Two Poems

I often think my mind and body are too connected


i often think my toes know the ground too intimately

i often think about things i don’t mean to think about

i wish i thought about purple, bright purple, light purple or purplish-blue

i often think about older sisters and even older ideas


i often think very very very very very young ideas

i often think i’m a movie inside a bug inside a fish

i often jump around inside the bouncy house of my soup trough

the brain-place where everything goes and drips and spills and the writing gets done


i often think in shapes like fingers or five little tombstones pointing

how eyes are round and squares are nice and circles are everywhere looking

if i notice too many circles i threaten to become a drawing of a house

a clean flat doodle with see-through walls and window panes galore


a clean flat body with see-through doors and nothing to say

the clean flat shape of a brain with diaphanous thoughts you’d have to palm to know

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Felt Poem


i like the idea that each bird means something distinct

i like the feeling of hearing the bird without having to see her

i like the idea of feeding my Babadook and letting him love me

i like the feeling of folding my brain-body into a listening bus


the bus driver drives through the chattering world and its endless perimeters

eyes on the road please my bb is getting hungry

eyes on the road please distracted by existence

eyes are the last road i prefer to end up on


the felt feelings are not the crux of the problem

the unfelt ones are where things start to turn

the anticipated ones are absolute ongoing heartache

i’m telling you it’s so hard to be a rolodex


it’s hard to be a walking telephone book with a trauma-pet

the tightroped world a hard place to balance this many pages on

FtB homepage | Latest workshop! | Autistic joy | Learn about Creative Wayfinding

↠ “Write & Witness”

~TONIGHT! Monday, June 15th at 5:15pm Pacific / 8:15pm Eastern. 90 minutes~

Come share your work in a cozy, strengths-based community.

We’ll spend the first 20 minutes settling into the space together. During this time, you might re-read your piece, jot down some intentions / affirmations, or simply let your body and brain catch up with where you are.

Then we’ll move into our sharing portion, where participants will have the opportunity to witness and be witnessed in community by sharing their work out loud and/or in the chat.

↠ Details:

• When: Monday, June 15th from 5:15 to 6:45pm Pacific / 8:15pm to 9:45pm Eastern (channeling new moon in Gemini energy!)

• Duration: 90 minutes

• Cost: “Write & Witness” is included with a paid subscription to For the Birds: $8/month or $84/year.

↠ Ways to participate (a non-exhaustive list):

• Read a poem, short essay, journal excerpt, fragment, or work-in-progress.

• Share something unfinished or “not ready.” In fact, I deeply encourage it.

• Share your writing in the chat, where I or another participant can read it aloud on your behalf.

• Bring a designated reader to read your work aloud.

• Content warnings will be encouraged—let’s say what needs saying, unfiltered, while still amplifying consent.

Your work does not need to be polished, coherent, impressive, or publication-ready. It just needs to be yours.

↠Paying members: Zoom & RSVP link here.*

↠Free readers: Wanna join us?

We’re a tenderhearted bunch of humans, and we’d absolutely love to have you.

*Dear beloved paying members: For ease & organization, click here to access a pinned post that lives on my For the Birds homepage—this is where I update our workshop details, Zoom info, & RSVP link each month, in addition to sending out these announcements. Consider bookmarking the pinned post!

What role do ~other people~ play in your creative work?

As a Libra rising with an Aries stellium, I’m contractually obligated to think A LOT about this kind of stuff: relationships, self amongst other, and the sticky yet wonderful (yet mind-boggling (yet necessary!)) interactions that our lives are made of.

In case you’re like me and spend a lot of time here too—an equal mix of flailing and longing—I’m sharing below excerpts from two short essays I wrote this past year that circle these topics.

May something here nudge your thinking in a useful direction!

“How Relationships Shape Our Creative Lives”

“The more clearly I understand my needs, the better I can meet them.

And when I meet my needs, I can show up in relationships with clarity, steadiness, and choice. I can choose the kinds of relationships that help me feel seen and safe instead of trying to mold myself into ones that don’t suit me.

It’s the Aries part of me (direct, self-directed, fiercely independent) finally getting what it needs.

It’s the Libra part of me (relational, connective, community-oriented) finally getting what it needs.

And it’s my autistic brain being recognized as a valuable component of my life, something I want to consult and accommodate, versus something “at odds” with living a rich, fulfilling, and community-oriented existence.”

↠ Read the full piece here.

“Shadow Work & Integration: Bringing Creativity Into the Daylight”

“When our creativity lies dormant underground, it usually means our support system is missing, too. We don’t speak aloud about this part of who we are or share our artistic longings with anyone. And in that silence and isolation, our creative self atrophies.

I know that hollow feeling well, the one where you’re outwardly fine but inwardly aching, living a life you can technically sustain but that isn’t emotionally whole. The one where you struggle alone without a guide, a cheering section, or a community that understands you.”

↠ Read the full piece here.

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But still I would be fairly useless in a coal mine

~for ~

I'm young, armed
with song—harnessed tight
inside my neck, around it.

A carabiner, sticky, responsible
for things hard to hold. Observant
of others, each blink and tic and nod
its own daybreak, a taught rope.

People are horizons. Everywhere.
Perpetually distant. 

I listen, look 
forward, eyes a lighthouse. Ideally 
I colonize nothing.

Today’s letter is a bit longer than usual. If your email provider cuts it short near the end, click “view entire message” to read it in full.

Dear Bird,

Near the end of March, I flew to Austin, Texas to attend NeuroDiversion 2026, something I’d been dreaming of since last fall. I liked the idea of participating in a formal event not just as me, but as a representative of my business—to “network” (barf), but in the most organic, inspired sense, in a room full of humans with brains wired similarly to mine.

Would I make friends? Meet colleagues and potential collaborators? Stir at least one person’s thinking about the intersection of neurodivergence + creative practice?

All three felt possible.

But I also had something to prove to myself.

I hadn’t been to a conference since AWP,1 the big to-do for English majors in college and grad school and which I attended many years in a row.

What to say about those years? Pre-diagnosis, I was still using large amounts of alcohol to cope with external + internal stimuli, chasing all my feelings right out of my body. I didn’t know how to be around others and not feel obliterated. Nor did I understand what I’ve come to see as my innate porousness: that I have no hatches to batten down, so to say, and must regulate at the level of environment and input. That the only way to survive an overwhelming energy is to leave the room, because once something gets in, it’s very hard to get it back out.

Even in the best of circumstances, AWP is a bright, sweaty place full of the worst parts of the English Department: competition and ego and everyone clamoring for attention as if they’re trying to cure cancer and not, oh I don’t know, land the iamb. Or get published in a journal someone’s actually heard of. Or cross the mysterious, gate-kept threshold from emerging writer into known one.

Add to this the fact that conference culture isn’t innately suited for brains & bodies like mine. Long, stacked lectures and workshops held beneath fluorescent lighting; fast-paced, alcohol-induced socializing; and an emphasize on doing, impressing, & selling over just…being. A lot of intentional curation is required to make this kind of event a more accommodating, inclusive one, something that accounts for the body as much as the brain.

And not just the brain—but all of them.

Enter: NeuroDiversion.

’s community project is a miraculous one, both emotionally and logistically. Workshops and breakout sessions are short, deeply varied, and hold space for learning, fun, and ease in equal measure. The main conference space is low lit, with colorful lights and cozy places to tuck away in, craft tables scattered throughout, and a low-sensory room you can escape to at any moment with zero consequence.

All of this made for—how else to say it? only big words feel right here—a life-changing weekend for me, one that re-enchanted the possibility of spontaneous social connection and showed me that, in the right context, it’s something I actually do want.

Here are the five most significant things I’m actively integrating from my experience.

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One: I’m pretty much still masking 24/7

It turns out, I am still masking most of the time, and on most days…

How do I know this? I know this because at ND26, I had my first experience of being almost entirely unmasked for about 72 hours straight.

And I know this because of what happened once I came home: how I caught myself moving though time and space a little differently, speaking up a little more in random social interactions, and feeling acutely aware of when the impulse to mask—to hide or camouflage some frequently misunderstood part of me—would re-assert itself.

I’m not sure we can fully learn how to unmask while still immersed in the environments in which the mask was born. ND26 gave me time and space to see and feel, from the inside out, what a longer bout of unmaskedness could feel like—to create this new internal reference point for myself.2

What did it feel like? Like high highs and low lows, the full tide of me ever-present and without apology.

By which I mean, it felt fucking marvelous.

Two: I still know very little about who I really am

…And when I’m unmasked? I am a different person than I’ve ever known myself to be. More social. Emotional af—but, like, externally.

Did you know that all your innermost emotions are things that can, like, come out of you? And be shared with other people?

The two months post-conference have been some of the best, hardest, most topsy turvy months of my life. (This might be the understatement of the year for me.)

Pre-autism diagnosis, I was haunted by three decades of a strange selflessness that I’d never been able to make sense of. What I’m talking about and celebrating here is different—not a lack of self, but an abundance of potential.

Who am I becoming? For the first time, I feel excited to find out.

Three: It’s hard to be soft in a pointy world

One thing I do know about myself:

“Some people are sharp on the outside but soft on the inside…while others, like me…are soft soft soft soft soft soft soft soft on the outside…with all our sharpnesses hidden.”

Which brings me, always, back to philosopher Martha Nussbaum (emphasis mine):

"To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances, in circumstances for which you are not yourself to blame. And I think that says something very important about the condition of the ethical life. That it is based on a trust in the uncertain, a willingness to be exposed. It's based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from that fragility."

Four: I don’t need more confidence—I need more self-compassion

See, for example, this real-time Note:

Rather than feeding my self-doubt, I decided to name what it was: worry.

And then, rather than feeding the worry, I called it something more accurate: a momentary loss of self-compassion.

Naming it as such revealed a different need. Instead of feeling obligated to convince myself I’d done a good job, I diverted my efforts toward showering myself with understanding and self-compassion, a nurturing hand on my chest.

You guys: this reframing stuff sometimes works!

Five: Learning is so much bigger, weirder, and more playful than academia wants us to believe

Grad school taught me to associate intellect with perpetual discomfort, competition, and refusal of the body’s softer needs. In academic spaces, the brain commands over everything else.

Except I’m tired of pitting firm and fragile against each other! I want a learning space that lets me care about big ideas and nervous system regulation in equal measure. I want new perspectives that pull me toward my growth edges while leaving room to be sad, silly, or tender while I’m there. Who cares about supposed genius when it’s been forcibly severed from one’s full emotional range?

Intuition, emotion, and sensitivity are valid forms of knowing in and of themselves. And I think NeuroDiversion is a space that knows this—knows that the best learning and thinking does not happen in a silo, but via embodied community.

As someone who lives in my head a lot, both by design and by conditioning, that was perhaps the most invaluable lesson for me.

You might also like…

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“It is like this: there are wonderfully gifted people who write a little piece and then write it over and over again to make it perfect—absolutely, flawlessly perfect, a gem. But these people only emit about a pearl a year, or in five years. And that is because of the grind, the polishing, i.e. the fear that the little literary pearl will not be perfect and unassailable. But this is all a loss of time and a pity. For in them there is a fountain of exuberant life and poetry and literature and imagination, but it cannot get out because they are so anxiously busy polishing the gem.”

~Brenda Ueland, If You Want To Write

Dear Bird,

Lately, the topic of sharing our work keeps surfacing everywhere.

In my creative mentorship sessions, where it’s a given. But also in one of our recent community workshops and in random conversations with peers. A lot of us are wondering what it could look like to be seen and heard in our truest creative expressions.

And what happens when we dare to imagine it?

I want to share my work, but…

But it isn’t ready.

But I’m scared.

But I don’t know if it’s good enough.

But I don’t know if I’m good enough.

And underneath all that, the deeper craving:

A longing not merely to publish, and not only for “attention,” but to be witnessed.

To belong inside intentional creative community, where you can share the things you’ve made with people who understand the vulnerability of having made them. And to let your work leave the private ecosystem of your notes app, journal, Google Doc, or desk drawer and become briefly alive in a room with other humans.

Some of us are hungry—not for praise, but resonance and kinship.

We want reciprocity and authenticity. To say, here—look at this thing that came through me, and to be received with care, attention, and enthusiasm.

(If you caught my recent convo with Amanda Bray, then you glimpsed the power of this!)

This longing is why I’ve created Write & Witness.

A seasonal offshoot of my monthly community workshops, the first installment of “Write & Witness” will take place on Monday, June 15th, at 5:15pm Pacific / 8:15pm Eastern.

On the new moon in Gemini, we’ll gather for 90 minutes in cozy, nourishing creative community. After arriving and settling into the space, we’ll begin sharing: poems, essay excerpts, fragments; tiny strange things, tender things, funny things. Unfinished things—not because they are perfect, but because they are alive.

Write & Witness is not an “open mic” in the traditional sense.

There is no pressure to perform, nor to present a polished, publication-ready version of yourself or your work.

This isn’t about proving your talent, but inhabiting your creative voice in the warm presence of others.

I think many of us—especially sensitive, neurodivergent souls—have absorbed the idea that only our most “finished” work deserves air or attention, that we should hide the process and reveal only the polished artifact. The supposed “gem.”

But this feels heartbreakingly inaccurate to me!! There is so much life in the unfinished and still-being-worked-through, so much goodness tucked inside fragments, attempts, experiments, and weird little side paths. And there’s so much connection available to us when we stop treating creativity like a performance review and let it once again be a living exchange.

Lately, I’ve grown a little exhausted by conversations about “external validation”—

—not because it isn’t a real threat, but because the conversations about it tend to erase something deeply human and necessary: That we are relational creatures, and that being witnessed matters.

There is nothing superficial or disempowering about wanting this.

Sometimes the work deepens because someone else heard it, or a piece becomes more itself because it was spoken aloud. Sometimes we don’t understand what we’re trying to say until another nervous system is present to receive it.

Relational witnessing matters—and creative work doesn’t happen in isolation.

If you’ve been longing for a gentler, more human-centered way to share your writing (one rooted in presence rather than performance), there’s a container waiting for you.

Hope to see you there, bird.

↠ Details

• When: Monday, June 15th from 5:15 to 6:45pm Pacific / 8:15pm Eastern (on the new moon in Gemini!)

• Duration: 90 minutes

• Cost: “Write & Witness” is included with a paid subscription to For the Birds: $8/month or $84/year.

Structure

We’ll spend the first 20 minutes settling into the space together. During this time, you might re-read your piece, make any last-minute tweaks, or simply let your body and brain catch up with where you are.

Then we’ll move into our sharing portion, where participants will have the opportunity to witness and be witnessed in community.

Ways to participate (a non-exhaustive list):

• Read a poem, short essay, journal excerpt, fragment, or work-in-progress.

• Share something unfinished or “not ready.” In fact, I deeply encourage it.

• Share your writing in the chat, where I or another participant can read it aloud on your behalf.

• Bring a designated reader to read your work aloud.

• Content warnings will be encouraged—let’s say what needs saying, unfiltered, while still amplifying consent.

Your work does not need to be polished, coherent, impressive, or publication-ready.

It just needs to be yours.

↠Paying members: Zoom & RSVP link here.*

↠Free readers: Wanna join us?

*Dear beloved paying members: For ease & organization, click here to access a pinned post that lives on my For the Birds homepage—this is where I update our workshop details, Zoom info, & RSVP link each month, in addition to sending out these announcements. Consider bookmarking the pinned post!

Your subscription directly supports the unfolding of this work and allows me to keep writing from the inside out rather than the outside in.

Subscribe now

Close your eyes and return your attention to its source.

Stop looking at pictures of things. Go be with the sky and the weeds and the ladybugs directly.

Stop looking at other people’s Homepages, About pages, Welcome pages—the surfaces of them. Stop looking at brands & logos.

Stop looking at other people’s clothes their hair their faces their eyes for a little while. Close your eyes and forget about other people for the time being.

Close your eyes and stop thinking about anyone else’s opinions but your own.

Close your eyes and forget about all the media you ate last week.

Stop looking at your numbers.

Stop looking at the packaging the descriptions the summaries on and of everything. Get as far away as you can from anything that’s about something.

A summary is an amputation. Don’t you want the whole package?

When something is about something, that means it isn’t the thing.

A textbook about oak trees.

A show about friendship.

Go be with the oaks! Go be with a friend.

Close your eyes and notice what you crave. Food? Literature? Open air?

Close your eyes and don’t open them back up until you promise me it won’t be to review your metrics but to look for the source of the chirping sound.

Close your eyes so you can’t find your wallet and then you’re fine anyway.

Close your eyes and trust what you already own.

Close your eyes and trust what you already know.

Close your eyes and trust that nobody knows how to navigate the edges of your knowing as safely as you do.

Close your eyes and turn your mind’s eye into a piece of paper.

Close your eyes and write—both toward and away from the edges of your knowing.

Go be with words, but only and always when the words are the thing—when language and poetry are how you transgress the aboutness and get to the weird primal core.

Even then: remember that words will always be partial. Close your eyes and forgive them their failings. Thank them for getting you as close as they do.

Imperfect, ecstatic words.

Close your eyes and go be with yourself. She’s out there—not even that far.

Imperfect. Ecstatic.

Stop looking at what you are not.

Stop looking at what you are not.

Stop looking at what you are not.

Stop looking at what you are not.

Close your eyes and picture your creative impulse.

Keep your eyes closed.

Imagine the innermost core of your creative impulse.

Keep your eyes closed.

Stop looking at what you are not.

Is it hot, the impulse? Is it a certain shape? Is it more than one color?

Keep your eyes closed.

Take a mental snapshot, a feelings snapshot, a somatic snapshot of everything you see or sense in there, deep in the middle of your creative impulse.

Notice what it isn’t: other people. Not their opinions nor their ideas nor their supposed expertise.

Well, what is it?

When you’re ready—and not a moment sooner—open your eyes and look.

Tilt an ear forward and listen, too.

If this landed, you might also like:

In which and I talk about the environments, shapes, and containers in which we really get to hear and see ourselves—each other.

If these essays & poemthings help inspire you, consider becoming a paying reader. You’ll gain access to once-a-month workshops and help sustain the deep, slow work of curating this space.

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Dear Bird,

If I wanted to set a high bar for my first “Live” experience on Substack, I think I nailed it?

My confidence comes from having a tremendously skilled and vulnerable conversation partner in , who showed up with everything I could’ve expected, and then a little bit more.

I knew our conversation would be an interesting one, well-suited for sensitive, divergent creatives looking for support and community but still figuring out exactly what that looks like for them.

But I was blown away by what our conversation offered me—the way it extended my thinking around community, reception, and the role that relationships play in my professional work.

Some favorite moments I’m carrying forward…

“The right squeeze is what counts” ~Amanda

When we enter a container—a focused and defined partnership of any kind—we need a consistent amount of freedom, agency, and consent.

But we also really really really need to feel held.

What makes for good holding?

I think it’s the boundaries of the relationship itself, communicated clearly and often, alongside the open-heartedness and good intentions with which both parties enter.

I think it’s about establishing a nuanced shared vocabulary early on.

And I think it has something to do with the ephemeral, emotional, harder-to-describe perimeter that envelopes both parties. There is a quality of attention, an emotional attunement, that I activate inside my brain and body when I sit down to hold space for another person—whether one or many.

And in all honesty, it feels a bit like a cosmic hug. One that leads to, as Amanda beautifully phrased it, “creative courage.”

A good mentorship or coaching container is a multilayered thing.

It is containment, but also scaffolding. It is prompting and cueing interspersed with deep listening. It is a space capable of holding joy and bravery and experiment and tenderness.

And above all: it is generative! One of the best reasons to enter this kind of partnership is because you’re excited to greet the version of you who will come out on the other side.

The body is a primary creative resource. Don’t ignore it.

I loved Amanda’s share about believing the wisdom of our bodily responses, and how this ties back to letting our authentic creative voice come through.

Our feelings, our memories, our sensitivities, our wounds, and all the softest, most emotional parts of who we are: this stuff is not at odds with our craft or skill!

Bypassing our needs, somatic or otherwise, is a great way to ensure your creative practice remains a tortured, burnout-inducing thing.

Don’t do that to yourself, friend—collaborate with your body.

You guys: Amanda is a poet.

I mean…

“What else do birds get to do?”

Come on now.

Give me all the frivolity in this life!

Who gets to define what counts as frivolous, anyway?

Merriam Webster: “of little weight or importance;” “lacking in seriousness.”

Y’all, I literally named this newsletter as a rebellious gesture of reclaiming supposed frivolity and worthlessness!

What I want in my creative practice—and I will settle for nothing less—is subversion and levity; to be unmasked and goofy as often as I am earnest and poetic; and to dare people (by which I mostly mean myself) to find value in every single iteration of who I am.

A strong partnership will feel bigger than the individual people involved.

As Amanda beautifully articulated, a good partnership is informed by both teacher and student, mentor and mentee, yet opens up into something bigger than what either could have created on their own.

In this way, it’s a kind of self-generating system: reciprocal, alive, and continually unfolding.

But also, nothing short of magic.

Thanks for tuning in, Bird!

↠ 💬 Let Amanda and I know in the comments: What stood out about our conversation? What questions surfaced? Or tell us about your own experience inside a good container.

Leave a comment

↠ Then stay tuned for next week’s formal announcement of Write & Witness, coming to your inbox on June 2nd.

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If these essays & poemthings help inspire you, consider becoming a paying reader. You’ll gain access to once-a-month workshops and help sustain the deep, slow work of curating this space.

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Dear Bird,

It might not surprise you to hear that I think a lot about jumping spiders.1

But lately I’ve been thinking about their human-made habitats, too. Aquariums and plastic containers, tiny worlds filled with moss and bark and carefully chosen humidity. Contained environments in which this tiny, miraculous creature can thrive.

I’m talking about spiders, but I’m also talking about you and me, bird!

Whether carefully curated or half stumbled into, our lives unfold inside containers of all kinds. Relational ones, work ones. Bodies and nervous systems that shape what can survive inside them. The mind itself—the ur-container. Creative containers, too.

All these literal and metaphorical climates, governed by conditions that either make our aliveness more possible, or less.

Here’s the part where I pretend to shift gears…

Have you noticed that most writing advice seems catered to a mythical, hyper-stable, presumably neurotypical writer?

Someone with endless energy that shows up in consistent, renewable batches. Someone with clear, unwavering focus and a perfectly regulated brain. Someone who wakes up every morning, drinks lemon water from a beautiful mason jar, writes 1,000 impeccable words, and then does it all again the very next day.

Cut to the rest of us: Tired. Limited by various overlapping responsibilities. Navigating neurodivergence, chronic illness, one form of marginalization or another. We are writing inside the conditions of our real lives, and they are messy, divergent, inconsistent, and wildly tender.

We need writing advice that accounts for our real, messy lives—and we need containers built to hold them.

In the wrong container, we learn to view our humanity—our internal landscape—as an obstacle to overcome rather than an innately valuable place to live and make from.

But in the right one?

The right container is nothing short of magic.

I see so many writers trying to force themselves into containers that do not fit, squishing and bending themselves into some unrealistic idea of what pacing, effort, and success are “supposed” to look like.

But in the right container, everything fits. I’ve seen it again and again in creative mentorship sessions, in our monthly workshops, and in the handful of small, intentional spaces in with I gather with one or more other human beings and practice being my fullest, least filtered self.

In the right container, you can finally take the next step forward with your project.

Or practice saying “no.”

You can write after years and years of not writing and only thinking about writing.

You can, for the first time in a long time (maybe ever), share your work with another person and feel something positive on the other side of it.

You can experiment, play, or think a brand new kind of thought.

You can make something really fucking weird for no other reason than because you wanted to!!

And you can stop spending so much energy policing your efforts or trying to be “correct.”

Just think of how much energy you’ll free up to actually, you know, take care of your self and make shit?! And to spend on stewarding your unique vision and voice.

↠ ↠ Last week, I went Live with to talk about all this stuff!

In this potent conversation, we touch on things like:

• what makes a container a nourishing one? (think: quality of attention, emotional attunement, and clear but open-hearted boundaries.)

• the medicine of witnessing and being witnessed

• somatic wisdom

• and the conditions that allow people to return to their creative practice on their own terms.

BIRD SEED

~a monthly mixtape, curated by M (who deserves a fucking medal)~

This Gemini season, let’s write about…

~zodiac-inspired prompts for poetic thinking~

This Gemini season, let’s write about:

BEING SPIRITED. Being of flesh—but more than just flesh.

Holding energy, zest, intention, verve.

Holding ghosts, too. Being possessed, but containing everything the ghosts need to live an animated life within your vicinity.

Being the breath of your own vicinity.

Breathing out loud. Breathing as loud as you need to. Taking the air into your body and using it for good. Abducting the air, haunting it.

Really living.

DUALITY. As in, contrast.

As in: opposition.

As in multitudes: two, and two, then two more of them. More of you. All of you. Both of you.

Both are true.

BEING SOCIAL. Because community is made of the Gemini spirit.

Because the party is planned through the Gemini spirit.

Because the people gather around the Gemini spirit.

Because the birds flock to the Gemini spirit.

Gregarious birds. Birds with entire colonies, ghosts and all.

Organized birds, with things to say and parties to throw.

Birds making more of themselves.

Birds making more of themselves by letting themselves be all the birds that each individual one of them really is.

This Gemini season, let yourself channel the social butterfly, the multitudinous bird, the friendly ghost.

What does each version of you have to say?

Say it on the page.

→ Dear bird, I’m in love with your comments!

Say hello, ask a question, respond to the prompt—or write a long essay-poem of your own:

Leave a comment

FtB homepage | Latest workshop! | Writing prompts | Work 1:1 with me

If these letters & poemthings help sustain you, consider becoming a paying member. Your subscription directly supports the slow unfolding of this work and allows me to keep writing from the inside out rather than the outside in.

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1

You cry so much that your eyes lose their shape.

2

You cry so much that your lungs turn into a large black spider and try to crawl away from your body.

3

You cry so much that a rolodex begins to run through your mind, showing the face of every grumpy or cynical or jaded or close-hearted person you’ve ever interacted with, and you think, Oh. I get it now.

4

You cry so much that you feel stuck perpetually trying to beckon the other person gently back to you. Is it a frozen feeling, or a seasick one?

Do you need to hold still, or is the holding still part of the problem?

All you know is that you resent that word. Problem.

5

You cry so much that your crying gets all criss-crossed with your sensory receptors. And because your particular brain is “so good” at making associations that stick, the whole world starts to feel associated with the crying, and the reason for crying. With them.

They’re everywhere.

In the water lapping against the mossy rocks. In the texture of the pages inside your hardback novel. In every single dog you cross paths with—how you almost reach out to pet one of them, a small fluffy thing nested on a man’s shoulder, before remembering, at the last moment, that he isn’t yours.

6

You cry so much that you forget to vote.

You brace for all the shame you know is on its way to you—it’ll be rushing in any moment now.

And at the last minute you find yourself flooded, instead, with empathy.

The way good people just don’t always get it right.

7

You cry so much that you wonder, genuinely, if your innate enthusiasm, a quality you are somewhat known for, might be gone forever.

It has only been four days, but still.

Then, amidst the wondering, you remember there’s a version of you that is, with some frequency, embarrassed by your enthusiasm.

And your eagerness.

And your optimism.

And your trust—which doesn’t come easily, but boy when it does…

You look at this version of you closely and see—it lands not as self-judgment but with a cool, startlingly neutrality—that she is an idiot. An absolute fool, for worrying about this sacred, precious quality of yours.

How to protect it, but also her, without putting a cage around either?

8

You cry so much that you can’t eat.

You already struggle to eat sometimes, which makes this either not a big deal or a really big deal. You aren’t sure how to tell.

And then, in a fleeting moment, the window opens: you register something like hunger. You go to a cafe and order the same-iest, safest food on the menu.

When they bring your plate to you, it takes you a moment to understand what you’re looking at.

A plate of simple breakfast tacos—egg, cheese, black beans, a mild salsa—garnished with one small slice of watermelon.

Now listen. You’ve heard all about the recency effect: the brain’s hard-wired tendency to spot the very things it was most recently made aware of, resulting in the impression that there are suddenly more of them everywhere.

You understand that this world is full of explanations both reasonable and mundane.

You don’t buy any of it.

You have never, not once, received a plate of food with a watermelon garnish.

You feel superstitious. You feel clear-sighted. You feel crazy. You feel wishful.

You take a bite.

9

You cry so much. So, so much.

And then, while walking through a dense forest in a small, grimy town by the coast, your partner points out the bright green shock of new growth dotting the end of every massive pine tree in sight, the branches of which are otherwise a much darker, deeper shade.

The juxtaposition of the two feelings, I mean colors, is so potent that you must turn around and march back to the car, stat.

10

But before you do, you cry.

You cry so much.

And then, because you’re already in town, and because you’d be crying no matter where you were, you drive toward a large concrete column your partner spotted in the distance—a tourist attraction, you both assume. Might as well check it out.

Upon arriving you learn that the column, built in 1926, is 600 feet tall and comprised of 164 steps in total. A small unlocked door sits at its base. It seems that, without fanfare or pre-registration, you can simply go in and climb to the top.

You go in; your partner follows.

You are maybe a third of the way up when you become aware of his breathing behind you. Oh, you think, his foot. He’s been having trouble with it. You wonder if the climb is causing pain.

You ask about his foot. He says it’s fine.

It takes you a bit longer—too long, really—to realize that your partner is scared. To remember his fear of heights.

(What is this “fear of heights?” When you are heartbroken, altitude loses all threat. There is nowhere else to fall.)

You reach out and grab your partner’s hand; tell him that he’s safe.

When you get to the top, you stay close to him, repressing the urge to stick your toes and arms over the edges. A bald eagle soars directly before you, just below your line of sight. The two of you look toward the mountains, then the trees.

Afterward, you search his face for relief—for some kind of evidence that your support (the affirming words, the hand-holding) did something good. You don’t see it.

“You helped me so much,” he tells you shortly thereafter. “Without you, I wouldn’t have made it to the top.”

You can’t quite put it into words yet, but you are beginning to understand something new about care and its consequences.

11

You cry so much. And then, predictably, you write.

You write and write and write and write and write, sentences insisting their way into your journal and onto your phone.

You decide to put them together in one place. You don’t know if it’s the most thoughtful thing you’ve ever written, or the least.

Truthfully—is it disillusionment, or optimism?—you don’t care.

You beg anyone who’s listening to please tell you that you won’t feel this bad forever.

• Navigating “Zoom fatigue”

• Craving something slower and at-their-own-pace

• Already maxed out on social gatherings this month

• Or who benefit from revisiting the content from our live calls

If that’s you—hi, hello!—I’m building an archive of evergreen creative support this year especially for you.

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“Me-search: Asking questions to enable creative movement”

~courtesy April’s guest facilitator, Liz—aka ~

You guys: I love welcoming guest facilitators into the FtB community!! From translating—and reveling in—our innate wildness, to protecting aliveness and beauty amidst tough times, to organizing our spaces with creative ease in mind: we’ve done some really juicy things thanks to some amazing teachers.

(Big hugs to Astrid Pleijel Blomstrand, , and Huber, respectively.)

Our April guest facilitator & workshop was no exception. Liz—a brilliant researcher and fellow Taurus—walked us through a highly curated series of questions designed to drum up clarity, organize our thinking, and bring us that much closer to self-revelation and an answer to the question, “well, what next?”

If you missed the live call, or just want to revisit the process, scroll down to find:

• Liz’s workshop slides

• A very thorough workshop narrative—also courtesy Liz!

• A few notes & shares from me

↠ If you’re an introspective human obsessed with asking good questions, this one’s for you.

Read more

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the nothingness required in order to make art.

The idling, fidgeting, puttering, and otherwise “doing nothing” that makes space inside us for big ideas and spontaneous inspiration.

Productivity culture conditions us to feel bad about this unstructured time—to misread open as empty. Which means when we’re lucky enough to have a stretch of it, we’re too busy berating ourselves to properly sink in.

Oh my dear sensitive friend: Let’s practice sinking in this month, together.

Your creativity loves when you do nothing!! It’s where your strangest thoughts and dreamiest dreams tend to pop their shy little heads up. And it’s also where—paradoxically—some really interesting work can sometimes get done.

There I am, unsuspiciously lying in the hammock, reading a dumb book with zero intentions of doing anything intellectual…

…and then suddenly I’m rushing back inside to my laptop, because that idea—the sticky, evasive one I’ve been trying to crack for weeks—has split open. Pomegranate full of shiny, delectable seeds.

↠ “Doing Nothing” (a co-resting space for rebellious idling)

~Wednesday, May 27th at 5:15pm Pacific / 8:15pm Eastern. 75 minutes~

↠ What to expect:

Look, I’m a reasonable person. We’re not just going to sit around and stare at each other! But we are going to inhabit the hour loosely, openly, and with extremely limited-to-no expectations of ourselves. We’ll hold ourselves—and each other—and our creative impulse lightly and just…see what arises.

• You might still show up with notebooks, collage materials, or an easy creative project within reach—but with full permission to ignore it entirely.

• I’ll be sharing my screen with some random bits and bobs of inspiration: images, texts, & small somatic invitations. These won’t be prompts so much as clouds passing by. You might pause and look up at them; you might not.

• After an hour of doing nothing, we’ll spend 15 minutes doing some gentle, low-stakes reflecting on the page.

↠ This workshop is for you if:

• You live inside late-stage capitalism. (Welcome, literally every person reading this.)

• You have a sticky relationship with “free time,” and you want to challenge that in a fun, safe way.

• You can get down with a silly, experimental workshop!

• You like gleaning inspiration from coincidence, chance, and letting go.

↠Paying members: Zoom & RSVP link here.*

↠Free readers: Wanna join us?

We’re a kind, enthusiastic bunch of humans, and we’d absolutely love to have you.

*Dear beloved paying members: For ease & organization, click here to access a pinned post that lives on my For the Birds homepage—this is where I update our workshop details, Zoom info, & RSVP link each month, in addition to sending out these announcements. Consider bookmarking the pinned post!

You’ll also gain access to monthly workshops and the larger community space. Win-win!

Subscribe now

Dear Bird,

If you’ve been here a while, you know I freakin’ love lists!

(Remember that “list-making party” we had a million years ago?!)

Lists (charts, diagrams, word webs: all of it) ground me, slow me down, and help make space between me and all the data constantly swirling around inside my head. Lighthouses among storms.

I also find them deeply energizing—a wildly accessible creative outlet.

You can make lists of literally anything: dreams, weird words, social experiences, ideas for SNL skits, fake band names…anything!

I stumbled into two hefty ones these past couple weeks. First, I did a small experiment where I posted one unhedged opinion a day for 10 days in a row, leading right up to my 39th birthday.

(A kind reader—hi hi, !—compared the list to Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles of Good Design, which inspired this very post / made me blush so hard.)

Second, a Beltane manifesto showed up on May 1st in response to some delightful invertebrate inspiration.

Dear bird, I’m sharing both pieces with you below.

May they inspire you directly—or else nudge you toward creating your own clarifying, empowering seasonal lists.

xoxo,

S

Unhedged Opinions

~in support of a more feral creative practice~

1. Writing is the most vital form of processing and expression for neurodivergent folks. The page offers a space no other one can replicate.

2. Measuring your work too closely or strictly distorts it.

3. Your experience is true.

4. Environment matters more than discipline.

5. Sensitivity is not optional.

6. “Throat-clearing” is part of the work; hesitation contains structure and use.

7. Your anger is a clarifying force.

8. Understanding comes after making.

9. Your voice carries meaning even when you don’t understand it.

10. Three things to trust unconditionally: curiosity, your creative impulse, & right timing.

Unhedged Opinions: downloadable version!

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Unhedged Opinions

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PNG (if you want me as your desktop background, etc.):

Last Friday morning, coffee in hand, I plopped down on the steps of our front porch and opened my journal:

How can I look to nature, and the freshness of spring, to bring something new into my writing practice and my creativity in general?

Literal and observant, I kept my mind focused on the earth around me, not paying too much attention at first to the whole creativity part.

I wrote:

• let things overgrow. think: who might this feed?

• plant bulbs in fall for an early spring burst of joy.

• grieve how quickly the lilac turns; notice that it turns every year.

• deadhead.

• learn to identify more of the bugs & birds around you.

• sunbathe! be a cat. be warm.

• weeding is meditative.

• we are not obligated to beautify our yard.

• don’t forget how much you enjoy looking at the clouds.

Part daily scrapbook, part renter’s manifesto (lol) and part pre-coffee rambling, when I looked over my list I registered a faint pulse.

Something was there.

I spent the rest of the morning translating my silly, spontaneous notes into the following Beltane Manifesto, pulling a creative credo from each mundane observation.

Dear Bird, here’s what fell out:

Beltane Manifesto

~May 2026~

1. unpolished, un-composed, unedited work is still work. wild work. its ferality is its value.

2. remember that impact is slow, takes time, & can’t be immediately assessed.

3. grief is present in the creative process—especially for us ND / female & queer / marginalized / chronically ill or disabled folks. but remember: things come back. they do. even in different form, they just do.

4. growth is not objectively better than rest. depending on the season or circumstance, growth might be the least healthy choice.

5. yr immediate surroundings are one of the best sources of creative inspiration and deep poetic thinking. attend to what’s there.

6. how you feel in yr body matters! especially when making art.

7. the mundane tasks—light editing, prepping submission materials, formatting, cleaning up your work station—are just as valuable as the glamorous ones. (& sometimes more quietly potent.)

8. oh honey: what you already do, and what you’ve already accomplished, is good enough. live inside your own ecosystem—it’s yours.

9. look up. be pointless sometimes. let creativity be the thing that meanders through your body via the sacred act of noticing and never, ever clings.

↠ “Me-search: Asking questions to enable creative movement” (a guest-facilitated workshop w/ Liz)

~Thursday, April 30th at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern. 90 minutes~

Whether you’ve got a piece of writing you’re feeling stuck on, or you want some help transitioning between projects, Liz will walk us through a loose framework we can turn to anytime to energize our thinking and create some forward motion.

↠ What to expect:

• When: Thursday, April 30th at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern

• Duration: 90 minutes

• Format: We’ll spend about an hour or so being gently guided through a series of writing prompts, with some built-in time near the end for optional sharing and Q&A.

↠ This workshop is for you if:

• You know where to start creatively, but don’t always remember how to continue.

• You are insatiably curious (hi! me too) and always asking questions.

• You’re full of spring energy but could use some light structure—and a kind community setting—in which to figure out a clearer direction forward.

• You can get down and nerdy with words—as both art and framework!

↠ About your guest facilitator:

Liz is the type of researcher who learns from people’s experiences, not reducing them to numbers. In this capacity she has done workshops to help others understand problem spaces (and sometimes themselves). As a creative she writes under the pen name Joan Antigone about learning and creative projects on her Substack, but finds expression through poetry, fiction, essays, sewing, costume design, perfectly arranging shelves, and letting herself make silly little doodles as she observes the world around her.

↠Paying members: Zoom & RSVP link here.*

↠Free readers: Wanna join us?

We’re a tenderhearted bunch of humans, and we’d absolutely love to have you.

*Dear beloved paying members: For ease & organization, click here to access a pinned post that lives on my For the Birds homepage—this is where I update our workshop details, Zoom info, & RSVP link each month, in addition to sending out these announcements. Consider bookmarking the pinned post!

FtB homepage | Latest workshop! | Writing prompts | Autistic joy | Work 1:1 with me

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Getting older (7 tiny vignettes)

1

I’ve always felt a certain sensitivity around age & aging—and before you jump to conclusions, I’m not talking about the fear of looking older. I dare laugh lines and crows feet to take up residence on my face as they please.1 I refuse to buy any product that says “anti-aging” on its packaging. The most unfeminist thing about me might be how I feel—objectively, non-negotiably—when I clock a female celebrity who’s clearly had work done. When I hear afab women complain about getting older, I grow immediately despondent.

I am simply looking for a different kind of role model.

The sensitivity I feel is weirder than gender troubles—more related to time’s preciousness, the simultaneous grief of becoming who I am while no longer remaining who I was.

It happens daily, don’t you think?

2

When I was a kid, I often felt out of sync with the other kids my age, preferring the company of children who were either old enough to babysit me or young enough for me to babysit them.

3

I remember going to a gift shop in Jacksonville, Oregon with my mom—I couldn’t have been more than 10—and using my Christmas money to buy not a toy or a book but a bulky silver keychain: a heavy angel’s wing that filled my entire palm. Engraved along its length was the question, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

At every age: I’ve pretty much always been this way. Sappy, sentimental. My body too small for everything it feels.

Feelings like automations, conveyer belts carrying intensity and passion up and down my limbs.

Though feelings like flowers, too.

Maybe tulips.

4

People have always talked to me like I’m much younger than I am.

“Are you even old enough to serve me that beer?” men would say, each one assuming he’d invented the joke, when I was young and still waiting tables.2

“You’ll appreciate it when you’re older, honey,” say the well-meaning women.

I’m still waiting for that day to come.

5

Once upon a time, May Sarton answered a question from a well-meaning—and much younger—audience member during a poetry reading Q&A. Something about the presumed difficulty of old age, the implication being a usual one: how do you cope with the loss of your value?

In her 70s and still working, her answer was direct, unflinching and, to my ear, celebratory: “I am more myself than I have ever been.”

She would go on to publish 9 more books—nine—before passing away in 1995 at the age of 83.

6

Some years ago, I had a revelation: I would no longer focus all my celebratory energy on my birthday itself—that first day of a new decade—but on the final day of my current one. It was 2021, I was 33 (christ’s death age) about to turn 34 (Simone Weil’s death age), and everything felt charged and uncanny, my life one big series of springs waiting to be sprung. I liked the idea of closing a chapter as ritualistically as I opened a new one, and those last few days of being 33 suddenly felt like treasure.

What would I do with that final one?

When the day arrived, M and I awoke at 4am and drove to a Tulip Farm just south of Portland, two “sunrise” tickets in hands. The super pink moon stared down at us the whole 90-minute drive, and I sucked on ginger candies to try and soothe the weird feeling in my tummy from being in a moving vehicle so early.

The next day, I turned 34.

7

Today, I am 39.

Our four spring tulips—we planted mostly daffodils last fall—have already turned.

I took a handful of their petals, crisp and curling inward toward themselves, and brought them to the edge of a tall bookshelf inside our house.

There they sit, detached from function. Decaying, yes, but slowly.

Sometimes I think I like them better this way.

FtB homepage | Latest workshop! | Writing prompts | Work 1:1 with me |

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In case you missed it…

But also, this:

BIRD SEED

~a monthly mixtape, curated by M (who said, and I quote: “I’ve been thinking a lot about death, and I’ve been thinking a lot about love. They aren’t opposites, you know?”)

This Taurus season, let’s write about…

~zodiac-inspired prompts for poetic thinking~

This Taurus season, let’s write about:

Earth! Oh my gosh: earth. And art. And beauty.

Beauty on paper, in words or lists or diagrams—flat beauty. Beauty you can pick up, fold, tear.

Oh my gosh: tears! Where do they go, and where do they come from?

Or bodies (same question).

Now look over there: flowers! Birds, dirt, seeds, buds, shoveling, weeding, clawing, lying down, sleeping, waking up, snacking, reveling, wiling. Wiling only yourself and those you care about most deeply, but mostly yourself, and mostly just deeper into this staunch moment of already you.

Because you are a statue.

Because the world around you is a living museum.

Because you are made of all the things you’ve ever loved.

Because you can be picked up, folded, torn.

Because you pick up, fold, and tear others by putting your creative voice into the world, everything you make, conjure, and say.

This Taurus season, tear them in two: those people you love—yourself first of all. Tear them, and now there’s more of them, and you, and love to go around.

→Dear bird: these zodiac posts are no longer paywalled!

That means the comments 💬 section is open to all. Say hello, ask a question, respond to the prompt—or write a long essay-poem of your own (good gawd: I *love* your long comments).

Leave a comment

FtB homepage | Latest workshop! | Writing prompts | Work 1:1 with me

• Struggling with Zoom fatigue

• Craving something slower and at-their-own-pace

• Already at their max quota for social gatherings this month

• Or who benefit from revisiting the content of our live calls

If that’s you—hi, hello!—I’m building an archive of evergreen creative support this year especially for you.

Subscribe now

“5 words a day”

~a generative + playful at-your-own-pace workshop~

March’s community call, originally scheduled for 1 hour, turned into a 90-minute workshop meets process session, where most of us hung around afterwards and divulged the insights we’d drummed up. We took turns reading our 5-word lists out loud, marveling at their unique blueprint (think: horoscope meets personality quiz). And we shared excerpts of our work—from the silly, experimental paragraphs to the cosmic poems to the deeply personal excavations.

I’m so grateful to spend time in this intimate, tenderhearted community every month.

As a way to extend the reach and usefulness of these gatherings and start building a supportive archive you can turn to as needed, I’ve turned March’s workshop into an at-your-own-pace offering!

Below you’ll find:

• A video workshop that walks you through the exercises.

• Workshop slides.

• Insights & revelations from the community.

• Real-time draft examples from me—what I literally created as I walked through the prompts alongside the group.

↠ If you’re a writer who’s endlessly curious about process, then this one’s especially for you.

Wherever these materials find you, I hope they bring inspiration, energy, and some helpful structure to your creative practice. Make it yours, you beautiful bird!

Read more

If last month was all about planting seeds, gathering inspiration, and getting started…

…then this month is all about maintaining momentum!

And I’m thrilled to keep the ball rolling with some extra-special help from writer, researcher, and guest facilitator Liz—aka the tremendously talented Joan Antigone.

↠ “Me-search: Asking questions to enable creative movement” (a guest-facilitated workshop w/ Liz)

~Thursday, April 30th at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern. 90 minutes~

Whether you’ve got a piece of writing you’re feeling stuck on, or you want some help transitioning between projects, Liz will walk us through a loose framework we can turn to anytime to energize our thinking and create some forward motion.

↠ What to expect:

• When: Thursday, April 30th at 1pm Pacific / 4pm Eastern

• Duration: 90 minutes

• Format: We’ll spend about an hour or so being gently guided through a series of writing prompts, with some built-in time near the end for optional sharing and Q&A.

↠ This workshop is for you if:

• You know where to start creatively, but don’t always remember how to continue.

• You are insatiably curious (hi! me too) and always asking questions.

• You’re full of spring energy but could use some light structure—and a kind community setting—in which to figure out a clearer direction forward.

• You can get down and nerdy with words—as both art and framework!

↠ About your guest facilitator:

Liz is the type of researcher who learns from people’s experiences, not reducing them to numbers. In this capacity she has done workshops to help others understand problem spaces (and sometimes themselves). As a creative she writes under the pen name Joan Antigone about learning and creative projects on her Substack, but finds expression through poetry, fiction, essays, sewing, costume design, perfectly arranging shelves, and letting herself make silly little doodles as she observes the world around her.

↠Paying members: Zoom & RSVP link here.*

↠Free readers: Wanna join us?

We’re a kind, enthusiastic bunch of humans, and we’d absolutely love to have you.

*Dear beloved paying members: For ease & organization, click here to access a pinned post that lives on my For the Birds homepage—this is where I update our workshop details, Zoom info, & RSVP link each month, in addition to sending out these announcements. Consider bookmarking the pinned post!

You’ll see some exciting announcements + new offerings in this space as we move deeper into spring and summer. If you’ve been on the fence about joining our monthly community workshops or deepening your support for this creative project, now’s an ideal time to do so!

Dear Bird,

There’s nothing more generative to me than being asked to define my terms.

And by “generative” I mean hard, dizzying, occasionally impossible, and deeply clarifying.

I’ve been working through this process in relation to poetry—how to read it, what a poem even is—and now I’m asking myself what I mean1 when I talk about having and deepening a “creative practice.”

What does it mean to have a “creative practice”?

No punches pulled: It’s not just about what you make, but about the systems you build, both external and internal, that make the making possible.

I spent so many awkward years telling people I was a writer only to be asked what books I had published. That assumption—that our work must show up in the most legible, widely acknowledged, product-oriented ways—left me feeling embarrassed and silly when I couldn’t provide the answer they were looking for.

Over time, I grew hesitant about mentioning my writing to people I didn’t know well, because I didn’t want to be asked questions that would remind me I wasn’t properly successful or doing creativity the “right” way.

This is the problem with defining our creative practices based on outcome alone: we learn to stop recognizing all the other ways it shows up.

And we learn to distrust and minimize the full scope of our efforts.

But here’s the thing: A creative practice isn’t only what you produce. It’s also the system you build to stay in relationship with your own creative energy.

And that’s a system way more fueled by self-trust than by external validation.2

If you’re like me, the notion of “self-trust” sends a little ping to your brain—like, woops, Sarah, I’m not sure I have enough of that for what you’re talking about here.

But self-trust doesn’t have to be a loud feeling!

Rather than an intuitive, rainbow-filled burstingness in your chest or gut, it can simply be a neutral choice you choose and then stand by. You can make the unglamorous but vital decision to give yourself the benefit of the doubt. If a technique isn’t working for you, or you find yourself not caring about the same thing as your peers do, or you want to write about a topic no one else seems presently interested in: you are allowed to decide that those impulses are worth following, even if it’s hard to feel that they are.

You are allowed to decide that the impulse itself is the validating mechanism.

When you regard your impulses in this way, the question of “what counts” begins to expand.

So—what counts?

Truthfully: all of it. Your creativity is a house with many doors, which you may enter in any number of ways.

Once inside, you see high arts and low arts, things that stretch your intellectual horizon and things that cozy up beside what you already know to be true.

You see public pursuits and private ones living side-by-side, equally valued.

You see constant companions—forms, ideas, other authors—alongside ones that come and go with the seasons.

You see the value of impermanence. The meals you cook, the songs you sing in the shower, the flashes of problem solving and creative thinking: you feel in your body how none of it requires proof or perpetuity. What’s good about a good meal, shower karaoke, or a moment of revelatory insight that occurs between two friends on a walk & talk is not that they last forever, but that they happened.

And over time, the distinction between “creative work” and the rest of your life starts to soften.

Not everything becomes art—but everything becomes part of the system that makes art possible.

↠ Intermission: Which parts of your creative system are you most proud of? Share your favorite supports with the community:

Leave a comment

Your creative practice is one of the most personal, intimate parts of who you are.

It’s not something you perform correctly, but that you continuously adjust so that it fits the way your attention and energy actually move.

This truth guides me in everything I do, from my day job as a creative mentor to my unpublished writing projects. It informs how I hike, how I look at birds and bugs and, on rare occasion, a coyote in the distance. It shapes how I see myself. And it’s top of mind as I craft the monthly workshops and co-writing sessions I host for this very community.

Your creativity is bound to thrive when you accommodate your innate energy cycles, amplify your authentic voice, and build frameworks that allow you to regard yourself with accuracy and authenticity.

Which is also to say: with compassion.

Accuracy → authenticity → compassion

There’s nothing accurate about pretending your creativity should be different than what it is.

My challenge to you this season: Identify one expectation you’ve been placing on yourself that isn’t authentic to who you really are or how you really work. Get as specific about it as you can—grow intimate with it.

Then, from that tended place of precision and directness: Dear bird, let it go.

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“Creative” isn’t a status you earn—it’s a relationship you design.

And for many of us, that’s a relationship we’re still actively learning how to build.

In the workshops and co-writing sessions I host for paid readers of this community, we spend time doing exactly that: paying attention to how your creative life actually works and shaping a practice that fits it more honestly.

It’s a space for tenderhearted, divergent humans to clarify what they’re already doing, refine how they name it, and build a more sustainable relationship with their own creative energy.

This kind of work happens more depthfully in community—where witnessing, curiosity, and shared attention make things easier to see.

If you’re craving a more authentic and robust creative practice, I hope you’ll join us at our next live workshop!

Subscribe now

More than anything, I hope this season brings you greater clarity, truer self-recognition, and more moments where your creative energy feels easy to meet.

For the Birds is a newsletter and community space for tenderhearted writers and divergent creative humans. Each month, we meet for a workshop or co-writing session with the same guiding aims: to steady our creative lives; to drum up clarity; and to remember that writing is equal parts craft and joy.

↠ “5 words a day” (a generative & playful exercise)

~Tuesday, March 31st at 9:30am Pacific / 12:30pm Eastern. 1 hour~

↠ What to expect:

• When: Tuesday, March 31st at 9:30am Pacific / 12:30pm Eastern

• Duration: 1 hour (digestible but nourishing!)

• Format: We’ll spend the bulk of the hour responding to a series of prompts that veer slightly poetic, writing quietly (but enthusiastically!) in each other’s company. If there’s time at the end, I’ll open up the room to some very optional sharing.

↠ 3 reasons to attend:

• You’ll get a creative writing session on the books early in the season. Hell yeah!

• You’ll do something silly and stretchy on the page that you’ve maybe never done before.

• You’ll come away with at least one idea for how to get started when getting started feels hard—and possibly some inspiration for creating your own similar exercises.

↠Paying members: Zoom & RSVP link here.*

↠Free members: Wanna join us?

We’re a kind, rigorous group, and we’d love to have you.

*Dear beloved community members: For ease & organization, click here to access a pinned post that now lives on my For the Birds homepage—this is where I’ll update our workshop details, Zoom info, & RSVP link each month, in addition to sending out these announcements. Consider bookmarking the pinned post!

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