Last year, I applied to a writing residency in Italy that I was out-of-my-mind excited about. It took a long time to apply, and I asked three mentors and colleagues to write letters of recommendation. Not only did I spend a bunch of time, but I also had three other writers spend a bunch of time, while one of them was solo parenting her first baby, another was dealing with an acute medical issue, and the third was promoting her second book. In short, they all had other shit to do.

It was the fourth or fifth residency I applied to, but I had a hopeful feeling about it—maybe this is the one. I already imagined myself walking down those stairs in the morning, coffee in one hand, journal in the other, breathing in the salty air.

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The next morning was warm and sunny, but I had rotting, wet anxiety swirling in my gut. It was the last day, and the talent show would be held that evening. While all the other groups were practicing, I told my group not to worry about my trick and that it would be a surprise.

A bad surprise, obviously.

They didn’t need to know that part yet. I was buying time.

Once I know I can’t do a thing anymore that I have been doing for a long time (say, performing a disappearing act), but I also don’t know what to do instead, I apparently just sit in a tree house talking to my new friends while internally freaking out and then calming myself by saying, maybe I could just disappear myself one more time. Just one last time, I swear!

But I’d already told Emmy and Julie Gemcake, and while I have historically been great at disappointing myself, I deeply dread disappointing others. I did not want Emmy and Julie Gemcake to think I was a liar.

…

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so flat and gold

almost smooth enough to blur the individual grains.

It was midday and blindingly hot,

my pale skin a sheen of sweat

the ocean milky glass.

I had the urge to strip down and run in.

I told him, and he scoffed.

“You can’t go in your underwear.”

I didn’t say: I meant naked.

I didn’t say: whether naked or clothed, or in underwear, nobody would care.

Least of all the ocean.

I did say: “Why not? There’s nobody here.”

“Go ahead,” he said, “if you really want to,” and so I didn’t.

And then I blamed him.

And then I blamed me.

And then I brought it up during fights over the next decade.

I made it mean so many things.

About us

about him

about me.

This morning I stood in the sand,

rivulets of ocean,

and so many rocks.

The light over the water clear and wet.

A tiny blush.

The people with me, bright-eyed and red-cheeked, stripping down and running into the cresting waves.

I did not feel the urge to run in.

I stood, warm in my hat and coat,

cheeks hurting from smiling,

eyes burning from c…

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Back when I’d graduated with my Associate’s Degree, I was heavily pregnant with my first daughter. Now, it was nearly six years later, and she was in Kindergarten. The twins were in pre-school, and my youngest daughter was three.

I couldn’t believe my luck. Not only had I received a Pell grant to finish my BA, but I’d also managed to get my youngest a coveted spot at university-subsidized pre-school, and my husband and I had found a small rental house in Missoula. Most of his clients were in Missoula, and so was the college. We were finally getting out of the tiny town we’d lived in, tucked away at the foot of the Bitterroot Mountain range. It was gorgeous and lonely, breathtakingly beautiful and isolated.

Missoula was walkable and full of free and affordable events and activities for families with children. A liberal oasis in a red state.

For my first married …

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The baby grown-up stranger tells me about her best friend who loves pickles more than anything. “For her birthday every year, I just get her all different kinds of pickles.”

A dull pain bursts and spreads in my gut, mixed with surprise that I’m not the only one gifting birthday pickles to friends.

I squeeze my face into a smile and tell the stranger what a good friend she is. She asks me about my favorite kind of pickle (Cornichons by Napoleon). She corrects my pronunciation, then tells me about getting pickl…

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When I was a kid, I started reading my stacks of library books in the car on the way home, straining my eyes and grateful for every foggy beam of streetlight, illuminating the car for a second. In other words, I was not patient when there was a new book in my hands, so I won’t make you wait either.

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From that first night on, I got magic and fireflies every night. On the second night, when the camp’s writer-in-residence, , spoke about her story (more on this later) in the outdoor chapel under the trees, she stopped mid-sentence and exclaimed: “Fireflies! This is magic!” My mouth dropped open. Everyone around me kept talking about magic. Everyone was pointing out fireflies. Everyone was helping me see that what I’d asked for was already there, had always been there.

, fellow camper and writer of exquisite poetry, told me I was getting a 4-day retroactive midwest childhood summer camp experience, and she was correct. I’d never experienced the magic of summer camp as a kid, but this felt like getting a redo of a nonexistent memory.

At summer camp, we acted like kids. No matter how hard we tried, we were always kind of sweaty, kind of dirty, kind of smelly. We were outside all the time and hungry all the time. We made friendship bracelets and made up songs while playing ukuleles and drew strange self-portraits. We didn’t know or care to ask what people did for a living. We talked about writing and other creative projects and our favorite books and each other’s stories, but rarely about how we paid our bills. We talked a lot about just being at camp: who had snacks to share (thanks, Melissa), which shower had the best water pressure (outdoor shower by the treehouse), and always always always where are we meeting right now?? (probably the tree chapel…).

I made friends with Becks and Mellie and Julie Gemcake and “just” Tia, and, of course, Emmy. On the first evening, I saw her standing there in front of the lodge with her face and her hair, and I said, hey, I like your pants. I didn’t know “pants” meant “knickers” meant “underwear” which she only explained to me much later, after we’d already spent an afternoon drying out in the tree house, writing, and talking, and after we jumped off the dock into the lake, holding hands, and after we spectacularly failed at every camp game involving singing and clapping our hands together, and after we laid under the stars doing yoga and snot-bubble crying while getting demolished by bugs.

Tia and Mellie were my cabin neighbors. At night, I’d walk home through the dark forest and see the light glowing orange in their little log cabin and hear them laughing over the soundtrack of cicadas. In the morning, we’d find each other on the path to the washhouse up the hill to splash ice-cold water on our faces and brush our fuzzy teeth.

Mellie had brought her tarot cards and was offering readings in a retrofitted airstream, one of the only places on the campground that had AC.

Mellie talked me through an entire spread that was shockingly accurate.

Don’t tell me it’s not real. I don’t care. All I ever do with anything is hear and see what I need to hear and see, whether that’s in a song Rob sends me or a tarot reading from a friend or a poem in my inbox or a message scrawled on the sidewalk in purple chalk.

I wasn’t able to fix my face when Mellie turned over the last card—The Magician.

That day, we were asked to practice in our assigned camp groups for performances in the camp talent show. Some people took this very seriously. I did not.

We settled on a skit called “Summer Camp’s Got Talent” with talent-less contestants and mean judges. The point was supposed to be focusing on the fun of creative expression and community without the constant worry about talent and competition. Three of us played the judges ( as Simon Cowell, as Britney Spears, and as Randy Jackson). Contestant sang an incredibly creepy rendition of Tiptoe Through The Tulips by Tiny Tim, and performed a dance routine. Trish is an actual singer, and Serena is an actual dancer, so they failed miserably at making themselves sound and look bad.

I was also a contestant. And of course, I picked being a magician.

I’d seen this funny magician on Instagram, who’d go in public and hold a glittery curtain, then “disappear” his friend who crouched behind a bystander’s suitcase, as he was dropping the curtain on the ground. I figured, I could drop the curtain and disappear myself behind a suitcase or trashcan or something else and get the same effect. Obviously, it would just be funny and hopefully make people laugh.

@siegfriedandjoyAntwort auf @DonPepino we feel you! ✨ #magicoflaughter

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I figured the “talent” part of the talent show was optional.

I thought I was set. Didn’t even really have to practice my “talent.” But then the second night of starry yoga with , I looked up into the abyss, only tethered to the ground by flimsy gravity.

I don’t know who asked the question inside of me. Instantly, the tears welled up and out and ran down my cheeks and into my hair and ears and the wet grass and the dirt. I couldn’t breathe.

“Why do you want to use your magic to disappear yourself?”

I cried my way through the rest of yoga, listening to Billie’s calm voice and staring at the outlines of dark cottonwood trees against an even darker sky.

I could have just done the trick and told myself it didn’t matter. But I already knew it did.

My ex-husband once said to me that I just become whatever a man wants me to be, and I hated that he was right. I became a Mormon for him, and an Atheist for my next partner. I kept my hair long because one man said he didn’t like it short. I stopped using Facebook because another man said it was stupid. I wore things I didn’t like because some man thought it was hot, or took them off, because another one said it was too whoreish. I’ve had sex I didn’t want to have and moved to places I didn’t want to live and avoided talking to people I cared about and quit listening to music I liked and stopped eating things I thought were delicious.

I thought of so many tiny and massive things I’ve started doing and stopped doing, not because I wanted to, but because some man wanted me to. This, by the way, is not these men’s fault that I kept shaving thin slices off myself until barely anything was left. I do not have this behavior with my kids or at work or with friends or my family. Only with romantic partners. So the issue is not that they’re men, but that they’re in the role of partner, husband, boyfriend.

I voluntarily, willingly, gladly disappeared myself. I wanted to be consumed inside someone else. So many times, I’ve felt the urge to literally crawl inside of a man and give up being my own person and call it love.

By the time I got up off my damp yoga mat, I knew I would have to do a different magic trick for the stupid talent show.

I immediately told Emmy and Julie Gemcake, so I couldn’t talk myself out of it. So other people would hold me accountable if I tried to disappear myself.

It’s not only about whether or not I believe that I have the power to create something, but what it is I want to create. As it turned out, my instinct wasn’t to create anything, but to take away, to hide, to disappear, and most importantly, to make my disappearing act a joke.

I walked back to my cabin in the woods quietly, slowly, knowing I needed to make a different kind of magic.

I had no idea how.

You can read part 3 here.

Monica and I met at summer camp for writers, and she told me that I was experiencing a retroactive four-day midwestern childhood summer, which is exactly right. We did not talk much during camp, because there were too many people to really get to know everyone, but she wore cool shirts that I commented on pretty much every day.

And now we are Substack buddies, and I find myself reading stuff she recommends, proving my theory that there is significant overlap between wearing cool shirts and good taste in words.

So, thanks for letting me share this, Monica :)

Where I Am From

by Monica Edwards

I am from a green, yellow, and orange vest, the colors bright like the decade I was growing into.

I am from smoke drifting from fireplaces to sky, from burnt oranges and dark blues, from the crackling and shifting of burning wood. From gum drops and fudge stripe cookies quietly removed from a…

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What My Bones Know

I collect my auntie’s bones,

brittle from decades of starving herself

of cutting pastries into thin slices

and making an entire meal

out of eight segments

of a dry tangerine.

I collect my daughter’s bones,

the ones I saw when she cut through

the soft flesh of her hands

too deep

She meant no real harm

she said

Just needed to feel something

other than pain

or maybe

a different kind of pain.

I collect my father’s bones

his knee joints like glass

unsteady on ice and uneven ground

always cracking knuckles

a spine crooked from carrying

a childhood burden

so heavy

I’ll never know how he carried it all the way

into adulthood

on those glass knees.

I collect my mother’s bones

the ones I pushed aside

making room for my head

bone to bone

her screams reverberating in my skull.

I collect my own bones

rearranging them inside my body

as if I could do that

as if I had power over them.

I’m just a creature

bones and flesh and skin and blood.

But what my bones know is this:

The time is short

already the ground is calling me

to lie down in its cool depths

the worms ready to strip everything

from my white nakedness

the sun ready to bleach

the wind ready to sweep.

Thanks to for inviting me, and to for hosting and leading the workshop with deliciously weird writing prompts after reading sections of the book out loud.

Emily gave me Women Who Run with the Wolves for my birthday, and it is the wildest, richest, most disorienting collection of stories about wild women, and I cannot read a page without underlining shit. In other words: get the book. Follow Katherine for future workshops. Write about your own bones, send me what you wrote, and I might share your words here.

Unrelated side note: What My Bones Know is also the title of a memoir about complex PTSD by Stephanie Foo, which includes the most fascinating exploration of a therapeutic relationship. Highly recommend.

Also, PS: that last paragraph of the poem is not a death wish (it kind of reads like that), but an acknowledgment that it’s coming and isn’t that far off.

PPS: Want to get your story out? Come hang with Amber and me on Monday!

Danielle recently had a short essay (or poem-ish piece) published in that I absolutely loved.

I’m posting both the original draft version as well as the published version, because I think it’s helpful to see how editors and publications adapt pieces, but also because I love them both for different reasons.

Below you’ll see the original first and then the published version. Let Danielle know in the comments what you think.

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Last summer, I spent a month out of state to be with one of my kids for medical treatment. I wrote about that strange, dusty, flat land here without ever mentioning why I was there. A year later, I’m starting to share more about the reasons with my daughter’s permission, but back then, I was just trying to make it through.

And one person who helped me make it through is my friend Coley.

While I was sitting on a bed at the Ronald McDonald house for the entire September of 2024, I read Coley’s manuscript about parenting her son with severe mental health issues. She’d hired me as her developmental editor and book coach, but we soon became friends, and I’ve told her a million times since then that her story made me feel less alone when I was most desperate. She saved my sanity when I was going crazy in endless waiting rooms. Watching your child go through really hard shit while you can’t do much, if anything, is one of the most cha…

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How it’s going: Last night, I walked through torrential downpours uphill over slick rocks and into dark woods and peed off the front porch of my log cabin in the black night and had my ass flattened against benches that were both too hard and too soggy. All my shoes are muddy and all my clothes are damp and my skin is being gently trampled on by eight different species of bugs I don’t know the names of and my hair has pouffed up to three times its regular volume.

(The video above is from the next day. It was still raining.)

How it started: I did the thing where I signed up for something many months ago that I wanted to back out of the closer it came.

(The thing I signed up for: Summer camp at Lake Wandawega in Wisconsin. I didn’t know anyone else going. I only knew Jeannine through her Substack, but had never taken a class or even engaged with the community. Oh, did I mention I also hate camping?)

I don’t know why I signed up. I had a pulling in my gut, and so I reserved this rustic little cabin without windows. Screens only. And yeah, maybe I was swayed by Camp Wandawega’s marketing, too, because the nostalgia of American sleep-away camp translates even across oceans to this un-happy camper who grew up in Germany and only watched badly dubbed US coming-of-age movies. They were always set at some summer camp at a lake.

Yesterday, I got up at 4 am and cried the entire way to the airport, while Rob was trying to reassure me that it probably would be fun, but if I didn’t want to go, I didn’t have to.

I didn’t have to.

But I did have the feeling that some slight discomfort might be good. Some stripping down of amenities. Some reduction in cushioning, if you will.

I arrived committed to Wandawega’s manifesto of low expectations. What’s the worst that could happen? I could be cold, wet, constipated, lonely, hungry, sleepless, lost in the woods, bitten and stung and scratched, and not meet a single person I liked.

Instead, I already got what I came here for on the very first night, in the middle of a crackling thunderstorm.

During the welcome introductions and over the end-times soundtrack pelting our mess hall tent, we shouted our names and what we wanted out of camp. I said:

MAGIC AND FIREFLIES.

Then one of my daughters texted me asking to talk on the phone. I worried it was bad news. That’s when I made the wet and worried walk back up to my cabin to take the call in private. It had been a year of mostly no news after a year of mostly bad news. Recently, there had been a tiny hope I was sheltering in my cupped hands, a flicker that would be extinguished if I opened my hands too much and suffocated if I closed them too tightly.

I lay on the bed, took a few breaths, and told myself I would be present for whatever the news would be.

The news itself only matters to her and me and our family, but it includes the right person answering the call and the money coming through at the last minute and the car being fixed and dropped off just in time, and the room being held even though the deposit hadn’t been paid, and some administrative review happening 11 times faster than average.

It was a Hail Mary pass in the last second of the most important game of the season. It was that final push on the last mile, hurtling yourself over the finish line. It was a happy coincidence, a moment where all the stars align just so, where everyone follows through exactly as they said they would, and where all the pieces make a whole much greater than the sum of their parts. It was that unexpected lucky break you sometimes get after trudging through the swamp and making a million phone calls and filling out applications designed to drive you to insanity and then still trying one more time with the thing that is probably not going to work out, but what if.

What if it did.

It did.

And all of this was magic, but the most magical part? She said: I’m so happy, mom.

It feels like an eternity since I have been dry and warm. It feels like an eternity since I’ve seen this child happy. Heard her laugh.

It’s days until her birthday. Last year, she spent the day alone in a psychiatric hospital not wanting to live. The first time alone. The first time separated from her twin and her siblings and all her family. Her face in a Zoom square, crying, desperate. My face in a Zoom square, crying, desperate.

It’s been a very long, very short year. And the year before was even longer and even shorter. But now it’s the moment when you hold your newborn, the pain of labor instantly forgotten.

I said I love you. I said this is magic. I said I’m so happy for you.

I looked out of my cabin window and thought my eyes were imagining what I wanted to see.

One glimmering pop and fizzle.

A glow in the dusk. I held my breath. Another glimmer, then two at a time, a bright flash, then a slow fade.

Magic is real. Fireflies are not extinct.

I don’t remember the last time I went a day without taking a shower. But this morning, here in the woods, I don’t feel the need to scrub off yesterday. The sadness I felt at leaving home, the grief of the goodbye that echoes too many goodbyes. The long airplane rides and all the other people, strangers getting their breath and bodies and skin and memories all over me. I don’t want to wash off the magic of yesterday or the fireflies.

Everything can stay. As is.

As is.

Read part 2 and part 3 of Magic and Fireflies.

Note: My daughter read this and approved it. If I write something sensitive that might be traced back to a specific person, especially one of my kids, I ask permission first.

Today is Monday. That means I deadlifted 165 lbs 15 times at the gym (in my bathing suit because I didn’t wash my shorts) and I’m introducing you to a beautiful new writer, my friend, Emily.

This week’s Emily is Em. Last week’s Emily is Emmy. I’m having extremely good friendship luck with women named Emily. Just saying, in case any of you are looking to make new friends. LOOK FOR ALL THE EMILYS!!

Emily’s not only a brilliant writer, but one of the most skilled book coaches and editors I’ve ever worked with. Coaching is full of people who couldn’t coach themselves if their lives depended on it, but Emily is different. Actually. She does the inner work most people are afraid of, and I deeply respect the way she…

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So, today I’m bringing you some gorgeous writing from my summer camp bestie, (who is also writing a book!!) Last week, I shared my “Where I’m from” poem about breadboxes and silent rage, and asked you to write and share yours with me (you’ll also find the poem template in that original post). But what I didn’t tell you was that while we were both traveling home after summer camp, she wrote hers at the airport and then sent me the template. Thank you for the inspiration and for letting me share your words, Emmy!

Where I’m From

by Emily Flannery

I am from…

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I’m from breadboxes

From store-brand potato chips and Labello lip balm.

I’m from the crooked cherry tree

In the backyard

(blooming white, fragrant, fruit crawling with worms)

I’m from pink roses cut from the garden

And silent rage.

From PopPop Arrgh and Oma Julchen whose name I share.

I’m from the house neighbors whispered about

Full of people who tried too hard or not at all.

From “Stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about”

And from “Do whatever you want, you never listen anyway.”

I’m from tortured Catholics and hypocritical hippies.

I’m from a village in Bavaria, the place of a battle in a war I don’t remember.

I’m from black coffee and Nutella straight out of the jar.

From Opa Erwin, who never learned to swim until he was grown,

Because he worked the farm every summer,

Then took his granddaughter to the community pool every week,

Patiently standing in chlorinated turquoise,

Watching me be a dolphin mermaid.

And from my sister, by choice not blood,

The only person who’s known me since birth and still talks to me,

Who tells me that I’m good and brave when I feel bad and scared.

I’m from my dead mother’s ring.

My hand looks naked without it, and with it, like hers.

And from stacks of journals, ink too thick for translucent pages,

Held hostage in a dark basement

By the one who no longer calls me sister,

And the few navy blue photo albums with gold frames I rescued,

Backs no longer sticky with gritty glue,

Pictures with rounded corners and faces blanched by overeager flash.

My mother red-eyed and poreless, hair so dark and so shiny,

And me in a blue polka dot bikini,

Eyes squeezed shut,

Mouth a gash of laughter.

I wrote this poem-ish thing based on the original poem “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon. You might have seen templates for how to create your own version of this poem, or seen your kids’ versions from English class. There’s an entire movement and whole website dedicated to thousands of “Where I’m From” poems from different people.

Years ago, my oldest daughter came home from school with her own version of this poem, and I remember how it made my breath catch in my chest, because it was so visceral and rich and tender. If you want to write your own, download the template below or go to the link.

Note: Based on George’s original poem, there’s an error in the template: lines 4 and 5 should come before line 3. But, it doesn’t matter. Play around with it, and see what comes out.

I Am From Conversation Generation Exercise

611KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

And here’s the original by George Ella Lyon:

Where I'm From

I am from clothespins,

from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.

I am from the dirt under the back porch.

(Black, glistening,

it tasted like beets.)

I am from the forsythia bush

the Dutch elm

whose long-gone limbs I remember

as if they were my own.

I'm from fudge and eyeglasses,

from Imogene and Alafair.

I'm from the know-it-alls

and the pass-it-ons,

from Perk up! and Pipe down!

I'm from He restoreth my soul

with a cottonball lamb

and ten verses I can say myself.

I'm from Artemus and Billie's Branch,

fried corn and strong coffee.

From the finger my grandfather lost

to the auger,

the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box

spilling old pictures,

a sift of lost faces

to drift beneath my dreams.

I am from those moments--

snapped before I budded --

leaf-fall from the family tree.

I learned about this poem-ish experiment at ’s Writing In The Dark Summer Camp (I will write more about this magical experience soon).

For now, I’m obsessed with poetry experiments, and I would LOVE it if you tried this with me and sent me your “Where I’m from” poems. I would like to share a few of yours here, but even if you don’t want them read publicly, I hope you still send them to me so I can enjoy them.

***********************************************

This bed is smaller than the one at home. Suddenly, I understand my grandparents sleeping in a full-size bed for decades. I don’t mind waking up every morning to excavate myself from under his heavy legs and veiny arms. That spot on his tan neck where the barber used a straight edge to create the perfect fade. I hesitate for a moment, wanting to press my lips against the skin and stubble and breathe in his scent.

I tiptoe out of the room, where he is still sleeping, soft white sheets against his broad shoulders. The open windows that we never shut and the fan we never turn off billow the linen curtains, a bright green baby gecko darting up the wall.

The island has been awake for hours already or never gone to sleep. Last night’s Coqui frogs and crickets seamlessly blend into the screeching of roosters and mynah birds. And always, always the ocean. Throwing itself onto the rocks endlessly. The entire island a white noise machine buzzing and calming at once.

The morning dawns grey and green, the air already mild and humid, soon bitter with coffee and sweet with warming soil, waxy green leaves of plants I don’t know the names of, and orange Hibiscus flowers as big as my face. I pull on the hot pink summer dress from the day before and sneak out of the cottage, coffee cup in hand. On the road down to the bay, I meet wandering ducks and feral cats; a mangy dog stares at me, standing in the middle of the road. A goat somewhere announces the day. On the corner, Pat, shirtless and leathery, already sits in a rickety lawn chair on his driveway, guarding his racks of kayaks and boards. We lift our coffee cups and nod.

I find the small cove, sit on the flat rock someone else put just so. I imagine my heart falling into step with the waves, my breath deepening, my eyes resting on the ocean so still in the distance and so rough at my feet. I don’t see the sun because it rises behind the hillside at my back, touching the clouds on the horizon in front of me. Peach and blush, a shimmer of pink. The ocean blue and turquoise, heaving layers of white foam, trying to reach my toes with the black sand under my nails, pink polish splinters hanging on for dear life.

I’m still salty and sandy from the day before, but I just sit there with my real face and my real body and my real heart and feel full, like that void, the black abyss, the endless crack right down the middle of me is filled by everything that’s growing and dying around me.

I’m touching the youngest place on earth, a mere million years old, still expanding, growing, evolving in real time. Everything can kill you here, or at least fuck you up real good. The volcanoes and riptides, the tsunamis and steep cliffs, the windy roads with zero streetlights, the sharks. And yet, everything is growing, not in a rebellious “I’ll show you” kind of way but with the urgency of a tree sapling racing toward the light, as if knowing there are no guarantees and somehow being fully accepting of this reality.

A tiny jungle grows around and inside every rusted-out car too expensive to get off the island. Hordes of feral chickens patrol the streets. Wild pigs, cats, and goats stroll through residential neighborhoods. Geckos in every house, giant venomous Hawaiian centipedes and tiny loudmouth Coqui frogs in every dark backyard. The ocean full of yellow tang and bottom feeders and tiger sharks and magnificent humpback whales. The wet green grows into oceanside mansions and dilapidated shacks, homeowners cutting out squares of roof to make room for papaya trees, picking avocados as big as a baby’s head, while watching tiny hummingbirds being swallowed whole inside the red beaks of the Heliconia flower. Every residential hillside built on black rock and overtaken by jungle, the humidity warping and darkening and softening every piece of wood, every slab of siding, every rickety chair.

It's nothing like the sharp, clear air at home, the jagged peaks, the straight angles of streets and avenues, the walkways shoveled, the fences freshly stained as per HOA rules, the houses small boxes of heat on the icy plane. There are no HOA rules here. Just warning signs about all the ways you can die.

I am content in this moment. I don’t need as much as I thought. A morning walk, a cup of coffee, my favorite thrift store dress. And the ocean at dawn.

I don’t miss the TV, email, or social media, the sugar I crave to soothe me, the distraction I seek to numb myself, the adrenaline of worry and drama, the validation of work, the mainland hustle of proving my “good-enough-ness” or “not-too-much-ness.” I feel just right.

I give up on straightening my hair, embrace the frizz. I go to the beach in a bikini so I can feel the water on as much skin as possible. I clean the gecko shit off the dishes without worrying that I’ll get salmonella.

On the plane, I’d read “The In-Between” by , and this sentence was my biggest treasure: “Our problem, then, is not one of impatience, but entitlement.” Right after that, the pilot comes on. Sorry to inform you that we can’t land at Kona airport because there are cracks in the runway that need to be fixed. We were diverted to Honolulu, no hotel beds left on the entire island. Too many earlier flights, too many tired passengers. We scrambled to lock in an overpriced Airbnb downtown and crammed outside with all the other passengers waiting for Ubers.

My shoulders dropped as soon as I stepped into that Hawaiian air. We’d had a fight on the plane we were both too tired to continue. We shared our last protein bar, while balancing our bags on a narrow traffic island, cars rushing by us and exhausted parents carrying limp toddlers drooling over their shoulders. We laughed at the absurdity of the situation and also the absurdity of considering these problems in a world of real problems, a slew of memories and inside jokes already forming between us. He looked at me and apologized for what he’d said earlier, then pulled me in close, my cheek against the spot on his chest that feels like home.

Then we got into the wrong Uber.

Our driver, a transplant from Brooklyn, dreadlocks to his waist and wearing a top hat, blasted metal and sang along loudly. None of us realized the mistake until the driver’s actual passengers called and cussed him out. I expected a screaming match, but he just chuckled and turned around.

And that’s when I realized I rarely feel entitled to places and things being or going my way. I accept bad luck, and accidents and forces of nature and errors. But, oh, how I have felt entitled to the people around me being and acting a certain way. I would have lost my shit on the rude passenger and felt justified about it. I said as much to our driver, and he responded that it didn’t bother him at all, and I believed him.

Some people wear shirts announcing to the world that they’re “unfuckwithable” or give “zero fucks,” and, well, we all know it’s bullshit. But this guy was not phased at all.

I’ve spent years imagining relationships that had nothing to do with reality, trying to manipulate and manage and negotiate and be passive-aggressive and directly aggressive and playing the victim and punishing “bad” behavior and refusing to get off my high horse and giving unsolicited advice. I thought being patient meant waiting long enough until other people got their shit together to be the way I wanted them to be. I thought being patient meant that at the end of my long-suffering waiting period, I’d be rewarded with the outcome to which I was obviously entitled.

In the first phone conversation with my friend Emily, after I’d ghosted her for over a year, I apologized for my shit ways and she said: “I’m not entitled to your friendship.” I sat in my car at the cemetery where I wanted to walk, but it was raining, and so I just stared through the window shield at the darkening trees. How was she able to let go like that without closure, without wondering, without harassing me for the reasons, or judging me as a person, or getting stuck in some wild stories? She just kept living her life and doing her work and spending time with her other friends and being happy and sad and all the things.

I told her, “It wasn’t about you.” She just said, I know. And I thought, yeah, but HOW did you know? How did you not think there was something wrong with you? How do you have connections that don’t always result in annihilation or abandonment? And how do you stay with yourself when they do?

After that conversation, I practice. When I feel resentment or anger come up in my relationships, I look at the person and say in my head: I’m not entitled to a relationship with you. Strangely, it allows me to soften enough to loosen my grip on wanting things to be different, wanting them to be different, wanting them to treat me differently, wanting to feel differently around them, wanting them to fill that hole, that void, that empty yawning endless abyss, where you never hear the rock hit the bottom if you throw it in.

Because sugar and work and funny IG videos are pretty good, but do you know how many people I’ve thrown into the abyss of me?

I tied my unrealistic expectations around their necks and bound their feet with baggage from the wounds they didn’t inflict but were definitely responsible for tending to, shoved rage and resentment and obligation in all their pockets. I pushed them in, and they fell like stones into my abyss. Do you know how many people I’ve thrown in there, and still, they have not stacked up to reach the top of this deep crack inside of me?

The cracks in the Kona runway were there days before we tried to land. They chose not to fix them. Then the rains came, floods eroding the ground and splitting open the cracks so wide it was too dangerous for planes to land, so they had to take action.

I knew about my crack too, have always known. Thought I was the only one with a crack, damaged goods. Sometimes, I convinced myself the crack was other people’s fault, and so I threw them in, yelling, “Fix it! Fix me!” as they fell. Sometimes, I thought the crack was my fault, and so the shame made me ignore it or distract myself so I wouldn’t have to look at this ugly, deep, raggedy hole in the center of me that I didn’t know how to fix. I thought I was broken, cracked forever.

The year before, we’d come to the island for the first time. I swam in the ocean for the first time. I moved from living in theory to living in practice. Instead of standing at the shore of my own life, I got in the water. I thought I’d figured it all out. I was finally in it. But I fought the ocean the entire time. And I paid for it in scrapes from sharp rocks and burning eyes and salt in my lungs from swallowing gallons of fish pee and losing my bathing suit and getting hammered in the face by waves, because I refused to dive into this terrifying organism. As if my tiny floating head, bobbing precariously above the surface could keep me safe. It could not. But for someone who’d always talked about the ocean and wanted to live by the ocean and loved the ocean and would never fucking stop telling you about it, it was a big deal to finally get in it.

I had no idea it was only the beginning. If this had been a movie, that ocean scene would have been way too obvious foreshadowing.

That entire year I would be in the ocean of my life, getting smashed in the face by walls of salt water, coming up for air, choking, only to be pulled under again. I’m glad I didn’t know what was coming. For someone who’d lived as a head on a stick, always abstracting, conceptualizing, theorizing….experiencing life meant being overwhelmed by physical sensations and intense emotions, struggling to regulate my nervous system so I could survive.

Learning to experience my actual life rather than dissociating didn’t look pretty. It looked like crying on the bathroom floor. It looked like sleepless nights. It looked like loneliness. It looked like desperately scratching into my journals. It looked like failure after failure, toddler tantrums melting the ice queen façade and teary, snot-bubble apologies for acting like a crazy bitch and screaming during breathwork and hyperventilating during therapy and smashing things at the gym to the point the coaches asked me if I was okay.

I was not.

And yet, it was what gave me the courage to scoot on my belly to the rim of the crack and look down for the first time. There were no monsters at the bottom, just a still clear pool of crystal water. I’d thrown stuff in there to fill up the crack, yes, but also to create ripples so I wouldn’t have to see my reflection at the very bottom of that glassy pool.

Back on the island, after a year that left me wrung out, I practiced being still to look at the bottom. Except it wasn’t hard there. We went on a sweaty hike up north, down the steep cliffs of Pololu Valley to an ancient Hawaiian burial ground, a safe haven between the raging ocean and the boiling volcano. In this grove of trees, the ocean waves get caught in the air, creating a persistent mist against the jungle mountains, trees filtering the sunlight in an otherworldly glimmer. The entire forest a ghostly creature, vibrating with love and grief.

Rob and I sat on the rocks, the breeze drying the sweat rolling down our backs, looking out at suicidal surfers. He told me how in Montana he felt like having to stiffen, brace against the elements, the cold, the ice, the wind. You have to bear down, shut down, stand down. You have to be the mountain, or you will die. On Hawaii, he felt like having to let go, relax, go with the waves and the wind, surrender to everything alive invading every space, the plants and animals in every crack, on every surface, in every home, and on our bodies. You have to be the ocean, or you will die.

I stare at him sideways, open-mouthed, because he gave words to my experience of home and of this place that feels like the home I need. I call him a fucking poet and mean it, and he gives me that sly smirk that makes me want to pull his clothes off.

Days later, I sit at the ocean alone at sunset. I watch the waves throw themselves against the sharp, black rocks, smaller versions of the volcanic mountains in the distance. The ocean doesn’t know that in decades and centuries, it will wear down the massive rock walls to tiny grains of black sand. But for now, it is splitting itself, shattering, foaming, the rocks seemingly unmoved. I wonder if I am the waves or the rocks. The ocean or the mountain. I wonder where I belong. But then I see a small pool and once I notice the first, I see many. Pools of clear water, carved into the rock and fed by the ocean.

I don’t have to decide. I can be both. I belong to both. And I don’t have the responsibility of being the ocean or the rock. I’m the pool of clear water, carved into the protective hardness of the rock, fed by the ocean, so wild and alive. And one day, the rocks will be worn down, the ocean taking them grain by grain, and all will be one.

This crack down my core, it’s not a hole at all. It’s my parts pulling away from each other, when I pretend that I’m not all the things. When I try to decide between being the ocean or the rocks. My parts are held together by my acceptance that they all exist. The petty part who doesn’t say I love you back when I’m angry. The soft part weeping over a poem a friend sent on the day my mom died six years ago. The hard part pushing for the better part of a year, five times a week, before completing my first-ever pull-up at the gym. The grieving part still sometimes wishing I’d had emotionally available parents, not addicts. The loving part, accepting they tried. The healing part, knowing I’ve become the kind of adult who would have been there for me when I was a child. The grateful part, holding my own children’s faces between my hands, carebear staring all my love into them. The humble part, repairing all the ways I’ve fucked up. The prideful part scoffing and the impatient part sighing and the silly part singing as loud as I can, off-key, knowing zero of the lyrics.

There was never anything scary at the bottom of that abyss. It was always just me, whispering, hey, I’m in here. Just look.

I spent the year between my island visits raging and talking kindly to myself. It took months until I could do it without physically cringing and rolling my eyes. I learned to feed and water myself and give myself pleasure and do new things I was scared of. I laughed at dark memes from my friend who appreciates my humor and ate with my eyes closed and cried because the sunset was too beautiful.

And when I want to be cruel and tell myself, “Wow, this is the least fucked up you’ve ever been, and that’s STILL so fucked up.” I look down at the inside of my left wrist where I had a guy with a tear tattoo ink the words “I got you” into my skin. I do sometimes feel ridiculous when I put my hand on my heart and tell myself that I’m safe and that I will not abandon myself. And even though I feel dumb doing it sometimes, I know it’s not dumber than telling myself what a worthless piece of shit I am, that I’ll never be enough, or that I’m too much, or that everyone I love will leave me or that I will be alone or that people will only stay with me for what I can do for them not who I am.

The fact that this verbal abuse leaves my body completely comfortable and relaxed, but kindness and love make me squirm allowed me to be more patient when speaking to myself in this new way. I might take another 40 years to undo the first 40.

It's okay, even brave, that the words on my wrist are aspirational.

The first time on the island, I tried to brace myself against the ocean like I braced myself against pain and the ocean showed me that resistance is futile. And yet, I continued to resist every wave of grief. I added layers of pointless suffering onto the pain of that year by fighting instead of accepting it. Why might I fight the pain? As Chanel Miller says, “pain, when examined closely, becomes clarity” and clarity usually means knowing what I need to change and I’d prefer not having to make a decision that might not work out, that I can’t blame on someone else, that is fully my responsibility to deal with the consequences.

Just give me any authority, or program, or 10 step plan, an expert, a guru to explain my feelings, to take the pain away, to make the decision, to fucking tell me what to do. At 40, I was still looking for daddies everywhere.

But this second time on the island, same ocean but different, same me but different.

I walked into the surf scared, but an elderly woman next to me smiled, and I asked casually, “So what do you do when the waves are too big?”

You dive in. Do not dive forward. Dive straight down toward the ocean floor and let the wave pull you back up on the other side.

I had no time to think, facing the first wall of water, so I followed her instructions.

I came up, slick like a seal, salt burning in my mascara-streaked eyes, full of awe. “I did it!” I yell at Rob, laughing. “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!” I have a flashback to learning how to ride my bike without training wheels, that feeling of elation and awe when I’m pedaling, free, wind on hot cheeks and sweaty hair, yelling to my neighbor, “I’m doing it! I’m doing it!”

Being the child I never got to be is the way to becoming the grown-up I want to be.

As if on cue, Rob starts yelling and pointing at Humpback whales in the distance, blowing and breaching. Is there anything more powerfully joyful than massive ocean mammals breaking the barrier between their secret world and the surface? And for a moment, I’m full of a shimmery goldenblue bliss, alive in the ocean and on this island and in this world where everything is growing and dying at once, and I feel whole in my pain and grief and the inexplicable beauty of sharing the water with enormous, misshapen, hairless ocean puppies and the poet I will always love and the version of myself who is the most naked and real and loving I’ve ever been.

And when I’ve had enough and run out of the water, away from the last wave trying to catch me and pull me back in, I know, dripping and glistening in the sun, that I still have no idea. That in a year from now, I’ll probably be glad I didn’t know what was coming. I have a pulling in my gut telling me that after a year of resisting, I’m ready to soften into the pain. I’m still scared, but I know it can’t be worse than what I did to myself last year, suffering miserably while trying to avoid the actual pain. I’m ready for that clarity I’ve been avoiding.

I’m practicing looking at the reality even when it’s ugly. Feeling the feelings that scare the shit out of me. Breathing when I know I’ll never feel better. Until I do. Holding myself tightly, promising never to leave myself on the floor again, committing again and again to loving myself as good and hard and gently and truthfully as I can. Telling that scared little girl to come out from her hiding place, because it’s safe now.

I dive straight down instead of resisting. Deep, deep, and deeper, right into the abyss. A dark and terrifying water grave, a moment of suspension, of wondering if I’ll ever get another breath again.

Until the wave pulls me back up and spits me out above the surface, so very, very far from where I dove in.

Yeah, me neither.

I have written so much and published so little lately. I look at 7 different Substack drafts in various stages of progress, journals full of scenes, a folder of pitch ideas, my still unfinished memoir.

Things are just not quite coming together right now. (If you feel like this, too, please let me know, so we can both feel less alone.)

But in these fragments and notes scribbled everywhere, I noticed how many bits happen to be about rocks.

So, just like gathering rocks on the beach, I’ve gathered them up and I’m emptying my pockets in front of you.

The mother rock

My mother said to me many years ago: I didn’t even realize how much it hurt me until it stopped. Kind of like finally picking a sharp pebble out of your shoe and taking that first step without pain.

I learned some truths about my mom and me then:

• We were both good at getting used to pain.

• We’d work a…

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I didn’t care for poetry until Andrea. Their words helped me feel less alone in the depths of grief and gave me a glimmer of gratitude for the great fortune of experiencing life, even while crying on the bathroom floor or hunched over on a chair in the emergency room.

They had that magical combination of honesty, courage, and love that made me feel like I would be okay even when I wasn’t okay and nothing was okay and I was scared that nothing ever would be okay again.

Andrea gave me hope when I had none.

Below is my favorite poem. It was originally called “For Days I Stop Wanting A Body” and was renamed “Tincture.” Both apply today.

Tincture

by Andrea Gibson

Imagine, when a human dies,

the soul misses the body, actually grieves

the loss of its hands and all

they could hold. Misses the throa…

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If you missed my announcement yesterday, you can read all about “Pitch, Please” here. I will still send you my personal essays here, too. This is an experiment for a new paid subscriber perk, because I don’t believe in starving artists. I don’t want to be one and I don’t want you to have to be one, either. If you are a paid subscriber, please let me know in the comments or via email (juliane@bergmannconsulting.com) if you find this resource helpful.

If you pitch and get a byline, please definitely let me know, so I can celebrate with you!

Proof of Life Giveaway

You were automatically entered into the drawing for a signed copy of Je…

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This Friday email will be called “Pitch, Please” because it makes me smile. Listen, I’ve always sucked at naming things, and I’m not ashamed of my corniness. Also, there are a shit ton of A Capella groups who agree with me.

Anyway…if you’re already a paid subscriber, you will get the first installment tomorrow. You don’t have to do anything. If you’re a free subscriber right now, and want to get “Pitch, Please”—sign up below.

Subscribe now

Where am I sourcing those opportunities?

I’m currently subscribed to Opportunities of the Week / Study Hall by Sonia Weiser, Amber Petty’s newsletter and pitching hour, Hope Clark’s newsletter, Corporeal Writing’s newsletter, Hedgebrook, and Tin House, and participate in various writing and editing FB and LinkedIn groups (such as Sue Shapiro’s private student group). I encourage you to follow them all, take their classes and courses, subscribe to their newsletters, or go into the hellhole that is Twitter/X to follow specific pubs and editors you want to write for. BUT if you don’t have the bandwidth for that, you can just become a paid subscriber to receive “Pitch, Please.”

Nine years ago, I quit my job and started a company so I could take on contract and freelance work as a writer (first for boring-ass technical writing projects and soul-sucking marketing and PR stuff—no judgment if you love this and aren’t dying inside like I was). Over the last decade-ish, I have written everything you could possibly think of: blogs, ad copy, internal comms, so many marketing emails, white papers, reports, essays, articles, and eventually entire books.

Now, I work only with authors I find fascinating on books I want to read myself, freelance for publications, and write my own stuff here on Substack. And I’m making money with all of them.

Below you will find some freebie examples (yes, these are all real and current, and the links work) of what will be inside “Pitch, Please” every Friday:

Pitch calls from editors and publications for articles and essays

• Jessica Orwig at Insider is looking for stories about the moves you still regret: “For Business Insider, I’m looking to publish personal essays from people with moving and housing regrets. Did you move and regret it? Do you regret staying put and never moving? Do you regret renting and never buying, or vice versa? Did you downsize and love it (or hate it)? It can be a recent move or one that happened years ago. Send your pitch with a clear BI-friendly headline and 3-5 sentences explaining the focus of your piece to jorwig@businessinsider.com.”

  Pitch, Please tomorrow includes pitch calls from Vogue, GQ, Cosmopolitan, Slate, Harpers, and The New York Times.

Writing jobs (full-time, part-time, and gigs)

• The Philadelphia Museum of Art is hiring an editor to “manage the publication process from initial manuscript development through substantive and copy editing, proofreading, and finalization of the content.” Candidates should have at least three years of editorial experience in art-book publishing; "museum, trade, or university press experience are all desirable." The salary is $68,367, and the position is part of the AFSCME Local 397 bargaining unit."

  Tomorrow’s roundup includes job opportunities at Penguin Random House, WSJ, The LA Times, and The Associated Press.

Writing contests & prizes

• I wish I was a poet right now! Rattle is accepting submissions for its 2025 Rattle Poetry Prize, which “offers $15,000 for a single poem to be published in the winter issue of the magazine. Ten finalists will also receive $500 each and publication, and be eligible for the $5,000 Readers’ Choice Award, which is selected by subscriber and entrant voting. The contest is open to writers worldwide, but “poems must be written primarily in English (no translations except by the original author).” Submission fee is $30. Submit through their Submittable page by July 15.

  There’s an even crazier opportunity for Novelists that I will share tomorrow.

Writing grants, internships, fellowships & residencies

• “The Kyoto Retreat is a new program created by Japan-based, independent curator Dexter Wimberly. The Kyoto Retreat offers artists, curators, and writers, based anywhere in the world, an opportunity to spend four weeks in Kyoto, Japan, for research, exploration, and inspiration. Individuals selected for the retreat will receive a roundtrip flight, a private bedroom, and $800 USD to supplement meals and local transportation. The Kyoto Retreat selects artists, curators, and writers at all career stages, working in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, film, video, new media, installation, fiction and nonfiction writing, poetry, interdisciplinary, and social practice. Individuals must be over 21 years old to apply. The inaugural Kyoto Retreat will take place from October 16–November 13, 2025.”

Writing classes, retreats, or workshops from people I like

• I’m going to the first-ever “Writing In The Dark” summer camp hosted by writer and teacher Jeannine Ouellette at Camp Wandawega in Wisconsin. “CAMP is an immersion in nature and creative community. CAMP is mornings of lakeside yoga and meeting under the trees for lively discussions of craft and generative writing exercises. CAMP is small group specialized workshop intensives (musical, visual, and sensory). CAMP is evening readings, learning from featured writer Tia Levings, campfires, talent shows, music, and camaraderie. And of course classic summer camp fun like swimming, boating, biking, archery, arts & crafts … and maybe even capture the flag.”

Other opportunities I think you should definitely know about

• You can get the formidable writer and editor Lidia Yuknavitch’s discerning eyes on your manuscript. THIS IS AN OUTRAGEOUS OPPORTUNITY. She just announced that she’s “taking on a small handful of manuscripts August through October—there are two slots for each month. Fiction, nonfiction, or hybrids are welcome.” If I had a completed manuscript, this is the person I would want to pay to read it. You can get all the info HERE.

Subscribe now

It will take me a while to put “Pitch, Please” together every week, so to get an idea, if it’s financially feasible for me to do long-term, I’d love to know if this is of value to you. If you become a paid subscriber now until tomorrow (7/11/25 at midnight Mountain time), you’ll also get:

• My complete pitch guide with pitch template (normally $47)

  

• The personal essay workshop recording I hosted with Noah Michelson from HuffPost, plus all the resources (normally $97)

  

• Entry into a drawing for a signed copy of Jennifer Pastiloff’s new book “Proof of Life” (normally $29)

  

I could have totally become an infomercial star, I just know it.

And if you’re already a paid subscriber—THANK YOU! You’ll be automatically entered into the drawing and will find the pitch guide and essay workshop links below, after the paywall.

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