Oh hi, you. 👋🏻

I’ve missed you. I know it’s been a long, long time since I’ve been sharing regularly.

Before I share anything else, I want to share my gratitude for you first. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for being here, for opening this email/Substack post, for reading and, hopefully, for sticking around. I’m honesty so stoked your sharing your inbox and your precious time with me right now.

Life’s been pretty unexpected in the in-between: hysterectomy, rare cancer dx, healing, becoming fully disabled, going into remission, GETTING A KITTEN among other events.

I’m happy I’ve finally made my way back into my email, back here to chat with you.

I’ve been rebuilding grace & magic’s website - it feels super cozy over there so far. I’m planning to build out posts and pages about topics that I can’t stop thinking and learning about. Topics like Curiosity, Death & Dying, Resilience, Joy, and Luck. You can check things out over there if you’d like by clicking here.

Luck is such a trippy concept, ya know?

Like, how was I so unlucky to develop this rare cancer AND lucky enough to be one of the 19% that don’t have it come back within the first 18months?!?

It feels very much like winning the lottery after losing it if that makes any sense.

One thing that I’m super grateful for post cancer diagnosis is all those years prior I’ve spent studying and developing tools to notice more, to pause longer, to find the magic in these little amazingly mundane moments. Turns out, those tools have made me more resilient and I honesty think they’ve helped me, not bounce back from because getting a cancer dx changes you forever, but evolve into my next iteration of sorts more peacefully.

Don’t get me wrong, getting my dx was traumatic. Living with it is traumatic is its own way too. But I also know I’m lucky in having the tools and support I’ve had to navigate it all without having it feel like its ruined my life.

So, at this moment I don’t have any sort of commitment for writing to you I can offer.

I’m very much in the thick of learning how to let my body lead in terms of what I do or don’t do each day. Radically accepting what my limitations are hasn’t been, and still isn’t, easy - but the more I do it, the more stable my system seems to becoming - that’s worth so much.

I thought it would be fun to share some of the side quests I’ve been on recently too. And I would adore hearing about a side quest you’ve been enjoying too!

I learned that there are two islands off the coast of Alaska where wooly mammoths survived for like 5,000 years more than anywhere else on earth! It makes me think of some of the wildly weird animals down in Australia or the Hobbit humans that seemed to have only lived on the island of Flores off Indonesia.

The Second-to-Last Mammoths Ever link also, pretty much any video on the PBS Eons channel is a fun watch & learn moment if you’re into that sort of thing.

And then this hilarious little skit from episode 5 of @LindsayNikole’s History of Cats series about that time Kenny decided to domesticate himself - hilarious.

“Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” ~Sylvia Plath

Only came across this Plath quote recently but oh the heavy lifting it’s doing for me. I too “want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted.” - there is much magic there I’d lost touch with, how I long to reconnect with it all.

Beyond Survival: on the joys of Jurassic Park and other fine things by Poet in a wheelchair. Made me wanna watch Jurassic Park again already. I mean, I watched it about a year ago and it had held up 100% but reading about someone else enjoying it so much (again) too was super enticing.

Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl (on repeat) it is so good. Every listen through I find something new and wonderful. Currently really grooving to Actually Romantic while doing another layer of processing my feelings about some hard stuff coming from others.

🐘 what i’m trying to remember

Life truly is about the journey, even when the side-quests bamboozle me, take over and become part of the main path.

Thank you again, so much, for opening and reading this email after such an eon of silence from me. I really mean it. I’m so happy to be back and would love to hear what’s going on in your neck of the woods.

💖 Kate

P.S. - I really would love to hear from you. Is there something you’d been hyperfocused on? A quote that keeps popping into your head?

P.S. P.S. If you haven’t watched the videos from The Life of a Showgirl, especially if you missed the o.g. MTV days, please gift yourself a chance to see them asap. Here’s a link to the playlist.