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Human Stuff is a free weekly-ish newsletter. You’re welcome to share parts of this letter that connect with you on social media, or send to someone you love. Thank you for reading, ‘heart’ing, commenting, sharing, for helping this newsletter continue by being here. In the midst of so much noise, your presence with my words truly means something.

Upcoming events:
— Join me in Point Reyes on 6/27 at 4pm, in conversation with incredible artist Sophie Wood Brinker about our books and how they weave together
— The Oakland event on the 23rd is sold out, but there will be standing room!

[ A song I’m loving ]

So much of what has been steady is now being uprooted, tugged from the solidity of earth and pulled into the swirl of air, left to float around until a new landing place reveals itself. Do you feel it, too? This sense of, “parts of me are unraveling, making space for what I can’t yet name”? This feeling of free-falling for so long, it starts to disorient who and where you are? This space of being stretched between what was and what will be, of which you don’t yet know? This knowing that What Has Been no longer fits, but What’s Coming Next is still too fuzzy to comprehend? This dizzying place of possibility, tinged with fear that is itself afraid to let go and make way for what wants to arrive? This constriction finally expanding, yet quickly returning to the constricted place because it’s not yet used to the fresh air? This push-pull? This tug-of-war between the known and the unknown? This burgeoning path of finally leaning into the aliveness that has been waiting for you, even as so much crumbles around you, or perhaps because of it?

It’s a tender place to be, yet I feel the world insisting I step into the unknown with less trepidation and more presence. I feel my child’s upcoming transition to a Big Kid School insisting I embrace newness with a wide heart. I feel the rejuvenation of doing my first-ever book event in person, buoying my spirit toward more connection, more human-to-human contact, more generous sharing, more pouring what I have to give outward instead of keeping it in my familiar hiding places. I feel my expressive self trying out new forms, new ways of saying what wants to be said, fresh eyes to see through. I feel my adult self occupying more and more of my body, filling in the places my younger parts once led from. I feel my young selves watching as it all unfolds, slowly trusting I’ve got me now, handing over the reigns to present-day me. I feel a congruence unfolding, perhaps for the first time, and it is unfamiliar, and it is insisting I let it happen. I feel change ushering me into its arms, an embrace instead of a shove. I feel I’ve been leaving breadcrumbs for myself my whole life, and I am just now learning to pick them up and let them change me as they’re meant to.

Within this uprooting, this change, this shift, is a nudge toward more risk. I’ve always been an incredibly risk-averse person, preferring to stay close to the edges I know, the places I can cling to., the identities I’ve locked in place. Yet as I talked for an hour in front of an audience this past Friday, I felt the risk of humiliation or rejection transform into a path toward connection and being of service. As I think about walking into a new school with my child, I feel the risk of not belonging held with the truth that expanding community is only possible within that risk. As I imagine sharing my work and art and self in new ways, I feel the risk of failing be met with the reality that it is only in taking the risk that I’ll ever know what could go right.

Risk as a path toward deeper connection. Risk as a compass of the heart’s longings. Risk as a marker of trying. Risk as creativity’s partner. Risk as an architect of courage. Risk as the only avenue toward what I want. Risk as a bolstering of grit. Risk as a tether to newness. Risk as a fortifier of what matters. Risk as desire embodied. Risk as power. Risk as the price of admission for expression. Risk as an endeavor of aliveness. And for perhaps the first time in my life, I want to risk. I want to risk. I want to risk.

David Whyte said, “We are here essentially to risk ourselves in the world. We are a form of invitation to others and to otherness, we are meant to hazard ourselves for the right thing…” I want to hazard myself for the right thing. I want to feel the edginess of trying, the aliveness that can only be found in risking what I know about myself for the fullness I haven’t yet accessed. I want to feel what my own courage can mirror to others, what the courage of others teaches me. I want to stay close to risking as an opening to more. I want to feel the sensations that come from moving toward what I say I want. When I see others taking risks on behalf of their longings for themselves and the world, I feel my heart expanding. More of that. More of that. More of that.

I worried a lot. Will the garden grow, will the rivers
flow in the right direction, will the earth turn
as it was taught, and if not how shall
I correct it?

Was I right, was I wrong, will I be forgiven,
can I do better?

Will I ever be able to sing, even the sparrows
can do it and I am, well,
hopeless.

Is my eyesight fading or am I just imagining it,
am I going to get rheumatism,
lockjaw, dementia?

Finally I saw that worrying had come to nothing.
And I gave it up. And took my old body
and went out into the morning,
and sang.
Mary Oliver, I Worried

I feel my looping habit of worrying transforming into wondering what else could happen, and the freedom in that is like an opening to walk into heart-first. It is what I wish for all of us: this trust to stay with what could be. This orientation toward facing the world with our shoulders back, attuned, listening. This movement toward what we long for, for ourselves and for each other and for our earth. This allowing of when the ripening comes. This leaving the edges of safety for the possibility of something more true, more beautiful.

What right things do you want to hazard yourself for? What do you want to risk yourself on behalf of? What possibility lies on the other side of risking leaving the comfortable, the known, the certain?

May we take our bodies out into the morning and sing, in all the iterations we long for. May the risk of Doing The Thing be met with the gift of all that arrives only by leaning in. May we embrace our longings with the kind of courage they require. And may we remember we’re held all the while.

Thank you, as always, for being here. My newsletter has been a little more off-schedule than usual lately; life is sparkling with so very much, and I’m doing my best to stay present with all of it, letting writing be emergent to match what I need in this sea of change. Your presence here means so much.