This Life

It took nearly 8 years but we’re back. Wuhan and I have both grown. There are high rises as far as the eye can see and highways connecting all the major districts; more bridges crossing the Yangtze River; more subways underground and more cars above it. But the return felt like a homecoming, despite the changes in us both. I’m working with English First (EF for short) once again, but returning…

April 1925 my great-grandmother and my grandmother boarded a steamboat in Stavanger, Norway headed to America. They were meeting my great grandfather already working and settled in Potlatch, Idaho half a world away from the fjords of western Scandinavia. Carved out by the glacial floods of the prehistoric Lake Missoula, Though seemingly familiar in geological surroundings, the Palouse of the…

Balance is something we create not something that is found. For years (the majority of my life really) I’ve tried to find balance. Thinking if I go here, achieve this, accomplish that I’ll finally feel “balanced.” Becoming a yogi, I thought I’d gain some insight but with that comes more to balance, more challenges to handle. For me, finding balance meant leaving the places that left me…

Death follows some like a shadow… We feel it’s weight on our heels but without it we’d never feel life and the extremity of joy on the other side. Grief is an energy to transmute, like all the rest. But if we don’t, death becomes a more than a shadow… Loosing him at 30 isn’t the hardest thing I’ve had to overcome, accept, deal with, process…but that doesn’t mean I don’t still cry about it.…

“It’s not personal. It’s business.” Lived by this my whole life, never quite understanding the irony. Business is nothing nor personal. It’s based on trust and confidence, loyalty and connection; things you build with those you are personal with. When any of these are betrayed due to business reasons; when one puts business first then we lose then we lose ourselves… Greed is a funny emotion.…

One day we’ll fall asleep together instead of apart, waking still wrapped in each other. Rising before the sun, making warm beverages for two as we both ready for the day. Apart when the sun is up, together with the moon. Our love looks better in the dark. Coming back to the other when duty is done and rest has been won.

Being a woman wild means feeling for your people. Holding space, making space, showing how and sharing feelings for and with others. It means feeling more for those around you. The Wild Woman is tapped in with her emotions, tuned in with what’s her’s and what’s not. She doesn’t carry these like a burden but as armor. Her sensitivities her protection; her vulnerabilities her power, her…

I wrote this piece nearly 5 years ago. Until now, I feared it being read by anyone but myself. “What would others think? What if they don’t get it? Or like it? What if I’m a shitty writer?”

I’ve outgrown such small, ego-filled thoughts. It’s time to share this piece. There is change in the air and it’s time to come out of my forest of shame and isolation, creatively speaking that is. Some…

It’s hard to watch these days, isn’t it? A long time ago I stopped watching as much “traditional” news and switched a primarily satire only diet. The Daily Show and shows and voices alike led my thinking along with a liberal education. From a young age I developed a healthy level of skepticism when it came to the media.

Now, in these times of crisis and so much unknown, we are turning to…

Finnegan’s Way, proof reader, fetcher, barker

Welp, my city, Spokane WA is all but locked down due to covid-19 and being stuck at home all day most days sucks. But this fur ball makes it easier. He helps the process of processing this trauma we as a society are experiencing collectively and my personal, individual traumas I’ve been lugging around in my baggage for years.

He helps me slow…

“isn’t it pretty to think so?

The last six weeks have been difficult creatively, stifling. I’ve felt blocked from producing and connecting with certain feelings— I’ve avoided pain and old wounds, long festering under bandages to keep hidden until fully healed.

This line from the #thesunalsorises has rattled around my brain for nearly two decades, and everytime it comes up again I find…