cultivating the beautiful ordinary by sharing our tales and our tables
Like the air, dreams are thick. “Where do they come from?” Slowly moving through stories. Stories electrify my body and paralyze me, strung together much like an addict strings up a row of sober days and calls it enough. These are my sober days. I feel the buzz in my head grow louder, the words…
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“We will not end white-body supremacy—or any form of human evil—by trying to tear it to pieces. Instead, we can offer people better ways to belong and better things to belong to.” — Resmaa Menakem I step into my office almost daily. Candles line my windowsill, one too many mugs sit with various amounts of…
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I look down at my phone and see an Instagram story. It catches my eye. This is not very unique for me, but I get in these rabbit holes chasing interesting stories. Maybe because it’s fall 2021, and the kid’s schooling is back online. For me, meandering through other people’s vacations, or sipping extra coffee…
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“The biggest thing our heritage provides us, is that we don’t divorce our body from our emotions. The problem with that is that we also feel the weight of it in our body faster than our brains can process it.” – Dr. Eliza Bast, describing the Latinx experience I sit in Poulsbo, beside the bay, where Coastal…
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In the wilds of motherhood, professional work, and various other creative endeavors, as an Indigenous/Mexican/Spanish/German woman, I find the spaces shrinking in which I feel intuitively understood. In the ongoing pandemic integration into real-life realities, paired with friction-filled sociopolitical conversations and an ever-emerging mental health crisis, I often “turtle,” or go inward. A few weeks…
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“For the opposite of clinging is not letting go but cherishing. This is the goal of the practice of humility. That having a “light grasp” on life prepares the way for cherishing what is right in front of us.” ― Barking to the Choir: The Power of Radical Kinship, Gregory Boyle Dear Colleague, This year,…
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We rarely travel at Christmas time. The last time, in fact, was three years ago, pre-COVID. This year, our family of six will make two brief trips; one to spend time with family, and one to relax in the sun with dear friends. The pandemic took away our less-than-regular visits with family. We lost a…
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My heart races as I descend the stones thrown recklessly at the edges of the earth. These coastal boulders are mighty as they break the waves, which threaten to wash away the trees and green shrubs, homes of bears and cougars. Whoever tossed them aside was very angry.
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The sun dances across my lap. The old Honda’s engine revs and releases around the curves of Lake Crescent. Turquoise waters on my right shimmer clearly against the evergreens next to its shore. I count the logs cast aside into the lake’s bottomless waters. Just past the upcoming campground we will take a hard right…
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Legends are made this way. Legends are borne in the small, tiny stories, the kind that stick year after year—where there is always more to tell, but you cannot get there because this particular part is just too good.
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