Do you ever feel like you are giving far fewer fucks and yet still caring so much it sometimes seems like there is only the most tissue-thin layer separating your soul from this world? Like your heart may be broken but your spirit is still rising? Do you ever walk on purpose even when you have nowhere to go? Do you notice things deeply, like the way whiskey burns at the end of the day? Are you claiming your identity, clear and strong and true, and also sinking into the vast unknowable mystery of your all? Do your days feel like longing and acquiescence and learning to stop grasping at things that are ready to leave or that choose not to come closer?
Do you finally know that you can choose a love and a life that does not break you? That you can claim a softer beauty and a kinder want. That even your animal hunger can soften its rough edges and say a full-throated yes to what is good and kind and holy. Do you remember that insanity is not a prerequisite for passion and that there is another pathway to your art, one that does not demand your pain as payment for its own becoming? Are you learning to show up? To take up space? To feel your power? Is it full of contradictions, does it feel like fire underwater, are you rising to roar?
