July | 2025 | Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray)

1. Poetry: after the photograph from Gaza a poem and a way from Frederick Joseph, The Uptight Scheduler Writes to James Crews and What Can’t Be Lost and Learning to Treasure What’s Here from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, Luminous on The Weekly Pause from James Crews, I’m So Tired. Aren’t You? from Julia Fehrenbacher, Failing and Flying by Jack Gilbert shared by Patti Digh, she made a masterpiece out of being underestimated by christopher sexton, Diving into the Wreck by Adrienne Rich, and Breathe and Morning Thoughts from Julie Barton.

2. Andrea Gibson, forever and always: Andrea Gibson Saved My Life with Their Instagram Updates on Their Cancer Journey, and Andrea Was Waiting To Give You This Gift, and Grieving Andrea with the One Who Loved Them Longest. And this, shared by Michelle C. Johnson in a recent newsletter:

“It was 2021, and for some reason, I stumbled upon Button Poetry’s website and found Andrea Gibson. I ordered four copies of You Better Be Lightning and waited for them to arrive. I knew I would give one copy to my brother-in-law and keep one for myself. The other two copies would find homes with friends. I didn’t know anything about Andrea at that time, and while I waited for the books to arrive, I did a deep dive into their stories, writings, life, and journey. I was obsessed. I resonate with people who navigate life with such heart and truth. Such rawness and care. Such connection with the more-than-human world. Such wisdom. Since 2021, I followed their journey through newsletters, interviews, and on social media. I watched their squirrel videos. I listened to their voice share about the Earth. I read about magical pumpkins that unexpectedly grew. I soaked in as much of their medicine as I could.

As most of you know, Andrea transitioned on July 14th, just a little more than a month shy of their 50th birthday. I will turn fifty in August, just as they would have, but life and death had other plans for Andrea. In the wake of their transition, their life has come alive in a different way through the innumerable shares everywhere about their life and work, about their way of living and dying. So much of what they have left us with is about loving life—the ugly and beautiful unexpected things. The wonder. The mystery. The web of connection.

So maybe when we die, and leave our bodies in physical form, we don’t lose everything we’ve had; maybe our lives expand. Maybe our relationship with everything we’ve ever loved deepens. Maybe.”

3. Hold On Let Go: Urns for Living and the Art of Trusting Time By Maria Popova. I love this project so much.

4. What do you know about your creative nature? I adore these prompts Jamie Ridler shared in a recent newsletter.

What nourishes your creativity? What blocks it?
What rhythms supports your creativity? What pace?
Who and what inspires you?
What do you find compelling?
What are your mediums and what do you love about them?
Are you drawn more to challenge or to play?
Do you find yourself immersed in big projects or loving littles?
What themes turn up in your work again and again?

5. 22 Writing Residencies, Grants, and Other Opportunities That Might Change Your Life, a great list from Alexandra Franzen.

6. Quietly Wild, Alix Klingenberg’s new poetry collection is available for preorder. I love what she has to say about writing a poetry collection in these current challenging times, one that is “about the importance of the natural world and the rhythms of the seasons.” She says it “feels like an act of resistance and hope right now, even as it feels a bit like sounding an alarm on a kazoo in a maelstrom of trumpets.”

7. Instructions for Living a Life on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “A Japanese hardware store, a fistful of pens, and a new way of seeing.”

8. ‘Generations of women have been disfigured’: Jamie Lee Curtis lets rip on plastic surgery, power, and Hollywood’s age problem on The Guardian. “The actor explains how she is fighting back against the ‘cosmeceutical industrial complex’ and why she has finally found freedom at 66 years old.”

9. Life lessons: Emmanuel Sonubi on what life so far has taught him. “The acclaimed stand-up comedian, 44, on surviving heart failure and a stroke, leading by example, and learning to agree to disagree.”

10. 10 things I’ve been telling myself, “small reminders that are easy to forget” from Meg Josephson.

11. Introducing The Permission Workbook. “A New Bi-Monthly Feature for Free and Paid Subscribers, Storytellers, and Art-makers” from Elissa Altman.

12. Good stuff from Patti Digh: What in you is ready to be known?, “Recognizing the surprising resonance of soul friends,” and On the other side of the glass, “we are the sum of our secrets.”

13. A megalist of tools for building community, “55 platforms + tactics for connecting off social media” from Elise Granata.

14. Little Truths Studio. I ADORE everything she makes, but the STICKERS?! Love.

15. Never Stop Learning, “A comic about my relationship to climbing (and making art)” from Connie Sun.

16. Journaler’s Routine No. 4: Debbie Millman. “I realized these weren’t just diary entries. They were witnesses to living and persevering.” On The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad.

17. Every Feeling Fully Felt, “Fifteen hours driving, two blissful days, one wondrous life” from Jena Schwartz.

18. Treating Yourself Like Someone You Love from Hugh Hollowell, a recent issue of his Life Is So Beautiful newsletter.

19. Art Under the Gun, another great pep talk from Danny Gregory.

20. A Cup of Soft Fruit, “On the joy of articulating grief” from Satya Robyn.

21. Alchemizing Evil from Julie Colwell. “Repeatedly applying these processes will alchemize the human instinct to blame – the real demon – into the gold of realignment to one’s truth and discovery of the next creative action. As we do this collectively, we have an unprecedented opportunity to shift this time from one of recycling through our worst human tendencies, to creating a new world of heart, vulnerability, and heaven on earth.”

22. the parting glass, “Coming clean on coming clean” from Elissa Altman.

23. When the Ink Smears Ever So Slightly, “On rededicating yourself to your work” from Jami Attenberg.

24. Sometimes It’s Not Jealousy. It Just May Be a Sign to Redirect, “Athena Dixon on finding pleasure in the joy of others.”

25. Creating Closure When the Universe Won’t Give It to You, “Another lesson in radical acceptance” from Elizabeth Kleinfeld.

26. Unbecoming from Jenny Lawson. “This week’s doodle is dedicated to everyone who is still figuring out who they are, instead of being who the world insists that you should be.”

27. The 100 Best Podcasts of All Time, an incomplete list from Time — I am gobsmacked that My Favorite Murder and Mike Birbiglia’s Working It Out didn’t make the list.

28. Emerging Form Episode 143: Shelley Read on Becoming a Novelist in Midlife. “In this conversation, Shelley shares with us how her journey from poet and non-fiction writer shifted into fiction with a single moment of observation and wonder. She shares with us how she crafts scenes, her penchant for playing with language, why she didn’t share with anyone about what she was doing for many years, how a love affair with her main character drove the whole novel, and what she has learned about her own creative process along the way.”

29. The Age of Incarceration. Reflections from the last survivors, reporting and visuals by Morgan Lieberman, and calligraphy by Chiyo Sanada. “During World War II, the U.S. government invoked the Alien Enemies Act, ultimately incarcerating more than 125,000 people of Japanese descent — including many American citizens. The act uprooted and split families, causing them to abandon their homes, businesses, and communities. It has been 80 years since the war ended and they were released. In these testimonies, nine of the last survivors of Japanese American incarceration reflect on their stolen youth and how this injustice impacted the rest of their lives.”

30. How I cut my screen time by 80%, a video by Makari Espe.

31. How To Stay Soft During Fast-Paced Seasons.

32. Sam Cannon Art. Because of things like this:

33. Artists in Their Own Words: Barb Markway.

34. ‘You think God didn’t make gay men?’ Comedian Leslie Jones on religion, grief and getting famous at 47 on The Guardian. “She was Saturday Night Live’s oldest hire, then faced a torrent of abuse after her role in the Ghostbusters reboot. She talks about the deaths of her mum, dad and brother – and why she’s given up dating men.”

35. Need an Escape? Tune Into Noah Kalina’s Ambient Landscapes Where Almost Nothing Happens.

36. And finally, this random collection of things I saved to my phone this week.

1. Morning walks. It was bound to happen eventually — we walked around the ponds and along the river this week and there were too many mosquitoes to go there anymore for a bit. And yet, this close to August means fall is coming soon so the wait won’t be too long, and the way everything turns golden then will make any wait worth it. I am savoring these next few weeks, the last weeks of Eric’s summer break, and am going to miss him joining us on our walks when he goes back to work.

2. Practice. Doing yoga and laughing with the crew at Red Sage and how kindly they indulge my mini “sermons” at the start of class, sitting in my practice room which is tiny and that makes if feel so cozy, writing in the morning with a mug of hot green tea in front of my HappyLight, and making art out of magazine pictures using scissors and glue stick.

3. Eric. He’s my favorite, the best decision I ever made, the choice I make over and over again. I wrote something in my Friday morning writing group about him, something that happened on one of our walks this week, written in response to “ides
for Andrea Gibson” by Maya Stein as our prompt.

“Maybe we’ll stop. Maybe we’ll keep going.” Ahead of us on the trail as we come around the corner by the spot where normally water rushes through but this morning it was quiet and almost dry, I see something moving, too big to be a bug but so bug like, and I say to Eric, “what the heck is that?” He steps closer, bends down, and says, “it’s a crawfish.” We surmise that it had left the dried up ditch that normally runs full, as he was walking away from where the water had been. Eric took a few pictures then moved him off the trail so he wouldn’t get stepped on or run over by a bike. He set him down on the opposite side of the trail from the now dry ditch, closer to the open field of grass where there was no water, other than the retention pond half a mile away by the road that the farm used to water the vegetable fields the crawfish would have to pass by or cross on his way there. As we walked away, I could tell it was bothering Eric, the man who stops when it’s rained to pick up earthworms stranded on the pavement and move them to the grass. He said, “where’s he even going to go?” We rounded the next corner where there’s another spot usually running water and he steps into the tall grass past the golden rod, pushing them aside to check if there is still water in that ditch. There is a bit, so Eric turns back around and jogs to where he’d left the crawdad. Ringo is impatient waiting, doesn’t like that he can’t see where Eric went, and I’m pretty sure Eric won’t find it on his own, so we follow. After a few minutes of searching, Ringo’s nose finds the crawdad, who has clearly turned around and is heading back towards the trail and the dried up ditch. Using a dog poop bag from his pocket, Eric picks it up and we walk with it to the other ditch where there’s still a bit of water, and he drops it in. I can tell Eric feels better, even though, as he says, earlier in the summer we’d gone to a crawfish boil and he’d eaten at least 50 of the same, turned bright red from the boiling water where they’d landed on the worst and last day of their lives. It’s all so weird and awful, this life, the way more than one thing can be true at a time. Maybe we’ll stop. Maybe we’ll keep going.

4. Mom. Still going, still doing well, still enjoying her snacks, still remembering us, still sending me selfies.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. Eric and I were enjoying Ringo the other day, the way he vocalizes, the way he has to dig up the couch, the way he still needs to play a bit before he can settle down, and later talking about how exactly what we were afraid of would happen is happening — that he’d mellow out once he was older and be so cute and funny and loveable that we’d forget how hard those early years were and think “we could totally get another cattle dog.”

Bonus joy: a massage, texting with Chloe’ and Chris and Chelsey, pizza, peaches, new underwear, a good pair of slippers, books from the library on my Kindle and how I can keep them a bit longer by turning on Airplane mode, reading in the morning before I write, getting in the pool, sitting in the sauna with Eric, the hydromassage chair, ice cream, prescription glasses, watching TV, listening to podcasts, the infinite number of times we are allowed to start over, Andrea Gibson, Megan Falley, poets and poetry, libraries and librarians, comedy, true crime, music, other people’s kids and dogs and gardens, down blankets and pillows, fans, fresh air, a big glass of cold clean water, sharing memes and reels with Shellie and Kari and Carrie, kitchen towels, wolves, butterflies and bees, online banking, online scheduling, online shopping, garden centers, lemonade, grapefruit Bubly water, coneflowers, black-eyed Susans, the purple blooms on the mint, dogs with names like Monkey and Goose and Biggie, naps, reading my Kindle in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.