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

1. Andrea Gibson, 8/13/75 – 7/14/25. “On July 14th, at 4:16AM, Andrea Gibson died in their home surrounded by their wife, Meg, four ex-girlfriends, their mother and father, dozens of friends, and their three beloved dogs…Andrea would want you to know that they got their wish. In the end, their heart was covered in stretch marks.” I knew this was coming, and yet… One of the last comments I left on Andrea’s blog was, “I do not love a world that will someday be here when you are not. I will also one day desperately love a world where you have been, that holds your open heart, your voice, your poetry in the stars and the sun and the grass and the bunnies and and and and…I love you. ❤️” 💔

2. Poetry: Messages from Home and My Aimless Love and When Answering Your Calling and A New Dark Age from Julie Barton, In Passing by Lisel Mueller, and Remember by Joy Harjo. And these:

3. Five Steps to Walk Away from Empire. “On finding new shapes and embracing nonlinear meanders” by Nicholas Triolo.

4. Advice for Getting Through Grief on Lion’s Roar. “Miriam Tarcov on how to navigate the pain of losing a loved one and—ultimately—reconnect with joy.”

5. Dear Fanny, Don’t Worry, I Know You’re Dead. “Ezra Fox on Working With Fanny Howe on Her Last Book.”

6. Choi + Shine Architects Collaborate with Communities Around the Globe to Crochet Monumental Lace Works.

7. ‘I felt pure, unconditional love’: the people who marry their AI chatbots. “The users of AI companion app Replika found themselves falling for their digital friends. Until – explains a new podcast – the bots went dark, a user was encouraged to kill Queen Elizabeth II and an update changed everything.”

8. The River House Broke. We Rushed in the River. “On July 4, the Guadalupe ripped our home from its pillars, pulling my family into its waters and into the night. Then morning came.”

9. Seane Corn and Lama Rod Owens: Steady Breath, Steady Heart on the Sounds True Podcast. “How are you doing these days? Exhausted? Heartbroken? Outraged? All of the above? In this era of uncertainty and instability, you may feel like your only choice is to forge ahead and just get through the week. If so, this podcast with two beloved Sounds True authors was created just for YOU. Here, Tami Simon speaks with Seane Corn and Lama Rod Owens to hear their personal insights for navigating our rapidly-changing world from a place of deep connection to our most important values, to the people who give us strength, and to those with whom we may feel hopelessly divided.”

10. Good stuff from Patti Digh. Reclaiming Sonder: The Profound Realization of Other Lives and The ghosts of becoming: A lineage of selves, lost.

11. Practice Delight, with Ross Gay: Hope Portal, Session 7.

12. The FOMO no one talks about: Am I missing my own life? by Meg Josephson.

13. Journaler’s Routine No. 2: Melissa Febos on The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad. “There are few moments in a day more peaceful and satisfying than these.”

14. 8 Ways to Embrace “Deep Casual Hosting” (So You’ll Actually Do It.) by Katherine Goldstein. “How to prioritize connection over exhausting Instagram expectations.”

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

1. Morning walks. Eric’s foot is better so he came with us this week on all our walks. It’s strange because most of the places near the water we typically have to avoid this time of year have remained accessible, only a few mosquitoes and plenty of dragonflies doing their work eating them.

2. Books, reading and writing them. I am still amazed how almost every book I read is a good one, hardly any stinkers. I can only think of one or two in the last year that were disappointing. And every time I sit down to work on writing one of my own, I’m amazed how much I’ve already written, how the process now is like piecing together a quilt. It’s also strange how now that I’m actively working on that, it matters less to me if I ever finish, because if I don’t it will only be because I ran out of time, not that I didn’t try.

3. Practice. I adore practicing with the women and sometimes dogs of Red Sage. I’m grateful that I’ve found practices that work for me and so lucky to have such good people to share them with.

4. Mom. We still send selfies to each other. As she gets more confused, I’m so grateful she hasn’t forgotten me and am eternally grateful for the good care and company she has where she’s at.

5. My tiny family, small house, little life. I love it here, with them.

Bonus joy: being able to start over or change my mind or cancel plans, naps, libraries and librarians, poets and poetry, my primary care doctor’s nurse practitioner, being able to opt out when they want to weigh me — and knowing that change in that office was at least partly because of me and a nutritionist who advocated for me and in so doing shifted the perspective of that practice, texting with Chris, the yellow mums Eric got for me, the whole house fan and a/c, other people’s dogs and kids and gardens, watching TV, listening to podcasts, new to me music, cooler temperatures, sharing reels and memes with Shellie and Kari and Carrie, ice cream, fresh corn, the value of doing absolutely nothing, opting out, fresh eggs, the ways Eric and I help each other, not being alone in “this,” photo magnets, afternoon storms, cooler temperatures, online shopping, grocery shopping, HRT, heating pads, vaccines, prescriptions, gummies, green tea, a handmade mug, stickers, birds in my feeder, butterflies and hummingbirds in my garden, reading in bed at night while Eric and Ringo sleep.