For a long time, I thought I needed to choose.

Photographer.
Writer.
Herbalist.
Maker.

Everyone kept telling me to niche down. Pick a lane. Build a brand.

So I did, over and over again.

I built separate places for separate parts of myself. Photography lived here. Herbal work lived there. Writing was tucked away somewhere else.

But that way of operating never felt right for me.

Because I don't experience these things as separate.

….

I exist here. I don't question anything. This is simply my reality.

A startling noise tears through everything and I am ripped into an alternate reality before I have the chance to hold onto anything.

I am in my bed. Cat next to me, hair tangled around me —

….

My heart breaks daily…

I feel the suffering of others and, try as I might to let it pass by, it finds its way into me. I absorb it, hold it, and in some unchosen way, begin to transmute it. Their storms seep into me and change shape, becoming part of the weather inside my own body. It has always been this way: my edges porous, unable to draw clean borders between myself and the world.

Some of what I carry is old, the grief of growing up in a fractured family, the lingering ache of trying to make sense of what was never whole. Some of it is new, the ripple effects of choices that continue to shape my life in ways I don’t always foresee.

….

The world still decays.
The masks are stuck on harder than ever.
The streets pulse with light while the foundation crumbles.
Despair hums beneath every scroll, every smile, every laugh.

And yet.

It is possible to stand in the shadow without surrender.
To hold the decay in one hand and the pulse of something larger in the other.

The shadow does not vanish.
It waits.
But light,
fragile and defiant,
waits beside it too.

Jung said the shadow must be seen. Nietzsche said the void stares back. Both knew this: to face the darkness is not to fall, it is to stand awake. Writing, witnessing, naming it, these are small rebellions, acts of clarity in the midst of rot.

Faith is not denial. It is the pulse beneath the pulse, the anchor when the world shakes. Prayer, ritual, reflection, they do not erase despair. They give it shape, make it visible, allow it to breathe without suffocating the spirit.

….

We live in a culture that demands performance.

Not art, not courage, not truth. Performance.

The script is simple:

“How are you?”
“Good, thanks. You?”
“Good.”

That’s the exchange.

No deviations allowed.

You could be standing on the ledge of your own mind and still the correct answer is fine.

Because God forbid you say, Actually, I don’t see the point in any of this. Life feels hollow. I’m tired of moving through days that seem to exist only because another one came before it.

Watch what happens.

The smile falters. The eyes shift. There’s a moment of panic while they search for something to say, usually one of the phrases we’ve collectively agreed are supposed to make being alive feel easier.

Find joy in the little things.

Think positive.

Practice gratitude.

Maybe they mean well. Most people probably do.

But beneath all of it I sometimes hear something else:

Please don’t make me look into the abyss.

We don’t know what to do with despair unless we can turn it into a problem with a solution.

….

The white distressed peeling paint, deeply textured black locust bark, the fading Queen Anne’s lace swaying in the breeze bathed in late summer sunlight… I am held captive by the silent story that lives here.

I can almost hear the echoes of forgotten footsteps, the distant laughter of children, and the soft rustle of a tired mother’s hands as she hangs clothes on the line. The imagined sounds swirl around in my mind, stirring lost memories that seem to linger in the air.

….

The morning after, I asked her if she remembered the night.
She stared at me with dead eyes and a blank look on her face.
I asked her again, “Do you remember what you said to me
before I left the bedroom?” She didn’t. I remember that night
vividly. The words spewed from her lips as the dense smell of
alcohol infiltrated my nostrils. They penetrated me like a dull
blade, and stuck inside for far too long.

It was a cold New England night, the kind that leaves you
chilled to the bone from the damp air. I was “home” from
college and had to stay at my mom’s for the weekend.
My friend dropped me off on his way south.

He drove away.
My heart sank.
I’m stuck here.

….

Don’t want diamonds,
Have no use
For pearls.
Touch my soul,
Set it aflame,
Make it dance — twirl.

Comes find me
With the hemlocks,
Under the night sky,
The essence of campfire
Suffusing nearby.

….

Invisible, I sit here —
A ghost amongst the crowd.
Do they perceive
These thoughts concealed,
I never speak aloud?

….

The days blur into one long ache,
Soft edges worn thin
By the weight of repetition.
Eat, sleep, work —
Repeat.
And for what?

Hope lingers in the hollow spaces,
A faint pulse beneath my ribs,
A whisper of something
I can’t name.
It presses into me,
Heavy as stone,
Fragile as smoke.

I search for meaning
In the rustle of leaves,
In the last light bleeding through the trees,
In the quiet ache of the night.

….