Saying The Quiet Part Out Loud: The Ugly Mug Is Truly Ugly

The Ugly Mug’s weekly Wednesday evening poetry reading and open mic, called Two Idiots Peddling Poetry, located near the Orange circle, is well known as a staple in the Southern California literary scene. When I was 16 and looking for poetry open mics in Orange County, the Internet pointed me to the Ugly Mug. I went one time. At that young age, I felt pretty intimidated and never returned. I didn’t feel especially welcomed, but as a young girl with social anxiety and plenty of troubles, I thought it was just me. No big deal.

But then, when I was 23 and discovering myself as a professional writer and poet after college, living in Long Beach, I once again found myself at the Ugly Mug. Like many young and emerging writers, I was “inducted” into the “poetry scene” at the Ugly Mug with a warning, something that goes like this: “Just so you know, there’s a mean old man you have to pay to enter, but don’t mind him, that’s just part of it.” The common wisdom is you just grit your teeth and get through the door.

That man’s name is Phillip Doyon, widely known as Phil, and he owns the building where the poetry reading is hosted, which used to be a coffee shop and is currently an event space. I am now 37 years old and it took me this long to finally trust my instincts enough to realize that Phil is not just a “harmless curmudgeon,” but an abusive white man protected by a culture of complicity. 

WHY I’M NEVER RETURNING TO THE UGLY MUG

Here’s what happened to wake me up: I was invited to feature (which means, read my own poems for a longer set) at the Ugly Mug’s Two Idiots Peddling Poetry reading on July 30, 2025, to celebrate the anthology SH!T MEN SAY TO ME (Moon Tide Press), in which I have a poem. I was invited by the wonderful and lovely editor and phenomenal poet Victoria Lynne McCoy to co-feature alongside JL Martindale. I was explicitly invited to read my own work as part of this feature. This will become relevant later.

Now, I have a baby. My husband travels for work often, so I planned childcare for that evening by asking my part-time nanny to watch the baby while I went to the reading. My nanny is a lovely person who is also a writer. When I told her about the reading theme, “SHIT MEN SAY TO ME,” she was excited and said she had plenty of material for the topic. (Don’t we all?) The morning of the reading, she read me a poem she wrote, and it was super fun and relevant, so I said, why don’t we all go tonight? Our plan was for her to watch the baby while I read, and then we’d switch while she read.

As an active couple, my husband and I bring our baby almost everywhere. We’ve taken her to social gatherings, festivals, nonprofit meetings, parades, city council meetings, and all sorts of events. We had just come back from an international trip with her at 7 months old. So I didn’t think much of it, and I know I’d seen children and babies at the Ugly Mug before. 

TLDR; Here’s why I’ll never return to the Ugly Mug and why I will never recommend this poetry reading to anyone ever again: 

That evening while I was featuring, the owner, Phil, threatened to physically harm my child. He said to my nanny, “You better not leave that thing with me…or I’ll get my rope and a board.” Before that, he had tried to intimidate us into leaving multiple times without clear reason. Afterward, the hosts not only ignored and dismissed my concerns but then retaliated against me.

WHY SAYING “IT’S JUST A JOKE” DOESN’T EXCUSE THE BEHAVIOR

It doesn’t matter that people are defending Phil’s comment as “just a joke.” And many are.

I was recently mentoring a group of high school students at a weekend retreat and a group of African American girls were threatened by a young boy with racial and sexual harassment. Would that behavior be considered acceptable if the parents said, “Well, it was just a joke”? No, absolutely not. And as the adults in the group, we took that behavior very seriously. We notified the camp counselors, and then the manager, and mediated a meeting with the young boy and his family. Their entire group was then asked to leave. 

So if an 11-year-old boy had to face the music and learn that his threats were unacceptable, why would a man in his 70s be exempt from accountability?

Every time I tell someone what this man said about my child, the look of shock and disgust is palpable on my listener’s face. Who thinks that dehumanizing a child, especially a baby of color (calling her “that thing”), and then threatening to silence her with physical violence is funny? I think I have a pretty good sense of humor, and no one has been able to explain the part where I’m supposed to laugh. 

WHY THIS IS A COMMUNITY-WIDE ISSUE

Immediately, plenty of Ugly Mug supporters jumped to Phil’s defense. After I posted about this incident on Facebook, the comments rolled in about how I was “blowing things out of proportion," and Phil was just “testing your sense of humor,” and “we can all be crusty at times.” Yes, I can be crusty at times. Sometimes I wake up in a bad mood. But I do not go around threatening other people’s babies. 

Those people defending Phil as someone who is just a “curmudgeon” with a controversial sense of humor probably aren’t considering that people with a history of dealing with abusive men don’t take menacing glares, intimidation, or verbal threats lightly. The level of gaslighting and the consistent dismissiveness of my concerns is astonishing, especially considering the exhausting irony that this happened during the evening themed “SHIT MEN SAY TO ME.”

In addition to threatening my child, Phil tried to get me and my baby to leave multiple times (after taking my money, of course), without explicitly stating any reasons why. And when I wouldn’t be intimidated into leaving, he glared at me the rest of the night, and seemingly took out his frustration with my non-compliance by threatening my child–someone who couldn’t talk back.

CONTRADICTING, CRAZY-MAKING LACK OF LOGIC OR CONSISTENCY

Later, Phil said that children weren’t allowed. But when I was on the mic, Ben Trigg, the main host of the reading who introduces people on the mic, said that children and babies have always been welcome there. I have seen white babies there. People vocalizing that their children have always felt welcome were white people. So why was my Asian baby suddenly unwelcome? 

There was one time I was applying for a rental unit with my partner, who is also mixed race, but has a Caucasian last name. We were told we were first in line for the unit, so I went to drop off our signed application. At that time, the older white male property manager started asking me all sorts of questions about my last name (Woo) and my ethnicity (Chinese), and where I was from. As soon as I left, we got the call that they were giving the unit to someone else.

Anyone who has experienced any level of discrimination will understand that sick pit in your stomach when you realize what is happening.

I had that sick pit in my stomach the moment I walked in the door and saw Phil scowling at me and my child, and then again when I heard the sickening “joke” he had made. Then again when I was told that children were now suddenly unwelcome after we arrived, and explicitly even that Phil hated children.

Ever since *rump was elected, there has been a noticeable shift in the boldness of despicable behavior, especially from white racists. My step-sister-in-law works as a counselor for the Boys and Girls Club in Orange County and she almost quit because the 5th graders (who were white) just couldn’t stop saying the “n” word. Do we let that behavior slide because they’re “just joking”?

And yet, one white man on Facebook lamented that Ben and Ln (the co-hosts) would be “so hurt” to hear implications that there could be a racial bias at work (because that’s what’s important). Plus, all these white people were lining up to say how welcome they’d always felt.

NO RESPONSE THEN RETALIATION FROM HOSTS

As soon as I got home that night, I sent an email to Ln Webre, one of the co-hosts of the reading, who was my point of contact, explaining what happened. I am a longtime event organizer and if anyone had brought this concern to me, I would have responded immediately. 

However, more than two days later, I had heard nothing. 

Yet, after I decided to voice my concerns and experience on my Facebook page, it took less than 6 hours for both Ln and Ben to respond. 

Then, the situation got much worse, because Ben Trigg, along with HanaLena Fennel, JL Martindale, and plenty of other Ugly Mug regulars, began twisting the narrative to make me the perpetrator. I was accused of being a pathological narcissist who had a pre-meditated malicious intent to destroy the reading, among other things.

The inciting incident of the verbal threat toward my child was not addressed, instead eclipsed by their preoccupation with my perceived lack of social etiquette, such as being five minutes late, having a “giant” stroller (which is the same width of a standard wheelchair), and even having the audacity to read my own work at a reading where I was invited to do that very thing.

It became clear to me that this was not an isolated incident, and this was not just one toxic person, but an entire community of immature, toxic people who would rather protect the fragile egos of Phil, the white male land owner, and Ben, the white male host, than take the concerns of a mother of color seriously. 

at least 72 OTHER PEOPLE HAVE EXPERIENCED SIMILAR HARASSMENT

After posting, a flood of messages began arriving at my inbox and in whispers at events–I was not the only one, by far, to experience harmful behavior from the owner or the hosts and regulars.

As of writing, I am aware of 72 instances wherein paying customers have been insulted or injured by the owner of The Ugly Mug and/or the hosts of the weekly Wednesday poetry reading. 

Even more problematic behavior is being revealed to me every day—that people are explicitly afraid to say because they don’t want to be retaliated against. This, it turns out, is a grounded fear, because of the way that Ben and the others immediately turned the situation around to attack my character rather than deal with the issue. 

Even the other host, Steve Ramirez, brushed off my concerns as “a joke in poor taste.” Don’t even get me started on the gaslighting happening within all of this. And the condescension. Ben actually wrote, “Some people think they have to take their NANNY everywhere.” 

I understand people feel protective of their poetry space and their friends, but the true character of many people has been revealed in broad daylight. 

It’s clear to me now that all my slight misgivings, all my nagging discomfort, all my instincts were trying to tell me something: the Ugly Mug is not “a supportive and safe place for readers and audience” as the hosts claim. [1] It’s clear that these hosts are ill-equipped to be holding space for a community in a public setting and claiming that it’s inclusive.

There is no HR to go to. As a community space, I think it’s fitting to have community accountability.

This is not just a poetry community, it is also a business in which Phil is profiting from this weekly event, and it is also a professional space where professional writers go to exhibit their work. 

I think it appropriate to address this concern publicly, since their private correspondence has been evasive and dismissive.

If you are a writer or poetry appreciator considering attending the Ugly Mug in Orange, California, I advise you to find better uses of your time and money.

A PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR, DECADES OF ABUSE 

We’re all human and all have our less-than-shining moments, and mature people can take accountability and try to do better next time. But this is clearly a pattern of behavior over decades, and there has been no meaningful attempt at apology, repair, or change in behavior. I’ve been told it’s impossible for them to find another venue, it’s unlikely that Phil will agree to stop interfacing with the public, Phil has declined my request for a conversation, and essentially, business will continue as usual. At least, after my urging, they now have added language to their event descriptions that children under 12 aren’t welcome, so at least no other parents will experience this. And I did get a refund of my money, though I doubt that came out of Phil’s pocket.

More needs to change.

THE REVIEWS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES 

On Yelp, the Ugly Mug has 42 one- and two-star reviews, which outnumbers the 38 three-, four-, and five-star reviews. Overwhelmingly, most reviews say pretty much the same thing: Phil is rude, mean, insulting, offensive, belittling, snarling, berating, and condescending. 

Some of the awful stories I’ve heard or seen include: Phil shouting at and slapping a woman, Phil yelling at a mother when she was trying to find a bathroom, and Phil regularly making “jokes” of physical harm to another woman. Remarkably, two musicians say he lied and cheated them out of their money.[2] 

There are at least an additional 12 negative reviews on Facebook.[3] The Google Business page has been shut down so who knows how many were on there. 

Additionally, 18 people have shared privately about their bad experiences at the Ugly Mug.

At the time of writing, I have seen or heard a total of 72 people say they have felt personally offended or injured by Phil and/or the hosts and their clique. 

And these 72 people are only the brave ones who have come forward so far. According to Lee Resources International, for every one customer who complains, there are 26 more unhappy but silent customers.[4] Many people who had an initial bad experience there have decided not to say or do anything and instead just never went back. It’s not illogical, then, to extrapolate that the number of people personally injured by the Ugly Mug (owner and/or host/clique) over 1,300 weeks (25 years) could be something like 1,846 people. 

Considering the atmosphere of intimidation, slander, and recrimination, it could even be higher. One of my friends said they didn’t want to say anything because they didn’t want the clique to ostracize and attack them. This is a valid fear. The poetry community is mighty but small. Fear of retaliation is a real fear in this place, and it has been shown to be grounded in reality with how they have publicly condemned me, immediately issuing libelous statements and personal attacks as their response.  

These incidents all reinforce my understanding of the open secret that an entire community has been whispering: This is not a safe space.

GASLIGHTERS DON’T WANT YOU TO TRUST YOUR OWN INSTINCTS

As a person with a history of dealing with abusive men, I have learned to trust my instincts. 

For example, I once lived with a young woman whose menacing boyfriend skulked around leering in my house, but no one else took the red flags I voiced seriously. Then, that person eventually physically assaulted my roommate. 

It’s important to listen to our intuition, especially when we keep sensing that something’s not right. Because if we’re feeling this way, it’s almost certain that other people are, too. 

For instance, I once got a sexually threatening voicemail from a few drunk boys, and when I posted about it on the Internet with the audio and the speaker’s name and photo, other women contacted me and said they had received similar messages but didn’t know what to do about it. They thanked me for saying something. One of the boys called me, begging to have me remove his name from my post. I did, but I made him promise to never do anything like this again and to stop harassing women.

Am I going to be that person? Yeah. I am. 

It’s astonishing to me that in a poetry space where people come expecting to feel safe and supported sharing their internal feelings, lived experiences, and personal vulnerabilities, the hosts and supporters of Two Idiots Peddling Poetry decided to first ignore, then gaslight and bully me for saying the quiet part out loud: This is a toxic environment and poets would be better off finding other venues to express themselves.

NOT A SAFE OR WELCOMING SPACE 

In addition to Phil’s injurious behavior, countless people have said they feel unwelcome in the space because the host and some regulars can be actively snide, rude, and unfriendly to people they seemingly don’t like or who are outside of their little clique. According to my experience and my sources, this clique tends to snub, dismiss, and even remove attendees from the open mic list whenever they want. 

Keep in mind, this is a public event that charges a $5 cover. It used to have a drink minimum also, back when it was a coffee shop. So, anyone who wants to attend must agree to the contract: exchange your precious money for hateful stares, rude remarks, and even discrimination.

RAMPANT  RACIAL AND SEXUAL HARASSMENT 

Interestingly, when I asked some of my friends about their experiences, across the board, it was women and people of color who reported the most discomfort and harassment. One of my older white female friends said that she knew Phil could be rude but never felt deeply troubled by him, and she said she realized it might be because she wasn’t the target of his vitriol.  

There are other issues, too. Multiple friends have said that they have felt uncomfortable with one of the regulars (one who made attacks on my character) being too sexually and physically aggressive, running their hands all over their body and pushing themself up against them, making unwanted sexual jokes, contributing to the hostile environment. 

When I was younger, I noticed the sexual leering from some of the older men in the place, but I brushed it off at the time because, let’s be real, that’s not unique to this space. However, in reading the Yelp reviews, other young girls felt that way about Phil, other friends have told me they felt this way in the space, and a male friend told me that their young female friends also never went back because of the inappropriate ogling and comments from the older white male regulars.

WHY EVEN KIND PEOPLE ARE BEING FOOLED

That being said, there are plenty of people I really care about in this space, which is why I continued to go and put up with the negativity. I went to the Ugly Mug because my friends went there. I’ve spent many, many memorable nights at the Ugly Mug appreciating poetry with friends I cherish. Most of my friends say they go there in order to see their friends and just put up with the rest of it. 

They say there’s not a lot of venues for poetry open mics in the area, so the sense I get is that we “just take what we can get.” Also, it’s been like this for so long that “why rock the boat”?

Is this the standard we really want to set for ourselves? That in order to participate in a poetry community, which should be uplifting and welcoming, we have to put up with regular abuse?

It’s well-known and normalized that in order to attend this open mic, there is a price to pay: your own dignity and comfort. 

It’s expected that you will exchange your hard-earned cash for glowering stares and disrespectful remarks, and if you think this is a problem, then there’s a problem with you.

Maybe if, 20 years ago when I first attended, I saw a description of the event that read, “The atmosphere here may be hostile. Enter at your own risk,” I could have saved myself years of feeling something wasn’t quite right but not being able to put my finger on it.

My intention is for the highest good for all, even though I know that can be difficult to see right now. I hope that the well-intentioned, kind people who frequent here can somehow find a way forward that doesn’t enable abuse and instead encourages honesty and fosters healing.

WHY I’M NOT KEEPING QUIET ANYMORE

I want to acknowledge the people who do like the reading series, and simply ask them to open their hearts and try to understand why after more than 12 years of enduring the negativity at the Ugly Mug (framed as a “rite of passage” into the Southern California poetry scene), the notoriously cruel owner threatening my baby was the last straw. 

As poet Saeed Jones has said, “The thing about doing hurtful things to me is that I’m a writer.”[5]

I am now also a mother. And before my child even turned one year old, I’ve already experienced a mean-spirited, cold-hearted older land-owning white man threatening her and discriminating against her.

Phil’s own supporters call him the “gargoyle at the gate” and the “monster with the flower behind his ear” and even describe his behavior as “berating,” but say they like it.[6] That’s fine if you like to be demeaned and berated in public, and no shade to anyone’s kinks, but can we all collectively understand that most people don’t like violent death or maiming jokes aimed at them or their children, especially without explicit consent or an established, trusting relationship? 

Furthermore, if Ben’s reaction to my semi-public statement that I wouldn’t be returning to the Ugly Mug because of Phil’s threats toward my baby was to passive-aggressively and publicly shame me, judge me, deflect, and dismiss my concerns before outright smearing my reputation, while fanning the flames of his friends slandering me, what do you think they’re saying about other people?

This is a public event, and therefore the hosts of the event have a responsibility to customers and attendees to take threats of violence seriously. Plenty of my friends are taking this seriously, and I appreciate those vocal supporters who risk their own ostracization to articulate their disapproval of Phil’s behavior and Ben’s handling of the situation. Yet, still, we are the ones asking for resolution and problem-solving, not them.  

It’s hard work to push back against abuse. I understand. A lot of people are afraid. And that’s what perpetuates the cycle.

THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL

We’re living in a time when dangerous older white men in positions of power lie and domineer in order to enrich themselves and are rewarded for it, while followers band together to twist the story and make the recipients of that violence seem like the perpetrators who need to be viciously attacked. 

Well-loved social justice writer adrienne marie brown writes that in complex human societies, as in nature, we see patterns repeating. A “fractal” is “a never-ending pattern,” such as the pattern for older white men to abuse their power in societies where they are positioned at the top of the hierarchy of privilege. “How we are at the small scale is how we are at the large scale,” she writes. [7] 

We are living in a time when women’s rights are being eroded, racism is rampant and emboldened by government, and an entire mass of the population believes vitriolic propaganda designed to obfuscate and eradicate opposition to extremist policies that oppress women, immigrants, the working class, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, scientists, journalists, and environmentalists, among others. 

It’s obvious to me how interrelated all these things are, from the microcosm of a micro-aggression to the macrocosm of institutionalized oppression.

Some more food for thought: why is it that seemingly the “only” place, according to supporters, for people to regularly go for poetry in Orange County is in the living room of a mean, nasty, miserable, misanthropic, baby-hating older white man? Why is it that it’s a white man who owns the land? Why are we paying him to be there? What alternatives could be possible? Why are we stuck in the scarcity mentality?

We are living in a time of a crisis of imagination. I am asking people to stop accepting the status quo—from a mean old white man bullying babies to a mean old white man in the white house abusing children. Think of something different. Do something different.

As I just read online by someone, “It can be overwhelming to witness/experience/take in all the injustices of the moment; the good news is that *they’re all connected. So if your little corner of work involves pulling at one of the threads, you’re helping to unravel the whole damn cloth.”[8]

And yet, it’s easier to be complicit than to risk saying something.

I was complicit. I won’t be anymore. 

It’s time to set higher standards. It’s time to evolve. Time to do better. Be better. 

“There are those who can see, those who can see when shown, and those who cannot see.” -Leonardo daVinci

Here is a (non-exhaustive) list of other regular open mics for poetry in the southern California region:

Orange County:

Arvida Books (Tustin)

Euclid Library (Anaheim)

Anaheim Library (Anaheim)

Light the Mic (Fullerton)

South Bay:

Oracle (Long Beach)

Swing Set (Long Beach)

Griot Cafe (Long Beach)

Muse on Fire (Long Beach)

The Sanctuary (Long Beach)

Floasis (Long Beach)

Poetry at DiPiazza’s (Long Beach)

Grand Annex (San Pedro)

LA:

Da Poetry Lounge (Los Angeles)

Anansi Writers Workshop (Los Angeles)

Poetry Diet (Los Angeles)

Sunday Jump (Los Angeles)

Obsidian Tongues (Pomona)

Here is another list of open mics in the greater LA area from Los Angeles Literature.

 Sources:

[1] https://orangecoast.com/2015/ben-trigg-on-peddling-poetry

[2] https://www.yelp.com/biz/the-ugly-mug-cafe-orange?rr=4

[3] https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068039497404

[4] https://getmindful.com/blog/customer-service-stats-that-matter-part-ii/#:~:text=For%20Every%20One%20Customer%20Complaint,your%20agents%20ask%20your%20customers

[5] https://www.instagram.com/p/DORfuQnjkET

[6] https://newuniversity.org/2016/01/19/ugly-mug-beautiful-soul/

[7] https://earthlingopinion.wordpress.com/2019/03/01/fractals-the-relationship-between-small-and-large/

[8] https://www.instagram.com/p/DOaoe23kYfv/

Here are a few snapshots of what people have said about the Ugly Mug over the years (not exhaustive)

If you have your own Ugly Mug story you would like to share, please feel free to contact me at NancyWooWriter@gmail.com.

Why I'm Never Going Back to the Ugly Mug

PSA for my poetry community — Hey, here’s an idea: Instead of going to the Ugly Mug on Wednesday evenings and giving $5 to the owner, Phil, who hates babies and tried to intimidate me into leaving three times because I brought my child, then called her “that thing” and threatened to shut her up with “rope and a board” — how about instead never go there again and instead set up a recurring donation of $5 to send food aid to children where it’s needed?

Seems like a no-brainer to me. Give $5 to the miserable, misanthropic miser who dehumanized and threatened my 9 month old baby… or give $5 to feed babies in Gaza, Mali, Yemen where food insecurity is high? Yeah, fuck you Phil.

$5 might not seem like a lot but $5 per person every week for 25 years is plenty of money. He’s always been rude but he actually crossed a line into being abusive. Sorry, the people who host the reading are fine and no shade to them, but shit is so fucked these days I don’t have time or money to waste on people perpetuating harm with low likelihood they will grow or change. If they’re not in therapy and getting better, they’re getting worse. Abuse escalates over time if not alchemized. I’ve been going there for 20 years and he’s certainly not gotten kinder. This is not a space that is welcoming or inclusive to mothers with children. So if that is you, I highly recommend you avoid this place.

Go ahead and judge me if you want for not being all love and light, I don’t care. Yes, I know everyone has a story and I don’t know his trauma, but a wise teacher said to me one time that once you reach the age of 35, you’re too old to be blaming your parents for your own misery.

We are living in a time when I’m way past the point of diplomacy with assholes and oppressors. Old mean white men do not run the world. We do. The personal is political, remember? One more time for good measure, fuck you Phil. P.S. It’s exasperating how ironic it was that I was there reading poems about “shit men say to me.” It truly never ends.

Here’s a link to send emergency aid to children through the World Food Programme.

Age of Exhaustion

I am inspired to write again after doing a meditation for motivation and confidence, and reading this insightful article: The Second Phase of the Fascist Invasion by Elad Nehorai - a very smart person who I had the privilege of meeting once or twice. I follow him on social media for balanced and insightful commentary on national and world politics.

Caveat: I have a hard time being consistent with keeping a blog or posting on social media. My motivation waxes and wanes with my mental health, my level of busy-ness, and world events. The honest truth is that sometimes it feels too painful to reveal the truth of what I’m feeling. This resistance to sharing has only increased with the increase of fascism in the country, and with the feeling that I don’t know who I can trust. I’ve been harassed by friends and family for posting Black Lives Matter and Free Palestine. Like anyone, I want to live a life free of harassment and judgment. So I’ve cut back on saying what I really think in favor of keeping the peace. However, I often feel like an imposter, as a writer afraid to write. But then I give myself compassion, and always eventually get back to the page.

The far right wants us to lose hope and succumb to cynicism. I'll admit, I feel my spirit has been drained starting in 2016 with the reality of Trumpism, and then kicked while down with COVID and the insurrection and shootings, and everything that keeps happening, including the war in Ukraine and the genocide in Gaza, and the repeal of Roe v. Wade and the list can go on.

However, like the end of this article proposes, we can't let them win. Sometimes it feels like the hardest thing to do to have a sense of hope, and to follow it with action, but we must.

I've lost family and friends over politics, and the last few years it has been so painful to post because speaking up has always inevitably resulted in personal loss. On top of that, in my professional environments (the ARTS and NONPROFIT sectors) time and time again, I experience either direct or indirect white-person racism (in the spaces that are supposed to be SAFE). Every time I’ve spoken up about it, I face my own demons of anxiety and fear. So much so that it makes me want to withdraw, and hide away from the harsh realities of the conflicts in the world. I am exhausted.

Like this article says, I feel we are in the age of exhaustion. I used to be so optimistic, and I believed in the inherent good of humanity. I believed with the right attitude and imagination, anything was possible. Now, I am not so sure. Homo sapiens is inherently violent, and has from the beginning exterminated all other hominoid species as well as caused innumerable animal species to go extinct. And here we are, facing the worst global crisis in 10,000 years—human-caused climate change—and still, world leaders continue to focus on bombing and destroying entire civilizations of people. It’s absolutely absurd.

There is something deeply ill in our society that needs healing. I've undergone a journey of personal healing over the last 15 years and I am happy to say I feel much more stable, accepting, and loved. However, there was some sort of spark in me that feels like it's been quelled. Some hope. Some inspiration. Something in me that felt like a magical spark of creativity. For the past few years, I feel like I have been faking it. That I am trying to live up to the ideal artist persona, who is strong and resilient and revolutionary, but the truth is, depression and anxiety overtake me more days than not. I suppose I am writing this because I’m exhausted, but I’m also tired of hiding.

I can accept that I feel defeated, but I won’t accept defeat. There is too much at stake with the November election to let my fears silence me. How can the left sustain the level of energy needed to win against the fascists? What do we need to do? What can we do?

What's Been Going On?

An update as to my whereabouts.
Reposted from my newsletter (subscribe).
 

The last workshop I held was called "Multiculturalism as Poetic Mosaic" at the Billie Jean King Long Beach Public Library for the Youth Poet Laureate Program in December. Before that, I hosted a free 6-week writing workshop called "Poetry for Self-Expression" in partnership with Angels Gate Cultural Center as a part of my year-long Artists at Work residency—all the way back in the summer!

2022 was actually a difficult year for me, so I was not as active in community leadership as usual. As we all know, writing is a reflection of life, and life must be lived in order to have anything to write about. I was so fortunate to have the financial support of the Artists at Work residency because it allowed me a year of rest. Since I discovered the poetry community in 2013, I have been excessively active in writing, teaching, hosting (often for free) and trying to make a life in the arts. I like to say I spent 10 years in hustle mode, so I deserved a year of rest. Not to mention, because of my personal circumstances, I have been in survival mode since I was a child.

So, finally, I had downtime to reflect, consider, and mostly just be. I had to un-learn the belief that my value was predicated on my productivity (thanks, Capitalism!). In fact, I didn't write much. What did I do all year? Of course I was fulfilling my duties as an Artist at Work and did some really fun programming with them, including teaching poetry to kids after school and running Poems & Produce in the Wilmington community garden. I had my book accepted for publication so I worked on that.

But outside of that, I think I mostly just took walks, meditated, and spiraled into existential boredom. I read recently that existential boredom is necessary for the creative impulse to strike, and boy did I go deep into existential reflection. I was questioning my purpose and meaning in life, not to mention the severe planetary crises facing us now. "Crisis as normal" you could say. How do we live with all of that? How do we hold crisis and hope at the same time? Was the human race really doomed, bringing down so many other species with us? These questions (as the topics of my book as well) plagued me. I had to determine where I stood in the face of all of it. What was I willing to believe, what was I willing to sacrifice, what was I willing to change, what was I willing to do in service to the web of life?

It also seemed like whatever I tried to begin ended up not working out. I almost started hosting a poetry open mic, but that didn't pan out for me. I started working on a family history project, but the second recording of an interview with my father didn't save! I was writing but not interested in anything I was writing. I followed the signs and just let myself give away all pre-conceived notions of what my life was supposed to be. I grieved all that was lost during the pandemic, emotions that perhaps I had suppressed while I was actively in survival and stress mode (who wasn't??). Not to mention, I was experimenting with new medication for my mental health and fighting through some severe depression. I attended many healing workshops online and I just kept getting through each day, grateful for the support of my spiritual community, family, partner, patrons, and friends.

I ended up being a part of a wonderful project called Behind the Mask, which brought together artists of various disciplines to write short scenes for the stage and then we performed our original pieces to a live audience! That really helped shake me out of my malaise. Then, I started painting. And riding my bike. I returned to bellydance class. Started cooking more. Rekindled some friendships. Started going to the Unitarian Universalist church! Started attending more online workshops as a student. Started drawing. Dabbled in fiction. And I took on a leadership role as the Hub Coordinator for the Sunrise Movement in Long Beach, a youth-led climate organization.

I was missing community, and I had to find it again. I was bored of poetry and had to find other ways of expressing myself. I had to seek out new avenues of fulfillment in my life. I am reminded again that the life of an artist takes many winding turns. I never really know what the next step will be, what I will be drawn towards, what new directions life has in store for me. I operate as a servant to my callings, and in 2022, I had to let go of all notions of who I was in the past in order to step into who I was becoming.

(Regarding environmentalism, I am changing constantly. I had to fight past the resistance to change! As a household, we are taking alternative modes of transportation like walking, biking, and busing rather than driving, we have a garden and a compost system, we eat way less meat, and we are now trying to get into the habit of buying products that are more sustainably produced, not to mention as an organization, Sunrise Long Beach is determined to get Long Beach to quit oil production.)

What does this mean for Surprise the Line? To be honest, I'm not sure. My interests are aligning around eco-poetry and solarpunk. In fact, I'll be teaching a workshop with CSU Channel Islands in April on solarpunk, the literary genre that imagines a future where humans, technology, and nature exist in harmony. If it goes well, I might be able to replicate it.

But the honest truth is that as much as I love running Surprise the Line and I love offering free and donation-based workshops, it is so much work on my own for not enough money. That's the real truth. If I wanted to really grow it out into a full-fledged organization, I would need lots of time, dedication, commitment, consistency, and a team. Just look at what The Poetry Lab and The Poetry Salon are doing! I know what kind of resources they put into their business, and I'm not sure that I'm fully committed to leading that level of expansion. So I am keeping Surprise the Line open as an avenue for me to teach classes and workshops when inspiration strikes.

Right now, I am being called deeper into climate activism and toward my own writing and art projects. That doesn't mean I won't ever host another workshop, but I've decided I can't run Surprise the Line as a full business, more of a side project that is personally interesting to me and not about making money. That feels good and right. I see poetry as a spiritual endeavor anyway, so I would like to keep my offerings free or donation-based. I don't want to transition into a paid business model. There is plenty of that already out there. There are TONS of literary organizations that offer classes, and of course the MFA.

If you've made it this far, thanks for reading! I feel a deep love and loyalty to everyone who has been with me either on my personal writing journey or as a part of the Surprise the Line community. Do we ever really know what life is going to do next? I'm in a state of open, curious discovery.

Much love,
Nancy

Part of the Solution

I’ve been worried about global warming since I was eight years old. I don’t remember how I learned about it, maybe television or school, but I’ve been keenly aware of global systems since I essentially became sentient. Behind everything, I see the systems working, and I’ve always felt at odds with the fluorescent supermarket. There was something unnatural about the world I grew up in. I sensed it but I couldn’t name it. Not until later.

It was white supremacy.

As a general ruling principle.

I grew up in Huntington Beach, California, which boasted the Nazi rallies in 2016.

White supremacy is a faulty dualistic paradigm that pits White People against Everyone Else. That’s why white people were able to engage in such brutal enslavement and genocide of Africans and Native Americans. White people created a false separation between themselves and those they exploited. It’s similar to how we call animals “it” so we don’t think of them as living beings.

And it’s all related: my sneaking suspicion that “something wasn’t right here” all throughout childhood. There was a clear distinction between the white people, who were the majority, and the rest of us. While my mother is white, I occupy a space of ethnic ambiguity, as many mixed-race kids do. So I was surrounded by white people, but I didn’t look like them.

I didn’t like the gaudiness of South Coast Plaza, a massive indoor shopping arena. I fantasized about living on a ranch. I always had this strange sense like something was missing.

That something was my connection to nature.

White supremacy creates the duality of “me vs. them,” where “them” is the non-white population of the global world. Nature is also included in the category of expendable. Therefore, it’s not in white supremacy’s range to feel empathy for fellow humans, animals, and ecosystems. It’s all expendable.

The me/them split mirrors the society/nature split. White supremacy, capitalism, and ecological destruction all go hand in hand.

So fighting one is fighting the other.

I’d like to think democracy works. I’m getting more involved in environmental stewardship in the form of political organizing, and decided that I’d rather spend my life working to be part of the solution than living in chosen denial.

That’s the underpinning to my forthcoming collection, I’d Rather Be Lightning. I don’t say it directly, of course, but I’d rather know the despair that is possible and choose hope anyway.

That is the paradigm I choose to live in. Hopepunk.

I’m immersed in news and media about the approaching/current ecological crisis because I can’t un-know what I know. We saw how fragile and unprepared our systems were for the COVID-19 pandemic. Human activity is putting so much pressure on so many of the world’s natural systems that scientists think we might have around a decade left, if that, to drastically reduce the output of global carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent serious, irreversible disasters that cannot be undone and could be civilization-ending events. We are approaching or have surpassed so many tipping points, such as biodiversity loss and desertification, that we as a society need to be thinking about how to make rapid changes in society. I mean, rapid. I mean, we need to move so fast and so clearly and so in alignment with each other.

I don’t believe there is any more important issue than this, and every aspect of society needs to realign with the parameters set out by the boundaries of our natural systems. That means we need to shift a culture of consumerism and competition to a culture of community and sustainability.

I think everyone has a role to play. I personally feel a spiritual calling towards writing and organizing. Others are botanists or farmers or arts leaders or visionary entrepreneurs or healers or teachers. We are all connected in the web of life, and it’s Western dualism that separates humans and nature so that it cannot see the obvious link between Antarctic ice sheets and the fragility of human life without the perfect condition of the Holocene. It does require a little bit of science, but basic science, to understand , for example, how melting peat bogs release methane, which is a greenhouse gas, which contributes to the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which causes global warming. And the warming that is already occurring is meting the ice caps, which means less reflective area to bounce back the sun’s rays, which means more warming.

One of the problems is that climate change is such a complex issue that it’s difficult to talk about. People don’t want to talk about it. We don’t want to think about it. We don’t even know how to talk about it because it’s either too depressing or too difficult. And many that I know have adopted an attitude of “fuck it,” which essentially equates to: We’re all gonna die so might as well live it up now! There’s nothing I can do about any of it anyway.

But I’m not resigned. What we need is people power and mass organizing to change the politics and the culture, which will be absolutely necessary if the human race is to survive. We need to work together, not in a dualistic framework of “us vs. them,” but in a holistic understanding that we are all in this boat together, and I’m worried for all of us. I have a biased attachment to humanity and would prefer that we don’t destroy ourselves.

Adapt or die. That is what the most brilliant scientists have been yelling at us now for decades. I think it’s time we listen.

We Finally Weeded the Yard and This Is What We Found

We cleaned out the yard last weekend. And built an enclosure for the compost pile.

My partner and I rent a house with a front yard, so during the height of quarantine, we built a garden bed and started planting. For a while it was glorious! It was all tomatoes and cucumbers and onions and peppers all the time!

Then, after a year and a half or so, I let the garden die. I lost the motivation to turn the bed and keep replanting. Some interior personal issues were rising to the surface that needed my attention. I went into a long winter.

Around that same time, Kurt, whose responsibility between us was to water and mow the lawn, decided that he was done. We have a manual lawn mower, which makes it a pain, and also California is in a severe drought, so why are we watering a lawn? He just stopped, and the grass turned from green to yellow.

So it became a dry chaparral wasteland out there.

We didn’t do anything about it for a very long time.

I think we had to experience what it was like to let the plant life die. We got to watch the lush grass die and be replaced by whatever resilient desert species cropped up in their place.

And finally, last weekend we weeded the whole thing out.

(It wasn’t even that much work. It was enjoyable. I love getting my hands in the dirt. I need to unplug from the Internet and from my overactive mind sometimes, and getting physical with Mother Earth usually does the trick.)

As we were weeding, I was identifying the wild plants that had started growing. There were tall bristly stalks, short little white flowers, dandelions, a striking orange Treasure Flower, tropical milkweed, some amaranth, and a handful of native plants. We took out all the exotic or invasive species and kept the natives.

Here are the native plants we found growing in our front yard! (I used the app Picture This for identification.)

• Hairy fleabane

• Spiny amaranth

• Tall flatsedge

• Creeping woodsorrel

Here are the invasive species we found:

• Tropical milkweed

• Bristly oxtongue

Unfortunately, after all that naturalist activity, our landlord came by a few days later, possibly inspired by our efforts, and pulled out the rest of the natives as he was trimming up what we started. The good news is he fixed the low front fence that had been missing spikes since we moved in three years ago. The bad news is he killed all the plants we were saving!.

I wonder if that scenario is the Broken Window Theory in action. The theory states that if there is one dysfunctional piece in a system, like a broken window in a neighborhood that no one fixes, it encourages more derelict behavior, and eventually the neighborhood breaks down. Was it because our landlord never fixed the fence that we let our yard meet that level of decay? Was it because we cleaned it up that he also did?

I think that’s part of it. Another part is that with the state of drought in California, it doesn’t quite make sense to keep watering a lawn in a desert. We want desert landscaping with native plants. We want to live in harmony with the natural environment around us, rather than waste precious fresh water that is needed elsewhere, like on the farms.

We don’t need a lawn. We can go to a park for fresh grass.

So we planted a couple of succulents and I’m planning on planting a new vegetable garden soon. (If we’re going to use water in the yard, it’s better to grow food.)

So, the yard doesn’t look great now, but it’s better than it was before.

Sometimes, transitions can be ugly.

I keep this in mind when I think about the transition the world is making from dependence on fossil fuels to renewable energy. So much needs to shift in the next ten years, and much more quickly than it has been, to avoid the worst of climate change. Some of it might be ugly. Some of it already has been.

Climate change enters every aspect of our lives. We are citizens living and using resources in the country responsible for nearly a quarter of the entire world’s emissions.

I get to enjoy the benefits of living in a wealthy, modernized, democratic Western country. And I also know that that wealth has been built on the backs of the global South over the past 500 years of colonialism, where the toll of a changing global ecosystem will be greatest.

So weeding the yard is like clearing out the old systems to make room for the new.

Even though it’s easier to put it off, eventually, the weeding needs to happen.

And the best I can do is work on changing myself, embracing the uncertainty of the rapidly shifting future.

It’s time to make lots of changes.

There’s a lot of us out there transitioning to a greener world. We need to. It’s mandatory. It’s crucial that we transition to a sustainable way of life. No more plastic one-time use cutlery.

No more environmental destruction.

No more watering lawns when we need water to irrigate crops.

So our once-green lawn has reverted back to its natural form in the landscape: chaparral. Maybe, just maybe, we can restore a little bit of the native land here and do our part to live our values and be part of the solution. There are too many problems in the world not to try and make things better in whatever way we can. Even if that means letting our lawn die and bearing with the ugliness until we reach the other side.

In Service of the Work

I have a Post-It above my desk that reads:

I am CENTERED BY the work. Doing the work CENTERS me!

I am driven by my work. Whatever my work is.

Truthfully, I dislike promoting myself. But I believe in the work.

Writing poetry is about connecting on a deeper level, and I write to connect. To give someone something to connect to.

Poetry is neurodivergent. It thinks in a different way.

I was reading poems at a park yesterday, invited by the endlessly gracious Alyssandra Nighswonger, and I was the poet in between bands. What a privilege. What a delight. What an honor.

At one point, I told the audience I liked to have fun with my poems. And I do.

Someone afterwards said they liked hearing the language play. Poetry is language playing. It can be about serious topics, but my favorite poems are the ones that horse around with syntax and shit. Voice.

So when I get sick of myself, as I often do, because the auxiliary aspects of writing are not always thrilling, and sometimes I feel like it is too self-centered to have a career as a poet, I remind myself that I am doing it in service of the work.

Sometimes, it feels like something other than me is writing. Something wiser, truer, and even funnier. My higher self coming through.

It’s something that’s always been there. A drive to write. A compulsion in me to chew on language. (And it’s better if it’s fun.)

Poetry thinks in a different way. It opens us.

If I’m in service to the work, I want my work to be in service of the world.

So, in a roundabout way, I tell myself, maybe my poems will mean something to someone out there who I will never meet, as many poems have changed me. So, then, my work is to heal, write, and act.

We all have our work. I was at a political candidate forum last night, and I could see every person on that stage was doing their work. Their calling. Aspiring assembly members, city council members, and mayors. Even though I may be skeptical of politicians’ true motives, some of them seem so genuine that I couldn’t help but feel inspired by their calling. I could see their drive to make a difference, make an impact, and be of service. Why else would anyone want to work that hard? They’re tireless, campaigning and campaigning.

Their drive to service and my drive to service may look different, but I recognize the path of service.

My service is to spread poetic wisdom and delight. To keep the channel of creativity open. To shine a light upon the tool of writing as a way through the darkness.

Even when down in the darkest depths, poetry has always been there for me. Poetry, in a way, is my higher power. A higher power, I should say. I think I have many higher powers. Writing certainly comes from a higher power.

There are so many of us doing the work to change ourselves and change the world that I feel hopeful. It’s a sort of faith to lean into the voice of your calling.

As long as I live in service to the work, I trust that I will hear the next right step and I will take it.

The Humility of Being Alive

I thought this year was going to be ecstatic, coming out of two years of off-and-on quarantine. I thought we were going to Party with Purpose. I was ready for the new renaissance as people threw off their masks and started rejoicing in our shared struggles and survival, wondering what’s next, ready to build the new world. That was the optimistic side of me running a little wild.

Instead, the universe knocked me down to my knees, made me face the humility of being alive at all. I had a deep crash, a medicated depression, a few months of brain fog and confusion, wondering what the point of anything was.

Whenever I get too down or too dissociated, the natural world always brings me back. That tree. That squirrel. Those birds. Just walking around the neighborhood helps.

Nature has a calming effect. Grounding.

There’s this stretch of grass on my daily walk to the lagoon that I love to cross barefoot. I stop, take my shoes off, and revel in the grass underneath my feet. It’s very healing to walk barefoot on Mother Earth.

The gift of nature is the vision of the web.

Natural ecosystems have checks and balances, every living thing interacting with other living things. Humans have become so disenfranchised from nature that we don’t always realize that everything we have is from the earth, this incredible planet full of so many resources. The web of life.

What hubris for humans to extract without replenishment. That’s what the capitalist viewpoint misses: We need to work in tandem WITH the natural ecosystems, not just decimate the earth until there’s nothing left. Can’t we see what a losing move that is? Of course we need a habitable planet! How is that hard to see?

I think what is needed in the world is global empathy. Empathy for people across the world that you will never meet, for future generations you will never meet. Because we are all human. We all share similar needs, desires, and joys. We’re all one species. We need to learn from each other, not destroy each other. There’s no group of humans that are inherently better than other humans. We’re all deserving of resources. The global imbalance pains me.

Whenever I get too depressed about everything, I return to nature. I find faith in nature. I find peace. This world is so much bigger than any one of us, and we’re all connected. We are a human web within the web of life. I have to believe that the web of life is more magical than the forces of destruction. (Like Ferngully, my favorite childhood movie. That film creates tiny environmentalists.)

In the depths of despair, nature brings me back to the humility of being alive, of being some alive creature on this planet, alongside billions of other alive creatures. What a strange thing that is. To be a part of the web of life. It strikes so much awe in me that it replaces the other feelings of fear and dread.

To be alive is mysterious, and we all get to live this mystery every day.

It slows me down, helps me remember that everyone else is living their lives at this exact moment, all of us moving forward in the mystery of time. It’s not a race. It’s not a competition. I’m not ahead or behind anybody, better or worse than anybody else. I’m just where I am and they are where they are.

Humility.

Humility expands our capacity for connection.

We are better able to empathize with others, which makes us more cooperative, which in the long run means survival. Humans are a tribal species. We depend on each other to survive.

Now we’re globally interconnected more than ever before.

My life is a droplet in the ocean of 8 billion human lives. Sometimes that makes me feel insignificant and tiny, but at a deeper level, I know that what I do matters because we are all intricately connected on the web of life. I want to simultaneously hold love in my heart for everyone in the world enduring extreme suffering, and at the same time embrace the light-heartedness of love. Can I be both empathetic and light-hearted at the same time?

Be less attached to suffering, my higher power says.

Humility says, I’m not in control of everything. I don’t know everything. So I let go of my judgments, and in doing so, free up space in my heart to live my own life in the present moment. The only place we ever really are.

How to Deal with the World

I wake with a feeling of emptiness. I lack motivation at this time in my life.

I rouse myself. Change clothes. Make coffee. Take the dog out. Drink coffee. Vape. Sometimes I call a friend if I’m feeling especially in the hole. I need to figure out what to do.

I have some tasks on my desk, but for some reason I feel listless toward them. Working at home alone has its edges of loneliness, and too much alone time reminds me of the panic of pandemic.

“I feel like I need a dose of inspiration,” I say to Kurt on the phone.

“Why don’t you take a walk around the block with the binoculars?” he suggests.

So I do. I became an amateur birdwatcher later on in the pandemic, but I haven’t been investing much in it lately.

I walk around the block with my ears tuned to the sky. Whistles here and there. I follow the sounds.

I stand underneath the trees and lift my binoculars to the sky. I scan the trees, on alert for any sign of movement.

And there they are, caught in the viewfinder: Two green parrots perched on the inside of perfectly matched green foliage. They have a red outline of a circle with yellow in the middle on the tops of their heads. They’re just sitting there preening. One preens himself then pecks his beak over to his mate to pick at her feathers.

They’re perfectly hidden amongst the abundant green leaves. I feel like I witnessed a private moment. They’re out in the open but you’d never know they were there if you didn’t look up.

That was a magical way to break me out of my funk and remind me that there’s such delight in the natural world. The natural world is all around us. We coexist.

I’m looking for meaning, I said to myself as I embarked this morning.

I always am. It gets exhausting. The best part of my day yesterday was walking to the Colorado Lagoon and lying underneath the trees for a while.

I need a daily dose of nature. Somehow some way.

That’s how I deal with the cacophony of the world. I find refuge and peace in nature.

And they are two sides of the same coin: my love and reverence towards nature on the one side, and my fear and terror over environmental destruction on the other.

Because I love nature, I contribute my time to protect her.

Work, relax, work, relax. We go through the rhythms of life.

With ease and grace. Around the sun again. Wake, sleep, wake, sleep.

Today I was reminded, the magic is there if you look for it.

Room for All: Share Your Gifts

I tend to be mostly private with my writing. I’m a recovering perfectionist. I want only my best work “out there.”

And that’s fine and good for my poetry. I’m very selective when it comes to sending out work. I have learned (the hard way, but that’s a story for another time) only to send out work I truly, actually, forever want published. So that means my poems tend to take a very long time in the gestation phase before well-done enough to pass the quality test. That’s all fine with me.

But another level of writing is the creative personal essay. I miss my LiveJournal days of the early 2000s. Remember when we had to wait for dial-up and share the Internet with the phone service? Depending on your age, you will know what I’m talking about, but as a Millennial my teenage years paralleled the teenage years of the Internet. Before Tumblr, there was Myspace and LiveJournal, a handful of others I’m now forgetting. Where teens would go to pour their heart out to the quickly developing cybersphere. I used to journal online profusely. I spent a lot of my late childhood in blog culture on the Internet.

My true nature is a writer. I write every day when I’m a clear state of mind (though there are dark periods, for sure). Since 2013, I have written 3 longhand pages every single day in a notebook - Julia Cameron’s morning pages. (If you aren’t aware of The Artist’s Way, stop reading right now and check that out.)

Here’s the problem: Doing longhand pages in a notebook every day produces A LOT of scribbled notebooks. I went through a serious Marie Kondo phase during the pandemic, and it became clear just how much space my old notebooks were taking up in the closet. Notebooks on notebooks on notebooks of my daily journaling. Word regurgitation. All just tangled up in each other. (If I ever wrote something I thought was really interesting, I’d rip the page out and put it aside to type up as an Actual Thing. But so much did not make it to the tearing out phase.)

I’m talking three big boxes and two shoeboxes full of journals—nearly a whole closet shelf.

Overwhelming!

So, I’ve recently transitioned over to doing my morning pages on the computer by using 750words.com. It’s a platform for people to type their morning pages into a digital (private) system. Not a blog. Just a word dump.

I like it so far. From an environmental standpoint, it uses less physical resources. I don’t have to waste trees with something so prolific and mundane as my daily journaling.

What a relief!

I’ll deal with my previous journals later. Maybe I’ll comb through them looking for gold.

All this to say, writing is my gift. I’ve resisted it over and over again through the years, for varying reasons. But it’s always there.

So, if writing is my gift, I need to share it.

We all have gifts. I want there to be room for everyone to share their gifts. That’s a strong value of mine, one which I work to cultivate in my teaching and community building. It’s taken a backseat as I’ve been in a long winter for the past 10 months, and I am emerging back into Creator Mode now.

I want to send more energy into the intention of creating space for the cultivation of gifts, so I naturally need to practice it myself.

I’m taking a leap and starting a blog on my website. We’ll see how it develops. Hello!

As the introductory post, I’d just like to conclude by saying that I plan to write about what feels true to me on a deep level, including curiosities, insights, and questions. I’d like this to be a place to start a conversation. If I’m thinking about something, maybe others are too. I’ll leave comments on so we can talk!

What I think about a lot: climate change and sustainability, emotional and mental health, human behavior, individual and collective psychologies, mythologies, spiritual interpretations of the world, and the creative process.

See you soon!