It found me: putting a bow on 2023

I promise that this isn’t going to be one of those year-end lists that opens with false humility like “Oh, perhaps a few good things happened,” then goes onto regale you with one thing after amazing other. Nor will I give you a list of tragedies that I’ve survived, and I count myself blessed for that. No, God gave me another challenge this year, one that looked very much like last year’s and that was for this experience-seeking, pink-cloud chasing lady to not only live through another ordinary year, but to come out weirdly feeling fortified by the abundance of uncertainty. Yep, said that.

Let me explain, but first, all of the ordinary:

As my landscape of opportunities (in both garment-making and photography) got more and more quiet, I’m proud of the efforts I put forth to create my own. The slowdown encouraged me to inspect what I was doing and what I really wanted to gain. Call it burnout or full-body rejection but to remain a joyful creator, I could no longer participate in the hustle to compete for clicks. Done. I’m grateful for the pedestrianism of part-time jobs to keep me tethered to a rhythm, to people and to financial flow. Out of that, I found that my ambition does still exist but only insofar as the organic growth that happens by reciprocity: putting forth effort and intention and seeing that not only be received but valued. Call me old-fashioned. And more on this later.

Surprises? That I got to see all of my favorite 80s bands this year and all but one show was with my oldest kid. I discovered that we both love to dance, hard and sweaty and unapologetically and just like when I first laid eyes on this kid, I fell in love all over again. The other unexpected love shown through the bright lights of Friday nights and high school football. I can’t tell you the story of despair that was middle school for my youngest, it’s not my story (even while it is). I’ll just say we needed a redemption and she (we) got one. In this area, we’re thriving and I’ll boast Formerly Reluctant Cheer Mom any day of the week. Oh and Taylor Swift.

This is the year that I was asked a question: In the absence of mass appeal or even positive feedback, is art still worth making? If this was a friend’s question, my answer would be an unequivocal YES, of course you should make your art, regardless, in spite of. But experience is meatier than advice. I got to live into my response, really forge answers. What did I come up with? Maybe my art is mediocre, or maybe instead of mass-appeal, my art is specific-appeal but either way, it doesn’t matter. My work as an artist is to remain in a constant state of discovery, adjusting my sails towards truest expression. I’ve learned what it isn’t: Trying to be someone other than my unapologetic self, editing myself, making concessions to please (gesturing to hypothetical people out there somewhere). And what it is? I only need be present to the mystery.

I mentioned the other unexpected delight and that has been the creation of my Substack space: Special. I can be impulsive and shocker, it doesn’t always serve me. There’s something to be said for low expectations. The thrills come easy, for one. And this has been my experience there. Many of you that receive this newsletter have subscribed, thank you! Organic growth feels like true, honest work and I’m steady and patient for it. This essay has probably been my most well-received and it’s entirely free.

I’m excited about the effort I’m planning for Special in 2024 and combined with my acceptance into Life In The Trinity Ministry’s Enneagram and Spiritual Formation cohort study I’ll be doing this year, I now understand why I was given two years to practice ordinary, to practice stillness, to practice meh.

Whatever I’m looking for—truth, God, me—I’m willing to manage the discomfort of ordinary because my hunch is, this is where I’ll find it.

xoxo

PS. This will be my last blog post here. If you want to stay in community with me, please sign up for my new-ish newsletter at Substack, Special: A Serial Memoir. If you like reading about recovery, creativity, midlife, spirituality and a dash of memoir, you’ll like it there, promise.

The audacity of a woman who wants.

The audacity of a woman who wants to be loved, wants to be angry, wants attention, wants to be left alone, wants space, wants a voice, wants support, wants freedom, wants help, wants autonomy, wants a community, wants to grieve, wants to be joyful, wants to please you, wants to please herself, wants a room of her own, wants a full table, wants to be understood, wants to be known, wants more. To be a someone who wants what she doesn’t have or wants more of what she does have is to be bold, brave, courageous and risky and if those are adjectives that have ever been used to describe you, Congratulations, you are a woman.

Sinead died. I wrote the above list. I saw the Barbie movie and America Ferrera’s speech made me cry. (If you’ve seen it, you know the scene.)

I’ve been relistening to the Sinead discography all weekend, I bet I’m not alone. It’s been years since I’ve listened to Lion and the Cobra all the way through. I was 18 when that album came out. I was graduating from high school and moving away to college. I was so full of passion and rage and fear and certainty and once I popped that cassette into the tape deck of my 280 ZX, it didn’t leave. I was so ready to escape my small town and that was the first of many future moments I’d have where I was so fearful of what could be but I knew I couldn’t do what I was doing anymore. It’s not like I left a conservative small Texas town for a liberal mecca, no. It was the same game, different rules and no matter where I went, there I was.

Up until that point, not a single adult in my life had ever asked me a pretty straitforward and essential question: Sondra, what do you want? In fact, no one asked me for a long, long time. But I eventually did start asking myself, in my journals and when I did, I had no practice. It’s taken a long time to answer that question with truth and clarity.

If you are a woman over 45, I would gesture to say that you haven’t been asked that question often either, so allow me to ask…What do you want? Do you want to be sad? Do you want to rage? Do you want to be rich? Do you want to be generous? Do you want to be quiet? Do you want to not have it all figured out? Do you want your creative work to matter?

Tell me, what do you want?

It’s like that but better.

I spent the entire cash option jackpot for last Wednesday’s billion dollar Powerball in my head as soon as I purchased the ticket: Trusts for all of my family members, a few financial and real estate investments, solar panels on the house, electric cars and bikes, all the business equipment I’d ever need with a ten year rainy day fund and the rest, I’d donate to climate change science. It felt like a plan.

And as you’ve probably guessed, I didn’t win. I folded up my lottery ticket to use as a bookmark and got back to the day’s work. Hope feels really good. In fact, I don’t think I could exist without it but there’s something that feels even more amazing than hope. When I indulge it, it’s like riding on a cotton candy cloud, all the cotton candy I can eat, it’s an edible cotton candy cloud of magical thinking and I could ride it for days and days, that is, until I was wake up in a confection stupor and realize I’ve done nothing but daydream for a week and I’ve not marked a single task off my list.

Not that a week of thinking is all bad (I’ll get back to this in a moment) but for me, I have to be mindful of the category of thinking I’m indulging in. Is it magical or is it productive? And do I have a plan for implementation? What are my actions to back it up? I don’t think time dreaming is time wasted however, magical thinking has a threshold where it can begin to feel like gluttony. Because of my many years of Enneagram study, I know my job as a 7 is to bring in emotions on purpose. When I’m feasting on all of my ideas to the point of making myself sick, the anecdote is to check in with my heart. When I allow my heart to have a say is when I get really juiced, I’m most alive, and I’m more focused on my purpose.

Allowing my heart to take the occasional wheel has give rise to a creatively fertile Summer. My heart has allowed me to grieve the change of the climate, sleep and nap (and I’m historically not a napper),has led me to early morning cold and soothing swims and has offered me some very viable solutions to some of my problems. I’ve really taken my heart to task, plying her with questions like, How can I continue to do what I love that is in flow with the current economy? How can I use my talents and skillsets to serve in the best possible ways? What offerings feel right on my conscious as the effects of climate change are pressing on us in real time?

I’ve worked out some answers. It’s still hope but it’s hope with a plan. I’ve teased out my new photo campaign but I’m not done yet. I’ll share a few more shifts in my business, creative work I already do but a shift in how I package my gifts to share with you and the world.

In the meantime, I’d love to know, what is making you feel hopeful right now?

Are you bothered?

Are you finding it hard to concentrate on your creative work right now? I don’t know about you, but every night I lay down at 9pm with a light read because I’m practicing good sleep hygiene, by 9:05 my brain decides to take a nihilism spin and I’ve convinced myself that no one gives a f*ck about what I’m doing because the planet is about to catch fire. But then I fall asleep and wake up optimistic again. And I guess I should expand “right now” to include the last 7 years because this sums up my experience since, oh, 2016.

If you have the audacity to pursue your art in a time of crisis after crisis, if you have the chutzpah to share it, and especially, if you have the guts to ask money for it, I’d like to offer a different perspective if you (like me) occasionally (or nightly) ask yourself, Who cares?

For every crisis happening right now, I see a bold and passionate response. The world is currently robust with passion. Be present to it. Let it affect you. Let it bother you. Wail, grieve, shake your fist at the sky, do everything you can to effect change, but then offer your art in response, whatever that is for you.

Maybe I’m selfish, but your art helps me to stay persistent, to keep the faith, to remember there is always more beauty than crisis. I bet I’m not the only one.

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This upcycled pretty and many others still up for grabs in my shop right now! Vacation followed by a quick commission turnaround, I’m back in flow this week. I have a new cocoon caftan design I’m working on, neutral boho dresses that I’m adding to my photo client closet (that will also be for sale), bolero-style lace jackets and yes, the mid-summer list is long.

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In spite of these temperatures that make me so sleepy I feel like I’m back in the womb, I continue to make and share and dream and encourage. This is my response. What is yours?

9 Years.

I intentionally saved Monday’s newsletter for today, 7.13. It’s a special day for me and I always acknowledge it with some words of reflection, so thank you for accepting this special edition. Today marks 9 years of sobriety. Alcohol was my drug of choice and it is seriously nothing short of a miracle that this lush has done 9 years of life without a sip.

Time can be stingy with her insight. I was so full of questions in the beginning. I wanted to know, Why did I do that? Why was I made this way? Why did it take me so long to quit? Why, why, why? But Time, in her ever omniscient wisdom, has only answered a few of those questions and the bulk of the story is still developing.

Here are a few things I know:

Being a lush was fun and glamorous for a long time until it wasn’t, as they say, but I was unaware of the moment it went from was to wasn’t.

Closing every party like an even sadder version of Peggy Lee singing “Is That All There Is?” is definitely a sign of that shift, but you can find forgiveness for yourself for not seeing it.

Windows of clarity are as real but as elusive as my kitty and anyone who gets close to one is very fortunate.

Many of life’s problems can be attributed to alcohol’s fallout but no matter how much karma debt you’ve paid off, sometimes life will just wreck you. You will find ways to respond that will surprise you.

You can be spontaneous and impulsive, you can have many ideas that hit the cutting room floor but you can also make daily right choices, you can follow through, and be proud of yourself for doing so.

I’ll say one more thing with you in mind. It’s no coincidence that I quit drinking in the thick of perimenopause. My body was in revolt (sorry I’m about to get corporeal up in here). I was bleeding like I’d been murdered, I couldn’t sleep for sweat and anxiety pouring out of me at 2am every morning like an alarm bell. I was constipated, creatively and well, all the ways. The body is always the first to send out the SOS and I believe it’s merely the messenger sent from the soul, but I shot the messenger, over and over until that aforementioned window of clarity that I just knew if I didn’t try, I’d die. So I wedged myself through.

If you need some support, my inbox is open.

Well that’s good to know.

“Where does it hurt?”

That’s the question Civil Rights legend, Ruby Sales, began asking at the beginning of her activism. She talks about this at length on an On Being episode with Krista Tippett, a conversation I’ve listened to or read the transcript half a dozen times. It’s a question that is meant to prompt recall, to help us tell the story about the choices we make. It’s all information.

This question came to me at the right time. It was 2016 and I’d already begun a personal excavation, but it helped me soften the experience. You can’t ask that question without compassion. It’s not asking about blame or regret, it’s just asking about the pain. Once I could identify it, create an environment for healing by wrapping it with love and care, only then could I mine it for the lesson.

Before this, if you’d have told me that my deepest fear could be my greatest gift, I’d have rolled my eyes so hard I would have injured myself. I wouldn’t have even been able to articulate what that was and certainly not without listing all the people who should be on trial for causing it. And while I now know that that is also necessary information, staying in the blame doesn’t help me heal the wound. And if I can’t heal the wound, I’m just busy nursing the wound.

So now I’ll ask you: Where is your most tender pain point? How did it get there? Mine it for information, what can you learn?

I can tell you mine. It’s rejection. And because I’ve been rejected and more painfully, my ideas have been rejected, just the fear of it can drive the bus. It’s good information. It’s why I want my work to be meaningful. And now, it’s the purpose of my service, I want your work to be meaningful too. This is my gift.

YOUR lesson is YOUR gift. And I hope you’ll share with those who need it too.

Next week: I’m on vacation! See you the following.

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My new campaign, creating images for creative women over 40 to support their transitions, their dreams, their new identities, is a joy. If you are changing careers, turning your hobby into your hustle, or just need validation that your are the artist you’re ready to say you are, I’m booking image sessions starting at the end of the Summer and into Fall.

While I’m working on refining my The Unruffled website, you can go to my online photography portfolio for more information and find a contact form for session inquiry. Not in the Austin area? Let’s have a conversation. I’d love to come to you!

Nothing left to lose.

I’m unsure when exactly I accepted this story as truth. Maybe it was sitting in church pews for the entirety of my youth and observing this: Some folks were born with the singing voices of angels, but the rest of us? We were somewhere on the spectrum of mediocre to the poor things that couldn’t carry a tune to save their lives.

I was definitely in Camp Mediocre and while that didn’t keep me from singing, it never occurred to me that if I’d sought out some training like vocal lessons, I could get better. I honestly thought that one was born talented and the rest of us were doomed to oridinary and that was just one of life’s many fates. Holding tight to this belief kept me from pursuing many creative identities that I longed to try on. I wasn’t a virtuoso so I didn’t see the point.

Because of the intense self-examination I’ve done in the past decade, I’ve been able to drill this story down to fear, specifically, fear of rejection. It was only until I went to back to college a second time, when I finally gave myself permission to follow a creative curiosity, permission to be mediocre, to discover that I wouldn’t die from constructive critique, that one can practice their way into talent that I changed my story.

I’ve been doing my creative work long enough now that sure, I’ve had a few accolades but the bliss I expected to result has been so brief, it’s hardly left an impression. I’m not impervious to the dopamine rush of validation, but I see it as a false flag. I’m optimistically driven to create and share regardless of applause, criticism or indifference, hand to heart.

If you can rise above the clouds of needing validation, you can see for miles.

Next Week: It’s all information.

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I’m having an end of Gemini Season Sale! Take 25% off of anything in the Marketplace by entering the code GEMINI23 at checkout! Offer is good through midnight, 6.21. Hope you find your soulmate!

The Anti-Manifest Agenda

If you’ve overcome something hard, if you’ve transformed self-harm to self-care, if you meditate every morning, say your prayers every evening, confess to therapists and friends on the reg and you still haven’t manifested your deepest desires, you aren’t doing it wrong. If you are doing everything listed above while also remembering that life is more or less ‘chop wood, carry water’ and YET you still harbor a secret expectation that is juicier than that tedious visual suggests, you aren’t doing it wrong. If you’ve done the ‘work’ and life is still pretty average, you aren’t doing life wrong.

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve always been optimistic. It is my nature, even as I’ve veered off into magical thinking (and ignoring truth). Before the books and the movies and the social movements, I was sold the Law of Attraction by the church of my youth. Buying into this came with a high cost: Ignoring the truth of my privilege, damaging my self-worth when bad shit happens (because I don’t care what kind of supreme manifestor you are, bad shit happens) and losing my connection to humanity.

The chamber I live in loves to broadcast a certain Marianne Williamson quote that, rest assured, I got plenty a kick out of too. The essence of this soapbox statement from A Return To Love is to own your power, your beauty, your fabulousness and doing anything other than this is playing small. But I’ve had some time to reconsider this and I’ve come to the conclusion that life doesn’t owe me anything, that I’d rather be compassionate and empathetic over powerful and fabulous, and I’m including the relationship I have with myself. I’m not entitled to anything except this moment right here, another moment to live my average life and make my mediocre art.

If you are making your mediocre art and you still have not manifested fame, fortune and success, please don’t let that stop you from your creative work. Don’t let your lack of manifestations put a ding in your self-value or the value of whatever creative work you pursue. You aren’t too old, it’s not too late, don’t let the Manifest Agenda tell you what success looks like. I, for one, need your mediocre art. It gives the rest of us permission to make our mediocre art. Hey, I’ll even be your biggest fan!

Maybe the manifest “live your best life” messaging never landed for you either, but you still need a little pep-talk, so here you go: your mediocre art is still worth doing, your ordinary work is still worth creating, your average life is still worth living. I’ll even have the audacity to say, the WORLD of middle-aged women need it. The real reward is that everyday, you get to show up curious. I want to be noticing, not manifesting and what I’m beginning to realize is that THIS is where true freedom lives.

Next week: Talent vs. Mediocrity

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Last Friday, had my first photoshoot toward building my portfolio for my new project that will eventually be a new offering, targeting creative women over 40. I'm so excited about this I could explode. Jenn is transitioning from a pharmacist to an herbalist and I'm thrilled to help her realize her new vision. I have many more sessions booked this Summer and I look forward to sharing a few peeks and behind-the-scenes along the way.

As always, the Marketplace is open! Clothe yourself in luxury garments and accessories that are kind to your Mother Earth. xo.

Gimme some of that average life (said no one evr)

It’s hard not to expect that life should be a series of fair and compensatory transactions. There’s an entire wall in every bookstore, enough podcasts to cover a coast-to-coast roadtrip and 1000s of social media campaigns to testify: Put in the “work”, your life can’t help but become glittery amazing. It’s all but guaranteed.

The opposite is true, right? People that live destructively suffer the consequences: They lose their important relationships, they go bankrupt, they go to jail and sometimes, they die. I lived destructively for decades and managed to skirt what’s considered the sludge of consequences, yet I felt bankrupt. When I finally dropped those destructive behaviors and started doing the aforementioned “work”, I expected the pendulum to then swing wildly towards the heavens. Maybe you’ve had the same thoughts? It’s what we’re sold. I’m reticent to admit it but yes, I really expected that life would rain down the rewards of putting in the work. But it hasn’t.

I’m not saying that life hasn’t improved. I’ve developed tools that have replaced my self-(harming)medication , I no longer self-report as spiritually and morally bankrupt, I’m alive. And maybe that’s the reward. I wake everyday NOT in jail, NOT hated by my spouse and children, NOT dead. THIS is it. But in the absence of glitter, what I get is an average life.

Doesn’t make for a very compelling podcast, does it? The title of the next NY Times bestseller isn’t going to be, “I Did Years of Work On Myself and All I Have To Show For It Is This Average Life”. You aren’t going to see giant marketing campaigns selling The Average Life™. If we all reported the truth, perhaps no one would get sober or scale or strive.

If this sounds like a rant, it’s not. If you’re asking, what happened to Ms. Optimism? Still present. I’m truly grateful for everyday that I wake up, period. But coming in on 9 years of sobriety and a whole lot of “work”, I’m finally waking up to my personal evolution: The very unsexy, unglittery work of Acceptance.

Next week: The Anti-Manifesting Agenda

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I’ve added some new lovelies to my Marketplace, like four pretty silk bags. These bags are made from silk scraps and vintage ties. They are perfect for your tarot cards, crystals or other magical trinkets. Also, another silk duster and a few pairs of silk scrap earrings.

1 800 CLAPPER

“I’ve been thinking a lot about mobility” is a helluva accurate way to say you’re over 50 without saying you’re over 50.

I was around a lot of family members with mobility issues this week. Some of these folks were experiencing good old fashioned degeneration that comes with age, albeit a tad early. Others’ issues were due to more lifestyle choices along the lines of ‘use it or lose it’. I don’t know how inspiration works for you, but I’m more often motivated by what I DON’T want than what I want.

I’m also not much for regret. Because I have personal experience, I believe humans are capable of dramatic change. I have a way of being (enneagram 7ness) that I don’t dwell in the past, present me with any turd and I can polish it to a shiny jewel, and I have a strong desire to mitigate any future regret. There is a downside to this (I can pretend I’m above consequences) but for the most part, this has served me well.

(As an aside, for years I drank beverages that made me fall down but I *just remembered that and that is proof of my superpower ability to spin.)

For instance, I birthed my daughter at an ‘advanced age’ but she motivates me to pursue vitality and yes, mobility. I even told my husband while out on one of our many weekend walks, “If I couldn’t do things like our 12 mile hike in Big Bend this summer, I’d really have to consider if this {gesturing wildly} is worth it all.” Dramatic much? Or not?

I woke up before sunrise this morning in a disturbing lucid dream state and wrote straight in my journal, “Why does not having mobility scare me so much?” Is it because I’d have to put a cap on my options, like never learning to tango in Argentina? Or spend days wandering the Louvre? Or walking the Camino de Santiago? If the possibilities that could make life amazing went away, then I’d just have to accept my average life. Why does that sound excruciating?

Next week: More on The Average Life ™

PS. Well, due to very life-y life last week, including a middle school graduation, a parental visit, a cousin grad party and numerous games of Scrabble, I was unable to list all of my new items in my Marketplace. However, I did manage two new silk fabric cuffs. Making these are a way to use up scrap bits and bobs and exercise a sort of creative improv: I never know how they’re going to turn out until I’m finished. I call them art for your arm!

The Middle-Age Gaze

As my personal new year approaches, I’m reminded how grateful I am to have a June birthday. Seasonally, I’m peak-idea manifestor. In January, the traditional NY, my ideas are soft, sleepy and slow, like winter mornings and me. In Spring, they have a shape, feel more seeded. But come Summer, they are fruiting. So birthdays, especially since I hit my mid-40s, are a ticket to change.

I had this idea to transition my photography career, put all of eggs in one basket and focus on one genre, solve one problem. And it’s a problem I share with my avatar: I want my creative work to be meaningful to me, I want cohesion but I don’t want to be bored, I want to serve up beauty on a platter to whomever wants to eat, I want to look how I feel and most days, that’s inspired, curious, satiated and yeah, beautiful.

I put out a call for volunteers because photography is one of those creative acts that just feels stupid to talk about. You got to show it, not tell it. I summoned women over 40 who were in a creative career, enjoyed a creative hobby or desired to transition from Not This, to This. Because I believe that women over 40 can resist the invitation, the invitation to step into an identity that they haven’t yet mastered, to answer a call even when they don’t recognize the voice, to want validation even while giving less fucks. I had a hunch I wasn’t the only one who needed this but I told myself I’d be grateful for 2 responses. I got 15. Validated.

I’ve been having the most affirming consultation sessions with these women and I’ll have my first session in two weeks, the week of my new year. Launching this, everything else I do falls right in line. Writing about middle-age, passion, transitions, recovery, craft and art in this newsletter, making garments that reflect the vibrancy of the feminine mystique while also honoring my commitment to live less harmfully and creating imagery under the middle-age gaze that serves women in their most dynamic years of their lives, feels, yeah…this is it.

I’m excited to take you with me in my transition. I’ll see you every Monday! (Yes, I said it!) I look forward to sharing more of my insight into middle-age, creative purpose, and rewilding beauty into my everyday.

I’m looking at you, 54.

PS. As always, the shop is open! A few silk dusters have been added and lots more coming this week. Check my instagram periodically for drops (via goofy dance reels, most likely).

This is a letter about books.

I am a creature of habit. You may be surprised by that, considering all of the turbans I wear. But I swear it’s true. I get up at 5am every morning. While a pot of coffee is brewing, I look over my day. I then curl up for an hour and a half in my cozy chair by the window with a book(s), I journal, I meditate, I stare into the void. No matter how much is pressing (and there is a lot pressing right now), this is my daily morning snapshot. It’s my reward for sobriety and it may sound like hyperbole, but I’d rank my habitual mornings as my number one reason for staying the path. There is nothing I would do to compromise my mornings.

I’ve been committed to books my whole life but I could never truthfully call myself a reader until I quit drinking. I couldn’t do both but because I romanticized the status of “reader” so hard, I pretended to be one. No matter where I lived, I always had shelves full of Very Important Books. It was Instagrammable before there was Instagram. Now I can say I’m in full integrity. I’m getting through all those books on my shelves. And my library cart. And my Amazon cart. And I rarely leave a local bookstore without a bag.

My recent obsessions are books about women artists and how they work. It started with Frida and Georgia and Diane and the most recent, a biography of Alice Neel. There’s a bonus if the artist’s life is set in a context that I’m also frothing over, like NYC in the 20s or 80s. I’ve also recently picked up every book the library has on Annie Leibovitz. As a photographer, you’d think I’d fallen down that hole before but I’d always put her work up on a high shelf that I felt I didn’t relate to. I fell when I watched her Masterclass during the Texas Ice Storm of ‘23 and learned that we actually share many of the same insecurities. I inhaled Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act the day it hit Audible and had to pick up the hardback so I can ink it up. I watched the Pamela Anderson doc while I had Covid last week. I’ve always had a soft spot for her since my years of working for a pin-up photographer in the 90s and her Audible book was as tender and smart as I thought it would be. More women artists, icons and iconoclasts on deck, set historically and geographically that’s on brand for me right now.

Yeah, no prescriptive self-help. Most I want to chuck across a room because I remembered I hate being told what to do (I’m letting you slide, Rick Rubin). Just live your life. Tell me about it. Make it interesting and maybe there’s something there I’d like to model.

On Books: Whatcha got? I may not read it but I’ll definitely let it languish in a cart for a while.

Are you opting in?

The sound of the shower turning on. A nose blown. The smell of Old Spice and Listerine. Daylight not yet. These things ping my senses, some real, some imagined in my fevered delusion. I wake up for a blip. Yep, still sick. I get to opt out again today. And that’s my husband getting dressed for work, not my father. So weird how my dad’s smells come rushing right back into my nose though, even when I can’t smell a thing.

When I’m sick, my membranes are thin. I feel porous, more open to receive. With the day-to-day chores unattainable, I can lie in bed and re-jenga my life and priorities. I don’t opt out of much anymore, not since I quit drinking. Rephrase: I do opt out, but it’s now dictated by discernment and not a hangover. No one likes to be sick (and I never want to be hungover again) but I do appreciate the change in perspective that all that bed time allows.

I’ve opted in a lot this month. That was one of my intentions for 2023. I’ve had so much engagement that I could feel my heart literally expand. And even though through all that people-ing I caught the bug, I have no regrets. I’m grateful to have no conditions that would make it worse than it’s been. I’m ready for my next dance.

I know I’m supposed to be hand-wringing worried about so much right now: a still threatening virus, a tanking economy, leaders puffing their chests, bullets aimed and stray. And I do. But I’m also opting into beauty. I’m opting into friends and art and my family and joy and I’m opting into love. In fact, I’m doubling down on love. It’s the only way.

This is no ordinary love.

Fridays are terrible days to send out a newsletter, statistically speaking. But I woke up this morning with the oh so familiar February longing in my chest that I had to finally capture it, so here is a stab.

I wish I could cast a central blame, how uncomplicated would that be? I wish I could just write it off as seasonal and yes, Spring has given us a kiss behind the bleachers but can’t quite commit, that’s part of it. And that my brother has a birthday in February and for a few months on paper, we’re only a year apart but his mental illness has created a chasm between us that I’m not enough of a grown-up to face. Yep, part of it too. And the Hallmark holiday that I’d love to just dismiss with a PPHHHHTTTThhh, but what is actually true is that I love love and if VDay was part of the pie chart, that slice would be large enough to make one sick.

I remember my first awareness of acute longing. It was over unrequited love. I know, how exceptional. I would crawl to the very bottom of my bed under so many blankets, I’d have to make a portal for the cool breeze of Air Supply to drift in off my record player: I’m all out of love, I’m so lost without you. Looking back, I think I was more committed to indulging the longing than the boy. It was then that I felt connected to the most sublime part of me.

I have a little theory about this (and you may only connect to this if you study the Enneagram). Like I honestly just downloaded this in the shower. I wonder if the desire to indulge that, whatever that thing is that makes you feel juiced, we are activating our repressed center. In lay-speak, as an Enneagram 7, I’m disconnected from feelings the most. I have to GO there. Music does it. In fact, it was one of my most cherished drinking activities and why I had my claws in it for so long, even as the trail of destruction grew to heights insurmountable. Music + booze was the vehicle that drove me to longing and longing = feelings. Never good at math, but I’ve been calculating that equation for most of my adult life.

In February, my longings are so consuming, I’m afraid they will swallow me whole. And that is what it all comes down to: fear. Because I no longer use alcohol as the trigger, I think if I allowed myself to have a February in July and another in say, October, I wouldn’t be so afraid of the longing and the emotions it forces me to feel. I need to think about this (haha, says the Enn. 7).

Explorations of longing are part of this new direction I’m moving in 2023 that I keep alluding to. I’m not trying to be a secretive asshole, it’s more of an aesthetic change and more singular focus than anything and it’s taking forever to get it just right. What to do with this longing? I make. I spin it into truth and beauty and art and without really knowing why I was being called to this reinvention this year, I guess I’m onto myself now.

20 year old Sondra would be so annoyed with me rn.

My kitty also enjoying the pace.

I worked as a waitress and bartender from age 18 through most of my 30s, even returning for a brief stint in my early 40s. We may be born slow and methodical, but restaurant servers have to adapt to a quick pace or they’re dead on the floor.

I’m now 53.5 and while it’s been a gradual dawning, I can no longer work at bartender pace. I’ll modify that: I CAN but only if my internal dialogue is that of a swim coach, counting down the seconds with a timer in my hand (that’s what swim coaches do, right?). I CAN do it, it’s just no longer my natural rhythm.

Please don’t think I’m in full acceptance of this. I own another voice that wants to berate me for not moving faster. She can’t help it. She’s been seduced by productivity books and capitalism and social media compare/despair. She says things like, “If you only moved faster, you’d have more with which to dazzle potential customers, more money in your bank, people work circles around you, here’s the proof: [insert any ol’ maker or artist here].”

But I’m surrendering. Working at that fiery pace is just no longer what my body wants to do. It wants to touch, savor, absorb, plod. And by virtue of this surrender, I’m finding it’s easier now to say no to things that I used to say yes to because I could do them well and fast, like alterations, but I’ve never loved doing them. Now that I’ve priced myself out of that business (sure, I can hem your pants but it will cost you $50), I have more energy for things worthy of my new pace. The work is now to not only accept this, but revere it.

This idea of pace is really rolled into a broader shift happening to me right now. I want to make art this year, which will require this energy. I am humbly its student. If you are observant, you will begin to notice some shifts around here and on my website. Just as I’m typing this, the other one is attempting to key up, “It’s already Jan 31 and you should have had this done…” and yes, I’m sorry, but I did just shush her. This shift is requiring new artwork and copy and handmade garments and photos and all of this will take time, sweet, delicious time. In fact, a big element of this creative project is a return to my analog roots, so it’s all one big exercise in delayed gratification. GenX, we used to be this, right?

She's dying to meet you.

My kids and I standing in Yayio Kusama’s Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity at the Museum of fine arts in houston a few weeks ago.

She looks like me, only smaller. Not dark and foreboding as a shadow implies, she’s cute, plump, freckle-faced. She has a gap between her two front teeth that seems to widen when she smiles. And she does that a lot, particularly this morning, as she is supremely pleased with her dress she chose for school that day. It is a flower-girl dress that she’d worn to perform in a wedding about a year prior and that day, well, she could just barely manage to zip it up but yes, it still fit. It is made of thick, scratchy lace over taffeta, blue on blue, two blues that clash seismically into neck, wrist and ankle ruffles and she is pleased. Very, very pleased. And since Mom and Dad are rushing out the door for work and the bus is coming soon, there is no need for parental approval for her outfit choice. It is done.

Prancing into her first grade class quickly catches the eye of Miss Loving because, of course, but her attention is not praise but concern as she says, “Oh honey, it’s St. Patrick’s Day. Here, let’s pin this green paper clover on your beautiful dress so that you don’t get pinched.” This is the first dot of opacity, the black not yet bled to all the edges, she bares her gap because yes, she’s compliant yet still fabulous AND she’s thwarted all particular danger for the day.

By post-lunch recess that little paper clover’s leaves have started to curl although still a bulwark, she hits the release on the double doors that open the stale hallway into the bright sunshine of noonday. At that very moment, she could feel the energy of a herd behind her and before she has the chance to turn a glance, she doubles-over from a violent pinch to the arm so hard, the tears shoot out like a cartoon river.

“Who do you think you are?”

I’ve done lots of work over this story before, mostly in a way that blamed my parents for not parenting me in a way that I’ve determined appropriate: Why did they let me wear that dress to school? Why didn’t they remind me to wear green? But for the last few weeks of this New Year, I’ve been meditating on her and I’ve epiphanied. She’s my truest nature, my most innocent, softest place. And while she wants to protect me from getting pinched, she’s leading me back to the shiniest jewel inside of me. I’m following her this year. I don’t have a word or a mantra for 2023, I just have her and I’m satiated with curiosity and wonder as to where she’ll take me.

Anything but this.

If you ask me how I’m doing right now, I’m going to say I’m busy.

Yeah, I’m suspicious of that word as much as the next person but with a thousand photos to edit from two back-to-back weddings, a few custom stitching orders, personal work and the tasks of my part-time job and my volunteer job and my Mom job, it’s economic. And yet, it’s inadequate. It’s a word that is devoid of emotion and often that’s fitting because when the plates are all spinning, I can operate best devoid of emotion. Emotions aren’t efficient. But that is not this time, not this season, not the truer story.

Nor is writing efficient. I don’t have time right now, check back in two weeks, I tell it. But if you are a writer of any kind, you know that it doesn’t work that way. It’s only patient for so long and when that runs out, the time it chooses is never convenient. I have to say, I admire its persistence.

The thing that has to be written right now is the thing I most don’t want to write. It’s bargained for my attention many times and my response has always been a firm Nope. And it’s not like writing doesn’t exist on this topic but that’s the thing about shame, it feels so singular.

So here I sit, writing you this letter that I don’t have time for to tell you about sentences that are being laid down in my journal that I don’t have time for, and yet this story insists. If emotions carry information, then the doggedness of shame that insists it’s art I guess deserves some reverence. Dammit.

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Is there a story inside of you so dogged that it insists it’s art? Maybe you’ve already course-corrected, changed your ways and changed your story, but it’s still there, patiently waiting to be told. I can help you. If you want to get it down in words or in visual art, check out Change Your Story. I have spots open this Fall to work with me 1:1 in either 4 or 8 week sessions.

Does your particular whispering sound like, Anything but this? We can walk towards that voice together.

Eight ways from Sunday.

I just returned from a ten day roadtrip across ‘Merica. We explored Little Rock, Memphis, Blackfalls State Park in West Virginia (and so many tiny hill-nestled towns) and finally, Pittsburg. Many hikes through the most beautiful forests I’ve ever treaded. Mushrooms of all colors and shapes (I actually do not like the taste of mushrooms but I’m obsessed with them all the same), ferns, mosses, seedlings and decay, my awareness acute due the this audio book I finished up while vagabonding. Blues seeping out of every crack in Memphis, Little Rock felt like a Little Austin and we daydreamed about moving there for more than a few minutes. We ate sandwiches in Pittsburg that were so wide they required a mouth opening usually only reserved the dentist’s chair and was introduced to the most generous, transparent stranger I’ve ever met, full of so much magic it was ridiculous. And get this, he wasn’t the only smiling and kind face we came across. Yep, America can be a swirling bowl of turds and being trapped inside a news cycle, it’s certainly the only perspective I’ve seen of late. It had become urgent for me to see beauty and poverty and skin and teeth and rot and birth to remember that yes, there is a point of no return, but like Suzanne Simard reminded me, the Earth wants to heal.

And so do I. I mean, I have. You see, this trip is always a bit loaded for me. It has nothing to do with location, only history, as the first week of July is where our Summer trips usually fall. And since the Summer trip of 2014 was the last time I was loaded (clever, I know), the history of that settles in like a fog, not particularly heavy but muddles my vision a bit. I have a playback that triggers now on our Summer trips. It’s of me dragging around a giant box of wine from place to place, firmly centered in my myopic activity while the world (and let’s include my family in this world) swirled around me. I don’t need to tell you what it was like…you may have your own version of this story. But because I now drag around books (I read 3 this trip) and puzzles and journals and a camera and my colossal curiosity is proof that I’ve healed.

So while I’m full of joy that today I’m eight years free from alcohol, I know that change is always dynamic. I’m still self-centered, not a great friend, have an insatiable hole for experiences that I don’t always see to the end. I tend to not follow rules, suggestions or even best practices unless they are my ideas first and can be very petulant if they are anyone else’s. But because I no longer wake up dead-brained every single blessed day, I’m at the very least aware of my very humanistic flaws. There is hope for me yet.

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I’d love to tell you about some fun collaborations I’m participating in this Summer. First is a Stitch-A-Long. Founded by Crispina ffrench, it is a community sewing experience and fundraiser that will support the building of a quilting studio in Gee’s Bend, Alabama. And get this…I get to team teach this with Mary Margaret Pettway, a many generations Gee’s Bend quilter. Pinch me. Tickets to participate are going on sale this Friday, and I’ll be sharing much more about the whole process then. But for now, we’d love your help! We are accepting votes on which square design we (you, if you participate) will use in this quilt. Head over to Crispina’s page to cast your vote!

Second, I recently did a pod interview with again, Crispina, on her new podcast called Rags to Riches! It is a podcast about textile upcycling, so if you are interested in how I got my start in that space, I’d love it if you checked it out! (This is the Spotify link, but it’s found on most of the podcast platforms.)

Finally, just another reminder that I now take Afterpay in my Marketplace! So if you’ve had your eyes on anything there, you value slow-made fashion but inflation and gas prices makes it all feel cost prohibitive, you can break items up into four payments. I personally use Afterpay all the time. And if you’d like to talk about custom work, like an heirloom textile that you have in mind for a fabulous upcycle, feel free to reply to this email! I’m always open to commissions and I could set that up with an Afterpay option as well.

Take care, sweet friends. It is a sweet old world, sometimes. Thanks, Lucinda.

Reinvention Ascension #53

My old journals tell me everything I need to know. Sure, birthdays should be a time of reflection, but my birthday journal entries of the past remind me of that movie trope when the boss pokes her head into some unwitting employee’s cubicle with “Can I talk to you for a second?” and your gut just knows this person’s in trouble. The conversation may even start off with a positive, but the very next sentence is, “And while I have you…”, then all of the disappointment and nine ways to Sunday they have fucked up is unleashed in one excruciating exhale. They are heartbreaking, these historic birthday reflections, truly.

I’d love to say this exercise did a 180 in the trip around the Sun that followed quitting drinking in 2014, but the change in my stance was very gradual. (Is that called, ‘learning to love yourself’?) It makes sense really, birthday rumination was a reflection of my mental state. Optimism favors the healthy. The change could also attest to simply getting older with gratitude, gratitude that gets punctuated more and more every year with loss. Either way, it changed.

Presently, Change is on the birthday marquis. Instead of dwelling on regret of all the things I didn’t accomplish over the previous year, my lens has shifted to opportunity. What is no longer working? What can I do differently? Add? Eliminate? Birthday number 53’s energetic flow surprisingly guided me straight to my closet. How do I dress myself at 53? I’m actually not interested in what is ‘appropriate’ (that’s a boring conversation). As an aside, I have never felt healthier and more at ease in my body than I do right now and honestly, you could knock me over with a feather at that marvel. Who would have thought? Certainly not me. I assumed that every year after 49 I’d feel the acute effects of deterioration and that’s just how the cards are stacked. Life is full of surprises, isn’t it?

Personal style may seem like a frivolous and indulgent endeavor, given the circumstances. It is, I wouldn’t argue with that. But if I didn’t have date with my creative muse lined up on my dance card every single day, I’d never get out of bed. So I guess it’s the pursuit of joy as a means of survival.

So just to catch you up on what my action has looked like as of late, I cleaned out my closet and have even started listing some resale of vintage and finer pieces in my Marketplace. That’s going to be a Summer regular if you want to browse.

I picked up a mystery bag at a garage sale that was full of the most delightful surprises, including THREE bias cut and lace silk nightgowns from the 40s that made me literally cry for their beautiful resilience. I mean, how many wars have they endured? And they’ve dared to remain beautiful in spite of it all. Isn’t that amazing? I made a little video that I posted on Instagram if you want to see how I’m altering them a bit so I can honor them by wearing them.

I also bought a hat and it urgently needs its own feature. I’ll have to get on that.

So tell me, do birthdays make you want to change things? Subtly or a total takedown reinvention? What has struck you with awe lately? This is the cycle of news I’m hungry for, with love.

Tripping the light fantastic.

My father was an auto mechanic. He was complex in character but simple in palette. His favorite meal was a plate of shrimp, extra delight if served three ways: fried, grilled and scampied. I’m using this as an analogy to describe something I haven’t referenced in a while but if you’ve followed me over the years, the mention of menopause shouldn’t induce unrest (unless you’re square in it, then it’s all unrest). So here’s a heaping serving of my menopausal experience, three ways: bodily, spatially, a measure of time. Order up!

I’m observing my post-menopausal body with part confusion, mostly awe. Obvious adjectives fit like sweaty, smelly, hairy but truer is the experience: wild, strong, sinewy, not unlike an adolescent. Until I catch a flap of my arm in my periphery, only then am I reminded that my experience of my body most likely isn’t how I’m perceived. And the blessed difference is the absence of adolescent concern. (I blissfully don’t care!)

Spatially, I feel like I’m returning to nature. My body feels most leveled when I’ve got my fingers in dirt, swapping oxygen with trees. The exaggerated sigh it produces in me is not unlike the scenes of flora taking over fabricated, like signs of the apocalypse in Station 11, a beautiful unclenching. I’m always geographically ambitious (just returned from hiking and lazy-river-ing in a state part) but really, my backyard offers a humble paradise. I’m letting the tendrils wrap round me. The blessed difference is that I’m still very much alive but retreating somewhere, somewhere like home.

When did this start? Was it in 2014 or before I got sober? Did it start five Easters ago when my daughter cracked a cascarón on my head and I cried? They say it’s like childbirth, you forget, forget, I’ve forgotten. My neighbor whose backyard meets with mine is slowly losing her mental stability and she paces, paces, not unlike a caged coyote, like she’s keeping time for the both of us. We’re both wild in our own ways but the blessed difference is my sentient freedom. She doesn’t see her door is open too.

I thought post-menopausal would be the end of something but it’s still growing, growing like a fungus. And I’ve never felt more vital, essential, intimately webbed into my surroundings. If we begin decaying the minute we’re born, I’ve never felt it so acutely. And at the edge of 53, it feels fantastic.

So, tell me the story of your fantastic decay. I’ve got all day. xo