“You can build an entire narrative out of what you don’t have.”

– Maya Stein, Narrative

Neat and tidy scenes, lined up in a row, with nothing confusing or obscuring popping up in between.

You can give yourself the just-right words you wish you’d had in your mouth.

A three-act story arc that makes the ending feel like a good one, like a victory, like the inevitable place to arrive.

You can write yourself the heroine instead of the anti-hero or villain (however well-intentioned).

You can weave in larger themes in your thirst to understand, in your hunger for meaning.

You can usher us through long months and years with a montage set to music conjuring just the right mood.

Are we patient now? Or rising to a place of courage and personal power?

You can squeeze events into a digestible timeline like an accordion.

All the months spent thinking, like a child sitting in a corner, long and hard about how you got here,

and a new vision, one without your old blinders, emerges now.

Oh, this is probably what they meant, and, That is probably how I sounded when I said that.

You have years of this material.

Life does not let us rewind and try again

but the page will believe anything we tell it.

We can start over at the beginning and try again, in this narrative if not elsewhere.

This is what I can see now, the pages murmur when you fan them with your thumb.

This is the braver path, the enlightened journey, tidier than real life for timely consumption.

A years-long epic reshaped to fit into an evening, accompanied by popcorn.

Read more of Jen’s writing in her new book.

Maybe you lost a beloved friend to this pandemic. Maybe you lost three. Maybe your best friend got a lung transplant at age sixteen, or you heard that terrible word: inoperable.

Maybe you are staring down the long double barrel of autumn and winter and wondering who we will be on the other side, and who will be there with us.

Some days I think of everyone I've ever loved. I am thinking of the unspoken or unsaid things and they rise and fall in me like waves.

The sound it makes is: thank you . . . thank you . . . thank you.

For things taught and kindnesses shown. For recognition and togetherness and making the world a more hospitable place for our strange and wondrous selves. For acceptance and this feeling of carrying in our hearts and being carried by others.

I do not know what to tell you. Maybe that tears come quickly for us in these days. Our voices break in the middle of so many sentences.

I want to say there is something about violins that gives this feeling voice. There is something about the blanket of night that makes it easier to say.

I imagine us always saying thank you, or I love you, as if every other sentence were these in code. To the liquor store owner passing wine bottles through bulletproof glass. The super who reminds me of my dad calling me by name as I walk by. The courier arriving with the medicine at 10 pm at night. The bus driver delivering me home safely and the old man waving through the barbershop window.

Our heart of hearts, our home base, or the safe harbor we dropped anchor into.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

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She wanted to have words. Good words like a solid credit score. This Is a Reliable Voice words.

Or mystical words like a spell or incantation that could make a new life appear, glitter swirling in the air as a transformation occurs. Soft to strong. Something now to something coming.

She wanted friends pulled close like a lap blanket in front of a winter fire. She wanted something to hit her lips and tongue that would rearrange her cells with its flavor and sensation.

She wanted to be all the way alive inside every day as if it were an unmapped forest and she was its explorer.

She wanted to be changed or altered by every leaf her eyes registered, every fallen branch and rock stepped over. She wanted to become quieter, somehow. Not in voice, but in rapt listening.

She wanted to feel everything. Raindrops and strong winds. Momentary panics and seasons gently ushering us from one to the next with a gentle overlapping of weather. As if the planets know it is hard for us to say goodbye sometimes. Or that other times we need to be slowed from rushing ahead. "Not so fast with those socks," these warm late September days chide.

She wanted her life to mean something, no matter how long it lasted. She wanted her ripple to pass its movement and energy on to the next one, to be a memory afterward for someone who witnessed it before turning to walk away.

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It's important now to build the community you need for the long haul. To upgrade your long-distance communications to have as many layers as possible to approximate togetherness. Audio. Video. Handwriting. This is part of your new survival, like food and water but for both body and spirit.

It's important now to notice any conditions you have the thought "We will be okay if..." hooked into. And unhook them. Either find something non-situational or non-circumstantial to anchor your "We will be okay if/because..." into, like our resilience and determination, or if you need to go to "We aren't going to be okay," go ahead and go there. Plan and act accordingly, shoring up whatever you need to face that.

The important thing is to locate the center of your own power, to live on and move into the world from that ground. We need each other in our power. Distress feels less useful.

If you haven't figured it out yet, many distressing things are coming. Many have been among us for a very long time but this moment spotlights or makes them appear heightened.

Sometimes it's grounding to remember the world has always been broken in more ways than we may ever know or understand. Our dismay, awareness, or shock may be the only thing that's new.

Let's stay in our usefulness. Crouch down low in your heart to feel the center of your own gravity. Come down. Get connected. Stay low.

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I have a blue-gray kitty laying on a sheepskin rug and plant leaves dancing to the beat of a ceiling fan. I have story cards papering my wall and a small stack of notebooks filling up. I have extra blueberries and granola begging for another cup of coffee to wash them down.

It feels like I should send a light flare soon but I'm still in the deep. Sometimes I can make myself say something, like diligently chewing and swallowing even though one's appetite is gone.

Still here. It looks like stillness on the outside but inside I am simmering and swirling and just hoping you can wait for me. I can't get to the depth without giving myself a break from the surface.

I am finding the songs that unlock my mind like keys. I am communing with memories and ghosts and making sure the teens wake by noon. I am at my desk, on the mat, looking out from the rooftop and waving at neighbors on our streets.

I am reading the news and watching what feels like a house of cards collapsing in slow motion.

I am riding the waves of energy and humidity. I am hot and cold all night in a love/hate dance with air conditioning.

The words of friends keep me afloat and I gather my own words to be a small raft for someone else.

That's how generosity works.

All things considered, I'm a miracle right now but it looks like being an ordinary person whose weekly chores feel like they were just done yesterday, not eight days ago. It looks a lot like being a mom (or sometimes, a maid) but I'm deep-sea diving in all my in-betweens. I'm finding good things down there.

Read more for Deep Diving Creatives.

I want a large poster framed at the foot of my bed, titled:

How To Keep Going. I want gorgeous typography and clever design to arrange wisdom in easy phrases I repeat like mantras and imagine tattooed on my arm.

How to keep going, it would tell me every morning. Don’t stop, it might say. Don’t give up.

Rest when you need to. When your optimism wanes, try sleep first, and if that doesn’t work try yelling your rage in the streets.

Forget imagining the future or planning for it and stomp your feet firmly in the ground of today.

Remember the children are watching and find the best inside of you for them.

Some days I would hate the words. They would feel weak and naive, like a band aid after a car crash.

No, honestly, I would say, as if it were a conversation in real time.

How to not lose heart. How to not spend ourselves to the bottom of the bottom. How to refill in a real way.

How to find the core of oneself that does not rise and fall but is solid, like iron.

How to burn every unnecessary part away and get down to all that ever mattered.

What is unchanging. What we must do and stand for as long as breath enters us. This heart beating. These lungs breathing. As long as they do.

As far as the sound of this life travels.

Let it be heard. Let it be felt.

Let's take inventory:

1. Books started but not finished.

2. Friends I miss, and

3. laughter. The big belly, cheek-bursting variety. Being able to reach absurdity through solemnity.

4. Tenderness. In every form and gesture I've ever known it.

5. This way of letting myself go that feels like head thrown back and hands released and hanging by my side.

6. The times I've believed in magic or felt it draw near, like a ballet rehearsal by a summer fountain and a tutu sprinkled with twinkle lights.

7. "The world is here for you, for this moment," they seemed to whisper.

8. My body vibrant and vital, my passion streaming through creative channels and not just rage.

9. The impulse that shot me straight out of bed in the morning, no matter how early it came.

10. Looking in a mirror with recognition.

11. Ocean waves and the call back thundering in my chest.

12. Prairie.

13. Sky.

14. My mother's cheek against mine.

15. Food that makes my mouth grateful to be alive.

16. The year that tears came every day. They had somewhere to go, then.

17. Feeling lost and then finding myself again. How the finding was so sweet.

18. The future as something to look forward to.

19. Not wondering if any color is left in my cheeks because I felt it coursing through.

20. The fleeting feeling, in red shoes stepping onto a stage, of being made for a moment.

21. Times when beauty sustained, like something that could be ingested and made part of me.

22. Headstones and graves reminding me I'm still this side of Earth's surface.

23. Knowing what to do next.

24. Falling into the net. Being caught.

25. Being held. Being held. Being held.

So what is there now, anyway, if all of that was back then?

Now there is the day and how I let it happen to me.

Now there is surviving. Trying to live through and fighting for others to live, too.

Now there is my body, obedient enough to keep taking its place in this chair and waiting.

Now there are the words Keep Going, even though we scarcely know what they mean anymore.

Now there is alive, not in any explosive kind of way but just the still-beating, still-breathing kind.

Now there is just the now.

Not all nights are for sleeping. Some are for unraveling old stories and learning new ones. Something driving or pushing forward in a way that demands our awakeness, even in the dark.

It is in so many ways this kind of night right now, even though the sun keeps lapping across the sky and our minds blend like thick porridge across the days.

There is much to dismantle and re-imagine. There are old mythologies that kept harsh realities at bay. Nights like this demand we let the old myths go and learn, not by rote but by turning around to look straight on at how we got here. To face our romanticism or idealism and the way they were just a cover. The way ignorance allows and conspires with violence.

Not all nights are for sleeping. Mostly there is no revelation or reward waiting like an easy exchange for lost slumber.

There is only the living pushing its way through whatever each day and night holds—the short ones and the ones that last months or years.

Thoughts today on holding the tension between the collective experiences of this time with deeply personal and individual ones. It takes awareness and a kind of thoughtfulness that makes space for others to be in different places than we are. An acceptance and grace. There are uncertain weeks ahead to navigate and to learn from. We can listen to one another and imagine ourselves into someone else's place while we go gently, side by side, onward.

Watch Side by Side (Ep 80):

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“What if I’m lost?” I ask at 4:30 in the morning. My doubt has a certain chorus: What if I’m doing it wrong? And the family is breaking, or the children are in distress? What if I missed my work moment, trying to hold what I thought was My Life together? Tried holding my heart together through loss after loss and so many interruptions.

What if my marketing funnel got clogged or I accidentally threw it out with the recycling. What if I missed it. Fell behind. Got it wrong. Like a car veering to avoid a small animal and ending up crumpled in a ditch instead. What if in trying to avert disaster I’ve only created a bigger mess?

Next, I come rushing to my own rescue with Great New Plans. We will have a family meeting, we will talk in a Feelings Circle. We will heal at last. Live in peace. Smile at each other in the morning when we are still groggy.

I come up with similar plans for work. I will Boost The Signal and write my email list and sit at the laptop every day. I will let people see the things I make. I will get out of my own way. I will emerge—finally—as Just The Thing You Were Hoping For. The Just What You Need When You Can’t Sleep at Night. I will be Just The Thing for Your Friend Lisa, Too.

I will be for everyone.

It will be easy. So easy I throw back my head during interviews and laugh. “All I am doing is what I’ve done all along!” I will giggle at the world’s surprised discovery of me, as if it has finally gotten my joke. As if I’m the last one at Hide and Seek to be found. "Silly friends," my amused smile in dramatic portraits will say. "I was here all along." Like someone dressed to match the wallpaper, finally stepping forward with a small wave. Is this what it’s like to be found?

Or could it also happen in the grass, lying in a row of graves.  Maybe it could be saying the thing that might lose you love, and playing the hand all the way through. A colleague’s voice saying: You’re not invisible even after all this time. All the calendars of strong-feeling days mixed with foggy ones.

You thought it was an equation, all your efforts adding up to something. But it was really your feet exploring forest floor, looking for a path.

Follow JLP on Instagram for more Insta Thoughts like this one.

What if you could take a step back, regroup or rest. What if time is a stretchy thing instead of a metronomic machine to punch in and out of. What if the world is not drumming impatient fingernails on the table and the whip handle is actually in your own hand?

Or, you know, Things I Wonder on a Thursday.

Drop off the radar if you want to. Leave that But Do I Really NEED To question in the dust. Follow your instinct for pacing. Honor your desire for respite. Examine the ideas you're harboring about what you're allowed or how the universe might spin to pieces without your iron grip. It won't.

But you might. Maybe unraveling is the point.

Morning, Sunshine. This is for you.

Watch Off the Radar (Episode 79):

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Tell me again how strong we are. About the stacking of days, and how far we have come. Take me to the place it all started. The first reaching for the future and the first yes across terrestrial lips.

Tell me once more about love. How it is like an element in the atmosphere. An animating force.

Tell me again it’s okay to feel it all. Even the parts that feel jagged and sharp. Parts like a bottomless canyon where one’s heart used to be. The things that feel heavy, and the ones flying about like live wires.

The ones that make a body go completely still, or explode into action.

Tell me a story about how nothing means anything but it all matters so much. In low, quiet tones say thoughts so thick I have to sigh into them.

Remind me of the things that will not change. Stars on a clear night. The feeling of someone near, even in that way that is untouched by space and time.

In some quiet field where the only sound is birdsong, our dearest ones are planted inside us and have taken root. A whole grove of unending loves to shade us, or whisper reassurances above our heads in the breeze.

Here even in the not here. This is the mystery. One we cannot easily shake no matter how we try.

Here in the not here. Love like atmosphere, like breath. Roots and leaves and the ground we came from. The ground we will all someday return to.

Tell me my name again. Not just the I Am Called one, but my true name. The one spoken by deities and stars that says who I am in the great universe of things, beings, and beloveds.

I am always forgetting, but you never do.

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I've been thinking for a long time about hope and realism--what hope means to us when we think of that word, how it differs from optimism or positivity. I think the belief I was dismantling underneath the vocabulary was about wishing things were different than they are, and thinking the wishing had some power in and of itself, when in my experience it often prevented me from looking or dealing directly with things as they actually are.

It's been almost a month since I first read the article "Our Pandemic Summer" by Ed Yong, and I still think about this one part I share here every day.

Resilience and realism has been a place for me to drop anchor. Instead of hanging my hope hat on an imaginary future date when "this will go away," I'm hanging mine on our resilience. Looking as straight as I can at a reality that is far from what I would wish. It's keeping me more steady, and patient, and strong.

Morning, Sunshine. This one's for you.

Watch Resilience and Realism (Episode 77):

Rebuild the Bicycle. Alt title: Question Everything. This is my go-to move for extreme flexibility and foundation-level regrouping.

Here I share what I mean by rebuilding the bicycle, how I use this practice in ordinary time, and also how it feels useful right now.

Morning, Sunshine.

Watch Rebuild the Bicycle (Episode 78):

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Make playlists. Listen to a song called Persephone again and again, but not so loudly you can't hear yourself think. Make your bed as soon as you get up, but climb right back under the covers again after breakfast with her beside you. Tackle things you are and are not looking forward to together.

Your pen moves across a wide page and she reads about something called "desalination".

Forget about your eyebrows for days. Maybe weeks. Let the clean laundry linger on the dining table, pushed aside to the far wall in a bid for space. Group games pull you now more than formal chairs, but that could change. Just yesterday you felt well enough to clean the kitchen and you did. Windexing the light fixtures is a particular state of wellness, or a stage of social distancing--it's hard to say anymore.

Throw open the windows and pretend it's the same as going outside. Try for the magical cross-breeze, where something blows in, blows out and through.

Pray, without knowing it: Make us new.

Feel long days and brighter light carrying you. Try not to worry about next winter. It is like a planet you have not visited: Who can really imagine it?

Any journey ahead will be lived just like this day. Moment by moment. Sheets pulled up and down, time moving across the wall in a slideshow of shadow and spotlight.

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I want to have good words to put here, words that name something you are feeling too, if not today then maybe yesterday. Words remembered like a song or recognizable like a face you love. Even a small familiarity feels so good right now. Instead my writing hand is a little bit asleep, my body not yet coaxed out from under my blanket. Coffee not yet made. Just this video I should share soon so it might find you under your own blanket before coffee. I had the words when I made this for you and I don't want to let the morning spill all over the kitchen floor before sharing them.

Morning, Sunshine.

Watch Existential (Episode 75)

While strange and difficult times unfold beyond our front door, building a world inside for ourselves is one way we are getting through.

I'd love to hear about *your* world inside a world, what feels like care or refuge. Here this time has its own kind of menu, its own sleep schedule, and so much softening anywhere we can.

Watch World Inside a World (Episode 76):

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A pamphlet on the benefits of saying the things you're afraid to say out loud, complete with diagrams of one's esophagus blocked and clenched before, open and released after.

A data graph detailing how you are not yet where you will someday be. It will have numerous versions tracking important variables like patience and calm in the presence of volatility. Those will increase while things like upset over having dishes to wash will decrease.

A how-to video on how to preserve love through pain. The one that tells how to catch yourself mid-wounding and correct course before repeating again and again. A special feature outlines how to offer a good apology, one that doesn't stop short or hold back but goes all the way.

A road map showing all the many routes to purpose. All the places you could find yourself because you carry yourself to them.

A master-level college course on how to leave gracefully. Without storming out the way your wounded heart often wants to--not in anger so much as that other thing. You saw it enacted once while babysitting, when the two-year-old cried, beside himself, throwing his body through the house room by room, eyes squeezed shut in anguish as you steered him away from coffee table corners.

The bedtime prayer that ushers you into carefree slumber every time.

A blueprint for hearts. A script for the tour. "Here is where I keep my dreams--closer to the path than my regrets. Every pebble under our feet hand-painted with an intention or longing in a sea of purples, greens, and blues." A weather guide for how to dress in every season. When to opt for softness and when it's time for structure. It doubles as a fashion guide. How to Wrap Yourself (or Shed Layers) for Every Mood.

An investor's guide whose only currency is connection.

A flashlight called What to Do Next that only illuminates a small half-circle in front of where your feet now stand.

The embroidered pillow that says We Already Love You.

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Sometimes you lose track of what day it is or what meal you are on, especially when the sky is dark like nightfall in the afternoon. When you remember, sitting beside her, how much you loved trig and how you miss doing puzzles and solving things together. So many things cannot be solved today, at least by you, but this equation can be tackled to the ground. Then you remember, going into the downslope of the day, this morning greeting, still waiting to be sent.

Maybe it's just as well. Maybe it underscores these thoughts, the need presented by this season to exercise grace and flexibility. The brightening, late-day sky outside reminds you: Sunshine can come at surprising times.

Today I send you a place to rest your heavy head, and a steady beat for when you catch your second wind. A reminder that pop music exists and is sometimes nice this time of day. I wish for you a break in the rain, and a deep surrender when it falls. I wish you sweet memories of days that taught you what you're made of. And dreams of things you can let go into. Green fields. Soft blankets and safety nets. For all that falls, others still hold steady and unchanging and strong.

Watch A New Baseline (Ep 73):

It's a new day, friends. I don't always know what to say in the way that we don't always know what we can do right now. But it doesn't stop the impulse from coming: to reach out, to speak up, to offer, to take care. In today's episode, we look at reimagining service, one of the most powerful opportunities of this time.

Now put that kettle on, Sunshine. There is light in this day and it wants to fall on you. 

Watch Reimagining Service (Ep 74):

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Keep breathing. Keep breathing, dear one, each breath a single stitch forming the seam of a day, each night a turn at the corner of a garment, and beginning again. Fresh, but connected. Part of everything that came before but also new.

With each breath, discover the mind within you, and below that the heartbeat. Travel down to the hunger in your belly and the ache even below that. Travel all the way down to your feet, learning when to stand up and when to rest, stretched out and toes wriggling in softest socks. With each breath leave the fray behind and return to the place insight is born. Release one hand from the past and the other from the future and fold them gently in the lap of this moment. Where there is no there but here and there is no when but now.

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If I seem quiet it's because I'm writing for myself. It feels like dragging a lake, sometimes, and sifting through a strange and surprising collection. It feels like being self contained. It feels like coming alive.

If I seem distant it's because I have this new planet to explore. A new atmosphere I'm recalibrating to. A different mix of oxygen and strength of gravity that teach me how to breathe and stand and walk newly. My muscles are adjusting. Here's how to hold your head up in a new land: try it for awhile and when you need to, rest. Repeat. Soon you will emerge like a new citizen of a liberated internal country. You can see glimpses of this new creature you are becoming out of the corner of your eye or in just the right light but on the other side of this becoming you will find yourself a new native, all the learned parts that were not you unlearned at last and just the glory of inhabiting this quiet place called Your Heart you have been longing for, for always.

I don't linger, I launch like a rocket from one thing to the next. But I'm creating Bubble Wrap Treatment and learning how to linger. You can, too.

Watch Bubble Wrap (Episode 71):

All of us, whether we are staying home or showing up for essential work, are likely feeling some effects of isolation threaded through this season. Those living very much in our heads can use this practice to remember our skin, to sink into gravity. To remember bodies were are so often forgetting and how to dwell deeply in them. ☀️

Watch Physical Touch (Episode 72):

Binge Watch and Subscribe to the Morning, Sunshine Series Here