Sarah and I close our laptops after a planning meeting with our publisher and agent and immediately get on FaceTime together to EXHALE. So many details. So many next steps. We’re new here. This is, in fact, our first rodeo and we have so many questions. Every bit of this SLOW BURN journey has us buzzing with hope and possibility and every dream we’ve ever spoken into the universe for our beautiful book. Our veins are coursing with adrenaline from the awareness that her release will be here before we know it and even though the writing work has been done for some time, there is still so much to be done to midwife her into the world. And then there’s the threads of vulnerability woven into so many unexpected spaces along the way. We knew she would be our healing, but we could have never predicted just how deep her reach would be and just how tired we would be with still six months to go.
Sarah carries her phone to the car and drives to the school pick-up line while we continue through our meeting notes. I carry my phone down the hall to turn the air-conditioning down and grumble about how it won’t be Fall in the desert until the end of October and no amount of PSL’s can change that fact.
And then we sit for a moment,
we hold it all,
we stare into our screens
and we just breathe.
It’s the me too and the with you
even here, even now.
This is the nature of our winding desert paths, just as it is our flowing river currents that have snaked their way through stone to find the sea. This is our bodies in rhythm with the earth and her seasons. This is us tapping into roots beneath giants. By now we know this part too. We know when to slow our pace and allow ourselves to meander into the honesty of how much we are needing to fill our own reservoirs. By now we trust us to know our flow. We take our own pulse and notice our desire to say less and drink in more. We are not meant to grind endlessly even toward the best and most beautiful goals. We only make what feels true and interesting and in alignment. And sometimes what is true is just breathing.
Sarah calls to her creative cycle that is changing with the leaves on her backyard trees. I float in the ebb and flow of my creative tides that surge and recede with the moon.
We exhale with relief as we echo back and forth
what we want and what we need
who we are and who we are definitely not
and all of a sudden there is so much room again.
Mercy and Emerson are back in school and Sarah’s house and her days are her own again. For me, Garrett has been back in school but the dust of getting Carsyn to college is just now settling. So here we are noticing the space, catching our breath, taking inventory of what it all costs, and tuning into the need to fill ourselves full again. Not for productivity’s sake. For our own sake.
We know you know.
When we slow down and take a moment — we see it, we hear it, we can feel it. We see the way we keep finding ourselves between the pages of other people’s storytelling. We catch lyrics like it’s the first time we’ve heard a song and devour new fiction like we’ve climbed inside the story and are never coming back. We discover new pieces of ourselves in the cracks between scenes in shows and moments in movies. We keep turning to more and more poetry and going back for seconds and thirds in the work our friends are making.
We are so hungry. Must be time to feast.
For the month of September we are going to use this space to share the things we are feasting on. The art that has us feverishly texting and leaving whispered voice memos at all hours of the night and spilling our coffee on pages first thing in the morning. The creativity of others that is dripping down our chins and through our fingertips. We will leave it on the table here for you. Take what’s yours, leave what’s not. And we would love to know what those things are for you! What have you read or seen that has left you breathless? What are you reading or watching or singing along to or making that has you using all caps in your group chats?
Put it on the table here.
We want it all.
We are still in deep with The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart by Holly Ringland. The series on Amazon Prime, the audiobook, the native Australian flowers woven throughout the story, the Floriography book, the refuge of Thornfield, the archetypal references to stories of Selkies, and on and on and on. The layers of this story are part of us now.