Welcome

Hello, and welcome! I’ve created this site to indulge my incessant attraction to creative writing as I tackle this thing we have all been traversing together called life.  My hunch is that you may be touched with wonder regarding the purpose of this digital platform, as well as the meaning of its title.  Throughout the course of my life, I have added many hats to my head.  I am a woman, a mother, an athlete, a writer, a painter, a potter, a pianist, an acupuncturist, an herbalist, a swim coach, an addict, and a pretty colorful ball of things that are unique to my experience here.  Of my passions exists the ever challenging, smack-you-in-the-humble-face, empowering, discouraging, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring, honest, raw sport of Olympic Weightlifting.  I open with this, despite my other loves and inklings, because it is something that has become a metaphor for many things in my life.  As sure as my heart beats, I am pushing weights above my head on days where time and energy have beaten me down and tossed me against cold walls, as well as on days where time and energy flow the way I seemingly expect them to, in harmony, at least according to my wild mind.  The point here is that when you are standing up with a giant weight over your head that weighs as much as (or more than) you do, the only way to not die under that weight is to force yourself to become absolutely positively unwaveringly present in that huge humble moment.  And in that moment, that can often feel like an hour or a split second, arises clarity.  Clarity about the fight I had with my daughter that morning about midriff tops, or about a missed deadline, or about how the first sip of coffee in the morning REALLY TASTES, or about my crippling student loans and how disgusting it is that I am far from the only one with crippling student loans, or about how incredible all three births of my children were, or about 27 years of bulimia and what it really DOES to a soul, or about the tree I saw on my drive today–how it seemed to just…wave.  I discover this world when I’m under the bar.  It is untouched.  Uncharted.  It is as though the thoughts in my mind insist that it is flat and approach their ships toward its horizon with the anticipation of sudden death as they fall off like cheerios on a kitchen table.  But, I can train my thoughts to realize that this world is vast.  It doesn’t end.  It doesn’t begin.  And I can’t tap it unless I’m present.  Present?  What is that?  What IS that?  Certainly a modern day buzz word, if I’m really humoring myself.  Sure, we can meditate.  There’s an app for that.  We can sit with our kids, hide our phones under our pillows for those grueling 5 minutes, take a walk, a bath, a drive.  But when are we ACTUALLY present?  We are actually present when death gets close.  When the prospect of risk outweighs the comfort of expectation.  Right there.  At the apex.  In the stillness.  There.  Under the bar.  Under the one thing that reminds me that I am human and mortal and soul and immortal all rolled into a great big ball of atoms jumping around like fireflies.  It is here where my writing is born, so naturally I found it appropriate to give life to the work with this header in mind.  Come.  Step in.  For a moment, or for more.  Read what I have to say.  Write what you want to reply.  And keep the conversation full and new, like a fat laughing baby, like the lone stream in a forest that speaks…only when heard.