“Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”
-Mary Oliver
After giving birth to three boys in quick succession, I found myself changed in every way possible. After being told I have a “way with words” for my entire life, I suddenly realized that when I had no space or time to make any other art, I still had my words. After a severe depression, I committed myself fully to prioritizing writing on a daily basis, and it has saved me.
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I began writing poetry in the notes section of my phone in 2020. With three babies under 3 years old and an insatiable desire to create, they came out raw and whole, often in the dark of night. As my children grow, poetry allows me to create written snapshots of moments I would otherwise forget. My hope is to share these with mothers everywhere, and give rise to a new genre that I am calling “Domestic Poetry”
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I am currently working on my first fictional novel. Having had a lifelong love of cameras, history, and magic, I've always wondered what a camera would sound like if it was alive? Better yet, what would it sound like if it actually took in the souls of its subjects (as was initially believed in the mid 1800s upon the advent of such astounding technology)?! Think magical realism meets historical fiction with a little surrealism thrown in. This achingly long process has been equally thrilling and exhausting, but my goal is to complete a work that transcends genre and finally scratches my age-old itch at the origins of memory and how humans survive because of it.
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The term “newsletter” has become synonymous with the word “spam” in recent years. After withdrawing from social media in 2021 for my mental health, I longed for a digital outlet that allowed me to stay in touch with, share my musings, and current projects with those I had met in person over the years. My newsletter became something else entirely- a weekly practice in vulnerability, storytelling, and open invitations. I continue to use the term for clarity of format, but I encourage you to read some of my past emails shared below and draw conclusions for yourself about it!
Domestic Poetry
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I didn’t get a break today
You said
As if
You expected one
As if
You could stop
Every need
From everyone
Including yourself
As if you could count
On a soft warm bed
Halfway through
To “recharge your batteries”
As your mom used to say
But that isn’t how it works
You’re the parent now
And you’ve just announced
That you have to poop
So you could write
This poem.
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What gift says
Thank you for cleaning the shit off the walls
What gift makes up for the sleepless nights
The lines stretched into skin
The hair clogging the drain?
What sale could possibly compensate
for a career put on pause
for those first precious years
before someone else is in charge
Of an entire education
Is there a card on the rack
That speaks to the hope of morning
And desperation of night
A wreath to adorn the door
Of the home that feels both like a prison and a sanctuary
It’s endless loop of days so poetically represented by a string of evergreen
Here, I wrapped this for you
This totem in my hands
Is nothing
is nothing
is nothing
But me trying to say
Thank you
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What did you do today
You ask
I want to tell you the truth
That I called my friends
That I took a nap in the car
That I took a walk
That I blasted my favorite songs from high school and sang over them with tears streaming down my face
That I stared at the way the wind blows the branches
That I looked at the clouds moving in the sky
That I walked into a bookstore just to feel the spines run along on my hand
Because all these things are what I needed today
But I don’t feel like I can tell you that
Because how can you ask someone
Please
Watch my children
So that I can hear the sound of my own breath again
Instead
I keep this all to myself
Because I live in a world
Where it is not productive to touch the earth with cracked fingernails
The days in which I had time to stop are over
You are a parent now, they say.
It is your child’s turn to play
And when they stop and dig holes in the ground
You are supposed to say
Hurry home, we have to go
I cannot dig for worms with you
It is no longer my place
For I must feed and clothe and work
That you may notice the birdsong
without me.
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I lay on the bed
In the home of my youth
The sounds are the same as they’ve always been
My mother’s voice through the vents
My father’s work in the yard
I know how the light hits every doorknob
Every bedspread
At every time of day
In every season
Of every year
I know which windows don’t have a shade
And which curtains my mother has replaced
I left in search of my own life
I bought my own bedspreads
My own curtains
And returned with arms full of children
And a heart full of gratitude
For when I lay on this bed now
I hear my children’s laughter through the vents
I hear the hum of their toys
I lay in the bed of my youth
With the exhaustion of a mother
Knowing that this is the one place
In the entire world
That I get to be
A child.
This poem is available for sale on my shop HERE
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I kiss his shoulder
Rest my lips along the curve of his neck
He folds himself around me
Limbs too long to crawl up
And fit back inside
Six years gone since our bodies split into two
His size shocking me every day
This body that I made
This human that I grew
Can barely fit in my lap
Anymore
And yet
I still ache for the softness of his body
I still hunger for the taste of his skin on my lips
Just as I did in the days of rocking chairs and breast milk
Just as I did in the sleepless blur of my own infancy
The fissure of our bodies birthed us both
And here he stands
Six years later
Reminding me
That I, too, am sprouting like a bud
Long and thin and sure
For every time he folds himself into me
He shows me
That the body of a mother
Never
Ever
Stops
Growing ,
Too.
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I did the laundry
And took out the trash
While you did the dishes
And fed our children.
I thought to myself,
why,
this is the work of living.
It is as though my tired body
is connected to all those before me
For when I bend to task
I feel the shadow of thousands
Of millions
Of billions
Behind my back.
They rub my knots from my shoulders
Brush the sweat from my brow
And say to me
O, dear one
We have pushed through the barriers of time
To tell you
That you are not the first
To hold each day as a trophy
Hard fought and hard won
Knowing that tomorrow
It all starts again.
We are not so different, you and I
We
Have lived
The work
Of living
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You’ve never seen my hair down
Last night the pain in my scalp led me to unveil it before you
It felt so good to massage my roots
After years of tying it up
Holding it back from your grasp
You cocked your head and smiled
“So beautiful” you said
I felt a tear forming at the corner of my eye
You reached out to touch it
My instinct has been to pull back
But this time I let you stroke the length of my hair
“So long” you said
You had no idea that I had long hair
I had no idea myself
I had let the faucet of time run my split ends down the drain
And so this...
This was a really nice moment
It was as if you were seeing me differently
It was as if
For the first time
You weren’t just seeing me as your mother
You were seeing me as a woman
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What is the night if not another place for a mother to give?
To contort herself to fit the needs of her children, her spouse
To pretzel herself around bodies and cries
What is rest if not another landscape we yearn for, an Eden always out of reach, a mirage before our tired eyes?
Motherhood robs us of sleep early
Before the Great Exit
Before the hope becomes reality
It marks you with tired eyes and frazzled bones
It’s pillowed and soaking leftovers a laughing stock for anyone and everyone whose body has never made a person from scratch
In the story of a mother, sleep is the villain
Always taunting
Always laughing in the dark corners of another endless night
Another hour alone
Here, our heroine battles
Here, our heroine cries
Unseen
Unheard
Again
And again
And again
The sleep of a mother is an oxymoron
It’s just a poem
written by a mother
In the middle of the night
Who can’t
For the life of her
Fucking sleep.
Recent Newsletters
“Hallmark holidays: Not a fan”
“Let's eradicate the belief that we are meant to show our love and appreciation on a single day, and instead, let's show it every day.”
“The Mirror of Wisdom”
“Have I made enough progress in my hours allotted for nothing but progress? “
“Lunch at the Coffin Bar”
“I sit and look at the empty chair facing me, wondering what it would be like if my grandmother had come out to lunch with me today.”
Book me.
I believe that words are most powerful when spoken aloud.
Creating intimate, vulnerable, and productive in person experiences has become my goal. As a self proclaimed “analog Soul in a digital world”, my hope is that this website is just a stepping stone to something so much more powerful and so much more tangible. Please reach out with any ideas, events, or collaborations you may have.
Blog
Kind of Woman
I left her speechless. Her body was never found.
Motherhood & Death
COVID Funeral
A poem that I wrote after watching my grandmother’s funeral online.
Year 19
Novel Excerpt: The Eye of a Camera
Novel Excerpt: “ A world he did not yet know he knew”
A Writing Exercise: The Camera as a Character
“ A Spider Led Me To A Cemetery”
Q: Should I have children?
I do not have children for me, and that’s the point.