Dear Starlight,
Last week, after writing my weekly newsletter, I recognized myself in the familiar loop—searching for a new answer to the old question: Where do I fit? Where do I belong?
I noticed the circle-eight pattern I’ve been walking. I wondered if perhaps I might not ever be able to recognize where I am, so I asked a different question: If I’ve arrived, if there’s no more need to hunt for purpose, to fit in, or be more? Then what?
Answer: Sit down and draw decorative borders. (Not even kidding.)
So I did. I sat down and started drawing—loopy, wave-like borders like ones I used to draw with my best friend in third grade. We made bookmarks, imagining our drawings and stories someday living inside real books. This memory was rekindled as I sat there in my living room carefully drawing little blue waves with golden moons on hand drawn rulered lines.
I had forgotten this was something I did and loved.
As I drew, something opened. I imagined illustrating one of my children’s stories. Sparks flew. Enthusiasm stirred. Everything around me became textured, alive with pattern—almost like the sensation of being high (it’s been a long time, but the memory returned).
I went for a walk, and the world at my feet stunned me, stopped me in my tracks—petal and seed explosions, small compositions of surprising color and joy.
This delight of polk-ad-dot petals stayed with me all week long.
—
Every morning, I pull a tarot card as medicine. Today and last Sunday: 8 of Swords.
For my New Moon pull, I asked: What is the prescription between the sun and the five of pentacles for resourcing myself? The six of pentacles has long been a struggle card for me—uncomfortable, persistent. But this time I received the message clearly:
We cannot receive from others what we are not open to receiving ourselves.
And the gesture: a child with arms open to the sun, receiving what they deserve without hesitation or self-consiousness.
That message turned in two directions:
Where am I giving with futility?
Where am I not receiving what I desire and deserve?
This week, I met with a new donor on a day I considered closing a door in another relationship. I prayed to right-shape my relationship with giving and receiving.
When the donor praised my work, I placed a hand on my heart and said, “Thank you. I receive that.” I genuinely felt the goodness of both my work and myself. I felt myself open my heart to myself in that moment.
That day, and every day since, I’ve been opening and closing my arms across my chest like wings—like a bird remembering how to fly.
Like the blue heron I saw take flight this morning at the river.
—
The artist Lee Krasner spent years discouraged, doubting herself, destroying her own paintings in the shadow of her famous husbands work and under the general discounting of woman’s art that permeates popular culture. She’d tear her work to shreds—over and over. Then one day, she noticed how the scraps landed at her feet: a new composition, beautiful in its natural arrangement. She picked up the pieces and collaged them together. Those were the paintings she finally had the courage to share with the world.
What moves me most in her story is not just her natural persistence, but the moment she chose to trust her own seeing. She didn’t change herself—she changed her perspective seeing her work newly. From that moment onward she acted the same, but differently.
This week, something shifted for me too: I received myself.
I stood in my own recognition.
Looking back over this week through my camera reel, I noticed something: every image from my week seemed to follow a pattern—beauty at my feet, and me, following it.
Yesterday, I had this thought:
When I was young, I hid myself somewhere in the future. I hoped that when and if I was safe, I would find her—and that I would do whatever it took to reach her, even if I didn’t know where or when. This happened when I was so young that I couldn’t even remember sending myself into hiding.
Now I’m here. Meeting her. The self I once sent running for the hills.
And when I pulled the 8 of Swords again this morning, I saw it clearly:
Follow your good feeling forward—one step at a time.
Out of the story of pain. Into the story I choose.
It is me who takes that step towards the me I want to be and always have been.
Medicine: Put my feet in the water.
So I went to the river, and I put my feet in, and I watched a blue heron lift herself up and soar.
