You write a thing that came from a hole in your chest.

You know it isn’t anything close to perfect.

You press publish, against your inner critic’s judgment.

You sigh a relieved sigh and go to make tea, or something like it. Twenty-four hours later, Substack emails you your numbers,

a grade, if you like.

I don’t. That’s the trouble. The metrics are sometimes true, but never the truth. As my readers have kindly expressed, metrics do not measure how long someone sat still after reading your words, or who remembered a quote and shared it with their sister, partner, or friend. They are binary, numerical, and can rarely capture impact, emotion or hints of recognition. Still, we religiously check them.

Can I turn this feature off? A little bit? Although I consider myself a performer in many fun and necessary ways, writing as performance is not my ministry. I don't want to be at the mercy of some dashboard, and these days, must work hard to circumvent this.

Oh, I could just not care, I suppose. It’s not that metrics are evil; indeed, there’s something to be gained from knowing how specific ideas and essay-things land, if they do at all. I know metrics can be helpful. Some people thrive with the right data. But for some of us, those numbers don't inspire refinement; they inspire hesitation, self-doubt and the death of important risk. Though I feel the fear and do it anyway, I reckon I am no more immune or impervious than anyone else. Metrics are too easily mistaken for meaning. Am I only as good as my last email? If that’s the case, I’m (regularly) screwed.

Some of us are out here trying to keep it raw and from the heart, a little unkempt, and wild,

and to let it be,

ungraded and unstarred.

The real metrics, I guess, live in the quiet; in those who don't comment but read, and the ones who show up at your little event in a bookshop in a town you’ve never been to before and say, “I’ve been following you since the beginning.” (You melt my heart each time you come out of the house to see me. Thank you. It isn’t a given, and each time I’m overwhelmed with gratitude.) I keep saying I’m going to do more meet-and-greets / readings / speakery things this year and next, and if you’d like me to come and do my thing where you are, please do reach out. I’m just an email away.

Back to the platform. I want to build a rebellion here, a library of feeling, a warmhouse of language, and, as I have said, must take care not to internalise spikes or slumps. I am not my open rate, or the subscribe or unsubscribe list, but could be the reason someone decides to start a newsletter, or a book, or a piece of art. This is why I show up each week. (Well, that and it buys my groceries). Some people ask me how I manage to show up twice a week, like what new is there to say?

Well, look.

As long as the sky is frost, then lilac-peach, and the roses grow, bloom and scent-happy, and the moon is a thumbnail

to a globe, to a sliver of silvergold,

and there are new, surprising, off-kilter people to see

and be thrilled or repulsed by, and dreamybad places to go,

and as long as the devilsystems tell on themselves and show their asses and awful teeth, and the devilsystems break something in me and bring forth new terrible truth and the seasons rise, and the trees green-green, tall and insistent

and we change and trip over and change some more,

each lesson is old as the world and always, always new. There are new thoughts, desperate challenges, and drumbeat affirmations that we need to know and unknow, ten times a year.

If you’re reading this, thank you. Whether you’ve been rocking with me from the beginning or here as of yesterday, it means more than any graph.

Love, Yrsa.

oh just me talking about talking

The doors, of course, are not real, but I didn’t know that. The deadlines were an idea of my own making. I didn’t understand that, either. “Late” was just a story, dreamed up by my inner critic, designed to self-sabotage and halt me before I even started. That, and too much time spent watching other people.

Success has no clock, only gatekeepers. It’s up to us to decide how much power the gatekeepers have. Gatekeepers count on you feeling as though you missed the moment. They want you to believe you need them. If you feel behind, that’s the system working as designed. If you are convinced you’re too late, you’ve taken yourself out of the running. If you are convinced you need some guy in a room to say yes to you, you’ll wait a long time.

If you can be convinced that real artists, writers, thought-leaders, and business owners were anointed at birth or even discovered on time, you’ll never realise that you can name yourself.

Thankfully, the brain and your life path don’t work on everyone else’s schedule. Opportunities, ideas and new outlooks don’t peak at 25, 30, 35, 40, or any other made-up number. The brain evolves. It rewires and builds new pathways. The brain is continually rewiring. Which means healing is possible. Which means it’s never too late. Which means that who you were is not who you have to be.

👆🏿👆🏿 I wrote this in the early hours of Tuesday morning, and now I’m making it free because I want more of you to see it. I know what it’s like not to be stuck but to feel it. It’s easy to believe you’ve missed your moment. Shame doesn’t just quiet you. It keeps you waiting. Sometimes, we feel frozen, not because we lack discipline or drive, but because of something deeper. Something in the body is holding us there. The brain isn’t just this disembodied thought factory. It’s an entire ecosystem - a body-mind machine shaped by the nervous system, our survival instincts and messages we absorbed long before we even had words for them. Sometimes, it’s not only our minds keeping us stuck, but the body remembering a time when movement wasn’t safe.

You can’t be late to your own life. Not really. And your brain can’t evolve on a self-imposed, strict timeline. Not really. Neuroplasticity proves that nothing is wasted or too late. Every moment of stillness or every year spent circling the same thoughts…every single bloody version of yourself was still a part of what it takes to make you you. Even the moments that seemed useless. Even the years you thought you lost.

I cannot stop giving thanks for all that I thought might kill me.

The information we are fed wants us to believe that if you haven’t been chosen by now, you never will be. Mate, you were meant to make your own timeline! I would not have any books if I waited for the people in the glass-fronted buildings!!! Creativity is an act of movement. Every time you make something, you prove that you are still in motion, that your story is still unfolding, and that waiting is not the answer. If success has no clock, you’re not late. If the doors weren’t real, you don’t have to wait for them to open. When you stop waiting, you become dangerous.

(If you need proof that you don’t need a gatekeeper, read Pay Your Rent With Poems, a practical guide to building something tangible, and yours.)

I don’t usually write about love in the way I’m about to. I write about love in prose and well-timed wistful poems infused with distance and hindsight. I write about the problem with love and the throes of early love, less so of the moments when it fails me or I fail it. I consider this work to be too close to the problem.

This morning, I am thinking specifically about being the problem, which is why this piece is difficult to write.

Somewhere in South West London, the leaves are turning pink. My love is moving on. I can't sleep in the same position anymore because everything slightly hurts. My joints are a shrill new language. My back is a long song. Los Angeles is awful and growing on me. Damn. I look great in my car. The streaming stations are fizzing, are melting into one. Things are poorly strung together. I'm turning into an expert. Of course, people try me, but I tell it like it is. I'm thirty and have been thirty for many, many years. My mother comes into my dreams, still, but she's younger than me now. This, my friend, is what time does.

The Josh Craig and I performed in Manchester. We’ll be performing everywhere. Invite us to your town.city.place of higher learning.gallery.

I ❤️ poetry + electronics. Also, shout out to my gorgeous friend Eloghosa Osunde, whose book “Necessary Fiction” is in the works. Sometimes when I perform this poem live, I shout it out xx

A special thank you to the Arts Council and Leone Rose xx

UK!!!! I’m having a party/meetup/fireside chat with electronics/ poetry reading/confessional in the UK with my incredible partner in fun, THE JOSH CRAIG!!! Come and say hi and listen or dance or sway to poems!!! SUN JULY 14TH doors at 7.30 PM band on the wall, Manchester, UK, FREE EVENT.

TICKETS NEEDED FOR ENTRY!!!!

Fall in love with a new poem. Break this damn English in forty places. Bend these silly rules of Engagement since they are not working for people like us, have never rarely worked for people like us, and people like us are tired, perhaps. Understand time as a divine faculty, not simply a resource to be bartered. Delete those apps from the phone. Send E a long, winding voicenote. Shape the growing story; all this hot, stained glass. Understand it is malleable, impressionable. Press lips hard against the windowpane. Marvel at the O shape. Be outside, even when the day is bold, and I am not. Find more things to love than to complain about. Find more people to love than people to complain about. Be a hell of a romantic—court joy as a new religion. Hold my own beautiful hands. Say the resounding no’s that are needed right now. Tell the girls what I learned in the wild. Start the alt club of my dreams. Become the CEO of the thrilling unknown. Talk about the confusion. Take these twisting wishes and almost wants & make love & strange art. Believe her. Believe him. Do Karaoke with J in Ktown again. Honour my beliefs but not so much that I cannot shift. Go to Nigeria and find my family. Go home to Jamaica. Bring something home to the land, and let it tell me ______ Nourish the earth and let the earth soothe. Let the life that I have set out work for me. Care even more about it all. Find inspiring methods of care. Hone a nurturing practice. Be in a new kind of communion. Work out what to do about the walls that have grown out of necessity. Sing about it. Fry plantains. Spend hours on good red rice. Invite folk around to eat. Tell her the truth about me, not her. Tell him the truth about me, not him. Tell them the truth about me, not them. Archive. Film. Draw. Paint. Put it out whether I think it’s ready or not. Learn everything from this.

You say that I don’t seem myself.

These days are long and revealing,

so every time I see one through, I grin.

Every time I make it home, I dance.

Every time I’m up again after being down, down, down;

I’m beating the odds.

Every time I don’t give up,

it’s worthy of celebration. Every time I write a poem,

it’s a bloody miracle. Of course, the me you knew before

is less available. She is keeping herself alive

and awake.

She is salt bathing and

forest walking and turning off her phone.

She is learning herself

and teaching herself piano. See the headlines.

See the persistent, awful news,

see the updates no one wants to hear or know about.

See the numbers - have you seen the numbers?

See the terrorists they will never call terrorists.

See the telling dark of the system.

See my beautiful body; offensive. My gleaming skin;

a problem. Who can still be themselves these days?

Isn’t the self a fine art composite,

an odd mosaic

a strange and growing story?

I no longer have time to lie to you.

*To be used when people expect you to still be the same and to still be doing all the taxing, unnecessary things that you were doing before, but you’re a shifting work in progress, and you wake up and know something is different and you know that thing is you. Sometimes, the right things shift in the night. You have emerged altered and surer with new intentions. Today is a New Day. You are beginning to see things for what they are and what they are becoming, and now you think twice about who has access to you and who you will allow to question you because, honestly, you have always deserved more.

© Yrsa Daley-Ward & The Josh Craig 2024

"I might have said this already, but think I’ve said most things already."

"I try to treat myself like I’d treat a lover. Or a parent."

"Oh, what does it all mean, anyway?"

POEMS -

SOBERCAKE

KIN

THE ROAR OF PATHS UNTAKEN IN THE ORANGE PEACE OF DUSK

IT HAPPENS WITHOUT

WE SHUDDER TO THINK

THINGS YOU WAKE UP TO AT THE EDGE OF THE YEAR

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be history

one day even this will be…

my long answer to the following;

I find your poetry very raw and moving, lyrical yet not what one would expect to find in literary journals. My question is, did you have to get published in many journals and make your way up to publishing? if not, how did you first get published/noticed?

More questions for the utter?

Dear friend,

* You have waited so long that waiting has become a home state, the place where you landed and took root.

* This place, where you have set down your life, does not care for you at all.

* What looks like safety might kill you.

* You keep looking for permission outside of yourself, but there will never be enough.

* You have thought yourself out of too many life-changing ideas. This is a criminal act, mostly born of fear.

* Life must only grow, gathering shape, gathering depth.

* You are not the only one. I, too, have thought myself out of several beautiful portals.

* Some of them were lost; they danced into the ether.

* Some of them were carried out beautifully, just not by me.

* We all forget ourselves, but this should not comfort you.

* It is time for us to cease this second-guessing. It is time-consuming, heart-consuming.

* Action is the best permission; grow on the job.

* Treat your passions like lovers. Fall into them often and with excitement.

* If you are bothered by someone else’s achievements,

consider why you think of success as a finite thing.

* This line of thought is a warning sign. Why does their having it mean that you cannot?

* Adjust your thinking before we move any further. There is enough to go around. There is more than enough to go around.

* ‘Success’ is catching. Make friends who inspire you. Make friends who are doing the thing you love.

* Take a lesson from everyone. Yes, everyone. When you disregard people for one reason or another, you are missing the point.

* Frequency is a powerful and absolute force. Vibration is a language. Learn to work with it.

* What you need is in every place, in multitudes.

lie to me again

the middle finger poem

there you are again

look at all our stunning work

Did you know that you can study the body by taking the time,

by making notes?

Do you know you can begin to regulate? Do you know that no one knows your body more? So, with all this in mind,

imagine you paid attention. This is a lifetime of learning. Imagine you knew how best to nourish your mind

(the place where your future is made.) Imagine you gave your body more of the things that it needs to flourish. Imagine you knew more about what to keep and what to let go of. This is a lifetime of learning. Imagine you started to notice and really learn your body;

the way that we learn the things that we love? What if you changed some of your questioning?

Not what do I think about this, but

what do I feel?

Not what must I do about this, but

where might I begin to find myself?

What are the sensations happening in your body?

In what situations do they come about? Where is the truth showing up

over and over and over again? When do you recede, and where do you contract? When do you expand and make the most of yourself?

Not why, but

where does it hurt? Furthermore,

what do you continue to put in your body that continues to harm your body? How much can a body take? How are you masking the truth of your body

over and over and over again? How are you blocking your messages?

Could you be more of a friend to yourself?

When the feeling comes,

when the discomfort is there,

how does it feel to sit inside it? Where is the thing that hurts?

Before we know why

we have to locate it. Before we begin to look for the solution/fix/release, we have

to locate it.

Where was the pattern formed? Where does the pattern begin? What are you repeating

over and over and over

again? Where is the disconnect? What is this tightening, this stitch, this ache, this will not go away, this breathlessness, this stiffening? Where is the thing, and how might you begin

to channel it elsewhere?

The difference between anxiety and excitement is you. Your perception, your projections, your distrust. You. You need new things.

We need new tools, new ways of working it through. We need new pathways from our memories to here. We need new systems, new responses to the things that were and are

and are no more.

The first thing to do is to feel.

READING…

HOW TO MISS YOUR LIFE EVEN AS IT’S HAPPENING

I KNOW WHAT WORKS (BUT THAT’S NOT THE POINT)

11.11

THERE ARE ENOUGH TERRIBLE THINGS

HACKS FOR EVERYDAY MAGIC

THE GRIME IS FULL OF NUTRIENTS

ily

❤️🌺✨🥰😊🥹

the utter is a completely reader-supported publication. You all know that I appreciate you so very much already. To support my work (receive all posts in their entirety, listen to my voice note ramblings, watch my video rants), consider becoming a paid subscriber at just $5 a month. It’ll be worth it. Promise.

your beat-up fingers,

your peppercorns,

the ice in your eye

 the way that you move

like a warning,

I think.  

Anyway. It was that time

against the backdrop of trees

the russet sky,

the houses built like half promises on rocks

when I started to get wise.

                                            There was drama

going on, inland.  A thin sliver of moon

wet oil on the ground,

white flowers in June.  

Your phone rang.                         You looked at it

                                                    and then at me. There was a shadow around

your head. I felt the thing we try not to feel.

It is a difficult time

for loving. Apparently, anything goes.

No one is allowed to dissolve

in public. We rent each other’s beds

for weeks and weeks and weeks

with nothing to show for it at the very end

but dirt underneath our nails.

I am still gasping, even today

for one I treated poorly.

They told me they

wished me

all the best

in the softest, most devastating way.

Note: half listened to this and cringed as always, but in the season and spirit of authenticity, here’s my ramble in its choppy unedited form

Also, talk to me. How are you feeling this December?

As promised, here is the link to last year’s post about this time of year

POEMS

YOU ARE A FOUR LETTER WORD No one will ever convince me that houses are not alive. Your house always looked like it was smiling. Your bedroom would often try to kill me. I will tell them your name. No. I won't tell them your name. It doesn't matter now anyway, or you matter too much. I am still taking your phone calls and wondering why. I tell my friends that I don't think of you. I really want to mean it. You have a dog and a wife with a kid and two cars and a garden. You call me to tell me you love me when everyone's sleeping. You are a four-letter word and you're not to be trusted. I still want you, or I still want to win. I wish we'd never met. YOU’D BETTER WATCH WHAT YOU ARE SAYING THE THINGS THAT YOU ARE SAYING ARE CHANGING YOUR LIFE. THE THINGS THAT YOU ARE SAYING ARE BIRTHING THINGS AND RAISING THINGS AND KILLING THINGS DEAD. THEY MAKE LARGE THINGS OUT OF SMALL THINGS, DANGER OUT OF THE UNKNOWN, MOVEMENT OUT OF DORMANT, RESTING POTENTIAL. THIS IS HOW YOU BUILD YOUR HOUSE AND THIS IS HOW THE HOUSE FORMS, THRIVING OR STRUGGLING. ACCORDING TO LANGUAGE. LOVERS AND OTHER PROBLEMS It was almost summer. I saw you and I thought you were the perfect medicine. I thought you’d help me live. We nearly killed each other trying. Or, we nearly killed ourselves trying. Of course it didn’t work. When you are this mad about a thing, it has to leave you. You have to be shown how much you need yourself, instead. There were good things, too, you always say. Things we miss each time that we review this. You, after our tenth misunderstanding wordlessly ironing my trousers. Me so caught up with thoughts of you I could never really eat. After the fight in Santa Monica we fell asleep blind drunk, holding hands like baby dolls. But were those good things? They were badly done, but they felt just right. The last time I came to you, I was hoping for something new. I boarded a plane and I prayed for the most. You were not there. Then I was not there. We have always been mirrors of each other’s best and most horrible work. I can’t come back from the things that were felt, but I love you. Someone else will love you more. IT’S LIKE THAT Friend, you have misunderstood me and likely I have misunderstood you. There is too much smoke here from long ago that we carried with us. Our air is old here. Hot. Wet-thick with dust. We could have been clearer with one another if there had been trust. But staying was harder. (We weren't taught to stay.) So go we must.

from today’s reading….

1. the middle finger poem

2. how to miss your life (even as it’s happening)

3. poetry, from ‘bone.’

4. when it is it but it ain’t, from ‘bone.’

5. we’ll be fine

6. untitled

7. you have to break, take breaks, or both.

“What is life without bruising to show for it?

What is the universe without the existential question? I still have the markings from all my best days.

I still have the stories from all the big nights.”

Love you all, Happy Friday!!!!!

“Sometimes I really don’t know about this.

There are so many things that make the world

unsafe, and so much that makes it wonderful

and all of them are true.

True like flowers. Soil. War.

True like ice, until it isn’t. True like water, until it isn’t.

True like us. Until we aren’t.”

You wake, your weather against your window your thoughts against yourself. Last night was triumphant in its way, you should have been there. God, you should have been there. There were glittering scenes everywhere; rain fell, people bloomed, wore black and blues, saw their reflections suddenly, shouted, left home, fell in love with somewhere else. Did you stay around to be part of it? This is the thing, you can always choose the story. If the ending is wrong, you can build it again. If only we understood the power of the pen, how we write ourselves into being, how we keep on crafting truth. I wish we understood that our words are wishes, cast. I wish we understood that our lives are built from thoughts. Old practiced tunnels hardening around us. How long will you hold yourself away from the things that are calling, anyway? All of the bright, all of the necessary. Thing that would bump the colour of it all, things that would wash you brilliant, things that you dare not seek. There was a time you might have dared. Do not lose it to history. Anyway, that much is impossible. Nothing you have loved, made sense of, come to awful terms with, accepted, raged against, no time you have spent, nothing you had (or thought you had) is ever truly lost. Yes, I'm looking at you. I only say it because I love you.

With all my love,

to every single one of you xxxx

thoughts from the dark coming into the light.

IT’S !! ASK THE UTTER ON FRIDAY!

GOT QUESTIONS?

 this is where you ask them.

I see you and I recognize your fear. You see me and you understand mine. We are accustomed to its moving shapes and many sounds and we have been living among each other for too long to not understand that we have them in common. Though our specifics vary, our fears are family. When we open our mouths to speak, fear scratches at our throats, and then it is carelessly present, turning the air a grim and unremarkable colour. This is why there are times that we avoid each other. You remind me of myself— of my uncertainty and anxiety and all the other painful things that I’m afraid to look at. When I catch your eye, I am often alarmed at my own tender reflection.

Fear itself is hardly the enemy. Fear is, in fact, an excellent indicator of where we are and what we believe to be true. It is too much to watch it at work sometimes. It’s uncomfortable to see the fear escaping our lips, reverberating in the space between us. It is obscuring our view and everything about our lives. And I am tired— and are you tired?

Every single day of our lives, we are sold “remedies.” We are sold all these urgent methods to disguise the fear. So many that we get confused. So many that our heads are spinning, and we can’t tell our own thoughts from those that are coming from outside. You can’t see what you want to do. I can’t tell what I want to be or care about. Wherever we go, TV and books and advertisements shout out what to do to conquer this fear, what to do to feel more alive. HOW to be good. How to be better. How to survive. How to stay in charge and inside of your body. How to feed and preserve your body. How to dress your body and sell it. How to succeed, leaving others behind in the dust.

These hows and how-tos are everywhere we look, in every place of retail, fitness, worship, and entertainment. These hows are flexible and glossy, know how to live, and keep getting all of our money. They tell us exactly what to buy, and where to buy it. They sound like promises and they look like lifelines. We are obsessed with them because they are flawless and stylish, fitter and cleaner than us, highly curated, and frighteningly relevant. They are political. They do superior activism, think critically, have wonderful social lives, and they know how to organize. We see pictures of them on their backs in impossible, sun-filled locations. They succeed and prosper, while the rest of us are simply getting by. Just.

They look just like us; that’s the problem. These hows are extremely vulnerable when it pays to be, and tremendously private. Perhaps they bought the house you have always wanted, perhaps they have the partner of your dreams. They are saintly and sexy with hidden limits. They are oh so perfect, and of course, they are a lie.

These hows will evade you, and they are built to do so; to keep you on the outside looking in, impressionable and wanting. They are so loud and fast and distracting that it is impossible to keep up. Every so often you think you find a way into them, but in a matter of time, you are lost. 

In a world so filled with voice, how to ever be sure of your own?

We are drowning in so many hows that we cannot find ourselves;

and when all we are told is that we do not know how,

all that we feel is weight. 

LOSE WEIGHT NOW GAIN MORE OF YOURSELF BUT IN ALL THE RIGHT PLACES BE IN THE MOMENT PLAN FOR YOUR FUTURE GET MONEY AND THINGS STAY FIT KEEP YOUR BODY TIGHT BE LOOSE HAVE SEX FIND A RELATIONSHIP DISTRACT YOURSELF KICK THE HABIT LOOK YOUNG AND SMOOTH GROW OLD GRACEFULLY LOOK HOT ALL THE TIME LOOK AS THOUGH LOOKING HOT JUST HAPPENS TO YOU NATURALLY AND WITH NO APPARENT EFFORT BE UNIMPRESSED BUT POSITIVE DON’T CARE TOO MUCH BUT CARE ENOUGH TO BE A WORTHY HUMAN BEING BE RADICAL NOT PREACHY HAVE STRONG POLITICAL OPINIONS BUT REMAIN MALLEABLE ENOUGH TO PUT THEM ASIDE FOR THE NEXT MORE PERTINENT CAUSE BE OUTRAGED (BUT DON’T BITE THE HAND THAT FEEDS) BE CONFIDENT AND HUMBLE OUTSPOKEN BUT ON‑BRAND RADICAL AND WARY NO‑NONSENSE BUT SPECULATIVE REMAIN OPEN TO THE PEOPLE WHO KNOW MORE ABOUT IT THAN YOU OF WHICH THERE ARE MANY CANCEL THOSE WHO ARE TOO SLOW ON THEIR JOURNEY TO KEEP UP WITH THE WORLD’S NEW AND EVOLVING KNOWLEDGE WORK HARD AND OF COURSE TAKE IT EASY 

(ii)

We have absorbed so much of the outside. It is a mass to unlearn, a voyage back to centre. When you go to list your dreams, do you draw a blank? 

By and large, over time, we have talked ourselves out of what we really want. Why do we do this? Why do we talk ourselves out of our great ideas?

It begins early. As we grow, we are told that the things we want are impossible. We start to believe that what we dream of does not exist. “Who do you think you are?” our circumstances scream, as they whip us into shape.

We can hardly blame those who raise us. They do their best with what they have been taught by the people who raised them, imposing their rules, standards, and ways of living. We inherit these ideas, to a fault. We learn to be realistic and sensible, and we travel far from our imaginations. We grow, afraid to ask for those vivid, forgotten things: the things that we honestly desire. Instead, we focus on what we think we can get. The things that we end up settling for. We learn to be actors. We get used to hiding our true selves, and often, we erase our own memories, letting go of the deep wishes of the soul, abandoning what we already know. We leave ourselves behind— and, God, are we feeling it today.

Perhaps we do this because we need to survive. Perhaps we do this to ensure our safety and community, by fitting in with those around us, and their own expectations and limitations. In many environments, the safest thing to do with our bodies is to slip by unnoticed, to bloom under the radar, in secret. But secrecy has its limits.

Where can we get to, weighed down like this? How far can we travel, heavy?

We need air and light. We need a reflection of some sort; to be able to see ourselves. We need space to stretch our limbs and we need to be allowed to grow. Meaning we need to allow ourselves to grow. Meaning we will change along the way. To do so, we must first leave some things at the gate.

Perhaps we have to start by remembering the thing that it is human nature to forget. Before we are to hope for any one answer, we must know there is no answer beyond ourselves. Before we are to hope for the truth, we must know there are no truths but the ones that we arrive at on our own. Developing, powerful, ever-changing truths. No one has the code for anyone else. Their work is not your work. All of us are trying to get through the days with as little or as much as we think we have. Some of us feel close to giving up; some of us think we have plans. No plan is airtight, or even close. The universe will always send conditions as reminders. Light weather, strong weather, and strange things that flood the scene.

Nobody really knows much more about it than you. Not doctors, not teachers, not writers. Not people paid to coach and speak. We come for treatment, never the cure. There is no one cure, and we know it. 

We come to be reassured, to be seen and understood. We come to be soothed. To know that there are others in this mess too. We come to be sure that we are more alike than not. 

Pre-order THE HOW here (US AND WORLD)

Pre-order THE HOW here (UK)

YOU WRITE WHEN YOU NEED TO. YOU WRITE IT DOWN BECAUSE EVERYTHING HAS THE DAZZLING POTENTIAL TO TEACH, HEAL, BECOME WORK, BECOME ART. BECAUSE WHAT MEETS YOU ON THE PAGE WILL ALMOST CERTAINLY SURPRISE YOU. BECAUSE YOU WILL FIND NEW WAYS. THERE ARE ALWAYS NEW WAYS. BECAUSE IN WRITING WE CAN IMAGINE, TRANSFORM, INVENT INCREDIBLE AND NEVER‐ENDING ALTERNATIVES, DREAM THINGS UP. BECAUSE HERE YOU ENSURE THAT NOTHING WILL EVER TRULY BE LOST. AND IF THE WORDS FALL, THEY WILL REACH OUT INTO BETTER PLACES, AND WHEN THE WORDS FALL, THEY WILL DIVIDE AND LAND ON SOMEONE WHO NEEDS THEM EVEN MORE THAN YOU. BECAUSE HERE YOU ALLOW ALL YOUR EXPERIENCES TO BECOME USEFUL. BECAUSE WRITING AND SOLVING AND CREATING = ALCHEMY. BECAUSE YOU CAN NEUTRALIZE OLD, OLD THINGS THAT STILL BURN. BECAUSE WHEN YOU MAKE ART YOU PLACE YOURSELF IN A BLESSED STATE OF POWER, POWER TO CREATE, POWER TO CHANGE THE WORLD BY CHANGING HEARTS, POWER TO REACH OUT, POWER TO SUBVERT, POWER TO TELL THE TRUTH FOR ONCE, POWER TO BIRTH A NEW TRUTH, POWER TO BE IN LOVE WITH AN UNTAMED AND MOVING THING. POWER NOT TO BE WEIGHED DOWN BY WHAT HAS BEEN, WHAT ALMOST WAS, AND WHAT MIGHT NEVER BE. BECAUSE WHEN YOU WRITE YOU AWAKEN THE DEEP, ALL‐KNOWING POWER, THE CREATOR, THE EVER‐PRESENT NARRATOR. POWER TO CHANGE SHAPE, POWER TO DRAW OUT WHAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW WAS IN THE WAY. POWER TO BECOME. POWER TO KEEP ON BECOMING AND NEVER, EVER STOP. POETRY. POWER TO SPARK, LIGHT UP, SET ON UNYIELDING FIRE. POWER TO PUT IT OUT. POWER TO LET IT OUT AND LET GO. YOU MAKE IT BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T, WHO ELSE WILL? YOU WRITE IT BECAUSE IF YOU DON’T, WHERE DOES IT GO? WHAT BECOMES OF HIDDEN, MUTATING THINGS THAT ARE NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE THEIR DAY? WHAT BECOMES OF THE BRILLIANT THINGS LEFT ALONE AND UNFED? YOU WRITE IT DOWN, BECAUSE WHY NOT? WHY NOT NOW? IF NOT NOW, THEN WHEN? YOU WRITE IT. YOU HAVE TO. ONLY YOU KNOW WHY.”

recorded this morning over breakfast…

and

taken from my upcoming book, THE HOW, out 2nd Nov. Available for pre-order everywhere books are sold!

xxxxxx

THE HOW is available for pre-order everywhere books are sold.

* Kin

* (&4) Unsure as yet

* The other side of ‘love’ (also untitled)

* Find me in the morning

Thanks for listening! xxxx