Goodbye, Hello

Not the 'new year' post I had in mind

Vildgren “Wild Branch”

I have not written to my friends on Substack in a while.

That sentence has hovered in my mind for weeks, waiting for the right moment to land. Not because I needed a clever explanation, but because I wanted to tell the truth without rushing past it.

The truth is: the last month has been full of goodbyes. Some obvious and heartbreaking. Some quiet. Some I did not recognize as goodbyes until I was already on the other side of them.

There has been a lot to tend. Family things. Grief things. Administrative things that quietly drain the nervous system. Long days of holding complexity, uncertainty, and responsibility without much room left over for language. When life tightens like that, even the practices that usually sustain us can slip out of reach.

I did not stop believing in writing. I just needed it for myself before I could offer it to anyone else.

Recently, I returned to a short poem by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer, At First It All Felt Like Goodbye. Please click through to read the whole thing. The poem begins where many of us begin, in loss, in rupture, in the ache of something ending.

goodbye to plans and to laughter,
your clothes and your car. 

And then the poem turns.

Hello, love that still grows.
Hello as I rise, when I walk outside.
Hello, with my hands in the dirt, when I drive
the winding alpine divide

Not a shiny hello.
Not a solved hello.
Just an opening.

That turn has been staying with me.

January is often framed as a month of beginnings, but for many of us it is also a month of reckoning. Of naming what cannot come with us. Of acknowledging what has already slipped away. Sometimes the most honest way forward is to let both truths coexist.

So here is what I am holding right now.

Some goodbyes

Goodbye to the idea that I must always be consistent to be sincere.
Goodbye to forcing clarity before it has arrived.
Goodbye to rushing meaning when it wants to be approached slowly.

Goodbye to pretending that the world is not heavy, or that current events do not touch our bodies and lives. There are real harms unfolding. Real fear. Real grief. I do not want this space to become a battleground, but I also do not want it to become a place of avoidance. Writing, for me, has always been a way to stay human without becoming overwhelmed.

Some hellos

Hello to returning, imperfectly.
Hello to writing as refuge rather than output.
Hello to practices that help us metabolize what we are living through, one sentence at a time.

Hello to asking better questions instead of demanding better answers.

This is where Insight Writing® comes back into view for me.

I am turning to this practice not because everything is settled, but because it is not.

Because when life gets bumpy, when the ground shifts beneath us, meaning does not arrive fully formed. It arrives through attention. Through language. Through being willing to sit with a prompt long enough for something honest to surface.

Insight Writing has always been less about productivity and more about presence. A way to say: I am here. This is what I notice. This is what wants to be named.

I’m bringing back Insight Writing workshops.

But unlike before, these gatherings will be a monthly occurrence and just one of a many treasures included within a paid subscription here on Substack (and a scattering of free ones).

I won’t make this a sales letter. This is simply me opening the door and saying: this group practice is alive again, and I am tending it with care.

If you are someone who has been carrying a lot, if you are searching for language that can hold complexity without collapsing into despair or certainty, if you are craving connection within your creative practice, this may be something to lean into when you are ready.

More information to follow in a separate message. For now, I want to offer you something simple.

A gentle practice

Take a few minutes this week to write two short lists.

One titled Goodbye.
One titled Hello.

Do not try to balance them. Do not judge what appears. Let each list be as long or as short as it needs to be. You are not declaring permanence. You are simply noticing what feels complete, and what feels newly possible.

This is not a performance.
It is a practice.

Yet, if you want to be seen, you may share some/all of your writing in the comments or send it just to me.

Thank you for being here, even in the pauses.
More soon.

xoxo