In the hot morass of Florida humidity, everything feels sweltering and stymied. But the skies …

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I sat down to write this Tuesday. I poured words into a journal, and a notes app, and notion, a few post-it notes, and finally, here. And it all felt like a tossed syllable salad.

So I…

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If we unfurled our grips, opened our fists, and decided we no longer carried the job description of duct-taping the universe together b…

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It was there I learned that beauty and scarcity, loss and abundance, hope and overwhelming heartbreak cou…

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I came prepared. Swimsuit. Towel. Goggles. Locker lock.

An aqua aerobics instructor calls out “mermaid tales” and I assume that’s an exercise for legs under the water as rows of ladies shift in their places.

It has been more than 15 years since I have swum a lap or exercised in the water. 

The morning is warm but the sun is not yet hot.

Suddenly, I am reminded why one of my nicknames was fish growing up. And why pools make Florida summers magical.

Being born without my left leg and having a mom who had been a professional water ballet swimmer in her day meant I learned to swim before I learned to walk. 

For many reasons, the pool became one of my safest places growing up.

It was the place I could be like everyone else and fully myself at the same time. Where I could swim, and dive, and race, and compete and float and know the water held me.

The water held me.

I have not so much looked at a pool since my mom’s passing over Mother’s Day 2020.  It was just too close to the ache of her absence.

The teenage lifeguard watches me from his perch. Yes, I could leave my crutches at the waters edge. 

She's a maniac, maniac on the floor
And she's dancing like she's never danced before…

The water held me.

It can cut you like a knife, if the gift becomes the fire
On a wire between will and what will be

The water held me.

Then it dawned on me that my mom swam this very lane and took this same aqua class 20 years ago and somehow time condensed and the water became arms and the sunlight her smile.

Sometimes the holiest moments come when we least expect them.

The water held me.

And I could almost hear the laughter of a decade of poolside summers ripple towards me from my childhood.

I duck under the water’s surface because the lifeguard was watching me stand oddly still beneath his tall red chair.

I was grateful no one would think twice about my streaming wet face.

As I began swimming, I soon found out my lungs forgot how to hold a sustained breath and my arms forgot how to move except as discombobulated rusty windmills that could barely manage three quarters of a rotation.

But still the water held me. In all my shortcomings. Welcomed me in all my weakness. Surrounded me with stillness.

I swam close to the edge of the pool alternating between a haphazard doggie paddle and a half-remembered frog crawl.

I would choose to start back swimming laps in an actual Olympic sized pool used by real competitive swim teams.

She’s a maniac…

But I forgot how light I felt in water.  Focus on how amazing it felt to move this body forward with all its challenges and quirks and extra special details.

…maniac…

My lungs slowly began to remember how to expand and hold on to a short breath by the end of the hour.

Don’t fight the water. Let the water carry you.

You don’t have to attack it. Let it surround you. 

Don’t gulp air. One steady breath. That’s all you need.

You aren’t free-diving in 3 inches of water.  You don’t have to hold your breath like there will be no more air when you surface.

Your arms don’t have to chop the water like it’s an opponent in a karate match.

The water is not something to be subdued.

Let the resistance of its molecules move you.

And when you are tired, turn, lean back… and just float.

That was one of the first thing mom taught me. How to float and make friends with the water.

All in all today I managed 6 faltering Olympic-sized laps sans floatation in an hour and a solid ten minutes of deep water treading.

I think that’s a pretty decent start. I can’t swim like I used to. But I can swim differently.  And every stroke reaching through the water moves me forward.

Swimming is a lot like creating, and creativity a pool.

Creativity can carry us. We can lean into it. We can learn rhythms to move through it.

We can learn to breathe in time with its strokes.

Creativity is an embodied experience, a baptism into joy and mystery and hope and wonder.

They all say she's crazy
Locking rhythms to the beat of her heart
Changing movement into light
She has danced into the danger zone
When the dancer becomes the dance.

Creativity surrounds and envelops and holds us.  It shapes us as we stretch our arms towards the unknown and invites us to kick our feet to the rhythm of our own heart beat.

And when our energy is spent, the days are long, and we feel like there’s nothing left to give...  We can simply face the sky and float.

Cheering you on friends. Always.

Imagine an island just off the English coast. Its residents can walk or drive to the mainland shore when the tide goes out, but when it comes back in, they are surrounded and held by …

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Put the pen down. Breathe.

Look at the words already written. Breathe again.

Pick up the pen. F…

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I’m not quite sure how this happened, but somehow I turned off commenting unintentionally at some point in recent weeks. 🥴

My apol…

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Putting the gloves 🥊 🥊 on and duking…

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Two months of preparation. Two weeks w…

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Dear Creatives,

Sometimes life speeds up so fast it feels like we are always running but never able to catch up. Or is that just me?

The noise around can feel deafening. Especially for me, with ongoin…

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If you’ve ever considered making your art something you sell even just to family, wow it can play all sorts of head games. I mean… that could just be me talking as the queen of overthi…

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On a day that can be, well, complicated for so many of us— I wanted to write a love letter we can send to ourselves.

But first, I am so, so, so grateful you are here. Each morning, I w…

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The need to be consistent could be killing your creativity and stifling your strength.

We are told by so many that to be “good enough” or to be successful, we have to first be consisten…

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You, my friend, are an artist. Even if you don’t know it yet. Even if you have never picked up a paintbrush or doodled in the corner of your class notes.

Gosh, these last few days have…

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Are we really halfway through January? It feels like I barely blinked. Except with one eye. And then that repeatedly. 🤨

I’m reminding myself that it’s OK to have a bajillion dreams and…

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It's the last place I feel like I knew who I was. I landed back in the USA with my health in shambles and my dreams in shards …

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Language is power. It has the power to shape us and make us and also break us. Some of the most consequential words are the ones we learn to speak to ourselves. The words we internalize that become…

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