From 2005 to 2020, I lived TV-free outside the reach of endless news cycles, relentless advertising, opinionated drivel, and the quicksand of bingeable streaming series. It was quiet bliss.

But then came the pandemic. The world felt like it was lurching off its axis and staying on top of the news felt like a survival necessity. My parents had just died and I was confined to my house because of being extremely medically vulnerable in a state whose policies favored political hubris over public health.

The black box hanging on my wall became, for a time, my window to the world outside my home. It was imperfect, but good God I needed to stream Harry Potter, Sister Act, and comfort shows on repeat to make the solitary confinement feel less solitary. This TV was quite talented. It played Spotify, became an endless babbling brook, and looked like art in a frame when I wasn’t watching it.

What I didn’t see because it crept over so slowly was the hold it was taking over my attention. Netflix autostreamed and “just one more episode” became “what’s the newest series?” The headlines got louder and the YouTube videos longer. My time and focus were being sucked into a virtual black hole on my wall.

Six years later, between the TV and my phone, my attention started feeling like it stopped belonging to me. And I utterly refuse to cede my attentional agency to an algorithm controlled by billionaires.

So many times I thought of ripping the TV off the wall entirely. But it has some genuinely lovely uses when kept in its place. After all, the issue really isn’t the TV—it’s my relationship with it.

Yesterday I hung a rod with a handmade quilt draped over it that tucked the TV behind a kaleidoscope of patchwork colors. I disconnected the cords and put them in a basket with the remote up on a shelf. I’m not anti-TV—I love a good movie night, maybe a little too much. But…

I want my intention to determine my attention.

I don’t have to live inside an algorithm. Neither do you. I’m the boss of my focus and my time, and I’m fully committed to putting as much friction as necessary between impulse and action to keep it that way.

For the next 90 days, I'm conducting a simple experiment: less television when I could be reading, less scrolling when I should be sleeping, and less consumption simply because I'm bored.

I’m calling it My Summer of Less. I really look forward to documenting what I learn through the experience here, as well as sharing some deep-dive essays from my research around the insights it surfaces.

More of what matters, less of everything else.

I can tell you this much already… The quilt covering my TV made the living side of my house instantly calmer, and me with it. I slept better than I have in eons.

What's competing for your attention right now? What do you want more of this summer? And what's one small piece of friction you could add between impulse and action to help make that happen?

📔 In case you missed it…

✨ Our summer book club starts this week!

We are doing something new with our paid subscriber community—our first-ever book club! In the month of June, we will be reading Sue Monk Kidd’s newest book, Writing, Creativity, and the Soul together as a community. If you are able, I’d love for you to join us!

Each week I’ll send my reflections from our reading during the week along with some discussion questions. Then at the end of the month, we’ll gather on Zoom to connect live.

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I’m so excited. If all goes well, we might add this as a regular rotating feature!

It is a joy to kick off summer here with you.

I’m so grateful for you being here. For your comments and support and restacks… and all the ways you are pivotal in building this community together.

Love from the bottom of my heart,

P.S. Let me know if you try your own version of a Summer of Less. Or if you have questions about it. I’m also sharing video thoughts on the journey over on Instagram if you are there.

I always love a “Give Jesus a chance. He died for the opportunity” license plate frame on a large SUV as it barrels down, practically pushing my car out of its way so it can take my place. Congratulations, you gained 3 whole feet.

As I sat there, NPR replayed Terry Gross’s 2016 interview with Stephen Colbert. (I already miss his opening monologues.) They were talking about his first years in the Ed Sullivan Theater. Stephen explained that, at first, he thought he needed Broadway energy to fill the space: high kicks and all. It was, after all, a literal Broadway stage.

But then, as he settled into the role, he began to realize that he didn’t need main-character high-kick energy to fill a gigantic space. Authentic presence was just as powerful, maybe more.

I turned the radio off, sat in traffic, and cried. Perhaps I’ve just been trying too hard here. Dandelions fill fields just by being themselves and letting the wind carry their seeds.

I’ve been quieter because things have been rearranging beneath the surface. In some ways, I think I’ve been trying to figure out the right high-kick routine to keep this space growing, when everything in me simply wants to write you letters and stories. Hot takes and hopeful rants about living with wonder in an age of algorithms. Messy confessions from the middle of my gloriously imperfect humanity. Big observations after leaving decades of leadership inside high-control religious ecosystems and living with chronic pain. Musings on creativity while currently in a creative rut.

I know some of you came initially for creative prompts and challenges. They have always been a part of the vision for this space, and they were the part that took off—in stunning ways. I am so grateful for that.

But this writer has ink in her marrow. And deep determination in her soul to use her words and time on this earth to create a space where wonder is a path back to ourselves and one another in a distracted, divided, and disconnected world.

We’ve never needed wonder more—not as a glowing aesthetic, but as a way of remaining human inside systems designed to fracture our attention and optimize our worth.

We need voices that name our griefs and guide us back to the joy that lives alongside them.

We need friends who offer strength when we cannot fathom taking even one more step. I hope I can be that here for you.

As for the proverbial elephant in the room… I hear from many places, “Now don’t be political. You’ll lose people.” Here’s the deal. You will probably never see me with a decision board breaking down election odds unless I was drawing on it. Not my lane. I’m going to leave government and political analysis to the pros like , , and .

But wonder is political. Creativity is political. Living in a disabled, female body in the state of Florida in 2026 is very political. Medical access is political.

You might occasionally see my spicy side because I am all in for team human decency, and I’m done tiptoeing. I firmly believe Christian nationalism undermines both the love of Christ and democratic freedom. I don’t say that as an outsider. I say that as someone who spent almost 20 years of her professional life inside those systems before leaving in 2013.

The gold SUV with a platitude plate frame sped between lanes ahead of me. I let out the deep breath-breath-sigh that settles your nervous system.

And I kept thinking: Wonder and whimsy change things, because they change us.

We may be living through a time of profound uncertainty. But that doesn’t mean we have to navigate it alone.

I’m exhausted by internet gurus and living in a culture where visibility is mistaken for expertise. Maybe you are too.

I’m not entirely sure what the road ahead will look like. But I know I want it to be curious, alive, and filled with honest stories and audacious hope, belly laughs, and, yes, creative community. Things that celebrate what is good and kind, without looking away from the things that are not.

And I believe down to my mitochondria that love will outlast all of this.

We will find our way forward together.

I am so glad you’re here.

All my love,

This week felt like it blew in creative fits and squalls. I was either living inside my thoughts or chasing them like a Texas tumbleweed in a spring storm.

I’ve been thinking a lot about consistency this week. Maybe it’s because we are nearing the end of our 100-Day Project. Perhaps it’s because I’m working on a longform writing project that is both feeding my soul and demanding I feed my soul more so I have what I need to write.

I can’t give what I do not have. The words that hold weight are the words that become real in me.

I am constantly fighting my way through the noise of this season. It is a difficult thing to maintain focus when the very system you escaped is now shaping public life around you in profound ways that keep every last nerve cell you have on perpetual high alert.

So I’ve been thinking of consistency. A lot. Primarily my lack of it.

Our Week 13-15 Prompts ⬇️

Because May is so busy leading into summer, I went ahead and added the rest of the 100 Days of Wonder prompts so you have them when you are ready.

This is what has caught my imagination ⬇️

What if the consistency of repetition matters far less than the consistency of the kind of substance that makes up the soul and story of our creative work?

When I hear the word consistency, I immediately think of streaks. How many days did you read? How many times a week did you walk? Did you show up every day? And I’m not saying there is no value there.

We absolutely need to show up for ourselves and our creative dreams.

But what if it is less about flawless repetition and more about focused composition, less about activity and more about authenticity?

What might happen if we shifted the way we defined consistency in our creative practice from the quantity of our execution to the quality of what winds up being executed?

You don’t need to optimize everything. Your creativity isn’t a machine. It’s a work of heart.

I think there is something powerful waiting to be explored here. Keep an eye out because I plan to do just that.

Love from the bottom of my heart,

This week has been a time of revisiting things. Revisiting loss. The kind that claws at the inside of your breast breast bone and kicks against your rib cage longing to break free. Revisiting love. The kind that seeps into your DNA and rearranges it so you can never be the same.

When things get hard, I lean harder on whimsy and wonder. I sometimes imagine them as Anne Shirley and Luna Lovegood wandering arm-in-arm in an enchanted forest where the trees tell stories and grow stars in their branches.

Whimsy isn’t abstract. It all but demands to be embodied in the real world. I think that’s why I love Anne Shirley so much. I was a 9 when Megan Follows made her debut in the beloved Anne of Green Gables. My mom almost didn’t let me watch it because she was afraid it would give me even more ideas than I already had.

Yes, I was the child who read under her blanket and got scolded for bringing Nancy Drew to the dinner table. The lake of shining waters and the depths of despair became permanent parts of my vocabulary. And I began to recite poetry out loud because I loved how the words felt when I said them. To be fair, my mama was pretty dang whimsical herself.

Our Week 12 Prompts ⬇️

If you are new, here are the links for the rest of the 100-day prompts so far: https://wonder.dmicheleperry.com/t/100-days-of-wonder-2026

More recently, I’ve thought of the powerful agency whimsy gives us as having 4 domains—like the 4 leaves of the clover. 🍀

• TEND: Embracing tiny ways to add care in my everyday, very ordinary life.

• ROOT: Connecting to what grounds, anchors, and nurtures me

• PLAY: Making and exploring all the corners of my creative practice without pressure.

• GROW: Developing my inner world. Leaning into writing, learning, and reflection.

Here are 4 images that share some main ways I whimsify my real-life world. I find it so helpful to have a starting place.

And every so often I still tilt my head to one side and think… what would Anne Shirley do in a situation like this?

I’m so incredibly grateful for you being here. For your comments and support and restacks… and all the ways you are pivotal in building this community together.

Love from the bottom of my heart,

Coming to our Prompt & Ponder members this week:

• Our first studio storytime video and coffee chat where I dive into more of my story and why I find whimsy so powerful.

• The audio version of me reading On grief, gardening, & what it means to come alive.

• A few hand selected visual reference images for creative inspiration.

• Our subscriber chat where we share what we’re working on!

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My backyard went feral this last year. A little like my soul, filled with the dried remains of what once thrived, after over a year of sickness kept me weak and in bed. I’m digging us both out this spring. We will find our roots again together.

It does not escape me that the week I finally begin ripping out the remains of my garden is also a week forever intertwined with pain, grief, and loss. And maybe, just maybe, this is the year I can sit with them as friends and teachers instead of enemies.

Six years ago my mom was beginning the final few days of her life. Cancer was finally finishing what it started. And I was caught in the gales of a grief so elemental I thought my heart would be shredded by its fury.

When someone died in Sudan, the village gathered to wail and pound their pain into drumbeats that lasted all night long… sometimes going on for days. It was raw, wild, and primal. I didn’t get it then because I still existed in a system that gave grief tidy edges and banished it to greeting cards.

We used to have rituals that gave us sacred containers for our loss and pain. Some places still have them. But I find myself now in a land that tends to reduce grief to a social media post. And the few places that hold the literal weight of my loss, I have not been able to bring myself to visit.

This Friday I will be seeing my parents graves for the first time since my mom passed six years ago. Another family member is being laid to rest there, and while everything in me wants to run, I know I need to be there. For my cousins, but also for me.

Grief isn’t the enemy. It’s not a cosmic boogeyman. It is the thing that lets you know how deep your love runs.

This post landed on my Instagram feed today. I hope it offers you the same strength it did me.

When we aren’t allowed to fully, deeply grieve, something deep in us begins to die. Maybe that’s part of what’s wrong in our world. We are carrying years of unprocessed loss and calling it strength. I’m learning that when I don’t pour myself out on a page, that loss gets lodged in my bones and metastasizes in my cells.

What if the very pain we are avoiding means we are also avoiding what it means to live fully alive? And all the pious, frantic bypassing with our platitudes and social niceties just leads us farther away from ourselves—and one another.

When we shut down our grief, we shut down a core part of what makes us magnificently human.

For those of you familiar with the story, when Lazarus (Jesus’s friend) died, Jesus wept. There was no, “Oh, he’s in a better place. Don’t be sad. That sickness was so hard.” Jesus freaking wept.

In the evangelical world I came out of, sorrow was often side-eyed as weakness and empathy has been rebranded as sin. When the whole system is built on a core belief that the human heart is intrinsically deceptive and wicked, emotional growth tends to get stunted in profound ways. This comes with a tragic lack of language and resources for navigating complex feelings. Like grief. Stuff-and-buff (as in stuff your feelings and buff your facade) is not a healthy coping mechanism or path to wholeness.

In the early days after my mom died, I wondered if I would survive the loss. It felt like my world was being dismantled on the molecular level.

But grief left stretchmarks my soul because it was a womb, not a tomb. Its darkness was not the darkness of death, but the darkness that comes before the dawn. Grief was an umbilical cord tethering me to the goodness that remained. Its pain still helps me embrace new depths of being in the world that are fused with wonder.

So if Mother’s Day is complicated for you, or just straight up hard, please hear me… your pain is valid. Your loss deserves to be witnessed with deep compassion. You deserve to be seen and heard, loved and held, not fixed or placated.

I hope that this space can be one where we find the wonder that lives in our scars and stretchmarks, and where we can bravely be more beautifully, deeply human even in the middle of all the hard.

All my love,

There is a little patch of clover nestled along the short stretch of sidewalk from my cottage front door to the driveway. It has captured my imagination more than most things these days.

We are in one of the worst droughts in a century right now in North Florida. But this little patch is a bright audacious green in the midst of all the creeping brown.

I have a penchant for naming things. Possibly more like a compulsion to identify and whimsify the world around me. It’s a coping mechanism.

My car glints red sparkles in the sun and is named Ruby. My crutches are affectionately called Goodness and Mercy respectively, because they follow me all the days of my life and are strong enough to walk on.

Our Week 11 Prompts ⬇️

This week, after 10 years of living in her, I have finally named my Florida home and studio Cloverfield Cottage. It took a decade of living inside this space to find its true name. Some things just take time to become what they are.

Have you ever had an outfit that is almost right? It’s just a tiny bit tight in one spot and the buckle isn’t that noticeable… But it isn’t comfortable enough to relax confidently in. Friend, you have permission to change the things that no longer work for you or your creativity.

Decades ago I lived in Calcutta, India for a time. I got passably proficient in turning 6 yards of fabric into a sari that mostly stayed put with the help of safety pins. But on the corner of my street was a tailor where I had my salwar kameezes custom-made to size. He’d barely measure me when I dropped off fabric and 3 days later, I had perfectly fitting clothes. It was like magic.

If something isn’t fitting right now, maybe it’s because you have grown. Not because something is wrong. Growth and change are signs of being alive. You have permission to expand without shame.

The air hung swollen, pregnant with rains ready to be delivered. The dry season was bowing out with fits and bluster begrudgingly making way for the wet to come.

I watched the winds blow the first real cloud cover we had seen in months onto our evening horizon. How so much in my world in Africa spoke to me of the wonder and beauty found in the simplest moments.

I sat with the children on our compound in the fading light huddled together with bursts of giggles taking silly shots on my camera.

All at once my crutches went walking away without me in the confident clutches of our then almost-four-year-olds.

Everyone dissolved into laughter. I told them if they took my crutches, they would have to carry me. I think they strongly considered those comments a challenge. But I can only hop so far on one leg.

I watched them joyfully turn the crutches I lean on into picture frames for the kind of laughter that makes you gasp between gales of guffaws.

Could the very things that carry the weight of my frailty become a frame for deep-down, belly-clutching joy?

I can say now, 15 grueling, devastatingly beautiful years later, with complete conviction and utter certainty… How we embrace and frame our frailties might be the most important key for unlocking the depths of this kind of transformative joy that carries us.

My friend has one of the most powerful memoirs I have ever read about surviving medical trauma and heart breaking loss. It is filled with THIS deep, stubborn, tenacious joy that doesn’t bypass pain; rather, it finds its place of thriving right in the middle of it. I’ll be sharing more on my personal experience reading this gift during her book launch week. But click this banner to read more on her website and preorder her book. It holds special relevance for those of us living with chronic illness and pain.

Get the Place Between Our Pains

Also, I got the delight to design her book launch website. It was such an honor. Preorders are critical in the book world. So if you are interested and able, consider getting a copy. Plus this is the link to her gorgeous Substack:

So my friend, what is one frailty you have encountered this week that might be holding an unexpected invitation to wonder and joy?

What is your ordinary resilient clover patch blooming at your feet?

(This isn’t about faking it until you make it or toxic hype, both of which I am allergic to. It’s about finding those micro moments of goodness right in the middle of the things that are hard.)

I am so incredibly grateful for you being here. For your comments and support and restacks… and all the ways you are pivotal in building this community together.

Love from the bottom of my heart,

I’ve been writing mostly by hand these days. It helps my squirrel brain focus long enough to maybe catch thoughts long enough to record them.

I’ve been watching the ink seep and scratch lines across my paper. Copying phrases I love from what I’m reading. Notating the techniques used and how I might adapt them to my devices. Reading with pen and paper in hand helps me hold on to what captures my imagination. Otherwise my thoughts are more a game of catch and release.

Our Week 10 Prompts ⬇️

This week I’ve been thinking about longing. The kind that dares us to want more than we currently have words for. Sue Monk Kidd writes, “Longing is one of the most eloquent and insistent ways the soul speaks.”

Spending decades in certain corners of evangelicalism, longing was portrayed as dangerous, and so were souls, unless they were saved. It was drilled deep that our souls should not, must not be trusted or listened to. Soulish was sinful and 3 inches removed from evil.

I was trained to stifle and shush, shelve and shame the very way the deepest part of me communicated. Longing was only holy if it was to make myself less and shrink my becoming into something palatable to the system I was in.

So I often lived a life only partly alive and called it sacred. It was more a function of being scared than anything set apart. But there was a sacristy in my soul and it was filled with longings I didn’t even know were there. One of them was to live a life of creativity.

Please hear me. Your creativity is not a selfish pursuit.

Many of you here reading this are women. These things are often especially true for us. There is a culture that expects us to be perennial caretakers, frequently even to the point of shutdown.

Friend, you are allowed to be true to what’s in your heart and open the door to listen to the longings in your soul. They are there for a reason.

Too often creativity is framed as a frivolous “little” hobby that only gets validated when a certain measure of “success” is reached. There are moments I even frame it that way to myself.

You are worthy of taking up space on a page. You are worthy of being seen and heard. You do not need to shrink who you are. You are not too much, too loud, too emotional, too quiet, too opinionated, or too sensitive.

If you have to shave off parts of who you are to be “welcome” that isn’t actual belonging. Belonging is found in the places we are allowed to “be longing” and have those dreams celebrated and supported. People who are invested in controlling narratives simply are afraid of anyone who has the ability to change them.

So welcome to a life of leaning into longing as good and beautiful and holy. It holds keys to how we connect to our creativity and often shows up as curiosity that becomes the doorway into deeper wonder.

I’m going to leave last week’s quote here again because I simply have not moved on from it.

What are the things that bring you alive?

What is one thing you are curious to try? Who are the people in your world that see your longings and call them sacred? Where are the spaces you don’t have to be scared of getting it wrong?

Hopefully this space is one of them.

You are so very loved and I’m deeply grateful for you being here.

PS. I found this video unexpectedly really inspiring this week. It’s not my normal fare, but there are so many insights. Especially the segment with 82-year-old Dan from OK starting at 7:50 (I have his interview cued up in the link.)

Honestly, the flattening effect of short-form media crept up on me. I didn’t even realize it was happening until I tried to craft something longer than an Instagram caption. Suddenly structuring a thesis and stating my points felt more like high-altitude rock climbing than writing.

One of the ways I got my words back post-TBI was by studying copywriting. This discipline gave me tools to research and find the words that lived in my audience’s head—as well as my own. I will always be grateful for that.

But copywriting is often short, conversational, and crafted to be pithy, almost to a fault. It is designed to hook you, but it only dives deep enough to get you to take the next desired action. Scroll down the page. Click the button. You know what copywriting doesn’t do well at all? Write a spacious, engaging book with depth of soul. Literary writing is a completely different world.

Since embarking on this writing adventure, I have come face-to-face with my own verbal inadequacies. Writing has felt like an exercise in squeezing ink from a rock. For over a year I have stared at my screen willing words to come that have simply refused to enter the stage on cue. Rude. (But it’s not the word’s fault. Not really.)

I’ve been quieter here because I have been trying to find the way back to my literary voice. And I’ve had to deep dive into reclaiming my own attention just to write about the importance of… reclaiming our attention. 🤣

One of the most vital things I’ve done to get my attention back has been to return to what was once a daily anchor for me: reading physical books and writing by hand in a notebook. My life unfolded in page after page of handwritten journals, starting when I was 15 through my 30s in Africa.

But when I returned to the US in 2013, I stopped writing. It was a devastating move, and I no longer trusted my voice to have anything worth saying. Then came the brain injury that took my words. So for the last decade there have been only scant scribbles and spurts stretched across a very few notebooks.

Sue Monk Kidd writes, “Writing is more than creating language and story. It also involves the creation of self.”

It takes attention to create anything—especially your own becoming.

Personally, I would rather not live in a world of 30-second soundbites where my attention gets auctioned to the highest bidder. I’m going to venture maybe you don’t either.

I want to be crystal clear about the dynamics that are at play. We live in an economy that is built to extract our attention and keep us scrolling (and spending).

Reclaiming that attention may be simple, but that doesn’t mean it is easy. It is not one-and-done, a box we check off, or a level we attain. It is rather an ongoing practice and an intentional posture we maintain.

What Attention Is & Why It Is Vital, Especially in an Age of Algorithms

The English word attention is derived from the Latin root attentio, meaning to stretch towards, as in active mental effort or focused concentration. The word also came to mean care and consideration. Taking back my attention has been one of the most important and stretching things I have ever done—pun completely intended.

When our attention gets fragmented, we are literally being stretched thin. Attention has a finite capacity. It can be exhausted and fatigued. And, as such, it requires care to protect and replenish.

In addition to our feeds and algorithms, navigating this new landscape of AI-everything adds a level of complexity to things. Whether we recognize it or not, AI writing has become utterly pervasive and ubiquitous on the internet.1 It is woven into online advertising, emails, scripts for YouTube videos, social media accounts, and sadly, even some books. AI is dramatically scaling the amount of content we have to sift through online which adds even more strain to our attention resources.

In the days ahead, it will be increasingly vital to not only know how to steward our focus but also how to recognize AI content and manipulation. Our democracy, freedom, and sanity may very well depend on it.

How to Get Your Attention Back, Even If You Can’t Move to a Cottage in the Woods

If I am really honest, all of this makes a part of me want to hide in an almost off-grid cabin in the woods. It’s so tempting. But for the vast majority of us, myself included, that’s obviously not a sustainable reality. There are, however, things we can do to help move towards balance. These are some of the things I am currently finding most helpful.

📱 I deleted apps that either extracted my attention or exploited it for someone else’s profit. TikTok and Amazon were my first two to go. While I liked some content, the format of TikTok was horrible for my brain health and my nervous system. It just wasn’t worth it. Amazon got cut because it was too easy to spend money I didn’t need to be spending. I am not here to tell you to delete a specific app. I am here to suggest we need to recognize anything that is depleting and extracting our attention for someone else’s profit.

☕️ I have scroll-free mornings. I now read a physical book and write in a journal as I enjoy my coffee. I don’t check my phone until I have to use it to create for work. Also, I turn my phone screen to grayscale when I am not working. Have you ever tried doomscrolling social media in grayscale? It almost put me to sleep!

📖 Reading physical books and now writing in an actual notebook every day for journaling. Writing even a few lines each day is one of the most grounding things I can do because I am honoring my own presence as worthy to take up space on a page.

✅ Monotask, micro-blast, and take a nap. Sorry I had to make that rhyme. I work on one thing at a time and when I feel exceedingly stuck, I blast a sheet of paper (usually in my planner) with everything I think I need to get done in the smallest minutia possible. Things that feel so small I can’t not do at least some of them. Also, I take naps now!

📝 I created a custom focus mode on my phone named Hobbit Hole Mode that turns off every notification—including the badges (the number that appears on an app icon saying how many notifications you have). This let’s me disappear from the world while I write.

💻 I started writing in a program called Obsidian. It is a super stripped-down, free program that just lets me write and organize my thoughts old school. It is analog-adjacent, which means it lives on my actual device with no cloud-based anything or subscription. Of course I have to manually back up everything, but that’s sweetly nostalgic. It returns me to the days of writing in Africa with a kerosene lantern and waning laptop battery.

Getting our attention back is about emotional regulation far more than it is external restriction. Restrictions may offer immediate structure, but they often don’t last for the long term. Whereas internal regulation is what happens when we go on a journey to learn what is healthy for us and our needs. Some things might need to go altogether. Others primarily require boundaries. And these decisions vary vastly between individuals and even between different life seasons.

One thing remains clear. If we want to experience more wonder in our world, reclaiming our attention is a crucial element in being able to find it.

The kind of wonder we talk about here isn’t ethereal aesthetics. It’s about showing up and practicing the art of noticing, training our attention to begin to see the small moments of goodness and beauty that unfold around us every single day. Not as a way to escape or bypass hard realities, but rather as a resilience strategy to make it through them.

So my friend, what is your attention stretching you towards today?

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I’m so grateful you’re here.

PS. If this has been helpful please share and restack this to help grow our community. And if you like weekly creative prompts (as well as our extensive archives) and access to upcoming audio versions of me reading (and chatting about) some of my written posts, consider becoming a paid subscriber.

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If this is wobbly, it’s because I’m writing in a Benadryl-induced haze thanks to the prolific pine pollen coating every surface around my North Florida cottage. Something happened this week that was not on my 2026 bingo card…

A few days ago I noticed two screens in my soffits were disturbed. When I went to repair them, we found out there was a raccoon that had moved in. Given the time of year, likely she was a mama-to-be looking for a safe den.

A raccoon nursery… in my attic. 🦝 It sounds like a story book. So of course, I had to name her. Meet Rosie the Raccoon.

I see the world through the lens of metaphor. You might call it an occupational hazard of being a writer. When something completely unexpected happens (a la raccoon nursery in my attic), I pause to listen deeper to see if there might be a lesson waiting.

Allow me to share for a moment what incredible creatures raccoons are.

Raccoons explore the world with their hands. Their curiosity guides nearly everything they do. I suspect this masked mama might illustrate something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

When the world feels uncertain, curiosity becomes one of the most powerful ways to move forward.

Raccoons are the poster children for embodied curiosity.

I’m literally in the middle of researching and writing about curiosity for my book, and it turns out that Rosie could be this section’s mascot.

Raccoons “see” the world through touch. 2/3rds of a raccoon’s brain is dedicated to processing tactile information. When they “wash” their food, they are wetting down their hands to make them more sensitive to touch and thus gain additional information.

They rival primates in their intelligence. Raccoons can remember things for years and are capable of observational learning. That means they can learn things by watching other raccoons do them. They also practice trial-and-error adaptibility with high levels of problem-solving.

Raccoon mamas are fierce protectors of their babies. Male raccoons will find dens and destroy the young so the females will go back into heat. Which is why I’ve had to spend so much to secure the rest of my soffits. The mamas will also move the kits multiple times if necessary to keep them safe.

Raccoons exist in the liminal spaces on the edges of things between the wild and the human world. They move in the dark and twilight hours.

Raccoons investigate the unfamiliar and adapt accordingly. They explore overlooked spaces (like my attic) and inhabit the margins. The personification of resilience and persistence, raccoons look at a world of obstacles and keep finding alternate openings, unexpected shelters, and overlooked resources.

Rosie reminds us curiosity is a survival skill in an age of uncertainty.

All this goes even deeper. Raccoons are considered boundary walkers in some folklore story traditions. Boundary walkers are characters that teach us how to navigate complexity and can be considered an archetype of creativity.

Because they make sense of the world through touch, raccoons speak to me of the importance of embodied curiosity in a world of volatility, information overload, and chronic disconnection.

My relationship with my injured brain changed when I stopped railing at its deficits and leaned into curiosity. That didn’t mean I wasn’t frustrated. It just meant I allowed my frustration to be a cue for curiosity rather than contempt.

Curiosity is the first part of The Wonder Habit®’s wonder wheel. Because Curiosity is the entry point that makes Connection, Courage, Creativity, and Compassion possible.

The curiosity I am referring to in this context isn’t just intellectual or abstract. It is embodied exploration. It is tactile and adaptive. And it is a function of our attention being intentionally engaged rather than extracted by our screens.

Raccoons thrive because of their curiosity and investigation of apparent obstacles. They remind us that we can be shaped by the practice of leaning toward what we do not yet fully understand.

Curiosity is the refusal to let the surface of things be all we see. It reminds us to stop moving through life as if everything is already settled and the story we are living through written in stone. We don’t have to settle for the shape of things as they are.

Curiosity helps us reclaim both our agency and our attention in a timeline that wants to control both. And as such it is in itself an act of beautiful resistance.

Wonder is participatory, not passive. It doesn’t float down from the ceiling unsolicited. Wonder invites us to explore a bigger, better story. And that bigger story can be held in tiny moments where we let our curiosity unlock new ways of being in the world.

Case in point, my attic still needs to be repaired. Rosie’s relocation still costs a lot of money. As in $4000 a lot of money. It has been inconvenient and disruptive.

Wonder doesn’t pretend hard things aren’t hard. But the practice of wonder can change the way we see the world in the middle of hard things.

So that is why you find me turning Rosie into an adorable illustration. Why I did a deep dive into raccoon facts and folklore. I am relentlessly determined to excavate the good that is buried in the hard.

Anne Lamott famously said, “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.”

In seasons of instability, it is easy to cope by grasping for anything that feels like certainty. Even when that certainty is false or manipulative.

Psychologists call this the need for “cognitive closure.”1 Our brains do not like ambiguity. They interpret it as a threat signal.

When uncertainty rises, we are likely to seize the first plausible explanation we find, freeze that into a belief system, and resist new information. Cognitive researchers refer to this dynamic as “seizing and freezing.”

It can make us susceptible to misinformation, manipulation, rigid thinking, and increased polarization. Succinctly, it makes us easier to control.

The antidote? Cultivating curiosity. Because curiosity allows our brains to approach uncertainty rather than avoid it.

Instead of treating ambiguity purely as a threat, curiosity reframes the unknown as information to explore. Simply put, this activates learning circuits in our brain and keeps us thinking rather than reacting. Curiosity helps us refuse to flatten the world around us and reduce it to that which makes us most comfortable.

Curiosity feels like a vital part of being able to traverse our current landscape. Which is why I’m writing a book. 😉

Let me leave you with this:

What if the most stabilizing thing right now is not finding greater certainty but cultivating deeper curiosity?

Just like raccoons can see the world through their hands in the middle of the night, curiosity can help us find our way through the dark.

Here are two practical things to try.

• Instead of doomscrolling and numbing your feelings, practice curiosity by interviewing one big emotion like you are an investigative reporter. Grab your reporter’s notebook (or the back of an envelope) and ask that emotion questions. Where did it come from? What does it want you to know? Etc. Then answer your questions as that emotion.

• Curiosity isn’t an abstract intellectual exercise. Pick something to learn as a tactile learner. For example, instead of just studying about Monet in an art book, read his letters. Paint studies of his paintings. Take your art materials and find your Giverny.

So tell me, what are you curious about right now? In what ways has curiosity helped you move through challenges in the past?

Leave a comment

🪷 Some new things are blooming around here for spring…

I’m trying out a new Substack schedule for spring and I’m so excited to share more writing and encouragement with you throughout the week. And provide a space for greater connection.

Y’all KNOW I love a good prompt. But I am deeply aware prompts can feel like homework and in our current event timeline, we do not need one more thing to do or feel behind on. So here are the changes I’m experimenting with this spring in hopes of serving you better.

• Monday: A longer form essay like this one (Free)

• Wednesday: Wildcard mix of content (Free)

• Thursday: Reviving our #DearCreatives series. (Free)

• Saturday: 100 Days of Wonder content during the challenge (Free)

• Sunday: Prompt & Ponder, our paid weekly wonder drop that is a mix of wonder prompts, seasonal creative practices, the audio of me reading select essays from the week with impromptu commentary, a weekly community conversation post, and other periodic surprise downloadable goodies. (Paid)

It’s an ambitious schedule. But I’ve never been great at moderation. So in this case, I’m all in.

If this sounds good, please consider subscribing and sharing this to help me get the word out. I am so grateful you are here.

We all have a part to play in the days we are in. Helping you be more creative, feel less alone, find wonder every day is mine.

All my love

,

Several weeks ago I started a new medication to help my brain with its dopamine issues from my TBI in 2018.

After a few days on this med, I was whisked off to my local ER beneath some twirly lights because it caused my blood pressure to spike to 200/100+.

I am fine. My blood pressure came down. And needless to say, this drug has now joined a litany of others that fill 2 full pages in single-spaced 10-point font.

I got my hopes up that this time there might be an easy answer. But alas, there was not. And truthfully… I’m still navigating that.

Instead, I’ve been getting near-daily lessons on the need to be gentle with myself and steady my rhythms.

To find the supportive practices that help my brain’s dopamine issues in other ways.

Practices that are slower and harder and far more frustrating than having a pill do the heavy lifting.

I’ve been forced to slow down and lean hard into the handmade and tactile work of making and simplifying the world around me.

I’m currently creating my dream homestead apothecary pantry in my garage.

That’s a fancy, romantic, dopamine-inducing way to say I’m organizing my canned goods and cleaning out my closet. You can’t make nutritious food if you can’t find it.

My phone’s color now turns off at 8 PM. I promise Instagram is not nearly as engaging in grayscale. My digital shopping apps have been deleted or get turned off with the color and can only be accessed through enough hoops to qualify as a circus act.

When your brain is dopamine-starved, guardrails and steady routines become lifelines.

But I’m finding steady doesn’t mean stationary, stuck, or stagnant. It’s simply the ability to return to my center after I’ve been shaken.

Steadiness is not perfection. It’s about presence grounding us enough to get our footing for the next right step.

Steadiness is not the absence of uncertainty. Rather, it’s learning to breathe and swim inside of it.

Steady is resilient. It is about being rooted, not rigid.

In a world where things feel like they just keep spinning faster and are more disconnected than ever, steadiness is a survival skill.

In a time when digital automation and AI seem to be taking over so many spaces, I have found life in the crispy, silk-smooth pages of my Hobonichi planner.

As the internet becomes abuzz with productivity systems and 2026 planners, viral steals and deals, and so much noise, I’m writing in the quiet of the midnight hours.

Pouring words onto pages by hand in a growing stack of tattered and well-loved notebooks.

The more my brain forces me to make choices toward a gentler way of doing things, the more I become aware of how our productivity tech-bro culture is built on practices that do violence to our well-being.

This is especially true for those of us who have chronic health issues, spicy nervous systems, or caregiving responsibilities.

We are not machines to be calibrated with a set of optimal outputs.

I’m going to say that again. And yes, I’m going to bold too many words.

You are not a machine to be optimized. You are a human being created to be loved.

You are not a pez dispenser. You are not a commodity to be mined. You are not a problem to be solved.

You are a human being made for love. Designed to live in rhythm with the seasons of your life journey and the natural world.

When we choose steady presence over frenetic productivity, we choose a life that isn’t focused on proving our worth.

Then we can focus on becoming who we really are.

In a season that is a flurry with expectations and endless to-do lists, friend, you have permission to choose presence over productivity, performance, and perfection.

Wonder is found in the imperfect, ordinary moments when we slow down enough to recognize and welcome it.

In flour-streaked counters and haphazard gingerbread houses. Faux cardboard ones count too.

In favorite movies and steaming cups of hot chocolate. In cookies that come out slightly singed but are still baked with love.

Wonder shows up quietly in the space between exhales, reminding us we don’t have to rush through our lives as if every day is an emergency.

It isn’t about perfection. It is about finding the path home to ourselves.

🎉 I’m hosting a live, half-day creative retreat on Dec. 4th!

Turn planning your 2026 into a creative playdate with friends!

This is a safe, fun, supportive space to help you design your year from inspiration and intention, not overwhelm and exhaustion.

Maybe you’ve tried all the “best” practices and bought the fancy planners only to feel like they shut your creativity down. 🙋🏻‍♀️ Me too.

You are not the problem. You’re not broken. You just need an approach that meets you where you are.

There is zero planning shame here.

This is about finding what works for you not replicating your favorite creator’s 10-part planning system that completely overwhelms you before you even get started. Oh wait… maybe that’s just me. 🫣

We’ll be covering things like:

✨ How to understand your inspiration process
✨ Ways to build your very own inspiration archive
✨ Brain hacks to get through overwhelm
✨ Fun ways to “plan” that feel like creative play
✨ And we’ll get started together!

Here’s the link to find out more ⬇️.

Live Creative Planning Retreat

This picture is probably as close to northern Sweden as I’ll get for the foreseeable future. So let’s take a moment to breathe in the cold, frosty pixels.

As for sharing my thoughts… this last week has hit particularly close to home, and I have a lot of them.

Before you banish me to your email trash bin, I’m oversaturated with current events too. It’s exhausting. Relentless.

This is not a reaction piece or deep dive into any one event.

I simply want to share a few things I’ve noticed through a heavy week that might help, paired with a story.

I know the undercurrents and power dynamics happening in the US right now well because I spent 20 years working in and around the corners of American evangelicalism that has given rise to them.

Today, I sat on my couch and cried yet again.

Somehow, for me personally, tears of lament felt like a more genuine starting place to respond to the litany of tragedies filling our newsfeeds.

• For the violence that ripped 2 lawmakers from their homes and families in MN… and wounded 2 more.

• For the violence that makes little children carry bulletproof body armor in bags once meant for books.

• For the bloodshed that took a father away from his family last week in Utah.

• For a generation of children that is being wiped out in multiple places overseas.

• For the rhetoric that turns our words into weapons against one another.

Here’s the thing…

When we speak words shaped like knives, we wind up wounding and lacerating our own souls as well as all those in earshot.

I long to find the place where we can beat our sharpened words into ploughshares so we can use them to plant seeds that nourish repair instead of promoting further rupture.

Wonder doesn’t exist in a vacuum. There is always a context around its appearing. I believe staying aware of that context is incredibly important.

Fun fact about me that I’ve never told anyone about online. I seriously considered becoming a lay Franciscan in college.

There was this house a few blocks from my campus that was turned into a neighborhood cafe serving scrumptious, often scratch-made, free, home-cooked meals on real china with real metal utensils. Where no one sat alone. Ever.

Community leaders. Professors. Pastors. The unhoused. Baylor students. The disabled. The struggling. Volunteers. Literally everyone and their cousin. A messy tangle of humanity all gathered eating together around communal tables.

It was called the Gospel Cafe. And it really was a picture of what good news could look like. I looked them up yesterday, and they are still going strong some 25 years later. That is remarkable to me.

The community running it introduced teenage me in her undergraduate days to the likes of Henri Nouwen, Brother Lawrence, and Richard Rohr. To what practicing contemplative community could look like. To silent retreats and wordless prayer.

They also challenged my many assumptions and stretched my understandings.

While I was busy trying to shoehorn my soul into a theology I never fully fit into, they offered something profoundly simpler and more expansive.

So expansive it has taken a few decades of discovery and dismantling to grow into.

For me the last decade since leaving professionalized, ordained ministry has been a returning to center. Whoever lives in love lives in God and God in them.

That’s it. That’s my life goal that took root under bridges and over bowls of soup 20+ years ago.

To live inside of Love and have Love live inside of me.

The kind of love that even loves the people in my world whose points of view I vehemently disagree with.

Some days I’m better at that than others.

The kind of love that loves my neighbors… full stop. All my neighbors.

This last week has found me reaching into the liturgical tradition in which I was raised.

We used to sing the Peace Prayer, that is often attributed to St. Francis.

It actually was written in France in 1912. And spread more broadly during the world wars. But it certainly carries the heart of St. Francis.

This last week especially, it has given me an anchor in turbulence that has been helpful.

I share it here in case it might offer words or phrases to hold on to.

Make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

Really… I wish I could just cook a gigantic pot soup with fresh baked bread like my dad used to make in the outdoor fire place. And have all of you come over and hang out.

That we could sit out in the garden or talk over steaming cups of tea served from my mom’s china.

That might be a smidge beyond reach, but we can continue to gather here around courage and kindness and tell the stories that help us feel less alone.

We can share the wonder and good things waiting in the tiniest of moments. That doesn’t just feed our souls, it tunes our nervous systems.

We can meet over essays and practices to help us thrive.

We can dive into creative prompts and opportunities to share beauty and joy.

This is a safe place to be who you are. You are welcome here just as you are.

I believe more firmly than ever that wonder is a solid path back to ourselves and out to a kinder future we build together.

And I’m beyond grateful to be journeying with you on it.

Thank you for being here. And being you.

If you this post was helpful, please consider sharing it.

You are loved,

And I get it. I have had moments where I have felt that too. It is an understandable response with all the heavy things going on.

But that’s where feisty Michele enters this chat.

Because joy doesn’t trickle down from above. It rises up from within.

JOY is an act of resistance to everything that would diminish the worth of our humanity or impede our ability to flourish together.

I am super feisty about this. And I’ve had some practice. I started defying medical odds the day I was born. I had 23 major surgeries by age 13. These last 12 years… I’ve lost everything twice. And this doesn’t even scratch the surface.

Like many of you, I’ve had ample opportunity to face challenges.

When things get difficult, my default is to flourish as an act of utter defiance.

I’ve been planting my fall garden this last week, and it’s had me thinking a lot about joy as a seed.

It is impossible to tell the impact of the plant by the size of the seed. Small things can make a big difference.

Growing joy is a LOT like growing a garden. It takes work, cultivation, nurturing, protection, and weeding.

It takes learning which seeds need what conditions to thrive.

And sometimes seeds don’t always take on the first try. That doesn’t mean anything other than there are times when we need to start them again.

But when I talk about joy, here’s what I don’t mean. I want to be really clear on this because there’s a lot of shaming that goes on for not overcoming well enough in some communities.

We don’t do that here.

Joy is not fake-it-till-you-make-it, weaponized toxic positivity, and hustle harder hype.

Joy is not pasting a smile in place when you are breaking into a thousand pieces inside.

Not everyone has the same access to joy. We each experience our circumstances differently.

Joy is not a denial of our circumstances or the hard things we are facing; it is a strategic response that gives us the power to keep going through them.

Victory Gardens. You've probably heard of them. During World War II, people were strongly encouraged to grow backyard vegetable gardens to supplement food rations.

In 1945, at their height, there were an estimated 20 million victory gardens in the United States that grew 40% of all the produce the US consumed.

During World War II, food was scarce. Resources were tight.

But victory gardens weren’t just about food. They gave people hope, dignity, and a way to contribute to meeting community needs.

Now, in 2025, we’re facing different challenges.

What if we had a movement of joy gardens? A movement of planting little, tiny, practical, whimsical, maybe even slightly silly seeds of joy.

A Joy Garden could be anything that plants delight and resilience where despair tries to grow.

It could be as simple as a pot of basil on your windowsill, encouraging chalk art on your driveway, a gratitude jar, a block cookout, a daily doodle, a supportive note.

Every single time we lean into deliberate, defiant, micro-acts of joy, we are cultivating a harvest of resilience.

We are growing pockets of wonder right where we are. This is resistance through delight, planting joy as a counter-narrative to despair, overconsumerism, and burnout.

And JOY seeds are everywhere. They grow in our sketchbooks, in kind words in grocery stores, in gatherings with neighbors for game nights, in building community one cup of coffee at a time, and of course in backyard gardens as well.

I heard recently encourage someone who has been doing their part by putting grocery store carts back in place.

Friends, there are no insignificant acts of kindness.

It all matters. You matter.

But sometimes, we need reminders of that, right? Especially in this noisy, loud, uncertain world.

Joy as resistance has a long-standing, storied history in activism. If that’s of interest, an incredible article from and the Preamble by Isla Flaherty landed in my inbox while I was writing this. It’s a great read.

The Preamble

Joy as Resistance

By Isla Flaherty…

Read more

a year ago · 550 likes · 26 comments · Sharon McMahon

If you’re new here, periodically we do creative challenges as a community. It’s how this space got started.

Imagine with me… what could a million tiny acts of joy become? How much light and courage would that release? What kind of creativity and community would grow? What momentum could that make in helping us tell ourselves and one another a better story?

SO… I thought, why not us? Why wait for someone else to get this started?

We can each play a part and start right where we are.

I’ve created a #millionseedsofjoy community project for us to jump into together this September. Everything will be hosted right here on The Wonder Habit.

It is whimsical, playful, practical, and built around solid brain science to help us access more joy in action. Joy is rising, and we can rise with it.

What is one simple way you access joy in your everyday life? Tell us in the comments.

Leave a comment

But figuring something out. Making it work. Powering through. Adjusting yourself into the shape of the hour, this was what real strength looked like.

At least, this is the message I got that some days I’m still untangling. It was passed down to me like an old ashtray.

As I was writing the prompts and reflections for our Prompt & Ponder members last week on the word nourish, I knew I wanted to write more around this idea and share it with all of you.

It feels important right now. And it has been another gloriously stormy afternoon, which means my gardening has been pushed back until tomorrow morning.

Real-life example.

Case in point, I hauled almost 100 lbs of dirt and mulch this week. One bucket at a time. It was both a workout and meditation. But when the next big mulch delivery came yesterday, I made sure to meet the driver, and he kindly placed mulch in the backyard for me.

I named my need. It got nourished.

If we haven’t met in person, you might not know I move through the world on one leg and crutches.

Last week, I scribbled in my journal:

I do not want a mass-produced life. I don’t want a life defined by what Amazon can deliver.

I want a curated life filled with artisan treasures made by hand. A life where DIY solutions are my first impulse, not my last. A world crafted from the joy of frayed edges and imperfections worn like badges of honor.

Sunsets and turnip greens growing in my yard. Hot cups of tea, paint-splattered clothes, whimsical details, and poetry books. These things nourish my being.

A few years ago I landed on a terrifying yet fascinating documentary on YouTube where anthropologists went into middle-class family homes and documented how many items each home had and studied the relationship the people had with their belongings. (Click the superscript 1 or scroll to the bottom if you’d like to watch it for yourself.)1

On average, each home in the study had upwards of 300,000 items. That was 11 years ago. I would dare say it would be far higher now thanks to online access, the ease of delivery, and social media consumption trends.

We do not need every color of every trend that appears in our feeds. Says the woman who breaks that rule when it comes to emotional support art supplies. 🧐

We live in a culture that trains us to consume things that do not actually nourish us.

Numbed-out people always need more of what numbs them. But when we are truly nourished and cared for, we are no longer nearly as susceptible to the 1001 ads we are bombarded by.

I am equally convinced we are often trained to numb the needs we cannot name because it is deeply difficult to truly nourish a need without a name.

Brené Brown, in her book Atlas of the Heart, emphasizes that developing an emotional vocabulary is crucial because it allows us to understand, move through, and heal from our experiences, and that journey ultimately shapes our reality.

She quotes Ludwig Wittgenstein in the statement "the limits of my language mean the limits of my world".2 In other words, the language we have access to to describe our feelings not only communicates them, it also shapes our experience of them.

I don’t have a scientific study to back this up, but I would venture to say the same is true for our needs. And as many needs are emotional in nature, it’s double the impact.

I know I wasn’t given an emotional vocabulary to express my feelings. It took a decade of therapy to discover the permission to feel them. And I’ve been building a vocabulary through literature, poetry, research, brain science, and art much of my adult life.

Consumption isn’t just about stuff. It’s about stories.

We become the stories we internalize and surround ourselves with.

These stories can become echo chambers, especially in today’s media environment.

Do the stories we take in primarily numb us or help us to name and nourish the needs we have?

What would it look like to replace overconsumption with open compassion that creates space for wonder and curiosity?

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Most of you get these posts in your email. Take a moment to hit the heart 🤍 icon above to say you enjoyed it and help me share this kind of courage with more people. Y’all are the kindest community on the internet, and it is an honor to serve you.

As I prep in 90°+ weather here in Florida for installing my fall garden 🌱 🪴, I’ve been thinking a lot about how if I judged my garden by a different garden online, I would think I am totally late… and an epic plant mom failure.

But the thing is… in Florida we have multiple growing seasons. When the rest of the world is basking in autumn leaves and fall colors, we enter our second vegetable garden season that would feel like summer to most places north of us.

How many times do we judge ourselves by a place with a different growing season? Or measure our worth by someone else’s metrics? Or reduce our stories down to a follower count or awards wall?

I wrestled that plant above in the picture. She towers over me at 6 feet tall. I initially thought she was an invasive weed.

But as is my custom, I whipped out my plant identifier app and came to find out this plant is a powerhouse of goodness.

So I apologized profusely for not seeing her for who she truly is.

Meet one Bidens Alba, who holds main character energy in my garden like a legend.

Her leaves can be cooked and are more nutritional than spinach. They are often considered a famine food in other parts of the world. Her leaves can also be made into a poultice for pain relief and have antiviral/antimicrobial qualities.

The flowers are edible. The flowers and leaves can be used in teas and infusions. And bidens alba/bidens pilosa is the third largest source of nutrition for Florida pollinators.

The butterflies LOVE her.

(PS, this is just me being a plant nerd… Not medical advice. Want to learn more? Google Bidens Alba/Bidens Pilosa and always consult professionals before using.)

I’ve said for years I want to live in a place with four seasons, and I’m realizing I do—our seasons just look different.

You don’t have to bloom on anyone else’s timetable. You don’t have to measure your becoming by anyone else’s expectations.

The world might be cozying up to autumn, and you're still planting tomatoes and snap peas. That doesn’t mean you are behind. It means you are different.

I’m partly glad to tuck in here for a little longer. I mean… for as long as I’m in Florida, I might as well plant vegetables like I own the place.

Part of wonder for me is the ongoing healing of my relationship to the earth of my body by tending the earth around me.

It would be way easier to write a book about wonder if I was in a place that felt wondrous. But I suspect it would not be nearly as strong of a book.

Writing from a place that challenges me to walk out the words I write and find wonder here anyway… that is the kind of soulful isometrics that create living and literary depth. At least… that's the story I’m going with.

I have no idea whether I will have access to medical care next year or be able to move north, and that unknown is unsettling to say the least.

I'm guessing many of you have unknowns you may be facing too. Please know that you aren’t alone in facing them. Not here. There is always a cup of tea with your name on it.

In the face of things I have no control over, I can still rip out weeds. (Pepper vine, I’m looking at you.) And put garden beds in. And turn my yard into a mini homestead that doubles as my cardio fitness program.

I place seeds into the ground as a radical declaration of hope. Because no one plants a seed without hope to hold onto.

I lean against the gnarled camphor tree and let its twisted branches hold me.

I lay under the bamboo bush that has created a little secret spot surrounded by green.

Eating the things I grow and forage nourishes and heals the landscape in me… and helps me to stay connected in a place filled with deep challenges.

Putting my hands into the soil to nurture the plants as they grow… Well, it’s very difficult to despise the patch of earth that feeds you.

Granted, I still have every plan to move northward as soon as I can, but until those plans come together, I don’t want to waste the seasons of the land where I live now.

So, my friend. Consider this the next time you feel rushed or like you are falling behind:

Maybe you’re not late at all. Maybe you just have a different growing season. And that is a beautiful thing.

I can’t wait to send out tomorrow’s Wonder Drop to our Prompt & Ponder community. Again, it is one of those words that hold worlds in it, and I can’t wait to share it with you.

Subscribe now

Also, I’m so curious:

How might understanding you are simply in a different growing season lift the weight of expectation and reduce some of the stress you are under?

All my love,

In the hot morass of Florida humidity, everything feels sweltering and stymied. But the skies repaint themselves every night, and it reminds me, so can I.

January is just a name on a piece of paper with a set of numbers attached.

Our calendars don’t have to determine the rise and fall of our creative rhythms.

In case you need to hear this too.

You can start over in the middle of the year.

You can begin a brand new day at noon.

Each breath is a chance for change.

You don’t have to hold out for another month or year or week to roll around.

Perhaps you’re not stuck. You’re simply getting ready to stretch your wings.

I scribble this in the edges of my journal.

august can be january.
blank pages and beginnings
found between
days melting together, edges singed,
baked to a crisp.

pause in the middle of the stanza.
take a long breath.

don't wait for permission,
or invitation,
or a magic square on a page.
interrupt your own paragraph.
start a new narrative.

in the middle of the year,
reinvent your becoming.

declare a new day at noon.
rearrange all the furniture
left in the room.

start as many times as you need.
just, whatever you do, 
don't 
give up on the dream.

If you are looking for a fresh start, turn to a blank page and write the words: FRESH START.

I know it’s a little cheesy. But it works and makes me giggle in the process.

If having a new calendar is motivating, get one. Bonus points » If you get a 2025 one midyear, they are usually discounted. Use the first half for note-taking.

Take a reset day. Do something not in your normal routine or space to reclaim your time and energy.

Change your scenery. Even if it is just moving your furniture around.

Take a week to focus your spare time on recalibrating the things that bring you life and joy.

We live in a vastly different world in many ways now than 6 months ago.

It’s ok to begin again. Try something new. I did something that felt brave… I got in front of the camera and read that original poem to all 100 of my TikTok followers. Mostly… so I could post the video with captions here 🤣, but it still counts.

Sending you so much love. Your dreams are worth fighting for.

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 let the words rest.

I was going to write this yesterday, but my pup Charlie got his ears cut during his grooming. My house looked like a crime scene. I was exhausted.

So I let myself rest.

Sometimes we find more when we choose less.

The air was swollen with rain as rivulets traced their way down my back in the thick Florida heat this morning. It’s the twice-weekly ritual of gathering all the things that need to be thrown away and fitting them like a real-life Tetris game into my one allotted bin.

This summer has been an odd season in almost every way. I’ve been living among half-packed boxes in between the now and the not yet.

My brain keeps misquoting Richard III… t’was the summer of our discontent. Well, winter is summer somewhere. 🤣

Everything feels sticky and complicated. News stories. My kitchen countertop. The jam jar lid I’ve wiped down easily 5 times.

Here’s the thing… sometimes life pitches curveballs.

I thought this summer was the time I would be moving to Minnesota. If you’re new here, MN has a much better medical system and insurance situation for my long-term complex needs.

However, with all the budget bizarreness, it is unclear now how things will be applied, so I am back in the land of wait-and-see, unpacking and putting away what was boxed.

Minnesota may happen. The boxes are ready when the time is right.

But in this moment, moving states has more to do with moving my state of attention to focus on writing The Wonder Habit® book and building our space here.

Moving states can mean many things.

In the middle of all the flux, I have been craving clear-surfaced, feels-like-a-hotel-room simplicity.

I think of Maya Angelou, who famously kept a hotel room in every place she lived just for undistracted writing.

Laser-focused. Not with 10 side projects and 50 ideas. Not throwing a pot of spaghetti at the wall. There are seasons for that. This isn’t one of them.

When the world dips and spins like a tilt-o-whirl in a windstorm, the answer to too much isn’t more.

No matter how loudly the internet screams. More hauls. More deals. More projects. More accolades. More cookies.

You can never have too many lip balms. Step right up and get one more. You might find the perfect lip balm, and then you can ditch the others and live your best minimalist life.

Tell me, I’m not the only one who has this tiktokified thought loop.

Often the thing our creativity needs most is less, so we have more space for what matters.

Less so our creativity has space to breathe and make connections.

Less so we can let our creative work rest and rise.

We don’t need 10 pages of new creative ideas; we need to show up for the main ideas we already have.

Sometimes in our search for perfection, we overlook what we already have right in front of us.

The more we spread our energy thin, the less energy we have to put into any one focal point.

Scattered is neither sustainable nor strategic.

How Do We Shift Toward Simplicity?

Everything feels relentless and loud right now. But we can adjust the volume in a million little ways.

Enter my 18-month weekly Moleskine planner.

I have tried a solid 80% of the planner systems known to man.

Bullet journaling. Aesthetic bullet journaling. Hobinichi. Full Focus. Erin Condren. Generic office shop. The Happy Planner. And on and on.

There’s a part of my brain that loves finding patterns and building systems.

But the more complicated I make it, the less likely I am to use it.

The same thing goes for our creative practice. The more complicated it is, the less likely we are to consistently engage with it.

This week I shelved my elaborate multi-notebook quarterly planning system that always made me feel behind and went back to a simple Moleskine weekly planner. Days of the week on the left. Lined blank page on the right. That’s all.

In the empty spaces, I’m pouring tiny moments of poetry into the margins.

Less is giving me capacity for more. When we simplify, we become spacious.

I may not be moving to my dream cottage with 4 seasons in Minnesota at this exact moment, but I’m breaking out the paint to create art on my walls and do the whimsical projects that were on hold.

I’m turning my house into an art project. It will either be the thing that sells it. Or its future owners will paint over my escapades.

I want to unfold honestly because becoming is its own kind of brave. These are the journeys that must not be rushed.

I’m not staying here long-term, but I’m here now.

So I am going to… Be. Here. Now.

Because now is all we ever truly have. Wonder is only found here, in the middle of our now. And I’m determined not to miss it.

Here YOU are. Thank you for being you. In case no one has told you lately:

We need your paint splotches. We need your poetry. We need your words. We need your images. We need your voice.

We need the story you are writing with your life one moment at a time.

We need you.

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All my love,

Never turn your back on the ocean.

All it takes is one wave you don’t expect to catch you in its spin cycle.

Now mind you, my ocean-swimming boogie-boarding days were limited and very tame.

So the spin cycle at most got sand in some uncomfortable places.

I also learned that facing the waves head on wasn’t all that helpful, either.

Even watching them come and knowing they were about to break didn’t stop them from knocking me off balance. Not that that was especially hard… as I have one leg to begin with.

The way to stand when the waves crested was to turn sideways.

It gave them less surface area to impact. You got extra style points for jumping a little bit to enjoy their bounce.

Our world feels like a noisy, frenetic churning ocean right now.

The answer isn’t to turn my back and ignore it. Because there is information that I need to know to make good decisions and play my part. Especially as someone who writes and creates for a living.

Believe me, I’d happily Irish exit out the back to a cottage in the woods many days.

And for a day or two, I might do just that. But only for a day or two.

Neither is the answer to turn fully and stare at the waves as they relentlessly pound and knock me down. Hard pass there as well.

Doom-scrolling? No, thank you.

Emotional or panic buying? Truly not helpful.

Engaging with rage bait? No way ever. If you engage, you amplify. So please don’t feed the trolls.

Arguing with (ahem, over explaining to) strangers on the internet? Nope. I’m in charge of me. I don’t need to convince anyone of anything. Because my energy is worth protecting. Yours is too.

Filling our space with 24-7-365 commentary on the same 10.7 headlines is soul-sucking mind clutter.

Stuffing our days with following all the details we have no control over is building a prison of information, rather than empowering us with purpose and action.

It’s like daring the ocean to not knock you down, over and over and over again. Oh-yeah-fancy pants wave, I’mm’a’gonna show you.

So what do we do differently?

We see the waves and we turn sideways. Extra points if you hop a little as they pass.

How to Stop Breaking News From Breaking Us

Ok journalists, please don’t come for me.

We need your honest, brave reporting and accurate storytelling more than ever.

I am a news junkie as someone who is curious to a fault. And my go-to response in crisis is wanting to understand all the facts. I am FOR you.

But the 24/7 cable churn and never-ending breaking news notifications, are like waves in an ocean. Sometimes it feels like we’re drowning in a very different kind of spin cycle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that.

Maybe the answer is to turn sideways. Not ignore facts. Not obsess over details we have no control over. Turn sideways.

Maybe resistance and resilience is to just turn sideways.

Perhaps there we will find both our purpose and perspective.

What might that look like?

Maybe it’s a stance of staying informed and choosing one thing to do around an issue important to you.

Maybe it’s helping a neighbor take her trash to the curb.

Calling your electeds on things that matter to you.

Plant pigeon peas as an experiment. My seeds just arrived a few moments ago. I’m going to toss them with abandon into my feral garden this evening as the sun sets and see what happens.

Paint a little something. Scribble a few thoughts. Bake cookies.

Have a cup of tea in the fancy china because you deserve fancy china.

Have ice cream in a fancy teacup because you can.

These are the things that help us not just survive in the waves, but thrive in them.

When I get overwhelmed, it’s usually because…

• I am trying to do too many things at once. Mega-garage sale meets writing a book meets a YouTube channel meets, well, you get the idea.

• I am looking way too far ahead. I cannot handle tomorrow because tomorrow isn’t here yet.

• I am trying to figure it all out, aka feel in control of things that are important, big, and scary. Like not maybe having access to medical care in the near future and having to move states to fix that.

• I am disconnected from myself. There is a reason why “flooding the zone” is such an effective propaganda tactic. It overwhelms by intent. And that overwhelm disconnects us from one another and often our own inner resources.

And in all of this… Wonder is a way back home.

• To find calm in the churn.

• To control what I can control.

• To pick one big thing to get done each day instead of a to-do list that would take a week.

• To keep reading good books and learning new things.

• To try garden experiments.

• To plan my driving route to MN.

• To make a year’s with of laundry detergent for about $40. (It works SO well!)

• To organize the hurricane pantry

• To help the one person in front of me.

• To not let any of the anger, fear, or cruelty out in the world right now change who I am or how I show up in my life.

Just Do the Next Right Thing

This is a tender week for me. As I expect it may be for many of you. Mother’s Day is a wave set all of its own.

In 2020, my mom was making her own Irish exit, and the last movie we watched together was Frozen 2.

She giggled like a little girl with joy. It’s just like Broadway! For that moment, she was five and the cancer that was ravaging her body was a world away.

We got to the point where The Next Right Thing started to play.

Deep in the throes of anticipatory grief that literally felt like my heart was being ripped to shreds, that song hit me in the gut so hard it was all I could do not to sob.

I knew it was going to be my song in a matter of days, if not hours. And indeed it was.

Believe me when I say I cannot hear it or write about it without tears flooding to this moment. And I hope that never changes.

Tears are reminders that tenderness is strength. Tears are love in liquid form.

When the doctor told my mom she wouldn’t live to see Christmas, she defiantly stated she would make it to Mother’s Day. She did just that. And then she was gone.

These lyrics have held me these last 5 years. And they hold me in a new way where I am now.

Just do the next right thing
Take a step, step again
It is all that I can to do
The next right thing
I won't look too far ahead
It's too much for me to take
But break it down to this next breath
This next step
This next choice is one that I can make…

Lyrics from Lyrics Find

Because this song isn’t just about the gravity of grief, it’s a way through the overwhelm.

It’s a strategy to stand in the waves. It’s the path to build a dream and forge a future.

I am so very grateful for your presence here.

Turning sideways in the waves is no fun alone. But it can be a joyful riot with friends. We need one another more than ever.

So maybe we should break out some boogie boards and turn some of these waves into rides of delight. Because joy is resistance. Love is a revolution. Kindness is a superpower.

You are dearly loved.

Hugs from here,

Michele

Some days it will be 2 hours before I realize, once again, I am not sitting, sinking into the strength of the seat I paid $37 for on Amazon what now seems like a few lifetimes ago.

Instead, my default mode seems to be set to “sinew in spasm”, as if by the sheer power of muscle contraction alone I could defy the force of gravity if something were to go wrong.

Maybe you relate?

All of this complicated by a spine shaped like the letter S with only 2 movable vertebrae below my neck, held in place by 2 stainless steel rods. My body is a brave creature, beautiful in all the ways she shows up.

A few years ago, I worked with a somatic/posture/embodiment coach to literally learn how to sit in a chair.

(He was incredible, btw. Here’s his Instagram.)

It took hours of practice. Hours of reminding myself to let the frame underneath me do the work. Sticky notes and phone timers, all reminding me to allow my very special body to actually be held by the chair. Or the floor. Or the bed.

It’s a skill I have absolutely not mastered…

And I’m having to revisit it all over again thanks to throwing my back out while trying to not enrage my neck incision further. So it is kind of top of mind at the moment.

My physical balance is feral and fragile all at the same time.

Don’t Just Do Something, Sit There

And here we all are… in this equally feral, fragile moment.

Sitting down is not the same thing as sitting out.

Maybe you’ve heard or felt this phrase bubble up in the middle of chaotic or frightening situations… don’t just sit there, DO something.

Transparently, I’ve only felt that about 1000x in the last 76 days.

Our words really do shape our worlds. And somehow, that phrase shapes a narrative that implies sitting is passivity, weakness, or punishment.

Sitting is none of these things.

Sitting is the active work of taking up space in the storm.

It is the active work of intention and presence that says I will not let the present moment drive me into overwhelm, fear, or shutdown.

Sitting with discomfort is a muscle that builds our capacity for wonder.

Because intentional wonder is almost impossible to find when we are living in reaction mode.

Slowing things down when everything screams do something NOW builds our internal resilience. Each time we stay present, we expand our threshold for what we can manage.

In a world that equates productivity with motion, sitting is an act of resistance that says, “I am worthy of taking up space even when I am not producing.”

Sitting is often where the deeper work begins. The grieving, forgiving, reimagining, accepting, trusting—it all starts with sitting.

And sitting itself can be an act of protest by refusing to be invisible or silent on the things that matter most.

Sitting is all these things. And so much more.

Wonder Isn’t About Finding the Way Out… It’s About Finding the Way Through

Sometimes sitting, letting yourself fully sink in to the present moment may be the only effective way to find your way through it.

The funny thing about wonder. You can’t find it in a moment you’re not presently in.

We can remember and reflect on its experience in the past. We can imagine and see its edges in the future.

But we can only sink into wonder’s fullness in the now.

Also. Sitting isn’t stuckness.

Though, sometimes it feels like it.

When we feel stuck and overwhelmed, reframing our lack of movement can help move us gently toward our next steps.

So what does that look like?

In a moment when I feel the familiar nag of anxiety when I sit down to write or create…

I will very intentionally take a deep breath and, on the exhale, picture my body sinking into the seat.

I will take time to feel the seat beneath me and remind myself...

I am not stuck. I am seated.

Being seated is a place of agency and authority, not helplessness.

I open my eyes and notice the light filtering across my desk. The paintings on my easel… the words in my journals.

In this moment, I am OK.

In this moment, I have what I need.

In this moment, I am writing to you.

And, then, we will write a better story as we rise together.

You are dearly loved.

I was privileged to stay on the 7th floor* in an old soviet bloc style apartment building with local hosts. I was there to offer leadership training for a nonprofit organization. It was such a joy to get to stay with new local friends.

After 30 hours of travel, one of my hosts and I stepped into a tiny closet of an elevator that barely fit 3 people. The door closed and left us in darkness, save the thin shaft of light that found its way intermittently through the cracked doors.

None of the buttons worked from inside the elevator. You had to call up to the floor where you were going and ask someone to call the elevator, which also doubled as a building toilet for some residents.

The elevator shuddered and shook as it screeched its way up, floor by floor.

Did I mention the power could go off at any time?

Most people took the stairs. But being on one leg and crutches, stairs were not always an option for me.

Often I was alone in the clanging tin latrine as it ferried me up and down the floors.

Suffice it to say, that elevator greatly enhanced my prayer life.

It taught me to look for the light flickering past. To watch for the dust that danced in the light beams and count the passing floors.

Letting my imagination run away with me? Hard pass. Really not helpful.

I got to decide where I placed my attention, where I focused my gaze.

Even in a situation I had next to no control, I could still choose my focus.

Life Can Feel a Lot Like a Shaky Elevator—Stopping to See Beauty Helps.

I’ve spent significant time in areas of the world that had authoritarian governments or that were still in the final throes of civil war.

I’ve lived in places where free speech was censored, women were not allowed education or to make decisions except with male approval, gasoline was over $10 USD/L, food was scarce, borders were closed, and medical care was nonexistent because there was 1 medical doctor 8 hours away on washed out rebel-controlled roads for thousands of people.

I am deeply concerned by many of the patterns I see emerging around me right now. But I am not surprised by them— I’ve seen them before.

In a world swirling with things we cannot control, here are some things we can.

• Stop the doom scroll. It is not helpful. If you are a research junkie like myself, there is an avalanche of media activity right now custom-made to exhaust, enrage and distract you. Pick your sources wisely. Dr. Google is not always your friend.

• Do not consume to the point of emotional overwhelm. Recognize when you are reaching your limit and turn it off.

  • Take it from me- after living 7 years in a conflict zone, you have to be able to turn it off. I’d stare into my candle flame each night and reflect on how NO amount of darkness could put out even the smallest spark of light.

• When we live in overwhelm, we are fundamentally disconnected from ourselves. Wonder is a tool to reconnect to our center.

• Make a list. What are the things you can take action on right now. Where do you have power? Perhaps you can’t move to a new state, but can you rearrange a room? Maybe you don’t have energy to rearrange a room, but can you organize a drawer?

• Keep looking for those moments of wonder. There will be many voices in your world who want you living inside their imagination, trapped in their narrative. You have power to decline those invitations.

Your rickety elevator could be an unexpected diagnosis, or a lost job. A loved one who is struggling. A dream that didn’t turn out the way you imagined. A mental health crisis. Or maybe you too are deeply concerned and directly affected by the current events unfolding around you.

Wonder and beauty are resistance to the things that try to diminish our dreams and weaken our worth.

Kindness and hope are both subversive acts. Don’t let the big things you cannot do stop you from the small, everyday acts of compassion and bravery you can.

Loving the person in front of you—That matters. More than you know. Now more than ever.

You don’t have to do everything. Just the next right thing.

As always, friends, this is a safe place to be who you are. You are welcome here.

Courage friends. Wonder awaits.

*Floor number changed

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.