I am Jeanette. Daughter of Doreen Granddaughter of Charlotte Great Granddaughter of Alice. Mother of Julianna Amelie Grace and Isabella Charlotte Rose This is my motherline. I was mothered in a way that gave me freedom, and voice, and a path of my own. I was mothered...
Dear love, It can be said that we are built by many things. Biology and lineage. Grit and moonlight and ocean stone. By fire and water and air. By the lessons of the grandmothers and the pounding of blood through veins and the very first break. The way it felt when...
This is the original essay that inspired my first book, You Are Not Too Much: Love Notes On Heartache, Redemption, & Reclamation. Order your copy here. “Life is complicated. I am tired of hiding.” “Why are you hiding?” “Because I’m...
‘You’ve got millions of worlds of words inside you’ she said. ‘But what am I to do if I can’t ever get them out?’ It’s true. I am haunted by that question. The words live in me always. Tumble all over each other inside and out. There are voice memos from freeway...
It was one night. Late. Alone in the center of tangled white sheets. Lost in the throes of fever and cough. Of chills and heat and sweat. Of the way the room grew distant and sounds became liquid and I floated in the middle of all that was and had been. And that...
The muse has got an edge tonight. She doesn’t have a lot of extra time and she’s not in the mood for the usual bullshit. You feel her come in on a breath through the open window and settle deep in this space. Like she owns it. It’s strange how she can be inside and...
We will always have a mistress. Poetry is our religion and the muse is our deity. She owns us. We will submit ourselves to her; beg for her to appear, turn ourselves inside out and go down on our knees to please her. At some point, you will come second to our burning...
{we live our lives in real time. an unceasing go-go-go and give-give-give. it can get messy, and tangled and so easy to forget ourselves in the midst of it all. but sometimes, right when it is needed the most, there will come a night...
Those who know me well (or even a little) know that words are my drug of choice. They are the rush and the heat and the grief and the sex and the connection and the disassociation and the mother and the wolf and the deepest and truest heart of me. It is in the words...
{some stories write themselves. in a rush, fingers and thoughts and words tumbling over one another almost faster than you can capture. some stories are stubborn, held tight, refusing to come to light no matter how hard you push. still others come easy, like water...
{Time now, it flies by. The days and months and years blend into one another. The words seem to take a backseat more than they should. This post was written on October 8th – my 39th birthday. It was a response to my post from last year, when the morning of my birthday...
Here I sit. In my coffee shop. The one with the rough brick walls and the shadowed light and the rooms that I weave through as if I was at home. Here, I am at home. I am always and never at home. The rain is coming down outside. Hammering onto this parched desert...
Fingers stained with ink from a fountain pen that leaks but that cannot be replaced because the ink stains are part of the magic. Candles on stones carried from the sea on both coasts. The one rock found on the beach that day, all twenty pounds of it. Hugged across...
In any life there is a time to speak – clear and strong and true. Hours and minutes when your voice will be the only thing that can deliver you through to what comes next. When coming clean is the grace that serves and saves. When you must unleash your truest story...
“When my heart feels so much, I need you to help it. You are the one who knows hearts. “ “I don’t know that I know hearts. I just believe in them. “ We are on the freeway, spinning toward home under a wide-open moon. A plane is coming in, fast and low. This...
You, lover, are so very beautiful. I know you don’t think so. I know you stand each morning, lift your face to the mirror and wage silent war on the skin and bones that hold you in this life. I know you do because I do too. But you are beautiful. You are beautiful...
Dear you. I know you. I know you wear your heart on your sleeve. I know that heart is pieced together from soft driftwood and tattered suitcases and old skeleton keys and the shards of pottery you’ve tucked in your pockets from all the things you’ve seen...
Look at you, beauty Sitting so quietly I see you there The way the light hits your face The way the wind filters through your hair How the curve of your neck is the definition of grace How your story lingers just beneath the surface. I know you have things to say....
“So yes I know how angry, or naive, or self-destructive, or messed up, or even deluded I sound weaving my way through these life stories at times. But beautiful things. Graceful things. Hopeful things can sometimes appear in dark places. Besides, I’m trying to...
Make no mistake, love; this has been the losing time. The time of grasping tight and trying hard and still, in the end, being forced to let go. Of fingers locked tight and pried stiff from that which you’d hoped to hold for so very long. It’s been the falling down...
{for Monique and her beloved James, on the day of their wedding} [soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/128517229″ params=”color=ff6600&auto_play=false&show_artwork=true” width=”100%” height=”166″...
(The universe, she brings magic. She gifts art. She helps the goodness find me, again and again. She has brought the soulful deep divers to me. Gives me opportunity to learn and to guide and to teach. Even when I am at my lowest – especially when I am at...
Truth: There is no choice The stories burn for release. We are writers by birth and by destiny and by intention. Not by choice. If we never scratched another word on a coffee shop napkin, this would not change. A writer is not someone who does. A writer is someone...
hushed house wide awake music fills my ears enters my body stirs my spirit darkness closes around as if i could be the only one alive in this entire world and i feel the pull of the wild moon calling me to witness her brilliance the way she cycles from a shadowed...
What are you doing right now? Stop it. Sit down. Exhale. Let it go. You don’t need to clean the kitchen. You don’t need to finish that email. You don’t need to do anything but give yourself over to the night. How could you best love yourself right...
