she writes on sundays

  • Now that you’ve all seen the Labyrinth

    Right now my life feels a bit like that scene in the labyrinth where she ends up in the piles and piles of trash where the woman is trying to make her be burdened down by her past.

    This little trash lady is trying to cover Sarah’s back in the past and have her carry it around. She’s using all the things of the past to make her feel weighted down.

    She’s using all the things of her past to try to make her forget she’s supposed to be moving forward.

    She’s trying to remind her of all the things that once were. All the things that  were soft and easy to distract her from the hard thing she needs to be doing.

    I don’t think the little trash lady thinks she’s wrong in what she’s doing.

    I think in fact, she believes she’s trying to protect Sarah. I think she is trying to give Sarah a chance to not have to do the hard thing.

    But that’s not what Sarah needs.

    Sarah needs to be reminded who she is.

    Because when we’re going through the fire we don’t need to be reminded of the times there were no flames; we need to be reminded of the times the flames burned us but we kept fucking going.

    We don’t need to be reminded of the quieter soft times; we need to be reminded of the times it got loud and we didn’t cover our ears.

    We don’t need to be reminded of who we used to be; we need to be reminded of who we are right now.

    Right now there’s a lot of pain in my life and honestly, I’d much rather cover myself with all the soft and kind and past experiences where it was all easier. 

    It feels like it would be easier to sit in a room and have a little trash lady laden my back with all the things that feel like they were from simpler times and have them weigh me down so I’m unmoving and just thinking of times where there weren’t any flames.

    But if you don’t keep moving you can’t keep being.

    If you allow yourself to sit amidst the things that feel easy while the fire sits outside the door you’re still probably going to get burned.

    I’ve been leaning away from the pain lately. More than I would normal do. I’ve been unmoving, unfeeling, incapable of existing.

    Because I say with tears in my eyes- it’s all been a lot harder than I’ve been able to communicate.

    The thing about pain though- is eventually you have to move, and it’s still there.

    So, much like Sarah in the Labyrinth I need to shake off the things from my back, I need to keep moving forward, even though it feels like I don’t know how to get to where I’m supposed to be going.

     And even though moving forward is scary and painful, even though it reminds you of what you’ve lost along the way, what you’re still battling, what is still unknown, you can never get to the center of the Labyrinth if you don’t keep going.

    So, let’s shake off what used to be, let’s remember that we have before and we will again and let’s find ourselves where we might have stopped so we can move forward again. 

    Let’s shake it off.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • I didn’t survive my thirties.

    I really want to sit and honor my thirties.

    I want to sit with where I’ve been and who I’ve become and what I’ve done.

    I want to sit with the person who feels like she dealt with more than she can even comprehend in these ten years.

    The thing I keep coming back to is a phrase that Patty and I had when we first moved to Washington in search of things that I think we didn’t know we were looking for.

    It was simply this “Let’s do the damn thing”.

    I don’t know really why I came to Washington ten years ago as a newly thirty year old. I don’t know why I chose a city in a state that I’d only been to once.

    I just know that it was what I was supposed to do. I had no qualms about it at all. No nerves honestly. All I had was a signed lease, someone I had never met picking me up in Seattle (I also didn’t know I’d be meeting one of my best friends that day, but that’s another story for another day), I didn’t have a job, just a working interview scheduled and peace from somewhere deep inside that it would all work out.

    I just knew that whatever happened was going to happen. 

    I was going to do the damn thing and that was that.

    And that’s what I kept doing for all of my thirties.

    Somewhere along the line, I don’t know where, probably with the influence of Teacher Tia “do the damn thing” turned into the more aggressive sounding but honestly more appropo for me “let’s keep fucking going”.

    I did really hard things in my thirties. I dealt with demons and insecurities and burn out and not enough-ness. I’ve lost friends and parts of myself, I’ve lost people and hope and there were moments along the way that I truly thought I was going to lose all of myself.

    The dark parts of my twenties have nothing on the dark parts of my thirties.

    I’m not one to throw the baby out with the bath water. I don’t really have time to meddle in regret.

    Even the things that I’m not proud of at the end of the day, choices I’ve made; they’ve still brought me here to where I am and I can’t begin to wish away where I am now for the hope that a singular different choice might have made where I am now better.

    My twenties were full. I graduated college, I proceeded to work in a field I knew nothing about, I made memories, I continued to live in a place I loved, I started going to camp, I traveled the world, I leaned into myself. I met darkness in ways I hadn’t before.

    And I jumped in a way honestly I don’t think people believed I could.

    And then, my thirties.

    To be honest, if I wanted too, I could look at the last ten years of my life and easily chose to construct the narrative that I haven’t done anything.

    Anyone can look at their life and see all the things they didn’t.

    The chances they didn’t take.

    The jobs they didn’t apply for.

    The dates they didn’t go on.

    I’ve made some jokes over the last 3-4 weeks of my life that at this point I’m just trying to survive my thirties. 

    And I could make that the point: that above everything else, I’ve survived.

    I could list all my didn’ts.

    But, where the fuck is the fun is that.

    I didn’t survive my thirties.

    I lived.

    I did hard things and I listened to God.

    I did hard things and I listened to a God who was very different than the one I grew up with.

    I met people in my thirties who honestly right now, literally make me teary-eyed thinking about them.

    I kept people in my thirties from my twenties and they are the real ones.

    I created in my thirties.

    My singleness didn’t make me brave in my thirties.

    I cussed a lot more in my thirties.

    I taught in my thirties. Tiny humans and teachers. I taught the parents of tiny humans who trusted me enough to listen.

    I changed my mind in my thirties. 

    I voted differently in my thirties.

    I laughed in my thirties.

    I met Holy Spirit in my thirties.

    I kept going to camp in my thirties.

    I sat on kitchen floors and I palm read and I wrote in bars.

    I sat around tables in my thirties and truly leaned into what that meant.

    I met loneliness in my thirties.

    I used my voice in my thirties.

    I preached in my thirties.

    I spent a lot of time in the backseat of the Steiner’s car in my thirties.

    I discovered beer Fridays in my thirties.

    (And also my love of whiskey)

    For fuck’s sake I taught tiny humans during a global pandemic in my thirties.

    I took vacations in my thirties and learned that the quiet hours before anyone wakes up are my favorites.

    John Wayne airport saw a lot of my tears in my thirties.

    I curated a costume closet in my thirties.

    I lived in three different houses in Bellingham in my thirties.

    I decided I only will make cheesecakes for Joanna in my thirties.

    I got on a Tito’s party bus in my thirties.

    I referenced the Labyrinth, vampires or smutty books a lot in my thirties.

    I walked away from things that were hindering me in my thirties.

    I found home in myself in my thirties.

    I lost my mom in my thirties.

    I officiated weddings in my thirties.

    I hosted dinners in my thirties.

    I wrote a lot of words in my thirties.

    I learned to bake gluten-free and vegan in my thirties.

    I affirmed that I would rather build the school and run it in my thirties.

    I got on stage in front of an audience again in my thirties (a week after my mom died).

    I learned I am an adamant supporter of the married couples in my life in my thirties.

    I became a regular in my thirties.

    I found my smile again in my thirties.

    I became the camp bible teacher in my thirties.

    I watched the children of my friends grow in my thirties.

    I loved hard in my thirties.

    I kept fucking going my thirties.

    I stayed in my thirties.

    I lived in my thirties.

    With love for one more time in my thirties,

    Meg 

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  • The vulnerability in the room

    I am very good at being vulnerable.

    And I really, really hate being Vulnerable.

    I’m someone who has a really high threshold for vulnerability. I believe my threshold is higher than others so that they are able to find the space to be vulnerable in ways that didn’t realize they had the permission to be so.

    But, I can sense the Vulnerabilities that actually take something.

    And those, I cannot stand.

    But, the problem with having a high threshold for vulnerabilities is that the ones that take; the capital V Vulnerabilities, those hurt to let the light hit.

    I think the last few months as I’ve even bogged down in other things and other hard things I’ve had a couple Vulnerabilities just start to edge into my house. It feels like whenever I come home there they are. Just sitting at the table seeing if I’m going to notice them. Seeing if I’m going to decide to deal with them.

    Seeing if I’m going to choose to say them out loud.

    Friday, sitting on my kitchen floor, I had a panic attack. I caught it and was able to shake it off and move through it but it still happened.

    And it felt as if the Vulnerability just stared at me from my spot on the floor. Beginning to take up more space than I wanted to give it.

    So here I am, sitting in the room with that Vulnerability. Choosing to not be afraid of the way it makes me crawl out of my skin.

    Choosing to not be afraid of the things that feel scary to say out loud. 

    The capital V Vulnerability is sitting in the room with me now, on the couch, just waiting.

    Waiting for me to choose to put hope into the room.

    Waiting for me to be more ok with the ways it can cut me.

    Well.

    I have different words marked on my body. Words that mark moments and seasons and words that I want to carry with me each day.

    One I got a few years back is the word audacious.

    “Showing a willingness to take surprising bold risks”.

    It hit me tonight that it’s time for a season of audacious hope (as absolutely fucking terrifying as that is).

    I’m going to make space to light candles that mark the hope and I’m going to try to choose each day to walk in audacious hope.

    Want to join me in some audacious hope?

    With love and a lit candle,

    Meg

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  • What if they didn’t tell us to go?

    What would we have done if they would have never told us we were world changers?

    One of my people, my soul sisters, Joanna sent me some midnight thoughts after a particular rough in my head Friday.

    And intertwined in the beautiful words and truths and sentences I had to agree with, with gritted teeth, was the stark reminder that we both grew up in a generation of Christianity and youth group and camp themes that told us over and over again that we were going to change the world.

    That it was our job to go out and be his hands.

    To go where He sent us.

    That we were the generation that was going to go into all the world.

    And I didn’t realize until I stopped and pondered Joanna’s words how much that heavy statement affected me.

    How much I carry the fact that I’m supposed to change things, that I’m supposed to make a difference with each day.

    How I feel like I fail every day I don’t feel like I’ve made a difference.

    To quote my beautiful friend in her words to me:

    “It’s not pressure. It’s the realization that being born for such a time as this is not a mandate to live up to.”

    As a millennial growing up in a high school youth group, who went to a Christian university, who has worked at a lot of churches, who did a year long mission among other missions trips, the phrase “born for such a time as this” has always felt like a challenge, something I need to meet up with.

    Something telling me I was strong enough to be stronger.

    Not something saying I had the things I needed right then, right where I am, as I was. 

    I remember youth conferences and Mexicali themes and university chapels and it was always the altar call of “who will go?”

    They told us to go and when we weren’t able to and when we didn’t know how to translate it into our normal lives, something happened.

    We lacked the ability to feel enough.

    I’m one of the “lucky” ones.

    I went.

    I’ve been 14 countries on mission trips. I’ve preached in prisons, taught Bible stories in the middle of a village in Mozambique.

    I’ve prayer walked in Thailand and Swaziland and Peru.

    I’ve taught English in Cambodia and China and Malaysia (because English IS easy- iykyk)

    I’ve cooked and cared for widows and orphans.

    I’ve been proposed marriage in at least 4 countries and kicked out of public transport when I said no.

    I’ve went.

    But now I stay.

    I think that’s part of the reason I always feel like running would help. 

    Like going somewhere I’m unknown, unneeded and uninvolved would help.

    Because they told us to go.

    They told us to change the world.

    They never told us to stay.

    So, now what?

    How do we, a generation who has disentangled from a faith that told us to go, to change the world, to move- how do we stay?

    And what if the world we were always meant to change was our own?

    In the smallest semblance of being.

    What if we were meant to change the world by staying but they just never got to that part?

    What if we were meant to move in the same space.

    What if the going was the daily thing we do.

    What if it didn’t have to be a big deal. 

    What if they never told us to go change the world?

    What would we have done?

    Well.

    I guess, as much as I don’t want to say this, we should do the opposite:

    So, let’s stay.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • it’s always about the Labyrinth

    I wrote the words that follow sitting in church this morning. I’ve been staring at my computer all evening because I haven’t wanted to try to transcribe them. Because I think there is something in there, hidden.

    I started with realizing that it’s felt like thus far in 2025 something is absolutely blocking my ability to put words on a page. Almost like something is trying to keep me from digging a little deeper.

    There is a point in so many fantastical movies where the main character has to make a choice to see beyond what has been created. Where they have to choose to come to reality even though it’s not an easy feat.

    Like in Hunger Games when Katniss noticing the chink in the walls and figures out where she needs to hit her arrow, or in Harry Potter where he realizes the shift from Voldemort not being in his reality to his reality.

    Or of course, the Labyrinth, when Sarah realizes the reality that was created isn’t actually reality.

    I think I’m living a bit in the space where I have to choose to move past the chink, to claim whatever the reality actually is. I think that I’ve been protecting myself from something and I’m not sure what.

    I feel as if I’m supposed to move forward into something.

    I think, there is another thing I’m supposed to reclaim, a thing I’ve lost.

    It’s funny as I was scribbling those words in my journal that I leave for emergency journal purposes in the office at church, my brain tried to play as if I didn’t know what they thing I desperately need to reclaim right now is.

    The thing that seems outside of the reality I’m living in.

    Simply; balance.

    Now, I know when the word balance comes up most people look at it as a calendar game, balancing work, life, obligations. Or as a health thing; balancing what you eat.

    For me, it’s actually just balance.

    And because the lack of balance has become my reality everything else in my life I believe has gone off kilter.

    I’ve spent since August 2023 being physically off center. I never regained it all back. But, I also think, since then I feel like I’ve been playing catch up. I feel like I can’t ever grasp everything I need in my hand.

    One of my current favorite book series has a character named Ivy. Ivy for her whole life will zone out, lose time, and describes trying to hold not time like sand going through her hand. And I realize that since I lost my balance I have been playing catch up. My inability to smile, to feel good in pictures, to have confidence.

    They are all things I lost when I lost my balance.

    I haven’t known how to move forward because it feels as if the reality I’m living in was one created by my inability to find my center.

    That’s the thing with those fantastical characters, the reason why writers write them, it’s so we can look at them and see ourselves. Because right now I see where each of those fantastical characters I referenced had to find their balance, had to stand firm.

    That’s how they moved forward.

    It didn’t mean the world wasn’t blowing up around them or that all their problems were solved.

    It doesn’t mean they weren’t afraid.

    They just reclaimed what was theirs.

    What they lost.

    So, here I am forcing myself to write the words, to stare at the screen.

    To realize it’s time to reclaim my balance.

    That’s all.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • Reclaim (again)

    The easy answer is that I started losing pieces of myself when my mom died.

    But, that’s not true.

    I started losing pieces of myself when I started acting out of who I thought I was supposed to be, who people needed me to be vs who I actually am.

    I’ve always felt a bit like I’m a doormat.

    I don’t have preferences I often blurt out. I’m not the first to state an opinion. I’d rather blend into the background and not be a burden.

    I’d rather someone else get their choice than me.

    Part of that isn’t bad. I’ve perfected the art as a teacher of picking battles. I’ve learned that if I chose to make something a thing with a three year old I have to follow through.

    Even if I realize about a minute in that it isn’t worth it- I chose it so I gotta keep going.

    So, in life, if I really don’t care, then I’m not going too.

    But, I think because of that, without realizing it, I’ve dropped pieces of myself along the way. 

    I’ll never forget the moment I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt I needed to leave the Y. I was in the backseat of our rental car in Hawaii. We were making one of our many drives back to the north shore from Waikiki. Shawn and Tori were chatting in the front and I was sitting there with the page open to the job application for the program supervisor job that was about to be available.

    I clicked apply.

    Then I promptly threw my phone across the car.

    Because for so long in my life all I had been was Teacher Meg. 

    Miss Meg.

    I didn’t know how to be anyone else.

    And I truly didn’t know if I liked teaching the tiny humans or if I was just a random person who had lucked into a job that I wasn’t qualified for but just good at.

    Sitting in the backseat of the rental car I realized I needed to move. I needed to make a change.

    I needed to jump off the cliff or I might completely lose all that I was.

    It was terrifying to leave the Y. Potentially one of the scariest things I’ve ever done; and I’ve argued in Spanish with a border guard in Bolivia who had multiple guns strapped to him.

    I just knew that this would be a part of finding who I was again.

    I was burnt out, was surviving teaching in a global pandemic, had gone through a couple devastating friend break-ups, had just visited my parents for the first time in almost two years and bottom line- I was very, very tired.

    And then, as I’ve said many times, five weeks after making the life change I thought would save me; my mom died.

    I have absolutely never been the same.

    In the last four years of my life, I’ve allowed things and people to take pieces of myself. I got really sick and it physically took a part of myself that I’ve loved about who I am. 

    I’ve allowed myself to drop pieces of myself that feel too big or too much.

    But, sitting on my couch, cozy, reading by the fire on Friday, I realized beyond a shadow of doubt it’s time to reclaim them again.

    2024 my word was again. I trudged into things and places and jobs and moments I’d done before and I needed to do again.

    I think I realized the things I didn’t want to do again weren’t as scary as I thought. Or I was able to realize I didn’t need them.

    I don’t think again is going away. I don’t think the words that pepper our hearts each year ever do. I think they build and layer in a lovely way- not like layering wallpaper over other wallpaper, but like modge-podging words on top of each other so you can see where they connect and where they need each other.

    Reclaim already feels scary.

    But like all the things I’ve done in my life that have been scary- I know I’m brave enough to handle it.

    So here I am in 2025;

    I’m gonna reclaim.

    With love,

    Meg 

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  • I’m ready to breathe again.

    I’m ready to breathe again.

    I’ve sat here for an hour and half and deleted words, closed documents, switched over to reading books and now I’m back again.

    The image that keeps coming into my brain tonight are all the people who moved through the night to see the baby Jesus. Now, I know historically, it wasn’t during December, who knows if it was cold; but all I can see is their breath on the air as the moved through the night to get to the manger.

    Their breath moving in front of them, as they walked to meet the baby that would change everything.

    And all I can think of our the words I wrote when my mom passed. That even though we were devastated she was gone, she was finally able to breathe again.

    I think for the last three years I haven’t been breathing.

    I mean I have obviously, been breathing. I’ve been living, moving forward, making choices, trudging through sickness, maneuvering through grief.

    But, I’ve realized, that this holiday season I just want to breathe.

    It sounds so simple, so cliche’. 

    People say they want to have breathing room, have space to breathe. That they just need to take a breath.

    To me breath is more than space and room.

    It’s being alive in a different way than I used to be.

    One of the collection of words I deleted simply stated that I feel like I’ve failed this year. 

    But, really, I think I’ve just been holding my breath in hopes that it would make a difference. That when I came up for air there would be clarity.

    And now, this span of time of holidays, I just want to breathe. I want to take deep breathes to my toes.

    I know these words don’t feel very holiday. They feel stilted and tired.

    These words need to breathe.

    So that’s where I am this Sunday before Christmas.

    That’s where I am in the last days of 2024.

    I’m going to breathe.

    I hope you’ll join me.

    With love,

    Meg 

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  • Again and again part 2

    I’m really done with my word of the year.

    Usually that isn’t the case. I might not like the word, but I see the good things that come from it and I can understand.

    Not this year.

    On Sunday, I was sitting in church and I was like “ok god, let’s be done. Let’s wrap this one up like a bow.”

    And he said “nah, I’m good.”

    Because, again, I have to keep going. 

    And no matter what that’s going to be the case. I’m always going to keep meeting places I’ve been before.

    Again and again.

    I thought this year would have more answers than it has. I thought maybe it would hold something.

    And really, it has held a lot. 

    It’s still held more than I can even comprehend I know.

    Usually, at this point in the year I feel like we’re starting to coast to the finish line. 

    Like I have a grasp and I start to understand what the baton in the relay race is going to look like.

    But, right now, I can’t even see the baton. I don’t know what it looks like, I don’t know if I’m even still moving towards the finish line.

    It kind of feels like I’m playing Mario kart with the Steiners and I’m just choosing to go off course because it’s easier.

     This year has honestly made me feel like I don’t know who I am at all.

    And has made me feel like I know exactly who I am at the same time.

    Because I knew this year, each thing I met, I had met before. I knew that each moment where I felt like I was walking through fire, I had walked through it before.

    I had done it before so I can do it again.

    And because of all of that; I stopped seeing that as a threat. 

    When I think about the labyrinth and how Sarah, the main character, is utilizing the book she has that is the story of the labyrinth to get through she must feel as if she’s been there before. She knew the book so well that it must have felt a bit like she had been there before.

    And there were places in the maze she went to again and again. 

    She was caught in the place of either moving forward and or allowing herself to “rest” in a place that at one point in the journey been safe.

    But the journey moved her forward.

    The journey has kept moving me forward.

    The things I’ve had to unearth even in just the last stretch of time that have been a reminder to me that my worth is not based on what I do.

    That I’m not the glue, even when it feels like if I allow myself to let go control it will all crumble.

    It causes me to sit on a street corner in Brasov, Romania across from Betsy Garmon as she leans in to tell me, remind me, implore me that I don’t have to be the glue.

    It’s almost as if, I’m still making my way toward the Goblin King.

    I haven’t had the chance to tell him he has no power over me.

    I haven’t saved the baby.

    I just dreamed I did.

    So here I am, again.

    Stronger.

    More capable.

    But still moving the fuck forward.

    We have less than 6 weeks left.

    I think I’m ready for this maze to be over.

    Let’s save the baby.

    With love,

    Meg

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  • I’m building a library

    The really interesting thing about most of my formative teen years being spent in a church is that I have this very weird viewpoint of when I look at something through the lens of the late 90s- Early 2000s church.


    When I hear certain phrases and they take me back to a cheesy worship song, or a quote or something that was drilled into my brain again and again.


    One of my best friends and soul sisters, Joanna, and I have been through a master class in letting go this year. It comes at us from every direction, at every angle, amidst newsletters, emails, on instagram, on sundays. The message over and over, again and again: we need to let go.

    Sometimes the letting go is obvious. Letting go of comparison, or frustration, letting go of hurt or expectations. Sometimes the letting go is up in the clouds, things that feel not real but are usually more real than we’d care to admit. But, big or small, the letting go is never easy. Clinched fists and echos of things that feel like facts that make the letting go feel like it doesn’t need to happen.


    The last sunday words I wrote were about un-gripping from hope and letting it do its magic. I’ve been in a bit of a daze about how to go about that.

    Trying to figure out how to allow myself hope and light and joy.
    Trying to figure out how to let hope in.


    Like I said, Joanna and I have had billboards every week about letting go and today she sent me an instagram that contained the words “Let go to let in”. And to circle back to the beginning of these words I was automatically taken back to high school youth group, to people in college, to words in church telling me I just needed to surrender and all the good things would come flooding into my life.


    Also, let’s cut the crap and realize that all those moments, “all the good things” was a man.


    But, I’ve been doing this christian and church thing for almost 25 years and I can very much tell you becoming a Christian and “surrendering” doesn’t make gold fall from the sky.
    Or lumberjack looking men show up behind you at a coffee shop and pick up the things that fell from your purse.


    So, today, when I saw those words all I could think about was this: what do I want to let in?
    Joanna’s four year old daughter, my sweet and sassy niece Leo, wiser than all the people who pray the demons out of places, simply says this: if it’s good, let it come in.


    And those words make me wonder-all those times in high school youth group and through college and small groups and everything in between; did I ever know what I actually wanted to come in.
    We all have our lists. Our things we want and need. Our ideal partners, the best job, a house.
    A Beauty and the beast library with a ladder.
    But what about the abstract?


    What about the words that live up in the clouds. The words that make you stand taller, walk with confidence. Speak with the ability to know you can back it all up.
    How do you let all that in?


    How do you move past a faith that always told you that the good things God brought were tangible and physical, into one that you know, which is a faith where the good things are simple, and not so simple, just you letting go and letting in to become who you were meant to be?


    I think it’s so funny how everything in our life has to be a tangible. The house, the job, the man, the library with a ladder.
    But what about letting in the things that make you realize that the house, the job, the man, the library with a ladder don’t actually matter.


    What about letting in the fact that the minute you decided screw waiting for a wedding gift and you were going to buy your own damn kitchen aide; you had two in a week.
    What about letting in that what you bring to the table isn’t something you hold in your hands.
    It’s just who you are.


    I know that I come across as a confident, know what I’m about, bad ass bitch.
    That’s what I bring to the table.
    But damn, sometimes letting that all in is really hard when it feels like the table is covered in the magazine clippings of all the reasons I am not any of it.


    This past year has honestly been as if someone took the previous years of my life and just handed me the bookmarks of what has been and said: ok let’s try that again.
    Again and again.


    So, tonight, I’m saying outwardly, to the universe, to whatever is listening: I’m choosing to allow the good in. I’m choosing to allow myself to bring hope, light, joy and peace to the table.
    I don’t have to hold it in my hands.
    I just am.


    So I’m gonna let that in.
    I’m not going to feel shame or guilt about not feeling enough because the “tangible things” aren’t coming.
    I’m going to continue to let go to let in.

    (and honestly, I’m gonna build my own damn library)
    With love,
    Meg

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  • For f*ck’s sake; let’s try hope. Again.

    I am not ready for whatever comes at the end of these words.

    As I’ve said; again and again, I write to untangle.

    I start at the beginning with words, or a phrase or a reference to the labyrinth or something Hannah Brencher wrote or something my pastor said in church (or honestly just during the work week) that pissed me off because I had to agree with it with gritted teeth.

    And then I write.

    Currently I feel that if I begin to untangle I might lose it all.

    I feel, as if I am hanging onto my sanity with an absolute death grip.

    That means, for today, it’s Hannah Brencher.

    She does a series of notes for every month and there is always one or two that I latch onto. 

    For lovely words and truth; @ Hannah Brencher

    I know that I know that I know I’m supposed to be letting go.

    I can physically feel how tightly wound I am, how I’m still terrified at giving hope a chance.

    Because if I can’t control it; who will. 

    (I know I’m freaking digging a deep hole with these words for my week but here we are).

    Truthfully, I haven’t been eating really. I haven’t been sleeping. 

    I’ve been in survival mode for longer than I care to admit.

    The bags under my eyes have their own bags and no amount of concealer can help.

    (I also know none of this will be surprising to my best friend).

    October was rough with ghosts and dates and memories of what once was. Then during nap time at work the day before Halloween, a text that friend had suddenly passed surprised and shocked me, shook me up.

    Solidifying to me that nothing good ever happens in octobers.

    I realized this morning standing in the cafe at my church that I am legitimately still terrified to hope that good things will happen.

    (To me.)

    And that controlling the hurt I encounter will make it hurt less.

    I haven’t been feeling very brave lately. Or strong.

    Or capable.

    These words aren’t meant to strike pity or empathy. 

    They are literally just truth for me to begin to untangle whatever all this is from my clenched fists.

    I think (I know) I’ve fallen back onto a pattern in which doing will get me out of being.

    When I had to get taken care for a month last year, it was damn hard for me. Even amidst all that I was going through, I was still writing the menus for work, typing out notes for each and every day I was gone even though it physically made me ill to look at my phone.

    When it feels like I’ve come so far from this place of doing as a personality trait I’ve realized it’s deeper and deeper.

    That month of dizziness and being unable to move was the hardest month I’ve maybe ever had because if I can’t do then what am I.

    So, today, I stare at my clenched fist.

    I don’t know what to do about it.

    I don’t know what I need to un-grip from.

    I just know it’s there.

    All the things amidst the grief, the pain, the things that don’t feel like hope but actually are.

    And I know; none of this feels good.

    The words would make my mom call me. Would cause people to feel like I’m worse off than I am.

    But you know what; I’m still here.

    And I’m choosing these words because right now in this world, this place we need to know that there are other people moving forward with us in the midst.

    I never want to be a person who brings others into her distress, grief or pain.

    I want you to know that amidst all of that you can live, you can have laughter and joy.

    You can support people and make ordering McDonald’s on DoorDash something you do for the plot.

    You can still have joy.

    Amidst all this I may not have hope but you damn well better believe I have joy.

    We have less than 60 days left in this year.

    My word for the year was _______ again.

    There are so many things I’ve had to do this year; again and again.

    And damn it, I think I’m supposed to learn through these last two months of this year to hope again.

    To believe that beautiful, bold, unattainably feeling things can happen for me.

    Love, grace, bright spots of color.

    I don’t know what else I need to un-grip from, but I do know that I’m supposed to un-grip my aggressive hold on hope and let it do its magic.

    Hope, in the dictionary, is also a verb.

    It’s an action.

    So let’s go.

    Let’s fucking hope.

    For the rest of 2024.

    And maybe onward.

    With love,

    Meghan

    (Because why the heck not)

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