That I Would Be Free

Essays on identity, transition and quietly building a life that fits.

  • I am terrified of the silence. 

    As children of mothers with depression, we have to teach ourselves how to cry because there is danger in the sadness. It feels like giant cavern that could swallow me whole, a darkness that I might never escape. So I flitter around saying, I’m fine! I’m fine! and going to parties and talking and drinking Read More

  • Week 1: Recovering a Sense of Safety

    “Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent.” Carl Jung I know I said “Week 1” last week, but I think keeping the chapter numbers aligned with the weeks will help us all to stay on track so…Week 1, Take 2. Whew! Read More

  • I am [after all,] my own muse.

    It’s rare that something comes out of my morning pages that I actually care to publish or use in some other piece of work. But this came out a few nights ago. I didn’t get my morning pages done in the morning because I was working on some other things and by 9pm, I was Read More

  • It Starts TODAY! Summer of Creativity

    This is week is dedicated to the introduction of The Artist’s Way (pages 1-24) so if you’re just now learning about this and you haven’t got the book, there’s still time! Read More

  • Walking today

    This came out on the page this morning. Creativity is medicine, my love. It makes it possible to start again over and over and over and over… Read More

  • The Artist’s Way: A Summer of Creativity!

    Let’s read The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron! If you are creative but feel your creativity lagging, if you used to be creative but haven’t used that part of yourself for some time, if you think you might be creative but never really tried–this book is medicine. Read More

  • Prosperity

    The purchase of my house closed on March 9, 2020. The world was shutting down, no toilet paper on store shelves, the streets becoming more and more still on my morning commute. Days before the close, I went to yoga on a Sunday morning at the kundalini studio near my house, and I was the Read More

  • It takes imagination.

    The Nuvaring Before I got married, I went to the student health center for a pre-marriage gynecology appointment. I was a student at Brigham Young University (BYU), 20 and a virgin. I didn’t think of myself as prude or naive, but I was probably both of those things. Raised in the conservative Mormon faith, I Read More

  • Something good 🙂

    Writing poetry about hard things is easy in a way. But, what about that whisper from inside that says good things are coming? The things you’ve waited for, even silently, as they seemed too big to speak? They are in motion. They are nearly here. All you must do is keeping going. Keep crossing that Read More

  • Who is Heavenly Mother?

    Now that I better understand the feminine divine, I see that, because of her nature, she doesn’t fit easily into organized religion. She is too big and complicated for that. There are no instructions for breathing! How would you teach someone to inhale? Yet, I notice very quickly when I am becoming oxygen-deprived. Read More