Written at dinner. Post an unbelievably magical day.

📚📚📚

Today began with the overwhelming stress of thinking about how much had to be done to be out of the space that contained Curious & Kind.

And then…

A picture of a yellow snail came by text.

If you read this newsletter…you know

She is the kind of person who sends pictures of yellow snails that look like sunshine…and my day was immediately made so much better back this very specific gesture of friendship.

…and I was reminded that yellow, yellow was the colour my cousin gifted me before she died. I’ll be with you in the yellow things she said. I know you’re not suppose to have a favourite cousin. But I did. I do. It was and is Mo. My Dad and her mum are cousins, and best friends. Mo, was my Dad’s favourite too. A ball of metaphorical sunshine.

If you think I’m positive…you never met Mo. she laughed in her sleep. She survived six years of brain cancer, and still wanted me to sing to her at the end. She still wanted me to know that she’d always be with me.

…but sometimes I forget.

But today, there was yellow EVERYWHERE.

Yellow saying. You’ve fucking got this. You’re not alone.look around you.

…and the day was fucking magical. (Sometimes a well placed sweat gets the message across in a way that most superlatives just can’t manage. I use it infrequently on purpose. So it is weighted when I do.)

This is saying the newsletter is too long for an email…so I can say goodbye now, and leave the rest in postscripts for you to find on Substack.

Heart,

Wake

Because I’m not even close to done.

P.S. A voice note.

P.P.S. EVEN MORE YELLOW

P.P.P.S.

A new magnolia bud!

P (to the power of 4) S-A STRANGE TINY MOVIE

P and P and P and P and P S-

And

Last post script

I thought that after a twelve hour day that was non stop from 8am-8pm…that sleep would be easy and long.

It took me until midnight to fall asleep. And then at 2:14am…I was awake again.

I tried to go back to sleep to no avail.

My brain was going over the events of yesterday, over and over and over and so here I am to free them from patterning and put them on the page so I can get some rest before tomorrow and packing up the rest of Curious & Kind.

…

The last day of Curious & Kind, I woke up excited. I walked my pup, fed her breakfast, and then I pre-made breakfast for my boys and put it in the fridge so they could eat it at their leisure (instead of waking up early on a Sunday). I kissed my partner goodbye, then texted the father of my children and asked if he could pick them up at my house…and then bring my partner to Curious & Kind, and the kids (to say goodbye).

He said of course, and that he’d be dropping off the paper from his girlfriend’s move so we could use it for our future home packing (which is to come after I finish up with Curious & Kind).

I am grateful every day for a family that works together. My children have a really brilliant Dad, who loves them so much. It feels so strange that they have not lived with me full time since September 2024. For a year and a half I’ve been a weekend, holiday, and summer parent.

In popular culture this is generally the role of the father. But our family works differently. For most of my children’s lives their Dad and I have been in a non-romantic co-parenting partnership.

(This was supposed to be about the last day of Curious & Kind and I promise I will re-direct after this important tangent)

I fell in love with their Dad on August 29th, 2004 after messaging back and forth, talking on the phone and generally enjoying a long-distance friendship for many months. He picked me up from the airport, and he was so happy to see me, and we spent the first 24 hours…walking.

Nearly 22 years ago. I knew he would be a great father. We got married in 2007. Had our first child in 2008. Our second in 2011. I decided to stay at home and parent them. We moved from our small town to Seattle in 2012. I came out on national coming out day 2012. As queer and gender queer. We made the decision to be non-romantic co-parents on July 13th, 2013.

We lived together until July 2019. Parenting.

I met my partner, my second great love, in 2016.

We met on May 15th and our first interaction? A very long walk. And then friendship. And then love. I didn’t introduce them to our kids until November 2016, and they became a fixture. My kids only knew them my friend, but they soon took on a parenting role.

My kids had no idea that parents…were often romantic partners. In their world, it was possible and their reality that parents were friends who cared for their children.

I love our story. All of it. Even the hard parts.

I feel exceptionally lucky that my former husband and my spouse are friends. That our focus as a group is raising our kids.

It is because of our kids (and my former child self) that I started running community spaces. So that I didn’t have to work a job where I wasn’t present in their lives. In the first three spaces, my kids were active participants. Creating programming and coming to work with me.

This iteration of Curious & Kind?

It was for me.

When we moved to Lunenburg in 2023…my kids were going to live with me. We’d been next door neighbours, their Dad and I, from 2019-2023.

When we moved to his home province to be closer to his family…he wanted to live in the city…and I…wanted to live in a cute smell town full of friendly people…because it is in that environment that in more likely to thrive.

Lunenburg was magical from the first moment I stepped onto its sidewalks. The day after the hurricane in 2023. We had already put an offer in a house in the valley.

…but there was something about this colourful town with its bright buildings, and a restaurateur who let us use her bathroom while she talked about how she’d had to stay the night on a mattress to keep her generator running so she wouldn’t lose all of her ingredients.

She asked us why we were there.

I told her we were moving to Nova Scotia.

She looked at my partner, me and my youngest kid who’d accompanied us that day.

Move here, she said. You belong in Lunenburg.

We left town. My youngest said that he loved how colourful the town was…but that it was too sad.

My love, I said, they just had a hurricane!

I jokingly looked for a house in Lunenburg and all of them were way out of our price range. Except one. It had been on the market for 6 months. So we assumed something was wrong with it. But still we tried to book a showing. The only day the family my that owned the home could do was the Wednesday we had to leave.

We went back to Lunenburg the Wednesday we were supposed to drive back to Ontario. We’d only given ourselves a week to find a new house before going home to pack up our lives in Almonte.

We saw the house…and it was exactly what we were looking for.

We went back to the town and told our new restaurant friend (her restaurant is called Hodge Podge) that we were going to bid on a house. She was excited. We then went to a little shop called Whimsy & Wildthings…and talked with the owner. She was awesome. She makes monsters and I make monsters. (It’s such a magical shop!) bought one of her monsters.

She also insisted that we belonged in Lunenburg.

On our drive back. We bid on the house. It was nerve wracking. Buying a house is such a strange thing.

The homeowners aren’t excited about selling it to us. I think because not both of the people wanted to leave Lunenburg. Reasonable.

But on the Sunday after we got back to a Almonte…they finally agreed to our terms.

We’d found a home. In Lunenburg.

We stayed in a wondrous town between the city (Halifax) and Lunenburg, called Hubbards. In a little house just across the road from the ocean. Our kids had been living with their Dad for months, and we were excited to have them back in our care.

I decided to get off the internet on October 3rd, 2023. I stopped using social media. I decided that in order to sink into my new province, my new home, that I had to stop looking back and move forward.

Instead of daily internet use…I spent time with my children. I wrote letters to my friends. I went to the ocean daily. I journaled by hand. I made friends at the nearby cafe.

It was magic.

We moved to Lunenburg on November 3rd, 2023 and our neighbours welcomed us.

Two days in I found a bookshop, and the purveyor welcomed me, and we chatted nearly two hours. At the end, she joked that she should hire me (I’m a bookseller and know how to use Bookmanager, a very peculiar software developed in the late 70s(?) for bookstores). I told her I was planning to finish writing my novel and wanted to focus on that.

…but a week later, I brought her my resume, and a stack of recommendations from my previous bookstore bosses, my editor and several people I’d worked with on previous iterations of Curious & Kind.

It turns out she didn’t actually have a job for me.

…I realized I’d taken her literally. She had been joking.

But a week after that I got a call saying she’d spoken with her business partner and that they had to hire me.

And so for 8 glorious months I worked at a bookshop. One of three bookstores in Lunenburg.

I’d also started working for a wondrous and magical post office/tea shop/mercantile on Mondays in a small village nearly an hour from Lunenburg.

I worked Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays.

I wrote my novelette.

I finished writing it August 25th, 2024.

I loved it so much and sent 42 copies to friends and colleagues.

In October 2024…I found out that the bookshop job was seasonal. That I would be out of work from January-April. I was offered another bookshop job in the town over…

My boss…had a moment where she told me she’d rather I didn’t take it.

In that moment, I realized…that I wanted to have my own bookshop. And the wheels began to turn.

I wrote my rather a long letter.

I felt brilliant in a bookshop. Like it was where I was meant to be.

After having a stroke in 2021…I’d lost my full time job to be at the bookshop in Almonte.

It broke my heart that I couldn’t be one of the town’s booksellers. But it was the reason that I ran the 2nd iteration of Curious & Kind.

Which was spectacular. The above is a picture of one of my best friends sitting on the couch (which had been donated by the library) with my faerie godchild, and Bunsqually.

Darn it. That was such a magical space.

Fast forward. In 2023 a property management company bought the building. They raised the rent 1300 dollars a month and tried to charge me $3000 in back rent because in”hadn’t paid enough”, even though I had paid the agreed on rent.

Oof y’all. Their shenanigans were legal. And I closed that iteration of Curious & Kind in July 2023.

After having run three community spaces between December 2018 and July 2023…I didn’t think I’d have it in me to do it again.

BUT LUNENBURG.

Being here, and having my kids decide to live in the city. And not having a bookshop job (though shout out to Rosefinch Mercantile for hosting my tiny 42 book book-shop in their space, annd incubating a dream!) All of a sudden I had energy again.

…and my parents were going to give me what is called a warm inheritance. That means they offered me some of the monies they would have given me upon their deaths…but because of my stress or…they weren’t sure I’d outlast them.

…I know that having this sort of support is a privilege. But I also see it as a sort of…responsibility.

I can’t, because of my stroke, and the fact that it heightened a lot of the issues my being autistic causes, work a “regular” job. The stress might actually kill me.

So I have to work within my capacity in spaces that makes me feel energized and not drained.

This didn’t mean I don’t want to work. This means I have to be intentional about how I work.

…and I put an offer on a building for a book shop the fall of 2025.

…but my monies couldn’t be accessed until April 2026…and…

The building sold to a couple. Who opened a bookshop.

Instead of being sad about it…I decided to take my monies and rent a space in Lunenburg to re-create Curious & Kind.

It was supposed to have a shop component, y’all. It was. I was going to make it sustainable.

…but just after I signed the lease…my kids asked if we would move to the city. They missed me and my partner and their pup.

Their Dad was getting tired. Raising two teenagers is not an easy task. Add chronic illness, ocd, and neurodivergence…and it’s a lot.

These kids need three parents.

…so I approached this Curious & Kind differently.

I paid myself out of my inheritance, and then that money went straight to the landlord. I created my own job. This anti-capitalist iteration actually cost less than both the previous iterations where I was charging for things.

I’m not joking.

Not having stock or having to do any marketing…it meant I could run it on a shoestring budget. Because I wasn’t selling things or charging for my time…the donations of furniture; books, toys, art supplies…they poured in.

This was a true community effort.

…and because I wasn’t charging…I didn’t have to put up with any jerks. No one could tell me how to run it. And it soon became a gentle space for so many community members looking for belonging.

Oh my goodness. I’m going to cry.

It became a space for friendship.

A festival of friendship.

1575 square feet of creative space. With no real programming. People told me what they’d like to do there, and I’d make it happen. It became a place where people could ask for things; and find that there was a community waiting to help.

I can’t express how beautiful it was to watch it happen. And because it had an expiry date…a built in ending…people came, knowing that it was a limited time offer.

This iteration of Curious & Kind has gentle people playing chess, writers, artists, a weekly club run by a nine year old, people meeting each other, newcomers getting a chance to be part of community and using their English skills in a natural environment.

It was a place that rebuilt my sense of self. I watched myself grow in that space. I saw that the space was looking after all of us, even me.

Yesterday was the culmination of a dream I had when I was 16, to run a surreal community space where no one had to pay for anything. Where people could say “I want this to happen” and it did. We had a clothing swap rack where people brought and took magical clothes. We had a marker bar. Seemingly endless art supplies. Books to read. Places to sit. Toys and Lego and stuffies. Full of strange items to fuel our imaginations.

Yesterday I put the clothing outside, a box of free books, free art, and the disco ghost. I put the monsters in the trees. And signs that invited people; anyone, to come take part in the last day of Curious & Kind. A come they did. They brought food to share. They took home beloved objects. They told stories to each other.

This whole past week was an extended goodbye to a space that really made a difference, and I can say that because it made a difference to me. I’m not who I was when I started it. I am more me than I’ve ever been.

It is 4:21am.

I had to go back to the space tomorrow to help folks from different organizations to move the furniture out, so it can be useful elsewhere. And I’ll pack up my things.

Then on Tuesday I’ll move my stuff out of the space.

On Wednesday I’ll clean. On Thursday night I’ll put the garbage outside. On Friday I’ll hand over the keys to the wondrous upholsterer who is moving into the space, a beloved local entrepreneur, so she can make the space her own.

It was a magical wild carousel of a ride.

…and I have beautiful things to keep me occupied for the next few months while I get my home ready for sale.

The tiny book #117 called The Grey House (which I’m so excited to write based on a prompt my youngest created) will be below, but later. Because I have to go back to sleep.

It’s now 4:27am, and I feel my brain and entire nervous system is calmed.

5:53pm

Update

📚📚📚#117

The Grey House

Heart,

Wake

(A small but wondrous contingent of the 80 some people who came and went during yesterday’s goodbye)

P.S. I’m sure there are a ton of typos in this newsletter. I’ll correct them later. 💖

(A portrait drawn by a wondrous 8 year old who loved my outfit)

I wore my favourite outfit and for nearly ten hours we existed in a state of beautiful chaos.

Community members coming and going, some staying for hours, others picking up things they’d put their name on. Strangers too! (Who are now friends)

(A trio of friends felting at the end of the day)

It is 10pm and I only just finished my tiny book. It is not good. But it feels real.

Today was the kind of magic that words will never do justice.

So here is my tiny book for the day.

📚📚📚#116

Heart,

Wake

P.S.

A tiny bit of calm from the moment where day becomes evening

But today I would be utterly and twisted amiss if I didn’t.

Because I today’s prompt was the prompt my friend wrote on. And her book is

STUNNING.

…and I didn’t want you to miss it. (She’s not the kind of person who would message me to say, HEY MY BOOK! But I am the kind of friend who likes to respect the generous effort of my friends, and this, after much pre-amble…drumroll…)

I Can Hear The Wind by Heather Towndrow

That is all. Thank you for the wondrous support of Heather’s work. Her books light up my week in a way I can’t quite explain. They are always unexpected and beautiful.

If you say nice things I will be sure to pass them on.

Heart,

Wake

(My shower curtains are beautiful in the morning light)

Oh no! Y’all!

I have to put the books here…and then in another email, because I realized after I wrote this that, today’s prompt was the one chose and it is again…so so magic.

So here it is. (But honestly, I’m going to send a second newsletter just with Heather’s book because it is too beautiful to be buried here)

📚📚📚

Heather’s I Hear the Wind

And my tiny book #115

That I completed today while at breakfast with my family.

I Hear the Wind

💖💖💖(this was written early this morning in a bit of a haze)

Last night after I made tapioca pudding for the kids, we watched some Master Chef (my youngest and I love the food part but really don’t like the staged-reality part, and it allows us to talk about critical media literacy, and what we see on television) and then…it was 11pm!

My partner only gets the weekends off and so they like to stay up late watching something silly. Last night they chose the pilot of Night Man…a show I’d never heard of from the 90s.

The premise? I’m still laughing.

A locally appreciated San Francisco saxophonist/martial artist is struck by lightning on the way home from a gig, on the same cable car as a high ranking political official who is trying to help some whistleblowers stop a secret government organization from stealing these newly developed…superhero weapons? Like a cape that makes you an invisible, and a bullet proof suit, and a battery that gives you zero gravity…

…and there’s a bomb of the cable car. And Johnny Domino, cuz of course that’s his name gets struck by lightning and gets the ability to…perceive the thoughts of evil people.

So he saves the politician and blows up a beautiful San Francisco mansion in the process. Then ends up getting all the super hero tech?

There’s a part two and I sort of feel like I have to watch it tonight. (Do you want me to tell you what happens, or would you rather watch it yourself 😆)

We went to bed at 2am.

And then my body woke me up at 4:42am.

I went back to sleep at 6am.

Then my alarm woke me up at 8:45am to give my eldest his thyroid meds.

Then my pup woke after her walk, and breakfast.

So I’m awake now.

But after a week of long beautiful days at Curious & Kind…I know I need some time off before tomorrow final party.

So. No one is awake in my house but me and the pup, and I’m going to go back to sleep.

I’ll write the tiny book later and pop it below.

Today I’m grateful for teenagers who don’t want me to get up early. A partner who can watch ludicrous things with me, and a pup who’s always ready for a nap.

📚📚📚

The tiny book will be here…later.

Heart,

Wake

💖💖💖

Yesterday was magical. It was full of exquisite joy, and creativity and the beautiful sadness that exists in endings.

Yesterday we had our last Thursday in the space known as Curious & Kind.

This was not its first ending. So for me it feels like a continuance. (My dad was a judge, and sometime legal language slips into my descriptions)

A continuance is the postponement in going back to the case. Time to collect evidence and affidavits. A space to breathe before sentencing.

For me, each time I end something…it feels just like that…a pause.

…because I know, inevitably, that I will have the strength and resources to do what I have always done.

But today I am tired.

Yesterday amongst all the beauty, the art, and the community…I found out a friend had died. I hadn’t spoken to her for ages. She was chronically ill the entire time I knew her. She was this big hearted comedian, who accepted me…through and through…even though I was a young upstart. She and I are about the same age, but she’d been doing comedy for ages by the time I came along.

She was made of sunshine and unicorns, perhaps in spite of all the health challenges that were dealt her. Oppositionally optimistic in te face of adversity, we both were.

…and yesterday, a youth worker who had received a new case load asked me for a unicorn…and I nearly broke down. Because Veronica was ALL about the unicorns. And it felt like one of those messages from beyond. Like HEY, I’m still here because unicorns are still here.

Yesterday I made tiny books with my friend and my friend Nell, and I revelled in the ease of our friendship. The moments of quiet while we made our books, and the chatting when we wanted to chat.

Curious & Kind has each and every time…brought me lifelong friendships. Because it is an external manifestation of who I am. It’s…me, but a space. Like open my heart and letting people inside. And trusting them to take good care of me, and themselves.

Yesterday my friends drove all the way from Port Medway, on a work day, to sit in the space. I didn’t get to spend much time with them, but they are the kind of people who are so kind that they don’t demand anything…they are gentle and thoughtful and found a spot to sit and chat.

…and they’d already invited me back to (known at Rosefinch Mercantile & Tea Room) to work Mondays, and then yesterday they offered me the small shelves back for the Curious & Kind bookshop I once had there. A rotating cast of 42 books, hand selected, for people to purchase. AND I asked if I could bring a small Mary Poppins bag of art supplies so folks can set up in the book, and visit and make art in Mondays when I’m there. They said yes.

So Curious & Kind isn’t over as so much as it’s gone back to roaming about. Tuesdays at the end of the day at the Lunenburg Art Gallery Society. Mondays at Rosefinch. Wednesday is chatty chess (we were thinking the library)…and all the pieces of this iteration of Curious & Kind will be moving to wondrous places. Someone’s new apartment, the local daycare, the women’s centre.

Yesterday the kids who came to the creative club played a game of “is this yours or is this mine” with some of the treasured items. It helped me better understand what I would take home, and what needed to be let go.

The kids (and adults) took bags and boxes home with them. Talismans full of the magic that happened here. Reminders of what took place, and the friendships that were made.

The writing group (the Jabberwockees will continue to meet), I’ll still get to do Art with Heather (and Nell). I’ll still be writing a tiny book a day, while I get my home ready to sell.

If you’re looking to move to a magical town, in a wondrous neighbourhood full of caring neighbours and people who still smile and wave to you in the streets. My house might be the one for you. Just look up Lunenburg. And maybe this is meant to be your next chapter. 💖

As I wrote this, I have already won my last game of chess in the space. My two friends are playing a game. Another friend came for a chat and to help me pack up the Lego table for the daycare.

It’s wild this town. Its incidences of serendipity are more numerous than I’ve ever experienced.

I had to do a page break because of it.

My new next door neighbour at the space came in for pliers (I didn’t have any) and he left with an office chair. And he showed me all the brittle antiques and told me their stories…and I saw one that looked as if it had the same keyhole as the desk I’d never been able to open at Curious & Kind.

Oh no.

Time passed. It’s now 8:57pm.

Time got completely away from me.

More wondrous people visited the space today. I was there until nearly 5pm.

I sinister my tiny book, while my friend tested three kinds of markers, and other friends made a monster.

(The little green one is a back pack, and the peach one is a cloud landed on a rock)

TOO MAGIC HAPPENED. My brain and heart are overloaded. Please look at this highly relevant tiny book while I recalibrate.

📚📚📚#114

Niche Emotions

Ok. I’m back.

I had to go to the grocery store, the person in front of me was buying five different melons, and the people behind me had just visited Curious & Kind for the first time this past Wednesday! They were buying tulips for a friend. I invited them both to the very last day of Curious & Kind this Sunday. (If you’re nearby you are also invited, and if you are far away please feel free to attend in spirit).

Then I remembered that my glove compartment wasn’t working, and though I’d just been to the car place yesterday and they fixed my entire car…I’d managed to break it in less than 24 hours.

I got to the garage 10 minutes before close…and Nick, the kind mechanic from NZ, he fixed it for me free of charge. (He never makes fun of how many stickers are on my car, come to think of it, none of the mechanics do! And he was the one who solved the flat tire mystery last year).

With my car’s glove box fixed (what a strange name for that compartment) I then made the trek to the city (Halifax) to pick up my boys.

They wanted Chatime (Bubble tea…our Friday tradition) and outside there were these…ducks.

I saw them in the same plaza a couple weeks back…and they’ve seemed to have forgotten that they are ducks?

My kids have decided that if they are still there next week that we will call Hope For Wildlife…

On the way home we played Family Jukebox. I think it’s my favourite thing in the world to do with my teens, currently, because it engenders this sort of respectful excited energy. We listen to each other’s choices and inevitably it leads to compliments on each other’s choice in music.

It’s hard not to cry tears of joy.

I can feel it building beautiful memories.

Now I’m home and my youngest has requested I make tapioca pudding. Which is kind of hilarious because that what bubble tea is made of.

…

I hope your Friday has been beautiful.

Heart,

Wake

P.S. one last thing that made me cry. An Instagram post by a friend that has been visiting Curious & Kind with his family since the very beginning.

📚📚📚#113

One of many Sara(h)s

I want to talk all about the last Curious & Kind Creative Club run by our resident 9 year old community builder.

…but the day has been too big. Too beautiful.

So here are some pictures. And a short video.

Heart,

Wake

(This photo has nothing to do with anything…except that it made me laugh to set it up at the space)

I’ll put the prompts at the top. So you can choose what you might want to write on this week.

Week 17

113. One of Many Sara(h)s

114. Niche Emotions

115. I hear the wind

116. The edge of chaos

117. The Grey House

118. A Mysterious Creek

119. Obscure Bingo

The prompts are strange this week. I write most of them that week I went to PEI with my kids. Some of them based on the weird game of car bingo my youngest came up with. The others snippets of conversations with my friends and family.

I have no idea what any of them will bring. Though I’m looking forward to mysterious creek.

💖💖💖

It’s a new day. My body woke me up about 5am. I searched the internet. How many hours of sleep does a nearly 47 year old need?

7 hours, seemed to be the common response.

I had slept about 5.

Does it have to be in a row?

7 to 9 hours of consecutive sleep…

Consecutive. That’s an odd word.

It feels like a very business way to talk about sleep.

Yesterday I listened. A lot. I stood in the art gallery surrounded by gorgeous paintings of flowers, and people talked to me, with me and sometimes at me.

One guest indicated she loved singing harmonies after an hour of chatting, and so I burst into a song I thought she might know. And we sang a rousing harmonic version of Going to the Chapel.

The demands of this week, and closing Curious & Kind are definitely getting to me. The coordinating picks ups, and lifting furniture, and encouraging folks to talk things without giving me monies is a lot.

So much of me just wants this part to be over. But I want to honour the ending of this beautiful thing.

Today I will play chess knowing that people will be popping in to use art supplies, to talk about the end of things, to whisk furniture away.

Then I will go over to the cafe where we play cribbage. I will not think about endings for two hours.

Then I’ll go back to the space and meet with more people.

Tonight I’m supposed to attend the beautiful epistolary book club I’m a part of. But I didn’t enjoy the book, and couldn’t get past the form of it. It’s called Ella Minnow Pea.

I had been simultaneously listening to The Correspondent via audio book for 8 hours as I drove to the city to pick up my boys over the past month…and that? It was engrossing, and I can’t wait to talk about it.

But I think tonight, I may just quietly sit out on book club. I know they’ll understand. This week is too intense, and I’ve listened so much, and I think I’ll need some quiet tonight.

The last three nights my partner and I have watched movies. Lake Placid (I loved it, weirdly), Sunlight (oh goodness it was the perfect kind of weird) and Arachnophobia (it was hard not to cheer for the spiders, but it wasn’t at all scary) and it’s been a lovely way to get out of my head at the end of the day.

It’s nearly 7am, and I don’t have to be at Curious & Kind until 11am. So I think I’ll attempt another round of sleep.

I’ve started thinking of my days in the number of carrots I have to eat to regulate myself (I’m so glad I never took up smoking, or drinking…carrots to calm myself is hilarious to my inner comedian, because the only side effect is that I’m slowly turning orange). Yesterday was a ten carrot day.

Most days I get by on six.

We shall see what today brings.

The tiny book will be here, at some point today. But not now. Because I’m going to scrabble (the act of playing words games with strangers on the internet) myself back to sleep (though I’d really like a carrot).

📚📚📚#112

Red Rover (do you remember that schoolyard game?)

Heart,

Wake

P.S. I so badly want to tell you about my gnome encounters this week. But that whimsy will have to wait.

Last night I went to the ocean. The sun was setting and the clouds were perfectly reflected on the still water.

I’m holding on to this calm moment.

Today I bought a tiny piece of art from a friend that fit my aesthetic so much that it felt like it was a portrait of me as a bird.

My friend Marsha is so very talented. And she runs this magical little shop. Today she introduced me to my new favourite art supply.

…and I spent the day at the gallery doing the initial swatch of the colours. It’s one of my favourite practices to get to know the markers.

Then I wrote my tiny book and listened to the stories of the people who came in.

Heart,

Wake

My body woke me up early. My phone was missing. It is my alarm clock. I put on my glasses took my pills.

My phone was on the floor behind my bed. It is usually on my bedside table, and I’m not sure what happened. when I picked it up there was a single text message from my friend.

A 42. I immediately took a deep breath. It didn’t hurt.

Yesterday as I was driving home, my chest began to hurt. On the left side. (Before you get worried, I want to assure you I’m alright) I listened to the very last of The Correspondent on my way home. The book ended just as I reached my driveway.

I was exhausted, but I’d received a message from a friend and they wanted a chat. They needed some commiseration about disability, and how some folks have a hard time accepting when you decide you need mobility aids. Thankfully their ability to self-advocate is of the highest at form.

We talked about how using mobility aids isn’t giving up, how there are things in the world meant to help if you need it. I feel grateful that I can speak to this. That when I had my stroke I did not resent my walker, but felt grateful for it. It helped me walk again. But if I’d had to continue using it lifelong, I still would be grateful for it. Using a mobility aid is not a failure. Accepting when the pain and struggle is too much and asking for help is not a weakness.

I told my friend that my chest was hurting and I needed to go inside

I told my partner immediately about the chest pain. I tried to stretch it out. Breathing hurt.

We decided to go to the grocery store. I was exhausted. I felt out of it.

When we got home, I looked up heart attack symptoms.

I wasn’t going to write this. Because I was not having a heart attack. I am fine. But I come from a family line and history of loved ones just…dying…with no warning. My Dad’s father died just before Christmas was he was 54…56? I never got to meet my grandfather. My youngest uncle died suddenly of some strange heart condition in his late 40s while out at his favourite coffee shop. Just like that. My Dad is the eldest and last surviving of the four brothers.

Three of my grandmothers died of a stroke.

I have a lot of family medical history to look at because my Dad’s father was the eldest of 22.

A lot of folks survived into their 90s too. I have a great aunt who’s approaching 100 years old, and she’s completely lucid, in good health, and remembers who I am even though she has a ridiculous amount of grandchildren and relatives.

Yesterday I calmed myself through the chest pain by writing a note called if I die today and it really helped. I got to say I love you to all the people I love. I realized as I wrote that though I want to be alive for a very long time (and that’s a miracle too) that I have lived an extraordinary life, and have such a wonderful family, and the people I’ve had the opportunity to know? So many of them are kind-hearted, creative and genuinely brilliant sparkly people.

I have lived a magical life.

I finished writing that note and the pain subsided. The anxiety disappeared.

I watched Lake Placid with my partner. (I want to grow up to be like Betty White…she is phenomenal is that movie)

We went to bed.

…and when I finally found my phone this morning it was 6:42am.

I breathed deeply again.

I don’t have to be at Curious & Kind until 11am. Today my friend is picking up the copper velvet chaise, another friend is getting the hanging egg calm chair for her physiotherapy practice. The Jabberwockees (the writing group that formed under the auspices of C&K) will meet one last time in that space. I will give my friend the hippo puppet she wanted.

That’s my Monday.

I don’t feel like going back to sleep. Though I could.

I’ll write my tiny book later, at the space and add it here. But I feel like hitting publish on this now.

It’ll be here, below the book emoji.

📚📚📚#110

Lemonier (I’m not sure why I wrote this or what it means, but I’m looking forward to finding out)

Heart,

Wake

My dad loved trying food, all sorts of food from all kinds of different cultures different from our own.

My dad is Métis from a French Canadian line and I grew up hunting, fishing, trapping and foraging. My mother had a father whose family came the Ukraine. So she’d make cabbage rolls, and borscht and pierogies. My great grandmother owned a small cafe on an island on the west coast of Canada, where my mother is from and made the most amazing clam chowder.

I grew up gardening and we always had fresh vegetables and berries in the summer, and a root cellar full of potatoes, beets, carrots and other delights. We had chickens too, and would gather their eggs in the morning.

I love food. It’s one of the central loves of my life.

I learned to cook early, and my father and I took two years of cooking classes at the local college when I was a teenager.

My eldest has always had a fraught relationship to food. Or rather as he got older, he began to develop food fears. He had an irrational fear of being poisoned, or having an allergy. We found him safe foods to eat, and tried not to force him to eat. It’s hard when you’re watching your child starve themself. But we got through that difficult time with love and support and education. Now he’s nearly 18 and excited about all sorts of food.

My youngest has loved cooking with me since he was really small. He could crack eggs and pronounce the word cinnamon by the time he was 2 1/2. He loves food and was always up for trying anything.

Then he started to report pain in his side. For years we thought he was dairy allergic. The doctors told us it was likely that.

But eventually, it turned out that he has Celiac’s Disease. So it had been wheat hurting him the whole time.

We’ve sent the last few years figuring out how to make delicious gluten-free meals.

I just finished eating my dim sum. I fished writing my tiny book. And one of the servers asked me what my plans were for the rest of the weekend.

I mentioned I was just excited to have a quiet moment to myself because I was closing my space in Lunenburg.

She told me it was a strange coincidence because today was her friend’s last shift because she is OPENING a restaurant near Lunenburg.

How wild life is. How many connections exist if we just…talk to each other.

So now I’m waiting to chat with her friend, just in case I can help connect her with the community.

…and my fortune cookie was perfect.

It’s been a magical day so far. My children’s father filled my car with boxes. I’m going to finish listening to The Correspondent on the way home.

Then I’m going to relax. This next week is going to be a big one.

Here is the tiny book for today.

📚📚📚#109

Tiny Tenrec

Heart,

Wake

First I have to start by saying I’m tired y’all. Usually I take Tuesdays off so that I don’t work every day. But the art gallery is open again, and volunteering there makes my heart spectacularly happy…

And because last week was the second last week of Curious & Kind…there were more people wanting to come by. More than usual. And a lot of it was listening to the manifestations of grief and gratitude around this community space we’d built together. It’s such an important part of the process…endings, and doing them with intention and kindness.

This week my friends also held space for me and my joy and wonder at the fact that this thing had happened at all.

Every day was full full full.

And yesterday I went to pick my boys up in the city. I’d washed all the things my youngest had asked me to wash. The taps, the doorknobs, his clothes…

But it wasn’t enough. So I treasure his clothes and gave him a brand new laundry bin, so he’d have one for clean and one for dirty. That likely makes sense. But dealing with OCD and the particular demands of multiple humans with OCD can be quite the puzzle to solve.

I told my youngest that when he’s an adult and living alone, he’ll have much more autonomy and be able to make his space the way he wants it. He said that he believes his therapy will help him with his rigid thinking and obsessive need for absolute cleanliness…because he’s getting therapy, and knows that a lot of his requests aren’t rational.

I am grateful for a family that can talk openly and candidly about our struggles. I am so grateful to my previous therapists and the work I’ve done on my own patterns so that I can be a supportive and understanding parent to my kids.

…but add exhaustion, getting woken up and startled, like I was last night at 2am by my eldest, and I have to admit I wasn’t at my best.

Gratefully my eldest understands his OCD fixations, and we were able, together, to talk him down from the fear that a bat got into his bedroom and left one tiny claw behind that would give him rabies. If you have OCD, your stories and commiseration are so very welcome here. If you don’t, and you’re confused as to why this kind of thing happens, absolutely feel free to educate yourself on what OCD actually is (as opposed to this media-fication of germaphobia and alphabetizing CDs).

So I am tired. But I am feeling happy because today the prompt for the tiny book is Dark Patterns…and my friend Heather wrote this beautiful book that made me cry…tears that had been stuck.

So today I get to share this with you.

I also get to tell you about how I relocated Bunsqually, the giant stuffy rabbit that I got on a crappy Easter holiday with the kids andmy partner years and years ago. Bunsqually was the ONLY good thing about that trip. He came home with us, and ended up, eventually, sitting on the couch at the 2021-2023 iteration of Curious & Kind in Almonte.

He was a comfort to so many people of all ages.

So when I started Curious & Kind again in Lunenburg, I knew I had to bring him in with me.

Bunsqually was equally as beloved at this Curious & Kind. Particularly by the one little girl who’ve I been reading to on and off since she was about 3. She 6 now, and her moms bring her to Curious & Kind regularly because it suits her. She’s made friends there, and read so many books, and she LOVES Buns(as he is affectionately known).

So on Thursday after 20 some people played and chatted and made art for two plus hours…she and her moms left.

I sent a text asking her mom…if they might be willing to adopt Buns. She replied enthusiastically.

…and the little girl had left her heart sweater.

So after sitting and relaxing post creative club, I drove Bunsqually to their house. Bunsqually was wearing her jacket.

When the little girl opened the door she was surprised to see me, Bunsqually and her jacket, and I told her that the giant rabbit that is beloved belongs to her now.

She was so excited she took him to her room at once and put him in a chair; and then came running out to ask me if I wanted to see *her* bunnies.

And I did! Very much so.

So I got to sit on the kitchen floor with my friends, two giant bunnies, and a very happy small human, and it was exactly the community care I’d needed.

That soothed my heart.

…and I knew that Bunsqually was exactly where he was meant to be.

I have to make breakfast for my family, so I can’t write more, but below are TWO books about Dark Patterns.

If you only have time to read one. Let it be the one by it is magic.

📚📚📚#108

My book: Dark Patterns

AND

Dark Patterns by

Heart,

Wake

Friday in snapshots.

Today was the second last Friday at the space. I played chess. I got a visit from a member of the book club I’m a part of returning my book. I went for a beautiful unexpected lunch with my friend from book club. Then two new friends visited to make art. We chatted and I focused on them, and made the tiny book as we chatted, and so it is very simple, because I wanted to be making art but also be present.

Here is the result.

📚📚📚#107

Heartpea

Heart,

Wake

It’s the penultimate Thursday of Curious & Kind. That means second to last. And I know that it will be okay, but right now I feel like I’m not going to get the dismount exactly right.

…and I have to be okay with that. I do not want to control how people feel about the end of this beautiful thing, but I do want to assure people that running this festival of friendship over the past ten months has been so enlivening.

I honestly don’t t feel sad, but like a tapestry made of all sorts of gratitude.

4:25pm

I’m writing now from outside the creative club. The second to last one. It is full of people of all ages making art, eating granola bars, and the chatter of joyful interactions.

Two kiddos are on the couch with the giant stuffed animals, and they are playing like there is no tomorrow.

Other kids and parents are at the Lego table, some folks are sitting on the couch reading and knitting. While others are having tea at one of the tables.

It’s beautiful. Magical. And I’m taking a breather to be outside and appreciate the fact that I don’t even have to be in there for it to work.

That is the most heartening this of all.

I finished the tiny book for the day at Art with Heather this morning.

📚📚📚

I’ll upload the rest later

This is later:

Heart,

Wake

(The button shelf at Curious & Kind)

A voice note because writing won’t quite cut it today.

The Whimsical Prompts for the week

Week 16

106. A Guanaco’s Dream

107. Heartpea

108. Dark Patterns

109. Tiny Tenrec

110. Lemonier

111. A baby cahow on Nonsuch

112. Red Rover

And the tiny book of the day which is exciting, because I’m intending to make it a series of children’s books 💖

📚📚📚

Heart,

Wake

💖💖💖

Last night I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to. So badly. But I was feeling both anxious and excited. Curious & Kind is closing in (*goes to the calendar to count the actual days*) 12 days.

12 days. I have twelve days to empty the space, and to thank all the people who made it what it is.

…and today is the first Tuesday back at the Lunenburg Art Gallery Society. It feels like home here, after my being here as many Tuesdays.

Come for a walk around the gallery with me?

…and while that was uploading I had soup from the cafe next door, chatted with some folks, drew/painted a whale card…got a new-to-me pair of shoes from a friend…

Met a filmmaker/carpenter…

And now I’m going to work on my tiny book.

It feels so good to be here.

So good.

The tiny book is here.

📚📚📚#104

The Crystal Cabinet

(This one was a lot of fun to draw and write)

It’s been such a lovely day.

Heart,

Wake

Today you get two tiny books! Because this is the prompt chose.

The first one belongs to me. The second to her.

I hope your Monday is magical.

📚📚📚

Tiny book #103

AND

and her book! It is magical, and exactly what I needed today.

I’m sending you love to wherever you are, whenever you are and however you are.

Heart,

Wake

12:42pm

(This is a clay hug that I made for my friend when she was having a rough day this past week)

💖💖💖

Today is a Sunday not requiring parenting and so this morning while I was waiting for my partner to get ready I went on a walk with a new friend.

She reached out to me yesterday with a concrete ask. Would I want to go for coffee and a walk on Sunday mid-morning.

Normally I couldn’t. But today! It was a go!

8:22pm

Oh no! The day disappeared into spring magic.

I want to talk about all of it. The walk and macaron with my friend.

Breakfast with my partner at this wondrous place that just re-opened for the season last month…where apparently my friend’s father (hi Miranda!) works.

I want to tell you all about the magical first foray into the forêt with our new to us camera. We ended up getting a second hand one from a camera shop, and I wanted to have a magical first photograph experience so we went here.

My partner is choosing nine photographs from the ones we took so you could be a part of our first photography session. We chose this absurdly magical place we’d never experienced fully before. A forest full of cement sculptures. IT WAS MAGIC.

(Gallery of photos here)

It turns out that the photographs we took with the actual camera were too big for here! My partner is figuring it out now. But I’ve put the photographs I took with my phone.

And after the first photography adventure (it was just so…exciting to spend time being creative with my love…we will be celebrating 10 years together May 15th) we decided to drive to the to catch the last bit of Crafternoon.

…and to my exquisite delight, as of May, I’ll be back at Rosefinch on Mondays thru to the end of June…which will help soften having to leave Curious & Kind earlier than thought, and brighten my weeks while I’m trying to seek our home.

Rosefinch is a safe and magical place for me, and so I feel grateful that I can rejoin the team there so seamlessly. (Thank you Audra and Haritha!)

…and then we went for sushi and ended up having a fabulous conversation with two other tables of neurodivergent darlings until the restaurant closed.

It was such a magical spring Sunday.

(You can wander through the woods with me here)

Oh! And then we got home and we did the dishes together, and I started my tiny book…

Which is half done, below:

📚📚📚tiny book #102

A Forest Full of Fireflies

(I painted the pages black and am waiting for them to dry 😆)

I hope your Sunday (or whatever day it is for you) has a modicum of magic in it too. 💖

Heart,

Wake

📚📚📚#101

Clear and Present Dancer

I wrote this book to

What a Feeling by Irene Cara

💖💖💖

Yesterday I announced publicly that Curious & Kind would close at the end of April.

I’m trying to make sure cute people who loved the space can come and gently say goodbye.

Now that the process has begun, I can feel myself getting lighter. I’m reminiscing on all the beautiful moments. I’m answering messages and texts about people who want to drop by.

I spent yesterday coordinating people to come by to take the things they love. I’m writing cards to the people who were so instrumental in making it what it is…

It’s Saturday, and for the first Saturday in ages I don’t have my kids.

I got up luxuriously late at 10am. I snuggled my dog. I wrote my tiny book. I ate four carrots (did I mentioned that I finally noticed I am turning orange-ish…it suits me).

(Just a light orange)

Yesterday after my busy day of sorting things out. Paying my last electrical bill for the space in person (the actual last one they will take out of my deposit)…I went home.

My partner was sitting waiting for me. I’d forgotten we were going to go to a movie for 4pm. It was after 4.

…they weren’t mad or disappointed. They understood.

They asked if I’d like to finally go get a camera.

I’ve been going on about wanting to get more into photography for years.

…so we drove all the way over to the next town over. To Best Buy. We waited patiently for someone one to get to us. A half hour passed. We were looking at ourselves in a mirror when a clerk finally came to see us.

He asked us what we were doing. Not what we wanted.

We are looking for a camera, I said.

There are no cameras here, he said. This is a Best Buy Express.

…but as we walked out, there were cameras.

It has been so long since I’ve been treated as a freak that staff has to “get rid of” that it didn’t even occur to me that was what he was doing. Like we’d be loitering instead of waiting for attention.

Years ago this would have hurt me. I would have spiralled.

But yesterday, at nearly 47 years old…I just said to my partner…we can spend our $600 somewhere else, yes? They agreed.

We are a strange looking pair. They are all Halloween and I’m a rainbow, and I love us, and how very queer we appear.

…and I’m grateful to have lived in this town where people love how bright I am, and who have accepted my partner and I as two gentle eccentrics who would never do anyone a lick of harm.

I think that’s what I keep re-inventing Curious & Kind over and over…because I also need a place to feel belonging. Just the way I am.

…it’s been such a joy to provide a space for the darling creatives and kind-hearted artists, writers, self-proclaimed weirdos and wunderkin.

That’s what I focusing on.

Today we will go to the city to buy a camera. A gift to ourselves. We celebrate 10 years of knowing each other on May 15th. And we are going to spend that day exploring what we can do with photography.

I hope your Saturday (or whatever day you’re experiencing) is full of tiny sparkling magic.

Heart,

Wake

(A bench painted by an 8 year old artist, for a 3D printed rose with dangling legs that I got from . It was made by a young artist too. And it reminds me of the Rose in Le Petit Prince. I love that it has its own bench now.)

The tiny book will be right here.

It will be tiny book #100

It will be called:

All I Wanted Was A Guava

📚📚📚

💖💖💖

But until then, right now I have to sort the last week. I can feel all that has happened bubbling…like a simmering pot that won’t let me sleep.

I think I might have to write this in categories, because it is too much. Which I think is why I couldn’t write about it. I didn’t want my overwhelm to overwhelm you. I wanted to write from a place of being okay.

…and right now, I feel that calm starting. The understanding that no matter what happens, I will be okay. Because I have existed. And because the existing I have done…it has been beautiful, mistake-full, big-hearted and the work I’ve done to make kindness and curiosity my first instincts…it’s working. Daily.

Where to start.

This past week I have been existing with many channels going on at once. Or maybe, imagine a music sheet, with dissonant notes playing on each line. But also sometimes harmonizing.

Trying to create a metaphor for how it feels to be simultaneously managing my child’s heath concerns while finding out that Curious & Kind will be closing early, at the end of the month, while also a maniac was threatening to end an entire civilization…while I was trying to go on a family vacation…

It’s no wonder I couldn’t write about anything.

I’m so grateful for this daily practice of making a tiny book.

Today is the 100th day. 100 is an arbitrary number as any other. But a lot of people seem to be excited by the idea of doing something for 100 days, and it’s fun to share in that excitement.

I have sat down, every day of this year, to write a tiny book. Yesterday…the 99th one…I didn’t finish. Which actually felt right, because while I was writing it, I wanted to be present with the three other people who had gathered at Curious & Kind for Art with .

This weekend, after I’d signed the agreement to ‘vacate the space by April 30th’ so that a kind, local entrepreneur can continue her business of ten years…I wanted to tell first. Because from the very beginning of this iteration of Curious & Kind…she has been there. She and her sons came to dance in the space right after I’d rented it. While it was empty.

Heather didn’t like the the very aggressive quote on the wall that had been left by a previous tenant, and neither did I. I dealt with that by gleefully peeling the deal letters off with one of the teens who was helping me set up the space, and then sending a picture to Heather.

When I set out a book of drawing…on the initial opening day, Heather drew in it. The book never quite did what I had intended, but that first hopeful drawing made me feel like things were going in the right direction.

Heather’s kids made some of the first monsters for the wall.

Over the course of this festival of Friendship, Heather has been there…nearly every Thursday morning so we could make art, together.

I wanted to tell her first, before I wrote anything down. And then I wanted to tell the people who come to the space each week. So I have spent this week doing that. In person. By gentle message.

I have made space for the feeling of loss, and the joys of having participated in the strange happening. So many things can be true at once.

Curious & Kind was always meant to be temporary. Mostly because everything is temporary.

I sat with three people today and we talked through to the eventual end of everything. And the possibility that the universe might continue to exist beyond us.

…and it was oddly soothing. To be reminded of our insignificance in the grand scheme of things, so that we could remember to focus on the now.

I didn’t finish my tiny book because…I was watching in awe at the beautiful interactions and friendship happening right in front of me.

This morning before Art with Heather I had gone to enact my dirty chai and barista chat ritual. I had stopped at the bookstore to tell the shop owner, and my friend about the early closing of Curious & Kind. The shop was busy, so I didn’t get to tell her about how my kid is now waiting to find out if he has diabetes, a UTI or something completely different. I could only fit one thing in. So I told her about the space coming to an early end.

Then I felt so heavy.

I needed to describe the way I felt so I recorded a tiny impromptu prose poem about the feeling.

I see now that it is 27 seconds long. Which is a number I chose which does the same thing as 42s for me…because during a very stressful time so many years ago, I wondered if I could trick my brain into taking more deep breaths. Seeing more beautiful things. And as we were driving past a house in a giant RV next to the Pacific Ocean against the express directions of my children’s father because I needed to see the ocean…I told my partner who was sitting in the seat next to me while my children and their father were reading in the back of the RV…I said, I’m choosing another magic number…and we drove past a house that said 27.

27 is it, I said.

…and all these years later, nearly 8 years…I have been gently seeing and making magic in the number 27 too. Wow. So it’s beautiful and strange that my tiny poem about feeling like a hot air balloon was accidentally 27 seconds long.

It’s now 5:42am, and I’m grinning.

I woke up at 4am. My partner was snoring and so was my dog, and I could feel the irritation of having been woken up building.

…but instead I started to think about all the beautiful moments in my day.

Writing and making art with three wondrous people.

Picking up delicious food for lunch and eating it with my youngest, who has had such a hard week trying to fight his OCD and nearly dehabilitating worry that he might have an infection that could trigger him having to take antibiotics which could cause he to have another bout of C.Diff…which meant we had to brave a hospital so he could have his blood drawn (the blood draw doesn’t bother him at all, but being in a hospital does)…and because being in a hospital triggered a meltdown so he couldn’t complete the urine sample part…so I spent Wednesday searching for a medical lab that would accept a home sample which had to arrive within two hours of collection…

And so yes…on Wednesday I did pretend I was some sort of super hero and drove a small bottle of urine to a a weird giant lab an hour from my house that agreed to take it.

All that to calm my child’s worries. To let him know he is heard, that his concerns are valid, that I understand how wanting to be okay and feeling like nothing will be okay…can exist simultaneously.

I thought about how my eldest son advocated for his own OCD diagnosis. And how he did his own exposure therapy with that therapeutic guidance. And how for the first time in years he feels…lighter, happier, and actually more in control of his own life.

And how he has counseled his brother to get professional help. And how his younger brother, my youngest…listened. And how remarkably my children’s father got a call while he was on vacation in the Dominican Republic saying that he had the kids finally have a primary care physician after nearly three years of waiting in the queue. And my youngest son asked his Dad last night, as I was dropping my boys off if he could go for a mental health assessment. So he could get the help he needs to manage his OCD.

His Dad agreed.

That is huge.

All of it.

…and right now I’m thinking about how we just had the third last Creative Club with the 9 year old who has been running them weekly since October.

How well she took the idea of ending the club on a beautiful note.

Each Thursday she comes in, big hearted and full of hope, not knowing who might show up. She accepts everyone into her club. She’s had as little as just me and her, to up to over 20 people. She is never disappointed by the turn out.

We start by putting her boots on the mat, and her jacket in the corner. Then she tells me about her week, or what she’s reading while she puts on her magic boots (a pair of tall slippers made by hand that I bought years ago, and for some strange reason they fit both of us, perfectly, but our feet are completely different sizes)…and then when the guests start arriving, she greets them, suggests possible activities.

(Today’s creative project in process)

Today was painting tiny furniture and learning to pronounce the word adidirondack…oh no! I taught it to them wrong! It’s adirondack…now I’m trying not to giggle and accidentally wake up my partner. I’ve been pronouncing adirondack with an extra syllable since I was 12!

Amazing.

I looked it up to make sure I was spelling it correctly…and I wasn’t! I love this. I will correct my mistake next week. But it was a magical club day.

I told the members who showed up about the early closing of Curious & Kind, and they all first said “how are you going to get EVERYTHING out by the end of April?!” I itemized my planning and steps…and then each of them offered to help.

…and I said YES. Because doing this together as a community, bringing things to a close together, that is as important as it was building it with the help of community. Curious & Kind doesn’t belong to me. This is the third iteration of it, and inevitably…it belongs to the community that brings it to life, and it has a wholeness to itself. Curious & Kind is like…an entity…and it sort of…runs itself. I open the doors…but it doesn’t need me there to do what it does…and that is freeing.

…that the connections, and community and friendships…continue beyond its walls. That’s its true magic I think. That it isn’t a place (as my friend Ashton once said as the last iteration was ending)…it’s in us. We carry the curiosity and kindness and welcoming with us.

…and to see that happening…again…it feels like a magic I didn’t know was possible. But that’s what community is and does. It supports itself. Actively. By creating gentle bonds and interconnections.

…and I don’t have to always be here for beautiful things to keep happening. Because it’s not about me. And that is freeing too.

Today some of the folks who come to Curious & Kind were asking what would happen to very specific objects within the space. Most of those things they were curious about…they belong to me.

So tonight when I woke up…I examined my attachment to these things. Do I need them? Or could I let them go?

Today an 8 year old artist (the one who made the rainbow bench with the buoy for my tiny legged rose…pictured above) she wanted to paint the tiny rocking chair. But the 9 year old wanted it.

So the 8 year old said…take the rocking chair, I’ll paint the bench.

I was excited about painting the Adirondack chair. (*Adirondack, Adirondack, Adirondack* I whisper this to myself to re-teach myself how to say it) in my excitement I put it at the table so I could sit to paint it with the two young artists.

But my friend, who just turned 75, she saw the chair sitting there…and she was taken with the idea of painting it. I only had one. I offered her a bench. But she really wanted the Adirondack chair.

…so I thought of the joy the 9 year old had experienced when then 8 year old gave her the rocking chair out of kindness. And I gave the Adirondack chair to my friend. Because it made sense to my heart.

I am not giving to a fault. I will not let go out the very important talismans I’ve collected that tie me to memories and place.

But I’m going through the things that the people have found comfort and connection in.

…and I will be doing some gentle letting go, so that the folks who have loved being in the space…can take home reminders. I have started making lists of objects and the people they belong to.

That is helping me with the end of what could be the last iteration of Curious & Kind. I never know.

Each iteration has carried its own kind of magic.

My 75 year old friend said to me as I was picking up my dog on Tuesday…that she had been talking with the 9 year old who runs the club. She told me the 9 year old had said that someday she wants to run a Curious & Kind of her own. She said it like I knew it. But the 9 year old hadn’t told me.

…and my heart exploded into sparkles.

The fact that community guiding is contagious makes me so happy. That community is a thing that anyone can learn to make. That’s exciting. And it brings me so much hope.

Today I felt a part of a community so beautiful that I cried.

Beautiful things make me cry.

I am excited to see what happens next.

(I’m going to ask my new friend if I can share the guava book she wrote yesterday. And when you come back later, I’ll have written a guava book too. Happy 100th day of the year. It seems worth celebrating.)

Heart,

Wake

The 9 year old’s first monster lit by the sun today held up by the hand that made it last October, she is still so excited by her first creation.

P.S. as I hit publish on this I feel light. Like literally lighter, but also the light is coming through the window because it is now 6:34am.