third christmas away from home. (Patreon)

hello my loves.

home is not a place. it's a feeling.

greetings from an exahusted amanda, christmas eve, glenorchy, aotearoa new zealand.

three stockings - gifted to me last year but a kind and generous maker - above the pizza oven at sue’s house. 

it's our third christmas away from home - one because of tour and two because of covid. 

we are doing....our best. we are trying. 

we are borrowing someone’s home and tree for the third time. 

it all come around. again, we are the adopted, and not the adopting. i’m so tired and so sad and happy and so grateful and so empty and so full. so lost and so found.

life comes. you do. you just....try. 

you just do what you can with what you have. 

you make it work somehow. 

you love, you live, you love.

tree....that way.

neil and i have spent the last 72 hours wrapping presents, making the best of what we've got, and trying to delight the little boy.

trying to give him memories that will endure in his heart as something beautiful.

i was going to try to get the december althing out before christmas....but it just didn't find time to happen. i know you don't mind.

i'm going to do it before i head fully offline for 9 days on december 28th our time.

may i just say....from the depths of my current exhaustion:

i have never felt gratitude this deep.

for the sheer inexplicableness of life, for the heartbreakingly vast kindness of strangers, for the unfolding of the impossible universe.

for friends. for support, in unbelievable and surprising forms.

for you, all of you - my patrons -  you people all around the world who have held me fast over the course of this pandemic, more than you understand.

for the stories of our lives being a mess, but a beautiful mess.

for love.

for simple, uncomplicated, unadulterated love.

ash is in bed, and he will wake up to an empty plate of crumbs and a nibbled carrot and an empty glass and a full stocking. 

it is enough.

it will have to all be enough.

to you, my dear patrons....may your hearts be at ease. 

may you sleep sweetly. 

may you have compassion with yourselves in a world that is more random and tumultuous that any of us every expected.

may you count every small blessing.

may you know that even if nothing is feeling right....may you know that i love you. i truly do.

i'm going to fall into bed with a smile in my heart, having said that.

that smile is because of so many things, but please know this: so much of that smile is because of you and your faith in me as an artist and as a plain old tired-ass mother and flailing human being.

merry christmas eve from new zealand, all.

may we all just do our best.

i love you all so, so much.

i am home.

xxx

AFP

p.s i'm reading comments here and on the last post, and if you haven't listened to it yet and you need a goddamn sonic hug...i made you a soul-hugging playlist.