A postcard(s) from Cape Cod (Patreon)

Hello loves.

I’m deep offline on a much-needed retreat with my family on Cape Cod, but wanted to write to you with some words and images from this little slice of paradise.

(Next week: Campersand post coming, song coming, Althing coming. For now - I drink deep, some time off…which you’re all always telling me to take, so I hope you’re happy :)

This popped up this morning on my meditation app, and Ash isn’t up yet, so I have a moment to pen this.

I’m happy here, happier than I’ve been in a long time.

I’m sending good wishes to everyone going through painful transformations at the moment.

I’ve been going through a massive life shift for quite a few years now, three parts act of God, two parts act of Me, that makes full fathom five; but I feel I’m finally past the acute, hemorrhage-pain in the ER and into the healing physical therapy. The ocean helps. In Aotearoa New Zealand, especially my year alone with Ash, she healed me daily. She called us in. She calmed me. She told me to wait.

She held me, and my kid. Here on Cape Cod, she reminds.

You can’t help but notice that, here. There is a bigger story, a more important story. The story will always wash up on the shore, like a bottle from the lighthouse keeper. You wait. You lose patience.

I’ve been thinking about intergenerational trauma this week, as I hang with families, catch up with old friends, enfold myself in the bigger. The stories that families keep in locked boxes, the expense of secrecy, the deep shame around addiction, the normalizing of so many things that get handed down over, and over, and over. Water on rocks over time. The lengths a family will go to in order to hide something bad. A whole organism that forms around a secret.

The hermit crabs are everywhere around our feet. I love them best of all, my comrades, always searching for a home, never settled by design. Ash picks them up with delight. We found one the other day hanging out in a living periwinkle. We called it an illegal sublet.

The sea. The dance between this country’s dark history and our current quagmire. The dark dance between ego, ambition, fame, trauma and, eventually, love. The dance I did with the world. The dance Ash will do with the world.

The thing a child needs most. Needed most. Loving arms. Safety. Reassurance. Protection from the dark, exposure to the sun, an invitation into the bigger, more important story.

A sense of belonging. Isn’t that all we ever wanted, as children?

Waving to all of you, with love.

To the lighthouse.

♥️🌊

(Various Photos by me, Grandma, Brendon & Alexis).