Something has happened and is happening to me.

After all the hours and days and weeks and months of illness and suffering and fear and fierce hope and determination and making endless batches of vegetable juice and countless appointments with doctors and healers of all kinds, after all the fatigue and pain and teeth-gritting endurance and incalculable letting go—to almost all of it, good riddance!—and surrender and sacrifice and unbelievable grace and kindness and love and generosity showered upon me, a quiet revolution is taking place.

I’m changed and changing. Irrevocably. And it’s happening almost undetectably in its motion yet unmistakably in its effects. It’s like I am wearing a mantle of light, which I haven’t earned but which each of us deserve, it being our true, abiding nature. And I am learning the reality of joy and wonder and gratitude, even as I continue to grub about often in suffering and fear and illusions and plans and dreams and goals and desires and opinions and judgments.

I am transformed and transforming. I am waking up slowly and sometimes startlingly, even while parts of me are still often fast asleep. And it is what I always longed for in the deepest parts of my being and what felt maddeningly far away and hard to get.

And yes, I’m wildly grateful for it. And I hasten to add, I’m still nothing special, except inasmuch as we are all unutterably special and precious and beautiful and good to the core.

And despite this momentary ramble today, I am mostly finding it incredibly hard to put words to this miracle for fear of sullying it or having it fly away like a frightened songbird or getting it wrong.

Mostly, I find myself tongue-tied these days, especially when it comes to the written word, and that’s very odd for someone for whom the written and spoken word has always been an astonishingly fluid thing readily available to my hand and tongue.

I want so much to speak to you, to share with you so many things that have occurred and are occurring to this body and mind and heart and soul on this crazy healing journey I’ve been on this past year. I long to commune with you through language (and in my offerings), and most days lately, I can’t find how or where to start.

But I want you to know how much I think of you—even those I’ve not yet met—and I cherish you being here with me, willing to lend me your ear and time occasionally, and I want to be worthy of that and gift you something deeply valuable, that’s so important to me. And of course, that’s an awful lot of pressure to put on oneself, especially when that self is just recently emerging from the fires of hell and still getting singed frequently and not yet out of the woods entirely, to switch metaphors mid-stream here.

But last night, as I was reading essays by the inimitable Brian Doyle, and his wild speech set free my own for a moment so that I had to sit bolt upright in bed and grab a pen and paper—thank goodness, they were handy right there by the bed—this I had to tell you, about the change in me, the wonder of it, the grace of it, even though incomplete. And I’m so grateful to have been given some words at last to share it with you.

I’m not the same person I was a year ago, when I was diagnosed all of a sudden with an illness that was supposed to claim my life but didn’t and I began an intense and ultimately miraculous healing journey that I’m still on. Of course, none of us are the people we were a year ago. But I’m noticeably not, after all I’ve endured and weathered and gathered.

It was hell to go through, even as it was filled with beautiful, astonishing gifts and moments. I don’t in any way want to make light of that journey. Some days the slow healing still causes me to despair. But I am grateful for the changes in me and curious to watch them continue to unfold and eager to help them continue in the right direction and very much wondering who am I now and what do I need and want and how can I support myself in all aspects.

Some of the big questions I’m living with daily right now are:

What to offer you in the coming year. Definitely The Artist’s Way at the start of the new year. And Freedom to Write as soon as I can after that. But what else and when and how.

How to re-imagine my Patreon subscription program into something gorgeous and wondrous and delectable and necessary that people want to share with everyone they know. What to add, subtract, and restructure so it becomes that. And should it move to Substack?

How to revitalize and reshape my Brilliant Playmates membership community into something powerful, beautiful, needed, and thriving. 

How to live in this crazy world and provide for myself and be as healthy as I can and also give my gifts to as many as I can and make a difference.

How do I keep nurturing this awakening in myself and others because it is the most essential thing?

How can I best contribute to co-creating a world in which all of life is cherished?

And how can we all have more joy, play, wonder, and beauty every day, because when we do we stop fighting and hoarding and doing all the other silly and damaging things we do?

And here’s what I really want to know:

What is it that you most need that I can give to support you living and flourishing artfully and soulfully and giving your amazing gifts to the world?

What are you grappling with? What do you long for? Where do you get stuck or need support?

I know it can feel ridiculously hard to answer such questions, but how about just “first thought, best thought”? And I know it can feel absurdly vulnerable to send the answers in an email to me, but I promise you I read each one with love and care and real interest. You can contact me here.