On fear, surrender, and what still blooms in the dark (March wrap-up)

Where the past meets possibility: the holy ache of spring

March was a collapse and expansion at the same time. It was the sun on our shoulders and our palms full of seeds. It was chocolate milkshakes that already tasted of summer and breakthroughs in unexpected places. It was the grief lifting from the sea and finding peace again here in the mountains that are always blue. It was spring, finally spring, and my son picking out the flowers we’d plant together. It was falling in love at one in the morning and not knowing where to put my devotion. It was publishing my memoir after five years of rejection and finally feeling seen. It was mezcal bars and dimly lit corners and hanging onto his every word. It was a blanket in the sun and my son’s top knot and blowing cinnamon into the house. It was virtual writing workshops while my son played in the grass and feeling into the ease and magic of being both writer and mother. It was blooming trees in Atlanta and symphony orchestras and crying in a red velvet seat. It was singing the ABC’s at the top of our lungs as we walked the lake in a rainstorm and barely making it home in time for dinner. It was reading my memoir aloud for the audiobook and choking up at the grief we’re all still carrying. It was bouquets made by my son from the dried flowers gifted by my husband. It was pushing past my fear to do the things I want to do and make the things I want to make. It was trying to figure out how to leave a country that’s feeling less and less like home. It was smoke-covered ridge lines and packing up my son’s drawings and waiting for the evacuation warning. It was dandelions tucked behind our ears and making wishes for rain. It was spending full days having to do nothing but be a mother and feeling so deliciously fulfilled. It was a mini-bar bottle of red wine and late night conversations and the sound of a courtyard fountain. It was dark chocolate in our mouths and being excited about the future for the first time in a long time. It was lying on our backs on the trampoline, watching the clouds, telling the universe all that we’re thankful for. It was being held in motherhood and art and community and finally holding myself.

I have so much to say about March. It was bursting with everything my soul needs—sun and presence with my son, spaces where I can be challenged and held both as a woman and a writer, a mother and a creative, and so many touch-god moments that made me pause and ask: is this really my life? How did I get so lucky?

If you’ve been reading my writing for a while now, you know I often write from the ache. From a childhood shaped by addiction and loss and longing. But I hope you’ve also noticed the thread I keep holding onto—the sliver of light I follow, even in the dark. I reach for it again and again, letting it guide me, steady me, carry me through until the next good thing comes.

Even with the backdrop of a terrifying political climate and my own personal grief, wildfire smoke staining the sky outside my window and the unease of waiting for an evacuation notice that I pray never comes, and all the ways my nervous system still sometimes believes I’m that three-year-old girl clinging to her mother as the cops break down the door to raid her home—I found so much good this month.

First of all, it’s spring. Fucking finally, right? Most of the trees are still bare-branched, but I can already feel the flourish that spring brings.

Through therapy, meditation, writing, and being part of powerful spaces like Kat River’s Art of Alchemy, I can honestly say I feel changed. Not in a glossy, tied-up-with-a-bow way. But in a way that feels cellular. Like I collapsed timelines, like I’m living from a version of myself that’s further along.

The me I was a month ago was still tangled in fear. Still spinning stories about why she couldn’t make money from her art. Still saying there wasn’t enough time to write. Still stuck in the loop of self-doubt and survival mode, dragging around the weight of rejection like a second skin. She was still hiding—ducking under the table any time her fear of being seen showed up. Still caught in the push and pull between motherhood and creativity. Still finding reasons to resent her mother, her husband, her father, the people she loves the most—outside of her son and brother because those two can do no wrong—because she didn’t know how to hold her grief.

But something shifted.

It started with a kind of death—a letting go of the version of myself who could only survive. Who was just waiting for something bad to happen.

And then came the slow emergence. The healing. The trust. The decisions made from where I’m headed instead of where I’ve been. The choosing of joy, even when it didn’t make sense on paper. The chasing of sea air and inspiration and the thrill of not knowing what’s going to happen next. The surrender. The momentum of what happens when you finally let go.

I’m saying yes to the things that light me up and no to the things that don’t feel right—especially the ones that leave me drained. And lately, it’s felt like everything is finally coming to the helm. Like a thousand threads have been slowly weaving themselves into something whole. It’s not a sense of arrival because I can feel how much more there is to uncover, but nothing feels far away anymore. The gap between who I was, who I am, and who I’m becoming is starting to collapse.

And I’m leaning into that.

Of course, it’s not all good. Our beautiful blue mountains are burning, and we came close to evacuating our home. It’s been six months since Hurricane Helene, and while we’re still picking up the pieces from that, here comes another disaster. It’s a lot for these mountains to hold, for us to hold. And I’m tired, y’all.

There will always be hard things—that’s the nature of life. But my son and I planted seeds anyway. We pressed flowers into smoky soil as if a fire wasn’t edging closer. As if they’d have time to bloom. Even now, as I publish this, the fire sits just one ridgeline away. I can see the plume of smoke from my bedroom window. Still, we plant and we hope and we wait for something to grow.

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I usually share what I’m reading, listening to, and watching, but today, I just want to tell you about a few things that are really lighting me up right now…

An essay of mine is being published in The Rumpus.

It’s part of their Voices on Addiction column and I’m so honored—not just because I highly respect The Rumpus, but because they reached out to me. I hadn’t even submitted. I was waiting until I felt “ready.” And then the universe whispered, you are. Thank you,

Kelly Thompson

for seeing the light in my story. I’m so honored to be in this space with you talking about the things that are hard to talk about.

Kat River’s Art of Alchemy.

This space has broken me and healed me—sometimes in the same breath. I swear, it’s changed my goddamn life.

Kat River

has this rare gift of distilling magic and strategy in a way that doesn’t just inspire, it lands. Her words stay with you. Her questions rearrange you. She doesn’t offer surface-level advice—she offers transformation, if you're willing to meet it.

Through her work, I’ve been able to reimagine what’s possible for me—not just creatively or professionally, but spiritually. Emotionally. As a mother. As a woman. As an artist. If you ever get the chance to learn from her, take it. You won’t come out the same. And that’s the point.

Write the Hard Thing.

This is a new offering I’ll be sharing soon—a grounded, body-based approach to writing the stories that scare us. The ones we’ve tiptoed around for years because they live too deep in the body to reach with words alone.

I get asked the same questions again and again:

How do you write about such hard things?

How do you move through the fear?

How do you stay with yourself when it hurts?

This is my answer. It’s the exact process I’ve used for years to move through resistance, to stay present with the tender stuff, to write from truth instead of trauma. It’s part nervous system care, part creative practice, and all heart.

I’ll be offering it here on Substack first, for those of you who’ve been here with me from the beginning, writing your own brave stories. If this sounds like something you need, stay close—more details soon.

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Gregory Alan Isakov.

If you’ve been here awhile, you already know his music is church to me.

It communicates straight to my soul in a way that nothing else has ever been able to do. Even the actual sound of his voice—there’s something about the resonance that settles into my bones like medicine. Like true sound healing. I know I’m gushing, but it’s the truth.

We got to see him play with the symphony in Asheville, and then again in Atlanta, and I swear it’s like a drug. On the days that follow the shows, I get all irritable and depressed like I’m coming down. Because in a way, I am.

It was extra sweet this time, too because my mom came with us to Atlanta and stayed at the Airbnb with our toddler so we could have a much-needed date night. And then she came over again to watch him for the Asheville show. Those moments with my partner feel like gold. Pressley isn’t in school yet, and we don’t have childcare, so this kind of time alone is rare.

I was thinking about how growing up I could never fully count on my mom. She spent most of my childhood in prison or high to the hills on methamphetamines. Even now that she’s sober, she’s not always consistent. But when it matters—she shows up. She knew how much these shows meant to me. And she came through.

A month ago, I was still holding onto resentment toward her. Still carrying the ache of all we didn’t have because of her addiction. But lately, I feel myself softening toward her. I feel lighter. Like something is loosening. Like we can just be together without all the weight. And that feels like its own kind of healing.

My memoir, serialized here on Substack.

We’re five chapters in and the next one drops on Thursday. This project has cracked something wide open in me. It’s raw, terrifying, and one of the most meaningful things I’ve ever shared.

I spent years writing this book, pouring every part of myself into it. Then five more years chasing a “yes” from literary agents that never came. I kept waiting for permission. Until I decided I didn’t need it. I just needed to tell the story. So I am—right here, in real time, with you.

It’s a story about survival, about learning how to hold love, even when it hurts. It’s about longing, resilience, memory, and what it means to come home to yourself when home was never safe to begin with. It’s for anyone who’s lived through something hard and is still learning how to carry it.

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Publishing The One Who Leaves on my own terms has changed everything. It has given me momentum. Clarity. A deeper sense of trust in my voice. Revisiting these memories has reconnected me to parts of myself I didn’t even know were missing. It’s softened something between me and my mother. It’s helped me hold the younger me with more tenderness. It’s reminded me how much I’ve carried, and how far I’ve come.

If you’re new, here’s what the memoir is about…

At thirty, I was pulled back to the shit-hole town off Route 66 in the dust of California that I’d spent my life trying to escape because Mom was facing felony charges—again. I get her out of the Mojave for a weekend and away from her drug-fueled lifestyle so that I can explore our shared past in search of truth. On the road, the narrative of Mom's life unfolds throughout the pages like a labyrinth: tales of home invasion well into the hundreds, her imprisonment with cellmate Susan Atkins from the Manson Cult, the meth lab Dad built in the garage of our sun-bleached house, the cast of homeless addicts I was raised around, and her role in the dissolution of our family.

These two narratives braid together, exposing the story of my life, but also my mother’s life. Of her unwavering love for me and her struggle to stay clean long enough to show it. Of my fight to understand her and accept the love she had for me all along, so that I could finally start a life of my own. The One Who Leaves is a raw and unflinching exploration of the ties that bind us to family, the lasting impact of addiction, and the power of redemption—revealing who we become both because of, and despite, a mother’s love.

If you haven’t started yet, I’d love for you to read along from the beginning.

You can find the prologue and all the chapters so far here.

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Now, it’s your turn. What’s been lighting you up? I’d love to hear in the comments.

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