A Beautiful Mess (& a Note of Gratitude)
How we find our words again—and where we go from here
Rather than my typical Sunday missive, I’m here today with a note of gratitude—to say how thankful I am for this kind, generous, much beloved community. But first, will you permit a small detour?
Over the summer, a community member named Lauren wrote to me about fear—how it had always loomed large in her life, how as a child she rehearsed catastrophes (losing everything she owned, being orphaned), believing such imaginings might inoculate her against life’s inevitable blows. Only decades later did the real catastrophes arrive, and at quite a clip. First a hurricane, then wildfires, then illness—her own and that of people she loved—and she found herself undone.
“I realized nothing prepared me for it,” she wrote. “I didn’t know how to find my words anymore.” (I nodded. I’ve been there too—more than once.)
Around that time, she spotted The Book of Alchemy at her local bookstore and began reading it as soon as she got home. When Dani Shapiro asked in the book’s very first prompt, What would you write if you weren’t afraid? Lauren already knew her answer—only she was too exhausted to get up and retrieve her journal.
What came next was a librarian’s nightmare (and a dream for me): she began writing inside the book itself. In the margins, the white space, above essays, between lines. It felt, she said, “delightfully transgressive.” She kept going for 100 days. Her words unspooled. Color bloomed into meaning. She made the book entirely her own—“the most beautiful mess,” she called it.
“If I could, I’d hand it to you,” Lauren said. “I’d pass it reverently, the way I used to place my infants in other people’s arms, and I would beam at this incredible creature in your hands. I’d ask you to see how I’ve done the hard work of becoming sure of a few things—and here are all the places where it was happening.”
The hard work of becoming sure of a few things.
That may sound modest. In truth, it is seismic—a quiet tectonic shift of inner knowing. It’s no small thing to find slightly firmer footing through daily devotion to the page. To alchemize pain into form, form into meaning.
Journaling has always been that for me, too—here in community, and alone in the privacy of a notebook. An experiment in transmuting life’s interruptions into creative grist. A reminder that if I keep showing up to the page long enough, language eventually finds me again—and I find my way back to the world.
So today I want to say thank you.
Thank you for reading.
Thank you for witnessing each other with such care.
Thank you for turning the comments section into small, human benedictions: I’ve been there. I see you. I’ll be thinking of you.
Your stories spark more stories. They’ve shaped this community into something living. You’ve made some of the most remarkable things I’ve ever seen—Lauren’s beautiful mess, yes, but also Linda’s knitted emotional-support chickens, Paul’s hospital doodles, Rhonda’s pinch pots of gratitude, Maryann’s ocean of blue notebooks. If there’s anything this community has taught me, it’s that showing up—tenderly, imperfectly, honestly—changes us.
With a new year peeking around the corner, I’ve been wondering what it might look like to start 2026 with a daily return to the page—one small creative act of attention and intention at a time.
I’m dreaming up a 30-day New Year’s Journaling Challenge—a way for us to enter the year in conversation with our intuition, rather than in battle with white-knuckled resolutions that were never built to hold our whole selves. Paid subscribers will receive daily prompts to spark inspiration and reflection, gentle accountability, and invitations to special gatherings sprinkled throughout January. I hope you’ll join me.
And in the spirit of beginnings, I’ll leave you with a prompt—borrowed from Dani Shapiro and angled to what’s ahead:
What would you write if you weren’t afraid—
and what might happen if you wrote it anyway?
Hold your answer close. More soon.
As a small thank you—
For the next 48 hours, we’re offering 30% off annual subscriptions.
This includes group subscriptions, too, if you’d like to invite friends to join you in the 30-Day New Year’s Journaling Challenge.
Suleika, I haven’t been commenting lately on social media because I’ve been in the midst of some major changes. I recently had to say goodbye to my sweet dog who was 16-1/2. And I’m getting my house ready to list after 27+ years. I’ll be downsizing and moving to a small beach town and a different lifestyle. I’m excited at what’s ahead, even as I’m feeling overwhelmed and emotional over so much letting go. But a constant part of my life is writing, and the path I’m on now I have you to thank for. You profoundly changed my life for the better when you started TIJ and I will always love and appreciate you for being such a beautiful influence and inspiration to me. Thank you and wishing you, Jon, Carmen, Holly, and the rest of this incredible community lots of love, peace, health, and joy. And yes, bring on the 30 day challenge. I’ll need it to ground me during this emotional time.
Grief finds me again. Runs me over flat and backs up to do it all over again. So, I've just been sitting....no, not all peaceful and monk like. Just sitting, weeping, blaming, longing, wondering, questioning, next to the only thing I ever valued from from Catholic upbringing..vigil lights. 25 of them, with little flickering battery operated lights, in a black, iron basket, surrounded by a garland of glossy cranberries. Abby Rhodes...our sweet, spicey, Tortie...we were gobsmacked a couple of weks ago when she became deathly ill and found out she had metastatic pancreatic cancer. How could that be? I had just taken her to the vet, 2 months ago, and they said, "Her red blood cell count is a little elevated but everything else is normal." Nothing will be normal again. She's dead. The day before Thanksgiving...that little body and soul so full of mischief, snuggles, the chattiest kitty I have ever met...is gone. Forever. Where do we go from here?