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After a picture-perfect splashdown, the crew of the Artemis II mission to the moon is safe, back on terra firma. What a triumph.

I’m not going to write about the mission — I’ve done that enough already, I think — except to say that for the ten days of the mission, my social media feeds were a delight. I’m pretty good at training the Instagram algorithm to feed me only uplifting content, but the barrage of moon joy over the last couple of weeks has been particularly encouraging. More, please.

Among all the feel-good posts, I came across this one from one of my favourite online writers, :

I loved this so much: “stay human” feels like a more realistic, more imperative goal; more than “stay calm,” far more than “stay positive.” It feels like what the Artemis II astronauts were reminding us to do. And it feels … I dunno, doable.

So here’s to staying human, friends, and staying kind.

In other news, here are a few peeks in my journal. Making these recent entries helped me meditate on the importance of staying human. Maybe they’ll help you, too.

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When I was a kid, I had two favourite days of the school year. I loved the first day, because of all the potential: the new clothes my mom bought me for the school year. The new classes and teachers. The new extracurriculars. So much new to look forward to.

But then, I also loved the last day of school: the summer of relaxation ahead. The feeling of accomplishment. The closing of a chapter before beginning a new one.

I miss those, man. The closest thing I get to that feeling these days is completing a journal and beginning another. Even though I never, ever revisit them once they’re done. I just like beginning them and starting them.

About a week ago, I finished a journal. And I started a new one. So satisfying.

Here’s what the new one looks like so far:

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My friend A’Driane, who lives in the northeastern part of the country, sends me photographs of her front garden on instant messenger. “Look at this,” she writes, as I look at the images of towering drifts and trees bending under the weight of the snow, unrelenting flakes still coming down. “We’re going to be hunkered down for a few days.”

I stare at the images and my throat clenches a bit. It’s not the photographs themselves that bother me — as someone who has rarely experienced snow, the images actually seem quite beautiful — it’s the idea of being there, unable to leave the house, uncertain about when I would be able to move about freely again. That idea, right now, seems deeply familiar.

We’ve been in a state of limbo for about a year now — in ways that I’m not ready to share on the internet quite yet — and last week, after it looked like there would be some movement, there was a setback that shook me. While I’m generally great with handling change, handling limbo? Not so much. It’s been very hard to keep from sliding into despair.

But Marcus returned from England this week, and he told me that despite the cold and the rain, the daffodils and the snowdrops are starting to appear all around, a sure sign that spring is around the corner. Here in Houston, the redbuds are starting to emerge — our first sign of spring. I’m choosing to take these flowers as a sign that things are going to shift for us, as well.

Fingers crossed.

Anyway, here’s how I’ve been processing these feelings in my journal:

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Back in ye olden blogging days, I’m talking the early aughts, there was a blogger who would occasionally write single-sentence blog posts — no images or anything — entitled “how to charm me.” She would share little snippets of her life without any context, like “how to charm me: say ‘here you go, sweetie,’ while placing my coffee in front of me, and then squeezing my shoulder as you walk away to take care of another customer.” Things like that. This blogger was an incredible writer — in fact, if I were to tell you that she was “queen of the mommybloggers,” and you were reading anything online during the early aughts, you’d know exactly who I was talking about — and she was known for her long-form, often irreverent posts, things she began writing years before she ever became pregnant with her first child. I loved her writing, but none so much as her little one-sentence posts.

How to charm me, indeed.

Anyway, I’ve been thinking about those old posts, and it occurs to me that it would do me well to occasionally make a note of when I’m charmed. Like when my little dog asks for belly rubs by running full tilt at someone, and then sliding on her back for the last 3 feet or so. Or when Marcus gets as excited at a Great Pottery Throw-Down binge session as I do. Or my daughter bursts into a rendition of the entire opening number from Hamilton for no damned reason.

It would do us all well.

And on that note, here’s what I doodled in my journal this week:

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The trait I most admire in a person is patience — and it is a trait that I absolutely, completely don’t have. Marcus is patient, God bless him, and I try his patience just about every opportunity I can. In return, he is … well, patient … damn near without exception. (For my part, I’m a really good cheerleader and I make great rum punch, so hopefully that repays him, in part.) But boy, do I wish I were patient, I really do.

Which is why, I think, I’m so taken with pottery: it is an exercise in patience if ever there was one. First, you have to throw the pot — but you have to do it slowly; rush, and the whole thing collapses. Then you have let what you’ve made dry to “leather hard” state — firm, but pliable — at which point you have to put the pot back on the wheel and trim the pot. This, of course, is risky, because at any moment the pot can go flying off the wheel. Then you have to let the pot dry completely, and pray that during drying, no cracks form. Then you have to have the pot “bisque” fired, which is a process that also brings cracking risks, or — here’s something fun — the pot could explode. If the pot survives, once it’s cooled from the kiln, then you have to glaze the pot, and fire it again — where it might crack again, or the glaze might run.

Then it’s done.

I don’t know that my pottery practice is making me more patient, but I’m certainly far more aware of my impatience — and that’s something, right?

Let’s hope for Marcus’s sake it is. 😬

Anyway. Here’s what else I made this week — in my journal:

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I’ve been deep in the throes of writing my next book, and it feels like the looming deadline to turn in my manuscript is accelerating. On top of this, we’re in the process of trying to sell our home (anyone want a house in Houston?), which means frequent house viewings disrupt my days. It’s a weird time.

And yet, I’m okay with it. (Not so much the house-selling thing — selling a house is a lot.) But there’s something grounding about having a project that needs tending to. And writing the book — this book that is exciting me, that is making me explore topics like belonging and community and compassion — well, I’m just grateful to have this task to focus me.

Anyway. Here’s what my downtime looked like this week:

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This week felt better — not because the news was particularly great, but because I finally did something.

What I did isn’t important. In fact, I can guarantee the little thing I did won’t be changing the world anytime soon. In the grand scheme of things, my little thing is nothing. But still, it’s something. And it moved me from feeling helpless to … well, maybe a little bit hopeful. From despair to … dare I say, the tiniest bit of optimism?

(In full transparency, it was this clip from the movie A Bug’s Life that did it.)

So I’ll do another little thing soon—and maybe another little thing after that. I might even go crazy and do a fourth little thing! You don’t know!

So here’s to doing little things, friends. Go do something little today, too.

And here’s what my journal looked like this week, for a little little-thing inspiration.

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As I type this, Alex is starting her journey from Colorado back home to Texas. The circumstances aren’t as great as her visits home usually are: she’s coming home to have her wisdom teeth removed. She’ll be fine, I’m sure, but I’ve been spending time making sure she has everything she needs to be as comfortable as possible over the next few days, before she returns to Boulder and university on Monday.

We’ve also been preparing for an ice storm that’s promising to make its way into town over the next 48 hours or so. For folks up north, the forecast for Houston is likely laughable; however, Houston’s infrastructure isn’t built for cold weather, and freezes can be pretty catastrophic in this part of the world (ask me how I know). So we’re busy making sure that we have gasoline for our generator and filling up bathtubs with water. We’ve also got candles and food and drinking water for a few days, and we know where all the blankets are.

You know, just in case.

With all this preparation, my focus shifted a bit from the world at large to my world — and honestly, it’s been a nice break. And when I’ve had downtime, I’ve been collecting words of wisdom to write-template (I just made that up) in my journal.

So here’s what I found, and what my journal pages looked like this week:

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For the last few months, I’ve been sharing peeks into my journals — week-at-a-glance spreads of my day-to-day life. And while I continue to journal in this way, over the Christmas break, I became fascinated by collage.

I admit that at first, I didn’t really understand collage — specifically, I didn’t get what makes good collage. Collage felt like something that’s taught to children; how can it be a true form of art?

And then I fell down a collage rabbit hole. My goodness, there are some amazing collage artists in the world. Like this person. And this person. And, holy smokes, this person. So, always up for a challenge, I decided to give it a whirl.

I love a good quote — my journals are filled with them, see the image at the top of this post — and because I figured I needed some guardrails as I tried collage, I decided to use quotes that I found as inspiration for what I created. And sweet Mary Margaret, I’ve been having a blast. Have you done collage before? It’s so meditative! It’s so introspective! It’s so … fun!

So the following are a few collages I did over the break, and the quotes that inspired them. Obviously, they’re not as good as the work by the artists I linked above, but I definitely love how it felt to make them.

And in a world that seems to be spiraling more and more into darkness, I’ll take meditative, introspective fun and light whenever I can.

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This was my last week in Bath, and the one in which I worked most consistently on my own business: coaching sessions, brainstorming for 2026, working on my next book, that sort of thing. Last Saturday, I had my final speaking gig of the year — a virtual event — and once I was done, I felt a weight lift: I’d been speaking almost weekly for the last two months, between workshops, retreats, and book tour stops, and it felt like I’d made it to the finish line. I could, at last, get into the Christmas spirit.

So on Sunday, I promised myself that I wouldn’t work, and instead, during a break in the ever-persistent English rain, I walked into town to take in the Bath Christmas Market, a two-week-long annual event.

As I walked around the stalls looking at the work of all sorts of artisans — woodworkers, potters, knitters, bakers, butchers, cheesemongers, to name just a few — I thought, well, here’s one deeply European custom that Americans could do well to copy. Christmas markets have been in Europe since the late Middle Ages, and although Bath’s Christmas market is considerably newer (c. 2000), hundreds of thousands of folks descend upon the city every year to partake. I don’t know of many Christmas markets in the US, which is a pity, because the concept is so heartwarming: a few weeks dedicated to providing holiday shoppers with an opportunity to turn their backs on large corporations and mass production, and instead support the work of independent makers. A chance for people to walk around charming, festive stalls, mulled wine in hand, the air filled with the scent of chestnuts roasting on an open fire (really!), all while buying soulful presents for their loved ones.

If “communal compassion” were a place, it would be a European Christmas market, is what I’m saying.

I didn’t buy much — I only travelled with carry-on baggage, so I didn’t have space in my bag to bring back gifts — but I did manage to purchase a sweater (sorry, jumper), and stop in for a coffee on the way back home. But for the couple of hours I was at the Christmas market, my commitment to giving only handmade gifts or purchasing Christmas presents from small businesses this year was renewed.

Anyway, as I always do on Fridays, I’ve shared what my week looked like in journal form, below. But here’s a gentle reminder to support small businesses as the year comes to a close (and for the record, books also make a lovely gift: independent bookstores are always so charming, and I can think of a few books you can have them order in for you. Ahem.)

May your year-end be filled with seasonal joy like twinkle lights, mulled wine, and hey, even chestnuts roasting on an open fire, if you can swing it.

Cheers, lovelies.

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I’m with Marcus and Alex in Bath this week, and yesterday, we had a Thanksgiving meal at a local restaurant with Marcus’ mom, sister, and her family. It was cold and drizzly outside, and warm and delicious and cozy inside. Just as it should be.

This week, in fact, was a full week of connecting with family and friends, both old and new. As always, I captured it in my journal — and you can see the pages below.

I hope that even if the weather didn’t fully cooperate, you’ve all had a warm and delicious and cozy week.

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I’m back in the United Kingdom again — preparing for my last book tour stop (in Bristol on Monday at 7pm — if you’re here in England, I hope you can join me!). And also, next week is Thanksgiving in the United States, so Marcus and Alex will be joining me on Sunday for the week ahead, so it will be all family, all the time. Which is lovely.

In the meantime, however, I’m in work mode: I have a few new coaching clients with whom I’m continuing to meet virtually while I’m here, and I’m doing book-related stuff (see: aforementioned book signing event; see also: if you happen to be in Bath now or over the next few weeks, there are a few signed copies at Mr. B’s Emporium of Reading Delights — g’on and get you some). I’m even starting to make some tentative moves in writing my next book … which is due in June. No pressure. But I also took the time to have a little art date day trip to London yesterday, to see my friend A’Driane Nieves’s exhibit at Albion Jeune gallery. Amazing.

And I’m also sticking to my journal pages. Take a look below to see what this week has looked like around these parts (including, as always, the tools I used to capture it):

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This week was a quiet week. I returned home from New Mexico on Saturday mid-morning, and placed my tiny new ceramic pot made by my friend Rob King on a shelf next to the other one of his that I own. Then I found another place on my shelf for the small piece of cholla cactus skeleton I’d tucked into my suitcase before leaving the Modern Elder Academy — a small souvenir from the desert. And with that, I returned to my daily routine. If there were a theme for this week, it would be ease — I have more excitement to face in the coming days, so when I have time to rest and recreate (re-create?), then I make sure to do so.

Which brings me to journaling.

If you’ve ever taken a coaching session or a workshop with me, you know that I’m a huge proponent of journaling as a tool: for planning, for self-exploration, or even meditation. (In fact, I took a stack of journals with me to this New Mexico retreat, and invited participants to journal every day.). The beauty of this new weekly section of The Make Light Journal is that it ensures that I practice what I preach: I work on a two-page spread of my journal all week long, adding a small bit each evening — sort of a “week-at-a-glance” in journal form. Because I love playing with markers and watercolour paints, the result is a crazy riot of colour that likely makes sense to very few folks but me — but then again, it really doesn’t have to make sense to everyone, does it?

The following is this week’s spread. I’ve decided to also include the tools that I use to create the pages, in the event that it’s helpful to anyone who wants to start a similarly colourful, chaotic journal practice. I strongly recommend it.

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As I write this, I’m still in Santa Fe at the Modern Elder Academy, and lovelies, this place is as magical as I remember. What a way to spend/end a week.

From streets teeming with trick-or-treaters to a tight-knit cohort of participants in my workshop, this week was all about community. I mentioned last week that I was going to start sharing journal pages with paid subscribers, if only to keep me accountable for spending some meditative practice time in my diary pages. Despite the fact that this was a busy week, I stayed true to the practice … but admittedly, there was a lot of visual inspiration around to encourage me to do so. And as I’ve promised (threatened?), I’m incapable of making great art — but I can make a colourful visual record of my daily life.

Take a look below.

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A personal example: for decades, I was terrified of going to the dentist, until I found one whose entire office was designed for the dentist-phobic. His office wasn’t in a shiny glass building; instead, it was in a tiny bungalow in a residential neighbourhood. His waiting room was in the living room, complete with art and interesting books in a bookcase and a working fireplace and even a glass of port to calm your nerves, if you felt like you needed it. His examination rooms and dentist chairs were in bedrooms — again, with art on the walls, and, get this: if you were cold, his assistant would bring a warm blanket fresh from the dryer and tuck you in. The design of his office was so thoughtful that now, years later, I’m not nearly as afraid of the dentist anymore. I don’t love the experience, you understand, but I’m no longer a person who is crippled by the thought of a dentist’s office. In fact, I’m now a person who goes frequently (albeit with a pretty well-curated, calm-inducing playlist).

Honestly, I’ve always been like this. When I was a kid, I would constantly rearrange my room, trying to create a space that felt comfortable for my ever-evolving self. I’m sensitive to light (overhead lights are the devil; pools of light for the win), and have been known to follow Marcus into rooms, aggressively snapping off lights he’s turned on like some sort of vampire, and illuminating softer lamps, instead. I almost always have music playing, depending on my surroundings, or anxiety levels, or even my goals. (For example, I have the aforementioned dentist playlist, an airplane playlist, even an in-my-studio writing playlist — you can hear my playlist for my upcoming book, here!) If a chair isn’t in the right position in a room, or we’re seated in the wrong part of a restaurant, I feel off.

Just me?

But the same is also true for geographies: I love the feeling when I’m in a vibrant city or a sleepy, seaside town (both are great, but different) — but when I’m in the mountains or in vast countryside, while I can appreciate their beauty, I never feel quite me. More specifically, it has been almost two years since our family has been splitting our life between Houston, Texas, and Bath, United Kingdom — and I was thinking, recently, that in some ways, I’m a different person in each place, primarily due to my surroundings. For instance, while I’m decidedly an introvert — and nothing will ever change this — in Houston, I’ve no problem staying home in the cool air conditioning, and never stepping foot outside, for days at a time. But in Bath, I find myself a bit restless staying home: it’s not that I want to socialize, necessarily, but the design of the city, with its storefronts and cafes along every street, makes me a person who needs to get out of the house, if only to quietly window shop on my own. In Bath, I even dress differently — not because of the weather (entirely), but because I feel like a different person than I do when I’m in Houston, and I think it has to do with how different the places I visit in those cities are, and how different the vibe is. It’s not like I’m trying to be a different person; I just am a different person. I’m not trying to blend in (perish the thought), but it’s like a different side of me moves to the forefront of who I am.

As I type this, I feel like this might sound a bit crazy. Maybe. But you feel it too, right?

The upshot is this: I believe surroundings can influence mood, or outlook, or even identity. (And I haven’t touched on the way that the politics and culture of a place can affect how it feels to exist in that space, especially as a person who is a member of any disenfranchised group. I strongly suspect that will be an essay for another time.) I’d love to hear your thoughts, advice or even quirks about your surroundings, and how you make your world feel like who you are. Prove to me I’m not alone.

(Related: in the video at the top of this post, I share a bit of what our life feels like these days, in images and music, when we’re in Bath. At some point, I’ll have to do something similar for Houston and compare. Maybe seeing them side by side, it’ll all make more sense to me.)

Here’s to spaces that allow us to tap into the parts of ourselves that we love. Have a great week, friends.

music: even if the sky is following down by candelion, via epidemicsound.com

are you in houston? come dabble with me!

If you’re in Houston, have I got some fun for you:

Always wanted to dabble in ceramics, but never got around to it? Want to celebrate In Defense of Dabbling before it even hits the stores? Join me for a PRE-LAUNCH DABBLING PARTY at my wonderful, magical pottery!

Come celebrate with me at HTX Clay on the evening of TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16TH -- I'll tell you all about my new book coming out, we'll get a lesson in handbuilding clay (I've never handbuilt, so I'll be as amateur at it as you are!), have some bubbly and the best part -- you'll get a signed copy of In Defense of Dabbling before anyone else does! Also, at the end of it, you'll have a ceramic souvenir that you made with your own hands.

In fact, bring a friend and make an evening of it!

Space is limited, so please book early.

and please don’t forget to grab a copy of my new book!

Have you pre-ordered In Defense of Dabbling yet? Please do — I’m really excited about this one: it will guide you to creating your own self-transcendent life.

You/can preorder the book in several ways:

Preorder on Amazon.

preorder on amazon

Preorder from your favourite local bookstore. Obviously, I love supporting independent booksellers, and I promise you, local bookstores will love you for supporting them. Find a local bookstore by clicking on the button below, and then clicking “Choose a Bookstore” on the top right of the page that appears:

preorder on Bookshop.org

Preorder a signed, personalized copy from Blue Willow Bookshop. Blue Willow is my local bookseller, and if you order from them, I’ll run over and sign it before they ship it out to you! Just be sure to add a note on checkout about who you’d like me to make out the inscription to. Also, they ship internationally, so that’s a plus!

preorder a SIGNED copy!

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If you’ve been following me on Substack this month, you already know that I’ve been celebrating my birthday with a Month of Daily Delights. I created this little video to share what I learned by creating and noting a delight every day. I hope you enjoy it.

It might seem a bit … trite? tone deaf? … to have spent an entire month celebrating, especially when atrocities, particularly in Gaza, go unabated. Believe me, as I’ve celebrated each little delight this month, there’s a part of me that feels a pang of — not guilt, exactly; but dis-ease, absolutely — when I wonder to myself, who am I to have this embarrassment of blessings, even little ones, like lipstick or cheap flowers? How is this fair?

I imagine many of you feel the same.

But here’s what I know to be true: hopelessness and helplessness have rarely changed the world, but I do believe that joy, love, gratitude, and compassion have turbo-charged movements. I believe that despair leads to burnout, but self-compassion is foundational for communal compassion: when we’re centered, restored, and re-created, we can turn our attention to the work that needs to be done, and we can do so ablaze with renewed commitment. Creating a cadence of self-compassion isn’t about hiding our heads in the sand, my friends — it’s about tethering to joy and gratitude, and reminding ourselves that joy and love and safety and rest and ease and abundance are the birthrights of every person on the planet — and this is what we fight for. This is why we donate, protest, call our representatives, volunteer, run for political office.

A cadence of self-compassion should work in tandem with a cadence of communal compassion, is what I’m saying. It’s not either/or. It’s both/and.

We must take note of the daily delights in our lives — to keep us from being crushed by despair, yes, but also to fuel us sufficiently to create the world we want and deserve. And then, we go create it.

My point: I hope you create a little delight at some point this week, my friends. Because the world needs you at your most compassionate, light-filled self.

music: weather any storm by cody francis, via epidemic sound

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This post, updating readers on our progress on our future plans for the UK, is for paid subscribers. If you’d like to stay connected as I share these updates, I invite you to consider upgrading to a paid subscription!

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The day after I returned from my whirlwind trip to Providence to witness my niece graduate (yay, class of 2025!), I turned right around and got on a plane again — this time, with Marcus, back to our beloved Bath.

We were only there for 5 days — a criminally short visit. We try to return a few times a year, usually for a couple of weeks. But even though our last visit was about three months ago, this trip was booked somewhat last minute: we learned that there had been a power blip in our flat that lasted long enough for the food in our freezer to spoil and the internet to go out, which meant that the Ring cameras we’d set up around our space were no longer functioning. So we knew we needed to return to check on things pretty soon.

But then, we received some news that made our need to return more urgent.

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