Burnt Sage & Blunt Truths

  I met a lovely person on a plane recently. We had a genuinely enjoyable conversation. We talked about life, social media, work, all the usual things people chat about when they're trapped in a flying aluminum tube together. Then came the line. "I'm kind of TikTok famous." Oh? My ears perked up. Did they have a million followers? Were brands throwing money at them? How was the creator fund working out for them?  Did people stop them in airports asking for selfies? No. Dude. They....had.... About 1,500 followers. I stared out the window for a minute because I wasn't sure if we were experiencing turbulence or if reality itself had shifted. Friends... What in the Kentucky Fried Delusion has happened to us? Since when did fifteen hundred followers become fame? I've got around 1,800 followers. Do you know what that makes me? Someone with around 1,800 followers. That's it. I'm not famous. I'm not an influencer. I'm not an internet celebrity. I'm...

  I just got back from the Fourth of July weekend in Arkansas, where we celebrated my granddaughter Gracelynn’s first birthday. One whole year. I do not know who authorized time to move that fast, but I would like to speak to a manager. She is perfect, of course. She carefully dissected her birthday cake with her fingers like a tiny forensic scientist. No wild cake-smashing chaos. No face-first dive into frosting. Just careful inspection, methodical sampling, and then—because I am blessed beyond measure—a cakey high five. That’s right. I got frosted. Some people get jewelry. Some people get flowers. I got a sticky baby palm full of birthday cake slapped into my hand, and frankly, it outranks most gifts I’ve ever received. She already does the goofy hand-over-mouth noise thing I taught her, completely unprompted. That means Grandma has officially made an impression. Next up: fish lips. I have a Jim Carrey rubber face and a sacred duty to pass on the ridiculous. She also learned to g...

  I'm getting real tired of hearing people tell me to "slow down." Slow down? My life has been moving at a glacier's pace for almost five years. Five years of appointments. Five years of waiting rooms. Five years of scans and bloodwork and "let's wait and see." Five years of putting things off. Five years of being too tired, too sore, too busy surviving to actually live. I've spent years watching everyone else move forward while I learned how to schedule my life around medical appointments, side effects, and recovery. I've learned how to cancel plans. How to sleep sitting up. How to measure my energy like it's a precious resource. And now, when I finally have a little fire in my belly, when I want to write, create, list vintage stamps at midnight, start projects, dream about the future, and maybe—just maybe—run toward something instead of merely crawling away from disaster— People tell me to slow down. No. Respectfully, fuck that. I have slow...

  A few days ago, I found a yarrow plant on the side of the road outside Oak Harbor. Not in a nursery. Not in a carefully curated garden center. Not with a cute little tag telling me how much sun it needed. On the side of the road. Traffic had backed up, and there it was. Dakota reached out, yanked the thing out of the ground by its roots, wrapped it in a wet paper towel, and tossed it into the car. That should have been the end of the story. Any gardening expert worth their salt would probably tell you that being ripped out of the earth, hauled around in a vehicle all day, and stuffed into a temporary pot with a snake plant is not ideal growing conditions. Yet here we are, and tell that to the yarrow.  The yarrow is thriving. Not surviving. Thriving. New growth. Upright stems. No dramatic wilting. No passive-aggressive yellowing of leaves. No plant version of filing a complaint with management. Just growth. And honestly, I can't stop thinking about it. Because some things are...

 People really need to learn the difference between protecting a tradition and performing authority online because it makes them feel spiritually important . Because those are not the same thing. Not even close. There is a particular kind of modern spiritual busybody that has emerged over the last decade — the self-appointed gatekeeper who was never initiated, never trained, never recognized by elders, never entrusted with actual responsibility… yet somehow speaks with the confidence of an oracle sitting on a flaming mountain. And the moment they see someone outside a tradition engaging with anything remotely adjacent to that path, they leap out of the bushes screaming: “You can’t do that!” “That’s closed!” “That’s forbidden!” “That’s disrespectful!” According to who, exactly? TikTok University? Three infographics and a trauma response? A Discord server moderated by someone named MoonPup420? Here’s the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to say out loud: If you are not ...

  There comes a point in prolonged suffering where “You’ve got this” stops sounding encouraging and starts sounding dismissive. Not because the person saying it is evil. Usually they mean well. Usually they care. But when someone has been carrying the weight of survival for months — or years — those three words can land like another brick on an already collapsing spine. Especially with looming hospitalization for a condition.  “You’ve got this.” Do they? Because from where they’re standing, they barely have themselves. People say “You’ve got this” because it’s clean. Efficient. Optimistic. It lets them exit the conversation quickly while still feeling supportive. It’s the motivational poster version of compassion. Spray-painted sunshine over a structural crack. What nobody talks about is how exhausting it becomes to constantly be viewed as “strong.” The woman juggling cancer treatments, a TBI, paperwork, exhaustion, bills, appointments, fear, grief, work obligations, and the p...

  Take her out. Let her order the second drink without making a joke about it. Let her laugh too loud for a minute. Let her loosen the death grip she keeps on herself every hour of every day just trying to function in a world that constantly asks women to give more than they have. Then ask her how she’s really doing. Not the polite version. Not the grocery store version. Not the “hanging in there” version. Ask her the kind of question that requires you to sit still long enough to hear something uncomfortable. Because you are probably not prepared for that conversation. When the drink settles in and the armor finally cracks open just enough to breathe, she’s going to start telling you about the woman she buried to survive. The version of herself that used to dream bigger. The one who had plans before responsibility ate them alive. The one who used to create, wander, dance, rest, laugh from her stomach instead of performing happiness from her throat. She’s going to tell you about the...