Optional Optimism

On my weekly writing club call this past week, we explored a conversation with the Yoruban Goddess, Oshun and how she is often depicted with a honey pot and a golden mirror. So much gold always on and around her as the rivers flow around her. I always open with a story or thoughts to share before unleashing the writing prompts for the day, and I was transferred to a different timeline while speaking this past week.

“Do you ever burn out on reading books?”, he asked me in an Adirondack chair on the front porch. “I really don’t, reading is a ritual for me, it is how I relax” I responded in my hanging egg chair that floats in the corner. I took a moment to think more on this. Reading is how I know myself, expand my overthinking brain into chapters, continue my learning. I did add, “I can burn out on a genre, though. But never books entirely, I am, in a word, obsessed with reading”.

In the land of devices and tech and screens, did you know that when you write something down pen to paper, it goes into your long term memory section of your brain? Physically forming the letters essentially send a signal to your brain saying: this is worth keeping.

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I lived in Southern California for most of my 20’s, I started in Hollywood, West Hollywood, quick stop in Brentwood (which I found my roommate and his apartment listed on Craigslist - do you remember this list? - how am I actually alive?) and eventually made my way down closer to the ocean living in Santa Monica and then, Venice. In one house, my neighbor was Kanye West and in another spot, I had a surfboard as a headboard. Wild.

Leaving this post open, which would usually reside in my Member Library (paid subscriber vault), in the event you want to have a read and then have a gander at your own Audit & Ask practice… My home growing up had a celestial kitchen filled with suns and moons all over the walls and sun/moon napkin rings, even. I feel like there were more suns than moons. Our plates and bowls were navy blue, an ode to the night sky and all.

How do we parent now? one weathered hand open, Optional Optimism is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In committing to a year with the goddesses for my writing club (I wrote about this weekly writing room recently, have a read) with a nod to Celtic, Nordic, Greek, Roman and West African mythologies, I knew I would be expanding my own inner narrative. There was no escaping the alchemy. In my first meeting with the Roman Goddess, Maia, she was not at all what I expected. Thus far, all the goddesses have been loud, authoritative, almost feral. Freyja has a chariot pulled by cats and a pet boar.

Is life just one big metaphor for living or what? I left the lights off in the basement so I could really feel into the music pulsating in my noise-cancelling headphones and see only shadows of myself reflecting back to me on the zoom screen. My dear friend teaches a Somatic Sunday Service on Zoom where we dance and feel and release, it was my first time. Have you taken a somatic dance class? I highly recommend it.

Did you read The Giver by Louis Lowry in your middle school curriculum. It was a favorite from my youth, this book and Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. I have always had a sad girl frequency wrapped within an optimist body, this seems to keep my ven diagram of existence very interesting. I have taken to reading these books again. I could not remember the plot lines so I re-read them and cried and then, I remembered why.