welcome to joy notes
writings on being stretched wide by beauty, grief, and the full spectrum of aliveness
This is joy notes, a twice-monthly newsletter about being stretched wide by beauty, grief, and the full spectrum of aliveness.
I decided to call this newsletter joy notes not because everything I write will be joyful, but because joy, pleasure, aliveness, creativity, curiosity, love, beauty, and care are the things that I orient towards.
I am tired of being expected to perform 24/7 outrage, sadness, and anger to be a good and radical person. Of course I am sad. Of course I am angry. Of course I am grieving, afraid, anxious.
But that’s only one part of the story, and it feels like a spell to name: the other part of the story is love. The other part of the story is why the world breaks my heart so much: because I love it that much.
The other part of the story is the pink orange sun sinking into the ocean. The other part of the story is my love’s head on my chest, breathing in sync while I rub their back. It’s dancing in July under the full moon and an entire gorgeous kaleidoscope cast of stars. It’s laying in a hammock in the forest watching the wind cascade through the leaves and the rain wash clean everything outside of your little tarp haven. It’s my cat’s warm, soft little body curled up like a little spoon into mine. It’s laughing and cooking in a cabin in the mountains with my close friends. It’s holding each other. It’s sunrise swims in the ocean, bites of fresh juicy summer peaches, smelling a rosemary bush on an evening walk through the city, lemon in your water, kissing, magnolia petals floating down onto your blanket, reading a really good book, the smell of the forest, a road trip with the windows down and really good music playing.
It’s not bypassing or looking away. It’s looking at everything that is here and making something beautiful.
It’s all the things we stay alive for.
That’s what I want to write about here: all the things we stay alive for. Which also often means writing about what is hard, what is heartbreaking, the messy nonlinear process of trauma healing from attachment to sexual violence to religion.
I bought a sweatshirt last year that says “your interest in beauty is not trivial” and it’s a saying I hold deep in my heart now. Folks say that the work of the artist, the writer, is to document the human condition and to make the revolution irresistible. I agree, and I think part of that is reminding us what there is to fight for. Part of that for me is a reminder of all the beauty and gorgeousness that is here amidst every shard of glass, everything that would hurt us. Perhaps it’s a particularly Libra assignment, so here is my small attempt to take it on.
Some things to expect in this newsletter:
a free email every month - paid subscribers will get one more email throughout the month with a new piece of writing.
essays and poems on coming alive, healing (especially in relationship), working with anxious attachments, queerness, desire, creativity and process, evolving spirituality, curiosity, “dying continually,” reclamation, big feelings, accessing joy and beauty, learning to be in generative conflict, humanizing everyone including ourselves, probably some love letters to sunsets, and more.
occasional creative prompting, Q&As, and collages.
Over the summer, I took a writing class with Cheryl Strayed where she shared E.B. White’s quote, “All that I ever hope to say in books, all that I ever hope to say, is that I love the world.”
And I continue to return to: if not for loving the world and each other, what is it we are fighting for?
When I think of what creates hope, what I am wanting to build and create in the world, it’s the capacity for all people to experience the joy, pleasure, love, beauty, goodness, magic that is very much here.
If you’ve read this far, maybe you can relate.
Thanks for being here.
Stay tuned for the first essay, out in September.
With care,
Eryn