These next few decades

Will change everything

We’ll never be

The same again.

We’re told

To look away

But

Not stop watching.

Let go

And

Hold on.

It’s not in

Our control

Yet

All in our power.

Just be

While

Everything’s exploding

Keep breathing

While

Others can’t.

It’s simple.

But

Complex.

Put one foot

In front

of the other

And

Pay your taxes

They’re coming for us.

I thought I was born

For something special

I don’t know

If I should

Implode

Explode

Or

Wait

Hold on, dear

Hold it together

Hold

Together

Fight

Fight

Fight

With love

Keep going.

The spaces
between us
can feel heavy,
too heavy to carry,
then:
Evaporated!
Never there.

Fresh air
when you say
my name.

🖤,
M

It’s a new perspective to survive the terror of our national government, and to continue taking action and loving harder. This mantra is useful for all situations in my life right now, I realized! “I’m safe” can help me:

• Fight facism

• Explore meeting new people

• Improve existing relationships

• Navigate uncertainties at work

Sharing in case it’s useful for you to practice this as a new belief, too.

A revolutionary idea (like love)

“I’m safe” is a bold statement for anyone who’s overcome anything in their lives. I understand that many people are NOT safe. Many of us never experienced complete safety for long lengths of time as children, much less adults. It’s hard to “pull up” a feeling of safety when we’re fighting for our survival.

But/and, everything I’ve learned over the last 10+ years about going from survival mode into joy again is related to introducing new ingredients to change my mind.

Mindsets are malleable

Mindsets are malleable. As we’ve seen with the rise of white nationalism in the U.S.

But ALWAYS more powerful than a group of rich men with rigid viewpoints is our collective ability to generate, for free, and from our own natural chemicals, whatever we want in our minds!

Think of it. When we allow ourselves to feel safe–regardless of what’s happened to and around us–we can generate infinite amounts of:

• Self-love

• Generosity

• Creativity

• Laughter

• Music

• Movement

• Ecstasy!

• Next-level problem-solving!

• Incredible changes!

With this shift in perspective–since I decided I’m safe–I think I can continue to do hard things. I can stand up with my neighbors and friends. I can keep loving and listening. I can keep creating and sharing generously.

You’re safe too

You too, right, friends? We do hard things. We protect and love and inspire one another. We make soup and share it. We show up anyway.

You’re safe.
You’re safe.
You’re safe.
I love you.
You’re safe.
You’re safe.
You’re safe.

Sending 🖤,

Margot

I find myself

Going up an escalator

My body moving

Through space

Functional

Like the rest of them

My mind

Holding your stare

Breathless

Constricted

In the best ways

Tummy tightens

Thighs twist

A quick breath out

More in

I’m coming home.

🖤,

Margot

You look happy Margot.

Really happy.

And you have to work for the kind of happiness you have.

It's not trivial.

It's wisdom.

I'm amazed by you, you are a light.

You always have been.

And you took it back, piece by piece, and made it bigger.

Love you

So very touched by that. It says more than I could ever. And it’s true. I’m so fucking grateful to wake up every day and have a chance to enjoy what I have.

I’ll post more about the trip separately. I want to share my dad’s art and perspectives.

In the meantime: Take your own light back. And keep making it bigger and bigger.

Xoxo,

Margot

Where do I stand? What’s on my “shore?”

What am I doing on other people’s shores instead of tending to my own?

What can I do to change my perspective and enrich the soil?

With whom am I sharing energy? What’s the exchange? How far in the river am I going for different folks?

Also: How much does our individuation matter? Non-duality in Buddhism reminds us that there’s no “others” - we’re all part of everything. I ask myself: How can I change my aperture to open up my understanding even more? What joys and opportunities might I be missing?

What are your thoughts, from your shores, on this metaphor?

Happily full of questions and pondering,

Margot

In is

the wonderfullest

Invitation in

the galaxy:

Priceless.

Hair

Eyes

Lips

Neck

Breasts

Tummy

Pussy

In hands

My hands

My body

Intertwined

Letting go

Letting go

Letting it all go

More.

Think of the connections between you and another as a river. You’re standing on one side, and the person’s on the other. If you find yourself on their shore, you’re in the wrong place!

I drew it for us:

I’m going to use this as a reminder this week—and always.

I’ll go back to my side of the river—and have no regrets about swimming in all the delicious connections I can find with the people I care about.

How does this metaphor hit you? Is it applicable?

🖤

M

The future flows through me

I am future

I am stars

I am a story

Lovingly told

Unfolding

I take another step

In.

The house on Ocean View Street looked like a mansion. And it was for rent. We lived so close to the mansion for rent, under a highway overpass, and in a different world.

I walked there from our old house, sweating up the super-steep hill that had prevented me from walking up that block before. I got to the top and saw the house.

It was steeply gabled, the roofline rising three stories above a driveway. A huge set of stairs flanked by old rose bushes led up to the front door. Plus, on the roof: a magical omen.

A weathervane! So high up top of the mansion for rent near our house. The weathervane was big and black and it turned in the wind. Incredibly, it was in the shape of an owl.

I wondered: Who decided to put a large black owl-shaped weathervane so high up on that fancy house?

Our old house

I was desperate for something to change. I was living in a cute 3-bedroom house but had long ago lost my mind in it. Every surface of the old house was covered in snot and smoodges and scrapes and bits of brik-a-brak.

I’d nursed a baby and wrestled with toddlers there. Worked really hard and supported my family there. I tried so hard to find my husband there. He lived somewhere within its walls, but not in the same house.

Stuck even more during the pandemic in 2020, I stared numbly at the dirty floors and walls. I dreamt of ways to make our home calm, peaceful, clean, and beautiful again.

Since external changes seemed impossible, I spent more and more time in the universe of my mind.

I learned to mediate. I found friends who shared my interests. I joined online Zoom communities. I went to therapy. I listened to abundance mediations at night, every night, softly buzzing soothing messages into my head with earplugs made for sleep.

I tried my best to keep my kids happy, though it wasn’t possible, given the amount of isolation my youngest child especially experienced.

Then, my mom moved in with us.

My poor mom

My mom Dianne had been disabled with chronic fatigue syndrome and poor for decades. After she moved from rural Colorado to a little town called Sebastopol in Northern California, I helped keep her head above water. She declined there in a sweet space for low-income seniors she’d found herself.

Before the pandemic, wildfires were burning in Santa Rosa, right near her apartment. I kept driving up to rescue her, bringing her to our house temporarily, then driving her back home.

Years later I found and moved her into a low-income studio apartment in Berkeley. It was almost impossible to get, but I had done it! The new apartment had potential. She no longer did.

Once she moved to Berkeley, I knew things were really bad. I took over medical care. My mom was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer's and vascular dementia. I saw the MRI of her brain and the white plaque. Her “swiss cheese brain,” as I’d joked about, really had holes in it. She wasn’t really my mom any more. I don’t know who she was.

In 2020, as we all went into quarantine, it was very hard to keep her fed and her apartment clean while not giving her COVID.

Then I found out she had bedbugs. And they were biting her! And they kept coming back.

“From another dimension,” someone told me about the bedbugs. It was like the bugs and the dementia were intertwined. A hellish parallel reality. But this is not a story about bedbugs in detail. (I can’t! It’s too traumatizing.)

Those nasty fuckers pushed my mom right out of that studio apartment and into the basement of our worn-down house and my dead marriage.

Nana in the LBO

Nana, as we called her, moved into what was formerly my only alone-space in the house. (Having an alone-space is needed for my mental sanity. In the first apartment I shared with my ex, I’d literally made a shitty-trashy-closet into a sweet space for myself, with books and curtains and a little desk. I needed it conceptually to breathe easier.)

In our old house, the space my mom moved into was a teeny room in the basement. I called it my "Little Blue Office," or LBO for short. As soon as she was there, though, I knew. She'd never be able to live on her own again. She couldn't remember to eat anymore. She got lost on walks around the block.

She couldn't be put away in a nursing home because she was far too active. Also, we had no money to pay for a nursing home “out of pocket” with no savings and no income. So, she'd live with us.

Margot makes a plan

Instead of going even more insane in my booger-stained-too-little home, I proposed we rent a 4-bedroom house temporarily so we could take care of her until she was ready to really “be committed” to a facility. An extra bedroom to rent, believe it or not, is WAY less expensive than the monthly fees at any assisted living or nursing home.

The plan: Lightly renovate our old house while we rented temporarily. Add a separate unit for her, or for future rental income. I’d supplement the care we’d naturally give her ourselves with the local social support services I’d learned to mine for her. Plus a budget in cash for an amazing caregiver a few hours a week.

Hence looking for a 4-bedroom to rent in our neighborhood, as quickly as possible, to make the renovation process time-and-money-efficient. Not an easy thing to find!

Inside the mansion

And yet! Here was this beautiful-looking big house at the top of Ocean View street, listed for rent on Zillow, with lots of space for Nana and our kids. Walking distance from our old house! When the landlord showed it to us a few days later, I was blown away. It was one of the nicest houses I'd ever been in, much less lived in!

The living room was like a ballroom. High, high ceilings. Parquet wood floors. A huge and ornate fireplace. Gems of colored light shone through stained glass windows in an atrium off the living room, quietly dancing on its walls and floors.

The kitchen, like the living room, and the house overall, was huge. As if one was supposed to be cooking for a household of twenty! The stove was a fancy brand, with a thousand burners, most of which, I later learned, would not light.

Over the stove was the ultimate rich person kitchen brag: An extra faucet set into the wall. To add water to your stock pots without going to the kitchen sink steps away! Heaven forbid.

A bathroom on the first floor contained a beautiful stained-glass window of a hummingbird. Another omen!

I’d go on to find animal talismans hidden in ornate fixtures throughout the house. Each time I felt like I received a gift from a former eccentric owner that was made for me.

Who shared my love for a home and its things to be a little magical?

Best of all, for my mom: There was a beautiful big bedroom with an ensuite shower on the first floor for her. She'd be okay there.

There were nice bedrooms for each kid. And I haven't even told you about the primary suite at the top of the house yet!

The ultimate no

When it came time to decide whether or not we should rent this gem, my now-ex decided “No.”

It was the last big no in a series of 10,000 no's that had come to define our relationship for more than a decade. When I asked what we'd do with my mom instead of rent this perfectly nice mansion that was in our price range and current neighborhood, he said,
"I don't want to move at all. I just want to stay here."

We had this discussion in the car in the front of the old house. The landlord of the mansion for rent needed to know if we were interested that night. We were hiding from all the maniacs who lived in the grungy house in front of us. I stared at it, and thought: How great it would be to have it fixed up, and to have enough space to take care of my mom there without losing my mind even more!

No? That's when I decided I would rent Nana's mansion by myself.

Because I would have been paying for it and doing all the work to make it happen anyway. It was my mom, and it was my need for a real fucking change, and my plan to take care of everyone as best I could.

So I moved, with my dementia-mom, shortly followed by 2 teenagers, into Nana's mansion. And my marriage was over.

Life in Nana’s mansion

I was so lonely when I drove home to that house on Ocean View. I climbed 3 flights of stairs to my space. I wasn’t complaining. It was a blessing.

The primary suite, flanked by huge square windows along the rooftop that opened up Bay Area-wide views, became my sanctuary. Where I could dance naked and cry like no one was watching. Because finally, at last, no one was.

The kids and I cried and fought and set up new part-time lives together. We watched as Nana got worse. And we survived.

I tended the old roses and the rest of the mansion. It spoke to me, and I thanked it.

Sundowning

My mom tortured me in Nana’s mansion. While she had a good life there, her disease progressed quickly. She'd crawl up the stairs to my room moaning. She left sad scribbled notes accusing me of things around. She'd get out-of-control-angry and worried at 4:30 or 5:00pm every night. (It’s called sundowning, and it’s very real and sad.)

She snuck out of the house and wandered. She chopped down bushes in the backyard. She threw medicine and remote controls and laptops and her ID away. Worst of all, she was so unhappy and anxious–especially at night.

And I couldn't help her.

I was going through a divorce, and the trifecta of fuckery that was my life at that moment of time in Nana's mansion.

I couldn’t keep her safe or happy anymore. It was horrible for both of us.

My mom’s and my freedom

Eventually, and with the help of a dear aunt, we found her a nursing home that would take her. It was in the little town where she'd grown up in rural Minnesota. Family coordinated to move her there. It was the sweetest, best nursing home in the world. In a community of people she remembered. And she got to bring her kitty Poppy!

Months later, as I slept in the now-far-too-big-top of Nana's mansion, I got the call.

She had passed away. Just days before I planned on moving everything and the kids back into our old house. (A different story, another time.) She had passed! I felt a beautiful joy and lightness. I felt her again: Happy.

Back at home

Days after she passed, I moved back into our old house! And I got to update it beautifully, just for my kids and myself. Without a “no” in sight.

After I got the kids and myself settled, I started a flower garden here.

My mom's free now.

She appears to many of us in the family, and to me, in different forms.

Did you hear the crow cawing this morning at the top of the tree? That was her.

She knows I'm home. And here with you.

🖤
M

Alone feels different
When you choose it.

I was always
So scared

Alone
Meant
Forever

Staring into
A black
Hole

Alone
Meant
Only
You
in
Space.

How can it be that,
And tea?
By yourself
Just the way
You like it?

Cats curled
At your feet
And
Plants dripping,
Overwatered,
Again?

Alone
Is an abyss
Of nothingness
Full of specks
Of dust
That
Turn
Out
To
Be
Stars.

First of all,
Tell me to go rest.

Tell me you’re taking care of it.

Bring me tea.
Tell me you believe in me.

Stay.
But not just stay-
Stay alive.

Relish little things.
Show me joys I may have missed.
Tell me the truth.

Know yourself.

Listen to me
Hold me
Protect me
Comfort me

Look at me as if I’m a good surprise
Every time.

Let me be creative
Let me be wild
Scream when I need to

Tell me the world
Needs more of me,
Bigger.

Let me shine, lover.

Don’t let me bury myself
In shame
For not being more.

Tell me I’m perfect as I am.

And there’s nothing more to do.

Oh, hello.
You’re the
Great Pretender.
Little lies light you up
So shiny!
For others.

A smooth,
even boring,
facade.

A face
with a smile
and dull eyes.

Encircled by buddies
clasping shoulders and fists
saying yes!
with wine and beer breath.

Such a Great Pretender!
Admirable,
how you have
no emotions
and so much
sureness
of being right.

How does it feel,
to be you,
Great Pretender?

Silly of me.

You’re like a golem
A clay creature
with some magic
and no soul

You can’t
answer.

This poem is part of a series about my friends’ exes.

That’s her ex.
Weasley sputterer
Text-dick-talking
Kid-bully.

Back at the mall
his swarthiness
made her pussy burn.

Now all we can do
is look away.

Stay away
from that one

We’re shouting
We’re whispering

But that one

That one
always defies
expectations

delivering
feeble jabs
that still hurt.

This poem is part of a series about my friends’ exes.

Later, when he lunged
To tongue-kiss me
After an hour of forced chatting
far away from one another
in his back garden,
Again, I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

He could talk, when we talked,
Which was encouraging?

We went inside.

More tongue-stabbing on a couch,
then,
without prelude,
without intimacy,
he pulled his pants off,
and sat there with his dick out.
Expectantly.

It was hard,
but I gave him the benefit of the doubt,
and left.

Weeks or months later,
He took me to the ER as I bled,
Then broke up with me
The next morning
In a Trader Joe’s parking lot.

No more benefits for
Pants-down Matt.
All doubt.

This poem is part of a series about my friends’ datees and exes.

“Be an ordinary hummingbird.”

A wise woman, who’s known me for years, was telling me to stop trying to be extraordinary. Why? Because trying to manifest miracles—and fucking BE a miracle—all the time is exhausting. It doesn’t work.

Now I can’t get the phrase out of my head.

I’m determined to break through my mental blocks and start writing publicly again. What prevented me in the past? The subconscious belief that since I haven’t posted publicly for years, when I do, every piece of writing—of my soul bared—must be a beautiful, incredible, awe-inspiring hummingbird-in-action.

I’m just a human. Or, as I now prefer to think of myself: An ordinary hummingbird. I’m awesome because I exist and I do what I do.

One of the things I do is write. And I’m so happy to be here again, writing to and with my hummingbird friends! We’re all ordinary and extraordinary. We can read, and write, and create art, and dance, each in our own ordinary ways.

The point isn’t to be extraordinary. It’s to be in the world without shame for not being more.

Simply existing. And letting in all the nourishing thoughts, people, and experiences we can.

This morning I saw this friend outside my window:

I hope you recognize your own ordinary hummingbird-ness in the coming days!

Love,
Margot

Dear Margot,

Once again, I didn't know this card was for "us" when I bought it. It seems like a dark and stark card. Need to cheer it up. BRB. (After drawing the key on the front...)

Okay...So what are our "keys?" The ones we've had all along?

• Courage. It's worth trying. I'll try it.

• Optimism. It will work out.

• Ability to see systems that work better for everyone. 🤓

• My network. The amazing people I've connected with deeply. 💗

• Persistence. Motherf'er! I will.

• Outsourcing to experts. Duh! You do it!

I do have the keys to my own happiness.

It's not inexplicable. It's not impossible.

It's happening.

🖤 M

Card by hatwigglove.com

Dear Margot,

It's your body talking here. Yeah–you have a body! That big brain is sittin' on top of something. Me/us! And I just wanted to say, thank you for slowing down.

You're listening to us again! It feels really good. We know what we need. Or, I'll say, I know what we need. And I trust you to go get it for us.

The intuitive meditation, the Hipline dance classes, the nice bed...They are just ways in to more joy, abundance, sensual pleasure.

And again, Paolo the Sacred Seed, there's no rush.

It's unfolding when and as it should.

🖤 M

Card by redcapcards.com

Summer is coming. More and more warmth, sunlight, and blooms to behold.

The front of this house alone–the lushness of rosebush leaves and dozens of tight dark red buds...It's where we're at. It's where we are germinating.

"Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."

- Lao Tzu

Don't rush. You don't have to fight or argue for what you want any more.

Good things just come.

Remember: All the right nutrients naturally flow to us.

People who love as deeply as us are a gift. But you're burnt out. So just be a seed.

And know more and more love, warmth, abundance, support, and understanding flows towards you.

Receive.

We're learning to ride the waves of joy as well as sorrow.

🖤 Margot

Card by redcapcards.com

Hi Margot!

What if it didn't end? What if love, abundance, joy, awe, and bliss (as well as pain) didn't end? What if things kept getting better and better for you for the rest of our lives?

Look at the views. For Goddess' sake, open the windows and soak them in with wide-open magivision.

See the ocean of love. Same ocean Ram Dass meditates in at Maui. It's literally circular, endless, living oneness.

Nothing at all for a seed to do besides germinate. That's enough. Gravitate towards sunlight, warmth, nutrients. Be a seed for now. It's all.

Love you heart-trooper.

Margot

Card by redcapcards.com