Introductions

I’m not very good at introductions.

I get flustered and feel that flutter in my hands—you know the one?
That one that turns into trembling. Your body shaking off escaping nervous energy.

Small talk feels like digging into my soul. The way your hands claw the sand on the beach only to watch it slip away, or trying to work through the rind of a clementine. My soul fights against itself to work that connection, to find the words to say.

Some people are naturals at this.
They have that woo.

I’d ping this “lack” as a negative (I used to excel at that—making things negative, that is. You really can throw the baby out with the bathwater if you aren’t careful), except that the flip side is I’m an exceptional listener.

That’s something I’m rather proud of.

I’m here because of 37.

It sounds strange to refer to the years of your life like an entity. But to me, they are. They are like beautiful, powerful, spectral goddesses guiding me onward to wherever it is I’m headed.

Right now, I’m 38. Her lessons are the chief content of this primer.

But it’s because of 37.

37 saved me.

You see, I got lost there for a bit.
(It happens to us all, doesn’t it?)

One minute you’re living your life—hustling, moving with the rhythm of the day, finding that beat, that melody that carries you forward. And then—
Catastrophe.

Life gets you by the teeth. Not even teeth—fangs. Venom-dripping fangs.

And you don’t see it coming. You should have, but you don’t.

And what’s left is grief and pain and all the dark side of the flipping coin.

That’s where I was.
Lost.

Lost in the rubble of a life I was living—a life that so instantly and mercilessly changed.

When I look back at that man crying on the floor of his living room in the A, I wonder that I made it through. That I survived the heartbreak. That I’m sitting here now at my kitchen bar with a cup of tea, writing.

This is my life.
The raw of it.

This is my archive—of the lessons, the feelings, the good things, and the sadness. A collection of moments that make up a life.

This is the small space that perhaps someone passes through, like a dandelion seed on the wind in the sticky Southern heat of August, and takes something with them. Something that helps them forward on their own path. Some nugget of connection that lets them know that they aren’t alone as they grind and move to the beat of the world’s heart.

They aren’t alone when the jaws snap.
They aren’t alone in the rubble.
They aren’t alone as they walk forward with the goddesses.