an big picture overview of my 3 core themes and daily practices, these last 8 years, and how everything fits together.
a simple structure for working on anything in your life
how to cultivate an embodied sense of the creative self — through a framework of daily body and creative rituals
It's been one year since I started painting a circle a day to document how I feel. Here are seven things I've learned from painting 365 moons.
Why and how I strived to break the wake up-check phone impulse, and created more mindful, focused mornings. This rule has made the biggest difference in my productivity and wellbeing.
on how drastically my life changed (in 2015) after starting a morning routine — and a detailed process on building your own.
against the idea of balance. my alternative to the wheel of life.
how I accompany my inner child to look at her fears
an big picture overview of my 3 core themes and daily practices, these last 8 years, and how everything fits together.
dear kening, we kindly urge your presence at a very important, somewhat anti-social function…
a simple structure for working on anything in your life
how to cultivate an embodied sense of the creative self — through a framework of daily body and creative rituals
the not-too-sweetness of a pudding cake that nourished me the entire week
I made this map of dark emotions to see all of the unholdable feelings on one page - roughly organized by how “unbearable” feelings are (the worst feelings on the left bottom corner).
I just opened a new room in this webhouse, and it’s called a dark place. it will be where I collect all of my notes-to-self and travelogues from time spent in dark places — as a reminder that I go there pretty often, and come out each time — having gained some treasures from the abyss. the problem with dark places is that I think they will last forever; I think they will suffocate me. but each time I visit, it is an opportunity for me to become more intimate with the shadows in my own head. the abyss ends, eventually. the abyss lives always inside me.
here is a good thing to have in your emotional medicinal closet — a personalized playlist of medicine songs. by that i mean: a short curation of songs to listen to when you're feeling especially terrible, and need to self-soothe, ground, or remind yourself that the apocalyptic world in your head — is not the end-all-be-all version of reality. sound — and music — is so healing, and requires no effort to absorb. you just press play.
when i don't know what to do or how to deal with life — sometimes i drop everything and take a bath. taking a bath is like the opposite of taking a walk — a walk means movement, air, earth, sun, light. a bath means stillness, settling, soaking and sinking in oneself — a retreat into physical or metaphorical darkness; the 360 degree embrace of water.
i've returned from two months of sleeping on friends' couches in new york city back to berlin — to an unrecognizably beautiful, green summer, and it feels like becoming a newborn again — like opening my eyes at each new day, and asking myself: what do I want to do with myself? how do I wish to be?
I turn thirty this year. looking back at the last ten years, I can see clearly how the process of growing up, growing older, growing wiser, growing deeper into myself and into my own skin — can be distilled down to the practice of embracing my own extremities of darkness. of welcoming it as a friend, rather than trying to push it away as an enemy. because the more you build fortresses against yourself, the greater and more insidious the enemy becomes — it finds cracks and holes to seep through while you sleep. I could never compartmentalize myself or my anxieties the way I wanted to. I could never control it, I could never contain the chaos, never silence my needs, nor suppress my obsessions. instead, my life has always existed between storms, and through storms. and it's taken me a long time, but finally I'm at a place of gradual acceptance, and surrender. now, when the darkness descends upon my mind like a choking fog, I only need to small-smile at myself, and say, ah, yes. hello darkness, my old friend. I wonder how long you'll visit me this time.
part of the personal journey of becoming my wise woman self is knowing when — and how — to write to myself. how to write deliberately and passionately for an audience of one.
lately, observing my own stormy weather, i realized that life is just this cycle — the above diagram — repeated over and over again. sometimes in the timescale of a day. sometimes over a month, year, or decades. and as long as we don't get stuck, we will grow and evolve in circles. until we die. (and even death is just a journey into a new place, no?)
if the only constant in life is change, chaos, and unpredictability — then the effort of trying to resist is what causes the most suffering. paralysis is the worst. getting stuck causes suffering — whereas movement through each part of the journey is what allows us to evolve, shed layers, grow.
some minimalist instructions for life — for my past and future self to remember and recite back to me, when I need it most. it could also be: swallow the sweetness, savor the bitter. because bitterness, too, can be truly appreciated as a portal for wounds and its transformation. what is light without dark? nothing. and that, for me, is the whole point of making art — to be still and present with yourself enough to feel the feelings, no matter how overwhelming they are, and to witness them, and yourself — as you are. in making art, we move emotions and experiences through us — and into its own form, into something that can be held, released, shared.
This is my list of 13 nourishing practices I keep coming back to everyday and every week, no matter where I am on the emotional spectrum.