thoughts.

I haven't been sharing my thoughts as much publicly lately because sometimes it ends up making my words feel less intimate when I am speaking them to my lover or to close friends. (which by the way, share similar characteristics of intimacy if done right). But then, I found that I wasn't sharing them at all. My tongue + brain do NOT want to cooperate and I end up frustrated that I am not describing myself and/or intentions well, or I don't have enough time, ( why do I feel like I have to be fast?) to REALLY say all the things, so I just don't, because that would only be a watered down version. But writing DOES give me the opportunity to slow my brain down and choose my words more carefully, more intentionally, without rush or remorse.

With that revelation, along with all the nuances inspiring me lately, I have decided to start writing letters via snail mail. Even making that decision has me giddy, so I know it will bear its own fruit + I am looking forward to the discovery of it.

I have been researching + learning about some of my favorite artists lately. I keep coming across projects about them and the intimacy found in letters written to their siblings, friends, lovers, or even mentors and that how today, in 2025, we use those letters to attain more details about their personal lives.

I know it was a sign of the times + that writing letters were the only way to communicate back then, but daaayyuuuummm, isn't that lovely?

It reminds me of when I found a box of letters in my closet, that were postmarked from 1986 to 1999 from my cousin Crystal. Letters with addresses of all the places I have lived from the time I was a kid - to the year before I got engaged. (We wrote each other a LOT.) I sat down and went through those letters and it had me longing for those summer nights spent lying on my Nanny + Papaw's roof dreaming out loud to each other about our futures and how we would live right down the road from one another and we would never lose touch.

I got to read letters that I wrote but have no memory of.

I got to see inside the heart of myself as a kid, as a teenager, as an almost adult.

I got to read about the trivial mundaneness of my days, as well as the BIG heartbreaks.

I got to read about my faith + watched it grow, letter after letter.

That was definitely some time traveling voodoo, and I was able to see the significance of my own letter writing. I lingered there for awhile, trying to remember all the things I had forgotten about, tried to feel those feelings again.

This is why writing letters should still be important to me.

The memory of it all is absolutely one beautiful outcome, but the other thing that REALLY speaks to me is that it is a written account of my life. Written the way I perceived it to be at that time. My very own words. One day my ancestors will be reading my letters + learning all about me in a very authentic way and that's exciting to me!

Sometimes I worry that I live too much in the past and not enough in the present. I am always searching old courthouses, newspapers, cemeteries and libraries for people or places related to me. I spend hours upon hours researching threads on the internet,conducting interviews, recording information...what is the driving force? Why am I so compelled to do that?

That's when I start thinking that I need to be more present + be in MY timeline more, but then I find myself thinking of how I can preserve my "right now" for the future. How can I help them (my ancestors) find me? What can I do today that will lead them to all that I have found out about their past beyond me? To think that one day I could be the link for my future ancestors to find my past ancestors, all just to make their present more meaningful?

That lights me uppppaaa.

"let my gardens speak for me when I am gone. let them speak in colored whispers of all the beauty i have seen. and felt. and lived. let them speak of how much death had to find me; how many hard seasons it took to make me a living, breathing thing. let them speak of my seasons of growth and abundance but let them also tell of my seasons of loss and decay. let the soft, wet earth be a reminder of hardness that didn't win. of sadness that didn't calcify. of surrender that triumphed over resisitance. and let the glorious, fragrant blooms speak of my life and its greatest lesson: that the beauty we make never dies."

come sit by my garden, song by Emory Hall