This space is in flux. I had planned to use it as an anonymous record of my time going through a master’s in counseling as a disabled survivor of complex trauma who had long believed counseling to be their future, but 2020 had its own plans. When I first cancelled my admission, I thought the change might be temporary. In a few years, I could reapply when my kids were in school.

As the days turned to weeks turned to months, a sneaky feeling trickled in—an enormous sense of relief took hold. I was glad I couldn’t go to grad school (limited childcare in the time of covid). I came to see how everything I had done to become a counselor (and many things for the sheer fun and thrill) was also the perfect training ground for a life of creating fiction.

(From living in snow caves I co-built, never being warm while living in said snow caves in the middle of the Wyoming Range in February, multi-day canoe trips, extensive therapy plunging the depths, studying abroad, working in haunted houses at probably too young an age, working in the violence prevention field for several years, being a professional disabled dancer (after the snow caves and the canoeing), hell, even being a gift packager for a large big box store with angry suburbanites breathing down my neck…)

The soil in my life has been rich for growing all manner of flowers and weeds. Now I get to scatter them as bouquets across all my writing.

And I must say, if I could choose anything at all to do for the rest of my life, it would be to write.

And live in a tree.

So what becomes of this space now? I suppose it will follow me on the strange journey of making things up (mostly those of a fantastical nature) and trying to share those words stitched into the confines of paper, in the ether world of screens, and over sound waves carrying stories spoken. Hopefully, if I’m lucky, I’ll find wonderful creative people to work alongside to improve my stories, and those tales will be enjoyed by the people who need them, myself included.