Prayer for Travelers - 2023

Dear Employers - 2022

Finding Our Work To Do - 2022

(inspired by Audre Lorde’s speech Learning from the 60s)

The Artist’s Inner Critic - 2021

We Will Not Cancel Us - 2021

I witnessed a lot of fighting, screaming, lying, and defensiveness growing up. This was often followed by pretending nothing happened either with denial, excuses, justifications, or absent/inauthentic apologies. I don’t blame my family anymore because I understand they were doing the best they could trying to cope with their own pain. And yet, the coping mechanisms I formed as a result took a toll on my personal relationships for years to come.

Avoidance felt comfortable & familiar
Dissociation felt automatic & necessary
Distance felt safe & protective
Cutting people off felt strong & inevitable

After years of therapy & deep love, lessons from abolition, and teachings from this book, I’ve found a new way. I’ve found healing.

Radical honesty & truth sharing, vulnerability, pausing for breath, difficult conversations, non-reactivity, creating space from my rage to receive clarity of its messages, compassion, settling my nervous system, apologies and forgiveness are all things I’m practicing. My relationships are transforming and I’ve never felt so peaceful. This is what it feels like to breathe, speak, live, and act with integrity, aligned with my values of humanity & freedom.

I offer this zine as a step forward. Reading these materials alone won’t heal all our relationships -- that takes deep internal work with intention, support, patience & practice -- but it’s a good place to start.

Skeleton Woman - 2020

(inspired by Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés)

“Wolves are good at relationships. Anyone who has observed wolves sees how deeply they bond… Their bonds carry them over and through harsh winters, plentiful springs, long walks, new offspring, old predators, tribal dances, and group sings. The relationship needs of humans are no different…”

“The instinctual lives of wolves include loyalty and lifelong bonds of trust and devotion… derived from their submission to the ancient Life/Death/Life nature… the peaks and valleys just are, and wolves ride them as efficiently & fluidly as possible…”

“This is something humans sometimes have trouble with… in order to create this enduring love, lovers must invite a third partner to the union: Skeleton Woman… She has the role of the oracle who knows when it is time for cycles to begin & end within a relationship. As such, she is the wildish aspect of the relationship, the one many view with terror, for when faith in the transformative has been lost, the natural cycles of increase & attrition are feared as well."

“I find the tale of Skeleton Woman most valuable when understood as a series of seven tasks that teach one soul to love another deeply and well.”

“These are: discovering another person as a kind of spiritual treasure, even though one may not at first realize what one has found. Next in most love relationships comes the chase and the hiding, a time of hopes and fears for both. Then, comes the untangling & understanding of the Life/Death/Life aspects of the relationship and the compassion for the task. Next come the relaxing into trust, the ability to rest in the presence and goodwill of the other, and after that a time of sharing both future dreams and past sadness, these being the beginning of healing archaic wounds with regard to love. And finally the use of the heart to sing up new life, and the intermingling of body & soul.”

-- Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Ph.D., Women Who Run With The Wolves

I do not show this skin for you - 2019

(inspired by Ayla Nereo)

One Shabbat evening, I immersed myself in a ceremonial ritual, my own way of creating sanctuary and mikvah. This zine poured out of me the following morning. It was created during a time I felt major insecurities about my body; I wanted a way to reclaim my joy and confidence. The lyrics come from Ayla Nereo’s song Show Yourself. The words are painted with my period blood as a direct gift from my body to yours. This zine is proof that when my ancestral, creative and bodily juices are aligned, my most meaningful magic will flow.

Murky & Lofty Intentions - 2019

“There are years that ask questions

and years that answer.”

--Zora Neale Hurston

I had a strong sense of self, dream, & vision for most of my life, supported by strategic coping mechanisms that kept me safe, fulfilled, & loved. That all got stirred up for me when some old childhood traumas I thought I “worked through” resurfaced and a new love was teaching me those coping strategies weren’t protecting me in the ways I believed they were. My life as I understood it turned completely upside down in what many would call my Saturn Return.

I created this zine at the start of that confusing time, the first time in my life I experienced depression & grief in a way that completely consumed me. As my coping mechanisms lost their power, I felt lost and so far away from myself with no idea where I disappeared to or if I was ever coming back. I started with the cover page of this zine hoping I’d be able to articulate for myself who I was and who I wanted to dream myself into being. I received almost no clarity or relief; instead, I got questions and vague imagery. It isn’t until several years later I offer this zine with patience & compassion & love for my younger, struggling self -- and for anyone else who may be experiencing something similar.