You want to be a writer? Then write. That is how to be a writer. The gatekeepers exist only in your mind, the impossibility of where to start is but a self-given-permission away. Craft one sentence, Google one submission guideline, turn over one rock, be curious about one idea. Tell that ache that it is welcomed in your presence, but it must pick one task to accomplish before the week is over to earn its keep.

Right now, we push aside all the feelings we “should” have and people we “should” be, and we open wide our doors to what is.

Good worlds collide. And sometimes no evil is to blame for our suffering; it is just what comes with the territory of a beautifully tragic, finite existence.

Amidst all of this worrisome loss and communal trauma, how do I name this relief that, if I’m being honest, weaves in and out of our new little world?

What would it have been like? Welcoming number two during a global pandemic, that is.

I know this because I won’t be in it with the one who will carry the torch of fear and irritability for the whole group tomorrow like a crotchety martyr.

To the kiddos whose incredible minds teach their families so much. And to the parents who fight hard to make sure the rest of the world can see it too.

Third way creativity is about veil-tearing, enemy-loving, sea-parting, tomb-emptying, ex nihilo-creating, cheek-turning, land-healing, imaginative living into which we’ve been called and for which we’ve been equipped. But like any art, it must be surrendered to, practiced, embracing of vulnerability and forgiveness, and have room to contain multitudes all at once.

I have given birth once, and that otherworldly phenomenon of rule-breaking labor-time which both lasts forever and passes in an instant was present in that eternally short moment now known in text books as the 2010 Haiti Earthquake. And then it was over. Which is a loaded sentence.