Heard

Anxiety is finally taking a back seat. Feels like years that she’s been driving me around. But now I have a home — Habibi of the Sea. And time and space to write.

A publisher contacted me recently. She’s interested in Letters to Lulu, the epistolary novella I penned in 2013, the same year I evacuated Olympia and got back to the ocean. The same year I spent four months living in a Jetta. The same year I returned to California and took up residence in the Seaside Motel. I did not give up on me. I did the best I could, given my beliefs at the time.

On Habibi, I’ve been going through my work: poems, essays, stories, songs, profiles, articles, speeches, scripts, journals, art installations and events, radio shows, films, dances, memoirs, plays, paintings, photos, novels. Despite rampant Not-Good-Enoughs, I produced, and occasionally shared, my Art. “Raise Your Voice” commands a tear sheet from a magazine, and sometimes I did. Sometimes I do.

Practice. Just practice. Don´t beat yourself over the head about the four unpublished novels, two unpublished memoirs, and the plethora of poetry. Don’t beat yourself over the head about anything. Give yourself grace. You are still embodied.

When I read the publisher’s email, dated the day after Hurricane Hilary hit, I wept. It ain’t too late.