I can choose to keep my heart open.

A story I shared with the lovely souls on my newsletter list:

I'm over here in my studio in the in-between space before Ellie gets home from school, and I'm thinking about you. And I want to talk about something.

I want to talk about how we struggle to stay open even as we long for more love in our lives. How we push others away yet we long to feel seen. How we want to protect ourselves from hurt even though being human means we will get hurt. 

I want to talk about how we close ourselves off from what we long for in such subtle ways.

We close our hearts when we don't accept a compliment, when we put ourselves down, when we get upset with our loved ones about the little things even when we know we could let them go. 

We have signs and quotes in our homes that talk about enjoying the simple moments and choosing dancing over doing the dishes, but we pile on the self-loathing when we scroll through Instagram and see perfect kitchens and flawless self-portraits.

We each have our own ways of making the choice not to open toward this life we're longing for, and I've been noticing how these choices happen in the most routine moments.

The other day, I had an experience of healing around, and I want to tell you about it. Earlier this week, I shared this photo on Instagram. 

And I paired the photo with these words: On Sunday evening, when I was taking a photo of our dinner table before letting everyone dive in (as one does), Jon said that I looked beautiful and I should take a selfie right this minute. I scoffed (as one does when married for a long time): My sunglasses are on my head. We're about to eat dinner. I don't want to be the blogger taking a selfie while her family waits to eat. But then I stopped and just flipped the camera around and took it. And today when I found it on my camera roll, I had this moment of getting how he sees me. Going to let that sink in as I make my way through this day.

Because here's the truth: Yes, I practice the mirror meditation and have come to a really positive space with how I think about my own beauty. I feel comfortable sharing self-portraits, and I certainly don't aim for flawless, perfection when I do. And yet, it is very hard for me to believe my husband when he tells me I'm beautiful. Especially in an everyday moment. I usually say something sarcastic or roll my eyes or use the "it's because I put on mascara" excuse.

But this time he said it right in front of our daughter who was taking in every word. And when I started to reply sarcastically, I looked at her watching me and stopped and took a breath and chose to listen.

It was such a simple, everyday kind of moment; one that none of us would have really remembered no matter how I responded. But one that deeply impacts all of us.

Dismissing someone's love is not how I want to move through my world over here, especially when this someone is my husband. And I don't want my daughter to witness this dismissal. 

I can choose to make another choice.

I can choose to keep my heart open.

This truth is why I have these words hanging in my studio.

I wrote these words and then made a little print so I could hang them up, so I will read them again and again to remember that keeping my heart open to all of it is a huge piece of my life's work.

This really is The And Space - we keep our hearts open to the joy and heartache, the beauty and the mess, the truth and all that we cannot control. All of it.

Even though this can feel huge, I have good news for both of us dear heart: This work of keeping our hearts open is actually done in the simplest of moments. At the kitchen table when someone else says, "You are beautiful." And you choose to believe them.

This work is done: 

• When you smile at the new mom at school who looks as unsure as her child.

• When you say, "Yes" to getting out of the house to connect with others.

• When you look yourself in the eye in the bathroom mirror and whisper "You've got this."

• When you stop talking on the phone when going through the checkout line.

• When you see the dishes in the sink and choose the dance party anyway.

• When you don't hold back the tears when with those you trust.

• When you gently say, "Could you listen to me instead of fix?" when a friend dives into her fixer role.

• When you wake up 10 minutes earlier to give yourself the gift of quiet before everyone else gets up.

• When you wear the red lipstick because it brings you joy.

• When you order takeout because the day really was that long and hard and no one is grading your ability to make dinner every single night.

This work of keeping our hearts open is done when we choose love and kindness and bravery in simple, real, moments that make up our daily lives.

So here's a little homework for you: Look for your own simple moments where you can choose to keep your heart open (even when the old stories might be pulling you to do something else). And then, if you want to, come back to this email and press reply and tell me about them. Or tell me about one of these moments that happened recently to you. I'd really love to hear your stories.

And remember honey, you are a light is this world. We are all blessed because you are here.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

there are things I want to tell you

I want to tell you about the sound of my daughter's laughter when it overflows out of her body and onto the memories of all who surround her.

I want to tell you about the way one deep breath, and then another, brings me closer to love when I make the choice to pause and breathe and listen.

I want to tell you about the birds, oh those birds, who sing every morning with no concern for who is running for president or who has a cleaner kitchen or what words make the perfect sales page.

I want to tell you about the light in our new home and how it heals me every single morning.

I want to tell you about the fire in me that simmered for so long and is now licking at my insides.

I want to tell you about that morning on vacation when I slipped out of bed and went down the hall to find Ellie, and we both wore long dresses and walked out onto the beach while most people were sleeping and took photos of one another twirling in the water and the magic was shimmering in the air and I knew we would never forget.

photo by eleanor jane

What stories are waiting inside you, dear heart? What stories are you wanting to tell? 

get out your camera (eleanor at 6)

A few weeks ago, Eleanor and I went to Point Defiance park to walk around the rose garden. We were working with prompts from Chapter 2 of Inner Excavation and using our senses to explore.

It was awesome. I let her use my phone to take photos of whatever she wanted, giving her the prompt of "find your senses," which she quickly expanded to "find flowers in every color of the rainbow." 

While she took photos and ran around, I took photos too. With my "big-girl camera." I snapped lots of flowers but also captured Eleanor at 6.

What I found on my camera today made me so very happy I got my big camera out and just had fun.

Capturing everyday life through our lens helps us gather evidence of the beautiful, messy, real life we're living every single day. This evidence in turn pushes us to see the ways we're already living the life we sometimes long for. We see examples of the ways we slow down and really enjoy our loved ones, how we take the time to notice the simple beauty around us, and how we honor our own needs. And sometimes a photography practice actually invites these moments of mindfulness and love into our lives. 

Gathering evidence is one powerful way to navigate The And Space. Try it and see what happens. Then come back and let me know what you unearth. 

in the dig site together

This summer, Eleanor is joining me (and more than 300 others) for the Inner Excavate-along, the read-along meets create-along of my book Inner Excavation.

And it's awesome. She's teaching me so much as she dives into the prompts and does things her way. 

At the beginning of any course I teach, I invite participants to create an intention for themselves. I wanted to teach this to Eleanor as well. So we read the introduction at bedtime a few weeks ago (she asked such awesome questions: Did you really write all of this? How did you know what you wanted to say?) and talked about what an intention is. The next day, she came up with this as her intention and wrote it in her journal.

Play. Have fun. Make mistakes that I can fix.)  She's working on spelling the words she knows and was delighted when she spelled fix as "fixe" so she could fix a mistake right away! 

I want to always remember that.

As we dive into each chapter, we're reading some of it together (especially the introductions) and then talking about the general themes. Then we work with a couple of prompts that I choose. (Depending on the age of your child, you could choose them together, work through all of them etc. Ellie is 6, so I'm going with what makes sense for her.)

So far, it has felt like the most important pieces I'm sharing are the different ways to "tell your story" - through photos, words, color, and any other way that makes sense to you. We're gathering words, going on walks to take photos, and also sitting down with our journals and creating with what we've gathered. 

Sometimes, I give her a jumping off point based on the prompts in the book if we don't already have a plan. I'm gently pushing her to write her own stories without asking me to spell every word; she's pushing back that she wants to learn how to spell the words she doesn't know.

I'm also learning how to stay quiet when I have an idea of what we might create and she's diving in and just having fun without needing any instruction. And I'm also figuring out ways to teach - "look what happens when you do this with your watercolor brush" and encouraging her to be curious and experiment. And I'm trying to let go of my expectations of how this experience "should" look.

So basically, the usual parenting lessons with a big side of color. 

And hopefully along the way, I'm giving her even more tools to express herself, her stories, her feelings, her dreams. Yes yes yes.

I'm also remembering that I need my own time where I can write my stories down, so I'm creating little pockets of alone time to do that too.

There's still time to join in this summer's free Inner Excavate-along. You just need the book! The course is always available and new folks are joining us every day in our magical Facebook group. You can buy the book here and sign up for the course emails here.

let yourself be seen

There's this space between all the roles and the chatter in your head and others' expectations and misunderstandings and wonderings. There's this space that exists between the inhalation and exhalation. A pause you can find if you slow down enough.

If you pay attention.

On the days when you might be wearing the same clothes you wore the day before, when you need a shower, when the way things are isn't quite the way you thought they would be, find that pause. And then another. And then another after that. See if you can find you - the you who isn't buried by the shoulds - in that space.

And when you do, take a photo and let yourself be seen (by the one person who knows you best of all: You).

This is what Inner Excavation is all about.

the grief and the joy (yet again.) (always.)

Millie, back in 2005 

In late April, it was the middle of the night and I was driving home from the airport. While driving, I started to imagine pulling up to the house and walking up the steps and then in the front door to our golden retriever Millie's face right there waiting for me. I had the thought, "I hope Jon's still up to help me carry my bags in."

And then I remembered that I was driving home to our new house and I'd be pulling in the garage. No steps. And then I remembered that Millie died earlier that month.

My breath caught in that way it does when the grief rushes in.

I turned up the radio and sang country songs at the top of my lungs the rest of the way home.

Earlier in the day, I'd been talking to my friend Lori about, well, everything, and I remember saying something about how the quiet way I'm holding my grief for Millie reminds me of a line from a poem I wrote about the days after my grandmother's death - "the open wound that people saw as me."

(Have you ever felt that way?)

The day after Millie died, we got the keys to our new home.

The joy and the grief. Hand in hand.

The new house is full of so much light. And space for this business of mine that has grown. And enough room for entertaining again and for Eleanor to run in the backyard and for Jon to have a little space just for him and for guests to feel comfortable in their own space. And the walls are painted blue now and they make me so happy I could burst.

And yet as I write these words sitting in my favorite chair, my faithful friend isn't curled up on the floor beside me snoring like she's always been when I write here on my blog or send newsletters to you.

The beauty and the sadness.  

As I watch the news and am surprised yet again that Trump's words can shock me, as I wonder why we are so divided but also see (some of) the reasons why, as my heart hurts thinking about it all, as I miss Millie, as I get news of a dear friend's cancer returning, as I hear of sadness in loved ones' lives, as I listen to Prince, as I wish I'd said things differently, as I hold space for so many stories, I sometimes wonder if perhaps a part of us is always an open wound of sorts. 

And then just as I begin to think that's true, someone sends me a lip sync video or Eleanor tells me a story about her stuffies or Jon takes my hand and squeezes it or I literally clap with glee hearing Jimmy Fallon tell a story about playing ping pong with Prince or I find myself dancing in the kitchen of my new house because I just can't stop myself as Fleetwood Mac spins on the record player or I notice the flowers in the backyard that are finally starting to bloom.

Because even when we hold so much grief, joy finds us.

Today, I just really want you to know that I deeply believe that joy is out there even when it feels far away, even when a part of us feels like an open wound. I hope you can believe that too. And if you can't today, I'm sitting right here beside you believing it for both of us. 

(Some of this post previously appeared in a newsletter love note. If you'd like to receive notes like this in your inbox, sign up here.)

ask the questions

If I was writing the introduction to Inner Excavation today, I would include the quote above because this idea of asking the questions and then answering them through self-expression and play and words and photos and journaling and color and connection - that is what my book is all about.

When I think about the timing of things - when the book came out, where the online world and social media were five and a half years ago, where we were in our relationship to self-portraits (that we now call selfies!), where I was in my own understanding of how to launch a book and run a business - combined with Ellie's birth and her surgery - I sometimes want to go back into that path behind me and just pluck my book right from the timeline and then come here and say:

Dear beautiful soul,

I wrote a book just for you. It's about cultivating a relationship with the one person who knows you best of all: you. It's about practicing self-care through writing and taking photos and sometimes getting messy with paper and color and paint and glue. It's about holding out your camera and looking at yourself in the eyes and saying, "Yes, I see you." It's about creating a foundation to help you build a bridge between daily life and the longings inside you.

This book contains so many practices that you can turn to again and again throughout your life so that you are always deepening your relationship with yourself (and in turn your relationship with others and all that is greater than you).

I hope you'll check it out and give yourself that gift of exploring and opening up to the stories inside you.

Love,
Liz

Today, I can't go back in time.

But I can stand behind these words and invite you to still come along. I have a stack of books here in my studio just waiting to get into your hands. I have a free ecourse (and a free private Facebook group) that begins June 27th. And I'd love to walk beside you.

Let's ask the questions and get messy and have fun exploring our answers.

Together.

Because you aren't alone over there as you find your way and long to tell your stories.

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Sign up for the Inner Excavate-along right here. And you can get Inner Excavation right here in my shop.

welcome to the and space

Hello Beautiful Soul,

It’s here. My new website is really really here.

It’s been a labor of love for months now as the extraordinary Evan Leah Quinn has worked her magic, listened to me, and synthesized my ramblings into this new home.

And I love it!

For several years now, I’ve been talking about how on any given day we have permission to hold beauty in one hand and the grit life hands us in the other. And I've mixed in this image that we can build a bridge between the routine of daily life and the longings we have inside us. With my new site, I want to introduce you to phrase that encompasses all that this idea means to me: The And Space.

The And Space is where:

• You're sitting in front of the evening news and can’t believe what you’re seeing, and five minutes later a text arrives from your best friend saying she just got engaged.
• You're at the kitchen table surrounded by the joy of listening to your daughter tell you a story, and the grief of wishing your grandmother could have known her taps you on the shoulder. 
• You're in the midst of a phone call that is about to change everything just as you notice the cherry tree is blooming in the front yard. 
• Your to-do list is stacking up, and you stop just for a moment to wish you could just rest.  
• You're in line at the grocery store exhausted from a long day at work, listening to the chatter around you, and you're smiling to yourself because you know when you get home you're turning up Johnny Cash and making your famous enchiladas. 

The And Space is where most of us live. 

And it is beautiful and overwhelming and amazing and messy.

What I want you to remember is: You aren’t in it alone. (I’m here with you.)

My hope is that this site will feel like a place for us to be in conversation: 

• As we sift through the stories of where we’ve been and choose truth and love.
• As we name and claim the dreams of what the future might look like.
• As we make the choice to just set it all down and sit in the quiet for a little while.

I’m so glad you’re here. And I look forward to navigating The And Space together.

Big big love,

Liz

photo credit: Lauren Oliver Photography