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

it's just paint.

When we moved into our house 12 years ago, I was a big fan of Trading Spaces. And sage green. I'd never owned a home before or painted a wall. I carefully chose the living room color to match my couch (a color called mochachino) and a happy yellow for the kitchen because it has a deep blue tiled counter. But the rest of the house I just went with what I liked.

Which is how I ended up with a minty green bedroom that didn't look like sage at all with a deep purple Trading Spaces inspired accent wall.

And I pretty much hated it for 12 years.

The wall was supposed to be kind of like a headboard. But I didn't measure and it turned out that when the furniture got there the bed and nightstands didn't work on that wall.

Ooof.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have stopped as soon as the first wall started to dry and said, "wait! I don't like this color." Because it wasn't sage at all and I knew I would't love sleeping in that room.

But I didn't say that. Because we were only going to live there a couple of years. And then 12 passed by and we never repainted.

It's now this really gorgeous gray and I hope the people who will buy this house and make it there own magical home feel serenity in that room.

Of course this is more than just a story about paint colors. It's really about listening to your gut and asking for help and the ways we get trapped into old stories and how sometimes the change we need is right in front of us but we just can't seem to shift enough to make it happen.

My new house is painted in shades of blue that feel like an invitation to take a deep breath. I went about choosing colors in a totally different way. And some might say there's too much blue. But gosh I feel at home.

But that's not really the story either.

It's really about how sometimes it takes 12 years of stuckness to realize you've been free all along.