I was standing in the cold at a tree lighting ceremony, watching hundreds of people do the same thing, and I kept asking myself: what are we actually doing here?

Thanksgiving is a complicated day. It carries real gratitude and real harm in the same breath. A celebration of abundance built on a story that erases Indigenous suffering. I'm learning to hold both.

I met a man at an AMVETS Hall who changed how I think about mortality. He wasn't a veteran. He was a guest, like me. And he was dying. He didn't lead with that. He led with survival kits.

I recently read 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom. What caught me wasn't the framework. It was what it revealed about my own patterns. Specifically, my relationship with time wealth and the word yes.

My dad and I were wrestling with a stuck window on the house I grew up in. Under his frustration I could hear the fear. He knows time is real. The project looked like it was stealing his freedom.

My dad and I were up on staging replacing windows when a deer family walked out into the garden. It was the first day of hunting season. What followed was a lesson in death, gratitude, and connection.

This past Friday I was off. I knew it while it was happening and I still kept showing up. What I've been learning is that being off isn't the problem. Not noticing it is.

I took a class at Maine Primitive learning to make a bow. Not the kind you tie in a ribbon. The kind that sends an arrow. I came with a question: can killing be an act of love?

Every September at the Common Ground Fair, I watch Chris Lombard step into a ring with one horse and a microphone. No routine. No trick list. Just a conversation using breath, body, and attention instead of force.

I grew up in a small town in Maine. We didn’t have cable. So my sister and I watched the same stack of VHS tapes over and over. Those movies shaped me in ways I couldn’t see at the time.