: : Y’all we did a thing! ~ S t o r y p o d L a u n c h ~

… from yours truly, to you and your heart, truly.

✨ 1 story given every few weeks available N O W in all the usual podcast places ✨

And you have homework! Details below :)

Beautiful People ~

It is with a wildly excited heart that I share this with y’all today. This project has been a total labor of love, and something that I initially thought would be just for my own process. As I shared the stories more and more, however, they spurred something unexpected, and I have been persuaded..

During the pandemic, i was able to get still enough, quiet enough, and for long enough to write a massive stack of short stories and poems. It felt like everything this world had wound me through came pouring forward in one way or another. These are stories often about humans in close proximity or concocted from figments of my imagination, sometimes auto-biographical, most (although not all) from the woman's-body-perspective, a healthy dose of magical realism sprinkled throughout (cuz let’s be honest, that’s the world I live in), some pretty edgy things from difficult times, a huge hats off to Momma Nay (mother nature), and general curiosity about this thing called a heart. While they often feel into the particulars of 'this one’, it has been made distinctly clear to me that much of this is universal, and for that reason, I am feeling compelled to share in hopes that they spark dialogue, contemplation, kindness toward self and other, and moments of deep peace.

Why Read Aloud?
When I was a kid, story hour was one of the most important parts of my day. Every night, my dad read to us, and memories of those tales linger still (apparently he read on, even after we had all fallen fast asleep).

It is a very different thing to take in information without a visual, especially when we are inundated through these peepholes all day long! With sound alone, we not only simplify the data stream, allowing things to land a little deeper, but we also have this lustrous engagement of our imagination which fills in the gaps and leads to great insight. (It is this same imagination that might lead to innovation and the solving of the planet’s greatest environmental challenges, I might posit- prolly worth giving her a lil workout time to time- bonus: it’s f u n !).

Other themes include loss and love, procreation, mental illness and initiation, coming of age, intergenerational patterning, stand-alone trauma, epigenetic gifts, sensuality/sexuality, futurescapes imagined, aging, family, ancestry, nourishment, birth, death, innocence, purpose, confusion, creativity, travel and belonging, to name a few.

How:
I recommend listening to the ‘Welcome’ episode first.

Secondly, a word about speed: I get curious about speed… These stories are an opportunity to slow down. They are not meant to be used as a consumerist form of hyperactive data-entry, which is our usual m.o. when it comes to receiving information. Many of the stories were found and written as a dance or a meditation, and their consumption invites similar dispositions. To be met with space and curiosity, and to allow for other layers- especially inside the body- is a different way to read or listen. Like the yoga that we engage, I have loved dropping back away from the prefrontal cortex, and letting these have a home deep inside the flesh, the viscera and the bones, and to see what comes. To unearth what is there. To go slow. And just like yoga, this is a practice. We are rewarded day in and day out for our speed. What happens when we really- I mean really- slow down? Not only in how we move and not as a dramatic pendulum swing that might put us into paralyzed exhaustion, but as a conscious quietude? as a way of being, hearing, connecting..?

These are all questions I love entertaining.

(With, of course, a healthy dose of whirling-dervishy speed-demony blastoiding here and there ;)).

And ultimately I wonder if it isn’t what our planet asks of us too? (Certainly there was opportunity for turning it down a notch during the pandemic and we saw all of nature came out to play!). How are we relational without being ravenously consumerist? What does that really mean for you?

When:
I’ll drop a new story for you every few weeks from a small selection of what’s written. If you “follow” the podcast, you will be alerted to its arrival.

Your homework:
I could say so much about the how, the why, and the wherefore on the stories themselves, and perhaps I will somewhere along the way, but for now, I’d really like them to speak for themselves and more than that, I want to hear how they speak to you!

Your mission should you choose to accept, is to reply here after listening with things that arise for you. Do memories come forward? Does in make you think of anything specifically, or feel a certain way? Where do you feel that in your body? Does it bring up any questions?

I want to know how and where these land.

—->> And…. This is a greater curiosity about art and community.
With these questions, comments, and insights, we’ll make an additional episode with myself and a friend of mine where we can gnaw on some of the bits that come forward, so let us know!! It can be the smallest thing, like a feeling, or a whole memory. Anything- truly. We will keep it all anonymous.

If in alignment for you, please support!
Share/ like/ forward/ toss your dollars, whatevs.

There is potential to publish the thing in its entirety and that all has a lot to do with the numbers of follows/ algorithms/ plays/ all the things.. if you feel called to, please feel free to toss further afield, share with your buds, and/or give it some energy by way of good vibes - not to be underestimated :)

I believe in story time.
I believe in written word.
I believe in slow.
I believe in art.
I believe in you.
I believe in Us.

I am so excited to share these with you and to hear how they land.

Please enjoy, my friends.

Let these words pluck the strings of your interior. And do be in touch.

All the love,

Julia

Or wherever you love to listen… 💛