The Wide-Awakeness Project
I write this newsletter to enter a conversation about what it means to be a loving, engaged, compassionate person in our world. I write it because connection heals and saves. I write it because I believe in the goodness of people, and this newsletter allows me to find goodness in new, creative, aspirational, and affirming places.
Why Here and Why Now?
I weep right now. Rather than simply weep and watch and burn, I write. I write to pay attention. I write about the beauty I find — wherever I find it — in my urgent hope to magnify, amplify, hold close, and lift up what can be missed if we turn away. I write to establish social proof that the majority is good. I write into a reality that imagines big love and makes it so. I write to create, invite, and build.
Ideal Subscribers
My ideal subscribers are reluctant joiners who seek a space to connect and dream. They are fearless lovers who believe we are made for this time. They are sports fans, policy wonks, scientists/believers-in-science, and fashionistas who grew up attending the summer reading program at the public library. They are people who mother, are quirky funny, and write an annual holiday letter. They love pets, eat out a lot because they are not that great in the kitchen, and struggle to keep house plants alive.
Transformation
The Wide-Awakeness Project will transform you in the way ancient mariners used constellations to navigate the night sky. It will transform you in the way that January offers a path to redemption every year. It will transform you in the way that tree roots connect and ensure their survival. It will transform you in the way that the journey of a project — something in which you invest and engage and breathe — teaches us we are star dust and steel.
At this moment — when so much hurts — we need something that heals. We need constellations and Januarys. We need tree roots and projects that connect us to ourselves, one another, and our world. Right here. Right now.
What you will receive if you subscribe to the Wide-Awakeness Project
I post three times a week. My posts move between pieces that explore love, hope, and gratitude, writing exercises that chronicle my writer’s journey and my efforts to pay attention and live with intention, and find joy, and interviews with people who speak to finding light in dark times.
About Me
I am a writer, researcher, and storyteller. I have trekked the Abel Tasman, bathed in the healing waters of Tirta Empul, climbed Mayan ruins in Belize, and kissed the Blarney Stone in search of wide-awakeness. I have written about the arts and sciences for leading organizations such as the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the United States Department of Education, the University of Cincinnati, Ohio University, several state Departments of Education, NASA, and Blue Man Group. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
The Challenge and Art of the Six-Word Memoir [because I could not write just one six-word memoir to describe me]
Broken miracle beautifully duct taped together./ Depth breath. Two steps. Deep breath./ Star dust. Scar tissue. Steel rims./ Brick by brick. Stone by stone./ Let the river carry you home./ Full-hearted pilgrim planting seeds and singing prayers./ Seeking grace. Sipping Saki. Crying to Carlile./ Green Ford. Blue Mazda. Gray Lexus./ Control freak pescatarian. Empathetic cheese lover./ Comforted by rainbows, cats, kaleidoscopes, seasons.
Selected Publications
About Wide-Awakeness
Paying attention is the pulse of wide-awakeness. Wide-awakeness is not my idea. Philosophers, scholars, and artists have been exploring it for generations. I was so hungry to understand it, I focused on it during my Ph.D. and founded the Wide-Awakeness Project committed to living it. At heart, wide-awakeness is about the in and of experience — where attention, imagination, and intention live. Where our work is our project. Where we create and invent. Where we connect and grow.
