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, as the Navajo describe, to feed the good wolf. 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, others, 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 essays that explore concepts like 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’m a writer, researcher, and lover of stories. I live in Atlanta, Georgia with my husband and elderly cats, Freckles and Tater. We bought a house here — a loft next to a historic, hundred-year-old renovated brick factory — almost two years ago. There is something sturdy and wonderful about living next to an old brick factory. Buying my first house in my fifties is a big deal. Home is a big deal. Along the way, I have lived in Miami, Cincinnati, Austin, Bellingham, and Indianapolis. I was born and raised around Louisville, Kentucky, and proudly host an annual Kentucky Derby party. I attend church weekly in the same progressive Christian denomination where I was raised and learned that God is love. I live with Turner syndrome.
I have trekked the Abel Tasman, bathed in the healing waters of Tirta Empul, and kissed the Blarney Stone in search of wide-awakeness. I have written about the arts and sciences for leading organizations such as the Blue Man Group, The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, NASA, Ohio University, the University of Cincinnati, several state Departments of Education, and the United States Department of Education. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
About 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 this project committed to living it. Wide-awakeness happens in the middle of the aesthetic, spiritual, emotional, in and of experience. It is where paying attention meets imagination.
The work of Maxine Greene introduced me to wide-awakeness. Drawing from philosophers like Schütz, Merleau-Ponty, Dewey, and others, Greene asserts that imagination makes empathy possible. In that frame, wide-awakeness defines our life project, and shapes a space where ideas grow, interpretations and analyses flow, and creativity thrives. Wide-Awakeness is about world-building. I have dedicated my life to exploring wide-awakeness. We must intentionally create pathways for wide-awakeness — safe harbors of imagination and empathy — in our world. That is the point of the Wide-Awakeness Project.
