VI. The Turn – The Mage Pays the Cost

This is where the Mage becomes real.

Not because he understands what is happening.
Not because he has the right words ready.

Because he risks losing what he loves.

He feels it first in his body. A tightening through his arms, a reflex that wants to pull Mindala closer–not in tenderness, but in restraint. An old instinct rises fast and convincing: Guide her. Ground her. Make this smaller before it’s taken.

He has done this before. He knows how.

Kate’s voice is already nearby, calm and corrective. The Sergeant’s presence is just behind that–heavy, unimpressed, ready to say this is what happens when you let things get out of hand.

The Mage’s hands tremble.

It’s subtle. Easy to miss if you aren’t looking for it. A brief shake, a swallow that doesn’t quite go down, a breath that catches and has to be taken again. Nothing dramatic. Nothing heroic.

Just fear.

Not the fear of being left.

The fear of knowing that if he lifted his voice now–if he called her down, if he tightened the sky–none of this would happen.

And that he would lose her anyway.

The old shame lines up right on time: If you loved better, you could control this.

He lets it burn–

and does not obey it.

Mindala drops low enough for him to feel the heat of her passing.

She circles once–too wide, too fast–then hesitates and comes closer, as if deciding whether to land or to flee.

“What is it?” she calls, not accusing, but raw. “Why does it feel like the night just changed?”

He loosens his hold.

Not retreat.
Not abandonment.

He lets his hands rest instead of clamp. He stays upright without bracing, present without steering.

“I’m here,” he says, and lets the words be enough.

Mindala tilts her head, feeling for something that isn’t tightening.

She doesn’t answer right away.

Then her wings steady on their own.

His words don’t challenge Kate. They don’t confront the Sergeant. They don’t command the sky to behave.

They bless the moment into continuity.

The system expects one of two things: control, or collapse. A tightening fist or a dramatic fall.

It receives neither.

There is a pause–a small, almost invisible gap where the old machinery doesn’t know what to do.

That is the crack.

And through it, something new has room to breathe.

VII. Remembrance – Continuity of Self

Mindala feels the spell reach for her.

It doesn’t arrive loudly. It never has.
It rises the way a thought pretends to be common sense, the way a chill pretends to be prudence.

Kate’s phrase forms with familiar precision, already polished, already certain.

If you know better, do better.

The words move toward her like a hand she has taken a thousand times before.

She almost does.

Her wings hesitate. Just a fraction. The old reflex begins to engage–slow the flight, pull the fire inward, make herself easier to hold.

But something interrupts the interruption.

The Mage has not tightened.
He has not shifted his weight.
He has not turned her into a problem to be solved.

He is still there.

Mindala feels it–not as pressure, not as instruction, but as steadiness. A presence that does not flinch when the old phrase appears. A warmth that does not become a grip.

She blinks, startled by the absence of urgency.

“Wait,” she says, softly, not to anyone else but to the movement inside her own body.

Kate’s voice sharpens. “This is where you mess it up,” she warns. “You’re forgetting yourself.”

Mindala feels the words land–and for the first time, they do not take her with them.

She notices Kate’s fear without stepping into it. The tightness in the belly that isn’t hers. The future catastrophe already rehearsed, already mourned.

She notices the Sergeant too, hovering at the edge of awareness, arms crossed, unimpressed. This is foolish, his silence says. This never lasts.

She doesn’t argue with him.

She doesn’t collapse either.

Instead, Mindala stays where she is.

She feels the weight of her own wings. The heat in her chest. The steady rhythm of her breath moving her forward through the air. She feels the Mage’s warmth along her spine, present but not enclosing.

She exhales, long and slow.

The air keeps holding her.

Kate falters. “You can’t–”

“I am,” Mindala replies, gently.

The joy does not spike.
It does not disappear.

It continues.

For the first time, the moment is not followed by erasure. The flight does not end because it has been noticed. The flame does not dim because it has been seen.

Mindala remembers–not just the flight, not just the flame–but herself across the moment when she would have vanished.

Her body stays hers.

She is alive.

And she remains.

VIII. Return With Risk

No one is destroyed.

The Sergeant does not disappear in a puff of insight or relief. He is still there at the edge of the sky, quick-eyed, arms crossed, cataloging what might go wrong. Softness still irritates him. Exposure still looks like danger. He still believes the world punishes the unguarded.

But he is no longer in command.

He watches Mindala circle and says nothing. The silence is unfamiliar. Uncomfortable. He shifts his weight, as if waiting for someone to ask him what he thinks.

No one does.

Kate remains too.

Her phrase still exists, etched into the mind like a hairline crack in glass–easy to miss, impossible to unlearn.

If you know better, do better.

She clears her throat when Mindala banks wide, when the fire flares just a little brighter than necessary. “Careful,” she says, out of habit more than urgency. “This is how it starts.”

Mindala hears her–and keeps flying.

Kate frowns, confused, then gathers herself. She will try again later. That is what guardians do when they don’t know another way to love. They return to the rule. They repeat the warning. They wait for the old reflex to answer.

The Mage stays with Mindala, not above her, not ahead–present.

He knows better than to mistake this for a victory. His body still remembers how easily he could tighten, how convincing control can feel. Each breath is a small refusal. Each moment of steadiness is an act, not a trait.

“This isn’t over,” he says quietly, more to himself than to anyone else.

Mindala hums in agreement. “I know.”

She circles the sky once, then again–not to prove anything, not to escape what waits below, not to reassure anyone watching.

She flies because movement feels honest. Because aliveness, once remembered, wants to move.

Sometimes Mindala lets him ride again.

Sometimes she doesn’t.

And sometimes, when she flies alone, she does not disappear.

The Mage laughs softly, the sound carried away by the wind. “Still with me?” he asks.

She tilts one wing in answer. Always.

Below them, the sky remains shared. Not owned. Not secured. Alive with possibility and interruption both.

Two full lights move within it, choosing–again and again–to return.

And in that returning, nothing is solved.

There is only the work of staying: not tightening when fear clears its throat, not shrinking when joy is seen, not forgetting what the body already knows.

Epilogue – A Quick Flight

Later–after the circles loosened, after the music softened into smaller conversations–Mindala felt it again.

A small pinch.

Someone laughing with the Mage. His warmth traveling outward like it always did.

The old pattern offered itself, perfectly rehearsed: tighten, correct, test, punish.

Kate stirred. The Sergeant shifted his stance.

Mindala breathed.

And instead of climbing away from the feeling, she descended into it.

She landed close enough to feel the Mage’s heat on her face. He turned toward her at once, eyes open, hands still.

“Hey,” he said, gentle as ever. “You okay?”

Mindala swallowed. Not dramatic. Real.

“I felt a prick,” she admitted, voice low. “Not because you did anything wrong. Just… because you’re you.”

He didn’t flinch. He didn’t defend. He waited.

Mindala leaned her head toward him, close enough to feel his breath.

“Will you take one quick flight with me?” she asked–sensuous, vulnerable, almost shy. “Then I’ll bring you right back. I just want the feel of you… and the sound of you… for a moment.”

The Mage smiled–soft, steady.

“Okay,” he said, touching her cheek. “One quick flight. To the moon and back!”
He laughed, free and a little delighted with himself.

Mindala lowered her shoulder like an invitation.

And when he climbed onto her back, it wasn’t control.

It wasn’t proof.

It was contact–chosen, returned to, and held lightly, with the sky still free.

II. The Mage – Voice Under Threat

The Mage stood among the revelry.

Hands passed him cups. Someone pulled him briefly into a dance. Laughter brushed his shoulders–warm, real, grounding for a moment.

He let himself be there.

But his eyes kept returning to the sky.

Without his weight, Mindala moved differently.

Higher. Faster. Too quick now for him to follow with anything but sight.

And his body noticed.

There was a particular brightness to nights like this–a clarity that felt almost loud. He had learned, over years he did not like to remember, that this kind of light drew eyes. Watchers. Corrections.

His throat tightened–not with panic, but with recognition.

From the ground, her laughter carried differently. Less shared now. More visible.

Instinct rose fast and sharp:
Hold her.
Guide her.
Call her back.
Make this smaller before someone names it dangerous.

He felt the impulse fully.

The memory came with it–his cheek pressed to the warmth of her neck, the steady power beneath her scales, the way contact used to quiet the world. How easy it would be to reach for that again. To turn love into a kind of harness.

He didn’t.

Not because refusing it made him virtuous, but because he knew the cost of bracing. He had paid it before. It made moments like this shrink. It made him shrink inside them, until joy felt conditional and brittle.

Above him, Mindala banked, laughing, light pouring off her, her flames licking the air and brushing anyone lucky enough to be close–heat without harm, invitation without demand.

For a heartbeat, he almost called out.

Instead, he stayed.

He let his breath settle. He let the old arguments line up and pass without answering them–Kate’s cautions, the Sergeant’s scorn, the familiar chorus that appeared whenever aliveness grew legs and ran ahead of its guards.

Hatred would have been easier. It would have felt like readiness.

He didn’t take it.

He rested one hand over his heart and chose the harder thing: presence without reach, warmth without direction, love without claim.

If she could hear him, he hoped it would land as steadiness, not instruction.

You’re beautiful like this.
Keep going.

She didn’t look down.

But her wings tipped, just slightly, as if the night itself had heard.

The Mage kept his eyes on what was alive–on the movement, the laughter, the unforced way the sky was holding her.

And he stayed.

III. The Sergeant – The Hand That Strangled the Sky

The Sergeant arrived long before anyone named him.

He stood at the edge of things, arms crossed, eyes narrowed–scanning everything.

Not just the sky.

The ground too: who was leaning toward whom, who was laughing too hard, who was touching like it meant something. Where others saw warmth, he saw leverage. Where others saw play, he saw the beginning of harm.

Vectors. Risk. Exposure.

Any place something soft might be struck.

“Careful,” he muttered, more to himself than to anyone else. “That’s how you get hurt.”

He had an eye for it. Weakness.

He could spot hesitation in a voice, softness in a gesture, longing that hadn’t yet learned to hide.

What he could not see was joy.

His voice was never loud. It didn’t need to be. It carried scorn the way a blade carried an edge.

“Don’t be naïve.”
“Tighten it up.”
“You should know better than that.”

Tenderness, in his world, was a defect. Something to be corrected before it cost too much.

“This life is a low thing,” he said often, as if repeating it would make it safer. “Only fools rise higher than they can defend.”

And so he worked.

He worked himself raw trying to control fate–outcomes, reputation, exposure, surprise. He planned for every angle, rehearsed every response, built walls where others might have built doors. Nothing moved without his permission. Nothing surprised him. Nothing breathed too freely.

“Now we’re safe,” he said one night, surveying the order he’d imposed. “Now nothing can touch us.”

He got exactly what he wanted.

Security.
Predictability.
Control.

At first, it felt like relief.

Then, slowly, something else set in.

The air grew thin. Conversations shortened. The sky felt lower. The fire that used to flicker at the edges of things went out without ceremony.

One evening, standing alone, the Sergeant realized there was nothing left to guard.

No betrayal had come.
No enemy had appeared.

There was only absence.

He had protected himself into a cage and mistaken it for strength.

The realization didn’t arrive gently. It hollowed him out. His knees buckled. His voice–once so certain–failed him when he tried to speak. The posture that had held him upright for years finally collapsed under its own weight.

“What did I do?” he whispered, though there was no one left to hear it.

And here was the cruelest truth of him, laid bare in the quiet:

He had never really seen Mindala.

When she streaked across the sky like a living miracle, he looked past her–to risk, to threat, to what could go wrong. He saw Kate’s fear and called it realism. He mistook vigilance for wisdom. He dismissed magic as delusion because it refused to be controlled.

“She’s going to get hurt,” he’d said, shaking his head. “All that brightness–nothing good comes of that much freedom.”

So when the Mage began to stir–drawn by something alive beyond rules and defenses–the Sergeant moved to crush it.

“Don’t be stupid,” he snapped. “That path will ruin you.”

But his voice no longer carried the weight it once had.

Because he was already breaking under the burden of his own victory.

And in that brief, devastating weakness–while the Sergeant lay spent beneath the life he had manufactured–the Mage slipped free.

“Go, then,” the Sergeant muttered, too tired to stand, too empty to stop him. “See where it gets you.”

The Mage didn’t answer.

He was simply gone–
not triumphant, not vengeful–
taking up a different quest: not to master fate, but to find his light.

The Sergeant was not persuaded.

He was outlived.

IV. Kate – The Ice-Dragon Who Calls It Care

Kate does not arrive as a voice.

She arrives as cold.

A sudden stilling of the air.
A rim of frost along the edge of heat.
The kind of cold that does not rush, because it knows it will win.

Kate is a dragon too.

Her scales are dark and faceted, like ice cut cleanly from a lake on the darkest night of the year, ice that never thaws. When she exhales, the flame that leaves her mouth is inky blue and silent. It does not burn. It preserves. Wherever it touches, motion slows, surfaces harden, and what was alive becomes manageable.

She does not envy Mindala’s fire.
She mistrusts it.

Kate lifts her head when Mindala climbs beyond the familiar lines of flight.

She does not look for joy. She looks for thresholds.

Without the Mage astride her, Mindala looks exposed.

And with the Mage among others, she looks–through Kate’s eyes–replaceable.

Too visible to be safe.
Too easy to misunderstand.
Too easy to lose.

Kate folds her wings and glides closer, precise and unhurried. She does not roar. She does not chase. She does not need to.

“Careful,” she says, her voice cool as stone pulled from deep earth. “You’re getting carried away.”

Her words land with weight. They always do. They are polished smooth by repetition–parental, absolute, worn down to certainty. They arrive already finished, already justified.

And she has one phrase she breathes like law, like truth older than the sky itself:

“If you know better, do better.”

She releases it in a thin stream of ice-flame.

She breathes it when Mindala is bright.
She breathes it when Mindala is playful.
She breathes it precisely when Mindala is most herself.

As if refusing to see the fire might make it go out.

The scene repeats, again and again.

Mindala mid-flight, rapture spilling from her like music. Friends circling, calling out. Heat everywhere. The Mage laughing into her neck, unguarded.

Then the temperature drops.

Kate’s ice-flame brushes Mindala’s underside–not enough to freeze, just enough to warn. Frost creeps along the edges of fire. The belly tightens. The throat hollows.

“If you know better, do better.”

Mindala falters. Just a fraction.

“What did I do?” she asks–not aloud, not yet–but in the place where the cold has landed.

Kate answers immediately, her eyes steady, unblinking.

“You’re being silly.”
“You’re forgetting yourself.”
“You’re inviting trouble.”

She gestures with one wing toward the wide, watching sky. “You don’t get to make mistakes like this,” she says. “Not without paying for them.”

The words feel like wisdom. They wear the armor of care.

But inside them live other truths, colder still:

Don’t be free.
Don’t give them a reason.
Don’t forget what happens to girls like you.
Everyone leaves.

Mindala’s wings slow. Fire pulls inward, redirected, disciplined, packed down into something that can be controlled. The sky shrinks to a survivable size.

Kate watches closely as the frost settles, nodding once in approval.

“There,” she says. “That’s better.”

She does not think she is stealing the sky.

She believes–truly–that she is saving Mindala’s life.

Because Kate cannot imagine a world where fire is safe, she meets flame with ice. She interrupts magic at its peak, freezes it just enough to keep it from running wild, trims it down to something that might endure attention.

She exhales again, softer now, almost tender.

“If you know better,” she murmurs, ice-flame whispering across the air,
“do better.”

And for a long time,

Mindala listens.

V. The Old Pattern – Joy Misread

The revelry continues.

The air is still warm.
Music moves in loose, generous spirals.
Laughter lifts and falls like breath.

From a distance, it would be easy to believe nothing has changed.

But something has.

Not the joy itself–
the way it is being held.

Mindala cuts low over the gathering, heat spilling in her wake, delight still alive in her body. Below, she catches sight of the Mage–open, laughing, pulled into a loose knot of conversation. Someone touches his arm as they speak. He leans in, listening the way he does, as if attention were something he gives freely.

The sight lands in her chest.

Not as fear.
Not as accusation.

As recognition.

He is alive here too.

For a moment, the feeling is clean. Even tender.
Two truths, side by side.

Then something reaches for it.

Not from her body–
from meaning.

Kate’s presence arrives like a cool hand at the back of the thought.

“See how easy it is,” she murmurs.
“How quickly attention gathers.”

Mindala keeps flying. The joy doesn’t vanish.

But the air has changed.

Below that whisper, another stance forms.

The Sergeant does not look at Mindala.

He looks at the arrangement.

At how attention, once gathered, starts to write stories no one consented to.

Distance.
Visibility.
Who is watched, and who is not.

He tracks how warmth turns into spectacle. How innocence, once noticed, begins to invite judgment. He has seen this pattern before–how freedom, left unframed, becomes a story someone else will tell.

From the ground, the Mage feels it before anyone speaks.

A cooling.
A subtle tightening.

He sees it in Mindala’s flight–not in her wings, but in her orientation. She is still radiant, still moving beautifully, but now her joy has an audience–even to herself.

This is the moment.

Not when she flies free.
But when freedom starts asking what it costs.

Kate gives it language.

“You’re doing a lot,” she says, almost fond. “People are watching.”

The Sergeant adds weight, not heat.

“This is how things get misunderstood,” he says.
“You don’t want that.”

Mindala’s wings stutter–just a fraction.

“What did I do?” she asks, not aloud, not defensively, but honestly.

Kate answers at once. “Nothing. That’s the problem. You’re not thinking ahead.”

The Sergeant seals it. “There’s always a price. You’re pretending there isn’t.”

And the old equation slides quietly back into place:

Visibility becomes risk.
Joy becomes exposure.
Freedom becomes carelessness.

Mindala’s fire pulls inward–not gone, just governed.
The sky feels closer now. Smaller. Manageable.

Below, the revelry continues, softened but intact. No one marks what contracted.

But the Mage feels it clearly.

That familiar tightening returns–the place where protection offers itself as control.

He could call her down.
He could say the right thing.
He could make the night safer by making it smaller.

Instead, he does something quieter.

He stays where he is.

Not braced.
Not withdrawn.

He lets his shoulders soften. He lets his breath deepen. He lets his face remain open to the sky–not watching for danger, not scanning for loss.

If she looks down, what she will see is not alarm.

It is warmth. A face that has not tightened. A body that has not turned away.

No signal.
No correction.
No claim.

Just a steady, unmistakable yes to her being alive.

The moment does not resolve.

And for the first time, it does not have to.

Continue reading next part.

We don’t orbit to impress.
We don’t shine on demand.
But we return.
Even in shadow,
[without losing ourselves,]
we pull each other closer.

I. Revelry Without Self-Consciousness

Mindala was already in the air.

Not lifting off. Not arriving. Not testing her wings against the wind.

Already there—threading herself through the sky as if it were a familiar room, laughing as she flew. Her wings cut wide, lazy arcs, scattering sparks that drifted like fireflies before fading into warmth. Around her, others circled and darted—creatures of feather and scale and borrowed courage—calling out to one another, chasing, yielding, colliding, then breaking apart again in delight.

“Higher!” someone shouted, banking hard to follow her.

Mindala laughed, a sound that came from her whole body, and tipped one wing just enough to make the chase interesting.

The Mage rode astride her, arms loose around her neck, not holding on so much as resting there. His laughter pressed into her scales the way sunlight pressed into stone—warm, familiar, without demand.

“Careful,” he said, grinning into the wind. “They’re going to think you’re showing off.”

She flicked her tail in response, playful. Only if they’re watching, she thought, and then dove anyway.

Below them, the world loosened. Conversations trailed off. Shoulders relaxed. Those who could not fly leaned back on warm rock or grass and watched the sky instead, feeling something in their chests soften without knowing why.

“Watch out!” someone called from below, half warning, half celebration. “When Mindala shows up, the night’s about to ignite!”

She heard it and answered with flame—not a blast, not a threat, but a shower of heat that rolled outward like laughter made visible. Where it touched, bodies leaned closer. Music surged. The night gathered itself into motion—alive, connective, unguarded.

“This is unfair,” one of the flyers said, pulling up beside her, breathless. “You make it too easy to forget everything else.”

Mindala tilted her head, considering, then shrugged one wing. “Forget what?”

The flyer laughed and peeled away, unable to answer.

They moved and made and invented games with no winners. They built little altars out of nothing but attention—circles of shared looking, shared breath, shared heat. The Mage leaned forward and said quietly, just for her, “You know they follow you because you make it feel possible.”

She didn’t reply. She was too busy being.

A little later, when the sky was thick with motion and the ground below had grown loud with music and laughter, Mindala dipped lower.

“Come down,” she said, glancing back at him. “They want you too.”

Before he could answer, she banked and released him gently, setting him down among the revelry—bare feet on warm stone, hands brushing the shoulders of those who welcomed him without ceremony.

“Don’t go far,” he called after her, smiling.

She didn’t answer.

She had already risen again, light and fast, carried by the sudden freedom of having no weight but her own.

When Mindala flew like this, she forgot herself. That was part of the miracle. She was less a dragon than a dance, less a body than a moment—bright, infinite, real. She wove herself among her companions, sometimes carrying one, sometimes racing another, sometimes simply flying alongside, delighted with whoever could keep up or cling on.

And then—without leaving the dance—something shifted.

It wasn’t a mirror.
It wasn’t reflection.

It was as if a second awareness opened its eyes inside her chest.

Freed of his weight, Mindala climbed.

Higher than before. Faster. Laughing into the thinning air as the sky opened without resistance.

Others tried to follow and fell back, calling out in delight and disbelief. Their voices blurred into warmth below her.

She felt it then—the widening arcs of her own flight, the way joy gathered beneath her like a field she had already crossed.

For the first time, she was alone in the upper air.

Not abandoned. Unheld.

She slowed, just a fraction.

Below, the Mage tilted his face upward. He did not call out. He did not signal. He simply stayed where he was, one hand resting over his heart, breath steady, eyes open.

Mindala felt it—not as instruction, not as tether—but as presence.

She tipped one wing in answer.

For the first time, she did not only move as the grandeur.

Something in her stayed.

Not naming. Not judging.

Just staying long enough to feel the shape of herself in motion.

Then she laughed again, folded into a long, sweeping turn, and let herself descend—rejoining the dance before the sky could decide anything for her.

She cut low over the revelry, heat spilling in her wake, and saw him.

The Mage was on the ground where she’d left him—laughing, close with others, hands open, listening like it was an art. Someone tugged him into a circle of dancers. Someone else leaned in to speak near his ear, and he smiled the way he always did, the way that made people feel chosen.

Mindala felt the smallest pinch beneath her ribs.

Not anger. Not betrayal.

Just information—

sharp enough to register:

he is alive out here too.

She hovered once, uncertain what to do with the feeling.

And that was when the cold arrived—not as weather, but as a thought that wore the costume of wisdom.

Kate’s voice arrives like frost.

“Look how easy it is for him.”

The pinch sharpened. The old math began to assemble itself:

If he is that free…
then I could be left.

Mindala blinked, startled—because only moments ago she had been drenched in her own freedom, and it had felt like home.

Now the same freedom, seen from the outside, suddenly looked like danger.

Continue reading next part.

Happy Sunday!

I started an essay for this week’s newsletter, but it just wasn’t coming together quite like I hoped it would, so I decided to shelve it for now. It’s a bit of a family joke at this point, the way I bounce from one idea to another, the things I remember so well and the other things that don’t stand a chance of being remembered (movie plots)…

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Happy Sunday,

I’m getting this out late, and Mindy has brunch plans. So, without further adieu, here’s my evolving perspective on listening to my body.

—david/gonzo

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Happy Sunday!

My favorite activities as a teenager all involved movement: dancing at concerts, playing football, weight training, delivering pizza for Pizza Hut, and working on the Wigwam Resort greens crew. This was in the mid to late 90s so most of these activities were done in relative silence. Me, in my body, often surprised to find that I hadn’t had…

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Happy Sunday,

Mindy and I are thinking through embodiment this month. Our youngest daughter is 12 and navigating the rich tapestry of emotions accompanying adolescence, and sometimes she gets disregulated. Instead of scolding her or ignoring her, Mindy wrote to her, sharing with her what’s worked. It’s beautiful.

Maybe you have your own list, or maybe som…

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Happy Sunday!

Last month, we explored the power of ritual—those intentional acts that bring us into the present, reconnect us with what matters, and remind us of the joy of being. Rituals, when chosen with care, can be portals into presence rather than chains of compulsion. This month, Mindy takes us deeper into the body itself. If ritual helps us rememb…

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Greetings friends! This week, David shares reflections on his challenging journey with ritual and how he has been able to find benefit from redefining and reframing what really helps him in his quest to feel good. Thank you for spending some of your time with us.

-Mindy

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Hello and happy Sunday! We were sorry to miss getting a newsletter out last week, but it made me think that maybe giving ourselves a bye week once a month wouldn’t be a bad approach. This week was a bit of an asskick for David and I, and he’s turned in early tonight so I’m flying solo and writing my own introduction. 😅 (For this reason, please don’t ho…

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Happy Sunday!

Mindy and I have spent a lot of time this month talking about intention and the ideas that attend it. I’m really enjoying this approach as it opens more time and space to consider different perspectives on the same concept. We’ve gone back and forth, tossing around ideas and thinking through how to set ourselves up for an enjoyable time con…

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Hello friends! We’ve made it nearly 2/3 of the way through January! 🎉, dampening it some but not extinguishing it. I saw some memes alluding to the fact that it’s ben a rough year already, there certainly has been a lot of tumult, and they asked if we might exchange the year since it wasn’t all that used yet.There have been some challenges in our house…

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Happy Sunday!

Mindy’s still asleep in our bed. We had a lovely restful weekend, and I’m delighted that’s continuing through this morning.

I’m working through several concepts reflecting on this month’s focus on the value and power of intention. If you find something you like as you pull on a thread, please reach out and share. You can reach us at [email p…

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Happy Sunday!

Jumping into January, Mindy dives into the transformative power of setting intentions and finding those intentions when things don’t go as expected rather than clinging to expectations. She explores how her subconscious predictions shape her reality and how intentional living can redefine experiences and connections.

I’m looking forward to s…

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Happy Sunday!

Mindy and I have been engaged in a lively conversation about this project because we want to double down on what’s working for us and those of you engaged. We’re very appreciative of what this project has brought into our life: a chance to collaborate, an opportunity to better know the mind of the other, and the lovely experience of so many…

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Happy Sunday!

When we were newly dating, after our adventure in the Amazon rainforest, Mindy invited me to stop by in the mornings before we went to school and work. She introduced me to yoga. It was intoxicating to feel so present in my body. And it was intoxicating to watch Mindy cross the space between her bedroom and the bathroom to get ready in noth…

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Hello friends! This week David dives deep into a framework of understanding he’s been exploring around connection and the different energies and motivations that influence our desire and ability to connect. We hope it gives you some good stuff to think on this week. And wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving this week! Thanks for spending a bit of time w…

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Hello Readers! We hope this finds you well. I realized that in last week’s newsletter we made no mention of the election results, which may have felt like an odd omission to some people. It’s interesting what pulls our attention on any given day or in any given moment, and how the process of giving our attention can feel involuntary but is in fact usual…

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Hello Readers and happy November! Our apologies for neglecting to get out a newsletter last week. Sometimes it just doesn’t come together. This week David shares a bit of a closer look into his annual ritual of taking inventory, and shares some lovely thoughts about what writing this newsletter has become for him. We hope you find something here that gi…

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Happy Sunday!

Three months ago, Mindy decided to try a “90 Day Striving Sabbatical.” Today she reflects on what how she encountered the joys of presence, the poetry of her lived experience, and a deeper connection to music.

It has been something beautiful to witness Mindy make room for generative creativity. She created a space for poetry by taking a brea…

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