The Event

1st. My friend, Marisa, and I voice text together almost daily. This week she was watching some of her friends’ animals.

2nd. The animals’ names were Boo-Bear and Pippi.

3rd. I thought she was calling Boo-Bear Pooh-Bear.

4th. I go to a sound healing event and find parking across the street from the venue. I sit in the car and listen to Marisa’s latest voice texts. She tells me,“It’s Boo-Bear with a B like Boo! A ghost!—not Pooh, like Winnie the Pooh.

5th. When I finish listening, I grab my mat & pillow, exit the car, cross the street, and go to the event. Once inside, after I finish setting up, I’m lying down on my mat, and notice the sound healer is wearing Winnie the Pooh socks.

6th. I remember just a few minutes earlier when I listened to Marisa say, “not Pooh, like Winnie the Pooh.”

7th. I tell the sound healer, “Just before walking in here I was talking to a friend who’s pet sitting for an animal named Boo-Bear and I kept calling him Pooh-Bear. And here he is on your socks.”

8th. The sound bath puts me into a hyper meditative state and throughout the hour, I consistently heard the names Pooh-Bear and Pippa in my thoughts. After the session is over, I put a bolster away in the corner and notice a Winnie the Pooh blanket draped over the back part of the performance area.

9th. I approach the sound healer and say, “So you have Winnie the Pooh socks and a Winnie the Pooh blanket. What is the significance of Winnie the Pooh for you?”

10th. She says, “You know Pooh and Roo?” I didn’t. “Well my business is named after my dog who passed away.” I named her after the character Roo from Winnie the Pooh. I used to have cancer and when I did, so did she. Sound Healing helped both of us. So I like to bring her with me in small ways, like the socks and the blanket.”

11th. The sound healer bent down and picked up a frame that was front and center of her performance area. She showed it to me. It was of the sound healer and Pippa Roo.

12th. I felt chills run the length of my spine. I say to her, “You know my friend who I mentioned at the beginning of class? The one who’s watching an animal named Boo-Bear? Well I didn’t tell you this, but she’s actually watching two animals. Their names are Boo-Bear and Pippi and I kept hearing Pooh-Bear and Pippa. Pippi and Pippa.”

13th. The sound healer says, “I just felt chills go through my body. You’re joking.”

14th. I say, “I’m not joking. Maybe Pippa Roo is coming through for you.”

15th. Immediately after the sound bath, I told Marisa that the healer initially said “Pippi-Roo” and then corrected herself to “Pippa-Roo.” I no longer trust my memory enough to know whether that happened exactly as I remembered it that night, so I’m noting the uncertainty here. I’m writing this weeks later from notes and voice texts.

The Reflection

Realization #1. Did Pippa-Roo really come through? Whether or not she did, the timing and name similarities were magically curious.

• Boo-Bear and Pippi & Pooh-Bear and Pippa

Realization #2. Our pets are family members. They affect us—and others—even after they’re gone.

• Would these particular sound baths exist if it weren’t for Pippa Roo?

• Important Note: As I write this, my cat daughter and sidekick, Soli-fox, sits next to my computer. She’s my best friend.

The Connection

Synchronicity I: The animals Marisa watched were Boo-Bear and Pippi. I kept turning Boo-Bear into Pooh-Bear. During the sound bath, the names Pooh-Bear and Pippi repeatedly ran through my mind. Afterward, the sound healer told me her deceased dog was named Pippa-Roo—and, strangely, I remember her saying Pippi-Roo before correcting herself: “Did I just say Pippi? I meant Pippa.” Whether or not she said Pippi, the similarity between the names is uncanny: Pippi and Pippa.

Synchronicity II: Right before I entered the venue, Marisa specifically corrects me: “Boo, like a ghost—not Pooh, like Winnie the Pooh.” Then only minutes later I encounter Winnie the Pooh imagery (the socks and later the blanket) that ultimately leads to the story of a deceased animal and the possibility of a “ghost”—Pippa-Roo coming through.

Synchronicity III: I encounter Pippa-Roo’s story during sound healing, only to find out that sound healing was a part of Pippa and the sound healer’s shared cancer experience and that Pippa Roo’s memory became the namesake and origin of the healer’s business and practice.

Synchronicity IV: While writing this Synchronicity Short, I notice something that I see every and look at it more intently. While washing dishes at the kitchen sink, I look up and the Pooh quote that I found months earlier while on a walk lands differently. The quote on one side reads: “As soon as I met you I knew a grand adventure was about to happen.” — Pooh. While investigating a synchronicity, I look up to find another one.

Further Investigation

Who is Roo?

• Roo is the youngest character in the Hundred Acre Wood.

• Roo embodies innocence and childhood.

• Roo is playful, fearless, energetic, and curious.

• Roo is Kanga’s son.

Who is Kanga?

• Kanga is the only female in the Hundred Acre Wood.

• Kanga is gentle, caring, and protective—she is the maternal figure for all of them.

  Interesting Note: Mother-child bond. I’m writing about a woman who was a mother to her dog as I call my cat, who is sitting right here, my daughter. Kanga carries Roo and the sound healer carries Pippa-Roo into her business, vocation and healing and then through her photograph, the socks, and the blanket.

We carry our loved ones, even after they pass away.

The Record

Who: Marisa, the Sound Healer, Pippa Roo, Soli-fox, Boo-Bear & Pippi, Me

What: Voice texts, name correction, Winnie the Pooh socks and blanket

Where: In my car and at the Sound Bath

When: Tuesday, September 29th, 2026

Why: Unknown

Peter Pan’s Message:

If you read the caption of the first image you understand why this is here.

Interesting Note: I just realized the language I used in the caption at the beginning: “There’s a quote from Peter Pan on the other side.”

The other side.

I’m writing a story about the possibility of a beloved pet coming through from “the other side”—and to receive the final message on this card, I have to turn it over and see what the other side has to say.

A Note to Readers:

Dialogue has been reconstructed from memory. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Personal Essays are free. These are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

Synchronicity Shorts

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

Share

Synchronicity Shorts: small notable synchronicities worth remembering. Recorded quickly. Not fully investigated yet.

The Event

1st. I’m at my son’s school for parent visiting day

2nd. My son’s latin teacher, Mr. Quintilian, shares a synchronicity story to his class that became a way-marker for his entire future.

3rd. He says something like, “I had a latin teacher in middle school who I really liked. I always noticed his briefcase. I forgot about him over time and went on with my life, eventually going to Paris by myself after graduating college. On my first day in Paris I noticed the suitcase. Then I saw my middle school teacher. He had taken a group of students to France to study french (he was a french teacher too). I wound up joining them and it helped me pursue the path of teaching.”

4th. After the class was over I approached Mr. Quintilian and said, “Let me get this straight. So you are a latin teacher, in some part, because of a synchronicity. You traveled across the world by yourself and noticed your middle school teacher’s briefcase. Then joined him and his students. So you set out on your own in a foreign place and discovered unexpected community, a reminder of home, and a nudge toward teaching latin as a vocation.” He nodded.

The Photos

The Reflection

Realization #1. There are endless possibilities

• Mr. Quintilian could have gone anywhere after college and his teacher could have taken his students anywhere. Or. They could have both gone to Paris on different days—or even on the same day but at different times. Mr. Quintilian could have been looking in a different direction—or needed to use the bathroom—but instead, on his first day—fully expecting to travel a foreign country alone—he recognized a briefcase.

Realization #2. Home can be found in unexpected places and people

• Sometimes home isn’t a place we return to. Sometimes it meets us where we are. Sometimes it finds us.

Realization #3. Pay attention to what grabs your attention. You may encounter or notice something without knowing why it matters or that it will matter later on.

• During middle school, Mr. Quintilian noticed something unique about the briefcase enough to remember it many years later. With his first encounter, it was just a distinct briefcase. Years later it became mythic.

The Connection

Synchronicity I: The Briefcase becomes foreshadow—a mythic object of power that allows Mr. Quintilian to connect to a former version of himself and allows him to take it with him into the next version of himself.

Synchronicity II: The Student Becomes the Teacher—Mr. Quintilian was his latin teacher’s student. The trip to Paris reunited them and helped usher along his future vocation and career. Now Mr. Quintilian is THE MIDDLE SCHOOL LATIN TEACHER. Student → teacher → student → teacher

Synchronicity III: Passing on Stories—I watched as Mr. Quintilian told his middle school latin students about his own middle school latin teacher…and the synchronicity that created a circle. Now I’m contributing by passing the story on to you.

The Record

Where: Mr. Quintilian’s classroom

Who: Mr. Quintilian, his students, and their parents

What: The Briefcase, The Paris Meeting

When: When Mr. Quintilian graduated college (maybe 30-40 years ago?) and October, 9th, 2026 in Mr. Quintilian’s latin classroom

Why: Concept of Home in unexpected places, The power of noticing

A Note to Readers:

Dialogue has been reconstructed from memory. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Personal Essays are free. These are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

Synchronicity Shorts are free. These are synchronicities that need to be remembered but are not fully investigated yet.

I’m leaning toward Paid Subscribers getting to come Inside the studio with me and witness my process.

This is what’s Inside the Studio:

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

The Event

1st. I’m in therapy for the 4th time in one week. My therapist Tee asks me, “What helps you move through grief in a healthy way?

2nd. I think about all of the things I’ve tried and reply, “Community. I need and want community support.”

3rd. Later in the session Tee says, “I do not want you to be alone this whole weekend especially if community is the support you need for your grief. It can look like calling a friend in Chicago or joining a grief group online or going out in public. Please do this to take care of yourself.”

4th. While Tee is saying the above, I get a WhatsApp message about an online grief group happening that same night. I met Key through a synchronicity a couple of years ago and joined her grief and creativity group a year ago. We have a quiet WhatsApp group so it was rare for her to message us. What’s even more rare was that she messaged about an online grief group happening that night at the exact moment Tee asked me to seek community to help with my grief.

5th. Even with the synchronicity I hemmed and hawed over going, deciding 15 minutes before the group started to go. Except registration had closed. I messaged Key and she was able to get me in at the exact moment the circle started.

The Photos

The Reflection

Realization #1. The universe might nudge but it’s up to me to follow it.

Realization #2. Six strangers helped each other feel seen, heard, and understood. Every person in the grief circle helped each other feel connected, less alone, and unsurprisingly…all shared eerily specific things in common.

The Connection

Synchronicity I: Tee tells me to look for community to help support my grief and specifically mentions a grief group as an example. At the exact moment she is telling me this over Zoom, Key messages me about an online grief group happening later that same night.

Synchronicity II: I decide to go to the grief circle at the last minute but can no longer register. Key is able to get me in at the exact moment the circle started.

The Record

Where: Zoom & WhatsApp / Home at desk + couch

Who: Tee, Key, Me, 5 women (+me) in the grief circle

What: The WhatsApp message, the Zoom invitation

When: 12pm-1pm and 9:30pm-11:00pm—9/25/2026

Why: Concept of Community & Love in Action

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Personal Essays are free. These are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

Synchronicity Shorts are free. These are synchronicities that need to be remembered but are not fully investigated yet.

I’m leaning toward Paid Subscribers getting to come Inside the studio with me and witness my process.

This is what’s Inside the Studio:

The Log, The Process, and The Body.

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

The Event

1st. I sit in front of K & M, pilates instructors & experienced academically trained dancers who are also physical therapists. They both focus somatically & holistically. They both work with and from injuries and hyper-mobility. They genuinely want to help me—their undiscovered connective tissue mystery client.

2nd. Immediately following the session, I walk to my car and notice a chipped and faded plastic heart. I stand over it, take a picture, & turn the heart over.

3rd. It says, “Love.” I put it in the car door pocket.

The Photos

The Reflection

Realization #1. I felt not only seen, heard, and understood. I felt hope.

Realization #2. All three of my head and neck injuries (cranial hematoma, Left VAD, Right VAD) ALL happened while dancing.

The Connection

Synchronicity: All three life-threatening injuries surround dancing. Now I’m working with two dancers to try and figure out why & how to prevent it from happening again.

The Record

Where: Pilates parking lot

Who: K & M

What: The plastic, pink heart with “love” on one side

When: 11am-12pm—9/16/2026

Why: Concept of Community & Love in Action

A Note to Readers

Dialogue has been reconstructed from memory. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Personal Essays are free. These are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

Glimmer Shorts are free. These are synchronicities that need to be remembered but are not fully investigated yet.

I’m leaning toward Paid Subscribers getting to come Inside the studio with me and witness my process.

This is what’s Inside the Studio:

The Log, The Process, and The Body.

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

For five years, she and I used to live next door to each other. She, her partner, and their two dogs are like family to me. When her partner and one of their dogs died a year ago, my husband and I separated around the same time. We’ve bonded over our grief.

Jan is from a rural farming village where several of her family members have died from cancer. Two of her sisters are currently dying from it and she’s planned to drive and meet them half way. She told me today, “I think it might be the last time I see some of my family members.”

I have tingling in my left forearm and palm as I type this. My hair is wet. I’m wearing bright orange sweatpants and an oversized rainbow shirt with a pegasus on it that my mom sent me in the mail. I haven’t been able to wear a bra in over a month because of my shoulder and neck.

The left occipital area and left side of my neck are tender and sore. But I am thankful. Because I’m not feeling the shooting pain anymore. I’m still afraid it will return if I pick something up wrong. Fold laundry. Wash the dishes. Drive.

This was the first time Jan had ever been inside my new home. She’d dropped me off plenty of times but I’d never invited her in.

Every other time I’d go to her house because that’s what’s normal for us. It’s familiar. It’s our routine.

She texted me the other day to check in and I told her the truth.

Jan: “Hi Chess. How are you doing lately? I miss you.”

Chess: “Hi Jan. I miss you too. I’ve not been well. I had to get a cat scan because of some chronic pain over the last month and the last three days have been very painful. The CT scan says no dissection but I’m still in pain.”

Jan: “So sorry to hear that, especially if they can’t find the source of the pain. Has to be scary for you. Sending positive light and energy your way so pain is eliminated soon. ❤️🙏❤️”

Chess: “Thanks Jan.”

Jan: “I’m planning on going out tomorrow so if you need anything or would like some company, let me know.”

Chess: “Thanks Jan. I’ll let you know.”

The shame I carry with my chronic pain is immense. Should I have told Jan the truth? She has so much pain in her life already. I probably just added to it more.

Part of our bond is that we do tell each other the truth. We grieve together and talk about the hard stuff. Death, divorce, and pain suck. We lived alongside each other for years. Yet I still felt bad telling her I was in pain.

I never let Jan know if I needed anything or to ask her to keep my company. She just showed up. And now we’re standing next to my kitchen table talking about CBD, CBN, and THC because Jan has insomnia. It’s been chronic. “Nothing was working so I was told to try a small ratio of THC. So I did and it was like being back in the seventies. Chess, I got high.”

I tried to picture Jan high.

“I don’t want that now. I mean maybe a year from now. But I was sitting there with my head whirling. There were too many thoughts about my past that I never knew were still in there. It was too much.” She sighed. “I’m so worried I’m not going to figure this sleep thing out by next week. If I don’t have good sleep before the drive I might not be able to do it.”

Then it clicked.

Jan had originally asked me to watch her dog, Lily, for a family reunion. She had planned to drive sixteen hours in one day so Lily wouldn’t have to spend the night alone. She would have driven eight hours to the event, stayed a few hours there, and then drove eight hours home.

Jan is almost eighty.

She never had kids and both her and Paul’s family were states away.

The first time I stayed with Lily, it had only been for a couple of hours while Jan went to see a movie. But it was the first time Jan had left her with someone—anyone—since Paul and Merry died. Paul was Jan’s partner. Merry was their other dog—Lily’s sister.

Even though Lily had known me for years, she was full of anxiety that night. She had always fulfilled the protector archetype, but this was different. She spent the whole night running to the window to look for her mom, pacing the house in circles, crying, and barking at me. She was barely able to rest.

I’d been so consumed with my own pain that I forgot about Jan’s. I forgot about Lily’s. I forgot that Jan cancelled going to the family reunion because she realized she couldn’t emotionally or mentally leave Lily overnight and couldn’t physically drive sixteen hours in one day. So she asked some of her family members to help her sisters meet her half way for lunch. They said yes.

So next week Jan is going to drive eight hours to have lunch with sisters who she may never see again.

And the key to everything is knowing that Lily is safe.

And I have become unreliable because of my pain.

And I hate it.

And I think that’s why I cried when Jan left.

Because while standing next to my kitchen table, Jan asked me, “Do you think you’ll still be ok to watch Lily next Sunday?”

And I felt the weight of dropping a rock down a well and listening for it to finally hit bottom. The deep shame of forgetting my promise hit hard. I didn’t want Jan to worry about not being able to see her sisters. I wanted to be a rock for her.

And now I’m crying.

Having an undiscovered connective tissue disease and the chronic pain that goes with it makes me unreliable sometimes.

In the past month I stepped down from an International Festival leadership position because of it. And now this.

Do you remember when Ariel plucked the petals from the flower in The Little Mermaid and repeated: He loves me. He loves me not. That is me when I have pain along the places where I’ve experienced vertebral artery trauma (I call them my trauma channels) except I repeat: Am I connected? Or am I dissected? Am I connected? Or am I dissected?

My body can tell me when something hurts but it can’t tell me exactly why. Then I have to decide whether what I’m feeling is something I can sit with or something I need to get scanned. I have had so. many. CAT scans. and MRIs.

Jan’s partner, Paul, died from an aortic dissection. When she first told me about it she said, “When they told me I couldn’t believe it. I thought of you.”

Before Jan stopped by, I was getting ready to make my matcha latte. I had the sieve over my favorite mug and the walnut maple milk in the frother. That’s when I heard something so light and tender I wondered if it was just an ordinary outside noise. A bird dropping a twig on the roof. A squirrel dropping a nut. But I went to the door anyway and peered through the peephole. And there she was.

When I opened the door, I felt grateful to see her but also ashamed at the state of my house. I invited her in. I ask everyone to remove their shoes but I didn’t ask Jan. I know she needs the support.

She had to side step the big heavy box full of cat litter and the toilet seat that’s too big that I need to return. Blankets were strewn around the couch and floor from watching The Mandalorian and Grogu last night with Bran.

The coffee table had piles of oracle card decks, tuning forks, an orange financial counseling flyer from the hospital. The new ultrasound order to check on the polyp in my gallbladder. Books. Hair brush. Nail trimmers. Remotes. Wrappers. Devices.

“Come on in,” I lead Jan through the small space. “I’m sorry it’s such a mess.” I’m relieved there’s not much on my kitchen table or kitchen counter. I was able to clean those last night.

Jan tripped walking into my kitchen. The floor is uneven. My first thought was: I should have warned her about that. She was ok, thank God.

I brought her into my studio. A heaping green trash bag was up against the screen door next to a small overflowing recycling bin. A laundry basket was heaped with unfolded dish towels. I felt relieved that I had at least folded a blanket and put it on top to hide the rest. Piles of stuff were everywhere.

Throughout, Jan kept marveling at how beautiful my home was. “This is so open and airy and bright. It’s marvelous. It flows so well! And look at your yard! Oh, Chess, it’s beautiful!”

I love her for saying this.

I have relied on my husband for so much throughout our eighteen year relationship. We’ve lived separately for a year and just began the divorce process. When my pain flares, my house gets messy. Our son helps me with the cat litter, trash, and dishwasher.

Standing with Jan, I started to spiral thinking about all that needs to be fixed: my two front porch stairs. The grass needs to be mowed, the thousand brown ferns need to be cleared, and the giant pumpkin vine that appears to be both thriving and dying simultaneously. It needs to be removed so it doesn’t choke the young serviceberry tree.

I cannot do any of this alone and I used to be able to.

Jan lives in her garden. She and Paul designed and grew it together. When we lived next door to each other, I used to tell people that I lived next to the Garden of Eden. It is one of the most beautiful gardens I’ve ever seen in my life. And I’ve been to Italy.

Jan and I stood at the back screen door and looked into my yard. “Oh how nice,” she exclaimed, “This is so cozy. I bet the cats just love sitting here at the door.”

Just that morning I had sat on the ground with both of my cats and watched the rain while I drank tea.

“I’m so sorry it’s a mess in here,” I told Jan.

“It’s lived in. It looks great. I love it,” she said smiling.

“When I have this chronic pain I can’t clean without activating the pain again. I have to do things in small doses and prioritize the dishes and dinner—otherwise, the pain returns. Everything else has to wait.”

“You do what you can,” Jan said. “You need to take care of yourself and Bran.”

Before leaving, Jan gave me a big hug goodbye—without putting any physical pressure on my left side. Someone once hugged me so hard that I wound up in an MRI machine.

I don’t even want to tell you that. But it’s true.

“Can I make you a cup of tea?” I asked Jan.

“No. I’ve got to drop something off at Laura’s and she’s expecting me. I just wanted to drop by and say hi.”

Laura lived next door to Kyle. “So you’ll be next door to Kyle.”

“Yes. That’s right.”

Kyle is/was my husband.

Our neighborhood is such a small world.

“Thanks for stopping by, Jan.” I walked her outside onto the front porch. “Watch out for the bottom two steps,” I warned her as she walked down the stairs. It’d been raining steadily for two days.

“Good to see you, Chess. Don’t worry about next Sunday. I have people who will help.”

I waved to her. “Don’t mind the gargantuan pumpkin vine on your way out. It needs to be cleared.”

“Well you’ve got some big blooms. No pumpkins?”

“No.”

“You never know.”

I watched her drive away and then cried. It’s not often someone stops over just to say hi.

After a little time had passed I reached for my phone and texted her.

Chess: “Thank you for stopping by. I didn’t realize how much I needed a quick hug from a familiar face until you left. Please know that if you’re unable to find a replacement for next Sunday that I will be there. And if I’m feeling even better I’d like to be there anyway, as planned. I’ll have you over one day when the house is all spiffy. Thank you for your kindness while it was a mess. You’re welcome anytime messy or spiffy.”

Jan: “Messy is never a bad thing for me -- it’s what is natural, probably comes from a farmhouse with 7 kids where nothing was “in its place”.”

Chess: “Also, your hair looks great. ❤️”

Jan: “Thanks. It feels much better being short.”

Chess: “It looks healthy and suits you.”

Jan: “I’m planning to find someone else so you don’t have that pressure on you. I have several options and will begin to pursue them.”

Chess: “Ok Jan. I want you to feel secure that Lily is safe and in good hands so you can travel with ease. Please know I feel terrible about this. I love both you and Lily and want to be reliable. I’m sorry.”

Jan: “Be assured I don’t feel any pressure about this change. I have options and would rather you focus on yourself. ❤️”

I desperately want to show up—and at the time of committing, I fully intend to show up—but sometimes my body doesn’t let me follow through when the time comes.

Reliability is seen as a character trait. We’ve been taught that all you have to do is show up. But what if you can’t?

About an hour after Jan left she sent me the following text:

Jan: “Lily is in good hands next week. Karen is covering her in the morning and some of the afternoon.”

Chess: “Ok. Thanks for letting me know. I’m glad you didn’t have to have any uncertainty for long. I’m glad Karen can be there for you.”

Jan: “We are in good shape so don’t be concerned about anything but yourself.”

I want to be an integral part and active contributor to my community—to being a good friend, parent, and neighbor. As a stay at home parent and spoonie*, I sometimes I compare my contributions to other people’s. And then I internalize the difference as shame.

Whether you’re a spoonie* or not, I believe this is happening to a lot of us. Even when I’m actively trying to set boundaries and to care for myself, I often wind up feeling all the things.

And maybe that’s ok even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Because today Jan stopped over to check on me. She gave me a gentle hug. She told me she loved my house despite the mess and maybe because of it. She told me to not worry and to focus on my health. And when I commented on the overgrown pumpkin vine and no pumpkins, she noticed the blooms.

I never planted the seeds. I let the pumpkins from last Halloween decompose in my yard and this massive, wild vine grew from them.

It’s sprawling, and parts of it have already withered and died—yet new shoots continue to spring up and expand.

It hasn’t produced one pumpkin.

But it has several big blooms.

Is a plant worth less if it doesn’t bear fruit?

*Spoonie: a term used by some people with chronic illness or disability to describe living with limited or fluctuating energy and capacity. I’ll write an entry dedicated to this term at a later date.

A Note to Readers:

Dialogue has been reconstructed from memory. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Both will definitely have access to personal essays which are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

I’m leaning toward Paid Subscribers getting to come Inside the studio with me and witness my process. What you’ve just read is an example of this.

This is what’s Inside the Studio:

The Log, The Process, and The Body.

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity. (What you just read is an example of this.)

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

  ---

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

Observational Notes

• Thoughts of Miguel’s Dad

• The Screen Saver Train

• Miguel following his intuition about the train

• Entrance with one minute to spare

• The Coin Purse

• The Swan

• The Butterfly

• Text Timing

  

My health care practitioner, Miguel, stood in front of the door while I sat in the chair in the corner. He was telling me about his trip to Machu Picchu. When he lived in Spain he had made a pact with his Spanish sister to one day go to Machu Picchu together. After several decades had passed, she called him last year and said: it’s time.

He got home three days ago and just before my treatment, he told me about a synchronicity he experienced there.

Let’s dive in.

• The day before Miguel flew to Peru, he gave me a treatment. During that session, I drifted deep and wafted between alpha and theta brain states. And all I could think about was Miguel’s dad.

• In response to the relentless thoughts, I prayed to him. Dear Miguel’s Dad, if you are trying to get through to your son, send me a sign. If you do that then I’ll say something to him. Also, I’m here to heal so please leave. The thoughts ceased.

• When the treatment time was up, Miguel knocked, walked in, and turned on the lights. I don’t think Miguel has ever in the seven years I’ve been his patient walked in and not asked some rendition of, How’d it go? How are you?

• After turning the lights on, the first thing Miguel said was, “The craziest thing just happened. The train to Machu Picchu just came up on my computer screen. I was checking out a patient and then the picture of the blue train popped up as my random screen saver.” He did not manually do this. Miguel told me that he gets a different photo every day and he had never had the train before.

• After Miguel told me about the screen saver, I remembered the persistent thoughts I had of his dad, so I asked Miguel if I could talk about him. He said yes. “I couldn’t stop thinking of your dad during treatment so I prayed to him and asked him to send a sign if he wanted me to tell you. The train photo randomly becoming your screen saver seems like a good sign. So maybe your dad is saying he’s going to be with you while you’re in Peru or that he’ll help you with the train issue.”

  

• The train issue was a difference in opinion about when to take the train. Miguel’s Spanish sister brought her son and friend on the trip. Miguel and the friend disagreed about which train to take.

• The friend wanted to get up at 3am to travel by van through the Andes mountains and ride the train to Machu Picchu in the dark.

• Miguel held his ground. They reached the entrance to Machu Picchu with about one minute to spare before their entry window closed. Machu Picchu uses timed entry tickets so when you buy your tickets beforehand, you’re assigned an entrance window. Miguel and his friends’ window was 7:00am-7:45am. They walked through the gates at 7:45am.

• Had Miguel and his friends missed their window of opportunity, they could have been denied access to the archaeological and world heritage site.

• When Miguel told me this, I thought of his dad. Especially because the screen saver had been about the blue train. I wondered if his dad helped him somehow.

• I asked Miguel, “What was one of the most significant memories from this trip?” Miguel shared that he was at an artisan booth that sold coin purses, most of which had llamas on them. They were two for 5 soles (around $3 dollars). He showed the vendor the llama coin purse in his hand and asked her if she had one that had more blue. The vendor sifted through what appeared to be fifty coin purses all bundled together and picked one up and said emphatically, “It’s this one!” and showed it to Miguel.

• There were a couple of small lines of blue on the purse. Miguel told me that he would never have described it as being blue. Miguel opened his mouth to say this to the woman but then she turned the coin purse over. What he saw took his breath away. On the back of the coin purse was a swan. Miguel told me, “That moment felt like everything around me came inward to bear witness.” He paid for the coin purses, turned around, and on some random street in Chinchero, had a huge emotional release. He said that he felt his dad’s presence and somehow knew that his dad was telling him that he was there with him.

• Miguel said that it also felt like all of the grief he hadn’t been able to express finally allowed itself to release. Miguel paused while telling me this. He filled with emotion. It was a gift to witness.

• Miguel told me that the moment after his dad’s soul left his body, he watched a white swan through the window land on the small lake behind his parents’ house. The swan stayed there for hours. The only other time they had seen a white swan was the first year his family moved into the home 45 years ago.

• From that moment on swans became a symbol representing his dad.

  

• The blue train screen saver. The blue train that got them into Machu Picchu on the dot. The “blue” coin purse with the swan.

• A coin purse….something to hold value.

• Immediately following the coin purse moment, while walking through Incan ruins in Chinchero, a single butterfly flew around Miguel’s head and no one else’s. His family believes butterflies are signs from his grandmother.

• Miguel told me that he felt like both his dad and grandma were at the top of the mountain, in that ancient village with him. When he went back to look at the coin purse later, he noticed the butterfly next to the swan.

  

• Later that morning, after the swan and the butterfly, Miguel sent a WhatsApp message to his mom and brothers to share what he’d experienced. Everyone shared memories of their dad and grandmother. Then one of Miguel’s brother’s said, “Miguel. You know that you sent this message at exactly the hour and minute that dad passed, right?”

You don’t always know your role in someone else’s story.

---

Reflections

---

• You’re a piece in someone else’s puzzle. Every piece is important to see the whole picture.

• Sometimes you need another perspective to see the dots and connect them. Like Miguel’s brother who noticed the time stamp.

• Grief appears when you least expect it. Like holding a coin purse on a random street in Peru.

• Symbols are deeply personal.

• Miguel’s Dad is awesome. Even if I never knew him.

---

Records of the Thread is reader-supported. The feeling of having a new subscriber is a bee asleep in a flower. A rainbow. A sun halo. A fox.

Dear Reader:

As an unpaid subscriber you have access to my personal essays which are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

To get a feel for my writing, please read the two essays that are published before this.

Paid Subscribers get to come into the studio with me and witness my process. What you’ve just read is an example of what you can read with a paid subscription. You will have access to:

A Look Inside the Studio

Regular, Recurring paid content will be:

• The Log: Short, to the point, numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional paid content:

• Clothes & Creativity

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit. Revise. Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

A Note to Readers

1. Dialogue has been reconstructed from memory. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

2. Permission was granted to tell this story and to publish Miguel’s photos.

If you enjoyed this, felt inspired or if you made it through to this point and have a bit of skepticism: welcome. Please consider supporting my work so you can get more. I will include a couple more free examples of what a Look Inside the Studio will look like.

Records of the Thread is reader-supported. The feeling of having a new subscriber is a bee asleep in a flower. A rainbow. A sun halo. A fox.

Synchronicity #1. Tamara is told she has a possible left vertebral artery dissection (VAD).

I woke up to Tamara messaging our bookclub that she had a torn artery.

PTSD set in.

As a two time survivor of bilateral VADs, waking up to this felt like an anomaly. A dream. A joke.

This is not going to be a lengthy article.

This is going to be a synchronicity sleuth detective log.

Subscribe now

Time Out

What’s a synchronicity sleuth detective log? It sounds like what it is but I’ll get to it below. Also know that the rest of Tamara’s story and the synchronicities involved will continue below too.

…but I’ve been thinking about my Substack offerings for a long time, so hear me out:

Dear Reader:

As an unpaid subscriber you have access to my personal essays which are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

To get a feel for my writing, please read the two essays that are published before this.

Paid Subscribers get to come into the studio with me and witness my process. You will have access to:

A Look Inside the Studio

Regular, Recurring paid content will be:

• The Log: Short, to the point, numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional paid content:

• Clothes & Creativity

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, & Reiki

That’s a lot.

Ok.

Time In.

Back to our feature:

Synchronicity #1-Arterial Dissection

Two Women in the Same Bookclub

Tamara is safe.

That’s what matters.

Before the radiological report was released, I was livid, because Tamara’s doctor didn’t seem worried. He told Tamara that she could wait to go on aspirin until after her carpal tunnel surgery in a week. As a two time survivor, I know how important anti-platelets can be to prevent stroke.

The CT showed a vascular abnormality and the radiologist said it could be chronic tortuosity or dissection and recommended further imaging. After an MRI/MRA with and without contrast (this phrase is burned into my brain), the doctor said it looked the same as the CT but did not know that radiologist’s findings yet.

This isn’t a long, personal essay, so I’ll point out two major synchronicities:

1. The first synchronicity is: Tamara had me, someone she personally knew, with direct experience with VADs.

2. The second synchronicity happened during an acupuncture session. The man in the room next to me said that he was driving home from vacation when he got into an accident and suffered whiplash. He was on dual anti-platelet therapy: Plavix and aspirin. Tamara had been on her way home from vacation when she got into an accident. She got whiplash. Earlier I had shared with her that during the acute healing phase of dissection, I was placed on dual anti-platelet therapy: Plavix and aspirin.

I had also asked Tamara for permission to reach out to two family members who were doctors: a hematologist and a general surgeon. She said yes.

Both doctors had responded while I was at acupuncture. They both said they were worried that she wasn’t on aspirin. The general surgeon said that he operates on patients while on aspirin and recommended that Tamara call her hand surgeon to see if he could do the same.

When I texted Tamara after acupuncture she said that she had already contacted her hand surgeon on her own, based on her inner knowing/intuition and got permission to go on aspirin immediately.

The Next Day

Tamara texts me.

• The MRI/MRA radiological report was online. No tortuosity. No dissection. Her left vertebral artery was dominant but otherwise normal.

NO DISSECTION

Thank God.

This was incredible news to hear. I found myself wondering: then what was it all for? Did I overreact? The synchronicity still existed but how I interpreted it changed.

Main Question I’m asking myself:

What did the synchronicity make possible?

The Heart: Tamara and I took our relationship out of the bookclub Discord chat and into our own. The synchronicity brought us together on another level.

We discovered several things:

• We both have rare diseases that complicate and confuse medical findings

• We both use acupuncture to manage chronic pain and nervous system regulation

• Tamara was supported by me. She didn’t need to explain her pain. I knew. I believed her. I advocated for her.

• Tamara advocated for herself.

• We both have experienced minimization by medical staff, friends, & family

This synchronicity helped two people feel less alone, more connected—seen, heard, believed, understood. Two different people with different stories, lives, and lessons to learn—but an opportunity to feel cared for.

Reflections

• You are human. You have natural assumptions and beliefs.

• The first story you think of isn’t the whole story. It might not even be the story.

• Seeing clearly often requires time.

• Synchronicity does not have to be predictive or have clear direction to be meaningful

• Synchronicity does not require your interpretation to be correct. It asks you to pause, notice, and become curious. It asks you to re-think your interpretation.

• Often the greatest meaning of a synchronicity is the connection it brings you—whether to another human or to an animal, plant, or place.

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit. Revise. Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Subscribe now

If you enjoyed this, felt inspired or if you made it through to this point and have a bit of skepticism: welcome. Please consider supporting my work so you can get more. I will include a couple more free examples of what a Look Inside the Studio will look like.

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The Walk

On a Saturday morning I walked with wet hair to my husband’s house two blocks away. It had been days since I’d had my morning matcha and I knew he had my favorite milk in his fridge.

I nodded to a man walking his dog as I listened to my phone ring loudly on speaker.

“Hi,” my husband answered groggily.

“I thought you said you were getting up at seven.”

“Guess I needed sleep. What’s up?”

“I’m on my way over to get the walnut-maple milk. I saw it in your fridge the other day. I’ve got that basket class at ten. Remember?”

“Yeah.”

“Well it’s nine. Bran is still sleeping but I’ll try to wake him before I leave. Once you get your act together, can you head over to my place so he’s not alone?”

“Uh huh.”

“Is your lower lock on in the back?”

“I don’t know. Use the front door.”

Since I moved out, Kyle had fully automated his house: locks, speakers, blinds. I couldn’t turn on a light without an app.

The front door is old school.

It needs a key.

I had crossed the street and was only a few doors down from Kyle, walking past the fire azalea house. The orange hues were deep in bloom. They looked and smelled like a sunset, so I closed my eyes to breathe them in.

I used my ladybug key to get in through the front. Miko brushed against my leg, then plopped on the floor and meowed.

Ten months and three weeks.

I keep count because I can’t believe we’ve been living separately and undefined for almost a year. Sitting in couples therapy every Tuesday at noon. Still eating dinner together with Bran most nights.

By the time I opened the refrigerator, I heard his footsteps on the stairs—and then he appeared. His bed head was like our son’s—a poofy, wavy sculpture of curls. “I got that milk for you…”

He rubbed his eyes.

“…in case you ever slept over.”

Master Bran

Our son was fresh into summer break…living in the liminal space between 6th and 7th grade. Hairy legs, baby face, newly condescending voice, pulling all-nighters, and sleeping late into the afternoon. Freedom.

At three in the morning Bran woke me to say that he had finished a book—then kissed my forehead, hugged me and said, “Sweet dreams, Mom. You’re simply the best.”

I’ve sung him that Tina Turner refrain since he was little.

While writing this, Bran yelled to me, “I love you, Mom!”

It was as if he knew I was writing about him.

After I woke up and walked downstairs, I found a vignette on the kitchen table. There was Bran’s finished book propped on top of a stack of other books looking like a trophy. Leaning against it all was a square painting of a fox.

I’ve always loved foxes.

I have a tattoo of a fox caring for a wolf pup on my right forearm. I’m the fox. Bran’s the pup.

Since Bran was little, he’s told me he was a wolf in another life. At four-years-old, he told me that humans destroyed his pack’s habitat and that he didn’t understand humans’ obsession with clothes. Clothing has always been Bran’s greatest sensory challenge.

I held the fox painting tenderly.

It was a gift.

I walked the house with it and asked the fox where they wanted to live. When I turned a corner I found Bran asleep, sprawled on the couch. There was a book lying next to him with a playing card tucked halfway through it.

So. He finished a book, started another, and painted a fox last night.

How late did he stay up?

I kissed him on his forehead and traced the curve of his nose with my finger. “Bran,” I whispered.

No response.

I kissed him again and said, “Bran. I’m going to class. Dad will be over soon.”

I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen, wrote a note, and left it next to him.

The Front Desk

Your life’s not worth getting into an accident over this. If the doors are closed, you’ll find a way in. Everything will be fine.

The museum opened early for students and I was afraid of missing the window.

Once parked, I half-walked, half-ran up the fifty shallow steps through the portal arch past the Orpheus fountain.

The museum door was massive. Its verdigris patina held raised geometric markings that looked like a language I couldn’t read. Every time I entered, I felt like I was crossing a threshold into another world.

The door was open.

April, the pink-haired artist, was behind the front desk. Usually she’s behind the coffee shop counter downstairs.

“Hi April!” I exclaimed.

“Hi!” she said, “I’m glad to see you because today’s my last day.”

“What?” I loved running into her.

“Yeah. I put my resignation in two weeks ago.”

Even though we didn’t see each other often, or know each other well—it meant something to recognize one another.

“Aw.” Something shifted in my chest. “I’m going to miss seeing you.”

“I have open studio days. I’ll post them on Instagram. Come to those.”

“Ok,” I said.

April asked if she could see my ticket. “I’ve got to scan everyone,” she said almost apologetically.

“Sure. Of course.” I grabbed my phone from my bag. “I just gotta find it.”

While scrolling through my email, trying to find the ticket I purchased months ago, I passed the emails from yesterday about my broken air conditioner.

To April, I was silently scrolling through my phone looking for a ticket.

To me, I felt myself disappear inside my thoughts. I worried about replacing the unit and having to tell Kyle.

I felt myself get hot. I started to sweat.

He and I have had strange parallels lately.

My toilet broke, then his.

His AC broke, then mine.

“Here it is,” I said with relief and gave my phone to April. After she scanned the screen I asked her, “How’s the AC in here doing?” It had been brutally hot the last few days.

“It finally got fixed!” she said.

So theirs broke too.

I looked up at the soaring ceilings and wondered if the walls were made of limestone. I couldn’t imagine what it would take to cool such a large space. “It feels good in here,” I said. “It’s comfortable.”

“Right?” she asked. “It was miserable. It turned out the temperature controls guy quit—and he was the one in charge of hiring someone to fix it. So it took a minute.”

Kyle works in temperature controls.

The AC technician who came to my house was also named Kyle.

The roofer who recently helped me—his name was Kyle too.

For almost 18 years, when something broke, I called Kyle.

I still call Kyle.

Kyle the technician told me I had a mystery leak. He said that the cost to try and find it—let alone the parts—wasn’t worth it. “Your unit is already 15 years old,” he’d said, “You’re better off getting a new one.”

Kyle and I will be married 15 years this October.

I put my phone back in my bag and started to walk toward the stairs. “Well, it was good to see you again, April. Good luck with everything. I gotta get to class.”

“You too. Enjoy basket making, Chess!”

The Basket Class

After wishing April well, I walked down the flight of stairs to the lower level.

Artwork lined the walls. More pieces were displayed inside of freestanding plexiglass cases. I wondered if any of it was student work and made a mental note to look more closely, later.

The classroom door was still open at the end of the hall.

Just before reaching it, two little blonde boys nearly collided with me. Their mother apologized but I didn’t care. I guessed that they were three and four years old.

“Close,” their mom said, “Two and three.”

Bran had been a beautiful moppet once. He’ll be thirteen in a week.

I entered the class quietly as the instructors talked at the front of the room.

I found an open corner spot at the closest table. It was full of women older than me.

Lucky.

Several of those big orange Home Depot buckets were set up between everyone’s chairs. I draped my button-down across the back of my seat and looked at the woman next to me. She was petite with fair skin and a red bob. She wore dark-rimmed glasses. “Hi,” I whispered to her and sat down.

She smiled in return.

Something one of the instructors said caught my attention. “I’m from rural Pennsylvania…which is known for its Arts & Crafts movement. I ironically grew up near a town called Basket, which is known for…”

She paused dramatically.

“Yes—basket-making. I’ve become fascinated with basket weaving as a way of getting in touch with my roots, and,” she laughed, “I learned from a woman in Basket off of Basket Road.”

Listening to her, I was learning about my roots too.

I was born in Pennsylvania.

I had no clue it was known for its basket making.

Over the last several years I’ve been drawn to baskets. I like to give gifts in them. I’ll bake bread, wrap it in a moppina, place it in a basket, and leave it on a neighbor’s doorstep.

In Robin Wall Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, she describes taking a black-ash basketry class to get in touch with her Potawatomi roots. She took the class with a seventh-generation basket maker, John Pigeon, from the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians. He teaches his students that basket making isn’t just a craft. It’s building a relationship with a tree.

The Eighteen-Year-Old Trees

“What happened to my tree?” Kyle asked.

I tensed. “I don’t know.”

In 2008, Kyle and I volunteered at the Hands of Hope Garden Faire that I grew up working at with my mom.

After a long day, we were gifted pine saplings wrapped in burlap.

Swaddled tree babies.

We agreed the trees would represent us.

We have carried them with us for our entire relationship.

For eighteen years, they lived through three apartments and three houses. When they outgrew their pots, I’d repot them. In almost every place we’ve lived, Kyle has asked, “When can we plant them in the earth?”

And I’d reply, “When we find our forever home.”

Except I couldn’t seem to find forever in the places we lived in together.

“Did you not water it?” he asked.

We stood between the fire pit and the fence and stared at the dead tree covered in vines.

“I didn’t water either of them,” I told him.

He looked at me skeptically.

They were always by each other’s side in identical pots, with soil from the same bag. They received the same rain. The same light.

When we sold the big house and moved into our current homes, we put the trees in my yard.

After they’d been there almost a year, one tree died while the other thrived.

I used to fear the trees’ deaths.

After a cranial hematoma, two artery dissections, and being choked in a bathtub—I’ve had a hell of a time learning how to feel safe.

I thought that if one of the trees died, it was a portent of my own death.

But—I don’t think that anymore.

I once shared some of my challenges with my younger brother and he said, “Chess. Any of one of us could go at any time.” I knew he was trying to be compassionate, but I felt dismissed.

Yet—he was right.

Any of us could go at any time.

We all know this.

But my body is what I know and what I have to work with, and it tells me things my head doesn’t want to know.

So Kyle and I stared at the two trees together, our son off in the background.

“Can you please plant this tree in the ground?” I asked him. “I’m afraid it will die like the other one.”

He looked at me and sighed. “I’ll plant it.”

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding my breath. “Thank you.”

“I’ll plant it because I’m choosing to see this one tree representing our marriage, and since it’s alive, there’s hope for us.” He looked around the yard. “I really don’t want to do this.” He picked up the shovel lying on the ground. “Where do you want it?”

“There,” I pointed. “In the corner.”

Kyle and Bran took turns digging up the earth.

They both complained.

For a decade I’ve wondered where I would plant my tree. In every home I’d look at the two potted pines, their growth controlled, and wonder: where is the place you will grow free?

The Gallery

Before we began to weave, our instructors took us upstairs into the museum galleries.

We all surrounded a large, colorful basket and one of our instructors asked us, “What do you notice?”

No one spoke.

Or raised their hand.

So I did.

“Its shape reminds me of a woman. It’s not what I’d expect a basket to look like.”

“Yes!” our instructor said excitedly. “Dee Clements intentionally does this with her work. Anyone else?”

When it came time to head back to the classroom, everyone followed our instructor but me. I stayed behind and lingered with the basket. I got as close as I could to its display case so I could look at it more closely.

The basket was unlike any I’d ever seen. The artist combined plastic and natural fibers and hand-painted them in brilliant hues. It looked as if there were several individual baskets woven together to create one larger entity. It looked alive.

The wall label next to the piece read:

The Body is a Piece of Land

I backed away slowly before rushing through the rest of the gallery to catch up to the class.

The Classroom

“Come on up to the front of the room and gather round. Again, my name is Addie. I’m going to give a demonstration.”

Everyone stood up.

I motioned to my table mate with the red bob to go before me. “Please,” I said. “After you.”

“Thanks.” She squeezed between our bucket, chairs, and neighbors.

Then I introduced myself. “I’m Chess.”

She smiled. “Vivian. Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise,” I said and followed her.

Addie sat at the table in the front of the room. Another instructor stood beside her.

Several thin strands of wet reeds lay on the table next to her. She picked up two strands and crossed one atop the other.

“This is how you begin,” she said.

She took two more reeds and layered them under and over each other.

Then she added two more and wove them into the others.

“You’re going to feel like you don’t know anything and you’re doing it wrong.”

Six reeds crossed each other.

“This is part of the process.”

A foundation began to emerge.

“Trust it.”

I couldn’t take it. I needed my pen.

"Excuse me,” I said and squeezed through the crowd.

Addie paused her instruction.

I could feel eyes on me.

Once at my seat, I grabbed my notebook and pen—then wove my way back to the front.

Everyone was looking at me.

“What?” I asked. “This isn’t just basket making.” I waved the notebook and pen around. “It’s philosophy.”

People laughed and Addie continued.

“You are literally going to be constructing walls,” she said.

“Don’t worry about the tension yet. Try your hardest not to have expectations of what shape you make. Because no two shapes will be alike.”

Once the demonstration was over, Addie stood and said, “Please ask for help whenever you need it. Don’t be shy. Becca and I are here for you.”

Then she led us to the back tables to choose our reeds. There were darker, tawny strands and lighter, straw ones. I chose tawny with a side of straw.

They reminded me of snakes. Long, slithery, soft.

I couldn’t stop touching them. They were familiar in a strange way.

Once back at my seat, Vivian was hunched over putting her reeds into our bucket. “Can I put mine on top of yours?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” she said.

“Thanks.”

The reeds had spring to them, but once they met the water they softened.

Home.

Vivian arranged a few clothes pins and a pair of scissors in front of her. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

I smiled and shook my head. “Neither do I.”

Vivian

“Do you know where we’re supposed to put the red clothespin?”

Vivian shook her head. “Your guess is as good as mine. I think I did something wrong. It just doesn’t look right.”

We both looked around the room for our instructors, Addie and Becca.

“What did people do to hold the reeds when clothespins didn’t exist?” I asked.

Vivian shrugged. “Beats me.”

My basket looked like a wiry octopus at this stage. I wondered, What did they use instead of clothespins to hold it all together? My thoughts drifted backward thousands of years—toward generations of weaving circles—hands working while stories were shared.

That’s why I was here.

To understand what it felt like to gather in community, create something alongside others, and share stories. “So where are you from?” I asked Vivian.

“I grew up in New York City,” she told me.

“Really? My dad was born in the Bronx and my older brother is a NYC detective.”

Our elbows moved alongside each other but our attention was focused on the baskets. If I took my eyes away from my weaving, I got confused and needed to backtrack.

“Really?” she asked with an excited lilt to her voice. “Where in the city?”

I didn’t know the city well, if at all. Even though so many of my family members and friends lived there. “Midtown,” I said.

“That’s where I grew up!” She told me the streets though they didn’t make sense to me. I think she said 71st and something.

While writing this essay, I realized my brother has been policing Midtown for almost 20 years, and until now I couldn’t have told you anything about it—I didn’t even know that it’s the largest business district in the world and home to the Empire State Building, the headquarters of the United Nations, and Times Square.

I was astonished.

You can know someone your entire life and still not really know them—what their days look like, what they witness, what they carry, and how they move through the world.

Addie and Becca came over and helped both Vivian and me separately. We were in different stages. My walls were constructed and I could see the shape my basket was making.

“How did you end up here?” I asked Vivian.

“Oh.” She paused. She was fumbling with a reed and clothespin, brow furrowed, but continued trying. “I saw the class and thought it would be interesting.”

“No,” I said, “I mean, how did you wind up here if you grew up in New York?”

“Oh,” she said again, understanding. “Well.” She stopped weaving. “Um….” She paused here for longer than expected.

I sensed something I couldn’t identify. So I paused too.

Vivian turned toward me.

So I turned toward her.

My throat tightened feeling energy shift between us. Something inside of me sensed where this was going, and I wished I were wrong.

Vivian told me something deeply personal. A terrible tragedy. It isn’t my story to tell, but it changed me.

There were people sitting across from us, beside us, and behind us. Could anyone else hear our conversation? It was as if we had woven a protective fabric around ourselves. If anyone else heard, they respected our space.

I didn’t know how to respond except for being present. I just breathed and felt my lungs become heavy.

After a few moments I said her name. “Vivian.”

If energy could pass between people—I hoped she could feel my grief alongside hers. “I cannot imagine what you and your family carry. I am so sorry.”

“Thank you.” She paused for a moment before turning back toward her basket.

We continued to work alongside each other and as I removed clothespins, I noticed that one of mine had a name written on it with black Sharpie.

There were several plastic baskets filled with clothespins set around each table. None of the other clothespins had writing on them. Mine was the only one. And it carried a name that Vivian had just entrusted to me.

“Vivian. Look.” I removed the clothespin from my basket and laid it on the table between us.

“Oh,” she said, looking surprised. “I suppose someone with that name could have taken a class here.”

“Maybe,” I said. “It’s the only clothespin in the room with anything written on it.”

Vivian picked it up and held it.

“Out of all of the names,” I said with wonder. “It feels like a miracle.”

Vivian put the clothespin down and we continued to work. I thought about something Vivian had told me about survivor’s guilt.

In some ways, I understood. Surviving when others don’t can add a weight to living. I carry a quiet belief that because I was spared, I have to do something meaningful with my life, and if I don’t, I’m wasting the gift of being alive.

Sometimes I feel like I’m not good enough.

Or doing enough.

There’s only so much a person can carry alone.

As the class came to a close, I was able to finish my basket with the help of Addie and Becca. I think Vivian and I must have asked them for help every few minutes. We could not have built our baskets alone. I don’t know that any of us in that room could have.

We needed each other.

Vivian gave me her contact information and invited me over for tea during the school year. We said goodbye and wished each other well and then I carried my finished basket outside into the sun and noticed a rosebush. I placed my basket in front of its pink roses and took a photo.

The miracle of that afternoon wasn’t only the clothespin.

It was the way weaving created space for us to slow down, feel safe enough to be vulnerable with one another, and share our stories.

It was a room full of people willing to fail, ask for help, and continue trying.

Our teachers told us right in the beginning that we would be building walls. But as I placed the basket in the entryway of my home, I felt other walls had come down.

Baskets make carrying things easier. I realize now that before my basket carried sunglasses, it carried a lot more.

A Note to Readers

1. Dialogue has been reconstructed from memory. Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect people’s privacy.

2. I’ve been working on this essay since June. It tickles me that I’ve completed it unknowingly during the Barbault’s Basket astrological event. I finish an essay about baskets while there’s a basket in the sky.

Further Reading

• The Thread of the Flying Spider is my first published Substack essay. I mention it briefly in this one.

• Robin Wall Kimmerer is an incredible writer, scientist, professor and enrolled member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. I mention her and her book Braiding Sweetgrass in this essay.

• John Pigeon is the Potawatomi basket maker who taught Robin Wall Kimmerer.

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Personal Essays are free. These are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

Synchronicity Shorts are free. These are synchronicities that need to be remembered but are not fully investigated yet.

I’m leaning toward Paid Subscribers getting to come Inside the studio with me and witness my process.

This is what’s Inside the Studio:

The Log, The Process, and The Body.

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

Share

What the facio.

This is my first Substack post.

Facio is latin for: to make, to build, to do. My neurodivergent, soon-to-be 13-year-old son taught me this. Facio feels important here—because when we’re sitting inside the rubble of our ideas that we haven’t brought to life—yet—it makes sense to think of building. Making. Creating.

You know when you have a great idea but you don’t follow through on it? Then you see someone else do it well? You might become Austin Powers maneuvering a 37-point turn in a narrow hallway.

Or.

You know when you’re doing the thing you hope to birth into the world, but still feel buried in the slush pile—and the lack of visibility aches like a night without your retainer?

Or.

You’re facio tired and overwhelmed by everything in the whole facio world so you. just. can’t. produce. like. everyone. else. and the operator in charge of your dreams puts you on hold…and when she gets back on the line, she asks: Does it seem like everyone else is crushing it? Mmmmm.

Does it feel like your chance has already passed? I see.

Or like you can’t keep up? Lord—yes.

The window of opportunity to cross the railroad tracks is gone.

The red lights flash.

The barrier gates go down.

Too bad. You’re stuck.

And you’re stopped by the comparison train carrying 90+ boxcars, each one cordially inviting you to wonder what kind of freight it’s hauling.

Don’t go on your phone.

Always carry a pen and notebook with you.

Find the magic button that’s hidden inside every form of transportation that Big Brother doesn’t want you to know about but is your God-given rite.

The button is a spider.

It will teleport you to a small space wedged between the window of your heart and the 95th floor of the John Hancock building in Chicago. There, you will meet a flying spider, who will tell you that you don’t need to shame yourself for not completing one of your dreams on someone else’s timeline. That you can share the same dream as others but know that your version is uniquely yours.

The spider will ask you: what will you do with your personal thread?

They will whisper: You’re the only one in charge of weaving your own web.

Today, my fellow spiritual detective friend, Marisa Love, and I talked about jealousy, identity, authenticity and the impossibly high expectations of productivity in a non-stop virtual-working world. Marisa is a professional intuitive, a writer, and a fellow seeker of wonder and magic. She meditates often and when she told me about seeing spiders hanging from threads in a tree during a dragon meditation, I recognized a synchronicity and discovered a forgotten memory. It was a small synchronicity—but equally important nonetheless.

The smallest of things matter.

Just the day before, I had been sitting beneath the shade of a tree on a gloriously sunny & breezy day. And the tree had tiny spiders hanging from threads. I’ll never know if they were dropping ladders from tiny helicopters, sending messages, or fishing for gnats, but what I witnessed, Marisa described in her meditation.

So, I took note.

It was Memorial Day. A holiday devoted to remembering.

I had just parked and gotten out of my car. There were numerous Detroit families grilling, the air thick with barbecue. I scanned the overgrown field with swaying grass and saw Mich in the distance, near the river, waving her arms.

I lifted my checked skirt as I walked through the field toward her and crossed paths with a man trying to launch a kite into the air with two children by his side. Just as I approached, the kite caught the wind.

A little boy ran toward me first. He shouted, “Hi!” and pointed to the kite. Then the little girl ran to me next, all teeth, giggling. “Look!” she shouted. “The kite is flying!”

“Hi!” I said, feeling her contagious joy. “Look at that kite fly!”

“It’s Spider man. Spidey is flying! Spidey is flying!” she exclaimed.

“Wow!” I said, “Thank you for sharing with me!”

I laughed and waved goodbye.

At that moment, I didn’t know that I would spend the afternoon sitting beneath a tree filled with spiders hanging from threads. Or that 8 years earlier doctors would describe my survival as hanging on by a thread. Or that 10 years before that, I watched a spider fly from a thread outside the John Hancock building.

But sometimes the story arrives before we understand it.

And sometimes we need others to point out the magical.

I had gone to meet some old friends near the Detroit river on Belle Isle. They offered me a camping chair nestled in the shade of that spider tree, and while talking about the Ai invasion and big corporations buying up healthy food brands, these spiders dropped down around me. I felt like a spider queen. Except it was Mish, my old roommate from Chicago, who pointed them out to her daughter Tilly (who didn’t show much interest)—but I did.

Maybe they were spider fae dropping Jacob’s ladder.

Maybe they were trying to save us.

What I do know is that the tree spiders were connecting us: Marisa and me. Mich and me. Two different days in two different ways. Two friends who didn’t know each other but knew me.

A strange mystery.

These noticings are why I’m here. It’s what I’ve signed up for. It’s why I write. I want to acknowledge connection where it isn’t normally found. After surviving a cranial hematoma, an abusive relationship, and two arterial dissections, I began to notice threads everywhere. I began to see them as signs for reconnection and healing.

Those threads became my lifeline and my experiences changed what I paid attention to. I actively choose, day-by-day, to dig in and excavate a life that remains beautiful, even amidst terror.

Those spiders hanging from the tree were tiny and when you looked at them from one perspective they seemed to defeat the laws of everything you thought you knew because they floated—mid-air—alongside bubbles Mish blew through a deep pink wand. From another perspective, the sun reflected iridescent shimmers on their thin, powerful silk. They sparkled.

The spiders had something to hold on to—and it lived within them.

It was their lifeline. Their thread.

In Elaine Pagel’s Gnostic Gospels she translated a Nag Hammadi text of the coptic Gospel of Thomas that quoted Jesus saying, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

Reading that quote now, I think of spider silk. What if all living things are teachers and messengers for each other? What if humans and spiders aren’t all that different?

Spiders bring forth what is within them to: survive, move through the world, protect themselves, and to create.

Maybe we do too.

What if our painting, writing, cooking, bread-baking, teaching, nursing, barista-ing, rock & stick collecting, walking, teaching, learning, shooting hoops, our musical things, our friendships, laughter—and our dreams—what if they are all spider silk?

Maybe these threads are the diner alien in the Spaceballs movie trying to claw their way out from our insides because they need to be seen.

Things refusing to stay hidden.

No joke—at the same moment I wrote the above line, my younger brother texted me a photo of a swampy scene and wrote “Can you spot the 2 foot gator head hiding in this photo?”

Synchronicity.

Connection.

Hidden in plain sight.

Jesus’ teachings are not all that mysterious. Maybe they’re the same as the spiders’. Maybe it’s about being open to possibility. Following the threads and activating them with wonder. Using them to create.

“I had a dream and because I did not live my dream, my dream was making me sick.” (Black Elk from “Black Elk Speaks” by John Neihardt.)

This happened to me.

For a long time, I thought my dream was to become a published author and artist.

But after surviving two vertebral artery dissections, I’ve come to realize that dreams don’t have to be professions.

The dissections taught me about disconnection and reconnection—losing touch with family, friends, with creativity, and with myself.

And they taught me something else—

My dream is actually to love my life.

Surviving and living are not the same thing.

Writing is one thread that helps me do that.

What Marisa and I were really talking about was: What are the threads that keep you connected? What threads keep you alive and well? The spiders rappelling down their silk in the tree reconnected me with a forgotten memory.

The memory surfaced like the Vasa warship—raised from the depths of the Stockholm harbor. Not lost. Found and preserved.

Twenty years ago while living in Chicago, I decided, on a whim, to take myself out on a date. I took one of the many elevators in the John Hancock Center to the Signature Lounge on the 95th floor. Have you seen that skyscraper? It’s a black marvel with criss-crossing, X-braced steel beams that form diamonds. When it was built in 1969, it was the second tallest building in the world. It looms. It’s iconic. And it’s in the Magnificent Mile one block away from the best beach in the city with expansive turquoise views of the great Lake Michigan.

Once inside of the Signature Lounge, I was seated next to a window. Only a large pane of glass separated me from the clouds. I could see everything at once— the suburbs where I had lived with my parents and went to high school and all of the city neighborhoods I had called Home: Lincoln Park, Lakeview, Bucktown, Wicker Park, Humbolt Park, Ukrainian Village.

I was sitting at the edge of something.

And on that edge was a spider.

I had never known a flying spider until that moment. I had forgotten that they existed until the conversation with Marisa 20 years later.

It was special to take myself to a fancy lounge and have a cocktail. At that time in my life, I had 5 jobs and still needed my parents to help me with my phone bill. But I’m so glad I did it. Because it wasn’t the luxury of the space, or the almost imperceptible sway my body felt from being so high. It was being given the window seat. yes. The gift of a coveted spot because not all tables lined the perimeter.

The view was overwhelming. It became a Where’s Waldo or Carmen Sandiego scene. Where in the life of Chess has she been? The el stations and bus stops and favorite walking paths. The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool. My commutes to the schools I went to, and to the jobs I frequented. The intersection where my chain fell off amidst moving traffic when I hoisted my bike onto my shoulder, brought it to the curb, reconnected the chain and arrived to class covered in grease.

A map of my life laid before me.

The horizon at golden hour—bright, warm light along an endless line.

The places least disturbed give us the horizon to marvel at—large bodies of water, expansive land, or views from an airplane—yet there I was inside of a skyscraper. A disturbance built of steel and glass erected a thousand feet into the clouds.

I could marvel there too.

After zooming out to the still line of silhouettes along the horizon—there—a black blob billowing outward in the foreground.

I zoomed in.

A spider held on to their own thread, seemingly floating mid-air.

They were a kite, ballooning outward to trapeze over cloud-piercing windows. They blew back and forth through a potential 48 mile an hour wind.

I looked closer.

There—another spider—walked the 95th floor windowsill like it was nothing. They paused to knit a parachute and after a couple of minutes, lifted their front legs to feel the wind—waited for the conditions to feel right—and leapt into the great abyss.

The spider flew!

The little girl and the spider kite at Belle Isle now shared a thread.

And years later, another thread would save my life. After my first vertebral artery dissection, doctors and nurses told me that I was lucky to be alive. That the clot near my brain looked like a balloon hanging on by a thread.

A balloon hanging on by a thread.

It was that thread that saved me.

It was the spider’s thread that saved them.

Maybe…that’s why, all these years later, the skyscraper spider memory has stayed with me.

The smallest life I could visibly acknowledge became the most interesting…because how?

How could this tiny marvel exist in these conditions?

How could they survive?

How could such a thin, nearly invisible thread be so strong?

How could I have forgotten this experience?

At the end of our conversation, I told Marisa that I had created a Substack account months earlier and finally felt ready to write my first post. When I signed in, I laughed. I had forgotten both the title and the profile picture I had chosen. The title: Records of the Thread. The photo: me wearing the beaded spider bolero tie that my mom gave me for Christmas.

Were these synchronicities orchestrated?

The next day, Marisa told me that after our discussion she couldn’t get the flying spider out of her head. It had jogged a memory of her own. She found a post from three years ago on her Instagram page—of a poem she had written and recited called “The Flying Spider of the Sun.”

While writing this essay, I looked up “flying spiders” not expecting much.

The spiders I saw on the John Hancock had a name: Bridge Spiders. Of course they were bridges. Just “ordinary” Orb Weavers who found a way to thrive in conditions that seemed impossible. They adapted—and discovered Home where few would think to look.

The spiders were miracles because of the disruption.

They used their thread to fly.

They scaled glass and steel to impossible heights.

They became steeplejacks, ironworkers, urban climbers and window-washers.

They made a home there.

Ok.

Spiders are everywhere, yet most of the time we don’t notice them.

But 95 stories high—they are impossible to ignore. They are impossible to fear.

What is usually hidden in plain sight became visible and the most interesting thing in the room.

That memory sent me down a spider hole. I looked up The Signature Lounge—and it no longer exists. At least the name doesn’t. After the Covid-19 pandemic, it closed its doors and remained vacant for years. But like the spider web, the story didn’t end with the disruption. It began there.

A French company that owns 360 CHICAGO, the observatory deck on the 94th floor bought the 95th and 96th floors to reinvent the space. The former Signature Lounge is being transformed into a 3 story atrium that will be one of only a few multi-level observational decks in the world. A place designed for illumination, and noticing.

I found an article with photos of the former Signature Lounge completely deconstructed down to cinder blocks, steel beams, and concrete.

The posh interior had been stripped to its bones.

The spider would understand.

A disturbance happened and the web was destroyed.

So they started over and decided to rebuild.

Further into the article were more photographs.

I gasped.

No glass. There was nothing to separate them from clouds, views, or spiders.

In those photos, men were replacing the very windows where the spiders lived.

It was double vision.

Construction workers on suspended scaffolding in the clouds wearing neon orange and white vests. Personalized hard hats with stickers. Yellow harnesses—and steel cables attached to their bodies.

The men had become the spiders.

How many times does a spider rebuild their web during their lifetime?

How about for humans?

I have rebuilt my web a thousand times.

And each time, I come away as myself, but changed.

It’s not just what or where you rebuild.

It’s who you become after the disruption.

It changes who you think you are. What you keep and what you leave behind.

After moving into a new home of my own, I started to cover nearly every white inch of my Ikea bookshelves with stickers. As a kid, I had covered a white-framed mirror in my bedroom with stickers too. My shelves and that mirror looked oddly alike.

Maybe I wasn’t reinventing myself so much as remembering a lost part of myself. It felt like I had been on an archaeological dig. I had been looking for dinosaurs and I finally found a skeleton.

Growing up, I had a long Italian name that mostly my grandparents would use. But my parents and friends called me something different. Over the years they shortened that name to Chess. It felt like a love-tap. The Italian name and Chess are not all that different. Yet they felt like separate worlds.

I’ve chosen to introduce myself as Chess now—and 9 times out of 10 someone says, “Jess?” and I say, “No. Chess. Like the game.”

Even though it is a slice of my legal name, I have chosen to identify as this pared down version of myself.

I didn’t throw the meal away.

I took the spaghetti and meatballs that my mom made, grabbed my own dish—and served myself.

Sometimes rebuilding your web changes what name you answer to.

Even the John Hancock Center is no longer the same. It is now known just by its address: 875 North Michigan Avenue—or—as the former John Hancock Center.

The building stayed the same. It’s just that now it’s not affiliated with a corporation. Now it’s just itself. The 95th floor is still the 95th floor. It’s just no longer the Signature Lounge.

I find it gleefully humorous that this essay circulates identity and John Hancock’s name is synonymous with leaving your mark on the world.

Just place your John Hancock on the dotted line.

Maybe that’s another thread in this story.

I was driving my son to school yesterday and it wasn’t until I was driving alone after I dropped him off that I noticed a thin, barely visible thread catching the morning sun. A sign that a spider had been there. Might still be there. The sun-tapped silk connected my seatbelt to the inside window near the rearview mirror.

Safety and Reflection.

These invisible threads are there.

I see you.

I exist.

So do you.

They connect us across continents.

One of my favorite tarot deck creators, Three Trees Tarot, is based out of the United Kingdom. They recently released The Winding—a tarot deck that follows a single spider on their journey.

While writing this essay, I learned that my copy made it to the United States—and returned to the UK.

I gave the wrong zip code.

There and Back again.

The spider is still winding their way home.

They haven’t arrived—yet.

Notes:

• I used they/them pronouns for the spider. This choice was inspired by Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, and also by indigenous teachings that invite us to see the living world as relatives rather than resources. In one of the chapters of Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin argues that colonization altered our language and how we relate to the natural world. She wrote, “Those whom my ancestors called relatives were renamed resources” (57). I cordially invite you to have your life changed by learning more here: Robin Wall Kimmerer Rocks!

• If you absolutely need to see the spider construction men replacing windows on the former John Hancock Center, see the photos here: Look inside Former Signature Room atop the former John Hancock

• Check out my friend Marisa Love reciting her flying spider poem here: "The Flying Spider of the Sun"

Dear Reader:

I’m trying to figure out what paid and unpaid subscribers have access to. Personal Essays are free. These are carefully crafted, slow to create, and finished. I’m snail paced with these.

Synchronicity Shorts are free. These are synchronicities that need to be remembered but are not fully investigated yet.

I’m leaning toward Paid Subscribers getting to come Inside the studio with me and witness my process.

This is what’s Inside the Studio:

The Log, The Process, and The Body.

• The Log: numbered Synchronicity Sleuth Detective Logs. These are the real time observations, patterns, and lessons that become part of my essays. They track mostf of the synchronicities I encounter.

• The Process: updates on mural work, painting, drawing, stickwork, embroidery, & songwriting.

• The Body: reflections on living with an undiscovered connective tissue disease, nervous system work, therapy, parenting, & neurodiversity.

Occasional content:

• Clothes & Creativity: fun with personal style

• Healing Modalities: My personal process using various modalities, building confidence as a practitioner, honing personal style

• Mini Readings from the Akashic Records, Tarot, Oracle Cards, & Reiki

The Sleuth’s Creed:

Observe first.

Interpret later.

Don’t assume.

Follow the thread.

Allow new evidence to change your mind.

Revisit.

Revise.

Reconsider.

Accept that a mystery might remain a mystery.

“Pay attention. Be astonished.” — Mary Oliver

“Dwell in Possibility.” — Emily Dickinson

Thank you for reading.

You help me feel brave.

Share