That is why, no matter how desperate the predicament is, I am always very much in earnest about clutching my cane, straightening my derby hat and fixing my tie, even though I have just landed on my head.

Charlie Chaplin

I am thinking about landing on my head. I hear a lot about the need to land on my feet, but landing on my head—specifically, the need to straighten my derby hat while landing on my head—is more familiar. I am a landing on my head professional. I speak quickly. I react before reflecting. I am not always a creator, mender, healer, or builder. I often leap before I look. 

I am writing to defend those who land on our heads, work on ourselves, and still love ourselves — and other fellow headlanders — anyway. Let me explain. I am practicing being gentle with myself and others. In a world of judgment and comparison, hard edges and upside downness, tearing up and torching, I want to live differently. I want to focus on forgiveness. I want to stay soft, creative, and kind. I want to be the gold that mends my broken pieces. I want to find joy in the most desperate of predicaments.

Derby hats make me smile. I remember finding and making hats. I remember beautiful hats and celebration. I remember family, friends, and community adorned in hats. There is something to the idea that in the most desperate of predicaments we look to our hats — our creativity and collective something — to inspire connection. Arranging ourselves toward that makes sense.

What I Keep Learning

Out of the Gate

My life coach had encouraged me to celebrate the completion of my memoir, The Stage Is On Fire. I had been working on the manuscript for well over three years in supportive writing classes, with patient editors, in a coffee shop surrounded by fellow writers who, by their very existence, proved that even in the brutal writing world, people still get books published. I was scared to share the work, but celebration needed to happen, and my friend Wendy graciously opened her doors for the festivities.

Read more here

If Irises Could Talk

My family passes down irises from generation to generation. I remember — deep purple with a whisper of violet and a golden backbone. We can trace their genealogy to my great-grandmother’s garden, I think. More than 100 years of soil and rain feed each flower. For more than 100 winters, they have slept in silence. For more than 100 springs, they survive the frost. Their faces always point to the sun. They kiss bees and flirt with ladybugs. Their regal petals wave in the breeze as if to greet the Queen of England. They are bursting through the snow without apology, hesitation, or fear. Every inch a lady.

Read more here

The Falls of the Ohio

I’d rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. — e.e. cummings

Growing up on the Ohio River in Louisville, Kentucky, I visited the Falls of the Ohio. The Falls are a 390 million-year-old fossil bed on the river’s floor. Fossils tell the river’s geological story of how the river has sung and danced for millennia. As a writer and storyteller, I deeply connect with the wonder, strength, and constancy. Our natural world tells us all about all of that.

Read more here

Paying Attention

Secretariat’s 1973 Kentucky Derby Win

John Prine singing My Old Kentucky Home

The Call to the Post at Churchill Downs

Dan Fogelberg singing Run for the Roses

How to Make a Derby Hat With Flowers