Wendy Blacke

emotional wayfarer

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    An Old Laptop and the Woman Who Used it

    An Old Laptop and the Woman Who Used it

    I was going through a particularly cluttered closet, as one may choose to do on the weekend. On the top shelf, sheathed between another old laptop and a box of Darwin’s saved art and school work, was the first laptop I ever bought. I had replaced it after 5 years with the laptop beside it, and later went back to using a desktop. But, there it was. In another box in the same closet, in the black spaghetti tangle of cords kept in case they are needed One Day, was the charger from this 2007 relic.

    I plugged it in. I opened the lid. I pressed the power button. I waited.

    Little blue lights twinkled from the silver and black moulded plastic of the keyboard. Fingerprints that might have been 15 years old lit up when the screen came to life.

    As Windows Vista awoke from what it thought was an eternal slumber, I was reminded why I had replaced the laptop in the first place. All over the screen, anywhere it was dark, were tiny red pixels. I remembered calling this “screen cancer” when the laptop first became afflicted.

    I opened up the file explorer and started poking around in folders. Old photos, old poems, old knitting patterns I had written, silly shots from the built-in low resolution webcam. I found myself falling back in time, finding little fragments of the woman I was. With familiarity, letting my fingers trace the keys that were used so well they were worn smooth and glossy. The glow of the screen was somehow warm with nostalgia.

    I bought this laptop when I was 22. I had just started working at the Staples Call Centre and we had an employee discount and “computer purchase program” where you could buy a new computer and have payments for it deducted from your paycheck, interest free. I still remember standing in line at the Staples store, excited to take it home. With this laptop I launched websites, wrote stories, designed knitting patterns, and shared art. From behind this screen I shared threads of myself with the world. With this keyboard I started a freelance writing career that allowed me to work from home as my own boss for a few years.

    In the file explorer, I found that I had replaced the laptop in October 2011, meaning one of the last things I went through with it was grief when Dave died. The post I shared in my 15 year memorial post of his death last month was written on this laptop a month before replacing it. A promising start and devastating end all wrapped up in one piece of old technology.

    And here after all these years sitting untouched it still turned on. A little spark of hope grew in my chest. Could I still use this for something? I mean, sure it’s old and has screen cancer but even with the red pixels, maybe I could use it to display knitting patterns. I did some research and decided to install Linux on it. It’s what I use on my main computer and it uses very little resources compared to Windows, so I figured I’d give it a try.

    I made a bootable USB drive with Linux Mint Xfce edition on it (a pretty streamlined and low-resource-usage build) and refurbished the laptop into something that was far more than I expected it would ever be again.

    First of all, Linux installed beautifully. No hiccups or weirdness, just hopped into the boot menu and launched Linux Mint, then nuked Windows when I installed Linux as the OS and rebooted. The whole thing took maybe 20 minutes. When it restarted, Linux Mint loaded up so beautifully and I was struck by how good the screen actually looked. It took me a moment to realize that the little red pixels that had plagued this laptop and made me replace it were gone. This whole time I thought it was a hardware issue, but somehow Linux fixed it.

    So now I have a perfectly up to date and usable (albeit slow) laptop that has no weird screen issues. I’m using it to write this very post and I’m having so many feelings about it. I worried I was going to talk my fiancé’s ear off while waxing poetic about the HP Pavilion dv9700 and the adventures I’ve had with it. I have already been using it to have my knitting patterns displayed on my side table where I knit and watch TV. Using my phone has been more of a nuisance for this purpose, and I’m finding I’m spending a lot more time knitting while watching TV than scrolling on my phone.

    The woman I was when I bought this laptop was so different to the woman I am today. She wasn’t yet a mom, hadn’t discovered she loves painting with watercolour, and hadn’t yet learned how to heal herself. I look back on the person I was with so much love. She was flailing, trying to figure out how to move forward in life when there was so much holding her back. She was scared but hopeful. Fierce but kind. She didn’t love herself yet but she was trying to. She was plagued with insomnia and fear. She wrote a suicide note and made a plan to leave.

    I’m happy all these years later that I decided to stay. Otherwise, this laptop would be in a landfill somewhere and I never would have had the opportunity to open it up and come face to face with myself from a different time, to see how much has changed for me or how much I’ve grown. I wouldn’t have found out that It. Gets. Better. I wouldn’t have become a mom, or found the fulfilling career I have. I wouldn’t have met so many important people or had the opportunities I’ve had to learn and grow as a person.

    I wonder, too, if 20 years from now I’ll be re-reading this post or poking through an old hard drive or phone and thinking about the woman I am today and how different she may be from the woman who may emerge in the future. Life is full of possibilities and beauty and hope and if my 41 years on this planet have taught me anything, it’s that nothing is guaranteed. We exist like water, flowing through life and changing course where we find hardship, obstacles, knowledge, or the beauty of love.

    I know this old laptop is just a bundle of plastic bits and wires and circuits, but when I opened it and found what was essentially a digital time capsule from a past version of me, it felt like more than that. It felt like walking into a familiar room after a long time away and finding everything just where it had been. It’s a piece of my personal history that reminds me of my journey and what the core, unwavering parts of me are.

    by

    Wendy Blacke

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    The Worst Day of My Life – 15 Years Later

    The Worst Day of My Life – 15 Years Later

    15 years ago today was the worst day of my life. I usually commemorate this day in some way online, and this year I wanted to share the original blog post I made about that day. It was originally published on a blog I had started as a way to document my pregnancy and motherhood. It was called A Girl Named Wendy and I posted to it daily. The following post is difficult to read. It was written on September 12, 2011, and I still hadn’t slept following the trauma detailed here. A lot of people were reaching out wanting to know what happened, and writing this post was a way for me to communicate it while protecting myself from the overwhelm of having to repeat it.

    Writing has been the connective tissue of my life, and it was the writing of this that did help me finally sleep. I have kept it preserved and never edited it. Grief never really goes away. You grow around it and through it. It becomes part of you.

    The Worst Day – Originally published September 12, 2011

    The blog is going to be depressing for the next while. On Saturday, September 10th, at around 4:00PM, I lost the person who meant the most to me. He was the love of my life, the father of our son and one of the kindest and gentlest people you will ever meet.

    It was like any other day, which is what makes it so hard to come to terms with. Everything was normal. Dave went to bed at 1:00AM on the 10th after we watched our regular episode of Dexter. It was normal for him to go to bed earlier than me so I said goodnight, tucked him in and went on with my night reading various things online and watching documentaries on Netflix.

    Dave would regularly have seizures that would occur in his sleep. We were still working to find out the cause, but it seemed to have something to do with his type 1 Diabetes and insulin dosage levels. We were on a waiting list for him to see an Endocrinologist, for which there was a 14 month wait. On this night, Dave had one of these seizures a few hours after he went to bed, at about 5:00AM. Like any other night, I heard him start seizing and went into the room to ensure he was safe and that he was in a safe position (on his side) when he finished seizing.

    At around 7:30AM, I was getting pretty tired and figured I’d try to get Darwin to settle down so I could go to bed as well. Like most nights, Darwin was having a hard time settling down. I’d rock him to sleep or breastfeed him to sleep but as soon as I put him in his crib and went to bed, he would start crying. Eventually I gave up and just brought Darwin to bed with me. It still took him a while to settle down after that. Last time I looked at the clock before we both fell asleep it was around 9:00AM.

    I awoke at around 12:30PM to Darwin crying. Dave wasn’t in bed anymore and his pillow was not there either. It was normal for him to move to the couch in the early morning/afternoon and nap. I thought nothing of it and this was confirmed when I took Darwin out into the main room to change his diaper. I changed his diaper and sat down on the loveseat to breastfeed him. Dave was on the longer couch, asleep, facing out from the couch. He was fine and everything was normal. He stirred when Darwin cried but quickly fell back asleep.

    I finished feeding Darwin and went back to bed with him at around 1:00PM or so. I awoke to him crying again at 4:00PM. When I awoke and looked at the clock, I found it odd that Dave had not woke up yet but reminded myself that he had had a seizure and usually slept longer and was groggy the day after. I carried Darwin out into the main room again.

    I sat on the loveseat and looked over at Dave who was still asleep on the couch, but facing the back of the couch. I called his name, “Dave! Wake up, it’s 4 o’clock!”.

    He didn’t move.

    “DAVE! Wake up!”

    Still nothing. I’m getting worried. Something was weird about the position of his body. I walked closer to him and realized it didn’t look like he was breathing. You know how you can see someone’s torso moving steadily up and down as they breathe? Dave was still. I instantly panicked. This was my biggest fear. I closed the remaining distance between he and I and I grabbed his shoulder to shake him awake. Something was very wrong. His whole body moved. His body was stiff.

    No.

    His face was pushed into the back of the couch (made of leather), and I shook his shoulder again while calling his name. I thought, he can’t breathe, he had another seizure and is unconscious and can’t breathe, and pulled hard on his shoulder to get his face away from the back of the couch. I expected he would start breathing again once his airways were free.

    No. No. No.

    That was when I saw his face. His lips were pulled back from his teeth, which were streaked with blood. He usually bit his lip or tongue when he had a seizure. He appeared to be snarling, and his eyes were rolled back, with just a sliver of white showing between his lids. He did not look like Dave. At this point I lost it.

    He’s dead.

    “DAVE! NO!” I screamed, phone in hand already dialing 9-1-1. I lost all feeling in my legs and fell to the ground, stunned. I couldn’t get up. I had Darwin in one hand, breastfeeding him, and my phone in the other and as it rang through to 9-1-1 I just screamed his name over and over again, hoping he would turn around and tell me he was okay. The line rang once. Twice. A woman answered. “9-1-1, what is the location of your emergency?”

    “I think he’s dead!” I cried into the phone, all the breath rushing out of me. I began to hyperventilate and sob uncontrollably.

    “Ma’am, breathe!” she responded to my panicked state.

    Fuck you. I thought. If Dave could breathe he would still be here. I don’t need to breathe, he does. Right now.

    I called our address into the phone as quickly and as clearly as I could. “Please hurry, I think he’s dead!” I called out. Darwin started to cry.

    She told me that an ambulance was on the way and began asking me a series of questions. She asked if he was breathing. I told her he was not. “He’s cold. He’s stiff.” I cried. She asked if it was cold in the room and I told her that it was not. I kept repeating “I think he’s dead.” as she explained that the ambulance would be there soon and asked if I wanted her to stay on the line. “Yes” I responded, I didn’t want to be alone. No way.

    For the next 8-10 minutes (which felt like hours) she asked me questions about him. How old he was, when the last time I saw him alive was, what had happened. I explained that it appeared as though he had a seizure and must have suffocated in the couch. I sobbed and told her that he just became a father and had his entire life ahead of him. I told her that our son was only 25 days old. Not even a month old and his father was dead. She was sympathetic and told me that everything would be okay. I hoped she was right.

    I kept thinking, “Paramedics are trained to save lives. They can bring him back. They will save him.”, I kept this belief until they arrived a few minutes later. I let them in and they too told me to breathe and to try and calm down.

    They made their way to his body, “Is he dead?” I asked, shrieking. The way she looked at me gave me the answer to the question. “I’m sorry, he’s gone.” she responded.

    “Can you save him? Can you bring him back?” I blurted out, crying. “I’m sorry, it’s too late. He’s been gone a while.”, she responded. I broke down again at this point, sobbing and unable to breathe. Why Dave? Why our family? I thought and began screaming whatever made sense to scream into the air. I told Darwin I was sorry. I screamed the word “no” over and over again until it didn’t make sense anymore. I was hysterical.

    The paramedics asked me to go to the bedroom. They said it would be easier if I didn’t see him. They helped me into the room where I sat on the bed as they asked me questions about what had happened. I choked out as much as I could at the time and answered the various questions they asked me. Two cops came in and questioned me. I explained to everyone that Dave had seizures and that I always heard them start to happen so I could always be there as he seizured, making sure he was safe when it was over because he would go unconscious for 2 hours following a seizure. I didn’t hear this one and itkilled him. When he stopped seizuring, his face ended up pushed into the back of the couch, the leather forming a seal over his mouth and nose. A few inches of leather suffocated and killed him.

    The police asked me if there was anyone I needed to call. I asked if I could call my mother and if she could come be with me. I felt so alone. They brought me my cell phone from the other room and I called her. I explained that Dave was dead and that the police were sending a squad care to pick her up. She was upset and in shock and within 20-30 minutes she had been picked up and arrived. She hugged me and told me how sorry she was. I explained again, to her, what had happened. 

    The paramedics left and a coroner arrived. She asked me many of the same questions and I went over everything again as best I could. She asked about his medications and I explained his insulin and how we thought it was linked to the seizures. She kept commenting on how cute Darwin was and how I had to live on for him and take care of him as well as I could.

    Everyone was so nice.

    The police asked about Dave’s parents and I told them where they lived and what their names were and gave their phone number. I told them I didn’t want to call to inform them. How do you make a phone call like that? How do you tell someone that their child has left this world? He said he wouldn’t want me to make that call anyway and that due to Dave’s age and the suddenness of the situation, they should be told in person. The RCMP would be sent out to notify them.

    The coroner came back in and explained that Dave’s body was going to be picked up soon and that it would be taken for an autopsy to see if there was an underlying cause of death or some sort of other condition that might have been causing it. She explained that she would call me on Monday to let me know more information. The people who were there to pick up Dave arrived. They asked me if I wanted to say goodbye.

    Initially I said no. I didn’t want to see him again. Not like that. I wanted to see him alive and well. Not like that. Not on that couch the way I found him.

    I changed my mind, knowing I would regret not saying goodbye, and wandered out into the main room. I asked if he looked normal or if his face was still screwed up. They told me he looked peaceful. He was still in the same position on the couch and I decided to say my goodbye’s. I didn’t look at his face, but stood behind him and poured my heart out to him with Darwin in my arms.

    I told him how much I loved him, and how much he meant to me. I thanked him for giving me the best year of my life and for providing me with a beautiful son. I told him I was sorry he was gone, and that I was sorry if I ever didn’t make it perfectly clear what an amazing man he was and how perfect he was for me, completing me and making me whole. I told him I loved him more than anything and that I didn’t know how I was going to live on without him. My Mom was by my side rubbing my shoulder and thanked Dave for treating me so well and for giving her a grandson. My Mom told me later that she kept hoping Dave would suddenly turn around and tell us he was okay. I wish more than anything that it would have happened that way. Before walking away, I promised him that I would be the best possible mother I could be for our son and that Darwin would always know what an amazing man and incredible father he was. I said goodbye and walked back to the bedroom.

    15 minutes later it was just me, my Mom and Darwin in the condo. Dave was gone. They took him away. I would never see him again sitting beside me or coming in the front door or laying beside me in bed. His body had been taken away, and he would never take another breath.

    I walked around the condo in shock. At this point it had been two and a half hours since I found his body. It was 6:30PM. I went into the bathroom and saw his razor and realized he would never use it again. I walked into our bedroom and looked at our bed, realizing we would never sleep beside each other or make love there ever again. In the living room his blood tester kit was there on the coffee table. I realized he would never again test his blood or inject insulin for his diabetes. In the kitchen I realized I would never again cook a meal for us to enjoy together. I looked down at Darwin, still in my arms, and realized Dave would never hold this sweet baby, his son, in his warm and protective arms ever again. This final realization hurt more than anything.

    Since that horrible 10th of September I have been at my Mom’s house. I haven’t been back to our condo where we planned to live the first phase of our lives together with the child we created. It’s now the 12th of September at 3:30AM and I still have not slept since finding Dave there on the couch. Every time I close my eyes, I see the way he looked on the couch. The strange position his body was in, the way his face looked, the way it didn’t look like Dave, but somehow was. 

    I don’t know what to do. I will keep the promise I made to Dave and will strive to be the best mother I can be to Darwin.

    It doesn’t feel like he’s really gone. I keep expecting him to phone me telling me he’s okay or to go home and find him there sitting on the couch watching TV. I keep thinking I will see him come through the door, totally healthy and alive. I just want my Dave back. I want my best friend back. I want Darwin to have his father back.

    He was so proud, and over the last few weeks of his too-short life, told me repeatedly that he felt like he finally had a purpose in life. He told me that at work he was more driven and saw a point to going there every day. He told me he loved the feeling of supporting his family and that it made him feel like a real man doing so. He told me that he felt like his life started the day Darwin was born and would do anything for us to be a happy family. He was a beautiful human being who was loving life and was so happy to be alive.

    I will never understand why this happened or exactly how this happened. Right now I feel so helpless. I feel lost. Life is never going to be the same. I will never have Dave in my arms again and he will never look me in the eyes again and tell me how much he loves me. He won’t see his little boy grow up to be a wonderful man like he was. I don’t even think he realized how amazing he was. I am a better person for having known him and I will never forget how he taught me to love. What we had was special and a once in a lifetime connection. The day Dave left, today, is the worst day of my life.

    by

    Wendy Blacke
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    Cypress Hills 2026

    Cypress Hills 2026

    a travel post

    I started taking Darwin camping when he was 3 years old. Every year since, aside from one year during COVID and another where we tried a different camp site, our spot has been Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park. I first fell in love with the area when I was a teenager and it has been an important place I’ve returned to time and time again.

    This year felt particularly important. Darwin had an amazing first year of high school and I have been on a personal healing journey. Sitting amongst the lodgepole pines with the whisper of the wind to keep you company and a fire to keep you warm brings a level of relaxation I haven’t felt anywhere else.

    A tent in the woods
    Home away from home.
    A bench nestled in the woods
    A beautiful bench at the start of a hiking trail.

    We arrived on a Sunday and checked into our campsite, the same campsite we stay in every year right in the park. There is no electricity, so nights tend to be quiet. It’s a refreshing change from life in the city, where the hum of traffic and electricity is a constant static in the air.

    To our surprise, there was no fire ban this year! Given the prevalence of wildfires this season, we thought our nightly bonfire tradition might take a break this year. Darwin just turned 15, and I thought it was about time I pass down the knowledge of how to build a fire. I don’t use fire starter, just paper, kindling, and a barbecue lighter. On the very first attempt, Darwin built a successful and beautiful fire.

    Darwin’s first fire

    We also made our annual trip to Eastend, Saskatchewan, where the largest T Rex skeleton in the world was discovered, and visited the T Rex Discovery Centre, home of Scotty the T-Rex. We barely avoided being eaten.

    It’s a really fun place to explore. Active paleontologists are working in this location so you get to see new fossils still in the process of being identified.

    We rented a boat to take out on Loch Leven, a beautiful tree-lined lake in the middle of the park. Our legs were tired after this and we were ready for lunch. It is so quiet and beautiful out on the water. Lots of seaweed this year!

    Loch Leven

    I absolutely have to give a shout out to Lakeview Grill, a restaurant overlooking this same little lake. In previous years we’ve had their Beyond Burger, which is amazing, but this year they didn’t have any in stock. They did, however, have the Beyond Dog, which is a brand of plant based hot dog that we hadn’t tried before. I will let this photo speak for itself, but it was the best hot dog I ever had. The salad was their house salad with berries and a raspberry vinaigrette. Yum!

    Squirrels are your neighbours when you are living in the woods. We had two in particular that earned names. We named them Dempster and Spitz after their preferred food item to steal. One morning I woke up and found Dempster hips deep in a torn open bag of hot dog buns. They are brave little creatures without much fear of humans, so keeping them out of the food was more challenging than you might think. Eventually we realized they were really running the show, so we started making regular payments of sunflower seeds to satisfy their demands.

    Dempster: hot dog bun thief

    We spent six nights in this little corner of paradise and arrived home feeling refreshed and ready for Darwin to start school this week. We have a little tradition of going to this lookout point to watch the sun set on our last night at camp. This year we were treated to a stunning display.

    Until next time, Cypress Hills. We’ll miss you!

    Bonus photos

    by

    Wendy Blacke
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  • Knitting Season

    Knitting Season

    Knitting is one of my oldest and most developed skills. I started when I was 20 years old. It was 2005 and I was working in a call centre for AT&T Wireless called Startek. There was a young man who sat beside me named Alex, and in between calls he would knit. He had purple needles and they would click away as scarves grew to length. He made them for his friends, he said.

    Curious, I went to the store and bought my own needles, a ball of red yarn, and got online to learn how to turn string into things like he did. Up until that point, my experience of knitting came in the form of gifts from my grandmother. She knit beautifully and I was an eager beneficiary.

    Even before YouTube existed, there were video tutorials for just about anything online. I don’t quite remember the name of the website I found and I can’t find it now, but I sat at my computer and learned the basics from a series of POV videos. I proudly proclaimed my first project to be “my red piece of crap”. It was small, misshapen and barely qualified as a “thing” at all. Next, I knit a scarf, then a hat, then a sweater. I kept challenging myself, learning how to knit with multiple colours, textures, and lace. I learned how to knit with beads and kept adding to my skill set as I went. I joined an online community of knitters and crocheters called Ravelry, where I still visit frequently looking through the database at new patterns and vegan-friendly yarns. I’ve documented many of my projects there over the nearly 20 years I’ve been a member.

    Knitting, like most of the forms of creative expression I enjoy, comes in waves. It’s been a few years since I made anything more than simple dish cloths or warm accessories for winter. Utilitarian knitting, not creative knitting. However, my needles started pricking at the edge of my dreams as soon as I got engaged. I want to make my own dress, and if I don’t knit the whole thing, I want to at least incorporate some delicate lace.

    It got me to thinking I’d like to add some of my favourite completed projects here to my website. I’m playing around with some ideas on how I’d like to do that. You may have already noticed there is a Knitting page currently under construction. I will likely publish each project as its own post, and then add them to that page. I want to add photos, notes, material lists, and links to the designer’s patterns for the benefit of other crafty curious individuals. In an age where I’m trusting external channels less and less, it will feel good to house it all under my own roof, so to speak.

    Knitting has gotten me through a lot of tough times in my life. There is something about the mundane repetitive activity of pulling loops through other loops that makes you feel like you’re making progress, even if you might be feeling a setback in other parts of your life. In some ways, I feel like I stitched myself back together, fortified with yarn. I look forward to showcasing some of the projects that kept my hands busy through grief, depression, joy, anxiety, and illness as I navigate the journey of life.

    by

    Wendy Blacke

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  • Refilling the Shell

    a life update

    Dear Reader, life changes fast, and I’m here with an update. My website has been sitting for a while unused. I’ve been reflecting on why that is, and I think I’ve lost touch with the purpose of this space. Some of that is because I started posting somewhat-polished pieces on my Substack, and even started a podcast called THOUGHTSCRAPES on there. I’ve made 5 episodes so far and I’m really enjoying the process of creating them, but the hustle and bustle of summer and my kiddo home from school means I get to spend a lot more time with family doing fun summer things, so my priorities are settled into experiences right now rather than creativity.

    And boy has it been hot! If you’re reading this and not drenched in sweat, what is your secret? I’ve had to cut back on my mental health walks simply because I may perish in this heat. We went to the Royal Saskatchewan Museum on the weekend to say our annual hello to Scotty the T Rex and see the new owl exhibit, and even inside that building, which I’m sure is temperature controlled to protect the artifacts and displays, was almost unpleasant in its mugginess.

    It’s also been quite a rainy summer so far. I love rain and I’m grateful my house has held up its integrity with no leaks. Other parts of my city haven’t been so lucky. The cool thing about the added moisture though, is that there have been a lot of mushrooms popping up everywhere. A sign of a healthy ecosystem, so I’m always happy to find them in my yard. It’s also made me curious to learn more about mycology and mushroom foraging. I started following this really awesome woman named Alexis Nikole who goes by @blackforager on Instagram, and her entire energy around foraging is so infectious. She’s a well of amazing information and I’ve been slurping it all up, poring over books on local plant life, and can’t wait to start recognizing things in the wild.

    Possibly my biggest news is that Taylor and I are engaged. He surprised me by getting down on one knee on a video chat all the way from where he lives in Texas. He had mailed me a ring and the moment was so perfect and beautiful. I’ve never felt so seen and accepted by someone, so the yes burst out with an enthusiasm I didn’t know I was capable of considering marriage is something I’ve actively avoided in the past. Turns out I wasn’t anti-marriage, I just hadn’t found someone who loved me the way I needed to be loved to feel safe.

    As a natural reaction to getting engaged, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’d even want from a wedding. I’ve decided the most important things to me (in order) are:

    1. Darwin is there
    2. I make my own dress
    3. It’s in a forest or garden

    Other than that I really don’t mind the details. I’m just so happy to love and to be loved by someone who I can share a mutual vulnerability with, and who never tries to dull my sparkle.

    I’ve picked up the knitting needles again. Strange timing, given the heat, I know, but from my air conditioned basement TV room, the seasons don’t seem to matter. I’m just making a simple dishcloth right now, or rather, finishing one I started probably 6 months ago or so, knit one corner of, and then abandoned in my knitting bag. I am going to need more practice with lace, so once this is done, I’m moving on to a nice summer top with a lace panel on the body and sleeves. I’ll make it out of this lovely dark teal cotton/linen blend yarn I’ve had in my stash for a few years.

    I started a new book a few days ago called Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, a Mexican-American woman who is also a Jungian psychoanalyst. I really enjoy Carl Jung’s work, and this book seems to be a wonderful mix of Jungian concepts through a feminist lens focused on empowerment and return to form. Getting in touch with our inner wild feminine, so often suppressed in patriarchal society.

    Speaking personally, most of the men I’ve known in my life, and plenty of women too, have tried to control, hurt, suppress, or shame me into a box. I’ve lived feeling like I need to shrink to fit, and I’m sorry to say that I did. I lost parts of myself along the way. I’d bend and twist and cut off the pieces that weren’t acceptable until what was left was someone I didn’t recognize. I was someone who existed trying to be loved and learning I couldn’t be without adding or subtracting, hiding and abiding. I’m learning to love myself exactly as I am, and I’m refilling the shell I became.

    Maybe the new purpose of this space will be documenting the joy I’m rediscovering in life; the things I’m learning on my path back to the me I was before the world told me that wasn’t acceptable. I’m building back my creativity, my curiosity, and my connection with nature and my personal spirituality. I’m in the middle of healing and it’s a beautiful place to be and grow.

    by

    Wendy Blacke
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