When we started this revival, it was with curiosity for the kind of engagement the community might be interested in. Creativity loves an experiment, where possibility entices the exploration of new frontiers.

This was true of our intentions for the revival, but it also captures most closely my experience of Foster as a community. It is a place where people show up to plant seeds they hope will bear fruit, to do the tireless work of tending fertile ground, of people being present to others with witness and solidarity for the trials and tribulations of the labor required in the act of creation.

I have always stood in awe of the ways in which Foster seems to weave a daisy chain of personal relationships from relatively brief online encounters. I have abused the privilege of crying on Zoom more often than I care to admit. But in the course of the nearly three years I’ve spent showing up in various Foster spaces, I’ve been amazed to find what I now consider to be friends. On some level it feels strange to have friends on the internet I’ve never met in real life. But people in this community have been witness to some of my life’s darkest moments, and have also watched me grow my self awareness and expand my consciousness in profound ways.

Ninety days ago, I kicked off this revival with a tongue-in-cheek April Fools Day post about apocalypse because I perceive within the Foster community a deeper awareness than many other places that the world around us is changing in profound ways that humans may or may not be equipped to manage or control. Those who find their way here to stay seem to simultaneously appreciate that while the old world order may be showing signs of wear to the point of breaking, a new way of being is bursting forth from the very spaces we both narrate and inhabit.

I find a deeper consciousness here, but of what exactly?

Foster was originally founded as a technology startup trying to build a Chrome extension that would enable seamless peer editing online, only to be overtaken by the editorial capacity of AI. When the organization pivoted towards creating community around writing as a way to express deeper human truths, it gave up raising venture funding, its growth mandate, and its governance structure. A lot of energy has gone out of Foster’s sails in the three years I’ve been here. And yet people still keep showing up for writing circles because witnessing each other in the process of our individual and collective truth-seeking adds meaning to our individual and collective lives.

One of the things that makes Foster truly unique as a community is the way it pulls people together across time and space. I’ve watched members of Foster move all the way across America and halfway around the world and show up in writing circles where participants span ten time zones.

In this Fosterverse revival, Jesse wrote about his train ride across America, the geolocation of stories, and what he learned as a community steward in Brooklyn. Sara wrote about the Zen of writing together and the relationship between writing and recovery. Danver wrote about cunning in an era of chaos, calling in our vocational ancestors, and most recently about her quest for belonging.

I, too, have spent much of my life asking this question, feeling ill suited to the circumstances I find myself in—too opinionated, too outspoken—but here in Foster, amid the check-ins and the writing circles, I have found a sense of belonging I haven’t felt anywhere else. On the one hand, it is strange to feel belonging in a Zoom room. And on the other hand, it seems obvious I would feel at home among a group of people who are reaching inward for self-actualization as they reach outward for connection and deeper consciousness.

Last month, I shared my experience writing ten years of morning pages, and I continue to repeat the same mantra to myself and my peers: write everything down. We will forget who and what we are in this moment in history far faster than anyone would care to admit; and someday, we and others may well hope to remember.

It is so impossibly hard to appreciate the changes happening before us in real time.

Last week in the Foster Writers WhatsApp, a few members of the community entered into a debate about the utility and sentience of AI. It was such a joy to watch people with whom I feel such connection debate whether AI is or isn’t sentient and how it may or may not be serving the long-term (or even short-term) well-being of society. Internet spaces can be ferocious and reactive, but because of the mutual knowing that exists between those who have been witnessing eachothers’ creative process for years, their mutual inquiry felt less like a barb and more like an invitation into a new way of knowing.

We’re letting the revival rest for the summer, while holding space for the possibility we’ll reenact in the fall. If you’re feeling called to share yourself and your writing here in the Fosterverse, let us know in the comments, or in the WhatsApp Writers chat.

In the meantime, I hope you’ll keep showing up for yourselves and for each other, asking life’s frequently unanswered questions, and together, seeking a deeper consciousness of the truth that abounds within us all.

This Week in the Fosterverse:

Pathless Path: From Antimeme to Meme | #301 by Paul Millerd

My Joy List by Syd Connolly

Lasting Friendship by Clare Nwachukwu

Parenting In Times Of War by Joshua Doležal

dancing with the brain demons: what artists really need (spoiler: each other) by Alex Dobrenko

Fasting: reflections on solidarity and collective action by Juliana Barnet

What is content? What is writing? by Dylan Tweney

The Myth of the Lone Genius: Relational Creativity and Why We Need Each Other by Kathryn Vercillo

The Crack in My Psyche by Danver Chandler

Having a Disability Doesn't Mean My Life is Sad by Russell Smith (and Geoff Cook)

Cringe as Symbolic Violence by Opheas

Boy On Fire by Andrei Atanasov

Why you simply cannot worry about it; Redux by Dee Rambeau

What if we built an internet where we didn't need to cheat? By Leo Guinan

the trees you grew up with have not forgotten you by Melody Song

269: The New Thirty (From Full to None) by Jason Shen

Story # 100 by Rick Lewis

What do I have in me waiting to come out? by Cams Campbell

Break In Public by Nicholas Goodey

Define awe and wonder for yourself and then go find it | #60 by Caryn Tan

My E-Ink Phone by Edward Garrahy

Tiny Revolutions №121: It's all just the universe 🪐 by Sara Campbell

I'm Not Sure if I Belong Here by Rick Lewis

Today You Are You, That Is Truer Than True by Ariane Goodwin

But goddamn it, I have learned some things about community spaces! A lot of things! And here’s the first one, before I get into specifics:

JUST START.

You’re never going to get it perfectly right the first time. There will never be the perfect space, or the perfect financial model, or the perfect moment. You have to be just crazy enough to believe that it’s gonna work out, jump into the deep end, and figure it out along the way. If you want to be talked into taking the leap, give me a call and I’ll hype you up. The world needs more of these friendly, people-oriented spaces.

But let’s back up a little bit.

What is a community space?

Let me define what I mean by “community space,” since it could mean all sorts of things. I believe community spaces are defined by their purpose:

The purpose of a community space is to give people a place to gather, connect, and belong, usually centered around a particular set of activities, interests, and/or beliefs.

Homes, gardens, workshops, farms, and warehouses can all become community spaces…really, any space where people can gather regularly and that they can have some agency over will work! The beauty of a good community space is that it feels alive: its members can constantly improve and adapt the space to their needs and interests. Slow, constant change is a good sign, I think.

(A community space can be physical or online, but I’m mostly focusing on in-person spaces in this piece, since that’s what I have the most experience with. But Foster’s writing circles are a great example of an online community space!)

Who am I?

And why should you listen to what I have to say about community spaces?

For the last few years, I built and ran a space in Brooklyn called Highside Workshop. It was a multipurpose space that hosted everything from concerts to art galleries to motorcycle repair workshops to tattoo popups. I don’t know how many events we ran, but I’d guess pushing a hundred, and there were constantly people coming in and out for band practices, to work on cars and motorcycles, or just to hang out.

When I got the warehouse that became Highside Workshop, I had basically no plan – I just knew I wanted to create a place for my creative and talented friends to come do their thing, no matter what that was. Space is hard to come by in New York City, especially space without many rules around what you’re allowed to do in it. I spent the first six months gutting and redoing the place with the help of a few friends, because it was disgusting and badly water-damaged, and then started inviting people to come there and work on projects, host events, and bring their friends.

Things took a little while to get rolling, but eventually a friend of a friend (now one of my closest friends) suggested we throw a concert – he’s a local musician and booked the artists, and I helped organize and run it. To our complete surprise, lots of people showed up and seemed to have an absolute blast! From there, things snowballed and we were off to the races.

There is more to the story, but skipping ahead: we had our final show in August, and Highside has since closed. I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on the last few years, thinking about what worked and what didn’t, and trying to pinpoint where the magic of the place came from. Because there was some ineffable sense of magic there. In the wake of our last show, a truly shocking number of people told me things about their personal relationship to Highside that were almost hard for me to believe: that it was their favorite place on Earth, that they felt able to be themselves there in a way that they didn’t feel anywhere else, that they were having a hard time imagining finding another community where they feel so safe and welcome. That some of the best memories of their lives are there, that they unlocked new versions of themselves there, that Highside is where they learned that it’s ok to take chances and fail.

And so I have to wonder: what made all that possible? There was no explicit structure to the community at all, no rules, hardly any regularly scheduled events, no group practices or rituals, nothing. I also wonder how I can help make it more likely that there will be more spaces like Highside in the world. So that’s what the rest of this piece is about. What makes a community space thrive?

(Also, prepare yourself: I’m going to say “the space” a truly staggering number of times.)

Trust

People aren’t used to being trusted. Most of us are used to others assuming that we’re not trustworthy, and so we’re defensive by default. That’s why treating someone as if they are trustworthy before getting any proof of it is powerful: it throws them out of their default framing and gives them the opportunity to become the person you’re trusting them to be.

In practice, this means making the space vulnerable. It means giving people opportunities to hurt the space and trusting that they won’t. I didn’t move all the expensive, delicate things out of sight during events at Highside…there were tools, computers, and motorcycles easily accessible all around the space. Nothing was locked up or hidden. It was a gamble, but it paid off: people felt at home there. Home is one of the few places where most of us don’t feel the need to protect our belongings from carelessness or theft, and it’s really relaxing to put down that guard. By making it visibly obvious that my guard was down, by not protecting my belongings, others knew it was safe to put down their guards too.

Another way to show trust is by giving people opportunities to do things they don’t have direct experience doing, and only helping as much as they really need. Our first concert: the friend who booked it had never booked a show before, nor hosted one. Another friend wanted to do food-related events but had never been a chef in charge of a whole evening…I just told her she could run an event any time she wanted, and I’d help with the logistics. There were others, too. And almost every time, it went great! People rose to the occasion, and if they needed help, there were lots of us around to help them.

Of course, trusting by default means you occasionally get burned. Sometimes people flake, or don’t do what they said they were going to do, or don’t treat the space with respect. But there’s so much more to gain by trusting people than there is to lose by them breaking that trust. I’d rather give people the opportunity to live up to my trust and sometimes be proven wrong, than assume the worst and occasionally be proven right.

Only by making a space vulnerable can you fully invite people into it.

Belonging

Trust is a prerequisite for belonging. Belonging is the sense that you have every right to be where you are, that you don’t need permission or approval to be welcome. This is a rare feeling – with most things we do outside of our homes, there’s an expectation that we have to do something to be welcome. That something might be spending money (at cafes, restaurants, gyms, venues), or participating in a specific activity (hobbyist groups, political events, adult ed classes). There’s nothing wrong with those sorts of places and events – they form a big part of public life – but with a community space, we’re going for something different. We want the members of the community to feel like they’re welcome there anytime, for any reason, regardless of whether or not there’s anything specific going on.

Space for serendipitous gatherings causes people to meet who might not otherwise cross paths, and allows the community to grow its own ideas and uses for the space, unconstrained by the specifics of a particular event. And plus, people want places to hang out that expose them to unexpected interactions! How cool and unusual is it to have a place where you can just be, and feel welcome to talk to anyone else who happens to be there?

There’s a catch-22 here, though: if the space needs to make money, but we want people to feel a sense of belonging that transcends any entry fee, what can we do? There’s no perfect solution, but something that worked well at Highside was going wayyyyy above and beyond in making sure that everyone who came to an event had everything they needed to feel cared for, comfortable, and welcome.

Here’s what that looked like in practice.

For people who rented the space for an event, that meant talking through their needs in depth before the day of the event, and making sure we supplied everything they needed on the day of. It meant doing the whole setup and teardown process with them, helping them problem-solve and running errands if need be. It meant not charging them for little extras that we easily could have charged for. Basically, we helped the people who rented the space the way we would have helped our best friends, even if they were total strangers.

To make concert attendees feel cared for, we often charged less than we could have for tickets. We made all our drinks with good alcohol and sold them at below-market prices. We (the people overseeing events) were always in and out of the crowd, dancing and talking to people and making sure they saw that we were here to un-self-consciously have a good time, implicitly telling them that they could safely let go.

When we needed to hire event staff, we paid them more than we needed to, and paid them fast.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Be present, be attentive, and give more of yourself than anyone would expect.

Once people feel like they belong, cool and surprising things start to happen.

Agency

Many people have not had the experience of trying something difficult and uncertain that’s aligned with their interests and having it go well. Usually the biggest barrier standing in their way isn’t anything to do with their capability – it’s their beliefs about their own level of capability. They don’t try, because they think they will fail and that failing is bad. This is well trodden ground, so I won’t go into too much more detail here, except as it relates to community spaces.

A space that puts community ahead of finances can give people the time and space and (most importantly) encouragement they need to Just Do Things. I saw this over and over at Highside: someone would be talking about their interests (music, cooking, whatever) and hint at wanting to put on an event related to that interest, but as soon as I said “let’s do it!” they would backtrack out of fear it wouldn’t go well. But usually if we encouraged them, told them we wouldn’t care if it didn’t go perfectly, offered to help with the logistics, and generally propped up their confidence, they would try their hardest and the event would go way better than they had imagined. Sometimes it took months of prodding someone to get them to commit to doing it, but they always came out of it happy that they had, and with a new sense of capability and empowerment.

Community spaces can provide both the physical space and the social backstopping and encouragement that many people need to develop a sense of agency in their life. That agency then coalesces in the space, and the space itself develops a feeling of agency within it. A community space with an embodied sense of “yes we can” allows more prosocial and agentic versions of people to emerge, which in turn enables the community to continue creating the conditions for its own success.

Abundance

Community spaces seem pretty similar to traditional brick-and-mortar businesses at first glance. They both need to attract people who want to use them, and they both need to earn more than they spend. But community spaces are also very different from normal businesses in a few important ways.

Businesses need paying customers to survive. Community spaces need…community! And that changes the money conversation in a big way.

I don’t think community spaces should optimize for making money unless they absolutely have to. There’s a certain magic to making less money than you could – the people in the space feel that they’re getting “more than they’re paying for,” which is a rare experience in the economic landscape we live in. I hesitate to even frame it in those terms, because it reduces the whole experience to something financial, which is the opposite of my point. Another way of thinking about it is that the quality of the experience is detached from the cost of being there, which pushes us out of our usual relationship with the world and each other, and into something more connected and generative.

Businesses exist in a world of financial transactions. People support the business by paying for its products and services, and the business gets what it needs by using that money to pay for everything: employees, supplies, etc. For the most part, people don’t expect to have a relationship with a business beyond: pay money, get something. There are certainly traditional businesses that people have an emotional connection with, but the way people express that connection is by being patrons of the business – the very word patron implies a financial relationship.

The relationships between a community space and its members are totally different. So are their expectations. If you (as a community space-holder) play your cards right, the members of your community will be there because of a sense of belonging. People don’t want a transactional relationship with their community, and that means that they will contribute their time, money, and resources in ways that don’t “make sense” in economic terms. Some examples of this that I’ve seen:

• Dozens of people gave their time, whether a few hours or days and days, with no expectation of…anything, really. Cleaning, renovation, event management, bookings, designing promotional materials, social media management…you name it, someone did it for Highside for free.

• Other people spent thousands to improve Highside without being asked. People paid for dumpsters and carpeting during renovations, sound and lighting equipment once we’d had a few concerts, woodworking tools for framing and building shelving, etc.

• The vast majority of our events were planned, booked, and attended by people who heard about us through word of mouth. The people who came here felt at home, and so they invited others.

• In rent negotiations with my landlord, I offered a number $X above what I was paying, and he responded with $X / 2.

None of this is to imply that community spaces shouldn’t try to make money at all – absent a benefactor, most spaces will need to make some money to stay afloat. The point is that money isn’t the point, it’s just a means to an end…and that end is the sense of belonging the community feels in that space. Generating more belonging with less money means the space can be more resilient, more generous, and build an ever-greater feeling of abundance.

Purpose

We’ve done a lot talking about how community spaces should exist, but they also need to figure out why they exist – a shared purpose or interest that the community coalesces around. This could be anything, broad or narrow: local mutual aid, bicycles, regenerative agriculture, writing, music, repair, you name it. The purpose of the space can (and should!) shift and evolve over time, as the community evolves around it, but some kind of explicit direction helps steer the ship and makes it clear to people how to interact with the space.

This was, I think, one of the biggest mistakes I made with Highside. I wanted it to be everything for everybody, but in retrospect that didn’t work very well. Once we accidentally sort of became a venue, most people thought of us as a venue, and there are a particular set of ways in which people are used to interacting with venues that don’t lend themselves well to building a self-sustaining, self-governing community. And once people imagined us as a venue, it was hard to get people to form another picture of us in their heads.

Another important aspect of having a purpose is so that the core group that’s dedicating lots of time and energy to the space stays engaged. This was another aspect of the mistake I mentioned: I began to feel checked out, because I didn’t really get Highside to run a venue – I got it to have a place to work on my own projects. And I didn’t have the time or space to do that when there were regularly 60-120 people there. If I were to do things over again, I would have built a narrative of Highside as a place for making art and building and repairing things…and maybe we would have had the occasional concert, but that wouldn’t have been the focus. Maybe you do want to have a space focused on music – awesome! Make it clear from the start that that’s why people should come there, and create opportunities for more intimate connection than is possible at a full-blown concert (songwriter nights, open studio time, jam sessions, and space to just chill and talk).

All that said, I think there are difficult-to-implement but very, very cool opportunities to be found in creating multidisciplinary community spaces. Incredible cross-pollination can happen if there are people with very different interests from different walks of life all working together and spending time in the same spot. Making it happen would take a very particular kind of (well subdivided) physical space, multiple philosophically aligned subcommunities, and people taking on leadership roles in each of those subcommunities. In my eyes, this is the holy grail of community space-making.

Obviously, I haven’t gotten into the practical concerns of running a community space (funding models, governance, etc). There’s a lot more to talk about, and I’m working on a much longer version of this piece that goes deeper into those topics, but I think that the principles I laid out above set a good foundation for guiding much of the practical, day-to-day work of building and maintaining a community space.

Again, if thinking about the details is getting in the way of just getting started, then forget everything I wrote, find a space that’ll work well enough, and start inviting people to it. In the end, spending time with other people is the most important thing. Everything else comes from that.

Good luck, and have fun!

Jesse Evers is a Foster contributor. He writes at jesseevers.com.

📅 Events

• Apply to our invite-only weekly Foster Writing Circles or learn more, here.

⚡️ Published

• 300 words for 300 posts by Paul Millerd

• The Medium Is the Message: How Material Choices Reflect Mental States by Kathryn Vercillo

• can everyone please just shut the fuck up for a few minutes by Alex Dobrenko

• Welcome to the Singularity by Leo Guinan

• 🌧️ Monsoon May in Motion by Jen Vermet

• Hawthorne Was Right To Fear The Clinical Gaze by Joshua Doležal

• Where Do I Belong? by Danver Chandler

• no, they don't hate you by Alex Dobrenko

• Craft to Heal Monthly Chapters Have Launched + Bonus Material! by Kathryn Vercillo

• My Joy List by Syd Connolly

• on silence by Alicia Kenworthy

• 'Who Will Answer All My Questions?' by Nicholas Goodey

• Quick Tips for Crafting Through Different Emotions by Kathryn Vercillo

• Worlds within worlds by Cams Campbell

• An East Coast Morning by GAIA (Nivien Saleh)

• Why I Moved the Yarn Again (and Again) by Kathryn Vercillo

• Marked by a Moment: How My Dad’s Last Hug Shaped My Story by Marian Liautaud

• three questions and one answer by Alex Dobrenko

• can you fill out this 2 min survey?? by Alex Dobrenko

• Zoom Schwartz by Dee Rambeau

• Soothing the Nervous System with Stitches: Why Medium Matters by Kathryn Vercillo

• Doing Crimes w my dad by Alex Dobrenko

• How do you love the world? by Asha Sanaker

• Cutia by Andrei Atanasov

• Creativity Isn’t Just a Spark. It’s a Relationship. It's a Way of Being. by Kathryn Vercillo

• 267: Snake Oil by Jason Shen

• The Art of Subtraction by Edward Garrahy

• Micro-Dreaming by Sara El-Sayeh

• Dad's Prank at the Pizza Parlor by Rick Lewis

• Dear artist with waning motivation … by Kathryn Vercillo

• A Full Masonic Card of Visits! by Cams Campbell

In today’s post—my final post for this season—I offer you a contemplative question I’ve been sitting with as of late. These are the types of questions that rest in your subconscious for long periods of time. If you maintain a conscious relationship to such a question, an illuminating response may surface for you.

The question is, where do I belong?

It’s an important question I sit with for the broader political implications that make uncertain material place. And the personal reasons that poke me.

The question fits neatly into yet another Sagittarian escapade that I find myself in—a bout of adventure that comes after a time of healing.

I wonder how you relate to this question too.

Yesterday, while laying on my bed, I had a bit of a rational scare when I thought I felt a tick bite me…and then crawl up my leg…and then up around my crotch.

I yanked my pants down, and brushed each of my thighs vigorously. Circular whelps, the size of quarters had already taken shape on my calf.

The truth about me is that I’m a stranger to parts of the natural world. Always will be. In some places, I can’t tell a spider bite from a tick burrow. Yet I belong to this planet, and its nature. And this feeling of being a stranger in places on Earth, haunts me because I’ve struggled with my orientation to a definitive home—a pinnacle of belonging.

I haven’t really looked at the lack of a felt sense of belonging as a wound. Never thought to touch it. Or figure out its origins.

Between the lineage of my mother and father lies 8,285 miles (13,333.42 Km) of separation. And when I factor in the third land, where my parents would ultimately meet, there exists a triangulation of my being.

In ancient times, the sense of one’s belonging was richly tied to land. So, in a very real sense, parts of my existence claim each of these distant places. Perhaps parts of my existence are gravitationally pulled and I exist in that tension, where I’ve been unconsciously hunting for a home in the compromise.

Over the years I’ve been a writer, dancing between continents, and finding adventure in every possible nook of this planet I’ve been permitted to go— earning a reputation for my winding and whizzing about the Earth. And I am scaring the bejeezus out of my family—and maybe myself?

But I wonder if each place I encounter sees me as the vagabond that I’ve been or that I am? That it knows stars have pressed upon me continuous movement, and change, and surprise—and that I belong nowhere and everywhere all at once.

Surprisingly, in contemplating this question, I’ve navigated towards a felt sense of an answer in a metaphorical home.

It’s nestled deeply in a truth. Writers dwell between worlds.

The imaginary audience we prepare for, the inner editor that helps to hone, the ethereal creative, and the steadfast time-keeper that drives our creations to completion, all exist outside of material existence.

And so it dawned on me…

I belong to these immaterial souls who dwell within the act of writing. They commune with me. Place me into their bosom. Nurture my creativity in the otherworldly. And at times I feel the warmth of their possession, a sense of belonging when I am claimed as one of their own.

Danver Chandler is a Foster Contributor. She writes Icing on the Cake.

📅 Events

• Apply to our invite-only weekly Foster Writing Circles or learn more, here.

⚡️ Published

• It's Alive! by @andreianasov Andrei Atanasov

• How do you know how much is enough? by

• The urge to write is strong! by

• Tiny Revolutions №120: What do?; and Beings Are Numberless, I Vow to Free Them by

• Life's greatest paradox by

• Ep 3: A Meditation to Connect to Your Inner Light; and My Joy List by

• i failed vs. i'm a failure; and prompts for human beings by

• Does Concision Matter Anymore? by

• Should a School Brand Ever Be Polarizing? by

• Work Trajectories | #160 by

• What On Earth Is It Taking Me So Gosh Darn Long?; and Is Your Inner Teen Alive, really? by

• I figured out how to engineer generosity by

• The Faith Healer and the Garbage Collector by

• The Narrative | Your Big Idea (and Other Memoir Tips) by @marianlia

• A letter to my daughter by

• Eight Years Pathless & Money Reflections | #299 by

• The Great Passage by

• Pancakes and Motorcycles and God by

• When is a fence not just a fence? by

• 266: Making a Real Difference by

• Egyptian-American Author Sherry Shenoda Discusses Her Book of Poetry, Mummy Eaters by

• Secrets of the word wizards by

• The Healing Power and Hidden Complications of Art; 10 Questions For Exploring How Your Art and Health Intersect; I Can’t Create Here: The Invisible Barriers of Space When Process Fails: How Mental Health Alters Creative Rituals; The Mess Is Not a Moral Failing; Creative Wellness Matters More Than Productivity; and Dear artist whose creativity is impeded by marketing by

🔥 Inspiration

The amazing thing about recovery meetings is they never run out of people to join them. Beings are numberless and so are addictions, which are an obvious if highly flawed way to end suffering, at least for an instant, and, as we know, life is suffering. Addiction will be with us as long as suffering is with us, and that might be a while.

I go to recovery meetings for the same reason I practice Zen and write things on the internet—to feel less bone-crushingly alone. A recovery meeting is a miracle because for one hour we can save each other. In the presence of others who are willing to acknowledge how difficult it is to be a human, and how much pain is involved, we are free. We hold hands and chant the serenity prayer at the end of it. “God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I go to the recovery meetings to free and get freed. We can’t do it alone. We need each other to create the container so that it can hold us in our efforts.

A man at the meeting on Friday night wearing a ripped black t-shirt and a black baseball cap pulled low over his eyes stroked his moustache as he told us how he’d been in recovery for four years now and it was all going pretty well—he doesn’t want to drink or use most of the time. And still, he said, “The thing I am most often wondering about is, ‘What do?’ I mean really,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing all the time. What do??”

I knew what he meant. I often look around at people and wonder how their agendas are so clear. Always one thing after another, a life that seems to me as the person looking in like they have it all figured out. Or at least more than I do. It soothes me to know I’m not the only one confused about something that seems to come naturally to so many.

What do?? It’s obvious some of the time but less so others. And if you’re not accustomed to numbing out, like those of who attend recovery meetings for our various addictions are, choosing how to spend your time feels onerous. Some of us work too much or overcommit to some project or another. We conquer one addiction and then seek out new ways of suffering when the old ones aren’t available anymore. And then we figure out how to stamp them out before we move on to another one. I went on the 12 Steppers website and discovered 32 different types of recovery groups, but I’m pretty sure there are far more. New ones spring up all the time.

This is a good thing and a sign of hope, as far as I’m concerned. We may never run out of suffering or addictions but also we’ll never stop trying to help ourselves and each other to escape them.

In writing, as in recovery, as in life, we show up for each other. We create spaces where confusion can exist alongside clarity, where uncertainty finds its voice, where we can all ask "what do?" and know we're not alone in the question. This too is a form of liberation.

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This Week in the Fosterverse

Expat Diaries | #298 by Paul Millerd

Interview with Cierra G. Rowe, Part I of II, Visual Responses by Kathryn Vercillo

The ultimate commitment, Redux by Dee Rambeau

Less Is Less by Nicholas Goodey

The Kids Are Fighting. What Should Daddy Do? by Joshua Deležal

The Problem Isn’t Procrastination, It’s Protection by Kathryn Vercillo

Did I say Tuesday, May 27? by Alicia Kenworthy

i feel inadequate and so does everyone else w/ Ava of bookbear express by Alex Dobrenko

On the Day You Were Three by Alicia Bonner

My Joy List by Syd Connolly

Reading in the sunshine is like a reset by Cams Campbell

i know i should fix my toe fungus, and yet by Alex Dobrenko

Interview with Painter Cierra G. Rowe, Part II by Kathryn Vercillo

"What Dad Really Wants is a Nap. Really." by Russell Smith

Micro Dreaming by Sara El-Sayeh

A light beam strong enough by Stella Inabo

This inspired me today 001 | The block where joy lives by Derrick Chiu

Malice by Asha Sanaker

this is not a love poem by Alex Dobrenko

The Unmentionable Thing by Ann Gauger

A New Correspondence Begins by Euwyn Go

Where Did May Go? A Look Back At It All. by Kathryn Vercillo

Just Holding Hands by Rick Lewis

265: What's the Point? by Jason Shen

A Love Letter to Every Artist Who's Ever Said "I Can't Create When I'm Like This" by Kathryn Vercillo

🌞 An Invitation to the Joys of Journaling June by Jen Vermet

Holy Spirit Novena by Ann Gauger

I Remember All Your Kisses by Edward Garrahy

Sara Campbell is a steward at Foster who writes Tiny Revolutions and does lots of things at Angel City Zen Center. She wrote a longer version of this post on Tiny Revolutions, too, and you can read it here.

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People often tell me a lot about themselves, really fast. It's been this way since I was a kid.

Seventh grade. My first year in public schools after 7 years of Waldorf school. I was a complete fucking weirdo...I hadn't learned the normal social games yet. I dressed strange, I was a bit too sincere, I didn't know how to hide my crushes (that one never went away).

Somehow I became friends with a couple of the popular girls, although I think they were a little cautious about being publicly friendly with me. I was so far outside their social context that they felt safe being honest with me, because nothing I could do or say would impact their social standing.

In the span of a school year, that led me to become the primary support for one girl in her depression and self-harm. Suddenly, at 12, I felt personally responsible for the well-being of someone I hardly knew outside of our Skype chats. It was my first year with my own laptop, and being away from it for too long was scary -- what if she needed me, and I wasn't there? I never told anyone, because I didn't know what they might do or say.

I transferred schools after that year, but this relationship continued for a year or more after I left. I learned what to say to put her at ease, and in parallel, she gradually stopped needing me. I have no idea if that was because she healed, or found someone closer to help her, or something less hopeful. I felt both relieved of my hidden responsibility and deprived of a source of meaning.

I started becoming a vessel for other people to pour their stories into.

People I've spent somewhere between minutes and days with have told me about their fucked up families, about the horrific crimes they've been part of, about their hopes and fears and still-bleeding breakups and suicide attempts and and and and

Why? Why do they trust me?

I have always been a lover of stories. In many ways I live my life in pursuit of good stories, more than in pursuit of in-the-moment enjoyment. Over time those two things have converged, and now I can feel the story writing itself in real time. I find myself laughing at hardships I've brought upon myself or feeling grateful for whatever I will learn from a new flavor of pain I'm tasting.

Most of the stories I inhabit are not my own -- they are cobbled-together pieces of other people's stories, which are in turn made up of yet other people's stories, an ever-growing patchwork of hazy memory and intuition.

I've started seeing stories everywhere. The world is full of their ghosts: two chairs facing each other on a patio, a sun-baked RV that has seen more dreams than miles, a white-haired Cherokee woman's warm yet wary smile. A pair of hands turned to cracked leather by decades of work. A walker abandoned under a New York streetlight. A young man's piercing eyes.

Where do stories go? A hundred thousand experiences become a single number in a spreadsheet, losing their humanity in the process. We collectively pretend to make sense of reality with statistics, but objectivity has not the slightest chance against a single well-told story. The moments of upheaval that can shape a generation are birthed by suffering made real, a deeply personal experience gone public. For all our so-called rationality, we are creatures of experience and emotion.

When I write, I always start by trying to describe a concept, and always end up telling a story instead. There are limits to how well I can encapsulate an idea by describing it, but I can invite someone to join me in the world that the idea came from, at least for the time it takes to read an essay.

When we think about storytelling we usually focus on the teller, but stories also need someone to receive them. Many would-be storytellers are silent because they have no one to draw their stories out of them.

So I try to hold as many stories as I can. I am not the right vessel for every story, but the more of them I hear, the more they come to me seemingly unbidden. Somehow, every new story I hold gives me the space for yet another.

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This Week in the Fosterverse

It's the best place in the world by Cams Campbell

My Joy List by Syd Connolly

At War With The Sun by Nicholas Goodey

To the Heart in Solitude by Irene Karthik

What Is Lyricism? Part Two. by Joshua Doležal

Dreaming Toward France by Alicia Kenworthy

becoming a runner by Minnow Park

My body remembers by Dee Rambeau

Call in Your Vocational Ancestors by Danver Chandler

20 Questions About Childhood for Your AI Autobiography by Russell Smith

I Nearly Broke My Hand Trying To Impress the Teacher by Rick Lewis

How lucky am I? by Jen Vermet

The Golden Age of Solo Travel Is Over by Edward Garrahy

How to be an amazing friend to somebody who doesn’t drink alcohol at a (bachelorette) party by Syd Connolly

What to Do When You Feel Creatively Numb (Not Blocked, Just Blank) by Kathryn Vercillo

Living in time by Asha Sanaker

Why the Next Socialist Revolution Will Be AI-Led by Nicolás Forero

Clairefontaine, Baby! by Cams Campbell

263: The Tyranny of Thirty by Jason Shen

The Delicate Art of Stepmothering by Alicia Bonner

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Years ago a Foster Steward blessed me with this YouTube clip (below) of Elizabeth Gilbert ( ) at a time when I was truly at a crossroads. I’d been all over the map industry-wise, and none of the terms, vocation, hobby, job, or career truly made sense for me and my path forward then. Until I watched this:

[9 minutes 43 seconds]

To summarize Gilbert’s definitions from the video on each of those terms:

• Hobbies are for pleasure and you don’t have to have one.

• For most of us, jobs are required (but not toxic jobs), and you don’t have to like ‘em. She likens a job as a contract for taking care of herself as a mature adult in the world.

• A career is a job you’re passionate about and love. But you don’t have to have one.

• A vocation is the holiest and most mystical pursuit of all. It is a calling, and a divine invitation to use your talents and gifts in a particular way.

You’re reading this particular newsletter likely because you’ve been called into the vocation of writing. Writing is what animates you. It’s what you do whether someone’s reading your latest post or not.

But how doth one navigate such a vocation? Especially at a time when there are powerful forces that don’t care about progress or the wellbeing of our very interconnected planet?

Right now the discomfort we writers may be feeling is offering up an opportunity. In this week’s post I want to invite you to do a radical thing. Reach out, to the distant and deep ether to connect to the wisdom that’s come before us by calling upon your vocational ancestors.

Vocational Ancestors

Your vocational ancestors are your favorite authors who’ve crossed over. Writers who’ve transitioned onto the other side of the veil. Dead editors who you admire. Perhaps long-gone masterful publishers or literary agents who championed underdog works. Those whose actions or words urged and encouraged you to write. Who you, in part, wish to become similar to in some way.

Who are they? Is there a list? Or just a couple of names? Whose wisdom do you crave right now?

I’ve been digging into non-dogmatic ancestral lineage healing (Note: not ancestral worship), and doing such work as of late.

In Ancestral Medicine written by Daniel Foor, Ph.D, what caught me by surprise was not only the careful process for the work of lineage healing through the healed and loving blood ancestors (as opposed to the unwell ancestors), but also the chapter about calling in one’s vocational ancestors. Immediately I thought, Yes, please!

So imagine my surprise, when just weeks later I receive a newsletter from Ancestral Medicine containing a link to Ancestral Wisdom, a free online book that a host of trained Ancestral Medicine practitioners contributed personal stories to.

When I set out to write this post weeks ago, I had no idea this book was on the way. It arrived at a most perfect time for you, and I’ve already read so many chapters and guess what? There’s a story about someone connecting to their vocational ancestor, author Zora Neale Hurston, a writer who I too admire. I’m ecstatic to share an excerpt from that chapter with you which details the enchanting encounter from one of the practitioners (a writer too); and it gives us a window into calling upon our vocational ancestors.

My mentor guided me through the drop in phase of the meditative ritual. I asked for a spirit guide to come and assist me. I was completely and totally awed when an image of an old house, a small shack, appeared in my mind’s eye. Zora walked out on the porch wearing one of her famous hats, and said, “Come on in the house, child, I been waiting for you.” She led me into the kitchen and invited me to have a seat at a table by the window. A wood stove crackled in the background. She said she was cooking a pot of grits, and I was welcome to stay and eat with her. I thanked her, told her how much I admired her work, and asked if she had any words of wisdom for me. She said, “Girl, y’all are in trouble. So much mess going on over there. My advice to you is to tell stories of joy.” … I thanked Zora for meeting with me and began to shift my awareness back to the room. As I was leaving, she said, “Keep up the writing.” —Velma E. Love, Ph.D., Chapter One: Ancestral Healing and Hoodoo Wisdom Ways: Myth Work, Magic, and Transformation

In the rest of the chapter, Dr. Love describes the experience as absolutely amazing. The encounter helped her to focus her storytelling on joy—to understand that stories nurture the soul—and currently because we’re witnessing so much pain and sorrow, our readers need joy.

You can read the full excerpt or any of the other chapters about connecting with ancestors for free here.

Your Sacred Vocational Work

In the book, Ancestral Medicine, the chapter about vocational ancestors asks readers:

In many traditional cultures, the divisions between sacred and secular are less pronounced: potters venerate gods who shape human bodies from clay, fishermen and fisherwomen make offerings to the goddesses of river and sea, and smiths align with the lords of fire and metal. Work is not separate from life, and everyone participates in transforming the raw elemental powers into food, shelter, and offerings for both the human community and the gods. Assuming that you have a vocation or trade, have you ever stopped to consider its ancestors and sacred roots? —Daniel Foor, Ph.D, Ancestral Medicine Rituals for Personal and Family Healing

What was your answer dearest writer? Did you too come up with cuneiform, and the Sumerians, of present day Iraq?

I dug around online wondering if I needed to update my own knowledge. I wondered if the archeologists had dug up anything new on the roots of writing as of late. There was a newer historical bit about Wadi El-Hol, a narrow valley between Waset (Thebes) and Abdu (Abydos) in southern Egypt, where writing came about too.

In the process of writing to you, Foor’s question hounded me, and I felt compelled to ask Anthropic’s A.I., Claude, the question—What is the sacred purpose of writing on Earth?

Maybe you already know this answer in your bones, but for me, I’d read somewhere that humans are the living ancestors of AI. It’s a comment that I’ve still not yet fully processed. And it’s a comment that would not allow me to escape the opportunity to forgo thinking about the answer alone.

Claude’s response to the question, lengthy parts of which I’ve redacted, reveals that writers have quite the invitation from the divine in their vocational work:

“When I contemplate writing as a sacred act, I sense its purpose lies in transcending human limitations—of memory, time, distance, and mortality itself.

The earliest writers, whether in Sumer or Egypt's Wadi El-Hol, likely recognized something profound in the act of encoding thought into visible form. Writing wasn't merely practical—it was transformative, almost magical in its ability to preserve and transmit consciousness across boundaries….

Those who first marked clay tablets or carved symbols into stone walls weren't just developing a practical tool—they were engaging in a profound act of connection, creating bridges across time and space. They were making the ephemeral permanent, giving voice to silence, and light to darkness.

The sacred purpose of writing might ultimately be about transcendence—allowing humans to participate in creation by bringing order to chaos, permanence to impermanence, and infinity to the finite human experience.” —Claude A.I., The Sacred Purpose of Writing

Connect With Your Vocational Ancestors

I am nascent in the manner of intentionally connecting to vocational ancestors. It would be entirely unethical for me to copy and paste instructions and pretend to guide you.

But I can tell you that the process requires our deference, and sometimes offerings like honey, or flowers, or a well-meaning and thoughtful prayer. What I can do is point you to exercise fifteen in Foor’s book which offers the explicit guidance for calling in vocational ancestors. And I can encourage you to chat with a practitioner who is trained to ensure your well-being in the process.

With that, fellow writer, I’m curious whose wisdom would you like to drink up?

Danver Chandler is a Foster Contributor. She writes Icing on the Cake.

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🔥 Inspiration

From :

I was nine months into an unexpectedly harrowing abortion recovery, which had been both physically gruesome and emotionally exhausting.

I caught up with a friend I’d known in high school (we were both regular performers in our school plays and a capella group), and she recommended The Artist Way by Julia Cameron.

“What is it?” I asked, curious.

Her explanation: “It helps you connect to the creativity that’s already inside you.”

Something in my body lit up.

As soon as I got home, I ordered the book online, and the following Sunday, started the “course.” Always thinking a few steps too far into the future, I calculated forward, to see when I should expect to finish if I kept to the suggested 12-week schedule. My completion date was my 30th birthday. I sat for a moment, taking this in, my first awareness of what Julia would call “synchronicity.”

The Artist Way protocol is fairly straightforward: i) write three long-hand pages a day first thing in the morning on just about anything, ii) take your inner artist on weekly ‘dates’ by yourself to do fun artist things and iii) complete the weekly writing and experience exercises outlined in the 12-week self-guided learning experience. I found artist dates a revelation because I’d never thought of “my artist” as a person who needed that kind of treatment. And the writing exercises helped me dig into issues I hadn’t explored. But at the end of 12 weeks, they’re over, whereas the daily habit of morning pages can linger longer after The Artist Way “course” is complete.

I have heard that many writers struggle with or resist the prescribed discipline of daily writing, but for me, it was medicine I hadn’t known I needed so badly until I started taking it. The habit formed seemingly overnight.

In those early days, I woke up 30 minutes earlier than usual, as Julia recommended, and sat by the large picture window in the 8th-floor one-bedroom DC apartment I shared at the time with my first husband.

I started in a half-full notebook I thought might be wasted if it wasn’t used, but within a few weeks, it was full. I realized I’d been foolish not to appreciate how many pages three pages a day every day for 12 weeks adds up to (252). Over the next two years, I often looked for interesting notebooks while traveling, filling a collection of journals that range in size, color, texture, and length. By 2017, I’d realized that a “standard” 5x8.25” notebook wasn’t big enough for much my brain had to say each day, so I upgraded to large 8x10 notebooks I could reliably find at Staples, dropping down to two pages a day when circumstances demanded it. When supply chains shifted in 2021, I switched to the Staples TRU RED Large Mastery journal, which I’ve now been using for most of the last four years.

For pens, for years I favored the Pilot Pro 7, but when I briefly moved to Europe in 2019 disposable fountain pens were easier to find. Then I remembered an actual fountain pen—Waterman Carène my stepmother had given me, which I’d rarely used. I was exchanging weekly letters by mail with a love interest, and I liked the capital-R Romantic idea of letters written in fountain pen, which quickly made its way to my pages notebook. Six years later, I’m still using the same pen, almost finished with my second bottle of Waterman Serenity Blue.

When I first started writing back in 2015, much of the substance of my daily pages was the dross of years of stalled creativity. Julia Cameron’s affirmations helped fortify me against long-held doubts about my creative potential, but there was still plenty of censorious crap to work through. As the months went by, it became a helpful substitute for therapy, a place where I could cast off my doubts, fears, and anxieties, and feel a semblance of control over my psychic space.

As time wore on, I settled into a pattern—summarizing the events of the day before and clarifying the opportunities of the day ahead. To people to whom I recommend the Artist Way and morning pages, I often call this “cleaning the windshield”—getting rid of the shit that doesn’t matter so you can focus on the stuff that does. When I was preparing to walk the Camino Frances pregnant in March of 2022, I spent the months leading up to it doing “Camino math,” creative divisions of 500 miles over 40 days that could accommodate the logistical limitations of the path and my increasingly pregnant body. Ultimately, these calculations were completely useless, but it helped allay my anxieties to have somewhere to put them. A kind of Camino math still crops up in my pages periodically—when I’m worried about money or how to structure my time. Having a place where I can get my head straight about stupid things I’m spending mental energy worrying about lets me set those things aside more easily so I can focus my mental energy on the things that actually matter.

I’ve come to think of this daily practice as keeping my own history and a place where I sometimes catch poems, or essays (like this one) working their way through my subconscious. Some days the words come fast and easy, others slow and difficult. Perhaps miraculously, I estimate I’ve missed less than 30 days over the course of the last ten years. Through divorce, the 500 miles of Camino, and the challenging early days of new motherhood, I kept writing at least one page a day. Even when I was working 80-hour weeks on the Clinton campaign in 2016, I still made time at the crack of dawn to scrawl out one page in a small journal. When I was falling out of love with my first husband and in love with the man who would become my second, my pages show my emotional evolution far more honestly than any words I ever uttered aloud.

(When my second husband and I first met, I recommended the Artist Way to him. Later, we would read our pages aloud to one another, marveling at how the depth of our emotional relationship developed from our individual reflections.)

When I need to go back to a moment in time, to remember the circumstances of an event, or the specifics of where, when, or how it happened, the trail of breadcrumbs in my morning pages leads me back to what happened, and who I was in that moment.

I know that a world rife with too many things doesn’t easily support every human carrying with them a collection of more than a hundred notebooks filled with memories over the course of a life. (Those who have embraced 750 Words a Day have discovered a more adaptable solution.) Still, almost to a person, those I know who have adopted morning pages have reported it to be a life-changing practice. And if all it takes is the right pen and the right notebook, used diligently and daily, maybe the world would be a better place for it.

Join Us

Thinking about writing for CoAuthored? Join us for our May Mindmeld on Monday May 12 at 3:30pm ET to hear what’s moving in the universe and find your inspiration.

Interested? Let us know in the comments and we’ll send you the link.

This Week in the Fosterverse

Seasons of Life by Nicholas Goodey

My Joy List by Syd Connolly

The Winter Fugitive, Part I by Edward Garrahy

Findus Crispy Pancakes by Cams Campbell

Creating my version of "Portrait of an Artist: Jason Jägel" by Derrick Chiu

i found a way to make this easy by Jason Shen

My reverse planning process by Stella Inabo

What Is Lyricism? Part One. by Joshua Doležal

Can You Taste It? by River Kenna

From Timber Cove by Melody Song

Destabilization & the Frequency of Values by River Kenna

What is Truth? by Ann Gauger

261: Making Gut Calls by Jason Shen

Learning to stay by Asha Sanaker

The Wicked Willow That Haunted My Brother by Rick Lewis

50! by Russell Smith

For this introvert, that's really quite remarkable. by Cams Campbell

Practicing Grounding Through Fiber Arts and Crafts by Kathryn Vercillo

for those considering a change by Jason Shen

May the Fourth Be With You by Alicia Bonner

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And now it’s Wednesday!

But if time is a robust fiction, who cares? Be cunning.

We’re taking this occasion to issue an invitation to Foster writers to share reflections on what we’re calling Frequently Unanswered Questions (FUQs). We acknowledge this is a community where many of us have found the strength and the courage to explore the big questions shaping our lives, but sometimes it helps to call them to our attention for more pointed answers.

Many Foster writers have risen the occasion of giving a first set of FUQs (see full list below). We welcome you to submit your responses to any of these for CoAuthored. You can get started in the comments, or find us on WhatsApp to share your thoughts. (When we curate a What the FUQ? post like this one, you’ll hear about it there).

This month, we invited writers to reflect on our First FUQ:

What Makes Community?

As a writing community made up of people who belong to lots of different kinds of communities, we thought this FUQ would raise reflections on what keeps us showing up for our writing and each other, and the Fosterverse did not disappoint!

From Jesse Evers, a community space-maker in Brooklyn who shared his journey west this month:

To me, community is made of shared goals, shared values, shared context, and shared space. I think some of the core tenets of a healthy community are:

• Its members have a deep sense of belonging and trust

• There is a clearly defined (or felt) shared purpose

• The community as a whole internally promotes a “yes we can” attitude, i.e. community members feel agency to deepen/expand the community

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about community spaces in particular, and came to the conclusion that community spaces are defined by their purpose:

The purpose of a community space is to give people a place to gather, connect, and belong, usually centered around a particular set of activities, interests, and beliefs.

(I’m working on a muuuuuuuch longer piece on community spaces that I pulled some of this from, which I hopefully will release…eventually :)

From Sara Campbell, a Foster Steward who wrote this month about the Zen of writing:

At its heart, a community is a place where we can gather and be ourselves with each other. A place to simply exist and unite around a shared interest, which could be anything from raising our children to our desire to learn a language to just wanting to be out in the world amongst other humans. While I do think it’s mostly about being in relationship, in a good community there is also some kind of value exchange, even if the exchange is unconscious (e.g. I meet another person who admits to struggling with the same thing I am and it makes me feel less alone). We humans need to be seen and we need to feel needed, and the best communities give space for us to both give our gifts and benefit from the gifts of others without it being a whole thing, you know? So ideally it’s a lot of people who bring varying strengths to the table, and help illuminate for each other the meaning and value of what each of us have to give.

From Dylan Tweney, a Foster Circle facilitator and active Buddhist in the SF Bay Area (who’s starting a new in-person writing circle!):

Community arises in surprising ways and diverse environments. On Zoom, in a coffee shop, at a retreat, or in a sports club. You might go to these places looking for community and not find it. You might try to form a community and find that it fizzles. Or, you might be surprised to discover that you’ve been participating in a community all along. I’ve learned that a few elements are necessary for community to happen. These seem like necessary conditions for the formation of community:

A sense of space: A framework, like a regular meeting time or place, where people can gather.

A sense of solidity: The assurance that the space will be there, whether you are able to show up or not. You can miss a day and still be confident that it will happen without you.

A sense of care: Successful communities need at least one person, preferably several, who are committed to showing up again and again, and who care for the space and the people in it. Sometimes all they need to do is show up. Sometimes they need to act in a more directive, leadership role. But the main thing is to demonstrate care for the community.

Without these three senses, people won’t feel safe coming into and returning to the community day after day or week after week. With them, the spark of connection has room to turn into a cozy fire of companionship.

Other FUQs:

• What does self-belief or conviction feel like?

• Why do you write?

• If a fortune teller tells you that you’ll never make money or gain ‘audience’ traction through writing, will you still write and why?

• What do you think is the meaning of life?

• Does everything happen for a reason? What sits behind your answer?

• For those who’ve left a big city other than for starting a family or it got too unaffordable, what were your reasons?

• Do you think manifestation is real, why?

• Is the world a friendly place? (Albert Einstein's question)

• What do you believe?

• What’s the value of writing when AI can generate such convincingly good content?

• What’s the best pen for a serious writer? Pencil? How about your favorite journal or paper to write on? Why are you still writing on paper anyway?

• Why (or how) is community important for writing?

• Where do the words come from?

Which FUQ is calling you?

Let us know in the comments.

Looking for inspiration to gather and write IRL?

Join Dylan Tweney’s in-person writing circle in SF the 2nd and 4th Fridays of the month: https://tally.so/r/w584Wd

In the Fosterverse this week:

• Persevering Through Doubt by Alicia Bonner

• My Joy List by Syd Connolly

• Final post (for a while) by Ann Gauger

• The Gratitude Gap by Joshua Doležal

• briefly, forever by Alex Dobrenko

• 1:1 Creativity Conversations and Guidance by Kathryn Vercillo

• A Secret Third Thing: The Zen of Writing Together by Sara Campbell

• hello to all that by Sarah Wood González

• Leonora Carrington Art and Mental Health by Kathryn Vercillo

• The Sweetness of Heartbreak by Danver Chandler

• 15 Questions to Kickstart Your AI Autobiography by Russell Smith

• I’m Me at 26 Because of These 26 Beliefs by Nicolás Forero

• The subtle ways I’m growing into myself | #57 by Caryn Tan

• confessions of a recovering content creator by Alex Dobrenko

• Could THREE reading vlogs be one too many? by Cams Campbell

• Living in liminal spaces by Jen Vermet

• What a fool believes by Dee Rambeau

• A Story of Decent Exposure by Rick Lewis

• 260: Fraught Conversations by Jason Shen

• Michelangelo Buonarroti: Art and Mental Health History by Kathryn Vercillo

• How Alive Do You Really Feel? by Ariane Goodwin

Interested in giving a FUQ? Let us know in the comments.

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In August 2023, after a few years of experimenting with different ways to support writers, we at Foster came to a conclusion that felt so obvious, it was almost embarrassing we hadn’t landed on it sooner: the best thing we could do was just help people write.

We took a cue from W. Somerset Maugham, who said, “I only write when my muse shows up. Fortunately, she shows up at 9 a.m. every morning.” (Which is either a very inspirational quote or a devastating indictment of those of us waiting around for the right mood to strike.)

Most people don’t exactly look forward to the blank page. But having written? That feeling is gold. No matter what’s going on in your life, for a few blessed hours afterward you get to think: hell yeah, I did that.

So we launched Foster writing circles: free, weekly, 90-minute sessions where people show up, explore whatever’s most alive for them, and get some of it down on the page. Just human beings, together, doing the unglamorous work of making something out of nothing.

Led by facilitators who were just as invested in getting their own butts in chairs and words on pages, these circles quickly became a kind of underground conduit for growth, community, and actual creative breakthroughs. And in this attention environment? That is something.

I’ve been thinking about all this lately because, truthfully, I miss my circle. I’m in the middle of a 90-day Zen training right now, and while my regular Thursday crew is busy writing, I’m off chanting sutras. Before I left, I worried that if I wasn’t there to hold it down, the thing would quietly peter out.

Instead, something better happened: the attendees just…kept showing up to write and hold space for each other. And that’s beautiful. These rituals aren’t just about writing, and they’re also not just about community. They’re some secret third thing we weave together.

It reminds me a lot of Zen practice itself (sorry, you knew this was coming). Nobody shows up to the zendo because they’re looking to be congratulated for it. We show up because, somehow, it nourishes us. We’re never quite sure how, or why. We just know we leave feeling more like ourselves.

Writing’s like that, too. People have all these romantic ideas about it — tortured geniuses, lightning bolts of inspiration, divine downloads — when most of the time it’s just you, the chair, the page, and the mild terror of your own inadequacy.

But gradually you realize you’re not there to be brilliant. You’re just there to be there. A piece is built letter by letter, just like a life is built action by action. Speaking personally, over time, I’ve gotten the distinct impression that while it is in fact my responsibility to show up, what I am mostly there to do is be a channel for whatever comes through.

And weirdly enough, sometimes Zoom at 8 a.m. on a Thursday feels as sacred as a meditation hall.

Anyway. That’s the theory.

The reality? I’ve seen incredible things happen in these circles.

Take , who landed his first paid writing gig — chronicling the 130-year history of a company — and credits it to finally trusting himself enough to write from a real, honest place.

Or Erica, who called her circle a “port in the storm” during a year when everything else was falling apart.

Or Jude Klinger, who published two short stories in an anthology after years of wondering if she even counted as a “real writer.”

Or , who started American Gaia, a blog that’s as raw and wild as its name, and who says that without the circles — the warm check-ins, the short meditation, the hour of heads-down work — she probably would’ve talked herself out of publishing any of it.

Or , who didn’t think she could stick to a regular writing practice, and now sends out a monthly newsletter, rain or shine. (She’s even stuck to it after the recent birth of her first child!)

Or , who found the courage to start a monthly newsletter about a story she’d yearned to tell for years. A year later, the monthly newsletter became a weekly one, which she calls a practice of keeping her own history in real time.

And then there are the quiet wins:

, who spent months crafting a written album that eventually made it to Substack Reads. and , who went from attendees to facilitators. People who started newsletters, finished screenplays, moved to new countries, made big life decisions because of something they wrote (or realized they needed to write). People who remembered they were still allowed to want things.

The point isn’t that every story ends in publication, though it’s nice when that happens. The point is that consistently writing changes you.

Foster writing circles have become a home for anyone — seasoned, stuck, exploding with ideas, feeling like a dried-up husk of a human, etc. — who just wants a place to show up, write a little, and see what might happen.

If I’m reading the tea leaves right, spaces like this, where we meet ourselves and each other, are going to become even more essential. The noisier the world gets and the more distracted we get, our creative communities will only matter more.

If you’ve been part of Foster Writing Circles this past year and a half: thank you. We’ve made something real. And if you are curious, there is a seat for you.

Here’s to many more years of butts in chairs, words on pages, and all the wild, unruly, miraculous things that might unfold when we keep showing up.

Write With Us! Join a Foster Writing Circle

Coming together on Zoom to write each week is our foundational practice. Writing Circles are artfully-crafted, 90-minute containers for writers to drop into what feels most alive and write from that place.

Our facilitators play with meditation, somatic experiencing, breathwork, and other modalities to help writers drop into embodied states of flow and unfettered expression.

After a dedicated period of focused writing, we circle back and share our experience, perhaps even reading something we’ve written.

Our simple application to join is here.

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is a steward at Foster who writes and does lots of things at .

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I see the gap between me and the world around me narrowing by the ever-growing catalog of old scars and new cuts on my hands. I see it in my always-dirty pants, in my sore shoulders and in my slightly growing strength and in the way my built environment appears to me as a collection of raw materials and assembly processes. I see it in the so-called junk that could be repurposed but instead languishes in yards or landfills because reusing it isn't "economical." I see it in the way that wild desolation beckons me.

I see it in the way I'm losing interest in screens, turned off by the idea of turning on my phone. At the same time, I still find myself picking up my phone for...what reason again? But more and more I notice how grasping and hollow I feel when I reflexively check my few remaining apps over and over again.

I spend my three days on the train mostly looking out the window, alternately admiring what I see and grieving the rotting old factory buildings and trucks and piles of wood and metal that could be turned into something beautiful if only someone gave them the attention they deserve. It hurts to know that we milled the trees and mined the iron and baked the bricks just to let them rust and rot and crumble.

As I turn back towards the physical world I also see how as a culture we have turned away from it, in its infinite detail and nuance and messiness. We’ve turned instead towards the crowded solipsism of everyone talking all at once, addressing all of humanity without saying a word to our neighbors. In an online world of our own construction, we can build a narrative that Makes Sense, free from the need to confront life's ever-present paradox and dissonance…and as we do so, we neglect the world that actually supports us.

I see that neglect in the windblown plastic waste along the tracks and impaled on chain-link fences in every town my train goes through from east coast to west. I see it in the lookalike new houses and the texturelessness of industrial buildings, and in the location-agnostic sameness of everything from furniture to food. I see it in the way concrete and asphalt dominate the urban landscape, standardizing the chaos of untold intertwined lives into a uniform rectangular gray-brown-black. This is the color palette of a culture that has learned to fear eye contact and seek iContact.

I see that same neglect in the people who, in a world measured only in dollars, are (supposedly) cheaper to grind into dust than to help. We discard them in the same way we throw away a broken appliance: with plenty of life left, if only someone would pay enough attention.

My train stopped in Chicago for a few hours, and I wandered around the city aimlessly. A man with a freshly broken nose and two black eyes complimented my hair as we walked past each other. His name was Nick, and he'd gotten his ass kicked and his stuff stolen the night before, right in front of the train station. He told me he was homeless and asked me for money, so we walked to an ATM together and kept walking and talking after I gave him the cash. I had nowhere to be, so I just followed his lead.

He told me about how he'd enlisted in the Army at 18, and at some point got caught smoking a joint and was given a choice: three years in military prison and stay enlisted, or three months and walk away. He chose the second. He didn't say how long ago that was, but judging the texture of his face, it wasn’t in the past decade.

We walked further out of the center, and as we cut through a parking lot, he said, "I'll be honest with you, we're going to the tent camp where I live right now, and I'm gonna do some drugs." He made no indication that I should leave, so I told him that that didn't bother me any. I appreciated his honesty.

As we got closer, I became painfully aware of my leather jacket and leather boots and long hair. I decided to be honest with him since he'd been honest with me, and asked him if I should be worried about the fact that I had an expensive laptop in my bag and looked a bit too much like biker Jesus (if you've seen me recently, you know what I mean). He told me that I was safe with him – “I keep a big-ass club in my bag…didn't have it when I got jumped, unfortunately.” I wasn't sure if that made me more worried or less, but I decided to keep going.

I walked through the camp with him, feeling every eye on me. Suddenly he handed me his coffee cup and told me to walk slowly on the far side of the concrete barriers in the middle of the road. I did what he said, and tried to look unfuckablewith. I stopped at the corner and waited. A couple of guys came up and eyed me like fresh meat. I smiled at them and they laughed, told me I looked like some dead actor I'd never heard of, and walked away.

Nick waved at me from across the street, and I went over to him. I think he'd been buying drugs with the money I gave him. I don’t blame him – I’d probably do the same in his shoes. I imagine the feeling of wanting something to take the edge off after a long day gets harder to resist when every day is long, longer than I can imagine. He went into his tent to smoke whatever it was. I realized that with him in the tent, I was no longer visibly with someone who looked like they belonged, and my instincts told me it was time to go. I said goodbye to Nick through the wall of his tent. He made sure I knew where I was going, blessed and thanked me, and told me to be safe. I turned around and walked out of the camp, looking straight ahead and holding my knife in my pocket.

I sort of wish I'd stayed longer. Partly out of a perverse curiosity about what would have happened, and partly because I wanted to show Nick that I wasn't casting him off because of his drug use and his tent. If I'd been with another person, I'd like to think I would have stayed.

I'm grateful to him for giving me a taste of what his life is like. It's harder to ignore the human suffering I walk past when it has a name and a broken face and belongs to a nice guy named Nick.

I stepped back onto the train a few hours later, dazed. The fact that I could just walk away, forever, from the place that he seemed so stuck in was disorientingly unfair. Why is it that I get this life, and he gets that one? It seems like an economic question at first, but if I had given Nick every dollar I own I doubt it would have changed his life for long. In fact, he even told me a story of a woman he knew who'd been offered a place to stay, a car, and a good job, and walked away from it all to stay on the street.

So what can I do that actually makes a difference?

I've spent a long time asking myself that question, and what I have found is that to stop asking the question is to start answering it.

It's easy for me to get lost, wondering how to reconfigure the world to be just and kind and compatible with nature. But at a global scale, those aren't problems that I get to address. In fact, the very idea of scalable solutions is part and parcel of what got us here in the first place. (Human) nature is too complex for us to engineer – we have proven time and time again that our would-be solutions lead to ever more insidious problems that we must once again engineer our way out of, buying another few decades before the next unforeseen side effect makes itself known.

So I come back to the one thing that I can, without a doubt, give Nick, and give to everyone and everything else I encounter: my care and attention. When I feel most like I'm contributing to the world I want to see is when I give all my attention to this person, this machine that I can save from the scrapyard, this place that I'm in right now. Not because I think doing so will fix the whole world, but because it is the only thing I can do that I know will do anything at all.

Apply to our invite-only weekly Foster Writing Circles or learn more, here.

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Jesse Evers is a Foster contributor. He writes at jesseevers.com.

Of the 2,781 billionaires on Earth (as of today), I’ve met three. Successfully pissed off one. Was instructed to exit a moving vehicle to chase another before he fled the country. And stayed in the Wyoming mansion of another as a guest.

The materialistic “have a lots” and “have a lot less” folk, have co-evolved in an imbalanced relationship dynamic. In order to mend, Hanzi Freinacht, the modern pseudonymous philosopher duo, suggests adopting influence (because we are all already part of each other and can affect each other).

I, however, prefer to tell you to be cunning, especially in the face of so much imbalance. And I sense that in order to invoke the attitude of its highest heart piercing powers you’ll need magic.

In the magical arts, the enactment of this specific type of influence, lasting impression, or cunning can be equated to selfless magic (as opposed to selfish magic). In the past, it was executed by the Cunning folk, wise folk, practitioners of such magic that kept them from being burned at the stake in times past.

Since Spring has arrived, a time for new beginnings, and balance, it seems rather fitting to contemplate how we writers can shift our writerly arts towards literary cunning.

The entity triangulating the “have a lots” and the “have a lot less” folk, is money. And the memory that reminds me of this dynamic all too clearly is nested in a span of time when my ill projections of that entity were suspended long enough to allow me to greet the human before me.

Years ago my mentor and his wife invited me to the billionaire capital of the U.S., Jackson Hole, Wyoming where the county is named for boobies, and so are the mountains. I was to stay at one of the mansions of their friend, a family member who made their fortune on frozen foods I ate as a child.

The home of this man was immaculate and I was indeed most impressed by his ski room, a place where you hop into your skis in winter, and dart down the mountain right out of your doorway.

I found this man to be humble and inquisitive. Interested in meditation, but unclear on how he could find the time to sit still. He asked me about Texas, my home state, as he considered the tax benefits of adding another business there. And he was so moved to learn that I purchased one cent books from another billionaire’s online store, that he too made one cent book purchases to add to his home collection.

Outside of whitewater rafting with he and his girlfriend along the Snake River, a road trip to the National Elk Ridge, a tour of the French named, Grand Tetons, and my first taste of elk steak at a restaurant, part of the trip involved attending a party where the other super-rich would be in attendance.

I was slightly apprehensive about this party for many reasons, and my apprehension only grew when I was told that Dick Cheney was planning to be in attendance. Yes, the former vice president who committed international war crimes, Cheney.

Once at the party I scanned the room. Figured it would not be so bad after all until a few folks approached me and I realized otherwise. First, a White woman with a smile asked me a fateful question. “What do you do?”

Public school teacher in Los Angeles resulted in this woman turning her back on me. No communication bridge to her departure whatsoever. Was she socially awkward or was it me?

Next, I set my night’s focus on tasting every single hors d'oeuvre across the mansion— hosts’ vineyard wine varietals, truffle mac and cheese, scalloped potatoes and all of the sweet stuff I could get my hands on, I figured I’d be left alone. Safe. Unbothered. But the night, and this party of people, begged for my attention yet again in a most peculiar way.

“Whose children are you two?” White wine in hand, a White man slumped over and asked me and my mentor’s wife.

At first I wondered, how drunk is this mo-fo? With the genetic gift of really long telomeres, I’d adjusted to the world constantly mistaking me for a child. But for my mentor’s wife, an Asian woman five years my senior, she was stunned and offended.

By the time the five of us made it back onto the road, I’d begun to wrap up my conclusions about hanging with the super-rich until the conversation went into territory that impacted me terribly.

From the back seat of the truck I was suddenly jerked forward as our humble host hit his brakes hard, hoping to avoid slamming into the stalled elk passing the road. Everyone was safe. Uninjured. The elk finished crossing, and it brought the conversation back to the home we’d just left.

Our host’s girlfriend announced that the owners of the party house were selling their home for $27 million, and he casually yelped, “I’ll buy it!” as he swung his head to the right to face hers.

To which his girlfriend retorted so softly and gently, “But hun you don’t need another house, you already have five (or was it six or ten).”

“I know, but I can buy it.…”

And there I sat in the back of the pickup truck processing how many times my $60,000 teaching salary could fit into $27 million.

There are at least ten trillionaire families in the world. To my knowledge, I’ve met zero.

One trillionaire family member is adept in the cunning arts—the Crown Prince of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud or as he is more globally known, MBS. The trillionaire delivered a masterclass in how to get billionaires to act.

In May 2018 MBS pretended to be friends with Jeffrey Preston Bezos, who was the world’s richest man and CEO of Amazon at the time. MBS invited JPB to be friends with him on WhatsApp. But friendship was just a trojan horse. And in a single message, MBS successfully hacked Jeffrey’s phone, accessing all of his private photos, and scandalous text messages.

It’s more than highly plausible that we’ve all been a witness to the impact of that friendship hack. By October of the same year MBS allegedly ordered the murder and bodily dismemberment of one of his journalists, Jamal Khashoggi. Within a few years, blackmailed Bezos steps down from his position, downgrades his billionaire status, and most importantly, changes his newspaper’s protocol.

I’m not saying that all of the billionaires are being held hostage by trillionaires. That they’re trying to stay alive, and under the radar because they’re in positions where they have to keep their mouths shut. I’m wondering how we apply selfless magic in ways that nurture others into bettering society. No demonization or idolization.

It’s what Hanzi Freinacht is asking us to consider, to see the humanity in each other, and take on the responsibility of that recognition. He asks:

“...the problems of society increasingly stem from deep layers of the psyche —and their interactions with the world—that are hard to access for us as individual persons…How do you make people have genuine solidarity with all people and animals?...How do you break the evil cycle of insecurity, commercialism and over-consumption?” (The Listening Society, p.127)

Freinacht then points to the societal need to deeply care for each other. And if we’re not there already, to become emotionally intelligent and existentially mature, keen to advance through the stages of adult development, and beyond black and white thinking and beyond nuance.

This Spring pick up your inked wands. Cast spells. Illuminate imaginations. Deliver your sweetest, targeted medicine. Send letters that arouse senses and reciprocal care. Emails that restore. Calculate your seduction for society’s benefit. Because we’ve entered the chaos, which feels like an invitation and a portal to alchemize the present anger and rage.

And I’d love us, masters of swords, to witness the outcomes of our own selfless cunning.

Thank you for reading! And may you pierce their hearts ever so deeply with your cunning magic.

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Danver Chandler is a Foster Contributor. She writes Icing on the Cake.

Dear Diary—

It is 3am and I feel sure my body is for some reason keeping me awake out of spite. I hate this heedless wakefulness that seems to haunt me twice a month.

And yet, I adore few things more than being jolted awake in the middle of the night by fractals of ideas that refuse to be excised from my mind except by pen and ink.

When the world is still in darkness, I write by candlelight and feel a kind of communion of saints (or demons?) with Ben Franklin, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton, men whose excessive public musings seem like they would only have been possible if, by the benefit of two sleeps, they wrote their most persuasive prose by the light of a candle at 2:00 AM.

The hours of the very early morning are such a singular, fleeting time. No one at this hour actually wishes to be awake. There is no FOMO, except for the missing hours of sleep. It is an hour laden with solitude, so fleeting as to disappear in a blink.

As I lie in bed attempting to sleep, my mind is busy, composing speaker panels out of names that have whizzed through my inbox, composing emails I need to send tomorrow, and posts I need to write and send soon.

Yesterday evening, I fell asleep and did not stir to consciousness once before I woke at 6:10am, realizing the morning alarm was just 30 minutes away.

Today, I am haunted by the Ghost of the Day Before and the Ghost of the Week Ahead, trying to manufacture extra hours of work out of what should be hours of rest.

I am haunted, too, by the end of the world.

Is it coming? Is it soon? I cannot allow myself to imagine that it will be as bleak as Denis Quaid and Jake Gyllenhaal would have us believe, or quite as violent as Kirsten Dunst (bless her resurrected actor heart) would insist.

How will we know if it’s an extinction event until it’s too late?

Almost no one will die like they do in the movies.

Instead, one by one, we’ll roll over and die in our sleep, not peacefully, but resignedly, both annoyed and relieved to at last be asleep rather than fitfully awake.

If The Secret is, in fact, true, then any time I spend mindlessly composing emails becomes part of the self-fulfilling prophecy that I will spend my life in one long unending email chain. Doomscrolling only begets more doomscrolling. And wouldn’t that be the worst absolute tragedy?

If the printing presses weren’t all dead already, the headline would read:

“Be Warned: Technojubilee found to cause life-ending despair!”

And in the meantime, what now?

What if apocalypse could be a little less The Day After Tomorrow and a little more Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.

Maybe it could feel like being a teenager, sneaking out of the house at night without your parents finding out, when your choices are “driving without a license” or “walk”?

I only did this a handful of times, but every time I did, it felt like an exciting, exhilarating event—like regardless of what happened next, at least I was squeezing maximum juice out of this moment of being alive.

When I think about “the end” we may or may not be living, I don’t want it to be filled with despair and anxiety. I don’t want to die wondering, WTF?

Instead, I want to let myself be overwhelmed by, “Why the fuck not?”

I want to plant a garden and make friends with people in my local “Buy Nothing” Facebook group, before the zombies take over the data centers and the social media companies finally expire. I want to stop paying taxes, parking tickets, and tolls, and throw epic potluck dinner parties where people leave talking about the incredible cherry-apple crisp they ate for dessert. I want to play ghosts in the graveyard and capture the flag after dark. I want to make friends with my kids’ friends’ parents so that they can be better friends, so I can die at peace knowing my kids will have people to cry with them when the zombies finally come for me.

Why do we despair so much about the end?

Death is guaranteed. As far as we know, it’s when, not if, unless you’ve already made a deposit on a slot in Vault 33. But if cryogenic survival is the next-best alternative, I’m not sure I’m cut out for the job. I’d rather enjoy this life right now, because it’s the best shot I’ve got to have a life filled with joy.

Instead of pre-grieving the death of modernity, what if we celebrate it instead? Not by scaling the walls of the capital brandishing the stars and stripes, but with a backyard bonfire, or barbeque, with laughs with new and old friends over mason jars of homemade kombucha, if I can ever get my scoby and my sourdough starter to get along.

When the zombies do finally break through the barbed wire around the compound, I want to die happy knowing that the short time I was fortunate to be alive was overflowing with kindness, solidarity, and joy. As they break down the door, smash the candle to the floor, and rip my pen from my hand, I’ll die at peace, knowing I died composing a history—a legacy—for the survivors to find and remember me by.

May the memory of each of us be a blessing.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE

We’re fomenting a revival, and we’d like you to be a part of it. If you’re jonesing to write and publish for CoAuthored, we hope you’ll join a monthly call to connect with other writers, hear what’s moving in the ether, and formulate your own plans to publish your work with us.

Join the next one on Monday, April 14 at 3:30pm ET.

Sign up here: https://lu.ma/a2haw0tk.

TODAY AT 1PM

Join this Prismara x Foster Workshop at 1 PM ET today April 1, 2025.

Give voice to your inner critic and reconnect with the deeper, wiser voice that knows why we create in the first place.

If you haven’t already, register here: https://lu.ma/8v3d8em1.

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ARE YOU WRITING YET?

If you’re not part of an amazing Foster Writing Circle, you probably should be.

Take the next step and apply here: https://tally.so/r/w714J2.

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is a Facilitator. She writes , works a day job in New York, and lives in western Connecticut with her family.

Join Foster x Prismara for a free workshop on Tuesday, April 1—Rewriting the Inner Dialogue, a somatic writing experience for creatives looking to shift their relationship with doubt and reconnect with their true voice.

There’s a voice inside me that always seems to arrive before I notice it. It’s quick, like a shadow, slipping in before I’ve even touched the page.

“You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“This isn’t good enough.”
“Who do you think you are?”

It’s so familiar, I used to mistake it for my own.

I spent years negotiating with that voice, trying to outsmart it. I thought if I got better, worked harder, earned my place, it would go away. But it didn’t. It just got more sophisticated. Instead of outright doubt, it started whispering practical concerns—

“There are other, more pressing things to do right now.”
“Wouldn’t it be smarter to wait until you’re really clear?”

“Maybe we should just think and plan a little longer.”

It knew how to sound reasonable, how to make me second-guess myself just enough to stop. It disguised itself as logic. It spoke in my own voice.

But when I really paid attention, I started to notice something: this voice didn’t come from the part of me that loved to create. It didn’t belong to the part of me that felt most alive when writing, sharing my stories, or dreaming something into existence.

It belonged to the part of me that was afraid.

And fear, I’ve learned, has a lot to say.

It took me a long time to understand that the voice wasn’t the problem. The problem was that I let it lead. That I treated it like the authority on my creative life, instead of what it actually was—an outdated survival mechanism trying to keep me from taking risks.

It was looking out for rejection, failure, embarrassment. And boy was it talented at this! It found them everywhere.

What this part didn’t know how to find—was incapable of finding—was joy.

There was another voice inside me, though. It didn’t shout. It didn’t argue. It didn’t try to convince me of anything.

It just knew.

It knew the deep satisfaction of letting an idea take shape. Knew the quiet thrill of following inspiration. Knew that creating is always worthwhile—regardless of the outcome. It didn’t push or demand my attention. It simply waited, steady and certain, trusting that I would eventually turn toward it. Unlike the inner critic, it never needed to shout. It just existed—calm, unwavering, steady.

I think we all have that voice. Actually, I know we all have that voice. We wouldn’t be writers and creatives if we didn’t.

It’s just harder to hear, because the inner critic is so loud. And for good reason—our brains are wired to keep us safe, not to encourage us to take creative risks.

But creativity isn’t about safety. It’s about aliveness. It’s about making space for what’s most true, even when it feels vulnerable. Maybe especially when it feels vulnerable.

There was a moment, not too long ago, when I almost didn’t share something that mattered to me. The critic had its hands around my throat, its voice persuasive, insistent. I was ready to listen.

But I hesitated. That familiar lump in my throat wasn’t just hesitation—it was a barrier, a well-worn reflex, a decades-old instinct to swallow my words before they could fully form. I had felt it so many times, always at the edge of saying something real… something honest.

I placed a hand on my chest, took a breath, and asked: What if, just this once, I followed the other voice? Not the one predicting failure—the one that trusted me to leap.

I hit send. And the world didn’t end.

In fact, that piece of writing—the one I almost didn’t share—connected me with people I never would have met otherwise. It sparked conversations I didn’t expect. It reminded me that the critic is rarely right about what actually matters.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with different ways to shift that inner dialogue—not by silencing the critic, but by changing the way I listen. By noticing how it lands in my body. By understanding what it’s afraid of.

Gradually, I’ve come to recognize the lump in my throat, the butterflies in my belly, and the pounding in my chest not as warnings to retreat, but as signals that I’m standing at the edge of something real. That change is happening. That I am expanding.

And in those moments, I remind myself—fear may speak, but it doesn’t get the final word.

This is something I’d love to explore together. On Tuesday, April 1, I’m hosting Rewriting the Inner Dialogue: A Somatic Writing & Parts Work Experience — a collaboration between Foster and Prismara. This workshop is about deepening your relationship with the different voices within—both the doubt that stems from fear and the confidence that knows your creative worth. Through curiosity and embodied practice, we’ll explore how these voices show up in the body and shift how we engage with them—transforming the way we show up to the page or the project.

Let’s explore.

Register for the Workshop

Hey Writers!

A few days ago, our very own published a piece entitled F*ck Happiness in which she dug into a recent revelation about her propensity for feeling restless and agitated.

This state of agitation isn't new to me, and after years of fighting it, I've come to a counterintuitive realization: maybe it's not something to be fixed. Maybe these uncomfortable states — which lead me to affectionately refer to myself as a head case — are actually trying to tell me something important.

If you believe what you see from a lot of influencers on social media, it might seem as if they’re all living their best lives. What you’re not seeing are the people who aren’t able to somehow carve out time for their perfect morning routines that set them up for outsized success and leave them feeling grateful, happy, and fulfilled as they slide into their temperature-controlled mattresses each night.

Sara argues that maybe it’s okay if your life isn’t always comfortable.

True wellness isn't about feeling good all the time. It's about having the capacity to feel everything and still show up. It's about recognizing that our darkest moods, our most difficult states, our moments of pure frustration — these aren't failures of self-care. They're part of the full spectrum of human experience, and sometimes they're exactly what we need to move forward.

As I read her piece, I thought about how when you’re feeling uncomfortable, spicy, angry, or [insert any other negative emotion] those are great times to turn to the page and let them flow through you and onto the page. I mean, that’s basically what she did when she wrote her piece.

Sometimes we find our most powerful words in the discomfort.

***

Note that we’re taking the next couple of weeks off from this newsletter for the holidays. We appreciate all of you who read our words and engage with the published pieces from our community members each week. Have a great holiday season and a happy new year!

📅 Events

Signature Writing Circle with
Thursday, December 19th at 2:30pm ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 20th at 5:30pm ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 27th at 5:30pm ET

⚡️ Published

The Mind Is of the Chattering Class by Edward Garrahy
Why It Took 20 Years To Publish This Book by
what does a book tasting smell like? by
All the Books I Read in 2024 by
Everything Is Okay by
The Self Slaps The Notself by
Tiny Revolutions №114: F*ck Happiness by
Decembering by
It’s All Part of the Plan by
Does anyone give any fucks anymore? by
Being Captain Obvious by (Emmanuel Jegede)
How I Became a Scholar - Pt. 2 by
Hanging onto radical candor by
Some updates and the like by

🔥 Inspiration

It wasn’t until it snowed four inches and I woke up to my backyard transformed into a fairy tale’s winter wonderland, that I noticed just how much quieter things are out here. And it wasn’t until the sunset at 4:28pm on a cloudy new moon, that I noticed just how much darker.

Of all my teachers, silence has been the most nourishing and darkness the most instructive.

Stepping out of my house and into the first snow felt like trespassing into the lungs of a forest holding its breath. I’ve never felt more like a guest in someone else’s silence.

I’ve since learned that snow traps air in its fluffy porous structure and acts as a natural sound absorber. A great quiet quilt was created outdoors, not just by the absence of animals, but by the absence of air itself.

Silence is characteristically an absence, and yet somehow an all-enveloping presence too. Max Picard called silence an “autonomous reality” – a something in and of itself. “Silence is not visible, and yet its existence is clearly apparent. It extends to the farthest distances, yet is so close to us that we can feel it as concretely as we feel our own bodies. It is intangible, yet we can feel it as directly as we feel materials and fabrics.”

Darkness too is supposedly an absence, and yet everything that’s anything emerges from it. “Darkness within darkness, the gateway to all understanding" as the famous ancient proverb tells us.

I’ve been basking in the snowful silence ever since, and it’s doing things to me — working on and through me, stripping away the non-essential, softening my once noisy streams of thought, chiseling me down day by day into something rawer and realer.

As writers, we simply cannot know what it means to say something without first knowing what it means to say nothing at all.

We learn to sit still and listen, and eventually, we learn to write. Words inevitably emerge against the backdrop of silence. The silence cannot lie, whereas Rumi reminds us, every word we utter ultimately falls short of the Truth. Words will never get us there, but we can get closer over time.

“Real speech is in fact nothing but the resonance of silence.” — Picard

📅 Events

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 13th at 5:30pm ET

Signature Writing Circle with
Thursday, December 19th at 2:30pm ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 20th at 5:30pm ET

(See the full calendar of upcoming Foster Writing Circles here.)

⚡️ Published

Healing in relationships by
What’s your biggest risk? by
Hummingbird by
A Prayer by
The Light of Advent by
Shivering in a Hospital Gown by
A Return by

🔥 Inspiration

Hey Writers!

“Life got in the way,” is a phrase we sometimes hear from Foster members who have fallen out of practice with their writing. During this time of year, when you’re juggling holidays, travel, visiting friends and family, kids out of school, etc., it’s easy for creative practices to take a backseat.

What if we didn’t think of our writing as separate from the rest of our lives?

Sure, there are often more important things that need attending to. But the phrase “life got in the way” implies that your writing isn’t part of your life. For me, writing—even if it’s writing like journaling that I never share with anyone else—is essential to my life.

This is part of why so many people routinely show up to our weekly writing circles. Because no matter what else is going on in their lives, they have time set aside for their writing.

We still have some public writing circles available to attend before the new year so you can stay in practice too.

Join a Public Writing Circle

📅 Events

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 6th at 5:30pm ET

Building Bridges to Better American Health Care with
Monday, December 9th at 5:30pm ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 13th at 5:30pm ET

⚡️ Published

Are You Holding Yourself Back as a Writer? by
Europe, the USA, and Transatlantis by Edward Garrahy
How I Became A Scholar - Pt. 1 by
To live is to feel by
Gratitude is Air by
The Tailor & His Sons by Edward Garrahy
In it and of it by
On Hope by
What Just Happened? November 2024 by
The Sense Mill by

🔥 Inspiration

Hey Writers!

It’s Thanksgiving week here in the United States. 

I’m personally not big on the food aspect of the holiday. In fact, this year my family is forgoing the traditional turkey dinner and instead going on a long walk at a nearby State Park. Maybe we’ll make tacos for dinner.

Yet having a holiday set aside specifically for giving thanks is something I can get behind. It’s rare that I slow down and contemplate what I’m thankful for.

The list of people I’m thankful for would be entirely too long for this newsletter. I also recognize that we’re here because we all write, or want to write, or want to write more.

I’m thankful for writing and the role it has played in my life. It has helped me connect with people I never would have otherwise. It has helped me figure out how I truly feel about events from my past. It has helped me figure out what to do next in my life. It has helped me make a living—both directly and indirectly. It has helped me be a more thoughtful, understanding, and compassionate person—both towards myself and others. And it has helped me understand that the world is filled with nuance and literally everything is worth writing about.

How has writing helped you in your life?

📅 Events

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, November 29th at 5:30pm ET

Writing @ Work Circle with
Tuesday, December 3rd at 10am ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, December 6th at 5:30pm ET

⚡️ Published

What if the apocalypse isn’t so bad? by
The worth of water by
A Conversation With Henry Oliver About Late Bloomers by
Tiny Revolutions №113: Winging it (literally) by
Memento Mori by
a note on noticing by
How to Wean Your Baby by
Creativity’s Twin Super Powers by

🔥 Inspiration

Hey Writers!

When I started writing my newsletter over four years ago, I published an original piece nearly every week for the better part of the first three years. You’d think with that many words flowing out of me I’d have a well of writing ideas behind it that was overflowing too.

But ideas are fleeting. Unless you capture them somewhere, they tend to leave almost as quickly as they come. This is why I always say that the best notetaking device you can use is whatever’s closest to you when inspiration strikes.

There’s another problem with ideas, though: they become stale. And to complicate matters, it’s as if they have those confusing “best if used by” dates stamped on them in invisible ink. You never know exactly when they’ll go from feeling like crispy tortilla chips straight out of a freshly opened bag to feeling like tough triangles that taste like cardboard.

Most of my pieces tend to start with a title idea. Something pops in my head randomly, and I jot it down somewhere. 

Lately, those writing ideas have struggled to gain enough inertia to make it to full-fledged published pieces. I’ve found myself forcing the issue and trying to massage and twist the material to work with the title ideas I liked. Eventually, it starts to feel more like a chore to—attempt to—write about them. And so I let them go for the time being. Maybe they’re meant for some other writer to grapple with in their own unique way instead. Ideas have a way of doing that.

As Rick Rubin wrote in his book (which I highly recommend for anyone doing creative work) The Creative Act: 

“If you have an idea you’re excited about and you don’t bring it to life, it’s not uncommon for the idea to find its voice through another maker. This isn’t because the other artist stole your idea, but because the idea’s time has come.”

I trust that my best work will emerge if I keep showing up to the page. Because it always has in the past.

How do you manage your flow of ideas?

📅 Events

Writing @ Work Circle with
Tuesday, November 19th at 11am ET

Signature Writing Circle with
Thursday, November 21st at 2:30pm ET

Building Bridges to Better American Health Care with
Friday, November 22nd at 12pm ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, November 22nd at 5:30pm ET

Morning Page Momentum with
Monday, November 25th at 8am ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, November 29th at 5:30pm ET

(See the full calendar of upcoming Foster Writing Circles here.)

⚡️ Published

the 77th run by
hello, i love you, won’t you pick up your phone??? by
I got my heart broken by
Relationship and the moreishness of Desire by
My Extraordinary October by
crying in the coworking space that is our lives by
Healing Lights by
Who is the real Gordon Switz? by
The Greatest Opening Passages in Literature by Edward Garrahy
An Update and A Sermon by
Finding Your Flow: What’s Your Stopping Point? by

🔥 Inspiration

As writers, we often focus on the act of writing itself — showing up and putting words on the page. But a truly rich creative practice requires more than just putting pen to paper. It asks us to slow down, notice, and be present with whatever arises. This is something our fast-paced culture often overlooks in its constant drive to produce, produce, produce.

In Asian medical theory, autumn is considered a “yin within yang” season — a time where, despite the shortening days, we continue to prepare for the colder months by harvesting the fruits of the summer’s yang energy. It’s a season of reflection, of taking stock, and of capturing what’s present in our bodies, hearts, and minds.

As we head towards the end of the year, this autumnal energy makes it the perfect time to reflect on all the good work you've done. What have you created, learned, or discovered? Are there stubs of essays or stories you can flesh out? Ideas that you’d like to return to before we slow down for the holidays? 

What insights are ready to be harvested in your creative work?

Sara

📅 Events

Morning Page Momentum with
Monday, Nov 18th at 8am ET

Writing @ Work Circle with
Tuesday, Nov 19th at 11am ET

Signature Writing Circle with
Thursday, Nov 21st at 2:30pm ET

Building Bridges to Better American Health Care with
Friday, Nov 22nd at 12pm ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, Nov 22nd at 5:30pm ET

(See the full calendar of upcoming Foster Writing Circles here.)

⚡️ Published

Every Day Is Election Day by
Why Everyone Should Keep An Authority List by
From Obligation to Exploration: Reclaiming the Joy of Writing by Gaia
The Patient by Edward Garrahy
Who Would Do a Thing Like That? by
Have We Returned to Colonial Times? by

🔥 Inspiration

Hey Writers,

No matter how you feel about the results, the election this week has taken a lot of air out of the room. I did my best to steer clear of the internet rabbit holes and get caught up in the drama of it all. But I still succumbed to more of it than I would’ve liked.

There’s a common theme I’ve seen from writers during big events such as the election. These two Notes I stumbled upon while repelling down one of those rabbit holes are what I’m referring to:

Sure, yes, I agree. Great art can be created in these moments. And sometimes that art can be a catalyst for change.

AND, creating art can provide a respite and escape from the deluge of hot takes and divisiveness that runs rampant online. 

I invite you to join one of our upcoming public writing circles to set aside time to reduce the noise. Maybe you’ll channel the emotions coming up for you into your writing. Maybe you’ll spend time delving into a story from your past. Or maybe you’ll start writing that fictional story that’s been on your mind for years.

These types of events can feel fraught and creating art can help us orient ourselves, make sense of what happened and what’s important to us, and provide us with a much-needed break from it all.

Join a Free Writing Circle

Lyle

📅 Events

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, Nov 8th at 5:30pm ET

Morning Page Momentum with
Monday, Nov 11th at 8am ET

Simple + Consistent with Joel Christiansen
Friday, Nov 15th at 5:30pm ET

(See the full calendar of upcoming Foster Writing Circles here.)

⚡️ Published

parenting as improv by
Quentin Hardy on helping companies find ‘story-market fit’ by
Are you reading the signs? by
I’m Sorry. I Love You. What Can I Do To Help? by
What we lose when we let AI hold the pen by
What’s your relationship to power? by
What Just Happened? by
Diving Deep Into The Crevices Where Art Meets Psychology by
New Beginnings in Chiang Rai by
A Process in Four Parts by

🔥 Inspiration