A bright immensity within us

an invitation

Something wondrous this way comes…but before I share, I want to acknowledge how strange it feels to be standing inside a bright personal moment while the country, and so much of the world, feels steeped in horror and grief. Lately the news has carried an unfathomable kind of heaviness, stories that lodge in the chest, that make any celebration big or small feel almost indecent. I find myself wondering whether joy is neglectful, negating or necessary? And if it is necessary, will it ever be enough?

I remember another season of my life, when I was the one underwater—dizzy, anxious, disenchanted, living in that long gray underworld where my body wouldn’t cooperate and the future felt suffocating. In that time, I would sometimes picture strangers living my opposite and whisper, Someone is getting married, someone is welcoming a baby, someone is setting out on the adventure of a lifetime. Oddly, those thoughts steadied me. It reminded me that somewhere, life was still expanding. My ragged inhale softened by the invisible exhale of millions. Some great balance I couldn’t see but needed to trust kept breathing on my behalf.

So maybe this is simply how it works. Maybe we take turns holding the light for one another on this blue dot, born into duality. Maybe one person’s small joy becomes another person’s proof that joy still exists at all.

If this season has brought me a little lift, a little wind at my back, maybe it isn’t something I own at all. Maybe it’s simply my turn to feel the current. I don’t know if it will change policy or heal national trauma. But I want to live in a world where kindness and beauty and joy are not rewards for the lucky or the strong. Where nothing about our tenderness has to be earned. Where even in the hardest moments, something in us still carries warmth and bright immensity, still finds a reason to keep going. Where each of us, at some point, gets to steady another, drawing forth what belongs to us all.

The poets always say it the best, so I’ll share one from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In These Dark Days

 
From what darkness in its center
does the amaryllis call forth
the tall green stalk, the muscular bud,
the voluptuous petals pealing back
from the center like radiant red bells?
What impossible sun shines
inside the rough-skinned bulb
to generate such lushness,
such extravagant beauty?
I want to know it, to trust it,
this bright immensity that pulses through
what is darkest in me, this life force
that cannot fit inside, that thrusts
through the desiccated skins
of my exhausted hopes to reveal itself
vulnerable and soft, vital, astonishing,
belonging to no one, alive within us all.

credit: Andrea Boudrias

Which brings me to the good news.

This March, Unfixed has been selected for the Charter Book Club Adventures, a beautiful, immersive reading experience created by educator and storyteller Monica Ticknor. Monica has spent her life turning books into living, breathing journeys. After more than a decade teaching language arts and history, coaching teams, and guiding students through both stories and life, she founded Charter Book Club Adventures to create spaces where literature becomes something communal and experiential.

She designs her book club curriculums like expeditions: thoughtful, reflective, deeply human. Readers don’t just discuss a book; they travel through it together, exploring its questions, themes, and transformations side by side their own.

This March, Monica will be hosting a four-week virtual book club for Unfixed where we’ll gather in conversation and reflection, moving through the story as a crew. And for those who want to take the metaphor literally, there’s also the option to join us for an all-inclusive, in-person sailing adventure in Madeira Beach, Florida—time on the water, in community, reading and talking and letting the body remember what it feels like to drift and move with the tides.

Of all the ways to gather around a book, we end up on the water—no doubt this is Charlie nudging the plot along with a crooked grin. Sailing, of course. The element that filled his lungs and lit his spirit, and the same water that folded him back into itself. My life has always preferred its symbols a little on the nose.

Most importantly, this is an invitation. You are welcome to join!

• the virtual Unfixed book club March 2026

  -or-

• the virtual Unfixed book club March 2026 + the sailing adventure March 20-22

In a chapter when so much feels fractured, the simple act of reading together feels like a necessary mending. A small circle of steadiness. A shared lantern. Proof that even now, we can gather, learn, celebrate, and hold and home one another in our stories. If this sounds like the harbor you need, I’d love to see you there.

JOIN THE UNFIXED BOOK CLUB CREW