This is the capacity I have

and that's OK

29 Jan 2025 - New moon in Capricorn

Loves,

Today I’m writing to you wrapped in the scent of essential oil of Melissa officinalis, commonly known as Lemon Balm. It smells like summer sunlight and warm honey kissed with lemon and my nervous system reacts like it’s peace in a bottle. Thank goodness.

The human nervous system is fascinating. Under the right circumstances, it will adapt to all sorts of life circumstances. Mine has been doing a really, really good job of adapting to the ongoing stress and grief scattered over the terrain of my life. Such a good job, in fact, that overwhelm is now the comfortable, known, state of being my system regards as home base. Well done neurons!

I’m marinating in Lemon Balm because scent can an excellent way to disrupt mental/emotional patterns. (I’ve been an aromatherapist for over 35 years, many of them spent specifically working with inhaling the scent of essential oils to shift mental/emotional states of being, so, yes, I know about these things.)

Pattern disruption of all kinds is becoming an essential survival skill for me. You too? I’m curious, what are some ways you disrupt non-nourishing patterns of thought, belief, and/or behavior? Drop your thoughts in the comments, if you’re willing to share. You never know who you might help!

Like my last letter, this one is brief-ish and I’ll be ending it with thought fragments. I sometimes wonder if I will ever get back to writing longer form pieces, but for now, this is the capacity I have. And that’s OK. Which is the point.

Lemon Balm is a vibrant, vital member of the mint family and will take over your garden if you plant it and let it go. You have been warned.

Two questions I’m asking myself (and you, if you’d like) and some thoughts, mostly from other people, in response

1. These days, what’s our responsibility as artists?

From the fierce, wise Terry Tempest Williams¹ (emphasis mine):

“How do we take our anger and transform it into sacred rage? How do we create a language that opens the heart instead of closing it? To bear witness is not a passive act. It's an act of consequence that leads to consciousness."

This classic quote from the always fierce, truth-speaking Toni Morrison:

In times of dread, artists must never remain silent. This is precisely the time when artists go to work. There is no time for despair, no place for self-pity, no room for fear. We speak, we write, we do language. That's how civilizations heal.

And this glorious encouragement from the always relevant Gloria Anzaldúa:

Write with your eyes like painters, with your ears like musicians, with your feet like dancers. You are the truthsayer with quill and torch. Write with your tongues on fire.

2. Are we tending ourselves as fiercely as we tend the world?

(Especially any of us who are HSPs, Introverts, NDs, knowing our tendencies to empathy overload and compassion fatigue?)

In her most recent post, my friend Jen Pavich² from The Unfiltered Drip,(another fierce, wise, woman) says,

We desperately need respite, rest, and healing in community. But we also need to stay engaged and keep working for good. The only way to do that is to be ruthlessly clear about our capacity, both personally and as communities.

Kaitlin Curtice’s most recent from The Liminality Journal ³ offers,

I think sometimes we need the cocoon.

And I think sometimes we resist the cocoon because it’s dark in there, and we will likely be turned to goo somewhere along the way.

But the thing about transformation is there is really no way around it. Only through, my friends. Only through.

And my own thoughts, in poem form (of course) from a project I called “Poems for Peace”. This poem (well, poem draft?) speaks to how I’m feeling lately.

for today
peace rides
the swell and 
collapse of my
lung-cradling ribs
as I breathe myself
into clear-eyed acceptance 
that the body gets what the body 
needs no matter how stridently “shoulds”
fling their shame at the tender walls of my heart. 

Poems for Peace #6
© 2018 Tracie Nichols

May you find tender ways to create nourishing patterns,

Tracie

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A few older writings of mine that talk a bit about resourcing ourselves and disrupting patterns:

Guidelines for burning times,

We are antennae for waves of fierce emotions

Sometimes it really is all too much…and that’s OK

Full contact listening—writing about it keeps me resilient

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Upcoming word adventures:

Spring Equinox: The pause before the spate

22 March 2025 from 4-5:30 PM EST | 9-10:30 PM UTC | Online (Zoom)

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Notes:

1. “A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. ‘So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?’” Website. Instagram.

2. I’ve known Jen Pavich for years and she always impresses, and inspires, the hell out of me. The article I quoted from:

How We Keep Going

3. I’m new to Kaitlin Curtice’s writing, but her The Liminality Journal is already becoming one of those I read no matter when. Here’s the article I quoted from:

What I'd Tell You From The Cocoon