I feel lost this week. My writing bubble busted open before its time. Distressing news will do that.

I’m home now, and the loss and lostness swell, creating their own bubble. I see beds I need to weed, a cluttered patio, an overgrown yard, floors and surfaces that need deep-clean attention, a fridge I need to relieve of the jars of things we’ll never eat, plants that need attention… And these are the things I can control if I reach through my despair and get to it.

One of my training leaders encouraged me, “the wind is at your back… Keep going.”

I’m trying, but the keeping and the going would be easier in a writing bubble.

A writer during the marathon mentioned that the world breached her bubble when she made the mistake of scrolling social media.

The struggle for a bubble is real. Yet, relying on the privilege of a bubble is hazardous. We have to write while the storm is on us. We especially need to write while the world is on fire, our small, inner world and the big bubble of a world outside our intimate sphere.

I’ll write to celebrate the joy I find under a bush or wedged deep inside a pocket. I’ll also voice the heartache. Not to bellyache my way through an annoyance of everyday life, but because I’m not the only one who experiences dark turns and moments bereft of light. Sharing my story lets others know they’re not alone.

Yes, I miss my writing bubble, but I’m pulling up my brave girl writer panties and pulling my chair closer to the page. This is the only way I know or even want to get through the days.

Here’s a bit that spilled out while I was still in my bubble but after it cracked.

30 June 2025

Last week, I slept on a couch by the window in an old house in New Orleans. The clap was red. The suddenness lightning blue.

And I wasn’t alone. I know I wasn’t alone. The thunder was in, not out, sitting next to me on the couch.

Again. Red. Lighting blue.

I levitated, suspended by the thrum of thunder and clap of clouds. Then quiet. Even the metal chimes, just beyond the window, hushed.

Fear? Reverence?

This was a commanding, demanding storm that woke a whole city. No one could escape its presence.

As I sat with it and listened to my own thunder stir, my inner storms rose with a fervor that spins tornados of fear and eagerness, anxiety and exhilaration.

I didn’t go out to meet this storm, to check its air; I knew the storm had let itself in.

I did peer through the window to remember: yes, this is where I am; to check: No, this isn’t a dream.

Powerful storms make wakes of change. And change has rolled me in its wake years. Not the everyday change we all experience, cuticles cluttering nails, hair growing and graying, wrinkles deepening, and callouses forming. Not those changes.

The big, quaking-earth changes.

Storms that push through bolted doors and let themselves in.

Surging waters that wash and turn and move all that was, then abandon it in puddles and mud.

We’re reduced to beginning again. To rethinking the day.

Shall we make a mud pie?

Like children, scratching for meaning in a sandbox, reframing the skills to serve this new, very different moment as we wait for the waters to recede, for the mud to dry, for the helpers… please, let there be helpers… to arrive.

I’m sick. Sick of letting go of what I know and love. Damned tired of starting over in the mud.

The storm was not ugly. It had beautiful moments. But was it necessary? Again?

These waters don’t heal, they just bring us to our knees, kneeling in the mud of new beginnings.

I’m fed up with mud pies and new beginnings.

Maybe this time will be easier. Maybe this time we can move our new beginning up the hill, to a higher place that never floods. And maybe this time I can keep something.

My hands are weary from gripping hard and pulling back, blisters of memory, reminders of all we lost.

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2025.