A New Home for Other Thoughts

Hello & Happy 2024!

I am starting the new year with a new home for this newsletter, having decided to leave Substack after their disappointing response to being called out for making money off of Nazis. I will return to posting via the blog on my website and will be sending newsletters via Beehiiv. The essays from my blog will be included in the newsletter that gets emailed to subscribers, but you can also find these essays at clairemtaylor.com/blog. I am working on getting my site updated with these changes and will go back and add to the blog all of the essays I wrote via Substack so that I have an additional archive of them when I officially delete my Substack account, but you should also be able to find all of them on my new beehiiv site. It is taking me some time to sort all of this out and I am not especially tech-savvy, so please bear with me through these changes and any awkward formatting, busted links, or general weirdness that results.

If you were subscribed at Substack or signed up for my email list at a recent event, your email address has been migrated to this newest iteration of my newsletter. If you do not wish to continue on in this new location, please feel free to unsubscribe and know that there are no hard feelings. I will only cry a little about how much you don’t like me. I think you can probably find an Unsubscribe link at the bottom of this newsletter. I don’t know because this is my first time sending one from here.

I started my year off in such a joyful way with two amazing reading events. Thank you to everyone who came out to either The Womb Room or the Pratt Library. I had so much fun sharing poems from my books One Good Thing and Mother Nature, as well as few favorite pieces from the past and some newer things I’ve been working on more recently. I can’t wait to do more. I have full videos from both readings and am working on splitting them into smaller sections. I will plan to share a few clips once I find the time to tackle that task. It has been a busy couple of weeks in my house, as I also held the first session of my workshop The Written Womb through Yellow Arrow Publishing. This is a virtual workshop and we’ll be meeting again in February. If you’d like to join, you can still sign up for the next session. I will also be holding an in-person version of this workshop at The Womb Room on Saturday, January 27th from 12-1:30. You can sign up here.

As so often happens after a busy period, everything in my household has come crumbling down. Everyone is tired and moody, or fighting off colds. Even the animals seem unsettled and dragged down. January is marching along at a pace that feels both glacial and brisk depending on the day (descriptions that also suit the current weather). We had our first snow of the season and as always happens whenever it snows again after a long period without any, I was struck by how quiet the world felt, how small and soft life can be. And so I wrote a bit about that, about the difficult moment I find myself in, and about January in general and the year ahead. You can find those thoughts below if you’re interested.

Thank you, as always, for reading and for your support.

If you’d like to further support my work, please consider purchasing one of my books, or a copy of Little Thoughts Press. I also have a ko-fi page.

Searching for Softness

January 16, 2024

I walked the dog through the falling snow last night. The neighborhood was quiet. Cars slowly shuffled over the thick, choppy slush that lined the streets. The sidewalks, yet to be shoveled, were coated in fresh snow and I laughed like a delighted child as my boots left prints in my wake. It was that kind of soft, lovely snow that somehow feels like a blanket despite the cold.

Later in the night, I awoke again and again to the cries of a baby who is likely teething, or possibly going through separation anxiety, or is simply doing that thing that babies do sometimes where their needs are mysterious and unknowable, and so deeply frustrating. I want to tell you I handled it beautifully. Sighed lightly as I slipped out of the covers and into the cold air of my bedroom. Gently padded up the stairs and lifted him from his crib and into my arms with a soft shushing, my body warm and waiting to give him my love. But instead, I threw back the covers and screamed fuck as loud as I could into the mattress and beat my fists like a child in the throes of a tantrum. I clomped upstairs, threw open his bedroom door, and said “Oh will you please shut up,” as I pulled him from his crib. But the weight of his body against mine calmed me, the soft collapse of his head against my shoulder, the small, sad shudder of his breath against my chest.

Outside the snow kept falling, steady and quiet, covering footprints and erasing the evidence of the evening. In the dark bedroom, I sang softly, one song after another until his eyes closed and his breathing steadied, and when he awoke and cried out when I set him back in his crib, I lifted him and sang again, barely a whisper. We fell asleep together on the futon in his room, my body curled around his so that he couldn’t flip over into the soft cushion of the mattress, couldn’t roll away. He was tucked against me and I kissed the fine hairs on his head, the soft skin of his cheeks. Is this what feels like to be bears, I wondered. Bodies pressed together, sharing their warmth, resting. In his sleep, his hand found mine and wrapped itself around my finger as if to say closer, closer. I need more of you. I had to remind myself that I could give it. I can give away all of myself and then take it back in the morning, return to my own body the way one returns home—coming in from the cold, shaking the snow from their boots and their hair, letting the warmth slowly return to their cheeks and limbs.

January is an odd month. I find it both invigorating and deeply exhausting. The end of the holiday season and the start of a new year tend to revive me. I get a creative surge in cold weather as if my whole system has been shocked and reset. I imagine it is not unlike what some people feel when they plunge themselves into freezing cold water. I’ll stick with just stepping out onto my porch and breathing in the cold air, but I think I understand the impulse at least. But while the colder temperature refreshes me, the accumulation of gray days drags me down. Without enough sunlight, I become melancholy and morose. So I am full of creative energy, but everything I create has an edge of darkness, a disturbing despairing quality that I too easily spiral down into. This is all crap, I tell myself, and then I force myself to keep working on it as if to punish myself instead of simply moving on to the next thing. I have to remind myself to be soft, gentle with my own emotions. To hold myself the way I hold the baby, whisper reassurances, let the night fold over me, and trust that morning will come.

There are many things that I would like to do this year. I have projects that I’m feeling energized to complete and others that I’m excited to start. I began this month by doing two poetry readings and launching my first writing workshop and it was all great fun. I can’t wait to do more. I want to get back to running regularly. I want to stretch more often because my body is so angry at me for neglecting this necessary bit of care. I want to read more and try out some new writing practices. I want to more fully and intentionally bask in the joy and beauty of my two little boys. I want to more easily give in to my desire to only choose the work and activities that fill me up. I want to be better about staying in touch with my friends. But for now, I am letting January be January. I am letting this week where the ground is covered in snow and the baby needs more comfort than usual slow me down and soften me. I am giving myself over to it like a bear who knows when it is time to pull back, to settle, to embrace a period of rest.