At 13, Lupine is more on her game offering content these days than I am. She’s created and uploaded a weekly craft video for kids, while I’ve stood here froze, a deer in the headlights. (Her latest video is here if you’ve been waiting.)

But goodness. It’s all a lot to integrate right now, isn’t it?

I thought I’d be productive during quarantine: making and donating masks to our small town hospital; doing Instagram live videos for LüSa Organics customers and blog fans; offering book readings and free classes with content from my books.

But here I am, just slowly processing it all.

And perhaps that alone is enough.

While the rest of our culture seems to be screaming, “Do more! Be more! Have something to show for this!” I’m over here honoring the need to simply process it all. Indeed, there is no need for me to have anything to show for this time aside from a heart that is slightly more healed and intact.

Process over product in the truest sense.

In the dreary rain of Monday, I pulled out my camera–long quiet–and snapped a few pictures of the countryside around our neighborhood on my way home from LüSa. I found beauty in the brokenness. It felt timely for the state of the world, our country, and most certainly my home state of Wisconsin right now.

And there it was. Indeed, there it always is. The bittersweet beauty of the broken places. The perfect imperfection of a world worn hard by time, a world that looks so much like our own tattered souls.

In the peeling paint and the abandoned, tumble-down farms, in the graffiti and rain showers, beauty was there, quietly waiting.

Our broken world and broken lives are beautiful, despite–and occasionally because of–our scars. Do you feel it?

There’s no need to have anything to show for this time. Tend your hearts. Or if you’d rather, light the world up with the magic you’ve been saving for a moment just such as this. There’s no right or wrong way to show up right now. Just show up. For yourself, your family, your community, your heart.

You know the way. Move slowly in that direction.

Stay well loves. You matter.

Love,

Rachel