even your regular, cliche, everyday words matter

remembering that the things we say to each other make a difference

Jun 20, 2025

Hi! I have missed you. I have missed sharing and creating here. And my weeks away have not been for lack of effort, I promise.

I have been trying for weeks to write anything I like, but my mind is moving constantly and only spitting out phrases, blurbs, and short sentences. I am very anxious and uncertain about a lot of things, but personally and collectively. Maybe you are too.

Even though things aren’t moving any faster than they ever have, it feels like they are. While I watch historic events happen on my tiny screen that I hold inches from my face each morning, I am also navigating personal growing pains. It feels like the world is echoing things happening inside me sometimes.

Each and every day I wake up and read something I did not expect. People are getting stolen off the streets, disappearing right before our eyes. Our kin across the globe are being bombed and killed every day. There were political assassinations by someone dressed like a cop in a city just north of where I live. I keep dreaming that my teeth are falling out. I need to make a dentist appointment.

I am also trying to learn how to stop relying on other people to make me feel like I am okay all the time. I am practicing my self soothing skills a lot. I am having a hard time slowing my brain down. It is going to be 95 degrees and I am worried about my neighbors who live outside. I am doing crisis intervention every single day. I am face to face with tragedy every single day. I have been helping people dress and care for their wounds and that is different for me, it feels like I can be useful in a new way.

My heart is as light right now as it is heavy and that makes me feel ashamed. I want to write about how I listen to my intuition. Nothing I do feels like enough. I have been doing things that feel right but feel very out of character for me. I cannot focus long enough to write an essay or draw a comic. I am worried about the future.

I have a long list of things I’ve wanted to write about for a few weeks, but my words feel kind of… meaningless. There isn’t anything I have created that feels generative or helpful or new, and so I draft and move on, draft and move on, draft and move on, waiting for something to feel right.

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I was on a very long bike ride today when it occurred to me that I might be forgetting or underestimating how powerful even the simplest words can be.

This might be surprising (or maybe not) but I am obsessed with words. Recently I have felt myself hanging onto the things people say to me, feeling a different weight to the messages I’m getting. Maybe there is something to that, maybe not, but my brain is very tuned in to what is being conveyed, and I never want to forget things. So I make scribbled notes on post-it’s or hastily type in my phone when something sticks out or lands in me a certain way. My life involves a LOT of communicating, so I have a quickly growing collection of sentences and phrases. While I was letting my mind wander on mile 30 of my bike ride this afternoon, I started to think about all the things people have said to me that probably didn’t feel like a huge deal to them but have been really important to me. Simple things people said that made a home in my heart, stoking the fire in me to keep me going.

And then I began to think about my post-its and lists, and all of the magic and hope contained in the things we say to each other every day. There is a lot of magic there.

I decided to share some of the maybe mundane things people have said to me over the last week to remind myself (and you) that your words matter. Your messages matter. You might not ever know it, but something you say or write could make a little home in someone’s heart that helps them feel lighter, warmer, or like they belong.

I hope you are finding your words and your art right now, and I hope you keep saying what you feel and what you need even if it doesn’t feel like it will ever matter. It matters.

Every single one of these utterances have bounced around in my head and heart since I heard or read them, and that is worth being grateful for.