The Year of Deep & Simple Mischief

I know this might sound strange given the fascist-executive-branch-thinks-they're-in-charge-of-the-entire-Earth state of the United States and a few other evil-whack-a-do governments killing their neighbors or own people right now. But I'm thinking about thriving this year.

Thriving.

As communities. As working people. Regular, loving, hardworking people on the ground around the world. How pathetic are the dictators and billionaires who think they can own, manipulate, and control everything, including us, without accountability or consequence? And the jerks who work for them. They're wrong. We're going to thrive as communities this year. We're going to make true community and accountability for actions among the wealthy and the chronically violent as popular as the Barbie and Wicked movies were– combined!

Humans can't fully thrive on our own, even in the best of times. In a year like this, if we don't live and move as close-knit communities and interconnected communities– and commit to thriving together, not just alone– far more good people and children will be terrorized, beaten, disappeared, and murdered by ICE (or their equivalent elsewhere). Paid for by their own tax dollars. In the past two weeks alone, here are the people who died in ICE custody or who were shot and killed by either on-duty or off-duty ICE agents:

• Keith Porter Jr
• Parady La
• Luis Beltran Yanez–Cruz
• Luis Gustavo Nunez Caceres
• Geraldo Lunas Campos
• Rebecca Good

That's one dead person every other day. That's on top of the 69,000 people (as of January 7, 2026) trying to survive in ICE custody or in the equally brutal foreign prisons they're shipping people to without due process. Their friends and families lives will never be the same. And as Keith Porter Jr and Rebecca Good demonstrated, any one of us could be next.

So, umm, no pressure at all. ;-) Hang on. The joyful part is almost here. 😄

Feeling the good and the bad approaching

Back sometime in November, I deemed 2026 to be the year of deep and simple mischief. Words often just show up for us, right? Well, "deep and simple mischief" showed up. I don't remember exactly when. Even before Mom entered hospice in early October, across the past 18 months or so, I knew her death was drawing near. Together we can feel things coming– good and bad. And I knew that living in the world after Mom passed was going to be difficult for my family. And for me. She's a big part of the laughter within us and the sparkles in our eyes.

So, knowing we would lose her soon-ish, here we've been proactive and more focused than usual on what fills us with energy, for a while now. And this month, we're shifting more fully to an in-person-community approach for 2026, pulling back a bit from online spaces, especially public spaces where paid-for abuse and surveillance run amok– in favor of seeing faces in person. My own guiding words for 2026 are "deep & simple mischief." In 2026, if it's not deep, simple, and/or full of the joyful mischief and love of laughter that lives at the heart of humanity, then it's not mine to do, or hold for too long.

One thing: Figure out your own formulas for 1) your favorite self surviving and 2) thriving as community

I'm trying something new today. It is a new year after all. For some of us anyway. I'm going to put a "One thing" near the beginning of essays this year. Some essays, that is– I'm too much a wanderer and poet to always do the same anything for long. The one thing section is for people who don't have time to read the whole essay. It's the one thing I'm offering today that I believe to be of greatest value to those who don't have time for the whole me. As a researcher and story gatherer and herbalist and poet and essayist at heart, I know I'm not for everybody. Lots of people don't have time for me. And, I like it that way. ;-) But I also like most human beings—including those who don't have time for me. So, here's this week's one thing...

Even as an introvert and an empathic being who often struggles with holding what feels like truckloads of the not-actually-hidden pain of others and myself, I'm all-in on community this year. All. In. Thrive together is my go-to choice above surviving this alone. Period. And, I've been practicing a long time– often unbeknownst to me– because I realized this week that I now know those who make this same choice even without words passing between us and even when our words get each others hackles up. I can feel those all in on our communities thriving together. Both in person and online. Planet care, community care, and self-care have become one and the same to me now: care. We care. My people care about all of it. Despite every violence and lie and blow that the human world, AI, chaos-profiteering governing bodies, and our own fears could throw at us about us. We care. We still care.

Thanks to my Mom who deeply loved to laugh, in 2025, I finally figured out my own formulas for living well no matter what:

• This is my true-self survival formula. To feel like my true and most free self– to survive as me– I need face-to-face, IRL time at least 2 days/week, in person, with other gentle and strong and open and fierce women, nonbinary folks, and other folks deeply in touch with their femme/creator selves, such as artists, musicians, makers/crafters/creators, herbalists, cooks, weavers, homemakers, writers, cool parents, kids, small (tiny really) local business owners, activists, land and water protectors, community builders, forests/trees, fields, beaches, and empaths in the local community and also folks that come from other places, cultures, and species– unlike mine– that deeply respect and honor both gentle and fierce feminine energy. Connecting online is great too, but it's not nearly enough for me, my community, or the world. Not anymore. This is non-negotiable now. Without this, the wounds of my childhood re-open. I become fearful and more part of the problem we face than part of solutions.
• This is my thriving-communities formula. To thrive and/or change the world, I need the same thing as above, but at least 3 days/week, and some weeks, more, when we can make it happen. What we do together, exactly, is less important to me now than who we're with and what we're learning together. That I know this to my core now is so freeing! As someone who loves to work and is a chronic over-worker, and as an empath who often ends up holding too much of the pain of the world, and as an elder caregiver on top of my work with little family close by and who can easily get stretched too thin taking care of others, I needed to know this. Now I do. Who I'm with and what we're learning together is what matters most to me within community. I can let go of everything else– to people who care more about the things I care less about.

If you do just one thing this year, figure out your own basic formula of what it takes to be your true– freest/most fun/gentle/playful/powerful– self and also what is yours to hold and let go of within community, so that you can thrive together, as community. Let's just ignore the fact that that's, maybe, um, two things. ;-)

Here, we have to (or we finally get to, depending on your perspective) let go of being isolationists and settlers and join the open-eyed world of the living and thriving together. Join creators and creation. Become collective selves. Get weirder and messier and funnier. Step off of all human-sized hamster wheels, as we can. Experience ourselves as reimagination stations. We have to stop settling for roles handed to us, language handed to us, fear handed to us, convenience handed to us on the backs of exploited others, and promises of wealth and power dangled before us but that either never appear (for 99% of us) or that require the giving up of our souls, empathy, and connection to humanity and earth when they do appear. There are all sorts of current communities and ancestors– both human and non-human– of earth that know how to thrive together. It's time to apprentice ourselves to them now or to go even deeper into our learning if we have been apprenticing for a while.

Do this as an individual or as collectives– and if you're really lucky or ridiculously stubborn– do both. Because everything we want in and for the world starts within us and our communities, including our non-human community members. Seriously, if I hear one more white person say, "When is somebody going to do something about this?" I may put my fist through a wall. We save us. Us. What we want starts within our own connections and imaginations and our collective imagination as living beings. Fascists always lose because our collective imagination is so much wider, wilder, and more powerful than the always-out-for-only-myself, wildly disconnected way of being that fascists must still settle for, generation after generation, because they cut themselves off from all other beings and ways of being.

Ideas for preparing for the year of deep and simple mischief

One of the best ideas I've heard is Renee Good's twice-repeated last words to her murderer: "I'm not mad at you. I'm not mad at you." There's not a poet or parent or soldier or human being on earth not cracked open at least a little bit by words that powerful. Wow. Life goals.

Another idea I love is what the walk-for-peace monks have been doing. Simply showing up, every day, together, and walking across the country. For peace. Turning the anger-centered online world on its ear by focusing on the kindness-centered, loving-in-person world. What a remarkably powerful move in a country now ripped apart daily by racist violence and cruelty paid for, created, and spread by the government itself.

In my own corner of the world, to get to the simple understanding of what it takes for me/my community/my world to thrive, across the past two years, I've tried a few other things. These are here only to foster imagination. They're not suggestions. You do you. To feel ready to thrive together in this particular year, I:

1. Gave the majority of my days to who and what I love most. For example, I spent some time outside with my green community every day. And with my partner every day. With my dog and cats every day. And with my parents 1 to 3 days a week. I also read every day and I wrote almost every day for the first time in years. Returning me to me. In 2025, I also almost tripled the number of days I spent with my niece and we added checking in with each other virtually every week, too. Usually with silly photos of ourselves. None of these things were easy to do. They required so much letting go of other things, and of fear, and of nonsense pumped at me by our culture and my own fear.
2. Spent more time with writers. Because 2024 almost killed me and returning to writing saved me when nobody else could, for most of 2025 I returned to hosting a writer's group. When Mom entered hospice, I let that group go and I joined a twice-a-month, writing-to-heal, writer's group. We focus on writing to heal and meet at a local healing-circles space twice a month.
3. Spent more time singing. After years of trying to stick with a larger choir, and failing, last fall I joined a weekly informal, drop-in singing group. So far, it's been all women who've shown up. We don't speak much. We don't have to. We sing 99.99% of the time. Simple, powerful songs from around the world. It's so freeing. And healing. And some people still wonder why its women on the frontlines fighting fascists. ;-)
4. Started going to local protests more often and making more activist friends locally. I did this showing-up-in-person-for-the-greater-good for decades in Seattle, but here on the island, between my caregiving and business responsibilities, I'd gotten out of the habit. But in 2024 and 2025, I couldn't not protest anymore. First, I showed up for friends in and near Gaza, and then, for my own people. People from or with friend-and-family ties to Ukraine, Venezuela, and Iran have joined us. This new insight into the true diversity on the island has made me fall more deeply in love with the island– everyone here– as a whole. If you need less fear, more clarity about who humanity really is, or more life-loving friends, protests are great places to be. Literally everyone I meet there I love almost instantly. Starting from I-already-love-you is a fantastic place to start when making new friends.
5. Sold the business I loved that was stretching me too thin. It's ridiculously hard to let go of what you built and love(d). But once loved and love aren't the same thing. Love fills you with energy for action and rest now. Holding on to the past– even a past you built and once dearly loved– drains energy. I'm too old for that shit.
6. I'm in the middle of starting a local friendship circle. In the past I called this hosting coworking spaces and Reimagination Stations. But coworking and reimagination stations centered on working. This new group that's pulling together is centering on friendship within local community– the OG of fostering and spreading deep and simple mischief. I worried that nobody would be interested. In the past week, I've heard from 14 women and am having to re-think about where to meet before we even meet, since my own living room isn't big enough if everyone shows up. Oy vey. What a fantastic problem to have. The entire purpose of this circle is friendship and fostering, deepening, and spreading friendship. Whatever else happens, whatever else we do together, that's the center that will hold us.
7. Attempted to focus my online time/presence so I don't get sucked in to the abyss that is social media these days. It sort of worked. I now write here– in long form– and then I share via email and to six social media platforms. On Facebook, I do my darndest to listen only to friends and speak only to friends and friends of friends, because I know how bogged down with fake and malicious accounts it is. Luckily and not-so-luckily-because-its-on-purpose, my friends span the globe. In all other social media spaces, I focus on listening to, learning with, and supporting people on the ground fighting billionaire-backed oppression, cruelty, and violence. I especially listen to and talk to women and nonbinary/LGBTQ+ folks and people of color, who have the most to lose if they/we lose and the most original and time-tested ideas for shaking off oppression. Honestly, I'm struggling with this one. Being a writer keeps me online a lot and still gets me into trouble-I-don't-want now and then. Just last night I commented on a Reuter's story on Facebook with an apparently witty, emotion-producing, and mind-changing few sentences. I spoke with hundreds of women and with one man who admitted he was MAGA but that he didn't expect to feel like he was living under a dictator like in Russia and China under this presendent. Wow. And. The comment got 13,000 likes in under 2 hours, and I ended up the target of roughly 800 pro-intimidation, pro-Trump, pro-ICE, pro-angry threats fake accounts/bots and a few Proud Boys. I had to spend 4 hours blocking accounts and reporting those showing up in my DMs with rape and death threats. Clearly, I need some friend help to stay focused online like I want to be.
8. Got clearer on my definition of "news" and focused my intake of it. Just about everything that qualifies as "news" for the masses in my country these days is highly biased, funded by billionaires and bad actors with only greedy self-interest at heart, and is still primarily focused on the activities and impacts of the always-frightened men in power, so I limit my U.S. "news" intake. The always-frightened can't help but spread fear and the lies that fear tell us. That's not me. Most days. That said, I do want to know what those determined to and well-funded enough enslave, harm, or destroy most of the world are up to, so I get my news two ways now. First, I listen to what my friends in other states and countries say about what's actually happening where they live. I listen to my friend in Iran about Iran. To my Palestinian friends about what's happening in and near Gaza. To my friends in Minnesota, Portland, North Carolina, and California about what's happening there. My friends around the world are my primary sources now. And second, I pay for Ground News for the days I want to quickly come up to speed on men-centered "news" at the national and global level. What a sad, sorry world those men live in. But the level of work the Ground News folks put into surfacing and sharing biases is remarkable. It's truly innovative work in the journalism space and worth supporting for people with the means, interest, and bandwidth to support them.
9. Listened even more closely to ancestors. I've spent my who life with a group of people in my head. Lately I've been listening even more closely to what my favorite ancestors did/think and to what my least favorite ancestors hoped for but fell short on. To learn. Depending on who you are, you could focus more on your family line, or your people's ancestors as a whole, or to ancestors who were on the land where you are now, or to people who've done the thing(s) that you want to/have to do now, or on some other set of humanity that you feel called to listen to as a whole. We get to define "ancestors" for ourselves. Really really. You can do this in the way that feels most intuitive to you. Some people go to the library or check out books online from the library and read books. Some people visit living elders. Some ask to be invited to community gatherings or ceremonies. Some watch documentaries and live theater or read essays and poetry or historical fiction. Some people lean on ancestral practices like meditation, dance, breathwork, dreamwork, or prayer. Some sit in silence and use their hearts and whole bodies to feel the presence and advice of ancestors. You do you. The important part is to listen more closely. Personally, I hold a huge host of trusted others in my body and imagination. From my grandparents and mom (Hi Mom), and other relatives who have passed, to writing and herbalist and poet mentors and authors who have passed on. Powerful writers and activists for humanity as a whole, like Audre Lorde and Bell Hooks and Maya Angelou. Imagination expanders like Ursula K. Le Guin and Madeleine L'Engle. Quiet world changers like poet Emily Dickenson. And Mahatma Gandhi, who I've been listening to since I was introduced to him– via a documentary and an expansive-hearted Bible teacher– since I met him when I was 12 and he was both dead and alive within the hearts and minds of good people the world over.
10. Listened even more to the living world without the filter of the rest of humanity. For me that's listening to whole forests and fields and individual trees, plants, and insects and wildlife. Humanity makes up just 0.01% of life on earth yet many of us have been allowing humanity– especially the worst of humanity– to stress us out almost 100% of the time. Decenter humanity for a bit each day, when it's safe to do so. What this looks like depends on you and what brings you comfort, rest, inspiration, or joy. Examples include talking to houseplants, bird watching, walks in the park, flying a kite in a genocide zone where only the sky itself is left for you to celebrate, foraging, gardening, practicing listening to trees and forests, volunteering or working outside and with nature, dancing or protesting in the streets and breathing fresh air with other peace loving people committed to keeping their whole neighborhood or city safe, sitting in stillness and silence while touching the earth, listening to plant friends outside, or following the adventures of your pets or Aloka the Peace Dog. If you live in the U.S., when you go outside, consider going as groups and, when safe to do so, inviting a friend who is being targeted by the current fascist regime. Feeling safe outdoors isn't possible for everyone on earth. It needs to be.
11. Listened to those who love the living so deeply that you can feel it instantly. Like my girl Carsie Blanton and her Keep the Little Flame Alive song. Carsie is an American Jewish folk singer who bends over backwards to make music accessible to people– rich and poor– and she risked her life on one of the flotillas to Gaza to help bring supplies and visibility to the Palestinian people.
12. I'm practicing (and learning) that when I must listen to deeply self-hating humans like fascists, whenever possible, that I should listen to them from spaces of community power, not individual isolation. Instead of listening to the horrors brought forth by the deeply self-hating humans alone and on your phone, listen as community. That's my goal anyway. I'm not there yet. What this looks like depends on you. It may look like friends holding you accountable to your commitment to be on your phone no more than 1 hour/day. Or a commitment to only read news while at the library or in the community center or coffee shop or when you're with people you can talk to about what's happening. Here it is rapidly coming to mean traveling in groups to keep the most vulnerable among us safe– a next-level community skill that women the world over already have plenty of experience with. We just have to remember what we can do.
13. Care about collective imagination and individual imagination. My individual imagination is pretty great, but it often pales in comparison to collective imagination. The more true-community focused our lives become, the more imagination we have access to and the more ability we have to create something better than our violent collective present. True community means that you are being held and supported as often as you are holding and supporting others. The lesson I had to re-learn is that it's perfectly ok– and actually wonderful– to curate some spaces to hold you well, so that you can better hold others in the rest of the world the rest of the time. Working on this now with the friendship group gathering!

As always, thanks for reading to here. If this was valuable to you and you have the means, consider becoming a subscriber. The site is set up so you can offer a $6 tip now and then, or pay $60 for a whole year of my work, or pay nothing if you have nothing to give right now. This is how I make my living. A girl's gotta eat!

This is going to be the hardest year of my life. A ridiculously hard year for so many. And, it's going to be a year of deep and simple mischief. I know it. Because we're bringing this forth together. How lovely– at last– to know a bit about what's coming in the uncertain days ahead.