In my experience this quote, attributed to Robin, has been true — that genuine empathy and understanding are so often born of suffering and loss that profoundly mark the soul. 

For my friends who came by this immense compassion because of personal pain, I am so grateful they are here. They make this existence manageable, with all of the strife life brings. 

And, I am also so sorry that these beautiful qualities they embody came at such cost to themselves. I truly know what that cost is, and what it takes to hold onto kindness, decency, optimism, love, and resilience when life keeps layering the pain. ❤️

These are some really dark times and also some dark hearts, words, and actions we are witnessing. I’ve heard a number of people refer to the chaos of this period as the last “extinction burst” of an old, rotten, dying way of thinking.

I’ve been hoping that’s true — as naive as that might seem — that this is the last, violent gasp of an entrenched bigotry and a backwardness that deserves to die.
In alchemy, the change from darkness to light is catharsis. It’s the point at which a blackened substance, through heat and reactivity, develops a white crust and then puffs into a cloud inside the alchemist’s flask.
It’s the stage at which future possibilities become apparent as a material is transformed from one to the other. It symbolizes rebirth through turmoil.

I know artists are built for the sometimes traumatizing task of transmuting darkness into light — standing up to and exposing the rottenness for what it is — maybe not by choice but because we’re born into the type of trouble that forces us to find a better way out of distress through creation.

I’m speaking as someone who could barely keep my life together for the debilitating effects of illness that came on suddenly in 2017. I know, in my own admittedly small way, what it means to lose almost everything materially, to have to march on when it’s demoralizing and exhausting and feeling utterly hopeless. 

My own philosophy is to keep creating no matter what it takes. Keep painting, keep writing, keep singing, keep seeing the sanctity and sanctuary of everything amazing and gorgeous around us that we stand to both lose and gain. But also refuse to ignore the badness. Fight back as hard as it does.

There was a story years ago about a scientist in San Francisco who lost his hand strength to type. But, he was so driven to keep writing, he rigged a pulley system for his hands to work his typewriter. 

It’s a powerful form of rebellion to build a pulley, literally or metaphorically. It’s a Grinch-who-store-Christmas kind of thing to say, yeah, you can try to take everything from me, but you can’t have this. 

I cherish the people on this earth who, through that same stubbornness, transmute suffering into goodness … like alchemists.

I personally want to be around for the time when the forces of this madness and hatred become just a puff in the flask.