Febuary love list

farting, dreams, a crocodile, + a blessing

Hi, friends. I’m seriously so honored to be in your inbox. How do we feel about love lists? Ones where we get honest. Where we keep noticing patterns, stories, and nature. I really love this practice and the practice of sharing these things with you. What do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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February brought a lot of dreams. I don’t mean in the ‘my dreams came true!’ way, although I am searching hard to notice the little ones when they happen, because they still do and I need to celebrate the heck out of them.

I mean weird dreams. Funny dreams. Piercing dreams about suffering and grief.

Can I share with you some things I dreamt, felt, saw, and read in February?

on a walk with my daughter

As a general rule, I have a lot of anxiety dreams. I am, after all, someone who’s lived with anxiety for my entire life. 2020 was absolutely riddled with such dreams. The way I feel in my body at this time of history is similar to how I felt during the pandemic, but with the knowledge that people are choosing to make stuff happen on purpose. And yet, instead of a horrible rash of stress dreams, my brain’s been telling me better things. She even has fun sometimes.

I dreamt a fart was so disruptive that a certain person in the White House couldn’t be heard over the noise, or over the raucous laughter that ensued. I woke myself up laughing. Thanks for that gem, brain. I’m so proud of dream me.

an illustration from the tale “The Wooing of Becfola” which you should read if you need another reason to feel angry at the Patriarchy. Or, how I feel sometimes, but then I fart.

The dreams that aren’t funny are full of deep grief and knowing. I dreamt I stood naked in the snow, surrounded by the fragile, broken bodies of dying fawns. I could only cradle one against my bare skin. I soothed and spoke gently to her as she died. Standing exposed to the stares of other people didn’t matter to me. Though surrounded by overwhelming suffering I could not stop, I knew I was doing the only thing I could.

I remain startled that my subconscious understands something that conscious me struggles to remember. I’m in awe of how far we’ve come since 2020, despite the state of the world.

This, too, is the state of the world:

-a day at the zoo with my kiddos

-lots of walks

-a surprise 2nd snow!

-finishing a second draft of the sequel to Double Alchemy, only a whole year after Double Alchemy was published! (this is a big deal)

-lots of laptop hostage snuggles with my cat:

dear Nova, why do you look forlorn?

I drew a card for each month of 2025, and the hermit is Febuary’s. I love the reminder to journey into my inner landscape. It’s certainly been a month for that. Not just journaling and sitting with my dreams, but evaluating several other decisions as well. There has been a lot of soul-searching this month.

hare & moon embroidery by Caitlin Gemmell

The hermit also offers a much needed warning on the dangers of isolation. As a bona vide introvert myself who has struggled to find community for what feels like an entire decade, I need this reminder not to give up on building a tiny village.

The timing feels right, too, here on the verge of spring. We’re still deep in our cave, but starting to shake off winter’s slumber and look towards the sun.

And this month, one tiny chance I took on community is already paying off.

This month I read the absolute balm that is The Maid and the Crocodile by Jordan Ifueko, a YA fantasy with just the right amount of romance and many delightful parallels to Howl’s Moving Castle.

This book was the perfect blend of escape and real-world mirroring. The magic system was unique and captivating, the main character one of the most well-developed I’ve read in a while. The romantic interest is a god cursed to slowly turn into a crocodile, and in case you’re wondering, yes he totally has a green slime meltdown moment.

The story is clever and beautiful, set in a post-revolution world where those formerly higher up in the social strata take out their resentment on the people they can still keep under their boot. The main character, Small Sade, is a maid who has aged out of the orphanage and is looking for work, and her life demonstrates how such people still fall through the cracks when the dust settles after big world shifts. But most importantly, she shows us how we need never give up, as long as we can find our collective voices.

In last month’s love letter, I wrote:

Storytelling isn’t enough, but nothing is. Storytelling isn’t enough, but it’s something. Storytelling isn’t enough, but it was never about one person’s isolated efforts, and few things remind us of that like storytelling does.

…and yeah. The Maid and the Crocodile illustrates that so beautifully.

A blessing

Where might your subconscious carry hidden treasures you can bring into the light?

What is one tiny step you can take towards building community?

Or, if this feels better:

May you unearth the stores of strength, humor, and resilience you already carry, and may you find people with whom you can support mutual thriving.

And don’t forget to fart.

Meet you over the orchard wall, friends.*

*One of my wonderful early readers for The Secret Heart of Maeve MacGowan started signing her emails like this. I like it.

Thanks for being here. My AuDHD brain is a bit scattered and prone to change things last minute, but here in The Purple Vale you can count on reflections on folklore, fairy tales, and the seasons from my little corner of East Tennessee–which is unceded Cherokee and Muscogee land.