Did I make this list for my fellow writers to accidentally forward to their people in hopes of receiving the just right write gift? Maybe. Did I also make this list because I want all of these things? Also maybe. Could you also just buy these things for yourself? Absolutely maybe. 

The cutest little typewriter desk calendar and art project in one.

The highlighters with a cult following.

Their favorite pens. These are mine. 

Another notebook. She has a hundred. She loves them all. Especially ones that make her laugh.

A fun and inspiring poetry book.

Stress release from all of those rejection letters. It happens. 

A paid subscription to a literary substack read.Or just send them a link to mine. That’s a gift for you and for me!

Welcome to the second entry of The Darling Files. In case you missed the first one, you can read it here. This month I share an essay I’ve worked on here and there, submitted a few times, but just never quite found it a home. I think that’s a big reason for this project. Too often I think the good words are only deemed good when someone else declares them so. I forget, I can be my own publisher. In case you needed the reminder, you can be your own publisher, too.

//

Our family shuffles into church late, as we do, sneaking down the side aisle like a second processional, my children’s footsteps greeting the congregation. Yes, hello, we are late once again. We find our usual seats on the creaky wood pews and I situate my three children on either side of me. From my Mary Poppins bag I pull various activities to keep their little hands busy before turning to the front of church with a deep sigh. We made it. Time to worship.

Immediately, though, I’m distracted. 

The children are my first and obvious distraction. They fidget in their seats like someone cranked up their windup knobs. I hush and give them the look. Still they wiggle and squirm as if movement is what keeps their hearts beating.

“Look what I made mom!” Elliott, my six-year-old, whisper shouts to me. He holds up a crayon drawn picture in front of his face. I smile through my mask giving him a quick thumbs up before glancing behind me hoping the people in the pews don’t see the way his rocket ship resembles bathroom graffiti.  Maybe they aren’t paying any attention to us.

CLATTER CLATTER CLANG. A water bottle falls to the ground.

Who am I kidding? We’re a side show spectacle. 

I’m trying to worship but I’m also trying to write, in my head, of course. It’s my turn to write the Prayers of the People for next week’s worship service. My plan was to pay attention in worship today (ha, I know, right?) to God speaking to me and then write what I heard. Just pay attention and then patch a few words together, says Mary Oliver in her poem “Praying.” And don’t try to make them elaborate.

I can almost hear her whisper shouting these words to me from across the sanctuary. Just patch a few words together? Got it, Mary, thanks for that. I mean, she’s right. Praying couldn’t be that hard, right? Ask God for what we need. Throw in some poetic language. Amen. 

But, Mary, I want to whisper shout right back to her, praying is just so heavy these days. I glance around the sanctuary, morning light streaming through the stained glass windows like fingers reaching out. I try to make out familiar faces but with masks, eyes are all I see. Tired eyes. Hopeful eyes. Distracted eyes (it’s me, hi.) What do they want? Where do I even begin? What are the just right words they need from me now to bring them comfort, healing, hope? 

Comfort, healing, hope. 

My mind meanders to my friend. She texted me earlier this week sharing news of her miscarriage. “I’m weak,” she confessed. “Pray for me please. I just can’t right now.” It was so early for them, too early to even share the good news, and now to have to be vulnerable in admitting crushed hope. My heart flinches with the clash of two emotions–the honor in being trusted with this story against the pain of wanting to remove their grief all together. I long to offer her encouraging words, something beautiful to give her hope.

Not a blue iris, says Mary Oliver, just weeds in a vacant lot.

My friend doesn’t need my iris words. She needs me to do what she isn’t strong enough to do herself. She needs my weeds in her vacant heart. She needs me to pray. 

Leo, my youngest, climbs into my lap now, as if he knew I needed to feel the weight of something I could hold.  I look up at the altar, attempt to settle back into the words of worship but once more something pulls my attention. 

A candle sits at the front of the church, a small one inside a tall hurricane on a table barely large enough for the holder to rest. There are other candles lit in church that morning, as there always are. But this flame is unique. 

This is a flame over which our church has kept watch since early June 2020. 

On that morning, a member of the Migizi organization, a non-profit that supports the well-being of the American Indian Youth in our Minneapolis community, came to our pastor with a lantern and a flame. The flame he carried was that which was found in the ashes of their smoldering building following the uprisings after the killing of George Floyd. 

I remember that morning all too well. I remember waking with fear as thick as the smell of smoke through our open windows. The previous night's protest and holy rage descended upon the corner of the Third Police Precinct in Minneapolis, bringing fire and destruction to every building in its wake. Our church was on that corner, Migizi right behind us across the alley. In the first light of the morning I learned with great relief that remarkably, our church held strong, untouched. Migizi was not quite as lucky. 

In the aftermath of that morning, a member of Migizi stood on the sidewalk in his trauma, overlooking a space that once held a safe home for their community, now in an unrecognizable heap of smoldering ash and flame. The ash would return to the earth, but the flame he wanted to keep.

Collecting the barely flickering flame in a lantern, he brought the fire, a symbol of renewal in the Native American culture, to our pastor. And thus our church agreed to keep watch over the light until Migizi could rebuild. Members of our community passed this tiny flame of light from home to home, keeping it alive ever since. 

Back in the sanctuary, the children play musical chairs in our cramped pew once more, pulling me back to the reality of my own responsibility. I think now of the action of our congregation carrying that fire with amazement, and also relief. Thank goodness no one asked me to care for the flame. Watching my children bounce around in the pews I can only imagine how quickly that light would have been snuffed out after a pillow wrestling tournament gone wrong. I imagined the three year old in my lap practicing his birthday candle blowing. One huff and a puff and all the important prayer work of holding space for a grieving community would go up in smoke.

Watching the candle today flicker, dance, letting us know it is still very much alive, I see I needn’t worry. The church knew who was capable of keeping the flame burning. Some are more prepared to carry the burden of flame for others in different seasons of life.

A member of Migizi gathers with us this morning to speak of the plans they have for rebuilding. She shares her gratitude with the church for keeping this small flame remembered, but it is I that feels honored. What an incredible amount of trust it takes to invite someone to carry your trauma. But really, what else could we have done? We couldn’t stop the fires from destroying their home. We could, however, carry a memory of that flame until they were ready to hold it themselves. 

It’s a bit like prayer, isn’t it? 

We share the ashes and flames of our lives with others—our grief, our trauma, our broken unknowns—so that they can hold it for us for a little while. We invite our people into every vulnerable feeling, the ones that make us wiggle and squirm, because this movement is what keeps our hearts beating. It’s what keeps the flame burning, and us remembering. It’s why we write words in our heads and whisper shout the things we want to share. It’s what keeps us coming together in community, even through all the distractions on a Sunday morning, because our collective presence, however loud and clattering in our echoing spaces, is how we hold each other. 

It’s how our prayers of the people get to God—in the trails of smoke from the flames we pass around, one shared grief at a time.

I have breaking news.

Taylor’s Swift’s latest album Midnights, conventionally marketed as an album about the things we worry about in the middle of the night, is not about what you think it’s about. 

The queen of easter eggs and secret codes has done it again! Taylor Swift released her latest album Midnights under the ruse of a concept album about the things that keep us up at night. Swifties around the world are analyzing every song and slotting in her various relationship dramas. But we all know those theories are for the little leagues of Swiftiedom. The real truth runs much deeper than that and I am here to reveal to you the EXCLUSIVE TOP SECRET NEVER BEFORE DISCUSSED truth behind the Midnights album. 

This is an album written entirely for THE WRITERS. 

Here’s how I know.

It started with “You’re on Your Own Kid.”  I was listening to her sing about a love who wouldn’t pay her attention, a tale as old as time, if you will. And then it got to the bridge, the one that seems to go on and on about the different stages of her life and loves. And that’s when it hit me. 

This isn’t a song about a lover. This is the story of her writing career. 

It’s the story of how writing was her great escape. It’s about the pages that turned and got her where she is today. It’s about how you give your blood, sweat, and tears for something you love and it can be really hard and no matter what lies ahead, you know you can face it. You always have, you always will. 

I dare you not to cry.

So this got me thinking, if that song is about writing, what else was Taylor hiding for us in the lyrics of her songs? Maybe this entire album is about writing. After all, nothing keeps us up more in the middle of the night than the painful task of putting words to paper?!

Stay with me as I break down every song, yes even the 3 AM Edition, to uncover what Taylor has to say about the writing life. You’ll never be able to listen to Midnights the same again.

Let’s start at the top, shall we? 

The synth is pumping. Taylor just said “Meet me at midnight.” Now it’s done. You’re sucked into the “Lavender Haze.” This song isn’t about the kind of love you might think, though; it’s about the first time you discovered writing. Maybe it was way back in middle school when you turned to a diary to pen your latest middle school drama. Maybe it was the first time you shared deep thoughts on an Instagram caption and people resonated with it or the first time you hit publish on your blog. Whatever you consider your first hit, you know the feeling I’m talking about. You’re in love…with writing. All this shit is new to you, but you want to stay here in this love spiral of words. People start asking you “so where is this going exactly?” as if the only way to be a writer is to be tied down to something or going viral. But that kind of pressure doesn’t matter to you. Get it off your desk, you have writing to do. 

So what does that look like? Well, as we make our way through this album the writing life can look like many different things. 

Sometimes, if we’re really lucky, writing will feel like being somewhere else, like, say, “Paris.” You can get so engrossed into your own story that you don’t even hear the news. I love that feeling, as rare as it is. 

“Maroon” will remind you that sometimes writing means revisiting the same stories over and over again but with new reflections on what you learned. While you once wrote about love being burning red, now with time you see love looks more like the rust that grew between telephones (authors note: my FAVORITE line in this whole song!), so scarlet it was maroon. Writing gives us an opportunity to always look back and learn.

Sometimes we give advice to our “Dear Reader,” when really the words were what we need to hear for ourselves. 

But sometimes writing is simply turning to the pages of a journal and getting out your angry thoughts. That’s what I think happened with “Vigilante Shit.” Taylor took to her journal to write out her angry thoughts in her morning pages so she wouldn’t say something she regretted in person. Sometimes we need our angry words. We don’t want to start shit, but we do want to imagine how it might end. That’s why we have stories. 

Writing often involves a lot of brainstorming to find the right metaphor, illustrated perfectly in the rambling muses of “Karma.” Is Karma my boyfriend, God, the breeze, a relaxing thought? You’ll go around and around trying to figure out what is right. You’ll wonder what you’ve learned from all those years and all those tears in writing but then finally it will hit you. You’ll know when you have found the right one because it will make you scream the answer with all of your friends “Oh wait! I’ve got it! Karma is the guy on the screen, coming straight home to me!”

Some of the best writers are those who aren’t afraid to ask questions in their writing, explored in the song “Question.” Sometimes we get swept away in the gray and we just want to have a conversation with someone about it.

Ever experienced writer’s block? Play “Glitch.” Every writer knows that feeling when they are writing about glorious happenings of happenstance and then suddenly a brief interruption, a slight malfunction, and now you can’t remember if you ever knew how to write. (It’s me. Hi.)

Speaking of me, now for the song that EVERY writer can relate to–the inner critic song. “Anti-Hero.” We all have her. I call mine Janice. She’s the one standing behind you when you pick up your pen to say “it’s me, hi, I’m the problem, it’s me.” We can’t be left to our own devices because we are terrible writers and will never amount to anything but a monster on a hill. It’s exhausting. 

Writing is often battling the myth that every writer is a “Mastermind.” It’s as if we simply lay the groundwork and then, just like clockwork the dominoes of good words cascade in a line. After all, strategy sets the scene for the tale. It’s as easy as that, right?

Well, no, actually. Writing actually feels more like surviving “The Great War.” And yet, we keep going, through bloodshed and tears on our letters, and we finally finish the shitty first draft. 

Now comes the hard part–the editing process. This is when you have to start pulling out the words and phrases that don’t work with the story, and this part will kill you. Put on “Bigger than the Whole Sky” and have yourself a good cry about saying goodbye to what the story could've been, would've been, should've been.

“Bejeweled” reminds us, though, that editing isn’t all bad. All that effort to make the whole thing shimmer and your writing will polish up real nice. 

Even when your writing does polish up real nice, it still comes with regret. “High Infidelity” is a song for anyone who has ever reread over past work and regretted ever writing it, even if the words seemed like the right thing at the time. 

Sometimes you wonder why you ever became a writer in the first place. You could have had it comfortable with, I don’t know, accounting, but instead you chose pain and changed like “Midnight Rain”. And maybe the pain was heaven but if writing had never saved you from boredom you “Would’ve Could've Should’ve” gone on as you were. But, Lord, writing made you feel important. 

So if writing is this painful, why do we keep doing this to ourselves? “Labyrinth” explains why. It only hurts this much right now, is what we are thinking the whole time we write. You think you’ll be getting over the pain of rejection your whole life so maybe you should just quit writing. And then, just when you thought your writing life was going down, a new idea for a story turns it right around. Oh no, you fell in love with writing again.

Because the truth is, once you’re a writer, you are always a writer. You just see life differently. Like “Snow on the Beach,” everything is weird but fucking beautiful, and you have to write about it. 

And if you are really lucky, you’ll have someone to tell your poems to and he’ll say “what a mind.” He’ll be the one you come running to when the voices that implore “you should be doing more,” to him you can admit that you’re just too soft for all of it. Because writing is great, but all you ever wanted was “Sweet Nothing.”

So, on behalf of all of the writers, Taylor, thank you for writing this album for us. You’re a mastermind.