I spent most of the day today at the Peach Street House (Spiderweb HQ) with the crew helping with recording of pieces for the DMA project that we have coming up in September. It was gorgeous outside and a small group of us hung out talking about the work and relationships and how we navigate the world.

I’ve been worried about how I would be able to make it through the piece that I wrote for this project because it dealt specifically with what I’m going through right now. I wrote the piece while I was coming down from the panic attack that set all of this in motion and I knew that reading it out loud would be brutally difficult. True to form, I made it through the first stanzas ok (first poem in almost 18 years) and then had to stop. I kept going back in to get enough for a full take and then took some time recovering. The piece is a little longer than it needed to be and I know that Conor will cut things to work with the project. I re-recorded the piece when I got back to the Bolivar House after climbing with Josh and Chris, clean take after some computer issues and it’s right here.

I had a really meaningful conversation about parental abandonment with Morgan as they unpacked the baggage around an absentee, emotionally abusive father and resonated with them mostly because of my experiences with my mother.

Tomorrow is Father’s Day and I’ll spend as much of the day with my kiddos as I can. They have been so great during this process and I know it isn’t easy for them. All I can do is promise that I won’t be a future conversation about a parent who isn’t one.