NOTE: Margaret’s latest flow-state writing as practiced each Friday morning with members of the Green Mountain Writer’s Group on Zoom. On March 20, 2026, she wrote the following essay in the allotted 40 minutes. Join us. All are welcome.
When someone asks me how I feel I’m challenged to respond. I wonder in third person what they really want to know, or even if they care. Do they want to hear about the deep foreboding that shadows every day, the grief and tears I quietly carry, the stark anxious static so distracting that rises out of random thoughts? If I’m lucky, they might want to hear about belonging welling up when nature is the stage, the stable rocks, the soft damp moss, the wind among the trees. That vast and wondrous living being that enfolds and nurtures all.
I wouldn’t trust them to reveal my doubts and undisciplined writing and creative urge that flutters through most days. My longings to express myself with care and hopes for peace and safety even at my door. Would I tell them of the guilt I have for fear of danger at a rally in my own community? Of war and pestilence that stalks us all or great economic collapse where a woman like me has so few ways to turn.
So, then I draw a card, read my horoscope, and find as Capricorn, I hold this role of coherent, structured bonds and plans fired by cosmic consciousness to hold the line, feel the feelings raw and huge and produce some energy of ethical values in soft boundaries for this eternal play of flesh and blood. Does it even matter if I know how I feel, as long as I can measure some sturdy safe step forward through feelings as they rise from what still feels like primordial ooze, but I hope is just a bog or drift of light where I can float across a painful boundary into a field of better news, a good idea, sharing a cup or cookie with someone who isn’t asking me hard questions.
There are very few who want to hear how I feel about a crowded room so full of noise my tinnitus works overtime to return me to the inner drone of my own body mind. The endless babble that goes on around as we make conversation trying to connect, performing happiness, touting our success, trying to remember things we can’t quite remember anymore, while carefully, fucking politely never asking how we feel. How they feel. How you feel. How I feel.
So soft and vulnerable, wild and chaotic, low and slow, wounded and afraid, alone, lonely, and unsure. On a good day joyful if not happy, busy with pleasant endeavors, managing prosperity, property, and rooted in the group, community, or activity, open free of pain. That’s about how I feel now. Calmer than before, with some small confidence that the Empress lives within, and I can say to myself that I feel about as well as everyone else.
Thank you ~
Happy to have found this space.