Read this post on Sara’s Substack. For more of Sara’s work check out her website, Instagram, and music on all streaming platforms. To support her work, here’s her Buy Me a Coffee link.

Read this post on Sara’s Substack. For more of Sara’s work check out her website, Instagram, and music on all streaming platforms. To support her work, here’s her Buy Me a Coffee link.

Find Sara's work at sarachase.net + on her Substack

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Dear Reader,

Maybe I’m speaking too soon as I’m currently in my 30’s, but I feel happily resolute in aging naturally. While aging is not a choice, hiding the aesthetics of aging is something women have been attempting for some time now. We all know this. We have eyes. We see the medspas popping up like gas stations every 3 blocks.

In part, aging without aesthetic intervention is an act of resistance. Let my face be a protest! But that’s not the whole story. I am bent on embracing beauty in what culture deems unattractive. Watch me dance, bite into rich foods, flirt with poetry, hug my tías while my laugh-lines laugh at the world’s need for me to feel “less than”. There’s more beauty to be found in the wise and aging than actresses who have fewer wrinkles in their fifties than they did in their twenties.

So yes, I love a good stick-it-to-the-man statement. But it’s not about men. It’s about me daring to have joy as I am. So take that.

Will I love having new wrinkles while others my age opt for botox? Eh. Maybe yes. Maybe no. Am I willing to undergo elective treatments to “keep up”? Nope. This is not because I feel above such things. It’s more about differing priorities. My eyes and heart are set on other things. If all goes as I hope, my wrinkles will be a reflection of maturity, resilience, and confidence I embraced on my way to that particular age.

I have the luxury of being surrounded by women I love (my mother included) who have no interest in adjusting their faces. In a world where more and more are choosing another path, that’s been helpful to me. I’d feel great about being that for younger women—showing another option for aging.

Now, I will be dying my hair because that’s plain fun. Another excuse to express myself? Yes, please.

Sincerely,

The Woman with More Wrinkles in Her Future

Thanks for being here <3

Extras to check out:

Song: I Got Love by Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band

Poetry Book: The Sun and Her Flowers by Rupi Kaur

Find and support Sara's work here: music, substack (blog), instagram, website, buy her a coffee

From Substack Post:

I was gifted a prayer rope that I know I am using incorrectly (if incorrect prayer is even possible). My understanding of its purpose is to set your heart and mind in a place to acknowledge God’s presence in real time. It’s not summoning God, or raising yourself to God. Rather, its purpose is to ease you into reality— to lull you out of the nightmare of materialism, scarcity, and isolation, and into understanding. All is more and lighter and deeper than it appears. God is here. God is mysterious. I am a child perpetually growing up, perpetually falling into God. Or something like that.

The prayer that has carried me in the last while has been about belonging in a cosmic sense. It’s led me to begin to feel I belong in an earthy sense. My eyes are opening to all the places, people, communities, and expressions in which I belong.

I’ll share some recent experiences of belonging:

* I belong in my mother’s smile as I share a new song with her

* I belong in my son’s hugs

* I belong in the prayers of fierce women around me

* I belong in my tía’s poems and my tío’s eyes as he tells a story

* I belong when I help a student write their first song

* My hands belong clutching beach sand

* My body belongs in the bed from which I type

* My joy belongs in meeting the author of a book that felt as necessary as soil

* My tears have belonged in my mind lately, as opposed to sliding down my cheeks

* I belong in the phone call of my friend checking on me

* I belong in shrimp and grits

* Can I say that again? I belong in shrimp and grits. (Thank you, primo Mykel).

Is there a place where you regularly have a feeling of belonging? The internet has provided us with more access to others’ feelings and perspectives, especially through memes. This can help us feel seen. There can be a sense of belonging in that. Deeper still, are there tactile places where you feel you belong? Is there a person whose arms open when they see you? Is there music that can carry your weight?

My encouragement is to take time to consider these. Appreciate them. Thank them. Strive to be that for another human who is doing their best to human.

Extras

Qobuz: a music streaming platform with high quality sound and a more ethical reimbursement structure for artists. Subscriptions start around $11 per month.

Something Holy song by Alice Phoebe Lou

Find and support Sara's work here: my music, substack, instagram, website, buy me a coffee

Don’t count on your warhorse to give you victory, for all its strength it cannot save you. — Psalm 33:17

What happens when all your defenses dissolve before your eyes—when they turn out to have the substance of holograms? How are you to proceed?

But first, a poem about monsters…

---------

One of the ways I proceed after my defenses have given way, is by reaching out to loving friends. On one such occasion I reached out to my sister, a woman who prays and hears from God, asking for encouragement. She was compelled not to tell me about my strengths, but instead to tell me of my need not to be anything — but to belong.

With that perspective, I was reminded of an acquaintance from over a decade ago who said to me, “You know those Scriptures where God calls people ‘beloved’? That’s my calling and purpose in life. My only job is to be loved.” She said this with eyes widening— her entire body seeming to be opened and steadied all at once. I don’t remember her name, but I remember her presence: her soft curls, her fingers open, and palms facing her God.

That’s the image I recall as my sister tells me of my need to know that I belong. There’s a scene where God describes himself as a mother hen shielding her baby chicks from harm. Covering her chicks, she takes the blows of life— be it predators, harsh weather, threats of every kind— upon herself. That’s where I am held. Any pains I feel are the secondary wounds that penetrate God first. Suffering has its limits when you are loved.

Have you found that to be true? I wrote about walking through the Valley of the Shadow of Death and not sitting in it. Today I reflect on it being merely the shadow of death, not death itself. Complete alienation from love is the epitome of death. Anything less can only be the shadow of it.

Here is where my belief that God is love has the greatest significance. I walk through the valley of the shadow of death receiving the world’s blows only through the wings of a God who calls me Beloved and assures me that I belong.

EXTRAS

a book: A Million Miles in a Thousand years by Donald Miller

a song: Tightrope by Jon Guerra

Thank you for being here <3

website: www.sarachase.net

blog: sarachase.substack.com

The Song I Always Needed

One day I'll write the

song I need

for such a time as this

The kind that binds

my soul as one

from hopeless scattered bits

One day I'll have the words

One day I'll have the rhymes

to hum in the dark

to summon the light

For more of my poetry & music: linktree + instagram + substack

_____________________

JOY

Grief in memories

joy in today's arrival

A day I could not have known

was making its way

toward me

longingly

throbbing with anticipation

bursting through its seems

How unceremoniously

Joy opened the front door entered my room

kneeled beside my bed

lulled me out of my fitful sleep talking

dream shocking the

horror right out of me

I’ve been dying to meet you

Joy said

walking me to the window sill

She handed me a mug

and as a waterfall filled it up

with herself

take two sips so you can

build a tolerance

for this fire pouring down your throat

I live to make you come alive

Just wait 'til you see

what a little Joy inside

can do.

For more of my poetry & music: linktree + instagram + substack

A kiss in a Panera 

is all the romance I need 

That and a partnership 

that carries love and work

and fidelity on all four shoulders

And making my coffee

And wrestling with our kids

And telling our daughter she 

deserves to be treated as

the gold she is

And showing our son how to

lift up others with both of his

hands 

And letting me cry

And calling me poetry 

And taking your time

to send up prayers

to listen—to read—-to call 

everyday holy

Cause you know me

and how my smile slips

and my thoughts trip

over themselves 

scraping for something

to take hold of 

—that’s when you hold me

And that’s all the romance I need.

Life long and daily 

and two becoming one

and one remaining two uniquely

So when I say

A kiss in a Panera is

all the romance I need 

You'll know what this poet means 

This is me trying something new. I did not script this. I simply read a poem I had just penned and recorded myself thinking out loud about it.

Read poem When Doubt is Faith on my Substack.

Babel | Plenty of Space on Mars

Somedays, the pessimism is real. Somedays, humanity is not all that impressive. I wrote this on one such day. This poem is not about overpopulation. Rather, it is about the way we treat each other. There is plenty to go around, but we behave as if we live on a planet of scarcity. It’s not that our resources are limited. Our generosity is.

Here’s where the teachings of Jesus are a disruption to our various systems. He taught us to give when we lack, trusting in a higher justice system- a cosmic justice system. Survival of the fittest has been our main mode of operation. And it works, sort of. It depends on the goal. If the goal is to acquire as much and as many as possible, then that is easily attained for the powerful. If the goal is inner peace, a sense of security, and maybe even joy, then acquiring and hoarding at the expense of others will not get you there.

Jesus’s approach was not to demand that everyone share.

Instead,

I’m talking about a love that changes your mind about the world, yourself, and others. Not a love we muster up from within ourselves, but a love we accept being poured over us and absorbed by calloused skin. Jesus was talking about a God-sized love that shocks every assumption we have right out of our system. This is a freedom we all crave but go about trying to attain through various destructive methods. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

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I plan to keep this going because I know the power of words and I intend to use them in a way that offers hope, validation of the human experience, and maybe a tear here and there. Join me as we stick it to the algorithm gods, one good read at a time ;-)

Extras:

Tobe Nwigwe’s Tiny Desk

The first song, Houston Tribute, is some of Tobe’s best writing in my opinion. Below are some of the lyrics. Songs like this are why Tobe is hands down one of my favorite artists alive right now. As I was uploading this, I had to stop to rewatch the entire thing. It’s just gold. Straight up gold.

Houston Tribute (excerpt)

…Most people get explicit when tryin' to visitThe mountain top to sacrifice all with that and the thicket, ughI'm speaking solely of atonementAnd most would get it if they weren't livin' just for the momentThe air we breathe is rented, repent if you think you own itThat's hard to comprehend when you busy bendin' them cornersLoners is what they say you must become to separate yourselfThat's a misnomer, relationships are the greatest wealthThe problem is you in relationships with hate itselfIs the sole establishment so much so you wouldn't date yourselfOuch, that's a pinch that might cause an abrasionBut don't fret, we all miss some steps F'n with Satan…

—Tobe Nwigwe

Terraform

Stop & Listen Playlist

A collection of all recommended songs from my substack. It’s not curated for any particular mood, but a collection of gems I’ve found while passing through all my moods.