We rarely talk about the tools. About how many it takes. About how instinct decides which one to reach for next. How no single one does it all. The same is true for healing. For art. For life. It’s a mess before it’s something. And it takes a whole set of unseen helpers to smooth the roughness and coax form from the formless.

Clay is new for me. A longing that lived quietly in the background for years, waiting for its time. I’ve carved out a space for it now — not just in the physical sense, with shelves and tools and muddy floors — but in my calendar, in my heart, in my breath. A kind of sanctuary. A slow return to something true.

In a world that moves fast and asks us to produce, I chose instead to listen. To slow down. To shape something with my own hands. To give myself what I’d so often given away: space, care, attention.

This practice is a gift to myself — and maybe, in some ways, to the parts of us all that have been waiting. Especially for women, who have long been taught to quiet their creative longing in service of everything else. This is a reclaiming. A remembering. A soft but steady revolution of form and feeling.

So here’s to the tools. To the process. To the clay. And to the quiet joy of making something that never had to be perfect to be beautiful.