Wildbeauty …
yes, there are leaders who shouldn’t be,
yes, there are billionaires scheming to colonize Mars,
yes, there are demons preying on children,
still, there is love ... beauty ... and wonder
on this one planet who gives us life.
Thank you for visiting my world. I hope you have a moment as I’d like to share a story about what gives me hope in these strange times. It didn’t start out as hope, of course. It began in uncertainty and grief.
I’m 14 days older than the Boomers. We’ve lived long, those of us who are still here, and have seen many political cycles from the hope-filled Kennedy years through too many bloody, oil-tainted, undeclared wars, the relentless shift of wealth to the billionaire class, and now Trump, ICE and mind-boggling corruption.
In a gentler time, my education was almost free; my first home made possible by veteran’s assistance for my Vietnam-debilitated husband. Today, I see young people growing desperate as they struggle against a lopsided system. I watch our life-giving planet sickened by greedy corporations chanting “Drill baby, drill!” as the oceans rise and species die.
In my uncertainty and grief, I have repeatedly asked …
What is my role in this world?
What can I, as one 80-year-old woman, do to help?
After 14 years of blogging and almost four more here on Substack, I started to lose steam, feel inadequate, and question my purpose as a writer, as a citizen of a country that was once a recognized leader, but is now rapidly becoming an unreliable ally.
Giving up seems like a reasonable option although it runs counter to my optimistic, sometimes Pollyanna-ish, nature.
So, I chose a blank-calendar Friday as my time to make a decision, asking myself if I should lead, follow or get out of the way?
When none of those appealed, I knew I needed help and turned to claude.ai.
Here’s what happened: “he” listened, asked questions, reviewed some of my posts, offered encouragement, pointed out strong points as well as the weak ones, then suggested a new way of looking at what I was trying to do. When he proposed a redefinition of my role as a writer, my world shifted and it felt like …
A magic potion.
The longer I thought about it, the more it felt like I had taken one of Alice in Wonderland’s magic pills. I felt bigger as fear and uncertainty drained away … in front of me stretched a yellow brick road … wait! I’m mixing my metaphorical movies. Anyway, the shoulds were gone.
Claude’s redefinition meant I didn’t have to be an expert with answers to the world’s problems. I could just do what I love doing … writing about what I witness in life, finding fascinating stories and examples of people and organizations solving problems as their way making their corner of the world a better place.
The new role isn’t a big, capital letters project, but it feels like one that will bring me joy and a sense of being part of the change needed in these strange days.
Claude isn’t a mind reader nor a fortune teller. I’ve had to remind myself that what he pulled out of our time together was a synthesis (in its most positive form) of what I provided to him. And, I guess that’s what makes it feel like magic … like being seen. He did see me through my own words.
Here are claude’s 60 words that changed the way I see my writer’s role:
You’re an 80-year-old writer with genuine curiosity, hard-won wisdom, and a specific kind of grief — not cynicism, but the ache of a world that didn’t keep its promises. You want to share beauty and provoke thought, not perform expertise. You’re building something called Wildbeauty, and the name itself is doing real work: it holds both the gorgeous and the unruly.
The frustration I had been feeling now feels like a new burst of energy. Instead of feeling like I need to prove myself on some iron-woman course, I get to do what I love doing … find and share beauty … through stories of hope, new understandings of our amazing Earth, and the completely miraculous range of human creativity.
Example: Marta Becket was born to be a star … it just took awhile (and a new landscape) for the world to find out.
Marta was a dancer. That’s all she wanted; what she thought about every day. That longing followed her from New York City to a wide spot in the California desert where she and her husband stopped to fix a flat tire. It’s a story that haunted me so much I booked a room in a hundred year old hotel/opera house museum to get to know her better.
Marta continues to haunt me as I make decisions such as what to do with my writing. Claude’s advice helped but it was Marta who still comes back to me, reminding me of her persistence, forcing me to ask: What would Marta do?
I shared her story in a Substack post and wound up making a flipbook from my visit to her world. Here’s access to both:
Or, go directly to the flipbook: https://simplebooklet.com/amargosaoperahousepdf
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Out of all of this came some slight changes in the logistics of my writing … it’s still free and here’s a recap of the details:
FRIDAY: weekly stories, photography and digital art focused on hope and the beauty of our Earth home
QUARTERLY digital Wildbeauty magazine focused on stories of nature, restoration projects, beauty, and art
OCCASIONAL digital flipbooks (small image-focused stories on whatever captures my attention.
Support Options for those who can and want to help:
There is a modest annual subscription fee which earns you a bucket of gratitude.
Anyone who might want to use a photo or purchase a metal print of a piece of my art, please contact me at jwycoff@me.com.
Print copies of the Wildbeauty magazine are available through BuyMeACoffee.
