Stefani Rossi
Wishing Upon Shooting Stars
I am a sucker for shooting stars. Sometimes I’ve seen them. Other times I’ve not. We live life in the space of both /and, where we can hope, despite there being no guarantee that our hopes are realized.
Confessions of an Amateur Dancer, In 3 Movements
Perhaps my favorite lesson from dance is that there are no winners or losers. This helps me re-imagine my life, my community, and the world in terms other than the binary of conventional success or failure. It helps me have patience for being human.
Bus Life
Riding the bus for me is a privilege and an inconvenience; it’s a bit new and a bit mundane, and, like most things in life, holds many contradictions...For this bounty, I give thanks.
Love Note to Life: Keep Breathing, Believe it’s Enough
In just over 3 months, I will become 3 years younger than my father was when he died without warning. The closer I get to that number, I am sobered by how young he was. Even more than that, I am sobered by how much he accomplished during his life, and—comparatively speaking—how much I have not.
The Power of a Well-Timed Word
I make no pretense that this is an easy endeavor. All expressions of love are risks. There is no promise of reciprocity. To genuinely give means offering words without trying to elicit or manipulate a response.
The Dare of Hope and the Weight of Glory
In week 1 of Advent, the meditation is hope. The invitation extended by readings, songs, and rituals is to dig deep and embrace hope as a way of thinking, of living, of breathing in the world....This year, as I ponder the theme of hope, I cannot escape the reality that our world is living through intense tension.
A Playlist for the Death of Dreams: Lament as Necessary First Steps
How can we welcome this place called Here—this unyielding stranger that bears no resemblance to the future we had dreamed? What I know to be true is that profound beginnings often have their start in places that appear void, formless, parched, and foreign.
+_
-
_____________________________________________
_____________________________________________
The Waking is an online literary magazine and a part of the Ruminate creative community that houses high-quality literary writing about what it’s like to be human. We are interested in short-form prose and visual-text hybrid work. This art can be beautiful, it can be strange, we just ask that it feels true.
READ
