a vernal pool

vernalpool.substack.com “Gently disintegrate me…”

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Custom worry demons available!

These stuffies are created to help a stuck feeling move through your body. Anger, grief, fear, insecurity, whatever. Perhaps you try and talk yourself out of the feeling, or intellectualize it. The soft demon is made to be hugged, squeezed, cried upon, held fast to your heart, danced with, I truly don’t know what will happen for you and your demon. But they are here to support.

Email me your struggle feeling and up to three colors. Demon will be ready in two weeks max. $25, plus shipping if not local, or let me know if you want to trade something. Orders beginning May 1st.

[email protected] (zeros!)

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Arretos

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First try at linocuts

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Next stuffie in the mental health series. This one is named NINSIE (Not inferior, not superior). I was listening to a podcast about Zen Buddhist teachings. She was talking about how we might find ourselves entering a social dynamic where we subconsciously assume we are either superior or inferior to the other person and how limiting that is to actually being present with the other person. How often am I assuming my own inferiority (and subsequently striving for superiority?) and how it keeps me closed off from the potential of real interaction. Feels radical to me to approach relationships with a baseline that we are neither inferior or superior to one another. Doesn’t mean either of us are free from fucking up, or that I might come to genuinely disagree with/dislike someone, but what space opens up when I’m not shoving myself and others into an immediate hierarchy.

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A summer weaving

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Feelings as water running in a river, and learning about the river stones underneath—moving with less reactivity

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Fabric masks in the making for Fun A Day

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Sketches for Fun A Day project—patchwork masks about feelings

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Ghostie/demon to work through anxiety, despair, and fear. I call them OFFIE (Old Family Fears). A reminder that the all-consuming fears that keep me up at night aren’t just my own, not just a product of me, the individual—but that they are part of the functioning of my family system, passed down through generations. Finding some softness and compassion (and distance) for those fears through manifesting this little stuffie.

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Journals: left, 2017-2024; right, 2024-?

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A silly joke for a friend….