Sometimes, I don’t have much to give. Sometimes, my own words exhaust themselves. My Offering Plate series is my way to still pour, borrowing from the well of things that have kept me going — whether that be a song, words from my archives, a reminiscence, pieces of conversations with wise souls, words from others, and so on. The idea of the offering plate is to pass it around, to sow a seed. Think of it as a communal collecting, where members of this community are encouraged to leave their own offering in the comments. To sow and be sown into. To hold and be held. To heal and be healed.
Hi all. If you are here, first and foremost, thank you. My following has grown largely since taking the leap to start my Substack last October.
I’ve not only gotten the opportunity to create a landing place for my words, but I’ve been blessed to connect with so many writers — so many doers of language, doers of love, doers of depth work, individuals in revolutionary motion with their hands and their tongues.
This community really feels like home.
In today’s offering plate, I am requesting the support of this community. I have a writer’s retreat that I would love to attend out of the country in October, but am currently lacking the resources to cover the full costs of the retreat + traveling expenses. You can read here for more details.
Any support, be it monetary or words of encouragement, means more than you know. If you'd like to contribute in any way, please know that I appreciate you from the bottom of my heart for believing in me and my work enough to help with this funding. I am trying to lean into the belief of things being possible for me — because they are.
If you’d like to pour into my plate, you can offer an amount here.
External offering:
Here are some words from others that have really shaken me lately.
- wrote about grief and… whew. One quote that particularly moved me from this piece is when she wrote, “My body said it didn’t give a shit (she cusses) and we needed to get to healing or give in to dying.”
A read from
on maternal mental health that’s so desperately needed: “Life was constantly moving yet I was arrested by depression in motherhood.”A note from
: “What if ‘aim’ is really ‘yearning’ but with its armor on?”
A note from
: “Call me by my name.” !!!
And now, I pass the plate. If you have an offering (words of encouragement, or anything on your heart that you want to share) please leave it in the comments.
With love and light,
Mariah Maddox
Words of encouragement for someone today (including myself every day):
1. You don't need someone's permission to restart your day at any moment, whether that is 6 am or 9 pm.
2. You deserve to go slow.
Mirror, mirror on the wall, why can't I see my reflection at all? Is the one who I see really me? I must admit I don't recognize her. At times I don't see her. Lost, confused, broken, dismayed, lonely, scared, ashamed, out of touch, disconnected, sad, upset... So many pieces, it's hard to make out the image looking back at me.