Make Art in the Face of Fuck*

100 Days of Creative Resistance

Today’s post features an essay I originally wrote for the Writing Co-Lab—a teaching cooperative owned and operated by artists passionate about craft, community, creativity, and the joyous power of the written word. I’m excited to share it with you here, alongside a few reflections and resources I’ve added for you, my Substack readers.

Thank you

Brian Gresko

for inviting me to be a part of this feature.

100 Days of Creative Resistance is a free daily email series offering encouragement, opposition, and commiseration—a reminder of why we write and create—in response to each of the first 100 days of the 47th president’s regime.

It features 100 iconoclastic contemporary voices, and I’m honored to be one of them. To see previous posts, visit the archive. If you would like to sign up, click here.

Be sure to scroll down— there's more.

My entire life has been an act of creative resistance.
But to be honest, it didn’t start that way—it began as destructive resistance.

Facing the blank page amid the shitshow that is the USA right now is daunting. But being a writer is what has saved me. I feel grateful for the act of writing and how the practice has led me to unfolding agency and purpose; the very act of narrative is power. And to have it right here, in the humble medium of pen and page, in this unfolding first 100 days since the inauguration, gives me respite.

Late winter. The hummingbirds haven’t arrived yet in Colorado and won’t for some time, but I’ve been notified: the migration has begun. The magpies gather in small gangs in our backyard, anticipating the robins’ annual nesting; we get babies yearly. It’s a little early, I tell them as I chase them away. They’re drawn to our small water feature that poses as a pond. Nearby, daffodils push green tendrils through the cold ground—a return.

As editor and founder of the original Voices on Addiction column at The Rumpus, I help showcase the full spectrum of addiction through the voices of those affected because writing about recovery is, itself, an act of creative resistance. It reaches across boundaries. It reminds us that addiction isn’t an isolated experience but a societal one, touching families, communities, and entire systems. Though the column centers addiction stories, it's more profound work, naming what’s been hidden, breaking silence, is the work of all storytelling that resists. Like the fragile life beginning in our yard, these stories hold the possibility of something new—and the power to break the stigma.

Storytelling is resistance in a world where policies and cultural narratives continually shape who is seen, heard, and valued.

In the rooms of twelve-step programs, members are encouraged to tell their stories of transformation: what I was like, what happened, and what I’m like now. I still remember the first time I stood in one of those rooms, heart in my mouth, voice shaking, sharing my story. There was no applause, no commentary, just listening. Just presence. Hearing the stories of others, I began to find my own. My consciousness changed. It was in that shared belonging, in recognizing I was not alone in my story, that my healing began and, with it, a new consciousness and, eventually, a new story.

In my column, those stories are told in a variety of creative ways. They not only work to dismantle the stigma surrounding addiction, whether in those who struggle or for their loved ones, but also contribute to a broader shift in perception and empathy. Storytelling invites a deeper awareness in both the writer and the reader. But what empowers our stories most, beyond the act of telling, is the consciousness behind them. The awareness of narrative as power, as agency, as a tool for transformation. That kind of awareness moves like water beneath ice, subtle but unstoppable.

Nothing is more thrilling than recognizing that we can change our narratives about ourselves and the world around us. With that discovery comes agency, initiative, and the thrill of creation.

Somewhere in my writing life, I realized how profoundly liberating it was to shape a narrative, put words on the page, and feel the ground shift beneath my feet. Writing about my life, which I do as a memoirist and essayist, changes my life. And changing my life changes the world. As Shakespeare wrote, to thine own self be true: the writer must begin there, at the level of their own awareness. Writing and reading are acts of consciousness, or they are nothing.

There’s an ongoing discussion about whether writing is therapy. I tend to agree that it’s not therapy. Still, there is healing in the agency writing gives us—especially at a time when so many of us are carrying personal trauma and living through collective political trauma. In my writing, I take the stories others—and I—tell about myself and the world around me and, in a kind of alchemy, transmute and shape them into art.

I undertook the project of amplifying stories of addiction from across the spectrum to open space for honesty, complexity, and dignity in how addiction is understood and to challenge narratives that reduce people to their pain. Over the past nine years as editor for Voices on Addiction, I’ve watched the mainstream perspective on addiction begin to shift—a slow, powerful change marked by less stigma and a growing cultural reckoning with alcohol. I don’t credit my little column with that magnitude of change, but I believe and am honored to think it plays even a small part. That’s what writing as creative resistance makes possible.

Just yesterday, two robins appeared in the yard, lit lightly on the rocks near the water. We think they’re the same pair that have been coming annually. Last year, they hatched four eggs, and miraculously, every one of the babies survived the predatory magpies. Eventually, they launched from the nest into the blue spruce at the edge of our yard, where they huddled, trying out their new wings until they made it far enough to perch on the tall backyard fence, imitating their watchful parents. The year prior, we had rejoiced when the mama robin laid turquoise eggs, only to be devastated when we found them gone one cold morning. The magpies, guilty, looking satisfied and hawkish, perched on the telephone wires and the high branches of the ash and maple. We hurried to protect the hummingbirds by hanging old shiny CDs, rumored to repel magpies, often wary of shiny or reflective objects, by a string from the trees. As it turned out, the hummingbirds survived that year. Now the magpies are back again, a little more wary, but so are the robins, unafraid and persistent.

Late winter. Early spring. Quiet, but change is underway. The air is heavy, expectant—like the world is holding its breath. Writing feels like that now. Not urgency, but presence. Not arrival, but migration. The work begins in silence, with slow attention, in protection of what’s just starting to take form. In a season that still feels cold and precarious, we write not for what’s coming but for what must endure.

Maybe this is the deeper work now—to tend to what’s fragile, to hold steady when old patterns stir. When I don’t act out the trauma response but contain and transmute it into art and fire, I serve the world.

So, if you're questioning the point of your creative practice today—write anyway. Light a candle. Open your notebook. Tend to the quiet. Return to your attention. Let consciousness guide the page. One sentence at a time, we build the world we want to live in.

---

One Thing:

My entire life has been an act of creative resistance. But to be honest, it didn’t start that way—it began as destructive resistance.

Through trial and error, I discovered something powerful: the life force is always moving, both upward and downward. Destruction and creation aren’t opposites—they work in tandem. The direction of my evolution depends on where I place my attention. When I focus on creation, something alchemical happens: destruction is transformed into new life. This is not an invitation to spiritually bypass the pain of destruction but to transmute it.

Exercise: Mapping Destruction and Creation

💛 Read This First

This exercise invites you to reflect on moments of trauma and survival. While it can be a powerful tool for insight and healing, it may also bring up intense emotions or memories. If you’re currently in crisis, feeling emotionally overwhelmed, or navigating trauma that hasn’t been processed, please don’t do this work alone. Reach out to a trusted therapist, support group, or mental health professional who can hold space with you. Your well-being comes first. Healing is not meant to be a solo act.

A Note on the Spiral

This exercise works with the polarity of creation and destruction—not as a binary of good and bad, but as a dynamic force that drives evolution. For a long time, I saw destruction as something separate, something to fear or escape. But what I’ve come to understand is that the function of destruction is creation. It clears, it breaks, it burns, but only so something new can emerge.

The spiral is always moving. The question is: Where do you meet it? That’s where the alchemy begins. We don’t always get to choose what happens, but we do get to choose how we meet it.

Instructions:

1. Take a blank sheet of paper and draw a vertical line down the middle.

2. On the left side, title it: “Traumatic Events”
   Begin listing the traumatic events of your life in chronological order, starting from your earliest memory to the present.

3. On the right side, title it: “What Helped Me Survive”
   For each trauma listed on the left, reflect and write what helped you survive at the time.
   This could be internal (imagination, faith, writing) or external (a person, place, or practice).

   For example, reading library books I was allowed to pick out weekly helped me as a child in a highly restrictive environment.¹

4. Once your page is complete, pause and observe.
   The left side reveals a spiral of Destruction.
   The right side reveals a spiral of Creation.

5. Reflect on the balance.
   The goal is not to ignore the destruction but to live on the right side—to spiral upward, toward life.

   

Addiction: Destruction and Creation
What I learned from living on the right side of the page

Some lives are shaped by what breaks. Mine has been shaped by what I’ve made from the breaking. This isn’t a trauma story—it’s a creation story.

Not long ago, I tried something simple: I made a list. I wrote down every major trauma I’ve lived through from birth to now. As I mapped them chronologically, I realized I couldn't even count them all. There’s at least one for every year of my life, probably more. They never stop.

But something surprising happened when I paired each traumatic event with what helped me survive it. That’s when I saw it clearly: I live on the right side of the page.

Let me explain.

On the left side of the page were the ruptures themselves—what hurt, what broke, what shocked, what silenced. But on the right side were the things that carried me. What helped me survive as a child was imagination, books, music, and writing.

As a young adult, it was something more mysterious: I had a near-death experience at nineteen that changed everything. I was shown something I had never been told, never been allowed to believe, that I had value. Intrinsic, unearned, indestructible value. A worth I was born with, that we’re all born with.

I was shown that no matter what I did, no matter how destructive I became, I could not destroy that value. Nothing and no one could erase it, not even me. I was given to understand that knowing that value is the definition of love.

And then I was sent back to live and to learn that truth firsthand.

That experience carried me through my twenties. It carried me through the chaos of my thirties. It’s still with me now. When I got sober, that experience came to me and gave me something to hold onto, some sense of a power greater than myself. And that was enough to begin.

Back to the page.

On the right side of it is my love for my daughters. My grandkids. My relentless hunger to learn. And writing, always, always writing.

The traumas kept coming. They still do. Betrayal and heartbreak by the dozens. I’ve broken bones, undergone multiple surgeries, been hit by a car, and rolled a truck on black ice in Alaska. A tree fell on my house while I was walking down the stairs—and crushed my car for good measure. That car later rolled down a hill on its own and narrowly missed hitting a daycare center full of children.

I was evacuated from the Old Fire in Southern California in 2003. That experience made me move to Alaska in 2004. And it was there, on a cold February night in 2008, that I relapsed—after 24 years of being sober. One beer. The only one in the house. My husband’s.

So yes, the left side of the page looks like destruction. But I keep turning my gaze to the right.

Because that is where I access power. Creation and destruction aren’t a binary; they’re a polarity. They exist in tension, not opposition. Destruction ruptures; it clears, it breaks, it burns. But if we stay there, we miss the opportunity. We miss the dynamic that is creation.

The purpose of polarity is evolution. And it’s not about choosing one side over the other; it’s about engaging with the alchemy between them. That’s where transformation lives. That’s where I move into co-creation with Life.

Looking back at how I survived destruction—how I found light in the darkest places—gives me the raw material for creation now. That’s what the right side of the page shows me. Whether what emerges becomes art or compost for the heap, healing or something I can finally name, it’s how I align myself with the polarity and transmute my life into art.

This is how I make art in the face of fuck.

I thought about listing more traumas, but at some point, it starts to feel like a litany—and I’m not here to rehearse despair. The same principle applies to the collective trauma we’re living through. (#47 got re-elected. We are experiencing tyranny and the dismantling of democracy.)

I stay on the right side of the page. Transmutation. Alchemy. This is how we turn the dark to light. This is how we evolve.

What I can say is this: claiming my voice has come at a cost. I’ve become estranged from most of my family of origin. That’s what truth does—it shakes things loose.
When you speak truth, it often disrupts existing dynamics and unsettles people who were invested in your silence.

But I’m no longer willing to collapse into the destruction. Yes, it’s part of the spiral. It feeds the fire. But it only has value when it gives way to new life.
I choose the right side of the page—where creation begins.

Where the spiral turns again.

And I keep writing.

---

On Repeat:

Art in the Face of F*ck
Songs for making beauty in the ruins. For turning rupture into gold, silence into story, exile into voice.

---

Shout Out:

I was thrilled to stumble upon AFTER/WORDS, where

Jessy Easton

is serializing her memoir, The One Who Leaves. She grew up in the Mojave Desert, in a meth lab on the edge of nowhere. Writing, she says, saved her life. Her essays have appeared in Rappahannock Review, Good River Review, and more.

Jessy is what it looks like to live on the right side of the page—someone who turns pain into purpose and rises up the spiral with every word. She embodies what it means to transform rupture into creation.

Keep an eye out for her upcoming essay, The Shape of Memory, dropping this April in Voices on Addiction at The Rumpus—you won’t want to miss it.

---

🌟 Special Offer for New Paid Subscribers

Pepa Recommends.

If you upgrade now, Kelly will gift you an exclusive, guided Yoga Nidra recording, crafted from her personal practice as an advanced Yoga Nidra facilitator trained by Kamini Desai.

Yoga Nidra is an ancient, sleep-based meditation designed to bring your whole body and mind into a deep state of rest. Using a combination of breath, body awareness, and attention techniques, it guides you into the liminal space between waking and sleeping, sometimes called the Zero Stress Zone.

In this deeply restorative practice, 45 minutes can feel as regenerative as 3 hours of sleep. This recording is designed to help you access that still point—where true rest, clarity, and creative renewal begin.

✨ Other perks of a paid subscription include:

• A developing resource page with tools, practices, and downloads

• Curated book recommendations aligned with the themes explored here

• Occasional bonus content, including audio meditations, prompts, and reflections

If this work speaks to you, consider joining the inner circle.
Rest is not optional. It’s how we stay dangerous. — Pepa

1. Attribution: I first heard this phrase from

Lidia Yuknavitch

— the undisputed Queen of art in the face of fuck.