Welcome.

We live in an age where everything is wibbly-wobbly. In some ways, it has never been easier to survive on this planet. Yet, opportunity in life has always been linked to where you were born and to whom. Class (classism), personal connection (nepotism), cultural or genealogical origin (racism), and even political affiliation shape the way we see one another. This isn’t new, nor are these filters exclusive to a specific group of people. Humans have cultivated the ability to see the world with discriminating eyes since the dawn of history. We decide what is right and wrong, who is good and who is bad, when we are safe and when we are unsafe. This is universal. Even my dog does it.

I’d be hard-pressed scouring the annals of history to find a time when humanity has been more self-aware of these patterns and their potential harms, yet I believe that today, holistically, as a species, we are actually freer from the box of our origins than ever before.

Why am I talking about this? Why do you care? This probably isn’t why you visited this space. I doubt you came here for a sermon. I also doubt my qualifications to give one.

Dear reader, I have a black hole inside of my chest. Psychologists call it depression. Mystics call it the Void. Studies have found that the most effective treatment of this wound—if I’m going to try to treat the source rather than the pain—is connection. 

There is a primordial hunger in me. Sometimes I feed it with food. Sometimes with sex. Sometimes with words. But the true path through that ancient empty wound lies in the space between us. The space that you can feel in the silence between words with a dear friend. When someone sits with you in your dark night, and suddenly you are less alone. When you get to the watering hole, and your tavern keeper sees you coming, and there is a frosty glass, beaded with the sweat of the room, waiting for you. Yes, the true connection comes not through the words we share, but through the receiving of one another. 

It is my hope that we can explore that space between words and breaths and thinking. Those moments that let us feel together, sigh together, cry together.

Thank you for joining me. I hope you find something here that you are looking for.

-MJ Shafa

P.S. If you want to get a taste of my primary genre writing (fantasy), check out the short story, “The Duchess”.