Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
-Mary Oliver, “Wild Geese.”
108 POTS began as a wholly personal project, which is to say that I hadn’t considered writing about it for an audience. Instead, I was looking for a way out of my own despair, and I’d intuited that putting my hands in clay might be part of the solution. I’d learn only later that an entire submodality of sensorimotor therapy is dedicated to this very idea: the Clay Field, an approach to healing trauma first developed by Cornelia Elbrecht.
As Elbrecht explains, touch is not only our first way of making sense of the world, it’s also one of the most potent: whether its forming core attachments as infants, experiencing violence, or spooning with our beloved, touch is at the very heart of so much of our individual identities. By engaging it through mediums such as clay, we can all find new approaches to surviving change, to healing longstanding emotional wounds, and to creating existential plasticity. That process, coupled with the idea of gifting pots as a way of cultivating gratitude, seemed like exactly what I needed: a redemptive way to find the kind of grounding I’d need for a more resilient, joyful life.
The specific circumstances that led me to this project were, of course, uniquely mine: a combination of long-standing doubt about my inherent worth, along with a bizarre series of more immediate traumas the likes of which seemed more plausible as a bad made-for-TV-movie than any lived reality. But the more I began to discuss the 108 Pots Project with friends and loved ones, the more I began to realize that, no matter how personal the catalyst, the effects of any such upheaval are almost universally shared. Turns out, so many of us are walking through life burdened with despair: whether it’s grief sparked by a painful divorce, anxiety about racially-motivated violence, or a sense of hopelessness provoked by climate change.
Talking about the 108 Pots Project soon became a way into conversations about this despair—a place for empathy and shared compassion. And it was those conversations that led to the creation of this Substack, which I saw as a way to broaden the dialog. Since its inception, I have been consistently overwhelmed in the best possible way by the response I’ve received from these posts. Your notes of encouragement and your willingness to share your own experiences have buoyed me up and inspired me to continue. I am beyond grateful.
It was my brilliant editor at Algonquin who first suggested that this project could become a book. We’ve spent the past few months sketching out what shape such a memoir might take, and I’m thrilled to report that idea will soon become a reality.
Clay Bodies will build upon some of the homilies I first published here, and its braided structure will also allow me to dig much deeper, both in terms of literary style and theme. I’ve never been more excited to begin a new book project.
Rest assured that 108 Pots the Substack will continue to exist as a complementary project, with its own unique content, as well as exclusive opportunities for paid subscribers, including signed copies of the memoir, virtual book clubs, and pot giveaways.
Thank you so much for joining me on this journey. I’m so eager to see where it continues to lead.
Love,
Kate
🥰