Welcome to Collective Self
Welcome to my author page. I’m Lori Kane, Whidbey Island-based essayist, poet, author, herbalist, home canner, and mystic. We also host retreats, talks, and workshops: our 2020 series lives on our Silly Dog Studios website. Check it out!
Books hold some of humanity’s deepest magic. Books are one of the places where I feel I fully belong. I write to understand and so that others might open a book and find exactly the thing they need at just the right moment for them—like other authors have done for me across my life. I write so that others have the experience of drawing in their breath with wonder and delight as they’re reminded of the deep magic at play in our world, and within humanity herself, even here, even now.
Our latest book Unshaken Wonder: Becoming Playful Elders Together is available in digital form on Amazon and in print form on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s, Books-a-Million, and BookBaby’s bookstore here. It’s for people asking themselves questions like: How do I get back to my playful self? How do I get back to being in love with humanity? What does it take to become a playful elder today? What does it take to encounter wonder daily? What does it take to reconnect with the wonder at our core during times of increasing polarization, isolation, exhaustion, and anger and when confronted by pain, death, injustice, and horror? And what exactly is unshaken wonder—the wonder that appears to sit at the core of playful elders around the world? I suspect that to find unshaken wonder we must be ready to unlearn much of what the old us thought was true. That we must feel a little bit ready to open ourselves up again to new possibilities, people, ideas, and places. Ready to let go of what doesn’t matter in this moment in favor of what matters most to those fully present and together here, right now.
Are you ready?
Recent Writings
Am I an empath? What my community has taught me…
I'm heartbroken (nauseous actually) about all the lives lost in Gaza again this week and our role in it. Thank you to my Jewish American and Palestinian friends for keeping this sorrow and pain in my line of site. Thanks to you, I'm doubling down on...
On befriending wonder and unleashing playfulness: a story, a trailer, and two new books
We've had one hell of a fall and winter here. We helped Mom move into a memory care home where she'll have the round-the-clock, large community support she now needs. We've been moving with our own grief and helping each other, and Mom and Dad, with theirs and with...
Defending Silence
I walked alone in the Because I felt the pull of I knelt beside the To better see the And then to my A warm light touched And the whole place began to Or maybe I just I couldn’t believe my And dropped down to my I reached out to And found And found And found...
How Do I Navigate Publishing a Book When I Know Nothing About That World?
I heard this from a friend in Seattle this week: "I write with a question. After much dithering, hemming and hawing, I have found the key to my book... I would greatly appreciate your counsel on how to navigate the process of getting it published. Finding an agent,...
What the Blue Bird Said to Me Today
I want you to celebrate yourself. Shake off your dust. Find fierce stones that speak to you hold them, gentle now, then drop them into rivers wrinkle your wide-eyed face to focus as they sink straight down oblivious to the current. Muck arrives through always-clear...
Example Letter: Telling Family about Mom’s Move into Memory Care
Hello family, We have some news. I’ve been away from my computer for a week—up with mom and dad—thanks for being patient with me. A week ago Thursday, Mom moved into Harbor Care, the memory care building in their retirement community. Dad still lives in the cottages,...