Ponder and Spoon

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West Linn, OR
Ponder and Spoon

Handmade wooden spoons, made with love, an axe, and some knives from local, sustainable wood.

Please donate to my recovery through chemotherapy https://gofund.me/c744c8dfa

06/16/2026

I've been hesitant to write about the good days. As if naming them might make them disappear.

There is a superstition in healing that I've never fully shaken. That saying I feel better out loud will summon the thing back. I knock on wood when I catch myself feeling fine — and I don't think i'm entirely joking when I do it.

But there's something else underneath the superstition. A question about who I am betraying when I write about a good day. The women still in the worst of it, who would read this and feel the distance between us. The version of me from last year who would've looked at this version — upright, eating breakfast without negotiating with her body about it, walking without her legs reporting back every few minutes — and felt something complicated. Not quite anger Something lonelier than that.

There’s also this contrast from posting my tears to feeling really good just a few days later, wondering “will they think I’m bonkers if I shared about today?”  Today was a good day. I know because I smelled the blooming linden trees and felt joy instead of just noting it. I ate breakfast slowly and tasted every bite. I walked and my body came with me, quietly, without conditions.

I’ve been writing about the hard days for a while now. I told myself to be honest about it. But writing mostly about the hard days is its own kind of performance. A mirror that captures just this particular angle.

The good days are also true. The walk happened. The trees smelled sweet like honey. I was, for a morning, just a woman who felt fine.

I am allowed to write that down. Celebrate it publicly even. I am still learning to believe it.

06/12/2026

It wasn't the chemo that brought me to my knees. Chemo is one of the strongest medicines there is, and I took it, and I stayed mostly upright.

It was what came after — a medication that woke every injury my body has carried, throughout my entire life, all at once, every minute of the day and night. As if they'd been waiting for permission.

We paused it. I'm coming back slowly, one joint at a time. Emergency visit, ENT, neurology. The dizziness is quieter now.

A prescription for physical therapy and alpha-lipoic acid in my hand. Holding my sweet body through the scare of it all.

06/10/2026

There are days my hands will not carve. The ache in my left wrist. A tiredness that sits behind my neck, not sleep-tiredness, something older. Sometimes the room smells too loud before I've touched anything and I already know.

I used to push through. Finish the cup. Pay for it for three days after, hands swollen, body furious with me. That was before cancer rearranged my understanding of what pushing costs.

Now I put the knife down.
I walk slowly, no destination worth mentioning. I lie on the floor and let my whole weight go into it. I watch something that asks nothing of me. I bake. I make chai and let my body have the morning without negotiating for it.

Sometimes I just watch the cups drying on the windowsill, the way the light moves across them, and that is the whole thing I do.

The guilt still comes with a very specific voice. You should be working, it says. And I put my hand on my chest, and I say my love, not today.

What I know now, that I did not know before is the days I do not carve are part of the carving. The wood is still becoming something on those days. Drying, settling, finding its shape in the air.

And so am I.

06/09/2026

"It smells very gooooood — are you sure you don't want any?" my dad would ask, playfully. No no, I'd say, reaching for my two-litre bottle of water instead. I was fifteen. Fasting every Friday for twenty four hours. I did that for years.

I've always pushed my body to be better. Fasting, exercising, eating well. But at some point the pushing stopped being about listening and became about overriding. That became clearer to me a few years into carving — I realised I had been hiding deep pain behind the making. It was easier to carve for hours than to feel what I actually needed.

Then the cancer came. And after a gruelling emergency operation, one night in the hospital — my body so weak, everything hurting, barely able to move — I begged the nurses to massage my back with rubbing alcohol because I wanted to get up, to move, to be stronger.

They laid me back down. Tears ran down my face. And I felt the gravity of the bed receiving me. Holding me.

For the first time in so many years, I stopped. I listened. And more than that — I trusted. Trusted that my body knew better than I did. That she had always known better. That I had simply not been paying attention.

That night I made a vow. To listen. To trust her wisdom.

I am still learning what that means. But I have not forgotten the vow.

06/02/2026

I had made exactly four cups before I got sick and had to stop.

Four. And I was just getting started — just beginning to understand what a cup could be. There is something about that shape that captured everything that brings me joy in carving. The beauty of the wood. The playfulness of movement. The touch of the tree's own story. And then, unlike a spoon or a fork, a cup holds something. It becomes a ritual. It participates in your day in a different way.

I adore coffee. I adore chai. The warmth, the smell, the slowness of it. And the thought that I could make the very object that holds that pleasure — that I could pour so much of myself into something that soothes someone else's soul — that thought kept me company while I was healing.

Last week I oiled the fifth cup of my life.

I held it for a long time.

05/29/2026

Something is opening in me alongside the healing.

For a long time this account has been about spoons, and forks, and the occasional mug I nearly destroyed my hands making. And it will keep being that — that part of me is not going anywhere.

But there is another part that has been quietly growing. Something that comes from the same place the making comes from, just expresses itself differently. I am not quite ready to name it yet.

I am not ready to share all of it yet. But I wanted you to know it is here.

More soon.

05/28/2026

These three arrived with personalities already intact.

I didn't plan that. I just followed the wood and this is what came. One is quieter, more contained — the kind that sits on a desk all day and asks for nothing. One leans into you slightly, handle tilted just so, as if it has something to say. The third one is the most playful — a knot landed exactly where it needed to, like a beauty mark it was born with.

These are big enough for a good cuppa, your favorite tea, a little ceremony before the day begins.

I'll have quite a few still to make and they'll be available soon.

05/27/2026

Carving taught me that I have a deep and magical connection with trees.

I didn't know that before. Most trees looked the same to me. I liked the sound of leaves but didn't feel much beyond that. It was only when I started working with wood — really working with it, splitting it open, smelling it, feeling the grain under my hands — that I understood trees as individuals. Each one with its own character, its own story, its own way of pushing back or giving way.

Carving also taught me to look beyond the surface. Beyond the cracks and the imperfections. To see them not as flaws but as part of what something is — the history of a living thing written in wood. I stopped trying to fix what was different and started loving it instead.

And somewhere along the way I learned something about myself too. That I am strong enough to work with such tough, unforgiving material. And gentle enough to listen to it. To take myself out of the way and let the wood guide me.

I am still learning to do that in the rest of my life.

05/22/2026

I was watching out the window when it fell. The whole building shook for a second.

It was strange — just a few days before I'd been looking for ways to get fresh wood, feeling well enough and strong enough to start carving again. And here it was. A whole tree. A few steps away from my chopping block.

I cut a few pieces that had broken off when it fell. They were dry and spalted, which made sense. I understood then why it had come down so suddenly. Such a majestic tree. I used to play cards as a child under those very branches — now stretched out on the ground.

I've been waiting to feel better and start making cups again. Maple is a hard wood to work with, but my desire was stronger. While axing out the first cup, I kept lifting my gaze to look at the tree. I've never made something from a tree that's still right there, with me. I could feel it resting on the ground. Still breathing. Still here.

It's such a magical feeling to make something just a few feet away from the tree itself. I cannot fully explain it.

I feel so honoured and grateful to work with this wood. And to have it live on through these cups I'm making — bringing joy to people, as it once brought joy to me.

05/20/2026

I've been thinking about how the relationships closest to us shape us — the things we learn, absorb, take on without even noticing.

From my mother I learned a particular way of being with my father. More caretaker than companion. Making sure he ate, making sure he was okay, filling the space before he even knew there was a gap.

After the surgery last year, something shifted. That pattern stopped feeling true to me. And when I looked at it honestly, I saw what was underneath it — I didn't trust him to take care of himself in the small things. I was doing it for him before he had the chance to do it for himself.

As I was slowly learning to trust myself to take care of me, I kept bumping into this. That trusting myself and trusting the people I love are part of the same thing.

I still love making food for people. I always will. But these days it comes from wanting to, not from habit or quiet worry. And when I find myself slipping into the old pattern, I just gently remind myself — it's good for both of us when I lean into trust.

For him. For me. For all of it.

Address

West Linn, OR
97068

Website

http://www.ponderandspoon.com/

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