Em Capito, LCSW

Em Capito, LCSW Soulful Resilience Therapist, Writer, Yoga & Meditation Teacher. Founder of Madrona, a nonprofit community of art and wellness for all beings.

This week: “I couldn’t help scanning through a list of 100 ways Yrsa Daley-Ward makes life livable.A former version of m...
03/13/2026

This week: “I couldn’t help scanning through a list of 100 ways Yrsa Daley-Ward makes life livable.

A former version of me is still very attached to lists and the potential to come across that one small, profound change that suddenly bypasses all of my hard realities.

As it turns out, one of the items was a potent framing for the hard thing I needed to do yesterday, just as soon as I stopped avoiding it by reading lists: stay extremely unattracted to ambivalent energy...”

Read the full post ➡️ Substack link in bio

🏞️

Many thanks to for the potent wording - highly recommend a follow on here and on the stack 👍🏻

03/11/2026

Last week, I met up with .writes for in Baltimore, Maryland. Z’s flight left early Sunday morning, but mine didn’t take off until 8 pm…so of course I rented a car (although a glitch in the matrix saddled me with an enormous Dodge Ram truck) and drove to in Delaware’s Brandywine Valley and then on to in New Jersey for a truly enchanting ❤️

The whole day presented contrast - juxtapositions between the city and the country, driving a truck on a highway and wandering on foot in the woods, the inclusivity of nature and exclusivity of wealth, my gratitude and my frustrations. It was good grist for the mill. I’m finishing up a short essay to share, drafted over my glass of Eidolón with good old Whitman, who wrote much of his work just 30 minutes from where I sipped the wine his poem inspired.

This week: “While the Hero’s Journey is just the tip of the iceberg of Campbell’s work, it proliferated into mainstream ...
03/06/2026

This week: “While the Hero’s Journey is just the tip of the iceberg of Campbell’s work, it proliferated into mainstream awareness and became his enduring legacy. For many, the framework showed up at a time in our lives when it felt revelatory, myself included.

I was introduced at 18, during my third year of college while studying social work and visibly pregnant, midway through a 9-month threshold into a rest-of-my-life call to adventure…”

💌 Read free now ➡️ Substack link in bio

🎒

Baltimore snaps. It’s been a wonder to move from writing in Zion at Voices for the West with - my home desert desperate...
03/06/2026

Baltimore snaps. It’s been a wonder to move from writing in Zion at Voices for the West with - my home desert desperate for water - directly to writing at in rainy Baltimore - a city right up to the edge of too much water as the tides rise.

Paying attention to place leads to significant inquiries - of self, of purpose, of community, of art.

Grateful to be connecting over all of it with my thoughtful daughter .writes ❤️

2 weeks away! Madrona is excited to bring Joseph Campbell's long-time friend and editor to SLC. Join us on the spring eq...
03/06/2026

2 weeks away! Madrona is excited to bring Joseph Campbell's long-time friend and editor to SLC. Join us on the spring equinox for the evening dialogue at UMOCA, and then dive deeper in a full-day workshop at Red Butte!

https://madronacollective.org/robert-walter/

A treasure of an excerpt from Pam Houston’s beautiful book, Without Exception (plus a personal story of being wrong and ...
03/05/2026

A treasure of an excerpt from Pam Houston’s beautiful book, Without Exception (plus a personal story of being wrong and figuring that out, but you’ll have to subscribe on Substack for that):

“When Keats first coined the phrase negative capability, in 1817, he was using it to describe a writer’s ability…to accept the ‘uncertainties, mysteries and doubts’ that actually comprise the human experience, without any ‘irritable reaching after fact and reason.’ He went on to say that for a writer, all of the ‘contradictions, unknowables, and boundless potentialities that life presents us, are part and parcel of living.’

Keats felt it was not only possible to hold two contradictory beliefs at the same time, but essential to, and to always keep an open mind to the fact that even when we are right, we are simultaneously wrong. (More than a century later, in 1957, Leon Festinger coined the phrase ‘cognitive dissonance,’ which put a decidedly more negative spin on a condition which Keats described with admiration and wonder, and this may have marked the beginning of the end for the human race.)

Phrased another way, negative capability is the capacity to contain and tolerate anxiety and doubt, to demonstrate courage in the face of unknowing, to open the concept of wisdom to not knowing, to being open generally, to replace all of the no buts with yes ands.

The opposite of negative capability is confirmation bias, cherry picking information that supports your hypothesis and not opening your mind to mystery at any cost…This is the truest pleasure of life as I know it: being wrong, opening the box I am inside of and stepping into a bigger box, knowing there is a bigger box outside of that one.“

This come from a gift post for my contributing Substack readers (thank you!). You can find the full post (for just a few bucks a month) at my substack link. All revenue is donated to Madrona ❤️

➡️ Substack link in bio

Moments from a weekend of writing in Zion with Amy Irvine, Craig Childs, Pam Houston, Jake Skeets and ❤️Juiciest yesss ...
03/02/2026

Moments from a weekend of writing in Zion with Amy Irvine, Craig Childs, Pam Houston, Jake Skeets and ❤️

Juiciest yesss take-home: the powerful generosity of humility - of owning my prior and assumed ongoing ignorance rather than ignoring the uncomfortable realities present in the scene (bias, privilege, harm, etc) or feigning enlightenment.

✍️🏜️

This week: “The inside of my head can be a battleground, especially when I’m trying to sleep but drank caffeine too late...
02/27/2026

This week: “The inside of my head can be a battleground, especially when I’m trying to sleep but drank caffeine too late in the day.

I am more often than not arguing with someone I’ve never met who has wronged me (politicians, law enforcement, insurance companies, etc) in irrational anticipation of an unlikely come to Jesus opportunity. Other common themes include the what I should have said redo and self-recrimination replays of minor mistakes...

Why do we feel so naked and vulnerable without a well-defended position?“

💌 Read ➡️ Substack link in bio

🏜️

This week: “Fear said that without my certainty, I would be lost, paralyzed. This was true! For as long as I needed cert...
02/20/2026

This week: “Fear said that without my certainty, I would be lost, paralyzed. This was true! For as long as I needed certainty, the absence of it was a spiral of anxiety.

Acceptance is the release of the *expectation*. As it turns out, the loss of something you never had and no longer seek isn’t a loss at all, but a relief of insanity...”

Plus, for contributing readers, two compilations to peruse for reminders and renewed inspiration from our Year of Authoring Beauty: 108 quotes and all 54 poems ✨

📖 Read now ➡️ Substack link in bio

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A moment of praise, for the snow finally falling, for the ecosystem that gifts not simply life, but beauty and play, for...
02/20/2026

A moment of praise, for the snow finally falling, for the ecosystem that gifts not simply life, but beauty and play, for this high desert in particular that sweeps me off my feet, and for the innate knowing that we are not tourists, separate from all the glory, but kin…at least for as long as we remember and honor our broad family of origin.

“We are nature and nature is us.” — Tonio Sadik

This week: “Global news platforms are overwhelmingly negative, and social media shaming greatly amplifies one’s sense of...
02/14/2026

This week: “Global news platforms are overwhelmingly negative, and social media shaming greatly amplifies one’s sense of panic and guilt over not doing enough.

Fortunately, there is a wide middle ground between apathetic scrolling and giving up all our worldly possessions and boycotted apps to become the next Mother Theresa.

Even our heroes who were the faces of major movements in history had thousands, if not millions, of people supporting their shared cause in billions of small ways.

What if we embraced the realistic scale of what we can do to create good at our particular intersection of place and purpose, and allowed others to do the same?“

Read the full post ➡️ Substack link in bio

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Resilience Changes Everything.

We’re all inherently strong and capable...we just get so cozy inside our comfort zone that we let those mental and emotional muscles atrophy until even minor stress can overwhelm our best intentions.

Adversity is inevitable and constant. Resilience is the counterweight that allows us to walk in peace and joy in the eye of the storm, fulfilling our authentic purpose and serving others. It’s a skill that requires practice; a lifestyle of intentional discomfort.

Victim to hero. Resilience changes everything.

Take action to invest in YOUR resilience: