Driving to the airport, the day after we were supposed to leave, our flights were delayed, then rebooked, then canceled again. The day prior, our flights were canceled and then rebooked. The reasons were myriad: Chicago had storms, the bathrooms were not functioning, there were safety issues on the plane. They wanted to reschedule me a third time to that evening, meaning I would arrive two days later in the place I was trying to get to. Instead, I did something I never have done before. I bought a plane ticket 15 minutes with another airline about an hour before the flight took off while I was a passenger in a car, then refunded the original flight.

Two cancellations. I did not let them do a third.

One.

We drove to our favorite place to fish. We unpacked our camp site and set up our paddle boards. We set out with two dogs, two paddleboards, and all of our fishing gear to the spot. At this small lake there is an incredible place to fish where the creek comes into the lake. It’s a cold, clear creek. Snow run off. Right below where the creek comes into the lake is a giant cold hole with deep water. We stand in the water and fish into the hold, generally catching one fish at a time every time we put in. The fish are beautiful. Brook trout with their swirling patterns. Rainbow trout, not even hatchery fish.

As we set out, one of the dogs we were with began to whimper and fret. He’s a medium sized dog, and he was panicking that we were not all together on the same water craft. He was jumping off the paddle board. I was lucky I was not capsized. Then, we pulled him back up by his floatation device handle.

He panicked again - this time running all the way up the side of the lake before giving up. He was cold and upset.

I got him back on the paddle board and comforted him, talking to him continuously to calm him down. I spoke to him - saying good dog every time he stayed seated in front of me. I expressed dissatisfaction and asked him to sit every time he lifted up to stand. Standing meant ready-to-jump. Sitting meant no immediate risk of capsizing. Before we left, I had some inkling that he hated these water craft, but I had no clue it would be this bad. We made it to the fishing spot and he was rewarded with many treats.

Two.

The sky was blue with passing clouds. A small group of avocets circled above, occasionally landing on sandy spots. Sandhill cranes flew in twos, calling out above us like pterosaurs high above the pines that filled the hillsides.

My son said, “There’s a dead deer.”

In the shallows where the creek meets the pond, in the sandy spot where we stand, an ill-fated fawn was dead and bloated.

We came to this spot - a lot of effort to get here - with the expectation of catching about a bajillion brook trout. That was quickly looking impossible.

I had to work to keep the dogs away from the dead fawn. It was unrecognizable, but too small to be a large deer.

We knew the water was contaminated. We knew the dogs could not go near. We knew they were interested.

We decided to catch some fish. We caught. Fish after fish. Then we realized that we could not keep any of them. We also knew that we could not stay in that spot and stay safe since inevitably some of the water would make it into our mouths, our eyes, or into the dogs. Or worse, the dogs would catch the smell and decide to roll in the dead bloated bambi in the shallows.

My son asked if we should move it, not realizing it was partly decomposed and that would add too much risk, while also not removing the bacteria.

Frustrated, we stood there in the shallows, with two dogs, the sandhill cranes calling overhead, the avocets circling, a fish on the line, and everything fell apart.

Have you ever had the experience where things are not going your way and it just makes you unravel and you get mad about every last thing that led to this moment?

Point Five.

We decide to go back to the campsite and regroup. I put the problem dog on my board and go back to the calm speaking. My son took the calm dog and took off first, getting far ahead to minimize capsizing.

We sit down at our campsite. And that’s when it happens. Despite slathering on picaridin, mosquitos descended upon us and the dogs. We watched as mosquitos bit the short-coated calm dog and welts rose up upon her. Incredible amounts of mosquitos.

We could start a fire, I say. We could go in the tent. We could try a new spot on the lake to fish in. No.

My son said, “let’s go.”

Tyler the Creator states on the album IGOR that sometimes you have to close a door to open a window. The long standing saying is that when God closes a door he opens a window. I like the idea that we are in charge and we can do the closing and opening.

We left.

We did not want to drive home, so we drove to a place we knew we could sleep and then the next morning we knew we could try a new spot.

We get to the new spot the next morning. We get to a lake and immediately catch a big, beautiful trout. Then we hike up a mile - the most beautiful trail up to an alpine lake. We are underprepared. I don’t have enough water. I’m wearing worn out Tevas. I’m carrying so much gear. We note that the dogs have begun to have weird sores on their bellies, presumably from being exposed to something in the water. Nevertheless, all are in good spirits.

We arrive at the next lake and it is beautiful. We put in our rods. We catch fish after fish. Gorgeous native cutthroat one after another. We catch and release three dozen fish and keep four big ones. It rains occasionally. There are no mosquitos.

My son learned that I will always help and support him.

I learned that we give something 2.5 tries before we get out. Once a string of things has negatively impacted the trip, we move on. We make it happen in a way that makes more sense.

I am older now. I am no longer afraid to call it.

The measure of time, looking back from where I am now, there is a series of expectations. Sometimes those expectations were met. Sometimes reality fell short. Other times I was surprised when I didn’t expect something. And still other times reality greatly exceeded my expectations.

Disappointment is something I struggle with. As an adult, I have a hard time with disappointment. I always want to make it right. I don't like to sit with it. I don’t like to let myself or other’s down.

I have a story for you. It’s a long story. It’s full of many ups and downs. It’s full of redirection. It’s a story for another day.

In life, I've learned, it’s ok to call something over far before you thought. I tend to wait 2.5 big disappointments. I've learned sometimes they happen in strings. I’ve learned that sometimes disappointments are like a sign from God that I need to close the door. Maybe, if something is difficult, it wasn’t meant for me.

When do you push through? When do you give up?

I was supposed to take a plane recently. The airline canceled my flight with them twice, then delayed my fight in such a way that I would land at my destination 48 hours after I was supposed to. Two flights - then point five.

Once bitten twice shy. Third time is a charm? I didn’t give them a third time. I canceled the flight and got a refund and bought a new flight while someone drove us to the airport.

I gave it 2.5 tries. Then I called it.

I stood in the twilight in Milwaukee with my son and my friends. From the front porch, the sky dimmed. The fireflies slowly started to emerge. A twinkle above us. A bulb in the grass. Smiles and joy erupted on everyone’s face. Fireflies. Joy. They exceeded my expectations.

Driving up Bogus Basin Road in Boise, Idaho, there are many trails off to the left and to the right. Some are short loops that are like dog parks. Some are longer loops, going up to the top of the ridge line. Some meander around or above the ridge line. The road curves and you need to really pay attention. I stop at a trail I have been on many times before. The landscape was beautiful and I walked through the desert. The desert appears like it could be void of living things, but it is full of living things. Abundant. By using field guides and apps, you start to learn how to identify the wildlife around you.

The yellow flower became arrowleaf balsamroot. The flash of blue became a mountain bluebird. The noisy chatter came from a black-billed magpie.

The landscape hadn’t changed. You had.

The Difference Between Looking and Seeing

Some of us look at nature in a large view, but with some adjustments, each detail helps the scene come alive.

We count miles.

We track elevation.

We photograph sunsets.

But learning names creates a deeper relationship.

We protect what we know.

Identifying species slows us down and encourages curiosity rather than achievement.

It is fun. There is a sense of learning with no objective and no outcome. You are merely viewing and experiencing and having a great time.

Even identifying bumblebees is a great time. There is a wonderful field guide for Western Bumble Bees available that teaches you about the bands and colors on their bottoms.

This bumble bee could be Bombus bifarius and it is on the beardstongue flower, a type of purple penstamon. The bee is doing exactly what Penstemons evolved for: its body size allows it to push deep into the flower tube and contact the pollen-bearing structures. Many Penstemon species are among the best native plants for supporting bumble bees in Idaho.

The Unexpected Joy of Being a Beginner

I’ve made a lot of mistakes, and still do, identifying flowers and birds. It’s always hard to identify the sounds of birds for me, but I am slowly learning what they sound like. I always think every red flower is firecracker penstemon, but it is not. I make mistakes all the time. I photograph, look it up, and verify before I make a definitive statement about what something is. In the process I learn about where the species fits into our ecosystem. I find a thrill finally being able to identify the red breasted nuthatch by it’s call.

Common wildflowers in the Boise foothills include:

• Arrowleaf balsamroot

• Lupine

• Indian paintbrush

• Penstemon

• Sagebrush buttercup

Some birds you can see or hear regularly include:

• Mountain bluebird

• Western meadowlark

• Red-tailed hawk

• California quail

• Black-billed magpie

I always find something new to learn no matter how many times I cross these hills.

Summer

Now that it is summer in the Boise Foothills, there are many more migrating birds and flowers blooming.

Today in the foothills, I used the Merlin app to identify and look for a number of birds including:

• Lazuli Bunting

• Cedar Waxwing

• Red Breasted Nuthatch

• Yellow Warbler

• Yellow-Rumped Warbler

• Nashville Warbler

• MacGillivray’s Warbler

• Western Tanagers

• Dusky Flycatchers

• Spotted Towhees

The app listens to the audio around you and tells you what the birds are. The results today were stunning.

They migrate, and spend a lot of time around the bodies of water that still flow, eating the bugs all around the area.

The Magic of Knowing Names

Once you start learning the names, the trails open up to you like neighbors. The foothills feel richer, more alive, and more personal. Every flower identified leads to five more questions. Every bird recognized reveals another story.

You do not need to be an expert. You can start with knowing about one flower. One bird. One trail.

Curiosity is a wonderful part of our humanity. We can follow a path of inquiry with no repercussions.

Closing Reflection

I hope you will observe. You can draw what you see, or write it down, or send it to me in a comment or chat. Just observe.

One thing I know for sure is the longer I spend looking into one spot, the more I see. It’s like the world opens up to you when you stop and look.

I hope you will look and share what you see.

For people with a safety net, mistakes are easy to accept. We are all allowed to make mistakes. Making a mistake can be especially taxing when it can lead to consequences down stream. It may not even be a large mistake, but it can seem like it can be big due to the lack of having a coordinated back up system. Sometimes mistakes are quite big, and dealing with their aftermath can be disastrous. And yet, mistakes are unavoidable. Bad things happen.

I have experienced a mentally difficult week. When you are a single parent with no support network, things can be really tough. In the past two months, my son and I have each had surgery. Things are just not back to normal, exactly.

While objectively speaking, we are doing well to some extent, that does not mean that things are not really hard. And what I mean is a few things.

Financially, being a single parent is incredibly difficult. That part is not the hardest though. The more difficult part is the emotional and mental toll on decision making and mistakes that are made.

A seminal study published in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues explores how a lack of these buffering resources directly causes poor psychological coping strategies when things go wrong (Stack & Meredith, 2018). Without a network to mitigate a crisis, single parents experience much higher baseline levels of anxiety, depression, and general distress when facing financial or logistical hardships (Stack & Meredith, 2018).

Many people navigate life with a subconscious sense of security knowing someone would catch them if they truly fell. Without that, you live in a constant state of additional stress and sometimes crushing self-blame. As the sole provider, protector, and decision-maker, any mistake feels like a personal indictment. For single parents, this often manifests as deep guilt (”I am failing my children”).

If you know a single parent, offer real, practical things that can help:

1. Literally just go pick up groceries and drop them off on the doorstep. “I'm running into Target/the grocery store. What brand of milk/bread/diapers do you use? I'm picking some up for you and will leave them on your porch on my way home.” And if they don’t respond, do it anyway.

2. When you make a batch of lasagna, soup, casserole, or a tray of enchiladas, double the recipe. Deliver it in a disposable container so they don’t even have to worry about washing and returning your dish.

3. “Who is your emergency contact?" on medical or school forms is terrifying. If you are a reliable friend, neighbor, or coworker, explicitly tell them: "I want you to put me down as your backup emergency contact for work/school. If your car breaks down or you get stuck, call me." Just knowing that name exists on paper lifts a massive psychological burden. I personally have no one listed as my emergency contact, and if it is required I just put my son, who is a child and does not deserve this.

4. Offer a trade, which works better if you live close by, rather than a forty minute drive across town. “Let’s do a trade. I’ll pick up both our kids from school on Tuesdays, and you pick them up on Thursdays.” Or, “I’ll mow your lawn if you help me look over this resume/organize this paperwork.”

5. Basic gift cards. If you want to provide financial relief without making it awkward, give gift cards to highly practical places (gas stations, grocery stores, local pharmacies, or rideshare apps like Uber/Lyft). A $25 gas card or a $30 Uber credit can be the exact buffer that saves them when a paycheck is late or a car battery dies.

6. Just be there as a co-pilot for the hard tasks they don’t want to get through. You don’t even have to be there - you can just set up a Zoom call. When someone is burnt out, bureaucratic or administrative tasks (like filing taxes, disputing a medical bill, sorting through a pile of mail, or applying for assistance) feel impossible. Just sitting on the couch drinking coffee while they tackle the paperwork (a concept called “body doubling”) provides immense grounding and focus.

7. If you are already doing something that requires logistics, extend an invitation that requires zero effort on their part. If you are driving your kids somewhere, text them: “We’re heading to the community pool/park on Saturday at 10 AM. We have extra seats in the car if you and the kids want to jump in with us.”

8. Check In Without Requiring a Reply!!! When you are completely overwhelmed, even replying to a text message feels like an item on a to-do list. Send supportive texts that explicitly release them from the obligation of answering. Try sending: “Thinking of you today! No need to reply to this, I know life is a lot for all of us, and I care about you. Just wanted to send some love.” This maintains the connection without adding to their cognitive load.

Above all, if you want to show up as a real friend, you can take the judgment out of the conversation entirely. Thank you in advance for all of the acts of kindness I hope you will impart on others because of this.

There should be two Mother’s Days. One for everyone with all of the support, and then a single mom’s Mother’s Day, where they are showered with generosity.

References

Czaja, S. J., Moxley, J. H., & Rogers, W. A. (2021). Social support, isolation, loneliness, and health among older adults in the PRISM randomized controlled trial. Frontiers in psychology, 12, 728658.

Kim, G. E., & Kim, E. J. (2020). Factors affecting the quality of life of single mothers compared to married mothers. BMC psychiatry, 20(1), 169.

Stack, R. J., & Meredith, A. (2018). The impact of financial hardship on single parents: An exploration of the journey from social distress to seeking help. Journal of family and economic issues, 39(2), 233-242.

That’s the way every day goes.
Every time we’ve no control.
If the sky is pink and white.
If the ground is black and yellow.

Things That Should Maybe Scare Me

I come across mountain lion prints. I experience this as complete awe. My heart skips a bit. I know that due to the snow falling in the mountains that it brought all the animals back down a bit. I had seen mountain lion prints a couple miles up the hill, but here they were on the trail closest to my home. This is evidence. I do not see them. I know that this means they probably see me. The last time rain fell was 3 days ago. These prints are likely three days old. The mountain lion likely went back uphill again following the deer and elk. This is not dangerous. The mountain lions have plenty to eat. They do not need me nor my dogs.

There are horses. There are always horses here. We feed them carrots. I am well attuned to these beautiful animals and so are my dogs. The only issue is the one dog rolls in their fresh poop. This is annoying. This is not dangerous. We are aware of one another and they know me because of the carrots. We have a shared understanding. You can tell there are predators nearby based on where they are standing on the hill.

The coyotes are howling. They are two ridges over in the Cartwright area. I considered going there today but did not because of the coyotes. I listen to them, in awe. I suspect they found the mountain lion cache. They tend to drag around the mountain lion kills. I love the coyotes and it makes me happy.

Are these dangers? They are wild. They are a part of the wild. This is what draws me to the hills.

What Actually Disrupts Me

I’ve started slowly rating people in my mind when I encounter them.

Someone told me to look out, they heard coyotes howling. My response was “Cool, where!?” and to keep going.

A man on a bike didn’t like that I was on his trail, running, and he whistled so loudly that it startled me. When I did not smile at him and instead said, “what the …” he got off his bike and started walking toward me like he was going to hit me, until he realized what he was going and rode away.

Someone warned me that there were horses. I said, “I know” - and I wanted to say that I live here, but that doesn’t make much sense, so I said, “I’m here all the time.” For whatever reason they took that to mean I was having a very bad day, so then they began to very patronizingly respond by saying “What can you do to have a better day? How can I best help you have a good day? I hope you have a better day.”

Here’s what you can do: be quiet. If you have advice for women in their forties or older? No, no you don’t. We’re all set.

These are comments with a lot of assumptions about me and who I am with no opening for dialogue. I am cast in someone else’s script and I did not choose this. These comments are all about them. These are social threats. They are more difficult to prepare for and to shake off. Mountain lions? Bring it. Random patronizing and self-aggrandizing people? No thanks.

The Contrast

Animals are predictable. This is not personal. There is no ego. There is no narrative. The experience is merely an experience.

Humans in these kinds of moments are not predictable. They act like it is deeply personal. This is driven by ego, projection, insecurity. Maybe it was their first time on this trail and maybe they were scared of the horses. Not my problem.

I know what to do with a mountain lion print. I don’t know what to do with someone that is angry that I exist.

Practice Toward Acceptance

Arthur Brooks shares that the best way to learn a new idea is to understand it, practice it, then share it. Here, you’re in the sharing moment with me. I make meaning from what I see and experience in the foothills.

These encounters are not random, but follow patterns about power, projection, and threat perception. I can rehearse my responses, not just physically but also socially and psychologically. Naming this here breaks the isolation and we can build collective strategies.

Here are some things that I have learned to do:

• Stay completely silent: sometimes this makes people more mad at first but then they go away. Non-engagement.

• Baseline scanning: try to notice people early on - which only works when there are not blind curves, like on Peggy’s Trail in Boise. I can prepare that the blind curves might cause someone to become mad that I am there.

• Angle my body, not just my words: body positions can reduce the perception of confrontation - I am always walking away, back to them.

• Pre-planned scripts: “I’m not interested, have a good day”

• Post-encounter processing: writing, sharing, narrating

Invitation to Practice

I’m choosing three to practice. Not because I expect danger every time but because I deserve to feel prepared, not just reactive.

Reflection

The wild doesn’t scare me.

It’s the moments when people forget how to be human that stay with me.

So I’ll keep running.

And I’ll keep learning what it means to move through the world: alert, practiced, and still open.

I was in my backyard in Long Branch, New Jersey and I had a toy duck. I was near a swingset. It was the late 1970s.

My grandparents came to this house when they first came to the United States. My grandmother was born into a large family that lived there and they took in my grandfather, who was an orphan. My grandmother and grandfather married, though they were raised in this large house.

It was a large three story house with a full basement. No one here was rich in the early half of the 1900s and many people lived here in this house. The basement had a tunnel out to beneath the railroad tracks behind the house where my ancestors made moonshine in a secret room. They sold it out of the basement doors that opened out onto the sidewalk. The moonshine was placed in tiny bottles and then stuffed inside of freshly baked bread.

As a kid we lived on the right side, and my grandmother and grandfather lived on the left. Through the center was a staircase going to the upper floors, which were shared.

I had a toy duck and I wanted to bury it and then unbury it. Someone said, “Don’t bury it, or you will lose it. It will go to a kid on the other side of the world. It will go to a kid in China.” I buried it, thinking I could remember where it was. I think someone took it to teach me a lesson. I never found it. I was scolded for burying the toy. I learned to not trust the world, but I also continually looked for trust, especially from people that had shown me that they were not trustworthy, for most of my life.

I did not think about this duck until I went through a guided meditation with a great healer. What I learned at this early age was not to trust others, and I felt significant self doubt. This memory, though I did not ever remember it consciously, informed how I operated. These subconscious beliefs followed me.

I find it hard to let go. I’ve experienced a lot of trauma. I think many of us have experienced at least one trauma. I think many of us find it hard to let go. There is a slow practice that releases and provides clear shifts that allow us to become someone new. I think that sometimes trauma can fuel post traumatic growth and that the experiences become the rich fodder of future successes. That is what this post is about.

Nine years ago, I wrote this about Long Branch, NJ:

We grew up in an ethnic enclave, poorer than I realized we were, because we had community - though at times not enough. I knew my Italian relatives had my back, no matter what happened.

Everyone was loud. There was food. The loudness and the food were a position against the pain we experienced in our daily lives. Bias. Ethnic mocking. Being bullied. “Amy the ape ate eight apples” was the very first thing I saw in Kindergarten at the Catholic School. I was called an ape for most of my childhood, and also things much, much worse than that.

I didn’t get both a supportive family, with all of the fascinating cultural landscapes that this family offered, and also a great education. There was a divide, for one because my family was only really supportive of me “marrying a nice Italian boy from the Shore.” I retain the cultural memories and the great education. It feels expensive.

In my memory of being 5, we would walk up and down through the backyard of Jeffrey Street, sampling everyone’s backyard produce. Tomato plants towered above me. Relatives looked out for me. We would have festivals with cultural experiences, and actual, real zeppole, homemade. Nougat candies. Real maraschino cannolis. Italian flag cookies. Handmade noodles and handmade bread. Moonshine. Mushrooms and burdock root dug up from the golf course. Parties in the streets. Seventies music. Dancing. Break dancing. Rap and soul music. Italian folk songs, belted out by drunk men, crooning loudly. Opera. And also so many dangers: fires, muggings, robberies, drug deals, kidnapping. We would always find needles in the parking lots. Tampon applicators on the beach.

They built a wall that separated our neighborhood from the area where the train station and the hospital are located. My school was three blocks away, but I was not allowed to walk there and back. I learned to ride my bike in the full basement, the same place the moonshine was made.

Yes, my life is improved. My son can ride his bike in our cul de sac. Our neighborhood experiences crime very, very rarely. My life is a dream that my ancestors dreamed. Freedom. Education. Yet, I will spend most of my life healing from the experiences I have had while trying to get to this place, mourning what I wanted, but could not attain.

On this improvement: I have spent forty years working on not feeling responsible when someone else exhibits bad behavior. I regularly will analyze myself to determine what I could have done to avoid the bad behavior, as if it’s my responsibility. I’m hopeful that with the experiences of late, my reality checks will have piled up and I’ll be able to much easier spot the bad behavior, and internalize who is truly responsible. This is the theme of the year. I know I am not alone. I have much more to say on this, and I will save it for another time.

I had surgery last week to remove a cyst. It had lived on my back for about 20 years. In the past three years it became weird, growing more, becoming infected, needing to be drained, etc. I visited several doctors and it was drained, but I was told it could not be removed because insurance would not cover it. Eventually, just last month, I learned that local urgent cares can lance these things (shocker, I know; I bet you all knew this already). Then I found a local women-owned dermatology clinic who removed the whole thing. I enjoyed the procedure. And I am thrilled this is over now.

Months ago, I visited a new doctor and found better results than I had from others. I started taking vitamins and hormones.

I also went back to an older therapist who guided me through a process.

I did not have high expectations.

Instead I saw something clearly that I had only glimpses of.

That I am a warrior. A confirmation.

I have everything I need.

And then a profound shift began. I have always had what I needed, even when I did not believe it, even when I had very, very little.

In the past I held onto people and situations far longer than I should have, like the cyst. Beyond just recognizing bad behavior, I put up with things that seem ok rather than letting go and shedding a layer to become more myself. I wait for things to change. I wait for others to change. I wait for someone to correct themselves.

I stayed in many situations that felt almost right, but not fully safe, partly because I did not know what safety was.

The great thinker adrienne maree brown recently shared that the best way to reduce burn out is to find the projects you love with the people who also love those projects.

Letting go has felt like giving up.

In 2014, Scientific American Mind wrote about post-traumatic growth, which is the idea that people don’t just recover from difficult experiences, but can grow from them.

That “adversity and ingenuity sometimes go hand in hand.”

Not because the adversity is good.

But because of what we do with it.

And this is the part I didn’t fully understand before:

The experience itself doesn’t carry the meaning.

We do.

Recently, I had this realization—quiet, almost boring in its simplicity:

Everything is actually right.

Not perfect. Not easy.

Just… right.

Because the only thing assigning meaning to my experiences—

is me.

So, if that is true, what I carry forward is my choice. I can make it a practice, and I can consciously choose to use these experiences to grow.

There’s a line from Hegel:

Maybe I don’t need to fully understand everything that’s happened to me.

Maybe I don’t need to resolve it all.

Maybe I just need to keep moving.

In The Book of Awakening Mark Nepo refers to shedding. In his entry from this book for March 28, he writes:

From the beginning
the key to renewal has been
the casting off of old skin.

It is necessary to cast off the old skin.

A cyst is literally a sac that decides it will hold onto dead skin. Each piece of dead skin flakes off and enters the sac and it gets larger and larger. Sometimes if it gets hit, the area becomes infected. You take twenty years of dead skin and you end up with a large mass going down and below, impacting the muscles and areas around where it is.

He asks us to center ourselves and think about what we might be carrying that is “dead skin.”

I was literally carrying around the dead skin.

But not just physically.

I’ve been carrying versions of it for years—old meanings, old responsibilities, old beliefs about what things say about me.

What if it all works out?

Not because everything was good.

But because I stop deciding that it wasn’t.

And maybe that’s what growth actually is.

Not fixing the past. Not understanding it perfectly.

But choosing, quietly and deliberately,

to not carry it the same way anymore.

A brief note before we begin: some how I signed up for this email list that sends you a playlist of songs from around the world in under three hours. It’s called Around The World In 3 Hours. This curated list is amazing, and that is an understatement. Enjoy.

On Healing

Healing from emotional abuse is rarely linear. Emotional abuse can happen slowly over time, quietly eroding your confidence or ability to recognize your own voice and experiences. Regaining strength can happen in the small moments when you start trusting your own voice again. You heal through the slow unlearning of lies that taught you to shrink, doubt, or apologize for existing, and the careful rebuilding of a self that was never actually broken. This space is for naming what happened without shame, honoring the ways you survived, and making room for gentler patterns to take root—at your own pace, in your own time.

I am a firm believer in using my own strength to walk uphill, or run up and down hill, to regain that confidence. There are very simple ways to go about this. You can set a goal to walk or climb a run a certain distance, then work to attain it. In that process every step of the way - no matter how small the goal is - works to retrain your mind. You learn to notice what works, and what does not work. You learn to see how much water to carry, how much food, and what works for you.

I was buying some fancy running chews in a store when someone I knew walked up to me and asked me if I knew how to use them. I was then man-splained to about how to use chews. How to use high energy treats. I bought them. I used them. They did work as fuel for me on the trails. But then I realized that gummy candies from the Winco bulk section work just as well, perhaps even better. That’s what retraining looks like. It’s not listening to the guy at the running store. It is about learning how to step forward with your own choices, trusting your intuition, and following it.

Once you see that your own advice is sufficient, you gain confidence again and again.

Emotional abuse is insidious. I find it difficult to understand. Abusers want to gain something. They may want to feel better about themselves. Some want to rise in the ranks at work, and incapacitating you in some way helps them get there. Some want your attention and sympathy. Naming emotional abuse is one way to help rise above it. In this short article, there are descriptions of types of emotional abuse and some reasons people might do it. Naming it is one method to rise above.

Naming it is one step, and once you have been able to do so, it is important to overcome it. As mentioned above, I find that hiking or trail running does two things to help me overcome abuse: I gain confidence and I am able to reflect on what was and was not abuse. Getting help from trained professionals, and understanding that abuse is a cycle are key. These 11 tips can help you too.

At one point or another, all of us will have experienced something like this. I encourage you to speak up, for yourself, for others. You can say that it is not ok. You can set boundaries.

Kindness can go so far. So can believing in yourself. I send you all confidence and the will to move forward. You’ve got this.

About My Lawn

Tonight I mowed my own lawn.

I say this, not as a euphemism, but a simple truth, so let’s get the idea that this is a euphemism out of the way. That’s not what I’m talking about here.

When I first moved into my house I was scared about maintaining the lawn. The lawn looked good to me when we moved in. That is, the grass appeared to be alive, and I was intimidated. I had no idea how to keep a lawn alive. I had no idea, too, what it might take to honestly pull up the thatch of the lawn and convert it to native plants, which is, maybe, a choice.

Maintaining a lawn is about choices. The lawn clearly represents to me success. I have a beautiful lawn. I do not have a perfect lawn. My lawn has weeds. The more I fertilize the lawn, the fewer weeds I have. I no longer stress about the weeds. I have seen the lawn improve with care and love.

My son and I, we feel joy on our lawn. We feel sadness, sometimes, too. The lawn lifts us, each small blade working together, conspiring to offer us support. The lawn helps us play baseball and catch and soccer. We run and hide on the lawn. We release thousands of ladybugs on the lawn.

The first step in the act of mowing, is the part where I pull out the mechanical mower and heft it, lifting it’s metal rod upon my shoulder, and lumber into the yard, I feel true selfhood. Here it is; this is what I see: a long pathway carving out the lawn. A rotating blade slicing many green leaves at the same time. The group of them falling to the ground, like a satisfying painting. Light green on dark green. Dark green on the brown of the earth. A pattern of cut-blade-chaos on the organized parallel blades reaching upward to the light of the sun. Moths flying out from the dark, damp earth. Daddy long legs walking quickly to deeper grass. The flies in the sun, specks, circling and landing again, not wanting to be disrupted.

When I see the small gnats flying above the grass, my son does too. My son says, “What are those? Mosquitos? Are they ticks? Look! So many flying all around!” He asks a perpetually long series of questions about all of the bugs that I desperately need to see.

I drop the mechanical mower many times to see what he sees. Interruptions in the mowing pattern. I wait, sometimes, to complete a row, before I respond to his request. Then, after such a long wait, the bug or the flower is often still there. A giant slug. A freshly opened purple wildflower. The spider droppings hanging from the web, and no sign of a spider. Where is this spider? We must investigate. Sometimes I hear long stories, too, about what the bug did right before I got there. Epic stories where the slug jumped up on the air and gobbled a fly.

My son also must help mow the lawn. He has tried to push the mower. I have pushed the mower while he also pushes the mower. He does not find that satisfactory. He would like to mow himself. He is too young to mow himself.

He would also like to use the choppers, and so I oblige. The large shears which he uses to cut down the Johnny Creeper vine, a plant I admire for the privacy, and also detest for it’s great abundance. He also uses the large shears, the choppers, to sometimes “trim” the rose bush that I nurse back to health once a year. He cuts the stems of the daffodils, in bloom in early spring. He cuts the stems of the daylilies, in early summer. He chomps the beautiful purple flowers of the native Dicentra formosa formosa - bleeding heart. I care for this plant, I work to move the other plants away from it to make room, and inevitably it is chopped, and reblooms later in the season, as delicate, beautiful, and droopily-sad as ever. Like a hot feeling face, pink after crying, looking down at the ground. Don’t cry, little bleeding heart, you will regrow.

After each break I will take back to the mower, pushing forward again, looking back to admire the length. If there is a piece that I missed I will drag myself back to that line or that spot, mowing carefully, to keep the lines the way I want them. Each interruption is inevitable. Each row of lawn invites equal parts interruption and satisfaction. I feel it’s like the American goldfinches who fly to the fence, away from the feeder, as the noise of the mower begins, and they return once we get started. They chit-chatter in the same patterns. Pew... chip chip. Pew... chip chip.

With each break or pause I use that time to my advantage. On my way back to the mower I stoop to pick up the willow branches. The willow branches fall, constantly, in an epic manner, whether it is a storm or not, falling every which way about the lawn. I never know where to put all of the willow branches. They don’t belong on a lawn being mowed. They become tails. My son proudly picks them up from a pile I created and drags them across the yard. “Look at my tail!” he says, and I must stop to admire it. He wears a very nice, very long tail. It’s a snake tail, I agree. It’s a dragon tail now.

I make choices in the pattern. I will navigate the obstacles on the lawn. Sometimes I move my mower over the toys, and my manual mower does not break the toys, which are often nestled closer to the brown of the earth, and sometimes I pick them up. I mow in one line. The sticks that drop from the willows get caught in my manual push mower. I pull back, pushing forward harder, to break the sticks, the willow sticks. I think to myself, I really must sharpen these rotating mower blades.

I really do admire my lawn.

This lawn is green because I water it. It is soft because I care for it. It is loved because we play in it.These are all careful decisions. We lay down in the lawn, admiring the small bugs.

With each time I mow I must also stop, at least once, for a longer break, to look under a piece of bark that my son has removed from our tree to see the bugs inside. Are there centipedes? Ladybugs? Which beetles carved a path through this bark.

Inevitably, this is my lawn. And I mow my own lawn.

I push the lawn through the lush parts. I look at the thickness and remark with impressive satisfaction the parts of the lawn that are particularly impressive. So many strands of grass come together here. Or with dismay. So many strands of a weedy grass here.

I dig these out, or I ferlize. I spray sometimes, out of anger. I replace the bald spots months later with grass seed.

I dream of owning my own scythe and picture myself scything the lawn instead. The sound of the scrape. The mower sings it’s song. The blades of grass drop, feeding the future grasses.

On this lawn, we feel joy. We laugh. On this lawn, we cry. These are the tiny, fragile blades that support us. They provide a nest for the bugs and the birds and the squirrels and the worms. The lawn supports us. This is what I wanted to say about my lawn.

Rain the Color of Blue with A Little Red In It

I strongly recommend you watch the trailer for the Nigerian remake of Purple Rain, calledRain the Color of Blue with A Little Red In It.

Note: I wrote this for an older newsletter of mine back when Tiny Letter used to exist. I loved Tiny Letter. When they folded, I failed to grab my writing from there. Recently it occurred to me to check the Internet Archive. This is because someone recently found some of Anthony Bourdain’s lost Li.st’s from the website Li.st. https://bourdain.greg.technology . I found a lot of old writing there, on the Wayback Machine. This one I wrote, in about a half hour, which came gushing out of me exactly as it is written, because it had been storing up inside me for so long. I had been thinking about it for years, wishing I still had access to this piece but I could not find it. Anyway, read and enjoy and please donate to the Internet Archive. They do God’s work. I did not make any edits to the original.

Ways In Which I Have Felt American

The Szajowski family and neighbors sitting around the table.

1.

My grandmother, Josephine Marotta Vecchione, was born into this world, one of the youngest of many children. As an immigrant, they lived in Long Branch, New Jersey in an Italian-American enclave near the train station. Jeffrey Street. Everyone on the street was a relative. The gardens connected in the backyards - no fences. I, as a child, would roam up and down the backyards visiting with relatives, eating all of their tomato plants. I would hide in the basements in the hot weather. I learned how to ride a bike in the basement. An E.T. bike. It was too dangerous, in the 1980s, for me to ride outside, and we soon moved.

We lived with my grandmother, Josephine, and her husband, Frank. Frank, my grandfather, was an orphan. His mother died on the boat that they took to arrive in America to meet Frank’s father. When my great grandmother died, Frank was left to live with the Marotta’s. And he did. An orphan.

My grandmother’s arm was shot when she was a child and was amputated from the elbow down. She hid this in ever photo. She wore an apron, at all times, and put her missing arm in a pocket to avoid attention.

The orphan was slated to marry the one armed lady. And it was so.

When I was very young, my grandmother made pasta by hand, using one hand. She was quite talented. In many ways.

My father would roam the golf course where he caddied part time. He worked on the railroad, too. He caddied for Italian mobsters. He would eye where he saw delectable mushrooms. He would bring the mushrooms home to my grandmother who would cook them for him. She would eat them after 2-3 days had passed, to see how he faired, to see if he became sick or not.

She cooked the pasta by hand, opened the wine bottle by hand, and mixed all together with the mushrooms, the tomatoes from the backyard, and served it.

My father told me that we were American. My father told me that Americans buy pasta from the store in boxes. He told his mother this. Americans buy pasta from the store.

And so we did.

2.

My mother told me the story of how I got my name.

“Your last name is so complex and so difficult to pronounce, so we chose Amy. It’s so simple. Amy.”

Amy Elizabeth Vecchione.

“Amy Carter was in the White House when you were born. She roller skated around the White House causing quite a stir. This is what we want for you. For you to be American.”

3.

My mother was dying and she instructed me about how to buy the babka.

First, I had to go to the right store. Next, I had to say the right things. I had to not choose the babka from the shelf, but rather, I had to talk with the owners and make sure I got the Polish babka. The right one.

I tried. I tried so hard. I don’t know exactly what I was supposed to do. I spoke the right language and used the right words.

I don’t think they understood, though, that I was part Polish. They looked at me and I’m sure they made assumptions because I don’t look Polish. I was handed a babka. But because I didn’t look Polish, it was the wrong babka. There was no woman in the house at that time who could go to the store to get the right babka. My mother was sad. It was the wrong babka.

My mother continued to drink buttermilk with morphine in it. My sister and I ate the babka.

4.

My mother took my sister and I to Washington DC as often as she could. We stayed at a Hyatt. We could not afford the Hyatt. It did not matter. This is what we did. We toured the Library of Congress and every other museum of culture in the Mall.

5.

I feel particularly American when I look at photos of my mother and uncle from the World Fair, 1964, Queens, New York.

As a child, we would go to Disney World in Florida, where I felt unfairly emotional about the It’s A Small World ride, which my mother would have seen for the first time at the World Fair in 1964. I felt a burden that I could not describe, and only now do I understand, 30 years later.

6.

My great grandmother, Pauline, left Poland in the early 1900s and emigrated to the United States.

She lived in Southern Poland.

My mother explained the significance of this to me many times as a child when we were asked to talk about our ethnic backgrounds and heritage at school.

The country was Austria. Hungary. Poland. Who knows, I thought as a child. I struggled with identity. It’s something that took me many years to figure out. As a kid, I wanted things to be clear and concise and I can recall very specifically struggling with this concept.

I know now that our ethnicity was complex. And we, the we that is my mother’s family, are from the Kingdom of Galicia. Mountain dwellers who once emigrated to this region from other regions in the middle east and northern India. Which is why my mother obtained her undergraduate degree in studying the middle ages peasantry. The Polish folks from this region were some of the last to be free. And once they were free, there were very few options. And so, they made these tough decisions to cross the ocean to America.

I know now that the conspicuous consumption that my family members participated in was due to a desire to feel and appear American.

Pauline. I look at her face. She came alone across the ocean. I don’t know her story, yet.

She traveled by boat across the Atlantic to live in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where she did not last for very long.

She raised her kids, and her kids raised their kids in Elizabeth, New Jersey, land of the immigrant.

I still visit there, sometimes, to St. Adalbert’s Latin Mass. I walk to the live chicken market where my mother bought duck blood and duck meat to make groat sausage from scratch.

I think about the stories I was told.

I am here because they made choices.

So that I can make choices.

So that I and my son can be free in a way that they never were able to be.

Compared to this time last year, I have made real progress in my life. It’s worth acknowledging and celebrating. This week also marks the death anniversaries of both of my parents. Each of my parents did achieve in their lives, neither lived to see their grand kids. Their choices shaped their lives - as ours all do. Their lives ended too soon and I’ve spent my whole life working hard to live long and differently from them.

My life is moving in a direction I want it to be moving into. Despite making those awesome decisions, I experienced a setback in December 2024. Over time, what I learned was that there were multiple injuries in my spine causing pain. They were not singular, or isolated. It was a group of injuries. And while I suffered a bit in terms of vertebrae degeneration, there were larger issues at play, specifically severe SI joint inflammation.

I’ve had something like this at another time on my right side. My right leg is shorter than the other, I have scoliosis, and was hit by a car when I was a teenager. All of these issues have led to some complicated issues, and for most of my life I’ve pretended I could just get through it all. I worked to take advantage of every opportunity - and to never let any tragedy go without using it to make my life better.

So in order to combat the amount of pain I have been in, I have been focusing on what we want to be different in the world, and places that embody what I wish the world were doing. So much about our society is not what I want it to be. That, in conjunction with pain, led me down a depressive state.

Are you struggling? You are not alone. Let me know if you want to talk about it. This incredible video is two years old but still an important message. Check in on loved ones - near and far.

I was in pain, experiencing depression and anxiety, and the pain forced me to slow down. And slowing down forced me to feel—not just physically, but emotionally. I found myself thinking deeply about the world I want to live in, and the world as it actually is. The relentless brutality of daily life—not the big political decisions made far away, but the small cruelties we inflict on each other—began to wear on me. Watching children and animals harmed in my own neighborhood, watching people treat each other with such indifference…it pushed me into a depressive state, especially layered on top of constant pain.

I am choosing to focus my efforts on the people and places where healing takes place.

Anxiety, grief over lost physical ability, fear of re-injury, frustration with limitations—all of these things I have been experiencing.

When I was in high school, the neighborhood where I lived was often destroyed by storms. We grew up next to the ocean, and catastrophic flooding occurred over and over again. In addition, the water areas became very polluted. I wanted to design wetlands that cleaned the water. Wetlands can function to both remove pollutants, and also prevent flooding. I wanted to go to UC Berkeley for environmental engineering and learn how to do this - but they cut the program the semester I arrived.

So I learned to pivot and to find beauty elsewhere. I look for the places where life thrives despite all odds.

I have worked hard to focus on the things that I love, but it was not working. I could see the good in the world, I could experience the diversity of plants and witness animals and plants thriving, but I could not feel the joy because I was in pain.

The first game I watched my son play after some procedures was incredible (he’s in blue - the goal keeper).

Over the past few weeks, I’m ramping back up on my trail work. I have been able to smile again - the genuine smiles of joy from seeing birds, flowers, and loved ones. Some hiking, and very light running. Five to seven miles at a time. The pain in one joint has greatly improved - finally - and I will have to continue to do a lot of physical therapy multiple times a day - which is the only real long term solution.

If you would like to go on a jaunt - explore a trail or what not, please let me know.

With a dog yesterday, we found an incredible deer rib cage. Today, we found a lot of beauty. I’m so thrilled I get to experience life again the way I used to.

I send you all my best. Cherish every moment.