These days, everything seems to be about optimizing the human experience. Nutrition, aging, dating, meditating... you name it, someone has figured out a way to make it better, faster, or more efficient.

So last night, I decided to try an optimized wellness experience called The 15-Ton Sound Bath: A Fluffy Cloud Experience, an evidence-based, multisensory experience with reviews like, “I was buzzing for days.”

I love sound baths and have made it something of a mission to experience as many different versions as possible. Most recently, I attended one that combined sound with acupuncture, which was glorious. I fell asleep during the session and slept wonderfully that night.

I had high hopes for the Fluffy Cloud. And, as it turns out, it worked.

The night started when I met my friend Nikki and her husband for a quick dinner at Flower Child in Bethesda. I caught a ride with them to BERHTA, the venue hosting the sound bath. As it turns out, I’m glad we arrived together and by car as the multi-acre music and dance club is rather difficult to find, which I wonder is intentionally part of its “charm.”

Following GPS brought us to a gated entrance in a rundown warehouse area near some kind of Verizon facility, a recycling plant, and other industrial-looking buildings. After driving around the area, we finally saw signs for the sound bath that led us through a labyrinth of other buildings, fenced parking lots, and finally BERHTA. One of the reviews of the nightclub called it a taste of Burning Man in DC, which made sense as we passed what looked like large paper-mache figures and other kinds of art next to a warehouse-type building.

Arriving at the door, we entered the lobby where our QR code tickets were scanned by a very tall, thin woman dressed in black with an Eastern European accent. We were invited to wait in a dimly lit space lined with lockers, a few couches and folding chairs, adjacent to the open bathroom, which had an unusually large number of closed-door stalls, a feature, I later discovered, enthusiastically praised by BERHTA reviewers.

There must have been about twelve of us total. As advertised, the group was intentionally kept small. Just before the start of the event, we were ushered into the sound bath space, another dimly lit space that contained large tree sculptures surrounding the “Fluffy Cloud,” which looked like a cross between storm clouds in the middle of a thunderstorm and an organic spaceship with pulsating veins of red light. Beneath this huge structure were rows of zero-gravity chairs.

As soon as all of us were reclined and locked in, the sound bath started with a recorded woman’s voice, her British-accented words instructing us to breathe, relax, and receive. Her instructions were followed quickly by deep, rolling waves of bass that felt deafening yet somehow didn’t hurt my ears. I could feel the sound simultaneously around and inside my body. Once I surrendered to the sound instead of bracing against it, my body started to relax.

From beneath my closed eyelids, I could tell the colors were changing in and around the spaceship cloud, but I was sinking so deeply into the experience that opening my eyes seemed to require more effort than I could muster. There were nature sounds along with a deeper bass current that was more felt than heard at times.

After what seemed like 10 minutes, the tall woman returned, ushering us into the next room. Leaving the Fluffy Cloud space, I was a bit disoriented and just wanted to fall back asleep.

We were directed to sit in an oblong circle of couches, cups of warm chamomile tea set at each place. The tall woman invited us to enjoy the tea and remain for phase two of the experience. As we sat there drinking, nobody spoke. One man looked the way I felt... he was lying back against the couch, eyes closed. I didn’t know if he was awake or asleep. And then a disembodied voice started to explain the science behind what we just experienced.

Initially, I thought the voice was coming from a decorative table lamp covered with cotton balls to resemble a tree that sat at the center of the long coffee table. Trying to make sense of that logic, I then decided it was just being piped into that space from somewhere else. The voice described the evidence behind the choice of sounds as well as why all the spaces were dimly lit. The voice also pointed out the diffusers on the table releasing a sandalwood blend of essential oils designed to calm and relax the body. Clearly, all of these elements were working because I could barely keep my eyes open.

Once the presentation concluded, we were released into the night. Since I had to use the restroom again before leaving, we were the last to leave. Walking into the dark evening, I was grateful to have my friends beside me. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to say it felt like we were the only people left on the planet in a post-apocalyptic scene. As we continued walking, two of the women from the sound bath seemed to materialize from nowhere asking us how to get to the road as they were trying to meet their Uber.

Once we got to the car — the only vehicle in the completely dark parking lot — and started driving home, we began talking about the experience we’d just had. I said I would have been terrified if I had to figure out how to find my Uber after that experience. It felt like my fight-flight response had been switched off.

Nikki shared feeling resistance at the beginning as well and that both she and her husband had stuffed their ears with toilet paper to protect their hearing. I hadn’t even considered protecting my ears. I had assumed that an event advertised as evidence-based had accounted for safe sound levels.

Some sounds seemed dissonant. Nikki described a sound as baby seals being clubbed. Somewhere in the middle of the sound bath, I stopped distinguishing sounds and just noticed vibration and sensation. And none of us discerned anything like a heartbeat, which supposedly happened somewhere close to the end.

One thing I noticed right away was that something felt oddly missing. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it at first, as I was still trying to make sense of everything that had happened. Clearly, my body responded exactly the way it was supposed to, so in that sense, the experience was a complete success. Yet, toward the end of our 45-minute drive home, I realized what was missing: someone holding space, a facilitator.

All the sound baths I’ve attended up to now have been facilitated by sound practitioners. They create the conditions for relaxation by warmly welcoming people into the space, helping them get settled, and easing the group into the experience with meditation or breathwork. And when the sound bath is over, they ease people back out just as slowly, often leaving time for participants to share what they experienced.

And yet, I can’t deny the effectiveness of the Fluffy Cloud. I had one of the best nights of sleep I’d had in a long time, confirmed by my Oura Ring the next morning. My sleep score was 87, two points above what Oura considers optimal.

By that measure, the experience worked. But the data didn’t capture everything.

The 15-Ton Sound Bath completely relaxed my body through an intentionally engineered and highly efficient experience. What it seemed to leave out was something that doesn’t lend itself well to optimization: human interaction.

Human interaction is messy and unpredictable. It is definitely not efficient. At its best, it is responsive and caring. It isn’t efficient when someone needs extra time to get settled because they’re anxious. It isn’t efficient to leave space for people to talk about what they experienced rather than moving seamlessly into the next phase. A recorded voice can invite you to relax, but there’s no metric for feeling welcomed.

Maybe that’s part of what I’ve been trying to understand when I ask myself what feels alive and nourishing. We live in a time when we can measure so much: our HRV, sleep, steps, productivity, views, likes. Those measurements can tell us something useful. My Oura Ring wasn’t wrong. My body was deeply relaxed.

Nourishment on the other hand, seems to be asking something different of us.

On the drive home, the three of us talked about what we’d experienced. We compared what we’d heard, laughed about the sounds we couldn’t identify, and wondered how we’d somehow missed the heartbeat that was supposedly there to create a womb-like experience. This part of the experience wasn’t designed or prompted by an evidence-based protocol, and nothing was measuring its effectiveness.

We were simply three friends driving home in the dark, talking about an extraordinary experience we’d just had together.

And that integration really was the best part.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Fall session starts Tuesday, September 1st-November 3rd, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Session — a live opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet on the second Wednesday of each month. Paid and Founding subscribers attend as part of their membership. Simply RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, September 9th here. Not yet a paid subscriber? You’re warmly welcome to join with a one-time ticket through Luma here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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My 45-year high school reunion is coming up this fall. The last time I seriously considered attending one, I texted my best friend Molly and told her I’d rather go with her. We joked about showing up wearing matching long black leather jackets a la The Matrix. She told me she registered but wasn’t particularly excited about going. The only person she really cared about seeing was me.

Neither of us made it to the 40-year reunion. My mother died the following weekend. And Molly was too sick to travel.

Molly died unexpectedly two years later. We hadn’t spoken during those last two years.

With the 45-year reunion approaching, I started remembering and thinking more about her. And I realized something I hadn’t fully admitted to myself.

I don’t think I ever really grieved her.

It was sophomore year, we were in homeroom together. I often wondered if we had different last names, would we still have been friends? Because of alphabetical order, you sat two seats behind me.

And then we discovered we lived close by, a five-minute drive away. And you taught me to drive. Finding empty parking lots, you’d let me drive your Vega before I had my license, the 8-track blaring Heart’s “Barracuda.” We’d sing at the top of our lungs. When the Vega finally died, your dad got you the purple Gremlin. You learned to drive a manual transmission, and then, so did I. I thought you were so cool, smoking Virginia Slims menthol cigarettes, the car filled with the distinctive scent of Downy fabric softener, bleach and cigarette smoke.

Your birthday was early in the year, February, and mine was at the end of the year, December, and so there was almost a year’s difference between us. In that way and in so many others, I was following you. You suggested I check into getting a job at the officer’s club at what is now Joint Base Andrews. We worked Saturdays setting up for the evening dinner and were Sunshine Girls at the Sunday Brunch. Wads of cash stuffed the pockets of our orange polyester zip-front uniforms. Those tips bought concert tickets, jeans, albums, and of course, cigarettes.

I remember pushing past the nausea so that I could smoke, too. There were so many firsts: my first job, my first beer, a Heineken, first joint. You even introduced me to my first boyfriend, eventually my first husband, George. Oh, and the concerts: Styx, the Eagles, the Police, Jackson Browne, Heart, to name a few. I’ll never forget nearly getting trampled at the Styx concert, the crowd of people moving in unison, losing my footing in that general admission crowd and getting pushed onto the floor… you yelling at the top of your lungs, “get that girl!” Somehow you got me out of there, bedraggled, sweaty, my t-shirt stretched out from all the pulling.

Tonight driving home in a rental, my playlist of old favorites on shuffle served up Heart’s “Mistral Wind.” I’ll never forget us seeing them on their Dog & Butterfly tour and hearing “Mistral Wind” live. It was so haunting and powerful, and on this rainy night, I was absolutely gutted. Heart will always be the soundtrack of our high school days.

Most of all, I remember driving, the freedom of driving, telling our parents we were going to the library, and then just driving. Driving, talking, listening to music, singing, and smoking. We knew the backroads around Clinton, Brandywine, and Suitland. Occasionally, one of us would get a wild hair (usually me), and we’d try to drive into the city. And since we’d always get lost, Old Town Alexandria was more our speed. I remember walking those streets, buying clogs, eating clam chowder with oyster crackers at the Fish Market, sitting by the water. We were trying to figure out the world, and our place in it. We’d talk for hours about everything and nothing at all.

I don’t recall either of us really knowing what we wanted to do with our lives. We just didn’t want to be like everybody else. I was cynical and questioning everything whereas you were more practical and cautious. Years later we’d discover that we both loved the movie Practical Magic and somehow, we each thought of ourselves as Sandra Bullock’s character Sally, the grounded, practical one, while seeing the other as Nicole Kidman’s Gillian, the free-spirited, dangerous one.

I got into University of Maryland and this is where we lost track for a while. It seems hard to believe that would happen especially when you talk to and see someone every day. But by then, George and I were getting serious, and after one semester at Maryland, I dropped out. In April 1982, we got married. He left for boot camp that summer, and we were stationed in Korea by the fall.

Staying in touch required more effort in those days. Without cell phones and computers, writing letters or making long distance phone calls was required. We were both living our lives in very different directions. I lived in Korea, Maine, California, and then Korea again. Aside from short visits when we were home visiting, we wouldn’t reconnect until George and I split. I remember the first time I saw you after the separation. I was deep in a funk, parked on the couch in my parent’s family room, sleeping most of the day away, while wide awake at night chain smoking and watching TV evangelists until I could fall asleep again. You were in school for business, dating some guy named Kevin, the man you would eventually marry and have kids with.

Years later, I remember you saying you were scared seeing me that way. It was the first time my life had imploded and I had to rebuild it. After a few months like that something finally clicked. I knew going back to school had to be part of the plan so I decided to join the Air Force. You called it a harebrained idea, but I think you were relieved to see me off that couch and with a purpose again.

That plan didn’t work out, but it got me working and striving again. Meanwhile, you got married and started a family. I remember those days seeing you as a mother. It felt hard to comprehend seeing my friend who had been my partner in crime, getting up to all kinds of shenanigans, wearing that long leather coat, selling shoes at The Wild Pair in Iverson Mall, that chain-smoking girl with a Heineken in hand, now a mother. And yet you took to it so naturally. It was like you had found your purpose. Whenever I think of a fierce protective mother, I see you, laying your life down for those kids. Sacrificing yourself for their well-being... leaving it all out on the field. That kind of unselfishness seemed incomprehensible to me in my late twenties, still trying to figure things out.

Whenever I’d bring that to your attention, we’d both launch into replaying the scene from Terms of Endearment where Debra Winger yells at her son to get over by the car, while John Lithgow says, “Nice boys. You’re great with them, too.” Then we’d both laugh hysterically. And you’d say, “when I’m gone, you have to remind the boys about their sainted mother” and you’d laugh that deep, throaty laugh of yours, your voice sounding like a cross between Demi Moore, Jodie Foster, and Debra Winger.

Do you remember our 10-year high school reunion? You came for the event and stayed in my tiny condo in Arlington, by then also home to Tom and our three cats. We both had this vision of ourselves in high school as awkward outsiders, not part of any group, and were surprised that others actually remembered us, and thought we were cool.

I remember how proud you were of my going back to school, and eventually graduate school. You always thought I was smart and capable, more so than I thought of myself. I thought you were doing a much harder job than you gave yourself credit for, raising three boys, while dropping hints that your marriage wasn’t as supportive as one would hope. And then your breakdown. I was never clear on how it happened; all I remember was learning of your psychiatric hospital stay. Spending weeks away from your kids. Your dad arranging for your older sister, Mary, to live in Ohio so that she could support you. I didn’t realize how much you were suffering.

It wasn’t until you called me one day and said that you and Kevin were divorcing that I understood how bad things were for you. You and the boys were visiting your mom in Clinton after the separation. It was July, and I invited all of you to come stay with us in Chesapeake Beach for the Fourth of July weekend. No questions asked. You could just come and be. I remember you, thin and drawn, a shadow of yourself, heartbroken over the double life Kevin had been leading.

One of my favorite memories of us was our trip to Sedona. I had to be in Phoenix for a work-related trip and talked you into meeting me there and driving up to Sedona for the weekend. I booked the rooms, got the rental car, all you had to do was buy your plane ticket. I got a Mustang convertible, not realizing that the Arizona heat would make that intolerable. Still, the idea of it was glorious. The first night of the trip was spent at the Hermosa Inn where they messed up the reservation and for that inconvenience, gave us a night in their grand suite casita. It was a sprawling two-bedroom, two-bathroom casita with a great room and kitchen. I can still see us running around that huge suite wrapped in their plush robes, feeling like we won the lottery.

The drive up to Sedona was memorable as well. We joked about being Thelma and Louise, the top down until we couldn’t take the heat, and watched the landscape change to striking red rocks views. Arriving at Amara Resort was like a dream, the lobby and hallways scented with essential oils, Oak Creek Canyon just beyond it. It felt like we had discovered a hidden gem. You bought a pair of the most ridiculous shoes at Tlaquepaque. They were festooned with feathers and beads and you called them your festive shoes because they were like works of art. We ate the most amazing food, walked through water misters to get relief from the dry desert heat, looked for the vortexes, and swam in the hotel pool with a million stars overhead.

You called it the trip of your life because you said it was the first time someone cared about what you wanted, and genuinely wanted to spend time with you. After that weekend, we parted ways at the airport. You caught a flight back to Ohio and I caught my connection to Washington, DC. We both cried when it was time to say goodbye.

I remember coming to visit you in Ohio when the boys were deep into the Harry Potter books. You laughed and called it the reading room as all three of them were parked in the living room reading the latest release. You were a single mom struggling to support your kids on your Kroger pharmacy tech salary. And you did an amazing job. And every time, you’d remind me, “don’t forget to tell them about their sainted mother.”

There were milestone events, like Matt’s graduations, first from high school, and then from college. And then attending Steve’s high school graduation as well. I remember you saying that "the boys are my resume." Their well-being was your first priority, and I saw how you beamed with pride at their accomplishments. You poured so much of yourself into raising them, and you were so proud of the men they were becoming.

And then there were the funerals. I remember going to your dad’s funeral at Arlington Cemetery. Later you came to my dad’s funeral. And you were there for me during Tom’s illness and death, a constant presence via text and phone call, holding my hand long distance. You lived with me through every last detail of that tragic year, saying “everything is going to be okay, I promise.”

And while those losses were profound, nothing prepared either of us for our mothers’ passing. Your mother passed first. Somehow you knew that when the snow was on the crocuses she’d be gone. And it was on your birthday in February. You said that nothing felt real until you had a chance to tell your mom.

Through all of this, you were a constant presence, even when you were dealing with your own failing health. I had hints of its severity when I noticed you disappearing into the bathroom for long periods of time when we were in Sedona. But you never let on or complained, if you could help it. I remember hearing of the hospital stays often after the fact, you cracking jokes about needing a cigarette, even when things were serious.

I had planned to come to Ohio for Nick’s high school graduation. I had my plane ticket, had taken time off from work, and was all ready to go. Just before I was supposed to leave, we somehow ended up in an argument with you saying not to come. Only later did I learn how sick you were at the time. This was after Tom had died and you knew how hard losing him had been for me. I came to understand that you simply didn't want me to see you that sick.

I’ll never forget our Zoom calls during the pandemic lockdown while my mom was still feeling somewhat okay. It was the three of us crocheting together. My mom loved being able to see you and hear your familiar voice as if you were in the room with us. That meant so much to her.

I still have all of your texts on my phone. I’m not even sure how far back they go, but stopping at random, I read our conversations from the last two weeks of my mom’s life. Everything from a documentary you watched about the royal family, to me mentioning how hard it was to cook dinner for myself now that my mom had stopped eating... that I could barely get her to take in some bone broth, and me feeling terrible about eating in front of her. Moments of mundane conversation scattered among caregiving details. At one point, I told you my mom’s transitioning soon, that she’s meeting the milestones, and that I’d call you after the next morphine injection.

I read you the letter I wrote to her. You said that letter made you cry, that you felt the dusty back roads of California, the awe of seeing the great Salt Flats, remembered my mom’s kindness towards you. You said you loved that letter and wanted me to write yours to make the boys cry.

When my mother died, you were the first person I called. You once told me that nothing felt real until you had a chance to tell your mom. I understand that now. Nothing felt quite real until I told you, either.

The texts document my unexpected move to the Shenandoah farm and then my four-month house sitting stint in Delaware. I didn’t know where I was going next and for the first time, I could actually imagine myself becoming homeless. There were conversations about me possibly moving to Ohio and sharing a place in between pictures of your new granddaughter, Avery. You said you found a place that might work in Upper Arlington. Rent for each of us would be about $800 a month. At that moment, I couldn’t commit to that amount per month as my income was still unsteady. I was nearing the end of my Delaware stay and still didn’t know where to go.

And then the texts abruptly stopped.

Yet I clearly remember our last phone conversation and you saying that I should consider a way to get on disability. And what I heard was that you didn’t believe in me. I was feeling desperate, unsure of my next move, and your suggestion of disability for a stable income sparked all my fears of not being able to get my life back together. It struck right at the heart of my self-doubt. I don’t remember exactly what we said to each other, but I remember feeling hurt and angry.

We didn’t talk again.

Two years later, your sister Melissa texted me asking me to call her when I got a chance. She said that you had unexpectedly passed in your sleep a few nights ago. Sometime later, she sent me a link to your obituary and your funeral arrangements. It was so hard to believe that you could possibly be gone.

How could you leave before we had a chance to repair? Everything was going to be alright, you promised.

I couldn’t go to your funeral. I couldn’t afford the plane ticket or a place to stay. And somewhere deep down, I thought you were right about me. Filled with shame, I didn’t even reach out to the boys.

There’s been a numbness, a disbelief that our story would end this way. That I failed you. I’m so sorry.

I’m sorry our last words to each other were in anger.

I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you those last two years.

I’m sorry I didn’t reach out to the boys and remind them about their sainted mother.

I’m sorry I didn’t get one more time to tell you that I love you.

I can still see you with your wild blonde Irish hair, smoky eye shadow, blue eyes rimmed in black eyeliner, smoking a cigarette, your sardonic sense of humor, that deep throaty laugh, the scent of Opium perfume lingering in your wake. Seeing me this way you’d probably offer to make me a chicken dinner as a way of saying everything is alright.

Writing this letter, it occurred to me that maybe I misunderstood what you meant all those years ago.

Perhaps you were just being Sally from Practical Magic, your reliable self, being careful and cautious. Perhaps you were worried about the precariousness of your own situation and weren’t in a position to carry more financial uncertainty yourself. Perhaps I might still be able to tell the boys about their sainted mother, if they’d be open to listening. Perhaps it’s not too late after all to write my Letter to Molly and make the boys cry.

All I know is that I miss the girl who taught me to smoke and also to drive, who called me Smalls in our texts (where did that even come from?), who came with me to our 10-year reunion, and the only person I wanted by my side for our upcoming 45^th this fall. The one who was always there through ordinary moments, celebrations, and tragedies.

The one with the festive shoes.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Fall session starts Tuesday, September 1st-November 3rd, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Session — a live opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet on the second Wednesday of each month. Paid and Founding subscribers attend as part of their membership. Simply RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, September 9th here. Not yet a paid subscriber? You’re warmly welcome to join with a one-time ticket through Luma here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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Buy Me a Coffee

Earlier this week, the August Monthly Wellness Session explored the question, "What am I ready to make room for now?" As I answered that question for myself, what came up surprised me and I've been writing about it ever since.

What emerged needs a little more time and space before it's ready to be shared, so I'm letting it rest and continue doing the work of transforming me.

For the first time since launching Mindful Reinvention, there won't be a new essay today. Sometimes the writing asks us to honor its timing rather than our own.

I'll see you next week.

Much love, Aurora ❤️

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This month’s wellness session is an invitation to consider the question: What am I ready to make room for now?

Inspired by the August new moon and solar eclipse, this session explores the possibility of beginning again by creating the conditions for something new to emerge. Through mindfulness, Reiki, and guided hypnotic visualization, we’ll…

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During one of my group sessions this week, we explored the topic of forgiveness, particularly self-forgiveness and self-compassion. One group member who was genuinely grappling with this idea asked thoughtfully, “why is it so hard to offer myself forgiveness or compassion? I would never treat or talk to anyone like I do to myself.”

As he spoke, others nodded in agreement. The question clearly resonated. It made me pause, as I could feel his pain and confusion. At the same time, flashes of my own inner dialogue crossed my mind. I recognized the tendency in myself. Why is it that so many of us extend kindness and understanding to others, yet find it difficult to show even a fraction of that same regard to ourselves?

After validating his concern, I offered what seemed like a reasonable explanation. Perhaps, I suggested, it stemmed from our negativity bias and our brain’s evolutionary propensity to focus on problems more readily than on success. I explained that the nervous system is designed to protect us, and as a result is more attuned to cues of threat than on evidence that everything is okay, and how practices that focus on gratitude and self-compassion might restore some balance.

While I could see the logic of that explanation, it felt emotionally unsatisfying and incomplete.

Why would we evolve to speak to ourselves this way? If self-criticism undermines our well-being, what adaptive purpose could it possibly serve? Where do these narratives come from? And how is it that these thoughts seem to arise in nearly everyone, even if they weren’t explicitly taught to think that way?

There might be evolutionary, developmental, and neuroscientific theories for why this voice exists, but those explanations offer little solace to someone who is living with that voice now.

And yet what stayed with me was the moment the question was voiced. Everyone nodded in recognition, including myself. What is often so painful is feeling like you’re alone in that kind of thinking. For years, I assumed I was. I used to joke with my therapist that I would have made an excellent monk given my propensity for self-flagellation.

What happened next was subtle, but unmistakable. The room seemed to soften. And while nothing had changed, and there was no definitive answer, what had felt like one person’s private struggle was suddenly a moment of shared humanity.

It’s one of the reasons why I find group work so powerful. Each person arrives with different histories, different life experiences, and different perspectives. Yet beneath those differences, we often discover that we’re grappling with the same deeply human questions. There is something liberating about knowing that you’re not alone.

And with that awareness comes a little space. That voice might still be there, but we can begin to recognize its story. Perhaps we can begin to ask questions like: “is that true?”

And in the light of awareness, that voice... that story... begins to lose some of its authority.

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If you enjoyed this reflection and my other content, please show your support with a❤️, comment, restack, and/or recommend to spread the word. And consider subscribing, free or paid. It helps me keep writing pieces that invite presence and meaning.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Session — a live opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet on the second Wednesday of each month. Paid and Founding subscribers attend as part of their membership. Simply RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, August 12 here. Not yet a paid subscriber? You're warmly welcome to join with a $20 one-time ticket through Luma here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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A few nights ago, I did something I’ve never done before. I signed up for a dinner with a table full of strangers. It occurred to me that most of my close relationships were formed through shared experiences and routines, like work or school. These days, 90% of my work happens online. Unless I make deliberate plans, it’s entirely possible that I can go for days without face-to-face interaction. And if you read my piece On Comfort Zones, when I described seeing a crow as a surreal experience, that should give you a sense of how little I’m getting out.

I saw this opportunity advertised on social media and thought, why not? It sounded fun to go to dinner with people who might have similar interests and have real conversations. At the very least, I figured I’d have a nice dinner. Part of the fun was the anticipation: what should I wear? I can’t remember the last time I wondered what to wear because I was excited about going somewhere. Where would we be meeting? The restaurant wasn’t revealed until the day before. How many people would be there? I understood that there’d be anywhere from four to eight people attending.

Since the dinner was downtown, I reserved an Uber so that I could get there on time. For the first time since I’ve been without a car, I was relieved not to have one. I didn’t have to worry about traffic or parking. I could simply enjoy the ride. The drive there was surprisingly smooth, even the Uber driver noted it. It’s been quite some time since I drove down GW Parkway. While it’s undergone massive construction, mostly to fix the drainage system beneath the road, it looked remarkably the same. Passing the scenic overlooks on the other side, I remembered the times I’ve stopped at those places to smoke a cigarette and admire the view. It seems like a lifetime ago.

Driving over the Key Bridge to Whitehurst Freeway was another well-worn route for me in a previous life. I watched pedestrians walking across the bridge wondering where they were headed. I marveled at how much of my life had been spent in the city, especially in this part of Northwest DC.

Since traffic was light, I arrived much earlier than expected. With about 15 minutes to kill, I asked the driver to drop me off a block sooner so that I could walk the rest of the way. It was a surprisingly cool night, with beautiful weather, so I didn’t mind walking. George Washington University’s campus is in this part of town, making it a pleasant walk.

Another thing contributing to my good mood was my shoes. A few weeks ago, I splurged on a pair of John Fluevogs. Since I only wear barefoot, or zero drop shoes, finding dress shoes that are both comfortable and stylish can feel almost impossible, especially for my size feet. I’d been eyeing this pair for months. As it turns out, they were perfect. With their wide toe-box and just the hint of a heel, they were not only comfortable, but they made me feel put together.

The dinner was wonderful. Not only was it a nice meal, the conversation was fun and easy. I met a few people I’d genuinely like to see again. Yet somewhere along the way, the evening already felt complete, long before I arrived at the restaurant. It turns out that what felt most alive and nourishing wasn’t the dinner itself. It was saying yes to possibility.

It was remembering how good it feels to have something to look forward to... wondering what to wear... noticing the city again... walking instead of rushing.

It was enjoying every step of the journey regardless of the outcome.

What has been feeling alive and nourishing for you lately?

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This is the start of an ongoing series that began with What Feels Alive and Nourishing, exploring ordinary moments that leave me feeling more connected, more present, more alive.

Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Class, an exclusive event for Founding and paid members of Mindful Reinvention, for an opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet every 2nd Wednesday of the month. RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, August 12th here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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Do you know how hard it is to find a manual transmission car these days? I should qualify: a used Volkswagen GTI, years 2018-2021, manual transmission. I’ve had CarMax search alerts set up for years now. I’ve not had a vehicle since 2021, after my mother passed. This is the first time I’m in a position to even consider purchasing one.

When I used to drive from Arlington, VA, to American University daily, there were roads that were a joy to drive. Dalecarlia Parkway to Westmoreland Circle. Or Military Road to Chain Bridge Road, crossing the bridge to Clara Barton Parkway and up Arizona Avenue, NW. Scenic, winding, and hilly… all things that make driving a manual transmission car fun. Since then, I’ve been obsessed with finding another Volkswagen GTI.

While there’s a whole world of other vehicles to choose from that would probably be more reliable, less expensive, and much more comfortable, a part of me longs for the interactive experience that only a manual transmission can provide.

When you drive a manual transmission, your attention can’t drift too far from the present moment. You’re listening to the engine, feeling the clutch engage, sensing the timing. The car and the road are constantly giving you information, inviting you to listen and respond, especially when weather conditions are challenging. An automatic transmission asks less of your attention. The mechanics of driving recede into the background, making it easier to stop noticing. Being on automatic pilot is surprisingly easy, whereas a manual transmission invites attention, anticipation, and responsiveness.

Driving a manual transmission is a lot like mindfulness meditation. It’s an embodied experience. You receive constant feedback from the vehicle and the environment around you, inviting participation. The more attentive you become, the more information is available to you.

I suppose that’s why I haven’t abandoned the search for the perfect used GTI. It’s not really about the car, although they don’t call it a hot hatch for nothing. It’s more about how I want to move through the world: paying attention, responding to what’s in front of me, being a full participant in my own life.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Class, an exclusive event for Founding and paid members of Mindful Reinvention, for an opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet every 2nd Wednesday of the month. RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, August 12th here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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A few days ago, a man in one of my mindfulness groups asked a question that sparked a reflective conversation. We had been talking about distress tolerance as the ability to stay present with difficult thoughts, emotions, and sensations without immediately trying to escape or eliminate them.

He paused for a moment and asked, “If I become better at tolerating distress, doesn’t that just mean I’ll get better at ignoring things or putting up with situations that hurt me?”

It was such an honest question, evoking nods of agreement, and responses in the chat that indicated others were grappling with similar thoughts. And I realized many people probably hear the phrase the same way. Why would anyone want to become better at tolerating emotional pain?

“It isn’t about learning to suffer more,” I told him. “It’s about staying present long enough to understand what your discomfort is trying to tell you.”

Sometimes anger points toward a boundary that hasn’t been set. Grief reveals what we deeply value. Fear might be inviting us to move carefully. Or perhaps discomfort is asking us to move anyway. The point isn’t to obey every emotion. Nor is it to push it away.

It’s to become curious enough to ask: What is this experience inviting me to see?

Instead of treating discomfort as something to eliminate, it becomes information.

Information that allows us to make wiser choices, or that helps us respond rather than simply react. In other words, distress tolerance isn’t about becoming better at enduring life. It’s about becoming better at listening.

A few days later, I read a thoughtful Note by reflecting on why certainty is so compelling. He suggested that people often seek certainty and relief more than truth, and that in an attention economy, certainty will almost always outperform nuance.

I think he’s right. We do long for certainty, and the relief it might bring. But as I sat with that observation, I found myself wondering if there was another layer. His Note stayed with me because it sent me down a different path of inquiry.

What if our search for certainty is partly an attempt to ease the burden of choosing?

Choice is difficult for many reasons. It asks us to tolerate uncertainty. It asks us to accept responsibility... authorship. And every meaningful choice closes as many doors as it opens. To choose one path is to let countless imagined futures quietly fall away.

No wonder we hesitate.

No wonder we sometimes look for someone else to choose for us.

Of course, making a choice doesn’t guarantee peace of mind. There are always the inevitable What if...? questions.

What if I chose the wrong career?
The wrong relationship?
The wrong city?

Sometimes you find yourself sitting in a Starbucks questioning every decision you’ve ever made.

I know because I’ve been there.

If I follow someone else’s formula and it doesn’t work, I can always conclude that the formula failed. But if no one can tell me exactly what to do, then I have to participate in creating my own life.

Years ago, I was almost always looking outward: for direction, for purpose, for reassurance, that I was on the right path.

Looking back, I don’t think I lacked information. I lacked self-trust.

Without an inner reference point, every setback threatened my well-being because my orientation depended largely on what was happening around me, or on whether someone else could reassure me that I was still headed in the right direction.

Over time, that began to change.

The question shifted from: What should I do? And more to: What do I notice? What feels congruent?

Earlier this year I wrote an essay called The Inner Compass, exploring what it means to cultivate that quieter place within ourselves. As I reflected on that piece, I realized this conversation had taken me somewhere new. The question was no longer how we cultivate an inner compass, but what leads us to doubt it in the first place.

I’ve also come to trust something I didn’t appreciate when I was younger: life is remarkably iterative. We aren’t choosing once. We’re participating in an ongoing conversation with our lives.

Often, we imagine that every decision is permanent, that one wrong turn will define us forever. But most of life doesn’t unfold that way. We make the best choice we can with what we know. We pay attention, adjust, learn, and begin again.

Self-trust isn’t believing we’ll always choose perfectly. It’s trusting that we’ll continue responding to what life reveals.

One of the most important things I’ve learned is this:

Experts are experts in their field.

They are not experts on you.

I’ve spent much of my life learning from experts. I value expertise deeply. My dentist knows far more about periodontal disease than I ever will. Researchers help me understand attention, trauma, and behavior. Their knowledge matters.

But expertise has a boundary...

No expert can tell you what your grief means.

No expert can tell you whether the next chapter of your life begins across town or across the world.

Those aren’t questions someone else can answer for us.

They’re questions we have to live.

While experts illuminate possibilities, offer practices, or expand our understanding, eventually, information gives way to something only we can do. We have to listen. We have to choose.

Perhaps that’s what contemplative practice has been teaching me all along: how to remain present when certainty isn’t available.

How to become curious instead of immediately reaching for relief.

How to let discomfort become information rather than something to escape.

How to make choices that arise from congruence instead of fear.

The practices don’t remove uncertainty, rather they change our relationship to it.

I sometimes joke that my intention is to work myself out of a job. It’s a terrible business model. But I can’t imagine approaching this work any other way.

If someone leaves a session with greater confidence in me but not in themselves, I’ve missed something essential. The goal was never dependence. It has always been agency: to strengthen another person’s capacity to notice; to discern; to choose with increasing confidence that they can participate fully in their own lives.

Years ago, someone I dated briefly described feeling as though he were sitting in the passenger seat of his own life. That phrase and the image it evokes has stayed with me.

I suspect many of us know that feeling, perhaps because we’ve gradually come to believe that someone else must know better.

Perhaps growth isn’t about finally finding the perfect map.

Perhaps it’s about gradually moving from the passenger seat into the driver’s seat of our own lives because we’ve cultivated the capacity to navigate. Or the quiet confidence that comes from participating more fully in our own lives.

Looking back, I realize that distress tolerance was never about becoming better at tolerating life.

It was about becoming willing to remain present long enough to participate in it.

To listen.

To discern.

To choose.

Again and again.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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This month’s wellness session is an invitation to pause and consider a simple but profound question: What is life asking of you now?

So often, we find ourselves looking ahead to what’s next or looking back at what has already passed. This practice offers a different orientation — one rooted in meeting this season of life with presence, curi…

Read more

I wasn’t looking for closure.

In fact, I wasn’t looking for anything at all.

I had just updated my LinkedIn profile after receiving a professional recognition. It was a small milestone that I was quietly proud of. As I was making a few changes, I found myself wondering about someone I hadn’t thought about in decades.

I had a little extra time before seeing a few clients and had just received the sweetest compliment from one of the Starbucks baristas. Ready to dive into my fruit and cheese box, I impulsively typed an ex’s name into the search bar.

Within seconds, I was no longer editing my profile.

I was questioning my entire life.

A list of people with the same name appeared. And there he was, at the top. There wasn’t much to see. A photograph. A professional headline. A handful of accomplishments. Enough to suggest that life had unfolded well.

That should have been the end of it.

Instead, feeling my heartbeat faster, my mind began writing an entirely different story.

What if I had chosen differently?

What if I had stayed?

What if the life I imagined all those years ago had actually been the better one?

The strange thing is that none of those questions were based on evidence. They were based on imagination. I wasn’t comparing my real life with theirs. I was comparing my real life with a biography my mind assembled in mere seconds.

It’s astonishing how quickly we do this.

In an instant, a degree becomes proof of fulfillment. A job title becomes evidence of purpose. A family photo becomes evidence that someone has lived a happy and meaningful life.

Meanwhile, we compare those carefully selected fragments to the full weight of our own lives, with its disappointments, losses, compromises, unfinished dreams, and quiet doubts that no one else can see.

It’s an impossible comparison.

As I sat with what had happened, I realized something even more unsettling.

We often think we’ve made peace with the past because nothing has disturbed it in a long time. But perhaps peace isn’t truly known until the past unexpectedly walks back into the room.

Sometimes it arrives as an old photograph, a familiar name, a chance encounter in the grocery store or an invitation to a reunion.

In a split second, decades disappear. The old stories wake up. And while we think we’ve healed, relationships have a remarkable way of holding mirrors to the versions of ourselves we once were.

For me, what surfaced wasn’t simply curiosity about another person’s life. At first, it felt like failure.

Sitting with it longer, I realized it was grief.

Grief for the lives I didn’t live. The career I once imagined. The choices I wondered about. The options that fell away without my noticing.

None of those lives are real.

But the grief they evoke certainly is.

Recently, I’ve written about imagined biographies — the stories we create about who we might have become if only one decision had been different. I thought I was writing about a psychological tendency. I didn’t realize I would eventually become the subject of my own essay.

Perhaps that’s how these stories finally loosen their grip.

For years I’ve told meditation students that the goal isn’t an empty mind. The moment you notice the mind has wandered, you’re already back. The noticing is the practice.

Maybe healing works the same way.

Maybe being healed doesn’t mean having a smooth, placid life. Maybe it means learning to navigate the turbulent moments without completely capsizing.

The mind wanders.

It writes imagined biographies.

It mistakes possibility for certainty.

We notice.

We come back.

Because the unlived life has one tremendous advantage. It never has to reveal its disappointments.

Only its possibilities.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

Every morning, before I fully wake, I seem to enter a conversation already in progress.

A song is already playing. This morning, it was the transition between the Journey songs “Feeling That Way” and “Anytime.” If you know those songs, you know the transition. It’s so seamless it feels like one song rather than two. They just belong together.

A thought is already half-finished. What time is it? 6- maybe 7am, given the way the light looks.

My body is slightly uncomfortable. Somewhere between sleeping and waking, a familiar voice quietly resumes its narration.

I’m hot... must pee.

Why is this song stuck in my head?

What do I need to do today?

Only later did I realize what had fascinated me wasn’t the thoughts themselves. It was the return of the “I.” Somewhere between sleeping and waking, consciousness narrowed into a familiar point of view.

The mind had resumed telling its story. I didn’t think much more about it.

Later that morning, I invited a group of clients to imagine meeting a future version of themselves. After a visualization meditation, one client who is recovering from burnout and work stress experienced his future self warmly embracing him, reassuring him that he is so much more than his job. While another client halfway through the same meditation stopped doing the practice because she felt she was too old for infinite possibilities so there was no point going forward. It was fascinating to watch one person encounter a future larger than the story he had been living, while another couldn’t imagine a future beyond hers.

As often happens, we mistake the story for fact. I don’t think they necessarily experienced their story as a story. One experienced “I’m more than my job.” The other experienced, “I’m too old.” That’s what stories do. At some point they stop feeling like interpretations and begin feeling like reality.

How much of our lives are constructed around these narratives? Or more to the point, how much of our lives is spent defending these narratives?

I spent 20 years and three attempts at a PhD defending the narrative that I had to prove that I was intelligent enough, accomplished enough, worthy enough.

In the process, I deferred starting a family for the same reason, until it was too late.

At the time, those choices felt entirely reasonable. Necessary, even. That’s the thing about stories, we rarely recognize them while we’re living inside them. And while I can finally say that I’ve released that particular narrative, it seems I’ve picked up another one — is it too late? Have I missed my chance to build the life I want now?

My teacher, Andrew Holocek, often says that the ego is an extraordinarily efficient construction company, endlessly building the stories that define the “I.”

It occurred to me that I had spent the day watching that same phenomenon unfold from three different vantage points.

I watched narrative thinking come online when I woke up.

I watched it shape the stories my clients believed about themselves.

And I watched that same process begin weaving a story of my own... that possibility has an expiration date.

And yet, this process isn’t the enemy. It fuels imagination, helps us remember the past, plan for the future, and make sense of our lives. We couldn’t function without it. The difficulty begins when one story becomes the only story we believe.

What would it be like to simply notice the process?

To recognize that the stories shaping our lives are often inherited, practiced, and repeated rather than consciously chosen?

And in that moment of recognition, what might be possible?

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Class, an exclusive event for Founding and paid members of Mindful Reinvention, for an opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet every 2nd Wednesday of the month. RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, July 8th here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Founding Members get exclusive discounts on sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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Does Anyone’s Life Turn Out the Way They Planned?

The question came from one of the participants in a group I was facilitating this past week.

We had just finished a meditation exploring opposites, a practice designed to loosen our grip on fixed identities and discover a deeper inner knowing. As often happens, the conversation that followed was far more interesting than anything I could have planned.

One person realized that she had spent years believing she was a loser because her life hadn’t turned out the way she expected. Somewhere along the way, she had begun comparing her real life to an imagined one, a version in which every plan had unfolded, every opportunity had worked out, and every milestone had arrived on schedule.

As she spoke, something shifted.

She began to see that the very experiences she had judged as failures had also made her resilient, compassionate, and uniquely herself.

Then she paused and asked, almost to herself:

“Does anyone’s life turn out the way they planned?”

The group was quiet.

It was one of those questions that doesn’t really need an answer because everyone already knows it.

Probably not.

Or at least, not in the way we imagine.

Listening to her, I realized I wasn’t so different. I’ve been thinking about that question ever since.

Because if I’m honest, there are days when it cuts straight through me.

A few weeks ago, after a dentist appointment, I found myself spiraling into familiar worries. Would I ever be able to afford another car? Would I ever own a place of my own again? Had I somehow taken a wrong turn years ago that left me permanently behind everyone else?

It’s remarkable how quickly the mind can construct an alternate biography.

In that imagined life, I made different decisions. I stayed on a practical career path. I had more financial security. I never lost what I lost.

It’s an impossible comparison because that life doesn’t exist.

Yet I sometimes judge my real life against it anyway.

The next day, I sat with a group working to rebuild their lives. One person recognized a painful story he had carried for years, that he would always return to prison, that every meaningful relationship would eventually fall apart, and this was simply who he was.

When invited to share after the meditation practice, he said something that stopped me:

“I don’t want to be that person anymore.”

In that moment, he hadn’t magically transformed. I was witnessing something subtler and far more powerful. He could suddenly see that who he thought he was, in fact, was a story.

I left work that day with the sense that I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

And yet, nothing about my circumstances had changed. The practical concerns, like paying bills and buying groceries, hadn’t disappeared.

But something about my orientation fundamentally shifted. Something within me felt a little more settled, aligned.

When I measure my life by the milestones I once imagined, it’s easy to conclude that I’ve fallen short.

When I measure it by the moments in which another human being begins to see themselves differently… by the privilege of witnessing someone discover their own strength… by the opportunity to sit beside people in some of the most difficult chapters of their lives…

I can’t help but think that perhaps my life unfolded exactly as it needed to. According to something I couldn’t have planned.

Perhaps that’s true for more of us than we realize.

Maybe the life we imagined was never meant to be a standard against which to judge the life we actually lived.

Maybe its purpose was simply to get us moving.

The real work begins when we stop comparing ourselves to an imaginary biography and become fully present to the life that is right in front of us.

And perhaps this is the better question:

“What has this life, this unexpected, imperfect, unplanned life, made possible that no other life could have?”

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If you enjoyed this reflection and my other content, please show your support with a❤️, comment, restack, and/or recommend to spread the word. And consider subscribing, free or paid. It helps me keep writing pieces that invite presence and meaning.

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Additional Resources:

• I’m excited to be offering a recurring 10-Week Mindfulness for Stress Management series through The Mindfulness Center. Sessions are recorded so you can join anytime. The Summer session started Tuesday, June 23rd-August 25th, 2026. Experience evidence-based practices to reduce stress, build resilience, and reconnect with a sense of calm and clarity. Perfect for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. Learn more and register here.

• Join the Monthly Wellness Class, an exclusive event for Founding and paid members of Mindful Reinvention, for an opportunity to pause, relax, and reset in community. We meet every 2nd Wednesday of the month. RSVP for the next session on Wednesday, July 8th here.

• For a deeper dive, consider one-on-one sessions. Founding Members get exclusive discounts on sessions. Check out my offerings here.

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Last Father’s Day, I wrote this piece about my dad.

Rereading it a year later, I recognize a deeper thread that has been running through my life, shaped in no small part by him: a desire to be of service, to live a meaningful life, and to belong to something larger than oneself.

My dad was a veteran of three wars: World War II, the Korean War, and Vietnam. His life was defined by service, something I deeply admired about him.

When he returned from deployments, we would pick him up in Norfolk. One year, we even had the chance to go aboard the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal. I was maybe nine or ten years old. I remember feeling a swell of pride, seeing him as part of something vast and essential, supporting an entire world I didn’t yet understand.

Little did I know that years later I would find myself working in Naval Aviation.

And while that work was meaningful, I eventually left to dedicate myself to a different kind of service, one rooted in healing, presence, and the belief that inner life matters as much as outer achievement.

The essay below is what I wrote last year, closer to the surface of that story, as I was still making sense of what it all meant.

My relationship with my dad has always been complicated.

One of my first comforting memories of him was when I was about six years old. I had strep throat, and my mom couldn’t leave work, so he took me to the doctor at Bethesda Naval Hospital — what’s now Walter Reed. I remember walking through the hospital, my small hand tucked inside his. I felt safe. After the appointment, he took me to the cafeteria for a hamburger. That may have been my favorite part.

I remember him coming home from work, often before my mom, sometimes starting dinner. He wasn’t a great cook, but he tried. There was a dish we called “hot dog surprise,” which usually involved whatever leftovers were in the fridge… plus hot dogs. And his infamous apple pie that looked beautiful, but the crust was so hard you needed a steak knife to get through it.

Stuckey’s and Sweet Corn

When I was young, there were long stretches when my dad wasn’t around. He was active duty in the Navy and would be deployed for months at a time. My mom, working full-time, somehow managed it all. When his deployments ended, she’d pack us into our wood-paneled Vista Cruiser and drive the four hours south to Norfolk, Virginia, to pick him up. We’d stop at Stuckey’s for pecan pie and buy sweet corn from roadside farm stands.

Those first days back were always a little tense. The smell of coffee and cigarettes, the creak of my dad’s ankles on the stairs: telltale signs that the house had changed, and that we kids couldn’t run wild like we did when he was gone. But there were also small pleasures. In the summer, I’d find him outside mowing the lawn. He’d come back in, sweaty and tired, and make one of my favorite meals: fried eggs over rice, the yolk runny, seasoned with salt and pepper.

And then there was his other side.

The Birthday Cake

“Happy Birthday!” he exclaimed one year, stepping into the house with the most spectacular cake I had ever seen. A gingerbread house stood proudly on top. He smelled of Old Spice, cigarettes, and something sharper — alcohol laced with celebration. I was thirteen. My mom was in the Philippines visiting family. I was so happy that for once, I was being celebrated.

Until I noticed the strange woman behind him.

Before I could fully register what was happening, they were already leaving. “Have fun — Happy Birthday!” he called out cheerfully, while she followed him, laughing nervously.

I stood there alone, staring at the cake. A heavy sadness washed over me as I realized he wasn’t coming back.

For years, that memory shaped how I saw him: a charming, erratic man whose love was unpredictable and whose presence was painful. He had a violent temper when he drank, and he drank a lot. I learned early how to stay small. I learned how to read the room for danger. And I carried those lessons into adulthood, choosing partners who mirrored that same volatility — fun-loving, charismatic, intoxicating, sometimes cruel.

But later, after I married and my husband joined the Air Force, my relationship with my dad began to shift.

Maps and a Road Trip

My parents helped me drive across the country to Monterey, California, where my husband was training at the Presidio’s language school. My dad meticulously planned the route, ordering AAA maps and marking all the stops. We drove for days — long stretches of endless highways, overnight stays at Best Western motels, through the Great Salt Flats of Utah, where the sky met the earth in a shimmering white haze; through Reno, where we played the slots, laughing like we had nothing to lose; through the desert Southwest, headlights cutting through the inky night. I remember dusty farm roads in rural California, stained fingers from eating sweet cherries we bought from a roadside stand.

We shared long, quiet hours, simple motel breakfasts, and road-trip conversations. Somewhere along the way, I learned more about my dad’s childhood — that he grew up dirt poor, that he didn’t own a proper pair of shoes until he joined the Navy during World War II. That he too had suffered abuse. It didn’t excuse anything, but it helped me understand the weight he carried.

For the first time, I began to see my parents not just as the figures of my childhood, but as complex, flawed, human beings — trying their best, full of contradictions and capable of surprising humor, and tenderness.

The following year, before leaving to meet my husband in Korea, I worked a summer job at the same Army agency my dad had served since retiring from the Navy. Our offices were just down the hall from one another. Every morning, he drove us through rush hour traffic, both ways, navigating the stop-and-go with practiced patience. There was never any question that he’d take on that chore. He saw it as his duty, and there was something quietly chivalrous about it, as if he was making up for the times he hadn’t been there. While he drove, I sat beside him finishing my makeup. He knew I wasn’t a morning person and never rushed me.

My mom packed lunches for both of us, and my dad stored mine in his office refrigerator. At noon, he’d walk it down the hallway and deliver it to me with a simple, familiar nod. It was such a small gesture, but it landed deeply — an offering without fanfare. In those weeks, I saw him differently. I witnessed his competence, his quiet rituals, and the way his colleagues respected him. And I had a new respect for him too, not with blind forgiveness, but with the clarity that comes from seeing someone more fully.

Those moments didn’t erase the pain of my childhood. They didn’t undo the fear, the confusion, or the longing. But they softened the edges. They let more truth in.

Making Room for the Whole Story

My father was never just one thing. He was a man of contradictions: tender and terrifying, loving and unreliable. And through the lens of time, I’ve learned to hold all of it.

Six months after he finally retired from the Army — after more than thirty years in the Navy and nearly two decades of Army civil service — my dad had a stroke. He had plans for retirement: to travel with my mom, to learn how to play golf, to enjoy the life he had worked so long and hard for. Those fifteen years leading up to his stroke were probably the happiest my parents were as a married couple. He had mellowed, and their life had grown more peaceful. When his health declined, my mom retired early to care for him, and she remained his caregiver for the next fourteen years until he passed in 2008. That chapter with its quiet grief and my mom’s daily sacrifices is a story I have yet to fully tell.

Father’s Day can be complicated. For some of us, it’s not a Hallmark holiday. It’s a day that stirs grief, gratitude, and memory in equal measure. But today, I’m honoring the whole picture. The man who made hard-crusted pies and runny-yolk eggs. The man who drove me cross-country and delivered my lunch down the hall. The man who hurt me, and who, in his own imperfect way, also loved me.

And maybe that’s what healing really asks of us: Not to forget the harm, but to make room for the whole story.

To tolerate ambivalence.

To live with the ache and the grace.

The wholeness of a life, imperfect and real.

A year later, I still find myself returning to these memories. What has changed is not the story itself, but my capacity to hold it with greater ease, and a deeper understanding of how much of who I am was shaped in its wake.

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I’m back at Whole Foods in Friendship Heights. I walked here after my dentist appointment, contemplating the price of neglected dental care over the last six years. I’d been pretty scrupulous about brushing and following the accepted wisdom of oral health until about ten years ago. It was my mom who got me started on using flouride-free toothpaste. She always seemed to be ahead of the curve, taking a mushroom blend supplement for immune support before it was mainstream.

Lately I’ve become fascinated by the oral microbiome and its effect on oral as well as overall physical health — all things I wish I’d known sooner. My gum inflammation and bleeding had finally become concerning enough that I’d spent the last month oil pulling, trying to reverse the damage. Perhaps a little too late.

Now I sat with a grilled salmon dinner from the prepared foods section while Sade sang “The Sweetest Taboo” overhead. Apparently, grocery stores are catering to late Boomers and Gen Xers, as we’re the ones spending the money. In any case, it makes for enjoyable sing-alongs while shopping.

As I walked over from the dentist, I noticed pain in my feet and legs.

Ugh.

Sarcopenia. Inflammation. Arthritis. All the things that begin occupying mental real estate after a certain age.

A far cry from wondering what Mark was doing or where he might be in the world.

Mark is my merchant marine friend, someone I could have easily fallen for (actually, I did) if he’d ever stayed in one place long enough. These days I’m less concerned with romance and more concerned with preserving my teeth and maintaining my health.

A cover of Modern English’s “I Melt with You” drifted through the speakers.

I remembered hearing the original for the first time in Valley Girl, the Nicolas Cage movie that introduced Valley Girl speak to the wider world. One song after another seemed determined to pull me backward through time.

Earlier, while waiting for the prescription mouthwash my dentist prescribed, I’d wandered through Rodman’s looking at magnifying reading glasses.

OMG. When did I get so boring? I thought.

I used to worry about being attractive. I used to belly dance, smoke cigarettes, and had a brief obsession with trapeze. Now I was comparing magnification strengths.

These days I wouldn’t wear high heels if you paid me. Undoing decades of abuse we put our bodies through feels like a full-time job.

The dentist, while kind, lectured me a bit. Not unfairly. But I felt myself becoming defensive.

It was the pandemic.

I was taking care of my mother.

Then she died.

I was barely making a living.

Then I had to find a place to live and rebuild my life.

I wanted to scream all of this. Instead, I nodded politely because ultimately he wasn’t wrong. I could have addressed it sooner.

But there are years that arrive like weather systems. Years when you’re caring for a dying parent. Years when you’re grieving.

Years when survival pushes maintenance to the edges of the map.

Waiting for my prescription, I’d made the mistake of scrolling Instagram. Comparison is the thief of joy, someone once said.

Everyone looked happier, healthier, and more successful than me.

I found myself wondering whether I’d been sold a bill of goods about following my passion. If I’d stayed at the Navy, I’d probably have a healthier 401(k), excellent benefits, and a lot less anxiety about dental bills. I’d certainly be in a better financial position.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever truly get my business off the ground.

Sometimes I wonder whether all the sacrifices were worth it.

And beneath that question is another one. Did my life matter enough to justify what it cost? It’s the George Bailey question. The one from the movie, It’s a Wonderful Life. The moment where, in despair, he wishes he’d never been born, only to discover the countless lives he touched without ever realizing it.

I think what I long for sometimes is my own version of that moment. Proof. Proof that the sacrifices mattered.

Proof that the people I helped were helped.

Proof that choosing service over security wasn’t a mistake. Most of us never get that tour. We never see the alternate timeline. We never see all the ripples.

Then I think about my mother. Those final months and days, being there with her. Helping her remain at home, exactly as she wanted. And suddenly the question becomes much simpler.

That was worth it. More than worth it. No alternate version of my life can convince me otherwise.

By then I was sitting over the remnants of my salmon dinner while “Could It Be I’m Falling in Love” by The Spinners played overhead.

My throat tightened as I fought back tears.

The retirement account wasn’t any larger. The dental bill hadn’t disappeared. The future remained as uncertain as ever.

But in that moment, sitting there among grocery carts and shoppers and old songs from another life, I felt the weight of it all. The roads taken, and not taken. The people I’ve loved and lost.

The woman I imagined I would become and who I actually became.

The questions remained.

What is it with this damn Whole Foods?

But for a few moments, listening to The Spinners in a Whole Foods café, life felt strangely beautiful and heartbreaking at the same time.

And perhaps that’s enough.

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Because it was so beautiful outside today, I decided not to rush straight home after my appointments. Instead, I brought my computer with me, thinking I might find somewhere to sit and do some writing.

A small act of rebellion against my own routines.

I had just gotten my haircut, which always feels like a small luxury in itself. Freshly cut hair has a way of making me feel slightly more presentable to the world, slightly more willing to participate in it.

In search of a Starbucks that Google Maps confidently assured me was only a ten-minute walk away, I happened upon a nail salon.

It’s been four years since I had a proper manicure.

For the most part, I’ve kept my nails natural, shaping them myself when needed. Sitting there in front of the wall of nail colors, I found myself almost paralyzed by choice. Row after row of colors. Tiny declarations of personality.

In the end, I chose a barely-there shimmery pink.

Practicality won out even in this small moment of indulgence. If I couldn’t afford to get my nails done again anytime soon, at least the grow-out wouldn’t look too obvious.

Still, what a luxury it felt like to have someone else carefully shape and care for my hands. Hours later, I keep catching myself looking down at my nails, wanting somehow to preserve this brief moment of perfection for as long as possible.

Continuing my search for Starbucks brought me past Marshall’s, so naturally, I stopped in.

The store was packed with people hunting for bargains beneath fluorescent lights and overstuffed racks. I somehow justified buying new underwear — organic cotton, five pairs for $14.99. Too good a deal to pass up.

Eventually, I finally found the Starbucks tucked inside a massive two-story Target. I’d never been inside a two-level Target before.

So here I sit now on the second floor with my water, a snack, and computer, overlooking the trees across the street, their leaves shimmering in the late afternoon sunlight.

I finished the draft of my post early and, feeling accomplished, stared out the window for a while admiring the cloudless blue sky. Days like this are rare in the Washington, DC area, where warm weather and hints of summer soon give way to stifling humidity.

Today reminded me of the glorious weather in Monterey, California, something I never took for granted, even though I only lived there for a year.

At that time, my ex-husband George was in the Air Force attending the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio of Monterey. I remember my first sight of Monterey Bay. It was 1985, and my parents had driven cross-country with me, a trip I mentioned in this post about my dad. We had just made our way through Castroville, the artichoke capital of the world, and after cresting a hill, Monterey Bay suddenly spread out before us.

It took my breath away.

On the radio, Tears for Fears were singing “Everybody Wants to Rule the World,” and I was in love. I couldn’t believe that I would be living there for the next year.

Back at the Starbucks, I packed up my things to head home.

Catching an Uber, I noticed how many people were out and about, especially those walking, cycling, or otherwise moving under their own power. I remarked to the driver how nice it was to see so many people outside. He agreed and we discussed the rarity of this kind of weather around here.

Then he shared a delightful story from earlier that morning.

Driving down a lonely stretch of road before sunrise, he noticed deer moving quietly on one side of the road while a variety of birds gathered along the other. He said the whole scene felt strangely surreal, like stepping into a fantasy world. It reminded him of the ending of the movie 12 Monkeys, when the animals had been released from the zoo and wandered freely through the city streets.

When I finally arrived home and stepped back into my room, it felt oddly claustrophobic.

Looking out the window, the light filtering through the trees had shifted into a golden hour glow. I felt all at once wistful and grateful for the simple pleasure of having spent the day out in the world, not doing anything particularly special, but simply responding spontaneously to the moment.

Wistful because it reminded me of childhood days like this — achingly beautiful days that felt so full of promise and possibility, and yet were always impossibly fleeting.

And now I know just how fleeting it all is.

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For better or worse, I’m a creature of habit. I suppose all of us are to some extent.

Each night before bed, I unwind with a game (or seven) of Duolingo Latin. I can’t let the triple XP points go to waste, even though I’ve already completed the course and am mostly maintaining my skill level at this point. After placing #1 in the Diamond League three times in a row, it’s surprisingly hard to let go of the streak. Two hundred twenty-seven days and counting.

It’s the gamification, of course. The tiny rewards. The dopamine hits. The cheerful Duolingo owl high-fiving me while my behavioral psychology-trained brain fully understands the mechanics of what’s happening and participates anyway.

The nervous system loves routine. Habits conserve energy. Repetition becomes automatic. Eventually, we stop deciding and simply continue.

Most of the week, my life happens online.

For four days straight, I move from group to group facilitating mindfulness sessions, fitting meals, laundry, emails, and small household tasks into the spaces between sessions. The rhythm is familiar now. Predictable. Contained. Little by little, my life has become optimized for containment.

There is something protective about it. Hermetically sealed.

And truthfully, I think I’ve needed it.

The majority of the groups I facilitate are high acuity mental health groups. People struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, substance use. Sometimes the stories are heartbreaking, gut-wrenching. Holding space for that level of pain day after day requires a certain steadiness. I need to remain grounded and centered enough not to absorb every story into my own nervous system.

So the routines serve a purpose.

The structure regulates me. It shields me from unpredictability, overstimulation, and emotional spillover. The familiar sequence of days creates a kind of psychological buffer between myself and the intensity I witness each week.

And yet, I can also feel how easily protection can become constriction.

Then Friday arrives.

Fridays are different. I leave the house to see clients in person or visit hospice patients. Sometimes I meet a friend or see my cousin. Fridays are my re-entry into the physical world, and lately I’ve noticed it takes time to adjust.

Yesterday, being out in the world almost felt painful.

The colors seemed oversaturated. Sounds felt sharper, more piercing. I could feel my feet inside my shoes with strange intensity and found myself wondering whether I was experiencing inflammation or whether I simply wasn’t used to wearing socks and shoes for extended periods anymore.

By midway through the day, it was as though I had regained my land legs.

A few mornings ago, after nearly five straight days of rain and gray skies, I woke earlier than usual. The sky was suddenly clear blue, the air dry and warm. I took my decaf coffee outside and sat quietly in the sunlight, feeling the warmth on my skin.

Then a crow flew overhead.

Not just any crow, but the largest crow I’d seen in a long time. Its wingspan stretched wide across the sky, its call echoing sharply in the stillness.

For a moment, it almost seemed to move in slow motion. I sat there staring at it in complete awe, as though I were seeing a crow for the first time in my life. The experience felt dreamlike and unsettlingly vivid at the same time, as though I had somehow stepped into another world.

And beneath that awe came another realization: I’ve been inside too long.

Later, I found myself thinking about a story my mother once told me about my older brother when he was very young. As a first-time parent, she was incredibly protective of him. She kept him meticulously clean and watched over him carefully. Eventually, she allowed him to play with the neighborhood children in a sandbox. According to my mother, he came home covered in insect bites while the other children seemed completely unaffected. The way she described it, he simply hadn’t developed the same hardiness the other kids had from being outside constantly.

After that, she loosened her grip a bit. She let him play hard, get dirty, roam more freely. In her words, she wanted him to become hardier.

There’s truth in that.

The more we remain inside our comfort zones, the less resilient we can become. Not only physically, but emotionally and psychologically as well. Human beings adapt remarkably well to repetition, predictability, and controlled environments. Even when those environments become too narrow.

Especially then.

What strikes me is how intelligent these contractions can seem while they’re happening. We build routines because they help us function. We streamline. We optimize. We reduce friction. The routines protect us.

But sometimes protection unintentionally becomes constriction.

And because the change happens gradually, we barely notice our lives getting smaller.

Until one day, a crow crossing the morning sky feels surreal, almost unbearably vivid.

Until wearing shoes feels strange.

Until re-entering the world feels less like stepping outside and more like learning to walk on land again.

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She was outside the examination room, waiting for the rest of the investigative team to arrive.

They were tasked with studying consciousness, so exploring the brain seemed the logical place to start.

Entering the room, she found a young girl calmly lying on the operating table while a section of her head was being sliced for examination. No one in the room appeared disturbed by this. The procedure unfolded with unsettling normalcy, as though the ordinary meaning of what was taking place had been suspended.

As the first slice was made, the young girl did not flinch. She didn’t appear to feel pain.

The second slice followed, deeper this time, removing a section for study. Somehow, impossibly, she remained alive. Calm. Present. Her hair had not even been shaved.

The investigator stood there with a growing realization that this procedure must require tremendous training. Precision. Reverence, even. If one were to participate in something so intimate, so irreversible, it would need to be done properly.

She left in search of the trainer.

The search brought her to a large hotel where another woman led her into a beautiful ground-floor suite with walls of windows on nearly every side. Light poured into both rooms. Beyond the glass were trees, birds moving through the branches, open air, and the feeling that nature sat just a few steps away.

The woman explained that she preferred this room to one high above the city. Up there, she said, one could see the sky and the ground below, but down here one could simply step outside.

The investigator walked slowly through the suite, momentarily distracted by the beauty of it. She wondered what kind of life allowed someone to stay in a room like this. She wondered whether the bedroom had at least one solid wall without windows, some place protected from view.

Then she realized the woman had already left the room.

She rushed after her, trying not to lose sight of her as she moved quickly through the hotel corridors. As she followed, her mind drifted back to the girl in the laboratory. Practical questions began surfacing. Wouldn’t the head normally be shaved first? Why had hers not been? Why did that detail disturb her so much? Above all, how was it that she was still alive, conscious?

The woman disappeared around another corner.

The investigator broke into a run to catch up.

Now they were outside in a courtyard, both of them searching for the trainer, who always seemed to be just ahead, just out of sight. And suddenly she understood with complete certainty that she must learn this technique properly in order to honor the sacrifice of the subject.

Then she woke.

In the gray light of dawn, the distinctive cheer, cheer of a cardinal could be heard outside my window, along with the realization that I was awake.

Images of the dream lingered with me for days: the surreal slicing of the brain, the strange calmness of the room, the elusive nature of the trainer, the movement from the contracted clinical world of the laboratory into the openness of light, windows, trees, and sky.

It seemed to echo many of the inquiries we’ve been exploring in the Preparing to Die Program: the possibility that when one searches deeply enough for a fixed and separate self, no solid center can ultimately be found.

Empty, and full at the same time.

Awareness itself prior to the identities and narratives that temporarily gather around it.

Perhaps that was why the girl remained so strangely calm.

Even now, the trainer remains somewhere just ahead around the corner, always briefly out of sight.

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It was a real journey to get here.

The night before the memorial service, I barely slept. My mind kept circling the same small concerns: what I was going to wear, whether I would get there on time, how I was going to hide the bee sting on my arm. For two weeks I had been trying to let the blister heal on its own, but it had been slowly draining, darkening in strange shades of raspberry and brown. I had convinced myself no one would notice it if I chose the right shirt.

Prior to the memorial service, it started leaking, making me late. After arriving, settling down next to my sister, it started again.

I quietly showed my sister, seated beside me, and her face contorted in horror. I spent the rest of the service trying to remain composed while simultaneously wondering if fluid was soaking through my sleeve.

My cousin’s husband, Mike, had passed away unexpectedly in March. He was younger than she was by nearly twenty years. My cousin herself is in remission from cancer for the third time.

As photographs from Mike’s life flashed across the screen, I kept thinking that I wished I had known him better.

It struck me how strange memorial services can be. A person’s life begins assembling itself in front of you through stories and photographs after they are already gone. Entire worlds of experience, routines, humor, friendships, private moments. I sat there realizing how little of another person we can truly hold, even within families.

After the service, before returning my Zipcar, I stopped at CVS to buy gauze, bandages, anything to manage the leaking mess on my arm. Somehow, I spent thirty-eight dollars on wound care supplies. Sitting in the parking lot, struggling to secure a loose bandage with silicone tape, I felt vaguely absurd and deeply human all at once.

The drive back through Chevy Chase became an exercise in patience, wading through stop-and-go traffic beneath nearly ninety-degree sunshine. Along the way I passed quiet leafy neighborhoods where people were doing yard work, children played nearby, and joggers moved steadily through the afternoon heat.

Stopped at a traffic light, I watched sunlight stream through the trees, catching bits of dandelion floating in the air.

It was a gorgeous moment.

I realized then that I couldn’t rush myself toward answers I don’t yet have. Earlier in the day, somewhere beneath the memorial service and traffic and wound care, I had found myself wondering whether I even wanted to entertain the possibility of love again someday.

But the truth is, I still feel as though there is much to process from the losses I’ve already lived through. That chapter hasn’t concluded.

Will it ever?

By the time I arrived at Whole Foods, the cool air rushing through the automatic doors felt like relief. Before me stretched what looked momentarily like the promised land: small bouquets of flowers, orchids, pyramids of fruit and produce glowing beneath soft overhead lighting.

And with all this abundance surrounding me, I settled on a chewy slice of spinach and cheese pizza.

While I struggled through the crust, two sparrows flew into the store and landed beneath the table across from me. They hopped around casually, as though they belonged there.

In my purse was the folded memorial service program.

Years ago, in the early days of my meditation teacher journey, I used to stop at this Whole Foods on my way home from The Mindfulness Center after commuting between Bethesda and Brandywine. I would pick up dinner for my mother and me before driving home.

Sitting there now, watching the sparrows move across the floor tiles beneath fluorescent lights, it struck me how much of life exists simultaneously: grief and beauty, errands and mortality, old memories and unanswered questions, leaking wounds and dandelion seeds floating through sunlight.

Nothing resolved itself this afternoon.

But for a few moments, sitting there with my pizza and my memories and the birds hopping nearby, life felt strangely whole anyway.

As I sat there, Little River Band’s “Reminiscing” began playing overhead.

“We’ll go dancing in the dark, walking through the park, and reminiscing…”

It felt almost unbearably perfect for the moment. One of my favorite songs years ago, now carrying entire eras of my life inside it.

There were people at the memorial service I hadn’t seen since the last funeral I attended.

Maybe that’s part of what grief does. It collapses time. Familiar faces reappear older. Songs return carrying emotional weight they once didn’t have. Entire chapters of life briefly gather themselves into the same afternoon: memorial programs folded inside purses, dandelion seeds floating through sunlight, sparrows beneath café tables, memories of mothers, old songs playing softly overhead.

I sat there for a while longer feeling gutted and wistful in equal measure.

Then eventually, I gathered my things and thought:

I guess I should make my way home.

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When I think of my mother, aside from her many wonderful qualities, what stands out most are her stories.

Every year, on our birthdays, she would tell us the story of how we were born. It was a kind of ritual, part celebration, part remembering. The same details, the same cadence, as if the telling itself mattered as much as the day.

Mine was always the most dramatic.

She had placenta previa, a birth complication that can cause severe hemorrhaging. Toward the end of her pregnancy, she was put on bed rest for a few weeks. The night before she was meant to return to work, she woke in the middle of the night thinking she had wet the bed. But it was blood.

Laughing, she used to say my father was so nervous he could hardly put on his pants as she mimicked him trying to step into a pant leg.

He drove her to Bethesda Naval, now Walter Reed, from their walk-up apartment in Southeast Washington, DC. I was born at dawn. A month early, by C-section. And because I was born on a Monday, she used to sing that children’s rhyme, Monday’s child is fair of face, as if it were another way of telling me who I was.

She described me as long and thin, with skinny arms and legs and fingers that looked too delicate to belong to a body. When she saw me in the incubator, she thought I might break.

I don’t remember any of this, of course. What I remember is the telling. The way the story returned each year, steady and unchanged, until it became something I carried inside me. It was less about the drama of what happened and more about the feeling it left behind — that I had arrived through something fragile, something uncertain, and had been held there, carefully, from the very beginning.

My mom would always laugh when she got to the part about how I changed. How the long, fragile baby in the incubator didn’t stay that way for long. I filled out quickly, she said, round and roly-poly, all baby fat and soft edges, as if making up for a precarious beginning. She brought me to work to meet her co-workers, who delighted in my peaceful countenance, sleeping so soundly that they could gently roll me without waking me up.

We had home movies from those early years. I can still picture them: me in the playpen, scowling at something just out of frame, while my brother and sister excitedly danced nearby, hamming it up for the camera. There was a kind of lightness in those scenes, a sense of being watched and delighted in.

What always struck me, watching them later, was how well dressed we all were. My sister in the cutest frilly dresses, with patent leather shoes and lacy socks. My brother, ten years older than me, in little suits that made him look both grown and still unmistakably a child. It made me wonder if they were always dressed like that, or if it was a special occasion that happened to be captured, one of those moments chosen for remembering.

Looking back, I realize those memories feel inseparable from the way she told them. The stories and the images blur together — what I saw, what I was shown, what was repeated often enough to become real in a different way. My mom had a way of holding it all lightly, even the parts that could have been frightening — especially the frightening parts. The fragility, the uncertainty, the pain, it was there, but softened by her voice, shaped into something I could carry without fear.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to see that it wasn’t just our stories she held. She carried the stories of her whole family.

In her later years, they seemed to gather more fully in her — names, places, small details that might have otherwise faded. I remember her making an effort to hold onto them, almost cataloguing them, as if they were something she couldn’t afford to lose. My mom used to call herself “the last of the Mohicans,” the only surviving sibling, the only one left to carry the stories. My cousin Barbara, recognizing this, began to collect the stories my mother told about her parents and seven siblings. My mother became a kind of living archive, holding not just what happened, but the feeling of it, the threads that connected one life to another.

She was the shy one growing up, the bookworm. At one point, she thought she might become a nun. It’s hard to imagine now, knowing the life she lived. She had known of my father as a child, a loud, rambunctious boy from just outside of town. Years later, he asked my grandfather for her hand in marriage. It was an arranged match, followed by a whirlwind courtship while he was on leave from the Navy during World War II.

How fitting for the bookworm to carry the stories. She held them all so lightly, even the ones that began in uncertainty. Even mine. Every year, she told me the story of how close it all came to not happening. And every year, without saying it directly, she reminded me: you are here.

Now, without her voice, I carry that knowing in a different way. Not as something I’m told, but as something I live. Perhaps this is the way I carry her forward… not through children, but through the stories I continue to hold.

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