The lights were warm and low, with heat rising despite the falling snow outside the third-floor windows. I was in a small bar for the Latin dance night, held twice a month, that I had recently learned about, with no idea how to dance Latin, but trying my best anyway. I watched closely as hips moved fast and sure all around me in ways I was not used to seeing up close. I wanted to move like that, but I had no idea how. So instead I focused on my feet, which seemed like the most immediate problem to solve. I wanted to stop constantly apologizing and spare my partners, who were strangers to me, the unnecessary pain I imagined they hadn’t signed up for. If someone was sitting on the edge of the room watching my inexperienced attempts at dancing that night, they might have wondered how I found myself there.

A friend recently told me that I was going to rock retirement given all the new hobbies I was trying, including salsa, as I adjusted to living in my own home for the first time in my life. My boys were now both driving and on the precipice of going out into the world as young adults. I saw them less and less as their independence and social lives expanded, leaving me with time on my hands for the first time in 18 years. I was excited to explore this newfound freedom and try new things. But the deeper pull was to get clarity about who I was and to land in a place of calm and peace with whatever emerged. When I was a teen and young adult, I did many things that people considered beyond my years, like volunteering in a Romanian orphanage during all my summer and Christmas breaks when I was in college. But I was surprisingly delayed when it came to certain aspects of identity development. And in my late 40s, I was attempting to figure out how to claim parts of myself that weren’t necessarily new and maybe had always been there, but not well understood or embraced. At the same time, I was watching my boys explore their own identities. In a way, we were like a trio of baby giraffes on wobbly legs.

I tried many new experiences and activities during this time. Of all of them, I found myself drawn more and more to creative endeavors. I began to notice that dancing was particularly appealing because of the joy that it brought me and how it felt in my body to give myself permission to move, so I signed up for lessons to actually learn to become a better dancer. I started with an 8-week course to learn to dance with aerial silks. After weeks of learning to climb the shiny silks, I ultimately decided that becoming one of those people who gracefully twists and spins through the air on aerial silks was probably not in the cards for me. I have dysautonomia, which does not bode well for hanging upside down or spinning on a shiny, slippery fabric. And while it was fun and empowering to learn to do those things in the short term, I felt lightheaded after most of the moves, so I did not pursue it further. What I didn’t need was an additional hard thing in my life. I was looking, instead, for something that felt good in my body. And that was when I was invited to try salsa.

Salsa, in a way, had been quietly calling me for years as I yearned to connect with the place where half of my lineage originates. My mother is Puerto Rican, but she didn’t raise me speaking Spanish, and she didn’t teach me much about the culture and the land where many of my relatives still live. I don’t know exactly why. She never told me and I never asked. We didn’t have that kind of relationship and her inner thoughts and feelings often felt inaccessible to me. What was accessible to me was her anger, which she displayed regularly toward me, her apparent target. My brothers were mostly the witnesses and not the recipients of her wrath. It wasn’t until I was deep into therapy in my 20s that I learned to describe the actions that came from her rage as emotional and verbal abuse. I can easily envision her scrunched up facial features and eyes round with rage, but I don’t have such a clear image of her smile.

I grew up in a small green split-level home, settled into southern Pennsylvania farmlands where the houses looked the same and so did many of the people. I took dance classes throughout my childhood, which I loved. I liked the freedom in my body and the option to take up space, which were not things I got to enjoy in my daily life. I also loved the beautiful, intricate dance recital costumes, a shift from the clothes my mother forced me to wear that didn’t fit me or the current trends, much to my regular embarrassment. I had small inklings of who I was back then, but little freedom to express or pursue it. Like the time I had my first kiss in the back of a pizza shop owned by my friend’s father. As we clumsily experimented with the foreign and novel activity, oregano hung in the air and I felt confused. The experience filled me with a mix of exhilaration and fear because the friend I was kissing was also a girl. We went to the same Catholic school and church and both had been taught that this activity would send us on the short route to hell. I was awakening to a part of myself while inherently knowing everyone I knew, including my mother, thought it was wrong. The idea of fueling her wrath was an impossibility to my young self who was so desperate to believe she could live a good life. But there was no question then that being gay would take me in the opposite direction of that good life I dreamed of.

This was not the first time I had felt this type of conflict and restraint. My older brother was brown-skinned like my mother, and we were closer in age, going through school at the same time. My younger brother was fair-skinned like me, with the phenotypic traits of my father’s Irish lineage. I watched in middle school as my older brother endured racist comments and was relentlessly picked on. It was awful, and I had no idea how to deal with it, often bearing witness in silence—a regret I hold to this day. We were siblings, but we had such vastly different experiences in how the world treated us. I felt separate from my mother and brother in so many ways, and I didn’t know what that meant about who I was. The only comments I got about this were that I must be adopted, given the difference in my and my mother’s skin tones—a thought I admit I wished could be true. If it were true, then maybe I wouldn’t be connected to this person who seemed incapable of kindness towards me and who left an embarrassing wake of emotional and relational destruction wherever she went. Being her daughter was fraught with pain and shame. The idea that maybe I wasn’t her daughter was one I allowed my young self to fantasize about for the brief reprieve it offered.

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Despite the difficulties I watched my brother endure because his brown skin made his Puerto Rican heritage visible to others, I also found myself wishing I could relate to that part of our family, but having no idea how to do that, much like I had no idea how to tell anyone about my attraction to girls. The person who gave me a sense of the culture was my grandfather, a short, ornery man who spoke almost exclusively Spanish and always wore a diamond-encrusted belt buckle that said “The Godfather” on it. To say he was a character would be an understatement. He was always smiling and kind to me. He cooked traditional Puerto Rican food, including Spanish rice, plantains, and baked pollo asado. He had a little chihuahua named Pepe, who was adorably small but vicious. That dog bit my toe when I was ten, leaving a bright crimson stripe running down my foot. My grandfather laughed, said a bunch of Spanish words I didn’t understand, then kissed both Pepe and me. Somehow I was okay with the whole situation, concluding that my grandfather loved both kids and animals, and thus I forgave Pepe, but knew to keep my distance.

I loved my grandfather and felt loved by him. As a kid, I only knew him as warm and gentle, but I later learned that wasn’t the whole story. As a young adult, my mother revealed that he had been an alcoholic throughout her childhood, a time marked by his angry outbursts and her spending time at bars when she should have been home in bed. It made me wonder what role my grandfather’s drinking and choices played in who she became, and what role the men she encountered during those late nights at bars might have played, too. And I wondered what impact that subsequently had on me. It shifted my view of him, just as I came to understand that the way he smiled and talked to young waitresses wasn’t friendliness but unwanted flirtation, leaving the young women to laugh along, likely not because they were flattered by this old man, but because their tips depended on it. Like all humans, he was multitudes and one of the shining lights in my childhood. And I needed to hold onto those lights because my mother, in her devout Catholic practice and choice to not incorporate Puerto Rican culture and tradition into our family life, served as an obstacle to both my acceptance of my sexuality and my understanding of my connection to being Puerto Rican.

When I left for college, I moved far away, desperate for space from my mother and all that came with being in her presence, which meant I saw both her and my grandfather less and less. I missed the home-cooked Puerto Rican meals and the smell of his cologne, but especially the cadence of his Spanish and the connection to a part of me I struggled to find elsewhere. To make up for this, I studied Spanish in college, but never became fluent. I had lost my loose connection to this part of me and it remained that way for years. I also stopped dancing at this point. I was moving into the gray unknown of young adulthood, where my kids are now, and it would take years before I would find my firm footing in myself and my identity.

As I moved into my 40s, my urge to learn about my Puerto Rican heritage grew strong. As I learned to dance salsa, I knew I would never be treated in a harmful way because of how I look, but that my brother and mother could be. We were family, but how the world perceived us visually dictated how safely we moved through society. I didn’t know how to acknowledge this part of myself that was invisible to the outside world, or how to feel about what I had escaped because of the way genetics had played out in how I looked. I felt guilt that I didn’t endure the cruelty that my brother did while simultaneously longing to claim this part of myself that was more readily available to him.

Similarly, when I came out, I had to face the reality that I was coming out at a different time and in a geographical place where the risks are much lower than they were when I was a teen. I had inadvertently escaped experiencing the bigotry and fears I would have experienced had I come out in the early 90s when I first realized I liked girls. My experience was so different that when I came out, my ex and I threw a party with our closest friends to tell them our news and invite them along on the challenging journey of restructuring our family. Of the curated list of thirty, only one person declined to come. He was a friend for 30 years and I have never heard from him again, other than terrible things he said about me that got back to me through our mutual friends. And he remains friends with my ex. The rest received me, my kids and my ex with love and wide-open arms.

I did not stay closeted because of fear for my safety or how I would be treated specifically, but rather because I was attempting to navigate what was already a difficult upbringing where I didn’t feel loved by my very own mother who would likely reject this part of me in the name of her God. I buried my sexuality because I couldn’t bear to give her yet another reason to withhold her love and reject me. And in our distance I also had no access to what it meant to be Puerto Rican. She was the gatekeeper for that in my daily life when I was young.

In an effort to deepen this connection to my roots, I started to take regular salsa lessons and attend Latin dance socials about eight months ago. This provided me with the opportunity to show how little I knew, with numerous partners who were willing to dance with me anyway. The small bar was crowded with Latinos, elderly folks, and queer people, all sweating together to the Latin beats. Joy felt palpable in the room. And I felt the beginning of a connection to something familiar yet previously out of reach. I also felt free to be gay, having been out for a few years at this point. I was finally feeling connected to two of the identities that were important to me.

In those early days of learning to dance, I felt warmth in the presence of people who shared my heritage, but much like the difference between me and my brother, I didn’t feel complete belonging. I was a white person. There was no way for anyone to know I was half Puerto Rican unless I said it. It reminded me of living for years with what I believed was a bisexual identity but passing as straight. Turned out, in the end, I was actually gay and simply stuck in a story packaged with a Catholic bow that allowed me not to face the full extent of my sexuality until I was in my early forties. While I had escaped the hardships of being gay and Hispanic in my early life, I also missed out on many things I would have liked to enjoy. Before I came out more publicly at age 43, I would encounter gay people and feel the same relatability and desire to connect as I experienced that night at my first Latin social, but I found no easy way to do that without explicitly outing myself. While I was willing to share about my sexuality by this point, most of the time it felt awkward. I had no idea how to fit it into the conversation without blurting it out randomly or making a production of the type of conversation that starts with, “I need to tell you something about me…” And I felt the same about being Puerto Rican. The complexity of identity and the way I had lived my life meant I never quite felt gay enough (until I was), and I never quite felt Hispanic enough. I never felt that I could own these parts of myself, but I always wanted to.

That slowly began to change as I continued going to salsa lessons and got to know people and shared more about myself in a more natural way. The truth was, I wanted to feel connected to this part of me that had felt unknown for most of my life, and I had been yearning for it in recent years. One of my COVID projects was learning to cook Puerto Rican food, while I silently mumbled regrets that I had never asked my grandfather to teach me the family recipes when he was still alive. I also finally got my kids’ dad to agree to a trip to Puerto Rico in the thick of our separation, as we strived to find our way to a new family structure that allowed the four of us to remain connected as family, though not as a married couple. As I walked through the streets of San Juan, with my kids walking up ahead, I saw eyes that looked exactly like my grandfather’s, deep, dark brown with a shape that somehow conveyed gentleness. I saw his hands too, on other bodies, in a place I was just becoming acquainted with. I could feel I was on land that some part of me found familiar, though I couldn’t really articulate which part. On the last night we were there, I sat and sipped my drink watching people dance salsa in the streets and thought that I would love to learn to do that one day.

I decided early on to be brave in learning salsa. I embraced my beginner status and openly disclosed to my partners, most of whom were strangers to me, that I had no idea what I was doing. Every time, they were patient as I found my literal footing in the basic step. The truth was that I loved experimenting with my body and this art form in a communal way. This mirrored what I was discovering about myself as I claimed my identity as a middle-aged woman. I was beginning to understand that mastering things throughout my life, while a helpful skill that is highly reinforced, had cost me something. It kept me from sitting with the confusion about myself that I needed in order to understand what was true. There was possibility in the unknown that was appealing. I was someone who had a long history of interpreting nervousness as excitement, and this was no exception. After a lifetime of closeted performing to meet societally and familially prescribed ideas of who and how I was supposed to be, I actually loved not knowing how to be in salsa. I felt free to be in my natural state, which at this point was clumsy and the only way I knew how to dance. More than anything, I wanted to just be me. I didn’t care if it was pretty or skillful, but I loved the idea that it might be one day. So I kept going.

Eventually, after about six months of fairly regular lessons and social dance nights, something started to click. The dancing began to feel embodied, and I was beginning to have an intuitive sense of how to move to the music. I could tell the difference between salsa, bachata, and merengue. Thanks to some very skilled leads, I learned how to follow pretty well and feel the subtle signals of how they wanted me to move in the space. People in the community were shifting from strangers to acquaintances, and for some, to friends. I learned to turn once and eventually twice at a time. I no longer needed to think of the early lesson to pretend there was a piece of paper between our hands to maintain the connection and thus provide the channel of physical communication of what to do next. Instead, I was beginning to sense it and I found an intuitive desire to dance with my eyes closed. The music, the movement and the feeling were becoming integrated. Socials became my favorite way to dance. I loved the heat in the room causing sweat to run down my back. It felt primal and pleasant. I loved watching people dance who had clearly grown up doing it, and I imagined what my life would have been like had I grown up dancing on the island with my Puerto Rican relatives, whom I only met a couple of times in my life. Eventually, some of the leads I’d danced with in the very beginning started to notice and comment on my progress. Others who watched from the sides did too. Even the bartender said, “Hey, you’re a great dancer!” I looked over both shoulders in response and said, “Me?!” She laughed and said yes, and I could barely believe it. Apparently, I could dance salsa.

The big moment came when a man in his fifties came up to me and said he had seen me at several of the lessons and socials. I remembered dancing with him on that first snowy night that I attempted to do salsa, stepping on his toes and tripping over mine. He told me about some big dance events in Montreal and said I should join their group and come with them sometime. I had heard murmurings of dancing in Montreal and in people’s homes and understood there was a selective group doing this regularly. I had just been invited in. It felt like I had the early stages of belonging with people who were good dancers and who knew the culture. He asked me why I started dancing salsa, and I told him about my mother and my grandfather and my desire to learn more about my Puerto Rican heritage. The conversation flowed as I talked with ease about who I was. He looked at me in shock upon learning I was half Puerto Rican and proceeded to tell me about growing up in San Juan. It’s true that he wouldn’t have known had I not told him, just like so many people have no idea I’m gay unless I tell them. But he accepted me as one of his own even before he knew, and his warmth toward me grew all the more as soon as I revealed this part of myself to him. It made me a bit teary. He likely had no idea what the significance was of the invite and this conversation. He was teaching me about the things my mother never did. This thing that had felt important yet out of reach for so long was suddenly present in my life. I was building a Hispanic community and regularly participating in the culture. It turned out that Puerto Rico had been in me all along; I just didn’t know I would find it in my hips and on the dance floor.

One night recently when I was in the flow of a fast-paced merengue, I looked around at the packed dance floor. People moved to the fast beat, some with ease and others stumbling as I once had. I smiled at a woman who bumped into me, and mouthed, “I’m sorry” and looked slightly embarrassed. I recognized that stage of learning, and as I moved smoothly, turning on cue whenever my lead gave the subtle sign, I could see I was no longer there. I had progressed to another stage, where I could feel my skills building and a growing sense of ease in the movements. My partner smiled at me as we both enjoyed the high energy moment. He was Puerto Rican. And so was I.

I sat with my feet together, knees splayed wide on a thick rubber yoga mat in the back corner of a yoga studio I had never been to before. On the wall beside me was a hand-painted glittery gold sun rising from the horizon of the floor, a welcome stand-in for the sun that hadn’t shown itself in days. It was the fourth week in January, 2023, and stick season was overstaying its welcome in the north, with no snow to coat the limbs of the trees, resulting in a drab, gray backdrop to the day. The room had large windows, and muted light poured onto the wooden floors and the backs of the other students as they set up their mats.

It had been years since I had been to a yoga class. I had spent much of the last decade focusing on running marathons, and more recently rehabbing a nagging injury to my hamstring tendon, from running all of those marathons. I had been granted permission that week by my doctor to expand my months-long physical therapy to include yoga, so here I was. My running career was effectively over.

I sat quietly and focused on the waves of my breath, willing my body to settle into stillness as I reflected on what led me to be sitting on this mat. At forty-three-years-old, I was five years past ending my relationships with my family of origin. I was eight years into raising a son, who’d been diagnosed with a serious chronic illness in young childhood, and fifteen years into raising his older brother. I had been with my husband, for twenty-two years, and married for twenty of those years. And I was one year into seeing changes in my once dependable physical form.

I shifted on the bolster I was sitting on and used a blanket to cushion my sore, injured tendon, with all its micro-tears that refused to heal. I looked down at my hands resting gently on my knees, and noticed the tiny familiar freckles across my knuckles, a gift passed down from my father, passed down to him by his father. My hands looked the same, but they had changed. These hands could not open jars anymore. They often dropped things. They no longer functioned well.

I considered the rest of my body. It was still strong, but I was unable to push it the way I used to. My body was telling me in a variety of ways that it was tired of being pushed, tired of having to endure, tired of having to prove that it could do whatever my mind decided it should do, or worse, whatever society told me I should do. My body, it seemed, had finally caught up with my heart, which had its own collection of micro-tears, and had been tired of such things for many years. I was grieving the loss of running, my primary coping mechanism and favorite activity since I was in fifth grade. Running was a big part of my identity, and I wondered who I was without it. And who might I become?

Tired of my self-pity, I shifted my focus onto the physical space and the people who were beginning to fill it. As I scanned the room, I realized I was the youngest person there, by far. This gentle yoga class sounded perfect for my current needs, but it hadn’t occurred to me that I had joined a new cohort of the elderly. During the class, I watched curiously as they modified their poses, spending prolonged periods resting in child’s pose, and at times releasing audible sounds of effort as they willed their bodies to do what was being asked of them. Laughing to myself, I understood the lesson. These students demonstrated over the course of an hour how to work with the body they were inhabiting as it was and within the bounds it dictated.

Humbled, I emulated them in my own practice, releasing the tension in my neck, as well as my expectations of my body, as I let go of my tendency toward effort and instead practiced restraint.

The class was winding down and I settled into savasana. I felt relaxed and peaceful. I took a long slow breath in and an even slower breath out. It was then that I suddenly sensed the presence of my newborn self, nestled into my neck, the way my boys had done when they were only minutes old. I could feel her weight and her warmth. I soaked in the feel of her and a wave of tenderness washed over me, leading an easy smile to spread across my lips. I sensed her full head of hair and chubby moon shaped face that matched a picture of me when I was a baby that used to hang in the hallway across from my childhood bedroom. I knew it was her because of the way her presence made me feel connected to myself. Some part deep within me was being held in the moments I felt her presence, like a warm blanket enveloping my young self. This was the same part that had often felt abandoned, discarded and left to fend for herself. In the weeks leading up to this yoga class, she was with me often. I felt she needed me to consider her, to nurture her, to protect her.

In the quiet moments of hibernation that the first weeks of that January offered, I set my intentions for 2023. But in the following few weeks leading up to the yoga class, they were overshadowed by a persistent inner knowing that my life was about to change, whether I intended it to or not. This was when my baby-self first started showing up and I experienced repeated strong visceral sensations that something big was going to happen this year. Something significant and impactful. I had clarity that it would be a good thing. It was a fact I did not question. My thoughts were not actively involved other than the vague idea that all the struggles of recent years were winding down and that they had prepared me for what was ahead.

By mid-January, along with the strong awareness of impending change in my life, I began to get non-stop chills, which I historically only experienced for 10 seconds or so when witnessing something awe-inspiring. But these chills lasted continuously two weeks. It felt like my cells were open, awake, and pulsing with electricity. An energy coursed through my body and any sense of tiredness was gone. I felt fully alive, like I was watching the most beautiful sunset all day, every day. My typical daily stress caring for my patients, parenting my darling but exhausting teenage boys, and tending to daily life faded into the background as feelings of optimism, brightness and anticipation took over.

Along with these bodily sensations I had several recurrent images in my mind during my daily meditation practice. I kept seeing a translucent onion-like object in which all of the layers were pulled down and laying limply in varying states of decay around a gooey glowing green core, as if all the work to get to center was done and discarded. My sense was that the center was always there, but that so many layers had kept me out, away from where the pure natural goodness within me could be found.

Over two decades in my career, I had sat as a witness and a guide for hundreds of individuals as they sought to find that same goodness within themselves on the journey to improving their health. With very few exceptions it was always there, but any number of things could keep people from getting to it, whether that be because of the pain of living a human life or because of the stories told by themselves, others or both. For me it had mostly been the pain of life, as I clung to the story that I was inherently good. But I felt it was time for ease and something positive after many weary years of loss and struggle. I yearned for peace and calm. I wanted to rest.

I called these intuitive experiences the knowing because I knew, without a doubt, that whatever embodied message I was receiving was true. And in time, whatever the knowing had to tell me always proved true. It didn’t show up frequently, but when it did, I listened, alert and open, to what it had to say. I trusted these messages completely. I trusted it while lying in the yoga class that day, and I trusted it the first time it showed up when I was ten-years old, when I first coined it the knowing.

***

The day before my first experience with the knowing, was a hard day, but not unlike most days growing up. School had been a place of calm for me, but it became much more complicated once I started fifth grade because my younger brother, J, started kindergarten there. He was a difficult kid with a lot of behavioral issues, who often exhibited inappropriate behaviors. This was not so unusual in my family because my mom was the same way. Worse yet, my mom took to volunteering at my school, once J started, so she was around 1-2 days per week. Seeing her at my school created social discomfort for me. In her presence I felt nervous about what she might say or do, and it left me nauseous and hypervigilant. I couldn’t relax when she was there. It also made me observant to any reaction to her from my peers, which could lead me to feel embarrassment at having to explain her behaviors in an attempt to manage the situation for myself.

In her perspective, J could do no wrong. She would often describe him as the underdog the world just didn’t understand, a victim to everyone else’s wrongdoings. The problem was everyone else, not his bizarre and aggressive behaviors. I imagined she viewed herself similarly. She was never one to apologize or even acknowledge the mean or inappropriate things she said or did.

At lunch that day, I noticed my mom first thing, my sensitive antenna locating her immediately. She was helping out in the cafeteria and I was on high alert as I ate my daily cream cheese and jelly sandwich, lovingly prepared by my dad, who was a kind man, softspoken and sweet. I looked up to see J pick his nose and then chase the most popular boy in my grade with his snotty pointer finger, attempting to wipe it on him. I was mortified. There was no way to explain his behaviors, but worse, when a teacher intervened, my mom aggressively confronted her.

“How dare you treat my son like that,” she said in a voice so loud I could hear her over more than a hundred kids. I was in a dark tunnel, my mom and the teacher were under a spotlight, and all the other noise faded into the background.

The teacher was calm and respectful, but my mom couldn’t tolerate her prized child being reprimanded. It was a direct attack on her, and her expression showed that she was nearing her tipping point, something I knew well from daily experience.

By now everyone was watching. My senses were heightened, and I heard whispers amongst my peers.

“What is wrong with her?” one girl asked the other kids sitting by her.

“E’s mom is so weird. So is her brother,” a boy stated in response.

“Maybe E is adopted? Her mom and older brother are so dark.” This comment came from a kid I didn’t know well. He was referring to the dark complexions of my mom and older brother, a result of my mom’s Hispanic heritage, whereas J and I looked like my dad’s side of the family whose roots were in Ireland. For a fleeting moment, I wished it was true. I wished I was adopted and that I wasn’t related to her.

The situation in the cafeteria eventually calmed as lunch came to an end, but the tension in my body remained.

***

That night, my parents went out and I was left in charge of J, even though my older brother was home as well. There was no discussing it. I was given strict instructions of what J was to eat, when he was to go to bed, and what he could and couldn’t do while they were gone.

The night went horribly. J misbehaved. He did what he wanted and I had no influence or control over him. I tried my best to follow my parents’ instructions, but he refused every one of them and seemed to find it funny that I was so determined to accomplish what she’d asked me to do. When the hour of his bedtime arrived, he refused. I tried to take him by the hand and guide him up the stairs, but he bit me, hard. It hurt, but it did not deter my efforts because I knew there would be worse consequences from my mother if I didn’t figure this out.

By the time my parents got home, J was sitting at the dining room table in only underwear, eating ice cream, way past his bed time, and my arms were covered in bite marks, some of which were beginning to scab from where he broke the skin. Predictably, my mother erupted like a volcano, spewing lava everywhere.

“What is wrong with you? You never listen! Or are you just incapable of doing anything right? Why do you always have to make my life so hard?” she screamed at me.

She then turned to J and sweetly said, “Are you okay, honey? Did she do anything to you?” She scooped him into a hug, providing comfort and care at the misfortunate that he had been left with me.

“But Mom, I tried!” I pleaded, showing her my arms, evidence of how hard it had been to manage him. I was certain this time she would understand given the physical evidence of my why my efforts failed. “He attacked me. There was nothing I could do!”

She waved me off, a look of disgust on her face, then re-engaged in cuddling my brother who smiled sweetly as he leaned into her. My dad silently went to the kitchen and began to prepare a snack for himself to avoid what was unfolding. He never intervened or attempted to protect me in these moments, leaving me on my own to navigate my mother’s rage.

I was viewed as the problem and got grounded for two weeks with no TV, friends, or telephone privileges. I didn’t care about those details as much as the concept that I had been hurt, with clear physical evidence marking my body, and her response was absent of any care or concern. Even worse, she added to the onslaught of punishment by pitting me and J against each other, a pattern that would play out repeatedly as we got older. There was no winning for me. She didn’t care that my brother had behaved violently, or that he wouldn’t listen. She didn’t acknowledge that the whole thing was a set-up, a test I was never going to pass. She didn’t see me as the innocent young child I was. I’m not sure she saw me at all. In her mind, it was all my fault. My existence was the problem.

Only after my mom took J to bed did my dad finally speak. “E, just apologize to her. Then it will all be better.”

I stared at him in disbelief, feeling a mixture of guilt, sadness, and depletion. “But you can see I didn’t do anything wrong! What am I apologizing for?”

“Look, I know that,” he said. “But it’s the only way. If you just say you’re sorry then this will all be over and that will be better for everyone.” But he was wrong. It would not be over for me. It would not be better for me.

I didn’t respond as I turned and wearily ascended the stairs to her room, leaving him in the living room, likely hopeful that I would resolve this mess for him.

I gently knocked on her bedroom door.

“Come in,” she said curtly.

I opened the door and slowly moved into her bedroom dodging piles of clothes strewn on every surface, as her hoarding tendencies were increasing.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said with an eye roll.

“I’m sorry about how tonight went,” I said.

“What exactly are you sorry about?”

“I’m sorry I didn’t follow your instructions,” I explained, trying to hide the aversion I was feeling to having to say these words, these lies, to her.

“Maybe one day you will learn to be a good girl. But I’m not holding out hope for that. Now come give me a hug.”

I didn’t want to hug her, or to be near her, but I knew I didn’t have another choice. I walked over to where she sat on the side of her bed, trying to keep my face blank of emotion. I put an arm loosely around her and gave the smallest squeeze. She did not hug me back. I left her there, and made my way back to the safety of my room. I fell asleep on a pillowcase soaked with my tears wondering if I would ever be a good enough girl, but knowing I had to try.

***

The next day at school, exhausted from everything that happened the day before, I drifted off into my own thoughts and stared out the window, while my history teacher’s voice faded into the background.

As I sat there, I had a moment of clear insight: My mom is not like other mothers. There is something going on with her that isn’t normal. The way she is has to do with her and not me, no matter what she says. I will never get my needs met by her. There is more for me in this life, but I will have to fight for it. I need to focus on school, friends and sports and just keep moving forward.

I didn’t know where these thoughts came from, but I received them as facts. From the first moment I thought this, I trusted this as the knowing. I believed these intuitions completely, and it would end up saving me. I stopped believing a word she said about me, and in doing so my sense of self and my worth were preserved. I knew without a doubt that there was a path and a place for me in the world, but that it was not with her and never would be. In that moment, I decided I would stop trying to gain her love, or to even try to get peace in her presence. I had to simply endure her, while meeting my needs and finding fulfilment elsewhere. It was a burden, but I knew I would be okay.

There are times in life when our bodies tell us, without words, what we should pay attention to. They tell us some truth that we need to know, but that we are often too busy to receive. Or maybe the message gets drowned out by the voices in our minds, or overshadowed by self-doubt. But then there are times when this felt sense stops us in our tracks, makes us look up and take notice of our lives, beckoning us to trust what it has to say. Sometimes it’s like a foghorn alerting us to a danger up ahead at sea. And sometimes it’s a spotlight illuminating our path home to ourselves.

***

Just as I had when I was young, I felt the knowing as I laid in rest at the end of the gentle yoga class, filled with gratitude at the guidance it had just offered me. The yoga teacher instructed us to roll onto one side in the fetal position, which she referred to as the seed pose. My infant baby rolled right over with me, and I wondered what seeds were being planted in my life that would show themselves this year. The rest and gentle movement of the previous hour had felt nourishing, comforting and necessary. I needed it, my infant-self needed it, and all the iterations of myself as a girl and as the women I had been in between needed it.

My classmates and I said a collective “Om” and acknowledged each other for sharing the yoga practice and space together. I added a silent thank you to my fellow yogis for showing me how to be in my body with its current limitations, for showing me how to surrender and accept. As class finished, I packed up my things, certain I would be back. It was clear I needed to spend more time in this place and in this practice. The knowing stayed with me as I exited the building and I was comforted by the recurrent idea that I was on a path that would change me forever. I was open. I was ready.

I have two friends who are in their 80s, named Anne and Walter. I met them separately in moments of happenstance that allowed the crossing of our paths. I recognized quick-forming and natural bonds between me and each of them. I carried no assumption that we wouldn’t be friends because of our age differences, so I was open to connecting. And so were they.

Having older friends has brought a perspective to my life that is hard to achieve on my own in the context of raising teens in my mid-40s. They have shed so many layers by this point in their lives. They seem to know who they are and what really matters. And then there’s the wisdom. The WISDOM! Our encounters involve them regularly leaving me with sage insights to contemplate, enriching my process of cultivating my own inner wisdom.

Walter and Anne have all the qualities I look for in friends. They are kind, interested in my life while allowing me into theirs, and they are invested in my human journey and all the twists and turns it involves. Most importantly, they love me. I know this because they say it freely. They seem to do most things in their life freely, something I strive for in my own life, although I don’t have quite their level of abandon yet.

While they are vibrant and vital, they also do things slowly. In large part, this is because their bodies require it. They both have ailments, aches, and conditions that need tending to. But they also seem much more interested in experiencing and savoring the process of life rather than an obsession with efficiently arriving at some destination, which most of my peers – and admittedly, sometimes I – seem to be consumed with. Perhaps this is an organic shift that occurs when one’s arrival at the destination of death inches closer.

Moving slowly through life appeals to me. I am constantly pushing against the current of our culture, repetitively whispering a mantra: may I have peace, rest, ease (things I look for wherever I can). When I am with Anne or Walter, they set the slow pace and I gladly match it.

For my birthday this year, Walter invited me to go on a ski trip to Vail, one of my favorite places to ski, with his wife, his children, and their families. He was inviting me into the precious moments of his family life, where memories would be made, as if I belonged there too. Belonging is something I often feel with him and something I have lacked in other areas of my life in recent years. My family encouraged me to go. Following the example of my elderly friends, I released restraint and embraced the opportunity with a resounding “Ok, YES!” and a heartfelt “thank you.”

As the trip neared, I was almost two years into the process of separating from my husband, an experience that had been both beautiful and heartbreaking. I had carried the wild mix of emotions that comes with familial transition and rearrangement, in addition to the pain of witnessing my children’s heartache and my husband’s grief. I also carried the heavy weight of knowing this was all happening because of me. Because I am gay and I didn’t understand the full extent of my identity or feel free enough to embrace it earlier in my life. I don’t have regrets about the delay in my understanding because I would never feel sorry for the decades I spent sharing a life with my ex, a good human who means a lot to me. For certain, I could never regret that our union gave us our kids. I knew I didn’t do anything wrong, that this wasn’t my fault per se, but everyone’s pain undeniably had a thread back to me.

The muscles required for staving off guilt and shame and shifting instead to compassionate acceptance of the unfolding of my life became strong in this process. The last thing I wanted to do was bravely navigate this experience with great care and skill only to end up hating myself for it. I just refused. No one involved would benefit from that outcome. Instead, I was committed to loving all of us through this, including me. But I was exhausted by it all. The deep well of resilience that I had enjoyed from a young age felt like it was drying up.

When I told Walter the news about my sexual identity and the changes that were afoot, he treated it with the utmost care as if it was a precious little bird I had placed in his hands. He talked of the beauty in my story and how he admired me and our whole family for how we were navigating it all. He was clear in stating it didn’t make him love me less. It just made him feel more connected and that he was there for me. He was a true friend.

When Walter invited me on the trip, it seemed like exactly what I needed. A break. Time in nature to move my body. An opportunity to enjoy and grow our friendship. A chance to step away from the challenges of the day-to-day and regroup for the difficult months still ahead. But the weeks leading up to the trip were dark and difficult. I was weary. And I felt utterly alone. I had many people who loved me, but most of them lived far away, or if they lived close, I only saw them every couple of months. In the midst of the process I was in, it didn’t feel like enough to sustain me.

I thought often of the giant redwood trees. I had learned that the reason they can stand so tall, resisting winds and floods, is because they have an extensive root structure that is shallow, but can extend 100 feet. These roots intertwine with the roots of the neighboring redwoods, forming a network of stability and nourishment for all of them, including the young and the old. They live in community. I had long known the research that social connection is essential to thriving as a human. It is also necessary to survive as a human. The U.S. Surgeon General recently released a statement that the mortality risks of social disconnection were on the same level as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. FIFTEEN!

For the last 12 years, I have lived in a community where my roots are not intertwined with those of the other people who live here. This is the first community I have been a part of where I haven’t felt belonging, despite great efforts on my part to foster connection. The town is lovely, and there are plenty of nice people in it, but they aren’t my people and it isn’t my place. This reality has taken a toll on me over the years, especially during times of hardship such as I was going through now.

I was my own case study. I could feel the weight and impact of going through life and this journey while experiencing loneliness and a lack of support. I had fellow redwood trees in my life, stunningly beautiful ones, but they weren’t close enough for our roots to intertwine. When we connected, it filled me with warmth and fueled me for a bit. But the days and weeks between phone calls or visits felt like being a lone tree out in a sparse field, vulnerable to the elements and exhausting myself as I struggled to stay upright. Thriving wasn’t even relevant in those moments. I was just trying to get by using my list of long-practiced self-care habits and my unbreakable hope that things will one day feel better.

In the days before the trip with Walter, I noticed that I wasn’t feeling excited about it. I felt like I was running on fumes and that the social and physical energy that the trip would require were nowhere to be found. A friend and my ex lovingly encouraged me to reconsider the trip, seeing the depletion in me. But I was conflicted because this would be time for connection with Walter and his family, which felt like a good thing. And I love skiing in Vail.

Up until two days before the trip, I still wasn’t clear how to proceed, so I got quiet and I listened for the truth about what I needed and what I should do. Meditation was a daily practice for me and never failed to provide a space of calm where my inner wisdom – just budding compared to the full blooms of the wisdom of Walter and Anne – could be heard. In those quiet moments reflecting on the trip, this is what came through clearly and definitively: “You need silence.”

I have had intuitive experiences since I was a child. Inner knowings and premonitions. The list of examples is long, and those who know about this and who have witnessed these moments in my life trust the validity of these experiences. One of the clearest examples happened on 9/11. I was driving home from an overnight shift when I heard on the radio about the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. Almost immediately, I got a very clear message (from where, I do not know) that said: “my family is involved in this.” It didn’t feel like a worry, but rather a fact. I arrived home just as another plane hit the second tower and I told my then-fiancé, who had proposed only the day before on September 10, 2001, that I knew my family was involved. He tried to soothe my concern. As the next two planes crashed and the towers fell, the message got louder and stronger within me. I told his parents, who we were living with at the time, that I knew my family was involved. I was insistent despite everyone’s reassurance that while this was unsettling, they were sure it would be fine. By late afternoon, my fiancé finally turned off the TV that I had been unable to look away from, searching for any clue as to which family member this could have impacted. He dragged me reluctantly out on a walk to try to shake this out of me and find some calm through movement. It didn’t work. I was certain bad news was coming about someone I loved.

That evening we got a call from my dad. A family member was indeed involved and missing. We buried him three weeks later.

So, when my inner voice told me I needed silence, I believed the wisdom of that message. I called Walter and told him I needed to cancel. With our roots entwined, he told me he supported me and that it was the right decision. He then asked if he and his wife could take me to dinner the next night before they left for the trip, which I agreed to, and it was lovely.

After telling Walter, I opened the website for the retreat center I have gone to once or twice a year for many years. It was always a place of restoration for me. The first retreat I saw listed for the upcoming weekend was a silent retreat, and it was scheduled to start on my birthday. My inner knowing was clear: “This is it.” This is what I need. I signed up immediately.

I had never done a silent retreat before. I enjoy quiet walks in the woods and chosen solitude for creative endeavors and to re-energize. But this would be a new experience. When I drove onto the property, passing the sign that said, “Breathe, you have arrived,” I felt confident and excited about my choice. I unpacked in the sparse dorm room where I would sleep, took an afternoon yoga class to settle in, then made my way to the room where the retreat would primarily take place.

There were 30 people participating in the silent retreat, spanning a wide range of ages. We had a leader to usher us through the weekend who was a calming presence. We started with a meditation to ground us and commence the experience. She then explained a little bit about what we could expect for the weekend and offered guidance for some things that could arise, in particular, how active the mind gets in the context of silence. After very brief introductions from all 30 of us, in which we shared our names and a few words about why we were there and what we were feeling, she passed out badges that indicated we were in silence so the staff and the hundreds of other people at the retreat center that weekend would be aware of our chosen quiet state.

When I slipped the lanyard carrying my “in loving silence” badge over my head, I felt chills. This felt important and just right. My inner knowing indicated I was exactly where I needed to be, on this, the first day of my 47th year. Our instructor then led us through a long meditation. During this meditation, I had a mental image of me sitting in meditation, my arms outstretched in front of me, cupped to receive the support and understanding that the weekend could offer.

The deeper I went into meditation, the more this scene expanded. I started to see people filling in a semi-circle in front of me and dropping liquid wisdom into the bowl made by my hands. It was clear these were the teachers of my life. Everyone was there: my best friends, my kids, my ex, Walter, and Anne. But other teachers were there too. More difficult ones. My abusive mother. People who had treated me poorly. I suddenly saw with clarity that they were in my life to offer me gifts and lessons as well, although in more difficult forms that were equally as important. It instantly shifted my relationship to the image of them as their faces smiled warmly back at me, like they had known all along they were there to help me even if it took me years, or in some cases decades, to understand this. The Dalai Lama was there, and so was Jesus. Even Mary Oliver was there (her words have offered some of the greatest teachings of my life). And they were all sitting in front of a forest of redwood trees, a reminder to keep finding my root system, my community.

I spent the next three days in close relationship with myself, waking at 5 am to journal, walking the trails that surrounded the retreat center, taking yoga classes, and ending the day with a sauna, in addition to attending multiple daily sessions specific to the silent retreat. I slept deeply and well. I was so in tune with myself. In some ways, it felt like the closest I have ever been to myself. Interestingly, I didn’t feel alone at all. I felt connected to my fellow silent retreat participants. We would pass each other in the halls and give a warm knowing smile. We would share meals next to each other, offering each other our presence, which was more than enough, especially with no one hiding behind the veil of who we thought we were supposed to be or who the world told us we were. We were simply existing peacefully together.

As I made my way through the weekend, I became calm, settled, and clear. My doubts dissipated. My mind continued to be a busy human mind, offering incessant unhelpful and inaccurate thoughts, but it faded into the background where it was almost imperceptible and thus, its impact on me and my experience dissipated. The intermittent neck pain I have struggled with for three years, that had been raging over the last couple of months, was nowhere to be found in my state of silence. I could sense my nervous system settling like silt in a stream after a hard rain. Slowly, grain by grain, my stream was running clear. Flowing.

When the final day came, I felt tears welling in my eyes as I packed my bags. I could feel the energy at the retreat center shifting from relaxed and tranquil to a more hurried pace as the weekend came to a close and people undoubtedly began to anticipate the to-do lists that awaited them in their lives in just a few hours. I didn’t like that feeling. It felt like precious sand was slipping through my fingers. I wanted to bottle it up. I needed to bring some of this feeling, this state of being, home with me to support me on my ongoing difficult journey. I knew the practices that would help me. And I was committed to prioritizing them. But I also knew it would be different without our nurturing retreat guide, without silence, and without the connection I felt with these other humans that weekend.

At the closing session of the retreat, our teacher led us through one last meditation and provided guidance about integrating this experience into our lives. We then had a chance to share what we were feeling. I told them how I had felt like a lone redwood for years, yet in their presence and in silence, I felt a root system of expansive connection. I was grateful. I didn’t know any of them through verbal storytelling. But when our eyes silently met, I could see their humanity, the deepest connection of all. It seems in our world these days that this is largely missing from society. You can’t see someone’s eyes through a screen or through hate. The words that fill stories that come off the tongue usually originate in the mind, not the heart. Silence was where I found connection. I felt a change in me. It was subtle, yet profound.

One by one, we ceremoniously took off our “in loving silence” badges, stating one word or sentence we would be taking with us. We breathed together. We wished each other well.

Later that morning, I went to one final yoga class before my long drive home, as did two of my fellow silent retreat participants. Upon seeing each other, we embraced in a three-way hug, saying few words (we knew it wasn’t necessary), feeling like we knew each other deeply. On some level, I believe we did.

When I got to my car, I turned on my phone and the 107 text messages flooded in. I checked messages from my kids and my ex first. Then I checked Walter’s. It was brief: “We miss you like hell in Vail. But I’m so glad we are connected.”

In late February 2024, my children’s father and I started working with a couples' therapist to determine how we would navigate our separation in light of my more complete awareness of my sexual identity. We had a working plan to tell the boys our two-part news in late May: that their mom was gay and that their parents were no longer going to be together. We planned to tell our community a week later in an attempt to get ahead of the small-town gossip that thrives on news like this and to have agency over our story and my coming out. I was relieved to know the logistics of the plan after many months of living in the unknown regarding these details. But the relief was short-lived as anxiety and dread settled in. I now had a countdown to the day that I would break my kids' hearts.

It felt like pulling up a lawn chair so I could have a front-row seat to an impending car accident with my children inside. It sounds dramatic, but that is how I experienced it in the lead-up. Anticipatory terror. My body was buzzing with adrenaline, receiving all the messages sent from my brain and nervous system that danger was ahead. My appetite decreased. My sleep was disrupted for days, coating my mornings with the residue of incomplete rest and the particular variety of exhaustion that anxiety leaves in its wake. I no longer questioned myself or my identity, but my mind was tortured by thoughts like, I am so close to launching them; what if I mess it up now?, What if I damage them beyond repair?, and What if they can't forgive me? On and on, the wild stories went. My friends and therapists would attempt to calm these ideas in me and offer reassurance that we would all be okay, but any calm I found was short-lived. I was agitated and afraid for days.

My ex sensed my unease and asked me what was wrong on several occasions. I tried my best to articulate my fears and worries. Neither of us was used to me being in a prolonged anxious state. It wasn't in my nature. Typically, I became calm and grounded in times of crisis. But this was different. I had watched my kids' hearts break many times, and while it was painful and sad to witness, and my compassion and empathy for their hurt were endless, I never felt a pull to fix it for them or prevent them from the full experience. I understood these to be the moments when they would build their toolbox of coping strategies, when they would become resilient, and when they would be trained to handle life. Those moments would be when their hearts would grow a protective, calloused outer layer that only difficult life experiences can create. I was their guide, not their guard in these moments. I had always been clear about this. But this situation was different. Now, I was the cause of one of, if not the most, salient and impactful moments of their lives thus far. There would be a before and an after, and the reason for it all would be me.

I knew there was no choice in the matter. I never blamed myself for who I was or felt shame about it. The days of betraying myself for other people's comfort were long gone, and keeping this a secret by swallowing my truth was never a consideration for me. My ex was in full agreement with this. But I struggled greatly that who I was would cause them suffering.

I did not have a loving mother to raise me. My mother was volatile, angry, and unstable, and I was the primary target and outlet for her rage. Having been the child recipient of a great deal of torment caused by my own mother, I was sensitive to the role I played in my kids' lives and did my best to be a good mom for them. Mothering them had been the most important role of my life, and the fact that I was causing them to hurt weighed heavily on me. I sometimes wondered if my heart could bear it.

That fear had been present for several days by the time April 8th, 2024, rolled around. It was the morning of the solar eclipse. My ex was getting ready for a work trip and would be viewing the celestial event from his seat on an airplane in the sky. Sensing my struggle, he asked again what was plaguing my mind.

“I’m so afraid,” I told him. “I am about to dismantle the only family I have ever known, the one I built with my body and with you. Being a mother is the most important thing I have ever done, and I can’t wrap my head around the sadness and grief I am about to cause them.”

He moved toward me and folded me into a warm embrace, resting his chin on my head. My ear landed on his heartbeat. It steadied me. We stayed like that for several minutes until the anxiety started to slowly release its grip on me, and my body began to calm.

“They will never stop loving you,” he told me softly. “They will be able to handle it because of how you have mothered them. They will be okay. I promise. And so will you.” My intuitive voice whispered, believe him.

In moments like this, I marveled at his kindness, the expression of love from somewhere so pure that it overshadowed his own pain. I wondered how many couples get to experience this kind of love. Can you know you have unconditional love without having the conditions that demonstrate it? For a long time, I wondered if I would ever experience such acceptance and unwavering support. I didn’t get it from my parents, the most likely place that unconditional love originates. And here I was, in the midst of the early stages of separation from my then-husband, and he was showing me complete, unconditional love.

My younger son came downstairs and sat at the kitchen table. I pulled away from my resting place on my husband's chest and walked over to the handmade dining table with grainy wood that my father-in-law had made when we built our home, intended to be a place where we could meet as a family. I sat down across from my darling boy, giving into gravity. Both my body and heart were weary. I examined his sweet face, the residue of his childhood almost imperceptible as I caught glimpses of the young man he was becoming. I could see the tiny freckles across his nose and the scar from when he needed stitches at age five. The swell of love I felt for him in that moment, like so many others, almost overwhelmed me. It felt bigger than my body could contain. I needed to trust that the love he had for me could endure this experience he was not yet aware he was about to have.

My husband left for his trip, my older son was away at school, and I dropped my younger son off at a friend's house. I would be viewing the eclipse by myself. Where we lived was in the path of totality, and people had been talking nonstop about this day for months. Yet, I had been distracted by my life and had given it hardly a thought, save for the brief moment of wisdom I had to purchase viewing glasses, which was less about being able to see what would take place in the sky and more about my attempts to protect my family in any way I could. My pull to take care of them was ever-present and strong, especially in light of the disruption that my evolution would cause them.

As midday arrived, I thought about how what I was doing was like an eclipse. By living in line with my truth and leaving my marriage, it seemed inevitable that I would be shadowing the brightness our family had enjoyed. It would bring darkness to our familial land. And I felt fear, weariness, and grief at the thought of it. I was sad that I had to be the cause of disruption and hardship to those I loved most. I was sad to realize I hadn’t known myself as well as I thought and that the challenges of my life had put such strong blinders on, keeping me from wholeness for so long. I was sad for the grief that had settled onto my husband’s face. And as the texts came in from friends near and far, asking about my plans for the eclipse and expressing excitement that I would view the most extreme version of this event, I felt the first wave of sadness that I would be alone on this day, a foreshadowing of life to come.

I have always loved solitude. Being alone didn’t scare me. I liked my own company. But I had never been alone in the way I was about to be—as a single person, divorced, and making my way in the world on my own. My mind had mostly been consumed by others who would feel the ripple effects of my revelation, not as gentle waves they could serenely float upon, but as the washing-machine effect of a raging ocean. My mind did not have much space at that point for considering my future. Yet, that day, I was acutely aware not just of being alone, but of the feeling of loneliness and awareness that there would be more moments like this to come.

The eclipse began that afternoon, as a slow swallowing of the sun by the shadow of the moon over a couple of hours until there was only a crescent of light left. I knew totality was about to begin, and I felt a pang in my heart in thinking that in a few months, totality would begin for our family when the boys would learn the news. I sat outside in our garden with my flimsy cardboard eclipse glasses sitting limply, almost pitifully, on my face, and waited to see what all the fuss was about.

What happened next was magical. The sun was wrapped completely in a blanket of the moon’s dark shadow, like a returned favor for the sun’s eternal reflected light that allows the moon to shine bright each night. The animals at the small farm up the road got eerily quiet, like someone had flipped off a switch to the soundtrack of the neighborhood. Our automatic garden lights turned on as the night sky settled into the afternoon as if it had taken a wrong turn and was confused about where it was supposed to be. Venus was brightly in view. It looked like dawn on the horizon, yet the sun was closer to its setting place in the sky, leaving my mind struggling to compute the combination of details I was viewing.

As I took all of this in, I felt frozen in place, awash in awe. It was breathtaking. I was keenly aware of the expanse of the universe and a sense of connection to others as I heard the yelps and hoots of excited neighbors off in the distance, all of us witnessing this extraordinary moment together. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I was deeply moved as I realized I wasn’t alone at all. My sadness about being alone had dissolved, and in its place, I felt calm, connected, and trusting that things would evolve as they should. The shadow of the moon was so beautiful, and it instantly shifted my sense of my own shadowing of my family. I had underestimated this moon and what it could do. Perhaps there would be beauty in my journey of coming out and all that entails. Perhaps my kids would see that beauty one day.

Just as quickly as night fell, the sun popped back out as a sliver, quickly brightening the sky. The curtain of wispy clouds shone again through the sun’s rays. Venus disappeared, but I could now hold in the light of day that it was still there, even if I couldn’t see it, just as I hoped I could hold onto our family’s love—that it would be there even if I couldn’t always see it. Even in my children’s expected grief and anger at the changes in store for their lives. I realized in that moment, that physical separation, and marital separation, were not enough to break the bonds of love that held us all together. Those were constant. Unconditional. And I needed to trade in my fear for trust and faith.

In the moments after totality, I was aware I was alone, but I no longer felt lonely. A deep calm had settled into my body, and hope took up residence where fear had been all day. I had a sense I would be okay, that we all would. It wasn’t an articulated thought, but rather a sense of grounded knowing and calm. I put my flimsy eclipse glasses back on and looked up to the sky in gratitude for the magical show it had just put on and for the lessons I received in those moments.

My son, C, met his best friend Birdie when they were six. They’d both spent a lot of time in the hospital dealing with childhood illnesses—illnesses that change the course of a young person’s life and the life of their family. Birdie had an undiagnosable illness that tortured her body for years longer than doctors predicted she would live. Her illness required frequent, sometimes lengthy, hospital admissions. C’s illness was a rare disease that wreaked havoc on all of his bodily systems. They shared a unique understanding of the version of childhood they were experiencing.

Birdie was developmentally delayed and tiny for her age. She was thin, with a distended belly housing her G-tube, which helped in the constant battle to keep her nourished. But all of those markers of her illness faded away when she smiled, revealing her pure and joyful essence. Her spirit seemed to elbow the symptoms and struggles aside, saying, Ignore all that; I am right HERE!

The first time they met, she expelled delightful giggles and squealed with joy as she asked him to play hide and seek. Though she had a form of blindness, she knew immediately where he was every time—something her mother said was unusual for her.

They each awaited their designated medical procedures that day, and both families noticed the natural ease between them. They fell into a rhythm, and an observable bond seemed to form instantly. “They must have formed a bond in another life,” Birdie’s mother said to me. We would later reveal to each other that we both got chills watching them play together that first day. Their connection felt otherworldly. It felt like we were witnessing something unique and special, as if they had known each other before this moment.

When I was in my mid-twenties, my spouse and I had our first “baby”—a golden retriever we got from an elderly woman who still had the spirit to want the exuberance of a red-headed puppy but a body that couldn’t keep up. The puppy needed to be rehomed, and she found a home with us. She came with the name Noodle.

We lived in San Diego at the time and brought our sweet girl to the dog beach most weekends. One time, shortly after we arrived at the strip of sand reserved for canines, Noodle went wild over another red retriever of similar size. The two couldn’t settle down, repeatedly nuzzling and tumbling over each other. We had never seen her behave this way. We imagined what she might have been thinking and feeling as we watched her insatiably engage with this other dog. After talking with the other dog’s owner and exchanging origin stories, we concluded they were from the same litter. What we were witnessing was, in fact, a reunion. I was in disbelief that these two pups had found each other among the hundreds of thousands of dogs in the area. I wasn’t sure I believed in the idea that things were meant to be, but moments like this certainly nudged me in that direction.

C and Birdie exhibited this same kind of energy when they met, as if they too were being reunited after separation—where from, we didn’t know, nor did it matter. Not all things are meant to be understood. Over the course of their friendship, her mother and I never questioned that these two were soulmates of the truest kind.

C and Birdie fell into an easy friendship, seeing each other in various domestic and clinical settings, despite whatever was happening in each of their health journeys. In the context of their friendship, I watched a tenderness emerge in my young son—one I hoped would stay with him as he grew up. He was patient, gentle, and good at communicating with her, despite her limitations. And he was brave.

He knew from the beginning that she would die, and yet he let himself get close to her and love her anyway. I wondered what I would have done if faced with that situation. Would I knowingly move towards something I knew would end in anguish? For him, it was so simple, so pure. There was nothing to debate or decide. He just embraced her, his heart vulnerably wide open, while I was the one more aware of what this would one day mean—for him and for her.

Birdie had many scares over the years of their friendship, many medical firsts, and miraculous moments. C had his own scary moments, riding the roller coaster of childhood illness, though his seat was lower on the scale of acuity than hers.

In every near-miss that Birdie had, her spirit prevailed, inspiring us all. But the inevitability of her circumstances eventually showed up when she was twelve, and her doctors delivered the news that her care needed to shift to focus on the quality, rather than quantity, of life. The best doctors in the world agreed there was nothing more to be done to treat her illness. In order to give her comfort, she needed a surgery that her doctors weren’t sure her body could survive, creating the worst type of conundrum. The surgery would take twenty hours, and the doctors would do things they typically didn’t do. We desperately hoped it would work and provide comfort, as it was clear her body was succumbing to her disease, overcome with dysfunction and infection. They did what they could, knowing, with all their efforts, it wouldn’t be enough to give her the life we all wanted for her, the life we selfishly wanted to continue for us.

Birdie made it through the surgery, but just a couple of months later, I got a call from her mother telling me that she had taken a sudden turn for the worse, and they believed her tiny body was failing. I sat at my kitchen island, my heart rate quickening with the news as I considered what to do. I asked if I brought C, would they allow him into the ICU to see her? Her mom got the approval from the doctors, so I canceled my day, rushed to C’s school to get him, and we processed the news as we drove the three and a half hours to be by Birdie’s side.

From the car, I called one of C’s doctors to see if they would move his upcoming appointment to that day since we’d already be there, and they graciously agreed. This is what the life of childhood illness entails: you see your dying friend and receive your own treatment at the same place on the same day.

By the time we arrived, Birdie hadn’t been awake in days. We knew it was possible she might never wake up. When we entered the room, C went to her side and laid his hand gently on her arm. Her face was swollen from the effects of medications, her skin cracking and peeling. Her breathing was almost imperceptible. Machines beeped all around her—the only clear indication that she was still with us.

Within minutes of his arrival at her bedside, she began to shift. And shortly after, with what seemed to be an immense amount of effort, she slightly opened her eyes and shifted her head to the left, where he had positioned himself next to her. It seemed his presence had called her spirit back to that room and back to her body once more. Birdie didn’t move anything else. Her eyes, despite their blindness, remained fixed on where C stood steadily, receiving the gift of her presence.

Her parents and I watched in awe, tears welling in our eyes, as these young friends once again spoke their special language that only they seemed to understand—transcending words and leaving us, the lucky witnesses, to believe in something greater than we could see or understand.

C asked if she wanted to play hide and seek, and Birdie started blinking her eyes. So, he proceeded to find spots to hide while her mom covered her with a blanket, and we took turns counting for her. Her eyes found him every time.

She stayed awake for about forty-five minutes, until it became apparent that she could not do it any longer. Her eyes closed softly, ending the final time we would ever see them open again. We knew it was time for us to go, and we knew it was also time for her to go too. C said his goodbye, understanding this would be the last time he would be with her. We left the room, which swelled with anticipatory grief, and made our way to the elevator as my hand rested on C’s back. My heart pulsed with pride and ached for the pain I knew he was about to experience in full.

Birdie had a resurgence for the next few weeks—a shock to her doctors and family. It didn’t change her prognosis, but it steadied her for a time, which, in turn, steadied all of us. The dark cloud on the horizon that had always been there paused its approach. But, of course, the pause expired, and the approach continued—this time, very quickly.

We received a call around 9 pm on a summer night. It was Birdie’s dad letting us know that the end was imminent. C was already in bed, but I knew he’d want to speak to her. He had shown his consistent willingness and desire to be in these sacred, raw moments with her, and I wanted to honor that.

I gently knocked on his bedroom door, awakening him. I sat on his bed, looking into his sleepy brown eyes, and told him that she was dying and the end was near. As expected, he asked if he could speak to her. He Facetimed her, as he had so many times during her hospital stays. And with her dad and multiple medical staff in the room, my sweet child spoke to his best friend in her last hours of life.

I watched him express his love for her out loud for all of us to hear. I watched him find his strength and step into what this moment asked of him. I watched him be the good friend to her that he had always been. He had known his job with her when they played hide and seek that first time. And in this final moment, as she went into hiding for the last time behind the veil of death, he knew his job as well. He was so courageous.

I thought about how so many people turn away from death—in thought, acknowledgment, and action. But he went right towards it. He stepped into the devastating scene without hesitation. He did it because his love was stronger than his fear. His bravery was bigger than his sadness. His friendship was more important than his comfort.

Birdie took her final breath the next morning, in her parents’ arms with her long-time doctor at the foot of her bed. Our hearts broke that day, leaving rough edges from the shards scraping at our chest walls, telling the story of sadness and loss that we didn’t yet have words for. We moved through the days that followed slowly, the weight of grief heavy on us.

C had known a love of a special kind—one I myself have not had in my own life. It was a privilege to witness it in these two children. What a gift.

In the aftermath of Birdie’s death, we sometimes sat in silent grief together as I held space for him. Other times, we talked about her, their friendship, and his feelings. He told me losing her was going to take a long time to process. He was right about that. But we agreed their bond would last forever

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A friend told me that if I wore a weighted vest when I went walking, it would make my core stronger. As a one-time endurance athlete sidelined by a career-ending injury, I was learning new ways to stay strong in my ever-changing body. Walking had become a daily activity, offering rhythmic, nervous system-soothing movement, time in nature, and a chance to get my heart rate up since I lived in a neighborhood full of steep hills. Always one with an affinity for challenge, fifteen pounds of metal pellets encased in bright purple neoprene draped over my shoulders seemed like a reasonable enough idea.

The first time I wore the vest, it was an unseasonably hot spring day. The air was closing in around me, reminding me of childhood days in the steamy farmlands of Pennsylvania. The days were lengthening, and the green on and around the trees that bookended the dirt road was emerging in vibrant hues saved for these few weeks of annual renewal. It was evening, and the sun shone bright but lower in the sky, warming my cheeks as I set out on the gravel roads by my house.

Lately, I had been walking about an hour most days. Some days, it was a slow, tired stroll matching the fatigue that had settled deep into my bones of late, my weary heart being dragged up and over one hill, only to find another waiting on the other side. Other days, it was a fast clip, my strides twice as long as usual, as the sweat rolled down from my head, wetting my hair and forming a growing ring around the neck of my shirt. The visible signs of exertion were satisfying.

I had turned to walking eight months earlier when I realized, at forty-four years old, that I was gay. As a woman married for twenty-two years and the mother of two teenage boys, this revelation was inconvenient at best and devastating to life as my family knew it at worst. I needed an outlet to support me through this process. It needed to be strength-building, ideally offering a metaphorical gift to my stressed life. Running was no longer an option, so I found myself most evenings lacing up my demoted running shoes and taking my fear, guilt, and longing out on the road.

In the beginning, the walking was to help me find my breath, something I seemed to be losing frequently as panic about my mid-life realization and its impacts on my family set in. Eventually, I shared my news with my husband, and he and his grief started to join me on my walks. It was winter then, and the sky was dark by 5 p.m. We would set out under the ink-black sky, trusting our feet to find the way. Sometimes we were blanketed by the stars, if we were lucky. I used to imagine they were there to let the light in during a time that felt dark and uncertain, and I would silently thank them for that.

We walked to review our marriage and consider our future. We talked about life, love, and the meaning of it all. Sometimes, we naturally fell into matching paces, reflecting decades spent sharing a life. Silence fell upon us when the words to understand this kind of life change wouldn’t come. We walked regardless of snow, rain, or the amount of time available. We needed to move to be able to be still. We needed to revert to the ease of conversation that comes when eye contact is not required, when the truth is hard to look at too closely.

Sometimes we cried, sometimes we laughed. But we never fought. I still can’t believe it, but we didn’t. Somehow, all of our years of the expected ups and downs of marriage, the repetitive arguments about the same two or three things, had simply dissipated. It was as if, in the threat of marital death, our perspective had shifted subtly but profoundly, and our priorities had become clarified.

We had shifted in our way of being together about five years before, when struggle and discontent had become too deep and lasted too long. We understood that change would be essential to carry on together. We dug deep to be our best selves and to more fully show up for our relationship. We learned a new shared language and took off the blindfolds that had kept us from really seeing one another. In its place, we settled into a deep, peaceful acceptance of ourselves and each other. Now, in the midst of my revelation and the shifting of our family structure, we marveled at how all of the work we had done was the foundation for the current context we found ourselves in. We were now learning to accept what life was offering us, whether it matched our planned order of things or not. We understood that ‘together forever’ is an idea, one that would not be ours to realize. We were audacious enough to dream that we could make this version beautiful too.

It was during those walks that we stepped into our vulnerability and witnessed each other in full. It was a show-and-tell of a sacred kind, the type that left us feeling known and validated. We had never talked so openly and heard each other so well. It was as if all the work we had done up until this point—cleaning out our histories, softening our edges, and excavating our hearts, minds, and souls—had prepared us for this. We walked so we could learn how to be where we were and surrender to whatever was up ahead. We walked to reclaim ourselves as individuals and to solidify ourselves as a family. We began to flirt with the idea that ‘together forever’ might be ours after all, just in a very different form—as an evolving family, creating our own terms to live by. We walked ourselves home, to the house we designed and built. We walked ourselves home to our boys and our modern family. And I imagined I was walking home to myself.

The week before we told the boys about my revelation, I felt conflicted about the extra weight I was lugging up the steepest hill on my solo walk that day. I was wearing my weighted vest, but the reality was that it was nothing compared to the weight I was carrying around internally. I was in a state of vacillation between terror and hope, grief and peace. I could not find firm footing, and my mind was taking brief vacations in the land of mild dissociation, an attempt to protect myself from the scary unknown. My mind had become a fiction writer—the award-winning kind—telling tales of catastrophe and the demise of my family, my children’s innocence, and my very own self. And here I was, adding weight, on purpose, to this inflection point in my life. I was in the deep end of difficulty, and I chose to add to it. Despite my ambivalence, I tightened the straps of my vest and picked up the pace.

This purple vest, with its promise of a strong core, had lured me. Initially, it was for muscle building. But I wondered if it might be about something else—something more symbolic. I needed my core to be strong so my heart could be soft. I needed my core to be strong so I could stand tall and tell the world who I was, so I could bear the pain of hurting my kids while boldly believing they would be okay. I needed this weight to help me shed a much heavier weight that I had carried my whole life.

That silly, ugly, bright purple vest became the symbol of what I was willing to carry if I believed it would help me get where I needed to go. If I believed I could stop moving towards something and actually find stillness in myself. I walked clad in that vest for months.

The first walk I took after we told the boys and our community of friends that I was gay and that we were separating, I picked up the heavy vest—by now an action of habit—about to put it on when something in me led me to pause. I realized with clarity that I didn’t need the weight that day. My core was strong, and my heart was soft. I was strong enough to tell my kids, and they loved me still. What I now needed was to walk freely—free from my weighted vest and free from the weight of my fears, conformity, and suppression. I needed only to carry myself in the world as I was, no more and no less. I dropped the weight of that vest in the corner of the garage, where it collects dust to this day. I set out with my old running shoes, feeling light and free, almost weightless, carrying only my hope for the life I was about to discover

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This is E.’s Substack.

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