We were standing at his kitchen island after having lunch together at a local Thai restaurant. I paused, weighing whether or not to say the words. And then, I just said it:

“Welcome to life as a woman.”

He paused, looking at me with his large eyes in his round face.

“You know,” he said, “You’re right. You’re mom put up with it, too, and she was a good model for you in how to handle it.”

And he was right. Many times throughout her life, my mother had limits set for her by others. The bosses who told her she wanted too much out of a job. The guy who told her she would never get her insurance certifications, that she couldn’t do it. The other guy who told her the local business association didn’t accept women members, and then told her she was divisive when she created a business group for women.

But she never let other people’s limits stifle her aspirations. She’d get angry, for sure. But then she’d move on, move forward. Let them have their opinions and just get on with it. As much as she told me to shake it off and rub it up, she told herself the very same thing.

Recently, I got on a romance reading jag. Until a few years ago, I never read romance as a genre. But I heard on who said just try contemporary romance. So, I did, and I’ve been hooked ever since. It was never really a stretch—I’ve always loved rom-com movies. “When Harry Met Sally” is one of my all-time favorites. When it comes to books, though, I just never gravitated toward the bodice-rippers. But I do love love.

I prefer romances that feature women who are doing their best to keep moving forward in the face of life’s challenges. In SUMMER ROMANCE by , Ali Morris is emerging from a season of grief from the loss of her mother and a broken marriage that suffocated some of the best parts of herself. Yet, Ali is still taking care of her kids, running her household, and trying to get a business off the ground.

In THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS by , Olive Smith is a biology Ph.D. student, one of few women in a male dominated world. No matter how tired she is, how frustrating the science becomes, or how confusing her relationship with the grumpy Adam Carlsen, Olive keeps striving.

These women are smart and hardworking. They may wallow a bit, but then they pull themselves up and keep going. They are unapologetically themselves.

Even when love upends their lives, what do they do? They keep going.

Ali Morris and Olive Smith persist.

My mother would’ve loved them, too.

My dad called the other day. He’d been thinking about what I’d said to him about life as a woman, and my mother, and me.

I told him that going through a lay-off hasn’t been easy. Even though I’ve been employed in a good job for six months now, every day the self-doubt rears up.

Can I still do this?

Do I know what I’m doing?

Can I make a whole new set of friends?

Am I even good at this?

Honestly, these are the kinds of thoughts that run through your head after someone has told you—Nope, we don’t want you here anymore.

I told my dad that my mother’s voice is in my ear, every day, telling me to keep going, that I can do it, to just be myself, and that I’m in it now anyway and really have no choice but to keep moving forward and doing my best.

I knew how lucky I was to have her when she was alive, and I’m grateful for her now. Because even though she’s been gone almost ten years, her voice is still strong, reminding me how to persist.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

On My Shelf
I love Ali Morris and Olive Smith, and I love their beaus who treat them as the queens they are. I’m especially partial to who writes women protagonists who are trying to make a go of it in their lives, despite what they’ve been through. I’ve only read one , but I’m excited to read more.

SUMMER ROMANCE and THE LOVE HYPOTHESIS in conversation with:

The Game Changer by Rachel Reid—This is the first book in the series that inspired the “Heated Rivalry” series on HBO

Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry—This has a similar “grumpy” love interest vibe as The Love Hypothesis

It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan

This Time Next Summer by Annabel Monaghan

That’s happening on the book I’m tapping out, but a weird thing has happened. While wandering the cobblestone streets and alleys of Quebec City last weekend with my husband to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary—I know you’re wondering, ‘How old can she possibly be!’—my brain also wandered into a totally different story. And now those characters are beating down the doors in my head, demanding to be heard! I’ve been madly scribbling in my journal and typing in a doc, just to catch this book—because this is definitely another book—as it flies at me.

I mean, it’s to the point where, between writing for my day job and all of this other writing, my hands ache at the end of the day. I can’t let these stories escape. If I don’t get the characters, scene ideas, scraps of dialog down, they’ll be gone. Every writer’s last word: ‘I don’t need to write it down. I’ll remember.’ And we never do. I’m not falling for it, and Future Judy is going to thank me, big time.

And I have to say, this is so much fun! Despite the aching hands, it’s the most fun I’ve had with my writing in a long time. I’m pretty much giddy with it.

And no one really understands. No one. So, sorry—this is my post. You have to hear about it.

Let me just say, I am not this type of writer—dare I say, novelist?

I write, all the time. I’m a firm believer that writing happens when I write. I’m a writer because I put my butt in the chair and do it. I’ve probably said this before, but I’m not a fan of the word ‘talent.’ I don’t know what that means. But I know what it is to work at my writing, to keep learning, to show up for my practice, to write and revise, and revise again and again and again.

I do not typically have characters beating down the doors in my head. I tell one story. It takes a long time. And by the end, I am hoping—trying—to cultivate a new story to work on next.

Some of you know that I’ve recently completed a novel about a ballerina who has so much to figure out about her life and herself, so much physical and emotional healing to do. It’s taken me years (more than I want to admit) to write. It’s taken so many revisions (more than I want to admit) to get to this current state. There were many times I thought, ‘What am I doing? Do I even know?’ And many times I thought, ‘Whatever happens with this book, it’s already given me so much.’

In this last revision, multiple threads came together and made the tapestry work. My Beta Readers are coming back to me with—‘Wow. Yes. This is now A BOOK.” And I am so thrilled, because I feel the same way. I am also terrified. Because the next phase is sending it out, to mostly be rejected.

I also recently listened to Amy Poehler’s interview with Carol Burnett on Poehler’s podcast, Good Hang. Burnett told the story about getting her first long-term role on Broadway—Once Upon a Mattress—which involved her getting rejected for a part in something else (who cares what that was!). Poehler made a comment that stayed with me: Rejection is God’s protection. I don’t know from God, but the Universe…I’m going to hold tight to that when I start the query process.

I’ve heard writers who talk about always having ideas come to them from anywhere and everywhere—the news, their kids, overheard conversations, pop songs—who always have characters talking to them in their heads. I’ve never been that kind of writer and, frankly, have always been a little jealous of that ability to just pluck ideas out of the ether. ‘Lucky you,’ I thought. ‘Lucky, lucky you.’

I’d written quite a bit of a shitty first draft of another novel while my ballerina book rested prior to this last revision. Writing can be a lot like baking that way—you mix all the ingredients together, work the dough, beat it up a bit, and then let it rest. And then, coming back from this revision, which I did mostly during my brief period of unemployment, other characters started yelling at me.

‘Don’t go back to that other story,’ they said. ‘You know something’s not working quite right. Let it sit until you figure it out. Because we have got a story for you!’

And these new characters were so right—they have a great story, and it tickles me every day I sit down to spend time with them on the page. That other novel did have problems that needed fixing. Somehow, working on the new piece allowed my brain to untangle those issues and weave a much cleaner tapestry, one that makes logical sense emotionally, which will help drive the external plot and make a much more satisfying story when I go back to it.

Then we go to Quebec and a whole new set of characters walks in. ‘Hey—what about us? We have things to say and do!’ Do they ever. These characters are deep and loving, but also so, so funny and charming. I already love them and their world and their story arcs, and all I have are notes on the page, scraps of what’s to come. I mean, I started tearing up at just the notes for the ending of this one!

It’s a surreal experience after spending so long writing an emotional tangle of a book. All I can figure is that writing my ballerina story and fortifying my MFA in creative writing with my healthy addiction to writing craft books and Amherst Writers & Artists writing practice has activated something new in my brain. It’s as if something has shaken loose and now my brain recognizes, ‘Yes, this is how we do this. This is how we put stories together.’

Whatever it is, I’m loving it. After years of wrestling the last book into existence, writing is giving me one of the best gifts: pleasure.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

It’s not just the massive transformational come-back story of a crumbling Chicago sandwich shop, but the characters and how each has a specific arc of transformation. How the restaurant is used as a crucible for a story about crippling trauma, grief, and loss. The writing—my god, the writing! The tension in each episode and how the writers somehow sustain it, so taut, a bow about to snap. It’s not a show for relaxing and unwinding. In fact, we’d often have to stop after one episode and then switch to something lighter (thank you, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and What We Do in the Shadows).

I also love it when my own worlds collide in a story I love—my passion for writing and storytelling and my day-job experience of building, leading, and being a part of teams. I found this happening a lot with Ted Lasso (another favorite for similar and different reasons) and The Bear. Each offers lessons in how to create teams that not only work, but that people want to be part of. In Ted, the path is a bit more direct. In The Bear, we’re never sure if we’re going to make it—and what a thrill when we do!

This last season of The Bear presented a real “a-ha” moment for me when the rag-tag team led by incredible chefs finally crosses a threshold into greatness. The crossing is fraught, as usual for The Bear, but sprinkled throughout are moments of recognition that this group has something special. More than one character remarks that the restaurant has something different that will fuel its success—the staff is more than a team; they’re a family.

My chest swelled with validation in this moment. In my past work life, in a senior team meeting, a fellow senior leader commented that our division was “a family.” The boss vehemently contradicted them, saying we weren’t a family, we were a team, because teams will face problems families won’t. It was a tense moment, and months later, when I caught up with that fellow senior leader, we each felt bruised by it.

And even now, I have thoughts. Teams face problems that families won’t?

Hmmm.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I’d been on plenty of teams—in that same organization—that didn’t deal with problems. And I’ve been on teams that do. And I know there’s a whole debate out there about whether we should treat our coworkers as family or as coworkers, but that’s not even the real issue. The real issue is so much more nuanced.

I keep returning to Brene Brown and her opening to Dare to Lead, a book I read with previous teams to help us understand each other better and therefore become more cohesive and effective as a group and as individual contributors. Brene Brown’s management missive in the introduction of that book is simply this: People, people, people, people, people.

Her point? Organizations and their leaders must make space for humanity in the workplace, for compassion, for relationships. We ask for—sometimes even demand—trust, but then we also must make space and create opportunities for trust to take root and grow. Leaders cannot ask people to contribute their opinions in meetings—because their thoughts and opinions are valued—and then shut people down for sharing them.

We can’t ask people to bring their all to work—and at the same time ask them to check part of themselves at the door.

And if you’re doing that, I wish you luck. If we don’t make room for humanity at work, trust erodes, more interpersonal problems ensue, and people feel less empowered to solve problems themselves. Fear and disillusionment creep in, and they stop contributing their expertise and ideas.

Do families always face problems head on? No. But to say that teams do is a bit of a myth.

Trust is the magic element, the alchemy that turns a group of people into more than the sum of its parts. When you work with people who have your back—even if spending extra time with them outside of work is the last thing you’d ever want to do—you are part of something more.

When you can listen to another opinion—really listen—and share yours in a place of safety—you are part of something more.

When you can lead by bringing people in and lifting them up—instead of shutting them out and shutting them down—you are part of something more.

I don’t know if it’s a family, but it’s more than a team.

Coworkers don’t need to be best friends—or even friends at all. But when coworkers can bring their whole selves to their work, can trust and be trusted, it can transform a team and a workplace. It takes the commitment and work of a caring leader. But it works. I know—I’ve seen it happen.

And just like The Bear, it will earn you star after star after star.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

P.S. Shows I love that are mentioned in this post—what this list says about me, I’m not entirely sure! 😂

The Bear
Ted Lasso
Bob’s Burgers
The Handmaid’s Tale
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
What We Do in the Shadows

The bold blue and yellow sign stood out unapologetically off the side of one of the first buildings we encountered at Den Gamble By, or The Old Town, an open air/living history museum in Aarhus, Denmark. The museum depicts daily life in Denmark across an astounding time period—1600s through 2014—with original structures, furnished living spaces, and demonstrations.

Summer is a time of vacations and adventuring, and one summer several years ago we spent two weeks traveling around Denmark. My husband and I knew about Den Gamble By from a previous trip with my family—a cruise through the Baltic with more than a dozen stops along the way. The Denmark stop was Aarhus and given our experience working at a living history museum, we felt compelled to visit the Danish version.

And loved it.

So, when planning this trip, we had to include Aarhus—for a variety of reasons, including the modern art museum ARoS and its famous rainbow panorama. Not to mention seriously amazing modern art.

Maybe it was experiencing Den Gamble By with a teenager or with our older brains, but this time the visit struck us differently, harder. We felt like time travelers and, the closer we came to contemporary times, voyeurs. For example, we stopped at an apartment depicting the life of a 2014 family, with two moms and three teenage kids. We walked right into this nice, modern apartment, the kids’ backpacks and jackets hanging by the door. We pulled open the drawers in the kitchen to find silverware in its place, opened the refrigerator and cabinets to find just what you’d think would be in a well-appointed kitchen. Clothes in their closets and drawers.

The family is real. They speak on a video about their lives and work and school. The apartment is a replica recreated in a real building rescued from demolition somewhere in Denmark.

The whole museum is like this: rescued buildings with recreated spaces informed by the people who lived and worked in them or places very similar to them. The spaces representing the 1970s and 1980s stick out in my memory the most:

- The gynecologist’s office, complete with giant ashtrays in every room—even the examination room.

- The pre-school, housed in neighborhood apartments, that looked a lot like the pre-school I attended.

- The television shop with the repair room in the back.

- The hip jazz bar that smelled like stale beer and cigarettes.

The apartments from this era also remain with me:

- One belonged to a blind man that had a shower in the kitchen. A recording played of him talking about living there and how the shower had always been in the kitchen.

- A single mother and her young son lived in another. The son consulted on how the furnishings to ensure its accuracy.

- Another belonged to a single woman who’d been a teacher and lived alone her whole life. Audio played of a colleague talking about her and the type of person she was.

- There was a student commune with their laundry hanging throughout the apartment and music playing from the record player.

- Another apartment housed a group of Turkish migrant workers.

It was a little freaky. Especially in the apartments. My husband kept feeling like we were breaking into people’s real homes—that’s how well done these spaces were recreated. It felt like the blind man or the single mom or one of the students in the commune was about to walk in from another room at any moment and ask us what the hell we were doing there. In the pre-school, my son asked, “What happened here?” thinking we were in a village that had been preserved after some apocalyptic disaster. It didn’t help that he had started a long post-apocalyptic phase at the time.

There is nothing remarkable about these people whose homes had been recreated or their lives. They didn’t create or invent anything special or win any awards. But the way their lives are documented in this museum is remarkable. It gives deeper meaning to the ordinary lives people lead. As someone who once worked in a living history museum demonstrating everyday life in bygone times, I appreciated the effort put into recording how people live now, what’s important to us now, rather than leaving that to future generations to try to piece together from the scraps we leave behind. Will that be harder or easier in a digital age? I don’t know.

One of the fiction-writing tips I’ve come across time and again, and that I rely on, is to use real details from your life in your work. I do this, because it’s honestly easier to pluck details from my life than to make up every single thing. The effect is deeper meaning and authenticity. Because these details mean something to me and are real, they come across differently on the page, have deeper meaning for the reader, and feel firmly rooted in the world of the story. Simply put, real details create a feeling of reality when making up a world from nothing.

My first novel is a grandmother-mother-daughter story—none of it autobiographical (although to an extent all fiction is autobiography). I had to make this clear to my mother when she read the manuscript for the first time, because I’d imbued it with many real details that she would be sure to recognize. The mother in the story, for example, sewed her daughter’s clothes, which my mom had done for me. The daughter remembers, not so fondly, the bathing suit her mother made for her once, and how it sagged and bagged in all the wrong places.

I was nervous about my mom reading the manuscript, because the mother is…well, not the best. And I didn’t want my mom to think that was a reflection on her, because it wasn’t. Yet, there were real details from my life, our shared life, in there.

Her reaction was the best I could’ve asked for. She said, “How did you ever come up with these people?”

The. Best. Response. Ever.

When I told her how nervous I’d been and why, and how relieved I was that she didn’t think the mother and family I’d created was a reflection on her, she replied, “The bathing suit I made wasn’t saggy.”

I had to chuckle at that.

My mom’s reaction showed that the technique works. The world I created in this story became vivid and real for my mother—and differentiated from hers—because of these real details. Weird, right? But effective.

I may start calling this the Den Gamble By Effect.

At Den Gamble By, it was so much fun to walk into a record shop or a television store, or walk by the Blockbuster Video and remember when. Remember when we bought records? Remember when we bought TVs at a store—and had them repaired? Remember the video rental place in town?

It’s not just nostalgia—although nostalgia can be better than dopamine sometimes.

It’s about meaning—how the ordinary becomes meaningful because it was part of someone’s life.

Maybe that’s why places like this matter. They show us that history isn’t made only by kings and presidents and celebrities. I think about this every time I go to clean out a drawer, a box, a closet (I can hear someone in my house right now asking, ‘when is that exactly?’—it happens!) and wonder, if I throw away all the papers, all the notes and letters, all the clippings and cards and useless trinkets, how will future generations of our family know who we were? Not just our names, the birth and death dates, the family relationships, but how we lived and why it mattered.

Every day, history is made by ordinary people living ordinary lives. It’s in the actions we take, the stories we tell, the details we preserve. We make meaning every day, whether it ends up in a museum, recorded on the pages of a journal, planted in a garden, or scratched in the margins of a cookbook.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

Transitions, am I right?

My friends who’ve been through it tell me it’s a frightening phase, teaching these kids how to drive. I have no illusions. I remember what it was like when I learned. I was terrified, and so was my mother. The way she clutched her chest with one hand and white-knuckled that hand grip above the door was a clue. Do they make that handgrip just for teenage driving lessons?

My mother was an insurance agent, so she knew all the statistics about teen drivers. This meant that when I finally did get my license (on the first try and right on time at age sixteen and one half), my curfew was 10:30 pm. Because she’d come across a statistic that said car accidents among teenagers went up after 10:30 pm.

I went to a regional high school. My friends were scattered among four towns. Some lived thirty minutes away. That meant sometimes, I was leaving a friend’s house before 10 pm to get home in time. I know that doesn’t sound like much of a hardship, but to a teenager, it was super lame and annoying.

When I started driving myself to the dance studio, which was in a marginally sketchy part of town at night, she constantly reminded me to walk to my car with someone else and have my keys in my hand. I’m pretty sure she taught me to hold a key between my fingers, so it could be used as a weapon in a pinch.

As an insurance pro, my mom heard about car and home accidents all the time. Her job wasn’t just helping people process claims, it was giving them a compassionate ear when they needed it. She knew how easily an ordinary day could become your worst, in an instant, because of a fender bender, kitchen fire, a break-in, or flooded basement. So, she was all about safety, although sometimes it came out a little…funny. I remember the summer after my first year of college, my roommate invited me to visit her in New Jersey and spend a week with her family at the shore. As I was leaving for the train, my mother told me a recent news story she’d heard about a young woman who got on a train to visit a friend and turned up murdered. I was flummoxed and a little horrified. But this was meant as instruction. She just wanted me to be safe, she said.

A summer or two after my husband and I got married, we decided to buy bikes. My mother advised us to get those orange flags for the back. You know the ones—the neon orange triangles atop long sticks that people put on little kids’ bikes so cars can see them. We were in our mid-to-late twenties at this point. My husband just looked at her and said, “No.”

She was one of those moms who insisted on waiting twenty minutes after eating before going into the water at the lake. When my parents started boating seriously, she was the one who took the navigation course and made sure the life jackets were handy when we went out. She definitely was not a helicopter parent. There was plenty I was left to figure out on my own when I was growing up. But there were also plenty of times she wanted to be sure I was safe.

I have a habit that some people in my house find a bit annoying.

Someone stubs a toe, drops a glass, trips up the stairs, and I say, “Be careful!”

I say it out of care and concern. But some—let’s just call them “people”—get annoyed because I say it after the incident has happened. Well, if I could see the future, I’d say it before.

I’m known for pointing out, with attitude, when kids ride their bikes through town without helmets or aren’t following the rules of the road (wheels go with wheels!). I’ve also been known for noting people who drive too fast or don’t stop fully at stop signs. I remind people to wear safety glasses when they’re doing home DIY projects, to hydrate when we’re going through a heat wave, and yes, to drive carefully.

All of this has earned me the title Safety Officer Judy.

Every time I make one of these comments, I know it’s coming. The sly smile and, “Safety Office Judy is on the case!”

I know I sound just like my mother when I say these things. But I also can’t help it. I’ve decided it’s best just to own it.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about legacy and inheritance, what is handed down when and what it means. Estates are one kind of inheritance. They can get so complicated so fast. They can break families apart. I’ve seen it happen. I bet you may have, too.

Physical inheritances may be what we think of most—who takes after whom. I take after my mother, but I also have my father’s height and broad shoulders and some of the roundness of his face. Our son is a blend of my husband and I. Sometimes he looks more like me. Often, I see my husband’s face looking back at me, especially in certain expressions.

But there’s another kind of inheritance, the unseen kind that passes from one generation to the next. My inheritance from my mother includes many of the treasures I’ve written about here—sewing, knitting, and handcrafts skills, music and dance, travel. It also includes lessons like how to dress professionally and appropriately for any occasion and how to shop for quality clothes on a budget. Her legacy includes how to persevere when life is difficult, how to pull myself out of the suck and keep moving forward. It’s Safety Officer Judy and the murder mystery addict.

Everything she—and my dad—taught me when I was kid has made me the person I am now. Her inheritance didn’t pass to me when she died. I’ve been carrying it all along.

I haven’t gotten in the car with my son behind the wheel yet. He’s in that teenage phase where Mom can’t tell him anything, and so it’s better for Dad to take these early lessons. But that day will come, and I’m certain I’ll white-knuckle it, just like my mother did.

And I’m certain Safety Officer Judy will have a lot to say.

I can only hope that my son will look back years from now—just as I have done with my own parents—and realize he was receiving his inheritance, too.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

There were at least one hundred of these projects presented on good old cardboard trifold backboards in the school cafeteria, bringing me back to science fair days, addressing issues ranging from cleaning up plastics in the ocean to better funding for youth sports to fixing the roads in one of the district’s towns. There were about ten projects on the roads in this town—clearly there’s a problem.

Our son’s project was on keeping the local bee population healthy, which I suspect was inspired by his dad, who kept bees for a while in the past. School is a battle with this kid. For someone who is a big advocate for education, I hate school, because during the school year it becomes the center of our relationship—all we do is fight about school. So, it made us proud to see him speak so easily and well when he presented his work to the teacher judging his work and other adults and peers who came to view his project. He’s so good at presenting himself and public speaking—weirdly good at it for a sixteen-year-old.

Our son’s best buddy’s project was on creating third spaces for teens in one of the district towns. ‘Third space’ is another way of saying hang-out spot. He asked what we did when we were his age and we weren’t in school. Where did we go to just be together?

Our answer: Outside.

My husband and I came of age in the 1980s. I was fortunate enough to grow up in a neighborhood that was sort of self-contained—not gated, but it was its own spot and only residential. People drove slowly down the roads and watched for kids, because we were everywhere. There was a lake in the neighborhood, but it wasn’t your typical lake community. Only one or two houses were actually on the water, and across the lake was a state park and campground. We all shared the lake and its two beaches—the Big Beach and Little Beach. You can guess how they got their names.

We all roamed the neighborhood. In the summer, we went to the lake, and that’s where I remember parents being around the most. Water is dangerous, and adult eyes were on us. But the rest of the time—we rode our bikes everywhere, including over to the state park, which connected to our neighborhood by an access road with an awesome hill and a path along the water from the Little Beach. We played in the woods behind our houses, woods that looked prehistoric, with huge, uprooted pines and giant ferns. I remember feeling like we could get lost in those woods. But now, when I visit my childhood house, I realize the houses on the next street were right there. We were practically playing in other people’s backyards.

In the winter, we met up to cross-country ski around the neighborhood and state park. We sledded down the hills, and we went ice skating often with no adult supervision. There’s a small pond at the bottom of the hill where I lived that was our preferred after-school skating spot. It’s the same pond where we caught crayfish in the summer and picked black raspberries from enormous briar bushes.

Third spaces were a friend’s bedroom where we gossiped, listened to music, played cards. Third spaces were a friend’s basement hangout room, where we watched movies and held birthday dance parties.

When you live in a rural area, you don’t always have access to a lot. But I will say, at least we had access to movie theaters—that we could afford. Not so anymore.

I also had the dance studio as a third space. It was an organized activity, but there was also a lot of social time, a place to just be.

This is what it was like to come of age in the 1980s. Every space was a third space for us in an era of hands-off, shake-it-off, rub-it-up parenting. I’ve said this before—my parents were great. They were very good to me, always. But they weren’t immune to this parenting style. There are reasons I muscle through pain, that I work instead of taking a sick day when I don’t feel well. It took me years to stop ignoring stress until it bloomed into a migraine. It’s taken even longer to realize that I may have a warped sense of pain—that what I call livable is actually not livable at all and should perhaps be addressed by a medical professional.

My husband and I recently rewatched the documentary “Class Action Park,” which is about an amusement and water park in Vernon Township, New Jersey, in the 1980s. When I looked up the film to see how best to describe it, this sentence stood out: “The title is based on one of the popular nicknames by parkgoers, alongside ‘Traction Park’ and ‘Accident Park.’” It’s worth the watch. It’s shocking and funny—until it’s not—and there’s something about it that captures the essence of what it was to be a child of the 80s. The fun of it all, but also the undercurrent of recklessness that could take a bad turn at any moment.

I won’t give anything away in case you haven’t seen it, or want to rewatch it, but toward the end, one of the commentators who went to the park as a kid, talks about being Gen X and growing up with hands-off parents and says something to the effect that it’s great that we grew up that way, and also really messed up that we grew up that way.

Those words landed in my chest. Because it was great that we grew up that way—able to roam and get into trouble and out of it on our own. (For the record, I never got into trouble.) We learned a lot. And generally—I’ve said this before, too—I believe my Gen X upbringing has served me well. If the zombie apocalypse happens, I have a feeling it’s the Gen Xers who’ll be getting stuff done. And, it was messed up that we grew up that way. Not everything can be made better by rubbing it up. Not everything can be simply shaken off.

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I keep circling back to those words at the end of “Class Action Park,” and now that question from my son’s friend.

Where did you go when you were kids?

Outside.

The answer sounds so simple. But it’s also complicated. Our third spaces weren’t spaces at all. They were the woods and frozen ponds and the neighborhood traversed on our bikes. We had freedom, but there was always that undercurrent of recklessness and danger. Riding through the state park, sometimes alone, I would think, “Something bad could happen to me here.”

Freedom and danger are often two sides of the same coin. It’s what I worry most about as a mom. As my son gets older and gains more and more freedom—like driving (I may not survive this right of passage)—I hope he makes good choices and stays safe. But safety isn’t always in our control, is it? Anything can happen.

I don’t think my son and his friends need the childhood we had. And I don’t think they need Helicopter Parenting either, hovering over them, watching their every move, protecting them from every possible danger. Or are we on Snowplow Parenting now, pushing all problems out of their way so they never have a bad experience—until they are smacked in the face with them as adults, of course, and then have no idea what to do. These are terrible options, too.

There has to be another way, a place where kids can grow and build resiliency and enjoy each other’s company with less recklessness and danger. In fact, some boredom for our kids would be terrific. When boredom arrives, so do imagination and invention. I worry what we’re losing in a generation that doesn’t know how to be bored, how to just sit on the grass and do nothing.

The civics night at my son’s school was full of imagination and invention. Teenagers asking questions: can we eliminate digital devices in schools, address teen mental health issues, provide financial and arts education, save the bees, and fix those darn roads? These kids, mine included, were asking how we can make the world better.

A great civics lesson.

Still, I come back to:

Where did you go when you were kids?

Maybe one thing we can change for the next generation is to give them a space to be.

Here’s to just being.

Now go shake it off!

Judy

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Two other dancers from our studio—favorites, really—were performing in our same category. They danced to “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” the dramatic showstopper from Dream Girls. Everyone knows the line—“And you, and you, and you—you’re gonna love me!” The dance was showstopping, too, and dramatic, and played to the strengths of their petit powerful bodies. From the dressing room, we could hear the audience applauding and cheering.

When they finished and returned, breathless and buoyant, to the dressing room, people came back to congratulate them. “You brought down the house!” they said.

I thought, “That’s it. They’ve won our category.”

My friend and I danced to Linda Ronstadt’s “Goodbye My Friend,” a slower, softer, more lyrical song, that matched our taller, longer bodies. I wouldn’t say we were favorites at the dance studio, but we held our own in the competitive group. We took the stage that night in our purple costumes, the neck and back line trimmed with red chiffon by my mother. The chiffon trailed down the back of our circle skirts, making a pleasing swirl effect when we turned and the skirts flared.

We put the other two girls from our studio out of our minds. I figured they’d won and just danced our own dance. It was the best we ever danced together. I knew it in that moment, and I still remember how good it felt.

This dance competition wasn’t the last situation I would think, “That’s it. They’ve won.”

My five-year college reunion was the last one I attended—I really should do something about that! I met up with a handful of my college friends. We stood around comparing notes: one friend was in law school, one in medical school, one working in New York City, and I was married, just bought a house, and working at a university. Each of us looked at the other and said, “God—your life is so together!”

And I thought, “My life? No, my life is NOT together. I am not doing anything compared to these women.” After that reunion, I went home and kept building my life. Because, what else do you do?

Fast forward ten years or so, I have my MFA, I’m writing, trying to publish, and nothing is happening. And I told myself, “That’s it. Writing must not be for me. Writing is for other people.” I stopped for a while, especially because it was hard to find time to write after I had my son. But I came back to it, because if you’re a writer, you write. The process became its own reward.

Jump to about six months ago, when I am laid off after 17 years with an organization where I’ve been successful and have a good reputation. I wondered about my expertise, my value, my abilities. The stories you tell yourself when you take this kind of hit…After a couple of tough weeks, I kept moving forward. I applied for jobs, made connections—stayed connected to friends and colleagues—and now I’m in a new position, in a new organization, and loving it.

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But here’s what I learned way back when that night at that dance competition, and what I keep learning again and again: the applause for someone else isn’t my ending. I keep dancing toward my own ending anyway.

Because we won that dance competition. The other duo may have earned loud cheers and applause for their showy drama, but my friend and I earned the high marks for our precision and synchronization. We danced not only with emotion that night, but also in perfect unison and with technical exactness. Even one of our teachers said she’d never seen us dance that way before. And I’ll admit there was satisfaction in beating the favorite girls, but there was more in knowing we’d danced our very best.

If I’d decided the story was over when I heard the applause for the other duo, we never would have earned our ending.

My writing life did not end. I’ve completed another draft of my novel-in-progress that I’m pretty chuffed about. I’m a certified Amherst Writers & Artists workshop facilitator. I’ve learned through trial and error and by the example of many other writers that writing isn’t for other people—it’s for me, too, and I define what success is.

My lay off has not defined me—or rather, it has, but not how I thought. I know myself better and differently because of it. I know that the leader I was, and still am, that my expertise and abilities remain tremendously valuable. Whether my previous employer knew it or not doesn’t matter. I know my worth outside of work—I kind of always did. But there’s nothing like the rug being pulled out from under you to test that knowledge.

My life was not together at my five-year college reunion. It was evolving. I was evolving and growing. I still didn’t quite know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

My writing life didn’t end.

My lay off wasn’t an ending either.

Back then, I knew I wanted to be a writer. I just hadn’t yet learned that applause isn’t the ending.

Applause is just feedback.

Even if they’re in crayon, on the back of a crumpled receipt, the endings are still ours to write.

Here’s to what comes next,

Judy

When Mom sewed, she faced a large window out to the front yard, where she could also keep an eye on the turkeys, squirrels, and other wildlife that passed by, and the road beyond, where she could see the cars of the neighborhood go down the street and comment on who was driving too fast. “There goes Mr. Zip-a-dee-do-da!”

I learned to sew on that metal Singer sewing machine.

With every passing year, Mom’s pride in how long she’d had the machine only grew.

“I’ve had that machine for 37 years,” she’d say.

40 years.

42 years.

50 years.

It’s still nestled inside the table in front of the window.

If machines had feelings, it would be lonely for its companion.

My interest in sewing sprouted early in life, watching Mom at that machine. If there is such a thing as a master seamstress, she was it. When she got married, brides still had such a thing called a trousseau—a wardrobe just for the honeymoon. Mom liked to boast that she had made everything in hers and was most proud of the pillbox hat she’d covered to match one of the suits.

In our spiral bound family albums, there are old photos of Mom and Dad and my brother and sister (before I was born) on vacation in matching outfits, shorts and shirts that Mom had made from patriotic fabric in bold red, white, and blue stripes. There are photos of other matching vacation outfits, too, from eras that typically provoke fits of laughter—we caption those as “The Goob Family Takes a Vacation.” You can see from the looks on my sister’s and brother’s faces in those photos just how much they enjoyed wearing those outfits.

There are photos of Dad and my brother in pioneer shirts she’d made to wear with their tri-corner hats for the bicentennial celebrations and Fourth of July parades. There are photos of me in calico smock tops she’d made when I was in grade school. I loved those tops.

One year, for Halloween, she made me a Tweety Bird costume. It had a yellow fur body and a big round, stuffed head, like a real mascot head. I wore orange tights for Tweety’s legs, and there must’ve been some kind of feet with it, too. The head I remember vividly, with the big cartoon eyes—white with blue and then black in the center. Years later, I told Mom how impressive that was, to make a costume like that. She said she did it for the challenge.

She also sewed me a bathing suit once, when the only fabric you could buy for bathing suits was a thick double-knit polyester. It was maroon, and in my memory it almost looks like a vintage 1940s bathing suit. I remember wearing it. I don’t remember hating it.

She sewed curtains and tablecloths and napkins. One year, my parents hosted a big party at the house for their anniversary. They expected a big crowd, fifty guests, maybe more, and Mom decided to make cloth napkins. She cut squares of fabric, zigzag stitched around the edges and then, much to my disappointment, showed me how to fray the edges. I spent hours grumbling, seam ripper in hand, pulling at the threads along the napkin edges until Mom was satisfied with the fringe. We still talk about it—Remember when Mom made all those napkins for that party?

Yes. I do.

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It’s Prom and Commencement season and that has me thinking about dresses and Mom’s sewing. In high school, Mom sewed skirts and outfits for my semi-formal dances—a bubble shirt in fuchsia and teal plaid with a matching solid fuchsia off-the-shoulder top comes to mind. She sewed dresses for my nieces when they were small, for First Communion and weddings. She made vests for my father—one he still wears every Christmas. It’s red with large gold jingle bells instead of buttons. The bells tend to loosen and fall off, and I sew them back on for him, rifling through Mom’s thread tin for the right red thread.

When I graduated from college, dresses were needed—for the commencement ceremony but even more so for the Laurel Parade. At my alma mater, the Laurel Parade is a beloved tradition in which hundreds of women, starting with the oldest participating reunion class and ending with the graduating class, walk through the campus carrying a long laurel chain. The parade ends at the grave of our founder, Mary Lyon, in the center of the campus, where the graduating class drapes the laurel chain over the wrought-iron fence around her gravesite.

All the women wear white for the Laurel Parade, with an accessory in their class color—yellow, red, green, blue. I needed a white dress.

I don’t remember asking Mom to do it, but I must have. Or maybe it was something we both assumed, that didn’t need saying, an unspoken agreement, an understanding between us that we both appreciated the uniqueness of the handmade.

At the time, I was enamored with 1920s fashions—loose drop-waist dresses, tulip sleeves, cloche hats. We found a pattern for a drop-waist dress with a box-pleat ankle-length skirt, a V-neck and tulip sleeves. The skirt and sleeves were trimmed with a lace cut-out about an inch above the hem. We chose a simple white-on-white cotton print and an equally simple cotton lace in a crisscross pattern, like lattice work, for the trim. It took her a few weeks to sew the dress. My mom worked full time, running her own insurance agency, and then she had her other full-time job of taking care of the family. By that time, there wasn’t a lot to take care of—just Dad really and her granddaughters, when needed.

She worked on sewing projects over time. A little here, a little there. And they were always complicated, always done right, finished properly, and that took time.

My parents traveled the world, always going somewhere. That year, during their travels, Mom picked up Belgian lace—a collar for the dress, and white lace gloves that stopped at the wrist. A whimsical white oversize flat cap, with a navy bow, completed the outfit.

I wore the dress for the parade, and it was stunning and unique. I wore it on a couple of cruises and to one or two parties in the years following. And since then, it has hung in my closet.

A home renovation a few years ago included a new master bedroom and a new, grand (well, grand to me, anyway) walk-in closet. Moving from the old closet to the new meant purging my clothes. I came across the white dress my mother had made. As I held the dress out on its hanger, I knew it had to go. For one thing, I would never wear it again. No matter how hard I tried, this body 25 years and one child later would likely never get back to a size and shape to fit into it again. For another, time had soaked into the fabric, staining the once crisp white-on-white cotton to a tan-yellow and spotting it with tiny rust dots.

But it was still the dress. The drop waist with box pleats, the tulip sleeves, the lace trim with the fabric cut away behind it—such a beautiful detail. The Belgian lace collar is still on it. It’s still Mom.

I hugged the dress, swallowing back tears, then took it off the hanger, and threw it on the floor—not on the goodwill pile, but in its own place, separate from the rest.

For the rest of that day, as I purged my clothes, my chest ached every time I spotted the rumple of dress out of the corner of my eye. I started bagging up the goodwill clothes, the dress remaining on the floor until the very last.

I picked it up and sobbed into the yellowed fabric, the dress my mother had made for me. I kept thinking, This dress, it’s past any good now. It’s just taking up space. It should go. It’s all right if it goes.

And yet even as those thoughts passed through my mind, my fingers gripped the dress tighter and tighter.

My mother made my wedding dress, too—because I asked her.

When my sister had gotten married, Mom thought she’d be making her dress, because my sister hated shopping for dresses.

Mom knew about insurance. So, she bought herself some. On one of their trips—to Japan this time—Mom bought yards and yards of a simple white silk fabric, plenty to make a simple wedding dress. And then, on the first day of shopping, my sister found the perfect dress.

When I asked Mom to make my wedding dress, she brought all that white silk out of the cedar chest at the end of her bed, unwrapped the tissue paper around it. There was plenty for the simple, sleeveless, V-neck, ankle-length dress pattern I’d chosen. The back was a little too low, so Mom had made a little fan-shaped piece of the silk to insert at the bottom of the V-back. She took a long swath of white organza and draped it around the neckline, and down the back, and had the florist make a string of little purple orchids. On the morning of my wedding, she sewed the orchid string onto the organza, over one shoulder and down the back.

I remember the making of my graduation dress more for some reason. Maybe because I was younger and still so connected to Mom during the time of the making. I wasn’t quite leaving her orbit—not just yet. Maybe because I was living with them still so deeply, both feet still planted in their home, in their lives, in that world of being their child—getting ready to spring, yes, but soles still flat on that ground.

Maybe because for all the stresses of graduating from college—trying to find a job, trying to imagine what my life would be, what I would do, who I would become—all that was not as stressful as starting a new life with a husband—and we were truly starting a new life together. We had to find a place to live, we had to find jobs that paid more than a pittance, so we could at least feed and house ourselves. Because of our living, working, and school situations, we had to pull together a household—a wedding shower actually mattered to us, because we didn’t have dishes or silverware or sheets or towels, a vacuum cleaner, a toaster, or pots and pans. Perhaps because of all of that—I had less time to pay attention to the making of my dress, the making of my wedding. The making of our life together had so gripped my attention.

My graduation dress has taken up space in my closet for 30 years now (and counting). That day, when I finished crying into the dress, I unfurled it, shook out the wrinkles as best I could, and put it back on a hanger covered with lace crocheted by my long-deceased grandmother, so it wouldn’t slip off. And I hung it up in the new closet.

Even though I would never wear it again, I knew that it was more than a dress, the threads connecting more than pieces of fabric to one another. And that was reason enough to keep it.

I find myself wanting to write about Mom a lot lately. I don’t know why. I don’t know what about her life, her story compels me to put her down on paper.

My mom was 76 when she died. I started losing her when she had a major stroke a few years before and never fully recovered.

I carry with me so much from her like cooking, a love of travel and adventure, knowing how to dress with class (and on a budget), generosity in all its forms, and a love of making things, including sewing.

I became interested in sewing from watching her. She taught me to sew, and my sewing interests have varied much over the years—from crafts, holiday decorations, clothing, and now with the Internet there are so many things to sew. Tote bags and notebook covers and clothing, and ways to upcycle and tailor your own clothes. Mom would’ve loved all the things we could’ve found online to sew together. Or she would’ve said, “I was doing that years ago. Now they put it online and everyone thinks it’s some brand-new thing—how stupid!”

That was Mom, too.

I’ll never sew on the old Singer that rests in my mother’s sewing table. That’s hers, and it will always be hers. But when my dad asks me to fix a button or a hem, I love pulling out her thread tin from the cabinet next to her sewing table, picking through her collection of threads, plucking a needle from the small, handmade pin cushion she used for as long as I can remember.

Several years ago, I decided it was time to buy a new sewing machine. I was going to put it off for a couple of months, but my wonderful husband asked a good question: “Why?”

I had no good answer. So, I did my research, asked around about what machines people liked, and made my purchase. I texted my auntie to share the good news, and she applauded my decision: “Good for you!”

We had a little text exchange, as we often do, and I told her how I loved my new sewing machine and I was so glad I did it. And then I said:

“These days, I sew to feel close to my mom.”

That’s still true.

Here’s to what stays with us and what comes next,

Judy

The person retiring is someone who means a lot to me. We share a love of literature and travel, and we share our introversion. At work functions, we always found each other, made an introverts’ island where we pumped up our energy before going back into the fray. We both love to laugh, and I admire his wit, cuttingly sharp at times. I admire his calm in a crisis and his empathy. He always has time for you—even if he doesn’t, he makes you feel like he does.

I’d spent 17 years at the former workplace, overlapping with about half of this person’s career. The former workplace that laid me off in December.

I’ve landed on my feet. I’m lucky, because it didn’t even take very long. Within a couple of months, another former colleague recruited me for a great position at Brandeis University, and I’m loving it. I’m doing work I enjoy, where I have experience, work that I’m good at, and my work is appreciated. I’m part of a team of great people in a great environment, at an impressive institution doing important work in the world.

Like I said: Lucky.

But also, maybe not. Luck has something to do with it, but so does hard work and experience and the reputation I’ve built over all those years. Partnerships and friendships and solid working relationships and collaborations led to my current position. I’m grateful—to all those people and also that I had the presence of mind to work hard and smart. To value relationships with my colleagues. To build bridges instead of burn them.

I learn something from every job, every role, every work experience. With all the lessons packed into the lay-off experience, I wish it came with a certificate at the end or some kind of credential. Some of the lessons have been really hard—How to Survive Humiliation 101, Losing Your Self-Esteem and How to Find It Again, Storage Solutions: Where to Stuff Your Anger.

But some lessons have been easy, even joyful. Over and over, I am overwhelmed by the community that surrounds me. The team I worked with—my team and some members from other teams—is now a circle of friends. We communicate regularly by text. We have an informal book club—our last read was Finding Me by Viola Davis (highly recommend) and our next is It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan. We support each other in the challenges presented by life and work, and celebrate with each other.

Driving home from our recent informal book club gathering, I thought, “I don’t think I’ve ever had this many friends in my life!”

A few weeks ago, as I thought about these friends and others at the former workplace, the more I thought—why shouldn’t I go to my colleague’s retirement celebration? Those of us who’d been laid off weren’t barred from the place or anything remotely like that. In fact, we were invited to apply for other job openings, if so inclined. I decided—this colleague is important to me, and I wasn’t going to let anyone else dictate my actions.

I shared the celebration information with others who’d been laid off. One of them asked if I was going. I told her yes—because of our colleague, and also because I wanted to show up for myself. To walk in with my head high, to have others see me and welcome me with warm embraces. And to have others just see me, see that I am fine, I am not afraid. In fact, I am better than I was before. She decided to go, too, if we could walk in together.

And that’s exactly what happened. As soon as we stepped in the door, we were mobbed with hugs and how-are-you’s and we-miss-you’s. We saw our retiring colleague, who was happy we came. We avoided the people we wanted to avoid and caught up with the people we wanted to catch up with. It felt like a reunion, with many past employees there to wish our friend well as he enters this new phase of his life. We were all so grateful and happy for him.

At one point, I texted my husband, “I have many friends here.”

He texted me back a gif of Polly and the women from Peaky Blinders strutting down the street in Birmingham. If you don’t know the show, it’s enough to say Polly is not a woman you mess with. The image says it all—women in a moment of their power. Women you do not want to cross.

That’s what it felt like. Not closure. I don’t need that place to give me that. It’s the other way around. I give myself closure.

More like stepping back into my power.

Here’s to stepping forward into what comes next,

Judy

There’s a moment Mexican Gothic that reminded me so much of The Yellow Wallpaper that I stopped and said out loud, “I see what you’re doing Silvia Moreno-Garcia. Touche.”

Our protagonist, Noemi Taboada is in her bedroom in the rundown and poorly lit High Place mansion tucked in a forest in the Mexican countryside, when she notices the wallpaper moving and shapeshifting. In the title alone, Moreno-Garcia sets up the reader for the experience of the book. However, I was unprepared for how deftly she drew on the long tradition of Gothic novels and stories that center the confinement of women to develop a rich, dark tale of one family’s sinister manipulation and the spirited young woman who would take them down.

Noemi ends up at High Place after receiving a disturbing letter from her newlywed cousin, who now lives in the perpetually dark and dilapidated mansion. Noemi is a high-class debutante, interested in parties and fun, not amateur rescue missions. But she also wants to go to college. She strikes a deal with her uncle: get her cousin back home, and he’ll pay for her college education. Once at High Place and under the thumb of her cousin’s husband and his father, it’s clear something is very wrong with this family and the house. Noemi has one ally, the family’s youngest son, but even he’s not that helpful. The house, the family, and the history of the place wreaks of violence, murder, and madness. As Moreno-Garcia turns the screws on Noemi, the window of escape grows smaller and smaller.

The book held so many ‘ah-ha’ moments for me in what Moreno-Garcia has done in echoing the Gothic tradition that’s in so many books I’ve loved. It started with Noemi and the wallpaper bringing back The Yellow Wallpaper, the classic story so many of us read in college about a woman hospitalized for postpartum depression and seeing the wallpaper move and transform on the walls. There we have a woman confined and losing her mind, and we don’t know if the cure is helping or hurting—but we know the woman cannot escape her physical or mental prison. And here, we have two women in a house that seems driven to be their prison, one of whom already seems to be losing her mind. The question in both stories: is the wallpaper really moving, or is it just in the women’s heads?

The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins also came to mind, about a woman trying to save her sister from a sinister marriage. Jane Eyre ripples through the pages of Mexican Gothic, as does Wuthering Heights. The use of fire in Mexican Gothic even parallels Jane Eyre. I’ve loved these books for a long time, for their settings on the windswept moors, for their stories of forbidden love, for the mysteries to be solved (I loved a good mystery—especially a murder).

All of these novels, including Mexican Gothic, also all include themes of women confined, controlled, gaslit, and stunted by men, and even other women who are also instruments of controlling men. It’s not surprising, given how few rights women had when these classic novels were written. I can’t help but ruminate on the lessons the women in these pages are shouting out to us now about autonomy, basic human rights, liberty.

The themes Moreno-Garcia pulled forward for Mexican Gothic are not tropes or easter eggs. Rather, she’s woven the tradition of the Gothic novel deep into the fabric of her story. I didn’t even realize it was there until I happened to catch it out of the corner of my eye, a dark shadow moving in a dark hallway in High Place.

Mexican Gothic: In Conversation With:
Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
The Yellow Wallpaper (short story) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys—on my shelf to be read, a book in conversation with Jane Eyre
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier

Here’s to what’s next on your TBR pile—happy reading!

Judy

The day in ninth grade when the high school band director plucked me from my quiet corner and stood me up in front of the marching band as the drum major.

The day my mother gave me a gentle push into a dressing room with a sparkling red dress—just to try it, see what it looked like.

There were other days, too—all the days I stepped into a dance studio where I was too shy and didn’t feel I fit in. I loved ballet, the precision of it, the lyricism, the lines, the pointe shoes. I took jazz, too, which I enjoyed less. I was too shy and anxious to free myself up enough for jazz. Everything about it felt like an embarrassment in my body. And I took tap—which I seemed to have a natural aptitude for. Tap was the one class where the other girls scoffed at difficult footwork, but I could breeze through it.

I was good enough to be in the competition group at the dance studio, which meant classes several hours a day, four days a week after school, in a neighboring town. All the other girls went to school together, and I didn’t.

All the other girls wore make-up and had long hair with bangs that they curled and teased and sprayed. My hair was fine and limp and looked much better short. I had no idea how to use a curling iron. I didn’t wear make-up.

The other girls were cool and fashionable. I didn’t follow trends and created my own looks based on whatever I liked. I wore hats—like berets and a Derby. No one my age wore hats, let alone a Derby. These girls were beautiful, and I was not.

I was an ugly duckling among swans, and they knew it.

Still, I stuck it out, and by the time I graduated high school, I’d made a couple of good friends.

For all these social hurdles, I look back on my dance studio experience with a mixture of fondness and pride. There’s a satisfaction that comes from working hard physically for athletic and artistic goals. I loved the performance experience of recitals and dance competitions—the restless atmosphere backstage, the mounting nerves, the thrill of the performance. Sticking it out in a social environment that challenged me, while also facing a wall of mirrors every day and performing on stage, also gave me a deep well of confidence and poise to draw upon in challenging situations later in life.

Lately, I’ve noticed that my confidence has eroded somewhere along the way. A change in setting, a different group of people, and suddenly I was uncomfortable speaking up, sharing my expertise, questioning everything I do. It feels a bit like the floor tilting beneath my feet, because I’m not even aware when it happened. I’d gone from the girl who took to the stage, to a woman hiding in the wings. A drum major in front of the marching band, to a woman hiding behind a music stand.

The girl who tried on that red dress was now a woman who would’ve put it back on the rack.

Clearly, something has shifted.

I’ve always loved this quote. I’ve copied it down in many a journal. And as many times as I’ve felt bad about myself because of something someone said to me or the way they behaved, I do believe her sage wisdom on this. We can only control our reaction to the world—and honestly, I am not the center of anyone’s universe.

Still, what does consent mean in the real world? My confidence was siphoned away without me realizing it. I made myself smaller. I stifled my own voice to save others the trouble.

And why? No one forced me. No one leaned over my shoulder telling me I wasn’t good enough and to just be quiet. But did they have to? Or is it enough to disregard years of knowledge and experience? Is it the constantly asking for more because what’s delivered never seems to be enough? Could it be simply the act of surviving? Make yourself smaller, less visible, and you’ll make it.

For any and all of those reasons, I slowly made myself less than. Maybe not in the eyes of my family and friends—but definitely in my own eyes and in the eyes of certain others. I didn’t recognize it in myself until a new environment and new experiences showed me what’s changed.

Now, I know. And just as Eleanor says no one can make me feel inferior but me, no one can rebuild me but me either.

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One experience that’s made a big difference in this process was training to become an (AWA) facilitator. AWA is a specific type of writing workshop that focuses on strengths-based feedback and follows a number of other specific guidelines.

During the training, everyone did two practice workshops. Normally something like this would tie me in knots. But for whatever reason, I wasn’t nervous at all. For each practice session, I was strangely confident. I had no worries, no anxiety, no fears. My writing group generously allowed me to practice again with them a couple of weeks later, and again I had no anxiety, only excitement. And afterward, I felt energized and fulfilled.

This is not the only setting where I’ve noticed this kind of shift. Where there’d been exhaustion and frustration, there’s now energy and enjoyment. Where there’d been worry and a lack of self-worth, there’s anticipation and fulfillment. Where I used to stay quiet, I’m working on speaking up more.

The drum major, the girl in the red dress, the dancer—they’re stepping out of the shadows. I didn’t notice when they disappeared, but I’m so glad they’re back in the light.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

PS If you’ve never taken an workshop, I highly recommend it. At the very least, you’ll write. At best, it can shift your relationship to writing in ways you’d never expect. Would I steer you wrong? 😊

And then there’s the food, which is a whole other category of beauty.

There is one image, though, that haunts. One afternoon while wandering the city, we made our way to the Capuchin Crypt, located beneath the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini. My husband wanted to see this, and we had time, so why not?

The tour started in a small gallery that talked about the origins and history of the Franciscan friars. There were portraits of members of the order, including a Caravaggio of Saint Francis, and cases of artifacts, bibles, and relics. The audio tour was presented as a conversation between an older man and younger man. The older man had visited the order once when he was young, and the younger man, a current member, was giving him a tour.

After viewing the galleries, we entered a narrow hallway with bright, white walls decorated in a sort of baroque style, motifs done in relief on the ceilings and walls. I say “sort of” because the decoration wasn’t white plaster or wood. They were gray pieces.

They were bones.

Human bones.

Over my head and all around me, trying their best to look like wreaths of rosebuds and flower petals.

I cringed beneath them.

Along this hallway were six small chapels, each ornately decorated in human bones, the remains of 3,700 Capuchin monks. The Shoulder Blade Chapel. The Pelvic Bone Chapel. Can you guess how they each were named? A tiny grim reaper, pinned to the ceiling, looked down on the first chamber, scythe and all made of bones.

I slowly passed one chapel after another, one question ringing loudly in my ears: Why?

The two men in my earbuds tried to answer, discussing how the bone chapels are not meant to be macabre, but rather reminders of life’s transience. They’re meant to innoculate against a fear of death, according to these two men with their jaunty British accents, to remind us that death is just another part of life. At one point, the older man describes the chapels as soothing.

Soothing?

I can think of many words to describe these chapels, and ‘soothing’ is not among them.

To soothe is to ease pain, not to push someone into a faceplant with the source of it. If death is the source of pain and anxiety, these bone chapels seemed a severe approach to exposure therapy—too much of the bad thing all at once.

I couldn’t understand why anyone would choose this kind of confrontation with death, until weeks later when I recalled a time when I came face to face with my own mortality.

My mother had just had her second stroke. The first one, ten years earlier, had been bad in that it had killed a lot of brain cells. But she’d made nearly a one-hundred-percent recovery. If you’d met her after that stroke, you’d probably never guess that it had happened. You’d have to really look to see her left foot lag just the slightest bit when she walked. You’d have to know her the way we knew her to realize she didn’t usually cry that easily.

But the second one—the second one was life changing. She was in a coma for days, and when she came out of it, there was no telling what she would recover. Would she walk again? Would she speak? Would she be able to breathe on her own? Would she remember us?

With time and a lot of therapy, she recovered some of those things. She walked, but always with one of us by her so she wouldn’t fall. She spoke, but we often couldn’t understand her. Swallowing was a trial and a triumph, every time. Swallowing, it turns out, is one of the most complex muscle movements your body can perform. These are the things you learn when you become immersed in a loved one’s very worst moment of their lives. You get an education you never expected.

My son had just turned four when this stroke hit my mother like a Mac truck barreling down a highway. I was in my early forties, and a thought that started small grew larger and larger, becoming a near constant companion:

I don’t want this to happen to me. I have this little boy. I’m not ready to have this happen to me.

Rationally, I knew what was happening—my mother’s stroke and near death pushed my face up against my own mortality, forcing me to take a good long, hard look at it. And I told myself, if the thoughts became too much, I’d talk to a professional who could help. I did talk to my doctor, who reassured me that medical issues don’t follow a straight path from one person to another. We did appropriate tests and took appropriate action that eased my mind somewhat. Over time my anxiety waned.

But the question remained, the same question the Capuchin monks tried to answer with their bone chapels: How does life continue in the face of death?

The monks’ answer was to surround themselves with the physical presence of death, the skeletons of those it took. My mother’s answer was to push past it, to not let death take up more room in her life than it needed.

After her first stroke, which happened while my parents were traveling on a boat in Florida, it would’ve been reasonable for her to shrink her life, to seek safety by staying close to home and living small. But she didn’t. She lived as large and far and wide as always. After she recovered and her health stabilized, my parents continued to travel the world. Her dream was to set foot on all seven continents. That means Antarctica was on her list. It was a stop on a cruise they took. This particular cruise ran into a cyclone on its way there. The seas swelled from thirty-five to sixty-five feet (and I may have that wrong—it may have been worse). Halfway through the storm, the captain decided to turn back. My parents got off the ship in Chile and ended up in a bar where Shackleton had asked for money to help rescue his crew stranded on the Endurance.

I still love that—my adventuring mom ending up in the same place as the great explorer.

While in Chile, my dad asked her what she wanted to do. She said she wanted to see penguins. He was flabbergasted—because that meant getting back on a boat. Did she really want to do that after what they’d just been through, after basically just cheating death? Yes, she said, definitely.

They saw penguins.

Even after her second stroke, the one that left her so debilitated, she didn’t shrink. We wouldn’t let her. She traveled to Florida every year with my father. We went to New York City together and saw Broadway shows, went shopping, ate at our favorite restaurants. At home she did the things she loved—got her hair and nails done, shopped and went out to lunch. The living never stopped.

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Back at the bone chapels, I noticed a young woman trailing behind me. Every time she passed by one of the chapels she brushed her arms and shoulders, as if brushing dust off herself. More like brushing the death off herself.

Amen, sister, I thought.

The chapels gave the feeling that death was clinging rather than letting go. Faced with death in this way, my mother would’ve done the same as this young woman. She was a rub-it-up, shake-it-off kind of mom.

My mother’s approach is the one I’ve adopted. To live large and far and wide. To embrace what I love to do and with the people I love as long as I possibly can.

My mom showed me that the best way to face death, to fight that urge to shrink and live small, is to make sure the living never stops. To go see the penguins anyway.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

This was my teenage son’s reaction as we stood, looking up at the massive and ancient structure of the Colosseum on our first night in Rome during a trip last month. After arriving at our Air BNB, we took the fifteen-minute walk down to the ancient structure in the middle of the modern city, eager to stretch our legs after a full day of plane flights.

The night was warm compared to the frigid temperatures at home, and the atmosphere around the Colosseum was lively, almost festive. People sat on curbs and steps, enjoying the view of the glowing arena. Others posed like supermodels in front of it for photos.

Our son has always had a passion for the past, mainly the prehistoric. But lately his interests have expanded to include ancient Greece and Rome, so it wasn’t surprising that he was impressed. Still, I wasn’t expecting the outpouring of emotion about standing where ancient Romans had stood thousands of years ago, looking at their gathering place.

A lump rose in my own throat, and my chin started to quiver. Not because of ancient Romans, but because of my own past.

A little over thirty years ago, I was in this same place, visiting the Colosseum with my parents and my sister on a trip we took to Paris and Rome. If it hadn’t been for my parents, we may not have even been in Rome that night.

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When I was in middle school, my father started doing more international travel for work. By the time I was 13 or 14, my mother accompanied him regularly and she finally said—”hey, let’s take Judith with us.” Fortunately, I was a good traveler. I didn’t complain and pretty much rolled with the punches, so I was invited back on the next trip and the next. Part of these trips were hosted by an international wire and cable group my father belonged to (yes, there is such a thing as an international wire and cable group). But my dad always left time for adventure—usually by hiring a local cab driver for the day who could show us around the city. And did we have adventures:

- While in Brazil, we visited the Iguazu waterfalls with a local driver—who took us out on the water at the top of the falls in a little boat with a tiny motor. I only remembered this a few years ago. I think I blocked it because it was a really stupid and frightening thing to do. We now call these Dad’s Nearly Fatal Travel Adventures.

- In Switzerland, Dad took us hiking on Mount Pilatus, with beautiful views and huge horned Capricorns that weren’t too happy to see us on their mountain.

- In Japan, we took a bus trip up Mount Fuji, but we couldn’t see the top because of all the fog—this is pretty typical. The next morning, my mom woke me up at about 4 am because there was a clear view of the mountain from our hotel room.

- Again in Brazil—because I will never forget this—my mom and I headed to the beach across the street from our hotel in Rio de Janeiro. At the beach, we took off our sandals and started to walk to the water. Within seconds, our feet were burning so hot, we started hopping from foot to foot, desperately trying to get our sandals back on. We finally made it to the water, but by then we were so hot, we decided to go back to the hotel pool—where we watched people take off their shoes and then do the same hopping jig we did to get their shoes back on!

Even as a teenager, I knew and valued what my parents were giving to me with every trip: spending time in a place where people speak a different language than I do, eat different foods, live differently. What an incredible gift. And I knew I was so lucky when it was happening. Not everyone has opportunities like this.

And on top of that, all these memories with my parents.

It wasn’t always easy either. I saw my parents argue, get frustrated with each other, solve problems. This was all before cell phones and computers—even before planes had those phones built into the backs of the seats for a while. My dad, who was truly a busy businessman, loved to board the plane and then get off (they used to let you do this) to make calls at the pay phone bank. My mother would fret and fret—rightfully so!—wondering when and if he would make it back on the plane, until he’d come running back on just before they closed the door.

So, many teachable moments. Including, you know, maybe don’t get into a tiny boat at the top of a giant waterfall.

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After the pandemic, with our son in his early teens, I decided we were going to travel. I wanted to give him the experiences my parents had given me. And I wanted the time with him that my parents had had with me. Because soon enough, he’ll be off building his own life.

Standing at the Colosseum that night with my son, my emotion bubbled up because I knew I was in a full-circle moment. I was stepping into the place my parents had made for me. They had once been showing me the world. Now, I’m in their shoes, experiencing with my son what they must’ve experienced traveling with me. I’m watching him experience new places, take in famous sights and museums, try new foods for the first time. Some I’m sharing with him, and some we’re discovering together.

When he was maybe four, our son learned about the statues that wrongly depict dinosaurs at Crystal Palace Park in London. He announced that he wanted to go to London to see these statues. My husband and I looked at each other and said, “London’s far away. Maybe someday.” A couple of years ago, we went to London, a first for all three of us. We went to Crystal Palace Park, and our son ran through the park to those statues. It was amazing.

I’m watching my son discover his favorite places in the world. And I know he’ll have these memories of traveling with us, just as I have my memories of traveling with my parents.

When we talk about legacy, we often refer to a passing down of something tangible—property or assets of some value. But in its most significant sense, a legacy is the handing down of tradition and values to the next generation.

Of all the legacies my parents have bestowed on me, one I value highly is the desire and courage to wander, to cultivate curiosity about the world.

And to always have a valid passport.

My parents didn’t give me trips. They gave me the world.

I can only hope to be so generous to our son.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

The Colosseum towered above us, the ancient limestone, volcanic rock, and brick glowing golden against the indigo night sky. The largest standing amphitheater in the world—completed in AD 80—was constructed by the Roman Emperors Vespasian and Titus for the people, replacing the private lake Nero constructed. The Colosseum hosted entertainment—the gladiator games that we’re familiar with, but also staged animal hunts and public executions.

Entertaining.

My little family recently returned from a trip to Rome, and the Colosseum was a 15-minute walk from our Air BNB along city streets teeming with traffic and sidewalks jammed with people, souvenir shops, and cafes. It was a return trip for me, having visited with my parents about 30 years ago. What stayed with me all those years and what struck me again this time are the ancient veins running through Rome, waiting for discovery at the turn of every corner.

Major archeological sites, like the Colosseum and the Forum, nestled among the hustle and bustle of 21st-century life.

Temples to Roman gods overlooking city thoroughfares.

Excavation sites fenced off along busy sidewalks.

Walls of ancient brick. Everywhere.

The foundations of these structures are so formidable that Romans of the past often used them to build new structures on top of them. On our tour of the Forum, an ancient site adjacent to the Colosseum, the guide pointed out that the Rome town hall is built on top of the ancient Roman archives. She also noted that they don’t do that anymore.

The city has endured through emperors, eras, and modern traffic woes, each layer building onto the other, much like the layers of brick and mortar and limestone that make up a structure as enduring as the Colosseum. Not all went well, of course. Ancient Rome had its share of terrible emperors, and I don’t know that I would call what happened in the Colosseum entertaining so much as barbaric.

That’s how it always goes, though. We don’t always learn as we go. Sometimes we build wisely, sometimes disastrously—sometimes despite our best intentions.

In Rome, I found myself reflecting on building things that endure. All I’ve ever built are teams. I wasn’t always good at it, and I mainly learned from trial and error, and watching others—those who do it well, and those who don’t. I’ve learned there are some key ingredients to building a strong team.

Self-awareness is the foundation. Not just knowing who you are, but knowing you have blind spots—and being willing to ask yourself, “Am I the one being a jerk here?” Empathy and vulnerability are the building blocks that create the psychological safety for team members to ask for help, admit when they’ve made mistakes, and share when things aren’t going well. Trust is the mortar that holds everything together. Without it, teams fall apart. Culture is the infrastructure—how teams work together, solve problems, address conflict, celebrate wins.

Culture and trust together create endurance. They can put a team on a path of lasting, growing strength, or on a path to destruction or implosion. With a strong culture and trust in place, the leader is building something else, something bigger than a team, larger than a leader.

Rome, after all the eras and emperors, still stands.

Through this period of unexpected transition in my career, I’ve had time to reflect on what I achieved at my last institution and how I feel about it all. Like any grieving process, it’s ongoing. I have to say, though, I’m pretty proud of what I did. The writing, the publications, the events and, yes, even an exhibit installation create a significant body of work. I’m also proud of the many relationships I developed and that continue. But most of all, I’m proud of the team I built, the way we worked together, and the community we’ve formed.

My career spans nearly 30 years (and counting), and I’ve been fortunate to have learned much from every job I’ve had and to have developed several deep and meaningful friendships along the way. I’ve never remained so attached to a team as I have to this one, though. Maybe it’s because of all the technology available now that wasn’t years ago.

But I think it has more to do with the time we put into learning to be empathetic and vulnerable with each other, learning to trust, and building our culture. Because I’m not their leader anymore.

I’m just one of the gals.

Yet here we are.

Cracking each other up with Instagram reels.

Sharing kid and puppy photos on the text thread.

Meeting up here and there for lunch or coffee. Sharing book recommendations and recipes. Still celebrating our wins and supporting each other in our losses.

And we’re not a team anymore.

We’re something bigger, more enduring.

We’re family.

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It may seem a bit of a stretch—even a bit of a grandiose stretch—to compare the Eternal City to office team building. Being in Rome, though, watching my son marvel at the Colosseum and pointing out every temple, every ancient-looking wall, reminded me that to build anything lasting takes intention. The bricks laid in just the right pattern, to hold weight but also to withstand the tremors of an earthquake, or from passing traffic centuries later.

The Colosseum has stood for nearly two thousand years. Thousands gathered inside it to watch the spectacles of their time. Now, Romans and tourists from around the world mingle on the terraces around it in the evening, staring up at its magnificence.

The Colosseum stands not because every emperor was wise.

Not because every era was kind or easy.

But because someone laid bricks and mortar with intention, foundations meant to hold.

This week, as I begin again, I’m thinking about foundations.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

One note stood out. Little birds and bird houses illustrate the envelope, and the handwriting inside is closer to calligraphy. The note thanks me for an article I’d written about the Individual Potential Program at the elementary school I attended—a program I was never selected for—and how sharing my experience helped heal old hurts the writer’s children carried because they’d been rejected from the same or similar programs.

To think that something I’d written had helped heal old hurts. It took a little of my breath, to be honest.

The other letters I saved in a folder. This one—I set aside.

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I remember the Individual Potential Program and why I’d written about it. As a reporter, I was back at my elementary school frequently for school committee meetings and programs, and it brought back memories. Many of those memories circled around my academic abilities. I struggled in school early on. The teachers told my parents that I did excellent work, but very slowly. If they pushed me to work faster, the work fell apart. My mother’s answer: don’t push her. I had trouble reading—I could read, but I couldn’t tell you what a book was about. And math—forget it! One math teacher made us stand in line at her desk so she could tell us what we did wrong on our worksheets, quizzes, and tests. All class long, the line got shorter and shorter, as kids grasped the material. Guess who was always in line?

In seventh grade, my first year of middle school, a weird thing happened: School became suddenly easy and I earned straight As for the first time. At the time, I remember thinking that my elementary school was just really hard. But now I know that my brain just wasn’t quite organized for school yet.

My struggles in elementary school meant I never made it into the Individual Potential Program, the program for the talented and gifted that started at my elementary school in the 1970s. The kids in this program got to leave class for a whole day each week to work on special projects in math, science, and reading. They put on plays, made intricate dioramas, and wrote stories.

The one close brush I had with the program was delivering a line in one of their plays.

I graduated from high school in the top ten, and my classmates kept asking if I’d been in that Individual Potential Program, convinced that I had been. Only one student in the top ten was. I went on to graduate with high honors from a top college and build a successful career and fulfilling life.

The point I made back then, and that perhaps helped heal old wounds, is that “gifted” and “talented” are so subjective and such malleable qualities. Who can really say who is and who isn’t? Especially at such young ages?

Personally, I don’t buy these labels. I’ve never understood talent. What I understand is work.

There is such a thing as natural ability. But even someone with an innate athletic, artistic, musical, you-name-it ability will lose it if they don’t work at it. Vincent Van Gogh is my favorite example of this idea: an amazing talent, but he did the work. In ten years, he produced over 900 paintings (about one painting every four days) and 1,100 drawings. During his time in the Saint-Rémy asylum, he produced about 150 paintings in a year, or one every two to three days. Van Gogh’s mental health—not great, I’ll grant that. But still, he knew the value in doing the work. He is my role model for putting my butt in the chair and getting the work done.

As an individual contributor and as a leader, my mantra has always been: Do the work. Because the work will stand for itself.

So, whether it’s in my professional life or my creative life, I do the work. To me, talent doesn’t come into it. It’s just doing the work.

My column for the newspaper reflected on a rejection of sorts, and the note I found was a reminder that I wasn’t alone in that feeling. Lately, I find myself reflecting on rejection once again, this time as a professional. After being laid off in December last year, everything I believed about hard work, dedication, experience—and yes, even talent—has come into question. I did the work—I worked hard, and I still found myself on the outside, at a turning point not of my choosing.

My community of friends and colleagues—a chosen family for whom I am deeply grateful—told me over and over that I’d land on my feet soon enough. But I’ll admit, I wasn’t so sure. Life’s sharp turns have a way of not only upending long-held beliefs but also shaking confidence to its core and feeding the furnace of imposter syndrome.

Here’s what I’ve learned: Doing the work has served me. I have landed on my feet because of it, and now I’m looking forward to starting a new position soon—one that I’m truly excited about, working with terrific people at an impressive institution that’s doing great work. It’s going to be fulfilling—and fun!

These labels—gifted, talented, high potential—they’re positive, used to shine a spotlight on our achievements. And that’s great. As long as we remember that spotlights leave much in shadow.

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The teachers in charge of the Individual Potential Program at my elementary school couldn’t imagine a girl who struggles with reading becoming a marketing communications professional who reads three books at a time, and writes books, too. They couldn’t imagine a girl who stood in line at the math teacher’s desk over and over again managing budgets. They couldn’t possibly know the true trajectory, the true latent potential of grade schoolers just waiting to be ignited by the right teacher, the right book, the right movie or museum.

The rug was pulled out from under me in December, and after weeks of self-reflection, wondering if I even have talent, that letter I found reminded me that these labels cannot possibly tell the whole story of our worth.

Only the work can do that. The work matters and stands for itself.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

In one of my early-morning German classes, the professor came bouncing in, giddy and breathless about this new thing called Netscape. We could use it to get a train schedule in Germany right now. She bubbled over with excitement about how it was going to change everything. The moment stands out in my memory, but not my reaction to it. I don’t think I really understood it—I don’t think many of us did. It was 8:30 in the morning. We were groggy and foggy, still waking up, trying to rev up our brains to think and speak in a different language.

It did change everything.

If you’re my generation or older, I bet you can pinpoint when your world changed from analog to digital. It happened in the transition from college to the workforce for me. In high school, we had some computers that were used for coding. I knew my brain wasn’t wired for that, so I never considered those classes. I didn’t take typing either and opted for art instead. What can I say? I knew myself even then. To this day, coworkers hear me banging away on my keyboard and are always shocked if they see I’m only using four fingers. I’m that fast—terrible, but fast.

I went to college with a word processor. It was like an electric typewriter with a built-in screen just above the keyboard. It had discs and printed where paper would normally come out of a typewriter. As an English major, with a million papers to write every semester, I loved it. There were computers around campus, but hardly anyone had their own. I knew one girl who did, and she’d built it with her father. I had no idea what that meant, to build a computer.

Email came to campus during my college years, but only for the campus community. We could go to a computer lab and email our professors or friends at school, but not home, not friends off campus. Which didn’t matter, because it was doubtful anyone at home had a computer, let alone email.

That Netscape morning came just a few years after another world-tilting moment: the fall of the Berlin Wall. The reunification of East and West Germany was underway and was the topic of our German classes. This professor was interested in the question “Was bleibt?/What remains?”, which was particular to East Germany’s transition. It considered the legacy of East Germany’s communist government and its history as the reunified society forged its future.

Part of that legacy had to do with the Stasi—the powerful and terrifying secret police—and the surveillance tactics used against its own people. The Stasi used a network of ordinary citizens who reported on their own neighbors, friends, and family members. When the wall came down, the Stasi tried to destroy its records. They didn’t want people to know who had informed on whom—many people didn’t want that. Imagine finding out that your neighbor—or worse, your friend or family member—reported you to the Stasi, maybe for something you didn’t even say or do.

What remains, indeed.

And this question—what remains?—applies not only to shifting societies, but to individuals. It has followed me through every transition, every reinvention, including the one I’m in now.

On a trip to Amsterdam, we visited the Museum of the Dutch Resistance. It’s the museum to visit after the Anne Frank House. After learning what happened to the Frank family, the Van Pels, and Fritz Pfeffer, learning the stories of the Dutch Resistance reinflates the spirit a bit.

At a certain point during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, the Dutch figured out the importance of personal information. They knew once the Germans had it, they had everything. They had your life. The Resistance told their citizens: Don’t give away your information. People knew they could end up in a prison camp as a result. But prison camps could be escaped. Once the Nazis had your personal information, you were permanently ensnared.

After I graduated college, my life quickly became networked. At my first job at a small daily newspaper, I worked at my first computer and literally watched a newspaper go from being hand set with Exacto knives and wax to computer design and pagination. My second job had email and…wait for it…a website. Not because businesses and organizations had any idea what websites were or how to use them, but because they all felt like they should just have one.

I started my career in print, writing and editing print collateral. With the dawn of digital and its every evolution—websites, e-readers, social media, virtual reality—the prediction has always been the death of print. Or the death of something. Younger generations are always telling me that email is dead. I haven’t even seen it catch a cold yet. And print has not died. Nothing has died. Everything has become more complex, providing more ways to reach people. Every new innovation adds another channel to the mix that we have to figure out how to use, who it reaches best, what content to put on it, and so on.

More ways to collect our information, too. Sometimes we know we’re giving it, and sometimes we don’t. The lessons of the Dutch Resistance—don’t give away your information—still echoes in my head.

Every transition asks the question, what are we willing to reveal about ourselves, what are we willing to give up, and what do we guard fiercely.

I can’t write this from my home in the United States without thinking about the world-tilting events unfolding around us and how they will continue to reverberate far into the future. I can’t write this without thinking about how we seem to be hardwired in our DNA to forget the lessons of history, to forget every lesson of oppression, the powers that be somehow believing it’s all going to turn out differently for them this time. And I wonder what will remain for the rest of us when the world tilts back—because it will, history has shown that it will. What will remain for those of us who tried to do something—anything—and those who stood by?

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There’s no turning back time. As many times as I threaten to throw our television out the window and banish the computer from the house, I can’t go back to pre-Internet days. I’m not sure I’d want to. Progress, even if we don’t like all of it, if we’re not always adept at managing it—if we’re blatantly irresponsible about it—is still, well, progress.

The arrival of the Internet was not the only or most significant world-tilting moment of my life. There have been others:

• The day this guy came sauntering into the conference room on the first day of my college summer job and I thought, “Who does he think he is?” My future husband of thirty years and counting, that’s who.

• The day our son entered the world. I never thought I would know so much about dinosaurs or know so acutely what it means to have my heart travel outside my body.

• The day my mother had her first stroke, and her second stroke.

• The day she died. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her, hear her words of encouragement in my head, smile or laugh at a memory of her, miss her.

Each one carried lessons about who I am and what I carry forward, preparing me for this latest moment: an unexpected career transition. Now that the emotional roller coaster has settled, I’m able to look at what remains from those 17 years, what serves me—the great experience and skills I gained and perhaps most importantly, the community that continues to surround and support me, the way we’re supporting each other.

My writing remains, provides structure to my day, purpose and fulfillment.

Reading remains, feeding my imagination, my mind, heart and soul.

Making with my hands remains, filling my well of creativity, freeing my mind to wander as my hands work the knitting needles, crochet hook, sewing machine.

Possibility remains, as I look to my future and what it could hold, consider what I have to contribute to another organization and to other writers. I’m excited to see how it’s all going to unfold.

Here’s to what remains and to the new and undiscovered parts of ourselves yet to emerge—the parts of ourselves we’re just now ready to meet.

Judy

It happens every year here: Winter. And every year, we take up our most favorite pastime: Complaining about it. The snow, the depth and quality of it, the clearing of it (not my area), and for some, the enjoyment of it. And then there’s the cold, the exact temperature of it, the duration, if it comes on a biting wind or if it just sits there, ever present in your bones, even under layers of fleece.

It’s been years since we’ve had a winter like this, with the landscape whitewashed for days, and temperatures below freezing for weeks. (You know it’s particularly cold when a day in the thirties feels downright balmy.) We complained during those years of milder winters, too. When the ground remained brown and muddy, we lamented our childhood winters of sledding, ice skating, and snowball fights in winter wonderlands of fluffy snow. We lamented the terrible skiing and snowboarding, even if we did neither.

All this cold and darkness has me dreaming of a trip we took last February to Arizona, where red rock formations loomed large against a cerulean sky. Red dust covered the ground, far into the distance. There were canyons so deep and so vast they seemed to have no bottom and no end, and steep cliffs, and gorges carved into impossible curves. Dotting this landscape were plants armored with spikes and spines, warning off any potential predators.

I remember thinking, What planet is this?

Earth. Somehow, it was still earth.

It was our first time in Sedona, and for my little family of New Englanders, it truly felt otherworldly. Most of the time it looked fake, like a movie set backdrop hung along the highways as we drove from Pheonix to Sedona, Sedona to Antelope Canyon or the Grand Canyon, climbing thousands of feet, ears popping, and then descending again.

We went to the Grand Canyon for the first time. Believe me when I tell you, it looked fake. It was so vast and so deep and so unlike anything else I’d ever seen that my brain almost couldn’t comprehend it. We walked along the south rim path and eventually ended up at a geological museum that explained how the canyon was formed—which I still don’t understand. There was a diorama of the canyon there, about the size of a small conference table. One two-inch stretch along the edge—a tiny fraction of the entire model—was marked “you are here.”

I never felt so small.

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If the Grand Canyon overwhelmed me with its scale, Antelope Canyon surprised me with its intimacy. A slot canyon formed by water erosion from flashfloods, we climbed down into it, walked through the swirling sandstone formations that changed color with the light from deep purples to peach, orange, and yellows. Even in the enclosed spaces, there was a sense of vastness, as we looked up at the sky through the opening at the top of the canyon. It felt much like being in a kind of chapel, a container made specifically to hold wonder.

There was more to Sedona’s strangeness than the landscape. Scattered among all the red rocks and the cacti and canyons were plenty of opportunities to get your aura photo taken and your charkas adjusted, purchase crystals from dozens of crystal shops, check your vibrations, and on and on.

I knew it would be like that—weird and kind of kooky. And the longer we were in Sedona, the more I sort of understood.

How could you be in that landscape and not think something magical or otherworldly was happening? How could you be there and not be gob smacked daily by a sense of wonder? Every day we were there, I was reminded hundreds of times that I am, in fact, surrounded by magic—the kind that doesn’t need to be found.

Back home, in the cold dead hand of a New England winter, where I sit writing this, I need to look a lot harder.

And yet, the magic is still there. The red rock dust has clung to more than my clothing; it’s settled somewhere deeper. In the cold, short days, I find myself reaching for color, casting beautiful yarn on my needles, making gifts for friends. Projects are beginning to fill a sunny new knitting bag, a gift from friends who know me so well, as I pluck skeins from my stash for patterns in my library.

Every day, I open the current draft of my novel and work on revisions. It feels like climbing down into a deep slot canyon, feeling my way through the swirling mazes of my characters’ inner landscapes as I fine tune plot points and the internal motivations that drive them. Even the uncertainty in my career path feels less like a chasm that can’t be crossed and more like a landscape to be explored, a path that I’m on even though I don’t know the destination, can’t quite fathom the full journey.

I wouldn’t say Sedona changed me. It would take more than a week there to break through a good New England crust. But the red rocks, the canyons, the cacti—the otherworldliness of it all has remained. Perhaps the point isn’t to escape the winter seasons of our lives, but to always carry enough awe with us to survive them.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

✍️ Writing Where You Are: Wonder often appears unannounced, making us pause and notice. When did life last throw something in your path that made you stop in awe? Take ten minutes today to write about it.

The shawl is beige—a color I would never choose now. But I chose it then for my mom, thinking that it was the color of elegance, of sophistication. And if my mother was anything, she was elegant and sophisticated. Always.

I made it more than thirty years ago, during the December of my sophomore year of college. That summer I’d taught myself to crochet, something I’d always wanted to do. What can I say? I’m unique. I blame my paternal grandmother who always showed up at our house with an armload of handmade goodies, most of them crocheted: mukluk slippers with pom-poms swinging at the end of the laces; vests in broomstick lace; hat and mitten sets; coffee cans in Santa Claus cozies, stuffed with cookies. My grandparents lived far away, so I never saw her making these things, but my mother dabbled in knitting and crocheting, so I knew they came from yarn and hooks and needles. I wanted to learn that magic.

The summer before my sophomore year of college was my first as a historical interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village, a living history museum that demonstrates everyday life in rural, early New England. I sharpened my novice knitting skills there and in my free time, taught myself to crochet.

I know. I was a real wild child.

When I went back to college that fall, I kept knitting and crocheting. It helped with the constant anxiety simmering below the surface of my every day, anxiety I didn’t even recognize until decades later. As the December break approached, I decided—too late—to make something for my mother for Christmas. I would crochet her a shawl. And of course, I chose a pattern with finer yarn and a smaller hook, so it would take that much longer to finish.

Despite my best efforts, I did not finish the shawl while still at school—not even close. I had to finish it at home, in the last couple of weeks leading up to Christmas, somehow without my mother seeing it. I waited until after my parents went to bed—usually around ten-thirty or eleven—and then took out the shawl and worked on it for an hour or two. It was slow work with the small hook.

The next day, I’d tell my parents something funny I saw on Letterman or Conan the night before, and my mom would say, “If you’re staying up that late, why don’t you fold the laundry?” Or empty the dishwasher. Or do some ironing.

This was very on brand for my mother. She was very caring and loving. She’s the reason I write—because she always believed in me. Even now, even though she’s not around anymore, her voice, telling me to believe in myself, let my light shine, and don’t give up, keeps me going.

But I’m also Gen X, the generation of “if you’re going to sit on the couch, you might as well make yourself useful doing it.” I’ve said this before, I believe my Gen X upbringing has generally served me well. In this case, however, I was a bit miffed. I wasn’t just sitting on the couch watching Letterman. I was already busy. Making something. For HER. Didn’t she know that?

No, she didn’t.

Which made for a good laugh on Christmas morning, when she opened her gift from me—the shawl—and I told her that’s what I’d been staying up late to do, and why I couldn’t also fold the laundry and do the ironing while I was at it.

She was so pleased with the shawl and all the work—and time—that went into it. And maybe a little sheepish about her repeated admonishing of how I could’ve been more helpful. My mom also knew herself. For me, it was one of the first moments of experiencing what my grandmother must’ve felt when she brought us her handmade gifts.

Gifts have always been my love language, a language learned from my family. In making that shawl for my mother, I learned about acts of devotion, of spending time creating something special for someone I love. I learned about giving my time, my creativity, and skill. I learned my own particular love language of handmade, how to show love through slow acts of doing.

When I was in college, my mother had already had TIAs—transient ischemic attacks, or mini strokes, where she briefly lost her ability to speak and write. They were more unsettling than they sound. At the time, they were attributed to her migraines, and life went on. Decades later, she had her first stroke. It was bad, but she nearly fully recovered. About ten years after that, she had her second stroke, which almost killed her. That one left her able speak somewhat, sometimes, but not communicate; she could walk but not by herself; she could do some things for herself, but she could not take care of herself. In many ways, we were lucky—she knew her family, she knew where she was, we could take her out and do things, and we did. But her last years were…challenging.

I did what I could to help, spending every Sunday with my parents, being my mom’s caregiver for the day and whenever else I could around my own family and job responsibilities. I got her out of bed, got her dressed, did her hair and make-up. She woke up crying some days, and I always wondered if that was because she forgot about the stroke overnight and was shocked to find herself in this state in the morning. What a terrible way to wake up. On those days, I’d give her the kind of speech she would’ve given me: “You’re in it, now, Mom. There’s only one thing we can do. We put our chins up, and we keep going.”

I cooked her breakfast and lunch. Sometimes we cooked together—dishes she taught me like eggplant parmesan and chicken stir fry, Mom always pointing out where I wasn’t following the recipe quite right. She could communicate well enough to tell me when I was making mistakes.

One day, after doing her hair and make-up, I thought she looked particularly good, and I told her so. I then asked her if she thought I looked good. “Better than last time,” she said.

Even impaired, Mom could speak her truth.

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I often look back on this time and wonder how I did it—how we did it as a family. I’m grateful I could care for my mom in what little ways I did, but even that took its toll physically and emotionally. The stress of it—the never-ending ups and downs of her health, never knowing what would happen next and when, all the injustices and indignities, big and small, that we helped her endure—it was all overwhelming at times.

But I realize now that my mother’s long years of quiet work helped me through it. The patience and perseverance she instilled in me, the compassion and strength. My mother’s act of devotion, years in the making, is what enabled me to be there for her when she needed me most, to show her the kind of person she’d raised. It’s the sturdy foundation I stand on now as a wife and as a mother of a teenager, as I face another of life’s transitions, staring down a lay-off and the path to something new and unknown. I hear her voice again, as clear as if she were standing next to me:

You’re in it now, Judith Ann. Just believe in yourself. Let your light shine. Chin up. Keep going.

My mother didn’t know what I was making back then when I was staying up late and not folding the laundry, and she didn’t know yet what she was making in me, the kind of woman I would become. But I carry it now—the patience, the calm steadiness, the perseverance—like a shawl wrapped around my own shoulders as I step forward on a path toward whatever comes next.

Judy

✍️Writing Where You Are: Think of a time you made a gift for someone—something stitched, drawn, baked…Did it go the way you planned, get the expected reaction, or take an unexpected turn? If you’re not crafty, what’s a handcraft you’ve always dreamed of trying—and what’s stopping you? Take ten minutes to write about a handmade gift—or the creative path you haven’t yet followed.

A fascination with people fuels my passion for story. My endless reading and writing is driven by a curiosity about people and what makes them tick: what past events shape their present, the choices they make and choose not to make, the masks they wear, what they reveal about themselves and how, and what they hide. Secrets and the masks people wear especially fascinate me—is there anything more motivating than keeping a secret, or more character revealing than betraying one? And haven’t we all learned the hard lesson that people aren’t always what they seem? (If you haven’t been burned by that yet, consider yourself lucky. Just wait—it’ll happen. No one is immune.)

Novels are a much safer place to learn about people who aren’t what they seem, and how those shifting identities shake up relationships like destructive earthquakes.

Take Advika and the Hollywood Wives by Kirthana Ramisetti, a contemporary novel about 22-year-old Advika Srinivasan, a failed screenwriter-turned bartender. She’s struggling with the recent death of her twin sister and working A-list events, which is where she meets Julian Zelding, legendary film producer who is magnetically attractive and charming despite being forty-plus years her senior. He also has the kind of industry power that makes or breaks careers. But the age difference doesn’t stop their whirlwind love affair, leading to an eventual elopement. Julian loves to name drop and not-so humble brag about his awards and achievements, but he refuses to talk about his exes. He also reveals himself to be a bit controlling, but then Advika sort of lets him take control of various aspects of her life, too.

The relationship shifts when, not even a month into their marriage, Julian’s first wife—actress Evie Lockhart—dies and Advika cannot ignore a wild and intriguing stipulation in her will. A film reel and $1 million will go to “Julian’s latest child bride” only if Advika divorces him first.

Advika can’t ignore this message from Evie Lockhart’s grave. She investigates and comes to realize that Julian isn’t the man she thought he was—that she didn’t really know him at all to begin with. Now she—young, penniless, and jobless—must extricate herself from an unwanted marriage to a man with wealth, power, and influence that could make or break any hopes she had of a screenwriting career forever.

The toxic relationships and thriller vibes in Advika and the Hollywood Wives speak to Gone Girl, which explores a similar situation. Amazing Amy is missing, and we worry about her and what her husband Nick could’ve done to her. Or did he do something to her? Who is really in power here? The tables in Gillian Flynn’s masterpiece don’t turn—they spin like helicopter rotors.

In We Were Never Here, author explores a friendship between two women, Emily and Kristen, and the relationship between power and fear. As their friendship strains under the pressure of repeated trauma events, Emily wonders if Kristen, her best friend since college, is really who she seems. And in the end, Emily discovers who she really is.

Two other novels I read recently fall into this category of “Who are these people?” One is Zakiya Dalila Harris’s The Other Black Girl, which left me wondering who any of the people are in this story. This is another situation of a powerful man exerting influence over much less powerful women and how the women try to take back some control—for better or worse. There are a lot of hidden agendas and scheming going on under the guise of workplace politeness. The other book is What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal in which Zoe Heller presents an unreliable narrator. We think Barbara Covett is being helpful and kind to Sheba—especially after Sheba’s affair with a student. But as Barbara’s account goes on, we have to wonder what her motives really are.

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Isn’t that the crux of the issue? To develop relationships built on trust, we must understand the motivations of others. For trust to exist—real trust—we must know and understand what motivates people. That’s the kind of trust that fortifies relationships against life’s storms when they come. The agendas can’t be hidden. They must be out on the table, waving in the air like flags for all to see. People must be willing to reveal their true selves to us. That’s real trust.

People who think they’re hiding their true selves—either for self-protection or personal gain or for some other reason—they never really are. Words, actions—what isn’t said and the actions not taken—are all character revealing. These are the writer’s tools, our hammers and chisels that reveal the true person hiding within the block of stone. They’re also our tools as people moving through the world to see through deception.

This is why we write fiction and read it: to make meaning of our real experiences and learn from them. The deceivers are out there. Pick up one of these books, or another that explores deception and toxic people and relationships, and learn the easy way, instead of the hard way.

A brief but important note about author support: has done an incredible service to writers everywhere by taking a stand against AI and intellectual property theft in her successful lawsuit against Anthropic (Go, Andi!). On top of that, Andrea is generous with her writing knowledge and the nicest person you could meet. She has asked nicely for people to support her by buying her books—which are fantastic! I’m going to ask forcefully—show her some support and buy her books! I have bought several, for myself and for gifts this holiday season, and I’ll continue to do so. Please join me:

The Last Ferry Out
The Spare Room
We Were Never Here
The Lost Night
The Herd

These are linked to Bookshop.org. I have no affiliation, I just like their mission. You can get her books anywhere.

Advika and the Hollywood Wives: In Conversation With:
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
We Were Never Here by Andrea Bartz
The Other Black Girl by Zakiya Dalila Harris
What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller

Here’s to what’s next on your TBR pile—happy reading!

Judy

Our friendship began in elementary school and only grew stronger through junior high and high school. I think she’d agree with me when I say neither of us was in the cool set, but neither in the outcasts either. We each had plenty of friends, and even though our social circles didn’t completely overlap, we maintained a strong friendship. There were plenty of sleepovers. We went to the Homecoming Dance together one year. We got ready for the prom together another year. And we just understood each other on another level.

A few examples: I found a series of old photo of us recently, one of me with my head hanging off the end of my bed, frowning. Weird—but I knew exactly what we were doing: testing to see if a frown turned upside down really does look like a smile. Spoiler: It does not.

The day after we saw “Dirty Dancing”—we were in junior high—for some reason we went with my father to a car dealership. Maybe he was bringing her home afterward. We sat on a curb belting out the songs and recapping our favorite scenes. My father didn’t know what to make of us. Teenagers are so goofy and dumb, and we were no exception.

One night in high school, we decided to drive to a movie theater in another part of the state we’d never been to—I still have no idea why my mother let me do this—and got completely lost coming home. I’m surprised we ever made it home.

We had that kind of friendship—willing to have an adventure or plan a birthday party in one of our basements. Even if we fell out of touch for a while, it’s the kind of friendship we fall right back into. I was in her wedding; I had a very small wedding party, but she came to mine.

And then…life happened, and we fell out of touch for a very long time.

I was randomly checking Facebook one day last spring, when I saw she was going through something significant and challenging, something I’d been through, too, and I reached out to offer my support and a kind ear if she ever wanted to talk. That’s how we ended up at the restaurant on the lake, having chowder and Caesar salads on that June evening. Again, we slipped into our friendship like slipping into a favorite pair of slippers. It was easy, comfortable, warm.

We still have so much in common. We both love true crime, and we both love to read. We’re each raising teenage sons and have aging parents. We both still love to laugh, so much.

I’m so grateful for the second chance at this friendship, to rekindle the embers of a relationship that’s been so special and such a constant throughout my life. The easy reconnection, born of a Facebook message, brought another friend to mind, however—someone I cared about just as deeply, someone whose absence I feel sharply now.

We were junior interns together at Old Sturbridge Village one summer, he and I. He had a big personality in the best way—a real goofball who loved to laugh. He was boisterous and smart and kind and hard working. He lived in the eastern part of the state, so after that summer, we lost touch.

Over the years, he showed up at the Village as an interpreter and our friendship would renew, and then he’d leave again and we’d lose contact. He worked at big, well-known amusement parks, performing in parades and shows, and sometimes traveled the world performing. At the end of the day, when we’d gather at the picnic tables and on the grass at the employee entrance to the museum, he’d sing and dance, performing the routines from the parks.

For a long time, we didn’t see or hear from him, and my husband and I would take turns saying, “I wonder what he’s up to.”

A little over ten years ago, the Village had an employee reunion, which we attended. Walking up by the farm, we saw a farmer talking to a visitor. My husband commented that it sure looked like our friend. The interpreter turned—and it was him! He was back working at the Village again. We were so happy to see him, and our friendship renewed over the next few years as he found his way through that phase of his life.

When he was ready to move on once more, he made a comment about distance relationships not working for him. For better or worse, we took that to mean once he left, he didn’t want to stay in touch.

So, we didn’t.

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He moved most of the country away, and we didn’t hear from him again. We’d still say to each other, “I wonder what he’s up to,” and my husband considered reaching out just to ask how things were going for him. But those words about distance relationships kept him, and me, from doing so.

The next thing we knew, mutual friends told us he’d died from an aggressive cancer. The news hit us hard. It felt completely wrong that someone exactly my age—someone who’d woven in and out of my life over decades—could be dead. Even though we hadn’t seen or spoken to him in a long time, his loss left a hole in our lives.

Regret can do that.

I found myself thinking about all of this on Thanksgiving night. My uncle had seen a photo of me from my junior intern days while working at my father’s house and took a photo of it, because he couldn’t get over how much my teenage son looks like my teenage self. We all looked at the photo and marveled at the resemblance, and on the way home, I started to think of my friend and what had slipped away.

At this time of year, when we’re counting our blessings, I’m reminded to tend to those relationships that matter most.

I missed my opportunity once. I can’t go back to that friend now, and I can’t change the past. All I can do is show up for the friends who are in my life now and say ‘yes’ when life offers me chances to reconnect.

Here’s to what’s next,

Judy

✍️Writing Where Your Are: If this stirred something in you, take a moment to think of a friend—someone who shaped you, lifted you, or was there when you needed them most. Write them a letter of gratitude—even if you keep it to yourself. Or, if you’re up to it, send it to them.