Where: Wrote this while at my cabin in PA which is, well, my place. Sitting outside at a picnic table in the early morning hours staring at the creek flowing by. The trip included skinny dipping in epic rainstorms, eating a ton of swedish fish, paddleboarding on my knees(!), building my central PA network from a bulletin board at a local country store, washing dishes with boiled creek water and driving a Jeep covered in mud wearing my trucker hat. It all felt very much like I was getting ready for my future life???

What’s happening for me: Had a busy July and busy-ness makes me grumpy. Then three things hit me over three days - a trifecta - that brought up my ongoing “things” (unrequited romantic love, if I’m a good mom, work as my worth). Then, when I scheduled time with my beloved therapist to talk them through, she brought up how I might be shaming myself/my kids/my humans, which I really, really, really didn’t want to hear!

Went almost immediately after my session to our family cabin for a couple of weeks which meant not only all the good things above (and more!) but also lots of hours of just being. Writing. Reading. Walking. And while that could have been bad given how I was entering, it was more exactly right. Had so many things to write about and sit with and space to let myself feel and turn towards it instead of distracting myself with my beloved to do list, including going deep on what I was scared of.

My daughter Nat read and edited some of my writing while there and said I should share this piece - so now home and feeling so good to be here/back and sharing as directed!

Here’s to August and feeling refreshed and always more living and growing and learning and being!

Love, what am I scared of?

Well my little one, the list here is LONG but if you’re asking what you’re scared of right here and right now, well, that is a shorter list.

• You’re scared that you’re not like-able or fun enough.

• You’re scared that you have hurt those you love most. That you are responsible for what’s hard in their worlds.

• You’re scared that you are too rigid. That you need things to be just so and when they aren’t, you can’t manage. That there’s only a small sliver you’re comfortable in.

• You’re scared of filling your kids with shame. Making them feel that they are not enough as they are but only when they do what you think is right, that there is only one way of being.

• You’re scared that you’re not thin or attractive enough. You’re scared you’ll fall into society’s norms and try to get smaller. Or that you won’t and you’ll never be as happy or as loved as you could be if you were thin and beautiful.

• You’re scared of turning bitter. Of pulling away from others, of not being able to love what is and instead, focusing on what isn’t.

• You’re scared that your identity will be so tied up in your work that it will be the most important thing in your life versus just something you’re doing.

• You’re scared that you won’t have friends or community or spaces. That you will isolate and not know how to get out beyond.

• You’re scared that you’re going to let life’s hard things overtake you. That the hard stuff will get into your bones and being and instead of working through them or lettting them flow through, that you’ll force them down and they’ll settle inside of you and eat away at you, bit by bit.

• You’re scared that your kids will know you love them but also think that your like of them is conditional because you don’t always know how to separate actions from someone’s being well enough.

• You’re scared your future self will be unhappy. Really, really unhappy.

My little one, all of these have grains of truth. It’s in there. Its real.

And there are SO many facets to all of this that we are not going to just take these at face value.

We will sit with them and feel them because they need to be felt. Deeply and wholly and completely.

But my love, I want us to notice. Even as we sit here and feel them and it hurts, this pain is not debilitating or all consuming. Because even as we feel it, we know that this list holds truths but that it isn’t the truth.

My love, you aren’t a heroine OR a victim OR a villain (thanks to LC for always reminding us of this!).

You’re just a human - and you’re a part of other’s stories but guess what, you aren’t their whole story!

And not only that. we also get to choose what to focus on, what comes to the forefront, what we center and where we go.

• You can focus on the times you have reveled in judging someone else and how good it felt to just let yourself be frustrated and upset for a bit - OR you can focus on your being able to pull back and love what is.

• You can focus on how not enough you feel with certain people and in certain situations - OR you can focus on how absolutely whole you feel when sitting here right now and how this moment feels even more true????

• You can focus on the moments where you have let yourself not like others and questioned who they were - OR you can focus on the moment we bring ourselves back to remembering that actions aren’t who folks are and we can yet again feel universal love.

• You can focus on how hard it was to be called out by someone who sees you and knows you - OR you can focus on how slowly over the next week you let yourself feel the hard of it and did something about it. Maybe not as quickly as you would have liked or in the ways you’re most proud of(!) - and you did it.

We can go down the road of all of these things we’re so scared of - and we can keep going and going and going…

OR my little one, we can pull up and see all of this as part of a bigger picture.

My love, it is hard to face that you aren’t perfect. That you will always struggle. That you’re human and learning and breaking and being all the time. ALL the time!

You get things so fucking right. And so fucking wrong. And everything in between.

What matters my little one is what we do with it all. Do we shut out the fear and blame others and get angry and refuse to let it in?

Do we fall into what feels easy and comfortable and good in the moment?

Do we dig our heels in?

Or, do we hear and listen? Do we feel? Do we keep learning and adjusting and paying attention?

Our core is so much stronger these days my love - SO much stronger (thanks LM for my new fave phrase “strong core, open heart!”).

We can take all of this in without it destroying us. We have built and healed in ways that will be forever good for us and will forever open up possibilities.

And the best part is that we have done it so we know we can do it again. And again. And again.

So right now, we are going to feel this fear. We’re going to let it in because it’s telling us something. About who we are. But more importantly, who we want to be.

And then, then we’re going to make a list of the specifics. The things that matter and that we want to evolve in and from. Why? Because, well, we LOVE a good list and the writing of the specifics grounds us in the here and now and what we can actually do - which is were we want to be.

My little one, we get to build this life and make it what we want it to be. And that looks one way now and can look another way tomorrow.

We are who we are. And that will never be one thing. We are always ALL the things.

For the list of what we’re scared of, there’s an equal list to what we’re proud of. And together, they make us, us. Human. Real. Whole.

What’s hitting hard on this one my little one is that you thought you were doing so well! So getting thrown back is a bit, well, tricky….

The reality - you are both doing so well AND you’re human. The circumstances you are in + experiencing matter for how it shows up. How you’re feeling and how you’ve slept and how stressed you are and who you’re with and, well, all the pieces. And guess what, all the tricky things? They’re going to keep coming up. Over and over and over. Because, well, that’s life!

So my little one, feel so good about where you are. Feel so good about writing this today and getting it out. Feel so good about what’s possible.

Hold yourself when you’re scared, make it safe to release when we want to control. We don’t need to double down, we can just love and sit in that love.

Go rest my love. And know you’re okay. And will be okay. And that this fear, it is just communication and information.

I promise, you are you and building a beautiful life for both of us.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: I have been all in at Helia - it’s feeling creative and purposeful and like where I want so much of my energy to go. But I’m also starting to feel that hum in my body and the urge to be “doing” and the incessant phone checking instead of peacefully drifting off to sleep or slow meanderings with the pups. Know it’s in balance - but still, not the best sign!!!!

What’s Happening for Me: I feel good and steady and whole and excited (if not quite as peaceful as I’m going for!). We are launching Helia (aka I feel like it’s good enough to share out in the world!), N’s summer is off to a raring start with musical rehearsals and summer school (very much the opposite of planned!), J is walking on air lately which is so fun to watch and I’m heading to visit S in a couple of weeks. The air in LA from the Boyle Heights fire is so bad that we’re mostly indoors with windows closed (and grateful to be a few miles out). I’m going on dates where I say yes to a second and third, going on dates where mid-way I say thank you and going to head home. I’m hanging out with new people(!) and having father’s day dinners with the fam. Living a life that feels wildly lucky and one I have built - and still (always?) tweaking the things…

Love, why am I so antsy and wired lately? It’s not a bad feeling necessarily - it’s just like things are humming through me and I can’t quite settle. There’s an energy and a drive and a need to fill or add or do that, well, it’s worrying me…. Because sometimes when I get into this place - where I need things, it starts to get into the “too much” that overtakes everything else!

Oh my love, I LOVE that you’re paying attention to this. You aren’t just going with it, you’re noticing it. Which is really beautiful and important - and makes all the difference.

It’s true - you are in a kind of hyper state these days…You have so many ideas moving through your mind and honestly, you’re just really, really excited. What are you excited about? Well, so many things but I would say it mostly boils down to possibilities.

You’re excited about Helia. You’re doing work that feels SO right and so you - what you’re meant to be doing. And, for the first time, that work isn’t in service of one person or one idea, the “thing” that you need to somehow make true in the world to prove your worth and be of value and be good. Instead, you’re building something that feels right to you. That’s what might help anyone or everyone. And it’s still in service - that’s kind of part of your DNA - but there isn’t an outcome you’re trying to hit or a person you’re trying to please. Instead it’s more about, how do I want to show up in the world? What feels right?

There are days that feel easier than others(!) - when the vision and the reality is lining up. There are days when it’s just not quite there yet and you don’t know how to get it there. But you’ve been waiting those out and seeing it through and remembering to ask people instead of living in your own head(!). And the result my little one feels good. SO good! And when you think about what you can do with this, what it means to be doing work that feels right with humans that are who you want to work with and that, well, is what you’re meant to be doing in the world, like the roads are all converging and colliding to be like this, just this. Well, there’s an energy to that. A hum.

And then, of course because it’s you, there are SO many more ideas on what else is possible and where you can take this. Possibilities have always been your jam, my little one. So when you see them and feel them - especially when they take on this shape and emotion, well, they have you feeling that buzz. It’s like your high my love!!!!

And you want to do it well. Because that’s who you are. What you care about. How you’re wired. And because it feels so important, so magical, so your calling, there’s a foundation to + in this that then spreads beyond.

So now we have ideas both for Helia, for work, for possibilities. But with it, you have also turned this driver turned on. This need to do and fill. You’re constantly wanting to check your phone to see what might be happening, what other inputs you can put into your system to help craft. What feedback, if any, is coming through.

And this my little one, this is the problem. The almost desperation for more and more and more. The not letting it come but the urgency and the need to keep it moving. As if you’re pausing and breathing and being might stifle it (when we both know it’s the opposite).

And in this moment my little one, it’s not just about Helia. Because you’re feeling possibilities in SO many areas of your life.

In dating for the first time in a LONG time there are possibilities. And not just specific humans but an energy. A sense of how awesome you are and what you have to offer and that it’s feeling like it’s time. A knowing that you’re kind of amazing and not just someone that others might settle for but rather the person that they’re so lucky to get.

That the humans you need and want in your world are coming. That your community is growing. That you’re meeting humans who you like and connect with and want to have coffee with. And you’re giving off that energy too - where humans you like and feel intrigued by are feeling the same and it’s feeling reciprocal and aligned and just, well, lovely.

Some of this is just timing, my little one. It’s that your kids are older and you have a spaciousness that hasn’t existed in as long as you can remember. And while Helia is pulling you in deeply and wholly, it is also fully in your control and while you aren’t “nailing it” quite yet, you are getting close!!!! You pause when you want. You take breaks often. You read and walk and decide that things are “enough” and move forward. How fucking awesome! And with that, you have space to let people in - in ways that haven’t existed in a LONG LONG LONG time. Maybe some of this is less that you’re different and more just that there’s an opening for others?

And some of this my little one, some is who you are and where you are. And that you’re existing more in the world than in your little corner. You needed that time in our house my little one, cocooning and huddling, waiting until we were ready. That time was beautiful and healing and one of the best things we have ever done. And, when you’re in that place my little one, you’re not open to new relationships and friends. You’re not in the world seeing and responding to things. You’re in your head and your body and your being. And that can be good. Really really good. But it can also lead to all sorts of things. The focusing on what isn’t off or wanting. The wishing for more. The wondering and worrying about why you’re here instead of there, whatever here and there might mean that day.

And my love, as much as we want to live from the inside. As important and fucking awesome as that is(!), our inside is the compass but when it’s the primary input and source, well, it’s a pretty warped sense of reality.

Because yes, it makes it easy to fixate on the times when the guy looks you up and down, appraising if you’re attractive and thin enough for him. Or when K says you look different with a look of almost repulsion. Or when you wear the wildly low cut/boob sharing jumpsuit on a date where the guy has told you how much he loves boobs(!) and he is so not feeling it he barely even looks.

Or we can fixate on the moments when you’re in a room and have no idea what to say or how to engage and just want to go home. Or when it seems like everyone has groups of friends that they feel so at home with and yours are so individual and scattered. Or the times when you want to hang out with someone and you realize that there’s almost no one in LA that you can call (for all the reasons - kids, lives, obligations, your own self getting in the way).

OR my little one (and remember how much easier this is to do when you’re IN THE WORLD!), you can realize that these are just moments.

In the last few weeks alone, there was the happy hour you where you had wonderful convos and even exchanged numbers with a potential friend. Or the flirtation at the bar after the Dodger game in your fugliest hat when you bonded over how flabbergasted you are that Treinen continues to get to pitch. Or the room with the new client where you were just going to listen but then you realize, you’re good. Really good. And the best thing here is to offer to help and start helping. Now.

We’ve explored this so much my little one - how easy it is to latch on to the negative. But that’s also especially easy when you don’t have a flow of new lives and experiences and happenings. When we’re just mulling over what has been. When we’re in the world of the living, well, new things are happening all the time and the history of it all is there but suddenly not quite so paramount.

So my love, getting back to the question, the energy you have right now is awesome. Really really beautiful and fun and right where we want to be. Exactly.

AND it is starting to tip a tiny bit into the things we know aren’t good. The needing to do’s and doing to feel good and whole and productive. To be useful and enough. To be living “right.

The wanting and needing connection and validation. Did the person text back yet? Has anyone responded to that email? Did the guy ask you on a second date? It’s so fun to have things happening - but that little bit of anxiety for it and the desire for that tiny rush of adrenaline that comes with - well, let’s obviously not go too far down that rabbit hole!

Possibilities are good. This energy you have is delightful. And if you find that you can’t balance it all with a good writing session, reading in the yard (with some naps), hikes without calls or podcasts or checking if any new texts came in, then we’ve gone too far. Then we need to take a break from technology for a bit. We need to have an afternoon off at the beach with our phone. We need to meditate just a bit longer and get back into a daily writing practice until well, until that balance is back.

You know what to do AND you know how to do it. And I think you’ve been avoiding because you’ also have been wondering WHY this is happening and kind of worried about it. What did it mean? Was it good? Bad? Unknowable?

And my little one, it just is. Like all things - it just is!!!!

So lean in, let it feel so fucking good and fun because possibilities are your jam. And then, well, then step it back so you’re able to relish in them and take them in and be balanced and whole and in the best place to live the full life that gets ALL of the good here and can weather all of the hard (because guess what, that keeps coming…).

I love you my little one. To the moon and back and with every possibility that presents itself in our world.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: I started working on my memoir on my writing retreat in April and it felt so obvious that the core question is - Am I a Good Mom? - and exploring that. The memoir is definitely paused (Helia is pulling me in good ways and there are only so many ways I can go!) - but getting that clarity and starting, it’s absolutely still moving in me

What’s Happening for Me: Life is good. Steady. After a rough-ish patch with my chrons flaring and kids in tricky seasons and house expense after house expense, I slowed down and pared back and amazingly(!), it worked. Less is more(!). And while not perfect (because never), mostly in a great place. A little less yoga. A few more slow hikes. An entire Memorial Day of cooking and watching Married at First Sight with J + N. More clarity and more space. In love with my pups. Time for dating. Excited about Helia. And here we are!

What makes a good mom? And, maybe, even more importantly, who gets to decide?

My little one, this question has been with you and in you for a long time. Likely not just about being a mom - but being good in general. But the mom thing, the mom thing feels so real.

Does it count when my mom tells me I’m a good mom? When my friend asks me for parenting advice? When I read or hear something and think yep, I do that? When my kids are doing well? When my kids tell me how great I am?

When I tell my therapist about how I managed a situation and I feel their approval. When my ex-husband compliments me, defers to me, tells me I’m doing a great job.

It is when I’m with other parents at S’ residential treatment center and think, I feel good and whole and real, I’m glad I’m at this stage in the journey. Is it that we made the decision to get S more help?

Is it when a friend calls and says thank you for raising such a kind and proactive and capable human?

Is it when you see your kid shining and glowing at accomplishing something they created and worked at and made happen?

Is it when your kid is absolutely furious at the world and irate and instead of reacting, you stay calm and hold the space and let them move through?

Is it when you figure out the magic words or just the right formula to help them navigate the hard things that have and do and will come their way?

Or is it when you fail miserably and just step back and let them navigate it - and they do! Or they don’t. But in both, you let it and them be….

In all of these my little one, there’s so much in there…

What does it mean to be dependent on others’ words or reactions or opinions?

What happens when those words are hollow? When they feel like pity? When they come from all of that human’s own experiences and struggles? When they’re “real” for that human - but it’s only from the sliver they see and know.

What does it mean about the early stages of S’ journey - where I was one of the new parents? When I was whipping back and forth and struggling to make it through the next hour.

What does it mean when my kids are struggling? Angry at me and blaming me for all the things? When I’m letting them navigate and it’s not obviously working, and not just for minutes or days but for what feels like unending seasons.

What does it mean when another parent comes at your child, upset at something they said or did? Is stepping in front of your child to protect them good parenting? When you dig in after? Or maybe when you just let it go?

What does it mean when friends and family and humans in our world don’t like my kids? Don’t think I’m doing it “right”? When you don’t want to share because of the judgment that will come, not just in the moment but the overall.

What does it mean when my family is on such a different path, when I’m asked about college and life and folks are so ready for me to jump in with the college tour or the application stress and I just smile and say, my kids are on very different paths!. And you see the shift. The uncertainty. The “oh, that’s great.”

And it is. Mostly. Always?

But you can see and you can feel their curiosity, their wondering…

The secret here, my little one, is that when I am confident in my kids, most folks will get on board. They’ll go with it. They trust that I know?!?!?

Does my trusting in my kids - and maybe, their trusting in me - maybe that’s what makes me a good mom?

Oh my love - this is hard. What you want - with every part of your being - is for your kids to be whole, to feel safe and loved, to have the grounding they need to move through hard things and become whoever they want to become.

And when you see them feeling safe and loved, it makes everything make sense. It feels like you’re on the right path and balancing where to step in and where to let it go and everything in between so well.

But when they’re not in that safe and loved space? Well, it’s so so so easy to turn on ourselves. To question what we’ve done, what we’re doing now. To make their journey about us, about what kind of mom we are.

My little one, being a good mom has almost nothing to do with our kids or their journeys.

You can do everything “right”, be the best mom that you are and could be and that society sees, following all the rules - and your kids, well, your kids could be dead in a ditch or spend their life spiraling and never quite landing in love and purpose and connection.

OR, you can do everything “wrong” - follow only rules or stick to a path that harms or give up entirely - and your kids, well, they can thrive and build the lives they want and need and feel so safe and so loved.

The good mom thing, the good mom thing is within you. About you. Inside of you. And it needs to not be based on whether N is having a good day or passing her classes. Or on whether J seems fulfilled and connected and happy. Or on whether S is in a season where we can see the future or a season where we feel stuck in today.

When we look at our kids, they are so who they are. Who they have been. Who they will likely always be.

Yes, in slightly different iterations - growth and maturity and life is real - but at their core, they are them. And the idea that we were responsible, we were in control - the hours and dollars and torment we’ve lived in trying so hard to help them be what we think and want and see…

Well my little one, perhaps we could have chilled a LOT MORE. Parented with a bit more heart and a lot more calm and, well, felt a lot more peace.

My love, when we think about being a good mom, it is the thing we want and will give anything for. And that, that’s a huge part of the problem. As if it is something we could accomplish or achieve. As if there’s a moment of yes, you’ve done it!

We know what we hear, what we compare ourselves to…

The podcast the one time - where the guy said look and see where the kids are well behaved and thoughtful and engaged. Those are the good parents and the ones you want to be in the world with, for your family to be with.

When your uncle talked about how having the family dinner was the way. The thing that his family always did and how it held them together.

And then you start down the path…

You think about all the times that your world didn’t want their family to be with yours. How many family dinners you did NOT have.

But then you think about what else you know, what’s beyond this?

The “perfect family” who fit that mold - how their eldest child took their life, how the mom confides in you how miserable she is. They look the part at dinner, but life isn’t just that snapshot. There’s always more. So much more.

Or when your aunt responded to your uncle, said you were traveling for work, you don’t know. It wasn’t family dinners, it was crying in the car and showing up over and over and making it through.

My love, there’s so much here - and at the end of the day, in mothering and in all things, it is not about what others see and think. It is not about the outcomes and the end game and the accomplishments. It’s about how we feel about it. Do we feel like a good mom?

Did we pay attention? Did we learn and adjust and shift? Did we show up?

Did we listen to what our souls and intuition and instinct told us? Did we stand up to and for our kids?

Did we see the things that are wonderful about them and celebrate that and honor possibilities?

Did we give space when it felt right? Did we step in when it felt needed?

Did we love them? Did we love ourselves?

My little one, there is no getting it right. There is no final stop where we can now declare ourselves a good mom. And if we can’t even do it, well, no one else gets to either.

But there is that thing, that thing that carries us through over and over and over, in motherhood and friendship and work and everything in between - it’s that living from the inside. It’s that being in touch with our soul, being in touch with our knowing, being in touch with our whole and true self. And then, then making decisions from there.

The outcomes become nothing. The accolades are nice but not needed.

My love, we can trust ourselves. We can trust ourselves to care and pay attention and to love. We can trust ourselves to have heart and soul and beautiful intentions. We can trust ourselves to know what’s best and right - in that moment and in that configuration and most importantly, for us.

Because what’s right for us, well, we can trust in that. It’s what we are meant to put in the world. It’s what we will be able to ground in and live with, no matter what comes.

When we have to realize that J might choose the opposite of what we want. That S might not ever love himself the way we want him to. That N might always be fighting her way through.

What will we be okay with? What will we ground in and think yep, I can keep breathing and loving and living and feel so good about my role and commitment and existence as their mom.

Not because it changed the outcome, but because my journey and life is mine and I only have to trust in - and listen to - myself to live into. It’s the only way to be okay. The only way to thrive. The only thing to model. The only thing to say yes to.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: Heard a friend comment about how everything is from either love or fear and felt my whole body freeze because it was like yep, that. That’s what’s been happening and what you absolutely need to write about.

What’s Happening for Me: Just spent THREE weeks solo - well, mostly solo! Drove to southern Oregon, car camping along the way for a magical writing retreat, swung home for a quick Easter celebration and then to the desert while John stayed at our place during his condo’s electrical work. I’d been feeling so lonely - and then I spent a few weeks alone and, well, guess, what, I loved it. Felt the OPPOSITE of being lonely. And yet again, like always, that facing the fear thing….

My love, let’s write about fear.

Let’s write about where it’s showing up. Let’s write about how we’re navigating through. Let’s write about where it’s helping and beautiful at bringing things forward. Let’s write about where it’s getting in the way and sending us in those way too familiar spirals…

My little one, fear is showing up in ways that are, well, so real. That old adage that comes up over and over - that everything is coming from fear or love - well, we don’t know if it’s true but we know there is SO much truth in it. And, well, so much these days seems to be coming from fear…

This makes sense in a lot of ways - and how we’re navigating it is honestly, kind of beautiful. But it doesn’t change the source and the root and this, this needs attention…

When N was sick a few weeks back and, well, there’s not really any other word for it, AWFUL, you spiraled a bit my love. Then, when J + R just weren’t following through on the agreements you all had made. It all started to overcome you.

You absolutely had the thoughts of “what if this cycle with S is starting all over again? What if I’m failing? What if I’ll have to live through this again?”

And your body tightened and you went through the motions. Outwardly, you held it together. You shared your frustration with others, wrote about it - all the pieces.

But the deep fear inside, the fear of “why is this happening and what am I doing so wrong and how are we here and is this the root of things” - that, that you kept to yourself.

And my love, all of that makes sense. Anything that brings those moments and times and spaces up, well, of course we’re going to be scared.

And as soon as N came out of it, as soon as she was not coming from her own place of fear, you talked with her. That one opening - a few days later. Not the “you need to reflect on this”. Not the “this is not okay” statements. The one that came from love and fear, both coming and living in our body together - saying, “I’d like to talk about the last few weeks. It felt really hard and scary. And I’m not sure what to do.”

And N responded so beautifully. With so much honesty and soul. And while it was just a few sentences - a promise to each other and to ourselves that we need to keep growing here, in all the ways, all the fear left our body and instead, instead we could be flooded with love and the knowing that we’ll take the steps and that while we have no idea where they’ll lead, we’ll walk through them. Step by step by step.

This ended well - really really well - but if N hadn’t emerged from her own fear, if she was still living there, if we couldn’t have had that response that made it all feel okay????

That’s a place to pay attention. How can we get there not just when it feels safe and our body and mind and soul are out of that moment - how can we get there while it’s happening?

The short answer my little one, we don’t know. There are no sets of rules or exact sets of steps to follow - we know how tempting a good framework or list is and, well, that’s not how life works (no matter how hard we all try!).

We’re just going to need to pay attention. To give ourselves space.

To keep talking about it - but to find one or two where we can really talk about it, where the fear can pour out and someone else can help hold it and us.

To write about it - to go deep and honest, not just the list of frustrations but the anger and the rage bubbling under. And underneath that, your innermost fears.

And, well, we can keep grounding in love. Asking ourselves the question - how can we open our heart? Take down our shield. Let ourselves feel all the things and lean into it. Because my little one, we know, we know we will get to the other side.

Now my little slowly opening heart human, let’s look at what else has been brewing these last few months… J + N are getting older. They’re both pulling away and building their own lives, J at a pace that has always made sense but while still living at home so you’re feeling all of it. N a bit later and after a couple really wonderfully close years together.

We’re both thrilled and grounded - it makes us feel like, okay, they’re doing this and they’re going there and how awesome to get to witness where it’s all going to land.

And, at the same time, it’s scary. You have come to terms with how much you love S and want him in your world. And, simultaneously, you have released that it will be whatever it will (most of the time!).

But these last couple of years, you, J + N have built a life - a home - that, well, feels SO SO SO good. In so many ways! And now, now we’re getting close that shifting and changing.

J is building his life and world. He will one day move out and create his next. N is thinking about college(!) - and living there!!! Both want to spend time with their friends, at their jobs, in their worlds. And we want that - we want it so much.

But in this in between - where they’re growing and we are, to some extent, sitting and watching versus doing the same. N isn’t ready yet for me to not be around - so I’m here. Alone. And when others are moving and we’re just here, it feels lonely. Really, really lonely.

So my little one - in an odd chance of events, we spent the last 3ish weeks solo - with a writing retreat mixed in there. We went into this time with the plan to be alone when we were feeling perhaps the loneliest we ever had. Which seems, well, odd. Really really odd.

And yet, stepping into that space - saying “I see you fear and guess what, let’s just see”. I’m not taking this potential idea that has somehow moved into my being of being trapped and alone forever in my living room as the truth. Or maybe as even the worst thing.

And, gloriously, when I was alone, loneliness was the farthest thing from my being - in every which way!!!!

The hours in solitude - writing when waking up, hikes in the AM and PM, working on and off throughout the day, skinny dipping in the afternoon = all mixed in with occasional calls with humans I loved, good books at the ready and simple food (zucchini noodles and raisin bran for the win). It was beautiful. And calming. And liberating? It felt so free.

A dear friend, RW, chose to live alone a few years ago to teach herself to do it. It sounded like such a luxury at the time, when I was dripping with children and obligations and everyone with me all the time - but now, now I see it as one of the most powerful things we can do.

I can be alone. I can be with others. I can exist in any reality that brings itself my way. And not only exist - I can thrive.

I can build a life I want that is NOT dependent on having kiddos that want to hang out with me all the time (though once in a while will be nice!).

I do not NEED to find a partner to be happy. Not sharing a house with my best friends or a front stoop where we know all of our neighbors? A lovely thing to aspire to - and not the foundational thing that will bring me happiness.

My little one - we faced this fear. We said - what will this look and feel like and we went for it.

And, as is almost always true, we found that not only was it okay, it was actually really, really, really lovely.

We’re doing this as we build Helia - we’re saying maybe I don’t need to make my professional world about finding someone or someone’s idea and throwing everything I have into making it successful? Maybe I can think about all the things I’ve learned in doing this and think how can I show up and support the most folks in the most ways? How can I do what I want to do versus what someone else wants me to do?

And then, then were doing it. And not just doing it - we’re going to go for it. We’re all in and while it’s a tiny bit scary, it’s well also, not at all? We’re building and moving and it feels so fun and full of life and possibility that the work doesn’t feel like work (most of the time!).

It feels like learning and growing and paying attention - and something I like jumping into when I wake up and something I like thinking about on hikes. And, just as easily saying, I’ll think about that later because I’m not here to serve a person or company, I’m serving an idea and possibility and that, that let’s me move and groove in all sorts of ways that feel pretty awesome.

The fear you weren’t good enough. That the only way to earn your place or be “okay” was to serve others’ ideas? Well, you get to have ideas too and when you like them enough, you get to run with them.

And finally my little one, let’s touch on what hat brought up. The fear that’s underlying everything, all the time. The fear that, as always, you’re not enough. That you’re not like-able or love-able and you’ll never get it “right”.

And here my little one - here we have leaned so hard into being ourselves, saying we’re here and we’re doing to do this and it’s all okay, it’s been really really good. We needed that turn, from wanting everyone to like us and crafting everything we did and said to do that into being US. All of us, in all the ways.

And my little one, this is an area to pay attention. It is so beautiful to be living in our body and our mind and our soul. AND, sometimes… Well, sometimes where this is coming from is not from love, for others OR ourselves, but rather, from that oppositional Ms. Defiant part.

This defiant part who means so well - and serves such a role and maybe, maybe it’s time for this part to slow a little. She has moved us far, really far. And now, now, maybe we can let ourselves soften.

Maybe we can let down what we need to prove and instead, instead we can choose to be curious and kind and focusing on the relationship and the universe and all the layers at play.

And to do this my love, perhaps we need to let that fear in again, the one that we might not be liked. And that it’s okay for that to happen.

We get to share ourselves and our beings and live from the inside. Always. But we don’t have to do it quite so strongly or rigidly or tightly. Instead, well, instead we could do it from a place of love. The fear that we’ve been building from - it’s real. So real. And instead, instead perhaps this is a moment to consider love….

My little one, this is as Elizabeth Gilbert says, this earth school thing. Our chance to live and breathe and learn and grow. And we are so often just needing to get through. The hard moments. The things that bring up the past. The ways of being “us” in a world that wants us to be, well, what it wants. The overwhelmed. The tricky relationship seasons.

And, there will never be the right way OR the wrong way to do this. But there is a way to move. And it’s one that is calling us to pay attention.

To keep listing our fears. To opening into them with all of our beings. And, whenever possible, when we can feel safe enough, let’s open our heart as we do it. To the world. To the humans we know. To our people we love. And maybe, maybe most importantly to ourselves.

My love, what we know, and know deep in our souls, is that we can do anything. We can move through anything. We can do this life.

The how? The what it looks like? That’s up to us - how scary adn how fucking awesome.

So all these fears that we’re holding, the nascent things in our being - we get to welcome them in. Say hello. Say thank you. Say I love that you’re bringing this forward and now, now let’s move through. We can face it and test it and run towards it. We can soften into it and let it be real and breath and have it be okay. We can just pay attention and know - and open our hearts.

And my love, if this is our life to live, I think we want one driven by love, with fear as a compass to help us get there. So that, that’s what we get to focus on creating.

I love you my little one - with every ounce of my being and breath.

Smile, breath in this emerging sunlight and see the garden starting to bloom and the pups now feeling so ready to go adventure and know what a gift this thing called life is, this chance to explore, this chance to write, this chance to be. It will do more to open your heart than almost anything else!

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: Wrote this in my FIRST round of Unmute when I was on sabbatical from Think of Us and just starting to write and find that space + voice. Ann gave a prompt about relationships - including what we want, what we won’t give and the idea of a dialogue. Fast forward to today - I’m on a writing retreat in southern Oregon and it’s beautiful and I am re-reading ALL of my writing (close to 2K pages) to try to figure out what to do with it all. Read this piece and it felt like exactly what I’m balancing today - which feels both sad and timeless and everything in between! My relationship with self = very strong. My sense of worthiness and value = in a beautiful place. The loneliness and push + pull and the choices I make/what I prioritize and the ways it’s not quite looking how I want and feel - also real!!!!

What’s Happening for Me: Things are both GREAT -and I’m lonely. Really lonely. This feels so weird as I have beautiful friends + family and life practices that are exactly right. Two of my kids - and one of their friends(!) - live with me at home. I go to yoga every morning and work in coffee shops where I am surrounded by others. I work with folks I like and enjoy spending time with (albeit virtually). I get to live near some of my oldest and dearest friends.

And, at the same time, I feel really alone. My kids are older and doing more and more of their own thing. Time together is fine - but it’s not soul filling or all encompassing or the thing they want to do. While I have good friends in LA, it isn’t the same as my very extended Bay Area community - forever friends (especially those with very different lives) are different from those we make as we’re becoming adults? And I can’t quite tap into it in LA. I do too much solo - or around others but not with them - and am not sure how to change that? I’m tired and have less in me than I used to - and work too much to fill the void - so then there’s less time? Olive doesn’t love strangers coming over so I need to think about it more carefully. I’m trying dating but it’s most definitely not quite landing yet…

So reading this as part of my retreat brought it all back. My relationship with myself = yes. Right. Here. Relationships with others and needing that (without being co-dependent OR working in the same office OR living in the same building OR seeing each other at school drop off every day…) - also so real. And something I need to prioritize and lean into and build and figure out. Because it’s not quite right yet…

Oh my love, what a beautiful, beautiful question to explore. There are so many kinds of relationships in our world. So many chances to see and be seen. So many chances to fully let go and let others in - and so many moments to pull back into only our relationship with ourself.

What do we want in relationships my love?

Let’s start with what we want in ALL of our relationships, romantic and as a parent and as a friend and at work.

• We want to see.

• We want to be seen.

• We want to feel safe..

• We want to find joy and delight.

• We want to feel ease.

• We want to feel connection.

Does this ever change my love? Is there ever a moment where you want to be in any relationship that doesn’t hold all of these? Why would we want that? Why would we allow that?

These questions my love, they are beautiful. What have we stopped risking?

It’s hard for us to let ourselves be hurt. To trust that we are worthy enough to be wanted.

We have lowered our standards - any relationship, if it has enough of the “right” things suddenly feels worth it.

We don’t want to quit. We don’t trust ourselves to make that choice. We don’t value ourselves enough to put ourselves first and are scared to risk what happens if we do.

What if we get hurt? What if we fail? What if we settle?

Let’s do this dialogue thing, my love, I think there might be something there that could be fun AND that you’re ready for. Really and truly ready for.

Nervous: I don’t want to be alone in the world. Not because I can’t be alone but because it means I wasn’t good enough for someone to want me. Because it means I was too fat to deserve a partner. I was too loud or quiet or didn’t bring enough for people to want to be with me. I don’t truly lose myself - and I adapt just a little here and there so that I am not alone.

Desiring: I hear you, Nervous, I do. And, I also know that we find our greatest joy in the world through connections and relationships. And that the ones that bring us this - EH, K, ES, AK, RW, AJ - are nothing short of transformational. These relationships don’t come often - but when they do, there is nothing better.

Nervous: Yes, that is so so so true. And do we want to keep waiting for those? Or seeking them out? Or instead, do we turn inward and find our deep and beautiful satisfaction within. And, when it is here, we can then see and experience it with everyone around us. AND, let’s note that while some of those are lasting, so many have not lasted or have not been great forever. Until we do our own work, how will we know that we are making the best choices? Or that things will last?

Desiring: All true. And I don’t think it has to be one or the other. I have loved the work we are doing to be in relationship with ourselves. To revel in being alone. And wouldn’t change any of it for the world. Think about how differently we respond to DR and K and EL today than we would have before. Not from a place of desperation but from a place of grounded-ness and knowing they are good but not all. AND, I still want to be in deep relationship, deep community with friends and a loved one. Our soul craves that intimacy - and knows it’s possible.

Nervous: I agree it’s possible - and I also have seen how we find it in different people and it doesn’t last. X, S, K, even L during that break, these were all humans that fed your soul with such deep and beautiful connection and then ended, some softly and some violently but all with pain. I don’t know that I want things that don’t last. And I don’t know that I want things that I cling to longer than we should (e.g. X and S). Are we really ready? Or again, would just being here, with ourselves be the strongest and most beautiful?

Desiring: Our primary relationship can be with ourself. And I am lonely. And every time we open to relationships and prioritize and release, the world gets better and better and better. Think about it, Nervous. Our kids have transformed our souls and beings in ways that we would never trade, even with everything it brings. And every time we open and remove our armor and let us feel all the things that come in those relationships, I scream nothing but YES. And when we showed ourselves to L and X and they loved us. And when we fell in love with K and he with us, is there anything more intoxicating? Or worthwhile?

Nervous: And the pain we have felt with S is more searing than anything. And we had to protect ourselves. This has closed us off to all things and honestly, I feel safe here. We can do the nourishing things and the fun things and it feels like exactly the way to be. Enjoying our world AND having the relationships that are here in the form they take.

Desiring: I won’t even try to take any of that away from you - you are right right right right. And we are worthy of ALL of it. We are worthy of release and abandon with our kids. We are worthy of the MOST beautiful friendships that feed our soul. We are worthy of true romantic love that feeds our soul and is beaming out of us at every step. We are worthy of only the best of relationships, including that with our own self. I can agree that we never want to compromise again on any of it. I no longer want to settle. AND I want more. More and more and more and more!

Nervous: If we can do this by putting our own relationship with ourselves first. And promise to honor that having a relationship that isn’t beautiful is worse than having none at all. We can be open to experience and explore - and I’m on board with being totally open as I think we are ready for it and can trust in ourselves and the possibilities that will come (and that it can be a process!) - AND if we get desperate or it starts fucking with our own sense of self, we are out and back to where we know we matter and know beautiful things are possible.

Desiring: I can get onboard with that. So part of what you’re saying is no DR? What about A and T and E?

Nervous: There is a role for all sorts of relationships, especially those we have had for our lifetime. Would never ask to change those. AND, how much we invest in them and when we seek out what’s not there, well, that’s not serving us. If we show up as our whole selves if + when it calls to us, awesome! If not, then let’s not.

Desiring: Hear you and that makes perfect sense. Deeply and wholly agree.

Nervous: We’re aligned - let’s go do this relationship thing. First is always with ourselves. Second is honoring the sacred and historical and ever lasting relationships we have, including releasing them when the time comes. And then, third, let’s open to any + all new and only allow in what is feeling like a YES!

Oh love - how fun to write that dialogue! As usual, both things (all things!) can be true! And my love, you are ready for more. You are ready for the biggest and most beautiful relationships in every part of your life as they are what is making life worth living. And we are WORTHY!

Worthy of only the relationships that set our souls on fire. That feel so fucking beautiful and magical - and worth it on even the hardest days. Where are seen and get to see. Where we find joy and delight. Where we are safe. Where we feel ease and “right-ness” in the world. These exist for us now - and will continue to exist in so many places and facets and with so many humans.

We get to be clear with our intentions and pay attention/go towards them at every moment and, my love, beautiful and honest and revelatory things will come!!!!! We aren’t here to go with the potential, we are here for the here and now and it is worth it.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

PS My love, we didn’t do enough here on all the ways we hold back. We didn’t go deep enough. What we want feels whole and true. But what about what we don’t want? What about what scares us? What about the ways we self sabotage?

• We get controlling - we have a vision of what we want and we start trying to orchestrate to it instead of being in the moment

• We start doubting ourselves and our worthiness - we cling to potential or possibility instead of what is honestly here right now

• We close ourselves off - we pu our “protection” on that doesn’t let us feel OR share from the heart. We don’t get vulnerable and release.

• We start living in the past or the future - instead of living in the what is and what we are experiencing, we start moving all over the map. We need to stay right here, which is all that matters.

This all stems from our own worthiness, my love. When we know our worth and feel confident in our self, as human and flawed and becoming - and when we do, when we know we have a shit ton to offer our world, beautiful beautiful beautiful things flow for us AND for the world.

2026 Update

My love - there is so much here that we have moved SO SO SO far on. And the premise is the same - we’re constantly in a push + pull. And we’ve hit a beautiful relationship with ourselves - one we can thank time and intention and these letters for building. And, at the exact same time, we aren’t yet fully trusting and releaseing. We’re saying we need to “practice”. We’re doing more work. We’re prioritizing almost everything above and beyond the community and relationships we want. It hasn’t hit yet my love - and the combo of action and accepting that you’ve been practicing these last years = you’re close. Very very close!

So, what needs to happen. We need to take this community - these friendships, these romantic relationships - that are the grounding and center in EVERY list you create for what you want in the world - and we need to make them central. Go after them as hard as we do in building Helia or fighting for our kids or taking our mornings back and doing what we alwyas imagined might be possible.

You can do this my little one - you can be open and vulnerable and put yourself out there. You can join things! You can be intentional in who you date and how - and put the time + energy in versus just taking what comes.

And it will hit - or it won’t. But the movement towards it versus the sitting in loneliness? That, that is worth every moment and everything we’re moving through.

I love you my little one - go build and create and be.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

When: 27 February 2026

Context: I’m visiting S in Utah. Had a morning without kids or dogs or work - and instead meditated (visited with my future self = delightful!), took a hike in the gorgeous Utah Valley AND wrote, all before getting to a session at his school by 9am. What possibilities no responsibility holds! S is doing better than he has in a long while - and being together is full of an ease that I haven’t felt with him in years. Somehow, this is giving me even more freedom and permission to be vulnerable and open to other things. The idea that while I’m definitely not on the rollercoaster with him, his being at a high moment gives me more breadth to say yes to other hard things.

What’s Happening for Me: Wrote my last piece on power and immediately started realizing how much so much of what inside me is still focused on the need to be good. How much I’d been clinging to being good at work. I offered to chat with J about building his videography/photography business - and instead of asking what he’s thinking about and excited for and consider, I bombarded him with ideas, trying to prove myself in some way/shape/form. I literally finished my idea dump with a phrase similar to, “see, I’m really good at this stuff!” Now, I can absolutely give myself a lot of grace in this for so many reasons - and I will - and at the core, I realize, there’s so much insecurity and uncertainty in my being as a whole. And that to get to teh next, I have to go all in, as, well, through is always the only way…

Love, where is the need to be good stemming from? How can we move through and just be our Self? How can we know and trust in our Self (the inside versus the outside)?

Oh my little one - these are some of the biggest questions! And some of what is exactly right for us to start paying attention to…

Logically, you’ve accepted that you’re human. And in some areas of your life - as a mom for example - you no longer feel the need to have to be good. You just are.

You had to face the accusations - and potentially the reality - that you were a terrible mom.

• From folks who didn’t believe in kids moving away from home for support.

• From folks who thought you didn’t send kids away soon enough.

• From therapists and experts who thought “too hard”, “too soft”, “too (fill in the blank)”.

• From S who looked at you with such venom, who sneered when your name was mentioned, his whole being contorting into hate.

• From N + J who told you how much you abandoned them during the hard years. How it was worse than anything before.

• From yourself who couldn’t get it right. Couldn’t help. Couldn’t keep her son safe. Couldn’t make him feel loved. Couldn’t even bear to breathe around him out of fear. Couldn’t even help him get to “okay”.

You lived through all of that - and so now, well, now my love, you’re okay exactly as you are. You’re a mom. You’re a human. No other adjectives needed.

And the difference my little one, you learned to look and live from inside instead of the out.

And my love, I wish we could talk about how brave and true this journey was. How impressive and courageous.

But my little one, it wasn’t any of those things. It was survival.

There was no way to face the world, to get out of bed - for yourself or for J + N - without walking through the fire. Sitting in the shame. Challenging everything you knew and built your life around and structured your existence on.

And all the things Debra, our therapist taught us - that we could do everything “right” and our kids could end up dead in a ditch. Or we could do everything “wrong” and they could live the happiest and most fulfilled life.

That the only way to survive, the only real way to chart our course? To listen to ourselves. To find our soul and know it, deeply and wholly and truly. And then, then when we were finally in touch and in relationship with each other?

Well, then, all we had to do was stop following any + all of the rules and follow what our soul said. Because if + when we did that, well, then - and only then - could we be okay.

And okay not just because things are “okay”, but truly okay where we could go on looking at ourselves in the mirror, go on breathing and living and existing, regardless of whatever the outcome was.

And you know this is true my little one. You know that every time you honor your intuition, every time you listen to yourself, it feels good. And whole.

And even when things go so terribly awry that you could imagine nearly dying with guilt or shame, none of it comes. It feels like information. A lesson. A learning. Because you honored you.

Of course, there’s SO much more here, my little one. And, at the core, we have learned, over and over again, that when we live from the inside, it is all okay. Good. Beautiful. Right.

So these definitions of good and bad you ask about, these things you’re trying to get to the bottom of because you feel them creeping back into your being….

The need to be “good at work”.

• The need to offer more advice and direction than the need to listen and learn.

• The starting with ideas versus asking what J’s are.

• The validation that you feel every time someone says that your work is helpful . And how that’s feeding you and driving you.

The way when other things feel hard, you can act like being good at work is part of your identity versus something that you do and act in and engage with. And not just engage with, but are complicit with to some extent? Falling right into how to “do capitalism” while pretending you’re doing it a little different or better or more human?

This is ego at work my little one. And the ego is coming from the need to be good.

And if you feel like it’s kind of hard to apply good anywhere else these days (e.g. in everything else, it’s feels like you’re just a “just”? Just a mom, just a hot yoga student, just a slow hiker, just a dog parent, just a mid-40s human starting to date, just a writer, just a human). So if there’s something you can be good at, well, it feels SO good to cling to.

And then, we take it further.

• So when S’ therapist highlights that you’ve “done the work” so you’re no longer living through or for your child, you BEAM!

• And when N’s therapist gently redirects your comment that “well, teens are hard!” about the lack of services for teenagers with a “well some of us love working with them”, you die a little bit inside.

• And when someone says you’ve been so helpful, you latch onto it and hold it and value it and think about how + where to share it.

• And, then when someone hasn’t scheduled or checked in for a few weeks - after a session where you know you weren’t as helpful as you usually are, you sit with it. Play it over in your head a few times. You move on - and you breathe in the knowledge that you can do better

None of these things cause anxiety or week long highs. We’ve moved past that my love - there’s no more living in just the highs or just the lows. But they also aren’t just yet information. They’re still validation that you’re good. Or signs that you might be not good enough. Not worthy. Bad.

And this my little one, this is what we MUST push through.

The idea that we can be good. The deep seated fear that we are bad.

And what have we internalized around all of this?

Being good? It means love, access, acceptance…

Being bad? It means there’s something wrong with us. Deep, deep inside. Something unfixable and something to avoid at any + all costs.

So I hear you wondering, where does this come from? These fears. These hopes.

Oh my little one, I want to take everything you say and ask and experience seriously - but this question!?!??! I have to giggle a little. Or a lot. Actually, let’s just laugh out loud and with abandon.

My love, these messages are EVERYWHERE!!!! They are what our society is built on - the more compliance we have, the more alignment, the more falling in line, the better!

And yes, there is a lot to be said about having a shared moral compass. A societal contract. About living in + with community with others that we make a pact to some degree on how we will engage. How we will show up.

But the bigger the community, the more money and power that’s at stake, the more important these messages and learning become.

• We are good Americans - fighting a just revolution and rooting out communism and evolving through the civil rights movement. We are civilized and good, against evil. The land of the free. the home of the brave.

• We are good girls. Smart and attractive. Obedient and diligent. Mostly quiet and small. Add in a little sass and spark to keep it interesting. Hard working. Generous. Loving and warm. The list can go on and on….

• We are the good kind of white people. We don’t own slaves. We definitely aren’t racist. We show up. We are giving and charitable.

It is so fucking ridiculous the stories we weave. And we have to confront this over and over. We’ve done it as a mom. We’ve done it as a white person.

But my love, we haven’t yet done it as a human. As the whole of our being, our full self.

And there’s not an obvious path for this one. It’s not the same as facing one facet. It’s going to require us to challenge every single aspect of ourselves. Everything we’ve ever been taught or seen modeled or seen celebrated.

(Note that this obviously isn’t entirely true -there are other models and we know it. AND the vast majority of what we see, engage with, experience as good, as what we’re striving for - this is what we are facing.)

We can do this - as so many others who have walked this path before us and helped to model the possibilities.

We have done this in two of the places that have the MOST weight and bearing in our world - as a white, middle-class, American woman - an inescapable identity as far as these go. As a mom, one of the most sacred and held and celebrated roles.

And in both, we’re fine. More than fine. Human. As we are. Listening and living from the inside. Taking everything else as information and moving through. So fucking beautifully. So valiantly.

So my little one, we’re now going to do this with our whole being.

We’re going to start challenging that we’re good at work and know that we have so much to give AND so much to learn and what a pleasure and honor that is.

We’re going to build a relationship with our little green part that has just appeared that looks a little like a cross between Anger and Sadness from Inside Out (thank gosh for Internal Family Systems). Our “Good at Work” part who is still to be named - and who holds this as their duty to fulfill and understand what’s under it. Who are they protecting? What are they helping us with? And what other ways can we put their gifts to work?

We’re going to keep walking towards the truth that we are short and round with a pudgy neck and see ourselves this way - and not with disdain but with a smile. We are going to ground in our future self who exudes such joy and peace in this being and this body that we can’t help but love on ourselves.

We are going to keep challenging the desire to get it right - how to build a business, the weird drive to have the “right” morning routine, the impulse to judge how others are spending time and money - so that we can avoid considering how we are doing it!!!

And instead, we are going to keep turning inside.

We’re going to check in with our parts more.

We’re going to work a little less and write + walk a little more.

Every time we feel one of our part’s egos coming in - whether to celebrate or to be held for fear it doesn’t completely implode - we are going to give it a hug and remind it that we love them just the way they are and then inquire what’s happening, what’s possible.

I love you my little one - this is NOT going to be fast. This isn’t going to be easy. And it’s, as always, exactly the right place to be in exactly the right moment.

The parts that are going to be hard? The parts that are going to find us scrambling back to anything + everything we might feel good in. The parts that are going to make us want to hid under the covers?

My love, let’s get ready for these…

• When we can’t figure out what’s “right” and we stew in it for a while, either ignoring it OR trying to force it (both of which work really well!). Then, when we finally figure out what feels “right”, we see all the things that our delays have caused and the impacts and we think, I need to be better/faster/clearer. And we have to just smile and laugh and say, glad I’m here now!

• When we need to have a hard convo or tell someone info they won’t like - so instead, we just avoid it. We’re scared someone might not like us. Or that we won’t do it “right”. Or something that really can’t even be named but is deep inside of us…. And we have to breathe and then just do the thing.

• When we watch our kids doing something that feels really, really that’s not what we want. And we start going down the rabbit hole of exactly the right thing to say or do or create that will help them see things exactly the way you want them to be seen but then remember that our job is just to love and know they’ll be okay and to be honest. And all we get to do is say what we think + feel - and move forward without control!

• When we do what we want and how we want - and those we love look at us like we’re from another planet. Trying hard not to judge - or maybe just judging with abandon! And we’re going to remember that others’ approval - their “getting it” - it’s not our end game.

• When we see a picture or catch a glimpse of ourselves in the mirror where all we see is fat, which starts the spiral of us most definitely being less than the skinnier folks around us and a deep fear that we’re not doing life right, we’re not good enough as we are . And we’re going to remember to picture ourselves as a soft, round, joyful + peaceful human and SMILE at that image.

• When we just don’t want to do the “good” business practices that are proven to work but don’t feel right in our soul (looking at you bottom of funnel lead capture!) - and then maybe we run out of money? Or maybe things don’t work at all? And we’re going to remember that the only thing that will actually feel good in all of this is that we like what we’re doing and it feels “right”.

My love, in short, we’re going to remember that we are exactly who we are - a human. We’re going to ground in the power that we’ve been feeling more and more of these days. The power to just be who we are, as we are. And how good that fucking feels - so much more than the “you’re good at this” comment or the approval in someone’s eyes or the money you might make or a person thinking you’re good or bad or anything in between.

That power, that knowing, that being us - this is the liberation we’re working towards. The moving through the good and the bad, through the facade of power and money, through the ridiculousness of America the great and the good little white girl. To just be. As we are. Who we are.

Oh my little one, I love you to the moon and back, to the stars and to the far away galaxies and to the core of our beloved earth.

You are a precious and special human - amongst millions and billions of other precious and special humans.

And there’s no better path to walk on and learn from and be immersed in than this. So, stay in it. Ground in it. Feel our world sending love and power coursing through every part of our being.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: Have had such opening and clarifying and inspiring conversations with so many folks these last few weeks. They have reminded me, on so many levels, how much possibility comes from imagination. And how much imagination sometimes needs a story or spark or example to get moving. This letter has been circling inside me for the past week or so - it took a while to be ready to be written - and when it was ready, like all things, came pouring out and even brought me back so clearly to the months just before the pandemic when I had first started getting thoughts down about how to Reimagine the World…

What’s Happening for Me: I’ve been feeling this new wave of awareness and possibility - and an even deeper commitment to action these days. When I am angry at one of my beautifully inspiring + infuriating teenagers. When I’m feeling stuck or behind at Helia. When I’m feeling fury and embarrassment and fear and helpless at what our society looks like. Each and every time, when I ground in what action feels right in my soul and I do it, everything (and I mean everything!) is better.

Love, what do I do right now? How do I show up?

Oh my little one, what a beautiful question. And before anything else, let’s note SO clearly that you’re doing it. By being you’re doing it. By moving you’re doing it. By asking this question and exploring and paying attention and considering all the things, you’re doing it.

The most important thing to know is that action is the most important thing. And you my sweet little busy bee, you are nothing if not an action taker. Always trying to figure out what’s next. Making the plan. Doing something.

This is a GIFT and one you should be wildly grateful for. While you’ve questioned your goodness and your worth over and over throughout your life, you have never felt helpless. You have a sense of agency and “get it done-ness” that has carried us to here and will carry us all the way through. This is “us” - and we can feel wildly grateful for it.

So, now let’s look at the world.

First my little one, let’s feel so so so grateful that we moved through so much of the shame that blocks us. The ways we are so complicit with how our world works, the ways we benefit as a white middle class female, as a mom, as a smart + capable professional, as a human born into the body + gender that feels like her own.

We went through those long years where we couldn’t figure out what to do because our very existence was contributing. Our complicated gymnastics to not hate ourselves, to be one of the “good” ones, to emphasize and focus on all the ways that we also struggled until we finally realized, we just are. Exactly as we are. Exactly as we will be.

And we had to feel ALL the things. The guilt. The self hatred. The uncertainty. The frozen-ness. The fear of what it meant.

But my little one, the best fucking thing that happened here is that you did feel it. You felt it all.

And the amazing thing about the feelings - when you keep your head up above the sand - is that they eventually wash through. The facts stay the same - but the stories and the meanings you give them - these keep moving. Until it all just is. And when it just is, well, then it’s okay.

And then, then when it’s okay, when it just is, this is when you can see. When you can start moving through it and taking action. And this journey my little one, this journey you have done. And I’m SO SO SO fucking proud of you for this.

Do you remember how you drew the “life map” - about how things started with the “seeing” and then the hiding and then the seeing and then the hiding - all in so many different forms - until moving into acceptance and action and future possibilities. Your own version of the seven stages of grief - but the many stages of accepting responsibility for the shit show of our current Western society.

And you also came up with the table when you were trying to figure out how to make sense of it all and how to share to help others move through.

The reality is my love, is that this map and this table - they are still so right.

We need to move through the shame - to do what we’re called to do. We need to lean into who we are, what calls to us from above, what superpowers and capabilities we have. And then we need to say yes and we need to move and make change and do something.

So yes, let’s look at this table and start interrogating what we’re doing, where we’re spending, who we’re listening to, how our worlds are stacking up.

Let’s know where our food comes from (gratitude A), let’s take all our money out of the stock market and loan it to LA Más to purchase community owned housing (inspired by R). Let’s listen to How to Survive the End of the World and watch Predictive History and read every word of Beloved Economies newsletters.

And we’re going to keep talking about it. So much in our world is NOT OKAY. Let’s not let these things slip away or be normalized.

So we talk about it during our facial. We talk about it at dinner with friends. We talk about it on dates. We talk about it at work.

My love, where our energy goes, so goes our power.

And in these convos, in these experiences, in being in the places we want to be in and with others who are doing the same, this is where we will hear more stories. More ideas. More possibilities.

• A deepening her faith and getting to experience what spirituality can open and the possibilities that come from having this foundation and this guide.

• K who just became a magistrate and is showing up with intention and integrity and awareness that is what I want so badly to be our world and helping me have just a little bit of hope and trust that it might not just be starting over but building from within.

• R is pulling all of her money out of big banks and the stock market and anything that feels aligned with the powers that be.

• KL is painting Gaza as it was so we can’t look away from what we are destroying.

• M is building his own self-sustaining ranch with a network of friends to live in relationship with the land and each other.

And we will get to explore.

• Does connection with our neighbors and relationships where we can lean on and trust each other make the biggest difference?

• Is it best to opt-out or join in to change from the inside?

• Is it spirituality and a higher calling that we’re connected to that moves us through?

• Is it knowledge and self awareness and honesty that moves us?

My love, there are no concrete answers. It is never ever just one thing. And sometimes, to even begin to imagine and explore, that’s where the power comes in. We need stories. We need guides. We need examples.

When we see and when we hear - it gives us a foundation of possibility. It opens the imagination. So we need to find those that are doing this. We need to do this. The power of stories is it makes things possible.

My little one, I want to pause and also call out that in all of this, we can absolutely honor that there are good humans who have truly believed and built the institutions and world we have and did so with heart and hope and integrity.

Our grandfather so believed - he believed in the power of law. In the possibilities of America. In how things were done and being built. And these beliefs and what he was imagining and creating and building towards, they were beautiful. So so so beautiful.

And when you look at the history of how we got here and how much death and destruction was wrought. And when you look at what happens with every large scale civilization and late stage all things when power and money are at play. There is no “right” way to do this…..

So we can do all this without hate + blame - and we need to feel + experience the consequences of what we’ve wrought.

And the thing to do about it, well, the thing to do is to know it. Feel it. And then do something. And the more convos we have, the more action we take, the more we listen and share, the more we take action and do. This is the only way.

• For every dollar spent in our community versus in a big company.

• For every minute spent in community instead of online.

• For every time someone says, “I have enough” and looks to share.

Now my little one, let’s get real to what needs to happen with you here. Yes, you’ve moved through the shame so you can just be. Yes, you’re taking action and starting to do more - and we can trust you’ll keep doing this in the ways that call.

The thing that’s different right now, the thing that needs your attention, my love. It’s what you’ve been starting to feel these last few days. It’s power.

Power is something we have shied away from for so long. And yet LOVED every time we have had it. And struggled every time it was taken away. We couldn’t understand it - what was given to us, what we controlled, what that relationship might look like.

We’ve explored this at every level (societally, sexually, familially, professionally) = and it still feels so foreign and scary?

And what is shifting my love, what I want to bring our attention to because it matters, is that I think finally, you’re starting to understand what power is. What it can look like. What it feels like.

Not the power that someone assigns you in a role - parent, boss, dominant, leader - but rather the power that you have in your soul and in your being. The power to be in touch with yourself and then act in full alignment with what that says.

We have been groomed (thanks to A for the MOST perfect word here) to operate in very specific ways. In ways that help perpetuate all the ways we live. And the only way through, to finding our power and taking these actions not just as steps but as overall ways of being, is to fully liberate ourselves. Not stick with the narratives and norms. To listen to our true selves and our beings.

And my little one, this is hard for you. You want so badly to be good (this is where that earlier stuff on worth and goodness and love-ability come into play!).

• It’s why, when someone hurts you publicly - and you want to cancel your call - you have to call a friend to help you send an email cancelling.

• It’s why when you get a weird feeling with a guy you’ve been talking to that you need to ask C if it’s “okay” to cancel a future date - and how to do it.

• It’s why it takes you years to quit things that aren’t good enough - and we have a shield part who is always ready to jump in (sometimes taking over) because while we know and eventually leave, the damage caused in the in between is real. So fucking real.

My love - you doing these things (even when it takes a while and you need support!), it’s power.

It’s power to say this is who I am and this is what I want and this is how I will engage. And that’s it. Not with explanations. Not with excuses. Not with caveats to soften or sharpen or make it “good”. Just as facts.

And this, this my little one, this is where we need to lean in.

We’ve spent the last few years learning how little control we have. How much things are so beyond us and not our orbit. And this, this has been so freeing and so good.

We can’t fix anyone. We can’t make anything happen. We can’t decide on an outcome and then use every one of our wiles to get us from here to there. It is a dangerous thing to think we have that kind of power - and it is even more dangerous when we start acting on it.

This my little one, this is the opposite of power. And we needed to learn and know that, well, we don’t have it. That it’s fruitless and destructive and we needed to fail and fail hard to learn. We needed to give it our all for things that mattered most to us, for things that were so deep in our soul and coming from so much hope and love - to fully let this go.

And now, now my little one, well, we have. And we have loved these last couple of years paying attention to what that means. How much peace this has brought. How much possibility and good-ness by letting go.

But now, now my little one, it’s time to continue our path. It’s time to go deep and hard and realize, with all of our being, that actually, while we have no control, we have all the power.

• We get to decide, each and every day, how we show up and what that looks like.

• We get to decide who we’re in relationship with.

• We get to decide what we spend our time on.

• We get to decide where our energy goes.

• We get to decide how to respond to things that happen.

• We get to decide what to do when how we respond doesn’t sit well with us.

• We get to decide where we spend our money and who we work with and what values we’re going to live into.

We get to decide all of this and more. Every minute of every day.

And we need to extract ourselves from making these decisions within some frame or definition of what “good” is.

And we need to own that our power is that we are in our power. That we are living and breathing and standing in it. Right here. Right now.

And we can trust ourselves - our deepest being and our deepest soul - and that whenever and however we make decisions from there - The Soul of Me (TSOM), Self, Love….

And this power, this power is what we all need to feel. We need to release into this with our full selves - not the conditioning we’ve experienced but as a fully formed human who is aware and capable of depth and possibility in ways that will continue to unfold.

So my little one - what to do???

Feel this power. Feel it coursing through us and TRUST IT!!! Listen to it. Honor it and feel it and know that this, this power, this will move us through all things.

And then, then we’re going to keep taking action.

We’re going to keep exploring and listening and sharing so that our collective imagination for what these actions can be will expand and grow and be infinite.

And my love, the more we all do this, in all the ways that call, the more we build to our next. The more we get out of paralysis and waiting for someone else to come in.

We respect revolution in all its forms - and perhaps this one is one that feels the most full of possibility for us right now, in this moment.

I love you my little one - this is hard to write. To remember. To feel. To know. And to commit to stepping into. To commit to owning.

And, my love, you can do it. We all can - but in this moment, I’m going to put all of my faith and trust and support in you. Right here and right now.

And guess what, regardless of what happens, regardless of what we feel and experience, regardless of where we are and who we’re in relationship with and what is going down, this is the path to being okay.

This is the path to our “surviving”. This is our path to building the next. And there’s no higher calling than that my love.

So let’s say yes - let’s own + feel it all, let’s take action, let’s imagine possibilities - and let’s step into our power with our full selves.

XOXO,

Self/Love

Context: A few months back, I decided that I felt good and whole and stable enough to start dating again, after a 10ish month hiatus where the last time I tried dating I felt nothing but anxiety and fear and so decided, “nope, too much, not right now.”

Fast forward to today and now, now when I look out 5-10 years, I see myself living in partnership, having a deep, loving relationship. So, well, I’ve decided to get started. To work through all the things and be present and stay and know, well, know that I can?!?!!? Had my first therapy session in months and months - wasn’t quite sure why and felt call for a check in and, as always, broke things open inside and brought suck clarity on what needed to happen next. So, waking up the next AM and writing and writing and writing….

What’s Happening for Me: I’ve been both feeling so whole and stable - and kind of grumpy?!?! Things have been circling inside me - not big shifts but a need to again say es, yes this is how I can + want to show up. How do I feel good about my parenting, regardless of what my children are feeling, experiencing, choosing? Is how I’m showing up in the world right, especially right now? What messages are coming from the inside to revisit versus fear from the outside and what others might think/see/want?

Dear love - Why are we scared we will never find love? Why can we trust in ourself and in the universe in almost every way - except when it comes to romance?!!?

Oh my little one, so much here. Let’s walk back through - all the things and places and spaces….

Do you remember feeling that if someone could just love you, if you had a boyfriend, then somehow, that would make you okay. Show everyone you were good and normal and wanted. And so you had them. All through high school.

Do you remember that even at 15, that you knew you’d settle. That you felt the twinges inside of you saying something is better than nothing. And you might only get something so, well, if that’s the case, please go for that! You need something. You absolutely need it.

And my love, the messages. All the messages.

From when you were young. Well meaning and with love…

• “you chose fruit!”

• “I just don’t want you to experience the things that so and so did for being fat. It was so hard.”

To the more abrupt and direct:

• “You better learn to cook like your mom or no one will ever want to marry you.”

To the comments - probably true, potentially helpful reflections - and yet how you took them…

• “You’re a lot.”

• “You can be too much.

• “You take up all the space in the room.”

From when you got to the oh so tender early teenage years, when you were just starting to explore.

From strangers:

• When the guy saw me driving in my van, raced to follow me, pulling up on the side of my car, getting a look, seeing the disgust on his face as he very quickly pulled away.

• It’s a good thing you have hot friends or no one would even look at you.

• Doing a u-turn to come see me on the street as I left the gym and then after pulling up at the curb, looking at me and saying, “oh no” and driving off.

To people you knew and trusted and loved and wanted…

• “I’m going to prom with B” from the person you’d been dating and making out with and falling for. No explanation, just that it wouldn’t be you and instead, B who was, if you had one, your arch-nemesis.

• Or the insidious and manipulative, “I want you. Most folks that see you just see how not good you are. But I can see what’s possible. I see your potential.”

• And even later, in your 20s when you continued to fall for DR over and over as he teases, “maybe I’ll go after T.” And when I say what? Why? He just grins and says cause he can.

“No one will want you if…” and fill in the blank with the number of possibilities that were filled in there…

To later in life, these last few years as you opened and started dating again. Wanting to see all that was possible.

• “I want to date other people, not just you. I love you - and you’re not enough. You want more and I can’t give it.” from the first person you had ever fallen in love with and given your mind, heart and soul to.

• “I get 1000s of likes, how do I even move through?” from the friend who has no idea what being on a dating app as a fatter human looks and feels like.

• The look on his face when I walk into the coffee shop and he sees me and clearly thinks, “oh no.”

• The way he looks me up and down when I walk into the restaurant. And then nods, I’ll do. It’s not as bad as he thought it might be.

• DR disappearing. Over and over and over again.

• “You look different” as you see the horror on the man you loved face as he sees what you look like after your latest bout with chrons and steroids and the 10-15 pounds you gain every time.

And my love, my love, these are biting. Cruel. Harsh.

And while they represent those things - and were probably true to the people in those moments, that does not mean they are reflective of you or more real. They are not the truth, just a truth.

They do not encompass all the times someone has stared at you with love and desire and adoration. They do not represent all the times that the people who love you told you how wonderful you were and how you light up their lives and how they admire you and respect you and want to be around you.

And yet, yet, these messages are the ones that are seared into you. We’re holding them in our body and mind and soul - and because they are so deep inside our being, they permeate everything. Until it’s suddenly the only reality we feel and see and know.

And my little one, let’s pause right there as that, that isn’t really true. John has loved and adored you from the moment you met him. C looks to you as one of the beautiful lights in his life. K may have shifted - and what you had together was so so so so real. IB has loved you. DR has turned to you.

My little one - just as in all the other facets of life - things are shifting and moving. There are moments of great fits and connection and ones of reaction and breaks. There are times when you have known in your body something or someone is exactly right. And others where you knew it wasn’t and you engaged.

You’ve had times where you’ve thought - NOT FOR ME! And these are all part of the world. Whether food or friends or jobs. Houses or dogs or books.

This is part of the world my little one - we are always responding to what is inside of us, to who we are and what is calling.

And others are doing the same.

The challenge here my little one is that we have equated our being and our worth and this higher thing to finding folks to want and desire you romantically. Why is that more important than all the others? Why this in particular?

Potential Reason # 1: Society’s clear and un-fucking relenting messages.

My love, pause. Let’s be so fucking honest about all of these societal messages. Whether from the movies and rom coms and Disney princesses to the teen magazines and conversations. It’s what’s celebrated and prioritized. When you say I’m working on my business and doing yoga, folks smile. When I say I’m starting to date again, their face lights up and they lean in and they’re all about it.

Potential Reason #2: Is it because this feels the most raw? The most reflective of our “true” self and being and who we are? The most intimate?

My little one, this also makes sense. It is a place + space that is probably one of our most intimate. It’s “in there”. And it’s a space where it’s not the whole world navigating, it comes down to two people both exploring and deciding. Not a plethora of options and places and spaces with so many involved.

And my little one, while this is absolutely silly, I’m going to help weave an analogy (or two or three!).

Analogy #1 - You walk into a library - there are so many books and titles and options to consider. A few you don’t even consider, they don’t draw you in. A few, the titles call but when you look at the cover, you slide them right back in. A few, you’re enticed enough to open and read a bit. A few, you take home and read. And a few, a very very very few, these are the ones that you love. The ones that speak to your soul. That change you and that you know you’ll carry forever.

Now, let’s take this further.

Analogy #2 - You look at job + career possibilities. The ones that you don’t even look at (huge corporations and law firms and finance). The ones you skim and think absolutely not (The start up co-founder. The VC partner. The program officer). The ones that you are intrigued by but just don’t quite call (the journalist. The writer). The ones that for whatever reason, you keep moving towards. Some that you choose because your whole body says YES! (TOU, Rev Foods). Some you choose because they make sense and you can make them work even though you know it’s a limited time gig (PW). Some you finally move into because you know it’s what you’re meant to do for the moment (Helia).

All of these feel easy. And it extends into life…

Making friends. Showing up. Knowing there are SO many possibilities and you will choose what calls (hot yoga and hiking for exercise, dogs are your current reason for being, writing, IFS + therapy for healing). And that there are more. Always more. And that it will work out. Each and every time.

So my little one, while it is SO different and so much more intimate and holds so much more weight and intrigue and a perceived “need” for permanence and FEELING (oh so much feeling), this is what dating and love and partnership are too.

These messages that we carry from all these moments in our life, the ones we have held onto?

Instead of holding onto them, we can just as easily choose to mine them from our soul and love on them and release them.

We can go deep into our center, where we have this lump black mountain where we’ve filed all these away. Every time there’s been an ounce of rejection and uncertainty and a message that we aren’t good enough, that there’s something wrong, we have put it into our body. For safekeeping? Out of fear that we needed to keep it inside, that releasing it for others might put it into their heads, might make it true? For the sense that these things did not ever need to be in the light?

My little one, these get to be in the light. We are going to go into the mountain with our mining carts (think Harry Potter going deep into Gringotts!) and we’re going to find all of these. And we’re going to love on them.

We’re going to hold them and wrap them up in warmth and hugs and we’re going to take them out of this dark mountain they’ve been stuck into. We’re going to travel out with them into our body. We’re going to let all of our parts see them. See the truth in them AND where they sit in the litany of all the other messages and truths that exist. That they are here - but so are SO SO SO many others.

They do not need to be hidden. And they are not so important that they need their own home.

We are going to bring them into the light - we’re going to mix them into the soil with all the others and in the sun. We’re going to let that warmth and light and the presence of all of it together warm them and build them until they, they are just moments. Just words. Some meant to harm. Some given with so much love. Some with fear. But all reflecting both others’ truth that they get to hold, and reflective of their own experiences and influences and fears. That we are ALL holding and navigating in our own way.

What matters, my love, is less about what is given to us, what we receive - and more about what we do with it. All of it.

We are here to explore and learn and uncover. To take it all in and know that all is possible. To wonder and marvel and adventure. To meet and experience and feel. Feel feel feel.

This life is short in the history of the world. And we, we get to decide what we do with it.

Which means not holding secrets - sharing them all with the world. It means feeling all the things and letting them flow through, not creating stories with them. It means letting our identity form itself, in deep relationship with the universe. Not picking and choosing, from fear or ego, but releasing and opening with every part of our being.

My little one, we get to let ourselves fall. We get to take it all in and be. We have agency here. We decide how we show up and what to hold and to some extent, what we believe. We get to know our worth and honor our preferences and callings (our body knows, every time).

AND we get to let others do the same.

This is a dance. A wandering hike. An exploration.

And while we can WANT (always, forever + deeply wanting!), we do not get to control. We do not get to know. We don’t get to do anything but move with intention and heart and honesty into our future.

My little one, these words and comments and experiences have had outlandish power over us. For decades. They’ve fed on every insecurity and uncertainty - and we’ve let them get bigger and stronger and feel MORE until they are at the core of our being, one of the primary ways we see and experience the world.

Our world is abundant and full of possibilities. Countless and endless and more and more and more.

Let’s go experience it and do it knowing we’re loved. And held. And good. And right. Exactly as we are and as who we are.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: At a writing group. In a bar. On a date! I’m trying this in person writing group thing - and heard about this one. And while I am cold and all the other writers are more horror/erotic fantasy types and while I’m drinking hot water because I drink so rarely these days, I’m here and I’m doing it and it’s kind of fun?!?!!?

What’s Happening for Me: The last few weeks have been slow and nurturing and oh so lovely. I feel a deeper sense of connection and clarity and possibility than I’ve felt in a long time. Part of this was having long and beautiful convos with a few friends including E where we talked about how scared I used to feel to ask for others to hold me, how I felt like there wasn’t anyone I could call. And when she asked if I had folks now, it was kind of beautiful. The answer was yes - but I realized it had always kind of been yes? And, maybe even more importantly, it was that I didn’t need it in the same way. Because my life feels calmer? Because I could ask? Because I write? Because I just feel held in the universe these days? I wasn’t sure - so this letter was circling around it…

Oh my little one, for tonight, I think we want to start writing about feeling - and being - held. It’s something new - and special. And something that was missing for many, many, many years in our world.

Do you remember that therapy session a year or two or three back, where Debra asked you what you needed. And you just wanted, with every ounce of your being, to say you wanted someone to hold you. You just wanted to feel held, like you weren’t alone, like someone cared, like someone would be there to hold you and in doing so, somehow, it would all be okay. Or maybe it wouldn’t be okay, but it would make it easier to get through, easier to get from here to there.

And you were SO embarrassed. The words, they were right there, but you couldn’t say them. They wouldn’t, they couldn’t even come out.

It was as if admitting that you wanted to be held would open all the terrible things in the world. It would mean you were weak. It would show that you couldn’t manage, that it really was too much. And it would show that there wasn’t anyone there to hold you.

If you admitted needing and warning this, you would then have to try to make it happen and there was no one, literally no one, that you felt in that moment that you could turn to and ask. And so, saying it out loud, it was too dangerous. Too scary.

And yet, in the final moments of your session, you finally let it out, admitting “I just want to be held.” And as you remember back, it almost snuck out, You certainly said it quietly, as an admission versus a declaration.

And Debra just received it. Beautifully. As if it was natural. And okay. So okay. And just said a version of “wonderful, you want to be held. What will that bring you”. And all you could feel in your body was relief, that somehow in even saying it out loud, that it opened something. That it made it okay to want this. That maybe you moved closer to it being possible.

But then, then she asked who you could ask to hold you. Who you could go to and ask for a hug. Freely. Openly. Where it would feel okay.

And then the panic struck. There were a litany of people that, looking back, who today you might call or drive over to. But then, then there was a litany of reasons:

• E of course - and she’s a single mom of young twins who can barely eat and drink and pee. You couldn’t put this on her.

• K, who you loved with every ounce of your being, who taught you what being held could feel like. Who you shut down and broke up with when he said he didn’t like your son. Maybe something you needed to hear, and something you couldn’t let in. Not even a little.

• M or S or T - all of whom would both show up at any hour of any day for anything you needed or wanted and yet, none of whom you felt would “want” to hug you necessarily, so, well, they’re off the table. You can’t ask for yet another thing, especially one so trifling and weird and silly.

• DR where there as an almost non-existent chance he would even respond to your text?

• Your kids who you could of course hug all the time but the flipping of it, the asking them to hug me, would that be okay? Would that shatter the illusion that we were all okay?

And so you just cried. Cried and cried and cried. Because what you needed, what you wanted, what every part of your being craved, was to be held and, well, it wasn’t to be. Not today - and somehow, today somehow felt like forever.

Flash forward my love - over the next few years…

We had so many moments where the bottom fell out. And our oldest and youngest kids would circle us and hug us - and somehow it made us all stronger, nothing broke. To where we told those people we thought would not want to hug that we wanted one and shockingly, hugged us. Hard. With their whole bodies.

And the nights when every cell in your body was awake and in fear, not knowing what to do and how to keep everyone safe and okay. And you called E. And she stayed on the phone with you, on no sleep, for hours and hours. And you called your best friend and she came to sit there for a bit so you could close your eyes. And you called your ex-husband, and he was on the next flight.

To where we had the day where we had to make calls that felt so daunting and overwhelming and personal - a moment where we were looking into long-term schools where our middle son might live and get support. But it was so much more than the calls, it was another step in admitting that we couldn’t live together, that we couldn’t keep him or our family safe. That what he needed was so beyond me. That I couldn’t be the mom that made it through, that I was the mom that was going to give up. And you called. You called K and asked him to come. You called your sister and said, “can you just be in the room”. And they both said “yes, of course.”

The world was holding you my love -the moment you let them, they all were there. In their own ways and everyone said yes.

And then my love, we continued. We continued to say - I want, I need - to be held. And we started these letters. These letters that suddenly and beautifully and completely connected us to the greater universe. To this universal wisdom. To this love and acceptance and world that was real. So real.

• When Sophie, our pup, was dying and we knew that we had failed her.

• When everything was falling apart with X and you knew you had to leave and yet had promised so many that you would be there, that you had it, that it would be okay. And now, well, now it was so far from okay.

• When you felt such anger and rage and fear that you couldn’t even admit you wanted to rebuild your relationship with S. When you hid from the possibilities of rejection and abject failure, saying you were ready when he was instead of laying it all there, saying you wanted this with every ounce of your being.

In these moments, we were terrified. And devastated. And scared. So so so so scared. And in each of them - and in so so so many more - we wrote our way through. You came here my little one, right here. And suddenly, we didn’t need the humans in our world to hold us. We didn’t need DR to suddenly realize that you were the love of his life. We didn’t need our family and friends to have oodles of free time and suddenly love physical connection. We could come here, right here.

Because my love, the world is holding us. The universe is here and propping every one of us up. And we are here to learn and explore and be - and my little one, I’ve got you.

I’ve always had you, and I always will.

When you get stuck in thinking it’s all about you, when you’re in your head and mind and being and grounding in just yourself, things feel impossible and scary. And in those moments my love, that’s when we need to be held.

And yes, yes we absolutely should want that and ask for it and have abundant relationships in our life where it’s possible. Where we are holding and being held with abandon!!!!

And, at the same time, where we are now, where we are in relationship with ourselves and with love and with the universe, we are held. And we are holding ourselves.

And this, this my love, this is something to honor and hold sacred. To turn to and celebrate and invest in. Daily. Weekly. With all of our being.

My little one, I’ve got you. I’ve got you when you turn away from yourself, when you abandon our truth and integrity and being and stop living from the inside and instead, follow the outside. And I’ve got you when you are living in full alignment. When you can feel the sun and the truth and the light and step into it with your whole being. I’ve got you when you’re hiding who you are and lying and hoping against all hope that no one will know. I’ve got you when you’re stepping into your truth. Speaking everything and anything that you know and hold of value. The secret thoughts you’re scared will have everyone running from you and render you truly unloveable. The honest thoughts that you don’t want to seep out as they will hurt others or end the “relationship” that you have.

I’m here my little one - always. You are valued. You are loved. You are held.

And you can find me anywhere. With a whisper - love, what would you have me know? With a written page, love, what do I need right now. With a deep exhale after yoga, sinking into the floor that’s holding you AND flowing through you. With a look out in nature at how big and vast our universe is and how small and tiny and insignificant we are, love, let me feel you. Show me all the things I need to know.

We’re here my little one and we’re here because you said YES!

And the best part of that, while I’m always here, even when you said no for so many years(!), when you thought you could out-smart or out-think or out-work or out-logic or out-persevere me - the best part is that when you say yes, at any moment, I will flood you. We will navigate this world and life and all it brings together.

I’m so proud of you, my little one. Who you are. Where you are. Who you’ve been. Who you’ll be.

And this being held, because you are now held, you’re ready and willing and able to hold others. And just think, just imagine, how beautiful it can all be when we’re all held AND ready to hold others.

This is what we’re doing with our life, my little one - this is our calling. And there is nothing more beautiful and nothing more important.

So let’s wake up each day - with our family, with our friends, with our community, with our writing, with Helia, with ourselves - and know we’re held and hold each other.

Let’s share honestly and vulnerably and all in so that the world we imagine, the world we want to live in - where each and every one of us is held and holding - that’s what we’re living and part of creating.

I love you my little one - to the moon and back.

I love your hair - on good hair days and bad. I love your big toes with fungus and the weird calluses. I love your very active nasal drip that means your coughing last weeks and weeks past any illness. I love your big calves that make knee high boots nearly impossible. I love your pudgy neck that you are so self conscious about. I love your tiny ears and your saggier than before weenus (elbow sags). I love your mind, I love your body, I love your soul.

You are held my little one, you are loved and held.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Context: Sitting cross legged on my bed, watching the morning light shine through the trees after days of rain, knowing I need to get moving and take the dogs out and yet relishing this slow morning, this space to write and be. I had a big moment of emotional reactivity a couple of weeks back and have ben circling writing it in my head and today’s the first day that’s felt “right” to get it all out.

What’s Happening for Me: I spent so much of the month of December racing and doing - and while all good things, I’m tired. S just transferred to a new school - and the hours and hours of calls and intakes and supports are not quite overwhelming but definitely requiring of time and attention in a new-ish way. I started dating which is mostly fine and I’m needing to remember this is my 10 year plan, not my one week to solve. I have a LONG list of work things in front of me that I thought I would be hankering to get done. Instead, I’m craving hours of nothing, having a hard time motivating myself to do anything these last few days. Maybe lingering illness from my flu last week? Maybe an acceptance of the season? Maybe just what I want and need?

I am NOT emotionally reactive!!!!!

Oh my little one, it was so fun to see how big that denial was. How immediate. How overwhelming.

And then, followed just as quickly by the defensive ones.

Well of course I’m emotionally reactive. When X is happening or Y is going on, what else could/would I possibly do?!?!!?

And then, in what feels like the same breath, the overwhelming shame.

This is all of my fault….

Ah my love, the flows of the feelings through us - wild and violent and powerful.

And perhaps, as we can see in that exact moment, there is absolutely some emotional reactivity happening!

I mean, my little one, I love you and, well, just saying…

My little one, part of our being us is having big emotions. Feelings. We live life deep and hard - and have always felt. Our family tells us how when we were a teenager our moods could shift the entire house. How uncertain everyone felt coming into my bedroom of “who” might be waiting past the doorway - a “hi, how’s your day” with a big smile OR a “what do you want” with a glare to anyone who dared enter my sanctuary.

My little one, we spent years pretending we didn’t have big feelings. That who we were wasn’t real.

• We hid any time there was pain or hard, crying only in the shower as if with no witnesses, they aren’t real.

• We could numb it away with food or exercise - if we don’t talk about it, they aren’t real.

• We could be mean and snap at others the moment we felt vulnerable so no one might know because, if no one knows, they aren’t real.

• We could work and tackle never ending to do lists - what a safe and wonderful place to turn where there’s always more to do and a way of being that leaves little to the land of feelings because again, if there isn’t time, they aren’t real.

And over the years, our capacity to hide and run and cover and distract, it has diminished.

Maybe we have been worn down, the great rope holding the ship at port fraying away string by string over time?

Maybe we have finally learned futility, how it always comes out anyways?

Maybe we have learned how good and beautiful and necessary it is to let ourselves feel all the things, not just in our own world but as a parent, in watching our kids and seeing how beautiful it can be?

And today my little one, even while we are feeling more than ever, at the exact time, we are also so much less reactive.

Our feelings come and our feelings go - and yet, it feels like we’re in a relationship with them. One that feels warm and safe and aware.

• There are times that we welcome them in, say hi and let them wash through. Watch them and feel so good that they’re here, that we have a capacity to feel!

• There are times that they overtake us. Generally when we’re in a rush and when we’re tired. When the to do list feels too long and we’re never going to make it on time.

• There are times they feel just too much. And instead of being scared or hiding away, we know this is our being telling us, this isn’t right. Anything that is driving us to this angry or anxious or scared over and over and over, it’s just not the right place for us.

So my little one, the conditions leading up to this 60 second spiral? When emotionally reactive was the only true way we could describe ourselves?

Remember the night before our tailspin how when Nat took over 5 hours to “pack” for a couple nights at her grandparents and, despite telling you she was on track over and over and over, had done NOTHING. And instead of calmly walking in to see how things are going, you stayed hunched over your computer furiously working from the couch, yelling from a few rooms over, finally checking at 10pm when you are long past ready to be asleep.

Or when at 6:15am the morning of you checked again - and Nat is fast asleep and lo and behold, the packing still isn’t done. And instead of taking a deep breath and either letting it be what it will be - or waking her up with love and a twinkle in your eye on what she’s planning to do with just one outfit for three days, you snap a bit. You say, “seriously” with all the emotion you can fit in that word. You threaten for her phone to be off for three days if she isn’t packed and cleaned and ready. Parenting brilliance happening over here.

And then,45 minutes later as you’re rushing out the door to get Nat to school (hopefully packed) and to catch a flight, you decide to check your email. And not only do you check your email, you decide now is the right time to skim 40ish pages of discharge papers for S.

And in this oh so scientific skimming where you’re looking for anything to latch onto, you see that his reintegration into our home will need support. That it can be characterized with high emotional reactivity and excessive caution.

And my love, I’m giggling as we write this as we know, we know you are NOT SETTING YOURSELF up for any kind of success or calm or understanding here.

• You do NOT need to be checking your email - let alone clicking in to read this report - in a moment like this while you’re running around. It’s a sign you’re not settled.

• You do NOT need to be working until 10pm to catch up on things. rushing out the door to get Nat to school and catch a flight

• You do NOT need to be racing around at the last minute. It’s a sign that you’re forgetting to calm and ground.

So when we get reactive, well, of course?!?!?!

My love, our emotions and feelings are so so so real. And so so so beautiful. And we also know that whenever we get these huge reactions, these reactive moments, these swirls and floods and overwhelms, that it is because we’ve lost our center.

And my little one, there have been YEARS where we didn’t have those this center.

Where we stayed way too long and our being had no choice but to start screaming and yelling to get us to listen.

Staying married to a good human who was not our person.

Staying at jobs when it was time to move on.

Staying in a home where we thought we could fight our way to being able to give our son what he - and we - needed.

Staying in a relationship that was almost right, and yet not at all.

And we’re so far past that now, my little one. We have learned - we have learned so much.

• We know how to create a foundation of a life that works for us, one that’s slower and calmer and full of nature walks and writing and morning plans.

• We love and accept ourselves as our whole being exactly as we are, as we were and as who we will become with lots of letters from love to know we’re seen and held and loved.

• We walk away from situations that aren’t serving - there isn’t always a requirement to see it through or learn from it or beat it - there’s dignity and beauty and a deep sense of self to know when something doesn’t serve and to choose to turn our attention towards what does.

When we follow these things, our lives, well, they work.

And, my little one, we are NOT perfect. We will have moments where these three grounding rules aren’t in quite the right balance. Where we’re working until 10pm and yelling from the couch and skimming emails while running out the door. And in these moments, the moments when we have big feelings, we are not going to let them wash through, we are going to get reactive.

And these feelings my little one, these moments of reactivity, they are natural. Human.

And while they are not “our fault” or something to lose sleep over or schedule an emergency therapy session over, they are our responsibility.

Our home is our responsibility. Our sense of self is our responsibility. Our relationships and connections - all our responsibility. And how they feel - how safe or calm or wild - these are ours to cultivate and to nurture and to protect.

So this reactivity my little one, it’s something that we are deeply responsible for. And something that can absolutely have big impacts. And take us from being who we are and who we can be into a moment in time that suddenly has bigger feelings.

And a reactive self, a reactive home, it is not what we want. It is not our best and truest self. It is not who we can be.

So it is our responsibility to learn from. To expand out of. To refuse to fall into the patterns.

It’s information - and information that we need to listen to. Because while we are human and these moments will happen, we want them to happen and tell us all the things - they’re also almost always a sign that things are off. Really off.

And because they’re off, we need to give our attention to bringing ourselves back. Back to a human with big feelings - who can take everything in with an open heart and a kind soul and a knowing that it will all be okay, that we all just are, and that possibilities will exist forever.

And my love, you can do this. You have been doing it. And it’s part of the big and beautiful and wonderful life that we have. One with big adventures and big dogs and big loves - and just as real, slow mornings and kind souls.

This isn’t new. It’s not unknown. And like all things, we will walk a balance to realize it and help it all be true.

I love you my big-hearted, big feeling, big living being. And I’m so proud of you for seeing this moment, for living into it, for accepting it exactly as it is and, at the same time, for knowing it has meaning and needed love and attention.

For letting your reactions flow. And then witnessing them flow and pausing to write and reflect and shift.

Breath. Love. Slow down. Settle in. Remember we’re here for the long-term not the moment. Write a bit more. Walk longer. And it will all be okay my little one. Beautiful and whole and real and okay.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Where: Sitting at my dining room table cluttered with so many things and trying to breathe and accept that I can write before cleaning it up, knowing that once I start, I will have a hard time making it back and yet, literally itching to get everything back into order!

Context: Unmute Yourself (again!!!!) had, as per usual, such a perfect + timeline quote as the starting point for our prompt: “What should I do about the wild and the tame? The wild heart that wants to be free, and the tame heart that wants to come home. I want to be held. I don’t want you to come too close. I want you to scoop me up and bring me home at nights. I don’t want to tell you where I am. I want to keep a place among the rocks where no one can find me. I want to be with you.” ― Jeanette Winterson

What was happening for me: I’m craving partnership and love and romance in a way that I thought I had moved past - or at least was a ways away. But it hit me hard the week before Thanksgiving - seeing so many couples up close, ones that have exactly what I want AND what I’ve run from AND that I’m scared of - and all of it looked like, well, yep, I’m ready. And feel so busy and too fat and wildly scared that it’s going to bring up all the things….

Oh my love, what a perfect description of the multitudes that we all contain!

Remember how we used to want to define ourselves, to “know” us and be able to describe it to others and be “consistent”. How we were so desperate to know what others thought of us, that Johari’s Window concept that stuck with us for so many decades - the deep desire to know what I couldn’t see, what others didn’t say, all of my “unknowns”...

How we wanted to be married to JM, to have a safe place to come back to and be wanted - and how we at the same time, especially post-kids, we felt so trapped and contained and like our whole life was disappearing before our eyes.

How we escaped to DR, flying all over the country for work with the hopes of rendezvousing with him in random hotels for nights that felt full of possibility. How he represented the life you hadn’t chosen and it looked so damn good.

Or that night DR came over, after you were settled in LA and living this next life - and he was still telling the same stories over and over and all you could feel was relief that you were where you were - and maybe some sadness about where he was. How nothing in the world could make you want to change places, to have any semblance of his life that had been so shiny just a few years earlier.

And then when you gave yourself fully to K - and how fucking good it felt. But then,when he refused to be yours’, to promise that he was in - you saw this deep commitment to himself and not to others, his fear of your kids and work and all the responsibility that you heaped on yourself over and over, the pain and struggles of raising S.

And so, so you pulled back. You ran.

Followed by coming back - missing the embrace and the connection and the love. And you knew it would end and it would hurt. Hurt in every part of your being. But you wanted and needed those months.

And then, when he wanted to expand, wanted you but not your life. Wanted to stop waiting and instead, be living and dating and loving on so many and not just you, you again said no. And then, just a year or so later, so desperate for that affection, you were open to anything…

Oh my little one. The desire for more. The fear of nothing ever being enough. The fear of being rejected. The desire and haunting of a life not lived.

We are constantly in an ebb and flow. We are who we are and when we are and how we are - every time.

There are seasons that feel all home. There are seasons that feel all about the beyond. And there are ones where what we crave switches day to day. And all are beautiful. All are us.

Now, as we get ready to start dating again, to putting ourselves back into the world with abandon and vulnerability and hope and patience, here’s what we need to know my little one - and when I say know, I mean the deep within us kind of knowing that we hold and hold tightly and abundantly and with every ounce of ourselves.

First, no one is coming to scoop us up. There isn’t some magic human that will read our writing or see us at work and suddenly throw themselves our way. There may be humans we come across as we venture into the world in a way we haven’t these last few years that feels full of intrigue and spark and a deep sense of possibility and ease at every step and then, wonderful. But sitting and waiting will not serve.

At the same time, as folks enter and appear, we need to meet each human and possibility with a sense of fullness.

And a sense of knowing that today we might want freedom and tomorrow we want nothing more than to be held. Both are beautiful. Both are okay. Both lead to a much more beautiful life full of possibility than living in one space.

And my little one, know that they too might be the same! We hope that we’re only falling in love with folks that are the multitudes - ones who honor who they are and as they are which means, they’ll be full of all these things.

This is all the stuff of life to celebrate. To enjoy and relish and giggle at. If we approach it all with a sense of joy and ease - that this is human’ing in all it’s finest forms - how fun this can all feel. How silly and right and real.

And again my little one, is there a better way to get to do this living thing?!?!!?

I love you my little one - you in all your multitudes AND everyone around us with the same.

You’ve had the BEST front row seat to watching this in your kids -

• From attacking us to crawling into bed and wanting - no needing - to be held like a baby. The whiplash as these would come sometimes within minutes of each other.

• From deep connection and laughter and love to the icy glares and tone filled with as much menace as they can summon.

• From snuggling and joking to mumbling maybe as they walk by with their heads down.

None of it phases you any more, my little one - you’re interested in the core and these are all waves.

These waves, they will be part of any + all things. And, as always, as much as we can be like - let’s make ourselves a certain way or only find humans to be around that work with how we are/what we want….

Well my little one, let’s just giggle at this. The idea that we can control anyone, including ourselves. The idea that we can make everything wrap around and be exactly as we want is so silly and absurd and just, well, THE ABSOLUTE WORST WAY TO APPROACH ALL THINGS..

And I know my little one, you spent so many years living that way that to call it wrong probably grates and well, rightly should. I don’t say this to bring up feelings or to challenge you or to in any way make you feel less. As you discovered with DR that night, we are here my love. We have taken this journey and GET to be here - in all the beautiful and wonderful ways. And there’s no where we would rather be.

If we look at all that comes in front of us as our chance to witness and learn and see and know, then it is WONDERFUL.

And if we look at it as what we want and when we want it and how we want it and with a sense of what is right and what is wrong, well…. That’s never going to take us anywhere my love. And I promise, will NOT be fun on the way.

So let’s love our multitudes. Let’s welcome everyone else’s. Let’s choose wholeness and enough-ness. Let’s have the highest fucking standards. And let’s allow the greatest leniency and flexibility and space for living that we can.

Let’s giggle and laugh and open and expand as we get to be on this journey of opening ourselves up, of wanting and saying YES to the door that holds dating and and love and partnership and possibility.

I love you my little love - take deep breaths and be and be ready for all that this human thing requires and offers and entails.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Where: At my counter staring at the pink + green kitchen, dogs alternating between wrestling and antsy for our morning hike and curling up on the couch, sensing we’re not leaving as quickly as they’d like!

Context: Unmute with Ann Randolph is back/happening and while I’ve missed a few days, getting the brilliance of the prompts and the opening meditation and the chance to share with others + read their work is inspiring. And reminding me how much power + peace there is in getting the words on the page. This day’s prompt? “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” - Maya Angelou

What was happening for me: Have been feeling kind of, well, antsy? Not sure this is quite the right word for it and there’s something brewing. This pull towards more - both more discipline and intention and structure AND expanding my humans and world, falling in love, building community…. I want it - and at the exact same time, want to stay exactly here I am….

Good morning my love - and so glad you’re here!!!! You’re not feeling quite ready to write right now - and that’s okay. I think there are a lot of layers here my little one…

First, you’re feeling just a bit antsy. You’re starting to open and wonder and want and whenever that happens, you get a little nervous. What if you can’t have what you want? What if you aren’t good enough?

You think about how your life feels SO full already. You think about how fat you look and feel these days. You think about all the reasons to stay in the cocoon you’re in. And this cocoon, my little one, this one has been SO good to us.

We haven’t felt stuck as we might have in the past - where we thought we had no options, where we were counting down the moments, where we were scrambling and fighting and clawing and so so so desperate. Or when we were despondent and felt trapped, like this is all there is and, well, so be it.

No my little one, this has been a lovely and very self-made and intentional cocoon.

We needed to heal. The last few years, they were too much. Way way way too much.

And now, now we’ve built what feels so exactly right. A home we love with our pups and two of our teenagers. With a pink + green kitchen and a stunning bedroom that you get to lay in and relish or cozy up in your pink chair or write away at your desk. With plants everywhere, greenery and life teeming at every turn. It’s perhaps a bit too cozy. Or a bit too messy. And mostly, it’s safe and warm and the place you want to be.

And a business that is so right. With humans we love. Doing work we enjoy and feel like YES. Our time flows and we generally just want more and relish what we get.

We get to write. We get to cook. We get to snuggle with Nat + the pups and watch tv. We have slow mornings. We hike and drink tea and breath deeply.

My little one, this has been a beautiful cocoon and one you have wanted to relish every moment of. And when folks don’t fit into it, you’ve been so hesitant to leave or adapt. And it has been EXACTLY RIGHT. Exactly.

And these last few days, well, these last few days/weeks you’ve been feeling more.

You’re feeling ready to meet some new humans.

You’re feeling ready to fall in love.

You’re feeling ready to go for it with your business, not just doing what you’re enjoying but pushing and creating and going all out to make it real.

You’re starting to crave more structure. More intent.

And you’re scared, my little one. So so so scared. You don’t want to fall into what the past held - with too much and no sense of even who you were or what you wanted, only ever on a mad rush to move from here to there.

You don’t want to put yourself out there on so many fronts and fail.

You aren’t sure you can do these things - and still feel good inside your being and your soul. The heart of what you have dedicated these last couple of years to.

• Which you have loved on and opened and healed in immeasurable ways.

• Which you have built and scaffolded and figured out how to hold the not enough-ness with minutes and days and weeks that serve.

• Which you have protected in a way you never knew possible - stepping back when things were triggering - who you were working with, dating, even just being in the world.

You wrapped our entire being into love and reminded all of our parts just how wonderful we were, how much we were worth and with + in that, held us until we felt right. Exactly right.

And now we’re here, my little one. Right here and right now - and we know that this isn’t enough. This isn’t our best and most beautiful forever life to freeze in. It’s been the best and most beautiful couple of years. Needed and wanted and so so so right.

And now, now is the time for more.

We can trust ourselves.

• We can trust ourselves to have discipline and structure and push ourselves back into the world without falling into the 18-20 hour days that never ended.

• We can trust ourselves to start dating again, to love ourselves as we are and say no when it isn’t quite right without desperation and fear and angst..

• We can trust ourselves to start having a schedule and eating with more intention without falling into eating disorders and panic and chaos when we aren’t following the “rules” we established.

My little one, we are ready. Ready to say thank you for this cocoon and to welcome what might come. The antsi-ness, the checking our phone, the desire for more, the feeling and cravings in our soul - we are ready. And our entire body + being is telling us that it is time. IT IS TIME.

This cocoon has been beautiful - and while we can never come back to this exact one at this exact moment - J will be moving on, Nat will keep growing up, Siv will be back in deeper ways, Helia will grow, new humans will enter, others will leave - we now know - and know in our deepest and trust form of knowing - that we can always build ourselves another one.

We can make as many cocoons in our life as we want and need - for however long we need them. And, just like now, we can trust when they have served their purpose. When they healed us and let us transform and then and only then, we can move on.

There are no endings. There are no beginnings. It all just is and keeps moving and grooving and flowing and being. HOW BEAUTIFUL!!!!!

And now my little one, now, it’s time to say yes to the next with all of our being and all of our soul and all of our heart.

• Let’s go build a business and transform the sector. And let’s do it our way - with what we love and how we love it.

• Let’s go make new friends and expand our world. Let’s go to writing + storytelling circles. Let’s host more things at our home. Let’s go to SOMOS NELA and invite everyone around.

• Let’s set a schedule and tighten up our mornings and know we can. We are holding ourselves in all sorts of ways - we don’t need to give ourselves these hours without anything to be cared for any longer. Let’s go to hot yoga and hike and write and make things happen.

• Let’s declare that we’re ready for love - chubby cheeks + fat neck + rolling belly and all. That we are worthy and an incredible catch - and ready to find the human(s) that we will build a life with.

• Let’s write and write and write - whenever it calls and maybe when it doesn’t.

I love you my little one - it’s time. We’ve earned this trust in ourselves and with that, our growing trust in the world and say YES and welcome all that comes next.

XOXOXOXO,

Self/Love

When: 4 November 2025

Where: In my favorite pink chair looking at my green wall and my dodger hat (World Series champs!), listening to my pups snore.

Context: Asked for a session with my therapist to explore how to want AND to not go all in/try to force an outcome - and she so brilliantly brought this through all the layers until directing me to write and when asked, said she could just see the prompt GO GO GO GO!!!!!!!!!!!! ?????? in REALLY BIG LETTERS AT THE TOP OF A PAGE. So, well, here we are!

What was happening for me: Finding myself very happily + readily moving into productive mode - and it becoming a bit overwhelming and a bit more empty than it normally is. Wanting to WANT with all of my being - and still live with joy and ease. Wanting to create and love - in all facets of my life. Feeling like I’m walking a line - perhaps a balance beam, not quite a tight rope - in figuring out how all of these things are going to fit together…

GO GO GO GO!!!!!!!!!!!! ??????

What a prompt my little one, Debra (our therapist) knows us SO well. There’s a lot here to sit with, why this is happening, what impacts it has (has had) and, perhaps most importantly, how might this look in the future?

Let’s start with how we KNOW this is the truth. And honestly, how much joy it brings us.

When a Helia partner shares how fabulous working with us is - including the comment, “Crazy fast response times, usually within the hour, at any time of day.”

The pride we felt in reading this - it was like, YES!

Or when our colleague pointed out that things felt a bit all over and hard to keep up with that week at work. And, after reflecting, we sent her a message starting with - “I think so much of this is me just struggling to feel (or not feel) after visiting S - and wanting to run and do some things. I’m sure there’s a much more eloquent way to say this and after a few days of a lot of feelings that were all over the map, it felt good (for me) to get into execution/doing mode.”

My love, we are comfortable in the moving and the doing. We like this place. We feel good in it. There’s so much that is so far beyond our control - but how much we do and when we do it and what we get done, that feels solidly in our wheelhouse.

AND my love, we have also slowed down. SO SO SO much. We are intentionally choosing to do less. We are sitting with - and relishing hours of time without tasks or needs.

When we’ve felt out of control as of late, we have taken deep breaths and long naps and read a book until we feel grounded again. And then, and only then, have we started to do again.

This is powerful. REALLY REALLY POWERFUL.

And we’ve been on this path for years.

• Pat called out to us how we were impacting our team and what the consequences might be with others trying to keep up with my pace in early-ish career days.

• Our social worker told us years ago how important going at the pace - and age - of our kids would matter.

• We have friends that have prompted inquiry and colleagues that have celebrated whenever I’ve wanted to change course.

This isn’t new - it’s a space in life that’s expanding, always expanding. And, understanding the why of it, well, that part feels like a space that is perhaps not nearly as explored or considered.

So my little one, where does this come from? What is driving this?

Well, as always, it’s unlikely to be just one thing… I don’t know that we know for certain or will figure it all out today, with just one write, and, here are some of the things that immediately flow:

• We have been celebrated our whole lives for getting things done and moving things.

• We can control it - when things are uncomfortable, we do. When we feel stuck, we can do. When we’re scared, we can do. When we’re uncertain, we can do. When we’re angry, we can do. Whenever things have felt wobbly or potentially too much, this turning to GO GO GO is an immediate salve, whether to move through what’s hitting us OR to avoid it at all costs.

• It works! So much of the time this choice moves us through things and makes things happen.

• It’s a way to have a place and role, a way to earn my worth and be valued in our world.

• It feels safe. It’s always there.

• It makes everything okay because something is happening/progress, we’re taking action - this is somehow true even when nothing is okay.

My love, as we write - and this list can go on and on and on, there’s a very clear feeling that’s happening. This is our way of being love-able. Of being worthy.

Every time we think we move beyond that, every time we’re in a space that feels like yes, I’m there, I feel loved and love-able and loving(!), this comes back up!

So, first, let’s acknowledge this and be okay. This is something that is so deep in our core, so shared in our world’s collective consciousness to some extent, that it will always be here and with us. And the better relationship we have, the more awareness and connection with it, the better. We are moving forward and through and being and living.

So, here we are. Right here.

What has sparked this? Is it always feeling a little too much? A little too loud? A little too fat? A little too smart? A little too bossy? A little too emotional?

Was it the move when you were younger, suddenly leaving the warm embrace of everything you knew and loved in South Florida and then, now, you’re all the way across the country in the middle of your kindergarten year and feeling really not sure of yourself. You’re kind of adrift. Katty gets a babysitter and you’re mean to her. You don’t brush your hair one morning and kids make fun of you and you don’t have your best friend living two doors down. You feel ashamed and realize you need to be on your game. Things will no longer just flow and you just being you won’t work.

You start eating to make the pain go away. And you start excelling. You start your GO GO GO! When you finish work early in class, the teacher praises you and you can get extra privileges and assignments. When you read more books than everyone, it’s good.

As the years pass, you learn to not overstep. When you say you’ve read every book in the library that you want to and your teacher just looks at you and says “not true”, you realize, you’ve gone too far. Or when you say you’re so busy in high school to the guy that likes you and he just turns and says “you’re always too busy, and you’re 16.” And that’s the last you hear from him.

But you also know, this is the place you can run to.

You drop it at times. Beginning of college when you meet Jackie and so many friends and you have fun. SO SO SO much fun.

Or when the kids move in and you’re just with them, being there and together as the best thing.

Or even in moments when you’ve been able to escape it. It might be your M.O. at work - but at home, in our shared co-op with Em + Dan, you can let it all go. When you sit and have your hours-long convos with Erica. On the roadtrip with Tash + the kids.

But overall, you’re always ready to turn it on and get moving. Especially when you’re untethered. When you’re uncertain.

This is not always your way of being. Not with your people. Not at work. Not with the humans you’ve known forever.

And somewhere along the line, between moving and shifting and normal human’ing, you’ve built in this thing where you don’t think new people will like you. And that there’s something wrong with you in your core. And that when folks see it, whether after years or because they can just tell from the get go, that they will want NOTHING to do with you.

And so you GO GO GO - at work, volunteering, in relationships - so that there’s always a way to prove your worth and have folks want you around, to admire you and keep you close. And so when things feel too hard/much, you have a safe AND effective place to be. Going. Doing. GO GO GO.

While this is true (SO TRUE!), it is also not the whole truth. Not by a long shot.

These last few years, you have been slowing down. You have been doing less. And less. And less. You have been sitting in the hard stuff. You have been accepting. You have been letting go and releasing. You have been choosing all sorts of paths. Go go go is one of them - and you know it’s not the only, not the best, not the place to necessarily be. Just a path to choose if + when it calls, for the time that it calls and makes sense.

And when you started releasing and wanting a few weeks ago, letting it all hang out, every part of you wanted to start GOING towards those things with full force.

As a way to make them real (because let’s be honest, you are VERY fucking effective).

As a way to protecting yourself - you just publicly shared all of these wants, now you need to make them happen?

What kind of person wants something and doesn’t go all out for it? What kind of person wants something and then let’s in the possibility that it might not happen, doesn’t achieve it.

But you KNEW this wasn’t right in your soul. Not the way to go. For you. For everyone around you. And you paused my little one. YOU PAUSED! And you reached out to Debra. And now you’re here, writing.

There is no one way to be or a right way to approach all of this, my love. You my little one are doing it exactly right. You are being intentional. Reaching out. Siting here and spending time and writing with me. Right here, right now! And then, you’ll carve your path through.

You are a doer who gets things done and can move mountains. You’re also a human who relishes just being. And both get to be true - at the same time, in the same moments.

We’re never just one thing - we’re us and that means, every time, ALL the things!

And while I feel good about where we are in relationship with Go Go Go, I also want to really spend a minute with you on the not feeling loved and worrying you’re not good about it.

Let’s be REALLY honest - you have made a LOT of mistakes. There are lots of ways that if you could, you might shift up.

And you can be too much. Or too little.

All of these things my little one, they are human! And you’re obsessing over them is both an “of course” and, at the exact same time, so so so silly.

First, we are making things about ourselves. Which is, well, never really the way to go.

Second, we are holding ourselves to a standard that we can’t even name or know exactly where it came from. One that is both ridiculous and devious.

We are supposed to be ALL the things - but the liberation we know and can feel and is so close, it comes in letting go of all of this “supposed to” shit and just being. Right here and right now.

We are human. We make mistakes. We feel things. We do great and we royally fuck up. We open our hearts to love and harden to close off when scared. We spend too much money. We are too tight with our dollars. We move too fast and break things. We move too slow and hurt others and miss things. We respond from a place of pain. We run and don’t respond. We center and ground and engage. We own up and take accountability.

Let’s giggle for a monent about the times we blame anyone + anything - e.g. “the dog was barking so I dropped the way too many things I’m trying to carry because I don’t want to make a second trip” kind of ridiculousness!!!!).

Humans will dislike us. Distrust us. Run from us. And love us. Feel immediate connection. Run towards us.

It’s all real. So real. And so human. And so okay.

As always, all we have is our souls (all credit to Tracy Chapman!). Our connection with ourselves. The ability to be in touch, to be intentional and say this, this is who I am. This is who I want to be. And then stay the course. In connection. In relationship. Evolving + shifting + grounding.

We know how to pay attention. We know how to connect with ourselves. And now, now we need to keep learning how to let go of this idea of who we think we need to be, who the world expects, who we aspire to and instead, ground in the knowing and depth and possibilities of who we actually are (which, as always, is all the things).

I love you my little one - every single part of you. I always have and I always will. And whenever this need starts to come, tries to take over. Come here. Right here. Be with me and I will fill you up. I will see EVERY part of you and hold you and love on you. And then, when you’re ready (and only when you’re ready), we’ll get ready and do it again.

XOXOXOXO

Self/Love

PS you’re chubby/dirty/curious kid self, they’re here, now and always, and the more you can love on them - and all your parts, the more this whole will be able to love and be loved!

Context: Sitting on my bed feeling the crisp morning air, listening to the birds, watching the sky light up. Pups laying at my feet. I’m feeling VERY behind in all things - and didn’t want to open my eyes to face the list AND couldn’t come up with what else felt right (long hike with the pups, reading, trying to go back to sleep?). Then this started writing itself in my head - sat up and grabbed my computer and let it flow…

What’s Happening for Me: It’s S’ 18th birthday today!!!!!!! We visited him last week as a family and it broke me open in new ways. My therapist has been asking me over and over what I want with him and the best I’ve had is - “I want a relationship IF he wants one”. She’s like, “do you hear yourself????” - but I haven’t been able to budge….

After the last week, I am now officially budged(!) and as I just texted to someone yesterday, “I had to learn to release - and now I have to learn to want and hope….”

Wanting. What a beautiful thing. What a hard and unknown and scary thing. And now my little one, now we need to learn how to do it.

We learned early on how to identify the “right” thing and then to make it happen. In the past few years, we have painfully and extractively and soul crushingly learned to release and let much of the world move exactly as it is.

And now, now we have to learn how to honestly and truthfully and with our whole being answer the question - what do we want.

And not just the easy things - not just the things like slow mornings or good food or a home we love and feel safe + wanted in.

The bigger + harder things that are circling in our bodies and our beings. The things we’re worried aren’t for us or might never come true or that we don’t deserve or that others will judge us for, both for the wanting and maybe even more for the saying it out loud or in the “what if we fail” scenarios.

Things like…

• We want Helia to be BIG, something influential and known and trusted.

• We want to write a memoir that millions read and that expands their perspectives and hearts and souls.

• We want to fall in love and share our home and life, that we want to get married again. That we want our family back.

• We want a relationship with S, a beautiful and rich and loving and full of joy + ease kind of relationship.

All of these things feel so silly to be afraid of when we finally write them down and yet, we’re nervous. Really really nervous.

Are we wanting too much?

• What does it say about us if we want something - and the person we want it with, the world, the myriad of humans around us, what if they don’t want the same thing?

• What does it mean if we announce things and then change our mind? What kind of person does that make us?

• What does it mean if we fail? If our wants never come to pass. Or we do them partially?

• What does it say about us that we can’t just be happy where we are and with what we have, that we need to want more?

Oh my little one, breathe. Breathe in my love and just sit here, right here, with me, for a minute. There is SO much happening here and I want us to break it down.

First and foremost, and perhaps MOST importantly, wanting is BEAUTIFUL!!!!! It is human and magical and it is where we get to imagine and let the universe flow through us to inspire about what’s possible.

One of the best and most wonderful things about us is that we have always known that the future can hold something even better than before. We aren’t looking back and wanting, we are moving and trusting and knowing that what’s coming, well, it can + will be “right”.

This is wonderful. SO SO SO wonderful. Not everyone has this so innately so let’s take a minute and appreciate it. We aren’t scared nothing good is coming or that things we want are impossible and will never come to pass, we’re mostly just scared what the world will think of you for saying you want things.

Oh my little one, this is such a thing and while I want to hold you and love you, I also kind of want to laugh. Sometimes you think you’ve come so far and moved through so much - and then you’re embarrassed to admit, even to yourself, that you want to fall in love. You immediately start thinking - what if it doesn’t happen? How will I find them? What if I’m not loveable like that? What do I need to do?

Then you start thinking - maybe I don’t want that? I also want to be alone. I relish the idea. Or to live with friends that you love, to share in daily life with the people that matter the most. Or maybe

You move out of the want so quickly and into the - I’m now admitting something, I’m making myself just a tiny bit vulnerable, so now, now I need to go and make it happen and bring it into reality or else…

Let’s sit with the “or else” my little one. What is that? What could it possibly entail?

• We might write a short story instead of a book. Or a memoir that no one reads. Or never move off of this Substack(!).

• We might fall in love - and have it end a month later. Or we might never find the love we crave.

• We might keep going with Helia, and have it never be more than a newsletter and a handful of consultants that a few people read and use.

• We might have some great things to come with S - along with really really hard times.

Whats wrong with these scenarios my little one? What is scaring us so much that we’re hiding, trying to camouflage ourselves and shrink into the world around us?

Is it that you will be human and known as such? Is it that those wants change your identity or how folks look at you? Is it that others might think less of you?

How much is this that you still have the list of what the world thinks and wants and deems “good” and living within that?

How much is that you are scared to death that you aren’t worthy?

Oh my love, I’m here. You’re here. We are okay.

Now, do you remember when Debra (our therapist), asked us in our very first session what we wanted and we couldn’t answer. We didn’t go back for weeks because we thought we had to have it ready. How we then made a spreadsheet with about 100 possible things we could want and when she asked us which of these felt beautiful in our soul, which felt liek the thing that might be it, we stubbornly said, all will work, I like all.

It felt so much safer to have a long list, things that could work. What you wanted, what felt warm and fun wasn’t worth calling out. It didn’t matter and might not happen - we had just met this person and we didn’t know what she might think about our want. Much safer to keep it REALLY expansive in our multiple tab spreadsheet.

Or when Debra told us a few months later that we could want. That it was good and beautiful to do so. And, that not only could we want, but that what we wanted could come true, it could be realized.

We almost couldn’t wrap our head around that one - I mean, what?!!?!? Wanting is good? AND we can have what we want???

She added the beautiful and important caveat that how we go after what we want matters - but that it doesn’t change it all being possible.

And now my little one, five years later, her words are finally ringing true.

It’s time, it’s time to learn to let ourself want. To release into that. To open up this other layer of living from the inside - that we’re doing SO well in our moment to moment and now, do with hopes and dreams.

And we need to do it not just when we think something is possible. And not only in certain spaces when it feels safe. We need to do this with abandon. With abundance.

I WANT!!!!

We can scream it from the rooftops. We can dance in it and jump all the way. We can swim in a pool of our wanting.

And the best part, we can want any + all things - and those things can change on a day to day basis. They aren’t what others want. They aren’t solemn vows or life long commitments.

They’re just a feeling. A desire. An opening of our soul.

We’ll realize some. We won’t realize others.

And guess what, it doesn’t matter!

I say that with a grin, my little one as I know that even writing a few wants when we started felt fraught. Scary. And now, I’m feeling this release.

Wanting is nothing more than what is calling to my soul right now and then sharing it out. Loudly and proudly - or quietly and confidently. It kind of doesn’t matter???? It’s just letting that desire flow through us and being human and vulnerable and open enough to say, yep that, I want that.

These wants will shift - from big to small and across and within each other. And we very much need to spend our next letter talking about how we go for what we want - as our historical all out, make it happen, throw every ounce of our being at something to get to an outcome, while, that is a weird and wildly unhealthy way of wanting, just in case you didn’t know.

I love you my little one - let’s go do some wanting!!!!!!!

Context: Late night (aka 8:30pm) at the dining room table, Nat is watching tv and hanging with the dogs and J + Ruben (his friend who just moved in) are in + out - and I’m trying to keep up with Unmute, reading the days’ prompt and writing at night, in time to get to post it in Circle and share with others. The prompt boils down to, “I have to do it” and this just flows out!

What’s Happening for Me: I’ve been working through what I’m so scared of, what I’m being called to do (aka open my heart, be vulnerable - all the things), it’s been easier to do these of late in a more “protected” space. And now, now with the chance to rebuild something new with S, it feels so absolutely right and so completely scary…. When this comes out, it feels like what I’d been trying to write for a few years but never came - a more full story, one that is full of love AND full of pain and not knowing and learning and, again, all the things…

Oh my love, we had to do it…

We had to say yes, from the moment we woke up and felt it in our soul, we had to adopt kids. 2-3 siblings. From foster care. It had to happen. We turned to John, waking him up at 5am and told him. And he said, “okay”. And it was happening.

We had to say yes. From the moment our social worker Devon said, these three kids, we knew we had to meet their social worker. And then we saw that photo - with J in the what we thought was a dodger shirt grinning and bearing it and S resenting every moment and N with the fakest smile we’d ever seen. We had to say yes to meet them.

We had to say yes. We spend the day in the park playing. Running. N is attached to me. I follow J. S runs wild with John by his side. We go to McDonalds and they open their legos and planes and art supplies. We leave them with their foster mom, N and S yelling “I love you” and J staring at us warily. We say, “thank you - how beautiful). And we had to say yes, yes to keep going.

We had to say yes. We take them bowling. We eat Vietnamese food. We watch J help N. S attaches himself to me. Nat wraps John around her finger, having him carry her every which way. My heart expands 1M sizes. When S says “I love you”, hugging me with every part of his being, and N won’t release but looks at me, yelling “I love you” and we had to say, “yes, yes, I love you too”. And somehow, somehow it’s true.

We had to say yes. They say they want to live with us. They want to come and spend the weekend. We drive to pick them up. J won’t come. We spend hours in the living room with the foster mom glaring at us, telling us that the kids will only eat rice and we’re white so we won’t have it. She tells us how S and N have already destroyed their presents. How S is a bad kid. J finally agrees to go to dinner nearby. We go and then he says yes, let’s go to your place. We drive 90 minutes, across the Bay Bridge, booster seats and car seats in place. Our home is set up. It’s ready. The kids run through the house, exploring with eyes of wonder. They have bulletin boards they can decorate. There are clothes, shoes and toys. There’s a basketball hoop for dirty clothes on the boys’ bunk bed. I smile watching S play with it, thanking Ms. Medina for recommending it. We lay down and read books and snuggle as they fall to sleep, taking turns with each of the kids. We make pancakes. We go for a bike ride with the bikes our friends’ boss donated. We say yes. Yes yes yes. We have to, there is no other option.

We had to say yes. We say yes to the school in the Castro where we think there will be lots of adopted kids. We say yes to everything the social worker suggests. We say yes to everything the book recommends. We say yes yes yes as we learn from each other and explore and fall in love. We say yes to long mornings snuggling in bed as they draw all over me with sharpies that never come out, as they giggle and laugh. As they pretend to be my babies and have me birth them. As they imagine games and build legos and watch movies and go bike riding and we live. And it is beautiful. And we have to keep going.

We had to say yes. To S who can only seem to calm down when he’s in your arms. To hiring help to get through the afternoons and evenings. To the school who calls and needs us there right away, day after day after day. To the new therapist that might help. To special time where anyone can ask at any time, where we will give them dedicated 10 minutes of just 1:1 time. To the minutes and hours and days we spend in special time, barely being able to make it to the bathroom. For the exercises and family discussions and circles of safety. For the lifebooks. To the hours of throwing and screaming and yelling, to the releasing of anger and frustration and fury and fear. To the neighbors spending time - and then pulling away. To breathe and over and over again, figuring it out. We have to say yes, we are in this. We can do this.

We had to say yes. For every ask for special time. For every laugh and adventure. For every car ride where we sing so loud. For every giggle. For dinners with stories from the day and songs, so many songs. For exploring the world. For loving food. For eating too much sushi and discovering all our favorites. For our hikes and beach walks and swims. For how we adventure. For the safety and joy. We have to say yes for the greatest joys we’ve ever known.

We had to say yes. We want to visit Mommy Linda, we want you to know your birth family. We drive to Sacramento every couple of months, we pay for a hotel with a pool so that all the feelings that build up in a couple hours at McDonalds can work their way out swimming and jumping nad going wild, and then snuggling to a movie in a hotel room, all cuddled up. We have to say yes, this is your family, this is your life and will be your life. We are here for this to be it. It makes the moments so hard. So so so hard. And we have to say yes, we are here for the long haul and we have to be here, right here.

We had to say yes. We find ourselves knowing our marriage isn’t right. John is a good man - and yet I feel so alone. We hear our friends say it’s time to think about this differently. We had to say yes to go to Kenya for work, to get some space and see what life can be. We come back with the kids, after being with Tash and we couldn’t go back. We had to have an affair to see if we could make it last longer, we had to finally give in and realize we needed a divorce, sobbing on a Sunday morning in my first therapist appointment ever laying on the panhandle that we can’t continue, even though we know we’ll continue to fight to stay for months. We had to leave right after Covid started, we had to run to LA.

We had to move to LA. We had to stay where our family was. Where my best friend was. Where we could have some support. We had to leave, we had to break up this family, we had to turn our back on the promise we made, we had to choose ourselves and we had to accept everything that might come. Where we weren’t working at 3am to get a few hours of cross over with East Africa in a house filled with mice that seemed impossible to get rid of. Where things could be a little easier. Where we could start fresh. We had to.

We had to try. Every and any thing. We had to say yes to N’s best friend moving into our already overfilled 900 square foot home. We had to hire help, anything to try to survive. We had to change schools, when S kept collapsing on the floor after he started a fight and then got beat up. We had to stop leaving the house and going anywhere or committed to doing anything. We had to be ready at every moment in case S had a breakdown. In case N said something terrible to him, in case J was excelling, in case I breathed wrong, the mom he had put all of his trust in to make it okay, who ruined everything by being a mom, and worse, the mom that broke up his family, that broke the promise we made. We had to.

We had to. We had to try every therapy known to mankind. We had to beg and fight and cajole to get into programs where somehow, I was better than any therapist there. Where no one believed or understood. Where we slept with him almost every night, him clinging so hard to my ribs that i had bruises across my body, a rash across my neck from his head being so wedged up and in. Where no matter what we could do, the pain was there. We had to take days off to write and listen. We had to push through and fight in all things. We had to try consequences. We had to try rewards. We had to try special time. We had to try structure. We had to try flexibility. We had to try support. We had to try sports and school and friends and family and food and… We had to.

We had to call the police that first time, when the violence and the threats were getting worse and worse, when we didn’t know if we could keep him safe. We had to NOT let him go to the psych ward, where we didn’t know what would happen. We had to hire the behavioral health specialist. We had to take out tens of thousands for more and more help. We had to keep him at home. We had to outlast it. We had to, there was no other choice. We had to.

We had to get sick. Our body had no choice. Our chrons had to come back and ravage our body. We had to go hard on the medicine. When the medicine did the opposite nad made us so sick, when insurance denied our trying what felt safe so they could have their “preferred drugs” in place, when all of our hair fell out, when we couldn’t walk more than 10 feet, when our legs were shaking and shaking and we kept “rushing” to the bathroom and the blood kept coming. We had to heal ourselves. We had to, it was the only way to keep going, even in a weakened state.

We had to say it was enough. We had to say I failed. We had to say that I gave every part of my being, tried every possible thing and we had to say it wasn’t enough. We weren’t enough. We couldn’t keep him safe. We couldn’t help. We couldn’t be a good mom. We couldn’t do it. We couldn’t do it. We had to say, he couldn’t live at home.

We had to fight for him to get the help, even in the pain we were in. We had to fight to rebuild our relationship with N + J. We had to fight to be able to sleep through the night, realizing we didn’t have to be on edge, to keep him safe, to keep the others safe, to keep me safe. We had to fight to understand what love and boundaries mean. We had to fight to show up. We had to fight to figure out who we were, this person who thought they could do it all. Who could do anything and make it happen. Who thought they could be his savior. Who thought his life was somehow mine - or partially mine??? We had to, there was no other choice.

And now my little one, now. It is almost two years later, S is turning 18. You and N and J have built a beautiful home. Not perfect, but safe. Loving. There are laughs. There is singing. J’s friends are over all the time. N and I sleep through the night. Every night.

And now, what do we have to do?????

We know what it is my little one, and it might be the scariest thing ever. Harder than anything we have done. Harder than taking the leap and saying yes. Harder than jumping in with both feet and going through every high and low than could exist. Harder than fighting through it. Harder than saying it’s enough.

S is figuring it out. He’s been through a lot these last months and you’re wathcing how he’s managing it all so differently. He’s lost 70 pounds and is so proud of how he looks. He has completed two years of school in one - getting B’s and feeling accomplished. Smart. He’s able to talk about hard things and not run away. The uncertainty. The anxiety. The lack of comfort - all those things are there and, well, he has both come SO far and is him, with everything that holds and means. He’s managing them and navigating them in ways that we could once only hope for.

And my little one, right now, we can diagnose and project and try to figure out what it all means. And in all honestly my little one, none of that matters. right now.

Right now, we HAVE to open our heart. We have to hope. We have to want. We have to say - I love you, I want a relationship with you. We have to ask for forgiveness. We have to stop protecting and preparing and curling inward. We have to stop looking for where he isn’t and instead, celebrate where he is. We have to trust that he can be okay. That we want him to be okay. That we don’t want just okay, that we want loving and thriving. That we want to hug him and vacation with him and laugh with him and build a life with him. That we want him to build a life.

We have to my beautiful mama, this mama that has loved and fought with such fierceness and protection and with being. We HAVE to let go. We have to trust. We have to hope. And not because we know, not because it will be, not because we have any control. But because we want it with our whole being. And that wanting and knowing, that being honest with it, it is the only knowing that matters.

We have to my little one. WE HAVE TO. And now, now, it is up to you that in the same way you HAD to close off to survive and get through and protect, now you HAVE to open to survive and get through and protect.

I love you and I promise, it is safe. Not that nothing bad will happen, not that there wont’ be pain, not that there is any guarantee. But because my love, there is no other way to live. This is it. This is the time. We have to - and it will be okay.

Context: Looking at a poem, The World Has Need of You, by Ellen Bass in Unmute with Ann Randolph earlier that day. It’s now late at night (well, after 8pm which counts as late!!!) as the mornings feel too tight to join the zoom but I’m now making space here at my dining room table in the evening. Though maybe not quite enough(!) as I revisit it a week-ish later, sitting in a AirBnB in Idaho, alternating between writing, staring out at the early morning sky (no dogs/kids here!) and chatting with Nat who’s up early at home…

What’s Happening for Me: Things are moving. 'Perhaps a bit too busy and mostly, mostly just right. I’m visiting S (my middle son) and feels both good and right and full of more joy + ease than I could have imagined - and also, feel myself shifting from my heart to my head as I try to “figure it out”. Trying to remember and hold everything in this piece - we know nothing…

Oh my little one, this line was PERFECT. “It’s a hard time to be human. We know too much. We know too little.”

I think this is probably universally true - and we can write all the reasons here. There’s so much information. The information we have is so skewed. We’re so limited by our own experience/life/ancestors that I don’t see how we might ever know what we need.

We feel wiser and more peaceful and more aware by the years we live. By the experiences we have. By the challenges we face. By living.

And, at the exact same time, we feel more aware of how little we know. How much is unknown - and always will be. We can go down a rabbit hole of learning and trying to understand - and nearly every time, we get spit out on the other side with a sense of “we’ll never get there.” That there isn’t even a “there”.

It’s so cute my little one, watching how you think you’ll learn. Or that you can know the “right” thing. At the global scale. At the individual scale. Even with our self….

What do you think will happen when you get there? And what the heck is there?!?!?!

• When you find the secret combination of supportive relationships and life experiences that help folks love themselves and it heals all things - climate and housing and human rights….

• When you figure out the secret to why folks feel fear instead of curiosity

• When you figure out how to heal someone’s heart, to help them trust themselves and in doing so, trust others

• When you find the secret to helping folks “see” and opt out of what they’ve been taught and instead, to use their own wisdom

• When you “know” how to help folks talk to each other

• When you can figure out just the “right” way to show up for humans you love

Will this knowledge suddenly make everything okay? Right? True?

Here’s the deal - nothing is ever knowable my little grasshopper. We all just get to be here, right here. And the joy is in remembering we know nothing. Not too much. Not too little. Nothing!

And that’s exactly right. I - as the universe and as love and as your capital “S” Self, I get to know. I get to know and hold all the universal wisdom that there is to be had.

And you, you human that you are,, you need to let go. You need to open your heart. You need to check in with me and be here, right here. You need to listen to everything around you - all that is said and unsaid - and then check in with me - and then do whatever comes. And know that everyone around us is going to do the same. And some of that will make so much sense. And some will make none at all.

We know too much. We know nothing. That’s how it’s always been. That’s how it will always be.

Now, let’s turn to the one other thing in this poem my love that you need to hear and know. The tug of feeling needed. You LOVE it. Love love love love love. Feel so safe and secure. A way to be wanted. A blueprint to fitting in. A path to finding love. To being loved. To being okay.

And you are good at it my little one. Really fucking good at it. You’re competent. You get things done and make things happen. Always and in a million different ways. And it feels so good to offer help to others. Not only for the place it gives you in the world. But also from some sense of purpose and way of being that feels so lovely and right.

I don’t ever want you to stop making your magic in the world happen my little one. It is a gift and SO fun to watch you work it and move things forward. And you have so much fun doing your thing. And others often need what you’re offering. We are all graced with different gifts - and when any of us bring them forward, it’s magical.

And, let’s be honest, some mornings you wake up and look around at the dogs you rescued and the kids you adopted and the business you’re running and the multitudes that you’ve offered to others and it is a seemingly never ending list to work on. And in those moments, you question what you’re choosing and why you’re living with (under?) so many things instead of waking up with an expanse of hours and hours and hours of time?????

Can you imagine waking up and letting the day take you where it will. Letting your creativity rise up. Letting your heart and soul move us where it will.

What we know is that we know nothing. And we are learning that there must be a balance between:

• Balance in being needed + waking up without a thing to do

• Moving things forward in the world and laying in our hammock staring up at the trees

• Letting the magic of universe move through us - both with our gifts and with the moment to moment calling

This balance, my little one, this one you can pay attention to. You can pay attention to when it comes - whether the season of life or how your hours play out in a day or week or month.

And while we are paying attention, let's learn to be comfortable in the NOT being needed so we relish that and welcome it in as much as the being needed. (Friendly reminder - it doesn't count when you are so destroyed and burnt out that you have no choice to retreat. Or when you channel all your wanting to be needed into ONE project, person or purpose. I know you want those to - and, well, they’re the worst.)

Just be in relationship with it all my little one. Be in relationship with me. And from there, it will all work itself out. I promise.

For now my little luscious cherry, my juicy blackberry, my meltingly delicious raspberry, my vibrant strawberry, my plump blueberry, my exotic huckleberry, breath and let go. Let go of needing to know, wanting to know, thinking we can know. The wanting to be needed. The fear of being needed. It will all just happen and flow and be.

I love you, I love you, I love you!!!!

XOXOXOXO

Self/Love

When: 20, 22 and 25 August 2025

Context: First sitting on my bed as the sun was coming up with both dogs snuggled in. Then in our dining room watching the soft morning light expand- with little notes from my writing retreat people that I recently pulled out of my bag next to me (a beautiful reminder to WRITE), two mugs of tea (peppermint and london fog), a vase overflowing with flowers, the pups laying sleepily next to me and the hum of Nat’s toothbrush in the background (older kids!). Finally, finishing this up in a bright cafe - when work is BEATING down my door but I know I need to finish writing this.

What’s Happening for Me: I recently ended a chapter that had been “mostly ended” for a while now. I say “mostly ended” as there were still a few tethers, none of which felt great. Then it just felt so clearly like it was time - and it was over with just a 10ish word email. A friend offered to help me mark the ending and all I could think of was wanting to write about it. Which then expanded over a couple days to my reflecting on endings, both this one in particular but also my relationship with the concept and history of it and, well, all the things. Have also recently listened to LISTEN TO SAVE PALESTINIAN LIVES w/ Our Friend Dr. Thaer Ahmad on We Can Do Hard Things, read the Subtack article The Biggest Loser Changed My Life by Kate Manne, watched my writing teacher Ann Ranolph’s Velveeta videos (example HERE) and am reading the book One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad all of which have kind of welded themselves into my being. The result = this letter and evolving thinking…

Love, what would you have me know about endings?

Oh my little one, what a beautiful and important question. Endings are on your mind lately my love for so many reasons - and you want to explore them, so let’s go there!

I think first and foremost, endings are just a thing that happens.

Sometimes we choose endings, sometimes others choose them. Sometimes they just happen, sometimes perhaps the universe steps in… Endings are not things to be afraid of. They are not things to run towards. They just are.

And the word, endings. It feels like such a big and weighty word. It has heft and formality and meaning all embedded in there in a way that, well, feels like it is an END (instead of begins like the word beginnings!).

But my little eager beaver who wants to get it “right”, perhaps these are all just words, Perhaps they all kind of mean the same thing? Perhaps they’re all just our attempt to describe things that are happening in the world?

We can - and perhaps shall - change our definition of endings. It’s time for us to enter them not with a sense of fear and trepidation but with a sense of possibility, with the knowing that they are a chance to build + create.

So let’s take a minute and walk through some bigger endings in our world:

• Gram + Pa’s final years - This was painful. And so prolonged. Maybe it was showing us what happens when we hold on too long? Memories that will haunt me every day. And memories that I will cherish and made every awful moment worth it. That life can be so beautiful and so painful and everything in between. And that we can feel this pain and survive. And it deepens us. And the ending is real and pronounced and we hate how it happened and even so, it happened. Endings happen.

• Leaving work places. One you stay until you “know” you’ve done what you meant to do. You feel complete and finished. Not that the work is (never!), just that it feels time in your soul. The other you fight to stay, to get to that feeling. You finally “quit”. It feels like the first time you’ve ever really quit anything maybe? And suddenly it’s fine. The world doesn’t end. You aren’t suddenly a bad person. When you reflect, the primary reflection you had was that you wished you quit sooner. Regardless you’re out. And with both there are things you’re proud of and things you aren’t. And they just are. Endings happen.

• Divorce. For years you know this CANNOT HAPPEN. You can’t imagine the impacts on your kids, you promised them a forever family. And yet you know in your body it’s coming. You can barely stomach to be in the house. It’s “right”. You think it will destroy them. You have to do it anyway, you know. And you do it - and compound it by fleeing to your childhood home in LA, moving everyone from SF so abruptly. Maybe it destroys us all. Maybe this is what sets S on the path where we are all hoping for a beautiful ending. Maybe it saves us and opens us all up to journeys and paths and possibilities we need. Maybe it’s neither and just is? And when Nat says the other day, I just know, my body is telling me it’s time to end this and I have to listen, I feel like this is maybe the most beautiful lesson I could ever have shared. Endings happen.

• Our family changes. We now live in LA and my ex/kids’ dad lives in SF. My middle son, S, lives outside our home. Sophie (our beloved dog) has passed. J will be gone at some point. I’m on my bed sobbing at how we went from 6 to 3 and what that might mean. What will come next? What could I have done to change this? How lonely might it be. It starts to feel okay. Painful and sad and okay. Endings happen.

  

And some current endings:

• Goodbye to work that had felt central to my identity and synonymous with my purpose. I leave - and try to design a good ending. It doesn’t go as planned and I leave before that happens. The connection lingers. Money is supposed to be shared - and it isn’t. The entire experience of it feels off. A friend asks me how it feels - and while I don’t quite have the words, it is different than how I want money and work and relationships to feel. I tell them this process feels disrespectful and bow out. There’s nothing planned or expanded on or desired, just an honest reckoning that this is over and accepting endings is perhaps the best way to move.

• Preparing for goodbye to J/this next iteration (realizing constantly shifting) - I’m loving J living at home as he becomes an adult. He contributes and makes our home richer. I love getting to witness and support his next iteration. He says he wants to move out, doesn't want to live at forever. I feel pain throughout my body. And then peace that whatever will come will come. And I love him and trust him. And know that the ending of this phase of home is coming - and there will just be a next and a next and a next.

• Realizing end of life is coming in next season with the elders I grew up with. Everyone is “good” - and we know that isn’t the forever state we’re going to be in. All sorts of fears from G+P passing come back. All sorts of ideas of how to make this different. And then I remember (okay, that’s giving me way too much credit, my therapist reminds me), this is not my life. This is theirs. And maybe the most beautiful thing I can do here is to ask them what that will look like. Ask them how I can show up and be part of it. To witness it and keep my eyes open and all my senses on (even as tears well up in my eyes thinking about this). That I can welcome and honor the ending, however close or far it may be and with all it will bring.

• That there are “knowns” of the world. How fun it was to delude myself for so many years that the world was a thing that I could know. That I could understand. That I could get right. Is there a universal right? Are there a list of rules that if we follow will make everything better? Who knows - and the more I welcome that the world is nothing but a series of beginnings and endings, things flowing beyond anything I could every comprehend and I release myself into it and let myself be guided, the more I’m able to show and see and hear, the more my heart opens, the more I feel clear and connected and whole. And from this place, this feels like maybe the best way to be a “good person. The ending of my certainty opens to way more peace…

I feel myself constantly becoming and the more I remove any sense of this being it or knowing, the less anything feels like a beginning or and ending and more just is…

My grandparents are still with me in too many ways to count. Nat reminds me of Joy, my gram, every time we drive through a yellow light. Whenever I hear someone laugh with joy and abandon, she’s right there. Whenever I meet someone with kind eyes, I feel him in my soul.

Nat tells me about John, my ex/her dad, going out and she says, “I’m just glad he’s finally doing something for himself as he’s usually only doing things for us”. I feel all the pricks of all the feelings - the beginnings of rage + resentment as the primary/nearly solo caregiver (and only parent that lives in the same city). I mention to J and he guffaws a bit. I tell John on our next call and we laugh together. Our family keeps evolving.

Sophie has transformed her presence in our worlds, teaching N and I to grieve together versus alone, expanding all of our hearts, and gifting us two 100 pound beasts of pups in an attempt to carry on her legacy.

What we’re leaning and hearing isn’t just about endings, my little one.

It is that language matters. The voices we hear matter.

We hear the word ending and feel sadness and failure. We hear beginning and feel hope and possibility.

Where are we falling for the language that others are using? Where are we only hearing certain voices. Where do we need deeper introspection?

Where do we need to change the definitions of words? The meanings? The feelings?

Is an ending really much different from a shift than a beginning might be? Is fat something to hate and revile OR to revel and fall into? Is family something to be warmly embraced and held in or something full of mine fields and trap doors and something to escape? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.

We build these definitions and then they hold us. Define us. Carry us through. Get all the power.

The definitions come from somewhere - and, like in all things, we get to have the agency to inquire and sit with and listen and, through that beautiful process of living and learning and being, they get to evolve. (note - let’s write more on this my little one, a LOT more).

For today, my little one, it’s endings. This is what we’re called to build a new relationship with. A relationship not of fear and failure and grief - instead one of possibility and humanity. Moving and shifting and being.

There are seasons. There are chapters. There are phases. We can call them whatever they need to be called. And mostly my love, mostly, it all just is.

XOXO,

Self/Love

Context; Sitting at my cabin in the middle of the woods in Central PA - my most favorite place in the world. The terrible news - there’s now service here which changes everything and for the moment, just going to pretend it’s still off the grid (we still don't have electricity, running water, plumbing…). I’m looking out at Pine Creek through the trees (mostly ironwoods and white pines right here), listening to the buttonwood run into the creek and the birds and watching the leaves quiver with the sounds of a few big trucks driving across mountain roads in the background. It’s magical and perfect and exactly right. My therapist recently told me I was sitting in my power in a way she hadn’t witnessed and I’ve been turning that word over and over - and woke up this AM feeling like it was time to write about it.

What’s Happening for Me: I feel peaceful. I feel present. I feel powerful. I feel clear. So many things have happened and are happening and yet, what matters feels so clear. I don’t know how long this might last and it’s lovely. And whole. And my ability to have an open heart, to release, to accept all that’s happening around me, it is lovely. Really really lovely.

Oh my love, I think writing about power is exactly right. It’s a word that’s kind of fraught in your mind, always has been and likely always will carry a bit of something. And yet, it’s real. It’s here.

You first started consciously thinking about power when you realized who had it and how doing what they said was a really, really good call.

Then, you saw it in classrooms and on your sports teams and in the social dynamics and in the workplace. You saw how different folks lorded it over you - the way certain sports officials relished the moment of being in charge and also how so many were apprehensive or didn’t want it. You had bosses that took it as a responsibility and honor and others that saw it as a superiority thing. You had friends who didn’t seem to care and others who based most of their lives on it.

You’ve always studied this, my little one. Do you remember walking through the store with your parents, turning every corner to see who was there and if they might be “above” or “below” you? I’m not quite sure there was a specific way of measuring this necessarily - what folks were wearing, how they held themselves, how “attractive” they were - and yet, you would hold yourself differently depending on who you might be passing.

You’ve paid attention to what’s explicit - but you’ve also studied the implicit. And then you navigated - always balancing how you showed up. Never going all out - or at least not visibly - always balancing doing what you were told and being liked (one form of power), especially by the right folks with also getting things done and moving things and being effective (another form of power) but also holding back, refusing to give in or up. When you had traditional power - aka being someone’s boss - you were thoughtful about it. And you liked when those you liked and respected had traditional power over you - and struggled mightily when that wasn’t the case…

When you first came to realize the power you held as a middle-class white woman, all that the world had given you and you got to hold, that was terrible. You realized what a fucked up relationship with power you had. How you had been holding so much that you’d refused to even realize. How terrible this made you, how you were actively harming the world just by your existence….

And while you still absolutely hold this power my earnest little heart and are absolutely complicit in so much of how our world holds power, it’s also not only that.

At first you wanted to die of shame. I say first but really, that one started first and continued for years. Here we are. Then, you wanted to organize folks to give it away, to say we tried and we fucked up so let’s pay it forward and celebrate doing so. Let others imagine possibilities and let those come to be.

Then Pat brought up that I was thinking about power too one-dimensionally, failing to understand how everyone had power. I legit couldn’t understand it at first - I knew the rules of the external world, whether screamed from the mountaintops or whispered and communicated with a glance - but this sense of internal power, it was all new to me.

I then worked to just hold power differently. To partner and support others that I thought “deserved” it - those that offered possibility and could maybe shift what this looked like ,what we were all experiencing.

And then, then, I realized how much I needed to step back from this outer world. To use amb’s framing, to think about the fractals I was operating in and focus on the smallest of the small. To start living from the outside.

And suddenly, I felt this power.

• This power to say I love my son and he can’t live with us. That I will show up for him when and how I want to do so. That there aren’t rules that I have to live by here, that I get to decide and that is the best and most important and beautiful way to be a mom.

• The power to say this feels disrespectful. I’m going to bow out and leave you to it. Not trying to change. Not trying to fight. But to just move on my way.

• The power to not care that much about what’s happening in our world as this current round of western civilization starts to deconstruct. To want there to be less suffering than there probably will, and also to accept that this is how the world moves and shifts. There is no universal right or wrong. This too shall pass applies to feelings and moments and life experiences - and also to civilizations and power regimes and ways of living.

• The power to care deeply - and be wildly intentional - about where I choose where I put my energy - not in the largest fractals that are farthest removed from me but rather, in the smallest. In my own internal family system (gratitude for IFS!), in my home, in my community, in my work. What I’m doing and how I’m doing it, this is where I want this power to lie.

• The power to be, just as I am and who I am. K came over last week and I could tell he is no longer interested in me or attracted to me. Likely I’m too fat. Likely I was overheated and canning/freezing hundreds of nectarines and covered in juices and sugars. And yet, the power I felt in not caring. In being as I am and him being as he is.

• The power to not plan. To just respond in the moment. To trust myself and the universe that I can just be and everything around me will work out.

• The power to live from the inside. To be angry when I feel it and sad when the feelings flood me. To let most things go. To let folks believe what they believe. To care deeply. To not care at all. To let the winds of the world move however they will and focus almost entirely on just how I’m showing up in that.

When I said to my therapist that I might text someone after my “official” communication to offer to talk things through and she asked why and I sat with that and couldn’t quite answer except that I thought it was who I might want to be in the world and she said, this moment, this is the only one moment today where I don’t hear you standing in your power.

And I’m realizing, this isn’t coming from my internal being, this is coming from how I want to be perceived, how I want the story to be told, how I want them to think of me. Inside, I’ve said what I want to say. They can call if they’d like, and it’s not something I need to engage with.

This power, this true power, this is what so many others have always known. Is it different cultures and ancestors that carry wisdom that’s more embodied and real? Is it being further removed from the white/straight/male/able-bodied/Western nexus of power that others dug deeper instead of just aligning?

Perhaps it’s that I failed so completely and utterly in the original definition - not in how others looking in might see it but in my own being I know. I put everything I had into certain aspects and in each moment, when I detached myself from my own power of existence, I failed.

Failed meaning others didn’t like me. Didn’t want me. Didn’t choose me. I was unloveable.

Failed meaning I didn’t get to the outcome I was trying SO hard to reach.

Failed meaning I was judging others and feeling inferior and/or superior, depending on the moment and the context, instead of realizing how fucking beautiful it is that there are so many of us and we are all doing our things.

I failed meaning I didn’t like myself. Felt disconnected and trapped and angry and just yucky.

Power my little one, this is the knowing ourselves and being ourselves, exactly as we are and where we are. A fat round face with a big soft belly. A sensitive soul who feels all the things - and then nothing at the same time. A being who shows up and then disappears when it’s too much. A person who can love everyone - and be very thoughtful and intentional about who gets in up close.

And you, you get to do all of this with LOVE. Love for yourself. Love for others. Love for our world.

My little singing cricket, my majestic eagle, my earnest reader and writer, my snuggly mama bear, my majestic white pine, you my little one, you are feeling good and whole and peaceful because you are finally learning what true power is. You are finally owning that your own being and your own knowing, these are the things to follow and hold sacred and trust. And in this, you are taking your power and holding your power and with it, becoming the most powerful life force you can.

And this powerful life force? It is the most fucking beautiful way you can live this life. It is how you will be the most you and do the most good. So own your power in every way you can - and celebrate and help others own their power in all the ways they can. Because this, this is a path to our most beautiful life.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Where: On my bed with my two very large pups next to me, listening to the birds and the sprinklers while watching the sun rise and the light come through the trees

Context: Have been playing around with this piece in my head for a month or so and I’m not sure this is it and feels like, if it’s about a year, need to put a line in the sand! I usually just write whatever comes in that moment whereas this, it was that but also something that I am spontaneously thinking about - e.g. I had time to add milk + honey to my tea and am sipping it - this feels weird?!?!? OR wow, this is a big feeling (I used to have these all day?!?!?)…

What was happening for me: Working a lot - though slowly and without stress and loving it. Not sleeping enough - late night rehearsals with Nat and choosing seeing friends and picking up my phone when I get home (phone = never, ever a good idea though THIS app from is game changing!). Have been a bit grumpy and know I need LESS and am realizing both, what a change in baseline at what my body + being want and can manage. And, when I think back to a year ago, I am THRIVING…. It is wild just how far perspective goes!

Oh my little one, what a difference a year makes! You’re sitting outside on the bench looking at your garden. You’re listening to birds. You’re breathing. You’re writing!!!!!

This year: You almost always sleep through the night, waking with the sun and the birds. Last night you woke up at the witching hour of 3am - in part because N and the dogs were all in your bed - and additional three, 100ish pound beings with all their scratching and turning and in part because your mind was moving. Ideas were flowing. And you let them flow through and grow and be what they would become. It was almost meditative, listening and feeling and finishing knowing what it all meant, at least in this moment. Then you went back to sleep.

Last year: You were up at 3am almost every night, with more things moving through your mind and body than you could manage. You would wake up with an almost internal conflict inside you, one you would fight desperately to ignore. Anything to get back to sleep. Eventually you’d try to meditate. Maybe some tapping. Turning the light on to read or write. Often succumbing to the phone. You’d check the time. Try a meditation app. Masturbate. Do few emails. You would be angry. Frustrated. Frantic. Tired. You’d finally give in and give up and start working to calm the noise. And then the sun is rising and you’re tired. Oh so tired.

My little one, this is just one example and it’s one that matters.

• The shame and guilt and fear that we felt, that we had fucked it up or weren’t doing it right or weren’t good enough or were failing. It feels almost gone? Moments of self doubt creep in and none as crippling or consuming, just feelings.

• The drive to get things done and be constantly doing and producing? It’s still there but with so much more peace, in a flow.

• The anger and frustration and resentment at doing so much for others, at giving myself away and then not having those I’m giving myself to do everything and anything I want or think immediately nor having the appreciation or gratitude we both want so desperately and avoid like the plague. It comes so sparingly you can look back 6ish months and remember it only twice?

What’s replacing them I can’t quite name. Our minutes and days and hours look different. Our mind is creative. Our heart is open. Our being feels different.

It’s not everlasting peace or calm, there is still grumpiness and tiredness and worry. This is not transcendence - we most definitely have not reached a destination and are still journey’ing.

Where we are right now, it might best described as just being. Flowing. Living?

My love, this new way of living, whatever we might call it, feels exactly right.

And we are here because you have chosen you. You are giving yourself so many gifts and treating yourself with so much kindness and love and care that it makes sleeping through the night, it makes opening our heart, it makes being and flowing and living possible and it is fucking beautiful.

My little one, these are the gifts we are giving ourselves and making this world, this world right here, possible.

SPACE!

We have slow mornings, we have hours of sitting in our yard, we have time with our family in ways that we never imagined (or perhaps wanted).

We love watching tv with Nat(!) and writing in the mornings. We love walks with the pups and no meetings before 10am. We love afternoons and evenings with nothing planned.

We had a busy week followed by a busy weekend - so we took today, a Thursday(!), off. And then we did it again. We gardened and took Coop to the vet and puttered. We went with J to the beach!

This space makes everything seem slower and calmer and more okay. There’s less to worry about or react to and instead, more opportunity to be in relationship with those we love, with the world, with ourselves.

We are not there yet - there is still so much more we can do here (less phone, always less phone) and to imagine the old feels almost impossible.

LA Community.

We are building this, slowly and person by person and it’s, well, it’s lovely. There isn’t a set group we are suddenly part of but rather, all sorts of people we feel connected with or inspired by. Folks we can breathe deeply when we’re near. We can go to a local event or writing party or sound bath at yoga and feel comfortable in our being. We chat with folks and feel connected. This is huge!

(Note - we are making time to participate. We are going to the same spaces and places where we see humans we recognize. We feel more and more comfortable in that space. We feel more and more comfortable with ourselves. This works in that space and somehow, starts to expand into others. This is making a difference.)

We can have a birthday gathering with old friends and writing friends and kids’ friends and the 20-something old kiddo you used to nanny and people we used to work with and folks we’re volunteering with and our dog trainer and see everyone together and say yes, this is what I’m building.

Our People.

The company we keep. While we don’t quite have words to describe this yet, or at least words that reflect that we are not just the victim but also the villain and the hero, this might be one of the most important.

(Note - my little one, let’s remember that these words - “hero”, “villain”, “victim” - they are harsh and extreme and so steeped in the culture we live in and, just as we don’t have the language here yet, we also don’t have better words on this. Something for us to sit and be with. It will come!)

The people we spending time with? Mostly, well, these relationships can be characterized with ease. With joy.

How much of this is where we are? With who they are? With who I’m choosing to spend time with? That we can’t quite know yet, my little one because, as always, it is all the things. And we do know…

There is rarely crunchiness - and when there is, it can be spoken about with love and honesty and moved through. There is no resentment or frustration, there is little hierarchy opr trying to control. We are with humans we like and respect, humans that are doing what they say they’ll do. There is no one we need to “manage”.

We are not in the company of fast movers and reactors or fixers. We are not in the company of those that are angry and fighting. We are not in the company of those that are depressed and want us to be their lifeline.

We are in space with those that are living and figuring it out. Dreaming. Struggling. Feeling. We are with people we like and that like us. This is powerful, really really powerful.

Living for Ourselves?

We’re nervous to write this and maybe, just maybe, we are on the other side?!?!?! Maybe we are now living as ourselves, both in how we do our day to day and in finding our purpose. We are trusting that the more we are ourselves, the more we live from the inside and open our heart and just are, well, the more everything we have and can offer will shine through.

My little one, the shift away from “knowing” our highest calling was focusing our entire being into living for others, whether en masse or for a few select humans, has been profound.

Giving away ourselves used to be the only thing that made sense and was good. It was the secret to being liked and loved and living a life worth living, one that others couldn’t question or judge. It now feels so silly and yet, it used to feel like this higher calling???? Like this way we had to be???? And now, well, now and it feels so empty.

Who are we to decide? Who are we to know? We just get to open and let things flow through. And this, this releasing and just getting to live and trusting we’ll do it just “right”, it is pretty fucking awesome.

Loving Ourselves.

My little one, we are loving ourselves. And with this love and compassion and open hearted embrace, we feel peace.

Peace that we are human. Peace in knowing we are incredible and can move through anything that comes our way. Peace in that we make mistakes, big and small.

Peace in that we are defensive and judgmental and anxious. Peace in knowing how competent and capable and loving and whole we are.

Peace that we have done good things. Peace that we are not a bad mom, that it is not all of our fault. Peace that we don’t have control. Peace that we haven’t failed or succeeded but that we have lived.

Peace in looking back at things we aren’t proud of and wish we could change. Peace that when we look in the aggregate, we know and love ourselves, we can hold ourselves with grace and care and feel peace that we are human and living and doing it all exactly right, exactly as it is and exactly as it will be.

What does all of this mean?

When we look back, we think about how each day felt full of feelings, so many big feelings. Full of responsibility. Full of being in charge. How we were in spaces because of their possibilities, because of our responsibilities. Clinging on and trying to get it right, whatever “it” was and whatever “right” might be defined by that day.

How everything that happened felt big and important and as if we had to do something, as if we had control. How silly it sounds when we think about it, when we look back….

• S says things one day and you don’t have feelings, instead, you think, well, this is where he is today. You’ don’t have a master plan. You have curiosities. And somehow, all you have written feels true. This is his life and his world and you are not in charge. You are not responsible. You are not good or bad or even that important. They may live the most beautiful and fulfilled life and feel peace daily. They may face demons all of their life and figure out how to be okay and make it all work. They may struggle and live in pain and suffering. They may harm others, they may one day kill you. All of these are possible - and so many more. You will love and observe and show up in ways that feel true in your being.

• You think about the connection you felt with M, how special it felt and rare and how you wanted it so badly, how it felt like THE thing instead of a thing. And now, now your friend Alyza reads your chart and says you won’t find your romantic partner until 2028 or 2029 and you wonder why you wanted it in the first place. Why you needed to make one connection be “the” connection? The desperation is mildly embarrassing nad yet so human and okay. You love yourself, who you were AND who you will be.

• X sends an infuriating message. It hurts. A lot. And you remember, you realize, they are who they are. They are who they have always been. You entered that relationship, that agreement, that space on your own cognizance and stayed in it long after it was beautiful. You felt pulled by the whirlpool, struggling in it, hoping to stay afloat and “win”, through what you were winning beyond survival is so unclear? You forgot that to get out you have to let yourself be sucked in. Release and let it flow and it will shoot you back, exactly where you’re supposed to be. So when you hear how they speak about you, how you are blamed, you can instead know you did good things and feel comfortable and proud and present and open your heart and love for it feels so far away and not even present.

• There are big, beautiful bills passing and words of a war with Iran and a genocide in Palestine and neighbors being snatched - kidnapped - from the streets. It is scary. It is wrong. And you remember that you don’t know. You don’t know the full story. You don’t know what it all means, today or tomorrow or decades or centuries in the future. You can listen to other voices - those far away from the US - who help you realize you know so little and you certainly don’t get to decide who is good or bad or what another country or human needs. You can listen to your neighbors and friends and ask what they need and do that, exactly that. You can walk Home Depot in the morning and pay legal bills and show up in community and celebration at LA Mas’ night market. You can help organizations and humans that are showing up in ways that feel beautiful. You can love fiercely. You can remember that you don’t have control and the more you give of yourself to these big things, the more power they have. And the more you live in your being and remember amb’s saying that small is all and show up in the day to day, the more okay it all feels.

My little one, who knows what the next year will bring and this, this right here feels beautiful. We are trusting ourselves. We are living from the inside. We are knowing that this, right here and right now, might be it.

We keep realizing how unimportant we are, how little control we have, how all we can do is love and open and listen and be.

I love you my little one. Choose space and joy and ease. Choose love and kindness and small. Let’s get to a place where we can giggle at ourselves sitting on the toilet scrolling on our phone, laughing at how we spent our time!

Trust ourselves and open our hearts and it will all be beautiful.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love

Our Reminders

• Less, always choose less

• Choose Joy. Choose Ease. If it feels bad, walk away. We can always return if + when it makes sense. There’s a reason it feels hard. There’s a reason it hurts.

• Opting out of what is good or normal and building our own world, listening to what feels good to us, pretty much always a good thing.

• We know nothing, we have no control - stay open to what shows up.

• Small is all. What we have, right here and right now, might be the most important things. Live small.

• Trust ourselves. We know. And when we listen and live from the inside, it is all okay (note - not right or good but okay and that is kind of the perfect place to be).

• Love - love ourselves, love others. Act from love whenever possible and when not possible, sit with why. Love can have boundaries.

• The parts that hurt and bring fear and uncertainty, they are scared and need love. Open when you an, rest when you need and you can love (and write!) your way to the other side.

Where: Still in my bed in my blue caftan Katty bought me in India that reminded her of our grandmother as our grandmother was passing away…. The dogs are going wild and I’m just ignoring except for an occasional “break” when it’s too much…

Context: I haven’t been writing. Or not nearly enough. All of my writing is going towards Helia and while “right”, I woke up yesterday morning knowing I needed this and needed it now. And then, didn’t do it!!! But today, today I got my computer out…

When I’m in a good place, I connect with my parts and check in (continuing gratitude for Internal Family Systems in all the ways). This is a snapshot of the convo - in all it’s honesty and vulnerability and truth! These are not all my parts - just the ones that wanted a check in today and there was space for.

What was happening for me: Building Helia. Driving Nat to and from. Scheduling a few too many things. Wanting to get back into a rhythm. Needing way too much sleep. Feeling present and peaceful and whole.

Good morning my little one, thank you for showing up. WE need this. More than you’ll ever fully realize or know and when it’s missing, when we choose other things, it is okay but it is never as whole and honest and full of possibility.

Make this space. Almost every day my little one. Even if it’s just for a few, it is good for us and good or our world. I promise.

So let’s check in, how’s it going?

In some ways, SO good. We are moving slowly. We are loving our work. WE are loving who is in our lives. We aren’t trying to solve everything. We are snuggling with our dogs. We are writing (work writing!) in cafes. We are not reacting. We are choosing humans.

We are exposing ourselves to all things about weight and size and fatness as we sit with that in our body. It’s feeling better and clearer and good.

In others, we need to do better.

We are taking way too long to get to sleep and are tired. Always tired. We have started scrolling Facebook - moving from FB Marketplace to see Cane Corso dog owner groups and watching post after post on the Texas floods. This scrolling, well, this scrolling has never served anyone.

We are feeling helpless at what is happening to those that aren’t documented. What we think will come. We aren’t writing barely at all. We’re not getting to yoga as much as our body craves. We aren’t making lists so everything is swirling and swirling and swirling in our heads.

My little one, we know. We know what is needed. We need to make our lists. We need to stop Facebook scrolling. Just completely stop. We need to write, every day we need to write. And we need sleep. And if we can’t get to bed early enough then we need to nap. Nap and nap and nap.

Now, let’s check in with our parts - who needs us, who wants us, where are they all today?

• Chief of Staff (looks like CJ from the West Wing) - feeling really good about where we are, moving and making things happen, would like more lists so they don’t have to hold it all and glad we are being productive and creating Helia, feels like we are moving with purpose and intention

• My wise one (looks like my therapist!) - mostly good, wants us to sleep more and remember that we are closing our heart a bit as we are scared and mostly, loves how much we are loving ourselves these days

• TSOM (stands for The Soul of Me - a little ball of light) - feeling so good, wants to shine even more and feels ready to release from me versus just be in me. Worried I’m a bit too tired so will stay with me until there’s more to spare.

• My 2 year old self - giggling and smiling and loving living with TSOM and my wise one. Feels loved and cared for.

• My shield (set of armor that covers me to keep bad things out when it’s too much to handle) - not all the way up but not disappearing or letting me live completely open as I’m too tired these days to hold it all. Wants me to rest more - and is feeling mostly good and confident.

• My can do anything self (version of me at 30 or 40 something that either stands with confidence and clarity OR is curled into a ball of shame) - feeling worried and a bit ashamed. We aren’t doing more - we have so much privilege that it’s easy for us to say the things we’re saying (we have no control, we know nothing, we just get to love). Our day to day lives and families are not under attack. We are not imminently fearing for our life. Wants to do more - for others and also really visible things so folks know we aren’t one of the bad ones. We agree on continuing to show up, making more and more time for that and remembering how privileged we are and what comes with that, what feels right. And, at the same time, we align that what others think doesn’t matter and the visibility of it, we need to let that go. That’s us living for others and wanting something that doesn’t exist. There aren’t good ones and bad ones, just ones. We agree that they will focus their energy on what we can offer from Helia this week, including preparing for LA Mas’ team retreat next week and checking in with those we care about on if + how we can show up.

• My 11 year old self - feeling better than they ever have. As we shed the shame of being fat and not the perfect body or woman that our world wants, this part feels more and more okay. She was paying attention to what we needed to do to be loved - by those closest to us, by our teachers, by our communities, by our world - and making sure we did all of those things so we would be safe. Every time we let any part of these go, she feels more and more whole and confident, not as scared and angry and reactive. Our listening to and reading about what other fat folks are experiencing and how they are moving through and what it all means is really healing for this part, giving her other ways to feel loved and to love. Makes everything feel less fraught and even was ready for a hug today.

Beautiful check in my love, thank you for doing this on every level. Needed and wanted and pretty much always worth it!

Go forth and be productive, start on the do list that’s calling and promise to go to yoga please - every part of you needs it.

XOXOXO,

Self/Love