I walked past a house with multiple deer resting in the yard, unbothered, completely unaware that summer was ending. We were in Sisters, a small picturesque western outpost near Bend, Oregon that has become a favorite Summer family tradition. We roll into town every August when we drop Mario at his nearby sleep-away camp. My aunt’s empty house in the woods, Felix signed up that morning for a week-long parks and rec day camp, Mike on a Zoom in the back bedroom. I was out getting some movement and me time in one of my favorite towns and someone was already trying to end it.

I got back, rinsed off and told Mike we should head into town for lunch. A little treat, a small act of resistance, a reminder that we were very much still in summer, OK? I sat with the annoyance for a couple of days and then posted a note to Substack saying I was allergic to the “summer is almost over” discourse. It got a reaction.

(A note before I continue: I know summer is not universally beloved. Wildfires, 100+ degree temps, humidity and storms. For many people the end of summer cannot come soon enough and that is completely valid. I am writing from my own slice of life in the Pacific Northwest where I am simply not ready to let go of the warm days and long evenings. Carry on.)

While I L-O-V-E Summer I must acknowledge that it is also really hard as a parent. You make the decision to spend lotsa dollars to put your kids in camps all summer, or if you are lucky you can send them to grandma camp or tap in a high schooler to help out or maybe just accept that you are going to take charge and manage it all yourself. If you work outside the house then you feel the pressure to steal away a few hours weeknights so you can do something ‘fun’ with your kids. Take them to a pool, visit the fair, enjoy all this magic and make it all memorable just like the online well intentioned propaganda wants us to.

I feel every bit of this. For us, our kids are in some sort of camp or care all summer 4-5 days a week which allows Mike and I to keep our same schedule. We are grateful for this. But still I feel the pressure to make things memorable. So I try to make room for special things after dinner. We go get ice cream or visit all the skate parks on weeknights or do sleepovers and movie nights with cousins on weekends.

Making all the magic is hard. Mom magic especially. Typically it is reserved for holidays or birthdays. Lucky for me, Felix’s birthday is July 5th. Which is its own kind of mid summer chaos. This year, Mike was traveling for a shoot and our family had a big gathering for the 4th so I actually have yet to throw him a party. He found a box cake mix in the pantry last weekend and brought it to me stunned saying ‘MOM! Look my cake you forgot to make it for my party and you forgot to have my party’, cue the mom guilt.

When he said it it stung and was adorable at the same time. Just a few days before he caught me saying in conversation that ‘having a kid with a birthday july 5th was not great’ he perked up and said to me ‘No Mom, its not bad. It goes Halloween, Christmas, Fourth of July and then my birthday. I get presents’. It was a reminder that the joy of a birthday is so special to a little kid. I gave him a great birthday morning with decor and gifts and surprises and we actually hosted family that day for a carne asada and to watch the Mexico WC game. My mom made him cupcakes even but we didn’t technically call it a birthday since Mike wanted to be here when we celebrated... we still need to do that. Cue the mom guilt again.

As if summer wasn't hard enough, this year we were also told we need to be delivering a 90s summer. Screen free, unstructured, nostalgic. As if 2026 wasn't a full thirty years away from that. And the cool girl summer lists. What the cool girls are wearing this summer, where the cool girls are going this summer, what the cool girls are eating this summer. I am 42. I don't know if I am technically supposed to be keeping track of any of this but it finds me anyway. A great reminder that being in your 40s has its privileges. I can just ignore it and create my own reality.

So in recent years I have drawn a line in the sand. Summer is not over until the fall equinox, September 22nd to be exact. Not a day before.

But more than that, summer is actually just a state of mind. The equinox is my hard line but the mindset is the real thing I am protecting. The looseness, the spontaneity, the alfresco meals and the walk to ice cream after dinner. None of that requires a specific date on the calendar. It just requires a decision to hold onto it a little longer. I know, I know, easy for me to say when I jump to Mexico for an endless summer.

Even without a departure to Mexico, it has helped that I reframe the start of the school year as more or less just another camp, the first few weeks of school are just ‘end of summer’ camp. We can still rebel a little, be a little feral but grateful for the structure and organization during the day that the school year brings.

For us school doesn't really start until we return to Mexico the first week of October this year. More on how we manage school in two countries here. But regardless I am not ready to say goodbye to eating alfresco, the looseness and spontaneity of a picnic in the park with neighbors, or a walk to ice cream after dinner.

When I posted that note earlier this month my new substack buddy commented:

I have not stopped thinking about it since. The kids going back is not the end of summer. It is the beginning of yours. Quieter mornings, your own schedule, the version of summer that belongs entirely to you. I am already planning an outdoor movie night for my girlfriends in September. Snacks, chilled wine on the deck, lawn chairs in the yard. If you are a Portland reader you are invited.

As we transition, a few small things that make the end of summer feel like liberation rather than logistics. Do hot lunch. A full three quarters of the year I don't pack, plan, wash lunchboxes or lament uneaten food. One less decision every single morning for months at a time. If you are the one filling out school forms, write your partner's name and number first. Schools call whoever is listed first and since moms are usually the ones holding the pen we default to ourselves out of habit not decision. This isn't a gotcha, it's just a small opportunity to practice what so many of us already believe about sharing the load. One tiny flip means your partner gets the call for emergencies, volunteer opportunities and lice outbreaks even though they never touched the form. And lastly, if getting out the door is a battle, try keeping a second set of toothbrushes downstairs so kids can brush after breakfast without disappearing into an upstairs distraction vortex. Small things. But they add up to a morning that feels like yours.

Mom summer is real. It is quieter, slower and belongs entirely to you. To my friends without kids you have zero excuses, live it up! We have until September 22nd.

Act accordingly.

xx LL

Emi took this assignment seriously and in true documentarian fashion she provided thoughtful and considered responses to my my seemingly throw away questions. Emily is a mother, wife, sister, daughter, cousin, friend and PEABODY AWARD winning filmmaker. Read on for confessions from one of the smartest, funniest and most genuinely curious people I know.

LL: Let's skip the small talk. What are you trying to do differently than your parents or exactly the same?

EC: It would be more interesting to have a Freudian analysis of all of my obsessions and why I’m choosing to live differently from my parents. But the boring truth is that I quite like my parents despite, and sometimes because of, their peculiarities, and feel reasonably well-adjusted. Probably any ways in which I’m living differently from them I’d mostly chalk up to generational difference or circumstance.

My parents were never married and, although they remain friends, haven’t been romantically intertwined since 1989. In some ways they are comically different, which is perhaps a post for another time, but I think at their core, they are both just insatiably curious people. I think it’s partially inherited and partially learned behavior, and I’m not sure I could turn it off if I tried, but I am inspired by and try to mirror their lifelong pursuit of endless fascination.

For me, in particular, this manifests most in a voracious interest in people’s lived experiences. And that sounds high-brow and existential, and it can be that, but I truly enjoy also just hearing about how someone moves through Costco, or how they navigated a recent high school reunion, etc. because I feel like when I’m in person with someone, I’m communicating with them, reading them, on a few different levels - body language, energy, reaction. It’s embarrassingly sincere to say, but you stand to learn so much when you listen.

LL: What you wanted to be when you grew up (and how close/far you landed)

EC: My parents both practiced medicine, and I was drawn from a very young age to the sciences. (I didn’t expect to be talking so much about my parents?? Last time, I promise!) Perhaps it was the weekend mornings spent at the hospital on rounds with my dad, or reading The Magic School Bus tour of the human body with my mom, but as a kid I dreamed of becoming a labor and delivery OBGYN. The ability to create a baby with your body just seemed like magic, and being a part of bringing life into this world did too.

In high school, I attended a magnet medical program where half of the school day was focused on science and medicine. It was endlessly engaging, but over summer break heading into my junior year, I stopped into a yard sale and picked up a VHS tape of Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing. I was bowled over by the social complexities explored through the relationships of these neighbors on this one block and on this one day. There’s that Roger Ebert quote: “For me, the movies are like a machine that generates empathy.” I think that was my first time really seeing that power. I ended up pursuing a career in documentary filmmaking and have been producing films and series ever since. Weirdly, I see a lot of similarities between the two practices, medicine and film. Both require boundless curiosity, attention to detail, creative thinking, and diving into specialized worlds. My cousin is a physician and sometimes at our regular family dinners, I think “oooooh I could really be happy doing that! Such honed skill! Such endless interest! Such ample and steady pay!” But I’m pretty happily settled here, for now.

LL: Who’s your fashion muse?

EC: I recently chaperoned my daughter’s class field trip to Sleeping Beauty, and when Prince Phillip bounded out in the most perfect monochrome Zoom-friendly WFH lewk, I sat there puzzling out modern interpretations.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m always absorbing. A daily commute on the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan (which I no longer have) was an infinite well of inspiration for me. The inspiration often comes from someone unexpected, like an old man in well-loved wool slacks and a silk scarf tied at their neck just so, which gets me thinking about finding that ever-elusive one perfect pant or how to layer beautifully in the cold.

I’ll also fall in love with the entire wardrobe of a character, like Rashida Jones in Sunny. The silhouettes she wore in that show are very “me” - oversized, with some proportional play, though she did more fun tonal combos than I tend to. And then, there’s always you, Lydia Lauer. We have a lifetime of history sharing inspiration, ideas, outfit checks, and actual clothes, and you are constantly arriving to my home in something simultaneously unfussy but with your unique joie de vivre that would make my life so much better if I was just wearing THAT.

LL: What do you currently have in your phantom shopping cart?

EC: After two decades as renters, we recently moved to my hometown Portland, Oregon and bought a home with a garden. We’ve been racing to catch up on all the homeowner knowledge required ever since.

The fun piece of that is the design dreaming. I am currently coveting the lighting hardware from Dimwit, that our friend Joanna Bean Martin premiered at this year’s NY Design Week. And, in another cart, the book Trees for All Seasons: Broadleaved Evergreens for Temperate Climates, written by Sean Hogan, the keeper of my favorite nursery on Sauvie Island. I’m forever on the quest for my next perfect tree.

LL: What you’ve given yourself permission to care less about:

EC: I used to think a LOT about clothes. Like, way more than I would have cared to acknowledge. Part of that was practical. When you live in a big city and are trekking for miles in all weather, but need to arrive looking chic, it takes careful planning! My life now looks a little different. I have fun getting dressed for meetings or dinner parties, but my daily life is now a little more relaxed. The calculation is more about how to seamlessly go from workout to zoom meetings, to school pick-up, and then back to my desk, while still looking dressed. See WFH ballet outfit inspo from question #3! I’m joking, but only kind of!

LL: What is something you prioritized this week that felt selfish but wasn’t:

EC: Writing this post :) It’s not often that I laze about navel-gazing publicly, but it was pretty fun!

LL: What is something you want to put out into the universe, something my readers can help you manifest?

EC: Can we normalize seeing each other's lived-in homes, and prioritize more impromptu dinner parties and human connection over domestic perfection before friends arrive? We can eat on the couch to avoid your child's ongoing art project taking over the dining room table. (Or is that just my house?)

Emi, only you would approach a confessions questionnaire like a documentarian. Thorough, considered, deeply researched, including into your own childhood. I have known you for 41 years so I should not be surprised! That is the whole thing right there. Her latest award winning film is the Sue Bird documentary Sue Bird In The Clutch available to watch on Netflix, a great flick for the whole family. You are welcome in advance.

xx LL

So in the spirit of a trend I keep seeing on Instagram — here are a few things I have decided are, actually, kinda chic.

Kinda chic to be on Substack. Not because it is popular, but because choosing to read and write in long form feels kinda countercultural. Thank you for showing up!

Kinda chic to publish your diary. The personal essay is having a moment and maybe it is because we are all exhausted by content that pretends to be useful. Sometimes a woman just processing her life out loud is the most valuable thing you read all week.

Kinda chic to not have a content calendar. The most inspired writing I do happens when something actually moves me to write it. Not because it's due a certain day of the week. I attempted a content calendar earlier this year. It lasted less than a week before it zapped every ounce of creativity or fun I had. Never again.

Kinda chic to write for less than 1000 people. Stuck between almost there and never gonna make it. But if you are reading this now, thank you- genuinely.

Kinda chic to write about your feelings and own up to not having the answers. When the entire internet wants to sell you a step by step remedy for every problem you have, admitting that you are still figuring it out is worth celebrating.

Kinda chic to spend more time writing and reading than scrolling. The attention economy is killing our actual attention spans. We gotta break the habit somehow. Writing requires you to finish a thought. That alone feels like a noble pursuit.

Kinda chic to be EIC of your own magazine. This is for all the folks who re-stack the Carrie Bradshaw meme every time it hits your feed. You are the editor, the writer, the art department and the distro team. Insanity but completely worth it.

Kinda chic to support other people’s writing. Through likes, comments, restacks and subscriptions. These three pieces in my feed last week deserve a shout out here.
- Dear Eldest Millenial Daughter by
- The Life We Built by
- Recognizing My Child’s Face, Growing Up Adopted by for

Kinda chic to be horizontal. Gimme all the landscape photos, long form personal essays and hot takes.

But in all honesty, I love seeing something new show up each day from this community. How everyone finds the time to write in their already over booked days or nights. Thats the best part. You don't need to know me and I don't need to know you. And yet here we are, writing our diaries on the internet and making strangers feel seen and heard.

xx LL

Leaving a job or getting laid off is like a funeral. Nobody tells you that, but it’s true. When I left Nike in 2020 I received larger than life floral arrangements, care packages, text messages, emails, phone calls and invitations to reminisce over lunch or drinks. All to celebrate and say goodbye. I felt so memorialized it was honestly like living through my own professional funeral, what a wonderful trip!

Record Layoffs! Corporate Burnout! Or the occasional and more eloquent: The Quiet Exodus of Women From Careers They Were Good At. These headlines are everywhere right now. But this isn’t a trend piece. It’s a dispatch from someone six years into the other side of that decision.

I have found myself revisiting what is actually lost when you leave a job or your role is eliminated. Sure, you forgo the title or the salary. But it’s actually the people. The scale of the projects. The clarity of knowing that each week, each month and each season there will be work to do. It is a ferris wheel or a rollercoaster or a lazy river depending on the role, but it’s always in motion and always moving toward the next milestone, brief or campaign.

Once you get off the ride and remove yourself from that constant motion there is a bit of identity vertigo. I caught myself after my departure from Nike stumbling when people asked me what my job was. Parents at school pickup, soccer games, chats with new friends. I struggled to find the words to define what I did outside of the easy answer I had not just rehearsed but ingrained in myself for twelve years. I found myself saying something different nearly every time. I had taken for granted how easy and natural it was to say “I work at Nike.”

What comes next, when you don’t know what to say, is the freedom to say whatever you want. Liberty, as I started calling it. That feeling everyone talks about when describing life on the other side of a departure or a layoff. Isn’t this what we all wanted? The feeling that makes us grateful for the leap or the push out the door.

I consciously took a break from working that first fall. Mario was starting kindergarten. Zoom kindergarten, which holds its own grief. We were simultaneously buying a house in Mexico and packing up Portland so renters could move in. I dove into domesticity. The logic being: if I was no longer contributing financially I should compensate by doing more of the things. That lasted two weeks. As it turns out, the freedom I had been handed did not translate into a desire to do more laundry, meal plan or organize the freezer. What it did do was make something else visible: I had already been doing a lot. The job, the house, the mothering, the mental load. It took not having the job to realize that. Which is a funny thing to learn in the middle of a pandemic while your five year old does PE class on an iPad in the middle of the living room.

What nobody warns you about is the shapelessness. Days that belong entirely to you that somehow feel harder to fill than the ones that didn’t. At first it was fabulous… A workout before noon, a proper lunch at home, nowhere to be until school pickup. And then you realize: SHIT! I didn’t make it to the grocery store yet today!?! How did I ever do all of this AND work? How was I keeping all of those plates spinning simultaneously? The answer, it turns out, is that I just was. Because I had to.

Then comes the doubt. Imposter syndrome is too manufactured a phrase for it. Too clickbaity, too clean. It is more like a deflating birthday balloon. Not a crisis, just a persistent low-grade very quiet hum following you around. The spiraling questions: will anyone call? Will I ever see a real brief again? Does anyone remember I exist outside of that job? You learn, slowly, that the answer to all three is yes. But the balloon sulks for a while before you believe it.

Distractions help. When you realize your time is truly yours you can fill it with what some people call hobbies. For me that looked like starting this substack, exploring my creativity through painting instead of just creative briefs and going for a walk outside in the middle of the day with a podcast that fills my cup.

Moving to Mexico was also part of my personal equation. A privilege earned after many years of working, saving and ultimately choosing myself over career climbing. Our town in Mexico is not cheap, but it is more affordable than the life I was funding in Portland, and that difference bought me time. I have been able to take on projects each year that keep me in the game on my own terms. I opted out of the structure but not a career. It just looks different than before. And not so different from many women I know who are making the same quiet calculation: choosing a lifestyle rather than letting a career dictate one.

Six years out I am in the busiest season of my career. More clients, better work, more inbound than I have been used to and balance truly on my terms- or what I have started calling ‘harmony’. But the more meaningful shift is that I finally know what to call what I do.

After Nike I fumbled that question for a long time. What do you do? I had a dozen answers depending on the day. It took a trusted friend, someone I respect enormously, who has built a serious career at Google to name it for me. She said: you are a true strategist, with experience in brand and creative. And that clicked. My entire career had that thread running through it. I just hadn’t taken the time to notice it.

I want to be clear that I am not here to gloat. You have seen the headlines: “how I landed my first six month retainer“ or “how to go freelance.“ This is not that. I don’t have a course to sell or a blueprint to unlock. This is just a personal reflection on the path, the messy middle, and the slow work of figuring out what comes next. There are more unknowns in this way of working than anyone’s clickbait headline will admit. You cannot cut and paste from someone else’s experience no matter how much their Substack costs. But it is genuinely comforting to know that other people are out here doing it too, asking the same questions, figuring it out as they go.

What I do now is not the big shoots or the massive campaigns I used to think defined my work. It is the upstream stuff. The consumer research, the brand building, the world building that sets the foundation for everything that comes after. The part most people skip because it is slower and harder to show in a deck. I turned out to be good at exactly that. And it took leaving a very big job to find out.

So no, I am not a teacher. Not a template. Not a lifestyle guru. Just as I shared last week, I am not more qualified than the next person to tell anyone how to go freelance or leave a big job or figure out what comes next. Because this life is not transferable. It is just mine.

I don’t know what your other side looks like. I only know mine. The in-between doesn’t last forever even when it feels like it will. What a privilege it is to be ambitious, creative, mothering, and still figuring out what a life well lived even looks like.
xx LL

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In late February I shared a slice of life reel on instagram. Our area of Mexico had been affected by some cartel shenanigans and the American news media was telling travelers to cancel their vacations to Mexico. Our town is a vacation and surf destination for travelers from all over the world. The media coverage was greatly affecting the small businesses and tourism in our area. I had friends and family around the world calling, texting and asking us about our safety. We were completely fine and our town completely insulated from this singular situation. In response to the calls from friends and family as well as the American media I decided to post a ‘ditl’ to showcase the calm, normalcy and beauty of our everyday life.

The post went viral almost immediately reaching 100k views in just under 24 hours. It was picked up by local personalities, small businesses and even the state of Jalisco’s secretary of tourism reposted it. I was dumbfounded. I was proud. I was also dealing with online criticism for the first time in my life. I was not trying to go viral. I was just posting the calm and the ordinary. The truth about a place I love and call home.

A few weeks later I posted a six second video showing the day we finished construction on our pool in Mexico and were filling it for the first time with the garden hose. It was spliced with a video of our current view of the pool, the garden now lush and the kids in the distance splashing. A striking juxtaposition ripe for views, shares and ‘how did they do that!?’ comments. That video also went viral, currently sitting at 886k views and today nearly five months later continues to inspire comments and follows.

These two videos brought in nearly 9,000 new people as followers on my instagram account @lydialauer. These two videos present a version of who I am. But not the whole me.

What came after was too many DMs asking for a quick call to talk about how to make a move like we did. Followers expecting tutorials on how to ‘make it work’ abroad. And an underserved audience hungry for more construction stories and BTS than I desired to share. I had to take a look in the mirror and ask myself some questions:

Am I an expat living in Mexico?
Yes, for part of the year.

Am I a gringo colonizing Mexico?
No, I am a white presenting Latina (there are many of us) connecting with her roots and raising her sons with a direct connection to their heritage.

Do I have any desire to HGTV my house, my life, my family?
Not at all.

Am I a lifestyle guru who wants to convince you that you should move abroad?
Nope.

I have friends who post prolifically, invest in shreditors (IYKYK), and create genuinely great content that converts. And even they bemoan the content train. They want to slow down but can’t for fear of losing momentum or god forbid: relevance. I understand the trap. I am just wary of falling into it. Of becoming someone maintaining a character instead of living a life.

In finishing the much talked about book Yesteryear last week I was struck by something. The anti hero in this book was so consumed by performing for everyone around her that she loses the thread of who she actually is. Reading it felt like a warning label for what could happen if I let 9,000 strangers decide who I am.

The book really hit on a few subjects personally. Firstly, the eldest daughter discourse and parentification of siblings, two things that deserve their own post from my pov. But the theme I want to explore today is performance. How we show up online. Sure I am guilty of this to some extent. We all are when we say ‘cheese’ to a camera. That smile is forced and often disingenuous, we are performing because the camera is on us.

The book has us observing the main character from all angles. We see good(?), bad and ugly. We are surveilling her and watching her perform in different situations. Looping in and out of control of the scene.

I can argue both ways about it. The assumption being that personal content is performance by definition. However, each person’s specificity and uniqueness might be the opposite of performance. Walk around your house and observe the ‘ugly’ stuff or look in the mirror and think about what bothers you. For me some days it is a house full of imperfect thrift finds smashed together trying to resemble a stylish home. My five year old who only will wear hand me down soccer jerseys- stained and too big. When he has a closet full of really cute shit I’ve saved or collected for him. Gray hairs on my head and wrinkles on my skin. None of that is curated, it is just what’s there. That is not performance, that is real life. If we crop some of that stuff out occasionally does it become performance? Or is it just seeing your life through rose colored glasses? I think so. And I think that’s okay. Selective is not the same as fake. Curated is not the same as performed. The line for me is whether what I’m sharing is true not whether it’s complete.

So no, I am not a teacher. Not a template. Not a lifestyle guru. I am not more qualified than the next person to tell anyone how to move abroad or go freelance or raise their kids and more importantly it is not my place. Because this life is not transferable, it is just mine.

What I actually want is quieter and harder to game: bring a smile, offer a new way of seeing something, live out loud and trust that my people will find it useful or funny or true. Bonus points if they think it is worthy enough of a comment or share. That is my how-to. So who wants my e-course or downloadable pdf!? ;)

As a brand and creative strategist I find it genuinely interesting to observe what resonates and where. I was actually able to use my own instagram as a case study recently to land some new work which is super validating. Those two videos were rocket ships, fed by the algorithm, fast and wide. And yet I have been showing up here, in the long form, for nearly six years. No rocket ship in personal writing. The climb is slower and the hacks feel hollow and unearned.

So why does any of it matter to me? Why do I care how many followers I have or whether the numbers go up? If I am being honest with myself: comparison creep. That quiet, corrosive habit of measuring your real life against someone else’s curated one. I am not immune to it. But naming it helps.

And maybe that’s the whole point. Not the followers or the algorithm or the rocket ships. Just showing up specifically enough that the right people find it useful or funny or true. This is my real life. I’m glad you’re here for it.

xx Ly

LL: Hi Martha, before you start your confessions can you introduce yourself using just five emojis?

MS: ✨😂🙏🏻🫶🌞

LL: What did 11 year old Martha want to be when she grew up?

MS: I was obsessed with magazines as a child, and really wanted to be a magazine editor. I think I was enchanted by the glamour, the fashion and of course the free beauty cabinet! I had an aunt who worked in magazines and I always thought of her as so elegant, gracious, creative and smart, and I wanted to be like her.

LL: Who’s your fashion muse?

MS: At the moment I really love Coco Schiffer. She always looks polished and she exudes such an excitable energy which I love, in a world in which so many fashion influencers are so serious and mysterious.

LL: What you’ve given yourself permission to care less about recently?

MS: Being seen. For years I was so self conscious, the idea of showing up on social media with no make up on or someone seeing my body was a no go. So posting on Instagram and TikTok is a love letter to that previously very self conscious girl.

LL: What is the most fun thing about being a creator on IG? And the least fun? Tell it to us straight :)

MS: Most fun- the community engagement. I LOVE getting DMs and comments from followers- questions, ideas and thoughtful responses to my posts. It feels like a really big group chat of like minded women who all want the same thing- to live and elevated life in the foreground whilst building wealth in the background. I love hearing about how my account has inspired women to take action on things- I love seeing the empowerment!

Least fun- the very rare nasty comments. Even though I know their comments say more about how they think of themselves than me, it still hurts. I think because I’ve been previously so critical of my own looks and body, those sorts of comments are particularly triggering.

LL: What is the content franchise on IG that you are surprised does so well and the one that you think is the the most under rated?

MS: Anyone who posts ‘hauls’ - I don’t understand it. The excess gives me anxiety. And it also takes very little thought. It surprises me how many women follow these accounts, because it’s not showcasing taste, it’s just showcasing trend and fashion fluency, which is not hard to do.

Probably not underrated anymore- but Loui Burke’s scathing bed making commentary is simply wonderful to watch! I also absolutely love gardening, so Pollyanna Wilkinson is another favourite.

LL: What is one food item you always splurge on? Maybe when out to eat or shopping for food staples?

MS: South African MCC- it’s our version of champagne and it’s so delicious. I like to serve it at my birthday parties each year that host in my garden.

LL: What is something you want to put out into the universe, something my readers can help you manifest?

MS: I’m big into manifesting, I’m a member of To Be Magnetic (I decided to sign up for a year on the Black Friday last year) so I manifest every morning. I’d love the Martha mindset to infiltrate every woman in the world so everyone starts to feel abundant with the wonderful life they have consciously curated, confident in their individual tastes and a calm inner knowing that they are building wealth at the same time.

Martha, thank you for playing along. I love your candor. Especially the parts about showing up online, positive (and negative) engagement and giving yourself permission to care less about being seen. The stuff we don’t always say out loud but all feel.

You are proof that the algorithm occasionally gets it exactly right. I love your definition of a life well built: beautiful in the foreground, wealthy in the background. I will be following along and taking notes.

Find Martha on Instagram, TikTok and Substack — her essays are very much worth your time.

And if you know someone who should be featured in this series, or you want to raise your own hand, drop it in the comments. I would love to crowdsource.

xx LL

On that trip to Goodwill we picked up a large scale portrait of a Matador for $14.00. It moved from room to room in the house as I would redecorate on a whim over weekends when I needed to decompress from work. Visitors to our house would ask about the matador. We had named him Benny Gomez after a bullfighter Mike and I saw in Madrid many years earlier on our first trip to Europe together. One visitor said ‘ah it is a Barbara Weber, she’s famous’ after seeing the artist’s signature in the corner. I just thought it was a joke about my Goodwill find and laughed it off. But as it turns out these are kind of a collectible to certain mid century art enthusiasts and regarded as a cultural relic by others.

Five years and one child later we moved one block up the street. We bought our current house mostly because of the yard. It is a double lot in the city with a towering Western Red Cedar that belongs in a national park but casually just shades our house in the summers. But also because the previous owners had taken excellent care of it and updated it in 2010 (which back in 2018 was not that long ago). The kitchen was updated, the bathrooms updated, the basement finished and the fact that none of it was dealing with the complicated identity based trauma of being a daycare or divided into a duplex. It was just a blue Dutch Colonial with a big yard built in 1925.

We brought the Matador with us when we moved in 2018 and hung him immediately at the entry. A warm, familiar, smiling face to greet us every time we came home. He also stands firm as a reminder of our decorating philosophy: never serious, never trendy, almost always secondhand.

In that spirit, here’s a tour of the things in our living room that stop me in my tracks. Everything you’re about to see is unshoppable. Not because I’m gatekeeping—there genuinely are no links. Most of these things came from somewhere that doesn’t exist anymore, my own two hands, or a fancy lady’s estate sale. Rest in peace, fancy ladies.

I'm going to take you through this house room by room, because each one deserves its own moment for all the stories and all the finds. Today: the living room. Coming eventually: a kitchen that has had some DIY glow ups, a dining room that works overtime: home office by day, homework central at night and Gingerbread house HQ come the holidays. A basement that is somehow both chaos and core memory. We start here, where the Matador welcomes you and directs you to your left.

Before we begin here is a listing photo from 2018. Please orient yourself with that window at the back of the room and see the solution below in item 4. Enjoy!

1. This room is large. It took me years to find the right rug for the space. But today the star of the show and what is holding us down right now is this living room rug from an estate sale. A mid century in Portland’s West Hills that was outfitted with an amazing collection of vintage European dish-ware (wait for the kitchen tour!), paintings and antiques. The rug I saw on the first day of the sale and was able to return Sunday when everything was half off. I was so grateful to see that it was still available. 1b) The petite card table in the corner of the room, seen below, is from this same sale. It folds out and opens to a felted green surface for games. Both were acquired in 2022.

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2. The sofa is a CB2 one I had seen across the internet in 2024. It was ranked for its sexy lines and playful form. It must have etched itself into my brain because when I saw it come up on Facebook Marketplace last summer I immediately messaged the seller. It did not fit in the woman’s house and it replaced a yellow vintage velvet one we had bought for $500 in 2018 from the beloved shop Midnight Sunlight, IYKYK. I love the lines and form of this new one. And the simplicity of the cushions. Acquired in 2025.

3. The coffee table came from OfferUp for $30. It hit two prerequisites of mine: LARGE and Glass/ mixed materials. Acquired in 2019.

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4. The French Doors I found at a salvage shop in summer 2020. Interior doors repurposed as something they weren't meant to be, shhh. Our brother-in-law installed them, we've weather-stripped the heck out of them, and we've looked at replacing them with the real deal. The price tag cured us of that idea pretty quickly.

   

5. This ceramic figure sits on a thrifted credenza we bought in 2014. The figure is a piece from Mexico’s famed Lagunilla market. A weekly vintage fair Sundays in the city. I loved the figure itself but also the semi drippy water color glaze. I packed it in a suitcase one year and brought it back to have a piece of Mexico here in Portland. Acquired 2021.

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6. The most complimented thing in our house is this painting. I painted it and I'm still figuring out how to say that confidently when people ask. After years of searching for something big enough to anchor this room I woke up one morning and just decided to DIY. Forty-eight hours later we had this now iconic—read: it was featured in a Dwell spread, piece of art.

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This house and the items in it have come together over time. It won’t ever be finished and it won’t ever be perfect. The Matador has been watching over it all since 2013. Through the foursquare, the move, the pandemic, the years in Mexico and back again. He's seen every version of this home and this family. I think he’s proud of us.

Thanks for reading. If you like this kind of storytelling I might consider sharing another room or collection of items soon. What's the most unshoppable thing in your home? The thing with a story nobody could recreate? Please share in the comments, I love these stories.

And if you liked this then be sure to check out these two posts here and here on my instagram :)

Thanks so much for reading xx LL

Before you go, please subscribe (cause it is free!) and tap the ❤️ if you enjoyed this post. This is a free rambling personal newsletter and I am trying to grow this community—and every new subscriber genuinely helps.

1. A FINANCIAL AWAKENING I had a realization recently while trying to fall asleep. I often attribute my new-ish consumption mindset to living in Mexico and embracing a slower lifestyle, but that is not 100% the reason for the shift. I realized, in bed that night, that six years after leaving my corporate job I no longer have reliable or regular pockets of disposable just for fun income to fuel regular trips to Nordstrom or The Yo! Store. And as I was trying my hardest to fall asleep that hit me like a ton of bricks. I am not sure what I can truly connect that to or why this aha moment occurred, but it was actually kind of sobering. Knowing that my income is directly connected or dependent on my output, my networking, my outreach, my visibility, the scale at which my clients operate, the list goes on. I think I have subconsciously reprioritized the things that don’t rely on me operating at FULL capacity in order to free myself from needing to operate at 100% ALL THE TIME. If this topic tickled your brain in a certain way, I wrote about my consumerism and consumption earlier this year here and here.

2. THIS IS JUST A BLOG I am comfortably in the routine of writing each week. It feels good. It feels cathartic and I like showing up here. I have observed a lot of peers on this platform working hard to define their niche or make sure that their consumer value is as clear as possible. As a reader I can appreciate this. So I want to do the same. My substack, this substack, is just a public journal. I can forget that sometimes and get caught up in the gamification of the platform (ranked newsletters, monetization, notes, chats, etc.) But spoiler alert: this is a personal blog and I am 1000% ok with that.

3. WORK LIFE Returning to Portland each summer is good for business. I am more visible, more available and hungry to start new projects. The problem is everyone else is also on summer mode. I am waiting to hear back from a handful of potential clients, equal parts excited and anxious. One project would be essentially full-time for a handful of months. The project and team are exciting. Yet I already know I’ll miss the flexibility the second I don’t have it anymore.

4. PARENTING SOS Since returning to Portland, I have been solo parenting (with the built in support of summer camps & our Nanny M-F- thank god!) four out of the past five weeks. Mike has one more week in Mexico City for a shoot and then I hope his work has him sticking around a little more consistently! As I mentioned last week Felix is not really taking to bedtime at all. And weekends with the boys and no Mike are killer.

Although I can report that I was very impressed the other night when I took an important call just as we walked into a taco spot for dinner. I was caught up in troubleshooting and pacing outside the restaurant. I came inside to see where they had ended up and realized that they had ordered for themselves at the counter and were happily and peacefully seated eating their tacos. I didn’t realize my quick call had taken 20 minutes. Whoops!

5. SEASONAL DEPRESSION June gloom showed up late last week. We went from 90 degree beautiful days to a stormy weekend and 61 degrees at noon. I am so offended by this false show of Summer. The lack of blue skies and sunshine really affects my outlook, my motivation and my sanity. Can we please make the glorious summer that I literally pack up my life for happen already!? PS I miss my tan sun-kissed Mexican reflection in the mirror.

Thanks for reading. Have a great long firework and hot dog weekend. I’ll be celebrating all of this on Saturday and Felix turns FIVE on Sunday so its a big weekend around here. Tell me in the comments what resonates or what you want more of from me. Some of these feel like full posts waiting to happen.

xx LL

The shift between our two lives is always a little disorienting at first. Mexico is slower, often barefoot, organic. Portland is errands and appointments and camps and neighbors and family obligations and skateparks and professional networking—all the things we don’t do away from here.

In the transition I paint a little, read a lot, and ease my way back in before my social battery is fully charged. These past two weeks I dove into Substack as a reader first. Here's what I found worth sharing.

1. — On Second Thought
   Football, Not Soccer

   Mexico! Mexico! Mexico! Everyone I know is deep in World Cup fever and this post pushed me over the edge. Lauren handed the newsletter over to her footie obsessed husband who proceeded to write a very earnest and extremely convincing breakdown of kits past and present worth your attention. The Thrasher x Argentina kit had me at hello and is one of the few things that made it into my cart and arriving on my doorstep this month. And with her inspo I dressed head to toe for our Mexico watch party last week. No further questions.

2. — WM Goods
   A Quick Rant About Substack and ShopMy

   I wrote about this exact topic twice last month and both posts kind of flopped- but mostly they had me second guessing my thesis. Then Whitney went and said it better, more honestly, and with less hand-wringing than I managed. Her subtitle is “I’m a walking hypocrite and I know it”, is exactly the kind of self-awareness that makes you trust a writer. The comments section alone is worth the visit. Enjoy.

3. — Ampersand Motherhood
   Unread on the Nightstand: A Summer Reading List for Mothers Who Contain Multitudes

   A new-to-me follow and already a favorite. Tyece put together a book list for mothers organized in her own words “by the selves we inherit, create, shed, and rebuild.” I’m currently reading one of her picks, ’s Famesick—and it’s making me sadder than I expected. Everyone said they loved it. I think I just feel too much for Lena’s body and the torture of being a misguided 20-something soul. Anyway, the full list has range and depth and I’m grateful to have it as a guide to work through all summer.

4. — Feed Me
   No Days Off

   Emily is a fixture on this platform for good reason. She asked 21 in-demand and notable newsletter writers how they take time off from a career with no real off switch. The illustrations alone pulled me in, but the question she’s asking is one I think about constantly. What does rest or a break even look like when writing is also just part of your life?

5. — Mother Love Letters
   Poems for People Who Love Olivia Rodrigo

   I found Violet through Tyece’s book list above and immediately understood the hype. I’m a self-described Livie—yes, at 42 years old. So the title alone stopped my scroll. But what really got me is that Violet is out here writing and sharing poetry on the internet like it’s the most natural thing in the world. It is a gift to have access to her art on this platform. Full stop.

That’s what I’ve been reading, plus a few more I’ll save for a future send. If Substack has brought back blogging, it’s only a matter of time before other early 2000s trends make a comeback too. Follow Friday, anyone? If you’re reading something good right now—on Substack or otherwise—let me know it in the comments. I always enjoy finding new to me voices.

xx Ly

On our first day back in town last week I was in the garage looking for Felix’s helmet. Mario joyfully rediscovered his bike and was in front of the house doing laps in the street. It was a warm evening and we had landed a few hours prior from Rome. I saw a kid in a ball cap passing across the street and saw Mario approach him from behind. I heard him use a silly voice and say ‘hey where do you think you are going?’ in a mock authoritarian voice. An invitation to start a conversation or in the least a ‘hi’. The ball cap boy barely flinched, didn’t acknowledge Mario and just kept lunging down the street. I watched as my son playfully put himself out there to a kid he had been in school with since kindergarten. A kid who was hot and cold with Mario. Some days telling him he couldn’t sit by him on the bus and other days Mario would come home from the bus stop and proudly tell us “Stan* let me sit by him today and told me I am his friend”. *The kids name is not really Stan but I am not going to share his name for obvious reasons.

I vaguely recognized the kid in the cap but when he ignored Mario it cemented who this kid was. It stung. I immediately caught myself telling Mario what a bummer it was that the kid acted that way. I led with my near constant refrain of "maybe his cat just died," the joke we use in our family when someone is rude or gruff with us. And then I called him a jerk anyway.

I wrote about my feelings around raising a boy in 2017 for Mother Mag, when Mario was almost three and I was still figuring out what it meant to raise a little white boy as a Mexicana- Americana. How I wanted him to be aware of his privilege and connected to his Mexican roots. Proud of where he comes from on both sides. At that time I was afraid of what my son would become. I saw his white privilege as a defining character trait. The things I feared were American patriarchal archetypes. A frat boy, a jock, a jerk.

Before I go any further, I must also confess that Mario is not a saint. He is equal parts fun and challenging but guess what, he can actually be a jerk sometimes too. Uniquely to his brother. Six and a half years his junior.

Now as a rising sixth grader I am not worried about those things. We continue to talk about privilege openly. And I see a kid who genuinely wants to be everyone’s friend. I observe an innocence and zero ‘cool kid’ posturing. I would like to believe that the conversations around privilege and culture and identity have produced this in him. I am proud of that.

We are in the awkward years for sure and he is transforming in front of me so my question now becomes what kind of man is he becoming and what is my role in that? What I wrote all those years ago was abstract. But now I am watching it all happen in front of me, in real time. The social dynamics, the kids who won’t include him. The way he still tries anyway, reaching for approval from kids who aren’t ready to give it.

I see in this pre-teen a sense of innocence, wonder, curiosity and energy that I want to protect. Hold onto as long as possible. In the fall of his fourth grade year I mentioned to Mario's teacher his feeling of being on the outs with some of the cool kids. I wanted to see if she observed anything in class that could help him, or help us. She told me he had checked out a book from the library about dinosaurs and was really into it, sharing new facts with his classmates daily. She noted that some kids had moved beyond dinosaurs by fourth grade. More into video games, TV shows, soccer. But then she said: "Hold onto that as long as you can." She was a mom of two grown boys. I felt that in my bones and knew we were going to be alright.

In Mexico it is different. The school is small. He has been in class with the same kids since kindergarten. We know every family. Birthday parties include the whole class, parents and siblings in tow. These are kids who have grown up alongside him, who move between Spanish and English depending on the day, many of whom also know what it feels like to live between two places and occasionally feel like an outsider. Our small community fosters a kind of innocence and openness that I have come to depend on. Sometimes all the kids running wild on the beach at sunset feels a little Lord of the Flies. But that's part of growing up in the jungle. The belonging there has never been something we had to think about or engineer.

I sometimes wonder if our lifestyle of living between two places has not allowed him to fully integrate here in Portland. If that not integrating is costing him something. How living in two very different communities with two very different cultures is damaging to his potential for a solid crew, a pack, somewhere to belong. I question the benefits of consistency versus the perceived gift of resilience. I struggle with this guilt. Am I making things harder than they need to be? Would this same struggle still happen if we were just living in one place instead of two? If the clique problem is not geography but just this stage of adolescence.

And then I start thinking about the myth we are told. The myth that your neighborhood school or any school becomes your social world, your village, your people. I see friends living this dream. I see moms at our Portland school who appear to be living it too. And I won’t pretend I don’t feel a pang of something watching that. But then I remind myself: it was never my reality, not even as a kid.

I went to alternative schools outside my neighborhood so the built-in social world never existed for me either. My network has always been rooted in family. A large gang of cousins and my lifelong friend Emily, who I have known since I was one year old. To this day that holds. We share a nanny with my cousin Anni, rotate family dinners between backyards all summer long.

I remind Mario of this. That at his age and well into HS, to this day even, I straddle multiple friend groups. I was voted ‘most outgoing’ in HS. And that my closest and most valuable relationships were with my cousins and my neighborhood friend, Emily again, who was a year older than me and not at my school. As it turns out his cousins here in town are his best playmates and his best friend in Portland is our across the street neighbor a couple years older and not at his school. They have been going back and forth from house to house playing and now ‘hanging out’ and growing up together. We adore their family and look forward to hosting them in San Pancho next spring.

The boy I feared, the frat boy, the jock, the jerk. Is not at all who he has become.

His teachers in both countries tell us he is a helper. That he is friends with the girls and the boys equally- somehow worth mentioning. He started a comic book club in Portland. In Mexico he scripted a short film and spent multiple recesses casting and filming it with his classmates.

I don’t know if any of what we are doing is right but I would like to believe that the life we are choosing has something to do with his nimbleness. The two languages, the two countries, the skateboarding, dinosaurs, the cousins, the neighbor across the street. Maybe that is just what consistency looks like for him.

Culturally we spend a lot of time talking about mean girls. The cultural narrative around adolescence and cruelty is almost entirely focused on them. The movies, the books, the cautionary tales. Can we blame this on the patriarchy? Nobody really warned me about the boys. The quiet ones who won’t let your kid sit on the bus. The ones who just keep walking.

I want to hear from you. How do you talk to your kids about belonging when you can't fix it for them? Do you call the other kid a jerk too or do you hold it together better than I do? Are you living the neighborhood school dream or did that myth miss you too? Please share it in the comments. I am genuinely asking.

xx LL

I am in a small Parisian apartment with Mike and the boys. I have about 20 minutes until I have to hop on an 8PM call, 11AM in LA. An intro call with a potential client. I have a slight giddy and nervous energy. I am making my kids the French equivalent of cup o noodles so they are fed ahead of both Mike and I hopping on zooms. Before you judge my culinary choices in, France of all places, my kids saw the ramen cups at the Monoprix and asked for them. We are traveling for a handful of weeks and a 1 euro meal is more than welcome while I dine on baguette, french butter and salami.

Five minutes before the call the boys have finished eating and cleared their plates. I am picking up loose noodles from the dining table. The same table I will soon be sitting at to try and be professional and impress this new client, try to win their business. Mike’s meeting begins in the tiny apartment’s kitchen with the door closed. The boys are watching Jurassic Park in the bedroom.

I check my appearance in the mirror. I move the vase of fresh peonies off the dining table and set them on the credenza behind me so they appear just so in the video frame. I get ready to open up zoom. I do the all too familiar dance of checking my calendar. Looking for the meeting link. It is not there. I go to my email to look and see if it was in the email copy. And then like a little ‘boop’ in You’ve Got Mail I see an email from 7:51PM. Nine minutes ago when I was cleaning ramen from the table. My meeting partner emails me to cancel the meeting. The reason, her own child related issue. So instead I sit down to write. The kids are already parked in front of a screen and its the first time this tiny apartment has been quiet since we arrived yesterday. Did I mention we are in Paris?

Before I begin to share the moments, the details, the memories, I must remind everyone of the one piece of wisdom my friend Kelly Lim, a seasoned mom of three, told me years ago and has stuck with me ever since. She said plainly that vacation with children is not vacation. It’s just relocation. And that has really informed my philosophy on traveling with kids especially at these ages. I look forward to travel in 2030 in four years when Felix is nine and Mario 15 when their legs are longer and stronger and their capacity and patience more in alignment with Mike and mine.

These past three weeks have been exactly what I expected because my expectations have been low. I have had unflattering moments of zero patience, fully informed by Felix's meltdowns and the ambient soundtrack of brothers bickering. But it’s also been as I expected because we really have not planned much. That’s kind of my philosophy across many aspects of our lives. But travel, especially. No hard and fast itineraries to follow just places and spaces to allow some forms and semblance of familiarity and routine. So playgrounds, coffee, shops and monuments become familiar fixtures on our outings day to day.

So why are we here? In March we booked tickets to Spain for my cousin’s wedding— some fotos below. “We can wing it!” we said, booking just one way. This was a romantic idea. Very ‘type b’ of Mike and I if you will. Sitges was a wonderful way to kick start and energize our trip. The wedding was beautiful, thoughtful and intimate. Held in a small coastal town where my aunt and uncle have had a house for over 25 years. I visited as a teen and in my 20’s but had not been back in many many years. Over our six days in Spain we had multi generational gatherings and meals every day and gelato at night with the gaggle of next gen primos. It was magical to reunite with our family there.

Since we had a reason to head to Europe and because the wedding was mid May we decided to take advantage of getting over to Europe and were able to pull Mario (grade 5 at his international school) and Felix (jardin in his waldorf school) out of school nearly two months early to make this trip more than just a quick jaunt but to introduce our kids to Europe.

Mario was sent with coursework to complete and so far he has been engaged and happy to accomplish assignments each morning before we take off for the day exploring. Speaking of exploring we have been doing the proven mix of breakfast at home, then setting out to a cultural/historical/tourist attraction have a light lunch and coffee and then off to a playground or skatepark. This recipe has worked for us on recent trips to LA or Mexico City and ensures we are not doing too much or asking too much of the kids.

So what does that look like in Europe? It is waking up at 10AM and then not leaving the house until 2pm. So that the kids will have eaten, Mike or I can workout or have a moment to work in quiet while the kids do their school activities and draw or occasionally watch an episode of Pokemon. This is the ease that comes with just being and not really having a plan or an itinerary. Then once we leave the house we roam. To one of those cultural landmarks, historical sites or attractions. Followed by a meal grabbed from a market or bakery. On the go, nothing fancy. But as mom and dad we will sit for a coffee in the afternoon at a real cafe with cute chairs, cute tables and usually some conversation with other travelers or locals who don’t mind speaking to us in English or Spanish. Then on to a playground, big open field or skate park to wind down for the day. If we are lucky we will go out to eat but most days we are eating in our apartment. Cooking veggies and pasta or simple salads with baguette and french butter. But then out of the apartment again to walk in the streets until 10 or 11pm. Back to the apartment after a gelato or sweet treat and then winding down for the kids while Mike and I return to our computers. Responding to emails and working on projects in these stolen moments between vacation.

In Paris it rained our first four days and we packed from near 90 degree temps in Mexico so we were walking around in all our layers which left me especially feeling very frumpy. On Sunday our second full day in the fashion capital we happened upon a weekend market full of vintage and thrifting (my fave!) and both Mike and I scored trench coats and we finally felt warm and me slightly more stylish! The poor boys kept with their layered hoodies and didn’t seem to mind.

We visited the Louvre mid week and in a wing full of Roman sculptures we found a man sketching, Mario was intrigued and sat with him for about 25 minutes learning and sketching alongside him. They spoke in Spanish the whole time. The man was born in Buenos Aires but raised in Paris. And Felix has had many Felix moments, asking to be carried after walking miles, making demands for toys at the super market but he has also had sweet moments sitting content for a full dinner just drawing Pokemon characters in a sketch book I brought him or when we walked by a gorgeous square with fountains and lawns he asked if we could do a picnic there. We ended up going two nights in a row with a mish mash of food from the Monoprix.

In Rome we stayed in a townhouse style apartment with traditional old world details. We arrived after midnight at our airbnb. The host met us at the door, she sweetly took me through the ins and outs of the apartment, how to turn on the water heater, the kitchen stove and operate the AC. This was her late grandmother’s apartment and it was a beautiful mix of MCM Italian decor, art and books. A red brass four post bed and all the charm and details you would expect in a chic Nonna’s apartment. The bathroom was a monotone green color story deserving of its own instagram grid post, to come. By the end of the tour she had Felix in her arms giving him a cuddle ready to present the kids the chocolate chip cookies and milk she had bought for our arrival. Looking back on that evening and late arrival I think that was our dinner.

On our first day in Rome we walked through the Colosseum and the Forum, crossed a picturesque bridge over the River Tiber and landed in Trastevere — tiny winding streets, beautiful foliage climbing the walls, our first gelato of the day with the promise of more later. We kept walking until we landed in a piazza anchored by a playground and a large movie screen set up for cinema in the square that evening. We stayed.

That piazza became our anchor for three days. A place to return to for familiarity. For the kids to rediscover the communal scooter left on the playground. For them to run wild while Mike and I sat, relaxed, and to enjoy briefly not being needed by the children.

One way tickets, no itinerary was the plan. Low expectations was the mindset.

What I didn’t plan for was how much of my actual life would come along with us: the work calls, the ramen, the stolen time to write this- vacation truly was relocation.

Also not part of the plan or possible to put in any itinerary: the man from Buenos Aires who gave Mario sketching lessons on the spot in the Louvre. Felix asking for a picnic and meaning it. Milk and cookies at midnight in a Roman Nonna’s apartment.

We just let it unfold and be what it was. Which was, memorable. Each day when things got hard or someone was whining I would stop and remind myself that we were only going to be on this exact trip once in our lifetime. That traveling is a huge honor and privilege. That we were never again going to be with our kids on their first trip to Europe and that was reminder enough to indulge in the gelato in the afternoon, order the wine with dinner, slow down, push through and soak it all up.

xx LL

The last week in town is always some sort of controlled chaos. I have written before about ‘hell week’ and the tornado of events that come into play each time we move houses. This time specifically it was packing our clothing and personal items into suitcases and storage in the bodega, prepping for renters arriving the same day we were flying out, staff meetings, maintenance lists, garden handoffs, golf cart repairs, a last minute booking for a wedding on the property, the list truly goes on. The logistical reality of having two homes and in two different countries paired with not just leaving a home but handing it over and hoping for the best has become a skill I never knew I had and that I am not quite sure is really applicable to any other job/industry or part of my life. But here we are.

I cried more than once that week. The first time sitting with my friend Malena outside the kids circo class. Our boys are each others favorites and we met our first year in town when I was pregnant with Felix and she with Mariano. We were speaking in Spanglish she is from Juarez and has lived in El Paso so I love chatting with her in spanglish. She calls me ‘friend’ and I call her ‘amiga’. She was asking how the prep was going and I got tears in my eyes before I could even answer her. And she said ‘friend are you estresada?’ and I said ‘no, solo triste, I’m not ready to leave yet’.

This is not the first year I have cried. I cry each year before we leave. Usually saying goodbye to our nanny Evelin and her adorable family. Or then I tear up when its Mario’s last day of school and we walk through the campus and he says bye to teachers and friends. I coined a term a few years ago ‘instant nostalgia’. It is a little more broad than the ‘core memories’ that are referenced in the Pixar movie Inside Out. It is more the awareness I feel, especially as a parent, knowing I am going to look back on this moment or these days with a cinematic filter. I feel it in the instant.

It’s this bizarre position we have put ourselves into. The paradox of leaving a place we love, people we love and going to another place we love with people we love. Knowing that we will be back in a few months but it still makes me emo every single time.

Our departure this year was nearly six weeks earlier than I prefer to leave. A big family wedding outside Barcelona meant flying to Europe for just a week felt wasteful, and the idea of showing the kids only the Spanish coast and turning around felt like a parenting miss. So we bit the bullet, pulled Mario out of school seven weeks early, with coursework and the administration's blessing, and booked one-way tickets to Spain. What followed was a train to Paris and a flight to Rome. But that's a whole other post, coming soon!

Read on for what is worth mentioning from this last week in town:

1. Casa Madre Scenes: During this last week nearly every corner I turn I catch little scenes that make my heart skip. Shorts & towels hung effortlessly on the celosia to dry. The house at golden hour after our gardener Esteban has just finished his sweep. The pool reflecting the evening pink sky and being the perfect temperature. As the days get hotter and more humid the windows and doors upstairs open to let a cool afternoon breeze in.

2. Leaning in & being a YES mom: To cure, or rather feed, my instant nostalgia I bank up sunsets on the beach, gelato & paleta runs after dinner to meet up with friends. I say ‘yes’ to requests for their friends to come over and staying for late night swims. Prioritize time with my friends, let our food last as long as it can the final two weeks and then just eat street tacos most nights and lean into all the good things that make parenting and living as easy as possible.

3. Tearing up amongst the chickens and Laundry at Tata’s house: Evelin has watched Felix since he was four months old. She was my own personal introduction into the experience of having a nanny. We never had one before with Mario. Felix has grown up in the home of Evelin and her family. He spends time with her parents, her sister, her cousins, aunts and grandfather. Spanish became his first language in their care. Her family has truly become his family and we are forever grateful for them all. Our goodbye this year came as I picked Felix up from her house like normal. I walked through the front door saludando a Tata, her grandfather sitting in front as always. I make my way to the back patio where the rest of the family is amongst chickens and laundry. I immediately had tears in my eyes as I realize I need to say my goodbyes.

4. Being in the company of women: My mom friends from the lower school and I have a tradition where we treat ourselves to a pool day at one of the hotels in town the week of Mother’s day. This year it aligned perfectly with my tornado of transition chaos. But I gave myself the permission to go. To order a drink (or two) dip in the pool. Spend time in the company of women (without our partners or children). PERFECTO.

5. Tacos on Calle Mexico: Our last night in town we went to sunset and ran into friends per usual. Typically everyone splinters off to their own homes for a meal or out to a spot. But this night we had a spontaneous family style post sunset meal at our favorite spot on Calle Mexico with our small village of friends. The kids crowding around tables pushed together, the parents spilling out onto the sidewalk and into the street

   ---

Closing out our time in San Pancho is always bittersweet. Hasta pronto San Panchis. Moving on to phase two of our year with summer starting, Portland waiting, and San Pancho already feeling far away. Thanks as always for reading. More soon.
xx LL

She is someone I deeply admire in every sense of the word. I look up to her both literally (yes, she’s tall) and figuratively, and I’m very proud of her as a fellow Portlander, mother, business owner, and community builder.

Pam has built something rare: a store that feels like an extension of her taste, her values, and her creativity. Not just a place to shop, but a place that makes you want to be the kind of person who shops there.

Her store, her staff, and she herself are all icons. She even recently started sharing on Substack, so go find her pieces about all of the above. She’s a real-life inspiration for my own moonlights, iykyk. Though I am fully aware my hair nor I will ever look as effortlessly chic as Pam.

Alas, please enjoy this little conversation with the founder of Frances May.

LL: Hi Pam, first of all congratulations on 18 (!!!) years of Frances May, can you please introduce yourself to our readers:

PBM: My name is Pamela Baker-Miller. I’m a mother of two, Máni and Winema, married to my high school crush, and an artist and small business owner. My shop, Frances May, has grown over the past two decades into what might now be considered a small department store. I’ve relied on a scrappy, artistic instinct to guide the business—rooted in creativity, connection, and community.

LL: What five emojis best describe you?

PBM: I’m not entirely sure these emojis describe me best, but they’re definitely the ones I use most: 🙄😑🤣♥️💅—usually to punctuate a joke or soften what might otherwise read as a very dry or sarcastic text. I’m a notoriously bad texter; an assistant once told me my messages were too curt and that I needed to lighten the tone… hence the emojis. 😑

LL: Tell us about the career you almost pursued instead of running FM?

PBM: I always thought I would be a painter—the feeling of disappearing into a creative project, where time stops and your mind is completely focused, has always been my happy place.

With hindsight, though, I’ve realized I have more creative freedom within boundaries. Design offers a sense of purpose, and I’ve fallen deeply in love with craft. I still want to roll around in art and be surrounded by it, but I’m especially drawn to using my artist brain to create things that serve an everyday function.

And, as my mom—who was a nurse for 35 years—likes to remind me, if all else fails, nursing is always a solid backup plan.

LL: As a mother, what is a family tradition you kept or one you ditched?

PBM: My parents were always honest with my sister and me about their struggles and challenges. They believed in open communication and not keeping secrets. I think that kind of honesty, even when it feels uncomfortable or scary to share with children, builds a deep sense of trust within a family.

I’ve chosen to raise my own children the same way. I do my best to explain things in an age-appropriate, understandable way, but I don’t sugarcoat much. That approach has also landed me in tricky moments, but I believe that honesty and open communication are invaluable ways to move through the world.

LL: What is something you prioritized this week that felt selfish but wasn’t?

PBM: I try to carve out time to be alone at home—sometimes that means leaving work early and picking up my kids at the very last minute. I used to think I was an extrovert, but in reality, I really value solitude.

LL: What is something you want to put out into the universe, something my readers can help you manifest?

PBM: Experiences. I would love to create and be part of new experiences. This could mean traveling more, opening my space to new ideas and events, letting my life get messy, and maybe doing things before I fully understand how to do them. I want to take more risks and say ‘yes’ more often.

So grateful for the opportunity to feature Pam and introduce those of you who don't know her yet. If you're not already following @francesmayshop on Instagram, you should! Their content and creative direction is elite. For those of you not from Portland, please add Frances May to your itinerary.

The shop is truly stunning. The kind of place that makes you feel chicer & welcome for just walking through the door. And hopefully the next time you visit, one of those experiences Pam is manifesting will be coming to life in her space. I'll be there.
xx Ly

I was hoping my post last week would spark a conversation or debate on this platform, but it didn’t. And it’s left me pondering. Perhaps regretting, my thesis. What started as an essay about why I’m not overtly charging for this newsletter turned into a tirade about affiliate links and consumerism. Whoops!

Here’s the truth: I’m at a point in my life where I’m not consuming much, and it has everything to do with where I’m living most of the year. A small beach town where trends don’t exist and there are zero fashion police to impress. I am no longer in an office where I feel the need to ‘dress for the job you want’ or to participate in staying ‘relevant’. I get to wear the same items again and again. I shop to fill gaps during summers in Portland, and that’s my fashion lifecycle.

Plus I’m not a fashion creator, nor do I try to be one. Do I like to share outfits once in a while, yes when it comes naturally. Evidence: A, B, C.

In the wake of last week’s post, I began to wonder: Wait, am I devaluing my time by not charging for this newsletter? And am I devaluing potential income by not using affiliate links?

The answer is very likely yes to both. But let’s return to that word: authenticity.

My goal is to be authentic, not influential. So here’s where I landed. A personal manifesto that I hope resonates.

I don’t want to make you feel like you need more stuff or like we need to compare our personal choices.

I want to make you excited about the activities, gatherings and moments that get you off your phone and earn you exactly zero dollars, like the flower arranging pictured above.

I want you to know that after five years into brand consulting I am still pitching jobs and getting ghosted, even with 10.4K followers and a newsletter that’s ranked in the top 15.

I want to show you real motherhood. The unglamorous version. Equal parts: emotionally draining, patience trying, core memory making and yes, pride & joy. Respecting your decision about becoming a parent or not.

I want to remind you that your worth isn’t tied to your career, your follower count, or how impressive your life looks to a stranger. It’s about the life you build outside of it all. The company you keep, the way you make others feel and experiencing life with all of its ups and downs.

That’s what I’m authenticating here. Not some aspirational lifestyle you should want. Just perspective from the one I’m actually living. Messy, imperfect, maybe questionable, and fully my own.

Ok and with all that said what do you want to hear from me next? What are the topics you are enjoying the most or areas I have not shared yet? Please let me know in the comments as I am hungry for some new direction on topics and themes.

Leave a comment

Thanks for being here.
xx ly

Please tap the ❤️ if you enjoyed this post. This is a free rambling personal newsletter and it is a joy to grow this community—and every new subscriber genuinely helps. Plus it is free!

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I work as a brand and creative strategist through my consultancy Studio la Madre. My job is literally helping companies figure out how to market and make people want to invest in their product or service. And as I look at my own projects, both professional and personal, the lines get blurry. Speaking of work, two projects I’ve spent time on in their early stages are finally coming to life. Please go visit Mowe Beauty and Dimwit to see some of the fantastic female-founded brands I get to support.

So why wouldn’t I monetize every possible opportunity? Why wouldn’t I slap affiliate links on my Worth Mentioning posts? Why wouldn’t I turn my Instagram into a shopping channel? It’s completely normalized now. Every content creator, every newsletter with a “favorites” section, even just regular people use them.

I could do this. I should do this, by industry standards. I share my favorite things all the time and when it feels right, I’ve shared shoppable links. People ask me where my sandals are from, what Pilates studio I go to, what pool towels we have at Casa Madre.

But here’s where I get stuck: I don’t want to convince you to click on a link. Or maybe it’s that I don’t want to go out of my way to convince you to click on a link.

And I know, I know—”Lydia, just recommend things you actually love! That’s authentic!”

But is it? Because the moment there’s money involved, the moment I get a cut every time you click through, doesn’t that change the recommendation? Even subconsciously? Even if I swear it doesn’t? Won’t each newsletter slowly shift into a shopping list for ROI disguised as favorites?

I attribute this shift in some part to living outside the United States. When we’re in our small town in Mexico, I still see targeted ads and sponsored posts about the “perfect summer dress” or “cure-all face creams.” But the barrier to actually add to cart and navigating international shipping and fees is such a hassle that I’ve simply fallen out of practice. And in doing so, lost that desire.

Sure, I pine after items I see and I’m aware of trends. But something shifted. Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s motherhood. Maybe it’s just spending half my life in a place where what is in style or on trend isn’t top of mind. I don’t want more stuff. And I don’t want to be in the business of convincing you that you need more stuff either.

So I choose to participate differently. I shop secondhand as often as possible because it gamifies shopping—I’m not just defaulting to the quickest, most convenient option.

But honestly, this isn’t new for me. Mike and I have never been the type to chase the newest thing or keep up with the Joneses. We drive old cars that we bought used. We don't upgrade our phones every year. My phone is held together with hope and a cracked screen protector—it's probably a safety hazard at this point, honestly. This is how we were able to save up and buy a house in Mexico, after all.

I’ve wanted a Goyard bag since 2013 when I was a Brand Specialist at Nike and a chic Brand Manager had one. Still haven’t pulled the trigger. There’s a Baggu toiletry bag I keep eyeing, it costs $38, which isn’t even that much but I can’t justify it right now. I have a toiletry bag that works great. Do I want the Baggu? Sure. Do I need it? Absolutely not.

This is just how I’m wired. Or maybe it’s how we’ve chosen to be wired—prioritizing experiences and space and flexibility over accumulation. It’s what allowed us to build Casa Madre. It’s what lets us split our year between two countries. It’s what gives us the freedom to pull our kid out of school two months early for travel.

So when I think about turning my newsletter into a shopping channel, it feels fundamentally at odds with how I actually live.

But here’s what makes this complicated: my actual job is helping brands sell things. As a strategist I help companies figure out their story, their positioning, how to connect with consumers. I’ve worked recently with the WNBA, Samsung and Sonos, and loads more to develop marketing strategies and creative campaigns. I’m good at this work. And I like to believe there’s a difference between helping a company tell their story authentically and participating in the constant churn of affiliate marketing and influencer commerce.

But the lines do get blurry. When does “sharing what I love” become “selling you things”? When does “building a platform” become “monetizing an audience”?

So here’s what I’ve decided to do, in a way that feels right for me:

I turned on paid subscriptions in mid-April. But not in a typical way. You won’t be paywalled from new content. You won’t miss posts. You won’t get teased with “subscribe to read the rest of this.” Everything I write moving forward stays free.

But if you want to access the archives, six months back or more, that’s paid. If you’ve been here from the beginning and want to support this work continuing, you can. If you just started reading and this resonates, welcome. It’s all free for you.

Maybe I’m overthinking it. But it’s the model that lets me sleep at night. It feels like the difference between direct support vs. transactional commerce. My writing is personal, sometimes intimate, and I hope it provides value to people in the midst of career transition, motherhood transition, or place transition.

I wrote about this a couple years ago here, but it feels even more relevant now. I personally feel like I am drowning in recommendations. In affiliate links. In “must-haves” and “holy grails” and “game-changers.”

And I get it, if you’re a fashion creator, a stylist, a decorator, or another type of expert where product recommendations ARE your expertise, I fully support you monetizing those links. That’s authentic to what you do. Just like I’d rather be paid for my ideas and expertise in brand and marketing—invited to panels, discussions, summits, and events. (Manifesting this right now!) But I’ll keep figuring this out as I go.

But I also think we’re reaching a breaking point. Consumer fatigue is real. People are tired of being sold to constantly. What if we just shared things we loved because we loved them? What if we recommended products because they genuinely made our lives better, not because we’d make $3.47 if you clicked through?

So what does this mean for you?

I’ll still share what I’m loving in my Worth Mentioning posts. I’ll still recommend restaurants, products, places, and people I want you to know. I’ll continue to write about my life, my work, my kids, and home. Everything remains free to read.

If this newsletter adds value to your life and if it makes you think, or laugh, or feel less alone in the messy middle of reinvention and figuring it all out, consider supporting it directly with a paid subscription. Not because you’ll get exclusive content, but because you want this work to continue.

And if you can’t or don’t want to pay, that’s completely fine too. Keep reading. Keep engaging. That matters just as much.

I don’t have this figured out. I’m making it up as I go, trying to find a model that feels authentic to how I want to show up in the world. Maybe I’m being naive. Maybe I’m leaving too much money on the table. Maybe in six months I’ll change my mind and you’ll see Shop.My links everywhere (though I doubt it).

But for now, this is where I land: I’d rather recommend things because I love them than because I’ll profit from them. I’d rather you trust that when I share something, it’s genuinely because I think it’s worth your attention, not your credit card.

Living in Mexico has taught me that less really can be more. That you don’t need constant consumption to live a full life. That space and simplicity and intentionality matter more than accumulation. I’m trying to carry that lesson into how I build this newsletter.

Thanks for being here. Thanks for reading. And if you want to support this work, I’m grateful. But I don’t need you to buy anything to be part of this community.

Now I’m curious: How do you navigate this? If you use affiliate links or run a paid newsletter, what’s your philosophy? I am genuinely curious and even open to being convinced to start monetizing my life! If you’re a reader who’s tired of being sold to, what kind of support feels good to you? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

xx Ly

All of this to say: I'm no parenting expert. But nearly 12 years in, I'm seasoned and I know a few things. I became a mother at the rise of Pinterest perfection—hipster baby estilo, gender neutral everything, amber necklaces, Solly Baby wraps, and Freshly Picked moccasins. Being a Type A mom felt like the only option, or rather, was the only option being presented. That was never me. I had a surprise pregnancy, and that really set the tone for my philosophy and experience as a mom. So ahead of Mother's Day this weekend, I'm sharing some realistic things worth mentioning about why I identify as a Type B mom.

If you want to know what it looks like to raise kids without color-coded calendars, elaborate organizational systems, meal plans or any kind of rigid structure—read on.

1. The Shoe Basket: Full disclosure, when we are in Mexico my kids really only wear shoes to school. So when they come home or take off for the day they head to the one large basket outside our front door where shoes live. That’s it. No cute cubby system, not even a cute basket- its a recycled black crate from the fruteria. No labels, no matching pairs neatly lined up. Honestly, we’re barefoot most of the time anyway, it’s a beach town, after all. The basket works. Sometimes shoes make it in, sometimes they don’t. We lose a shoe here and there, but we always find them eventually.

2. Quesadillas y guacamole: This is my everything meal. Breakfast? Quesadilla with an egg. Lunch? Quesadilla and fresh guacamole. Dinner? Same thing. It’s fast, the kids will eat it, and I can make it without thinking. No meal planning, no elaborate prep. Just tortillas, cheese, avocado, onion, limon, sal and we’re good. Sometimes I feel like I should apologize for how basic this is. But then I remember nobody's complaining.

3. What is Normal? I became a mom before a lot of my friends did, so I didn’t have many peers to compare myself to. Nobody told me it wasn’t normal to get home from the hospital on Christmas Eve with a newborn, take a nap, throw on a muumuu, and head to a 50-person family Christmas Eve dinner. So I just... did it. I’ve never been someone who thinks anything is too precious. My clothes are meant to be worn, our furniture is meant to be used (and abused), and life is for living. Not having a comparison group early on and ignoring the Pinterest boards gave me permission.

4. Playdates just... happen: I’ve never been a “let’s schedule a playdate” kind of mom. And fortunately being in a small town playdates & sleepovers happen spontaneously. A text before school pick up, a neighbor showing up at the door, my kids asking if they can go somewhere and I say sure. The kids don’t care. They’re just happy to play.

5. Bedtime is whenever: I realized this month that we don’t have a bedtime routine. No set time, a rough window. Some nights it’s 8:30pm, some nights it’s 9:30pm because we were at the beach or having dinner late. They brush their teeth (usually), they get in bed, sometimes there’s a story, sometimes not. Mario reads himself to sleep now. Felix wants me to lie with him some nights, other nights he’s out before I can. That’s it. No lavender spray, no white noise machines, no perfect routine. Just tired kids going to sleep.

6. The non negotiable: This is the one thing I’m actually Type A about: I must move my body before noon every day. A hot Pilates class, a gym workout, a walk, a run—something. This is non-negotiable, and my family understands and allows this for me. It’s for my mental health and theirs. Everything else can be flexible, but this can’t.

My husband recently asked what I mean when I say I'm a 'Type B mom.' To me it means: sure, my kid takes piano lessons, but he might only practice once a week. Dinner isn't always at a set time. There will be food and it will be warm, but sometimes homemade, sometimes tacos from town. It means I'm not forcing us to stick to a structure or plan for the sake of sanity, because that would actually drive me insane. I need fluidity and room for things to just shape and happen. Except for that daily workout. If that doesn't happen, I truly go insane.

Whether you’re Type A or Type B, I hope you read this and think ‘hey, we eat quesadillas too!’ or ‘our shoes never make it into the cubbies/basket/closet either.’ What are your shortcuts? What’s helping make it all smoother these days? Let me know in the comments.

We’re at #21 on Substack’s Rising chart and climbing. Thank you for reading and being part of this community. Please like, share, and comment, this is just starting to get really fun.

xx Ly

Other things ‘worth mentioning’:

I guess you could say there was a vision. Because if you were standing there with Mike and I that day you might have just seen some shabby cement boxes and a very big pile of dirt. It was the definition of rough around the edges. Rustic in a charming way.

So many properties for sale here, and honestly so many built specifically for Airbnb, feel neutered to me. Painted white, minimal decor that is supposed to feel high-end, designed for turnover and consumption rather than for living. What drew us to this property was the opposite of that. The rough cement on the walls. The aged bricks on the patio. It had soul in the way that places have soul when they’ve actually been lived in. Walking through it for the first time felt less like a transaction and more like coming home, which for me is not a casual thing to say.

Mexico is where my family comes from. My grandfather immigrated here in the 1950s, raised six children with my Mexican-American grandmother and they made a beautiful life. Buying this property felt like a small continuation of something he started. And in 2022, after the pandemic kept us all apart longer than anyone expected, we celebrated with him here. A trio of local musicians played music our family has danced to for generations. My Welito, in the place I had imagined him the first day I walked through the gate. That was the moment I knew we had done the right thing.

Once our offer was accepted we spent a little time reimagining the space. A trip we had taken in 2019 to Lotusland in Montecito provided some inspiration for the overall vibe: semi-rustic, a bit of old world charm, nothing trying too hard or feeling out of place. Our first week in town we met a local construction team. A family of brothers, one an electrician, one a plumber, one a cement worker. The same family who had built the property’s rustic music studio fifteen years prior. They knew this exact site, this land and its limitations. We worked with what was already here and the most cost effective materials available: concrete. Ten days after we arrived construction started on what would become our now, dare I say, iconic Casa Madre pool.

A couple months later the pool was complete and construction began on the main house. Mike and I used a very low tech collage method we invented in Google Slides to visualize our ideas. Designed the floor plan quickly and with zero input from professionals. Oops. We used more or less the existing footprint on the main floor and above it built from scratch what I call the family apartment. Flanked by a tiled terrace, each room connects and the bedrooms all open up to the trees. We are nestled in the canopy of mango, avocado and zapote. Not the most efficient design. But a very special space for our family.

In creating this home Mike and I got to fulfill something we hadn’t expected. As lifelong creatives who had been working for other people our entire careers, this brief was our own. We imagined and built something we knew our family could enjoy for generations. We named the two existing casitas after our boys. Casa Momo and Casa Felix. Unoriginal perhaps, but with the intention that as they grow older, move out, start their own families, they will always have a place of their own here. And the pink house, our house we call Casa Padre. With all three casitas existing here together in the arms of our property we call Casa Madre. See what I did there?

Part of living here is understanding that Casa Madre is a never ending creative project. The climate is harsh. Hurricane winds, humidity, torrential rain. Each season brings something new to our attention. Painting, restoration, landscaping. The furniture is eclectic. The garden has grown mature and a little wild. The tile and the art have been collected over time and hung on a whim. I love finding antiques and treasures when we travel, giant candelabras for dinners in the garden, paintings for the casitas, ceramics for the shelves. None of it was planned. All of it belongs.

Our family lives here the bulk of the year. This is not a design hotel or an Airbnb. It is a family home we built to share. So, occasionally when we are traveling or not in town it is available to book. For weddings, family vacations or small retreats. Creating a hospitality experience through our own point of view has been one of the more satisfactory parts of this whole project. Picking our favorite towels, sheets, espresso machine. Items we use in our daily lives that have become part of the experience for guests too.

What I want for this house is not complex. Sunday afternoons in the pool that stretch into evening without anyone needing to rush off. Kids happy, parents happy, the colorful lounge chairs and pool towels I chose specifically to add some whimsy — with a nod to 1960’s Slim Aarons aesthetic, a little glamour in a very rustic Mexican setting. Christmas Eve here feels like real family history in the making. My family in Portland celebrates with a large and extravagant dinner my aunt hosts every year. Beautiful, special and something I could never compete with nor would I try. But we have had a few holidays here that feel completely authentic to this house, this community, and this version of our family with nods to those special gatherings in Portland.

That’s the thing I hold onto. Not the design, not the bookings, not the finished product. The way a place feels when it’s actually being lived in by us, by our kids, eventually by whoever they become. We named the casitas after our boys so that no matter where life takes them they will always have a place here.

That was always the whole point.

xx LL

“This is not a design hotel or an Airbnb. It is a family home we built to share.”

Casa Madre sleeps 10-12. Available for weddings, retreats and family gatherings. DM @casa.madre.mx or visit casamadremx.com

I met Kelly in January 2020 at what can best be described as a 'cool moms' meetup in Portland through my friend Sam. She was in the midst of her own messy reinvention, though I didn't know it yet. So I did what anyone would do. I found her on Instagram and we stayed in touch through the pandemic and beyond. I was always inspired by her energy, personal style and the juggling of professional and personal life. So when her book came out, I was eager to read it. Mike brought it back for me from a recent trip to the states. A couple weeks back, on the night of my 42nd birthday actually, in our Mexico City Apartment, I stayed up all night reading it- this is 42, I guess.

There's a certain kind of satisfaction you get reading a memoir-style book by someone you know. I learned new things, got more detail, felt validated myself, but mostly I appreciated her candidness and fully respect not only that she found the time to write this all down but the guts to publish it. Read on for some confessions you won’t find in her book.

LL: What you’ve given yourself permission to care less about?

KC: Well, I don’t care about a lot of things, but mainly I don’t care about anyone’s opinions of my parenting decisions. I think there are a lot of “should do’s” when you first have a kid. I’ve learned to let go of the “shoulds” and just lean into what works for my family and me. For example: my fourth kid wore his pajamas everyday to preschool for 6 months.

LL: Who is the person whose style you’d clone if you could and the quintessential look of theirs you are most inspired by?

KC: Zoe Kravitz! She is effortlessly cool, original, and exudes self confidence. In 2020 she starred in a Netflix TV adaptation of High Fidelity and I took screen shots of every outfit she wore while I watched. Her looks were more traditionally masculine silhouettes styled in a way she still looked effortlessly sexy. Also her 2021 Met Gala chain link Saint Laurent dress - so chic.

LL|: What is the thing you prioritized this week that felt selfish but wasn’t?

KC: Sleep, always. I get in bed at 8pm no matter what is going on in my family. Everyone knows that mom SHUTS DOWN at 7:45pm. I’ve stopped tucking the kids in at night because I can’t stay up late enough. They’ll come to my bed and give me hugs. My husband jokes that I fall asleep so early as a self preservation method, so no one can bother me or ask me to do anything. He’s probably right.

LL: What is a rule you broke that actually set you free?

KC: Growing out my grey/white hair at the age of 38. Everyone thought I was crazy (except my husband who was 100% supportive) when I did it, but I love it. I still feel hot, and young, and cool. It’s empowering to declare what my own definition of beauty is and not bending to some IG algorithm telling me what my hair, lips, and forehead should look like.
*editors note: AMEN

LL: What advice did everyone give you post divorce that didn’t work for you?

KC: Everyone assumes that divorce has to be this messy, horrible, hateful event. I refused to believe that my divorce was a tragedy or that being a single mom was something I should be embarrassed about. I intentionally chose divorce to create a more full, beautiful life experience than the one I had been living and I was committed to building that life for myself, versus wallowing in self pity, sadness, and shame.

I also don’t believe the opposite of being husband/wife is being enemies. There is a huge spectrum in there. In the early months of separation and divorce, emotions were high. I did my best to act with care, and integrity knowing that we were ending one version of a relationship together while also building a new version of one as co-parents.

LL: Tell me the guilty pleasure you’re not actually guilty about?

KC: We have a weekend nanny for our four kids and it’s glorious. It’s a luxury to be able to afford a nanny and I know this because for my first 10 years of parenthood, I couldn’t afford one. A weekend nanny allows my family the flexibility to enjoy our time. We use our nanny so we can take kids to their individual sports events without having to drag the rest along or to stay home with the 3 year old so we can take the three big kids to the beach. Most importantly, we use our nanny to watch our kids so my husband and I can golf together or go out to dinner. Having extra childcare allows me to actually have fun as a mom, who works full time. I don’t want my kids to grow up thinking a mother’s only purpose is to be in service to others. I want my kids to see their mom having fun and enjoying life, so they feel permission to do the same someday. *editors note: AMEN, again.

LL: Lastly, what is something you want to put out into the universe, something my readers can help you manifest?

KC: On a deeper level - I am trying to manifest more presence. I’ve worked my whole life to be exactly where I am today with my career, my “Happy. Working. Mom” book release, my relationship with my husband, my four kids at fun ages, but I constantly find myself too busy to enjoy it all! I am trying to manifest more peace and presence for the moment I am in versus being distracted because I am always stressing, planning, and multitasking to keep it all afloat.

On a surface level- I promised my kids I would buy a golf cart to drive to the beach if I sold enough books to pay for it. LET’S SELL SOME BOOKS! Happy.Working.Mom available at yolo-books.com and everywhere else you can buy books.

Thank you Kelly, I am so proud of you for writing this and grateful you allowed me to feature you. Go find her book and go give all the happy-working-moms you know lotsa love, a night off or better yet a vacation and of course lifelong respect and gratitude.

As a bonus for Portland friends: Kelly is coming to town May 8th for her book tour, so go to her reading at Soho House for me please. For the rest of you find her on instagram @coop_kel.

xx LL

Emma Grede’s now viral soundbite about career and remote work gave me a mini panic attack. And I don’t get panic attacks. But by ‘panic attack’ I mean it gave me pause. It made me think for a minute that the way I am operating my career is in disservice to my potential. Ouch.

I respect Emma for the businesswoman and mother that she is. So when she said that working from home and remote work “is a career killer for women” I had to hear her out. See the clip below.

I found myself nodding along and then thinking ‘oh shit… have I been wrong the past six years?’ In some ways yes. Being outside of Corporate America means that I have had to forgo a steady and well earned paycheck, Mike and I have had to figure out independent health care and our conversations with potential clients or meetings come with no guarantees of contracted services. But what Emma is really referring to is the rat race, LARP-ing (yes, LARP-ing, look it up) and gamification of careers in office.

The impressions, networking and politics that exist when you are working amongst peers and leaders. The raising your hand to volunteer to take on more work or stay late to finish a deck in hopes that it impresses upon the right people and that the ‘work hard and you will get rewarded’ that we were raised upon still rings true in the corporate structure. In my personal experience that did not always play itself out. Lots of times it was the squeaky wheels that got the oil IYKYK.

The way that I work today is a hustle and a privilege. Something I can only do because of choices Mike and I have made together—living part of the year in Mexico where our cost of living is lower, renting our house in Portland to cover that mortgage, building Casa Madre as both home, creative project and income source, saying no to a lot of financial comfort in exchange for time, space and different priorities. This isn’t available to everyone, and I know that. But it’s the trade we decided was worth it for right now and after many years working for others.

This didn’t just happen. It took years of building relationships, a reputation, and a portfolio that lets me walk into client conversations with credibility. It took Mike and I being aligned on what we were willing to risk. And it takes constant recalibration—figuring out what works, what doesn’t, and being okay with the fact that it might all look different six months from now.

At Nike, success meant titles, promotions, being in the room where decisions were made. It meant proving myself over and over, delivering excellent work and hoping it translated to upward mobility. And for a while, that mattered to me. But twelve years in and a pandemic really shifted my perspective. Now success looks like control over my time. It looks like saying yes to the work I want and no to the rest.

Don’t get me wrong, I have to hunt and put myself out there which doesn’t come naturally. Jobs are not falling out of the sky for me but six years in I have been planting seeds and watching relationships blossom into trust and then bloom into partners and clients. Editors note: Not sure where the gardening metaphor came from but lets go with it. But truly this kind of work requires patience and tending- much like a garden!

At this stage of career, after 12+ years at Nike, six years consulting and at this point of motherhood where my kids are bigger: four and 11 years old, their lives are fuller and my life is fuller I am valuing the flexibility to do both things. My career right now is consulting in brand and creative strategy. I talk with potential clients all the time and we see where things go. Sometimes a quick three week sprint to build a brief or land a creative territory. Sometimes a handful of months to dive in and understand their consumer, their vision and how best to position them to launch a new product or strategically show up differently in their market.

I work in peaks and valleys which means I can also mother in peaks and valleys. I do my best to organize my schedule, my clients and my personal projects around my priorities that shift season to season. Which means childcare shifts, responsibilities between Mike and I shift and time on zoom or time with my kids shifts. I am always in motion and it is all fluid.

Emma is right for the world she’s describing. If you want to climb in corporate America, face time matters. Visibility matters. LARP-ing matters. But I also know I didn’t leave Nike to replicate that structure on my own. I left to find and explore something different. Something messier, less secure, but mine.

Maybe the real conversation isn’t whether remote work is a career killer. Maybe it’s about what we mean by “career” in the first place. For Emma, it’s advancement, influence, being in the room. For me, right now, it’s sustainability. It’s staying in the game (ugh- can’t escape the sports metaphors) on my terms instead of burning out, failing or painfully trying to do it all. There are real trade-offs. I’m not building toward a C-suite title or equity that vests. I don’t have the safety net of a corporate salary or the perks of corporate travel (which I miss the most!) But I do have the ability to be present for work, personal projects and this particular season of my kids’ lives. I’m not willing to give that up. Not yet, anyway.

I have to close with what has become my constant refrain about our current lifestyle: it is not forever. My kids will get older. We will move back to a big city. Everyone’s needs will shift. Maybe I’ll want something different then. More structure, a bigger team, a return to an office perhaps (probably not). Or maybe this fluidity will keep evolving into whatever the next chapter requires. Rancho Madre might finally be in the cards!!! I’m not locked in. I’m just making the choices that work for right now and I am really grateful for every one of them.

xx Ly

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Alas, what happened next after not agreeing to sit, continue drawing and eat some food was that I swiftly scooped him up and marched him back to our apartment (literal steps away) and Mike paid the bill. Later that evening, Felix asleep, Mario and I walked to the market down the street and bought an overpriced (read: imported gourmet ice cream) pint of Ben & Jerry’s cookie dough ice cream and I spent the night staying up too late finishing a book in bed- this is 42 friends.

Today in honor of this trip, our fifth or sixth as a family, spring break survival and my birthday I am sharing a list of what is worth mentioning on this trip, this month, so far.

1. Why Mexico City: Each spring our kids get two weeks off school and each year we've landed here for the same reason: it has everything our beach town doesn't. My personal list is short and specific: castelvetrano olives, weather- a) cold enough to want a cappuccino instead of an iced americano and b) to wear a full outfit, baguettes, and enough city to actually get lost in. And in the theme of this send: it is worth mentioning that these two weeks are high tourist time in our town so a great reason to rent out Casa Madre.

2. Two weeks!?! A two week spring break is not two weeks. Add the weekends and the Friday that kicks it off and you’re looking at 17 days. Which is a lot. It is a long haul and something we mostly lean into. The thing that makes it manageable and honestly enjoyable is coming back to the same place every year. Meaning we have some built in familiarity and support. It’s not home but it’s a place we now know well enough that it doesn’t feel like we’re performing vacation the entire time. The familiarity anchors us and provides some comfort for the kids so we are not just exploring anew each trip, instead returning to the same neighborhood, parks, shops, etc. that feel welcoming and like a second (third in our case) home. That distinction matters more than I expected.

3. Some magic moments: This time around we are staying in a friend of a friend’s apartment while she is traveling herself. It is an old iconic and picturesque set of apartments that take up an entire block en la Condesa, the green ones near Lardo and Mapache IYKYK. The first night we arrived Felix noticed the hardwood floors remarking that they were ‘like Portland’. Our home in Portland and so many of our family and friends homes have original hardwoods just like this grand apartment. And our home in San Pancho and many of the homes in that area are polished concrete. I loved that little detail he picked up on immediately.

We spent Sunday walking down La Reforma one of the longest and most picturesque streets in the city. Lined with the purple blooms of Jacaranda trees it is shut to cars and buses on Sundays and it feels like the entire city is out exercising, biking, walking, strolling and in our case chaperoning two skateboarders.

Yesterday we went to the zoo, the best zoo I have ever visited, and this was our fourth time. The zoo is a free attraction in the cities equivalent of Central Park- Bosque de Chapultepec. It is beautifully manicured and always a super pleasant experience. My kids were on their best behavior and in the best moods this afternoon and because this was a repeat visit we really just had the best time exploring at our own pace- fast only slowing down to see what the boys really wanted to investigate. Mario remarked multiple times how it was the best day ever- PARENTING WIN!

A final one to share, taking the city bus down Reforma. Felix was very into the red double decker buses we saw buzzing down the streets and on our walk home from the zoo (about 1.5 miles) he asked if we could take one of the buses. Mike was at home on a zoom and we had time to kill so we did it. We rode one line down Reforma, hopped off and rode it back to our stop. For my kids it was the equivalent of an amusement park ride, very clean and great views of the monuments that dot the large boulevard.

4. The birthday: I gifted myself a week of pilates classes at a studio in our neighborhood. One thing about me is that a workout is my own version of personal therapy/ mental healthcare and I must move my body everyday or else I am GRUMPY. So I signed up to start my morning with a reformer class that kicked my ass and where I was by far the oldest gal in the room. Grounding in more ways than one.

We spent the rest of the morning on a goose chase trying to access a pool club that was ultimately not in the cards for the day. So we opted for lunch at a nearby restaurant where the dumplings Mario ordered were raw and Felix fought back on soy sauce servings (drowning rice in soy sauce not allowed) wherein he ended under the table crying, pouting and generally melting down. I did a swift swoop of Felix out of the restaurant to calm down which lead us to a 10 minute walk about landing at a food cart and a hot dog. The boy had to eat and this was the answer. He then accompanied me to my favorite department store where I browsed purses, clothes and bras. Ultimately buying two bras because I accidentally only packed sports bras, whoops!

Mike and Mario did a museum tour and bought me a giant bouquet of flowers before we reconvened at the playground and finally landed back at restaurant number two for delicious food, wine spritzes and Felix’s second round of under the table misbehavior. It was a better than average day with higher than average grumpiness from El Fiz but I will take it.

5. Notes for next time: Pack the skateboards again, a boring walk to get coffee with your parents suddenly turns into a chance to thrash some new obstacles and land some new tricks. And continue to take advantage of the day camps: we did a skate camp and a couple days of an art camp. Only bad thing is that I now need to figure out how to fit multiple masterpieces into our luggage alongside said helmets & boards.

The camps were a treat this year, allowing us to cover off on some childcare during work meetings but mostly providing some much needed structure and forced separation. Traveling for two weeks with a 4 year old and 11 year old is exhausting on its own and makes me truly appreciate the regular routine that school and extracurriculars provide for us.

Eighteen days is a long time to be untethered from routine. I was initially a little underwhelmed when I booked our tickets, wishing for a moment that I had chosen somewhere new to explore or a different part of Mexico to familiarize ourselves with. But now as we close out this trip I feel really great about this decision. Building just enough structure (breathing room) around the chaos so that everyone, including me, can actually enjoy the in-between parts. I've been doing some version of this since 2020. I think I’m getting better at it.

Thanks for following along will share a round up of fotos on ig soon. xx Ly