I did not send you a newsletter last week.

I do not feel bad about this.

I know what happened last week. Crafting something I cared about enough to send to you? It was not going to happen.

I could cheat here and say I was aggrieved with writer’s block.

But I don’t believe in “writer’s block.”

That phrase makes it sound like we people who write are in a rarefied world, where we are helpless when this condition attacks us. All we can do is wait for the muse to return.

I do not believe in the muse.

I believe in listening to my body and letting my gut tell me when I need to rest.

Everything else is unpleasant stress.

Here—read this quote from Rick Rubin on how to stop letting “writing block” be an impediment from making something.

“Everything I make is a diary entry. I can write a diary entry. You can’t tell me it wasn’t good enough.

This is what I experienced for myself.

No one else can judge it.

Everything we make can be that.

It can be a personal reflection of who we are in that time.

It doesn’t have to have any expectation that it will change anyone else or change the world.

It doesn’t have to be ‘This has to sell a certain amount of copies’ for any reason.

It doesn’t have to be be any of these reasons.

All it has to be is this— I am making these things for me and I want to do it to the best of my ability.

And it’s honest.

It’s honest in where I am right now.

And when you’re living in this world of being honest—where you’re at—there’s nothing blocking that experience.

There are no blocks.

The blocks come from dealing with a different perception, one that is made up.

You made up this story—I am in this block because I’m afraid that someone else isn’t going to like it.

There are no blocks.”

He’s right.

Rubin wrote about this idea from his book: The Creative Act: A Way of Being. (This is a strong recommendation from me.)

Creating is not a rare talent for the few. It’s a skill we can build with practice.

It has taken me decades to realize this—creativity only matters if it is a means of connecting with the world.

“Creativity is a way of moving through the world, every minute, every day. Once you acquiesce to the demands of the creative life, it becomes a part of you. Even in the midst of a project, you still look for new ideas each day. At any moment, you’re prepared to stop what you’re doing to make a note or a drawing, or capture a fleeting thought. It becomes second nature. And we’re always in it, every hour of the day. Staying in it means a commitment to remain open to what’s around you. Paying attention and listening. Looking for connections and relationships in the outside world. Searching for beauty. Seeking stories. Noticing what you find interesting, what makes you lean forward.”

—Rick Rubin

If I don’t write, my mind goes a little dull.

The more often I write, the more interested I am in the world. The way the fern fronds bend toward the ground in the yard outside my window fascinates me. The sound of our cats’ water fountain sometimes grinds and sometimes winds itself into a little song.

Every interview and story about Dolly Parton makes me love her more and more. (Damn you, Death. Why Dolly?)

I am always paying attention and listening. (And I highly recommend this documentary about Mary Oliver: Saved by the Beauty of the World.)

Seeing patterns and making connections—that is how my mind works. (I also highly recommend the book The Pattern Seekers: How Autism Drives Human Invention, written by Simon Baron-Cohen. It gave me a lens for looking at the world I had never seen before.)

So, creating? Creating is like breath for me.

I never go a day without it.

And yet. And yet.

For more than a decade, I wrote every day, specifically for publication. I needed to produce, for Gluten-Free Girl, for cookbooks, for recipes we developed for magazines and other people’s books.

Even when that race-car creating slowed down, I still kept up the habit.

I wrote every day and published it somewhere—in Instagram captions, in Facebook entries, on long, 14-part stories on Threads. Or copy for workshops I wanted to teach with follow-up emails to entice people to sign up for more. Or writing drafts of pieces I wanted to sell to magazines.

Why was I listening to that insidious little whisper of ‘This has to sell a certain amount of copies’?

That’s the American way.

Also, we have been broke for years.

We’re poor. We’ve been the kind of poor for 6 years—since COVID hit and our youngest child’s neuroimmune psychiatric disorder flared into nightmare emergency state for 3 long years and I could not work—that most people pretend they are not experiencing.

Hell, I did too. Who wants to be poor in this country? People who don’t make much money become the scapegoats for people who like to point fingers and spit out derogatory quips instead of being part of the community who want to help.

Dolly Parton wanted to help. Always.

(Read this piece from Heather Cox Richardson to read the dazzling list of good deeds she did to help people. My god, I think Dolly lived in a holy, radically inclusive vision of the world.)

And why? She grew up dirt poor in a one-room house, with a mom and dad and 11 brothers and sisters. She had love and kindness in her community and not much else.

She wrote her own story. And she was one hell of a writer.

She never forgot the poverty at the heart of her story. She wanted other people to find release from that constant stress, since she knew it by heart.

But right now, in this country, in this economy, with crazy-for-power men in charge?

We poor people are the enemy.

James Baldwin knew the truth.

We’re moving again. In a few weeks. It will be our 5th move in 7 years.

Moving costs a lot of money.

Renting U-Haul trucks. Dump fees. The gasoline required to drive all the clothing and furniture we are ready to let go to the thrift store. The paper plates and cups that you must eat out of the last week because you packed the dishes. Last-minute takeout meals because you’re exhausted. Packing tape, boxes, and a new lock for the new tiny storage space. First month’s rent, a deposit equivalent to the rent, plus a $500 fee because you have two cats who are part of the family.

That’s a lot of money when you’re living paycheck to paycheck.

We’ve had to move 5 times because we have lived in houses where the owners eventually told us that—so sorry to do this to you—they could make more money by selling the house or renting the house out to wealthier people who want to stay there for the weekend.

This is also why we cannot save much money. Every year and a half to two years, we have to go through this again. We’re not the only ones. Any friends we have on our island who rent, like us, have moved 4 to 5 times since the COVID lockdowns began.

It’s extremely expensive to be poor.

Still, we persist.

My husband and I have started sorting through books and giving away clothes that no longer fit. We are figuring out how to pace ourselves so can heave everything into a rental U-Haul again, and yet rest as much as possible to offset my post-exertional malaise.

And we are giving away anything we do not need on our community’s Buy Nothing page, so we can help other people too.

Oh, and it is a universal truth—unwritten but real—that if you are moving, everything else in your life has to break down at the same time.

Last week, we drove to Seattle to get my husband’s suddenly awful cavity fixed, to go to the Social Security Administration office for new copies of the kids’ cards, a quick stop to Costco for $1.50 hot dog combos, which also turned into why can’t we just look at some of the clothes or a new computer for me (no), and then, horribly, a trip to the mall for the Apple store to see if someone there could fix my daughter’s 4-year-old phone instead of necessitating us buying her a new phone on another monthly payment plan. (Also a no.)

That was all in one day.

Neurodivergent family road trip from hell.

But, we laughed about it the next day. What else are you going to do?

After all, as Dolly Parton’s character said in Steel Magnolias: “Laughter through tears is my favorite emotion."

Exhausted isn’t the right word to describe what I feel. Evervated. That is the closest word to what I’m feeling.

(We can never actually say our experiences with words, but we can come close.)

I’m 60 now. And for the past few days, my husband and I have been lifting thick plastic tubs—full of books and journals and sentimental stuff and photographs going back to the early 1990s—onto the lawn. Cleaning the tops. Sorting through to make sure everything in there is something we want to keep. And then putting them into a little U-Haul truck, to drive them at 7 am to the tiny storage space we rented to keep them all in. Our new place will be much smaller.

We need to become minimalists.

Oh, but being a minimalist is a sign that you have money too. The single hand-made maple plant stand, with a clean white planter, and a small Monsterra plant tilting toward the light. And nothing else surrounds the $5800 couch in a color described as sand or oatmeal. Never beige. Oh, never beige. It’s fawn or buff or biscuit.

You’re paying for those adjectives, not the couch.

That’s Vogue and Instagram and stupid Kardashians “we’re so rich that we don’t want color in our house” mentality.

Everything is minimal and taupe.

That’s not us.

Abundance is our family value in everything we love.

Have I mentioned that the beautiful old house we’ve been living in for more than a year came completely furnished? And that we gave away almost everything we owned, thinking we would live here forever?

And so we have no furniture?

We have no furniture.

It’s expensive to be poor.

I’m not complaining. I’m truly not complaining to seek your sympathy.

I’m not asking for you to help. We are going to figure it out.

Instead, I want to tell you this.

I am so glad that our family has been poor, scraping by, struggling, and tumbling our way toward the end of the modicum of my husband’s paycheck every two weeks.

Why?

If you’re paying attention at all, you know that the economy is in trouble in this country. Did you know that 1 out of 4 Americans is now functionally unemployed? 25%. That was the unemployment rate during the Great Depression.

I’m one of them.

Like many of my friends, I cannot find a writing job or editing job or recipe developing job or any kind of jobs that would use my skillsets.

AI has taken over almost all of those jobs.

I have a brilliant, incredible friend looking for a job. She’s in her late 40s. She has applied to over 100 jobs in the last 3 months. She has only moved ahead with the first interview with 3 of those jobs.

And no second interview.

We all have been battered into a corner by money-grubbing, solipsistic, and sordid men who disdain people who do not live like them and control this country right now.

Is anyone reading having the calmest and most joyful time of your life right now?

At some point, every day, someone from Europe asks on Threads: “Americans, are you doing okay right now?”

And always the answer is—nope. Definitely not. Not even close.

I’m horrified by it all.

But we are prepared here.

Being low on money, perpetually, has forced us to stop shopping for things.

Having things has become the driving force of American culture.

It’s empty.

We don’t need more things.

We live on a deeply mindful budget. (I never knew how to do that before.)

We know exactly how much money is coming in or out of our bank.

We are changing the way we eat completely—we have the basic ingredients we always want in our kitchen, then we shop for 2 or 3 specific foods to make that night’s dish. I am all about the sheet pan, the one pot, the gluten-free flatbread filled with fresh summer vegetables and barbecue tofu. We don’t waste food anymore. We are going to be eating simply, mostly focused on vegetables.

We seem to be inexorably headed toward a time of fascism and darkness.

We need victory gardens. Community care. More pickling and putting up food.

We need to learn to live with less, as a culture.

We need more connection and creativity to make it through.

That’s what we have been required to do for 6 years here.

People without money are—by far—the most generous people. We know what it feels like to go without.

Learning how to live with intention, letting go of old stories of what we should have, and finding calm right now?

That’s a creative act too.

Last week, when we were spending too much time at an Apple store, I met a young man who amazed me.

Originally from Kyrgyzstan, he was adopted by a white family who lived in Louisiana.

“Louisiana? I hope that wasn’t too hard for you,” I offered.

“What, because I’m a person of color and queer? No, here’s the truth. It’s easier in the South. At least there the racism is overt. You know what you’re dealing with there. Here in Seattle, the racism is covert. You think you’re talking to someone who isn’t racist, and then they do something small, something dismissive. And then you think, “Oh I see. You’re a ‘nice’ racist.”

I told him I wasn’t surprised, sadly. Our youngest, who is Black, was called the N-word at least 18 times last school year. We’re always talking them through it and listening.

Racism is endemic to the cultural experiment called America.

We kept talking, laughing, and finishing each other’s sentences immediate after we began talking.

While we waited for the new phone to be delivered from the back, he looked at me and said, “You know, I haven’t met anyone like you in Seattle.”

I laughed. “Yeah, I’m pretty much not like anyone else.”

He didn’t laugh. He looked at me with kindness. “I think that’s wonderful.”

I do too, now. I do too.

After all, as Dolly once said: "I'm not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I'm not dumb... and I also know that I'm not blonde."

My daughter started to tell him about our crazy week, about the ways the phone had failed her and it filled her with anxious dread. She wanted to complain.

He interrupted her and said, “You know, I’m sorry that this happened to you. But I’m going to tell you something I have learned. Friction is only an invitation to reorganize.”

I looked at him, my mouth open.

“Yes!” I said. “I had never thought of it that way.”

Friction is only an invitation to reorganize.

I haven’t stopped thinking about his invitation since then.

All of this is part of the reason I did not send out a newsletter last week.

“When we reach an impasse at any point in the creative process, it can be helpful to step away from the project to create space and allow a solution to appear. We might hold a problem to be solved lightly in the back of our consciousness instead of the front of our mind. This way, we can remain present with it over time while engaging in a simple, unrelated task such as driving, walking, swimming, showering, washing dishes, dancing. These distractions keep one part of the mind busy while freeing the rest to remain open to whatever comes in. This process of nonthinking allows us to access a different part of our brain. One that can see more angles than the direct path. Distraction is not procrastination. Distraction is a strategy in service of the work.”

—Rick Rubin

Here’s the other part of why I did not send you a newsletter last week.

In these past 3 years, and especially these last 6 months, I have been keeping one part of my mind busy while freeing the rest to remain open to whatever comes in.

I know what I want to offer now.

But I cannot name it, yet.

I’m taking my time.

I’m writing it all by hand.

I will not be using any of the standard internet techniques to connect with people.

I will let you know when it’s ready. I’ll share it with you in plain language.

I’m creating something I love. I believe it’s what I was always built to do.

And I want to do it with you, if you’re ready.

But later. Soon.

Not today.

Soon.

For the next few weeks, while we move everything again, I’m on hiatus from any new pieces. However, you’ll be receiving one a week—all of you—since I have been editing any old pieces that still feel like compelling stories. I’ll be sharing them with you here every Wednesday until we are settled in.

My only dream now is to make a comfortable living by writing these stories and sharing them with you. Not millions. Not new book deals. Writing these stories. If you feel the urge to help me make that happen, consider becoming a paid subscriber today.

Subscribe now

“Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle, bicycle, bicycle
I want to ride my bicycle
I want to ride my bike
I want to ride my bicycle”

Hi friends.

I’ve be…

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I’m exhausted.

At some moments of the day, I cannot life my arms made of lead more than an inch.

I wish I had Spiderman’s abilities to heal quickly.

But, I’m only me.

Me exhausted.

Taking a deep breath before I sit down, I open my email server to see 24 new messages, only 2 hours after I last opened it. Every single email is something that requires my attention.

I divide them in my mind:

Now

Later

The now? Urgent, personal, and generally complicated answers to do with my kids’ brain differences and specific medical circumstances.

Later—the same, but they can wait until tomorrow. I open them and hit snooze.

Choosing the day I will deal with them requires my cogent brain power too.

Another few units of my energy surges toward the screen.

Some of the later remind me to say: “I really should unsubscribe from that newsletter I haven’t read, or don’t want anymore, or never signed up for anyway.” But opening each one, finding the unsubscribe button on the bottom, clicking on it, then having to re-enter my email—curses upon your houses, marketers, who try to put up one more impediment between me and that freedom—and skip the quiz that wants me to answer why I am unsubscribing?

All of that requires more energy than I can expend in this session.

So the emails keep on coming, week after week, ceaselessly, until I decide one day to devote several units of my energy to sifting through all my emails and unsubscribing from them all in one go.

The new requires me NOW.

The referral from the doctor who oversees my youngest child’s care has finally been approved at the new clinic we need to visit. This is the 6th clinic where we now have an ongoing relationship for care.

I need to complete paperwork.

Completing paperwork is the bane of my existence.

Every clinic uses a different system for its charting. Every clinic needs the same information I have on hand (or in my head) but needs a different form for it.

This one needs all of my units of energy to get the ball rolling.

I go back to the remaining emails I previously thought were NOW and snooze them all until the next day.

Why is every question in the tiniest font possible?

I need to upload a photo of the insurance card but there is no button that says upload here that allows me to do that.

When I try to put the photos under the directive, nothing sticks. I’m flicking jpgs at a blank space and they keep bouncing back.

Take a breath. Take a breath.

Move on.

Exhausted.

This is where I wonder what it would be like to live with universal health care, with one universal form for the same kid with the same conditions, and let them pull that up from their systems when it’s time to begin working with a new doctor.

But there’s no point in living in Fantasyland.

Don’t go there.

So I move on, exhausted.

This form requires answers about early infancy, childhood, and every year up to right now. I’m required to remember all the points of time when certain singular behaviors began. I’m required to remember which ones have abated.

And which ones are new.

Why is this font and the space for these extensive answers so damned small?

I write and write. This part is much easier for me than the mindless tasks that require me to hunt through my files and find the dates. But it’s still exhausting.

Ninety minutes later, I’m finally done.

I hit send.

This task has required half of the time I have to myself while the kiddo is at summer camp for the afternoon.

There are still 14 more tasks that need doing before I can pick up the kid. And I still haven’t eaten today.

There’s no time for a triumphant dance or a nap.

Keep moving, even though I’m exhausted.

Two days later, I hear back from the person in charge of intake at the new clinic.

“You did great. You’re almost there. We just need the photo of the insurance card.”

Sigh.

I write back, politely.

“Thank you for bringing that up. I tried to upload the photo, but there was no place to upload it. If you can tell me exactly where in the form I can do that, I can finish it today.”

Later in the day, she writes back.

“No problem. Just upload the photo in the documents section of your profile.”

Nothing on the form linked to that folder. Nothing told me there was a separate section, only for documents. I had never seen it before.

Dutifully, I found the documents section, then uploaded the photo.

And then emailed back. “Thanks so much!”

One more task out of the way.

Only 382 more to go.

How do I keep doing this work when my eyelids perpetually want to close as I am working?

We have to start planning for our move soon, the fifth time in seven years that we’ve been required to move to a new home. It’s not our fault. We’re good tenants. It’s the economy.

Four times now, landlords who have said we are some of the best tenants they have ever experienced have asked us to move because they realized they could make more money out of selling their homes or turning it into a vacation rental than they would by continuing to rent to us.

We keep moving because we don’t make enough money for the people who want to make more money.

And in this economy, I can’t blame them.

After all, almost every one of the few houses on Vashon Island that are available for rent right now cost $5,000 a month.

I know we’re not alone in this.

According to the Ludwig Institute for Shared Economic Prosperity:

LISEP’s Minimal Quality of Life (MQL) Index — an advanced cost-of-living measure that not only tracks essential expenses but those necessary for well-being, growth, and upward mobility — reveals that from 2001 to 2023, the cost of affording basic economic security doubled, rising 99.5%, 38% faster than the Consumer Price Index. Housing costs soared 130%, healthcare 178%, and the savings required to attend an in-state, public university 122%. Meanwhile, median earnings have declined for this group by 4% after adjusting for MQL.

“For too long, traditional cost-of-living measures have focused too much attention on mere survival. This approach ignores the fundamental truth that surviving is not living even a minimal quality of life,” said LISEP Chairman Gene Ludwig. “When confronted with a measure that captures the cost of a life offering opportunity, dignity, and the ability to pursue one’s potential, it becomes clear that middle- and working-class Americans aren’t just being squeezed — they’re being priced out of the American dream.”

Here’s a note: this study was based on the American economy from 2001 to 2023.

Imagine what it’s like now, in this cruel chaos that is imitating fascism too well for my taste.

I’m too exhausted to write about that now.

Forward.

I have an ADHD mind, which I only came to realize at 55. ADHD is far more wildly disruptive than this culture’s stereotypical understanding of it would suggest. Doing paperwork and emails like this is actually painful for me.

But, I have to get it done. I’ve taught myself enough tricks to get more juice out of this already-squeezed citrus mind of mine.

This work has to be done for my family.

Doing the work that my brain doesn’t do easily always exhausts me.

My brain was formed by the events of my childhood that caused complex PTSD and every experiences in my life after, because my brain was changed by that trauma. Permanently.

When I was diagnosed with cPTSD at 52, I did my old song and dance routine.

I’m going to read every book about trauma and form an understanding that will help me heal myself.

That only did so much.

I’m going to try EMDR. My god, that was the hardest work I’ve ever done. But it has changed me. Surely now I am healed.

Nope. Better. But cPTSD never goes away.

We only learn to dance with it.

I haven’t yet learned how to rest with it, though.

My doctor is testing me for new autoimmune disorders or other reasons for this total exhaustion of mine. There are a few possibilities.

But what if I’m just exhausted?

How will I ever get the rest I need?

Can exhausted mamas check into sanitariums these days?

In another time and place, I would not be the person writing all the emails, keeping up with appointments, researching and talking with people whose kids have the same diagnoses as mine, and trying to hold everyone together through the flares of disparate conditions.

I’m really not built for this.

But I have to be the prefrontal cortex of my family.

I‘m the only one who can do all of this, even if I’m not that good at it.

My husband, my wonderful husband, does everything he can to help. He holds us up in other ways.

His brain doesn’t work like mine.

I don’t blame him that this part of the work is mine.

However, I can wail and gnash my teeth against the patriarchy, which raised us all to believe that men do what they can and the women do all the rest.

Are you exhausted too?

I really would love to hear your story.

A month after being diagnosed with celiac, in May of 2005, I finished teaching school for the academic year.

Oh thank god.

It had been yet another hard one—too mu…

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I woke up early, my eyes fluttering. No alarm. No one else awake. I walked upstairs, started the coffee, then went onto the deck to listen to the day. Closing my eyes, I could hear the birds, the rustling of deer in the bushes or the small animals in the ravine downhill from our house, plus the sounds of cars going by. Five minutes of this sound bath woke me up more gently than another spin around the Twitter and Instagram wheel could have ever given me.

A hot cup of coffee, a fire crackling in the fireplace, and a new book to read. My husband Danny sat beside me in bed, reading. We were not talking, together, in our room, happy.

I grabbed the bowl of dark greens—cabbage, kale, and chard—that Danny had cooked up the night before and the pot of beans he had braised for a couple of hours. Silver pan on the biggest burner, green olive oil shimmering and swirling in little waves toward the center. Greens in, beans in, shreds of ham hock in. The sun shone in my eyes, the kitchen a flurry of white and yellow and everything clear. I stirred, listening to the music in my head. (Still the songs from the production of Footloose that our daughter Lucy had been in a few days before. “Let’s hear it for the boy!”)

Time for breakfast. Scoops of white rice, still warm from the cooker, topped with warm beans and greens and ham hock. Hot sauce for me and Danny. Breakfast served.

What are you grateful for today, my loves? This book, this meal, my Toy Story 4 game, this moment.

Time for morning chores. Yes, D, you do have to help. Please get off the table, D. Take this bowl into the kitchen, D.

Thank you for helping, L. I could see how easily she, at 11, moved into her work.

I released the upset that the younger one couldn’t seem to sustain working for 10 whole minutes.

Time. Time will take care of this.

L moved to her room to sing and twirl her wand and make up a new musical in her head. I sat down with that new book, now 50 pages in, and a second cup of coffee in my Star Wars mug. D asked Danny to play an alphabet game with him on the now-cleaned-off table. I looked over and the light compeled me to grab my phone and capture that moment now, to save it for when I can see it again in 20 years.

Danny drove the kids to the farmers’ market and the thrift store, finishing with the bakery our friend owned for the weekly treat. I stayed at home to have an online conversation with wonderful women.

I love good conversations.

Everyone get yourself some lunch. You know, 3 bites of ice cream and a sleeve of Ritz crackers isn’t a great lunch. Let’s choose something else, shall we?

My marvelous friend walked in our home, exuding sunshine and huge energy. Her heart—so strong, filling the room. We sat at the table with a cup of strong tea while the kids watched a sitcom on Disney+ for their tv time. (Thank goodness for Disney+. No more arguments about which show to watch.) She and I planned the conversations we wanted to start having with women who move us, about their journey to enough.

What the world needs now is another podcast, says no one, I’m sure. Still, something was gathering, announcing itself, like the clouds banking over the Cascades out our window.

In the middle of Frozen 2—a movie we agreed to see in the theater for the sake of the kids—Lucy squeezed my hand and leaned toward my ear. “It’s so good, Mama. I love it so much.” I squeeze her hand back and agreed.

Who knew it would be a movie about a woman embracing her own power and finding the life she was meant to lead? And Indigenous peoples who have been wronged and finally have their land returned.

Mostly, though, I grew teary, because I figure that a couple of years from now, L may not want to squeeze my hand first in a movie theater. I put my arm around her and gave her a hug.

When we arrived home, L asked if she could play in her room. Of course, my love, I say, knowing that she has been so moved by the movie that she needs time alone to act out scenes and choreograph new dances. D asked for me to play the soundtrack and we built something with Magna-tiles together, talking and happy. Danny cooked our dinner, happy in his own space too.

What are you grateful for in this moment, my loves? The movie, that we saw Frozen 2, the way Olaf was so funny, all of us together.

D snuggled into me, ready to hear stories. “I love you, Mama.”

I love you too, buddy. I rubbed his back and listened to his breath drop into slowness. He fell asleep.

Someday, he won’t want me to stay with him in his bedroom until he is asleep, to sing him songs, and remind him how much I love him.

On the nights that I am the one with D as he falls asleep, I feel the passage of time quicken.

L and Danny and I sat on the couch, after Lucy’s shower, after a chapter of Little Women, and watched the next episode of Star Wars: Rebels. We all enjoyed it. Lucy brushed her hair, then stopped when the show grew even more exciting, and then started again when I reminded her.

She saddens when I say it’s time for bed.

After Danny and I talked and cleaned the kitchen—our wrap-up of the day—after Danny went to Lucy’s room to read her to sleep—she still needs someone to lead her into it when she is over-tired—we sat down to watch Schitt’s Creek and hold hands. And then we climbed into bed, close to each other, and read news and ridiculous stories on our phones. I put mine down and read another 50 pages of my book.

We kissed goodnight.

I turned out the light.

This was the ordinary day we had on a quiet Saturday, nothing special.

We all had time together, then space, adventures outside the house, time watching stories we love.

There were more mundane moments, which slipped away.

It was an ordinary day.

The next morning, at our Unitarian church, I heard the news that one of my former students had died. He was a good, solid man, always ready to help anyone in his community. Apparently he had been stressed about building a new business. His doctor diagnosed him with high blood pressure. He had suffered a massive heart attack, in his home, with all of his family there for dinner.

He was only 39.

Thinking of him and the loss, every detail I wrote for this piece tasted even sweeter.

I write to live twice.

In most moments of the day these days, I know something: I have enough.

The mundane magic of an ordinary day is an enormous gift.

Thank you for reading.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work and read my ongoing writing project.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is my in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, plus a plethora of other factors, made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the stories of my body, one essay at a time, so I can let them go.

This series of essays is the follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid subscribers, every other Wednesday.

Subscribe now

I never thought an egg would bring me to tears.

I took a photo of that fried egg, in the small pan, with my dinky point and shoot…

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And sometimes, we are laughing so fully that our faces scrunch up and no sound comes out of our mouths for a moment.

We are playing Cards Against Humanity. This is my first time playing it. Having school-age children for the last 17 years means that I missed the chance to play this game with adults I trust. At first, I kept playing it like Apples to Apples, the sweet family version. What would fit best in this situation? But when one of my friends keeps putting down the darkest, most twisted answer, and we all laugh so hard I think we might have let out a little pee, then I change my strategy.

The next card I play? “Flesh-eating bacteria.” In context of the question, this is about the most twisted thing I’ve ever said.

I don’t care.

We’re playing together, these 4 friends, and I have nowhere else to go, and nothing else to do, but laugh with these women I have known since the summer of 2022.

Back in the summer of 2022, I launched a project called Camp Curiosity. It was a goofy idea, but it was exactly the kind of experience I needed after nearly 2 years of being in the house with my family for COVID lockdowns. Maybe other women did too?

I created an 8-week structure, with 3 online meetings a week, plus a forum for talking with each other.

We met once a week to talk about the shoulds—the insidious little voices in our thoughts that said we weren’t good enough, the thoughts that weren’t true but kept poking pins in our balloons of good moods. The shoulds about our bodies, our work and worth in the world, our parenting, the state of our houses, our bank accounts. We tackled a different should each week. And each week, I offered a series of thoughtful questions we could ask ourselves in calm, the questions that might help us to tear down the lifelong bombardment of carping, nasty thoughts.

The 2nd meeting each week focused on our creativity. It’s clear to me that creativity is the antidote to anxiety, because it puts us in a flow state, in the moment, focused only on what we are doing with words or paints or songwriting. So each week, I invited a woman who is an artist I knew to join us and talk about her creative process. And I asked the women in the group to bring their own creative project to the meetings, so they could work on it while they listened and asked questions.

And the 3rd meeting? What is making us laugh?

Monty Python? Cute babies? The Colbert Questionert? We developed a theme each week for the next session, then women sent me clips and I compiled them to help us laugh.

Nothing about this project made sense as a power move to establish myself as n influencer on the internet at that moment. Or any moment.

But the 40 or so women who joined the group that summer certainly enjoyed it.

And at the end of it, 9 of them wrote to me and said, “We want to keep going. We love you. But we love each other even more. We can’t imagine not knowing each other.”

We began meeting with each other to talk about our shoulds, to share book and movie recommendations, to share what was hard in that moment, and to laugh together. We shared our stories.

Every Monday evening.

I stopped charging them any money after a year. It felt wrong.

They had become my friends. I could no longer think of them as customers.

That’s how we created the Monday Night Ladies.

We started meeting in person in the summer of 2023 on Vashon Island.

I thought a little glamping would be fun. And it was. But I know refer to that retreat now as the Port-a-Potty weekend. (There was also great Thai food, cold plunges in Puget Sound, ice cream and pinball games, s’mores around the campfire while we read a Dolly Parton book out loud. And so much goodness. But still. We decided to rent house after that summer.)

In the summer of 2024, we rented a house on Anderson Island, an even more rural island south of Tacoma in Washington State. An island with nothing but swimming holes, an old-forest trail that leads to the beach, a golf course, and a sweet little house that had everything we needed.

Last year, we were going to go somewhere near Lake Michigan, but all the vacation rentals were all too expensive. And then we found what looked like a sweet space in Illinois, not too far from Chicago. Kayaks! Fire pit! My friends later told me it was actually swampy, on a tiny road in a town no one remembers the name of now. I couldn’t go, at the last moment, because my youngest child was doing so horribly with a flare of their autoimmune disorder.

I’m still sad I missed that time with these women.

This past weekend, 5 of us went to the sweet vacation rental on Anderson Island again, where there was even less to do than last time.

The convenience store where you could rent a Uhaul, buy gas, and find an emergency stash of jarred garlic, Dijon mustard, and green olives with pimentos closed down in February.

Luckily, we knew that before we left. So we stocked up at Wren’s Nest Baking and Central Co-op in Tacoma and made sure we had enough food for every possible bite we might want to eat.

We had enough gluten-free baked goods for the 5 of us for every meal and snack. We also had fresh rhubarb and lion’s mane mushrooms from the farmer’s market. And one of us—our friend who has written so many splendid cookbooks — made incredible Pad Thai on our last night together.

Between meals and snacks, we sat in the sauna on the front porch and sweated while talking. We napped and read and talked and talked. We went on that hike to the beach. Some of us found a new swimming hole and jumped in together.

There were four of us there the entire weekend. On Saturday, one of the women, who also lives in Seattle, took a day off from moving to come down and join us for the day

Two of the remaining seven women who are still Monday Night Ladies could not come this year. And they were missed.

We spent the days with no agenda, no need for productivity, and no set ideas of what we needed to do.

I feel like reading. So I did. And so did my other friends, who one by one joined me to sit on the couches, under the skylights, silent and burrowed in our books. I feel like writing now, said one of us. And so we did. Feel like painting? Do that. Feel like another slice of gluten-free bread with butter? Go ahead. Want to watch Team America together? Fuck yeah.

There is nothing like being in a house full of women, talking about epidurals, birth stories, and breastfeeding fiascos until nearly midnight, even when you know you have to get up at 6 the next morning to make the 7:20 am ferry.

My god how we laughed. And we did almost nothing, so well.

This weekend meant the world to me. I mean, I think any woman like us would have enjoyed this time.

But this is the first time that my youngest child has been healed enough that I could leave them for a weekend of doing nothing productive since the retreat two years ago.

These women I love were so generous with me. Thank you, ladies.

This weekend felt like a deep release.

On Saturday afternoon, as two of my favorite women plated the charcuterie board—prosciutto slices folded in half loosely, the salami laid out in collapsed-domino style—another one painted with watercolor on grey paper, and the 4th came downstairs to help in the kitchen, I sat down at the table and asked them this question.

“Hey, ladies. I haven’t wanted to talk about work at all this weekend. But since we’re all here, can I ask you a question? We’re all pretty different in some ways. We certainly live in different parts of the country. And yet, we all fit together so well. What is it that we have in common? I’m trying to figure out how to describe the kind of women who come to work with me, so they can see themselves in the description.”

You see, I’ve been using neurodivergent women in perimenopause and beyond as my placeholder for the kind of women who attend my workshops. But honestly, I don’t want to keep using neurodivergent as a label anymore.

They know me. Here’s what my ladies told me.

We all share this:

• kind. Not nice. Kind

• kind of a bitch, when necessary

• care about social justice and women’s rights

• curious

• love books and talking about them (movies and tv too)

• interested in how other people’s brains work

• laugh at everything silly and ridiculous

• adore food—shopping for it, talking about it, cooking it, eating it

• not afraid to try new things

• live on a coast or near water, with some exceptions

• slightly older, in perimenopause and beyond

• community minded

• conversations excite us

• good listeners

• strong work ethic (perhaps too strong)

• feel at peace in nature

• fundamentally decent

• feel safe being vulnerable with each other if we need support

• authentic

And after we made this list, I looked at it and immediately thought—this is me.

These are the 4 women with whom I shared the weekend.

These are the people who tend to gather when I start a group.

We play well together.

And in the end, after listening to me read the list back, we all said the same thing.

It’s pretty simple.

We’re friends.

Later in the evening, when we were headed toward another wonderful conversation, I said to them all, “Thank you. Thank you for all of this. When I was a kid, sitting alone under a tree in elementary school, watching all the kids and not understanding how they worked, I wondered if I’d ever have friends. Along with the other women I’ve come to think of as family, you’re the friends I was looking for then.”

We all had a moment.

And then, one of my friends said, “This is a good reminder. You can make new friends at any age, really.”

It’s true.

I’m so damned grateful I created that crazy idea for the summer of 2022. There are 7 of us women, bonded forever, because of Monday nights and summer retreated.

Here’s to Camp Curiosity 2022, forever.

If you read that list, and it feels like you, then I’m glad you’re here. Keep coming back. You’re welcome here.

Oat-quinoa granola with maple syrup, lots of nuts, and salt

I don’t write about food for a living anymore, after more than a decade of writing one of the world’s first gluten-free food blog for 13 years. But once in a while here, when the spirit insists, I’m going to share something I made that I love. This one insisted.

This batch of granola I baked the morning before I left for the trip made everyone happy. It’s full of nuts, so filled with protein and fiber from the oats and quinoa. Plus, it’s delicious.

I saw the original template recipe in Kristen Miglore’s book, Genius Recipes, which she created for Food52. I have always adored Kristen’s spirit, her generosity, and her impeccable palate. I knew this one was worth trying.

It turns out the original creator of this granola, Nekisia Davis, made it up one morning after working at her pizza restaurant in Brooklyn the night before. She wanted delicious, crunchy, bright, and easy to make every week. That it is. Plus, she now sells her granola, which is gluten-free and vegan. So, if you don’t feel like making it, you can buy it instead.

If you’re not afraid of mixing and baking, you can make this tomorrow. It’s a pour-everything-into-the-same-bowl-and-stir easy. And then you bake it, at low heat, stirring every 15 minutes to make sure it’s evenly toasting.

That’s it.

Oh! And the key to making your own granola, which I learned the hard way? Take the sheet pan out of oven the minute the granola starts to toast up a little tiny bit brown. It keeps cooking on the counter. That’s what makes the wonderful crunch.

Play. Enjoy.

Subscribe now

This essay is free for everyone to read.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to support my work and read my ongoing writing project.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is driven by discovery. I’m doing an in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, has made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the story, one essay at a time, then letting it go.

This is my follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid subscribers, every other Sunday.

Thanks for reading.

Subscribe now

Will I feel like this when I am pregnant? Kicks, little pinches, a gremlin giggling in my i…

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A hot cup of coffee, a fire crackling in the fireplace, and a new book to start reading. My husband sits beside me, reading. We are not talking, together in the room, in our own heads, happy.

I grab the bowl of dark greens — cabbage, kale, and chard—Danny cooked up the night before and the pot of beans he braised for a couple of hours. Silver pan on the biggest burner, green olive oil shimmering and swirling in little waves toward the center. Greens go in, beans go in, shreds of ham hock go in. The sun is shining in my eyes, the kitchen a flurry of white and yellow and everything clear. I am stirring, listening to the music in my head. (Still the songs from the production of Footloose that L performed in last week. “Let’s hear it for the boy!” It won’t go away.) Time for breakfast. Scoops of white rice, still warm in the rice cooker, topped with warm beans and greens and ham hock. Hot sauce for me and Danny. Breakfast is served.

What are you grateful for today, my loves? This book, this meal, my Toy Story 4 game, this moment.

Time for morning chores. Yes, D, you do have to help. Please get off the table, D. Take this bowl into the kitchen, D. Thank you for helping, L. I see how easily Lucy moves into doing her work. Time. Time will take care of this.

L moves to her room to sing and twirl her wand and make up a new musical in her head. I sit down with that new book, now 50 pages in, and a second cup of coffee in my Star Wars mug. Dasks Danny to play an alphabet game with him on the now-cleaned-off table. I look over and the light compels me to grab my phone and see that moment now, save it for when I can see it again in 20 years.

Danny drives the kids to the farmers’ market and the thrift store, the bakery our friend owns for the weekly treat. I stay at home to have a conversation with a wonderful woman for a podcast. Podcasts are good conversations.

Everyone get yourself some lunch. No, 3 bites of ice cream and a sleeve of Ritz crackers isn’t a great lunch. Let’s choose something else, shall we?

My marvelous friend walks in our home exuding sunshine and huge energy. Her heart—it is so strong and fills the room. We sit at the table with another cup of coffee while the kids watch a sitcom on Disney+ for their tv time. (Thank goodness for Disney+. No more arguments about which show to watch.) Mand I plan the conversations we want to start having with women who move us, about their journey to enough. What the world needs now is another podcast, says no one, I’m sure. Still, something is gathering, announcing itself, like the clouds banking over the Cascades out our window. Our conversation is the sunlight above those clouds.

In the middle of Frozen 2—a movie we agreed to see in the theater for the sake of the kids—L squeezes my hand and leans toward my ear. “It’s so good, Mama. I love it so much.” I squeeze her hand back and agree. Who knew it would be a movie about a woman embracing her own power and finding the life she was meant to lead? And indigenous peoples who have been wronged and finally have the next right thing done to return their land? Mostly, though, I am teary, because I know that a couple of years from now, L may not want to squeeze my hand first in a movie theater. I put my arm around her and give her a hug.

When we are home, L asks if she can play in her room. Of course, my love, I say, knowing that she has been so moved by the movie that she needs time alone to act out scenes and choreograph new dances. Dasks for us to play the soundtrack and we build something with Magna-tiles together, talking and happy. Danny cooks our dinner, happy in his own space too.

What are you grateful for in this moment, my loves? The movie, that we saw Frozen 2, the way Olaf was so funny, all of us together.

D snuggles into me, ready to hear stories. “I love you, Mama.” I love you too, buddy. I rub his back and listen to his breath drop into slowness. He is falling asleep. Someday, he won’t want me to stay with him in his bedroom until he is asleep, to sing him songs, and remind him how much I love him. On the nights that I am the one with D as he falls asleep, I feel the passage of time quicken.

I rub his head and kiss his cheek before I leave the room.

L and Danny and I sit on the couch, after Lucy’s shower, after a chapter of Little Women, and watch the next episode of Star Wars: Rebels. We all enjoy it. Lbrushes her hair, then stops when the show grows even more exciting, and then starts again when I remind her. She saddens when I say it’s time for bed. She never wants to leave the day.

After Danny and I have talked and cleaned the kitchen—our wrap-up of the day—after Danny goes to Lucy’s room to sing her to sleep—she still needs someone to lead her into it when she is over-tired—we sit down to watch Schitt’s Creek and hold hands. And then we climb into bed, close to each other, and read news and ridiculous stories on her phones. I put mine down and read another 50 pages of my book. We kiss goodnight. We always say I love you. I turn out the light.

This is the ordinary day we had on a quiet Saturday, nothing special. We all had time together, then space, adventures outside the house, time watching stories we love. There were many more moments, mundane, that slipped away. It was an ordinary day.

The next mornin, at our Unitarian church, I heard the news that one of my former students had died on Friday. He was a good, solid man, always ready to help anyone in his community. Apparently he had been stressed about building a new business. His doctor diagnosed him with high blood pressure. He suffered a massive heart attack, in his home, with all of his family there for dinner. He was only 39.

I’m thinking of him now as I write this piece. Each detail is more suffused with gratitude in writing this than I might have felt at the moment. But I know something important, most moments of the day: I have enough. Reminding myself of that through the lens of this sorrow magnifies what I already know.

The mundane magic of an ordinary day is an enormous gift.

Subscribe now

This essay is free for everyone to read.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is my ongoing writing project, driven by discovery. I’m doing an in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, has made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the story, one essay at a time, then letting it go.

This is my follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid susbscribers, every other Sunday.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to read that writing project and support my work.

Subscribe now

For hours, I had been in terrible pain—my belly full of stabs and smears of agony. My throat felt like I ha…

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That morning, I was going to walk from the ferry boat along Western Avenue, but my feet took me up the stairs and over the walkway.

As I reached the end of the dock, about to pass onto the trail to 1st Avenue, I passed a man hunched over a trash can, his hood hiding his face, his body withered into itself in pain. Beside him, a young woman, with 3 overstuffed bags, looking perplexed. And an older woman with an employee badge from the ferry system. I looked at them and kept walking. And then I walked back.

“Do you need help?” I asked them.

The young woman — no older than mid-20s — with the wide face and frightened eyes, looked up at me. “It’s my grandpa. He can’t walk. His back has seized up and he just can’t move anymore. It’s probably the cold weather.”

I looked at him again.

For some reason, I had seen his frail body and fairly new sneakers and wondered if he had been an addict. Now I saw he was in his late 80s, the veins on the back of his hands prominent. He looked up and winced in pain.

The ferry employee talked with him for a moment. I asked the young woman if they would like help getting to a hospital.

“We’re on the way to the doctor’s now. He has a Parkinson’s study. But he can’t get down to the street to reach the car that is picking us up from Catholic services.” Shelooked all around as she said this.

Hm. Well, if they had a car coming, all we had to do was get him to the street.

“Do you think he would let me help?” I asked her. “We could both hold him by the arm and slowly walk down the steps.”

Her face looked relieved.

“Grandpa, this lady here will help us. Will you let her take your arm too?”

He nodded, slowly. The ferry worker went back to her booth.

I was carrying a big bag of gluten-free flours to work, about 15 pounds’ worth. I wrapped the top of the bag over the top of itself to close it, then put it in my right arm like a baby. I’ve held babies against my hip for years. I could do this.

The granddaughter told her grandpa that we were ready to go. She threw away her coffee, settled all her bags on her hip and over her shoulder, and reached for his coffee. She took his left arm. I took his right. And I slowed down my pace, and my breathing, to let him lead. When we reached the stairs, there wasn’t enough room for the three of us across the right side of the stairs. So she went to the other side of the stairs, and reached for his hand over the railing. And I held his right arm and let him guide us at his pace. It took about 15 minutes for us to get down the stairs.

When we reached the bottom of the steps, she cheered him. But then we couldn’t find the car. I asked if she had the number for the driver. She did. “But I can’t really understand him because he has such a thick Southern accent.”

She tried talking to the driver, messing up the name of the street we were on.

She apologized. “I’m sorry. I don’t know Seattle that well. I really don’t know it at all. We never get over here.”

I figured out quickly they were from the Peninsula, from a little rural town somewhere in the woods. The number of bags she held told me they were going to be staying at the hospital for a couple of days. And they were both frightened.

So I offered to talk to the driver, led him to the southwest corner of Alaska and Columbia, and waited the few moments until the driver arrived. They were both grateful. The older man in pain hadn’t said a word.

But when the car pulled up, he patted my back with shaky hands, then pulled me in for a hug. I gave him one back.

When I pulled away, I noticed he was mouthing, “Thank you. Thank you.”

And when I stood up straight, I noticed, for the first time, that his cap had a Confederate flag on it. And the words: forever rebel.

Life is complicated.

Or is it?

Would I have refused to help that man and his granddaughter if I had seen the hat first? I hope not. I don’t think so. But I’m glad I didn’t know. He was, quite simply, a human in pain. I had the chance to help.

Given where they lived, and his hat, I’m pretty sure he must have voted for Trump. It’s no secret — I did not. I continue to be horrified by Trump as an unhinged person, terrified of the policies he puts into place, and especially concerned that his tenure as president is destroying so much of what we thought was solid in democracy, which turns out to be merely a flimsy gentleman’s agreement. Stephen Miller, who seems to be the only person remaining in that administration from the inauguration until now, is a white nationalist who admires the immigration laws of Adolf Hitler. And he has created most of this administration’s immigration policies.

I fear for our country. I fear for the numerous people in this country who have been made to feel small and repugnant by people who feel safe saying hateful things and committing terrible acts because of their virulent racism.

The Confederate flag has become an even more potent symbol of white power than ever before. (And don’t let biased Southern textbooks fool you. Slavery was the central issue of that war.

I will honestly never understand why anyone who knows those facts would still want to proudly claim it?

Would that hat have stopped me from helping that man, given all this?

Nope.

He was a man in pain. His granddaughter was frightened. And I was able to help.

I’m not a hero. I’m only human.

I think that’s what I wish the most fervently: that we could meet each person we encounter as a fellow human, instead of masking them with labels and turning away from them.

If we could actually meet each person anew, none of this repugnant stuff would exist.

I’m doing the best I can with this. I hope to do better.

This essay is free for everyone to read.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is my ongoing writing project, driven by discovery. I’m doing an in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, has made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the story, one essay at a time, then letting it go.

This is my follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid susbscribers, every other Sunday.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to read that writing project and support my work.

Subscribe now

Doing water aerobics in an outdoor pool all summer, bobbing next to women in their 70s and 80s…

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Sitting in a dinky hotel room in Los Angeles, I watched the trailer for the last Star Wars film in the series of 9. I cried, triumphant and sad. Then I called my husband and daughter, who had just watched it too and we talked fast about every part. And then I watched it again and again.

L has become a huge Star Wars fan, a comic-con level adorer. She studies all the characters, especially the women, in visual dictionaries. She is all in.

I have been all in for 42 years.

On my 11th birthday, in 1977, I watched the first Star Wars movie. I left the theater with my family, gaping, my eyes wide in the bright sunlight. I was never the same. And now, my daughter is 11 and she is going to see the last one with me in December.

We are counting down the days.

In the trailer, a voiceover from Luke Skywalker: “Confronting fear — it is the destiny of a Jedi.” That line made me catch my breath and cry.

The next morning, I woke up thinking about that line. Why did it make me cry?

When I was 11 and saw Star Wars for the first time, I was living in the midst of the most difficult time of my life. As I write in my book, ENOUGH, not only was my life entirely restricted — I was not allowed to visit someone else’s house for the first time until I was 17 — but my mind was slowly chiseled down into a prison cell of thinking only of my mother’s fear. We were all trained to think of her first — and then the effect on the entire family — when we contemplated doing anything. My concerns were so far down the list that they ceased to exist. The pure joy of that movie — two hours without hearing fighting or having to stave one off, the underdogs beating the forces of darkness — was enough to make me love it.

And I loved it — then Empire and Jedi after it — so hard that the movie became a lifelong talisman for me. The existential backbone of the movies made sense to me in a way that religion never did.

The idea of the force resonated deep within me — that love and fully being present in the world could be a power. (I lived in a home where being fully present was too painful to bear as a child.)

By the time Return of the Jedi came out in 1983, I was reading Joseph Campbell, because I had read he was an influence on George Lucas. Reading Campbell’s works was one of the first times I began to think of my life as a hero’s journey instead of a prison.

There has to be a way out of this, I would think.

I didn’t know how to free myself for a long time.

But after watching Star Wars and reading Joseph Campbell, I began to realize that there might be a way out of this prison of the mind.

Han Solo was frozen in carbonite, yet eventually he emerged, temporarily blinded and weak, but free.

After I returned home from Los Angeles, Lucy and Danny and I finished watching Rogue One, which is one of our favorite of the Star Wars movies. I unabashedly love the fact that these new movies show women as strong, just as important — if not more — than the men around them. The culture has changed since I was 11. Not enough, but better.

And as we watched, I was struck by the scene of Chirrut Îmwe, the blind monk in the movie, moving through the battle toward where he needed to go, chanting repeatedly, “I am one with the force. The force is in me. I am one with the force. The force is in me.”

I think that is how I survived my difficult childhood. I believe that is how so many of us — and there are so many of us — survived difficult childhoods. We walked through the battle scenes, somehow convincing ourselves that we would survive if we believed in the force. The force for you might have been God or Allah or your friends or fashion or the future. For me, the force was in books. The force was in love. And the force was in the strong feeling, running through me, that somehow life could be better than this. That I would survive. And someday, I would understand.

So after I thought for awhile the other day about why I was so struck by that line from Luke — “Confronting fear — it is the destiny of a Jedi” — I realized why I had cried.

Having just released ENOUGH, which was me facing the deepest fears I once held, and recording the audiobook for it in less than two days, I was suffused with an understanding.

I know now, 42 years later, why I had loved Star Wars so much when I was 11.

My mother’s fears and dominant personality was Darth Vader. Everything in our house came from her command. And I knew, even as a kid, that it wasn’t love that compelled her to command. It was fear, tightly knotted deep in the pit of the stomach and the base of the brain fear.

Her fear was the most powerful force in our house.

And it was not to be contested.

My father was one of the generals on the bridge of the ship, one who believes he has a little bit of power, that he commands. And yet he ducked in fear, knowing that if he said the wrong thing, Darth Vader might choke him to death.

And my brother and I? We were the foot soldiers, the ones turning the ship when commanded, trying to stay out of the way, more than a little frantic because we might get the wrath that had nothing to do with us, for no reason, any time of the day.

But after I saw Star Wars for the first time, I had hope.

I watched Luke and Leia through those first 3 movies, and realized that a brother and sister could rebel.

We could fight to get out of there.

And like Luke with Darth Vader, I knew all along there was something good in my mother. I wanted to believe. I saw glimpses along the way that it was her fear that was the enemy, not her. It’s why I still have a relationship with her now.

Star Wars taught me how to resist, through the force, through love and being present. It’s part of the reason I am still here now.

Life is long and looping and hard and beautiful. Knowing yourself — and the catalysts that can change your brain — can take a really long time. If we’re lucky, we have some signposts along the way.

And when we go to watch the very last Star Wars film of all time in December, I know I will be crying.

But I will be cheering — yelling so loudly my throat will hurt later — at the sight of a strong young woman who has taken all the history and teachings into her heart.

She will lead them.

And my 11-year-old daughter will be by my side.

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This essay is free for everyone to read.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is my ongoing writing project, driven by discovery. I’m doing an in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, has made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the story, one essay at a time, then letting it go.

This is my follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid susbscribers, every other Sunday.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to read that writing project and support my work.

Subscribe now

I’m in the driver’s seat of my car, stopped at a sign. My good friend is in the passenger seat, next to me. I’m waiting to pull out on 12th Avenue, in Seattl…

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This is my 5th-grade photo, taken when I was 10. The Bicentennial flag lets you know the year. So does my home-permed hair, which I never wanted. My glasses, my buck teeth, my flannel-pattern blouse — everything about this photo is terrible.

Or so I thought, for years upon years. At a certain point in my life, this was the most embarrassing photo I could imagine. Nothing mortified me more than the thought of someone seeing this photo.

Now, of course, I think this photo is darling. There’s nothing embarrassing here. Instead, I want to hug this little girl, who was in the same grade my daughter is in now. I don’t live in shame for any part of me now. But I did. Oh, I did.

I wish I could hug this girl when she was crouched on the top of her closet, doors closed, hiding from the noise of her parents fighting again. I wish I could hug this kiddo when she pleaded to go to a friend’s house after school but she was told no, over and over, because of her mother’s fears about the kid and her brother leaving the house at all. I wish I could hold her when she sat in class, perched on the edge of her seat, hand raised always, because knowing the answers at school was the only place she found any validation. I wish I could step in when her parents fought viciously every afternoon and insist that she come between them when they had their fists drawn and she used every ounce of her to say the right thing to make them stop. Just stop.

I wish I could hug this kid and take her out of there.

But I do know this. Books saved this kiddo’s sanity. She lived and breathed in words like talismans and one day, she dreamed of being a writer, like Jo March or Francie Nolan or Harriet the Spy.

I have a feeling she would feel, for the first time, that everything eventually would turn out okay.

It took all the courage I had to write my memoir, ENOUGH. My body tried to stop me many times, but I persisted. And I changed myself in the act of letting it all go.

So I wrote it for myself, always with the hope in my mind that it would be in service to some readers too.

After the book arrived in some people’s homes, I learned that my greatest hope came true. There were tears at every book event I did. Women and men have nodded when I talked about the themes of shame, the details of my life and traumatic childhoods, the way we excoriate ourselves for the sake of fitting in.

It turns out that naming your shame changes things. It starts to disappear.

What I discovered after ENOUGH was published—and continued to write and publish more stories of the messy middle—is that I was never alone as a child.

Oh, I thought I was alone. I felt desperately lonely until I was in my late 20s, a keening aloneness in the suffering in my family I was forced to keep secret.

Writing the book helped me to liberate myself in a way that therapy, meditation, yoga, talking, and growing older had not touched. Publishing this book has helped me to realize how many other kids were out there, feeling alone in that trauma. (And there still are so many kids feeling this today.)

One woman wrote me on the day of publication of my book to say, “Thank you for writing this book. I have never seen my family in someone else’s book before.”

I was walking on NE Sandy Avenue in Portland, toward a friend’s bakery, when I read this in my messages. I honestly had to sit down on the steps of a closed store and let myself cry.

That little kid part of me knew that someone had endured what I had lived.

As an adult, of course, I started to realize that lots of people were struggling in suffering they were required to keep secret. (I didn’t know that as a kid.) Still, after the publication of ENOUGH, I started to hear from these women and men, who were once lonely little kids in the middle of a scary house.

I wish we all could have sent up some kind of signal to find each other on the playground then.

It turns out that when you tell your story, bare and raw and true, quite a few other people find themselves in it too.

Subscribe now

This essay is free for everyone to read.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is my ongoing writing project, driven by discovery. I’m doing an in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, has made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the story, one essay at a time, then letting it go.

This is my follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid susbscribers, every other Sunday.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to read that writing project and support my work.

Subscribe now

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I have been thinking about this man often this week. Every day lately, he sets up this tiny card table, arranges rubber ducks on it, and hangs the white sign written in light spide…

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Oh, there have been flashes and moments of feeling fully present and f…

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For years I made photographs of food on spotless plates resting on marble surfaces, with ingredients placed in the right space for composition. It was part of how I earned my living — selling the dream of dinner on the table, everything gleaming, with no dirty dishes.

What I never showed was the other half of the table.

At times, my husband and I realized we needed to make a photograph that moment, in the 20 minutes before we had to pick up our daughter from her 2 hours of daycare, all that we could afford at the time.

So he finished cooking the recipe for the day — cinnamon-sugar doughnut holes or potato-green bean salad with anchovy vinaigrette or date-hazelnut balls with coconut-chocolate ganache — in the kitchen with the dishes piled up in the sink. I took a quick look at the best light in the dining room, then shoved everything away from the side of the table closest to the window. On one side, a wiped-clean wooden surface, with a white scrim in front of the window and a white card set up to bounce light on the food, to avoid any shadows.

On the other side of the table? Dishes from breakfast. A doll without any shoes. Paperwork for an insurance claim due that day. A small load of clean laundry. Charge cords for the phones. My to-do list for the day. A poster we bought at the thrift store three days before. A salt cellar on its side, with a wide path spilling onto the table. Half-empty coffee cups. Messy, tangled-up, crazy-strewn table.

I know now that we are not the only ones with two little kids and a messy home. I know now that I’m not the only one who shoves the last remnants of clothes into the closet before a party so our house looks good for guests.

Raise your hand if you sometimes go to bed without doing the dishes.

Raise it higher if you sometimes have dishes from a couple of days ago in the sink. Nod if you have been late paying a bill because you shoved it into a box when you were cleaning your desk in a frenzy. High five if you have that one room you promise yourself you will renovate and make minimal in its beauty, yet it sits there stuffed with things to do.

Is your house ready for a photoshoot in a glossy magazine or an Instagram post for a design site? Ours is not. Not by a long shot. I’m not sure it ever will be.

Our lives are easier now. The kids are 11 and 5, so they clean up after themselves, at our direction. Sometimes. The panic pressure of running our own business and freelancing for more than a decade — always having to choose sending an invoice or finishing a piece over tidying up the house — ended. I have a job with money coming in regularly. D starts kindergarten this week. I can feel the ease arriving.

However, we moved to a new house this weekend. For the last couple of weeks — and now in the new house too — our house has, temporarily returned to the chaos of before. So I thought I would show it to you this time.

On this messy bar, the following:

— a Christmas mug that never made it back into the Christmas box in January.

— two felt soaps the kids made at the Unitarian summer retreat a couple of weeks ago. They think they need to keep them. I don’t think they do.

— a Vashon Island Baking Company coffee mug full of stainless steel straws, which we bought to put into my purse so we we don’t have to use plastic ones. However, the irony of the plastic cup in front of it is not lost on me. The last week before moving we switched to paper plates and plastic cups. It’s what we have always done to make it through that last push.

— a photo of Sharon and me that our friend Gabe took on the roof of our apartment on 101st and Broadway in 2001, a lifetime ago.

— a small plastic statue of Yoda, which we bought at the Star Wars store in Aberdeen, Washington after a week at the coast.

— two ramekins that we gave away to Granny’s, a photo album of Lucy’s first year, bills, garlic powder, and a can of black beans.

— the index card upon which I wrote “Let’s be in love with the world,” after hearing Maurice Sendak’s last interview before he died, during which he cried and made me cry as he talked with Terry Gross. I will never forget that conversation.

That bar into the kitchen is spotless now. We no longer live there. Half of that mess has been thrown away or given to the thrift store. The rest is in our new home, packed in a box we have yet to unpack.

It seems the transitions, and the messiness that goes with them, are the only thing we can count on in this world.

Maybe it’s time to embrace our messes and stop trying to hide them from everyone else.

Subscribe now

This essay is free for everyone to read.

The Story of Learning How to Feed Myself is my ongoing writing project, driven by discovery. I’m doing an in-depth revision of the blaring story I have always told myself — that my body has never been good enough to rest. The noise about food in my head, implanted there by 1970s and 1980s diet culture, has made me suck in my stomach for nearly 50 years.

Now, I’m breaking down the story, one essay at a time, then letting it go.

This is my follow-up to my memoir in essays: ENOUGH: Notes from a Woman Who Has Finally Found It. This time I am writing the book as a newsletter, one essay at a time. A new essay will arrive, only for paid susbscribers, every other Sunday.

If reading this sparked something in you, then consider becoming a paid subscriber to read that writing project and support my work.

Subscribe now

That was weird.

I’d never been inside anything like a yoga studio before I stepped into my first class, in the year 2000.

Eve…

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