I used to keep my hair long.

Mostly because I only really knew how to ponytail. But also because my hair was always in the way. And with long hair, I tamed it based on the activity.

A bun for the times I was upside down in yoga class.

A side braid was perfect for a ski helmet.

A low pony tail fit under a hat to keep the sun out of my face on long hikes and backpacking trips.

Long hair always looked great under a headband.

A shaved head solves all problems.

In September, I cut my hair short and got so many compliments. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t ask my stylist to make sure it still made an easy topknot. Because in a lot of ways that was my resignation from an untethered wild life to a predictable, sensible mom in the Midwest.

Who needs a side braid when you only ski once a year?

It’s been a long time since the three of us have spent time in the mountains. I wasn’t ready to go back. The last time leaving Tahoe broke my brain in ways I wasn’t ready to even think about. My therapist cautioned me to take the time to say goodbye, to close the chapter. Instead? I took my anger and fled. I didn’t really look back.

I haven’t taken a proper vacation nor have I stopped much since. A lifelong sprinter of sorts (not physically), I quit and move on really fast, fast enough so all the feelings don’t catch me until they do. In this way, I have the illusion of a headstart, but they find me eventually, and problematically. But the speed is not the problem. It’s the lack of breaks in between that get me.

On what would have been a gorgeous heart soaring hike on a Monday in Boulder, Colorado with my family, I am struck with so much grief. I find a rock to sneak away and sob on as the PYs find bigger and bigger boulders to bounce off. Just like when Penn was little and we lived out west. The mountain families we run into in head to toe REI, grief. That’s who we would have been. The endless vistas that make you feel so small, grief. The pine scent, the quiet solitude, the altitude. All grief grief grief, but in ways that were never meant to be fixed, just held with the tenderness of a grandmother. I forced myself to get it all out. Feel all the feelings. Let it weigh me down and wring me out. It took a long time, but I felt lighter, and a bit nauseated.

The last haircut I had, I said, let’s just trim. I’m in a grow out phase. And I know there is never returning to a time or even a place, I do know that there has to be room for both my wild mountain heart and my sensible Midwest one. Because none of this has anything to do with a location on a map: it just means finally giving myself permission and space to be both/and.

So on the first day of spring, the first day back from vacation, a step of sorts. I’m spending my lunch break, a break I never take, staring at the river, writing this down, eating a Sub Shop sandwich, realizing the power of taking things one day at a time, of reclaiming my time, reflecting all of the big feelings I always seem to have and restarting the walk of finding what life makes sense for us, even if that means we take a space ship instead of a car.

But first, we’re already planning our next vacation.

How to Die in Ohio

Don’t.

But if you must, do it on a Tuesday preferably in the wet part of a Midwest spring where it’s moody and ominous, forcing funeralgoers under black umbrellas and sunglasses to hide their grief. Hold out until you have successfully shadowed a devastated executrix and have transferred your voice memos to actionable legal documents while simultaneously picking out your funeral showing program, obviously choosing the agnostic eagle flying over a mountain. 

Make sure your expired yogurt has been disposed of and that you have included custody of your four cats in your will. Do it lying down in a supine position, free of a violent fall or traumatic brain injury so your death certificate reads senescence instead of preventable accident. Your Facebook friends want to know if this was a drug overdose so mention “died of old age” in the obit.

Cancel your AOL account because you have not shared your password with any living humans in 30 years. Take care to evict your renters who haven’t paid rent since November and discontinue your car wash membership. 

This way, your next of kin will avoid erratic Porsche rides with your lawyer the day before Christmas Eve, going 70 on a 45 throwing candy cane wrappers out of the window, making sure you are aware of the fact they once owned a golf course and that they have a hard stop at four to catch a plane to South Carolina. 

Take out the trash. Alert the local media.

But maybe the most important way to prepare for death is to diminish the fear of it. And the only way to do that is to really live: sideways and upside down, with stories you share about that one time you hitchhiked to Colorado and the maybe slightly illegal kid things you did in high school and the ebb and flow of really falling in and out of love.

Which is why we need the dead and dying to teach us an urgent lesson on how we spend our time. Can I resist the lull of the mudane or is that part of it? To be in love with the laundry? To relish the morning commute? Fall head over heels for a sunset? If this is all going to end on a moody Tuesday in March while I’m in a supine position, how am I not desperate to go outside and feel all the things? How do I so comfortably waste so much time propped up on fear of being inadequate and alone that I scroll endlessly? How can I afford it? Why am I not desperate to see the life in everything I do when I’ve spent so much time with the dead?

I’m not sure I know the proper way to die as if there ever were a thing. But if we aren’t risking everything for joy, none of this matters. I do know that to be true.

So let’s not hesitate okay? Let’s say I love you and book the tickets and quit the jobs and kiss in public with the urgency that only the recently deceased can give us. We can’t afford not to.

The most important words I'll ever write

My words lately have been lists: rows and columns of commodities, sundries, tasks like haircuts and ‘sweep the rug’ that feel so sanitized.

But maybe in all the spaces between action: sweep, chop, shop, make, do: I’m making a map of how you can find me after all the things I have to do are done.

Weddings and birthdays and funerals are doors, ushering us back to ‘When did I see you last?’ and ‘when will I see you again?’ I pause the doing to attend. It reminds us of who we were when we met and it breaks our collective hearts to think of who we will be and won’t be when we meet again, one million groceries bought between your 25th birthday and when you get married, 40 haircuts between your mother’s funeral and the birth of your child.

And if life is just walking each other home and saying I love you before falling asleep, then making the map of lists: rows and columns of groceries, plant the garden, stare out the window: are the most important words I’ll ever write.

“We are what we are, you are what you are, love us if you can.”

— Mary Oliver

JOFO: The Joy Of Freaking Out

One of my greatest accomplishments will eventually be paying attention to the right things, sooner.

Let me explain.

As I continue to prioritize making friends/peace with the parts of myself that aren’t easily loved or celebrated, the more I’m available to love and accept others that have the same parts.

And the more I make peace/friends with these shadows, the less people activate chaos in me.

This frees up so much space for fun, love, joy, creativity, health, because I’m busy feeling abundance and love instead of getting stuck on bitterness, frustration, envy, and anger.

That doesn’t mean I don’t feel bitterness, frustration, envy, and anger. It’s actually the opposite. I welcome them to be an active part of my life.

It’s how I know the value of the JOFO. 

Enter: The joy of freaking out

We don’t value freaking out. We avoid it at all costs, including other emotions that add to blowing up in a freak out. It’s unpleasant. It’s socially not acceptable. It’s embarrassing.

I am very good at freaking out. I may be an expert? Thinking about this while watching my tiny kid freak out, I wondered, “What if I just embrace this instead of trying to stop it?”

The last time he freaked out, I asked him, “Do you want to be mad or do you wan to talk?” And that’s when it occurred to me that maybe this is a feeling he needs to get out of his body. And if we don’t sit with it and let it out, it’ll never go away.

And if that’s true for my 4 year old, is it true for me?

So here’s a thing I’ve been trying to integrate: instead of denying myself all parts of me, I am now thinking of freaking out as a very wise tool to use, wisely.
Think: Steam valve. With rules.

1. Don’t hurt others. Just like opening popcorn, keep your freak out of the faces of loved ones. 

2. Don’t live there. Freaking can turn into a lifestyle, which will turn you into a bitter bebe. Move on when the steam is finished.

3. Let the freak really get out. I don’t have scientific proof, but not letting yourself feel a full freak out has to be hurting your mental and physical body. 

Maybe it can be fun? Maybe it can at least feel good? At the very least, it could set you free.

People ask me allll the time about living in Ohio now. “How are you, really? How can you live in such a dark place after having so many sunny days?”

But I guess since I’ve made friends with the clouds, the sun always, eventually, seems to find me. 

And I really hope that for you, too. One controlled freak out at a time.

The Hard Part of Listening to Yourself (In A Sea of Bad Advice)

There is ubiquitous advice on how to correct our chronic overworking, overdoing, overexerting lives and it’s making us all sick. There is definitely truth in this.

But last year, I attempted to apply this to my life and ended up getting really confused. I was feeling lost and unmotivated, so I did less. I canceled things. I prioritized rest. And I ended up making everything worse. 

A few months ago, my friend Eve pulled my Human Design chart and I’ll never be the same. For almost 40 years, I thought I was an introvert. Vehemently thought being a homebody was who I was. What my chart parsed for me is pretty opposite. And when I decided to own that people fuel me, my life completely shifted. Everything was illuminated. Instead of meeting new people with judgment and caution, I met strangers with baseline neutrality and universal connection. I learned that people and community, the things I thought I needed to limit, are the very things that I need more of.

The biggest takeaway is that I’m a unique being. We all are. And because we are all wildly different, we need wildly different solutions. A curated look at who we are instead of using generic terms to describe us, and tell a story about who we are that can be completely outdated and limiting.

I get it: everything is expensive. We’ve got limited time and resources, so we outsource our mental health to TikTok and Instagram, our news to Twitter or whatever it’s called now, and our casserole recipes from Facebook (this is actually fine). This is a problem, because we aren’t getting good advice for our unique selves. We can’t just apply someone else’s solutions to ours. When we decide to give ownership of our problems to third parties and Instagram quotes, we’ll get very generic results. Sometimes damaging ones.

Instead of solving problems we think we have, we actually have to learn to listen to ourselves.

Listening to ourselves is an enormous undertaking. And when we are really squeezed for time, we want someone else to tell us what’s wrong. That’s the problem with applying a panacea to our life: one sized fits all rarely exists.

I actually don’t need more rest: I need more meaningful work. I discovered that there are times I can work a 15 hour day and feel incredibly rejuvenated and other types of work drain me in minutes. It’s a generalization, but those 15 hour days don’t need as much rest as those minutes of draining work where I’m not doing what I’m good at or interested in.

I have zero answers. No one does. Because no one will ever know exactly what you need. That is your job. It’s hard. And confusing. But there are tools to help.

The baby step I’m making in listening to myself is following my guts. My Human Design led me to realizing I feel a lot of things in my stomach. I have always had this ability, but because I didn’t understand it, I treated it as a problem to be cured. Now, I’m treating it as my greatest barometer. I started tracking different sensations in my gut. It’s inextricably linked to my emotions and how I view the world. Instead of a food journal, I started a gut journal.

This is an invitation to get curious about your life. Try on a solution and see how it fits. Throw it away if it doesn’t work. Make time to really listen, and find your own ears and use them. Be honest with yourself about what you need and be brave enough to rethink who you’ve told yourself you are. Maybe you’re not the same person now.

Our bodies are trying to tell us all the information we need. We just need to give it the space and time that it deserves.

I am a Pile of Laundry

I snapped this uneven, messy photo of a typical morning at the Pickle Jar.

There are many constants in this photo: dusty light fixtures, the pile up of dishes and recycling, a half eaten bag of Doritos from the night before, a water pump and hose that belong in the shed, a ceiling fan waiting to be returned but currently taking up precious real estate that is the dining room table. The top of the fridge is full of clutter. The fridge itself is nearly full of leftovers way past their prime, and the front can’t hold any more magnets or Penn art. There is no order. Tidyness does not live here. Even in the realm of unremarkable, this is exceptionally so. And if you could hear this photo, it’s loud to the tune of “Down By The Bay” sung by these two PYs at 6:30am on a Friday morning. I picked out the melody from the piano, where I turned and took this photo.

I had a long, distinctly beautiful chunk of my life that was dedicated to taking photos of mountain vistas and alpine lake views with captions like “lake life” and “another day at the office,” verbose and particularly blind to the fact that I was building most of my online persona around a singular location, one that I was proud of and that made me feel accomplished. We all applaud this kind of breathtaking content. A messy kitchen? Not really.

But the reason I took this photo isn’t because I thought you’d like it. It was because it was one of those moments in your life that makes you want to pause. This photo is for me. It belongs to me. Hold on, I need to hear that little 4 year old voice just for one minute more. I need that tiny dinosaur robe in the frame. I need to remember that dad making lunches everyday in his t-ball coach shirt.

I read this interview today and I couldn’t help but hang on to this idea. “It's kind of like when people say, "Oh, this traffic is so bad." I'm like, "You are traffic." You can't sit there and be like, "Oh man, the traffic was horrible. I'm sorry, I was late." You are traffic. You're in it. Without you, there would be no traffic.”

I hate a pile of laundry. I hate a messy kitchen. But I am that messy kitchen. I am that pile of laundry. I’ll probably get around to dusting and the recycling will eventually get hauled away. I will probably fold that laundry or just dry it again. Who cares. I have a theory that resisting the fact that we are all messy kitchens leads to us feeling this really boring guilt of not having Insta-worthy houses, not having a life we think should look like this instead of embracing the dust and seeing ourselves and our families as interesting, dynamic, messy human beans.

The more and more I begin to settle into a life increasingly offline, moments like these become way more important than capturing that tidy, dramatic vista in frame. I’m finally able to see my life, and what I define as success, through my own eyes instead of someone else’s. I am a messy, dusty kitchen in Ohio. I’m so thankful that I’m a messy kitchen in Ohio. That I get to be in this specific kitchen. That I get a kitchen at all. This kitchen, my kitchen, full of these specific lunatics. Without us, there would be no kitchen.

The Farmhouse

We talk a lot about birds.

As someone who has spent the better part of a decade out west, I only really felt confident identifying two birds: stellar jays and mountain chickadees. They were loud and always squawking about “seed-burgers.” But even at the end of February when I landed at the farm, I couldn’t believe the amount and variety of birds that stop by here daily.

Cardinals. Nuthatches. Blue Jays. Starlings. Blue birds. Cow birds. Red-winged Blackbirds. Morning Doves. Tufted Titmouses. Chickadees. Robins. And last week, I saw my first Baltimore Oriole (the bird, not the baseball player).

But that’s what the farm has always been: it’s warm and there’s food. The birds have a heated birdbath. My uncles and cousins sit at the kitchen table, talking and watching for birds. I’ve learned so much about my family and about birds in just three short months.

The most unusual but comforting parts have been the idle times. The jigsaw puzzles on the dining room table. The books and crosswords we finish sitting next to each other in silence in the evening when the sunset pours through the west windows. The morning hours before anyone else is awake: where it’s so quiet I can actually hear my own thoughts. I think about how many people have lived here before me, since the 1890s, and about all the unsaid things that quiet brings to the surface.

What is it about family that brings us together and points at all the things that are so unbelievably warm and are also so cold and distant? Where do you ask questions and when do you just keep reading? How do you keep from falling into old familial patterns while also loving and honoring your ancestors?

As someone that has never really been able to feel completely at home, I think the farm is as close as I’ll ever get. I’m in awe at the depth of our roots, how I can’t go very far without running into a cousin, an uncle, a distant relative. And as we arrive at closing date on our own sweet little farmhouse 10 minutes up the road, there’s a lot we want to work on eventually, but I think the first order of business is to get a bird feeder. To remind us that home can be as simple as food and warmth. And the rest may very well take a life time or more to unravel, understand, and appreciate.

Depressed: A Working Document

The standard working document for sad feelings is a romantic comedy: a white women in her mid 30s breaking up with her boyfriend and therefore ordering takeout, having disheveled hair, and living in sweatpants. She can’t stop crying. She doesn’t shower or leave her house. Her quirky best friend tells her it’s gonna be okay through a keyhole. Her plants wilt. But the guy shows up and the sadness board is erased. It goes to zero. Her problem is solved.

I was conditioned to believe that sadness can be cured with silly dances and bike rides and a man that you like. That it had some silver lining, a beginning, a middle, and an end.

My Depression shows up unannounced on sunny days when everything should be fine.

I talk myself out of saying I’m depressed, a lot. I don’t have time to sit with this like they tell me to. “Just invite the feelings in” like it hasn’t already sat squarely in my stomach three weeks ago.

It’s always there but there are things to do.

I talk myself out of quantifying it. I can get up and do the dishes. But it feels like I’m walking through really thick sand. I’m swimming against a current. The wind is never to my back. Everything is so hard.

I don’t tell anyone. It’s a secret. But in a rare act of bravery, I say something out loud.
”I think I’m lowkey depressed?”

“Really? I had no idea! I’m so sorry! Do you need anything?”

Depressed feels heavy-handed but it also feels like a luxury using that word. It’s dwarfed by having no idea how to answer “do you need anything?” I sink into myself, shocked I have any more real estate to collapse into.

No one likes problems that don’t have a fix. Depression has a very short shelf life. It needs a purpose. It needs cause and effect. It needs a solid story arc. I consult what Mercury and the moon are up to. It has to be something else, instead of just me, something I have done, or something I haven’t been able to do. I crave something to externally pin it to.

I’m not sure where I internalized that my depression needs editorial acclaim. I must be interesting, even in my suffering. This needs a good back story with an equally satisfying bow at the end, all of the sad pieces sandwiches between clever quips and self-deprication. My disheveled hair, on trend. My withered plants, ironic. My sweatpants, designer. My mascara smudges, edgy. Even in my darkness, I have to still be worthy.

Saying it out loud is not sexy. I fear it’s too much. It comes with also showing up messy and leaning into the exhaustion. What if I just didn’t get up to do the dishes? What if I took the day off? Would I disintegrate or would I be able to crawl out of the basement of my brain?

I’m too scared to find out. I do all the things asked of me and collapse after bedtime in a withered lump. There is nothing I want to do. So I just kind of do nothing. I know, by habit, it passes eventually. Sometimes it takes days, other times it takes weeks. Sometimes in those time frames, things feel a bit better for a day, only to retreat back to a heavy, dark space. I just kind of slump through the minutiae try not to hate myself for being so sad.

It doesn’t ever feel therapeutic or satisfying. It’s just waiting in this weird Beetlejuice waiting room for it all to pass, hoping this time I finally felt it all, I did the work, I let it in and talked about it. And if I did the work this time, maybe I never have to do it again, until inevitably, it comes back again, creeps into a really solid Tuesday when I’m making toast, spaces get filled with a dullness, so slowly I don’t know I’m in it until I’m already under.

There is hope, I know this.

I know, I have learned, that you can hold two things at once:
You can notice that you are not yourself.

And also.

You can believe that yourself always comes back.

We Are Fine

I touched down in Detroit exactly one week until Lindsay got married. I was (mostly) full of sheer hype to get to spend loads of time with her, but the rest of my brain was consumed with being home for two weeks. This part of the world has the ability to grow my heart eight sizes too big or absolutely crush me with grief. I was steadying myself to be open to whatever came my way.

We were fortunate enough to stay on the family farm with my 93 year old grandmother in the house she was born in. A giant farmhouse had plenty of room for us and I was emotional seeing Penn run until ragged, feeding the fish with my Uncle Nick, making waffles with my dad, and delivering the paper from the end of the quarter mile lane (via golf cart!) to my grandmother’s lap on Thursdays. It felt like maybe, this time, this visit would be different. Maybe it would illuminate the pieces of our life that seemed out of place, give us clarity, help us understand our nomad life and why we’re starting to feel tired of moving around so much.

But first, I had to get my best friend married.

I met Lindsay in Mrs. Wright’s class in 5th grade. I had just moved from Toledo to Bedford and knew no one. Lindsay was wearing this fire Tiny Toons jersey shirt and I immediately thought she was the coolest person, something that hasn’t changed in the nearly 30 years I’ve known her.

It’s not crazy to know someone that long, but now 38, I realize the absolute brilliance and luck that has to happen to continue to know and love someone for that long. Lindsay has been there for everything in my life: the tiny subtle moments where we passed notes in high school, partied in our separate college towns, bopped around Target a million times, to the big ones when my mom died in junior year, my jubilee (wedding), the birth of my son. To know someone that long and to love them that long is a gift: it’s rare and dizzying in the best of ways.

The wedding week was filled with who Jack and Lindsay love and who love them: a beautiful group of some of the most interesting, kind, smart, talented people I’ve ever met. I blubbered like a babe when they exchanged vows, completely overwhelmed and eclipsed by the life they had built.

Witnessing Lindsay and Jack’s life in this frame amplified the feeling of belonging that I’ve been searching for and failing to find for so long. It gave us a lot to talk about and contemplate as we try and figure out what makes sense to our family. The idea of place and community seems so easy for them. I can’t help but wish that for us, too. There is so much appeal to staying and figuring it out: the mess, the unwinding, marveling at what can grow when you decide to nurture a life in just one place.

Their first dance song happened to be the soundtrack to a very cheesy video compilation of us surprising our favorites almost 7 years ago, a love song to where we are from, where we always feel pulled back to, sometimes against our will. It felt like the universe giving us permission to live whatever kind of life we want, even if it lands us right back where we started.

I blabbed a love letter to Lindsay for her wedding gift like we always do, a smushed-up, slightly more sophisticated version of our notes in middle school and high school, lamenting on the notion that some people feel like home more than a house or a place, and I’m so happy she found Jack as her home. But what I didn’t say is that Lindsay has always felt like home to me, maybe more than a place ever will. And for that, I’m beyond grateful to just know her.

Since 5th grade.

Part Wolf

I may rely too much on the planets and the universe to explain the absolute chaos inside of me, or maybe that’s all I have.

Either way, this week has been turbulent. As if someone took my brain out and shook it and threw it back in, everything feels really off.
I’ve buried myself in work to avoid these unpleasant feelings, but I may have gone too far today.

After spending 7 hours in front of the computer with no breaks, I threw on some shoes and just started driving. My mind thought junk food, but then I envisioned my acupuncturist looking at me with the disappointing mom look when reviewing my food journal and that scares me, so I headed to the health food store. Chocolate bar, veggie fried rice, and coconut water in hand, I went to check out and met Lindsey.

An innocuous question of “How’s your day been?” led me to talk about the weather.
”It’s summer!”
”Yeah we didn’t get a spring!”
”Ugh right? This May should’ve been March!”
Lindsey paused and looked at me thoughtfully. It doesn’t feel like that happens often.
”You know, the weather is just getting more uncomfortable, isn’t it?”
We talked like old friends and she took her time, even as another person had joined the line behind me.

I took my rice to the airport and watched planes take off. They climb so abruptly to get over the mountain range and there is a moment before they disappear behind the mountains that feels scary, risky, uncertain. I find myself holding my breath, staring them each down until I’m certain they are safely in the sky.

Sometimes I think that’s all I’m doing in this season of my life: holding my breath until I can identify a safe place to land. And sometimes I feel like I’ve been holding my breath for years, grieving the life I used to thrive in, revisiting the spaces that used to give me a firm sense of home, understanding, that now feel so foreign, it’s hard to remember what it used to feel like to belong.

Maybe it’s the universe, maybe it’s the ongoing pandemic, maybe it’s my constant toxic trait of always feeling misunderstood and like I’m the only person in the world that feels this deeply, thinks this much, pays attention. Maybe it’s not enough art and too much reality TV. Maybe it’s not enough vitamin D or yoga or friends chatting idly on my couch. Maybe it’s everything.

Back to Lindsey. Before I left the market, she said,
”I’m a doula so I deal with women giving birth! And we talk all the time about life in centimeters. 8-10. We have to get to 8-10 but it’s uncomfortable to wait to get there, and it’s uncomfortable when we are there. And isn’t that like being human?”

I teared up. She looked at me and smiled. I waved goodbye and walked to my car and thought about the uncomfortable space it takes to bring life into the world, the weight of waiting for it to get here and the pain of it being in progress. I think about how absolutely heartbreakingly beautiful it is to be a mom and how absolutely heartbreaking it is to be a mom: the moments I never want to end and the moments I can’t wait to be done with forever. This holding on and letting go over and over again.

And I don’t know what else to do but hold my breath and watch the planes make it over the mountain.