Rewritten Road

I have a terrible habit of not doing something until absolutely necessary. Getting gas when I’m already running late is one of them. This morning, as I’m closing my gas lid, a man beside me says “I think we can all hear your music now. It’s too loud.” I turned the music down, smiled and…

There are countless books that promise to teach you how to trust the universe. They’ll tell you to surrender.Manifest.Raise your vibration. …believe everything is happening for you… But I don’t think that’s how trust begins. I think trust is born the day your life falls apart and despite every instinct telling you to give up,…

Do you think the lightning bugs hum their condolences?  Or their congratulations? I wonder that sometimes when the world feels impossibly quiet. I often wonder what the day will look like when it stops engulfing me.  Will the clouds part the day the nightmares finally stop?  Or will they grow darker, as if the sky doesn’t notice that…

For someone who wakes up at the ass crack of dawn to hike mountains, it feels ridiculous to admit that a bug bite is what finally took me down. Not a cliff. Not a bear. Not 12 miles of rocky trail. A friggin’ bug bite. I barely even noticed it at first. Just another summer…

For years, I thought happiness lived somewhere on the other side of perfection. Part of that probably started with Martha Stewart. I grew up watching someone who seemed to have mastered life. The beautiful home. The perfect table settings. The organized spaces. The gardens. The recipes. Everything looked intentional and effortless. Somewhere between her shows…

My son invited me bouldering today. That sentence sounds simple enough. A few hours at a climbing gym.Some sore forearms.A lot of laughter.A new appreciation for muscles I forgot existed. But the truth is, I don’t think today was really about climbing. A few years ago, I wasn’t sure what our future would look like.…

When I moved to New England, I was taking a chance on a city and state I’ve never been to and I’m not sure what the expectations were but I definitely thought making friends would be easier than healing. I was wrong. Healing at least came with instructions. Therapy. Boundaries. Long walks. Books. Learning how…

There is not enough conversation around the creative crisis that happens when you finally find yourself happy. Er – not happy exactly. Safe. Stable. No longer fighting for your life in invisible ways. A few years ago, I could write constantly. Pages and pages.Essays.Poetry.Entire emotional autopsies at two in the morning. Now, I often find…

There is something deeply unwell about voluntarily leaving your house at 3:45 in the morning to go hike fourteen miles alone in the mountains. And yet. Lately these drives have started feeling sacred to me. The roads are empty. The world is quiet. Nobody needs anything from me yet. It’s just a smoothie, headlights, playlists…

There is a moment when hiking where you realize you’ve been going the wrong way. There usually isn’t a sign or a sudden drop-off, it’s just this brief moment you feel in your chest. Then the trees start to look unfamiliar or the light shifts. But your body understands before your mind does. So you…