No one knows the thread connecting one word to another is the steam from your grandmother’s chicken and dumplings, straight from her cast-iron Dutch oven onto the trivet you painted in the third grade; meant to look like a tiger, but slightly resembling an orange lemur with too long a nose. The paragraphs are held together by that translucent, gray thread- ephemeral and wispy.

No one knows the prick of a finger taught you that there was no such thing as tiny pain- that pain was pain all over, and it was unfortunately, something you would learn over and over again and in new and different ways. When you watched others you loved suffer, and you somehow felt it in your own body. The reverberation of a voo-doo alarm, a pin in the cotton stitching, an ache in your own side. Wounds are felt twice when humans bear witness. Wounds are twice as wide and twice as likely to heal, too.

No one knows the cadence of your exposition was to the rhythm of the first 16 measures of Bach’s Concerto in D Minor- passionate, staccato, unpredictable. No one knows you were as unsure as the coda- of where to take the plot next. Until, all of a sudden, you were. And it played itself. Like it was always going to. Because it was.

“Aren’t you worried?

Aren’t you worried AI will take over your job?

Your art?

Aren’t you worried writers will become obsolete?”

I cannot answer all of the other questions; like how data centers are killing Mother Earth one root at a time. Or how hundreds of beautifully crafted sentences were stolen and regurgitated to draw a neat bow at the end of every declarative sentence. That “we” have ironed out the “formula” to effective writing, and it is always a question sandwiched by a declarative. What it is not. What it could be? What it is.

What I can tell you is this:

Not a single large language model has ever made me phantomly catch the scent of mirepoix on the stove in the middle of February- when it was the middle of June, and the passage I was reading wasn’t even about food. There is nothing that such unnamed platforms have pumped out that has made me feel pain in a limb that was whole. Because there is nothing to discover. There is no secret. No scandal. No lost love. No myth. No betrayal. No redemption. There is no death- and if there is no death, well, we already know it was never alive to begin with.

And who wants to read something that was never alive? Something that was alive once, and now dead? Well, that is something.

But never alive at all?

No, no.

I am worried about everything.

About how my insurance went up hundreds of dollars a month and our American healthcare system doesn’t seem to think that teeth are connected to one’s body. I am worried about the ever-growing rot in my side porch that has now provided shelter for an entire neighborhood of chipmunks who sound like they are bowling in my rafters will grow to a Dr. Strange-sized portal in my living room. I am worried about the thousands of millennials dying from colon cancer and that there are LBGTQIA+ children still afraid to tell their parents who they are and that the earth might be so hot by the time my children have children that they will never know the cool waters of a deep lake in the middle of an August day.

But I am not worried that anything will replace the art of reaching a finger through a page across continents and centuries to hold another, human, heart.

We belong to each other, after all.

One of the best ways I know to ensure we never forget that is to support the ones showing up to do the work. Buy a theater ticket. Order the print. Download the EP on Spotify. Pick up the roadside floral bouquet. Pay your neighbor to bake the sourdough. Pre-order the book.

Subscribe to one of the millions here who show up every week to reach out a hand with a human heart attached. Make someone’s day and subscribe (paid subscriptions are always welcome.) Make someone’s life and connect them with your agent.

As long as we continue to connect our words with our hearts and extend them- as long as we stay curious about the grief and the joy and the pain and the satisfaction-

As long as we stay alive.

I’m not worried a bit.

Grief smells like cinnamon in my coffee; the grit and the sweetness clinging to the sides like a toddler with floaties in the deep end. I took myself to breakfast this morning in an attempt to hold the floating pieces of my body to one table, anchored solely by an 18.00 piece of avocado toast.

It is still shocking every time I hear a woman sob into a cup and exclaim, “I’m not sure why I’m so sad.”

I began checking my work email at 5:12 am when I went to the bathroom, checking our socials accounts, making note of re-shares and collaborations to address when the clock hours officially begin. I checked my second and third work email to close some doors- a freelance project gone rogue and all of the feelings that accompany the deep dread of something not turning out how you hoped, and a deep relief that maybe juggling 4 inboxes isn’t a realistic expectation.

I’ve made breakfasts, wiped tears, checked in about early dismissals for orthodontist appointments, realigned meeting schedules, and thrown some unidentifiable frozen meat on the counter that by some magic will turn into dinner by 6 pm. I’ve made phone calls, ran dishwashers, driven through school drop-offs, texted a friend. It’s 8:16 am.

May came in like violet royalty and out like a bruise. My brain is a browser full of open tabs, left so long they’re littered with pop-ups of things I am no longer interested in entertaining. I have been righteously indignant that we (women) shouldn’t have to choose. We shouldn’t have to choose between being mothers and professionals and creatives and our health and our wealth and our families. We shouldn’t have to choose.

What I believe now, after weeks of witnessing bruising fade to greens and reds and yellows- is that while that may still hold true, the attributed budget for each has been too high.

I tell my daughters that their days are pie charts, with 100%. If they give 30% to school work and 40% to friends, there is only 30% remaining. But I have had my own system, using my pie chart like a Venn diagram- if only I could have overlapping circles, perhaps I could cheat the system.

I have only cheated them and myself.

Have you noticed the category missing from my chart? And by example and default, their charts?

Ourselves.

May has ended, and June has come in quietly with its pink peonies and sunsets and ice pop dribbles. I am hobbling gently into the heat and sunshine, holding my own hands, pink and tender.

We do not have to pick a lane.

But we do have to adjust what we give to each.

May June hold space for you to sit in your own tenderness, and then brave the culling. May you place your own self in the center of your circle and not be afraid when things begin to feel not as they ought. It will take some adjusting to this living as you matter.

I have hungrily absorbed Roscoe Hall and Sean Dietrich’s (Sean of the South, as he is more well known) content for over a year now. I am not generally taken by male creatives, in truth. But these men- who write novels and play the fiddle and cook for Food and Wine and create moving art and commit to keeping musical, culinary, and literary history just as wholeheartedly as providing a heartfelt, Costco deep dive- I cannot stop thinking about.

In my career, brand messaging strategies have been brandished on my calloused fingertips, on the insides of my eyelids- not least of which is brand identity. Identity is singular. This is who you are. This is what you do.

Meaning, pick a lane. Get really good at staying in it. Then, tell people about it.

I have become a master of helping others pick a lane- and staying in it. I would be so bold as to say I can do it for pretty much anyone.

Anyone but myself.

The Cost of a Color

In this series, February, red, was desire, story, and the hunger for a deeper meaning: the part of me that had been silenced and found. Blue, April, was the in-between: the softening, the exhausted women, and the question of whether choosing smaller is a choice at all.

This series, in and of itself, names the very thing I have wrestled with my entire life: choose a color. Stay within it. My body still walks within the walls of the binary: black and white, good and evil, practical or impractical, safe or dangerous. Perhaps living in color has never meant living in only one at a time.

Violent Violet

*Disclaimer: there are, in certain instances, true binary stances. Human rights, dignity, and belonging fall under them. The protection of all people from harm, the care and keeping of all humans from poverty, despair, violence, abuse, war, starvation, separation from families, and fear. These should never be violet stances, nor are they mine.

In a country literally and figuratively organized entirely around red and blue-violet people are inconvenient. The internet doesn’t know what to do with us. The comment section requires an eviction notice catch phrase. The algorithm rewards bold clarity of position and punishes the person who keeps saying and also. They need to be able to buy what you’re selling, metaphorically speaking (sometimes).

We’ve been conditioned to distrust complexity, to read nuance as weakness, to demand that a person be one thing so we know whether to trust them. We can no longer have meaningful dialogue, entertain curiosity, or temper our feelings.

The world that raised me in black and white is doing the same thing the algorithm does now: sorting us into a color. Tying to keep us there. But there are more than a few not willing

The Violet People

But then, there are creators like the ones mentioned above who move differently, and without apology. The creatives I most admire never picked a lane. Roscoe Hall, Sean Dietrich, Suleika Jaouad and her husband John Batiste, Rita Moreno (and most EGOT winners, probably) remain exactly who they are in the given moment they are in and the room adjusts around them.

They all kept making the thing they were making in their own register, at their own temperature, until the world caught up.

This isn’t weakness. Irresponsibility. Lack of direction or clarity.

It’s the integration of blue and red.

Violet.

Living in the binary for a multi-hyphenate person feels divisive at its core. My all-or-nothing wiring regardless of where it came from, has forced me to separate out pieces of myself like a Picasso for so long I feel as though they might float away altogether.

I am the woman who is deeply passionate and longs for the deepest quiet. I am in equal parts the life of the party and the wallflower. I am the rebel and the rule follower- the inner and the outer. I have wanted a beautiful, quiet, and slow life- and I have wanted one full of packed theaters and stages. I have desired intimate classrooms and packed auditoriums and book signings; dinner parties, and dinners for one.

I have routinely, like a truffle hound, tried to sniff out a middle ground. An acceptable path I could live with as an identity. A brand I could commit to. A lane, for God’s sake.

But the moderate path is beige- the color that happens when all the other colors give up on themselves. Violet is what happens when they stop being afraid of each other. When passion doesn’t need calm to legitimize it, and calm doesn’t need passion to prove it’s alive.

Violet is what happens when you stop choosing a lane and you start choosing yourself.

What would that look like for you?

Living in Color is a monthly series. February was red. April was blue. Violet is what happens next.

There is a particular shade of blue that belongs to April.

Not the bold, declarative blue of summer sky or the deep navy of old money, champagne flutes on yachts and cardigans around shoulders. April blue is softer than that. It’s the robin’s egg blue, broken by the fox who lives behind the creek. The blue of early morning water, twinkling with glitter with something just beneath the surface, of a lake that hasn’t decided yet whether it’s cold or warm. It is the blue of in between.

I live in this blue now. I have for a while.

The women are shrinking.

Not metaphorically ,though also, yes. Literally, physically, measurably shrinking. The before and after photos flood my feed like a tide that only moves in one direction. Everyone’s teeth seem to have gotten bigger. Everything else? Smaller. Less. Better.

The buzz around them is always the language of elimination: lose, reduce, control.

It is too familiar.

I say this carefully, observationally, with no judgment. Bodies are complicated. Hunger is complicated. Aging is complicated. The relationship between a woman and her own body is so layered with history and the specific cruelty of being scrutinized that no one, not even the most astute and articulate of authors, could pen an appropriate, encompassing take.

It is the timing that hangs me up. We are simultaneously telling women to take up less physical space and professional space.

The rub?

We are calling the mass exodus- the watershed of pounds and opinions- wellness.

The workplace numbers are stark. Women are leaving. Some have been pushed out, laid off, and let go. Some are choosing, and the choosing is real and valid; happening inside a system that made the other options untenable: like paying more for childcare than juggling two mortgages.

Trad wife content is not a fringe aesthetic; it is an algorithm-optimized lifestyle brand, and the comments are full of women who are tired. Who has gone days- sometimes weeks- without anyone asking them what they might like for lunch. Who throws loads of laundry in and rocks a sick baby on her lunch break between Zoom meetings. Who wants to make something beautiful with her hands and not be (quietly, off-screen) asked to justify it with productivity metrics and revenue stats.

I feel that tiredness in my body like a current.

I grew up in a few high-control, religious environments.

If this was also your story, you know the particular shape of the container you were handed. It was blue, too. Blue like compliance. Like the held breath before you say the thing you’re not supposed to say. You were told who you were before you had a chance to find out. You were given the ending of the story and told to grow toward it.

Good wife. Good mother. Quiet heart. Small needs.

I left, and then I didn’t leave, and then I left again in pieces; which is how most of us leave anything, really. Not all at once, but in the slow renegotiation of what we actually believe versus what we were told to believe versus what we genuinely want, which is the hardest layer to reach because someone else named our wants before we could.

Here is what I wanted, underneath all of it:

A slower life. A creative life. Color.

Not the absence of love or family or faith, but a life where wanting them was a choice I made with my whole self, not a script I inherited.

The tension is that I still want to be a good wife. A good mother. It is not performance, and it is not conditioning (or it is both, and I have made peace with not being able to fully separate them). I want to make a beautiful home and feed people well, and be present in a way I wasn’t always allowed to be present in my own life.

What I don’t want is to disappear into it.

The shrinking is a choice and it is not a choice.

That is the most honest thing I can say about it. About the prairie dresses and the big white teeth and sunken eyes. About the women leaving boardrooms and the ones who stayed in religions that named them before they could name themselves. Some of it is chosen. Some of it is economic. All of it is political.

Some of it is the water finding the lowest point; not because it wants to be low, but because that is what water does when the landscape doesn’t leave it anywhere else to go.

I am trying to learn the difference between flowing and disappearing.

Between softening and shrinking.

Between choosing a slower life and being asked to make myself smaller, and calling it peace.

What do I do now? Now that I am old enough to ask honestly, and young enough to do something about it?

Living in Color is a monthly series. March was green. May will come.

If this landed somewhere with you, share it with someone who is also figuring out the difference between floating in the current and disappearing.

“If we returned to loving the land, waters, and all beings that live and breathe around us, we might learn how to love our human relatives again.”

-Kaitlin Curtice

I learned to swim in the shallows of Lake Winnipesaukee, the minnows biting my toenails in the yellow-green. The strip of beach in the vacation community/campsite I grew up in held every one of my secrets in its grains of sand. The cookies I stole off the counter. Later, the cigarette butts I’d hide behind the swings. My sobs in the dark. My quiet triumphs.

My mother had hoped I would learn in the shallow end of the town pool at home, where she brought me for lessons in the chill of the morning. The lifeguards all looked like Winnie the Pooh with sweatshirts over their bathing suits, hot coffee sloshing about in to-go cups. I clung to the railing on the steps, lips blue and defiantly sealed. This is not how I do it, I already knew. Not in this chlorine-scented, man-made pond.

I needed something wild.

I learned to swim on the lake shore, my fingernails slick with grit and algae. I learned to only use my arms until I was far enough out where the water turned from chartreuse to navy- too many of us had broken toes kicking hidden boulders beneath the choppy wake.

I learned to watch for how the water ripples when a water moccasin swims too close. How to tell the difference between a male and female loon call. I learned how the water felt naked, under the moonlight- only black beneath and above me. I learned how to allow my shoulders to drop from my earlobes, to fill my lungs with air, to float under the stars.

I have never been an athlete. I prefer to sleep indoors. But I am a daughter of the wild, of the water- through and through.

I have been swimming in the man-made, chlorinated pond for much too long. Everything pings and buzzes and vibrates and startles.

I think it might be time to return to the wild.

“There is a power that has been since all eternity, and that force and potentiality is green!”

- Hildegard of Bingen

Green is a color rife with promise. In cultures across continents, it symbolizes renewal, wealth, fertility, and health. March is my birth month, and I have always loved its cyclical return of life. Crocuses pushing through hardened earth. The reminder of “not yet, but just wait.” The ground is pulsing. Light and warmth are coming.

When I mapped out the colors for the year in December, I had high expectations for March. I had secretly believed it would be my very own return to life. That after three whole months investing in my own healing, awareness, wanting, and wellness, I would begin to peel painful scales like Eustace and return from dragon to human again. To the piano. To the kitchen. To the page. I chose green for March because I thought it would bring life back to me.

Instead, I found myself deeply unwell.

After a first-time mother returns home with a mewling, ancient soul trapped in a baby’s body and she has a moment alone with a long-time friend, she almost always gestures wildly to the peri-bottles and the nursing pads and the underwear-sized ice packs and exclaims,

“Why doesn’t anyone tell you this?”

That your body will feel like a melting popsicle in the heat of July, unable to stay on its stick- dripping from too many places to count. That you will, indeed (perhaps) experience a kind of love that will double you over in agony and simultaneously give you buyer’s remorse. That you would actually give anything for a cigarette (you don’t smoke) and a beer (you hate beer) because even though you never really wanted either of those things before, the time for wanting those things is over, at least for a time, and you hate the idea of not getting to choose anymore.

I wish I could grab the shoulders of my young mother self and tell her to hold on. While she survived the loss of three babies, 2 high-risk pregnancies resulting in inductions at 35 weeks due to eclampsia, pre-eclampsia, and HELLP syndrome, her hormones were not through fucking with her.

Enter: perimenopause.

Irony of ironies, in the season I had chosen to really listen to my own body and respond accordingly, she decides to go entirely off the rails. This month has been sandwiched by insomnia, anxiety attacks, migraines, chest pains, and exhaustion.

The color of life arrived just as my body felt least alive.

It feels like a betrayal- this shocking fragility in midlife. Especially after all the work I’ve put in to actually remember I HAVE a body in the first place.

I won’t shame my own vessel by saying it is failing me ( as much as I would like to). But this pattern is not entirely new to me, either. I know from lived experience that the longer I neglect, ignore, and belittle my own needs- the louder and stronger they become. This often means physical illness, mental unwellness, and a week of PTO to grab back the reins and begin again. There are only two things that pull me through every time. Humanity and the Humanities.

Humanity means:

• vulnerability with others

• connection even when I don’t want to

• accepting help and offers of care

The Humanities mean:

• Re-connecting to The Story through others’ stories and my own, via music, literature, philosophy, theater, and the arts that help interpret and nourish suffering. (I wrote about what I mean by The Story a few weeks ago, here.)

My favorite stories I return to:

• Kate DiCamillo’s “The Magician’s Elephant”

• Anita Diamante’s “The Red Tent”

• Kelly Barnhill’s “The Ogress and the Orphans”

• Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Book of Longings”

(You can grab these books and others (and support local bookstores and me a little at the same time!) here.)

Green, Reconsidered

Reluctantly, I have been forced to reinterpret my hope for the color green and accept the following:

Green has never only signified abundance.

Green is also:

• unripe

• tender

• new growth vulnerable to breakage, in need of protection

It begs the question: What if green is not strength itself, but the potential just before ( I wrote about my interesting relationship with potential here) ?

Isn’t that what I’ve loved about March all along?

Having a body is not the same as living in it.

Even though I have been unwell, something is changing. I am ear to the ground of the rumbling in my own earth. I can hear the crocus before they break through. The scurrying, sleepy waking of mouse dens. Only in recent decades has midlife been the time when women collapse under the weight of the invisible labor no one sees, and the visible labor society is perfectly happy to let them shoulder alone. Rest, care, and community have always been basic needs. It’s the through line in every story- lived, and on the page.

Green is indeed not the color of having arrived at all, but the one of beginning again. Having a body is not the same as living in it. I just haven’t really wanted to live in it, truly. Not until now. What does it look like to wake up to your own body for the first time, as it’s transitioning into its second Act? I suppose we’ll find out.

What does green mean to you?

Before anxious dogs who bark at ladybugs in the middle of the night, or insomniac children, or bodies that creak after a day of shoveling, R and I used to plan out PTO around live music. WXPN All About the Music Festival, in Camden, New Jersey, in July 2006 was one we had planned for a while.

This annual summer festival at Wiggins Park on the Camden waterfront featured multiple stages of live performances: the ones we recognized (Alejandro Escovedo, Jim James (My Morning Jacket), Allen Toussaint, and Grace Potter) were deemed worth the trip.

But if you know me at all, you know the heat is not my jam. I lasted as long as I could in the height of summer, amidst sweaty bodies in patchwork quilt skirts and bandana bandeaus, before I tugged on my brand-new husband’s drenched shirt-sleeve and told him we needed to go. It was walking back through the dusty sea of beat-up Subarus that we heard her voice.

When you’re a vocalist yourself, you pay attention to the kind of voice that stops you.

All of these lines across my face-

Tell you the story of who I am.

So many stories of where I’ve been-

And how I got back to where I am.

I’m not sure if I even communicated I was turning back around to where we came. I had to see the woman who was singing like her life depended on it.

I still feel that way, 20 years later.

Brandi Carlile’s written the soundtrack to my adulthood since that sweaty July when she performed on a side stage and no one knew her name. She hadn’t even released her first album yet.

Every time I’ve seen her since, it’s a reminder of my own Story- and a chance to rewrite it.

I’ll be 43.

Though yellow is my favorite color, I’ve attributed GREEN to this month as it feels like an opportunity of growth, new life, new ways of viewing money and finances, and a chance to breathe.

Here are a few things I’ve done to close out February:

Nourishment Part 1:

1. Old haunts

2. New spot on the bucket list for years now: Shukette. Was it everything I hoped? Yes. Don’t sleep on the parsnip dip….for real.

Nourishment Part 2:

1. Quality time in a weekend away with my husband. He planned the entire Valentine’s Day weekend, and it was lovely to get to spend it in NYC.

2. Brandi Carlile’s Human Tour at MSG.

   

   Tag, you’re it. Tell me how you’ve brought color back into your life so far this year. Tell me how you haven’t, but you’re going to start. Tell me, tell me. And then, more importantly, go do it.

Earth’s crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees takes off his shoes.

-Elizabeth Barrett Browning

I am in the stage of life where my children are old enough to galavant around town with a friend, but not old enough to drive themselves there. That is why I found myself on a Saturday morning, alone at a cafe I had never frequented- close enough for pick-up, far enough away not to impede on their burgeoning independence. I ordered a chai and settled in the window seat with Joseph Campbell’s “The Power of Myth”.

In my former life as a high school English teacher, my classroom was plastered with pictorials of the phases of The Hero’s Journey. The Odyssey was one of my favorite works to teach. Like most educators in the Arts fields, Joseph Campbell was the elder I turned to. It’s been five years since my body has graced the doorway of a classroom. Five years since I held Fagle’s translation in my hands, post-its fluttering like butterfly wings. But this past week has held all the heaviness of living in a country fraught with violence, racism, perpetuated rape and abuse culture, and I returned to where I always go when things are spiraling outside of my tightly clenched hands-

The story.

No one gets the irony more than I do that I left the hallowed walls of shaping minds to wind up as a Storyteller/Content Manager in Marketing. I get to tell the story of businesses in ways that feel true to their vision, mission, and values. It is purposeful- dare I say, holy- work.

As a society, we are surrounded by content. Our social media feeds are full of “influencers” and “content creators”. Our Amazon carts are directly linked to some woman in a prairie dress gathering daisies in her Scottish Highland garden so that we can bring those exact brass knobs to our own kitchens.

We consume, we don’t actually “create”.

We are surrounded by content, but starved for meaning.

My tea grew cold as patrons walked in, newspapers tucked beneath arms and elbows, chattering about headlines and soccer schedules. The vestige of my past in tattered pages lay flat on my table, now littered with crumpled napkins, my scrawling script along the edges.

Could it be that our current cultural suffering is large in part consequential to our abandoning of The Story?

When I began teaching in 2003, there was a Creation Myth Unit built into every prep. Genesis, Gilgamesh, Nun and Ra, Chaos and Gaia were all players in the daily story of the classroom. Students heard over and over, the same myth with different names, the trajectory of nothing into something, of darkness and of light, of water and earth, the power of shaping one’s own story and the contribution to a community one needs along the way.

I can’t remember when it was removed. I only know that by the time my last year as an educator rolled around in 2021, I hadn’t touched Joseph Campbell since my youngest daughter had been a thought, and my students had traded asking questions about the meaning of life for what percentage of their grade would be affected if they didn’t hand in this paper?

David Brooks celebrated his 20+ year career at the NYT these last few weeks with a farewell article containing some commentary on The Story.

We haven’t just lost the plot, we’ve lost the story.

The erosion of basic human kindness and societal contribution, the flattening of an inner life without sharing our lunch to 1.2K strangers in a 30-second reel: this kind of narrative collapse has led us to where we are today: a society chasing optimization, individualistic goal posts, an intolerance and inability to consider multiple origin stories, in short:

We have traded away the wisdom of The Story.

Look where it has gotten us.

Fiction is the truth inside the lie- Stephen King

Myths and the stories that hold them are not escapist notions- they are maps. Maps for being human. The Arts have always taught us what it means to suffer, to grieve- and what it looks like to rise. Courage, betrayal, resistance, and assembly arcs place individuals inside of a story bigger than they could have imagined themselves. In Greek Literature, the term for when the hero returns home is, Nostos. But the return requires a former journey with a clear, shared purpose.

There can be no Nostos if there is no deeper connection to home itself, and to the people in it.

There is an African myth about a little boy and a bird who sang the most beautiful song he had ever heard. The boy loved the bird’s song so much that he brought it home to feed and nourish it as a way of saying thank you for its offering. On the third day of bringing it home for food, the boy’s father, outraged by having to feed another living thing, killed the bird.

The father died on the spot.

Kill the bird, kill the song, and the people die.

This is not solely the responsibility of our current political climate or technology.

Without a shared story-without a mutual admiration of the bird’s song and the commitment to nourish and protect it, we reduce life-saving maps to test prep. We use Art as “enrichment” and not as the roadmap. We are unmoored in our anxiety, identity, and anger. We turn on each other.

Without The Story- we’re not fully human.

Doesn’t that explain a lot?

I don’t believe it’s too late to silence the GPS, pick up a few friends in the backseat, and dig the map out of the glove box. I don’t believe we’re past the ability to create, to wrestle, to hope. If history has taught us anything, it’s that The Story endures.

It just may take a while to uncover it.

Maybe we can start by feeding the bird.

“Maybe Eve was never meant to be our warning. Maybe she was meant to be our model. Own your wanting. Eat the apple. Let it burn.”

―Glennon Doyle, Untamed

We had lived in a second-floor apartment in northern New Jersey for close to five years, with two children five and under. When the walls began to close in, we would throw them in the car and drive “to the country”. To the little farm with the bunnies and the fresh apples. To the brew pub with the red ale and the extra crispy fries. To the house just beyond the stone bridge on the corner, with the tree swing by the creek in the yard.

“If that house is ever for sale, I’d buy it,” We’d joke with sweeping gestures in the rural neighborhood where no one leaves- they just pass their memories in plaster walls down to their children.

And then one day, the mountain ablaze in red and gold, the baby covered in crusted cinnamon sugar from apple cider donuts, there was a sign.

(Out front.)

And we collectively gasped, clinging tightly to red takeaway coffee cups. We had been working 4 jobs between us and returned home to three rooms for the hope of something we couldn’t see.

Nothing had happened, essentially, in that moment we looked at the For Sale sign, the sleeping children in the backseat, and then back to the front porch and the bubbling creek- but we knew something was about to begin.

Own your wanting.

Imbolc

“Imbolic is the threshhold between winter and spring, a time when we’re still in the heart of darkness but can still make room for hope.”-Fionna Cook and Jessica Roux, The Wheel of the Year

Imbolc begins today, the first day of February. It’s a hushed sense of anticipation. Of something bubbling just under the surface. It’s about owning your wanting, when it’s still just a flicker. It’s the first sparks of a fire that hasn’t quite gotten going yet- and you’re unsure it’ll be able to catch.

But it does. Every time. And when it does, the embers glow RED.

February’s Color is RED:

In February, I’m honoring the work I’ve done within myself in January to prepare for this transition time- this bubbling-beneath-the-surface time. In the establishment of my own rituals, I have found my own realignments with my values, my commitments, and the way I approach my work and life. It’s not perfect, but it does FEEL different. Here are the reframes that feel less hard to claim as my own these days, and the practical ways I’ve kept them:

• “I Will Work Harder”- Boxer, Animal Farm no longer belongs to me, innately. You would think after teaching Animal Farm for over a decade, I would have learned before now that breaking one’s body for someone else’s gain is a one-way ticket to the glue factory. I no longer check work-related emails or messaging APPS after 5 pm, or on weekends. I light a candle every day at 5 pm, make a cup of tea, and put my laptop somewhere I can’t access it.

• I stay in bed. My children are now older and can manage some things on their own. I have been awake with them for over ten years. So now, when I can, I stay in bed. Sometimes, I bring my coffee back to bed. When my husband is home- he brings it up to me. Rest is never something I have been able to honor- softness was weakness. In the last few months, we have purchased a new bed and bedding, pillows, a velvet headboard. My body deserves softness and rest, and I am giving it to her.

• Field Trips. I recognize my extreme privilege to have a fully remote job in a job landscape that is barren for so many. I rarely take advantage of the flexibility of time I have, however, because I want “to do a good job”, which has translated into being chained to my desk. On days where my meetings are lighter, I head out now. To the library, to Panera, to the local cafe. A change of scenery is neurologically proven to improve productivity, creativity, and mood.

February: RED: Own Your Wanting

After a month of hyper-focus on rest, restorative practices, white-noise, and realignments, the shift to the color RED means owning my wanting. Here is what I want (in February, and beyond):

• One PTO day, just for me to do as I please. (Maybe I’ll finally get here?)

• One clothing purchase I make for myself, just because I LOVE it. (Thinking about this one.) Have you heard of this “Dopamine Dressing?” Dressing yourself in a way that brings you joy?

• To spend more dedicated time to my home- organizing, smaller home projects, etc., to invest in its beauty in a way that makes me feel more connected and grounded to it.

• To make small steps toward movement in my body, motivated from a place of care and not punishment. (Anyone else doing this year’s Yoga with Adrianne?)

• To spend time with just my husband- we’re in a family season of changes- children growing older, careers shifting- I want to make sure we get to know each other as we are now, and grow. (And also, he’s the best live music/new restaurant partner.)

• To submit/perform/display one creative work that uses my voice in a way I haven’t in a long time- it’s been a dream of mine to pitch a story to The Moth, or to show up and sing with the Gaia Music Collective, or to simply, just, audition for something to say I did it. One or all of these would be eating the apple.

Books/Music for February:

• A revisit of Untamed by Glennon Doyle is always required reading when I need to remember that what I want is important.

• I’m obsessed with this song these days. It’s been on repeat every am.

Local Haunts:

• Shukette’s been on my bucket list for years. We’re finally going.

• Bread and Culture remains worth the 35-minute trip for us to buy the sourdough for the week.

In the Belly (Imbolc is old Irish for in the belly):

I’ve been making these two cookie recipes for decades, now. They are failsafes for parties, for both kids and grown-ups alike. I’m prepping a good deal of dough for the Super Bowl party this coming weekend. You should make them, too:

• Salted Chocolate Chunk Cookies

• Confetti Cookies

The questions for you, in February:

1. How are you going to own your own wanting this month?

2. How are you going to eat the apple and watch it burn?

As you proceed and you have stories of reclaiming your own wanting in your life, career, relationships, self-expression- share them!

The world is a dark, frightening place right now. Let’s bring the color back.

Starting with us.

Image: Original print by Anisa Makhoul, whom I am currently obsessed with. It’s hanging in my kitchen.

“We stand, brushing away the dust, catching our breath. And it comes to me that the echoes of my own life will likely die away in that way thunder does. But this life, what a shining thing—it is enough.”- Ana, The Book of Longings

Essay: The Remembering

“It’s just the remembering,” I said. Half delirious, face shining with sweat-the labor of a nursing mother digging purple crescent graves beneath the swollen hollows of my eyes.

My littlest, recovering from a virus so violent it rocked both of our bodies- pulling on her stomach lining, pulling on my vagus nerve.

She is holding her belly with one hand, her throat with the other. Steadfast in her refusal of fluids. She had made that mistake once already, and her body would not allow her to forget the all-night consequences.

“I can’t,” she sobbed, arm across her tired eyes, rubbed raw and red with fever, “ I will just throw it up.”

The black sweatpants that were supposed to be my re-entry into walking the trail are still plastered to my body two days later, flecked with vomit, ice-pop drippings, Tylenol. My hands are cracked and raw from baptizing every surface with Bleach.

I tell her she has every right to be afraid. Her body has lived through something it does not want to repeat again. It might always hold the memory, in fact. The way her sore tummy and her throat are talking to her is simply the Remembering.

In the dark, the sun creeping into the broken blind in my room, I teach her how to hold her own body with both hands in a way that is less protective than it is reassuring. To breathe slowly into sore lungs. To whisper:

Thank you for trying to protect me.

You have done your job.

I love you.

Thank you for the Remembering.

I am safe now.

She agreed to one spoonful of soup. Then, another.

I watched her Remembering heal with every furtive sip.

I watched mine heal in kind.

January is my month to focus on rest and restorative practices, so my body is ready to accept the color that will come in February. Here are some things that have kept me aligned:

January’s Restorative Practices

1. I can’t live a truly analog life- if you can believe it, I’m a Marketing Manager in my day job. But I have been trying to bring back analog practices when I can- starting with writing these posts each week long-hand, in my journal first. It’s returned a part of myself that I didn’t remember missing.

2. I have sensitive skin times a thousand, AND, I’ve been much more cognizant of what I put on the largest organ of my body in my forties. I heard about May Lindstrom through The Lazy Genius podcast over three years ago, and thought I’d give it a try. May’s approach to skincare is a ritualistic practice I’ve bought into for 3 years now. It is all hand-made, with all natural ingredients. While it is truly the best thing I’ve ever put on my skin, it’s her emphasis on the embodiment practice of care that I’ve truly needed. My tried and trues are her Blue Cocoon, The Good Stuff, and, now, I’m a Pendulum Potion evangelist.

3. I’ve been in a book club with my favorite women in the universe for several years now. This month, we’re starting Sue Monk Kidd’s Book of Longings, and I get to lead the discussions. It’s one of my absolute favorites. There are plenty of aspects about teaching in the classroom that I don’t miss at all- but the actual act of teaching literature ( the analysis, the synthesis, the discussion, the connection) is something my soul misses every day.

A Ritualistic Recipe

We make chicken broth once a week. We have since the beginning of time. ( Or, for twenty years, as long as we’ve been married). It’s one of the singular, most grounding and restorative practices of my life. And. My husband and I make it differently. Here’s the basic recipe/ method:

• 1 (5-pound) roasting chicken

• 2 large yellow onions, unpeeled and quartered

• 3 carrots, unpeeled and halved crosswise

• 2 celery stalks with leaves, cut into thirds crosswise

• a few sprigs of fresh flat-leaf parsley

• a few sprigs of fresh thyme

• 1 head of garlic, unpeeled and cut in half

• 2 tablespoons kosher salt

• 2 teaspoons of whole black peppercorns

*Place in large stockpot. Bring up to a boil, then simmer low and slow for as short as 4 hours, as long as 16. Use wherever a recipe calls for stock, to boil noodles in for extra protein/nutrients for kiddos, to thin out sauces, or to simply sip during the day (that’s our preferred method, and our kids after-school ritual).

Rich’s Version:

Add:

• Apple Cider Vinegar ( 1 tsp)

• Replace parsley with rosemary

• Scale back on the garlic

• SOMETIMES throws an apple/lemon in

Jenny’s Version:

Add:

• 1-2 parsnips

• 1-2 leeks

• 1 turnip

• 4 springs of dill

• Up the garlic (2 heads, please and thank you)

• 5-6 whole allspice berries

The Invitation

What January’s color choice has taught me so far (if you’re new and you don’t know what this means- read this first) :

You don’t get to Cloud Dance unless you’ve reconciled your own Remembering.

How has the Cloud Dancing White shown up in your life this month?

What are some grounding practices that return you to yourself?

What are you hoping for, as you follow here?

What is the color missing from your life that you hope will return?

If you’ve been inspired to join me in Living in Color, make sure to subscribe so posts end up in your inbox.

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I will sometimes update my thoughts on Instagram- if you’re also there, you’re welcome to follow me there. ( My profile will remain private, annoying I know, but I take the cultivation of community too seriously to open it up to the masses.)

Instagram: @jennyvanderbergshannon

If I mention books here that you’d love to purchase yourself, please consider getting them here if you can instead of the Amazon machine. Bookshop supports independent bookstores all over the nation- and one thing we need more of, are people who care about books and those who read them.

Lastly, I will never paywall a single post on this series, Living in Color. I know too many women who feel lost, stretched, scared, and alone in this season, and I will not allow barriers to access.

To those who have chosen to be paid subscribers, there aren’t even words to describe my thanks. I am able to continue to provide art and connection this way ( and pay a utility bill or send a kid to summer camp) because of your gift.

Leaving with some restorative images from January:

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself- Emily Dickinson

When Pantone released their color of the year, there was a surge of comedians rubbing their hands together in delight heard around the world. This joke wrote itself. Considering the state of things, it seemed almost fitting that an American (New Jersey!) based company, whose sole responsibility is to bring joy through the infusion of life and color into our walls, our fonts, and our clothing, would land on a tone-deaf, color-blind iteration of whiteness.

And-

I knew immediately it would be the starting color for this project.

If You’re Living in Color, Why Are You Starting Here?

I thought self-abandonment was some social media-inspired, pop psychology bullshit until I was lamenting to a friend in the summer how I didn’t even know what I wanted or liked, and she called me flat out on a lie.

You’ve always known, she said. You are one of the most passionate, decisive people I know. You’ve just always abandoned yourself for someone or something else.

A few weeks later, my therapist asked if I actually really wanted to live without anxiety. Is there a world where I would want to function outside of the driving, anxious hum that has so often been perceived as drive and determination? What would actually happen if I dropped the default response of caring for everyone and everything but myself?

I know until that moment, I hadn’t wanted to. Let anxiety go.

I do now.

Like too many women who have suffered and survived losses, betrayals, abuses, and traumas from broken humans and broken systems, anxiety had become the one faithful friend I could depend on. I let him in the door. I let him on the couch. I gave him the keys to the house. I had no way of knowing how to welcome the feeling, while keeping my own authority.

But in 2026, to borrow Emily’s words, I am out with lanterns in the warm, white light, looking for myself.

Want to come?

Not The New Year’s Resolution You Were Hoping For

January, the official launch of winter without the cushion of the magic of the holidays is a time to hibernate, rest, and recalibrate, not the time to start ambitious projects. Good thing this isn’t one.

Tabula Rasa means “Blank Slate” in Latin. Every creative person who has a bookshelf of journals “too nice to write in” knows the pressure of a blank slate- but there can also be beauty in it. Especially because I know what belongs in this one. I just have to be brave enough to write it down.

For me, January is for grounding practices, for gentle soups simmering, for snowy walks. It’s for books that breathe comfort and a gentle returning- to my brain, my body, my spirit. It’s for remembering where I need to begin in order to fill the pages with all the color that’s been waiting to be painted.

January is a beautiful, cloud-dancing beginning.

It can be for you, too.

January – White

Nourishment for January:

• I’ll be drinking a chamomile lavender tea or an orange blossom white tea every night before bed to gently assert a grounding practice for January.

• What’s tea without a cookie? My shortbread recipe fits the bill. You can find it in this older Substack post.

• Alison Roman’s Spiced Chickpea Stew is a literal game-changer- and the only thing I want to eat when I need to nourish all the parts of me.

Books for January

A few books I’ll be reading from in January are:

• The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel

• Wisdom of the Earth, Wisdom of the Body: A Seasonal Guide to Chinese Medicine and Yoga for Balance and Vitality by Jennifer Raye

• Kitchen Meditations for Every Day by Tamar Adler

• Good Things by Samin Nostrat

  If, like me, you want to make it a point to support local bookshops rather than feed the Amazon machine, you can purchase all the books I mention in this section directly from my Bookshop Store (I’m an affiliate, so I also get a few cents if purchased this way.) Bookshop is a platform that supports local, independent bookstores while also still providing the consumer with the luxury of getting good reads delivered. Win-win.

“The Mothers” post I wrote last year also has some great female authors to add to your reading list this time of year.

Local Haunts for January:

• Come for me if you’d like, I grew up in NJ, and I’ve eaten a lot of pizza. Coniglio’s has the best grandma pie I’ve ever eaten. It would be a shame not to make a visit as it’s own grounding practice.

• My big kid got a year membership as a Christmas gift, so it looks like we’ll be spending our weekends here.

• If you live in central-ish NJ, seafood can be hard to come by. That’s because you didn’t know about this.

For you, for January:

Are you also out with lanterns looking for yourself in January?

If you have your own self-abandonment story, tell someone (and if you can’t, tell me!) If you’re arranging steps to climb out- share it. Science backs up my belief that when we share- our stories, our commitments, our voices, our lives- we’re all better for it. Do it in a way that doesn’t feel performative to you.

If there’s a practice, a recipe, or a local spot where you live where you find some peace, grounding, or a trail of breadcrumbs back to yourself- drop it here in the comments or tag me on Instagram, if you’d like so I can share it with others.

We all deserve to return to ourselves- and a cheering section as we do.

May each of our lanterns light the way for ourselves and each other.

Happy January, friends.

Looking Ahead:

I promise not to fill your inbox- it’s full enough. You’ll get at least one monthly update on the color of the month and how I’m pursuing it; possibly one more if I’m feeling inspired. At the start of each month, I’ll give a brief reflection on how the color of the previous month shaped how I’m returning to myself and a teaser for the month to come.

They don’t call February the month of LOVE for nothing. Until then.

Somewhere around July, I realized something was wrong. We had some changes at home that divided my time between parenting as my full-time job and my full-time job that pays me a salary. I was taking work calls between summer camp drop-offs, working before the kids woke up, and then again after they went to bed just to continually wake feeling behind.

The fall brought much of the same, except adding the cadence of school drop-offs and pick-ups, play rehearsal, and soccer schedules- an endless loop of “what can I make for dinner that mostly everyone might eat?” My old companion Anxiety worked at such a fever pitch that her general background hum sounded more like screeching wheels.

In October, the screeching wheels came to a halt. I suddenly no longer had it in me to make sure anyone got anywhere on time. Cereal for dinner sounded fine- again. All sounds of life- music in the kitchen, in the car- ceased. The stack of books on my night table that usually rotated weekly remained unchanged. I didn’t want to write. I didn’t want to have dinner with friends. I didn’t want to learn anything new.

Anxiety is my baseline- I have never understood the life-sucking tendrils of watching all of the color drain from my life. This is how I explained it, sitting in my therapist’s office.

All the color is gone.

Is this depression?

It didn’t fit the model I grew up with, as represented in my own family. I was still getting up in the morning. Showering. Showing up at my job. The kids had clean clothes. I never forgot to pick them up. I wasn’t sleeping all the time.

But there was no COLOR. I was living in grayscale.

So she asked me, as she often does, a question I didn’t have the answer to:

“What can you do to bring it back?”

Maybe you have had the kind of year that has sucked the color from the pages of your story, too. Chances are, if you’re here, it’s because you're also a Mother (ALL identifying genders are welcome here, and I also know the majority of you are Moms) trying to juggle professional and personal responsibilities. Maybe you ended up here because you, like me, have left the faith structure and system you were raised in, and finding the color outside of those walls still feels a little, well, dangerous. Maybe you came for some recipes and creativity, solidarity in burnout, and the systems that perpetuate it. Maybe it was my witty prose?

Whatever brought you in, here is what I know:

In 2026, we need to bring the color back.

This isn’t about reinvention.

It’s about return.

Living in Color is my way back.

Over the next year, I’ll be moving through the calendar by color, letting each month offer a different invitation:

• White for peace and grounding

• Green for growth and money

• Pink for play

• Black for boldness

• Gold for celebration

Each month will include personal essays, simple seasonal recipes, books worth lingering with, local rituals and places that anchor a life, and honest stories about work, creativity, motherhood, finances, identity, and becoming.

Not as advice. Not as optimization. As lived practice.

This is not a hustle project. I don’t need another one of those, do you? It’s slow on purpose. It’s meant to be read with a cup of something warm, or saved for later, or returned to when you have a moment to yourself. Take what you need. Leave the rest. If you want, tell me about it. I’d love that.

Living in Color is for anyone who’s sitting on the kitchen floor right now, wondering where YOU are beneath the doctor’s appointments and kid’s hockey gear and struggling marriages and peanut butter sandwiches (can we send those to school again, or no?)

It’s for those in transition. For women, mainly, who have spent years caring, providing, striving, or surviving—and are ready to ask what they want now- and believe they deserve the answer.

For readers who prefer depth over certainty, reflection over instruction.

The world has been a dark and scary place, this year especially.

Let’s bring the color back.

With Love-

Jenny

After years of being blocked off from communities I’ve really desired access to by paywalls, I don’t want a single thing to stand in the way of you pursuing your own life in color. I have eliminated all paywalls for the next year in the hope that we can build trust, connection, creativity, and hope together.

I am also able to do so because of the incredible financial support I’ve been given here. Last year’s supporters enabled me to:

*Send my youngest to summer camp

*Pay for groceries for a month

I am always incredibly moved by financial support and never take a single dollar for granted. If you are so moved to support this project this year, thank you, thank you, thank you.

I’m sure the only thing Mary was ever obedient to was birdsong.

We are not the same.

Obedience has been my drill sergeant for the majority of my life, whistling in my ear, drop and give me twenty. Even in this last quarter, when I had begun to think the fringe had frayed enough to blow away like tumbleweed, I find it still hanging on- a ball of lint and hair and skin cells at the far reaches of the dryer. Proof of life.

The thing about being an obedient woman is that everyone likes you. And no one really likes YOU. I’ve never so much cared about being liked- but I have cared very much about being good. Smart, talented, capable, reliable.

Good.

Obedience didn’t come easily for me. I defied my mother at bedtime so often that at the age of 2, she taught me how to push the VHS into the player and press the green button until Cinderella appeared on the small, boxed screen, bent low over the brown carpet smelling of sour milk, Oscar Meyer bologna sandwiches and Elmo. Yes, Elmo is a distinct smell.

I wasn’t born obedient; I was made.

This revelation used to feel like an albatross. Just another victim of a system built on the backs of my own free labor. I have let it silence me in meetings when I should have been empowered enough to facilitate, but solemnly took my own orders instead. It has quieted my rage- good girls aren’t angry girls. Angry girls aren’t heard. Society doesn’t tolerate an un-dulcet tone of a female in charge. If there is no pleading, reassurance, or calming tone coming out of my face it seems unwanted. I have always toed the line of the both/and. I have always been able to see both sides. I have always forgiven, always given second and third and 33rd chances.

I do not want to lose who I am. And. I held the kernel of hope in my hand like a talisman and heard it whisper-

If it can be made, it can be un-made.

So, obedience, here’s to you:

You were crafted out of fear and the need to control. To keep me small, to keep me quiet. The trouble is, I’ve spent the last two years trying to find the little girl I was born to be-

The one who refused orders and turned over dinner plates and ran out of rooms she didn’t want to be in. The one who sang at the top of her lungs in the middle of crowded rooms whether anyone was listening or not.

The one who didn’t just believe there was something better, but knew it- and knew she deserved to have it.

I’ve gotten to remember her, and remember when she stopped being herself- and started being obedient.

All because Mary told me I didn’t have to be good and it broke the wire in my brain that held tight to obedience and duty to make room.

For me.

The dog walked into the woods and back out again, a tangle of burrs in her matted fur. I have spent the last 2 nights gently holding the fur closest to the skin and plucking them out one by one with my thumb and forefinger. It is the pulling that hurts- when you hold close to the root, it lessens the sting.

“Mama, can we go to Paris?”

My oldest needs to see the world in the same way an introvert needs an empty room. She cannot breathe in this town- this tiny town we moved to when the world was still reeling from the apocalypse, our second-floor apartment much too small for her dreams of the stage and the Eiffel Tower. I hoped this centuries-old house (because I had stopped praying, then) would hold us as gently as the brook in the backyard. It has, and it hasn’t.

I don’t know anything about Chakras. Not really. Only enough to know every online quiz I’ve ever taken points to my root Chakra being broken. What do you do with that? When the foundation is cracked? When you hold close to the root, I think to myself, knuckles deep in black and white fur, it lessens the sting. One strong pull and the cracks will spider. Some walls are meant to come down.

My old over-production, eager to please, fill-in-the-cracks tendencies crept up so fast this season ,I didn’t see them coming. There’s no color, I tell my therapist. Where did the color go? I am being pulled out to sea with the tide. Christmas. Mortgage. Aging parents. Raising teenagers. Career. Marriage.

I can’t get the biggest and last burr out from the inside of her ear. She will eventually try to bite my fingers off- her unfriendly warning snarls are coming too frequently. She loves me, but not enough to not cause bodily harm. She is a dog, and this is who she is.

I am navigating the line of parenting young adult-ish people poorly. I do not know when to back off and when to step in. When to rescue and when to allow resilience to grow. When to bail out, when to stand aside. I want to hold as closely to the skin as they’ll let me, to lessen the sting. But they are meant to pull away.

I can’t stop the pulling. I will have to find another way.

Perhaps it lies close to the root.

I’ll let you know when I find it.

My first real job as an adult was for an organization called Early Intervention. We provided services for children in the early childhood stages of development who had possible developmental, cognitive, and social delays. It was long before you needed an actual degree for such things; it was enough that I was enrolled in my senior year of undergrad. They provided all the training, and I made 60.00 an hour- unheard of, as a 23-year-old used to making 10.00, filing paperwork for the local dentist. I was sold. That’s when I was assigned to Sam.

Though Sam was only 4, he already carried an intricate diagnosis. Sam was classified as level 3 on the Autism spectrum. He had zero impulse control. Flapping and stimming. No spontaneous verbalizations. They sent me to a Child Study Center in order to learn a relatively new (at the time) method of teaching such children, called A.B.A. as well as Greenspan’s Floortime Theory before allowing me to come to his home. I’m not sure what it was supposed to prepare me for, but this, for certain, was not it.

Sam was one of five children, four out of the five with special needs. His mother was young, beautiful, and scared. Her dark circles were hollow. Her fingers looked like pretzel sticks. I couldn’t appreciate then the feat of what toll it must have taken to keep a kosher kitchen and darn a sock with expert precision with five, non-verbal humans running amok.

I was meant to engage in occupational activities and life skills with Sam; he was four and couldn’t use a fork or the toilet. When he spoke, it would only be scripting from a particular Winnie the Pooh movie he would watch over and over again when his Mother gave up all resistance and brought the VCR down from the attic.

He was wildly aggressive. Throwing punches, plates, sometimes, his own poop. He would bite everyone. A gluten-free diet was recommended, but Sam had a sweet tooth and only preferred Challah and apple juice, so he would steal food he wasn’t allowed to have right off their counters leaving a wake of crumbs and dribbles. He would howl like a coyote when he felt like he wasn’t being understood, which was basically all the time. I was in over my head but true to form even now, I’d never admit it.

I had been there a few months, three times a week, and felt like I was finally gaining some ground when I showed up one day to Sam, sitting cross-legged on the rug. Sam had never sat down the entire three months I had been with him. I approached carefully so not to frighten him and sat down in front of him. He was hyper-focused on a familiar puzzle set in front of him, but wasn’t putting the pieces in the appropriate order. Normally, this would frustrate him and he would fling himself into a fit of rage, but he was not getting up. In fact, when I leaned down far enough to be level with his eyes, I could see silent tears teeming track marks down his dirty face.

I found his mother at the kitchen table, coated in breakfast remnants, her head in one hand, silent tears down a face that looked just like her son.

“What is wrong with Sam?”

And in a torrent of guilt-ridden grief that only now, a mother myself, could identify, she told me the story.

She had noticed Sam limping several days prior and had enough energy to wrestle him and check his legs. She didn’t find anything until she reached his feet.

Sam had a habit of walking around barefoot- he disliked the sensation of socks and frankly, there were too many battles to fight this one that day. As the weather had been warm, he was barefoot outside quite a bit. Mom rationalized that barefooted children are a mild infraction comparatively. Sam, as we both conjectured, must have tried to balance on an old, dead log in the backyard a week or so back and had gotten several (more like 10) splinters in the soles of his feet. Without any ability to express discomfort, his ailments went unnoticed and led to festering, infected splinters in the tender parts of his feet; rendering him now, unable to even walk on them.

Mom had called several doctors, all of whom aware of Sam and his resistance to treatment, and refused to treat him unless he was put under. That was costly. A cost she didn’t have, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to consider anyway, just imagining how he would respond to needles, or the waking after. We stared at each other, two women in their early twenties with very different lives. I took the kitchen chair next to her and cried as well.

I faint in hospitals, puke at the sight of bodily fluids. I am not the one you want in a medical emergency. I told Mom to go get needles, peroxide, towels, Neosporin, and bandages. She obeyed without thinking, grateful for a directive. When I explained the plan to her, she only nodded in agreement.

I had watched her thread needles amidst chaos. Balances soup bowls, unwavering. She would be the surgeon for her son, and with her permission, I would hold him down. It was not the job I signed up for.

He was the strongest four-year-old I had ever encountered but his injuries made him easier to overcome, and I wrapped my legs around his, my arms around his torso, and held him tightly on the floor, as I was taught to do for children with violent behavior.

His fingernails bit the undersides of my arms bloody. He wailed an unearthly sound I can still hear at night, when I am afraid my own children are hurt or scared.

I whispered the only thing that made sense at the time. “Sam, I know you’re not going to understand this but your Mama and I love you. We love you. We love you so much. We can’t take this hurt away but we can be here with you and help you heal. Sometimes the healing things hurt. It is the worst. And it is true.” My fingers stuck on jam and twigs and other things as I tried to run them through his hair.

His Mother worked as deftly as I’d ever seen her. The muscles in my arms groaned and strained, but together, we freed Sam of every, single splinter. We disinfected each sore and wrapped his feet as best as we could manage. We bribed him with sweets he wasn’t allowed to have and Winnie on an endless loop so that he could sit still and heal.

It was the first time she ever poured me a cup of tea in her kitchen. It was the first time she held my hand. It was the first time I remember seeing her smile. I knew in that moment, I was sent for him- but I stayed for her.

I stayed with Sam as long as they would allow before he aged out of the system. During my last week, he gently placed his hands on both sides of my face and said, “Bye, Jen,” unprompted. I can still hear it now.

It remains one of the proudest moments of my entire life.

But it’s his Mom who has stayed with me; as I became a mother myself. As I learned much later than she did, how much healing can hurt, how lonely motherhood can be, and how beautiful it is to have someone show up in uncertainty and in love, to stand with you in it.

noun

1. a feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat.

   “she was faint with hunger”

   
   Growing up, every once in a while, my Mom would pour an avalanche of Oreos and other packaged goods onto a tray in front of the television. “Junk Food Dinner!” she’d exclaim.

We were delighted with the tall, perspiring glasses of Crystal Light and the Cheetos in front of Mr. Rogers on the brown rug in the living room. We were too young to equate the 20’s week on the calendar as the tight week before payday on the 30th.

We didn’t know it was all the food we had left.

noun

1. a feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat.

   “she was faint with hunger”

In 2011, I strapped my sweating 5-month-old baby to my back and walked a box of the only jewelry I owned into the pawn shop around the corner from the house I was about to lose.

I laid out some diamond earrings, gold bracelets, and reluctantly, the ring my Nana gave me-my birthstone-onto the velvet square on the glass counter. The old man with the ridiculous glasses gave my hand a sympathetic pat as he counted out a few hundred-dollar bills into my shaking hand.

I went directly to ShopRite for formula, diapers, and some avocados.

noun

1. a feeling of discomfort or weakness caused by lack of food, coupled with the desire to eat.

   “she was faint with hunger”

1 in 5 children in America is hungry.

40% of SNAP benefits recipients are children.

To define “hungry” in this context requires some qualifiers. It means food-insecure households. Missing meals. Eating less than you need to reserve some for later. Electing to feed your children instead of yourself. Having to choose between meals and medical care.

Hunger impairs cognitive ability. Increases anxiety. Affects retention.

More than 75% of American educators have students who REGULARLY come to school hungry. Out of the teachers with hungry children in their class:

• 76% saw decreased academic performance

• 62% saw behavioral issues increased

• 47% noticed children getting sick more often

With the impending extension of the shutdown into November, children who depend on SNAP benefits will go hungry.

If that sounds like a loaded statement, it is.

verb

1. 1.

   have a strong desire or craving for.

   “all actors hunger for such a role”

It seems we have a hunger problem- in more ways than one.

1. We have children who are hungry, who are set to become increasingly more so. (noun).

2. We don’t have enough people hungry enough to do something about it. (verb).

As is often customary in these posts, I’ve included a recipe below. If there is ever only one you follow from me, I hope this is it.

Recipe for Feeding the Hungry Children in Your Community

Ingredients:

*Willingness

*Empathy

*Information

*Action

Directions:

1. Research the local food pantries in yours and your surrounding communities. Check for their needs lists. Use that list to cultivate items from your pantry to supply, or purchase those items if able. Drop them off at the appropriate collection centers and times. (Please, please do not donate expired, damaged or opened items. Those who are hungry deserve food dignity. If you wouldn’t eat it yourself, do not expect someone else to.)

2. Make a call to your local public schools. Ask if you can donate a day, a week, a month’s worth of lunch money for one student, or pay off a lunch balance.

3. Organize without your own community’s local businesses. Is there a bakery that can offer donations after closing time? Are there CSA’s that aren’t picked up, or a surplus of turnips they can’t get rid of? Recruit community members and poll them for the best ways to communicate that information to food-insecure households.

No child should go hungry. Full stop.

If you have other ideas, please share in the comments.

We belong to each other, now more than ever.

There is an azalea bush in the yard, in the back. Half of it has grown in the shade of the garage, withered and bare. The other half is full of green-turning red as the autumn creeps in. There is a blossom who has insisted that mid-October was her time to bloom, even when every natural whisper has told her otherwise. Her petals have the dehydrated lines of an old woman’s hands. The stamens have no pollen. She was dead on her feet; never lived before she died, simply because she insisted on blooming in the wrong season.

I took bags of frozen bones out of the freezer this morning to pour into the Sunday stock pot. There, they will marry with carrot tops and roots and herbs to make something that will sustain and heal us for one more week. It’s one of the few sacred rituals I still keep; it’s subversive narrative wafting into the ether like the steam. From ashes to ashes does not apply here. From ashes to sustenance, to healing, to life is the only arc I want to develop over and over.

I am tired these days. My own bones feel frozen. I trace the lines on my hands, an old woman’s hands, and rub lotion into the canyons before bed at night. I went to a doctor three times for “eye swelling” only to be told that my eyes have, in fact, looked like this for ages. My decades of no sleeping finally caught up to the dark, puffy rings that fall beneath them. Perhaps this is just my face now. What happens when one does like one’s own face?

My texts are full of check-ins and meltdowns, all women. Mostly mothers.

Are you alright?

Did you eat?

What does HFM Disease look like?

Did you save for college?

I lost my mind on my kid today.

On my boss today.

On my employee today.

I’m not sleeping.

I ate an entire pizza. For breakfast.

I’m so tired.

Are our kids safe?

I’m so tired.

Is this too much coffee?

Do you have an onion?

How is anyone doing this?

We are not. Doing this.

We are frozen in our bones. We have no choice but to force blooms outside of their own season, but our color is fading.

What will happen when all the flowers are gone?

There is an azalea bush in the yard, in the back. Half of it has grown in the shade of the garage, withered and bare. The other half is full of green-turning red as the autumn creeps in. There is a blossom who has insisted that mid-October was her time to bloom, even when every natural whisper has told her otherwise. Her petals have the dehydrated lines of an old woman’s hands. The stamens have no pollen. She was dead on her feet; never lived before she died, simply because she bloomed in the wrong season.

But maybe she didn’t have a choice.

Maybe, she was told by the others, tight and safe in their own buds, reserving their energy, that she had to be the one to pull the weight. Maybe she was told the whole bush would go down unless she exhibited supernatural strength and forced a performance no one else was willing to play. Maybe, just maybe she didn’t want to.

Maybe she was tired and frozen in her bones but she reached deep into her roots and pulled the last few drops of life to half-heartedly bloom her last- for them. For you.

And you’ll get never see the truth of what she could have been.

There are most assuredly squirrels in the walls that separate my living room from my three-season porch. I know this because I found a hole, torn tooth by little tooth, at the exposed joist. I know this because sometimes, whilst sitting quietly with the lights off, I can hear little scratching noises from behind the ancient plaster that graciously holds up my tired head. I know this because my little one leaves 6 raw almonds, stolen from a giant Costco bag on the door of the refrigerator, on the stone step directly below it.

For Templeton and Wilbur, she says.

Sometimes what we feed is what tears us apart.

I wore a fleeced jacket, my husband’s, all day indoors today, though the weather boasted a balmy 70. I could not get warm. My mandibular joint has been frozen in a permanent state of lock-jaw. I believe it started when a man on the news told humans that their very purpose was to kill others and not fit into “polite society”. I think it’s painful fate was sealed when the government shut down hours later- putting a giant pause on food stamps, Social Security Checks, and Section 8.

Sometimes, who we choose not to feed tears us apart.

I made a Turkish Red Lentil soup with a delicate spiced butter, fresh cilantro, a dollop of yogurt. I froze it in deli containers and stacked them in the freezer. I wished for a moment I could ship them to someone who is sad and missing someone who will never return. Someone who hasn’t eaten a meal made for them in years. Someone who is hurting and afraid and alone.

Sometimes, who we want to feed tears us apart.

I’ve been reading Suleika Jaouad’s “The Book of Alchemy” at night before bed. I’ve been coupling it with Kelly Barnhill’s, “The Ogress and the Orphans” as a read-aloud with my little. I’ve fallen asleep clutching both to my chest like talismans. Like harbingers of hope. The styles and genres and authors are different- but the deep rumbling of brutal and beautiful humanity is the same. We need to love each other. We need to love ourselves.

Sometimes what we feed ourselves, tears us apart.

There was a moment this week during a rec soccer game full of third, fourth and fifth grade girls. A moment at a night game, under the lights, when the sunset decided to show off. A moment when all action stopped dead on the field and the coaches had to shout from the sidelines:

“Stop looking at the sky and play the game!”

A moment when I watched young women weigh the checks and balances- glance from their authority to the pink dancing across the sky- and choose beauty. Choose awe. A moment when I believed that we might be alright after all.

Sometimes we just need to remember who holds the spoon.

But when I am home- truly, “home”, when I slam my laptop a little too forcefully and I attempt to turn off my brain from “generating leads” out of everything, I turn the music loud and the right side burner on. I splash some oil into my chipped Dutch oven, slice a Vidalia onion, sprinkle some sea salt, and wait for the feeling that comes when you take simple ingredients and make magic out of them.

It always comes.

The same way my brain can never get over how little black dots scattered across a page sound the way they do when they come out of your mouth, or how thoughts can give someone the hope to carry on for one more day when they’re written hieroglyphs in different orders we call the alphabet on paper. The magic of ordinary rituals and the people who lean into them is never lost on me.

When I am home, I cook.

It’s simple and it’s extraordinary, both.

September in the Garden State is something to behold. If you haven’t been around long enough to recognize how I am positively evangelistic about my beloved home state of New Jersey (I’ve had some practice with evangelicalism, you see), I will not apologize in advance. If you have never been here, you cannot have an opinion. If you have been here and had an unsavory experience, you didn’t do it right. (Stay with me next time, ok?)

Meaning, you weren’t here in September.

Golden light on fields of sunflowers. Endless rows of cherry heirloom tomatoes. Sunsets over the Atlantic. Boardwalks and mountains, cold swims in deep rivers, waterfalls, and the best walking weather to peruse the best city in the country (yes, I said it), only a few minutes away- why doesn’t everyone live here among the language, art, culture, and food? (Insert a chorus of “THE TAXES”, right on cue.)

I hear that, I do.

And I still think it’s worth it.

Here are the magical things I’ve turned to when I “got home” this September.

These are the treasured family spots we’ve eaten this month, at the request of our kids before the dreaded return to school.

Gronsky’s Milk House, High Bridge- have you been looking for a pancake the size of a hubcap? I wasn’t either, but now I don’t have to. It’s as delicious as it is large- and always choose the monthly special. (We’re partial to the cinnabun pancake months.)

Gabriel’s Fountain, Bridgewater- Fresh salads, burgers and in-house made ice cream make’s Gabriel’s a crowd pleaser for us- and that’s a tall order (Just like their Ugly Flat Tire Fries with avocado, bacon and thousand island dressing.)

Missy’s Main Street Cafe, Rockaway- our eldest’s favorite breakfast spot, and not just because you get your check in a Beetlejuice VHS case. Chicken and waffles is the repeat order….(ask for the berry sauce) but to find out how to order it, you’ll just have to go.

Like most families with younger children this summer, ours had a soundtrack. I will admit, I was skeptical at first but it didn’t take long before I found myself humming along while working or chopping vegetables. Inspired, I wondered if I could play with the theme to make dinner.

It’s been a hit- and not the one-hit wonder kind.

K-Pop Demon Hunters Pot Roast (IYKYK)

Ingredients:

• 1 (4 pound) chuck roast, cut into 3-inch pieces (you can ask the butcher to do this for you)

• 1 TBS kosher salt

• 1 TBS oil

• 1 Vidalia onion, thinly sliced

• 5 garlic cloves, grated

• 1 TBS grated fresh ginger

• 1 star anise

• 1 cinnamon stick

• Fresh cilantro

• 2 tablespoons gochujang paste

• ¼ cup brown sugar

• ½ cup soy sauce

• 2 cups beef stock

• Fresh cilantro and lime, for serving

Brown the beef in a bit of oil in a Dutch oven on top of the stove, 2 minutes on each side, and then remove. Brown the sliced onions next, for 2-3 minutes on high heat. In a separate bowl, mix garlic, ginger, gochujang paste, brown sugar, some cilantro, and soy sauce. Turn the heat down to medium. Add the sauce to the onions. Add the beef back in. Add the broth, the star anise and the cinnamon stick. Simmer for five minutes on top of stove. Move to a 350 degree oven, for 2 hours or until meat is tender enough to pull apart.

Serve over fluffy white rice or “Golden” mashed potatoes.

*I like to sprinkle some fresh cilantro and a squeeze of lime juice for a bit of acidity before serving, but you can leave them out if you’re the “cilantro tastes like soap” variety.

“I know you’re there. It’s ok to come in.”

Tears ensued, like they do almost every night. Shaky breaths and hot cheeks and gangly limbs climb into my side of the bed. I try to shift over as closely as possible to my sleeping spouse, but our 70 lb Bernedoodle has a chokehold on my left ankle, stretched across the bottom of my bed.

My girls are insomniacs. Even the furry one. It is something I had hoped would never pass down our line. But on most nights, you will find some semblance of us weeping and sweating, making another cup of tea, holding each other’s hands (or paws) in the dark.

I have had a lifetime of practice being awake. I have eye bags not even the 300.00 face oil made by fairies hands can fix. I can tell time by the way the light changes in one part of the sky over the corner of the house. I’ve watched Orion’s Belt fade into day on each birthday. I promise you, it is not FOMO. I have to be reminded to leave the house at times, both living and working in the same rooms has never bothered me with only myself for company. My body is convinced that as long as I am at attention, I can prevent the next natural disaster or violent crime. For a thing with such a low worth scale, it’s an arrogant little sucker.

1/3 of Americans aren’t getting enough rest.

We are all exhausted.

Awake isn’t what I would call it.

But we’re certainly not asleep.

I haven’t walked the tender line of awareness, engagement, and self-protection in a while, the way I have this week. I would have preferred not to have been awake most hours of the day, to avoid bearing witness to what was and is unfolding. The canyon keeps growing, and I have never been flexible enough to stretch a split across the divide without ripping tendons- or my pants.

How do we listen?

Where do we stand?

How do we dialogue?

How do we move forward?

How do we still love each other?

Do we? Still love each other?

How do we know when it’s time to stay awake and when it’s time to rest?

My favorite person I’ve never met on the internet speaks about counterweights being the life-givers of the day. But in order to have a counterweight, we need to have already been carrying a weight.

How do we know what to pick up and what to put down?

How do we know the line between staying informed and over-consumption?

How do we know when it’s time to sleep- or when it’s time to stay awake?

My little has been sick this week. With a history of febrile seizures during fevers extending past the usual early development milestones, sickness brings an extra component to my already anxiety-addled brain. I have been awake since Tuesday and was doing fine until the walls in the shower started growing black and fuzzy midday, my shaking hands turning the water off slowly to sit on the soaked floor and wait for it to pass, or for the world to go involuntarily dark for a few minutes before it would inevitably come back to life, one spot at a time.

When you cannot identify the boundary lines between awake and asleep, sometimes your body will do it for you.

But my body has been through enough already. I would hate for it to have to take on one more thing, like shutting my entire system down simply because I couldn’t do it myself.

I know what it is to be awake when you desire to be anything but; I have done it all my life.

But to choose- when to be awake, and when to rest?

The privilege of that choice deserves some attention.