birthday wishes

It's my birthday today. I'm one of those annoying people - who loves their birthday to distraction and thinks it should be a national holiday (or at least a day off) and wants to spend a week on either side being called "the birthday girl" and being made to feel special. Luckily I've always had families that indulge.

But for me, my birthday is also a time for reflection. And as I've reflected on this past year, I'd say it's probably been one of my hardest. 

Many challenging things (each of which might have needed some time to recover from but that all conspired to happen on top of each other in the span of 4-5 months) left me on the wrong side of depleted. To the point of learning the "clinical" definition of burnout and exactly how wrongly most of us throw around "burnout" too casually. Because the real thing is like a wolf to a puppy.

And yet - I think this year I may have grown the most as well.

Even as I write those words I feel incredulous. Because at times last fall, I've felt like a barren wasteland inside. Glassy eyed and empty. Nothing to give. Nothing to grow.

If I thought anxiety was bad, burnout is something not to be fucked with.

Anxiety for me is like Dementors. Burnout is like being trapped in Azkaban.

And yet I have found my way out. Through therapy and meditation and a program called LIT that had me realizing I had been cutting off my power by not listening to my gut and my feelings. My mind was exhausted because I had somehow decided it was the only one to listen to and that I had to do it all myself and all in one way.

But here's the thing about hitting your own rock bottom, you have to build yourself back up again. But you can only do it with blocks that are deeply meaningful. Because anything else won't give you the energy you need to get out of bed.

And so I did tiny little things and took little steps.

I met friends. I coached football. I volunteered for costume fittings and book fairs. I got to know my neighbors and I wrote. I woke up every morning at 5:30am and did 20 minutes of yoga, read Mary Oliver and wrote in my journal.

They are not all kind words or words I'll feel comfortable reading later. But they are true words and words I needed to get out of me.

I suppose the gift of "middle age" is that I've started to see how every additional year I get is a gift. Truly. Too many friends have been struck by serious health issues for me to ignore what my body has been trying to tell me.

But before this year, I didn't believe it possible for a person to change on the inside like this.

I've always been an anxious frantic sort of person, since childhood. Wound up so tightly on the "what ifs" and "nexts".

But this year I've seen, if only in glimpses, how iI could actually moved differently in the world - "zen mama" as my kids have started calling it.

It's a marvel. To know that just because I exist in one way today it doesn't need to be like that always.

And that is the gift I'm taking into this next year. One of knowing that reinvention is always possible and usually it's the smallest changes that get you there. Oh, and to never let that much of myself go again. 

where did simple go?

Life feels so complicated now. Like with every day that passes somehow I manage to pull tighter some invisible thread that binds all of my days and decisions together. 

Reading my words from when I was 25 I realize it's all relative. I'm sure even then I thought my life was full and complicated. But miss the certainty, the naivety held in those sentences.  Like I could just write what was happening in my world and hit post and there was nothing else to it. 

It doesn't feel easy to do that anymore. Sure some of it's all of the demands on my time, but more, it's having the space to think to even know what or how I'm feeling before I can share it with anyone else.

I just did a TED talk. Me. I've wanted to do that for so long and then I've been working on it so hard and now? I'm back and hurled back into the everyday but I need time to reflect. That's really what the writing always did for me.

I find myself looking for space more and more. 

Space to breathe, space to think, space to be. 

But what comes out for that space to come in?

in dreams and in love

I am a lot. Like certifiably. I want too much. I demand too much. I need too much.

I’ve known this all my life. Its served me well as I’ve just set my eyes on new challenges and hurled myself at them with focus and tenacity. 

But it’s hard with my people. I think I can be a hard person to live with. To be with. So uncompromising and stingy with the grace.

So it’s been a revelation to find myself married for 15 years. To have found someone who’s not afraid of the messy. Of the too much. Who gives an anchor to my wings.

It’s in the hardest times that we realize what it is that we actually have and in the turmoil of the past year I’ve realized just what a gift I have in the sturdiness of him.

Someone who doesn’t shy away from the hard, uncomfortable work. Who can take my frustrations and come back with optimism and a plan. 

Who has never walked away from my too much. 

In the 18 years we’ve been together we’ve been through a lot. Some years more shouty than others. We are two very different people coming from two very different backgrounds. 

But if there’s one lesson marriage has taught me it’s this:

There is no inevitability. No forgone conclusions. There is only waking up every single morning and deciding to do the work. To fight. 

So yeah, I marvel on days when I make it really hard to want to fight for this. I am in awe of the strength and the sense of self it needs to keep showing up. To keep pushing at me, but also, keep pushing with me.

True partnership is really hard. It pushes us to the brink as often as it feels rewarding.

Running two companies, raising two kids, keeping a sense of our own selves while holding onto and nurturing our relationship - so many days the math of all that feels crushing. 

Our wedding rings are engraved with:

In dreams and in love…

… there are no impossibilities.

It’s in the hardest days I feel those words the most.

bringing back blogs.

I first started a new fangled thing called "blogging" when I first moved to Cincinnati. I wanted a simple way to tell my friends and family about what was happening in my life, even if I didn't talk to them daily.

It was easy. Jot down what was only mind and hit publish. My friends would occasionally check in whenever they were curious.  

My own little weird corner of the internet where I could share unfiltered all the things I was experiencing and learning and thinking and my people could drop by and visit, when and however long they wanted to.

It felt both connecting and therapeutic. There were no sweeping assertions or conclusions. There was little insight and often no real "point".

It was just life in its most beautiful and honest form.

Eventually I moved to Typepad and Wordpress and then Substack. And what had started as a small personal thing found broader resonance as I shared about building a company while building a family. 

But as I shifted from a blogging platform to newsletter one, I found my writing changed. I wouldn't have thought it, because the newsletter offered better, easier distribution and yet. 

I felt this pressure to make my posts mean something if it was going to show up in your inbox. So then I would hoard my thoughts, start weighing and considering them. Seeing if they were "worthy" enough.  And too often? I felt they weren't. So I found myself writing less and filtering more. 

Recently I went back to my old blogs. As I read those confident, naive and raw posts I realized: I missed blogging. Just straight up, inconsequential, unfiltered little posts. That live on my little weird page. Where others are welcome but if they find it's not for them are welcome to never come back.

I shared this in a new little writing group and found resonance amongst other onetime bloggers.

So we're bringing back blogging. Even if it's just a handful of us with our weird little ideas and raw experiences. Digital places to express and be ourselves for no other purpose than just to be.




time travel.

When you move, you find lots of treasures, forgotten and tucked away. Clothes, journals and yes, iPods shuffles.

I might have squealed when I found this gem - with its charger no less. I plugged it in and hoped against hope it might still work.

I had no idea what I would find on it - because recall, this pinnacle of product engineering has no screen. Just load up maybe 50? 100? songs and just go - forward or back with a little scroll wheel. That's it.

Just picture my delight the little orange light flashed green and I grabbed my daughter's corded headphones and pressed play expectantly,

Fire Burning started piping through and instantly transported me to a jeep in the middle of Maui during our honeymoon in 2009.

I sat there - surrounded by the utter chaos of moving into a new home and felt such simple joy.

The next morning I took my new friend Clippy (yes, I know) and laced up running shoes.

Anyone who knows me knows I am not a Runner. And yet, one of the best parts of moving cities is reinvention. Trying on a new version of yourself.

And so, why not take advantage of this ridiculous Cali weather and see what the fuss is all about.

No screens, no phone. Just me, my iPod shuffle and the open road (well, the quite contained and well traversed streets of Menlo).

I hit play - not knowing what was coming next.

Just throwing it all over to faith like a crazy person.

And running back into 2009.