Grace: Whatever This Time Is

My word of the year was tenderness. 

I should know better by now. Every time I set an intention at the precipice of a new year, monumental things appear just around the corner. 

I have been alone for most of this year. 

It is a weird time. I’ve seen all four seasons of whatever we’re calling this time, this year of coronavirus, at a distance. This is the most solitary time of my life. I see this as neither good nor bad.  

I have been alone physically, but also emotionally. Feelings are not for wimps. But all those gnarly emotions are information, guideposts for the road ahead. The only way out is through every single feeling. 

A handful of friends check in every now and again, and for that I am grateful. But I can hear in some of their voices a need, not to actually know how I am, but to fill the void, to be connected to something. Anything.

A few friends want to save me. Conversations are peppered with invitations to visit their homes, hours away from my own. I live a New Yorker’s life, and I do not have a car. I am appreciative of their efforts, but the prospect of sitting on a bus, windows closed, for two hours, in the middle of a global pandemic, is enough to keep me under the covers—alone—for a very long time.

I will always choose home. This is the most basic truth of who I am.  

The pandemic demanded I spend time with myself. It has stripped everything in my life down to the basics. Without work, dinners with friends, travel to faraway places, and all the other ways I have normally distracted myself, I had to learn how to be myself on my couch. In my kitchen. Scrubbing the bathtub. Watching the news.

Too much news.

   

How do you describe this year? The one where nothing happens, but everything happens, all at once? 

I have begun this section more times than I care to admit. I keep censoring myself. Someone may be offended. We’re at a time in our history, at least in America, when someone will be offended by everything a person can say. 

As hard as it is, I’m learning not to care. 

It’s been wild to watch intelligent, sane, reasonable people fall on the edge of their sanity. To bear witness to people suddenly deem themselves infectious disease experts, with a degree from Facebook. To see them post debunked materials over and over again, as if the more they post, the truer they become. 

I watch people I know rail against and yell at politicians on social media. It’s a peculiar thing to see people scream at the ones who are doing their best to keep their populations safe and alive. (And curiously, be silent about the ones who simply don’t care.) I want to tell these people they are probably yelling at a 22-year-old intern who is just trying to do the best job they can.  

Ultimately, I don’t blame the politicians, the ones trying to keep their citizens alive, however imperfectly. At least they are trying. I blame us. The collective us who have decided we don’t care enough to keep each other safe. 

I will never understand this. 

The people who have decided their personal liberty is more important than communal safety don’t seem to understand they are the ones prolonging this. If they stopped flouting the guidelines for just a few weeks, the collective would benefit. Restrictions would lift sooner. But maybe living in New York City, having heard the urgent (and seemingly endless) sound of sirens echoing in the quiet of the city last spring and felt the terror permeate the achingly silent streets, has given me a different perspective from the rest of the country. 

Still. It’s crazy that keeping each other safe has become a political firestorm. But, here we are.

In the more daunting moments, when the aloneness has overtaken everything, I go for a walk. This used to be my cure for everything. But now—in between the trees that heal me, the sun that warms me—being around people feels stressful. The noses resting on top of masks. The masks worn as chin guards. The maskless who look in your eyes defiantly, daring you to say something. 

My city is a walking city, a place where taking public transportation is easier than driving yourself. We don’t hide in our cars. Sharing space is a way of life. This has been one reason why I love living here. Humanity is always right outside your doorstep. 

But these times are not normal. So, we adjust our behavior accordingly.

 

I have spent time alone, in the depths of grief. 

The grief has surprised me, my one constant companion for these last nine months. It is deep and wide and ever present, and even when it’s hiding in the shadows, I know it’s still there. It is so significant I have a hard time talking about it, putting words to it. 

It has been easier to just feel my way through the days. 

While I know people who have fallen ill, I am fortunate to not have lost anyone. So (but)(and) the depth of what I’m mourning has stunned me. 

No one prepares you for grieving your country. But I am. I have never had illusions about its historic complexity and dark underbelly, but I’ve always believed in the idea of the goodness of America. I have been surprised—gutted—by the lack of humanity that has seeped into the far reaches of my country. By the brief solidarity that turned to disdain for people who took to the streets to fight for the right of black people to live, and by the courteous consideration for those irate because they can’t hang out at the bar. And how masks have bred fury. 

Honestly—please just wear a mask. 

I grieve the absence of the country I have always known us to be—the one where we band together in times of need to help one another.

 

We’ve had no national day, week, or month of mourning. We haven’t mourned as a country. In New York City, where I live, we publicly and privately mourn the almost 3,000 souls lost on September 11, 2001 every single year. Today we are now at a point where we are losing that many people every day. Every. Single. Day. And yet, we do not collectively mourn. We go on about our days in denial, as if everything is normal. As if it’s no big deal. 

But I mourn. I mourn both the incalculable losses, and I mourn our national apathy about them. I mourn the suffering of people on food lines and those who have been treated with contempt because they didn’t have enough savings to get through a pandemic. 

I mourn that it didn’t have to be this way. There are days when it feels too much too bear. 

I am grieving the loss of my own job and, with it, the amazing team of coworkers who were more supportive than almost anyone I have ever worked with. I miss the ability to say, “I’m not okay today” and know that someone on the other side of our virtual galaxy would have empathy for that before we moved on with our work. 

Mostly, I grieve for the carefree way we used to live our lives.

 

In the space of being alone, in the middle of a global pandemic, I have learned to be tender with myself. 

I’ve discovered a softness in me I don’t often acknowledge. It is the empathetic part of me, the deepest space that aches for people in pain, that understands the nonsensical questioners are often simply terrified of what is happening around them, that wants to fix the broken things. 

That part of me needs caretaking, too, and I have tended to it as best as I could. 

Movement saved me. All those emotions, thoughts, and feelings get stuck in the crevices of our bodies, and they need to be acknowledged and excavated. (Have you heard of The Class by Taryn Toomey? The digital classes have changed my life. It is my therapy, my religion, my mental stability. There is no easy way to describe it—sort of like spiritual calisthenics—but I always feel better for having done it.) 

Our bodies are wise; we should listen to them. 

Early on, I would shut off my computer at the end of the work day, and my body would power down, too. It let me know a nap was not negotiable. The reclamation of a deep rest that has eluded me for the last decade, if not more, was sweet. And necessary.

 

I have been the opposite of whatever productive is. 

We are living in traumatic, entirely remarkable times. Busyness has no place in that. My tenderest decision was to be realistic about what I could handle. There would be no languages learned, no books written, no apartment DIY renovations done this year. And I am okay with that. 

In fact, I’m forever changed by it. I’m no longer interested in a life I need a vacation from. I want to live deliberately, with a shorter workday and more time for meaningful conversations. I want to leave small talk far behind. I want to savor the meals I’ve cooked, feel the tickle of a cocktail or sparkling water on my tongue. I want to walk outside and look up at the sky, make note of how today’s clouds are different from yesterdays. How the blue of above has shifted its hue.

I want to pay attention.

Mary Oliver said, “attention is the beginning of devotion.” Yes. That’s what I want. A life of devotion.

I am deeply spiritual, and I have turned to that for comfort. But I do not spiritualize my way out of situations. If you were a person who threw “love and light” mantras at me when I was talking about my sadness, or told me to raise my frequency or elevate my vibration, I have ignored you. 

I believe every feeling is valid, the sadness and the anguish, the pleasures and the delights. If it means the only person to acknowledge them is me, then so be it. 

We must be the people tending to our deepest needs.

In one moment of sudden and startling clarity, I realized almond milk has no place in my coffee. Half and half now has its rightful place in my refrigerator. This was perhaps my most satisfying revelation of the year.

 

As much as I want to give it one, this post does not have a Pollyanna-like ending. The story continues, and what happens next is still unknown.  

As the year begins to draw to a close, I recognize the need to get quiet. I need to tune out everyone’s opinions and rage and fury, and I need to figure out what is next. My journey continues, and at the moment what’s ahead is a great mystery. I need to begin dreaming again, to envision the ideal future in my head. 

And so I will. 

And you? How will you close out this unconventional year?

I’m thinking about what I want for us. All the ways we can emerge from this time better, stronger, unified.

May we know joy. May we allow it to permeate our every cell. And may we embody it on our travels near and far.  

May we rediscover our common humanity and fully root ourselves in it. 

May we rise up to be the community members needed at this time in our history. 

May we not cling to the ideas of what was and open ourselves to the newness of the world trying to be born. 

May we dream up a new world where everyone matters.  

May we treat ourselves—and each other, please—with tenderness, especially when times are hard. 

Sending you love, good health, and safety, and wishing you all beautiful things for the year ahead. 

xo, with goodness and grace. 

Grace: Uncertainty

The air sounds peaceful today, if air has a sound, and I can hear the birds chirping. Lots of people have mentioned hearing the birds more than ever, as if they’ve just begun to sing their songs again while we are hunkering down indoors. I’ve always heard the birds, but usually only in the early morning hours. Now I can hear them throughout the day. 

How many other things have we not noticed in our everyday lives? 

My normally noisy street is quiet today, few cars coming and going with any regularity. Every day now sounds like a holiday morning in the city, with that calm hovering over the concrete as the world has slowed down. And for the first time in many days, I am feeling okay. 

… … …

How are you? No really, how are you?

I check in with myself multiple times a day. Cycling through the stages of quarantine, I take stock of how my heart is feeling. It feels different at any given moment. To say this is a weird time would be the understatement of the century, but here we are. I have been in some state of frazzled these last few weeks. Work is busy. I am grateful, humbled even, to have continued working when so many are not. But I keep wondering how continuing on as if everything is normal is affecting my mental health. Because this is not normal.

Though, it’s what we New Yorkers do. We plow through. It’s partly why we are tough. We are driven, and that drive keeps us moving, even through impossible circumstances. 

I work from home, mostly, so I have my rhythms down to a science. And suddenly, everyone else is also home and they’ve started playing a different beat. Everyone wants to video chat—weekly happy hours have replaced the real thing, though those only happen every few months. My phone rings with endless calls of people checking in. The text alarm dings at a steady pace. I have never truly known sensory overload until these past few weeks.

Everyone wants to be connected. And it is exhausting me.

… … …

It occurred to me this week what I’ve been longing for. These are not ordinary times. It feels as if we’re being called to pay attention to something bigger than us. To get still. To listen. To hear the wisdom coming from the earth, from the sky, from the water, and from something greater, if you believe in that. I would like to hear what they all have to say. 

Now, I do solitude very well. I am a champion solitude-er. As we were told to stay home, I kept joking, “I was made for these times!” And I think I was. But I also think we all were. Or we wouldn’t be here. 

While I relish the time at home, it has taught me about the people I see most. I am introverted, with a rich inner life, and an often awkwardly hesitant outer life. Most of my friends are extroverted, the social butterflies, the ones who tell jokes and always have a story to share, the ones who are up for an adventure at any moment of the day. It’s actually striking to see how different we are.  

We do solitude very differently. Bored is a word I’m hearing a lot. I laugh when I hear grown people say how bored they are—and how we so often try to talk children out of their boredom. But, bored is where the good things—and new ways of being—emerge. Bored is basically my end goal. 

Everyone is struggling in different ways, at least in my own world. It’s been hard to have real conversations about all the feelings. People seem overwhelmed by them, and it’s easier to binge another Netflix series than it is to face whatever it is you’d rather ignore. And so I tend to my own emotions and navigate them solo. I’ve had to be okay with sometimes not being okay. 

These times are scary and uncertain. The simple act of going to the grocery store last week felt borderline terrifying. Two lonely cars drove down the street, one a police truck. The avenue felt apocalyptic. The few people on the street wore masks. We’re being told to stay at least six feet from each other, and New York City sidewalks are often not that wide. Grocery store aisles are barely half that. So we claimed one side to gingerly hug. We seemed afraid of each other, when we weren’t being clueless and acting as if nothing has changed.  

Everything has changed. 

Your town may not be like mine. I pray it’s not. But it would be difficult to not acknowledge our interconnectedness now. What I do here affects you on the other side of the country. Or the other side of the world. Our actions matter. 

… … … 

How may I serve? 

I keep hearing those words. I’ve donated to a different place every time I’ve gotten paid since this started. It keeps me from feeling helpless. But the need is overwhelming, and though I feel good after I’ve done it, later it doesn’t feel like nearly enough. 

We often make the mistake of feeling like we have to give money to make a difference. Showing someone you care is priceless. 

The sweetness of old friends checking in on me has overwhelmed me. After a conversation with one of my best friends—where I said I hadn’t really had downtime because I was either working or trying to source groceries / clean them off once I received / cooking them—she sent me a few days worth of prepared meals, just so I could have some extra space in my days. I picked up mail one day to find a card from a friend that she’d painted in a rainbow of colors, embossed with the word GRATEFUL.

Kindness matters. 

We’re all in it together. But now we deal with “it” separately, apart, in solitude. This is not a coronavirus phenomenon. We just busy ourselves just enough to have to pay attention to greater wisdom. But now attention must be paid. We’re being shaken awake. 

These times are calling us to recalibrate. To change. To look at what isn’t working—personally, professionally, globally—and to face it head on. 

We are irrevocably changed. Yes, there is a collective trauma at play—the main reason why I think people are so busy busying themselves with connectedness. But perhaps something is trying to be born from this traumatizing time. 

And so on this Easter morning, there is no news on in the background, no Netflix on pause, no virtual games waiting to be played. Instead, I am listening to the birds whistling their songs on this Sunday. I am noticing the vibrant green of the baby leaves sprouting from the trees across the street. I am listening to the sounds of silence, so rare in New York City. And I am dreaming of what comes after this. But I am certain life has a bigger dream than I could imagine waiting for us on the other side of this. 

Sending all of you so much love on this Easter Sunday. Stay home. Wash your hands. Find joy in the time of boredom. Help when you can. Tell your beloveds you love them. Be kind. 

At some point we will emerge from these cocoons, and we will rise again. 

xo, with goodness and grace. 

 

 

 

Grace: Our 10-Year Anniversary

We’re all starving for something.

If there has been a recurrent theme in the last decade, it would be hunger. My hunger is deep and wide and palpable.

I’ve craved calm in the chaos. Beauty instead of ugliness. Steadfastness amidst uncertainty. Human connection in lieu of screen time. Love. Always love.

Sometimes it seems like there’s never enough love.

It’s funny to think 10 years have passed since I began this blog. One Thanksgiving night, I decided to be brave and put my words into the world. I didn’t know if anyone would care about what I had to say. I still wonder.

A decade is a good marker to reflect on what has been.

I remember feeling unhappy with my life back then, yet determined to crawl out of it. Writing has been a constant in my life. It is the way I express myself best. So I put together this little site, determined to focus on what is good in the world. I invited you to join the “goodness intervention.” (Click here to read the first post! And yes, I am still thankful for bacon.) Together, by focusing on the good, we’d find our happy.

Now I understand that unhappiness is just hunger for something else. That yearning doesn’t magically go away. You actually have to do something about it. 

That’s the hard part.

My life is vastly different than it was a decade ago. I am vastly different than I was a decade ago. And in many ways, exactly the same.

Jobs and relationships—I’ve let go of many, and some have let go of me. None of that was easy, but with the gift of hindsight, it all was necessary. We are what we tolerate. When we settle, our lives sink in to mediocrity and our home is built on that foundation.

Anything that came to a dramatic conclusion had warning signs. It first appeared with whispers.

“Are you gonna let that person talk to you that way?”

“Do you really want to cancel another dinner plan to work late again?”

“Should you let that passive aggressive comment slide?”

Left ignored, the whispers transform into megaphones, until you can ignore them no more.

It’s occurred to me only in the past year that much of what’s in my life wasn’t by conscious choice. It takes courage to have a life of your own choosing. Not one you were conditioned to want. Not one that you “should” have. Not the one that looks good on Instagram.

What I really want has become clearer. Also, I probably should relax a little bit. 🙂

In the last 10 years, I began to see the world outside my own country. This, more than anything, has changed my life. It is a privilege I am immensely grateful for every single day.

I never learn more about myself than when I am somewhere new. It doesn’t matter if I’m on a solo journey, or with friends. Traveling points out my weak spots. It highlights the ways I’m not compatible with my companions. It emboldens my New Yorker pushiness when warranted (thank goodness), but triggers my shyness when meeting new people. It sometimes makes me long to share a particularly gorgeous moment with the special someone who hasn’t yet shown up.

It digs into the tender places. I don’t do vulnerability well, but traveling shoves it right in my face and forces me to deal.

But also, seeing a new place reinforces my sense of wonder. It helps me remember how much beauty there is in this world. How grand life is. It’s just waiting for us to remember.

(You guys. I went to Iceland this year and didn’t tell you. I’ll fill you in soon.)

My ability to feel wonder is my favorite thing about me. It’s the thing that propelled me to begin blogging, and it’s what I hope to always retain.

Of course, it’s also easy to think life is better when you’re on a plane to somewhere fabulous. But the thing is, you still have to go home. And if you haven’t created a home life that is nurturing and welcoming, all the frequent flyer miles in the world cannot create that for you.

The biggest thing the last decade taught me was about softness. Or, how too much information, too little compassion, too few real-life connections make it difficult to stay centered and sane. The world has changed dramatically, and I struggle with how my emotions have been altered along with it. The hardest thing for me has been to remain soft in at least of few of my inner spaces.

But when I’m in doubt, when I think there is just no hope, I go out into nature.

Nature always resets me just right. The trees, the flowers, the leaves all have a wisdom, and they help me remember to be soft.

 

Also, somewhere during the last 10 years I learned you shouldn’t double space after a period. These are the times I wish there was some kind of universal memo to tell you everything you’ve learned about life has now changed. But, alas, no. Anyway…

Ultimately, focusing on the good is life changing. There is a next step to that, though. Taking action on what you want is key. Being willing to get out of your comfort zone leads to goodness you hadn’t imagined. I hope to always be willing to take a leap.

What about you—what have you learned? 

And so we put these years behind us and look towards the ones to come. Where will the next 10 years take me? Only the future knows. But hopefully I will still remember to document the good, to celebrate life’s small graces, and to eat the best grub possible.

Whether you’ve read this little blog since that first Thanksgiving night or this is the first time we’ve met, thank you. In a world grabbing your attention at every turn, I’m grateful you’ve taken time to read my words. It means more than I could possibly say.

I may not be in this space as much as I used to be, but I’m always rooting for us. Here’s to the next 10 years. May we flourish.

XO, with goodness and grace.

Grace: 2018—The Other Side of Yes

The last few years seem like a big ol’ blur, intense and jarring and confusing. I’ve emerged from the tunnel of these years with the prevalent thought, “What the *** was that???”

When I compare the person I was a few years ago to the one I am now, I’m faced with startling contradictions. Somehow it feels I’m in exactly the same place—emotionally and physically—and at the same time a completely different person. I’m crankier, yet more empathetic; weary, yet full of wonder; terrified of everything, yet ready to barrel past the fear.

So there’s no clarity in any of that.

For these last few years, this blog has been simply a series of one or two travel posts a year, with a year-end wrap up for good measure. It’s been in flux—just like me. I’m trying to figure out who I am after decades of work, and not much play, left me feeling like there had to be more to life. It’s been an interesting and challenging time.

I thought a lot about love this year.

Mostly, I thought about how you can fall out of love with your life and not realize it. When I look at the writing I’ve done over the last few years—which, admittedly, hasn’t been much—I see my struggle with this. I’m constantly saying how I’m living in the in-between space, in that middle place between the person I was and the one I will become. It’s unsettling, this feeling of not knowing what lies ahead.

I’ve also begun to see the barriers I put up against love. It’s been eye opening to notice how I don’t let people in, and how I resist allowing them to really get to know me. Which is funny for a person who “sees” love everywhere I go.

Maybe all those signs of love are heavenly reminders that a life without love isn’t really much of a life at all.

I already have a vulnerability hangover just writing all of that.

When I think of all the interesting things I’ve done over the last few years, almost all of them began with the word no.

As a former people pleaser (and thank goodness THAT part of the program is over), I had to learn how to say no in order to put up healthy boundaries. I like the word no; it makes me feel in control. The thing is, my no’s don’t all mean the same thing.

Sometimes it means, “oh, hell no!” Or as I like to say in texts, “nooooooo.” But other times it’s an internal “hmmmm.” Much less definitive. As in, I don’t know how I feel about that, and I need to think about it. But for right now I’m gonna say, nope. 

It’s taken me almost half a century to understand this about myself. The place of no is how I process new information.

This summer, I had a series of conversations with a friend that always ended with me lamenting how I didn’t know who I wanted to be or what I wanted to do. I was in the middle of a transition, and I didn’t know how to get to the other side. One day, she finally stopped me and offered incredibly wise advice.

She gently suggested that maybe I stop the hustle. That I let go of the notion that I had to achieve something to be a valid person. That I stop trying to define my life and just go live it. That I give myself that space to just be.

This was life changing. And so, I gave myself some room to just live. And to start saying yes more often.

If on January 1, you had told me I’d travel to Paris, Rome, and London (with a couple of stops in Sicily) within the span of twelve months, I’d have thought you were insane. And yet…that actually happened.

How one says that without sounding obnoxious, I don’t know. And yet.

Sometimes life presents situations you could never have imagined yourself being in. And the only thing standing between you and an unimaginably amazing place is your ability to say yes.

This year I said yes more often than not. To myself. To my friends. To adventure.

And I ended up seeing Europe’s greatest hits.

Paris: You already know I fell in love with Paris. (Click here to see the post, if you haven’t.)

Italy: My first love. This year we got to know each other better.

Should you find yourself in Rome and willing to go off the beaten path, venture out to Aventine Hill. You’ll find a line of people at a nondescript door, looking through a keyhole…which sounds insane. But when you look through it, you’ll see it’s perfectly lined up with St. Peter’s Cathedral at the Vatican. No matter how many times I’d seen it on the internet, when I looked through it in person, I gasped.

I’ve been to Sicily four times in the last couple of decades, each time visiting a different region, and each time I go, I discover a new side of it.

 

We have lots of traffic in New York City, but not once has it ever been because of a goat herd.

London: It’s been a dream of mine to see all the lights around London at Christmas time. To say I was not disappointed is the understatement of the century. It was magical.

Life doesn’t always feel of full of goodness in the midst of a day. But when I look back on all that I was lucky enough to do and see over the past year, how can I feel anything but grateful? Perhaps the key to life, and love, is saying yes, even just a little more.

Can we start the new year by making a few promises to ourselves? First, can we give ourselves a break? If you’re like me, you’re really hard on yourself. And it’s exhausting. It also blocks the fun. Can we invite in the fun??

Can we feel afraid and uncertain and uncomfortable, and move forward anyway? Can we open ourselves to the possibilities we don’t know exist? Can we trust that life holds good things in trust for us, and they can be ours if just give them some room?

Let’s begin by saying yes to ourselves. Magical things are waiting for us on the other side of it. Here’s to a life well lived and well loved in 2019.

xo, with goodness and grace.

Goodness: Paris

No one wants to hear me drone on about Paris. They don’t say this, of course, because most of the people I know are (sort of) polite. But I can feel the inward roll of the eyes when I start talking about it yet again. I think they’re tired of me yammering on about its magnificent beauty.

I fell in love with a city. You know that feeling when you fall in love with someone and all you want to do is talk about that person? And no one wants to about hear it, again? And again. And yet again. That’s me, currently.

For a long time I didn’t want to hear it, either. I thought of Paris as something too far out of reach, unattainable. I didn’t feel fancy enough for it.

I was sitting in my apartment on a cold January day, fully in a funk and having a hard time pulling myself out of it. So I started asking questions. What experience did I need to have? What dreams haven’t I fulfilled? Where could I go???

Paris came to mind. It’s always been on my list of dream places to visit, but I never thought I’d actually go. Friends would try to convince me I should go, but I would poo poo the idea. I don’t speak a lick of French, and all the clichés about the French had settled into somewhere in the deep recesses of my brain.

I realize now how much of my trepidation came from other people’s notions and someone else’s fears.

And so when I felt excited at the prospect of going this time around, I booked a trip for early spring.

I arrived in full New Yorker mode, all wound up and wearing my self-protective attitude. This meant immediately challenging the taxi driver about the fact that he didn’t have a taxi light on the top of his car (my internet research warned against getting in cabs without one), and then about the lack of a meter once I got in the car (which turned out to be on his cell phone). Being New Yorker means being perennially paranoid, and acting accordingly.

Is this your first time in Paris? he asked.

Yes, it is.

Ah. That explains it.

I still don’t know what that meant, but it made me chuckle.

By the end of the hour-and-a-half long ride—which was almost an hour longer than normal because a rail strike forced more people into their cars-—we’d become fast friends. He showed me points of interest as we passed them and gave me tips on navigating the city. We had interesting conversation about politics and our leaders, and we talked about our families. When we reached my hotel, he kissed me on both cheeks, told me I was hilarious, and thanked me for the fun ride.

So began four days in the city of love.

It had been a while since I’d explored a place on my own, without a friend (or five) with me. I’d almost forgotten how to do the thing of learning a place through my own lens. I’d forgotten the freedom of setting my own agenda.

Freedom, I think, is the thing that travel gives you. It frees you from the daily routine, the list of have-tos, the endless rounds of meetings and conference calls and brainstorms. It releases you from responsibility.

And when you travel on your own, once you get past your own discomfort of being alone, it puts you in touch with what lights you up.

So I wandered more than I have in years, to the point of exhaustion. I loved every second of it.

Lest you also begin to roll your eyes as I wax poetic about Paris, I’ll pipe down a bit and show you some pictures.

This was one of my favorite places.

Sacre-Coeur Basilica, in the Montmartre hilltop neighborhood, sits at the highest point of Paris.

If you venture up the 300 stairs that lead to the top of the dome, you are rewarded with the most spectacular views of the city.

Love is everywhere. Especially in this city.

I explored the bridges along the Seine River. This one, Pont Alexandre III, is a masterpiece. A Parisian later told me the bridge had been a gift from Russia to France.

I don’t have many photos of it for two reasons. 1) I couldn’t get over how ornate and intricate and beautiful it was, so I just stood on the bridge for a long time trying to take it all in. 2) There were so many people—wedding parties in particular—it was hard to take the pictures I had in my mind.

What you can’t see is another bridal party on the other side of this couple.

By the way, if I’m patiently waiting to take a picture and you insist on planting yourself for a personal photo shoot, I’ve now decided to just make you part of the landscape. For example, these girls.

They stayed like that for so long. I bet they are still there. But I digress. 🙂

I visited a handful of museums, and YOU GUYS. The buildings were just as awe-inspiring as the art.

The Picasso Museum. I don’t have much to say, except—Look. At. This.

At the Musée de l’Orangerie, Monet’s water lilies circled two rooms.

And of course, the Louvre.

And, as one does when in Paris, I made the pilgrimage to Mona Lisa.

The French people were, for the most part, kind and full of good humor.

And, the food. Because, Paris.

Of all the drool-worthy food I ate, I think it’s slightly hilarious that one of my favorite meals was a small plate of fried chicken. Though, to call it a small plate of fried chicken is to undersell how delicious it was. In my research before my trip, I’d read that Ellsworth had arguably the best fried chicken in the world. It’s something I rarely eat, but I immediately felt the need to try it.

It didn’t disappoint. Served alongside a buttermilk dipping sauce and house made pickles, the chicken was crispy, succulent, juicy deliciousness.

I’m mostly gluten free at home, but there was no way I was going to France and not eat everything.

Like this chocolate-pistachio escargot. It’s the thing you are supposed to get at this particular bakery, which of course meant I wanted something else. (Insert emoji eye roll.) Please hear me when I say this: if you are ever in Paris, you need to go to Du Pain et des Idées. Get this. Full stop. And yes, I am bossing you around.

You’re welcome.

Also, aren’t these asparagus gorgeous?

Probably the most magical moment was on my next to last night. Sitting in my hotel room, legs throbbing from all the walking I’d done, I felt to pull to go back out.

So I did.

As soon as I walked out of the metro station, the skies opened up.

It didn’t matter. The rain only added to the drama.

Sometimes the touristy thing ends up being the most majestic.

That’s the thing about this city—magnificence is everywhere. It wasn’t until I visited that I realized how colorless my life had looked. How mundane everything had begun to feel. Paris woke me up. It made me feel alive again. It embodies beauty, and the spirit of why beauty matters. Because the world is a vibrant, glorious, enchanting place.

It’s why I don’t mind if no one wants to hear about how I fell in love with it. Renewed in spirit, I returned home able to see my own city with fresh eyes.

It was a good reminder that life is beautiful, and so are we.

xo, with goodness and grace.

Grace: 2017–Thoughts at Year’s End

I’ve been giving a lot of thought to this last year and what it meant to me. But I find myself not wanting to recap or rehash or relive any of it.

Instead, I’m thinking about what I want from the next year.

On Christmas Day, I hunkered down on my parents’ sofa as we flipped through old photo albums. I came across a picture of me from when I was about 7 or 8, and it stopped me. That was a girl I hadn’t remembered.

I recall the day vividly; I was roller skating on my block, as I often did, and my dad came outside, armed with his camera. (I inherited my love of photography from him.) We had an impromptu photo shoot; me skating and posing and being goofy, him documenting it all. I wore a purple plaid pinafore, accessorized with my blue and yellow skates and a Reggie Jackson pin. I loved baseball—actually my brother did, which in those days was the same thing—and I loved #44 on the Yankees.

There were a series of pictures from this shoot in the album, and seeing them now makes me laugh. I was open and funny and spirited, at that beautiful age before self-consciousness sets in. But I kept going back to that one photo.

I’m looking off camera, most likely at my dad, hands on my hips, slight smirk on my face, eyes steely and certain and probably annoyed about something. I’m sassy, feisty and unafraid. I’m in command of myself.

I turned to my dad, incredulous at this picture of my younger self. When was I this person? He laughed and then heaved a sigh full of humor and weariness. You’ve always been that person.

How can we get ourselves so wrong?

I once had someone challenge me about my personality. What is it with you and being nice? I didn’t understand what she meant at the time; in fact, I was slightly offended by it. I know now that I confused being nice with being kind. I understand that wanting to be viewed as nice often leads to a contrived persona, built so people will like us. But instead we betray ourselves as we dumb down our truest essence.

Now I know that sometimes I am kind. Sometimes I am flippin’ furious. And that’s okay. It is possible for both things to exist in the same person. We can be many things at the same time. Soft and rough around the edges. Courteous and demanding. Understanding and challenging.

So much of our lives is consumed by what we’ve been told to want and need—and who we should be. When I think of what I want in 2018, I’m pretty sure of what I don’t want. I will not start a diet on January 1. I certainly will not be in the gym bright and early on that day, nor any other day that week. I will not deprive myself of my feelings. I will not buy into any of this ‘new year, new you’ nonsense. I’m fine just as I am, and I’m guessing you are, too. I will not waste anymore time with resolutions based on who everyone else thinks we should be and all strive towards becoming.

Instead, my hope is to show up—as me. Not some made-up and idealized version of myself, but who I really am. That person is messy in so, so many ways. (My brother loves to tell a story about a donut and my desk drawer. But, a tale for another day.) The real me has big emotions and is learning to express them. She gets angry. If you are annoying her, chances are she will blurt it out a little too quickly and very loudly. This may hurt your feelings. But she feels love deeply, too. She loves to laugh. She thinks comedians are rarely funny, but real people are inherently hilarious. She looks for beauty in the world every single day. She will point at the moon as it rises and tell you, Wow…you need to see this! If you dismiss it, she will know that you’ve unlearned wonder, but she trusts you will find your way. This is the person I was when I was born, and she is the person longing to be fully immersed in the world every day. I know intellectually that I am enough, but maybe it’s time to start living like it.

Wishing all of this, and all beautiful things in this new year.  Let’s make ourselves proud.

xo, with goodness and grace.

Grace: Beauty

Listen, are you just breathing a little, and calling it a life?  — Mary Oliver

Taking a late summer stroll through the winding streets of Panarea—a magical island north of Sicily—I was talking to my friend about my writing.

She’d asked me why I wasn’t blogging anymore. My goal had always been to maintain a positive outlook in the blog no matter what was going on, but that had begun to feel inauthentic. I was thinking about this when she asked her question—and instead I blurted out, “Since the election, I haven’t been feeling very positive.”

Now. I don’t share that to get political. Like, at all. I share it because it startled me, and I’ve been trying to make sense of it ever since. I’ve voraciously consumed the news over the last year, thinking I was merely staying informed. What I hadn’t realized was how deeply the rollercoaster of events was altering my worldview. I hadn’t understood how much it changed me.

When we’ve lost our way, how do we return to ourselves? 

I have always been someone who feels deeply.

The page has always been my safe place for processing all those feelings. I don’t always know how to express them in person—if I’m quietly thinking, I can be seen as aloof and withholding; if I’m vocal and opinionated, it can come across as overbearing. But on the page, they find meaning and hope.

Until now. Now the words are stuck. The emotions feel big and complicated and aggressive in my body, but they won’t work their way out into the world. They just sit there, stuck in sludge, unmoving and unable to find a way out. So instead of writing, I read the news. Endlessly. And then I watch it on TV.

A few months after that Sicilian conversation, it occurred to me that I was in an abusive relationship with information. Too much of it isn’t helpful; it can actually feel toxic. But I like being informed, so I wrestle with balance. How can you stay connected to the world around you, while somehow managing to be completely disconnected?

I don’t know. But if you’ve figured it out, I want to hear about it.

Aside from that, life just feels so complicated. And exhausting.

Shopping in Whole Foods a couple of months ago, I found myself trying to pick up a dozen eggs on the way to the cash register. I stopped and stood in front of an entire wall display of eggs. There must’ve been 50 different varieties, each labeled with one of four classifications. Cage free. Pasture raised. Outdoor access. Mobile houses on pasture. (Wait…do chickens have mobile homes???) I was confused. Which was better for the chickens? Who had the best quality of life? What’s the difference between a pasture and the great outdoors? I wanted to be a good person, to make the right decision.

But. There. Were. So. Many. Eggs.

I became overwhelmed with indecision. I began to breathe heavily, and perspiration started to bead on my forehead. I felt ten seconds away from the onset of a panic attack. So I walked away, egg free.

Our lives are so complex. We have too many choices. I’m not sure this multitude of options is adding quality to our lives.

Even my relationship with food—long my simplest and easiest partnership—is complicated. I’m allergic to everything. (Okay, not everything. But, so many of the things. How can you have creamy coffee when it seems you are allergic to dairy, almonds and coconut and aren’t supposed to have soy?) I took a break from my beloved cup of caffeine for two weeks and then, craving a steamy hot latte, I returned to it one Sunday morning. It made my heart race so fast I thought it was going to pound right out of my chest. I took a break from coffee and, in return, coffee quit me.

I find new gray hairs every time I visit the office ladies room, and a new wrinkle greets me each morning in my home bathroom mirror. Who is this person reflected back at me?

Can you return to yourself when you no longer recognize yourself? 

All of this left me overwhelmed and wondering how I could ever feel hopeful again. I seek to make meaning in my writing, but sometimes I question whether it’s possible anymore. Did the optimistic l part of me move on, as people we know sometimes do? Or is she still living in me and just on a break, off somewhere recalibrating?

At the resort in Panarea during our Sicilian excursion, there was one young woman working in the cafe who took care of us every morning. Her joy was palpable, infectious. I asked her what her secret was—why was she always so joyful? Her eyes widened. She stretched an arm out in front of us.

“Look where we are! How could you be anything but happy looking at this every day?”

She had a point.

Months later, sitting at my desk, feeling spectacularly grumpy, I emailed a friend to discuss the foul mood I couldn’t seem to shake.

She wrote back, bossy with instructions. She ordered me to take my camera and go outside—that very minute—and to not go back to the office until I’d documented something beautiful.

All I can say is, I hope you have friends like this.

I did as told, ending up in Central Park for a brisk walk. The heavens did not part; rainbows did not magically appear in the sky; Moses did not part any sea. But on a cloudy and cool day, I found a respite from city life, if only for twenty minutes. My mind calmed down as I took in the fall landscape. Trees letting go of their auburn leaves. Birds swooping and soaring. Lake water flowing in a singular direction.

Life moves on. The seasons change, and so do we. And we can focus on chaos and nonsense, or we can search with another purpose.

And so I am left with this: I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I don’t know who I have become or are on the road to becoming. I don’t know when hopeful words will once again flow on my laptop. But there in the midst of the uncertainty and the rage and the questioning, beauty is lurking. It may be right in front of me at every turn while on vacation, and it may lay hiding in the dustiest of corners. But it is always there.

Beauty persists.

And as I make my way back to myself, I persist, too.

 

Grace: Recharging

The rain is softly falling outside. I can always tell when it’s raining, not from looking out the window, but by the whoosh of tires from cars racing against the road. Right now, I can also hear the faintest sound of birds singing in the tree under my window. I’m guessing they are always there, chirping away, but I’m usually too preoccupied to hear them.

I love the peace of early mornings before the city hits full speed.

It has been almost six months since my last post. I’ve barely written anything during this time; this felt necessary.

I took some time off at the beginning of the year, and it wasn’t until I stopped that I realized how much I needed it. We don’t appreciate this in our non-stop culture, this thing of taking a breather. But I’m beginning to believe it should be required every few years, if not sooner.

Something funny happened during this time: I got to see what a normal work day looks like from an outsider’s perspective. And, it was shocking. We live like crazy people, you guys. Faces in phones, racing against time. Bodies pushing against others, needing to get where they are going—and fast. Humanity everywhere but in the moment. Is this normal?

All of my senses felt the shock of rush hour without anywhere to rush. No wonder I needed a break.

So exactly how did I recharge my psychic batteries? I started off with an overpacked schedule of cocktails and dinners, bracketed by wall-to-wall news. My advice? Don’t do this. It will not refresh you.

Sleeping in helps, though I rarely did. But the following things were my biggest helpers.

Art. It became my lifeline. I think it should be a habit to explore something artistic once a week. In museums, in the streets, in the park—wherever. Just to get out and see someone else’s perspective.

Georgia O’Keefe is my everything. I fan-girled at this exhibit—and then I went back. A few times.

Irving Penn blew me away with his striking images and fashionable eye.

Chihuly inspired with color, curlicues and creativity.

Travel. My friends invited a few of us to accompany them on their family vacation to Denmark. At first I said no. I was on a break from work, and it wasn’t practical. They made me go anyway.

Everyone should have friends like this. Without them, I wouldn’t have hiked to castle ruins…

…walked through the forest amongst Danish cows…

…seen these magical trees everywhere (and if anyone knows what they are called, please let me know!)…

…eaten the best fish & chips I’ve ever had (curiously, in an aquarium!)…

…seen all the colorful buildings…

…or walked through the Rainbow Bridge atop the ARoS Museum in Aarhus.

I’m the luckiest girl.

My takeaways from the trip? The Danish are perhaps the kindest people I’ve ever met—not one rude person did I come across the week I was there. Their 7-Elevens are spotless and the food looks so fresh I bet you could have a delicious four-course meal in any location. (No, I didn’t try this.)  There is a civilized way of living in the country—no less productive, but slower paced and more deliberate—that I aspire to incorporate into my own daily life.

Wandering. Back home, I wandered around my city, now in full bloom. New York is never more beautiful than when she is coming to life in spring. She’s such a show off.

Beauty reminds me about the simplicity of life. When I acknowledge it, and drink in its exquisite gorgeousness, it brings me back to myself. I’ve learned when I’m feeling frazzled and rundown and uninspired, it’s time to seek out beauty.

What about you—how do you recharge? I’d love to hear.

To my friends United States, however you choose to refresh on this Memorial Day holiday, please take a few moments to remember all of those souls who devoted their lives to our country. We may be one gloriously dysfunctional, divided mess of an American family, but we still live under one flag. Remember to honor those who have fought for our rights to enjoy freedoms we so often take for granted. That bravery is the epitome of beautiful.

xo, with goodness and grace.

Grace: 2016—Goodbye to All That

I’ve written several drafts of this end-of-2016 post, trying to make sense of a year that made no sense. Nevertheless I’ve plodded along, stringing sentences together that were angry or incoherent or sappy or whiny. Or all of the above. But when I looked back in all my drafts, there was a single theme threaded throughout.

My year was weird. Maybe yours was, too?

For me, it was the most bi-polar 12-month period ever. Here’s my story of two very different years. One was super duper ugly, and the other was, dare I say, pretty good.

PART I: The Ugly

This part was all about the storms that rolled in.

It wasn’t just the election. Though, much of it was—and what it revealed. People are angry. Though underneath all that fury, I think people feel vulnerable and scared and unsure about so many things. The world can seem frightening and uncertain, and because so many don’t know what to do with all those feelings, they lash out at the low hanging fruit. Which may be you.

Can we just pretend like all that didn’t happen? No? Mmmkay.

This year wore me out, you guys. I’m tired. Like, a Rip van Winkle kind of tired. Only, I also have insomnia and can’t go to sleep. (That’s a true story.)

I’m over everyone’s political opinions. Enough. Basta. Callate. Please. It’s nice that so many people are interested enough to have opinions, but good lord…do I need to hear every single one of them?

I’m also tired of being accommodating to everyone’s feelings. Now…I know this is not a Goodness, Grace and Grub kind of sentiment, but when I’m tired I get real. Too many times I’ve watched the quieter, tentative, thoughtful voices begin to express opinions, only to be resolutely shut down and shut up. I’ve seen it, and I’ve experienced it—and I’m done with that. So I’ve had to get used to speaking a little louder and a little more forcefully. Sometimes I forget to be polite; I talk over people when they are in mid-thought. Sometimes I speak just a little too passionately, where it makes people uncomfortable and they quickly change the subject. But you know what? Everyone needs to get over it. Because I’m all about owning my version of the truth, and it’s time for people to hear it.

So there’s that.

I’m emotionally exhausted from holding it all together. It takes a lot to make a life—patience, courage, grit, fortitude, and EFFORT, with a loud-mouthed, shouty E. Sometimes I just want to stay under the covers, jar of Nutella and spoon in hand, Food Network on the TV, easy summer read (even though it’s winter and I still haven’t finished it) somewhere in the sheets.

I literally can’t even with walking behind certain people on New York City streets—you know the ones, those who shuffle along with their heads stooped and eyes mesmerized by their phone, fully oblivious to the fact they are all up in my way. Is that you in front of me? Please stop. Because your life isn’t in your phone. It’s when you turn it off and look up.

I can’t handle losing any more icons. George Michael…what can I say? You were my adolescence. I still remember the day I heard your group Wham! was breaking up. I was 15, in the car with my mom, driving down the 405 freeway in Los Angeles with the radio on when the DJ made the announcement. At the time I thought my heart couldn’t be broken by a pop star any more than that. Now I know that isn’t true. Thank you for leaving a legacy of music; it means you can still be here for all those important moments in our lives.

I’m exhausted from all complaining, my own included.

But. I’m beginning to see all this as a blessing. Even the anger. Especially the anger. This year I felt all the feels, and I got in touch with deep dark rage hiding in the recesses of my everything. A few years ago, this would have made me uncomfortable, and I would have giggled the rage away. This year, not so much. I’m saying goodbye to all that. The anger and the rage and the fire in me burned bright and loomed large.

My good girl persona is learning how to co-exist with big gnarly feelings. I think it’s about time.

PART II: The Good

There was so much to be happy about. Really. And the good wakes me up when I’m exhausted.

First came Goodness. I traveled more than I have in years. The more I travel, the more I think it’s necessary. When you get out of your own neighborhood, you begin understand life more. When you see the world, it isn’t some big idea outside of yourself. You become part of it. You learn new ways of seeing life. Even in Vegas, baby.

After my trip to Portugal (see post here), I spent two days on my own in Madrid. Not gonna lie, it was tough. I missed my friends. None of my elementary school/high school/college Spanish came back like I thought it would, making it tough to communicate in a city where most people don’t speak English. Restaurants I wanted to dine in were closed, as so many places in Europe are in August. And I got lost on the way to virtually every place I tried to find.

In situations like this, I discover so much about myself, like how I react when I feel out of my element—and how I talk to myself during those times. (Spoiler alert: It isn’t good.) I was constantly challenged—hot and sweaty and cranky and tired and lost and unsettled—but I made it through. And then, I was rewarded with perhaps my most magical night of the year.

Chasing the sun in another country is fun, y’all.

Then came Grace. This year, I found community. It came to me when I wasn’t looking, as most good things in life do. I now have a group of people in my life who are always supportive of each other, make me laugh, and don’t run when I say crazy things.

I made new friends. I reconnected with a few old friends. I strengthened bonds with people who’ve been in my life for ages.

This year, I found my people.

And there was Grub. When I look back on this year, I realize I don’t write nearly enough about food.

My favorite meals of the year were colorful and full-flavored, yet homey and simple.

There were these clams.

Oh, these clams. One of my favorite places in Manhattan is Via Carota, in the West Village. The menu is Italian-inspired, but I don’t really like to put a label on the food. It’s just good. The menu changes in tandem with the season. The clams—with corn, tomatoes and shallots—were one of the highlights of my summer. I know this sounds very dramatic. But they were gooooood, perfectly capturing essence of summer. Food tastes different when ingredients are at their freshest.

I’d say these were my favorite thing I ate all year, but then I remember this dessert from Wildair on the Lower East Side.

I don’t remember what it was called, but the bowl held an airy panna cotta topped with what I can only describe as strawberry snow. Refreshing, cool, creamy, crunchy. Delicious.

The dessert wine was selected by my server. All I can say is, when you eat in a place known for their wine and you don’t know what to drink, put yourself at the mercy of your server. Their expert recommendation will not disappoint.

I think this is a good lesson for other areas of life, too.

How do you sum up a year so full of contradictions? You don’t. You keep living a life, one full of angst and confusion and joy and clarity—because the contradictions are the fairy dust of life.

Here’s to saying goodbye to a big glorious mess of a year, and hello to a new one where we get to try it all over again. Whatever you do in this next year, just make sure you LIVE it.

As always, thank you for being part of the Goodness community. Wishing you a beautiful 2017 full of dreams come true. Happy New Year!

with goodness and grace, XO.

Goodness: Portugal

If I had made a list of dream places to visit, Portugal wouldn’t have made it. So when my friend said she wanted to take a trip with a small group of loved ones for her milestone birthday, I was surprised to hear the country was at the top of her list.

Portugal has been an under the radar destination for some time, making it a more affordable option to places like France and Italy. But travel seems to be on the upswing. Over the last two years, I’ve noticed a good many people I follow on social media posting about travel there, with mixed reviews. Some worshipped it, while others felt a deep indifference.

I fell into the former category, happily. But here’s what you need to know: Portugal is not Italy. Italy is easy to love, mainly because she can be aggressively romantic and lusty with her demands for you to love her instantly. (And, I did.) Portugal is its own locale, and it deserves to be judged for what it is. So, as with any new lover, you have to surrender the need for comparison. You have to arrive with no expectations and let Portugal show you why she deserves your love.

Lisbon, where we were based, is a shabby chic town. It is hilly like San Francisco, and much of the city is under construction. But, five minutes wandering through a Lisbon neighborhood charmed me; five days had me in the full bloom of love.

When I arrived, my friend Dana was already at the hotel and eager to show me around our neighborhood, called Alfama.

The first thing I discovered is art is everywhere. It is embedded into the fabric of everyday life in Lisbon. We ventured into an area filled with graffiti, where artists were encouraged to create works of art within the landscape. It was magical.

We stopped in the Palacio Belmonte, an exquisite hotel in Alfama. There was unexpected beauty in every corner.

When the rest of the group arrived, we took a food tour of Lisbon. Experiencing how people eat is such a great way to know a place. We stopped at the Mercado da Ribera, which has served as Lisbon’s main food market since the 1890s. Today the market is divided in half.

One half is a traditional market that sells fresh produce, meats and fish to consumers, as well as local restaurants and bars.

The newer section houses the Time Out market, an awesome food hall with a dizzying array of options.

We drank copious amounts of vinho verde (or “young wine,” a refreshing white wine as light bodied as water) and sampled many delicious things on our tour…

…but my favorite was the most famous dessert in Portugal: custard tarts.

The tarts, also known as pastel de nata, were developed by the nuns who used egg whites to starch their habits, which left them with an abundance of egg yolks. Rather than discard them, they created this heavenly confection. Ours were from Manteigaria, reported to be some of the best in the city. While many bakeries use margarine in their crusts, Manteigaria uses 100% butter. The good news is they are only 120 calories per tart, so when you have more than one (and you will!), there’s no need to feel guilty about it.

The beauty of traveling is you dive deep into life—and eat two or three (okay, four!) pastries—with not one ounce of guilt. You meet yourself in the sweet spot of pleasure, happy to wander for hours on end. I like who I am when I’m traveling. I begin asking myself the big questions of life.

Like, why does my laundry never look this cute?

I loved the people everywhere we went. Sweetness abounded, and while most people spoke at least a little English—a taxi driver told me the United Kingdom once ruled Portugal, so English is generally taught in schools—they were bowled over if you tried to speak Portuguese, even if only a word or two.

I can confidently say three things: bom dia (good morning), sim (yes), and obrigada (thank you). If you are a man, people were always eager to tell us, then you’d say obrigado.

Also charming were the tiles, or azulejos, we saw everywhere. They are traditionally embedded into the architecture throughout Lisbon.

But then again, I found mostly everything to be sweetly enchanting.

After our first cloudy morning, I realized my hotel room faced east. The light chaser that I am, I wondered if I would be able to see the sun rise each morning.

And boy, did I.

Each morning the sun lit me up with excitement for unexpected pleasures of the day ahead.

I can’t wait to go back.

Bom dia, with goodness and grace. xo

Grace: Joy

How do you name what is unnamable? I don’t know. Except, it is profound.

I find it difficult to describe it in the way I can give meaning to other emotions. My anger is full of fire; my irritation, a constant hot friction; my annoyance, ever-present and something I’d like to flick away.

But joy, instead, presents itself with subtlety. It whispers. If you are paying attention, though, you know when it is there. It passes through like a beam of light, illuminating everything, permeating every cell and hair and curve of your body. It is a resounding yes in a world full of nos.

My word of the year is joy. I plucked it from the ether, hung on the hopes of beginning again. It sounded lofty and unattainable. I tend to choose things like this because they are hard, because achieving them means I have done something. It means I am living a life and not simply taking up space.

But you cannot achieve joy, any more than you can achieve love. Nor can you possess it. It simply arrives one day, and then it leaves, sometimes all on the same day.

This summer has not felt like summer in all the ways it is supposed to feel. I’ve had exactly zero beach days and precisely the same amount of time to meander aimlessly through my city with no obligations. The things I love about summer are ones I haven’t had time to embrace.

But, in lieu of days that end with sand in everything, perhaps I’ve discovered something better. It has been a season of friendship. Of reconnection. Of community. I have found myself bonded in all ways, unexpected and humbling.

I remember the January day when I struggled to find a word, the idea of what this year would represent. I settled on joy—if you can settle on such a thing—and it felt right. Last year (and the year before that, and the year before that, and maybe even the one before that) was one long slog through emotional mud. Maybe I’d earned a bit of joy.

And then I went on with life. Every now and then I’d check my joy barometer. Nope, not yet, was always the answer.

Throughout the year, I manage to maintain a sense of wonder about the world. I look up and see clouds in wispy, angelic formations, sun rays beaming between buildings, birds playing and swooping in flight. Wonder is my thing.

But joy? Not so much.

And then, the fault lines of my inner landscape began to shift.

On the last morning of a fun birthday weekend a few weeks ago, I sat down for a meditation. Almost immediately, I was overwhelmed as gratitude washed over me, ebbing and flowing like the ocean at high tide. I felt humbled by the love I’d been shown.

I felt such deep gratefulness for the old friend who spontaneously asked if I wanted to meet for a cocktail, which turned into a fun evening where I’d felt more seen and understood than I had by anyone in years. For a generous friend I deem my fairy godmother, who gifted me with a birthday evening with more champagne and fun with a group of strangers than I thought possible. For girlfriends who make a day of wandering through new neighborhoods ridiculously fun. For co-workers who are kind and funny, always laughing in spite of the craziness of what we do for a living.

When I was done, I even felt a profound appreciation for the pigeons who take a breather from the summer heat on my windowsill.

This gratitude opened a doorway to joy. It didn’t shout its presence; it crept up slowly, kindly. Joy welcomed me, and beckoned for me to sit with it awhile. Maybe it’s always there, lurking just underneath the layers of irritation and annoyance.

I’ve wondered, how do you hold onto this thing, so blissful…yet slippery? The answer is stunningly simple: you don’t. You allow it to sneak up on you and, when it does, you let it permeate every cell and hair and ounce of you.

And then, you wait until the next time.

Grace: Rebirth

I have fallen in love with trees.

It began with a trip to Savannah, Georgia, a place new to me and my six traveling companions. Almost immediately, I was charmed by the slower pace, the architecture, and the way everything was framed by majestic trees.

Obsessed with the stature and curve of their branches and the dangling Spanish moss so foreign to me, I regularly interrupted conversations to say, Oh, look at this tree! Then I would stop and have a personal photo shoot with my new muse.

At one point, my friend Claudia eyed me pointing my camera phone at yet another set of trees and, with sweet sunshine in her voice, staged a one-woman intervention with her words. Okay. We get it. You love the trees. I think you got your picture already. Maybe something else? 

So I kept snapping images, but only in my memory.

During a walk through Forsyth Park, I spotted a tree trunk so massive it had to be a few centuries old. I felt deeply connected to its roots, a gravitational pull moving me to stand by its side. I resisted the overwhelming urge to hug the tree.

I mean this quite literally.

Back home, joy filled me one morning when I saw the tree underneath my window about to burst into leafy bloom. My favorite color in the world is the fresh green of a newly born leaf, so vibrant and bright and full of life.

New leaf life always makes me think of the winter just past. What a marvel it is for a tree to have shed old leaves and to devote an entire season to creating new life in their place. How it looks so bare and forlorn, and how the lack of life on the outside always makes me sad. But, that sadness is misplaced. In reality it is still full of life, though it lives beneath the bark.

I think this is true for people, too.

I think this of me, in the middle of a transition difficult to name, even to myself.  The old life—and its stagnant, stale, and unnecessary parts—has fallen away, and the new life is not yet fully formed. In this space of becoming, I chase the things captivating my attention, which I now understand is a way of rebuilding. The muse highlights what really matters. In seeking the things I love, the things that love me back, I am able to begin again. Rebirth is inevitable, and I’m excited to see where it leads.

In the meantime, I will let nature have its way with me.

xo, with goodness and grace.

Grace: Who We Are

I’ve come down with a case of the Who am I…?-itis.

Perhaps you’ve had it, too.

You know, the voice that comes chiming in from time to time? When you’re all full of confidence and lofty dreams, and you’ve made grand plans to fling yourself into something new?

That voice that says, Who am I to think I can do that?

Making my Who am I…?-itis worse—someone unfollowed me on Instagram. As I write that sentence, I know it is the silliest thing ever.

Someone unfollowed me on Instagram.

It should be noted that if someone I knew uttered those words to me, I would absolutely, unequivocally say to them, “REALLY? Maybe you should get a real problem???”

Sometimes I get judgey.

Is judgey a real word? (See.)

Anyway. The person who unfollowed me, it wasn’t a person I knew. It was someone I briefly met at an Instameet, where people from the Instagram community gather at one place in a city for the sole purpose of taking pictures. 5:30am, standing on a subway platform in the chill of a windy early spring morning, about to chase a sunrise. We greeted each other, as strangers in a ridiculous situation do. Hi, I’m me and Hi, you’re you. We exchanged Instagram handles, so we could follow each other and see our pictures from that day. And that was that.

Over the months that followed, he would often “like” my pictures. Whenever I would see his name pop up, I would feel a small amount of pride. This person, with a sizable social media following, likes my pictures! It felt like validation. Like, okay, maybe I can take a decent picture. Maybe I have something to say.

And then the other day, I realized I hadn’t seen his name in a while. So I did the thing you should never do if you ever want to maintain any sense of sanity anywhere in the vicinity of the world of social media. I checked my list of followers. And his name was gone.

The Who am I…? voices got even louder. I mean, there are REAL photographers in the world. You probably take too many pictures of your food—and who cares what you ate/are eating/cooked/are cooking, anyway? And there are people who are REAL food photographers. And REAL cooks.

Who am I to do any of it?

The things we put ourselves through.

A day later, I was waiting on the bus stop, en route to see a friend. I was on my phone, doing goodness knows what, when a woman walked up to me, sighed and said, Hi.

My New Yorker guard went up. Hi, I said tentatively.

She asked me how to get to a certain cross section, the location of a hospital. She’d had surgery on her brain and hadn’t felt right, so she wanted to get checked out.

I told her where she could get a ticket for the limited service bus, which she should take since it would get her there faster. She didn’t have any money, she said.

This was one of those city-specific moments; as she was talking, I was wrestling with how long I would continue with this conversation. A reality of urban life is encountering people from all walks of life, all with very real (and some not so real) problems. As a sensitive person, I am like a sponge for everyone’s emotions. I’ve learned the art of putting up invisible boundaries in order to protect my own sense of well being, particularly in this city where everyone wants something from you.

She kept talking. And because I am polite and she seemed like a kind person, I kept listening.

She was glad to be alive. She had been in the service and saw things that changed her. That no one should see, go through, be immersed in. She enlisted after her mother died because she needed a purpose.  She was in the military for 7 years. After she came home and dealt with her head trauma, after surgery, she said the military wanted her for another tour. This made her laugh. She was thankful to laugh and to be alive and to have breath sigh out of her lungs every day.

I listened, and I nodded, and I smiled when it was appropriate. I was moved by what she was saying, but I was desperately trying not absorb the energy of it.

The regular bus came, and I needed to be on my way. I told her to wait for the limited bus because she could get on in any door and chances are they wouldn’t check for tickets.

God bless you, she smiled.

Bless you, too, I smiled back.

Thank you for talking to me, she called out, as I started towards the bus.

Those six words, so open and vulnerable and honest, almost made me burst into tears right there on 2nd Avenue.

Whether we are wrestling with head trauma or social media rejection, we all really want the same thing.  We all just want to be seen.

There’s that saying, the struggle is real. It makes me laugh every time I hear it. The store was out of Nutella…the struggle is real.  

But you know what? IT IS. And so, maybe our job in life is to bear witness to the people around us. To acknowledge each other’s hardships and sadness and struggles.

We have these moments of “Who am I…”-itis, where we feel less than and not entitled to dare to dream of a circumstance better than the one we’re in. Who am I to dream?

With breath in my lungs and health in my body, who am I not to?

As for my Instagram unfollower? He had his reasons, whatever they may be. Ultimately the people who are supposed to witness how I see the world and my musings, will.

Like you. 🙂 Here’s one of my favorite photos from this week.

We don’t always know where we’re going, but our deep selves will get us there. Who we are is infinitely braver than any of us can imagine.

xo, with goodness and grace.

Grace: A Joyful Year

I have a number of things rattling around my brain and trying to hit the page. Separately they seem random and not at all connected.

Bear with me as I try to make sense of them all.

Thought #1: When I woke up this morning, the first bit of news I read in my email was of the passing of David Bowie. It immediately gave me a pit in my stomach. Now, if I were being honest, I wasn’t a super fan. But I did have an appreciation for his artistry and some of his music.

When I think of him, I think of a very specific time in my life. Junior high, me at 12 and 13 years old. Let’s Dance, China Girl, Modern Love. These songs, at a time when I was awkwardly transitioning into another phase of life, were pure joy. At a time when MTV was beginning to flourish, those videos were alive. I would stand in front of the TV in my older brother’s room—because my parents wouldn’t yet let me have cable TV—lip-synching and dancing as the videos played.

If there was one thing I learned in my adolescence, it’s when life gets tough, when you really don’t fit in, when you feel like a misfit, lock yourself in your room, and dance. To this day, when I hear Modern Love, I stop what I’m doing…and I dance.

Have I dated myself yet?

Thought #2: Over the weekend, one of my Facebook friends put up a very poignant post on Oprah and weight loss and how we feel about ourselves. (You should very definitely read it; click here. You’re welcome.)

In her essay, she mentions how she’s heard the phrase “get your life.” I’ve heard it before, but something about the way she uses it kept it stuck on a loop in my mind.  It can mean a lot of things (some not so positive), but it can be a simple as ‘get it together.’ Or, go out and get the life that you want. At least that’s how I’m choosing to spin it.

I want to get it.

Thought #3: I don’t believe in making resolutions. For me they are the equivalent of waiting to start a diet on Monday—and a set up to disappointing yourself. (See the link above.) While I love taking stock at the year’s end, I prefer to begin anew, with the months ahead feeling freshly scrubbed, all shiny and new.

I asked myself what I wanted from this year, and the answer was pretty simple. Joy. (See thought #1.)

I also think sometimes we make life more difficult that it needs to be. So, I simplify.

Instead, I’d rather ask myself who I want to be.

This year, it’s pretty simple. I want to see more sunrises and sunsets, and feel reverence in the miracle of another day. I want to laugh more—though, even when it gets hard, somehow I can always manage a giggle. I want to say a big YES to all the things I have wanted in my life, including some that are as spooky as a haunted house.

I want joy. I want to dance. I want to get it.

Look at me. Somehow, I managed to tie together three disparate thoughts.

As I figure out how to do and be all of those things, I may write less here or I may write more. We’ll see. There won’t be, for this year at least, weekly posts about what was good. Because I’ve decided, it’s all good.

Now, go get it.  I’d love to hear what you want from this year. Share in the comments below!

xo, with goodness and grace.

 

Week 52: Reflections on 2015

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” — Seneca

The year that was.

Have you ever had a year so challenging it made you question everything? Where you were stripped down to the core in all ways? Emotionally, physically, professionally, and spiritually?

I began the year with lofty intentions. It was to be the “Year of Me,” where I would finally set myself on a path to being the woman I always wanted to be. My word of the year was freedom. Somewhere along the way the refrain let go of what no longer serves you took up residence in my brain and wouldn’t leave.

All I can say is, be careful of what you intend.

Why, you ask? When you set intentions, the universe will rise up to meet them. It will gather the sun and the moon and the stars in a special council meeting to figure out ways to help you get what you’ve asked.

This I learned in some epic ways. Because, people, the events that follow are not always pretty. Sometimes the special council says, Nope…we gotta tear the whole thing down and start all over again.

Crazy happened, in many ways and in multiple areas of life. The days went by, and the crazy got crazier. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, throughout the year I did my best to see the blessings in advance. To say, oh yes, here’s why this happened. I GET IT, dear universe. I’m good. 

But, actually, no. It doesn’t work that way. You can’t avoid the hard and difficult and weird by “spiritualizing” your way out of it. You cannot pre-pave the pain in the hopes of avoiding it.

The only way out is through. 

At the end of the day, y’all, you need to care for your heart’s longings. This—not a 401(k), not health insurance, not a promotion, not a corner office—is all you really need. Those other things may be necessary, but they are not a life.

But, fear gets in the way.

Fear makes us do funny things. Fear can make you build a foundation for a home in a place you didn’t know you’d end up—and exactly where you never wanted to be. Fear encourages you construct a life on shoulds. Fear leads you to the long conversation with your doctor, as I had a few months ago, where his prescription sounds like this: “You need to be committed to living a clean and pure and health-driven life, and you need to be committed to getting the crazy out of your life.”

This advice also led me to a summer of drinking rosé like it was blush-colored water. (Which, I admit, was pretty fun…but, I digress.)

Fear will also make you blind to changing things because it gets in your way.

But, here’s the deal. If you don’t deal with things, they will deal with you. You end up living a life by default.

This is not soul satisfying…nor the reason why you are on this earth.

In the end, I found my freedom. It is mine to do what I will. I end the year on a blank page, holding a clean slate, and sitting in an empty room. This would have freaked me out a few years ago. Now—now that it’s all said and done—I understand the gift for what it is. I have the freedom of a future of my own creation; I have the ability to write my own story. Joy awaits on the other side of this newfound freedom.

At the end of this year, in all its difficulty and all its toughness, I am free.

Wishing you all beautiful things as the new year dawns.

Now, we get to begin again. Happy New Year, y’all.

xo, with love and light, goodness and grace.