“The empanadas make that much of a difference??” Kendall and I were exchanging texts across the Atlantic, me at a Scandi-style coffee shop in my favorite North Carolina beach town, her from her bed in Lisbon. PDF’s of menus kept popping up on my phone as she looked up places to eat for when we meet in London in December.

I’d been texting a rote YES and YES and YES to every restaurant she suggested, only half paying attention while I churned on a parallel project on my iPad.

“The other place had ceviche, but not as many options,” she continued into the now one-way convo.

“Hey, listen honey, I can’t process all these menus,” I finally admitted. “I’m trying to write. Saturday is the third anniversary of The Luminist. Can you believe that? I’m trying to put my thoughts together for a post.”

”Wow, three years! Time flies! How does it feel??”

“Weird! I feel like what I’m writing now is way different from when I started. Back then I was like ‘I’M GONNA CHANGE THE CONVERSATION AROUND LOSS’ and now, I’m like, ‘I just want to tell stories.’ Because by writing the story, I figure out something about myself. So, each Saturday, I grow. And while I’m growing, I offer the chance for other people to see themselves in my stories. To question what they are thinking. To feel less alone. So, winning.”

She replied, “So it’s less like a concrete mission? I think that’s good. Now it’s more open to interpretation cause you allow yourself to find joy in it.”

Wow. Yeah. What she said.

(Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.)

For all eleven of you who have been here since that November Wednesday in 2022, when I recorded that very first post voiceover from the closet of my hotel room at the Kuwait Hilton, and then Leona sent it out to the world while I was standing at the podium at my company’s Middle East women’s summit… thanks.

For the thousand of you who have joined over the last three years, shared your ideas in the comments, sent me an email, texted me, shared with a friend, or just existed out there in the ether… thanks.

I’m even thankful for the people who have come and gone. To Don who harangued me on the regular in the comments for not reflecting his own grief experience. For those fellow Substack newbies who started with me when the platform was in its infancy, and have now gone on to different platforms or forms of expression. For the subscribers who tried reading, but ultimately didn’t resonate. For those reading 100 substacks and simply need to cut down to a more manageable size.

During these past three years, I have learned how to write and what it felt good to write about. I have changed and evolved (hello Empty-Nester Sue, farewell Corporate Sue). I have tried and failed at topics and post structures and whether or not to use section headings. I have force-fit things and then realized I was trying to be a Cheryl Strayed or Liz Gilbert or Oliver Burkeman when in fact I am a Sue Deagle... until I finally, organically fell into what I could sustain week after week, which turns out to be:

Simply noticing.

Noticing something about a conversation, a painting, a book, a tree, a football commentator, a billboard, my kids, my friends that piques my interest or pulls me in.

Single-finger tapping the half-formed thought into the subject line on my gmail app. Adding a few sentence fragments that make sense only to me. Transferring the hieroglyphics into a google doc and then typing until I figure out what that spark of interest is trying to tell me.

And Kendall hit the nail on the head. When I take a snippet from, say, my latest boneheaded decision and put it on a page — like an old-timey scientist pinning a specimen to parchment, bringing out the magnifying glass to look closer at the complexities invisible to the naked eye — I feel joy. I find it fun, and often surprising. It’s inviting mystery, complexity, nuance rather than trying to force certainty.

It’s not just the third anniversary of The Luminist. It’s also the ninth anniversary of Mike’s death.

We launched TL on this date out of strength. To take back a date that signifies the worst day of my life. To start something new and hopeful and empowering amidst the ashes.

Nothing changes the fact that the love of my life is no longer on this planet. I claim my inalienable right to mourn that forever. But noticing — paying attention to reality compared to the stories our minds and culture like to spin — has helped me place my grief in its larger context.

That’s what happened that March day that now lives in TL lore — when I was in the forest on one of my ‘crying walks’ a few months after Mike died. I was startled, literally shocked, to see baby leaves unfurling in the crisp, barely-Spring light. I reached out to touch one, hardly daring to believe that after a winter so cold anything would dare to live again. I remember it was a little spongey, not stiff or starchy like an adult leaf. It was just beginning.

My grief-addled brain wasn’t moving fast enough to have any lightning-bolt insights. But eventually these unlikely baby leaves became my go-to analogy: loss may mean destruction and heartbreak and despair, but that does NOT mean it’s the end of the story.

So of course I’ve found relief and freedom and joy in noticing. We don’t need pretty fairytales to help us breathe a little easier. We just need to look around.

To the truth that (eventually) sets us free,

Sue

(Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.)

P.S. To honor the evolution of my work, we’re rebranding! Going forward, we will be known as: The Luminist, a weekly column on noticing reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin.

We’ve also given the graphics a glow-up, so we’ve got a new logo — just a simple lighthouse — and a font I adore thanks to inspo from a very stylish hotel in Lisbon. (See, noticing again!)

And finally, here is an excerpt from our new about page:

I’m Sue. I write about ordinary life, especially the parts that don’t fit neatly into the story of “a good life” we’ve been told:

Why we’re afraid of things. Identity and how it shifts. The way we grow out of things we once thought would be forever. The way we lose things we once thought we could never live without. Why we are our own worst enemy. How grief and joy can sit in the same room without one of them having to leave. What resilience actually looks like. The strange aliveness hiding in regular moments.

I’ve discovered there is gold in these uncomfortable parts of life — meaning a little bit of wisdom or acceptance or insight or peace that allows me to feel more alive right here, right now, rather than always striving for a future that can’t help but be ten steps ahead.

So every week, I publish an essay about looking at something a little more deeply. Not to give you answers. Not to fix what’s broken. Just to expand what you see.

Even though we are widening our focus beyond our original mission, The Luminist will always be a haven for people struggling with grief and loss. So you can find posts specifically on those topics here.

(Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com.)

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