I look over my growing list, pleased with myself:

* Punch it, Bishop!

* There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza

* Is this the place we hate?

* Zazzo!

* Bye bye, camera

* I’ve been working on the railroad

I add more nonsensical phrases every day, and it’s all the fault of a half-century-old autobiographical novel with a quirky title: Family Lexicon.

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While visiting Kendall in Portugal last fall, I did my usual dawdling in bookstores like some literary vagrant.

At Livraria da Travessa in Lisbon’s Principe Real neighborhood, I spent hours in the English-language back room pawing through neatly stacked piles, as if I was Marco Polo feeling for the best bolts of silk. In an effort at self control, I have self-imposed the rule of no more than three books per bookstore. After much back and forth, I selected On Agoraphobia (don’t have it but I’ve always had a maudlin fascination with it) and In the Dream House (a harrowing memoir, experimentally told). Only one more slot to fill…

I was running my hand over another stack of spines, when a sleek cover with a moody black and white photo grabbed my attention: Family Lexicon by Natalia Ginzburg. The book’s description read, “Homesick for her Italian family, she summoned them in this celebration of the routines and rituals, in-jokes and insults and, above all, the repeated sayings that make up every family.”

I flipped open the book, and found myself immersed in the favorite references and phrases of an intellectual family in 1930’s Italy:

“We haven’t come to Bergamo on a military campaign” — a phrase picked up from an orchestra conductor cajoling his musicians, which conveyed everyone needed to get their act together, pronto. Then there was, “Good morning, most eminent Señor Lipman” — a tongue-in-cheek greeting designed to take one down a notch, inspired by a patient of Ginzburg’s psychologist uncle who thought he was God. And also, her father’s addition of “poor” as a preamble to anyone who had passed away, their name now bearing a kind of honorific: “poor Galeotti”, he’d say every time he referenced his dearly departed friend.

Though I did not connect with the phrases I was reading, I could feel their tacky texture. These quips were shorthand forms of intimacy for the Levi’s (Ginzburg’s maiden name), a way to instantly feel closer through letter or telephone call when they lived countries apart.

I LOVE finding a book like Family Lexicon, the kind that describes and investigates a part of life I know so intimately, but have never looked directly at… In this case, the way we create a language within our families. Our own version of pig Latin, or Urban Dictionary. Sayings particular to us, to our unit, to our family’s history, and to the important or hilarious moments, TV shows, or rituals in our lives. This language makes zero sense to the outsider, but it’s a rich tapestry of layered meaning to us.

It took approximately five seconds for me to decide 1) I’d found my third book, and 2) I’d start gathering the Deagle family lexicon.

Zazzo (noun) - a ringing phone

We picked up our first family phrases based on Connor’s attempts at speech. A tow head in his blue mesh stroller, his chubby finger pointed accusatorially at a distracted lady in an elevator as her cellphone rang in her purse. He shouted “zazzo!”, a word we still use today whenever someone’s phone rings.

Bye bye, camera! (valediction) - because cameras deserve to be recognized for their work, too.

Another memory: Connor, wearing yellow rubber dishwashing gloves that reached his armpits, goofing off in the kitchen while I snapped his pic. When it was time for cleanup, I took one final picture with our Minolta and then I said, “Say bye bye to the camera!” “Bye bye, camera!” he said in a sing-song voice, which we try to replicate after each photography session.

Dear Liza, a hole! (exclamation) - the only correct way to mention someone has a hole in an article of clothing

&

I’ve been working on the railroad (description) - a casual, slightly dramatic way to explain you’ve been hard at work

I sang folk songs from my childhood while I was chauffeuring my two back-seat passengers to daycare and art class and swimming lessons. These call-and-response folk favorites included “She’ll be coming around the mountain” complete with verses, “she’ll be riding six white horses” and “someone’s in the kitchen with Dinah”. Another favorite: “There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza, a hole.” And lastly, “I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live long day”, augmented of course by “Dinah, won’t you blow your horn?” (Clearly we Deagles have a thing for Dinah’s??)

Over the years, we short-handed the lengthier versions down to bite size. So if someone showed up in front of me sporting a hole in their sock, their monologue included “Dear Liza, a hole”. If anyone had a big homework assignment that took forever: “I’ve been working on the railroad!”

Punch it, Bishop! (directive) - a polite-ish way of telling someone to hurry up

During the teenage stage, we added nothing to the family lexicon, as mere breathing was a crime. But at this young adult stage, we’ve returned to our family lexicon with a vengeance. Our family love language is laughter, and we’ve resurrected the kid-stage language while also creating new ones. “Punch it, Bishop!” was added in the last decade, so we can express some urgency while mimicking Sigourney Weaver telling her bot bro to step on the gas in Alien.

Is this the place we hate? (rhetorical question) - a subtle way of naming the chaotic nature of a place

This is a new addition! We added it just this last year while stuck in a London black cab at the Piccadilly Circus roundabout. Traffic had ground to a halt, the advert-laden jumbotrons were burning our retinas, and floods of Christmas revelers jaywalked the logjam. Overwhelmed, Kendall turned to me and said “I hate this place.” So now whenever lights are flashing, pedestrians are flowing, or chaos generally reigns, “is this the place we hate?” sums it up.

As much as it hurts this word-nerd to say it, the words themselves don’t really matter. Ginzburg allowed me to see what does: an undercurrent of connection that exists as we exchange them back and forth, sitting next to each other or across the miles that separate us. They are the threads, the tethers, that tie us together. They don’t overpromise — they can’t keep bad things from happening; they can’t make ruptures heal. But they remind us that whatever life hands us, we’ll be in it together.

To the nonsense that binds us,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

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Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle

“Back at it again, in the land of your origin!” I was sitting on a bench, sunlight dappling my khaki hiking pants. My gaze oscillated between the 900-year-old majesty of Trondheim’s Nidaros Cathedral and the glassy gadget in the palm of my hand. The one that let me take a selfie and then send it along with a text to my B-school friend Brian on the last day of my pilgrimage.

Brian was the only person in my orbit who had been to Trondheim, and possibly who could even locate it on a map. He’d honored his Norwegian heritage by spending a semester studying in the city. Thirty years ago, he’d sat where I sat.

“How are you?” he replied. “Enjoying Norway? I’m going to the Norway vs Brazil Sunday World Cup game. We will lose, but sing a lot.”

“I’m loving the Norway World Cup team,” I responded, “the country is electric with excitement! So cool you are going to the game.”

Then I dead-paned my best Zlatan one-liner: “Brazil is not as strong as it once was…your team has a chance.”

As if I know a damn thing about the beautiful game.

(Pssst… there are going to be many links in this post. If you weren’t as plugged into the World Cup hype as I was, or if you just want relive a little bit of it, I highly recommend clicking on them!)

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I know zippo about football. (Or should I say soccer? Which do we call it now??)

My brother and father learned the sport in the late 80’s, looking for a home for Eric’s athletic abilities outside of my dad’s traditional baseball and American football. Soccer was the red-headed-stepchild of sports in Western PA, you might as well be playing bocci. But my brother was good at it — a red-headed giant (coincidence?), imposing in the goal, all sharp-elbows and you’ll-be-sorry ferocity in the face of oncoming goal-scorers. Wary, they hesitated. Then, he wiped them out.

A few games surveying this from the cold metal bleachers was as far as my soccer education went.

I was 21 years old during the 1990 World Cup — ‘Italia ‘90’ as it was known. The only reason I paid any attention then was my circumstances: staying in a 7th floor apartment in Kuwait, the home of my Lebanese boyfriend and his family. We sat on the floor so the cool tiles soaked into our bones as the A/C worked overtime in the July evening heat, watching West Germany win.

In the 1994 US-hosted Cup, I visited my Dad in Chicago, having an afternoon to myself as he soldiered off to Soldier Field, happy to volunteer for a sport he’d come to love. Brazil was the winner that go-round.

Then, life happened, and the World Cup fell off my dashboard… for give-or-take 30 years.

It abruptly came back into my awareness while I was jet-setting through the Middle East for work in the early 2020’s. While visiting Qatar’s Al Udeid Air Base, or the US Army’s Camp Al Sayliyah, or merely catching a connecting flight through the marble-wrapped Doha airport, for years the signs of World Cup preparation were everywhere. At first it was the evidence of construction: lorries and cranes, but also sagging washing lines, pinned up shirts and underwear, blowing in the blow-torch breeze around apartments full of foreign national workers. Then, closer to game time, the airport itself sprouted a mini-pitch and enough World Cup kitsch to give Time’s Square a run for its money.

Which brings us to World Cup 2026. Where, quite inexplicably, we are all World Cuppers now? Or at least World Cup consumers. Of the game itself kinda, but more often of a particular athlete or fan-base or absurd story about stadiums in the FIFA witness protection program, forced to forgo their names for weeks. We’ve been drawn in by the quirky spectacle of it all:

Me and Brian’s beloved Norwegian’s “Ro” in Times Square. Orange-clad Dutch crowds doing their rave-like, left-right shuffle through the Dallas, Houston and Kansas City streets. The people of Lawrence, Kansas hosting and falling in love with the Algerians like they were their long lost cousins, kept from them all their lives by some heartless uncle.

We’ve seen a giant Viking by the name of Erling Haaland become a cowboy, eventual Golden Boot winner Kylian Mbappe play an invisible flute, Jude Bellingham impersonate Gene Kelly, dancing his way through defenders with the ball. And of course Messi be Messi, even though in the end it wasn’t quite enough.

We’ve met commentators, coaches, team captains, podcasters who have infected us with their enthusiasm. Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers with his never-ending passion for the game. Rebecca Lowe killing it as the host of the Fox broadcast. Lamine Yamal’s little brother Kenye dancing.

We’ve seen old acquaintances anew, like Trevor Noah and his watch parties: him and three close friends, arguing and screaming their heads off, shilling Keurig coffee, and giving shoutouts to Telemundo from their Love Sac couch.

Buzzing on a synchronous level, we’ve connected with friends and family thanks to the frenzy: I talked to Brian for the first time in a long time, Dad and I texted our observations, I got to empathize with pal Karl when it was apparent it was indeed not ‘coming home’ for the English. We sang songs — Country Roads, Wonderwall, Sweet Caroline — that brought us collectively into effervescent nostalgia, mingling with present-moment connection and celebration. We Deagles, as disbursed as we are, even managed to have an IRL family moment: me, Connor, Kendall and Richie lounging on the sectional taking in the Norway - England game, my face in my hands at the end as Norway’s fairytale ended.

We were enchanted by this combo platter of energy, of humanity. No need to understand what off-sides is (still don’t), why everyone is rowing, what Levi’s did to deserve it, or why this all feels so right. I’m going to attribute it to just being human. The mysterious and inexplicable creatures that we are.

Now it’s over. The spell is broken. The seats, emptied. The stadium names, restored. Our visitors are packing up and heading home. We’ll watch other things on Fox One or Telemundo, or maybe leave the TV off till College Football begins. (Though I’ll still follow Trevor Noah and Men In Blazers, no matter what they’re talking about next.)

It’s a loss. And not just if the team we were rooting for didn’t win.

Personally, I feel the loss of something that brought us all together. Something that proved it is still possible to feel so globally intertwined and playful and genuinely enjoying each other’s company, no matter what the stories we tell ourselves (or the news tells us).

For better or worse, loss is my familiar. I know how it works. For a time there will be a hole. Then things will fill it: sports things, work things, life things. But the hole never fills completely; a bit of empty space always exists. Which is where the memories live, reachable the next time I text Brian or watch Rog from Men In Blazers rub his bald head in despair. Then I’ll remember the joy of this 2026 World Cup too.

In love with the world,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

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Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle

As the Eurostar glided out of Amsterdam Centraal Station on July 4th, I settled into my seat.

I pulled out my iPhone charger, wiggling the prongs of its green converter until it found purchase in the outlet near my ankle. I rummaged in my tote bag for my Lechturnem dot-grid journal, its pages fat with scribbles and scraps from the pilgrim path, and slid it into the netted seat pocket at eye level. My mesh pen case found a home snuggled up next to it. Command center complete, I swiveled left to stare out the window at the cityscape as it slid by. Backwards.

I prefer a forward-facing train seat. Looking at where I’ve been, rather than where I’m going, makes me queasy. (In more ways than one.) But this was the only solo berth on the Eurostar app’s seating map with an unobstructed window view. And I knew exactly how I wanted to spend this four-hour journey: gawking at the lives of the Dutch, the Belgians, the French, the Brits as we raced through Rotterdam, Brussels, Lille, London.

And thinking/writing about them in comparison to my own nation, on this 250th birthday of America. I put my elbow on the armrest, balanced my chin on the shelf of my palm, and stared.

Familiar sights came into view: power stations, water tanks, cranes, graffiti. I could have been on the Acela from DC to NYC, except for the Dutch language signage with words I had no hope of pronouncing. Then, the voice of the train conductor broke into my brain, telling us everything we needed to know. But first in Dutch. Then French. And last but not least, English.

Yeah, that’s not happening on Amtrak.

So while immersed in the sights and sounds and (backwards) motion that felt like a left-of-center simulation of home, my mind wandered to a topic that had been taking up a lot of head space on the trail. Specifically, my identity as an American.

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The pilgrim path breaks you down.

I don’t mean by beating you to a pulp (although there are moments of that), I mean by breaking you down into your component parts. Something about going back to basics makes the different parts of you more… visible. Evident. Unavoidable.

Once that happens — and the components of you are laying all over the forest floor like some IKEA bookshelf deconstructed into nuts and bolts and particleboard bits — you can take a good hard look at those pieces.

This unfolds at a tangible level as you meet new people daily. What’s the first thing you tell them about yourself? I found my default was mom — two working stiff kids back home made for a good story, and so a good entry into conversation. That would lead to revealing my past corporate life, and quick aside about being a writer now. Widow would come up when the conversation went deeper, perhaps when sharing my experience and motivations from pilgrimage 1.0. My western PA background also emerged because I couldn’t help comparing it to the rural areas of Norway I was walking through.

But the most obvious thing about me to a Norwegian host or a Swiss pilgrim or a Dutchie sitting across from me at breakfast was where I’m from. My appearance didn’t give it away; many people spoke to me in Norwegian before the clueless look on my face course-corrected their mistaken impression. But as soon as I opened my mouth, it was over. It was my accent, sure, of course. But even more what I project: a boldness, a casualness, a friendliness. There is no doubt I’m American.

But I sure as heck didn’t lead with that. And when my country of origin did inevitably come up, I would rush by it, hoping to collaborate with my European conversation partners on a ‘nothing-to-see-here’ vibe. Frankly, I’d been doing this for decades, wary of being pigeon-holed as the ugly American abroad. I was pretty sure it was better this way for everyone — me politely refraining from rubbing our stereotypical self-centeredness in their faces, while they politely gave me opportunities to prove I was ‘one of the good ones’.

But the more interactions I had on the pilgrim trail, the more I realized a lot of my American judgement was mine and mine alone. Yes, upon confirming I was American, proprietors and pilgrims would express bafflement about the changes in our country. They’d ask a few curious questions. Then they’d share their own stories of America, their favorite American TV shows, movies, music. The places they’d visited, and the places they aspired to see. They were actually eager to talk to me about America, making my ‘let’s not talk about this’ plan relatively worthless.

Eventually I had to acknowledge that these Northern Europeans don’t like me DESPITE the fact that I’m American. They actually liked me for all the things being American has made me: open, curious, interested, supportive.

During the pilgrimage, I was on a news blackout. Except for the World Cup. I’d open my New York Times app while holding my hand over 80% of the screen so I could quickly tap the “World Cup” tab at the top without getting sucked into the headlines.

My phone of course did that magical/creepy thing where now Instagram also knew I was into the World Cup, and started delivering me reels by Europeans who were visiting the US for the matches and, astonishingly, were almost all offering Americans an apology.

Side by side, while on different sides of the Atlantic, me and these shocked tourists were realizing the same thing: American politics are one thing, but the American people, with our American values and personality and big smiles, are a whole other.

Day after day, kilometer after kilometer, I was chewing on this. This mismatch between the portrayal of the US’s global dealings and the American people’s genuine way of being. Between the stories from the US that make the international news and the way I experience my friends and neighbors. Between the trepidation I carry abroad and the appreciation other pilgrims expressed for my overt friendliness... Until a new way of relating to my American-ness solidified near the end of my journey.

Over breakfast at Ner-Grefstad gard, I sat with 70+ year old proprietors Nils-Erik and Lila, their tiny cat rubbing circles around my calves. We chatted about Nils-Erik’s generations-old family-run farm up the hill. About Lila’s birthplace, the tiny island of Sula off the Norwegian coast, and how her fisherman father died when she was four. About all the pilgrims they have coming through from all around the world, amounting to several hundred each summer.

In the looping conversation, so intimate in such a short time, we came back to where my people are from: Mingo Junction, Steubenville, Shadyside, Ohio. Coal mining, industrial, blue-collar towns along the Ohio River. These are where my people raised their families and earned their living. This is the source of my Americanness. Great-grandparents who emigrated from Poland and Russia and God-knows-where. Some who literally came over on the boat. They were brave and bold and worked incredibly hard. The fact that in 2026 I was gallivanting my way through Norway was a direct outcome of their commitment and struggle a hundred years ago. They risked everything to find and build a better life.

I welled up while I was relating my origin story. (Geez, so much freaking crying on the pilgrim path!) Lila and Nils-Erik patiently waited until I caught my breath.

“I’m proud to be an American.” I croaked through my tight throat.

Lila put her hand on my shoulder. “You should be, dear. You should be.”

What was I thinking, downplaying that??

I take enormous pride in my ancestors and history. Why am I swapping that for shame about what it means to be an American today? Pffffft. NO. No longer. Not any more.

I must do my part to continue contributing to the American experiment. To honor my great grandparents, their sacrifices, and their stubborn optimism.

I’m their American legacy. And of that, I could not possibly be more proud.

Back on the train, another couple of notebook pages were filled with scribbles. I looked up at the announcement monitor to see a cartoon figure toting a cup of steaming tea. Suddenly, I was parched.

Time for a visit to the cafe car.

I wobbled my way from carriage #1 to carriage #8, the speed of the Eurostar far outpacing the Acela. My sea legs were rusty after all those hours walking, and I clutched the handrails for dear life. As the last set of sliding glass doors closed behind me, déjà vu set in. This cafe car was the same configuration as the Acela’s, a curved counter, a coffee machine, a space to wait in a tidy line.

When it was my turn, the dude spoke to me in Dutch.

I shook my head, “Ah, sorry, I only have English.” The rote response I’d shared 1,000 times in the last month.

“Oh, no problem, what will you have?”

“Tea, please,” I replied.

“Our machine is struggling a little today, it’s going to take a minute to heat up. And I know you British like your tea hot!” He smiled.

Without a moment of hesitation I said, loud and proud, in front of 20 people of who-knows-what nationality in that packed cafe car, “I’m not British. I’m American. I’ll take my tea whatever temperature you wanna give it to me.”

He laughed.

“And besides, it’s our birthday today, the day we got free of those Brits!” I chuckled.

He cocked his head and laughed. “Well, Happy Birthday to America!” Then he slid a square of chocolate across the counter, “a little something for your special day.”

I smiled as I made my way, hand over hand, back to my seat. It was a special day — a day worth celebrating for a country worth celebrating. I don’t care about your politics, and I hope you don’t care about mine, but may we always care about the people who have made, and continue to make, America something to celebrate.

To the USA,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

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Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle

As we taxied down the tarmac all I could see from seat 7D were pine trees, thick as weeds.

Then the plane’s wheels gave the blacktop their goodbye kiss and we climbed, leaving Trondheim behind. My view of the pines went from a line-of-sight, to birds-eye, to a drone’s-eye view. Below the plane, the black-green forests undulated, the mountain lakes glimmered, the streams cut ribbons through the undergrowth. The logging roads wiggled throughout the terrain like a strand of spaghetti, tossed over the landscape to see what stuck. I pressed my forehead to the double-paned window glass like some Marvel-movie demi-god surveying her glorious creation. Except it was not my creation. I was its.

Then it was gone. Cotton-ball clouds on a baby blue background obscured the view. I rested the back of my head against the airplane seat and closed my eyes, my heart beating fast.

Holy sh*t, I DID THAT!

I walked through that gorgeous country.

I walked through forests just like those.

I traversed streams just like those.

I skirted alongside lakes just like those.

I dragged Wilson along logging roads just like those.

With a 25 pound pack. For 21 days.

And damn, am I ever going to miss you, Norway.

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Missing Norway? This is the first of many feelings that are different between pilgrimage 1.0 and 2.0.

When I called a wrap on pilgrimage 1.0, I walked away feeling as if I had found myself again. I hadn’t known she was missing — no face on a milk carton, no flyers stapled to a telephone pole. But day after day, on that trail from Sweden to Norway, I kept getting glimpses of her, like an analog time machine gradually walking me back to my pre-Mike, then pre-MBA, then pre-adult self. That western PA gal who swam a million laps, read in her bed for endless hours, strapped on a face mask and chest protector and knelt in the infield dirt playing catcher for her softball team. That quiet observer of life who marched to her own beat and didn’t take any s**t.

Like taking Windex to a cloudy mirror, pilgrimage 1.0 also let me clearly see who I had become. Life was stripped down to its essence: sleeping in Scandinavian twin beds, eating cheese sandwiches, walking along quiet trails and glistening lakes, chatting with another pilgrim or my nightly host. There was nothing left to hide me from me; I could see the default societal settings I’d adopted to run from scarcity, manage risk, maximize my life. And you know what? There’s no shame in that game. That chick did what she needed to do, and she built a great freaking life doing it. But 1.0 was the time to let that go. Those settings had served their purpose and were now holding me back, blocking what I was capable of next.

In the two years since, I’ve held on to that girl I recovered. Not every minute of every day, but most of the time. She’s both grounded me and given me the sense of a path forward. I can tell I’m losing my way when I find myself chasing the siren call of metrics that no longer matter (Success! Notoriety! Achievement!) or straying from the person I aspire to be in the name of security. I catch myself more easily, and the thought is instant, “Nope, this isn’t it, something’s wrong.” Because once you’ve found your way back to yourself, losing her again becomes so unpalatable your priorities rearrange themselves. You’ll do anything to stay true to you.

But wrapping up pilgrimage 2.0 feels different. The outline is the same — beauty, nature, conversations, cheese sandwiches — but the starting point was different.

I started as myself. Then I (unintentionally) added a next-level degree of difficulty. So instead of stripped down, I’m coming away expanded. Or perhaps I should say expansive. I’m not just bigger, but more nuanced, more complex, more respectful of all the facets that add up to a human life.

I walked through the unknown, inside and out, and it expanded both my worldview and my self awareness. The unknown of the terrain, the language, the food; the unknown of feeling my lungs and feet begging for mercy but needing to keep going; the unknown of how I’d react when pushed to my edge.

Walking alongside all those uncertainties, I also became porous to beauty. I feel like the Norwegian landscape is now living inside of me — its mountain plateaus, its cascading waterfalls, its intensity and beauty. I can still hear the mountain streams pounding the rocks as they race towards the rivers. The birds, especially the cuckoo, calling out. And sheep, both their bleating and their bells, continue to soundtrack my days. My dreams still swirl around my next accommodation. I’m still stashing napkins in my pocket and reusing my plastic bags.

You don’t come away from these things (or, at least I don’t) with some map for the rest of your life. You come away with a better compass. Does this feel like the right direction? Is the needle pointing north? Stop. Check. Feel. Ask.

Pilgrimage, at its heart, is a delivery mechanism for self awareness. How do I do with not knowing what today’s accommodation will look like? How do I do with seeing my bunk bed and knowing full well I’m going to bash my head on it in the middle of the night when I get up to use the loo? How do I do with the curt proprietor telling me, “You’re too early” after a brutal 27km day? How do I do with not knowing how long this three-peaks day will take? How can I adjust? When do I wallow? What tools do I have to change the circumstance, or at least my thinking about it?

Pilgrimage 2.0 took that girl from 1.0 and taught her the power of her own mind. And the peace that comes with knowing yourself just a little bit better.

To our evolution,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle

P.S. As a wrap to this pilgrim journey (although you can count me writing about/processing this trip for months to come) I wanted to share a roundup:

* 21: Days on the pilgrim path

* 400: Kilometers covered (around 250 miles but who’s counting!)

* 30: Cheese sandwiches consumed (conservative estimate)

* 2: Modes of alternate transportation when I’d had enough (train, car)

* 9: Hours of hiking on my longest day

* 14: Total other pilgrims met

* 4: Total number of pilgrims nationalities (Swiss, German, Dutch, Norwegian)

* 2: Blisters

* 25: Boiled eggs consumed

* 60: Pages filled in my journal

* 2: Number of stoplights I saw between Lillehammer and Trondheim

* 6: Number of times I ate rhubarb in some form (juice, compote, crumble, etc)

Maybe it started the morning of Day 8 at the Thon Hotel breakfast buffet. After what I’m now labeling my ‘Three Peaks’ Day, I’d slept like a freshman home from college, waking to an alarm set for 8:45. Not bothering to pack up yet, I arrived at the breakfast buffet with plenty of stuff-my-face time and sandwich-making time before breakfast closed at 9:30. Only when I had settled into a corner table with a heaping plate of eggs, salmon, toast, and herring(!), did I wake up enough to take in my surroundings. Catty-corner was a lone brunette, her back to me.

What’s her story? Her yoga pants, purple shirt, and sneakers said she wasn’t a pilgrim. Was she here alone, passing through, or maybe visiting family…?

As my internal Columbo was just getting revved up, an exceedingly tall dark-haired man entered from my peripheral vision, pushing a pram, the mewling sounds of a baby piercing the air. He parked it next to her table, then leaned down to kiss her cheek, his hand resting on her back. It was the hand that did it. There was nothing perfunctory or auto-pilot in the gesture, it was a genuine, caring caress. That was it for me. Tears welled as longing filled any available space in my throat and heart and lungs, like someone had pulled a ripcord on an inflatable vest that had somehow gotten inside my chest.

It’s been 21 years since I shared those tiny-baby-minding days with my husband. But suddenly memories of Mike, his smile, the feeling of his hand on my back, infused every part of me as I sat in Otta, Norway at the breakfast buffet.

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Or perhaps it was Day 12, on the descent from the Dovrefjell mountain range, during a visit to the Eysteinkyrka.

I greeted the tiny Norwegian volunteer at the door with a gentle handshake, and she swiftly stamped my pilgrim passport and ushered me into the sanctuary.

“You have it all to yourself,” she whispered.

I paused, momentarily blind in the dim light. A small stained glass window on the back wall cast an amber glow, and my eyes started to find shapes and colors in the dim room… oh, it was more beautiful than I could’ve imagined: board-formed concrete, overlayed with beams from nearby trees, pews of the lightest pine. My first thought was Connor; we are fellow brutalist architecture freaks, sharing our love of all things concrete. I couldn’t wait to tell him what I had stumbled upon in the mountains of Norway. Next Kendall came to mind, the graceful pews and soaring ceilings made me hope of taking a perfect picture to share with her.

To the right of the altar stood a simple, iron Scandinavian candelabra shaped in a circle. Four pinkie-thin white candles, lit by others for reasons unknown, flickered.

During Pilgrimage 1.0, I’d tried to connect with Mike at just such a scene in a traditional church in Stode, Sweden on Day 3. I’d gotten emotional crickets, from me and from him.

But this time, in this brutalist beauty with the thoughts of our children swirling, and still raw from a tough first week, he was right there. I felt my heart crack open and the emotion swell, heat rising into my face. With trembling hands I dropped a ten kroner coin through the slot in the collection box, and then I lit my own taper — Mike’s taper. As I sat in the front pew, I watched it flicker, standing tall against the other candles burning their way down. I let the tears flow down my face.

And here I am on Day 18, and I find myself alone.

Yes, I’m alone every day as I walk, but the evenings are often crowded with other pilgrims, helpful proprietors, gaggles of fisherman who have come off the beaten path, hoping to get first dibs at the fat summer salmon.

But tonight I’m even off the unbeaten path. I’m at Gumdal Gard, in its tiny ‘stabbur’ or storehouse, fifty yards from the main house. It’s no more than six beds, a tiny kitchen, an ancient table. The only sound is rain pitter-pattering on the gravel outside, heard through the open door. I’ve eaten the extra sandwich I packed at breakfast, hung my sink-done laundry to dry, and now sit at that table, notes, pens, books splayed about.

Since the Three Peaks Day, the terrain beneath my feet — and in my mind — has changed. I’m realizing how many versions of ‘hard’ there are in life… and that I’m done fighting them. I’m putting down my dukes. Well, that’s not quite right. It’s more like I don’t have the strength to keep my dukes up. Nor, really, the desire. Because no matter my raised fists, the hard things come.

Like Mike’s birthday, which is today.

I used to avoid thinking about this day, letting it slide by unacknowledged. But in this tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, I’ve decided to fully, openly, curiously step into it instead — in the same way I’ve been stepping into steep ascents and descents, dense undergrowth, trails twisting with roots and rocks, kilometer after kilometer, day after day.

So, whatever day it started, it was Day 18 that I released the subtle need to hold Mike at bay. That I sat alone but not alone, writing about Mike, recalling good and bad moments together, enjoying the muffled rain and the smell of moist earth coming in from outside, under the midnight sun.

We think doing hard things, like remembering our lost loved ones or hiking through endless mountains, simply always feels like pain. But when we stop fighting them, we realize there is so much more to these experiences. Sometimes they feel like connection, sometimes they feel like gratitude, and more often than I ever expect, they feel like awe.

Happy Mike Day,

Sue

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Last fall, I sent Ruben, my Scandinavian pilgrimage organizer, a note. ”I’m ready to pilgrim again!” I wrote, and then described my desire to carbon copy 2024’s journey.

“Same route???” he immediately responded.

Wait a second, is that judgement I’m reading in all the question marks? Doesn’t everybody love to repeat the same exact thing ad nauseum, to prove to themselves the first time wasn’t a fluke?

Hmm. Maybe that’s just me.

“I have three other routes you can do! There is so much else you can see. We cannot repeat!” the ever-blunt Dutchie informed me.

“Ok, well I see you have a Norway-only, south-to-north route to Trondheim on your website. I don’t want to start in Oslo, that’s too far. Maybe a little further up?”

“Yes, I just opened a route from Lillehammer. It will take 21 days. How does that sound?”

And in typical knee-jerk fashion, without a second thought or single lick of research, I responded: “I’m in.”

So there I was, picturing all those gently rolling Swedish hills, lakeside walks, logging roads, gentle grades that were long, yes, but eminently doable from pilgrimage 1.0.

Boy, was I wrong.

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Day 1: Fine, sure, no problem. Some roadside walking and a manageable climb out of Lillehammer.

Day 2: Hold up, this is way hillier than I expected. And why are these trails no wider than a loaf of bread? And filled with rocks. Just 17km took me 8 hours.

Day 3: All of the above, only raining. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.

Was it going to be this level of survival mode day 4, 5, 6…..?

Of course there were incredible views, incredible food, incredibly nice Swiss, German, and Dutch pilgrims along the way. But the terrain was handing me my ass. Ascents so steep that I was mouth breathing for hours. Descents where I could not see my feet through the underbrush. Rinse and repeat.

By Day 6, I was pissed. At what, I couldn’t actually say. Certainly not Ruben, who spelled this all out in the trail notes he gave me far, far ahead of time. (Which I didn’t read.) I wasn’t mad at myself, either. After all, I wanted a challenge, I wanted to practice doing hard things. I’m even happy with my tendency to leap without learning everything ahead of time. I’m into the surprise, even when it’s nasty.

No, I was just the kind of mad that happens when life is freaking hard and it pisses you off. To top it all off, that evening’s accommodation was on the gritty side. My cheeseburger at the town’s solo cafe was consumed in sullen silence, no other customers to be seen.

While I was open to what pilgrimage 2.0 would bring me on the macro level, on the micro, I had happily pictured myself deep thinking, reading, and writing, just like pilgrimage 1.0.

Yeah, no.

I was so beat down by the time I reached my destination each day, rubbing two brain cells together to generate a thought or read a sentence any longer than ‘see Spot run’ was a non-starter. The Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust) and Robert McFarlane (Is a River Alive) books I’d packed might as well have been the Chinese edition.

So, when I wasn’t walking I mostly stared into space. While elevating my feet.

Day 6 became Night 6 and I flip-flopped on my tiny top bunk, trying to get comfortable with my wafer-thin pillow in the never-dark Nordic summer ight. The needle on my internal fortitude dial was bouncing around “empty”. I pulled out my phone to trace the map and read the description for Day 7 — ‘more of the same’ was the theme.

I needed an attitude adjustment. Pronto.

So, as a man of action, I tossed around a few ideas. I briefly dreamed of levitation or a transporter beam, but quickly set those aside for my tried and true go-to’s for when things get dire:

Play #1: Expectation management

I started by reading Ruben’s directions for the next day carefully: there would be three super-sized elevation gains and losses. (That’s a pilgrim euphemism for big ass hills.) Ok, don’t love this, but the only way to the other side is through. So as I set out the next morning, I didn’t think about the whole trek, just the “elevation gain” in front of me. This way, rather than dreading them all (well, truth is I still did dread them, just a little less) I could tick each one off as I flattened them before they could flatten me.

Play #2: A carrot

This route is filled with guest houses and mountain lodges. Very few hotels. But the Thon Hotel Otta (which I kept calling the Thor hotel in my head, as one does) awaited me at the end. It was no Four Seasons, more Beaver Falls Holiday Inn vibes, but the thought of a room with my own bathroom (a luxury!) and a dinner buffet was like hope on a stick. A carrot dangling in front of me.

Play #3: Treats

I tend to want to keep stomping forward and wreck myself, rather than let myself take a break. To convince myself to take my pack off for 20 minutes, I needed an incentive. I had my daily cheese sandwich, but that was hardly inspiring. So I needed two treats for in between the three elevations (simple pre-school math). First up, instant coffee in a plastic jar, along with a mysterious yogurt and nut mix. I cannot convey the kind of Michelin-star experience this was. Heaven. One hill later, I stopped at a campground to purchase the most syrupy juice I could find along with a chocolate bar. It sounds disgusting writing about it. It was pure bliss consuming it.

As I rode the emotional and altitudinal highs and lows of the day, life handed me an unexpected boost as well, by way of the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away. (Ever wonder what you think about on the pilgrim path? There’s your answer.)

Midway through the second of the ascents and descents from hell, I picked up a stick. A hiking stick. It was hiding in some underbrush, whispering my name. Maybe a little help boosting me up or steadying me as I find my footing would make the day better? I’m not normally a hiking pole gal, but desperate times, desperate measures. It was a learning curve, that first kilometer with the stick in tow. By the second, I couldn’t believe I’d ever lived without this stick. Just like Tom on his desert island, his only companion a volleyball, I christened my stick by the same name: Wilson.

I’m not sure I would have made it without Wilson. Not just physically, mentally too. To have something to rely on, to help me, to literally hold in my hand gave me courage, safety, and support, just when I needed it. A mountain-made security blanket.

At the end of hour eight, I came down out of the hills to a gravel logging road, then a paved walkway, flat as a pancake and headed into Otta. I was almost there. The up-and-downs conquered, the treats consumed, the hotel on the horizon. As I reached the sidewalk, I was so tired I was dragging Wilson behind me like Linus with his blanket. I passed a fire station, its freshly mown grass dusting the concrete where my feet fell. Clearly no need for a walking stick. Still I could not let him go.

To get into town proper, I had to go through a tunnel under the Norwegian version of a highway. The change in light brought me up short, and for a second I saw myself fifteen minutes from now: sweaty, swollen, and filthy, carrying a big jagged stick, sidling up to the front desk clerk and asking for my room. It was time to let Wilson go.

That’s what the pilgrim path teaches you. How to use your existing skills better, sure. But also how to find new ones, and then, when it’s time, how to leave those behind too.

In recovery,

Sue

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Two years ago I was a baby writer. Sure, I was already two years into writing The Luminist, but my editor Leona was still doing the painstaking work of teaching me to show not tell, focus on one main idea instead of ten, and accept revision as a non-negotiable part of the process. We worked on the letters from the pilgrim path 1.0 across nine time zones, and some of those were the best posts I’d written to date. But I still had a long way to go.

Now, I once again find myself in the reality-distortion-field-incinerator that is the pilgrim trail. It’s like a giant mirror has descended from the heavens, the kind you find in posh hotel bathrooms that illuminate each and every pore. Sometimes that’s not a great thing. Sometimes it’s just what you need.

Because it can be hard to see how we’ve changed. We get disgusted with ourselves: “When will I ever get closer to my goals? When will I ever improve?”

As I pound away kilometer after kilometer (I’ve made a deal with myself: I can only google a mileage converter when I’m done) here’s something I’m catching myself doing: translating what I’m seeing, hearing, smelling into words. You know, like a writer does.

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How can I describe to you the way the tips of the pine trees poke through the blanket of fog? The way they stand like a sea of prim, outstretched pinkies, green but no less proud than those poised beside teacups?

How about the clouds? How their meaty shadows alchemize the generally crisp forest air I’m walking through into something earthy, soil-y, loamy, smelling, I swear, just like the color brown?

And what about the bells on every last sheep neck of the herd on the hill? How they create a concert of one-note wind-chimes, or perhaps a chorus of toddlers banging 100 spoons against 100 pots?

Yeah, I’m not sure either. But the cool thing is, that’s where my mind goes. Amidst the stiffness and pain and days of unexpected rain, my mind pauses its catastrophizing clatter to write, even if the words are only in my head.

This is how I know I’ve advanced from novice to apprentice. Not because I’ve written 185 posts or a banger of a book about loss. Because even when I’m not on the page, I’m thinking about the page.

From somewhere between Dovre and Fokstuga,

Sue

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Dear reader, by the time you read this, I’ll have gone full Viking, walking four or six or sometimes eight hours a day with all my clothes (and books!) on my back through Norway. This will be my life for the next 21 days as I cover the distance from Lillehammer to Trondheim, on the second round of the pilgrimage I began almost exactly two years ago.

I’m not quite on trail yet, though I wish I was. There’s a special mix of boredom, restlessness, and anxiety that seems to descend upon me pre-trip. I think I checked my passport expiration date a dozen times before I boarded the transatlantic flight, as if maybe the first 11 times I just hadn’t read the numbers quite right. In an attempt to settle the pre-walk jitters, I looked back at the first pilgrim letter I published back in June of 2024. Turns out I was in an almost identical, irrational stress spiral then, which is comforting in its own way. I’m still anxious, but I’m no longer beating myself up about it.

That letter ended with words from my friend Paul, who happened to be on a pilgrimage of his own at the time: “Let’s go and get to know ourselves a little bit better.”

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The first time I stepped onto the pilgrim path, my intention was to dredge up and release the last bits of grief over my husband’s death eight years before. In the days, weeks, and months after Mike’s heart attack, I had been in full-blown “save the kids” mode. Grief still regularly laid me out on the bathroom floor sobbing, or the couch where I watched Star Wars movies three at a time, and I never hid my tears or pain from Connor and Kendall. But I always assumed that I had shoved some parts of my bottomless grief away out of self- and child-preservation.

During the 28 days of that first pilgrimage, I cried about Mike… twice, which is about how much I cry about him in a regular month.

I ended up mostly reconnecting with an even earlier version of Sue: the quiet girl who loved to be absorbed in books, or to perch on a stool at the edge of the church potlucks and just observe. The learner, the observer, the clue collector.

The solitary walking took me to a part of myself I had totally forgotten existed. I could not have planned it. I could only be open to it.

So for this pilgrimage, I’ve decided not to seek anything.

I’ve learned over the last two years — hell, over the last ten — that having expectations often only serves to make you upset or disoriented when reality unfolds. Instead, I’ve discovered I want that reality: I want the details, the subtleties, the opportunities I can only catch when I’m fully present to what is, rather than trying to force what I want.

So this go-round, I’m not setting intentions. I’m setting boundaries around the trip, so whatever is supposed to happen can happen inside it.

I’ve cleared all my decks: paid my taxes, paid my bills, paid my visits to family and friends before my farewells. I’ve tied up loose ends at the treehouse, and got Kendall off and running on her internship. I’ve cleaned the house and crossed everything off the to-do list. Everyone knows: I won’t be opening my email or dealing with logistics on the trip. Don’t ask me for the Netflix log-in code. If s**t goes down, call Uncle Richie.

These are the only things weighing on my mind now: sharing my location with my trip planner and freak out helper Ruben every day, then sending a screenshot to Richie, and finally posting a photo or two on Instagram as an ongoing photo diary (follow along!). Doing my laundry every three days or so, aka scrubbing my socks in the sink. Writing a letter to all of you here once a week. And though I’m not making plans, I know there will be days I will question my decision, and days I will question my sanity. Days I’m one with nature, and days I’m cursing rain or sneaky cows or incessant hills.

And, well… that’s it. The rest will unfold.

Two years ago I didn’t know what to expect. So I stuffed my rucksack full of expectations. They did the work of the blister cream and bandaids I brought but never needed: to give me a feeling of being prepared, being in control.

But this time around, the uncertainty doesn’t scare me. It gives me goosebumps. The good kind. As long as I can make it to Trondheim without my damn passport magically expiring, I’ll be fine.

To preparing just enough to be surprised,

Sue

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I was standing on one leg like an oversized flamingo, my bare foot on a wobbly disc of plywood while I tossed a rubber ball against the gym’s cinderblock wall. It was the last indignity of a balance training session Kavon had cooked up to get me ready for the pilgrim path.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

“So what is it, exactly?” I asked curtly, doubly frustrated by the man who had given me this task, and by the topic we happened to be discussing. “Please explain this Costco thing.”

Kavon shook his head, disappointed in my evident disdain. As a small business owner and dad of two, he ran through a litany of things he loves about Costco: predictable pricing, guaranteed bargains, almost everything he needs for home and work. As a true fanboy, he’d even listened to the Acquired podcast episode that outlined Costco’s strategy and business approach, rattling off their profit margin philosophy and fair wage ethos.

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Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

As he did his Costco rendition of ‘How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count The Ways’, I didn’t dare nod my head for fear of falling off my disc. I couldn’t argue with his logic. Yet… it didn’t feel like enough. Enough to generate that baffling Costco ride-or-die passion I’ve seen in so many men, including one guy who is no longer here.

Then, Kavon surprised me with this:

“I think what I also love is the discovery element: you never know what you might find. It doesn’t feel like shopping, it feels more like a warehouse-sized treasure hunt. Will it be a kayak? A giant wheel of cheese? A sample that a hair-netted lady gives you that changes your dinner plans? Four tires for your car? It’s the land of opportunity.”

Thwack. Thwack. Thwump.

I dropped the ball and lurched sideways off the plywood. Of course. Now it all makes sense.

When Mike was alive and the kids were young, I let him drag me to the warehouse-to-end-all-warehouses once every couple of months.

Not because we needed any more toilet paper. Because Costco was Mike’s happy place. Emphatically, enthusiastically, inexplicably his happy place. He’d load our cart with collared work shirts, underwear for the kids, sheets. He’d buy our TVs and our computers. Twenty-four packs of paper towels, ten packs of dental floss, three-packs of chicken wings, a case of wine. One time, he’d loaded so many beach towels into our overflowing cart that, when we turned our backs for a second, a lady began shopping from it, deciding which color combos she wanted for herself.

For the entirety of our marriage, I did not get it. Costco’s so-muchness was too much for me: floor-to-ceiling jam-packed shelves, freezer after freezer of frosted-over foods, the random middle section of giant cardboard boxes spilling over with tube socks and camisoles. My brain found the lack of rhyme or reason overwhelming. I sulked through every single trip.

I never once thought to ask him why he loved it.

That version of me — the early aughts to mid-2010’s Sue — was harried. Underwater and breathing through a straw. I didn’t have much bandwidth for curiosity. I was just trying to do a killer job at work, keep the kids alive and thriving, and run a household on the weekdays while Mike was away. I write that sentence now and think, well, no wonder spending hours in a place that overwhelmed my senses sent me into a tailspin.

In short, I wasn’t in the right headspace back then to wonder what about Costco delighted him so much, let alone ask.

But my life now is different, and so am I. I’ve pivoted from corporate to creative work. I’ve returned to my beloved childhood pastime of reading endless books, seeing the world from a new angle in each one. I have new relationships, Kavons who generate unexpected conversations and insights. And my days are spacious, allowing me to enjoy noticing and sometimes even solving mysteries.

Like the mystery of Mike and Costco.

Costco was never shopping for him, it was an expedition. And Mike — strategic, deal-loving, optimization-brained Mike, whose family nickname was ‘Action Adventure Man’ — was built for expeditions.

From my new vantage point, I can see, in those final years, how Mike was breathing through a straw, too. That Mike’s life was full of constraints, just like mine. I can see why a super-sized warehouse gave him joy, how finding unexpected things to bring to his family lit him up, like a caveman dragging home the mastodon he’s just downed. Costco ticked all his boxes, allowing him to do the thing he loved most: provide for us.

These realizations give me a thrill. My relationship to Mike still gets to evolve — my understanding and love of him still gets to deepen — simply because I’m still changing. He will never be frozen in amber as long I never give up growing myself.

Hi Mike. It’s nice to see you, honey. Watch out for those other shoppers, they’re eyeing your cart…

To new perspectives,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

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Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle 

I stood with my back to the lectern as the modest crowd disbursed, deep in conversation with my friend Kevin.

“It’s way harder to do these book talks than it ever was to speak to the masses in our corporate days,” I said to him, perplexed.

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Kevin has seen me do both. He was the Chief Legal Officer to my Chief Operating Officer at our $4B defense contractor. I’ve closed deals with this guy at 2am, bounced around the dust of Kuwait with him in the back of a passenger van, and, more recently, clinked glasses with him over my signed book deal. And one month ago, he was responsible for ginning up half my audience at Octavia Books in New Orleans, the last stop on my tour. No mean feat when the talk is about loss.

Head cocked, he mused, “You’re not in a ballroom with a sea of faces. You’re looking everyone in the eye. And you’re not talking about revenue growth or margin expansion. You’re talking about loss.”

He paused. “I also noticed everyone wants to tell you their story afterward. Is that part hard?”

“Actually, no. That’s the best part. What a surprise.”

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Like a coach watching last Sunday’s game tape, I’ve been reviewing the playback of the last three months: zig-zagging around Europe and the US, talking about coping dirty, ordinary magic, Bruce Springsteen, and a different kind of great. I’ve been cataloging the pleasant surprises and the sneak attacks. The plays I want to run again. The ones I want to retire.

Here’s what the tape revealed:

The nerves were a good sign. Speaking is one of my favorite things, and I’ve done it for decades with ease. The endless practice that corporate gave me was something I thought would port right over to these intimate settings. Nope. Because Kevin was right — this is very different than discussing revenue growth or margin expansion. It’s personal. And maybe nerves are the cost of doing something that hits so close to home. I’ll pay that toll every time.

And as soon as each presentation began, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. All that gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands faded, and I was telling my story to a room of people who care.

The brilliance was already in the room. I kept thinking it was exclusively my job to show up and deliver. The tape tells a different story. In Colorado, Wayne thought out loud about the moments he’d consoled best and handed the whole room new tools. In Portland, Ellie turned to a struggling stranger and said, “have you tried wailing?” — one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in my life, and it didn’t come from me. In New Orleans, Carolyn shared books and wisdom like she’d been waiting years for exactly this room. If all I was doing was hosting a Loss Cafe where we cross-pollinate our tips and resources, that would be more than enough.

My friends were in the stands. I’ve had a decade-long struggle trying to put the nail in the coffin of my Lone Ranger tendencies. And you know, I think I might have done it — during the book tour, I saw my friend’s faces at every turn. Luanne and her daughter Natalie at the Bookworm in Edwards. My Amsterdam crew, out in full force. Kevin jumping in with the first question so the Q&A didn’t start with crickets. Reviewing the footage, I see evidence everywhere that I did not do this alone. Thank God, I’m finally getting it!

I was built for the stories. I knew the territory — talking about loss means you’re going to hear about loss. Yet I didn’t know how I would handle what might come my way. I needn’t have worried. For five minutes on a folding chair after every event, I listened, I nodded along, I hugged. It turns out being truly heard when life gets hard is rarer than it should be. And for whatever reason, I seem to be wired for the receiving end of it.

The book went places without me. This is the part of the tape I keep rewinding. My dad finding it on a Chicago bookstore shelf. Rebecca’s dad reading her copy from his chair. Lesley-Anne holding it up against the South African mountains near her home. I wrote this book and then let it go… and it went. There’s something casually staggering about that. Like a dandelion seed floating to who-knows-where, landing, germinating, growing.

I did my part, and I’ll continue to do my part. I’ll keep endlessly talking about it, speaking about it, pressing copies of it into peoples’ hands. But there’s something else I’ve learned, something a tad woo-woo: the book is on a path of its own. Reaching who its meant to reach, when it’s meant to reach them, in a way my playback tape will never reveal. And so, all the writing and revising and promoting and traveling and fretting led to this: a companion for life’s journeys through loss, meeting people when they need it.

And nowadays, that’s what I call success.

In gratitude and celebration and exhaustion,

Sue

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P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here: https://youtu.be/AUuXFmOqZV8