The Luminist

How do you know when to let something go?

Letting things go without having a say — more highway robbery than baton-passing — takes up chapter after chapter of my story. This includes my moves as a kid all the way up to the empty nest, with Mike’s death the textbook exemplar.

But what about the times when the choice is ours?

Sometimes we wait for an undeniable knowing, for a YES!, for a bi-plane dragging a banner NOW’S THE TIME. Sometimes we get so burnt out or turned off or fed up we can’t take it anymore, then we flail our way out. Sometimes what we are holding onto feels so precious that we don’t realize we’re whiteknuckling it, preserving some old upsides but dragging along a whole raft of downsides too.

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My most recent experience choosing an ending (by the flail method by the way) was when I left the corporate world. It started with the burnout, which had been accumulating for years, but after a particularly hairy season at work could no longer be ignored. Well, that’s not totally right — I absolutely would have ignored it, but it started leaking out as unhinged responses to minor issues, a deep sense of constriction I couldn’t shake, and occasionally an overwhelming desire to simply lie down on the floor… Eventually I realized I didn’t want to be this version of myself. Which was terrifying because I didn’t know how to be anything else — anything other than Work Sue. So during a moment of acute exhaustion and desperation, I asked the universe for signs… and got them.

“There is a time for departure even when there’s no certain place to go.” – A quote from the playwright Tennessee Williams that caught my eye in the Financial Times.

“I am leaving so I can enjoy my family and life in a fuller and more present way.” – retiring congressman Katko told the Wall Street Journal.

And Ash Barty had just won the Australian Open and decided to retire at age 25 – “I don’t have the physical drive, the emotional want, and everything it takes to challenge yourself at the very top level anymore. I am spent… I’ve given absolutely everything I have to this beautiful sport of tennis, and I’m really happy with that. For me, that is my success.”

I started questioning why I was staying, rather than when was the right time to go… and realized I didn’t have a great answer for that. But I kept perseverating over the decision, until I installed a forcing function a year down the road: Pilgrimage 1.0. I figured if I felt differently after 28 days walking through Scandinavia, I could always go back. That was 2024; clearly I haven’t.

All that to say, this territory is not unfamiliar. But I still felt woefully unprepared when I started feeling the next inklings it was time to let go of something… the something being the vacation home my late husband built for us in the Outer Banks.

That sun-dappled, soundfront masterpiece was one of Mike’s mastodon moments: his nose-to-the-grindstone work had generated an unexpected windfall for his firm, along with a hefty bonus for him. And all he wanted to do was use it to provide for us. With his vision and my consultation, we alchemized that windfall into a family destination, a breezy bungalow on steroids overlooking the Currituck Sound.

But 14 years later, what was once a family haven had become a millstone around my neck. It was still sun-dappled and breeze-laden, it was also firmly in its maintenance tail: HVACs failing, trees dying, hurricanes rolling up and down the Atlantic coast. I began to be filled with catastrophic dread every time I opened the front door: what would be broken, leaking, deteriorating now? Again… this is not the version of myself I want to be.

But on the other hand, what about the memories this place held? 4ft tall Connor and 3ft tall Kendall playing ‘I’m still on the raft’ in the pool, trying to pull Mike off the inflatable mattress. Cousins from Ohio and Texas and Maryland and Australia in epic nerf-gun battles from their bunks. A sunscreened grandparent on pool duty in the backyard playing referee and counting heads. Aunts and uncles sitting around the long kitchen table post-dinner, talking about RV-adventures and trips to Beaver Creek. And my contribution: making every frozen mixed drink in the Vitamix cookbook.

What do you do with that? That combo platter of good and bad, of joy and pain, of cherished moments and roto-rooter repairmen?

I think what finally let me put the beach house on the market was realizing that it was antithetical to the life I want to lead. The red thread running through so many of my choices from childhood to today has been freedom. I think it’s why I head out on the pilgrim path, why white space on the calendar gives me a thrill, why solitude is my go-to. And an aging family home is the opposite of freedom, no matter how many memories it keeps alive.

It was time to move the last evidence of Mike from a house on the Outer Banks into our hearts.

And so, I did. Not with grace and aplomb. With tears and pain, second only to the aftermath of Mike’s death. To be honest, I’m totally fried. Crispy as a potato chip, and just as apt to snap. It’ll take a little time to get myself back.

One grace note: in taking that leap of faith, the universe caught us. A family just like us — well, just like we used to be — appeared. Three kids this time: 4, 10 and 13. A couple who loved what we built, their cousins and grandparents and aunts and uncles ready to fill up the rooms and picture frames. The house will again be filled with the squeals from the pool, never-ending sand on the tile floors, sunburned shoulders.

Mike knew how to build something with total devotion. And in his devotion to me, I’m not surprised he supported me letting it go too.

Heart cracking,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book 

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

When I travel to foreign countries, I notice things.

The slight pull-back of a Norwegian’s shoulders that indicates I’ve invaded their personal space. How I get mysteriously taller whenever I journey from Scandinavia to Amsterdam to London. The NASA logo on locals’ t-shirts, no matter where in the world I am. (Honestly still baffled by this one.)

But a recent no-passport-required boondoggle through eight states and three airports showed me just how much there is to notice in the US of A.

As I planes-trains-and-automobiled it across swathes of America, I first dipped a toe in a few states — Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi –- blazing my way in Kendall’s Subaru down to New Orleans. After one thousand miles of books-on-tape (In Search of Now by Jo Marchant and The Disappearing Act by Maria Stepanova), I began the ‘linger’ portion of my agenda. Louisiana got me for a few days. Texas next. Then three different towns in Colorado.

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Here’s what stood out:

Friendliness: In some places, baristas will chat you up, ask where you’re headed, give you recommendations for where to get lunch. Some will respond to your “How’s it going” with a blank stare, just waiting until you order. And go away.

Food: The deeper into the Southeast I got, the less likely I was to see a Whole Foods, but the more likely I was to smell something delicious just in the air.

Preferences: In the Houston airport, it was all cowboy hats and tacos. At the Denver airport, it was Patagonia backpacks and dogs. When I got back to Dulles in DC, it was brief cases and international languages.

Police cruisers: Pickup trucks in Alabama, Dodge chargers in Tennessee, Ford Explorers in Colorado. Boring sedans in Virginia.

Rules and orderliness: I won’t name names, but in some places everyone follows even unspoken agreements, like walking around the park clockwise. In others, literal laws are mere suggestions. There are places where not paying the parking meter is a gamble that 90% of people take.

Billboards: Folks, it’s all injury lawyers, all the time, on our nation’s highways. ‘No fee unless we win!’ ‘We fight for you!’ ‘Been the victim of a marauding 18-wheeler?’ But the standard white-guy lawyers plastered up there look different: way more hair in Louisiana, way more cowboy hats in Texas. The level of exclamation marks and hyperbole also differ (very little in Colorado, the most in Louisiana). I think in a blind test I now could identify a state by its ambulance-chaser ads.

I know we all share 99.9% of the same DNA or whatever the hell that statistic is, but I think that’s a meaningless number. Chatting with a barista in Birmingham or an ultramarathoner in Colorado Springs, I already know they have a heart and teeth and cells with chromosomes just like me, big whoop. The differences are what I find delightful, the differences are what open me up to how big and varied the human experience really is… which brings me to the last leg of my journey, sitting on the couch of an Airbnb in the Vail Valley.

After a lung-searing hike with a 2,000 foot-altitude-gain that afternoon, me and my glass of Gruner Veltliner were ready to kick back. My plan was to watch Voicemails for Isabelle, a romcom with a side of loss — right up my alley. So I grabbed the slick little remote and pressed the convenient red NETFLIX that even this luddite couldn’t miss.

But when the Netflix home screen loaded, I shook my head back and forth, ponytail flopping in confusion. Shows called Allegedly, El Chapo, and War Machine filled the home screen. My Netflix home page is usually stacked with esoteric documentaries (Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold), food shows (Chef’s Table: Barbecue), sports (Beckham, Full Swing). Not Donnie Brasco or Snowden or The Downfall of Boeing.

Then at the top left of the screen I noticed a big blue box with that lopsided Netflix pixel grin, the name ‘Thomas’ hanging off to the right.

I’ve never met Thomas. I don’t know what he looks like, where he’s from, his hopes and dreams. But right then, in that instant, I actually knew a lot about Thomas. Staring at his “recommended for you” and “continue watching” lists, it was like the roller blind shielding Thomas’s inner world went zinging up with a muffled rattle. I stared at Thomas’s Netflix, dumbfounded. Holy heck! So… different.

I could be put off by that fact. I could be tempted to “other” people who are into different things than I am. Or, I could want to try to close the distance between us, perhaps insisting they see the world the way I do… I did briefly consider pulling up Voicemails from Isabelle on Thomas’s account. Then he forever would have been served up romcoms in his feed: People We Meet on Vacation, Nobody Wants This, etc. Without knowing how or why it happened, he might have gotten a little taste of me, my preferences, my interests, my love for pop culture that mixes loss with living.

But that didn’t seem fair or right to infect his algorithm. So I logged out of Thomas and logged in as Sue, reminding myself to logout before I left the Airbnb in a couple days.

The least I can do is give Thomas in the Rockies, the cowboys in Texas, the foodies in NOLA, and the backpackers in Denver space to be the way they want to be. Who are any of us to say which way of dressing, talking, eating, relating to rules, designing billboards is better. Which way is right. I think that inclination gets in the way of what our first instinct should be: curiosity.

To the shocking, delightful variety,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book 

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 hope the blade is long enough!”

The maintenance man lifted his tattoo-covered arm to adjust his safety glasses, their ends tucked snugly underneath his skull cap. He smoothed down his Rip Van Winkle beard, then started up his hand-held circular saw with a vhrrrrrrrrrrr.

“Stand back, we’re gonna make some sparks!” he said without looking at me, locked in on his task with little boy glee.

I laughed and slunk a few steps backward in the hotel hallway with that combo feeling of wanting to be part of the action… but not wanting to lose an eye.

In a few minutes, it was all over — the jammed lock on my Colorado Springs hotel room door lay in pieces on the floor. Mr. Maintenance Man and I exchanged a quick ‘holy s**t!’ glance, then burst out with a belly laugh.

“Sorry about the wait while we figured this out, and really sorry this happened. Thanks for staying with us,” he said.

“No problem at all,” I replied. “No problem at all.”

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For seven years, Colorado Springs was my home away from home.

Five months after Mike died, I began my last corporate gig at a small US defense contractor. Like any true Beltway Bandit, we had a Virginia office, but Colorado Springs was HQ. So once a month that’s where I was too: driving past the swooping cathedral of the Air Force Academy on my commute from the Denver airport. Pausing during meetings while the jets from Peterson Air Force Base roared overhead. Taking a crack of dawn yoga class where the thin air had me gasping for breath, and then I’d inevitably start crying during legs-up-the-wall pose.

But it’s hard to see much of a city when your only free time is 6-7am. I managed to squeeze in early morning walks in the Garden of the Gods, peanut-butter-and-banana toast at Loyal Coffee, and those cathartic yoga classes. But with that limited exposure, I only got the tiniest of impressions of the Springs, as if an opaque curtain was pulled in front of my eyes and all I could see were the blurry shapes of people and places I rushed by between meetings. So last week, when I returned to Colorado Springs for the first time in three years, my only goals were to 1) be there for a friend going through a hard time, and 2) finally get to know the place I had driven around, done business in, and cried during yoga so many times:

I hiked the Palmer Point trail, ogling the striated spires of lumpy sandstone and the views of Pike’s Peak. I lingered at Loyal Coffee long enough to chat with the barista about her Kermit pin. “I just saw a skit with Dolly Parton chatting up your famous frog — we’ll sure miss her, won’t we? At least we know Kermit will never leave.” I walked the downtown streets, with their mix of retirees, fitness freaks, cowboys, mountain bikers, bible beaters, bohemian hippies, average Joes, and so many homeless. The larger-than-lifesize photo of Kevin Durant in his Olympic uniform in the window of the US Olympic Committee’s HQ still made me jump.

Through it all, I took my time. Because, you know, no work emergencies, no HR disasters, no lost or won deals to celebrate or mourn. Just a chance to visit some good friends in their time of need, while also seeing a city I thought I knew, anew.

And it could have been as simple as all that. Until the jammed door made its grand entrance.

I sat on the floor outside my hotel room, cooling my heels while the staff scrambled trying to figure out how to get me back in to my room. Other than my tote bag containing my pen case, iPad, and three random books, all my belongings were trapped inside. And it was time to check out and head to Denver to see Connor. I waited for the urgency, the anxiety, the stress to start buzzing beneath my skin. But I felt… calm? If my belongings had been locked in my room during my corporate days, I’d have been stuck to the ceiling. I would probably have been late for a flight, a meeting, at the very least a call. But here, now, I wasn’t any of those things. So the twenty minutes that passed before Mr. Circular Saw showed up, were… well, a giant nothing burger. They elicited no feelings at all. I just sat.

Which made me think about Corporate Sue. And wince. She would have been impatient, angry even. She’d have been pacing the hallway, getting more and more red in the face. She might have been, as much as I hate to admit this, rude.

But instead, I got to watch Rip Van Winkle circular saw his heart out. I got to chat with the tattoo-sleeved head of housekeeping and her two trainees. I got to pass some time just waiting. I got to be a human being, emphasis on the being.

Sometimes we need a mirror to see how far we’ve come. Trying to reflect in a vacuum can only go so far. The mirror in my bathroom shows me things have changed (crepey neck, crows feet), as does the fit of my pants. Internally, I can know my patience for BS has reduced in size, like the water in Lake Tahoe. But other changes are harder to note… because there is no measuring stick to line them up against. No before-and-after to compare, side by side.

But that’s what Colorado Springs just did for me.

I understand why Corporate Sue was the way she was, and I don’t begrudge her for it. Holding a c-suite job while solo-parenting teenagers would fray anyone around the edges. But I’m glad I didn’t get stuck there. I’m glad that when given the opportunity to change, to relax, to open, to become more myself and less what external circumstances dictate, I’m able to take it. I’m glad I can now grin and gasp at the sparks of the circular saw, rather than checking my watch and glaring at the man holding it.

To old things made new,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book 

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

It’s 6:30am, and I’m doing soggy laps around Audubon Park, the Fahrenheit scale just shy of triple digits.

You can’t quite fry an egg, but steaming spinach is a distinct possibility. The pond’s ducks look like they could be in a Natural-History-Museum diorama, floating completely stationary thanks to the thick, pea green algae carpeting the water’s surface. Crape Myrtle blossoms break loose from their branches and hang in the air like suspended confetti. Gravity may be a natural law on earth, but it’s no match for whatever forces exist in the steamy vortex of mid-August New Orleans.

Everything feels like it’s moving stun-gun slow. Which is perhaps why I see anew a thing I’ve seen dozens of times before: a granite pavilion glowing hazily in the immobile air. My sluggish steps steer me towards its flank, where I read the engraved text:

Dedicated to Music

In Memory of Isidore Newman and Rebecca Kiefer Newman

1921

The Newmans’ names are all over this town, tangible evidence of Isidore’s 19th century philanthropy, of which music was a special love. But as I slide around the pavilion’s far side, I see this:

And The Night Will Be Filled With Music

And The Cares That Infest The Day

Shall Fold Their Tents Like The Arabs

And As Silently Steal Away

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Most of my life, music was something I could take or leave.

Sure, I sang in the school choir, trilled along to my dad’s faves Jim Croce and Simon & Garfunkel from the back of the family Vega, and absorbed the hymns of my Presbyterian upbringing so deeply into my psyche that sometimes they spring forth unbidden (Up From the Grave He Arose, anyone?). But I personally wasn’t an album purchaser or a mix-tape maker. I didn’t own a boom box or cassette player. Any pocket money made from lifeguarding or teaching swimming lessons was hoarded in my sock drawer, to be occasionally splurged on a book. Come to think of it, it might have been the long-distance swimmer in me that turned music into a second-class citizen. Lap after lap with only my own thoughts for company, I got comfortable with silence.

Then, I married a singer. Music filled the house in the form of cassettes, CDs, Pandora. Broadway soundtracks, Celine Dion, Seal. Christmas choir music. System of a Down. My musical omnivore husband played it all, while simultaneously belting it out with his rich bass voice. My love for him intertwined with all he loved, and so I was opened to music in a way I’d been closed before.

Fast forward to the post-catastrophe years, and that fortuitous opening turned into a critical input: music as a salve. I’d play songs that Mike used to sing around the house. Seal’s Love’s Divine. Bill Wither’s Lovely Day. I started collecting new ones whose lyrics encapsulated his love for me, since his own voice could no longer carry that message. Famous by Mason Ramsey topped that list. All of these I gathered into an Apple playlist, with the album image his broad-smiled picture. I titled it Mikey.

Somehow on that soupy slow morning, those granite words grabbed me by my sweat-soaked REI T-shirt and yanked me nose-to-nose with the memory of the playlist, of the picture… but mostly of the effect. The way those carefully assembled songs always sent the super-sized cares that infested those days, silently away. And in the quiet pocket that remained in their wake, I could commune with my no-longer-here husband.

Because I’m naturally curious (and a little skeptical), I want to understand the mechanism of how this works. How does music scoop us up like a hot air balloon, out of the “cares that infest the day” and into the awe and love of the upper atmosphere of life? But understanding each step of this process is beside the point. The point is that it just does. Over and over again, across generations, music comes to our rescue — and thus, we can rest in the confidence of a consoling tool that helps us not just tolerate the human condition, but transcend it.

For as long as a Bach fugue, a Springsteen story, a Taylor Swift lyrical twist exists, we may turn to it for solace.

Maybe that’s why Isidore Newman did it — gave such a large portion of his fortune to music, which once upon a time seemed relatively frivolous to me. He could have spent it all on hospitals or orphanages or libraries. But he knew that our bodies and minds aren’t the only things that need healing and nourishment. So do our souls.

In tune,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book 

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 over the Treehouse sink, upside-down quart of milk in my hand, feeling the flimsy sides bulging and contracting as the 2% glub-glub-glubbed out. I wiped the splatters and tossed the container into the recycling, the last evidence of my daughter’s summer stay at home with me, disappearing down the drain.

We packed it all in this summer, which is the last before her senior year of college. Trips downtown for sushi, to the mall for shopping, to the Outer Banks for a last hurrah. We chattered like birds throughout it all, sharing ongoing processing debriefs of the pilgrim path (from me) and day-in-the-life reports and celebrations of corporate life (from her). We marveled at the Freaky-Friday-style swap out of our lives. We talked a lot about what her dad would have thought. And just like any jam-packed, big-laugh, late-night vacation, it feels like it was over in a blink.

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So as an act of memory preservation (and processing the stubborn remnants of empty-nest grief), I’ve been going back through the highlights of the last three months… and realizing that what I recall most aren’t the ‘events’ — the places we went or things we did. No. As I roll the recycling bin down the driveway past the buzzing bees, under the thick green poplars, what comes to mind are smells, sounds, and sights of being in the flesh with my powerhouse kid.

Most evenings, I’d be perched in my designated reading chair with a strategic view straight down the driveway. When the Mazda appeared around the corner with a signature Kendall zip, I’d jump up and flail-wave like those inflatables at a used car dealership. If I was too immersed in my book or newspaper and missed my cue, the sing-song beep of the security system as she entered the house always got my attention. My heart rate zero-to-sixteed in anticipation of the scolding “MOM!” echoing off the mudroom tiles, dripping with accusation for being asleep at the switch. I’d skip over and give her a kiss on the head, the smell of her shampoo and the DC streets wafting from her.

On weekends, we’d sit side by side at the kitchen island, her perfume mixing with the smell of my Dove soap, matching pony tails swaying as she gave me Instagram lessons, handing my phone back to me with the command, ‘ok, now you try it’. We’d retire to the couch, sharing our phones back and forth as we lay toe-to-toe on the sectional. She’d share depop bags and Mejuri bracelets and memes about moms not waiting at their kids’ beck and call. I’d share Erling Haaland videos, moms dancing with babies to Beat It, and the #lunchladiesoftiktok lipsyncing to Sheila E. I’d ask questions only a Gen Xer would, such as “Why do they call it doom scrolling? There’s no doom in my scroll.” She’d laugh and eyeroll in perfect synchrony.

Back scratches in bed. Faux battles over the volume on the remote and the last tortilla in the pack. An evening walk up the sea-green street. 12-minute mornings. I breathe in these memories, savoring their weight, their texture, like in another dimension we’re still side by side and the veil between worlds is thin.

While Kendall is at school, we’ll still talk/text/Facetime constantly, but being in the same space changes the stickiness of our encounters. 3D interactions sink in, making memories last in a way technology-assisted talking can’t quite seem to do. When I’m using all five senses to take this girl in, my body tells my brain to pay attention. Mark the occasion. Savor.

This summer, I got my cup filled with full-body memories safe from any recycling bin… which I’m going to need. Because, as if anyone doubted, it’s been confirmed: Kendall got a return offer. She’ll be moving to NYC after graduation. So my treasured horde of IRL memories will be my salve as our next season begins.

Feeling all the things,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book 

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

Dear listener -

Hope your dog days of summer are treating you well. I had grand plans to lay on the floor and do nothing (except read) for the month of August. As per usual, life has other plans. So no new post this week, we are re-running one of my faves from a little over a year ago.

I’ll be back on the horse with something fresh for you next weekend. Thanks for being out there, I appreciate it beyond what words can express.

Sue

***

“Guess where I am!”

I texted my son Connor the picture of myself with a heart emoji. He was headed to bed halfway around the world, exhausted after fourteen hours in seat 46L before finally landing in Tokyo.

“FRANK!” He shot back, complete with crying-laughing emoji.

Frank Dining Hall. Colgate University’s version of the college cafeteria that makes you question how they’re charging highway robbery tuition for penal institution level food. I stared down at my tater tots. They looked back at me with equal disappointment.

“The food IS absolutely terrible here!” I replied.

“It always is! But I’m eating good out here in Tokyo! Enjoy Colgate, mom!”

Three weeks after Connor’s rain-soaked graduation, here I am again. Tater tots abandoned, I drive back to the cute-as-a button cottage I’ve rented ten times over the last four years. The rough hewn work table is strewn with workshop pdfs, craft talk notes, and classmate manuscripts from the Colgate Writers Conference I’m currently attending. But I ignore the piles, drop my tote bag on the floor, and return to the rocking chair on the porch to watch the twilight fade. The trees are thick and green, cicadas are humming their summer symphony, and I’m wondering how a place I never chose became so perfectly mine.

***

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***

Hitchhiking on Someone Else’s Dream

Back in 2020, a college counselor put Colgate on Connor’s “to explore” list. Neither of us had ever heard of it. We visited on a February day so cold even this Pennsylvania girl questioned whether humans were meant to live this far north. He liked what he saw and he applied. He got in. But he’d also gotten into William & Mary, his dad’s alma mater… And yet, after one more visit, Connor said Colgate felt like “his place”. So I said, “whatever you want, honey” and sent in the tuition.

My first impression of Colgate? It was fine. I was happy Connor liked it. I was doubly happy I could drive up from Virginia in an afternoon. But Colgate didn’t make me swoon. It mostly made me grateful I lived farther south.

But here’s the thing about places you don’t choose: if you lean in, they can surprise you.

First, I found the postage-stamp sized bar with the decent wine and comfy vibe. Then I found a walking route through neighborhoods with front porches that belong on postcards. Next, the startlingly named Price Chopper grocery store that somehow carried everything I needed. Finally, the cross-country trail through the woods where I could think without interruption.

Trip after trip, year after year, I built my own relationship with Colgate and the surrounding town of Hamilton. So when an email about a writers conference on campus landed in my inbox, I didn’t hesitate. Not because I’d fallen in love with Connor’s school, but because I’d fallen in love with what I’d carved out there.

That’s the secret about unchosen circumstances. You can’t control what lands in your lap, but you can absolutely control what you do with it.

Unfortunately, I’ve become an expert at this.

What I’m Not Supposed to Say

Eight and a half years ago, I got handed a life I never would have ordered. Single parenthood. Solo decision-making. Holidays that felt slightly lopsided no matter how hard I tried. If someone had told me in 2016 that I’d not only survive Mike’s death but actually cherish parts of the life that came after, I’d have suggested they check themselves into the funny farm.

Yet here we are.

I’ve discovered things I love about my widowed life that feel taboo to admit.

Like how I can decide last-minute to go on a trip, no negotiating the dates, the activities, whether we get burgers or sushi. How Connor and I developed this shorthand that comes from being a two-person team. How I get to be entirely myself in my house — no compromising on the thermostat or the volume of my music or whether we watch another episode.

I remember maybe two years after Mike died, I caught myself humming while organizing a closet. Just, you know… happy. Happy in the life I had come to have.

The guilt hit like a brick wall. Should I be this content? This... unbroken?

I’ve struggled with that worry on and off since. It comes up many times when I write a post for you, dear reader. “Will they think I’m a monster for admitting I love this life? Should I show more grief, more regret?”

But Colgate is showing me how ridiculous that guilt is. I can love this upstate campus without diminishing any other place I’ve been happy. I can appreciate my favorite trail here while still missing other paths I’ve taken.

Loving different versions of your life works the same way.

I never chose to support Connor through college applications alone. But I discovered I’m pretty good at it. No committee meetings in my kitchen. No lengthy discussions about pros and cons. Just my gut, Connor’s instincts, and a willingness to trust both.

I never chose to travel by myself. But now I get to visit museums for exactly as long — or as short — as I want. I get to pick whatever play tickles my fancy, and leave halfway through when it’s a dud. I get to spend time deep in dedicated conversation with my far off friends in their towns.

I never chose to become Connor’s only parent. But wow, texting each other inside jokes as he travels through Japan is priceless; I love the bond that we have now.

And I can love this life, and still love Mike.

What We Do With What We Get

The truth is, most of our lives are built on circumstances we didn’t choose. The family we’re born into. The economy we graduate into. The health we inherit. The losses that reshape everything.

We spend so much energy wishing things were different instead of discovering what’s possible within what is.

I’m still learning this. Still sometimes catching myself humming in closets and wondering if I should feel guilty. Still amazed that a campus in the middle of nowhere New York became one of my favorite places on earth.

But I’m getting better at trusting the process. At finding my walking trail, my dive bar, my cottage with a view of the forest. At building something beautiful out of whatever each day hands me.

The tater tots are still terrible. But the view from this porch?

Perfect.

Making the most of it,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book 

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 don’t think this is the morning routine all those influencers are raving about, but I love it:

Weekdays, I’m up early. I empty the dishwasher, the dehumidifier, and my brain into the pages of my notebook. Then, I take my tea and toast at the kitchen island, twiddling my thumbs while I wait for Kendall’s footsteps on the stairs. The patter of her sensible flats, the swish of her pleated pants, and her overstuffed work bag rhythmically bumping against the staircase railing announce her arrival.

She fries her eggs, toasts her toast, and packs her lunch while we chitchat about her projects for the day and her plans after work: a happy hour or a Nats game. Maybe dinner with a friend. Then she doles out my admin responsibilities:

“This needs to go to the post office, this to UPS for an Amazon return.”

“Got it!” I reply, like some pick-me girl happy to help the queen bee. The truth is I am so happy to be her trusty sidekick, running errands during the day while she kicks ass at her internship.

Twelve minutes later, my working girl is out the door, driving her Mazda to the commuter lot, then catching the Metro to her M Street Office. I clear our plates, wipe the counter, sit back down to make my to-do list for the day, and think to myself wow, I could get used to this!

(Nostalgia sidebar here: Kendall’s future as a corporate wonk was undeniable, starting at no more than three years old. She’d hold my earphones up to her ears and spout gibberish. “What are you doing?” I’d ask. She’d lift her tiny index finger to her lips, “Shhh! I’m on a call!”. I’d give her discarded printouts of PowerPoints to draw on; she’d come back with graphs and numbers and boxes in the Crayola rainbow, make-believe decks of her own. At Christmas craft time she wouldn’t stop at the gingerbread house, she’d also make sure to add a sugar-cube table with gummy bear coworkers seated around it. “What are the gummy bears doing?” I’d ask. “They are having a meeting!” she’d exclaim.)

As my sell-ice-to-Eskimos daughter is wrapping up her executive recruiting internship, these twelve-minute-mornings have lulled me into thinking that whatever came next, it would be here. Nearby. On M Street. Forever.

So when she announced one Tuesday evening over tacos that she was thinking about moving to New York City post graduation, my heart dropped into my New Balance sneakers. My very practiced game face quickly slid into place. Words like absolutely, sounds great, you do you! spewed forth. But inside, a neon sign was flashing: AGAIN?!?

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Who knows if this move will come to pass. Which in no way prevents me from pre-catastrophizing, pre-grieving, pre-questioning the meaning of life. I’ve realized that even though I thought I had the empty nest processed, integrated, and assimilated since Kendall left for college in 2023, well, clearly, not so much.

So I’ve been doing what I do best: sinking into grief like a cat into a bathtub, while simultaneously watching myself from the outside, amused.

First, my brain jumped to berating myself for even being surprised: seriously, that working girl would not have lived with her mom in her corporate phase for more than five minutes. There was never going to be a ‘twelve minute mornings’ dream sequence with loving gazes over breakfast indefinitely. Ok, but at least I’d know she was sleeping in a DuPont Circle duplex or an Adams Morgan row house or an Arlington condo — thirty minutes away in a pinch. And that distance, or lack thereof, felt comforting.

Next my brain went to the destination for this highway robbery, attempting to assign blame: New York, it’s all your fault. We’ve had an ambivalent relationship, but I thought we were getting to know each other better? Now you are stealing my kid? But on the practical side, the train ride is so easy, tons of her friends are moving there too, and it’s not even a timezone away. Kendall even proclaimed, “I’m going to teach you to love New York.” (I may resist.)

While I try every time, logicking my way out of loss never gets me where I need to go. So, I had to dig a little deeper to see what my seething was really about.

A walk through Great Falls did the trick, getting me out of my head and into my emotions — I was mad for thinking I’d mastered the empty nest. Mad that I did not see this coming. Mad that I cannot whack-a-mole this particular bugaboo into submission and off my “loss list”.

Only now, as I’m writing this, can I finally even see the deepest layer — it’s the gradual changing of my relationship with the kids. As their lives fill, they just don’t need me as much. Which is the entire objective of being a parent. We are working towards our own obsolescence. And the metric of that is watching our kids gain — independence, adventure, expanded ecosystems, cities they love — as we lose.

For a while I’m going to sit and seethe. I’ll talk to myself, to Kavon, to Richie, to you, dear reader. And eventually, what always happens will happen — the frustration will dissipate. After enough rides of this merry-go-round, I’m starting to see my process more clearly:

First, shock: My knee-jerk reaction is to get pissed off, to yell WTF in the face of loss. I ask to speak to management. I wave over the referee. I file a complaint. I wallow.

Second, anger: I exercise my metaphorical biceps with some fist waving at the heavens.

Third, intellectualism: Lab coat and pocket protector at the ready, I try to think my way out of any and all feelings — “it’s not so bad / I can fix it / you’re being dramatic.”

Fourth, emotions: I dig deeper, into the uncomfortable and icky feelings, like flipping over a rock on a muddy trail and seeing all the squirming life underneath.

Fifth, trial-and-error: Day by day, I learn to deal. What can help me feel better, in the short term first, then the long?

I’m not quite ready to own it — because I’m still licking my wounds over the potential loss of Kendall moving out next summer — but seeing my grief process so clearly is, dare I say it, actually empowering. I have been here so many times, I not only know the terrain, I know I’ll make it across the jagged peaks and deep valleys.

I think, collectively, we don’t want to look back at our losses. Not in anger, nor in sadness, nor even in contemplation. We want them to be one, done, and erased from our memory. However, loss is NEVER one and done. And refusing to look back and take stock of how we got through each loss just robs us of becoming familiar with our process… which is the only way we can learn to trust it.

Clarification/warning: this doesn’t mean loss somehow gets comfortable. Sorrow still abounds, along with insecurity, fear, avoidance — just like on the TV show Cheers, all the regulars will be there. We don’t come to some enlightened bliss state where loss doesn’t bother us. At least I haven’t, and I think anyone saying that’s possible is full of BS.

But we can learn to feel some agency with loss. We can go through it with our eyes open, so we recognize we’ve been here before and made it through. We can dull our knee-jerk reaction of avoiding and delaying loss at all costs. We can take a deep, shaky breath and face it, so all the good things that await on the other side — Kendall steamrolling NYC, seeing Broadway plays together, a whole bunch of things I simply can’t imagine yet because I’m too busy holding a grudge against that rotten Big Apple up north — can come to pass.

Enjoying every twelve-minute morning I have left,

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: https://suedeagle.com/book

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 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/

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

“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/

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

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

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