The Luminist

“Can you just wait? Wait to break up until I get home?” It was Day 11 on the pilgrim trail. I’d gotten my bearings, my routine, and my cheese sandwich strategy down. But I carried a worry tucked at the back of my brain. My daughter Kendall was having boy issues.

While she was mulling over what to do, I put in that ridiculous request: can you wait?

You know, for TWENTY MORE DAYS?

You know, so I can be there to support and help?

You know, because you are my baby and I don’t want to be so far away when the difficulties of life come raining down?

“Mom! Geez. I can handle this. I’ll do it my way.”

Yes, yes, of course she would. And she did.

A couple days later, her relationship was officially kaput, she was moving on, and I was left wondering if she was too rash or if I was too timid…

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How much time do we grownups spend waiting?

Waiting for the exact right timing.

Waiting for the right decision to reveal itself.

Waiting for when we’ll know for sure, when all risks are eliminated, when our choice is guaranteed to be smooth sailing.

That increment of time? It’s called FOREVER.

What happens in the meantime? Decisions are made for us. Our relationship disintegrates in a blaze of sparks and fury. Our job gets pulled out from underneath us when we’re least prepared for it. Our wavering friendship implodes.

Essentially, the other shoe drops… but from a hand that isn’t ours, leaving us hurt, frustrated, afraid.

But wait. (Lol.) This doesn’t feel like us, right?

We are thoughtful, insightful, action-oriented people! We get s**t done. Our careers, mortgages, families, friend groups, our 10k races and bowling leagues, our blow-out vacations and surprise parties attest to our do-do-doer-ness.

We are engaged with life and forward motion in so many areas of our lives. But paradoxically, we are avowed ‘waiters’ in the areas that count the most. Where the stakes are highest. Where a wrong move might ruin our day, week, month. Or life.

However, we don’t realize that waiting itself is a decision — we’re putting the choice directly in the universe’s hands, crossing our fingers, and pretending we’re being “responsible”.

I’m furious about this topic right now because of a play I just saw…

Waiting for Godot.

You might have heard of it.

It’s maddening. The premise of the play is two dudes are waiting. You know…for Godot. They don’t really know who he is. What he does. Exactly what will happen when he shows. But they feel confident waiting is the right thing, because Godot will come with answers.

Answers on what to do next.

They share flashes of anger, despair, uncertainty, and boredom (as did I, trying to figure out what this play was about). But in the end they always just come back around to agreeing that waiting is the only way to go. They’ll give Godot one more day to show up with his answers.

Then another.

Then another.

As I sat there checking my watch, it’s like I could feel life slipping away as the two characters decided over and over again that doing nothing was better than doing something.

Because they wanted to be sure they were doing the right something.

And every time I’ve done the same thing, or recommended that my kids, friends, colleagues do the same thing, flashed before my eyes.

At the root of so much indecision is waiting for the knowing to tap us on the shoulder and whisper, “this way!”

But knowing rarely shows up like a giant, flashing LED arrow. So we rest instead on the odd, self-sabotaging comfort of indecision, defaulting to what we know rather than risk possible sacrifice for an uncertain outcome.

But is that really living?

I believe there is more out there in the world for most of us.

Not more things, more life.

A vibrant life that expresses our talents, our hard-earned wisdom, along with our needs and evolving values. But how do we get from here to there, if we don’t know the way? If we don’t have Godot giving us all the answers?

I can’t just say to any of us “stop waiting!” That’s like saying to my grieving self “stop being sad!” Our brains are not short order cooks, taking instructions and churning out eggs over easy with a side of courage and fortitude. Instead of Godot, it turns out that my literary crush, Oliver Burkeman, has some suggestions. (Unsurprisingly.)

In Meditations for Mortals, he suggests that we need to obsesses less over The Right Choice, and focus instead on taking small, imperfect actions. By prioritizing movement, in whatever direction, we reclaim agency in the situation — the ‘situation’ being our own damn life.

“As you withdraw your psychological energies from denial or avoidance and focus them on action, momentum starts to gather, and each decision proves easier to take than the last.”

He’s not telling us to quit tomorrow, break up tonight, resign immediately from our little league coaching gig. It’s not as terrifying as all that. He’s just encouraging us to embrace our agency by taking some, any imperfect action.

Burkeman defines ‘action’ as having two simple characteristics:

1 — It’s tangible.

Open up the word doc and begin revising your resume; call your mom and discuss the pros and cons of breaking up; write down a list of other candidates to take over your coaching gig. Do something on paper, in person, IRL. Not up in your head.

2 — It can be so small.

Here’s a cause for relief: size does not matter. Want to go for something big? Don’t let me stop you. But a series of smaller choices can keep our nervous system from seeing change as a big threat and high-diving into fight/flight/freeze mode. The tangible examples above? None are giant leaps of faith that require a new degree, cross-country move, or shaving your head. Don’t let your brain fear monger you into paralysis.

“To move forward, we have to choose, and keep on choosing,” Burkeman says.

“I’m no longer waiting, wondering, worrying. I can’t be sure I made the ‘right’ choice, but I feel relief anyway.”

That was my editor Leona talking about a big change she just made. Yes, the decision was super hard. Yes, processing it has involved tears and wine. But she’s no longer stuck; life feels like an open road of possibility again. Other choices have started to cascade through her, like puzzle pieces clicking into place.

Knowing, in all its hyped-up glory, is actually not that easy to come by from a cold start. A couple of laps around the track, via small tangible actions, opens up a path to see things more clearly.

Because chances are, Godot is not going to just show up with the answers.

But if one of those dudes had walked even half a mile down the road, he might’ve realized that right around the bend there was a library or a wise monk or traveling circus — anything that could have been more helpful than waiting.

But I digress…

In action,

Sue

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P.S. I shared last week about my nascent Noticing Odes practice (sounds like an ACTION, right?). As an accountability exercise, I wanted to share that I’m… loving it! My eyes are peeled, my notes app, and index finger is getting a workout, and I’m evoking really heartwarming memories and stories from my life while capturing the ideas. Here’s a peek:

Is there anything worse than being grumpy when you expected to be happy? That’s how I felt this Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday — all the festiveness and togetherness and coziness and mashed potatoes but without the stress of gift-giving.

This year, I was elated to have the kids home, to have my family packed into the treehouse, to eat so much pie. But I found myself out of sorts.

I’d wake up each morning reset by the night’s sleep. I’d take in the trees and sunrise, read a little bit of my bedside book, The Book of Delights by Ross Gay, and look forward to the day ahead. But then the whirlwind would start, and my mood would slide downhill.

Why? I honestly don’t know. Maybe this is just how life is sometimes? Maybe I miss some of those old joys of Thanksgiving when Mike was around… All I know is, it was definitely made worse by the fact that I expected myself to be feeling great, and just wasn’t.

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Saturday morning, I’d finally had enough of my own foul mood.

… But it was too cold to do my regular grumpiness-elimination routine: a hike in Great Falls Park.

… And of course I didn’t feel like reading any of my four in-process books.

… I didn’t even feel like writing. (Side note: It’s so crazy to realize that I’m really a writer now. When I can’t write, due to internal or external forces, I feel like I’m deprived of a key nutrient.)

So I just stared at the dark, pre-dawn sky out my window, feeling a bit like a testy teenager who may or may not be holding onto their bad mood on purpose.

I live close enough to Dulles International Airport that the sky over my house often includes an airplane or four. The highway of lights overhead might bother others, but I love the constant reminder of flight, travel, and having the world accessible from my doorstep. My previous international business trips, and current international for-fun trips, have created a web of friends, adventures, and aha moments that span the globe. So seeing a tictac with wings jet across the sky reminds me of moments when I was out of my routine and swept into the awe of being alive.

I’ve watched the planes enough to realize that that morning, one was on a different flight path.

Perhaps it’s coming from Montreal, or maybe Iceland! Wow, that must’ve been an early flight for them. Or maybe the pilot just took a different flight path because they like it better. Perhaps the view is different. Are pilots allowed to change course to get a better view?

The crankiness was gone, replaced by curiosity.

I often think of coping methods as types of activities.

Read a book! Go to a museum! Run as deep into the woods and as far from other humans as possible!

But that morning I wasn’t finding solace by either escaping my circumstances or escaping my mind. Instead I found a different way to just be in it. I dove into my senses and let the details of what I saw around me spark a new type of feeling. Yes, there was a part of me that still wanted to grumble. But I tuned my internal dial away from this part (we can call her the Judger) and instead handed the mic to the Noticer.

Turns out the Noticer has the Investigator, Dreamer, and Delighter on speed dial too.

Soon my mind was playing out possibilities for trips I wanted to take in the New Year, wondering about the lifestyles of international pilots, and happily diverted from my own crumby inner state. I think I even giggled. I’ve always been a fan of sinking out of autopilot and into observation (more on that in post #6 and post #55), but I hadn’t realized that it could be used in-the-moment this way. Which makes me want to smack my forehead with a “Duh, Deagle!” but that’s beside the point.

As the sun rose, I started to look around my room for other things I could notice, and my bedside book caught my eye. The Book of Delights. The premise is simple — each day author Ross Gay wrote an ode to something that delighted him. Ode to air quotes. A tomato plant. A silent nod of recognition.

Gay (I love that that’s his last name, by the way) was showing me how it was done — take my noticings to the next level. Pick a subject and tune the dial to delight. Choose to pay attention to the things that would light me up, instead of pull me down.

Now that the holidays are in full swing, it’s important to have coping methods close at hand.

When we’re out of our normal routines, sweating booze and sugar, and trying to stay cheery but our eyelid keeps twitching, we need all the help we can get.

Especially in the form of subtle coping methods — things we can do if we have only five minutes to hide in the bathroom, or while we sit in an airport arrivals traffic jam.

So I’ve started the practice of writing a daily Noticing Ode (Node for short). Everyday it reminds me that I have the power to tune my dial. So far I’ve written about a majestic eight-point buck standing at the end of my driveway, ponytails and their cousins, pigtails and man buns, and a fading dream about a painting of light.

This way my mind has something engaging and re-centering to DO, rather than being shouted down and told to take a literal hike.

It may seem simple, but for this widow, adding a new tool to her coping tool box is revelatory. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer now ;), but my inner ache craves more than simple distractions.

By creating something, even a short note on my phone, I’m reminded of who I am and what I’m capable of. I’m reminded of my past, as my Nodes often pull up memories (dad’s deer hunting days, Kendall’s toddler pigtails). I’m reminded of what still awaits me, realizing how much more there is to experience and discover. And most importantly, I realize where I am isn’t that bad.

Sometimes there’s so much going on, we get lost in the tornado of problems to solve. And the holidays take the normal stress we’re under and supersize it.

Noticing slows down my pace, so I can look around and remember that everything isn’t actually crapola. From there, it’s much easier to see the truth: Sure, I could’ve used more alone time this Thanksgiving, and definitely more time to write. But other than that, it was time well spent.

Good luck this holiday season!

Sue

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“Sue, our podchat is ready!” Even though I was reading the words, in my mind I could hear Gareth’s lilting accent wafting across the Atlantic. This feel-like-I’ve-known-you-forever chap is a new friend I met at Do Wales. Despite the thousands of miles, cultural differences, and varied upbringings that separate us, we are simpatico.

While architecting is his day job, Gareth Dauncey is also the founder of the Mood app and host of the podcast How Do You Feel Today.

Does that description make you think he’s a tree-hugging, airy-fairy, woo-woo-worshiping hippy? You know, talking about his feeeeeeeeeelings?

The truth is, Gareth built his app and started his podcast from a place many of us reach at a point (or many points) in our lives: the feeling that we just don’t want to get out of bed. Though we may have meaningful work and loving families, we’re exhausted and unmotivated. We feel like giving up, but we can’t figure out why…

We can call it ‘depression’, but then it’s easy to distance ourselves from it — “Oh, I’ve never seen a therapist or been diagnosed or medicated. That’s not me. I haven’t been depressed.”

So let’s just call it… low points.

Gareth was tired of low points running his life. So instead of gritting his teeth, pretending everything was fine, and carrying on, he turned his attention toward them.

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Using a set of colored-pens and a traditional calendar as a prototype, Gareth started to track how he felt.

(This was before Apple watches, Oura rings, or the next-gen fitbits!)

Just once a day, he’d draw a line on the current day in a color that represented his mood. This daily, pen-to-paper ritual turned out to be powerful by:

* creating awareness in the moment about how he felt and…

* proliferating over a week, a month, a year in all it’s color-coded glory to reveal that his mood swings weren’t as random as he had originally thought.

For those of you who have struggled with unpredictable emotions (myself included!), you know how huge this is.

Gareth ended up being able to zoom out and see the trends — how his mood sunk… and rose. Then he could reflect on why. What was happening in his life, his family, his business, the world? What outside forces were affecting his internal landscape.

Today, Gareth’s highlighter/calendar method has evolved into the Mood app. It asks one simple question: How do you feel today? You answer by tapping a color gradient within a range of high to low. That’s it. Then, over time, you can see patterns in the stripes of hue…

What was I doing during that really dark-colored time? Oh right, that was when I was reintegrating back into real life after pilgriming, complete with a pile bills and a broken air conditioner.

What was I doing when the colors were consistently light? That was when the kids and I were lallygagging on the sectional, laughing our asses off while watching track, triathlon, and table tennis at the Olympics.

When you dip, you can assess why. When you rise, same.

How simple is that? Track how you feel in order to reflect, analyze the root causes, and course correct.

I can’t believe I’ve never thought of tracking my mood.

“What is measured can be managed,” and all that.

But it almost seemed… too simplistic? Our mood is affected by so many things — work, family, relationships, diet, exercise, sleep, the weather, the traffic, how frothy our cappuccino is that morning. So instead of ever thinking to track how I felt, I’ve tracked and optimized plenty of other things. I was briefly so obsessed with walking 10k steps a day that I wore a track around my living room rug.

But I’ve been making it more complicated than it has to be.

For many of us, the goal of having a slimmer waist line, sleeping more deeply, or getting the promotion at work is to eventually… be happier, right?

(Ok, maybe sometimes it’s to be healthier, but what’s so great about living to be 90 if we’re miserable?)

We can only know if our actions are doing any good if we track the outcomes. And I’d argue, feeling good — peaceful, content, joyful, spacious, pick your “light” emotion of choice — is the ultimate outcome of them all.

Without this data:

* We might keep mindlessly repeating tactics that don’t work, hamstringing our way out of lows and into highs.

* We might beat ourselves up every time things don’t go quite right. Then we might stop trying at all.

Gareth’s mission might seem only helpful to those of us who experience problematic mood swings.

But it’s more than that.

He’s helping us help ourselves.

In order to build a life that feels good, we have to get in touch with our core — what actually makes us feel better and what actually makes us feel worse. So we don’t end up chasing ideas (frequently other peoples’) of what will bring us joy, only to end up depleted and confused.

Self reflection isn’t an optional, superfluous step.

It’s the only thing that ensures our actions are based on what actually works for us. Otherwise, we’re wandering around in the dark, hoping to somehow stumble upon happiness.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s about the journey, not the destination. But we can at least know we’re moving in the right direction.

Tracking the hues,

Sue

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Last Friday, I set my alarm for 5:30am. Blinking my bleary eyes as if that would help them adjust to the pre-dawn dark, I changed from my PJs into my workout clothes, then got on the treadmill at max incline for 30 minutes.

Then I meditated for 20.

Then I showered for 10.

I was getting myself awake and amped up for a 7:30am fireside chat with Carlos Saba and Laurence McCahill, the founders of The Happy Startup (based in the UK, which explains the early call time).

The title of our chat: Embracing Everything, from Loss to Aliveness

Appropriate, considering it was the eighth anniversary of Mike’s death. 

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When Carlos and I were setting the date for the fireside chat weeks ago, it didn’t even register to me what November 15th was. 

This seems preposterous, but it’s the truth. We were anchoring on Fridays in November, clicking through possible days.

“Nope, can’t do that one, I’ll be in New Orleans for parent’s weekend.” 

“Nope, can’t do that one, that’s Thanksgiving here in the USA.” 

So November 15th was just an empty white box on my calendar that looked perfect for scheduling. I don’t put “Anniversary of Mike’s Death” in my google calendar like I would a kid’s birthday or Christmas Day. So the morning looked sufficiently blank. 

My reaction, once I realized the scheduling overlap?  

“Perfect”. 

After all, I started The Luminist on Mike’s sixth deathiversary, while also keynoting the V2X women’s conference in Kuwait. However, that November both crossovers were intentional — I was proud of what I had made in the aftermath of Mike’s death and excited to weave the “bitter” and “sweet” strands together.

Last year, however, I didn’t do anything grand, accidentally or on purpose. Instead, I cried for days.

And before that… Before that is hard to remember. But I do remember that I used to tell my family and friends not to text me. I wanted to control my sorrow. And random, intermittent texts popping up, intended to soothe, would have the opposite effect.

This is one of the quirks of grief that you just don’t know until you go through it. Turns out that sadness, while a constant companion in the beginning, eventually develops it’s own weather pattern that is impossible to predict. And as the years go by, new emotions appear on the radar too — gratitude, empowerment, awe.

My emotions feel beyond my control, just like they did in the acute stage of grief. But this no longer scares me. I trust that it won’t rain for more than a week or so at a time, and I’ve been through enough sparkling sunny days that I’m pretty sure one will come again.

I’ve said many times in this space that I worship mystery.

Because not knowing has brought me so much wonder and peace.

Not having to:

* understand everything;

* have an explanation for everything;

* have a solution for everything…

… opens me.

Embracing this truth (yes, I said truth) is the biggest change I’ve experienced since Mike’s death, and feels at the core of the vibrant life I get to live today.  

However, mystery is not all rainbows and unicorns. It has a sharp edge. Mystery is sometimes just a pretty way of saying uncertainty, insecurity, fear. The unpleasant reality that a rogue wave of grief could take me by surprise and take me down at any moment will always exist. 

But I can’t believe in mystery only when it’s convenient. If I start micro-managing my feelings, every moment of sadness will become a failure. And every moment of contentedness will be dissected rather than enjoyed.

So I give myself to the mystery of emotion.

I let the clouds float by overhead, looking for shapes in the sky… instead of trying to figure out how to make them come and go when it works best for me.

Carlos, Laurence, and I had a tech-challenged but heartfelt chat.

Then I hopped into Kendall’s little blue Mazda and made the six-hour drive north to Colgate University for Connor’s Fall a capella concert. The same place I cried a lot this time last year. 

As I cruised up past Gettysburg, Harrisburg, Scranton, and got off on the windy country roads toward Colgate, I took in my surroundings — broken down barns, broken down cars, barren trees, arms outstretched to the sky as if beseeching for snow to turn post-autumn emptiness into a winter wonderland. I listened to a podcast my good buddy Karl sent me. I finished an audiobook about the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I talked to Richie on the phone. 

Then I got to see my giant little boy. He’s having the best senior year, filled with leadership lessons and deep human connection.

And finally an a capella concert that filled a college chapel with hope and youth and promise.

In other words, this November 15th, I didn’t feel sad. I felt joy. 

Who knows what the ninth anniversary of Mike’s death will feel like… or the tenth, twentieth, thirtieth. What I do know is, there will be moments of sadness, despair, loneliness, frustration that have nothing to do with the exact date when a Fairfax County Hospital ER room was lit like the sun as my world eclipsed into darkness. 

When we are open to it all, the sadness will show up at the right time. Not a time we would prefer, but the time when the emotion is ripe and ready to drop from the vine. It’s funny how humans have gotten so separated from the organic nature of our own emotions. They have a wisdom, even if it doesn’t fit neatly into our lunch break.

But I have learned to trust it, because while some deathiversaries feel like crawling across broken glass, some feel like a cozy autumn day, chatting with friends, mooning over my son, and borrowing my daughter’s sporty car for a joy ride.

In the flow,

P.S. Check out Carlos Saba’s substack The Midlife Guide for many more interviews and blogs about how to turn midlife from a crisis into an opportunity.

Sue

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As a kid, I was never the begging type. I wouldn’t pound my parents with incessant requests. No pleading. No pouting. I was persistent, but at a low frequency. My strategy worked: I often got my requests at least considered, and sometimes fulfilled. Which is how I ended up with Tasha.

Tasha was a shelter kitty, petite and gray, with fuzzy-sweater fur that made you want to run your hand up and down her back all day. She was perfect.

And two weeks after we got her… she was gone. 

Unbeknownst to us, she was ill when we brought her home. We had a few love-filled days, followed by a week of decline, then a quiet burial at the tree line in the backyard. I was ten.

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I was reminded of this first faceplant into loss when I heard the story of Ben.

Ben was the beloved pup of Kirk Herbstreit, a well known college football Game Day anchor and analyst. Kirk brought Ben everywhere, at first to keep him company while chasing football teams around the country, and then because Ben had become famous in his own right, just by being so dang lovable.

Unfortunately, Ben’s journey on the planet ended last week at age ten, when he passed away from cancer. 

In a video my brother-in-law sent me (Richie knows I’m a sucker for anything grief and/or love related), Kirk is at his regular seat with the other Game Day analysts. His longtime colleague, Lee Corso, is by his side. As Kirk attempts to intro a tribute to Ben, he finds himself unable to speak. He is overcome. Heaving shoulders follow. Lee reaches across to touch Kirk’s arm. The other commentators lean in. And the video tape rolls with a sweet tribute to Ben.

This is what happens when we love. 

We lose.

Not the ‘loser’ kind of losing, like getting picked last for kickball or falling face first into your mashed potatoes in the middle school cafeteria. The winning kind. The kind that proves just how deep our love went.

Loss doesn’t exist without love coming first. And yet, we still think losing something is a sign of failure and grieving is a sign of weakness? Please. Pets prove this isn’t the case.

It takes guts to cry on national television like Kirk did! (And on ESPN no less, not even Oprah!)

Loss isn’t a consolation prize you get when you mess up. It’s a sign that you’ve done something right, in my opinion. That you gave your heart to a person, animal, relationship, job so deeply that losing it feels like losing part of yourself… Losing feels like dying.

This is what love asks of us —

Are you willing to care more about this other creature than you care about protecting yourself? Are you willing to risk the bone-deep ache of grief in order to feel epic amounts of love in this relationship? Are you willing to trade plain Jane comfort and security for firework explosions of aliveness — both heart filling and heart breaking?

Loss is a feature not a bug of aliveness.

And our pets, more than any other kinds of loss, give us the chance to practice this over and over and over again, because their life spans are frustratingly, achingly short.

We think we have no experience with loss.

No experience making it through the really tough stuff. But we all do. A pet, a job, a dream, a love affair — we all know what it’s like to say goodbye to something we desperately want to keep.

It sucks, but on some level we were all built to do it — to learn to love again.

Just to be clear, I’m not comparing the death of a person to the death of a pet. Because I think ‘comparing’ losses is total b******t, and only serves to make our ‘smaller’ losses unacceptable, and therefore hidden.

What I am saying is, if you’ve ever cared for an animal in your life, from a gerbil to a goat, a parakeet to a python, a Maine coon to a mastiff, you have loved and lost. You’ve felt that bittersweet feeling, and you would not have traded the love to avoid the pain. In fact, the love lives on in spectacular ways. As Kirk says of animals in his tribute “The warmth they give us never goes away.”

Let’s tell ourselves a different story. Let’s tell ourselves the truth. That our animals have not only taught us how to love, but also how to lose. Then how to love again. And again. And again.

A few months after Tasha died, we got another cat. 

Then eventually, another. 

(Our radioactive goldfish, who went by the cutting-edge name Goldie, was not exactly giving off a huge amount of love from her algae coated bowl on top of the television set.)

We didn’t stop loving because we lost. We didn’t pull up the ladders, circle the wagons, make our lives smaller by vowing never to have a pet again.

We opened our broken hearts to something new. We said “yes” to love and loss all over again.

And if nothing else, knowing that Tasha’s and Ben’s and Fido’s and Mr. Whiskers’ life will eventually come to an end makes us love a little more fiercely while they’re still around.

I don’t want a life that feels like a steady state of predictable numbness. I will choose the love, licks, and cuddles every time. I will choose to be broken, knowing that first comes opening… and once I heal, opening will come around again.

To our pets,

Sue

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“This is not the Smithsonian, sir, this is the National Gallery of Art.” The sharp-tongued docent spread her hands out on the gallery map, and leaned menacingly towards the man, affronted. 

Standing behind him in line, I was silently shouting, “Abort, dude, abort. She’s going to eat you for breakfast!” But he was not reading the room. Ignoring her body language, he doubled down. “Well, what’s the difference?” 

Uh, geez. 

“Andrew Mellon founded this museum, it stands alone from its neighbors here on the Washington Mall, and...”

I could witness a blood bath a few rooms away in the Old Masters’ paintings. I did not need to see a live-action dismemberment in the National Gallery entrance hall. Trying to save this guy’s life and move on with mine, I cut in, “Hi, so sorry to interrupt, but can you please tell me the direction of the special Impressionist exhibit?”

“Oh, that’s what I’m looking for too!” He cluelessly said. 

“Upstairs and to the left.” She looked at me, rolling her eyes in his direction. 

I sprinted away, hoping he’d follow. 

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I ascended Andrew Mellon’s marble clad stairway and walked down the second floor’s echoey stone hallway.

(Thank you, 19th century robber baron, using a sackful of your pillaged money to create such a thing of beauty!)

I met the queue in the atrium, scanned the QR code on the poster, and read the exhibit pre-brief on my phone. As I waited my turn with the other art nerds, I absentmindedly fingered the velvet ropes corralling us.

The exhibit — Paris 1874: The Impressionist Moment — takes us back to when the Impressionists were just getting started. Unlike today, when Monet’s lily pads are printed on throw pillows and phone cases, initially the Impressionists were mocked. Because the powers that be were still valuing the realism, perfection, and high ideals of picture perfect images in the style of academicism. Not only did the paintings border on photographic, they were also grand scenes of morality, frugality, how a toga was properly draped. 

But the Impressionists couldn’t help but try something different. 

* They painted what they saw in front of them — not biblical figures or lauded leaders from times passed. 

* They sought to evoke a feeling (an impression, if you will) in their paintings by using choppy brush strokes, luminous colors, and white-primed canvases.

* Their art reflected modern times — a post-war life that the academic painters of the day appeared oblivious to. 

The Impressionists were dedicated to the here and now. The experience of today, rather than an idealized re-telling of the past. They weren’t trying to escape their lived reality, paint over it, or trade it in for the good old days. They wanted to capture the present moment’s essence just as it was.

And let the imperfect, everyday, fleeting nature of it be the beauty of it.

Funnily enough, the critics of the time ridiculed the Impressionists for prioritizing beauty over message.

Unless each painting was banging you over the head with a parable of higher virtue, the haters didn’t see it’s worth.

They missed the profound message I see in an Impressionist painting — perfection is not necessary for beauty. In fact, you can find beauty anywhere. (Especially if you squint ;).

This has been my experience crawling out of my grief pit and stumbling into aliveness. We think life should look a certain way… and so we go on striving to make every detail perfect — retirement savings account, LinkedIn profile, clean house, car, kids — just like the academic painters’ brush strokes. Not a hair out of place.

But in doing so, we can accidentally suck the juice out of life. We forget to enjoy the experience of it while we are busy perfecting it.

Even if your life doesn’t look like a gorgeously rendered biblical parable or partially clad Greek god, even if it just looks like a bustling city block, a hazy sunrise, or lily pads, there is beauty in it. Maybe even more beauty, because it is real and therefore can be felt.

Because what is life without feeling? What is life without aliveness?

You might be wondering, why are we taking life advice from renegade artists?

Yes, stereotypically artists are flaky and don’t care if their parents hate them or their wife and children starve. They’re not embarrassed by their own kooky ideas or empty bank accounts. They're not trying to get their kid into university, the roof fixed, the car keys away from their aging parents.

But the Impressionists invite us to see that beauty is available to all of us, at any time. We get to define beauty for ourselves, rather than always striving for some ideal to which we can only fall short.

Even in the late 1800s, people were feeling the squeeze of perfectionism, standardization, robotization that made it harder to enjoy the here and now.

But the here and now is the only thing that can be enjoyed.

So let’s look for more reasons to enjoy it, rather than more reasons to judge it.

Finding the beauty,

Sue

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“Where is that damn book!?!” Head tilted at an angle, I stood on the back of my office couch, sliding my fingers across book spines, scanning the titles sideways. 

My beloved bookshelf is my brain’s external hard drive. I use it for inspiration, reflection, and research. On this particular day I was in search of a fact from The End of Trauma by Dr. George A. Bonanno for my Do Loss book outline — “x number of those grieving feel better in y years”. And I couldn’t find the tome anywhere.

“Didn’t I read that in 2022, before his other book, The Other Side of Sadness? Oh hell, I can't remember now.”  

This left me standing on the couch scanning and scanning and scanning. And it really pissed me off.

“Ok, this system is no longer working. Time for a reboot.” I scowled.

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In the New York Times ‘By the Book’ column, authors are regularly asked, “How do you arrange your books?” 

The most frequent answers are “not very well” or “all over the place”. 

What??? I mean, how can you find a beloved book if they are not dewey-decimal-ed into submission using your personal OCD system?

If I were to be interviewed for this column (one can always hope!), here’s my answer: by year read. Beginning in 2017, the year after my husband died.

I know exactly where to find my books, because I remember exactly where I was in my grieving process when I read them. (Until last weekend, but we’re getting there.)

2017 was the year of the classic grief memoirs — A Grief Observed; The Year of Magical Thinking. Interspersed were also books by psychics and mystics and anyone who talked about the possibility of life after death. Mainlining stories of widows, widowers, and ghost whisperers helped me believe that I would survive this. Because the memoirs gave me hope of my life post Mike’s loss, and the mystics gave me hope that Mike might still exist in some form. Hope was the name of the game.

2018 came with a branching out to more esoteric loss memoirs, lots of reading about nature, and sparks of curiosity about the science of grief and memory — Mary Oliver’s Upstream, Lewis Hyde’s A Primer for Forgetting. Plus a few fiction books by favorite authors Pat Barker and Michael Ondaatje to get me out of my head. 

As the years unfolded and my ability to think about anything besides loss returned, my reading selections evolved further. Architecture books popped up in 2019, the year Treehouse planning began. Books on race proliferated in 2020. Books on war and the Founding Fathers showed up as I sought to better understand the warfighters and nation I was serving at work. Books about death gave way to books about life — how to live well and get the most out of our short time on earth. The shelves of the 2020’s were filled with Montaigne, the Stoics, Seneca. Memoirs by famous creatives. Fiction books that explored the human experience.

My bookshelf ended up being a timeline of my healing, then my growth, and finally my evolution of the thinker and writer typing this for you right now. 

But when I could not find the Bonanno book, I had a major realization.

Mike’s death-iversary is no longer the blackhole around which my entire experience orbits. 

My timeline now involves a new marker of my transformation: the day I stopped mentally organizing my existence around November 15, 2016. 

So I emptied my shelves. 

EVERY. SINGLE. BOOK. 

I put them in piles around my office by genre — fiction, memoirs by famous people, memoirs by non-famous people, grief-specific memoirs, personal growth, science, race, war, poetry, graphic novels. Then I dusted everything down and re-shelved.

I now can see all my fiction books (top shelf!), all my memoirs (second and third), then my books about living and life. In four hours, I aligned my external brain to who I am today. 

No longer someone solely defined by the worst day of their life. Instead, someone who has faced challenges, been transformed by the pressure and heat, and — while not necessarily ‘grateful’ for crawling through that dumpster fire — is moving forward empowered.

The timeline has been left behind and replaced with… knowing.

The knowing that Mike has been integrated into every facet of me and the kids’ lives. We’re no longer constantly thinking about how far we are from the day he took his last breath. Instead, we’re living with him inside of us, beside us, around us. Maybe he’s become more of a feeling than a human being, but he’s still a force of love, support, and inspiration. We know what kind of life he’d want for us, and we unabashedly live it. He influences us every day.

In other words, our focus is no longer on what we lost when he left, but on what we had before his heart stopped.

It’s corny to say but it feels so real — he lives on through us. It doesn’t matter how long its been, nothing can separate us from him now. 

When finishing a new book, I still write the year on the inside cover.

So even though my “book years” are intertwined now like sleeping puppies in a box, I can still pick up a book and reminisce about my state of mind when I read it, placing it in time. Placing ME in time. 

Not because I want to look back with woe — “Oh gosh, its been so long since I last hugged Mike…” — but because it’s amazing to see my progress! Time passing is no longer a bad thing, it’s a measuring stick for my evolution. I get to open a book from my shelf, see 2022 written in the top right corner, and feel a rush of pride and awe. Look how far I’ve come in just two years… I can’t wait to see where I go next!

November 15 will always be a moody, messy day. I can’t forget that it’s the anniversary of the white hot line that divided my life into ‘before’ and ‘after’. But that line no longer defines every day.

It feels good to know that eventually loss becomes just a part of life, rather than a lurking boogeyman you organize your life around.

Already buying more books,

Sue

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“What is all this crap??” I blurted into the crisp Swedish air. 

I was sitting on the tiny porch of my even tinier log cabin, strides away from an unpronounceable lake, checking email. 

The practicalities of a home, kids, and responsibilities kept me from an email-free pilgrimage. But as the days unfolded and my routine of communing with nature, myself, and my lunchtime cheese-and-cucumber sandwich solidified, almost every email crowding my inbox began to look more and more strange. Intrusive. Preposterous. 

Not the ones with bills or the notes from friends. But the ones selling me things I didn’t need, telling me news I didn’t care about, hitting me up for donations for this or that university I didn’t want to support. 

Why was I giving these so much of my time??

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In my Virgina-suburbs life, I’d have opened these missives, read the first few lines, then ignored them. Maybe I’d leave some unread, hoping to come back to them later, make a featured recipe contained within, ponder an idea highlighted in the text. But on the pilgrim trail? It just seemed like death by a thousand cuts. Compared to the free-wheeling hens, the surprise lakes, the hidden-in-plain-sight trolls, these emails didn’t deserve even five seconds of my attention.  

Buddhist Dave helped me understand why these emails infuriated me so much.

They didn’t just steal my time, they stole my peace.

Every time I thought, “I don’t have time to make this vegetarian lasagne recipe from the NY Times now but I’ll save this email so I can sometime soon,” I started a vicious cycle. I’d see the email again in my inbox, or randomly just remember the lasagne recipe, and a little pang of “s**t, I haven’t done that yet” would wince through me.

Emails like this started to cause me to feel disgust with myself. Disgust that I’m not superwoman, that I don’t have time to do it all, that I’m not cooking more meals at home, that I’m prioritizing the wrong things, that I’m a terrible mother, that I’m going to die of diabetes… Omg, how did I get here??

An email. A well-meaning, “here’s a delicious recipe” email.

It’s not really the email’s fault — it’s just the way my brain categorizes and then relates to the contents of the email.

I started paying more attention and these were some of the surprising reactions I had to emails:

* FOMO — Omg that bomber jacket is so cute. I’ll just keep an eye out for when it goes on sale…

* Despair — Just another terrible thing in the world I can’t really do anything about.

* Self-judgement — Jim got a big promotion! I wonder where I would be if I hadn’t retired early… Now I’m just irrelevant…

* Overwhelm — Another recipe I don’t have time to cook, a newsletter I don’t have time to read, a workout routine I don’t have time to try.

What good was all this information if I couldn’t interact with it without feeling bad?

Was the excess information actually helpful if at the same time it was sapping my hard-won peace?

More information does not mean more happiness.

In fact, it might be the opposite — especially when we’ll use the information to berate ourselves.

There are never going to be more than 24 hours in the day, and it’s highly unlikely we’re going to discover a new productivity hack that finally makes it possible for us to do all the things we’ve been putting off for ages. So why do we stay engaged with the firehose of news, sales, tips, editorials?

Probably because we don’t realize how much the onslaught is wearing us down.

Since the pilgrimage, I’ve become aware of how things I had previously thought of as insignificant were actually pulling me farther from both my goals and my contentment.

Nothing like being under-stimulated for four weeks to realize you’ve actually been over-stimulated for years.

Since I’ve been home, I’ve been smashing those psychic mosquitos in all sorts of ways:

* Un. Sub. Scribing. From. Everything!!!!

* Getting rid of the books that I’m never going to read, so I stop judging myself for having bought them and never cracked their spines.

* Keeping my work space clear of clutter so when I sit down to work I actually work.

* Putting catalogs, bulletins, and "limited time!!” offers straight in the recycling.

* Hiding the TikTok app on my phone.

And suddenly… I feel in control.

Over the last seven years I’ve been realizing how much I can’t control, and learning to be okay with that.

The kids are going to do whatever extra-curricular’s they want; my investments are going to ride the stock market waves; my body is going to continue to soften no matter how many kettlebells I swing and pool laps I swim.

But now I’m realizing that there is one MAJOR way I can control my life — I can control how I spend my time, where I allocate my brain space, and what I give my attention to on a daily basis.

We can’t control what life throws us, but we can control what we fill our lives with.

FOMO and self-judgment will probably still plague me, but I don’t have to give them my email address, read their messages first thing in the morning, and create special folders where I save them for years!

If I miss that adorable bomber jacket going on sale, who cares. It’s worth it to trade obsessively scouring emails and always feeling like I’m falling behind for sipping coffee and watching the autumn leaves swirl.

This is a choice I didn’t know I had. Now I will never go back.

Uninformed and at peace,

Sue

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We talk a lot here about the hard times of life, the out-of-the-blue tragedies that leave you shell-shocked in a pile of rubble, wondering what the hell you do now.

But this post is about the other end of the spectrum — the small serendipities that snowball into giant, life-changing, holy-smokes-my-dream-is-coming-true realities…

“Do you want me to hold your tote bag?” Leona gently asked.

”Um… no thanks. I need something to clutch,” I responded, death gripping the canvas straps. 

In 30 minutes time I’d be on stage, giving the most important talk of my life.

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Long-time readers will know that the Do Lectures are part of The Luminist’s origin story. 

When I attended the off-the-beaten-path event in 2022, it was just the inspirational shove I needed to begin executing on the dream I had had for several years: change the conversation around loss in our culture. 

Two months later I met my editor Leona. 

Two months after that, we hit publish on our first post.

I can speak in front of crowds in my sleep. 

It wasn’t always this way. But now I have enough faith in what I have to say and enough reps over my 30+ years in corporate America to thrive with a mic in hand. 

But giving a talk at Do Wales? About a subject I’m dedicating my life to? Achieving a goal I’ve strived for, fought for, prayed for over the last two years? This was an ‘all chips in the center of the table’ moment for me. And I really did not want to screw it up.

I’d endlessly practiced my talk on the pilgrim path, arms waving, strategic pausing, wiping away a tear. So the guts were ready. It was the delivery that was freaking me out. In an effort to calm my racing heart, I walked. I strolled up a nearby country lane, letting the trees and meadow grasses drain out some of my nervous energy. Then a view of Cardigan Bay made me feel just the right kind of small — I remembered my talk was just a blip in the grand scheme of life. With that lightness, I headed back down to the cow shed and stepped on stage…

{WHEW}

I said everything I wanted to say. I felt calm but elated, focused but radiating energy. 

And I did Mike proud.

It’s easy to sit around waiting for things to happen. 

Waiting for our lives to change, for the tides to turn, for success to require no risk and guarantee reward. But at a certain point, rather than waiting for things to happen, it’s time to happen to things. 

This is essentially the premise of the Do Lectures — to inspire people to do stuff. It’s one thing to have an idea, it’s another thing to turn that idea into tangible change. The speakers at the Do Lectures all come from different industries and backgrounds, some are running massive events companies, some are changing the justice system, some are questioning the way we think about perfectionism, mental health, resilience in the workplace. But the common thread is that they’re not just thinking about it, they’re taking action.

(Sound intriguing? You can sign up for the 2025 interest list here. That rad group of humans has my ringing endorsement!!)

When I first registered for Do Wales in 2022, I didn’t know what would happen. But I figured just going was enough. Enough to break me of my waiting, wanting, perseverating… and move me into doing. 

I heard stories of how people started off with goal X and have now ended up at goal Y; how the road is always circuitous and always shrouded in fog; why people still willingly walked into the unknown of chasing their dream.

Because they had to at least try.

Because staying where they were was getting too constricting, stale, mind numbing.

Because they are masochists.

Because they were more afraid of living with “what if” than “well, at least I gave it my best shot.”

Because they wanted to leave their mark on this earth.

Because what else is life for?

I can’t plan my life anymore.

Sure, I still plan vacations and lunch dates and gym sessions. But I can’t make a five-year plan, or even a one-year plan.

It started with doing my dream, but now it feels like my dream is doing me. I got the engine turning, and now I’m just along for the ride…

After my talk, a petite, brunette Brit approached me, introducing herself as the head of the Do Book Company. 

This week, I signed my book deal. Do Loss will hit the shelves in early 2026!

It is a dream-turned-reality two years in the making, with twists and turns I could never have anticipated nor prepared for. In other words, I didn’t fly, train, and taxi to a rural farm on the west coast of Wales in 2022 because I thought one day I’d get a book deal out of it. I didn’t pitch myself as a Do speaker because I thought I’d get more than pre-talk heartburn. I didn’t cry on stage in front of a bunch of strangers in hopes of padding my resume. I did it all because I had to do something.

And I might as well do something that stirred my soul.

Flash forward to July 2024 and Leona and I were jumping up and down in our Do tipi, screaming with excitement. 

If that doesn’t encapsulate the magic and fury of life’s mystery, I don’t know what does.

In awe,

Sue

P.S. If you have twenty minutes, you can watch my talk here!

Josh Connolly spoke right after me about emotional resilience, and if you have the time, our talks make an incredible pair! You can watch his here.

And finally, another chance to sign up for the Do Wales 2025 interest list. Who knows where it could take you…

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

“Willing and able to assist?” 

I rotely responded “yes!” to the flight attendant’s FAA-required question about my mindset and capabilities while sitting in a coveted exit-row seat.

As the safety video commenced, I turned to stare out the window at the Chicago ramp crew tossing the remaining bags in the cargo hold. After seven years of at-least-monthly flights, I’m a connoisseur of safety videos; I’d seen United’s a hundred times, and it’s nothing to write home about. (Air New Zealand, you’re the winner!)

Then, an unfamiliar info video started. “This is a story that makes everyone cry…” the woman’s voice began, tongue firmly in cheek. 

I swiveled my head back to the in-seat monitor to watch as the camera panned to passengers in various states of teary-eyed emotion. 

“Laugh cry… Ugly cry… And definitely, totally not crying,” she continued. 

The short wrapped up with a gray-bearded Santa Claus look-alike, shoulders shaking with barely contained sobs as he watched a tiny sea turtle navigate its first steps across a wide beach. A flight attendant put a soothing arm on his shoulder, handing him a cocktail napkin to dab his tears. 

The final words floated across the frame in crisp white font:

Screens (and feels) arriving at every seat.

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In 30 seconds, this ad shined a light on our unspoken beliefs about crying.

We believe crying:

* Will make people think we are weird, weak, and best avoided. 

* Is for sissies, which we are certainly not. 

* Should only be done alone in bathroom stalls or on shower floors, not airplane seats or anywhere else we can be seen. 

* Is a sign of being out of control, which we strive to never be.

* Is only acceptable under extreme duress — and again, only as long as no one else is watching. 

Even when we are crying for a GOOD reason — like baby sea turtles!

We don’t just cry when we are upset, we can also cry when we are overwhelmed with positive emotions. And being able to feel this “good” end of the spectrum is a huge reason I advocate feeling all your feels. Because we can’t numb ourselves to our lows without taking the sparkle out of the highs too. For example, giving yourself over to joy always involves accepting the risk that one day the thing that is bringing you joy will disappear. So we practice feeling the pits in order to fully, unapologetically bask in the streaming sunshine of the summit, whenever we make it there again. (For a more in-depth discussion of emotions as a whole, check out post #99 and post #88.)

I love this ad because while it’s pointing out just how uncomfortable our society is with crying, it also reminds us of all the happy reasons we tear up — being moved by love, awe, gratitude, the fragility and tenacity of a baby turtle.

Even Simon Sinek talks about how welling up is a sign you’re treading close to your purpose, your “why”.

So crying isn’t just a sign of emotion, it’s a sign of aliveness — how willing and able we are to be affected by epic experiences to the point that the intensity of the sensation bubbles up and out of our eyes.

My Chicago trip involved another reason to be moved. 

My dad Harry just turned 80. Surrounded by his kids, grandkids, and one great grandkid (Isla!), blowing out his birthday candles, reading his birthday cards… he was moved. He welled up. He maybe even shed a tear.

My dad is not known for overt emotional expression, but since his stroke his feelings sneak to the surface a little more often.

This is not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of courage. Rather than simply understanding the moment intellectually, he’s letting his heart be touched by the experience too. He’s willing to be moved by love, opened by love, made vulnerable by love — all for the sake of actually feeling love.

And you know what, I don’t think my dad’s glassy eyes made anyone think he was a sissy or not to be trusted. I think they gave us a chance to see the soft, gooey, human center under the stoic, baby-boomer shell.

Is being human so embarrassing… or is it the entire point? To have moments when we let down our guard and feel what it is to be alive?

Doing that next to a stranger on a flight doesn’t seem like a terrible time to start.

In tears,

Sue

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