The Luminist

“Don’t walk away, boy… I’ll be right there for you!” I was perched on a high stool at a bustling Italian restaurant in the heart of Wellington, New Zealand. A familiar beat and lilting harmony floated from the restaurant’s speakers as I clanked my spoon against the bottom of my tiramisu glass, crawling the terrain for any leftovers.

After shazaming the song to make sure I heard it right, I threw my head back in laughter. It’s 2024. I’m 8,744 miles (give or take) from home, visiting my son during his study abroad. Yet an early 90’s R&B hit is throwing rocks from the past up at the window of my present-day brain.

I’d traversed a continent, an ocean, and thirty years, yet my mind was suddenly trying to return to 24-year-old Sue. Pre-Mike, pre-mom, pre-world traveler, pre-almost everything I am today. Who was she? What were her values and priorities? Why was she doing what she was doing?

At that age, we feel so mature and so assured. We think we are fully formed, know everything there is to know, and are ready to take on the world. 

Little do we realize it’s just the beginning of our journey of discovering who we are and what we actually want.

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Being immersed in a different culture sometimes feels like entering an alternate universe.

The basics are the same: planet earth, humans, food, water, shelter, money. But the difference is in the details.

In New Zealand, there’s limited public wifi. So people aren’t staring at their phones in cafes, on park benches, waiting at the bus stop, they’re reading books! Literal, physical, cover-and-pages books! Buying anything at the pharmacy, including cough drops, involves talking to a pharmacist. Pedestrians very much do not have the right of way. The cross-country bus driver learns everyone’s names and drops them off like a parent dropping their kid off for school, “Enjoy your day!”

Spend enough time in a new culture and you can’t help but wonder… How much of myself is actually me, and how much is just the culture I grew up in?

For example, 24-year-old Sue to present-day Sue spent the majority of her time working, with a few years spent getting her MBA… in order to work. I chose that path; it made sense based on my priority to be financially secure. But how much of my desire and the way I went about obtaining it is actually based on American culture and values? I never took a year off to travel or tried a different type of work. It’s like I couldn’t even imagine there was any other way to reach the same end. 

In case that line of existential questioning wasn’t enough, in New Zealand I’m also out of my routine and to-do lists. Did I pay the kids’ tuition bill? Is that shower head leak going to turn into a major repair? Did I make the Christmas flight reservations? Is the Subaru’s registration expired? Nope. The tasks and kettlebell workouts can wait. Right now the question isn’t “what do I need to do today?” It’s “what do I want to do today?”

There is no responsibility, auto-pilot, or expectations to hide behind way out here.

By being taken out of our element, we’re brought back to ourselves. 

Since Mike died, I have been a mountain. 

I got a new job. I crushed the new job. 

I got the kids through their most profound loss. They are launched from the nest. 

I built a support network. I built a haven.

But it’s time to switch form. Mountain-mode has served me well these 7+ years. I’ve stood out there on the horizon, leading from the front with strength and resolve. Now I want to learn to bend, to sway, to flex with the wind and rain. Maybe even to dance. 

I’m ready to see who I am when I don’t have to be anything. I’m also curious to see who I’ve become since life and loss have changed me. What have I been forged into? What am I ready to emerge as?

I have so much more to learn about myself — this person underneath all the societal norms of executive, wife, mom, widow that have defined me for decades. 

On my way to the airport to catch my flight back to Virginia, I found myself rattling off all the time differences around the world to my Cambodian cab driver. (England is 5, Kuwait is 7, Auckland, 16.) “You’ve been everywhere!” he declared in wonder.

So what’s left to explore? My inner landscape. The canyons and ridges of myself, the hidden alpine lakes. The sinkholes. The waterfalls. The meadows.

Life, loss, culture have taught me to show up in certain ways — driven, work and family focused, tough as nails, slick as a duck’s back. But there’s so much more to me. Parts that are softer, quieter, less productive but more electrified by reality.

Before it’s too late, I don’t just want to see the Great Wall of China, spend mountains of time with Connor and Kendall, turn The Luminist into all it can be. I also want to know and experience all of me.

To self discovery,

Sue

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Another word for loss is transition. I like it because it’s neutral.

We’ve probably lost a thing or two, and we’ve probably gained a thing or two. But we don’t always have to tally these categories to see which way the scales swing. Sometimes it’s enough to know that things have changed. 

A lot has changed in my life recently. I became an empty nester, I left my corporate career, I decided to get bangs. (Just kidding! I’m not that crazy. Kendall would have my head on a platter!) But even though the image in the mirror is pretty much the same, my day-to-day life is completely different without full-time gigs at V2X and Raising Teenagers, Inc.

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In the eight months since I hugged Kendall goodbye in her sweltering New Orleans dorm room, and 100 days since I deleted my work email from my iPhone, I have come to understand some things:

The key to facing any transition is to go in with eyes OPEN.

Often our knee-jerk reaction to anything uncomfortable is to do our very best to not feel it. “I gave at the office, Mr. Feelings. Stuff a sock in it!”

So we numb out, distract ourselves, and generally hide from the new reality we find ourselves in. 

But this “head in the sand” approach only deepens our suffering. When we are trying to not feel anything, we are missing all the ways we could actually be feeling better.  

* We miss the opportunity to pour out an entire ocean of tears, and realize that what comes next is relief.

* We miss the chance to be supported by loved ones, friends, even strangers who, if they knew even an iota of our suffering, would step into the breach with a hug, a kind word, a mason jar of chicken soup, a loaf of banana bread.

* We miss discovering that amidst a massive inner earthquake, we bend instead of break. 

* We miss the radiance in the dailiness.

* We miss learning which coping mechanisms, pattern interrupts, friends can pull us out of a funk. 

* We miss the opportunity to intentionally recreate our lives based on our new circumstances, new needs, and new desires.

My motto for the last year has been, “alive, awake, participatory, and engaged.” 

But I didn’t understand the full significance of these words until I suddenly had an extra 60+ hours of weekly free time on my hands.

Time that previously I had been on autopilot — doing what I had to do to bring home the bacon, cook the bacon, wrangle the bacon-eating kids, serve the bacon, then clean up the kitchen splattered in bacon.

Not all transitions leave us with extra time but because this one happened to, it drove the lesson home for me: when we meet each moment with be-here-now-even-when-we-want-to-bolt presence and awareness, we are able to make the best decision for ourselves in that moment.

I have many specific takeaways about what worked for me in this time — finding the right balance between structured activities and go-with-the-flow time; prioritizing deep, authentic human connection; embracing my new ability to follow serendipity and live spontaneously, to name a few. 

But those are my lessons for this transition. Who knows what I’ll need when I become a world-famous author and spend six months on a book tour ;). And who knows what you’ll need during your next transition.

But the only way we can find out is by walking into the change... How? You guessed it! Alive, awake, participatory, and engaged. 

Alive - feeling, breathing, not numbing out.

Awake - staying present, paying attention, taking note.

Participatory - taking action, saying “yes” or “no”, embracing any choices that remain in our hands.

Engaged - being an active player in the unfolding of our reality, rather than a passive bystander.

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When we ground ourselves in reality, especially the uncomfortable parts of reality, we are more equipped to move forward.

By going through a transition with presence, we unlock our potential to evolve and grow.

Because we have both: the ability to adapt to change and the ability to affect change.

During the last 100 days, for example:

I’ve been careful about what I put in my brain. Nothing that makes the losses feel heavier than they already are. Nothing that reduces my sense of agency.

If I’ve realized I’m in a funk, I embrace my “coping dirty methods” — watching Star Wars with a vodka gimlet, for example — because I know that when I’m gentle with myself, I’ll have the motivation to pull myself out of the funk sooner. If I berate myself, trying to “whip myself into shape”, I’m just digging the pit deeper.

I’ve regularly scheduled healthy coping mechanisms even before I fall into a funk. Weekends with Julie, walks with Takis, kettlebells with Kavon. Either it pulls me out of my inner swamp, or I just have a lovely time. 

I’ve consistently reflected on which structures and routines are feeling exciting and expansive for me, and which aren’t. Because I’m not just transitioning out of full-time motherhood and a corporate career. I’m transitioning into something too.

And that unwritten future is where all my power lies.

Often we act as if our emotions are our greatest weak spot, the chink in our armor that, if we’re not careful, could end us.

But while emotions can hurt — and hurt a LOT — they won’t kill us. Because they aren’t weaknesses, they are guiding lights, letting us know what our hearts long for. 

So if we want to live well, live vibrantly, live a life that makes our hearts burst, we have to let ourselves feel.

We have to let reality sink in, let it rock us, and let ourselves be shaken into claiming the power we have… and releasing resistance to what isn’t in our control.

Alive, awake, participatory, and engaged,

Sue

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“I want to feel relevant… I want to BE relevant.” ~ Julia Child (played by Sarah Lancashire) in the HBO Max series Julia. 

The series starts in 1962, months before Child’s famous PBS show, The French Chef, would be conceived. Her beloved bible Mastering the Art of French Cooking had been released, but her second book was floundering in the development phase, and she had just realized another major dream was dead… She’d never had a child, and now it was too late. Menopause had come knocking. Things weren’t great for Julia, but they weren’t terrible. It was a true mixed bag. You know, life. 

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This is the type of moment many of us can relate too. The future isn’t playing out like we had planned; we’re losing momentum, or maybe even have been stopped dead in our tracks. But Julia somehow turned this floundering into ten seasons of her beloved cooking show, Peabody and Emmy awards, and a TV revolution.

She didn’t even own a television herself! Let alone have any experience performing, producing, or in the entertainment industry.

But that was all beside the point. She had an idea, and not much to lose...

I feel a kinship with Julia. Life dealt both of us hands that we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves. Society expected us to become irrelevant — widows and childless women aren’t often heralded as the great innovators of the age. It would have been easy to disappear.

But our greatest losses became the staging ground for our most meaningful achievements. We threw out our carefully laid plans, took a sharp left turn into a new craft, and made something no one saw coming.

Loss is rarely as simple as losing something.

When we lose a loved one, a job, a dream, we lose our future. We lose who we wanted to be. We lose who we thought we were.

An essential mold we used to understand ourselves — for me it was Mike’s wife; for Julia it was future mother — breaks into a thousand pieces. We become un-categorizable, even to ourselves. 

Untethered from our previous identity, we have also jettisoned our expectations, along with our fears of messing it all up. It’s been messed up. Everything has already gone wrong. Worst fears realized, future demolished, ego vaporized. Now what?

Might as well make a plucked chicken dance on national television. Might as well spill our secrets to the Wall Street Journal. Might as well do what we want.

When our defined future has been leveled, when the dust clears, when we stop sobbing long enough to look around, we often find a wide horizon of possibilities. 

Yes, loss is crushing. But it’s also insanely freeing. 

I’ve been told by many people that writing so publicly about my loss and life is courageous.

But I don’t feel courageous. I just feel more excited by the possibilities than paralyzed by the potential outcomes. And I think Julia felt the same way.

In order to try something completely new, to throw our hat into the ring when we have zippo skill, we have to see ourselves differently. Or, more accurately, completely cease to see ourselves at all.

When we can put the concept of our self aside — including the list of characteristics and judgments we have about ourselves: “I’m good at this, I’m bad at that, I can’t do that because I’ll embarrass myself” — we lose any reason to be afraid. 

We have built walls around ourselves, thinking they keep us safe, but they just keep us small. We talk ourselves out of doing things we have not already mastered. We look at people and say, “they’re a natural” or “they’ve been doing it all their life”. We default to the excuse, “that’s not us”.

But when you have an idea, a curiosity, a vision, you step in. When you release the constraints on who you are, you step up. And the universe joins you.

“Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. Begin it now.” - Goethe

Or as Julia Child would say, “Be fearless, and above all, have fun.”

Bon appetite to life,

Sue

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

“I am indebted to all my friendships. The abiding ones and those which, for whatever reason, ran their course.”

I stumbled upon this quote in the acknowledgements of author Hisham Matar’s new novel, My Friends. He’d immersed me in a world of Libyan exiles living in Thatcher-era London, longing for home yet creating a chosen family. Loving each other and their adopted city. Drifting apart as time, tragedy, family, and priorities changed their trajectories. 

(By the way, you can have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, by subscribing at theluminist.substack.com.)

I was struck by Matar’s gentle recognition that some friendships endure while others are only for a season, without labelling one as better than the other. Both kinds inspired his novel. Both kinds enriched his life.

Yet as a society, we don’t look at this both/and. We think friendships should last forever.

And if they don’t, the only explanation is that someone did something wrong. 

Friendships are not the only thing we hold onto past their prime. 

Jobs. Homes. Decisions. Aspirations. 

Is it scarcity mentality, fear of “failing”, or dread of the unknown that makes us grasp onto past choices that are no longer serving us? Maybe all of the above.

And if we are “unfortunate” enough to experience loss, we tend take it personally. (“Unfortunate” is in quotes because loss visits all of us, there are no lucky and unlucky in this realm.) “If I could have just done something differently, maybe it could have worked out differently.”

Or we assume the other side of the friendship, the job, the whatever was the problem. Either way, one factor had to be deficient in order to explain why the sum crumbled.

When loss is consistently seen as the worst-case scenario, the only explanation for it can be failure. So the only way to meet it is by fighting against it.

I’ve declared, “I’m not a quitter,” more times than I can count. But I see now that stubbornness was hiding a fear of impermanence. Letting go of something that we’ve outgrown isn’t quitting. (Can you imagine someone trying to smush their foot into a shoe that no longer fits while grumbling, “I ain’t no quitter…”?) Letting go is an act of courage. Courage to embrace our evolution, and courage to believe something that fits us better is around the corner. 

We grow, not all at the same rate, not all in the same direction as the people, communities, jobs, companies, even physical environments, towns, homes that surround us. 

We humans are starbursts, not inchworms. Our way forward is blessedly unpredictable. 

Maybe this is the crux of the matter. Immersed in the wildness of the world, we yearn for something — anything! — stable to hold onto. It’s said that the only thing we can control is ourselves. (Ok, I’ve even said it.) So perhaps we hold extra tight onto our own constancy… but we are as ever-changing as the earth from which we were born.

Nature brings me my favorite metaphors.

Because we are part of nature.

When I’m able to step back and see things through the lens of natural rhythms, loss looks less like personal failure and more like the cyclicality of life.

The tree drops its leaves every single year. The river erodes its bank, creating another that suits it better. The sun, even the sun, breaks its daily streak to duck behind the moon. 

Release people, jobs, even dreams. Give them wings. In the process you naturally release yourself… to find someone new to cross stitch with, mountain bike with, debate the merits of Coke Zero with. To find a job that lights you up, not weighs you down. To find adventure in a new town, a new block, a new walking route. 

And whenever you can, let them go with grace.

That way, we lose the friend, job, or house, but get to keep the love we had for them. Rather than holding on so long all we feel is resentment.

Embracing loss,

Sue

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Writing online about grief and loss is nothing like what I had imagined. Even though I’d thought I had it all figured out.

(By the way, you can have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, by subscribing at theluminist.substack.com.)

By the time I came up with The Luminist’s name (about two years ago, which was four months before I actually published my first post), I was absolutely sure it would play out like this:

* I’d talk about everything I’d learned from Mike’s death and its aftermath. I’d lecture about subverting societal expectations. I’d pontificate on consolation and human connection.

* I’d quote from my library of books, from newspaper articles, from the Harvard Business Review, weaving my experience with the research of international thought leaders and anecdotes from famous memoirists.

* My thoughts would float onto the page — comprehensible, comforting, and empowering on the first try.

* You’d be dazzled. You’d be wowed. You’d be changed. 

* Mission accomplished. 

75 posts later, I’ve realized 75 things… about how naive I was. 

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Realization #7: There are no wasted words in writing. Everything that I write and delete (more than you can imagine!) I need to write… and delete. They are integral parts of the process, not mistakes.

Realization #12: Post ideas do not seed, sprout, and grow to maturation all while locked inside my own brain. They are nourished and strengthened by interaction with other brains. There is no idea that is not first talked through with 1-10 people before it lands on the page. 

Realization #13: Yes books and the HBR have great quotes. But nothing gets me inspired like talks with Kavon at our 6am workouts, or with Takis on our Monday morning walks.

I’ve been around the block a time or two. 

In other words, I’m not some spring chicken who has yet to learn that foxes come out at night. But writing TL has been a startling reminder that I don’t actually know everything. (Kendall says, “I told you so!”)

Sure, I’ve planned and executed international growth strategies that doubled my company’s size. Sure, I got two kids through high school and into college as a single mom. Sure, I looked the reaper straight in the face and then turned his kiss of death into a life of joy. But that doesn’t mean I know how every story will end. 

And while it has been humbling — and on occasion downright depressing — to feel like a novice again, it’s also exhilarating.

Realization #27: I need you, dear reader, to create TL. We are symbiotic. I need you for ideas and inspiration and audience participation. I need the little texts on Saturday morning or Tuesday afternoon about how the post made you look at something in your life a little differently.

Realization #33: No one ever knows how their work, their support, their kindness is truly impacting people. So give it away as much as you can, wherever you can, without looking back.

It’s a known psychological fact that humans are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.

Once upon a time, this seemed like a shortcoming. If only we could get our expectations right, we could plan, prepare, strategize, and accordingly live happily ever after.

Right after Mike died, I thought I was going to feel terrible foorreeeevveer. Going forward, happiness would always be beyond my grasp.

But luckily, this was a failure of imagination. Here’s why:

1) Our imaginations are there to help us believe what's possible, not write out the exact play-by-play for what is going to happen. And definitely not cross the potential for joy off the list.

2) Who’s to say how life with a living, breathing Mike would have worked out? Who knows what challenges, losses, struggles we would have faced in that alternate universe.

Realization #48: I start a post and it rarely — well, let’s use the right word: NEVER — ends up being about what I think it’s going to be about.

Realization #49: Writing isn’t reporting. Writing is discovering!

Realization #50: My own writing can change my own perspective. 

Realization #57: I love that I never know how a post is going to turn out!

Life is nothing but unpredictable.

From surviving loss to starting a newsletter, the only thing we can be sure of is that we will be surprised.

And isn’t knowing just how little we know actually kind of refreshing?

It gives us permission to experiment, to explore, to learn. To lighten up a bit and enjoy the ride.

If we let it, this world will over and over make us feel like a spring chicken.

Realization #75: I’m not just writing about loss. I’m writing about learning to live fully. Loss has been my main teacher. But it’s not the only option. Any initiation into embracing the unknown, feeling your feelings, and loving like there’s no tomorrow will do.

In pleasant surprise,

Sue

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

"Why are you hiding your success?” I can't remember if these exact words came out of Leona’s mouth or if my brain just heard the veiled question under what she was saying. I shrugged sheepishly. “I’m worried people won’t take me seriously when I talk about loss and hardship if other parts of my life are actually pretty damn great. Like somehow the good things in my life forfeit my ‘hardship credibility’... Maybe it’s that I don’t want to seem un-relatable. I don’t want to make people feel bad for the hand they’ve been dealt. I want to inspire them to believe that ‘things will be great again’, even if they’re not so great right now.”

Growing up, humbleness was not only my family’s reality but also one of our core values.

Victory laps, showboating, flaunting, bragging, attention-grabbing — anything that could be perceived as other than meager modesty was deemed unacceptable arrogance. Tall poppy syndrome kept our stalks short. 

But now I have the time and means to go to idea festivals, take writing workshops, visit the kids in exotic locales, walk across Scandinavia for thirty days. I try not to rub it in anyone’s face, but I’m here every week writing about my life. It’s hard to hide my daily reality.

Which has me wondering… Do people want to hear what I have to say if I expose how much I love my life?

Is exposing the high highs doing much good in a world where so many people are suffering from low lows?

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

In 1954, Roger Bannister was the first human being recorded running a mile in less than four minutes. 

People had been seriously attempting the feat for over 50 years, yet as more people tried and failed, some began to think it just wasn't humanly possible.

But it wasn’t Bannister’s success that caught my eye in the Harvard Business Review article that Leona sent me a day after our conversation. It was what came next.

As Bill Taylor describes, “Just 46 days after Bannister's feat, John Landy, an Australian runner, not only broke the barrier again, [but broke Bannister’s record], with a time of 3 minutes 58 seconds. Then, just a year later, three runners broke the four-minute barrier in a single race. Over the last half century, more than a thousand runners have conquered a barrier that had once been considered hopelessly out of reach.” 

It’s not that everyone suddenly got faster from eating wheat bran or wearing Nikes. It’s because they saw it could be done. With a role model, they were able to believe they could do it too.

Taylor sums it up by saying, “great leaders don’t just out-perform their rivals. They transform the sense of what’s possible.”

It’s important that our role models be relatable. 

We don’t want them to seem like otherworldly gods, to whom we could never hope to compare. But we don’t want them to play small either. Then they wouldn’t be role models. They wouldn’t show us what was possible, what we too are capable of.

I was a quiet kid from a dying Pennsylvania steel town once.

Then I was kicking ass in business school, dating a total dreamboat, and confidently building a future that looked nothing like my childhood.

Then I was a new mother, getting news that her minutes-old son might not survive the night.

Then I was half of an enviable American couple, making business deals between driving the kids to soccer and swim practice.

Then I was a widow, wiping away my children’s’ tears in the dark hours of endless nights. (No pics of that one…)

In other words, my high highs have always been side by side with low lows. This is life. I put my lows on display to help readers know that they aren’t alone, that others have come through this hellscape before them, and survived. 

But the world needs my highs too. Not to make anyone feel bad for their circumstances, their efforts, or their choices. But to prove that the seemingly impossible is possible. To prove that society’s expectations, and sometimes even our own expectations, can be dead wrong.

Because even though my husband died decades before his time, my life is full of love. Even though sometimes I spend the evening weeping on my bathroom floor, I also regularly experience electrifying joy and excitement. Even though society believes widows like me live small lives, my life is a grand, world-spanning adventure. 

To the point that sometimes I even feel larger than life. Crackling with energy. Transcendent.

A part of me winces in reaction to that last sentence. 

“You are going to make people feel bad! Quit showing off! Keep this under wraps, you doofus! Keep your big, happy, vibrant life on the down-low. Go ahead and live like you want, but edit it for public consumption. Shut up already about the ‘well this weekend I was in New Orleans, next, London.’ Take it down a notch. Appear small.”

But letting that inner gremlin silence me means that I’m buying its b******t. Instead, I’m going to stick my neck out, rewrite the expectations of life after loss, and generally be big, loud, and joyful. All in hopes that my success blows up some invisible limit and makes it easier for others to succeed along side me.

Because, lets get real. My success is not my own.

It's a product of all the people who wove their hands together into a net, to catch me and to launch me into the sky — talking me down when I’m ready to set all the piles of death paperwork on fire; absolutely insisting I quit grief shopping and apply for a new job instead; pumping me up before my vulnerable interview with the Wall Street Journal.

People who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself. So let me do the same for you:

You have your own version of crackling energy inside of you. Your own version of playing big. Your own version of being the hero, role model, the four-minute-miler. 

It all starts with expanding your sense of what’s possible. 

So as comfortable as it would be to play humble and meager and modest, I won’t. It would be a disservice to everyone who has helped me get here, and everyone I want to help launch into the sky.

Celebrating success,

Sue

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

There are few things that I find as energizing as new ideas. When I’m having a down day, a new idea can be just the perspective shift, pattern interrupt, or reminder that I need to return to a state of possibility. And when I’m having a good day, new ideas make the world seem even bigger and brighter. The discovery will never end, and I’m so glad about that.

I spent last weekend swimming in new ideas. It was my second year at the New Orleans Book Festival, and hopefully far from my last. Whereas last year I practically stumbled upon the festival, this year I plotted out my three days with the precision of an Army logistician, dedicated to completing the mission swiftly and safely.

Like the library-card-wielding nerd that I am, I want to share all the talks I attended with you (15 total!). I want to line-item each and every takeaway. I want to gush over writers. And I want to ask you to join me in noodling about the questions that are now lodged in my head.

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But for the sake of your time and sanity, I’ve chosen three — just three! — ideas I can’t not share:

#1: From New York Times Columnist David Brooks discussing his new book How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen:

“Instead of asking people, ‘What do you think?’ I now ask people, ‘How did you come to believe this?’ Without a back story, the context that shapes people, we cannot hope to really see each other.”

#2: From NPR anchor and author Michele Norris discussing her book What Americans Really Think About Race and Identity:

“I don’t believe in common ground. I believe in building bridges.”

#3: Religion and Philosophy professor Eddie Glaude on his book We Are the Leaders We’ve Been Looking For:

“Heroes are there to help us see the heroic in us, so we can become the people we were meant to be.”

None of these ideas change the world around me.

But they help me look at it differently, interact with it more patiently, be curious instead of judgmental.

There are no easy solutions to the “problems” that face us, individually or collectively. Especially when the problems are as final as death and loss and grief. But that doesn’t mean we back down, numb out, or bury our heads in the sand. 

Rather, we find a way to show up to the problems that makes them a little bit easier to face. Or makes us feel more capable of facing them.

These ideas —

* deeply seeing the people around me;

* committing to building bridges across divides;

* and consistently showing up as the best version of myself (that I can muster) in each moment

— empower me to face any worries, demons, darkness that are currently flitting around in my head. And to accompany others as they face theirs.

Do you have a guiding star? Or perhaps do you want to borrow one of mine? What shift in perspective, in narrative, or in mindset could you use right now to make this moment feel less like a pile of s**t, and more like fertile soil?

Because we won’t change anything if we don’t first believe something else is possible.

Letting ideas crack me open,

Sue

P.S. You can watch some of this year’s talks on the New Orleans Book Festival YouTube channel!

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

“I’m going to meet my future husband in the Lufthansa lounge!” In my world-traveling corporate wonk days, I used this line like a shield. While cooling my heels with co-workers during layovers in the Frankfurt airport, I would paint them a picture of an eligible business bachelor sitting in one of the leather lounge armchairs… and me sauntering over to him without hesitation. “Hey, what’s that PowerPoint you’re working on?” or “Want to discuss the geopolitical ramifications of that front page article in the Financial Times?” 

The thing is, I didn’t really mean it. I just wanted to head off my co-workers’ awkward question.

“So… are you dating again?”

In the early days after Mike’s death, the kids and I were in survival mode. 

We were learning a lopsided do-see-do for three. Inserting an unfamiliar dancer was a non-starter. But seven years and one empty nest later, I still look at dating like a cat examining a pool of water — hesitant, to say the least.

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What’s going on here?

* Maybe I’m set in my ways. I have forgotten how to compromise, collaborate, co-create a joint life… all the things you do in a romantic relationship. And I don’t really want to relearn.

* Maybe I’ve grown attached to my freedom. I do what I want, see who I want, go where I want, any time I want. I don’t want anyone questioning the number of shoes or books or colorful eyeglasses arriving in the mail. I want to take boondoggle trips at the drop of a hat. And sometimes I want to spend an afternoon watching Andor on Disney+.

* No doubt about this one — Connor and Kendall remain my priority. I want to take their calls whenever they come. Hop on a plane to see them whenever I feel like it. Talk them down from ledges whenever necessary. And never juggle another human being's feelings while doing so.

Hm. This sounds an awful lot like a scarcity mindset. Like I’m death gripping the life I love today, not wanting to trade it for the unknown, or unremembered, rewards of partnership.

Scarcity mindset is the opposite of the vibrant living I strive for. And it’s definitely not what Mike would want for me. He basically wrote it in the fated letter I found months after his death:

And if indeed something should happen, know that all I would want for you… is to know this love and to move forward with your life, living fully and happily.

But the more I think about it, the more I’m sure.

My life is full and happy.

And not just full of long walks on the beach, Mardi Gras trips, and other superficial things that receive likes and envy on social media. It’s full of what society thinks can only come from a partner: soul connection.

Connections that make me feel deeply seen and cared for:

Ken putting a Perrier at my seat every time we were at a conference together.

CeCe listening patiently as I talk in circles around whatever is on my mind until I’ve said it all, and find peace. Then we sit in comfortable silence and watch the sunset.

Leona knowing exactly how and when to get me out of a writing rut, even though she lives thousands of miles away and leads a very different life than me. (She’s a 30-something digital nomad currently training her cat to ride on her shoulder.)

Connor voluntarily showing me his driver’s license on the way to the airport, as a sign of love and deep understanding of my neurotic worry that we’ll not be able to get through TSA without it.

Kendall accepting my apology for going off the rails by saying, “I was watching you spin out for a little… I know how you are, you like to solve problems fast but sometimes you need to slow down. I just waited. It’s ok.”

I don’t have one person holding my hand. But there’s at least 12 people who have my back.

“When that anxiety falls away, when hurt retreats, it becomes clear to me how often my soul meets another’s,”

explains Amy Key in Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone, a memoir exploring her lifelong uncoupled state.

But the anxiety and hurt has to fall away first.

Before we can appreciate the fullness of single life, we have to let go of the expectations that we should be partnered.

Maybe this is why I rail so intensely against the dating question — because it’s another example of how the expectations for widowhood keep people from finding beauty on the other side of loss:

* Your life is terrible because your partner died.

* Your life is extra terrible until you find another person to fill that gap.

We have to stop telling people they should hate their lives because they are different from the norm.

Instead, let’s embrace their choices as fully as they have.

Let’s highlight what fills all of our lives, not what is missing from them.

And my life is overflowing with connection, support, and intimacy, even if it comes in a package that is different than what’s expected.

I’m going to stop caring about my romantic partner status.

I think I’ve felt like I had to have a black-and-white answer to go with the black-and-white question, “So… are you seeing anyone?” 

But I’m moving away from seeing life that way — all or nothing, happy or sad, love or loss. I’m living in the cracks in between, where the ends of the spectrum mix and mingle. It isn’t uniform gray, it’s a bit of everything, all at once. 

So for anyone who is curious, I’m dropping the decision of if/when to look for a partner. Instead I’m going to let life unfold, and see where it takes me. 

No expectations, just an openness to any and all the sources of soul connection I can plug into this heart of mine.

Intimately,

Sue

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“So, bro, what do you do when you are in a trough?” I asked. “I tell myself, ‘This will come to an end, it will not last forever,’ ” was Richie’s response. We were discussing the troughs of life — the times when things are especially difficult for one reason or another.

Since last week’s post, I’ve become mildly obsessed with these periods. Not just my go-to of grief, but any and all moments when the sine curve of life dips below the zero line and everything just gets hard. And yet, over and over again most of us find the strength and motivation to move forward. How?

A few days later, Sonya and I were headed home from a book talk in DC when I popped the same question to her. 

“I think about the hardest thing I have ever done, and compare it to the current situation. Then I can usually tell myself, ‘I’ve done harder things than what’s in front of me right now, and survived. I’ll make it through.’ ” 

Then she turned the question on me. 

I answered, “Well, this sounds kind of dark, but you’ll understand. I always say to myself, ‘Nobody died.’ ”

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After several days of rolling these answers around like rocks in the tumbler of my mind, it dawned on me.

While Richie’s, Sonya’s, and my words varied, these three “trough” strategies were fundamentally the same. They all reflect our experience, our history of surviving. Over and over and over again. 

As a fellow member of the human race, I don’t love reliving the slow-motion train wrecks of my hardest moments. Even while writing The Luminist, I rarely bring up the vivid images of the day my world crumbled. Instead, I prefer to conjure the moments when the clouds finally parted and we found ourselves in warm sunlight, touching baby leaves, laughing about squeegees. In general, when I walk down the halls of my memory, I’m looking for the good times. Smiles everyone, smiles! 

I, like most people, assume that revisiting painful memories just causes more pain.

So why go there?

Here’s why: these memories are eye-witness evidence of our ability to survive.

The point is not to remember how godawful that moment was, and end up crying on the couch for the rest of the day. The point is to face the reality that there was a moment in our past when we thought we couldn’t go on… and yet we did. Personally, I have survived a real double-digit humdinger of a list, with Mike’s death on the first line. And comparing that side-by-side with whatever I’m currently going through (a crisis of creative confidence, for example) makes me laugh. I’m going to be just fine.

So along with all the other kinds of lists we humans love to scribble down (bucket lists, gratitude lists, Christmas lists!), I'm compiling my toughest moments, standing back in awe, then patting myself vigorously on the back for making it through.

These moments I would rather forget are where my power lies.

I’m not sure if I believe the old refrain, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”… but knowing I’ve survived worse, and this too shall pass, definitely boosts my confidence.

On the flip side, ignoring the existence of troughs, past or present, builds a brittleness around the hard times of life. I don’t want to break that easily. 

The way that we meet and travel through our troughs defines our lives.

The peaks are easy, no one has to teach us how to ride the waves of joy and contentment. So the biggest impact we can have on our lives is by adjusting the way that we manage the inevitable hard times that come in between. In this life, pain is inevitable. Time to heal and regroup is required. But building resilience to relate to that pain and healing is the game-changer.

We’ve talked in previous posts about how to upgrade our trough mindset — I will survive this, things will be great again, “failure” is just an experiment I learned from, etc. Zooming out however, I don’t think we need another strategy as much as we need to remember that humans are made to heal, that we’ve done it before, and that we can do it again.

This is the opposite of arrogance. It is learning from history.

Despite my strategy skepticism, I’ll almost definitely write about more trough strategies in the future. I can’t help myself. I love feeling like I have an action plan, I’m in control, I can make a change. But I’m realizing that my beloved strategies on some level might be security blankets — a way to wrap myself in a sense of agency while waiting for the trough to roll over me, pass through me, and then leave.

I’m not going to tell you that time heals all wounds. But a wave of grief, a stressful deadline crunch at work, a writing block will almost certainly not last forever. Especially when we believe in its end, and our ability to make it there.

With confidence,

Sue

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I put down my iPad, took off my glasses, and rubbed my eyes, sighing. A midweek afternoon writing quietly at the treehouse had been my idea of perfection just a few weeks ago. During all the transatlantic red-eyes, all-nighters prepping for meetings, and weekends sacrificed to putting out HR fires, contemplative hours like this had been my daydream. But I’d already started to dread them. 

Now that writing was no longer my happy distraction from my high-stakes corporate job, it had started to feel like work. The worst kind of work. The kind that I wasn’t very good at.

Even if combing through spreadsheets and romancing investors hadn’t been my life’s purpose, I had at least felt like I was in my element. The speed with which I could check off tasks at my old job, no matter if I liked the task or not, reminded me every day that I was capable and effective. That I had years of accumulated experience. That I could “add value”. 

Now it was the opposite. I’d spent 10 hours banging away at my latest Luminist post, and yet I felt like I had little to show for it.

There’s always a moment when the new toy, new car, new friend, new partner, new hobby loses its shine. It’s all in our mind’s eye — the way this new thing initially sparkles in comparison to its familiar and thus boring surroundings. But the glow inevitably fades.

Then we’re left standing in the shadows where there used to be warm light, confused, even dejected. We try to manage the feeling of being deceived, but deep down we know we only have our own rose-colored glasses to blame.

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In early January, I decided to go all-in on writing.

I was unemployed and the proud occupant of an empty nest. Dedicating myself to honing my craft was both aligned with my Luminist goals and a great way to ensure I don’t slip into early onset retirement. This gal has at least another 20 years of fuel in her tank, and finally the freedom to follow her own passions. Let’s see what she can do!

Cue images of Sue writing at sunlit cafes, Sue attending writing workshops, Sue coming to love writing as her long lost soulmate.

I had imagined that with more time to devote to writing, it would become more easeful. Instead, it’s bringing into sharp relief how much farther I have to go… which absolutely blows. I went from a highly skilled C-suite exec to a writing novice who is still trying to learn that universal maxim, “show don’t tell”.

I’ve always said it’s good to be humbled, but do I really mean it?

I think I do… I still believe the after-effects are good, but the process itself sucks. 

The last couple of weeks, there’s been this demented little gremlin running around inside my brain. He’s got a megaphone and is shouting so loud I keep expecting people outside my own head to hear him. (What’s that squeaking coming out of your ear??) His go-to chants include:

* Why are you doing this? 

* You suck!

* It’s going to feel this terrible forever!

* Isn’t there an easier way to change the world than this?

I’ve written here about how to get out of a funk, and here about how to embrace the frustration that’s inherent when striving toward any worthy goal.

But we humans have a funny way of needing to learn things multiple times, multiple ways. So I wasn’t able to pull myself out of the pity party right away. I didn’t immediately reach for my tried and true coping mechanisms. I wallowed a bit. 

And that is ok. It’s even normal.

When someone loses a loved one, we give them all the space and time in the world to grieve.

(If we’re not complete a******s.)

But rarely do we offer others or ourselves the same grace when we’ve lost something smaller. A daydreamy future of changing the way people think about life and loss by tapping contentedly on an iPad in sunlit cafes, for example. But we damn well should.

Sitting in the muck is a human need. Eventually we will move forward, but not before our time. Not before we've validated that what we’re feeling is real and hard and we get be upset about it for awhile. For example, spending seventy weeks honing a craft to still have so much to learn is frustrating.

The point is not always to be on the up-and-up-and-up. First of all, life (and loss) has a way of making that impossible. Second of all, that negates the beauty and wisdom of the harder moments. 

Ugh. Sometimes practicing what I preach is a real pain in my ass.

It worked! I stayed at my pity party so long that I got bored and lonely. 

Eventually I looked at the gremlin with the megaphone and thought, “‘Well if writing is going to suck forever, I can at least talk about it. I can at least invite someone besides this loudmouth to the party.”

Julie had no patience for the gremlin’s chattering. “What you create is beautiful. Of course it’s hard! And it’s worth it. You got this.” And Leona didn’t even know I was hosting a pity party when she emailed me out of the blue about the devotion of writing — how to embrace its slow, steady progress like nurturing a bonsai tree. 

Hmm… everyone is staring at the same picture but seeing something different than me. That gremlin sure is loud, but his is only one perspective. What else could be going on here?

Ironically enough, I found myself writing to dig to the bottom of these feelings:

I miss being good at something.

The psychological security blanket that my job provided helped me deal with being a beginner at writing. With that safety net gone, I don’t have anything in my daily life that makes me feel accomplished, ease-filled, confident. I may not have loved every day at work, but it balanced out the struggle of learning a new craft.

I’m embarrassed that with all this free time, I’m still struggling.

I expected with more space, there’d be more ease… Oh, busted, you little expectations monster! It’s not the writing itself that’s making me sad, it’s the false expectation that it should be easier by now.

Also, writing is damn hard! Even 15 months into writing TL, I am still in denial that most human beings (self included) do not sit down and spit out a perfect piece of writing on the first go. 

I want learning to be one and done.

Leona shouldn’t have to give me the same notes, make the same edits, prod me in the same directions over and over again… should she?

Hmm. That sounds a lot like I’m treating myself like a machine.

If grieving isn’t one and done, why would I assume learning to be so different? I have to show up over and over again, knowing I’m going to get spun around by an oncoming wave of unpleasant emotion. That’s the only way we make it through. And that’s the only way we absorb all the wisdom too.

On Friday afternoon, I whipped out my tiny tripod microphone, ready to record the latest post. 

(You can listen to me read this post as a voiceover, in case you didn’t know! The button is at the top of the post.)

I did a dry run to warm up, reading the final copy out loud to myself. And just like every Friday for the last seventy weeks, I experienced a vast, soaring feeling in my chest, like the eagles I see along the Potomac taking flight.

I can’t believe the truth and beauty of what Leona and I have created. I can’t believe how it faithfully, viscerally captures my experience. I can’t believe how all the frustration yields another insight, another stepping stone, another marker of the love that Mike left behind.

I’m still deciding if I believe there’s some cosmic plan to all of this.

If sometimes we “have to” go through hard things to learn important lessons for the future. I personally love the idea of Mike’s death and all the pain the kids and I went through having some greater meaning, versus being a random act of hell.

But sometimes that perspective negates the struggles of life by explaining them away. “You’re only struggling for a very good reason down the road!”

Struggle, strife, and all the frustrating things of life may have a greater meaning, they may not. I’ll never know. Either way, they remind us to treat ourselves and others with grace and compassion. To be gentle. And to let the good times soak into our hearts when they come around.

Writing is hard. Grief sucks. And my life is better because both of them are a part of it. Even when I want to smash this iPad.

Here for the long run,

Sue

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