The Luminist

Earning its title of the Eternal City through two and a half thousand years of uninterrupted history, we think of Rome as a monolith. 

Yet it is the embodiment of change and adaptation. The repurposing of the old to become the new. High times. Fallow times. Overrun-by-barbarians times.

Nothing says you’ve hit rock bottom like your emperor hauling ass to Byzantium (then conveniently renaming it Constantinople), abandoning you to the unwashed hordes bent on plunder. Nothing says you’ve rebuilt yourself like Michelangelo and Bernini infusing your halls and streets with beauty no other city can rival. No city on earth represents the cyclicality of life like Rome. 

You rise. You fall. You rise again. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

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Rome’s story — though far grander, character-filled, and epoch-spanning — is the macro version of our individual stories. History is just better at telling it than we are at telling the stories of our own lives. Maybe because it’s hard for us to see the story that we are living inside. Maybe because we don’t want to admit that it’s a bit of a mess.

Bruce Feiler, author of Life Is in the Transitions, explains, “Primed to expect that our lives will follow a predictable path, we’re thrown when they don’t. We have linear expectations but nonlinear realities... We’re all comparing ourselves to an ideal that no longer exists and beating ourselves up for not achieving it.”

Feiler interviewed 225 Americans over three years, coming to the conclusion that the average American experiences around 36 disruptive changes in their lifetime. One every 12 to 18 months. Some of these “disruptors” are of our own choosing. Switching jobs, moving, getting married, having a baby. Many are not. And some — about three to five in every human life — are catastrophic, leveling our reality to the metaphorical ground zero. These Feiler calls “lifequakes”. They are the experiences that create the “before’s” and “after’s” we use as chapter markers in our lives. Before Covid. After Mike. 

But even if the events are uncontrollable, the narrative of our story — whether it’s a tragedy, an epic, a tale of redemption, a Les Miserables, even a comedy — is entirely up to us. And I don’t know about you, but I plan on clinging to the one thing I can control, thank you very much.

It’s a choice: are we victims of circumstance, destined to drink the bitter juice of lemons for the rest of our days? 

Or are we victims of circumstance who managed against the odds to turn lemons into lemonade?

Feiler describes these two ends of the lemonade-aka-personal-narrative spectrum: people who speak about disruptors as affecting their life for the worse, period – utilizing what he calls a contamination narrative. And those who describe disruptors as being hard but eventually leading to something, anything, good — utilizing a redemption narrative.

We can all guess the result of this research from a mile away. Folks that retold their past without a glimmer of silver lining were more likely to feel depressed and stuck. Folks that accepted that their past was hard, but still made a point of appreciating the daisies growing from the rubble of their lifequakes, felt more empowered and hopeful. 

Feiler’s research had me borderline bouncing with glee on the drive from Rome to Sorrento. Because, similar to George Bonanno’s research on resilience, it’s so dang accessible. Any of us can start the journey from contamination to redemption at any time.

We don’t need to change the past one bit. We just have to start telling our story differently. 

Adjacent to the contamination narrative, I think many of us end up in another common pitfall post-lifequake. I’m not a researcher but I spend a lot of time talking to strangers about what makes them tick. And it seems like, in American society at least, the knee-jerk reaction after a lifequake is to focus on preventing things from ever going wrong again. It’s understandable… but it doesn’t take us very far.

First, because as hard as we try to wrestle reality into submission, we just don’t have that much control over what will happen next. Second, we are still relating to the past in a way that imprisons us rather than empowers us. And while I don’t think any of us are going to manage to turn off “worry mode” for good, we can at least balance it with something constructive. We can focus on the ways we worked through the latest lifequake — with it, around it, below it, above it, however you got from there to here.

Whether it’s through journaling, bullet-pointing, voice-noting, or chatting with a dear friend, find a way to start to own your narrative (outside of your head!). 

Start to examine, excavate, and elaborate the ways you’ve put the pieces of your life back together again — maybe over and over again.

Start to connect the jumbled events of your life into a constellation that once more finds a way to shine.

Start to ground in the strength you have, regardless of the mud pit you may currently find yourself in.

When we open to lifequakes — with plenty of space given to grieve and process of course— they help us reevaluate our lives. 

They allow us (by forcing us) to pause, take a step back, and realign with our priorities. From there, we can carve a more purposeful, innovative, and fulfilling path forward.

Several years after Mike’s death I began telling people, “I’m going to change the conversation around death in our culture!” Wait… hold up. Sue the Hard Charger, Sue the Corporate Exec, Sue Suck-It-Up-Buttercup is going to do what?? I said it to enough astonished friends that I realized something foundational had changed within me. I just wasn’t yet sure what…

So I retraced my steps, looking for signs of what had not just saved me from the quicksand of despair, but had clearly rerouted my entire trajectory. When I looked up from my old footprints in the loamy soil, I realized I had walked past many forks in the road — places I could have turned right, trying to stay closer to “the way things used to be” but really extending my misery. Over and over again, I had instead turned left… onto a path that was entirely unknown and a little scary, but felt like possibility.

For example, I’ve always worked but as a widow I wanted my work to be more than a paycheck. Really, I needed it to be one. So I made it one. I started the annual Women’s Summit for my international company. Every year we gather from around the world to support each other, learn from each other, and connect. Work now fills part of the void that Mike left. I didn’t know I could do that. But I didn’t assume I couldn’t either. I turned left, letting myself believe that it would work out somehow.

And human connection was a molecular-level upgrade for me. “You are all alone in this world” Sue melted and morphed into “Hey, what’s your name and what’s your story” Sue. So much so that I have a long list of Italian names in my Notes app of all the people I’ve met in the last two weeks. And this fills me with almost unspeakable delight.

The redemption narrative doesn’t mean we believe that things will go back to being “good” in the same way they were before.

Rather, we let our grief drive us to try new things, discover new interests and connections and support, and build a life that is “good” in a brand new way. We trust that we are inventive enough to figure it out. We don’t give up.

When our world has been so rocked, not only does our illusion of control shatter, so do our expectations, assumptions, and self-imposed limits.

“Those facing adversity often suffer from… a feeling of being out of sync or out of touch with those around them. These attitudes, in turn, give these individuals more freedom to take risks, to experiment, to explore means of expression outside the social mainstream,” Feiler explains.

Lifequakes SUCK. I wish them on no one. But for those who have already experienced them and are trying to figure out how to write the “after” chapter, assume nothing, try anything, and trust that you’ll find something.

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

Right out of the gate, we handicap ourselves by assuming life is going to be plain vanilla — or maybe even rainbows and unicorns.

We are literally shocked when things go sideways. This was not what we were led to believe life is.

If life is not good, we are not happy… right? Wrong. Life is not good nor bad, it is simply unpredictable. And it’s up to us to make something of it anyway.

I’m not saying “pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” I’m saying trust that you are more resilient than you necessarily feel. And it’s okay to feel that way! No one has to move through grief and come out the other side, redeemed and victorious, today. We just have to stop telling ourselves we won’t be able to do it ever.

If we can do this, our challenges  — while no less painful, disruptive, or unwelcome — feel less crippling. Part detour, part initiation, they ask us to push beyond what we thought we were capable of. They require that we step closer to the best version of ourselves. Even if we’d rather go back to “before” — yes, please — we have the option to create our own consolation prize by daring to do what we didn’t dare to do “before”.

One week from tomorrow, I walk into my next lifequake. Thankfully I can see this one coming from a mile away — and no one is getting hurt. It’s “just” an empty nest. But it’s still going to be weird. I don’t think I’m going to like it at first. But I can’t control any of that. All I can control — after feeling all the feels and letting myself process what I need to process — is my expectations for what comes next:

Eventually, somehow, someway, I’ll be okay. More than okay. I’ll make lemonade.

I no longer assume that feeling anything but bliss and happiness and fulfillment ‘til the end of my days means I’m somehow doing it wrong. I know transitions, disruptors, lifequakes are part of the package. And this mindset makes all the difference. I can lean into the discomfort and be forged by it. I can trust it won’t break me. I can give it my all. Because I’ve done it before. And even without Connor and Kendall around, I will do it again.

The goal isn’t to move backwards, to erase the pain and the change. It’s to integrate, evolve, and like Rome, rise again — a little bit less afraid to squeeze every last drop of life out of this dizzyingly swift existence.

“Chaos is not noise, it’s signal; disorder is not a mistake, it’s a design element. If we view these periods as aberrations, we risk their becoming missed opportunities. If we view them as openings, we just might open up to them. Transitions are not going away; the key to benefiting from them is to not turn away. Don’t shield your eyes when the scary parts start; that’s when the heroes are made,” as Feiler says.

In change,

Sue

If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:

* Post #5: Demystifying the griever’s mind. How stepping into the grieving mind allows us to be with others in the midst of their human experience… and our own.

* Post #12: How I became a heart-seeking missile (in a good way). The epic power of our hearts to take loss and turn it into even more love.

* Post #14: Things will be great again. Giving each other permission to believe in the future while honoring the pain of the present.

* Post #27: Exceeding your own expectations. How my grieving teenagers became empowerment gurus.

* Post #32: I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. It’s time to rewrite, and rewire, the narrative of suffering and struggle.

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

Last week, we talked about moving on.

We talked about how, no matter what has ended, it’s crucial to our wellbeing that we allow ourselves to find and embrace forward momentum. Otherwise, we accidentally sacrifice our future for a past we can never return to.

But we also talked about how sometimes you really don’t want to move on, or aren’t sure how. So we searched for a middle ground.

And we ended up talking about breathing life back into the relationships that are now one-sided, due to death or other kinds of separations. Because as long as we are alive and changing, our relationships will be evolving with us. Like picking up a favorite book again, we can discover something new no matter how many times we go back.

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

This week, while hauling around an aspirational and absurd tote of books on my two-week vacation, this metaphor really grabbed me.

Refusing to move on is like refusing to read another book ever again because the last one was so good. It’s like assuming another book could never “take the place” of the last, so we don’t even want to try. Then there’s the opposite reaction too: throwing out a book because we loved it so much and now that it’s over, we can’t stand it. We feel the end of it like a wound. We want to go backwards… but since we can’t do that, we’ll settle for never thinking about it again.

Yes, this is hyperbole and simplification, but it’s not so far from the common strategies we goofy humans employ when faced with loss.

Both rumination (being afraid to “move on” to a new book) and avoidance (throwing the book out for good) miss the mark. They stall out our lives rather than making them fuller. It’s almost like a part of us dies, thinking it’s a noble self-sacrifice to allow the rest of ourselves to live… but we want to be fully alive!

I think part of the problem is we don’t realize that death and everything that comes with it (pain, illness, weakness, loss, failure) is part of life. So how do we weave death and life into each other? How do we shift our perspective to see them not as opposites but partners? As much as we don’t like to think about it, death creates nourishment for life after all.

In the last post, we brought new life to what had been lost in order to grease the way through rumination into forward momentum.

What if we injected a little loss into our daily lives to move past the stalemate of avoidance?

People are surprised how much the kids and I talk about Mike.

In the beginning, it was to make sure the kids didn’t feel like they had to hide their grief. But now it’s just the way we live. Mike and Mike’s death are part of the fabric of our lives, our stories, our hero’s journeys. As Brené Brown points out, “Owning our story can be hard but not nearly as difficult as spending our lives running from it.”

Weaving acknowledgment of loss into life hasn’t just saved us from the (well-documented) negative impacts of avoidance. It’s added something too. Being reminded of love is another way of interpreting being reminded of loss.

So the kids and I have integrated Mike, his death, and death in general by:

1 - Talking about him daily. Talking about his loss, yes, but more often talking about something funny he said, a family catchphrase he originated, what he would think about Kendall’s choice of boyfriend, how Connor’s a capella singing reminds us of his booming voice. 

2 - Tucking keepsakes from him around the house, in places of honor but also just regular places. We all have some of his ashes by our beds. Notes he left us live on the cork board. His books mingle about so you never know when you’ll pick one up to find a message from him in the page margin.

3 - Letting his death change the course of our lives. The kids stepped up and opened up and blew all of our socks off in the process. I melted out of my “Sue the Hard Charger” armor to discover the compassionate, authentic, connection-magnet leader underneath. The Luminist was born.

Mike had many phenomenal things to offer in life. But I’d say in death, he’s become wiser. That’s him teaching us all how to:

* Rest and slow down.

* Express yourself to your loved ones (while you are alive if you can!)

* Leave love as your legacy.

Some of these things he did while he was alive… some things he wanted to do but never got around to. Which will happen to the best of us. Regrets are part of living and dying. But keeping death close will remind you what really matters, so you don’t go out with too many.

We get more out of life when we get more comfortable with loss.

“Because every tender, delicious, electrifying aspect of the human experience comes with something crappy. Love means you have something to lose. Success implies the countless failures that lead up to it. Achieving your greatest, life-altering dream requires leaving many things behind.” (Sue Deagle, post #30.)

We have children for Pete’s sake, there’s nothing more terrifying and exhilarating than that!

Speaking of that and the World Cup — Go USWNT! — there’s a really sweet part at the end of Ted Lasso (no spoilers, I promise). Ted is talking to his mom about his son. In a moment of vulnerability he admits, “I’m scared sometimes to get close to that little boy… because I know he’s going to leave.”

Everything in our life one day will end, whether it goes out with our own light or before it. There’s a way of looking at that fact that leads to apathy. If nothing lasts, nothing matters. It’s not worth caring about and hurting over.

But I like another interpretation: if nothing matters, then everything is what I make of it. And I want to make A LOT of it. I want to go out feeling like a mashed grape — having given all I’ve got to the absurd process of distillation, fermentation, and finally, a really good wine… aka, a really good time! I want to feel like I’ve held nothing back, faced my fears, summited the peak, scraped the clouds, walked back down to hug my family and admit that it was cool but coming home was better.

I don’t want nothing, I want it all.

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

All of those who are no longer on this earth are reaching across time and space to help us live our best lives.

With the love they gave us, the wisdom they left behind, their sugar cookie recipe (a Grandma Tillie special!), even their regrets — the things they would have done differently. As Walt Whitman said, “We contain multitudes.” We are both ourselves and every person who we have encountered, every person we have loved. 

In other words, there is more to death than loss. There is perspective. There is priority. There is shared purpose. There is love. There is life. There are new fruits waiting to ripen and nourish us, if we stop being so convinced that, because the seed is growing from the fertile soil of death, they will poison us. Avoidance and rumination leave us with the least pleasant parts of loss. We deserve better.

So let’s plant the seeds of integration and water the soil with the knowing that “things will be great again.”

Case in point, I’m in Italy with my daughter, celebrating her graduation and dreaming of all the things she will achieve next. While we watch the sunset across the Mediterranean, we don’t have to skirt around the topic of Mike. He’s not some unspoken rock in our shoe. Rather, he’s with us like soil under our roots — supporting, nourishing, anchoring everything that we do.

With death by our side,

Sue

If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:

* Post #29: Learning from laughter to trust my tears. When we feel, we heal.

* Post #30: The beautiful, the painful, the dazzling. How I learned from loss to be unafraid of life.

* Post #33: It’s okay to be afraid. Allowing fear to live, but not to rule.

* Post #34: Acceptance is just the beginning. The powerful first step to rebuilding after losing so much.

* Post #37: Moving on isn’t leaving behind. Evolving our relationships with those we have lost (part 1).

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

“Moving on” may be one of the hardest parts of grief. 

Try as we might, we can’t keep the clock from ticking, taking us further and further from our loved one’s last breath. We worry about losing the sharp memory of their smile, their laugh, their love. We shudder at the thought of boxing their possessions up. We honestly cannot imagine life without them… and yet it continues all around us.

Author Michael A. Singer posits in The Surrender Experiment that, prior to disruptive events in our lives, “Your whole being is headed in one direction physically, emotionally, and mentally; and that direction has all the momentum of your past and all the dreams for your future.”

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

When our lives abruptly change, it can take a long while to slow down the momentum of the previous trajectory — to shake loose our now outdated understanding of how things should be. It also takes a long time to grieve and release the dreams we had for our future…

But if we’re going to move forward from grief, this task is imperative. Otherwise we get stuck in the past.

Easier said than done.

I kept trying to figure out how to glue back together

the shattered pieces of our life in the early days after Mike’s death. But there was a gaping hole. A Mike-shaped hole. So hard as I tried to go back to “normal”, I constantly bumped up against the eerily quiet space where he was supposed to be: Mike walking in the door from his weekly business trip, Mike’s booming voice singing as he did the laundry, Mike’s warm hugs.

I kept being irrationally surprised when nothing in my life resumed its former shape. Like returning to your childhood bedroom and expecting everything to be in its place only to find your parents turned it into a home office.

While I don’t believe anything as trite as “time heals all wounds”, it does dissipate the momentum of your prior life. You find yourself at a standstill while you decide on a new direction, come up with new dreams. This moment is subtly terrifying in a way that is hard to explain. Because it’s not just your life riding on the way you move forward. How the memory and legacy of your loved one weaves into this new life also hangs in the balance.

For me, this meant finding a way for Mike to “live” in my life without holding onto (and being endlessly bereft about losing) the way things used to be.

Redefining Mike in my life.

Letting Mike’s place in my life evolve so the kids and I could “move on” without losing him.

In the CNN podcast series All There Is, 

Anderson Cooper is working his way through the boxes and boxes that now contain what’s left of his mother Gloria Vanderbilt’s life. Months after her death — and decades after his father’s and brother’s deaths — Anderson strives to understand how to deal with his profound grief. 

In episode five, Cooper is joined by filmmaker Kirsten Johnson, whose mother died of Alzheimer’s and whose father is currently declining from dementia. While their conversation centers on “anticipatory grief”, I couldn’t stop thinking about another idea they brought up — that it’s never too late to know someone better, even if they are gone.

Johnson explains, “Whether it's through someone who knew them, finding something they wrote, etc., it's never too late to get to know someone differently and even more deeply.

“We let the idea of death trap us, but we don't have to.” 

Boom.

Death, as much as it is absolutely a real thing, is also a cultural construct. You can tell because we all have different ideas about what’s on the other side of death. If there are ways to communicate across the veil. If we will be reunited with our loved ones eventually, etc.

Before Mike died, I didn’t really bother to think about it. Death was an end. It sucked but what are we going to do about it?

However, when I was actually faced with death coming into my house, walking up my stairs, finding my husband, and taking him beyond a threshold I could not pass… I realized that my old understanding of death would trap me if I wasn’t careful.

If I hung onto the idea that there was nothing else — that he was gone, period — I’d set myself up for a miserable, lose-lose future. Because moving forward would mean moving farther away from him.

While writing this draft, out of the blue I received a touching email from a reader, a fellow widow, explaining this very dilemma. She has been looking for ways to not end up “stuck in sadness” and “afraid to move on and let go, even just a little.” She continues, “I want to lean into life and do all of the things I would have done if [my husband] were still here.”

I cried reading her message, remembering the feeling of hating the only two options I seemed to have.

Thank god for option C.

First came the incredible consolers in my life,

rushing in to fill me up with stories of Mike that I had never heard before. Adventures, triumphs, his rarely-captured goofiness. Their contributions to my vibrant life are indescribable and priceless.

I slowly realized that though I had lived with the man for 18 years, there was much I didn’t know… Death had erased his body, his voice, his hands, but it had opened my eyes.

When I had had the opportunity to speak to the man right in front of me, I hadn’t listened like I do now. I hadn’t heard him clearly, saw him clearly. Nor he, me. It wasn’t our fault. That’s just how life goes. It includes messy layers of humanity and stress and unspoken requests and hurts and the fact that there is never enough time… which hold us always slightly apart from each other.

As I’ve said before, though Mike is gone, I know him more truly and deeply now. Maybe not his wrinkles, nor scars, nor the Superman curl in his hair, but his heart. The part that matters. And the current relationship I have with Mike is exclusively soul-to-soul, nothing stuck in between.

In this new way of relating, the things Mike did leave now vibrate with meaning and messages. Mike’s old calendars capturing his days read not as milestone momentos but as pure devotion for our family. Mike’s keepsakes of his mother sing the song of his massive heart. His old photos from his study-aboard semesters are like flaming arrows straight from his adventurous spirit to ignite mine. And the conversations I remember — the ones my brain has decided to keep — dazzle with affection and appreciation and true love.

Mike and I speak all the time. Not in words like we used to. But in secret smiles and synchronistic signs. Books that are marked with his lilting handwriting and moments that Connor walks in wearing an old shirt of his. Luminist posts about legacy and kindness, priorities and rest, our mind-blowing kids.

In the way that he teaches all of you through me every single week.

This communing won’t end as long as I’m alive. It can’t get old or stale. Because every time I change or evolve or see something from a novel perspective, I get to go back to Mike and start a whole new conversation. I get to discover more of him through my new eyes. 

No one told me that “moving on” could feel like this.

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

There’s a part two of this post coming next week.

But I think this is enough for one week. And by “enough”, I mean “a worldview-shattering realization!!”

As one last example, Cooper shares in the podcast, “My mom told me that toward the end of her life, her relationship with her aunt completely changed. Her aunt was dead… [for] long decades. But she saw her aunt differently. She saw her aunt through much more sympathetic eyes and it was from reading some old letters that I had found in storage that I showed to her… It was doing something new with somebody who had been dead for more than 50 years.”

Reflect with me:

Can you re-write a story from your past based on solely your memories? A bad breakup. A fall-out with a friend. A business transaction turned sour.

But instead of engaging with the memory as the version of you that took part in it, view it from your current vantage point. A little more mature, a little wiser, a little more compassionate. And way less caught up in the emotion of the moment.

The past can’t change but we can’t help but change. Which means there is endless opportunity to relate in a new way, see from a new perspective, learn a new insight of something or someone that now lives in the rear-view mirror.

But here’s the kicker: without regretting that we weren’t able to be more present, more loving, more connected, more whatever in the past.

Because if we had seen everything there was to see back then, we’d have nothing new to discover now.

In evolution,

Sue

If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:

* Post #2: Why I wouldn’t trade away the grief. While I would give anything to have my late husband back, my life is more vibrant, more meaningful, more miraculous thanks to the lessons of grief and loss.

* Post #8: Then and now. How I’ve learned to let transformation unfold… rather than it being an uphill struggle.

* Post #14: Things will be great again. Giving each other permission to believe in the future while honoring the pain of the present.

* Post #23: Forgetting in order to remember. How the memory chisel clears our path forward.

* Post #31: Not all progress feels like progress. Sometimes it feels like limbo.

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

“When two or more are gathered in my name…” is maybe a weird way to start a (mostly) secular newsletter, but hear me out.

It’s a paraphrase of a Bible verse, but I think it’s more than that. It’s a reflection of the power of community, of connection, of collaboration, of accountability, of communal action. The unique force that is created between people, around people, within people who gather for a common reason…

I spent 15 hours pounding my head against a post (the written kind) this past weekend that I’m not sure will ever see the light of your inbox. Sunday night I sent my beloved editor Leona a hail-mary email, “Can you do anything with this??”

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

She took it and ran, just not in the direction I was expecting. After promising me that we would definitely, no matter what, have a post for you Saturday (you’re reading it now!), she asked me what I really wanted to say this week to you, dear reader.

What was “bright & alive for me” that I wanted you to understand. 

Not what I thought would land well or rate well for SEO or get LinkedIn traction. Rather, what I felt called to speak next into our ongoing conversation. 

I bypassed my logical, results-driven, solution-oriented brain (luckily it was early morning so it was still waking up), pulled my trusted bedside notebook and purple pen into my lap, and had this down in two minutes flat:

Thank you. 

Thank you for making the stakes high. Thank you for pushing me to my limit out of my desire to make something meaningful for you — and for the world. Thank you for making me love this work even though it is butt-hard. Thank you for making all of it, every minute of this, worth it.

Thank you for sending me texts, emails, and commenting on the impact of specific posts, and how they resonate with you. Thank you for giving me more ideas to talk about with each one. Thank you for forcing me to take all my scribbles and ideas and make something out of them. Thank you for letting me share my work so it can become our work. 

Thank you for introducing me to my creativity, to helping me excavate it, develop it, communicate big things in impactful ways with it. Thank you for giving me a chance to play with words — which have always been my home, my favorite place to be, my security blanket and salve. 

Thank you for filling some of the Mike-shaped hole.

Thank you for motivating me to dig deeper to understand my experience so I can integrate it… then share it. 

Thank you for saying “I think you found your calling.” Thank you for helping me know I will still have meaning and purpose when my nest is empty. Thank you for helping me make meaning out of Mike’s death. Thank you for giving me something outside myself. 

In other words, thank you for not making this just about me. Because if I were writing into a void, if I were writing only for myself, if I were writing without feedback or accountability, I’m pretty sure I would have quit by now.

You bring the power. You have turned my idea into a mission into a movement. Simply by contributing your presence.

“The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” according to Aristotle.

I’ve understood this for a long time in terms of teamwork. Leona and I create something every week that we both readily admit is more than twice what we could create on our own.

But there are many of you (over 600 of you!) that don't participate in the writing of The Luminist every week. And yet by showing up — typing your email in the little subscribe box, clicking through from LinkedIn, or googling me and somehow finding The Luminist in the 5th search result under all my corporate wonk-ness — you turn this individual undertaking into a team… something.

A teammission, teamvision, teammovement, teamcommitment, teamexploration, teamdream?

Whatever we want to call it, it is two or more gathering in the name of having hard conversations, learning from loss, getting the most out of life. And for some reason, that makes this movement a thousand times more powerful.

For one, I try way harder. There’s an entirely different level of accountability but also love, devotion, dedication that pours out of me into TL knowing that you’re on the other end. And even though sometimes it makes me want to set my laptop on fire, I don’t get burnt out. If anything, I get fired up.

Because I’m getting so much out of it too:

* digging deep into my experience in order to properly explain it,

* challenging myself to explore topics that challenge me so I can report the way through to you,

* meeting and connecting and being vulnerable with you,

* learning what’s going on in your head, your life, your heart,

* realizing there is so much more to The Luminist than I originally thought,

* and being transformed in the process.

The Luminist is not just being watered and nourished by me. It’s not just providing shade and fruit for me. Maybe I planted the seed, but all of you showed up to make sure it grew.

Before Mike died, I had a slogan. “We are all alone in this world.” 

I’d trot this out whenever I was feeling disappointed, hurt, diminished by other people in my life. Even Mike. Especially Mike. With these words, I could protect myself from leaning too far into human connection, too far into vulnerability. I wore that mantra like a suit of armor. It made my life more protected, more controlled, more self-contained… but smaller. 

After Mike’s death, that armor fell clanging to the floor. Raw, exposed, desperate, my friends, family, and even strangers came to my rescue. And for the first time in my life, I let them. This may not sound earth-shattering to those used to giving and receiving help on the regular. It was for me.

I became a heart-seeking missile. I let my interactions with anyone, everyone, sink below the superficial. I talked to team-members in the field about what kept them going on the longest, hardest days. I mentored younger colleagues, inspired by their ambition to change the department, the company, the country, the world. I started to realize that no matter who I was talking to — a high-ranking international official or my local Great Falls park ranger — nothing pulled us together faster than a shared experience, a shared belief, a shared ritual, or a shared purpose.

A shared purpose. (Aka what now pops me up from bed to scribble a thank-you note to you, dear reader, at 5am.)

Knowing that others care about the same thing you do. Knowing that in the unsharable, unknowable recesses of our hearts we share at least this thing. Knowing that, for all the ways we are utterly alone — inside our own heads, inside our own bodies, dealing with struggles, suffering, pain that no one else can experience — in this way, a way that really freaking matters, we can come together.

The proof is in the mountains we can move, mountains that would be simply towering, impossibly large outlines if we were by ourselves.

Without all of you rooting me on, I never would have had the guts to talk to the Wall Street Journal about TL. I would never have posted on LinkedIn about TL. I would have played small. TL would have stayed small. But because this mission is shared, I have been able to overcome those fears. Because it’s not just about me. It’s about changing the way we talk about and think about and live life. It’s about us.

And I know even if I were to stumble, lose confidence, get scared, this net — this “teamdream” — that we’ve woven together would become a parachute and catch me. Pick me back up. Land me lightly on my feet.

By helping me remember that I’m not struggling for no reason. I’m struggling for a great reason. (And I’m not the only one that thinks so!) With that in mind, I can give my pride a pat on the back, reminding myself that “failure” still counts as a successful experiment, shake it off, and keep going.

Knowing that makes it so much easier to lean in, to give you my all, to get vulnerable and goofy and raw.

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

Your turn!

We hit pause on this section for a few weeks because we realized we’re asking some really hard questions! And not everyone is ready to open up to 650 of their closest strangers — or ever will be. Doesn’t matter. Whether we share is irrelevant. But I would like you to think. Find something to scribble notes on, a loved one to think out loud with, or even just a clear, dedicated space in your mind as you consider the following:

First, what are the “teamdreams” in your life that raise you up, that make you feel inspired and motivated, that are clearly more powerful than the sum of their parts? Think obvious but also subtle. Your book club, your sports team, your mastermind, your band, your yoga class? A work project whose outcome will create massive impact to your team, your organization, your client?

Second, are there any parts of your life that could benefit from some communal witness, support, energy? An idea for a blog or a podcast that you’ve been thinking about for years perhaps ;)? Your desire to learn to play the drums or surf or blacksmith? A bad habit you’ve been trying to kick in secret without much success?

As always, start small. Lean in, reach out, ask for support in the ways that are just a little scary. Experiment. Test it for yourself.

And remember that stumbling is part of the process. In fact, being willing to stumble may mean that you’re onto something.

In shared purpose,

Sue

If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:

* Post #15: The empowerment of not taking yourself to seriously. Sue Deagle, Despot (part 1).

* Post #18: Purpose isn’t the destination. Frustration and the feeling of being alive.

* Post #22: The resilience experiment. If you can learn from “failure” without self-judgment, you can be resilient.

* Post #27: Exceeding your own expectations. How my grieving teenagers became empowerment gurus.

* Post #32: I think I can. I think I can. I think I can. It’s time to rewrite, and rewire, the narrative of suffering and struggle.

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

"NO IDLING ALLOWED." The sign warns participants at the Saturday Katie’s Cars & Coffee gathering in my neighborhood of Great Falls. Park your Ferraris, Lamborghinis, MacLarens, your antique Thunderbirds and Model-T’s — but no revving, no backfiring, no loud showing-off. 

But while the cars are not, plenty of idling still takes place. The lazy Saturday morning kind when humans gather around to just look at cars (or use the excuse of looking at cars), to chat and catch up, to meet old friends and make new ones. 

This kind of idling should have a different sign.

MORE IDLING NEEDED!

More rest, more relaxation, more activities just for the fun of it. Not with the end in mind.

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

In my previous, manic, merry-go-round life,

I often felt on the verge of being flung off the white-maned plastic horse I was clinging to for dear life.

We ran at a pretty brisk clip when Mike was alive; idling was rarely on the schedule. Sports, school, work, travel, planning, strategizing, succeeding, passing the f* out… and then doing it all over again. 

While I have always been a can-do, get-things-done-kind of girl, I was an amateur compared to Mike. ‘Busy’ was his happy place. And while Mike may have been at the extreme end of the spectrum, most of us can relate to this “productivity or death” mindset. Cough, cough.

Driven by relentless perfectionism, a capacious desire to provide for his family, and constant validation of this modus operandi from big-time success, he rarely rested. This made him the consummate consultant, a tough-but-beloved leader, and an always-there-for-you friend. It also made him stressed, anxious, and, at times, objectively worn down. 

(To the point where he was BFFs with the pharmacist who filled his antibiotic prescriptions — colds on top of nonstop work trips giving the recurring gift of sinus infections.)

And maybe it had something to do with that widow-maker heart attack.

Once Mike was no longer in the family driver’s seat,

foot on the gas, the three of us pulled back from the pedal-to-the-metal lifestyle. Initially because grief left us no choice. But even once we were feeling more or less ourselves, we realized we didn’t want to go back to our previous pace. We had seen the merits of living the slow(er) life — and we had seen that our lives and dreams had not crumbled in the meantime. 

We saw that we could not just have both — accomplishments and rest — but that through this combination, we could have more.

Since I ‘dialed it back’, I have secured and grown into an incredibly rewarding corporate job. I have built a house. I have helped the kids survive their teenage years and get into college. I have started The Luminist. Yeah, these took hard work, but not just that. They took looking up from the grindstone long enough to ask, “What else?” “What really matters here?” “What will change everything else?” And finally they took giving myself and the kids the space we needed to come up with the answers.

We discovered that very rarely was the answer “more work.” Sometimes you’ll get “a new kind of work” or “a perspective shift at work” or even “a re-commitment to this aspect of work”. But often you’ll hear “more time with family, with friends, for pleasure and play, to enjoy what you already have”... Rather than always, endlessly, maddeningly striving for more.

So why was Mike — and if we’re honest, are many of us —

pathologically incapable of rest? I stumbled upon a counterintuitive answer to this question in Oliver Burkeman’s 4,000 Weeks: Time Management for Mere Mortals.

The rarely acknowledged truth about rest is, as much as we pine for it, talk about our lack of it, rail against societal norms that discourage it… we don’t know how to even prioritize it, let alone enjoy it. Take a full two weeks off work — actually off work, no emails!! — and by day 8 (if not day 4) I would bet all of us are antsy, guilt-ridden, practically gnawing our fingernails off with anxiety over the mystery mountain of messages that must be awaiting us. Not to mention how much we detest being alone with our own minds.

Our general squeamishness around the whole matter has been dubbed ‘idleness aversion’ by social scientists. It’s just like fear of spiders or the open ocean… but with something we literally need to survive. 

The nonsensical math we employ to justify our masochism habit, according to Burkeman, goes like this: more work + less rest = a future state of invulnerable happiness.

We can trace the origins of this fable back to the Calvinists and Puritans. Their belief was that hard work made you worthy of heaven. So doubling down on toil and struggle was a kind of insurance policy to ensure you’d spend eternity surrounded by harp-playing cherubs in the wispy, comfy clouds, rather than sizzling in literal hellfire. 

Today, rather than scrap the entire myth, we have seemingly replaced ‘heaven’ with ‘retirement’. And hell is the external shame and internal judgment we feel from being “lazy, indolent, negligent, unimportant, worthless, valueless, pointless.”

So the new story goes like this: by forsaking rest — along with pleasure, leisure, general enjoyment of the present moment — we are giving away today, thinking we are stockpiling happiness and idleness for the future… 

But we aren’t actually saving anything. We are gambling. And the odds aren’t in our favor.

Just ask Mike Deagle.

At the beginning of his unbeknownst last year on the planet,

something shifted for Mike. He began to feel there was something missing. The go-go-go — the supreme hard-charger pace, ambition, accomplishment — was no longer serving him like it once had. He was feeling less happiness, less fulfillment, less assuredness that this was the right way.

“What do you want in a husband?” He asked me somewhat rhetorically as I’d signed up 18 years before for the role of his wife.

“I want a husband who will get down on the floor and play with the kids,” I responded.

In our lexicon, that meant putting aside the yellow-legal-pad to-do lists, canceling the hours-long planning sessions around the kitchen island, forgoing the spreadsheets charting out yearly milestones. Aka dropping some of the things that had made our family measurably more comfortable and secure to do an activity with seemingly no payoff. Just play. 

I didn’t know exactly what I was asking Mike but I knew it was what I wanted. And I knew it was what Mike wanted too… though he was still trying to explain to himself why giving up an hour of work — aka providing for the kids and their futures — was worth it.

Burkeman explains what neither Mike nor I could articulate in that moment, “To rest for the sake of rest [or play for the sake of play] entails first accepting the fact that this is it: that your days aren’t progressing toward a future state of perfectly invulnerable happiness, and that to approach them with such an assumption is systematically to drain our four thousand weeks of their value.” 

When we send emails on vacation, multi-task during our kids' little league games, forsake hobbies we once loved because we can’t justify doing them, we puncture a hole in the moments that matter most… moments that we can never get back. 

Living in the future, for the future, does not leave space for the present. 

And the present is where everyone we care about is living, breathing, waiting for us to look up from our work and enjoy our precious time together.

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

Mike no more knew how to slow down, to rest, to make space

than he knew how to conduct an orchestra or perform brain surgery. But he began to seek, read, talk about, and investigate how he might take baby steps to change. 

But we know how this story ends. He ran out of time. 

Burkeman summarizes so much of my grief in the pithy sentence, “Mortality makes it impossible to ignore the absurdity of living solely for the future.”

Storing away achievements and accomplishments by forsaking rest, pleasure, or play is like a squirrel gathering nuts for the winter… then moving to a different neighborhood, only to starve. You will not be able to reap the rewards of your nut-gathering without some leisure mixed in.

I couldn’t change Mike’s trajectory. But I’d love the chance to change yours. Especially when the solution is so simple and so dang enjoyable. Just start small. Take time for your hobbies, your silly pursuits, your non-value added activities. Take time to play. And ignore the voices — internally and externally — that are still stuck in the outdated heaven-and-hell narrative.

Because we don’t have to wait for bliss. Sip a latte in the streaming June sun on a Saturday morning with nothing else planned for the day. Make new inside jokes with your kids that will last decades. Pick up an instrument, a craft, a sport from high school that you loved but abandoned to focus on more “productive” pursuits.

This earth offers us delight, comfort, satisfaction in excess. If only we slow down enough to enjoy it… 

So let’s embrace that life’s sole guarantee is what’s before us, here, in the present moment. 

Let’s open our eyes to see the gamble we are making — living exclusively for a payout in the future — with not just our own lives, but the lives of our loved ones, our spouses, our children.

Finally, let’s accept that we are deserving of all the pleasures of life right now, with or without endless toil. 

Because life isn’t fair. And sometimes, that’s a good thing.

Rest in peace,

Sue

If you resonated with this post and want more, check out these:

* Post #3: What are we actually afraid of? Why dissecting our fears around death & dying is key to living a better life.

* Post #6: The radiance in dailiness. Grief taught me to see the magic in the “ordinary”. Let me show you an easier way.

* Post #11: Restoring the magic of time. How stepping (or being shoved) off the hamster wheel helps us reclaim our sense of possibility, serendipity, and flow.

* Post #18: Purpose isn’t the destination. Frustration and the feeling of being alive.

* Post #31: Not all progress feels like progress. Sometimes it feels like limbo.

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

“Welcome to Sunset Pines, where we live every day to the fullest!”

His ice-blue eyes and broad cheekbones hidden under a globulous helmet and sight-reducing glasses, Chris Hemsworth squints at the pretend staff members of the pretend retirement village as they repeat this mantra… unfailingly, unendingly, annoyingly. 

Personally, I think watching Hemsworth read a phonebook is a worthwhile endeavor. But his mini-series Limitless had me expanding my beefcake ideas (and fantasies) about Thor. Throughout the six episodes, he gamely plays giant, muscled guinea pig to help the viewer understand how we can expand and even overcome our limits. But also, which limits of the human experience cannot be conquered…

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

Episodes 1-5 are in-depth explorations of ways to be healthier — stress-proofing, cold-plunging, fasting, strengthening, memory enhancement, and more. The show’s vibe is both silly and scientific, offering Hemsworth as experimental sacrifice to the leading experts of ways to “live better for longer.” Through his triumphs and frustrations, epiphanies and re-starts (plus a whole lot of self-deprecation in that smoky Australian accent), Hemsworth aims to evolve viewers’ mindsets and behaviors for the sake of improving our healthspan, not merely our lifespan. 

The final episode is different — very different.

Instead of surfing around icebergs or pulling golf carts with a body harness, you find Hemsworth in a retirement home called Sunset Pines, surrounded by genuine, wise, and wizened oldsters.

Chris is walked through three days of immersive senior experience by BJ Miller, a renowned palliative care doctor and author of A Beginner’s Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death. Miller is the soulful, calm, patient yin to Chris’s understandable yang during his first day of the experiment… You’d be frustrated too if you suddenly found yourself stuffed into a restrictive cyborg suit designed to make you feel like you were 87 years old. 

Miller shines in helping us understand the physical reality of human limitation — along with the cycles of denial, adaptation, and acceptance that turn these limitations into profound lessons. But the real stars of the episode are the real people who share their real stories of accepting what they cannot change and learning to love life anyway — in a new way, and sometimes even a deeper way.

For example, Chris faces off with oldster Gary during a pingpong match, where Gary summarily kicks his ass. The age suit limits Chris’s movements to the point that he can barely hit one return. The games ends with Chris grumbling, “Shut up, Gary” in response to Gary’s good-natured ribbing and throwing his paddle down in disgust.

BJ then finds Chris in a corner, sans bowling-ball helmet. As they talk about Chris’s frustrations, BJ invites Gary in to tell his own personal story. 

A montage of Gary’s Kung Fu prowess in his younger years follows — his triumphs, his rewards, his pride in the strength and grace of his body. Gary then shares the grief of losing his martial artist identity through age and injury… Until he came across Tai Chi, which re-opened his world. He goes on to explain how this unexpected turn of events helped him to find “a new way of connecting to [his] physicality,” which translated to a new way of looking at himself and at life in general.

What started as a limitation became a revelation for Gary. Life was somehow bigger and vaster and more gratifying than he had previously imagined when everything was easy. The challenge had forced him beyond his comfort zone… and it turns out, there was a whole wide world of self-knowledge, self-acceptance, and self-love out there.

In Gary’s own words, “Once you learn to accept a thing for what it is, you find something even deeper and more valuable.”

Miller chimes in, “Even as our body is maybe weakening, it’s opening up something else… A part of us is getting smaller, but there’s this room for us to get bigger in some other way. And that’s when humans really shine, when we come up against a limit. It’s a gift in a way.”

And it all starts with what often is thought of as the last step — acceptance.

We talk a lot here at TL about action — 

being empowered, engaged, and participatory in creating our technicolor lives. Action verbs galore.

But living through our suffering, our failures, our losses does not only involve action. In our most fragile times, we are probably not, ‘punching above our weight’, ‘taking the bull by the horns’, or ‘leaning in.’ 

In fact, sometimes we need to go into full-on hibernation.

But while it may not look like there is a lot happening on the surface, there’s a deep alchemical process taking place inside of anyone who has just come face-to-face with the “unfixable” — acceptance.

But what really is acceptance? And how does one reach it? Surrender to it? Fall backwards into it?

At the core of acceptance is releasing the idea of who we thought we were and what our lives were going to look like… which is unbelievably hard. Because we get attached to the parts of ourselves and our lives we believe we’ve worked hard for, are maybe even “owed” to us. We have an idea of the way things ought to be.

But on the other side of our ideas about what should happen is an endless buffet of possibility.

It’s not our limits that limit us.

It’s our ideas about what is right and wrong, good and bad, fair and unfair — for the external world, but also ourselves. We put ourselves into boxes about what we should do and want. Until life turns all that upside-down and it’s no longer up to us to choose. Life has forced us down a path we never wanted or imagined. There’s no changing it. Only reimagining ourselves inside this new story. Rewriting our character arc. Letting our very beings become the fertile ground of possibility.

Because freedom and opportunity are nothing if we ourselves are afraid to change, to try, to learn. Nothing wild and wonderful will happen until we are wild enough to say “YOLO” and see what happens.

Or in the case of myself and BJ Miller, until we don’t have any other option.

Miller lost three of his limbs at 19 in a freak accident. His identity as a vital, athletic, unstoppable young man collapsed, along with the dreams for his future… until he stopped asking his body or the world to change and allowed himself to change:

“My sense of self expanded to the point where I could not only accommodate limb loss, but I started making meaning and sense of my experience — I went into medicine. I fell immediately in love with palliative care… and now my job is to treat suffering and help others find meaning in their lives as well.”

Now, if that isn’t inspiring, I don’t know what is.

Before Mike died, I assumed people were grateful

because their lives were full of good things. But every day it becomes clearer and clearer that gratitude is a choice no matter the cowpies life has thrown in our way.

This feels dangerously close to toxic positivity, which is probably why it’s taken me so long to hop aboard the daily-gratitude-journal train. But I’m learning that gratitude does not require minimizing or denying the undeniable struggle-fest that is sometimes life. In fact, it’s helpful if we acknowledge it! And keep moving.

Acceptance helps us find the middle way through the pitfalls on either side of the spectrum — “this isn’t happening” or “this is terrible and I’ll never recover”. When we let either of these extremes dominate our mental landscape, we end up spending all our energy fighting the struggles and the suffering. In these mindsets, there is simply no room for appreciating the silver linings or even the full-blown blue bird days. Acceptance makes that room.

As Miller explains, “We tend to treat life as this right that we have — that by virtue of being born, we have a right to life, we have a right to a tomorrow. No. Life is a gift. Another day is a gift. A full life is one that includes death, includes pain, but if we [could still] be grateful for yet another minute on this beautiful, crazy planet… Imagine that!”

Hemsworth comes to the same conclusion, turning his baby-blues on the camera one last time to summarize his biggest take-away from Sunset Pines, “The truth is that we are not limitless. What matters? It all matters. Every moment, every smile, every tear, every kiss… All of it.”

Amen to that, brother. 

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

Acceptance is not an abandonment of the good fight

to live your very best life. It is actually opening yourself to it — especially when “your very best life” no longer looks the way you had expected it to.

In the early days of my widowhood, I would scream at the sky, “You can come back now!!!” hoping to reach Mike, reach God, reach someone who could turn this terrible bus around.

Unsurprisingly, I did not.

Eventually, I got tired of yelling at something that could not or would not answer my pleas. I started looking around for things that could comfort me. And I found friends, family, books, baby leaves, big trees, sunrises, surprisingly deep work community. I stopped asking for something I could never have ever again, and instead decided — consciously decided — to release my identity as Mike’s wife. To accept that I was a single mom. To allow myself to love and be loved in previously unimagined ways.

Six years later, the new light of my life, The Luminist, was born. Not despite my loss, but because of it.

If I had stayed screaming at the sky, I never would have let nature, friends and family, meaningful work rush in to fill the void. It would have stayed a void, full of nothing but pain.

In this way, acceptance turns an ending into a beginning.

As the old adage goes, it’s not what you have, it’s how you use it.

To your unimagined futures, identities, possibilities,

Sue

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

Kendall was speeding along 95 North from Virginia to New Jersey in her little blue Mazda SUV when she pulled into the mammoth Chesapeake House Rest Stop to hit Peet’s coffee for a shot of caffeine (wrapped in the sweet coldness of an iced vanilla latte) and keep a promise to her mother.

“I’m gettin coffee!” She texted me.

I was already ahead of her. 

“I’m tracking your progress!” I texted back, looking down at the location app on my phone. 

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

I was across the Atlantic Ocean, perched at an outdoor cafe table along Monmouth Street in Covent Garden, London, first-drafting this post and enjoying the beautiful summer day. I refer un-ironically to London as the city of my heart. I studied abroad here. I got engaged here. I visited with Mike every five years. We brought the kids for Mike’s 50th birthday. And now I visit at least once a year — but really whenever I can sneak it into my nonstop work schedule.

This time, I managed an entire 48 hours in the Big Smoke on my way home from a work trip that began in Romania (shout out to our jaw-dropping team there!) and finished off in Brussels with a geopolitical smorgasborg with the war in Ukraine as centerpiece (where I got to sit next to the incredibly badass former woman president of Lithuania). 

I could see the three bubbles come up in the text window as Kendall settled in with her iced latte.

K: What are you doing?

Me: Living my best life! Only thing I am missing is you!

K: It’s crazy how we are all doing different things now because we are adults. You are in London, I am in New Jersey, Connor is in Cali… what the heck! You should write a post about that.

Me: I KNOW.

K: You could write about how much we have changed without letting guilt get in the way of progress. How much we have grown up.

Me: Meaning like how we have thrived and not felt bad about it??

K: Exactly. Forgetting in healing… but taking pieces of daddy with us.

Me: And how I have not let my fear of losing you and Connor make me lock you two in the house?

K: That too, yes!

Me: LIVING.

K: Exactly. You never stop me. We assess risk and find a way

I had a friend whose mom never took him to swim lessons

when he was a kid. She was afraid he might drown. But now he’s an adult who can’t swim. Who has to be very careful around pools and rivers and beaches and boats. He’s never done a cannonball or boogie boarded or been bounced off an inner tube by a maniacal uncle towing him behind a speedboat. Her choice ended up increasing his chances of drowning a thousand-fold, and now in order to protect himself he has to constantly limit his life. 

When Mike died, I faced a similar choice. Wrap my children in bubble wrap (with appropriate breathing holes, of course!!) and never let them out of my sight… or don’t. 

When first faced with any noteworthy loss, the knee-jerk reaction is often the former. Anything precious gets locked away, never to see daylight again — whether its loved ones, family heirlooms, money, or even yourself.

Protect all that is valuable and scarce! our frazzled, exhausted, but refusing-to-release-control fight-or-flight system screams.

But slowly, the conscious mind — the part that hovers above the ocean of emotion, observing it rather than swimming (or drowning) in it — comes back online. And mine asked a simple question that I was never able to push past to roll out the bubble wrap:

What is more valuable than living life? 

My mind was not asking about maintaining the physiological necessities of survival — eating, sleeping, breathing — but experiencing all that life has to offer. The beautiful, the painful, the dazzling. 

The answer came instantaneously. Absolutely nothing.

The vibrant, fulfilling, technicolor life I aim to live everyday — 

and support my kids in living — will also always be a human life. And on this plane of existence, s**t happens. 

Our carefully laid plans implode. The path we are obliviously skipping down gets swallowed by an opening crevasse. Even someone who has decidedly already gone through their fair share of hardship — Mike’s parents divorced when he was 7, his mom died of cancer when he was 22, his son almost didn’t survive his first ten days on this earth — and does everything in their power to prepare for and prevent worst-case scenarios drops dead before he has even passed his prime.

So after watching a finalist for World’s Most Health-Conscious Man die of heart disease, no one would have blamed me if I had become cynical and fearful. And believe me, I considered it! (The 6ft-long sheets of bubble wrap permanently live in my Amazon cart.)

But the decision to make life smaller with the hopes of making it longer is generally a reactionary rather than a rational one. We can never escape risk, nor harm nor hardship nor loss. Even our ability to reduce it is minimal in the face of all the absurd forces that these fragile human bodies can and do succumb to.

Like it’s time for a new story about loss, it’s time for a new strategy with risk. Yep, it’s scary. But we need to figure out how to not let our knee-jerk fear domineer the mental math. 

The point of fear is to protect life after all. Not to diminish it, dampen it, drain all the color out of it. Our fear is meant to be our ally, just not our commander. Its presence is a marker to pause and consider…

But without ever losing sight of the point: living, not just surviving.

Let’s get this straight: I still live in utter, abject terror

that something is going to happen to Connor or Kendall. It’s managed with a dubious mix of OCD check-ins, superstitious rituals, and regular reassurance from the kids — “mom, we got this.”

Driving to New Jersey after midnight? Mexico City to visit BFF Kiki and her family for spring break? Cali for the summer? New Zealand for a semester? 

“OK, if you are going to drive that late at night, you are going to call when you leave and halfway through.”

“OK, Kiki’s mom has to meet you at the airport, and every day you have to tell me where your passport is.”

“OK, we have regular check-ins in Cali, and no, you are not allowed to quit college and become a weed-smoking surfer.”

“OK, if you think taking this semester abroad is the right idea, you need to get all your core curriculum done first.”

And then, once I have completed my voodoo dance to ask the gods to keep them safe, I take the most important step. I consciously turn down the volume dial on my fear using my go-to coping mechanisms: strenuous crack-of-dawn exercise, deep breaths among big green trees, texts to friends asking them to tell me what I need to hear, “everything will be just fine.”

I also choose to set an example and live myself. To travel, to have adventures, to take a few, very manageable risks. The kids have the same fears, the same bad dreams as me. “Text me when you take off and land!” is a common refrain among all of us.

The point is, it's a process. It’s not done with ease or aplomb. It’s done with muscle-straining determination to uncurl fear’s death grip from around life and let it be what it is — exhilarating, terrifying, strengthening, weakening, eye-opening, jaw-dropping, everything.

My editor, Leona, was telling me about the novel 2312

in which people have colonized all the planets of the solar system, including Mercury (we’ve got two sci-fi nerds in the house!)

Because Mercury is so close to the Sun, the Mercurians (Mercurites?) devised a clever system to keep their bubbled-off city rotating around the small planet constantly, just out of the Sun’s destructive view. That’s where most of the Mercurians live — in endless twilight.

But not all. A few leave the safe confines of their moving metropolis to walk the surface of the planet. It’s exhausting; they sleep in bursts and have to be on the move whenever awake. But apparently it’s worth it. Because for a few short minutes everyday, they get to see the Sun. Yes, too long under its blazing gaze will fry them until even the bonds between their atoms disintegrate. However, if they do it right — if they’re smart about their exposure and their pace, if they plan enough time to get back into the cool, safe blanket of shade — they can have both. 

Kim Stanley Robinson, the author, imagines what the unfolding dawn would look like for one such “sunwalker,”

“A flick of orange fire dolphins over the horizon and their blood leaps inside them. More brief banners follow, flicking up, arcing in loops, breaking off and floating free in the sky. Star oh star, about to break on them!”

“Then… the actual surface of the sun blinks and stays, spills slowly to the sides. The spill to the left and right keeps spreading, farther than seems possible, until it is very obvious one stands on a pebble next to a star. Time to turn and run!”

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I want my children, myself, everyone, to know

that they are on a pebble next to a star… to know the feeling of life, of living, of being alive. To have moments where they are so full of sensation and emotion and electricity and blood that life itself becomes an entity around them and in them. 

Like a fish who discovers they are in water — they suddenly understand the experience of it and have a word to name that experience… It becomes its own force that they can dance with, encourage, appreciate, celebrate.

So, despite myself, I want Connor and Kendall to see the Sun… and have a planned and practiced path back to the safe shadows where they can rest and post their pics and text me all about it.

There’s a lot out there to be afraid of. But there’s also so much to explore. When we accept that both exist in equal measure, we get a little closer to understanding the paradox that makes up a vibrant life — it is never either. It is always both. It’s always all of it.

Loss has taught me and the kids which risks aren’t worth it… and which really really really are.

From this perspective, fear is good council. But will never have the last word.

In risk and reward,

Sue

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I hadn’t gotten 20 pages into The Expectation Effect: How Your Mindset Can Change Your World by British science writer David Robson before my head was spinning.

One quote in particular, from Stanford psychology professor Alia Crum, made me put down the book and look around at reality with new eyes… “Our minds aren’t passive observers simply perceiving reality as it is; our minds actually change reality. In other words, the reality we will experience tomorrow is in part a product of the mindsets we hold today.”

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Hold up. Come again? Our minds and mindsets actually change reality?

Looks like it! But it often actually works against us, rather than for us…

Quoting study after study, professor after doctor after research director, Robson shows that our brains are ‘prediction machines’ that constantly simulate the future using past experiences, contextual clues, and our five senses. This may sound like an infallible combo platter of inputs, but buyer beware! Robson’s analysis of the research suggests that our brains are both limited in their data collection and subjective in their interpretation of that data. 

Then add the brain’s certainty that it’s crunched all the data perfectly, and you’ve got a version of revisionist history that not only mucks up causation and correlation of the past, but imprints it on the future. 

It’s like Drunk History (haven’t seen it? Well worth a giggle!), minus the cue cards off-screen, plus fortune-telling… disguised as scientific prediction.

And we are very very susceptible to thinking that our thoughts are true. (Even though we are all regularly thinking ludicrous things like “everyone hates me”, “my haircut makes me look fat”, and “this $500 pantsuit is going to save my career.”) So our thoughts become self-fulfilling prophecies — whether it’s because: 

* our confirmation bias causes us to see what we expect to see (other people having better luck/opportunities/friends/haircuts/suits than us);

* we actively spend our energy preparing for the expected outcome, rather than making space for the opposite to happen;

* our body literally changes its physiology to match our expectations (it’s WILD, read the book to learn more);

* or any combination of these.

In other words, worst-case thinking doesn’t prepare you. It promotes the worst case. 

Perhaps Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian describes it best when he shares, “I’ve always been fond of ‘defensive pessimism’: keep your expectations low, and you can only ever be pleasantly surprised. But this approach defines our expectations as wholly impotent: vain hopes that reality might or might not deign to fulfill. The Expectation Effect shows that, on the contrary, our expectations participate actively in that reality.”

Luckily, our brains are so terrifyingly all-powerful that old, limiting expectations have an easy antidote: new, updated expectations.

Robson shares that one way we can rewire our prediction machine 

is through ‘exposure therapy’ — confronting our fears to rewrite the script on what happens when we come face-to-face with a snake, a shark, or the death of our spouse.

And no, you don’t have to lose your spouse like me to practice.

In my early grief days, I plunged into weekly Amazon cardboard boxes and white bubble envelopes for the next installment of my personally curated grief canon. I started reading because I was desperate to feel less alone, but all these books had a surprising outcome. Over and over I read the words of people who had suffered unimaginable loss… and then had put Humpty Dumpty back together again in the form of new lives and new loves. 

Turns out loss isn’t the end. Sometimes it's even the beginning. But often it's just the middle of a life shaped by many things.

Yet most people have no clue that life is actually still worth living after a terrible loss because society avoids the subject… Our prediction machines only get input from our own catastrophizing imaginations and 60 Minute specials about the worst things anyone has ever heard of.

So, reading The Luminist — or or or — is a form of exposure therapy for you, dear reader. An exercise in recalibrating your prediction engine. You read about the kids and I, or Sandra Ann or Chris or Katie, coming out the other side — maybe a little rougher around the edges, but also happily giving less of a crap about those “rough edges” and more authentically enjoying our lives. And your brain gets a new data point: “Oh, that was terrible, but look! She/he/they are thriving — it's possible!”

Like sore muscles after a workout that turn into stronger biceps a few days later, that ache we feel from absorbing stories of someone’s sadness turns into self-confidence through practice. We realize we can do it — we can go through the hardest of things and after a time come out vital, passionate, present, and very much alive. 

And our brains start to predict and implement a new future…

(Robson also mentions how ‘social contagions’ get incorporated into our prediction machines. So I plan on using social contagion for my own evil purposes… I want to spread the idea, for the idea to go viral, that loss is actually part of a life well-lived! Mwahahaha!)

Quick sidebar: I think it’s worth noting the difference

between having constructive and productive expectations, and being so attached to our expectations that we crumble into inconsolable dust when they aren’t met.

The former involves another expectation — unspoken but essential — that we will be ok if our expectations aren’t met. We will make space to process the disappointment. We will remember that disappointment happens to everyone — it isn’t the universe telling us we’re doing it wrong or are a terrible person or anything like that.

Sure, maybe we will take a moment to pause and make sure our inner compass is pointing straight and true… and then we will keep chugging along towards our goals, hopes, dreams. Because they are worth a stubbed toe or ten.

In other words, our prediction machines come to read “failure” as a cue to learn, reorganize, and set out again. Not to give up.

Stories of tragedy don’t just teach us to survive our own.

We learn to console better as well. To dare to hope for a smile-filled future for those around us who are struggling. 

(Which is not the same thing as toxic positivity. Robson explains that the expectation effect has nothing to do with labeling unpleasant emotions or sensations “bad” and then doggedly rejecting and avoiding them.

In fact, that strategy can lead people to get stuck in a downward spiral of negativity because they feel bad for feeling bad. A “nocebo,”  or harmful placebo, as Robson calls it. Harnessing the productive power of expectations is not about judging where you are but about holding space for a desired outcome in the future.)

We visited such an example back in post #14: “Things will be great again.” Brave words from a dear friend who loved Mike and loved our family and was heartbroken over his death… But wasn’t going to let anyone’s misaligned prediction machine (including my own) hold the kids and I back from all life had to offer.

It’s deeply affirming to have neuroscience backing up what I felt in my bones after Wayne’s words had fully set it.

We need others to hold high hopes (even expectations) for us when we can’t hold a freaking glass of water on our own.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, being able to reverse aging 

(as covered in Robson’s book) is really cool and all. But what truly drives me to write this post is the thought of suffering piled on suffering… for those who are already going through the worst time of their life and are then told, literally or subliminally, by their loved ones, by their friends, by society that they will never recover. That life will never be great again.

Can you imagine what would happen if you believed that?? I can feel my cells deciding on the spot that metabolism just isn’t worth the trouble anymore.

As consolers, we can never assuage the sharp, searing pain of losing your special person, your health, your job, your home. What we can do — what we must do — is not add a single straw of negative expectations to that load. And when possible, take off any other straws that have been left there too.

In my earliest days of grief, I had two kids to survive for and an admittedly belligerent disposition that had always been ignited by smashing others’ expectations. While these things helped, I don’t feel I would have thrived without that simple sentence from a beloved friend. Those five words engaged the expectation effect, rewired my prediction engine, and sent me on the path towards making the most of my one wild, grief-stricken, and still precious life. 

Thanks again, Wayne. You changed my life. And maybe hundreds of others through the TL mission.

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Looking back, I think it helped that my prediction machine

was already totaled and ablaze from Mike’s unpredictable heart failure (the guy ate exclusively salmon, spinach, and blueberries for Pete’s sake!).

So maybe, in a weird way, loss is the perfect time to rewire (or fully trade-in) your expectations.

Maybe it’s a moment to embrace that we understand so little of the mysteries that rule death and life, we might as well see what we can get away with. 

Like being bold enough to believe that we can make it into the Top 10 of Britain’s Got Talent with our acrobatic salsa act… at age 80.

With high expectations,

Sue

P.S.

If you’d like a song vibe that aligns with this post (we’re going for a holistic approach here at TL), check out Breath (Lenno Remix) by Seinabo Sey. 

Sey sings, “When you believe in your future, it’s different.” Amen to that!

P.P.S.

If you liked this post, you might also be interested in:

#22: The resilience experiment. If you can learn from “failure” without self-judgment, you can be resilient.

#14: Things will be great again. Giving each other permission to believe in the future while honoring the pain of the present.

#2: Why I wouldn't trade away the grief. While I would give anything to have my late husband back, my life is more vibrant, more meaningful, more miraculous thanks to the lessons of grief and loss.

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

Her satin dress shimmering in the midmorning sun, Kendall walked across the slender stage, totally in her element under everyone’s gaze. She took her diploma and shook the head of school’s hand. I leapt up, my baby-blue-suited fist pumping the sky and a WHOOP bursting from my mouth. Finding my eyes, Kendall did a little happy dance. Not just for all she had accomplished in her four years of high school, which is an impressive list. Also for the excitement of what lays ahead. Leaving the nest. College. Adulthood. Independence. Freedom. Responsibility. Sovereignty. 

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But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because after graduation on Friday came… Saturday. Connor left for his summer in LA (watch out !). Then the rest of my family departed… and it was just Kendall and I in the house again. We lounged on the couch and chatted happily, feeling both relieved that graduation was over, and also a little bit like… “Now what?” We had entered limbo.

But thankfully a more pleasant version of it compared to the Wednesday… which had followed the Tuesday Mike died.

Losing my husband teleported me and the kids into the land of in-between. Our previous life had been unceremoniously ripped away, but we had no idea how to move forward or what the next stage could possibly look like. We were suspended in grief and fear and memories that were just out of reach…

Unlike the tingly anticipation for our upcoming, action-packed, post-graduation summer, six years ago I was desperate to figure out how long the suspended animation of that moment would last. How long I’d have to keep living with the feeling that surely I would die soon from this broken heart. I mentally ticked through the dates of each memoir in my grief canon, trying to predict the immeasurable timeline of grief. I would calculate, “Well, ok, she wrote this memoir in 1995 and her husband died in 1990 so probably by 1993 she was sane enough to start the writing process and thus feeling at least a little better??” 

But my mental machinations were not getting me any closer to healing. They were moving me away from living in the moment, where the healing actually happens. 

“Don't look for peace. Don't look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender.” ― Eckhart Tolle in The Power of Now.

Pretty words, Mr. Tolle, but I’m going to need to run some tests on that really quick…

I’ve come to call these stretches of awkwardness the tween times,

paying homage to that truly terrible period of prepubescence — when one is not quite a teenager, no longer a child, lost in between and facing down the barrel of hormonal acne among other things.

These are the times when the person we thought we were — finished, complete, a marble statue artfully posed on a pedestal in our little life museum — suddenly reverts to a lump of clay, waiting to be re-shaped into our next iteration by the people, the places, the circumstances we find ourselves in next. But are not here quite yet.

The worst part is that these tween times don’t feel like a new beginning, a spring dawn, a ray of sun slicing through a spent thunderstorm. Yes, the rebirth is coming. But first, by necessity, must come a death of sorts. An abrupt end to our modus operandi: keep going, head down, faster if possible. 

So much of what we’ve known falls away, leaving us in a space dark and scary with uncertainty… with nothing to keep us company (aka keep us busy, keep us validated, keep us motivated) besides ourselves.

Thus, we lose form and purpose, devolving into the lump of clay. 

YIKES.

And yet… even in this cow pie of directionless-ness there is an opening. A new doorway we’ve never noticed before inviting us inward.

Limbo is the opportunity to see who you are when you aren’t chasing something. When you’re not distracted by action, carried away by momentum. The compass must be held still to direct with accuracy. You have to find what brings you fulfillment when not striding towards some future goal, but sitting still in the present moment.

I’ve never been in a float tank, but I can imagine it’s similarly unnerving. 

Rather than relaxed, I could see how one could feel tense, untrusting of the stillness… and what they might discover in it. 

Rather than at peace, one could be impatient, doubting that this present moment is worth their time (as if there was another timeline they could abandon it for instead).

Rather than absorbing the nourishment of rest, one could be distracted, mind desperately searching for something to accomplish, to prove, to earn. 

Yet, our honest reactions are perfect. Exactly what we need. Not to be avoided (point for Tolle). Because we’re seeing that we haven’t just been running towards things — diplomas, promotions, vacations — we’ve been running away too. And this is the moment to break the pattern, redefine the self, and reimagine the future.

The tween times are when we’re most moldable. Soft and squishy. So much has ended that there is ample space for the new — even a new version of new. A future self that is bigger than anything you could have imagined while physically and mentally hemmed in by the deep ruts of the old.

Not to brag or anything, but during my grief tween era, I transformed from Sue the Hard Changer to Sue, President of the Feeling Your Feelings Club. I turned a scattering of friends into a life-supporting network of priceless connections. I felt awe that made me literally cry for the first time ever. I even discovered my freaking life purpose (which I thought was a myth comparable to the Tooth Fairy before this).

In other words, how we acknowledge, accept, and navigate leaving behind who we were defines us more than all our victory laps, award ceremonies, and celebratory gatherings combined.

At the end of our liminal phases, we don’t walk out with the secret to happiness or eternal joy or whatever. Rather, we find a kind of equilibrium, a foundation built on the rock bottom (and undeniable truth) of our being. We have integrated and reconfigured our values and priorities. We have let the changes sink into our core so we can evolve from our core too. (Yes, there’s an obvious cocoon metaphor here… but how many metaphors is too many metaphors?)

We step forward as a more refined version of that marble statue — one step closer to who we really are. 

In my humble opinion, this is no consolation prize. This is what it's all about, what we are all here for, why we exist.

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After Kendall’s ceremony,

we all gathered for a reception on the oval quad in front of her school. I wandered around to see a few people I wanted to thank — the dean of academics who shepherded her through some tough times offered, “Thank you for sharing her with us!” Her senior math teacher was crisply matter of fact, “See, it all worked out!” as if he’d never had a doubt.

I finally found Kendall deep in hugs with her friends. “Mommy!” she shouted, enveloping me in a sweaty, rose-scented hug. “Oh, Kendall, I just realized I had not thought of daddy all morning!” I blurted. 

I was truly shocked. Mike had not crossed my mind at all. At no moment had “he should be here” inserted itself into the occasion. And it wasn’t upsetting (because I’ve learned to trust forgetting is a good thing), it was enlivening. Limbo had slid behind me like the fading pink clouds of dawn, replaced with dazzling sunlight.

“Well, he’s with us, so of course you don’t miss him,” she declared in her best ‘mom, you are a moron’ voice. She was right obviously. Mike is so deeply integrated in the way we live now that he’s not a separate entity to miss. 

I didn’t know I would ever end up here. That we, a bereaved family, would ever be so lucky. But looking back, it makes sense. Because in that liminal moment after Mike’s death, I gave myself the time to pause and reflect. I took six weeks off work (and am privileged enough to be able to take six weeks off work) and sat with my grief… First like a ghost that wouldn’t stop haunting me, then like the stray cat that hangs around because you fed it once, and finally like another member of the family — totally comfortable in its idiosyncratic presence.

Through the tween/lump of clay/crucible/float tank/compass/cocoon process, with loads of support from so many family and friends, I evolved into something that blows my own mind.

If I could offer one last analogy… Kendall’s high school mascot is the snail (“Go, go, escargot!”). Always carrying its shell, its home, its reprieve, its support on its back. By forcing us into ourselves, the liminal space helps us find our own shells, which have always been there but we haven’t had to rely on before. We explore the dark twists and turns of our inner worlds to discover they’re not so frightening. And actually hold a lot of empowerment and confidence once we decide to work with them, rather than against them.

And from that place, the restfulness of self-knowing, the needle of our compass can settle. Then we know, without a doubt, that we are headed in the right direction. Until the next little death comes and we do it all over again.

Trusting the process,

Sue

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The story of the Deagles, the story that started The Luminist, is not a story of loss. It is a story of loving and living.

And yet, in every post, in every story I share with you, dear reader, there is grief. Like salt in dark chocolate, it stands in opposition to the sweetness of life. But it doesn’t diminish it. If anything, it deepens it, enriches it, provides it with a counterpoint so it can fully shine.

For awhile I thought I was telling the story of salt, of loss, with the goal of changing the cultural conversation around it. But no one would show up, week after week, to relentlessly read about the hardest parts of someone else’s life… even me!

Now, after six months of writing TL (six months?!), I’m finally realizing that why I show up every week (and I assume you do too) is to change the conversation around life.

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Because every tender, delicious, electrifying aspect of the human experience comes with something crappy. Love means you have something to lose. Success implies the countless failures that lead up to it. Achieving your greatest, life-altering dream requires leaving many things behind. We need to embrace that, talk about that, prepare for that.

And I believe that through this new conversation, we will come to understand and internalize a new kind of story. (I say “new” but I think it’s probably as old as the earth… and we’ve just forgotten it.) A story of transformation, of overcoming fear, of living a life of utter fulfillment, and maybe even changing the world.

After Mike’s loss, I realized there was an entire side of life I had never let myself engage with.

Any experience that dared to push beyond "pleasant" or at least neutral had been assiduously avoided. So I was half alive. I was fulfilling half my potential. I was half connected. I was half numb and afraid and refusing to open my eyes.

On this other side — the side of grief that society imagines as dull grey days and sleepless lonely nights — I am bursting with life. Because there isn't an aspect of it I dare not engage with. 

I don’t avoid loss and vulnerability and judgment like I once did (most of the time). Because they are part of life, and I want all of it. I want to live life to its fullest, to my fullest! Even though it scares the bejesus out of me, I’m going to invite a WSJ film crew into my home and read The Letter from my late husband. I’m going to have the hard conversations with my coworkers and my kids. I’m going to dare to dream that I can change the world — and then actually take steps to make it happen.

Because I have hard proof that I can survive something I was sure was going to break me. I have practice, confidence, reference. And I know I’m supported and loved through it all. 

So welcome to our revised Luminist mission:

Embracing all of life — the love and the loss, the struggle and the success, the knowing and the mystery — so we can be fully alive.

We are talking about what being “fully alive” feels like:

* shivering with excitement in the morning and happily collapsing into bed at night

* conversations with your kids or friends or coworkers that are so good you stay up way past your bedtime

* sometimes sobbing your eyes out and sometimes laughing so hard you beg for it to stop

* tan lines and scrapes and epic memories

* mysteries and even miracles

We’re discussing how we can cultivate the necessary skills to ride this full life like a mechanical bull: resilience, connection, wonder, empowerment, vulnerability, and a mystifying combination of humility and confidence.

And finally, we’re realizing — all together — that we can hack the hard stuff. Because we’ve all been through the hard stuff. You can’t have made it far enough in life to learn to read these words without some kind of loss or struggle. Now it’s just time to harvest the fruit of those lessons. To realize you’ve spent a lifetime already turning water into wine. So what incredible feat are you going to perform next?

Enough navel gazing! Let’s get to the looking back.

Here are the ways we’ve challenged and changed the conversation about life in our last ten posts:

#21: Reclaimed self-help as the way of the warrior (rather than the wimp).

#22: Rescued failure from the dungeon of lost hopes by making it a tool of resilience.

#23: Let ourselves forget in order to better remember.

#24: Recruited our bodies to help our minds and emotions heal.

#25: Spoke about the unspeakable aspects of existence (in The Wall Street Journal!)

#26: Accepted that sharing might actually save our lives (rather than cause us to die of embarrassment).

#27: Learned from my grieving children how to become superheroes.

#28: Reimagined legacy from macro acts to micro love.

#29: Realized that laughter and tears aren’t opposites but allies.

Every Luminist post is about being alive, awake, participatory, and engaged in everything that is around you. Integrating it all — the good, the bad, and the ugly — because we want salt in our chocolate, depth to our joy, power behind our priorities.

It’s about living the best life you can — not just about living life with loss.

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Before I started TL, I struggled to get courageous enough to explore my creativity.

(Like I said, I still get scared. I just know that it’s not going to stop me.)

For a bravery infusion, I hooked my inspiration IV up to some powerful women creatives. I explored all the works of punk rock poet Patti Smith. I delved into the artist Helen Frakenthaler. Then I stumbled on Laurie Anderson. Ohioan by birth, I felt a kinship with her sensibility even though her work as a performance artist was pretty, well, out there. I visited her exhibit at the Hirshorn. I read more about her life. Then she showed up at my beloved FT Weekend (the coincidences never stop!)

That’s when things got really personal. I learned Anderson was a widow. She was married to rockstar Lou Reed of Take a Walk on the Wild Side. 

Laurie was with Lou in his final illness and held him as he died. About that haunting moment, she said, “I had gotten to walk with him to the end of the world. Life — so beautiful, painful, and dazzling — does not get any better than that.”

Beautiful. Painful. Dazzling. The fullness of life, without a moment avoided or ignored.

Plus, a little laughter sprinkled on top. 

To all of it,

Sue

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