The Luminist

I love the moment when acquaintances become friends. Like when fellow Substacker sent a love arrow through my heart (and proved how well she already knows me) via a Substack note encouraging me to check out a new show on Peacock: The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning.

Based on a book of the same name by Margaretta Magnusson, the TV show walks participants through “cleaning out [their] crap so others don’t have to when [their] dead,” as described by Amy Poehler, the show’s executive producer and narrator, and one of our go-to gif generators here at The Luminist.

The series is a potluck of my favorite ingredients: European accents, deep conversation, heartfelt connection, swearing… and a lot of laughter intermingled with tears. Like life. 

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The ‘death cleaners’ are comprised of Swedes — Ella the organizer with her collection of hip, blocky glasses and subversive grin, Johan the designer with his vertically challenged red hair and side-eyes at the camera, and Kat the therapist, exuding warmth under her funky hats and elven locks.

They have mastered not just the art of cleaning and organizing, but also of speaking straight to the heart of the matter — with love. None of this “protecting others’ feelings'' while secretly saving themselves from a hard conversation. They call it as they see it. But with bone-deep compassion that feels like gently descending into a clear pool… rather than getting your hands covered in something sweet and sticky.

And at times the death cleaners are wrapped in a cloud of confusion on American colloquial phrases and stifling emotional claustrophobia. The looks on their faces say, “How can these people be so exuberant but so closed off? So committed to getting the most out of life but so out of touch with their feelings??”

Unsurprisingly, they even say this out loud. 

Because it turns out a lot of the reason why we hold on to stuff is because we’re holding on to an emotion — unable or unwilling to let it go — while desperate for the physical and mental spaciousness on the other side.

In Episode 5, “What Lies Beneath”, 

the death cleaners train their sights on Godfrey, a 33-year-old sparkling human being and cancer survivor. In 2018, Godfrey lost his dad and his mom within 14 months of each other in the midst of dealing with his own life-threatening diagnosis.

Since then, Godfrey has kept all their possessions (like, all their possessions) stacked in a giant Jenga game in his basement. The death cleaners give this space a tongue-in-cheek name: the grief pit. 

After Godfrey’s dear friends make a human assembly line (a factory, as Ella calls it) to empty the grief pit onto the back lawn, Godfrey picks each item up, and, using Ella’s system, sorts out what to keep and what to give away. 

After hours of sorting, perseverating, reminiscing, and reflecting… Godfrey resolved to give away… NOTHING. 

Ella eyes the camera. “Too much ‘keep’.” She deadpans. 

Therapist Kat takes Godfrey into the kitchen for a heart-to-heart. While baking Betty Crocker brownies from a box in memory of his mom, she gently helps Godfrey excavate the reason for the grief pit. Soon he realizes it’s not that he wants to keep everything… He just doesn't want to give away anything. Because that means admitting his parents are really gone. 

Tears start to flow. Kat pauses. But Godfrey rushes in, trying to stem the tears with a torrent of words, “I am trying not to cry.”

Kat gently shakes her head.

“You Americans always say that. My Swedish clients never say that. Godfrey, emotions need motion to heal…” 

“Can we hug it out, as you Americans say?”

As they lean in for a big bear hug, Kat’s tall frame engulfing his slight build, the oven dings. Godfrey cheekily chimes in, “The brownies are ready! Now we can eat our emotions! Another American thing!”

Kat doesn’t miss a beat, “You are teaching me all these American skills!”

Their tears turn into belly laughter faster than a race car driver shifting gears.

I cried while writing — and reading and editing and talking about — 

the last few Luminist posts. Some of you did too. Our social norms say that crying is all we do when we experience loss, because sorrow is all we feel. This undersells our complexity, while also missing the subtle interactions and connections between feelings like grief and joy. 

When we try to hold an unpleasant emotion in, it takes up all the space. Joy, gratitude, fulfillment become shells of what they once were because we aren’t able to fully engage with them. We are too busy keeping a lid on what we don’t want to feel. But when sadness, for example, is finally allowed to have its good cry, the next thing it generally wants to do is lay down like a toddler overdue for a nap. Suddenly, the body and psyche aren’t clogged with resistance and tension anymore. They are wide open… 

And what so often fills that space once it’s made? Laughter. Lightness. Relief… filling the cracks of your entire being just as the grief once did. 

I think of the giggle I had with Connor and Kendall, late on our first day without Mike, over never having to squeegee our showers again. I see myself cackling when Toula presented me with my Despot plaque. I remember countless times, just a few days, weeks, months after Mike died, when the laughter erupted out of me. I don’t remember most of the jokes, just the liberation of it. Reality was still grim, but all the tears I had shed had helped me come to terms with that. And now I was coming to terms with the flip side of the coin — I was still very much alive.

It blows my mind that humans respond over and over again to an emotional “breakdown” by riding a updraft straight into pure delight. Could there be a clearer sign that we’re on the right track?

I think this is the secret handshake the universe has arranged for us to heal. Laughter and tears have the same energy — let them both out. When you cry more, you laugh more.

It worked for Godfrey. 

With Kat, Ella, and Johan cheering him on, he slowly but surely sorted through the belongings that were encasing his stalled feelings like cement around a nuclear reactor… and set them all free. 

The episode concludes with all Godfrey’s friends coming together for a celebration of his parents’ lives — something Godfrey was unable to do while he was sick. They tell stories. They cry. They laugh. They toast. They hug.

As the death cleaners are preparing to depart, Godfrey shares one more thing. 

“[During the celebration], I felt my mother and I could hear her laughter. And how proud she was of me... that I endured.” 

There was finally space in Godfrey’s life again, physically and metaphorically, to feel something beyond profound loss. The loss was still there, of course, but suddenly, so was the love. 

As the pastor who married Mike and I wrote in a letter after he learned of Mike’s death… “You get to keep the love.”

But you must make the space to see it. To feel it. To live it.

What about you?

While I'm clearly a big fan of liberation through crying (shocking to all those who knew the old me!), it’s not the only means to this end.

What are the other activities, techniques, practices you have found to liberate emotions trapped in your body and mind… and basement? How do you make space for your natural state — expansion, empowerment, hope?

For example, I also love meditation. I do it almost daily. I’ve also heard heavy-metal singing, top-of-the-lungs shouting, and pillow punching can be quite effective. I’m considering adding them to the rotation… if only to save on tissues. 

To setting ourselves free,

Sue

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I think about honoring Mike a lot. With The Luminist, of course. How I raise our kids, all the time. But also how I speak about him, share him, illustrate him to absolute strangers in a way that lets them feel just a bit of warmth from a soul that burned so bright. As anyone who has lost someone knows, it’s important to get him right. 

Which is why my jaw hit the floor when, out of the blue, I received the text message:

“Front page of WSJ.com today!”

This text greeted me when I returned to my car after a crack-of-dawn Friday morning workout, slinging kettlebells and straining through deadlifts, making sure this 54-year-old body is capable of lifting her roller-bag into the overhead bin. 

I stared at the words. Time stamped 7:01am.

The video dropped? I thought it wouldn’t be until Monday or Tuesday. My stomach dropped to my ankles. 

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

I texted back the work friend who shared the words with me. 

“Have not seen the end product yet! Yikes!” 

He responded, “I learned a new term — view shed!”

Uh boy, that means he not only saw it on the homepage, he watched it. 

With shaky hands, I started the car and let my internal autopilot guide me where I needed to be… Great Falls Park. At stoplights along the way, I looked in my email and saw the note from the Wall Street Journal video producer Nikki sharing the link. I forwarded it on to a few besties — Julie, Luanne, CeCe, Takis, Dave — with an “I can’t bear to watch, but here it is” note. 

By the time I arrived at the park, I had Julie’s response:

The fear, the anxiety I was carrying drained out of me like a water-filled clay pot shot with a pellet gun. Emptied of the nerves, the clay pot shards were still coated with a chalky residue it took me a minute to recognize. It was sadness. I missed Mike. Then I started to cry. 

My initial hesitations about doing the Wall Street Journal video —

once the news article was published and the cat was irrevocably out of the bag — revolved around two things: dishonoring Mike and embarrassing myself. 

My logical brain knew I was in good hands with Nikki (the producer) and Roddy (the videographer). I was confident they would produce something visually stunning, encapsulating the beauty that is the Treehouse. No-brainer there. But I was still worried I’d make myself look bad. And in the process — unintentionally, unknowingly, unforgivably — Mike. 

Though I took to filming like a fish out of water (or perhaps a fish out of water trying to ride a bike), I slowly emerged from my shell under Nikki and Roddy’s patient tutelage. To the point where I found myself climbing up on my couch in my fanciest oxfords (something I often do when no one is looking) right in front of the camera.

Toward the end of the taping day, I was at home enough with the duo that I showed Nikki and Roddy my box of mementos (including the notebook from last week’s post where Kendall re-did my to-do list). I started shuffling through, looking for a specific picture of Mike. Then I saw his precious college-ruled triple-folded letter, titled with a cursive Sweatheart, resting on top of the sought-after photo in its clear protective sleeve. 

I explained what was in the letter. Nikki asked if I was ok to read it. I said absolutely.

Roddy filmed while I used all the intestinal fortitude available to me to steady my voice and get through it without breaking down. (I seriously engaged core muscles I didn’t even know I had. My trainer would be so proud.) I had to keep my composure. Because I wanted the world to hear Mike. I wanted the world to know Mike.

When we were done, we paused in silence for a while. Roddy said, “I don’t think I will ever find love like that.” Nikki and I were both surprised. I leaned in purposefully and intensely, “But why not Roddy? There is no reason you cannot have the same kind of love Mike and I had.” His face went from skeptical to hopeful. 

The last shot of the day was the walk in my backyard meadow. We were catching the golden-hour light gleaming off the green leaves and gnarly tree trunks. I felt comfortable and was riffing about my life without Mike and his overflowing love for us. I lapsed into silence, taking in my tree-filled haven, forgetting about the camera. Then something caught my eye. A baby buck in all his burnished, tan, fuzzy glory was standing right there, looking at us with deep brown eyes. With a gasp, I pointed out our unexpected visitor and we stared at him in awe. 

I like to think it was Mike.

After having a good cry in Great Falls Park,

my close friend Mike called. He’d had the article forwarded to him by one of the analysts that cover our public company. I told him I had not watched it yet and why. He told me not to worry. 

“The deer was the icing on the cake.”

“By the way, they absolutely got the best of Mike because you read his letter. That was him. And then the photos on top of it. You showed how much he truly cared for his family. With just a few sentences, you captured how much he cared.”

With these words, my sadness fully burned away like a morning fog… and from behind it emerged the sparkling, clear-blue-sky inspiration that carries me through the writing process each week.

The words bubbled out of me like a spring, “That was a total unintended consequence, but the best possible outcome of all. I hope people will hear the words from that letter and think ‘I still have time. I want to be the best partner/friend/coworker/etc I can be. I want to make a difference by the way I love and show up and take care of the people around me.’ Like Roddy… It’s not too late. It’s never too late. Because you never know which seemingly small action, like writing a letter, will have an enduring impact!” 

Like I said… I think about honoring Mike a lot.

And, if he could whisper in my ear, what message he would want to leave the world — of hope, of motivation, of inspiration.

This would be it: it’s not too late. You have no idea how some hypothetical letter about an airplane crash that you leave for your spouse is eventually going to make it into a WSJ video and hearten a young videographer to keep chasing his dreams.

We simply have no idea. We don’t know what our most impactful act in this lifetime is going to be. Each action we make — minute or seismic — ripples and ricochets like a wave plowing into a coast of boulders and cliffs. It’s a system too chaotic to predict.

So we don’t give up. We never throw in the towel — “I’ve tried everything! Nothing I do is going to make an impact. I’m resigning myself to Star Wars marathons and Chunky Monkey pints for the rest of my days.”

Just like Mike had no idea his letter to me would be read on the front page of the internet (or close enough), I had no idea that I’d find my purpose (the mystical, elusive, better-than-black-coffee kind) until my husband died one random Tuesday morning.

It’s part of the mystery. And that kind of sucks. Because we want to have a job, a goal, a summit we can climb to the top of, proving we have “won” at life. But once we recover from taking ourselves so seriously, it can be liberating. All we can do is do what we want to do… well. Do it with our whole soul — squeezing every last drop of being and loving into the mundane actions that make up our lives — with no clue which ones will “stick.”

I pulled into my garage,

hung up with Mike and went in search of Kendall. She was tucked into her bed amidst the fallout zone of strewn clothing, tote bags, and mate-less shoes in her crypt-dark room. 

“Will you watch a video with me?”

“What video?” She responded.

“The WSJ one — it just dropped.”

She could tell I was tentative and unsure, abnormal for me.

She sat up with a whoosh of air, patted the bed next to her, and commanded, “SIT DOWN!”

I gathered up the fingernail clippers and nail file taking up the space where I was instructed to sit. She keeps a little keepsake blue velvet box — containing a metal heart with Mike’s ashes — tucked just under her bedside lamp. I put the paraphernalia on top of the box and said, “Hold this, daddy.” Then snuggled in beside her, opened up the iPad, and held my breath. 

For six minutes, we watched the video.

“This turned out great. You were yourself, real and authentic. And that’s what people want to see. Not someone fake or pretending… Daddy would be proud of you,” she said. (And Kendall isn’t one to blow hot air.)

“And that deer at the end was crazy!”

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So tell me,

Do you have an experience of someone touching you with an action, a word, even just a smile? Something that would have seemed insignificant from the outside but meant so much to you?

Or the reverse scenario — did you offer some small act of kindness or respect that turned out to be a big deal for someone else?

And finally, how can you move through today, just a little bit more intentionally, remembering that the ripples you create with each step, each moment of eye contact, each email drafted and sent hold the potential to change lives?

Like the imperceptible butterfly wing flap that creates a hurricane on the other side of the world (but in a good way).

With rippling love,

Sue

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

In 90 days, Kendall and I board a plane for Tulane. I’ll come home after a few days. Kendall will stay. Both of my kids, 11 and 13 when their dad died, will then be in college. I can’t believe it…  WE DID IT.

We made it this far. In one piece! Bruised but not broken. Lost (at times) but eventually found. Connected more than ever to each other and those who have helped us along the way. 

When I shared the good news of Kendall’s college acceptance with my dad last December, he said, “Congrats to Kendall… and well done to you, Mom.”

Well done, Mom? Me?? 

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

This was all Kendall. Earning the grades, shining in her extracurriculars, writing college essays that embodied her life experience. Not a charity case accepted to her university because the admissions committee felt sorry for her — but a truly different kind of kid, shaped by her proximity to loss. 

Not different bad… (We are changing cultural norms around here, so if that was your knee-jerk response, check yourself! Different isn’t always bad!)

Different good. 

Kendall and Connor are independent, indefatigable, and internally prioritized in a way teenagers who have not experienced tragedy just aren’t. Yes, sure, they are melting into a puddle on the floor sometimes (bad boyfriends, bad test grades, bad choices), still doing boneheaded things sometimes (uh… has anyone seen the shower-head some teenager pilfered from my house during a “my-mom’s-away!” party??) and deep, deep, deep in sadness sometimes, missing their dad. 

But they persevere, they course-correct, they come out stronger. And most importantly, when the wins and losses of the moment are over, they look in the rearview mirror and feel empowered by what they are capable of. 

So why was my dad atta-boying me? What had I done to get Kendall — or Connor — into college? Paid the application fees? Drove them to countless university visits? Performed the support-your-kid activities most parents do?

Then I had an epiphany, an a-ha moment, an “oh, I know what he means!” 

What I had done was be a mom during the hardest time in my children’s lives, while also living through the hardest time of my own. I had been the leader of our three-piece band — Kendall on guitar, riffing and riling the crowd, me on keyboard, holding the melody and getting lost in the music, and Connor clearly on the drums, making sure no one loses sight of the rhythm and the beat… with the spotlight of our hearts shining on the empty space where our lead singer used to be. Front and center and gone. 

Although finding my husband unresponsive,

performing chest compressions, and having an ER doc tell me they could not restart Mike’s heart all compete neck-and-neck for the worst moment of my life, they are defeated hands down by the moment I came home to tell the kids their dad was gone. 

That is, was, and will forever be the worst moment of my life.

Everything about it is seared into my memory — the sound of our tan checkered-print couch as Connor and Kendall shifted in their seats, waiting for me to explain why my eyes were so red. The weight and softness of their small hands reaching for mine as I leaned in to tell them the catastrophic news. Confusion. Tears. 

(Another reason I am so thankful to be in my new treehouse and not in that vortex of terrible tactile memories any longer.)

When I literally couldn’t do anything for anyone, I could always show up for them. Yes, to lead them, guide them, support them. But also just to listen to them. To see them. To make and hold space for them to express all of them. 

This looked like:

1 - A walk around the neighborhood with Kendall so she could process. “Well, at least daddy is with Grandma Mary Ann [his mom] in heaven now. She must have really missed him and be happy he is there,” she had said, already so wise at such a young age.

 2 - A car ride with Connor, who dared not look directly at me for fear of melting into tears (again) while he said, “Grandma [my mom] seems to get some peace at church, so maybe I should try going there with her and it might help?”

3 - A sit-down with the kids, doing my best to chart the course ahead for them, “We are going to go through this pain and feel it. Daddy finished the basement and first floor of the house that is YOU, and we are just going to finish off the second floor without him. But he already baked into you all the important stuff. He is part of your foundation.”

4 - Endlessly letting my heart break over Kendall’s forlorn refrain, “I really wish I could have seen him one more time. When he tucked me in, he said to me “I’ll see you in the morning.” 

Excruciating moments of just really, really listening despite the sharp edges of each word… feeling like I was sitting in a heap of broken glass with shards slicing me at all angles. Holding their sorrow while I was holding mine. 

But without the talking and the listening, there is no processing, integrating, absorbing, moving forward.

And moving forward there was a surprising amount of.

Connor sprang into action to become the man of the house. He took out the garbage, anticipated my feelings, and gave me extra hugs. He became the sticky-note-leaver and letter-writer his dad had been.

Kendall channeled Mike’s mad skills at getting things done. I was sitting at the kitchen island when I heard her dump her heavy backpack in the mudroom with a thud. Rounding the corner, her face lit up in a smile upon seeing me. 

“So what did you do today, mom?”

I looked down at my little gray notebook and the grid-printed pages with my to-do list. I’d spent hours on phone calls, emailing, filling out paperwork, and of course also crying. I had not managed to cross one single item off.

I explained an edited version of this to her. She wrinkled up her 11-year-old face with a ‘this will not do’ expression. 

“Ok, give me your notebook. Let’s make a different list.”

In her chunky, elementary-school handwriting, she split my list into long-term to-do’s and things I could get done TODAY. (Honestly, still blows my mind at the simple genius of it.) “Tomorrow when I come home, you will have some of these crossed off,” she encouraged me matter of factly.

And she was right.

Turns out Kendall is right a lot.

One afternoon when she was 13, she sat on the kitchen staircase, a few steps up to get a better view of me while I moved around the kitchen, preparing dinner. Fists under her chin, elbows on her thighs, I could tell she was deep in thought. 

“You know, mom, people are out there living their la-dee-da lives, and when something bad happens to them, they are not going to be able to handle it,” she said, again, matter of factly.

“But I am going to be ready.”

My reply? 

“That’s right, baby, you are. You definitely are.”

Kids, teenagers, young adults are incredible. They haven’t yet been so inundated by (and don’t really listen to) the opinions of adults telling them what they are capable of and what they aren’t that they believe any of it. Instead, they try themselves, challenge themselves, push beyond supposed limits… And they look to the “grown-ups” around them to do the same. 

The way that Kendall and Connor trusted me with every single piece of their shattered hearts — and the way that I rose out of my own tatters to hold them — still feels like a miracle. But in the most human, earthly, profound-in-its-naivety way. 

They didn’t know “better” than to ask me for such a task. And that simplicity of spirit, that innocence of trust made space for me to do what I didn’t know I could. In their young minds, that’s what humans do. They break beyond imagining, and then they heal to be stronger than ever. Just like Harry Potter.

Looking back, only now do I realize that in this way they saved me. 

By simply not even considering that I couldn’t be Superwoman. 

So I became the model to fit their mold. 

And then they broke the mold, expanding beyond it as they grow into young adults themselves.

Why not? They know they are already capable of exceeding everyone’s expectations. Limits can’t contain them.

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

While I write The Luminist as a lighthouse

for anyone searching to find the vibrant life that exists beyond loss, Connor and Kendall have been my lighthouses. My babies-somehow-turned-forces-of-nature shine their message on me in hot, white light: refuse to limit yourself. Even when I’m elbow deep in a vat of Chunky Monkey and on my third Star Wars for the night, who knows what I could do tomorrow. Especially once I emerge from the sugar coma.

Like the height marks on the door post, limits, boundaries, cages of expectations are meant to be outgrown. 

It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being your own ally, finding the best tools for your toolkit, trying them out, course correcting, and making space for you to surprise even yourself.

In 90 days, I become an empty nester. It’s a daunting transition… but with all this Connor & Kendall insight and inspiration floating around in my mind, body, and heart (always make two to-do lists rather than one), I’m ready.

In my own way, I feel like a kid going to college. Full of potential, bursting with ideas, and ready to sign up for way too many extracurricular activities!

Your turn!

Where have you pleasantly surprised yourself by exceeding internal expectations? As small as finishing a task faster than you were expecting, as big as getting an unexpected promotion… Or as left-field as setting the family record in the hotdog eating contest!

Give yourself a pat on the back too.

It’s kind of like the chicken and the egg.

Did Conner & Kendall believe anything is possible because I decided to, for their sakes? Or did I come to believe anything was possible because they showed me the way? Or did we all just figure it out together by standing hand-in-hand at the rim of the smoldering crater where our lives once were… and letting it transform us from the inside out?

I don’t care to figure out the answer — even if I could. I like the mystery of it.

(Though I say with certainty that we wouldn’t have made it here without the endless open-hearted listening to each others’ “feels”… but that’s a topic for a future post!)

Whatever happened, I’ll take the pat on the back from my dad and raise my gaze to the horizon — letting confidence deepen my breath and a half-smile perch on my lips. For my family, always, but a little bit for me too. Just because I’m curious to see what I can do.

With no expectations… and no limits,

Sue

P.S. If you resonated with this post, I think you’d also like:

* Sue Deagle, Despot (part 1): The empowerment of not taking yourself too seriously.

* Sue Deagle, Despot (part 2): A new definition of personal power — rooted in humor and humanity.

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

Last Sunday, I found myself reading my own words.

“Sharing my story has not equated to more suffering nor embarrassment nor feelings of being exposed. In fact, I am suffering less. Much less. I am galvanized, energized, mobilized. It is cathartic beyond imagining to make meaning from my loss by helping others.”

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

Followed by words from a relative stranger:

“Although my situation is quite different from Sue Deagle’s (and I do not equate a disease diagnosis with the loss of a loved one), I can relate completely to this initial feeling of sharing my story. It took many years to tell people what was happening to me, but when I did, it was a tremendous relief.”

Chris Anselmo, writer of Hello, Adversity, highlighted something very important in the conversation about vulnerability: 

The relief you feel when you let your pain be seen. When you let yourself be seen. When you share your truth without expectation… just because it feels so good to stop hiding.

Last week, my soliloquy was about vulnerability. This week, it’s about vulnerability’s irreplaceable sidekick: sharing. And how this emotional Batman & Robin duo creates one of the most powerful forces for good in the entire universe: connection.

Let’s start at the beginning: humans are social creatures.

But that requires more than just hunting and gathering and snuggling for warmth together.

“We are the only animal on the planet… that goes out of its way to share the contents of our minds with others, even when there’s no immediate gain,” Dr. Bill von Hippel explains in an interview with Dr. Vivek Murthy, recorded in Dr. Murthy’s eye-opening book, Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World.

“We do this because it helps us get on the same page and allows us to understand one another better, which has longer-term advantages,” Dr. von Hippel summarizes.

In other words, our vulnerable exposure (yes, exactly, the uncomfortable kind) comes with evolutionary rewards. It creates tight-knit, empathetic communities with shared values that are more likely to survive a brutal winter than a grudgingly-gathered gaggle of rugged individualists. 

The proof is in the space where the pudding should be: loneliness.

We may not always identify it as such, but according to Dr. Murthy, we can hear it in phrases like, “I’m just so tired.” “I feel like I’m carrying the weight of the world.” “It feels like I’m always helping someone, but when I need help, there’s no one there...”

Similar to hunger, thirst, or exhaustion, there are detrimental impacts to missing a vital nutrient. Loneliness, Dr. Murthy explains, has been linked to host of negative health outcomes from heart disease (cough cough) to immune disorders to Alzheimer's. I don’t share this to scare you but to reiterate that connection, vulnerability, and sharing are important to everyone, not just the tree-hugging crowd.

Then, in case all of that wasn’t enough, Dr. Murthy explains that extended loneliness can trigger us into a state of “hypervigilance”. Now, not only are we lonely, but we are so lonely that we become a little too aware of social threats (feeling left out, passive-aggressive slights, the direction of someone’s feet while they talk to you.) To the point where we start to pick up on signals that people don’t like us… when those signals aren’t really there. Exhausted, we withdraw even further, deciding (incorrectly!) the problem is us after all.

(If my kids weren’t already past the worst of puberty social anxiety, I’d be texting them nonstop to explain this to them!! Probably will, just in case…)

So if the initial loneliness is bad, the extended loneliness makes it worse… While piled on top of the wounds being human inflicts on us all — grief, trauma, illness, hardship of so many kinds — that we are fighting to overcome without saying a word.

Understanding came crashing down on me.

First, why connection is the special sauce that makes everything (truly everything) better. We are hardwired to seek it out; it fulfills us in a way nothing else can. “Happiness is only real when shared” to quote a man who learned the hard way…

Second, why it took my husband literally dying for me to discover the first part.

Our evolutionary instincts are at war with our modern impulses. The first wants us to belong, the second is worried about us fitting in. (Brené Brown explains the difference in The Gifts of Imperfection). And we are stuck in the middle, sinking deeper into the loneliness quagmire that both promise to deliver us out of… but only one actually can.

A devil on one shoulder, an angel on the other. Which is which? Unfortunately, we can tell because the devil is yelling.

We have to push through literal nonsense in our own prefrontal cortex — “no one will want to be around you, everyone will think you’re just looking for attention, they’ll think you’re weak, you’ll be alone, you can do this all by yourself and don’t need help” — to find the promised land of connection.

It took 48 years of me following these LOUD directions with little to no success, plus an Everest-sized helping of grief that wasn’t going to pass itself tissues, to decide to try something else.

But while our biological need for connection is embedded in our bones, the signals to stay quiet and private surround us on all sides. This isn’t a battle we will fight once and look back on with pride. We will be fighting to stay on the unerring path to connection for the rest of our lives.

Which will be a little bit easier if we start by admitting that, even once we know better, we will walk backwards over and over again.

This week’s anecdote takes place, unsurprising, on a business trip.

I was visiting our hardworking teams at Fort Irwin in Barstow, CA (aka a moonscape accidentally located on the high desert of Planet Earth). 

One leader, upon seeing me, purposefully strode forward and extended his hand.

“Nice to meet you, Sue… and congrats on the house!” he said.

“The house?” I responded, genuinely perplexed. 

“Yes, the house! And The Luminist, I read that too.”

Oh jeez. He had seen the Wall Street Journal article AND my private work. He knew about Mike. He knew about me. I was laid bare, vulnerable and exposed. I swallowed, trying to ignore the unpleasant sensation of cold tentacles reaching up from my gut and curling around my heart. My worlds were officially colliding. Work-life balance? More like work-life train crash.

Before I could briskly shake his hand and get the hell out of there, he continued, “You and I have a common experience. I lost my wife 14 years ago.”

In an instant, those cold tentacles turned warm, tender, and welcoming — in their embrace, my heart melted. Though I was still talking to a stranger, all my distrust and wariness wafted away on the dry desert air. Why had I reacted as if this person was an enemy spy, who now had all the dirt he needed to blackmail me? He was a man who had lost his wife. And was coming to share that with me. To see me and be seen.

I squeezed his shoulder, feeling us sink past our titles and work uniforms and secret schemes of espionage to stand together as two humans, honoring both the struggle and the strength of the other.

I wasn’t alone in my suffering. In fact, I’ll never be alone in suffering (as Anselmo reminded me in his welcoming post). It’s part of the human experience. And the more I remember that, the easier it is to open myself, “expose” myself, and reap the rewards of sharing and connecting.

Struggle connects us. And hiding it pulls us apart.

(I have written about my personal discovery of this before, but dang, it feels good to have science validate my lived experience. Also… I needed the reminder.)

Unfortunately, the modern world keeps coming up with new, exciting ways for us to hide — to airbrush our blemishes, curate our online profiles, create the hologram of a life that is enviable. I can’t blame us for trying it. It looked fun! But now can we admit it isn’t working?

As Dr. Murthy explains, “To be real is to be vulnerable, and this takes courage, especially if we believe that others will like us more if we hide or distort who we truly are. Technology can promote this belief by making it easy to pose online as someone braver, happier, better looking, and more successful than we really feel. 

“These poses, in fact, are a form of social withdrawal. They may let us pretend that we’re more accepted, but the pretense only intensifies our loneliness.”

It’s part of the reason I’m so grateful to have found a community on Substack — to name a few — who openly discuss their struggles in order to learn from them, while simultaneously sharing their learning with all of us, and creating space for us to be messy and growing too.

Because I’ll take any reminder I can get that I’m not alone. That I’m not broken. That, in fact, I’m on my hero’s journey.

With this reframe, hiding becomes unimaginable, and sharing becomes refreshingly impersonal.

Why would I hide something as intensely exquisite as the rawness of real life?

I’d love to hear from you.

What are the experiences that have shaken you awake from the modern hive mind to embrace the ancestral knowing of connection and sharing? When can you share easily and naturally? What locks down your clam shell?

If replying to these questions (or posting your responses publicly) is a struggle, you’re welcome to use this space as practice. There are no “wrong” answers. Just the opportunity to share ourselves in our full, complicated, messy, human, relatable glory.

And to be accepted as we are.

In struggle and in strength,

Sue

P.S. The Wall Street Journal video folks were here on Monday for a 12-hour day! The process was amazing and exhausting. I hope to share their great finished product with you in the next week or two. Stay tuned!

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

Back in 2021, my architect Robert asked

if I would be ok publishing the home we built together — my healing-oasis, nature-temple, connection-generator “treehouse”. It had been just as much a labor of love for Robert as for me. And as a business person, I understood (and wanted!) the positive impact publicity would have on his practice.

Yet I hesitated. Our privacy standards around the Deagle household rivaled the national security apparatus surrounding us here in the suburbs of Washington, DC. (Langley, anyone?) We didn’t do social media. We didn’t publish pictures. We kept it all under wraps. Private.

But as the months and eventually years snuck past since Robert’s ask, a different timeline began unfolding in my mind. If the house were published, maybe I could use the publicity to tell my story. And maybe my story would mean something, inspire someone, free my idea of changing the conversation around death from the echo-chamber of my mind (and occasional conversations with the lady helping me find hiking boots at REI) to impact the world at large. 

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

Twenty months later, with trepidation, I agreed. 

And another four months later, my home and my story were published in the WSJ. (Shoutout to Robert’s publicist, Andrew Huff, and the WSJ reporter, Nancy Keates, for believing this story was worth sharing!)

Reaction to the article was swift. Not even an hour after it was published online (and still 24 hours before it would be available in print) I began getting emails. Texts. LinkedIn requests. Substack subscriptions. Eventually even letters (physical letters!) from co-workers, friends, and strangers. From people wanting to sell me things or ask me on a date (wait, what?). 

Most of the feedback was heartfelt and appreciative: 

* “Thank you for sharing something so personal.”

* “Thank you for being so brave and telling your story.”

* “A highly moving, courageous, and inspiring article.”

* “I am nine months into losing my spouse. Thank you for showing me what the future can look like.”

* “Divorce may not be the same as death but your story makes me think I can make it through this terribly painful time.”

* “You are an inspiration.”

Before all else, I want to thank everyone who wrote to me, messaged me, posted comments here and on LinkedIn. 

I see you. I see you seeing there is another way to do this “grief thing”. And when I say that I am honored to be your lighthouse in whatever storm you find yourself in — for a moment or for decades — know that I am expressing the burning-bright truth of my heart.

While the outpouring of gratitude from the WSJ article

has left me humming and bouncing and honestly over-stimulated, I was also surprised. What I shared in that article did not feel brave or inspiring. It felt essential. Crucial. Utterly necessary. 

It felt like speaking the truth. 

So why is it such a big deal to share personal truth in today’s day and age? Especially when it’s about loss and grief — an initiation by fire that few humans manage to escape.

After speaking to my mom, my friend Ken, my daughter — really anyone who would talk to me about it — here are the main reasons we came up with for why people are afraid to share intimate, difficult truths:

* Exposing vulnerability.

* Feeling further sorrow from reliving events.

* Saying something wrong and making someone else suffer more.

Not so long ago, these concerns (piled on top of “privacy mode”) had stopped me from sharing my story. But obviously something has given way. It took the WSJ article reaction and a flight to the Middle East and back for me to realize just what.

Simply put, the seemingly immovable tectonic plates of my priorities have, well, moved. It was such an unmeasurably slow process that I hardly noticed… until they shifted so much that, out of the blue, I emailed Robert back with a “let’s do it.”

On this other side, I realize I will never value appearances, staying in my comfort zone, protecting others’ comfort zones, nor only experiencing and expressing “positive” emotions like I once did.

(Which is also why I’m finally breaking my grief silence on LinkedIn. Terrifying and exhilarating!)

I have been too changed. Too moved by the good I can do by living my life in the opposite way.

Today, the desires of my “small self” (based on fear) are no match for the dreams of my “big self” (based on expansion, inspiration, imagination).

I have gotten out of my own way.

But I can’t take credit for it. It was loss and grief that taught me what really matters… and what simply doesn’t.

Despite what I initially feared,

sharing my story has not equated to more suffering nor embarrassment nor feelings of being exposed. In fact, I am suffering less. Much less. I am galvanized, energized, mobilized. It is cathartic beyond imagining to make meaning from my loss by helping others…

By planting seeds in your mind, dear reader, that you can make it through. 

As Brené Brown explains in only the way she can, “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, and creativity. It is the source of hope, empathy, accountability, and authenticity.

“If we want greater clarity in our purpose or deeper and more meaningful spiritual lives, vulnerability is the path.”

Now, I can’t imagine choosing the flimsy illusion of self-protection — by hiding my story, airbrushing my wounds, pretending to be Superwoman — over splaying my heart open to receive support and offer solace… To relieve others of their suffering and isolation. Their false belief that this is how it is; that they don’t have a choice.

My purpose, my impact, my vibrant life have far too much potential to hobble them in hopes of hiding something that anyone can discover through google.

Looking back, only now do I realize how far I’ve come… and therefore how far we can all go, individually and collectively!

“Something has been lost here,

vanished beyond living memory: a fluency in the experiences that have patterned humanity since we began.

“We have surrendered the rites of passage that used to take us from birth to death, and in doing so have rendered many parts of our existence unspeakable. We witness them anyway, separately, mutely, in studied isolation from our friends and neighbors who are doing the same. Centuries of knowledge are lost in this silence, generations of fellowship.“ - Katherine May in Enchantment.

The article, me, my story, my willingness to tell it seems exceptional… But why? Because we’ve lost the art of talking about life. About the things that really happen. About how to get through them. Face to face. With each other. 

Of course we are afraid of this conversation… No one ever taught us:

* It is natural to experience these hard and painful emotions.

* Words we might use to express them or console others experiencing them.

* We will survive.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t figure it out anyway. Stubbornness has already brought many of us this far!

Let’s re-create the muscle memory of talking about loss. Let’s learn how to sit with each other and let the tears flow. Let’s practice walking through loss with those we love, as a community, a society, heck… a nation and a world.

Like the synchronized movements of a Tai Chi gathering, our approach to loss should mimic that flow. Not one person off by themselves flailing through moves no one ever taught them, awkward, exposed, alone.

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

I’m not that different from you.

Yes, I have shared something few share. But my tectonic priorities are only a few millimeters from yours… just far enough to tip the scales in the direction of opening, sharing, connecting.

That’s all it takes. A straw to break the camel’s desire to be. so. strong. and. never. admit. vulnerability!!!

So let’s zoom in — from the big picture to the straw. To the little shifts that bring us closer to who we want to be.

When you find yourself sliding into a mental or emotional space you don’t want to be in (defensive and shut-down for example), what are your hacks for pulling yourself out of it and into your courageous, authentic, unapologetic self?

It can be about vulnerability or whatever else feels brave and bright for you these days.

For example when I feel my body tensing with the desire to self-protect, either against my own vulnerabilities or the suffering of others, I uncross my arms.

I leave my actual, physical heart exposed.

I even lean in a few degrees.

It is a deliberate, awkward, borderline painful effort but by shifting my body, my mind starts to follow suit. I remember that I am not in danger, that vulnerability will not expose me to pain but actually open me to connection and fulfillment and purpose.

It helps me to focus on these small steps, letting them pile up over time… so I eventually end up taking a big step without even realizing it.

Slowly but surely,

Sue

P.S. The Wall Street Journal is making a short video

about me and my treehouse! The film crew is coming Monday! I am unsurprisingly very excited and very nervous. The way I like it… feeling it all!

Anyway, wish me luck! And I’ll be sure to share it with all of you as soon as it’s published.

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

We are a culture that lives mostly in our minds, rather than our skins. We solve complex problems. We interact via zoom. We lay awake at night thinking anxious thoughts. We scroll and scroll and scroll. 

We’ve been taught that this is the “right” way to live. Mind over matter. Except… when things are good.

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

When things are good we’re encouraged to be in our bodies. To dance and sing and laugh as if we’ve been here all along. (And then post the evidence to social media.) As soon as things go south though, disconnect, scold yourself that it could be worse, and push through without complaining (or processing or venting or expressing.)

Before Mike died, I followed the mind-over-matter directive religiously.

I had a smile plastered on my face 87% of the time, but my outward show of happiness only extended an inch deep. Underneath… didn’t know, didn’t want to know. I reminded myself, friends, family to focus on the positive, to get control of themselves, compartmentalize and move on. Heck, I was so repressed that I wouldn’t even listen to sad songs for fear of “catching” the bad vibes.

Such was my previous incarnation, Sue the Hard Charger.

When I look back at her, I can’t help but smile sadly. She had no idea what she was missing. Luckily, I found it. Or it found me. When I was stripped of the ability to cherry-pick the good emotions from the bad, I realized I hadn’t been making the choices I thought I had. 

I wasn’t experiencing some… I was experiencing none. 

In comparison to what came next, life was a slog from one not-quite-fulfilling achievement to the next. I kept waiting for some level of success to crack open my shell and finally allow in the radiance of joy and delight and contentment that I was sure was just around the corner (and pretended to already have — fake it til you feel it!).

Well, my shell finally did crack and I’m pleased to report that now all these feelings come visit me regularly! All I had to do was cry like a baby for several months.

Someone who actually knows what they are talking about has confirmed I’m not full of baloney.

In 2014, trauma researcher and psychiatrist Bessel A. van der Kolk came out with The Body Keeps The Score and immediately revolutionized the way we understand the body’s role in storing trauma, processing emotions, and overcoming mental health disorders.

His research illuminates just how futile “mind over matter” is when it comes to emotional (and therefore mental) health. “No matter how much insight and understanding we develop, the rational brain is basically impotent to talk the emotional brain out of its own reality,” van der Kolk explains.

Besides it being ineffectual, the mind-over-matter strategy can actually work against our goal of vibrant, meaningful lives. In one of so many mind-blowing experiments with veterans, van der Kolk discovers that in an effort to stifle the lingering dread and terror associated with their PTSD, participants had managed to shut down areas of the brain that are “responsible for registering the entire range of emotions and sensations that form the foundation of our self-awareness, our sense of who we are.”

They “deadened their capacity to feel fully alive,” he summarizes.

Thankfully, the entire book isn’t so bleak. 

The solutions van der Kolk offers are simple but weirdly radical in our mentalist culture. Basically, we have to stop running away from the “negative” feelings, and instead meet any internal sensation or emotion (tightening, hardening, expansion, relaxation, shiver of dread or of pleasure) with — drum roll please — acceptance!

“Neuroscience research shows that the only way we can change the way we feel is by becoming aware of our inner experience and learning to befriend what is going inside ourselves.”

He goes on, “Once you start approaching your body with curiosity rather than with fear, everything shifts.”

There’s no good and no bad emotions. There’s just you. You don’t have to enjoy it all, but if you try to repeatedly jettison any feeling— with toxic positivity or “suck it up buttercup” or Netflix binges — it’ll just continue to haunt you from your subconscious.

“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information [from yourself], you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know.”

Aka, feel what you feel.

Before Mike died, I rarely cried. 

I used to wear that restraint like a Miss America sash — with a silly misplaced pride. But when the rubber met the road (and I was faced with more emotion than I thought any human capable of processing), I had to release control.

My carefully constructed compartments, avoidance and distraction techniques, and menacingly chipper inner dialogue… all crumbled.

And thank god they did. Just like van der Kolk predicted, my mind, even after all those years of being supposedly trained to prevail over the matter of my body, was useless to dam the roiling ocean of my emotions. The rising tide of grief breached first the beach, then the storm walls, and finally flooded every nook and cranny of my being. There was nothing I could do but let my body’s natural response take over… and sob.

We fear going down into the uncontrollable-crying abyss because we cannot see the ladder leading back out. But we don’t exit the abyss the same way we entered.

We don’t go back to where we were, we enter into a new space entirely. And we can only see the trap door that’ll lead us out once we’ve allowed the emotion we’ve been trying to contain to flow… and carry us with it.

The emotion is not the obstacle. It is the waterslide. 

I’m not saying get stuck in the emotion. I’m not saying dump it all on whomever has the misfortune of being closest to you. I’m saying trust it is arising for a reason. Trust that it’s on your side. Trust it has somewhere important to take you. Trust that it needs to be allowed to move you. And trust that it is about you and for you, rather than anyone else.

Since that fateful day, I’ve done a lot of ugly, deep crying with the cool tile of the bathroom floor pressed against my cheek. A lot.

Gradually I have learned to trust my body’s instinct to start bawling — trust that the breakdown is part of the process, and trust that a not-insignificant amount of relief will follow. 

And not your standard “so glad that all worked out alright” relief. Because obviously, in the case of loss and grief, that’s not an option. But relief nonetheless.

The waterslide’s path to that other side goes like this (at least for me):

* Utter release. No more fighting or containing or controlling.

* Purely existing in the truth of my wrecked reality — whether it’s the loss of Mike or just a particularly fruitless and fractured day.

* The full admittal that “THIS FEELS SUCKY.”

* Tension I hadn’t realized I was holding in my chest and shoulders and jaw and belly dissolves.

* Some more crying, just to make sure I got it all.

* Then, like fog lifting, I find myself in relief. In peace. And acceptance. Even sometimes forgiveness. 

I don’t have to be at peace with the situation, but I have found peace through release in my body. Through no longer resisting the storm surge of sobs. And that makes facing reality easier — because I’m no longer also at war with myself.

My body continues to astound me with all the ways it offers relief from my buzzing mind.

I touch unfurling baby leaves and am pulled out of work rumination to marvel at the quiet genius of mother nature.

I slip into my breath and end up grinning at how dang good it feels to pull back my shoulders as I inhale, and then release them (and then some) as I sigh out a long exhale.

I dance and weep and hug everyone at my niece’s wedding, letting the celebration of new love crack my heart open to the effervescent, impermanent, oh-so-dear present moment.

Sensing — whether it be the early morning Potomac air or the knots in my neck created by work stress or the part of my heart that will always be broken — connects me to my whole self (brain to heart to toes) while allowing me to pause and be present in the moment. Whenever I feel stretched thin, off my game, or about to lose it, I know this is what I need. Because it’s the place where I will always feel both safe to relax and capable of facing any challenge: at home in my body.

In this way, permission to feel is permission to be ourselves.

And permission to be ourselves turns us into our best ally rather than our worst enemy. 

And then everything gets a thousand times better.

Let’s take a moment to feel together.

What are your favorite body/sensing/feeling activities? Specifically the ones that bring you closer to yourself. Hiking, gardening, journaling, golfing, go-kart racing, a cappella singing, creating art, going on a long drive, catching up with a friend? 

What are the activities (that we all succumb to sometimes, no point denying it) that pull us farther from ourselves? For me, it’s Netflix binging, drinking that second vodka gimlet, or absolutely refusing to cry when I know it will make me feel so much better!

Finally, for my overachievers: Is there an emotion that has been lingering beneath the surface for some time? Anxiety. Stress. Anger. Sadness. Can you find a way to befriend it as van der Kolk recommends, in the comments or in private? Or if that is too much today, just admit it is there and it’s ok to be there?

After all the grief, I refuse to miss a moment of life.

So I drove out to Erin & Matt’s wedding by myself last Saturday, eagerly anticipating seeing old family, meeting new family, and embarrassing Erin with stories from when she was little. (She had the ROUNDEST toes. They were like little tiny blueberries! Otherworldly soft and squishy.)

Then I felt something. Something I didn’t want to feel… A feather-light uneasiness sliding up from the depths of my belly. A question took shape in my mind. Would watching this new love unfold fill me with that old gut-wrenching sadness over the love I lost? I didn’t honestly know the answer…

All I knew is that whatever feelings showed up, I’d let them flow through as the harbingers of vibrant living I have learned them to be… and it would be more than ok. It would be technicolor.

Did I shed some tears? You bet. Were they all happy? Close enough. Did I reach for my go-to coping mechanisms to help me through — a bear hug from my brother-in-law and a solo tour of the sunset-glowing property? But of course!

A new love just began. My old love still lives on. And I live in my body and mind to experience every minute of it.

And that is what makes me so alive.

With every atom of my being,

Sue

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

This past Easter weekend, we smashed some eggs.  

After coloring the shells with crayons, dye, and glitter, we gathered around the table for a family tradition. As my Russian Grandma Tillie taught us, two participants face off (egg off?), pointy ends of the eggs tapping quickly against each other to see whose breaks first. 

We talk an unbelievable amount of smack during these bouts. We do victory laps. We pound our chests. And we recount previous bouts in previous years with family members who are no longer here.

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

My mom chimed in, “Remember how Tillie used to cheat by wrapping her meaty fist around the egg so you’d hit her fingers first instead of the egg and lose?” 

I smiled. How could I forget that old babushka smiling sweetly and resolutely denying she ever did any such thing? How could I forget her sneaking me a box of Peanut Butter Captain Crunch whenever I visited the grocery store where she worked as the deli lady. How could I forget how she piled me and my friends dangerously high in the back of her sedan to take us out for ice cream? How could I forget how she would fall asleep sitting up on the couch, not spilling a drop of coffee from the mug in her hand?

Her memory, whenever it bubbles up in my consciousness, fills me with gratitude and fondness. But this warmth of feeling is not generated merely by remembering. It also owes its strength to the power of forgetting.

In the years after Mike died, I forgot a lot.

Initially, my fading ability to remember what day-to-day life was like when he was alive saddened me beyond words. 

I remembered the big occasions, milestones, and some soft and tender moments. I certainly remembered the love. But I forgot the feeling of having him around. The mundane mornings and uneventful evenings. The drug store runs and the walks around the neighborhood. The bill paying and the nap taking. I still knew (and know today) the impression of him, but the stark reality of his daily existence continuously trickled like water out my hands, no matter how hard I smushed them together.

Even if you haven’t lost someone close, you know a version of this feeling. It’s visiting a snow-capped and tree-filled mountain range, hiking its trails, swimming its lakes, camping its valleys. Your senses are full of pine needles and bird calls and sun and shade. The chill when you get out of the lake, the sting of campfire smoke in your eyes, the smell of your old sleeping bag… It’s at your fingertips. It’s undeniable. It’s not always pleasant. You don’t worry about remembering or forgetting it. 

But then you depart. You steal glances of the fading mountain outline in the rearview mirror as you drive away. The details — the good, the bad, the utterly mundane — slip away. Only an overarching impression of wild beauty remains.

And if you have lost someone close… You know the fear that accompanies the forgetting. The desperation. You will never add  a new memory of them (which is why stories are such a gift when consoling). So we try to hold onto every single memory we have. We want to stay lost in the trees, debilitated by the thought of never returning.

But it’s the view of the forest that will save us. That will allow us to know and remember the love of the past… while setting us free to experience the present. In other words, grieve.

“Forgetting is required for emotional well-being.”

“… for letting go of resentments, neurotic fears, and hurtful experiences that fester. Too much memory or too little forgetting imprisons with pain,” Scott A. Small, neuroscientist and Alzheimer researcher, explains in his book, Forgetting: The Benefits of Not Remembering.

According to Small, aspects of forgetting are natural, nurturing, and needed. Forgetting shapes our experiences into a useful story while whittling away our fears, our regrets, our resentments with a “memory chisel”. We are unconsciously “sculpting” our memories so we can move forward.  

“Memory is not a museum of personal history, rather a gallery of memory art,” Small summarizes. 

To remember the truth of someone is to forget the details.

To honor their memory is to release your resentments.

To grieve them is to let the flawed human melt away to reveal the legend.

In this way, the memories of life with Mike now have an intense, larger-than-life essence to them. The feeling of being loved and loving him. Witnessing his devotion to the kids. His strong and slender hands.

I have an even purer love for Mike now than I did when he was alive. How could I not? I see him more clearly. The contractions of our humanity that used to get in the way have been forgotten. (Weren’t you supposed to pick up the dry cleaning? The milk? The kids??)

I have traded in the memory of his humanness for the radiance of his spirit.

Grandma Tillie too. The grievances my mother had with her (as any daughter has with any mother) have long faded away. She’s able to remember her  tough-as-nails mom with fondness rather than bitterness. She accepts Tillie’s shortcomings, knowing that she did the best she could with what she had. She focuses on all Tillie could and did give her, rather than what was lacking.

In other words, my mother is not trapped by the memories of her mother. She is only gifted by them.

When The Luminist was still in the single-digit post numbers,

I sent Leona (my beloved collaborator and editor!) a draft of a post breaking down compassion with an elaborate (and indecipherable) metaphor of a diving platform. She knocked out a rewrite but neither of us were feeling it. I took another crack. She took another crack. Still no “undercurrent" was appearing, no holistic message, nothing that was worthy of you, dear reader.

Finally, on Thursday night (when we are usually buttoning things up and doing the voiceover), we decided to bail. After all the hours spent, words written, thoughts discarded, the entire thing went into the trash. We pulled out a back-up post and called it a day. 

(I’m really new at this writing game… I am way better at speaking! Hint hint, wink wink.)

I was worried. Super worried. Would the next post be this awful? Maybe I didn’t have what it takes. How can I put Leona through that again? 

Then the next post happened. And the next. And the next. We let ourselves move on. We didn’t get stuck fussing about “what went wrong.” We stayed present. We let the past fade. And suddenly we are here at post #23. 

These posts are never easy. But they are worth it. So I’m glad I forget. Hanging on to the memory of the compassion-post-debacle would have hamstrung my way forward. It might have even ended The Luminist… Thankfully, my brain is damn good at applying the memory chisel. Now when I look back, I mostly remember how Leona and I rallied to come up with something beautiful for that week. How we didn’t settle for publishing a post neither of us liked. How we started again the next week knowing that “we can do hard things.”

As that experience fades into the background — like the outline of those mountains in the rearview mirror — I move forward every week… wiser thanks to the past but not crippled by it.

What about you?

I’m not going to ask you what you want to forget. We don’t need to put that down in writing. Instead, what do you want to remember?

What is the essence of an experience, a time in your life, a relationship, a person that you choose to bring into sharp relief… Not because it’s 100% accurate or perfect, but because it allows you to still love and still live.

To the forgotten,

Sue

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

On the day Mike died, I had visitors. I don’t mean family, who gathered together in mutual consolation. I don’t mean close friends, who gave us space. I mean… acquaintances. People in our solar system but not our immediate orbit. 

A mom we knew from the kids’ school showed up ashen-faced and jittery in my driveway. I happened to be in the garage, collecting myself in a private moment. 

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

Seeing me, she rushed forward, grabbing my arm. 

“Sue! I’m so sorry. I could never do this… what you are doing right now. I would never survive.”

I was too lost in the fog of shock to think of anything polite or strategic to say. All I could manage was honesty.

“You’d be surprised what you’re capable of.”

I probably would have thought the same thing in her shoes. 

Whether it is one of our brains’ nonsensical defense mechanisms or a culturally-inherited belief, most of us are convinced that surviving our worst tragedies isn’t a sure thing. You can tell because the “lucky ones” end up hosting talk shows where the rest of us convene to learn their secrets of survival.

Not surprisingly, according to someone who actually studies loss and trauma, science doesn’t support this narrative.

I read Dr. George Bonanno's first book — The Other Side of Sadness — with a ferocious intensity. I was an airplane crash survivor wandering the desert, despairing that I’d never find water… and this book quenched my thirst. Its premise was simple and life-giving: grieving is natural and normal, and so is recovering. 

Along with some unexpected words from a close friend, this book gave me permission to set my sights not just on surviving, but on thriving.

In 2022, Bonanno came out with a broader and deeper discussion of resilience in his next book, The End of Trauma. I dove into it head first, no longer as a wretch dying of thirst, but as a crusader, galvanized to learn the secrets of resilience, healing, prospering, and vibrant living.

In this book, Bonanno re-writes the above-mentioned narrative that “adverse experiences” cripple many of us, while also debunking common coping myths, including:

* brushing trauma aside

* the suck-it-up-buttercup method

* smearing it with a thick coat of toxic positivity, spiritual bypassing, or “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”

* you either have the resilience gene or you don’t — like red hair or actually being fine with five hours a sleep a night

Rather, Bonanno democratizes resilience. We can all learn it.

Bonanno asserts that having a flexibility mindset (optimism about the future, confidence in your ability to cope, and a willingness to think about threats as challenges) gives us a conviction that says, “I will find a way to deal with this challenge.”

This mindset then allows us to grieve, process, hibernate, cope, curse the heavens however we need to when hardship hits… while simultaneously knowing that we will make it to the other side.

Or as my friend says, “I have survived 100% of my toughest days so far. I will get through this one too.”

Around two-thirds of us will have a “resilience trajectory,” as Bonanno puts it.

We survive our adverse event and move ahead. (In a related subject close to my heart, 83% of deployed military members show a resilience trajectory according to one study Bonanno references. And surprisingly, 81% after combat.)

If we are good at practicing self-care, self-nurturing, self-compassion, self-respect… if we are curious, joyful, optimistic, hopeful, patient, spiritual, then we are resilient… right? Not quite. 

Here one of our favorite Luminist concepts comes in — paradox. Bonanno says that these are all great qualities to have, and they contribute some to resilience, but surprisingly, not more than 50%

Huh? 

Bonanno’s research suggests that the flexibility mindset turns into resilience when taken to the next level… Aka put into action.

It’s not just what you have! It’s how you use it ;).

This happens when we take our healing into our own hands — testing what works and what doesn’t — without getting discouraged and giving up.

* We try a coping skill.

* We feel like 100%, certified, grade-A crap.

* We scrap it and try a different coping skill.

We don’t attach the "failure" to our identity. The coping strategy was not a good match for this moment (or "context” as Bonanno puts it). We did an experiment and learned something from it. Now we will do another.

Turns out it’s not you. It’s your coping mechanism.

Because I’m a girl who learns by example (and assumes everyone else does too), let me share a few of my own with you.

Netflix suppression & distraction.

In the first year of mourning when I hit overload, my coping strategy was a stiff drink (discreetly poured out of the kids’ sight) and a Star Wars mini-marathon. It gave me a respite from the swirling anxiety and dread of the unknown and endless well of missing Mike… just for a little bit. 

As I’ve described in a previous post, part of processing loss is allowing time for restoration. Like how winter makes way for spring. We need to shut down for a bit, letting our minds and our souls reset. Apparently Chewbacca’s ululations were my ticket to that mindless peace. Consistently, I would zone back in during the closing credits of Return of the Jedi feeling more anchored to the present moment, rather than lost in pain of the past or fear of the future. 

So even though I am a flag-waving member of the Feel Your Feelings! Club, my Star Wars cocktail hours were a surprisingly successful coping mechanism. Now, if that had turned into an every-evening endeavor instead of a few Fridays a month, or made me feel worse when I came back to reality, I would have needed to re-assess.

Suppression and distraction worked for me in that moment. 

As I gained strength and momentum in my healing process, I noticed that my once dear Yoda & vodka ritual didn’t have the same effect. I would come out feeling drained and dazed rather than grounded. So I moved on to other strategies.

The same strategy that works in one moment may not work in the next. 

Context context context.

Battlefield perspective shift.

Along with successful coping moments, I had plenty of face-plants from coping choices gone wrong…  

On the first anniversary of Mike’s death, I was torn between being active and chilling out. Honoring his loss in some grandiose way or pretending it wasn’t happening at all. Staying busy or staying prone. 

I took the day off.

The kids wanted to go to school so I had until 3:30 to myself. It was too much freedom to not do some grand gesture. (I tend to default to go-big-or-go-home when a quiet afternoon reading by the fire would do.) After some thought, I decided to take the 90-minute drive to Gettysburg. Wouldn’t seeing our nation's most profound, bloody, history-pivoting battlefield memorial put death into perspective? My one death (Mike) vs tens of thousands? 

I got the kids off to school, packed a lunch, poured coffee into my hydroflask, and headed north.

Straight out of the gate I found myself on a slippery slope. Seeing buses of white-haired senior citizens reminded me of all the ages Mike would never achieve… and the ages I would be without him. Next, the sheer volume of death reported in the exhibits felt both overwhelming and detached from the real, individual death my heart was still breaking over.

I headed outside to walk the battlefield and see the monuments in an attempt to salvage the day. Fresh air! Trees! These were some of my favorite bag-of-tricks coping mechanisms. I walked and walked and walked. Monument after monument, name after name. SO much death... Too much death to honor what each individual life had been, had meant. Mismatch.

Ok, enough. Time to abort.

I jumped in my car, did a Dukes-of-Hazard screech out of the bus-filled parking lot, and headed south. I pulled up Audible, seeking the relief of a tried and true coping strategy: listening to a memoir by a dad who lost his adult son. It worked. I took a shaky breath, feeling my blood pressure take a step back from the edge. I was back in my zone, back in my groove, back in what worked for me — individual, personal experiences. Not battlefield generals exhorting troops.  

I made it home with plenty of  time to greet the kids, give them a particularly tight hug, and make some mac-n-cheese before letting us all sink into sweet relief with SpongeBob.

Since that day I have embraced my loss in a thousand different ways and talked about death with just as many people. But embracing loss at the scope of Gettysburg was not a successful strategy for me. Not at that time in my journey.

Coping methods are inherently neither good nor bad. 

Every strategy has costs and benefits. Effective strategies help us meet the challenge of the moment without costing too much of our time, life-force, or actual money. There is no rule book, playbook, song book, sketchbook, or comic book that lays out the exact successful strategy for every challenge. It is on us to read the context, experiment, and assess how it’s going.

Then, if it’s not working, to turn on a dime without self-judgment.

Which is all easier said than done, obviously. So we start experimenting, pivoting, practicing the “pause-and-reflect” sequence when the stakes are low:

* What are your tried and true coping strategies that you turn to again and again?

* Is there a coping mechanism that has been your go-to for awhile but is losing its effectiveness? (Do you continue to use it anyway?)

* What is a coping mechanism (or two) you’d like to slip into your toolkit and start experimenting with?

Working the giant feedback loop of life, we refine our way forward over and over again.

In resilience,

Sue

P.S.

As I was writing the first draft of this post on Sunday afternoon, we had our own live-action resilience challenge here at Casa Deagle. 

A boy Kendall had been hanging out with did her dirty. At first there was a lot of yelling and profanity directed at said boy. “Coping dirty” as Bonanno would say… but effectively! Then there was talking, pacing, crying, and screaming. Friends called with consolation. “That jerk! You are awesome, don’t let this turkey get you down.” Next, a good long walk in the trees of Great Falls Park, followed by some horse-hugging at a nearby barn. 

Finally, there was some quiet wound-licking and hopeful words about the path ahead when we leave this boy behind and head to college. As you can imagine, Kendall has a lot of experience with the mindset + action + experimentation = resilience equation. Losing your dad at eleven gives you lots of practice at assessing context, selecting strategies, and adapting as your needs change. 

And most of all, living in the mindset: “I’ve been through the worst and come out the other side, wise and fierce and still laughing and even more alive. I can do it again.”

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

I am a bookworm. It’s not a new thing. But since Mike died, it has definitely become a different thing.

Books (and their authors) kept me company in depths of grief that many of us inevitably visit but few examine or chart their way through. Ever since my “grief canon” provided a faint but followable promise out of the ink blackness of loss, I have turned to books over and over again with questions simple and profound. (You can find the full list of those books here.)

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

Questions like:

* How do I live a better life?

* How do I remain calm(ish) at my children’s antics when I really want to scream?

* How can I be a better community member, leader, servant to the greater good?

* How can I spend less time staring at my phone, TV, computer and more time connecting with the natural world?

* What are the truths that the wise sages of the ages learned about living, dying, connecting, loving and how do I learn them too?

* What are the “hacks” that will help me focus more, sleep better, lead better, live longer, and how can I weave them into my daily life?

I think, because I’m relatively new to the personal development scene, I didn’t realize the extent to which my reading choices (and now writing choices) have earned me a place in a unique group. A group that doesn’t seem to get a whole lot of respect from “literary” types. A group whose mission is somehow thought of as frivolous, naive, hapless…? 

“Self-helpers.”

A few weeks ago, Kendall and I traveled to New Orleans for Tulane’s admitted students weekend. 

On the flight, I read A Line in the World: A Year on the North Sea Coast by Danish author Dorthe Nors — a visceral exploration of noticing more, feeling more, reflecting more as Nors explores the historical and current-day challenges facing the unforgiving, weather-beaten coastline of her homeland.

After the information sessions, Kendall went off with new friends to do what (pre-) college students do on a beautiful spring day (I didn’t ask) and I found myself with a few free hours. Serendipitously, the New Orleans Book Festival was also happening on campus that day. *Bookworm wiggle of delight.*

After perusing the festival pamphlet, my purple pen circled a talk that was happening in just 15 minutes. I fast-walked across campus (fast enough to be on time but not so fast that the Louisiana humidity combined forces with my sweat to turn me into a swamp creature) because I really didn’t want to miss this one! I slipped in with two minutes to spare, noticing that attendance was sparse… but those in attendance seemed as excited as me. The session title explained it all: The Uplift and Little Pieces of Hope: Finding Happiness and Inspiration in Everyday Life with Tony Dokoupil and Todd Doughty.

I had zero name recognition of these gentlemen but since I am totally into the radiance in dailiness, I couldn't miss anything that included “finding inspiration in everyday life”.

With four-story-tall oaks oozing green through the windows behind them, Doukupil told us about his show — The Uplift on CBS — and desire to change the never-ending focus on negative news. Doughty explained the inception and impetus of his Instagram project highlighting small-scale positives, which eventually turned into a book — Little Pieces of Hope: Happy-Making Things in a Difficult World. 

Both of these men have projects focused on helping others see the world differently by highlighting the hopeful in a society addicted to the enraging. They were pouring out their souls in deep connection with the audience, sharing backstories and anecdotes, unexpected synchronicities and electric insights. I was furiously scribbling notes on my program — takeaways for looking at my life through a new, uplifted light. 

Which is why I was so perplexed when Doukupil turned to Doughty and asked, “But… how does it feel to have your book labeled ‘Self-Help’??”

Reader, I assure you, he did not mean it in a positive way.

Help. A good thing to provide, of course! But an embarrassing thing to need. If you are unlucky enough to need help, you are trying to move through the “hard times” as quickly as possible to “get back on your own two feet.”

When we need help, even to move a piece of furniture so big that no one could do it on their own, we’re sheepish about it. We often apologize both before and after making the request! (“I’m so sorry to ask but…”) We go to Google with our questions, preferring to admit our ignorance to the anonymity of the search bar before our close friends and family. We feel insufficient and like a burden and it makes whatever we are going through worse… to the point that sometimes we won’t ask at all.

Obviously, this is nonsense. Humans, with our minuscule teeth, flimsy claws, and erratically distributed hair, are decidedly not built to go it alone. And though we have agreed to live together, work together, and rely on each other in many aspects of life, it only extends to culturally sanctioned limits.

Outside of that, competence and independence remain the expectation. Especially when it comes to mental health, productivity, weight loss, finding love, making money, accepting, healing, and loving yourself — aka “personal issues” that “should” be “controlled” by “willpower.”

(If you haven’t read about the science that suggests willpower is a myth, I highly suggest it. It’s very very gratifying.)

And even then, when we embrace our responsibility and empowerment — like good “independent” people — and try to help ourselves by going to the sources that say they have the answers to our questions (already written and printed in a book!), we are looked down upon for visiting that section of the bookstore. Come ON.

By this logic, our moral obligation is to struggle, suffer, and not say a word… with experiences, mindsets, challenges that other people have already faced and found their way through.

You should have also learned to read on your own, do math on your own, drive on your own, play basketball on your own. 

Poppycock.

Struggle is inherent to life. As is the desire to progress, to learn, to improve your situation. But we can do all those things without reinventing the wheel.

Cultivating, curating, and consuming the right kinds of self-help for YOU (correct, not all self-help is going to be helpful) is like having a good friend ride shotgun on your wild journey of life — she’s been where you want to go, she has snacks, tissues, a wicked sense of humor, and she knows how to change a flat.

To Doughty’s credit, when asked how it felt to join the self-help bookshelves, despite his day job at Penguin Random House that has him focused on more “high-minded” literary pursuits, he said he didn’t care what his book was categorized as, as long as it resonated with people. As long as it helped them through their day. 

No wonder he wrote a “self-help” book — he knows something that many of us could use! He’s learned to set aside any pride that keeps him from helping himself or others.

In its place springs a pride that’s deeper than keeping up appearances. A pride in the incomparable human ability to learn, adapt, transform — to decide to climb a mountain even though you don’t know the way… and seek directions from those who have traveled before, because living to tell the tale is worth the “embarrassment”.

Author and magician Amit Kalantri put it succinctly. “It is courage which can find the solution to every problem.”

In this way, I see “self-helpers” as not just hopers and dreamers but as warriors, willing to both believe that there is a better way, and willing to fight to find it…

Through all the pity, shame, and judgment that society throws our way (along with the contradictions, limitations, and scams of the self-help industry).

On that note, rather than throw out the self-help section, I want to expand it!

I want it to include books we wouldn’t typically call self-help but which provide tangible, actionable wisdom about the human condition nonetheless. A book on the meditative aspects of fly-fishing or bird watching (Slow Birding: The Art and Science of Enjoying the Birds in Your Own Backyard) comes to mind. And biographies of historical figures we admire (I just finished one on Chester Nimitz). Or the book I read on the way to New Orleans about living on the desolate edge of the civilized world, what it strips away, and what it brings to life. 

And I don’t want to stop at books. My other self-help inputs (and suggestions!) include sunrises and great coffee, rich conversations and deep connection, architecture and art. 

And, frankly, YOU. Because you inspire me every single day. I am inspired to break my old thought patterns, to morph my mindset, to explore crazy ideas so I can aggregate, integrate, and illuminate as a gift to you. Connection with and service to you teaches me and drives me to be the best version of me. And all you have to do is sit there and look pretty ;).

Self-helpers dare to dream that things — and themselves — can be different… and are willing to consider any source of help, advice, insight, illumination to discover how to make it happen.

As Lex Luthor says, “Some people can read War and Peace and come away thinking it's a simple adventure story. Others can read the ingredients on a chewing gum wrapper and unlock the secrets of the universe.” 

(Yes, I’ll even take words of wisdom from a comic book character!)

Don’t let anyone (yourself included!) make you feel bad for having the courage to put your pride aside and seek solutions wherever you can find them.

Your turn!

* What are your favorite self-help sources, books, podcasts, newsletters, etc?

* Have you noticed a particular type, perspective, genre, or format of self-help really works for you? Or one that doesn’t?

* Any words of advice for a self-help newbie who is trying to find what works for them?

With hope & courage,

Sue

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

Writing you from Mississippi this week: We made it to #20! As we like to do when we hit a new “decade”, there’s an index of the topics we’ve covered in the last nine posts at the bottom. And before that, a little riff on what I’m learning about writing and reading and sharing ideas with all of you! On to the post…

Thank you for reading The Luminist! If you want to support our work, please consider sharing this post. The more, the merrier!!

Expanding creativity from art to existence.

Rick Rubin, a prolific and genre-spanning music producer recently released a book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being. When it first hit the shelves, I passed. “What does a music producer of Adele and the Beastie Boys have to teach me? I’m not in the music biz, I barely count myself as a creative, this can’t possibly apply.” 

But the book kept popping up in disparate outlets where I satisfy my cravings for new ideas — a weekly newsletter on creativity, a podcast about the human condition, the Wall Street Journal. Once I get a “recommendation” twice from the universe, I pay attention. Three times? I’m in.

Rubin’s points are straightforward yet revelatory. To create is to bring something into existence that wasn’t there before. Therefore we are all creators… of our lives. The person you will be tomorrow — with new ideas, experiences, thoughts, goals, influences — is different from the person you are today. 

After twenty weeks of writing The Luminist, I was just beginning to see myself as a creative (for the first time in my life.)

But, according to Rubin’s definition, I have been a creative for my entire life. I couldn’t help but be one. None of us can. But for me, for most of my life, this “creative act” was unnoticed… I was focused on the destination rather than the (creative) process. I didn’t realize the power I had. Until Mike died. 

In the last six years, I have been wildly intentional, inventive, experimental, and devoted to creating a new life for myself and my kids. 

We think loss hinders our creativity but it actually nuclear powers it. It removes the veil of the ordinary, helps us not take ourselves so seriously, reveals the mystery threading through our lives, ignites the connection and the power inside of us. But you have to co-create this new life, this next evolution of yourself.

You must be an active participant.

My creative endeavor here at TL is a sacred contract I have with you, dear reader, to do what Rubin recommends — keep my input antenna sharp like a giant satellite receiving messages from outer space. But no Area-51 aliens here, just me receiving input from everything in my life. Noticing. Pulling it all together. Finding the common denominator. 

Aggregate, integrate, illuminate. That’s my art. 

Then you — your creativity, your agency, your power — come in. I have created an idea, but it’s just an idea. It’s not a fact. I’m not plucking a ruby red apple from an orchard branch and offering it to you, fully formed and ready to eat. Rather, I’m presenting you with a modern sculpture at the MOMA.

My dream is that you walk around that idea and view it from all its different angles, translating and absorbing it in a way that makes sense to you — serves you — based on your lived experiences, based on who you are.

You get to make it your own.

Find what works and leave the rest.

Let it inspire you to the epiphany that changes your life, your month, your day.

Offer it, in a revised version, to a friend who needed to hear it.

Use it as the foundation for an idea of your own that serves you and/or those around you better than my original idea.

Contemplate it until it evolves into something unrecognizable, then present it to the world in your own way, letting it spread new wings once again to seed new ideas for new people.

Butcher my words however you need to until they speak to part of you, awaken part of you, actualize part of you.

That’s what TL is all about. Taking the raw ingredients of your life and deciding what you want to make out of them. Like learning to take the hard, seemingly inedible berries from ancient, knotted trees and turn them into olives. (Or if you’re not an olive fan, the process of making cheese is also a wild thing to think about.)

We are all creatives — that’s what I took from Rubin and that’s what I want to deliver to you in the next 20, 50, 100, 1000 posts.

Adding to my standard themes of connection, power, and mystery, you can expect to read more from me about changing the way we think about our lives: 

* How to take action to transform our thinking.

* How to balance trauma with resilience. 

* How to support each other better. 

* How to access the power inside.

But enough about me, this is really about you.

My antenna is up and ready to receive. Want to put something in my aggregation engine and see what comes out in a post? Want to co-create?

With creative agency,

Sue

One of the most satisfying parts of writing The Luminist is looking back and seeing how far we’ve come. So indulge me, would you? (And maybe catch up on old posts that you missed!)

#11: Restoring the magic of time.

From the kairos perspective, obstacles look less like mountains to climb and more like river bends to navigate… Follow the current, stay in the flow, see your opening and take it.

But to slip into kairos, we have to momentarily release our death grip on chronos.

We have to step back from our to-do lists and tap into our inner knowing. Which, let’s be honest, we could all probably use some practice at.

When we are in sync with what we really need — along with the world around us — we make the right choices at the right times… for our personal growth, our impact on the world, whatever we are trying to accomplish.

#12: How I became a heart-seeking missile (in a good way).

Though, six years later, [the hole in my heart where Mike should be] still aches regularly, I’m realizing that even the vacuum of loss has its technicolor lining. 

* It keeps us present, on the razor’s edge of life’s potential and pain, absolutely unwilling to settle for anything less than a life well lived (which I wrote a post about a few weeks ago!)

* If we are able to hold a blackhole inside our chests and keep living, it must mean that — like outer space — our hearts are giant, expansive, seemingly never-ending… and capable of endless connection, care, and compassion.

#13: We are not islands.

Grief is a brutal emotion to carry around. No one can “fix” it. So it’s easy to feel like the best thing we can do is try to protect everyone else from our raincloud. And if in the meantime we figure out how to avoid or ignore the raincloud ourselves, even better! 

But it doesn’t work that way!!

Denying painful emotions not only separates us from others, it separates us from ourselves.

#14: Things will be great again.

Those precious words from Wayne gave me permission to let life go on when so much of society assumed that my life would be permanently less-than, diminished, small.

Permission to let my family’s future unfold in exciting ways alongside the sad ways.

Permission to let my heart feel joy again while still being broken.

Permission to let this tragedy transform my life in not all good ways, but definitely some good ways.

#15: Sue Deagle, Despot (Part 1).

For the first time in my life, I didn’t even pretend to handle things well. I didn’t take myself seriously. I didn’t expect myself to “rise to the challenge.”

I asked the bare minimum of myself, and was gentle with myself when I couldn’t even deliver that. 

I admitted mistakes easily and forgave myself immediately after that. 

I learned to ask for help without feeling bad at all. And also how to tell people to politely f*** off because I did not have the time, strength, nor concern for anyone’s drama but my own.

There were only two things in the world that mattered to me, and my ego was not one of them.

#16: Sue Deagle, Despot (Part 2).

Because turns out power — at least the kind that humans can sustain, versus bulldozers — is not about control or perfection. It’s about being imperfect, acknowledging your limits, leaning into love and compassion, especially for yourself.

Then it becomes absolutely clear what’s non-negotiable for you. What is worth fighting for, changing, pushing through in this one wild and precious life. Not because you have anything to prove to anyone, including yourself. But because that’s what your life is for: showing up for the people, communities, causes, adventures that light up your heart. 

In this new understanding, exerting power gives you life rather than taking away from it.

#17: Mystery is my religion.

I don’t know if synchronicities are “real.” And I don’t really care. It’s all part of the mystery… Please, no spoilers! I am giving myself permission to notice the weird coincidences and cherish them, maybe even call them miracles, without the burden of searching for causation.

Because they wouldn’t be any less magical if I knew how they worked. I’d just be less appreciative of their magic, less touched by it, less delighted by it. I’d explain it away. I wouldn’t let it make me feel something. And I want to feel something.

(FYI, causation is still very much a part of my daily life. Just only when it’s actually constructive, rather than simply a wet blanket.)

#18: Purpose isn’t the destination.

But by Friday afternoon, no matter how humbling the writing process has been that week, Leona and I are both in pinch-myself-awe at what has channeled through us. Even when it’s not that good! 

Because we are on our hero’s journey. We are stepping outside our comfort zones, outside the walls that keep us warm and safe and a little anesthetized. We are feeling the elements whip around us — and inside of us — cheeks red from the wind and the sun, lungs burning with the effort, backs sweaty from blood pumping. We can look back, down the mountain, and see how far we’ve come. We can see the spot where we once pointed up from and said, “Do you think we can get there? I think we should try.” 

We’re not “there” yet. But it doesn’t matter. We are trying, and because of it, we feel alive.

#19: Where words can’t take us.

To be human is to have an interior life and a soul that needs witnessing. Needs acknowledgement. Needs connection.

Needs to stand side-by-side with another soul, hip-deep in the roiling river of life, wide-eyed and wordless, taking it all in, knowing the other is with them, experiencing it too.

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