The Luminist

As we taxied down the tarmac all I could see from seat 7D were pine trees, thick as weeds.

Then the plane’s wheels gave the blacktop their goodbye kiss and we climbed, leaving Trondheim behind. My view of the pines went from a line-of-sight, to birds-eye, to a drone’s-eye view. Below the plane, the black-green forests undulated, the mountain lakes glimmered, the streams cut ribbons through the undergrowth. The logging roads wiggled throughout the terrain like a strand of spaghetti, tossed over the landscape to see what stuck. I pressed my forehead to the double-paned window glass like some Marvel-movie demi-god surveying her glorious creation. Except it was not my creation. I was its.

Then it was gone. Cotton-ball clouds on a baby blue background obscured the view. I rested the back of my head against the airplane seat and closed my eyes, my heart beating fast.

Holy sh*t, I DID THAT!

I walked through that gorgeous country.

I walked through forests just like those.

I traversed streams just like those.

I skirted alongside lakes just like those.

I dragged Wilson along logging roads just like those.

With a 25 pound pack. For 21 days.

And damn, am I ever going to miss you, Norway.

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Missing Norway? This is the first of many feelings that are different between pilgrimage 1.0 and 2.0.

When I called a wrap on pilgrimage 1.0, I walked away feeling as if I had found myself again. I hadn’t known she was missing — no face on a milk carton, no flyers stapled to a telephone pole. But day after day, on that trail from Sweden to Norway, I kept getting glimpses of her, like an analog time machine gradually walking me back to my pre-Mike, then pre-MBA, then pre-adult self. That western PA gal who swam a million laps, read in her bed for endless hours, strapped on a face mask and chest protector and knelt in the infield dirt playing catcher for her softball team. That quiet observer of life who marched to her own beat and didn’t take any s**t.

Like taking Windex to a cloudy mirror, pilgrimage 1.0 also let me clearly see who I had become. Life was stripped down to its essence: sleeping in Scandinavian twin beds, eating cheese sandwiches, walking along quiet trails and glistening lakes, chatting with another pilgrim or my nightly host. There was nothing left to hide me from me; I could see the default societal settings I’d adopted to run from scarcity, manage risk, maximize my life. And you know what? There’s no shame in that game. That chick did what she needed to do, and she built a great freaking life doing it. But 1.0 was the time to let that go. Those settings had served their purpose and were now holding me back, blocking what I was capable of next.

In the two years since, I’ve held on to that girl I recovered. Not every minute of every day, but most of the time. She’s both grounded me and given me the sense of a path forward. I can tell I’m losing my way when I find myself chasing the siren call of metrics that no longer matter (Success! Notoriety! Achievement!) or straying from the person I aspire to be in the name of security. I catch myself more easily, and the thought is instant, “Nope, this isn’t it, something’s wrong.” Because once you’ve found your way back to yourself, losing her again becomes so unpalatable your priorities rearrange themselves. You’ll do anything to stay true to you.

But wrapping up pilgrimage 2.0 feels different. The outline is the same — beauty, nature, conversations, cheese sandwiches — but the starting point was different.

I started as myself. Then I (unintentionally) added a next-level degree of difficulty. So instead of stripped down, I’m coming away expanded. Or perhaps I should say expansive. I’m not just bigger, but more nuanced, more complex, more respectful of all the facets that add up to a human life.

I walked through the unknown, inside and out, and it expanded both my worldview and my self awareness. The unknown of the terrain, the language, the food; the unknown of feeling my lungs and feet begging for mercy but needing to keep going; the unknown of how I’d react when pushed to my edge.

Walking alongside all those uncertainties, I also became porous to beauty. I feel like the Norwegian landscape is now living inside of me — its mountain plateaus, its cascading waterfalls, its intensity and beauty. I can still hear the mountain streams pounding the rocks as they race towards the rivers. The birds, especially the cuckoo, calling out. And sheep, both their bleating and their bells, continue to soundtrack my days. My dreams still swirl around my next accommodation. I’m still stashing napkins in my pocket and reusing my plastic bags.

You don’t come away from these things (or, at least I don’t) with some map for the rest of your life. You come away with a better compass. Does this feel like the right direction? Is the needle pointing north? Stop. Check. Feel. Ask.

Pilgrimage, at its heart, is a delivery mechanism for self awareness. How do I do with not knowing what today’s accommodation will look like? How do I do with seeing my bunk bed and knowing full well I’m going to bash my head on it in the middle of the night when I get up to use the loo? How do I do with the curt proprietor telling me, “You’re too early” after a brutal 27km day? How do I do with not knowing how long this three-peaks day will take? How can I adjust? When do I wallow? What tools do I have to change the circumstance, or at least my thinking about it?

Pilgrimage 2.0 took that girl from 1.0 and taught her the power of her own mind. And the peace that comes with knowing yourself just a little bit better.

To our evolution,

Sue

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Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle

P.S. As a wrap to this pilgrim journey (although you can count me writing about/processing this trip for months to come) I wanted to share a roundup:

* 21: Days on the pilgrim path

* 400: Kilometers covered (around 250 miles but who’s counting!)

* 30: Cheese sandwiches consumed (conservative estimate)

* 2: Modes of alternate transportation when I’d had enough (train, car)

* 9: Hours of hiking on my longest day

* 14: Total other pilgrims met

* 4: Total number of pilgrims nationalities (Swiss, German, Dutch, Norwegian)

* 2: Blisters

* 25: Boiled eggs consumed

* 60: Pages filled in my journal

* 2: Number of stoplights I saw between Lillehammer and Trondheim

* 6: Number of times I ate rhubarb in some form (juice, compote, crumble, etc)

Maybe it started the morning of Day 8 at the Thon Hotel breakfast buffet. After what I’m now labeling my ‘Three Peaks’ Day, I’d slept like a freshman home from college, waking to an alarm set for 8:45. Not bothering to pack up yet, I arrived at the breakfast buffet with plenty of stuff-my-face time and sandwich-making time before breakfast closed at 9:30. Only when I had settled into a corner table with a heaping plate of eggs, salmon, toast, and herring(!), did I wake up enough to take in my surroundings. Catty-corner was a lone brunette, her back to me.

What’s her story? Her yoga pants, purple shirt, and sneakers said she wasn’t a pilgrim. Was she here alone, passing through, or maybe visiting family…?

As my internal Columbo was just getting revved up, an exceedingly tall dark-haired man entered from my peripheral vision, pushing a pram, the mewling sounds of a baby piercing the air. He parked it next to her table, then leaned down to kiss her cheek, his hand resting on her back. It was the hand that did it. There was nothing perfunctory or auto-pilot in the gesture, it was a genuine, caring caress. That was it for me. Tears welled as longing filled any available space in my throat and heart and lungs, like someone had pulled a ripcord on an inflatable vest that had somehow gotten inside my chest.

It’s been 21 years since I shared those tiny-baby-minding days with my husband. But suddenly memories of Mike, his smile, the feeling of his hand on my back, infused every part of me as I sat in Otta, Norway at the breakfast buffet.

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Or perhaps it was Day 12, on the descent from the Dovrefjell mountain range, during a visit to the Eysteinkyrka.

I greeted the tiny Norwegian volunteer at the door with a gentle handshake, and she swiftly stamped my pilgrim passport and ushered me into the sanctuary.

“You have it all to yourself,” she whispered.

I paused, momentarily blind in the dim light. A small stained glass window on the back wall cast an amber glow, and my eyes started to find shapes and colors in the dim room… oh, it was more beautiful than I could’ve imagined: board-formed concrete, overlayed with beams from nearby trees, pews of the lightest pine. My first thought was Connor; we are fellow brutalist architecture freaks, sharing our love of all things concrete. I couldn’t wait to tell him what I had stumbled upon in the mountains of Norway. Next Kendall came to mind, the graceful pews and soaring ceilings made me hope of taking a perfect picture to share with her.

To the right of the altar stood a simple, iron Scandinavian candelabra shaped in a circle. Four pinkie-thin white candles, lit by others for reasons unknown, flickered.

During Pilgrimage 1.0, I’d tried to connect with Mike at just such a scene in a traditional church in Stode, Sweden on Day 3. I’d gotten emotional crickets, from me and from him.

But this time, in this brutalist beauty with the thoughts of our children swirling, and still raw from a tough first week, he was right there. I felt my heart crack open and the emotion swell, heat rising into my face. With trembling hands I dropped a ten kroner coin through the slot in the collection box, and then I lit my own taper — Mike’s taper. As I sat in the front pew, I watched it flicker, standing tall against the other candles burning their way down. I let the tears flow down my face.

And here I am on Day 18, and I find myself alone.

Yes, I’m alone every day as I walk, but the evenings are often crowded with other pilgrims, helpful proprietors, gaggles of fisherman who have come off the beaten path, hoping to get first dibs at the fat summer salmon.

But tonight I’m even off the unbeaten path. I’m at Gumdal Gard, in its tiny ‘stabbur’ or storehouse, fifty yards from the main house. It’s no more than six beds, a tiny kitchen, an ancient table. The only sound is rain pitter-pattering on the gravel outside, heard through the open door. I’ve eaten the extra sandwich I packed at breakfast, hung my sink-done laundry to dry, and now sit at that table, notes, pens, books splayed about.

Since the Three Peaks Day, the terrain beneath my feet — and in my mind — has changed. I’m realizing how many versions of ‘hard’ there are in life… and that I’m done fighting them. I’m putting down my dukes. Well, that’s not quite right. It’s more like I don’t have the strength to keep my dukes up. Nor, really, the desire. Because no matter my raised fists, the hard things come.

Like Mike’s birthday, which is today.

I used to avoid thinking about this day, letting it slide by unacknowledged. But in this tiny cabin in the middle of nowhere, I’ve decided to fully, openly, curiously step into it instead — in the same way I’ve been stepping into steep ascents and descents, dense undergrowth, trails twisting with roots and rocks, kilometer after kilometer, day after day.

So, whatever day it started, it was Day 18 that I released the subtle need to hold Mike at bay. That I sat alone but not alone, writing about Mike, recalling good and bad moments together, enjoying the muffled rain and the smell of moist earth coming in from outside, under the midnight sun.

We think doing hard things, like remembering our lost loved ones or hiking through endless mountains, simply always feels like pain. But when we stop fighting them, we realize there is so much more to these experiences. Sometimes they feel like connection, sometimes they feel like gratitude, and more often than I ever expect, they feel like awe.

Happy Mike Day,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle

Last fall, I sent Ruben, my Scandinavian pilgrimage organizer, a note. ”I’m ready to pilgrim again!” I wrote, and then described my desire to carbon copy 2024’s journey.

“Same route???” he immediately responded.

Wait a second, is that judgement I’m reading in all the question marks? Doesn’t everybody love to repeat the same exact thing ad nauseum, to prove to themselves the first time wasn’t a fluke?

Hmm. Maybe that’s just me.

“I have three other routes you can do! There is so much else you can see. We cannot repeat!” the ever-blunt Dutchie informed me.

“Ok, well I see you have a Norway-only, south-to-north route to Trondheim on your website. I don’t want to start in Oslo, that’s too far. Maybe a little further up?”

“Yes, I just opened a route from Lillehammer. It will take 21 days. How does that sound?”

And in typical knee-jerk fashion, without a second thought or single lick of research, I responded: “I’m in.”

So there I was, picturing all those gently rolling Swedish hills, lakeside walks, logging roads, gentle grades that were long, yes, but eminently doable from pilgrimage 1.0.

Boy, was I wrong.

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Day 1: Fine, sure, no problem. Some roadside walking and a manageable climb out of Lillehammer.

Day 2: Hold up, this is way hillier than I expected. And why are these trails no wider than a loaf of bread? And filled with rocks. Just 17km took me 8 hours.

Day 3: All of the above, only raining. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore.

Was it going to be this level of survival mode day 4, 5, 6…..?

Of course there were incredible views, incredible food, incredibly nice Swiss, German, and Dutch pilgrims along the way. But the terrain was handing me my ass. Ascents so steep that I was mouth breathing for hours. Descents where I could not see my feet through the underbrush. Rinse and repeat.

By Day 6, I was pissed. At what, I couldn’t actually say. Certainly not Ruben, who spelled this all out in the trail notes he gave me far, far ahead of time. (Which I didn’t read.) I wasn’t mad at myself, either. After all, I wanted a challenge, I wanted to practice doing hard things. I’m even happy with my tendency to leap without learning everything ahead of time. I’m into the surprise, even when it’s nasty.

No, I was just the kind of mad that happens when life is freaking hard and it pisses you off. To top it all off, that evening’s accommodation was on the gritty side. My cheeseburger at the town’s solo cafe was consumed in sullen silence, no other customers to be seen.

While I was open to what pilgrimage 2.0 would bring me on the macro level, on the micro, I had happily pictured myself deep thinking, reading, and writing, just like pilgrimage 1.0.

Yeah, no.

I was so beat down by the time I reached my destination each day, rubbing two brain cells together to generate a thought or read a sentence any longer than ‘see Spot run’ was a non-starter. The Rebecca Solnit (Wanderlust) and Robert McFarlane (Is a River Alive) books I’d packed might as well have been the Chinese edition.

So, when I wasn’t walking I mostly stared into space. While elevating my feet.

Day 6 became Night 6 and I flip-flopped on my tiny top bunk, trying to get comfortable with my wafer-thin pillow in the never-dark Nordic summer ight. The needle on my internal fortitude dial was bouncing around “empty”. I pulled out my phone to trace the map and read the description for Day 7 — ‘more of the same’ was the theme.

I needed an attitude adjustment. Pronto.

So, as a man of action, I tossed around a few ideas. I briefly dreamed of levitation or a transporter beam, but quickly set those aside for my tried and true go-to’s for when things get dire:

Play #1: Expectation management

I started by reading Ruben’s directions for the next day carefully: there would be three super-sized elevation gains and losses. (That’s a pilgrim euphemism for big ass hills.) Ok, don’t love this, but the only way to the other side is through. So as I set out the next morning, I didn’t think about the whole trek, just the “elevation gain” in front of me. This way, rather than dreading them all (well, truth is I still did dread them, just a little less) I could tick each one off as I flattened them before they could flatten me.

Play #2: A carrot

This route is filled with guest houses and mountain lodges. Very few hotels. But the Thon Hotel Otta (which I kept calling the Thor hotel in my head, as one does) awaited me at the end. It was no Four Seasons, more Beaver Falls Holiday Inn vibes, but the thought of a room with my own bathroom (a luxury!) and a dinner buffet was like hope on a stick. A carrot dangling in front of me.

Play #3: Treats

I tend to want to keep stomping forward and wreck myself, rather than let myself take a break. To convince myself to take my pack off for 20 minutes, I needed an incentive. I had my daily cheese sandwich, but that was hardly inspiring. So I needed two treats for in between the three elevations (simple pre-school math). First up, instant coffee in a plastic jar, along with a mysterious yogurt and nut mix. I cannot convey the kind of Michelin-star experience this was. Heaven. One hill later, I stopped at a campground to purchase the most syrupy juice I could find along with a chocolate bar. It sounds disgusting writing about it. It was pure bliss consuming it.

As I rode the emotional and altitudinal highs and lows of the day, life handed me an unexpected boost as well, by way of the Tom Hanks movie Cast Away. (Ever wonder what you think about on the pilgrim path? There’s your answer.)

Midway through the second of the ascents and descents from hell, I picked up a stick. A hiking stick. It was hiding in some underbrush, whispering my name. Maybe a little help boosting me up or steadying me as I find my footing would make the day better? I’m not normally a hiking pole gal, but desperate times, desperate measures. It was a learning curve, that first kilometer with the stick in tow. By the second, I couldn’t believe I’d ever lived without this stick. Just like Tom on his desert island, his only companion a volleyball, I christened my stick by the same name: Wilson.

I’m not sure I would have made it without Wilson. Not just physically, mentally too. To have something to rely on, to help me, to literally hold in my hand gave me courage, safety, and support, just when I needed it. A mountain-made security blanket.

At the end of hour eight, I came down out of the hills to a gravel logging road, then a paved walkway, flat as a pancake and headed into Otta. I was almost there. The up-and-downs conquered, the treats consumed, the hotel on the horizon. As I reached the sidewalk, I was so tired I was dragging Wilson behind me like Linus with his blanket. I passed a fire station, its freshly mown grass dusting the concrete where my feet fell. Clearly no need for a walking stick. Still I could not let him go.

To get into town proper, I had to go through a tunnel under the Norwegian version of a highway. The change in light brought me up short, and for a second I saw myself fifteen minutes from now: sweaty, swollen, and filthy, carrying a big jagged stick, sidling up to the front desk clerk and asking for my room. It was time to let Wilson go.

That’s what the pilgrim path teaches you. How to use your existing skills better, sure. But also how to find new ones, and then, when it’s time, how to leave those behind too.

In recovery,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle 

Two years ago I was a baby writer. Sure, I was already two years into writing The Luminist, but my editor Leona was still doing the painstaking work of teaching me to show not tell, focus on one main idea instead of ten, and accept revision as a non-negotiable part of the process. We worked on the letters from the pilgrim path 1.0 across nine time zones, and some of those were the best posts I’d written to date. But I still had a long way to go.

Now, I once again find myself in the reality-distortion-field-incinerator that is the pilgrim trail. It’s like a giant mirror has descended from the heavens, the kind you find in posh hotel bathrooms that illuminate each and every pore. Sometimes that’s not a great thing. Sometimes it’s just what you need.

Because it can be hard to see how we’ve changed. We get disgusted with ourselves: “When will I ever get closer to my goals? When will I ever improve?”

As I pound away kilometer after kilometer (I’ve made a deal with myself: I can only google a mileage converter when I’m done) here’s something I’m catching myself doing: translating what I’m seeing, hearing, smelling into words. You know, like a writer does.

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How can I describe to you the way the tips of the pine trees poke through the blanket of fog? The way they stand like a sea of prim, outstretched pinkies, green but no less proud than those poised beside teacups?

How about the clouds? How their meaty shadows alchemize the generally crisp forest air I’m walking through into something earthy, soil-y, loamy, smelling, I swear, just like the color brown?

And what about the bells on every last sheep neck of the herd on the hill? How they create a concert of one-note wind-chimes, or perhaps a chorus of toddlers banging 100 spoons against 100 pots?

Yeah, I’m not sure either. But the cool thing is, that’s where my mind goes. Amidst the stiffness and pain and days of unexpected rain, my mind pauses its catastrophizing clatter to write, even if the words are only in my head.

This is how I know I’ve advanced from novice to apprentice. Not because I’ve written 185 posts or a banger of a book about loss. Because even when I’m not on the page, I’m thinking about the page.

From somewhere between Dovre and Fokstuga,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle 

Dear reader, by the time you read this, I’ll have gone full Viking, walking four or six or sometimes eight hours a day with all my clothes (and books!) on my back through Norway. This will be my life for the next 21 days as I cover the distance from Lillehammer to Trondheim, on the second round of the pilgrimage I began almost exactly two years ago.

I’m not quite on trail yet, though I wish I was. There’s a special mix of boredom, restlessness, and anxiety that seems to descend upon me pre-trip. I think I checked my passport expiration date a dozen times before I boarded the transatlantic flight, as if maybe the first 11 times I just hadn’t read the numbers quite right. In an attempt to settle the pre-walk jitters, I looked back at the first pilgrim letter I published back in June of 2024. Turns out I was in an almost identical, irrational stress spiral then, which is comforting in its own way. I’m still anxious, but I’m no longer beating myself up about it.

That letter ended with words from my friend Paul, who happened to be on a pilgrimage of his own at the time: “Let’s go and get to know ourselves a little bit better.”

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The first time I stepped onto the pilgrim path, my intention was to dredge up and release the last bits of grief over my husband’s death eight years before. In the days, weeks, and months after Mike’s heart attack, I had been in full-blown “save the kids” mode. Grief still regularly laid me out on the bathroom floor sobbing, or the couch where I watched Star Wars movies three at a time, and I never hid my tears or pain from Connor and Kendall. But I always assumed that I had shoved some parts of my bottomless grief away out of self- and child-preservation.

During the 28 days of that first pilgrimage, I cried about Mike… twice, which is about how much I cry about him in a regular month.

I ended up mostly reconnecting with an even earlier version of Sue: the quiet girl who loved to be absorbed in books, or to perch on a stool at the edge of the church potlucks and just observe. The learner, the observer, the clue collector.

The solitary walking took me to a part of myself I had totally forgotten existed. I could not have planned it. I could only be open to it.

So for this pilgrimage, I’ve decided not to seek anything.

I’ve learned over the last two years — hell, over the last ten — that having expectations often only serves to make you upset or disoriented when reality unfolds. Instead, I’ve discovered I want that reality: I want the details, the subtleties, the opportunities I can only catch when I’m fully present to what is, rather than trying to force what I want.

So this go-round, I’m not setting intentions. I’m setting boundaries around the trip, so whatever is supposed to happen can happen inside it.

I’ve cleared all my decks: paid my taxes, paid my bills, paid my visits to family and friends before my farewells. I’ve tied up loose ends at the treehouse, and got Kendall off and running on her internship. I’ve cleaned the house and crossed everything off the to-do list. Everyone knows: I won’t be opening my email or dealing with logistics on the trip. Don’t ask me for the Netflix log-in code. If s**t goes down, call Uncle Richie.

These are the only things weighing on my mind now: sharing my location with my trip planner and freak out helper Ruben every day, then sending a screenshot to Richie, and finally posting a photo or two on Instagram as an ongoing photo diary (follow along!). Doing my laundry every three days or so, aka scrubbing my socks in the sink. Writing a letter to all of you here once a week. And though I’m not making plans, I know there will be days I will question my decision, and days I will question my sanity. Days I’m one with nature, and days I’m cursing rain or sneaky cows or incessant hills.

And, well… that’s it. The rest will unfold.

Two years ago I didn’t know what to expect. So I stuffed my rucksack full of expectations. They did the work of the blister cream and bandaids I brought but never needed: to give me a feeling of being prepared, being in control.

But this time around, the uncertainty doesn’t scare me. It gives me goosebumps. The good kind. As long as I can make it to Trondheim without my damn passport magically expiring, I’ll be fine.

To preparing just enough to be surprised,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle 

I was standing on one leg like an oversized flamingo, my bare foot on a wobbly disc of plywood while I tossed a rubber ball against the gym’s cinderblock wall. It was the last indignity of a balance training session Kavon had cooked up to get me ready for the pilgrim path.

Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

“So what is it, exactly?” I asked curtly, doubly frustrated by the man who had given me this task, and by the topic we happened to be discussing. “Please explain this Costco thing.”

Kavon shook his head, disappointed in my evident disdain. As a small business owner and dad of two, he ran through a litany of things he loves about Costco: predictable pricing, guaranteed bargains, almost everything he needs for home and work. As a true fanboy, he’d even listened to the Acquired podcast episode that outlined Costco’s strategy and business approach, rattling off their profit margin philosophy and fair wage ethos.

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Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

As he did his Costco rendition of ‘How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count The Ways’, I didn’t dare nod my head for fear of falling off my disc. I couldn’t argue with his logic. Yet… it didn’t feel like enough. Enough to generate that baffling Costco ride-or-die passion I’ve seen in so many men, including one guy who is no longer here.

Then, Kavon surprised me with this:

“I think what I also love is the discovery element: you never know what you might find. It doesn’t feel like shopping, it feels more like a warehouse-sized treasure hunt. Will it be a kayak? A giant wheel of cheese? A sample that a hair-netted lady gives you that changes your dinner plans? Four tires for your car? It’s the land of opportunity.”

Thwack. Thwack. Thwump.

I dropped the ball and lurched sideways off the plywood. Of course. Now it all makes sense.

When Mike was alive and the kids were young, I let him drag me to the warehouse-to-end-all-warehouses once every couple of months.

Not because we needed any more toilet paper. Because Costco was Mike’s happy place. Emphatically, enthusiastically, inexplicably his happy place. He’d load our cart with collared work shirts, underwear for the kids, sheets. He’d buy our TVs and our computers. Twenty-four packs of paper towels, ten packs of dental floss, three-packs of chicken wings, a case of wine. One time, he’d loaded so many beach towels into our overflowing cart that, when we turned our backs for a second, a lady began shopping from it, deciding which color combos she wanted for herself.

For the entirety of our marriage, I did not get it. Costco’s so-muchness was too much for me: floor-to-ceiling jam-packed shelves, freezer after freezer of frosted-over foods, the random middle section of giant cardboard boxes spilling over with tube socks and camisoles. My brain found the lack of rhyme or reason overwhelming. I sulked through every single trip.

I never once thought to ask him why he loved it.

That version of me — the early aughts to mid-2010’s Sue — was harried. Underwater and breathing through a straw. I didn’t have much bandwidth for curiosity. I was just trying to do a killer job at work, keep the kids alive and thriving, and run a household on the weekdays while Mike was away. I write that sentence now and think, well, no wonder spending hours in a place that overwhelmed my senses sent me into a tailspin.

In short, I wasn’t in the right headspace back then to wonder what about Costco delighted him so much, let alone ask.

But my life now is different, and so am I. I’ve pivoted from corporate to creative work. I’ve returned to my beloved childhood pastime of reading endless books, seeing the world from a new angle in each one. I have new relationships, Kavons who generate unexpected conversations and insights. And my days are spacious, allowing me to enjoy noticing and sometimes even solving mysteries.

Like the mystery of Mike and Costco.

Costco was never shopping for him, it was an expedition. And Mike — strategic, deal-loving, optimization-brained Mike, whose family nickname was ‘Action Adventure Man’ — was built for expeditions.

From my new vantage point, I can see, in those final years, how Mike was breathing through a straw, too. That Mike’s life was full of constraints, just like mine. I can see why a super-sized warehouse gave him joy, how finding unexpected things to bring to his family lit him up, like a caveman dragging home the mastodon he’s just downed. Costco ticked all his boxes, allowing him to do the thing he loved most: provide for us.

These realizations give me a thrill. My relationship to Mike still gets to evolve — my understanding and love of him still gets to deepen — simply because I’m still changing. He will never be frozen in amber as long I never give up growing myself.

Hi Mike. It’s nice to see you, honey. Watch out for those other shoppers, they’re eyeing your cart…

To new perspectives,

Sue

Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle 

I stood with my back to the lectern as the modest crowd disbursed, deep in conversation with my friend Kevin.

“It’s way harder to do these book talks than it ever was to speak to the masses in our corporate days,” I said to him, perplexed.

Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com

Kevin has seen me do both. He was the Chief Legal Officer to my Chief Operating Officer at our $4B defense contractor. I’ve closed deals with this guy at 2am, bounced around the dust of Kuwait with him in the back of a passenger van, and, more recently, clinked glasses with him over my signed book deal. And one month ago, he was responsible for ginning up half my audience at Octavia Books in New Orleans, the last stop on my tour. No mean feat when the talk is about loss.

Head cocked, he mused, “You’re not in a ballroom with a sea of faces. You’re looking everyone in the eye. And you’re not talking about revenue growth or margin expansion. You’re talking about loss.”

He paused. “I also noticed everyone wants to tell you their story afterward. Is that part hard?”

“Actually, no. That’s the best part. What a surprise.”

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Like a coach watching last Sunday’s game tape, I’ve been reviewing the playback of the last three months: zig-zagging around Europe and the US, talking about coping dirty, ordinary magic, Bruce Springsteen, and a different kind of great. I’ve been cataloging the pleasant surprises and the sneak attacks. The plays I want to run again. The ones I want to retire.

Here’s what the tape revealed:

The nerves were a good sign. Speaking is one of my favorite things, and I’ve done it for decades with ease. The endless practice that corporate gave me was something I thought would port right over to these intimate settings. Nope. Because Kevin was right — this is very different than discussing revenue growth or margin expansion. It’s personal. And maybe nerves are the cost of doing something that hits so close to home. I’ll pay that toll every time.

And as soon as each presentation began, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. All that gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands faded, and I was telling my story to a room of people who care.

The brilliance was already in the room. I kept thinking it was exclusively my job to show up and deliver. The tape tells a different story. In Colorado, Wayne thought out loud about the moments he’d consoled best and handed the whole room new tools. In Portland, Ellie turned to a struggling stranger and said, “have you tried wailing?” — one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in my life, and it didn’t come from me. In New Orleans, Carolyn shared books and wisdom like she’d been waiting years for exactly this room. If all I was doing was hosting a Loss Cafe where we cross-pollinate our tips and resources, that would be more than enough.

My friends were in the stands. I’ve had a decade-long struggle trying to put the nail in the coffin of my Lone Ranger tendencies. And you know, I think I might have done it — during the book tour, I saw my friend’s faces at every turn. Luanne and her daughter Natalie at the Bookworm in Edwards. My Amsterdam crew, out in full force. Kevin jumping in with the first question so the Q&A didn’t start with crickets. Reviewing the footage, I see evidence everywhere that I did not do this alone. Thank God, I’m finally getting it!

I was built for the stories. I knew the territory — talking about loss means you’re going to hear about loss. Yet I didn’t know how I would handle what might come my way. I needn’t have worried. For five minutes on a folding chair after every event, I listened, I nodded along, I hugged. It turns out being truly heard when life gets hard is rarer than it should be. And for whatever reason, I seem to be wired for the receiving end of it.

The book went places without me. This is the part of the tape I keep rewinding. My dad finding it on a Chicago bookstore shelf. Rebecca’s dad reading her copy from his chair. Lesley-Anne holding it up against the South African mountains near her home. I wrote this book and then let it go… and it went. There’s something casually staggering about that. Like a dandelion seed floating to who-knows-where, landing, germinating, growing.

I did my part, and I’ll continue to do my part. I’ll keep endlessly talking about it, speaking about it, pressing copies of it into peoples’ hands. But there’s something else I’ve learned, something a tad woo-woo: the book is on a path of its own. Reaching who its meant to reach, when it’s meant to reach them, in a way my playback tape will never reveal. And so, all the writing and revising and promoting and traveling and fretting led to this: a companion for life’s journeys through loss, meeting people when they need it.

And nowadays, that’s what I call success.

In gratitude and celebration and exhaustion,

Sue

Subscribe on Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/

P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here: https://youtu.be/AUuXFmOqZV8

Marco looked up at me confused. “Michelle?” he asked. “Ah, no, sorry, it’s under my husband’s name: Michael.”

When you’ve intertwined your life so thoroughly with another person, and then they disappear off the face of the earth, you always have to be ready for a jump scare — at the DMV, on the phone with insurance, or when buying performance gear for a month-long hike.

It was a deserted Tuesday morning at REI, and I had just been shopping for my upcoming Scandi pilgrimage, 2.0. Moments before my thoughts had sounded something like, should I have gotten these t-shirts in a large instead of a medium? Could I really count on the tiny no-spill containers to, well, not spill? How much weight would this add to my pack?

The twenty-something checkout clerk, his forest green vest clashing with his Hawaiian shirt underneath, scanned the see-through bottles and Patagonia tees.

“Oh, look, you have $67 in points. Wanna use them now?” Marco asked.

“Oh, that’s a lucky break! Absolutely!”

“I won’t tell Michael if you don’t,” Marco said with a wink.

“It’s our little secret, Marco. Pinky swear?” I tee-hee’d.

“Michael would see an email receipt, do you want me to print it instead to keep our secret safe?” he cracked.

“Brilliant idea! Yes!”

We belly laughed, delighting in a moment of conspiratorial connection, pulling a fast one on unsuspecting Michael.

Who would have thought, ten years ago, that this would be my life?

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Marco doesn’t know Michael is dead. I didn’t tell him. Why would I? It was a perfect little moment: warm, funny, completely ordinary. And although I’ve had conversations with other REI clerks about loss (mostly in the shoe department), poor Marco did not need his own jump scare at the beginning of his shift. Plus I don’t want to alert corporate REI that I’ve been piggy-backing off a dead man’s member number for a decade. They might take my points!

My late husband, non-earthbound as he is, is woven into my days in a fashion that baffles my black-and-white thinking. He’s not here, so, you know, he shouldn’t be here. But he’s everywhere. His name on the REI account. His password on our movie streaming service. His picture on my office bookshelf. Loss is strange that way. It doesn’t erase people, it just changes where they live.

Driving home with my bag of loot, I kept thinking: this is not how I pictured loss going. I could never have imagined it would be like this. Not the convo I just had with Marco. Not the pilgrimage. Not the book I just published. Not my new work family at Experience Camps for Grieving Kids. Not the Treehouse I was steering towards. Not the ways Mike likes to wink at me from the other side.

Not any of it.

We think loss makes the future unknowable, and we’re not wrong. But so does almost every other change or decision.

Think about it. When we embark on the journey to parenthood, we commit our entire life to a child who doesn’t yet exist. But we do have a picture in our head: maybe they’ll have my husband’s sky-blue eyes or love Tolkien’s books or swim the 1650 just like me. Then this actual human arrives, with deep green eyes, strong negative opinions about swimming, absolutely zero interest in reading, and you think, oh! This is who showed up. And within about ten minutes, you can’t imagine anyone else. The picture you started with is completely beside the point.

We do this all the time. We pick colleges based on brochures and a whistle-stop tour. We switch jobs for the promise of career advancement or a better work environment. We move cities, believing a different climate or culture or commute to work will improve our lives. All of it a leap toward something we cannot actually know. And somehow, we call that normal.

But the other side of loss? That we treat as a special kind of murky darkness. Or, if we do picture it, we see a smaller, weaker, more unsure version of ourselves. Someone beaten by the game of life.

Not someone giggling with Marco at the REI.

We’ve always taken these leaps into the unknown, loss is just more like a shove than a jump. But there’s still possibility on the other side of it all. I couldn’t have pictured the life I’m now living in my worst moments, nor my best ones. It arrived because I kept moving forward, stubbornly believing that, just like the college freshman or new associate or out-of-state transplant, this future had something to offer me.

We think we’re planning — with the dreams and goals and timelines — but we’re mostly inspiring ourselves. And while we should keep doing all of those things, don’t be surprised if you end up somewhere you never saw coming. Because the truth is, our imaginations simply can’t keep up with all the possibilities available in this technicolor reality called life.

Like I said, I’m starting to pack for another month-long walk across Scandinavia. The intent of my first pilgrimage back in 2024 was to walk off the final dregs of my grief. Instead, it ended up being a return to parts of me that got buried during the grind of adulthood: the voracious reader, the insatiable learner, the patient, content observer. Grief, that sly fox, brought me home.

Truthfully, I have no idea what I’m going to find this time around. But I’ve learned that doesn’t matter. I don’t have to know where I’m going to keep moving forward.

Looking forward to whatever I find,

Sue

Subscribe on Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin.

P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here.

I’ve always felt meh about New York. It’s not that I’m not a city person. London is my favorite place on the planet, and Amsterdam has recently stolen my heart. But New York from the very beginning has rubbed me the wrong way. It all started in Western PA. No one from my hometown ever put New York on a pedestal. Quite the opposite. We mostly thought those people were crazy.

I first actually set foot in NYC in 1979 as part of a gaggle of 5th grade girls on an Eastern Seaboard van tour with our gym teacher. My hazy memory puts us standing at the base of the Statue of Liberty, navigating the dank subway, sleeping in a church basement. But I much more clearly remember (and remember enjoying) Philadelphia’s Liberty Bell and the waves of Rehoboth Beach.

My next visit wasn’t much more memorable. In 1995 I took a flight north as a 27-year-old MBA student on a mass cattle call for a consulting job with Coopers & Lybrand (RIP). Our little plane from Raleigh-Durham was buffeted by thunderstorms. Airsickness bags were put through their paces. We kissed the ground upon landing at LaGuardia. My next set of memories from that weekend were interviews with the partners in their hotel rooms. I don’t recall the trip home thankfully, just that I got a call a few days later, securing a post-MBA gig. Not in NYC, God forbid, but DC. I looked forward to my leafy suburbs and limited commute.

Then there were the career-building years, when my husband and I both regularly frequented New York for an investor, or board, or lawyer something-or-other. Sometimes we’d cross paths, snagging a kiss and lunch before running to our meetings. Here, I find a rare highlight of New York in my Mike memory rolodex: a 2016 viewing of Hamilton, sharing martinis in the Westin lobby post-show, reliving our favorite parts, characters, raps. That was the last show we saw together before Mike died. But lingering on that memory, I don’t find any of my fondness for it turning towards NYC. It was about me and Mike; the setting was trivial.

In the ten years since, going to New York was like seeing that loud uncle-in-law at family functions — an accepted part of life, but never, ever, a goal. Why would I choose to go to a place where the buildings were so high sunlight didn’t hit the streets? Where you could assume you were sitting in pigeon poop if you wanted to sit anywhere at all? Where the honking horns and big LCD ads made thinking an act of equal parts willpower and disassociation?

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But I had my first new thought about NYC last week, right after I got off the train.

I had resignedly taken the trip north for my non-profit Experience Camps’ board meeting and our annual fundraising gala.

After a cozy two hours in the Quiet Car, I had scurried through the bowels of Penn Station to the modern cathedral that is Moynihan Train Terminal. The sunbeams ricochetted off every surface. The shopfronts looked like a movie set. Even the jumbotron ads looked elegant.

As I lingered to take it all in, a thought pinged: Is the Quiet Car and Moynihan the best part of my NYC trips?

Without even setting foot in the city proper, I was already sure I had my highlight reel complete. That’s the kind of on-repeat story I have self-righteously marched out trip after trip.

Then, out of nowhere, something new arose: What a stingy thought.

Ok Scrooge, everywhere outside of America people sing the praises of NYC. They share their highlight reel from their visit, or at the very least, their aspiration to someday create one. And here it is, right up the road from me, a place I have the chance to see regularly. Yet I somehow spurn it.

Why don’t, for a weekend, I try to see what they all see? Why don’t I do what I say I LOVE doing, and look beyond the surly manners and historical layers of grit? Why don’t I cut the judging, and spend some time noticing first?

It was a nice idea, but old habits die hard.

I tore myself away from the station and headed uptown, dodging tourists and suits and fashionistas as I trudged to the Times Square Hilton to drop off my stuff. Then I walked the nine blocks north to the ExCamps Board meeting, trying to discreetly plug my ears as taxis blared at each other. At least I fit in, I thought. Everyone is scowling.

Once at the restaurant, I mazed my way to the back room, appreciating the sensation of burrowing my way out of the city, and walked into a group of colleagues turned friends.

Last year I was still getting to know this crew. Eighteen months in, I’ve now jumped in with both feet. I co-chair a Risk Committee, co-facilitate a Caregiver Advisory Board, know the team on a first name basis. On this particular evening, we talked about public relations and AI. From start to finish the meeting had that special sauce of intellectual stimulation and emotional fulfillment, aka what happens when you’re part of a team deeply dedicated to a cause.

I was already on Cloud 9 when CEO Sara shared, “The team and I were joking around that people who are helpful and kind are like poptarts: convenient and delicious! But Sue is not just a regular poptart, she’s a frosted poptart. The best kind!” Ridiculous metaphors back-to-back with convos about grief and loss — these are my people. I practically floated back to the Hilton.

I always knew that New York had a rich history of nonprofit and cause-oriented work. But finally I was a part of it: passionate conversations with dry humor, loud laughter, and an aggressively can-do attitude. NYC isn’t just hard, it’s rambunctious. It’s gonna throw its hat in the ring for a good cause and, with a smile on its face, give the fight all it’s got. Even if it loses, it’ll shake hands, and be back tomorrow.

Hm. Point for New York.

The next morning I opened my curtains, expecting to see the sheer rock face of another hotel blocking any form of natural light.

Instead my head swiveled, taking in a to-die-for vista of the city. Ancient water towers topped bricked buildings to my left. Gleaming skyscrapers stood sentry on my right. Red industrial cranes loomed in the far distance. Smaller scenes revealed racks of clothing in a fashion house window; six silent figures sitting around a conference table; a tiny atrium with trees reaching upwards far below.

“Wow New York, you are PRETTY!” I literally said out loud in my surprise.

Another point.

I headed to a breakfast joint near Central Park. The sun was shining, the spring leaves were unfurling, the horns were honking. But this May day, they had a cheerful quality to them, like a boisterous family playing a board game. I’d just crossed 5th avenue when the green leaves of Central Park gave way to green tables and green shelves covered in… books?

I had to pause to re-orient. There I was, standing in the middle of a bookstore, a light breeze ruffling my hair and flipping a couple covers open. The horns were still going off, but some dial in my mind turned the volume down as my fingers grazed the books, laying face up as if sunbathing.

I picked up a current bestseller, a Rachel Cusk I’d had my eye on, then lingered at the NYC-themed table. There, a slate-blue cover with an etching of a pigeon drew me in. New York Sketches by E. B. White. Any book with ‘sketches’ in the title must be about observing, and since I always have my future (third) book on my mind — NODES: Noticing Odes — I figured EB could school me. How else could I justify buying a book solely dedicated to a city I definitely still didn’t like? I pulled it on top of my pile and headed to the register.

For those keeping score at home…New York is up three.

After a lap around the MoMa, I settled myself in the outdoor courtyard, a cold brew in hand, and pulled out my new purchase. The intro was penned by White’s granddaughter; “He was a master at finding words for the small, unforgettable moments. The small moments of wonder.” I raised my chin from the page, curious to imitate Mr White and see what I found. My eyes gravitated to a man in a black-watch-patterned blazer, black Beats headphones, round glasses, beat up sneaks, his foot tap-tap-tapping to the beat, while he knit. Looking over him like a parent checking their child’s homework was Rodin’s sculpture of John the Baptist.

There’s no point counting anymore. New York wins.

We all come with pre-conceptions (NYC is full of loud-mouth bullies), comparisons (London is better), and judgments (do we really have to honk this much??). Every situation we walk into, we’ll bring a sack full of those.

But how do we remember to look beyond those too? To look up from our well-worn thoughts of “I like this, but not that” or “I wish it was this way, not that way”, and actually see what’s here? Because the truth is, New York never did anything wrong. I had just never given it a chance. I had this story that it was too loud and too grimy and too skyscraper-y and I would just never have a good time there. So I didn’t.

But come on, it’s New York.

And finally I was there with enough time and enough goodwill to actually notice.

To seeing beyond ourselves,

Sue

Subscribe on Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin.

P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here.

My Uber driver’s monologue began the moment the back hatch of her Volvo lifted. For 26 minutes, she shared her ride-share maximization strategies (always chose passengers with the longest rides), her conspiracy theories (cloud seeding and chemtrails over Louisiana are killing us), and the two times she’d been reported for dangerous driving (those passengers just wanted their money back). By the time we reached Louis Armstrong International Airport, I was firmly on the passengers’ side.

I checked my bag and descended into the airport’s belly. The 6am, post-Jazz-Fest TSA line greeted me at the bottom of the stairs.

I took it personally.

Ten days in someone else’s beautiful-but-not-mine home had drained my battery. Add to that a broken writing rhythm and the stress of my last Do Loss book event; a creeping Scrooge feeling had bubbled up. Not even walks with Olive around Audubon Park on beautiful May days had been able to shake it. My brain wanted to be elsewhere. Now.

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Which, in my book, is no harm, no foul.

We all get worn out, stressed out, bored out of our minds sometimes. We all deserve to cope dirty when we need to, aka do whatever works to get us through the rough patches. When that craving bubbles up, I’ll melt into the couch in front of Star Wars movies for hours. But I didn’t think a slightly unhinged Uber driver and a disrupted writing routine reached that threshold. Yet I could still feel myself craving the emotional equivalent of airplane mode: zoning out.

Once I cleared the TSA line and boarded, I tucked my WSJ and current novel into the seat back pocket. I never buy the wifi on a plane — an old habit from my corporate days, when 32,000 feet was the only work-free zone on earth. Devices inert. World on mute.

I noticed I still craved my usual escapes: checking the kids’ locations, reading news articles online, scrolling. I just couldn’t have them. I wasn’t feeling all that hard copy content in my seat-back stash either, so I settled on staring into space. As my mind meandered, a six-week-old conversation popped into my head.

My pal Deb — devoted Buddhist, small-animal vet in the Vail Valley — and I were debriefing after my very first book talk in Colorado, when she gave me a new perspective on my beloved coping dirty: maybe when we reach for simple pleasures, what we’re looking for isn’t distraction at all. Maybe it’s connection.

Because not all escapes are created equal. Some leave me feeling worse than before I picked up my phone, or reached into the fridge, or retail-therapied my day away, or watched Dave Chapelle’s latest Netflix special.

But some leave me feeling strangely more myself.

There’s a guy on Instagram called Ben the Bookseller. He films himself in his bookshop recommending books, talking smack about book covers, and revealing unknown gems with this completely unhinged enthusiasm, silly mannerisms and unique British style. His hair stands straight up, barely contained. I watch him and I laugh. I copy down his recommendations — Oh, I have Swimming Studies on my TBR pile, I’ll pull it out as Ben just gave it a glowing review! After one-way communing with Ben, I feel genuinely good. I don’t feel distracted. I feel re-connected with parts of myself that I cherish and enjoy: the book nerd, the endless learner, the anglophile with dry humor.

But then there are those other times — you know the ones — when you get sucked into whatever the algorithm decides you need, and forty minutes later you surface feeling vaguely gross, like you just ate an entire sleeve of Oreos and can’t remember doing it.

Same phone. Same app. Completely different experience.

Deb’s reframe changed the question I now ask myself. Not do I need a break? (The answer is almost always yes.) But what am I actually hungry for?

Sometimes it’s a laugh. Sometimes it’s an idea. Sometimes it’s a person who reminds you that the world contains people worth knowing.

So on the plane that day, I ended up mostly staring out the window. The clouds and landscapes below grazed by, and I just let my thoughts do the same thing. The irritation eventually thinned and gave way to peace which gave way to curiosity. To openness. To looking outward once again, at the elderly gentleman next to me with his Vietnam Veteran ball cap, to the flight attendant’s boxy red glasses, to the business man sound asleep on the aisle.

An hour later, I felt like I had landed back in a core part of my being: the Noticer who is endlessly content watching the world eddy and swirl, and slowly unspooling its mysteries.

To finding what brings you home,

Sue

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