The Luminist

“You seem a little quiet, is everything okay? You went on that hike today and were gone a long time.”

“Oh, sorry ma. After the hike I actually ended up reading at the library. My car was parked there, and I went in to get warm. You know how I love libraries.”

Hmmm… that wasn’t really answering my question.

Connor and I sat across from each other in an aging red leather booth at Jackson’s Mighty Fine Food. We’d beat the post-Thanksgiving Saturday evening rush, and were enjoying having the popular restaurant mostly to ourselves during a senior-citizen-style 4pm meal.

I’d just finished my cheeseburger; Connor, his brick chicken and broccoli, plus most of my fries.

Our waitress floated in and out, dropping off a straw, a napkin, more rolls. In the relative silence, I steeled myself, broaching the subject that had been weighing on my mind.

“Okay, manny, but what else is going on. Did I say something that ticked you off?”

He looked at me, baffled, and then finally figured out what I was really talking about. “No, no, it’s nothing about you… Honestly, ma, I just don’t feel like I belong here anymore. Virginia is fine. It’s where I grew up. But it’s not me.”

I blinked. Several times.

He continued, “I’ve been to places around the world that feel more me. Where there are real mountains. Where the hiking trails are a stones-throw away. Where I can ski in November. You know, the stuff I love. I can’t do that here. Not like I can living in Denver.”

After a too-long pause, I did my best to rebound.

“Oh! Okay then, well I’m glad you found a place you love so much, Connor. No issues. We’ll make sure we plan in the future to maybe get you back a day or two early. Maybe this lingering in Virginia after Thanksgiving is not optimal.”

”Thanks ma, that’s a great idea. Let’s plan for that.”

Just 60 days into Connor’s new season as a working stiff, his move to Denver, his first foray into no-joke adulting, he’s fallen in love.

This relationship is not a flash in the pan or love at first sight. It’s been building for some time. He’s had an ongoing connection with Colorado for one week each year for the past decade, plus an entire summer fling back in 2022. And now Colorado is what he longs for. Colorado is his home.

As this realization slowly spread through my body like the ketchup oozing across my plate, my cheeseburger-filled stomach lurched. This was different than all the times he had left home before — college in New York, a summer in L.A., a semester in New Zealand. Those were boomerang experiences, bringing him back to my doorstep when the adventure was done. But in this moment, with my useless hands folded on my lap, I realized those were all just dress rehearsals for what was unfolding now.

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Prior to the red-leather-booth confessional, I’d been convinced I’d stuck the landing, patting myself on the back for successfully navigating his departure from my nest.

So I was not ready for the way this realization hit me right between the eyes — this kid will never live under my roof again.

Oof.

And then I ignored all I’ve learned in the last nine years of studying and processing grief, and did what I’ve always done. I dragged out my mental props and set decorations, preparing the stage for my favorite four-act play:

Act 1: Beat myself up

How can something I’ve pined for, orchestrated, micromanaged, supported, and suffered for not lead to warm fuzzies and unending bliss? How can I be unhappy about the exact outcome I could only dream of when this kid was a baby chick in an incubator, perilously close to never leaving the Georgetown NICU? How could I so deeply want something for someone I love, then be unhappy when they get it?

Act 2: Rail against the change

Things will never be the same. I’ll never have Connor close by on the regular, his seismic steps rocking the treehouse as he sprints up and down the stairs. The smell of multiple packets of Quaker Maple & Brown Sugar oatmeal cooking in the microwave. His crazy post-sleep hair standing on end in crop-circle-like patterns that scientists should study. His mid-conference call hugs, when he can’t help but slide into my office even when he knows I’m busy. I’m being ROBBED.

Act 3: Mourn

Finally, I just let myself be sad. I wallowed in it. I walked around Great Falls park like a backpack-sporting zombie. I talked to Leona. To Kavon. To Kendall. I gave myself some grace, and then just sat in the mess.

Act 4: Accept

After what was apparently the right amount of rumination, talking, nature, sadness, or maybe leftover apple pie — nothing that can be measured on a clock or a chart, just the amount of time that’s unique to all of us in every single circumstance — I stumbled into acceptance. Yep, this is the way it is. I accept that Connor’s job is to find what works for him and reject what doesn’t, whether that’s people or places. To grow into adulthood on his own terms. And it’s my job to let him.

While I’m no Tom Stoppard (RIP), this is my standard four-act play. Actors, contexts, props, and scenes come and go. But this is how it usually plays out for me.

However, while I always think that when the curtain falls on Act 4, that’s the end of the story… it never actually is. Predictably, an unpredictable thing happens next. An encore.

Unlike in a play, my real-life encore doesn’t happen right away. I usually have to run through mini versions of those first four acts a few more times, which also make me sure the encore definitely isn’t coming. But eventually, once I’ve built up momentum and actually begin moving ahead, life becomes ripe for it. Generally the encore is something surprising; I could not have hoped for it because I could not have imagined it. It doesn’t fill the hole of my grief or make the change all hunky dorey. Simply, it’s what steps into the vacuum created by the change.

And so life proves yet again that it won’t ever stop it’s unfolding. It doesn’t matter how devastated I was when I realized things would never be the same. It will grow something I can’t see coming.

In that predictable unpredictability, I find consolation.

On the last day of Connor’s visit, Uncle Richie rolled up in his white Jeep, ready for the airport run. As he helped Connor carry his duffle bag, roller bag, backpack and winter coat, the two of them started joking around like the 60- and 23-year-old delinquents they are.

“Hey, I want to take a picture of the two of you, stand still!” I tried to get their attention amidst the smack talk and laughter.

Like two frat bros with mischief on their minds, they looped their arms around each other’s necks a little too tightly. They discreetly balled their fists to see who would sock each other first.

Exasperated, I sighed, “Geez, come ON you two. Stand still for a second.”

They gave each other a steely gaze. Then they obeyed.

And in that moment, right in front of me, was an encore from a nearly decade-old four act play. It breaks my heart that Mike isn’t here, but if he had been, I wouldn’t get to watch these two goofy boy-men, thick as thieves, wrestling in the driveway of a home built to help us heal.

I hug Connor goodbye. I’ll see him at Christmas, and enjoy some solitude to process this change between now and then. And it will be a little bit easier because life won’t let me get too far before reminding me it’s got a trick or two up it’s sleeve.

To the encore,

Sue

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

“I thought you were at a board meeting… what’s up with the tutus? I always pictured you as anti-tutu.” Kendall was baffled. No lie, so was I.

I’d managed to clock 57 years on this planet never sporting a tutu. I’d hazard a guess that 80% of my fellow Experience Camps for Grieving Children board members never had either. But our board retreat was designed to get us closer to understanding the experience of the grieving kids we support. So we were going all in on the zany, fun energy our camps bring to kids who have lost a caregiver or a sibling.

Tutus were part of the deal.

The day also had all the usual board meeting elements: CEO reports, growth projections, financials, sandwiches from Panera. And like every corporate event I’ve attended in my 33 years, an outside speaker. Or in this case, a panel of them.

Board member Lauren acted as facilitator for three guys in their mid-twenties — Kyle, Luke, and Dylan. All had lost dads young. All had been ExCamps campers, returning year after year. And now all take one week off their jobs in the summer to volunteer as counselors. None of them wanted to come to ‘grief camp’ initially; they were too busy trying not to feel anything. Trying to just be kids. But what they found surprised them: the regular camp fun, in a place where they could also feel normal because they were surrounded by people who had gone through similar experiences.

Lauren’s last question was about the impact that camp had had on each of them personally. Kyle, being a typical young man, answered with only a few words. But his response made my jaw hit the floor.

“I don’t know what I’d be without this camp. Or without my grief.”

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

Inspirational speakers were part of my corporate gigs for three decades.

Blue Angels fighter pilots schooling us on teamwork and connection. Bestselling authors who overcame impossible odds. NFL quarterbacks miraculously winning Super Bowls after career-ending injuries. These folks got paid to move audiences. Sometimes they did. Other times, I found myself thinking ‘who hired this guy?’, even when the guilty party was me.

Yet none of those speakers moved me the way Kyle, Luke, and Dylan did.

Which is strange to my analytical brain, because not only were they lacking the backing of a speaker’s bureau and years spent fine-tuning their delivery, they also couldn’t even really explain how they went from “I do NOT want to go to grief camp” to a decade later, dedicating a week of their summer volunteering there. Instead, they just cracked a joke and shrugged their shoulders when they didn’t know what to say.

So what was it? What rearranged my DNA in a way no brave aviator, football legend, or Nobel laureate had before?

After spending entirely too long thinking about it, for me it comes down to three things:

1) The ordinariness of it all.

I used to put those corporate speakers on a pedestal. Look what they’ve achieved! Look what they’ve overcome! But pedestals by their very nature create distance. That distance decreases relatability. While I was inspired, I can’t imagine walking a mile in their shoes. The gap between their superhuman tenacity and my life felt like the Grand Canyon.

But these bros were ordinary. No, I’m not saying losing your dad young is ordinary (although 6.4 million children will lose a caregiver or a sibling by the time they turn 18, so it’s not as rare as we wish). But they clearly weren’t superhuman. They weren’t curing cancer, solving world peace, breaking land-speed records, illuminating the origins of black holes, all while simultaneously being Mother Teresa’s mini-me. In other words, they could be anyone.

Also, their journeys were ordinary — they literally went to SUMMER CAMP for one week, several years in a row, and now are doing great? Obviously there is way more to their stories than this. But again, nothing that you or I couldn’t imagine happening in our lives or the lives of our children. They’re just three guys in their mid-twenties who had something terrible happen, got support, and are now doing pretty well: enjoying their jobs and volunteering in the summer. Their flourishing is not out of reach.

2) They didn’t try to give us a recipe.

These dudes couldn’t articulate the top ten reasons why Experience Camps became so important to them. They couldn’t lay out the step-by-step journey of how grief transformed them. They couldn’t explain exactly what role community had played. In no way could they break it down for us.

And in doing so, they reminded me that 90% of processing grief is just leaning in to what supports you.

The friends who feel replenishing rather than exhausting. The movies that make you laugh. The book that makes you cry cathartic tears. The support group you kind of dread but always feel better after. The long walks, the therapy sessions, the facials, the journaling, the kickboxing, the milkshakes. Grief camp. WHATEVER.

Screw doing grief “right”. Just lean in to what works for you, even if you have no idea how or why.

3) They didn’t need to spin their grief.

Not one of them said, “It was terrible to lose my dad, but at least I made all these lifelong friends.” In fact, they never once said “at least”. Quite simply, they didn’t position their tragedy as the prereq to a bajillion silver linings, the reason they now have incredible wisdom or fortitude, or even the insight that life is too short.

Our culture loves to frame any struggle as “no pain, no gain”. (Ahem, guilty!) It’s so rare to hear someone share about hardship without turning their pain into the first part of an equation that eventually, obviously leads to a permanent kumbaya-style inner peace. But they also didn’t just say that their pain was solely painful.

It was simply part of their story. Not the end, not the climax, not even the training montage.

So after turning this over in my head nonstop like a kid on a trampoline who’s just mastered her somersault, I think I’ve got it.

These young men, in their goofy, sheepish way, are shining examples of what I’ve been struggling to find words for for years.

They didn’t show us what it looks like when you’ve “healed” from loss to become this sparkling new superhuman (or monk). Rather, they showed us what it looks like when you’ve just integrated it into who you are. Healing suggests completion, a before-and-after where you emerge on the other side transformed but finished. Integration suggests something ongoing, alive, woven into the fabric of who you’re still becoming.

Kyle didn’t say, “I overcame my grief and now I’m thriving.” He said, “I don’t know what I’d be without this camp. Or without my grief.” Damn, I tear up just writing that sentence.

That’s the only thing we ever really do with big grief. We don’t move past it or get over it. We just... incorporate it.

We find a new shape to take so it can live within us without consuming us.

And this is why I’m ready to launch a national ad campaign for Kyle, Luke, and Dylan: they prove that integration is so accessible. It doesn’t require Navy Seal-level resilience or a redemption arc the size of Everest or making meaning of your pain (whatever that actually means). It just requires showing up, leaning in, finding your coping methods, and trusting that somehow you’ll find yourself on the other side, living a happily ordinary life.

That’s not inspiration from a pedestal. That’s a lighthouse from someone on the exact same level as you, lighting the way.

To ordinary examples,

Sue

P.S. We are a few days past giving Tuesday, but If you’d like to help thousands of ordinary kids live a happily ordinary life, you can contribute to Experience Camps for Grieving Children here: Donate Now!!

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“Let’s go get a margarita before we go to the emergency room.” Mike looked at me like I’d completely lost it. He knew better than to say anything out loud, but his face said it all.

I’d been having a gradually expanding pain in my lower abdomen. Not debilitating, but not decreasing. We were now on day three.

Yet it was one of my favorite days of the year. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving. A time when corporate America puts work to bed. A time when the kids were at school. A time when Mike and I would go out to lunch with no phones buzzing, no HR disasters, no demands. Instead, we’d stroll around the outdoor mall, hand holding, laughing, talking about something besides work.

That day always felt like it had slipped through a wormhole and was in a different universe, so the rest of life couldn’t encroach and steal our peace.

“Okay,” Mike said, because he was an expert at Sue management, especially at my most belligerent. “How about we go to the emergency room first, and if they tell us it’s nothing, we’ll go get margaritas after.”

I agreed.

We had “our” emergency room — a tiny satellite location near the house. We’d been there for stitches, pneumonia, a broken foot. It was always a quick in-and-out. I had faith it would be again. I probably just needed a painkiller prescription, and then we’d be on our way. Bonus: it was five minutes away from Uncle Julio’s, our tex mex joint of choice.

The kind nurse took my vitals, then handed me a hospital gown. The orderly wheeled me in for a CT scan. I mentioned to both “hoping to get out of here in time for a margarita!” They looked at me the way Mike had.

I’d just received the best of all emergency room perks — a just-out-of-the-heater warm blanket — when the doctor came back in.

“Sorry Mrs. Deagle, no margaritas today. You have appendicitis. We’re sending you to the main hospital for surgery tonight.”

Tonight?

Sure enough, ten hours later I came home without my appendix, sleeping away Thanksgiving Day on the couch.

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A lot has changed since that annual Margarita Wednesday tradition (and the one year it was RUDELY interrupted by abdominal surgery).

Mike died. I left my corporate job, giving up my overflowing inbox and buzzing phone. The kids grew up, so I’m not beholden to their school and activity schedules. In other words, every single structural element that made that Margarita Wednesday special has evolved or disappeared. And yet, every single Thanksgiving week, without fail, I get the same wormhole feeling. The feeling of sweet, sweet space.

I’ve been taking long walks around my neighborhood this week. It’s a ghost town, tumbleweeds practically blowing through the streets. Everyone is gone, visiting family and friends. My email influx has slowed to a trickle (though I’m pretty sure my spam folder is overflowing with Black Friday deals.) As the light fades around 4pm, I find myself picking up a book I bought in January but never got around to reading. My son Connor is home from Denver, and we spend every evening on the sectional watching football, a Marvel movie, Top Gear.

There are some traditions we have purposefully laid to rest as our family has changed — we canceled Father’s Day in 2017, we now go to my mom’s for Thanksgiving Dinner rather than hosting, we celebrated our last Christmas in Colorado last year. But some traditions you want to keep around, even while it seems like life is pulling away from them.

I’m glad to know that while a tradition may change shape — I drank zero margarita’s this past Wednesday — the essence can remain.

Looking back, it strikes me that I never got too hung up on the particulars of the tradition. (Margaritas or meltdown!!) It makes sense, because Mike’s death catapulted me into full ADAPT-TO-SURVIVE mode. So for each birthday, holiday, vacation, I was much more focused on recreating the feeling that meant so much to me and the kids, without giving a damn what that looked like. Which explains why every Wednesday before Thanksgiving for the last few years has looked different. One year I went to an esoteric artsy movie. Another year, a special exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. And another, a long and lazy lap swim in the pool.

Maybe that’s a silver lining of things changing before we’re ready for them to. Before we are ‘prepared’. I never got a chance to be mad that my Mall-and-Margarita tradition wasn’t bringing me the same satisfaction. If I wanted to feel that crystalline pause feeling, I had to look within and figure out what would bring me that, considering who I was and what I was craving today.

No matter how external circumstances change, we always have access to internal states, aka feelings. Feeling good might look different now or require different ingredients, but it’s still possible. We just have to have to think outside the tradition box, or in this case, the margarita glass.

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours,

Sue

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

My mom and I like to hang out in an office park. The drab, three-story buildings house doctors’ offices, title companies, civil engineers. They also hide something unexpected: a church. And adjacent to the enormous conference-room-turned-sanctuary, a church-run coffee shop.

It’s halfway between her condo and my treehouse, but it has mostly become our go-to spot because of the sheer variety of human beings. Toddlers in the play area screeching like pterodactyls. Veterans wearing their bomber jackets and Air Force ball caps. Real estate agents striking deals. Gray-haired gaggles of ladies clicky clacking away at their knitting. Hoodied college students tuning out the world with their ear buds and laptops.

A 57-year-old daughter and 79-year-old mother fit right in (and can enjoy the people watching).

When I arrived, mom was already sitting in our favorite corner at a high-top table, a plastic cup of water in front of her, writing in a notebook.

I walked over and hugged her. “Hi Mom! How are you? I’ll go place our order. Same as last time for you?”

”Avocado toast, yes, but this time I’d like a cappuccino too.”

“Okay, great. Before I do that, I brought a couple of things for you.”

I looped my tote-bag straps over the back of the remaining chair, sticking my hand in to fish around. First I pulled out a candle.

“I tried this Christmas candle and don’t love it, so I’m handing it over to you.”

Then I took a deep breath as I reached into my bag again… Even though I’d just forced a candle I found insufferable on her, I had much more trepidation about the next delivery. But I wasn’t backing down, I had to at least try.

So I pulled out a hardback.

“Ok, listen, I brought this book for you.” I showed her the cover: The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old by Sophy Burnham.

“I read an interview with the author and it made me think of you. I know sometimes getting older hasn’t been the most fun, and I thought it might help.”

Like a rollercoaster heading downhill, my words got faster.

“I think there are two ways you might enjoy this book. First, if the author’s words resonate and you like it, then by all means read it! Or, if you think she’s full of BS and you don’t buy what she’s selling, then you can throw the book in a fire and watch it burn. I think that might be rewarding too!! So, no pressure to like it or agree with it, okay?”

She gave me a ‘oh, my crazy daughter’ smile. I skipped off to order our food.

When I returned a few moments later, her nose was in the book. She put it aside while we caught up.

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

I know exactly nothing about what it feels like to turn 80. Fifty-seven is the extent of my horizon. So when a blurb on a book says it can “take the fear out of adding another year”, should I believe that? How will I know for sure it will resonate with my mom, rather than be platitude-filled gibberish that only makes her feel worse?

I don’t know the answer to any of those things. But here’s what I do know: my mom’s life has changed a lot over the last decade. She retired from a high-pressure job running a county mental health center. She moved from our western PA home to the hubbub of Northern Virginia. She swooped in and literally saved my life when Mike died, running the house so I could earn the bacon. She even held ‘Camp GMA’ for her grandchildren for a week every summer, cookie-baking, seashell gathering, managing the endless squabbling like a saint. Then those grandchildren grew up.

I can only imagine what it’s like to walk in my mom’s size 8.5 Hokas, but with all the changes in her daily life and environment and health, I’m guessing it’s not a cake walk.

So I want to support her in some way, but have approximately NO idea what would help.

Early in my life this sense of being unsure… was the end of the story. I did not lean in to help people because I figured ‘what do I know?’ As if the exact knowledge of the exact experience is what’s required to support others in their tough times.

Now, I know that’s hogwash. My grief SWOT team who helped me through the first 90 days post Mike’s passing (and the nine years after) had never lost a spouse. Luanne, Takis, CeCe simply rushed forward, finding any way they could help, which turned out to be crying with me over breakfast, changing my tires, double checking my paperwork. No one told them that was what I needed, they just found their opening and took it. I’m sure their personal grief experiences informed how they acted, but mostly I think it was just from a place of love, and a belief that doing something, anything was what was required.

They taught me you don’t have to know what you’re doing to make a giant difference. You just have to act.

A week had passed and I’d assumed The Wonder and Happiness of Being Old had met its fate.

But then, a text.

“That book you gave me is wonderful and you should give it to every older person you know!”

I stared down at those words from GMA and slowly exhaled, shoulders slumping in relief.

(I chuckle every time I see my kids’ hipster name for my mother show up on my screen. Does everything have to be acronym, text-ready, and inscrutable?)

“Oh, you didn’t have to burn the book! Yay! It’s hard to imagine, but books can be risky! I’m glad I took the risk. Want me to order some copies for your friends?!”

As we chatted about what she liked about the book, and which of her friends might appreciate it, I couldn’t help but laugh at myself. What exactly had I been so afraid might happen?

Honestly, of a few different things. I’d been terrified my recommendation would:

* Offend her. How dare I acknowledge that she’s old?? Or that she’s going through a tough time?? Or that she might need support??

* Be at best ignorant, at worst harmful, given I have no idea what it’s like to be her age.

* Feel like I was trying to “fix” my mother instead of simply loving and supporting her exactly how and where she is.

In other words, I thought I could simultaneously ruin her life and our relationship by trying to help…?

To be fair, I can think of times when people really did ruin my day when they were convinced they had the solution to my problem. When an old coworker cornered me and talked my ear off about Mike being in a “better place”, when actually the best place Mike could be was alive and playing with his kids. That was offensive, ignorant, and harmful — check, check, check.

But you know what also didn’t help? All those people who didn’t risk it. Because their fear of messing up was bigger than their desire to support me.

I was absolutely NOT going to fall into that trap with my own mother. I was going to put my big girl pants on and try.

So I shared the book. But I shared it with permission, as an offering, a ‘I’m thinking of you, even though I’m not 100% sure this is going to hit the mark.”

It seems like many of us are mostly thinking about ourselves when we are considering how to help someone else… And it shows.

When we are mostly concerned with how we are coming across, our offering of support comes out twisted. We either want a gold star for doing it right, and therefore get pushy, or we don’t want to be caught trying and failing, so we don’t do anything at all.

But you know what is actually supportive in almost all situations? “Hey, I’m thinking of you! This thing I have/know/can do may not be what you need, but I wanted to offer it just in case it is. If it doesn’t help, chuck it in the bin! I’m here for you.”

No matter what you’re offering, it’s a win. Because the person in need knows you’re in their corner.

I can’t help but think about Do Loss as I write this… I wrote an entire freaking book for people who are going through hell, while I can’t be sure it will help every person who is going through hell. Because what we each need is so unique to the moment, to our situation, to our personality, etc. So I’ve come to think of it not as a sure thing, but as an offering, a tangible way of saying “I’m thinking of you. I’m trying.”

Even if the book just becomes kindling, may it keep someone warm… alongside the knowing that someone cared enough to risk it.

To sticking out our necks,

Sue

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

“The empanadas make that much of a difference??” Kendall and I were exchanging texts across the Atlantic, me at a Scandi-style coffee shop in my favorite North Carolina beach town, her from her bed in Lisbon. PDF’s of menus kept popping up on my phone as she looked up places to eat for when we meet in London in December.

I’d been texting a rote YES and YES and YES to every restaurant she suggested, only half paying attention while I churned on a parallel project on my iPad.

“The other place had ceviche, but not as many options,” she continued into the now one-way convo.

“Hey, listen honey, I can’t process all these menus,” I finally admitted. “I’m trying to write. Saturday is the third anniversary of The Luminist. Can you believe that? I’m trying to put my thoughts together for a post.”

”Wow, three years! Time flies! How does it feel??”

“Weird! I feel like what I’m writing now is way different from when I started. Back then I was like ‘I’M GONNA CHANGE THE CONVERSATION AROUND LOSS’ and now, I’m like, ‘I just want to tell stories.’ Because by writing the story, I figure out something about myself. So, each Saturday, I grow. And while I’m growing, I offer the chance for other people to see themselves in my stories. To question what they are thinking. To feel less alone. So, winning.”

She replied, “So it’s less like a concrete mission? I think that’s good. Now it’s more open to interpretation cause you allow yourself to find joy in it.”

Wow. Yeah. What she said.

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

For all eleven of you who have been here since that November Wednesday in 2022, when I recorded that very first post voiceover from the closet of my hotel room at the Kuwait Hilton, and then Leona sent it out to the world while I was standing at the podium at my company’s Middle East women’s summit… thanks.

For the thousand of you who have joined over the last three years, shared your ideas in the comments, sent me an email, texted me, shared with a friend, or just existed out there in the ether… thanks.

I’m even thankful for the people who have come and gone. To Don who harangued me on the regular in the comments for not reflecting his own grief experience. For those fellow Substack newbies who started with me when the platform was in its infancy, and have now gone on to different platforms or forms of expression. For the subscribers who tried reading, but ultimately didn’t resonate. For those reading 100 substacks and simply need to cut down to a more manageable size.

During these past three years, I have learned how to write and what it felt good to write about. I have changed and evolved (hello Empty-Nester Sue, farewell Corporate Sue). I have tried and failed at topics and post structures and whether or not to use section headings. I have force-fit things and then realized I was trying to be a Cheryl Strayed or Liz Gilbert or Oliver Burkeman when in fact I am a Sue Deagle... until I finally, organically fell into what I could sustain week after week, which turns out to be:

Simply noticing.

Noticing something about a conversation, a painting, a book, a tree, a football commentator, a billboard, my kids, my friends that piques my interest or pulls me in.

Single-finger tapping the half-formed thought into the subject line on my gmail app. Adding a few sentence fragments that make sense only to me. Transferring the hieroglyphics into a google doc and then typing until I figure out what that spark of interest is trying to tell me.

And Kendall hit the nail on the head. When I take a snippet from, say, my latest boneheaded decision and put it on a page — like an old-timey scientist pinning a specimen to parchment, bringing out the magnifying glass to look closer at the complexities invisible to the naked eye — I feel joy. I find it fun, and often surprising. It’s inviting mystery, complexity, nuance rather than trying to force certainty.

It’s not just the third anniversary of The Luminist. It’s also the ninth anniversary of Mike’s death.

We launched TL on this date out of strength. To take back a date that signifies the worst day of my life. To start something new and hopeful and empowering amidst the ashes.

Nothing changes the fact that the love of my life is no longer on this planet. I claim my inalienable right to mourn that forever. But noticing — paying attention to reality compared to the stories our minds and culture like to spin — has helped me place my grief in its larger context.

That’s what happened that March day that now lives in TL lore — when I was in the forest on one of my ‘crying walks’ a few months after Mike died. I was startled, literally shocked, to see baby leaves unfurling in the crisp, barely-Spring light. I reached out to touch one, hardly daring to believe that after a winter so cold anything would dare to live again. I remember it was a little spongey, not stiff or starchy like an adult leaf. It was just beginning.

My grief-addled brain wasn’t moving fast enough to have any lightning-bolt insights. But eventually these unlikely baby leaves became my go-to analogy: loss may mean destruction and heartbreak and despair, but that does NOT mean it’s the end of the story.

So of course I’ve found relief and freedom and joy in noticing. We don’t need pretty fairytales to help us breathe a little easier. We just need to look around.

To the truth that (eventually) sets us free,

Sue

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

P.S. To honor the evolution of my work, we’re rebranding! Going forward, we will be known as: The Luminist, a weekly column on noticing reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin.

We’ve also given the graphics a glow-up, so we’ve got a new logo — just a simple lighthouse — and a font I adore thanks to inspo from a very stylish hotel in Lisbon. (See, noticing again!)

And finally, here is an excerpt from our new about page:

I’m Sue. I write about ordinary life, especially the parts that don’t fit neatly into the story of “a good life” we’ve been told:

Why we’re afraid of things. Identity and how it shifts. The way we grow out of things we once thought would be forever. The way we lose things we once thought we could never live without. Why we are our own worst enemy. How grief and joy can sit in the same room without one of them having to leave. What resilience actually looks like. The strange aliveness hiding in regular moments.

I’ve discovered there is gold in these uncomfortable parts of life — meaning a little bit of wisdom or acceptance or insight or peace that allows me to feel more alive right here, right now, rather than always striving for a future that can’t help but be ten steps ahead.

So every week, I publish an essay about looking at something a little more deeply. Not to give you answers. Not to fix what’s broken. Just to expand what you see.

Even though we are widening our focus beyond our original mission, The Luminist will always be a haven for people struggling with grief and loss. So you can find posts specifically on those topics here.

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

Back in those silent days, I didn’t know how it was going to turn out. It was 2020, the height of COVID. The kids and I were trapped in our rental house, waiting for the Treehouse to be built. Each day we’d be at our stations — spare bedroom desk for Connor, home office for me, and Kendall not bothering to even leave her bed, doing her classes while snuggled under her comforter. The sounds of the day in the Deagle house were muffled voices through pocket doors as we proceeded with the pantomime of school and work.

Every day at 6pm I’d grab my coat and punch the garage door opener, sliding into the passenger seat of Connor’s silver Subaru. Five minutes later, a sullen Kendall would join me, getting behind the wheel.

Driving lessons.

It’s hard to teach someone to drive when even breathing too loudly is frowned upon. When your 15-and-a-half-year-old is doing her best to pretend you don’t exist. But permit-holders can’t drive without a grownup in the car, so the evil of my existence had to be accepted. I gave tips and guidance of course, which was mostly rewarded with a disdainful grunt in response.

Forty hours at the wheel was the state of Virginia’s requirement for moving on from permit to license. A regulation work week. That’s how I framed it in my head: I was going to spend a regulation work week with a colleague not interested in communicating.

Other than driving instructions, accepted with that surly grunt, the only other thing I discussed was the music she played.

“Who sings this song?”

“Is this the same singer as that other song?”

“What does that album cover mean?”

“Is this singer still alive?”

It was the thinnest of threads, learning about the music she listened to. But it was all I had to go on. She didn’t come to me about boy advice, friend drama, homework help, anything else. So I leaned in in the only way I could, showing I cared about what she cared about.

We’d skip by Post Malone, do SZA on repeat, wade through the disjointed vibes of Tyler the Creator. But my favorite, though God forbid I say it out loud, was “Where’d All the Time Go?” by Dr. Dog. Something about the catchy melody, the pauses, the sing-along-ability. I’d hum it under my breath so as not to call attention to my enjoyment.

I knew she liked it too, only because it was one of the few songs she never skipped.

We survived driving lessons. We survived the pandemic. She got her license and no longer needed me in the car.

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

Time passed. Calendar years torn off one by one. That fifteen-year-old surly newbie driver is now a twenty-year-old junior in college, taking Europe by storm during her study abroad.

A month ago, I was tucked into my usual Thursday crack-of-dawn spot at Rare Bird Coffee Roasters, listening to the take-no-s**t tattooed barista call out order numbers while snippets of conversation floated around me. My notebook, iPad, banana bread, and flat white threatened to overwhelm my tiny tabletop.

Then the distinctive first bars of a familiar tune filled the air. My perception of the buzzing room began to narrow, the coffee shop receding as a scene from half a decade earlier filled my mind’s eye. I giggled.

Then I opened my messaging app, tapping the grey-circled ‘K’, and punched the voice note button as I began to sing very softly along.

“Where’d All the Time Go… it’s starting to fly...”

I shifted over to a whisper: “Hey, I’m in this coffee shop so I can’t sing too loud, but our song just came on, and I wanted to say I love you!”

I hummed a few more bars and giggled some more. Then hit send.

I tapped the Shazam app to capture the particulars, forwarding the Dr. Dog song title across the ocean to Lisbon. To Kendall.

I followed up with a “So happy we have US!”

I have no idea how it happened. Honestly, I’m not sure I want to know. Some mysteries are better left unsolved.

What I do know is this: at some point between those driving lessons and now, something shifted. The disdainful teenager thawed. The grunts turned into actual responses. That moment in the coffee shop was just one of a hundred in the last few years that has surprised me. Just during my recent trip to visit her in Portugal, we had nonstop, deep, real conversations about life. Not a single side eye or surly grunt. She gave me Instagram lessons, showed me every single one of her thrifting purchases, even endured an overcrowded and opulent bookstore just because she knows what’s important to me.

But it’s how it felt when it was just the two of us, not doing much at all, that shows me how our relationship has evolved.

On our last night in Portugal together, we sat facing each other across a tiny ramen bar around the corner from Kendall’s dorm in Campo Pequeno. The rectangular outline of the LED lights extending above the bar made it feel like a mirror, like I was staring into myself, but seeing my daughter instead.

We slurped in companionable silence, a silence a million times different than those car rides. We were content in each other’s company. Connected without saying a word.

It feels like lifetimes ago that I sat next to her in the Subaru as she conspicuously turned up the music in order to drown out the unforgivable sound of my breathing.

I had no idea how to reconnect with her back then… All I knew was that I loved her, even when she was not so crazy about me. And that was enough for me to want to stay by her silent side. Some days you might have called me resigned, while on others I was accepting. Either way, I wasn’t interested in her music because I was under some delusional impression that knowing the words to SZA would make her want to talk to me again. I just was taking what I could get, without having a clue how it would turn out.

Apparently, that was enough.

Singing along,

Sue

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

I heard the commotion before I could pinpoint the source. My daughter Kendall and I had stowed our luggage, pulled out our phones, and were sitting side-by-side, snug in our seats as we waited for the 11:30am train to depart Gare do Oriente for Porto, Portugal.

We heard the sound of the carriage door squeak open. Then, a yammering of voices talking all at once, some high, some low, pierced the peaceful silence.

The tip of the spear finally came into view: a tiny snowy-haired woman walking backwards while jabbering to the rest of her unseen but very much heard posse.

Her eyes landed on us.

“Do you speak English?” she leaned down and asked.

We nodded, stupefied.

”What is your seat number?” she said with exasperation.

Kendall stood up, now towering over her, and pointed at the numbers printed in red tucked under the overhead luggage racks.

“Here, you can see we’re in 24 and 26,” she said, drawing the woman’s gaze upward.

“Oh, everyone, this young lady just showed me where the seat numbers are!” She called out to her invisible compatriots. “Thank you, dear. We are just in front of you!” She patted Kendall’s shoulder as she sat back down.

Then luggage, coats, hats, and grey hairs piled into the row in front of us, chattering away like birds in a nest jockeying for their mother’s attention.

As the husbands groused about heavy handbags and the lateness of the train, the wives peeled off jackets and pulled out sandwiches. They settled in.

I took in the commotion, my mind whirring through its English-accent Rolodex. Definitely not American. So where were these dropped r’s and slightly flat tones coming from? Are they Australian like my nephew Matt? A Kiwi like Connor’s New Zealand pals? From the north of England like the characters I saw in that Jez Butterworth play in London a few years back?

Then one of the blokes ended his sentence with a sliding-up-the-scale ‘ey?’ and my Rolodex halted.

This scrum of oldsters was South African.

And now in this tiny train terminal in Lisbon, on a travel adventure with my daughter in 2025, I was suddenly submerged in memories of trips and friends very far south. I could see Wayne taking the kids on a hike up Cape Town’s Lion’s Head. I heard Gillian’s constant encouragement of my writing and my kid raising. It’s like I was sitting a row over from Lesley-Anne, Mike’s old coworker turned friend for life.

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

I took my first flight when I was eight.

A trip with Grandma Tillie and my sister Amy to visit family in Denver. I can’t remember a single thing about the trip itself, except a feeling. A combo of awe, surprise, adventure… a ‘wow, I get to fly on an airplane!’ sort of thing. It was a big deal for a kid from Beaver Falls in 1976.

I didn’t get on a plane again for twelve years. Next destination? London.

During that trip I was infected with the travel bug (the good kind) and never looked back. In the decades since, I’ve done a bonkers criss-crossing of the globe. I’ve gone to new locales (love you, Patagonia!) and had some plays on repeat (looking at you, London). I’ve sweated through my shirt in the deserts of Middle Eastern Emirates and watched glaciers floating by in Greenland. I’ve swam in the seas of Mexico and hiked the hills of Norway.

I came. I saw. I took pictures and bought postcards.

Sometimes, I had genuinely moving experiences. Sometimes I checked “Must See While In [insert city]” boxes.

But this latest trip to Portugal feels different.

I’ve been to Portugal before, so I can’t blame the place. 25 years ago, my late husband Mike and I spent a sun-baked week in a stick shift with no A/C tooling around the country. We were fascinated by the cappuccinos at the highway rest areas (pre-Starbucks!), dazzled by the castles with their bright colors, appalled by the sunburned British tourists. We swam in a saltwater pool in Sagres with a group of Italians. We ate ourselves silly. We even enshrined the word Obidos (a lovely Portuguese city) into our Deagle lexicon as a substitute for ‘I dunno’.

In other words, it was an all-around delightful adventure. But it was more in that old vein: we came, we saw, we checked the tourist boxes. Versus these days, when I’m not as jazzed by touring another gorgeous cathedral (God bless them).

Because who cares how much of the world you’ve seen, if you can’t appreciate those memories? Who cares how much life you’ve lived, if you never slow down, look back, and bask in it all?

I saw Lisbon the way I always love to see cities: by walking.

Up and down the steep hills, I saw washing hanging out to dry against a shimmering green-tiled facade. I strolled behind tiny oldsters using canes to navigate the cobblestoned inclines. I paused a minute to listen to saxophone scales wafting from a second story window.

As my legs worked, my mind slid into an old, familiar state: noticing.

The white wires hanging from everyone’s ears: in this city the cool kids don’t wear AirPods, corded headphones are the thing. The tourist transit of choice: tuktuks and golf carts, not giant buses. The cab drivers: dapperly dressed, middle-aged men in button down shirts and Loro-Piano-style sweaters. I’d step under an awning or into a vestibule every time an ‘oh that’s cool!’ thought popped into my head, and fat finger what I saw into my notes app under the header PORTUGAL NOTICING.

I’ve written before about noticing. It’s one of my favorite ways to get out of my head — when I’m unproductively stuck planning, strategizing, catastrophizing — and back into life. But this time noticing was just step 1…

Step 2 was a little psychedelic, but I think you’ll get it.

You know in scifi movies like Interstellar when a 2D image turns on its side and suddenly stretches, revealing a third dimension? It was a little bit like that… if you took it down to 2% of it’s wormhole intensity.

It was so subtle, I might not have realized, but I was already in Noticing Mode so the pump was primed. My perception began to deepen, my synapses registering not just what I was seeing in front of me in Lisbon, but what Lisbon reminded me of. The connections Lisbon was firing in my brain. I wasn’t just here, I was also in every place that reminded me of here.

Here’s a few examples:

Lisbon makes my body feel like it’s in a distilled version of New Orleans. Buildings festooned with wrought iron balconies and bejeweled tiles. Street numbers tiled into the pavement. Trees with trunks the diameter of a two door Fiat. The sound of trolleys vibrating through me before I see their bright yellow faces coming around the bend.

On the first morning I stood at my fourth floor hotel window on the edge of Bario Alto, watching moms and dads drop off their little ones at a daycare up the block, a mysterious door opening to let them in. Babies in front-loaded papooses, toddlers in tiny strollers, the occasional mop-topped boy riding on a dad’s shoulders. All that took me back to Mike and I, and the thousands of daycare drop offs, neighborhood walks, Great Falls strolls we did we did when the kids were young. Holding tiny hands. Wiping tiny noses. Engulfing our tiny people in a big hug before rushing to work.

The iconic painting of a gorgeous Portuguese badass in my hotel lobby, oozing power, energy, and a sly cool that I used to think was beyond me. But wait, I’d just been with my badass new lady friends in London — women who are running successful business, traversing distances in fell running races, reinventing themselves. While I stared up at Ms. Baddie on the wall, I whipped out WhatsApp and pounded out ‘we are as cool as she is, no cigarette required!’

Kendall had the last of five interviews for a summer internship while I visited. She’d come to my hotel for peace and quiet. I’d go take a walk around the neighborhood, doing my regulation mom fretting. She’d eventually text ‘come back! It went great!’ and I’d race back for the debrief. It was like all those times Mike had a work call from a vacation spot — Hawaii, Vail, etc. So Business Kendall was doing her Business Mike impression. Wait, not an impression. The REAL DEAL. She snagged that internship.

It actually is more like Interstellar than I realized. Walking the streets of Lisbon, it feels almost like I just have to find the right stick-shift car or cathedral or roadside cappuccino, and I’ll be back on vacation with Mike…

It’s interesting how home doesn’t have this same effect. The rooms you’ve lived in for years, the cafes you prefer for coffee dates or slow mornings, the paths you’ve walked so many times that you know every tricky root. These places carry SO many memories. But you’ve also seen them so many times they no longer catch your attention. It’s much easier to just be in your own head, on autopilot, running through your to-do list.

While traveling, your senses are charmed, startled, intrigued into presence… but apparently not exclusively presence of the present moment.

I’ve never been so delighted to not be youthful. To have a thick case of memories (which I’m picturing kind of like retro photo slides) that I can flip through whenever an aroma, an architectural detail, an angle of light, or a gaggle of grey hairs reminds me of something… Ah, here’s the one! I pull out the slide and hold it up to light; its blurry, sepia image projects across whatever is in front of me, and for a moment I get to live in both realities.

I get to live in magical kind of 3D.

To the places that remind us where we’ve already been,

Sue

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

Fall light flooded our eyes as we popped out of the grimy darkness of the tunnel onto the Golden Jubilee bridge.

Alice, Nic, and I had shared a haven’t-seen-you-for-a-while group hug, then left the ancient environs of Charing Cross Station behind, passing through 60 seconds of broken-bulb purgatory before emerging onto the Thames footbridge in all its modern beauty.

We hadn’t stopped talking post-hug. We’ve only been friends for 18 months, but we had a marathon’s worth of ground to cover in the few short hours on tap. Nic’s new book. Alice’s professional pivot. My ambitions for and confusions about my writing career. I was blathering on about this very newsletter. Its three year anniversary is approaching, and I’ve been trying to reconcile what I’m doing now with who I’ve been, and who I want to be.

In her delightful Dutchie way, Nic listened to me talking with a keen eye and a mischievous smile. Then she said quite matter of factly:

“When I met you, I just knew you as a writer. I’ve never known you as anything else. That’s who you are to me.”

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

We live up in our heads.

Here’s what it looks like inside of mine: a massive construction zone, multiple work areas competing for time, attention, and energy. A tug-of-war over the community bulldozer. Worker strikes. Lots of loud beeping, clanging, crashing. The occasional siren. Or ominous silence. Some areas have been neglected for years, despite the fact that I’m constantly tripping over them. Some I diligently work on daily. Sometimes I make progress. Sometimes I just add to the mess.

For much of my life, my career felt like the aspect of the endless renovation I had most under control. Sure, it was always a work in progress, playing the corporate chess match while trying to keep investors happy while trying to serve our employees and customers too. But at least I knew exactly what I was doing and why I was doing it: to provide for my family. My mission was clear, my to-do list prioritized, and though some weeks my work hours far exceeded 40, I felt focused and clear-eyed.

But now, doing whatever the hell it is I’m doing these days, I don’t have the same tangible motivation or obvious priorities.

And nothing is worse for a construction site than being unsure about what you’re trying to build.

Yes, I’ve been calling myself a writer for the last year, plus or minus. But compared to my 30+ years in corporate, I don’t feel embodied in that yet. I’m still learning. I’m in the toddler stages. The Luminist, Do Loss, early drafts of my next book are all bricks in a brick wall I’m building… but to what end? I’m still trying to figure that out.

But Nic already sees me as just that: a writer. No question, no confusion, no blinking and rubbing her eyes as she tries to understand how Corporate Sue became Creative Sue.

The next morning, I was having coffee with Alice. She’d read my Do Loss draft, and we were using the language and stories in the book as I intended: a kind of shorthand to bring loss out of the dark. We were sharing a few formative, family-related loss experiences from our pasts when a thought struck me.

“I tell stories about my different kinds of losses in the book,” I said, puzzled, “but I never once mention my parent’s divorce. Even though that’s a major loss… It might have been more formative than I realized.”

I can’t believe I worked on this book for a year and never once thought of that.

Like my own history has become a room I walk through every day, without even seeing the photos on the walls, momentos from vacations of yesteryear, or the plant in the corner that desperately needs water.

But sitting next to Alice, it’s like I flipped by the memory of the divorce and actually paused… because she didn’t know about it. That’s what caught my attention, not the memory itself but the fact that I had never shared it with her. I knew it was a part of me she’d never seen, so I did a double take and realized I personally hadn’t thought about it in years.

My new friendships strike again.

It’s like these relationships are giving me permission to tell my own story differently. Because I’m a different person today than I was two years ago. Same history, but not the same woman.

During my London trip, I also managed to squeeze in a laughter-filled dinner with another group of new friends. In a Primrose Hill gastro pub, Lisa, Mindy, Rebecca, Alice and I talked challenges, accomplishments, and how to take a selfie without ending up with a double chin.

We’d all been speakers at the Do over the last three years. We talked about what it was like not just to stand on stage with all your vulnerabilities in full view, but to then be challenged by watching yourself on the recording. Some of us dove right in. Some waited. Some never watched at all. Then we talked about the reactions of our friends and family — the way they recognized the ‘us’ they knew in those videos. How we wave our hands when we are nervous. How we catch our breath in the gut wrenching moments. How we were surprisingly funny at just the right times.

I felt so nourished by that dinner that when I lay down in the cool white sheets of my Baker Street hotel bed, I didn’t reach for my regular soothing strategies. A flick through New Orleans Zillow. Reading a random article in the WSJ. Instagram.

I just laid in the dim light feeling a full body contentment, wondering about the power of being with these other humans to pull a giant tarp over my construction zone, blocking it from my mind’s eye view and giving me a rest…

I’ll never let my old, ride-or-die friends go. When I text and say “I’m at Target and I can’t stop buying pillows,” they know that 1) I’m melting down and 2) I need to be pulled out of my tailspin with a precise ratio of tough love and a walk in the woods.

But new friends provide something so special too: a fresh perspective on the construction zone I’ve spent so much time staring at, my eyes are getting crossed.

That lack of knowledge is SO freeing. While I’m flailing around trying to decide what’s next for me with all my baggage on my back, they are providing active input baggage-free. They are participating in the construction of the person I’m becoming, not based on who I’ve been. Sue 2.0. (Or maybe 3.0 or 7.0?)

As I build myself into this new season of who I am, I keep trying to go back to my old selves as building blocks. But my new friends don’t have that context. They provide novel data based on who I am today.

All my old mistakes, character flaws, lack of empathy, tendency to set someone on fire with a glare — those are invisible to them. Sure, I fill them in. As you build a friendship, you always end up sharing the things that are key to who you have become. But what you share and how you weave it in can be yet another surprise and revelation.

So as someone who likely doesn’t know you or any of your history, but would like to consider myself a friend, can I say:

* Whatever renovation or pivot you’re working on, you’ve probably made more progress than you realize.

* You owe nothing to your history, past versions of yourself, or renovations that got abandoned halfway through. So while you’re reinventing yourself, feel free to reinvent the way you relate to your past too.

* The fact that you even have a construction zone is not a personal failing. It just makes you one of the crew.

* And finally, you’re also probably more tired than you are lost. Give yourself a break and get some rest.

To seeing yourself anew,

Sue

Thanks for reading The Luminist!

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

When I was a kid, birthdays meant breakfast in bed. My mom would rise early. She’d pull the waffle iron from its top-shelf roost, plugging the cord into the wall socket ‘til the dull amber bulb turned bright red.

She’d bisquick up the waffle batter, spray Pam on the griddle, and pour. She’d take the steaming hot waffle out with a fork, plop it on the plate, add a little flower in a vase and a cup of syrup on the side.

She’d carry it up the stairs to my room on a plastic tray covered in pictures of black-eyed Susans. Pushing open my door with her foot, she’d sing me a 78rpm version of Happy Birthday to You, while nestling the tray’s fold-out legs on either side of my blanket-wrapped thighs. Then be on her way.

That’s what formed my idea of what a birthday is. Digging into my warm waffle, strings of syrup clinging to my fork. Running my finger along the chipped edges of a tray that only came out on birthdays. Seeing the sun come through my curtains on a school day. Stillness. Warmth. Light. A pause in a hectic life to mark a special day.

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

I’ve never been a big birthday person.

That’s not quite right. Maybe it’s more accurate to say birthdays have always meant something different to me. That feeling of a pause my mom gave me year after year was nothing my kid mind could put its finger on. But as I grew into adulthood, I found myself replicating it without realizing it. I found myself year after year wanting that moment-out-of-time feeling to mark the day.

So after I left home, I DIY’d my birthday pause.

I could still count on Mom singing me a high-speed Happy Birthday across a phone line, on an answering machine, or as a voicemail no matter where I was. But for the remainder of the day, I would look for ways to give myself that breakfast-in-bed feeling. I’d treat myself to a nice dinner, a swim, a book I’d been pining for. Whatever pulled me through the wormhole into the feeling of having all the time in the world.

When boyfriends entered my life, I didn’t play the gotcha game, waiting to see if they’d remember the day and what I wanted. I took responsibility for my own pause, my own happiness.

As my life got more full and more complicated, I just became more committed to my birthday tradition. When the kids entered the picture, I’d take the day off of work and go to the movies in the afternoon, ensuring I’d given myself what I needed to feel special that day.

Even after Mike died, my birthday didn’t make me sad. Tons of other things did: his birthday, our anniversary, the first day of school for the kids, random Tuesdays. But I was always in charge of my own happiness on my birthday.

That independence kept my birthday in a shielded bubble of my own making.

This birthday felt a little different.

For the first time in years, I was in person with my flesh and blood kid. Connor was on the ramp up to his new job, and I’d flown to Colorado to unpack his duffle, hang clothes, buy extension cords, test out sports bars until he found his favorite. When I woke up on my birthday, he said, “We’re going for a hike in the mountains!”

He’d already picked the trail, mapped the route, planned the whole thing. It’s exactly what I would have chosen to do if I was on my own. But I didn’t have to choose it. He did that for me.

While we were driving up to Loveland Pass to walk the ridge trail and gawk at alpine lakes, my phone kept buzzing, texts and WhatsApps rolling in.

“What are you looking at, Ma?” Connor asked, a tad annoyed. The turning Aspens outside the truck’s window were painting the hills with fiery yellow strokes. He was baffled why my attention would be glued to my phone instead.

Blushing, I slid it into my coat pocket and turned to face him.

“Sorry manny, it’s just I’m getting a bunch of birthday wishes! I’m kind of surprised. Which is weird, because I surely get these every year?”

“Well maybe this year you are just noticing more,” he replied. “And you do have new people in your life.”

Scratching my head, I replied, “I’m noticing how loved I feel.”

Here’s the thing about self-sufficiency: when you’re good at it, there’s no clear reason to stop.

I grew up in western Pennsylvania in the ‘80s. My dad and all my friends’ dads got laid off when the steel mill shut down. I watched what that did to families… and then swore it wouldn’t happen to me. So I went to business school instead of studying anthropology. I built a career. I became my own generator: pour in the gas, turn it on, keep trucking. Financially, but also emotionally. It just seemed safer and more straightforward.

And honestly, for awhile it worked perfectly.

When you live in a self-sufficient bubble, you don’t have to risk anything. You don’t have to depend on people who might disappoint you. You don’t have to rely on anyone or anything else, because 90% of the time you’re good to go.

And that other 10% of the time, when s**t hits the fan, of course they show up. That’s what happened when Mike died, because that’s what you do when someone’s husband disappears at fifty.

But birthday texts? Planning birthday hikes? Random check-ins? Showing up when there’s no emergency?

That’s... different. Harder for me to trust. More vulnerable.

Connor was right. I do have new people in my life. My friend Hannah from Amsterdam. My crew from Do Wales. Kevin. Leona. And I am noticing more — not just people reaching out or Connor taking the reigns of my birthday plans, but the cumulative effect of it. Like sediment building on a rock structure until suddenly you look up and realize: Oh! This is a big pile of rock, aka people who care enough to reach out!

But this isn’t the first time I’ve been surprised by this.

Mike’s death was the first time my personal myth of self-sufficiency was shattered, but it’s happened over and over again since then. Building my corporate family, starting the Vectrus Women’s Summit, during the holidays, random bad days, leaving my corporate career, writing The Luminist. Just a couple weeks ago when Connor landed his new job — largely because I didn’t try to lone-ranger-mom him and let other people help — my subconscious belief that I can and should do things alone was quietly proven to be a farce yet again.

You’d think by now I’d get it. You’d think the lesson would stick.

But old habits die hard. I keep sliding back to my self-sufficient bubble, where I’m happily responsible for generating my own safety, security, contentment.

And then life keeps gently, persistently showing me that I don’t have to be.

People want to show up. Not because I need them desperately. Not because there’s a crisis. Just because they care.

That’s the scary part. When your happiness depends on yourself, you control the outcome. When you let other people in, when you let them pierce that bubble, you’re risking something. You’re trusting they’ll keep showing up even when you’re fine. Especially when you’re fine.

And that requires believing that care makes life better even outside of catastrophe.

I’m still learning that one.

A few days later, I was sitting at the bar in New Orleans, still thinking about my self-sufficiency bubble, and it’s tendency to re-form no matter how many times it’s popped. My old coworker Kevin had sent me a silly gif wishing me happy birthday. I sent him back a pic of me at the bar, saying I’d been feeling pretty good about my 57th year.

His response: Heinz 57.

I laughed out loud. Heinz 57 — that nonsensical number that became iconic because Henry Heinz, ketchup capitalist, decided it would be.

So here’s to Deagle 57.

Not because it’s a milestone or a Hallmark moment or significant for any reason except that I say so.

It’s going to be the year I become a published author. The year Connor becomes a working adult. The year I take a second pilgrimage and revisit Portugal.

The year I get slowly but surely better at trusting people will show up, even when they don’t need to. And the year I let them.

I don’t have to lock people out, or fling the door open wide invite everyone in. I can just open the door when someone knocks.

To interdependence,

Sue

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“The Buffalo Bills might go 17-0 this season!” Connor said admiringly, wishing his flailing Baltimore Ravens had a shot in hell of doing the same.

There he goes again, I thought, aghast at Connor’s tempting of fate. That kid has a penchant for wildly optimistic predictions, showcased by the fact that we’re only a month into the NFL season.

“Their quarterback Josh Allen is on fire, their running back James Cook is killing it, and their offensive line is amazing,” he blathered on. But I wanted to stuff cotton in my ears, saving myself from this heresy.

“Dude, stop! We are only four games into the season! Don’t say that, you are going to jinx them!”

As I reached over to wrap my knuckles on the nearest wood surface, I looked down at my arms to see if I needed Benadryl for the hives I was surely about to break out in.

“Mom, why are you knocking wood? What do you care? They aren’t even your team!” he laughed.

Oh, damn, busted. Why DO I care?

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I thought my superstitions skulked well below the surface. Turns out, they are dancing around in full view, like a toddler playing hide-and-seek.

There I was, admonishing my kid for possibly messing up a football team’s entire freaking season via that all powerful, surefire method of, well, saying out loud that they are going to go undefeated. And doing it from halfway across the country, no less.

That will sink the Bills for sure.

But that’s literally what my brain was telling me. Because that’s the textbook definition of superstition: attributing power to words, actions, or omens to influence events, bring good fortune, or prevent bad luck.

I consoled myself by saying I’m only a little superstitious. I’m not a black cat, broken mirror, rabbit’s foot, salt-over-the-shoulder kind of gal. I’m not like my Polish and Russian grandmothers, who thought a bird in the house meant someone was about to die. Yet under my pragmatic MBA and science-nerd facades lies a mysterious pool of nonsensical beliefs on cause-and-effect that I erratically and unpredictably dip into.

And not merely when my kid starts making overly optimistic football proclamations. I get particularly Middle Ages in my thinking whenever things are going well, but we have yet to cross the finish line.

Back in my corporate days of yore, I remember sitting around a Colorado conference table late into a Tuesday night as we hashed out our final strategy to close an important negotiation. Paper plates with globs of red sauce and leftover crusts littered the table. We were hopped up on caffeine and slightly greasy from the pizza, but had managed to cross everything off the whiteboard to-do list. I sat back to take a breath when the coworker on my left blurted out, “I think they are going to go for it! I think this thing is in the bag!”

In the stale air of the too-hot room, the cheese and mushrooms in my stomach did a somersault. I turned and glared.

Was I surprised when our proposal came back with a polite “not quite, more work to do”? Not one bit. The little bean counter in my head notched another mark in the ‘see what happens when you predict success too early’ column, cementing my aversion for saying anything too optimistic too early.

But hold on a second. Do I literally think that predictive words (or the people who are saying them) have some overwhelming juju, some mystical Merlin-like power to change an outcome for the worse? To utterly derail things like hard work, good planning, and common sense?

Hmmm… no, I don’t. I don’t believe words have that kind of power. So what is it then?

Do I think confidence or surety in an outcome is somehow in bad taste? That we should always be humble and get what we get and don’t get upset? As a human who approaches the world with boldness and energy, that doesn’t really fit me either.

Maybe it’s my fear of disappointment. My penchant for always keeping my expectations low, and therefore having them easily exceeded. Or do I just have lots of experience in the worst, so preparing for the best is a gear I just don’t have?

Looking at my past choices, that doesn’t fit either. I try not to get attached to outcomes, but I often put myself out there and hope for the best. I literally got a book deal by inserting myself into enough conversations. That doesn’t sound like someone who is afraid of disappointment.

So what was I really protecting when I reached for that wood?

For seven years of my corporate life, I traveled regularly to the Middle East.

Decades earlier, I’d learned a tiny bit (shway) of Arabic from my cute Lebanese boyfriend. I’d met Abdallah when he was wedged into one of those tiny desks with the immovable top in the dark recesses of our international university in London. His dark mustache made him look older than his 22 years, but his green eyes sparkled with the energy of a kid.

During a month-long trip to Kuwait to visit him and his family in 1990, my vocabulary increased, my still malleable 21-year-old brain absorbing it all. (Those were the days.)

I could count to ten, ask for a kiss, swear like a sailor, and sing the Kuwaiti national anthem. But the Arabic word he taught me that still sticks with me all these years later is inshallah. It means god-willing. It means ‘I’ve got no control over what’s happening, and it will unfold however it will unfold, by a mechanism I can’t begin to understand.”

When, 27 years later, I found myself back in the Middle East visiting military bases for my corporate gig, I heard this word all around me. Even by those with no religious affiliation. By our Arab business partners. Our American regional leaders. Our multi-national workforce. And the veterans of the Gulf War I worked alongside. It was seamlessly woven into regular conversations. Whether we were planning a site visit, hoping to ink a contract, or even arranging a pickup time for the next day’s flight, a seamless inshallah would follow all remarks about our plans.

This resonated. These were the years immediately following my husband’s death, and my acceptance of all I couldn’t control was growing exponentially. This reminder, that we really don’t control much in this world, felt tailor-made for me.

We hope tomorrow will come, our plans will be realized, good things will come our way, but there’s no guarantee.

I think, somewhere deep in my brain or body or heart, my slightly superstitious knocking-on-wood tendencies and inshallah’s message of ‘what will be will be’ feel like the same thing.

I don’t knock on wood because I think it will change an outcome. I knock on wood to remind myself I have no control. It’s less superstition, more ritual — a physical prayer, a gesture of humility, a bit of a shrug. “I’ve said this hopeful thing out loud, but I recognize the outcome isn’t mine to command.”

So the next time Connor makes some wild prediction, maybe this time I’ll bypass the wood-knocking and respond with inshallah instead.

Not to protect the Bills’ season, but to remind myself of what I believe: we don’t control much, but we can always hope for the best.

Go Steelers!

Sue

P.S. When I woke up last Monday morning to edit this post, I checked the box scores. Sure enough, the Bills had their first loss to the Patriots the night before. Not because of all-powerful Connor. Because life is unpredictable, even when you are one of the best teams in the league. Sorry Bills fans! ;-)

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