The Luminist

I used to be anti-hope. Not just skeptical — actively opposed to the very concept. Hope was for people who lacked discipline. People who couldn't take control of their circumstances. People who preferred wishful thinking to actual action.

As a corporate executive with a strategic plan for everything — from my career trajectory to my kids’ college applications — I relied on analysis, preparation, and sheer determination. In comparison, hope seemed like a pastel-colored consolation prize for those who weren’t willing to put in the work. It sounded nice but had no substance — a concept paraded around as if it could save us all, without any clear mechanism for how. What were the five actionable steps hope was going to use? What measurable outcomes could it produce?

It just gave us an excuse to sit back and “hope for the best” — a wallflower waiting to be asked to dance while the doers were already on the floor boogieing their hearts out.

From my vantage point, the Emperor of Hope had no clothes.

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But while working on my book Do Loss, I started wondering if I had hope all wrong. Then an article from one of my favorite Financial Times columnists, Jemima Kelly, confirmed my ass-backwardness.

I love Kelly because she's a self-described skeptic and contrarian. My kind of woman. But this column's title?

"It's the hope that saves you."

My sassy columnist crush was sincere to the bone.

And damn if she wasn't right.

Hope is often "conflated with optimism, but there are some important distinctions," Kelly explains.

These distinctions matter.

"Optimism is an expectation of a positive future. Hope is a habit of focusing action and attention on a future that is good and that is difficult but yet possible to attain," Kelly quotes Edward Brooks, executive director of the Oxford Character Project, as saying.

In other words, hope isn't the passive waiting I've judged it as for years. Hope is the birthplace of action. Because you hope, you take steps forward.

I’m just going to continue to quote Kelly, because she explains it so well…

“Optimism — while it brings health and happiness benefits of its own, and tends to be more motivating than pessimism when used in messaging — is a much more passive thing; some people seem to be born with it and others without. Hoping is a choice to focus on the possibility, however faint, of some future good, and crucially involves individual and collective agency. Hope carries with it the conviction that we can take action that makes our desired future more likely.”

So according to Brooks and Kelly, optimism sits on the passive end of the spectrum — a general sunny outlook.

But hope? Hope has muscle to it. It demands something of us.

Because hope is as an orientation of our entire selves — a way of directing our attention, energy, and action toward possibility even when circumstances seem hopeless. It’s not about denying reality — it’s about choosing how we will move forward from here.

I ended up writing an entire section in Do Loss around this understanding of hope, which I’ve come to call ‘actionable hope’.

Because I'm still a strategic thinker to my core, I find it helpful to break down this concept into three essential elements. That way when the imperative "Hope!" feels too abstract, you can find your way back to this empowered mindset, one factor at a time.

1. Openness to possibility

After Mike died, possibility was the last thing on my mind. The future I had imagined — growing old together, sharing grandchildren, traveling the world once the kids were launched — had vanished. All I could see was a blank wall where those dreams had been.

But slowly, I began to notice tiny cracks in that wall: moments of unexpected connection, glimpses of beauty that caught me off guard, flashes of joy that I couldn’t have predicted. These weren’t signs that my grief was “ending” (it never truly does), but rather that life was continuing to unfold in ways I couldn’t have anticipated.

Hope isn’t about bypassing any pain we’re feeling. It’s about remembering that just because things are bleak now doesn’t mean they will stay bleak. Your life may never be the same, your heart may be a nuclear fallout zone, but the possibility of something good coming over the horizon remains.

2. Belief in our capacity to persevere and heal

A reader from South Korea wrote to Kelly after her article was published, sharing how the piece had affected him during an unimaginably difficult time. His wife had suffered a traumatic brain injury in a serious accident, leading to emergency surgeries and intensive care. In the midst of this terrible uncertainty, he found that Kelly’s words “felt like a shaft of light breaking into that darkness.”

What struck me about his letter wasn't just the circumstances he faced, but his recognition that hope was "not a naive indulgence but a virtue, a form of courage."

Let that sink in.

Even without guarantees — perhaps especially without guarantees — he chose to believe in their capacity to come out the other side of that life-altering challenge. He didn’t give up. He kept going.

You might call it delusional, but I call it essential. Because at some point in your life, things will feel hopeless. I hate to break it to you, but despair is on the "guaranteed list" alongside death and taxes. And the only way through those times is to choose to stubbornly, consistently believe anyway.

So we maintain the conviction that:

* we have the strength to endure what feels unbearable

* we have the miraculous ability to heal from what seems permanent

* no matter how long it takes, we will find our way through the impossible

3. Active participation in our way forward

The final and perhaps most crucial element of actionable hope is that it requires our participation. The future we dream of is not something we wait for, it’s something we help to create.

In those early days of widowhood, I often felt like I was simply waiting for time to pass, for the pain to lessen, for some mysterious healing process to work its subconscious magic while consciously I just trudged through day after day. But I gradually realized that healing wasn't happening to me — I was actively engaged in it, whether I recognized it or not.

Every time I reached out to a friend instead of isolating, every time I allowed myself to feel the full force of grief instead of numbing it, every time I tried something new despite the voice inside that said "what's the point?", I was participating in my own healing.

As Kelly points out, hope "involves individual and collective agency." It carries the conviction that our actions make a difference — that we can do things today that make our desired future more likely, even if it's months or years away.

Years after Mike’s death, I found myself facing entirely different losses — which is how life goes. Loss doesn’t retire after one big performance. It keeps showing up in different costumes throughout our lives.

When my daughter left for college, I became an empty-nester. I walked into her newly spotless bedroom and felt my chest tighten. Not the same as death, not even close, but still — something precious had changed forever. The house echoed. My calendar gaped with unfilled hours. My identity as hands-on mom vanished overnight.

But instead of white-knuckling through it or pretending I was "just fine" (my old playbook), I leaned into actionable hope. I acknowledged the reality: yes, this hurts. And I simultaneously chose to believe that I could survive this transition and discover something lovely on the other side. So after dropping Kendall off at Tulane, I embarked on my "Empty Nester World Tour." I spent two weeks traveling, seeing beloved family, and exploring what my next chapter might look like. When I returned home, the ache was still there, but it was accompanied by a sense of agency and possibility.

When I wrapped up my corporate career after 30+ years, another kind of loss hit. I didn't just miss the paycheck or the purpose, though both mattered, but the entire ecosystem that had structured my days for decades. My work family, my travel schedule, even my professional identity — gone. Several friends warned me about the "retirement blues," assuming I'd need a wine subscription to carry me through the inevitable lows.

But actionable hope works no matter what you’re grieving, what is shifting and changing. I honored what I missed while actively building a writer's life. I believed I could create something meaningful even without knowing exactly what that would look like. I experimented rather than expected perfection.

Most of us resist hope after loss, afraid it makes us naive or sets us up for more disappointment.

The opposite is true.

Hope isn’t wishful thinking — it’s the engine that powers everything that comes next. It’s what gets us out of bed when gravity has doubled. It’s what helps us experiment when certainty has vanished. Without it, we’re left with only forlorn endurance, only somber survival.

With it? We become architects of our own transformation.

Life still brings storms. Days of darkness. Moments when I doubt everything I believe about growth and healing. But I've found that actionable hope isn't about feeling hopeful all the time—it's about continuing to choose possibility, belief in our capacity to heal, and taking baby steps toward a brighter future, even when we're pretty sure it's pointless.

So now, for me, hope has been reborn.

Now I see that being hopeful is not naive or passive, it's dauntless.

Choosing to believe,

Sue

P.S. This post includes excerpts from my upcoming book, Do Loss. Pre-order your copy today at Bookshop.org.

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Ten months from now, that will be me. I was standing in a Chelsea brownstone at a book launch, having a full on out-of-body experience.

I clapped as Jillian Lavender, author of Do Reset, stepped off the makeshift stage radiating peace. I smiled as Miranda, the publisher I share with Jillian, told the origin story of our publishing house, The Do Book Company. I joined the other guests in flipping through the pages of Do Reset, admiring its cheeky cover.

And then I floated to a quiet corner to let myself take it all in…

It was one of those moments where time stands still — a moment so surreal it magnetizes your full presence into the here and now.

OMG, I’m going to be a published author.

In my mind, I could clearly see all the crossroads — the points of no going back — that had brought me to this white walled, glass-ceiling room. The path felt both so unlikely, so impossibly precarious, and yet so fated — my husband’s death, years of grief and doubt, a job that gave me meaning and repaired my sense of self, serendipitous meetings on Colorado trails and in London workshops, corporate retirement and my kitchen table where I’d write even when I wanted to quit. Notebooks full of scribbled ideas, teetering piles of dashed-off sticky notes, half-started google docs, all littering my trail like discarded tissues or perhaps breadcrumbs...

And now I’d have something to show for it. And something to share with others going through it.

I pulled my attention back to the brownstone.

Ten more months, Deagle.

And then I’d be at my own book launch.

Not in a fancy New York rowhouse, but somewhere in Virginia with my friends and family, beaming as I presented Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change.

This moment felt like completing a circle. From desperate reader to hopeful author. From seeker to guide.

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Books have always been my happy place. As a kid, I’d spend hours holed up in my room escaping to different worlds: Middle Earth, the Kansas prairies, a galaxy far, far away.

As an adult, I'd lose track of time browsing bookshelves, running my fingers across spines, breathing in that perfect paper-and-possibility scent that no candle has ever quite captured.

But after Mike died, books transformed from a pleasant pastime into my first line of defense.

Loss doesn't just take someone away. It torches your mental map — all those assumptions about how life works, which path to take, and how to stay “safe”. Suddenly you're standing in unfamiliar territory, directionless.

My brain, remarkable pattern-recognition machine that it is, frantically searched for new bearings. Examples. Evidence. Stories of people who'd walked this hellscape before me and somehow kept going.

I found those stories on bookshelves.

Bearing the Unbearable showed me I wasn't crazy when grief ambushed me in the cereal aisle. Keep Moving gave me permission to believe life on the other side of loss could be better, richer, more meaningful. Grief and Hamburgers (yes, that's actually the title) made me laugh.

These weren't just books. They were lifelines thrown to a drowning woman.

The books mattered, but equally important were the places I found them.

Independent bookstores became my go-to destinations for directions, possibility, hope. I didn’t have to know what I was looking for, but in the carefully curated shelves, I always found what I needed.

Unlike algorithms that feed you more of what you've already consumed, indies offer something magical: human discernment. Booksellers who've read widely and thought deeply, coming up with connections no algorithm would make. “If you liked that memoir about grief, you might find comfort in this novel about rebuilding.”

Places like The Tattered Cover inside Denver Airport, Island Books in the Outer Banks, The Bookworm in Vail Valley, Loyalty Books in DC. International havens like Daunt Books in London and Unity Books in Auckland. These aren’t just retail spaces for me. They are possibility factories. Wisdom waypoints. Hope harbors. Places where someone has thoughtfully selected titles that, more than once, made me gape in astonishment at the feeling that these people — author and bookseller — were living inside my head.

When loss blinds you to possibility, don’t panic. There are tomes of insight and inspiration all over the world, just waiting for you to crack their spine.

Books and bookstores saved me. But they might not be your thing.

Maybe you find soul sustenance at a community garden where the elderly man who lost his wife a decade ago speaks about her with a smile, then divides her prized dahlias and passes some to you.

Maybe it’s with the podcast host who survived something similar and articulates exactly what you can't yet put into words.

Maybe it’s in the Pinterest board of grief quotes that somehow feel written just for you, or on the trail where you watch winter turn into spring, or in the garage workshop where you build something from nothing.

The medium doesn't matter. What matters is finding spaces — physical or virtual, social or solitary — that consistently feed your healing. Places that reliably offer new ways of understanding what you're living through. That stock metaphorical flares for your darkest nights.

Because when loss cracks us open, it creates a hungry emptiness. That void needs filling — not with distraction or numbing, but with sanity. With understanding. With possibility. With hope.

The day after the book launch in New York, I had lunch with Miranda and her daughter Millie at a cozy West Village bistro. We debriefed about the night before, talked next steps for Do Loss, and pretended not to notice Naomi Watts and Billy Crudup at the catty-corner table.

As they gathered their luggage to head to JFK for their flight home, Miranda asked about my plans for the rest of the day.

"I'm just going to wander," I said. "I have a list of bookstores I'd like to check out."

And I did. I spent quality hours browsing shelves, talking to booksellers, feeding my soul. I came out with a haul of books that will help me grow — as a writer, a person, a guide.

I also thought about the strange symmetry of my journey. Nine years ago, books were my lifeboats. Now I'm building my own vessel for others to climb aboard.

Standing in the Poetry section of Three Lives & Company in Greenwich Village, surrounded by slim volumes that punch well above their weight, it hit me: what saves us shapes us. My life didn't just rebound after Mike died. It reconfigured — like a house that loses a load-bearing wall and has to find a new way to stand. Books helped me rebuild, and in doing so became a central axis of my life. Of course I became a writer. I wasn’t just healing with books, I was honing in on the power of books to bring me back to myself, even when “myself” was nothing more than a pile of shattered glass.

I wonder: what's saving you right now? What wisdom waypoint is providing shelter and hope amidst the storm? Maybe it's not a bookstore. Maybe it's hiking trails through National Parks or Buddhist meditation or that YouTube channel about rebuilding vintage motorcycles.

Whatever it is, pay attention. Because it might not just be medicine for tough days, it might be fulfillment for a long life.

To finding what lights us up and following it home,

Sue

P.S. Did I mention I’m publishing a book soon?? You can pre-order your copy of Do Loss here!

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As the miles unfolded on my six-hour drive to Colgate this past weekend, I watched spring transform through my windshield.

At my Virginia jumping-off point, a sheer tablecloth of bright green draped the dark trunks, new leaves neon in the sun. As I got farther north, the tablecloth fell to the ground, the only green in sight carpeting the fields and meadows, tree buds still tight in their winter slumber.

While my eyes took in the changing landscape, my ears were learning the forest's secrets through an audiobook of Suzanne Simard's Finding the Mother Tree. Her lilting Canadian voice described something extraordinary happening beneath the surface soil of those woods I was driving past. Trees aren't standalone giants competing for resources — they're connected by fungal networks that share nutrients like carbon and water. The journal Nature dubbed her discovery the "Wood Wide Web."

I sighed with recognition and relief. I’ve been trying for YEARS to describe the invisible net of support that caught me and the kids after Mike died. To explain why it’s not just “nice to have”, but essential on this life rollercoaster. To capture it’s organic, subtle nature.

Simard and the forest finally gave me the language I’ve been looking for.

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We throw around "it takes a village" like it's gospel, but let's be honest — we don’t act like it.

* We attribute our successes to ourselves alone. (Rugged individualism all the way, baby.)

* We withdraw when times get hard. (Nothing to see here.)

* We pretend we don't need help until we're drowning in our own stubborn independence.

Meanwhile, trees have been quietly thriving through connection for approximately forever. There's no tree TED Talk about "Ten Steps to Forest Domination." There's just an inherent recognition that when you thrive, I thrive. When you struggle, we all feel it.

Which is actually JUST like humans. We all have our own ecosystems, invisible but vital, sometimes ignored but always there. The coworker who gives you a ride to pick your car up from the mechanic. The old friend who always answers your call. The aunt who still sends you a crisp $20 bill for your birthday.

I could point to the anthropological, physiological, and archeological evidence that we are social creatures. But let’s just look at something more concrete: the feeling of confidence. The willingness to put yourself out there, to take a risk, make a bet, and give it everything you’ve got. Without people who have our back, we don’t take the risks. Without others believing in us, we don’t believe in ourselves. Sure, in theory we could do these things alone, but we don’t. Because without others we are in survival mode, not change-the-world mode.

Every single mom can tell you that those “self-made success stories” are complete b******t. We just don’t like to admit it.

When I finally arrived on campus after the long drive, Connor was mad-dashing between preparations for a frisbee tournament and the final a cappella concert of his college career. He carved out time for a quick diner dinner. Over my club sandwich and his quesadilla, I watched his human forest unfold.

"The frisbee team's staying at the Econo Lodge next weekend," he said, typing a quick text. "I've got the car assignments sorted. I should probably check with C.J. to make sure he paid the registration fee."

He took a bite, shifting gears. "Professor Brown finally admitted that she thinks my French accent is improving — after four years! She made me promise to keep in touch after I graduate. It feels good to have, like, a mentor.”

Between bites: "Oh, and that freshman Econ student came for tutoring yesterday, totally panicking about the next exam. Two hours later? Complete turnaround. You could literally see the equations clicking into place in her head."

Here I was, thinking I was just watching my kid eat a quesadilla, when I was actually seeing a living, breathing ecosystem in action. His a cappella group supporting his creative expression. The frisbee team forming a sweaty but surprisingly organized family. His professor offering mentorship. His tutoring job letting him pay forward what he's learned.

Kendall's networks look completely different but are just as rich. High school friends scattered across the country but thick as thieves through their infamous group chat. The barn where she connects with her aging pony Frank, still able to sink into their old rhythm and jump some rails. Her college friends learning how to “adult” together, sometimes stumbling, always catching each other.

They're both building forests that will sustain them through whatever storms come their way. It doesn’t matter if they’re doing it consciously or not, it’s just what humans do.

There’s a myth about connections that I believe keeps us from leaning into them.

We think that the give-and-take between friends, colleagues, partners should always be equal. But resilient bonds aren’t static — they fluctuate and evolve. Sometimes we're in receive mode, drawing strength when life knocks us flat. Sometimes we're in transmit mode, feeding energy back into our communities. And occasionally, we experience what I can only think to call kumbaya mode, those rare moments when the system hums in perfect balance.

I used to be terrible at receive mode. Like, Olympic-level terrible. When someone offered help, I'd smile brightly while backing toward the nearest exit. "No, no, I'm fine! Totally fine! Never been better! Do you smell smoke? I should check on that!"

Then life handed me a situation where "I've got this" simply wasn't an option. And I discovered something surprising: letting people help me didn't diminish me. It strengthened our entire ecosystem.

This rhythm of giving and receiving isn't something most of us were ever taught. We operate as if there's some cosmic scoreboard tracking who's given what to whom.

But networks don't keep score. They just keep taking care of each other, and keep growing because of it.

There's one more remarkable thing that Dr. Simard discovered.

When a mother tree — a tree that has become a central hub of the forest network — comes to the end of its life, it doesn't just die. It gives a final burst of nutrients to its web. A surge that helps its saplings survive and their supporting ecosystem thrive.

Mike was our mother tree.

The day after the funeral, I found myself surrounded by a forest I hadn't fully recognized before. Parents I barely knew arranged playdates for the kids. Family quietly repaired the house and got the oil changed in my car. Friends patiently helped me through mountains of gibberish paperwork. Neighbors shoveled my drive without ever being asked.

I'd always thought of ourselves as independent. Strong. Capable. We were, of course, but not in the way I'd imagined. We were strong because we were connected. We were capable because we were supported.

The physics of grief should have flattened us.

That's what most people would predict: father gone, mother broken, children lost.

Instead, our forest grew denser. Not because loss itself strengthens, but because Mike had been steadily building connections his entire life. And as his final gift, he gave us everything he had.

Our entire cultural mythology centers around standing alone, facing challenges with nothing but grit and a montage sequence. We celebrate the summit photo but ignore the Sherpas, the support crew, the partner who facilitated our training for months, the friends cheering us on.

What if we celebrated our connections instead? What if we acknowledged our interdependence as strength rather than weakness?

Because the storms will come. They always do. The only question is whether we’ll face them alone, or surrounded by a forest that's been preparing for this moment all along.

In connection,

Sue

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"Don't cry." Two words that capture everything wrong with how we're taught to console… and yet, when my friend Takis said them to me across our corner lunch table in 2017, I knew what he actually meant: “I can't bear to see you hurting this much.”

In the bleak early months after Mike’s death, Takis and my favorite faux French bistro in suburban Virginia transformed from a place of shared laughter to a one-sided effort to keep me afloat. Our regular haunt — where we'd watch with glee as waiters simultaneously poured our soup from tureens, ask for second baguettes, and pretend to resist dessert — had become a place where tears regularly dripped into my untouched French onion soup.

Most of my memories from the “acute phase” of grief are blurry, but one moment remains crystal clear: the burning eyes and clenched throat as I tried to stuff down a sob after pointing out that my children no longer had a father. Takis silently nodded. As I began to lose it, he reached over and laid his hand lightly on my forearm.

"Oh, Deagle, don't cry."

His correction came lightning fast:

"I'm sorry, I don't mean that. Go ahead and cry. Cry all you want. I'm right here."

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This is what real consolation looks like — showing up imperfectly, but not letting it stop you from showing up anyway.

It looks like Denise haunting local used bookshops to buy me dog-eared memoirs, knowing that reading stories of people who had navigated loss helped my brain see a path forward.

It looks like Julie sending me goofy cards to make me momentarily laugh, including one emblazoned with THEN ALL HELL BROKE LOOSE.

It looks like Luanne texting me on Christmas morning to check in, and remind me why it was important to still be here.

Did these acts of consolation make me forget my husband was dead, emerge out of my grief immediately and permanently, or even just stop crying for a bit? Um, well… no. But in their silly, small, and subtle ways, they showed me that I wasn’t alone.

That I was worth the awkwardness of trying to comfort a person for whom there is no easy fix.

My friends didn't let "I don't know what to say" or "I might make things worse" or "I'll give her some time" stop them from acting. They risked it.

I wouldn't be where I am today if they hadn't.

So why are we so good at coming up with excuses rather than sending a damn sympathy card?

I have three unscientific theories:

Loss reveals our unfiltered humanity — and it's messy.

When you sit with someone in deep grief, you might witness rage, despair, or numbness that feels overwhelming. Our instinct is to look away when confronted with raw pain, like my colleague who literally backed out of the elevator when she saw my red-rimmed eyes. It's not cruelty, it's self-preservation confusing a grieving woman for a werewolf.

We make it about ourselves.

When our calls go unreturned or our lasagna sits uneaten, we wonder, "Did I do something wrong?" But grief doesn’t follow society’s rules for social interactions, gratitude, or the appropriate time to eat dinner. My friend Linda got it. She would bring me a latte and just leave it on the front porch… Period. She expected neither an audience nor an accolade, she simply wanted to make the gesture, “I’m out here, thinking of you, caring for you.”

We've set an impossible bar for success.

We secretly believe good consolation should make the pain vanish, when really all we can do is help our friend turn their face toward the sun for a moment. Not to banish darkness, but to remind them light still exists somewhere in the universe.

The truth is, we don't need to be perfect consolers.

We just need to show up.

Our job isn't to fix or solve. We're simply accompanying someone while they're caterpillar soup — that strange in-between where they've dissolved into unrecognizable goo inside their chrysalis, but are not yet ready to emerge transformed. Our role is to circle the cocoon, keeping it safe from further harm, minimizing stressors and distractors, and being patient with whatever timeline our beloved goo requires.

In other words, set your expectations lower — both of what you’ll have to offer and how they’ll react — and you'll free yourself to just give whatever you’ve got, rather than overthink yourself out of it.

Because let’s all agree: nobody knows exactly what to say.

Scripts aren't what we need anyway. They're hollow and empty, general and vague. And they distract us from the main point of consolation: to help the griever feel less terribly terribly alone.

During the last days of my corporate job, I was on a Zoom call with dozens of people.

I shared some encouraging words with a barely perceptible wobble, then punched the red exit button and put my face in my hands to cry.

The first tears were still pooled in my eyes when I heard the bleating ring of an incoming video call. It was my friend Bill.

If others had called in that same moment, I might not have answered. That wouldn't have made them or me bad — we all have different relationships with different people. I accepted Bill's call because something in me knew he was exactly what I needed.

"Sue?" he asked. "How are you doing?"

But he didn't really expect an answer. He had simply heard the wobble and called, ready for whatever he might find. We sat there, him in Colorado, me in Virginia, as I just cried and he held the space in companionable silence.

Eventually, my tears ran out, and I croaked, "That was hard."

"Yep, I know," he said.

And that was all I needed to turn my face toward the sun again.

Consolation isn't about having the perfect words. It's about being willing to sit in the soup with someone, knowing neither of you has a recipe for how this all turns out.

In it together,

Sue

P.S. You can read my practical guide to consoling here…

And my emotional guide to consoling here.

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"I'm so glad I can take a break from using my brain!" Last Sunday morning, Kendall and I were slumped at French Truck Coffee's narrow counter, waiting for our breakfast sandwiches.

The place hummed with the weekend crowd, air thick with chicory and conversation. I nursed a cold brew; she, a vanilla latte. We both drooped like marathoners past the finish line — her from a night dancing on Frenchmen Street, me from three days of intellectual whiplash at the New Orleans Book Festival.

"Tone deaf, mom!" She deadpanned, as her day ahead consisted of studying for a marketing exam and writing a history paper. Mine? Long walks in Audubon park, a stop at my favorite bookstore, and a ton of staring into space.

Because holy moly, this year's festival rewired me.

Not just through the ideas I encountered, but through realizations about how I've evolved since I first walked these grounds.

There was something deeply satisfying about being in that exact spot, that exact coffee shop, thinking about that exact festival that I had attended the year before, and the year before that. To feel how time hadn’t left me unchanged. I was different in tangible ways I might not have noticed until I came back to Book Fest, back to French Truck.

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The festival itself was a kaleidoscope of ideas.

I bypassed the bigwig authors in the main tent (Michael Lewis, Gen. Petraeus, John Grisham, Bob Woodward, Dr. Fauci) in favor of the esoteric — a tactical choice that had less to do with intellectual snobbery and more to do with finding a seat without waiting in Black-Friday-sized lines.

I learned that the Mississippi River is more than just America's liquid interstate. Through Boyce Upholt's book, I glimpsed the river that Mark Twain knew — not just an industrial channel but a complex ecosystem, a cultural dividing line, a spiritual touchstone. Ernest Scheyder made me confront the uncomfortable truth about my beloved iPhone — this warm rectangle I cradle for hours daily, exists because someone, somewhere, is pulling lithium from the earth. “My clean energy future has dirty hands”, I tapped into my sleek, strip-mined device. Sarah Lewis had me questioning why I tick "Caucasian" at the doctor's office when I've never set foot in the Caucasus — the sketchy origins of race as a construct leaving me both enlightened and unsettled.

But as I filled my notebook with insights from others, I found myself scribbling unexpected observations in the margins — notes not about the panelists, but about me.

Four personal revelations emerged between coffee refills and sweaty walks between venues:

I think like a writer now.

When I wrote about my first BookFest experience, I was still navigating the strange limbo between "person who writes" and "writer." One hundred-plus posts later, something has shifted.

Yes, I have a book deal now, and that sure does help. But on a deeper level, storytelling has become my craft. And while surrounded by other writers and authors, I noticed sneaky tricks of the trade I couldn’t have pointed out before. Not just the words they use — but the spaces between them. Not just the substance of their stories — but how they're woven, layered, connected, like watching a builder frame a house while simultaneously living in it.

I wasn't merely absorbing content; I was studying craft. How authors leaned into microphones when sharing something intimate. How they navigated vulnerable passages without flinching. How they fielded questions that struck nerves without becoming defensive. As my notepad filled with content, my writer's mind catalogued technique.

Writing has changed how I see. And seeing differently has changed how I write.

Obsession has transformed from distraction into inspiration.

Author after author spoke about how they began writing about their topics. To the very last one, they described getting interested in something, then following it down the rabbit hole like a young girl with no self-preservation instinct. The mining expert who became obsessed with supply chains. The biographer who stumbled across a forgotten letter. The novelist who couldn't shake a character who appeared in a dream.

When you follow your rabbit holes, passion carries you through the inevitable roadblocks. It transforms "that’s an interesting idea…" to "I can't stop thinking about this" to “holy smokes, people need to hear about this!”

But in the days of juggling my corporate career with single parenthood, I never had the luxury of following curiosity where it led. My mental GPS was perpetually set to "fastest route with no tolls," recalculating every time I threatened to veer off course. Now I have this luxury, and I'm discovering that what looks like indulgence is actually the engine of creative sustainability.

My body has more to offer than shuttling my brain around.

"Your body is not the all-terrain vehicle for your brain," my editor Leona wrote recently. I've treated mine that way for a long time, expecting my physical self to dutifully carry my thinking self from meeting to meeting, milestone to milestone, without complaint or need. In corporate America, I was essentially a brain with legs attached for transportation purposes only.

But during BookFest, I found I could not take in all that information without getting away from my notebook and phone and just walking walking walking. Something about the rhythm of footsteps helps me process the nuances of what's been said, determine what I agree with, what I don't, what requires more thought.

I’m realizing that the body is a thinking tool itself — a processor, a filter, a way of knowing that operates alongside but distinct from rational thought.

When I honor both, I can absorb more deeply than I ever could through intellect alone.

My kids actually think I'm interesting (who knew?).

No, I did not drag my kids to Book Fest. That's mutiny on a stick. But what surprised me was their genuine interest in what I’d learned and what I thought about it all.

(This bullet point might be more about them changing than me, but I don’t care because it’s DELIGHTFUL and I want to share it.)

Every evening when I met Kendall for dinner, she quizzed me. "Tell me what you learned,” or "What was your favorite?" Then, Connor and I did a giant FaceTime download on Sunday afternoon that meandered from the festival to books we'd recently picked up, from his love of fiction versus my preference for non-fiction to our shared desire to expand our minds.

Three years ago, our conversations were logistics and gentle check-ins. "Did you eat something other than pizza this week?" "Mom, I need more money for *cough* books." Now they're exchanges between adults with opinions and perspectives that merit discussion.

As I continue work on my own book — Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change — to meet my May 1 deadline, Book Fest has given me a profound realization about change itself.

Standing in the same lines year after year reminded me that personal continuity, this idea that as adults we’re pretty much unchanging, is completely baloney.

We fear big changes — new jobs, empty nests, unexpected losses — as if without them, we'd remain perfectly preserved versions of our current selves. But that's not how life works.

Change happens whether we invite it or not, whether we notice it or not.

The person who walked into French Truck Coffee in 2023 is as different from me today as New Orleans in summer is from New Orleans in winter — same geography, entirely different ecosystem.

We are never standing still, even when we think we are. The changes we fear as catastrophic disruptions are just more visible symptoms of the evolution happening beneath the surface all the time, like suddenly noticing your child is taller after months of imperceptible growth.

I find a peculiar comfort in this.

Because it means that the changes we resist most fiercely are often just markers of what's already been brewing. Looking at reality that way, the question shifts — it isn't whether things will change, but rather how we will meet the long-coming change when it finally breaches our awareness.

Who will I be when I return to French Truck Coffee next year? I have no earthly idea. But I know for certain she'll be a person I haven't met yet. And she'll be carrying a book with my name on it — both familiar and strange, both me and not-me.

Whoever she is, I hope she gives herself to it fully. Because I’d rather be in the flow of life, than fighting against it.

To the changes that shape us, without us even noticing,

Sue

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"What is that word??" I was sitting in the Amsterdam Public Library when a slide flashed an inscrutable word: gezellig.

I nudged Nadia, my break-time conference buddy. "What does that mean?"

"It's very Dutch," she said. "The feeling of cozy comfort and belonging when people are together. An evening with close friends would be gezellig."

Funny how a word you can't pronounce can describe the exact thing you are experiencing.

My five days in Amsterdam were pure gezellig. And they taught me something about holes — not just how they form, but how they keep refilling in ways you'd never expect.

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I've had three lives as a traveler.

First came the Mike years. Our last trip was for his 50th — London museums, South African safaris, birthday cake in the bush.

But the memories I cherish the most aren’t the landmarks. It's the four of us laughing in the van. Debating our day over café tables. The way Connor insisted on reading every museum plaque in the ancient Japan section, until Kendall shot him a look as sharp as a samurai’s blade.

The moments between adventures outlasted the adventures themselves.

Then that life ended.

Five months after Mike died, I got a new job and found myself on planes again. Different business card, same window seat. I discovered that work travel held its own kind of belonging — soldiers with stories that made me rethink courage, coworkers who became confidants over giant soft pretzels in the Lufthansa lounge. Conference rooms where the laughter of connection happened between PowerPoint slides.

That was gezellig too. I just didn't have the word yet.

Then a year ago, I traded my C-suite office for a writer's desk. (Well, really a writer’s iPad at various tables, couches, and bars, but you get the point.)

The pattern was starting to become clear: lose something, mourn it, then open myself to the possibility of something new filling this space.

But could the same emptiness be filled a third time? I wasn't so sure. But I also wasn't going to wait around to find out.

So I became a solo traveler.

Freedom became my companion instead — wandering museums until my feet hurt, not until someone else's did. Eating gelato for dinner because I only have convince myself it counts as a serving of calcium. Taking seventeen photos of the same cathedral without apologetic glances to a bored companion tapping their watch.

I still met people — taxi drivers with political theories, hiking guides who knew the names of every mountain flower, fellow pilgrims sharing blister remedies. I visit Connor and Kendall every month and get to stroll with them through their budding adult lives. Once a year, my British friend Paul and I excavate our humanity over daylong London walks.

But these are toe-dips in connection, not the full-body plunge into communal belonging.

I told myself this was enough. Adaptation is my superpower. I've had plenty of practice.

Then Amsterdam happened.

“Would you consider speaking at my friend's publishing conference in Amsterdam?”

When I received this email from Nicoline, a bright-eyed Dutch woman I'd met at Do Wales, I said yes before I even finished reading. Traveling to a new city, meeting other authors, and getting to connect with an online friend, Alice, who also lived in Holland? Say no more. I’m buying my tickets.

So I pulled out my usual Solo Sue playbook: Pick a few restaurants (local favorites to tourist hot spots), buy a ticket for a day in the museum (the Van Gogh/Anselm Kiefer joint exhibit was in town), and hone my stroopwafel sampling strategy.

Then gezellig ambushed me.

Nicoline and Hannah, the conference director, endured the rush hour traffic to pick me up at Schiphol airport. Before we had hit the first traffic light, we were deep into books, politics, and the difference between eastern Pennsylvania (Hannah’s from Gettysburg) and western PA (Beaver Falls all the way!). The next morning, Alice and I hugged for the first time ever, and not five minutes later were chatting during our panel like we lived down the street from each other. Soon after, I watched Nicoline sign copies of her book, beaming with happiness for my friend.

Each day brought more: sunshine slanting across a French bistro's patio while we debated writing habits and Dutch personality traits over wine and flat whites. A storytelling night called Mezrab where strangers spilled hilarious and vulnerable secrets, and we ate homemade Iranian lentil soup perched precariously on our laps. A concert where I lay shoulder to shoulder with Alice, watching projected stars dance across the cathedral ceiling, while music and poetry pooled around us.

Something had happened again. A third time. The hole had filled itself in with something completely new. Not with a husband. Not with colleagues. But with writers and creatives who immediately felt like my people.

Life isn't just about losing and finding once.

It's about losing and finding over and over again, with each cycle teaching you to trust the process a little more.

Loss and new growth isn’t a one-time event. It's a sequence of dominos that keeps unfolding throughout your life.

Each hole in our lives becomes a little plot of potential that fills with something we couldn't have imagined when we were staring at the emptiness. Something that wasn't possible before the loss carved out the space.

What makes this third time different for me is that now I recognize the pattern. I wasn’t sure something could grow here yet again, but it has. I feel myself trusting the universe, the mystery, the unfolding a little bit more.

My last night in Amsterdam, I walked the city by myself, watching the sunset turn canal water gold.

Back in my hotel room, I scrolled through photos — all those faces smiling back at me from my phone.

I'd come seeking a city. I found a circle instead.

I opened WhatsApp and told my new friends what they'd given me — not just connection, but proof that life keeps finding new ways to fill the same empty spaces. That each time the filling is different but no less complete. That the cycle can be trusted.

To finding gezellig, again and again, in forms we never saw coming.

Sue

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"If you want a hack, go listen to a podcast. Here, we do the work." I was sweating on my treadmill when Peloton instructor Robin Arzon leaned into the camera and yanked me up by my virtual Lululemon collar. She wasn’t letting me cut her intervals short.

Because she knows there's no hack for good health — or for good anything. You have to put in the reps.

This is an unpopular opinion in a world obsessed with shortcuts. Silicon Valley, for example, gave us "complete nutrition" you eat from a pouch. Cut the corner, squeeze beige goo into your mouth, and boom — feeding accomplished. Not because they're soldiers in combat or astronauts in space. Because they're busy coding and can't be bothered with the "inefficiency" of chewing.

What these bros missed wasn't just meals that actually taste good. They missed connection over food that nourishes our souls. Pauses that refresh our minds. The return to presence that comes with each extra savory bite.

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For years, my nutrient pouch was coffee. Who needs sleep when you can mainline caffeine? My digestive tract still sends me hate mail for that shortcut. But I had a corporate career to crush and kids to raise. Sleep was for the weak. Or maybe the wise. Either way, not for me.

We laugh at Silicon Valley's absurdity, but we all have our version of the nutrient pouch — the corner we think we can cut without consequence.

Hacks promise to save time, but they're really about avoiding discomfort.

One less sweaty interval. One less frustrated stare into an empty fridge. One less hour spent “wasting” your life sleeping. So we can move on and accomplish more more more!

The problem? Some of life's most important muscles only develop through discomfort… one of which includes the capacity to notice and appreciate the little things.

When Mike died, I tired to hack grief. Compartmentalize during work hours, function for the kids, cry in the shower where nobody could hear me. Deal with the emotional fallout later. Much later. Like never.

But grief is the ultimate anti-hack zone. It demands the long, messy road — and turns out, that road leads somewhere worth going. After these years of feeling my feelings instead of intellectualizing them, I’ve discovered something worth dedicating an entire Substack to: I'm more present, more connected, more alive. Not despite the hard path, but because of it.

The shortcut I thought would protect me was actually robbing me of transformation and joy. And that's the paradox of hacks — in trying to avoid pain, we miss the growth. In rushing to the destination, we miss the gifts scattered along the way.

I spent 28 days on the pilgrim trail because I knew a hack wouldn’t work.

I was trying to figure out what was “next” in my life — how to fill my time, define my priorities, and introduce myself at dinner parties after leaving my corporate career. Luckily, I had a nagging suspicion I needed the real deal. No spreadsheets, no productivity apps, no life coaches selling me "five easy steps to clarity." Just one foot in front of the other, day after day, with nothing but my thoughts and the Scandinavian horizon.

And it worked. I had answers to both the questions that I did and didn’t know I had — what matters to me now, who I am when I'm not defined by my job title, how I move forward in a way that is authentic to me. Some things just require time and space and even a little bit of struggle to unfold.

On one of my last nights in Norway, I was journaling by the light of the midnight sun, looking back through the messy, imperfect scrawl that documented my journey. What I saw wasn't a straight line to enlightenment, but a rich tapestry of moments: sunburnt shoulders and psychological breakthroughs, wrong turns and unexpected kindnesses from strangers, frustration and wonder.

The answers hadn't come in spite of the challenge. They had come through it. The same way my grief transformation didn’t happen despite the pain, but because of it.

The path is the point. The journey is where the magic happens. (Just ask a fortune cookie.)

I'm not saying all shortcuts are bad.

Sometimes we need to get through Tuesday's mundane tasks to reach Wednesday's joy. But hacks have become our default approach to everything, even the experiences meant to be savored.

So I've decided there are places where I'll let myself go straight for the destination, and places where I'm in it for the journey — like time with my kids, walks in Great Falls Park, or writing these posts for you. Because those journeys offer too many scenic detours, unexpected insights, and sighs of affection, wonder, or breakthrough that I simply refuse to miss.

The next time you're tempted by a life hack that promises to eliminate discomfort, consider the choice carefully. Is the saved time worth the shortened journey? Remember that the path to becoming more — more capable, more present, more alive, more you — runs straight through the middle of things we're trying to avoid.

Because life's richest gifts aren't waiting at the finish line. They're scattered along the path, waiting for us to slow down and notice.

Taking the long way,

Sue

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"You know... it's nice to share." Three-year-old Daniel stood at the foot of my chaise lounge, eyeing my painted parrot bookmark like it was the last cookie in the jar.

I'd been chatting with his parents about jet lag between London and this sun-drenched pool in Mexico when Daniel spotted the bookmark. Though still fuzzy from his nap, he'd locked onto it with the laser focus only toddlers possess.

"Just put your book out at night and the nice hotel ladies will put one in there," I offered. "That's how I got mine."

He wasn't buying the delayed gratification. His comment about sharing took me a second, but I had to admire the boldness. So I folded the corner of my page, handed over the parrot, and watched his face light up.

"Thank you!" He giggled and pitter-pattered away.

Kendall missed this interaction. She'd just headed back to our room along the jungle pathway.

"How old is your daughter?" Daniel's dad asked.

"Twenty. She wanted a spring break trip together."

"Hard to imagine that someday Daniel will want to vacation with us," he said. "Seeing you two gives us hope."

Just then Daniel came running back, midnight blue book in hand, parrot bookmark proudly peeking out. He held it up for inspection.

"Perfect!" I said, and he beamed.

I turned to his parents. "Our brains aren't wired to imagine most futures. But don't worry — good things are coming, whether you can picture them or not."

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Sometimes I catch myself saying crap like that and think I should be wearing a turban with a crystal ball in my lap.

But I’m not trying to predict the future, for myself or for anyone else. I’m trying to do the exact opposite.

I’m trying to get us (myself included) to release our death grip on expecting, forecasting, and prognosticating.

Because it never turns out how we think.

Sometimes worse. Sometimes better. Sometimes sideways. But always a surprise.

Meanwhile, our brains run prediction software built from old data — what our parents did, what movies promised us, what society has proscribed as success. When reality delivers something different, we don't upgrade the software. We declare reality broken.

The irony? Our desperate grip on expectations doesn't protect us from disappointment. It guarantees it. And worse — it blinds us to the unexpected gifts waiting just outside our field of vision.

"You still have your person, but I don't have my person."

This same girl who's now wants to spend her spring break with me once said those words, her voice flat with truth.

She gravitated toward Mike. Connor gravitated toward me. When Mike died, she lost her person. I kept mine.

I didn't rush in with platitudes. She was right. All I said was, "Well, someday I hope I can be your person."

Nine years later, I am. After the pit of teenage despair, we're close in a way I never imagined possible. Not because I replaced Mike in her heart, but because we built something entirely new. Something that wouldn't exist if Mike were still alive.

Or would it?

That's just it — predicting isn't the point. Living into the plot twists is.

Dropping the scorecards (is it better? is it worse?) frees us to build with what we have instead of mourning what we don't.

For years after Mike died, people couldn't believe I was happy. They couldn't fathom my life as a widow being rich and vibrant. Full of women's summits, treehouse sunrises, global adventures, and deep conversations with total strangers.

But while I still long for Mike, I learned to stop longing for my old life. Today is too rich to waste energy looking backward.

I honor Mike by evolving, not by preserving us in formaldehyde. The real disrespect would be pretending I'm the same woman he left behind.

Here’s a few ways I’ve changed: I encourage swearing. I'm pro-laziness. I'm anti-squeegee.

All things that would've earned me The Look across the dinner table. But I think he'd prefer this authentic version of me to one fossilized in grief, endlessly performing what-would-Mike-approve-of calculations.

So instead of asking "What would Mike do?" I ask "What makes us thrive?"

Like beach vacations with Kendall where we talk for hours, asking questions, sharing laughter. Sleeping in twin beds we’ve smooshed so close together that she can tap my shoulder at night: "Mom, you're snoring, turn over." And laugh about it in the morning.

This unforeseen life has become my different kind of great.

All because I stopped trying to force what would bloom from the ashes. I just kept planting seeds, watering what grew, and trusting that life, given enough care and freedom, finds its way toward the light.

In the spirit of full disclosure:

I guard this "great" fiercely. This great where Kendall and I walk barefoot on warm sand, deepening our connection with every footstep.

I don't want anything to change…

But it will.

The kids will build careers, find partners, create families. My place in their lives will shift. There will be periods where I'm not as content.

And I'll adjust. Because as long as I don't let myself fossilize with “the way things should be”, different kinds of great will keep unfolding.

This isn't faith or hope or belief. It's just openness to possibility. It's knowing I've survived the darkest of times and now live in brightness I never could have predicted.

We spend our lives trying to forecast tomorrow, as if predicting it will somehow protect us from it. But the real magic happens when we put down the crystal ball and look up at what's actually unfolding right in front of us.

In possibility,

Sue

"Hey, Sue, come here, I need your face." It was 7am on a winter Sunday so bright it hurt my eyes. Richie my brother-in-law was downloading the garage door opener app onto my phone. He held the rectangle up to my face. I fixed my thousand-mile stare until the checkmark swirled into view.

"We're in!"

Then without fanfare he finished setting it up so I wouldn't have to run through the blustery cold to the garage panel to get into the Treehouse. So I could stay in the warmth of my car.

This is love.

Not the kind that makes it into Valentine's Day commercials. But the kind that actually makes my life better.

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We're taught to look for love in the flashy, shiny places.

The surprise proposal. The candlelit dinner. The diamond anything.

But these are just the marketing campaign for love, not the actual product.

Real love hides in plain sight — in gestures so ordinary we barely notice them. The partner who refills your water bottle without being asked. The friend who remembers you hate cilantro so leaves it on the side of their potluck guacamole. The colleague who quietly adjusts the meeting time knowing you have a long commute.

Nothing says "I love you" like making someone's life better in ways they'll never post on Instagram.

The gesture I remember most came on an ordinary Tuesday. Eight-year-old Kendall and I were in the garage, buckling up for errands. Mike came out to say goodbye and noticed the windshield was splattered with bugs.

"Wait, hold on." He ran back inside.

He emerged seconds later with Windex and paper towels. He stepped onto the running board and leaned forward, scrubbing away each splatter with quiet determination.

While he worked on the other side of the glass, I turned to catch Kendall's eye.

"Listen, this is important. Flowers are nice and everything, but this is what you want in a partner, in the person you love. Someone who will clean the bugs off your windshield."

It took losing Mike to fully see what had been there all along.

Because when my world imploded in 2016, a dozen roses wouldn't have fixed a damn thing. But I would have given anything for one more moment of watching him clean those bugs, noticing him refill my coffee, feeling him kiss the top of my head as he passed by my desk.

Grief has a way of stripping everything down to the studs. Suddenly you see the hidden support beams that were holding everything up. All those small, forgettable moments were actually the infrastructure of your life… You discover the most beautiful truth and the most painful one simultaneously: life's meaning was never in the milestones. It was always in the mundane.

It reminds me of a concept I’ve talked about before: the “radiance in dailiness”. I stole the term from author Don DeLillo. He mentioned it in an interview about his cult classic White Noise, referencing the miracles hidden in “ordinary” reality. Originally the quote made me think of how my five senses were sharpened and enlivened when I emerged from my grief pit: being awe-struck by the baby soft texture of spring leaves or the diamond droplets of dew that I could stare into for hours.

But arguably the biggest sense organ of all is our hearts.

Looking back, I see that my heart, cracked wide open by loss, became exquisitely sensitive to the thousand quiet ways people showed they cared. Like a tuning fork suddenly calibrated to detect the gentlest vibrations of kindness.

These everyday acts of love still warm me years later:

Ken leaving a Pellegrino on my desk without a word.

Mom tackling the most tedious job in existence, putting away our Christmas decorations, without being asked.

Takis appearing in my driveway like a guardian angel in human form, insisting we were heading to the ER when I threw my back out.

We can argue parents are obligated, husbands must, brother-in-laws should. But actually, no. Nobody owes us anything beyond the bare minimum.

When someone does these small things without thinking, that's love so embedded it's become instinct. Each gesture alone might seem insignificant. Together, they're everything.

When we develop the habit of noticing these everyday expressions of love, something shifts. Ordinary days reveal their extraordinary nature. Mundane interactions become sacred. Even the hardest times feel more bearable because we recognize the skinny but strong threads of affection that we continue to wrap around each other.

The grand gestures are fireworks — spectacular but fleeting. The small acts of love are sunlight — unremarkable while actually sustaining life.

So if my mission is to help others live INTO their one wild and precious life, what actually gets you there?

Part of the recipe has got to be this: opening your eyes to love in its humble disguises.

It’s given me two gifts I can't get anywhere else:

First, the actual comfort from each small act — the warmth of the car on a winter morning, the cold Pellegrino on a hot afternoon, help with errands when I can’t bend over. But even more powerful is the cumulative effect — the awareness that I am supported by a web of love, woven through seemingly mundane acts of care.

In a world obsessed with the extraordinary, there is quiet revolution in honoring the ordinary ways we tend to each other.

Maybe the most meaningful life doesn’t rely on grand romantic gestures, or epic accomplishments, or life-changing adventures. Maybe it just requires giving and receiving love in its everyday work clothes, showing up and making life better in a thousand unremarkable ways.

To noticing what’s already there,

Sue

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“Everything okay, Sue?” It was a chilly October spring day in the Southern Hemisphere, waaaaay back in 2018.

Patches of snow dotted the pampas. The wind sliced through my jacket. I had paused mid-stride, staring at my gloved hands like I'd never seen them before.

Nico, my Chilean, mind-reading guide, had been pointing out the llama-like guanacas and the tortured sideways trees. That morning I’d tried his yerba mate as we drove through the Patagonian landscape in his Toyota Hilux. We’d parked on a ridge and tramped down a hill to see a long-abandoned ranch when he noticed me freeze.

“These are Mike’s gloves,” I mumbled, more to myself than to Nico. But after several days together and many stories shared, he understood right away. He drifted just far enough away to give me space while keeping me in sight.

This trip was a 50th birthday present to myself. It had been just shy of two years since Mike’s death, and, well… he should have been there. But the only tangible manifestation of him were his slightly-too-large gloves warming my freezing hands. A piece of him I could still touch. Because holding onto his things felt like holding onto him.

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We do this, don't we? Transform ordinary things into sacred vessels after someone dies.

Not just the obvious keepsakes — the family photos, the precious gifts. I'm talking about the random bits of life that become holy simply because they were touched by someone we loved. Like Mike's gloves.

I could have put those gloves in a box for safekeeping. I did that with many other of Mike’s things. Carting those boxes from house to house. Storing them somewhere safe. Eyeballing them on occasion to make sure they were where I’d left them.

Those boxes sit like dormant volcanoes now, eight years later. If I were to open them, memories and emotions would erupt out: Mike in that sky blue half-zip when we went to see Hamilton in NYC, beaming in his pinstriped suit at Connor's 6th grade graduation, turning the small jade lion in his hands after his semester in South Africa. The boxes have become boobytraps, crystallizing with pain over the silent, dark years.

But not the gloves. They’ve traveled around the world with me. Beaver Creek, Sedona, Greenland, Colgate, Patagonia. And a thousand hikes in Great Falls Park. Over time, they’ve been drained of their totem status. They’ve become part of me as much as they were part of Mike.

And maybe that’s because Mike has become part of me, too. I carry him with me everywhere I go. He’s no longer a separate being. He’s weightless.

It’s been a bitter cold winter in Virginia.

We’ve dealt with more snow than the last several winters combined. So the gloves have gotten a workout.

And finally, the inevitable happened. When I went to gather my hat, scarf, coat, and boots from the car, only one glove rested on the passenger seat.

I searched under the seats, in the garage, all around the mudroom to no avail. Finally, I had to pause and ask myself, “ok, how do I feel about this?”

Surprisingly, the answer was. “I’m sad, but ok.”

Only a few years back, this would have been a catastrophe that sent me into an ugly cry. But Mike is not in those gloves. Mike is in me. Forever.

And right when I felt the sadness lifting, I looked down at my feet.

There the glove was, stuck under the gas pedal.

With warm hands,

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