This is the story about how I gave up my autonomy, sense of self, my freedom and instead became enmeshed with the dogma of the Catholic Church for 16 years.

No one forced me to do this. I did this to myself. I’m telling you this not because my story is unique, but because I don’t think I’m the only one.

Early in my marriage, I realized my husband and I were incompatible. The red flags had been there while we were dating. I saw them and looked the other way. They're not the point of this story.

I had already decided he was the one.

I was tired of being single. The love of my life, my boyfriend from college, had gotten away. There was no one who compared to him. I had had steady boyfriends since our break-up, and this relationship checked off important boxes. He provided enough to make a potential marriage work: a good job, steady income, attractive, and he came from a loving blue-collar family much like my own.

We had a lot in common, and fell in love.

I explained away his shortcomings, God knows I had plenty myself. Instead I focused on his positive attributes. I’d already had way too much negativity in my life with my mother’s harsh words and inability to be pleased. She thought all my boyfriends sucked, so it was easy to dismiss her complaints about this one.

Once the dust settled after a whirlwind romance, I found myself married and gave birth to two daughters in quick succession. Despite living in a family of four, I felt inexplicably alone. My spouse was physically there, but he had not woven himself into the emotional fabric of our family.

Our marriage appeared intact from the outside. It was an image we both cultivated and people expected to see.

I had achieved the dream of a suburban home with a white picket fence, but I was the one running things: the bills, the kids, the decisions. He didn’t fight me on it. He just let me. And I mistook that for a partnership.

Financial insecurity made our union worse. We’d bought a house that we had to stretch for and were now saddled with a big monthly mortgage payment. It was difficult making ends meet.

Instead of divorcing, which barely crossed my mind, I took the path of least resistance. I stayed put. Taking note of my situation, I concluded I could no longer trust myself to make important decisions. Clearly, I had settled, and now too much was at stake with two babies for whom I longed to provide the very best.

The church became a logical place to land. The building was a short walk away. We went every Sunday morning, as was my training. My mother did not allow skipping mass. It was a sin after all. I fell away from church during the free-wheeling lifestyle of a college student, but moving home landed me back in a familiar weekly pattern. Every Sunday without fail, we attended mass for the next 16 years. It gave the week its rhythm. It was what I knew.

I didn’t dive deeper into Catholicism right away because mostly I was trying to get through the day with two toddlers. Then my son came along, and my energy stretched across three people who depended on me for everything. For a long time, that was enough. They were the salt of the earth, filling my cup with joy.

As they grew up, the hollowness of the marriage confronted me. I had come up for air and found out there was no ‘there’ there.

My solution was to attend daily mass after the kids got on the bus. I was the youngest in a group of gray-haired folks. If I got there early, I could say the rosary in my pew before mass started. It comforted me to be in the church’s quiet. I thought it was God who drew me there. He saw me. He could fix this.

I journaled during this time, and when I read those entries back, I could see how despondent I was. I begged God to heal my husband. To make him come back to us. Even though his body was there, his mind and heart were not.

The church gave me language for my suffering that made it feel sacred instead of senseless. I wasn’t lonely — I was carrying my cross. I wasn’t trapped — I was honoring my vocation. I wasn’t unhappy — I was being tested.

Once I had those words, I didn’t need my own anymore.

I listened to Catholic AM radio and cassette tapes whenever I could — running errands, folding laundry, waiting in the pickup line. I filled every quiet moment with the church’s voice so there was no room left for my own. I called it studying.

Now I see it for what it was: I was drowning out the doubt. I thought it would be my salvation and the key to staying in my marriage. I would somehow rise above the dysfunction.

I enrolled in a Catholic lay program to take a deep dive into the faith. The pastor had to approve it, and I felt lucky when he did. The course was a series of classes over a couple of years. I had to complete a project for our local church in order to graduate.

I became a Eucharistic minister, and when that wasn’t enough, I became a teacher in the RCIA (Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults), a program for people converting to the faith as adults. I headed a regional Catholic women’s annual retreat called MOM (Mary Our Mother) – Heart of the Home.

I didn’t think of those things as work. I thought of them as service. But I was staffing the church for free — training their new members, standing at their altar, completing a project for the parish just to earn a certificate. The more I gave, the more invested I became, and the harder it was to imagine walking away from everything I’d built.

That’s how it works. They don’t have to lock the door. You lock it yourself.

By then, the church had become the lens through which I saw everything. People outside the faith weren’t just different — they were lost. Ours was the one true faith.

Friends who slept in on Sundays, who questioned doctrine, who trusted themselves over scripture — I pitied them quietly. I didn’t realize that the wall I’d built between us and them was also the wall keeping me in.

The full story of why I left my marriage is one I’ve told before and won’t retell here. What I’ll say is that love came back into my life, and it reminded me what it felt like to be fully seen. That was the jolt. Everything I’d been holding in place started to unravel.

When I finally left, I thought the church would catch me. I’d given it sixteen years. I’d walked to daily mass. I’d trained converts. I’d stood at the altar and placed the Eucharist in people’s hands.

Surely that counted for something.

I went to the pastor. He told me the failure of my marriage was my fault — something I’d set in motion as a reckless twenty-year-old. There was no curiosity. No compassion. Just a verdict.

After that, I was shunned. Not dramatically — no one stood up and pointed. People just stopped talking to me. The women I’d run the retreats with, the ones I’d trained alongside, they looked through me.

I was trouble. I had broken the rules, and the rules were all that held us together. There was no fabric underneath. I’d mistaken structure for love.

I didn’t make a dramatic exit. I just stopped going. It wasn’t a door slamming. It was more like finally putting down something heavy that I’d convinced myself I needed to carry.

What took longer was understanding what those years had actually been. I used to think my time as a Eucharistic minister, an RCIA trainer, a student of the faith — I thought that was devotion.

Now I see it differently.

I was grappling. I was circling the things that never made sense to me, hoping that if I got closer, studied harder, gave more of myself, the belief would finally take root.

Someone once told me, “If it all made sense, what would be there to believe?” And I accepted that. I let it quiet the questions. But the questions never actually stopped.

The truth I couldn’t admit, not to the grannies at daily mass, not to the converts I trained, not even to myself, was that I never fully believed. Not deep down. I gave it lip service. I performed belief the way I performed a happy marriage, convincingly enough that even I almost bought it. And when the belief didn’t come, I did what I’d always done: I blamed myself. If I just studied more. If I just prayed harder. If I were smarter, more faithful, more something, it would click.

That’s the trick, isn’t it? The system tells you that doubt is your deficiency. Not a sign that something doesn’t hold up; rather, a sign that you don’t measure up. And for a woman who had already decided she couldn’t trust her own judgment, that was the perfect trap.

I found the word for what I’d been doing on TikTok, of all places. A woman was talking about religious deconstruction — the process of pulling apart the beliefs you were handed and deciding which ones, if any, are actually yours. I didn’t even know it was a thing. But listening to her, and then to others — atheists, former evangelicals, ex-Catholics — who methodically picked apart the very doctrines I’d been asked to swallow whole, I felt something I hadn’t expected. Not anger. Relief. Someone was finally saying out loud what I had been too ashamed to whisper: this doesn’t make sense, and it’s not because something is wrong with you.

I’m still in that process. I put up a tree every December, not for the birth of Christ, but for the winter solstice — for the pagan roots underneath the story I was told. I keep what I choose to keep. I leave the rest. That’s not rebellion. That’s autonomy. And it’s taken me a very long time to know the difference.

What are you not allowed to question? Start there.

If you found something here worth keeping, pass it on. A like, a comment, a restack — it's how The Pebble in Your Shoe finds the people who need it most. And if you have wisdom of your own to add, the comments are open. I'd love to hear what you'd put on your list.

Who agrees that grandmothers have more than earned their own research study?

Dr. Neal K. Shah, a Johns Hopkins and NIH-funded researcher, certainly does. In an Instagram video, he speaks about why grandparents seem more joyful with their grandchildren than they were with their own children.

My children haven’t expressed this thought to me, but they see a different version of me than when they were growing up.

Emory University scanned the brains of grandmothers looking at photos of their grandchildren. The emotional center fired instantly. Scientists called it “Grandma Brain.” When the same grandmothers looked at photos of their adult children, their brains responded totally differently, not with less love, but with a different kind. The brain fired in a more thoughtful, complex way. (Translation: still love you deeply, just with a side of “have you paid your taxes?”)

The lead researcher asked the same grandmothers what was different. Not one of them talked about love, but said, “This time I’m not scared, I’m not exhausted, no one’s judging me. This time I get to show up and feel every single moment without the weight of the world on my shoulders.”

Grandparents don’t love their adult children less, but love their grandchildren in a way they wished they could have loved their own children: freely, lightly, and without the weight of the world on their shoulders. This is their second chance. And watching them take it is one of the most beautiful things a family can witness.

I watched that video three times because it named something I hadn’t found words for yet.

I was a good mother. I was also scared, exhausted, and carrying more than I knew. My children got my best and also my worst moments, my unfinished edges, my fears I hadn’t yet faced.

My grandchildren get what’s left after I put all of that down. Turns out, what’s left is actually the good stuff.

So this birthday (I turned 63 last week) I wrote some things down. Not a confession. Not an apology. A few things I know now that I wish I’d known then. The weight I’ve finally set at the door. And the things I’m still, honestly, wrestling with.

I’m writing it for my kids. None of us should have to wait until we’re gone to pass on what we know. But if you find something here, that belongs to you, take it.

1. Your house doesn’t need to be perfect.

It doesn’t have to be sterile or pass a white-glove test. It doesn’t have to look like the soft hues of a Pottery Barn spread. It doesn’t need to impress anyone. Your kids don’t care what your house looks like. They don’t need color-coordinated sofa pillows. They only need their home to feel safe, like a warm embrace, a refuge from the outside world.

So keep those pencil marks on the wall to show how much they’ve grown, frame their crayon drawings, and display their dandelion bouquets.

2. People will come and go in your life.

Your childhood friendships may not last until you’re 40. That’s normal and totally ok.

I think of the friends you made in those years on the cul-de-sac — how close you all were, how permanent it seemed. And then life moved everyone like a handful of dice thrown in the air. Not all friendships survived the distance, and I know that hurts. Childhood friends know where you came from. Later friends will know who you decided to be. You need both, but the second kind you have to go find.

What I know at 63 is that new friendships can happen faster than you’d expect, and go deeper than the ones you spent decades building. You get pickier. But you also get braver about saying, ‘I want to know you better.’ I never had that courage at 30. There’s less pretense — you show up as you actually are, not who you think they want to meet. And if it doesn’t work out, you’re okay. You’re not devastated. You’ve learned that some people are for a season, and that’s enough.

3. Don’t waste your time drinking.

I used to inventory it, shop for it, spend my hard-earned dollars on just the right bottle, and then choose the best occasion to drink it. The amount of mental energy I gave to “what should we open?” could have powered a small village. It was nothing but a means of escape. I never spent as much time chasing the ripest mango, which is food that was actually nutritious.

Looking back, I can’t name one positive thing about the experience of drinking. Back then, I didn’t know that it was a carcinogen. Now its widespread knowledge that alcohol contributes to 7 types of cancer and many diseases.

If that’s not enough, it causes you to say or do regrettable things you normally wouldn’t if you were sober. You will make plenty of mistakes on your own, don’t let drinking make you add to your list.

Plus, you feel like crap the next day. A truly inefficient hobby.

4. Your body keeps the score, but it also keeps showing up.

The body that annoys you with its allergies and menstrual cramps is a friend, not a foe. It gives you data which you should take seriously.

Think about what this body does without being asked. Your heart has beaten roughly 100,000 times today alone without a reminder, without a thank you. It grew your children from nothing. It has carried you through every hard thing you’ve ever survived, and it is still here, still showing up, still asking only that you pay attention.

When it speaks — an ache, a flutter, an exhaustion that sleep doesn’t fix — listen. It’s not betraying you. It’s trying to tell you something.

5. You are enough. You are perfect inside and out. Really.

You’ve heard this before, but I want you to really hear it. Corporations trying to sell you something invented the standard you’re measuring yourself against. The diet and beauty industry alone is worth over a kajillion dollars, built entirely on making you feel you’re not thin or pretty enough. No one actually looks like the magazine cover. Not even the woman on it! She’s been smoothed and shrunk and lit within an inch of her actual humanity.

Ok, that’s five things. I could have written fifty. But you have lives to live, and so do I.

What I can tell you is that I’m not done learning. The list of what I’m still wrestling with is probably longer than the list of what I know. Fear, for instance. Fear and I have reached a truce, but negotiations are ongoing. She still shows up uninvited, but she no longer runs the meeting.

Rest still feels like surrender some days.

And there’s a voice that occasionally asks, “Who do you think you are?” She’s quieter now, but she hasn’t left the building.

But I’m not waiting until I’m gone to say what I know. None of us should. I hope you take these words to heart.

Which brings me to this coming Tuesday.

I’m so excited to welcome to Substack Live — creator of Tips from Dead People, where the departed pass on what they wished the living knew. Join us Tuesday, April 21st at 11 a.m on Substack Live. Because this conversation — about what we carry, what we pass down, and what we finally set at the door — is one worth having while we’re still here. Just click here on Tuesday. Don’t worry, I’ll send you a reminder on Monday.

In the meantime, you can check out Mary’s Substack out below.

Tips From Dead People

Welcome to the inside of my brain, stuffed full of potato chips, semi-colons, and obituaries.

By Mary McGreevy

If you have Instagram, you can follow her there.

Can’t wait to see you on Tuesday!

On Saturday, I went to the No Kings Rally in Toms River, New Jersey.

I brought a homemade sign that caused some enthusiastic honking. (Scroll all the way down for a peek.)

There were so many amazing signs, but one impressed me the most. The sign belonged to a 94 year old, in a wheelchair, and read: NO KINGS. (Not in my 94 years — NOT EVER.)

I don’t know her name. I know she showed up. And I know that when a 94-year-old woman wheels herself to a rally, the least the rest of us can do is get off the couch.

This was the biggest turnout yet — over 8 million people at more than 3,300 events across all 50 states. Organizers are calling it the largest single-day demonstration in U.S. history. The first rally drew 5 million. Then 7 million. Now 8 million. Something is growing.

Was it fun? Yes. Was it energizing to be surrounded by people who are paying attention? Absolutely. But I want to be honest with you: a rally doesn’t save democracy. Showing up on a Saturday feels good. The harder work happens on the other days — in the conversations you don’t walk away from, with the people you can’t quite avoid.

Last fall I wrote Why Good People Must Stop Being Quiet — with actual scripts for those moments when someone drops a lie at the dinner table and you freeze. If you haven’t read it, now is a good time. If you have, it might be worth another look.

P.S. April Fools! There is no 94-year-old. There was no rally. Democracy is fine. Everything is fine. (It's not fine. She was real. Go read Why Good People Must Stop Being Quiet and get those scripts ready to play a part in saving our democracy.)

A few things going forward:

I’m writing twice a month now — a choice I made intentionally, not reluctantly. You’ll still hear from me, and when you do, it’ll be worth opening. I’m also hosting a monthly Substack Live. If you haven’t joined one yet, keep an eye out — the next one is coming soon.

Show up when it matters. See you in two weeks

If this piece resonates with you, I'd love to know. Leave a comment, tap the like button, or share it with someone who might need it — someone who maybe hasn't thought about their Mrs. Gallucci in a while.

Suddenly, I’m a person with strategies.

The weekend officially starts on Thursday now because that’s the day estate sales begin. It’s important to get there early on the first day for a chance at the most coveted items, but seasoned buyers know it’s the final hours when you can get the best deals.

I like to think of myself as both disciplined and opportunistic — a dangerous combination in a house full of other people’s things.

There were only a few hours left when I find myself on the second floor with a stuffed brown and white horse under my arm. Seven silk scarves lay scattered on the bed. Not the Chanel ones — they had gone first — but the less bougie ones. I examine each one, since I am bougie myself, only taking the ones marked 100% silk. After all, I’m a businesswoman, not just an admirer of beautiful things. (Though, to be clear, I excel at both.)

I have an eBay store to stock, but my goal is not to bring too much home for myself. I don’t want my kids to be forced to clear it all out one day, standing over a pile saying, “What exactly was Mom doing?” This strategy is not working out well now that I haunt estate sales every weekend like a well-dressed trespasser with exquisite taste.

The bedroom echoes with its bare walls and floor. I remind myself to look around, really look, because the best stuff isn’t shouty—it never has to be. I step to the bureau and see a two-foot long laminated Union Leader newspaper article from January 1967, with a smaller one, also laminated, nearby. Sandwiched underneath is a report typed on a typewriter, flawless, telegraphing its ancientness on brittle, yellowed paper — from the era when one mistake meant starting the whole page over.

And then the India ink paintings appear.

Grainy art paper with swirls of brown, pink, yellow, and blue. Faint staple marks in the corners hint at their time on a classroom bulletin board — high up on the wall, just out of reach for a room full of wiggly third graders.

Suddenly I see myself, my chin resting on my desk with a straw between my lips, gathering up all my breath to blow the watery ink across the paper. I’d done this type of painting as a child, too.

I don’t stop to read the articles or the report, but gather all the pieces in my free hand. I have to have this. (A phrase that has never once led to a minimalist lifestyle.)

I pay $5 for mementos from a former third-grade teacher, Mrs. Patricia V. Gallucci, of Battle Hill Elementary School in Union, New Jersey. Less than a latte, more than a small act of faith.

I read her obituary later — she was 91 when she died. In all these years, she never threw away this collection. The family, if there was one left, didn’t want it. Somehow, either Patricia herself or the universe decided it should end up among the lamps and purses and silk scarves for someone to find.

When I get home, I read the newspaper articles about Patricia’s art projects and her own typewritten words. Patricia was not only interested in teaching her students about the process of making unique designs using colored India ink and water. She wanted them to discover the joy of seeing LIFE — she capitalized the word — in the pictures.

Her students reported seeing clouds, rivers, and even Abraham Lincoln with a curl in his hair. Some wrote that they saw poetry. At the end, Patricia notes: “This type of activity provided the opportunity for each child to use his individual creativeness.”

Before Individual Educational Plans (IEPs) existed, before differentiated learning had a name, Patricia Gallucci was already doing it. She put ink in water, let every child breathe on it differently, move it differently, and then asked each one to look and say what they saw. Not the right answer. Their own vision.

I had a teacher like Patricia, too. Mine was named Miss France. I remember her being soft spoken and kind, a rarity in a strict Catholic school with rowdy classrooms of 40 or more students, the educational equivalent of crowd control with a stiff ruler.

In third grade, Miss France had us memorize Joyce Kilmer’s poem called “Trees.”

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the earth’s sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,

And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in summer wear

A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;

Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

Miss France taught me to see the sacredness of an ordinary tree. Trees, in all their glory, aren’t shouty either, and yet, somehow, they hold the entire sky.

Life came at me with its brutal demands, and those early sparks got buried, not extinguished, just filed under “later,” where so many important things go. I’m sure you had a Miss France too — someone who pointed you toward beauty before the world got loud. Maybe you’ve forgotten her name. Maybe you’ve forgotten what she showed you.

That’s why it matters to have people like Jenny Santa Maria in your life as an adult. Jenny is a pysanky egg artist and a former special education teacher who spent her career devising ways to reach children that the standard approach couldn’t reach. Jenny is the kind of person who refuses to accept that there is only one door in.

During our recent Substack Live conversation, we considered how different the world would be if every child had an IEP.

What if every child had someone who found the particular way they see?

Patricia did that in 1967. Miss France was doing it in 1969 with a poem. Jenny does it today with wax and dye and eggs that reveal themselves layer by layer.

There is a saying that every person dies twice — once when they stop breathing, and a second time when their name is spoken for the last time.

Patricia kept her typewritten report for sixty years. She laminated the newspaper articles. She kept the evidence of what she had done and why it mattered. And now her name is in this essay, which means you just said it too, at least in your mind.

Patricia V. Gallucci taught children to see LIFE in the chaos of ink and water. Miss France put a poem in my body that I still carry. Jenny Santa Maria is still out there coaching adults, mostly women, to see what’s already there, layer by layer.

I'm doing my own version of it — writing it down, keeping the record, trying to point people toward what they might have forgotten they could see.

I don’t know yet whether what I’m building will last. I don’t know if anyone will want it when I’m gone. But I’m writing it down anyway. I’m keeping the evidence. After all — someone always comes in the final hours.

In case you missed it, here is the Substack Live from Monday.

I'm bringing this one back from last year because I can't think of a better way to prepare for what's coming. On March 23rd at 11 a.m., I'm sitting down live with the incredible Jenny Santa Maria—the artist who led our pysanky gathering and inspired every word of this piece. If you've ever wanted to understand why writing on an egg feels like resistance, or you're curious about trying it yourself, join us. The live will be even richer if you've spent a few minutes with this essay first.

I'm the smallest I can be. On the floor, I've got my knees close to my chest and my arms wrapped tightly around my shins. With my chin tucked toward my chest, I rock back and forth, back and forth, along my spine, until momentum lifts me upright, and I'm almost sitting. I'm balancing myself on my sitting bones while still keeping my egg shape.

I like this tiny version of myself.

In yoga, we call this pose a cosmic egg. Returning to my egg roots reminds me of how we begin life, safe and warm in our mothers' wombs. The cosmic egg is a powerful symbol in Hindu mythology, representing the universe's creation and containing the primordial elements from which life emerges.

Eggs have so much to teach us.

Eggs are nutritionally rich and culturally profound. However, the tenacious bird flu has limited their availability, and grocery prices for a carton have soared accordingly. People are so upset about this that they made egg prices a political platform during the last election.

Eggs are having their day.

Ancient people understood their scarcity. In cold climates, chickens don't usually lay eggs over the winter. In the spring, the appearance of eggs meant renewal, life, and the rebirth of nature.

Creating Pysanky: An Ancient Art of Resistance

I recently had an opportunity to make something unique with an ordinary chicken egg. Friends and I recently “wrote Pysanky” with artist Jenny Santa Maria. You've probably seen these beautiful eggs but may be unaware of their profound meaning. The tradition of using wax to create eggshell designs and add color with dye predates Christianity. It was a pagan practice traced back thousands of years to pre-Christian Slavic cultures.

The word pysanka comes from the Ukrainian verb "pysaty, " meaning "to write," since designs are written onto the egg using a wax-resist batik technique. People used this writing to communicate with symbols like the sun, wheat, flowers, fish, spirals, triangles, and crosses.

With the Christianization of Kyivan Rus in 988 CE, many pagan customs persisted and were absorbed into the Christian calendar. The pysanka transitioned from a fertility talisman to a symbol of Christ's resurrection, demonstrating an early example of cultural adaptation rather than erasure. In the tenth century, the pysanky tradition was absorbed into Christian culture and associated with Easter. The egg became a symbol for the tomb of Jesus.

The Myth That Keeps Ukraine Strong

The Ukrainian people have held tightly to a pre-Christian myth that has perpetuated the practice of pysanky.

It goes like this:

A terrifying serpent monster is chained deep in the Carpathian mountains. This evil beast strives to break itself free, threatening to bring destruction to the world. Every year, the creature sends out minions to spy on humanity. These creatures report back on how many pysanky they have found. As long as people continue to decorate eggs and keep the tradition alive, the monster remains bound and powerless.

The more pysanky created, the tighter the chains become. However, if people were to stop making pysanky, the monster's chains would loosen, and eventually, it would escape, bringing chaos, suffering, and destruction to the world.

The legend of the chained monster connects Pysanky to preserving peace and order, and the myth resonates even more powerfully today.

Americans can relate to this mythological creature as we witness our struggles with forces beyond our control. We are also fighting battles against corruption, misinformation, and the erosion of democratic norms.

In both contexts, the monster represents forces that threaten to overwhelm us. In both cases, the creative act becomes a form of resistance—a way to assert that beauty and tradition will persist despite destruction. We may feel powerless, but we can raise the collective spirit through our creative actions, just as Ukrainians have done through centuries of occupation and oppression.

For Ukrainians facing war, creating pysanky represents a continuation of cultural identity that has survived centuries of attempts at erasure.

Cultural Survival Against All Odds

Pysanky's survival through centuries of cultural transitions and political upheavals speaks to the resilience of this folk tradition. During the Ottoman, Polish, and Russian rule, Ukraine, lacking independent statehood for much of its history, was controlled by various empires. Despite these external influences, pysanky persisted as an oral and artistic tradition passed down within families, particularly by women.

Because pysanky were created in people's homes rather than formal settings, the art avoided suppression more easily than other cultural expressions.

The Soviet era, from 1922 to 1991, presented perhaps the greatest threat to this tradition. The Soviet regime sought to suppress religious and nationalist expressions, and pysanky, with its deep connection to both, was actively discouraged. Many Ukrainian artists and rural practitioners stopped making them for fear of persecution.

However, Ukrainian communities in other parts of the world, particularly North America, kept the tradition alive. Ukrainian immigrants to the US and Canada established cultural centers and museums dedicated to pysanky. In the 1960s, a resurgence of Ukrainian nationalism and folk art movements helped reintroduce pysanky to new generations.

In 2023, the first Easter season after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, artists organized fundraisers and sold their pysanky eggs to raise money to benefit Ukraine. These efforts continue as the war drags on.

Pysanky reminds us that art created in kitchens and living rooms can outlast empires.

Fragility and Resilience: Lessons from a Broken Egg

The chained monster's minions were diabolically active while I was writing my pysanky egg. I broke my egg not once but twice and had to start over with a new egg each time. I was especially distraught the first time because I had received the coveted blue chicken egg, which meant my base color would be a spectacular background for my design.

But it was not to be.

In those moments of frustration, I remembered life’s essential lessons:

• Everything is temporary.

• Life is fragile.

• I can always begin again.

Another friend broke her egg while she was melting the wax from the egg, the final step of the process. Coach Jenny swooped in and preserved as much of her artwork as possible, even though the egg was now missing its base.

There's something profoundly metaphorical about creating art on such a delicate surface. The process teaches patience, acceptance, and the courage to start over—qualities that echo the resilience of the Ukrainian people throughout their turbulent history.

The egg's fragility mirrors our vulnerability, while the act of creation demonstrates our capacity to just keep going.

Coming Together: The Communal Power of Creation

In times of war and oppression, Ukrainians have made pysanky a symbol of resilience and national identity. Pysanky brings people of all ages together, reinforcing the bonds of our humanity.

Women coming together creatively has become especially meaningful since the pandemic, when these gatherings were rare. Our group shared concerns about the current political climate and the need for stress relief. By creating pysanky, we could discuss other things that bind us together while supporting Ukraine.

While writing on our eggs, we often worked in meditative silence as we transcribed our messages. Pysanky symbolizes peace in Ukrainian tradition and is a form of prayer. This communal silence created space for processing difficult emotions about global events that often leave us feeling helpless.

Creating Pysanky as Solidarity

In this time when many Americans feel restricted in showing support for Ukraine, creating pysanky offers a tangible way to express solidarity. The creative act itself becomes an act of resistance against fear and complacency. Writing pysanky here shows we are aware of this native art form and engage with it alongside Ukrainians, even though we are far away and may otherwise lack the power to influence world events.

Creating pysanky connects us to a tradition that has survived centuries of attempts at cultural erasure. By participating in this tradition, we affirm its continued relevance and power. Each egg we create symbolically tightens the chains on the monster of destruction, whether in Ukraine or in our society.

Interested in trying pysanky? Consider this:

• Researching local Ukrainian cultural centers that might offer workshops. If you're here in New Jersey, you can find Jenny Santa Maria conducting workshops everywhere! Follow her on Instagram for more info.

• Contacting art centers and community education programs.

• Checking out YouTube and learning this beautiful art at home. You will need these basic supplies: raw eggs, beeswax, kistka tools, dyes, and candles.

• Creating a space where participants can both learn the technique and discuss its meaning.

Through these small, beautiful acts of creation, we participate in a centuries-old tradition of resilience. We remind ourselves that even in the most difficult times, we retain the power to create beauty, preserve culture, and strengthen community—one tiny, cosmic egg at a time.

Want to see a brief tutorial on creating Pysanky? Check out this brief Youtube video.

There’s a scene in Gisèle Pelicot’s memoir that I can’t shake. In the early days after her husband’s arrest, before she fully digested the scope of what he had done to her, she went to the prison and brought him a bag of warm clothes. She was worried he might be cold.

I know that woman.

I was that woman.

I had those same feelings for a man who had only been physically present for most of our marriage. When he spoke of us in conversation as “We decided…” “We went…” I would feel validated for that moment when he considered me a part of him.

I took care of him, even though he offered little in return. I shopped, cooked, cleaned, and took care of our children. I worked a full-time career.

The worst part?

I enjoyed taking care of him. It gave me a role in his life. He got the best I had because that’s who I was trained to be.

I don’t know exactly when my dissatisfaction crescendoed. It was a series of cracks, not a single break.

A set of books that reminded me I was capable of longing.

A LinkedIn message I almost didn’t send.

A friend who asked me one question that undid twenty years of certainty.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I lost twenty pounds — and my husband never noticed I was disappearing.

When Gisèle decided to open her trial to the public, she did something I hadn’t yet learned to do.

She refused to protect everyone else from her truth. But truth in a woman's mouth is rarely received as simply true.

Because of its complexity, it is often not clear to those on the outside. Others deliberately distort it. Mostly, people enjoy being uninformed — seeing only headlines, hearing only whispers — and their understanding of a few “facts” is colored by their own lens and desire to be right.

Gisèle knew opening the trial could go sideways. It did. Her husband, Dominique, had videotaped every assault. She was comatose in the footage. That’s some rock-solid evidence.

Gisèle even fought for the footage to be shown publicly so no one could claim ignorance about what rape actually looks like.

She won that fight. And then the court reversed the decision and locked the public out anyway.

Those images alone should have been enough to convict them.

They weren’t.

One defense attorney pointed to the rhythmic movement of Gisèle’s hips during an assault and told the court she was enjoying it. A drugged, unconscious woman’s involuntary physical response was used as evidence of her consent.

Her own body, turned against her.

As women, we’ve learned our truth is only for us. For the outside world, it is negotiable when coming up against men, especially wealthy, powerful, and connected men.

But who am I kidding? It’s the same with ordinary men in our lives, even though they have slightly less leverage than the Jeffrey Epsteins of the world.

When I left my marriage, people assumed I had been having an affair, and that’s how they treated me.

One day, I stopped at my neighbor’s house, two doors down from our family home. This was the woman I saw every week when we used to drive our kids to school together. We knew each other well. But this time when I knocked, she didn’t welcome me in. Instead, I stood on the stoop and spoke. I got the hint and left.

After my husband and I split, I still looked to my church community for support. When I shared with my parish pastor everything that had happened, I was looking for a lifeline — some hope that I hadn’t ruined my life and my family’s. He assured me it was all my fault, and Larry’s too, confirming what I had already thought.

Great support, Father.

At an outdoor fair that summer, a man who was also a Eucharistic Minister looked through me when I spoke to him. It was as if I wasn’t even there.

I continued to attend church, with no interaction from anyone except one woman who had recently gotten divorced. She offered kind words, which were unexpected, and I fell apart before her. She told me it would be okay, although I couldn’t imagine how.

My own parents cut ties with me. My mother’s words haunt me still. “I am ashamed of you.”

I was tried in whispers, convicted without a courtroom.

Virginia Giuffre didn’t even get that much mercy.

Virginia was sixteen when Jeffrey Epstein first trafficked her. For years she told her story to journalists, to lawyers, to anyone who would listen. She named powerful men. She was specific. She was persistent. And for years, the world found reasons not to believe her.

She was too young, too damaged, too inconvenient. The men she accused were too wealthy, too connected, too important to be brought down by one woman’s testimony.

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, the man she accused of assaulting her when she was a teenager, was only arrested this past February, not for what he did to Virginia, but for sharing government secrets with Epstein. The system that had ignored her for decades finally moved, and it moved for paperwork.

Virginia Giuffre died by suicide in 2025. She did not live to see it.

She told the truth her entire adult life, and the truth was not enough. The truth is never enough when the world has decided in advance that a woman’s account of her own experience is negotiable.

This is what we are up against. Not just monsters like Dominique Pelicot or Jeffrey Epstein. But the everyday machinery that turns women’s testimony into something that can be bargained with, dismissed, or simply ignored until we are no longer here to repeat it.

Let’s always remember Virginia Giuffre and the price she paid.

Gisèle Pelicot survived the assaults, opened her trial to the world, and published her memoir. She is prospering now with a new partner, her children, her grandchildren, and her voice fully her own. Her book is called A Hymn to Life. The title is not ironic. She means it.

I too found a new life with my husband Larry. I outlasted my parents’, my neighbor’s, and my priest’s judgment. I write about it.

I don’t know how to make this hopeful. What I know is that Gisèle Pelicot is still here. I am still here. And we are both, finally, telling our own stories.

Writing this one cost me something. If it cost you something to read it, I'd love to hear about it in the comments. And if you know a woman who is carrying shame that was never hers to begin with — please send this to her.

PS My Substack Live with Jenny Santa Maria, the Pysanky Egg Artist and Art Coach is postponed. It will now be on Monday, March 23rd at 11 a.m. I’ll send you a reminder next week.

The best thing you can do if this landed? Like it, restack it, and tell me in the comments what's waking up in you. These conversations are why I'm here.💙

March arrived this week, and I felt the first whisper of something loosening.

On Monday, I immersed myself in the annual Philadelphia Flower Show, where beauty whispered to my spirit and senses. I wandered through exhibits exploding with impossible colors. The tulips were so saturated they looked painted, while smiling orchids defied the gray Northeast winter, perched in the crooks of tropical trees. Every once in a while, a whiff of hyacinths filled the air with something that smelled like a yes.

Nature does its work silently, never breaking its rhythm. Not quite spring yet, but the promise of it. The way the light shifts ever so slightly, and your body knows before your mind does.

I needed that promise. Because the world has felt so heavy lately. Heavy in ways I don’t have words for, and I suspect you feel it, too.

And so, this week I went looking for hope. Not the toxic positivity kind — the real kind. The kind that tells the truth about the darkness and then points toward the light, anyway.

I found it in two unexpected places.

The first was Viola Davis at the NAACP Awards. The video came to me from my Pysanky egg artist friend Jenny, who shared Viola’s speech in her newsletter. Viola stood at the podium and said something that stopped me cold:

“The definition of hell: On the last day on earth, the person you became meets the person you could have become.”

I had to sit with that for a while. Not because it frightened me, though it did, a little, but because it cracked something open. All that potential. All the versions of ourselves we’ve quietly folded up and tucked away because life got complicated, or someone told us we were too much, or we got so good at being the good girl that we forgot to ask what we actually wanted.

For those of us in our third chapter, that sentence hits differently. We don’t have unlimited runway anymore. The question isn’t someday. It’s now.

Which brings me to the second thing I found — a word I’d never encountered before, in a publication called , from fellow Substack writer, .

Amy shares her joy at finding the word “Suerza’” (pronounced soo-wair-zah.) It’s a made-up word from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows by John Koenig, that blends the Spanish words for luck (suerte) and strength (fuerza). Koenig’s definition made me hit the pause button, just like Viola did.

Suerza: A feeling of quiet amazement that you exist at all. A sense of gratitude that you were even born in the first place, that you somehow emerged alive and breathing despite all odds.

There it is. That’s the antidote to the heaviness.

Not denial. Not pretending the world isn’t what it is. But this: you are here.

Against extraordinary odds, you made it to this exact moment. All the generations before you, all the near-misses and the heartbreaks and the losses, you are breathing and reading these words and feeling the first hint of March light.

The luck that you made it here. The strength to finally become her.

Spring doesn’t ask permission to arrive. It doesn’t wait until the world is less of a mess, or until we’ve figured everything out. It just comes, quietly and insistently, pushing up through the cold ground.

You get to do the same thing.

This is your season to ask: what version of myself have I been postponing? What have I been waiting for the world to settle down enough to become?

The person you could have become is still possible.

She’s been waiting to meet you.

Suerza. You have more of it than you know.

QUESTION: What’s waking up in you this March? I’d love to hear.

P.S. The friend who brought Viola's words into my life — Jenny, the Pysanky egg artist — is joining me on Substack Live on Thursday, March 12th at 11 a.m. for a conversation about creativity, expression, and making beautiful things in a heavy world. I'd love to see you there. Please mark your calendar.🤍

I was in a car accident last week. I’m okay — mostly — but it meant no newsletter, no post, just me and a hospital bed and a lot of waiting.

While I was recovering, I kept thinking about Keith Bumgarner’s piece that I’d been saving for the right moment. This felt like it.

Keith writes about trauma, survival, and what it finally took — nine therapists and seven decades of living — to find real healing. His story is not easy to read. It’s also not easy to look away from. He writes with the kind of honesty that makes you braver about your own story.

Please support Keith by liking, restacking, and writing a supportive comment.

I’ll be back soon. For now, I’m grateful to hand you over to Keith.

From being scalded with boiling water to being imprisoned for hours at a time in a wooden box, my father’s severe torture shattered my sense of safety, boundaries, and self-worth—especially when coupled with my mother’s failure to protect me.

Now at 71, I appreciate the strength and resilience these experiences forged, which enable me to share my story. Sexual abuse by adult women began when I was 10 and continued throughout adolescence, igniting a destructive sexual obsession that dominated my early life. Healing began at 67, when I finally found a trustworthy, competent therapist whose guidance helped me understand the impact of my trauma and reclaim my life. This recovery journey gives me both hope and the courage to tell my story.

I sat across from nine different therapists before I found the one who could actually help me—Kim Asher*, MS, LPC, CCH.

Nine.

If you’ve ever “started over” with a new therapist, you know what that number really costs. It’s nine rounds of hope. Nine waiting rooms. Nine intake forms that ask you to turn your life into tidy categories. Nine first sessions where you try to sound coherent while your nervous system does cartwheels.

I’m in my seventies now. I’ve carried complex trauma for decades—and the familiar fallout that so many of us learn to treat as personal defects: depression that doesn’t politely resolve, chronic anxiety, compulsive over-control, attention that misfires under stress, and a body that sometimes acts as if the danger is still happening.

So when I say “nine,” I don’t mean I was being picky. I mean I was trying to survive my own history with help that was actually safe—until my first session with Kim, when I felt something small but unmistakable: a quiet internal exhale.

The myth that keeps us stuck

We’re taught to believe that if someone is licensed and we’re willing, therapy should work. You bring the pain; they bring the expertise; healing ensues.

But therapy isn’t a rational transaction. It’s a relationship. For trauma survivors, the relationship isn’t a bonus feature—it’s the engine. That’s what nobody tells you at the beginning: finding a therapist can feel like dating, in the least romantic sense of the word. Not because you’re looking for perfect, but because your nervous system is deciding who is safe enough to tell the truth to.

And if you were trained early in life to override your instincts—to stay polite, stay quiet, stay “reasonable,” no matter what your body is screaming—then you’re especially vulnerable to staying with the wrong fit far too long.

I did.

What nine wrong fits taught me

Looking back, those nine attempts weren’t failures. They were reconnaissance missions into what my healing could not tolerate.

One therapist was undeniably brilliant—quick, polished, impressive. But when I started talking about adolescent abuse, her attention slid toward the wrong thing. Not my fear. Not the betrayal. Details. There’s a kind of curiosity that isn’t clinical; it’s invasive even when it’s disguised as “assessment.” My body knew that before my brain could explain it.

Another therapist revealed his worldview early: he believed women caused men’s problems. Then he launched into stories about his divorce like I’d paid admission to his wounds. It became clear his pain was driving the therapy, not mine.

And then there was the therapist who brought a faith lens. I wasn’t so sure about this, but I tried, because many people I respect find real comfort there. In session three, she reframed my adolescent abuse, and she suggested it wasn’t really abuse.

If you’ve never had a professional minimize your harm, let me translate the effect: it doesn’t just hurt your feelings. It teaches your nervous system that help is dangerous. That is the opposite of healing.

Each bad fit clarified the same lesson: credentials matter, but integrity and self-awareness matter more.

The three non-negotiables I finally learned to honor

After more therapy than I care to count (and more life than I ever expected to survive), here’s what I believe truly matters.

1) Trust your body.

Your nervous system is not being dramatic. It’s reporting. When I walked into Kim’s office the first time, something in me loosened—not a miracle, not “fixed,” just enough to tell the truth. If you find yourself tensing up before sessions, manufacturing enthusiasm you don’t feel, or editing your truth to avoid disappointing your therapist, your body is telling you something. Listen.

2) Expertise matters, but it’s not everything.

If you’re dealing with complex trauma, find someone trained in trauma work. If addiction, grief, or OCD is part of your story, seek that specialization. But technical knowledge without relational skill is like a scalpel in the wrong hands—precise yet dangerous. I needed someone who understood trauma and could sit with me in the mess of it without flinching, moralizing, minimizing, or making it about themselves.

3) Style is substance.

Some therapists are active and directive. Others are reflective and quiet. Neither is “better.” They’re different. You need to know yourself well enough to recognize which approach serves you. I’ve always been good at intellectual analysis; I can think circles around my own pain. I needed someone who wouldn’t let me stay in my head—someone who would gently, persistently call me back to what I was feeling in my body.

The cost of waiting is real

Here’s the hard truth: staying with a therapist who isn’t helping you means continuing to suffer. It means paying money to stay stuck. I wasted months—years, if I’m honest—with therapists I knew weren’t right because I felt guilty about leaving, worried I was being too demanding, or convinced myself the problem was me.

The problem was never me.

And if you’re reading this, wondering whether your doubts are valid, the problem isn’t you either.

Permission to leave

You don’t owe your therapist your suffering. You don’t owe them another chance if your gut tells you this isn’t working. You don’t owe them an elaborate explanation for why you’re moving on.

The therapeutic relationship is built on trust, yes. But it’s not a friendship or a family bond. It’s a professional relationship designed to support your healing. When it stops serving that purpose—or when you suspect it never did—you’re allowed to leave.

Gratitude for past help shouldn’t trap you in present ineffectiveness. You can honor what someone gave you and still recognize that you need something different now.

What finding Kim taught me

Working with Kim, the difference wasn’t mystical. It was structural.

She had the expertise I needed—a deep understanding of complex trauma, especially the kind inflicted by trusted caregivers. But more than that, she had a way of being present that made truth-telling possible.

She doesn’t let me hide, but she never shames me for trying. She sees through my defenses without making me feel exposed. She can sit with the worst of what I’ve experienced without looking away, yet she never gets lost in it with me. She holds hope for me when I can’t keep it for myself.

This is what a proper fit feels like: not comfort exactly, but a steady sense that you’re working with someone who knows how to guide your brokenness toward a path of healing.

Trust the journey

If you’re searching for the right therapist or wondering whether the one you have is actually helping, trust your experience. Trust your doubts. Trust that you deserve care that genuinely enables you to heal.

Nine therapists taught me what I didn’t need. Kim is teaching me how to handle what happened.

Your journey will be different from mine. Keep searching until you find someone who helps your body believe you’re safe again.

*Kim Asher is a licensed professional counselor and a member of ACA.

Education: The Ohio State University—1991, B.A. Psychology

Georgia State University—1995, M.S. Counseling Psychology

Thanks, Keith, for sharing your struggle finding the right therapist and for normalizing the discernment process. I’m so glad you found Kim.

Since I came across Keith here on Substack, I was impressed with his candor about the sexual abuse he experienced at the hands of older women. This topic is rarely discussed, especially publicly, and I admire his bravery and determination to come out from under by telling his story.

In the words of Gisèle Pelicot, “Shame must change sides.”

Here are some other of Keith’s pieces I urge you to read.

Don't Let the Past Steal Your Soul

The Note (part 1)

From my earliest memories, I suffered severe physical abuse by my father, including scalding water on my wrists, repeated attempts to submerge me, confinement in a wooden chest until I soiled myself, and nearly daily beatings with a makeshift weapon. This ongoing violence, coupled with the total absence of protection or love from my mother, shattered my…

Read more

10 months ago · 13 likes · 17 comments · Keith Bumgarner

Don't Let the Past Steal Your Soul

The Space Between Words

This post is dedicated to my therapist, Kim Asher, who has served as a key factor in my intelligent and functional learning journey regarding dissociation, helping me become my complete self…

Read more

10 months ago · 2 likes · 2 comments · Keith Bumgarner

Don't Let the Past Steal Your Soul

Eleven Days and Two Blocks Too Far

This story may be truncated in your email. You may read the story in its entirety in your browser or the Substack App…

Read more

5 months ago · 14 likes · 9 comments · Keith Bumgarner

Don't Let the Past Steal Your Soul

Nightmare at the Biltmore

From my earliest memories, I suffered severe physical abuse by my father, including scalding water on my wrists, repeated attempts to submerge me, confinement in a wooden chest until I soiled myself, and nearly daily beatings with a makeshift weapon. This ongoing violence, coupled with the total absence of protection or love from my mother, shattered my…

Read more

6 months ago · 7 likes · Keith Bumgarner

You can subscribe to Keith’s publication here.

Don't Let the Past Steal Your Soul

My story of redemption and healing, regarding the life impact of my physical, emotional and sexual abuse as a child and adolescent.

By Keith Bumgarner

This one's heavy. Estate sales, my mother's last day at home, and the immigrant workers I see but maybe don't really see. I don't have answers, just questions that won't leave me alone. If it resonates, let me know. Comment, share, restack—I want to know if you're sitting with this too.

Did they know it was their last day at home?

I kept asking myself that, walking through the estate sale with its opened pack of Depends keeping no secrets on an accent chair.

They couldn’t have known, or they would have stripped the bed and emptied the pantry. They would have given the children’s books, clothes, and toys to their rightful owners.

You learn a lot about people when you walk through their homes. The biggest bedroom belonged to the couple. The second bedroom had no bed at all. Instead, it held a heavy walnut desk and organized plastic bins of baseball cards. The third bedroom, this one was special. It belonged to the beloved grandchildren. A granddaughter had come first with pink-painted walls and a white floral bureau. Almost as an after-thought, a bookshelf with two Hess trucks, Duplo blocks, and a rainbow of magnetic tiles, was the only evidence there might have been a boy in this room.

A pink cotton dress hung in the closet, ready for summer.

The Mrs. probably would have taken the time to peel the wax from the candelabra if she thought over a hundred people would walk through their house.

No one prepares you for your last day in your house. Most times you won’t wake knowing it is your last day.

My mother ran away on her last day.

That decision would change her living arrangements permanently. It wasn’t much over a week after my dad died when she decided she didn’t like her caregiver, a kind-hearted Black woman named Janice. Janice wore a wig and fake eyelashes during the day, but took them off at night. I think it confused my mom, an old white German lady, to see someone transform like that.

Or maybe it was having a black person in her home at all.

I had hired Janice to stay with my mom in the house after I went back to work. No sense uprooting someone with dementia who had already lost her life partner.

Even though Janice always locked the door, my mom’s mind wasn’t gone enough not to remember how to unlock her own back door. She walked to a neighbor’s house in the cool spring air without a coat and told them someone was keeping her against her will. I got a call at work and drove over to pick her up.

Once Mom was back home and she realized Janice wasn’t leaving, she called the police. They took my mom to the hospital for a psych evaluation, after which I transferred her to a locked dementia care facility. I couldn’t take any more chances that she might try to run away.

If my mother had known it would be her last morning to wake up in her own bed that fateful day in March 2014, would she still have run away?

Maybe the thought of a last day disturbs me because I know I will have a last day too. The rat-a-tat-tat of my neighbor’s roof brings me out of my ruminating. The temperature is in the teens this morning as I watch the Mexican roofers pull off tiles. They defy gravity as they walk the steep pitch with athleticism and grace.

How are they working in this cold?

It’s morose, but I wonder what would happen if one of them fell. He would have left home this morning, not knowing he wouldn’t be letting his dog out again.

He and his crew probably feel like that every day.

The estate sale felt tragic because those people didn’t know. But what’s more tragic? To live your whole life not knowing when it will end, or to live every day knowing the home you’ve made could be taken from you?

These men know. And we’re the ones making them know.

I’m inside my warm house selling my mother’s crystal necklaces on eBay while men risk their lives in the cold outside my window. ICE could detain and deport them any day. Men who are visible and invisible at the same time.

I see them, but do I see them?

I don’t know the answer to that. I just know the question won’t leave me alone.

This one is close to my heart. It's about being too scared to eat at the table you've been invited to—and what happens when you sit down anyway. If it resonates, share it with a woman who's been walking back and forth on something. And I'd love to hear your big chicken moment in the comments.

“I live in alignment with the truth of my life.”

That’s what the tattoo on my arm means. I got it at 62, at a goddess gathering, knowing full well I would be disappointing a very important person in my life, my husband.

I met Tobi, a massage therapist, six years ago. While she worked on my back, we chatted, getting to know each other. She was easy to talk to and a superb listener. Her intelligent hands knew what I didn’t say, as my body telegraphed my life story without words.

Over time, we discovered we had much in common. We were both yoga teachers who’d grown disillusioned with the yoga industry. Our hair went gray early in life, and we let our natural color grow out. We both struggled with parents who had mental health issues, and we both had divorced.

One thing about us was starkly different, though: Tobi’s body was a canvas of many tattoos, and I had none.

Tobi inspired me at every appointment. She sparked so many ideas in me, often giving me a laundry list of things to do when I left. She was part coach, part masseuse, part acupuncturist, all rolled into one.

After COVID lifted, Tobi started ladies-only group gatherings, where we could mingle and meet other fabulous women. Here, everyone could speak from the heart. Tobi’s gatherings were sacred spaces of connection and loving support.

This year was even more remarkable, though. This was the first time she was holding the gathering in her own space. She’d gotten a degree in acupuncture a few months earlier and was now running her business in a newly rented studio.

Generously, she allowed me to invite a few friends to join. Altogether, thirty of us worked on our vision boards and ate vegetarian food, with the option to get a tattoo if we wanted. Tobi mentioned at my appointment earlier in the week that Norali, the tattoo artist, would be there.

Tobi has seen me undressed. She knew I didn’t have any tattoos anywhere, yet she asked if I was getting one. No, I hadn’t been planning on it, but that question watered a seed.

The night before the gathering, my husband and I were out with a friend. He mentioned I was going to the goddess gathering the next day, and I added that a tattoo artist would be there.

“Would you get a tattoo?” our friend asked.

“I’m not saying no. I might.”

My husband either didn’t hear me or thought I was kidding. He goes off about tattoos sometimes—how he believed people lived with regret after getting them and how they would remove them if they could. He routinely sends my kids articles about tattoo ink causing cancer. I know his position. Some tattoos are in poor taste, I’ll give him that. But I’ve also seen works of art, ones that make me want to ask the person their story.

Two of my three kids have tattoos. I was with my daughter during a correction session for an ill-advised college tattoo. I got excited watching the artist work, and had visions of him tattooing a giant peacock on my back.

I easily talked myself out of it, citing wrinkly skin, back rolls, and probable regrets later.

But now I was thinking about it again. Norali did hand-poke medicine tattoos—intentional marking rooted in presence and symbolism. She intuitively channeled each tattoo. Her clients could choose from an array of beautiful, one-of-a-kind ancestral magic. Two of the women I invited already had one from Norali and were getting another one that night.

They also asked me if I was getting one. I shrugged.

I walked over to where a woman was getting tattooed to watch Norali at work. I considered the templates available to choose from that day. They were interesting and intricate; still, I couldn’t decide.

I kept going back to watch, making everyone slide in so I could get by. Each woman receiving their tattoo was so at ease, breathing steadily as the ink took shape. Everyone in line already had tattoos—this was just another layer of their story, not a big deal. One woman was covered neck-to-toe in them, and Norali was somehow finding one last bare spot to fill.

I felt like a big chicken. Like Tobi had invited me to a feast, but I was too afraid to eat. All this nervous energy, walking back and forth, looking at the designs again, watching the needle do its work, trying to borrow courage from these women who had already claimed this for themselves.

I knew what was waiting at home. That voice in my head telling me this was too much, not classy, that I’d regret it. It wasn’t just my doubt but the disapproval of others, especially my husband, already internalized before I’d even made a choice.

But what if I left without doing it? What if I drove home knowing that I had let fear control me? That thought felt worse than the tattoo itself. Worse than the conversation I’d have to have with myself later. I didn’t want to be the woman who came this close and then backed away because of wrinkly skin, or cancer articles, or someone else’s opinion about what belonged on my body.

I returned to my friend who had added to her tattoo that day and examined it again. It was so her—beautiful.

Weary from my deliberation, I sat down with Norali. “This is my first tattoo.”

Norali bowed her head. “I am honored that you are trusting me with it.”

I chose the tattoo with the message: “I live in alignment with the truth of my life.”

I didn’t feel a thing as she worked. Instead, I focused on listening to each lady speak and tell her story. When Norali finished, I was excited to see it.

My friends looked so shocked and proud. Tobi beamed. Norali even posted a photo of my forearm with her tattoo on her Instagram.

On the way home, the closer I got, the more nervous I became.

When I told my husband, he thought I was kidding at first. I showed him the evidence on my arm. His eyebrows rose, and his eyes widened.

“Oh, no!”

He muttered something about my tattoo making his day even worse.

Later, I tried to name it. “I know you’re really disappointed in me.”

Somehow, he’d turned a corner. “It’s your body. You can do what you want.”

And that was it. Technically, the right answer. I knew it would take some time for full acceptance.

But he was right about one thing: it is my body—my body that had carried three children, that had done what others had expected of it for decades, that other people’s ideas had shaped about how it should look, what it should do, what marks were acceptable and which weren’t.

At 62, I claimed a different truth. Not just the image on my arm, but the act itself. I am my own person. My body isn’t for anyone’s pleasure except my own. Not even someone who loves me gets to decide what I write on my skin.

When I look at that tattoo now, I see more than Norali’s beautiful hand-poke work. I see the woman who was too afraid to eat at the table, too afraid to take up space. And I see the woman who sat down anyway, despite the nerves, despite the voice of disapproval she’d already internalized, despite knowing the conversation waiting at home.

I see a woman living in alignment with the truth of her life.

What’s your “big chicken” moment—the thing you almost didn’t do because you were too scared?

If this resonates, I'd love to know: What joy have you been following that might already be teaching you something valuable? Hit reply and tell me, or leave a comment below. And if you know someone who's been asking "what's next?" - someone who might need permission to backtrack and see what they've been walking past - restacking this helps more women find it. ❤️

Expert thrifters advise backtracking through the store before you leave.

I was ready to go with my keys in hand, brain already onto the next errand on my to-do list. But their words rang in my ears, so I turned around.

That’s when I saw it.

My eye told me something didn’t make sense, like two decades had accidentally collided in aisle three. A yellowed doily, an actual little handmade relic, draped over a modern tie-dye lampshade. Victorian tea party meets Woodstock souvenir.

I lifted the doily and was greeted with a riot of color. The shade was exquisite. I have a cylindrical lampshade at home that’s been begging for an update (quietly, like it doesn’t want to be a bother), and I knew I had to get this beauty.

I’d considered painting my own lampshade at home, but fear kept me from experimenting and possibly ruining it. I can handle many forms of personal growth, but “destroying a perfectly decent lampshade in the name of creativity” is not in my DNA.

So I did what any reasonable modern woman does when she spots something gorgeous and needs a second opinion: I snapped a photo and uploaded it to ChatGPT, my trusted evaluator, guide, and overly enthusiastic intern.

ChatGPT reported that it looked like a designer shade and was absolutely worthy of my consideration. But I already knew it was perfect. (I just enjoy having backup that never rolls its eyes.)

Then came the problem: there was no price sticker anywhere.

At other thrift stores, signs are posted liberally about this situation, as if Moses himself wrote them.

“If there is no price, it’s not for sale. No exceptions.”

But this store had no such signs. Which, frankly, made me nervous. Thrift stores run on mysterious laws. Sometimes the laws are posted. Sometimes they are telepathic. Sometimes they are enforced by a woman named Carol who has worked there since 1994 and is not in the mood.

I stopped an employee and asked. She looked at the shade I was cradling.

“A lampshade without a base?” she said. “Ninety-nine cents.”

Wait, what?

This had to be a mistake. I headed to the register ready to confess, like I’d broken a crystal candlestick and was about to offer my firstborn as restitution.

But I didn’t even get the chance.

“It’s ninety-nine cents,” the cashier volunteered, as casually as if she’d said, “Have a nice day.”

Thrift gods, I see you.

This fascination with buying used things is not new. My parents were flea market aficionados, so I grew up understanding that “new” is often just “more expensive.” I bought my kids’ toys from garage sales because Fisher Price stuff lasts forever and because children treat toys like they’re training for a demolition derby. I love the feeling of getting something that looks brand new for pennies. I even buy used cars because I refuse to pay full sticker price for the privilege of immediate depreciation.

But as I’ve gotten older, I don’t go to garage sales anymore. I just don’t need much anymore.

Or so I thought.

That “I’m done with buying things” feeling evaporated when serendipity struck and I took my first step into a consignment boutique called House of Style. I hadn’t meant to go shopping for myself. I was on a mission to get a handbag strap repaired at the cobbler.

I made a special trip, found parking on a crowded Main Street, a minor miracle, and the crabby cobbler turned me away at the door with a dismissive shout:

“Shoes only!”

Fine.

If you’ve ever found parking on a busy Main Street, you know you don’t waste it. So I lingered. I wandered. I backtracked in real life.

And that’s how I ended up in House of Style.

The store was packed with designer women’s apparel—shoes, belts, scarves, handbags—all on consignment. Beautiful, gently used items for a fraction of the cost of new. That chance detour, that happy accident, ignited a new lifestyle for me.

In the past six months, everything has changed in how I view clothing and household goods. I love fashion but can’t go into a retail clothing store anymore. I’ll walk in, look at a price tag, and feel my soul quietly exit my body. I’m obsessed with finding designer items for pennies.

But here’s something else I didn’t expect: following this joy opened a door I didn’t know was there.

Thrifting is a joyful addiction, like going on a treasure hunt every day. But there’s only so much you can buy for yourself. I already had plenty. What I did have, though, was an eye for unique and expensive. I kept spotting things I didn’t want, but I could tell were worth far more than $4.99 at Goodwill.

And I started to wonder if I could resell and make a profit.

I didn’t set out to become a reseller. I just followed what felt joyful: the treasure hunt, the thrill of the find, the pleasure of bringing beautiful things home.

With each something new that came home with me, I wanted something else to leave—one in, one out, so the joy didn’t turn into clutter.

Then I remembered the dozen sterling silver napkin rings my mother had given me, sitting unused in a drawer. My Martha Stewart days have been over for a while so I listed them on eBay. So far, four have sold.

Suddenly I had a skill I didn’t know I was building and an inventory I didn’t know I was gathering. The thrifting I was doing for pleasure? It taught me what sold, what didn’t, how to spot quality, how to photograph, how to ship.

It taught me the difference between “pretty” and “searchable.” It taught me that value isn’t always obvious, unless you train your eye to see it.

I’m not saying everyone should become a reseller.

But I am saying this: what if the income you’re looking for is hiding inside the joy you’re already feeling? What if you don’t need a five-year plan? What if you just need to backtrack through the store one more time and see what you’ve been walking past?

That lampshade is now glowing on my lamp at home, lighting up my living room. The photo you’re seeing? That’s it: proof that backtracking pays off.

The shade I almost missed cost 99 cents.

But it reminded me of something bigger—sometimes the next step isn’t forward.

Sometimes it’s simply turning around and noticing what’s been waiting for you all along.

Before you dive in, a tiny favor that makes a big difference: if something here lands for you, would you tap the heart, leave a comment, or share this with a friend? (A share is basically the Substack version of setting out extra chairs and saying, “Come sit with us.”) I read every comment, and it helps this little corner of the internet find more people who might need it.

For six decades, I was convinced I couldn’t sing.

Not “I’m shy.” Not “I’m rusty.” I mean couldn’t. The kind of certainty you carry like a medical diagnosis. Some people have lactose intolerance. I had melody intolerance.

My lack of talent never interfered with my enthusiasm. I loved to sing anyway, mostly in the car, where the acoustics and denial are excellent.

Then I met a retired chorus teacher from the Bronx who taught his elderly mother to sing. And I thought: if he can teach one woman of advanced wisdom, he can probably teach another. Chris offered a sample class and suddenly I was taking weekly singing lessons on Zoom, because this is apparently how my third chapter is going.

New hobbies, fresh humiliation, better posture.

It’s been a year since I started, and I want to share what I’ve learned from someone who explored her voice for the first time.

Here are the 10 things I learned about singing:

1. You must connect to your whole self to sing well.
This goes with anything you do, really. I can’t believe it took me so long to realize it. As a yoga teacher who philosophizes about the union of mind, body, and spirit, it’s time to embrace the lesson.

Old habits die hard. I spent most of my life on autopilot, not caring much about the impact of my over-scheduled life on my body. I treated myself like a machine. No time to feel. Just get to the next thing. Like an efficient little Amazon warehouse with a pulse.

Once I stopped working full-time, I finally had the bandwidth to notice nuance and subtlety without steamrolling ahead. Singing became a refiner, gently but relentlessly insisting I show up as a whole person—breath, body, feelings, attention, working together instead of taking turns.

Which is a poetic way of saying: I found an emotions drawer I hadn’t opened since the Backstreet Boys were still together. And it turns out those feelings weren’t extra. They were part of the instrument.

2. You have to feel your feelings to sound beautiful.
There’s a huge difference between singing the notes and singing with your whole being.

That difference is what makes a song land.

My emotional connection had been turned off for a long time in order to survive. And then in lessons, feelings got shelved again because I was too busy focusing on the notes and whether I was singing them “right.” I wasn’t able to “be” in the song while I was basically doing musical spreadsheet work.

“What is Fantine feeling here?” Chris asked during I Dreamed a Dream.

I knew that feeling—profound regret, sadness, the weight of choices. But I was still too busy counting beats to fully feel it. My heart was sobbing in French while my brain was yelling, “ONE-and-TWO-and—DON’T RUIN THIS.”

Then we started Both Sides Now. After practicing it for a few weeks, something clicked. Joni Mitchell was only 23 when she wrote it. How could this young woman know my whole life story? I’d heard the song casually on the radio, but I hadn’t ever sat with the words. This was some soul-stirring shit. And the truth is, I don’t really know life at all.

That was the moment I understood the assignment: feelings aren’t something you add to a song. They’re the song.

3. I hated the sound of my voice until I didn’t.
Before lessons, whenever I heard a recording of myself, I would wince. When Chris suggested I listen to our class recordings to practice, it was painful. I really didn’t like the sounds I was making.

But I wanted to progress, so I swallowed this bitter pill. Week after week, I’d listen and got used to how I sounded. I had only heard myself inside my head. Now I was learning to be at peace with my voice out in the world, not in a “love yourself” poster way, more like making friends with a neighbor I’d spent years side-eyeing.

4. Training your vocal cords is a workout.
Who knew you could change how your voice sounds through targeted exercises? I practiced almost every day and little by little my voice started to respond. It’s not just “sing more” — it’s drills, repetition, and building stamina like you’re training a tiny athletic team in your throat.

5. Singing is biomechanics with feelings.
I have TMJ, and some of Chris’s exercises targeted the jaw. I could feel my jaw resist the two corks I put between my teeth to get my mouth to relax. A lot of the work was reprogramming the facial muscles. My gag reflex wanted to kick in too, but eventually the sensations calmed down.

Nothing says “personal growth” like trying not to dry heave on a Friday at 10:00 a.m.

The tongue plays a huge role vocally, and a tense tongue is bound to mess up your sound. Now I routinely do the tongue exercise as a check-in. Let’s call it ‘oddly satisfying,’ like sticking your tongue out at your husband when you don’t think he’s looking.

“Oh, honey…I’m just practicing.”

Chris also had me stand for the whole class. No curling into myself, no singing from a collapsed ribcage. Posture and breath weren’t “nice extras.” They were the foundation. I had to feel my feet, lengthen my spine, and let the breath drop in like it actually had somewhere to go.

And then there was the bubble exercise: blowing steadily through a straw into a glass of water. Yes, actual bubbles. It looked like preschool science hour, but it taught my breath what my brain couldn’t: steady support, less panic, and a lot less “holding on for dear life.”

6. Rhythm is a full-body experience.
You don’t just count the beat. You feel it. In your body. Which was one of the hardest lessons for me—yes, harder than jamming two corks in my uptight mouth.

I had to keep time and sing, and suddenly I felt like that kid in gym class again. I don’t know why. Maybe my body still remembers dodgeball as an emotional event. Anyway, let’s move on before I break into a cold sweat.

7. I sing better when I’m having fun.
As I was learning, I got very in my head about doing things right. I wanted to be a good student. The best student. This caused anxiety to creep in and then nothing worked right.

Chris knew how to get me to laugh and not take myself so seriously. Sometimes he’d act silly. Sometimes we’d move our bodies to get the energy flowing. Turns out my voice responds well to joy and poorly to my inner corporate compliance officer.

8. I am my own worst critic, but I’m learning to retire her.
I was constantly judging myself when I couldn’t hit a note. Sometimes I’d back away from the note if I thought my voice would crack. Chris would notice right away.

That’s when he told me about Buddha’s second arrow.

Do you know the story? The first arrow is unavoidable pain—like missing a note or singing the wrong word. The second arrow is our reaction: anger, self-blame, worry, dwelling. It magnifies the original pain and creates prolonged suffering. The second arrow is optional, a choice we can control through mindfulness.

In other words: I’m allowed to miss the note. I’m just not allowed to bully myself for it for the next seven business days.

9. The fastest way to sing is to stop trying to sing.
Sometimes Chris would tell me to say the lyrics in my speaking voice. With just a few tweaks, the speaking would turn into song.

To elicit certain sounds, he had me channeling my inner mob boss… or La Divina. Becoming another person helps you sing. Role playing is a way to get someplace new. I don’t claim to understand it, but it works.

Apparently my voice likes costumes. Even imaginary ones.

10. Singing lessons aren’t really about singing.
They’re about learning to hear yourself—literally and figuratively. About taking up space with your voice. About letting yourself be heard even when you might crack.

Every woman in her third chapter who has spent decades making herself smaller, quieter, more palatable needs to learn this. Not necessarily through singing. But through something.

So here’s my question for you. What have you avoided your whole life because you decided you were “bad” at it? What would it feel like to try anyway—not to be good, but to be present, embodied, willing to crack?

Your voice—whatever form it takes—deserves to be heard.

I’m excited (and a little nervous) to share this: I’m doing my first-ever Substack Live with Chris—my retired Bronx chorus-teacher-on-Zoom—on Monday morning, 1/26 at 10:00 a.m. and you’re invited.

We’ll talk about what I’ve learned this past year, what actually helps when you think you “can’t sing,” and the bigger thing underneath it all—learning to hear yourself and take up space with your voice. Expect a few stories, a few laughs, and a very real behind-the-scenes look at how this whole “finding my voice” experiment has gone. Come live, bring your questions, and if you can’t make it, you can still RSVP so you’ll get the replay.

Today’s guest post comes from Savira Gupta, a yoga teacher and writer whose work explores the intersection of ancient wisdom and modern life. This post coincides with a precious time for me. As I write this, I’m with my grandson Julian, while his parents are at the hospital welcoming his new sibling, Archer. This makes the timing of Savira’s piece feel almost prophetic.

When she shared with me how becoming a long-distance grandmother transformed her understanding of what yoga actually means—not just poses on a mat, but a way of being with love, loss, and letting go—I knew you’d want to hear her story.

If her words resonate with you, please let Savira know in the comments, and consider restacking this post so others navigating their own tender moments can find it too.

There are moments when words fall short, because what I feel is nothing but pure love—a connection to a little being who, in her own indirect yet undeniable way, is a part of me. Watching my granddaughter explore the world through her own eyes feels like witnessing something extraordinary: pure joy, pure love, pure presence. She radiates all of it effortlessly. And when I see it, feel it, and connect with it, something inside me softens and opens.

This, to me, is what yoga has taught me to recognize—this return to presence, this tender reflection of love.

What Yoga Really Is

You might think of yoga as exercise—people on mats doing poses and breathing exercises. And while that’s part of it, yoga is actually an ancient practice of training our awareness. It comes from a Sanskrit word meaning “union”—the bringing together of body, mind, and spirit. Those poses and breathing techniques? They’re tools that help us learn to be present, to notice our thoughts and feelings without being swept away by them.

Yoga is really about how we live, how we show up in each moment of our lives. It’s about seeing clearly, feeling deeply, and holding everything—the joy and the sorrow—with an open heart. And nowhere has this become more clear to me than in becoming a grandmother who lives far from her family.

Children are our greatest teachers. They haven’t yet learned to live anywhere but here, now. When my granddaughter laughs, she laughs with her whole body. When she discovers something new—a leaf, a shadow, the feeling of water on her hands—she is completely absorbed. There is no past, no future, only this miraculous present moment.

This is what yoga asks of us. Not to become perfect, but to return again and again to now. To this breath. This moment. This experience of being alive.

Standing Where My Parents Once Stood

But here’s what I’ve been learning about being a grandparent who lives far away: there are also the goodbyes. And each goodbye has taught me something profound about love and letting go.

I remember being the daughter my parents left behind, watching them go with a heaviness in their hearts. And now I stand on the other side of that story, the one who leaves her children and granddaughter.

In this, I’ve come to recognize something deeply ancestral: a full circle that always takes us back to our parents, our grandparents, and even further to those who came before. The challenges we face, the love we feel, the choices we make—all of this has been lived before. Our parents knew this terrain.

Their parents did too.

Feeling Without Clinging

The Bhagavad Gita offers us this wisdom:

“The contact of the senses with their objects gives rise to cold and heat, pleasure and pain. They come and go and are impermanent; endure them.”

What does this mean for us? It means that all feelings—the warmth of holding my granddaughter, the ache when I have to leave, the joy of watching her grow, the longing when I’m far away—all of these are natural, temporary, and meant to be felt.

Not avoided. Not suppressed. But also not clung to so tightly that they define us.

I can enjoy the precious time with my family, feel the tug of leaving, even cry as I go, yet not be bound by attachment. This is one of yoga’s most liberating teachings: we can feel everything fully without being imprisoned by our feelings.

We can love deeply without needing to possess or control.

The Forest Dweller Stage

In the yogic tradition, life is understood in stages. The stage I find myself in now is called Vanaprastha—”forest dweller”; but I like to call it the “grandparenting stage.”

After we’ve spent our earlier years raising families and being at the center of activity, comes this gentler stage of loosening, of turning inward, of shifting from constant doing to simply being.

As a grandparent, this stage offers beautiful guidance. I’m no longer the one making the daily decisions or directing the show. That’s my children’s role now. My role is to support, to witness, to offer love without interference. To be fully present when I’m there, and to trust when I’m not.

The Gita reminds me:

“You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action.”

I can show up, offer my love, share my wisdom when asked, and then release any attachment to how things unfold. My children will parent in their own way. My granddaughter will grow on her own unique path. And that’s exactly as it should be.

Yoga Is How We Show Up

This is how yoga filters through every aspect of our lives.

 When I watch my granddaughter, I’m practicing presence.

 When I say goodbye, I’m practicing non-attachment.

 When I watch my children parent, I’m practicing surrender.

 When I feel the grief of distance and don’t push it away, I’m practicing acceptance.

This is yoga. All of it.

Non-attachment doesn’t mean we don’t care or don’t love. It means we love fully while holding lightly. It means we recognize that the people we love are not ours to possess. They have their own paths, their own lives, their own lessons to learn.

When I leave my granddaughter now, I do so with gratitude. Gratitude for the time we had. Gratitude for the technology that lets us stay connected. Gratitude for my own parents, who showed me this path even when I didn’t understand it yet.

I recognize that this rhythm of coming together and parting is part of the lineage we inherit, live, and eventually pass on. It’s a reminder that love can be deep, connection can be real, and yet freedom from attachment remains possible.

This is the gift of yoga. This is what we practice on our mats so we can live it everywhere else—in the hellos and the goodbyes, in the presence and the distance, in the holding on and the letting go.

An Invitation

If you’re navigating your own transitions—whether it’s becoming a grandparent, letting your children go, or simply learning how to hold life more lightly—I hope something here speaks to you. Your practice is not just on the mat. Your practice is everywhere.

The ancient wisdom reminds us: feel everything, cling to nothing. Love deeply, hold lightly. Show up fully, then let go.

This is yoga. This is life. And we’re all learning together, one breath, one moment, one precious goodbye and hello at a time.

With love and gratitude,

Savira Gupta

Living Yoga Journal

Where modern practice meets timeless tradition.

By Savira V Gupta

Today would have been my father's 90th birthday. He tried so hard to fix what couldn't be fixed between my mother and me, and I've been thinking about him as I wrote this. If this resonates, I'd love to hear from you in the comments. And please share if you know someone navigating their own complicated inheritance.

My son posted an Instagram reel of his friends jamming in the basement - a reunion with his old high school pals. While watching, I spotted something in the frame: a light green blanket draped over a chair.

Not just any blanket.

The blanket.

The one I’d left behind as I was moving out of our family home 17 years ago.

I can’t say I’d completely forgotten that blanket, because it’s been haunting me with the arrival of each new grandchild. My daughters had received baby blanket gifts, even a special one a friend had crocheted. Seeing the handmade baby blanket was when I started wishing for the mint green blanket featuring a giraffe with black eyelashes and a knotted yarn tail.

When I left my ex-husband, the blanket which had lived in the coat closet never crossed my mind.

My kids are adults now, and their old baby blanket holds little nostalgia for them. But for me, the presence of the blanket was something much more layered.

The day my mother dropped it off, I had a new baby in my arms, and I was angry. I didn’t want to speak to her, as she presented me with what had previously been a much-awaited and already cherished blanket for my third (and final) baby. The giraffe afghan was one of many she had made and gifted to other young mothers, never me.

I had been elated that she was finally working on one for the new baby, but when she arrived with it, we were in the midst of another feud. My mother’s mental health issues had worsened with the years, and things between us were not good. Our relationship was rarely loving, but this day, a dark cloud of pain hung heavy between us.

I don't remember what I said when she handed it to me.. I do remember finding out later how hurt she was that I hadn’t fussed over the blanket, and that my reaction had been wrong.

I was always wrong.

According to her, everything about me was wrong.

Things continued to deteriorate between us, but I hung on to the idea of a mother for several more years. When I announced my intention to divorce my husband, our mother-daughter bond fractured altogether.

Throughout the marriage, she had often made comments about how much she despised my husband, usually when he was barely out of earshot. When I told her I was going to divorce him, my mother became enraged. Her contempt for a man she could barely tolerate, vanished.

She didn’t believe in divorce. She didn’t care if I was happy. She began a campaign to ruin my reputation and spread the idea that I was an all-around terrible daughter and mother.

A friend’s husband got cornered at the local market, listening to a tirade about how ashamed my mother was of me as a daughter. She told her fellow parishioners, friends, neighbors, anyone who would listen, what a disappointment I was.

My mother urged my teenage children to shut me out and to live with their father. I’m thankful that her effort failed.

Some might call me a slow learner. I had to wait for this final betrayal to convince myself that I was better off without her.

When I got remarried, I did not invite her to our wedding. My dad was invited, but he didn’t dare cross her. I had little-to-no contact with my parents, except for the occasional furtive call from my father, who still hoped that my mother and I would reconcile.

“There is no way to fix this, Dad,” I said.

I could not act as if nothing had happened. That was my old way, but I was about to start a new, better way of living.

Not long after my new marriage, my father woke up one morning too weak to get out of bed. My mother never called 9-1-1. Instead, she borrowed a neighbor’s walker and urged him to use it to get himself out of bed. The neighbor’s daughter was suspicious of the situation and asked to see my dad.

She took one look at my father and called an ambulance, and then me.

I stayed with my dad in the hospital where he received treatment for a heart attack, while my mother enjoyed a good old time. She went to a ladies’ penny party, then a bus trip to the casino, and all-around enjoyed herself while he was recovering. When he went home, he was back in her care, and there was nothing I could do to help him.

After my father died of lung cancer two years later, my mother, who had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, could no longer live alone. I took over her care and sold their house and belongings. She lived in a dementia home for the next seven years until her death in May 2020.

Despite it all, I try hard to remember the best parts of my mother. No one is all bad. I know this.

She was a great cook, baker, and made intricate needlepoint pictures. She could sew anything and grew beautiful flowers.

I still have her miniature Murano Christmas tree, which I wrapped and put away yesterday, along with all the holiday decorations. The tree reminded me of how magical she made Christmas when I was young. Every Christmas Eve, as we pulled our car into the garage after mass and dinner, my mom would run upstairs and ring a silver bell; its tinkling signified that St. Nikolas had been there. I’d race up the stairs, excited to see what he’d left for me under the shiny tree.

One really good memory.

It’s something.

When I spot the blanket in the video, relief floods my body. A miracle that it still exists and that my ex hadn’t purged it along with all the remnants of our time together.

I had been longing for that blanket. I wanted to see and touch it one more time. I asked my son to bring it with him when he came over.

“Don’t worry,” I tell him. “I promise to give it back.”

The blanket presents itself as perfect as the day she gave it to me. I wash it in Woolite because I figure no one had done so in years, but the water in the bucket is clean and clear. It dries fast on the line. Satisfied, I hand it back to my son.

He shakes his head, saying, “You keep it! I just use it to cover my amp.”

To him, the blanket was functional but carried no weight. He didn’t need it, but I did.

This time, I am grateful for the gift.

The blanket was proof that my mother’s hands had once made beautiful things, even when her mind and mouth had created ugliness.

After all these years, I could finally separate the goodness of the gift from the giver. The skill from the sickness. What she could have been from what she couldn’t be.

I wasn’t ready for it when she brought it over that day.

I left it behind when I fled.

After her death, after seven years of caring for her through dementia, after my own transformation into a woman who helps women reclaim their lives, I’m finally ready to receive it.

Her hands made this. That’s real. That survives.

The rest? I left that in the closet where it belongs.

This blanket will wrap around my grandchildren now, carrying forward only what is good.

Before you read: If this piece speaks to you, please take a moment to leave a comment, share it with someone who might need to read it, or tap the heart button. These small actions help more women find these conversations about the realities we’re often told to hide.

Holding him felt like something that was only slightly denser than air.

A week ago today, baby Hayes joined the family. He was born in the afternoon, so I took his older brother and sister to meet him that evening. I studied Hayes’s angelic face for recognition. Was he more like his mother or his father? I concluded he resembled my bachelor grand-uncle Willi, with his signature lack of eyebrows and hair.

My daughter looked no worse for wear. Hayes was her smallest baby yet, a mere 7 lb. 14 oz. Three pushes, and he was out. She smiled as she sat on one of those large absorbent pads the hospital gives you after you give birth. It peeked out from under her, so I adjusted the blanket to cover it.

Why did I do that?

My 10-year-old granddaughter probably hadn’t noticed it sticking out. If she had pointed it out, it would have been appropriate to reveal details about the birthing process. As it was, she was curious about the clamp on the baby’s belly button, and I explained that he had been attached to his mother only a few hours earlier, just as she had once been.

My 2-year-old grandson only focused on the doctor’s stool, a wonder with its spinning seat and wheel rollers, to a boy obsessed with monster trucks.

Was blood such terrible evidence of what had just gone down?

It bothered me that I wanted to hide it. I realized it’s part of my training as a woman. We’re supposed to have the baby, but then go about our sterile business. Pretend that we didn’t just push out our insides and finally a full-sized baby human. Birthing calls for a whole lot of guts that ends in a profound moment of glory.

The day after seeing the new baby, I happened to see Esther Strauss’s sculpture with the Mother of God sitting on a rock in active labor. The sculpture named “Crowning” depicts the Virgin Mary with a halo circling her head, her legs spread wide, preparing to give birth, the same way actual women do.

The sculpture’s presence in the Mariendom Cathedral in Linz, Austria, created such an uproar among conservative Catholics that they demanded it be taken down. When the Linz diocese did not comply, someone decapitated her haloed head from her body. The unknown vandal has since been crowned the “Hero of Linz.” (See photo of the piece here.)

I remember how much shame I felt that first time I leaked blood on my way to the bathroom after giving birth. I was so horrified that I went back to get a tissue to wipe up the trail. Later, bathrooms became my hiding place where I would breastfeed my child so that I wasn’t exposing my breasts in public. I remember my mother asking why I was feeding my baby in a stall with the question, “Is it really so bad?”

Yes, apparently it was.

A woman’s body feeding a child was obscene, but a woman’s body sold to sell beer was everywhere. We’ve been taught that our bodies exist for display and desire, not for the messy, magnificent work of creating and sustaining life. Breasts are fine as long as they’re decorative. Blood and milk and the raw power of birth? Hide that away.

As each new grandchild enters the world, I revisit my own birth experiences. The first one held the wonder of a science experiment, the second—with no pain meds—was like slipping a banana out of a peel, and the third more like an exorcism. A nurse pressed down on my abdomen with such force I screamed for her to stop. No one explained why that was happening, but the next horror came as the doctor used a vacuum and forceps to pull my baby out. My body became an obstacle between them and the baby, something to be managed and overcome. That last birth was traumatic for both me and my son.

Yet all three resulted in the miraculous gift of life.

Since then, some things have changed for the better. Pregnant women wear form-fitting clothes that celebrate their growing bellies instead of hiding them. Fathers sleep in hospital rooms on fold-out beds, partners in the process. My daughters talk openly about their postpartum experiences including the clots, the overwhelm, the profound exhaustion, in ways I never could. After my births, it was business as usual. No downtime, no permission to name what my body had just been through.

We’re inching toward honoring the full reality of birth and recovery. But as the beheaded Mary in Austria shows us, we still have far to go. We’ll celebrate the bump and the baby, but the blood, the spreading, the raw animal power of a body opening to let life through? That we still want to hide. That we still call obscene.

All mothers deserve halos, deserve to be crowned for the holy work their bodies do, not separated from their laboring bodies, but precisely because of them.

Welcome to the world, Hayes. Your mother is magnificent.

I want to introduce you to my friend Maggie Doucette. Maggie is a political consultant who writes about how democracy actually works at the grassroots level. She’s taught me more about civics and local government in the past two years than I learned in decades of voting. Today she’s sharing something that will resonate with anyone who’s been feeling exhausted by political noise or wondering if their voice even matters. Her perspective might change how you think about participation.

If this piece speaks to you, please tap the heart button, leave a comment, and restack it so others can find Maggie’s work.

There is a moment that keeps happening to me lately. Someone leans in at the grocery store, the post office, or on the street as I am walking my dogs, lowers their voice, and asks:

“Are you the girl who runs the Point Beach Civic Forum?”

Sometimes the question is about taxes. Sometimes a construction project. Sometimes whatever the town seems to be doing that week. But underneath the question is something deeper: Am I missing something? Does any of this still matter? Do I still matter?

If you have been feeling tired, discouraged, or disconnected from civic life, you are not imagining it. Almost everyone I talk to feels that same heaviness. There is even a term for it in neuroscience: learned helplessness. It describes what happens when the brain has been overwhelmed by too much uncertainty, too much chaos, and too many moments where effort did not seem to change anything. The nervous system starts conserving energy. Motivation dips. Focus scatters. People withdraw not because they do not care, but because their bodies and minds are exhausted.

None of that is a personal failure. It is a human reaction to a very inhuman moment.

When someone pulls me aside and asks a question, I usually say:

“You are not bothering me. You are participating.”

Most people do not see themselves as participants in civic life. They imagine participation as something loud like speeches, protests, or having a perfect memory of high school civics. But the truth is much simpler. You do not need perfect knowledge to matter. You do not even need to remember civics class. Most of us are learning or relearning as we go.

And what I have learned, especially in the last year, is that most of the real work of democracy is quiet. Ordinary. Local. Done by people who assume they are not doing much at all.

Those are the people holding everything together.

The Power of Simply Showing Up

One of the strangest truths about government anywhere in the country is how empty the room often is. People imagine their town councils and boards as busy complicated places. In reality, it is a few officials, a handful of stackable chairs, and a few fluorescent lights that should have been replaced during the Obama administration.

That is why a single resident changes the room.

I have watched it so many times. Someone walks in, sits quietly, and simply listens. There are no speeches and no demands. Just presence. And suddenly the people at the table are aware that someone from the community is watching decisions happen in real time.

Presence shifts power even when it is silent.

And it is true everywhere. In my town. In your town. In places you have never heard of. In my consulting work with local groups, leaders, and people who never thought they belonged in these rooms, I see the same pattern.

People think they need expertise before stepping in.
What they really need is curiosity.
That alone moves the needle more than they realize.

Why We Feel Powerless and Why We Are Not

Across the country, people tell me the same things:

“I am tired. I cannot take in one more headline.”
“I feel like everyone else understands this but me.”
“What difference does my voice make”

These are not signs of apathy. They are signs of a nervous system that has been running on overdrive.

When people repeatedly observe chaos or abuses of power without meaningful accountability, the brain stops seeing a connection between effort and outcome. That is learned helplessness. Motivation circuits quiet down. People retreat. Not because they have stopped caring, but because it is difficult to keep engaging in a world that feels unresponsive.

But here is the part we do not talk about enough.

Even in the middle of a relentless national news cycle, local life still responds to ordinary people faster than anything else in our political system.

Your town notices when you show up.
Your school board notices when you ask a sincere question.
Your elected officials notice when you email and say, “I am trying to understand.”

And this is the key. Small actions with visible outcomes are the neurological antidote to learned helplessness.

When the brain sees:
I did something and something happened,
it begins rewiring out of shutdown.

Local participation creates those small, undeniable moments of cause and effect that restore agency.

The problem is not that people do not matter.
The problem is that they do not realize they still do.

The Small Stuff That Holds Everything Up

Democracy does not survive because of grand gestures. It survives because of thousands of tiny actions that never make the news.

A resident glances at a meeting agenda.
A neighbor asks a clarifying question.
Someone wonders “Why are we doing it this way”
A person shows up once a year simply to listen.

These actions do not look powerful.
They do not feel revolutionary.
But they stabilize entire communities.

If you have ever asked a question, paid attention, or refused to look away even for a moment, you are already doing the work.

How Quiet Participation Becomes Courage

Civic courage is not dramatic. It looks like this:

Someone sits in the back of a meeting.
Someone asks the “naive” question everyone else was silently holding.
Someone shows up even when they disagree because they care enough to be present.

These small choices accumulate. They become the building blocks of a community that remembers itself.

In my work, whether I am helping a local group, a curious resident, or someone trying to rebuild trust in their town, the goal is always the same.

Help people find their voice without fear.
Show them where their influence lives.
Teach them which levers they can actually pull even when the national picture feels impossible.

Those levers still work.
They do not require heroics.
They only require presence.

One Small Step to Try This Month

Look up the agenda for your town’s next meeting. Do not go. Just read it.

Why this matters:

It reconnects you to where you live.
It grounds you in facts instead of noise.
It shows you what is actually being decided.
And most importantly, it creates the crucial moment:
I took an action and something happened.

If you decide to attend later, wonderful.
If all you do is read it, you have already participated.

You have already strengthened something.

You Are Already Part of This Story

Democracy is not kept alive by the loudest voices.
It is kept alive by the curious ones.
The ones who pay attention.
The ones who show up and say, “I care what happens here.”

You do not have to fix everything.
You only have to hold one small piece.
And that is more than enough.

Want to hear more from Maggie? Check out her Substack.

Maggie Doucette

If this resonates, I’d love for you to share it. Tap the restack button, leave a comment about what you’re spiraling toward, or click the heart. Your engagement helps others find this beautiful community - and right now, there are a lot of us learning to spiral in new directions and give ourselves permission to change.

I came across this symbol in class the other day, and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. It’s such a compelling image, I got lost in it.

My teacher called it a Celtic gratitude symbol, but in my research, I also found it attributed to Buddhists. I couldn’t find any clear history, only that it circulated on the internet in the past few years.

Maybe somebody made it up.

Clearly, it works. Tattoo-worthy even.

With a spiral at the center, three dots trailing off to the side, and a hook at the bottom, each part of the image carries meaning.

Yet it’s the spiral that keeps pulling me back.

We often use “spiraling” as a warning, but what if the spiral itself is neutral, just movement, just change?

A spiral represents change, evolution, and the acceptance of constant shifts. And according to the symbol’s design, gratitude sits right there at the center of it all.

The Thing About Spirals

Spirals don’t move in straight lines. They don’t follow the path you think they should. Remember the Slinky we used to play with as kids? The toy had a mind of its own.

Spirals circle back, but never to quite the same place. Each loop brings you somewhere slightly different, slightly changed.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot since so many of you responded to my piece about not cooking Thanksgiving dinner anymore. The relief in your comments wasn’t really about turkey and pie. It was about finally letting yourselves change direction, follow a different path, spiral somewhere new.

One of you wrote:

“I had to smile at your description of holiday cooking without wine. I quit drinking a while back, and I had a similar discovery. Turns out I did not enjoy basting anything. I enjoyed distracting myself from doing it.

Your piece reminded me that honesty often arrives in the smallest, funniest ways. Like realizing you do not actually love peeling potatoes. Sometimes the truest path is the one where you bring the butter, set it down, and enjoy your people without trying to run a culinary marathon”.

Another:

“I’ve been exhausted the last few years with hosting our large gathering, and I’m glad to have a break this year due to the Loop (a boat trip). I’m not sure I have the courage to give it up altogether, though.”

Here’s what I’m learning: everything does fall apart. That’s the point. The spiral keeps turning whether we cooperate or not. The question is whether we’re going to fight it or use the momentum.

What the Symbol Means

The three dots on the gratitude symbol represent infinity - an endless list. There’s always something more to be grateful for when you’re paying attention.

When you’re not too exhausted from obligation to notice.

The hook at the bottom is called a Makau, a Hawaiian word meaning fishhook. In Hawaiian legend, the demigod Maui used a nautical fishhook to gather fish up the Hawaiian islands. The story makes the Makau a powerful symbol of creation and unity. It symbolizes the ocean, strength, and prosperity.

And this is the part that surprised me: gratitude doesn’t just feel good. It actually gives us strength.

What gratitude can we reel in today?

The more I practice being genuinely grateful for the life I’m actually living, not the one I was supposed to have, not the one I’m performing for others, the more energy I have. The more abundant everything feels.

I’m grateful for the quiet of a holiday I’m not hosting.

I’m grateful for mornings I didn’t have to wake up early to prep for people who expected me to.

I’m grateful for the freedom to say no, the relief of being done with performances, and the energy I have now for things that actually matter.

My daughters are both expecting babies in December and January. I’m watching them create their own versions of family, their own traditions, their own spirals. And I’m discovering that one of the greatest gifts I can give them is the model of a woman who chose herself, who stopped managing everyone else’s comfort, who followed the spiral where it led.

The Center Holds

Here’s the thing about putting gratitude at the center: it doesn’t mean everything is perfect. It doesn’t mean you’re not allowed to be angry, disappointed, or done with things that aren’t working.

It means that even in the middle of change - especially in the middle of change - you can find solid ground. You can acknowledge what’s real. You can be grateful for the breaking as much as the becoming.

The spiral keeps turning. We keep evolving. And gratitude sits right there at the center, holding it all together while everything else shifts.

Your Turn

What are you spiraling toward right now? What are you finding gratitude for in the middle of all the change?

I want to hear from you. Leave a comment below. This community we’re building together is one of the things I’m most grateful for. Thank you!

Next week: Guest writer on how ordinary people - not heroes, not politicians, just you - keep democracy standing.