SEARCH RESULTS

Every weekend, I do the same thing. It starts on Friday, with me mistakenly viewing the upcoming weekend as two days where I can work on all the things I can't get done during the week. I make a list of what I want to do between Saturday morning and Sunday night, and I invariably get a little carried away, as in I include more things than any one individual could possibly do in a 48-hour time period. And then I feel stressed about everything on my list, and by Sunday night I am annoyed at myself because of everything I didn't do. And at the same time, I dismiss everything I did get done. My focus is all out of whack. Two of the most important things to learn when you get into photography are how to compose your photo, and getting your focus right. If either one of these aspects is off, it throws off your entire image. Every photo tells a story, but if your viewer doesn't know what to pay attention to, your story gets lost. A scattered image means that nothing stands out, or the wrong thing becomes the focus and the actual point disappears. But when you nail composition and focus, then the story of your image leaps out at you. Focus in photography literally tells the viewer what to pay attention to, and it is essential not just for the sake of the viewer, but because it is an intimate tie between the viewer and the photographer. The focus of the photo is an insight into how the photographer views the world, and/or the people in it. Using focus, I can show you how I see flowers, or how a sunset makes me feel. I can show you what I treasure in my relationship with my husband or my kids, or what I see when I look at someone else. Through focus, you can look through my eyes and see what I see. When I'm taking a photo, knowing what to focus on seems so simple. I know what I was drawn to, and it's just a matter of figuring out the best way to showcase that. I have a clear vision of what I want, and I can single-mindedly drown out everything else. But when it comes to focusing on what's important in my life, all that clarity goes away. Suddenly, I am feeling scattered, with none of the elements in proper focus. I don't know where to look, and I feel frustrated and confused. With photography, I start with a goal, a basic idea of what I want, and then I go from there. I remove anything that doesn't contribute to the image in my head, while making sure to include everything that's important. This ensures that the viewer knows exactly what to pay attention to, and it is part of the creative fun for me. It's so satisfying when I get it right! I feel a literal adrenaline rush every time. But when I don't know what to focus on in my life, inevitably everything goes sideways. The things that I want to highlight get overshadowed, and the things that don't really contribute to what I'm wanting to create get much too much focus. Not only am I not clear on what to pay attention to, but no one else really knows what's important to me, either. I say that my family and spending time in nature are my priorities, but if you looked at how I spend my time, or what is on my weekend to-do list, family time and exploring the outdoors don't even make the top ten. My words and my actions don't match, and it creates dissonance in both my internal and external worlds. I don't want this to be the case anymore. I want to put my attention on the things that matter most to me, and remove the things that are actually extra. I need to bring more alignment to my life, and this means creating space for what my heart wants to prioritize. I'm starting with my to-do list, that monster that takes over my energy every weekend. I'm going to practice doing what I do every time I pick up my camera--take in everything around me, and then filter down to what I actually want to focus on. In this way, maybe I can get back to what it is I want to create in my life. More time to daydream. More reading. More writing and photography. More adventure and exploration. More time in nature. And many more family memories.

I still remember the day I decided to focus on photography. It was about ten years ago, and I was knee-deep in motherhood, running a household, marriage, and my job. I spent my days running from one responsibility to another, feeling trapped in my roles and losing all sense of my identity outside of them. I didn't know how to be what everyone seemed to need me to be, and also stay connected to myself. So, I left myself behind and got entirely immersed in my family and career. It wasn't my best decision, but it was what I felt I needed to do. I didn't know that it was possible to hold on to myself and my loved ones at the same time. Life up to that point had taught me that the cost of keeping relationships was abandoning myself. And so I lost touch with my own inner being, so that I could stay connected with the people I loved. And then one day my husband suggested I pick up my camera and try taking some photos. He knew I had talked about it in college, but never did anything with it. I wanted something that was just for me, and photography seemed as good a thing as any other. So I dusted my camera off and took a few photos. They were not good, let me tell you. Far from it. But something about looking through that viewfinder changed me. As my camera shutter clicked, something clicked within me as well. And then I looked on my screen at the photo I had taken, and I was introduced to possibly the most important aspect of any creative act. Curiosity. You see, that first photo was pretty bad. The first several were bad, actually. But every time I took a photo, I looked at it, and instead of getting stuck in judgment of the photo, I got curious. I asked myself what I didn't like about it, and what would make it better. I thought about what I needed to do differently, and I tried it again. I shifted position, I moved things around, I got closer or farther away, I changed settings. And over time, my photos got better, little by little. Every time I got curious about a photo, I was teaching myself to step out of judgment, and to lean into learning instead. I could have seen those photos and told myself I wasn't any good, that this was a waste of time, and then just given up. Especially since it took me months to take photos I was truly proud of. But I didn't, possibly because I was so tired of being seen only through my roles. Seeing the world differently through my camera lens somehow helped me to see myself, too, and I wasn't ready to walk away from that. So I kept trying, and I kept getting curious instead of judgmental. And over time, my photos got better and better. I grew as a photographer, and I grew in my connection to myself. I took the questions I asked about my photos, and I began to ask them about my life and relationships as well. What do I think of this? Is it what I was aiming for? What might make it better? What could I do differently to get a different result? The thing about being a photographer is that no one else can do what you can do. No one else can take that specific image. No one else can see what you see. I can't take someone else's photo. I can only focus on seeing what I see, my own creative vision, and doing my best to capture it. At the point in time when I first got into photography, I looked at everything through everyone else's eyes. I didn't prioritize my own perspective, ever. But with a camera in my hands, I could only see my own perspective. I had to stay in my own lane, and get curious about what I saw, and what I could control. Eventually this transferred to staying in my own lane in other areas, as well. I realized that on one else could see what I could see without a camera. No one else could see through my eyes, and it wasn't my job to see through anyone else's eyes. My job was to see what I saw, and stay curious. Ask questions, without throwing my own vision out the window. Trust my own perspective, my own eyes, and stay true to it. It's a lesson I'm still learning, every time I pick up my camera.

My mother-in-law loved photography. She didn't think she was very good at it, but she was. She refused to edit her photos, and she wouldn't take any classes or watch any videos to help herself improve, but she had plenty of natural talent. When she discovered that we shared a love of photography, it became a thing we could do together. We went on photography outings and had a great time getting lost in forests, meadows, and gardens together. We'd compare photos and share each other's work. We encouraged each other and cheered for our accomplishments. Two years ago, she passed away. A few weeks before, I found out I was getting my first photography show. I didn't tell her. I'm not sure why, but I think I was trying to spare her from the guilt I knew she'd feel that she would clearly be missing it. A few months later, as I packed up my show, I also tucked away my love of photography. As much fun as the show had been, and as proud as I was of how it turned out, it was also a lot of work. Between everything I had to do to get ready for it, and dealing with the grief of losing the one person I shared this love of photography with, I found that picking up my camera felt damn near impossible. So I put my camera on the shelf and didn't touch it for the better part of the next year. I focused on my writing. I started a Substack newsletter. I wrote a course on intentional living, and taught it both live at my job and virtually on Substack. I began sharing my poetry more on Instagram. I grew a vegetable garden. I improved my cooking. I did all kinds of creative things, but I did not pick up my camera. I felt guilty about it, but I couldn't do a single thing about it. Every task related to taking photos felt like too much work. I had no motivation to even find the time to take it on. And then this last summer I went on vacation with my family, my best friend, and her family. We went to the Smoky Mountains, a place I've been wanting to go for as long as I can remember. I threw my camera bag in the trunk along with my suitcase almost as an afterthought, just on the off chance I decided to use it. I mean, it was the Smoky Mountains, after all. You never knew, I might just maybe want to take a photo of something. Three days into the trip, and I could barely put the camera down. I was awestruck by the beauty surrounding me, and I couldn't take the photos fast enough. With each one, I dug up another piece of the passion that I had buried the previous year. By the time we got home, I had made a promise to myself to get back to photography, in whatever way I could. If going on photography outings felt too hard, then I would take photos around my house, in my garden, on walks around my town. I'd learn about food photography, and take photos of the food I was learning to cook. I'd do whatever I had to in order to return photography to my life. This wasn't new to me. When I first got into photography, I did it as a way of seeing the beauty in a life that felt far removed from what I had envisioned for myself. Between getting lost in my various roles and letting my inner people-pleaser make my decisions for me, I couldn't find myself in my own life. Photographing my life and the world around me helped me to see my world differently, and over time this allowed me to approach my life from a place of gratitude instead of resentment. Everything changed after that, because I could now more clearly see what was working, what wasn't, and most importantly, step actively into my life again. It's funny how the thing that brings us to life can also be the thing that we most run from. Grief made keeping that connection to my mother-in-law feel too raw, and I couldn't bear to get that close to the flame. Too much potential for pain. But eventually it became the thing that returned me to myself, just as it had when I got into it originally. And so I decided to focus this blog not just on intentional living and creativity, but on how photography helps me to do that. It's been a rough couple of years, and I could use a little help finding the beauty and joy again. Let's see if we can discover it together. I can just about hear my mother-in-law cheering us on.

We’re heading into the holiday season once again, and it’s got me thinking about expectations. Specifically, the expectations we place on ourselves, and then proceed to beat ourselves with when we don’t live up to the high standards we ourselves created. Or is that just me? Actually, I know for a fact that it isn’t just me, because I talk with clients every week who do the same thing to themselves. It’s part of human nature, part of having these minds that we carry around within ourselves. For those of us who are overachievers and perfectionists, like me, we have this tendency to feel we need to live up to this gold standard (and sometimes we are the ones who created the gold standard in the first place), and then we hold ourselves accountable to it, despite any unhappiness, stress, and anxiety it may bring us. We forget that we set the standard ourselves, and therefore we can change it, or let it go, anytime we want to. This time between Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years is my favorite time of the year. I love Christmas. I love the holidays. The older I get, the worse I’m getting. I’m decorating earlier and earlier, I’m playing holiday music more and more often. I watch holiday movies almost exclusively starting right about now, and going straight through to New Years. Eventually, I will just turn into Buddy the Elf, and my husband will have no choice but to ship me off to the North Pole where I can drink hot chocolate with candy canes year round and say things like “oh snowballs” without getting side-eyed. But last year, our family got some disturbing news right before Christmas, and then our beloved and elderly cat took a dramatic turn for the worse, and we ended up spending Christmas day saying good-bye to him. And then a few weeks after that, we got the news that Leo’s mom was not going to be continuing her cancer treatments, and 18 days after that, she passed away. She was an active part of our lives, and the holidays were no exception. She has been woven into a lot of our traditions and memories. So this year, the holiday season feels more than a little bittersweet, and I am working on finding my way through it. The truth is, I don’t really know how to navigate a difficult holiday season like this one. I have been dreading this entire season for months, but now that it’s here, I am finding that I am actually enjoying parts of it much more than I thought I would. And then I am randomly crying, seemingly out of nowhere. And then back to enjoying it again. The only thing I can say for this experience so far is that it’s teaching me to throw my expectations out of the window. Expectations are kind of my enemy right now, because I never know when I will feel a very different way from what I was anticipating. And double goes for my husband, who has broken down into tears several times in the past week. In short, we are both kind of a mess, and also not, all at the same time. I had assumed for months that this holiday season would be completely miserable. I have been dreading it since spring. And now that it’s here, it’s actually…not miserable at all. There’s sadness, of course, but it’s not as terrible as I thought it would be. The lights are still beautiful, the music still brings me joy, I am still looking forward to watching all of our usual Christmas movies. I am finding myself unexpectedly looking forward to most of Christmas again, and it’s a bit disconcerting. See, the thing is, even low expectations are still expectations, and sometimes we can hold ourselves to a negative expectation just as much as a positive one. We can tell ourselves that we aren’t allowed to enjoy something, that a particular experience is supposed to feel a certain way, and that’s the only interpretation that we allow. In doing this, we inadvertently set ourselves up to not have pleasant surprises, because we close the door to unexpected joy and delight. We also are not typically real great at allowing for complex and changing emotions, so if something is feeling “good” or “bad”, we often tell ourselves that it can only be in one category, and we struggle with moving back and forth between happy, sad, joy, anger, and gratitude around the same experience. And this is the challenge I’ve been grappling with this past week: learning to allow myself to dance between all the emotions, and not getting stuck in any particular one, or telling myself a story about how something is “supposed” to feel. Not chasing my joy away because I’ve told myself that surely it will not be visiting me right now, and instead allowing joy to be an unexpected visitor this month, quietly sitting down next to me and wiping my tears away. Realizing that this can be both a difficult holiday season, and a light one, in the same breath. I mean, really, isn’t that what the holidays are all about? What is a string of lights in winter, if not a symbol of bringing light to the darkness? We do it precisely because they remind us that hope, joy, and love exist in even the darkest of moments. So what’s the use of stringing those lights at all, if we can’t bring the metaphor to life inside ourselves, and allow joy to light up our inner darkness? I realize that might be a little on the nose, but it’s also not wrong. It also reminds me that the other half of the metaphor is the darkness. The darkness is not wrong, any more than night is wrong. The darkness just is, and it’s a part of life, just as much as the light is. Both are needed, both are allowed, and both are beautiful in their own way. In fact, both are beautiful because they both exist at the same time. It’s the contrast between them that catches our eye and brings us wonder. If this holiday season is feeling complicated for you right now, too, I encourage you to join me in allowing for both the dark and the light to coexist inside you. Let the strings of lights you see around you remind you that there is always a little bit of joy available to you, to light up your darkest moments as well. I will do the same, and if you need help remembering this, let me know. I’m here. I love you. I appreciate you. Thank you for being here. Love, Amy

I don’t know what it is about poetry, but there’s something magical about it. I used to be well acquainted with that magic, when I was young and didn’t care so much about what people thought. It probably helped that I was spending a lot of time hanging out with Anne Shirley and Jo March, and those two ladies had me soaking up all the romance of writing and nature and symbolism. I would get out my notebook paper and #2 pencil, stare dreamily out the window, imagine myself as the main character in the origin movie about someone famous and amazing, and all my romantic-but-wounded-teenage-girl-angst would make its dramatic way onto the page. I have no idea what exactly I wrote, because I never saved any of it. But I can imagine it would have been the stuff of every single 90’s TV show meant for teenagers. All the “My So-Called Life” vibes you could possibly imagine, and then some. And then I hit the second half of high school, and then college, and then marriage, and parenthood, and somewhere in there I left poetry behind. I missed it, longed for it even, but I convinced myself that I couldn’t write poetry, that being a poet was an unrealistic idea for me, I certainly wasn’t good enough, and the few times I took a crack at it, it was like I was just trying to prove to myself that it wasn’t meant for me, so that I could finally put this ridiculous dream behind me. But I didn’t put it behind me. It kept whispering to me, and no matter how many times I tried to push it away, it just wouldn’t leave. And at the same time, I was feeling so very distant from myself. I couldn’t find that girl I used to be. I knew I was getting closer to her, and sometimes I could almost feel her, but then she would sneak out of my grasp, slippery little minx that she is, and run off into the mist again. I didn’t know how to get her to stand still long enough that I could actually touch her, let alone embody her. This continued for years, until eventually I got frustrated enough that I decided to step, hesitantly and fearfully, into the practice of writing poetry again. I decided to write bad poetry, and just never show it to anyone. Ever. I slowly began the practice of writing little bits here and there. And to my surprise, I didn’t hate what I wrote. It wasn’t amazing, but it wasn’t awful, either. Over time, with practice and the help of some poetry friends, I started to develop my own voice, and I learned how to use poetry to speak to the things that I had been hiding from for so long. I learned the power of using prompts. I learned how to use the details of my own life and combine them with symbolism. I broke my habit of “trying to say something”, and began just expressing what was in my heart, even if it felt silly or weird. Especially if it felt silly or weird. And somehow, without even really trying, I suddenly found myself in conversation with myself. The real me. That elusive girl who I was chasing found me, once I stopped running after her and instead just sat still and invited her to join me, without expectation or pressure. Turns out, she is happy to sit with me, for as long as I will let her. Apparently she has some things she has been wanting to tell me. And ultimately, I think that is the gift that poetry gives, to me and to anyone who decides to step into that practice. The opportunity to stay in touch with myself, and a moment to give a voice to what’s going on in the deepest part of me, for good or bad. It’s not always deep and insightful, it’s certainly not always pleasant, and there are many times when I’d rather not look at it. But the price of not doing it is to go back to being a stranger to myself, and that is a price that I am not willing to keep paying anymore. If you would like to follow along on my poetry journey, you can follow me on Instagram , or subscribe to my Substack. I've got some exciting things coming over there. Love, Amy

** A little warning for you, before you read this newsletter. This one contains mentions of abuse, fire, and suicide. Please read with caution, and if this will be triggering for you in any way, please just skip this one .** In 1992, I had a lot going on. I was in middle school (that's a whole thing all by itself, amiright?). I was getting bullied by half the school because a girl had started a rumor that I was gay, and they believed her. The early 90’s was not a good time to be considered gay, and the bullying was next level. We had moved to a much bigger city, with a much higher crime rate, and people were stabbed and shot within mere blocks of our house.  I had just been told about a history of sexual abuse that occurred years before between various relatives on one side of my family, the perpetrators had been and were still being protected by the family, and I was told about it because I was in danger of being the next victim. And lastly, my life was at risk at the hands of my sister.   I feel like that last one needs a bit of an explanation.  See, my sister was four years older than me, and we adopted her into our family. The fact that we adopted her only matters because it speaks to her back story. She lived with her biological family for the first 10 years of her life, and to say that there were problems would be a massive understatement. I can't share much about her history because it's her story, and it's private, but we can sum it up with this: her family didn't teach her about ideals like love, kindness, and compassion, and therefore, she didn't understand them. All she knew was hate, fear, anger, and violence. Empathy and perspective are things that we need to be taught. We don't start out as humans understanding that other people feel pain just like we ourselves do. Our parents have to teach us that if we pull someone's hair, it hurts that person just like it would hurt us if someone pulled our hair, and that it's therefore not a kind thing to do, and also that being kind is good.  My sister was not taught this as a young child, and as such, she is a sociopath. Actually, she is a psychopath, but we'll get to that in a second. She feels no empathy, no sorrow when someone else is injured. If an animal was injured in front of her, she would not feel any compassion for their suffering. In fact, not only does she not respond with compassion to other living beings, but things like love and compassion actually frighten the hell out of her. When presented with them, she feels threatened and comes out swinging, like a scared animal who is being cornered. Needless to say, this is less than ideal for a family, particularly a family with a young child in the mix. I'll spare you the gory details, but long story short, by the time I was in middle school, she was in a lock-up facility, and my parents had gone through her room and found her plans to kill both them and me.   Even I don't know the exact details on that, but I do know that she had plans to set the house on fire and ensure that we died in the blaze. While no one told me how she intended for that to happen, it was clear that she didn’t mean for us to die from smoke inhalation. Whatever she had planned for us, it was something horrific.  My parents showed her plans to the police, and they told us to never ever let her in the house, because she absolutely intended to do it and was fully capable of it.  I was 11 years old. And I knew that she wanted to kill us, slowly and excruciatingly. Moreover, I also knew that she had broken out of lock-up facilities in the past, and that she also ran with a group of friends who had quite the violent history themselves.  At least one of them was already suspected of murdering someone, and from what I heard, was absolutely guilty of it. In other words, she was fully capable of getting to us. No lock-up facility was going to get in her way.   Every night I went to bed wondering if this would be the night she put her plan into action. Every night wondering if I would wake to the sight of flames surrounding my bed, and no way to escape. Every night I tried to brace myself for the feel of the flames on my skin. And every night I was locked in terror, afraid to move or even breathe, but equally terrified not to. After two years of this, by the time I was 13, I was getting very tired of staring down death every night, and I started thinking that if I was going to die anyway, I might as well have some say over how it happened. That's when I started spending some time sitting on the bathroom floor with a bottle of pills in my hand, my hand hovering on the lid, debating whether I should open it or not. I never actually opened the bottle, I never tried to kill myself, but I got very close on more than one occasion.  We often hear suicide framed as a thoughtless, selfish act. The popular narrative is that the person who killed themselves, or who tried, took a reckless action without thinking about how their actions impacted those around them. They could only see their own pain, and lost sight of the bigger picture. They couldn't see all the people around them who loved them and could have helped them, if only they had spoken up about their suffering.  Ultimately, the victim becomes the bad guy in the story, and their suffering becomes a sign of their weakness. They failed because they weren’t able to save themselves. What this narrative misses is the reality of the person who is struggling. I wasn’t contemplating committing suicide because I was ignorant of how much I was loved, or because I wasn’t thinking about the people around me. I was contemplating suicide because I was surrounded by people who loved me, and even that couldn’t keep me safe. I was contemplating suicide because I could not fathom living with that level of fear any longer. The people who would have judged me had I done it weren’t the ones who had to lie in my bed every night, facing what I was facing. I never spoke up about how I was feeling, never let anyone know how scared I was or what I was thinking about. Had anyone asked me, I would have looked them straight in the eye and lied my face off. Why? Because if I had told the truth, someone might have tried to stop me. And if that had happened, I might possibly have ended up in the same kind of facility that my sister was in. That idea scared me more than staying at home. And even if I had been put somewhere temporarily, for my own safety, I ultimately would have been sent back home, and nothing really would have changed. But also, and here’s the interesting thing, no one asked me. No one asked me how I was doing. My dad was a pastor, the entire church knew what was going on, and no one asked me if I was okay. Why was it my responsibility, as the kid in the situation, to let someone know that I wasn’t okay, simply so they could put a temporary band-aid on my trauma and feel reassured that they had “helped”, instead of the adults around me actually taking charge and getting me out of that situation? And when I say "adults", I don't just mean my parents. I mean anyone. One reason I sometimes hear for people not checking on the well-being of someone who isn't their own kid is because they don't want to interfere. They don't want to overstep their bounds. I get that, but there are ways to ask someone if they are okay without being disrespectful. Because here’s the thing, even though my parents were right there in the house with me, they were not able to truly take charge in the way that I needed them to, because they were also being traumatized. They were not functioning well themselves, because they were also terrified. And this is where the whole expectation that people who are struggling are supposed to be able to know how to save themselves really falls short—because when you are in significant pain like that, you are not generally capable of making healthy decisions for yourself. You do things like stay in bed all day, miss work and school, withdraw from family and friends, put immense amounts of pressure on yourself, and believe every negative thought you’ve ever had about yourself and the world. Does this sound to you like someone who is functioning well enough to recognize what needs to be done, when it needs to be done, and who to tell about it? I don’t have any easy answers for this, because mental health and suicide prevention are complex issues. But I think that finding the answers starts with looking at each other with compassion, instead of judgment. When we decide that someone was “bad” or “selfish” because they “gave in to their suffering”, what we are really doing is judging how they handled an experience that was clearly too overwhelming, with the unspoken inference that we somehow would have handled it better. We are pushing them down farther, instead of lifting them up, while at the same time criticizing them for not being able to lift themselves up. My reality at 13 years old was a horrible one, and every night when I sat on the bathroom floor, deciding whether or not to take an entire bottle of pills, I was the one who had to find the courage to get up off the floor and go back to bed, to stare down my fear for another night. Nobody else was on that floor with me, and nobody held my hand through the night. I was on my own, and I knew it. And when we don’t walk through someone else’s hell with them, we don’t get to decide how they should walk through it. What is much more helpful, and what I wish for all of us, is to be willing to hold someone else’s hand as they walk through their hell. If someone had been holding my hand, I might not have ended up on the bathroom floor at all. Love, Amy

Last week I met with two teenage girls who both happened to break up with their boyfriends in that same week. During my conversations with each of them, I noticed they both started off feeling very sad and somewhat numb, and partway through our conversations, I watched them begin to come alive. In each case, it started with a sudden thought along the lines of “Oh wait, now I get to do _______(talk to this friend again, Snapchat whoever I want, go wherever I want without having to let him know where I am or who I’m with, etc.)”. This thought led to another one, and then another one, the realizations of what they could now do coming faster and faster. Within just a few minutes, both girls were no longer sad. Instead, they were hopeful, breathing easier, and feeling freer, because they were no longer shackled by the restrictions their partners had put on them. They realized they were no longer in a position of giving their freedom away in order to make someone else happy I wondered what kind of reactions their now-exes were having to the break-ups, and what they would think if they could see how these girls were reacting. I wondered if they were feeling freer also, or if they were feeling somewhat lost. I’ve always been intrigued by the fact that many men remarry fairly quickly after a divorce or the death of their spouse. Women, on the other hand, tend to remain single for much longer. I’ve heard a repeating chorus of some version of “I don’t know if I will ever have another serious relationship again, let alone get married. I like being able to do whatever I want now, and don’t want to give that up” from enough women to know that this is a common refrain. Many women find they much prefer being able to go where they want to go, be friends with whoever they want to be friends with, make their own financial decisions, and not have to check in with anyone, in ways they feel they just can’t do inside of a relationship. Given this, I find it interesting that the narrative around men has historically been that they are wild stallions who women invariably want to tame and break. Women, on the other hand, are framed as these controlling harpies who just need a good firm hand on the till so they will fall into line, and then everything will be fine. The men can gallop off as the free and powerful creatures they are, and the women will leave them to their capricious ways, and happily stay home, keep house and watch the babies. But what was playing out in front of me was a very different reality. These women were acting like they were the horses who had been saddled, but whose saddle had just been abruptly removed, and they were starting to realize that they could now run free again. Once that realization hit, they were chomping at the bit to get back out there, not to be saddled again, but so they could run and play and dance and feel alive again. And the guys? At least one of them jumped immediately into another relationship. He, at least, does not appear to feel the need to run free anytime soon, given that he essentially piled one saddle on top of another. So what does this mean when held up against that competing historical narrative, and what do we do about it? And why did those girls give their freedom away so quickly in the first place? I remember when my husband and I started dating, and he made some comments to me about my inherent independent streak. I very clearly did not “need” a man, and this bothered him. He wanted to feel needed, and like I depended on him for things. He wanted to open the jar for me, rescue me from the side of the road, and check my oil for me (the fact that he didn’t actually know how to check the oil, and I did, was beside the point). I was in the love bubble and wanted to make him happy, and so I started asking him for help with things that I didn’t actually need his help with. I pretended to need him, so that he would feel needed, and over time I forgot that I didn’t actually need his help with these things at all. I got so good at pretending, I even fooled myself. Eventually, I woke up and found my spine again, but by that time, I had been playing the part for so long that it took some time (and no small amount of anxiety) for me to remind myself of my own capabilities. Now, I look at my behavior back then and I shake my head at my own foolishness. But I also understand why I did it. The narrative that it was my job to make people happy was so strong that it didn’t even occur to me that it wasn’t actually my job to do whatever I had to do to make my boyfriend/fiance/husband happy. If that meant selling my own independence down the river, then I guess I just had to bid it farewell and send it packing. Better that he be happy than I hold on to my own identity. Now, before I give the impression that this is about man-bashing, let me be clear—I don’t think that men really need or expect women to be whatever they are needing, or be objects for men to order about and report to. I do suspect that our gender stereotypes and narratives are deeply false, on both sides, and that we accidentally reinforce them when we act as if they are actually accurate, and this likely leads to untold levels of confusion and misunderstandings on both sides. My husband and I both matured individually and inside of our relationship, and we now have a relationship where we support each other’s independence. While we still have certain things we lean on each other for, we are also much better about seeing each other as two distinct people with separate needs and preferences, and practice honoring our individuality as well as our union. And those girls I was talking to last week both vowed that in their next relationship, they would not give their freedom away for the sake of making their partner happy. Whether or not they stick with that remains to be seen, but for now, I will encourage them to be true to themselves and stand on their own two feet. A partner who is worth either one of them will appreciate their ability to stand up for themselves, rather than expect them to bend to the will of anyone. Let’s see who’s the wild stallion now, shall we? Love, Amy

Several years ago, I found myself having my first experiences with generalized anxiety and anxiety attacks. As someone with PTSD, I was very familiar with the flooding that came over me when I encountered a trigger of a specific past trauma. I knew that if I came across anything that hinted of fire or burns, I would have a full-fledged panic attack, and need to remove myself from that situation immediately. But never before had I experienced anxiety at the thought of being left alone with my own children, a full 13 years into parenting. Never before had I panicked at the thought of having to adjust to a change in plans at the last minute. I had been busy for the past 20 years, but I'd never hyperventilated because of my to-do list before. All of a sudden, the demands of functioning at any level, let alone the level I was demanding of myself, became much too much. It started probably 10 years before (if I'm being honest, it really started about 25 years prior, but that's for another post), when my husband and I decided to move across the state with our two-year-old daughter, to be closer to his family. In order to be able to meet the financial costs required for a move that big, we had to bring in some additional income. It was ironic, really, because the main reason we were moving was because we couldn't afford our current situation. The only solution we could think of was to move, be closer to family, and lean on them while we got ourselves back on our feet, and on more solid ground. But in order to do that, we needed more money. So I got a third job. Mind you, I was already working two jobs, one as a substitute teacher and another at a clothing store. But once we decided to move, I took on a third one, working at a local daycare where my friend also worked. It was made possible because the daycare agreed to watch my daughter for free during my shifts. This meant that I was now working 7 days a week, for about three months straight leading up to our move. It was around this time that I started drinking coffee on the regular. I had occasionally turned to it before, but that was the exception. Once I started working nonstop, it became a necessity. It got me through my days, allowed me to meet our goal, and returned to me a sense of the control I felt I had lost. With that came the hopeful reassurance that maybe we would be okay, which was a feeling that had eluded me for the two years we had been struggling. Soon I associated "just figure it out and keep going" with feelings of safety and stability. In order to hold on to that feeling, I had to keep pushing. Keep figuring it out, keep hustling, keep doing what I had to do in order to feel like we were keeping our heads above water. Enter perfectionism and workaholism, fueled by daily amounts of coffee that would concern a Columbian coffee manufacturer. All this mixed with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, and eventually landed me in therapy, which was exactly where I needed to be. One day my therapist and I were discussing the idea of being "broken", and if I thought I was broken, and if I was, what that meant to me. I went back home that day and wrote the following. If you have ever wondered if you are broken, too, I hope this helps you feel a little less alone in it. If we purchase something that is broken, we return it. If something we already have breaks, we fix it or throw it out. And according to some social media profiles, some of us appear to have achieved perfect lives. Everywhere we look, there is the assumption that if something is flawed, it is unworthy. So what does that say about us? If we are not perfect, are we unworthy? Sitting on a quiet doorstep, on a quiet street, there was a vase. It was made by hand, and with love, many years ago. Someone carefully painted it a beautiful robins-egg blue, and it shone and sparkled beautifully in the sun. It sat in a place of honor on that doorstep, proudly proclaiming itself to the admiration of all. One day a woman was walking down the steps, and she lost her balance. In an attempt to regain her footing, her hand carelessly shot out and knocked the vase over. The impact caused a large crack to form down the side of the vase. The woman tried to fix the crack, but she couldn't. The woman put the vase back on the doorstep, but since the crack was clearly visible, she placed it so that the crack was facing the wall, and only the still-perfect side showed to the world. The vase continued to delight the passersby, and the woman was relieved that no one seemed to notice the crack. As far as everyone else knew, the vase was still perfect. But she still worried that one day someone would notice the hidden flaw. So she checked it every day, looking at it from every angle possible from the street, to assure herself that no one would be able to guess the truth. She knew that if her neighbors were aware of that crack, they would no longer admire her vase. Over time she became obsessed with keeping up the illusion of perfection. It appeared to be working, as people began commenting that the vase seemed to be even more beautiful. One day, as she was completing her daily check, she noticed someone was watching her. An elderly gentleman was walking her way, and had observed her behavior. He walked right up to the vase, and stood staring at it contemplatively. After a moment, he gently turned the vase around so the crack was facing him. The woman immediately tried to turn it back, explaining that she had wanted it positioned so the crack was hidden. But the man just smiled, and told her that he knew it was cracked before he turned it around. "How did you know?" she asked. She had been so careful, she knew he couldn't possibly have seen it from where he had been. "Because," he explained kindly, "the vase glowed as if lit from within. A light like that only comes from something that has a crack. Something that has been broken, and now has a way to let the light in. Perfect things can't let in the light. Only broken things can do that." May we all see our brokenness as merely gaps where our humanity can come through, so that we can allow our inner lights to shine on each other and show each other the way.

This past Sunday, I stood in my yard with my family as my husband dug a hole for a rose bush, the yellow rose bush that we were planting as a memorial for his mom, who passed away three months ago. It seems odd to say that if she were here, she would have loved that we planted it for her, because if she were still here, we wouldn’t have done it. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me to plant flowers for other people in my garden. But now that she is gone, it seems like the most natural and obvious thing to do. It feels so strange to think of her now as “gone.” It’s on par with realizing that it’s been three months now. It feels like it’s been three weeks, and three years, simultaneously. The past three months have been heartbreaking and healing, isolating and connecting, terrible and beautiful. So much of everything, and it’s only when I sit and focus on it for a moment that the full scope of it returns to my awareness, and the tears begin to flow. We had no warning at all, and at the same time, we knew long before it happened. She was told in the fall of 2022 that her melanoma from years prior had returned, this time in her liver. Her initial reaction was fear, understandably, but what angered me was her statements while we were waiting on the biopsy results, that if it did turn out to be cancer, she wouldn’t be able to fight it. I didn’t realize at the time that she was simply telling us something that she intuitively knew to be true already. What I heard in her words was that she was already giving up, which in turn felt like giving up on us. On her family. That we were not worth fighting for. We weren’t even worth getting in the ring for. The reality, though, is that I don’t know what was going on in her heart or mind. I do know that she loved us to the fullest extent she was capable of, and she rejoiced in every moment she spent with us. I also know that she spent her life in fear, and didn’t take many chances in life. She struggled to trust people, often assumed the worst, and rarely believed that people loved and valued her. I watched her deprive herself of so many moments of potential joy and delight, because she didn’t trust life, God, or the Universe to have her back. She was afraid of joy, afraid of hope, and instead placed her faith in fear and anxiety. She thought this would protect her in some way, would keep her safer. But in reality, all it did was separate her from everything she truly, secretly wanted. Since she died, I have been splitting my time between working through my own feelings, meeting with my clients, taking care of the endless tasks around the house, attempting to hold space for my husband and kids, and stepping in to handle things when my husband’s grief takes him out of whatever he or we were planning on doing. Grief does not operate on a tidy timetable, it has no regard for your intentions, and it has a terrible habit of taking over whatever you were in the middle of doing, often at the worst possible moment. My husband and I have had intimate experience with this recently, as he can be fine one moment and barely able to function the next.  And I admit I have had a few moments like that myself. This has required us to set aside, sometimes willingly and sometimes reluctantly, whatever one of us was wanting or needing, so that that partner can step up and support the other.  But what I refuse to set aside is my joy, my gratitude, and my dreams. If my mother-in-law’s life taught me anything, it was the danger in choosing fear over just about anything else. I don’t want that to be my legacy, and I don’t want to spend my life afraid to live it, afraid to open my heart in my relationships, afraid to let in joy and gratitude, afraid to chase exactly what I want.  And yet, since she died, I have felt so many of my own anxieties come up. It’s been a whirlwind ride through everything I thought I had laid to rest, every fear, every negative story coming up to cause me to question myself, my career, and my relationships. I wrote in my journal about a month after she died that grief is a great excavator. Everything has been coming up for us to sift through, and we are constantly facing the choice of whether we should keep that belief, story, behavior, or value, or toss it into the discard pile.  This has resulted in exhaustion and arguments, mingled with a strange sense of lightness and hope, as I begin to let go of the things that are no longer serving me, and dream into what the future might hold. Some of those things would be harder to do with my mother-in-law’s fears shadowing me. Because the reality is, the instinct to choose fear is a natural and normal one, and it tends to be contagious. As much as she wanted good things for all of us, she was afraid of those good things, and her fear caused both me and my husband to question and hold ourselves back many times. Now, her death gives me the inspiration to open myself up more to love, gratitude, joy, and creativity, in a way that I would have struggled to do while she was alive. Sometimes this creates a bit of an inner conflict in me, and at other times, I can hear her whispering to me “Go for it, love, life’s too short. I should know.”

I water my dreams in drips and drops, Spacing out the nutrients like a miser Afraid that the golden treasure will run out. I water my dreams like a nervous gardener, afraid of both giving too much and not enough, so my dreams grow in spurts, varying between lush vibrancy and stark bare branches, starving for fuel. I water my dreams like they are a pack of angry dogs, and I’m afraid of getting too close. I move toward them one inch at a time, holding my breath, and hoping that the next step isn’t the one that causes them to bite.

The alarm clock was cheerily singing away. I was hiding under my covers. My hand slipped out to turn it off, then quickly burrowed under the blanket again. I did NOT want to get up. I was exhausted. Not the typical "I'm a mom, my kids wear me out" tired. I was tired of life. My job was draining me; my middle child's special needs were a constant source of worry, not to mention requiring a level of patience normally reserved for saints; my daughter was still recovering from a traumatic experience over the summer and I was concerned for her emotional welfare; my to-do list was overwhelming me, etc. Even my creative hobbies felt like too much work. The load on my shoulders felt unmanageable. I needed a break. I was so desperate for a little time to clear my head, I scheduled myself a vacation day. Keep in mind, at this point I was still very much a workaholic, so me taking a vacation day was right up there with announcing I had a terminal illness. I sent the kids off to school, the husband off to work, and I went back home. I didn't do anything terribly special that day, but I allowed my mind to wander. I thought about all the things I was stressing over, and how hopeless it all felt, and suddenly it hit me. I knew exactly what my problem was. It was fear. There is so much in our world to be afraid of. In the previous month, I had read that the Earth is running out of food and clean water, children are dying in refuge camps, and people in our own backyards are being shot while innocently going about their daily lives. My own community had recently been rocked by the suicide of a local teenager. On top of all that was my fears for my children, and for the struggling families I served in my full-time job. It was all starting to be too much. Fear can take on many forms. Sometimes it looks like anger. Sometimes we mistake it for sadness. Or resentment, or bitterness. Sometimes it can even cause us to shut down, and then it looks like exhaustion or indifference. Fear can make even the simplest task look like a mountain. Fear quietly steals our hopes, our dreams, our very happiness. We don't even see it happening. We think it's stress, or exhaustion, or anger over a particular situation. But underneath, it is a fear that something awful could happen and we can't stop it. Our kids could be seriously hurt. Or killed. We could lose our jobs. Our relationships might fall apart. People might leave us. Perhaps the biggest fear of all is one that we don't really say out loud. The fear that this could be all your life ever is. The fear that when we look back on our lives, all we will see is a pile of dishes and bills and laundry, and nothing else. Sure, we raised happy and healthy kids, and that's great, but we didn't do anything for ourselves. Don't get me wrong, if one day you are lucky enough to see your children grow into fabulous adults who are kind people and productive citizens, then you have much to be proud of. That is a wonderful legacy to leave behind. But what about us? Our dreams? Our hopes and fantasies for what our lives would look like? I don't think any one of us wants to die without realizing any of our dreams beyond having kids. Without exploring what else we could do. Having and raising kids is a miracle, yes, but that is not all you were put on this earth to do. For one, we are meant to enjoy raising them, not be a barely coherent, stressed-out hot mess dragging ourselves from one task to another. I know, I know, I can hear you telling me that the last thing you need is pressure to enjoy yourself on top of everything else you have to do. I get it. I do. Here's the thing. This isn't meant to guilt you. I'm guessing you have plenty of that already. So just humor me for a second here, and stay with me. Enjoying yourself in your experience of life, parenting or otherwise, is not just another thing to put on your to-do list. It's a mindset change you can bring to whatever you are already doing. Enjoying the journey is seeing yourself as a complete person, with creative endeavors and hobbies and dreams of your own that are just as worthwhile as everything else in your life. Not limiting your identify to "parent" or "spouse" or "employee", or whatever other identities you might hold. You are also just you. A complete person all on your own, outside of all those identities. But chasing those endeavors and dreams means being brave. Brave enough to face the fear that is holding you back. Fear of looking inside yourself. Fear of failure. Fear of rejection. The fear that we might not be safe if we step outside of our comfort zones, as uncomfortable as they might seem to us. Our comfort zones might not feel good to us, but they are familiar and safe, and we don't know what's on the other side of them, and that is scary as hell. But when we stop our mindless daily grind, and really look at ourselves and the choices we are making, we are gifted with a tremendous opportunity. For me, facing the reality of what I was afraid of allowed me to let go of those fears, and start embracing my life again. It wasn't easy or quick. It meant sitting with some feelings I had been running from, and breathing through them. It meant returning to rituals that ground me and help me feel steady and safe, such as meditating and spending time in nature. It meant taking some obligatory things off my to-do list, and adding things that just feel good. It meant prioritizing eating healthy, nurturing foods that keep my energy and mood up, rather than junk that runs my body down. And it meant saying no to things that I didn't really want to do. What about you? What would your life be like if you were living fully, without fear? Comment below or send me an email. I'd love to hear about it. Love, Amy

I learned to give myself away in a million different ways. Slowly, with a smile and a charming quip, making them believe it all came naturally. I learned to smile when I wanted to frown, to charm when I wanted to hide, to apologize when I didn’t feel I did anything wrong. To do what was expected and desired by other people, rather than what I wanted to do. To ignore the whispers of my own heart, and to lift up the egos of others. To act as if I wanted nothing more than to follow the whims of others, to make other people feel better, and to shine an approving light on the machinations of men, while insisting I had nothing, needed nothing, wanted nothing for myself. I learned that I was available for the taking. A giving tree, with limbs that were only there to serve the needs of others. Until the day I decided I was not going to participate in the taking anymore, and I began to water my own roots instead, thirsty roots that drank in the water greedily and then demanded more. I didn't know I was dying from thirst until I got that first sip of water, I only knew that I could no longer pretend that I was quenched by giving my life's nectar away. Instead I allowed myself to stand in the nourishing drizzle and let it soak into my being and begin to nourish my roots. This was a start, and for a while I learned to make do with just a little bit of care, just a little bit of listening to my own inner callings. But now? Now I want to stand in the pouring rain and get drenched in its restorative waters. I want to open my mouth and allow it to pour down my throat, soak into my hair, and drip off my fingers. I want to dance in it, roll around in it, bathe in it up to my neck, to watch my skin get pruney from taking in so much of my own abundance. I want it to fill me up until you have to back away from the power overflowing my cup. Only then will I lick my lips and declare myself satisfied.