It’s 2:24 PM on my 41st birthday and I’m writing this braless in my pajamas on the couch with football muted in the background while Evan naps with cats.

Up until one month ago, we had tickets to see David Byrne’s Amerian Utopia on Broadway in NYC at 8:00 PM tonight. Up until two weeks ago, we had invited a heap of friends to a cabin we booked next to a lake with a hot tub, a foot of snow, and an “immaculate vibe”. Up until a week ago, we were leaving in a few days for a 10-day van life trip in Arizona. Then, we canceled it all. I changed the plans to a hike that started at 2:00 PM in the mountains followed by a soak at a mineral bath and some pizza. Friends joined as they wanted to or could, no gifts, no expectations, no problem. It was glorious.

Before the events of the past two years, if I was doling out unsolicited advice on do’s and oh-no-no’s of post-trauma life, my go-to advice was whatever you do, DON’T make any major life changes for one year. This wasn’t advice born from my own experience. It was the advice given to my mom when my brother died and again when her husband (my dad) died. In that year, she clung to it like scripture. “I need to feel through all the seasons” she’d say when we’d talk about selling the large house she was living in alone or even downsizing the California king bed that she always hated anyway. One year became a liminal space that at times felt like a cocoon of comfort where there were no decisions to make and other times a prison of stagnant air and no decisions were allowed to be made. As the daughter, it was the same mix of relief for not having to navigate more change and frustration watching the flashes of desire for change be born in my mom’s eyes then die as she watched the clock.

Soaking in the mineral bath with my girlfriends we got on the topic of ritual. One of “our” daughters just started their period and her mom (our friend) shared how she insisted on washing her daughter’s feet in rose water then taking her out for a girl’s evening together, a ritual she’d learned to do from another mother. She was surprised at how accepting her daughter was; none of the typical eye-rolling she usually gets as an 11-year-old with a hippy mother. We went around and shared our individual experiences of the day we started our period, some of us were held in love, some terrified with zero prior knowledge to prepare them. We laughed, we cried, we all agreed that as girls and boys, women and men we don’t share in enough ritual for these transformative moments.

Our American culture has so little preparation, conversation, and acknowledgment in our collective, human experiences. Education on hormones and our bodies, on sex and voicing consent, on how to navigate heartbreak and not ruin your credit score, on grief and death, and the waves of emotion that are universal, is left to the parents to “teach” and it’s done behind each familys’ closed door. Even the most communicative, well-equipped parents are still only working with their child so of course, a natural silo is formed and it’s not until you’re 41 in a hot tub with girlfriends that you realize that you’re not alone. Far too many never open up enough to see how much they, we, belong in common awkwardness and fear and pain. Being the women of action we are, we spoke on how collective education of girls that included journaling and discussing - a recreation of our own gathering in the water that day - could profoundly impact the lives, perspectives, and hearts of young girls and boys. Call it education, call it a ritual, call it observance or tradition but can we please gift one another this chance to not feel so alone in the experiences we’ll all inevitably have?

As it goes with the grief of the past year:

I’d found a rhythm to living my life before cancer.

I’d found a rhythm to living with cancer - given a printout of my appointments, treatments, drugs schedule, follow-up, and what to expect.

I have no rhythm, no idea how to live having had cancer, or how to navigate these specific thoughts, fears, uncertainty, and anxiety.

If I hadn’t walked through what I had with mom and someone said to me, “wait one year to do anything” I would have clung to that advice for dear life. I’m a little jealous of followers of the Jewish faith who have a detailed day-by-day formula for how to proceed with life when losing a loved one. What a relief to be told what in the hopes of finding, well, relief. Some of this advice and ritual is sold to us as a fast pass through the pain - that is until you go through the pain and realize, oh shit, you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you gotta go through it.*

Going through it for Evan and me has meant literally sitting with the pain and seeing what it has to teach it. Yeah yeah, that is not at ALL as romantic as it sounds. It freaking sucks most of the time. There are unmanageable days that are all about survival - the ones where we can barely peel ourselves off the couch with swollen cry eyes. I’m pretty sure if Alexa is listening to us our 2021 most spoken phrase of the year would be “it’s not fair.” Yet…YET…there are the days that the resistance, the sadness, the sitting in openness unearths some truths we’ve never spoken. Then those truths become sparks, the sparks become a curiosity, then the curiosity is explored, and one day POOF! A new dream is born.

We canceled New York because our pain told us we wanted to be with our family. In dreaming about our Iowa home we decided to sign up for RAGBRAI, a bike ride that we did in our first year of young love. On one of those puffy-eyed days on the couch, we searched for RAGBRAI videos and found Buses, Bikes, and Beers, the sweetest couple from Idaho who do all kinds of fun adventures on their bikes. That sparked our passion for cycling again which got us planning adventures on our bikes. On the trip to Iowa, we rode with old friends and my mom all around my hometown. And we started to feel…better. Not just better but really happy. Like, REALLY happy. The outdoor community, the midwest seasons, the thunderstorms and fireflies, the free community events, the live music, the dinners around the table with our family, the food - oh my gosh, the food. AHHH!!! SO good. Like an Iowa summer lightning storm we were sitting on the couch moments after returning home from our Iowa trip, locked eyes smiled, and knew. 30-days out of treatment, we heard the call. We felt free in our trust to take that call. It’s time to move home.

In 48-hours we had a plan. A week later we worked it out so we can continue our work, I can keep my insurance, we’ll sell the house, we’ll take the cats to my in-laws, we’ll live at my mom’s until we find our next home in Iowa. We let go of New York and Arizona and immaculate vibes. We broke the news to friends and we all held each other in the woods and in the mineral bath and at the pizza place. No one was surprised because, well, we change plans a lot. Suffering has cost us a lot but it’s also given us total clarity and total freedom. We do not suffer the opinions of others or arbitrary wait periods. Openness, connectedness, sharing our pain with others shattered the silos of this experience and we all can continue to share our love wherever we live. Ahhh, the power of shared truth.

Thirty days from now, mom and my other mother Doris** will fly to Oregon, we’ll pack up two cars, 4-cats, and drive 1,946 miles to Charles City, IA. We’ll return or Oregon/California every few months for appointments and work and the mountains we love.

I shared with my wise friend Jami how oddly easy it was to dismantle the life we’ve built the past ten years in Oregon and how odd it was that I simply said “I’m moving” to those close friends without my typical reasoning and preamble. Her response punctuated my feelings: “In my experience, the more clear I am about the choices I’m making the less explanation I need. The fewer words I use, the more clarity I have.”

Happily breaking the one-year no decisions rule. Happily continuing to embrace the ritual of allowing it all, of change, of listening.

Happily (and in the fewest words to convey the most clarity) - moving onward.

Footnotes:

*Kate Bowler has built a career on shattering the myths of “everything happens for a reason.” Consume any and all of her content that you can.

**Doris kept me overnight when my mom worked 3rd shift. She taught me to how to shuffle cards, work hard, laugh loud, and she always had a giant vat of animal crackers waiting for me. I wish for all little girls that they are raised by a tribe of women. And I wish for all women that we can continue to raise one another as my tribe of women continues to raise me.

Moving on.

The Best of 2021

Hot take: remove your port ASAP