The Ache of Wanting to Keep What We Know We’ll Lose (June Wrap-Up)

Turning 39, the wild hope that there’s still time, and following the quiet yes of my body

June was spending whole days outside and being sun-drunk on presence and summer’s promise. It was palms full of wild strawberries and building fairy houses out of the branches from the black walnut tree. It was fireflies well into the dark and vintage sheer blush-colored dresses snagged on river rocks. It was mango lassi dusted with rose petals, salty and floral on our tongue and crying over a friend’s manuscript in the last of the day’s light. It was chocolate cake at 6,000 feet and woven into my husband, into my son, into love. It was the tangerine sun and the blue mountains and the sea-glass green water and a forever reminder why it’s so hard to leave this place. It was my son’s hands filled with the rainbow and birthday candles first thing in the morning. It was the full moon and the Blue Lotus and planting seeds for all the things we yearn for. It was fistfuls of pineapple, juice dripping down our chins and mouths full of sunshine. It was chlorine joy and sky blue, lake blue, blue everything. It was celebrating my husband for the incredible father he is and burying my face in his hair that smelled of campfire. It was making charm bracelets in the watery air and the first blackberry of the season and burying the baby Blue Jay where the heirloom peonies used to be. It was prayer rooms filled with my husband’s song and swans at the water’s edge. It was crying first thing in the morning for weeks from the deep relief of finally understanding how my body had been holding all I thought I’d buried. It was marshmallow mouths, sparklers like snowflakes and releasing our fears and loss and waiting into the fire. It was yoga every single day, and for the first time since my son was born, feeling connected to my body. It was throwing rocks by the river and writing the hard thing in the company of others. It was a tea ceremony in the middle of the woods, meeting the muse, and pressing flowers between the pages of my life. It was writers on a stormy downtown rooftop, soaked in dreams that never made it, and in that moment, I knew that mine was only beginning.

We’re on our way to Michigan as I write this. We’ll be there for a month, celebrating my brother’s birthday, my son’s, and soaking up the sun, the cobalt lake water, and the fireflies in the poplars. We’re about two hours into a nine-hour drive, with seven still to go. My son spent the first stretch drawing with colored pencils and listening to Creedence Clearwater Revival while I caught up on all the Substack magic. My husband drove, telling me stories about space and the dogs are curled in the backseat around a giant Peppa Pig stuffed animal.

There are flowers from my garden tucked into the dash, an iced matcha sweating in the cup holder, his hand on my thigh. The fog is still clinging to the mountains. Bananas are browning in the center console. And, of course, I already have to pee. It’s the first day of July, and, true to form, I’m late getting this wrap-up out. But maybe that’s okay. Life feels full in the best and most chaotic way right now. There’s movement and mess and sweetness tucked into the quiet moments. And somewhere in the swirl of it all, I feel a kind of peace I haven’t felt in a long time. Like something is shifting. Like I’m right on time.

I turned 39 this month, which really felt good in my body and my mind. Except for the part of me that thinks about having another baby every damn day, and then wonders if I’m “too old.” Is 39 really too old? Or is that just something society or the government or whoever the fuck fed us to keep women on a timeline that serves everyone but us?

I don’t know, but the whole thing takes up way too much space in my brain. I wish I could set it down. I truly am so full with my son and his magic and his joy and the way he made me a mother. But there’s this small, quiet sliver of me that says, another baby would be nice, wouldn’t it? To do it all again?

I’m not ready to fully let go of the baby stage. Pressley turns four in two weeks and I’m in that strange place where mourning and celebration live side by side. Mourning the end of his babyhood, celebrating the fullness of who he’s becoming. I’ve loved every stage equally, and maybe that’s why I find myself dreaming of going back. Of holding a baby in my arms again, doing anything just to keep them close. And maybe the real question underneath all this is, why do I always want my arms to be full?'

I don’t know how to make this decision. I imagine we won’t decide. We’ll just keep living, and time will keep slipping, and I’ll turn 40 and still be here, wondering. I’ve always struggled with the big decisions, noncommittal by nature (or maybe by nurture, or lack thereof). It took me seven years to marry Perry just to give you an idea of how ridiculous this can get. I know I don’t have seven years for another baby, but I keep asking, what if I make the wrong choice? What if it shifts my life in a way that, I don’t know, changes things in a not-so-good way? We’ve finally, against all odds, learned the steps of this dance with our son and our businesses and our art and our love and our lust and for the first time in years, we’re in a fucking waltz. And I’m scared to mess up the rhythm.

Also, money. Kids are expensive. And I want to travel and spend all day with them in-between fiery bouts of writing. But can I? Could we still go to Lisbon and Amsterdam for three weeks like we’re planning this fall? Could I still write in the early morning hours when the house is still asleep? I have no idea. If you know how to make this decision, please do let me know. I’m all ears.

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Anyway, besides that whole baby spiral, turning 39 has actually felt nourishing. Perry planned the sweetest day. And by sweet, I mean, he put a birthday candle in every single thing. I’m not kidding. When I came downstairs, there was a candle in my tea box. One on the bathroom counter next to my makeup bag. One in the bagel we ate by the river. A candle in the croissant at the café (where strangers saw him lighting it and all joined in singing Happy Birthday, if that’s not some sweet southern energy, I don’t know what is). There was one in our Indian food, and another in the chocolate stout cake we ate as the blue mountains stretched out in front of us. Let me tell you, this man knows me so well. I turn just about everything into a ceremony with lighting a candle.

We went to my favorite bookstores and I bought a book on rituals that coincide with the seasons. It was such a simple day, but it was filled with everything I love. The little girl in me who was forever waiting for her mother to get out of prison, whose birthdays always felt like they were missing something, felt so loved and cared for. I don’t know how I got so lucky. But I really did hit the jackpot with my husband.

This month, I booked our flights to Lisbon and Amsterdam for October. I’ve been feeling the pull to Portugal ever since the election. I was sitting at my uncle’s kitchen table in England the morning after, watching him sip his coffee with a sour look on his face, shaking his head in disbelief. He works for the U.S. government on a military base over there, and he was just gutted. I looked at him and said, “I guess I’m moving to Portugal.”

I’ve never even been to Portugal, but it’s like my soul already knows the place. Like it’s been calling me quietly from across the ocean. All year, I’ve been getting these little hits, an intuition, a journal prompt that leads me there. A Substack article. A stranger who just got back. Someone else who lives there. And then, of course, the dates I wanted to go lined up perfectly with a friend who lives in Lisbon offering her home while she’s away. I couldn’t have planned it better if I tried.

So, if you’ve been to Lisbon, or if you live there, tell me everything. I want to know what it feels like.

Have you ever followed a feeling like this? Gone somewhere just because your soul said yes?

We tacked on Amsterdam at the end because Gregory Alan Isakov, my muse and friend and hero, is performing there. And seeing him live is like touching God, I swear it. My soul aches for it. To see him in the city of water feels like a dream. And that’s what I’m always after, to live a life that is so god damn beautiful that it feels as if it’s come from a dream. Greg has a song called “Amsterdam,” and to hear him sing it in the actual city of Amsterdam, well, I can tell you there’s not much better than that.

We honored the summer solstice by spending the entire day outside in full presence. We started at the river, throwing rocks and making charcoal drawings from the scorched wood left behind by past campers. We picked wildflowers, made messy little bouquets, ate food the color of the sun, and stretched our bodies in warm afternoon light.

Later, I set up a little ritual on the table with two terracotta pots, one for what we’re calling in, and one for what we’re ready to let go of. My son had already filled one pot with dried petals he’d collected for his specialty, “flower soup,” (it’s a delicacy), so naturally, that one became the calling-in pot. The other, he dubbed the yuck pot.

I cut strips of my son’s construction paper and gave each of us three to write what we wanted more of, and three for what we were ready to release. I called in embodied safety and the anchored confidence that comes from finally not bracing for impact, after all those years when the bad things hit like avalanches, again and again. I called in abundance and financial freedom because maybe that would make the whole baby #2 question easier, and also, I want to take my son to Paris, to Australia, to buy a house near my brother in Michigan. I want to support women-owned businesses and buy my husband all the music gear he needs to make more of his beautiful magic. And I called in community for my family, something I’ve been craving, especially for my son.

My son drew a playhouse, a rocket ship, and tiny stick figures of his cousins, Emma and Abby. My husband called in safety, too (we might still be a little trauma-bonded, it’s fine).

When I introduced the release pot, I explained to my son it was for worries, things that feel “yucky.” His first response: “Ouchies and when bees fly in your eyes.” (A gnat had flown in his earlier and it was, apparently, a tragedy.) He also drew a picture of dog poop (he stepped in some that morning) and a scratched CD, because nothing upsets him more than when his music skips. Honestly, same, baby. Same.

I let go of people-pleasing, the fear of being seen, and old scarcity stories. My husband let go of distractions. We built a fire and tossed each piece in one by one, calling in, letting go, and eating s’mores in between.

We ended the night curled up on the trampoline, counting stars and fireflies and musing about the beauty of language.

The next morning, I woke up feeling hungover, like I was sun-drunk on presence. And damn it was beautiful.

The next day, I led a writing circle with Trust and Travel’s The Practice. We began with a short grounding, then I read Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s Summer Haibun.

Then I offered a line as our prompt:

“There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night.”

I love this line because it’s both whimsical and devastating. It’s the sweetness of wanting to preserve something and the heartbreak of knowing you can’t. That’s what summer does to us. It reminds us how fleeting everything is.

So I invited everyone to let the “summer sky” stand in for whatever they’re trying to hold onto. To write a poem that becomes an act of trying to preserve the unpreservable.

We wrote for an hour and we shared and we connected. And it was everything I needed. Being in community with women, writing together, is honestly like a drug. Nothing lights me up like that. Hearing them read their words, watching them go straight to the hard thing without needing permission, that’s the power of prompts, and the magic of poetry. It takes you there.

Before we wrapped, they asked me to share mine. I hadn’t planned to. But I did. It was about my son and the sun, and really, I think that’s what all of my poems circle around. I read it aloud, and we cried together over the human ache of trying to hold on to what we know we’ll eventually lose. I felt seen and held and this is the power of writing. This is the power of being witnessed. This is the power of community.

Here’s the poem:

Wishing Pots

There are not enough jam jars to can this summer sky at night. Your laugh escapes through the top of the open net of the big trampoline, past the fireflies and the soft-tipped hemlocks into the stars. I reach and I reach through the portal, through the blue black dark and cricket-thick air, but my hands return empty mouthed, flailing like evening birds. Hungry. Hungry for the sweetness that is both satisfying and fleeting in the same breath.  Will you remember this? The ever long day the sun washed over us like warm rain, when we tossed our wishes into the terracotta pot, and ate fists full of pineapple, juice running down our chins, and onto the speckled rocks we collected from the river, the ones you said were dinosaur eggs. This time, when everything is what it seems and everything is more. of course a rock is never just a rock and neither is this lightness. One day, too soon I will call up to you, hey love, hey darling and silence will answer back with its heavy hands. I will walk the stairs in bare-red-dirt-summer-feet and push your door open to find your room empty. So I reach and reach until my fingers ache. I hold, I carry, I grasp, leaning into the weight of it—this presence, so dense and dizzied, I stumble, steeped in sun and fermented joy, your hands around my neck, you holding me holding you.

a streak of sugar
on the porch rail—proof you were
just here, just laughing

Also, this month I kicked off my weekly Write the Hard Thing LIVE Writing + Grounding sessions, and oh my god, they are so soul-filling. We get together once a week for 20 minutes to ground and to write, using a prompt as an entry point into writing our hard stories. It’s felt so good to have this pause to tune into my body and my story.

Even after writing a whole memoir (that I’m serializing here on Substack), I still find there’s more to say, more layers to touch, more memories to meet. And this space has become a way for me (and now, others too) to return to the page with gentleness and courage. It’s becoming a rhythm, a practice, a moment to pause and remember, your truth matters, and your body deserves to feel safe enough to tell it.

If you haven’t joined us yet, our next one is Tuesday, July 8 at 12:00PM ET. Come exactly as you are. The only rule is that you have to tell the truth as you remember it. I’d love to have you there.

I’ll leave you with a prompt:

“I thought I had more time…”

Start with this line and follow where it leads. Maybe it’s a moment you wanted to stretch out. Maybe it’s a decision you’re still circling. Maybe it’s a memory that keeps tugging at your sleeve.