The Quiet Surrender Of Loving What’s Here, Not What’s Missing (May Wrap-Up)

The never-ending duality of life, tending to the past, and silver linings

May was saltwater on our tongue and the sun in our hands. It was sandcastles and sandy sheets and his perfect face that makes me cry and laugh all at the same time. It was listening to the trees and squeezing every last ounce of light before the sea and sky turned blue-black. It was folk dances in the mountains and putting flowers on our pizza and making the most of this little town we’ve all outgrown. It was guilt roses the colors of the rainbow or maybe they were just love roses, after all. It was my son’s first rollercoaster and holding his small buzzing body between my thighs. It was dancing in the dark and running through a maze of mirrors searching for joy. It was giant oaks and letting love in even when it hurts. It was watching my son in my mother’s arms and thinking about how close we got to losing her. It was expanding my flower bed to fit the irises and the foxgloves and the peonies, shoveling sod until my back felt like it was breaking. It was Mother’s Day and holding love and grief in the same hand. It was my son’s face in my hands, mine in his, and really, what could be better than this? It was drying the guilt roses that were maybe just love roses along the bookshelf and my son noticing their beauty. It was the towering blush-colored rhododendrons by the lake and the very first firefly of the season. It was yoga on the cafe deck and my son almost falling asleep in my arms in the sticky sun. It was wanting another baby and not wanting another baby and saying this over and over for the past four years. It was looking up flights to Amsterdam and Portugal and being addicted to always having something on the horizon. It was taking my grandma to a prom party at her dementia care home and watching her slip in and out of French with fake eyelashes glued to her lids and a yellow corsage wrapped around her wrist. It was hugging my Dad for the first time in a year and mourning all the time we lost. It was soaking up his love and his big laugh and his sweet efforts to connect with my son. It was my son saying papa, papa, papa, and my dad giving him the presence I always wanted from him. It was cinnamon-sugar donuts on our hands and faces and filling the car with flowers. It was the scent of tire grease and motor oil and the feeling of home, like back when I’d curl up beside Dad after he’d spent the day bent over someone else’s car. It was grilled corn and building train tracks and talking about the past until the moon comes up over the ridgeline. It was my son’s hands in my father’s and the quiet surrender of finally loving what’s here, not what’s missing.

I’ve been resisting writing this wrap-up, probably because May was as hard as it was beautiful, and now, honestly, I’m just tired. I’ve been hosting since March, and I finally said goodbye to my last houseguests until maybe Christmas. It’s bittersweet. I love having people here, but hosting takes a lot out of me.

It’s not just the logistics, it’s the energy. I spend so much time tuning into others—lifting them up, matching their moods, decoding their needs—that I end up drained, sometimes losing myself entirely. My rhythm gets thrown off. I stop meditating. I stop writing. All the things that keep me grounded start slipping through the cracks. And why? Every time, I tell myself I’ll still make space for what matters to me. But by day two, it’s already fallen away, and I’m too exhausted to even think about doing anything but showing up for the people I love.

It’s a strange kind of self-sabotage. And afterward, I’m left trying to recover, to come back to myself, to find the rhythm again.

Hosting fills me up and empties me. But I guess that’s true of most good things. Motherhood does that. So does writing, exercise, therapy, even love. The things that shape us often stretch us, too.

There’s always a duality—joy and exhaustion, connection and depletion, holding space for others while trying not to abandon ourselves. I’m learning that honoring both can be the most generous thing we do. The question is, how?

My dad’s been here the past week, and even though I’ve been running on fumes and sabotaging myself in the ways I tend to do, having him here has been incredibly nourishing. This is the first time he’s visited in two years. Last year, he couldn’t come. Hurricane Helene washed out Highway 40, the route he usually takes, and honestly, our town wasn’t in any shape to receive visitors. I mourned not seeing him. I carried that grief to England and Spain, missing him from across the ocean.

Our week together was slow and full in the best ways. Good meals, flower planting, long walks, lingering in the living room, talking. Making art with my son. This is what being part of a family should feel like.

When I visit my dad in Michigan, he’s usually so worn out from working that he can barely keep his eyes open, let alone be fully present. And every time, the old story I’ve told myself since childhood, he doesn’t care enough, I don’t matter enough, just digs in a little deeper. But this time, it was as if we softened the edges of that old story and began carving out something truer—a narrative that honors him, me, my son. Something connective. Healing. I felt him trying. Saying yes to building train tracks and block towers, to making playdough records on the floor. Saying yes to lying on the trampoline while my son bounced and talked a mile a minute, just like I used to when I was little, back in the Mojave, when Dad bought us a trampoline with drug money and we’d jump around him for hours.

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On this trip, he sat in the sage-green chair while my son read him stories from books he made out of construction paper, every color of the rainbow. He treated us to the motorcycle museum. Drew chalk motorcycles on the back porch that the rain has already washed them away.

The night before he left, we saw the first firefly of the season. We stood on the porch, watching them flicker in the trees, marking time by their glow. We said we’d never let another year pass without seeing each other again. Of course, that hadn’t been the plan. We had plans. But then, the hurricane. Then Christmas. Then I went to California in a van for a month. Then my brother came. Then my cousin. Then my mom had a heart attack.

Time slips. The people you love most begin to live more in memory than in the flesh. Their laugh becomes a thought instead of a sound. And God, I missed my dad’s laugh. It’s medicine.

I’ve got one more month here in these firefly fields and blue mountains I call home before I head north to see him again. Knowing another visit was just around the corner made the goodbye a little easier—the lingering hug in the kitchen the night before, and then again at 4 a.m., just before he pulled away. I stood at the window as his car disappeared down the road. There was a light sting of sadness, but mostly, there was gratitude.

We started the month off the coast of South Carolina, spending the entire day at the beach building sandcastles and kissing each other’s sun-warmed faces. My mom was still recovering from her heart attack then, her memory holding only about an hour at a time. She kept calling, over and over: Where are you? Where are you? Where are you? We were still waiting to understand why it had happened—was it meth again, or something else?

I know I owe you a piece about all of that. And I’ll write it. But for now, just know that May held the duality of everything: my son’s face sugared with joy, my heart at peace beside the sea, even as another part of me spiraled in worry over my mother. It was a month where I held love and disappointment to my chest at the same time.

Mom brought over flowers when we got home from the coast, and my first thought was, guilt roses. An unspoken apology. I wanted to trim their stems gently, place them in a vintage vase on the kitchen table, and at the same time, I wanted to shove them in a blender on high speed. That’s what it is to be a daughter sometimes. Her daughter. But still, I put them in water. Because even rage needs somewhere soft to land.

Later in the month, I took my cousin to Gatlinburg to check Tennessee off her travel list. That place is a sterile Strip of cheap novelty. A Trump store (what in the actual fuck?), terrible food, zero soul. And yet, we made the most of it. I took my son on his very first roller coaster. I held his buzzing body between my thighs as we whipped through the mountain. Wide-eyed and open-mouthed, he grinned at the sky and said, Mama, let’s go faster next time. My brave, magic child. Already growing too fast. One day, he’ll ride without me, move through the world on his own. And I’ll be the one gripping the edges, hoping he remembers how it felt to be held this close.

We got lost in an overpriced mirror maze I would’ve hated if he hadn’t loved it so much. In a mirrored disco room, we danced to Phoenix’s 1901, and I thought of my twenty-something self, broke, in a toxic relationship with an alcoholic, still finding slivers of joy in the chaos. That’s what I’m doing now, still—searching for the silver lining. Finding light in this country, this state, this town I’m always wondering if I should leave.

Only now, it’s easier. The silver lining has widened. There’s still darkness, but it’s only a sliver inside a whole lot of light.

May was also Mother’s Day, though I barely remember it. I couldn’t sink into it. I was still reeling from almost losing my mom. I visited my grandmother at the care home, the woman who was more of a mother to me than anyone else, raising me while mine was in prison. Her dementia is slowly erasing her mind, but somehow, she still remembers me. She’s only forgotten me once—on Christmas morning. She screamed at me to get the fuck away from her like I was a stranger, an enemy. I left in tears and cried the whole way home. God, no one tells you how brutal it is to grow older. How the people who shaped you begin to fade, how you’re left clutching at memories and nothing else.

My husband had planned a small celebration with friends and our son for Mother’s Day. I kept trying to get out of it. I was so tired. All I wanted was to climb into bed and sleep for a hundred years. But it turned out to be exactly what I needed. My friends showed up with gifts. Salt scrubs, face masks, handwritten notes. Ttiny altars of care. They know how to tend to me, how to nudge me back toward myself. They see me. Not just as a woman, but as a mother, too.

One of them said that when she dies, she wants to come back as my child because she knows she’d be safe, seen, loved beyond measure. It meant everything to be witnessed like that. To have someone recognize how fully I love, how completely my son holds my heart, and to know they see it, too.

Later, the guilt roses that my mom gave me began to bloom. I hung them upside down on the string lights by the bookshelf to dry. My son was dancing in the living room when he paused, turned off the music, and said, “I want to watch you make the room pretty.” His noticing undoes me. His attention to beauty, to care. He looked at the drying roses and said they looked like a rainbow, and he was right.

Now they sit in a vase by the front door. I’m not sure if that’s good energy or bad, but I like to believe they stand for something. For hope. For love, maybe. Or at least, that’s the story I tell myself.

Other things to note this month

I was featured on

Substack Writers at Work with Sarah Fay

, talking about how Notes and a carefully chosen community can be the key to meaningful growth on Substack. If you’ve been wondering how to use Notes to tell your story, build real connection, and grow your Substack in a way that actually feels good, I hope you’ll tune into this conversation I had with Sarah and a few incredible writers.

We talked about the power of staying grounded in your story while sharing Notes, how to grow your audience with intention, and why Notes can be such a powerful place to begin.

A huge thank you to

Sarah Fay

for creating such a generous, grounded space for this conversation, and for always championing the power of authentic storytelling.

You can catch the live here. I hop on around the 20-minute mark.

Why Notes and a carefully chosen community are the keys to Substack

To be honest, I kind of want to crawl under a table every time I see myself on video or hear myself talk. I’m working on this whole fear of being seen thing. It’s deep-rooted, and I know it stems from the shame I carried as a kid while my mother was in prison. I was terrified someone would find out. That they’d make fun of me, or worse, say something cruel about her. In my eyes, she was perfect, even in her flaws.

So I lied. Said she was away on a work trip. I said she was visiting her aunt, sister, cousin, someone far far away. I was already being bullied for being skinny and poor, and I couldn’t bear to stack anything else on top of that. And so of course I learned to hide. To shrink. To fear what would happen if someone really saw me.

Even now, when I share my truth and write the hard stories, there’s still a voice inside that says, What if they find out who you really are? Where you come from? It tells me, Be quiet. Don’t say too much. Don’t draw attention. Who do you think you are?

But what I’m learning in therapy is that that voice doesn’t get to run the show. I hear it, but I don’t obey it. I say, Shhh. Let me speak. Let me tell the truth.

And I do.

Not because the voice has disappeared, but because I’m finally learning how to hold a little more safety. A little more peace. A little more me.

Oh, and this month, I got a Substack Bestseller badge, which means I now have “hundreds” of paid subscribers. At least, that’s how they put it. Really, you get the badge once you hit 101. But still, feels good. I’m deeply grateful for this growing community, for every single person who shows up week after week to read the memoir I’m serializing here.

They say shame dies when stories are told in safe places. And they’re right. Sharing my story here is setting me free. For most of my life, silence felt safe. But silence never saved me. Story did.

Now, connecting with readers who see themselves in these pages or who are processing their own stories through mine reminds me what this is really about. Not the badge, not the numbers, not even the money. It’s about connection. Healing. Helping. It’s about making something that matters.

Here’s a small handful of the beautiful messages that came in this month—notes that made me feel seen, held, and reminded me why I keep showing up, even on the hardest days.

Okay, now I’m crying.

It’s just that after five years of rejection, I can’t believe I finally have a place to tell my story, and that people are actually reading it. More than that… they’re feeling it. It’s helping them. In my heart of hearts, I knew it would. It just needed a chance to be out in the world, to reach the people who need it.

And if you’re sitting on a story, I hope this reminds you that you don’t have to wait for permission to tell it. That you don’t have to wait until you're “ready.” The right time won’t come, but your truth is already waiting. Begin where you are.

If you need a gentle nudge, the Fear to Flow framework I created might help. It’s a simple, supportive path to writing the hard things. To facing the fear and telling the truth anyway. Because someone out there is waiting for your words.

And maybe, so are you.

And if you’ve been thinking about becoming a paid subscriber to follow along with my memoir, now’s a great time. We’re only on chapter 14 of over 50, so there’s plenty to dive into, and honestly, getting to binge-read might be even better than waiting week to week. It’s $5/month or $20/year—about the cost of a single book, but with so many chapters still to come.