Palm Springs

Palm Springs was always a place that existed more in my mind than reality. It made me think of Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra, but it was never a place I planned to visit. Even though it’s less than eleven hours by car from Albuquerque, it never felt like it was on the way to any place I was headed.

However, Greg and I traveled there for the day on one of our LA trips (before the pandemic) and attended an estate sale before lunch and taking photos. I received quite a few compliments on the dress I was wearing (not the one in this photo– this one was taken last spring) and I knew that somehow I’d have to figure out how to get us back there although I had no idea how that would happen. We made one more trip there, but it was the La Quinta Triathlon in early December 2023 that would change everything for me.

Greg had signed up for the second time (I didn’t accompany him the first time because I had an event in Albuquerque) and I had promised I would make this trip. But I also didn’t want to stand around all day waiting for him to finish. On a whim, I signed up for the Palm Springs Vintage Market, hoping I’d be accepted, but reminding myself that the world wouldn’t end if I didn’t get in.

I did!

Greg wasn’t happy at first, worried that there was no way we could transport his bicycle and gear along with all my Chelle Summer items in the car. I had already figured that out– instead of bins, I would use bags and we could place the bicycle on top of everything Chelle Summer.

Last year was a rough year for Chelle Summer. I was doing events left and right, but none of them were going well. Time was running out for me to continuing doing it. I always made back the fees, but not much more. I wasn’t selling much online and my vintage items especially weren’t selling at all. I had packed away all my cool vintage fabrics because very few people were interested in them.I had no idea how to reach the right people or if I ever would.

Those endless prayers paid off that day at the Palm Springs Vintage Market when I found my people. To say I my work felt appreciated on a large scale was an understatement. The ball began to roll, the dominos to fall, and here we are a year later heading into the third market of the season, what was my first market last year.

They say this market is special and I get it. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this week, I’m also saying thanks to Palm Springs for all the Chelle Summer love. I’m grateful the road finally took me there.

Popping Fear

This photo describes fears so well.

I remember in high school, as a runner, being told that fear comes down to not knowing what’s going to happen. On that morning in Maine last summer, as seen in this photo, we couldn’t see the bay– and the Atlantic Ocean beyond it– because of the fog. In fear, we can’t see much in front of us so the anxiety and worry creep in. We begin to wonder a little bit, but then it keeps growing to the point where we are stuck in place. The fear paralyzes us.

Fear grows as we experience more life, as we are told no more often, and as we are hurt either physically or emotionally. I believe that one of the most challenging aspects of life is learning not to let fear disrupt who we want to be and what we want to accomplish.

Understanding the root of fear is the first step to not letting fear win the battle. Once we can identify it, we can acknowledge it. And from there, we must reflect inwardly on the steps we can take to pop that fear bubble.

For me, I know that my creativity is partly how I overcome fear. By creating something, writing something, or sewing something, I’m putting something positive back into the world where the world is trying to take something from me.

I also know that movement is helpful– swimming, running for me. The ways I pop the fear bubble might not be the same for you, however, if you aren’t sure what you need to do, start trying various things. After all, overcoming fear has to start somewhere.

The Writing Life

Chelle Summer has taken over my life in ways I don’t think I ever could have imagined. It started out with bucket bags and I had no idea that nearly ten years later people would identify me as a “handbag maker” or a “fashion designer.” I love what I do; I find great joy in creating.

But what many people don’t know is that writing is my true my love.

I had wanted to be a writer since I was six years old, dreaming of not just published books, but the bestseller list, too. I achieved my dream of becoming a published author in 2001 when my first book, for sibling survivors of suicide, was published. I have since published twelve more books and Ida Lee, just out a month ago, is the thirteenth.

The hardest part about publishing a book is the marketing, getting people to read it. People are caught up in reading what Amazon tells them they should or what the bestseller list highlights. Strong marketing (meaning lots of dinero paid to people to put the word out) is really what makes a bestselling book. And when you’re just one person like me, it can feel nearly impossible to make happen.

Chelle Summer comprises the bulk of my income and the demand for what I make has increased, especially in the past year. I’m happy and, again, I love to create and see people enjoy what I made, too.

But I realized somewhere along the way that I couldn’t forget the writer in me.

In the early morning hours, I try to write a page, Monday through Friday. It might not be much and there might be days where I write more. Or I’ll read through a manuscript I’ve started and not finished. I just try to do something daily because I understand that the writing aspect of storytelling is still important to me.

And I while I wish everyone would read what I’ve written, I also see that it’s most important that I finish these novels and publish them. I don’t want to wake up in twenty years and see so many half-written projects here. I want to see them through, to release my stories and characters to the world.

Sometimes the goals and dreams change. The key is changing along with them.

Meet Ida Lee.

Return to Winter Pool

I returned to swimming at the gym last week; “winter pool” as I call it.

While the weather is still unexpectedly too warm for this time of year, my own pool has gotten a bit too cool for me so last week I began to make the trek to the gym to swim.

It means a change in routine which isn’t a bad thing; it’s just that- a change in routine. The first few days are always the hardest because I’m not just walking out the back door with the dogs but instead gathering up things I need and hoping I get my lane one in the sun.

But as I walked down the back hallway that leads to the outdoor pool, it was like I hadn’t been gone at all. Over the next few days people greeted me, told me they were glad I was back, and I felt myself settling back into the “winter pool routine.”

Obviously, my pool at home is much shorter and colder so the workout itself is different. My goal at home is to tolerate the colder water and not push off the sides of the pool (keeping myself buoyant without help the entire duration). At the gym it’s longer laps for a longer swim.

It takes a few days of physical adjustment and then on Friday morning the mental adjustment kicked in as well. I felt I was in a good enough physical place that my mind could start to wander, using that time to work out details about my writing, sewing, Chelle Summer. I’d been planning out my latest Chelle Summer newsletter in my head and there was an answer I needed. Several other ideas came to me, too.

Now I was really back into the winter swimming routine.

Belonging

I have been thinking a lot about how I don’t feel as if I belong anywhere. I look at social media and the things people say or do, they aren’t me or things I want to say or do. I see there is a balance in how much I post and reveal to people so I can’t waste the little sort of “space” I have to share on things that don’t feel worthy to me. Then as I peer back on my life I can see that there was a time when fitting in was so important. Yet as I entered my teens years, I found myself on a bit of a path alone, finding what interested me and sticking to that rather than what helped me “be” like everyone else.

This continued into adulthood and I can remember my mom saying that she wasn’t sure where I came from, that I was different from the rest of the family. “You’re of a different branch,” she often said. This was never said in a negative way– my mom was the most supportive mom one could have, something I can’t say I entirely appreciated (and what often makes it harder that she’s not here now although I know she is with me, yet in a different way).

In recent years, my feeling that time has short has intensified and I find I don’t want to waste my time on what doesn’t feel like it adds anything to my life, kind of like those social media trends. I have tried to hold steady to what I want to do, what brings me joy, and what I believe I’m here to contribute.

That also puts me at odds with belonging.

After taking six planes in the last week, I had some time to reflect on this and I realized that the people in this world who want to contribute something on a bigger scale, they often sit as outliers outside the circle. They know they have something to share or do, but staying inside the circle isn’t often the way to make it happen. They have to carve out their place, or build this from scratch.

I feel like one of those people. I sit on the outside (or one might say I’m running around the outside of the circle) and look to see how I can create what it is that I want. In areas where I haven’t been supported on a large scale– getting an agent or my books published, so I went and did it on my own. It’s been hard to get people interested in various segments of Chelle Summer because they don’t believe I “fit” with what they are looking for.

Instead, I have to build what I want. The good news (for me!) is that figuring this out has helped me begin to shed doors I’ve kept open and need now to be closed. There are a lot of supportive people out there and I’m not going to keep trying to get some people interested in what I can see they don’t appreciate or understand.

Life is too short to keep giving energy to doors that are letting good energy dissipate when there are doors to open that will help it blossom.

Mom

Every morning when I’m out running Lilly, I pray. I say thanks, I ask for help, I try to use the time to reflect on what has happened and what I need to go forward. I ask to say positive, especially with the chaos that seems to constantly surround us these days.

I also use that time to say hi to everyone in my life who has died– my parents, my sister, and all the dogs I’ve had. While I know they are around me, that they are all at peace, sometimes I’ll pray, “I hope you’re all well,” Then I realize how silly that is because, of course, they’re all well, they are filled with peace and love now.

And then throughout my days, I find the signs of them are around me. I’m not sure I’m aware of all of them, usually they seem to nearly smack me in the head. Lately, Mom has come to me several times via the song “Every Rose has its Thorn” by Poison. She loved that song so much that she had the 45 (for those of you who remember what a 45 is…).

I had a meeting a church recently and the office door is near the prayer garden where I purchased a brick for Mom so I always stop and say hi to her when I’m there. This time, however, there was a feather right near her name.

Native Americans have all sorts of beliefs surrounding feathers and the one I was introduced to early was that when you find a feather, it means you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing; you’re on the right track for your life. I always take this to mean confirmation that I’m supposed to keep moving forward, that all is well, to hold steady and keep forging ahead.

On this day there was Mom (Marianne Linn) and there was a feather. While she can’t call me up and tell me to stay the course, that I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, the feather landing right there when I was stopping by her brick was enough for me.

Just a small reminder that she’s cheering me on as I try to keep moving forward each day, to keep doing the things I believe I’m supposed to do. Even when the path isn’t so clear or obvious.

Surfing Lessons

While it’s now the end of September, each August I find a slew of surfing photos that come through my Facebook memories feed. I took my first surfing lesson August 2011 and the photo here was shot as I took the board out into the water at Rye, New Hampshire, for the first time, having no idea I’d actually get up on the board that day and it would open a new world to me.

A year later, I bought a surfboard, one custom made for me and my world continued to change. I had been divorced not long after that first surfing lesson and life moved me back to my hometown outside Chicago. But I found myself surfing in Hawaii and Australia that year. And when I bought the board, storing it in the garage of my friends Sam and Lois in LA, I also began to take more trips to LA. After Greg and I got together, we began to drive to LA from Albuquerque where I had returned to.

I learned so much from surfing, especially about taking on new challenges at age 40 and during the end of a relationship. I wasn’t ever good at surfing, but the times I caught waves and felt the board skim the top of the water all the way to the beach, can’t be matched.

However, somewhere in this time, I also had a shoulder injury (we aren’t sure if it was the day I was pulled down by my dog Gidget, yes, the irony of that one!, or the day my board whacked me in the shoulder at Manhattan Beach after a wave twisted me around in the surf). My shoulder began to pop out and when it happened one day as I was paddling to get in sync with a wave, I knew my surfing days were probably over.

The board came home to Albuquerque after Sam and Lois moved to assisted living and it’s now part of my living room decor. We use it occasionally in photos and I’m still hoping for the day that it will ride back to LA in the car and I’ll have a near waveless day in September where I can at least paddle out to the backside of those flat waves at RAT Beach in Palos Verdes and listen to the sound of the water as it hits the board.

I’m a better person because I took the chance on surfing. I read somewhere (and I can’t remember his name at the moment), but surfing person said, “Surfing recreates your life.”

It definitely did mine.

Change

Why are we so resistant to change?

A few weeks ago, during mass, Fr. Stephen in his homily talked about how we as humans are supposed to change. He discussed how we aren’t meant to stay in one place, how we are constantly called to do challenges.

I believe this. It’s hard sometimes because it’s easier to stay still, to stay where we are. And yet I hear so many people say they aren’t happy with their lives or certain aspects of their lives. Yet they won’t make those changes, take those steps to go forward and do something about it.

I used to say that I was constantly forced out of my box, to do things new or building on the steps of what I had already learned. I have made this choice in my life. I won’t say that it’s easy because there are times where I don’t necessarily feel like I “fit” into my life, the people in my life, or whatever it is I’m doing. It’s like I make the changes, I try to heed the call of what I’m being asked to do to go forward, but then suddenly the box doesn’t feel right. And that’s because I have changed.

Sometimes I post how I feel things are moving forward, after feeing stagnant for some time, and yet during that time I also sense that around me my surroundings aren’t matching up to the changes. It’s a push and pull as I go forward, as I shut doors to open new ones, as I seek to find where I really want to be, who I want to be.

It comes with challenges and it’s supposed to. Making change doesn’t mean it’s easy. After all, if it weren’t, most people would make changes rather than staying right where they are. What I do know is that it’s worth the journey when you look back and see how far you’ve come.

Living the Words

As I post this, today is World Suicide Prevention Day.

Each year I have tried to put out a message somehow related to it, usually where I see the state of prevention, having had a long string of time spent working in the field as well as, obviously, the loss of my own younger sister to suicide now 31 years ago.

But this year, the message has changed because my work has changed.

While I purposely stepped away from the field some years ago, seeing my life had changed, that I felt I had done all I could do, at some points since then I have tried to resurrect aspects of the work I’ve done. And gone nowhere.

At the end of last year, I saw things finally starting to move forward with Chelle Summer. There had been a lot of start, stop, start. While there is still that to some extent, the movement forward is going much faster and I see where I’m having to shut some doors where nothing is happening, where it’s not worth the effort to keep trying to throw things out there.

On Friday, this happened as I closed a door related to something else and (I’m not kidding!) 20 minutes later, another door opened. I had been struggled in my head, deciding whether or not to close the door, but something kept telling me to do it. So, I did and I knew when another door opened that I had done the right thing.

I also was thinking about this being September and how I wasn’t feeling the need to try to make things happen, that Chelle Summer and my writing, along with a few other activities are what make me happy. There is not an endless amount of time in life and we must choose where we best feel we are appreciated, can make a difference, whatever is important to us.

As I was contemplating this, I thought of something our Archbishop John Wester some years ago had told me. I was at an event of people who were involved in the church to meet him when he was new here. I’d been invited by friends and I explained to him that I’d run a divorced women’s group, but was no long doing it as I had gotten married and felt it was time to move on. I was feeling a bit bad about not being involved, however, he said something that has resonated with me since then.

“You’re living the it.”

And that’s exactly what Chelle Summer, my writing, and everything else I do is about. It’s about living moving forward after loss, after divorce, after a whole lot of other things that could have easily kept me down, kept me on the couch, kept me where I was in that moment. My inspiration comes from the childhood I shared with Denise, the inspiration from Mom to be creative and use color. The best I can offer this world is to continue that, to be a role model in the way I live my life and share that.

I walked outside while I was still in the midst of these thoughts and a monarch butterfly flew right in front of me, the only one I’ve seen this year.

Message heard and confirmed. Loud and clear.

Fall Beginnngs

August and September have always felt like a time of new beginnings to me. I believe it’s because the start of school always brought new clothes, maybe new friends, a new cross country running season. I would always believe that somehow there was growth of sorts over summer break and I’d see what the reward would look like as a new school year began.

Even after many years of school, I still have felt this in the fall and as I look back on this photo from late August 2013, I can reflect on the significance of that particular time.

At the time, this wouldn’t have been obvious to me. It had been a painful few years after a divorce and two moves across the country. However, when this photo was taken, I was back in Albuquerque and I had no idea that within the next week, I would meet Greg. Then a year later around the same time, we would get engaged.

But there is something else in this photo that I didn’t realize until I found it the other day- what I’m wearing. That’s a Trina Turk coverup. I don’t remember the original price of it, but it was something I couldn’t justify buying at the time. I searched and searched online and then waited for the price to drop. The web site where I bought it, a name I don’t remember but it was owned by Gap, no longer exists.

This was the true beginning of Chelle Summer. I just didn’t know it yet.

I saw something I loved, something I wanted to be a part of. But also something I wanted to start creating of my own. I had no idea how to go about it, especially finding the fabric prints, but the seed was planted when I bought this coverup.

I still have it– it’s in the drawer with all the swimwear I have made– because it’s a part of where I am today. And the photo is a reminder of how much more it means.

Easing a Grief Journey

We all experience grief and loss, none of it the same because we are unique people, we have unique relationships with people in our lives.

But we all experience pain in loss, pain and loss that can feel unbearable at times.

When I was divorced in 2011, there was a different kind of intensity to the loss than when my father died or my younger sister before that. I was older and more aware. And my life changed in ways that the deaths had not altered my life– moving, having to form new relationships…the list goes on.

Feeling exasperated, I finally asked God what I was supposed to learn during this experience. I wanted to move forward’ I wanted out of the pain I was tired of feeling. I wanted life to open to brighter sunshine again.

One of the messages I felt I received during that time was that it’s an opportunity to draw closer to God. For many of us, feeling closer to God brings a sense of peace that so many other aspects of life don’t. It’s as if a piece of a puzzle has been placed so that we can see much of the picture the puzzle creates. Or maybe we reach a scenic view on a trip.

I don’t wish loss of any kind on anyone. But I know the reality is that we all will experience it (or have experienced it). We can’t turn back the the clock to change anything, however, we can make sure we go forward and use it as an opportunity to grow. And using it as an opportunity to grow closer to God is also one way that will bring us much peace and hope.

It’s always worth the effort.

The Faith of Seeking the Path

On this day (at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater), the path was there. It wasn’t so hard to find.

But not all days are like that. I often think it’s like answered prayers– when it happens (again, not always, or at least in the way we expect!), we are so grateful because we know it’s almost a rarity. Keeping the faith for the journey, the path, or whatever we seek often feels the same to me.

I know exactly what I would like to accomplish, however, I’m just not always such how I’ll get there. First, we have to start taking steps. We know the hardest part of anything are those first steps, right? The steps can be small. We often won’t know where we are stepping or which way we’re going. But we trust (there’s the faith part!) that we’ll figure it out as we go.

And we might not make the right decision at times. Maybe it was the right decision in that moment, but we see later we should have gone another way or maybe stopped for a longer rest. The journey often is like a board game– start, stop, go back, go forward. It’s mixed up and there’s not a straight path forward.

But we keep moving forward. The key is that even when we can’t see where we’re going, where it looks dark and unknown, we don’t turn back. We know that somewhere ahead we’ll reach the place where light will splash on it and tell us, “You made it!”

Revisiting the Places of My Past

I was very lucky that we took a family vacation every year when I was growing up. While one year we went away at spring break, usually my dad took off the first two weeks of August and that’s when we traveled (school was still starting after Labor Day until I hit high school). There were six of us so it was always a road trip in the family station wagon.

I didn’t know it at the time- and probably didn’t care– but these were really planned out trips. My mom would later say her regret is that we were always running off to a new place and rarely spent two nights in one Holiday Inn but starting early and getting all those miles in meant we saw more places. One vacation was centered around Civil War Battlefields. My dad was a project engineer and when possible we toured factories and saw things made like cigarettes (he smoked Belairs and I remember the tour guide handing him a stack at the end of the tour and Kellogg’s (there were got to pick a box of cereals and that was my introduction to Product 19).

There also were historical houses which is what led us to Campobello Island in June on our road trip. I had been there the summer after eighth grade with my parents and my younger sister Denise. Campobello is off the coast of Maine and actually in Canada although it is jointly run by the Canadian and US governments. Still, you have to go through a border crossing each way.

What’s significant is that it was the summer home of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. While it’s not where he contracted polio, it’s where he fell ill with it. Sadly, after leaving the island very ill, he never returned although his family did and the house is now open for tours. It’s known for its red paint and green trim.

I have wanted to go back for a long time and when I knew we were going to be in Boston for a wedding, I decided this was the time we’d trek north and make it happen. Sometimes places we visited in our childhoods no longer exist, but I’m grateful when a place exists and remains pretty much as it was then.

The following day, which happened to be our ninth wedding anniversary, we stopped at the American side of Niagara Falls. I had done the Canadian side with my family several times– and with Greg– but due to time and a customs restraint (we had a car full of Chelle summer inventory which caused a bit of a problem at the Canadian border of Campobello), we decided to stay on the American side.

While it wasn’t the same as the Canadian side, I’m still glad we stopped. There’s something special about Niagara and it’s yet another happy memory, especially given that both my parents and my younger sister have died. I can’t relieve these memories with them but by going back to these places I can relive the memories in new form and share them with Greg.

Where Hope Resides

I sometimes feel like I need to revisit this concept– where hope resides– for several reasons. One is that sometimes I find myself thinking about it and the different ways and places I find hope in my life. And other times things happen, things that affect all of us in some way, and it’s so easy to lose hope.

This time it’s a combination of reasons that led me to write this today. I had already been thinking about it while I was swimming the other day and then it was like the phrase “where hope resides” kept coming back to me.

I find hope in many places. I can see that I learned early how important it was to somewhere in my mind have ideas of where I find hope because life can easily drag us down. I don’t believe life does this intentionally (unless we make intentional decisions that lead to events that will do that), but, to me, part of life feels like a board game. We move forward, we move back, we are stalled. How are we not just going to survive but thrive in that?

Right now I’m finding hope in summer. I realize that might sound obvious given my lifestyle brand is named Chelle Summer, but there’s something inspiring about the sun’s warmth, everything in full bloom, and the color we see around us. Hope resides in swimming laps in that warm sunshine, cooling off from the intense heat in the pool. Hope resides from seeing my three dogs sitting in the shade around the pool watching me, happy to be with me. And hope resides in having those moments to let my mind wander, to think about the day that has past, and what’s ahead,

Hope resides somewhere for all of us and not in just one place. It’s up to us to find it, but I believe it’s there. Take a step back if you’re not feeling it today or any day it feels far away. Think about where you’ve found hope before. And if you don’t find hope there now, look for another place. It’s there, maybe burning faintly, but it’s definitely there.

The Wannabe Innkeeper

I don’t know how it started, but I still have this dream that a rundown motel (must have a swimming pool in the parking lot or I’m not interested!) will land in my lap and I’ll renovate it and turn it into something like the Chelliday Motel.

It’s not that I have this vision of actually running the motel myself– I haven’t found a way to multiple the time available to me in my life- but to head up a project like that has always intrigued me. I know I saw this as far back as high school, a dream that sat in the back of my mind. And now as I watch so many of these motels disappear, I find my dream disappearing, too.

I’m grateful for the people who take old motels and turn them into boutique motels, but often these have too much “new” in them. There are things that need to be changed and updated, yet the soul of the motel could still exist in a newer form. That doesn’t always happen in the boutique motels we see today. The vision is too far out from where the motel started.

I think back in high school the dream was more about building my own chain, even as these motels were turning into express boxes with interior entrances and table-top sized swimming pools. When Kemmons Wilson created Holiday Inn, it was about giving people a similar experience each night. And yet in that sameness, there was still a swimming pool, ash trays and glasses with the Holiday Inn great sign printed on them. And stationery. Many of these things disappeared in the name of giving people less, telling them it was too expensive to have these things if they wanted to pay less.

And yet without all these details, the motels lost their soul. And few could hang on until interested people could come along and revive them.

For now, the dream continues to be just that. Maybe something will happen one day, a turn of events. But for now, I’ll keep telling the stories of those in my mind, of those whose footprints I walk, dreaming of another time.

The Demise of the Route 66 Motel

One of my goals for our trip this past month was to stay in as many small motels as possible. Greg will tell you that there’s nothing that makes me happier than a swimming pool in the middle of a parking lot. But when I set out to find these places to stay, I was disappointed in how many have disappeared, especially in recent years.

I don’t need lots of frills, usually just a clean, quiet place to sleep. The swimming pool is a huge bonus. And I don’t mind making a phone call to secure a reservation.

As I began my search, at first I would find places that were viable. Then I’d find out they were closed. Many had fallen into such disrepair they were torn down, a few as recently as the past year. I already had seen these changes in the Canadian side of Niagara Falls when we visited nine years ago. Those little mom and pop motels we stayed at as a family- my dad driving up the road deciding which one we’d stay at– are long gone. Greg and I did find one on that trip (the Blue Moon) where we stayed– and is still in business today.

These little motels have been swallowed up by box chains that now cast a shadow over the Big Texan in Amarillo. When we stopped in Gallup several months ago at the Desert Skies to take photos with the sign, we learned the motel has closed. And is being torn down. The owner was there and said he would be building a new one. A chain.

If you’ve read my book, Route 66 Dreams, you know that part of the story is about staying in little motels, about a father’s goal to take his family on a trip via Route 66 as he remembered it. That trip was in 1986, 20-some years after his prior trip, and there had already been major changes. On the last night of the vacation, he relents and makes a reservation for a chain hotel to give his wife the same soap and room she might find in another motel, the conformity that many people crave on the road instead of the uniqueness a mom and pop motel provides.

While I might not always like the aesthetic changes of some of the boutique motels, repurposed from the old motels, but I’m grateful someone has tried to take a property and give it new life. I know that things have to change. And yet I remain sad that we continue to let so much disappear, as if those stories don’t matter.

Popping the Bubble

We are just returned from a two-week road trip that took us into fourteen states plus Canada and across over 5,000 miles. And yet I know it would have been easy not to take the trip, that there are a million reasons to stay home and forget the rest of the world exists.

But the best thing we can do for ourselves is to pop our bubbles. We’ve gotten too comfortable being home since the pandemic started. The pandemic gave everyone an excuse to not go out, to not be with people, to not see the world. I know it made it harder for me to get back into the rhythm of seeking out new experiences. I got much too comfortable and I’ve had to work harder to make sure I leave my comfort zone because I know that I’m much happier as a person when I do explore new places and meet new people.

While I have several photos from the trip that are my favorites, I believe this one sums up the overall vibe and reflection I have of the trip. It was taken at the Munger Moss Motel in Lebanon, Missouri, one of the remaining Route 66 motels (I’ll tackle that topic in another blog). That ribbon of highway stretched out in front of me is there for the exploring; that road is much like life. It’s there for us if we choose to take it.

I’m also wearing a new Chelle Summer outfit I created. Part of getting out of my bubble is also sharing Chelle Summer with more people (more coming on that, too).

I could have stayed home and sat in my swimming pool for two weeks while the dogs ran around it. Instead, I stuck a needle in my bubble and had a slew of experiences I never could have imagined.

I’m glad I popped my bubble.

Prepping for a road trip, new handbags to share, and, of course, Goose...and Ash, too

"Lanterns for Others"

Sitting on my desk for six months has been a piece Patti Davis wrote in the New York Times (November 1, 2023) after the death of actor Matthew Perry about the loneliness of addiction. It has sat there for these two lines near the end:

“He laid bare his wounds, his struggles, his complicated relationship with drugs and alcohol. That’s the best we can do in life– be truthful and hope those truths become lanterns for others as they wander through the dark.”

While my journey hasn’t been drug or alcohol related, there has been much darkness in loss and the road to finding light again.

I don’t always share what I’m immediately going through because I’ve also learned that my journey is about showing how I got somewhere and that means holding onto it until I at least get far enough along the road that I can reflect on it.

The journey has also changed in many ways, more reflecting now through what I make for Chelle Summer. I have held a lantern for a long time for those who have come after me in loss, in particular suicide bereaved siblings, but I also wear a bright-colored dress and carry a bright-colored handbag that serve as lanterns, too.

I shared much in the early years of my grief journey of the pain and sadness that I felt after losing my sister. But I also always balanced that with where I found hope. I believe it’s because I always knew on some level if you were going to share your pain, you also had to help people find a way out of that pain, not to be stuck in it. There is importance to connection through sharing, but we also should be leading the way through the darkness, not all stuck there standing and looking around into nothing.

Be truthful about the journey. But also share what brings you hope to keep traveling forward, to find your way out of darkness. We can all learn from each other. And help each other, even if it’s just about providing a little hope along the way.

New video! Chelle Summer bags to share and a Mother's Day message