Breaking the Loop

The loop. We all have at least one– maybe more than one, maybe more than we want to count. The loops that repeat in our heads over and over about how we feel about ourselves, about something we regret we did or said, how we think others see us. They can be endless while sending us into a downward spiral that paralyzes us.

Yes, those loops.

Those are the kind of loops that are meant to be broken. They don’t do us any good so why do we hang onto them other than we’re just so accustomed to them that they are a habit, the kind of habit that needs to be broken.

It takes a little work– I won’t deny it, I’ve spent years cutting my loops and throwing them in the Wednesday trash pick up. But once you learn how to break the loops, you become more aware of them and can stop them before they paralyze you.

The key is finding a way that works for you to stop them so you can break them. In fact, the universe might be trying to break them for you and you just don’t realize it (that phone call or text message that comes through while you’re looping? It’s probably there to help get you out of your head).

For me, I’ve learned to distract myself from the loop. The loop is negative and I know it, but I also know how hard it is to stop myself from the negative fearful thinking that ruled so much of my life. If I’m looping. I force myself to think of something happy and that means switching my mind to thinking about whatever writing project I’m working on or something that I’m sewing. Maybe even a drawing/painting that I’m not quite sure how to get onto paper.

This happened recently– I caught myself in the loop and then moved my thinking to what I was going to write the next day in the latest novel I’m writing. What would happen next in the story? What pieces was I missing? Where was I stuck that I need help to change or make happen?

I found that I instantly felt better and the loop had been thrown in the trash. Sure, the loops keeps trying to come back, pesky things that they are, but I keep breaking them. And the best part? It’s actually forcing me to spend more of my mind and time being creative. I've come to realize how much time I’ve wasted thinking about things that don’t deserve the loop.

Questions...and then answers

Maybe I’ve been lucky. It seems I’ve been asking the question of who I am and trying new things for most of my life. However, maybe it’s more than luck, maybe it happened so I could share it with others and help them to move forward, too.

Somewhere in the boxes of things from my childhood, there is one of those diaries that has a lock on it, a gift for a birthday somewhere along the line. I know around fifth grade I asked who I was in my diary, already seeing how I reflected to be different things to different people. In sixth grade, I began journaling steadily, a task i continued to do for the bulk of my years (although there are several years at one point).

To go back and read those journals, what I find is a girl trying to find herself, knowing she was bound for bigger things, and despite the challenge and nervousness of trying new things, doing them anyway. My younger sister’s suicide when I was 21 didn’t stop me, it just made me reflect even more on what was most important to me. After all, just months after her death, I found myself bound a summer internship at USA Boxing at the United State Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Life didn’t stop because she had ended her life; there was even more to do.

I got where I am because I have kept asking the questions, continued to explore opportunities in life, even ones I wasn’t sure about but I could at least say I did try (believe me, my flute-playing skills should be long forgotten).

It’s a long road and it’s one, much like prayer, that doesn’t always have the answers. But as I dragged myself out of bed in the cold this morning to run and then go swim, feeling like weekend was short, the week ahead feeling long, I am reminded that sometimes life is like that.

Continuing to trudge forward is well worth it though. At some point we reach points of rest, points of fun, and we can take a peek back and see, yes, I know who I am because I walked this road.

Start asking. Write it down. Throw it out there in prayer– when you’re washing dishes, working out, driving. The answers might not come right away but the universe is waiting for you to ask and take off from the starting line. You’ll move forward. You might not see it at first, but it’ll happen. Stay open and let it emerge.

Knowing Myself

I’m sure it’s no surprise that that’s me in the photo above. My mom hung this photo in our hall– she had every reason to be proud of it, not because I was in it but because of sunshine she caught bouncing off the water. And the bright colors I’m wearing. That’s me, still today.

When I look at this photo I’m reminded how well I know myself. And how important that is for continuing to forge forward in my life- and navigate all the challenges that come with forging forward.

I don’t like the pandemic. In fact, I hate the pandemic for a lot of reasons as we all do. But I still believe that we’ve been given an opportunity to make positive changes in our lives. The hard part is many people aren’t sure how to do that, especially where to start.

So let me help you.

Start asking yourself questions– Who am I? What do I want from life?

You might not have answers to either of these right away and that’s okay. Remember, sustainable change, the kind that lasts, doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a long, slow road. But it’s worth to stay on it.

Ask those questions as you’re driving, cutting vegetables for dinner. Write them down in a notebook and then jot down answers as they come. You don’t need to write in sentences and things might not make sense right now. That’s okay!

First you need to throw it out to the universe so the universe can throw the responses back to you.

And listen.

You never know where the answers might come from, but the more you ask and the more you work at listening, you’ll find they are right there in front of you waiting for you to acknowledge them.

The January Video: Inspiration for a New Year

St. Dwynwen's Day

January 25 is St. Dwynwen’s Day. She is the Welsh patron saint of lovers and in our house, this is our Valentine’s Day.

I’m not sure how my interest in her began except that I remember flipping through a book, Britain’s Holiest Places, at Wendy’s cottage in the Welsh countryside and somehow I became interested in St. Dwynwen’s site on the sea.

I knew I wanted go to there, but it wasn’t until I was trying to finish my book That Cooking Girl that I knew I needed to go there to finish writing the novel.

The book centers around Megan, a Welsh name that John Peters, the man I called my “UK Dad’ and who died just a few weeks after my mom, thought I should build a character and story around. While my story about Megan isn't quite what I know he had in mind, I did incorporate so much that he shared with me, especially adding the “Mzee,” the wise uncle he called himself. It’s a Swahili term he learned from the years he and his family lived in Kenya.

It was important to John on my visits to the UK that he and his wife Jean show me Wales. He wanted me to see the “other” part of the UK that he felt Americans too often overlooked. On my next visit there, which fell during my one-year wedding anniversary with Greg, Wendy (who had never been to St. Dwynwen’s site) and Nigel took us there.

It’s important to note that you can only visit when the tide is out otherwise you need a boat (good luck swimming since it never really gets warm there!) to get to the little piece of land where she lived.

That visit allowed me to finish the book because I had the final piece I needed for it. And each year since then, we have celebrated St. Dwynwen and her day in our house. Maybe one day I’ll understand why I was drawn there, but I’m not sure it matters. The reality is that I felt a need to go, I was able to do it and had people who wanted to experience with me, and I finished my fourth novel because of it.

I’m sure John is nodding approvingly.

When doors close so new ones can open

I have always been grateful that Sam and Lois never batted an eye about keeping my surfboard in their garage. It was one of the biggest reasons I was able to get the board since I don’t live in the LA area. But I also knew the day would come when I would have take the surfboard out of the garage for the last time, not to be returned once it was placed in my car.

As I write this, they are moving to assisted living next week in San Diego. We were able to see them for a short time on New Year’s Eve and retrieve the boards (we gave Greg’s board to our friend Greg who was excited to be the recipient of it as he hopes to learn to surf soon). No matter how much time we have with people, it never feels like enough and it’s hard to believe that nearly ten years have gone by since the board was made for me.

I have written about how I currently can’t ride it because my shoulder pops out and I’m not sure when I’ll have surgery to repair (besides also not being convinced that surgery will actually keep it in place). But we continued to take it down to the beach on many of our trips and used it in Chelle Summer photos. I also hoped for a very flat ocean day because I knew I could at least get out on the water with it and listen to the calm water lap against the balsa wood of the board.

Instead, we’ve made the board part of our home decor, resting it against a wall in our living room, and some people have said it looks like it belongs (exactly how I pictured it in my mind). We’ll use it for Chelle Summer photos, after all, it is part of my logo, and one day it will return to LA and the ocean.

However, the board is just a metaphor for a big change not just for me but for Greg, too. For more than ten years I stayed with Sam and Lois (adding Greg to the mix seven years ago) and it was like our “other” home. I call them my California parents and appreciated how much we felt not just welcomed but allowed to become in some way part of the fabric of their home and their lives in Palos Verdes.

Several months ago, my mom’s candy thermometer broke when I was making prickly pear candy. Quite honestly, I freaked out, thinking my world would end, that my hard candy wouldn’t be the same. But after trying the second new thermometer, the candy came out better than before. I felt as if I’d been kicked a reminder– sometimes you’re asked to give up something for something better.

I don’t want to say that anything could be better than the fun and times we had with Sam and Lois. I am experiencing a grief I can’t talk much about right now. There’s so much to this and they and their house– and the surfboard– are a huge part of who I am today.

Yet I also know that sometimes you must close doors to open new ones, bigger ones. The hardest part is trusting as you stand between those two doors waiting for it to happen. That’s where I am now.

Keep Looking Up– and Ahead

This is how this morning felt– like there was an endless staircase, only going up, ahead of me. I didn’t really want to run or swim or tackle the long list that awaits me. It’s January and, while I continue to step forward in my life, it’s a lot of work to keep my feet going forward rather than stopping when it feels like this month could be more endless than usual (why can’t it be 28 days like February?).

The losses keep coming– so many deaths, not many from COVID in my life, but from other causes or people who are, well, old and it’s their time to move on. I have the sense that many people aren’t supposed to travel with us in our different world.

We have all changed. The world has changed. I heard a quote yesterday that said, “We have to figure out how to stitch our past to our future.” We have to weave them together without many loved ones, without familiar routines that we miss, and the pieces of our lives we thought would always be there for us. While this virus feels endless, it will end, but everything will not be the same.

We have to find how to make it with this “new” world and “new” life. We need to find our happiness in new things while we’re still grieving all that we have lost. Obviously, seeing how people are struggling to cope, this isn’t an easy task. However, our focus should be on making do with the new rather than continuing to look back at what was and what won’t be again.

We all have choices. We can stay where we are, stuck and unhappy. Or we can grin and bear the discomfort and find a new path ahead of us. What we can’t always see is how great a new path can be. But we must take those first steps to find out.

Staying the Course

Today is the feast day of St. Elizabeth Seton and this reflection I found from Franciscan Media resonated with me:

"She had no extraordinary gifts.She was not a mystic or stigmatic. She did not prophesy or speak in tongues. She had two great devotions: abandonment to the will of God and an ardent love for the Blessed Sacrament. She wrote to a friend, Julia Scott, that she would prefer to exchange the world for a 'cave or a desert.' 'But God has given me a great deal to do, and I have always and hope always to prefer his will to every wish of my own.'"

After several irritations yesterday, I found myself looking for a way to forge myself forward while feeling a bit deflated. When I saw this reflection earlier this morning, I was quickly jolted back to where I need to be, the reminder that I have much to do, that God has much for me to do, and that I can’t let life get me down.

As we begin a new year, a good reminder for all of us. Don’t despair no matter what’s happening around you. Life is too short to get caught up in what keeps us down. After all, some of our greatest joy comes from accomplishing things that we don’t believe we’re capable of doing.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

While I didn’t get to to mention it yesterday on social media, my birthday is really about the Feast Day for Our Lady of Guadalupe.

I had some birthdays along the way that were awful for a variety of reasons. I wasn’t aware of the significance of Guadalupe until I came to New Mexico and slowly found her becoming part of my life. When I’m at church– even in another town or state where there might be a Guadalupe statue (because I travel mostly between New Mexico and California where she is part of the culture), I will light a candle and say a prayer to her.

I always ask her to guide and lead me, to help me with my writing, and to make sure I do the things I’m supposed to do. I believe life has larger, more significant things for me to do and I don’t want to miss them.

The inspiration is coming fast and furious and I’m holding on during the holidays, hoping I can harness it when everything quiets down in January. I’m starting to realize that it’s like Guadalupe is constantly whispering in my ears ideas and bringing me inspiration.

Yesterday, however, the day that we share, was about honoring the last year, the prayers, the inspirations, the accomplishments. While I continue to be inspired, it is important to take that day, that step back, and acknowledge all that’s happened. With her in my life, my birthday has become a more meaningful and spiritual day.

I did that with mass in the morning and a small dinner party with some of the more spiritual people in my life, especially Veronica who is from Mexico and knows more about Guadalupe than I ever will.

Thank you, Guadalupe. I look forward to what we’ll do in the year ahead with you continuing to lead me.

A Season of Giving to Others

I am very careful about what say and how I say it. I know how easily things can be misconstrued because each of us views the world differently.

I have been a little overwhelmed the last few weeks and I have about two weeks ahead of me before it eases up. That said, I want to clarify that a lot of good things are happening and I’m grateful I have events to take Chelle Summer items to sell at and that there are quite a few people glad to see me, have conversations with me, and come to my house for a party.

Still, it’s the season of Advent and this is the time of year when I feel closest to God. I was at the Norbertine Monastery Friday to meet with Fr. Gene for my spiritual direction and telling him that I’ve been struggling a bit with not taking enough time to enjoy the season. I always hear that we should step back during the holidays because it’s about Jesus, not commercialism.

The reality for me is that I have a small window that will shut in January for a few months and it will paralyze my income for a time. I’ve been making so much stuff over the pandemic and I want to share it with the world.

Fr. Gene reminded me that Advent is a season of giving to others and he asked, “Isn’t much of what you do for others?”

“Yes,” I said, thinking about everything I’ve made and the parties I host. “It’s my time to give back to everyone for the year. It’s like the culmination of a year of prayers.”

“You are an instrument of giving to others,” he added.

This brought me so much relief because I had felt that but somewhere inside me I had also doubted it. But what most people don’t know is that I talk to God, to Our Lady of Guadalupe, asking for guidance with my sewing, with my writing. They are part of everything I make that I share with others. I just needed someone to say it to me outside my head (a place that sometimes gets me in trouble!).

I am happy to give to others. I like knowing I’m sharing color, happiness, and inspiration. And I’m looking forward to seeing what next year brings. After a break. Maybe.

My Changing Orbit

This week I’ll begin to send our holiday cards, a rite of the season I enjoy and always have. My list has morphed and changed over the years as people have come in gone in my life, something I don’t like but I understand.

Growing up, I lived in a very transient corporate town where families tended to stay about five years and then the dads were transferred and the families moved on. Sometimes you kept in touch with people, sometimes you didn’t. And sometimes Facebook brought them back into your life (one of the positive things that social media has done).

But as someone who wrote about my sister’s suicide and traveled the world speaking about it, grief, and suicide prevention, I also have had quite a few people come and go from life. They needed to hear my words but sometimes they are ready to move on and unfriend me because they don’t need the reminder or my words or whatever it is I provided them. I have learned to accept that, that I am not always supposed to be part of the long journey of someone’s life.

This year, however, I am very aware of the many losses by death that are shrinking my Christmas card list. These people were usually older (none died from Covid) and if I didn’t have contact with their children, I often didn’t know about their deaths except through the obituaries (if they had one). Just a few days ago I found out someone I knew had died in August when her invitation to my Chelle Summer Holiday Preview was returned for lack of forwarding address. I somehow missed her obituary in August and, while she was 85 and we had a great conversation the spring, I am still sad that she has died.

I remind myself that she is happy– she is with her parents and her husband again. I know that when her husband died, she was sad but she told me she reminded herself that Corky was with God and that made her happy. I know that Sally is with God and she is happy.

Because the list is shrinking and I feel like a chunk of my life, particularly here in Albuquerque is gone (mostly relationships that hover around the time of my first marriage), I’m also grateful for the new friends I have made over the last year or so. The list is shrinking in one place but growing in another.

I also am reminded that there are stories for me to tell– that there was so much I learned and that these people taught me. My hope is that I can take that forward with me as my orbit morphs and changes and I try to go with it.

Letting go...to move forward

My candy thermometer broke last night as I was making a batch of prickly pear hard candy. Well, the truth is I don’t know when it broke. I was working on several things at once in my kitchen and the candy was near the end of my list. I got it started and watched the temperature climb– slowly as it does– and didn’t notice the glass top was missing until I was at 300 degrees and getting ready to pour the candy into the pan to cool.

While this might seem like a silly thing to blog about, the thermometer belonged to my mom and it was the only one I’ve used to make the prickly pear hard candy.

I don’t know why she had one– what she had made so she bought one– and I don’t think I ever used it until I started making prickly pear candy several years ago. I felt a little irritated, knowing I’d have to create another batch because I don’t know if the candy had glass or not, but mostly because that was a connection to Mom.

Yet something else occurred to me– perhaps this letting go was about more than using her candy thermometer. Instead, Mom is saying, “It got you started making the candy, but get a new one. You’re going to be making more candy and you need a new one.”

Many times we get upset that the objects that tie us to our loved ones get ruined, broken, or whatever. Yet those things happen so we can go forward, so we can let go, but mostly so we can let something greater come to us.

Positive Self Talk

When I started running when I was twelve, I had no idea there was a mental side to training. Quite honestly, I thought you pretty much just went out and ran as hard as you could, pushing yourself as much as you could, that it was all about your physical body and nothing else.

But I was lucky to be quickly introduced then and through my teen years to things like self talk and how much running is about telling yourself you can do it, you can push yourself to run faster, longer. And how you learn to let go of whatever else is distracting you, bothering you so that you can keep your focus on the race. It was about learning to let go of everything that had happened at school that day (and/or at home) and “staying the course” as it was often called.

I’ll be honest and say it took me a long time to master these skills and I still haven’t in many ways. However, I do know that I use them daily to push myself to accomplish whatever tasks are ahead of me and to keep me moving forward when sometimes it feels like it would be easier to sleep in, lounge on the couch, to give up.

Last week here in Albuquerque we had wind. Then we had more wind. and yet more wind. One would have thought it was spring with all the wind we had. I woke up at 4:00 am as I usually do and the last thing I wanted to do was go run in that wind. And then swim in the wind (the gym where I swim has an outdoor heated pool).

That’s when the self talk started. First I had to get myself out the door into the cold and wind with Lilly. Then when I returned home, it was Ash’s turn for his run. And, finally, my run without the dogs.

I patted myself on the back but I still had to get myself to the pool.

I always say that I run because I can do it out the front door– if I went to the gym to run I’m not sure I would ever have developed the routine that I have. It’s hard to get in the cold car and drive to the gym. But I kept reminding myself that I could do it, that I had swum in worse conditions. And that when I was done, how happy I’d be that I’d accomplished the full workout in less than ideal conditions.

The wind made the water feel a little cool; I used that as incentive to swim faster. I tried to think of other things to make the time pass and somehow I made it to my 1,150 yards and climbed out of the pool, knowing I could stay inside the rest of the day if I wanted to.

It wasn’t easy, but each time I do this kind of workout, it makes it easier the next time I’m faced with a challenge. I don’t know that any of us ever master positive self talk but I know it’s helped me accomplish a lot more in my life than if I hadn’t had those lessons. I was lucky to have them early.

A Little Bit of Effort Goes a Long Way

More Home

I have my doctorate in family studies and most people don’t know that it’s actually an outgrowth of what was home economics. We tend to think of home economics as a sewing or foods class we took in junior high/high school.

What we don’t think about is the history of home economics– the reasons it began, where world events took it, and where it landed today. That was in the book in the photo- The Secret History of Home Economics.

There are a lot of things I could say about the book– it was very well researched– but for me, it’s really about the continued reminder of the importance of home. And as technology advanced to make doing household chores less cumbersome (to some extent– I still don’t like emptying the dishwasher and folding laundry) and more women joined the workforce, it ultimately morphed into family studies, looking at how we can make families stronger.

For me though, I find the history interesting because I believe home is important. As I reflect back on my own experience with my mom, I see how hard she worked to create as much of a happy home for us (despite all efforts by my dad to squash it with his own unhappiness that kept him drinking). And as I’ve gone to so many estate sales, now realizing I’ve been going to them for almost twenty-five years, I also see that my mom was just like the other moms out there.

They kept the recipe booklets that came from the gas company or they mailed away to Jello for. There was often a stack of towels or sheets in the linen closet to be saved for special occasions that in their eyes never came along and thus were never used. There were bright patterns on the dish towels and the pot holders/hot pads in the kitchen for when they tired of making meals for their family, usually an ungrateful group who didn’t understand what a chore constant dinner creation could be.

While the book delves much deeper than this and while my doctorate isn’t related to cooking and housekeeping in any way, I can only think that because my mom worked so hard on our home, and because my friend Bonnie, who grew up in an “oil patch” family and then married an “oil patch” man, taught me that you need to sow your seeds no matter where you are planted, I’m aware of the importance of making our dwelling as much a happy and comfortable place as we can.

Home is where I work, making my home better is what inspires me, and the history of home– while not always pleasant when one reflects on the racism and sexism– is necessary to acknowledge as we continue to take it forward. It’s still about strengthening family units, however those might be defined (two humans and two dogs at my house). It’s ultimately about how we make our lives better, lessons not always taught in this present world we live in.

Peace in the Continued Sort of Chaos

While things are much calmer than they were a year ago, we are still processing much change around us. And the grief of the life and ways that are no longer part of our routines. There have been many losses, not just deaths, but in the way we do things and, for some people, the loss of relationships with people who have chosen different routes.

We don’t grieve overnight, get up the next morning, and forget what once was. Grief is a process and it’s a journey. Some people are afraid to venture out after so much time alone or without having the responsibility to leave home. Other people are still afraid of what virus lurks among us.

We have all lost something, many things. While not to the virus, I’ve had quite a few deaths of people in the outside orbit of my life. My sense of time has changed in a way I can’t explain– for some reason it feels like the days are spinning faster. I even said to Greg yesterday, “How did an hour go by?” when I realized the tomatillos I was roasting in the oven had been in there an hour already.

But we all also have had the opportunity to find peace within ourselves. Our days are never perfect commercials on television where everyone is happy and having a great time. There is alway a bumble, a hiccup, and usually a person causing havoc.

One thing we should be taking away from this pandemic experience is how to find peace inside ourselves. Have you done that? We can’t control the outside world but we can control our reactions to it. Some people remain reactive to it, others have learned to step away from the world (or just their phone which in many ways can be one in the same).

I’m finding I don’t want to be on my phone, not because of the chaos of the world, but because it keeps me from being more creative. I want to write, to sew, to paint, to draw. I don’t need to keep looking things up, checking the newsfeed. It all will be there later when I’m ready to share what I’ve created.

This morning there was a road runner on my front porch ledge, definitely a reminder of the peaceful pace as he stood and looked around, not in a hurry to go anywhere. Instead, he stood and surveyed the scene as if to stop and smell the roses.

This week's video: Supportive Actions

National Mental Health Month

As summer has transitioned to fall, I can see the light changing. The days grow shorter, but with all that hot weather behind us (and hopefully all the fires, too), the air and sky are crisp again here in the desert Southwest.

This month our focus is on mental health, a topic that has gotten much more awareness since the pandemic began. It’s boggling why we haven’t given it much attention before– while I believe in holistic health (mental/emotional, spiritual, and physical), making sure our minds are in a good place is key to accomplishing so much. And that includes guiding us into healthy relationships (and maintaining them).

While we always should have some focus on our mental health, this month I’m asking you to take a closer look at what helps keep you mentally healthy. Maybe you don’t know, maybe you know you need to work on your mental health but you don’t know how or what to do. Acknowledging work to do is the first step. After all, we all should take the time to reevaluating taking care of ourselves. Sometimes we need to make tweaks but we don’t do it because we think it’s easier to keep rolling along in our comfort zone.

I was fortunate to be made aware early of mental health because of my competitive running career, working with a sports psychologist. My interest in mental wellness predates my sister’s suicide by quite a few years.

My challenge to you for this month is to think about the things that help you feel mentally healthy. And if you feel your mental health needs work, create a series of steps to make changes. We are all works in progress and there is nothing wrong with stepping back and revisiting how you take care of your mental wellness.

And there is no better time to do it.

Saying Goodbye to AAS

I know this isn’t a great photo, there are other better photos of Jim Rogers and I, but in this one he’s handing the gavel to me, the handing of the presidential leadership from one president to another. It was one of the most significant and meaningful events in my life, becoming president of the American Association of Suicidology nearly ten years ago.

I have put off writing about this because I didn’t want it to interfere with any messages this month regarding National Suicide Prevention Month. And I waited to see how things would roll out, but I know now that I have severed my last ties with the organization that brought me so much, that gave me a new family, that connected me with people around the world, and was my professional home even before my first book was published. In fact, AAS led me to the publisher of my first book about sibling suicide grief.

But a leadership grab that quite honestly makes no sense to me has forced me to cut that final string and shut the door.

Most people will say that I severed ties a long time ago because I tried to walk away from the work. What many people don’t realize is that since my sister died, my parents have died also and it changed the “place” of my sister Denise’s death in my life. I felt it was time for me to do other things.

And there was something else– when I went back to a conference, this particular one in Phoenix several years ago, I was dismayed by what I saw. This was not the professional organization that I had joined back in 1999, a group of people who made me want to do better, to be better. Instead, I saw bashing of people and a lack of respect from one particular group to another. The leadership that had gotten us where we were was gone because the people who came in chose to blatantly disrespect others. And then the bylaws.

I didn’t tell many people what I saw; I thought maybe it was just me. But it turns out, what I saw was the beginning of the end and where we have landed today.

I grieved the loss of AAS then and I grieved it again in August. I would not be who I am or where I am without AAS. I’m glad I walked away when I did, that I chose wisely not to rejoin several years ago and watch the demise from a closer seat than I needed to sit.

I don’t like it; part of me is angry, knowing the work of so many that is gone. But I do understand that change happens and somewhere in this I’ll find my way forward. Like I always have.

And I hope everyone else does, too.

Taking Care of Ourselves