A Year Later

Feeling the healing. *Chapter 52*

Fifty-two weeks ago I was frustrated. I’d had my Substack for eight months, started off strong and then gradually let the motivation to keep up with it fade into oblivion. It was a pattern familiar to the point of repulsion. I was about to turn 40 and quite frankly too old wise to continue repeating a cycle akin to stuffing myself into a pair of way too tight jeans.

Waiting, by Bonnie Lynn Felton, lynnfelton.com

In my early 30s, seeking help after a toxic relationship, I started therapy. One of my main goals, apart from healing trauma, was to sort through my anxieties about “being an adult.” At that point, I’d let laundry pile up for months, I’d leave dishes in the sink and my bed unmade. It would take me days to clean my apartment and wash my clothes and the reality of it weighed heavily on my sense of self and confidence. This wasn’t who I wanted to be. In my mind, I was tidy, well-dressed and well-spoken, smart, funny and on top of my shit. Coming home to the mess, I began to see, was looking directly at the hurt and confusion that crowded my spirit and identity.

Week by week, session by session, shepherded by my angel therapist, Emily, I organized the chaos in my mind and, in turn, initiated the habit of making my bed every morning. I’d hear my grandmother, an insistent daily bed maker, with every pillow fluffed and sheet tucked, you must start the day with a tidy room. It made me proud to build a practice. Even with dirty clothes surrounding it, a smoothed-out duvet represented such huge progress. Doing dishes, straightening my desk, lugging a load of laundry down three flights to the building’s washers, became tangible healing.

As I was standing over the sink this afternoon, washing dishes from lunch, listening to a podcast I’d started while putting fresh sheets on our bed, it struck me, I have healed so much. To say you’ve moved on, gotten better, achieved xyz, is fine, but it is only surface. To feel it, deeply experience the appreciation of it, to know without a doubt that you are a new person, is something else entirely. A tenderness I don’t think I have the language to express. It’s moved me to the point of tears.

In 2020 I had the honor of being Arthur’s nanny. He is the son of one of my dearest soulmates, Kristin, and her wonderful husband, Jeremy. I’d just moved back to Georgia, had very few friends, no life outside of my childhood home and, like everyone, no idea when “normal” life would resume. Monday through Friday, I would wake up at 5:30am, meditate for 30 minutes, journal, take a walk with my dad and the dogs and drive into Atlanta to see Arthur. After his morning nap, I’d load him into the stroller and we would walk forever. At nine months old, he would look at everything with wonder, the sky, the trees, the giant blow-up dinosaurs the neighbors ALWAYS had inflated and I would wonder how in the world I would ever meet new people. We would walk and walk and walk.

On a walk to the gym¹ this week, it sunk in, a distinct visceral memory of my strolls with Arthur. Suddenly, I was looking back at a distant shore from which I’d departed. It hit me. I’ve reached dry land. I’m standing on the other side. Living a dream dreamt by my younger self. Breathing in hot summer air as I puffed up the hill put me right back behind Arthur’s stroller, sweating as I pushed to reach the top. Except now he is starting kindergarten and I am living with my boyfriend surrounded by friends I didn’t know existed four years ago. I felt it and I was overwhelmed with awe and gratitude.

For fifty two weeks I have published an essay every Monday. At this point, it’s like making my bed. Even if things around it don’t appear entirely how I envision my next-level self to look, I realize now, they probably never will. Habits build foundations strong enough to hold bigger ones. Routines become second nature and we forget to have reverence for how far we’ve come. We reach the top of a hill and there’s another one waiting. With more wisdom and grace, we keep climbing.

We practice. We grow. We heal.

It’s been a whole year. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading.

READING

Upon a recommendation from reader, JP (thank you!!), I have begun Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo. I’m just at the beginning but so far, it flows like poetry.

WATCHING

A lot of YouTube. I started posting my cooking videos over there just for the hell of it and it’s been totally wild to see how a video can (mildly) take off depending on how much engagement it gets. I GOT MY FIRST HATER!!!

And then 300 views directly after. Anyway, have fallen down Vlog wormholes this week from my nostalgic favorites like Zoe Sugg and Tanya Burr.

BAKING

A pan of focaccia to serve as refreshment for our first DeeJay’s cooking class! Still the very best focaccia recipe I have ever found and so freaking easy.

As you can see, I’ve given my page a little facelift to celebrate reaching a milestone! (Canva may be my favorite place on the Internet next to Substack.) Along with some new fun graphics, I will also be adding a bi-weekly column to my posting schedule called Sweet Tea Talks. For Paid Subscribers, every other Wednesday, I will bring you what I have decided to call, “light-hearted porch gossip.” Up first, a more in-depth discussion on the mindset shifts I made before I met my boyfriend, Alan. You can also look forward to chats about how to act in a restaurant and the feelings associated with being asked if you’re pregnant when you most certainly are NOT. I’m excited to get more intimate, casual and funny with y’all.

Also for Paid Subscribers, I’ve been working on a small cookbook called, Pretty Easy, as a token of my appreciation. Should be coming to your inboxes late September.

For everyone, starting back in the Fall, you can expect as usual, a Monday essay, one cooking video and one podcast a month.

I’m incredibly excited to start a fresh new year of posting and with such deep gratitude, I thank you for being here. A year truly flies by, kinda scary honestly, but I am so ready and pumped for more growth.

I hope you are having a wonderful close to your Summer. I’ll talk to you next week. I am, as always, sending you my love.

1. I’ve been going to my friend Alicia’s apartment building and using their gym, best life hack of all time…find apartment building with gym…pretend you live there…get fit.