I had a near-death experience at 25. It resulted in a couple of emergency surgeries, a giant scar across my belly, and ongoing issues with my breathing. I have had 15 surgeries since. Add a couple of pregnancies (totally worth it), a car accident (totally not worth it), some caregiving, and you have a recipe for varsity-level depletion.

But I didn’t know. I just didn’t know. Because I couldn’t remember feeling good.

I am now 50. This means half of my life, and all of my children’s lives, has been a slow crawl, a lot of energy management, surges of output and creativity, tempered by surgeries and recoveries. And so much work to accept what was. To still create a great life, some amazing businesses, a vast network of the most amazing friends, and have a second epic childhood with my kids. My adult life has been filled with magic and has cost every bit of energy I could muster. Underwater is an understatement.

Half of my life. Half full? Half empty? Honestly, I have experienced moments of feeling both. I like to believe my life half full. I don’t know. I do know I feel great right now. It is miraculous. One of the most shocking things about this newfound vitality is realizing how long I have not felt healthy. How life-shaping health is, good or bad.

I recently re-read a piece I had written about the original experience at 25. I think about my mom watching her once energetic kid get progressively sicker, sliced up, flatlined, returned, and eventually discharged. My oldest is almost 24. I cannot imagine her terror.

Below is “Guts,” the story of my near-death experience and the beginning of it all, for paid subscribers from my still-in-progress memoir, “The Mink Pen.” This piece was originally published in “We Leave The Flowers Where They Are,” an anthology curated, edited, and published by the one and only Richard Fifield.

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You guys. You guys. YOU GUYS.

Can you hear me? If you were here, you could, because I HAVE A VOICE.

I had surgery a couple of weeks ago— surgery number 15 on the airway, number 3 for the vocal cords. Some are better than others. But for some reason this time, wow. It all worked. I feel and sound fantastic. My voice is a little rough, but it is so, so, so much better. Inflection. Volume. Tone. I haven’t worn my speaker in weeks. I don’t even pack it around with me. Poor little neglected speaker, it is probably out of charge. But I am not. Full force.

None of it is permanent, but I don’t care. The airway will last about a year. The voice will last 4-6 months. This doesn’t even bum me right now out because I never dreamt I would feel this good again. I am not going to waste it wishing for later. I. Will. Take. It.

I will use this window to catch up with everyone. To record my voice in a voice bank, which is actually a pretty amazing concept, where if I ever need to have a fully augmented robot voice assist, it would be my voice. So I am banking.

Banking on this moment. Banking on the friends who let me text them for the last 18 months while I avoided talking, or those who tolerated my gnarly sound. Banking on my family and telling them I love them over and over and over. Banking on the radio in my car, because I really have missed singing along.

Do everything you can for your own health. The best way to love anyone else is to prioritize yourself. This sounds so cliché, but good lord, it is true. It has been work. All caps WORK. And nothing is guaranteed. There is no gold star, extra credit, deserving, workaround, chute, ladder, or secret door. Just work without any promise at all. I am a very lucky human right now. And a very healthy patient. And a very, very happy girl.

So I sing along before it’s gone. The whole song. The ten-minute version. Turn it up.

The only way out is through— that is what we say on the boat when the weather sucks. Stopping doesn’t help; in fact, that is the worst thing to do. At a minimum, get to a calm spot to anchor. Go.

And so the last year and a half, since my accident, I just kept thinking, the only way out is through. The only way out is through. But there was no direction, no motor, and no voice. I had more than a few days of tossing in the towel. Waving the flag. Hanging my head. Tucking my tail. All the crappy cliches that basically mean, “I give up.”

But a little voice in my head kept pushing. Go. Crawl if you must. Go anywhere. Do anything. Just don’t stop. So I went to the Doctor. The scans. The tests. Physical therapy. Talk therapy. Eye doctors. ENTS. Surgeries. Injections. Primary care. New primary care. Fuck it, I am my own primary care. Chiropractors. Massage. A full calendar of appointments. Like it was my job. My expensive, discouraging, oftentimes painful job.

Thank god for the friends.

One day, I whispered to a girlfriend, “I am out of resilience,” a live wire true thing to admit. She just shrugged and said, “You will find something else.” And all of a sudden, I had permission to just move forward, not try to go back to my old tools, tricks, and hacks. She didn’t try to talk me into a feeling. She didn’t remind me of days gone by. She just shrugged. So I did too. Such a remarkable, simple, perfect, powerful gift. Shrug.

A beloved buddy who had a long-time concussion a couple of years ago asked me, “What qualities do you need to cultivate if this is permanent?” and again, the gift of releasing the idea of getting back to my old self.

I had another friend who I would text, “I left the house,” and she would text back encouragement, celebrating the micro wins. I got us each a tote bag that said “Things happen when you leave the house” and wore it everywhere.

Somewhere in late spring, I started working again, a perfect project, only 20 hours a month, in town, with a team I adore, doing work I believe in. Twenty hours a month is not a lot of time, but it felt like a lifeline, and at the time, it was a stretch between all the appointments. This work was its own form of medicine. I will do an entire post about it.

I am thrilled to report that I now physically feel better than I have in years. Like a superstitious baseball player putting on the right sock first, then a secret handshake, don’t jinx the winning streak. I don’t know exactly which modality, supplement, exercise, or sleight of hand is working, so I am deeply attached to them all. Don’t jinx this.

My voice still sucks. It is a bummer. It is more tiring than I want it to be. It has some limits I keep bumping into, much to my chagrin. But my health, oh Lordy, I can honestly say I did not ever expect it to recover, and it did. In spades. I want to do all the things.

Energy is precious and precarious, and basically the only thing that matters. I am determined not to waste it. In fact, I am not like my old self. I am much better. Every day I make art. Pottery. I write. I am in a dance show. I move my body. I sleep like a champ. I dream vivid dreams of people I miss, full of shenanigans and impossible plots. I refuse to “kill time,” so I have set very small limits for social media. Instead, when I want a connection, I open my Photos app, and I text old pictures to friends, stirring up memories and stories. I send my kids photos of their childhood, our beautiful story together. I am weaving then and now into something stronger. I love it, real connection and social media at its finest. Bonus: No ads.

The only way out is through, but sometimes the only way through is crawling. But you know what? Crawling works.

I don’t trust people who don’t have a favorite pen. Where is your attention? Do you not notice when something small makes the ordinary task into a joy?

Lately, I have been drastically limiting my social media, writing in notebooks, reading paperback books, and using other tangible, analogue tools to cope with anxiety and with opportunity. The world is a lot, and my best role is creation, not consumption, so for me, the pen is mightier than the screen. I was in a bookstore (yay, bookstores!) recently, buying books and a stack of spiral notebooks (yay, paper! yay spiral pads that lay flat! yay blue lines! yay doodles), when, lo and behold, on the checkout counter was a rack of Le Pens. My mother’s favorite pen was the Le Pen, a dainty, smooth, flowing micro-felt-tip pen. Precise. Acid-free for her art. I don’t think I have seen one in years. I had forgotten this small detail about my mother. Her pens. Red, blue, black, lilac, turquoise. They are so small and thin, perfect for my little, raccoon-like hands. I bought one in every color.

And as I write—for work as an impact producer (storytelling, group insights, facilitation, culture, community), for lists, for messages to my family on post-it notes, to finish my book, the things I need to remember in the middle of the night, the love notes, the reminders— I am using my Le Pens. And there she is, my rascally, creative, magical mom, in my raccoon hands. How can something so insignificant matter so much? This tiny, tiny pen is making a huge difference. I feel stronger. I feel like I did before my life life-ed me, before the car hit me, before I was sick, before we derailed democracy, before she was gone. The little lilac one makes me the strongest.

I know a pen is not going to fix everything broken, in or around me, but I think that anything that moves the needle, even a smidge, even just the width of a fine-point pen, is worth holding onto. Worth working with. Worth wielding.

I am not one for resolutions. I am one for intention.

Every year, I pick a word of the year on my birthday, a compass heading, a reset button, an arrival, and a destination all in one word. I love the process of finding the right word (oh, how I love the right words), especially the challenge of finding one that is adaptable to mean enough distinct things to be helpful in all kinds of circumstances.
A couple of years ago, the word was MAKE; last year, it was prophetically VOICE, although CRASH would have been a strong contender. This year I have picked…. (drumroll here)

ALLOW

A couple of weeks in, ALLOW is proving to be a word well worth committing to.

People’s plans change? ALLOW.

Feeling myself getting worked up about someone else’s choices? ALLOW.

Feeling worked up about my own? ALLOW

Longing for joy? ALLOW

Stifling my sadness? ALLOW.

Missing my mom? ALLOW.

An opportunity comes along. ALLOW.

My kids are in their 20s, and ALLOW is the perfect way to describe parenting emerging adults. And being married. And being a friend. And menopause. And car crashes. And my voice issues.

And it works in reverse, which makes it an especially strong word of the year. There are plenty of things NOT to ALLOW in times such as these. So much to stand up for, stand against, stand with. All with determining what we will and will not ALLOW at the center of deciding where and how to act.

This year I am 50. I am in love with this milestone. When I was 25, I was very sick, near-death experience level sick. (That is a whole story and a whole chapter in my book.) I have spent the last 25 years dealing with fallout from that illness while simultaneously creating an amazing, beautiful, wild ride of a life. Starting borrowed time at 25 basically means my entire adult life has been nothing short of a bucket list.

Now I am fifty years old. One down, two to go. Because 150 years seems like just the right amount of time to do all the things, with all the people, in all the places, this bucket list is long and still growing.

All that to say, I am tired—and inspired. And feel like this 50th birthday might ALLOW for something new, a softer touch with my life, and a lot more room for grace.

ALLOW might need to be my next tattoo.

For the next 50-100 years, I am allowing. I hope you are too.

Several months ago, my speech pathologist suggested I contact campus disability services to try out some adaptive equipment for my voice. I was decidedly NOT ready to hear that. I didn’t want to need anything, which, as we all know, is decidedly NOT the same thing as not actually needing anything.

But every day, I grew more frustrated, isolated, and entrenched in my thinking.

“I can’t talk.”

(Not true, I can, it is just very quiet and rough.)

“I will never meet anyone new again.”

(This seemed the most possible and also the most impossible.)

“How will I maintain the connections I do have?”

(I underestimated the foundations.)

And the real kicker, “My kids are grown. How will I keep that relationship?”

(This turned my heart inside out in the most painful of unsaid fears.)

We would try to go to a dinner party, a bust, too many conversations at the same time. At the store, “Are you sick?” Even at home, if someone walked away while talking, my voice couldn’t follow. I was participating less and less. All of the unsaid things were choking me in an entirely different way.

I had signed up to attend HATCH in November, thinking I would be better a full year after the accident. But I wasn’t. I even begged my way into a surgery to inject my vocal cords to try to make them work better, but nope. I felt like I was aboard a pending train wreck. I know how much talking happens at events, and the entire premise of HATCH is to accelerate relationships. How could I even begin to help, add value, connect?

Dear friends/my doctor had us for a quiet dinner so that I could hang in the conversation. It was incredible. I felt less lonely than I had in ages. I was like a junkie and stayed too late because I was connecting.

I would do anything for this feeling.

Acceptance really is a beast. The amazing writer Anne Lamott wrote about acceptance as a stray cat, scratching at the door, yowling to come in, wearing her down until she eventually said, “Fuck it, come in.” My acceptance was the opposite, I was locked inside, yowling to be let out, until finally I said, “Fuck it, plug me in.”

I picked up a whistle for emergencies, a harmonica so I could cheer people on, and went to disability services on campus, where they rent adaptive equipment, and picked up a personal amplifier. I packed a small humidifier, a heating pad, and enough lozenges to survive a winter. Overpacked and nervous I headed to Mexico City.

On the flight, I introduced myself to the HATCH cohort on WhatsApp and explained that my voice wasn’t working properly, that it didn’t hurt, and that I wanted to connect. Please, please, please.

The first night I tried the amplifier. It is a black speaker and a headset mic. I looked like a tour guide, or like I was vogue-ing in Rhythm Nation. I felt so awkward and wired up. But I also was heard. I could joke, laugh, and participate.

I could talk.
I met so many new people.
Old friends were there and close, and I could hug them and be heard.

Eventually, everyone got used to it, except for the one person on the last day who admitted they had spent the entire week thinking I was the chillest stage manager in the world, headsetted up but totally unfazed by any of the technical difficulties on stage. Jokingly, I was referred to as the tour guide.

So follow me, the tour starts here: Pushback, breakdown, accept, amplify, connect. Find yourself here in this lovely, loving world. Welcome to the new wired, mic-ed up me.

*****************
Thanks to everyone at HATCH MX25. Even if I had the words to say how much your connection meant to me, there is no amplifier loud enough.

Tour guide, at your service.

In high school, I was passionate about ceramics. It was as close as I ever got to rebelling against my mom— choosing to do 3D art instead of painting.

I loved the pottery studio at the back of the school, filled with wheels, kilns, and buckets of glaze. I loved the long-haired, kind-eyed, enthusiastic teacher who truly saw and celebrated each kid and cup. I loved the pack of art kids clad in ‘90s grunge jeans, flannels, and Doc Martens caked in clay. But mostly I loved the process.

Centering the clay is the crux of throwing pots. If it isn’t done properly, nothing really works. I had to be so present and tuned in. If I pushed too hard, off-center. If I got distracted, off-center. Getting frustrated only made it worse. I had to surrender and try again. Some days it was absolutely impossible.

I’ve started ceramics again in the last couple of years, and the visceral muscle memory is wild. I am 17 again, a pixie mixing glazes and wielding torches and making mud into mugs and goblets. My hands know exactly what to do — these motions I’ve done countless times, so long ago. If I think at all, I mess up. I just have to let my hands do what they know.

After my accident, I’ve continued to hold my pottery studio rental space each month, thinking I would return to this practice of time travel and tactile art making. At first, it was pain that kept me from going. Then my wonky eyes were incapable of focusing on the spinning wheel. But now, after 10 months and lots of recovering, I’ve started going again regularly.

The best cure for empty nesting is a mix of friends, hobbies, and just leaving the damn house. Ceramics is good because once you have something in the process, you have to keep going. If it dries out, it’s over. Each day, another step, and at the end, something useful and beautiful to show for it. Recovering from my accident has provided little opportunity to show accomplishment despite a mountain of effort and time.

The best part of the pottery studio is that I don’t have to talk. Especially not about talking. No one asks if I’m sick, if I’ve lost my voice, or what’s wrong. No one points out, “your voice sounds terrible,” as if I don’t already know. I just put on my headphones, focus on centering, and stay silent.

Lately, I’m not just throwing pots. At home, I have taken to throwing things out of frustration. When trying to interject. Or advocate. To be listened to. It feels so good to just make noise. I completely understand toddlers throwing tantrums because they don’t have words. Sometimes I want to throw everything I can across the room, crash bang boom. It is shocking and absurd and oh so very very loud.

I am running out of resilience.

If I push too hard, off-center. If I get distracted, off-center. Getting frustrated only makes it worse. I can only surrender and try again. Some days it is absolutely impossible.

But, some days, it is.

Today at the studio, I could center the clay every time. Up, down, and there it is, centered. This gives me hope and recharges my fragile resilience a bit. If I can center there, perhaps I can recenter everywhere.

Over the summer, a group of gal pals and I started playing Rummikub. Rummikub is like a mash-up of rummy, majong, and dominoes, and Bananagrams. It is relatively simple, requires just enough focus to stay present, feels like a brain exercise, and is a deliciously light social lift. Like social sorbet.

I hadn’t played since I was ten with my grandparents in Boca Raton, sitting in their formal dining room, click-clacking the tiles and playing a week-long tally of scores and eating popovers.

Now I gather with friends for an hour or two, play a few rounds. Snack on small nibbles out of small bowls. Some days we just show up and play. On a good day, we also wear a lot of old lady jewelry and mumus because it just seems right. Dress for the day you want to have! I now have a Rummikub go-bag, a sparkling tote of baubles, polyester, and sunglasses big enough to make Iris Apfel proud.

Note: I do not have the emergency go-bag I keep saying I need, you know, the one with practical items like flashlights, passports, and water. Stuff to survive an earthquake or fire or emergency. This is still on the to-do list where it has been for years. The Rummikube go-bag happened the second I thought of it. Poof. Packed. Clearly, my motivation skews to more joy, less fear. Perhaps this is more important than I thought.

Actually, it has become important. I am tentatively and tenderly welcoming my new chapter of empty nesting, and because my husband travels extensively for work, a truly empty house. It is simultaneously lovely and lonely. The silence, space, and stillness are shocking. I feel the entire range of emotions from grief to glimmers of excitement about what might be next and the space to create it. And just about when I find my groove, they all come home for a flurry of food, socks, and activity. I fall for it every time, this sleight of hand that feels like it will last, but it doesn’t. I am a sucker for nostalgia.

The empty house was a big, deep sad-land for a while. I would realize the sun had gone down only when I would look up from my soul sucking screen and notice that I was sitting in the dark and had forgotten to eat dinner. Clearly, this state of the blues is not sustainable or healthy. The best cure for my depression— friends. The hardest when I am depressed—people. Such a trap.

Enter Rummikub. Easy. Finite. There are rules. We laugh. We leave.

Last week I was preemptive to my depression as my house cleared out again and sent out an “Emergency Rummikub” text explaining I just needed to fill my schedule. This is not a call for help I ever expected to send, but it made sense to all involved. It is like the sorbet of emergencies.

Now I get that Rummikub is not going to solve the complex times we live in. But it can offer a dose of simplicity to balance my more current state of heartache. And I do believe community and relationships will always sit at the center of solutions and change. So whatever that looks like today, I will take it.

Fun fact— in writing this story, I discovered that Rummikub is, in fact, cool and there is a group in LA who throws RummiKlub parties as major fundraisers at swanky clubs. Who knew? Our grandparents, that’s who.

I was recently asked to write a letter to my 18-year-old self for a lovely young woman, Eliana, on her 18th birthday. I thought about how my aunt once told me the only job for kids 18-25 is to try stuff, change their minds, switch plans, flop, reset enough times that they come out of that phase with a long list of things they know they do NOT want. This way, every try or dead end is celebrated as one more thing you now know, rather than feeling like a failure— high five! That didn’t work out? Now you know! Figuring out what you DO want or what your purpose is all comes later. I am turning 50 this year and feel like I need to take another pass at my list.

Below is what I wrote:

****

Oh my 18-year-old self

I’ve so much to tell you

From this distance I shout too loud

Hold yourself tightly but hold life lightly

But mostly I want to pull you close

Whisper in your ear

The way little girls whisper secrets or

Shy children whisper to their parents

Hand cupped

I would whisper this

Shhhhhh

Don’t worry or fuss

You are doing this section of Not Knowing exactly right

There is plenty of time for knowing

and frankly knowing isn’t all it’s cracked up to be

Your only job for the next few years is to

try things

and build a list of all the things you

do

NOT

want

Yes

The I Don’t Want List

This list will help guide you for your entire life

But the only way to build it is to try

Those experiences just add to your list

making each learning and restarting a success

The secret in your ear is

there is no such thing as failures or false starts or flops

The list looks like

I don’t want to learn like this…

I don’t want to live here or there…

I don’t want to listen to that advice again…

I don’t want to love like that…

The longer the list, the better.

Celebrate it all

There is one more thing you now understand

Add it to the list.

Because my dear

I look at my I Don’t Want List

Built when I was 18, 20, 22

hard won through a lot of doing what might have been considered flops

I can see the choices that came directly from what I learned

about what I do not want

Turned out to be the only times in my life where

I got exactly what I wanted

Then I would switch to your other ear and sheepishly confess to my 18-year-old self

I have spent my entire life trying to come back to you.

Your confidence

Your ability to leap

Your beauty and your bravery

All the things you don’t know yet

I want to swim the impossible upstream until I land back in the pool of 18

With the clearest calmest deepest waters cool and alive on my skin

I would kiss her forehead

hold eye contact for 18 full seconds

and whisper one last thing

Do not rush downriver

****

My favorite game as a kid was called Bigger and Better. I seriously doubt it’s still being played by roving packs of unsupervised kids today. The game started with two teams, each given something small and ordinary—like a paperclip or a pen. Then, for an hour, you’d run around asking strangers to trade it for something “bigger and better.” At the end of the hour, both teams would return to compare final objects and see who had traded up the most.

One time we returned after 5 trades pushing an old car. Another time it was a couch. There were a lot of paths to take in Bigger and Better. Sometimes it was only a few long-winded trades, others we dealt in speed and volume. You had to work together and make a team. Who was the smoothest talker in the group? Who was the muscle to move the damn thing down the road? Who could decide which houses to hit up or not— did they have a lot of stuff? Were they willing partners? Would they be inspired or annoyed? Did they need or want what we had? What was the strategy? Bigger and Better might be the closest I ever got to business school.

I loved the unknown. The optimism required. The scramble. The lightness in which we held each object knowing it was about to be traded. The teamwork. The competition. Most of all I loved the possibility. What would happen next? Bigger and better could be anything, anything at all.

I often think about this trade-up game, and it is clear as I have gotten older I seem to have slid into more of a trade-off game. Everything costs something. Time, energy, money, one opportunity means saying no to another, roads not taken. It is no longer asking for something bigger and better. It is a lot more asking “how?”

My dear friend Lynn Casey calls them the cursed hows— when logistics block imagination. Purpose traded for impossibility. Limits set the course. Boo. I am tired of my own limited thinking, health bullshit, protocol, and departments of tradeoffs costing us what connects communities.

Confession. Every month or so I buy a lottery ticket*. I do this for one of two reasons. One— my mom loved the lottery, so sometimes when I acutely miss her I buy a ticket. Some people see their loved ones in sparkles on the ocean, or birds, butterflies, feathers. My mom shows up in lottery tickets. The second reason is that it is a cheap, fast shortcut from feeling stuck to getting back to a mindset of possibility. It is also clarifying to ask myself if I won what would I do? Would I keep the job? Start something new? Where would I invest? Give? Work? Rest? What would I do first? And the wildly revealing question: Who would I tell?

So I trade a couple of bucks to unstuck myself and my mindset, answer some big questions, and push myself out of the “cursed hows”. That isn’t so bad. But I want trade-UPs, not trade-OFFs.

I want to play my life-sized game of Bigger and Better. For me, of course it starts with a pen. So I write. A newsletter. A chapter. A book. A screenplay. Another. Trade UP. Only UP. UP UP UP. Trade-offs get a giant buzzer sound from a failed move on a game show. XXXXXXXXxxxxx. Trade-ups get a DING DING DING. Trade up or not at all. What could be bigger and better than that?

*(I KNOW the lottery is not a smart financial move. It is not my intention. Thanks.)

When my sons were little, we got through every week in a style akin to an avalanche. Mondays felt like we had an entire week to fit everything in, explore a land of possibility. As the week went on we built up speed and stuff, more and more momentum, less and less control. And by Friday someone, or everyone, (including me) would be in tears.

One Friday, when someone was maxed out (including me) I declared, “On Fridays, we cry.”

Once that pattern became clear it was comforting to know what to expect. It was just the end of the week, not the end of the world. We could look ahead to soften the crash landing. Order take out food. Watch a movie. Make no plans.

Of course they got older, and Fridays filled up with activities, friends, sports, rehearsals. But still more often than not someone would be melting down (including me) and right when we thought something was really wrong, I would realize, ooooh, it is FRIDAY. Just let it be ok to not be ok, forgive the grumpiness, give space for the grace.

Just last week, one of my now-adult sons was stuck in a funk. And right about when I started to feel their feelings and go into a spin of solving, I remembered—it was Friday.

I can just let Friday be Friday. I can soften the edges that will give, leave the rest. I can let it not be ok. I don’t have to feel their feelings, or get on the rollercoaster.

I am trying to give this same space to myself— the avalanche of the week now looks like the news, insurance bullshit, appointments, bills, menopause, my insistence of carrying other people’s stress, etc. By the end of the week it is still just too much. Crash. It is time for some takeout, forgiveness, and grace (including me.)

——

(Note: this post was written on a Monday obvi)

Sometimes I feel like my entire family is taking a gap year. Between jobs. Between opportunities. Between caregiving for children and aging parents. Between a car accident and normal life.

But this chasm seems bigger than us. The gap between people, parties, systems. The gap between truths. The gap between incomes, wealth, needs. The gap between who we say we are and how we behave. The gap between all that is changing and where we eventually will land.

What will be left behind when the tide goes out? There seems to be very little listening, learning, or letting the impacts of one event clarify before starting the next.

Destruction disguised as disruption.

A friend once told me the only difference between the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote was that the coyote looked down. The Roadrunner zoomed across the chasms, followed by the coyote but midway, mid-air, the coyote froze, glanced into the abyss, gulped, and plummeted down— Boom. Splat. The takeaway: don’t freeze, eyes up, keep going, meep-meep!

I remember being a little kid in swim lessons. The hot puddles on the cement. My fingers and toes like prunes. Cinnamon bears from the vending machine. My mom on the deck smelling like Coppertone. How much I hated putting my face in the water. Blowing bubbles, kicking everywhere, flailing. The first time we swam across the pool unaided, I was afraid of hitting the wall head on so I stopped too soon. I remember my hands reaching out but not quite touching the edge. Instantly, I panicked even though I could see how close I was to safety, I couldn’t reach it. I had misjudged the gap between swimming across and holding on. I feel like that now— coming up a bit short, losing momentum, and needing to figure out some way to move forward.

The swim instructor grabbed my hands and pulled me the rest of the way, where I clung to the scratchy cement like a baby. I hadn’t been in any danger but I was deeply embarrassed. Later that summer, when we were supposed to jump off of the diving board for the first time, I remembered that moment of embarrassment and overcompensated by diving instead of jumping. This became a signature move in my life. Headfirst into the water, all the way to the wall. Anything worth doing is worth overdoing.

I am coming back to myself. Healing and resurfacing. Less grasping, more diving. Surfacing from a fog into a new landscape and world order. The gap is much bigger than I expected.

I still don’t quite know where the splashing stops and the wall starts. I still hate putting my face in the water. I still am a terrible swimmer. I still will only dive in.

Hoping you are holding on, head first, head up, still swimming. To your edges. To each other. This chasm is the deep end, my friends. Meep.

I don’t do New Year’s resolutions. Not my jam. But I always choose a word of the year—one word to snap me back when I drift, one word to keep my choices aligned with a larger intention. A couple of years ago, it was MAKE.

This year, I wasn’t sure I had it in me to care—between the car crash, the nerve damage, the healing, the election—I felt knocked off track, smacked out of my vibrant life and into something smaller, stiller, sepia. A north star doesn’t matter on a cloudy, foggy night.

I usually make a list of possibilities and thoughtfully mull them over, chewing on them, seeing how far they stretch into different meanings to find the one I want. So many words to choose from. This year, I couldn’t even make a list. I felt bitter because I miss people. My normal life. I miss words. As tempting as it was, I didn’t want my 2025 word to be BITTER. That is not the compass heading I need. And it is changing every week as I slowly recover.

I can now have a conversation if the room is quiet. I can Zoom and talk on the phone again, which reopens my world to my friends far away (I missed you). I am basically useless in a restaurant or if music is playing. Loud fans are the worst. I have learned a lot about being quiet. A lot about listening—and especially listeners. Fun fact: the best listeners all happen to wear hearing aids. They understand the effort, the focus. They know how precious words are. They understand what is lost when a word cannot be heard.

Now that I don’t have the vocal budget to spend frivolously, I realize how much I used to talk. Now, I let so many questions, responses, anecdotes just float through me, unsaid, because they just don’t matter. Just noise. The world and the news are even noisier. Where to start? How to be loud enough to even matter?

In college, my favorite classes were all about India. I had no personal connection to the subject—in fact, growing up in Alaska and Montana was about as far away from India as I could be. But the teacher was one of those teachers you love and follow from class to class, and Indian Civilization, History, and Humanities were his specialty, so I took them all. One highlight was reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. It was an incredible accompaniment to studying the history of postcolonial India (and just a fantastic standalone read). One of the characters’ noses continues to drip, grow, and overtake his face, mirroring the expansion of corruption and power. Since reading that book, I wonder about everything as an allegory for the world.

So what does this accident mean? These slow-healing nerves? This patience I have to cultivate? I now spend a lot of time with speech therapists and voice specialists. This injury is one giant metaphor. Amplify. Project. Resonance. Vibration.

Without making a list at all, my word was clear: VOICE.

My own physical voice. Sitting close to those I love so they can hear me. Closer, right in their ear. Making sure I have eye contact so we can gesture. Intentionally turning down the other noise.

Amplification. My writing. This newsletter. Other voices.

My new love, listening. Whose voices do I hear? Who’s voice is missing? Who is loudest? Who isn’t being heard despite trying? How much of that is our lack of listening? How much of that is our own projection?

Do I feel the vibration? The many, many other ways to express ourselves, to resonate.

Art. Dance. Protest. Song. Silence. VOICE.

A couple of years ago, at the height of grief I wrote about how aesthetic is the opposite of anesthetic— a choice between seeking either numbness or beauty. And here we are again, my friends. The deluge of news makes me want to both shut down and go wild with action. The clash of emotion and information renders me numb. Where to even begin?

But here is the thing. Since my car accident I’ve been numb— quite literally. Half of my head feels like styrofoam. This causes a delay in my vision and a gap in my vocal cords, so they don’t fully close. My voice remains so much quieter. It’s all one big metaphor, as it often is. I’m numb, unable to see clearly, and have to work extra hard just to be heard. The double crash of car accident and election stopped me in my tracks.

I was missing my life, my work, and my friends. But I wasn’t about to miss a trip to Cuba to see our youngest son perform with the incredible Ballet Beyond Borders (BBB). He would be dancing almost 30 times, and we’d have the chance to reconnect with the ever-growing BBB family of dancers — from Cuba, Italy, Romania, South Africa, Mexico, Brazil, Canada, China, and across the US, including Native American dancers, and more. It wasn’t the ideal time for my physical health, but it was the perfect timing for my emotional, mental, and social well-being.

There is never a wrong time for art.

It was an avalanche of aesthetics — dancing everywhere all the time. Dancers who seem like little kids goofing and giggling, then step on stage and transform in to beasts, swans, storms, and stories. The heartbeat of Cuba is the clave drum— music is like wind, it simply swirls around you, down dirty streets, out of crumbling doorways, from instruments that are barely held together, out of vintage cars from a time long past. In all of the beauty, there is also so much broken or unavailable.

Cuba is a giant dose of perspective, the impact of politics and policies on people, and of the undeniable power of the arts. Ballet Beyond Borders partnered with Cuban dance school/company Lizt Alfonzo Dance Cuba. With over 1000 students located in old Habana we could see firsthand how dance gave opportunity, structure, story, and community.

Ballet Beyond Borders is true grassroots global impact— creating life changing opportunities for individual dancers, all the while connecting cultures and communities to a global movement through the universal language of dance. It is personal, profound, and powerful. The change it creates is tangible and needed now more than ever.

A couple of years ago I was in Italy for another BBB adventure when back home in the US it felt as though our systems were crumbling. I looked around Rome and thought of all of the history— the empires, the falls, the post-enlightenment dark ages, the wars. I asked our host how to hold such history. He told me America is still a toddler. And that the way forward when times are hard is to “Make art. And then make dinner last longer.”

And that is what Cuba did for me— moved me forward with art and perspective and love. And what Ballet Beyond Borders does best— make art with people from so many different places, beliefs, and stories and then gather around a table to laugh, cry, share, and dance. Make dinner last longer.

There will be a BBB show in Missoula on Feb 15th at the Westside Theater (evening and matinee) with new work co-created by some of the returning dancers. So many of the BBB dancers have gone on to professional careers or trainee programs, and many are reuniting for this show. It will be all kinds of genres of dance, and many new works co-created by the dancers themselves. It is the start of another new chapter for BBB. Join if you can, and if you can’t, please consider donating to BBB (or other art organizations) because sometimes the difference we can make is to chose beauty over numbness, ballet beyond borders.

Video “Manifest”— performed by BBB dancers, Dubai World Expo 2021. Choreographed by Alina Ciceo from Romania.

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Coming back to yourself is a bit like recovering from frostbite—it must go slowly to be safe. Relief feels like a promise made with questionable reliability. Hurting is involved. Hope is required.

One day in physical therapy, my PT—someone I’ve known for ages—placed her hands gently on the sides of my face, looked into my eyes, and said, “There you are, Peter.” I cried because I knew exactly what she meant. It was a reference to a pivotal moment in the movie Hook, starring Robin Williams and written by the great J.V. Hart.

In the film, Peter has returned to Neverland as a grown-up, cynical and unwilling to believe in the magic of his past. As he begins to turn the corner toward acceptance, one of the Lost Boys takes Peter’s face in his hands, smooshes it, squints, and searches for something. Then, suddenly, the boy lights up and declares, “Oh, there you are, Peter.” He sees Peter Pan before Peter can see him himself.

That moment in physical therapy became my own turning point. I am still here. It just takes looking closely. It also takes a team of people who see the old me even when I can’t.

That same PT taught me to respond to “How are you doing?” with, “I’m working on awesome.” That reframe is as vital as the therapy itself. I’m so tired of the old answer—the list of ailments, the endless woe-is-blah-blah-blah. This response is succinct, positive, and true. The goal isn’t just to get well. It’s to get all the way to awesome.

I am getting better. It’s taking so much longer than I could have imagined, but I have a growing list of gains. Some frustrations remain, but every improvement gives me hope. So I continue to improve, to heal, to smoosh, to squint, to seek Peter, and to work—doggedly and only—on awesome.

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This post part of a series about recovering from my car crash:

When I was a kid, a boy named Tommy told me girls couldn’t throw straight. In response, I threw a rock from across the street and hit him square between the eyes. The moment it happened, I was horrified by what I had done—and terrified of what he might do to me. I ran home and skipped school the next day, feigning sickness. My mom didn’t question it. We watched movies all day and she made me cinnamon toast for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

When I finally felt ready to face Tommy, I returned to school. He never mentioned the rock, and my mom never brought up my fake sick day.

Every so often, when life, friends, or school became too much, my mom would let me take another "sick day." She’d make endless cinnamon toast, give me space to breathe, and when I was ready, she’d send me back out into the world—no questions asked.

Seven weeks ago, I was in a car crash. The first week was a whirlwind of shock, adrenaline, pain, and a relentless urge to keep saying how lucky I was that it wasn’t worse. I was SO POSITIVE! IT COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH WORSE! I AM SO LUCKY!

My physical therapist warned me that the full extent of my injuries would become clear over time, as everything settled. She was right. There’s a list of things that aren’t working quite right—some are improving, some are not.

I was right, I am so lucky… and, it is sucky. I am making room for both now.

One of the most persistent issues is my voice. One of my vocal cords isn’t working properly, so they aren’t touching. It is a combination of the nerve injury/ numbness on my left side and muscle strain from the whiplash. At its best, my voice is now quiet and raspy, some days, it’s barely audible. I have very little control over tone. I can only speak in what would kindly be called a confidential volume. Not a whisper, but close.

I’ve always used my voice—for work, for connection, for story. An anecdote here, an interruption there, sarcasm, compliments, phones, zooms, keynotes, leading, and laughing. Now, I ration it carefully. I speak less, realizing how much talking is just wasted words. I save it for my family and friends, though even then, people often can’t understand me. They ask me to repeat myself, and sometimes it doesn’t feel worth the effort. I sound annoyed, but I am just straining. Other times, they ask “What?” and immediately realize they understood me the first time. I wonder about my own habits of lazy listening, interrupting, and oversensitivity to tone.

I’ve learned a lot about listening—and about listeners, good and bad. I’ve realized that being heard isn’t just about words; it’s about feeling held. Hear me to hold me. Grace is the name of the game on all sides.

Still, I can’t seem to shake the denial. I keep thinking I’m ready to reenter the world, to reengage. But every time I try, I’m hit with the sharp reminder that this is real. It isn’t a day of playing hooky and cinnamon toast. The injuries are still here, I can’t just decide they’re over. The hope is still for a full recovery but nothing is guaranteed. The timeline is unclear—just like my voice.

All I can do is wait, and now that my head is clearing, write. Everything takes so much longer than normal. I rest, recover, and remind myself that pausing isn’t the end. I watch the world outside. I sit close to those I love and love them extra for listening so carefully. I write to capture my inner voice which still has so much to say. I wish my mom was here.

Time.

Slow healing.

Acceptance.

Quiet.

Sit so close.

Cinnamon everywhere.

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(This is one piece in a series about recovering from my car accident. It is was more than I could express in one piece. More to come.)

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Monday started with a car crash— I was t-boned by a car that was speeding through a red light. Lots to say about that later, but in short, I feel a little like I was just in another crash on Tuesday.

Similar shock. Similar confusion. What happened? Why is everything blurry? Did I do something wrong? What is the damage? How much just changed? Where did that come from? How did I not see? I am hurt, but where exactly? Who else is injured? There is so much to do. So much to feel.

Today is Wednesday and my birthday. I usually throw a party for all the people I love. But not today. Today I just need to recover from both of the crashes. I stayed up until 2:30 am. I woke up feeling dread. I didn’t want to get out of bed. Then I started receiving messages from around our neighborhood about our tree. Messages like “Your tree gives me hope and tears at the same time. Thank you for being lovely people. What a hard day.”

We have a 50-foot Christmas tree in our yard with 3500 Christmas lights on it. It is over the top, even for me, this Rockefeller Plaza-style tree in the middle of a dark wooded neighborhood in Montana. We usually turn it on around Thanksgiving and leave it lit up for the winter. I figured my family lit it during the night as a surprise but I had been awake most of the night. When I asked my husband what time he woke up to dig out the extension cords, he said he hadn’t lit the tree. We scrambled out of bed like little kids on Christmas and there it was, lit in full. And there we were, upright.

In my book, I have a chapter called, “There’s this tree and that is something” about my mom, her love of Christmas lights, grief, and this very tree. It was as if she had lit it herself. It doesn’t change any outcomes or damage, but it does change this small corner of this dark night.

There is so much to feel. So much to do.

So much missing. So much lost.

We are not the people I had hoped.

Drive safe. Be careful and care-full. Love your neighbors. Light what you can.

So much more soon.

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As election day approaches, the air is thick with anxiety. Everywhere, I hear nervous chatter, with one word repeated over and over: “dread.” It’s almost tangible, a heavy presence of fear and apprehension.

But dread has another meaning.

Terns, my favorite bird, migrate farther than any other, traveling over 55,000 miles each year. In colonies of 2,000 to 20,000, their collective noise is deafening. Yet, sometimes, without warning, they all fall silent, lift off, circle their nests in flight, then land and resume their calls. This unexplained moment of silent flight is known as a dread.

For the coming days, I’m choosing to dread like a tern. Less noise, more silence. Less scrolling, more soaring. Less wandering, more circling home. Less isolation, more community.

A dread of terns is awe-inspiring. It’s unexpected, powerful, and peaceful. Let’s not simply dread tomorrow—let’s be a dread tomorrow.

-elke

PS: I wrote about the moment I learned this alternate definition of dread in my book, “The Mink Pen” (excerpt below). It is also the story of the painting above by my mother Cheri Govertsen Greer.

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A few years ago, at the start of this open nesting journey, one of my kids was really struggling. And so was I. As goes the kid, so goes the mom/parent/me.

My anxiety was off the charts. I couldn’t sleep. I was researching obsessively as if googling were a tangible task—like building a house or performing CPR. I needed to get my own feet under me, not just worry about my kid’s footing.

I reached out to other parents, friends, and therapists. And I went to see the amazing Betty Higgins.

Betty is a Master Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Certified Sports Enhancement Coach, and Certified Life Coach—and pretty much everyone in my life has seen her at some point. Addiction, phobias, codependency, trauma, grief—she covers it all. But mostly, I go to her for the simple gift of hope. Hope that something will help. Hope that there’s always an option to try.

After letting me rant, vent, and spiral, she sweetly says something positive, yet profound like: "It’s great you’ve developed all these skills, but they aren’t serving you anymore. Let’s move on."

Her kids are a little older than mine, so she offered a lot of empathy to my empty feelings, too. Then she gave me what has become one of the secret weapons in my parenting toolkit:

"Imagine two years from now. Everything has worked out, and your kid is thriving. All of this—the worry, the struggle—has passed, been learned from, and fueled growth. Picture your kid happy, healthy, and two years older. ONLY talk to that kid. Even now, when you’re sitting with a stuck, scared kid who’s taking it out on you—that’s the current kid. ONLY talk to the kid two years ahead."

I don’t use this all the time—most days, I’m fully enmeshed in whatever today’s crisis-of-the-day is. I get swept up in the panic that whatever’s happening will last forever, that it’s a permanent state. I spiral into the false feeling that they should know what they want, be actively engaged every day in chasing it, and clobbering goals. It is a sinkhole. Because let’s be real—has anyone between 18 and 25 ever not questioned their life, purpose, and path?

But the times I remember? When I pull this out like a lifeline and speak to that future version of my kid—wow. It works. It gives us all the space to change. It gives us hope. It helps me see the impermanence in whatever feels so overwhelming.

I’ve been using it a lot lately. The best part is, it doesn’t require pretending. I genuinely believe that joy and greatness are already there in my sons. Sometimes, my panic is just fear that it’s still locked up, untapped. This trick helps me let it flow.

This week has been a bit rough for me—more on that later— but it is something akin to the question above edited to read: Because let’s be real—has anyone between 18 and FORTY-EIGHT ever not questioned their life, purpose, and path? So, I started using the same trick in my self-talk. I imagine that in two years, all this stuckness will be gone, and it’s all working out. I picture the me I want to be, and I talk only to her.

Two years from now, today, two years ago. Them. Me. You.

I like that kid.

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When I was a kid in the 80’s, there was a TV show called “Secret City.” Simple premise of a guy dressed in a flight suit standing in front of a drawing board. In each episode, he taught us all how to draw— floating cities. Chains. Perspective. Shadow. I cannot imagine the pitch for that show, how it got approved, or the impossibility of that in today’s media landscape. But I am sure glad I was a kid during Secret City. I have a hunch much of our current treasure trove of video game graphics is from latchkey kids who grew up watching Secret City and eating cereal for dinner, memorizing everything Captain Mark taught. I remember that perspective drawing started with four things: a point of view, a horizon line, a vanishing point, and converging lines. 40 years later, I still think about those shows regularly.

That said, I think about EVERYTHING regularly. All the time.

I have too many tabs open on my computer. Too many inputs. Too many parallel conversations in my mind, addressing hypothetical or unclear situations. And I am far, far too permeable to other people’s stress. When this person has a problem with that person. When I see a misunderstanding, I want to correct it, even if I have nothing to do with it.

Sometimes, I feel there is no way to navigate this world without ping-ponging off of each other and all of our misunderstandings. So many truths. So many converging lines. Sometimes, I start to spin. Or retreat. Either way, my mind starts churning, as does my belly. How is it that other people’s stress makes me feel so thrown?

A genius, clearheaded friend of mine unknowingly gave me a gift the other day. She and I were visiting when I got interrupted a pissy text where someone felt like something they were experiencing somewhere else was unfair (keeping it vague on the page to keep it simple in real life). Anyhow, my friend was sitting with me and simply said, “Now, that’s perspective,” and she then shrugged and carried on with our original conversation as if there was nothing to perseverate about at all.

Nothing. To. Perseverate. About.

Holy shit. I didn’t have to derail. I didn’t have to solve it. Justify. Translate. Explain. Excuse. It wasn’t even about me. I certainly don’t need to involve myself.

It is a fact that it IS a perspective. Other truths or untruths don’t have to be explored. State the only true thing, move on.

Instead of thinking about our pissy friend or trying to explain our perspectives of her perspective via text, we just had lunch.

Later, I was basking in this breakthrough and was reminded of Secret City and the four rules of perspective. A point of view, a horizon line, a vanishing point, and converging lines, and I realized that those basics of illustration are also the basics of relationships. I had just forgotten about the vanishing point. And the point of view.

I kinda feel like I just got a secret decoder ring to close half of my internal open tabs. Click. Click. Click. Close. Close. Close. I feel like another great TV captain Oprah shouting, “A car for YOU and a car for YOU!” only I am shouting, “A perspective for You and a perspective for YOU!”

A smorgasbord of perceives. A flock. A murder. A herd. An avalanche. It doesn’t matter. I don’t have to fix them, align them, or hold them.

Now, THAT’S a perspective.

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