Sometimes, when night is approaching and I’m seeing the sun creep below the horizon and the air turn a stale blue, I like to imagine it’s actually dawn and the sun is on its opposite trajectory to become familiar with a new day. I feel the world awaken inch by inch, a drop of dew float off, an overwhelming sense that the air is meeting something. I am inventing moments to freeze. I place myself in this time of day I used to see often, like at middle school sleepovers when we’d egg each other on to see the night through. Or in high school, when I’d drag myself out of bed for an early practice for a game that would make me cry often and still haunt my dreams 12 years later. Or in college, when beer and youth kept me talking to people I no longer remember. I place myself in the light that told me hours had somehow passed on the first night I ever spent with my now husband, and we need to rest for a few hours before he had to head to work, a deadline he knew was approaching quickly but stayed up anyway. I sometimes see that light come through our bedroom window after I lie our son down again, a full belly of milk pulling him back to sleep, and I think to myself that I could go downstairs and start my coffee and pick up my pen for a bit. But sleep is treasured these days these months this life, so instead I pretend dusk is dawn before suddenly it’s my own bedtime and it feels like the few moments I had to wonder about this world have slipped away again. I keep thieving time from myself. It seems like no matter how I intend to use these moments, the most they are good for is slipping away and I am always wondering where the time has gone.

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Those first two and a half weeks of life, my son could not see much more than vague, fuzzy shapes and gray and white tones.

Those first two and a half weeks of motherhood, I could not see how I would ever stop crying.

Now, I want to bottle up my son’s marble blue eyes.

I want to set the bottle on the window sill. I want the sunlight to refract through it and turn the entire room oceanic. I want to kiss his baby doll mouth and hear what he has to say about dinosaurs and keep figuring things out together. I want my nipples to refresh but more so I want to nourish him forever.

I want to nourish each other forever.

A funny thing about experiencing pregnancy for the first time, at least for me, is that you will be told about every single physical, mental, and emotional feeling you will experience and yet there is no way to prepare for how deeply they will color every moment of your life. I knew I would feel nauseous, but not how impossible it would be to ignore. I knew I would cry for no reason, but not that it would also feel like I’m crying for every reason in existence.

I knew I would be tired, but not that I would feel it deeper than my bones, in places that appear untouchable.

But here’s the other funny thing about experiencing pregnancy for the first time - you are reminded every day how many things can be true at once. That I am tired, but the world feels brighter. That a kick in the stomach can feel relieving. That my body hurts and I am so glad it has been such a kind home for my son.

Tonight, in an effort to still share my thoughts with you despite the 3rd trimester fog, I am sharing bits and pieces I pulled from my journals from the last 4 years. I found feelings that are evergreen in these thoughts, ponderings, snapshots, flashbacks, explorations, pseudo-poems, what have you.

Enjoy! I’m going to bed.

I had dinner with two new friends tonight and we laughed and talked about the love in our lives and I drank two beers and told a few stories and remembered how fulfilling it can be to simply notice yourself living.

The exhaustion is hitting me a lot harder and a lot earlier than normal, but the joy is uncontainable.

A turquoise bruise creeps outwards from beneath the medical tape on my bicep. I poke the bruise and feel nothing, just like I felt nothing as the needle clicked into my arm, nor as the blood the color of my nephew’s favorite firetruck pooled in the plastic monitor clinging to my arm like a bandaid. Last week, I drug my limbs through the dluge lining their crevices so I could tickle the moon with girls whose bodies sometimes bruise in the same way as mine. We each would have preferred to plant our feet on the ground, but the breadth of where our bodies will take us is astounding. I am the embroidery hanging on my grandmother’s wall. Needles running through me as color scuttles closely behind. I barely remember when a prick felt like my body bursting into shards of glass. But I do remember the first time I lifted medical tape to reveal a combustion of purple and sickly yellow. You never forget your fist time on the battlefield.

There are pros and cons to being overwhelmingly self aware.

I didn’t realize the ice at my grandma’s house had a specific taste until she filled up my water bottle for me and left it on the counter. I came home from a concert and found it waiting for me with a note. I had almost left her a note myself before we left to remind her we’d be coming back late. I didn’t want to scare her. She forgets a lot lately. Like which grandkid lives where. Or that my grandpa has been dead for nearly a year. She asked me earlier that day if she should text him to let him know I was there, angry he spent so much time away from the house lately. We’ve all resigned to smiling and nodding. Her ice tastes like clarity and air conditioning after a hot afternoon outside and my grandpa asking if he could get me anything. I used his shower and his half-used bar of soap still rested on the edge of the tub. I don’t pray but as his water gathered at my feet, I thought towards him that he was still felt everywhere and I’m sorry that includes even where he’s not.

I want to feel unlimited.
I want to feel limitless.

You once left a gray t-shirt in my apartment back in Iowa City. I’d wear it to bed and smell you every night until Friday.

I still love to pull your t-shirts out of the dryer before I crawl between sheets next to you. I don’t know that you have a specific scent anymore. Maybe that’s just one more thing we borrow from one another.

My anxiety is loud today. I don’t know exactly why, but I feel like my mind is just to the left of my body.

Sometimes, I will journal stuff that immediately feels like it doesn’t actually apply to me and I can’t figure out who I was seconds ago when I wrote it. I suppose that’s why I do this writing thing - to understand how I feel. I’m not lying to myself when I write those things but rather wading through the lies of expectations the world puts on me.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the physical act of time passing. I’ve been noticing how tasks appear unmanageable at their outset yet I almost always conquer them more quickly than I expected. It’s been 7 years since I chose to change the way I’d allow myself to live. Why does that simultaneously feel like just yesterday and something that never happened?

You can’t figure out who you’re going to be when you haven’t met the person you are currently.

I think the music leaves your lips in the front seat and lands somewhere in the ditch flowers. I hope it lies in wait for someone with an empty shotgun. Someone who needs a back up singer. That’s how I’ve begun to see myself and I’ve grown soft, softer than the landing of a wild butterfly in a meadow where no one is around to hear it. I’d like to know how many hours I’ve spent surfing pavement with you. I’d like to know how many hours I’ve been happy.

Grief has been a strange experience so far because I have only experienced it in the ways you are supposed to. He was my 85 year old grandpa with cancer. There was a softening to the edge of his death. That sometimes makes me feel like I’m not feeling as much about him as I think he deserves. I miss him but it hasn’t felt like a gaping hole because I always knew I’d lose my grandparents eventually. What do I even know about grief when I haven’t felt it swallow me?

It’s strange, this time of pregnancy. It doesn’t necessarily register that I have a baby inside of me. I feel so different than my baseline, so tired and nauseous. If I hadn’t been trying to get pregnant, I’d just assume I was sick. This baby has made its presence known indirectly, but I haven’t felt that kick of a limb that brings it all together.

Yet as I wait for that signal, I stand on the precipice of a whole new world. I am preparing to see colors differently. To have a new reason for the world. I am excited to meet both my new baby and the new me.

What are you supposed to do when you feel called to something that you have no control over?

I tucked my love under my chin as my son knocked circles on my womb. I hope those knuckles gingerly enter our room one day where my love may or may not lie tucked under my chin. Or maybe vice versa, I’ll be curled with my son against my chest and my love will sidle into the room to breathe us into safety. What to do with all of this soon to be realized love? Welcome it all with bright eyes, I suppose. I am blessed with a head held forward.

My teammate
Makes me forget what loneliness feels like.

I think about change constantly - where it comes from, how to steady myself within it, how to see it for the constant companion it is. The more comfortable I get with change, the more I realize I am comfortable with the nuances of being a person. When we don’t give space to those nuances, we don’t give space to live growing in the direction it needs. Change doesn’t have to mean loss.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

Although, any writer worth their salt will make strong claims about how the world is and how they believe it should be. So I suppose in that sense, all writing is a bit political.

But I avoid writing about political systems and processes, especially that of the United States, mostly because I do not have the research and analytical skills I believe it requires. But also because I find it disheartening and a diversion from what I truly care about.

Then every so often, (which now feels like every other day) a political situation like the one in which we find ourselves now occurs, and not addressing it with whatever pittance of a platform I have feels, at best, irresponsible. At worst, a complete disregard of my obligation to humanity. Politics might not be the focus of my writing but how we care for one another is, and I have strong feelings on how the world is and how I believe it should be. Or how it could be.

I’ve felt this push and pull around political writing since my freshman year of college when Donald Trump becoming president felt like the remotest of realities. I felt it as I felt this country splinter into two opposing sides, like kids at recess in a game of flag football, and I was the one of the few hanging out on the swing set not caring who won. The feeling got bigger throughout the Covid-19 pandemic and the movement after George Floyd’s murder.

And now the feeling is back, spurred on by two extrajudicial murders by the state, occurring just miles away from where George Floyd’s was supposed to change everything.

I find myself wondering, again, foolishly, even while remembering everything that has occurred in the last five years, if this could maybe be the time things actually do change.

Will we stop believing in someone based on whether they have an R or D next to their name?

Will we stop putting our faith in powerful people who reap the benefits from the status quo?

Will we stop accepting sanitized PR statements of rage as acceptable action by people who care more about affording their summer homes than using their tangible power to hold evil to account?

Will we learn to recognize when we are being lied to?

Will we stop believing those people when they tell us that our neighbor who is a little different from us is the problem when billionaires hoard every resource for themselves?

Will we stop believing that affordable health care and quality education is too expensive while sending militaries to attack our citizens and putting up a gilded ballroom are mandatory budget line items?

Will we change our commands from “vote” and “share this post” to “help your community members in need” and “protect the vulnerable among us”?

Will we quit letting hot topic vocab words scare us from what we actually need to create a just and livable world?

I don’t know if we will this time. But what I do know is more and more people are waking up to the fact that none of this is how it has to be. That the rich and powerful, whether they are Democrat, Republican, or anything in between, do not have the working class’s best interest at heart. That every moment we continue with this “us vs. them” mentality is a moment they can get away with hoarding wealth and abandoning us all to suffer under their manufactured designs for us.

I have recently learned about the Working Families Party and while I have more learning to do, I am intrigued by what they stand for and the vision they have for the world. I encourage you to check them out and remember that we do not have to continue to accept the status quo.

A few resources I’ve found to support people in Minnesota (and a few Iowa-based resources helping immigrants and refugees here):

• https://www.standwithminnesota.com/

• https://linktr.ee/mplsmutualaid

• https://www.ilcm.org/

• https://www.canmn.org/

• https://www.mettacoffee.com/ (they are collecting and distrubting community donations)

• Des Moines Refugee Support

• Iowa Migrant Movement for Justice

• Refugee Alliance of Central Iowa

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

Dark lipstick. Heavy VSCO filters on slightly grainy photos. Chokers. Snapchat flower crowns. A subtle air of hope that hadn’t yet been snuffed out by cynical chaos. A Drake song playing in the distance.

Internet users across the world are throwing it back to 2016, and suddenly Instagram looks like it did back when it was fun. When influencers were only a vague idea and we actually saw posts from people we know. I shared a few selfies from when I was 19, long, dark hair framing a mysterious pout with pop punk lyrics in the captions. I used to keep a list of my favorite songs to use for when the lighting was just right.

The trend has resulted in the inevitable miserable deploring that occurs on the internet any time a large group of people engage in something that isn’t inherently negative.

“Why are you all in a 2016 psychosis?”

“How can you celebrate the year Trump was first elected?”

“I’m pretty sure this is just a conspiracy to distract everyone from what’s going on in Minneapolis.” (Yes, this is a real thought I saw someone post)

These people are seeing nostalgia as a celebration of the past rather than what it truly is - a nod to the people we once were. A letting go. A goodbye.

It’s not that 2016 had a particular magic or ease to it. I was 19, a sophomore in college, and the most depressed I had ever been and have ever been since. I was still dating my high school boyfriend, a relationship that should have ended right then but we somehow managed to drag out for an additional year and a half. I was lonely all the time and felt like I had no friends. I couldn’t decide on what I wanted to study. I worked a restaurant that was poorly managed and made me miserable. It was the first presidential election in which I was able to participate and I still don’t think I’ve recovered from the righteous anger I felt at all hours of the day. I was such a long way away from learning to like myself.

But that was also the version of me who was making decisions for herself for the first time. I had my first taste of letting go and indulging myself. I danced a ton. I drank way too much and had a ton of fun doing it. I had fun with make up for the first time. I lived in a gorgeous old house with the snuggliest orange cat. I saw my favorite band perform and went to my first Pridefest. The music around me at all times felt delicious and nothing was too serious yet.

I don’t wish to be that girl again, but I do love her deeply. She was sad and unsure of herself but she was just beginning the process of becoming a more complete version of herself. She was starting to have fun for the first time in her life. I don’t wish to travel back to 2016 but I love to celebrate the way it built me into the person that I really love today.

Our collective look to 2016 is a collective look to a society we can never be again, for better or for worse. Nothing is a monolith but I know many of us felt freer then, less complicated in our view of the world. We cannot return but we can smile at those people, remember every inch of what they gave to us. This inevitably means we are in a constant process of saying goodbye to those people we can never be again. And every goodbye has an element of grieving to it, no matter how warranted.

The 2016 to 2026 jump feels especially distinct to me because of the goodbyes I am saying at both points. Ten years ago, I was 19, shedding the child I was and attempting to understand myself within that particular period of growing up. Today, I am 29, pregnant with my first child and a homeowner and attempting to understand myself within this new period of growing up that seems so radical and dramatic. I will never again be without worry or responsibility. I will never again be wholly my own person. It is a change that I am welcoming with wide open arms, but it is a change that inevitably means letting go of a girl that, again, I really, really love. I am grieving the loss of that girl as I get to know this new version of myself.

Megan, an old high school acquaintance, someone I knew a lot better in 2016, posted this about her own experience with grief as she became a new mom.

She perfectly captured what it feels like to simultaneously look back and move forward and celebrate all of the versions of ourselves that we’ve had the pleasure of knowing. Whether we’re embarking on these expansive, life-changing journeys or just remembering what it was like to be in college, we’re not wishing for the old us. We’re simply helping these versions better understand each other.

As Joan Didion said, it’s good for us to stay on speaking terms with the people we used to be. It helps us understand who we’re going to be tomorrow.

Now that we’re settled into our home, I’m diving deep into prepping for our baby boy to make his appearance. If you’ve ever wanted to support me and my writing, or are just feeling generous today, here is the link to our baby registry. I do not expect anything from anyone, and I am eternally grateful for any bit of support I may receive. It does feel a little uncomfortable to share this, but as someone who deeply values community and hopes to instill that in my son, asking for support feels like an important part of creating a world where we can ask for and offer this kind of help freely.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

I was in the middle of a sentence while talking to my husband when I saw the email and gasped (Matt, if you’re reading this, sorry for not paying close attention to our conversation LOL). I immediately started flipping through the photos. The warm tones, unabashed joy in every smile, candid shots of us in real time remembering that, holy shit, we’re married now! I couldn’t get enough.

I stopped at the picture of our first kiss. I can still feel the smile creep up on my lips as I realized we had finally arrived at the moment. My brother’s voice slowly fell away at that point. I looked at the person I love most in the world, the person who not only completes me but goes even deeper, completes the vision I have of what the world can be.

A person at the edge of that photo caught my eye. My best friend, Krysten, who has been in my life since I was 4 years old. She is my absolute, the person that knows me to my core, the perfect ideal of a best friend. My person. She stands behind me as my maid of honor. She’s holding my bouquet. Her blonde hair is curled into the cutest half-up do. And she is smiling at us with such sincere delight and unabashed elation that I am overwhelmed each time I see the photo. In that moment, her love for us is every bit as palpable as the love we have for each other.

It is so easy to be a cynic. I see it on Twitter each and every day (yes I’m still there, and yes I will call it Twitter until the day it dies) — the harmful opinions, the lack of nuance, the instinct to assume negative intentions, the lack of consequences for bigotry. I am sad about the bad ways people treat each other, but I’m even more sad about how often people ignore the good ways we treat each other, too.

But last weekend, I had 180 people look at Matthew and me with love and kindness in the way Krysten is in this photo (but not as much as you do, Krys — I know you love me the most), and I was reminded of the intentional ways Matthew and I have found joy and support in our lives.

From our parents friends who have watched us grow our entire lives.

From the coworkers we have spent years working alongside.

From our friends we have known since elementary school.

From our families who have given us more than we could have ever hoped for.

From the incredible women who have made me feel safe, supported, and loved at so many different points in my life, and have loved Matt right from the start.

From the men who love Matt for the kind, joyful man he is and show him love in all kinds of ways, and who never care (much) when I crash boys night.

From the camp friends who all traveled so far to celebrate with us, who have helped us through every high and low (literally) of living with a chronic illness and brought so much love and laughter into our lives.

From every person who walked into The University Club that night, who smiled with us and danced with us and cheered on Matt’s karaoke, who have shown up for us throughout our lives and given us unconditional love. From the people who have known us since babies and the people who came into our lives recently. From the people we’ve toasted to and the people no longer with us, and every single person who lost themselves in the music with us on the happiest night of our lives.

Our lives and our hearts are so incredibly full.

I hope you can think of one person, one pet, even one favorite activity or one book that’s changed your life, that helps you feel the happy in the air.

It’s all out there if you choose to see it.

With love,

Macey SHOFROTH (Pronounced Show-Froth, my sister and brother both had to ask me the day before the wedding LOL)

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

So. I know I promised to publish a few re-published essays for the last few weeks of December. But alas, life was life-ing and I missed a few weeks. I am so sorry. But I’m back! And I’m ready to write.

2025 was a big year for my family. I began a new job on January 3. I ran a half marathon in April. By July, I was pregnant with our first baby. And we ended the year purchasing and moving into our own home. I feel as if I’ve lived six lifetimes this year.

I didn’t realize all that I had accomplished until I pulled out the letter I wrote to myself at the end of 2024.

I started this practice in 2022. Near the end of December, I write a letter to myself to be read around the same time the following year. The letter expresses everything I hope for myself for the upcoming year. It’s more than just goals to cross off, but rather a declaration of the ways I hope to grow and the type of person I hope to be.

All of those accomplishments I listed above? They were dreams 2024 Macey had for 2025 Macey. But what felt more important to me is 2024 Macey’s request for 2025 Macey to look back on the year, and herself, with kindness, regardless of how it went.

Here is how the letter began:

“I have a feeling that you’ve had quite the year. If it was good, take a moment to be proud of yourself. If it was bad, take a breath because you made it through. In all actuality, I’m sure it was both because that’s how life is. So be proud of yourself either way.”

This feels like an important reminder to pass on to 2026 Macey, who will have completed a year of navigating motherhood and home ownership. I am preparing for an incredible, emotional, dramatic, joyous, loving, difficult, exciting year. I want to share the note that I wrote to that version of myself here. I have left some of it out that I’d like to keep just for myself.

Dear 2026 Macey,

Well girl, you made it. I can’t even begin to guess what you’re feeling right now. But with how 2025 went, I know it set you up for a thrilling 2026. I can’t wait to hear about everything that happened.

Your house is beautiful. I hope you’ve been able to turn it into a comfortable home. We are still settling in, and the way the house is a blank canvas is intimidating. But I hoe you’ve savored, and continue to savor, the time you have to truly make it yours. Nothing needs to be rushed. Take pride and take care of your home - you deserve it.

You can feel that baby boy in your belly right now - I’m sure he’s bouncing everywhere in the open right now. Motherhood is the first time where I feel I have no clue what’s coming next. I don’t know who I’ll be with him, or Matt. But I know I feel no fear about finding out. I hope you remember to have fun and breathe. I hope you prioritize infusing love into him so he can do the same to the world. I hope you practice patience. I hope you gain confidence in your abilities and you find a way to balance what you want to balance.

I hope you’ve found a way to integrate exercise into your new life. I hope you still respect your body and love this new version of it. You’ve loved it for so long.

I’m so tired from pregnancy right now. I’m sure you’re currently tired from mothering. No matter how this year went, I hope you’re smiling and loving and being kind to yourself. Keep figuring things out like you always do. You’ve got this.

Love,

2025 Macey

Now that we’re settled into our home, I’m diving deep into prepping for our baby boy to make his appearance. If you’ve ever wanted to support me and my writing, or are just feeling generous today, here is the link to our baby registry. I do not expect anything from anyone, and I am eternally grateful for any bit of support I may receive. It does feel a little uncomfortable to share this, but as someone who deeply values community and hopes to instill that in my son, asking for support feels like an important part of creating a world where we can ask for and offer this kind of help freely.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

My dear friend Emma is in the process of moving her life from Kansas City to New York City for the exact reasons I am trying to compel you to ignore. And it’s been an interesting study for me in how different people value such different parts of their lives as I am so incredibly excited for her to do the thing I would never want to do.

Emma and I grew up in eastern Iowa and met at our summer camp in Boone. Since 12 years old I remember her telling me she wanted to move out of Iowa. And she did when she moved to a Kansas City suburb in high school. I could tell, from afar, that my friend was finding the “more” she had always wanted in this bigger world with more interesting people and the space to branch out into different parts of herself.

But still, it wasn’t what she needed. She told me a few months ago that what she needs is a faster pace of life, the ability to live as loudly as possible with no one telling her to quiet down, the creative ecosystem that is already so firmly established.

I can’t fault her for that. Especially when the only thing standing between her and everything she hopes for is a plane ride.

I often wonder about my own motivations for staying in the Midwest and trying to build a stronger system, something better. I think often about why I didn’t make the same choice as Emma, to move to a place where the arts and culture scene is already known as a place where dreams come true. Why I’ve decided to play some part in creating such a scene here.

I don’t know if I have a true, straightforward answer as to why I decided to stay in Iowa. It’s probably the same thing that drives most decisions in my life—my gut told me so. I tend to be led by instinct and heart when it comes to making a choice. This leads to many last second grocery purchases that weren’t on the list and causes my husband immeasurable stress as we try to make major life decisions, but hey, it feels right to let my spirit show me where I’m supposed to go.

I’ve never felt called to live anywhere else but Iowa. I’m letting go of my worry that staying here means I missed out on something important. I’m making my something important here.

I don’t think I am built for difficult living, and that’s how these huge coastal cities appear to me. I have an expensive chronic illness. I don’t cope well with stress. I can’t deal with people who are rough and rude, who believe more in moving quickly than moving with kindness. I have a big family that has always lived within six hours of each other and I am still best friends with the girl I met when I was four years old. I am directionally challenged.

I think New York City is a beautiful place with the most interesting people in the world. I long for Emma’s adventurous spirit that’s taking her there.

The easiness of living in the Midwest suits me. A lower cost of living, more space to live and breathe, my siblings and parents just down the road. The scene is less cutthroat because everyone is just excited to feel like an arts scene exists. Folks smile at me in the grocery store and mean it, and I believe that there is a quiet majority here who want to be better than how our political climate appears, who want to be better if they could just be given the tools to try.

What doesn’t feel easy about staying here is fighting for a politic that doesn’t oppress the most vulnerable among us, trying to convince people that we can build a future here without Kim Reynolds and gutted public schools and terrible water quality if we stop leaving for places where the work has already been done. It doesn’t feel easy to build structures that support artists and ask creatives to do so much with so little and to forge a new path for artists through a space that often feels littered with giant rocks and insurmountable hills.

But it’s what my gut tells me I’m meant to do. So while my dear friend Emma is listening to her own gut and chasing her dreams in a place that lights her heart on fire, I’m going to cheer for her while I chase my dreams in a place that makes my heart feel cozy, my soul feel safe and nourished.

It’s that comfort that’s bolstering me as I throw myself into building a Midwest Creative Life for folks like me who feel connected to this place, who deserve to pursue their creative whims with fervor without feeling like they must struggle to even try.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

I’m currently reading “A Silent Treatment” by Jeannie Vanasco (because even when I am treading water I have to find time to read or I will lose every bit of sanity I hold on to), which is about her complicated relationship with her mother and her punishing silences. I guess I made an unconscious choice to pick up a few memoirs that look at complexities and mistakes around motherhood (including “Mother Mary Comes to Me” by Arundhati Roy) 3 months before I become one myself, so I’m sure there’s an essay there to be explored one day. But anyway, The central question of the memoir is, “What do we owe our parents?”

I’ve had a similar question tumbling around my head for a few years; “What do we owe each other?” Looking through my drafts to see which essay I wanted to publish this week, I saw this title and it felt exactly right.

Please feel free to share in the comments what, if anything, you believe we owe one another.

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What I remember the most from around age 10 until I was 21 was an overwhelming feeling of loneliness.

That’s not to say there weren’t pockets of great joy and connection during that time. I was loved by a wonderful family. I grew friendships that still sustain me today, fell in love for the first time, discovered the places where my passion burned.

But I lived every day with the sense that I was not making myself known to others in the ways I hoped they would know me. It was as if every person I hoped to reach stood on the other side of a sheet of plexiglass, smiling and waving and offering their hand to place against mine through the surface. But the intimation of intimacy is almost more painful than none at all. And I felt so frustrated by my inability to give and get what I needed to feel comfortable.

That discomfort has profoundly shaped how I interact with other people every day. Because I hope through one step, one look, one gesture, one word, I can let someone know that they are being seen, even on the smallest scale of who they are. Every one deserves to feel their humanness acknowledged by someone else.

I’ve been thinking a lot about community and the present day and if there’s any way we can claw ourselves back to a society comprised of people who see one another. Or if that society ever existed in the first place. These same anxieties are abundant in the many conversations, both public and private, about why things are, just, *like this*.

I learned to make myself seen by truly seeing myself for the first time. I’d spent so long chasing the high of feeling wanted that I neglected to notice how I’d never spent much time with myself. I have no way of killing this cliche but I went through my first heartbreak and suddenly had more time alone than I’d ever had in my life and I finally learned how to be a person who could share equally in love. That journey felt like finally integrating the person I wanted to be and the person I was showing to the world. Suddenly, I was capable of letting people in. Plexiglass shattered.

Two years ago, I met my friend Jay for the first time in a coffee shop in Des Moines and started getting to know one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. Jay is a Black, gay man from Wisconsin, and I think one of the first things I asked him was why he chose Iowa of all places, a place I thought my idea of Jay would never want to live.

But I’ve learned that northern Wisconsin has profoundly shaped Jay’s sense of self. That Jay’s sense of self is rooted in integrity and a drive to create the world he wants, both for himself and others. There’s a kindness in the way he lets other people show up as they are. He loves basketball. And he’s incredibly funny.

I think we’ve forgotten we have a responsibility to the world to put in that effort of truly opening ourselves to one another. What we innately want is balance in how we come to our relationships, a 50/50 exchange of desire to build joy together in whatever form that takes. While some of us might show up too much, too many of us aren’t showing up at all, retreating away into our phones and our homes and our discomfort with a life unseen.

We’ve forgotten that showing up is the easiest part.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

Around 1954, Johnny Jones was looking for someone to sweep floors, wash the windows, and learn the basics of being a printer. At the time, my grandpa, Bob Goodyear, was on the basketball team. He wasn’t getting much playing time, and after talking with his coach, he decided he’d take the job.

From then on, he led a lifetime of hard work, service, kindness, and dedication to his family.

My grandpa passed away this weekend after a battle with kidney cancer. He was 85 years old, a husband, a father of three, a grandfather of 12, and a great-grandfather of 11. He ran a newspaper for decades, served his community, found friendship wherever he went, and loved his family fiercely.

From the moment my grandpa took a job at the Monticello Express, he fell in love with the world of news publishing. He approached the job with excitement and curiosity. The newspaper industry was rapidly transforming at that point. He learned quickly, honed his skills, and grew The Monticello Express to the community pillar it still is today, a paper that has survived the intense industry contraction we’ve seen over the last few decades.

A few years ago, I helped my grandpa put together a book detailing his life story. We spent hours together, talking about his life as I wrote down every memory that shaped him into the dedicated man he was. Here are a few excerpts from that project that detail his experiences publishing a newspaper as technology revolutionized news:

When I first began learning how to print newspapers, we used letterpress printing. For headlines, we hand set each letter. The other parts of the newspaper were made with a linotype machine. One of my jobs was to take the type and throw it into a led pot to be melted and reused for the next paper. I would also take the letters we still needed and set it into a California Type Case. I also learned how to cast mats. These were a piece of asbestos that I would pour hot melted led into, which would then harden and be used to print on the letter press. I eventually learned how to run the letterpress. We had a snapper, which was a hand fed press, and also a Little Giant. Being a printer was easy for me, and I was much better at it than I am at the desktop publishing we use today.

In the fall of 1956, I attended the University of Iowa for one semester. I took a newspaper production course under Henry Africa, and I learned to use a linotype machine. When a new foreman, Bob Harlan, came to the Express in 1958, we switched to offset printing and I operated a Model 32 Linotype machine. Emma Stadtmueller operated a Model 8 Linotype machine right next to me. We set all the type for the newspaper, with me doing ads and her doing the news. In 1958, we got rid of my linotype machine and received compugraphic machines. We would type on a keyboard that would punch tape, and the punched tape would be run through the compugraphic machine that would set the news matter. We had filmotype machines for the headlines and larger type. This was still a one letter at a time deal.

Eventually, we got a Comp IV, which set the bigger type using a keyboard. You could just sit there and type, but you’d have to change the sizes. We then bought a big process camera and the pieces of each page were done by hand. You’d cut the sections, wax it, and paste it up on the sheet of paper. You would take the paste up to the camera and shoot the negative of that page. Then we’d make sure there was no flaws in the negative, take that and lay it on top of a metal plate, and you’d put the plate on the press. That is what you’d print from.

We started printing offset with a Harris S7L press. They had to knock a hole in the wall to get it into the building due to its large size. We still have an 18 by 24-inch Solna Offset Printing Press that works on the same principle.

When we printed letterpress, there was a big letterpress that printed four big, broad sheet pages at the same time. These were 36 by 48 inch sheets. Independence bought a Web Offset Press, and we started printing our newspaper with them. We then printed with Guttenburg, then Maquoketa Web Press, then in Calmar, and currently with the Quad City Times…I was named shop foreman in 1965. At that point, I oversaw the production of the paper and did the estimating and pricing of printing jobs. We started publishing the Publishers Idea Exchange, which was a national advertising service. We eventually bought this publication. We also printed Ad Master Layout Sheets and pasteup sheets, which we sold to newspapers all over the country.

My grandpa was the biggest cheerleader of my writing. He shared all of my work and never let a moment pass without telling me that he was proud of me. This was a man who spent decades in the newspaper industry, read thousands upon thousands of pieces of writing, served on the board of the Iowa Newspaper Association, and was an avid reader for most of his life. And he saw the value in what I had to say, believing that I am special.

But that’s the biggest thing I’ve taken away from my grandpa: he knew how to make you feel special. He was there at every sporting event, every musical performance, every awards ceremony. He made sure to see us before homecoming and prom, he traveled the state of Iowa to take any of his nine grandchildren out to dinner, and he always slipped you a little “walk around” money as he hugged you goodbye. It wasn’t just his kids and grandkids that felt this love. He was in the crowd cheering on his great nieces and nephews, kept up on my best friend’s life, cherished his nights laughing with his brothers-in-law. One sentence kept coming up throughout his visitation and funeral: “He was one of the good ones.” He really, really was.

The last time my grandpa texted me, he complimented a recent column I had written. I detailed a really nice and inspiring conversation with Dr. Jackie Thompson, and he loved it.

I felt like you were enjoying yourself as you were writing it.

I really was, Grandpa. You always see the joy in each and every one of us. We’ll miss you forever.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

Back in May, I had to travel to eastern Iowa for work.

I swung over to Monticello, my hometown, to say hi to my grandma when I was finished. These (not-so-) quick lunches used to be the norm at Grandma’s house, but with my parents no longer living there, I don’t get to my hometown very often. My brother happened to also be in the area for work, and the double lunch date sent my grandma into ecstasy.

Leaving her house, I drove past the neighborhood I moved to in 8th grade, where my parents had left a year before. I drove down the hill that took me to school every day. Past the firehouse where my dad volunteered for 25 years, the football field that held my social life on fall Fridays, the swimming pool where I wasted hours of summer. As I edged out of town, I found myself crying.

Home is a complicated feeling for me. I have found home more often in people than places and that feels dangerous. People shift and places are meant to be where they are. But then again, I’ve known places to shift significantly, too.

This place is no longer home. It was only sort of home for the first 18 years of my life. I had deep, expansive love in my life but not a whole lot of comfort. My hometown was an itchy skin I needed to shed. Driving through it again felt like a dissociative act, like I was dissociating from the person I am today, that sureness, to the person I was who never felt like she walked on solid ground. The distance between those two people was visceral and I was somehow covering it in a single trip across town limits.

Monticello is a place where you’re either cemented for life or rushed away. You don’t really just pass through, hang out for a bit. It’s the place I’ve spent the most amount of time in my life thus far. I harbor no ill feelings towards it. I don’t judge those who still call it home – I wished to feel the same sense of peace walking down the street as they seemed to. Its illusiveness exhausted me.

I still felt that discomfort 10 years later, even while I was just passing through. I think because it’s the place I was broken down and rebuilt in so many different ways. I grieve the relationship I had to this place, the triumphs and the heartbreaks and every absentminded moment in between. It was so much good, but good can only go so far when it’s just not quite right.

And I grieve that girl I was when I lived there, who was just as active a participant in the dysfunctional relationship. I generally agree with Joan Didion in that we should remain cordial with the people we were, but there’s something sort of devastating about returning to the scene of the crime where those people were made and broken. Where your self-esteem was burned and you couldn’t make things make sense. I want to know that person but when I’m in that space, it feels like maybe I’m going to become that person again. And that’s terrifying.

Last week, my husband and I closed on our very first home together. We officially take possession next week. I finally have a place that I can make wholly mine. I am, for once, the one with power in my relationship with the place I live. My parents live down the street, my siblings and best friend a short drive away. I have paint and wallpaper and the power to lock my door to whomever I want to keep out. I have a haven for my family, a place to make for my son.

The opening of this new home is such a stark difference to the closing of my previous. I’m saying hi to a me I’m excited to meet but saying goodbye to a me I’ll never know again. That’s the grief I keep coming back to, the grief I felt as I drove through Monticello with no idea of if I’ll ever be back again – the unfamiliarity with the person I used to be and the places that made me. It’s the grief of time passing, closing a chapter no matter how difficult it was to read. It’s a good loss, a loss I welcome, a loss leading somewhere sweet. But a loss nonetheless.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

In a conference room with bare walls and an elevated stage, under harsh lighting, seated at round tables dispersed throughout the room with writers of various experience, Jennifer L. Knox. taught me about the power of ugly.

How often do you think about the word ugly? Is ugly the bowl cut your mom gave you in 1988? Is it the gastric present your cat left you on the carpet? Kim Reynolds’ legacy in Iowa?

“Your brain is far more engaged with ugly.”

I think a lot about the ugliness that we let happen, the ugliness that we think of as inevitable but is really human-made and perpetuated. Jennifer, an author of five books of poetry and a teacher in central Iowa, thinks a lot about it, too. She thinks about how it can change our experience of a piece of art. How it can capture the complexities of being a human.

Jennifer’s workshop was a part of the 2nd annual Poetry Palooza, a festival celebrating poetry and aiming to recapture the spirit of the Des Moines National Poetry Festival, defunct since the aughts. The theme this year was “Poetry of Place and Echoes of Earth.” I didn’t feel much inspired by setting as I walked into the Grand View University Student Center amidst the dreary, muted gray sky and drowning wind inherent to Iowa in April.

The workshop began with an explanation of the difference in brain waves when we look at something beautiful versus when we look at something ugly. Beauty is a straight line, easy to fathom, your brain on autopilot. Ugly is asymmetry, a sporadic wave of activity, your brain trying to make sense of the wrongness it’s consuming.

“Your brain is far more engaged with ugly,” Jennifer said. “You get the benefit of surprise, which increases the intensity of all feelings by 400%. It’s the jackpot of emotions when we’re engaging with art.”

I’m struck by the word engage here. We are never just consuming art; we are giving it our context and taking its right back. We are letting it alter our brain waves and shift our perspectives on the world.

The art I have left feeling intensely uncomfortable and deeply changed by is the art that explores the ugliness of the human spirit. The art that shows us the people to avoid loving and the people to avoid becoming.

Jeannie Vanasco’s “Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was A Girl,” where she interviews her childhood friend turned rapist who assaulted her when she was blackout drunk. She tries to comprehend his incomprehensible choices, how a person could put on such ugliness for a moment and how that moment looked to him. It was an unsettling look into how the people we know can transform into something unfathomable, something they don’t even understand themselves.

In the pilot of “The Sinner,” Jessica Biel portrays a suburban mother quietly struggling with the loneliness of managing a family. An idyllic day at the beach with her husband and son turns into a horror show when she suddenly walks over to a man and stabs him to death. The camera’s perspective is in the thick of the chaos, her knife plunging into his neck so viscerally, her husband pulling her away and screaming “what are you doing?!” over and over into her face, the other beachgoers screaming and running in the background. The scene felt so realistic that I was on edge the entire next day at work, seeing it over and over.

“Ugly has a place. Ugly has a time. Ugly has a use, too.”

Jennifer defined ugly as something eliciting the opposite response of beauty—recoiling, grimacing, screaming. Ugly is asymmetrical; it has too much or too little of something. Ugly is emotionally complex. Ugly is a reality we don’t want to face.

She said this to me in an email:

“Ugly is the ultimate counter-ballast to the more ‘expected’ moves we make in a poem out of habit, fear, etc. Students have often told me they're afraid to deviate from the consensus, from moves that feel/seem more acceptable. ‘Don't rock the boat.’ Art should stir the reader and the artist; ugly isn't just not bad, it's a great way to make your poems more resonant, memorable, stirring, unpredictable, and human.”

It’s the art that interrogates the complexity of our collective experience that resonates the most. That makes us turn to the movie-goer next to us to see if they just saw the same thing you did, or if everyone else at the concert is remembering their first heartbreak, too.

The six featured poets gathered on stage directly after the workshops for a panel on “eco-poetry,” a word I quickly found I did not understand. I thought of poetry about nature, intricate descriptions of verdant leaves and sprawling mountains. The type of writing that, quite honestly, I find boring. I much prefer to read about humans and our vast, bizarre motivations. Which, apparently, is eco-poetry.

Camille Dungy described eco-poems as having “direct interaction with the Anthropocene,” differing from nature poetry by “taking into account the human element of our ecosystem.” Deb Marquart described this idea of the interaction of humanity and nature: “There is nothing under the sun, including the sun, that is not environment. We are porous and subject to everything around us.”

Nasrullah Mambrol writes in “Literariness” that “eco-poetics investigates how the human is situated within its habitat.”

I think we all long to live in our habitat without any interference from the ugly. It’s an understandable yet ultimately futile desire, a world that likely will never exist. Ugly has a place. Ugly has a time. Ugly has a use, too, especially in art—to reveal the complexities underlying our human relation to the ecosystem around us.

I stopped Jen before the poet panel to get her email; I had already started journaling and trying to make sense of ugly’s place in my own work. She was incredibly kind enough to answer my follow-up questions. I wanted to understand how she conceptualized ugliness, how the context around ugliness shifts our reactions.

She shared:

“For me, apparent ugliness is an epiphany that blooms when I actually connect to the world—I'm not just pretending to—I look around, and suddenly I see a new ugly. Mycelium is the base organism from which mushroom spores sprout. Mycorrhizal mycelium brings water to a tree’s roots in exchange for sugar, produced in the tree during photosynthesis. Beneath the Malheur National Forest in Oregon, Armillaria Ostoyae mycelium (AKA, the Humongous Fungus) is the largest contiguous living organism on the planet, measuring 2,385 acres across.

So when I say ‘connect to the world,’ maybe what I'm really tapping into is a human mycelium that reveals our interconnectedness.”

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

The easiest way to get comfortable with the uncertainty that permeates modern life: Read a book.

Read many books. Read books from all around the world. Read the genres you love and the genres that scare you. Just pick up a book and read.

It’s by reading that I’ve come to an understanding that nothing can be certain when so many perspectives, experiences, knowledge, and contradictions exist in the world.

I can’t think of a more narrow and sad way to live than to never read. The absence of color that must poison that type of world. To read is to expand in every direction you could ever imagine.

There is nothing I love more than talking about books and recommending books to others. So, to kick off the final month of writing in 2025, here are my favorite books I’ve read this year.

1. The House of my Mother: A Daughter’s Quest for Freedom by Shari Franke

   

   Shari grew up with her mother, Ruby Franke, documenting her and her five siblings’ every move for her millions of YouTube subscribers. Ruby was in the early wave of Mormon influencers, but it all came crashing down in 2023 when she was arrested for child abuse. Shari’s memoir is both a tragic narrative of neglect and a seething indictment of the family vlogger industry.

2. The Book of Delights: Essays by Ross Gay

   

   For one year, poet Ross Gay writes about one thing that invoked a sense of delight in him every day. This little book is a call to keep our eyes up and open, to absorb life and turn away from nihilism. It’s a perspective shift I believe we all could use.

3. Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

   

   Jesmyn Ward writes about the forces shaping her life in New Orleans through the lens of the loss of five men she loved. She deftly analyzes how poverty and racism intertwine in the American south to disenfranchise its citizens. She is someone I should have read a long time ago, and I can’t wait to read more from her.

4. The Book of Alchemy: A Creative Practice for an Inspired Life by Suleika Jaouad

   

   If you are someone who journals, you need this book. Suleika began her Substack, , in 2020, bringing people together with journaling prompts and conversation during the Covid-19 pandemic. This book is a collection of prompts with mini-essays from all kinds of creatives. I found it very creatively inspiring and I’ll be sharing essays that sprang from this book at some point.

5. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson

   

   For being a long time reader, there are a lot of iconic books I have not read. I was inspired to try Marilynne Robinson from a 2024 NYT interview where I found her frankness delightful. How I didn’t know who she was before as a graduate of the University of Iowa’s English program, I have no clue. The tender POV in this epistolary novel was a delight to experience.

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6. There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension by Hanif Abdurraqib

   

   You know that meme where an English teacher asks why an author may have made the curtains blue, and the stressed student responds with, “The curtains were fucking blue”? Hanif Abdurraqib proves that curtains are never just fucking blue. It’s never just about basketball, it’s about love and community and transcending. I love a memoir written by a poet.

7. I’ll Have What She’s Having by Chelsea Handler

   

   It might be a cringey white woman thing to love Chelsea Handler. But I just find her perspective on life so refreshing. She values honesty, respect, family, and treating others with kindness. She despises bullshit and ego. She came to this understanding of life in her late 40s and early 50s, and I’m thankful she shares it through her writing so I can absorb it earlier in my life.

8. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

   

   This science fiction novel had a surge in popularity on the internet this year, and for good reason. We meet our protagonist, who is locked in a room with 39 women in an unknown place for unknown reasons. What follows is beautiful, frustrating, liberating, confusing, and everything you want in a complex narrative that asks you to question why you believe what you believe.

9. Eyeliner: A Cultural History by Zahra Fatima Hankir

   

   I bought this on a whim and had no clue what to expect. Eyeliner, my staple make up since I began wearing it in 6th grade, has a complex history that spans both countries and centuries. In hindsight, it feels like I should have known this to be the case, but I was delightfully surprised at what I learned from this. It made me rethink some judgement I’d had toward a grocery store clerk and the way she wore her eyeliner when I’d see her every Saturday. That’s the most magical thing a book can do - change your perspective.

10. The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi

    

    I’ve been finding it difficult to understand how the Israel and Palestine conflict could be called “complicated” over the ongoing 2+ year war. Indiscriminately bombing children, families, and civilians seems pretty uncomplicatedly wrong to me. This history of the region was helpful in understanding how public opinion has been shaped and what roles different powers have played.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

He’s a Midwest king. He has a palpable love for his friends and community. He takes his art and his commitment to his fans seriously in such a silly and light way that I deeply admire. And he sees the world through a lens that is delightfully grounded and principled.

He posted this to his Instagram story last night, and it brought me a moment of clarity:

I wonder at what point so much of the world lost touch with the skill needed to see the joyful part of being a human. To turn your face towards brightness, not as an act of ignorance of suffering but rather a deliberate decision live with love anyway.

I really believe this is a skill that takes practice. Ritualized intention to mold your vision into something new. I think maybe this ease we have with slipping into anger, ego, fear, is a direct result of our joy muscles withering away.

I’m realizing that’s what I find so comforting about Caleb. Joy, for him, is a practice. It’s intentional. It’s a constant act of care for the world around him. His podcasts guests reflect the diverse and deep community of loved ones that he has cultivated across the country, and the people he welcomes with open arms. Comedians, musicians, the director of the Kansas City Tenants Union. Each episode ends with a genuine declaration of love and respect. It’s easy to mistake an insincere celebrity as honest, but it’s impossible to believe the sincerity between Caleb and his friends is anything but absolute.

I’m realizing this is also what I find so comforting about myself and the perspective I’ve cultivated over the years. I decided when I was 21 that I was exhausted living with a default state of anger. It’s been seven years of feeling for the lightness in every moment.

Like how today, when my doctor’s appointment went better than I was expecting, and I ran into a childhood friend in the lobby that I hadn’t seen in years.

Or the excitement in my husband’s voice when he talks about the fishing trip he’s going on with his friends this week.

Or how I’m reminded of the thoughtfulness of my mother-in-law when I slip the bookmark she chose for me into the book she bought me for Christmas.

Or how in the morning light this morning, my cat laid on my chest and I remembered that my grandpa visited me in my dreams the night before.

I wonder how often those that seemed to have turn towards cruelty ever think about these moments throughout their day. If there’s ever a pause, a consideration, of how they are experiencing the world.

There is a lot of anxiety in being a person who is constantly aware of themselves and the potential harm they are inflicting. But there’s also a lot of comfort in knowing that genuine care will always be your lasting impact.

I’ve been told, like Caleb, that this thinking is idealistic. I’ve fought against my own internal criticism that I am living with a naiveté that will ultimately be my downfall.

But I will echo the last two lines of his post:

“I don’t ever want to understand cruelty. I hope I never see violence as a foregone conclusion.”

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options. Pick one or more, and help sustain this movement.

The worst part of the information age is not everyone having access to everything going on in the world. It’s that everyone feels like they have to have an opinion on it all.

It’s as if the constant barrage of insane news flying at our faces 24/7 is making us all feel like we have an obligation to be keyed in to everything going on in the world. Of course, being informed is important, but so is having normal conversations about normal human things that don’t involve debating the fundamentals of humanity.

Thanksgiving is uniquely primed for those types of nausea-inducing conversations, and you might be prepping how you’re going to redirect your racist uncle right alongside the turkey.

I am proposing, instead, 25 topics of conversation that will be much more fun to discuss, reveal new and interesting depths to the relatives you see twice a year, and (hopefully) ensure no one will leave the dinner table crying and blocking everyone on Facebook.

1. Greet everyone with an uncomfortably long hug, like, it’s really weird that you’re hugging them for so long, why are you doing that, please let go, and see who the first person is to ask if you’re doing okay.

2. Share a small moment from your life that delighted you recently.

3. If you were a Thanksgiving dish, which would you be and why?

4. Do you think this life is the first time you’ve been on Earth?

5. Which sibling will be the best at taking care of Mom and Dad when they start to turn senile?

6. Say three nice things about Mom (or whoever took the lead in planning Thanksgiving, which, let’s be honest, is likely a mom).

7. What’s the best new song you listened to recently?

8. Which NFL position do you think you could play?

9. Which of your grandparents would you be least surprised to learn had an affair in 1972?

10. Reveal one bad thing you did in high school that your parents never figured out (those under 18 in attendance are excused from participating).

11. How was NASCAR almost as big of a sport in America as the NFL in the late 90s and early 2000s and what would it take for them to reach that level of popularity again? (This is a specific request from my husband and also a test to see if he reads my stuff)

12. If the entire family was stranded on an island, who would be sacrificed for food first?

13. Share one thing you’re thankful for.

14. Share one thing you’re not thankful for.

15. Share your most embarrassing moment from elementary school.

16. Do you think aliens have pets?

17. What’s the most evil thing one of your siblings did to you when you were children?

18. What are the top 5 best Christmas movies?

19. If you had to choose a different woman in your family to be your mom, who would you choose?

20. Which cousin’s ex-boyfriend or ex-girlfriend was your least favorite and why?

21. What’s your favorite book you’ve ever read?

22. Set a timer for five minutes and everyone make a sincere attempt at writing a poem. Then share all poems, slam-style, and the winner gets first choice of leftovers to take home.

23. Which family member would you call as a lifeline if you were a contestant on Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

24. Share the funniest moment you can remember of a family member crying and/or fighting with someone else on a holiday.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

I considered writing about anger today.

The feeling has been licking at my heels all month. It’s been poking its head around the door I’m trying to keep closed, my desperate disbelief at how some people move in the world, what and who they believe. I keep rebuilding the pages in my mind, percolating arguments, the fire in my chest burning brighter.

I don’t want to write about anger.

The last time I felt a truly righteous anger like this was, as you can probably guess, 2016. That election spanned the first year and a half of my college career. I entered adulthood trying to understand who I was going to be and instead found the dark underbelly of who many people already were.

This is not a piece about anger.

I arrived at the Women’s Resource and Action Center in Iowa City that night with hope, for the light I saw in the world to grow bigger and for the darkness people around me kept insisting upon to grow smaller. I sat next to my friend Madi as states filled in with color like bad prom make up. She shared in my hope, and we felt it slowly dwindle away as the night wore on.

At some point I decided I couldn’t remain sober while watching Steve Kornacki announce my disappointment, so I went home. I grabbed two Busch Lights that belonged to my roommate out of the fridge. I hated Busch Light — still do, but with less arrogance — but I was a 20-year-old in a pinch, and the night was constricting uncomfortably.

I went to my then-boyfriend’s house, bless his heart, a Bernie-bro with little patience. I kept refreshing and relaying the results. I can’t remember what exactly he said to me, just an exasperation to stop, go to bed, how could you expect anything different? I rolled over and fell into sobs.

But remember, this piece is not about anger.

I’ve become more and more aware that we are all having entirely different conversations with each other and it’s forcing us past one another in perpetuity. I never predicted how much of adulthood would be spent looking at the same picture as someone else and seeing something completely different and feeling absolutely fucking crazy. I don’t know where to begin reconciling. It’s maddening how impenetrable this gulf between all of us has become. It’s maddening how no one can see their own part in the chaos.

Derek Thompson wrote a poignant piece in The Atlantic this month about how solitude is eroding much of our societal structures, one of which being the political world. He argues that our closest connections, that “inner ring of family and best friends,” is as strong as its ever been, and we have built more relationships with distant, tribal connections of shared affinities (think the people across the country who you can chat with on Twitter about how much you hate the Kansas City Chiefs) than any other point in history.

But while we’re glued to our phones or stuck at home, we’ve lost touch with those middle connections, the “village,” the “familiar but not intimate relationships,” and we’re no longer practicing the ability to coexist with differences. Thompson writes, “Families teach us love, and tribes teach us loyalty. The village teaches us tolerance.”

I think that’s why writing about anger feels so futile to me. If I scream, but no one is capable of hearing and processing my anger in an understanding and effective manner, did I even throw a tantrum at all? These structures we’ve built are no longer serving us. So we all walk on wildly into an isolating oblivion and I’m stuck here screaming into the void while the world turns.

I no longer feel human in anger.

I don’t think anger will help me see and be seen. I don’t think anger will help my humanity come alive. Maybe destroying the forces of solitude will. I suppose that’s what I’m desperately hoping for these days. As fires raged through Los Angeles this month, I scrolled through places to donate money and opportunities for folks to volunteer their time and was reminded of exactly how I felt before this election, that only we can save each other.

I cringe at how idealist this sounds and I know that most people reading this will, too. But the only way we will ever start having the same conversation is through the tiny steps we take toward one another. I have to believe that we’re capable of seeing the same picture — it’s quite frankly the only thing that keeps me alive.

Otherwise, I might let anger swallow me whole.

The Midwest Creative is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options. Pick one or more, and help sustain this movement.

You would think I’d have considered my desire to become a mother enough to have a quick answer to this question, but I paused. There were the surface level things, an adorable, squishy baby to snuggle and obsess over. That mythical biological clock tapping on my shoulder. Or there was the peace I felt knowing I was ready for this step and that my husband and I would be good parents.

But what Sammy, who has an impressive way of getting at the beating drum beneath her fingers in your scalp, was really asking me was what did I see, when I thought about my future as a mom, that felt the most like coming home?

Since the moment I found out I was pregnant, I saw myself with a daughter. A baby girl with thick, curly brown hair and big feelings and the capability to mold the universe to her liking. I looked at baby girl clothes online and planned future conversations about navigating friendships and self-esteem and our intrinsic value. I dreamt of a relationship like I had growing up with my own mom, where we could hang out constantly and talk about anything and trust one another. I wanted to fill my house with unmistakable power of the girl.

We fail children in so many ways and begin them on a path of always feeling less than, and that seems especially apparent to me when it comes to little girls. There is so little room for children to be complete human beings, no grace for their mistakes made as they attempt to live a life for the first time. The emotions of girls are seen as more burdensome, their struggles as petty and overemotional. We have many subtle ways of letting our girls know we don’t take them as seriously as we do boys. I wanted to show my hypothetical daughter that I would always take her seriously.

We learned last week that we will be having a baby boy join us in March. A boy who will likely have thick, curly hair and big feelings and the capability to mold the universe to his liking. I felt my husband tense up a bit when the ultrasound tech pointed out the baby’s boy parts to us; he knew how deeply I had hoped for a girl.

But the moment was not a letdown like he, and I, had anticipated if this were to be the news we received; it became a shift in my expectations of what my future was about to look like. And I knew in that instant, my future was going to look just as sweet as I’d already imagined, and that thing about parenthood I was most looking forward to was unchanged.

Now is the part where I get a bit maudlin, so bear with me.

I don’t have a spiritual practice in the traditional sense. I am confirmed Catholic, but I decided at about age 8 that it felt like a lot of nonsense and my parents were wasting their money on CCD classes. I recognize the utility of spirituality and I’ve been searching for a way to define that for myself that doesn’t involve compromising what I see as my personal moral integrity. There’s one concept that, while it veers into an overwrought territory that makes me cringe into the high heavens, encompasses what I see as my own personal religion: Love.

Love is my religion. It’s the state in which I feel connected to something bigger than myself. It’s the higher purpose that I serve that gives me a reason to live. Romantic, friendship, familial, community – the proliferation of love in all of its forms is the most noble thing we can do with this life. And as I become a parent, I am deeply ready for my heart to expand in new and unbelievable ways with a love that I cannot even begin to imagine. Parenthood will grow my spiritual practice exponentially, and I will find a renewed sense of purpose.

I am most looking forward to living in that space in the small moments, in noticing the tiniest details about my son and leading him to brighten the world. I am looking forward to seeing him find a place within our family, to be a friend and a light to those who need it.

I want my parenting to be constructive and encouraging and expansive. I want it to see hope and promise in the fissures that I know we will encounter. I appreciate the term respectful parenting, where your child is treated with dignity while still being taught boundaries, expectations, and consequences. Where they are shown how to live in the world as an additive, without demeaning them when their inevitable mistakes detract.

The gender of my child, nor their likes and dislikes and dreams and failures, hasn’t changed how I see my personhood growing as I welcome myself to motherhood. I am uncertain who my son will be, what he will teach my husband and me, but I am certain love will guide the three of us.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

A few weeks ago, I went to the county fair in my hometown for the first time in 8 years. I stood on the dirt track with my husband, waiting for the concert to start. Kids I used to babysit and younger siblings of my classmates walked around me with cups of beer in their hands.

I recounted who stumbled past me to my mom the next day, incredulous.

“But they’re babies!” I said.

“Well, not any more?” she replied.

The thing about my hometown is that time always seems frozen in place. I am not a young professional building her writing career when I’m there; I am an uncomfortable teen scared of everything. These other kids did not hold on up their end of the deal—how did these people younger than me become adults when I often feel like a stunted version of myself?

I struggle with conceptualizing myself as a person who was formerly someone else. That the days have marched forward and I have been changed and I am now a version of me that knows things, understands herself, feels driven and capable and a little less fearful. That teenager still feels so present, even as I’ve made space for the me I have become.

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This disbelief in myself was at its most intense at the beginning of my career. I felt an inherent emptiness in my lack of professional experience, which wasn’t necessarily incorrect at first; it takes nourishment to grow. But I kept gaining that experience, writing more and meeting more people and understanding more of what works and what doesn’t, and I still felt like I hadn’t earned respect. My body became stronger the more I learned, yet my perceptions of myself stayed the same.

I struggle with conceptualizing myself as a person who was formerly someone else.

Something changed within me this year. I started to understand how much of this energy was self-inflicted. That I was taking myself out before anyone around me had a chance to consider my capabilities.

It began with noticing how often I began my sentences with the phrase, “I think.”

“I think I like that photo.”

“I think they’re a great writer.”

“I think this strategy will work.”

“I think” was a way to soften my conviction, to qualify that it was okay to take my opinions lightly because I wasn’t throwing my entire weight behind them.

The phrase rose like bile every time I opened my mouth, even as I gained more confidence to speak up in rooms I knew I had earned the right to be in.

Have you ever stopped to take inventory of how you communicate with yourself?

“I think” loomed louder and louder in my mind. My insides constricted trying to keep it from escaping my throat. I felt physically weaker, like my ideas losing power took every ounce of physicality I had with them.

My body would shrink away from itself, and the distance between who I felt myself to be and who I thought myself to be became untenable. I’ve been working to remove “I think” from my vocabulary ever since.

My boss has taught me how to be thoughtful with language. She’s an economist with words, each earning its rightful place. My delete button is most active right before I send her something I’ve written. I strive to find purpose like her.

“I think” is to be lazy with language. It’s a meaningless filler that serves to frame my thoughts in a way that feels less threatening. A strong writer claims her space on the page. Otherwise, why would anyone listen?

I resolved to stop starting my sentences with “I think” and I feel myself sit straighter. Every inch of muscle fiber activates. There’s a brightness in my chest that grows each time I allow myself and my ideas to take up space. It grows even more when I realize I am surrounded by people who want to listen.

I’ve allowed myself the space to feel sure of myself as a writer, to indulge in believing that I have something interesting to say and that I’m no longer a small child wandering through the scary halls of Corporate America. I’ve finally become someone who is not constantly worried everyone else sees her as a bumbling idiot; rather, I’m someone who is no longer thinking about other people perceiving me at all. I care more about providing something worthwhile to perceive.

That awareness of language on a molecular level has changed my approach to writing. Each word earns its place. Even as I draft this essay, I catch myself wandering into meaningless language, passive voice that dilutes the thickness of my language. My language that I believe earned a place on this page. It’s that act of noticing that tells me that time has past and I have grown and that scared teenager inside me quiets a bit.

It feels much deeper than just thinking I have the knowledge and skills that have earned consideration. It’s inherently knowing that I am capable of creating something worth listening to. Even when it’s not there in the moment, that knowledge and skill will carry me to a place where it waits for me like a sun-drenched meadow.

When you feel good about yourself, free within your confidence and sureness, it becomes physically impossible to return to feeling half-baked, self-conscious. Alienated from your power.

That’s a me I no longer know.

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The Midwest Creative is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options. Pick one or more, and help sustain this movement.

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Today is my 29th birthday, which naturally means I am beginning my 30th year of life. And I have never been so excited.

You might expect a woman my age to cringe and retreat at the number 30 and sob mournfully for the magical jungle of my 20s. And while there is a a sort of goodbye I’ve already begun, I’ve been excited to turn 30 for a few years now. Confidence and grace. Unashamed. Thirty, flirty, and thriving.

Humans love stories. It’s the oldest tradition we have, passing down lessons learned and miles walked so those behind us understand what may come their way. I am beginning my third decade guided by stories of women seeing their lives expand in unbelievable ways as they age.

Women on Twitter furtively describe a newfound wildness to their sexualities in their 30s. Chelsea Handler and Amy Poehler talk extensively on their podcasts about how they found the fullest versions of themselves in their 40s and 50s. Women take risks and change their entire career paths after finally realizing their dreams decades after they were told to decide. Pop culture and shared tales over glasses of wine describe the 30th decade as one of confidence, self-assuredness, growth, exploration, and an intolerance for the bullshit that permeated the decade before.

Yet, I imagine, many of you felt a twinge of surprise when you read that I’m excited to turn 30.

Somewhere along the way, stories stopped being guidance and become omens, the smallest slivers of discomfort or harm turning us away from experiences that could also be fruitful and exhilarating. Stories that tell us that youth and beauty are king, that heartbreak will be the end of us and vulnerability is too much of a risk. These stories became distorted through the lens of our fears. It’s an evolutionary survival method to avoid threat, and nothing could be more threatening than someone deviating from what the majority has deemed most desirable.

Or, even worse, we pretend the stories meant to lead us don’t exist. Because it’s easier to fear. Because if we are scared, knowing others are not, that we don’t have to be, is too much of a mountain to climb.

These faulty forms of protection are doing more harm than good when they cause us to care more about image than the substance of our lives.

When I was in middle school, 5th or 6th grade and just beginning puberty, I told my mom that I thought I was fat. “My thighs are big!” I remember telling her, convinced I had developed an untenable bodily largesse. (This is long before we were having conversations around body positivity and not viewing fat as a bad word, so please give me a bit of grace.)

“Well, my thighs are bigger than yours, so what does that make me?” she responded.

This response made me pause for a second. I knew my mom was thin. I knew that I was smaller than her - granted, I was smaller because I was a child, but it revealed the fault in my logic. And there was something about that truth sitting there, wide open, unavoidable, that made me realize I didn’t even believe what I had said in the first place. A few other girls at school had said this about their own bodies. It felt like something we were supposed to believe about ourselves.

How lucky we are to have access to those who want to encourage and prepare us. These stories are there, if you listen, to guide us through whatever new period life upon which we are about to embark. How shameful that we toss their knowledge aside.

We ignore these stories because we are searching for solutions to problems that we convince ourselves exist, and the more of us that buy into this, the more those problems do exist. The real solutions like in embracing the myriad and accepting the course of time while choosing to spend it in the ways that fulfill us the most.

In Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, the aging Reverend Ames writes a letter to his young son to be read long after the reverend passes. His son was born to him late in life, and he feels the urgency to provide his son with guidance long after he dies. He tells his son, “It is worth living long enough to outlast whatever sense of grievance you acquire.”

The gift of longevity is letting go of the sense of bitterness and regret we have developed - that’s the message Reverend Ames wants to impart to his son. Live long enough to understand what matters. And maybe, if the reverend can help it, his son will learn what matters a little sooner than he did.

More than extolling the gift of time, his act of writing to his son is extolling the gift of knowledge passed. Storytelling is the oldest human tradition and it’s also the most important because it means no moment is faced alone. I wonder at our insistence to try and face these moments alone, any way. I hope we start heeding this gift more often.

With Uncertainty is a proud member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Please consider a subscription to my brilliant colleagues’ work to support storytelling across the state of Iowa. All of these authors provide content for free, with paid subscription options.

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