Hey friends…
This week has had a lot of hard moments for me and my family and I also haven’t been feeling well, so I haven’t been able to write my weekly share like I wanted to. BUT, I did write something a few months ago when I arrived at my mom’s house, the place where I lived since kindergarten, that I wanted to share. Lately, I’ve been sharing a lot about memories and home and belonging, and this piece fits right in. Here we go…
I’m sitting in a white plastic chair on the grass outside my mom’s house, facing the sun. The steam from my tea floats up from the grassy patch beneath me where my mug is sitting and I can’t help but think of all the times my best friend Sam and I laid on this very same patch of grass after high school in our bikinis, with baby oil slathered all over our bodies to get a tan, or the times one of our boyfriends dropped off a twelve pack of Coors Light through the very same window to my bedroom I was looking at now, before going to the front door of the house to greet my mom.
I look to my right and I see our neighbor, Mr. Science’s house, who we named that shortly after we moved in in 1986 because he had gone to Cal Tech and was really smart and whose name I didn’t even know was “Dave Ferguson” until my 20’s, who still lives next door, and seeing him in his driveway waxing his car the other day reminded me of all the Christmases he gave us the best gifts that only a young, single, professional with no kids could, like a walkman, a see through telephone, and diamond earrings, until he stopped once me and my sister got boobs and he probably deemed it no longer appropriate.
I’m home for the first time in four years. For the first time since cancer. And for the first time, I am seeing this house and seeing myself in an entirely different way.
The world is so full of change. We age, we get sick, we lose loved ones. Our kids go to college, our friends start to die, who we see in the mirror isn’t who we remember ourselves as being. The town we moved into that had an old-school charm and a down-home feel now has a Whole Foods and a new subdivision where your favorite creek used to be. They all tell us that the only thing constant is change, and the older I get, the more I understand why people say that. Time is speeding up and the changes are becoming more permanent.
These past four years have had more change than I would have liked. There’s been too much newness, too many uncharted waters, they’ve called for too much resilience, which has left me unmoored and exhausted, and so this morning, as my tea warmed my hands and the sun kissed my face, the familiarity of this grass, this patio, and this small yellow home that never changes, has given me great comfort.
The neighbors are the same, the trees are the same, the birds chirping in the tree outside the window at 7 am are the same, and the calming affect that that’s having on my heart is allowing me to see the ways that I’m still the same too, on a soul level, as I always was. Only this time, as someone in midlife having now gone through some harrowing things in life, I can finally appreciate it.
The beauty I never saw before fills my eyes with tears of overwhelming gratitude. I can look at old pictures and appreciate that I’ve had these experiences instead of getting lost in lamenting that I’m not young, skinny, tan, hot and with the whole of time ahead of me anymore. These moments are everywhere now, especially since illness and cancer and I’m so glad I’m not too busy still #girlbossing to even see them.
So Happy New Year to you. I wanted to share a slice of my morning with you. May you see your true self clearly, may you have more moments that fill your heart with gratitude, and may you see how incredibly far you’ve come while still keeping that same mischievous, bright, and electric spark you’ve always had.
This week, I hope you find your own patch of grass among the ever changing world and you think to yourself “this is exactly where I’m supposed to be.”
XO
Sally
P.s. For my paid VIPS below…I’m gonna spill some of the beans about my week and a podcast that had me thinking about what it means to be a “good girl.”