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I don’t want words.
I am exhausted by words.

Come walk with me 
through the woods instead.

Move when I move. 
And pause when I pause.

Put your palms to the bark of this tree.
Feel the sap running under the surface with your mind. 

Barely touch the outermost molecules 
of the new petals of a purple wildflower.

Feel the mosquito’s legs brush against your arm 
And just as gently wave it away.

Listen to the rubber band voices of the frogs in the pond.
Close your eyes and try to locate them with your ears.

Watch the pollen drift on the slow current.
See the geese glide through.

Gasp that the log by that rock
Is really a sunbathing snapping turtle.

Listen to the chirp of the creek as it flows around the fallen tree.
Be immersed in birdsong without knowing their names.

Stroll at the most.
Pause often.

Don’t crowd this with speech. 
Inhabit my life without it.

I forgive you for getting away with it. 
I forgive you for never having to pay. 
I forgive you for never changing.
I forgive you for taking my children.
I forgive you for the years I will never get back. 
I forgive you for not letting me say goodbye to the dog.
I forgive you for all the money that disappeared.
I forgive you for the things you did to my body.
I forgive you for the fact that now I know how that feels.

But I also forgive me. 

I forgive me for staying.
I forgive me for not knowing what to do.
I forgive me for being confused.
I forgive me for not being enough for you.
I forgive me for not being tough enough.

I forgive me for telling the truth.
I forgive me for expecting people to believe me.
I forgive me for not having the right evidence.
I forgive me for not knowing how to tell the story right.

I forgive me for never writing the book. 
I forgive me for not being able to translate this for other people. 

I forgive me for giving up.
I forgive me for running.

I’m only a human being. 
I’m not a saint. 
I’m not the mother you didn't have 
And for whom your soul seems to roar endlessly.

I was deeply in love with the world
And now I practice not flinching at being loved back.

I forgive myself for that, too.

If I can't do that, you really win.

I wish it had never happened.

But if it hadn’t happened,

I wouldn’t have my best reasons for living.

95% of it was perfect.

Of the imperfect, 4% was me being human

And 1% is the stuff of which I need to let go.

I will sit.

I will breathe.

I will allow myself to practice.

Please be patient, God.

My hands think they love being cramped into fists.

Okay, let’s just chill for a second.

Let’s just chill.

Because my anxiety is already at an 11, and the Cadbury Creme Eggs were not on clearance at 7 p.m., which was very un-Christian of Meijer.

Southeast Michigan is flooded, including my favorite spot to sit and listen to the river, which is seasonally appropriate but bad for whatever’s trying to get out of my subconscious.

My cats are annoyed with me for reasons that remain unclear.

I accidentally started a YA romance trilogy that does not exist in any local library or online system, so now I’m waiting on ThriftBooks like it’s 2007 just to find out what happens next.

And somewhere in San Jose, a stranger spent several minutes on my blog, which is either flattering or unsettling depending on which of my two current moods I’m inhabiting.

Also—there’s the war thing.

I don’t like the war thing.

There are moments where I’m just vibing on Pepcid on my couch with a heating pad and a cat in my lap, filling out Instructional Design job applications with my trusty AI bot, listening to something classical, convinced that everything is going to be fine if I just keep moving forward, like the good girl I know I am.

And then there are moments where I’m sitting in a county park parking lot with my pink Hydroflask, listening to Hook by Blues Traveler on repeat, wondering if it’s time to go to Canada.

It’s so incredibly close to time to go to Canada.

My pattern recognition is screaming, Do these people have any idea what they’re doing?

And the answer is yes.

They are doing this on purpose.

I cannot personally imagine wanting to do this on purpose, but those people are.

They don’t need to break us all at once. They just need to keep us slightly off balance—hungry, irritated, tired, and reactive.

We’ll complain about $6 gas and $8 chips and still drive to the beach this summer.

We’ll be shocked when something escalates somewhere else—but not in our hometown. Not yet.

We’ll send thoughts and prayers and then yell at someone in traffic on the way home.

Those people want us pissed off.

They want that little spike of adrenaline every time something small goes wrong.

We don’t need anything external to take us down. We’ll do it to ourselves if we’re not careful.

So I’ll order my books. And then I’ll order more.

I’ll keep using my AI to tailor my resumes.

I’ll wait for Canada to decide if I’m a citizen, since my grandmother’s mother never got the chance to decide for herself.

I’ll calm my 18-year-old when weird Selective Service mail shows up and remind him that an autism diagnosis and a heart murmur count for something in this world.

And then I’ll breathe.

In for four. Out for six.

I’ll take the magnesium.

I’ll pet whatever cat’s within reach.

I’ll eat something that used to be alive in the ground.

Not because it fixes anything. But because it keeps me bending, not breaking.

When I do that, I’m changing their game.

We don’t break.

They don’t win.

So, once again, I’m no longer teaching.

I really tried this time. I have cats now. They need food and litter.
I still couldn’t do it.

I could give you all the reasons it didn’t work. I could tell you I finally hit every square on my “Teaching Is Toxic” bingo card and walked away from things even the recruiter said were justified.

But that’s not why I’m not going back.

I can’t take on anything that isn’t mine anymore.

I don’t care that it isn’t your fault.
I don’t care that someone handed it to you a decade ago and now it’s “someone else’s turn.”
I don’t care if the state handed it to you.
I don’t care that people keep showing up, dropping their own mess, and leaving.

I don’t care if it’s funding.
I don’t care if it’s staffing.
I don’t care if it’s health.

I agree—you shouldn’t be holding it.

But I’m not going to hold it either.

I don’t care why you think I should.
I don’t care if it’s for legal reasons.
I don’t care if it helps you sleep at night.
I don’t care if you “just need a minute” and you’ll be right back.
I don’t care if we signed a contract where it said, in 8-point light grey font, that I would hold it.

No.

I’m not holding it anymore.

I would rather sit on my couch, refreshing LinkedIn and trying to figure out how I’m paying May’s rent—with no health insurance—than walk into another crumbling 1950s classroom.

I’m no longer dealing with:

• drunk parents at meetings
• discipline meetings where no one shows up
• kids old enough to drive who were never taught what an equal sign means
• superintendents who wouldn’t recognize a Title IX violation if it hit them in the face
• directors who are either impossible to hire or quietly taking screenshots of my emails
• principals waiting for a reason to expel
• gen ed teachers who don’t come to IEP meetings
• behavior interventionists sending students back to my room to “get services” after they hit someone the hour before

And that’s just in the past few months.

It doesn’t include Morocco.
It doesn’t include the farm towns where people voted for this and still don’t have heat in the winter.
It doesn’t include my first year, when one of my students died three months after school started.

I still showed up after that.

But I’m done.

So I don’t know who wins.

COVID.
Charter schools.
The Department of Education.
Whoever built it like this—

You win.

I’m out.

Enjoy it.

The placement I left in December still hasn’t found another certified special ed teacher.

They were paying $2000 a week.

Allegory of Hope, Allesandro Turchi, 17th Century


Dear Son,

I talked to your brother this week, and he’s been collecting data. 
He said that only two people hate me that he knows of: 
you and your dad. 

I know he’s been at it since before Christmas
I was getting these weird texts from him 
saying people were telling me they say hi. 
Your dad’s girlfriend, your grandma. 
I’m proud of him, 
because he certainly doesn’t get this from his father. 
He’s testing reality. 
It’s beautiful.

When I was a bartender, I gathered data all the time. 
I learned that I made $50 more a night 
when I wore contacts instead of glasses. 
I learned that I could only unfurl my smartassness with a certain kind of man–
he would end up tipping me very well 
or, weirdly, ask me to marry him. 
I learned that deep alcoholism prevented a person 
from knowing who’d broken their ribs the night before. 

It was me. 
They’d come up behind me 
and tried to hug me when I’d told them not to–
so I elbowed them as hard as I could.
	
I told your brother I don’t think that you and your dad hate me
I think both of you wanted me to be something 
I wasn’t capable of being
and it hurt you very deeply. 

I don’t know how to fix it. 
Because I can’t. 
	
I know that this is a very boomer thing to say, 
but I genuinely did the best I could. 

When I didn’t know something, 
I consulted experts, 
because that’s what you’re supposed to do. 

My problem is that I trusted the wrong people. 

I thought I was the problem, and acted accordingly. 
I was in therapy, 
I was following the instructions of my mental health team to the letter.
I read all the parenting books. 
I got sober, I volunteered, I went to church, I joined parenting groups. 

I went back to work–
but only part time because someone had to cook dinner. 
I went back to college. 

I was exhausted but I kept pushing because that’s what you’re supposed to do. 

You’re supposed to grow. 
You’re supposed to change.

That’s the audacity of hope. 

It never occurred to me that I was doing too much and my body was suffering. 
It still hurts that it wasn’t enough. 
Everything fell apart anyway. 

It felt like liquid fire 
slipping through my fingers 
as I sobbed. 

You and your brother went to live with your dad.
I moved out of town. 

I had cluster headaches and couldn’t get off my couch.
I worked 60 hours a week 
and marvelled that a dead person could do so much 
and move the needle so little.

But.
I started doing yoga. 
I started stretching, 
I started getting massages regularly, 
I followed my nutritionist’s instructions, 
I dedicated myself to sleep. 

I listened to a lot of hiphop, 
I danced in my kitchen. 

I wrote bad poetry. I tried to get it published. It didn’t work. 

I looked at international teaching jobs. 
I looked at them again. 

I visited Morocco and decided to live there–
because why the hell not. 

If I was going to be miserable, I might as well learn some languages.

It was all deeply painful. 
Every day 
I either ached or cried or begged the universe for it to stop. 
But I kept going, 
through Rabat, 
through your graduation
(do you know I was there?)
through dogsitting in Canada, 
through trying to start a business in Ecuador. 

And now I’m back in Michigan, and have been for months. 
I keep losing teaching jobs– 
It’s almost a game at this point. 

But I feel solid–
annoyed most of the time, but a good annoyed. 
I go to meetings, I pay my bills. 
I adopted two cats.

There’s another data point your brother passed along. 
You’re very angry right now. 

And rightfully so. 
The world can be shit. 
Nothing makes sense. 

I asked him if you get angry like I do, and he said yes. 
It’s no wonder he’s afraid of you–
It’s a powerful anger 
that can move mountains when applied correctly. 

He also says you’re sad. 
He says you cry all the time. 

So. 
I have a question for you. 
It’s a dumb question, and old-fashioned, 
but it’s the one that probably will help the most.

Can you muster the audacity of hope?

Can you see a more colorful world when you close your eyes? 
Can you imagine not being in pain? 
When you listen to music, does everything seem 2% better?

Hold on to that. 
Trust me. 
You’ll be fine.

I miss you terribly, but that is not the important thing here. 
The important thing is your pain. 
But even more important than the pain is you, as a person. 

You–
a light in this world, 
not seeing your own light, 
and crying alone in the dark. 

I’m not there, but I see you. 
And you are so beautiful. 
You always have been, and you always will be. 

I don’t need data for that.
It’s just true.

Love,
Mom

I finally broke down and got sick last Friday. It hit me like a freight train, and I still feel gross. The upside to all of the fluids in my body draining out my nose is that I have been goofy as hell because I’m so tired, and completely incapable of doing any real work. 

So I did what every Gen Xer worth their salt does when they’re sick, and I watched TV. Except it wasn’t Let’s Make a Deal or The Price is Right. I watched The Blues Brothers. And I saw the light.

I have been searching for the wrong thing all my life. I’ve been looking for steady employment and not hating their ex-wives, when what I really want is Elwood.

Elwood Blues is the archetype of perfect positive masculinity for this flaming dumpster fire that is dominating what should be my peaceful midlife. I did everything right, everything turned out wrong, and now I want integrity, unfortunate tattoos, and someone—ANYONE–who believes in something bigger than themselves to bring me along for the bit. 

First, some personal context. While The Blues Brothers was being filmed, I lived near Joliet, Illinois—my family lived there until I was 8. I was watching the opening sequence, at the hellish hazy oil refineries, and I said wait, I know that place. My dad worked in that strip of refineries at a chemical plant, and, it being the early 1980s, would take me into work with him, where an office assistant would park me in a conference room with stacks of green-and-white striped dot matrix printer paper and smelly markers while my dad worked on enormous mainframes that were probably less technologically complex than my blender manufactured last year. 

Every time I travel through Chicago, I cry. Every time I fly into O’Hare and the plane curves around the Sears Tower, I take studied sips of water to hide the tears rising in my eyes. Every time I’ve emerged from Union Station into the caverns of downtown Chicago, I’ve had to work harder than I did on my capstone project for my degree on looking like it doesn’t affect me.

I love that part of the country. It’s in my bones. It’s probably the closest experience I have to home.

That said, this movie beautifully reminds me of that home. The haze is forlorn, the trash in the streets has a purpose, the old police car is, of course, the rational choice over the Cadillac. I didn’t live in the shiny northern suburbs, I lived in the ones where people did the work. 

And Elwood Blues, who waits for his brother dutifully outside of the prison, who tells him he has to see the penguin because he promised, who, when he attends the church and his brother sees the light, doesn’t see anything himself—but is still the one who insists, throughout the movie, that they’re on a mission from God… He’s my flipping hero. He lets his brother sleep on the bed. He only eats white toast. (Sensory issues, I can relate.) He’s the driver, he doesn’t smoke, he plays harmonica without it being annoying. 

He’s competent and steady and even puts hooking up with literally the most beautiful woman in the world aside in order to get to the gig and create a better future for kids like he once was. 

It’s a silly movie from a silly time, and there must have been mountains of cocaine involved, but seriously. Where’s my Elwood Blues? Yes, his name is scrawled unevenly across his knuckles, trailing off on the third finger of his left hand, but I am personally no stranger to unfortunate tattoos. I need the steadiness. I need the divine dedication. I need someone, anyone, who can ride beside me on this stupid fucking “journey” and not make it worse on purpose.

And knows the best way to handle Nazis is to drive straight through them.

I don’t think this is too much to ask. A little sincerity goes a long way, and if you add vision to that you have the perfect man.

So I’m taking applications. The contact form is above. Thank you for your consideration.

These people compared The Blues Brothers to a crusade movie and they kind of have a point.

Three years ago today, I left.

Last night, I slept through the night for the first time since I left.

On January 25, 2023, I slept on a mattress on the floor in a house with no furniture on the east side of Lansing. I had lived at the same address for over sixteen years—with my kids’ dad, and then with our family—but in early December I’d filed for divorce. He made enough noise every day that I knew I needed to leave fast.

I have good friends, and they’ve instinctively checked in on me today. They don’t know the exact date. They just know that things are cold and hard and frozen here, and they’re kind enough to reach out. It’s not bad. It’s just heavy. It’s a heavy day.

At the same time, they can’t know how important it is.

I joked with my sister earlier that talking about my marriage is like speaking Dutch in Cambodia. There are people in Cambodia who speak Dutch, and I know they’re there. No one who doesn’t speak Dutch is offended if I speak it around them—but they have no idea what I’m saying. It’s a rare group who will understand, and I’m always surprised when someone does.

As a present to myself, I’m going to speak Dutch here. Just for a minute. Just for you.

From the very beginning, I assumed I was the problem, and I took responsibility for that. Very early on, I knew that no matter what I said or did, he was going to do whatever he wanted. If the marriage was going to work, if I wanted to stay near the kids, I was going to have to change. And if I wasn’t around, no one would know how to take care of them.

So I changed.

When I got pregnant, it was made very clear to me that it was my choice to keep the kids. When I saw two lines on the stick, I knew that I couldn’t raise a kid on my own, so we talked about getting married. However, I had to beg him to propose. 

He didn’t come to prenatal appointments much after the first ultrasound. He’d just been appointed to his job at the state and was saving his time off for when the kids were born. I kept trying to talk to him about the nursery. He dodged the question until I finally cornered him and asked, “Do you like things with animals on them?”

That became the first of many jokes about me being too intense. A crazy pregnant lady.

I’d quit my job because I had hyperemesis. I think he believed I sat around watching TV all day. In reality, I had to concentrate deeply to keep food down, wasn’t gaining weight, and my hair was falling out.

I thought this was benign neglect. I thought that men didn’t know anything about pregnancy, and I’d heard so many stories of women being nuts while pregnant. It made sense.

We did get married—downtown, across from the capitol, in the church with Governor’s Row carved into the stone. When I walked down the aisle, it was the first time I waddled. 

Two weeks later, he came into the room with his phone open and asked for a picture.

I said no. I was wearing his boxers and a campaign t-shirt. I told him I was disgusting.

He said, “Not of your face.”

It took a second to register. I told him I didn’t do pictures. He said it had been such a long time. Please.

I took a deep breath, pulled down his boxers, and lay back. I heard the camera sound. Then: thank you, thank you, as he rushed out of the room.

I had no idea what to feel, so I didn’t let myself feel anything.

At church every week, everyone told me what a great dad he was going to be. I smiled.

I made it to 36 weeks and six days. It was mid-July, hot as hell. I’d eventually gained almost seventy-five pounds—I joked it was a mercy C-section. In reality, I had pre-eclampsia, and after some brief moments when I tried to breastfeed, the babies were whisked away and I was put on a magnesium sulfate drip. I puked through the first night of my babies’ lives. I slept through the next day.

I found out later that he’d taken over a conference room and invited guests into the hospital. At least a dozen people held my babies that day. I did not.

I told myself I’d been sick. He was proud. He loved them so much he wanted to show them off. They made other people happy. They were twins—when do you get to see twin babies in real life?

They weren’t even a day old, and they were already on display as his children.

In the first ten days of their lives, they met both the governor and the host of a public television political talk show. I was high on Vicodin for both events, but on the show, I predicted the next president.

Everyone was kind. But I was his wife. The mother of his children.

Three weeks after major abdominal surgery—three weeks after giving birth to two babies—he told me it was time to have sex again. When I said the doctors said to wait six weeks, he said they only said that to “cover their asses.”

It took a few seconds.

I thought about how I had no job. My name wasn’t on the house. I had no money. I was about to declare bankruptcy over medical bills. I thought about the two babies in the crib eight feet away.

What was I supposed to do? Go to the hospital afterward? We had one car.

We’d been married for three months.

That was just the beginning. I stayed for over fifteen more years.

It became ordinary. That’s the scariest thing about learning to speak Dutch in Cambodia. You don’t even feel like you’re lying. You convince yourself you don’t speak Dutch at all—that you’re speaking Cambodian. You learn key words and phrases and can say them with a perfect accent. 

It sounds like fluency. But you can’t hold a conversation. You just know how to signal that you can.

When I left my marriage, everyone was surprised. Family. Friends. No one knew. No one could have known. I’d learned early what not to say, and I’d memorized what I needed in order to pass.

But the truth is, many people didn’t want to know. I was told directly that they didn’t want to talk about my marriage. People I thought cared deeply about me said they didn’t want to talk about my divorce.

Some said they’d stay friends with both of us. I told them that was fine. They could stay friends with him. I’d make it easy.

I couldn’t stay friends with people who thought it was a normal Cambodian divorce. I couldn’t even speak the language.

He could. I’ll write more about that another time.

For now, it’s snowing in Michigan. There’s a snow day tomorrow. It’s late, and I’m tired.

But it’s been three years. I’m out. I’m free. I lost almost everything—but I’m alive.

And last night, I slept through the night.

I have a good feeling about later.

If this post resonated, this site can help.

My sister said, “Wait—didn’t you already have a viola?”

Yes, I did. I donated it to a high school orchestra program before I went to Ecuador this last time, because I wasn’t planning to come back.

I came back. It’s been three months. So I got another viola.

It’s a student instrument, and I’m a student again. I have to get my hands and ears back in shape; I’m going to be spending a lot of time with a tuner app, swearing at the fingertips of my left hand and moving my right arm very, very slowly.

I am, however, a student who was once a professional. And with a new instrument—one with no history—I get to let go of the professional part and go back to enjoying making noise with an expensively carved piece of wood. I get to marvel at muscle memory and actually enjoy something that once gave me great meaning for a long time.

Music is patterns. I reached a point once where I didn’t need to count rests anymore; I just listened for what came next. I heard cues instead of notes. I felt goosebumps instead of anxiety. When I closed my eyes, I saw colored light. I breathed in largo or allegretto. I read strange markings on a page—generations of pencil smudges, completely meaningless to mere mortals—and turned them into sound.

I sat with groups of people sweating under stage lights, or hidden in the shadows of an orchestra pit, and together we turned the unintelligible into something gorgeous.

I miss that part.

I don’t miss the pressure.

(I certainly don’t miss Interlochen, but that’s another tale.)

For now, I move a bow over strings. I listen with all the parts of the insides of my ears, trying to make sounds correct. Trying to make all the aspects of the patterns work together to create something beautiful—in the dead of a Michigan winter, everything outside covered in ice.

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Merida is a vibe.

The sun sets sideways, and I’m sleeping with a depth and solidity I haven’t been able to manage back in Michigan. It’s 57 degrees in Detroit, dropping to 24 by sunrise in six hours. When I go back on Thursday, the high is 18. 

It’s still 71 degrees at 9 pm here.

There’s a clumsy, dry, fast iguana I’m stalking. There’s tiny bugs that are stinging my elbows. The Ubers are cheap and the Walmart is comforting and the buildings are bright.

Most importantly, I started the book today. It’s THE book. All the rest of them were arcs of energy that fizzled after a few days or weeks. This one is masonry. It’s blood, and bone, and gristle, and flesh. I feel like I’m about to give birth. It’s art, but more importantly it’s craft. It’s time, it’s guided effort, it’s deep breaths, it’s bare feet on the cement floor.

I’m not only writing it, but it’s writing me. I’m not going to be the same when I’m done. I’ll look the same, and sound the same, but I won’t be the same. 

I love making art. You cannot vision board this into existence, this isn’t clever. This is life. You have to sit, and you have to listen. You have to stretch, and you have to trust that in the end, after you’ve brought this thing to the surface, you will still be human and you will still be loved. 

If anything, you will be loved more. You have to be. 

Wish me luck.

Like this? Check out my Substack.