Somewhere between being the pot-smoking, rule-breaking teenager who snuck out the back door and rolled the car down the driveway after midnight (sorry, Dad, but that truth was bound to come out eventually) and turning 52, I stopped being fun.

I don’t know if it was the private school uniform that encouraged my teenage antics or the banker’s suit, briefcase, nylons and heels that eventually discouraged them, but somewhere along the way, I lost my edge.

And I don’t recall agreeing to any of it, but somehow responsibility arrived rolled up with my college diploma and job offer, passed to me like a baton as I crossed the stage in 1996.

I was spontaneous. I loved having a good time. I didn’t always consider the consequences. I just went for it.

And damn, I had a lot of fun.

I was also the yearbook editor in high school, running a little side business manufacturing fake IDs out of the yearbook room.

And in complete transparency, I actually looked up the statute of limitations before putting that confession into words on a public forum. Since I’m not running for office, I’m considering myself in the clear.

But wow, do I wish I’d kept one of those artifacts from my past. I would frame it today.

I’m sure it was a terrible replica of anything resembling a legal ID, but apparently it was convincing enough for some of the seedier drinking establishments in downtown Minneapolis.

And really, wasn’t that the point?

In fairness to myself, entrepreneurship came naturally. It’s in my DNA. And honestly, so is rule-breaking. I am circling back to you, Dad, on both of those. You should be proud.

Now, before anyone gets concerned, I’m certainly not suggesting that pot smoking and potentially felonious activities are the secret to having fun. My color palette doesn’t include orange (unless it Hermès orange) or black-and-white stripes.

But I do wonder what happened to that girl.

Maybe being carefree is simply part of being a teenager. But why did that part of me have to expire when I became an adult?

And when did I decide she wasn’t allowed to come along?

Apparently, I left more than my permed hair in the ’90s.

When Life Got Serious

Becoming an independent young adult. Getting married. Buying a home. Taking on a mortgage. Having a child. Getting divorced. Illness. Losing my husband. Losing friends.

Life unfolded as it does, but the seriousness and responsibilities escalated.

It’s amazing how quickly that happens.

I think about those choices. So many were made before my prefrontal cortex was fully developed. My inner child was getting abandoned before I was even considered developmentally fully formed.

That sucks.

A kinder version of myself might have held the reins a little longer before sending me off into full adulthood, whether I was ready for it or not.

And yet, somewhere between adolescence and becoming a fully formed adult, I began taking on roles that seemed to require a certain persona.

The responsible citizen.

The corporate executive. The wife. The mother. The business owner. The community leader.

Each role came with expectations about how I was supposed to behave. Or at least what I assumed those expectations to be.

Be responsible. Be dependable. Be accomplished. Be mature. Be someone other people could count on.

And I became exceptionally good at all of those things.

My first job out of college actually required me to wear a skirt, pantyhose and suit jacket every single day.

I loved the wardrobe so much that I took a weekend job at Ann Taylor to help pay for it.

I also had to place ashtrays on the boardroom table before big meetings, which tells you something about the era I was entering.

Looking back, I didn’t reluctantly step into adulthood. I embraced it.

I was the one who actually asked for a briefcase for graduation.

And before you picture some Don Draper rectangular box with a handle, let me assure you that style was still very much a priority.

It was a black leather Coach saddle bag.

She was a completely impractical beauty that couldn’t accommodate my Tupperware brown-bag lunch, but I had never been more proud.

I loved being the woman in the suit. I loved the career, the ambition and the responsibilities that came with it. But somewhere between dressing the part and becoming the part, I began to take myself very seriously.

It might have started with an Excel spreadsheet I created to account for every dollar I earned, spent and saved. It only occurs to me now that there was never a line item for fun.

It makes me think of my late husband. His first job out of college was as a schoolteacher. He kept track of every dollar in a little pocket-sized notebook. He didn’t make much, but he accounted for it all. The disproportionate amount he spent on entertainment and alcohol speaks volumes about who he was, even back then.

He clearly understood the importance of budgeting for fun long before I did.

Looking back, I wonder how much of the responsible adult I became was actually me and how much was simply who I thought I was supposed to be. Working Girl (and Pretty Woman) were my favorite movies back in the day, so it’s hard to discern.

Even now, my analytical brain is spinning with questions. At what point did being responsible become being overly responsible? When did thinking things through become overthinking everything?

More importantly, why did I start believing that being an adult meant taking everything so seriously? Can I blame it on the briefcase?

I don’t think the problem was that I took serious things seriously. That’s just being smart. I think the problem was that eventually, I started taking everything seriously.

The Uncomfortable Realization

A couple of weeks ago, I attended the Hoffman Process, a seven-day program focused on self-awareness and personal growth.

One of the central ideas of the program is that we’re made up of four interconnected parts: our intellectual, spiritual, physical and emotional selves. The emotional self, or emotional child, is where our feelings, creativity, spontaneity and capacity for play live. Part of the process is learning to create balance among all four parts.

What became painfully obvious to me was that my intellectual self had been running the show. It’s literally been in the driver’s seat.

I have spent decades developing the part of myself that thinks, plans, organizes, anticipates and manages. My friends often laugh at my level of organization. I have a label and bin for everything, including the label maker.

It’s served me extraordinarily well in many areas of my life. Until recently, I considered ambition, grit, tenacity, hard work, determination, and resilience as my greatest attributes. I deeply appreciate what those qualities have allowed me to accomplish. Without them, I am not sure I could have run ten marathons and rebuilt my life after my husband passed away.

But somewhere along the way, between taking on life and responsibilities, my intellectual self became so dominant that I lost touch with the part of me that knows how to have fun.

That’s a hard thing to admit, particularly because I have a wonderful life. I travel, have extraordinary experiences, enjoy beautiful places and meet interesting people. I am grateful for all of it.

But here’s what I’m realizing. Having fun and being fun are two entirely different things.

And I want to be both.

The Boy Who Never Grew Up

Ironically, I’m now married to a 59-year-old man who never lost sight of his 12-year-old self.

Every Friday morning, I wake up to a dance party pouring out of our bathroom, with The Cure serenading me with Friday I’m in Love.

This is also a man who will happily eat an entire box of sugary cereal for dinner. And often does when I’m out of town. He makes me laugh every single day.

And when he’s with his young nephews, I’m not entirely sure who is having more fun. He engages with them as though he’s their age.

And me?

I’m usually the one giggling from the comfort of my Eight Sleep mattress, wrapped in sheets with a thread count that makes getting out of bed seem impossibly difficult some mornings.

So while he’s dancing around the room, I’m snuggled in watching.

We’re both enjoying the moment, but I’m realizing that I’ve become accustomed to enjoying the fun from the sidelines instead of participating in it.

And perhaps that’s part of what I want to change. Not just having fun, but being fun. Bringing more energy, spontaneity, humor and playfulness into my everyday life.

That’s the distinction. And that’s what’s been missing.

When Did We Start Taking Ourselves So Seriously?

Was it the responsibilities and spreadsheets that tracked my life? The expectations and the roles that went with each of them? And their corresponding outfits?

No wonder Sara Blakely cut the feet off her pantyhose. The package didn’t just arrive with the promise to pull everything up and in. Apparently, they sucked the fun out, too.

The retired finance executive in me doesn’t miss the pantyhose or the 15-year-old version of myself making reckless decisions. I certainly don’t need to return to my teenage antics. Escaping a felony once in a lifetime is more than enough.

But I do miss the freedom of my youth, before everything required so much consideration.

I’m sure I’m not alone here. I mean, I hope I’m not. I can’t be the only person who associated being responsible with being serious.

Post-Hoffman Process, here’s what I’m realizing. The two aren’t mutually exclusive.

I can have good judgment and still be spontaneous. I can throw confetti into the air, have a 30-second dance party and laugh like a schoolkid without abandoning every ounce of responsibility I’ve accumulated over the past three decades.

And I can be 52 years old and still have a little mischief in me. The kind that doesn’t involve law enforcement.

Making Room for More of Me

I recently discovered , who writes Sick & Well here on Substack. Her homepage is an explosion of color, personality and fun. It is playful and full of energy, and I shared with her how much I love it. It screams FUN!

I live in my beige era, with an occasional pop of blue or green, and I have absolutely no intention of changing that. I’ve discovered what makes me comfortable, what feels authentic to me, and I love those things about myself.

But I also recognize that I’ve become so caught up in getting things right that it consumes me. My intellectual self can intellectualize things into complete oblivion, to the point where I neither share, show up nor participate. Talk about not being fun.

How many times have you sat on the sidelines and watched other people dance at a party? Or hesitated before posting something on social media?

There’s a fine line between discernment and perfectionism, especially when you’re sharing your life with the world. I’m realizing that my hesitation often has less to do with discernment than I’d like to admit. Because it turns out I’m really good at discerning.

Years ago, I shared with a group that I would like to roll more like a ball and less like a square.

Molly is the colorful ball. I’m the beige square.

I happen to like the woman I’ve become. I’m not looking to replace her. But all these years later, I would truly like to learn how to roll through the world with more spontaneity and playfulness.

New experiences. New friendships. New opportunities. And add a seat at the table for that badass teenager who used to live inside me.

Not so she can take over. Just so she can remind me how to be fun again and how to roll through life.

If Stella Can Get Her Groove Back, So Can I

I don’t want my intellectual self to be the only one making decisions anymore. She’s been in the driver’s seat for far too long, and honestly, it’s exhausting living with that constant chatter and rumination.

I want to bring some of my old spirit into the life I have now.

And maybe that starts with something as simple as getting out of bed on Friday morning and joining my husband for a dance party.

Because if Stella can get her groove back, so can I.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

Please tell me I’m not alone here! I’d love to hear your thoughts. I read them all!

Leave a comment

P.S. I’ve already started. Exhibit A: me, rolling like a beige ball.

10 Things I’m Doing to Get My Groove Back

And yes, I see the irony in responding to “you’re too serious” with a ten-point plan. Paid subscribers, it’s below.

More of my work

When she said “chopped,” she wasn’t referring to anything on the menu or a special salad, which I found myself looking for.

For those of you who don’t speak Gen Z, let me save you the trouble of looking it up. Apparently, “chopped” means not looking your best.

You’re welcome.

I’ve spent the last several days with her. Experiencing life through her lens has been such a gift. She’s 21. I’m 52. While we’ve shared so many of the same experiences, we didn’t experience them in the same way. We still don’t. We each have our own window into the world.

Admittedly, hers comes with a vernacular I’m still learning. Decoding Gen Z requires a whole different kind of blueprint and subscriptions to a few apps I’m unwilling to download.

And maybe that’s exactly where we each get stuck. In the unwillingness.

I don’t mean the anti-TikTok kind of unwillingness, but the unwillingness to cast a wider net. To consider that our understanding of something might not be the only one. That someone else’s experience might be entirely different from our own, even when we’ve lived through the very same thing.

And being willing to listen doesn’t require us to agree.

I don’t need to download TikTok to understand her relationship with trends and generational social norms. I simply have to listen with an open mind and a sense of curiosity.

I can hold firm to my own values, opinions, and boundaries while remaining curious about how someone else experiences the world.

Which makes this the perfect week to begin with the first pillar in our new series, What If We Choose Joy?, inspired by The Book of Joy, a conversation between the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The first half of the book explores the obstacles to joy. Fear, anger, anxiety, stress, envy, loneliness. Let’s not forget rumination either. My analytical brain loves to spin, turn, twist, and sit in my own story of anguish far longer than I care to admit.

The second half offers the Eight Pillars of Joy, four qualities of the mind and four of the heart that we can cultivate to experience more joy. Not just in anticipation of the holidays, but as part of our everyday lives.

The first of the Eight Pillars of Joy is Perspective.

Perhaps there’s a reason it comes first. Sometimes the greatest obstacle to experiencing joy isn’t what’s happening around us. It’s how we’re seeing it.

I’ve read The Book of Joy countless times. I’ve shared these principles in yoga classes, explored them in workshops, and returned to them again and again. And yet, here I am, on the very first pillar, and I’m not quite ready to turn the page.

Which brings me back to Mexico.

While I was digitally detoxing with The Book of Joy, she was furiously texting her boyfriend about their Halloween plans, her fingers ripping across her phone faster than the eye could follow. Another Gen Z skill that leaves me in awe.

When I asked what the plans were, she lit up. They were going to carve pumpkins.

I reminded her that she hates carving pumpkins. “You love carved pumpkins,” I said. “You don’t love carving them.”

“Mom, I loved doing that.”

“You loved it when I did it. Not when you did it.”

And I had proof. An epic photo of her reaction, hand deep in the belly of a pumpkin.

She was convinced she was right. I had photographic evidence to support my version.

But here’s what I hadn’t considered. She could have hated putting her hand inside that pumpkin and still loved the idea of carving it.

Maybe we were both right.

And maybe that’s what happens when we’re willing to consider another perspective. We might actually discover that our version of events isn’t necessarily the whole story.

What’s that age-old saying? There are two sides to every story. Although I suspect there are often quite a few more.

The pumpkin story is silly, of course. But it does lend itself to a much bigger question.

How tightly are we willing to hold on to our own version of events? Our opinions, our beliefs, our perspective of a person or situation?

And at what cost?

Because there’s something on the other side of our need to be right. Sometimes it’s a friendship. Sometimes it’s a relationship. Sometimes it’s our ability to connect with someone whose experience of the world is distinctly different from our own.

In The Book of Joy, the Dalai Lama talks about moving from me to we. And I can’t help but think about how much joy we potentially give up when we remain so firmly planted in the me.

We don’t have to agree with someone else’s perspective. But what happens if we listen? Again, we might not agree, but in the process, we may learn something. We might expand our awareness, make room for new possibilities, and even lessen some of the burdens we carry.

There is no question that much of my own suffering comes from living in my head, consumed by frustration, judgment, and worry.

It’s exactly why I return to this book again and again.

The Pillars of Joy are a practice. Shifting perspective is a practice.

This week, I’m inviting you to consider a question I’ve been asking myself.

What are you holding on to so tightly that it might be costing you joy?

I’m going to do the same. Next week, I’ll turn the page to Humility.

Until then, maybe I’ll even slay at speaking Gen Z while I’m vibing with my daughter. No cap.

With Intention,

Leslie

P.S. Speaking of perspective, I’ve had a rather startling realization about myself lately. Somewhere along the way, I stopped being FUN! Apparently, I’ve been spending far too much time in my head and not nearly enough in my heart.

I’m writing about this rather humbling discovery, and what I’m doing about it, in Thursday’s edition of The Preferred Edit. I suspect I’m not alone in this one.

Clearly, I would love your perspective. Drop a comment. I read them all!

Leave a comment

Welcome to The Founder’s Letter, a weekly publication of The Preferred EDIT, where the practice of yoga meets the practice of living.

Or maybe I came across it on my own.

Quite honestly, I can’t remember. But what I do remember is that the book itself landed like a gift.

That year, in the weeks leading into the holidays, I spent eight weeks teaching to each of the Eight Pillars of Joy in my power yoga classes.

If you’ve ever taken on of my yoga classes, you may remember that moment toward the end of class, somewhere around pigeon pose, when you had nothing left to do but let go. As a teacher, it was often my favorite time to share something. Your body was tired. Your mind was quieter. And somehow, the words seemed to find exactly the right place to land.

The words of the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu felt particularly poignant that year.

So much so that when Christmas came around, I decided to give every member of the Toledo Yoga teaching team their own copy of The Book of Joy.

There were well over twenty teachers on the team at the time. I hand-wrapped every book in brown craft paper, tied each one with a bow and wrote a personal inscription inside. At our holiday brunch, I stacked them on the counter in what became its own little Christmas tree of books and gifts for everyone to grab on their way out the door.

I loved everything about it.

And now, years later and thousands of miles away in Florida, I find myself thinking about that book again.

Maybe because we are once again heading toward the holidays. Maybe because life looks very different for me now than it did then. Or maybe because the Eight Pillars of Joy feel every bit as pertinent today as they did the first time I taught them.

So we are going back.

Over the next ten weeks, I’m going to use this Founder’s Letter to explore The Book of Joy with you.

We’ll begin next week with the first of the Eight Pillars and make our way through each one as we head toward the end of the year.

I can’t promise how this will unfold, but my sense is that some weeks, the emails may be brief while others may ask you to linger a little longer. What I do know is that the holidays are busy enough, and my intention isn’t to give you one more thing to do.

What I would like to offer you instead is something to consider. What actually creates joy, and how do we cultivate more of it?

And perhaps most importantly, how do we recognize it when it is already right in front of us?

If you’d like to take a deeper dive, pick up your own copy of The Book of Joy and follow along. Consider this our own little virtual book club, with all of us staying in the conversation together for the next ten weeks.

Because if there is an opportunity to arrive at the end of this year with a little more joy, a little more perspective and a little more appreciation for what really matters, I am all in.

And I would love for each of you to experience the same.

With intention,

Leslie

Welcome to The Founder’s Letter, where the practice of yoga meets the practice of living. A weekly letter I share with the yoga studio I founded, love, and adore, and now with you. A community where we can share, grow, and connect.

I’m grateful you’re here.

Subscribe now

P.S. Over the years, I’ve perfected my own way of creating a little more ease heading into the holidays. It takes some advance planning, which is exactly why I’m sharing these ideas now, well before the holidays kick into high gear. In this article, I share some of my favorite ways to make the holidays more peaceful, less stressful, and a whole lot less hectic.

Toledo Yoga.

What began as a desire to share a practice I loved eventually became something much bigger than I could have imagined.

Our original mission was to create a powerful community through the practice of yoga in the 419 (Toledo’s area code). But we quickly realized we needed to drop the digits.

Our community was growing well beyond Toledo.

People came for the yoga, but what kept them coming back was the community that was growing with each class. And that community wasn’t limited to Toledo. Our online platform and dynamic teaching team created access for people to unite from across the country and around the world.

For years, I had the privilege of teaching yoga. And while I loved the physical practice, it was always the work off the mat that interested me most.

The ancient teachings of yoga have remarkably little to do with whether you can touch your toes or stand on your head.

And quite honestly, most people can’t touch their toes. Myself included.

Ironically, I may have been the least flexible yoga studio owner around.

The practice of yoga is rooted in something far greater: how we live.

How we treat one another. How we respond when life doesn’t go according to plan. How we navigate discomfort, practice compassion, let go of expectations, and learn to become a little more comfortable with ourselves.

Those are the lessons that have stayed with me, and the ones I’m still interested in practicing every day.

On March 1, 2023, I received a phone call that abruptly ended my role as a teacher and leader of Toledo Yoga.

That morning, my husband, George, suffered a spontaneous brain bleed. My world stopped with that call, and three weeks later, it was turned upside down when he passed away.

The community I had spent years helping to build, along with the practices I’d adopted through yoga, became the very things that sustained me through my darkest days and the years of rebuilding that followed.

So, why The Founder’s Letter?

Earlier this year, I began writing a weekly letter to the Toledo Yoga community.

I no longer live in Toledo, but I still feel a deep connection to the studio and the people who were such an important part of my life for so many years.

Writing these letters has become a way for me to give back to a community that gave me so much, and it continues to feel deeply meaningful.

Each week, I find myself revisiting the teachings I once shared in class, often discovering that they have taken on new meaning through my own experiences.

The Four Agreements. The Eight Limbs of Yoga. The Eight Pillars of Joy. The practice of letting go. The courage to step outside our comfort zones.

Nearly nine months and dozens of letters later, I realized something.

These conversations don’t have to end at the studio doors.

Over the years, I’ve learned something incredibly valuable. You don’t need to practice yoga to appreciate its philosophy. You don’t need to know what downward-facing dog looks like or have any desire to learn.

You simply need to be curious about yourself and the world around you.

And perhaps be willing to consider another perspective now and then.

What you’ll find here

My late husband, George, used to affectionately refer to yoga as “the 3,000-year-old fad.”

I can still hear him saying it, and while it used to bother me, it now makes me laugh. I think what bothered me most wasn’t that he was wrong about yoga’s popularity, but that he referred to my passion as a fad.

He loved ribbing me.

Of course, I gave it right back to him. After all, how many fads can claim to have survived 3,000 years?

And that’s exactly what I intend to share here. The practices, philosophy, wisdom, and teachings that I continue to embrace in my own life.

Some weeks, there will be something practical to take away. Other times, I may leave you with something worth contemplating. After all, the Buddha spent quite a bit of time sitting beneath a tree. Sometimes that’s where the real work happens.

I don’t profess to have all the answers. Quite the opposite. My analytical brain likes to sit in the driver’s seat more than it does in quiet contemplation under a tree, or anywhere for that matter.

The older I get, the more I realize how much I don’t know. But I’m curious. I’m willing to question what I think I know. And I’m still practicing. Because that’s what yoga is, after all. A practice.

A little about me

I’m the founder of Toledo Yoga, a former yoga teacher, a mother, a writer, and someone who has spent much of her adult life exploring what it means to live with greater intention.

I’ve also discovered that knowing yogic philosophy and living it are two very different things.

One of my favorite teachers and dear friends often says, “Practice yoga when you don’t need it, so it’s there when you do.”

With everything life has offered me, I’ve learned to lean on that practice more than I ever imagined I would. And I feel tremendously grateful for everything this timeless fad continues to offer.

Whether you’ve practiced alongside me in Naples or Toledo, or you’re finding your way here for the first time, I’m glad you found your way here.

Welcome to The Founder’s Letter, where the practice continues off the mat.

With intention,
Leslie

I knew absolutely nothing about any of them. Not where they came from, what they did for a living, or what had brought them there.

I grabbed a plate of food and sat down at a table with a group of strangers.

Almost immediately, I regretted my decision.

There was one woman dominating the conversation, pontificating about all the great things she’d done and imparting her knowledge and wisdom to everyone at the table.

I was completely turned off.

We’ve all met that person before. The one who instantly rubs us the wrong way. And in a split second, we make the go/no-go decision about them.

In that moment, that’s exactly what I did.

I barely engaged in the conversation and found myself eating as quickly as possible, looking for the first opportunity to politely excuse myself.

I wanted to put as much distance between myself and this woman as possible.

The irony?

I was going to be spending the next seven days with these people.

There was no escaping her.

I’d known her for less than twenty minutes, and I’d decided I already knew everything I needed to know about her.

Why is it that certain people get under our skin? And so quickly? Like little mites invading our nervous system in a matter of moments.

The funny thing is, sometimes our strongest reactions have very little to do with the present moment.

There’s that age-old saying, if it’s hysterical, it’s historical.

Damn if that’s not true.

Sometimes it’s simply the way someone looks. They remind us of a person or relationship from our past.

Sometimes it’s the way someone speaks, a particular tone of voice, or even the way someone smells.

My beloved husband actually had to get rid of his body wash because the smell reminded me of Camp Foley in seventh grade. Trust me, I don’t want to climb into bed being reminded of those three weeks in Northern Minnesota every night, especially the mosquitos.

Sometimes we don’t even know why we’re reacting. We just recognize the sensation in our bodies when something gets triggered. The tightness in the chest. The tension in the shoulders. The constriction in our throat.

And sometimes the person sitting across from us is simply being themselves, and something about it doesn’t land well.

Which brings me back to the woman at dinner. The one I had decided to avoid at all costs for an entire week.

What was it about her that had managed to get so far under my skin in such a short period of time?

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that what I had interpreted as self-righteousness reminded me of someone from my childhood. A parental figure who was always imparting her “wisdom” to me. Sometimes it was welcomed. Other times, it felt like an overstep.

And suddenly, my reaction began to make sense.

My response had very little to do with the woman sitting across from me. It was shaped by the familiarity of being lectured to as an eight-year-old girl who didn’t yet have the emotional capacity to understand the lessons being imparted to her or the desire to sit and listen to them.

When I stepped away long enough to examine what was happening, I realized that I was responding to a present-day interaction with emotions that belonged to an earlier experience.

An experience from 45 years ago.

How messed up is that?

But I know I’m not alone here. We all carry patterns from our past, whether we recognize them or not.

I didn’t choose to react to that woman the way I did. I just did.

The feeling arrived without warning.

And here’s where you get to exhale.

Just because we learned a pattern doesn’t mean we have to keep repeating it.

We can recognize it. Question it. And eventually learn to respond differently.

Which means the guy on the train loudly conducting what sounds like a corporate takeover on speakerphone, the impossibly flexible, perfectly toned twenty-something at yoga class who looks like she stepped out of a lululemon campaign, or even the woman pontificating across the dinner table doesn’t have to become the villain in a story they don’t even know you’re telling.

They might actually become a friend.

But getting there takes something I’m still learning and have a deep desire to practice.

Because there’s a particular kind of person I’ve come to admire.

The person who is deeply grounded in themselves. We’ve all encountered someone like that at some point in our lives.

The kind of person who looks you in the eye when you’re talking and actually listens. No wandering eye, no quick glance at their phone. They ask questions from a place of genuine curiosity. They don’t interrupt, which admittedly I am very guilty of. And they can sit in an uncomfortable conversation without feeling the need to immediately defend themselves or become the loudest person in the room.

But there’s another quality I’ve come to admire even more.

The ability to take accountability with ease and grace.

Imagine hearing that in your eulogy. “She moved through life with ease and grace. She was always the most grounded person in the room.”

I think the people who are really good at taking accountability speak it like a second language.

And I wonder, how did they become so fluent?

Because taking accountability requires enough self-worth to survive being wrong.

As a Type A perfectionist, I really don’t like being wrong.

Like, ever.

But what I’m learning is that I did something wrong is very different from there is something wrong with me.

And maybe that distinction is what makes accountability so difficult for some of us.

There’s also the willingness to admit that maybe our assessment of someone else wasn’t entirely accurate or, worse yet, completely wrong.

Because let’s be honest, we judge people all the time. We make assumptions, draw conclusions, and decide whether we like someone before we’ve even had a chance to get to know them.

I certainly did that night at dinner.

And it makes me wonder how often I’ve allowed my own experiences to influence the way I see other people. How many opportunities have I missed to get to know someone for who they actually are rather than who I perceived them to be through the filter of my past?

Sometimes our judgment of another person tells us more about ourselves than it does about them.

Yikes. That’s a hard pill to swallow.

Think about the person who gets under your skin the fastest. A colleague? Your mother-in-law? A sibling? Ask yourself honestly, is it really about them?

Once we slap a judgment on someone, we tend to defend our position.

We convince ourselves we’re right. We replay conversations and scenarios in our heads. We look for evidence to support our opinions because, let’s face it, the validation feels pretty rewarding.

We even recruit other people to support our position and further validate it. That’s a vicious circle.

I know I’ve done it. It’s not an easy thing to admit, but it’s also entirely real.

That’s not the person I want to be. I want to be someone who recognizes when an old pattern is showing up in a new relationship or even an existing one. Someone who is willing to get curious about why another person is getting under her skin rather than automatically assuming that person is the problem.

Most importantly, though, I want to be someone who takes accountability for those judgments once I recognize what’s behind them.

Maybe that’s what being grounded actually looks like. I still have the reaction. I just take responsibility for what I do with it.

As the week went on, I started to see the woman from dinner differently. So rather than leave my first reaction unspoken, I approached her.

And trust me, there was a moment of personal discomfort when I said:

“I have to tell you something. When I met you the first evening, I left the table as quickly as I could. I was really triggered by you, which I’ve come to realize had nothing to do with you but everything to do with me. And I’m really glad I wiped my own slate clean, because it’s been so much fun getting to know you and hearing about your experiences.”

My vulnerability, and her willingness to receive what I was saying, opened the door to a much deeper appreciation for one another.

I’m certainly not sharing any of this from a soapbox. Quite the opposite, in fact. I’m just warming up this new muscle.

But I’m excited to flex it.

I walked away from that first dinner convinced I knew exactly who this woman was.

Seven days later, I walked away with a friend I genuinely love and adore.

She didn’t need to change. I did.

Always EDITing,
Leslie

I know I am not alone here. Have you ever misjudged someone who turned out to surprise you? I’d love to hear your story.

Leave a comment

P.S. This is just one of the many lessons I’m flirting with after seven days away. I’m still processing so much of what I experienced, and I suspect you’ll be hearing more about it in the weeks ahead.

More of my recent work

I used to be right there in the crowds, chasing down Christmas until the night before.

But I’ve spent years refining the holidays since. I adopted and adapted routines that stripped out the chaos and brought in something that felt almost radical: ease. Actually being peaceful at the time of year when the world promotes peace with tinsel and twinkle lights. Imagine that.

Somewhere along the way, I decided I didn’t want to do that anymore. I love the holidays far too much to spend December stressed out by them. I also spend a lot of time regulating my nervous system, and there is nothing that can hijack it faster than the holiday hustle.

I know how annoying this sounds. It’s October. Trust me, I am not here to make you feel anything less about how you do the holidays. The people who know me well often ask for my tips, and last year I arrived on the Substack scene just as the holidays were unfolding. Yep, I started my Substack while everyone else was scrambling to beat the shipping deadlines. This year I have the advantage of time. And so do you.

So I’m sharing four things I have used for years in hopes that you might steal one or two and give yourself a little more peace and ease come December. Nothing profound. Use, refine, share or ignore. They are simply things that have made my life easier.

1. Listen & Take Notes

Like I said, these are simple tips. This one might be the easiest.

All year long, I pay attention when someone I love mentions something they want, something they need, something they would never buy for themselves, or even something they just happen to admire. I use my Notes app to keep track. Often, though, if I see something that immediately makes me think of someone, I buy it. It goes into the Christmas stash and I move on. I even have a dog toy already purchased for my beloved pup. I don’t end up in HomeGoods that often these days, but if you have a pet, they are locked and loaded in that department.

For me, this makes gift giving far more intentional. By the time December rolls around, I don’t want to be staring at six names still on my list and buying things just so I can cross them off. That’s when I start buying a gift because I need a gift, not because I found something that made me think of the person receiving it.

I’d much rather remember something you casually mentioned in February and surprise you with it ten months later. To me, that’s the fun of giving someone a gift in the first place.

2. Create a Hard Stop

Decide in advance when you want to be done shopping. This year, my hard stop is October 31. In years past, it has actually been September 15, which I realize may sound slightly ridiculous when most people haven’t even bought their Halloween candy.

This year, I am giving myself some space, in part because when this lands in your inbox, I will be in the midst of a program that requires a digital detox. After a full week unplugged (more on that to come), I’m not sure I will be eager to jump right back in where I left off on my shopping list.

Give your family a heads-up and your deadline. I promise, this helps. If there is something they really want, they know when they need to tell you. Otherwise, they are leaving it up to you.

3. Holiday Cards Without the Mayhem

I adore sending and receiving holiday cards. I take great pride in being the first envelope in everyone’s mailbox.

After years of stuffing, licking and stamping nearly 400 cards for friends and my late husband George’s business associates, I found support. (Because let’s be real, if you knew George, you know involving him would have resulted in a good-natured MESS, likely involving spilled red wine.)

Enter: Paper Culture. My secret weapon for years.

This isn’t groundbreaking, and more and more friends are discovering it, but their offering is exceptional. You upload your address list once (yes, it takes a little time to convert your current system into a spreadsheet…but you only have to do it once), and they handle everything else: printing, stuffing, stamping and mailing. You even choose your preferred mailing date.

Their customer service has been incredible too. Years ago, they accidentally mailed my cards at Halloween. (Yes, Halloween.) They immediately resolved it with a full refund and future credit. The upside? I received a flood of hilarious messages from friends, so I still consider it a win.

The best part? They almost always have a promotion, and if you subscribe, they remind you. I wait for one before ordering.

Once your spreadsheet exists, it’s easy to update when friends move…and suddenly the holiday-card project that once consumed days becomes a task that takes minutes.

The hardest part is choosing the design, but that’s the fun part anyway.

4. Wrapping. The Easiest Way to Put a Bow on It.

This might be my favorite tip to share. It’s a simple, beautiful, year-round system that I am always grateful for. I take great pride in this one because it is foolproof and borderline life-changing.

I love gift giving, so of course I was the person with a closet overflowing with wrapping paper, spools of half-used ribbon, crushed paper and smashed bows. Every time I went to wrap a gift, the fun of it all was stripped away by the mess I had to untangle first.

And I am definitely NOT a craft person. TBH, the idea of wandering through Michaels or Hobby Lobby in December, or really any time of year, sends my nervous system into overdrive.

Here’s my entire system with links to everything you need:

• Kraft Paper. Always and only. I use it for every occasion. And to be clear, it’s not the thick brown art paper or postal wrap (I learned that the hard way), but the true thin kraft wrapping roll. It’s simple, chic and incredibly versatile. I no longer have a bucket of wrapping paper rolls I need to store throughout the year. I buy one 100-foot roll, and I keep one extra roll on hand. That’s it.

• Grosgrain Ribbon, Purchased the Smart Way. This is what gives your gift personality and makes kraft paper the only paper you need. You can dress the box in any color or pattern. Here’s the simple solution, though: skip Michaels and Hobby Lobby. You will overspend and end up with a fraction of the ribbon you need. I buy my ribbon in bulk from Uline.com, where you can choose the color, width and roll size (50 to 100 yards). If you haven’t used Uline before, they ship FAST, which is also great if you’re in a pinch. My staple colors include cream, white, red, blue and pink. I find the easiest storage solution is actually a paper-towel holder. The spools spin on the rod, making it the easiest hack. I also limit my ribbon to what the holder can actually hold, which is about five rolls. Otherwise, I know myself. I’ll end up right back where I started with a closet full of ribbon.

• Merchandise Tags. I use these as my gift tags. I keep them in cream, white and kraft. Amazon or Michaels is perfect for this. Uline sells them by the thousand, which is a lot of tags. I avoid the “holiday” looking tags. Remember, this is about creating simplicity. Holiday-specific tags don’t work for birthdays. Save yourself the money and go with something you can use year-round.

• Miscellaneous Items. I keep the following on hand in a bin specifically for gift wrapping so when the time comes, I am not scouring the house looking for what I need: craft scissors, tape on an actual dispenser that I can refill, a few extra tape refills and a few different colored fine-point Sharpie pens. Red for the holidays. Black, green and blue for everything else. Use a shoebox or any small container to store these items. It doesn’t need to be pretty. It just needs to be contained and accessible.

That’s the entire operation. One roll of paper, a handful of ribbon, simple tags and one bin with everything else I need. Here are two links to find everything you need. The Kraft System and The Ribbon.

That’s it. Four tips. Nothing profound, but they work.

And yes, I realize we are still in October. But that is sort of the point. Do a little of this now and perhaps there will be one less night in December spent sitting in traffic with wet feet because you ran out of Scotch tape.

I’ll be home with the Prosecco.

BONUS TIP: GET PAID TO SHOP

I almost forgot this one because I’ve been using it for so long that it’s become second nature. It’s too good to leave out.

Before I buy anything online, I check here first. And trust me, it’s worth it $$.

Holiday ease, delivered.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. This one may feel a little different from what I’ve been writing lately. A little levity seemed timely right now. Sometimes I simply want to share what makes my life a little easier in hopes it might do the same for you. I hope you stick around for all of it.

And now I want yours. What’s the one thing you do that makes the holidays easier? Leave it in the comments. I’m always looking for a good idea. Isn’t that what being here is about after all?

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More of my recent work:

I’ll be unplugged. Unconnected. Unavailable.

Growing up in the ’80s, I spent hours playing in the neighborhood without anyone knowing exactly where I was. I never would have imagined that being unreachable for seven days would feel like I’m planning my own demise, but somehow it does.

My daughter won’t be able to get ahold of me for seven full days.

I keep thinking about that.

In college, I lived in China. No one could get ahold of me. Sometimes for weeks. Communication happened by fax. A phone call wasn’t something we expected. Sometimes it wasn’t even possible.

And yet here I am, decades later, staring down seven days of being unreachable as though I’m making some monumental exit from the world.

This isn’t an article about being dependent on technology.

Or maybe it is.

I’m still trying to untangle the web of cords and chargers and passwords and codes that seem to have become strings attached to me.

Some of this is choice. Actually, all of it is. But if I were choosing from an à la carte menu, I don’t think disconnection would make my list.

This isn’t that kind of program.

Disconnection is part of the deal.

I couldn’t be more excited. I couldn’t be more ready.

And yet this part terrifies me.

It wasn’t until I reread these words, en route to the program, that I realized there may be something much bigger underneath that fear.

I took the last phone call my late husband ever made. He was thousands of miles away at our home in Naples while I was at our home in Ohio. I knew something was wrong, so I kept him on the phone with me while help made its way to him.

A spontaneous brain bleed took his speech. Three weeks later, it took his life. He never made another phone call.

He called me because he knew something was wrong. So yeah, I know what it feels like to answer a call that changes everything.

Perhaps that’s part of what makes the idea of being unreachable feel so much bigger than simply turning off my phone.

Of course there’s an emergency line. My family knows how to reach me if they truly need me. We’ve even defined the parameters of what an emergency looks like.

But what if someone needs to reset a password and the code comes to my phone? Because that actually occurred last night.

What if they need access to something that requires me?

What if someone needs something only I know how to get?

Or worse yet, what if I had missed that call?

There it is.

Maybe that’s the part I’m actually afraid of.

Not being without my phone.

Being unavailable.

I feel responsible for making sure everyone else has what they need. And as I prepare to disappear for seven days, I’m beginning to wonder how much of that responsibility is actually mine.

They can figure it out.

At least I think they can.

Maybe I’m the one who needs to figure out what happens when I’m no longer immediately accessible, useful or available.

And maybe you don’t need to disappear for seven days to ask yourself the same question I’m asking myself:

What do I believe will happen if I make myself unavailable?

If I don’t answer the text immediately.

If someone has to solve the problem without me.

If I’m not the keeper of the password, the calendar, the answer or the plan.

If I let someone else figure it out.

I’m beginning to wonder whether being constantly available has become so intertwined with being responsible that I no longer know where one ends and the other begins.

For the next seven days, I’m going to find out.

Always EDITing,
Leslie

P.S. While I may be out of pocket, I made sure I wouldn’t disappear from here entirely. I have a week’s worth of work coming your way, including an article that may piss you off or make you excited. You’ll have to let me know which. Look for it Thursday.

In the meantime, please leave me a comment. I look forward to coming back, reading them and responding. It’s truly a part of Substack that I’ve come to love: the connection and the community.

Leave a comment

If you’re new here, welcome. I’m Leslie.

I became a runner later in life, ran ten marathons, then left my running shoes behind in Australia last year and started writing instead.

I became a widow at 49, recently remarried the most remarkable human, travel every chance I get, and am deeply curious about health and longevity, relationships, ambition and how we choose to live. I also like the finer things in life and make no apologies for it.

I write from experience and about what matters to me in the moment. I’ll offer perspective from my non-linear life, ask questions that may make you pause and never gatekeep a new favorite find or a great idea.

I want to be remembered as someone who helped others across the finish line, built community, offered guidance when it was needed and, perhaps most importantly, lowered everyone’s cortisol.

Join me. I’d love to have you.

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More of my recent work:

Growing up, having a pen pal was about the coolest thing ever. A letter would arrive in the mail from someone who lived somewhere else, and for however long you both stayed committed to writing, you had this little friendship unfolding on paper.

I had a pen pal. I couldn’t tell you her name today. I don’t remember where she lived, when we stopped writing or who stopped writing first. At some point in my early teens, the letters simply stopped coming. I am sure I was too busy being a teenager to even notice.

It was a slow drift. And eventually, there was almost no trace of it except for the envelopes left in my desk drawer, which at some point got discarded too. The memory of it is so vague today, it’s almost as though it didn’t exist.

I’d like to think friendship loss in the digital age could happen the same way.

It can’t.

The footprint feels inescapable.

The person may no longer be part of your life, but there they are. In your camera roll. Your old text messages. Your contacts. Your social media feed. Someone else’s social media feed. Tagged photographs. Group texts. And that damn memory feature on the iPhone that not only serves you a photo you didn’t ask for, but creates a whole video set to music that ironically plays like a funeral itself.

The friendship can end. The footprint doesn’t.

And sometimes that footprint hurts.

It’s one thing when it’s your own phone reminding you with a photo or calendar reminder of a birthday or anniversary. Suddenly the enemy is the object in your hand, the one you actually own and have some control over. It’s another when social media does the dirty work and you open Instagram only to find yourself looking at a life you used to be part of.

I’d like to offer some enlightened response to all of this. I don’t have one.

I think you’d have to walk around in a suit of armor for some of it not to affect you.

So what do you do?

We have all kinds of options now. Block. Delete. Unfollow. Unfriend. Mute. Leave the group chat. Remove the tag. Erase the text thread.

But there’s something about some of those actions that feels incredibly permanent to me. And perhaps more importantly, consequential.

Because friendship endings don’t necessarily stay endings.

Recently, a friend came back into my life after nearly ten years of not speaking. Whatever caused the demise of that friendship feels almost inconsequential to me today. Ten years changed the view. And I was grateful to receive the call.

But it made me wonder about all the definitive things we can do while standing in the middle of hurt.

Fear can make us behave disproportionately to a situation. So can anger. So can rejection. So can the pain of feeling left out. And the digital age gives us the ability to turn those feelings into actions almost instantaneously.

One click.

Done.

Except sometimes it isn’t.

Because people notice. Let’s be real. People track who’s following whom in the most bizarre ways. An unfollow can become a statement. A block can become evidence. Suddenly something deeply personal becomes visible to people who weren’t part of the friendship or the rift in the first place.

And then come the questions.

What happened?

Who did what?

Whose fault was it?

I’ve been on the receiving end of those questions, but I’ve also been the person wondering them. Someone tells me she had a falling out with a close friend and my brain gets curious. Somewhere underneath that curiosity is often judgment of one or both parties. Because someone has to be at fault, right? And sadly, people often make that decision without actually knowing the whole story.

Maybe that’s another reason friendship loss can feel so lonely. Acknowledging it can feel like inviting an investigation.

Someone once said to me, “I think the reason friendship loss is such a taboo topic is because if I share my experience, people will wonder what’s wrong with me that it occurred in the first place.”

That’s the saddest part. We hurt in silence.

And perhaps that’s where we owe ourselves both space and grace to not make a reactionary and immediate decision about what to do with every digital remnant of a relationship.

While that rabbit hole of deleting might feel cathartic in the moment, maybe the better question is:

How definitive do I want to make this while I’m still sitting in the hurt?

Don’t get me wrong. There are certainly relationships where blocking, deleting and creating a hard boundary are not only needed but necessary. But not every friendship ends that way. Some fade with time or distance. Some rupture in one grand moment. Others end without explanation. Some friendships probably should end. And, apparently, some find their way back ten years later.

We don’t always know which one we’re experiencing while we’re standing in the hurt of it. And often the only thing that brings clarity is time itself.

A phone call a decade later may arrive with regret if the camera roll is empty. I am grateful mine wasn’t. Honestly, it never occurred to me to delete the photos at the time.

Wouldn’t that be like deleting pieces of yourself too?

Maybe it’s less about erasing the footprint and more about learning how to live with it.

The photographs can hurt when they show up at the most unexpected moment. And the memories that come with them may have an equal bite if enough time hasn’t passed. But they may still be worth keeping. Their sting doesn’t mean the friendship wasn’t good when it existed.

Someone can no longer belong in your present without requiring you to delete them from your past.

They were part of your life. Maybe, in some form, they always will be.

Can we simply honor that? Can we be grateful for what was?

I don’t know that there is a perfect antidote for friendship loss in the digital age. I only know this. Making something disappear from a screen doesn’t make it disappear from you.

And perhaps it doesn’t need to.

Not every ending requires erasure.

And when her call arrived this week, I was glad my phone still knew who was calling.

I didn’t have to wonder.

I never deleted her.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

I would love to know if this resonated with you. Friendship loss is a part of the human experience. It happens in all forms, and it's not easy to navigate…especially alone.

Leave a comment

P.S. I don't pretend to have this figured out. Friendship loss is complicated, and every ending is different. But I do think there are a few questions worth asking before making decisions from a place of hurt. If you're a paid subscriber, here are 5 guideposts that are worth keeping around.

I came across an article on Substack the other day, and the title hit a nerve.

It was provocative, in a clickbait sort of way, and written by a writing professor who seemed to be questioning whether much of what is published here qualifies as writing.

So, naturally, I read it, and it pissed me off.

Pardon the F-bomb in the title. The nerve is apparently still a little raw.

And no, I am not going to share the article here because there is no sense in hijacking your nervous system too.

It’s not that I disagreed with everything the professor had to say. In fact, buried underneath the provocation was a question I think every writer should consider:

What are you giving the reader?

Fair question.

I just don’t buy the suggestion that sharing what we’ve learned from living somehow isn’t enough.

There’s a difference between simply telling someone what happened to you and reflecting on what happened to you. If I’m writing a personal essay about someone I loved and lost, I’m probably not just telling you that I loved and lost.

I’m telling you what loving taught me, what losing taught me, and what I know now that I didn’t know before.

And that might matter to you.

It also might not.

And maybe my experience doesn’t interest everyone.

So what?

I think about art and an analogy that seems to apply to many things in life.

There are so many different genres. Folk art. Traditional art. Modern art. Contemporary art, which I happen to lean into. The list goes on and on. The shops, museums, art fairs and books on the subject are equally endless.

The bottom line is, there’s a buyer for every kind of art.

I’m probably not buying the folk art. My girlfriend isn’t buying the contemporary piece I’d happily hang on my wall. We each lean in and love what we love.

That doesn’t make one of them art and the other one not art.

Writing isn’t so different.

Your people are out there, and your perspective is your own.

There is something about the suggestion that only certain experiences, told in certain ways, by people who have somehow earned the right to call themselves writers, that really gets under my skin.

I didn’t arrive on this platform as a learned writer with a degree in literary prose. And I suspect many other people didn’t either.

Does the craft make the writer, or does the writer make the craft?

Honestly, I don’t care.

In my simple mind’s eye, good writing is just that. Good writing.

I don’t need to grade the composition of an article or know the pedigree of the author to determine whether I found value or relatability in the piece.

There seems to be a culture where expertise requires credentials and, worse yet, sharing requires authority. That little orange check and subscriber count have created a subculture of that here as well. I am ashamed to admit that I have looked at those things as though they somehow provide extra value. Maybe they do. Maybe they don’t.

What I do know is that I am not a professor, and I certainly don’t have a degree in writing. But from my kitchen table, I see another kind of credibility that comes simply from having lived through something.

You don’t have to be the expert to have something worth saying. I am definitely not. But I have a growing library of more than 100 articles I call writing, and I am building something not just for myself. If something I write resonates with even one person, that matters to me.

What I do have, like you, is experience.

I ran ten marathons in less than four years. I learned a lot about training, endurance, recovery and good running shoes along the way.

I built more than one business from the ground up and learned plenty about ambition, including what it can cost you, but also the value of community and the importance of organization and hiring smart people.

I lost my husband unexpectedly. I know grief in a way I never wanted to and would never wish on another.

I also remarried at 52. I know something about beginning again and how some people welcome it and others don’t.

I raised a daughter who is now finding her own way in the world, which has taught me more about the heartbreak of letting go than I ever imagined.

None of those experiences makes me the definitive authority on running, business, grief, marriage or motherhood. They certainly didn’t come with a degree.

But they do make me an authority on what those experiences taught me. Through grit, determination, pain, loss and joy, I earned my stripes. And I am here to share it.

Experience doesn’t qualify you to tell someone else how to live. It qualifies you to tell them what living taught you.

My curiosity is what drove me here.

I want to read about the thing you did that scared you.

The place you went that changed you.

How grief changed you and how you navigated through it.

I am genuinely interested in knowing about the mistake you made twice before you finally learned from it because perhaps I won’t make it too.

I want to know what product you’re putting on your face at 50 that somehow makes you look 35. If you have that, please do share.

I want a little piece of each and every one of you that gives me an added perspective I can’t get sitting in my kitchen in Naples, Florida.

Tell me what you believed at 25 that you wouldn’t dream of believing at 52.

Tell me what, at 52, you never thought was possible and yet you’re doing it and kicking ass in the process.

Tell me what worked.

Tell me what didn’t.

Tell me what you wish someone had told you sooner.

I truly want to know.

While I could go back to the college classroom and learn at the expense of both my pocketbook and my time, the truth of the matter is, I don’t need to.

Because somewhere out there, someone is writing about the very thing I might be craving or didn’t even know I needed to know.

And when I do read about it, wow, am I glad I now know.

Your perspective, your experience, your life and your words matter. Put into writing, they just may make me stop for a second and think, I never thought about it that way.

That’s something.

And no, everyone isn’t going to care.

They don’t have to.

I don’t stop in front of every painting in a museum either.

In fact, I may skip an entire floor.

But I stop in front of the ones that speak to me.

That’s what personal writing can do.

Maybe your life isn’t interesting to everyone.

Neither is mine.

But what you’ve learned from living yours might be exactly what someone else needs to read.

You don’t need to be an expert on life to share what life has taught you.

A life lived is a life worth sharing.

Don’t let anyone else suggest otherwise.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

If this resonates with you at all, I would love your thoughts. Your comments create community, and I love meeting you all here.

Leave a comment

P.S. In the spirit and desire to continue leaving my readers with something worth arriving here for, I’m sharing my list of rituals and resources I lean into to support my nervous system. Trust me, after reading that article, I doubled down on a few things here.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you may know that my goal is to become the person who lowers everyone’s cortisol. I’m also a huge believer in the science behind longevity and spend a considerable amount of time and resources traveling to clinics around the world in support of my own wellbeing.

If you’re a paid subscriber, what follows is for you, with gratitude for your support and readership.

A few of my recent pieces that I am proud to share:

Who doesn’t love a good goody bag?

As a kid, there was almost nothing better than leaving a birthday party with one. You brought a gift to the party and then left with one too. The mother of that invention deserves a bravo from me. Yes, the ice cream, cake and games were great, but the gift on the way out the door…that was the best part.

It didn’t even have to be good. A few pieces of candy. A plastic ring. Some stickers. It didn’t matter. Leaving with something made it special.

My inner child still loves a good goody bag, which I have discovered is exactly what I want to give my reader too.

Apparently, adulthood hasn’t changed this about me. Give me samples at Bluemercury and I’m delighted. A peek in the drawer for my own selection of what amounts to less than .05 ounces of a product somehow makes the lotion I purchased seem even more worthwhile. Send me home from an event with a gift bag and I will absolutely look inside before I get to the car.

And I am clearly not the only one out there who appreciates a giveaway. I have a friend who has developed a long list of retailers that give you something on your birthday or throughout the month. She spends the entire month making her way around town for every version of a Dunkin’ donut birthday treat. Her Facebook feed documents every stop along the way. It’s comical and genius. It also tells you there is something about walking away with a little something extra that we apparently never outgrow.

That unexpected takeaway somehow adds value to the entire experience. It turns out, there is a deep psychological response to being rewarded, and a corresponding dopamine hit. No wonder I love free samples. My brain craves the reward.

Which, curiously, has me thinking about my own writing.

A few weeks ago, I published an article, How to Write a Personal Essay Without Overexposing Your World. It took off in a way I wasn’t expecting and brought a lot of new readers, which has been amazing to experience.

If that one was about what not to share, consider this its sister. This one is about what to give.

Since then, I’ve thought a lot about how I crafted that article and what gave it wings, if you will.

I could chalk it up to the algorithm or the title or timing. Add “How to” to a title and, I suspect, the machine behind the machine sees opportunity. I am sure those things probably played some part. But I think there was something much simpler happening.

I gave the reader their own version of a goody bag. There was a digital party favor tucked inside.

In this case, the takeaway was five guideposts for writing a personal essay without blowing up your world in the process. I even made a Canva graphic for it too. They weren’t pulled from a writing manual or something I learned in a classroom. The article stemmed from an unsubscribe that arrived like a gut punch and caused me to reflect on my own work.

It turns out I had a few things I needed to untangle. I revisited my library of published articles and did a little analysis. Having been a professional analyst for nearly two decades, this felt like a familiar but uncomfortable exercise. It turns out it’s easier to analyze other people’s work than your own.

But I learned a few things along the way that I felt were worth sharing. Hence the article.

This platform has been hugely welcoming and supportive. If I can provide a smoother landing for others, it feels reciprocal to what I have received here.

When I arrived on Substack, I didn’t think I had anything tangible to offer.

There are a lot of writers doing a remarkable job of capitalizing on what Substack was built to do: monetize your work. There is no shortage of writers selling courses and guides. There are also publications sharing recipes, financial advice, workouts, productivity systems and downloadable whatever-you-can-imagine.

One of the very first people I met on the platform was a wellness and travel writer with a book titled 150 Spas You Need to Visit Before You Die. I know that because I bought it. Of course I did.

She, like so many others, had expertise that seemed easy to package and, eventually, monetize.

I didn’t have any of that. I know that sounds like I’m playing the victim card. Trust me, I’m not. But there was a big part of me sitting in the seat of comparison, wondering what I could offer that would be compelling enough for someone to subscribe to.

Yes, I’ve had a lot of life experience and could easily be the poster child for reinvention, a word I have really come to loathe (that’s for another article). But so have a lot of other people, and I wasn’t sure any of it qualified as expertise.

I have stories to tell and opinions about plenty of things. I have traveled extensively, run ten marathons, owned a business, raised a daughter, worked in finance, taught yoga, lost my husband, started over and somehow found myself writing about all of it on the internet. Again, the reason for the article about not overexposing your world.

But none of that felt like a product. Which, I suspect, is what a lot of other writers out there are questioning for themselves too.

What do I have to offer? What do I know that someone else would actually want? And perhaps the bigger question on a platform built around subscriptions, why would anyone subscribe or even pay to read it?

I received almost that exact question in the comments of my last article.

A fellow nonfiction writer asked what she could write about that would inspire and give hope, but also help grow her publication.

I told her I always write from what is most relevant in my own life and the lessons I am learning along the way.

I believed that answer when I wrote it. I still do.

Until another comment made me realize there was more to it.

North Star.

Those two words stopped me for two reasons that feel divinely connected. The gas station adjacent to the yoga studio I owned is called True North, but for some reason I always mistakenly called it North Star. Always.

The reference also reminded me of the guideposts we created for the studio. The mission and vision statements for Toledo Yoga were our North Star. We used them as guides for the business, and they are still used that way today. If a decision isn’t in alignment with the mission and vision of the organization, there is a pivot.

It’s what has kept the studio alive and thriving for 12 years, which is no easy feat in the boutique fitness world.

Why didn’t I have the same thing for The Preferred EDIT?

Paula’s comment hit home.

I wasn’t lacking subject matter. I had identified the pillars of The Preferred EDIT early on, and I knew what I wanted to write about. Somewhere along the way, though, I think I became more focused on what I wanted to say than what I wanted the reader to walk away with.

There’s a difference.

I found that I can easily write about a personal experience and find the universal truth where the reader sees something about themselves in the article. As a personal essayist, that comes easily for me. For example, I can write about my experience qualifying for the Boston Marathon (which I actually did when I ran my very first marathon), but you don’t have to be a runner to understand what it feels like to work toward something that once seemed impossible. The Boston qualifier is my story. When you recognize something seemingly impossible you’ve overcome in your own life, that’s the universal truth.

As writers, we can all find ways to make the reader laugh, think, perhaps feel a little less alone in their own struggle, or even feel seen.

But Paula’s comment made me wonder if I had stopped one step too soon.

As a longtime practitioner of yoga and former studio owner, the analyst in me still evaluates every yoga class I take using three simple pillars: physicalness, possibility and empowerment. Did I have a physical experience? Did I learn or experience something new? And perhaps most importantly, did I leave feeling empowered?

Maybe writing isn’t so different.

Empowerment was the goody bag in yoga. It’s the difference between a good class and a great one. Walking away with something unexpected that I could apply to my own life, off the mat, that’s not only a bonus, it’s a personal reward.

So what was I leaving my readers with? What was I putting in their goody bag?

Once I started thinking about my writing this way, I realized I had been defining what I had to offer far too narrowly.

I kept thinking I needed a product. Something I could package up and hand to the reader as proof that their time, or their subscription, had been worth it.

The five guideposts in my personal essay article weren’t a product. They were pieces of what I had learned from my own experience. Ones that not only benefited me as a writer but also the people who helped shape the stories themselves. (I think it’s safe to say that no one wants to be overexposed online.)

I began looking at the rest of my writing differently.

I recently ran into a woman who was one of the very first subscribers to The Preferred EDIT. Oddly enough, we bumped into each other at a funeral. She said, “I enjoy reading your articles, but I now own a very expensive pair of tennis shoes because of you.”

It made me laugh in the moment. But the reality is, Amazon continues to send me small commissions from random things I linked months ago. Over the 70-plus articles I have published, I have written about my travels, the longevity clinics I’ve visited and my own wellness journey, the clothes I’ve worn along the way and, apparently, even a pair of expensive tennis shoes. But I have also shared the things that have worked for me, like how to protect my privacy and even how I make the holidays a peaceful time of year (an article I am excited to repurpose in the coming weeks!).

My point is, the product doesn’t have to be a product. The goody bag can simply be filled with pieces of me.

Which brings me back to the question from the writer in my comments: What do I have to offer?

Perhaps that’s not quite the right question to ask.

I don’t need to package expertise in a PDF to make it relatable or desired. My life, like yours, is rich with experience. Old or young, we all have perspective and things we’ve learned along the way.

That’s really no different from how the five guideposts in my “How to” article came to be. I didn’t know what they were before I started looking at my own experience. I went back through my writing, considered what that one unsubscribe had stirred up in me and figured out what I had learned along the way. Then I gave those lessons to the reader in the simplest terms I could: a graphic with the five guideposts and the detail behind each of them.

Maybe what I need to start asking myself again is: What have I discovered that might save someone else time, money or heartache? What have I tried that I would absolutely do again? What have I found that I can’t stop telling my friends about?

Because that’s actually how The Preferred EDIT came to fruition. Everyone wanted to know what vibration plate I purchased. The idea of that makes me laugh now. I think I jumped on it before it became a trend, and my friends wanted to know more about it. Now they’re everywhere. Or they were anyway. That TikTok moment may have come and gone. I’m not on that platform, so I wouldn’t know.

But what I do know is that we each have a goody bag to offer. Yours might look like your grandmother’s beloved recipes, knowledge from your professional world or even a book that inspired you. Heck, it can even be a pair of tennis shoes you love.

You don’t need a course, a credential or a downloadable PDF to have something worth giving the reader. Sometimes you just have to look at what you already know, what you’ve experienced and what you’ve picked up or learned along the way.

I think that’s the piece I had lost sight of, and what I am really excited to bring back to my writing. The idea of sharing more of what I discover, learn, love and experience brings me so much joy. And yes, I actually love creating those Canva graphics, so I suspect there will be plenty more of those too.

With every article going forward, my North Star will be:

What am I giving the reader to take with them?

Maybe it isn’t about deciding what I should write about at all. Maybe it’s making sure that whatever I choose to write about leaves you with something you didn’t have when you arrived.

If you have made it this far, then consider this the end of the birthday party.

Here is your goody bag:

Always EDITing,
Leslie

Please share your thoughts. I feel like I make a new friend with each comment.

Leave a comment

P.S. If you are a paid subscriber, you are getting the Goody Bag bonus. A little bit from my life lately and the things I found that I love.

I was lying in bed on Sunday morning with a little extra time and absolutely no reason to get up.

So I did what I tell my 21-year-old daughter not to do. I started scrolling.

I was flipping through Substack, reading articles and comments, when I eventually landed on my own publication page.

And I decided to spend ten minutes doing something I had only done once before, but hadn’t done since.

I liked my own work. Not just my most recent article. I liked all of it.

I went through every article and every Note I’ve published and double-tapped the heart until every single one was filled in red. I deleted a few duds along the way, but I was mostly on a like-roll.

If you use Substack on your phone, you may recognize the moment. There’s a tiny vibration every time you hit the heart. A little pulse back confirming that you did, in fact, fill in the blank.

I don’t know about you, but it kind of makes me laugh. It’s like a confirmation of self-love.

I told my husband what I was doing and he said, “It’s like getting a warm hug.” It kind of was.

Later that morning, we were sitting outside on the patio while I drank my matcha, and I wrote a Note about it:

The responses were so fun to read.

Hell yeah.

I didn’t know we could do that.

I thought it might be taboo.

I’ve always wondered about this.

And then someone added a fifth:

Why not comment on your own work, too?

I loved that.

Why not?

Add a little meta.

“This was one of my favorite articles to write.”

“This one means a lot to me.”

“I keep coming back to this idea.”

The irony wasn’t lost on me. I wanted other people to hit the heart, yet I hadn’t bothered to hit it myself.

Ten minutes and a whole lot of red hearts later, I started thinking about how weird we are about self-promotion.

Actually, what really got me thinking about this started the day before.

I was reading through the comments on one of my most recent articles, How to Write a Personal Essay Without Overexposing Your World. There are currently 115 comments, although roughly half are mine because I respond to the people who take the time to leave me thoughtful comments.

Hint, hint. I love comments.

But buried in all those comments was one that really caught my attention. Not just because of what they said about my article, but because they did something no one else had done.

They asked me to subscribe to theirs.

“i’m building something over at that i think u might really enjoy… it’s very much about the things underneath the obvious story n the signals we tend to edit out of our own lives.

if u fancy it, subscribe for free… i’d genuinely love to have u there ❤️”

I loved the ask.

It was simple. If you like what I have to say here, you might like what I’m doing over there. Come join me.

And out of all comments, they were the only person who did it.

I immediately subscribed, of course I did. The use of the word “fancy” made the invitation even better. I need to use that word more often in that exact way.

I loved the confidence of the ask. I loved that this person believed enough in what they were creating to tell me I might enjoy it too.

Which made me wonder why more of us don’t do the same.

Why are we so reluctant to tell people about the things we’re proud of?

Subscribe now

When I first came to Substack, I knew absolutely nothing about the platform.

I was surrounded by writers, authors, journalists and publishers doing really remarkable things while my imposter syndrome was alive and well.

One of the things I couldn’t understand was why people weren’t promoting their own articles in Notes.

You spend hours writing something. You edit it. You publish it. And then it lands in an email inbox somewhere else in the world. At the same time, it lands in the “Post” category of your publication.

And then…that’s it?

I jokingly told my writing coach that Substack seemed to be the place where articles go to die. Which in some cases is entirely true. If an article doesn’t sprout wings and go viral with restacks, it just lands in the graveyard of articles you’ve published. Entombed on Substack until someone randomly decides to browse your work.

I asked him, “Do you ever promote your articles in your Notes?”

“No, I really don’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.”

Neither had I.

But once I did, I couldn’t unthink it. In fact, this is something I am working on and look forward to sharing: how to keep your articles alive after hitting publish. I’ve been quietly working on this project for a while and will self-promote the heck out of it for everyone’s benefit when I am done.

Why wouldn’t we promote the work we’re most proud of?

Somewhere along the way, many of us seem to have absorbed the idea that believing in ourselves is acceptable, but publicly demonstrating that belief is a little embarrassing.

I did develop a little elevator speech to share when people ask what I am doing, but I find I rarely use it. (I wrote about it in this article). Long gone are the days of handing out business cards with our information on them. Perhaps that needs a revival as well.

It seems like privacy is the new black.

And I get it.

I lived the last two decades married to a man whose career was very public, but whose personal life, by choice, was decidedly not. My late husband was deeply private and loathed social media, so I certainly understand the movement toward protecting more of our lives. Those boundaries are important and sometimes even necessary. And to his point, not every meal, vacation, relationship, accomplishment and private moment needs to be turned into content. Not everything needs validation from others and not everything needs a witness.

There are plenty of things that don’t belong on the internet, and I appreciate that for myself and others.

But I wonder if, in our effort not to overshare, overpromote or appear too impressed with ourselves, we’ve swung a little too far in the other direction.

Because there’s a difference between protecting your privacy and hiding your pride. Think about how quick and easy it is to share our pride in someone else. Kids’ graduations. First day of school. Other people’s accomplishments. Those moments of pride are easy to hit publish on. But our own work? Somehow that doesn’t come with the same ease.

I also think there’s a difference between self-promotion and self-importance that plays into this. I think part of the hesitation comes from not wanting to look like we’re standing on a pedestal implying grandeur. No one wants to be seen as that guy. But maybe self-promotion is simply self-belief made visible, the empty heart filled with red.

I see this outside of writing, too.

My daughter recently landed an amazing internship. Eventually, she posted about it on LinkedIn.

I loved that she did. She was very conscious of her words and how the post would land. Not because she needed everyone to tell her how impressive she was. Not because every accomplishment requires applause. But because this is what she’s doing with her life right now, and she’s proud of it.

Why shouldn’t she tell people?

That’s part of what LinkedIn is for and I love that her generation recognizes the value of that platform. You let the world know what you’re doing, what you’re learning, what you’re building and where you’re headed.

Not only does it foster connection, it creates possibilities for others. Someone sees it, they may remember it, and they may come knocking six months later when an opportunity lands on their desk or when they could use the advice, knowledge, skills and connections you’ve gained. Talk about win-win.

So posting about it, that’s not necessarily bragging. It’s participating in your own life.

And maybe that’s the distinction I’ve been trying to untangle.

Self-promotion can be an invitation.

I made this.

I’m proud of it.

I think you might like it and perhaps even more, there might be something here for you to gain. That’s always my hope when someone reads my work or when I read someone else’s.

That’s essentially what the person from Silent Witness Press said to me.

And it worked. I subscribed.

There’s something refreshingly confident about someone being willing to say, “I think what I’m doing is worth your time.”

We celebrate that confidence in incredibly successful people all the time. We talk about other people’s rising success. Cool things people are launching. And we listen as other people talk about their businesses, promote their books or movies (I have a friend who is hitting her stride in that world and witnessing her promote the film is incredible to watch. I never tire of seeing her posts and what she’s up to).

Yet when we’re still building something, self-promotion can feel a little uncomfortable. Like maybe we’re supposed to wait for someone else to notice first.

Why?

Why are we asking other people to believe in something we’re hesitant to publicly believe in ourselves?

A friend once shared a quote with me that I’ve repeated for years:

To fly, you must First Love Yourself.

F-L-Y.

I’ve always loved it. Sunday morning made me think about it differently.

We put things into the world because we want them to go somewhere. I want people to read what I write. I love when someone shares it. Of course I’d love for a Note to go viral. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

So why would I sit around waiting for someone else to press the heart first?

I wasn’t looking for validation Sunday morning. I was simply giving myself a little.

One double tap at a time.

So go ahead and like your own work.

Share the article again. Tell people about the thing you’re building. Post the accomplishment.

Leave the comment. I’m going to be the first to leave one on this article.

Make the invitation. I’d fancy your subscription.

And say you’re proud of something when you are.

None of this means you have to turn your entire life inside out to be seen. That’s something I’m still working on myself. Simply adding my photo and bio to the little section below felt like a big step. But it also felt like I was putting myself on some sort of self-promotion pedestal. Which, now that I think about it, is exactly the point and the one I am here to embrace.

It is my publication. The bio deserves a place. I read them on every book jacket. Why not have one of my own? I hope to read yours, too.

Most importantly though, if I care enough to write it, edit it, publish it and put my name on it, I can certainly care enough to hit the heart.

So Sunday morning I did.

Every single one.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

Thank you for reading this far. As you know, I love comments. Please share what you’re working on, proud of, or have been hesitant to tell others about.

It’s time to be a little boastful. Why not?

Leave a comment

If you’ve been around long enough, you know that painfully sweet feeling of holding a Bic lighter over your head in a crowded stadium until the flicker gets a little too hot on your thumb, but you still resist the urge to let go of the orange lever keeping the flame lit.

iPhone flashlights have become the replacement now, lighting up auditoriums across the world. Certainly less blister-producing, though I remember those fan scars all too well.

But our phones are doing a lot more than that.

They’re also telling us where to go, what to buy, what to wear, what to eat, what to read, where to stay and, increasingly, who we might want to become.

Trust me, I know. I spent much of this summer with one of those phones in my hand.

I also spent it doing things I genuinely love.

I knocked bucket list items down one after another. I went gorilla trekking in Rwanda. I spent four days detoxing at a longevity institute in Mexico. I strolled along the promenades in beach towns along the Pacific Coast and spent quiet mornings sipping smoothies from SunLife Café while taking in the boho chic lifestyle in Malibu.

My camera reel is evidence of a summer well-traveled and well lived.

And I assure you, it was.

Yet somehow, I came home feeling less like myself.

It took me a while to understand the contradiction.

I wasn’t unhappy and certainly not ungrateful. Quite the opposite. I had spent months with people I love, in places I love, doing things I had chosen to do, some of which I never dreamed of doing.

But I had also spent an extraordinary amount of time in motion. I crisscrossed the globe and was on more airplanes and in more airports than I can count. I was planning the next destination while still standing in the current one and filling those endless hours of waiting and traveling by clicking and scrolling and consuming. I wish I could say otherwise, but that’s the reality.

Somewhere in there, my summer started to feel a little like Disneyland.

Where everything was perfectly queued. Every menu item reviewed before I had even arrived and taken a bite. Everything optimized for all the obvious reasons. Let’s be real. If you get to do it once, you want to do it right.

I was never lost. And apart from one delayed bag, I was never at a loss.

But that was almost the problem.

We went to San Diego for a wedding toward the end of the summer and I could not figure out what to wear. I know, it sounds so petty. I don’t keep a closet full of formal attire, so buying, renting, or borrowing was required. But I simply couldn’t decide. And before you decide to stop reading, give me a moment. I think you’ll relate.

I think I looked at every dress on the internet. I saw what other people were wearing to formal weddings, what was trending, what looked good on someone with my body type, what other women had bought and returned, what some faceless Instagram page had bundled together and deemed appropriate for an August wedding in Southern California.

I scrolled myself into static. Complete shopping paralysis.

Eventually, the day before we left, I ordered a green dress and had it drop-shipped to our Airbnb. By the grace of God, it fit and the steam iron got the wrinkles out.

And the irony was, I loved it.

I would choose it again.

That last part matters.

Because I’ve been thinking a lot about influence lately, and I don’t think influence is the problem.

We are supposed to be influenced.

People introduce us to books that change us. Friends take us somewhere we never would have found ourselves. Someone recommends a restaurant and we have one of the best meals of our lives. We travel somewhere because another person went first and knows we will equally love it.

Our lives have always been shaped by what other people show us. It’s part of the human experience.

What’s changed is the volume.

We’ve always been influenced by other people, but we’ve never had this many people influencing us at once. There are more places to go, things to buy, ways to live and versions of ourselves to consider than we could possibly get to in one lifetime. And somehow we’ve managed to put access to all of it into a five-inch screen we carry in our back pocket.

This is not a revolutionary idea. But it’s the first time I’ve felt truly at odds with it.

Perhaps it’s because I’m in the midst of my own era of reinvention, one I just wrote about in Empty Nest: Your Most Informed Reinvention Yet. I’m actively thinking about what I want next, and suddenly I feel like I’m drowning in options.

A nice problem to have, admittedly. But an overwhelming one.

Let’s be real. Before our feet hit the floor in the morning, we can consume dozens of other people’s choices.

And eventually, something subtle can begin to happen.

Exposure starts masquerading as desire.

I am the first to acknowledge that I am susceptible to the digital age’s latest marketing tactics. It’s like I have no armor against it.

You see the cozy blanket enough times where wanting it starts to feel like your idea and needing it feels like a requirement for comfort.

Or in my case, you see the destination enough times and it becomes your bucket list. Hence gorillas in Rwanda.

Or alternatively, you watch someone else’s morning routine and begin questioning your own.

Or ultimately, you see another person’s career, body, house, marriage, business, wellness practice, success, reinvention or life and some little part of you begins asking:

Should I be doing that too?

I know I am not alone here. Instagram shopping has become the modern-day version of QVC, with packages begin arriving long after you forgot about that late night order.

And you don’t need to be sitting at a midlife crossroads to feel the weight of this. I see it happening with my own 21-year-old daughter as she explores what comes next after college.

This isn’t a life-stage problem that arrives with an AARP card. It’s a life problem that comes with an iPhone and 24/7 access to everyone else’s choices.

Most of the time, we don’t even notice when this is happening, and perhaps that’s what frightens me.

I am a fully educated adult woman with an MBA and a CV that points toward success. I often joke that I missed my calling as a CIA agent. I am clearly someone who likes to be informed.

Yet I realize I am slowly bleeding away my own agency.

There is no dramatic moment when we decide to give it up. It happens quietly. One search, one recommendation, one review, one double tap, one metric and one fulfilled shopping cart later.

We become extraordinarily good at making informed decisions while becoming less practiced at making intuitive ones.

Even the simple guardrail of requiring cash or a credit card in hand is gone. The ease with which we make decisions has become a little like driving on autopilot, without much thought about how we arrived at the destination.

I started forming ideas the way AI forms sentences, predicting the next likely thing based on everything I had already consumed.

The algorithm isn’t just guessing what I like anymore. It’s actually showing me who I could become. And if I do a little extra work, I can meet my future-self avatar who’s already doing the thing I haven’t even fully baked in my own mind.

It’s both wild and completely creepy to think about.

And after enough exposure to all those possible selves, I realize I’m having a harder time hearing who I was underneath all the layers I’ve built on top of her.

That’s the erosion I’m talking about.

Not losing yourself in some dramatic existential collapse or a midlife crisis. It’s something much quieter.

It happens in a way you don’t even realize and it look likes this: You become a little less certain about which product to buy. So you explore more options, compare items or places, and review everyone else’s Reddit comments. Because God forbid we don’t exhaust every possibility.

You might consider this being informed. I certainly did and still do. But eventually, the line between inspiration and influence becomes difficult to see.

This is especially ironic for me. I created an entire publication around preference.

The Preferred Edit is a place for everything I love, everything I prefer, the things that work for me, the places that inspire me and the beautiful details that bring me joy.

Preferred is the whole point.

Which might be why I’m paying so much attention to this now. Knowing what I prefer matters to me.

I think I’ve spent the last few years believing that choosing myself was the work. I’ve written about it. I’ve practiced it. In many ways, I’ve rebuilt my life around it. Particularly after my late husband died and reinvention was my only choice.

But I’m beginning to understand there is another piece.

You can choose yourself and still not be choosing for yourself.

Those are different. And it’s taken me time to grasp that notion.

Choosing yourself is agency. Choosing for yourself is discernment.

And maybe discernment is simply knowing yourself well enough to take in everything the world has to offer without assuming you need to absorb all of it.

Now, do I still stand behind everything I have shared? Yes, 100%. But trust me when I say, discernment is becoming the new muscle to flex, one that doesn’t require creatine and extra protein, because that certainly falls in the realm of influence these days.

Maybe the question isn’t whether something influenced me. Of course it did.

Maybe the question is much simpler:

Would I choose the green dress again? Yes.

And the irony is, it was one of the very first ones I saved in my quest for the dress.

My intuition was right. I just became distracted by everything else.

I hate to admit it, but this happens more often than not. And sometimes the consequences are far greater than arriving in town without a dress in hand.

The same thing happened again recently when I was planning yet another trip, another bucket-list one.

At every turn, I seemed to come across another roadblock. Somewhere along the way, I said to my husband, “I feel like I’m trying to put a square peg into a round hole. The universe is trying to tell me this is not the right time.”

But I persevered. I made the plans and put the deposit down, only to realize just this week that there is, in fact, a roadblock. And this one I can’t work around.

My intuition was right. Again.

But I was so clouded by the possibility of an extraordinary trip. I fell in love with each glossy image, every review, and the one that seems to get me every time: the scarcity mentality that if I don’t do it now, there will be no more rooms, no more flights and no way to get there.

I don’t think I’ve lost touch with my intuition at all. If anything, these two experiences tell me the opposite.

I think the outside world has gotten really good at what it does.

Influencers know how to influence. Marketing companies know how to market. AI knows how to press our hot buttons. Someone is always listening in, whether we want them to or not.

And that’s the slow drip.

This isn’t me battling against modern-day technology. It’s the realization of what I’ve given up along the way.

I know there are people who can stand firmly grounded in their own decisions and their own intuition. But I also think there’s a leak happening for all of us, whether we realize it or not.

I’m not here to stand on a soapbox. I’m just here to say, wow. I see it. It’s happening. It’s real.

And I’m going to reclaim what I can, where I can and how I can.

Because agency and choice arrived as scarcity for me growing up. Maybe that’s why realizing how casually I’ve given pieces of both away now hits differently.

At first I thought this was about control, because that is how I’m hardwired. I’m a Capricorn, after all. We like to be the ones standing at the helm with a clipboard in hand.

But this isn’t about control. It’s about returning to self.

And not the controlling self that needs to dictate every turn. I’m talking about the self that sits at the seat of my soul. The place where my intuition is grounded.

That part of me. The one that asks, what still feels like me? What am I pursuing because I genuinely want it versus what am I pursuing because I’ve seen it enough times to believe I should?

I consider what gives me energy. What makes me curious. What makes me feel most comfortable in my own skin.

Those questions feel different from the ones I’ve been asking, and they take me back to one of my earliest articles, The Cost of a Borrowed Identity, where I explore what it looks like to make authentic choices.

Since coming home, I’ve been craving stillness in a way I haven’t in a long time.

I notice I’m clicking less and integrating more. I’m noticing more and consuming less. I think my UPS man would agree. He’s probably wondering what happened to me.

I also find myself wondering less about what I should do next and paying more attention to what I actually want next.

I’m tired of giving my agency away, piece by piece and click by click.

And what bothers the controlling part of me the most is realizing how often I’ve done this without knowing I was doing it.

This isn’t about wanting a life without influence or a world without technology.

I want to hear it all, and I certainly want the ease every device offers. I just want my own intuition to have the final vote.

The dress stays.

It turns out it’s a good one.

Always EDITing,
Leslie

Please tell me I am not the only one who feels this slow drip of self. I would love to know your thoughts.

Leave a comment

A few of my latest articles — this is me learning embracing self promotion.

Substack feels like a safe space to share freely. But it comes with one of the things I don’t love about social media. The “like” factor. And let’s be real, Substack offers that dopamine kick that feeds human nature, the desire to feel accepted. And if we are being really honest, it has become another social media app. Of course, with it comes the critics too, who leave with the same simple click. It removes them from your list, and it removes you from their world. Both are occurring at the same time.

Getting comfortable with all of that is its own work. Because the triumph of a new subscriber hits just as hard as an unsubscribe hits later. Sometimes the unsubscribe lands with an even bigger punch to the gut, particularly if it’s someone I know personally.

As someone who didn’t arrive with a following of any kind, an email list I could upload from another platform, or relationships that would help catapult my growth, my trajectory is being built one article and note at a time. Trust me when I say, I celebrate each milestone along the way. I also completely cherish each subscriber. When a new one lands, there is a sense of validation of time, energy, authorship, and creativity that leaves me feeling proud and excited.

And while I love, in every sense of the word, the people in my life who read my work, I don’t expect it to land with everyone. Sometimes, I’ll be honest, it feels easier to have people I don’t know read my work than the people closest to me. Or the ones on the periphery.

I’ve read notes other people have published where they openly acknowledge having created an account and developed a Substack community without a single person in their world knowing anything about that. To those of you who’ve done that, I get you.

I usually don’t share my articles with anyone until they’re fully baked. I’m a perfectionist, after all.

But in this instance, I read this one to my husband, Dave, in draft form. He’s the one set of eyes, if not my daughter Elise, who gets a preview before I hit publish. They are my two trusted editors, and the stopgap before I send it off for the world to digest.

And when I read him this draft, he offered something interesting.

He said you’re not writing the old-world way, if we can call it that. Long before writing on social platforms became a thing, feedback came in one of two ways. From the professional critics who wrote about the work themselves, and from the sales that drove the numbers. On Substack, the feedback is immediate, and the critic is anyone and everyone.

And this new world requires one of two things. A thicker skin, and the ability to not get caught up in the statistics or the comments. Or complete anonymity, which is nearly impossible to come by, certainly with respect to writing personal essays. (If you’re among the other enviable type who has the uncanny ability to turn the other way, I applaud you.)

My husband said something else I also thought was interesting. When he reads an author, he doesn’t give up on them just because he didn’t love one thing they published. He used Grisham as an example. He’s loved so many of his books, even if a few of the early ones didn’t hit hard. But it never occurred to him to abandon Grisham as an author entirely. Back then, that idea barely existed. On Substack, it’s different.

If an article doesn’t resonate or the author doesn’t vibe, the option is simple. Unsubscribe. As the author yourself, that simple gesture can feel extremely personal, particularly when the content is just that, personal.

There is also another entanglement that comes with writing personal content, one that requires a different kind of finesse, and one that I think is worth sharing.

I’ve been on Substack for nine months now and have 69 articles published, a number that’s not lost on me. It’s my late husband’s angel number, and when it shows up, I am always reminded he is here for me. As it turns out, his passing and the grief that I’ve learned to live with are among many of the topics I have written about and will continue to share.

My life is my source material, after all. My experiences don’t exist in a vacuum. They exist in connection and relationship to other people. But I recognize the responsibility that comes with writing this type of nonfiction. There are other people to consider. People I love, people I respect, and people I want to protect.

And when I share an experience, I inevitably take into account how, where, and in what capacity the other people involved land on the page.

This is where I struggle, and I suspect it’s where others struggle too. It’s also why I developed these guideposts.

What it really boils down to is how much is too much and how little is too little. If my goal is to extract meaning from my experience, how much detail do I need to share? And if I withhold too much, have I stripped the story of the very thing that made it interesting or worth sharing? I also recognize that readers respond to real experience. It’s what makes stories relatable and shareable.

This is where the silent critic often takes a seat on my shoulder. And if I’m not careful, I start writing for that voice instead of for the person who might actually need to read what I have to say.

The private part of me gets to say, Wow, I can’t believe these things have fucking happened to me (or for me).

And then the writer part of me gets to ask, Wow, what did this teach me about being human?

Both of those voices are mine.

They just don’t need the same audience.

If you’re new here, welcome. I’m Leslie.

I’ve run ten marathons. I became a widow at 49, recently remarried the most remarkable human, travel every chance I get, and am deeply curious about health and longevity, relationships, ambition and how we choose to live. I also like the finer things in life and make no apologies for it.

I write from experience and about what matters to me in the moment. I’ll offer perspective from my non-linear life, along with questions and ideas that may make you pause or get excited. I’ll never gatekeep a new favorite find or a great idea. And I may even challenge you to get curious about your own life.

I want to be remembered as someone who helped others across the finish line, built community, offered guidance when it was needed and, perhaps most importantly, lowered everyone’s cortisol.

Join me. I’d love to have you.

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Unless you’re writing technical content, this tightrope doesn’t exist. But I suspect a lot of people on this platform are coming in as nonfiction writers. Using their personal experiences as their muse, so to speak.

I think most personal essayists have experienced that feeling of am I oversharing, or did I share something I shouldn’t have. Or maybe just shared something they wish they hadn’t.

And that’s where I think the threat to writers begins.

When those voices become louder than our own thoughts.

When other people become the editor without ever entering the room.

When you’re writing around your experience in fear of that one critic in the corner.

As a personal essayist or creative nonfiction writer, your life is the source material. The experiences each of us endure leave a mark. They leave a fingerprint.

And maybe the editorial discipline is learning to write about the mark without necessarily revealing the fingerprint.

What it’s like to be destabilized in life, not who destabilized you.

To want to make shifts.

To learn to let go.

To be hurt.

To change your mind.

To realize something about yourself you couldn’t have known without living through the experience first.

The reader doesn’t need every detail. Quite frankly, some of those details would read like a TMZ article, and I can assure you I have no interest in writing that.

What I am interested in is what came out of it. That’s the heart of who I am. Curious. Always wanting to learn more about myself.

Because I lived the experience, and in some instances, I paid whatever price came with it. That holds true for all of us. Whether we paid a price or benefitted from it, there’s value in it. And perhaps not just for me. If I can take what I learned from it and turn it into something that makes another person feel understood, or maybe helps them see something happening in their own life a little differently, then perhaps that’s the part worth sharing.

For me, that’s where the best writing exists and what brings me back to the keyboard.

The discipline is what keeps me steady when the critic is anyone and everyone, and the exit is one simple click.

Rather than looking at the shadow on my shoulder as a critic, I’m using it as fuel instead. Fuel to get me across the tightrope with a little more grace, a little more elegance, and a whole lot more informed.

That’s the tightrope. I plan to keep walking it, and I plan to keep learning from it.

I didn’t arrive here having any true understanding of the craft of writing, and I have learned a tremendous amount along the way. I can’t profess to be an expert and am only now just owning the title of writer, essayist, author, all of which still feel awkward to own.

What I do know is that the critic isn’t going anywhere. Neither am I.

Writing from your own life experience doesn’t mean you need to air all your dirty laundry or anyone else’s for that matter. It’s about knowing where the line is.

If you’re writing personal essays, or considering it for yourself, here are a few guideposts I’ve learned to lean on over the last 69 articles that get me across that tightrope.

1. Is the story mine to tell?

I feel like this question is where that tightrope begins. Because if I’m writing about my life, there are obviously other people in it who shape my experiences.

The answer to this one isn’t always perfect. But I have learned that I can tell you what an experience did to me without telling you everything that happened. I can share details without sharing other people’s details. Maybe that’s the line. What did I feel? What did I learn? What changed because of it? Or more importantly, what part of me changed because of it? That’s the part of the story that belongs to me, and that’s where I have to write it from.

2. What does this article offer someone else?

I am not a niche author. My articles jump across all sorts of topics. What I publish usually comes down to what’s occurring in my world at any given time. But my intention is always to leave the reader with something.

There are plenty of articles to read on Substack, so I take seriously the question of what I can offer in exchange for someone’s time. Maybe it’s insight into something or someplace new. A reason to look at something in their own life a little differently. A new way of doing or trying something. Hell, sometimes it’s even a new pair of shoes I found and love.

Ultimately, I recognize and honor that people have a finite amount of time to read. What am I offering them in exchange for some of their most precious asset?

That question stays at the forefront of my mind as I hit the keys.

3. Does the reader need the detail, or do I need the reader to know it?

This one is hard to reckon with because, let’s be honest, details make a story better. They add texture, color, and sometimes that edge-of-the-seat feeling that puts you right there with the author. It’s the balance between exteriority and interiority, and the part of writing I am just learning about thanks to my incredible writing coach, . As I mentioned, I’m new to this craft and beyond grateful to those offering me both feedback and guidance.

But just because a detail makes the story better doesn’t mean it belongs in the story. That’s the part I’m learning.

Sometimes I have to ask why I want you to know it so badly. If it’s to prove I was right, or wronged, or justified, that’s not for the story, and I need to hit delete, which never feels easy.

I may still write the version where I get to say, You would not fucking believe what happened.

You just might never get to read it.

But if there’s something in the experience worth sharing, and a way to tell it without overexposing my world or someone else’s, you’ll probably find it in your inbox on one of my publishing days. I can assure you of that.

4. Am I writing from reflection or reaction?

While I have 69 published articles to date, there are countless others sitting in a folder behind the scenes that will likely remain unpublished for this very reason. If I look back at them now, I am sure today’s version of me is really glad they didn’t find their way out into the world.

There is nothing wrong with reactionary writing. That is what the unpublished folder and my journal are for. I believe in the power of putting pen to paper and letting it rip. It’s deeply therapeutic.

But reactionary publishing can become a forest fire of its own making.

This is where that extra set of eyes or editorial voice of reason becomes really important. Sometimes it’s necessary to let someone else vet the landing before a hard launch.

5. Do I stand behind what I wrote?

Sure, virality and likability are at the forefront of writing (for some anyway). But the real question is whether I can stand behind what I publish.

People are allowed to dislike what I write, and they are certainly allowed to interpret it differently than I intended. It’s almost inevitable. We all arrive with our own perspectives and no two will ever be the same. I can’t edit around every possible interpretation.

But I can ask myself whether I’ve written something I’m willing to stand behind.

And if the answer is yes, maybe that has to be enough. Because once it’s out there, it will always be out there. I don’t take that lightly before I hit publish.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

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I just left four extraordinary days behind me, and what lies ahead is a celebration of life for a remarkable man, and father to a family I consider my own.

It’s like being at the intersection of friendship and loss, something I am acutely familiar with.

This whole trip started when one of my dearest friends asked me to join her at her home in Kiawah, in the low country near Charleston, where she was scheduled for a board meeting. Inside the trip she booked us one night at the most extraordinary inn I have ever experienced, in the heart of old Charleston.

It’s the kind of place very few people have access to and very few people know about. What a gift to be on the periphery of her knowing. It is the kind of place where everything is handled before you know it needs handling. Where every detail feels deliberate and every cupboard intentionally seems to hold a surprise worth finding. Down to no news outlets permitted on the television in the shared common space and an entire freezer full of Jeni’s ice cream with a loaded toppings bar on the center island. My nervous system said its own quiet thank you for both.

OMG and the pillows! They were so good I joked about taking one home. I felt like I slept on a cloud with my head surrounded by fluffy marshmallows.

Apparently I wasn’t the first to notice, as there was a book on the nightstand listing where everything in the room came from, which is how I found out my head had been sleeping on an $850 pillow. Seriously! I had no idea pillows could be so expensive. Despite the rule breaker in me, it did not come home in my suitcase.

As if sleeping like a queen wasn’t dreamy enough, we awoke to the fluffiest scrambled eggs I’ve ever eaten and enjoyed them on a porch built for the equivalent of royalty back in the day.

I’ve never felt more taken care of.

It was 24 hours of no worry. No obligation. And no sense of duty or responsibility.

And those days don’t exist quite like they used to for me.

The last several years I have been quietly rebuilding my foundation, one that crumbled out from under me like an earthquake and left me holding the bag of responsibility and obligation that once rested in the very capable hands of my late husband.

As if that loss wasn’t enough, then it happened again. Shortly after losing George to a spontaneous brain bleed, my dearest friend Todd, and daily lifeline, had a stroke that took him before we ever got to celebrate his 60th, a night that would have undoubtedly arrived with drag queens, dueling pianos, loads of champagne, and laughter carried out for days.

Loss like that, in addition to the unraveling of other friendships in the wake of rebuilding my life, doesn’t arrive without completely hijacking the nervous system. As someone with a deep need to control the outcome of life, unexpected arrives like a cannonball to the gut.

I have done the work. Mentally, emotionally, physically, through each of those respective losses.

My sympathetic nervous system is still walking the high wire.

I honestly thought I’d see a notable difference in my diagnostic testing, something I deeply believe in and am grateful to understand, thanks to my time at both Chenot and SHA Mexico.

I still have work to do.

As it turns out, physical stress doesn’t yield just because the threat is gone. Or the friendship wound has closed. Or enough time has passed that the loss is a reminder of the past rather than a deep cut.

That’s the hardest part to swallow.

The body takes longer than the mind to play catch up. It keeps its own record, and the nervous system needs nurturing, so it stops living in anticipation of the next crash.

It wasn’t until this afternoon, in conversation with my girlfriend while en route to the airport, that I realized how far I’ve come. We found ourselves deep into another conversation, much like the ones that had filled the last few days. Time with a dear friend is like that. You pick up exactly where you left off and then spend inseparable days together where the conversation never ends and the quiet stretches don’t need filling. Where you’re both anxious to hear and to share every detail between now and then that requires rehashing.

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That’s what we were doing. Rehashing. And somewhere in it, I heard myself listing things I had been meaning to share with her. Things that I have implemented that I know she would benefit from too.

In the absence of my late husband, and the team of people who worked closely with him, there were things I left exposed.

That’s the part I don’t love admitting. I was a banker. A professional woman who understood exactly how this works.

And I handed it to someone else. I don’t think I am alone here. A lot of other women out there hand off those responsibilities in the same way. We prioritize roles and duties that balance out the household ecosystem. My late husband dutifully would enroll me in all the conversations but mentally my attention was elsewhere, and I left the load for him to carry until suddenly he wasn’t there to carry it anymore.

I needed to regain a solid foothold on everything and quickly. As the one solely responsible for holding the bag, I found small ways to add in a layer of protection that leaves me able to sleep at night, $850 pillow or not.

Because let’s be real, exposure of a personal and financial nature, especially in this day and age, is basically like standing on a street corner naked. The idea of that will wreak havoc on the nervous system on any level. My nervous system didn’t need any additional hits of voltage.

Over time, I adopted new tools and systems.

That’s what all of these are. Not productivity but protection and privacy. While they initially took time to implement, they’re so integrated now that they run on autopilot. I nearly forgot the value they carry until I found myself rehashing them with my girlfriend.

Here’s the thing. Whether you’ve experienced loss like mine or not, taking the driver’s seat feels damn good.

Loss stripped away my sense of security. The feeling of being looked after by someone whose job it was to think of it before I did.

I spent one night in a place where a stranger had anticipated every need I had, and a few I didn’t know I had, and I slept like a person without a care in the world. Floating on a cloud.

You can pay for that for a night, but that’s usually as long as it lasts.

Instead of chasing that sense of peace, I quietly, and mostly without noticing, built it over the last several years through small decisions I never thought of as recovery until now. Until I shared them with her, when there was a moment of both pride and ownership.

While my body hasn’t caught all the way up, it doesn’t have to today.

So here’s the list. Perhaps there’s one in here for you to grab hold of as well. While I cannot offer you a deluxe pillow, I can share what allows me to sleep at night.

Dashlane. A password keeper. I have reached the point where there are simply too many passwords, passkeys, account numbers and logins for my brain to be the storage system. And to be honest, for years I used the same exact password for everything. I know… yikes. Dashlane has become that extra layer of protection and a safe place to store everything. I no longer go through the brain drain of resetting passwords with each click I make.

DeleteMe. Keeps my privacy in check. This one was eye-opening. Google search your name. You may find yourself alarmed at how much personal information exists out there. DeleteMe literally does that. I discovered my information was sitting in places I didn’t even know existed, which was basically all over the wild worldwide web. I don’t need strangers being able to assemble a dossier on me with three clicks and a Google search. DeleteMe works on my behalf without effort on my end. Exhale.

A credit freeze with all three reporting agencies. This is one of those things I wish someone had told me to do years ago. I keep my credit frozen unless I actually need someone to access it. It doesn’t hurt your credit score, and you can temporarily “thaw” it online if needed. It takes the worry away about someone doing nefarious things in my name. It’s not protection against every kind of identity theft, but it puts a substantial barrier between my identity and someone trying to open a credit card with it and having their own Pretty Woman shopping extravaganza.

1440. News that keeps me informed without derailing me. I want to know what’s happening in the world. I don’t want what’s happening in the world to hijack my nervous system before I’ve finished my first cup of matcha. 1440 delivers a fact-driven email daily that keeps me informed without spending my day marinating in the news or figuring out what’s real.

Superhuman Mail. My attempt to make email less overwhelming. I’m still learning to integrate this one, but I’m intrigued by the possibility. Email can send me spiraling or, worse, leave me in paralysis because I get inundated with it daily. Superhuman helps organize it all and more.

I have a trip coming up that will leave me completely out of pocket for seven days. Yes, that freaks me out. My hope is that Superhuman becomes less another app I have to manage and more the thing that makes reentry and everyday email more manageable. Ask me after the trip. I’ll let you know when that is later!

NuCalm. This app truly allows me to sleep at night. This one came home with me from Chenot in Switzerland. They use NuCalm as part of their neuro-acoustic treatments, and I’ve come to rely on the 8-hour DeepestSleep setting. In particular, Dave and I both love the Summer Nights program that sounds like sleeping under the stars with crickets chirping. In short, it uses engineered sound to shift your brain out of stress, which I clearly need.

Privacy screen protectors for my iPhone and laptop. This might be the least sophisticated item on the list and one of the most practical. This is my 16th trip this year. I’ve had my phone, laptop, and iPad open in airport lounges, middle seats, and packed airport trams across the globe where I’m squeezed against strangers.

While a privacy screen isn’t cybersecurity, it does dramatically limit what someone sitting beside you can see. Because who wants the guy in 14B reading along as you text a friend. Not me.

That last one I almost forgot entirely until I was reminded to send my girlfriend the link.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. – No girls trip goes without a good shopping day and Charleston is no exception. More on my fun finds in the coming days including the last-minute funeral attire I picked up en route to the airport this morning and fully plan to wear again.

P.P.S. – For those with a little extra fun money to burn, here is the link to the pillows. If you do in fact buy one, please let me know. I will be dreaming about them for a long time to come. All other comments are welcome too. Always!

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More from my time at Chenot Switzerland and SHA Mexico plus a few takeaways…

But here I sit. In the eye of it.

It’s not an unfamiliar storm. But it’s new in an entirely different way. And I think a lot of women are sitting in some version of it right now.

I left my daughter thousands of miles away at college.

We said goodbye again last night, and I boarded a plane this morning. The internal turmoil didn’t settle until mid-morning, once the 4:30 AM wake-up wore off and I was left clear-eyed, caffeinated, and hungover from heartache.

Nothing forces you to sit with emotions quite like a three-and-a-half-hour cross-country flight with intermittent Wi-Fi and a window seat you can’t quite climb out of without waking the two sleeping strangers to your left.

To be fair, one of them was my husband, but he was peacefully asleep and waking him felt unfair since I was the one who booked the flight.

So I sat there, forlorn, staring at the blank black screen on the back of the seat in front of me. It felt ominous as I started wondering how I’m going to make sense of the next several decades of my own life.

How am I going to light up my own screen, if you will?

I wasn’t sure whether to cry, throw my hands up, or pull my hair out in agony. Like I said, I am in the middle of the shit storm.

And the funny thing is, it’s not like I didn’t see it coming.

The label feels opportunistic, but calling myself an empty nester just feels depressing.

Am I seriously that old? Do I really own that title now, too? Growing up, that was always reserved for “old people” with short grey hair set weekly by a hairdresser. Mine is still long and blonde… with a little help, but that’s just semantics.

Honestly, I think my AARP card is going to arrive faster than my daughter is going to return.

She won’t be home again until Thanksgiving. As if that week isn’t short enough, she’ll likely split it between a few days in Naples and time in Ohio with high school friends and family.

Christmas will likely look the same with an added few days.

After that she’s off and running from graduation straight into her graduate program, and the beginning of her future, where time off becomes the luxury someone else grants you, on their calendar and under their restrictions.

There will be no more long summers spent doing nothing and everything. And no more family trips set around our availability. Now we’ll ride on whatever she can squeeze in.

So yeah, it feels like the beginning of the end.

I know I am not the only one in the midst of this existential crisis. Take one look at social media and you’ll find middle-aged menopausal women openly crying or celebrating this new stage of life. Trust me, you’ll see it all.

Some women exhale as if they’ve been holding it all in until the silence permitted a new kind of freedom. One that allows them to finally take the romantic trip they’d been putting off. The closet edit that frees them of the high school sweatshirts and jerseys that had become the Friday night uniform for the last four years, or the pantry clean-out decades in the making that ends with the loud thud of the crockpot hitting the bottom of the garbage bin. And days divided between the tennis court, pickleball court or golf course.

Some just carry on. The corporate world doesn’t stop for a college drop-off. Life keeps moving just with one or two fewer people at the table.

Some keep busy. Like, superhumanly busy. Globetrotting around with friends and other couples. Meeting at tailgates across the country. Filling the calendar with as many social events as their college-aged kids.

Some trade the kid for an aging parent, and the whole thing quietly recycles.

None of that is me. Well, some of it was. But honestly, it was only temporary filler. Because even busy and travel can start to feel mundane.

Where I am now is more in the holy-shit-what’s-my-purpose stage.

I know reinvention. I’ve been living it for three-plus years. When my late husband passed away reinvention wasn’t an option. It was simply my life dictated by a spontaneous brain bleed that arrived on a fateful Wednesday morning before the coffee even found the mug.

One day I was teaching yoga in a studio I built and operated, training for a marathon, and working with a team of architects, designers and contractors on our dream home in Northern Michigan.

Weeks later I was selling homes, relocating myself, my belongings, my life, and my daughter’s. None of it was the grand plan until suddenly it was.

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Finding love in the middle of all of it was reinvention on a whole different level. Equally surprising but a surprise I like to think of as a higher power working in my favor… finally.

But so much of that reinvention was reactive.

Something changed, and I had to change with it.

Not the love, of course, but everything else.

This reinvention is different. This one feels personal. It’s not being forced. There is no realtor or advisor or doctor or psychic who can guide me through. I have to figure out what I actually want… for me.

And while 52 is oldish, sure, it’s far from over.

Writing found me last year, somewhere near the peak of my reinvention climb. Right before I said, “I do.” And it’s taken me somewhere I never planned to go, and I’m here for all of it.

But I’ve experienced something since I’ve started. Not everyone takes the second chapter seriously. And trust me, I’ve felt it.

People have come and gone these past six months. Friends who have whittled my writing down to “social media therapy.” Really? And more importantly, why the dig? From my side, why not?

Why shouldn’t someone start writing at 52? Or start a new company at 55? Take up painting at 60? Go back to school at 65? Hell, I saw someone on Substack announce they finished med school at 70!

And yet, we only seem to clap for reinvention if it goes big. After someone becomes the next Mel Robbins. In all fairness, Substack did a grand job of celebrating the med school grad. But the rest of the world seems to be waiting for the book to sell, and the business to skyrocket before there is a collective buy-in that it is worthy of pom-poms.

As if the trying isn’t the part worth celebrating. Why can’t we celebrate anyone who wants to try something new at this stage of life? Or any stage of life?

Because if we’re honest, the odds are better now. Not worse.

We’re more mature. We know our strengths, our weaknesses, who we generally are, and more importantly, who we aren’t.

Nobody reinvents from a more informed place than a woman who’s already survived one full remaking. And I’ve had more than one in the last half century.

So no, this isn’t the sad version of the empty-nest story. It’s the argument for what comes next.

I’m still in the eye of it, and I don’t have the answer yet.

I’m allowed to want one. One more big grand reinvention. Dare I say maybe even two.

So if you’re out there wondering the same, I say go for it. New careers, passions, and paths aren’t just reserved for the youth.

Who’s to say you won’t be the next big thing in your arena.

And who’s to say I won’t be, too.

Always EDITing,
Leslie

P.S. I am curious, if life afforded you one more chapter, what would it be? Aim high. There are no boundaries in here. Honestly, I would love a stint as a CIA agent. I’d be damn good at it. But this is my home, and it seems to have found me. So I’ll retire that notion and write as though I am looking for a different kind of agent.

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Twenty-four hours before her first day, she was exactly who she’d been for the previous three years in Malibu, beachy blonde waves, jean shorts, tank tops, and flip-flops. If you’ve spent any time here, you know “formal” in Malibu means maybe tucking in a shirttail. If you even have one. A day later, she was commuting from Washington, D.C. into McLean each morning in a black blazer, tailored trousers, and heels.

Well. Sort of.

The heels weren’t actually on her feet. They were tucked inside her designer tote next to her lunch bag, hidden beneath the polished exterior alongside the tennis shoes she wore on the Metro every morning and changed out of once she got to the office.

Her own Tess McGill, Working Girl moment.

My husband had given her that lunch bag for her birthday before she left for D.C. Talk about full circle. Long gone are the days of the monogrammed Pottery Barn Kids lunchbox and the matching backpack that looked almost as big as her little body. Today it’s a sleek neoprene lunch bag tucked inside a designer tote.

The contents, though, have barely changed.

Turkey. Sliced strawberries. Cucumbers. Crackers. And two Hershey’s Kisses.

Some things don’t change, even at twenty-one.

Her internship has since come to an end. The blazers are packed away, and she’s back in Malibu getting ready for her senior year in college. Which means that, like so many families this time of year, we’re preparing for another beginning.

Depending on where you are in the world right now, there’s an anticipatory feeling in the air. Excitement laced with apprehension, a thread of insecurity underneath it all. It’s back-to-school season in the States. And for some, it isn’t just back to school. It marks the start of a major life pivot. The first day of a professional career, or in my daughter Elise’s case, the beginning of the end. The countdown toward college graduation and the next chapter. We’ve been slowly preparing since late last spring.

The truth is, everyone’s mostly just figuring it out. Part of it is playing a role. A little fake it till you make it. You dress the part. But in your own way.

As parents, we spend years preparing our kids for these moments. We teach them to drive. We help them choose colleges. We talk about careers, and we remind them to be kind, to work hard, to say thank you. What I didn’t expect was that one of the biggest confidence builders would come from something as simple as getting dressed.

I’ll be honest, and sorry, Elise, my budding career gal doesn’t see what her closet holds with the same eye I do. So there was work to do. Not to buy her a whole new wardrobe, but to train her eye, to build from what she already had and assemble it each day for a successful professional summer. Because being the new kid in the cubicle isn’t easy. Neither is walking onto a college or high school campus feeling like you don’t look the part.

And trust me, this isn’t about how to fit in. It’s about how to feel confident upon arrival, whatever your vibe is.

We often joke in our house that the umbilical cord is still attached. And I’m beyond grateful for the relationship I have with my daughter. It’s not one I have with my own mother. That one is complicated, and she’s been absent for much of my life. Having a close relationship with Elise is the greatest gift.

And if I’m being honest with myself, I’m sure I go the extra mile to be the mother for her that I longed for in my own life, which undoubtedly means doing too much for her sometimes. She lets me know when I’m overstepping, and I’m also learning to let go. It’s not an easy thing to do.

I always say the biggest job as a parent is to raise independent children. Letting them take the wheel is the double-edged sword we have to learn to carry. And this summer, between my travel schedule and my desire to see her take charge, we needed a plan. One that didn’t have her calling me every night, or in the middle of a wardrobe crisis: WHAT DO I WEAR TODAY? It was imperative for both of us. So we built a plan. And here’s how we did it.

It started with a lesson I’d learned thirty years earlier, from a magazine.

Long before Pinterest, Instagram, TikTok, or any wardrobe app, there was one feature I looked forward to every single month inside InStyle. It was called Instant Style. If you’re old enough to remember those pages inside that 100-page glossy rag, you probably just smiled. They were always some of my favorite pages, and the recreations of them floating around social now still make me pause.

Those pages fascinated me. Not because they featured expensive clothes, and not because they told me what was fashionable. Because they showed me possibilities. One blazer, three outfits, a handful of basics mixed together in ways I never would have thought of on my own.

Looking back, I don’t think they were really teaching style. They were teaching perspective. That a great wardrobe was never about owning more. It was about seeing what you already owned differently.

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Thirty years later, I found myself trying to teach Elise the very same lesson. Not because I wanted her to become someone she wasn’t. Quite the opposite. I wanted her to walk into that office feeling like herself. Confident, prepared, able to spend her mental energy on the work instead of on whether she’d chosen the right outfit.

That’s when I introduced her to an app called Stylebook. Instead of standing in front of her closet every morning trying to remember what she owned, she photographed every piece, organized it by category, and started building outfits in advance. She could mix and match what she already had, plan a whole week in a few minutes, and pack for a trip without leaving half her wardrobe behind.

And somewhere in there, she stopped saying she had nothing to wear. Because for the first time, she could see everything she already owned.

Then something funny happened. She showed it to her stepsister. Her stepsister showed a few friends. Those friends showed other friends. Now there’s a whole group of college students and young professionals using it, each for their own reason: planning internships, getting through sorority recruitment, avoiding the overpacked suitcase, or just rediscovering clothes they forgot they owned.

Watching it spread reminded me of those old Instant Style pages. The technology changed. The lesson didn’t.

Confidence rarely comes from having more. More clothes. More shoes. More options. More often, it comes from removing unnecessary decisions.

Because the first day of school is stressful enough. The first internship is stressful enough. The first job is stressful enough. If fifteen minutes on a Sunday means you get to spend Monday morning thinking about your work instead of your wardrobe, that’s a pretty good return.

Clothes don’t determine your worth. They don’t make you smarter, or kinder, or more capable. But they can remove one unnecessary distraction. And sometimes that’s exactly what confidence looks like.

As for Elise, the internship is over. The blazers are back in the closet. The tennis shoes have reclaimed their rightful place. And somewhere inside a designer tote sits a sleek little lunch bag carrying turkey, strawberries, cucumbers, crackers…

…and two Hershey’s Kisses.

Apparently some things are worth keeping exactly the same.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

I love reading your comments. Drop me one or leave your own Instant Style hack.

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P.S. I'm getting ready to leave Malibu. This is always the hard part. Goodbyes never get easier. Being an empty nester is a whole nother article, one I plan to tackle on my flight home. Tears and all.

Of course it was. It was Mexico in July, and I was seated inside a sweat lodge.

A new offering on the menu. The photo in the brochure made it look peaceful and traditional. Stepping into a Mayan ritual seemed like a brilliant idea, a way to embrace my quest for wellness in a truly cultural way while staying at a longevity clinic in Mexico. I naively did no research. Turns out that was a good thing, because the Condé Nast article I read after the fact would have sent me packing.

And I didn’t just sign myself up. I enrolled my daughter, too, who looked at me afterward and said, that was the wildest thing you’ve ever asked me to do.

A beautiful Mayan shaman greeted us. (I’ll be honest, I’m not sure that’s the right word for a woman who serves as a ceremonial guide in the Mayan tradition, but it’s the one I have.) She was knowledgeable and calming. We both felt reassured as we were saged, welcomed, and led inside the Temazcal.

As the volcanic rocks were placed in the firepit and the temperature began to climb, she asked us to consider what we were seeking.

I said peace.

I had no idea those two hours were about to expose something I had spent my entire life trying to outrun.

But to explain that, I need to back up.

I’m writing this en route home from SHA Wellness — my second stay in two years. Last year, my daughter, two friends and I arrived fully immersed in one of their seven-day detox programs. This year, with only a few calendar days to spare, we opted for a shorter stay, one we could design ourselves, catered to our own desires and outcomes. A program they call Stay Your Way. We signed up.

Four days to unwind after the whirlwind summer I’d set in motion. My priority was singular: relaxation. Four full days of living in a bathrobe, leaning into rest, ironing out a nervous system still recovering from cross-continent trips and, more honestly, from years of stress and trauma.

It sounds luxurious. It is. Don’t get me wrong.

But it doesn’t come easily for someone who has spent a lifetime tying her worth to her productivity.

What I’m realizing, though, is that longevity, wellness, my overall well-being — this is the work. Not the thing I get to after the work, but the work itself.

And not only for me. For my daughter, too. It’s something I hope she can embrace at 21 in a way I’m only learning at 52.

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We added our own twist, of course. A glass of champagne each night before dinner. Because here’s the thing: living at full tilt isn’t the norm, and I know that when restriction hits hard, the pendulum swings back even harder. So even at a wellness clinic, there’s a place for a pop of that kind of pleasure. Trust me, they’d noted my propensity to savor bubbles right in my profile, which only makes me appreciate them more.

What I’m after, always, is balance. 80/20. A week away doesn’t need to be an extreme for the benefits to still deliver.

Here’s the fuller truth, though. I have been chasing wellness for the majority of my adult life, in some shape or form. I’ve tried, and I’m willing to try, just about anything.

I have attended countless yoga trainings. More than I can recall. Name the modality, and I likely have a certificate of completion tucked into a file marked “Yoga Teacher Training Certificates” — because of course I have that.

I’ve been on women’s retreats. Not the kind that reunite friends for a fun weekend, but the kind that led me to wellbeing and alternative treatments for aging long before Instagram existed — before TikTok made everything mainstream and viral. The kind that led to a full kitchen edit, where I forced my family to eat quinoa I’d soaked for a full day, because back then quinoa only came raw, sold at health food stores with abstract names like Claudia’s.

With a degree in East Asian Studies, I found my way to Traditional Chinese Medicine years ago, and I swear by it, for my weekly nervous system reboot and for so many other ailments I’ve battled over the years. There’s something about ancient medicine that has always held an allure for me.

Honestly, there is nothing quite like floating on the waters of the Dead Sea, basking in the mud beneath it, then scrubbing it off with the salt crystals that form along the shore. The therapeutic benefits are as mystifying as the land that surrounds it.

And then there’s therapy, of course. I believe everyone can benefit from a good therapist. It’s never easy, but exploring the past and getting to know all my internal parts has been a huge shift in how I experience life and my relationships.

As for longevity and wellness clinics, they’ve been earmarked in the Notes app on my phone for easily a decade. I was mesmerized by the first article I read and held onto it, knowing that one day I’d find my way to one. After my late husband died and my daughter left for a school year in Switzerland, I did. I booked a week at a renowned clinic near her, ended up extending my stay, and went back the following year.

And still. After all of it, and so many other things I’ve done, I’m always curious what else is out there.

Which is how my daughter got dragged into a sweat lodge with me, along with baggage I didn’t even know I was carrying.

Last year, SHA’s diagnostic testing told me my sympathetic nervous system was hardwired for threat. At the time, I assumed it was because of everything I’d lived through over the previous two years.

This year, I expected different results. Yes, life will always have its ups and downs, but I have continued to do the work. And for the first time in SO LONG, I am genuinely happy.

But the numbers hadn’t changed. If anything, they got slightly worse. My parasympathetic nervous system (the one responsible for rest and digest) is literally asleep at the wheel.

It wasn’t until I found myself sitting in the dark inside a Mayan sweat lodge that I realized why.

I’ve spent a lifetime bracing. Bracing for the floor to fall out. Bracing for something to be taken away. Bracing for the other shoe to drop.

Peace wasn’t the thing standing in my way. Bracing was.

I couldn’t access it because I was still preparing for impact.

And somewhere in that dome-shaped “house of heat,” meant to represent the womb of Mother Earth (I know, it sounds so woo-woo), amidst an indigenous ceremonial ritual, with hot water poured over volcanic rocks, steam rising with no escape, the smell of herbs and medicinal plants in the air, the rhythmic chanting all around, I broke my own glass ceiling.

What I’ve come to know is this: the subconscious is the real driver, and our own glass ceiling.

The body keeps score. And mine has been keeping a high one.

Locked in every muscle and fiber, the shadows of my subconscious have been hiding.

For years I thought I could crack mine by pushing harder. Thinking more. Reading more. Learning more. Running marathons across the globe. Scrubbing, rubbing, mud-bathing, and needling my way through all the layers.

We all have our own version of “not enough” playing on default somewhere in the depths of the brain.

But in the dark, I found a shadow bigger than that, one no masseuse in the world was going to unlock.

I went in asking for peace.

But somewhere between the sage-infused steam, the primal chanting, and the layers of sweat, trust surfaced.

The one missing piece to my puzzle. The one thing I never questioned.

And here’s the part I cringe to write: I have never held trust as a foundation. It isn’t what I was built on.

As a product of divorce, I lived a childhood of chaos and uncertainty. Things were taken from me as a parenting tactic, one likely passed down from the generation before. Somehow, through it all, I learned early on that if I couldn’t count on others, I would take care of myself. And I did. I have more grit than I know what to do with.

But trust? No.

When things get pulled away at a young age, you learn to expect it. At least I did. So I built a world I could depend on, and I controlled and organized my way through life.

But here’s the thing. That foundation doesn’t hold when the uncontrollable happens.

No clear plastic bin, however neatly labeled, can withstand an earthquake overnight.

In the last few years, I’ve had my fair share of unexpected loss. And when those things happen, big or small, the subconscious defaults to what it knows best. In my case, that’s to expect more.

Living in a body that’s always preparing for impact is no way to live. Trust me – and I say that both honestly and ironically.

My own glass ceiling wasn’t about inner peace. It was about trust.

Suddenly, those test results made sense. My nervous system wasn’t simply responding to the losses of the past few years. It was responding to a lifetime spent bracing. My body wasn’t confused. It was doing exactly what it had been taught to do.

You can’t relax your way to calm when the foundation underneath is I don’t trust this to hold.

Trust is the one thing I couldn’t train for. Couldn’t achieve. Couldn’t book at any wellness clinic in the world.

It only surfaced when I finally stopped doing.

I won’t pretend I walked out of that lodge holding it. I didn’t.

But I walked out knowing its name.

And after a lifetime of chasing, I finally know where to begin.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

Your comments fuel me. I read them all!

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P.S. As for SHA Wellness, I look forward to my return and am excited to share some cool offerings that might pique your interest as well. Stay tuned.

As for me, I have a quick 24 hours at home before I am off on yet another adventure. Life will begin to slow down for me soon. Trust me, I am ready for it too.

I never kept the phone on or even charged it. Yet, turning off the service and giving up the number that had been part of his identity for as long as cell service has been available felt more permanent than his memorial service.

His email account is still active, though. Thousands of junk emails arrive every week, and every so often I still scroll through them, just in case something important somehow finds its way there. It never does anymore, but I still look anyway.

None of those decisions came easily. And the idea that a stranger likely answers his cell phone number is something I can’t think about without feeling a pit in my stomach.

George died three years and four months ago today.

Seven months ago, I remarried.

I never imagined I would find love again after losing him. Thankfully, I married a man who doesn’t ask me to leave George behind. He understands that love doesn’t erase love. In fact, he totally embraces it, and the photos of George I keep around our house.

Besides, George has a funny way of reminding us he’s never very far away.

I had just left Volcanoes National Park, on the border of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and not far from Uganda, and said goodbye to the both the golden monkeys and my beloved friends and travel companions. On the walk to meet my driver, I struck up a conversation with a man from Los Angeles. We had about twenty minutes together. Aside from his wife and the porter there to guide us, we were the only ones in this remote field at the edge of the bamboo forest. Naturally, I struck up conversation.

I asked what he did. Real estate, he said. I asked what kind. Commercial. I inquired further, which sector, and mentioned my late husband had been in commercial real estate too.

That’s where we connected the dots. It turned out he’d bought a portfolio of real estate from George’s former REIT. They had never met. But he knew of him. Meanwhile I am thinking… wow, this is so random!

As we reached the parking lot, he stopped. “Can I show you something?”

He pulled out his phone, opened his contacts, and handed it to me. There it was. George’s contact information. Everything you needed to know if you were looking to reach a man as if he were still alive, including the cell phone number that is permanently etched in my mind, along with the ringtone I assigned to it, which always causes me to abruptly turn when I hear it play.

They’d never met. George died. And still, he had it.

Nearly 8,000 miles from home, after weeks spent traveling across Africa, just before beginning the thirty-six-hour journey back to my daughter, my new husband, and the life waiting for me…

There was George. Winking at me from this stranger’s iPhone screen.

I was already emotional about leaving Africa. Seeing George’s name felt like the hug I needed.

When I walked out the door in Naples weeks earlier, I looked at his photo on our kitchen counter and said, “Grab your angel’s wings. We are going on another adventure.” I should have expected that he would find a way to remind me that his love and memory have no geographical restrictions.

But to understand why I was standing in that parking lot in Rwanda in the first place, I have to go back to a woman named Aline.

The life I lived with George in Toledo bears little resemblance to the life I live today. For starters, I no longer shovel snow. Not that I did much there either, but I call Naples home now.

I no longer own the yoga studio that shaped both my days and my life for so many years, though I remain deeply connected to the community that continues to thrive there.

And I no longer spend Sunday afternoons logging into Skype. Does that even exist anymore?

That’s where this story begins. Not in Africa, but at a boutique yoga studio, on Central Avenue in a small mid-west town, that I opened twelve years ago.

Through Toledo Yoga, I became a mentor with Africa Yoga Project, an organization that paired yoga teachers in the United States with emerging teachers throughout Africa. My mentee was the only participant living in Rwanda.

Her name is Aline. We were first introduced in 2015.

At the time, she had never flown on an airplane. She had never traveled beyond Rwanda except for a thirty-hour bus ride to Nairobi, Kenya, where she attended a teacher training with my teacher, Baron Baptiste, and Paige Elenson. She left behind her job at a local bar, courageously boarded a bus by herself, and chose a path she had no idea would transform her life.

The mentorship program required a monthly Skype call. But after the first one, I knew once a month wasn’t going to be enough.

First of all, the connection was so poor we could barely hear each other. During the rainy season in Rwanda we’d lose each other entirely, and some Sundays we spent almost as much time reconnecting as talking.

Secondly, Aline was painfully shy, which is so hard to imagine now. Back then it took a lot to get her to open up. In her defense, she would say that English wasn’t her first language, although she spoke it far better than she ever gave herself credit for. But getting to know her required both time and patience. Both of which I honored and respected. The program asked a lot… of both of us, and we were both committed.

So we started meeting every Sunday. Each week, it was like meeting a different person. She didn’t just gain confidence. She began to flourish.

The woman who had once struggled to find the words to describe her own thoughts slowly became someone who spoke with clarity, conviction, and purpose.

She began teaching more classes, enrolling more students, and finding ways to support her community. She overcame (and still overcomes) cultural, political, and religious barriers in order to reach those most in need, the genocide survivors who navigate unimaginable grief.

She earned an opportunity to spend a month studying meditation in Thailand. It was her first time on an airplane. Her first time leaving the African continent.

And she kept saying yes. Yes to new opportunities. Yes to travel (which always amazed me) and yes to the transformation of her life unfolding in the most remarkable ways.

Somewhere along the way, our relationship quietly shifted. As the program came to an end, it was clear she no longer needed a mentor. If anything, I had become the student.

Over the years we stayed in touch, but meeting in person always felt unlikely. George never had any interest in traveling to Africa, and despite several attempts to bring Aline to the United States, it never aligned.

Ten years after our first Skype call, we finally had an opportunity to meet in person.

There are very few people in life with whom you can trace a decade of growth so clearly. To hug her, to laugh with her, to finally look her in the eyes instead of through a temperamental computer screen, was one of the most meaningful moments of my trip.

Today, Aline leads an organization that reaches more than 5,000 students every week in Rwanda (the number astonishes me). Not only that, she works with the United Nations to bring yoga, mindfulness, and healing into the most war-torn communities around the world, often at the very edge of the battlefields.

I still picture the young woman who nervously boarded a bus for thirty hours to attend her first training. Now she boards airplanes and walks into some of the most difficult places on earth with peace as her badge.

Ten years ago, I was helping Aline find her voice. Today, she’s helping thousands of others find theirs.

Being with her in her home country was such a gift. We had less than twenty-four hours together, which included a greeting at the airport and a short drive to our hotel, a beautiful morning at the Kigali Genocide Memorial, where Aline shared pieces of her own story and her family’s struggles during that time and beyond, a lunch inspired by local cuisine, and shopping (of course). Not the kind of shopping tourists usually imagine, but a chance to meet the remarkable women weaving beautiful baskets by hand, supporting themselves, their families, and one another through their craft.

Naturally, I came home with more than I needed and an extra bag to carry it all.

One of those baskets now sits in my favorite spot in the house, holding an orchid. Every time I walk past it, I don’t just think of Rwanda. I think of Aline. And of course there is the one she gifted me. A beautiful butterfly woven into the design. To me, it’s perfectly symbolic of her journey and her transformation.

Leaving her was harder than I expected. Not because our time together had been long. But because we’d already spent ten years building the relationship.

The hug goodbye wasn’t the end of something. It felt like the continuation of something that had begun all those years ago on Sunday afternoons over unreliable Skype calls.

Rather than goodbye, we said “Until next time.”

One of her dreams has always been to visit the United States. And I am desperately hoping we can finally make that happen.

As emotional as saying goodbye was, I never had to carry it alone. My dear friend Debi saw exactly what this reunion meant to me.

She and her husband, Pierre, along with their family, did something I’ll never forget. They invited me to join them in Rwanda. They folded me into their family as though I’d belonged there all along. They even included me in the “Gorilla Trekkers” text thread long before our departure, a thread of family musings, jabs, and photos that always made me feel part of the tribe.

Without them, none of this would have happened. I wouldn’t have been standing there, hugging Aline goodbye.

While I thought I was traveling to Rwanda to see gorillas, the truth is, I was traveling to finally meet the woman Aline had become.

And though this article seemed like it should be easy to write, I struggled, and I couldn’t figure out why.

So much happened along the way. But this last part, the finale in Rwanda, jammed into a few short days, seemed to carry the most weight.

George showed up as an encore. Aline was at the center of it all. And the gorillas? That’s what everyone asks about.

When I was scrolling through the photos looking for what I wanted to share, in hopes the words would find me, everything finally came into focus.

This trip wasn’t about wildlife. It wasn’t even about Rwanda. It was about belonging. And oddly enough, the gorillas showed me that.

Belonging has always been complicated for me. As I reflect back, though, it’s been a thread that I have unknowingly pulled through so many of my previous articles.

I’ve written about grief, about friendship (that seems to be a sticky one that will get more attention soon), family, reinvention (I am an expert at that), identity, even trends.

Underneath all of them was the same quiet question.

Where do I belong? How do I fit in?

I am a product of divorced parents. I divorced myself. I made choices outside the norm: falling in love and marrying an older man, losing him unexpectedly and my best friend a year later, and then remarrying. All those moments were filled with uncertainty and loss.

Standing in the bamboo forests of Volcanoes National Park, I was surrounded by mountain gorillas so close I could hear them tearing bamboo with their teeth. Babies tumbling over one another, playing their own version of ring around the rosy. A mother nursing another. A silverback mating. Yes, we saw that primal moment too. I wasn’t simply observing wildlife.

I was witnessing something far greater. I was witnessing belonging.

This troop of gorillas, like all others, created their own unit. Several females. A large silverback. Tons of babies, all nestled into the bamboo of the forest with an unmistakable rhythm to it all.

For primates, belonging isn’t simply comforting. It’s essential. It’s how they survive. And it’s actually how they’ve thrived (again). Once on the edge of extinction, they’ve repopulated through conservation efforts and their own natural instinct to gather and protect one another, which was a wonder to see firsthand.

So somewhere between meeting Aline, being welcomed so effortlessly into Debi and Pierre’s family, sitting among a gorilla troop that instinctively protects one another, and finding George waiting for me in the most unexpected place on earth…

I realized I’d spent the entire trip surrounded by different expressions of the very thing I’d been searching for most of my life.

Belonging.

As I finally conclude my Africa articles, I am reminded that sometimes the greatest gifts people give us aren’t extravagant at all. Sometimes they simply make space for one more.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. If you made it this far… thank you! I am grateful to share this journey with you. Next up… a return trip I am about to embark on for my health and wellbeing. One I am so excited about. Yet, another country. More to come next week.

As always, your comments fuel me.

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That was the end of Africa.

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I walked back through the village to the carpark, found my driver, and closed the door.

I’ve been home a week, and this is the first I’ve been able to write.

I want to tell you it was jet lag. Some of it was. But the truer thing is that I walked back into a life where everything has a place, where I am almost painfully organized, and I felt paralyzed.

I stood in my closet and couldn’t move.

Bags I still hadn’t unpacked. Hangers so full I couldn’t slip one more thing between them. I had just spent multiple days an arm’s length from the Big Five, in a world I never thought I’d get to stand in, and I came back to all of this and something in me wouldn’t settle.

So I didn’t force it. I took the week. I cleared my own field before I let myself write about theirs.

And now I can tell you what I discovered.

When I arrived, I fell in love. How could I not?

It was a scene out of Out of Africa. I felt like Meryl Streep among antiques and heirlooms that made the place look more like a film set than a life anyone actually gets to live. I kept waiting for Robert Redford to walk in, scotch in hand, ready for an evening of storytelling by the fire.

&Beyond Bateleur Camp had set the stage. Crystal on white linen. Leather campaign chairs at the edge of the deck, looking out over a sweeping stretch of plain with a single elephant on the horizon.

And then my room.

A tent, yes. But one with a teak door and walls papered in antique maps. A bar cart styled like Ralph Lauren himself had come to arrange it. A crystal decanter labeled SHERRY.

And a brass tub facing a wall of glass, the plain sitting right there, the first thing I’d see in the morning. On the other side of beautiful screened doors that stayed locked all night, but still let the sounds of the Mara seep in. A candle inside a large hurricane votive flickered across the ceiling. Just enough to see by if we needed to get up. Just enough, in the otherwise dark vista.

So yes, I was completely surrounded by luxury. And I own the fact that I love beautiful things.

It’s not what I came from.

I grew up often wearing the same outfit to school two days in a row, hoping no one would notice. I can distinctly remember the one. Black corduroy pants. A green cardigan sweater with a white shirt. And brown boots that were my prized possession. I loved that outfit for everything it was and hated it for everything it wasn’t.

Wearing it made me feel like I fit in. But rewearing it (out of necessity) left me standing outside the inner circle I desperately wanted to live inside. And in high school, that can do a lot to a girl’s psyche. It certainly did mine.

It’s no surprise that I’ve spent much of my adult life surrounding myself with beautiful things. It’s not that I wanted to be as far from that girl as I could get, it’s that my subconscious drove me directly toward everything she envisioned when I finally had the means to make it my own. Somewhere along the way, though, appreciation quietly became accumulation. One more sweater. Another purse or pair of shoes. Beautiful things disappearing into a closet already full of them.

I recall walking through the Ralph Lauren store in downtown Minneapolis during those formative years of my life. I was never the patron. I was the plus one to the friend whose parent was there to meet their personal shopper. Mindfully absorbing every detail. It was a world far from my own, where timeless elegance met quiet luxury. Where worn leather, soft cashmere, warm wood, and objects felt as though they’d been collected over a lifetime, each detail carrying its own story. It felt lived-in, in the most sophisticated way.

Standing in this camp, in the middle of the open plains of Kenya, felt like stepping into the world my teenage self would have dreamed up if someone had handed her an unlimited budget, assigned her a personal shopper, and told her to go big.She would have loved every inch of it.

And here’s what she never could have imagined and what I didn’t expect.

When we woke early the morning after our arrival, something inside of me began to rearrange.

Because when the coffee arrived, on the silver tray, along with the 4:30 AM wakeup call, I stopped insisting on my own preferences and allowed myself to receive what the experience offered. Admittedly though, my gut is only now catching up. But everything exciting in the Mara happens as the sun begins to climb and in the afternoon as dusk falls. Embracing both required something from me. It required a kind of surrender I’d never allowed myself. One that asked me to soften my edges and let go of what I could control.

When I stepped into a basket and lifted off the ground, hovering over the Mara in a hot air balloon, with the lens of the camera stretched as far as it would go with no end in sight, I experienced peace.

Everywhere I looked. Just peace.

And trust me, as the day carried on, and when the lion turned toward our vehicle, the adrenaline went through me like a current. But our guide just sat there. Calm. A true she-warrior, and the embodiment of fierce grace.

And the lion passed just as she knew it would.

The elephants and cheetahs did the same.

We saw it all. From near and far. The herds of animals slowly migrating from the Serengeti, where I stood directly between Tanzania and Kenya. There is something special about being able to check another country off the list by simply placing a foot over the imaginary but real dividing line.

And the kills with the vultures hovering. We experienced those too. The Mara didn’t hold back for us. We got the full show.

And still, in the middle of all of it, the elephant bull charging our vehicle and the lions mating less than ten yards away. Peace.

I loved all of it. It was everything I imagined it would be.

But what I loved most was how at ease I felt.

Yes, I came with the outfit. Curated for every part of the journey, of course. That’s me. That will always be me.

But out there, it wasn’t even needed and it wasn’t what mattered.

And maybe that’s the thing I’m only now realizing. Because arriving home and standing in my closet with hangers I could barely slip a piece of paper between, I was both as far from Africa as I could get and worlds away from the peace I felt when I was there.

Before I could even sit down to write, I had to clear my own field. And I did. I’ll continue to—not to whittle my life down to only the essentials, but to create room for beauty to be seen again. To build from the beauty I already have. Because I will always be the girl in awe in the Ralph Lauren store. But I am no longer chasing.

Africa didn’t make me love beautiful things any less. If anything, it made me appreciate them more.

It’s not lost on me that I’ve spent years trying to surround myself with beauty, only to discover I’d collected so much of it that I could no longer fully appreciate what was already there.

Africa reminded me of something I’ve overlooked.

Beauty needs space.

Space to be noticed. Space to be worn. Space to become part of your life instead of another thing tucked onto an already crowded shelf.

I’ll always love beautiful things.

I just don’t have the same need to be consumed by it anymore. And when I pack for the next safari (which is already in the making) or the next adventure, I will curate it with ease and unpack it without paralysis.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

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P.S. There is a Part Three to this series. Of course there is. I’m still unpacking that one too. It will arrive… soon.

P.P.S. These are the pieces that made the edit. The ones I’m making space for. The ones that will get repacked for the next safari and will continue to wear, rewear, and love for years to come.

Safari Essentials

Layering is the name of the game when packing for safari. It gets super dusty driving through the open plains of the Mara, and the days start really early. Hats are key, both to make for an easy morning departure and to keep the wind from tying knots in your hair. Scarves help combat the dust and keep you warm. I was so grateful for each of these pieces.

• SoldOut.NYC sweater — a great layering piece over my Zara t-shirts.

• James Perse pants — packed light and wore well.

• VEJA tennis shoes — traveled to both Ireland and Africa, and are now a mainstay in my closet.

• Miu Miu hat — a splurge, but worth it for both safari and gorilla trekking. I even shared it with my roomie, who looked darling in it.

• Rag & Bone cap — felt too appropriate not to take along plus it was on sale when I bought it.

• Velvet sarong — doubled as a skirt and a scarf, and folds to nothing when packing.

• Kujten and ASHA scarves — splurges as well, but will be worn for a lifetime.

• Warby Parker progressive reader sunglasses — I’m at the age where readers are required, and on safari, sunglasses are a must against the dust. These doubled as both my readers and my sunnies all week.

You’ve seen the reel. Set to something sweeping from The Lion King. The post that teaches you how to curate your safari wardrobe. The wine picnic laid out with a herd grazing in the vista. The farm-to-table dinner that looks too composed to eat.

Don’t get me wrong. I came fully intending to write my own version of that piece. Lord knows I packed for it. I probably spent as much on every “essential” inside my brand new soft-sided luggage as I did on the trip itself. Each leg its own category, each occasion its own outfit, the whole trip sorted and labeled before I left the house. The limit was thirty-three pounds. I exceeded it. Knowingly. I’m a rule breaker, after all.

And I took the photos. Trust me, I took thousands.

But there are two sides to every story. The other half of the Mara is the one you won’t find in the brochure. The one that makes those beautiful posts even possible. This week, the lens widened, and I met the Kenya that exists behind the shiny four-by-six photos that fill the frames.

Putting these past several weeks into words feels like a task bigger than the land itself. So I’m dividing the telling the way I divide my packing cubes. Four distinct parts, each carrying the weight it deserves. This is part one. Welcome to the Africa you may not have known existed.

I arrived on an organized retreat, the Sacred Awakening Retreat. I’m honestly not a group-travel person. At all. But my daughter Elise called me the moment she saw a dear friend was hosting it. Mom, you have to go. She’d been on safari the year before, and it changed her. She wanted me to see what she saw. It had always been on my bucket list. It just wasn’t on my late husband’s. It seemed like the right time to finally do the thing I’d been waiting to do. A friend decided to come too. That sealed the deal, and I’m so grateful we made the choice to go.

Underneath all of it was Paige Elenson. Paige has lived in Kenya for the better part of two decades, responsible for the employment of countless youth through an organization she co-founded, Africa Yoga Project. A non-profit that uses yoga to educate and employ young people across Africa, so they can become leaders in their own communities. An organization I hold dear.

With her name on the itinerary, I should have known. A trip Paige touches is never the curated half. Of course the lens got wider. That’s what she does. She widens it, then asks you to look in the most introspective, beautiful and inviting way.

And here’s the part that gets me. It was all right there on the schedule. Spending time in the local environment, connected to the community, nature and purpose. I read it like a mission statement and saw it as logistics. Then, I lived it as something else entirely.

So I looked.

It’s everywhere, if you’re looking. Unless you arrive by private jet, positioned right beside a five-star camp, which is possible, and is part two of this series. But that’s not how I first arrived. My drive was long.

Nothing in the Mara is close. Every journey requires some version of an unpaved road. And the longer you travel, the more you see. The children walking to school, some without shoes. The homes of mud and thatch, of tin pressed into walls. The river, and the mile of hill between it and everywhere the water needs to go.

None of it staged, posed, or curated for a reel. Just authentic. Always there. Exactly that far outside the frame I’d have happily called the whole picture.

Not this week, though.

This week, I lived outside the frame.

We visited a primary school where we stepped off the safari trucks like celebrities walking into a stadium of screaming fans. They don’t get visitors often, so they welcomed us like we were the most important people who had ever arrived. Children reaching for my hand, touching my blonde hair, saying my name, telling me they loved me.

They meant it. That’s the part that takes the floor out from under you. The people with the least, giving us all they have to offer. Their time. Their presence. Their hands to hold. Their voices.

We played. We laughed. We had the simple kind of joy, the kind that doesn’t check whether anyone’s watching.

We felt the same fanfare at the local college and high school. Students who are the first in their families to receive an education. Celebrities in their own villages, in their own right. They see education as an opportunity, a means to a new life, for themselves and for the countless family members behind them. Their pride, their joy, their devotion, their determination. If you could bottle it, it would be worth more than anything sold here.

We visited the Kipsigis mamas. Literally the mothers of the community. We met a woman who built her home over eleven years for about a hundred and fifty dollars. I have spent more than that on a Tuesday and could not tell you on what.

She invited us in. Shared her life. Held the whole room with the story of how she’s transforming her community by empowering the women in it.

Then she showed us how she lives. We walked down to the river and filled the jugs. The ones they depend on to sustain their lives. Wash their clothes. Cook their food. Water their crops. And care for their livestock.

And the jugs weren’t light. They were fourteen liters (or forty pounds to you and me, which required a Google search and conversion to know). Then, up the hill. With the full jug strapped to my back or wrapped around my head (an option I didn’t take for fear that I would return without a full head of hair).

I did it once, as an experience. They do it multiple times a day simply to survive.

I got to put mine down. They cannot.

And there are photos I didn’t take.

Not because I didn’t want to capture the moment. Because the moment captured me, in a way no photo could hand back to anyone later. Some things don’t go through the lens. They go straight in and stay.

The most real hour of my week is the one with no proof it happened.

And then there’s Jackson.

I spent the week with Jackson. A Maasai elder. Warrior, in the way the word actually means here. The last generation to earn it the old way.

The most obvious and still prevalent telltale sign of a Maasai warrior is a missing front tooth. It’s a visible marker of identity, of beauty, maturity, and belonging. The sign that someone has crossed into adulthood and earned their place in the community. Worn with pride, never hidden. And even if they wanted it back, a dentist is not a profession in the Mara. When that tooth comes out, it’s done by an elder with the tip of a machete. The same one they carry at their waist. The same one that cuts the leaf from the vine, and in a worst-case scenario, the last defense in a wildlife encounter. All of which occur.

Last night Jackson walked us through the brush. Taught us the weapons. And then, the path. What it has always taken to become a warrior here, and what that path has become.

At fourteen, one of the first rites is a public circumcision. The circumciser’s only job is to make the boy flinch. A blink. A breath. The twitch of a single toe as the blade meets skin, sometimes dull as a kitchen knife, sometimes doused in hot pepper oil. Any movement, and the label follows him and his family for generations. If he holds still, he’s earned it. If he doesn’t, his mother is beaten for raising a weak son.

The other rite was to kill a male lion. Alone. With a spear.

Jackson has killed six.

He told us this himself, at dusk, in the brush he’s known his whole life. Not as a performance. As a path. One he then explained has since been retired. The lions are protected now. And the change made room for something else: girls can become warriors too. And I met one, a she-warrior. I only knew she was a warrior by her tooth. The proving ground is no longer killing a lion. It’s education. The reward is still a cow. It remains the most prized gift and family possession. And one they work hard to achieve.

I keep thinking about who Jackson is in a safari photo. The silhouette. The red shuka against the sky, the figure the Mara prints on its brochures.

Every piece Jackson wears tells a story about identity, age, status, and community. His shuka, beadwork, jewelry, sandals, staff, and spear. What you do not see among them is his pen. Jackson co-authored a book, The Last Maasai Warriors, and he’s wielding the pen as purposefully as he once wielded the spear, toward something harder to win.

He and his fellow elders are rewriting a playbook as old as the land itself. Not to be photographed. To be heard. To change the landscape into one where girls become warriors through school instead of survival. Where women have a voice, earn a living, carry it back to their communities. Where there’s infrastructure, and health that’s tended, and clean water that doesn’t cost a mile uphill. Where there’s food.

The spear protected the old world.

The pen is building a new one.

And he didn’t hide any of it from us. None of them did. They didn’t keep their half of the Mara outside the frame. They invited us in, so that we might help carry the voice out. So that when the world looks at Kenya, it sees something that makes it pause instead of scroll. Something that connects the dots between the beautiful moment and what it costs to make that moment possible.

A community’s survival, underneath the postcard.

I don’t know what to call the week.

On paper it was a retreat. That’s what I booked. That’s what I paid for. It wasn’t a mission trip. It wasn’t a training. And I won’t shrink it by calling it a cultural immersion, or a life-changing experience, though I suppose it was both. Those words are too small.

I still don’t have the word for it. And maybe that’s okay. Maybe it’s enough to know this half of the Mara exists. And to know that the half I came for, the five-star luxury one, isn’t at odds with it. It’s welcomed. Because it offers the Maasai what they need to build their new world.

What I do know is what Mara authenticity looks like now. And it’s not in any brochure.

The curated bag is me. Authentically me. Every considered, labeled, occasion-matched piece of it. I packed for the trip I thought I was taking.

The Mara didn’t stay in its category.

I’m writing this en route to the half I came for. The Instagram-worthy one. I’ve learned there are two real times to see the Big Five, the animals everyone comes for: dawn and dusk. My next stop has it all teed up, curated and certain, the animals practically waiting in the wings. I won’t pretend I won’t love every frame.

Both are true. The woman with the curated bag and the one who carried the water a mile uphill. I’m not choosing between them. Jackson is the reason I don’t have to.

And tomorrow at dawn, a hot air balloon. It will lift me up and show me how vast this land is. How far apart two lives can sit on the same stretch of ground. The divide between where I was this week and where I’ll be an hour from now, measured in a single ride.

I’ll be looking down at both halves at once.

But the thing I can’t stop turning over isn’t ahead of me. It’s Jackson, riding shotgun.

Two hours from Bogani to the five-star camp, he stayed on as our guide, watching the road, keeping us safe, all the way into the half of the Mara I came for. The same spear that killed six lions, now clearing the bush bathroom of wildlife before we stepped in. Trust me, two hours on those roads requires a pit stop or two. Behind a tree or not, it’s a necessity at 52.

He has every reason to resent this half. The luxury. The lens. The version of his homeland that gets sold while his people carry water up a hill.

He doesn’t.

He loves it. All of it. He knows this half feeds his land and his people, and he embraces it the way he embraces the rest, with joy, with wonderment, with both halves held easily in the same two hands that have thrown a spear and now hold a pen.

I spent a week learning I didn’t have to choose between the woman with the curated bag and the one who carried the water.

The man with the most reason to choose was sitting beside me the whole time.

Choosing both.

Still.

Always EDITing, Leslie

P.S. - Part two is the half I came for. The luxury. The Big Five at dawn and dusk. The frames I won’t pretend I won’t love. Coming next.

And part three. Aline. Through Africa Yoga Project, I spent three years mentoring a young teacher in Rwanda. We’ve never met in person. In a few days, we will. Everything else on this trip, I packed for. Her, I can’t. That moment will come with emotion that will require its own version of unpacking. That one gets its own Edit.

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