I do at 52.

15,700 likes. 531 comments. In two days.

I started Thursday with zero followers. By Sunday I had 582, and my profile had been viewed nearly a quarter of a million times.

For someone who doesn’t have a real social media presence, this felt insane.

Let me back up.

I’m trying to grow my Substack. I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Some people arrive with an audience already built. A following somewhere else that comes with them. I’m not one of them. No real Instagram presence. I’m not an influencer. I’m not, honestly, much of a social media person at all.

So I’ve been paying attention to how other people do it. I’ve read all the articles. You know what I mean.

There’s a writer I started following a few months ago. She’s a wonderful writer, and her growth has been remarkable. Honestly, none of it surprises me. In one piece she mentioned a note she’d posted on Threads that had taken off. I got curious… enough to actually go look. I wanted to understand what it was about.

What I found surprised me. It isn’t Instagram. It isn’t quite Substack either. It felt like a younger brother… a looser, more provocative version with less guardrails. Less performance. More chat. Like stepping into a pub where everyone’s had a couple drinks and words are flowing freely.

And I’ll be honest. There’s a part of me, at 52, that still feels unworthy of taking up the space. Sharing a platform with gifted writers. That part of me felt somewhat at ease with Threads.

So on Thursday, on the way to Washington, I jumped in anyway. Zero following. My first note: I just arrived on the scene. Any tips for the new kid on the block?

Twenty people answered.

Just be yourself. Comment when you want. Think of it like a big chat group.

Lift others up.

Be as feral as you like.

Block family and friends from real life if you want to stay feral.

Don’t post dick pics.

I laughed out loud at that last one. It’s 2026 and we still have to say it to each other.

But that was the thing. The whole welcome was like that. Honest. Disarming. Nobody selling anything. Nobody curating. Welcoming in a way that didn’t feel performative at all.

So I tried. I posted a few things. Shared a few thoughts. Nothing was tracking.

Then Saturday night, on our way to dinner in DC, it occurred to me I hadn’t posted again all day.

So I put up that photo. Those four words.

I’d been studying how to grow, doing the small deliberate things. And the thing that traveled was the one I almost forgot to post.

A second thought. Something I was sure wouldn’t make a difference.

Not instead of the effort. On top of it.

The deliberate work got me in the room. The thing I didn’t think about is what people could feel.

I was trying to grow. I wasn’t trying to win.

When I lost my late husband unexpectedly, when life flipped upside down and everything I knew went with it, rebuilding wasn’t about winning. How could it be? It was about moving forward. The only direction I could go. I hear people say, I’m in my no fucks era. I think about it differently. It’s discernment without abandonment.

I still care. In fact I care deeply. I just care differently now.

Maybe that’s why I could post it without thinking.

Yes, the numbers stopped me. But what really got my attention was the messages.

Hundreds of them. Some version of the same thing, over and over.

Thank you for giving me hope.

Hope for love. Hope for a second chapter. Hope that life can still surprise us. Hope that their story isn’t over.

I’ve read nearly all of them. I’m still answering each one.

I didn’t post it to inspire anyone. I posted it because I’m in love, and I wanted to share the moment.

For the first time in my life, I’ve been stepping outside my comfort zone. In front of the camera. And this strange new place felt, of all things, safe enough to do it.

What surprised me most was how many people were reaching for hope.

People are looking for it everywhere. In small places. In big ones. I drove around town today, an ordinary Monday, and caught the stink eye at half the stop signs. People are tired. People are bracing.

And then four words and a photo gave a few thousand strangers something to hold onto.

Faith, Hope, and Love were the cornerstone of our wedding. They’re the cornerstone of our marriage. They sit underneath everything.

But hope might be the one the world is hungriest for right now.

If four words and an image can offer it, then so can the words and the talents the rest of us are walking around with.

And here’s the part I keep sitting with.

The response gave me hope.

Readers don’t just want to follow influencers.

My writing isn’t all for nothing.

And that part of me that felt unworthy of taking up the space?

I’m realizing I’m worthy of it.

Always Editing,
Leslie

P.S. And yes — to answer the question that sent me to Threads in the first place: my subscriber base grew too. So if you’ve wondered whether it’s worth finding your way over there, it is. Find me when you do. I’ll follow you back.

P.P.S The writer. The one who unknowingly became my expander. She deserves a shout out too. Thank you . Your truth is the feral cat in the room, and the one that keeps me coming back to your words.

You know how I feel about comments. I read every one. They're the reason I keep showing up. Leave me yours.

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My late husband died and those words went with him.

I don’t have a single recording of George saying I love you. Not a voice memo. Not a video. Nowhere in my phone, in this whole digital age, can I pull up his voice and hear it.

I have one voicemail from him.

December 16, 2022.

It’s ten seconds long. The only thing he says is hello... hello? Something wasn’t working in that moment. The line, the signal, something. He was reaching and not getting through.

That’s the one voicemail I have. Him, trying to connect, and the words never landing.

For some reason, I didn’t delete it at the time.

He died unexpectedly a few months later.

Those seemingly meaningless words became entombed in my phone.

I’m writing this with tears. I’ll be honest about that.

I remarried.

If you scroll through my voicemail inbox right now, there are thirty-six of them from my husband Dave. I counted.

They’re short. He’s on his way home, or out running an errand. They almost always start the same way.

Hey, babe.

And they almost always end the same way too.

I love you.

I am completely unwilling to delete a single one.

And I hear those words at home, too. On any given day.

Then there’s one from Elise. My daughter. 2015. She would have been ten.

Hi mommy I love you so much love you bye.

She left it without thinking. The way a child does. The exact words, all of them, in one breath, and then gone — love you bye — already on to the next thing.

And then, ironically, one more. From my late best friend Todd.

He passed away suddenly one year after George.

He called late at night. A few pops under his belt, as he would say. Which usually looked like straight vodka on ice.

God love him.

The voicemail is terse. He was mad at me. Inappropriate, frankly. And I still keep it.

It makes me laugh now. We had that kind of relationship. George used to say we were like brother and sister.

So I keep them all. A ten-year-old saying I love you so much without being asked. Dave, thirty-six times. Todd, mad at me at midnight. George, reaching through a bad connection and never quite getting there.

The words… from a child. From my husband. From others.

Everyone except from him. I’d do anything to hear him say them. But I can’t.

He lost his words before he lost his life.

A spontaneous rupture arrived and scrambled everything. Three weeks of word salad that carried no meaning. The brain bleed took that from him. It took it from me.

And it rips me to shreds that I don’t recall the last time he said it. Not because he didn’t. Because he did so often it became the background. The casual departure.

I do have him, though. Not his voice saying the words, but him.

There are videos. Funny ones I can replay. One where he’s at the piano. He loved to play. I’m so blessed I can still hear his music whenever I want.

But to hear him say I love you and be able to play that. That’s the one. That’s the wish.

I can’t clip it together from fragments of what I do have. No AI in the world can generate the true sentiment. Nothing satisfies what only lives as a memory now. A sketchy one at best.

We planned for everything else. He was a lawyer by trade, after all. His affairs were in order. We just didn’t plan for the unexpected. And when it came, what I lost wasn’t on any list. His words. His ability to say I love you. The one inheritance that would keep part of us, part of him alive.

No one tells you to save the voice. Not a lawyer. Not an estate attorney. I wish they had.

I can’t go back for it. But I can keep it from happening again.

I’m in Washington, DC, right now. With Elise. I leave tomorrow.

I won’t see her again for more than a month.

That’s the hard part.

And then I’m getting on a plane to somewhere remote. I don’t know if I’ll have a good connection where I’m going.

I promise you, when I leave for that trip, I know exactly what I’m taking with me.

But before I go, I’m capturing her voice. Her telling me she loves me. And I’m leaving her mine. So she never has to wonder what I sounded like saying it.

If you’ve lost someone, you already know. You don’t need me to explain it.

And if you’re lucky enough to still hear those voices every day — then this is the only thing I’ll ask.

Save one. The voice. The words. The ordinary hey babe that’s so familiar you stopped hearing it.

Not because you’re afraid of losing it.

Because it’s worth keeping.

Capture them telling you. Let them capture you telling them.

Don’t wait. Do it before the next ordinary goodbye you won’t remember.

Hello... hello?

That’s what I have.

So I’m going to go get more.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. Each week, I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them. Motherhood. Marriage. Grief. The roles we keep playing.

Two pieces a week. Tuesday and Sunday.

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Whose voice would you give anything to hear again—or which one are you going to capture before you can't? I would love to read about it.

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I have the same green cargo pants in three different versions.

James Perse. Velvet. Frame.

All green. All cargo. All the same. And yet, I’ve convinced myself, different enough.

I’m headed to Rwanda. Gorilla trekking. And to meet Aline.

I met Aline through the Africa Yoga Project. AYP empowers marginalized youth in Africa through yoga, leadership training, and employment.

I mentored her remotely for years, once a week on a screen. That was years ago. It changed her life. It changed mine. This is the trip where I finally meet her in person.

Even writing that makes me cry.

I’m anxious. Nervous. Excited. All of it rolled into one.

So yes, I have been preparing.

Not by packing. I haven’t done that.

By shopping.

I keep looking. Keep ordering. Keep deciphering.

The gorillas will not notice the difference between the subtle variations of my green cargo pants. I am fairly certain of this. And my travel companions? They came for the gorillas. Not my fashion show.

I know this.

And yet.

I keep curating. A capsule wardrobe for what I’ve decided will be a perfect trip. Every piece considered. Every shade of green accounted for. As if the right pants could guarantee the right experience.

It’s the perfectionist in me. The part that believes if I get the preparation exactly right, the thing itself will follow.

So I prepare. I order. I prepare to prepare.

And then, because apparently I wasn’t done, I bought a camera.

A real one. The kind that takes a beautiful photo, in the right hands.

Mine are not yet the right hands. I don’t know how to use it. Which means I now have a new project… learning the camera. And that’s layered on top of a trip I haven’t packed for, in service of capturing a trip I haven’t taken.

The suitcase is still open on the floor.

The piles are still piles.

But the Amazon cart is full. Still waiting for more. Still waiting for me to push Place Your Order.

Here’s the part that gives it away.

This week I’m leaving for Washington, D.C. I’ll pack for that the night before. Somehow that one seems easier. A trip that’s days away gets the night-before treatment. A trip that’s weeks away gets a capsule wardrobe and a camera I can’t operate.

The closer it is, the less I fuss. The farther it is, the more I prepare for it.

I’ll let you sit with what that says about me. I’m still sitting with it myself.

This isn’t just about packing.

This is Getting Ready to Get Ready. The hamster wheel. I’ve been on it a while now. It’s exhausting.

We all get caught up in it at some point. Starting to write and over-editing. Planning that turns into weeks of indecision. The minute you open Instagram, it hands you another idea. Another place to go. Something else to try instead.

We are flooded with information all the time. Too much information becomes the decision highway stuck in traffic. Like being on the 405 in LA for hours.

The cart fills. The wheel spins. The trip doesn’t get packed.

If I’m honest, the wheel isn’t just exhaustion.

It’s fear.

The part of me always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The part that thinks if I prepare enough, maybe nothing drastic happens to take this moment off the map.

As if planning could keep the worst from arriving.

I know what it looks like when something gets taken off the map. I’d rather not see it again.

The fourth pair of green cargo pants isn’t going to make the trip happen. Packing will.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. If you’d like to see what survived the wheel — the things I now take on every trip without thinking — vote below. I’m honestly curious whether it’d be useful to anyone but me.

P.P.S. I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them.
Motherhood. Marriage. Grief. The roles we keep playing. Tuesdays and Sundays.
Follow along. I am always editing… something.

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I was on a phone call with a family member a few years ago, and I could feel it turning.

Not what was being said. The direction of it. The shift.

You know that moment. When something crosses from a conversation into something else.

And I remember thinking, we’re getting close.

So I said it. “Before one more thing gets said that either one of us will regret, I’m going to hang up now.”

I can recall exactly where I was. I had just pulled into the garage. CarPlay still active. The Bose speakers still reciting every breath. I shut the garage door. Turned off the engine.

And had my thumb hovering over the red END button on my screen when the ten words were said.

“You wouldn’t understand this from your selfish point of view.”

I said, “That’s exactly what I meant. I’m saying goodbye.”

And I did.

That’s the part I still sit with.

Not the fight. Not even the ending.

The moment right before it tipped. The moment I could feel it coming.

And the reality that you can see something clearly, try to stop it, and still not be able to stop where it goes.

My late husband George was an attorney. He understood discernment.

He used to call me the blonde pitbull. I could argue a point to the nth degree. Stay in it. Push it. Win it.

He was different. He knew when enough became too much.

I didn’t always understand the difference.

It took me years to shake that nickname. If I’m being honest, I probably carried it until the day he passed. Every now and then I still hear it. From an old friend. A former colleague.

The blonde pitbull.

It served me well.

Corporate finance. Legal negotiations. Holding the line.

I spent years in boardrooms across the world. Sometimes thirty lawyers across the table, going at it for hours, well into the night, until night turned into morning and a few hours of sleep felt optional.

The deals were complex. A fleet of cruise ships for a household name. Manufacturing facilities for some of the largest automobile companies in the world.

I sat at those tables and didn’t let others finish sentences.

When the objections were thrown, I came back with a rebounding punch.

I got paid well for it.

And my clients walked away grateful.

You had to be fierce. Especially as a woman.

I didn’t just want to win. I wanted the last word.

To close a thing the way you close a deal. Every point understood. Every party agreed. Everyone signed off and clear.

But fierceness doesn’t translate. Not to the people you love.

There’s no signature page. No final set of documents where everyone agrees to all the terms. Some things don’t close. And the harder I tried to button them up, the worse they got.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand, slowly, and not by choice.

George wasn’t teaching me discernment. He couldn’t. He was showing me something he didn’t have the power to hand over.

I had to learn it the only way it can be learned.

The hard way.

It comes from loss. From the conversations that didn’t end well and can’t be redone. You earn it by saying too much, once, to someone who mattered, and watching what it costs.

Recently I learned that someone said something about me they’d never say to my face.

Something I wasn’t meant to hear.

But I did.

A friend shared it with me. Not to wound me, but to help me make sense of something I hadn’t been able to understand.

And here’s what I noticed in myself.

I don’t need to confront the person who said it. They don’t know I know. And I’m going to leave it that way.

Not out of fear. I’ve spent my life in harder conversations. It’s that there’s nothing to resolve. No version of the conversation that closes clean.

Some things don’t translate to closure.

Things have been said. They can’t be unsaid. The hurt is done.

Apologies can circulate. But the sentiment lingers.

Like the smell of smoke after a forest fire. It seeps into your clothes. Your skin. Your hair. You’re reminded at every turn. It lessens. But it remains.

So I’m not going to confront them. Not because I’m carrying the sword of blame…I let that go. I don’t want to live my life weighed down by swords of any kind.

It’s that sometimes the smarter thing is to walk away. Not completely. Maybe just enough.

Not out of playing it safe.

Out of playing it smart.

I don’t want to be the family member on the phone. The one who got the last word.

And I don’t want to be the woman in the checkout line who leaves a snarky comment behind for the rude clerk. The one who has to even the score with a stranger she’ll never see again, just to walk out feeling right.

Same fierceness. Different sizes.

I’ve been her, too. While I may have gotten the last word, I never feel good about myself after.

The need to finish it. To make it land. To be sure they understood.

Words don’t come back.

Not every sentence needs to be finished.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. Each week, I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them.

I send two pieces a week. Tuesday and Sunday.

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I didn’t need reminding. It’s not a day I will forget.

But his previous pharmacy texted me a greeting. Confusing my number as his and no longer aware that it’s been over three years since he picked up a prescription.

In grief, those are the hardest moments.

The expired future.

The things you thought you would do together. Have together. Share together. The moments you thought you would celebrate, together.

A date. An event. A calendar notification.

One more thing to grieve.

But the expired future doesn’t only come from losing a person.

Yesterday I was on a coaching call with a young man. Successful by every external measure. An impressive title with a reputable company. Financially secure. A beautiful home. But underneath that “American Dream” hides an unhappy 33 year old who quietly admitted he hates his job, doesn’t love the city he lives in, and recently ended things with a remarkable woman he loves deeply but felt uncertain about family and forever.

“I’ve been going through a really dark period,” he said.

I asked him why he called it dark.

He paused.

“I guess it’s grief.”

“Yes. I have been grieving.”

He is grieving.

Not a person. Not a relationship.

Himself.

Another expired future.

The man he would have been without a broken childhood. The man he would have become if he hadn’t been abused as a child.

A version of himself he will never know.

One that was taken from him.

One he was robbed of by another.

That grief has no funeral. No casserole train. No anniversary card.

But it is grief.

Not just his.

We all have those parts of ourselves.

The choices we made. The different adventures we chose. The ones we look back at and wonder about.

We should give ourselves permission to grieve those too.

Grief doesn’t need a doomsday label. “Dark” makes it sound oppressive.

Grief doesn’t need a modifier.

The expired future is grief.

We should have permission to sit in it. Learn from it. Let the emotions run their course without labeling them.

I am not an expert in anything.

No license. No degree. No permission to prescribe.

I just know grief. I know it in my bones. I know it in my heart. I know it in my mind when it spins wildly out of control and lands me in tears greater than any tissue box can absorb.

And I don’t know many people who don’t know it.

I know people who have experienced loss and try to run from it. I was one of them. I ran ten marathons through sweat and tears. The grief I ran from then is not the same grief I know now.

I cry for George and the life we shared.

I grieve the friends I lost who didn’t understand how I could move forward and remarry. The family who, in the midst of the celebration, were still living in the wake of the first and unable to meet me where I was at.

There are losses inside the loss.

A college basketball coach said something to me not long after George died. I’ve come back to it more times than I can count.

Forward is a direction.

Not healing. Not closure. Not moving on.

Just forward.

And as I told that young man yesterday:

Grief isn’t something that has an ending. There is no fixing.

And two things can be true.

You can still be grieving one thing and learn to love, have, and hold another.

He’s slowly realizing this for himself now.

George’s nickname was Messy. In fact, that’s all I called him or sometimes just The Mess.

I’m learning to live both with and without The Mess in my life.

Forward is a direction.

I’m still walking it.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. Whatever your expired future is, you’re allowed to sit in it today.

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P.P.S. Each week, I write about the patterns we don’t see until we name them. Motherhood. Marriage. Grief. The roles we keep playing.

I send two pieces a week. Tuesday and Sunday. This week Tuesday arrived early. I like to think of it as a HBD to The Mess.

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A Law & Order type accusation.

The story itself isn’t worth retelling. It feels like drama. Not worthy of air space.

But in the moment, I was cast into a role. I wanted to defend myself.

I didn’t.

Then a friend called me this week. Spiraling. She’d been similarly accused, something she’d said, twisted by the time it landed.

Word-slide.

Like that age-old game of operator.

What got back wasn’t anything close to what she said.

She wanted to rush to the table to defend herself. To explain. To set the record straight.

She too had been cast into a role.

Persecutor.

Here’s the part nobody says out loud.

We don’t negotiate these roles with the people we’re in them with. We assign them. They are assigned to us. We rotate through them. Silently. In our own stories. In theirs.

Then we wonder why everyone seems miscast. Why we are so misunderstood. Why we are being talked about when we aren’t even in the room.

A few months earlier, I was rereading Daring Greatly. The section on parenting. On shame. On the quiet ways we pass it down without meaning to.

I didn’t ease into the realization. It hit all at once.

I have been quietly rescuing my daughter.

For years.

We often joke that the umbilical cord was never fully cut. The reality is, I never let go.

I have stepped in too quickly. Buffered her from consequences. Made things easier when they were supposed to be hard.

Every time I did that, I was telling her something underneath it: that she couldn’t handle it on her own. That the world was happening to her. That she needed me to make it right. Isn’t that what a parent is supposed to do… ease the pain?

In reality, I had cast her as the victim.

I had been trying to rescue her… for a lifetime. Hers.

The accusation I opened with is different.

The hardest one. Because it’s a role I never took. It was assigned.

A result of word-slide. Or more simply someone wanting to shift the narrative. To make me wrong. Make me the villain. It’s hard to know exactly. Ultimately, I was cast as the persecutor.

You can’t audition out of it. You can only choose not to perform.

There is another role in this world of drama. The one I almost sat in.

I was the first one to say I love you in my relationship with my husband.

When I said it, I told him not to respond.

I didn’t know then what I know now. That he didn’t come from a family that traded those words easily. That waiting for him to say it back would have drowned me.

I would have spent the silence writing a story where his pause was about me.

When really, it was just about him.

That’s playing victim. Thankfully, I didn’t jump into the role then.

But I’ve taken it plenty of other times. When a text goes unanswered. When a friend goes quiet at dinner. When someone I love seems distant for reasons I can’t pin down.

The first thing I do is make it mean something about me.

That’s the trap.

These roles aren’t real. They’re casting decisions. We make them without telling anyone. And then we play them like they were given to us.

We are all writing each other into stories we never agreed to be in.

The rescuer doesn’t ask the victim if she wants to be saved. The victim doesn’t ask the persecutor if he meant to wound. The persecutor usually doesn’t even know she’s been cast.

We just play the parts.

We project, we react, we wound, we defend, we apologize, we placate.

And the whole time, we are the main character of a story we believe is reality.

The triangle isn’t a trap because the roles are inescapable.

It’s a trap because we keep showing up to play them.

When my friend called me this week, spiraling, ready to rush to the table and defend herself, that’s what I told her.

The moment you defend, it will be word-slide again.

It will escalate. It will travel. And the next time it comes back around, you won’t be the persecutor anymore. You’ll be the victim. The one they’re talking about when you’re not in the room.

If you let it go, there will be no more oxygen for it to carry on.

But the hardest part is giving up defending yourself.

You have to let someone keep believing a thing about you that isn’t true. You have to let the story travel without you in it. You have to be misunderstood and not correct it.

Someone used to say to me: you cannot defend what isn’t real.

I never understood it then.

I do now.

You don’t fix the triangle.

You step out of it.

And what’s been sitting with me since I started writing this is that I owe my daughter an apology.

For casting her into a role she never asked to be in.

Always EDITing,
Leslie

P.S. — Tired of the drama? Of defending yourself? You can’t step out of a role you can’t see.

Below is a five-step worksheet for finding the role you play, the role you’ve been cast into, and the one small action that moves you out of both.

For the people who no longer want to live in the drama.

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P.P.S. — This is the first worksheet I’ve created to go with an EDIT.

If it lands, I’ll keep building them.

Not just naming the patterns… but giving you a way to step out of them.

Stepping Out Of The Drama Triangle Worksheet

268KB ∙ PDF file

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A five-step worksheet for stepping out of the Drama Triangle. Notice the role you play, the role you've been cast into, and the one small action that moves you out of both. For the people who no longer want to live with drama.

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We got in line behind a woman unloading four rotisserie chickens from her cart.

Never shy, I asked.

“What are you doing with all the chickens?”

She said her doctor keeps telling her to eat more protein. This was lunch for the week.

Then she added it.

“I’m being lazy.”

What she meant was she wasn’t roasting them herself.

What I was thinking, standing there with my sourdough, was that I should run back and grab one for our fridge.

Meal prep is not my strong suit. I’ve found my workarounds. I am not well when I am hungry... ask my husband. The mean-spirited teenager shows up in those moments. Anything longer than 30 min prep time can quickly bring out that little monster.

But I kept thinking about her on the drive home.

Four chickens. A doctor’s order. A solution she’d already executed before she even got to the register. And in the time it took her to load them onto the conveyor belt, she had judged herself for it.

I wasn’t judging her. I was taking notes.

We do this. Quickly. Reflexively. We solve a problem and then apologize for the way we solved it. We find the smart workaround and call it the lazy one. We do the thing that actually serves us and then pre-empt the criticism by criticizing ourselves first.

Nobody asked her if she cooked the chickens.

She volunteered the verdict.

We don’t wait to be judged. We volunteer the verdict ourselves.

Here’s the part I didn’t say out loud at the register.

Hiding below my sourdough was my own protein time-saver. Amylu chicken sausages and crumbles. If you’re a Bobby Approved kind of person, the only knock is that the chicken, while free of antibiotics, “should be non-GMO or organic or, ideally, pasture-raised”.

I live 80/20. I am willing to color outside the lines for an easy Italian dinner on a Tuesday.

But I noticed something.

The judgment she was avoiding?

I’ve been avoiding it too.

I have a small list of things like this. Quiet shortcuts I’ve collected over the years that genuinely make my life easier and my body better. And I rarely share them.

Not because I’m protecting them.

Because sharing them would mean admitting I’m not doing the thing the “right” way.

Which is its own version of four chickens and an apology.

So this week, a small practice.

Catch yourself reaching for “lazy” or “cheating” or “shortcut” to describe something that’s actually working. Notice who you’re apologizing to.

Most of the time, no one is asking.

I’ll go first.

The chicken sausages are in the fridge.

Always EDITing,
Leslie

P.S. I’m about to start something new. An aligned experiment. It makes me both excited and nervous. It’s the kind of thing where I can already feel where the wobble lives. The voice that wants to call the smart move the lazy one. The reflex to apologize before anyone has questioned anything.

I’m learning to exercise the muscle myself.

More on that in the weeks to come.

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She’d turned 21 in that gap. Finished her last final. She’s officially a senior, headed to a professional internship in Washington D.C. this summer. While I couldn’t be prouder, I also feel myself already bracing.

I texted her when my luggage dropped. She was between events. I told her to carry on. I walked into one of my favorite boutiques, grabbed Erewhon (if you know you know) to go because it is undeniably the greatest (and most expensive) hot bar on planet earth, and pulled up to her apartment just before six.

Her roommates were gone. One for the weekend. The other for the summer.

I was excited to camp out with her. Her apartment in Malibu has its own special vibe, affectionately known as The Peterson House. Think Serena & Lily meets SoCal on a college student’s budget. The peel & stick wallpaper gives it personality you can’t find in a basic rental.

She came in thrilled to see me. Her boyfriend was with her. And then her attention moved… fast.

The Barbie birthday cake I’d sent for the surprise party her friends threw had been left out on the kitchen counter. The afternoon sun had hit the Barbie tower just right. It had melted. And nose-dived to the floor with a big thud of yellow and pink frosting covering the floor.

Our reunion turned into clean-up in aisle 5.

He was headed to a beach bonfire for another friend’s birthday. I could tell she wanted to go too.

Torn.

I sent them both on their way. I was doing all I could to keep my eyes open anyway.

And as the door closed I felt it again, like watching her step into a continuous revolving door as a little girl and emerge, each time, a little more grown.

Every time she chooses something that proves I raised her well. Every time she doesn’t need me for the thing I would have stayed up all night to give her.

She returned well after 1 AM smelling like a s’mores. My ability to recap her night was drowned out by her post campfire shower and my heavy eyelids. Our reunion didn’t actually begin until the next morning.

The tides have changed.

Long are the days when I sent her to camp and she begged to come home. Long are the days when she wrote in kindergarten:

On the first day of school, we had three recesses. I missed my mom.

I am no longer the main character in her story.

I haven’t been for a while, if I’m being honest. The shift has been happening for years. I just hadn’t named it yet.

There’s a concept from one of my favorite authors, Don Miguel Ruiz, that I haven’t been able to shake. He calls it the storyteller.

We’re each writing a story where we are the main character, and everyone else, our parents, our partners, our children, is a secondary character we’ve cast and shaped. We don’t actually know them. We know the version of them we’ve created.

And when they grow into someone we didn’t write, we feel the loss before we can name it.

The story needs a rewrite. The rewrite takes a kind of looking we don’t always have. Or want.

I saw it last week, in a way so small I almost missed it.

My daughter and I were taking her car to be stored for the summer. She said she needed gas, but only a little, they say it’s not good to fill it all the way up before storage.

I asked who they was.

Neither of us knew. We looked it up. Turns out you should fill it. It’s better for the tank.

It was a small thing. But it stuck with me. How quickly we accept they say as truth. How easily we live inside stories we never traced back to a source.

I do this with people too.

For 21 years, I have been writing my daughter as the main character in my story. The lead role. The reason I make most of the decisions I make. The first call. The first thought. The first concern.

But that’s the trap Ruiz is naming.

The character I’ve been writing isn’t her. It’s my version of her. The little girl who needed me. The teenager I worried about. The college freshman I dropped off three years ago. Each one a real moment. None of them the whole person.

She has been adulting beautifully.

Quietly. Without fanfare. Without asking my permission (just my credit card). The way it’s supposed to happen.

And while I’ve been holding onto the character I created, she’s been becoming someone I’m only now meeting.

She has her own story. Her own boyfriend, her own friends, her own city, her own birthday celebrated without me there. Her own internship. Her own next chapter that I am only loosely consulted on.

I am no longer the main character in her story.

I’m not sure what I am yet. Author of my own, maybe. Witness to hers. Whatever it is, it doesn’t have a name yet. It’s a role I’m writing as I go.

And the character I’ve been holding onto isn’t really hers either.

Growing up, Elise used to say, you’re my best friend.

My answer was always the same. No. I am your mother. Someday when you’re old enough, you can call me that.

I think that day arrived.

And I’m not sure I’m ready for it. Acknowledging that feels like I am giving up something I am not sure I ever want to let go of.

This is what no one tells you about motherhood at this stage. The grief isn’t that something has gone wrong. The grief is that everything has gone right. She has become exactly who she was meant to be. And that becoming requires that I loosen my grip on the role I’ve held for two decades.

The end of our 5 days together came fast.

Another 4 AM wake-up. We were both flying out at 7. I had to return the rental car. Her boyfriend showed up at the apartment at 5 to load the bags into the car. His request… to drive her to the airport. Their last moments together before a summer apart.

Young love at its most beautiful stage.

I drove separate.

If you know me well, you know I live in my own time zone. That’s what my late husband used to say. Drove him crazy.

He’d be the one shaking his head, murmuring “Goddammit” (his favorite verb, noun, and adjective) and telling me to hurry, even now.

So it was no surprise that I caught every red light. Got rerouted. Hit more delays at the still-not-quite-finished LAX rental car return.

CLEAR shuffled me through security where I finally found her.

Only for my bag to get flagged.

Each moment ticking. Fast.

The boarding door was one minute from shutting when I ran — the first time I’ve run since I crossed the Sydney marathon finish line in August. My tenth and last marathon.

I was the very last person on the plane.

I didn’t get to linger with her. No long goodbye.

Three weeks until I see her again.

She’s writing her own story now.

The most loving thing I can do is stop holding the pen.

Instead, I’m writing this with tears 30,000 feet above the world.

My own story.

As far from her as I’ve ever been.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

A few weeks from now, I’ll be writing from somewhere very different.

My bag came home a little heavier.

Top of the list: safari attire.

I am over the moon about my upcoming trip to the Maasai Mara for the great migration and the chance to see the Big Five in their own habitat. The bigger bonus, gorilla trekking in Rwanda. And an opportunity to finally meet a woman I mentored for years (more to come on this for sure).

Planning for this is its own special curation. I found some goodies to take along. Thanks to my time in Malibu.

I’ll be writing from there. Come along.

Oh and… last week’s subscriber give-away was announced in my Notes yesterday. Another one will drop next month. Not from Malibu. Think: Africa!

This will land in Meredith’s mailbox this week.

For others, lake days, kids out of school, baseball games.

The busyness of summer in full swing.

Which means a lot of us are about to go quiet. And a lot of us are about to misread it.

I grew up in an age when, on any given night, you could find a 25-foot phone cord snaked beneath the narrow gap where the wood floor met the carpet, stretched all the way from the kitchen wall to a bedroom down the hall.

If the phone wasn’t already in my sister’s room, I would sneak in quietly, lift it, back out, close the door as if no one had come or gone, then drag that long cord down the hallway, under my door, and into my room.

In the kitchen sat the answering machine, looping messages on a tiny cassette tape. And when we walked in the door and saw that blinking red light, it was a race to the kitchen. Who could press play first.

Back then, silence did not mean anything at all. It was just silence.

And if you called someone and the line was tied up, you got a busy signal. That familiar, repetitive tone that some of us can still hear without even thinking about it.

Busy meant busy. That was it.

It meant they were already on the phone. It meant they were unavailable. It meant you would try again later.

It did not mean rejection.

If life were only that simple today.

Back then, silence said nothing. Now it says too much.

We live in a world where communication moves at a speed no nervous system was built to absorb. News lands instantly. Emails fly across the world in less than a second. Text messages arrive with an expectation, spoken or unspoken, that they will be answered just as quickly.

To be honest, the only person who consistently leaves me a voicemail anymore is a loan officer letting me know I have been preapproved for a $200,000 line of credit. No matter how many times I block the number, they keep calling, filling my voicemail inbox with opportunities I never asked for.

Otherwise, access to people usually comes through text. Or Snapchat. Or DMs. I cannot even keep track anymore.

Texting is still the most common route, and I am, like many others, guilty of having a message box full of unanswered texts. Not because I do not care. Not because I am avoiding people. Not because I do not like them.

Because the inbox is crowded.

It is buried under air junk. Coupon codes. Brand texts. Shipping alerts. The 15% off offer that seemed worth it at checkout.

And somewhere in that mess lives your text message.

So if the reply does not come right away, it is rarely what you think.

I have been on both sides of this. More times than I would like to admit. And I just sat witness to a friend who got caught deep in the drama of her own doing.

She reached out to a friend who she usually sees a few times a month. She extended a dinner invite that got declined. Her friend was sick. She followed up a few days later to check-in. To revisit making plans and her message was left unread.

She sent a second “checking-in” message. Crickets.

A few days went by. She called me unraveled. Concerned, but also wanting to hit replay with me to make sense of the silence.

Ironically, I had just written this piece. It’s actually been sitting unpublished for a few weeks now. Other edits took precedence. So I read her a few parts of it. Mainly the “grace” I offer at the end.

A few days passed. I asked her if she had heard back.

The answer came with an audible exhale. Yes… she’s been so busy. We are getting together in a few weeks. They shared a brief but lovely exchange that restored her peace. And her friend… none the wiser of the tailspin she had been in for days.

Days of unraveling. Over a silence that never meant a thing.

We’ve all been there.

You sent the message Tuesday.

You have re-read it twice since.

You have checked your phone more times than you would admit.

And with every hour, the silence gets louder. And the story gets worse.

We have become far too quick to make meaning out of silence. In the absence of a message, we assume we have been dismissed. Forgotten. Ghosted. Disliked.

And once that story starts, it moves fast.

We spiral. We question. We fill in blanks that were never ours to fill. And before long, someone who simply has a crowded inbox becomes the unwilling participant in a story they never wrote.

That is where the danger lies.

Not in the delayed response itself, but in the meaning we attach to it.

Give yourself grace. Give other people grace. And when something matters, communicate in the clearest way you know how.

Hey, it has been a minute. I have not heard from you. Just wanted to let you know you have been on my mind.

That says more than any story we tell ourselves in the silence.

Not everything needed a response then. We didn’t assume it did.

Not every unanswered text is a rejection. Sometimes it’s just a modern-day busy signal.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

I actually wrote this EDIT a few weeks ago. It got tucked away as others took precedence. When my girlfriend called last week in her own unraveling about the friend who left her unread, I pulled it back up and decided to publish it today. The original post script, the one that follows, remains. I kept it. In hindsight, that trip I took north to Toledo, it was exactly what I needed. Reinvigorating in the most surprising ways. For the first time in three years, I felt far less anxious about being back in a place I used to call home. One that holds memories that are sometimes still too painful to carry. I was too busy to check in. And that checking out… it turned out to be exactly what I needed to recalibrate.

P.S. —

In the spirit of checking out. I am currently en route north for a quick meeting. One I am excited about. The trip also allows me to revisit some of my favorite places to reset. First stop, literally from the airport to the table, an hour at Dr. Lu’s Nourishing Life Center in Ann Arbor. When I lived in Toledo, Dr. Lu was my 2-3x a week nervous and wellness system ritual. I was an East Asian Studies major in college, and lived in China for a bit. I gravitate towards his philosophy and to traditional Chinese medicine. It’s not for everyone, but it works wonders for me. And he and his practitioners are healers in their own right. I am grateful to each of them for all they have done for me over the years.

As if the universe was preparing me for that hour of respite ahead, one of today’s most modern-day dependencies failed. I sit without Wifi. No ability to check in. Just the ability to check out, which comes with a completely different kind of checking in.

If you’re squeamish about needles pause here. I was loaded with cups and needles and left feeling remarkable. The photo says it all.

This morning I was watching a clip of Taylor Swift talking about her writing. Not her songs. Her process. And one line stopped me.

“I remember writing it and being like, oh my God, do you wanna say this? And I’m like, actually, I feel like a lot of people feel that way. That always overrides my discomfort if a line feels too true. Because I don’t really think there’s anything that’s too true.”

That made me pause.

Because for the last several months, I have been writing around things. Tiptoeing. Polishing the edges. Saying just enough without actually saying the thing.

My writing coach called it.

“Take the lid off. Put your fingers on the keyboard and let it rip.”

It didn’t feel inspiring. It felt like a punch.

But he wasn’t wrong. And neither was she.

How do I make a newsletter really compelling? That’s the question I’ve been sitting with for months.

The answer started with a teeter totter.

I loved the playground when I was little. But the teeter totter? I never quite got it.

Even back then, it was flat.

It took me forty years to know why.

Here’s the thing about writing in public.

We start out honest. We publish something true. People connect with it, and a few people don’t. The few who don’t will say things. Sometimes loud. Sometimes pointed. Sometimes cruel.

And whether you mean to or not, you start writing toward them. The next piece is a little more measured. The one after that, a little more careful. You’re writing for the people who might be upset, not the ones who came because you were honest.

This is the teeter totter.

Criticism sits on one side. The pressure to play it safe sits on the other. You sit in the middle, between two opposing weights, trying to balance.

Your writing coach reads it and tells you it’s flat. The numbers stop moving. The connection thins. Subscribers don’t convert.

The criticism you’ve been absorbing came because of the very thing that was working. The vulnerability. The honesty. The willingness to say something true. That’s what drew people in. And that’s what drew the fire.

You start protecting yourself from the fire, and in doing so, you flatten the very thing readers came for.

The teeter totter doesn’t care which side has more truth on it.

It just balances.

There’s a second way I see this, and it’s more familiar than the first.

Years ago at the airport, I’d watch the luggage carousel and pray it wasn’t my suitcase that came around with the latch broken, and the contents spilling out for the whole baggage claim to see. The bra. The thong (I would die). The thing I’d shoved in at the last minute.

Nobody wants to be the messy suitcase. Seriously, I would walk away before I’d claim it as mine.

Whoever invented packing cubes is a genius. If TSA opened my bag tomorrow, it would look contained. Considered. Nothing falling out. Nothing damning.

This is what flat writing looks like.

Call it packing-cube writing. Everything in its place. Nothing exposed. Nothing the algorithm or the critic or the screenshotter could grab and hold up.

And it reads exactly like that. Contained, considered, closed. Flat.

I was with a friend recently and she mentioned someone we both know. “I have a hard time connecting with her,” she said. “I don’t know why.”

I knew why immediately.

The person she was describing is guarded. Not in an obvious way. In the way that gets felt across the table without ever being named. The packed-up version of a person.

The thing you think you’re hiding is exactly what the reader is sensing.

You can be honest and still write flat. The criticism you’ve absorbed has already edited the honesty before it leaves your fingers.

The flatness is the tell.

The packing cubes are the tell.

The careful sentence where you almost said it and then pulled back, that’s the tell.

The reader can’t always name what’s missing. But they feel it.

That’s why they don’t subscribe.

That’s why the piece you worked hardest to make palatable is the one that didn’t land.

That’s why the writer you can’t put down is the writer who’s exposed something you weren’t expecting them to.

That’s why the world loves Taylor Swift. She sings to what you’ve experienced but never had words for. She doesn’t hold back. She unpacks it all for the world to see.

What I’ve learned from my writing coach isn’t just about how to write.

When we started working together, he gave me a brand brief. A cohesive recap of everything I’d created with The Preferred EDIT to date. Thoughtful. Introspective. Honest.

One paragraph stopped me cold and has had me rethinking my life in its totality ever since.

It read:

Three years ago, Leslie’s husband George Chapman — a public figure — passed away unexpectedly from a spontaneous brain bleed on March 22, 2023. In the years since, she has navigated profound grief, launched her daughter Elise to college on the opposite coast, relocated from Ohio to Florida, sold and purchased homes, remarried to David, and undergone a wholesale reinvention of her life.

I’d been living it. I hadn’t been seeing it.

Reading the brief, and the articles it alluded to, I saw a pattern that long predated my writing. I’d been holding the container tight for decades. Maybe a lifetime.

Always waiting for the other shoe to drop.

So I learned to sit right in the center of the teeter totter. Playing it safe. Maintaining control through chaos by packing life neatly up wherever I could. Balanced.

The packing cubes weren’t a writing problem.

The packing cubes were a way of being.

What my writing coach, and ironically, Taylor Swift, have taught me is to move out of the center.

It’s like learning to walk again. It’s like learning a new language — internally, the conversations I have in my head, and externally, how I project myself into the world. How I want others to see me.

I am not the same person I was three years ago.

Thank goodness for that.

So here’s what I’m doing.

I’m getting off the teeter totter.

But not from feedback. Feedback is what got me here.

The criticism was flattening me. The pushback that called the flatness flat — that’s been the fuel. It lands me in a more introspective space than I was in before. For that, I’m deeply grateful.

I’m unpacking the cubes.

Some of what’s inside is uncomfortable. Some is fuel for other people’s fodder. Some of it might be again. But the alternative is writing a contained, considered, perfectly polished version of myself that no one wants to read, including me.

Some of what I’ve been packing into the cubes is going to come out. If you’ve only known the polished version of me, this is me telling you in advance.

Taylor said if a line feels too true.

There’s no such thing.

If you’re a writer and your work has gone flat, look at what you’ve been carrying on the other side of the teeter totter. Look at what you’ve been packing into cubes.

The reader knows.

They’ve always known.

Write for the few who showed up to take shots.

Or the many who showed up because you told the truth.

I’m learning. I’m unpacking. It’s my rewrite.

Take the lid off.

I finished this piece while flying somewhere over the western US, en route to Malibu to spend a few days with my daughter. My suitcase is packed. Packing cubes, naturally. If they all fell open, here’s what you would find.

Malibu is one of the most relaxed places I visit. Getting dressed there technically looks like a hoodie and flip flops. I elevate that my way, a cozy cashmere cardigan, a slightly elevated tank top, my beloved Birkenstocks, and anything drawstring these days (loving that vibe). I never need to bring much. My daughter’s closet handles the rest. But the hat and the bag… all mine and both from my wildly talented friend at Anya & Niki. The crossbody straw bag stops people all the time. And the hat... a requirement as I am diligently working to offset skin damage of the past.

This is the other cube.

My daughter has a thick head of beautiful curls. I have stress, age, and hormones, which have caused major fallout. Truly, alarming. The kind of alarming that has you researching things at midnight and being more honest with your doctor than you have been in years.

The K18, the Nutrafol, the Oribe, the brush I will not travel without. Not an immediate fix. But over the past year, they’ve helped me rebuild. I won’t leave them behind. And my daughter, bless her curls, doesn’t own them for me to borrow.

That’s the honest cube.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. — A small thing.

There’s a boutique in Malibu I love. I discovered it on my last trip. The owner is one of those people I could talk to for hours, and her shop is the kind of curated that doesn’t feel staged. I’d like to send something from there to one of you.

Subscribers only. Leave a comment on this post. I’ll pick someone next Saturday (5/9) and DM you here on Substack.

If this lands well, maybe we make it a regular thing. I have a lot of fun travel coming up, and so much I know I’ll want to share.

On Christmas Day, 2015, my late husband George gave me a ridiculously large emerald.

Elizabeth Taylor style. Surrounded by tiny diamonds. Set in gold. The kind of piece that makes other jewelry feel self-conscious.

He found it through a jeweler who had acquired it from an estate sale. No origin story. No history. Just… this stone.

And when he gave it to me, I didn’t quite know what to do with it.

It felt like something a pirate would tuck away after a long voyage. Too large. Too bold. Not quite mine to wear.

So I did exactly that. I tucked it away.

For years.

I thought about turning it into a ring. Repurposing it into something I could actually use. But every time I came close, I hesitated.

It never quite felt like me.

Some of us have a version of this. Something we were given, or chose, that we tried to make fit. Like Peppermint Patty in a ballgown. It wasn’t me.

So it spent over a decade inside my safe, loved but unseen.

Eventually, I sent it to a jeweler in California to sell.

He made it into a ring instead. Two diamond baguettes on either side. Still… all 9.49 carats sitting on my finger felt like a balloon I couldn’t quite hold onto.

It wasn’t meant for me.

And maybe, somehow, it knew that.

The ring never sold.

Instead, it found its way to a friend of mine in Naples, a jeweler, who shared it with his fiancée.

She fell in love with it immediately.

And this time, it stayed.

A decade later, when it came time for our December wedding, she loaned it back to me.

This beautiful, ridiculous piece of my past.

It became my something old. Something new. Something borrowed.

But more than that, it became a bridge.

A way to carry a piece of my life with George into the life I was stepping into.

It was harder than I expected to give it back.

For a moment, I considered asking to buy it from her.

But then she wore it to her own wedding.

And somehow, that felt right.

Now she plans to pass it down to her stepdaughter.

And maybe someday, my daughter will wear it too.

Some pieces aren’t meant to belong to us.

They’re meant to move through us.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

Our photographer told us it would take up to eight weeks to receive our wedding photos. He wasn’t kidding.

By the time the gallery finally landed in my inbox, we were in the middle of travel and life and everything that keeps you moving forward. We skimmed them, smiled, and kept going.

But recently, we slowed down long enough to actually sit with them.

Every image. Every moment.

And it’s been unexpectedly emotional to relive it all.

If you’ve been here since December, you read about our wedding in real time, five days after we said I do, written from a quiet British West Indies island on our honeymoon. This is the fuller story now, four months later, with the photos in hand and the reflection I didn’t yet have.

A more intimate look at the moments that made the day what it was.

Getting remarried after losing my late husband three years ago wasn’t something I ever contemplated for myself. That is until I met Dave.

Our initial connection, albeit via text, felt like the universe was conspiring toward something neither of us thought possible.

At 58 Dave had become known as the forever bachelor. He didn’t plan for that. It’s just how life took shape. After too many bad endings, he turned his attention to faith, family, friends, his career. He is truly the best friend to many, a devoted godfather to the fortunate few and the greatest brother and son a family could ask for. Finding this rare gem, my unicorn, seemed unimaginable.

A strong Irish Catholic faith comes first in his world which made marriage profoundly significant for him. Knowing this about him makes me love him all the more and gave me a new perspective on shifting my own thoughts about remarrying.

But to be honest, when he proposed, the idea of planning a wedding was paralyzing. My social conditioning said: you don’t do this again. Not with a big wedding. Not when you’ve been married before. But how could I deny that to my beloved fiancé who waited 58 years.

And celebrating felt like something we both earned.

We didn’t want a wedding built on tradition. We wanted one built on intention.

Because Dave had never been married, our guest list leaned heavily toward his friends and family. People who had waited a lifetime to witness this moment. The love in that space was palpable. Collective. Earned.

A balance of simplicity and elegance. Nothing extra. Nothing missing.

The shamrock, of course, became the cornerstone of every detail. A nod to Dave’s Notre Dame roots and symbolic of faith, love and hope. Something we have built into our marriage manifesto.

When we unraveled the expected and rebuilt the framework of what it looks like to get remarried, the list of no’s was long. Every decision ran through the same filter. And every time we asked it, we knew.

So there was no groom’s dinner. Instead, a casual meet and greet at an Irish pub. Another nod to Notre Dame, with lots of Guinness shared among his former college friends and teammates.

There was no bridal party. No choreography. No obligations disguised as tradition.

Instead, Elise, my beautiful daughter, stood as our honoree. My bonus daughter, Bre, shared a reading. My late husband’s childhood best friend walked me down the aisle. And our two best friends delivered a ceremony written entirely by us. Words chosen carefully. Honestly. Tenderly.

Looking back, most of our attention was placed on our vows. Every word of the ceremony came from the heart. Every word written by us, with the exception of our officiant who went off script in the best way.

When it came time to say I do, Dave said it six times.

Six.

No hesitation. No pause. Just certainty spilling over.

There was not a dry eye in sight.

I did not wear white. I wore navy, Dave’s favorite color, in a ball gown that made me feel like a modern day Grace Kelly.

Fully myself.

I was adorned in a ridiculous amount of borrowed jewels from dear friends, including a repurposed gem originally gifted to me by my late husband George. My something old, new, and borrowed all at once.

There was no limo. We took a beach Moke instead. Ridiculously fun. Wildly us. And the source of epic photos.

The reception was intimate and food forward, held in a courtyard that felt like being wrapped inside an orchid filled New Orleans venue, right in the heart of downtown Naples. Candlelight. Conversation. Presence.

There was no dancing, with the exception of one couple who had their own special moment at the end of the night. One I will always remember, and they may not.

But there was extraordinary music. A pianist and a saxophonist filling the space with warmth and soul.

There were impromptu speeches. The kind you can’t script. The kind that leave everyone in tears, from laughter and from joy.

And honestly something I hadn’t considered at all. So when the microphone began to pass, it was the best surprise of the night.

There was no cake. Instead, we served warm mini donuts. Dave’s favorite. Nostalgic. Joyfully unfussy.

This was not a wedding designed to impress. It was a wedding designed to reflect.

Perfectly imperfect. Deeply intentional. Exactly us.

Always EDITing,
Mrs. Leslie Legus

P.S. Four months later, we laugh that we’re past the warranty period.

Next EDIT: more about the borrowed emerald ring — and the strange, quiet life it’s lived.

One more… I’ll never tire seeing this.

We’d just met. I was acknowledging her publicly. Someone corrected me. I apologized.

But the moment had already passed.

And it’s been sitting with me since. Because of what it showed me about everything else.

Because we do this all the time.

In rooms much bigger than the one I was in.

You show up to book club already off.

Not dramatically. Nothing worth canceling over. Just… off.

You had an argument before you left the house. Something small. Something that, in the moment, felt big enough to carry with you.

So you do what we all do. You sit down. You exhale. You start talking.

About life. About stress. About the argument.

It passes. The night moves on. Everyone laughs. You hug goodbye. You go home.

And by the time your head hits the pillow… it’s over. You and your husband work it out. The moment dissolves as quickly as it came.

You forget about it.

But they don’t.

Because that’s what you left them with.

So the next time you walk into that same room, you’re met with concern.

“I’ve been thinking about you.” “I’ve been praying for you.” “I hope everything is okay.”

And for a second, you don’t even recognize the version of yourself they’re holding.

Because you’ve already moved on. But they’re still standing in the last thing you gave them.

We leave people with a version of us that isn’t current. Call it the last snapshot. A moment taken mid-reaction. Mid-emotion. Mid-story.

And then we walk away, resolve it privately, evolve quietly…while they continue relating to that snapshot.

Because once it’s said, it doesn’t belong to you anymore. It belongs to the person who heard it. And they will carry it forward until you give them something new.

Think about someone you love. Right now, they are holding a version of you that isn’t who you are anymore.

The daughter who hung up on her mom. The mom is still sitting with the receiver in hand. The daughter’s already out with friends. Laughing. Enjoying her night.

The truth is, people don’t remember everything.

They remember the last thing.

That becomes the reference point.

Which is why her name keeps coming back to me.

Then I came across this quote in Into the Magic Shop, a neurosurgeon’s book about the brain and the heart of all places, and it stopped me:

“Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.”

You don’t need to curate your life.

You don’t get to control what people remember. Only what you give them to remember you by.

So I’m starting with names.

What are you starting with?

Thank you, Damiya. You are the source of inspiration for this EDIT. I will never forget your name.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

P.S. The next EDIT drops Sunday. Inside the camera roll from our recent wedding. I cordially invite you.

I certainly didn’t wake up thinking about his question. Instead I did what I am now trying to undo. Break what feels like an unbreakable habit.

I woke up early and spent an hour doing all the mindless things on my phone that eat away at time faster than I realize. By the time I got up to brush my teeth, I felt like shit. Not because of the one prosecco I had with friends last night but because of that hour. The one I just threw away. And that question showed up immediately behind it.

When I walked into the kitchen, he spoke to me. There are two photos of my late husband George sitting on our kitchen counter. Right next to the box of cards from his celebration of life. The ones I haven’t moved.

As I grabbed for my container of vitamins, I could hear him. And I was immediately taken back to one of our last conversations. And the sentiment that remains ingrained in my mind.

Have I done enough?

If I passed tomorrow, was my time spent wisely? Did I make an impact big enough to matter?

The family room is where we would spend hours. Watching shows. Reading books. Talking. Drinking wine. Playing fiercely competitive backgammon on the glass table between the his and hers brown swivel chairs. The ones that knew our bodies from years of imprint in the cushions.

That winter, he made one of his rare trips home.

I remember finding him there in his chair. By the fire in our family room. A glass of wine in his hand. A book set down beside him.

There were tears on his cheek.

He told me he didn’t feel like he had enough time left to do what he wanted to do for the community.

To contribute in a way that would elevate Toledo to the potential he knew was there. He loved his home town.

That was always how he moved through the world.

Not focused on himself. Focused on what could be better. And how to help people get there.

There is something I didn’t share last week in my EDIT, Somethings Don’t Get Fixed. They Get Carried

When I decided to speak at this celebration of life. In that unplanned moment. I shared that moment. That memory. His words. And when I looked around the room. I saw something he couldn’t.

A room full of people who had been changed by him.

People carrying pieces of his thinking. His generosity. His belief in what was possible.

A legacy already in motion.

One he didn’t get to measure.

There is a gap between what we think we’ve done and what we’ve actually done. It almost always runs in our favor.

And most of us live inside that gap.

Wondering if it’s enough. Wondering if it counts. Wondering if we missed something.

And all of that carries weight. Not like weight that builds strength but one that creates stress and dis-ease.

George lived there too. The man who had changed a room full of lives and wasn’t there to see a single one.

I’m standing in the same place.

The solution to the gap isn’t found in a big bold philanthropic gesture. Sometimes it’s far simpler.

For me the biggest opportunity lives deep inside my iPhone’s Settings. Apple doesn’t call it lost opportunity. They call it Screen Time. It’s a rude awakening. It’s not one I would proudly share either.

I don’t want to be that bar chart. I want to use my time more purposefully. One hour on the phone is one less hour with a friend. And that hour with a friend? It could change something.

My potential is greater than the bar chart. That’s the momentum I am working for. One habit at a time.

And so this morning, I asked myself:

How can I stand stronger?

Because if I’m honest, in the midst of my own fire, there are moments I want to shrink.

Pull the covers over my head. Disappear into a day of doomscrolling. Numb it out.

But I’ve done that before.

An hour passes, and I feel it.

Not relief. Not rest.

Just… worse.

Stuck is a heavy feeling. Shame is even heavier.

So I don’t stay there.

Instead, I write.

Fingers to the keyboard. Momentum in that simple act alone.

Then I downloaded a book I’ve read more than once. One that brings me back to myself. Daring Greatly.

I’ll listen to it on my walk today. Tomorrow. Until I finish it again.

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…” — Theodore Roosevelt

George was in the arena his whole life. And he still wasn’t sure he’d done enough.

We all have moments that take us out. Pull us down. Convince us to stay there.

The work is to get up anyway.

He’s been asking me that question ever since. Or maybe I’ve been asking it for him.

And this morning, because of George, I’m reminded of something simple and steady:

I still have time. I am still here.

And I’m not done yet.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

And if you were watching closely, you noticed something subtle when the camera zoomed in tight.

On the wrists of some of the best golfers in the world, there’s data.

WHOOP Straps.

Tracking recovery. Heart rate. Strain. Sleep.

All in the name of optimization.

And yet, these are the same players who talk about feel.
About trusting the swing.
About knowing when to push and when to pull back.

Not from a screen.
From somewhere internal.

Because for the better part of five years, I’d been doing a version of the same thing. A subtle outsourcing of self.

To the WHOOP that left an indent on my wrist and a tan line on my arm. To the Oura Ring and its crowns and its various scores. I’ve tried them all.

If I got a crown, it meant I slept well. If it was green, I was ready. If it said I was strained, suddenly I could feel it.

I stopped asking myself.

I started checking.

There were days I felt run down. Off. Not quite right.

And instead of listening to that, I looked for confirmation.

If my stats didn’t reflect it, I overrode myself.

Green meant go, right?

I recall shaking my wrist on an airplane just to close a ring. Walking a few extra steps down the hallway just to keep my streak. Like 25 steps before bed, in a circle, down the hall and back, actually counted. I know.

As if the data mattered more than the reality of where I was.

It’s not that different from reading your horoscope and then living into it.

Waiting for something external to tell you what your day is.

Last summer in Huntington Beach, I sat down with a tarot card reader at a street fair.

For fun.

When I stood up, I turned to Dave and said, “Don’t ever let me do that again.”

Not because it was wrong.

Because I could feel what it did.

It shifted me out of my own knowing and into anticipation.

And then, unintentionally, everything went quiet.

I left a bag on a Delta flight.

Inside it were my chargers.
Including the one for my Oura Ring.

By the time I landed, on a remote island, a full weekend ahead, the ring was dead.

No data.
No recovery score.
No readiness.

Nothing to check.

Just me.

And what I could feel.

I thought it would be freeing.

It wasn’t.

It was uncomfortable.

Because somewhere along the way, I stopped trusting the one source that had never actually been wrong.

Myself.

And then this weekend, I was in yoga.

One of my favorite instructors was teaching. She arrived for the weekend from Kenya. Grounded in a way you can feel before she even speaks.

At one point she said something simple.

There are other modalities. Pilates. CrossFit.

And then there is yoga.

It’s different.

It asks more.

Not more effort. More listening.

It asks you to pay attention.
To follow your breath.
To be guided by something you can’t measure.

Your gut.
Your intuition.

And it registered.

Because somewhere along the way, I lost that.

Buried in stats.
Hidden inside movement.

For me, that was running.

Don’t get me wrong. I love all of it. The data, the structure, the runs, the Pilates. But I can see now there were moments I was also escaping.

I’ve been moving fast enough not to hear myself.

And at some point, I stopped listening.

I’m on the fence about replacing my Oura Ring.

Not just because the charger is gone.

The ring itself looked tired.

Chipped. Worn.

Like a manicure entering its third week.

It had done its job.

Maybe more than its job.

Before I replace it, I’m staying here for a minute.

Without it.

Listening again.

Trusting what I feel before I check anything.

Because if I’m honest, it’s not just the ring.

I can see other places where I’ve handed that knowing over.

To systems.
To routines.
To people.

Different forms of the same giving.

A cupboard full of supplements I stopped questioning somewhere along the way.

A subtle outsourcing of self.

These stats operate like so many others. The external validation we seek beyond the devices. I realize, in the absence of it in one area of my life, how dependent I’ve been on it in others. In the midst of significant decisions right now, I can’t look elsewhere for the answers. I can’t call on a device, an audience, or even others for this.

There’s an old saying. Wherever you go, there you are.

For a long time, I just made sure I was well-tracked when I got there.

Perhaps stripping away the Ring was exactly what I needed.

For now, I’m here.

No stats. Just me. Listening again. Trusting again.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

We were scheduled to go to church. That was the agreed plan. When I woke up, I did not want to go.

In fact, the rebellious f-you teenager who still holds a seat at my boardroom table showed up as CEO about an hour before I found myself in the pew. I actually told my husband to go without me in that snarky, no you just go voice I even cringe to hear.

But partnership doesn’t work that way for me, and I knew immediately I needed to change my tone. My husband is Catholic, and Easter Sunday is as foundational to him as my morning matcha ritual is to me. I wouldn’t rip away that anchor because my own was fraying.

And the truth is, I needed to be there too. I just didn’t know why yet.

There is a relationship in my life right now that has unraveled without explanation. I’ve tried to mend it. Tried to understand it. I’ve created space for it. I’ve even fawned for it, which in hindsight makes me pity myself a little.

This person, this lifelong friend, has built a narrative I’m not part of. One that others have seemingly been pulled into in a way that feels like being left at the end of a middle school cafeteria table, desperately trying to enter a conversation already happening without you.

I’ve known that for a while. And I kept showing up anyway.

I rehashed every recent encounter, every text, every conversation through my head forty times throughout the weekend, desperate to make sense of it all. None of it. Not one part of it made sense. And by Sunday morning, the inner teenager had taken the wheel.

That is what happens when we keep trying to fix what will not be fixed.

We do not just fail to fix it. We lose ourselves inside the trying.

And some of us genuinely believe that if we try hard enough and keep showing up, something in the other person will finally give.

So there I sat in the pew, pissed off, half listening, when the message started. The old man with a cane in front of me was doing everything he could just to be there. His son steady beside him at every moment. And I was sitting there furious about a friendship.

And then the minister, not the priest, because my cold rebellion caused us to miss Catholic Easter Mass and pivot to a church across the street, told a story from 17 years ago about a snow globe.

He and his wife, along with their one-year-old son, had been invited to a dinner party to meet members of their new congregation. Their hosts were prominent members of the community, the kind with influential connections they were proud to drop into conversation.

At the center of the table sat a snow globe.

Not an ordinary one. Though it was Christmas, it was obvious this globe held center stage year-round, waiting for someone to ask about it. And when someone finally did that evening, the group gathered around to hear its significance.

It had been given to the family by a well-known country star, with an autograph as proof. Meaningful. Precious. The kind of object you do not touch casually.

Everyone listened in admiration.

And then, as the room began to mingle again, the minister’s curious one-year-old reached in just fast enough, lifted it high enough, and let go abruptly enough for the globe to come crashing down with enough force to shatter into tiny pieces, its contents spilling across the table and onto the family heirloom Bible all at once.

The room went silent. There was no fixing it. Not the globe. Not the Bible. Not the moment.

And that is when it clicked for me.

Read more

At the back, a little girl was crying. “Mom, let me see it,” she said, reaching for the phone her mother had just handed to her older brother.

Just moments before, we had been talking about my next EDIT. We’re traveling out of town for a funeral the day it publishes, and I told him I wanted to keep the sentiment light.

The tram pulled out of sight. I looked at him and said, “I know exactly what to share.” Thanks to that little girl.

Access.

Who gets it. Who asks for it. Who we give it to without thinking. And how much of it we give away.

And it took me a long time to find my answer. One I am still not clear on. But it starts with three questions I’d never thought to ask.

I’ve lived most of my life privately. Intentionally. Guarded. My late husband despised social media, and I respected that. We kept our world, our travels, mostly to ourselves. I can recall an exact moment when I did share something.

I had just finished my first Boston Marathon.

Getting there was no small feat. And I don’t mean qualifying. That part is obvious.

My late husband had just come out of brain surgery. Unexpected. Beyond frightening. The kind of moment that stops everything.

The doctors saved his life.

He landed in the hospital days before my race. He was still in the ICU when he looked at me and told me to go. To lace up. To run.

So I did.

And when I crossed that finish line, it felt bigger than anything. Not just the race. Everything it took to get there. What we had just lived through. What we were still in.

He was so proud of me.

I shared it.
The moment. The story. What it took.

And then later, he was livid when he realized I had shared it for others to read. I edited the post.

It took several years, but after he passed away, I started writing.

Not casually. Not surface-level. More honestly than I expected to. And more honestly than others expected.

And something shifted. I began to notice my life and how I lived in it differently.

You take a photo. You have a moment. You travel. You observe. You experience.

And every single time, without fail: Do I share this?

To be completely honest, I’ve never liked being on the front end of the camera. Not when I was little. Even less now. So the answer is usually no and the photos remain entombed on my phone. Hiding.

I’ve been on the go a lot lately. Only home two weekends in the last two months. My trips and my life have been extraordinary lately.

I cringe even writing that. Sharing this openly is profoundly out of my comfort zone. As though I am waiting for a barrage of naysayers to criticize my words and my life.

But I unexpectedly found myself in Amsterdam for a night. Shared an intimate evening with Nashville songwriters singing their own billboard songs. Golfed some of the country’s best courses (not well but that’s not the point). Walked the beaches on Malibu and Kiawah.

And somewhere along the way, I started documenting pieces of it. Just because it was there.

Not because I don’t want to share. But because I’m starting to care more about how.

And why.

There’s a narrative right now that staying quiet is the new vogue.

That privacy is the ultimate form of power.

I’ve lived that version. For years. And here’s what’s true: privacy can be a shelter. But it can also become a habit you mistake for a choice. What I kept to myself didn’t always feel like power. Sometimes it felt like disappearing. I kept our world private and called it intentional. But some of that was fear. Fear of being dismissed, of being misread, of mattering to no one or mattering too much. Or worse, not looking good enough. Whole years I kept to myself. Not by design. By default.

And I suspect I’m not the only one with a camera roll full of remarkable unseen photos.

So when people say staying quiet is the new vogue, I understand the appeal. I just know what’s on the other side of it.

Because sharing, when it’s intentional, isn’t exposure.
It’s expression.
It’s connection.
It’s a way of saying, this mattered.

The question isn’t whether to share.
It’s what.
And how much.
And with whom.

Living on the other version is what taught me to ask differently.

Three questions. That’s the whole filter.

Am I sharing to connect or to be seen?
Does this add something? Or just show something?
Would I still share this if no one reacted to it?

Not as rules.
As a filter.

Not everything needs to be shown.
Not every moment needs an audience.
Some things belong to your inner circle.
Some belong only to you.
And some, when shared with care, become something more.

Discernment is the line.
And it’s not fixed.

It moves. It asks more of you the more you step into it. So I’m here, sharing a little. Not everything I saw or felt. Just what stayed with me. Because maybe that’s the balance.

Not silence.
Not oversharing.
But choosing.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

Some you carry easily. And some are like a toxin you can never expel. The kind you didn’t ask for and can’t put down.

Those ones usually start the same way.

A friend calls and says,

“I have something to tell you. You have to promise me you won’t tell anyone.”

It sounds harmless. Familiar, even.

Because saying yes feels like trust. Like proof you’re the kind of person who can be confided in.

And almost instinctively, we say yes.

The reality is, the person asking already knows what they’re about to tell you. You don’t. They’re using your desire to be included to get your agreement before you know what you’re agreeing to.

And here’s where things start to go sideways.

Because what you’ve just agreed to isn’t casual. It’s a blind contract. You signed it without seeing the terms. And that’s the thing about blind contracts: by the time you know what you agreed to, it’s too late to negotiate.

And if what you’re told puts you out of integrity with someone else, or sits heavy in a way you can’t carry, you’re stuck.

Out of integrity with yourself by staying silent.

Or out of integrity with someone else by speaking.

That’s the trap.

Not the story.

The agreement.

There’s a different way to handle it. And it requires more strength than most people are willing to access in the moment, because it means choosing integrity over the immediate comfort of being included.

Years ago, I was in a training program, out of my element. The woman leading it was a stranger to me. She was one of the most grounded people I’d encountered.

She shared a story that placed her in this exact trap. How she handled it stuck with me.

She didn’t hesitate. Didn’t lean in or lower her voice. She just said it like she’d answered this question a hundred times and had no anxiety about the answer.

What she shared was simple.

Pause.

The phrase that changes everything:

“I don’t know that I can make that promise without knowing what it is.”

Twelve words. And you’re out of the blind contract.

I remember thinking, do I have that kind of strength and restraint?

I’m a curious person by nature. I often joke that I missed my calling as a CIA agent. My friends agree. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been sent the post, “we all have that one friend who can find anything out in less than an hour.”

So when someone calls and offers a scoop, I’m usually all in.

But standing in front of me was someone poised. Grounded. Fully owning the space she was in. And she offered a different way.

And it landed. Because not long before that, I had found myself stuck inside someone else’s secret. The kind you don’t want to carry.

And for reasons I won’t explain, I’ve held it for nearly a decade.

I don’t feel good about knowing it.

I didn’t then. I don’t now. It’s like a toxin in my body that I can never expel.

At the time, I hadn’t built that kind of restraint. And nearly ten years later, I still feel it. Not every day. But there are moments. I no longer live in proximity to that person, but there are still occasions when I see them. In those moments, the secret loops through my mind like a stuck tape coloring what I say. That filter gets heavy. The cost is a kind of distance I didn’t choose and can’t explain.

And the truth is, the cost of carrying it has never been worth whatever came with hearing it.

Because in that moment, you’re pushing against something very human. The desire to know. To be included. To be trusted with something others aren’t.

But let’s call it what it is.

It’s not always about connection.

Sometimes it’s about proximity to information.

Sometimes it’s about feeling important.

We like knowing things others don’t. It’s just human. But it becomes a problem the moment someone else’s secret becomes the price of our curiosity.

And here’s the cost:

You become a container for things that were never yours to carry.

Sometimes worse, you become complicit in something that quietly misaligns you with someone else. And when you see that person, your mind goes immediately to what you’re carrying. Something they don’t know you know. Something that would matter to them. And your body responds before you can stop it. You withdraw, ever so slightly. And that’s where people end up in situations they never intended.

Holding secrets for other people is a slippery slope.

Not because people are bad.

But because not everything shared is yours to carry.

And not every confidence is clean.

A life with fewer entanglements is cleaner. Quieter. More yours.

So the next time someone asks you to promise before they speak:

You are allowed to hear the terms before you agree to them.

Not every secret becomes the kind of thing you carry for a decade. And not every secret becomes toxic. But you don’t have to agree to find out.

The person who pauses before she promises isn’t being difficult.

She’s being discerning.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

This week, I wanted to take a bit of a turn.

And as we move into spring, into April, it feels like the right moment to shift the tone. Toward something lighter. Something lived.

At 52, I know my style. And every March, I have to remind myself of that.

I live in a community where storefront windows are designed to immediately draw you in. Colors. Patterns. Creative and masterful displays intended to entice even the most practical buyer. Hard not to notice. Sometimes hard to resist.

Social media advertising has become so sophisticated that the online version of shopping feels as visceral as Fifth Avenue at Christmas, year-round.

As we slowly come out of winter hibernation, the retail world is on full tilt attempting to draw us in.

I previously wrote an article called The Cost of a Borrowed Identity, and identified what I call The Zara Effect. The slow drift that happens when what you wear starts to look like everyone else, and somewhere along the way, stops feeling like you.

One t-shirt here, a pair of pants later, a set you couldn’t resist that’s almost sold out.

The drift is slow. That’s what makes it dangerous.

I’ve been traveling a lot these past few months. More than usual.

Home has started to feel unfamiliar in that strange way where you wake up and need a second to remember where you are.

And while I’ve loved every trip, I’m equally ready to land.

To come back to routine.
To something more grounded.

I wouldn’t have been able to move through that pace and still feel good in my body, or keep my mental health intact, without structure.

Not rigidity.
Structure.

And yes, I’m type A. To an extreme. I don’t fight that anymore. I use it.

Especially when it comes to how I live and how I dress.

Because if I’m not paying attention, travel has a way of pulling me into whatever aesthetic I’m surrounded by. A boutique in one city. A perfectly styled window in another. And suddenly I’m holding pieces that made sense there, but don’t belong here.

I’ve done a lot of editing lately.
Closet included.

Not to have less.
But to have mine.

Because there’s a very specific feeling I’ve learned to pay attention to.

It’s the moment you walk into a room and see someone wearing almost exactly what you’re wearing.

Same designer. Same cut. Same color story.

And instead of feeling connected, you feel… diluted.

Like losing a piece of yourself.

Or disappearing into a pattern that’s only a few shades off from the woman next to you.

That’s The Zara Effect.

And I’m not interested in disappearing. Or sameness.

So lately, here’s what I’ve been leaning on:

1. The “Would I Wear This at Home?” Filter

If it only makes sense in the city I’m standing in, it’s a no. It’s easy to get lost in the boutique window. A straw hat at a beach store in Mexico. A beautiful scarf in a snow village in the Alps. A commemorative t-shirt from the pro shop.

It takes restraint, but in those moments I ask myself how often it will actually be worn after the trip ends. My life isn’t lived in a boutique window.

2. Unknown Over Recognized

If I immediately recognize the item or the brand, I pause.

Recognize usually means everywhere.

3. One Piece, Not the Rainbow

My daughter was guilty of this to the point where I simply couldn’t walk into some stores with her.

Eight of the exact same sweatshirt in every new color drop is not necessary. We all know the stores. They thrive on limited-edition color drops that social media makes viral. One staple color is more than enough.

4. The Airport Test

If I see it three times between security and my gate, I’ve learned what I need to know.

5. Edit in Real Time

I don’t wait for a seasonal purge anymore.

If it doesn’t feel like me now, it doesn’t stay.

None of this is about restraint.

I still love clothing. I still acquire (scroll down to find a few of my latest finds).
But the acquisition is different.

It’s aligned. More deliberate.

When I’m window shopping, scrolling, or purging, the question I come back to is simple: who am I wearing this for?

Because the goal was never to have less, well perhaps a little less.

It was to stop borrowing from the look inside the store window and to start owning my own sense of self.

Happy Tuesday. End of March. Beginning of April.

A small return to self.

Always EDITing,

Leslie

Like I said, I still love a good aesthetic. Lately, I’ve been leaning into less-known brands. Ones you can’t find at every mall across the country.

I’ve been a big fan of ME + EM for years for that exact reason. The company began in London, and ordering wasn’t as easy as it is today. Their brick-and-mortar stores were originally just overseas, and I’m a touch-and-feel kind of shopper.

Now there are a handful of stores in the U.S., and when I was in LA last week with Elise, we found our way to their newest location. I tried on the pants, the tops, the sweater. A few pieces made their way home with me.

Not because they were everywhere.

Because they weren’t.

And more importantly, because they felt like me.

The shoes, bag & earrings are also pieces I have and love. Enjoy!

I’d love to know what brands you’re discovering this Spring. Drop a comment below.

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I’ve held onto this EDIT for nearly a month. I wasn’t ready to share it. Getting to the end of the month felt like survival.

Two years ago this month my best friend died. My former brother-in-law as well.

And a few weeks ago, I learned that another friend from an earlier chapter of my life had passed away. Distance had grown between us over the years, but the news still rocked me.

March, it seems, has become a month that lives differently in my body than it does on the calendar.

Loss has a way of doing that.

These kinds of losses do not simply heal with time. Grief settles somewhere deeper. It lives in your bones. You never know when that tidal wave of heartbreak will roll in. Sometimes it’s bigger than others. It arrives unannounced. You learn to get comfortable crying openly in public when it does. You learn how to walk beside it, how to carry it forward, but it rarely disappears the way those beautifully curated Instagram posts suggest. It just doesn’t.

And what has struck me most this year is not only the accumulation of loss, but how differently the people around me are experiencing the same moment.

My daughter called recently in tears just thinking about entering March and everything it holds for her.

My bonus daughter woke in the middle of the night shaken by dreams she didn’t want to carry.

And I found myself listening to a podcast that had nothing to do with grief at all, yet one sentence landed squarely in the middle of everything I’ve been noticing.

We often assume everyone around us is living inside the same moment.

But we aren’t.

Grief makes that truth obvious inside a family.

Two people can lose the same person and still be living inside entirely different emotional timelines.

One person anticipates the date months ahead.
Another carries it quietly without speaking.
Another meets it unexpectedly in the middle of the night.

One wants to celebrate the anniversary of the passing, while another wants to privately honor the day without words.

For some people, grief means life must stop.
For others, it means learning how to carry forward what remains.

And thanks to one amazing coach who reminded me very early on, when I felt completely hopeless, of something simple.

Forward is a direction.

That was enough. It didn’t require a destination. It didn’t require a timeline. It didn’t require anyone else’s permission.

None of those responses are wrong.

They are simply different.

Lately I’ve started noticing this same dynamic everywhere.

There seems to be an expectation right now that we should all be reacting to the world in the exact same way, at the exact same time. That we should be consuming the same news, sharing the same outrage, listening to the same podcasts, speaking with the same urgency.

And if we’re not, silence is often interpreted as something else.

Ignorance.
Avoidance.
Head in the sand.

Or the assumption that we live in polarity, which quietly and unnecessarily creates division.

But sometimes silence is not avoidance or opposition.

Sometimes it is simply boundary.

When my late husband was alive, he woke up every morning and turned on every television in the house. News ran constantly. Morning until night. Every channel seemed to be narrating the state of the world. It was like living on the set of a major news network. And I couldn’t escape the noise.

After he passed away, I realized something surprising.

I never turned the televisions on during the day again.

Not once.

It wasn’t a political decision.

It was a necessary one.

The house had finally become quiet.

That doesn’t mean I’m unaware of what’s happening in the world. It simply means I am intentional about what I allow to live inside my space.

I was reminded of this again the other day when a friend called and said, “I just can’t with social media right now.”

It wasn’t the first time I had heard someone say something like that.

For many people, social media feels like a constant stream of outrage and bad news.

But the funny thing is, my social media brings me joy.

Somewhere along the way I fluffed my algorithm with golden retrievers and beautiful travel guides. Coastal villages. Train rides through the Alps. Small cafés tucked into quiet streets I long to explore. Unexpected corners of the world that make you pause and imagine the next adventure.

My feed has become something closer to a curated dreamscape.

A small window into possibility at the end of the day.

Not doom scrolling.
Intentional scrolling.

But people assume what they see is what I see.

And that simply isn’t true.

Just like we assume people are reacting to the world the same way we are.

Or grieving the same way we are.

Or moving through life on the same timeline we are.

But we aren’t.

And sometimes that difference reveals itself in ways that are far more personal than we expect.

What follows is difficult for me to share, but it is the moment that made this lesson impossible to ignore.

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