This July, I traveled, I ate extraordinarily well, I cried a million times, I slept for days, and slowly but surely started to feel myself come back to life again. In June, we said goodbye to our deeply loved dog Lou. In July, I found myself doing everything from lounging, vacationing, indulging and allowing myself to just accept that the day was going to be whatever my grief dictated it to be.
What has been eye-opening in this grieving and healing process is realizing how prolonged caretaking of anyone and anything, animal or human, for many months as they slowly reach the end of their life, requires ENORMOUS hypervigilance. July was the first time since January 2026 where caretaking didn’t consume my entire life. And while I would do it all over again, 100 times over for my girl Lou, July was selfishly about me. I feel like I’ve woken up from a 8 month slumber and experiencing genuine presence for the first time in ages. So this July I ran with this newfound feeling. I was gluttonous, I fought back against the sadness that has consumed my existence and felt, here, in this moment, on this earth, with all senses.
I thank Lou for that too. Her spirit was guiding this month’s journey of burnout prevention, just like it did when she was my sidekick and by my side in the flesh.
With that…Here is what July looked like:
1. Purged Toxic Products From My Home and Started Over
Coming out of this grief, I just needed to get rid of the toxicity, and apparently that manifested literally.
I went through my entire kitchen and living room and pulled out everything I no longer felt good about, the plastic containers I had been meaning to replace for years, the cleaning products I had never actually looked at the ingredients of, the candles I had been burning without a second thought. I switched all my food containers over to glass, my rice cooker to stainless, air fryer to glass, my cutting boards to steel…I went for it! I researched every cleaning product in the house and landed on Koala Eco as my go-to, and switched every single candle over to KEAP, specifically the Wood Cabin scent which is warm and grounding and smells fantastic. There is something that happens when you physically clear out the things that are quietly working against you! I swear! It goes beyond the practical, I wanted to match my environment to the version of myself I am slowly trying to become on the other side of all of this. I did not plan for this process to be a grief or burnout prevention ritual, but that is what it became.
COST: Items range from $10-$200
2. I Took Off My Oura Ring
I was addicted to my Oura ring. I would look at its results to guide how I feel…?! I also recognized this month that wearing it through grief was actively working against me. My sleep has been disrupted in ways that are completely understandable given everything my nervous system has been through, and waking up to a readiness score that confirms I slept TERRIBLY is information I already have and do not need to be reminded of. It was genuinely adding to my stress not helping. I’ll eventually put it back on, but for now…Grief is not a metric!
COST: Free
3. I Took My First Spanish Lesson and I Am Determined To One Day Be Fluent.
Three truths 1) My husband is fluent in Spanish 2) We travel often to Spanish speaking countries 3) I am sick and tired of coming across as some quiet, unopinionated woman when we do, while he charms entire rooms in a language I cannot participate in. Anyone who knows me understands…unopinonated?! Quiet? Nope. Not me.
SO, I finally stopped complaining about it, signed up to take my first EVER Spanish lesson. I chose Preply, which pairs you with a live tutor online. It was so fun that I bought a package - 4 sessions a month. I am now so motivated and curious. Being a beginner in your 30s is a humbling and important exercise. It’s good for the brain, and the soul. Highly recommend!
COST: €243.60 Total for 5 Sessions
4. I Saw The Potluck Off-Broadway and It Wrecked Me in the Best Way
In 1979, five labor organizers and activists were murdered in the streets of Greensboro, North Carolina by members of the KKK and the American Nazi Party during a protest (TRUE STORY).
Flash forward to now (2026), a young man named César James Alvarez, named after one of the deceased Greensboro 5, writes a musical, The Potluck, about his experience of grappling with a tragedy that has greatly impacted his family’s life, all the while acknowledging he was not there and is a millennial trying to make sense of the past in the present moment. Centered around a twelve-person intergenerational cast, the show is weird and funny and brilliant and emotionally alive in the way the best theater ever manages. It’s relatable in the sense most of us have inherited a history we did not live through, and yet feel completely responsible for honoring it, or healing it, any way. My husband and I walked out of The Potluck moved in a way we were not expecting, and yet still cannot quite grasp how transedental it was.
Whooooof. I don’t know else to describe it…Lin Manuel did a really good job explaining its impact.
COST: $65/Ticket
5. We Ate Our Way Through San Sebastián and Through Our Grief
My husband and I went to Biarritz, France & San Sebastián, Spain for vacation and ate so damn much. While we had so many great meals, the evenings we had at Seabird, IRATZE and Manojo, blew our minds. All run by local husband and wife teams, each restaurant had a passion and zest for experimenting with flavors and cultures that felt so fresh and so f*cking unique. The dishes were incredible, layered and confident and completely unexpected, and the natural wine was DELICIOUS! We ate slowly, ordered too much, rolled ourselves out of each restaurant, so full and delighted. We let the whole thing be exactly what it was, two people moving through something enormous together, finding that the world still contains so much that is generous and beautiful and worth being present for.
LINKS TO EACH RESTAUANT ABOVE
COST: $130-$200 euros on average
6. I Started Reading Signs by Laura Lynne Jackson
My friend Jasmine recommended I read Signs by Laura Lynne Jackson, and I started weeping only a few pages in.
Laura Lynne Jackson writes about the ways the universe communicates with us through signs, the small and specific and sometimes inexplicable moments that carry the feeling of something larger reaching through, and I came to this book desperately wanting to connect to Lou, to feel her somewhere, to believe that the love between us did not simply end because her life did. I am not going to tell you what to believe about any of that. What I will tell you is that this book has helped me enormously. During a season of grief where logic has very limited usefulness, something like Signs, a book that speaks the language of the heart and the spirit, rather than the head, goes very far.
COST: $17.56 (paperback)
7. Booked a Solo Trip to Copenhagen With No Agenda and No Plans
In late September I am heading to Copenhagen ahead of visiting a friend in Amsterdam, and I booked it entirely for myself. I have no itinerary, no agenda and nowhere to be. It will just be me in a city, with a list of recommendations from friends, and complete freedom to do whatever I want with every hour of every day. The act of booking it, of deciding that I deserved an entire trip built around nothing except my own curiosity and pleasure, feels damn amazing.
Solo travel is something I hear people talk themselves out of far too easily. I know feeling like you need a companion, or at minimum, a very full itinerary to justify getting on a plane alone is a lot, but I genuinely think there is something that happens when you travel by yourself that cannot be replicated any other way. It’s a particular feeling of having no one’s preferences to consider except your own, at exactly your own pace….thats indescribable.
If you’re on the fence…please consider giving it a shot.
You deserve it.
July was the month I started to believe that being OKAY was something I can experience now. I am a LEO, and August is my birthday month. I have never been more excited to be a year older. 2025-2026 has been a season of overwhelm. Illness, grief, caretaking, all of it layered on top of each other for months. I want to spend the first chunk of MY new year doing every single thing I have been dreaming about: traveling, being present, taking up space, learning Spanish, ALL THE THINGS.
Lou taught me that I was the most worthy creature she has ever known, and I did the exact same for her back. I believe, we both never once questioned whether we deserved to be loved the way we loved once another. I took so many notes from 14 years with that precious munchkin…and the biggest takeaway remains true: just do it, all of it. Get the dog, do the trip, buy the thing, experience life and all the emotions and feelings it brings.
All of it is worth it. All of it.
THANK YOU JULY.
AUGUST…LEO SEASON…LETS GO!
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