The ache to write lately has been intense. I hear lines of all kinds that float through my brain. I prefer the days where I am sitting listening to my writing playlist and driving through the changing landscape of Leelanau County and all I can hear is my thoughts. There has been so much I have been thinking about when it comes to my work, my life, the way the land changes, and everything in between. There are threads I just simply want to chase.
So I stop or while I sit and wait for soccer practice to end I write. I write and I write. I let my thoughts unfold like a sketch or drawing that really only makes sense to me till I can put them together in a string of thoughts that may feel different to someone else.
The thing I see more than ever in the clear of my thoughts on paper and on my notes app is something really beautiful and wonderful, that in this time of the year when the land is flat and everything is muddied together there is something we can take into account.
Somewhere in the winter when the storms were blowing and the snow continued to pile something always changes in us, in the land, and in the way we simply look at the world. I felt that this winter. I felt something disappear and reshape in myself. Maybe it was the healing process. Maybe it was being forced to be still. Maybe it was seeing winter in a new light but I found something fresh and new that I am still grappling. In the process of rearrangement there is also always something that is lost.
In the waking hours of spring these days when the robin wakes me and the chickadee becomes an echo across the woods, I see how the light is still blue on the edges of the woods and the hills are just slightly becoming green in their slowest way I could describe. Yet, I also see something emerging deeper in this process of growth I have been in.
I let an immense amount of things go this year already. Instagram feels the way Facebook felt to me in 2016. I was deeply humbled and have also reconnected with my body in a way that has offered me a new perspective of my identity with my body and self. I have confidence I never had before. I am grateful for things that felt simple before. I lean into the parts of me that felt before scary or unlovable because frankly I don’t care if they aren’t comfortable for others, they are who I am. I am weird and I love being weird. I love being able to feel the land or see colors so layered and deeply they make me cry. More than anything, I came to terms with the fact I am getting older and there is beauty and loss in that.
…loss can also set us free
I see more than ever how people have mid-life crisis happen. I feel in someway I have been slowly having it since 2020. I feel something in those years between then and now I have been rearranged and put back together through so many ways from injury to children to career to loss to facing fears I now know I am more than capable of handling. Things have changed but along the way there was plenty of loss.
There were the physical losses of family members and people I love or the dog that I still think about every day and I believe I will for the rest of my life. There were the moments I was scared I would lose my dad, but more than anything, I lost the parts of me that I feared if I let go I would lose control and wouldn’t have protection anymore emotionally. I let those go. I let myself feel it all. I let myself be deeply aware of who I am and have begun to hear the song I am meant to sing in the process.
We speak often about the way that loss is regret and grief but loss can also set us free. Sometimes what we lose in the process of growing is what we need to allow to pass on in our life whether it be someone, something, or a someplace. It can be the very thing that allows us to shape into the next thing we are meant for or what will ultimately show us where we are meant to head next.
I think about this often in Spring when what has been lost in the wake of winter is evident in the matted grasses and the dull landscape that looks flat and all the layers of fall still cover what is yet to become. I think about it when the mud shifts and moves around in the ruts of the dirt road that I have driven a million times in various moments of life. I think about it most though when the shift of winter is clearly upon us and spring has appeared with the song of the birds. As if I can finally see what I no longer am holding because of all that winter forced me to let go.
Often when we sit in the early weeks of spring, we can feel this angst of longing for what will be, but we need to also hear what was under the faint trickle of the moving water and melting snow. We need to acknowledge all we have lost that now allows us to fly in new ways as the crocus blossoms and the daffodils emerge.
You can check out the Spring playlist today on Spotify! Head here to get access to it for Free.
Random writing from my notes and notebooks over the weeks that gather in the spaces between in life. A practice of writing where inspiration finds me.
4/10/2026
I write to your after the snow was like potato chips falling from the sky on a Wednesday. The day was gray and the lake was still frozen. I write to tell you I thought of you and how the lake looked from your home when I was young and it was cold or how I built Petoskey stone bridges in the sun room that was warm even on an April day like this.
How this day that would have been ugly to most reminded me of the days long past where I sat there building, aware of the sun, and you sat and read the paper while drinking tea.
These moments, though tiny, they brought sun to moments of my childhood when things felt hard. Even in early April when I ache for the sun, a day full of cold and snow felt warmed by one tiny moment I had with you.
4/7/2026
I drive the road every day. The gravel one between home and where I am heading. It has sumac beside it and in the spring if I roll down the windows in the morning when the sun first hits the edges of the hills clearly and warmly, I can still hear the peepers in the spring below and I can smell the scent of life; soil, degradation, and green all at once.
The road gets these ruts at different points in the year and can hold the snow in ways when the wind blows hard that I cannot explain. The pines here will drop the snow far faster than it will fall from the sky.
I know the road like I know memories in my brain. They are marked with bumps that identify the road just the same. Every rut is a moment I felt in my body and also when I let them pass as well. It is the moment I knew my grandfather died or the moment I went into labor after the snow storm. It is where I fell back in love with my husband after a hard stretch. A moment I was once again reminded just how good life is even when it is so hard. It is a transition between one place and another.
The gravel is every story I want to remember and others I want to forget. The hard. The good. The must hold moments the and ones that will define my story if I let them or want them to.
The road gets muddy and the ruts get deeper these days in the spring when the frozen water of winter melts with the rain. I feel when the mud forms it stirs the memories that sit here it awakens new pathways in me, in nature, in the ways I see both the past and future.
Sometimes in summer, it will hold the song of the cicadas as I return dirty and sweaty with the windows down and the dust kicks up from the dry days we have had. The car will never be clean but I won’t be mad, it means there is always a journey I get to have every day. An indication there is a separation between going and coming home.
Just some things happening and that I am thinking of lately:
ON MY MIND: Farmers. I mean this deeply. I sat in an education session this week in one of my committee meetings for the conservancy and more than ever I felt the challenges of what it is to farm in America or really the world. I walked away as a slight loss for words if I am honest. I realized how the challenges for farmers and our food system aren’t just complicated but they are dire. Like being in a house that is on fire and it seems no one is really caring. If I know anything though, leaning into buying food from local sources and supporting young farmers is more important than ever before right now. Finding ways to move your dollars local can change things even a little this spring. Get a CSA go to the market in your area. Keep showing up for people working in the soil.
OBSESSING ABOUT: Home updates. I spent a lot of time inside the walls of my home this winter and it allowed me to really think about what I love and don’t like about my home. We are approaching nearly 10 years here this next year and I think I am finally past decision fatigue because we testing paint colors and looking at art and even drapes for the space. It’s fun and still slow, but tiny things are getting updated, but I am glad we are taking the time to do it. If you are curious about what I am thinking and loving I of course keep a Pinterest board.
PRIORITIZING: My strength. I am just over 4 months after having ACL reconstruction surgery and I don’t really enjoy talking about it because this process is slow. Very slow. BUT I feel the last few weeks have been major in the healing realm. I am back into weight lifting to build muscle, light controlled environment jogging, and jumping. It’s huge when I think about the fact 4 months ago I needed full assistance just to take a shower. More than ever I have gratitude for my body and my priorities are different with how I care for it. I realize how important it is to fuel it well, challenge it to do things, and also to rest and give gratitude too. We live in a culture that prioritizes health as being slight and I have learned in this process that is insane especially as a woman. I would rather weigh more and be strong and capable than to be skinny and in capable. I am learning seeing how to build muscle. How to care for myself in new ways and it is giving me a lot of joy and connection to self in the process. So when I say I am stronger now after surgery it isn’t just about how much weight I can move, but also about the mental and emotional things as well.
WEARING: I am always hunting for a good pair of jeans. For the last few years I have a style of Gap jeans I hunt for second hand. As much as I don’t like Gap, I do appreciate that their jeans fit my body well, but instead of going direct, I look for indirect and second hand. Though these have been good, I recently randomly tried on a pair of jeans from Buck Mason and whoa. I haven’t ever found jeans that fit this well and though an investment I was happy to make it since I rarely buy brand new clothes. I will have these jeans forever I believe so I felt the investment was worthy.
READING: Catcher in the Rye. I finished Snow Child while on my trip out to Arizona. I highly suggest reading Snow Child if you haven’t. It was particularly a wonderful story for winter and the ends of it. It was just sort of magical and mysterious and deeply connected to the wildness of nature. Catcher in the Rye now has been a 180 turn but I sort of love how J.D. Salinger writes. I never read it in school because it was on a list of books to choose from. It didn’t sound as interesting as Their Eyes Were Watching God. In high school I had a lot of interest in the Civil War and Emancipation. I found it harrowing and important to me in those years, but I have been told to read this one and since it is quick, I figure why not.
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