Well, I’m just going to say it: We’re moving to the Netherlands.

We are selling our house, getting rid of most of our stuff, and moving to the Netherlands this summer.

I’ve started this blog post about ten times and keep giving up because I know you’re going to ask me “Why?” and I really want to explain why, but it’s hard. We’ve been contemplating this for years and I don’t know how to wrap ten thousand hours of conversation up in a single blog post.

And no matter what I say, out loud or to myself, I am acutely aware of how lucky we are to do this, how we are nowhere near the people threatened by or suffering the most from what’s happening in our country right now, and our reasons for leaving sound a little like a blend of Eat Pray Love (puke) and some sort of DITCH THE CUBICLE FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS weekend workshop in Missouri.

Our reasons are small and material and vast and, dare I say it? Spiritual.

Fuck.

Fine.

We want to live. We want to do something. We want our kids to witness a reality that isn’t American.

Our lives aren’t working. No. They are just working. That’s it. We are surviving. Full stop.

We work and drive and pay and sleep and work and pay and drive and look to the future for relief. Someday. Someday it will get easier and better and we won’t feel like we are spending our ONE SINGLE FUCKING LIFE working and paying and driving in circles, all of it in circles, still living paycheck to paycheck, so we can turn 65 or 70 and maybe retire, hoping we make it that far, ten or twenty years before we die, thinking finally Oh good, now I get to do some shit.

When I say this, I think of how damn near all of us live this way. I feel the privilege of even contemplating a different life. My life as a writer. A house we can sell. No dependents we need to stay and take care of (as in, ailing parents). A family that I’m 99% sure would buy us plane tickets home if we were about to hit the streets of Amsterdam.

I don’t think a life lived in the crushing grind of late-stage capitalism is a wasted life, a life less lived.

What I think is that Mac and I are tired of being trapped in a life that works on the outside but costs us everything we’ve got on the inside.

We want to try something else, somewhere else.

We have always wanted to not live here for some portion of our lives, but when we had kids five minutes after we met, we gave up that dream. When we visited Spain and France in 2017, it re-planted itself in our foreheads and refused to leave. It spun around our brains but always fell dead against another thought: But we can’t do that. How would we do that? We have four kids. We aren’t trust-fund babies.

Eventually, we began to wonder who gets to decide what we can and can’t do with our lives, what’s “immature” and “irresponsible” versus “mature” and “reasonable.”

WHO GETS TO DEFINE WHAT MAKES SENSE IN OUR LIVES?  Who convinced us that this is life? And why and how did we buy so fully into it?

When you’re on your deathbeds, you’ll never regret going. But you may regret not going. Those were the words of my friend Lisa that did us in.

We’re going on a freelancer visa. Mac is going to make & sell custom steel and wood furniture (as in, starting a new business) and I’m going to continue writing and teaching.

I don’t think everyone can do this, wants to do this, or needs to do this for “fulfillment.” I don’t think we’re braver or more profound or harder workers than anybody who wants to do something like this but isn’t or can’t. I don’t think we are special and to be quite honest I don’t think I’ve ever felt quite as exposed as I do right now, telling you this, which is why I’ve waited so long.

Because I can’t control what others do with this narrative. Of course I can’t control what the internet does with any of my words, but normally, by the time my fingers hit the keyboard, I know what I think and I know what I want to say and I am prepared to stand in the truth as I see it, knowing, of course, that I could be wrong, but that’s another topic.

Normally, I have considered and thought through and feel comfortable standing by what I say.

But I don’t know shit about this. I don’t know if it’s the “right” decision.

It’s messy and I’m afraid.

And the truth is, if we fail, we’ll move back. What else can we do?

And so, here I am, telling you this, and inviting you to hang out with us on this fucking adventure. We are packing and selling our house now. This is the first place I’ve ever felt is a real, real home. That’s another post, but we’re saying goodbye to the happiest home we’ve ever had, the brightest, most comfortable place, even though there’s a triple bunk in one bedroom and Arlo’s dresser is in a hallway.

I don’t know how to leave my parents. I don’t know how to leave my friends. I don’t know how to say goodbye to the roar of the northern California ocean and the redwood trees and Lake Tahoe and the vineyards of Sonoma County. There’s so much here for us.

Mac has never lived outside of this county. Not country. COUNTY. We don’t speak Dutch (I know everyone there speaks English but still).

What if it all goes wrong? What if we just can’t do it?

But what if we didn’t try?

the trip that did us in

****

If you read my book, you’ll know this was a dream of mine since I lived in Spain in 2000.

Fuck it, here we go.

You know when you leave a bar of soap in water too long and the bottom gets all squishy and useless, becoming at that point exactly what a bar of soap should not be? Well, as you probably know, that useless degenerative paste is our President. I mean, if soap scum could be a white supremacist, misogynistic, neo-fascist with poor grammar skills.

So everybody settle down with the New Year’s resolution situation.

America, take it easy. Not only do you have slippery soap scum as President, you probably have at least one family member excited about it.

For two years, my American friends committed to reality as opposed to collective partisan delusion, you’ve endured a President who behaves worse than you’d ever let your kids behave while listening to you mother say things like, “Yes, he’s a buffoon, but look at the economy!”

For two years, you’ve wondered what the hell is wrong with these people, how it’s mentally and spiritually possible for them to believe Captain Pussy-Grabber is the man leading our country “in a better direction.”

For two years, you’ve watched Trump hold his Mein Kampf rallies with thousands of gleefully hopping white people chanting hate rhymes, and while you watch them, you realize you’re supposed to raise kids on a planet with these emoji-loving humans, the same ones who lie in bed at night inventing pizza pedophile Clinton crimes.

(Yes, hopping. Whether figuratively or literally, they seem like the type of people who hop.)

And here we are at the end of 2018 and everyone is telling us to “do better for the New Year.” Have we not endured enough without the addition of arbitrary self-improvement requirements?

America with decency, you have done enough. You’ve run a motherfucking marathon barefoot on Legos.

We’ve survived, and we’re tired. Personally, I’m sticking with low-hanging resolutions and suggest you consider the same.

Here are mine:

1. Cut down my coffee consumption for a “more healthy alternative.” I’m kidding. I will however consider buying organic half-n-half for my six cups of daily coffee. If it’s on sale.
2. Continue my streak of occasionally allowing a vigorous unfollow to replace the complex, nuanced diatribe I just wrote to a woman in Minnesota with feathered hair who thinks Nickelback is a good band and Jesus elected Trump.
3. Buy some fucking bins for something.
4. Put some shit in the bins.
5. Fold a fitted sheet once.
6. Wear my gym clothes three times a week.
7. Turn forty in March.
8. Complete ten pages in one of those eclectic adult coloring books of jungles or fish or whatever.
9. Watch every episode of Black-ish next to my children because it’s bonding.
10. Take 150 baths.
11. Yell at my children 2% less.
12. Do not eat simple carbohydrates I’ve discovered in the kitchen between 1am-4am because I can’t sleep thinking about the nation degenerating into steaming piles of dog shit. Eat peanut butter or cheese or something.
13. Convert three more people to the use of CBD vape pens to treat their insomnia because there is no joy like hearing your 69-year-old aunt ask you where she can get that “weed sucking thing.”
14. Only spend thirty minutes a day scrolling trending topics on Twitter then staring out the window wondering where it all went wrong.
15. DO NOT READ EMOJI-OBSESSED TRUMP SUPPORTER #QANON MORONS AT ALL EVER JANELLE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EVEN IF YOU LIKE PAIN WHICH YOU CLEARLY DO BECAUSE YOU CAN’T SEEM TO STOP.
16. Make a vision board of ways Mitch McConnell may face a sudden and untimely demise.
17. Make a vision board of ways we can help Ruth Bader Ginsburg not die.
18. Read books that aim to not make me smarter.
19. Put stuff in my phone calendar and then look at it occasionally.
20. Miss three school commitments instead of five.
21. Go on nature walks with my kids once a month, or put on a shark documentary or stand in the backyard grass or whatever.
22. Recommit myself to my marriage by not divorcing for another year.
23. Try to remember not to let my third-grader wear my “I gave a fuck once” socks to school again.

Low-hanging resolutions, motherfuckers. For Jesus.

***

ACTUAL 2019 GOAL: Write another book. Or something. 

Until then, will you check out the one I already wrote?

Just sometimes, ya know? Like when somebody you absolutely knew was trustworthy – somebody you considered family, somebody you invited into all areas of your life, somebody you would have sworn felt the same about you – turns out to be a goddamn liar without any particular capacity for, oh, you know, integrity?

It’s impossible to write this post without being annoyingly vague, but that is the burden we must bear, for this isn’t a story I can detail. I can, however, tell you this: A person my entire family loved like a fucking brother – a non-blood relative each of my kids called “uncle” – betrayed the shit out of us, lied about it, kept lying about it, lied some more about just in case there were some lies left untold, and then, just when we were about to open conversation with him in the hope of some reconciliation, re-engaged unapologetically in the same shit that ended our friendship in the first place.

But the details are unimportant.

The point is, and the thing Mac and I have been asking ourselves since this happened a couple of months ago, after all the tears and rage and confusion – is how difficult it is to not simply shut down the entire friend division of life.

After a loss and betrayal like this, the feeling of “How could I be so wrong about a person?” is overwhelming, and I question my ability to assess character, morality, integrity.

And in the pain and confusion, there’s a side of Mac and me that never wants to open up to anybody again, never wants a new friend, never wants to let anyone come over on motherfucking Christmas.

As in, friendship closed for business until further notice.

Because truly, how can you love somebody so much and have them throw ya away for nothing?

For real, how can we be so goddamn wrong about people? 

That’s the thing, you know? That feeling of having been hoodwinked, played, taken for the ultimate heart ride. But this time, we included our children. This motherfucker caused serious emotional pain for our children.

And I had to navigate that, answer their questions about why he doesn’t come around anymore, and how much they miss him, and I had to come up with something to say beyond: “Some people are fucking assholes.”

Because that wouldn’t have been entirely true anyway, though I wanted to say it in the heat of my sadness. I wanted to rail and scream and tell them we were simply wrong about this person and fuck him and the boat he rode in on.

But that ain’t true, and I know it. And they need to know it.

Instead, I told them, “Well, he made some decisions that make it impossible for us to be friends, but we loved him, and he loved us, and we had some great times together, but sometimes love isn’t enough.”

Sometimes love isn’t enough. Sometimes it isn’t enough to counteract the brokenness and imperfections of a person, their inability to show honesty or decency or maturity, and you have to let both parts stand. Sometimes you have to accept a person is just too fucked up to trust.

Even though you want to.

I know, I know. “We don’t harm people we love.”

And to that I say, Lolllllllllll. That’s a good one. Either we do harm people we love, or no human on the planet knows how to love, because come the fuck on. Seems to me we harm the people we love often.

I’ve been harmed by AND harmed every single person I love most on this earth.

Seems to me we have love and we have all this other shit inside of us too, parts that do harm, and the people around us feel both.

But with most people, the people we keep in our lives, the support and love and devotion and service is way bigger than the harm, so we can tolerate a person’s humanity, their brokenness.

There’s a difference between imperfect and FUCKING TOXIC AS FUCK.

We gotta let the toxic ones go.

But then we’re left with all the love we shared and nowhere to put it. We’re left with memories of the pain and the friendship, and the confusion of where the fuck it all went wrong.

Part of me wants to shut off, shut down, shove everyone away. Mac and I took turns saying, “I’m never trusting anyone again.” We were joking, sort of. We were being dramatic, sort of. And yet, I see people who do exactly that. I see people hurt by the inevitable betrayal of humans, by the imperfections of those around them, and turning themselves into impenetrable fortresses.

I get it. We have to survive somehow. And honestly, in moments, it’s rather appealing.

But this isn’t a threat to my continued survival, and as such, it’s something that simply hurts, a lot, and makes me question what I thought I knew of people. Makes me wonder what I could have learned, and should learn, and will learn. I look for my part in all this: Where were the signs? What could I have done better? It’s all we can do, I guess. Try to gain some wisdom while also recognizing that sometimes there is nothing we can do, nothing to foresee, and people are just goddamn WEIRD.

I know in my heart that “never loving a new person again” is not the solution. I know that openness to deep friendship is not the solution. But goddamnit, I would have staked my life on this fool.

Bah.

I suppose I find myself making the ultimate choice again, to let the fucked up nature of humans exist alongside their exquisite beauty, and holding so damn close the friends who’ve stuck around, the family by my side—to remind me not only of the fleeting nature of connection, but the sacredness of the threads that remain.

I have never felt more grateful for the friends in my life who exist like rocks, have withstood the test of years. If nothing else, I see that, and it’s blinding in its brilliance.

So here’s to more ridiculous loving.

Mac gave me this card a few months ago, and it feels so right.

***

Join me in January

for the first workshop in my series, and then write with me ALL YEAR. 

“Write Anyway” is for the person who:

• has a nagging question or persistent feeling of “You should write this,” but isn’t;
• can’t decide what to write about;
• constantly hears the “you suck why are you even trying?” voice when she sits down to write;
• is too afraid to write what they’re really feeling/thinking/experiencing;
• is agonizing over what people will think;
• is obsessing over perfection; and/or
• getting bent out of shape for 3 days over assholes on the internet criticizing in ways that hurt (and somehow they always hit where it hurts). Insulting intelligence. Name-calling. Making fun. Crafting Reddit threads against you.

I consider myself a rational person. Generally, in arguments, I’m the one constructing bullet-proof logical defenses of my ego. Err I mean “point.” If the person I’m with is crying or engaging in some other sort of extreme emotional reaction I usually look at them rather alarmed and wish they’d stop so we could get back to the logical portion of the evening, where I’m more comfortable.

Or I’m yelling and flailing wildly, which is how I do sadness.

Alright, fine. I am irrational, but pretty much only with family. Family has the ability to bring the crazy RIGHT UP TO THE MOTHERFUCKING SURFACE with me, but it’s because I love them more than the rest of you (sorry) and since they’ve got my heart all wrapped up in their chest hairs (just leave me alone with my metaphors), they affect me on a level others cannot. I think this is normal.

“Normal.” Whatever.

My point is I’m a somewhat rational, thoughtful, reasonable human who only loses her shit around her kids, mother and husband. Winning, in other words.

In public, I don’t look for fights and I’m not confrontational and usually I just want to eat the triple-cream brie in peace.

You know, at parties. I want to eat the brie in peace, not argue with you about guns. We should stop shooting each other. That’s my opinion. There. Pass the salami.

I don’t waltz out of rooms or scream and yell or demand that you get the fuck out of my house because your opinions and insights make me want to fold up in a corner and weep for humanity. I realize you don’t really affect me, and I can always lambaste you later on my blog, so I focus on appreciating you for something good (like maybe your kids are cute, or you have nice boots, or love to sing. I love singing too!).

In other words, I don’t freak the fuck out when people annoy me.

Unless I’m on Facebook.

But only sometimes. Sometimes I’m okay. Sometimes Facebook removes my brain upon log-in. But I never know which it’s going to be which seems totally unfair because if you’re going to act irrationally there should at least be some warning for it.

Oh wait. That MAY not make sense. Whatever.

The question is: Why do I repeatedly act in irrational ways on Facebook that never end well? For funnies? Okay. Except it’s not fun.

It’s never fun. It’s never once been fun ever.

“Hey Janelle, let’s try that again because maybe THIS TIME it will be fun.”

For example:

The Rage Unfriend: We’ve been friends for a few months. I don’t know you very well, but you seem fine. You like cats and roses. But then yesterday you shared Matt fucking Walsh’s “essay” about how Planned Parenthood murders children and none of their other services matter and that is such a fucking stupid thing to say because HOW DOES WOMEN’S REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH NOT MATTER YOU FUCKING OMG and I have to unfriend you. Immediately. I want to block your ass. I want to unfriend you, lecture you for 9 hours, and call your mother. Wait. No. I do not want to call your mother.

Now, this all makes sense in the moment. I don’t want Matt Walsh in my newsfeed. I don’t even want to come face-to-face with the reality that people READ the man let alone use him as the embodiment of their perspectives. And if you’re interested in blotting out Planned Parenthood we clearly don’t have much in common, and you’re not my cousin sister aunt grandma so WHY ARE WE FRIENDS? Let’s not be friends.

But then again (a day later), I realize: Really, Janelle, this person was just sharing her opinions. There was no threat to you. Not real or imagined. There was nothing. Absolutely nothing. Why unfriend because your politics don’t align? Know thy enemies, asshole.

You could have just unfollowed her and gotten the same result.

BUT it’s so damn satisfying in the moment.

Actually, you know what? Fuck it. One cannot be expected to thrive emotionally in the face of “none of Planned Parenthood’s services matter.”

Okay, but this one. This one is real:

The Distant Family Member Unfriend. The evolution of our “friendship” inside my head:

• Day 1: Oh “so and so” I saw at that family party wants to be friends. Okay. Accept request.
• Day 14: Wow, she writes some really unfortunate shit.
• Day 30: Wait. Trump? Nope. Unfollow.
• Day 45: Please stop commenting on how I can improve my parenting.
• Day 45.5: You have been banished to “acquaintance” setting.
• Year 365: Damn, why do I ever publish anything publicly? There she is again.
• Year 2: Did you just? No you didn’t. You did not do that. You did that. Unfriend.
• 47 seconds later: OH FUCK WHAT AM I GOING TO DO AT THE FAMILY BBQ NEXT WEEK?

Damn you Janelle. A way better option would have been to NOT BE A FUCKING LOON and just let the distant-family-member flow across your FB feed a few times a year and pretend it isn’t happening or repeat a peaceful mantra or stack rocks or something.

But I can’t because I need that moment of satisfaction. I NEED IT.

There are more:

The Rage Block. I’m not afraid of you but I hate you so thoroughly I must block you because unfriending is insufficient to express my rage. Somehow, I feel like I’m DOING something by blocking you. Like I’m really letting you have it. I find satisfaction in the idea of you trying to find me and being like “I can’t find her!” And then realizing…wait. Right. Oh yeah. Nobody cares.

The Heartfelt Discussion with Total Strangers. I feel strongly on this topic so I’m going to share my deep feelings and well-thought-out perspectives, to which Facebook responds: “I’d like to beat you with my barren uterus you fucking cunt.” (That’s a direct quote.) Thanks for getting me. I feel good about this.

The Logical Argument with People’s Logical Fallacies:

• You: If people would behave the cops wouldn’t have to shoot them.
• Me: That doesn’t make sense. One doesn’t prove the other.
• You: Yes it does. Cops only shoot people who are misbehaving so if people don’t misbehave they won’t get shot.
• Me: But you can’t explain a problem with the problem. It is possible that cops shoot people even if they aren’t misbehaving.
• You: No.
• Me: What do you mean, “no?”
  You: You’re a cop-hater. My dad was a cop. I KNOW COPS.
• Me: Okay but the presence of helpful, law-abiding police officers doesn’t negate the possibility of cops who shoot people unnecessarily.
• You: You liberals hate everybody. Why don’t you go back to the country you came from?
• Me: Wait. What. Okay.

Why do I waste my time? Why? Why? Why do I torture myself with mental acrobats leading only to existential wasteland (okay so maybe I’m a tiny bit dramatic) and why click on the story about the baby being put in a microwave so I cry about it off and on for two days straight and question everything I’ve ever known to be true and real?

Why click on the lost-kid story or the killed-tiger story or the latest from Donald IMAFUCKINGFASCIST Trump or anything from the “#AllLivesMatter” crew (seriously just go home with that crap)? The Wendy Williams boobs are for sex only intellectual shit-show? ONE MORE MEME TELLING ME TO GET SOME ME TIME BECAUSE I’M WORTH IT. Gahhhhhhh why am I here get me outta here.

Why? Does Facebook remove my brain? Do I like pain? Maybe I like pain.

I should get off. I can’t get off.

Because cat videos, newborns, and you.

Oh, so it’s your fault. Good. I feel better.

Now excuse me while I hop on over to my hate-follows on Instagram.

********

I teach better than I manage my emotions on Facebook.

Join me for my February writing workshop.

And btw, there are only 5 spots left and this is the only evening version I’ll be teaching of this in 2016.

You know I don’t give advice, but there’s this one area of life I have so mastered so fully (SARCASM MOTHERFUCKERS) I feel it would be a disservice to humanity to not share.

And that area is: LOSING WEIGHT.

Look, I don’t want to discuss feminism or women’s bodies or getting comfortable with my fatness or whatever the fuck else we all sit around discussing. I KNOW there are fat yogis balancing on their heads, powerful as hell. I KNOW there are women super okay with the rolls of their belly but I also know that those women are not me.

I am neither a fat yogi nor a woman comfortable with her belly.

I feel like shit. My back hurts. I look at myself naked and sorta want to puke. I KNOW I HAVE INTERNALIZED BODY SHAMING NARRATIVES OF SELF HATRED.

I’m not proud. I’m merely stating the facts: I am overfuckingweight and I don’t like it. I’m overweight because I eat too much and believe in the futility of eating one’s feelings yet do it anyway because THAT’S FUN.

Also, I don’t exercise enough.

I wasn’t always overweight. While they were trying to find what was wrong with me (during my active alcoholism), they gave me a bunch of psychiatric diagnoses and put me on 7 to 11 different psychotropic drugs at the same time. I gained 70 pounds in 3 months.

Um…..

And I’ve never quite been able to regain control. But I can’t blame that completely. Sure, that’s how it started, but once it happened I began the spiral into Fuck It All I’m Already Fat and started eating with wild abandon.

I’m not particularly unhealthy. My blood pressure is low. My blood sugar normal.

But I feel like shit.

This is just me. This is not a statement on all fat women in the world, or America. Or even my town. Or even one single other person.

I’m sure if I were a better, more enlightened human, I would

A. get okay with my body as it is; or,

B. do something about it.

I’m working on B.

But I kinda suck at it.

Once, a few years ago, when I was about this weight, I got super pissed off and done with not changing and I lost 40 pounds over a year or so and felt amazing.

Then I got pregnant again and gained it all back that was nearly 2 years ago the end.

Nice story, right?

I hate that story. That story can lick donkey balls.

Sorry. I should be more feminine.

I should stop apologizing.

I AM A FAT APOLOGIZING WOMAN FULL OF ANTI-FEMINIST GUILT AND BAD LANGUAGE.

Okay here’s the deal: I’m trying to lose weight to feel stronger and more able-bodied and in less pain AND to feel more comfortable in my body and clothes.

Here’s how it’s going:

4am: Wake up but against my will. Nurse tiny creature next to me and beg him (in silence of course) to go back to fucking sleep

5am: Breathe a sigh of relief that tiny human fell back asleep, roll over to do the same

5:15am: Wonder why I’m not asleep yet

5:30am: Wonder why I’m not asleep yet

5:45am: Meditate with the vigor of a thousand warriors because JESUS FUCK I NEED SLEEP

6am: Fall asleep

6:30am: Hear alarm go off, want to die

6:36: Get out of bed after looking at phone for 6 minutes even though I know that’s a super bad way to start the day

6:40: Do 7-minute workout thing (dude it’s an app and it rocks and I’ve actually been doing it!)

7am: Eat a healthy breakfast because today is going to be a good clean eating day!

7-10am: Drink 47,000 gallons of coffee but without sugar

10:30am: Healthy snack

1pm: healthy lunch

3pm: Drive around 12 small nations to pick up kids

3:15pm: Realize I’m fucking starving

4pm: Realize I’m dizzy from healthy snack deficiency

4:30pm: Get home. Open fridge. Eat something healthy but wish there was something more filling and also healthy

5pm: Start making dinner

6:30pm: GIVE UP BECAUSE IF FOOD DOESN’T GET IN MY MOTHERFUCKING BELLY RIGHT NOW I MAY DIE OR KILL YOU AND I’M SO TIRED AND I CAN’T EAT A DAMN GRILLED CHICKEN BREAST AND SALAD AGAIN BECAUSE BORING AND FOOD IS COMFORT (NO IT ISN’T) BUT IT KIND OF SEEMS LIKE IT IS SO…

6:45pm: EAT IT ALL,REGRET IT

7pm: Realize I basically negated all my day’s efforts because it’s the night calories that REALLY matter and ohmygodJanelle you suck and you’ll always be fat and nobody likes you.

8pm: Get upset with myself for fat shaming body shaming self bashing and blatant lack of self love.

10pm: Resolve to do better tomorrow.

11pm: Go the fuck to sleep

Then, DUDE CHECK THIS SHIT OUT: I do slightly better tomorrow.

That is actually happening and it’s real. I’ve been making tiny changes and little nudges here and there and I’ve lost 10 pounds over the past 6 weeks. What?

Every day, I’m trying to be a little healthier than the last, and if I eat everything in a 5 mile radius during one meal, I try to get back on track for the next without mentally assaulting myself until I’m lying lifeless on a cold stone floor.

And I see now that a big part of this is realizing that I deserve health and attention and wellness and compassion (lord I sound like a fucking life coach), and tiny changes ultimately result in a new place entirely.

And that feels damn good.

So yeah, success. Or something. Fucking rock it.

Slightly more than yesterday.

Do you ever wish you could see yourself the way your kids do?