Dear Cole,

I’m writing you from our front porch, on the eve of your high school graduation. 

Life is not easy. You know that. You have lived that. It’s not about building a life that is easy–without pain or confusion–it’s about living life fully, completely, and compassionately. I know you can do that because you already have.

You have backbone in you now that will never leave you. You just have to talk to your courage, ask it for a clue as to what the next best step might be.

Talk to me, too, wherever I may be. As Anne Sexton, the poet, said to her daughter, “Talk to your heart. I am in it.”

I’ve lived a good life, a life full of adventure, and love. You can, too. Go for it! Risk discomfort for meaningful experience.

Do you remember how scary it was to disassemble your car and how fulfilling it was to put it back together, figuring it out as you went along? It’s not a bad analogy for how to make it through tough times. 

Or do you remember the story about the time I was learning to surf and was embarrassed by how terrible I was? And how I didn’t want to tell anyone I was surfing until I got really good? And how, at a party with interesting, cool people, I went to shake a fascinating woman’s hand and just as I did, sea water streamed out my nose? I apologized and tried to explain that I had just been surfing, but not very well, and that I was sorry, and excuse me while I went to get a tissue. Do you know what the fascinating woman replied? 

“When I see the surfers as I drive home from work at sunset, I think, what a beautiful painting! But you–you are not looking at the painting, you are in the painting. Don’t ever apologize for being in the painting!”

Aim for a life where you are in the painting–out in the world, trying things, throwing your whole, messy self into it, instead of waiting for mastery to begin. 

There is a Taoist story of an old farmer and his son. Maybe you know it. 

One day the farmer’s horse ran away.

“What bad luck!” His neighbors said.

“We’ll see,” replied the farmer.

The next day, the horse returned with three wild horses.

“How wonderful!” said the neighbors.

“We’ll see,” said the farmer.

Then the farmer’s son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. 

“How terrible!” said the neighbors as they brought food and flowers.

“We’ll see,” said the farmer. 

The next week, military officials came to the village to draft young men to the army. They saw that the son’s leg was broken, and passed him by. When his neighbors came around once again to say “What good luck!”

“We’ll see,” the farmer said.

Only time can tell the whole story. We never know whether something is good or bad luck when we are in a situation.

Trust that every time you’ve been challenged, you’ve learned something. When you broke your foot, you learned to beat Papa at chess. When I was diagnosed, you learned how to be a good friend to Joako. When Covid cancelled in-person classes, you learned to replace the clutch in your car. It doesn’t help to divide life into good and bad events, because we can’t see the future. 

Experience life as it is and don’t fight the moments. Being an adult doesn’t just happen because you turn 18 or graduate. Adulthood is a process of becoming. You have to earn it by facing difficult times with openness and curiosity, not just fear.

At dinner table arguments with your sister, I see how often you are right. I also see how important it is for you to be right. Remember, don’t take yourself, or the world, too seriously. Go lightly. Practice being kind rather than right. It feels good to “win” an argument, but it feels better to boost others up and see them discover what is right for them. 

Recently you spoke about your need to let go of trying to know everything. You said that you feel more comfortable in uncertainty now. The way you put it was, “it’s okay to wonder.” I love that. It reminds me of something the brilliant Toni Morrison said, “Meet the unfamiliar with unflinching friendliness.”

You are perfect now, you were perfect when you were born. It is okay to wonder. You don’t need to know everything, or to be right all the time, to earn love.

Papa and I love you unconditionally, Cole. Go into the world knowing that, and watch the way the world responds with love.

xox mama
more published letters:

• The Sex Talk I Never Got, for my Son
• Dear Cole on your 13th Birthday
• Letter to My Daughter

 

What is the most radical response to despair?

Last night, I didn’t sleep much. I was cycling through feelings of sadness and anger at the stupidity of another mass shooting, this time in my hometown of Boulder, CO. Ten people died, including a police officer. As I write this, I still don’t know the victims’ names. What if we lost a teacher or a friend who was just trying to buy her groceries? (Take Action Here)

Luckily, we are not at home. On spring vacation, we’re staying at a YMCA in the mountains, here to x-country ski and rest. We are safe, but rest is hard to come by. Hazel, in tears, keeps asking, “Why would someone do that?” and “How can we play when others are hurting?”

I stumbled through an answer when we went for a walk, “We may never know why. And it’s okay to feel deep sadness for the victims’ families and to play in the sunshine, at the same time. Play just might bring balance back to this world.”

We discovered a small chapel on the property. We walked in and knelt awkwardly before an empty altar, beneath a simple, stained-glass window. I remembered that in a few days, it would be the anniversary of my friend Lisa’s death. 

Hazel and I cobbled together a prayer for all the families of the victims, for Lisa, for the living who are sad and scared. It all felt too much. My friend Katherine texted me this poem,  

“I am in need of music that would flow

Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips

Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,

With melody, deep, clear, and liquid slow…” -Elizabeth Bishop, “Sonnet” (1928)

Then, outside, Hazel spotted a fox running toward us. The fox was so light on the fresh snow, it looked as if it were floating. When the fox saw our little dog, it stopped. It sat down. It looked like it was trying to decide if we were bad or good. 

“Yes, we’re capable of the most awful atrocities…

we (also) have a fantastic capacity for goodness.”–Archbishop Desmond Tutu

Before the fox could decide, a car drove by. It turned and floated away, its thick red tail waving like a flag. 

We went looking for solace and found it in wildness. 

I also found it in the back of the car: Easter candy and plastic eggs that I bought last week.

While my family slept last night, I hid plastic eggs filled with candy everywhere in our motel room. On lamp-tops, under folded towels, in the mini fridge, between the covers of a book, in boots and socks, and tucked gently into pockets. 

Cole woke up when he rolled over and broke a plastic egg in his bed. 

Half-asleep, he asked, “What’s going on?”

“Easter came two weeks early. At least the egg hunt part,” I said.

“Why?” 

“Because we need to be on the hunt for goodness today.” 

The kids, now giant teenagers, crawled all over the room, and all over us, looking for eggs. They let out satisfied sighs when they found them. The best music was hearing them laugh.  

Sometimes, I get too caught up in the statistics and the dark truths of living and dying. But today I am a little jacked up on too little sleep and too much candy. I feel more determined than ever to celebrate what we have and to be on the hunt for goodness.

Our kids need our help to see the good in the world. Too many of them are struggling to see it. 

That doesn’t mean we have to turn our backs on the atrocities. It means we double down on action. We discipline ourselves to uncover the beauty and the compassion around us. We make it visible. We say it aloud: “See the way young people were helping older people get to safety in the grocery store? People who did not know each other at all?”  

“Listen. Did you hear that our neighbors are sitting with victims, holding space for them to grieve? And Colorado moms are taking action to end gun violence forever?”

“Look! Over here, see the fox and the snow falling on the steady pines?”

We have to work to find the beauty. To make beauty, too. It might be the most radical response to despair.

How am I right now? Awake, safe, sad, angry, and grateful. The kids are wired on sugar. In a minute we’ll head out into the woods on a hunt for goodness. We’ll look for moose sign, fox tracks, and acrobatic starlings, while holding you all in our hearts. 

Once restored, we’ll go back to Boulder and take the baton from our exhausted neighbors. We’ll show up, pitch in, and do our best to make sure lives were not lost for nothing. #BoulderStrong

Love,

Susie

Take Action:

#BoulderStrong

act.everytown.org

#Morethanthoughtsandprayers

 

We declare 2020 Annus Horribilis. And we invite 2021 to be Annus Stupendous! The year 2020 dared us to be human: vulnerable, mortal, and adaptable. We realized how important laughter is to our wellbeing. And we learned that rage and grief are not one-off emotions. They are rough landscapes to travel through again and again, until we spot joy.

How has this year given you a map to find joy, even contentment, within a terrible storm? 

I learned that I am more of a wild beast than a domestic creature. I thrive on spontaneity and variety, connection and travel. I used to feel bad that I needed variety, that I wasn’t focusing on only one thing in my business. But I learned in 2020 to own my need for variety and to embrace it, because it makes me happy. So I will bring that forward with me in 2021 and make it a part of my business plan. My friend discovered that she has zero tolerance for B.S. and for high heels. She wants to carry into 2021 her desire to do more things that are meaningful to her and to wear fuzzy socks in flip flops more. What will you bring forward with you? 

Here’s a fun activity: Draw a map of the year as if it were a landscape, complete with what you learned about yourself. 

• What were your personal peaks? What were your valleys? 
• Where is the quick sand, the place you get stuck in the role of victim?
• Put an oasis on your map and label it with the things that fill you up.
• Draw a couple of rivers of curiosity. Where might they lead in 3 years?
• Don’t forget to include your home . Let it stand for relationships, too. What do you want to keep? What do you want to let go?
• What else could you put on there? The forest of uncertainty? Your 3-2-1 plan? 

(I’ll send you a t-shirt if you send me a picture of your map drawn with enthusiasm and honesty to [email protected]) 

Life is the rarest of gifts. Time is our most precious resource. We have to honor those truths daily by living the most courageous, fulfilling lives we can imagine. To navigate what lies ahead, it helps to have a map to your true self.

If there is no way of knowing what life will hand us, why not do what you love? Why wouldn’t you ask for what you need? Or write that book, study Spanish, learn to play the flute? What stops you? Can you talk back to the voice, to that inner critic, that says you can’t?

We are much more powerful than we think. 2020 showed us that we can pivot and that we are deeply creative and capable. Choose to lean into what you love.

Xo

susie 

***

…to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward

What’s larger within us, toward how we were born.

Look, we are not unspectacular things.

We’ve come this far, survived this much. 

What would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?

–from “Dead Stars” by Ada Limón

***

image credit: Helen Cann from her book, How to Make Hand-Drawn Maps

I wake in the middle of the night, feeling lost and anxious, and ask Kurt, “Do we know the election results?”

“No, not yet.”

I can’t sleep anymore. I get up and put on the kettle for tea. Our teenage daughter, Hazel, can’t sleep either. At dawn, she wraps herself in a blanket and comes to the kitchen. She pours a bowl of cereal and makes me one too. I sit next to her and hand her a cup of tea. The two of us eat our Cheerios and drink our tea in silence. 

“What do we do now?” She asks.

“We feel all the feels.”

“I read that we only have seven years before climate change is irreversible.”

“In my experience, change rarely comes from the top office.”

“Then where does it come from?”

“From the ground up. They say that women are going to decide this election. I think women are going to lead us through the challenges ahead. The old ways aren’t working anymore. Women will create a new way.” 

“With a really old, white guy as President.”

“This time.”

I sound strong, but my heart is beating fast. My breath is shallow, and my chest is tight. I can’t get enough air. I know this feeling. It is grief. 

Fear wins. 

Science and truth and dignity lose. 

It isn’t for sure. Nothing is. 

I need to get away from the red and blue map. I can see it inside my closed eyelids. 

Luckily, my friend Tania knows a place in the forest where we can surround ourselves in geologic time, the resiliency of lichen, and the natural cycles of change.

I leave Hazel and Kurt watching Monty Python’s “Ministry of Silly Walks” and take the dog out to meet Tania at a trailhead.

We scramble up a scree field to the western side of one of the Flatirons, the slab-like peaks rising above Boulder. We lean our backs against nothing but sky and a 290-million-year-old sloping mountain. We stay there for a long time in silence.

The rocks and their lichen necklaces say to me, “All will be well. All will be well.” 

When it’s time to go, we aren’t ready to return home. 

“What if we bushwack up to that ridge?” Tania suggests.

It’s exactly what I feel like doing. 

We bushwhack through dense pine forests and up steep, slippery rock faces. At one point, I have only one good hand hold on the rock. I’m perched precariously. It’s unclear where to put my foot next, or where the next hand hold might be.

“How are you?” Tania calls up to me from the ground. 

“I’m okay right now. Just not sure what’s next.”

Then we laugh at the obvious analogy to the whole nation waiting in the unknown about the election. Maybe that’s how we get through this uncertainty: one hand-hold at a time. And when someone asks, How are you? We can take it moment by moment and answer, We’re okay right now. 

We climb like this for several hours. When the rock is too steep for Leo the dog, Tania goes first, and I pass Leo to her. We scale the rock this way, passing Leo between us, making slow but steady progress. Leo clings to me with a look that says, You have gone totally insane.  Then a raven flies over us, his wingtips only an arm’s length away.

The jagged ridge is in sight. I wonder, Will there be another ridge to climb or have we made it to the top? We crest the ridge and look. It’s a jaw-dropping view. Snow-capped peaks touching bluebird skies for miles. The Continental Divide runs north to south before us. 

The only problem is we don’t know how to get down. Then I hear Tania shout with joy. She has found a trail. We can’t believe our luck. Hidden behind a boulder is a well-worn path. There’s even a sign tacked to a tree pointing us home. 

We intentionally got lost and found our way home. 

On the first switchback down, there’s a Limber Pine.

A rare species whose scientific name is Pinus flexilis. Limber Pines can live up to 3000 years because their branches are remarkably flexible, even in the driest of climates. Their branches twist, bend, and bounce back from the heaviest snowstorms and the strongest gales. 

I hug the tree, hoping some of its wisdom sticks to my clothes.

Tania laughs, “That’s right. We all need to be more flexilis to get through this year.” 

Soon, we are back at the trailhead. I feel stronger, lighter from our adventure. I was unsteady before and now I feel brave again. 

One way through all this painful waiting is to physically feel our way through the unknown, in order not to fear it. Courage loves action.

How are you? 

I’m okay right now.

Love,

Susie

Out on a walk with Leo the dog, I came upon a big, beautiful labyrinth made of carefully chosen bricks and stones. It looked inviting, like something I had to do. But part way in, I’m sure the dog thought, Why do we keep going around in circles over here when the squirrels and ducks are over there? And I thought, This is taking a long time. I have a lot to do today. Can I sprint through a labyrinth? 

I stopped and took a few deep breaths, scanning for an easy-out. Leo sat down. And in that little sliver of calm, I decided to stay in the labyrinth. I thought, My to-do list can wait. Leo can wait, too. I’m here now. I started walking the labyrinth’s bent path again. But I couldn’t focus. My mind kept spinning on my latest health challenges. 

This week I found out I need brain surgery, on the fourth anniversary of those first surgeries on my skull. Then yesterday I learned that my son broke five bones in his foot. Knowing that we both might need operations during COVID and that we will be apart for another five weeks has sent me into a small tailspin with the big emotions of a mama bear who cannot care for her young. 

But as I walked the labyrinth, certain that I was doing it wrong by not being meditative, it started to work on me anyway. I walked the turns and realized, This is my life. It is not straight. It is this labyrinth: curved, cyclical, full of turns and uncertainty. The problem isn’t the shape of my life, but the size of my expectations. I expected my life to be more straight and clear by midlife. But that has not been my experience. And yet that has not changed its quality or beauty. It is still magnificent.

So I kept walking, and Leo came right along with me. Before I knew it, I was standing in the center. I was home. I felt relieved, confident, and calm. Leo naturally relaxed and lay down. I noticed that the way out was back the way I came. I thought, I know how to do this. Back through surgery and radiation and recovery. I ran back, laughing. Leo liked this part and started leaping a little. I know how to do surgery. I know how to recover from surgery. I know how to heal with radiation. I am here. I am still here. I will be here for a long time to come. You can find me riding the hairpin turns, one at a time, always bending home.

Love,

Susie

Starting April 1, I’m running a 30-day journaling challenge that I’m calling The Resilience Journals. I am doing this because I am used to being in isolation. I had to separate myself after major surgery, and after chemo and radiation. 

What sustained me then and now is keeping a journal. Any act of creativity works, but journaling is simple, and doesn’t require a lot of space or time.

Journaling untangles my knots. It wakes me up to beauty. 

I don’t know how it works; it just does. 

I know a lot of you journal already. Some of you began your first journal in my English class when you were sixteen. I say we rediscover the practice. I want to invite you ALL to join me for the month of April. 

Let’s do something creative together, while apart.

It’s an antidote to fear. And a ladder to clarity. 

Turns out that this idea of a 30-day journal challenge is not mine alone. In a case of simultaneous discovery, one of my heroes (and a cancer survivor), Suleika Jaoud is also doing a 30-day journaling challenge. The reason I’m so late to launch this idea is that when I found out that she was doing it, I hesitated. I let my idea wilt. But today I realized that the brave over perfect move is to keep going. I can build a mini revolution WITH her by doing a challenge with you. It will be one steeped in creativity, and in resilience and resistance journaling!

Here’s how it works: 1-11 minutes of free-writing each morning. No rules. It starts today.

I’ll give you 7 prompts each week by email. Here’s the link to sign up to receive for FREE daily journal prompts!

I’ll also be posting prompts each day on Instagram (@susierinehart) and Facebook (Susie Rinehart Home of the Brave)

You do not need to share what you write. But send me pictures of your journal or anything you feel ready to share. I would also love it if you passed the idea forward and invited others to join. They’ll need to sign up for my newsletter at www.susierinehart.com to receive the prompts, or they can follow me on instagram (@susierinehart) or on Facebook: Susie Rinehart, Home of the Brave.

In creative solidarity, let’s write!

Love,

Susie

***

Here’s the link to sign up to receive for FREE daily journal prompts!