Throw yourself a party.

Here's How It Works

1. Gather 5-7 of your closest friends, and you’ll end up with a circle of trusted friends you can squeeze onto a patio.
2. Everyone: write your thing on an index card. The dream, the project, the plan, whatever. Get specific.*
3. Read it out loud to the patio. Watch friends raise their voices to share the many ways, big and small, they can help. You want to run that marathon? A hand will raise: I can offer childcare while you train. Another: I have a discount code for running shoes. Another: I’m training, too, if you need an accountability partner.
4. Exchange gifts. Say thank you.
5. Go forth and raise your hand for others.

Soon enough, you’ll have a room full of dreamers who have all-the-sudden become doers, with the help of nothing but Sharpies and each other.

It’s no small thing, sharing our big things. Asking for help. Saying it all out loud.
You’ll see.

Lately

It’s been work and hockey, hockey and work. There is a thin layer of ice smattering everything east of Home Depot. I’m uncharacteristically nonchalant over the chaos. You know I’ve always had a soft spot for good old-fashioned hockey.

At night, she plugs her nose when she does a pose for the photo. I laugh for days.

—

Me: Last week, I’d meant to book his flight to Chicago, but I forgot the team is doing it this year. I’ve done this before, and you’d think I’d have learned my lesson (Max traveled with his team to Minnesota and, beyond), but this has got to be the third time this year? I blame moving. My head is in the clouds, on my patients, anywhere but here.

—

He: Finally ready for a crazed travel season.

—

Me: Finally home.

Of Mint-Lemonade and Sisters

Well, it happened.

Monet wakes up early, I make coffee, she asks for farmers market time, I say sure, and while I usually know better, while I usually use this sun-streamed quiet hour wisely, while I usually listen to my sister while I cook/burn the eggs, while I usually live my life with my own thoughts, my own direction, my own path, my own prayers, I did something else instead.

I lost myself in the Internet.

I lost myself.

—

There was a guy on the screen. He lived in a new house in WVC and had such ingenious wit and wisdom to share on living joyfully, on simplifying, on living a soulful, sustainable life with a kid in tow, with a fully supportive boss who – of course, I’m assuming here – does not keep track of how many times he calls in sick for work, or with an emergency, or car trouble, or sick child, or parent needs, or the thought that we might actually need to someday! 

He made White Russian spritzers and homemade Pico and knows how to gracefully decline house guests.

He is perfect. His life is perfect.

—

I am no stranger to the comparison trap, not in the slightest. It’s a large portion of the reason I quit Facebook (well, there were many reasons there), and it’s a large portion of the reason I regulate my time in front of the screen. I’m prone to thinking everyone has it all figured out except for me, prone to thinking everyone has it all, period.

No one has it all.
I know this, I know this, I know this.
(Why do I not yet believe this?)

But on this quiet morning, as I sit braless with bedhead, it’s easy to see the guy with the white-russian spritzer in WVC (actually, currently in Jail – need I say more?!).

—

Do you want to know what I did after living with him for 4 months?

I bought cilantro at the grocery. I contemplated new bedding, linen of course. I secretly cursed Monet for not being an optimist like me, lamented the fact that Markus wants to save every single shred of artwork imaginable. I shamed myself for keeping so many boxes of photos, and then I fully convinced myself I could keep them, sure, but only if I hid them in newly-acquired under-the-bed-storage.

Do you want to know what I did not do?

I did not think.

—

I did not sit with my feelings of inadequacy long enough to realize they were not feelings of inadequacy at all. They were a recognition of someone else’s lies, someone else’s frauds, someone else’s fake. Look at him, killing it at this living stuff. He’s soaring! He’s happy!

And in my small mind, I twisted someone else’s happiness to mean there should be none left for me.

—

A simple scenario:

Man on the screen has cilantro. I like the guy on the screen; I like the way he lives. Do I need cilantro to like the way I live, too?

A simple truth:
No.

—

Monet doesn’t either. I don’t need the cilantro, the linen sheets, the under-the-bed-storage (OK, I might). But I needn’t shame myself when I think I do.

(It happens to the best of us.)

—

Anyway, I emailed myself, thanks to the sweet sister I have.

—

Hello!

This is wildly random, but I’m sending you an officially official fan letter to applaud you on the life you’re leading. I know that sounds strange, and I know applause is likely not what you’re after, but hey – we all need a blue ribbon moment every now and then, yes?

I know the life you lead is not without challenges, and I’m so impressed by your self-control, your wisdom, your grace. Thank you for sharing your life with the rest of us.

We’re learning from you, and growing with you, and that’s no small thing.
B.

—

And just like that, with a hit of the Send button, my own visions of perceived inadequacy vanished and, in its place, a deep respect for another human arrived.

—

I read once that, of all the feelings we must listen to, intuition is one of the most important. Intuition reveals what it is we want. Is it great care? A gentle spirit? The ability to gracefully decline a date?

Sit with it.
Learn from it.
Write about it.
Thank it.
Hit Send.

When You have A Terrible

Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

It began with the truck incident.

The parked car in the street, the U-haul in the driveway, a pick-up truck peeling out of the parking lot with less-than-desirable visibility. I blink, thinking of course I could clear the memories from my mind.

I could not.

I scrawl a statement on the police record, my contact information. My mom and Monet watch from their boxes – wide-eyed as I bend to pick up a shattered picture on the side of the bedroom.

It is not yet 2 pm.

I call the number on the brochure, speak with an advocate – apologize profusely when the security officer of the front desk calls back. I schedule an appointment. I shuttle boxes to the storage unit, stopping at the phone store for a new number, phone, email. A phone case from Monet for a week early birthday treat.

Back home, I fuss with my clothes and hit the alarm button to hear the distinct sound of a truck locked in the driveway below.

I unload the remaining belongings – the rest left unscathed – and after I put myself down for a late night nap, Monet and I find ourselves back on the driveway picking tiny pieces of my life from before.

What’s with today? she says.

—

Earlier, it was the heart necklace.

The diamond heart ripped from the chain as I open my eyes to look for the noise, the hurtful ping as it scatters across the room, the temporary panic as it skids toward the vent.

I crouch down, find the diamond, slip it with the spit off my face into a bag, tuck it in my top vanity drawer.

I’m sorry, I say to myself.

—

Earlier still, a miscommunication, a disagreement left unresolved, a looming decision, a fitful night of sleep. The morning-after feeling when you wake, remembering you’re ringless with a scratch down the side of your truck.

What’s with today? I say to no one at all.

—

I have been living at breakneck speed this month, rejiggering calendars to compensate for a sickness here, a last-minute decision there, both on the greiving and receiving end of each other’s mistakes, our own. In a misfired attempt to cope with the fullness, I pounded three daily miles on the treadmill only to develop a bad case of runner’s knee (oh, if only this were metaphorical).

I knew it was coming, the dropped bottom, although I anticipated far less shards.

It was a bad day, is all. It was one of many, smack dab in the middle of a lot of other people’s bad days, in the midst of a news cycle that spins wild, in the center of a hard collective.

And this is how I know to start paying attention. This is how I know it’s either going to change, or it isn’t.

—

I do not feel better yet, not really. My soul still feels a little knocked up, wrung out. Still underwater.

But in all of life’s strange-and-graceful meandering, isn’t this what it takes? A few shards to shatter the surface? Your own small, average mishaps swirling under a slew of larger ones to snap you into the realization that this is it? This is what happens?

Just, this – the everyday mess of life. The tiny moments that drive you insane from inconvenience into sheer gratitude for survival in no less than the time it takes to spit in a face. The dumb stuff that sends you jumping for joy then brings you to your knees, your fingers picking pieces of glass from your pictures.

A whole world, waiting for a whole new world.

—

The next thing, then.

A nap. A book. A text to the girlfriends. A short walk, a favor for the neighbor. Catching up with Markus. A phone call with my dad.  An emptying of a calendar square for Morgen, a filling for me. A water refill. A course correction of the largest degree.

And this, one of Max’s famous knock knock jokes:

—

Will you remember me in a year?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a month?
Yes.
Will you remember me in a week?
Yes.
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
See? You forgot me already!

—

A whispered prayer that I don’t.

Do Not Lose Yourself

We do know each other, the two of us. 

This screen is not real life. Since we are ever so lucky enough to move beyond the pixels, I welcome it. (Head’s up: I’m a hugger.) And ever since we were little, my sister has not regarded me as a stranger, and take my words as such. Think of her as sanguine and spirited. Think of her as someone who exists beyond her thoughts and ideas, someone who is often-helping, always-learning. Think of her as me, today, a host of contradiction and chaos in a static, searching body.

Regard me as a simple, everyday human offering a small sliver of herself to a large chunk of humanity.

I promise to think of you the same.

Write It Down

After work today, I decided not to go home instead escaping with a purse, my phone and clothes on my back, not even toothpaste. I’d gone to talk with a social worker although talk is perhaps a reach to write. Yesterday morning, I woke to find spit in my face.

—

How do I find the time? The real question is a far simpler one:

Is it essential?

We find time for the essential, after all. We find time to brush our teeth, to shower, to feed the dogs, to feed ourselves. We find time to go to work, to go to sleep, to go to the grocery store for milk.

Some of us find the time for other things we deem essential: workouts, hair appointments, Sunday morning church.

And so, the question isn’t how we find the time.

It is why.

—

My only answer to this is that to blog, for me, is to breathe. It is to write it all down without expectation, unmeant for consumption. 

There is no how.

Sit down at your local coffee shop and type out a blog post. Make notes on the back of your son’s artwork, grocery lists, appointment reminders, nursing meeting agendas. Write long-winded cursive letters to your future self in a leather-bound journal on a rainy day. Leave yourself voice reminders while sautéing the onions. Call a friend for a walk around the neighborhood and exchange random thoughts about your lives, your perspectives – the truth as you see it today.

—

Listen, I know we’re busy.

I know we might have children, or aging parents, or needy dogs and grown-up responsibilities and a full-time job and you don’t understand, I’m already in an abusive relationship.

Write that down, too, if you’d like.

Say what it feels like to be drowning. Feel the shape of those words as they land on the page, or on another ear. Understand that this is your life – your gift.

Allow yourself five minutes to introduce yourself to it.

—

It will look ugly.

The truth often does. Our mirrors are all a little skewed, a lot cracked. You’ll be tempted to bust out the gorilla glue for repairs, to twist your words into lies that make you sound like less of a jerk at the end of the day. Write those down, too.

Maybe we’re all jerks at the end of the day.

Choose to be one of the honest ones.

—

So yes, blogging is essential. Writing is essential to me, and I think likely to you, and the how doesn't matter.

But the why does.

—

Here’s to the stories we live, and the stories we tell.
May they be one and the same.

(And may we wake to not find spit in our face.)

Work & Whiplash

I know two things: (1) I love this island. (2) I love this boy.

I fell into a bit of an impromptu travel season this month – three back-to-back trips with a weekend between. Just enough time to empty the suitcase into the laundry cycle, to re-roll and re-pack once it was refreshed.

—

I am learning that one is not in direct competition with the other; that separation doesn’t always mean absence, that these two ideas are not mutually exclusive. That life, mostly, can be compartmentalized until it can’t.

—

It’s an odd thing, to receive the very thing you wanted. To receive the quiet of an empty room you’d wished for only weeks ago. To receive the alone time you crave, the silence you love.

The whiplash of it all.

The release from responsibility in one area, straight into the throes of responsibility in another.

—

It’s about presence, for me, I’ve come to know.

It’s about being gone when I’m gone. Being home when I’m home. Being all there, wherever I am, and resisting the temptation to bow out of social hour because I need to FaceTime.

(Resisting the temptation to bow out of family time because I need to hop on a call.)

R & R

You come for rest, for rejuvenation. You think it might be a nice bonus to meet someone with an answer to what’s weighing on your heart. Maybe you’ll bump into her at the pool, or eating a shaved ice, or on a surf board.

What happens is this: you depart realizing she’s you, and has been along.

(You promise to keep in touch.)

When in Hawaii...

1. Turn off your phone

2. Head straight for Honolulu and book a room at Hilton Beach Resort. Rainbow Tower is rad because it has a lagoon view and is closest to the food. Also, the beach. If you’re coming in around midday on a Friday, you might catch an indigenous meal and smile at the boy drinking POG by the palm tree. Ask your driver if Hawaii likes to party and witness an emphatic string of positives: Yes, yeah, yeaaah, aloha!

3. Curl up under beach towels with fireworks blazing in the sky. Your jet lag will kick in first thing the next morning, but it’s worth it. Rinse, repeat, rinse, repeat. Aloha forever.

4. Try your first shrimp taco (I knowwwww) and add shrimp and garlic to your grocery list pronto. Also, google food trucks on the island. (This one’s the winner for now!)

5. Stake out a spot on Sunset Beach, stay there forever. Do not leave. Sitting in the swaying hammock with warm toes, you’ll feel like you did when you were 19 in Cancun, which is never a bad thing to feel.

6. Learn many things; remember two: (1) everything is sand, (2) except for love.

To my sweet, loving, committed to work kids Preslee and Max – that couldn't come this time, there's always next time, next time.

Want to get more done?

You know that thing you’ve been wanting to do? Climb Mt. Olympus? Finish your basement? Sew that quilt? Get your license? Volunteer at the homeless shelter?

I think you should do it this summer.

(I know, I know. The boys are home. You’ve got that road trip planned. Work’s insane right now. The calendar’s full: reunions, vacations, getaways, dentist appointments. Check, check, check, check. I get it. )

So don’t do it alone, that’s all.

Regenerate

Sea Cucumbers

Do you know of them? Their ability to regenerate, or as 20-year-old Max explains to me, “to grow and to grow again?” Sea cucumbers, as a defense, can release their organs to a predator, slipping away to be quietly reborn in 1-5 weeks. Spending themselves entirely. Allowing themselves to be made new.

Waiting patiently, week after week, knowing restoration is already happening within them. Knowing change is on its way.

They do not sow their failures, reap their mistakes. They do not store away each hurt. They do not cater to their wounds and they do not cling to their scars.

Instead: they spill their guts, surrender their insides, become reborn.

They regenerate, and regenerate again.

It sounds a bit like mercy, I think. And patience. Quietly, expectantly awaiting your own small and many rebirths. Delivering them, then allowing them to deliver you.

The things we keep

& The Stories We Keep Close

Markus is passionate about hockey, record breaking and window-down, top-of-the-lung car singing. Welcome (back) to High School Hockey.

The Person My Family Needs

Morgen, Max and Markus are my biggest priority; my proudest prize.

Motherhood and marriage are hard work and I’m fairly unapologetic about learning to be better at both. It’s an ever-evolving process – one that I do not take lightly. When Morgen was first born, the balance seemed pretty steady. The plates didn't spin too fast; the expectations weren't piled too high. Still somewhere along the way, I realized that – for me – the only plates I truly wanted to spin were the ones that held my family. And then it became easier. Far, far easier. And far more enjoyable. When I stopped fighting for the person I thought I wanted to be and – instead – embraced the person my family needed, everything shifted. Because it turns out, the person I want to be is the person my family needs. I cannot serve those beyond my four walls and neglect the needs within my own home.

Today's Encouragement

On the night of a bad day, I wonder if people truly change. If we’re all just out here screwing each other up or if there is, as I’ve been taught, a capacity for a better way.

The angry encounter peace? Can the yeller stop yelling?

And then, this:

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life?

I used to think this was an old verse about material goods, about how meaningless it was to buy objects void of permanence. You can’t take it with you, and all that. I used to think this was a simple reminder that we’re wasting precious hours adding another chunky knit sweater to our cart, or fretting over our 10-year plan.

And yet, when I re-read it, later mulling it over at the kitchen sink scrubbing steak from the pan, I think it might be about tomorrow, sure, but also yesterday.

why i blog

the things we keep

By day, I change dressings and write nursing notes and input orders and answer emails. I speak to patient's with cancer, say another prayer, brew another coffee. By day I travel the world, or at least the grocery store. I read another chapter and battle another bad habit. I fry bacon. I change my outfit. I refill my water glass and then start the laundry and sing lullabies and search for that ubiquitous missing sock yet again.

By night, I write it all down here.

Mamas

There are few things I consider myself an expert in, but truth be told: if recharging one’s energy with littles underfoot were an Olympic sport (missed opportunity, Greece), I like to think my sister Lara would take home a gold.

Whatever you call it: grandparenting, retiring, mama breaks, “GG” time — it can all feel so, so elusive when you’ve got young kids. More often than not, the moment you’ve found yourself sitting on the sofa with a good book is the moment your children have realized the kitchen faucet sprayer makes for an excellent fireman’s hose.

And so, if you’re in the trenches (or drenches, mothers of said firemen), here are a few photos of Lara with her newest grand-twins to infuse your day with a few exhales here and there.

Small Step No. 7

A Simple Trick

There’s a marketing rule that, to encourage impulse purchases in consumers, desirable products should be neatly organized at eye level, preferably of a toddler. Make it eye-catching, make it obvious. Make it impossible to ignore.

And this is why I’ve stopped placing my phone on the car console.

It was eye-catching. It was obvious. It was impossible to ignore, all too easy to impulse grab. My phone now happily sits in my purse, pinging and flashing to no one at all.

And so, a small reminder for myself, instead:

Place an open book on the kitchen counter.

I’ve been reading through books over and over and over again, and I’ve found that I’ll return to it more often throughout the day if it’s already open, already inviting — right there out in the open, right where my brain has trained itself to seek out my phone.

It’s the simplest shift that has proved to be a more useful, more productive resting place for my eyes – and my soul.

Small Steps: 6.5

There are no shortage of things to work on in this grand life, no limits to areas in need of refinement. Of late, for me? Communication. In specific? Tongue-holding.

And so, a small reminder for myself:

Say what you see.

And sometimes, only that.

I’m finding since that this micro-mantra, this ‘Say what you see’ is applicable in nearly any scenario – in offering (and receiving) feedback, in sharing compliments, in encouraging another. Just last month I scrawled a list of helpful things I witnessed Markus doing – for us, for others – and tucked it into a Valentine taped to the garage door. There it was in black and white: every little thing from toothbrushing to trash duty. He felt appreciated. He felt seen.

I’ve been practicing the art all around town – from noticing my hairdresser’s new cheek color (sidenote: it was pink and it looked incredible) to offering a hand to the grandfather in the grocery store.

Sure, we can say what we think. We can say what we know to be true, and why. We can spend our days lecturing, defending our convictions to others, attempting to talk everyone else into understanding things precisely the way we understand them.

But sometimes, often times, we need only say what we see.

And to listen – carefully, intently – to what we don’t.

Small Step No. 6

There’s a tried-and-true tip I’ve often heard from seasoned counselors, one of which is guaranteed to keep arguments fair, gentle and in-the-moment (rather than relying on cheap shots and past scripts), and it is simply this:

Avoid two words: (1) Always and (2) Never.

There are a few obvious reasons here, one of which being that neither of the above words are often true. Does your son really never do the dishes? Are you really always picking up dirty socks? Is your teen truly always on his phone? And so, as of late, I’ve made more of an effort to steer clear of these mounting exaggerations, certainly in an argument, but also in everyday language, and in my own self-chatter.

It has since, oddly enough, transformed my parenting.

It is no longer “You never finish your carrots!” or “You always forget your keys at your friend’s house!” and is instead, something a bit gentler, a bit kinder, a lot more true.

It is a small difference, the tiniest shift. But it makes for a giant space between frustration and exasperation, between correction and shame, between simple mistakes and complete failure.

It is surprisingly hard to do, leaving out the two words.

Last week, as I'm coming home from work, I’m buttoning my coat and adjusting my seat belt and re-buckling a shoe and starting the car when Markus announces he is up snowboarding with his friends.

Why do you always forget to tell me? flies through my mind, and before I can embarrass myself, the littlest voice in the back of my mind reminds me not to say “always.”

(Sometimes, parenting is little more than training a 40-something-year-old to sound precisely like your conscience.)

Small Step No. 5

Genius indeed.

Max's girlfriend Preslee is an expert in strategy, having studied psychology in high school and learning a thing or two from her own three(!) vibrant, boisterous siblings. I’d long admired how she manages to set high expectations for Max without constant nagging, bribes or ultimatums, and a few months ago, she spilled her secret…she was visiting my home for dinner and as she was helping to cut the turkey, she called out to her boyfriend: Thank you for washing your hands!

No nagging. No reminders. No request. Just a simple thank you for a task not yet completed. And sure enough, seemingly out of the woodwork, Max headed into the bathroom to wash his hands for dinner.

My eyes widened, and with a smile, she explained why it works:

Assume the best. They’re smart; they know what is expected of them and, if given a bit of freedom, will mostly live up to those expectations. By offering gratitude for a task not yet completed, I’m communicating (a) the expectation, (b) my trust that the expectation will be met, and (c) the person’s reward (i.e., a simple “thank you”) for meeting it.

She added: I don’t like to use the word “Please” unless I’m making a request, and hand-washing is non-negotiable.

Genius, yes?

And so, a small reminder for myself:

Lead with a thank you, not with a please.

A few weeks ago, a girlfriend called while Markus and I were listening to (loud) music.

I’m gonna take this, I said, turning down the volume on the speakers. Thank you for being quiet.

Markus offered a thumb’s up, then went outside to shoot a few pucks.

—

Top O' The Mornin'

to you!

Peach Diaries is not a brand. There’s no sales strategy, no newsletter sign ups, no editorial calendar, certainly no virtual assistant. It’s simply a place where I can work out what it means to be human, in bits and pieces, all faults and fumbles. Occasionally, I travel worldwide. Every now and then, I post some photos. Sometimes, I write bestsellers. (Just kidding, mostly, I burn the pancakes.)

3 Things of Beauty

Natalye & Markus

1. During courtship, a male Adelie penguin presents his chosen female with a pebble as a gift. If the female accepts, they mate for life.

2. If you die in Amsterdam with no next of kin, and/or no one to mourn for you, a poet will write a poem for you and recite it at your funeral.

3. You, today.

Small Step No. 4

It’s inevitable. 

You run into your son’s step-moms’ aunt at a birthday party and you know each other, but you don’t know know each other, so you fumble into stilted small talk until someone politely excuses themselves to hit the ladies’ room, or refill a drink.

It’s enough to make you want to avoid the next dinner party altogether (if not for the cake).

And so, a small reminder for myself:

Ask “What did you do today?” instead of “How are you?”

I first learned this trick from a family friend and retired psychologist who says that when faced with a small talk scenario, “What did you do today?” sends the brain into a logical/info zone rather than theoretical/emotion zone. It’s far easier for people to conjure up a list of what they did rather than how they felt, so the conversation flows more comfortably (and is ever-enlightening).

Bonus points: Work will likely come up in a response, so you’re saved from asking the dreaded follow-up question: What is it you do for a living?

—

Go forth and mingle, friends. I’ll be the one by the cake.