We are in that part of summer here in Colorado where the mornings are delightfully tempered, midday is hot, dry, and unforgiving. Then afternoons bring a performance of rain sheets.

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We spent more time decluttering this weekend. A few hours spent sifting through a section of shelves in the garage that has been filled with unused items since we moved in. The previous owners, we assume, thought it generous to leave many gallons of miscellaneous paint, among other pesticides and dried tubes of caulking.

It took longer than I thought it would, and I still have to figure out a system to catalog the paints we actually want to keep.

I vacuumed the entryway from the garage into the house and we wiped down the white shelves before putting back what belonged. A fraction of what was there before. What we hoped would be a couple of hours spent on decluttering the whole garage was spent only on this handful of shelves.

We drove to the donation center and saw “our friend” - the girl who wears thick black eyeliner and cool graphic t-shirts under her work vest. As we left, I told her we’d see her again soon. She doesn't know I’m on a mission to declutter our whole house and will see her often.

We stopped for lunch at the Mediterranean restaurant near our house and agreed about how well it “hit the spot.”

Our favorite ice cream place opened a drive through in our area, so we stopped there to taste two new flavors saying “mmmm, that’s good” about each one, knowing all along we’d just bring home a pint of mint chocolate chip.

When we got home, we told the dogs how much we’d missed them. I took a long and hot shower, washing all the dirt, sweat, and garage dust from me, and pulling my wet hair up into a twist before spending extra time applying lotion to this body I am grateful for.

Michael took a nap on the floor in our bedroom before showering. Tonight we’ll eat leftovers for dinner and sit close together on the couch while we watch something stupid. When I laugh especially hard at certain parts, Michael will rewind it for me so we can experience it again. And sometimes again after that. Soaking every last giggle out of a scene that tickles us.

I’ll scoop the mint chocolate chip ice cream into two bowls -his will be blue, and mine will be yellow. We’ll look at each other smiling, grateful we stopped to pick up the pint.

We’ll let the dogs go out to potty once more, noticing the thick moisture the rain has brought to the air, and how the ground and the plants and the whole world feel and smell different having been washed in the rain.

All four of us will make our way up to bed, Tula first, then me, Jeffrey taking his time on the stairs, and finally Michael, having locked all the doors and turned on all the outdoor lights.

We’ll brush our teeth and tuck the dogs into wherever in our bedroom they claim as their sleeping place for the night. We’ll each turn on our reading lamps, clipped to the books we’re chewing through right now.

Michael will fall asleep very quickly while I read next to him. I’ll finish my cup of melatonin tea, then wake him up to drink his too. I’ll turn my reading light off, place the book on my nightstand and turn over on my right side.

I’ll listen closely to the skylights, hoping the rain has returned to accompany us to bed.

And then I’ll fall asleep thinking about how this very ordinary Saturday is another one of my favorite days in this life.

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Could you use some time carved out just for rest? Just to receive, relax, be poured into, and re-center before your week? There is still space in August’s Seasonal Self, and we’d love to have you.

All you have to do to join is register through Venmo, $25 to @Jesie-Steffes. Be sure to include our email address so I can send you the zoom link.

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Not because it tidily packed me into a box, but because it gave me language for who I’d always been.

We have Dr. Elaine Aron to thank for the concept of high sensitivity. Her website is a treasure trove of resources, including a self-test to see if you may be highly sensitive.

Self Test

High Sensitivity isn’t a diagnosis or condition. It’s a personality trait. It’s a tenderness and receptivity that causes us to move through the world differently.

It’s also an extraordinary pain in the ass if you believe you must change it to fit into this loud, sharp world.

Many HSPs grew up hearing well meaning but unhelpful messages like this:

“Don’t take it personally,” “Don’t let it impact you so deeply,” “You’re so sensitive, try to toughen up,” “That’s not even about you, why are you so worried,” “This shouldn’t bother you so much, why are you uncomfortable?”

Some of my earliest memories of my own tenderness were what I call “empathy overloads.” In the 1988 movie, The Land Before Time, Little Foot is orphaned when his mother is killed while trying to protect him. I asked over and over to watch this movie, despite how utterly wrecked I was every time I endured that scene. I felt so deeply for Little Foot that I couldn’t separate his animated experience from my own.

My mom wasn’t gone. She was probably folding laundry in the next room.

But my body couldn’t tell the difference between Little Foot’s grief and my own pain at witnessing his grief.

Stories like this through my childhood persisted. Crying “too much” about this, or that. Struggling to be dropped off at preschool, and working myself into hyperventilation while well-meaning day care workers attempted to soothe me.

It was framed as me having “a really hard time with goodbyes.” I always wanted my whole family together, in the same place, and within view. This was difficult, given the age of my siblings and my dad’s frequent work travel.

In retrospect I realize that what I was experiencing was not just difficulty with goodbyes - it was how my high sensitivity manifested as a child. I needed more transition time, more time working up to departures, more information, more space, more quiet, and more control. I have parents who tried their hardest not only to accommodate my sensitivity, but to celebrate it. I had a much gentler childhood than many highly sensitive people do, and it was still difficult.

So what is the sensitivity in high sensitivity?

It’s often said that our nervous systems overwhelm more quickly and more easily than others. While this can be true, it’s actually an incomplete picture.

HSPs experience approximately 20-30% more sensory data than non-sensitive folks.

What does this mean? It means that when we experience something, we are experiencing it in high definition. Surround sound, IMAX. It’s all louder, more vivid, more intense. And our nervous system reacts.

Simply put: This trait allows us to feel and experience things deeply, and requires us to process things more thoroughly. An HSP friend and I joke that it takes us about 48 revisits on a particular topic to really start to feel like we’ve got a handle on it.

It’s important to note too, that high sensitivity isn’t introversion. Someone may experience both - or the HSPs efforts to reduce overwhelm in their life may look like introversion, but this isn’t always the case.

In working with HSPs and my own sensitivity for the last several years, I have learned one crucial thing:

Sensitivity requires softness and stewardship.

Before I understood my sensitivity, I spent years trying to become less affected. I believed maturity meant toughening up. I thought growth meant needing less, feeling less, recovering faster, adapting more easily.

Learning I was highly sensitive didn’t erase those pressures. But it shifted the question. I stopped asking, “How do I become someone else?” and started asking, “How do I care well for the person I’ve always been?”

There’s much to say about the specific stewardship that sensitivity requires- and many of the essays here on Sated Soul explore just that.

For now though, I will leave you with the arc of what I have seen so far in my own life, and the lives of the HSPs who find their way into my office:

Recognition. We realize we are highly sensitive.

Acceptance. We understand it is unchanging, and our work is acceptance.

Accommodation. We begin to cultivate a life that holds our sensitivity with softness and reverence.

Celebration. We see that this is, truly, something lovely, not only good for us, but for our loved ones, and for the world.

If this illuminates something in you and you want to learn more, I’ve spoken about high sensitivity on a couple of podcasts recently. You might enjoy listening, both hosts are tender-hearts themselves.

If you’re beginning to recognize yourself in these words, I hope this offers more than an explanation. I hope it offers relief.

You do not need to become less sensitive. You may simply need to stop asking your sensitivity to survive without care.

There is another way to live with a tender nervous system. One rooted not in fixing yourself, but in learning to steward yourself with softness.

Whether as an HSP, an empath, a helper, healer, or simply a tender heart, I built a course to help you navigate the framework above (and then some!!) and there are a couple of ways to join.

The Fall cohort has filled for The Way of the Tender. So I added a second Winter cohort that begins in January. If this sounds like it might be the next right step for you, you can fill out an interest form HERE.

I’d love to hear from you. When did you first begin to understand your sensitivity differently?

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In late 2024, we rearranged our living room and traded out my large, bulky, and shockingly heavy buffet upon which the television sat, for something smaller, lighter, and that had no drawers.

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Someone on Facebook marketplace was kind enough to see beauty in the old buffet I had haphazardly painted “tiffany blue” and affixed with obnoxious gold hardware. Everything that was formerly in that buffet went into the box our Christmas tree came in, and slid next to my desk in my home office.

And there that box sat - massive and inconvenient since then. I remembered there were treasures in there, but also a bunch of junk. And somehow the task of going through the box felt too big and too long. So I put it off over and over and over.

Until I could find the most inconvenient time to get a gust of motivation. Which landed on Sunday. I set my phone timer for exactly and hour, and decided I would do what I could in that time.

I used to time myself emptying the dishwasher too. One of my most hated chores. My fastest time to date is 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

I don’t know why I’d forgotten about this strategy of mine because it works so well for me. My alarm went off just as I stood up, having completed the project, with the box now full of donations, and all of the treasures having been rescued from neglect.

Michael was kind enough to stop the (actually relevant) work he was doing to prepare for family who will be in town this week long enough to accompany me to the donate. Gone. It’s gone now, that looming and cumbersome box.

I walked in and out of my home office several times the rest of the day, gleeful at my accomplishment. So damn satisfied with myself.

And what’s most special of all, is that I found my paper day planners dating back to 2011 - and flipping through them (I like to tuck little things in planners - like pictures, and leaves, and other important things) I found a poem I reference almost daily in my work as a grief counselor.

This poem, ripped straight from its book, Salt by Nayyirah Waheed, gifted to me by a client more than a decade ago.

I knew I had it somewhere - and now I have it where it belongs.

May you declutter all that disturbs you.

May you find within the disruption the treasures in the mess.

And may you know the peace of your own space.

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Maybe it was something rigid, narrow-focused. Perhaps naive or unrealistically expansive. Possibly, it was a belief you were handed or conditioned into, that was never really yours in the first place.

Maybe it was something you now know was cruel.

What happened to make you let that belief expire?

What happened TO YOU or to someone you love, or to your soul for you to allow that belief to fall through your formerly white-knuckled grasp?

Expired relationships, held onto tightly for fear another won’t come along. Expired jobs, kept because of worry that the next thing will be worse, or not clear, or unavailable. Or, that there is no “next thing.”

If I was a real jerk, here is where I’d say all of those fears are from a “scarcity mindset” or from a place of “lack.” But I don’t believe that. Perhaps that is one of my own expired beliefs.

Now I know this is often about loss aversion.

I believe in abundance. I believe an “abundant mindset” is so very helpful and positively impactful. I also believe that telling someone to “have an abundance mindset” to solve their deep psychological fear around change, is, well, bullshit.

It’s really hard to reconsider beliefs. It’s tremendously difficult to let them expire. Not only because it requires some replacement, but because it requires openness, curiosity, toleration of uncertainty, and ultimately - risk.

And I think the risk of loss - the aversion to loss - is one of the biggest hurdles.

“If I don’t believe this anymore, who do I belong with, and to?”

“If I don’t believe this anymore, what do I believe?”

“If I don’t believe this anymore, who are my people, and how do I identify myself?”

In my experience, beliefs have expired like the condiments in the door of the fridge.

The Thai peanut sesame dressing that I was, at one point, putting on nearly everything. Now, a half used bottle that I periodically pick up when cleaning the fridge out for the week, convince myself I will plan a meal around this week, and then put right back where I found it. I will do this several more times, over the coming months, until eventually I will examine that Thai dressing just a little closer and see that despite its robust shelf life, it expired 8 months ago.

Because that is what we do with our beliefs - we tell ourselves “I’ll come back to this some day.”

I will then clean out all of the condiments, decisively throwing everything away that isn’t “good anymore.”

The fridge will be new then.

I will feel new then.

What are the beliefs we still let take up space on the shelf because it’s hard to figure out what to do with them?

Or - and this is painful for me - the beliefs that we regret ever buying in the first place because they never really were true for us. Grieving that we ever invested in them in the first place.

I have been doing my own cognitive fridge purging. Deep work with my therapist figuring out what parts of me have held onto some beliefs that have expired. And Fear’s role in trying to convince me it is safest to let my fridge be filled with expired things instead of tolerating the distress that will be required to open a fairly empty fridge until I make it to the market and choose the things that I really want.

I’ve been examining these beliefs in multiple domains: What do I no longer believe about therapy? What beliefs about religion and spirituality have expired? What about myself and my own needs for wellbeing have changed? What about needs, and love, and relationships, and rest, and money, and values, and time?

So I return to my question: What beliefs of yours have expired? How does it feel to name that reconsideration bravely? Can you tolerate that bare fridge for a while as you select the new bounty to fill it?

Maybe what feels like emptiness is just the pause between what no longer feeds you and what will.

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Speaking of reconsiderations, I’ve decided to shift the topics for upcoming Seasonal Self offerings. Moving with the seasons, to me, also means moving with intuition. And my intuition is telling me we’re collectively needing something just a little different for July and August. Logistics are the same - just the topics have shifted. If one or both speak to you, I’d love for you to join.

Seasonal Self

I met a landscaper at the house to devise a plan for the neglected yard. As we approached the front door, we saw a tiny fawn curled up beside the large blue planter that now houses my rosemary.

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It took every ounce of my self control not to touch that fawn. Not to scoop it up and take it inside and decide this tiny perfect thing was going to be mine.

That’s a holy restraint. The restraint that allows us to observe. To admire. To stand in awe. And to stay far enough away for that creature to remain as wild as it needs to be.

The doe and this year’s set of twins are testing my restraint again. I read that a doe’s first reproductive year, she is likely to have a single fawn, and then she can reproduce every year after that, for the entirety of her life, having twins each time. I think the doe that left that baby by the planter in 2020 is the same one here now. She tends to tell her fawns to stay in the same spots around our yard.

Does will leave their spotted little offspring for several hours at a time to forage. Tula first alerted us to the presence of one of the fawns in the tree well in our front yard. We noticed it first at night, as Tula crept carefully and curiously towards something. Michael realized it was a fawn, perfectly still and curled into the protective shape of a kidney bean. We watched with awe from the window and wondered when the doe would return.

When the fawn was still in the same spot the next morning, my restraint began to weaken. I worried that the little fawn had been forgotten, or rejected. “Exactly how many hours will a doe leave her fawn to forage” I googled. “Do not touch a fawn unless you know the doe is dead!” I read. Over and over, DO NOT TOUCH THE FAWN.

Okay, I will not touch the fawn! I wanted so badly though, to not only touch it, but to save it. And there was nothing it needed saving from.

I watched on our outdoor cameras as the doe returned to the back yard later that day and wondered how I could telepathically remind her that her other baby was in the front yard, and not to forget it. She left the fawn there all day, and the fawn stayed exactly where it had been placed, ears upright - disproportionately big for its little body - listening to all the sounds of this new earth.

I found a way to trust the doe and her instinctual knowing, but it is far harder for me to trust my own wild nature.

I trusted that the little fawn arrived with everything it would need to survive. Somehow I struggle to believe the same is true of me.

I doubt my own instinct. My own equipping. I forget that sometimes I am the wild creature I need to trust too.

Last week marked my second “quarterly seasonal reset.” In my first, I learned the holy lesson that I Belong First to Myself.

Somewhere between the doe leaving and returning, the lesson found me. The Divine used both the silent still fawn and its foraging mother to remind me that I can trust my own nature.

To rest as needed.

To stay very very still until the time is right.

To prioritize my own nourishment and wellbeing.

To trust that those who do depend on me in some form can also take very good care of themselves.

And that I can return when I’m ready and well fed.

Maybe I don't need to become something new. Maybe I only need to trust the wild creature I've been all along.

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It feels fitting that July’s Seasonal Self is about Being Seen. I have a feeling that trusting our own wild nature is the first step toward taking up space without retreating.

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Asia Suler, who you can now find her on the ‘stack. Is that something? Is that a cool little abbreviation? I’ll let you decide. Anyways, Asia Suler recently released a podcast episode about the topic of rightsizing. And it felt like soothing balm.

In it, she talks about the ideas of editing our lives - clutter, belongings, “stuff” but then takes it deeper, as she always does, and talked about how “rightsizing” is the pathway for our most authentic and creative self to emerge.

It helped me understand the urge I have had for the last year or so, to (somewhat aggressively) prune my life. Chopping and snipping branches here and there. Some were dead and crispy. Some still bore fruit, but had just become too heavy. Some weren’t even from my own tree, but somehow I was still watering them, and sending them the vital nutrients I needed for, well, myself.

I struggle with guilt about my pruning. I have felt shame before about the “rightsizing” of my life and my schedule, and my attention resulting in many “no thank yous” and how those do in fact impact others around me.

And yet, the need to edit, and to rightsize is compelling and irresistible.

I want my life to feel potent.

I want my time to feel like mine.

I want to do less out of obligation. No more “half-assed.” Only “full-assed” efforts.1

What wold it look like to distill my life further? To let it become as potent as I’d like for it to be? I think it will require continued movements towards rightsizing.

The timing of this all is quite spectacular. Many of my clients are moving through the same work. Examining their lives and deciding what must be pruned. And for what reasons. They are making hard choices to renegotiate relationships. To say “no” to what they’ve always said “yes” to. To trust in themselves and the process of growth, that with that new and opened up space, something new will grow.

A couple of years ago, during one of our trademark Colorado heavy storms, we lost many branches on our established pines. They did their best, but they couldn’t keep all their branches from snapping under the weight. I wrote about my conversation with them here. And I must say, that essay is a great companion to this one.

One of the branches that was snapped, I insisted on keeping as long as possible. It’s a big branch that I hung a hummingbird feeder from. I worried that if we cut it closer to the trunk like the tree experts, and our neighbor suggested, that I wouldn’t have a place for my feeder. But I stopped hanging hummingbird feeders last year. I wasn’t keeping up on cleaning them and refilling them properly, and it didn’t feel fair to attract the little loves for them only to find a sticky mess that could harm them. The branch that was once in service to the birds had retired, but I’ve been trying not to let it.

What remains, is the big branch I insisted on leaving long. And now that branch, a “giving” branch as I thought of it, needs to be rightsized. Michael will love learning in real time with you all as he reads this about our newest house project. (Michael, I love you, my dad will help us.)

There are more metaphorical branches I have had to cut too. Like I mentioned, there are things that are genuinely helpful to others that I have had to stop doing. Not because I don’t care. Quite the opposite. Because I care that what I do, and how I do it is with my whole heart - my trunk - and that I can’t do the things anymore that aren’t direct offshoots of that.

I know I’m mixing metaphors here. Are we talking about rightsizing, or pruning trees? Both. My right size, is to have dead and no longer sustainable branches cut.

That may mean I do less. That may mean I offer less. That may mean I say “yes” to less. But this will mean that that my yeses are real, whole-assed yeses.

Asia Suler talks about physical environment as needing to be right sized, and then mentions social circles too. She talks about how once we get “right sized” in these ways, our creativity and most aligned offering to the world is able to happen. We begin to have the right amount of room energetically to be who we are truly are.

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I have to say, that I think I may have done this unintentionally. Early this Spring, it became clear to me that a long running podcast I co-hosted was no longer a branch I could sustain. It had great listenership, and benefited many people - myself and my cohost included. But it was an undeniable realization once I felt that branch requiring nutrients I could no longer give. I shed my newsletter around that same time and simplified to stay here on Substack instead. I closed down “new client consults” on my schedule for a while and decided I would need to be really discerning about adding any new clients to my practice. I wanted to make sure I could offer my existing folks the best of me. I had to make sure I could give nutrients to what I really wanted to grow.

I released ideas of many of my workshops and trainings and offerings - including “Reiki for Helpers” and “Self Care for Therapists” and “Writing Your Life.” And maybe I’ll offer those one day, but as I read them now, I realize I was trying to create workshops with the titles of the things I actually needed to be giving myself. Yikes.

What happened when I started to rightsize, and to choose a few things to do very well, is that I learned what I’m supposed to be doing, and with whom. This is a work in progress, certainly, but the clarity gained by abandoning the “more the merrier” concept has floored me.

All this pruning and rightsizing landed me at the most potent realization I have had professionally in a long time.

My whole body softens when I read that simple sentence. A lot of what I do is indirectly in service of this mission- but I’m working on making it more explicit, more distilled, and more organized. I’m sure that will unfold naturally now that I’ve set my internal navigation towards it, and I think that gentle direction is part of the rightsizing for me.

Here’s the first beautiful thing to come out of this rightsizing and pruning. The first thing to grow where I pruned some room.

This Fall, I’m offering The Way of the Tender. An 8-week, therapist-led experiential course for highly sensitive women, healers, helpers, empaths, and those who are tender hearted and tending others.

It’s going to cover everything I wish I’d had to support my own sensitivity, and it’s built with sensitivity and tenderness at the center.

I’m keeping it small, and spaces are starting to fill. But there is no urgency here. There is no pressure. If the timing isn’t right for you, a future cohort might be. If this sounds like the next right step, you can learn more below, or go straight to the interest form.

THE WAY OF THE TENDER

INQUIRY FORM

Until I meet you here next, I invite you to consider a few questions about rightsizing:

A final reminder from the season: Summer Solstice has arrived. We are tilted furthest towards the sun. May you feel its warmth, and may you bask in its nourishment of your growth. And may you be ever reminded that the extra light we have is very well used on rest and play.

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Tula watches vigilantly as squirrels approach the bird feeder, and then busts out to bark them away. I’m unsure whether she knows she’s in service of the birds.

On Thursday morning as I washed my hands in the kitchen sink, I saw a little ball of feathers perched on the Russian olive tree on the eastern side of our house. A new baby robin. Old enough to not look wet anymore, but young enough to be plump, helpless, and shaggy-feathered. The mother robin flitted by every little while with her offering to her baby. And that little baby waited, and received, and pooped on my patio several times.

I wondered if that mother robin had to say “stay here, don’t move, I’m going to get you some breakfast.” But that baby did move.

Not far, at first, and both that baby and I seemed nervous about the launch. As I watched her precariously hop back and forth on that one branch where she had stayed so still, I could feel that she was about to move.

She didn’t tell me she was about to move, but she didn’t have to either. I could feel the energy that something was about to give way.

As she finally stepped off, wings flapping haphazardly, I held my breath. She wobbled through the air the six-foot distance to the pine tree. “You made it!” I thought.

I noticed then that the little bird had moved to join her sibling, who had already been in the pine, and had already pooped multiple poops onto my patio.

I haven’t seen the robins since. And I’ve hosed off all the poop. Cleaning the canvas for the next avian artists.

But since then, I have asked myself several times if that mother robin knew that her children would not heed her warning. If maybe that was part of the whole thing.

“Don’t move!” she said, but then left long enough to ensure that baby bird would find herself bored enough, urged enough, compelled enough to move.

No longer able to fight her impulse, she had to try. She had to trust that her wings would do what they were meant to do.

And I wonder whether that baby robin was rebellious or simply ready.

And whether there is ever a difference between the two.

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The Delighting Mini Retreat on Sunday was such a, well, a delight. If you missed it but know that a monthly reset like this would do you some good, consider joining us in July and August.

Seasonal Self

And stay tuned here, I’v got something really special coming for the tender hearts an highly sensitive souls that I’ll be sharing more about in the coming weeks.

Diving deeper into this idea, I’ve examined my own life.

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I think often about the idea of the value of something. “Is that good for me?” “Will that benefit us?” “Is that worth it?” “Is this the right choice?” “Will I regret this?”

When it comes to decisions, I like to think I am very discerning, and I like to believe I hold the choice up in my hands and examine it from all angles.

But I will admit, even when I do this, I almost always land back to my first instinct, that first intuitive bump of what the right choice was. It’s like the mulling around of the thing is a show for a more pragmatic part of me.

I don’t mind the little charade.

Here is what I realized recently. There is a cost for every decision. And not just the “no” left behind after a “yes,” but very specific costs that are associated with what we choose.

I think we are mostly making those calculations internally. Or, negotiating with them repeatedly. I know I do.

I want my nervous system to feel good, but I also want to have the bandwidth, capacity, and interest to say “yes” to all the things I’m invited to by people who matter in my life.

However, those aren’t compatible in me.

I want to have a big huge offering to the world that changes the lives of millions of people and makes a big impact and fixes and heals and rights us. And I also want to go to bed at 8:30 pm, have time to lay on the ground with my dogs, and cook breakfast.

I want a really big life where I don’t care about how uncomfortable a pair of pants or sandals are, where I’m just glad to be on the adventure. Except that I want a lot of peace more than that.

And I think my “simple little life” is the cost of the peace I so desperately desire. My life isn’t small in meaning. It’s small in radius.

This isn’t a complaint, but an observation.

A life full of possibility often costs settledness.
A life full of achievement often costs rest.
A life full of expansion often costs security.

What interests me is that we spend so much time talking about what things give us, and much less time talking about what they require of us. What they cost.

I don’t get freedom without uncertainty.
I don’t get belonging without vulnerability.
I don’t get intimacy without disappointment.
I don’t get peace without relinquishing something.

So, perhaps I’m asking the wrong questions.

Instead of asking:

“What is this costing me?”

What if I asked:

“What cost am I relieved to be paying?”

For example:

My peace costs me some excitement. My boundaries cost me some approval. My slower pace costs me some productivity. My healing costs me certain versions of myself.

And still, I’d choose them again.

So maybe the question is what life is it that you want? What do you know it will cost you? And when the bill arrives, will you still pay it?

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There are just a couple of spots left in this Sunday’s Delighting Mini Retreat. I’d love to have you. Learn more here.

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“Just in the nick of time!” I say, (like a dork) with my fist pumped in the air.

To catch you up - I’m writing a series of essays compiling a survey I sent out asking you all to help me avoid a midlife crisis when I turn 40 in September. You can read more here. This is the fourth in that series, but you can catch up here, here, and most recently, here.

Diving back in to the survey responses this week, I was struck by a synchronicity that thumped me right between the eyes.

Here is what I asked the Acorns (under 40):

What do you imagine will change when you turn forty? Emotionally, physically, socially, professionally - anything.

There is some level of certainty in these hopes. A longing for a certainty, alongside a knowing that it may not be so clear. There is a sense of waiting in the Acorns’ responses that I relate to so deeply to that it makes me nauseous.

I’ve said before that I want forty to be an initiation. A threshold, a doorway, an “edge” as the name of this series implies. But the deeper I dive into this, I realize that the longings us Acorns might have pinned onto forty may already be washing over us.

Here is what the Oaks had to say:

What got better in your forties that no one really talks about? This could be something emotional, relational, physical, professional, or internal.

There is wisdom in these answers - of course. The Oaks are wise, sturdy, and rooted. But what strikes me is there is no mention of certainty here. Heaps and heaps of knowing, confidence, and awareness - but no certainty. And it thrills me.

The Oaks speak of shedding what doesn’t matter. What no longer works. What has launched, what is ripe and ready to fall from the branch.

There is permission here. Permission to become, to learn, to un-become and unlearn. The invitation in this permission feels to me like “Are you ready to allow yourself to be the most you, that you’ve ever been?”

And doesn’t that kind of emergence require permission more than certainty?

The seed that has burrowed into me in compiling this piece is simply that. I do not need to know certainly. I just need to give myself permission to unfold into forty and beyond.

And maybe it’d be nice to start that today, fellow Acorns?

Here is our collaboration, sweet friends:

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There are just a couple pieces left in this series, and they’ll land in your inbox in the coming months. In the meantime, I just want to thank you. For reading, for contributing to this series, and for being here.

I’d love to connect with you over the summer - and there are a few ways to do that.

Isn’t it true that if we love someone we should try to not hurt them?

Isn’t it true that we’ll live a hundred, or thousand lives within this one if we let ourselves?

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Isn’t it true that we don’t deserve dogs, but somehow they stay with us?

Isn’t it true that we have to work really hard to become who we really are?

Isn’t it true that we can only really, truly, find ourselves if we have enough solitude to even see what’s going on in our internal world?

Isn’t it true that we all have that phase we went through that just makes us cringe?

Isn’t it true a future version of ourselves may think we’re in one right now?

Isn’t it true we all have the dreams we tell people are our dreams, but then we also have the ones that are so big, so lavish, so foolish that we couldn’t possibly speak them out into the universe?

Isn’t it true we all have a favorite part of our body? And a least favorite too?

Isn’t it true there’s something you’ve done, or thought, or wished for that you would hate for anyone to ever know?

Isn’t it true that when you were little you were so divinely perfect and then something convinced you that you weren’t?

Isn’t it true how that first heartbreak really hurts like a son of a bitch.

Isn’t it true how the second one does too?

Isn’t it true how it’s hard to be a human, and even harder to talk about how hard it is to be a human?

Isn’t it true how we’re all varying degrees of afraid of that one thing that’s going to happen to us all, and has happened to some we’ve loved?

Isn’t it true how that song can pull you back to when you were at 12 or 21, or 35, or whatever age you were yesterday?

Isn’t it true we’re just trying our best?

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I’d love to hear from you. What are you hypotheses? What do you know to be true?

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Suffering though - that, we understand deeply, intimately, and thoroughly.

We explain our suffering to ourselves with precision. Study it, turn it over in our hearts repeatedly, painting all its edges with our own fault.

Of course, there are reasons for this. For this bizarre ownership. It helps us avoid a dangerous fate in the future - or so we believe. It even helps us prevent the suffering of others from happening to us.

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The belief begins like this: “That happened to me because…” and then we fill that sentence in with something easy for our mind to grab. We complete that mental “loop” with something accessible, so that we can move on.

But we often aren’t filling it with something true.

“That happened to me because…I deserved it.”

“I am suffering because…I’m bad.”

“That happened to them because…they weren’t cautious.”

“They are suffering because…of their own choices.”

This “loop completion” can then give us an entire skeletal belief system that we build upon. Collecting other beliefs that reinforce how we “deserve” the hard things that have happened. Or the belief that if we stay careful enough, suffering will not find us.

We enter into this repeated and intimate relationship with our own blame and suffering and then wonder why the world, and our lives feel narrowly focused, bleak, and cast in grey.

Delight has been there all along. But we have become afraid of it.

To fully sink into delight (or contentedness, or whimsy, or play for that matter) requires surrender. A surrendering of the laser focus we’ve had on the horizon.

I believe that necessary surrender feels too close to the powerlessness we may have been facing in suffering, so our brow furrows, our stomach turns, our muscles brace and we say - “This is too dangerous, I have to get out of here.” Perhaps it’s someone telling us they love us and instead of softening, we begin searching for the moment they might leave.

It’s there that we find ourselves having run from delight, or even peace - and having run through a maze of fear and landed right back at suffering.

Delight requires trust. Trust in the belief that we might just be safe enough to stop scanning for danger, and to pick that wildflower at our feet.

Sometimes the suffering has been so extensive, or so repeated (a succession of losses, a childhood of trauma or abuse, a string of catastrophes) that we have learned to trust the nature of suffering more than the nature of repair.

“The devil you know…” you might be muttering under your breath.

To “heal” requires several things. And the real gag of it all is that those several things are specific to each person. But, one common ingredient, according to yours truly, is the willingness to try and trust something other than suffering.

Trust neutrality if you need to.

Or irony.

Trust that you are in some tragic comedy of errors, perhaps.

I know that what I’m suggesting may feel like a tall order. To trust that there is goodness in the world, and your life.

I will let you in on a little secret though. You already have the tool. You’ve been using it well, and it’s already something you’re good at.

That same skill that helps you scan the horizon looking for threat? It can also help you find the ripest strawberries by smell at the grocery store.

That keen observation can help you celebrate when you and your new friend both quote the same movie.

Or to notice how you and the grocery store employee are both quietly singing the song playing on the overhead speakers.

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We’re not reprogramming. We certainly need to be able to scan for threat. What we’re doing is asking, “Can you help me notice this too?”

And it’s in noticing more - a fuller story than only what has been hard and sorrowful - that we begin to trust more than pain.

We can then trust our pain and our pleasure, in equal measure.

Bad things have happened to you because bad things happen in this world. To all the people. In varying degrees and amounts.

And the good things have happened to you for the same reason. And will continue to happen to you. And me too. And them, and us all.

I’m inviting you into a space where we can say “there is so much suffering here - and yet…”

And then, what unfolds after that “yet” is a “holiness that exists in everything.” And only YOU can decide what that will look like for you.

I want to leave you with a poem. The first and last lines of which I repeat to myself frequently.

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If you have found yourself scanning for more danger than pleasure, I invite you into the sacred space of Seasonal Self. There, we leave our metaphorical shoes at the door, gather in gentle community and learn what the season has to share with us.

The next chance to join us is for the Delighting Mini Retreat. It’s starting to fill, but there is room for you and all your delight.

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Sit down.

Ideally outside, but definitely away from any electronics.

Get quiet. And then when it feels very quiet, take even more time to get quieter.

Notice what it feels like to be alive. How you have a brain that’s thinking thoughts, and lungs that are breathing air. Consider the muscles and bones of you, allowing you to stay so perfectly still.

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Before you even begin to consider your decision, say “thank you.”

To this life, to your life. To your body. To your Creator. To the energies and love and all the tiny choices and decisions that brought you here to begin with.

And then once you’ve said your thanks, bow your head ever so slightly and exhale all the things that make this complicated.

Invite Doubt to exit and smile as he does.

Watch as he holds the door open for Curiosity to enter. Watch as she sits down, unpacks her things, and slips off her shoes.

Cross-legged, she’ll sit across from you and ask you to lay out all the options.

She’ll listen, and your only job is to say everything. To lay it all out before her like puzzle pieces. And she’ll ask questions that both perplex and delight you.

You’ll notice how the asking of Curiosity’s questions feel more like balm than an answer ever could.

You’ll take turns putting pieces together - the parts you already know creating the border of the puzzle.

You may have to hold pieces up - these persistent little questions - and ask yourself if they even belong to this puzzle. If they don’t, set them aside.

Hold up to your heart the most pressing pieces. The best questions. The ones that probably don’t have answers. Press them there to your beating chest and see what happens.

Notice if the soft body of you wraps around the possibility, or recoils. How does it feel? This thing, sandwiched between your palm and your heart? Does it belong to you? Does it belong in you?

Those are the pieces that are yours to find a home for.

Piece them together, rotating them in your fingertips until the edges softly press together.

The picture of clarity you find at the end, will look nothing like you expected. It’s unlikely to be one of the “thises” or “thats” you once held side by side in clammy palms.

It’s likely to be something strange but deeply rooted in you. Something ancestral and new, all at once. It’s likely, that this knowing that Curiosity has helped you discover will surprise you both.

And then Curiosity will excuse herself to make you both some lunch. Just then is when, you’ll hear the knock at the door of your soul and find Trust.

Ready to companion you as you take the risk on your own knowing.

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I can’t wait to see you in May’s Seasonal Self gathering. And hopefully again in June for the “Delighting” Mini Retreat.

There is also something tender and long-awaited on the horizon for Fall.

Think: small-group course centered around deep reflection, gentle pacing, and meaningful integration. I’m creating this with Tender Hearts and Highly Sensitive women at the center of it all.

Those joining us for the June mini retreat will be the very first to hear what’s unfolding and will get early access to sign up.

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For a moment, I forget I’m the therapist.

I forget we’re “doing therapy” (whatever that means.)

Because suddenly, I’m listening to an expert.

And the expert is them. And so is the topic.

The title of this essay is one such occurrence. When a client said something that’s now been on a sticky note on my desk for several months.

“I want good things for myself.”

Yes! Don’t we? Aren’t we allowed to?

In choices and decisions. In prioritizing and aligning our actions with our values. Aren’t we allowed to “want good things for ourselves?”

I know that you know that I’m not talking about “things” in the way we might think of handbags and watches, caviar, and private jets. Although you’re welcome to want those too.

Because that changes how we make choices, doesn’t it? If we want good things for ourselves, maybe we do hold those boundaries like they’re essential - because they are. If I want good things for myself, I make choices that bring those good things in. I carve out time, and space. I make decisions based on what I know is right for me. I care less what people think about me or my choices.

Not because they don’t matter - but because I am choosing good things for myself, and I can trust that they will do the same.

I think there’s also a wild amount of self-love and self-care in this wisdom. “I want good things for myself” feels like the beginning of a sentence.

That maybe finishes with:

…because I love myself.

…because I’m allowed to want more than survival.

…because it’s time.

…because I believe my life can feel different than it has.

…because I trust myself.

…because I’m willing to build a life that can hold them.

…and I want good things for you too.

Wanting good things for ourselves doesn’t necessarily change what we have.

It changes the orientation of our lives. Like a compass recalibrating. Subtle, but steady enough that over time, we find ourselves somewhere new. It gives access to direction, not certainty.

So I’ll leave you with this:

Do you want good things for yourself?

You’re allowed to.

I certainly want them for you.

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Speaking of good things, I’d love to see you in May’s Seasonal Self gathering. Or, to have you join us in June for the “Delighting” Mini Retreat.

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Speaking of…my favorite Oak of all time turned fifty last week. Happy Birthday, Michael. This new decade looks fantastic on you.

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As a grief therapist, I’m no stranger to the sadness, sorrow, and even fear that arises as a result of loss. And, I have a uniquely blessed experience of also seeing how grief opens people up. It expands them, alters them, and irreversibly softens them in ways that really can’t be replicated otherwise.

To catch you up - I’m writing a series of essays compiling a survey I sent out asking you all to help me avoid a midlife crisis when I turn 40 in September. You can read more here.

This is the third in that series, but you can catch up here, and here.

So, I was excited to see what our Oaks would have to say in response to this question:

What did you have to grieve or let go of around this age? A role, an identity, a dream, a version of yourself, a relationship with your body, etc.

It continues to fascinate me how us Acorns have fears that are deeply steeped in cultural narratives, versus the lived truth of the Oaks. Simply put, we do have some grief to prepare for as we transitions from Acorns to Oaks, but it doesn’t seem to be the specific flavors of loss we fear.

I asked the Acorns:

What fears do you carry about aging into your forties?

I resonate so deeply with every one of the fears shared by the Acorns, and also see so much bravery in the work the Oaks have done.

This set of questions, perhaps more than any others I asked makes me picture standing on one side of a canyon, or gap, and being encouraged by the one on the other side to “Jump! You can make it!”

Or perhaps it’s the image of an outstretched hand, offering stability as we navigate moss-covered slippery rocks across a river. Their hands aren’t there to keep us from slipping - but to keep us from drowning when we do inevitably slip into the river of grief.

And perhaps most of all, these questions feel like the Oaks gently reminding us to slow down. There is enough time for us, and urgency doesn’t add to growth.

We are growing and becoming in our own time - grief and all.

Here is this week’s collaboration:

I hope you’re enjoying this series as much as I am. It’s been such a pleasure so far to watch the intergenerational conversation happening here. Many of the generous souls who have contributed to the Edge of Forty can be found in the monthly Seasonal Self gatherings - in case you’d ever like to share some space with these wise folks.

As always, I’m grateful to be here, and grateful to each of you for letting me show up in your inbox each week.

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That becomes my lunch, and on those days - that meal is a mid-day efficiency and nothing more.

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On a recent sweet-potato-for-lunch day, I remembered lunches I had in high school.

My friends and I would all file into my little school’s cafeteria and unbox our lunches. On the days when my mom would make my lunch, I’d struggle to unzip the full to the brim lunch box, filled with a bounty inside. What I’d often find was a few napkins wrapped around a fork, some chips that had been delicately placed in a baggie so they wouldn’t be crushed, and a tall, hefty, foil-wrapped sandwich. Sometimes there was a cookie or two, and often a string cheese and a container of fresh fruit, cut into manageable pieces.

On some of my favorite occasions, there would be a banana that she’d written a love note onto - in pen, right onto the peel. It felt a little illegal somehow, and it thrilled me.

I’d notice the lunches of my friends - microwavable meals, flattened PB&Js pulled from even flatter brown sacks.2 Often, my meal-mates would oooh and ahh at the lunch I unboxed.

And in those moments, I’d feel really exposed.

Recently, I realized that what I’d felt was the observation of being loved in a very real, and specific-to-me way. I wasn’t just unboxing my lunch. I was pulling out evidence. Evidence of being considered and thoughtfully loved. The opposite, really, of a sweet potato efficiency lunch.

The exposure I felt was the feeling of having something really, really good. Something easeful and supportive. And that feeling has actually often made me feel pretty bashful.

Not because I don’t think I deserve it.

But because I think everyone should have access to it.

I had the chance to re-encounter this experience in 2015 when Michael and I took a roadtrip to Texas. My mom offered to pack us some food for the drive, and we gratefully accepted. As he opened the cooler, we found plump, thoroughly washed grapes, pulled from their vines for easy grab and snacking - adorned with little snips of mint throughout.

We stopped for a picnic lunch and ate my mother’s homemade chicken salad with washed, crispy lettuce leaves on fresh baguette.

Michael and I still talk about how hers is our favorite chicken salad - and having it that day specifically was the best it’s ever tasted.

I didn’t feel as exposed or bashful of the bounty that day. In part because Michael didn’t question why it’d been given to us. He didn’t ask “who, us?” or “what did we do to deserve such thoughtfulness?”

He just thanked the maker and gobbled it right up - as intended.

I’ve come to understand that this kind of care leaves us emotionally naked.
The kind that says: I know what you like. I thought about you when you weren’t there. I used my time on you.

It’s less familiar than giving. That very specific flavor of feeling when a whole room is singing you “Happy Birthday” or you listen to a voicemail on speakerphone and it’s your Sweetie saying how much they love you and your friends get to hear how adored you are by your beloved.

As always, thank you for being here with me. And if you’d like to connect a little more closely and in real time…I’d love to see you at a Seasonal Self gathering….check out what’s coming up as the warmer months announce themselves more assertively.

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No, that’s not quite right.

The better I know myself, the more I see what I can’t tolerate.

Mmm, still not quite.

The more honest I am with myself, about myself, the more I understand where and in what I do and do not belong.

Long-winded, but yes.

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On a chilling snowy night this Winter, I met two girlfriends for dinner. We huddled together over cheesy bread and hopes for the year. We shared about the podcasts we’d been listening to, things we’d learned, and goals we had.

Throughout this dinner, one of my friends shared with us about a yoga teacher offering steeply discounted online yoga teacher training. The energy of inspiration and the perpetual belief that I should do more trainings took me over and I signed up right then and there, before dessert cannoli even hit the table.

During my “12 magical nights” ritual in December, one of the wishes I wrote down that was burned and offered up to the Divine to take care of for me was “I have clarity about yoga teacher training.”

“This is it!” I thought. An affordable, self-paced, online program for yoga teacher training.

The course opened at the beginning of February and I dutifully began to work my way through the requirements.

And I have hated every moment of it.

Except the requirement to do yoga. That, I have enjoyed.

Here is where historically, I would tell you about my perception of the flaws in the online program.

But I don’t have to deem something “not good” to determine that it is not for me. I do not have to demonize, villainize, or hate something to know I don’t want it.

The training feels chaotic, impersonal, and confusing - to me. And I realized that’s not working for me because yoga is where I meet the most peaceful, attuned, and clear version of myself. I will need a training that feels that way.

I am working on undoing this pattern in me that has served as justification for my own knowing before.

The pattern has looked like this:

1. Something doesn’t feel right. A program, a training, a relationship, a job, a request. I feel it, often in both my gut and my head. A tension in my belly, and a fogginess in my mind.

2. I know it’s not for me. Like deeply in my core know it’s a “no.”

3. I believe that’s simply not enough of a reason. So I begin my mission to find all the ways that the thing is inherently flawed, disorganized, out of line, inappropriate, or not enough.

4. I feel justified to say “no.” (but also feel judgmental, non-generous, cowardly, and not truthful - so then have to deal with that.)

I know I’m not the only person who does this. I actually think it’s likely a limb of my high sensitivity. I think we, as HSPs often decide between “I’m bad” or “It’s bad” as the two option to explain a lack of fit or want.

I don’t believe this is intentional, I think it’s simply how us Tenders make sense of the conditioning to people please.

What I’m working on now is leaning into step 1. Attuning to my knowing in step 2. Then pausing for maybe a step 2.5 that says “Thank you, but this isn’t for me.”

Maybe that’s what more fully expressed high sensitivity can look like. The ability to say that something isn’t for me without degrading myself or the thing that doesn’t fit.

The real invitation in this yoga teacher training disappointment has been to ask myself better questions. Questions like “Why am I drawn to yoga at all?” “What excites me about the idea of a yoga teacher training?” “What about me needs to be considered in how I select what I participate in?”

And maybe the broader question I am trying to ask myself is “can my knowing be enough?”

Yes. I believe it can.

I guess my wish in December for “clarity about yoga teacher training” is actually coming to me as clarity about myself.

And isn’t that something?

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PS. If I ever do go through the right-for-me yoga teacher training, and then I find myself teaching, in person or online, I imagine I would start each class sitting down gently and I would say to each of the souls in my class:

“Thank you for bringing yourself here today. For bringing your mind, and your heart, and your body. I love them all, and I love all of you.”

And then about 50% of the time, I’d cry because it would feel just so tender to be doing that together.

“I want to hear about exactly that!” I told her.

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We went on to talk about how we are so often defined relationally. So much so, that we can move through whole seasons of our lives not really knowing who the “we” we are becoming even is.

I went back into the messages from the Acorns and Oaks, and saw that this theme was certainly woven there. It sounded a lot like hopes that forty and beyond would bring a magical sense of knowing thyself. And surprisingly, many of our Oaks confirmed that there is some element of magical emergence that happens as we age.

I found it interesting that what the Acorns (under 40s) pictured for someone in their 40s was not the same as what they hoped for themselves in their 40s:

They were asked:

What do you hope might begin at forty? (A freedom, clarity, confidence, or shift you suspect might come with age.)

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These ideas are wild, free, unshackled, and grateful. We want to liberate! But we also fear that fiery desire dwindling under the weight of life and relationships. There seems to be a choice point here.

When you picture someone in their forties, what comes to mind? (Images, assumptions, stereotypes, or role models.)

We hold the knowing that with age comes knowledge, and a seasoned-ness, but in the other hand, pressure to “do it right” and appreciate what we’ve got while we’ve got it.

So what say the Oaks?

What did you finally stop managing or trying so hard to be? (A pressure you dropped, a performance you abandoned, a freedom you claimed.)

My takeaway here is that the threshold of forty- and then beyond invites a pruning and an unlearning. The invitation to let the juiciest and ripest of our fruits to be eaten instead of hoping they are going to delight the trees around us.

A shedding of roles, pressure, and management of self.

This energy is relief, quiet (and loud) rebellion, a deep and full exhale. And damn, does that feel good.

Here’s this week’s collaboration:

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One more thing. If you’d like to do the work of orienting towards what really matters to you - no matter if you’re an Oak or an Acorn, I invite you to join us this Sunday for Seasonal Self. The folks who come on Sunday will be the first to know about our virtual summer mini retreat, so you won’t want to miss it.

Learn More Here

A time explicitly set aside to forget I am anything to anyone except myself.

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I also decided I probably needed to make them as low effort as possible, so that the stress of travel, packing, and all that comes with a “getaway” was avoided.

I just had my first one of the year last week. I spent time in a few of my favorite places, and intentionally didn’t touch my laptop until now as I am writing this.

I ate good food, and took myself to lunch. I sat in the sun. I slept in. I worked out. I met up with a couple of friends. I scratched and kissed and sniffed my dogs.

But mostly, I forgot I was anything to anyone except myself.

Just before sitting down to write this week, a friend sent me a video referencing the impact of emotionally focused one-on-one work and how draining it can be compared to purely physical labor.

This resonated deeply.

Burnout for me has never been about having to get up early, keep a schedule, write notes about clients, or figure out what we’ll have for dinner. It’s not been about getting everyone scheduled, keeping my office tidy, or washing my sheets regularly enough.

Burnout for me happens when I have given away too much of myself emotionally, energetically, and spiritually.

Just as we each have specific conditions that lead to our healing, I believe we each have specific conditions that lead to our withering too.

And here’s the hardest part for me about burnout - the pathway there is paved in empathy, love, good intention, and my belief that people can heal!

The turn in that road - where the birds go silent, the sky becomes overcast, and the tree limbs start to gnarl, is when I believe it is me who is responsible for that healing.

And I don’t just mean my clients.

I am very good at getting my little snoot all up into other people’s healing business.

“How’s your anxiety been lately?” I’ve asked lawn care professionals before.

“Do you think your daughter might be highly sensitive and that’s why she does that?” I’ve asked a flight attendant.

“You know, IFS would probably be such a good fit for you.” I’ve offered to anyone who has mentioned feeling any sort of duality at all.

My burnout is my own doing, almost always.

It’s my own exhaustion of being perceptive in a world that doesn’t have built-in boundaries for that perception.

And I’m actually not going to beat myself up for that or even lament here.

I love who I am, and I love that I’m weird and nosey and bizarre and odd and that I want to know why your dad said that thing to you when you were 25, and what keeps you thinking about it still.

But I also need to take better care of that part of myself. I owe myself my own weird interest.

I owe it to myself to forget I am anything to anyone except myself.

And my answer isn’t to “shut off” that perception (because we can’t), but it’s to create sacred intervals where it doesn’t get to define me.

While in my first quarterly seasonal reset, I realized that for anything new to truly arrive in me, I have to be quiet enough to hear it.

For anything revelatory or inspiring to emerge, I have to be non-expectant.

For my heart, psyche, and soul to remember who I am, I have to give myself time and space to not be relationally defined at all.

I’m tempted to tell you all the cool things I thought of while in my reset. But mostly I want to leave you with this:

I remembered I belong first to myself.

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If you too are craving something seasonal, and something resetting, might I suggest April’s Seasonal Self gathering. We’ll be exploring the concept of values. Identifying what matters to us, and how we can live in a way that reflects that orientation.

Reserve Your Spot

Overwhelmed the way one might be, if, say, they walked into a room with 40 puppies and were invited to be cuddled upon by them all.

Truly, overwhelmed, in the best possible way.

Thank you.

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I combed through the responses, gathering themes. I noticed, in the most miraculous way, that the questions, fears, and hopes raised by the “under 40” respondents - who I’m going to call the “Acorns” - were almost all intuitively responded to by the “over 40” respondents, whom I’ve decided to call the “Oaks.”

The “conversation” happening between the Acorns and Oaks, spanning time, location, and generation is actually the thing that has surprised and touched me most.

So I want to start The Edge of Forty Series right there. In this sacred exchange of handing our elders our fear and watching them wrap it gently in the silken fabric of their wisdom.

THE ACORNS:

If someone in their forties who is wise, loving, aware, and honest were sitting beside you right now, what would you want to ask them?

THE OAKS:

If you could sit with your 30-something-year-old self for a few minutes, what would you tell them?

It’s fascinating to me how much reassurance the Oaks shared with their younger selves. How explicit they were about the promise of restoration. And how much tenderness is needed for the Acorns.

There is much more that I’ll be exploring in the responses in coming essays, including being instead of performing, grief as a gate, time and unfolding, desire, and the unexpected softening and strength of our forties.

But until then, let me leave you with this poem we all wrote together:

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I have 4 pressed leaves from Autumn. All different shapes and colors - each more perfect than the last. I tuck them into different pages in my new journal so that I’ll find them like a surprise from my former self.

I have the fortune from a Chinese takeout cookie that says “Love is on the way.” I received it with my meal a few weeks before Michael and I reunited nearly a decade ago.

I have an ugly orange and white striped cardigan I wore tirelessly when I was 22. It’s now tied into big knots and used as a tug toy for my two furry babies.

These collections, these relics, are all evidence of what I love and what loves me.

I have these little things, and more, all over, but by far the weirdest is Jeffrey’s teeth.

At his last dental cleaning, he had to have two of his teeth pulled. One broke as they worked to get it out. Before the procedure, I asked the vet tech if I could have his teeth if any needed to be pulled.

After a silent pause that definitely said “I think you’re weird but I won’t say it” she more graciously said “sure, we can do that.”

They did forget to keep the teeth for me, and when I picked him up that day, I asked for my strange little dental souvenirs.

“Oh, shoot! You told me you wanted them, hold on, I can still save them from the trash!”

Then I offered a silent pause that definitely said “I cannot believe you’d betray me and my son Jeffrey by throwing his teeth, his TEETH away!!” but instead, I said “no problem, I’ll wait.”

She salvaged my gift, three little pieces of teeth. One full tooth, and two little pieces of teeth that used to make up one little tooth.

I keep them in my yoga/reiki/I come in here to re-center space. Jeffrey sometimes comes in and starts sniffing around and I say gleefully “Oh, are you coming to visit your teefies?!!?” and he wags and wiggles as if to say “yes, you crazy lady, let me see my own damn teeth.”

I hold one between my pointer finger and my thumb very tightly and hold it out to him, and he sniffs it first, and then tries to eat it. And then I say “you can’t eat your own chompies, Jeff!” in sing songy voice because we both know he would if I’d let him, because he doesn’t really know what they are, just that they’re his.

Except that they’re mine now, because that’s how love works.

We give up little bits of ourselves to the people and animals and places we love.

And then maybe they see that thing of theirs in us, and say “hey that’s mine!” and we say “no, no, no, you loved that into me, so it’s actually mine now, but I’ll let you visit it in me.”

And that’s why we become so much like who and what we love, because we’re just exchanging teeth.

Love makes us porous.

Love rearranges what belongs to whom.

Love leaves pieces behind

It’s interesting how strange love makes us.

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If you missed last week, I not so gently requested that you assist me in preventing a mid life crisis later this year. The responses that are rolling in are so rich, nourishing, funny, and human. I can’t wait to share more with you as I organize and compile.

There’s still time to offer up your voice, and I’d love to hear from you.

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