I am running into a new year, and the old years blow back like a wind that I catch in my hair...

-Lucille Clifton

Hello everyone! I’m so glad you’re here.

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Wowowww 98 degrees and RISING! I started at a café but am now back at my apartment with one leg slung over the couch. How are you?

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I turned 36 yesterday. Apparently, according to the internet, Americans consider the mid thirties, particularly 36, to be the peak of life. Have I peaked?! I hope not, honestly. But I do feel really, really good.

For the past year, I’ve had a list of things on my notes app that need tending to. They’re mostly boring tasks, like making an appointment for a physical and checking to see if it’s possible to consolidate more of my debt. Things I knew were important but took a back seat to the immediate gratification of buying a fresh bouquet of flowers, or a buttery linen duvet from Parachute.

When I got back from Bali- a trip rooted in pleasure- something clicked. I booked the physical, got a full panel of bloodwork, had my hormone levels checked, started seeing a therapist, began working with a financial coach, and generally just decided to look head on at things I’d been unconsciously avoiding. All of this to say, I’ve made some big strides in the last six months. And though the changes are subtle, my inner world feels completely different than it did this time last year.

I told my friends that it feels like I’m floating on a lily pad. Life is good, calm, steady. Sometimes I’m restless; there are moments I miss the dopamine-inducing rush of an impulsive decision I experienced often in my twenties. And though I would absolutely take the existence I’ve cultivated today over any prior version of self, I am not immune to the desire to feel awake and alive as often as possible. The difference is that nowadays I can usually tap into that feeling from a day of walking around the Met, a meaningful conversation with friends, or looking up at the shape-shifting colors of the summer sunset transmuting all the buildings around me, knowing I am a part of something much bigger than any need to understand it.

So when 36 rolled around, it felt like—-ah, yes. Here we are.

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After teaching my morning class on Saturday, I had clear instructions to meet my friends Becca and Hallie at Central Park South between 56th and 57th by 12:05. Such specific instructions with so many vague possibilities. Were we going hiking? On a picnic? To a pool? I arrived at the hotel around 12:08 where Becca greeted me. It turns out there’s a hidden spa on the basement floor of the hotel. In the elevator on the way down, she told me I had a 90-minute massage booked in approximately seven minutes.

OoOooOoOoooH! I responded, excited. Getting massaged is my favorite thing in the world.

The massage was amazing. Exhale Spa uses heated beds, weighted blankets, and tables that can adjust positions a la the famous tempur-pedic mattresses of the early 2000s. I spent the entire 90 minutes slack jawed and melting into my therapist’s hands. After the massage, Hallie and I did a quick sauna moment before meeting Becca back at her place, where a full spread was laid out on her dining table. We did face masks and snacked on cheese and fruit and dolmas and spanakopita. Later, we headed downtown for cocktails and dinner at Palma, a beautiful Italian spot in the west village with a backyard patio covered in twinkle lights. I was not not flirting with the host, a Clark Kentish lookalike who was absolutely many years younger than me.

It was a perfect day. I felt so loved and cared for and it would have been plenty. However, I love birthdays, and I love hosting, so I’d also decided to throw a house party the following night at my apartment, albeit with a 5pm start time since it was a Sunday night and we’re all adults here. By 4:40 I had everything set out on the table, candles lit, playlist queued. This is my mother to a tee, who always had the table set and food prepped hours before any guests arrived.

By the time by buzzer rang, I was sweating from pacing around my apartment all day in preparation, but mostly just really excited to see a bunch of my friends in one place. It was a beautiful evening of homemade carrot cake with cream cheese frosting and people clustered in corners gabbing, me bopping manically around making sure I got to chat with everyone, smitten at a full house of my beloveds. People really turned up with the party food- homemade focaccia, an heirloom tomato tart, korean fried chicken, and of course my classic lipton onion dip, always a crowd pleaser. After blowing out my birthday candles, I made everyone go around in a circle and say a word or intention for the coming year.

I went last because I couldn’t decide what my word was. What’s the opposite of doubt? I asked everyone.

Trust!

Knowing!

Conviction? they chimed in.

….mmmm yes, conviction! That feels right.

So anyway, that’s my word. Hopefully a whole bunch of other wonderful words unfold alongside it.

Turning 35 last year felt significant because of the number. It was only two months after Robin died, so the occasion marked not only the passing of time but the entry into a new era. My grief stood on a delicate precipice- one side desperately clinging to the life I’d known and loved, another knowing the only choice was to jump.

I have spent the last year learning how to exist without the thing I love most in the world. To my shock, I have felt more alive this year than I ever have before. Robin’s physical presence is not absolute, but the love we share is. To be able to experience this continued connection both spiritually and viscerally reinforces my belief that anything is possible, and that even in the depths of hell that is the state of the world right now, things will be OK.

My therapist might say that I learned at a young age how to make things OK even when they weren’t OK. Maybe. But I also witness good every day in my work, and in the people I keep company with. This is important. Connection is paramount in order to move beyond the illusion of the mind. If we only ever have our individual lens, the world is small, contracted. It is through others that we learn to see ourselves more clearly, which is why it’s so essential to surround yourself with people who make life expansive and joyful.

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It’s nearly 100 degrees today. Robin would have hated this weather. My heart goes out to all the potatoes having to take their afternoon walks today.

Summer continues to be slow, syrupy, mutable. Last Tuesday I decided to bike home after teaching instead of taking the subway. It was just before sunset, the sky a diorama of dusky pastels above me. Thank god I did because otherwise I would have missed the cinema that is the Hudson River at dusk, a glassy and iridescent expanse teeming with possibility, the air on my skin softer than the outside of a peach.

I hadn’t ridden home all season because the greenway was under construction, so when I felt the silk of fresh pavement under my tires, it was as if everything old had been paved over, my new life waiting for me in the horizon, wide open and free.

I’m taking it day by day, holding my peace close. I’m also eating toast with salty butter and homemade black raspberry jam my friend from high school sent me in the mail recently- thank you Blair!

Wishing you a week filled with beauty, connection, and the ability to honor the space between knowing and not knowing.

I’m grateful for my life, and I’m very grateful for all of you.

See you next Tuesday,

Emma

spa-d

spread

my friend Kira said we look like a sorority with some boys thrown in and I can’t stop laughing about it

I made a cocktail!

cakeeeeee!

After everyone went home, I sat on my bed reading through cards and opening treats, feeling so moved and grateful for the people in my life. My friend Katie watercolored this card with two of my favorite things- the moon and pickles :)

My mom sent me this box of sweets and when I took the lid off, 10 plastic butterflies came flying out, much to my shock. I screamed and then started laughing. When I called her, she was cackling.

can’t put the nsfw version here, so we’ll settle on this. May we all be draped in love and freshly laundered linens!

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See you next week.

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