If you want to give thanks, but this time not to the labyrinth of cause and effect-give thanks to the plain sweetness of a day
-Malena Mörling
Hello everyone! I’m so glad you’re here.
Happy December! My friend Katie voice memo-ed me this morning that it was snowing on her walk. I’m back in the swing of things after a cozy few days with family. How are you?
I took this photo on Saturday afternoon during a sunny outing to a local bookstore in my sister’s town. The light was right, and I’d done little more than make trips between her fridge and the living room couch the two days prior.
Thanksgiving was the usual fun nonsense: start eating apps at 10am, be full by noon, hungry again by 2, dinner at 4, lay, eat leftovers. My brother-in-law did most of the cooking as I popped in and out of the kitchen for stuffed mushrooms and shrimp cocktail. We are not a family who works out on holidays. I don’t know what it’s like to rally for a morning 5k or gather in the backyard for flag football, though I’ve always been fascinated and in slight awe of those who commit to this each year.
Instead, I sat on the couch drinking wine with my sister while my nieces made everyone watercolor place cards from their playroom. I did do my hair and lined my eyes with liquid liner, which is also funny considering we didn’t leave the house that day.
At dinner, we went around the table doing our “exit interviews” for the year, a tradition my friend Kira first introduced me to that is generally done on people’s birthdays. Essentially, everyone says one thing that was really great, one thing that was difficult, something you’re leaving behind, and something you’re bringing with you. Violet, who is six, shared her great thing as passing a swim test that allowed her to jump off the diving board with the big kids. I’m pretty sure she is bringing chocolate into the new year.
Robin’s passing was my difficult moment, no surprise there, and then the way my community showed up for me after, a moving highlight.
In case you’re wondering, I’m leaving doubt behind and bringing love with me.
The rest of the weekend was spent coaching Felicity on her new special skill-headstands!, seeing Wicked (I wept), cuddle puddling on the couch, and commiserating with my sister about why we aren’t the type of people who wake up in the morning looking immediately snatched.
Other highlights include Violet crawling into bed with me at 5am each morning then sleeping for 3 more hours koala-ed to each other, a cook-your-own-meat Japanese bbq moment, a leisurely trip to Marshall’s for candles and athleisure-the suburban ones are better- and consuming the entire 12-pack of babybel cheese wheels at the bottom of the fridge.
I love holidays and I love doing nothing. It makes returning home that much sweeter, especially when neighbors leave family-recipe pumpkin cream cheese rolls on your doormat. I arrived back late Saturday night to a dark apartment full of plants, flicked on every light, and greeted Robin as if she hadn’t been right beside me the entire week away.
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January marks the halfway point of my thirty-fifth year. I was explaining to someone recently that my life pre-pandemic looked vastly different than it does now. I lived with roommates, had never led a yoga retreat, was emptying my bank account every month after paying rent, and generally feeling hopeful but adrift about my future.
A lot was good too: Robin’s back legs were still spry. I was having a great deal of (mildly toxic) fun.
I feel like a whole different person these last few years, I say to my sister in the car on the way home from South Station Wednesday morning. She’s packed me a ziploc bag full of snacks for the ride. Sometimes it’s boring, but mostly I feel grounded, like my center of gravity is steady and constant. We’re talking about our parents and the kids and then us as kids.
Do you remember that giant art studio dad used to take us to where we threw paint on the walls? Do you remember when mom waited tables in high school so we could do more activities? Do you remember when I thought I’d marry John Watson? Haha.
Kayla and I always end up talking about our childhood on car rides. Our lives are so different but have always coexisted harmoniously, each of us carrying threads of experience that the other admires. I convinced her to purchase a form-fitting bodysuit this week. She gave me shit for saying I wasn’t hungry and then finishing the last piece of everything.
At the Dunkin Donuts drive-thru on our last night, we had a laughing attack when the cashier taking our order didn’t realize her microphone was on and was giggling about something before quickly recovering into the speaker- hi! Op! Sorry, what can I get you? My poor sister tried to order us hot chocolates while I wheezed beside her in the passenger seat, only making the situation worse. Hi! Hahahahahaha. Sorry. Ummmm. a peppermint ho——hahahahahha sorry sorry. A peppermin—-hahahaha. Oh gosh I’m sorry. A PEPPERMINT HOT CHOCOLATE AND ONE REGULAR HOT CHOCOLATE PLEASE HAHAHAHA. I was crying by the time we rolled up to the window, looking the other way while Kayla had to save face and apologize on our behalf to the puzzled woman. I’m laughing about it now as I write this. I text her-
Laughing about the dunkin drive thru
Same. Multiple times per day.
Though much has changed in the last 4+ years, a lot has stayed the same, too. I find comfort in that.
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I have a tiny Christmas tree on display under my TV. It sits next to the cluster of plants beside the living room window, Robin’s plant corner, as I call it. The peace lily a friend sent me after she died is thriving. Plants notoriously do not do well in my home. Is it Robin’s energy or luck keeping them alive? How many more times will I wonder if something happening in my life has been ordained by her spirit magic?
The thing about losing your beloved is that you start to feel at odds with reality because it seems impossible that they are no longer a part of it. I cannot believe that anyone I have met in the last six months doesn’t know Robin, will only ever know her through photos or stories. How do I explain her potato-ness? That uncanny combination of wisdom and neurosis? That she was both an old lady and a pork dumpling, half sage, half toddler. How do I capture the tone of her dinosaur howls, or the click of her long toenails on my wood floors? How do I convey that I miss her more than I have ever missed her while also feeling excited for what’s to come, my mind now free from the burden of anticipating life without her?
It’s just so weird she’s not here, I say to someone a few nights ago while laying in bed looking at the corner she used to stare at me from. This is her apartment too, you know?
I meet friends for coffee between classes. We update each other on the holidays, big and small life things. A friend who I haven’t seen cry begins crying. Gah. Life is just so…hard sometimes. I’m tired of feeling like I constantly have to hustle to be OK. We listen and respond, offering words of comfort while still validating her feelings. She asks me how I get through the really hard moments. I think of the days after Robin left, a steady blur.
I sit with it. Take a bath maybe, journal. Do yoga. Or just let it steep. You have to let it steep.
…Dateline helps too.
We laugh.
The last month of the year is always filled with reflection and longing. At least it is for me. I sense new movement coming in 2025, a slightly different way of doing things. I don’t know what that looks like yet exactly, but I’m ready to start considering what it means. My childhood bestie is visiting me next weekend. I have holiday parties to attend, a spa day with some ladies on Sunday. Life is sweet and steady, folding and unfolding again and again, like a dormant car map sitting accordion-style in the glove compartment; the destination unknown but the routes familiar, a bigger picture formed out of the graininess if you open up the whole thing and consider where you’ve been.
I hope you have moments of beauty this week. I look forward to connecting with you here and in the world, or wherever else our paths might cross.
With love,
Emma
We all got the same letter rings
japanese bbq, but make it smores
I immediately went to trader joe’s when I got home
a cooked a cute meal
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See you next week, everyone!
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Washington Heights community!
Heights Meditation and Yoga is now using the Hebrew Tabernacle space to hold classes until we move into permanent residency. The space is big, quiet, and candlelit, (and classes are starting to get really full again so it feels like a budding community!)
Come join me on Monday nights for 630 vinyasa and 745 restorative.
Additonally, I am always looking to add new private clients to my roster. If you know someone who you think would enjoy or benefit from working with me one-on-one, please send them my way :)
Looove these pics with Kayla! January marks my half way point to a birthday too. You have a way of writing that makes me feel like I'm sitting next to you just catching up ❤️