Elastic until they break

I received a call from a metaphorically close, but geographically distant girlfriend who is starring down the barrel of a second traumatic breakup. The first heartbreak was senior year when the boyman she dated our entire collegiate career decided to simply not show for our final sorority formal. Cue Enya’s Only Time. This second one-two punch occurs many years and many boyfriends later, but on a much more serious playing field; that of canceled of engagements and dashed wedding plans.

“At least they didn’t put down a deposit,” my mom tittered from her end of the…

If I have one superpower, it’s my ability to get shit done.

This first manifested itself in the throes of childhood, in one of the torture prisons known as “Girl Scout camp” where you pack seven outfits but return home wearing the same underwear. All the chatty pre-pubescent girls would gather around the minivans, singing songs about mosquitoes and ill-named, ill-fated children we did not want to become (“she had ten hairs on her head. Five were alive and the other five were dead.”) The caravan would wind its way through the backwoods of Michigan to deposit 20 girls and…

For as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a writer. My childhood journals are riddled with spelling errors and earnest laments about my dreams of advanced English degrees and published novels. But I’ve got a job and a mortgage and while I’m hustling to do all the good stuff, I’m not naming and claiming or whatever other bullshit I’m supposed to have accomplished by the age of 30. But today I’m giving myself permission to just write and be.

Because I’ve come to realize that yes, you can make money and perhaps even be self-employed as a…

I can’t recall where I first heard the term “lighthouse friend,” but after a decade of toxic relationship management, I am intimately familiar with the telltale signs and real-life angst and damage a lighthouse can cause. As the lost boat in this particular story, I first blamed nature, and then I blamed the friend, but nothing changed until I made the decision to leave the ocean. For while this friendship ebbed and flowed around me like the sun, it was my refusal to cut ties that allowed the poison to seep into my sense of self and wellbeing.

Built on…

There are moments in retrospect even Hitler had to say, “hmm, perhaps I’ve made a mistake.” From these learning experiences come necessary innovation: Fenced-in yards, childproof locks, sunscreen, condoms. As I emerged from my hellscape two hours later, I reflect: If I could take that back and do literally (literally) anything else (literally- garbage pick through used hypodermic needles, take the SAT three times in a row without bathroom breaks, go on a wilderness family counseling retreat with my idiot brother-in-law) I would say “yes, please, one-hundred times.”

I believe Hot Yoga is a sophisticated Japanese torture technique honed during…

Fear can be an effective motivator. Scene: 2014, Friday happy hour at the local bar, an inspired conversation with a newish coworker who just loves to run which makes me feel both jealous (“I wish I loved to run”), curious (“can I run?”), and powerful (“IM SURE I CAN RUN”). After pulling on my Captain America figurative cape, I find myself punching my credit card digits into an online portal for some future half-marathon benefiting wounded veterans or shelter dogs (or wounded veterans who need access to shelter pets). We exchange a sloppy hug (friends!) …

Today is my 30th birthday (I’ll pause while you sing). Culturally, we “make a big deal” out of decade birthdays not because they are inherently more valuable, but because we are looking for milestones that can easily fit into compact boxes labeled “life lessons”. Each decade marks a formative transition from one very distinct educational bracket to another.

From zero to ten, you grow into a human. From a blob of fourth-trimester gunk and uselessness to a full-fledged, bonified person with a name, brain, and the ability to ride a bike and negotiate sleepovers. From ten to twenty you (arguably)…

The alarm goes off at 6am every weekday. Even if it was a late night, even if I had three glasses of wine while watching The Bachelor from my cousin’s siphoned Hulu account, the alarm goes off and I get up. I know myself, and I know I must maintain some semblance of a schedule or I’ll hide in a dark, dark corner. I get up, put on my worn exercise clothes, and drive to the gym. The front desk woman has no idea she is a pawn in my morning ritual. If rule #1 is create a schedule, rule…