A Letter to My Community
Lately I have had a quiet urgency stirring in my heart to reach out to you directly, dear community, with my own sort of love letter before we release some beautiful things for you this summer and fall. As the team became busy with podcast editing, artist collaborations, farm repairs, and retreat planning, I found myself contemplating ways to give you all the context I want you to have to make Love, Lizzy as real to you as she is to me.
After a lot of quiet reflection, a few thoughts like, “This is so long no one is going to read it,” and multiple edits, I feel ready “enough” to share this letter with you—mostly because the greatest thing I have learned as an entrepreneur and an artist is you have to put things out to get better. It is the interactions with other humans where we learn the most.
So this is version one of the story of how Love, Lizzy came to be. There are hundreds of more pages, thousands of details, and a lot more angles to how I got here. Perhaps one day all the characters introduced below will get deeper storylines and more context will be shared.
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Extended Reading From this Episode:
Half Broke Horses by Jeannette Walls
The Vision of Love, Lizzy
It is important to note that Love, Lizzy represents the matriarch and is a manifestation of visions I have been shown of a better world for women and girls. I have studied inside, and studied from a distance, several organizations who are doing exceptional work to keep women and girls safe across the globe. My most memorable encounter with the impeccable minds at work on this issue was when my dear friend and mentor Sunny Lu Williams got me a front-row seat to the United Nations Women and Girls Summit at the UN headquarters in New York. Why I have been blessed with such extraordinary opportunities I may never know, but I am working to make the most of them.
At her core, Lizzy is a teacher, a friend, and a work of art. She serves as the sage of the community who holds sacred space for others. She doesn’t claim to know best or know more than you. She simply holds up a mirror and helps reflect back your own strength, light, and wisdom.
She is also, at times, the keeper of the stories. The experience and knowledge of generations of women that came before is held within her, and when necessary, the history she carries in her bones can become life-saving guidance for you.
I know that within each of you is a matriarch who during the darkest hours shows up for her people to ensure their survival. It is in times of darkness that we most need the power of the matriarch; it’s when we’re working to preserve our light that she can be the most helpful.
The original Lizzy, and the matriarch of my life, was my mother. It is difficult to capture her essence with words and I can only share about her from my limited perspective, but I have done my best.
The first visual I can recall is at a backyard barbecue in Melrose Park, Illinois. I am coming to life inside my mother’s belly as she walks between crowds of friends with my sisters by her side, Catherine age five and Julia not yet a year old. My Aunt Leta is there. The sun is shining. My mother seems happy.
Nine months or so later we would all migrate to set up house in a little neighborhood off McGalliard Road in Muncie, Indiana. This is the house where we would have first communion parties, learn wiffle ball in the backyard, rescue our first rescue dog, and wearing costumes my mother designed and sewed for each of us, we would roast pumpkin seeds as a family on Halloween. From my recollection there was a lot of joy in this chapter of my mother’s life. This is where I first really got to know her.
Her Fire and Her Light
My mother was bold, carrying a fire that I see lit in both my sisters in different ways. Sometimes as her daughter, you would catch that fire at the wrong moment and the heat would astound you. Other times it perfectly lit the next stepping stone you needed to leap to on your journey to self-discovery. She had a unique recipe for depth and play. When moods were right and the music started, my mother was the first to pull you onto the dance floor.
Originating from Chicago gave her a lot of spunk and character. She had layers, texture. To be honest, our new little Midwest town could not truly hold the depth of my mother’s character. In many ways, I felt the sky was a ceiling forcing her to crouch down.
Where I am subtle and gentle, she embodied those qualities but she most enjoyed speaking truth to power. She was often ruffling a few feathers—something she was capable of doing without isolating her audience, like any great magician with the perfect sleight of hand. You wanted the truth from her; it felt comforting.
She had a roaring laughter that, as clichéd as it may sound, forced her hands to clap her knees. I can see her now, mouth wide open leaned over staring into my eyes, cackling. She made plans in the kind of way where if there was a crisis, she would just tell you what to do and her instructions were like a treasure map to healing and relief. I can remember her pausing at the back door before I would leave for the day to hug me tightly and remind me, “I love you, you are beautiful, and you are a wonderful daughter.” If you fought her on things, she would express her disappointment with her body language and eye movements which did all the shaming necessary for you to step into line. I often needed a hot shower after one of her lectures.
Resentment did form in my teen years and I’m sure my sisters can say the same, but when I reflect back on the life she gave me, I can’t help but remember the outlandish Christmas celebrations where, like good Catholics, we all sat to read The Nativity before one present was opened. Even when we spent Christmas at my grandparents, my mother hauled our blessings from Indiana to Pennsylvania to ensure Santa delivered on his promise each Christmas morning. My father languished about the price of underwear at Victoria’s Secret. It was 5 for $25 back then—I am unsure if we even had the money, but each year there would be new underwear in our stockings. My mother would give him ultimatums in the checkout line at the mall until he stopped vocalizing his dismay and got on board. And then there was the way she stopped time on our birthdays. Horoscope cut out of the newspaper, no chores, favorite dinner, handmade cake, without fail. A no-chores day was a dream since you had to sometimes clean the toilet three times before she would let you go play outside.
She had abundant patience when it came to children, and I think one of her favorite places to be was in her office at the front of the house, kneeling on the ground over a bag of toys with a little human, helping them navigate their big feelings. Equal to her passion for helping and healing was her love of food, singing, theatre and spraying her many plants who only thrived in that house due to her regular attunement and her daily humming of show tunes. When she had just months to live, my father went all out on patio furniture so she could spend the spring and summer sitting outside with her lovely plants and all the visitors who came from near and far to say farewell. When I got my driver’s license, I remember her crying as I dropped her back off at the house so she could return to work and I could get back to school—she just couldn’t believe I was old enough to drive. And when they moved me into the dorms just five minutes from her front door, she could barely get out of the car to say goodbye. The heart of a lion, the fire of a dragon, and all attempts at sainthood created this remarkable, complex human who I was blessed to call my mom.
Lessons from Her Journey
Her terminal breast cancer diagnosis of ’98 eventually required her to have a “work from home” career at a time when that wasn’t quite so easy or normalized. Moving her therapy office into our house so she could continue to work and nap between her sessions was probably a strategic move—I wasn’t privy to how it was made but I was witness to it, as her office was next door to my purple-stained bedroom. While maybe my mom would tell you this wasn’t what she wanted, or maybe she would tell you it was exactly what she wanted—it enabled her to continue her creativity and passion. My dad used to make jokes about how we should put a “Free Therapy” sign on the front door; he lovingly was referring to her generosity of spirit and how she gave her services away, a lot. But I remember this stinging me a little bit—I was my mother’s “intern” and I sat with her each month and saw how hard she worked to make sense of the billing and get herself paid, navigating insurance and people paying what they could when they could. Having learned the hard way now, I understand the difficulty of working in hearts and minds all day and being expected to whip out a spreadsheet and run credit cards. I recall as I am writing this why my desire for financial training and support for women entrepreneurs is so central to our mission. God bless the accountants.
My mother also understood something innately that took me years to learn: women’s safety and security isn’t just about protection from violence. Keeping women and children safe is just the bare minimum. When we want strong, resilient, joyful communities we must expect more. It’s about creating conditions where women are nourished. That they aren’t forced to choose between their health and their responsibilities, between their mental health and their relationships, between feeding their creativity and feeding their families.
The Weight She Carried
In my recollection, my mother yearned for the bizarre balance that is advertised to all women. I saw her create community organizations, serve on the committee for the local international art fair, and speak about inequities in education while also standing there holding a bouquet of flowers after every one of my choir performances. She once said to me weeks before her passing, “I don’t know, I wanted to be my own woman with a career and I wanted to be a great mother to you girls, I don’t know if I did it right.”
That conversation stuck with me. It’s been percolating in my mind. Why did my mother get cancer?
I started reading a lot of research on cancer and stress, cancer and autoimmune disease. When that data just enraged me I turned to literature from women who had been deemed crazy or unwell. Poetry, novels, consuming any story I could get my hands on from the point of view of the woman gone a “little mad.” Why did it seem that all the deeply feeling women die young? Jane Austen, Sylvia Plath, Princess Diana, my mother.
I dare to dream of a world where it is easy for women to stay alive. Where the sky is big enough for us to stand tall, reach up and touch the clouds.
The Solution
And after all this time I have whittled the solution down to two things. They aren’t the only things that influence the vibrancy of our communities of women and girls, but they are the two I am choosing to spend my time on.
One is economics. Certainly it is much easier to survive this world when you have enough money to afford to live. And it is much, much easier when achieving economic sovereignty doesn’t cost you your health and safety. And I will touch on that aspect later.
The second, and one of great importance, is community. I am talking about coalitions of women who are out in their communities solving problems, offering a helping hand, joining school boards, marching in the streets, holding the babies while the mama showers.
It’s not just the mothers that take care of the family, it’s all the women who show up with their extra time and their extra treasure offering their literal hands so a mother can get a moment to rest. But in order for us to have strong villages and strong communities, we must have healthy women.
On Women and Men
Before I go any further, let me address the narrative in society that says if you are “for women” you are “against men.” The notion that a woman’s intellect boils down to this-and-that thinking is dangerous, for everyone. Fueling this narrative is holding all of us back and creating divide. No society ever overcame adversity with division. A woman’s beliefs aren’t rigid; they are fluid, intuitive, dynamic, rageful, and anchored in compassion. You think when we say we care about the women that it means we don’t care about the men? What rigid belief system must a society have to believe this lie; that the women, the mothers of the sons, the sisters of the brothers, the daughters of the fathers, the aunties to the nephews, that we don’t care?
When we pit the women against the men we lose. Especially since we need the men and we need them to be healthy of mind and body and soul, just like we dream this for ourselves.
To box women into one idea or a few ideas is undermining her complexity. A woman just cannot be boxed in, she cannot be made to never change her mind, to never ask why, to sit quietly by while the world around her burns. It is in her DNA to create, advocate, to fight for her people, to take care of those around her.
So that is one thing we have set out to do here, to preserve the health and power of the matriarchs, the caretakers of the people, the stewards of the emotional wisdom.
When the Matriarch Disappears
I can tell you firsthand what it is like when the matriarch disappears. When my mother passed away, my world was rocked. At the young age of 22, I hadn’t realized how much my mother’s presence and listening ear had grounded me. Her steady heartbeat was the sound of safety, of home.
I can remember it like it was yesterday. I was woken by my father as the sun peaked her sweet head over the June sky and I was told it was time. I pulled a sweatshirt over my head and followed him into our living room.
My mom had been diagnosed with cancer when I was twelve, so I had spent many sleepless nights imagining this moment. I would lay awake negotiating with God, questioning the decision, wondering what kind of God would allow this disease to exist.
I had vivid dreams of my mother’s funeral, who would be there, what we would talk about, how it would feel. I wondered if I would be sixteen or fifty. There was a chance, a very slim one, that I held onto for dear life that I would be fifty.
As we walked into the living room there, gathered around, were both of my sisters, my mom’s sister and my mom’s best friend, and in the middle of all of them on a hospice bed was my mom.
We sat there holding her hand and telling her how much we loved her. Our second rescue dog, Jax, laid by her side calmly. As time passed, the sun peered in the front window and lit up the room and the shadow of her plants danced on the wall. We counted her breaths until finally there were no more breaths to count. And then like a crowded theatre when a performance ends, we dispersed, heading off to different dimensions to handle the loss in our own ways.
This was the beginning of me seeing that life is finite and special. This moment would change me, like I think it changes many of us. It would call upon me and ask me to make the most with my time.
The months following her passing were foggy at best. It wasn’t until I moved to New York City seven months later and stood wide-eyed in the Ed Sullivan Theatre watching David Letterman perform night after night that I could feel her again. The lights were like magic. In that theatre all time stopped, just as it had when I was in her arms.
I bought a notebook and began writing to her on my commute, leaving midtown on the late-night N train to Astoria, Queens. She used to take the L in Chicago—maybe my DNA found something familiar in the slamming of the subway door and the low-grade buzzing of the wheels moving along the track.
I experienced a lot on those train rides. My sweet Midwest self was becoming tougher by the day, but the hole in my heart wasn’t getting any smaller. Sometimes I would hear the voice of the train conductor calling out my stop and I would cry, knowing that this sacred time connecting to her was coming to an end.
The Search
While writing to my mom helped me express the trials and tribulations of my roaring twenties, the lack of response left me feeling empty and abandoned. I needed her wisdom and guidance, and I was desperate to find it. Collaboration, creating, theatre, filmmaking—those would be the only things that gave me relief from my grief. When I wasn’t working, I looked for her in every cute boy, every stranger, every mentor and around every street corner. I searched for her on a backpacking trip across Europe the year I turned 26. I thought I almost found her in a cathedral, roaming the parks and walkways in Berlin. I lit a candle in her name, hoping the light would help her find me. She sent so many angels to guide me. On that trip alone was the boutique owner from Australia who refused to let me spend my birthday without a lavish brunch, and the Parisian couple who made us laugh that night my sister and I spent New Year’s Eve in Brussels buying her some cute red boots and counting down the seconds to midnight in the middle of Grand Place. We ate truffles and she purchased a butterfly and flower silk scarf for my birthday. I returned to the states to take another work adventure across the country hoping it would cure my pain.
The Surrender
After a trail of addresses from coast to coast, romantic misfires, and getting my brain scanned for answers—I felt like I needed a century-long break. I just couldn’t “white knuckle” it another day. Mom dies, daughter is sad for the rest of her life, was not going to be my story anymore. I began to stop trying. “Uncle,” I would whisper to God on the floor of my apartment. “You win,” I would say. Take me or leave me, but I’m not doing this anymore.
One afternoon in a cafe decorated with Christmas lights during one of those brutal midwest winters another angel appeared. My aunt held me with grace while I tried to muster up the courage to share with her my predicament. I surrender, I remember telling her. I just, I can’t do it anymore. And without hesitation she offered me a respite. A break. A place to lay my head while I sorted out my heart. I packed up my bags for what would mark my last cross-country move and I headed to a cozy little island for a stay at Anna’s beach house.
One evening, on her balcony overlooking the Atlantic I sat cross-legged staring at the sun. I asked my mom to help me connect the dots. What was I missing that was keeping me stuck in this “place”? No matter where I went, what I did, where I lived, or who I loved, my heart ached. Even in this little beach town with no worries for miles, I felt sad.
I closed my eyes like I had a thousand times before when I asked for her guidance. Within seconds my mind began scribing poems for me to read and then painting the details like a silhouette. Images of me walking around like Carmen Sandiego, head down hoping to go unnoticed. She plays a movie of me locked up in a cage with another version of me standing outside the cage with the damn keys. But ironically, instead of a door with a lock there is just an opening. I watch a film of myself gently and stoically walking out of the cage on my own to greet my own self. Outside of the cage now appears an old wooden door and as me and myself open it to see where it leads, we stumble upon a Narnia, a sort of euphoric beautiful expansive garden. There are rivers that run for miles and flowers blossoming in every direction.
This was a turning point. My channel, like floodgates, had now opened. I had heard many therapists and scholars talk about overcoming depression through the “integration” of the self. But their vocabulary had never pierced the veil; I have always needed imagery and motion pictures to arrive at understanding. Seeing myself take my own hand and walk out of a cage staged in a dark, dilapidated warehouse into a magical garden? That I understood. I couldn’t believe how clear things started to become. It wasn’t like an overnight transformation—obviously I had been at this for some time. But as I followed one clear idea and then another and another, all the dots began to connect. My heart wasn’t full, but it began to feel in a new way.
The Love That Changes Everything
The first time I felt my heart start to open again was when I met my rescue dog. Before the awakening on the balcony, before the cozy Christmas lunch and the move to the island, there was Billy. Sweet Billy. The guy that adventured all over the country with me even if it meant sitting in the back for a ten-hour car ride. The guy that follows me around resting his little head while he waits for me to shower, cook a meal, and even go to the restroom. Billy taught me courage, to scale a mountain even when I was afraid, to turn onto that unmarked road even when I wasn’t sure where it led. Without Billy there is no healing, no recovery, no joy.
The next major heart opener I experienced was when I went home one thanksgiving to spend some time with my sister and my nieces. I was standing in my sister’s laundry room folding my laundry to pack my suitcase to return to Texas and I couldn’t stop crying. This time the tears weren’t tears of sadness or grief, they were tears of gratitude. In that moment I could not believe how much love I was experiencing. That this kind of love was even available. It was like real true love, like the deepest kind of love, the layered kind of love. Indescribable, all-in, an “I can’t believe how much I love these little humans” kind of love.
And you know, my mom makes a lot of sense now. It’s just wonderful to move through the world, loving everybody like they’re special little humans. It was possible now that I had experienced this kind of love, that I could give it to everyone, including myself. I just think kindness gets you really far and it feels really good and it’s just really so easy. It really is. This extraordinary turning point in my life watching my sister become a mother and being given the honor to know and love her children, it’s kind of unbearable. I will never be able to fully express my gratitude that she went first, that she dared to love again, that she has always kind of gone first. A unique kind of courage.
The Mission Becomes Clear
This is when I became sure and grounded in the fact that I was born to make something beautiful out of this story. That I needed to be here, that my life mattered. It was time to expand upon what my mother taught me, to carry her legacy forward.
There is a Christmas theme in this story because one foggy Christmas eve at my Aunt Jan’s house she and I had this fortuitous conversation while she was covered in flour from a days long lasagna tradition expedition. She told me that from what I was saying it sure did sound like I wanted to be a coach. “A coach!, I exclaimed. Like Tony Robbins?”. She chuckled “I am a coach, you know. I teach a coaching certification program here in Pittsburgh at Duquesne.” My mouth shot open as I listened to her state all of these fascinating things she had done while being a coach. Like presenting incredible research at Harvard, helping all these women she met while trying to entertain herself when my cousins went back to school and she had been staying at home. I was flabbergasted. I could have never predicted what happened next, which was for her to encourage me to apply to the program and then become my sponsor for the next year. I had so many wonderful Saturday morning drives with my aunt through the hills of Cranberry onto the 1-79 on our way to Pittsburgh. I could not believe I got this time with her, and oh how it changed me or made me I am rather unsure. I was transformed. Through this process of education I discovered a world where you get to do what you love all day long. There I was just talking with people, helping them solve problems, getting to know them. What a job!
It was there in the freezing cold classroom during those long weekends at Duquesne with my Aunt that I realized, where my mother had opened her home to women and other deeply feeling humans to give them shelter from the storm, I wanted to go one step further and curate spaces where women could learn to fish. Where I could help them build businesses that fuel their creativity so they could provide the financial security that allows them to show up fully for all the roles they hold. I’ve learned that true safety for women is about creating economic independence that gives us choice and building communities around us that give us support. It’s not really about flexible work; let’s pause to contemplate that here for a moment.
Flexibility: the quality of bending easily without breaking
We already know how to do that. I want more. I am not looking for women to be more flexible and continue to fight not to break under the pressure of a society who disregards her. No, I want women to fly. I want more women to have the great privilege to be the stewards of their time.
When women get to direct how they use their time, they can answer the call upon their life to do what they deem is most important. And often, when women do what they deem is most important they write music, create poetry, become doctors and nurses, scholars and scientists, leaders and lawyers, inventors and entrepreneurs. And while they are doing all this they also show up to care for aging parents, are present for their children’s milestones, and volunteer in their communities. I am simply proposing that we begin to build a system around them that helps them have energy left over at the end of their day for their own physical and emotional needs.
Women have become aware of the gaslighting we endure in a societal system that spews shame and ridicule on us for wanting wealth, while at the same time the leaders of that society make decisions that inflate prices while acting as if we do not need our own financial security to survive. Women are tired of playing the fool. And that is where Love, Lizzy comes in.
How Love, Lizzy Works
The Matriarch first appears here at Love, Lizzy through our love letters and podcast. We invite you to submit your questions, ideas, dreams, and quandaries so Lizzy can provide a reflective space for you to learn about yourself and grow in your creative power. In turn, we get to reflect on your story, your grief, and your purpose with you. We get the greatest gift of all: bearing witness to your beautiful life.
When you submit your query to Lizzy, she reflects deeply and shares her response in the form of a Love Letter from Lizzy or expands upon the topic on the Love, Lizzy podcast. We then share Lizzy’s responses with the community so all of you can take from her wisdom what you need for yourself.
In addition to this digital sanctuary, we are busy curating the Love, Lizzy Farm, a physical respite where we have already hosted many retreats for women to rest, recover, learn, create, and grow.
Here on the farm, and in our community we help women own their time, and make money running a business built around their unique talents and passions. We don’t claim that entrepreneurship is easy, resilience is key, which is why we have spent a decade marrying business strategy and coaching with emotional agility training and wellness practices that help women care for themselves while they do work they love.
The Journey Through Time and Space
I traveled far and long to bring you this work of art. I switched dimensions a few times like taxi cabs and catapulted backward like a boomerang to simply land softly in a green patch of grass on Audubon Road. I woke up, five years old, and there was my mother, laughing. In my recollection she wears an apron—she has outstretched arms like Julie Andrews running in a field. She’s singing with bravado, “The hills are alive with the sound of music?” It’s Friday pizza night. I listen to her while I feed Fred our old goldfish.
And before that I spent some time observing a memory of myself lying on my back on the hardwood floor of the dim-lit foyer over on Riley road in the last place I saw my mother alive. Emptying her house room by room, letting my hands run along the shelves of her cedar closets where her costume jewelry used to be. Saying goodbye to her one last time.
I have written this to you over several weeks—but also lifetimes. I traveled day and night, sometimes for months to finally find myself in this time and place, writing to you. It took seventeen years to get here. I held the soft leather straps around a horse’s neck up and down the slope of the Gore Range on a hot sunny June afternoon desperate for perspective. I journaled my wild ideas under the Colorado stars while wild horses grazed in a field outside my tent, as if to say, “you’re exactly where you are supposed to be.”
One morning I woke to the sun rising in the Gila National Forest sleeping in a tent next door to a grey-bearded wanderer with his 1980’s camper van and his rosary which we prayed over the fire the night prior.
And the only way I figured out that there was another option from the grieving sad girl was to be in that place that very morning, at Doc Campbell’s Post country store where I stumbled upon a crucial matriarchal character to my journey; Jeannette Walls tells the story of her grandmother, Lily Casey Smith in the true-life novel Half Broke Horses. Lily became my north star, courageous, and as Jeannette says, ‘no-nonsense, resourceful and spectacularly compelling woman.’
She gave me the idea to continue this real travel and time travel adventure without obsessing over the outcome. Memories would call to me and demand my attention, and sometimes the only way to catch them was to be completely removed from society itself, in solitary, alone with my channel.
Grandmother’s Kitchen
At one point I was on Highland Avenue on my Pap Pap’s back porch singing the look-and-see song my cousin carved into the wood. My mother was there too—but only faintly; my grandma is most present in that look back. She too wears an apron but her moves are slower and more poetic, she pauses briefly to wipe the sweat from her forehead and then smirks in my direction as she spots me through the screen door. “It’s hot!” she exclaims with a thick Italian Pittsburgh accent. The kitchen smells like twice-baked potatoes and roasted chicken. She had been up baking since three in the morning, attended church and mopped the floors before the sunrise. The best time of day at my granny’s was lunch time when she finally sat down in the little corner booth in the kitchen and got to visit and laugh with all of us.
It took a lot of time traveling to get here. I put in a lot of reps, scoured hundreds of memories to try to make sense of it all. Took my grief quite seriously. It felt serious. It was woven into every recollection I could recall. Through every lens there was The Grief like some sort of filter over my heart. Everything was draped in sadness. See just now, there’s another one. My Papa passing one winter in the Holy Cross neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. Everything is painted black. Priests are there to pay their respects. My mother weeps. No windex or brute force was getting this filter off. Time and persistence was the only way.
I spent many evenings in my late twenties on the stoop of the Cathedral where my Papa was ordained a Deacon asking him for answers. I never had the courage to enter the Church but thought through osmosis I may gain some understanding. “I feel so sad Papa, how do I find relief?”
Long Black Limousines
Somehow Long Black Limousine begins to play. Fanciest car I’d ever seen. My mom’s brother, my Uncle Mike passes. I’m heartbroken. I crashed his car once accidentally after being sent to Dallas to try to stitch my heart back together following unfortunate ‘statistically trendy’ circumstances that occurred that previous spring on college break. “Everyone is whispering about me and looking at me funny,” I said to my mom. Or maybe I never said it. I remember wanting to disappear. So there I was, stalled behind a big fancy pickup truck on the corner of some street and some other street in a suburb outside Dallas wearing a bolo on my way to serve table-side guacamole at a La Hacienda just crying my eyes out.
You idiot, I thought. You’re such a mess. I catch a glimpse of myself in the rearview and recall the night I dyed my hair blonde—regrets. And the scars from those years never seem to disappear but I carry on either way. Standing at my Uncle’s funeral I wished I could tell him how much I loved him. Tell him, “sorry about your car” and hear him chuckle from deep inside his belly one last time. If my mother’s the magician he taught her the tricks.
The Crime Lab of Memory
It was as if I was solving some true crime case connecting all these dots and searching for clues and doing ride-alongs with a companion named Little T. Except there was no crime. Well, a woman dying from cancer felt like a crime to me. In my crime lab there is a big white board with photographs and ticket stubs and dates and times and memories. The playbacks are like a film where I do my own reel changes. Flick 1989. Flick Summer of ’94. Flick College graduation, a gentleman stops me as I step off the stage and attempt to flip my tassel; “of all the names they called today yours was the one I was most happy to hear.”
Why does this memory matter to this story? Because if you look at things through a different lens, not grieving sad girl, but, girl on a triumphant adventure overcoming adversity, it changes everything. Three years earlier that same gentleman had called me into his office to inquire why his most attentive and attuned student was failing his criminology class. Without making a peep in any direction I was still doing my level best to remain invisible and survive the aftermath of that statistical nightmare of spring break 2005. He revealed a clue to me that I desperately needed; resting isn’t failure. I’ve used his wisdom often. I put him up on the white board.
Austin and the Art of Breathing
Austin, Texas 2021. “You hold your breath,” he remarked as we laid on rubber mats on the floor listening to the sounds of quarantine outside our window as thirty-somethings social distanced around a pool in the courtyard of a five-story apartment complex. How did he know I couldn’t breathe? When do they teach you how to breathe? Did my mom send him too?
I carried blue bonnets home after I walked for hours past peach trees along creeks and over rivers in one of the most vibrant cities I have lived, trying to learn to breathe again. Finally feeling a connection from my belly up through my heart and into my chest. This must be what they mean by embodiment. I fell in love with a gravel parking lot coffee shop housed in an airstream with an old greying black dog on the porch. Flitch Coffee. That’s where I started drinking oat milk lattes with lavender. Those iced lattes kept me alive.
I liked the east side, I recall.
Then there’s the dreams I encountered of my mother’s mother. Who imprinted on me the love of the fairytale. With each Disney VHS she purchased she helped me wander into other worlds. Betty taught me to explore. The way she held my hand so delicately in hers. Be still my heart, she called me every Sunday like clock work. I am told that her life force was once taken by mama’s little helpers and a stifling environment following the loss of a child. How much of my grandmother’s grief did my mother have to carry? Oh the things I wish I could ask Betty.
Throughout all of these years there was a knowing gaining momentum inside of me. The visions were becoming clearer, but it felt crazy to keep going at times. I couldn’t explain what I saw to others; it was difficult to express in words what I was feeling. I had an understanding of the destination, but no map to get me there. For many years I had no practical evidence that my research and exploration were worth the effort I was putting in, but as the knowing got stronger, the decisions became easier, the blueprint, the scaffolding, the how, began to manifest.
The Reiki Session
Back on the farm at present time I stand watering my drying azaleas to protect them from the hot summer sun.
A few weeks ago, the Universe inspired me—by way of our farm manager Alexis—to attend a Reiki session with a local practitioner who opened a magic shop that I have grown to love. Jill, who you’ll learn more about in the coming months, facilitated an inviting environment and set out on her practice with candles, warmth, crystals, and the power of her hands.
My mind was racing—as it tends to do. Even with a regular meditation practice, those pesky thoughts are right there waiting to pounce. It was so wonderful to rest for a while, allowing the table to hold my heavy bones. When the session completed, Jill let me know that my mom was there and that she wanted me to hear her say that she wishes I could find the joy in her presence, instead of feeling the sorrow of her death.
Well, mom, if you’re listening, this is my best attempt at joy. This sweet island, this work-in-progress farmhouse, this movement, these little love notes and sacred spaces I attempt to create for women—this is me living in my joy. I know you are here. I recall the day you appeared and asked me to get in my car and drive to check on my father. I know it was you who saved his life that day. Then you sent another angel, Uncle Richard to help keep him alive for those three weeks. And you sent that nurse the hospital tried to let go of who was such a great help to us. More light workers—thanks to you, I am surrounded by them.
I wish you were here to hug me and tell me that I did good. To walk the ocean with me and my darling Billy in the mornings and gather at the farm with our family for the holidays. But if I must accept you in spirit, I just want you to hear me say: I really am trying to make you proud.
Living Wildly While Carrying Grief
I have stumbled and failed my way to this moment. Working without a net is a term I understand intimately. At times, my wild west cowgirl nature has probably given those around me whiplash.
I have had the most invigorating ride in an Indycar clocking 180 miles per hour through the streets of Long Beach, blown up cars on an early summer morning on the same glistening streets of Chicago where my mom once walked. I looked up at the same sky she pondered under while in the background I heard the director yell, “cut!” as the cars skidded into place and the helicopter circled. I have sniffed the endless roses on the northwest side of Portland, Oregon on my way home from the greatest corporate campus in the world where I learned about the origination of the swoosh, the mile record breaker, and how to shatter expectations (mostly my own).
I have lived wildly and intentionally while carrying a heavy backpack on my shoulders full of grief. I have loved while terrified of abandonment and like Houdini have escaped situations just right before someone swindled every last ounce of my magic. In my time of mourning I helped launch, grow, and nurture more than twenty women-owned businesses, passed legislation, and followed my dreams all over the world. This is what we do—we carry on. And my story, while paved with some heartache, is nothing compared to some of the stories I’ve heard from others along this journey. If they can do it, I certainly can.
We Are Resilient
I am here as living proof that we are a resilient species. That our scars, setbacks, and tribulations are a sliver of the story. Creation is the life force that keeps us going when it feels like we have nothing left to give. We must create even when we feel like giving up.
That is what we are going to do here. We are going to heal, we are going to overcome, we are going to connect, and we are going to create.
Gratitude
I am grateful for the mighty team of women who have come alongside me to apply their talents to our mission and who have trusted me with their hearts and their dreams. I learn from you each day.
To my sisters who in each of their own ways have allowed me to grieve our mother out loud when at times my process may have interfered with their process. For the way they always let me come along to play when I would raise my small hand and say, “Me too.”
From mentors and friends, cousins, aunts and uncles, to every single angel who let me sleep on their couch, borrow their lunch money, lean on their shoulder and cry—Love, Lizzy does not exist without all of you. It was you that taught me that community can be a bridge to a brighter future.
A very special thanks to Michael, O’Hara and the core team of college professors who held me in the months after my mom passed and let me feel my way through the fog and still create art. It is often those first few moments after a trauma that makes the difference as to whether you survive. You offered me a modality and a structure for how I would continue to go on even in my darkest hours. To simply give the mic to my creativity and let her speak. I understand better than anyone why the cynical and despondent first come for the art when they want control.
And to my father, the man with nine lives; I would need a thousand more pages to try to describe you. The good news is, there is still so much life to live. Thank you for hanging on through the heartache and the pain. Because of you, I will never quit. We love you, Pappy.
Welcome to Love, Lizzy
So welcome to Love, Lizzy. This is the era of joy, of community, of our best attempt at kindness and love. I am committed to proving that when we take care of each other it sort of shrinks all the obstacles and things get better for everyone. I promise to do my best to do right by all of you and to continue to learn quickly when I realize I have made a mistake.
When women are safe, supported, and financially empowered to pursue their dreams, which often results in caring for and pouring into their communities, we all rise.
If you’ve been wrestling with an idea and are not sure what step to take next, if you’re trying to figure out how to build something meaningful while still being present for your family, if you’re navigating heartache and wondering how to find relief, these are the perfect topics to share with Lizzy. We would be honored to hear from you or visit with you here on the farm.
I want to take this moment to remind you and myself, that you are loved, you are beautiful, and you are a wonderful human.
See you on the farm!
With love, Teresa
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