Week 147: Coffee With the Waves

🌊 Coffee with the Waves

This week the hubs and I finally went camping — a trip we’d planned for months and looked forward to, even though the timing couldn’t have been worse. Between home projects, doctor appointments, and caring for his mom (whose needs are growing by the day), life has been… a lot. Add in a few tricky family dynamics, and we were both running on fumes.

So when we finally hit the road, it felt like one long exhale. The weather was perfect — blue skies, golden sunsets, and ocean breezes that carried the sound of waves right to our campsite. The clam chowder was creamy, the marshmallows were charred and black (just how I like them), and for a few days, the world felt beautifully still.

One of the biggest highlights? Meeting up with our son. We’d just dropped him off at grad school a couple of weeks ago, and the transition has had its ups and downs — for both of us. Seeing him again, laughing and joking like always, filled my heart in a way I didn’t realize I needed. He’s finding his footing, and that brought me so much peace.

But there was a bittersweet note, too. On our last morning, coffee mugs warming our hands, we stood on the beach watching the waves roll in — steady and familiar. I found myself writing my oldest’s name in the sand, tracing each letter before the tide reached up to claim it. It was my quiet goodbye to the beach, and a moment to whisper how much I still wish I could hug her, look into her eyes, and tell her she’s part of everything beautiful I see.

Sometimes a change of scenery doesn’t fix what’s heavy. You bring your heart with you, after all. But sometimes, a change of scenery gives you a little breathing room — a pause long enough for clarity to form and perspective to shift. The ocean air, the campfire laughter, the quiet moments by the shore… they didn’t erase the hard parts, but they helped me see them differently.

Maybe that’s what this trip was really about — not escaping life, but stepping away just far enough to breathe, to remember what still feels good, and to come home with a little more peace than before.

☕ Your Turn:

Have you ever taken a trip that helped you see things differently — not because everything changed, but because you did? I’d love to hear your story in the comments.

The Version of Me I’m Leaving Behind

April found me still reminding myself to pause before I speak. My patience feels thinner these days. But something else has shifted too. My relationship with my mother is ongoing and complicated. Boundaries have helped. It’s getting easier to hold them—which, strangely, makes saying yes feel cleaner too. I even set up a friendship blind date for her and a client, meeting them there to help it along. They both said they were lonely. They both said they wanted connection. Neither followed up. Instead, my mom booked a bus trip with the neighbor she insists she can’t stand. I laughed when she told me—really laughed. Not because it was surprising, but because it wasn’t. She moves toward what’s familiar, even when it doesn’t suit her. I know that pattern. I’ve lived inside a version of it. She either copies my hairstyle and clothes or criticizes them. There’s rarely a middle ground. I’m less affected than I used to be—not because she’s changed, but because I’m starting to see her m...

Week 152: Bearing Witness: Anne Frank and the Father Who Returned Alone

The third and final reflection on collective and personal grief and on the love that survives when everything else is lost. Bearing Witness: Anne Frank and the Father Who Returned Alone When Otto Frank stepped off the train back into Amsterdam in June 1945, the city he returned to was both familiar and unrecognizable. The canals still shimmered in the summer light, the bells still rang from the Westerkerk, but the laughter of his wife and daughters was gone. The war had ended, but for Otto, the silence had only just begun. For weeks, he searched. He wrote letters, visited refugee centers, and followed every rumor that his daughters, Margot and Anne, might still be alive. In his pocket, he carried hope like a scrap of paper—folded, worn, almost transparent. But each inquiry ended the same way: a shake of the head, a name on a list, a quiet apology. Eventually, the truth reached him—Anne and Margot had not died in Auschwitz as first reported, but in Bergen-Belsen, of typhus, just wee...

Week 153: Closing the Series & Turning Toward November

As I close this three-part series on grief—its collective echoes, its private chambers, its impossible tenderness—I find myself turning, as I always do this time of year, toward November. It’s the month that holds everything. Lily’s angelversary sits at its center like an ache I can feel before the calendar even flips. First in my dreams, then in my bones. My body always seems to remember before my mind gets the memo. One moment I’m functioning—answering texts, folding laundry. The next I’m swirling: emotional to numb, numb to sobbing on the dining room floor while her favorite pop songs pulse through the speakers, as if she’s just in the next room asking me to turn it up. And then the next morning… nothing. A strange, hollow quiet. Not peace, not calm—just a blank space where last night’s tidal wave had been. It still startles me how grief moves like unpredictable weather, sweeping in and receding on its own terms. November has a way of unearthing the memories I’ve tucked c...

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