Today I will address directly the first in a series of pressing time-sensitive questions which our family is currently facing. But first the littlest one and I are off to spend the morning with our friend and her family at their urban farm.

The days are starting to melt together the way they often do in the the heat of the summer. There really aren’t that many weeks left until Labor Day, time is passing by rocket fast. Regardless of our plans for next school year, September will bring about a shift in our rhythm and I for one am in no hurry for Autumn to arrive.

Come to think of it, I’m never in a hurry for Autumn to arrive.

Roux was awake practically all night long, tossing, turning, calling to me from his bed, unable to keep still even wedged between his father and me. This morning I realized the new moon is upon us, and the restlessness made sense.

He has always been terribly sensitive to lunar energy, just like his mama. This new moon in Leo is especially powerful by way of creative energy and strength in the face of adversity, qualities I in particular am working to cultivate within myself. Leo gives us permission to be freely and unapologetically authentic, to harness the fire and forge ahead with confidence and courage.

I am in the midst of my own personal revolution, there is no doubt. Of what I’m less certain is where this journey will lead, in either the immediate or distant future. What’s surprising is that I’m pretty at ease with the uncertainty of it all. I can’t help but think the pregnancy was diverted on account of something else needing to happen instead, so with deep trust in the universe I’m available to whatever emerges during this next lunar cycle.

May the blessings be.

For maybe the first time ever in my life, I’m a little bit relieved to be done with July. I’m more than ready to greet a new month, a new week, and what feels kind of a like a new season.

Our summer vacation had hardly started when we lost our littlest love; it will be a full month this Friday that we’ve been grieving. Grief is not a stagnant thing, it is dynamic, evolving, undulating, unexpected, everlasting. I’m moving through it as best I can, I don’t think I’ve ever tried so hard to take care of myself and my family, which has helped me to heal immensely.

I know that I will carry this loss closely, undeniably a defining life experience, but I also know that I am able to alchemize the pain into productivity. I’m ready to see where this path leads.

In the four weeks I’ve taken this incredibly gentle all-levels yoga class on Sunday mornings, one truth has been made quite clear: this body of mine has changed.

Poses into which I used to be able to slip now require great effort to maintain even the most basic variation. A great deal of my natural flexibility has diminished, I’m tight in places that have previously always been loose. I wonder if I’ll ever be that limber again.

Of course, this is to be expected. I quite literally never do yoga. Rather, I haven’t in a reeeeally long time. I more than took for granted the ease with which I had always been able to move. Slowly, and ever so delicately, I am beginning to navigate the current shape of things, accepting with grace where I am and setting a clear intention for where I’d like to be with a little dedicated practice.

Physical fitness is a journey, I have learned this over the years. There is not a more resilient machine on Earth than the human body, it’s ability to regenerate and transform is miraculous. Presently, I find myself in the form of a postpartum woman, significantly softer and rounder than my normal state of being, but without a baby to help nurse off the extra weight. It is entirely up to myself to get into shape.

This is not about getting my body back. To be honest, I’m not interested in that former vessel. I want to be stronger and healthier than I was before, more open of heart and mind, steeped in self-love and gratitude.

Progress comes to those to put in the effort.

I did one of those things I’ve been meaning to do since we’ve lived here, but just haven’t managed to do so. I finally got myself to the top of Cowles Mountain, and I’ll never go on a Saturday again. I can see an early weekday morning excursion being a better experience, less crowded, fewer people competing for space. I didn’t enjoy being made to feel as though I was in the way by the many folks running up and down the trail. It was, however, lovely, exhilarating, and totally worth the social awkwardness. It also got me thinking about the many other quintessential San Diego experiences that we have yet to do.

There is time yet left in this summer and I intend to make the most of it!

I’d be extremely proud of us if we managed to:

Hike and swim at Torrey Pines

Spend the day at La Jolla Shores

Visit the Zoo

Explore Barrio Logan

It’s ambitious to think we’ll get to all of these before school starts, whatever that may mean. But this is a time for pushing myself, so anything can happen.

The Salvation Army Truck just came and gathered a dozen plus bags of miscellaneous treasures for which we no longer have use. There will probably be at least another two dozen bags for collecting in a few more weeks, once we’ve sorted the garage.

This is a time of letting go, of creating space, releasing and opening to the new. I find this to be true in a number of ways, and for our living space to reflect this is tremendously grounding.

It took close to ninety minutes and over four miles for my rascally Roux Huckleberry to fall asleep in his stroller. Oh, toddlers. They try so hard to convince you they no longer need to nap but it just isn’t true! Napping is a wildly important part of healthy development for young kids, a time to internalize all they’ve absorbed. That does not make it any less frustrating as the struggle to get them to sleep intensifies, but the effort is well worth it.

(He literally woke up as I finished typing that last sentence. Ten minutes of snuggling him in my bed and he’s fast asleep again. Punk.)

It’s been three weeks since the surgery that removed from my uterus the contents of a pregnancy that ended prematurely, a baby I will never get to hold in my arms but whom I carried in my womb for over four months and will carry in my heart forever. My physical healing has progressed much more rapidly than I anticipated, a blessing for which I am truly grateful. I am no longer riddled with discomfort or plagued by insomnia. My restlessness has subsided, transforming into heightened level of general productivity. There are still moments of deep sadness, but I’ve decided that’s when the baby is nearest, a remarkably comforting thought.

My main objective at this point is to have as much fun with my kids as possible over the next few weeks. I’m not entirely certain of our plans for the next school year; those questions will be answered in the coming days, after many more conversations with my husband, my colleagues, and our administration. For now, it is still summer vacation and it’s time for us to live into this season of adventure, make some memories, enjoy the incredibly beautiful city which we are so fortunate to call home.

Today I am grateful for happy kids, supportive girlfriends, frozen coffee, and sparkling rosé. And my husband. I’m eternally grateful for him.

I’m not really sure what the next step is, what I’m meant to be doing or even where we are meant to be living. I’ve more than a few questions posed to the Universe and I’m doing my best to be as patient as possible while I wait for the clarity I’m seeking.

In the meantime, I’ll keep going to the gym and tidying my house and adding to the donation pile. And writing, even if it’s nonsense.

I’m pretty good at starting things. I’m even better at thinking about things and I truly excel at talking about things. Finishing things? Not so much.

This is a theme that runs deep, a pattern I’ve yet to escape in a bevy of iterations. Maybe it’s a fear of failure, or of success, or maybe it’s just plain fucking laziness. One way or another, I have been plagued by an inability to see much of anything through to completion.

Not anymore.

I’ve said it before and I’m sure this is not the last time I will say it, losing this baby brought a level of self awareness that is overwhelmingly clear. It is time for me to be a lot more disciplined and a lot less irresponsible.

The truth is, I’m a terribly half-assed writer. I fancy myself a writer, I’ve even been hired to string a few words together for money, and had my work published in a fancypants women’s magazine. But I don’t keep a regular practice and that is the worst thing a writer can do, not write. Because then what? Too many thoughts, is what. Too many thoughts and not nearly enough doing.

The summer I turned 29, one of my absolute dearest gal pals endeavored to write each and every day as she approached her thirtieth birthday. She challenged herself to grow, she shared her journey, and she achieved more than she intended, which often happens with clear eyes and a full heart. Can’t. Lose.

At the very least, I will end up with a real-time account of the year I spent turning thirtyfive. Which in and of itself is remarkable. There is gold in every archive if you look hard enough, more on this later.

I want to be able to look back at this year, more than anything, and be able to say that I tried. I pushed myself as a maker, a mother, a wordsmith, a wife. I did my best to be of service to my family, and cared for myself along the way.

There is so much I want to accomplish this year, to learn, to do. Choosing to document this process of becoming another year older is just something that seems necessary to the experience, so I’m going with it.

Honesty is my only objective. This ought to be interesting.

Yesterday, my husband and my father and my Auntie Kelly came together to give me the best day ever. My husband took me to La Costa Resort, my father sent me to the spa there, and my Auntie kept my kids for the night so my beloved and I could escape from parenthood for the first time since before Roux was born.

It’s been so long since we’ve been alone as individual adults and it was so incredibly refreshing, that alone was such a great gift. We had a few private grieving moments, things I’m sure we’ll continue to share for a long time to come. But we had time to connect in a meaningful and memorable way, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We’d never been to a spa together before and it was a day we’ll always remember.

We kept saying to each other when you live in a place like San Diego such as we do, there is no shame in vacationing in your own city. There is no shame ever in vacationing in your own city, I’m allll about the staycation, but my point is that La Costa is world-renowned for a reason.

Ah, birthdays. My absolute favorite time to reflect. To consider the past and prepare for the future, acknowledging the significance of another completed rotation around the sun. It seems as I get older that each birthday is a little more poignant, there is a little more at which to look back and a little more at which to look forward. Perhaps that is part of getting older, awareness and all that, or maybe it’s just the time in my life for that kind of self-attunement.

There is something about turning 34 that has intensified my desire to be better, to try harder, to spread more love. To be a being of light and not sorrow, to let hope replace worry, to cultivate authentic beauty, these are the markers of success for which I am striving.

I plan on unfolding right along with this next year, flowing with whatever may come, rejoicing and accepting with a grateful heart every step of the way.

This morning I took a long walk with Roux is his stroller, and thought the same thing I always do: we are so lucky to live here.

Ours is a quiet neighborhood tucked into the hills near the heart of downtown, walking distance from many exciting attractions and metropolitan marketplaces, a cozy little corner of a city I’ve grown to love an awful lot.

It’s funny, the best and worst things have happened here in San Diego. I’ve grown a lot and earned a few scars, making the most out of our time in America’s Finest City. It will be four years this August that we will have called this place home, and while I’m not certain how long we’ll stay, I can say for sure that moving here was a very good thing.