I write in my head On my way to pick up the dog,overshoot by a mile, lost in thought: I compose four years 2017TRUMP Stress & Fear Surreal2018Sex ASSAULT Stress & Fear Surreal2019Justice Pursuit COURT Stress Fear Surreal2020Covid-19 PANDEMIC Stress & Fear Surreal!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yeah, pretty shittyPoor Me In the shower use all the hot water,lost in thought: I compose four years 2017Rocked 50 Marched Most Fit STRENGTH2018Adopted Wiggling-Wagging Love JOY2019Created mountain HAVEn PEACE2020Found my Voice POWEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Yeah, I see.I’m LuckyI AM OK New Year’s coming2021will bewhat it will bewhat it will beandWHAT I DO.That, too … Dare to Conquer 2021 Grandson
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Two years ago this week, we closed on our mountain house and became the new owners. It honestly felt so surreal as we signed the final papers from the typical very tall stack, and left the meeting. Was it ours? Was it really ours? It was really ours! We lived here now. In Grand County, a county we had spent so much time visiting for 20 years. We could now call it home. John and I felt like kids let loose in a candy story of possibility. There was something new and good in our lives. We needed this good
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Ironically, we only went to look at “our” mountain house as an afterthought — as a back-up viewing with the real-estate agent. Our primary target that early-November day was a cute little log cabin in our favorite neighborhood, down on the flats near the lake. There’s nothing more “Colorado” to me than a log cabin among pine trees. And the square, high-peaked little structure with its classic ribbed exterior was picturesque-perfect and inviting when we arrived, hosting a blanket of snow on the roof and entrance railings, and a backdrop of flocked pine trees up and down the street and
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The day before John and I took a day trip to Grand Lake and finally found our mountain house in early November 2018, I had spent hours e-mailing back and forth with the deputy district attorney who was the lead prosecutor assigned to my assault case, and doing a lot of heavy deliberation. Houses weren’t really on my mind. I was in the early stages of dealing with the court case, which included 10 charges against my attacker for both my assault and for the kidnapping and sexual assault of another woman in Denver the day prior. The preliminary hearing,
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John and I grew up in Minnesota, surrounded by lots and lots of water. Our birth place is known as the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and that’s not just a trite motto, though it is a misnomer: There actually are 11,842 lakes more than 10 acres in size, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, and thousands of smaller bodies of water, plus wetlands, creeks and rivers. When you drive around the state, it’s nearly impossible to travel very far without seeing water of some sort. “There are five lakes within one mile of where I’m sitting right now,”
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This afternoon I’m sitting, feet up and tucked under a white, down blanket, in one of my most-favorite spots in the whole world. I’ve settled in at one end of a Mid-Century style couch that’s dressed in a mellow Scandinavian-blue fabric and pushed up next to a picture window. Through the glass, I can peek through pine trees to see my beloved high-country lake ringed by mountains. It is full-on cozy with a view. I, in fact, specifically designed this spot to be exactly that: a place that allows our guests (and me) to be able to curl up against
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I grew up in the 1970s and ‘80s as part of a Swedish-American family in a suburban home just beyond the city limits of St. Paul, Minnesota. The last sibling to arrive, I joined my older sister, two brothers and parents in a small, single-story house on a cul de sac of other starter homes built in the 1950s. In my generation, suburban homes did not necessarily equate to more space. We lived lightly crammed together, six people sharing one bathroom. But that didn’t seem particularly unusual to me when I was young. Nor did it seem odd that there
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“You gotta keep moving. Once you stop moving, you die.” My dad told me this many times in the decade before he died, although I’m not sure if this message was meant for me, to remind himself of this mantra or to tell me something about himself. Probably all three. Dad always “moved” and tried to get us kids to move, even if he didn’t always do it in the most encouraging way (meaning he yelled a lot). He didn’t always know how to teach us, but he tried to instill his passions largely through exposure and small snippets of
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I’m a “research” person. My family knows this about me. If they are reading this, they are nodding their collective heads. When I don’t understand a concept or when I want to figure out how to do something or improve the way I do it, I research. I over-research, actually. It’s how I used to approach papers in college and articles when I was a younger journalist; I would do at least twice the amount of research as necessary to complete a project, and by the time I was ready to begin my first draft, the words would just pour
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(TW: Trigger Warning) Toward the end of June, I had to remind myself again that it’s okay to be still sometimes and to not “produce.” It’s a good reminder for me in general, as it’s my nature to go after things with passion, take on too much and be rigid with my plans. But when my brain is waving a white flag after a trigger, as it was then, I find I need to silence the self-critical voice inside my head judging me for not being more productive — for not being able to focus on what I had been
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