For those of you who know me, you know that I love tea.

And when I say I love tea, I mean I really, really love tea.

My love affair began when I was sixteen or seventeen, during a visit to London. I cannot remember what kind of tea I drank that day, but I remember falling in love with the experience. More than four decades later, that affection has only grown.

I love the ceremony of drinking tea. Wrapping my hands around a warm cup, taking a deep breath, and enjoying that first sip. I often think about the farmers in different corners of the world who carefully tended and harvested the leaves that eventually found their way into my cup. There is something wonderful about knowing how many hands and how much care went into creating such a simple pleasure.

I love exploring different varieties. Black tea, red tea, white tea, green tea, and even yellow tea, a rarity I discovered and fell in love with during a visit to China. I love reading about tea, talking about tea, learning about its history, and sharing it with other people.

My family would probably tell you that my enthusiasm borders on obsession. There is an entire section of our pantry devoted to tea, with enough varieties to keep a small tea shop in business. Even drinking six to eight cups a day, I am fairly certain I could live another hundred years and never finish what we have.

And yet, I keep buying more.

So, when I found myself in New Orleans recently on a business trip, it seemed perfectly reasonable to spend an early evening exploring a local tea shop.

That is how I discovered Bottom of the Cup Tearoom, a charming little establishment in the French Quarter that has been welcoming visitors since 1929.

When I walked inside, I started laughing. Not only was it a tea shop filled with beautiful teas, but it also offered tea leaf readings, tarot readings, palm readings, and other spiritual services.

Of course it did.

Somehow, without even trying, I had found a place that combined two of my favorite interests: tea and the mysteries of the universe. Naturally, I decided to have both a tea leaf reading and a tarot reading. How could I possibly resist?

But the most fascinating part of my visit was something I discovered while browsing the teas.

Displayed beside the collection of teas available to choose from was a description of the tearoom’s history. I began reading, expecting to learn a little about the establishment, and instead discovered a story that captivated me.

During the 1920s, many immigrant women had established fortune-telling businesses in cities throughout the United States. But fortune-telling was frowned upon, and local ordinances prohibited accepting payment for those services.

So the women came up with a rather ingenious solution.

They opened tea rooms.

Customers could purchase tea or refreshments for twenty-five cents or more, and the readings were offered as a complimentary service. The practice flourished through the 1930s in cities including Boston, New York, Chicago, St. Petersburg, and New Orleans.

Bottom of the Cup was among the early establishments, opening in 1929.

I stood there smiling at the cleverness of it all. Faced with restrictions on how they could earn a living, these women found another way. They created businesses that allowed them to continue their work while bringing people together over something as simple as a cup of tea.

Nearly a century later, I was standing in a tearoom enjoying the very tradition they had helped establish.

I found myself wondering about the women who had gathered around those tables over the decades. What brought them there? What stories did they share? What were they hoping to discover in the bottom of their teacups?

And what about the women who opened those early tea rooms? Did they ever imagine that their creative solution to a very practical problem would become part of a tradition that would endure for generations?

There is something I find particularly appealing about that kind of ingenuity. We often think of resilience as a grand act of courage, but sometimes it is simply the ability to look at an obstacle and imagine another way around it.

I thought about how often we become attached to the idea that something must happen a particular way. We make plans, imagine outcomes, and convince ourselves that the path in front of us is the only one available. When something interrupts that vision, it can be difficult to see beyond the disappointment.

I have certainly been there.

But life has taught me that changing direction does not always mean giving up on where we hoped to go. Sometimes it is simply how we get there.

And there I was, learning that lesson from a group of women who had found a rather clever way to keep doing what mattered to them nearly a hundred years ago.

What struck me most was how an ordinary evening had introduced me to a piece of history I knew nothing about. I had gone looking for a cup of tea and discovered a story about resourcefulness, determination, and the remarkable ways our lives remain connected to people we will never meet.

This discovery made me fall in love with tea even more.

It made me think about how many stories are hiding in the places we visit every day. The neighborhood restaurant, the family-owned bookstore, the little shop that has occupied the same corner for generations. Each has a history, often far more interesting than we could imagine.

As I left Bottom of the Cup, I thought about my first cup of tea in London all those years ago. I could never have imagined that a simple pleasure I discovered as a teenager would one day lead me to a nearly century-old tearoom in New Orleans, where I would find myself having my tea leaves read and learning about a remarkable chapter of history.

I like to imagine sitting across from one of those women today, listening to her story. I would ask about her life, the challenges she faced, and how she came to open a tea room. I suspect I would have a hundred questions, and we would need more than one pot of tea to get through them all.

I went looking for an afternoon cup of tea and came away with a story I could not wait to share.

And perhaps that is the most wonderful thing about following our curiosity. We never really know what we might discover.

As for my ever-growing collection of tea at home, I suppose I could use this experience as justification for adding a few more varieties.

After all, you never know what stories might be waiting in the next cup.

Sunday Held Reflection

Sometimes the most interesting stories are waiting in the most ordinary places. All it takes is a little curiosity and a willingness to explore.

This week, consider the history behind something familiar. Ask a question, wander into a shop you have always passed, or learn the story behind a tradition you enjoy. You might discover something that changes the way you see it.

And when life presents an obstacle, remember those resourceful women who found another way. A little creativity can sometimes open doors we never knew existed.

I would love to hear about an unexpected discovery that has stayed with you. Share your story in the comments.

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Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me. If you enjoyed this story, I hope you will subscribe to Sunday Held and share it with someone who might appreciate a little wonder in their week.

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Until next Sunday, pour a cup of tea and stay awhile.

Episode 20

🎙️ Episode 20: The Wrong Question

What if the thing standing between us and the life we hope for isn’t a lack of courage, but something we haven’t yet learned to believe about ourselves?

In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I return to The Wrong Question, a reflection inspired by an unexpected encounter during a trip to Costa Rica to celebrate my mother’s 85th birthday.

I share how a conversation with a remarkable woman, surrounded by the beauty of a place that always grounds me, led to a realization about luck, fear, and the complicated relationship we sometimes have with our own success.

We spend so much of our lives wondering whether we are ready for what comes next. But what happens when we begin questioning the question itself?

🎙️ Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for a conversation about trusting ourselves, embracing possibility, and finding the courage to become who we’ve always been.

Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories is available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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I recently sat down with a friend who was telling me about a trip abroad he would be taking in a few weeks.

He had planned a wonderful itinerary, filled with places he had long wanted to visit and experiences he could hardly wait to have. As he described everything, he lit up like a Christmas tree. His excitement was contagious, and before long, I found myself imagining the adventure right along with him.

Then I asked about his flights.

The change in his expression was almost comical. The excitement that had animated him only moments earlier gave way to something approaching despair. He began recounting everything he dreaded about getting there: the drive to the airport, the TSA lines, the crowds, the boarding process, and all the little aggravations that seem to accompany modern air travel. If only he could click his heels, nod his head, and magically arrive at his destination, he told me, he would be perfectly happy.

I understood what he meant, although I couldn’t help finding his reaction fascinating. We were talking about the very same experience, yet our feelings about it couldn’t have been more different.

I have something I affectionately call my travel bookends. They encompass everything surrounding a trip, from the earliest stages of planning to the journey home. And while my friend regarded much of that time as an unfortunate necessity, I have always considered it part of the adventure.

For me, the pleasure begins long before departure day. I love researching destinations, imagining itineraries, choosing flights, and discovering the possibilities that await. There is something delicious about having a trip on the calendar, knowing that somewhere in the future are places I have yet to see, people I have yet to meet, and experiences I cannot possibly anticipate.

I should mention that my enthusiasm does not extend to packing. I have never found anything particularly enchanting about deciding which shoes deserve precious suitcase space or attempting to predict what I might feel like wearing ten days from now. But once that chore is behind me, I am more than ready to begin enjoying the journey.

Even arranging transportation to the airport brings a certain satisfaction. I look forward to leaving the house, checking in, navigating security, and eventually finding myself on the other side, where the responsibilities of everyday life begin to loosen their grip.

One of my favorite airport rituals is walking slowly through the terminal toward my gate. I glance at the departure boards along the way, curious about where each plane is headed. Paris. Tokyo. New York. Somewhere I have been and loved, or somewhere I have yet to discover.

I look at the people gathered around the gates and wonder about their stories. Is the woman standing near the window about to visit her grandchildren? Is the couple laughing together embarking on their honeymoon? Is someone traveling alone, perhaps a little nervous, about to experience something that will change the way they see the world?

I find myself wondering what they will do when they arrive. What places will they explore? What meals will they enjoy? What unexpected encounters might become the stories they tell years from now?

There is something endlessly fascinating about an airport. Thousands of people moving through the same building, each with a different destination, a different purpose, and a life unfolding far beyond anything the rest of us can see.

And then there are the lounges.

Give me a comfortable chair, a cup of tea or a glass of champagne, something to nibble on, and a few uninterrupted hours, and I am a very happy traveler. I particularly love finding a seat near the windows, where I can watch the planes take off and land.

I never tire of seeing an aircraft gather speed, lift from the runway, and disappear into the sky. Nor do I tire of watching another descend toward the earth, carrying passengers whose journeys are ending, beginning, or perhaps continuing somewhere else entirely.

Sometimes I read or write. Other times I simply watch the activity beyond the glass, content to let my thoughts wander. There is something rather wonderful about having nowhere else I need to be and nothing in particular I need to accomplish.

Which may explain why I generally prefer arriving at the airport four or five hours before my flight.

My family does not share my enthusiasm.

They regard this practice with a mixture of disbelief and affectionate exasperation. Why, they wonder, would anyone willingly spend half a day at an airport when we could leave the house at a far more reasonable hour?

I have tried explaining that I am already on vacation, although I suspect they consider this further evidence of my peculiar relationship with air travel.

But that is precisely how I see it. Once the bags are checked and the practicalities are behind me, I can settle into the simple pleasure of being on my way. There are no meetings to attend, errands to run, or household responsibilities competing for my attention. For a little while, I can simply enjoy wherever I happen to be.

I shared all of this with my friend, including my family’s longstanding objections to my airport arrival times. We laughed, and I suggested that perhaps he might try looking at his upcoming travel days differently. Instead of regarding them as obstacles standing between him and his vacation, what if he considered them part of the vacation itself?

It was a casual conversation, the sort we have all the time without imagining it will amount to anything particularly significant.

A few weeks later, after he returned from his trip, my telephone rang.

It was my friend, and I could hear the excitement in his voice before he had even finished saying hello. He told me that our conversation had stayed with him and that he had decided to try something different.

Rather than approaching the airport with his usual sense of dread, he had made a conscious effort to enjoy the experience. He and his wife took their time, relaxed into the journey, and found themselves appreciating things they would ordinarily have rushed through or dismissed as inconveniences.

He was genuinely delighted by the difference.

What struck me most was something he said about the length of their vacation. By changing the way they approached their travel days, he and his wife felt as though they had enjoyed more time away.

They hadn’t extended their trip. They hadn’t changed their flights or added another destination. They had simply begun enjoying themselves sooner.

I found that observation rather extraordinary.

Ever since, I have been thinking about how much of our experience is shaped by the expectations we carry into it.

We develop opinions about certain activities and circumstances, sometimes so gradually that we hardly notice. Somewhere along the way, the commute becomes dreadful, the grocery shopping becomes a nuisance, and preparing for a gathering becomes a list of exhausting obligations.

Eventually, we stop questioning those assumptions. We know how we feel about these things, and so we approach them expecting to feel exactly that way.

I wonder how often our expectations become part of the very experience we are anticipating.

My friend had been dreading his travel days weeks before he ever stepped foot inside an airport. While sitting comfortably at home, discussing a trip he was thrilled to take, he was already experiencing the frustration of security lines he had yet to encounter and crowds he had yet to navigate.

The inconvenience hadn’t happened, but his aggravation was already quite real.

I suspect we all do some version of this.

We anticipate a difficult conversation and spend days rehearsing everything that might go wrong. We look at a calendar crowded with obligations and decide the week will be exhausting before Monday has even arrived. We dread an appointment, a long drive, or a household task, allowing our expectations to color hours that might otherwise have been perfectly pleasant.

Of course, some experiences genuinely deserve their unpleasant reputations. There are frustrations we cannot avoid and circumstances that no amount of positive thinking will improve. I certainly wouldn’t suggest that every difficult moment contains a hidden delight waiting to be discovered.

But I do wonder about the vast territory between the things we love and the things we truly dislike.

The ordinary moments. The necessary tasks. The preparations, transitions, and stretches of time we tend to regard as merely getting us from one place to another.

Consider the hours before a dinner party. There is shopping to be done, food to prepare, a table to set, and a house to straighten. It is easy to become so preoccupied with everything that needs to be accomplished that the preparations feel like an obstacle standing between us and the evening we are looking forward to.

Yet those same hours might be spent listening to favorite music, enjoying the aromas coming from the kitchen, setting a beautiful table, and anticipating the laughter of people we love. The work hasn’t disappeared, but our relationship with it has changed.

Perhaps that is what interests me most about reframing an experience. It doesn’t necessarily require us to ignore what is inconvenient or pretend that every responsibility is a pleasure. It simply asks us to consider whether the way we have always looked at something is the only way to see it.

And I think there is a certain freedom in that possibility.

What I especially appreciated about my friend’s experience was his willingness to reconsider something he had disliked for years. He could easily have dismissed my enthusiasm for airports as an amusing personal quirk. My family, I suspect, would have enthusiastically agreed with him.

Instead, he was curious.

He allowed for the possibility that an experience he had long considered unpleasant might have something more to offer. And because he was willing to look at it differently, he discovered enjoyment where he had never thought to look before.

I have been wondering what assumptions of my own might deserve similar reconsideration.

There are certainly things I approach with less enthusiasm than I bring to an airport lounge. Perhaps some of them really are as tedious as I believe. But perhaps others have become unpleasant simply because I have never thought to experience them any differently.

What stays with me is how little my friend actually changed. He traveled on the same airplanes, through the same airports, and followed the same itinerary he had planned all along.

Yet he came home feeling that his vacation had somehow grown longer.

There is something quietly profound about that, particularly when I think about how often we wish time would move faster. We look forward to the weekend, count the days until a vacation, or wait impatiently for the next occasion that promises to bring us happiness.

Meanwhile, the hours we are so eager to get through are hours of our lives, too.

And while I would never suggest that we should enjoy every one of them, I am beginning to think we might be too quick to dismiss some of them.

My friend discovered a little more vacation without adding a single day to his travels. He found pleasure in hours he had previously considered lost to the inconvenience of getting somewhere else.

I wonder how much more of our lives we might enjoy if we occasionally questioned what we have decided is worth looking forward to.

Perhaps we don’t always need more time, better circumstances, or something extraordinary to happen.

Sometimes, we may simply need to look again at what is already in front of us.

And perhaps, in doing so, we might discover that the part of life we’ve been waiting to enjoy has already begun.

A Sunday Reflection

Is there something in your life that you have come to regard as an inconvenience, an obligation, or simply something to get through? Something you approach with a familiar sense of dread, perhaps without even remembering when you began feeling that way?

I wonder what might happen if you gave it another look. Not with the expectation that it must suddenly become wonderful, but with enough curiosity to consider that there might be something enjoyable about it that you haven’t yet noticed.

After all, we have only so many hours to spend. It seems a shame to wish away more of them than we need to.

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Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me. If this reflection resonated, I hope you’ll share it with someone who might enjoy looking at an ordinary part of life a little differently. And I invite you to join me on the Sunday Held podcast, available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify, where we continue exploring the stories behind these reflections and the moments that stay with us.

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Sometimes the distance between us isn’t measured in miles, but in the calls we never quite get around to making.

In this episode, Nicole reflects on a conversation with her niece Lexi that inspired The Distance Between Us, and candidly acknowledges how the demands of work, family, and everyday life had distracted her from nurturing a relationship she deeply treasures.

Revisiting the essay, she explores what she’s come to understand about loving someone enough to let them find their own way, while remembering that meaningful connections require more than good intentions.

A heartfelt reflection on love, accountability, and the importance of showing up for the people who matter most.

🎧 Listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Substack.

Read the original essay at sundayheld.substack.com.

“Hello, miss! Have a blessed Thursday!”

Somewhere along Seventh Avenue in New York City, between 57th and 58th Streets, a gentleman holding a tin cup has been greeting me with some variation of those words for at least ten years. The day of the week changes, but his enthusiasm never seems to. I don’t know his name, where he lives or much of anything about his life. Yet whenever my travels bring me back to New York, he is someone I genuinely look forward to seeing.

What makes that admission particularly meaningful is that there was a time when I was afraid even to look him in the eye.

For more than a decade, I have had a little ritual whenever my travels bring me to New York. I wake about thirty minutes before dawn, lace up my walking shoes and head from my hotel in Midtown toward Central Park. I have always felt a deep connection to nature, and there is something especially wonderful about finding myself immersed in it in the middle of one of the busiest cities in the world. The trees, winding paths and changing seasons offer a welcome contrast to the energy of Manhattan. Those early morning walks have become my way of grounding and centering myself before the demands of the day begin, giving me time to gather my thoughts, appreciate my surroundings and simply enjoy being outside.

There is something magnificent about watching the first sunlight reach the tops of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, gradually illuminating the steel and glass above the trees as another day begins. I love the devoted parents of fur babies walking their four-legged companions, the couples pushing strollers, the tourists consulting their maps and the joggers navigating around one another with the practiced ease of people who have done this a thousand times before. I often wonder about their stories, where they are going, what kind of day awaits them and whether they notice the same beauty I do.

I recognize that a middle-aged woman power walking through Central Park before sunrise may not sound like the most sensible undertaking. New York has a reputation, and walking alone in the dark naturally brings a certain awareness of one’s surroundings. But I have learned that the city is already alive at that hour. There are runners, walkers and devoted dog owners who, like me, prefer to greet the day before most of the world has awakened. I find my pack among them and stay nearby, enjoying the unspoken camaraderie of people who share an affection for these early hours. No one seems to wonder why I am there, and no one gives me a sideways glance. We simply share the paths, each finding our own reason to be there.

And along the way, there is the gentleman with the tin cup.

When I first began encountering him, I was apprehensive. It wasn’t anything he had done. He had never threatened me, approached me aggressively or given me any particular reason to be afraid. But I was a woman walking through New York before dawn, conscious of the city’s reputation for crime and protective of my own safety. I was alert, cautious and inclined to keep moving. Whenever I approached him, I kept my eyes fixed straight ahead, never allowing myself to meet his gaze. I heard his cheerful greeting, but fear kept me from acknowledging the man offering it.

And yet, each time I returned to New York, there he was, holding his tin cup and wishing me a blessed day with the same warmth and enthusiasm.

I cannot tell you exactly when things began to change. Perhaps it was the familiarity of seeing him again and again, or the growing realization that the apprehension I felt had never been about anything he had actually done. Eventually, I began to look his way. A glance became a smile, a smile became a greeting, and over time, we began exchanging a few words. Somewhere along the way, a man I had once been afraid even to look at became someone I genuinely hoped to see.

As I reflect on those early encounters, I feel a measure of shame. Not because I was careful. I still am, and I believe there is wisdom in recognizing our vulnerability and being attentive to our surroundings. What troubles me is that I allowed my fear to influence how I perceived someone about whom I knew absolutely nothing. Here was a man who had consistently offered me kindness, and for so long, I couldn’t even bring myself to look him in the eye.

That is uncomfortable to acknowledge, particularly because I have always considered curiosity and compassion essential to the way I experience the world. I have traveled to unfamiliar places, embraced cultures different from my own and found some of my most meaningful experiences in conversations with people whose lives bear little resemblance to mine. Yet on a New York sidewalk, I had allowed my assumptions to precede my curiosity.

I wonder how often that happens in ways we don’t even recognize. How readily do we form impressions based on appearances, circumstances or the stories we have been told? How many people do we pass without considering that the person before us has a life every bit as layered and complicated as our own?

I have always admired Anthony Bourdain for the way he approached the world. His travels were never simply about the destinations or the food. He was interested in the people, particularly those whose stories might otherwise go unheard. He understood that the most memorable parts of a journey often emerge from encounters we could never have anticipated. He once reflected on how the little human moments, the unexpected kindnesses, are the ones that stay with us.

I think of that sentiment whenever I see the gentleman on Seventh Avenue. I have been fortunate to visit extraordinary places, stand before ancient wonders and experience moments of breathtaking beauty. Yet among the memories I have accumulated, there is a man holding a tin cup on a New York sidewalk whose simple greeting has stayed with me for more than a decade.

What I find especially humbling is that he has no reason to know any of this. I doubt he realizes that I once feared him, that I have spent time reflecting on the unfairness of that fear, or that his greeting has become something I anticipate whenever I return to the city. He has simply continued to offer a few cheerful words to someone passing by.

I still know almost nothing about his circumstances, and I am conscious of how easily we can create stories about people based on what little we see. His tin cup tells me far less about him than I might once have assumed. What I do know is that he has treated me with warmth, and that my experience of him changed when I allowed myself to receive it.

There is an important difference between exercising caution and allowing fear to determine how we regard another human being. I am not suggesting we abandon our instincts or ignore our safety. Rather, I have come to appreciate that we can protect ourselves without closing ourselves off to the possibility of kindness. We can remain attentive to our surroundings while remembering that the people we encounter deserve to be seen as individuals, not merely through the lens of our apprehensions.

I think about the impressions we leave on one another, often without the slightest awareness that we have made one at all. A smile offered in passing, a thoughtful word, a moment of acknowledgment. These gestures may seem inconsequential to the person offering them, yet become part of someone else’s memory, sometimes for years.

And I think about how much of our own growth happens in similarly ordinary moments. Not through some dramatic revelation, but through the gradual recognition that a belief we once held, or a judgment we once made, deserves to be reconsidered.

For years, I have walked the same route through New York, watched the same sunlight find its way across the skyscrapers and passed the same gentleman holding his tin cup. The surroundings have become familiar, but my understanding of what I encounter along the way continues to evolve.

There was no extraordinary event that changed how I felt about him. No profound conversation or revelation about his life. There was simply a man who kept wishing me a blessed day, and a woman who eventually began to hear him.

I once passed a man on Seventh Avenue without daring to meet his eyes. Now, whenever I return to New York, I look for his face in the early morning darkness, hoping to exchange another smile and hear him wish me a blessed day.

And I wonder how many other blessings I have walked past without recognizing them.

A Sunday Reflection

Have you ever looked back on an encounter and realized that your assumptions prevented you from seeing someone as they truly were? Or has a small kindness from a stranger stayed with you long after the moment passed?

I would love to hear about the people who have challenged your perceptions, surprised you with their generosity or reminded you that some of life’s most meaningful encounters happen when we least expect them.

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Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me. If this reflection resonated, I hope you’ll share it with someone who might appreciate it too. And if you’re new here, I invite you to subscribe to Sunday Held at sundayheld.substack.com, where we gather each Sunday to reflect on the experiences that shape how we see ourselves and the world around us.

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You can also join me for Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, where I share more about the experiences and reflections behind these essays. Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Substack.

What happens when a place makes you feel both incredibly small and deeply connected to something much larger?

In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I go behind Looking Up at the Same Sky, an essay inspired by a morning at Machu Picchu. Arriving before dawn and watching the sun cascade over a place built nearly six hundred years ago left me thinking about the people who once stood there—and the civilizations flourishing elsewhere in the world at the very same time.

It was a moment that left me curious, humbled and honored, and reminded me that history was never happening one chapter at a time. Humanity was unfolding everywhere, all at once, beneath the same sky.

Settle in with a cup of tea as I share the story behind the essay, read the piece, and reflect on what I am still thinking about today.

Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Substack.

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Years ago, a CEO I worked for complimented me on how calmly I had navigated a particularly difficult crisis. I thanked him, of course, but I remember being struck by his observation. If only he knew what was happening inside my body and my head.

On the outside, I was composed, thoughtful and reassuring. On the inside, I was a ball of nerves. My body was tense, my mind was racing, and I was overthinking every possible outcome while worrying about everything that could go wrong. I was like a duck gliding across a pond, looking perfectly serene while paddling wildly beneath the surface.

I have thought about that compliment many times over the years, especially recently, because something rather remarkable has happened. I am beginning to feel as calm as I once appeared.

I have always been someone who takes her responsibilities seriously. I love my work, enjoy a challenge and take enormous satisfaction in doing something well. But for much of my life, there was an underlying restlessness that accompanied me even when nothing particularly demanding was happening. I had become so accustomed to being busy, and so uncomfortable with the thought of falling behind, that relaxing could feel like something I needed to justify.

I suspect some of that began when I was a little girl.

Growing up, my parents allowed me one hour of television each evening on school nights. At the time, I considered this a rather unreasonable restriction. How was I supposed to choose between The Facts of Life and Eight Is Enough? These were important decisions, and I am fairly certain my parents did not appreciate the emotional complexity involved.

When my father caught me stretching that hour, he would say, “You know, as you sit here and watch television, there are other people becoming smarter than you.”

Well, that certainly took some of the enjoyment out of watching Mrs. Garrett.

I know what my father intended. He wanted me to value learning, make good use of my time and understand the opportunities that come from hard work. I am grateful for those lessons. But I wonder whether I also absorbed the idea that enjoying myself meant someone else was getting ahead. I remember feeling guilty when I was doing nothing productive, and that guilt was not just a passing thought.

I felt it physically.

It followed me well into adulthood. I remember getting the flu at various times throughout my twenties, thirties and forties, and becoming restless after barely an hour at home. I would lie there thinking about the emails accumulating and the work piling up in my absence. Even when my body was telling me it needed rest, I struggled to give myself permission to take it.

Perhaps the most telling example came almost twenty years ago, on my first day at the company where I still work.

I had just left a large law firm where working more than eighty hours a week was routine. My telephone rang constantly, hundreds of emails filled my inbox each day, and between drafting motions, appearing in court and responding to the seemingly endless demands of clients and colleagues, there was rarely a moment when someone did not need something from me. I had grown accustomed to that pace and the feeling of being needed every minute.

Then I arrived at my new office, settled in and waited for the day to begin. My telephone did not ring once. Not once.

Instead of enjoying the reprieve, I became increasingly uncomfortable. I wondered whether I had made a mistake leaving the law firm, whether the company really needed me and whether they already regretted hiring me. By the end of the day, I had managed to turn an uninterrupted afternoon into a rather elaborate internal investigation of my career choices.

Looking back, I laugh affectionately at that younger version of myself. If only she had known what the next twenty years would bring. There would be no shortage of ringing telephones, difficult decisions, extraordinary colleagues or opportunities to prove herself. She could have enjoyed that first afternoon.

But what interests me most now is how I felt that day. The absence of urgency made me physically uncomfortable. I was so accustomed to anticipating the next demand that, when nothing happened, I could not settle into the moment.

I had learned how to manage pressure, but I had not learned how to feel at ease without it. And even when I was managing that pressure successfully, as the CEO had observed, I was often experiencing an entirely different reality beneath the surface.

Which brings me to last week.

I was walking with a colleague near my office, already late for a meeting, when a beautiful orange butterfly caught my eye. It was dancing in the breeze, floating and turning as the sunlight caught its wings. I stopped walking and admired it aloud for several seconds. I have no idea what my colleague thought of my sudden fascination with a butterfly when we were supposed to be somewhere else, but I was completely delighted.

What surprised me afterward was how natural it had felt to stop. I had not considered whether I could afford those few seconds or felt guilty about spending them on something that served no practical purpose. I was late, my responsibilities were waiting, and yet I felt completely relaxed.

And I realized that I have been noticing this same feeling in other parts of my life, including at work.

The responsibilities have not diminished, and I am no less ambitious or committed than I was before. Difficult situations still arise, decisions still need to be made, and there are days when everything seems to demand attention at once. But I am experiencing those moments differently. I am more thoughtful, more creative and more willing to consider an unexpected possibility before deciding how to proceed. I can recognize the urgency of a situation without automatically feeling that urgency throughout my body.

I think back to that CEO and the compliment that surprised me so much. At the time, I knew how to project calm because the people depending on me needed a steady leader. I am proud that I could do that, even when I was paddling furiously beneath the surface.

What I am discovering now is that I can be just as capable, just as committed and just as effective without all that frantic paddling.

And I find that rather extraordinary.

I think about the little girl who felt guilty watching television, the young attorney who could not enjoy an afternoon without a ringing telephone, and the executive who appeared perfectly calm while experiencing a storm inside. I have enormous affection for all of them. Their determination helped me build a life I love.

But last week, walking near the workplace where I once sat anxiously waiting for my telephone to ring, I stopped to admire a butterfly. I was late for a meeting, my responsibilities were waiting, and I had every reason to keep walking. Yet I felt completely at ease.

For years, I knew how to look calm. I am only now discovering what it feels like to be calm.

And I think my father would be pleased to know that, after all these years, his daughter is still learning something.

Sunday Held Reflection

Have you ever appeared perfectly calm to everyone around you while feeling anything but calm inside? Have you ever felt guilty taking a day off, or even going on vacation, only to discover that you could not fully relax because your mind kept returning to everything waiting for you at home or at work?

I wonder how many of us have become so accustomed to managing pressure that we no longer recognize how much of it we are experiencing. And what might change if the calm we show the world began to match the calm we feel within ourselves?

I would love to hear your thoughts and experiences. There is something wonderful about discovering how much we have in common through the stories we share.

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Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me. If this reflection resonated with you, I hope you will subscribe, share it with someone who might enjoy it, and join me again next Sunday for another story about the moments and experiences that shape our lives.

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And if you would like to spend a little more time together, I invite you to listen to Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, where I share the personal reflections, memories and experiences behind these essays. New episodes arrive on Wednesdays, and you can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Substack.

Until next Sunday.

How often do we make ourselves a little smaller just to fit the room?

When I wrote A Little Less Pressure, I was thinking about the subtle ways we edit ourselves to belong. Holding back an opinion. Softening an instinct. Wondering if we are too much of something and deciding to become a little less of it.

In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I reflect on the difference between having standards for ourselves and constantly managing who we are for everyone else. And what can happen when we stop asking whether the room is comfortable with us and start asking a different question: Am I being myself?

This is the story behind A Little Less Pressure—and what I now understand about taking up the space that was ours all along.

Pour yourself a cup of tea, press play, and stay awhile.

🎧 Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories
Available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and Substack.

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I checked in on myself this week, not because anything was wrong. Quite the opposite.

Lately, I have been noticing a more relaxed version of myself showing up, both at home and in the office. She is more creative, more inspired and having more fun, not just in one part of her life, but across all of it. I was curious about her, especially because I could remember another version of myself, not very long ago, who felt frustrated, uncertain and unclear about what came next. A year ago, I was asking a lot of questions and demanding answers I simply did not have. Now I was moving through many of the same parts of my life differently.

The contrast was not hard to miss, so I decided to check in.

I did something I first wrote about in The One I Had Forgotten. I closed my eyes and invited my four-year-old self to come sit on my lap. The first time I did this exercise, nearly a decade ago, she had something painful to tell me. She missed me. Worse, she thought I had forgotten about her. I never forgot that.

This time, I closed my eyes, pictured that little girl climbing onto my lap and asked her a very simple question: How are you doing?

Her answer surprised me. She was well-rested. She was excited. She felt free in a way I did not remember her feeling before. Most striking of all, she was beginning to let go of the guilt she had carried about putting herself first. This was a very different little girl from the one who once told me I had forgotten her, and she seemed remarkably similar to the woman I had been noticing lately.

So what changed?

Me.

I grew. I evolved. Not in some dramatic, unrecognizable way. I am still me. I still plan. I still worry. I still occasionally try to negotiate with the universe as though there might be someone on the other end willing to discuss terms.

But sitting there with her, I thought about a phrase we hear all the time: release what no longer serves you.

I have spent a lot of time this past year thinking about what that actually means. I used to hear those words and think about things outside of us: relationships that had run their course, obligations we had outgrown, expectations that belonged to someone else. Things we were supposed to identify, release and leave behind.

I see it differently now. Sometimes what no longer serves us is a rule we have been living by.

Be useful. Be prepared. Do not disappoint anyone. Know the answer. Keep going. Put yourself last and call it generosity.

I do not remember consciously choosing any of these rules. There was no moment when I sat down and decided this was how I would live. They accumulated over time, shaped by experience and reinforced by the fact that many of them worked. That is what makes them so hard to recognize.

Being prepared helped me succeed. Being dependable earned trust. Anticipating what could go wrong made me very good at solving problems before they became problems. Showing up for people made me someone others could count on. These were not weaknesses I needed to overcome. They were strengths. I simply stopped noticing when a strength became a requirement I placed on myself.

Last year, one of my closest friends was getting married during a particularly demanding period at work. For twenty years, I had never missed a day during that time. Not one. There was no written rule saying I could not go to the wedding. I had written that rule myself: work comes first. I had followed it for so long that I stopped recognizing it as a choice.

This time, I chose differently. I went to the wedding.

The world did not fall apart. My commitment to my work did not disappear, and I did not become less dependable because I allowed myself to be somewhere else for one important day. I simply broke one of my own rules. Once I started seeing them, I found more.

Decades ago, I learned that decisions had been made in a meeting about work within my area of responsibility, even though neither I nor anyone from my team had been included. I was angry, and I made sure everyone knew it. I blew up.

By the time I walked back to my office, I regretted how I had reacted. I called my colleague and apologized. Then I called everyone who had witnessed it and apologized to them too. For years, I thought the lesson in that story was about controlling my temper. I understand it differently now. I had another rule: if something matters, protect it fiercely.

I still believe in protecting the people and things I care about. What I no longer believe is that fierce has to mean loud. I do not have to demonstrate how deeply I care by the size of my reaction. I can keep the conviction and retire the rule that grew around it.

That realization made me curious about how many other rules I had mistaken for personality.

A year ago, when I was uncertain about the next chapter of my career, I became almost comically determined to figure it out. I meditated. I pulled tarot cards. I looked for signs everywhere. I am fairly certain I gave more weight to a few fortune cookies than any reasonable person should.

I thought I was searching for an answer. I was following another rule: know what comes next.

I like knowing what comes next. I like plans, contingencies and enough information to feel prepared for whatever is around the corner. There is nothing wrong with any of that. The problem comes when preparation turns into a demand for certainty.

That version of me from a year ago was not simply uncertain. She was frustrated by her uncertainty. She believed there was an answer somewhere and that, with enough effort, reflection or divination, she should be able to find it. I have a lot of affection for her now. She was trying very hard.

Somewhere over the past year, I stopped requiring her to figure everything out. I started paying attention to when fear was influencing a decision. I became more conscious of wanting things without becoming so attached to one outcome that everything else felt like disappointment. I began noticing the difference between preparing for my life and trying to control it.

Without really noticing when it happened, I became more relaxed. Then something else happened: I became more creative.

Ideas started coming more easily. I felt inspired in ways I had not felt for some time. I laughed more. I enjoyed my work more. I enjoyed my life more. There was energy available for things I had not realized I was too preoccupied to notice.

That may be what surprised me most. I had always assumed that loosening my grip would make me less productive, less focused or less effective. Instead, I found the opposite. I had not lost my edge. I had made room for other parts of myself.

I no longer want to spend this chapter of my life correcting the woman I used to be. I rather like her. She worked incredibly hard to get me here. I just want to relieve her of a few responsibilities she assigned herself along the way: responsibility for everyone’s happiness, guilt when choosing herself, the belief that enough preparation can prevent disappointment, the idea that being strong means needing less, and the reflex to assume that if something matters enough, she should be able to figure it out.

There are versions of ourselves that deserve our gratitude, not our permanence.

That is the part of release what no longer serves you I had missed. Release can sound like rejection: find the bad habit, identify the unhealthy pattern, get rid of it, become better. I do not feel that way about the woman I have been. I understand her.

I understand why she wanted to be prepared, why disappointing people bothered her so much, why knowing what came next made her feel safer and why choosing herself could come with guilt even when she desperately needed to. Those rules came from somewhere. They had reasons. Some protected me. Some propelled me. Some helped me build a life I am deeply grateful for.

They did their jobs. I just never stopped to ask whether they still had them.

Which brings me back to the little girl sitting on my lap.

Nearly a decade ago, she told me she missed me. She thought I had forgotten her. This time, she did not ask where I had been. She was rested. She was excited. She felt free. She was no longer waiting for permission to put herself first.

And I finally understood why she seemed so familiar. She was the version of myself I had been meeting lately: the one having more fun, the one creating, the one feeling inspired, the one who was no longer spending quite so much energy trying to make everything turn out exactly right.

I had not changed that little girl. I had changed the rules she was living under. And rules can be changed.

That, for me, is what releasing what no longer serves us has come to mean. It is not becoming someone else. It is not rejecting who we were or regretting the ways we learned to survive, succeed, love or protect ourselves.

It is noticing the rules we have followed for so long that we stopped remembering they were rules. And once we recognize them, we get to decide whether we still want to live by them.

A Sunday Held Reflection

What rules did you write for yourself years ago that you are still following today? Which came from your family, your work, a relationship, a disappointment or simply the person you needed to be at the time? Which helped you become who you are but now ask more from you than they give back?

You do not have to resent them to reconsider them, and you do not have to decide they were wrong in order to decide they are finished. This week, find one. Not the biggest one or the one that requires you to reinvent your life by Tuesday. Just one rule you have been following without realizing you still had a choice.

Look at it with some affection. Remember what it once did for you. Then ask yourself the question I wish I had asked much sooner: Do I still want to live this way?

The answer may be yes, and that one gets to stay. If the answer is no, you are allowed to write a new rule.

Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me. If something here stayed with you, I hope you will carry it into the week ahead, or share it with someone who might need it too.

And if you would like to hear more about the moments behind these reflections, you can find Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories on Substack, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Until next Sunday.

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What if not every relationship that matters is meant to last?

In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I return to For a Season, a reflection born from looking back at some of the more painful relationships in my life and wondering what they were there to teach me.

I talk about the people who knew earlier versions of us, the relationships we once thought would last forever, and what can happen when we stop asking why something ended and begin to consider what knowing that person gave us.

Some people stay. Some people do not. But that does not mean they were not important.

🎙️Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for a conversation about love, loss, letting go, and the people who were meant to walk beside us for only part of the way.

Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories is available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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I recently heard a story about a traffic officer who was called to a bridge where a man was threatening to take his own life. The officer had been sent there to direct traffic and help manage the scene. He also happened to be a pastor.

When he arrived, he saw the man and instinctively walked toward him. Later, he described looking into his eyes and seeing what he could only describe as darkness. There was fear there, helplessness and the unmistakable look of someone in deep distress.

The officer reached out his hand and yelled, “Grab me! Grab me, please!”

For the next forty minutes, he stood there with his hand extended, pleading with a stranger to take it. I keep thinking about those forty minutes. How long they must have felt. How many times the officer could have wondered whether he was getting through to him. Yet he stayed there, asking this man to trust him when trust, hope and perhaps even the belief that his own life mattered must have felt very far away.

Eventually, the man reached for his hand.

The story could have ended there, and it still would have been extraordinary. But the officer continued to check on him afterward, eventually making it a daily practice. The two became friends, and the man who had once stood on that bridge went on to thrive.

What stayed with me was not only that the officer helped save his life. It was that he had been sent there to direct traffic. No one had asked him to become part of this man’s story. He simply saw another human being in pain and could not look away.

As I listened, I found myself thinking about something that happened to me many years ago.

I was in my twenties and traveling for business through the Dallas airport. I grew up fairly sheltered and, at that point in my life, had not been exposed to many of the harder realities people carry with them.

While I was waiting to board, I noticed a man in military uniform sitting hunched over on the floor. At some point he looked up, and I remember being struck by his eyes. I had no idea where he had been, what he had experienced or what was happening in his life that day, and I would never pretend otherwise. I just remember seeing a heaviness in his face that I had not encountered before.

I was flying business class, and without thinking too much about it, I walked over and offered him my seat. I thanked him for his service. He seemed embarrassed by the attention, and I immediately worried that I was making him uncomfortable. Rather than make a bigger production of it, I went to the gate agent, had our seats switched and walked away.

When I boarded the plane, he was already sitting in my seat. He looked up at me and his entire expression changed. He gave me this enormous smile. I smiled back, put my hand over my heart and mouthed, “Thank you.”

He lowered his head, almost shyly, and that was the end of our interaction.

I never knew his name. I never knew his story. I have no idea whether he thought about that exchange again after the plane landed. Yet here I am, decades later, remembering it because of a story about two strangers on a bridge.

Of course, the two moments are not remotely the same. One involved a man standing at the edge of life and another person refusing to give up on him. Mine was a small gesture in an airport that cost me little more than a comfortable seat.

But both have made me think about what can happen when we really notice another person. And more than that, I have been wondering why strangers can sometimes bring out the very best in us.

There is something almost instinctive about it. The traffic officer did not stand on that bridge weighing what was expected of him. I do not remember standing in that airport debating whether I should give up my seat. In both cases, there was simply another person in front of us and an impulse to respond.

Where does that come from?

Maybe there is something about a stranger that strips away all the things that can complicate our relationships with the people we know. There is no history to revisit, no old hurt sitting between us, no expectation of anything in return. We do not know their politics, their mistakes, their difficult habits or the hundred other things we sometimes allow to shape how generously we see someone.

We just see a person.

I find that incredibly hopeful. Perhaps compassion is more natural to us than we sometimes believe. Before we have time to decide whether something is our responsibility, there can be this immediate recognition of another person’s humanity. We see pain and want to ease it. We see someone struggling and want to help. We see a stranger sitting on an airport floor and, for reasons we may not completely understand even years later, something inside us says, Do something.

Maybe that instinct is worth paying attention to.

We spend so much of our days doing what we are supposed to be doing. We get where we need to go, finish what needs to be finished and move through the routines that make up a life. The traffic officer could have stayed with the traffic. I could have boarded my flight and never thought twice about the man sitting on the floor. Most of us have probably had moments when we did keep walking. Life moves quickly, and we do too.

But every so often, we don’t.

We stop. We notice. And perhaps those moments tell us something important about who we are underneath all the noise. Not because a gesture makes us good people, but because for a moment there is nothing standing between one human being and another. No obligation, reward or expectation. Just recognition.

There is another part of the bridge story that I find equally moving. The man eventually took the officer’s hand.

We talk a lot about the courage it takes to help someone, but receiving help requires its own kind of courage. That man had to trust a stranger at what may have been the lowest moment of his life. The officer could extend his hand, but eventually the man had to decide to reach for it.

Life gives us opportunities to be on both sides of that exchange. Sometimes we are fortunate enough to have something to give, even if it is only our attention, our time or a seat on an airplane. Other times, we may be the person who needs to believe someone when they tell us that we matter.

Maybe the beauty of human connection is that we do not always need to know someone’s story to become a small part of it. We do not have to understand everything they have lived through. Sometimes we simply notice each other, respond to what is in front of us and trust the instinct that tells us not to keep walking.

I will probably never know what became of the soldier I met all those years ago. I hope life has been good to him. I hope he knows that the young woman who saw him sitting on the airport floor still remembers his smile and appreciates his sacrifices.

And I hope I never become too busy, too distracted or too consumed with where I am going to notice when life gives me another reason to stop. Because sometimes we think we know why we are there, only to discover that life had something else in mind.

Sometimes we are simply there to extend a hand.

A Sunday Held Reflection

Think about the strangers who have appeared unexpectedly in your own life. Who noticed you when they did not have to? Who offered a hand, in whatever form it took? And perhaps just as importantly, when someone offered it, did you let yourself take it?

Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me. If something here stayed with you, I hope you will carry it into the week ahead, or share it with someone who might need it too.

And if you would like to hear more about the moments behind these reflections, you can find Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories on Substack, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Until next Sunday.

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What happens when the person who is there to observe becomes the person who changes the moment?

In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I take you behind The People Who Saw Us First — a reflection that began in a doctor’s office, at a time when fear had already taken my mind to the worst possible places.

I share what was happening inside me that day, why I am proud that I was able to look beyond my own worry and notice the young woman who was there to shadow, and how one simple conversation unexpectedly shifted everything.

After reading the essay, I reflect on the people who see something in us before we see it ourselves — and the moments when we may have the chance to do the same for someone else.

Sometimes the person standing at the edge of the story becomes the person we remember most.

🎙️ Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for the story behind the story.

Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories is available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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Years ago, a psychic told me that my dad wanted me to “make space” for the love of my life to come into my life.

I have never forgotten those words. My father had died, and I was still deep in the grief of losing him. At the time, making space meant finding a way to live with that grief without allowing it to fill every part of me. It did not mean loving my dad less or leaving him behind. I don’t think grief works that way anyway. It was more about allowing something else to exist alongside the loss.

Eventually, something did.

I have thought about those words many times over the years, but recently they have come back to me in a completely different way. I am realizing that we are asked to make space throughout our lives, and it doesn’t always happen because something has ended. Sometimes nothing ends at all. We simply realize that the way we have been holding something is taking more from us than it should.

I have been thinking about this a lot in relation to my career.

A year ago, I was struggling with what the next phase of my career might look like. I wanted certainty. Actually, wanted is probably too mild a word for it. I was demanding certainty. I thought I should know what was next. I should have a plan. I should be able to look at everything I had done and somehow figure out where it was all leading.

And when I could not, I went looking for the answer pretty much everywhere. I meditated. I looked for signs. I assigned meaning to coincidences and things people said that probably had absolutely nothing to do with me. I am a little embarrassed to admit that fortune cookies got involved. Apparently I thought the answer to the next phase of my career might arrive after Chinese food.

It did not.

Neither did the meditation, the cards, the signs or all of my thinking. I was trying so hard to get ahead of my own life. I wanted to know what was coming so I could prepare for it, make the right decision, avoid the wrong one and, I suppose, feel some sense of control over all of it.

There was a desperation and urgency to it that I can see much more clearly now. It was not enough to wonder what might come next. I needed to know, preferably immediately. I treated uncertainty as though it were a problem I should be able to solve, and the longer I could not solve it, the harder I looked.

Eventually, instead of looking ahead, I started looking back at the life I had already lived.

What I saw should probably have been obvious to me all along. Almost none of it had happened in a straight line. There were things I desperately wanted that did not happen and things I never thought to want that did. People came into my life unexpectedly. Plans changed. Doors opened. Others closed. Some disappointments made absolutely no sense to me until much later.

And somehow, all of those turns had brought me here.

When I really thought about it, I realized that if my life had unfolded exactly the way I once imagined it would, I do not think it would have been nearly as rich or rewarding as the life I actually got. Here I was demanding to know what came next when some of the best parts of my life had come from things I never could have predicted.

My imagination, it turns out, had been far too limited. Life had done better.

That realization changed something in me, although not all at once. I did not wake up the next morning completely at peace with uncertainty. I still wondered what was going to happen. I still had opinions about what I wanted to happen. I still do.

But I stopped insisting that I had to know.

That is when I began to understand surrender differently. For most of my life, surrender sounded like giving up, and I am not particularly good at giving up, so it never held much appeal. But I began to see that I could still advocate for myself and others. I could work hard, make decisions, pay attention and want things for myself. I could participate fully in creating the life I wanted without believing I could control exactly how it would turn out.

There is a point where participation becomes pushing, where thinking becomes overthinking, where caring becomes carrying. I know that line much better than I used to.

Something rather wonderful happened when I stopped crossing it quite so often. I became more present. I was not spending as much time in conversations while also having another conversation in my head about something that might happen six months from now. I was not replaying everything or trying to find meaning in every small development.

Emotionally, I felt more settled too. Things that once might have sent me spinning did not seem to have the same hold on me. Even my body seemed to notice. I was less wound up. I felt calmer. I had not realized how much of my uncertainty I had been carrying physically until I began to put some of it down.

The circumstances around me had not magically changed. I had.

I still care deeply about my work. I still want to do it well. There are circumstances around me that I have to navigate, decisions I do not control and questions about what comes next that I cannot answer yet. I do what is mine to do. I advocate for myself and others when I need to. I show up, work hard and pay attention. I just do not carry every unanswered question home with me anymore.

It occurred to me recently that perhaps this is another version of what my dad was trying to tell me all those years ago.

Make space.

This time, not for another person to come into my life, but for more of my own life to come back into view.

I think we are asked to do this in so many ways. Maybe you have just dropped your child off at college. For eighteen years, you knew where they were sleeping every night. You knew whether they had eaten, whether they made it home, whether something seemed wrong just by the way they walked through the door. Then one day you help make a bed in a dorm room, hug them goodbye and drive away.

Nothing about the love has diminished, but the way you love them has to change. You have to give them room to become who they are going to become, which sounds beautiful until you are the one driving away. There must be some surrender in that too. Not surrendering the relationship, but surrendering the version of it that belonged to another time.

The same can happen with a friendship, a marriage entering a different season, a career, a dream we have held onto for years, or simply an idea of how we thought something was supposed to turn out. Sometimes we keep pouring energy into something because it mattered to us once without stopping to ask whether the way we are holding it still makes sense.

There can be grief in admitting that. We can grieve what something was, or what we hoped it might become, without becoming bitter about what it is. We can be disappointed and still be grateful. We can care deeply and also decide that something does not need quite so much of us anymore.

I think that is when things begin to rebalance. The energy that has been wrapped around one thing starts finding its way back into the rest of our lives. We notice the people right in front of us. We say yes to an experience instead of being distracted by whatever we are trying to resolve. We laugh more easily. We become curious again. We remember there is so much more to us than the one thing we have been trying so hard to figure out.

For a long time, I thought uncertainty was something I needed to solve. Now I am beginning to wonder if it is simply part of the deal. We are not supposed to know every turn before we reach it. At least, my life certainly has not worked that way, and I am grateful it has not.

That does not mean sitting back and waiting for life to happen. I believe we have far more influence over our lives than we sometimes realize. We choose where we put our attention. We decide who we spend our time with. We make the call, take the trip, say yes, say no, try something new. We participate in creating a life that feels right to us.

And then, at some point, we have to let life participate too.

I think that is what I was missing a year ago. I was so busy trying to figure out what life was going to do next that I was leaving very little room for it to surprise me. Looking back, that seems especially strange because surprise has been responsible for so much of what I love about the life I have.

Which brings me, again, to my dad.

When I first heard “make space,” I thought he was telling me something about grief and love. Maybe he was. It was exactly what I needed to hear then. All these years later, I wonder if those same two words were something I would need more than once.

Maybe making space is not always about leaving something behind. Sometimes it is simply loosening our grip enough to let something take its proper place in our lives, trusting ourselves to do what we can and accepting that we will not always know what happens next.

I do not know exactly what my next chapter looks like. A year ago, that would have been very difficult for me to say. Today, it feels different. I still wonder about it, of course. I am human. And I cannot promise I will never again look suspiciously closely at a fortune cookie.

But I am not chasing the answer the way I once did.

For now, I am making space. And I am curious to see what finds its way in.

Over tea this Sunday, I wonder if there is something in your own life that you do not need to leave, fix or resolve, but might simply be ready to hold differently.

Maybe you do not need the next answer yet. Maybe you just need a little room for it to find you.

Until next Sunday.

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Sunday Held is a place for reflections on the moments that stay with us, the things life continues to teach us, and the meaning we sometimes find when we finally stop long enough to notice.

And every Wednesday, Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories goes a little deeper into the experiences behind these reflections: what happened, what stayed with me, and what I am still thinking about now.

You can find Stories Behind the Stories on Substack, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

If something here stayed with you, I hope you will subscribe, share it with someone who might need it, or simply come back next Sunday. I will be here.

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What are the things we are drawn to long before we understand why?

In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I take you behind The Lighthouse, the most-read Sunday Held reflection to date.

I share what was on my mind when I sat down to write it, why I found myself thinking about the things that stay with us from childhood, and what surprised me most after I released the story into the world.

Sometimes we write from a place that feels deeply personal, only to discover that other people recognize something of themselves there too.

And sometimes the things we have carried with us for years may be trying to remind us of something we already know.

🎙️ Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for the story behind the story.

Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories is available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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I have always been fascinated by Mount Everest.

I have no desire to climb it. Let me make that clear. But for years, I have told close friends that I would love to go to Everest Base Camp and talk to the people who do.

I have so many questions for them.

What makes someone leave their children, their spouse, their family and the comforts of home to attempt something so dangerous? How do you prepare your body for that kind of punishment? What happens in your mind when you are freezing, exhausted, struggling to breathe and still looking up at how far you have to go?

But mostly, I want to ask them why.

Why Everest?

Recently, I was on my way to the airport when my driver picked me up. The first thing I noticed was his smile. It was infectious. He had this wonderful energy about him, and within a few minutes I found myself wanting to know more about him.

So we started talking.

I learned that he was from Nepal, and naturally, I had to ask.

“Tell me about Everest.”

He smiled, and we were off.

He told me about the mountain and the Sherpas who help climbers navigate it. He talked about the danger, about the people who have died there and about the enormous respect the Sherpas have for Everest.

Then he told me about the prayer.

Before the climb, he explained, there is a prayer offered in respect for the mountain. As he talked about it, I could tell this was something he spoke about with great reverence.

And then, right there in the front seat of the car, he showed me.

He brought his hands together and began to recite the prayer.

I watched him from the back seat. His hands were pressed together and his expression changed. For those few moments, it was easy to imagine him kneeling before Everest instead of sitting behind the wheel of a car taking me to the airport.

I did not understand the words, I did not need to. I understood the reverence.

It was beautiful.

I have always thought about Everest in terms of strength. The physical fitness it must require. The mental discipline. The ability to keep going when every part of you must be telling you to stop.

Until that car ride, I had not thought nearly as much about humility.

He explained that you respect the mountain. You listen to it. There are times when, no matter how much you have trained or sacrificed to get there, you have to accept what the mountain and the conditions will allow.

There was something about that I loved.

We live in a world that celebrates pushing through. Keep going. Do not give up. Finish what you started.

But knowing when to continue and when not to can require its own kind of strength.

I could have listened to him talk about Everest for the rest of the drive.

But somewhere along the way, I started asking about him.

He told me he had grown up in a small village in Nepal and had come to America eleven years ago. He had left his family, his friends and the way of life he knew.

I wanted to understand what had drawn him here, so I asked him why he came.

He paused.

“Opportunity.”

Then another pause.

“Freedom.”

“Hope.”

“Strength.”

And finally, “Happiness.”

I remember sitting in the back seat listening as each word came to him.

There was something so simple and moving about the way he answered. One word at a time. No long explanation. No attempt to turn his life into a story for me.

Just five words.

Opportunity.

Freedom.

Hope.

Strength.

Happiness.

I had spent so much of our drive asking him about the remarkable people who travel to Nepal to climb the highest mountain in the world. Now I found myself thinking about the man sitting a few feet in front of me and the journey that had brought him from a small village in Nepal to this particular road, on this particular morning, with me sitting in his back seat asking questions.

I did not know enough about his life to know what those eleven years had held.

I did not know what had been difficult or what had come easily. I did not know what he missed, what surprised him, or whether the life he found here looked anything like the one he imagined before he came.

I only knew what he chose to tell me.

And somehow, those five words felt like enough.

There is something about courage that is easier to recognize when it looks extraordinary.

We understand it when someone is standing on the side of Everest. We can see the danger. We can imagine the fear.

The other kind can be easier to miss.

It can exist in decisions and changes we know nothing about. In the lives of people we encounter every day without ever knowing what brought them to this particular point in their story.

Sometimes it may be sitting right in front of us, driving us to the airport.

I have thought about that ride several times since.

I think about his hands coming together as he recited the prayer. I think about the reverence on his face. And I think about those five words.

Opportunity. Freedom. Hope. Strength. Happiness.

Maybe that is what I loved most about our conversation. I got into his car fascinated by people who climb mountains and got out thinking about all the mountains people climb that the rest of us may never know about.

I still want to visit Everest Base Camp someday.

I still want to sit with the climbers and hear their stories. I want to know what brought them there, what they hope to find and why this particular mountain called to them.

But now I know there is another question I would want to ask.

What did you have to climb before you ever got here?

I have a feeling those are the stories I would remember most.

A Sunday Reflection

What mountain are you climbing right now?

Maybe you are at the beginning, looking up and wondering how you will get there. Maybe you are somewhere in the middle. Maybe you have reached a place you once thought was impossible. Or perhaps you are deciding whether the path you started on is still the one you want to follow.

And then look around.

There may be people in your life climbing mountains you know nothing about. Not because they are hiding them, but because we rarely know the whole of another person’s story.

Perhaps this week, we can be a little more curious about one another. Ask a question. Listen to the answer. Resist the temptation to fill in the parts we do not know.

And give yourself some grace for whatever mountain happens to be in front of you.

Not every climb needs to look extraordinary to matter.

Thank you for spending part of your Sunday with me.

Each week, I sit down with a cup of tea and share a reflection about the moments, people and experiences that stay with me long after they happen. If something here made you think of a mountain you have climbed, or someone whose story you took the time to hear, I would love to hear about it.

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And if you would like to hear more about what was happening behind the words, join me on Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, where I share the stories behind these reflections. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for the story behind the story.

Until next Sunday.

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In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I revisit The World Came to Visit, an essay inspired by something unexpected that began appearing in my social media feed at a time when I was feeling particularly discouraged by how divided we seemed to have become.

Before reading the essay in its entirety, I share why videos of wide-eyed visitors experiencing America for the first time completely captivated me. It was not just their excitement about our country that drew me in. It was their joy, their curiosity, and the way people from completely different places seemed to find one another so easily.

After reading the essay, I reflect on the question that stayed with me long after I wrote it: What happens when everyone goes home? And perhaps the joy we were witnessing was never something they brought with them at all. Maybe it was already here, and they simply reminded us where to look.

🎙️ Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for the story behind the story.

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It had been more than a decade since the four of us had been together.

That sounds like such a long time when I write it. More than ten years of careers and families, marriages and children, losses and celebrations, ordinary Tuesdays and life-changing moments. So much had happened in each of our lives without the others there to witness it.

And yet, when we were finally together again, it did not feel like we had to find our way back to one another. We just picked up where we left off.

I had gone home to Northern California and reunited with three of my closest girlfriends from high school. We gathered in a beautiful living room overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and almost immediately the years between us seemed to collapse.

What struck me was what wasn’t there.

There was no guilt about how much time had passed. No explanations for why we had not done this sooner. No keeping score over who had called whom or who had been better about staying in touch. None of us needed to defend the lives that had gotten busy and pulled us in different directions.

We were simply happy to be there.

At some point, the old pictures and yearbooks came out. There we were. Silly teenagers again. The only thing missing was a little Bartles & James.

We looked at our hair and our clothes and the expressions on our faces. Oh, the Aquanet and shoulder pads! We read things we had written to one another decades ago and tried to decipher inside jokes that once required no explanation at all. One photograph would lead to a story, which would lead to another story, and suddenly we were talking about something that happened more than thirty years ago as if it had happened last weekend.

Some memories came rushing back. Others had apparently been entrusted to one of us for safekeeping because the rest of us had no recollection of them whatsoever.

There was a lot of, Wait, I did that? And even more laughter. The kind that hurts your stomach and stretches your mouth.

I loved looking at those extraordinary women. I think I loved them differently than I ever could have back then.

When I looked at my younger self, I remembered how much she did not know yet. She was awkward sometimes. Insecure. Unsure of herself in ways she probably worked very hard to hide. She was even unkind sometimes. She was trying to figure out who she was while also trying to fit in, which I suspect is what most of us were doing.

She had no idea what was coming.

She did not know where she would live or what kind of career she would have. She did not know whom she would love, what she would lose, where she would travel, what would frighten her or what would eventually make her stronger.

She could not have known that more than thirty years later, she would be sitting near the Pacific Ocean with these same girls, now women, looking back at all of it. And fondly, I might add.

There is something different about being with people who knew you before your adult life began.

Most of the people we meet later know some version of the person we eventually became. They meet us after we have acquired a little confidence, learned a few lessons and figured out how to move through the world with at least the appearance that we know what we are doing.

Old friends know better.

These women knew me before the résumé and the titles. Before marriage, divorce, marriage again and stepmotherhood. Before I had traveled much of the world. Before some of the experiences that would shape me the most had even happened.

They knew my family. They knew where I came from. They knew the girl before the woman.

And sitting with them again made me realize how rare that becomes as we get older.

There was a warmth to it that I had not expected. Not nostalgia exactly, although there was plenty of that. It was more the feeling of returning to my roots and discovering that they were still there.

I did not want the weekend to move too quickly.

I wanted to stay present for it, which is something I think I understand much better now than I did when we were teenagers. Back then, we were always looking toward whatever came next. College. Careers. Love. Adulthood. We had our whole lives ahead of us and, of course, we had no idea how quickly those lives would begin unfolding.

Now I wanted to do the opposite.

I wanted to notice. The living room. The ocean beyond the windows. The old photographs spread out in front of us. The stories. The laughter that still sounded familiar after all these years.

Later, we went outside and took a selfie together with the Pacific behind us. Four women smiling into a camera.

Looking at that picture now, I cannot help thinking about all the younger versions of us that are somehow inside it too.

The girls in the yearbooks could never have imagined these women. They did not know the lives waiting for them or how many times they would have to begin again. They certainly did not know there would come a day when simply being together again would feel like something worth holding onto.

Maybe that is what stayed with me most after I left.

We talk so much about the people who walk beside us through life, but there is something equally meaningful about the people who knew us near the starting line. Even when our paths separate for a while, they remain connected to a part of our story that no one we meet later can ever fully know.

More than a decade had passed since the four of us had been together.

We could have spent the afternoon noticing the years we had missed.

Instead, we spent it remembering the years we shared.

And somewhere between the old photographs, the thirty-year-old stories and the Pacific stretching out in front of us, I felt the warmth of something I had not realized I needed.

I had gone home to see old friends. I left remembering how good it feels to be known by the people who knew you when your whole life was still ahead of you.

Maybe that is one of the gifts of finding our way back to the people who knew us then. They remind us not only of where we came from, but of just how far we have traveled.

***

Thank you for sitting with me over tea today. I hope this reflection makes you think of someone who knew you when your whole life was still ahead of you. Maybe today is a good day to reach out and simply pick up where you left off.

Until next Sunday.

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Sunday Held is a place for reflection, connection, and the stories that stay with us. If something here resonated with you, I hope you will share it with someone who might need it too.

🎙️ And if you would like to hear the stories behind these reflections, join me for Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, available on Substack, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify.

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In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I revisit The Inheritance of Wonder, an essay about my father, the lessons he left behind, and the unexpected ways we sometimes discover that the people we have lost are still very much a part of who we have become.

Before reading the essay in its entirety, I share what was happening in my life when I wrote it—a particularly reflective time when I found myself thinking deeply about my dad, everything he taught me, and my growing willingness to receive the signs that remind me of him without needing to explain them away.

After reading the essay, I reflect on what I now understand about inheritance: that perhaps the most meaningful things our parents leave us are not possessions at all, but curiosity, confidence, wonder, and ways of seeing the world that become part of us.

This is an episode about fathers and daughters, signs, travel, curiosity, and recognizing that sometimes the greatest inheritance is not what someone leaves us, but what they leave in us.

🎙️ Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for the story behind the story.

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A few years ago, I was traveling in Tokyo with my family when they announced that we needed to go to a 7-Eleven. Again.

By that point in the trip, visiting 7-Eleven had somehow become part of our nightly routine. After dinner, we would stop so everyone could stock up on snacks for the next day of touring around Japan. And I get it. The 7-Eleven stores in Japan are nothing like the ones we have at home. They are the mecca of convenience stores. There is amazing sushi, elaborate sweets, slushies and rows of interesting things that I could not identify but my family assured me we needed to try.

But this was probably our fifth visit that week, and I had seen enough. So while my family went inside to make their selections, I stayed behind in the lobby of the office building where the store was located. I sat down and did what I often do when I have a few minutes with nowhere I need to be. I watched people.

Men and women in suits moved in and out of the elevators. Most seemed to be in a hurry, heading somewhere or coming from somewhere. It was the end of an ordinary workday unfolding in front of me, and I probably would not remember any of it if I hadn’t noticed an older gentleman in a white jumpsuit. He looked to be in his sixties or seventies and appeared to be responsible for cleaning the lobby.

The funny thing was, there was really nothing to clean. The floor was immaculate. You could have eaten off of it. But this man walked slowly around the lobby with his hands tucked behind his back, looking down as he followed what seemed to be a very specific pattern across the floor. He was studying it, and he was smiling.

I watched him for several minutes before realizing that he had no idea I was watching him. Actually, he did not seem to notice much of anything happening around him. Elevators opened and closed. Executives hurried past. People crossed directly in front of him. None of it seemed to pull his attention away. His eyes remained fixed on the floor.

Eventually, he saw something. I could not see it from where I was sitting. Maybe it was a crumb or a tiny piece of lint. Whatever it was, it was enough for him to stop. He leaned down to inspect it, then walked over to retrieve his broom and dustpan. He returned to the exact spot and carefully swept it up.

I assumed he was finished, but he was not. He got down on his hands and knees and inspected the area again. Apparently, something was still not right because he stood up, walked over to a bucket, brought it back and mopped the spot. Then he looked again. Only when he was satisfied did he continue on his way, hands behind his back, searching the floor for whatever might need his attention next. Still smiling.

I was fascinated. There was no supervisor standing nearby. No one was complimenting him. Most of the people walking through the lobby barely seemed to know he was there, and he certainly did not know that a woman sitting across the lobby had become completely absorbed in watching him work. Whatever satisfaction he was getting from what he was doing belonged entirely to him.

I remember wondering whether I would be that good at his job. I am not sure I would have noticed whatever he found on that already spotless floor. And even if I had, I am fairly certain I would have swept it up, considered the job done and moved on. He looked again.

For years, when I thought about that early evening in Tokyo, I assumed what stayed with me was the pride he took in his work. There was something beautiful about watching someone care that much about doing a job well, particularly when nobody seemed to be paying attention. But lately, I have been thinking about him differently.

I think what I witnessed that afternoon may have been alignment.

Alignment is one of those words that gets tossed around a lot these days. We talk about being aligned with our purpose, our relationships and our careers. I am not sure I ever really understood what it meant in practical terms. Maybe I still do not completely, but I am beginning to understand what it feels like.

I used to think being aligned with your work meant finding the work you were meant to do. The right career. The right company. The right position. Some magical combination of talent and purpose that would make Monday morning feel different. Now I wonder if alignment has much less to do with what is happening around us and much more to do with what is happening within us.

I have been doing my current job for twenty years. I still work as hard as I ever have. I am still as loyal as I could possibly be. I still care deeply about doing good work and about the people I do it with. But lately, I have noticed that I am showing up differently.

I am calmer than I have ever been at work. I take things less personally. I am less likely to allow a difficult conversation, a disappointment or a decision I disagree with to become something larger than it actually is. The things that happen at work still matter to me. They just do not move into my head and live there the way they once did.

There is a healthy distance now between what I experience and what I allow that experience to do to me physically, mentally and emotionally. What has surprised me is that this distance has not made me care less. If anything, I think it has allowed me to care better.

I can be invested without being consumed by the outcome. I can disagree without feeling personally diminished. I can have a bad day and recognize it as exactly that: a bad day, not a referendum on my worth, my career or everything I have spent years building. Somewhere in all of that, I have found a new kind of confidence.

It is not the confidence that comes from having all the answers. I certainly do not. It is something steadier than that. I know what I know. I know what I bring. I know how hard I work and where my loyalty lies. I do not need every moment around me to confirm those things anymore.

And with that has come something I did not expect after twenty years: joy. Not every day. Not every meeting. Let’s not get carried away. But there is a lightness in my work that was not always there before. I am more present for it. I spend less energy worrying about what something means for me and more energy simply doing what is in front of me as well as I know how.

Which brings me back to that man in Tokyo. I wonder now if that was what I was seeing in him. He did not appear to need his work to be anything other than what it was. He was not glancing around to see who had noticed how clean the lobby was. He was not comparing himself to the executives walking past him. At least from where I was sitting, he seemed completely at ease with himself and with the work in front of him.

There was a floor. It was his responsibility, and he wanted it to be beautiful.

Maybe alignment is not something we find once all the pieces of our lives finally fall into place. Maybe it arrives when we stop asking everything around us to tell us who we are. When we know what matters to us and behave accordingly. When we can give our best without giving away all of ourselves, and when we can care deeply without carrying everything.

I think back to that lobby sometimes and all of those people rushing through it. I am sure there were important people among them, with impressive titles and full calendars. I understood those people. In many ways, I was one of them.

But I do not remember any of them.

I remember him.

He never saw me watching. He barely seemed to see anyone at all. He saw the floor in front of him, and he gave it his full attention.

Maybe he had figured something out long before I did. Or maybe, all these years later, I am finally catching up to the man in the white jumpsuit.

Over tea this Sunday, I would love to know what alignment feels like to you. Has your relationship with your work changed over the years? Have you ever found yourself enjoying something differently simply because you were approaching it differently? Tell me in the comments. I always love hearing your stories, too.

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If Sunday Held has become part of your Sunday, I hope you will subscribe and join me here each week.

And on Wednesdays, the conversation continues with Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, where I share what was happening beyond the words on the page, the memories that inspired them and what I have come to understand since. You can listen here on Substack, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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In this episode of Sunday Held: Stories Behind the Stories, I revisit It Comes in Waves, an essay that began with a stranger on a plane and became a reflection on grief, empathy, grace, and the invisible burdens we carry.

Before reading the essay in its entirety, I share what happened that morning on my way to Seoul—from asking my dad to join me on the trip and tucking his college ring into my carry-on, to an owl calling before dawn and the unexpected encounter that unfolded just before takeoff.

After the reading, I reflect on what it means to remain open enough to notice the people and signs around us, even in the rush of everyday life. I also share what a remarkable flight attendant taught me about showing up for others while carrying our own burdens, and why perhaps we could all move through the world a little slower to judge, a little quicker to understand, and a little more generous with our grace.

🎙️ Press play, settle in with a cup of tea, and join me for the story behind the story.

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