☀️No Explanation Only Reputation (ok maybe a little explanation)

A March letter that's been a long time coming but...

Well hi there hello and welcome to the season of this newsletter where I reeeeeally lean heavy into the “ish” part of monthly-ish. Whether you’ve been here since the beginning, or found me in the last year and waited ever so patiently for me to get my “ish” together and send you a little note, I’m just so glad you’re here.

Speaking of long time no talk…

Do you remember that one time in 2016 when shit hit the fan for Taylor Swift? No? You don’t have a borderline unhealthy parasocial relationship with Taylor Swift? Yeah me neither. But anyway, here’s what happened. So the internet got weird, as the internet tends to do, and people said some mean things and she was like “yeah I’m out.” We essentially didn’t hear from her for a solid year. That is until one day she just threw a snake across her Instagram profile and was like…I’m back witches!

And then she told us she had this brand new album and it was a whole new sound from her and she was bad ass and strong and feisty and she basically revamped her whole vibe with a single line telling us the old Taylor couldn’t come to the phone right now. Why?

Slay. (I don’t know if I’m allowed to use that word as a Grandma Millennial so don’t tell my 12 year old, ok? Her eyes would roll out the door.)

I was thinking about this and how it would be really cool to come back to my Substack in that way. I thought maybe I could return in your inboxes with this new look and new sound and of course a killer new album that I’ve been tirelessly working on whilst away with all the juicy details of my secret life, angry snap backs to the haters, tales of heartbreak and new love and all that good stuff. And you would say “oh that’s why she’s been away! We get it now! What an icon! I can’t wait to get tickets to the tour!”

Actually, while we’re on this topic of albums, this feels like a good time to tell you a secret that I’ve been keeping from you for the last year which is that in April I’ll be releasing my BRAND NEW album. It’s called The Tortured Creative Mom Departme…

Hahaha. Couldn’t even say that with a straight face. No I’m not. But oh my god you should see your faces.

Dear Readers, there is no new album. No new look. No tour. Definitely no snakes. The old Rachel is not dead. She’s just…I don’t know. Tired?

Tired apparently doesn’t make for great album content.

What exactly was I doing, you might ask? Working on a super in depth writing project keeping me from my regular content?

No.

But did I spend my time reading through a library of novels and memoirs to improve my creative writing craft?

Also no.

But did I take some intentional time to better my mental health and retreat into a screen free existence where I learned to listen to my own heartbeat and felt at peace in my body?

You must be kidding.

Ok, well did I at the very least cry?

YES! That I did, a lot in fact. But unlike Taylor, I am not productive. For me it’s more I cry a lot…[pause]..it’s an art.

I guess in short, I didn’t mean to, but I stopped sharing my writing.

It’s just that the world got a little wild for me in the spring turned summer turned fall, winter, good grief nearly spring at this point judging by the crocuses I saw pop up outside this morning. All of the transitions in fact from a whole year of leaving behind a past beloved community to navigating new communities to holding space for everyone’s emotions to shifting family needs to balancing career shifts and somewhere in there some weird perimenopasuse stuff that I don’t have time to go into but believe me it’s exhausting and so on and so on and so on…Well, anyway, it leveled me. And yeah, I’ve cried a lot in the rebalancing of this new part of my life. Cried, but also laughed and listened and worried and slept and didn’t sleep and then cried some more (did I mention the perimeni thing?)

So no, maybe there were no decent words on a page. But there were stories. There are always stories.

I’m thinking about the stories I collect in my therapy work, sitting with other parents and helping them craft their own stories of their child and their capabilities each day. There is a whole lot of creative process in teaching a child how to navigate the world when their brain is built a little different than others.

There is also an editing process when a new working mother returns home to a life and kids and dinner and sports practices. So many sports practices. I had to learn what stays and what goes. How to shift parts around to make my own story flow a little better. Let some things go, even those darlings with which I swore I would never part. And the truth is I’m still in the editing stage. Maybe I always will be. Probably it will get easier.

And then of course there are still 1000s of garbage words sitting in untitled google documents filled with mediocre complaints about the struggles of balancing this new life of a working mom coupled with the rise of older children and all the responsibilities that come with that, not to mention the state of the world right now. Jack Antonoff has yet to show up and help me pull those into a surprise album for y’all. And so in my folders they sit.

It’s a very weird thing when you write fairly regularly for a bunch of readers to all of a sudden just…not. You feel like you have to explain yourself or apologize and that is also kind of awkward because then you wonder if maybe people didn’t even notice you were gone which is probably the case.

But a great poet¹ once said “there will be no explanation, just reputation.”

I’d like to think if I have any reputation it is as a person who never gives up on her creativity, who tries new things, who begins again and again and again. And so I will.

Speaking of Reputation…allow me to get into this letter (and maybe more to come closer than a year apart) with my most favorite part of the beginning of the Reputation album. No, not with a snake but with a throat clear…ready for it?

Ahem. Cheers!

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SPEAKING OF…

a series where I string together all the things I’ve been meaning to tell you.

Speaking of Taylor Swift…

There are many Taylor Swift related books sitting on my stand (who am I kidding, they’re piled all over the floor.) One I have been loving lately is this poetry book. Every poem is a response to a Taylor Swift song but never tells you which song so you have to try and figure it out which is basically what it means to be a swiftie. So cryptic and machiavellian.

In other Taylor news, I recently had a friend ask me what was the name of my Taylor Swift blog. I was about to tell them I didn’t have a Taylor Swift blog. But then I realized that wasn’t exactly true, at least not of late. I seem to swirl Taylor Swift into all of my poems. I’m not going to apologize for that. But I can let you know if you are new here, and Taylor Swift isn’t usually your thing, I think you’ll still find a place in my words. Also, I love love LOVE to know what you swirl into all of your poems! Tell me the most ridiculous things.

Speaking of ridiculous things we love…

For an entire week I was completely consumed with the real life (?) meet cute flirtatious rendezvous between the host of the YouTube channel Chicken Shop Date Amelia D and actor Andrew Garflied. Truly I could not get enough content. This basically sums it up for me. I wanted to talk about it with anyone. If the two year olds I work with could string together more than 2 words, I would bring it up with them. Are you also invested? Tell me all of your thoughts. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, begin here. Then watch this episode. Is this not the coziest romance?

Speaking of cozy…

I’m an enneagram nine. We love to be cozy. Here are a few things bringing the cozy in my life lately. This sweatsuit that Caroline claims I wear every day. I don’t. But I would if I could. There are a bajillion colors so you can find one for whatever color best suits you. I rock the hot pink one because it’s so fun to have a pop of color.

Other cozy includes this soup (loved so much by my children that it was requested for a birthday dinner!) Also this enchilada slow cooker meal makes a frequent visit on a busy weeknight. Just be sure to skip the onion saute thing and just dump it all in. Frozen chicken works too. Trust me. I’ve even been known to take it in the back of my car for a midweek baseball game tailgate. Spring sports are calling!

Speaking of comfort in the middle of crazy schedules…

My favorite way of finding comfort in the middle of a hectic work day is pausing to watch a quick show while I eat lunch. I am a big fan of the show Somebody Somewhere. I am of course very biased because not only did I grow up in the town in which the show takes place, but I also lived two doors down from Bridget Everett and took piano lessons from her mom. However, even without that connection, I believe this show to be such a comforting delightful showcase of simple storyline with deep character development. The show just released the third season and in the lead up I have thoroughly enjoyed listening to Bridget discuss love, grief, and creativity on Fresh Aire as well as Working it Out Podcast.

Speaking of Love, Grief, and Creativity…

Music and creating music is my latest fascination. I am never not inspired by musical artistry in all forms. A few things I’ve loved lately…

Making of a song with Billie Eilish “Birds of a Feather” and Kacey Musgraves “Dinner with Friends.” The creative process of writing a song is soooo fascinating to me! I need more of these episodes please!

Interview with Taylor Swift’s choreographer Mandy Moore. I would take 13 hours of this discussion please.

Speaking of Taylor Swift, AGAIN…

I can’t let this newsletter go out without giving a shout out to my FAVORITE creative project I get to be apart of every week…Swift and Swigs with Sibs Podcast! Yes, my brother and I are still going strong on our in depth discussions of cocktails, Taylor Swift, and all the adjacent subjects on both of those topics. In fact, we celebrated 100 EPISODES in December with an EPIC episode on the most iconic, and my favorite song, ATWTMVFTV. Now 107 episodes in you are sure to find a song that intrigues you. Give it a listen, leave a review, tell me what song or cocktail we should feature next!

Speaking of Taylor Swift one last time I promise…

While we’re talking Taylor Swift inspirations, you can find another way I swirled her into my poems over on a new essay I have published at Coffee + Crumbs entitled “I Hate it Here.” It’s a story that came together when I didn’t think I had any stories left. And I like to think it was the dominoes cascading in a line that got me to finally get back to this little letter.

I want to close out this letter with a quote from a book that I believe walked me back to the page. Novelist Anthony Doerr writes in his memoir about spending a year in Rome shortly after becoming a father and also while trying to write a book. For a year he wrestles with being thrown into an unknown world—parenting and home—and he must find his way threw it as a writer. He struggles, and this gave me comfort somehow. Whatever you are wrestling with right now, may this—the quote and this letter a year in the making—bring you comfort.

“A good journal entry—like a good song, or sketch, or photograph—ought to break up the habitual and lift away the film that forms over the eye, the finger, the tongue, the heart. A good journal entry ought be a love letter to the world. Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience—buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello—become new all over again.”

― Anthony Doerr, Four Seasons in Rome: On Twins, Insomnia, and the Biggest Funeral in the History of the World

1. It was Taylor Swift. Duh.