Expanding the surface for opportunity
Abridged version of my Substack Post “Surface Area”
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… today I wanted to share that exactly 3 years, 3 months, and 12 days into being Maria’s mom and 7-ish years into being Jesus’ partner, here’s what I wanted you to know:
I still love my bed. But I also love the life that I’ve lived out in the big, beautiful, cruel, kind, magical, hard, and redeeming world. I’ve moved ~15 times in my 44 years and each time, whether I wanted to or not, my beliefs were challenged, my priors were checked, and I was forever changed. What I can do and see and understand and connect to has been forever multiplied.
In the last 12 years since moving to New York City: I am grateful that I met my partner before he knew what I knew, and that we continued to grow in our own ways for 5 years before we even went on our first, real date. I love that we traveled and lived together for 3 years before we became parents.
And before that: I marvel knowing I commuted from Virginia into Washington D.C. and eventually lived at the border of Dupont Circle and Georgetown. I am inspired by my younger self, who once in the Nation’s capital, learned how to play the sports of Politics and Crisis Comms and News with some of the best in the game. And the Internet! I did so much on, in, around, with, from, to, through, and because of the Internet. And the people, the coworkers, the lifelong conspirators, the launches, the closings - I hold them all so dearly, daily.
As for post-high school: I can’t believe my luck to have arrived in Davis, California to meet lifelong friends Vanessa Shields and Sara in the dorm we shared by the cows (ah, Tercero F). And EED on the shuttle and Dr. Cowen near the feldspars. And A&D’s big yellow chair and the bicycles on campus, everywhere. I carry you each in my heart and in the practice of my practice. You each showed me that showing up unlocks Narnia upon Narnia - and holding wonder, faith, and science together is a necessary and (not an or).
And yet: As as much as I loved parts of UCD, I am inspired by my younger self that knew she wanted more out of her college experience (and by more, I actually wanted less - smaller classes, more focus). So I transferred the very next year. To a place that made me break out in hives and settle into my own gifts. I found Lorde and Foucault; Rubin and Michaels; Sanderson and MacAloon; Durkheim and Marx; the L and the Bourgeois Pig; Lake Shore Drive and my first cab rides.
Winding it all the way back to the 1980s and ‘90s: I am grateful to have grown up in the mountains of Lake Tahoe and the fields of the Willamette Valley. My parents are rugged, curious, and self-sufficient—and my sister and I do our best to live up to their best. I was SO sad I had to leave Tahoe (and Lindsay J., Emily, Kellea, et al.) the summer before 6th grade, but then again, I would have never been able to meet Annie, Jess, Steph, Tara, Erin, Tiff, Blair, LesP, Tonya, Matt W ^ 2, Robin, Rose, Amy, Ryan… and the coaches and the teachers that helped me sharpen and loosen; flare and focus, diverge and converge; and summon my gifts for teamwork and dreamwork.
And so, fair reader, I can’t help but ask:
What opportunities are you grateful to your younger self for making possible?
What surface area did you expand by leaving the shire?
And what awaits you over the next bend?
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