what i know to be true.

The year was 2017. Megan was on her annual trip to Portland. It was probably grey and rainy and cold outside. We’d probably had a late night the evening before. And, if those two things were true, then we definitely didn’t want to do much on whatever day this was written — lounging, watching New Girl, drinking coffee, reading our new books from Powell’s. And, when we’d cycled through all those, we did what any gals born in the early 90s do with a notebook, pen, and some time to kill.

We played a game of MASH.

You remember this game, right? The one where your entire future is determined by the size of a spiral circle your friend draws. The one where the most important pieces of your future are not only the city where you’ll live and the job you’ll have but also — at least in my preteen versions of MASH — the color of the car you’ll drive and the kind of wedding dress you’ll wear. (I went through a looooong, weird phase in middle school where everything was going to be silver. Silver house! Silver car! Silver wedding dress!) From these games, I’ve married countless exes and crushes and celebrities. I’ve been a therapist and a teacher and the winner of American Idol. And I’ve had anywhere from one to seven to 25 dogs and children (but, always, always a dog).

From the start, I knew MASH couldn’t accurately predict my future. I knew it was just a game. I knew that what was written on these pieces of paper wouldn’t come true. It couldn’t! Probably not. And yet, I’d always pin just a little bit of hope or wonder on the every-fifth-answer that got circled. Even as an adult, I’d think, “Well, maybe I could be a Broadway actress. Maybe, in another life, I could meet and marry Ryan Gosling. Maybe I could move to Norway. Or New York City. Or Minneapolis.”

Megan and I have written lots of things in notebooks together over the years — goals, resolutions, diaries of our trips together so we always remember the four hours we spent at an AT&T on New Year’s Eve or the random house party we went to in Arizona. And we’ve played many games of MASH throughout our friendship, too — while waiting at the airport, flying on planes, during sleepovers. So this one game where MASH told me that I’d be moving to the Twin Cities didn’t stick with me. I didn’t have any big revelations once it was circled. I didn’t set my sights on moving to the Cities right at that moment, or make an action plan and move forward with it as soon as the game was done. It was circled (along with the rest of my MASH-decided life plan), and then I moved on.

I’ve wondered about living in the Twin Cities for a while, but those wonderings never turned into anything more than that. I wasn’t sure I’d ever live there, especially after planting myself back in Fargo-Moorhead. But then the world changed this spring, and so did my plans. And so did my ideas of what I thought I would do next, or could do next, or wanted to do next.

So my tentative wonderings about the Twin Cities turned into more serious wonderings. And then those more serious wonderings turned into tentative conversations. And then those tentative conversations turned into something more: “Maybe I can do this.”

But moving is exhausting, job searching is overwhelming, and both of those things feel particularly heightened and hard during this time in the world. Was I really going to do this? Was now the right time to do this? And, even at almost-30 years old, I’ve asked myself too many times: Will other people think this is the right choice? 

I found myself thinking about that word — right — a lot. I’d catch myself wondering if my plans were right or wrong, easily switching into either/or thinking, even though I try to keep my feet planted in the world of both/and. Who’s to say what’s right or wrong for my life, except for me? Through it all, while I’ve been trying to shift away from wondering if what I’m doing is right, I do know one thing.

These wonderings that turned into conversations that turned into, “Okay! I’m doing this?! I’m doing this!” felt good. They felt true. I felt that it was “right,” not in that there was an unlived, opposite, “wrong” choice. But it was right because I felt it deep in my bones, even when I’ve been nervous and scared of the unknown. Even when I know I’m going to miss my mom and dog, my cozy apartment, the life I’ve built and lived in Fargo-Moorhead. Even with all that, this still feels like the truest choice I can make for myself right now.

After I had my first tentative conversation about moving to the Twin Cities with Megan, she pulled out that same notebook and handed me the slip of paper at the top of this post. She’d saved that little square of mine, knowing that one day this circled “Minneapolis” might become more than a MASH answer.

A few weeks later, she mailed me this quote by Cheryl Strayed: “Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.” I wrote this quote, probably five years ago. I sent it to her in a card, while she was in the middle of her own deep figuring-things-out phase. It’s lived on her fridge since then, but made its way back to me. Soon, it’ll find a home in our new place.

So, I’m moving to the Twin Cities next month. Now, this is more than an answer made by a spiral circle. It’s a deliberate choice I’m making for this next phase of life — on and off paper.

Here’s to this next, true thing in my life. Fargo, I’m not going far — the drive is the perfect distance to listen to the Hamilton soundtrack in its entirety and sit with your feelings for awhile. Come stay with Megan and I in our cutie little duplex once things calm down. All are welcome for a drink on our patio. 

And Twin Cities, hi! I’m so excited to get to know you.

the answer was yes.

When I flew to Fargo-Moorhead to interview for my job that wasn’t mine at the time, I snuck away to young blood. I had extended my trip past the typical 36-hours-across-the-country-and-back schedule that’s typical in Residence Life to make a long weekend out of it — the “it” not being the interview, but the being home. I was in the *tHicK* of it then: my last term of grad school, my last months in my job, balancing being present for my education and my students’ education, their lives and my own life, while white-knuckling the looming figure-out-a-job-and-geographical-location decision.

So I was home, but I had articles to read and reports to respond to and, beyond that, a deeper question: Could I live here? Could I make this town home again, all on my own? So I went to Young Blood on a Saturday afternoon, just me. Not I-grew-up-in-Fargo me or I-went-to-college-here me, but I-might-move-here-as-a-27-year-old me. I bought a cup of coffee and a refill and perched myself at the window seat. Between sending GIFs of reassurance to my RAs after a hard duty night and underlining a source for my COMPS, I let the question wander around my brain and my heart: Could I live here? Could I find a church and a coffee shop and a community here? Could I make this place home again? I imagined coming to this coffee shop on a different Saturday in a different month, with a different job and responsibilities, maybe to read. or to write or blog, or to make friends with the baristas or smile at a handsome man from across the room (hey, a gal can dream). I imagined having coffee dates with old and new friends, what it might feel like to be a regular somewhere, to belong here.

There’s much more to say but this caption is already long so the answer was yes. Yes, I could. A complicated yes at times, and not to all the questions I asked back then, but still yes. This is home. Where I read and write and have coffee dates, where I order my first cup for here, my refill to go. This photo was taken this morning, looking out that same window.

MOORHEAD

I was just trying to update my Instagram bio.

“Just moved back to the Fargo-MOORHEAD area.”

I didn’t intend for Moorhead to come out as MOORHEAD. I clicked back to MOORHEAD and tried typing it again, but before I could click the X that stops your phone’s autocorrect suggestion, it changed itself back. MOORHEAD.

And since I read into everything in my life, I started to wonder about MOORHEAD. When had I typed MOORHEAD instead of Moorhead? Why was it defaulting to this all-caps, seems-like-you’re-screaming version of my new city? Why did seeing MOORHEAD make me want to giggle but also burst into tears? It’s like my phone was trying to tell me, “Hello! Why yes, you are in MOORHEAD. Yes, not only in Minnesota, but MOORHEAD! MOORHEAD. You live nowhere else in the world but MOORHEAD.”

When seemingly insignificant things like this happen (again, I was just trying to update my Instagram bio with where I live and a few new emojis) and cause me to pause (I spent about 10 minutes staring at MOORHEAD, before I decided I should sit down and write something about it ), I often take them as signs to look more closely at something. To pay attention, to dig deeper, to search for meaning. I can take a sentence I overhear, or a 30-second conversation with a barista, or a photo of feet amongst leaves and make it into a reflection on my Enneagram type or love life or vocational life -- sometimes all of those, at the same time.

I took my iPhone’s autocorrected capitalization as an invitation. An invitation to think about the fact that I do, in fact, live in Moorhead. Not Portland, Oregon; a location that I chose, that shaped me, that became a defining part of my identity for five years. A location that became home and that, from the very beginning, a location I wanted to shout from the rooftops in capital letters. PORTLAND! I’m moving to PORTLAND! Even before jumping in a U-Haul without cruise control to make the 1500-mile drive, even before arriving at that first apartment, even before walking to the Starbucks down the street to upload that first blog post, I adopted an identity of Moving to Portland. It was part of my family’s Christmas letters to acquaintances. It was my Current City on Facebook. It was a place on a map that transformed into home, that transformed my life.

Now, I’m navigating a whole new set of life circumstances not in Portland. In July, I hopped in my car and drove across the country and now -- I’m living in Moorhead. It’s been a big-yet-calm shake-up over the last six months. And I haven’t written a thing about it, except maybe an Instagram post in August. A lot of life has happened in these six months and I’ve kept some of it at an arm’s length. My excuse has been because this transition is still happening. It’s not like you move to a place and then the adjustment and feelings and challenges are done the moment the last box is unpacked. The complicated mourning and the bittersweet celebrating don’t find their own places in a drawer as your kitchen knives do. The feelings of, “What the hell did I just do?!” don’t leave your heart at the same time you recycle your last cardboard box. A transition is ongoing and constant and very, very present. Even with all the goodness in it, navigating it can be overwhelming. And lonely.

I started this blog when I lived in Portland. I’ve been a scattered writer over the last four-ish years, letting other good things (friends and love and work and school) and not-as-good things (Netflix and depression and doubt and loneliness) get in the way of tending to this space. This space of writing, reflecting, sharing, repeating the process. And yet these posts, though rare, have made me feel more connected; to myself, to my own life, and to others, somehow. They’ve made me feel less alone in the navigation of difficult change and huge hurts, and in the celebration of small wonders and huge awe.

And so, here I am. And here’s a reintroduction of this little space on the Internet -- with a new look, a new location, a new-yet-same author.

I’m going to accept the little invitations that come my way to remember Portland, through texts and songs and middle-of-the-night memories, to think about Portland, to write the countless stories about the life I lived there. And I’m going to listen for the call to think about and reflect on and wrestle with my life now -- right here in MOORHEAD. Because these invitations are everywhere, if we want them to be -- even in our Instagram bios. They’re in conversations with strangers and friends, street signs and radio commercials, all that we see and hear and feel, if we open ourselves to them.

Here’s to accepting the invitations of our lives. Thanks for accompanying me as I open mine.

Class Letter

May 2013

What's new? Tell us.

This was the first line of an email I received from my college last week. I'm a proud alum: I subscribe to (and actually read) the emails that share fundraising goals and construction updates and student stories. I keep up with (and truly care about) what's happening on campus, even though all the current students I knew have already graduated. I keep in touch with professors (more than I can count on one hand), grabbing coffee when I'm back in town or sending e-updates back and forth. So an invitation to contribute to a class letter didn't make me think twice.

We want to hear what's happened in your life this past year. Family changes? New job? Travel opportunities? Hobbies? Send your class agent some news to share with your class.

I certainly had things to share about this last year -- things that I'd feel reasonably comfortable sharing with my graduating class of 700ish people. The standard class letter topics that, from the outside, define my day-to-day life and Instagram and résumé. I work as a Residence Director at a diverse university. I had the opportunity to travel to Minneapolis and Chicago and Denver and Milwaukee and Atlanta. I started graduate school. I live in Portland and get to go on frequent hikes and visit the coast and live in a progressive and socially-conscious and active place, all while spending time with a great community of humans. Sounds awesome, yeah?

And I also had things to share about this year that wouldn't necessarily make it into my school's publication, but still feel like defining victories. They're the small victories, as Anne Lamott calls them. The things that I don't typically name when acquaintances ask, "What's new?" but are usually on my mind more than what I actually say in response to that question. Like the fact that I finally got my Oregon driver's license last winter. And that I had jury duty for the first time! I started drinking coffee and quickly moved to drinking it black. I decided to wait to go to seminary. I started a job that has me interacting with 18-year-olds every day. I moved. I voted for a woman.

I found this request for submissions again last night in my Gmail inbox, after sorting through the bill reminders and LinkedIn notifications. And as I was reading, I didn't think about those big and small victories. I thought about all of the things -- in my own life and in others' -- that wouldn't be shared in this class letter. The things that we intentionally don't say when people ask, "What's up?"

I read the questions again. Family changes? New job? Travel opportunities? Hobbies?

What are the answers that we wouldn't dream of submitting for our class letters?

I thought about people from my college who have gone through a major breakup this year. Or had a death in their family. Or a miscarriage. I thought about the people who have lost their jobs, or who feel like they'll never be able to get their dream job, or feel stuck in jobs that drain their time or energy or souls. I thought about my classmates who travel all the time for work, but hate being away from loved ones, or not feeling grounded in a community, or hate that they're hurting the environment a little more every time they have to board an airplane for that meeting. I thought about my classmates whose lives or budgets or realities don't allow them to go very far from home, who are frustrated with the repetition of their day-to-day lives. I thought about my classmates whose hobbies include Netflix bingeing and social media scrolling and a lot of time spent sitting alone in their expensive apartments, wondering what the hell their twenties are supposed to be about -- because it certainly doesn't feel like it should be this.

My class letter, if I was being honest about this past year, would include some of those things. A breakup that gutted me. A lot of Gilmore Girls in my apartment. A lot of late nights and Saturdays and middle-of-the-nights spent working. It included appointments with a counselor. It included a lot of questions around vocation, worth, relationships, finances, and location. A lot of unpublished writing drafts for this blog.

I've been seeing things like this -- publicly calling out those things that we feel ashamed of -- circulate on my Instagram and Facebook feeds before. Some call them honest résumés, some call them real résumés, some call them failure résumés. They list the musicals that she auditioned for, but never got called back. They list the fellowships that he applied to, but never got an interview for. They list the jobs or internships, the research opportunities or awards, the thing I worked really hard toward or the thing I really wanted that I never got. Basically, they list the things that we wouldn't dream of putting on our résumé.

But by putting in public these things that so often shame us, that make us feel like we don't have our lives together, maybe it allows us to take back these failures or disappointments or heartbreaks and remind ourselves that they're just a part of life. All of the things that we wouldn't dream of putting in a class letter? Every alum from my college (and every human in the world) has a few pages' worth of those, too. We’re not the only ones.

A public letter sent to our entire graduating class of over 700 humans maybe isn't the best place for us to lay out the innermost pages of our souls. But as we submit these life updates, maybe we can still find a way to check in about all those things we won't share there. Maybe the next time a friend or parent or partner asks us, “What’s new?” our answers can be a little more real. They can have a little more truth. They can include a little more of the “here’s what’s hard” and “here’s where I’m hurting.” It takes a lot of effort and bravery to ask that question and want to listen to the honest answer. And it takes a lot of effort and bravery to respond to that question when that answer doesn’t feel picture perfect. It requires us to show up, to ourselves and to each other, as whole people.

So, what's new?

sunrise.

Even after all this time,
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that.
It lights the whole sky.
-Hafiz

I moved this summer, to an apartment within a residence hall in Downtown Portland. Not that my previous apartment — one within a residence hall in Northeast Portland — had me that much more connected to the Earth, but this move seemed to take me just a bit farther from nature. I’m in the middle of a 14-story building filled with college students, in the middle of Portland State University’s campus, in the middle of the concrete and tall buildings and mass transit systems that make up our city. I live on the most populated block in Portland; humans and human-made things surround me.

However, this shift back to the hustle-hustle-hustle pace of Downtown wasn’t much of a shock to me. I knew what living Downtown felt like, and I was excited about the chance to be so close to everything again, so connected to the pulse of this city, to have so few needs for my car on a regular basis. I was excited to be woken up in the early morning because of the garbage trucks, to hear the bells from the MAX as I fell asleep, to know any time there’s a fire or emergency because of the sirens. This kind of connectedness to the heart of things felt good to me. And still feels good.

I didn’t grow up in a traditionally outdoorsy family. It was my mom and me, in North Dakota, which is winter and well-below freezing most of the time. I didn’t like camping, or hiking, or ogle at and respect the landscape around me. It didn't seem like anything special to me; it just was. However, I did spend most of my childhood summers outdoors, at my grandparents’ house, and can still remember staying outside — running through my grandma’s huge flower garden, racing my cousins on our bikes up and down (and up and down, and up and down) the gravel driveway, lying on the grass after a water gun fight — until the sun set. Their Minnesota home was surrounded by fields that stretched for miles, crops sprouting out of the black earth, other homes and humans just specks in the distance. As the sky darkened, and my grandma or grandpa would call us in closer to the house, we’d look out over those fields and see this perfectly round, orange-yellow-red ball floating over the sky and down through the fields. And I remember being fascinated by how this sun thing worked, even as a kid who never had any interest in science other than making volcanoes out of baking soda and water.

“But where did it go?” I would think. ”You’re telling me that little ball lights up the whole sky? For EVERYONE on earth?”

Now, if I can time it right, I wake up with the sunrise. It’s getting harder as we move further into autumn and the sun comes up later while the time I have to be at work doesn’t, but even if I’m already awake, I make a conscious effort to move toward one of my two, five-foot by five-foot east-facing windows and pause. Take a deep breath. Look out. Sometimes I’ll stand with a cup of coffee, or with my hair halfway curled, or even when I’m already running a bit late for that early morning meeting. And from my 9th story apartment, I see the sun rise up over the hills. I can even see a corner of Mt. Hood defiantly peeking around the three tall buildings that block most of its view, with the sunshine behind it. The sky does all sorts of tricks within a five-to-ten-minute period of the sun stretching out over the landscape. Sometimes, it streaks yellows and oranges and pinks through strips of the remaining darkness. Sometimes, the whole sky turns bright pink. Sometimes, like on Wednesday morning, the sun rose through a thick layer of fog — fog so thick that I couldn’t see the bridges or traffic or river. But even when the clouds are heavy, hanging over the city without any glimmer of hope that Portland will see the actual sun that day, it still rises. It still shows up for the city, for us, for the world.

Watching the sun rise has been one of the most powerful experiences of my summer, one that has shaped my time in this new job, in this new apartment, and in some ways, in this new life. To begin each day being greeted by the sun — being grounded by this little orange-yellow-red ball that lights up the whole sky, for everyone in the world, no matter what — and to be reminded that I’m surrounded by nature, by earthiness, even though I live in an apartment within a residence hall in Downtown Portland. It reminds me that just by doing what it does, nature shows us that it loves us every single day. The sun rising, the rain falling, the plants growing, the leaves dropping, the clouds parting, even if just for a moment. And maybe — even if we’re planted in the middle of a bunch of concrete and human-made things — we can show it that we love it, too, by taking a moment to pause in reverence to whatever nature is around us.