national public radio

Yeah, I’m kind of a big deal. I’m going to be on the radio.

I’ve been describing the last six months or so like this; I imagine my life as a dining table. A fancy, old money dining table. Like the ones they have on Downton Abbey with the beautiful candelabra, and the fine china plates, the crystal stemware and the actual silver silverware that has to be washed AND polished. A few months ago, someone approached my beautiful table and unceremoniously tipped it over. And then a couple of months after that they walked over to where everything had spilled and quick marched across everything that lay there on the floor.

Now I’m trying to clean it up. I’m surveying the damage and I’m deciding what’s savable and what’s trashed. What can be glued back together, or melted down to make something better. What was and could still be beautiful, and what I never needed in the first place. I’m righting the table and checking for structural damage. And I’m searching for the people who can help me with the process. After all, I don’t know the first thing about fine china or silverware.

Recently I answered a random NPR ‘callout’ via Facebook. The ask was for people who were about to start on a major life change and wanted to be part of a new project. I felt compelled to share my story and how I’d like things to go, and a week later they called me back!

Soon afterwards I was seated in a recording booth at KUOW studios in the U-District in Seattle, talking to a lovely woman in Minnesota who is on the other side of a ‘collaborative divorce’ and a mother to two young children.

Our stories were very different, but so very similar. And even though we weren’t even in the same state, we connected via our honesty and our sincerity and our love of our babies. I walked in nervous, and I walked out grateful.

I don’t yet know what the end result of the recording will be (I’ll keep you posted!), but the immediate result was the comfort of hearing, ‘you’ll be ok,’ and ‘you can do this,’ from someone who is, and who has.