Dear Abra,

Exactly three years ago I wrote this love letter to you.

I was just rounding the bend on the first trimester of my first – and, I’m confident now, only – pregnancy.  Never sick a single day, I remember feeling nervous that this was a bad sign, foretelling a “weak” pregnancy that might not stick, but after passing that magical 12-week mark I breathed a deep sigh of relief.  This was how I told the world about your impending arrival.  It was an ebullient time, the final gasp of winter before spring broke through the cold, crusty days.  On our last Valentine’s Day as a family of two your dad and I spent the day working on a do-it-yourself bathroom remodel that we had just begun, one we were certain would take a few short months and instead wrapped up just a few weeks before you were born, a desperate race against the clock.  But that day we were full of the bright optimism that one feel’s at the beginning of such projects, before the inevitable budget-busting, time-sucking setbacks dig in their muddy heels and threaten to sully everything.  Before reality has a chance to cast its long shadow over the excitement.  There is a photo of me taken that day, standing in the midst of the construction zone, pretending to shampoo my hair where the new shower head would be, a slight bulge peeking out just above my waistband, luminous smile swiped across my face, oblivious to what an all-consuming project this would end up being.

We were such bad judges of so many things.

Reading those words I wrote to embryo-you feels like opening a message in a bottle, a barnacled time capsule sent over the currents of three life-changing years.  They are years that have simultaneously worn away my edges, like a piece of dull sea glass, and bolstered me, depositing more sands on my shores.  When I read that letter, it is clear that I had no idea of the magnitude or nature of the challenges that were in store, only a vague notion that things would be tough.  Everything has been infinitely harder when we ever could have imagined.  What I see in that letter, even in the folds of the uncertainties, is blind confidence, the kind that every love affair begins with.  They are the capricious words of young love.  I do not doubt the love I expressed for you in that first letter, but it was abstract and incomplete.  The worries I felt were the ones that every mother feels for her baby, not the specific ones that I feel for you, my daughter, Abra:  that your inherent clumsiness will inevitably result in you losing a front tooth on the playground, that your soft-hearted nature will lead to you feeling perpetually pushed over, that you will absorb the anger and frustration I sometimes unfairly cast in your direction.

These early years have chastened me, but my love for you has matured.  Despite what I predicted (and secretly hoped for) in that first letter, except for your infancy, we haven’t taken you out to eat much.  You have never been content to sit in a high chair, happily popping Cheerios into your mouth and ogling at other diners through batted eyelashes.  Instead, going out to eat is generally a three-ring circus, your father and I the frantic lion-tamers.  But a few Sundays ago we took our chances at an early dinner at a new burger restaurant in our neighborhood.  I nervously peered in the window, seeing not a single child or high chair in sight.  But we were warmly welcomed and settled into a quiet corner booth, where you arranged yourself on folded knees, two clothespins tucked neatly under you, and observed the bustling scene.  I ordered you a root beer, which delighted you to no end and gave your father and me 20 solid minutes of uninterrupted adult conversation, and we all gasped and then giggled when you accidentally poked a finger through the soggy Styrofoam cup, so firm was your grip on this rare and delicious treat.  And when that was done you happily ate a small plate of French fries, carefully swiping each one through a shallow trench of ketchup, another infrequent indulgence.  After dinner we walked into the dusky evening, clouds scuttling across a moody sky, pink light illuminating the Sandias.  You jumped up on a wall in a parking lot, spotting one of the stenciled “You Are Loved” signs that pop up from time to time around town, the clandestine work of a sentimental graffiti artist.  I snapped a photo as you hopped along the wall, holding your papa’s hand, happy as a clam.  It was an exceptional and precious afternoon, specific and totally complete.

Loving being pregnant is different than loving being a mother.  Loving a person is different than loving the idea of a person.  Although you have always been loved, what I know now is that I love you, and I love being your mother.

Love,

Your Mama

This “love letter” is part of Momalom’s Love It Up Challenge.  The first letter I wrote to Abra won the last challenge three years (has it really been three years?) ago. 

A few weeks ago I awoke one morning with a small, tight knot in my back.  It had lodged itself in the valley next to my scapula, a compact mass of taut tissue that had taken up residence overnight, for no apparent reason.  I tried massaging it with my fingertips, my elbow arranged in a sharp hairpin in front of my nose to reach the awkward spot on my back.  I tried stretching, soaking in hot baths, and taking Ibuprofen.  Not only did it not budge, it grew worse.  Each time I inhaled deeply I felt the tightness in the upper-left quadrant of my back expand; each time I twisted my torso around to look out my blind spot while driving I felt a tingle of pain race up my back.  After nearly two weeks I finally called my massage therapist, who was able to see me a few days later.

Lying face-down on the soft, white massage table, Sarah asked me what had happened to cause this.  “I don’t know,” I said, innocently, and then launched into the story of my fainting episode and subsequent overnight hospital stay.  “Well, making a dead fall like that on the kitchen floor, that’d be enough for a back to go into spasm.”  As she expertly kneaded the knot and arranged her hands in different configurations on my back I told her that these things – fainting, trips to the emergency room, mysterious muscle spasms – didn’t used to happen to me like they do now.  “The last two years, since Abra has been born, have been really hard on me,” I said, plainly, tears pricking the backs of my eyelids.

Face smooshed into the table, I can feel Sarah nodding and listening; massage therapists and hair stylists are alike in this way. “Have you ever considered that maybe this is just a function of growing older?”  she asks.  I have not.  It is far too easy to attribute these things to Abra and the dramatic changes in my lifestyle that have ensued.  I am in the best shape I’ve been since graduating high school, I remind myself, and quickly shake off the possibility that the natural process of aging has anything to do with it.

Later that week Maikael forwards me an op-ed piece with the alarming title You Are Going to Die, which I read with intense interest.  Since my mother’s sudden death 10 years ago I find myself magnetically drawn to any story that pertains to grief and dying, especially our culture’s (often-backward) treatment of it.  It’s really a piece on aging, a process that, the author astutely notes, is fundamentally characterized by a loss of control, and one that “feels grotesquely unfair,” even though it is the only reality that all of us will eventually face.  I instantly flash to my late-night admission on the cardiac wing of the hospital after fainting, how I was the youngest, healthiest-looking person there, simultaneously fortified and frightened by one singular thought:  You do not belong here.  Unless, of course, I did.  How, the following morning, I was antsy and anxious to be discharged from “a world of sick people, invisible to the rest of us,” trying to wrest control and hasten the process in any way possible, eager to pass back through the veil and reclaim my healthy status.  To be seen again.

These events of the past month have made me more aware than I normally am that, as my friend, Lindsey, would say, I am approaching “the top of the Ferris wheel.”  While I presume that there is still more life ahead of me than behind me (I will turn 35 this year), the ratio becomes less skewed by the day.  My health and youth, once effortlessly bestowed, no longer feel like a given.  There is something about having crossed the chasm from being someone’s child to being someone’s mother that has altered my perspective of what it means to grow older.  Death and birth are bookends for me, as they are for all of us, though I’m not speaking of my own.  My mother’s death and my daughter’s birth:  these are the events that are the primary guideposts on my journey toward living more whole-heartedly and with greater acceptance.  “Death is a lot like birth (which people also gird themselves for with books and courses and experts) — everyone’s is different, some are relatively quick and painless and some are prolonged and traumatic, but they’re all pretty messy and unpleasant and there’s not a lot you can do to prepare yourself.”  In this curious way my daughter’s birth, by all accounts a life-affirming event, has made me increasingly aware of my ascent on the Ferris wheel of life:  standing on the other side of the chasm, it has brought about a deeper understanding of what losing my status as a mother’s daughter has robbed me of.

I’ve recently come to realize that my search for home is intimately and equally connected with my mother’s death and my daughter’s birth.  In the midst of reading Katrina Kenison’s newest book, Magical Journey, she discusses how, while her children are largely grown and out of the house, she is still charged with tending the home fires.  What allows her children to go out into the world and take risks as young adults is knowing that she is holding “home base,” with all its attendant rituals, routines and traditions.  “It’s having a firm footing in the past…that allows them to step boldly forth into new territory.”  The author of You Are Going to Die, upon facing his aging mother selling his childhood home, similarly says:

However infrequently I go there, it is the place on earth that feels like home to me, the place I’ll always have to go back to in case adulthood falls through. I hadn’t realized, until I was forcibly divested of it, that I’d been harboring the idea that someday, when this whole crazy adventure was over, I would at some point be nine again, sitting around the dinner table with Mom and Dad and my sister. And beneath it all, even at age 45, there is the irrational, little-kid fear: Who’s going to take care of me? I remember my mother telling me that when her own mother died, when Mom was in her 40s, her first thought was: I’m an orphan.

Home isn’t so much a physical structure as an intricately woven web of the things that make a life, and when the person who holds that delicate, sturdy web in place dies or otherwise ceases to exist, so, too, goes the security of the web.  For years I’ve wondered where my daring, risk-taking self disappeared to, and I’ve finally come to understand that she vanished along with my mother, that “irrational, little-kid fear” made all the more acute by enduring that loss in my early 20s, a time of shifting identities and the usual uncertainties of where my life might take me.  That my childhood home had been sold the year before, many of its contents liquidated and the remnants siphoned into a small apartment and a dank storage unit, did not help.  We all come to the realization that we must, ultimately, weave our own nets; I’ve just arrived here a little earlier than most.

Everything changes.  There is no going back.  But as I ratchet forward on the Ferris wheel, my car swinging perilously toward the top, I’m also beginning to understand that, after so many rootless years, life has given me an opportunity to now be the one who holds home base and weaves the web.  Raising a young daughter forces me into uncomfortable territory every day, unwittingly nudging me towards that daring person I once was.  I think my craving for home at this particular juncture has a great deal to do with wanting to provide steadiness for my daughter in the shadow of my own shallow root system.  And maybe, through that process, my own roots will grow and deepen alongside hers.

Thank you to everyone for your kind and caring thoughts and comments last week regarding my recent hospital stay.  In sharing this story with others over the past month I’ve come to realize that many people are “fainters,” especially those of us who are deeply sensitive and highly attuned to the world around them. 

Also, the winner of a copy of Magical Journey was Jennifer!  Thanks to everyone who left a comment, and congratulations, Jennifer. 

I was sitting in a wing back chair at my aunt’s house, listening to a detailed story about how her Achilles’s tendon had dissolved over a matter of weeks.  It was almost 10:30, and we were preparing to turn in for the night in anticipation of our flight back to Albuquerque the next day when Maikael had innocently asked, “So what happened to your foot anyway?”  Equally blessed and cursed with a fertile imagination, it wasn’t difficult for me to envision the ropy muscle separating from the bone and then ceasing to exist altogether, like acid poured over metal, and my mind circled around this mystery in an infinite loop until I was overcome with a familiar sensation.

The trip “home” for the holidays, our first time in Seattle for Christmas in nine years, had been high-contrast.  It is always wonderful to visit with some of my oldest, dearest friends and family, drink too much excellent coffee, and let my eyes soak in the vibrant green landscape for a few days.  But Abra, who doesn’t travel very well in the first place, had a terrible, fever-y cold that settled in for the majority of our trip, making her miserable, cranky and in need of long afternoon naps that kept us house-bound for big stretches of each day.  There is always a lot of going and doing on these trips, and more than once I found myself secretly grateful that Abra’s illness was keeping some of that at bay.  At the end of most visits back I whiff a little longing for the life I left behind 10 years ago, but tonight I was just ready to be home.

I wasn’t surprised when I suddenly started to feel nauseous and woozy, a perfect storm of exhaustion, dehydration, and a gross medical story having finally washed up against my shores.  It’s a feeling I am intimately acquainted with, and in an effort to prevent what I knew was going to happen next, I stood up and made my way to the kitchen to get myself a glass of water.  I think I’ve got this under control, I remember thinking as I gripped the kitchen counter.  The next thing I knew, the darkness was pricked by a fireworks show of white starbursts, and the sound of a thousand radio stations, all competing for airtime, flooded my consciousness.  I always hear the voices before I see their accompanying faces.  Yes, she’s coming back, I hear my uncle say.  Okay, we’ll keep her still until the paramedics get here.  Then Maikael’s face, inches from mine, a mix of worry and relief.

I am a fainter.  The technical term is vasovagal syncope.  The first time it happened to me, at age 16, I had hurt my wrist during tear-down for a show and suddenly found myself slumped on the floor of the theatre, having hit my head on the stage’s lip on the way down.  The emergency room doctor that attended me warned that it would probably happen again, so when it does, usually every couple of years, I don’t think much of it.  Usually these spells are precipitated by pain, exhaustion, dehydration, emotional stress, or some combination of factors that I don’t fully understand.  I’ve always thought of it as my body’s way of protecting itself, as if my nervous system simply shuts down when I become too overwhelmed by life.

Maikael, aware of my history, probably wouldn’t have called the ambulance except for the fact that no one saw what happened.  Much like my return to consciousness, they heard me before they saw me, a loud crash reverberating through the condominium.  Maikael found me in the kitchen lying prostrate on the floor, the cat’s food and water scattered at my feet.  My eyes were rolled back in my head, a terrible grimace, “like a dead fish,” arranged on my face.  “I thought you had slipped on the water, hit your head,” he said.  “It looked like you were a vegetable.”

Normally after fainting I immediately feel better, but the nausea persisted and my head throbbed.  After checking my vital signs the paramedics determined that my blood pressure was too low and decided to transport me to the nearest hospital.  They gave me a tab of Zofran for the nausea and conducted a routine EKG en route.  As the ambulance slid through the night, headlights slicing through the cold January rain, I told the paramedic, “The last time we were in Seattle our daughter was rushed by ambulance to Children’s Hospital when she vomited blood.”  “Man, that’s too bad,” he said.  “And then we spent last Christmas vacation in a Mexican emergency clinic when my husband and I got terrible food poisoning,” I added.  It sounded ridiculous, saying all of this out loud, but I knew the paramedic was right when he innocently asked, “Maybe you should stay home next year?”

The emergency room is bright and quiet this Thursday night.  Nurses enter the curtained room, an IV is inserted, a family medical history is taken, a hospital gown donned, another EKG conducted.  Having been through this routine before I am waiting for the doctor to return with the results and send me home with an admonishment to rest and stay low to the ground the next time this happens.  Instead, he says, “I’m concerned with the results of your EKG.  The one taken in the ambulance was highly abnormal, and the one we took when you first got here was borderline.”  He tells me about something called Burgata Syndrome, a very rare but very serious hereditary heart condition with three main risk factors:  a family history of sudden cardiac death, a history of fainting episodes, and an abnormal EKG.  Without treatment, 100% of cases result in death.  I must not be behaving sufficiently freaked out because the doctor, as if to impress upon me the gravity of the situation, warns me that, if it’s concluded I have Burgata Syndrome, a cardiac surgeon will be implanting a defibrillator in my chest the next morning.

While we wait for the technician to perform another EKG, and then another, I ask Maikael to Google Burgata Syndrome on his smartphone.  He reads me snippets of the entry on Wikipedia, and as he talks my mind allows myself to imagine this possibility.  What is the recovery period like from a surgery of this magnitude? How big will the scar be? Will I have to go through a separate TSA line at the airport? Will I be able to keep running?  Will Abra lose a mother too-early, just like me? I think about how life can so quickly slip off its seemingly sturdy tracks, how one small question from Maikael to my aunt led us tumbling down this rabbit hole, creating a series of circumstances that will either save my life or amount to one big headache.  I think about how my mother’s sudden death continues to pursue me in the most oblique ways, even 10 years later.  I wonder if I will ever be free of it.

My heart has always been stronger than my head and it tells me that this is not what is wrong with me.  I am not surprised when the next two EKGs come back perfectly normal.  Still, the doctor, who strikes me now as overly cautious, is concerned about the dramatic fluctuations between each reading and assures me that I’m not going home tonight, and that I should re-book my flight scheduled for tomorrow.

It is 4 am before my mammoth hospital bed is barged down a darkened corridor on the cardiac wing.  I can’t help but crane my neck into the dimly-lit rooms; a man, wrapped in a ratty bathrobe, hair askance, balances himself on the edge of his bed, head bowed.  Everyone I see is old, a fact that simultaneously startles and comforts me, a tangible reminder that I don’t really belong here, at least not yet.  A dry cough issues from another room, but mostly there is silence.  I try to settle myself in for a few hours of sleep – I’ve been warned that the nursing staff will be back in an hour and a half to take my vital signs and begin their daily rounds – but my mind circles around a hard pebble of truth.  I have spent more time interacting with the world of emergency medicine the past two years than the rest of my life combined.  How strange, to be an otherwise perfectly healthy family who finds themselves either out of the shadows of doctor’s offices or lurking around hospital emergency rooms in faraway places, a case study in extremes.

As I turn the facts over in my mind, searching for the lesson, I feel a flame of self-inflicted anger licking at me, overcome by the sense that I have brought these circumstances down upon myself.  If I had just gone to bed 10 minutes earlier.  If I had just told someone I didn’t feel well.  If I had just stayed seated.  If I had just asked for a glass of water.  If I had just told the paramedics, “I’m fine,” none of this would have happened.  I have always been a firm believer in the notion that if you don’t listen to the Universe’s whispers then it will start to shout, and what I’m really mad at myself for is not listening better.  The lesson, while so obvious that even a paramedic who didn’t know me could plainly see it, is one I am persistently blind to, and I wonder what further dramatic circumstances are in store if I don’t finally pay attention and listen to the call, issued loud and clear.

Stay at home.  Stop moving.

Later that afternoon, I lie on my side in a darkened room, an ultra-sonographer skimming a wand over an open flap in my hospital gown to peer inside my heart.  Although a series of expensive medical tests and the cardiologist have told me what I already know – that the chance I have Burgata Syndrome is highly unlikely, and that I’m probably just a fainter – he wants to make sure there are no structural abnormalities.  So I watch the valves of my heart open and close on the screen, like a fish moving its lips.  I see that essential muscle flex and release in a steady rhythm, watching the pulse of my life, so close to the surface yet deep within me.  I’m not sure how anyone can tell much of anything from the grainy picture, but later the physician’s assistant breezily reports that, while everything is essentially fine, they discovered a small hole in my heart.  “You’ve probably always had it – lots of people do.  It usually closes up at birth, but sometimes it doesn’t.  It’s not likely related to what happened,” she says, with a shrug in her voice.

A few weeks after I’ve been discharged from the hospital into another cold, January night with a clean bill of health, my friend, Meghan, notes the metaphor and poetry of having a hole in one’s heart.  A grief counselor once told me that the bereaved are like “the walking wounded:” seemingly fine on the outside but moving through the world with a gaping hole somewhere inside, where no one can see, a crucial piece of their anatomy missing.  That’s a bit how this feels, the presence of something felt through its absence.  One night I am reading Katrina Kenison’s new book, Magical Journey, which arrived in the mail while I was out of town.  Maybe even while I was in the hospital.  Home, she comes to realize in her own journey towards wholeness, is “the invisible, inviolable place deep within me, a still point to which I could always return.”  I can’t help but wonder if that’s the piece of my heart that’s missing, that deep-seated sense of place that I’ve never seemed to possess, a congenital loss.  What I most need to cultivate in my life, what might begin to fill that negative space, is home.

The above photo was taken in a moment of levity (yes, that is me, checking my email from a hospital bed, IV and all); near the end of this ordeal, Maikael had the wherewithal to snap a photo for posterity. 

I used to soak in the bath nearly every night.  It was one of the few habits that formed in childhood and persisted well into my adult years, a reliable part of my daily routine.  Once, upon visiting a friend out of town, the first thing she exclaimed when I walked through the door of her home was, “I haven’t had time to clean the bathtub yet!”  Sometimes I bathed for only 15 minutes, other times for more than an hour, but regardless of how much or how little time I had to devote it was a way to tend to body and soul, a restorative experience that helped me to transition from day to night, activity to rest.  It was where I did some of my best thinking.  Then, as the saying goes, I had a baby.  At my first visit to the midwife’s office I was warned to avoid soaking in tubs during my pregnancy, which was a major disappointment:  if there was ever a time of life to be taking regular baths, this was it.  By the time Abra was born I was solidly out of the routine, and in the ragged months that followed, when there was no easy way to delineate day and night and no time for leisurely soaks, I let what had been a lifelong ritual and pleasure slip through my fingers.

How fitting it was that I read most of Katrina Kenison’s new book, Magical Journey: An Apprenticeship in Contentment, a spiritual memoir about coming home to oneself, while soaking in the bathtub over the course of a few evenings.  Magical Journey begins where her last book, The Gift of an Ordinary Day, leaves off, and I have eagerly anticipated its release since reading (and, subsequently, re-reading) Ordinary Day.  It is the story of entering the “late afternoon” of one’s life, punctuated by the twin losses of her children growing up and leaving home and the death of a close friend.  Much like Kenison’s previous book, which bears the subtitle A Mother’s Memoir, one need not be in that particular stage of life to identify with and relate to the very human, universal themes that she consistently grapples with:  accepting our current realities, reconciling ourselves with our pasts, the impermanence of life itself.  This is a book for anyone who has ever found themselves at a crossroads and wondered, “What now?”

The story unfolds during a period of Kenison’s life where one door has closed and another has yet to open, “the lonely liminal spaces between what’s ended and what has yet to begin.”  As she struggles with this “fertile void” she slowly gains an education in how to allow the path to open before her rather than strong arming it into existence.  Recounting the experiences, both big and small, of a particular year of her life – including standing vigil at a friend’s deathbed, getting her ears pierced, training to be a yoga teacher, rearranging the furniture, attending a class reunion, exploring Reiki, making a weekend getaway to a cabin in the woods, teaching a writing workshop – they provide tangible examples of how Kenison comes to learn sometimes hard-won lessons in how to grow more comfortable with the uncertainties that color each of our lives.  Her antidote?  Be present.  Listen and love more.  Enjoy, appreciate, and accept the circumstances of yourself and your life, just as they are.

Magical Journey is filled with so many rich words and insights, both from Kenison and other spiritual seekers before her whose quotes she smartly weaves throughout the text.  Kenison’s writing always has a way of transporting me to her corner of the world and soothing my soul in the process.  Her book offers no pat answers – I’d have been disappointed if it did – and grapples deftly with the inherent complexity of life’s Big Questions.  She reminds me again and again that “your life is your practice,” and through translating her experiences into words she helps readers understand how to transform their own lives into “laboratories,” for Kenison is truly a teacher at heart.  Although I’m still firmly in the early afternoon of my life I recognized many of the same feelings of uncertainty she elucidates, as this stage of mothering a young child slowly unfurls and reveals itself.  But after reading this book, I felt surer about my place in this world and more confident that my task right now is not, in her words, to remake myself but to remember myself – even if it’s as simple and humble as resuming a nightly bathing ritual.

“Meaning and purpose come not from accomplishing great things in the world,” she concludes, “but simply from loving those who are right in front of you, doing all you can with what you have, in the time you have, in the place where you are.”  No matter our circumstances, Kenison powerfully assures us that we all have this capacity within our reach.

Ms. Kenison has written a beautiful book and “instruction manual” for living and loving better.  And, as if to confirm the fact that all journeys really do have a bit of magic at work, I was delighted when I learned that my dear friend and Tribe sister, Melissa Dowler, comprised half of the husband-wife team that produced this stunning promotional video for Magical Journey.  Please read, watch, be inspired, and enjoy!

I am giving away a copy of Magical Journey to one lucky reader!  Simply leave a comment on this post by Tuesday, January 22, and I will draw a name at random at that time.  If you’re itching to read Katrina’s words before securing your own copy of the book, head on over — right now! — to her blog.  I’ve been a reader since its earliest days, and I never miss a post.

1.  What was the single best thing that happened this past year?

Maikael and I had the opportunity to take a trip to Italy, just the two of us, last March.  It was our first extended trip away from Abra, and I feel so fortunate that we were able to leave her in such loving hands with my mother-in-law while we were in Europe.  As a result, we all had a marvelous time.

2.  What was the single most challenging thing that happened?

Maikael traveled for work a great deal with year, and it is always hard to manage being a “single parent” in his absence.  We had a new roof put on our house during one such trip, an expensive foray that left us roof-less during the only three-day stretch of rain we had in Albuquerque all year, and also led to an unfortunate run-in with an unhappy neighbor.

3.  What was an unexpected joy this past year? 

Abra starting preschool three mornings a week – a joy for both of us.  I was so worried about the imagined pitfalls – separation anxiety, constant illness, bringing home bad habits – that I never stopped to consider that none of those would come to pass.  Instead, we are both happier than we have ever been with the arrangement.

4.  What was an unexpected obstacle?

Inertia and laziness.  I imagined that once Abra started preschool I would have oodles of time to be professionally productive.  Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time doing everything but writing.  This is something I need to rectify in 2013.

5.  Pick three words to describe 2012.

Full, unproductive, adventure

6.  Pick three words your spouse would use to describe your 2012 (don’t ask them; guess based on how you think your spouse sees you).

Stressed, self-critical, successful

7.  Pick three words your spouse would use to describe their 2012 (again, without asking).

Fortunate, travel, invested

8.  What were the best books you read this year?

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn, Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese, Bringing Up Bebe by Pamela Druckerman, Wild by Cheryl Strayed

9.  With whom were your most valuable relationships?

Maikael and Abra, for starters.  It is exciting to see the ways we are growing together into a family, the traditions and rituals, big and small, that are forming.  Also, I had the chance to see my best friend, Heidi, who lives in Las Vegas, three times this year.  I am also growing into some friendships in Albuquerque for the first time in a long time, and I look forward to seeing how they deepen in the coming year.

10.  What was your biggest personal change from January to December of this past year?

I find myself craving home, stability and roots more than ever before.  As a lifelong wanderer, this is a monumental shift for me.  I know that the year ahead will be defined by this awareness.

11.  In what way(s) did you grow emotionally?

I am trying to be gentler with myself and others.

12.  In what way(s) did you grow spiritually?

I am making a more concerted effort to let go and accept.

13.  In what way(s) did you grow physically?

I became a devoted runner, something I never thought was in the cards for me, and completed by first 10k in May.  I run 4-5 miles three mornings a week, coupled with strength training two days a week, and as a result I’m in the best shape I’ve been in since graduating high school!

14.  In what way(s) did you grow in your relationships with others?

I have always maintained many relationships, but in the past year I’ve found myself focusing more deeply on a few key relationships rather than trying to spread my energies thin, which I’ve found surprisingly rewarding and energizing.  I am able to be more present with the people who I choose to spend time with.

15.  What was the most enjoyable part of your work (both professionally and at home)?

Professionally, I had the opportunity to start writing regularly for Edible Santa Fe, a long-held dream of mine, and it is thrilling every time I see my name in print and receive a paycheck in the mail.  On the home front, I’ve enjoyed cooking dinner most nights of the week and creating community around the kitchen table.

16.  What was the most challenging part of your work (both professionally and at home)?

Making decisions about how I should spend my time.  I’m still not very good at this; it’s something I need to work on in 2013.

17.  What was your single biggest time waster in your life this past year?

Facebook, hands down.  I took a six-week hiatus from social media this fall, which was much needed, but I still feel its pull on me.  Another one might be in order this – and every – year.

18.  What was the best way you used your time this past year?

Taking the time to consistently teach and reinforce good habits and manners with Abra.  I don’t win every day, and being on top of it takes a lot of effort, but each time I hear her say “please” or “thank you” without my prompting I feel a sense of shared pride and accomplishment.

19.  What was biggest thing you learned this past year?

Everything in life is a trade-off.

20.  Create a phrase or statement that describes 2012 for you.

Most of what we worry about never happens anyway.

I promise I’ll be back soon!