Category Archives: existence

2025 year in review

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As I look back on 2025, what stands out most is the increased flexibility in my schedule. I had more time to move freely, to travel solo, and to hear myself think. I need this quiet time to thrive, and so 2025 was a step in the right direction–with even more schedule flexibility coming around the bend.

Last spring was marked by a bumper crop of new baby Shetland lambs, in so many colors! It was a charming time to shear and sell fleeces and to watch the sheep grazing in lush green pastures. I am so grateful for my little farm, for the renewing cycles of living with livestock and for the peace that the animals bring.

Professionally, I’ll also remember that spring as simultaneously deeply successful and deeply stressful. A promotion process went sideways, and it took months to resolve (thankfully, it did resolve positively in my favor). There was also amazing book news. This is the year that I saw my first book begin to populate on all major bookselling websites. 2026 is shaping up to be another big year for reading and writing, with my first book expected to be published in spring and my second book to follow shortly thereafter in the fall. Not one, but two books in one year?!?! I have to pinch myself. It’s truly a dream come true. And there are more projects in the works too, in addition to the books. Look for more birth work, birth classes, and more writing projects from me! Although all of this takes time, years even, these projects are now well underway.

The summer was spent in pure bliss–I spent my days writing hard toward daily goals and my afternoons reading outside on the porch where the weather was perfect for months on end. The weekends were spent on tiny adventures, and, of course, more work, because I still love my work. It was hands down one of the most productive AND restorative summers I’ve ever had, and I hope to repeat that schedule in years to come.

The highlight of the fall was a solo trip to Louisiana to celebrate 10 life-changing years with my love, and that was truly a transformational trip. I felt my old self again. I felt possibilities opening up. I felt freedom and satisfaction. It was also something I hope to replicate in years to come–finally breaking away from old routines and rigid “to do” lists. To be fair, those routines and “to do” lists have also saved my life over the past seven years, so I’m grateful for those too, and they will certainly continue!

Despite neglect and precarity, in the fall my garden produced a bumper crop of pumpkins and zinnias, along with the usual jungle of colorful hollyhocks, which I love. I also traveled to San Francisco for a work conference in the fall. These conferences usually feel less like work and more like rejuvenation and inspiration too. I returned in time for the avalanche of holiday activities and “to do” lists and I felt deep gratitude for my family and this season and tried to savor the swim lessons and holiday concerts and artwork–all of those unique and fleeting hallmark moments.

The big theme in 2025 was stretching my wings a bit more than previous years allowed, and it felt so good. I felt more myself again, more room to breathe, more room to move. I am looking forward to so much more of that in the years to come. It sometimes seems counter intuitive, but I feel that I have more to give to my loved ones when I also have time to care for myself. In numerology, 2026 is a 1 year for us all and turns into a strong 2 year for me personally, which is supposed to be about connection. I look forward to it!

2025 reading list

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Here’s my 2025 reading list! It’s longer than I thought it would be, since I didn’t read much in the spring, summer, or even fall, it seemed. Summer is normally a big reading time for me, but my literacy energy this summer was mostly spent in writing. Perhaps the most noteworthy aspect of my reading was that this was the year that I became obsessed with Moa Martinson. There are other treasures here as well…

  1. Farm-Raised Kids by Katie Kulla
  2. The Blue Fox by Sjón
  3. Paris: A Memoir by Paris Hilton
  4. Gathering Moss by Robin Wall Kimmerer
  5. Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
  6. Dear Girls by Ali Wong
  7. Making Love with the Land by Joshua Whitehead
  8. Love, Pamela by Pamela Anderson
  9. Atomic Habits by James Clear
  10. My Mother Gets Married by Moa Martinson
  11. On Chesil Beach by Ian McEwan
  12. I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
  13. There There by Tommy Orange
  14. I’ll Tell You in Person by Chloe Caldwell
  15. Women by Chloe Caldwell
  16. Blink by Malcolm Gladwell
  17. In Pieces by Sally Field
  18. Lives of Girls and Women by Alice Munro
  19. Through the Children’s Gate by Adam Gopnik
  20. Little Weirds by Jenny Slate
  21. Women and Appletrees by Moa Martinson
  22. I Like to Watch by Emily Nussbaum
  23. Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight by Alexandra Fuller
  24. The Best American Short Stories 2024
  25. Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss by Margaret Renkl
  26. Women We Buried, Women We Burned by Rachel Louise Snyder
  27. How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti
  28. The Goodbye Kit by Daneen Bergland
  29. Spiral Staircase: A Meditation on Alchemy by Alyssa Spungen
  30. The 5 Types of Wealth by Sahil Bloom
  31. The Comfort Crisis: Embrace Discomfort To Reclaim Your Wild, Happy, Healthy Self by Michael Easter
  32. Audition by Katie Kitamura
  33. If You’re Seeing This It’s Meant for You by Leigh Stein
  34. Surviving Autocracy by Masha Gessen
  35. The Deep Places by Ross Douthat
  36. Mindset by Carol Dweck
  37. Who Is Government? by Michael Lewis (et al)
  38. The Forever Colony by Victor Villanueva
  39. Rosarita by Anita Desai
  40. Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson
  41. If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die by Lee Tilghman
  42. The Siren’s Call by Chris Hayes
  43. Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer
  44. A Mountain to the North, a Lake to the South, Paths to the West, a River to the East by László Krasznahorkai
  45. Dare to Lead by Brené Brown
  46. The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman
  47. Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
my 2025 booklist from Goodreads

Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh

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At this point, I’m not sure if I’ll get through any more books from my tbr pile, so Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh might be my last book of 2025! I found this little gem in a little free library awhile back. Mostly these little libraries are full of throw away titles, but there’s one a few blocks from the house that is carefully curated, and I’ve found several high quality children’s books and decent literary titles over the years.

I took a quick glance at this book and saw that the writing was literary-quality and that the author was female and that it was old–all good signs–so I grabbed it. Here’s why they are good signs: there were not a lot of women writing 100 years ago, so those who were published tended to earn their place, and secondly, this book was a reprint from the original, which was published in 1955. The fact that publishers are still putting effort into keeping the book in publications is a good sign!

The book itself is, perhaps, not the feminist anthem that some hope it would be, but the message is important, if not too class-based, and that message is the fact that a woman should have the opportunity not just to have a room of one’s own, but also to have an annual two-week vacation of one’s own. And I agree!

After reading a chapter, I got curious and looked up the author. I quickly realizing that the author is also the mother from the famed Lindbergh kidnapping! I read on.

The book’s setting is lovely, in rustic a vacation home on a tropical beach, admiring the sea and the seashells it offers to the shore. How idyllic! The insights are not inconsequential and demonstrate an understanding of social class and the social movements of the time, which was before second wave feminism.

This book is worth reading for those interested in tracing feminist thought over the last century because I do think the author’s writing adds to that opus. However, the writer is also cautious and relatively safe with her ideas. I would have loved a deeper sense of place, and a deeper sense of self. Instead, it read more like theory in that regard. As a reader, I found myself wanting more specific personal reflection, one that pointed to a unique person (Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s life on paper was fascinating!), but she reveals none of that and instead mostly sticks to pairing insightful platitudes with observations inspired by nature–in this case on the beach during her two week vacation–which is a worthwhile endeavor.

The Witch’s Trinity by Erika Mailman

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My research has recently lead me to the learn more about the horrendous witch hunts that took place, especially in Europe, circa 1400-1700s and about the book that was used for those persecutions, the Malleus Maleficarum. That research process lead me to read Erika Mailman’s book, The Witch’s Trinity. The book is not my typical genre, but it was an engaging read that helped inform my understanding of that time in history. Here are a few things that stood out:

Mailman’s scene setting in the book was phenomenal. The consistent tone and language throughout was effective. The details of village life and the beliefs of the time were captivating and really helped set the scene for the terrifying witch hunts of that time.

The book takes place in a village that is experiencing famine, and the reader can easily see how the intensity of starvation completely skews people’s ability to think straight, to be reasonable, or to act with justice. I also recently learned that people with anorexia begin to loose their reasoning abilities due to lack of calories, and that lack of reasoning only exacerbates the problem. So too could I see the role of starvation and suffering in the witch hunt accusations.

Next, in reading this book, and having recently reading through the Malleus Maleficarum, I was struck by just how dangerous these books can be, how dangerous it can be to so completely trust a perspective or an interpretation that disadvantages and even outwardly harms certain individuals. As I read, I thought of all of the good people I know who might be accused just because of their differences. In the end, nobody is except from the dangerous mob mentality that can plague human thinking.

The Witch’s Trinity is an engaging, plot driven book that is expertly told by the author. It’s an interesting read for those interested in this place, time, and circumstances.

Dare to Lead by Brené Brown

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I read Dare to Lead by Brené Brown while thinking about how it would/might inform my own scholarship. As it turns out, it was a quite timely read. While reading, I spent a good deal of time anticipating what the counter arguments might be, but I won’t go into all of that here.

My only skepticism is not one of the book or the ideas, but that the author claims to be a 10 out of 10 introvert, and in reading the anecdotes throughout I just think there is no way! Not because of the speaking and busy life–no introverts can do all of that. It was because of moments in the book like when she seems to applaud a company’s move to replace walls with glass and keep doors open, and it is in the way she schedules herself with so much peopling. Even her time blindness is something I see mostly in my extrovert friends. In fact, she reminds me of a few extroverts I know. They like to unwind with a bath daily, and then they call themselves introverts for that quiet time, but in my opinion, they’re still a million miles away.

I’ll end by saying that this book reminds us of our humanity, especially at work, a place and dynamic where negativity can thrive. Most of us spend a lot of our time in work for pay, and this book offers some other ways of interacting within those long spaces.

Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer

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Now this was a fascinating book! In Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma by Claire Dederer, Dederer offers monstrous male artists (in every form) and analyzes their audience. As an avid reader, and citizen of the world, I am somewhat interested in the question, especially in the wake of the “me too” movement and subsequent “cancel culture.” Dederer wrestles with the question and avoids simple soundbites and quick solutions.

As a reader, I was interested in our similarities and differences. We both love Woody Allen movies, but she loves Polanski and I can take or leave his work. She has a distaste for Hemingway, and I still think his work is extraordinary. We both love Carver.

However, what was most interesting to me was in the last half of the book, when she turns her lens toward herself: “Am I a Monster?” and “Abandoning Mothers.” As a mother and an intellectual and an author, and, maybe above all else, someone who delights in deep focus, the questions Dederer asks are those that I share.

A question arises, “Do my children matter as much as my writing?” Dederer seems to have a good relationship with her children, seems to have balanced it all in some kind of positive way, but it was not without struggle.

However, for me, this is not the question, but rather an adjacent statement, which is that I matter too. Contemporary motherhood culture has women give of themselves so completely that there is no space for exploration, creation, for the self of the mother/person. To me this is intolerable, and I find myself needing to claw out a space for myself within the rigid expectations of motherhood within my culture, also still while the other thing is true: I love my children and feel deeply grateful for them. Plus, they inspire a greater depth of work in me that I otherwise could have created. And, amid all of these realities, I matter too.

The Siren’s Call by Chris Hayes

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The Siren’s Call by Chris Hayes is about the attention economy and how various forms of media seek to gain and hold our attention for profit. This book is important for anyone engaging with media, especially social media, to read. Because our attention is a means of profit, the smartest, wealthiest, most powerful people put massive amounts of resources into taking our attention from our own purview and giving it to others, who then exploit it for profit. From there, it isn’t hard to delve into deeper philosophical questions about the value of a life lived with an attention that has been ceded to others.

If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die by Lee Tilghman

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When Lee Tilghman’s followers said she was problematic, out of touch, too privileged– that she should be cancelled–she responded with her book, If You Don’t Like This, I Will Die, where she basically says, “Yes, I am, and you don’t even know the half of it.”

What follows is a behind the scenes look at the life of an “influencer.” Most people follow influencers, and Tilghman offers a behind the scenes look at the work, the lifestyle, and the mental sacrifice that can go into that world. Things are definitely not what they seem. Tilghman’s book highlights just how all consuming social media is–from excessive time, to resources, and to our attention too, of course. Posting became her entire life. She saw everything from the perspective of a post, and she worked very hard at it constantly. But she was so focused that she could not enjoy regular life.

Many people say that social media makes people sad because it makes them feel fomo. I do not experience that. However, I do experience the time suck that is synonymous with social media usage.

I paired this reading with Chris Hayes’s The Sirens’ Call, a book about the attention economy, and they work really well together! I recommend!

Rosarita by Anita Desai

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Rosarita by Anita Desai is a book for literary readers who want to spend some more mental energy in the beautiful cities of Mexico. Decades have passed now since I spent a summer traveling through Mexico on a trip with my school, but this book brought back that wonderful sense of travel–the unique sights and sounds that can only be experienced by being in Mexico, as an outsider perhaps. Readers who do not have the same connect to the country will still enjoy the prose, the rich description, and the strange emotional journey of our main character.

The Forever Colony by Victor Villanueva

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I enjoyed The Forever Colony by Victor Villanueva tremendously. The book does the work of reclamation history and offers lovely prose and theory and magical realism. I was reminded of The Lost Journals of Sacajewea by Debra Magpie Earling, which does something similar, imho.