Sentimental Living

Joy, Hard Stuff and the In-Between

One Bowl Gluten Free Pumpkin Snacking Cake

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Gluten Free Pumpkin Cake

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One Bowl Gluten Free Pumpkin Snacking Cake with Chocolate
Author: 
Recipe type: Dessert
: Baking
Prep Time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
 
This is a super quick, flavorful, not too sweet recipe that I find delicious on both the cold and rare warm fall days It's pretty much ready to eat within 30 minutes if you skip the cooling steps and it's both gluten and dairy free. I have not tried making it vegan with a flax egg yet, but there might be enough binding properties from the high fat nut butter and the pumpkin to keep it together. Let me know if you try it that way.
Ingredients
  • 1 cup mashed pumpkin or squash*
  • ½ cup nut butter
  • ¼ cup olive oil
  • ¼ cup dark brown sugar**
  • 1 egg
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ¾ cup oat flour
  • ¼ cup chopped semi-sweet or dark chocolate
Method
  1. Preheat oven to 350˙F. Line an 8 x 8 baking pan with parchment.
  2. In a large bowl, combine mashed pumpkin, nut butter, olive oil, sugar and egg in a large bowl. Mix with a whisk or fork until sugar is dissolved and the mixture is fairly uniform. Add cinnamon and salt and mix well. Add baking powder and baking soda and mix really well to make sure the leavening agents are well dispersed.*** Add oat flour and mix until combined. The batter will be fairly thick. Pour/scrape into your prepared pan. Smooth out the top with a spatula and top with chopped chocolate.
  3. Bake for about 20 minutes. You’ll know it’s done when the edges have browned. Try not to overbake. While moist, this cake has a light crumb because of the oat flour. Cool on a wire rack for 5 minutes, then using the parchment paper, remove from the pan and let cool completely. Cut into squares to serve. This cake is a bit delicate so the squares may fall a part a bit, but it tastes so good I don’t think you’ll care.
  4. Store covered for about 3ish days.
Notes
*You can use canned but I love making my own pumpkin or squash mash. All you have to do is take a whole pumpkin or squash, poke with a knife in a few places, and roast at 400˙F until it’s really soft and almost beginning to collapse. This can take anywhere from 45 minutes to an hour and a half or more depending on the size of your squash. Then just break apart, peel, deseed and mash with a fork. Extra squash freezes well and is great in soups, oatmeal, hummus etc.
**If coconut sugar is your thing, this would be a good swap here. I have not tried this with maple but the extra liquid could alter the texture a bit.
***I learned this one bowl hack of adding the leavening separate of the flour from Deb at Smitten Kitchen. I use it on most quick breads and oil based baked goods. It works so well.

 

The Things We’d Do

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Montana Lifestyle Photographer
The Things We’d Do        

We’d sit and read books,
my feet in your lap
We’d lay in bed,
your fingers, traipsing
along my ribs, trespassing
along my belly, the one
I wish was smaller, the one
where you find nothing wrong.

I’d make us toast
And cakes
And pies
You’d make us toast too,
with avocado.

We’d cry, usually not at the same time
And laugh, usually, and often at the same time
I’d drink too much wine
You’d kiss me, especially, when worry filled my brow
And for a moment my only worry,
that you’d stop.

There’s these pieces of me
I’ve been saving them, like the pineapple flavored gummy bears,
for last
I’ve been saving them
for you
I’ve saved them for so long
I almost gave up
(I was not sure I’d saved them at all).

The First Time I Ate a Whole Lobster

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The first time I ate a whole lobster it was in the darkness on a porch in Maine with wet hair. We had cheap dollar store candles to light the work of our hands, the candle holders repurposed condiment jars. It was early October and every day had the same quality of light, a constant grey that makes it impossible to tell the time of day. It rained often too. And it was a bit cold in the mornings and the dark of night. But the lobster and it’s juices were warm to our fingers. 

I wondered what it would taste like. Would it be different than the chunks of lobster I’d had in stews or in that quesadilla on Harbour Island? This one was plucked from the cold Maine waters that morning and boiled less than an hour ago. This one was eaten out of doors in the wild night. Something told me the flesh would be sweeter. 

Anne was my tutor in the art of disassembling these shock red crustaceans. I had only met Anne two evenings ago but a part of me has known her my whole life. ‘Everything is done with a twist,’ she said. With my first twist I now held the tail in my hand and there was a swish of sea water onto my plate. I’m eating the ocean. 

The meat was sweet. We had warm butter but we didn’t need it. Anne was right, it was more than enough on it’s own. Red wine sat in water glasses next to us. My glass was stained with lobster juice, this feast messy and wonderful. Anne used her hands to talk to me. I took her photo. In the summer she said you eat your lobster like this fending off mosquitoes and then you jump in the lake. That I will have to try next time. 

 

your shoulder

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I like this photo.
Her shoulder features, prominently. Her hair,
beginning to stick, with the humidity and rain,
     IS so beautiful, against the glow of her bare
shoulder.

In the background, their smiles. Hers,
especially full.
Of so much.     You want to ask her what all it holds.
   And perhaps you’d like to borrow it sometime.

Maybe it’s a bit weird, to like
a photo of a shoulder so much but,
to me
   that’s the thing
     about having a lover.

We get to know each others’ bodies
intimately.
     We get to look at things
like shoulders,
     or ribs and collarbones
to really see them
no need of mirrors and things.
     We get to admire
         their tendons.
We get to study their toes.

And then we get to find places     in and on
      their body       for our own.
Oh my hand is quite at home in this slant of
                   her side.
My head fits just right in this nook of his chest.
       Beat, beat goes the heart.
My fingers are dancing along
                  your spine.
one vertebrae       
                        at a time.

I did not know I could admire a shoulder
            SO MUCH.
’til I met yours. 

Your Shirt

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Every morning I wake to the warming sky. Your white walls still holding the deep blue of night. I marvel at the pink blossoms outside your windows. I get up. I brush my teeth. I pee. I begin my day. I read about love in your bed, however this particular story makes me like love less. I think about running. I go running. Usually up towards the bridge. I think about delicious coffee and how I will drink it after running.

I make toast with lots of butter. I bought an avocado because I wanted to make avocado toast like you. I also bought tomatoes. But not Jersey tomatoes. I don’t want to be like you and Alice. I eat at your bar stools and look out the window, looking nowhere at all. I feel least lonely in the morning. Perhaps, not lonely at all. I decide to shower.

I walk barefoot and damp wrapped only in a towel along your wood floors. Pausing as I pass your closet, I admire the shirts hung neatly, but not perfectly. I touch them. I’m curious about them. This light blue one, the material is fairly coarse but well worn. What does it look like on you? I think this striped one would be my favorite on you.

In another life I’d be wearing your shirt right now. We’d have met at a bar and as things sometimes happen especially on unseasonably warm early May Fridays after a few too many glasses of wine and too easy conversation, one thing has led to another. But in the morning even with the spell of the spring heat broken we linger. We eat breakfast together. You make me toast and eggs and I pick up your shirt off the floor to wear, a brazen move for a stranger, but maybe we’re strangers no more.

In this life, I put on your shirt. I can’t put my finger on the why. Maybe I wonder if we would fit together. I look at myself in your shirt.

I eat my lunch alone.  

Montréal: we did not fall in love, and yet you linger

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Someone once remarked that I fall in love with every place I visit. Yes, I am adaptable. I fall in love with a lot of places. I have walked the streets of Brooklyn and imagined leaving my beloved mountains for brownstones and bricks. I have built a home in Anacortes in my head that sits right on the edge of the forest lands so that my running shoes are perpetually muddy. Or put the plans for a farm in Cornwall in the back corner of my mind, so that every spring can be spent foraging for wild garlic and eating almond praline ice cream in the first warm days. I can name more places I’ve fallen for than places I have not.

When I arrived in Montréal I felt immediately uncertain. Had I ever seen pictures of Montréal? Surely, there was that movie I’d seen set in Montréal. That Michelle Williams indy flick about affairs with a trippy sex montage and that scene at the public pool of women young and old, their naked bodies with the folds and the flaps juxtaposed against one another–for me, the crowning achievement of that film. On second thought, that might have been Toronto.

I was forewarned that I was going to love Montréal. I wholeheartedly agreed. I would love Montréal. As we drove further into the city though, I still felt like a fish out of water. A tired and starving one. I was staying with new friends. Instagram friends turned real life friends. We danced that dance of cautious courtesy, each trying to not put the other out and ascertain how to meet the needs of the friend who’d we forgotten is still a stranger. We went to a market in search of food, a famous market but finding a vegetarian meal proved a challenge. I forgot to call my bank and could not withdraw cash and of course it was cash only. Canada doesn’t feel very foreign so my practiced traveler brain had not fully turned on. I forgot about currency, and cell phone service, and that I was in French-Canadia. I cannot speak French. And I was just so tired and just so not in love with Montréal. Why was there so much trash in the streets? Piles of it. Why did I feel afraid? I go to cities all the time. I run solo in cities all the time. And yet, as we passed crowds of boisterous messy and tattooed men I was feeling that misguided prejudice I don’t want to have as an intelligent, well traveled human. Especially a privileged white one. 

The next day we took photos at dawn in a park that was beautiful and not beautiful. The effects of winter were still everywhere. The grass was dead. The bushes brown. There was magic in this morning. There was magic in our time photographing. It was meant to be just an hour in the park but then the lure of a hot coffee and a cozy shop took us on an adventure. I rarely wander new places with my SLR in hand, let alone two. This was a different way of experiencing a new city. And I had a friend who I forced to play model at times. ‘Here, go down that alley. Sit in this laundromat. I know this is so hipster, but we’re doing it anyways.’ Seeing Montréal that way, I was still caught off guard by the garbage, but I was now seeing the sameness that Instagram culture has bred through out the world (think about how you can get avocado toast just about everywhere) and this familiarity was comforting.  The gentrification served as a calming placeholder for my mind. It was just enough different and just enough the same. I think my photos are a reflection of those two things. I was drawn to both. 

I’m still not entirely sure what I think of Montréal yet it holds this weird place in my inner travelogue. It’s vivid. Alluring even. Yet, I’m in no hurry to go back. I’d get a bagel again, but just from the shop whose bagels are slightly less sweet. They make them round the clock and you can buy them 24 hours a day. There are two famed bagel shops and you’re typically on one team or the other.  I’m team Fairmount. Get the sesame bagel if you want to be a traditionalist. I got cinnamon raisin. Ha! I’d go to Café Olimpico again just because it’s kind of ridiculous and so very Italian and the coffee isn’t that great but again it’s ridiculous and worth experiencing. Maybe I’d find my Italian friend from Argentina who was kind enough to let me take his portrait too.

The rest of what I have to say about this lingering city will be said with the visual vignettes I took away with me. This is how I saw Montréal. 

 

A Closeness to Fall, Time Away & Lemon Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread

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The mornings are crisp. The sunrise has grown lazy, only making her appearance on the white of my walls at half past 6. I found myself in the mountains this past weekend with a glistening of frost on my windshield. The sunlight has that peculiar golden hue that signals the closeness of fall. Suddenly, the rush of summer has come to a halt. The tomatoes are still bursting, and my bowls are filled with wrinkled ripe stone fruit but I also spy winter squash at the markets. I have the urge to buy one, maybe roast it, and tuck it into something warm. Autumn is coming. A season I have always loved but have been longing to put off and post-pone this year.

I have struggled with letting go of summer. Did I get enough from her? I camped 7 times, which is maybe 7 times more than last summer and yet it still feels like I did not eat enough tomatoes, husk enough corn, climb enough mountains, celebrate enough of this life, jump in enough bodies of water, bask in enough sun or grow enough in this season of my life.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to eat a peach. I’ve noticed that each season has begun to have a certain inanimate object, usually a plant, that becomes representative of that time in my life. Spring was daffodils. Winter, bags of fresh milled Canadian winter wheat. I have bought box after box of peaches since the first ones that actually smelled like peaches arrived from California. I have watched them ripen further still in bowls in my house. I’m always trying to think of how to eat them. Grilled. In salads. Crisps. Hot sugar crust cobblers. Roasted jams. On toast. In bourbon milkshakes. But have I just picked one up and eaten it greedily as I did as a child? That was good enough then. There was no need for fanfare or a production. In my head I have visions of my tanned childhood self, smelling of chlorine eating peaches straight from the tree only out of doors as the juice dribbled down my chin and my fingers. This was summer. Last weekend I ate a plum that way. It actually tasted like a plum. Since moving to Montana, it might be one of two, maybe three plums I’ve had that actually tasted like something. It was heaven. Why don’t I do this more?

Fall, I’m starting to grow excited by you. I’m mourning summer a bit because this one in particular meant so much to me in so many hard and wondrous ways. I’m very much in the middle of so much. I remember this past September so well. Can it really have been a year already? It feels like I have accomplished nothing yet am on the verge of so much. When we’re in the thick of it all we often can’t see beyond the end of our own noses. It’s probably when we most get in our own way. I certainly feel that way rather frequently.

With this change in seasons and the changes in my own life I’ve experienced in the past month I’ve felt a pull to step away from the world of Instagram. I have all these ideas, plans for change and transformation, new projects (i.e. #versatileveg, which is still going to happen but just not quite yet) mulling around in my head, in process already, but if you read my last post you’ll know I decided it was not quite the moment to launch full steam ahead. For me this is the moment to come back to myself and I find Instagram to be at odds with that. It’s a platform I love so much in so many ways but right now it feels noisy and a place of comparison. Creatively, I feel really inspired or on the verge of inspired right now. I photograph daily for the joy of it. I’m spending more minutes with a pen in hand or click clacking at my keyboard searching for the words to tell my own unique story. So I may be sharing more on this space but I may not. You can now sign up on the right to be notified when I do post if you are interested in seeing and reading about my experience of this time in our magical world.

I did want to leave you with on new recipe in honor of #versatileveg. Zucchini has been a close second behind peaches for the plant of this season. For once in my life I can’t seem to get enough. I’m stealing them from my mom’s plant almost daily; she’s even had to ask me to leave her some. Zucchini is the underdog of summer that everyone eagerly casts aside and bakes into bread because they have no idea what to do with it. I can eat zucchini every which way every day but lately I’ve craved the comfort of the chocolate studded muffins of my childhood. When our neglected abundance led to squash the size of me the only redeemable use of the oversized variety was a spiced bread. I have made three in the past week seeking to maintain the nostalgia of what I ate as a kid but to brighten and simplify the recipe. This summer I have relied heavily on fresh lemon in my baking and I was reminded that it goes quite well with chocolate and zucchini, and cinnamon. All my favorites together. I’ve chosen olive oil for ease and because it happens to pair quite well with all my key flavors too. Quick breads should be quick and whenever possible one bowl. This is exactly that. You can bake it as muffins or as a loaf, I’ve done both. Regardless, it will be something heavenly to bite into in the morning with a cup of hot tea as you too watch the sunlight drift into that peculiar hue of autumn. 


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Lemon Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread
Author: 
Recipe type: Breakfast, Dessert, Snack
Prep Time: 
Cook time: 
Total time: 
Serves: 1 loaf or 12 muffins
 
This is an easy one bowl recipe that will help you get through an abundance of zucchini and the change in seasons. The lemon adds brightness, the chocolate that indulgence I crave, the whole wheat flour a heartiness, it's only slightly sweet, and the olive oil plays well off all these things as our main source of fat. It's not too decadent for snack time or breakfast and it freezes quite well.
Ingredients
  • 2 cups coarsely grated zucchini
  • ½ cup olive oil
  • ½ cup full fat yogurt, greek preferably
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • zest of 2-3 lemons
  • 2 eggs
  • 1½ cups whole wheat flour*
  • 2 teaspoons cinnamon
  • ½ teaspoon baking powder
  • ½ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon kosher salt
  • ½ cup chocolate chips (optional, but who would want to leave these out?)

Method
  1. Preheat your oven to 350˙F. Grease or spray a loaf pan or muffin tin with oil.
  2. Wrap the zucchini in a clean dish towel and roll it up and wring it out to pull out the excess water. Set aside. You can skip this step in a hurry but it does help to lighten up the crumb and texture a noticeable amount. Both are still extremely delicious so choose your own adventure here.
  3. In a large bowl whisk together olive oil, yogurt, brown sugar, vanilla and lemon zest. The zest of two medium lemons adds a bright note but is not too lemony. I really like lemon so I opted for three to get that burst of citrus. Add eggs one at a time whisking in between until full incorporated. Whisk a further 30 seconds to a minute until the batter thickens slightly. With a spatula fold in the zucchini.
  4. Sift flour, cinnamon, baking powder, baking soda and salt directly over your wet ingredients. Fold in until almost all the dry bits are moist. Add your chocolate chips and continue to fold in until everything is just incorporated, being careful not to over mix.
  5. Pour into your prepared loaf pan or if making muffins use ¼ cup measuring cup to fill each muffin cup. The loaf will bake at 350˙F for about 50-55 minutes. Muffins take about 25-30 minutes. They're both done when the edges start to brown and toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes and then remove to cool completely on a wire rack. Or do as I do and eat one with a thick lashing of butter immediately.
  6. These will stay fresh for a few days and freeze nicely. If I bake a loaf I pre-slice it before freezing a will pull a slice straight the frozen and toast in cast iron for a yummy quick breakfast.
Notes
*I use Eat Grain organic sifted Red Fife flour in almost all my baking. This 100% whole wheat flour is a little less dense than some of your average store varieties due to the their sifting and milling processes. I'd recommend you bake with a white whole wheat flour like King Authur's or do a 50:50 mix of whole wheat and all purpose if you're working with a more traditional whole wheat flour and prefer a lighter final crumb.

Choosing (Again)

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It was the first time I’d ever cracked into a fresh whole crab. It had been pulled straight from the Washington waters just days before but I barely remember it. The salt I tasted came not from the creature whose flesh had only known the salty sea but from my own tears. This had been one of the longest and most awful weekends of my photography career spent side by side with my newly minted ex-boyfriend. It involved back to back weddings in different states, 100 degree weather without shade, the most thankless bride I’d ever met, cut knees, sleeping in what we called ‘sex sheets’ as they’d very obviously just been slept in by the couple we were photographing, finally learning how to open a bottle of beer with out a bottle opener in the dark on a dock, multiple 5am days, driving back across three states with stops along the way long enough to get locked in a bathroom in the middle of nowhere Montana and to see a game warden about a certain piece of Idaho wilderness. Sitting on the splintered wood next to the boy who’d broken my heart eating the crab I couldn’t really taste, I wondered why. Why was I doing all that I was doing? What was it for? What was the point? Tears streamed down my face and for a moment I forgot my heartache over this specific complicated human and felt the heart of the matter. I don’t think I could quite put it into these specific words in that moment but my body didn’t need language to understand: I was building a life I did not want to live. And so my heart fully broke.

Broken I like so many began the process of rebuilding myself and my life (are those two separate things?). It got worse before it got better as it so often does. We break and then when we didn’t think it was possible we somehow break even more (can we really hold so much?). I’m sure the pieces of me began to come together before I could really see or feel it, but on Christmas day, one of the final days of that year, I went for a run in the morning and I saw the dew on the branches. I stopped. It was backlit by the light reflecting off the lake I was running around. I remember the clothes I was wearing. I remember the feeling in body. I felt whole again. I could see the world again. I could be in the world again. I took a photo. I breathed in that moment. It stands in my head as a marker of the before and the after. The Tori who was and the Tori who is.

I keep making the mistake after periods of massive growth and transition of thinking I’ve reached a place of arrival. I’ve grown. Yay! Celebration. Joy. Phew! So glad that is over. I know I will have to grow again but it will be different. I will never go back. My path is linear from hereto forward. I have mastered x, y and z, they will never be tested again. I am now here on the right and I will never be lured by the left again. And then I’m blindsided when all the things I thought I knew and learned are pulled out from under me like a rug, or like my clumsy first grade self that attempted a cartwheel on the pavement only to find herself stunned and squarely on her back with the breath knocked out of her. The path is not linear. It never is. It never will be. (And really would we want it to be? Somedays my answer is yes).

As winter and spring did their dance with one another this past year I finally surrendered to the slowness that had been beckoning me. I had been fighting it for so long. I almost chose ‘Go Big’ as my words for this year because that’s where I wanted to be. But which I? My true self? Or the self I impose on me based on some arbitrary expectation of who I think I need and should be at 34? But hadn’t I already changed and slowed down? Wasn’t that what I did after I cried over crab? I felt mad. Cheated. This is not the life I had signed up for. 

This is not the life I signed up for. A thought on repeat this August. My life began to speed up this July. I thought I was over and through some things. That I had done the work and therefore I was now getting a neat bow for all that hard work, all those tears, the sweat, emotional strife, therapy, money, for all that the last year had asked of me. July was mostly bliss and I embraced it. I blasted the music in my car at full volume and danced at stoplights. I could barely sleep at times I was so happy to be awake. I camped a lot. I began to run. I cooked vegetables straight from the ground with creative fervor. I dug my hands into the earth tending to beets, broccoli, squash, cauliflower and marveled at the beauty of the dirt that clung to the cracks of my still young hands. My skin took on a golden hue from days out of doors. Every night was spent in the company of friends and loved ones. There was a rosy tint to my cheeks that came from more than the sun. And I was ever so grateful. I had forgotten just how good this life can be. But as it happens there was no bow. I had begun to speed up. I had abandoned slow. I am glad I got lost in the bliss but I can also see that I abandoned myself a little in there too. Because in the end I chose the word evolve for 2018 and evolution asks us for time.

  

In the last few weeks, really all of the last 52, my subconscious has been asking what kind of life do you want to live? Do you want to make a lot money? Do you want to be successful? Do you want to live on a farm? Do you want slow mornings? Do you want children? Do you want to be videoing your life in 15 second bursts constantly? Do you want an editorial calendar of photos and snippets of thought? What about creating the perfect grid? Do you want to be a wedding photographer? Many of these questions I don’t have answers to. But I do know what I would do every day if I could. Read, run, write, garden, photograph and cook for people. I do many of those things daily as it is. Maybe you’re scoffing at how luxurious that sounds. Isn’t that what we all want? Tori, there is health insurance, and mortgages, and 401ks, and college savings, and college loans, and, and the washer is breaking unexpectedly, and we have to go to that cousin’s wedding on the east coast that we don’t want to go to, and laundry, and picky kids to feed, and the ski trip to save for, and never enough sleep. Yes, yes there is. But what if we’re living all wrong? What if society has sold us a lie?

The minute I realized the rug was pulled out from underneath me I decided I was finally going to do ten things I have been thinking about for a year(s). Cookbook pdf, set up that newsletter, #versatileveg, rebrand my wedding photography, women’s portraits, donate 1% of my profit to a non-profit, book that trip to Italy with my mom, build my food photography portfolio, photograph more farms, cut my hair, die it, get a tattoo—all worthwhile things. All things I will do. The truth of the matter: I was reacting, I was running, I didn’t want to lie on my laminate floors and feel all the things that hurt. I literally tried to hike myself into numbness and when I finally succeeded I found myself 8 miles in at a glacial lake I could not actually see. So I sat there and I cried and I took a nap. I came home and sat on the couch with a glass of wine next to a bowl of peaches in the dark and I let myself mourn what I had lost and what I did not understand. I did it again another night. And one morning. And one afternoon. And I will probably do it again.

A friend pointed out to me last week that the majority of what I do is an extension of myself and my heart. Maybe, she suggested it’s hard to do all those things like rebrand and change my whole business and life because I’m not actually ok right now. Oh. Oh. Perhaps it wasn’t the time to move full steam ahead. My body knew what my mind did not. My friend was right. I keep trying to be over there in this place where I think I should be, want to be, need to be, hope to be, instead of where I am. I hardly ever sit exactly where I am. Instead of sitting with my own suffering and being curious towards it I had feverishly hiked away from it. What can it teach me? If I build these ten things, not only will they be a distraction, but then I can prove my worth. Why do I really need to be full? I am valuable because I built this business and finally became the doer, the act-er, instead of just the talker about-er. Am I still not enough?

Sitting in the dark next to that bowl of peaches I made a decision. We get to decide what kind of lives we want to live. Again I feel the gentle tugs of stillness and slowness. They’re at the hem of my dress. They’re the soft fingertips on my shoulders. They’re the hands soothing my temples. They’re a quiet urging that has grown so loud it’s the white noise of my every minute. Do the things you know you want to do. Do them. Be present in them. Focus on them. Be intentional. Don’t think about the should. The newsletter you should create. The scalable business model you need to build. The family you long to create. Do the things you are already doing. The wedding clients you already have. The families inviting you into their homes this fall. And then write. And write some more. And photograph. And run. And be curious. And spend hours tapping your keyboard and with your pen and moleskin and your mind. Go to the library. And cook. Cook from all your cookbooks. Have everyone over. Make a cake without a recipe. Bake bread until the flour is permanently lodged in the cracks that winter will bring to your hands. Do the work that you have well and with intention. Be more present than ever before. Stop being exhausted from all the responsibility of never-ending achievement. Never-ending goals.

Even as I write this I feel so privileged. There’s also that fearful voice that worries I’m getting left behind, telling me, I have to do all the things. If I don’t I’m just spoiled and not good enough and I should be able to be and do more right now. We get to choose. We get to choose. We get to decide. My 401k may continue to suffer. This may be a consequence. But what might I learn from stillness? From sitting down to write with out feeling guilty. Or creating photos for the sake of creating photos. Or just how many more lunches might I get with my mom? Will I finally bake that chocolate cake I have wanted to bake for 2, maybe three years? It’s on my vision board for goodness sakes and yet for some reason I bake everything but that chocolate cake. I just made peach scones. Another friend asked me why I have not baked that chocolate cake yet? It never feels like the right time. Chocolate cakes don’t have seasons, not like plum tarts, and peach galettes or tomato pies. We get to choose. Today I chose peach scones. 

I’ve Never Been Good at Pretending

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The craggy, rooted black pavement was under my feet. I carried myself through the middle of the quiet street under a canopy of trees and a blanket of dark Montana night sky. I really liked the shoes I was wearing. I bought them with money I made taking photos. I bought a house the same way. I looked up at the stars, at this world, this amazing place that I am a part of. I felt alive.

I am living.
I am here.
This is happening.

How can I feel so happy? And so sad at the same time.

Much of the month of August I have spent in a cloud of depression. I don’t say this to be pitied or felt sorry for or for people to worry about me or to wish it away for me. Of course I don’t really want to feel this way and it has not been pleasant, actually at times it was practically imbearable (that made up word sounds more right than the un-version of it). I texted a friend in a state of panic two weeks ago as I drove from construction detour after detour trying to get to a trailhead, trying to get to the mountains, trying to get to my sanity. I was losing my shit. And she called me and talked me off a cliff of my mind’s own making. The gratitude I have for that human, for her words, her love, her kindness, I can’t quite express. So yes, it has been awful but also probably necessary.

“Change happens when the pain of staying the same is greater than the pain of change.”*

I have thought a lot about not sharing this. My public posts have become more emotionally wrought, some might say dark or depressing. An acquaintance even texted me yesterday and asked how my house is and whether I’m loving it (which despite depression, I am!). They assumed so because they had not seen many depressing posts on Instagram lately. Signed with a wink face. I get it: emotion, feeling, these can be really uncomfortable. But what I’ve noticed lately, is how many around me are all just struggling along too. I have loved ones searching for healing just like me. I have friends in relationships that they’re scared won’t work out. Friends with career worries. Others with body image issues they’re afraid to talk about. Heartbreak over the falling apart of relationships. Financial worry. Worry that they’re wasting their life on the wrong things. All of us seeking. All of us sad and happy and somewhere in between a million times over each day, each week, each month, each year.

In therapy yesterday, we talked about the magic in the world. Last week she asked me what magic I had accessed recently. I could think of none. That sounds so bleak and dramatic, but it was nonetheless true. She asked me yesterday and I had an immediate answer. Tuesday night, in a haze of wine, lost in a late summer warm night, my belly full of the best crab cake of my life, walking down a street I love, under trees I love, in a town I love, and in shoes I love that I love even more because I made the money to buy them, I felt the magic of the world. I felt so happy. And so sad. My therapist said she loves that feeling. And maybe I do too, because it feels so honest.

Why do we spend so much time pretending? When we’re all going through so much all the time. Aren’t we all walking this line between culturally accepted opposites of happy and sad. How much time do we really spend firmly planted and completely embraced by only one of those feelings in it’s entirety? We’re sold the carpe diem dream. Let’s seize this day, let’s live it like it might be our last, surely it could be—and I have struggled with this notion for years, because that grandiose sentiment has also felt like an exhausting idea in practice. I firmly believe that sometimes we just need to be sad and sit with it and let it be our teacher. We can’t rush through it. In fact, to do so, is in my opinion to do ourselves a great disservice and only procrastinate and protract the struggle or set of struggles in our precious lives.

“…when the pain of staying the same is greater…”

Maybe carpe diem can be applied differently, possibly mediocrely. What if it’s walking down the street and marveling at the stars and feeling good about a silly pair of shoes because it’s really cool that you made enough money to buy them and you live in a town you love and you’re heartbroken and don’t understand humans and you’re confused about the meaning of life and the meaning of your specific life and you really like trees and your friend said she dreamt you were a tree and that was really cool and empowering and man emotional pain is so physically painful and life is awful but it feels really good to be outside and able to move and walk on your own two healthyish feet and it’s so weird to be so resolutely happy and so sad in the same breath. Maybe carpe diem is sitting with the pain and not getting out of bed until 10am somedays because you’ve spent a decade plus judging every step you take and you’re finally tired. Maybe it’s sitting in the dark in your own house crying because you experienced loss and you need to feel it. But that bowl of peaches in the wan August light is marvelous, too.  Maybe it’s making an olive oil cake in the quiet and feeling the worn wood of the spoon in your hand and the smell of lemon zest in the bowl. Maybe it’s writing stream of conscious early in the morning as the almost fall sunlight hits the keys of the laptop you think might be on the verge of dying but you’re willing to last another 6 months. Maybe carpe diem is rarely the grand gesture we’ve been sold. Maybe it is being wholly and fully in our messes, beauty and suffering and all but mostly the in between. Maybe it’s not rising above, maybe it’s just being able to be with in it all.

“..than the pain of change.”

*Quote is from Tony Robbins whom I have mixed feelings about but this sentiment has come up a lot lately including this exact quote in my journal this morning.

What Running Gave Me

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This is the last time I ran. It was an early Sunday morning. May 20th. And I only ran for these photos to be taken. I wanted images of me doing something I love most. In a spot I love most. I wanted them as a memory of this transitionary period.

It feels like I am reaching the end of this very long tunnel. An ending whose existence I often questioned. I hope that I don’t find myself eating these words in a few weeks time and find that the light leaks were merely a mirage. And I don’t mean returning to running, though there is that too. Because I’ve begun to recognize that the loss of running, all the injury, all the trying and striving, and resisting and fighting, has not really been about running at all. It’s been about facing my greatest fears of value and wanting to be worthy of being loved. All of this struggle, or most of it, has been in a flee from fear, of never feeling like enough. I have never felt so powerless or out of control as I have in the past few months. I have felt like an alien in my own body no matter what I do. My mental anguish and striving I’d bet has manifested in the physical. The more I have resisted the more my body and spirit have required my surrender. I am still in the tunnel but already I can feel that there is a real shift and real healing happening. I get it now. I get why athletes say injury is the best thing that happened to them while also saying they don’t wish it on anyone, because you don’t. I would not undo what I have gone through. I would not un-lose my muscle and aerobic fitness. I would not un-lose the pounds. I would not un-cry the tears. I would not undo the bleak valleys I’ve ventured into. I have wanted to at times. I have wanted to go back to the girl I was last June physically and emotionally. I have wanted to be someone else. I have wanted magical answers. There will still be many moments when I do. Deep down though, this is not work I want to procrastinate. It would be more painful to sweep under the rug than to keep putting one muddy foot in front of the other.

Running saved me. Then running broke me. But here in the middle of it all, because my journey on this earth is still going, running has given me more than it has taken taken away. If I continue to let go, continue to surrender, I can see not only a way through, but a way of living that has so much more peace, joy, love, grace, space, and as my beautiful friend pointed out, ‘Life will probably be a lot more fun.’

Photo Credit: Lauren E. Lipscomb