My College Essay

I was cleaning up old files the other day, and I came across this file name: ‘college essay.’

It was in such an old word format, I had to open it as a text file.

I have no idea what the question was, but I was clearly trying to persuade the folks in admissions that I was worthy of entry to their elite school.

I was trying to impress them and be humble at the same time.

I was trying to demonstrate my worthiness without being “too much.”

I was seventeen when I wrote this. I was a baby when I went to college.

I’ll be honest: It’s hard not to eye roll at my 17-year old self.

How to Survive the Worst Year of Your Life

August 2018 to February 2019 will go down in history as the worst six months of my life.

Cliff’s Notes: Dog Died, Mom Got Cancer, Relationship Ended, Dad Died.

It was a lot.

I’ve read and studied so much about grief in the past few years — at the time, I thought it was to help my clients. Because grief is part of any major life change.

Little did I know, I was preparing to survive the worst year ever.

In some ways, I was prepared. And in other ways: it is impossible to prepare.

These are a handful of tools that helped me survive the worst year of my life.

Hopefully, they will help you in your hour of deepest need.

Just like anything, practice makes better. (I don’t believe in perfect anymore.) After each loss, I got better at each of these. I am so grateful I had many of them in place before my dog Bodhi died — because without them, I would likely be in corner somewhere, drinking cheap box wine and eating ice cream straight from the container.

Without further ado:

How to survive the worst year of your life, in advance:

Why Money Is Part of My Meditation

Many of us have a kinda weird relationship with money. Me too.

I’ve ranged from penny pincher — clipping coupons, checking my budget multiple times a day — to completely reckless — not looking at my balances for months on end. Hoping if I ignore it, maybe it would just go away. (Newsflash: it did. But not the way I’d hoped.)

Sometimes my behavior was related to how much money I was making, and sometimes it wasn’t.

In 2018, I promised myself I would take the bull by the horns and do whatever it took to heal this relationship. My theme for 2018 would be “Easy Money.”

Because until now, Money had been anything but easy.

Why Change Feels Like Torture and Acts Like Paradox

How often do we pray for change?

“Dear God, I’ll do anything, just get me out of here.”
“What am I supposed to do now?”
“Why does my hair always do this same weird thing?”
“I just can’t do this anymore.”

We think, “any change at all!” How great if our new job doubles our take-home, a boyfriend who understands how to take care of us (it’s so simple, after all!), for our mother to stop asking when she’ll be a grandmother (or for her to actually be a grandmother!)

Coffee and Change

The heat of the summer brings madness. Heat so heavy it seems inescapable. Pressure so intense it’s suffocating.

This summer is no different. The world is a little upside down lately. The political situation in the US is the most watched reality show in history. The Brexit vote signaled a dismantling of the European Union, based entirely on ignorance and xenophobia. And truly unfathomable acts of violence have torn spirits from Orlando to Minneapolis, Turkey to Taipei, Bangladesh to South Sudan.

 

I love coffee.

Iced, drip, cappuccino, latte, mocha, cortado. I’ll drink it brewed with dishwater, tamped into espresso machines that cost more than fine cars, or cold brewed overnight. I love coffee so much that even when I give up caffeine, I still drink decaf. There’s something about the warm, nutty flavor of coffee, subtle bitterness, coating of crema, slight buzz — it makes me feel like myself again.

Coffee beans are seeds that grow inside a cherry-like berry. They grow on the sides of mountains in subtropical climates. The berries are hand-picked, seeds separated and soaked, then dried. The beans are roasted, rested, ground, tamped, heated, soaked, steamed, brewed.

It takes a lot of hot, hard work to make me feel like myself again.

Perhaps the heat of summer is bringing us to a boiling point. Perhaps this steam is whistling to us as shouts of “Black Lives Matter,” “Obama can’t take my guns,” and “No Bigots, No Borders.” Perhaps the pressure of violence is pushing us closer to each other. Perhaps we’re about to be transformed into ourselves again.

Compassion and empathy ask us to see ourselves in others. It asks us to see ourselves in young men so angry they take the innocent lives of 48. To feel the overflowing frustration of an Army vet whom snipers men in blue. To feel the fear of men in uniform, facing violence every day, make assumptions based on the color of someone’s skin. To witness the ill-advised votes of people so afraid of someone encroaching on our homes.

We are all angry. We all make assumptions. We are all afraid.

Until we see our own anger, until we humble our assumptions, until we can sit with our own fear, nothing will change. If we can’t see ourselves in the faces of others, hear our voices in their shouts for justice, feel their hearts breaking inside our own chests: we will never be transformed.

The heat of this summer is bringing us to a boiling point: heat rises, bringing everything to the surface. Under the right heat and the right pressure, we transform simple green seeds into rich coffee beans, tiny beans to grounds rich like soil, add heat and pressure: coffee.

The heat of this summer – the pressure in our system – has the potential to transform us. With wisdom, with patience, and with artistry — let’s use the heat of this summer to make something beautiful. Let’s become ourselves again.