This week I have started and stopped writing several times. It’s been my intent to refrain from engaging in political conversations, but it feels impossible not to process what’s happening in the world here on the page.
As I know many of my sisters are feeling, I am immensely sad. I have already been in a process of massive change and I’m grieving. I’m moving away what has been home for two decades. While my initial years were a love-hate relationship with Los Angeles, I feel like I burned in the fire of this city and not only survived, but thrived. I came here and modeled, joining an industry where women were objectified, commoditized, analyzed, and promised the world… if only they were willing to [insert soul-compromising sacrifices here]. I was then hit by a car as a pedestrian and had a near-death experience that grounded me, in spite of my intent to leave this city and return to a life in Maui, while I healed for nearly a year. And then life took over … I met my ex, birthed my little girl, and here we are twenty years later.
I have come to love Los Angeles. It’s a place of “no ceilings.” There is always someone crazier than you, more fucked up by life, riding even closer to the edge. It’s calming to be in the middle. It’s comforting to know that no matter how different I feel, how lonely I get, that there are more like me, and therefore we are not alone. And the creative fire burns deep and bright. While there are loads of newcomers (and old-timers) high on delusion, there are so many smart, hard-working, creative, ambitious, driven individuals who take on impossible odds and create art and business. It’s inspiring, motivating, and I thrive on the buzz.
While I am moving less than a hundred miles away to Lake Arrowhead, I have also traveled enough to recognize that it’s another world. When I moved to L.A. after being a nomadic hippie following spiritual teachers, I changed. It happens over time. We become part of our place, and our place becomes part of us. L.A. and I exchanged DNA and we’ve been merged for a long time. When I move to the mountains, I will be letting parts of myself go, allowing other parts to evolve. I will take on new traits, I will craft a new relationship with another place, I will change. And while that can be incredibly exciting, a rebirth even, there must be a place for grief. For acknowledgment of what has been. Because it’s also who I have been. And who I’ve become.
So while I deeply appreciate the many congratulations, what I appreciate even more are the ones who say to me, “This is a huge change for you.” Thank you for seeing that dear, wise friends. It is a huge change for me. There are lots of moments where I look at the ocean and well up to know we won’t be six minutes from each other. Each time I meet someone for coffee or lunch I think, “Will this be the last time we do this while I am local?” Each time I drive by a place I have cried, or laughed memorably – whether that’s where I first had an apartment in Hollywood, or where I walked while pregnant with my daughter, or where I grabbed coffee and sat to write for hours – I feel grief. I cry. I feel alone.
I don’t know what the next years will bring. But I know it will be different. I know I can get in the car and drive the hundred miles to the place where I have created life, nurtured life, come to terms with life. The place where I grew up, from being a wide-eyed wanderer in my early twenties, to a full-grown, secure and creative woman in my forties with two kids, two careers, and a house of my own. But it will be different.
And that brings me back to the immense sadness I share with my sisters this week. We know how hard life can be, how much it takes to learn ourselves, how much power and strength we must summon to lead ourselves and our children. Life is not meant to be taken lightly. It’s meant to be navigated with intent, consciousness, and resources. And the path is deeply, individually, our own. It’s each of our spiritual journeys to meet life on life’s terms, to learn the lessons, to cope and accept and hold—or not.
Please world, make some space for nuance. Make some space for complexity. Allow us the space for self-discovery. Do not force upon us the values of others. Don’t we have to manage enough? Aren’t we always and already digesting the inherent challenge of simply showing up?
I feel like I want to say I’m sorry. To all of you, to us that are struggling, I’m so sorry there is one more thing. Or many more things. I’m so sorry for this too, this weight on our shoulders, our bodies, our bellies, our roots. I’m so sorry for one more thing.
All I can say is, we are not alone.
