Friends, California, Heather Armstrong, and Writing

My thoughts this Friday morning in May.

I’m writing from my own bed this morning, sipping home coffee, with both Piper and Jack curled up next to me. In other words: I’m writing to you from heaven. I flew in late last night from San Diego, where I spent the past few days with two of my best friends, eating the best food, taking long walks, and basking in the California sun (which is so different than the east coast sun; I’ll never quite get over it).

I’ve got all kinds of thoughts and ideas swirling around and wanted to get them down here to you in the kind of writing I miss doing: easy writing, unstructured writing, the kind we used to do when we wrote long emails back in the day—or at least I used to do that, did you?—to our friends. It’s the kind of writing I used to do on my blog way back when, but it didn’t last for long because pretty quickly, I felt the pressure to write Something Very Good. This meant thinking about the topic for days or weeks beforehand, coming up with a structure, sometimes outlining my points, and spending dozens of hours fretting over sentence structure and how to best articulate something and writing and rewriting, and considering the blog title and subtitle and the perfect image—you know, the process of writing, basically, or writing for the internet—and while all of that was great for me, is still great for me, I miss just letting things come out. It’s what I used to do on Instagram, too, back in the 2013 - 2018 era, when I used it as sort of a journal (I think I’ve heard it called “microblogging”), and I all this to say, I miss how that kind of writing feels to my brain and heart.

So I’m setting a timer for an hour here and I’m just going to write what’s on my heart and not look back, without worrying whether this is good or enough to be worth your time, not even to check for typos, okay?

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I had the best time with my friends these past few days. I’ve been going to San Diego quite a lot in the past year because T and I bought a condo there last year—something we hadn’t planned to do exactly, at least not for several years, but the stars aligned, and we jumped—and I love it. California is so foreign to me, so not a geography I identify with as being “me,” that it feels like I’m trying on a new wardrobe every time I go. Like a style I’m stretching to feel comfortable wearing, but not because it’s not comfortable, it’s just so different than what I’m used to seeing myself in.

Although I was born and raised in Colorado, ever since I moved to Boston in 1999, it’s been home to me. The frequency of the east coast is my frequency; when I moved here, my whole nervous system synced like it had finally found the right gear. The blueish light, the pace, the ocean, the smells, the buildings—everything. I’ve said many times that my first decade in Boston felt like a sweeping romance, like falling in love every day, in a pinch-me way. I still feel that way but it’s a more settled kind of love, like any long-term relationship: it’s comfortable, worn, home.

But now there’s this new place: southern California. A whole new world with new light, new smells, a different frequency. We’re not moving there, but we’re toying with the idea of doing that after Alma graduates from high school (what?), and I can both see this as my future and not. I’m not ready to let go of the east coast yet (I’m not sure I ever will be, not fully), but I am enjoying trying on this new look. We’ll see.

But we had the best time. Just a few days. These are friends I’ve raised Alma with; our kids are friends, and we’ve spent winters skiing together and most weekends at home together over the past six or so years. There’s a larger group but just three of us went on this trip.

We walked and walked and walked.

This is the first group of friends I made in sobriety, after those first lonely years where I could barely be around people because I found it so physically exhausting, so awkward and hard. I avoided having mom friends in Alma’s earlier years, too. I’m not sure exactly why other than it felt suffocating and boring to me to talk about our babies (I can be an asshole), and I was convinced that I didn’t need that—whatever I thought that was—but, oh, I did. This group of friends has shaped Alma’s childhood and these years for me in an indelible way; they’ve become our family, our fun, our companionship, our memories, and our plans.

The golden cast of the light is so otherworldly to me.

While we were sitting at breakfast on Tuesday morning, I scrolled Instagram and saw a post about Heather Armstrong passing away. I gasped, scrolled furiously, and disappeared into my phone for about a half hour, trying in spurts of words to explain to my friends who she was and why this mattered to me.

Although I hadn’t followed her or read Dooce in many years, Heather was the first blog I encountered, the first woman and mother writing online back in the early aughts, and unless you were there for it, it’s near-impossible to explain how big she was, how influential, how…seismic. I loved reading her, especially in the earliest years, but it was never without a sting of jealousy for me, so I often felt like I hated her, too, or at least was hate-reading her words. Every time she published a new piece, I felt a wave of nausea; I wanted to both eat the words but also not see them because she was so damn good. Funny. No, hilarious. Razor-sharp wit. Biting sarcasm. Metaphors and turns of phrase I could never, not if I tried for the next fifty years, replicate. She talked honestly about mental health and motherhood in a way no one else was doing at the time. She was just a regular person from Utah, not an author or a celebrity, and it was wild and addictive and exciting and edgy. She loved music the way I love music and would often post about songs from The National or My Morning Jacket or Radiohead and I would internally scream because ME TOO, but also I WANT TO DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING, STOP IT. Which is to say she lit that first spark for me as she did who knows how many others; she plowed a brand new trail, An Online Person, A Blogger, A Regular Woman with An Audience, A Truth Teller (these were brand-new things then; the internet was new, imagine). She was the reason I started many blogs over the next ten years, even if I felt totally inadequate and small and not funny or witty or interesting when I wrote on them because I was always comparing myself to her.

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about her since I found out on Tuesday. I’ve been texting with various friends about it: friends who I read her with back then, other author/online friends, and a few guy friends who reached out to ask who she was. I’m haunted by the way her unraveling had turned into a spectator sport over the past ten years or so. I’m haunted by my reaction to her announcing she was sober a couple of years ago, which was to groan, as if she was taking something from me. I’m haunted by reading—after I learned of her death—a few of her recent posts because they feel prescient now. Dark. Reaching. I’m haunted by how much hate she got, always, and how we treat women who have power and influence—how we scorch them, hate them, decimate them. I’m haunted by how, again, I’m reminded that my continued sobriety is more about luck than anything else—that none of us is immune to falling, particularly when mental illness is present. I’m haunted by our increasing degrees of isolation. I am haunted by the idea of her two children living without her, living with her memory, and now her death. I’m haunted by how quickly and easily we dismiss or throw people and their work away—even people who’ve impacted us profoundly. I’m sitting with this. I’m sending Heather and her family love and grace.

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I love my friend Elissa Altman’s Instagram post about writing being a physical act. I am in the last days before I officially begin writing book number three, and her post made me think about all this physical work I’ve been doing over the past year—shifting all those hours I used to spend doing endless cardio into throwing around heavy weights and swinging kettlebells—is perhaps a preparation, a training. She’s right, of course. Writing is intensely physical. When I was writing We Are The Luckiest, I would pass out for hours after writing sessions, so physically exhausted it was as if I’d run ten miles. I got regular migraines. My shoulders rode up so high they were practically hooked to my ears. And Push Off from Here was the same, except it was more of a brain hurt. Lots of migraines.

Still, I’m excited to begin, in a nervous way. I’ve been rolling around the stories and the concepts for several months now, jotting notes in my phone, making lists in my journal, and playing with titles (I have a hard time working on a project if I don’t have a great name or title).

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Lastly, my last piece on being a half-time mom unsurprisingly hit a nerve. I had to delete and ban several comments (I’m good with debate and disagreement; cruelty and hate I won’t allow). It’s a marker of growth for me to be able to allow the tension to exist on my platform, even to welcome it, so I’m glad for that. I feel as strong and solid in my views and my role as a mother as I possibly could, which is also heartening. I also get to pick up Alma from school today and she’ll be with me for the week and I cannot wait to see her, per usual.

Have a beautiful weekend. Love your people. As a parting gift, I offer you my favorite kind of croissant, the kitty kind.

She’s perfect.

Love,
Laura

You are reading Love Story, a weekly-ish newsletter about relationships, recovery, and writing (with a heavy dose of Taylor Swift) from Laura McKowen. I’m also on Instagram, and have written two books. I love engaging with you in the comments, which are open to paid subscribers, and you can subscribe here or give a gift subscription here.