View this email in your browser

Were gonna need more bacon.

Hi again.

This is becoming a pattern, us meeting up like this.

Thank you for still reading about my life with no (almost) real reason or call to action. Many of you have followed me since the BusinessWeek days, and I am always and will always be honored to be in your inbox.

Last time I wrote about how yes it is lovely on the other side of a venture-backed startup. And it is. I want to KNOW and remember that it is when the petty smallness of life starts to stress me out.

No matter what my day brings, I am not having chest pains at Disneyland because I know a board meeting is coming up and despite every drop of blood I have going into my startup it is not going to meet its projections.

I am not hospitalized with pneumonia in three-quarters of my lungs from overwork.

I am not being protected by armed guards because of threats on my life.

I (probably) have a positive balance in my bank account.

WHATEVER BS IM DEALING WITH IS SO MUCH LESS THAN IVE DONE EVERY DAY FOR SO LONG.

I am so worried about my happiness baseline shifting I want to write that on a sharpie on my forehead so I see it every time I look in the mirror.

THAT said. My life is not stress-free and the core consuming engine of my fire right now is the emotional labor of raising two tween girls, one cis gender one trans gender. One entering puberty and the other blocking it. Both leaving a trail of the final breadcrumbs of childhood while entering their super human origin stories.

The other day I told Paul I felt we needed to hold space for people who like Taylor Swifts pop career but just do not care for twangy top 40 country no matter who sings it.

Eli had recently decided she needed to go back and listen to Taylor Swifts entire discography uninterrupted in order because she needed to better appreciate the latter day Taylor Swift which is the one they know, age-wise and mom-hates-country-music-and-never-plays-it-wise.

So we started in the car one morning. And two songs in, Evie was like Yall can do this journey without me.

Later, Paul angrily countered that Evies kindergarten drawings werent that good either. She was a TEENAGER! (Hes been a major Swiftie since before we had a word for it.)

Thats when I said, with a straight face, that we needed to hold space for those who just dont like top 40 country. And he looked at me like: Remember when you were a ferocious, feral journalist who terrified everyone?

Yes, I do. But now I am someone who spends most of her emotional energy holding space for alllllllllll the things.Even the things other people think its dumb to hold space for.

I have to force myself not to fix anything.

I listen. I back rub. I agree it sucks. I ask what more I can do to help.I make magical bacon. And I hold a lot of space.

And while its so so so hard, I love it too. Its so fleeting and so important.

I am watching them find their power.If I look away I might miss it.

The other day, Eli got a book of magic spells from the bookstore. It was the kind of thing we stock for bachelorette parties along with the Jane Austen tarot decks.

Its a bummer there are no hexes in here, she said flipping through it.

Yesterday, she picked it back up and was poring over it in the car, with total sincerity. It was the quietest Ive heard her in the car in a while.

She looked up finally and said, I want to help Mr. W, and I think Ive found something. She had the most earnest face Ive ever seen on a human being.

Mr. W is her favorite teacher at school and hes leaving, not by his own choice. She had found a protection spell.

I have to put food out for the spirits every week. . . can you save me some of the bacon tonight?

That is tween.

Its coming to problems with a clean slate of solutions. Its finding ways to solve things yourself but asking mom for the bacon because her bacon is the best and the spirits need to be well fed. Its heart-on-your-sleeve this is wrong and I care and its ok to feel it.

Its believing in magic. It is magic.

I am writing this on a rare day where so far neither has cried today. One of them cries almost every day. Its so beautiful but also so hard.

The other night, it was Evies turn. She was sobbing and sobbing and sobbing her emotions just out of control and her discomfort with a lack of control.

I know you think this period you are going through is pain and weakness, but this is strength. This is your strength forming and coalescing. Everything that is happening to you now physically and emotionally and mentally is all building enormous strength that you will draw on for the rest of your life. Its never pretty at the moment you get bit by the atomic spider.