Tag Archives: healing

JustRachel

I have a habit of writing eulogies; this isn’t one

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Hey, it’s been a while. For those who’ve forgotten, my name is Rachel, just Rachel. I’m 30 now, fast approaching 31, and this past year has been a bit of a whirlwind, so let me catch you up.

Since last November, I…

Traveled

I took two solo trips (international); first to Ireland to tour schools and explore work opportunities and later to Spain, where I turned 30 and fulfilled all of my Cheetah Girl fantasies.

Ireland

Spain

I visited Tampa, Florida, and Phoenix, Arizona, and I was so fortunate as to make some really special connections in both places.

Tampa

Phoenix

Leaned toward love, rather than away from it

I got extremely done up (2x) and stood alongside two very good friends as a bridesmaid on their respective wedding days.

I went on a couple of dates and proved to myself that I am actually really open to getting my heart broken, for the right person—though I can somewhat confidently say, I don’t think I have met them yet…

Learned

I earned an online certificate from Cornell University in Project Management (my pride in this accomplishment has shifted slightly since the Jane Doe case came to light, but I refuse to discount the work I put in and the sacrifices I made to make it happen).

Leveraged

I applied to two new jobs (that I was qualified for because of the certificate program), both an ocean away; neither panned out, and I’m grateful for that—life had bigger plans.

Lept

I mended some fences (it was time), moved back out of my childhood bedroom, bought a house (unrelated to the fences), and realized on more than one occasion that I am only mortal (very related to the house, among other things).

…and beyond the big stuff I could go on and on about all the “smaller” moments that made this year what it was—but if I dove into that we would be here for quite a while.

So now what? That’s where I should take you, right? What’s next?

I always find it funny that, in the face of hearing about accomplishments or witnessing radical moments of achievement—like winning a gold medal—we are trained to almost immediately move to the next question, the “Now what?” or “What’s next?” We rarely let ourselves sit in it because we are supposed to keep moving, running, chasing—next-ing(?) the next thing.

And to be fair, if you asked me, I could tell you, for me—next is:

Painting my dining room terracotta before I host Thanksgiving (I’m leaning toward the shade that is oddly named Jalapeno—paint colors don’t always make much sense to me), finishing the caulking on the stairs, touching up trim and ceilings and quarter-rounds. Washing the paint brushes that have been hanging out in my basement beer fridge. Hanging pictures, art, and shelves to better organize the ungodly amount of stuff that I have amassed over the years. (All the really sexy, home-owner-y stuff).

…

Or, I could be a bit more honest; I could tell you that next is slowing down:

Building back my bank account and building out my vegan and non-vegan crock pot cookbook repertoire (because I am having so much fun exploring meals with ingredients I have often overlooked and tools I’ve underused).

…

We could shift the conversation to corporate and I could pivot to tell you that from a professional perspective:

I could list the career achievements I am chasing because a raise would be really nice, but selling people on it in this climate is… tricky, to say the least. (Most days I look at the stories surrounding the job market and I am just happy to have a job).

I could tell you about the shows I am watching and rewatching (and rewatching—I might have a slight addiction to one or two storylines out there), the books I can’t seem to settle myself enough at night to read… or write (though I know the time for that is coming soon).

What’s next: a more honest answer…

Look, truth is… I could bury you in my up next because trust me, I have it, I’m in it, I know it is there—but if you looked at me, saw me, and you asked me, genuinely, “what’s next?”—I would tell you with tired eyes that I am far less concerned with “next” than I am with “now”; because for all the projects in the pipeline, all the adventures I have planned, all the weddings and baby showers and birthdays and holidays I have to attend, not everything that is coming next is inherently good. Some of what is next is change and while not all change is bad, some changes require adjustments that I am not eager to attend to quite yet.

Instead of “What’s next?” ask, “what is now?”

When I started AwkwardnAdulting back in 2018-2019 it was never meant to be excessively serious. My staff and I, all in our early 20’s wrote about dating and working and failing to “adult” based on what we were lead to believe “adulting” was about.

And somewhere along the way that shifted, and we all shifted and we fell into versions of adulting that we may have been expected to be? I don’t know, I am rambling a bit—

I have a habit of writing eulogies; this isn’t that, and that’s intentional.

Before this post, eulogies and memorials were, more often than not, what would bring me out of a hiatus. Lost people, lost innocence, lost elections (not anymore), lost composure at yet another headline that made my blood boil. And that much was intentional because, for me, those were the easy things to write. Being loud about loss in one focused moment helped me to quiet it elsewhere. And to my own credit, I guess I am good at memorializing people(?) or maybe I just process grief better on a page than I can in my head—in any event, I could feel myself being drawn back here enough to decide that, instead of my next post being a eulogy, my now post could be a bit of a victory lap. [In short— I realized that I owed it to myself to take a moment and write down all the incredible things that I achieved at the tail end of my 20s into my first year of my 30s].

First now, then next

Right now, today, this week, this month (after a record year), I am making no effort to race into “what’s next,” and I am making every effort to hold on to “what’s now.”

—what’s now is: family, friends, and long drives that vastly shorten long weekends.

What’s now is focusing on me, just Rachel, and on the people I love enjoying the present and holding tight to one another, and beyond that, for now at least, nothing else matters.

So here is to a record year. A future that can wait. And a now that will be worth talking about later.

JustRachel

On Healing

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I’ve mentioned before that I once saw a quote on my facebook wall that a friend posted around the time she had her first child. It read, “We all just want to give our kids lives they don’t have to heal from.” And given recent events, the overturning of Roe, the clear beeline being made toward attacking the rights and lives of LGBTQ+ people, a new perspective dawned on me.

We all want to give our kids a life they don’t have to heal from, sure, but the irony of the statement is that we ourselves are living proof that, broken or whole – we heal.

So what does this mean in the context of what is happening today? Well I suppose it would be natural to make the connection and just say, “we heal” but I’d argue that saying that, after knowing the extent and the ramifications of recent supreme court actions is incredibly tone-deaf.

You see, if I were to say “we heal,” as a declaration, or as a distinct statement regarding next steps – as if it were that simple, I would be diluting the actual gravity of the situation.

To say, “we heal” as a and in the tone of “just” statement – to insinuate that a 10 year old girl, who was r*ped by her father and had to get an abortion out of state because her state outlawed it after 6 weeks, needs to “just heal” is inherently insensitive and tactless and far too on-brand with aggressive and radical republican christian values for my liking. In other words, it gives “you are in our thoughts and prayers” and that is just no longer acceptable.

So instead… we fight.

We fight not only for our rights to merely exist as we are and have full bodily autonomy like the men do, but we fight for the right to heal despite the odds and the laws being against us. We fight for the right to survive this deeply barbaric assault on our freedoms and our bodies and we fight to forgive those who thought for a single moment that they could take them — and to be clear we don’t fight to forgive them because they deserve it, we fight to forgive them because when we boil it down, we don’t really forgive others for them – especially in cases like these where they don’t deserve it, but we forgive others for ourselves. we fight to forgive them because the anger is too heavy and it will only slow us down.

Healing isn’t a linear path but it’s one many of us will be on for much of our lives – because the fact of it all is, whether or not our parents or our country give us a life that we have to heal from – we will fight and we will heal.