The Light is You

In 2023, I started writing a memoir about the years I spent searching for something to believe in after getting divorced at twenty-seven and leaving the Evangelical church.

When I left that life, I believed I would bounce back to some earlier version of myself who didn’t feel the need to hide. At first, it seemed like I would. The relief of being free from a bad church and an unhappy marriage was so intense that it blanketed all aches for a while.

But I soon felt myself stiffening, calcifying. I longed to sit very still until no one could see me, to recoil back into myself inch by inch.

I’m never coming back. I realized as it finally clicked that there was no way to resurrect the earlier, unmarred person I had been hoping to become. If I wanted to learn how to stop hiding, I was on my own, without the protective shell of some imaginary ideal self to hold me in place.

The realization that I would never know myself as I could have been—that the possibility of her had ceased to exist somewhere in those years of abandoning myself for the shapes and beliefs of others—I felt a chasm open up in my mind.

I found myself scraping and clawing at the past, trying to salvage something of the person that had been lost in those years, her potential, her trajectory. I longed for her with an intensity I couldn’t describe, grieved with a ferocity that felt illegitimate.

The experience of accepting what had been lost and figuring out who I was going to be now very lonely.

Pain like that is hard for people to sit with. It is terrifying to be near the pulse grief, even when it is neatened and restrained, because it reminds us of all those things in life that we can’t control. It is easier to produce a cliche refrain, offered as a jeweled comfort: there will be a light at the end of it all.

Unfortunately, some grief is immortal, an aimless thing that does not age. Sometimes there isn’t an end.

I sensed that, but I wanted to live!! So, I set out to resurrect whatever parts of myself were left and release parts that were gone.

In this Substack, I explore stories from my life: getting divorced young, falling in love again, and the way taking my writing seriously (and sharing it with others) changed me by helping me remember and honor the self I couldn’t resurrect.

My art has taught me that there is a lot of light inside the tunnel as well.

I sometimes write about grief—the suffocating interior of that apparently infinite tunnel. But what I love to write about most are the lights, those sun-soaked days of triumph and exhilaration that reminded me I was alive, and that there was something left of me.

You can think of this Substack as me shouting down a dark tunnel to my younger self.

“There is no light at the end!” I am screaming. “The light is you!”

The light is you.

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Along with being a writer, I am an Associate Certified Coach, specializing in helping people make progress on creative goals or professional transitions that feel stalled. In the last two years, I have worked with more than 100 clients, including tech leaders, non-profit professionals, and artists, to help them get unstuck and feel more connected to their inner compass.

I share occasional essays on developing creative practices, navigating resistance, and how to build resilience to the fear of sharing our art with the world. To learn more about my coaching, you can visit my website!

Thank you for being here!