I no longer know what those words mean.

It hurts to write such a sentence. I do it here to grab your attention so that you will read this iconic, dare I say epic, essay.

I’ll stop now.

As a writer who strives to, and sweats over, finding and using words that carry precise emotional and intellectual weight, it pains me to watch some of the tools of my trade lose their heft, their edge, their usefulness. It hurts to watch these small, incremental (and cumulative) betrayals of language.

Let’s take a look, shall we?

Bespoke. A word with a lovely linguistic history (hand-tailored suits from Savile Row) that implied an intimate relationship between maker and buyer. It has now devolved into a bloated buzzword slapped onto mass-produced items to add a veneer of pretentious luxury (and a higher price tag).

Literally. Don’t. Get. Me. Started. It is now a generic intensifier, a filler word, instead of indicating something that happened exactly as described. “I literally died.” Really? Then I guess you’re not here to utter this sentence, are you?

Perfect (and pun-y) use of the word “literally.

Curated. Museum collections are carefully, thoughtfully, expertly selected. That is: They are curated. Now curated is used to refer to most any collection, a fancy word for “we picked stuff for you,” the “we” probably an algorithm. Is your Spotify playlist expertly curated? I think not.

Luxury. Once rare enough to mean something (craftsmanship, exclusivity) we now have—oh yes we do--“luxury vinyl flooring,” which is a composite of polyvinyl chloride, limestone dust, Dioctyl Terephthalate, and Benzoate Esters. Sink into the luxury of that, why dontchya?

Awesome. A word long drained of its awe and reverence. If finding a convenient parking spot is deemed “awesome” does that mean this bit of luck was inspired by something vast and powerful that challenges our understanding of the world? When is the last time you felt something gasp-worthy and magical—but had no word left for it?

Artisanal. What it used to mean: Made by the hands of a trained craftsperson (or in a small workshop) that depended on local materials and generation-spanning methods, no two items being exactly alike. What it means now: Nothing. Sara Lee Artesano is thick-sliced white bread dusted with flour to mimic a bakery loaf. It is mass-produced in centralized commercial factories. And then there are Tostitos Artisan Recipes tortilla chips.

Game changer. True game changers fundamentally rewrite the script, whatever that script might be, making the previous reality obsolete. Think smart phones. Or antibiotics. CRISPR, generative AI, GLP-1. But not, for example, that “game-changing” new refrigerator that is the old refrigerator with a tiny chip that performs the same tasks (but now you need a smart phone).

Epic. A small word that used to pack a wallop, it referred to something vast, grand, heroic, legendary. Now it’s used to describe a good burrito.

We have leveled the peaks of these once mighty words. We have made them ordinary.

I know I am way too late to the party to save “awe.” I wish I could. I am in awe of the clouds at 30,000 feet, of just about every Mary Oliver poem, of the lightning-quick language acquisition of a two-year-old. But the word no longer expresses the wonder and amazement.

I want that word back. It would be epic. A literal game-changer.

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Brian’s wife was Cheryl Strayed, and together they were, as one of Brian’s eulogizer’s aptly put it, “Portland Royalty.” I knew of and had several times met Cheryl, and like so very many others, admired not just her work but the ease and grace with which she handled her fame and navigated her life.

She announced Brian’s illness on social media (not naming the disease but describing it as “fatal”) and then soon thereafter, it seemed to me barely a month, she announced his death. The post was a beautiful piece of writing because even in grief or shock, even numb and overcome, Cheryl would be incapable of writing anything other than quietly lyrical sentences.

And then came the remembrances. Friends of Brian. Collaborators on his documentaries. Lewis & Clark classmates. Film critics. Fellow documentarians. People who had never met him but had been touched by his work. Memories, anecdotes, photos, kind and tender words—posted, shared, multiplied.

For Cheryl and her (their) two children, it was a tsunami of public grief.

As one not so long ago walloped by the death of a very good man with whom I had made a very good life, a stellar father, and—not like Brian, but in his own way – an admired public figure, I watched this virtual outpouring with curiosity, and with heart-ache.

I wondered: Did these memories and stories, these anecdotes and photos, these kind and tender words from both strangers and friends, did this soothe Cheryl? Did any of it ease the weight, even by a gram? I wondered if Cheryl wished she could grieve in private.

But maybe not. She is a public person. They were a public couple. It may be that this outpouring felt like affirmation: Brian mattered. But Cheryl and their children didn’t need that affirmation. They lived it.

Public grief expands the narrative beyond the finality of death. And yet Brian’s work already does that more permanently than any single memory.

This tension I feel refuses to settle.

I wonder about the pressure of public grief, the implicit or explicit requirement to participate in the mediated narrative. To respond, curate, be gracious. To become, in a sense, the steward of other people’s grief as well as their own.

And as I know, as anyone who has faced great loss knows, grief has its own pace: halting, disoriented, nonlinear. Public grief runs on a different clock: immediate, declarative, already forming sentences. Before the bereaved have even located themselves inside the loss, the world has begun to describe it.

I wonder what that feels like.

I remember how little I could name in those first days and weeks, how even language felt premature.

I wonder about my own decision, my family’s decision, to hold our grief close to the chest. To the heart.

And what, exactly, that protected—and what it cost.

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And yet, the reality of loss does not evaporate in the spring sunshine. Sometimes, unexpectedly, unbidden, the spring sunshine does the opposite. It illuminates what is no longer there.

Like seeing the first blossoms on the apple trees out in the orchard, and all of a sudden remembering that year we rented an old-fashioned wooden press and made our own cider.

Like out mowing the lawn, and all of a sudden seeing a mirage on the meadow. He is out there riding the mower wearing the only hat that fits his oversized head, the one I bought him at least a decade ago. He’s listening to some audio book to drown out the drone of the engine. Probably some geeky science thing which he will “explain” to me over dinner later. One year I found a card with a cartoon of a guy on a riding mower with the caption, “the lawn ranger.” I printed out a copy, and left it, anonymously, (ha) on his desk.

Like putting on the filthy old barn jacket, his, to go out and pick lettuce in the cool of the morning and finding a balled up tissue, his, in the pocket which, according to a science story I read in the New York Times, contains “copious amounts of (his) DNA.”

I know framing this as “illuminating the loss” makes these remembered moments seem sad or mournful. No. Not at all. In fact, the opposite. Or maybe not “opposite,” but rather a graceful balance, an integration of bitter and sweet. It is the integration in and of my life: what was and what is no longer and what still is and what might be. It feels powerful to be in this place now four and a half years after his death.

I am re-reading Susan Cain’s Bittersweet. I read it as I eat dinner, most often fish and a plate of the roasted vegetables he hated. That’s the bitter (I sort of miss him telling me how much he detests Brussel’s sprouts and that cauliflower is overrated) and the sweet (I get to eat them all I want).

Which brings me to page 227 in Cain’s book and this sentence: “The idea is not to paper over your loss…the idea is smaller than that, yet also grander: that after all the grief and loss and disruption you are still—you always will be—exactly who you are.”

And so I am.

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Where is here?

I’ve been thinking about this, for reasons obvious to anyone who has read Everything Changes Everything.

Maybe their soul is here, and that’s what we feel. But when the body is opened, examined, named part by part, no soul is found. If we can’t see it, does that mean it isn’t there? I don’t know.

Most people, it turns out, believe the dead are somewhere. Nearly two-thirds of Americans say they believe in heaven. Just over half believe in hell. Globally, about a third of adults believe in reincarnation—another version of elsewhere, another way of saying not gone.

We seem to need a place to put the dead. Up there. Down below. Back again.

I don’t believe any of that.

And still, I feel the presence of my husband.

Not as a ghost. Not as a voice in my head. Not as memory rising up in some predictable swell of sorrow. Something else. Ineffable. There but not there. Always there but out of reach. Palpable, but not touchable.

And that, I think, is the sadness. Not that I have lost him (I have not) but that he is here—perhaps even more fully, energetically here than he was when he walked the earth—but that we cannot touch.

Although once, we did.

It happened at the end of the second day of my walk across northern Spain, the Camino Frances journey I undertook a year after his death. This is the scene from my book, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk.

That night I had a dream so real, so palpable, that when I awoke, I was convinced it had actually happened. In the dream Tom knelt beside the bunkbed, reached in, and touched my shoulder. I felt that touch. In the dream, I got out of bed. I stood up. And we embraced, the kind of full-body embrace that lasts long enough for you to feel the other person’s body heat. I felt that embrace. I felt that heat. Then we stood apart.

“Go,” he said.

When you dream, your subconscious is trying to tell you something. When you dream of people who have died, you pay close attention. My dreams are often embarrassingly obvious. Once I dreamt I hit my father over the head with a frying pan. Like that.

“Go,” said Tom, who was for three decades my husband.

It was a command, both forceful and loving. But it was also, or so it seemed to me when I awoke in the dark the next morning, him giving me permission. Not permission to do this thing—I didn’t need that from him, dead or alive—but permission to walk into a future that did not include him. Permission to become who I was going to become.

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My scrolling and clicking and viewing and revisiting have shaped much of what now shows up in my social media feeds.

I don’t mind all the videos of sumptuous first-class seating and BVLGARI amenity kits and rare white sturgeon caviar on Emirates. I love the guy who answers every question by defaulting to his love of cheese. The guy who dresses in a bad wig and takes his partner (that would be him, sans wig) to task for his lack of empathy and emotional intelligence? Love that. And Maggie Weber who posts and comments on embarrassing business names and unintentionally vulgar logos? Oh yes. Give me more. And while cat videos are so yesterday, I cannot resist that guy who goes through his feline’s purse to find a MasterCat credit card, a tube of black lipstick, and a very small pocket knife.

That’s the good news. That’s the fun stuff.

But lately—my fault—the reels that have been showing up are (mostly) young women sobbing in their cars as they relate their (mostly) horrific cancer “journeys.” Sometimes they post from hospital rooms, just recovering from or going into surgery. They relate scary biopsy findings and scans that show new mets and chemo that no longer works. And it is all heartbreaking. And compelling. I am also getting an extraordinary number of videos made by mothers who have given birth to babies with severe disabilities or life-threatening conditions or rare incurable diseases.

And I wonder why.

Not why I’m seeing them—I understand that, and take responsibility for it—but why they are making them. Every day, sometimes.

Some creators say they are compelled by a desire to help others in similar situations or to bring awareness to struggles often hidden. This is admirable. But surely some of it is also driven by loneliness or depression—a need to tell, and no one close enough to listen.

But it’s more complicated than that. Because these women are not speaking into a void. They are speaking into a kind of vast, invisible room filled with strangers who witness, respond, return. It’s messy, sometimes performative, sometimes raw, sometimes monetized—but it is also a form of being seen.

But what kind of witnessing is this? What kind of companionship?

I think something else is going on underneath this, interwoven with it. And I think it is connected to how many people now consider their chatbot their best friend or closest confidant.

Humans are storytelling animals. It’s how we make sense of our lives, how we learn about others, how we learn about the world. We. Tell. Stories. In telling our own stories—to ourselves, to others—we untangle the tangles, we create order out of chaos, we find (or struggle to find) meaning out of randomness.

Increasingly we live silo-ed lives, especially those of us who work from home. Who stream our entertainment. Who get our dinner delivered to our doorstep. Increasingly, we live solitary lives. (The share of people living alone was 7.7 percent n 1940, 13 percent in 1960, and today is close to 30 percent.)

So to whom do we tell our stories? Do we have so few actual humans in our lives that our closest companions are generative AI bots? Do we have so few caring friends that we have to relate our tragic tales to strangers by talking into cellphones propped up against steering wheels?

I am more saddened and scared by this than I am by the current state of our politics. Which is saying A LOT.

And here I am, typing this on a screen, standing in front of my computer in a room in a house where I live alone.

Telling you this.

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Substack Central sends me this message when someone clicks “subscribe” and also pledges a dollar amount, should I choose to enable paid subscriptions. I do not monetize. But the button is there.

I find the message unsettling.

Yes, it’s flattering—someone thinks my work is worthy of their money. But it also introduces something that hadn’t been there before: doubt. A calculus. A subtle redefinition of value. My writing, which had existed outside of transaction, is suddenly measurable in dollars.

There are hundreds of thousands of newsletters on Substack. Almost 60 percent have paid subscriptions enabled, but only 6 percent of readers actually pay. A small percentage of writers earn meaningful income. Of those, the top 5 percent generate more than 90 percent of the earnings. Almost all came to the platform with audiences already in place. Substack did not so much create these writers as amplify them.

I could make a modest—and I mean modest—income from those who have clicked that button. But I ask myself: If I do that, what changes?

Before: I write. You read (if you want).
After: I write. You pay. I deliver.

You are now my customer.

I need to provide value. I need to deliver product. I start noticing what lands, what brings in new subscribers. Am I tempted to give you what it seems you want, even if it’s not exactly what I want to write? Do I begin to sort my readers by what they pay? Hold back for some, offer more to others? Create a special relationship with the ones who pay me the most?

Writing that had been an offering—an invitation to inquiry, a prompt to conversation—begins to feel like content. Output. Goods in the marketplace.

And yet, there is a paradox. Charging can deepen commitment, attract more devoted readers, create a tighter community. And, whether I buy into this (pun intended) or not, charging may add value simply because “you get what you pay for.”

Do I believe writers should be paid? Yes. A big yes.

But for me, at this moment, I want to hold on to one place where my writing does not have to prove its worth in dollars.

I want to add a note here to those who have clicked (and continue to click) on the “donate” button to pledge an amount should I enable that function: I am delighted and honored that you did this. It continues to be a lovely surprise. I am so very glad to have you as readers. I take NOTHING for granted, especially your support. Or the support of ALL you who read these weekly essays.

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The visual, maybe even visceral, power of the church is here. The premier temple of Jesus Christ of the Latter-day Saints, a massive 210-foot high, 253,000-square foot, six-spired, gleaming white granite structure, is somehow not dwarfed by either the 10,000-foot Wasatch Mountains or the new skyscrapers of the city. It has bulk. It has gravitas. It has meaning.

The temple makes a major statement. But downtown there is also the historic Tabernacle (home of the choir), the 21,000-seat Conference Center, the Assembly Hall, a high-rise church building, a massive Family History Library, the Beehive House (Brigham Young’s official residence), and the Lion House (home to the many sister wives of Mr. Young).

The city itself may have become increasingly (religiously) diverse as the population has soared--Mormons are actually now in the minority, perhaps 40 percent of the population--but the presence of the church is unquestionable.

The Mormon origin story is a challenge to the rational mind. It goes like this: In 1823, an Angel visits a 17 year old asleep in his bedroom, directing him to gold plates buried in a nearby hill. On these plates is text written in “reformed Egyptian” which the teen (that would be Joseph Smith) translates by placing special stones in a hat. The translated words (they appear on these “seer stones” not on the plates themselves) is a record of prophets’ (and Jesus’) spiritual journeys on the American continent, from 600BC to 400AD. This is the Book of Mormon.

I read about this on my phone, sitting on a bench in Temple Square. I shake my head. Who could possibly believe this story?

Islam has a parallel narrative to tell: a 40-year-old (that would be Muhammad) meditating in a cave receives revelations via an angel. These revelations are a direct transmission from the divine into the human language. This is the Qur’an.

Is the tale of a virgin birth any more believable?

I understand men like Joseph Smith or women like St. Teresa or St. Catherine who report visions, who have felt the presence of something big and powerful, who are transformed by an unfathomable experience. I understand because I, too, have felt this. I have felt this hiking alone on a dirt path in the forest with the early morning sun slanting through the trees. I have felt this at 35,000 feet staring out the window at a blanket of clouds.

There is something. It is bigger than me. It is bigger than life. It is beyond knowing.

I understand the force of this ineffable something. What I don’t understand, as I walk the streets of Salt Lake City, is not how 17 million people believe Joseph Smith’s story, the Mormon origin tale—but how I draw the line between what feels true to me and what feels impossible.

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Yes. This is a trick question.

Because no—I am not referring to I love you.

I have heard I love you from men, including an extraordinary one. Someone who loved me until death did we part. I hear it from my children, who feel it, as I do, with immeasurable depth. I hear it more casually, but no less sincerely, from friends, old and new, near and distant.

But for me, I love you is not the sweetest three-word sentence.

The sweetest sentence is: I got you.

As in: I see you. I understand. I’ve got your back. You can count on me. I am here to support you in whatever way you need, in this moment and for the long haul, without strings.

Those words are powerful. But they are even more powerful when unspoken.

When Claudia—not an everyday friend but a soul-sister—showed up to work with me all day, side by side, sorting through Lizzie’s storage unit. This was one of the worst days of my life. I didn’t ask for help. She didn’t ask if I needed it. She just showed up. I got you. The message could not have been clearer. Or more loving.

When Karuna didn’t ask. She just got in her car and drove two hours to have coffee with me because she knew—she knew—that what I needed was dark humor in dark times.

When Tino, a Spaniard I met a few days into hiking El Camino del Norte, fell in behind me on a hard climb in the late afternoon sun. He placed his hands under my backpack and lifted it up, held it, taking the weight from my shoulders. Two years later, I can still feel that lightening. The relief. The surprise of being cared for.

When Zane, my younger son, saw I was drowning in details a few days ago and said, “Why don’t you go make some tea. I’ll do this.”

I got you has so much power.
It is better than love.
Or, rather, it is love made manifest.

That’s what I feel when I walk into an independent bookstore.

These past three weeks I’ve done author events for my new book, Everything Changes Everything, at seven Indies, each one a reflection of both owner and community, each one a space both intimate and commercial.

They are stores, yes. But they are also ongoing celebrations of the written word. They are brick-and-mortar expressions of the belief in the power, resilience, and continued relevance of books. They testify to a love affair—with reading, with readers, with authors—that persists in a landscape of algorithms, one-click purchases, and overnight-on-your-porch deliveries.

In that vast landscape (and yes, I mean the big A landscape, the one portal that accounts for more than 50 percent of all book sales), these Indies are, you think, a dying breed.

Oh no, my friends, THEY. ARE. NOT.

There are, according to American Bookseller Association, 3,200 independent bookstores in the US. The industry has seen a major resurgence, with the number of stores growing by 70 percent since 2020. Last year, in one single year, 422 new independent bookstores opened.

Sit with that for a moment. (Now get up and go to your local Indie.)

Why the resurgence? Why the vibrant health? If you support and frequent a local Indie, you know why:

Indies are not merely places to purchase something. They are community centers. They are neighborhood literary hubs that host book clubs, organize reading groups, and bring authors into conversation with readers. They are what sociologists call “third places”--not home, not work, but spaces where we encounter other people, ideas, and experiences.

We spend so much of our lives staring at screens: working, shopping, planning, scheduling, interacting via text, meeting on Zoom. Going out to an indie bookstore and sitting among other readers, friends and strangers, listening to an author (or being the author), asking questions, entering a conversation that would not have happened were it not for these people on this night being in this place …

This is an occasion.
Maybe even a celebration.

During the past few weeks, I’ve been hosted by independent bookstores in Portland, Eugene, Seattle, Manzanita, and Bend—with more to come.

Each had its own distinct vibe: from Powell’s, the largest independent bookstore in the world, to the stage at Tsunami, my hometown treasure; from the neighborhood warmth of Broadway Books and Third Place to the intimacy (and yes, wine and chocolate) of Cloud & Leaf, to the vibrant community energy of Roundabout Books.

Each felt different. Yet, they also felt the same: welcoming, lively, real. You know: IRL.

This is my love letter to Indies, those that are the linchpins of rural towns, those that populate the neighborhoods of cities, big and small. All of them.

I know how hard it is to make a living in books.
I know you have to love it.

That love is returned—in full.
From me.

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I was a long block away from home when I sensed someone behind me, heard the footsteps, listened hard, heard them getting closer. If you are a woman reading this, you know what I’m talking about. You know that chill, that state of high-alert. I picked up my pace. I was maybe a half a block from my building when he grabbed me from behind.

I dropped the bag of groceries. I remember there was a glass bottle in there, apple juice, and it crashed and broke. I jabbed both elbow back, hard, and got him in the ribs. He was just a kid, a skinny kid. He ran. So did I, in the opposite direction, making it to the door of the apartment building.

Years later, walking at dusk on a street near Pioneer Square in Seattle, I took note of two men on the other side of the street, walking quickly. Too quickly, I thought. Now they were opposite me. They started to cross the street. I had in my fist my keychain with my car key positioned between my fingers, pointed out. That’s how I walked. This is how we women walk. It’s how I navigated parking lots and especially underground parking garages. I picked up my pace. They were close behind me. I started to run.

This does not end with a robbery or worse. It ends with me, sweating and panting and making it to the open door of a little shop on the street. It ends with me, once more, experiencing the unremitting high anxiety of a woman walking the city streets of her own country.

And where that takes me--where it took me--was 5,116 miles, to Spain, to find a safe place to walk. To walk alone, in the darkness, in forests, through remote countryside, but also, in the dark, in cities, on backstreets. Sometimes lost. Never fearful.

Let me repeat: NEVER FEARFUL.

I had to travel across a continent and an ocean to find this.

After the deaths of both my husband and my daughter, after the legalities and the finances and the paperwork and all those crushing, mind-numbing, spirit-and-soul-sapping details that follow such events, I knew what I needed: I needed to venture on a very long hike, alone, lost in a landscape. Lost, as they say (and I will say) to find myself.

I considered the PCT and the AT and a number of other in-country hikes. Then I thought about pitching a tent off-trail and lying awake half the night listening.

Not for bears.

For men.

As Margaret Atwood once wrote: “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them”.

On the Camino Francés across northern Spain, and the next year up the spine of Portugal, and the year after that across the Asturias Mountains, and the year after that, through the woodlands and rolling countryside of northern Galicia, walking alone, often before dawn with only headlight illuminating my path, I had no fear.

I. Had. No. Fear.

Fearlessness became part of who I was.

Two nights ago, I was walking from a downtown movie theatre back to my car. A block ahead of me I noticed a trio of men sitting on the sidewalk. They were calling out to passing cars. I crossed the street. I walked quickly to my car, alone, always keeping them in sight.

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I had stopped for a meal at a little bar on the Calle Mayor in Puenta la Reine, four days into what would be a 37-day walk across northern Spain on the Camino Francés.

What I was seeing was either an authentic pilgrim or a very serious re-enactor.

A few tables away sat two couples, dressed in matching Arc’teryx jackets, having a lively conversation in German. I couldn’t take my eyes off the women. Their hair (unlike mine) looked freshly washed and (very much unlike mine) was styled. They were wearing lipstick. I understood just a bit of their conversation. They too were Camino walkers. At the moment they were enjoying a second vino tinto while waiting for their driver to arrive. He would be transporting them and their luggage to their hotel accommodations for the night in Estella, about fifteen miles away.

What I was seeing was the other, opposite iteration of those who embark on the Camino journey: the tourist.

It took me a while to understand this, and what this meant. As I was to learn—both first-hand walking all those days (and on four subsequent Camino treks), and then later reading Camino posts in chatgroups—was this: As open-hearted and spiritually enlightened the Camino is (or purports to be, or aspires to be), there is a clear and powerful “more-Camino-than-thou” undercurrent.

The guy sitting near me in that bar who looked like Hagrid and scooped up stew with his hands was at the apex of the Hierarchy of Authenticity. Or at least gave every indication of being. He was the ultimate pilgrim.

At the nadir of the Hierarchy of Authenticity were those who hired companies to curate their entire Camino experience: creating a daily walking schedule, making all reservations (in private rooms and hotels, not bunkbeds in albergues), and transporting baggage. Often the baggage being transported was actual luggage not backpacks, thus these peregrinos were noticeably well and cleanly dressed. They sported outfits. Like the two couples I eavesdropped on in that bar.

Not quite Hagrid-like, but thinking themselves mas peregrino(a) than thou, were those who walked the entire length of the Camino, carried everything on their backs, and made no advance plans for accommodations because, as they say, “the Camino provides.”

In chatgroups they seem particularly critical of the tourists. I too was critical. But the more I thought about my self-elevated position on this hierarchy, the more I had to down-pyramid myself.

I used apps and GPS to find my way (at least on subsequent Caminos...the first one I got lost a lot). I wore Gore-Tex hikers (no rope sandals for me), my feet swathed in silk Injinji toe socks. My vest was Polar Fleece. My snacks were David Protein. True, I slept in bunkbeds among snorers. I washed out my socks in a cold-water sink every night. I carried what I needed on my back (except for that first Camino when I packed too heavy and needed some relief).

But what exactly was my claim to (near) top-of-pyramid status? How could I justify my quiet (but snarky) judgment of the “tourists? My experience was hardly authentic.

And, frankly, the more I considered this, the more I realized that even thinking in these terms made me menos que not mas que peregrina. It struck me that a pilgrimage meant to strip away ego was remarkably efficient at manufacturing it.

What do you think? You be the judge (as in, you know--judgmental).

If the Camino de Santiago is in your future or was in your past, you might be interested in my new book, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk.

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He walked his first Camino. Came home, quit his job, got sober. Walked his second Camino. Met the love of his life. Walked with her. Got married. Settled in this tiny village. Took off to walk again. And again. And again. Returning to run this tienda in between these jaunts. He had walked the Camino Francés thirteen times, he told me.

I listened, fascinated. Transformative stories are the meat-and-potatoes of Camino narratives. I was to hear various iterations of this I-was-lost-now-I-am-found tale during my journey. What fascinated me even more than his about-face and happily-ever-after chronicle was that he chose to walk the same path thirteen times.

With all the extraordinary hikes through extraordinary landscapes, why? As I walked on, I met other repeat Camino Francés pilgrims. Or heard first-timers vow they would return. It was a mystery to me, this urge to repeat, this do-over mentality.

Oh yes, the countryside was extraordinary. The path meandered across undulating plains, roamed through olive groves and vineyards, crossed both arid flatlands and green rolling hills. It traversed the cobblestone Calle Mayor of tiny villages both quaint and crumbling (often both). And the experience was extraordinary--a potent and often unexpected ping-ponging between daily grind and dazzling revelation.

But do it again? And again? The very same 500 miles? The very same quaint villages?

Now, more than three years after returning from my first Camino, I understand. I think it is because those Camino lessons in simplicity, focus, and clarity, in what matters and what doesn’t, in the camaraderie of souls, in delighting in the ebb and flow of life, those lessons learned while walking, those lessons you promised yourself you’d never forget…they are damned hard to hold on to.

I remember thinking, so very many nights, sleeping between paper sheets or in a bunkbed or in a room of snorers: “I’ll never again take my quiet bedroom with my big bed and my flannel sheets for granted.” And then I did. Within days. Or, when the rain was pelting me, and the next village, the next stop, the next place to escape the weather, was miles away:”I’ll never again take an evening in front of the fire reading a book for granted.” And then I did.

Those other lessons, the big ones? You can be independent and interdependent simultaneously; receiving help and being helpless are not at all the same; things sometimes make sense when you stop trying so hard to make them make sense. It is so very hard to remember this when you are home, back in the comfort zone, back in the lovely rut of your own life.

This is why people walk again and again to recapture these moments, to relearn the lessons, to sink back into the magic.

Me too.

I did not retrace my steps on the Francés. But the following year I returned to walk the Portuguese. And the year after, I walked half of the Norte combined with the Primitivo. And last fall, I returned to walk the Inglés.

I am fast walker.

I am a slow learner.

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Glad you asked.

Memoir and nonfiction are often seen as opposites: one memory-inspired and personal, the other objective and reportorial. I reject that dichotomy.

Underlying that dichotomy is a much bigger one: subjectivity (memory, memoir) v objectivity (research, nonfiction). I reject that one too. This is not a rejection of the value of careful reporting, verification, and deep research. It is the acknowledgement that all that, all that thoughtful, conscientious work, flows through a mind, a human mind, a person with a past.

Every moment passes through the person doing the observing.

Someone whose (you pick) gender, age, race, geography, upbringing, economic status, education makes a difference. Our filters, recognized and not, the lens through which we experience what we experience, means while we are being “objective” we are simultaneously “subjective.” I embrace—and applaud—that.

As a narrative journalist and an immersion reporter, I value (and practice) direct observation, attentive listening, deep research, and adherence to (whenever possible, verifiable) fact.

Memoirists generally, but not always, operate in another universe, one of recollection and emotion, where memory is the basis for the work, where “subjectivity” is a given, where “literary license” is accepted—and valued. Where the big T (emotional) Truth can trump little t (factual) truth.

But both are important, aren’t they? Readers want to know two things: what happened, and what it meant. And a writer does not have to sacrifice one for the other. It is possible to satisfy readers’ hunger for real stories about real people while also offering emotional depth and human connection.

I think a book can be both factually rich and emotionally deep. I hope this what I have accomplished with Everything Changes Everything.

The book is grounded in real-time research and drawn from direct experience. All the people in the book are real. I have not invented or combined characters. The dialogue comes from direct observation (and participation), contemporaneous documentation, or my own journal entries, voice memos, photographs, and interviews. The events in this book are real. Most I witnessed (and lived through) firsthand and documented in real time. Others I reconstructed using notes, emails, texts, photos, and documents.

I am making a case for my due diligence as an “objective” reporter. But the truth remains: every moment in this book passed through me.

I’ve done my best to offer both facts and insight – the reportorial and the personal – with accuracy and care. During all of this, I have actively struggled with the complexity of memory, emotion, and lived experience.

It’s life after all.

Which not incidentally, is the title of my Substack.

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I read these words. Then I read them again. I am touched. They are part of a longer, flattering, it-seems-to-me deeply insightful email about my new book.

But wait. Everything Changes Everything has been available for less than 24 hours. How could this person know it so intimately?

And wait. There’s something about that language…Its syntactic fluency; its tidy list of three; its slick thematic mirroring; its perceptive but strangely interchangeable insight.

This recent email, from “a member of the Executive Committee of the European Book Club,” is inviting me to participate in a “virtual spotlight session” to be watched by “thousands” of members. After the flattery and the promises comes this: “to facilitate professional production standards, technical coordination, and international promotion, a standard participation fee applies.” Because we all know how labor-intensive it is to set up a zoom and send an email.

It’s a scam.

These invitations from fake book clubs—of which there are MANY—follow a predictable template: Lavish praise. Claims of thousands of members. A proposed “feature” or “spotlight.” A “modest” fee.

This is only one way scammers are preying on us writers these days. What else is out there in the Wide, Wide World of Scam? Glad you asked.

How about The Instagram Book Promotion Swarm?

The moment (maybe nano-second) I posted the arrival of Everything Changes Everything on Instagram with #newbook #booklaunch hashtags, exclamation-studded comments began to appear on my IG feed:
“Promote it on @bookpromo! (or some iteration)
“DM us at (for example) @bookbuzzgram, @bookreadpage, @bookworm
“Feature your book with us!”

Oh boy! Book-lovers! Yay.

Well, they will love my book to the tune of $25 a mention, $50 a feed post, $100 a “premium promotion.”

OK. We’ve all heard that social media is a legit way to get a book noticed, so I investigate further. When I click on these accounts, I see they list thousands or tens of thousands of followers. Impressive. So I start to click through their posts. What? 2 “likes,” maybe, occasionally, 8?

That mathematical mismatch is the tell. Scam.

And then there are the paid review “mills.”

These come in two flavors. In one, someone emails or DMs you out of the blue, praising your book and offering a little “review package”: 5, 10, 20 glowing notices on Amazon or Goodreads for a fee. In the other, the same service is dressed up as a marketing business, complete with a sleek website and tiered “review campaigns.” (I got one of these yesterday.)

Either way the premise is simple: pay us and reviews will appear. What you’re actually buying might be (minimum-wage) freelancers who skim the book (or, more probably, ask a chatbot to do it for them), or networks of fake accounts, or bots cranking out praise by the dozen—reviews that look authentic right up until the next fraud purge. And there’s a dark side: if the author refuses payment after initial contact, some mills retaliate with negative review bombing.

The ironic thing about these scams is that they thrive on something deeply honorable: the belief that books matter and deserve readers. The scammers understand that longing perfectly.

They just monetize it.

The Romans warned caveat emptor.

The publishing version may be simpler: caveat scriptor. Writer beware.

And here’s how:

Five Quick Tells a “Book Opportunity” Is a Scam

• Email address is fishy – Gmail, Outlook, or weird domains pretending to be official. “Clever” misspellings of legit email accounts (randemhouse.com)

• Praise is too perfect – insightful in that AI-ish way of flattering and mirroring...and borderline generic.

• Audience is enormous but invisible – claiming huge follower or member counts, (so so many Ks! bot alert!) but, take a look: tiny engagement on posts.

• The fee sneaks in late – You’re so great, the book is so great, and by the way, we charge a small fee for “logistics” or “promotion” or “set-up.”

• They found you too fast – your book is barely released, yet they know it intimately. Or, another iteration: your book is older, languishing in some obscure corner of the internet, but DISCOVERED!

Here’s a recent NYT story on publishing scams.

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The sky begins to lighten behind me, pink and yellow and pastel blue. Over my right shoulder I see a faint rainbow. Yes, I am lost, but is this so bad?

Maybe a minute after this thought occurs to me, I see a faded yellow arrow painted on the side of a building. I was lost; now I am not. The timing feels magical because I need it to feel magical. It also feels contrived, like if someone told me this happened—this Zen-like moment of letting go and then, boom, receiving – I would groan.

This is obviously a teaching moment. It seems my days are filled with these. In fact, this journey is beginning to feel like one long teaching moment. I mostly love this, but then I don’t.

Does everything have to be a goddamned teaching moment?

Can’t I just disappear into the experience it and stop trying to mine it for insights, to extract lessons?

Why does everything have to mean something?

Today’s lesson is not over yet. The sun is up. And now I am seeing signs every kilometer or so, signs that unmistakably point me in the right direction: yellow arrows on the sides of barns, on fences, on stone walls, on utility poles; newer turquoise blue signs with canary yellow clamshells.

Sometimes these signs are eye-level and hard to miss. Sometimes they are faded, barely visible. I know that I can go a long way without seeing a sign, and I know what it feels like to move from concern to worry to mild panic when I don’t. I also know that sense of relief that almost borders on exaltation when I finally do see a sign.

And I think: I wish life were like the Camino and every so often, just when you needed it, there was a sign to tell you, to reassure you, that you were on the right path.

And then I think: Maybe life is like this, but we just don’t see the signs that are right in front of us, or we see them and ignore them, or we are just looking elsewhere.

And then I think: Why do we need signs anyway? Why don’t we trust our, as the self-helpers say, “inner compass”?

And then I think: Stop thinking. Just walk.

!!YESTERDAY was PUB DAY!! You have just read the final excerpt from my book, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk. Now you have no choice but to buy the book. :-)) More about it and how to order is here

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What I see in front of me has none of the splendor and gravitas I was anticipating. It is just a very tall wooden pole with a simple metal cross mounted on top. It is modest—except for its sixteen-foot height—unadorned, artless, inelegant, sitting atop a very large mound of stones.

Kiki had told me that pilgrims leave a memento at the cross, something they’ve brought from home, something that represents their struggles and burdens, the literal weight of past pain. The act of carrying it and then leaving it behind symbolizes the shedding of this burden, a spiritual cleansing, perhaps even, for the believer, absolution.

I knew nothing of the cross itself as a marker on the journey, and I knew nothing about its significance. But I knew quite a lot about carrying burdens.

In my backpack, not as burden but as companion, is a stone of Tom’s given to him by a Qero shaman in Peru as well as a metal cuff bracelet stamped with Lizzie’s name. And there I was, at the Cruz de Ferro, with these two items I had carried on my back for more than two hundred miles. And here in front of me was this hallowed spot where thousands of pilgrims had placed commemorative items believing that, in adding them to the pile, they were relinquishing their worries or troubles to a higher power.

There have been times I wished I believed in God, and this is one of them.

Heavy rain is coming in sideways. The wind is whipping my plastic poncho, making sails of the sides. I would like to keep walking, to head down to the next village to get out of the weather and sit quietly with a café con leche. But I know I must stop to leave Tom’s stone and Lizzie’s bracelet on the mound.

As I climb the massive pile leading to the cross, I can see that among the rocks and stones are beads and flags, ribbons, photos, poems and letters and prayers on slips of paper. There is a small stuffed teddy bear. There is a lock of hair. So many bits and pieces of so many lives.

I don’t think I appreciated until this moment that, although I have approached the Camino as a solitary expedition, an experience uniquely my own, I am in fact part of a collective journey. Of course, I know that for centuries others have walked this path. But it is seeing this heap of mementos, this pile of troubles that people have tried to leave behind that has given me a different sense of community.

I find a place for Tom’s stone and set Lizzie’s bracelet on top of it.

I think I’m supposed to say a prayer. But I don’t pray. Instead, I tell my husband and my daughter—yes, out loud—that I am leaving a bit of them here in Spain, that I think they will like it here, and that I love them.

Of course, I am crying.

This is melodramatic. I know this as I do it, but I do it anyway.

The rest of that day, as I walk down, down, down along narrow winding paths, the sky as changeable as my mood—dark and foreboding, clearing and bright, then thick with rain clouds once again—I think: Did I leave anything behind when I left those items on the mound by the cross? Did I leave behind pain, grief? Guilt? Anger? Am I unburdened?

You have just read an excerpt from my new/ upcoming (Feb 24) book, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk. More about the book and how to order is here.

Just when I need and want to be alone with my thoughts, here comes a loud and loquacious young Londoner who introduces himself as “Harry…like the Prince, like Potter,” and proceeds to lecture me on the Aristotelian theory of the ultimate nature of reality. He is twenty-two and knows everything. Except, apparently, how to read people, which they don’t teach at Oxford.

Or he hasn’t taken that course yet.

Just when he moves on to attach himself to a group of young women who may be more receptive to his charms than I am, a much older man, an Irishman, takes up the slack and begins to match his pace to mine. The Irish, it is said, are great storytellers, and Michael is part of that tradition. The story he is choosing to tell, as we walk past fields of just harvested wheat and sunflowers, is about his bunions. The tale involves ice packs and hot soaks and splints and orthotics and finally, surgery. He has before and after x-ray images of his foot on his phone. Which he most generously shares with me.

And then, just like that, I am alone again. Okay, not exactly, “just like that.” Michael stops for a pint at an outdoor café in a little village we are passing through, and although I would love—and need—a café con leche, I tell him I must continue on if I am to make it to my albergue in time to secure a bottom bunk. This is not exactly true, and not exactly not-true. But it does get me out of hearing the next chapter of the Saga of the Bunion.

I walk on. There is a river to cross, and a lovely stone bridge, and a clear path ahead: olive groves in the foreground, blue-purple mountains in the distance, a sky that threatens but withholds rain.

I feel comfortable. I feel comfortable in a way I cannot remember feeling since I was a child. I am in a foreign land, among strangers, where I know just enough of the language, and not enough of the culture, finding (and sometimes not finding) my way. I am often clueless. Yet I am also at peace. It makes little sense to me. And that fact alone would throw me off-kilter, yet it doesn’t.

It may be that now, after all that has happened, it takes more to off-kilter me.

You have just read an excerpt from my new/ upcoming (Feb 24) book, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk. More about the book and how to order is here.

I lose her the next day as I walk past olive orchards and vineyards, through a series of small villages, down more narrow, winding streets, in and out of tiny cafes to refuel with café con leche. And then, a day later, we find each other on the approach to yet another sleepy little town.

It had been raining, misting really, all morning, and the cobblestone streets are slick. We turn a corner and see a small group gathered around a man sitting on the ground. When we get closer, we see that his forehead is bleeding, and he has a big, ugly gash across his nose. His left leg is outstretched, elevated on a backpack. That foot is shoeless and sockless. The ankle is wrapped. His toes are swollen and blue. We learn that he had slipped and fallen a few minutes before. Brian, a nurse from Colorado whom I had met and walked with briefly the day before, had wrapped the ankle.

Others walk with first-aid kits, a few band-aids, a packet of antiseptic wipes, a tube of antibiotic ointment. Brian walks with a medical kit, with the supplies necessary to treat a serious injury. And that’s what he is doing there on the wet stones, kneeling by the man. Another pilgrim whose phone has a Spanish sim card had just called an ambulance. It would take a while to get here. A third is using the injured man’s phone to call the man’s wife in the Netherlands. Emily and I stand there for a moment. Then she walks over to his side, kneels, and takes his hand. Just holds his hand. Because it is what she can do.

I see this scene now as if it had just happened: The rain starting in earnest; the small group huddled together; the man, a stranger to all, in the center. And Emily, wordless, holding his hand.

To be immersed in this landscape of kindness is extraordinary. I want to stay here forever, in the drenching rain, in wet boots, in a town I don’t know the name of, among strangers. In this moment, I forget about the ugliness of the world. I forget my own wounds. I am not healed. But I experience a sliver of what that might feel like.

You have just read an excerpt from my new/ upcoming (Feb 24) book, Everything Changes Everything: Love, Loss, and a Really Long Walk. More about the book and how to order is here.

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A dear friend of a dear friend, out for a lovely dinner with her husband, chokes on a piece of meat. Hollywood versions notwithstanding, the Heimlich maneuver fails.

My husband, whose newest book was enjoying more success than any of his (notable) others, is diagnosed with a weird cancer than comes from nowhere, is caused by nothing. And is incurable.

The utter, confounding randomness of it. The heartbreaking randomness of it. The rage against the universe-ness of it.

And yet, we fool ourselves into thinking that life makes sense, that it has order, that we have control. We have to in order to move forward, to make decisions. To live in this world. And, really, how hard is it to fool ourselves?

In fact, among the haphazard, the accidental, the arbitrary, and the senseless, there is order: We function within 24-hour days and 12-month years. The grass grows. The tides come in and recede. Oranges are orange. We sweat when it’s hot. We shiver when it’s cold. It makes sense.

And we do, we can, exercise control: We set alarms and awaken at the hour we want to. We decide what to eat for dinner and cook it. We wear our favorite red shirt because we decide to wear our favorite red shirt.

Where is the helplessness in that? Where is the chaos in that?

And then--I do not have to remind you--the unexpected, the unplanned, the whack upside the head, and we must discard our notions of control.

Which brings me, sadly, angrily, aghast, to the murder of Alex Pretti, the ICU nurse who worked in the VA hospital in Minneapolis, the man who was peacefully and lawfully protesting ICE on the streets of his city. His murder was “random,” in the sense that anyone in that crowd might have been singled out and shot.

But it was, most definitely, NOT.

That killing, that murder, was part of a (sub)culture of violence, hatred, and fear. Which is not random at all. It is purposeful: learned and nurtured and supported and spread with ferocity and intent.

What to do with that. How to process that. How to make sense of living in a world where such random/ not random events happen? Tell me, please.

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There’s an exchange at the end of Wes Anderson’s insistently quirky movie, “Asteroid City,” that helps me keep my head above water and would be on etched on my epitaph if I were going to be buried rather than incinerated (yes, that’s me exercising control even when dead):

“I don’t understand this play,” says one character.

“Just keep telling the story,” responds another.

And so I do. And so do we all.

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The due date was January 1. It passed. And then another day passed. And then more days. Then a week. And then two weeks.

Meanwhile, I did everything my midwife suggested: cod liver oil, car rides over bumpy roads, sex. Yoga. Manifesting. And still he remained comfy inside.

He was comfy, not me.

When the two-week mark passed, placing me in the “high risk” delivery category, I lost the opportunity for a home birth (as planned). On day 15, he finally announced his intention to come into the world. And a mere 42 hours later, he arrived, all 10 lbs. 6 oz. of him. Babies gain ½ pound a WEEK starting in the 9^th month. So while I was waddling around, drinking cod liver oil and doing other stuff, he put on an extra pound and change.

He emerged looking like a three-month old. Nurses came to ogle.

He arrived late, but he did everything else early: slept through the night at 4 weeks (big baby, big stomach), walked at 8 months (causing havoc), learned to read at 3 years (and yes, we have the VHS tapes to prove it). And so very, very quickly—how did that happen?--grew into the man he is today. The whip-smart, quick-witted, kind-hearted, 6’2”, bearded (like his father) guy whose birthday is today.

There are many different kinds of love. But this love, the love of a mother for a child, simply arrives, fully formed, the moment the child enters the world. It is not chosen or negotiated or built over time. It is instant, permanent, and fierce.

It is different from the love for a partner—this stranger you met somewhere along the way – which is earned and shaped through years of learning. It is different from the love for parents, which is inherited and complicated. And it is different from the love for friends, which is chosen and sustained, lost, rediscovered. The love for a child is like gravity. It simply exists.

And so today I celebrate this human who grew inside of me. This person I have known from the moment he existed. This one with whom I share a quirky sense of humor, a love for solo travel, my fellow cat-lover, my backyard farmer partner. We share history. We share the future.

Happy birthday, my son.

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