Dear Penny Love,

I’ve been worried about losing you since the moment I met you. As time ticked on and the glitter on your face became more apparent, I would often say to myself, “A lifetime with you would not be long enough,” and I was right.

It’s been six days* since you left us and I’m finding it hard to breathe. How do I start to process choosing to end the very best part of the past eleven years?

Today marks one year since my second cancer prevention surgery. I am sharing this blog in hopes that one day it might be the meaningful search that another woman lands on providing her with the insight that she is seeking. Also, I want to normalize women’s health by talking about it. Also, writing is cathartic for me, duh.

And in the 16th year of Nicholas’ new normal, New England called us back.

Twenty-one months after my big brother’s fall from a tree, subsequent traumatic brain injury, and with my parent’s blessing, I moved from Massachusetts to Colorado. There was always an expectation that I’d come home when and if I was needed, and history will show that I* (now WE) have done this, willingly.

I don’t know if it’s my desire to find something, anything, that is familiar or the extra time that allows for some creativity, regardless I’m compelled to share the similarities between van life and pandemic life. In a lot of ways, van life prepared us for days like these.

Sure, in a million obvious ways these two experiences are extremely and apparently dissimilar but in a handful of ways, they are not. We spent over a year planning for van life and securing our finances in order to set out and explore with nothing but wonderment + a sense of adventure. Pandemic life, on the other hand, has rolled over us like a tsunami with very little warning and complete financial insecurity. So, how are they similar? Let’s discuss this.

Pamela did a podcast with Nicole DeBoom ‘Run This World’. She touches on van life, CBD, start-up life, brain injuries, love of spuds. Have a listen:

The words are not really flowing this year and I feel like Nicholas has been living with a brain injury my entire life. It’s not that I forget the 27 years I knew my big brother as uninjured, it’s just that 15 years is a long time. It’s most of my adult life to date. I don’t really have anything profound to say, but as I admitted years ago, acknowledging and writing on January 5th is part of my process, until it isn’t.

Apparently, it’s National Infertility Awareness Week (or it was last week when I wrote this). I know this because of social media. I am totally cool with normalizing fertility issues. The miscarriages I have had are the result of conceiving via medical intervention. Natural conception didn’t work for us. I’ll talk about this stuff openly + honestly all day long, but I can’t help but feel that there is a sector of people who fall under the category of “infertile” who don’t have a voice.

The month’s leading up to the 14th anniversary’s of Nicholas’ fall from a tree has had me more involved in his care than I have been in close to 12 yrs…and it was about time. I was in my second year of graduate school for physical therapy when Nicholas fell out of a tree and became the brain injured version of the person that he once was. Prior to that, I had tried to move out west for grad school, but one of the top five Doctor of Physical Therapy programs was in Boston, so I stayed (zero regrets because the MGH Institute For Health Professions was the perfect place for me). However, I was seriously considering doing my third year, my internship year, out west. This was a secret to no one and a goal I was set on achieving. When Nicholas got hurt, my parents asked me to stay and, without hesitation, I stayed.

You’ve heard the expressions of having several balls in the air, many irons in the fire or perhaps wearing many hats. There are a million ways to explain that feeling when you simply have a lot going on all at once. For me, I refer to various areas of my life as buckets and from Sept – April my buckets were overflowing, disorganized, tipped over and downright dysfunctional. I felt like raccoons had gotten into the garbage late at night and left the contents of my life scattered in extremely odd places.

Normally our blog is about realizations, streams of consciousness, etc, and rarely do we write about where we went, how we got there, and what we did. Before we left on our 16 month North American van adventure, many people told us where to go and how to get there and what to do. While we were/are grateful for the insight, it was overwhelming. We are more casual and prefer to go with our gut (or our google/Instagram) and keep our ears and eyes open to insight we get from others along the way. However, we recently spent 5 days in a van driving around Iceland, and a quick visit to a place with so much to offer warrants some type of itinerary. We decided a summary of our adventure might be helpful for others who are headed to the land of fire + ice…cuz everyone seems to be doing it these days.

As I sit here on the eve of the 13th anniversary of Nicholas’ accident, trying to think of something profound to say, I’m having a difficult time finding anything coherent to write because I have one million thoughts and emotions, but they are not about me or my family, for once.

Ever since I met Jon over eleven years ago I’ve been envious of his “event life” career. Working and operating event to event always seemed so glamorous to me especially when compared to having the same schedule every day.

DISCLAIMER: This was written Fall 2016. Nothing has really changed except my workspace (big shift). I now work partially from home (ie alone and quiet, have more jobs w social media, and am in a fairly quiet slow-paced physical therapy setting/self-employed).

On this and subsequent trips, I have spent quite a bit of time listening to autobiographies written and narrated by female comedians and I always learn something.

** Disclaimer this was written in July **

This post was supposed to be all about riding bikes in France during the Tour de France this past July as my mother and I celebrated our 40th & 70th birthdays together this fall.

Please excuse the non-Van Life, non- Life Life post as we touch upon a cause that is near and dear to our hearts.

Transition: the process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another.

Since we officially came off the road in June, many people have asked me how it feels to be back in Boulder. The truth is that I have no idea.

We wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who has followed along on our van adventures and kept up with our blog. More adventures are afoot and this little chunk of the internet will continue to be our dumping ground for van build details, lessons learned, nomadic life, personal revelations and so much more. As a result, we decided this would be a good platform to share a goal of ours: Be selected as finalists for a panel at SXSW. To borrow words directly from their website, SXSW (South By South West) is a conference and festival that “dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals…SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together…The event features sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, and a variety of networking opportunities”.

The trendy topic these days is minimalism. Some people would think that we must be minimalists because we live(d) in a van. I don’t know the technical definition for a minimalist, but I’m pretty sure I’m not one. Rather, van life has helped confirm my own personal definition for me as a “less-ist”.

I realized recently that I write a lot about my parents, my brother, my husband, but I don’t write much about my big sister, Kristin. I am surprised by my lack of writing about her as she’s the person I talk to the most in the world, second to Jon. I talk to her several times a week and, quite frankly, I’d be lost without her.

As we begin to mentally prepare for life back in a stationary home, I’m acutely aware of the things I adore about van life. I’m not ready to miss these things or give them up. In writing this list of things I appreciate about van life and what I’m worried about losing by introducing the house (even part-time), I hope to hold myself accountable