This is a way you shouldn't be

In less than three months, Unfit Parent will come out. You can download the first chapter (the introduction) on my website for a sneak peek.

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Last month, I wrote a post about our family’s time at our local climbing gym. I heard from so many people who felt moved and encouraged by our experience there.

Unfortunately, there has been a parallel story that our family has been living that has been the exact opposite of access and inclusion. I will write the details of that story soon, but believe me when I say it is bad.

It has revealed something about this small city we’ve tried to make our home that we can’t see past. We will be moving to Toronto by the end of the month.

If you are a reader in Toronto, please reach out! David went to grad school there, but we assume things have changed in the last 17 years. We would love your advice on the best neighborhoods for us.

Nothing is all bad, of course. I am so lucky to have my sweet family and the friends who have supported us. We are loved and we are strong and we will land on our feet.

There’s a Mary Oliver poem I keep coming back to about the hard choice to leave somewhere. She speaks to the grief that is inherent anytime we have to walk away. I know many of my California friends feel this.

If you also have to leave somewhere you thought you could stay, I am sending you my love.

No Voyage by Mary Oliver

I wake earlier, now that the birds have come
And sing in the unfailing trees.
On a cot by an open window
I lie like land used up, while spring unfolds.

Now of all voyagers I remember, who among them
Did not board ship with grief among their maps?—
Till it seemed men never go somewhere, they only leave
Wherever they are, when the dying begins.

For myself, I find my wanting life
Implores no novelty and no disguise of distance;
Where, in what country, might I put down these thoughts,
Who still am citizen of this fallen city?

On a cot by an open window, I lie and remember
While the birds in the trees sing of the circle of time.
Let the dying go on, and let me, if I can,
Inherit from disaster before I move.

O, I go to see the great ships ride from harbor,
And my wounds leap with impatience; yet I turn back
To sort the weeping ruins of my house:
Here or nowhere I will make peace with the fact.