#185: From beginner to intermediate.

#185: From beginner to intermediate.

Two years ago I was a baby writer. Sure, I was already two years into writing The Luminist, but my editor Leona was still doing the painstaking work of teaching me to show not tell, focus on one main idea instead of ten, and accept revision as a non-negotiable part of the process. We worked on the letters from the pilgrim path 1.0 [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/139-revisiting-the-pilgrim-path] across nine time zones, and some of those were the best posts I’d written to date. But I still had a long way to go. Now, I once again find myself in the reality-distortion-field-incinerator that is the pilgrim trail. It’s like a giant mirror has descended from the heavens, the kind you find in posh hotel bathrooms that illuminate each and every pore. Sometimes that’s not a great thing. Sometimes it’s just what you need. Because it can be hard to see how we’ve changed. We get disgusted with ourselves: “When will I ever get closer to my goals? When will I ever improve?” As I pound away kilometer after kilometer (I’ve made a deal with myself: I can only google a mileage converter when I’m done) here’s something I’m catching myself doing: translating what I’m seeing, hearing, smelling into words. You know, like a writer does. (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/].) How can I describe to you the way the tips of the pine trees poke through the blanket of fog? The way they stand like a sea of prim, outstretched pinkies, green but no less proud than those poised beside teacups? How about the clouds? How their meaty shadows alchemize the generally crisp forest air I’m walking through into something earthy, soil-y, loamy, smelling, I swear, just like the color brown? And what about the bells on every last sheep neck of the herd on the hill? How they create a concert of one-note wind-chimes, or perhaps a chorus of toddlers banging 100 spoons against 100 pots? Yeah, I’m not sure either. But the cool thing is, that’s where my mind goes. Amidst the stiffness and pain and days of unexpected rain, my mind pauses its catastrophizing clatter to write, even if the words are only in my head. This is how I know I’ve advanced from novice to apprentice. Not because I’ve written 185 posts or a banger of a book about loss [https://suedeagle.com/book]. Because even when I’m not on the page, I’m thinking about the page. From somewhere between Dovre and Fokstuga, Sue Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle [https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle]  Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#184: Pilgrim prep.

Dear reader, by the time you read this, I’ll have gone full Viking, walking four or six or sometimes eight hours a day with all my clothes (and books!) on my back through Norway. This will be my life for the next 21 days as I cover the distance from Lillehammer to Trondheim, on the second round of the pilgrimage [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/94-the-secret-ingredient-of-self] I began almost exactly two years ago. I’m not quite on trail yet, though I wish I was. There’s a special mix of boredom, restlessness, and anxiety that seems to descend upon me pre-trip. I think I checked my passport expiration date a dozen times before I boarded the transatlantic flight, as if maybe the first 11 times I just hadn’t read the numbers quite right. In an attempt to settle the pre-walk jitters, I looked back at the first pilgrim letter I published back in June of 2024 [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/pilgrim-letter-1-the-comfort-zone]. Turns out I was in an almost identical, irrational stress spiral then, which is comforting in its own way. I’m still anxious, but I’m no longer beating myself up about it. That letter ended with words from my friend Paul, who happened to be on a pilgrimage of his own at the time: “Let’s go and get to know ourselves a little bit better.” (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/].) The first time I stepped onto the pilgrim path, my intention was to dredge up and release the last bits of grief over my husband’s death [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief] eight years before. In the days, weeks, and months after Mike’s heart attack, I had been in full-blown “save the kids” mode. Grief still regularly laid me out on the bathroom floor sobbing, or the couch where I watched Star Wars movies three at a time, and I never hid my tears or pain from Connor and Kendall. But I always assumed that I had shoved some parts of my bottomless grief away out of self- and child-preservation. During the 28 days of that first pilgrimage, I cried about Mike… twice, which is about how much I cry about him in a regular month. I ended up mostly reconnecting with an even earlier version of Sue: the quiet girl who loved to be absorbed in books, or to perch on a stool at the edge of the church potlucks and just observe. The learner, the observer, the clue collector. The solitary walking took me to a part of myself I had totally forgotten existed. I could not have planned it. I could only be open to it. So for this pilgrimage, I’ve decided not to seek anything. I’ve learned over the last two years — hell, over the last ten — that having expectations often only serves to make you upset or disoriented when reality unfolds. Instead, I’ve discovered I want that reality: I want the details, the subtleties, the opportunities I can only catch when I’m fully present to what is, rather than trying to force what I want. So this go-round, I’m not setting intentions. I’m setting boundaries around the trip, so whatever is supposed to happen can happen inside it. I’ve cleared all my decks: paid my taxes, paid my bills, paid my visits to family and friends before my farewells. I’ve tied up loose ends at the treehouse, and got Kendall off and running on her internship. I’ve cleaned the house and crossed everything off the to-do list. Everyone knows: I won’t be opening my email or dealing with logistics on the trip. Don’t ask me for the Netflix log-in code. If s**t goes down, call Uncle Richie. These are the only things weighing on my mind now: sharing my location with my trip planner and freak out helper Ruben every day, then sending a screenshot to Richie, and finally posting a photo or two on Instagram as an ongoing photo diary (follow along! [https://www.instagram.com/sue.deagle]). Doing my laundry every three days or so, aka scrubbing my socks in the sink. Writing a letter to all of you here once a week. And though I’m not making plans, I know there will be days I will question my decision, and days I will question my sanity. Days I’m one with nature, and days I’m cursing rain or sneaky cows or incessant hills. And, well… that’s it. The rest will unfold. Two years ago I didn’t know what to expect. So I stuffed my rucksack full of expectations. They did the work of the blister cream and bandaids I brought but never needed: to give me a feeling of being prepared, being in control. But this time around, the uncertainty doesn’t scare me. It gives me goosebumps. The good kind. As long as I can make it to Trondheim without my damn passport magically expiring, I’ll be fine. To preparing just enough to be surprised, Sue Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle [https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle]  Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#183: Costco.

I was standing on one leg like an oversized flamingo, my bare foot on a wobbly disc of plywood while I tossed a rubber ball against the gym’s cinderblock wall. It was the last indignity of a balance training session Kavon had cooked up to get me ready for the pilgrim path. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. “So what is it, exactly?” I asked curtly, doubly frustrated by the man who had given me this task, and by the topic we happened to be discussing. “Please explain this Costco thing.” Kavon shook his head, disappointed in my evident disdain. As a small business owner and dad of two, he ran through a litany of things he loves about Costco: predictable pricing, guaranteed bargains, almost everything he needs for home and work. As a true fanboy, he’d even listened to the Acquired [https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco]podcast episode [https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/costco] that outlined Costco’s strategy and business approach, rattling off their profit margin philosophy and fair wage ethos. (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/].) Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. As he did his Costco rendition of ‘How Do I Love Thee, Let Me Count The Ways’, I didn’t dare nod my head for fear of falling off my disc. I couldn’t argue with his logic. Yet… it didn’t feel like enough. Enough to generate that baffling Costco ride-or-die passion I’ve seen in so many men, including one guy [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief] who is no longer here. Then, Kavon surprised me with this: “I think what I also love is the discovery element: you never know what you might find. It doesn’t feel like shopping, it feels more like a warehouse-sized treasure hunt. Will it be a kayak? A giant wheel of cheese? A sample that a hair-netted lady gives you that changes your dinner plans? Four tires for your car? It’s the land of opportunity.” Thwack. Thwack. Thwump. I dropped the ball and lurched sideways off the plywood. Of course. Now it all makes sense. When Mike was alive and the kids were young, I let him drag me to the warehouse-to-end-all-warehouses once every couple of months. Not because we needed any more toilet paper. Because Costco was Mike’s happy place. Emphatically, enthusiastically, inexplicably his happy place. He’d load our cart with collared work shirts, underwear for the kids, sheets. He’d buy our TVs and our computers. Twenty-four packs of paper towels, ten packs of dental floss, three-packs of chicken wings, a case of wine. One time, he’d loaded so many beach towels into our overflowing cart that, when we turned our backs for a second, a lady began shopping from it, deciding which color combos she wanted for herself. For the entirety of our marriage, I did not get it. Costco’s so-muchness was too much for me: floor-to-ceiling jam-packed shelves, freezer after freezer of frosted-over foods, the random middle section of giant cardboard boxes spilling over with tube socks and camisoles. My brain found the lack of rhyme or reason overwhelming. I sulked through every single trip. I never once thought to ask him why he loved it. That version of me — the early aughts to mid-2010’s Sue — was harried. Underwater and breathing through a straw. I didn’t have much bandwidth for curiosity. I was just trying to do a killer job at work, keep the kids alive and thriving, and run a household on the weekdays while Mike was away. I write that sentence now and think, well, no wonder spending hours in a place that overwhelmed my senses sent me into a tailspin. In short, I wasn’t in the right headspace back then to wonder what about Costco delighted him so much, let alone ask. But my life now is different, and so am I. I’ve pivoted from corporate to creative work [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/70-taking-the-cycles-of-life-less]. I’ve returned to my beloved childhood pastime of reading endless books, seeing the world from a new angle in each one. I have new relationships, Kavons who generate unexpected conversations and insights. And my days are spacious, allowing me to enjoy noticing [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/157-three-years-later-i-finally-understand] and sometimes even solving mysteries. Like the mystery of Mike and Costco. Costco was never shopping for him, it was an expedition. And Mike — strategic, deal-loving, optimization-brained Mike, whose family nickname was ‘Action Adventure Man’ — was built for expeditions. From my new vantage point, I can see, in those final years, how Mike was breathing through a straw, too. That Mike’s life was full of constraints, just like mine. I can see why a super-sized warehouse gave him joy, how finding unexpected things to bring to his family lit him up, like a caveman dragging home the mastodon he’s just downed. Costco ticked all his boxes, allowing him to do the thing he loved most: provide for us. These realizations give me a thrill. My relationship to Mike still gets to evolve — my understanding and love of him still gets to deepen — simply because I’m still changing. He will never be frozen in amber as long I never give up growing myself. Hi Mike. It’s nice to see you, honey. Watch out for those other shoppers, they’re eyeing your cart… To new perspectives, Sue Subscribe to Substack to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Find books and stories to support your journey in the Loss Canon: The Books that Got Me Through. You can find it on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle [https://www.youtube.com/@suedeagle]  Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#182: Notes from a Book Launch.

I stood with my back to the lectern as the modest crowd disbursed, deep in conversation with my friend Kevin. “It’s way harder to do these book [https://suedeagle.com/book] talks than it ever was to speak to the masses in our corporate days,” I said to him, perplexed. Order Sue's Book - Do Loss: A New Way to Move Through Change here: theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com] Kevin has seen me do both. He was the Chief Legal Officer to my Chief Operating Officer at our $4B defense contractor. I’ve closed deals with this guy at 2am, bounced around the dust of Kuwait with him in the back of a passenger van, and, more recently, clinked glasses with him over my signed book deal. And one month ago, he was responsible for ginning up half my audience at Octavia Books in New Orleans, the last stop on my tour. No mean feat when the talk is about loss. Head cocked, he mused, “You’re not in a ballroom with a sea of faces. You’re looking everyone in the eye. And you’re not talking about revenue growth or margin expansion. You’re talking about loss.” He paused. “I also noticed everyone wants to tell you their story afterward. Is that part hard?” “Actually, no. That’s the best part. What a surprise.” Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/]. Like a coach watching last Sunday’s game tape, I’ve been reviewing the playback of the last three months: zig-zagging around Europe and the US, talking about coping dirty, ordinary magic, Bruce Springsteen, and a different kind of great. I’ve been cataloging the pleasant surprises and the sneak attacks. The plays I want to run again. The ones I want to retire. Here’s what the tape revealed: The nerves were a good sign. Speaking is one of my favorite things, and I’ve done it for decades with ease. The endless practice that corporate gave me was something I thought would port right over to these intimate settings. Nope. Because Kevin was right — this is very different than discussing revenue growth or margin expansion. It’s personal. And maybe nerves are the cost of doing something that hits so close to home. I’ll pay that toll every time. And as soon as each presentation began, I felt like I was exactly where I was supposed to be, doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. All that gnashing of teeth and wringing of hands faded, and I was telling my story to a room of people who care. The brilliance was already in the room. I kept thinking it was exclusively my job to show up and deliver. The tape tells a different story. In Colorado, Wayne thought out loud about the moments he’d consoled best and handed the whole room new tools. In Portland, Ellie turned to a struggling stranger and said, “have you tried wailing?” — one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard in my life, and it didn’t come from me. In New Orleans, Carolyn shared books and wisdom like she’d been waiting years for exactly this room. If all I was doing was hosting a Loss Cafe where we cross-pollinate our tips and resources, that would be more than enough. My friends were in the stands. I’ve had a decade-long struggle trying to put the nail in the coffin of my Lone Ranger tendencies. And you know, I think I might have done it — during the book tour, I saw my friend’s faces at every turn. Luanne and her daughter Natalie at the Bookworm in Edwards. My Amsterdam crew, out in full force. Kevin jumping in with the first question so the Q&A didn’t start with crickets. Reviewing the footage, I see evidence everywhere that I did not do this alone. Thank God, I’m finally getting it! I was built for the stories. I knew the territory — talking about loss means you’re going to hear about loss. Yet I didn’t know how I would handle what might come my way. I needn’t have worried. For five minutes on a folding chair after every event, I listened, I nodded along, I hugged. It turns out being truly heard when life gets hard is rarer than it should be. And for whatever reason, I seem to be wired for the receiving end of it. The book went places without me. This is the part of the tape I keep rewinding. My dad finding it on a Chicago bookstore shelf. Rebecca’s dad reading her copy from his chair. Lesley-Anne holding it up against the South African mountains near her home. I wrote this book and then let it go… and it went. There’s something casually staggering about that. Like a dandelion seed floating to who-knows-where, landing, germinating, growing. I did my part, and I’ll continue to do my part. I’ll keep endlessly talking about it, speaking about it, pressing copies of it into peoples’ hands. But there’s something else I’ve learned, something a tad woo-woo: the book is on a path of its own. Reaching who its meant to reach, when it’s meant to reach them, in a way my playback tape will never reveal. And so, all the writing and revising and promoting and traveling and fretting led to this: a companion [https://suedeagle.com/book] for life’s journeys through loss, meeting people when they need it. And nowadays, that’s what I call success. In gratitude and celebration and exhaustion, Sue Subscribe on Substack [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe] to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin: https://theluminist.substack.com/ [https://theluminist.substack.com/] P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/170-the-loss-canon]: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here: https://youtu.be/AUuXFmOqZV8 [https://youtu.be/AUuXFmOqZV8] Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

#181: Leaps.

Marco looked up at me confused. “Michelle?” he asked. “Ah, no, sorry, it’s under my husband’s name: Michael.” When you’ve intertwined your life so thoroughly with another person, and then they disappear off the face of the earth [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/2-why-i-wouldnt-trade-away-the-grief], you always have to be ready for a jump scare — at the DMV, on the phone with insurance, or when buying performance gear for a month-long hike. It was a deserted Tuesday morning at REI, and I had just been shopping for my upcoming Scandi pilgrimage, 2.0. Moments before my thoughts had sounded something like, should I have gotten these t-shirts in a large instead of a medium? Could I really count on the tiny no-spill containers to, well, not spill? How much weight would this add to my pack? The twenty-something checkout clerk, his forest green vest clashing with his Hawaiian shirt underneath, scanned the see-through bottles and Patagonia tees. “Oh, look, you have $67 in points. Wanna use them now?” Marco asked. “Oh, that’s a lucky break! Absolutely!” “I won’t tell Michael if you don’t,” Marco said with a wink. “It’s our little secret, Marco. Pinky swear?” I tee-hee’d. “Michael would see an email receipt, do you want me to print it instead to keep our secret safe?” he cracked. “Brilliant idea! Yes!” We belly laughed, delighting in a moment of conspiratorial connection, pulling a fast one on unsuspecting Michael. Who would have thought, ten years ago, that this would be my life? (Subscribe to have the Luminist delivered to your inbox every Saturday, in both written and audio format, at theluminist.substack.com [http://theluminist.substack.com].) Marco doesn’t know Michael is dead. I didn’t tell him. Why would I? It was a perfect little moment: warm, funny, completely ordinary. And although I’ve had conversations with other REI clerks about loss (mostly in the shoe department), poor Marco did not need his own jump scare at the beginning of his shift. Plus I don’t want to alert corporate REI that I’ve been piggy-backing off a dead man’s member number for a decade. They might take my points! My late husband, non-earthbound as he is, is woven into my days in a fashion that baffles my black-and-white thinking. He’s not here, so, you know, he shouldn’t be here. But he’s everywhere. His name on the REI account. His password on our movie streaming service. His picture on my office bookshelf. Loss is strange that way. It doesn’t erase people, it just changes where they live. Driving home with my bag of loot, I kept thinking: this is not how I pictured loss going. I could never have imagined it would be like this. Not the convo I just had with Marco. Not the pilgrimage. Not the book I just published [https://suedeagle.com/book]. Not my new work family at Experience Camps for Grieving Kids. Not the Treehouse I was steering towards. Not the ways Mike likes to wink at me from the other side. Not any of it. We think loss makes the future unknowable, and we’re not wrong. But so does almost every other change or decision. Think about it. When we embark on the journey to parenthood, we commit our entire life to a child who doesn’t yet exist. But we do have a picture in our head: maybe they’ll have my husband’s sky-blue eyes or love Tolkien’s books or swim the 1650 just like me. Then this actual human arrives, with deep green eyes, strong negative opinions about swimming, absolutely zero interest in reading, and you think, oh! This is who showed up. And within about ten minutes, you can’t imagine anyone else. The picture you started with is completely beside the point. We do this all the time. We pick colleges based on brochures and a whistle-stop tour. We switch jobs for the promise of career advancement or a better work environment. We move cities, believing a different climate or culture or commute to work will improve our lives. All of it a leap toward something we cannot actually know. And somehow, we call that normal. But the other side of loss? That we treat as a special kind of murky darkness. Or, if we do picture it, we see a smaller, weaker, more unsure version of ourselves. Someone beaten by the game of life. Not someone giggling with Marco at the REI. We’ve always taken these leaps into the unknown, loss is just more like a shove than a jump. But there’s still possibility on the other side of it all. I couldn’t have pictured the life I’m now living in my worst moments, nor my best ones. It arrived because I kept moving forward, stubbornly believing that, just like the college freshman or new associate or out-of-state transplant, this future had something to offer me. We think we’re planning — with the dreams and goals and timelines — but we’re mostly inspiring ourselves. And while we should keep doing all of those things, don’t be surprised if you end up somewhere you never saw coming. Because the truth is, our imaginations simply can’t keep up with all the possibilities available in this technicolor reality called life. Like I said, I’m starting to pack for another month-long walk across Scandinavia. The intent of my first pilgrimage back in 2024 [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/82-vikings-pilgrims-catharsis] was to walk off the final dregs of my grief. Instead, it ended up being a return to parts of me that got buried during the grind of adulthood: the voracious reader, the insatiable learner, the patient, content observer. Grief, that sly fox, brought me home. Truthfully, I have no idea what I’m going to find this time around. But I’ve learned that doesn’t matter. I don’t have to know where I’m going to keep moving forward. Looking forward to whatever I find, Sue Subscribe on Substack [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe] to receive The Luminist in your inbox every Saturday — an invitation to notice reality, rather than the stories our minds and culture like to spin. P.S. I’ve made another video for the Loss Canon [https://theluminist.substack.com/p/170-the-loss-canon]: The Books that Got Me Through. If you’re into books and/or videos, you can watch it right here [https://youtu.be/MlPbSIT-bQM]. Get full access to The Luminist at theluminist.substack.com/subscribe [https://theluminist.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]