A friend once said to me, “Sarah, you’re one of the most direct people I’ve ever met.” Well, this year, I’ve embraced that!
So I’ll start out with the elephant in the room.
My life finally REALLY changed in March when a physician I had only known for about 2 minutes asked me an equally direct question: “Is he always this abusive?” She was trying to take care of a patient that wasn’t me – and who was apparently abusing her and her staff in a way that had been my life for way too many years.
Whoa… Rewind about 5 days, when I packed up everything I cared about in 10 minutes and left my home and life behind. Thankfully God didn’t have more important things to do right then because he helped Leo and Gus understand that they needed to cooperate in getting in their little kitty carrier fast – since I didn’t have very much time to get out safely.
I began to understand what a strange – and also freeing – feeling it is to abruptly leave your life. And as I put the miles between me and that life, a peace came to me, knowing that I had everything I really cared about in that car with me, and that I was safe now. What mattered to me got real simple in those hours as I drove far away.
Anyway, back to that question in that hospital. I looked that physician in the eyes, sized her character up for whether she was someone who could and would do anything with the truth if I told it, and then let tears that I had held in for more than 15 years start to fall. I didn’t have to be so strong anymore, and the mask came off. Over the next few hours, I sobbed as I told my story. So many people have since said to me, “Sarah, I didn’t know,” and all I can think to myself is, “That’s right, because I worked really hard to make sure you didn’t.” I wasn’t yet prepared to deal with what I would have to if I admitted the truth to myself – and stopped trying to be strong. The person going through it has to be ready – and I wasn’t ready… until I was. And then I did something about it.
So, to end the story about the elephant, he’s completely and totally out of my life now. And as a very good personal friend and professional mentor of mine told me many years ago, “Sarah, the opposite of love is not hate – it is indifference.” I feel that deeply. Whatever reckoning he has to do with the universe is up to someone other than me.
Sometime last year as I was dreaming of my freedom, I got a bug to get an RV – one that I could take to beautiful and remote places where most people can’t get, which is where I usually find the parts of me that I value the most. As I ran with Grace on the cold winter mornings, I would dream of hitting the road and heading to the spring warmth of the red sandstone and canyons of southern Utah. And well, it’s me … so I obsessed about it until I made it real.
And along the way, I’ve had so much fun and learned so much more about myself. My biggest surprise? The confidence that it has helped me build. There’s no feeling quite like hitching up my trailer, climbing up in my big F350, and hitting the road to wherever the spirit moves me – and knowing that I’m capable of doing it myself.
Well, myself, and Leo and Gus and Grace … and sometimes Hope.
We have had so much fun, and found so many parts of me again.
The happiness and laughter I find with old friends!
The solitude I find on walks at sunset.
The peace I find when I hike the miles out in the mountains with fields of wildflowers, where the air smells like I remember columbine tasting.
The joy I find playing outside with friends who somehow know my soul.
The gratitude I find when nature takes my breath away on a cold fall morning.
The honesty I find beside a campfire under the stars.
The love I have when I drop in and stay a few days with Mom and Dad, while I do laundry before I head back out into the wild again. It’s a lot like it was when I was still in college.
I mean, a trailer and the road are practically in my blood – so I suppose it’s not surprising that I am finding these things again, after too many years away.
And I’ve learned some new things. Like that Starlink lets me work from literally anywhere, which opens up so many options. Though I did cringe a little when someone asked if I was a YouTuber, and I had to explain that I was a lawyer.
And that sometimes it’s ok to say that I can’t do it all – as long as I still do right. I am so thankful that Millie has a happy and safe and wonderful life now, and that I still get to visit her and get her love. Anybody who has met Millie knows that she is a truly great dog with an enormous amount of rambunctious and gangly love to give – she is just a lot of dog.
And that cats are really active at night… a fact I contemplate as I lay awake in the 150 square feet or so I share with them in the trailer. Honestly, that’s the thing that usually makes me call it a trip and come home – longing for just a few nights of a peaceful sleep without Leo and Gus racing across my back, meowing, and beating one another up for fun. Gus talks a lot at night and Leo races amazingly fast for an old guy with only three and a half legs.
And about the world of podcasts! Nothing makes my miles go by smoother than a good, intellectually challenging podcast: Mike Drop, Mike Rowe, Dogs of War, Jocko, Shawn Ryan. It seems like maybe 2024 was the year that a lot of us found alternatives to the mainstream’s KoolAid – even though the KoolAid didn’t exactly match up with what we were pretty sure we could see with our own eyes – and started thinking for ourselves again.
And I’ve also learned that I’m doing something special. I’ve done a lot of amazing and incredible things in my professional life, but never before have I had so many people tell me that they respect what I’m doing.
And more than anything else, I’ve learned that I’m stronger than I ever imagined. And that honor, courage, and character aren’t up for negotiation.
Em and I had a super fun sister visit this fall. We ate our way thru the vacation again – the truffle miso spinach salad at Matsu was, we agreed, the surprising winner for best dish. Although the scallops over brussels sprouts were extraordinary, too.
So that has been my 2024 if I were to tell it – in my style – exactly as it was! As I sit here writing this, with the lights on the Christmas tree, and watching the fire in my fireplace, where Gus and Grace are sleeping together on the rug again after he accidentally beat her up last week, I contemplate how I’ve spent a lot of years taking care of everybody else – in part, that’s what makes me so good professionally at what I do. This year, I finally decided to start taking care of me – and that feels pretty amazing.
