I was unemployed for almost 400 days.

Before I was laid off, if someone had told me they had been unemployed that long, I would have thought they were lying or doing something very wrong. Are you really applying to jobs? Are you bad at interviewing? Does your resume have a million typos? Are you applying for jobs you’re not qualified for?

I think that’s one of the reasons I told very few people I’d lost my job. It felt shocking and embarrassing every single time, plus it still didn’t feel real. Like something was wrong with me because no one would hire me. I did not have the mental bandwidth to manage my own life; explaining in detail to someone else why I was finding it impossible to find a new job was beyond my abilities.

When I was laid off, I took one week to sit with my shock and grief, then I started applying for jobs. I was given 12-weeks severance, and I wanted to find a new job before that time was up, so I could put all that extra money in my savings account. My plan was to come out ahead of this setback, start a new job and have a new paycheck before the severance ran out.

I had my first interview a few weeks later. I look good on paper and have lots of experience. This was going to be so easy!

Except the salary was less than I made my first year of teaching. The job wanted a college degree and 3-5 years writing experience but wanted to pay me for none of it. No, thank you.

I kept applying for jobs, getting some interviews and lots of rejection emails. By October, I was going through rounds of interviews at a Fortune 500 company. Things were going great. They wanted to pay me an insane amount of money. I’d have to travel to Columbus, Ohio, three days a week, but we could make it work. It was such a great opportunity.

In the third (fourth?) round, they ghosted me. Like just stopped all communication. We went from “we’ll get the offer drawn up and emailed over” to silence.

I learned the hard way you shouldn’t stop applying for jobs just because it looked like you were getting an offer soon. I had wasted a few weeks of not applying for jobs and was back at square one.

October turned into November and then December.

No one hires around the holidays, so I wasn’t confident I’d have much luck until 2024. But then in early December, I started interviewing at an online merchant to manage writers and editors. I went through three rounds of group interviews, each one more promising than the next. Things were looking good.

Then I got the “we’re going with another candidate” email the day after Christmas.

I’ve always thought I didn’t care much about what other people thought of me. In many cases, that still holds true. But this process was a mind fuck. How many times can I be rejected before I start to lose all sense of myself? Is there something wrong with me? All the ways my previous boss had told me I was horrible or overbearing, was that coming across in all these interviews? I had lots of first interviews, but I had many second and third interviews also. I tried to tell myself I wouldn’t be invited back if I was as off-putting as my old boss said.

But I wasn’t being offered a job either. So maybe she was correct.

I stretched my 12 weeks of severance to just over 20 weeks. Money was tight, but Chris was working any overtime he was offered, and our budget was saving us. I’ve written endlessly about money and how we manage it, but I can’t tell you how much having a budget made the first 5-ish months of my unemployment more manageable. I knew what we could cut immediately when I lost my paycheck. Being laid off was shocking, but I wasn’t, at first, worried about our finances. We intentionally live below our means, but trimming a lot of the fat (our new clothes budget, vacation fund, etc.) was a painless choice. Plus, it all felt temporary. I just knew I’d have a job soon.

January was coming and people would start hiring again.

By the end of January, I applied for unemployment benefits. My severance was gone. I was applying for jobs, but not getting any calls for interviews. We hadn’t touched our savings yet, but it felt like we were getting close to it. Through the fall, I had been doing odd jobs for family members and friends of friends. Need your laundry room redone? I got you. Need your house cleaned? I’m your woman. I was buying furniture and random stuff at auctions and selling it on Marketplace or Etsy. I was applying for jobs and doing so many random side hustles that our needs were being met, but by the new year, things were getting stressful. We weren’t saving any money, and I didn’t have any job prospects. Things couldn’t continue like this for much longer.

Unemployment finally kicked in, and it almost covered our mortgage payment. I got a freelance writing job in February that felt promising as I continued to look for a full-time job. We demo’d our upstairs bathroom thinking we could finally fix the leak that we’d discovered five months prior.

Except the leak had created much more damage than we thought. And the freelance job only lasted a few weeks before they decided I wasn’t a good fit (great! just what I needed to hear!). Now we had a destroyed bathroom and office, no additional income, and bills to pay.

Chris and I started donating plasma around this time. This felt like another humiliating blow. Chris was working as much as he could, and then after work he’d go spend hours waiting to donate then sitting in a chair while they took his plasma. I’d drop the girls off at school then go spend the morning at the clinic.

A random fact about me is that my veins are incredibly difficult to draw blood from. They’re deep and they roll and I have really low blood pressure; I’ve always been a hard stick. In college, I worked at a clinic where the nurses saw my veins as a fun challenge on slow days. I’m not scared of needles, but I’ve had some pretty painful experiences. More often than not, I’d show up to donate plasma, spend a few hours waiting and then just have the techs dig around in both arms until they had to give up. I’d come home covered in bruises and swollen. I’d wear long sleeves and wait for the bruises to go away, then do back and try again.

It was, in many ways, a violent way to make money. Chris could do it easily, but I could only donate when a certain woman was working. She was the only one who could stick me, no matter how confidently the other techs assured me they could. Mostly, I just wasted 3 hours to come home covered in deep, painful bruises and bandaids, with no extra money to show for it.

Chris pleaded with me to stop, but I felt so hopeless and guilty about not having a job that I felt like the punishment was appropriate. I needed to contribute to our family. I felt guilty he was working so much and then spending his evenings at the plasma donation center. He was tired and overworked, and I needed to be able to do something besides apply for jobs and do random work for other people who paid me more than I was worth because they felt sorry for me.

The bruises felt deserved.

I kept applying for jobs, mostly getting rejected, and going on a few interviews. I sometimes made it past the first round and sometimes I did not. I spent hours on LinkedIn and job websites. When I was initially laid off, I was given access to a job coach and job search firm. They helped me with interviewing and resumes and cover letters, but I exhausted their resources and contract before I found a job. The school year ended, and I still did not have a job. My daughters had completed their 7th and 9th grade school years, and I had been unemployed the whole time.

I was still in shock. It felt like I was living in a nightmare, where nothing made sense, and I couldn’t figure out how to wake up. And all of this was my fault. I spent hours rehashing my last job, convinced I could somehow fix everything if I thought about it long enough. And still, very few people knew I was unemployed. I was severely depressed, didn’t know how to ask for help, and didn’t know how to help myself.

I was applying for any and every job I was vaguely qualified for. I didn’t care if I had to drive an hour each way to an office job. I didn’t care if I would be paid half of what my last salary was. I kept thinking about the job interview I declined in September because of pay. How clueless I had been. I should have accepted anything and everything that came my way. I thought it would be easier than this.

In the summer, a former colleague and boss reached out. She had been checking on me since I had been laid off. She offered to connect me with a few people. I welcomed the connections. I introduced myself to both people and then applied for jobs at their places of employment putting their names down as referrals, with their permission. I had done this countless times in the past 11 months. LinkedIn is a hellscape, but it’s good for knowing who works where and how that might help you.

Within a week, one of the companies reached out. The recruiter loved me. She ended our longer-than-scheduled call with “we’re going to get you a job here.” I was past hopeful or trusting of recruiters. I had literally been told I had a job before and then ghosted. But, okay, whatever you say, lady.

By this time, I had run out of unemployment benefits. We were paying our mortgage with our savings, which I had avoided for as long as I could. I was sure I’d have to go find a retail job, I was out of options. I was still busting my ass buying and selling stuff on the internet and doing any and every odd job someone offered me, but it had been a year without a job, and we couldn’t keep doing what we were doing much longer. Would I have to ask one of my parents for money? I knew either one of them would help if I asked, but I felt so defeated already. I think that would have been a tipping point for me. But it was soon going to be the only option.

But the recruiter had been right. She was going to get me a job there. After rounds of interviews, a job offer finally arrived. A good job offer. One that I accepted, trying not to sound as desperate as I was. I began the new job after being unemployed for over a year. It still felt unreal, that someone had thought I’d be a good fit somewhere after being told I wasn’t for so long.

I had applied to over 800 jobs while I was unemployed. Had countless recruiter phone calls. Went on endless first interviews and many second and third interviews. Sometimes I heard back after interviews and sometimes I did not. I told myself I was just bad at interviewing, but I got enough callbacks I knew that wasn’t true. I read countless posts and threads from people in similar situations. Unemployment was low but finding a job if you were unemployed was insanely hard. My messy search for a job wasn’t unique. Lots of people were working just as hard as I was with no success.

I’m not exactly sure why I’m sharing this now, besides the internet has always been a place I’ve shared hard things. I don’t do that as often as I used to, but this one felt like it deserved space. Because I know reading this when I was unemployed would have made me feel less alone. Because I’ve mentioned my depression but not fully explained it. Because I want to write about other things now, but this experience has had such a profound influence on my life I felt I couldn’t go forward without telling it. Because I’m a different person now, and I want to mark it in some way.

I thought I’d share about this experience after I started my new job. But then I got worried. What if that’s too soon? What if this new job doesn’t work out? So I decided to wait until my 3-month review. After I pass the trial period, then I’ll share. But then that passed, and I thought I’d share a little bit later.

My review went well and my boss is helpful, communicative, and encouraging. I feel stable and welcome in this role, but the lasting impact of a horrible boss and a layoff has followed me to this new place. I’ve had this job for 5 months, and I still live in fear of losing it. Even when no signs point in that direction. I finished out the year with a review that was really good and planning with my supervisor what I want to work on when this project is finished. My boss sees me in this position long term. I’m still just working to make myself believe it too.

I want to leave most of this in 2024. I want to get it out of the way. I want to start 2025 with less fear and shame. I lost my job in 2023, and it took me a really long time to find a new one. Its impact was felt in a million ways. We have picked up a lot of those pieces in the past five months, but not as quickly as I would like. Even after all these years and all kinds of lessons to the contrary, I still want to be more resilient and quick-healing than I can be. Than I should be.

Thanks for reading and thanks for all the messages. It’s the first day of 2025, and I’m looking forward to a better year than the past two. Not because I have a job now, but because we survived, because we’re still here despite all the hard stuff. And that’s a constant in my life I’ve come to appreciate.

Still here.

Thanks be to God.

To say I didn’t see it coming is the understatement of the century.

I was in the car driving my daughter to her orthodontist appointment; she was getting ready to start high school in a few days, and it was finally time to have her braces removed. It was an exciting day.

The afternoon before, my boss had rescheduled a meeting, so we were arriving to the appointment early so I could have the meeting in the car before heading into the orthodontist. On the way, I explained to Elliott that I didn’t know what the meeting was about, but it wouldn’t take long and she just needed to sit there quietly. I even said, “It’s not like I’m going to be fired or anything.”

I don’t know why I thought to say that.

30 minutes later, my boss and a random HR lady I’d never met before informed me my position was being eliminated, and I was being laid off. It was a Wednesday in July. My last day would be Friday.

As I sat stunned in the driver’s seat of my car with the rising sun in my face, my daughter wept silently. I couldn’t cry, not in front of this boss who I despised or my daughter who I loved fiercely. My boss read her prepared statement without acknowledging me or even saying hello. Then she signed off and left me with an HR lady to go over severance and PTO payouts and returning my computer equipment.

I didn’t understand a word she was saying. I focused on my breathing and not getting upset in front of my daughter who was sobbing in the seat next to me as she texted her dad.

The call ended, and we stepped out of the car to walk toward the orthodontist office. At the last second, I remembered to take a picture of Elliott, the last one with her braces still on. Her eyes were swollen and red, tears still staining her cheeks. I wanted everything to be normal and fine for her. This was supposed to be a good morning. I had to pretend it still was.

I told her everything was fine, hugged her, assured her I was okay, and then sent her back to have metal and glue scraped from her teeth.

She cried quietly through the whole appointment.

I had been given the rest of the day off. My job didn’t exist anymore, so what was the point of working? I finished out my last two days and ended my time with a send-off from my coworkers. It was tradition, on a person’s last day, to say goodbye with funny memes, kind words, and silly games. A virtual going-away party. But the party had never been for someone who was laid off. It was always a celebration, a bittersweet see-you-later.

My party was horrible. I loved my coworkers, and I loved my job. I was proud of the work we did, and the people I worked with were some of the best. All thirteen people present cried. No one was happy; we were all shocked and sad. It was the worst party I’ve ever been to. Everyone said nice things about me and that was also horrible. I lost count of the times I had to turn my camera off, because ugly crying at your work going-away party is such a bummer.

I’d met the woman—the one who selected my position to be eliminated—the year before at a company retreat. When she became my boss a few months later, she informed me during our first meeting that she had not liked me from the moment she met me.

I was too proud of the work we were doing. I bragged about our data too much. I took too much credit for the success of the content I created and managed.

She was—it goes without saying—a shitty boss. She was immature, unsure, and manipulative. She liked to keep secrets and withhold information. She didn’t like questions, which is an unhelpful trait when you’re the manager and your teams need to know how to do their jobs.

She disliked me for all the reasons a bully is mean in middle school: she was scared people would realize she didn’t know what she was doing. And I often asked questions that highlighted deficiency, which made me a target.

The good news is I wasn’t the only target. But she eliminated that woman’s position too, so she really showed us.

Losing a job you love is devastating.

I know you’re supposed to hold a job loosely, your job is not your life. Your life is your life and the job is just a way to help you live your life.

But I loved my job anyway.

Without exaggerating, I probably acknowledged how lucky I was to have the job I did and how much I loved what I was doing at least twice a week. It felt ridiculously privileged to get to combine the things I loved—teaching and writing and never leaving the house—into a job that paid my bills and more. I worked with smart, creative people who challenged me and made me better. I went from impacting one hundred students a year in the classroom to thousands each month. I got to write the instruction for The Outsiders, a book I loved teaching, so that thousands of students learned about poverty and friendship and grief and love. I wish I could say I didn’t feel so proud about the work I was doing, maybe my boss would have hated me less if I didn’t care so much, but I did.

And then someone who didn’t even understand my job was able to eliminate it due to budget cuts and pettiness. It’s been over a year since this has happened. I’m not writing from a place of anger anymore, just honesty. I don’t want you to read this and think I’m sinking to her level. I refuse to do that.

But I do know my job shouldn’t have been eliminated. I do know she did this out of spite.

And I know this because soon after my last day, my boss got a new boss because of all the bad choices she was making. And soon everyone realized what some of us already knew, and she was fired. And now they’re trying to re-create my position to make up for the mess she made. They’re trying to bring back an integral part of a product she tried to ruin.

I hope they can right the ship, because I still love the product I worked on and the people still there. They deserve a calm, safe work environment and smart, capable leaders. I hope they get that soon.

It’s hard to find the words to describe how depressed I became after losing my job.

A few days after I was laid off, my girls went back to school. I was able to get everyone where they needed to be and then spend the day frozen. I didn’t know how to recover from this blow that felt so personal. I know a layoff isn’t supposed to be personal—I was one of thirty people who lost their jobs that day—but I knew why my boss had chosen my position. And that made it so much worse.

I told very few people about losing my job. It took me two months to tell my mom, three months to tell my dad. If Elliott hadn’t been in the car with me that day, I’m not sure I would have told the girls for a while. I felt so ashamed and sad. It felt like failure, and I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know how much my job made me feel secure, but having it ripped away made everything feel out of control. I would like to pretend that’s not true, but I’m not good at pretending.

I isolated myself from everyone. I didn’t want to go anywhere or do anything. I went radio silent in a few friend groups and only one person reached out or asked how I was doing. I didn’t think I could feel worse, but I was wrong. I was the friend who helped you move, who dropped off food, who showed up to celebrate you, but apparently that was all I was good for. It was not to be expected from others. No need to check on someone who seems to have disappeared, someone who doesn’t normally do that. Sometimes I just felt like I was being a victim and making everything about me—depression is good at that—but I can look back now with clearer eyes and say that was shitty. I deserved better friends.

I had a really hard time finding a job and that made my depression worse. I couldn’t get out of the funk I was in, and then I kept getting rejected for jobs I was qualified or over-qualified for. [I’m going to write more about this tomorrow.] My layoff felt personal—it was my personality and work style my boss found so offensive—and applying for a new job feels so vulnerable, especially when you’re unemployed, that I took every rejection email as another blow to my non-existent self worth.

Chris, without mentioning it, upped his depression medicine. I know he did this without telling me because I was too fragile to know. My mental health is tied so extricably to my family’s that being sad felt dangerous at times. I tried to be sad during the day while everyone was gone and then “normal” when everyone was home. I know it wasn’t working, but no one pointed it out. I’ve always been the strong one, the one who helps everyone else hold it together, but I was barely hanging on by the end of most days. I was on edge, impatient, and snippy. I couldn’t get control of what I was feeling or literally anything and a single, small need from someone else in my family felt overwhelming.

And then I felt guilty about all of it.

Rinse and repeat.

Fall was hard. Winter was harder. Spring felt hard but with whispers of hope like it always does. By summer, I began to think I might never find a job, might never not be depressed, might never be who I was. I’d like to say that’s hyperbole, but my brain and every rejection email confirmed it. I would never recover from this blow. I had done something wrong, I was unlikable, I was unemployable.

The one-year anniversary of being laid off came and went. I had been unemployed for a year. I did not recognize myself, my life, or my future.

Been thinking about you. Hope everything is well.

My friend texted me this week to check-in. I’ve been quiet off and on the internet. She noticed.

I have a handful of similar messages on Instagram, I can see the preview of DMs asking if I’m okay, telling me I’m missed, hoping that I’m well.

I am well. I am tired and maybe a little depressed, but I am well.

Where have I been?

About two months ago I went radio silent in most parts of my life and the short answer is I’ve been putzing. Putzing around the house. Putzing around thrift shops. Putzing around my neighborhood on walks where I stop to inspect flowers and discarded trash on the side of the road.

My oldest daughter, after years of begging for social media, was finally allowed to get BeReal. I’m staunchly anti-social media for teenagers. There’s just too much damning evidence on how it impacts mental health and body image and a million other developing brain parts too precious to influence right now. But also, I understand the feeling of being left out. I understand what it’s like to show up to school when everyone but you has had the same cultural experiences. I grew up without cable TV when it was a thing everyone had. I wasn’t allowed to watch Friends or The Simpsons, and I had my Salt and Peppa CD taken away after my mom walked into my room while I was listening to it.

I survived, even though conservative Christianity tried it darnedest. And by survived, I mean I’ve had lots of therapy, and I left the cult of evangelical Christianity. But still.

Back to BeReal: my daughter got BeReal so I did, too. The gist of BeReal is you can only post at certain times a day, and you have to participate to see your friends’ posts who are also only posting at certain times a day. It’s similar to Instagram but without filters and set up to, hopefully, help you with some boundaries around your time.

I’m horrible at BeReal.

For years, I’ve had all notifications except text messages turned off on my phone. I don’t want the distraction or intrusion most of them bring, so the only time I know I have an email or a mention on Twitter (never calling it X) is to open an app. I like it that way. But BeReal, to work correctly, means you have to have notifications, which I miss constantly. And then when I do see them? I’m doing the same thing I was doing yesterday when I got the notification: driving my kids somewhere, making dinner, sitting in bed reading a book at an extremely early hour.

That’s it. That’s where I’ve been.

A few weeks ago, I was with my dad as he picked up some stuff he bought at an online auction. As I helped him load some shelves into the back of his truck, I had a flashback to my grandpa doing the exact same thing a few decades ago.

I come from a long line of people who love auctions. One of my favorite stories about my grandpa is how one Saturday he was at an auction and fell off a truck while loading something for someone. He got up and continued about his day, just limping slightly. The next day, he went to church—limping—and then after church, he and my grandma went out for dinner. When they pulled up to the restaurant (maybe my aunt was with them?), he casually asked if someone could run inside and see if the restaurant had a wheelchair he could borrow.

Someone said that’s probably not how restaurants work and maybe you should have your leg checked out if it hurts that bad. They ended up at the emergency room where they learned my grandpa had been walking around on a broken hip for the past 30 hours.

He was mostly upset he missed Sunday dinner.

Anyway, my family loves an auction (and food), and we will not be distracted by silly things like broken bones when it comes to a treasure.

I’ve been driving all over eastern Indiana picking up my online auction deals the past few months.

That’s where I’ve been.

In 2019, we had some drywall work done in our house: patching a light switch we’d moved, redoing the ceiling in a room that was wonky, just random things around the house you ignore until there’s enough of them to warrant calling someone to fix them.

One of the patches has sat, unpainted, in our kitchen since then. I would stare at it at least once a week and think about painting it, but I didn’t have any more of the original kitchen paint and to figure out the color and finish and buying more felt like it would kill me, so I left it.

This week I painted the kitchen, finally covering the drywall patch. I decided it was just easier to paint the whole kitchen than figuring out the original color. Then I had to paint the bench because the new wall paint made the bench color look off. Now I’ve started painting the trim because it looks dingy.

Chris recently said, “Can you just leave stuff alone?”

No, no, I cannot.

That’s where I’ve been.

Chris turned 40 a few weeks ago. I had a late-night, very loud dinner with friends last weekend. I’ve been slowly sanding a French door for my office. I took my nervous dog to the groomer, and he shit on the car seat on the way, so I got to clean the car. I’ve made gallons of tomato soup for dinner, for freezing, for sharing. We just shut the pool for the season. I sat on my porch this morning covered in a blanket and sipped hot coffee. I decided we are a family who no longer uses paper plates or napkins because it’s a waste of money and bad for the environment. I’m trying to find a pair of loose-fitting jeans that everyone is wearing right now, but it’s not going well.

I’ve watched tennis, helped my mom move, and done one million loads of laundry. I’ve been reading a lot, putting myself to bed early, and planning our next road trip. Noah Kahan has been playing non-stop in my car, and Fleetwood Mac provides the background music for anything I’m doing in the kitchen. It’s not chilly enough to turn the fireplace on yet, but I’m counting down the days until I can.

I need to order groceries, and last night I fed my family Zaxby’s because making food sounded like the hardest thing I’ve ever been asked to do. Chris is meeting with his sponsor this morning, just like he does every Saturday morning. I’ll take a walk this afternoon. Tonight, I’ll drive some kids to the homecoming dance.

That’s where I’ve been.

Last week in Florida, Ellie and I were wandering around a bookstore when a man got really close to me and made a weird comment about my body.

I was immediately uncomfortable with how close he got, how familiar he acted toward me.

As I continued to browse, I watched him wander around the store talking to teenage girls.

Soon, the man went up to three girls. He said he was a photographer, did they play sports? Did they need senior pictures or anything done? Do you want to see my portfolio, he asked.

I froze in place.

I could tell the girls were uncomfortable. But they—like all girls—are taught to be polite to strangers. So they stood and listened, glancing over at one another, as he talked about how good he was at photography and where were the girls going to college and did they want to see his photos. 

I stood at the next table trying to figure out how to join the conversation, how to tell the girls it was okay to leave, how to let them know they didn’t need to be meek and accommodating, especially when a grown man made them uncomfortable. And I could tell they were uncomfortable.

Soon, the guy wrapped up his conversation because the girls weren’t really engaging with him. He wasn’t getting what he wanted, so he moved on.

As we left the store, I reminded Ellie she’s not required to be nice to strange men. That she doesn’t have to stay in situations where she feels uncomfortable and just walking away, with no regard for being polite or gentle, is completely acceptable. There’s no reason for grown men to talk to teenage girls in a store with no other adults around. We raise our girls to be kind and say please and thank you, but we also need them to understand not everyone is owed their respect or time. As they say on My Favorite Murder, fuck politeness. Especially when you’re feeling unsafe or creeped out.

I was reminded of this story as I read the news about yesterday’s women’s Iowa v. LSU game. We want women, especially Black women, to be kind and gentle and polite. Society demands it and we echo the expectation in our social media posts and critiques. How dare women be competitive and challenging and not polite on the basketball court. How dare Black women be bold and proud and energetic.

Our misogynistic society has so many expectations for women, and we double those for Black women. Women will never meet the standards society expects of them, and Black women will surely not. Whatever the standard, it will be bent and stretched and changed when Black women get involved. To be accepted here, you must be what we demand. And when you meet that demand, we will change the rules.

Women must be humble and not brag and never direct. They must be meek and quiet and never boast.

Black women must be that and more.

Always more, never enough.

If people are made uncomfortable by a woman, it’s always the woman’s fault. Boldness will not be tolerated. Be good at your job, but don’t acknowledge you’re good at your job. Do not be proud you’re good at your job.

And what’s worse (if this can be worse?) is White woman are normally the first people to line up to pile on the misogyny. Misogyny continues to thrive because White woman uphold it, ensure its place so Black woman can be put in theirs. 

We honestly believe if we hold others down, we’ll be lifted higher. We don’t realize that while we drown others, we’re standing in the same deep water gasping for air.

As Ellie and I walked away from that bookstore last week, I kept telling her she doesn’t have to meet society’s expectations of meek and polite while she’s out in public. If the situation warrants it, she gets to be rude and walk away. She doesn’t have to make herself small and uncomfortable for the sake of others.

And the same goes for women who play basketball on national TV. 

I removed over 1,000 posts.

It was time.

I’ve done this before, whittling down the blog posts that live here. I’ve been writing on this blog since 2008, and we—this blog and myself—have seen some things.

In 2014 (I think?), I paid someone to redesign my blog and move it to a bigger server. While that was happening, I deleted about 100 blog posts. Just dumb stuff I had written as I tried to find my voice on the world wide web. I don’t regret taking them down, but I regret deleting them completely. Did I not know about reverting posts to drafts? Did I not understand I could take them down, but still keep them for myself?

That’s what I did this time: slowly read through over 1,400 blog posts and reverted most of them to drafts. They still exist, and I can access them anytime I want, but they’re not for public consumption anymore.

I did this for a number of reasons.

Some of the blog posts were just dumb. Why did I post that? Who cares about that? Why did I take the time to even write that nonsense?

Some of the blog posts were not who I am anymore. I took down most of the fashion/clothes posts. Remember when I tried to be a fashion blogger? I hope you don’t. I really hope you don’t. I’d taken down a ton of those a few years ago (Copycat Wednesday, anyone?), but many still existed. I left a few up for old times’ sake—to keep me humble and slightly embarrassed—but most of them are gone now. RIP fashionable Mary. You will not be missed.

Some of the blog posts were sponsored content I don’t care about anymore. Also, no one paid me enough money to keep those on my site for years. If Lenovo or Kindle or Thermos want those lame posts back up, they can send me another check. I’ll also accept PayPal or Venmo.

Some of the blog posts were things I don’t believe anymore.

As I figured out what I wanted to write about on the internet, I wrote about lots of things. Some of them don’t need to be read anymore. I’ve learned better ways, learned better truths, learned where I was wrong. I don’t want bad theology I once believed to harm people who might stumble across something I’ve read. It’s not helpful or needed. At times, I wrote things unaware of the privilege I was operating from. How my advice wasn’t as simple as I made it out to be.

I’m so glad I never wrote a book in my 20s or 30s. I’d die to know some of the things I had once believed were out there forever, and I couldn’t take them back. I know the internet is forever, but it’s a little less forever than a published book. (Right? Please say yes.)

Recently, I read a self-help book. The author is in her late twenties and full of life experiences she’s learned lessons from and feels like everyone else should know them too. I cringed a lot while I read her book. I already know she’s going to look back in a decade and wish she hadn’t written some of the things she did. Experience is a hard teacher, and we all have to do it one way or another. Hers will just be very, very public.

Reading my old blog posts through the lens of a 40-year-old woman who’s had years of therapy was uncomfortable. I could see how hard I was trying and failing, how much energy I was exerting to keep a failing marriage alive, how some of the things I was doing was enabling a really sick husband. I left a few of those posts up. Not because I loved them, but because if anyone spent the time to go back to them, they probably knew our marriage story, and it felt important to show some of the chaos and heartache in real time.

Maybe one day I’ll feel different and remove them. Maybe not. I reserve the right to change my mind about anything I post at anytime. I’m the one paying the bills to keep the lights on. [such a dad thing to say]

I’ve spend the past 3-ish years removing pictures of my daughters from the internet. I started with my Instagram account and archived all their little toddler and baby pictures. Then I removed most things they were featured in. I loved those pictures, but they’re for us and not the world. Last year, I deleted Facebook and all the images I’d posted of them there. I’d stopped posting their pictures on Facebook around 2018, but deleting my account took care of all the older ones.

The past few months, I removed most pictures of my girls from this space as well.

Some still exist, don’t get me wrong. There are a few family photos and travel posts still up. And some random other ones. But they don’t need to be on the internet because of me anymore. I don’t post their pictures on Instagram unless I have their permission and usually not in any permanent spots. I took away some of their autonomy when they were younger, and I wish I hadn’t. I’m part of the first generation of parents raising kids in a digital age, and I think most of us spent a little too much time posting pictures of our kids for people (and strangers) to see.

I’d do things differently now. I can’t change the past, but I can edit it from my WordPress dashboard. So I did.

I don’t want to disappear from the internet. I mostly like it here. But I want to show up in a new way.

Maybe you’ve noticed pictures of my children’s faces don’t really show up in blog posts much anymore. There are a lot of pictures of their backs. If they’re in pictures, they’re small and out of focus, they’re wearing masks or peeking out of water. That’s intentional. This is my blog, not theirs. Their peers are on the internet, and my kids should get to decide how they show up on it. Plus, I don’t want to give estranged family members access—in any form—to my children. They don’t deserve that. They don’t deserve even a glimpse of my magical children.

Truthfully, I didn’t think anyone would notice or care this happened. I didn’t even plan to mention it. But I forget that even though I have been very sporadic about writing here, people still read my words and pay attention to this space. I know it’s true because I see the blog stats each month when WordPress emails them to me. Every month, I’m surprised at the traffic to this dusty little place.

I had removed about 500 posts when I got a message from a loyal reader asking about a post she loved but couldn’t find. Her sister was getting married, and she wanted to send it to her. It’s gone, I said. I’m cleaning house and taking down things that might misrepresent what I believe now. I just don’t want to harm anyone with my bad theology.

She said she understood and appreciated it. Then she said, please don’t ever take down ‘My Grandmothers’ Hands.’ It’s one of my favorite posts.

I assured her it wasn’t going anywhere.

There’s still a lot of stuff here. About 300 posts, to be specific. Some of the writing is good. Some of the writing is not good. I’m glad I’ve learned and grown and gotten better at some things. I still have a lot to learn. I still have a lot of growing to do. Which means more posts might come down one day. I’m sure I’ve missed some things I should probably take down right now.

A lot of reading my old blog posts was a practice in giving myself grace.

I’ll give myself that going forward too, as I stretch my blog post muscles and find my footing here once again. I hope you’ll stick around to see how it goes.

No, really, it’s gone.

I’ve been dreaming about it for a while; this break up has been slowly coming for years.

It began four or five years ago when I deleted it from my phone. I wanted one less thing to waste time on so I removed the Facebook app.

It was probably around 2016. I was beginning to see stuff from people I was friends with that I didn’t like. Stuff that made my heart hurt, things that made me angry, things that made me lose respect and patience and love.

I didn’t like those feelings so I limited my Facebook access to my computer.

The two things keeping me on Facebook at the time: Facebook was good for my blog, for my writing career. And it held a lot of old pictures and videos I loved.

I began sharing less on Facebook. The past few years, I’ve probably posted something once a month? Maybe less. I stopped sharing most things about my kids online because they’re older now and it doesn’t feel like my place anymore. One day they’ll be able to see the things I’ve posted about them online. And while I don’t think there’s anything bad, they’re their own people with their own stories to tell and I want to give them the freedom to do that.

They still show up on blog posts and Instagram, but it’s very intentional and only with their permission. But mostly, I just avoid sharing about my kids now.

I choose to write about and share my life on the internet. They get that choice too.

As someone who runs a “business” on Facebook, things have changed a lot since I first created that Facebook page in 2011. So many things.

In 2021, I had 2,000+ followers, but none of them got to see the things I posted unless I paid Facebook to access their feeds. More than 2,000 followers and, on average, about 100 people would see a post organically.

I just don’t want to play those games.

Granted, I don’t rely on my blog or social media accounts for income. I blog for no other reason than I enjoy it. This is the exact same reason—maybe with just more focus and intention—I started this blog in 2008. (Shout out to Blogspot and all the dedicated people who used to read all the weird crap I wrote there! I’m slowly going through my archives and taking down lots of things I wrote a decade or more ago. There’s a lot of dumb stuff out there.)

I like writing so I write. But maintaining a website and an email list and a server and other website-related things costs me more than I make from blogging every month. I am always in the red running this space. (There was a time when I made a good income from blogging; I stopped doing that a few years ago because it’s not how I want to spend my time. Maybe that will change in the future. Who knows.)

But I pay those costs, because I like to have a place to write. A place where I don’t have to play games or figure out the latest algorithm changes. A place where I’m in charge, said the Enneagram Eight. (And, yes, I understand Google and ranking and how I’m still a part of the game in some ways, but I don’t make choices to influence those algorithms. I’m purposefully ignoring them.)

No matter the plan or goal, it’s bad business sense to build a business solely on platforms you don’t own or control. When Facebook went down this fall, I loved it. Everything was so quiet. I felt a sense of relief.

That’s when I knew it was time to get rid of Facebook for good.

Full disclosure: I have the job I love—a writing career—because of Facebook. Facebook, in its heyday, shared my blog posts widely. I gained thousands of email subscribers from Facebook. The site visits from Facebook allowed me to work with companies that paid me well to share their products. I got to collaborate with businesses that boosted my resume and byline. Facebook gave me Instagram and Twitter followers. Facebook let a former work colleague post about a contract job she had that led me to the full-time writing job I’ve had for a few years now. A job I love and feel really lucky to get to do every day. I am grateful for Facebook. For what it used to be.

But I don’t need it anymore.

Will my blog visits go down? Absolutely.
Will this move cost me money? Yes.
Will it bother me? No.

I’ll just keep writing here when I feel like it. I’ll still keep posting on Instagram when I want to and keep ignoring it when I don’t. Someone asked if I felt like I was still part of the machine since Facebook owns Instagram and WhatsApp (two apps I still have and use). My answer is yes, but on my terms.

I still find joy and value in Instagram. I follow who I like, unfollow who I don’t, and spend intentional time there with boundaries. Facebook was not like that for me. I constantly had to hide friends’ posts because they were racist and horrible. I lost respect for people I used to look up to. I saw too much ugly from people I was trying to love there. Plus, it seemed to be more and more a place for people who didn’t understand social norms still applied on the internet. That we don’t gossip and share misinformation and things we wouldn’t say to people’s faces. Facebook has become a place where all the ugly parts of people’s hearts were proudly displayed, commonly in the name of Jesus. Facebook became a dark, dark place. In the name of Jesus. How ironic.

Also, I’m not sure we’re supposed to know the innermost thoughts of a 1000 people we casually know. That seems more harmful than helpful. We know our brains aren’t made for that much information or that many relationships, all of it becomes surface level and fake. Facebook is a mess. Its influence on our culture and relationships and hearts is destructive and concerning.

I don’t want to be a part of that mess anymore.

It’s only been 30 days, and I already feel lighter.

I was able to request a file with all my data from Facebook, so I didn’t lose anything I was worried about. All the pictures of baby Ellie Graham and our yearly Beech Grove pub crawls are safely saved on my Google Drive. I hit delete in the early morning hours of November 1st. Facebook was worried about my choice. It asked a few times if I was serious. And they kept my account available for 30 days just in case I changed my mind. (The only things I will miss are Facebook Marketplace and keeping up with community and school news for our small town. But really, I lived without those things before, and I’ll do it again.)

In the 30 days since I deleted Facebook, I’ve noticed I mostly only used it when I was bored or trying to distract myself from the work I was supposed to be doing. It was a crutch, a really convenient crutch. I’ve only thought about Facebook when I’ve been bored or wanted to escape something. And that realization means I made the right choice for me.

Today is the last day I’ll have access to my old account, all my “friends,” business pages, photos, and comments. I know Facebook hopes I’ll come back. They made (and continue to make) a fortune off their users. A “free” website isn’t ever really free, you’re paying with your information, your time, and your dependency.

I don’t want to pay them anymore.

What does this mean for my other social media apps? Right now, nothing. The cost of using Instagram still comes out in my favor. That might change one day, though. I’m not making any promises. If I’ve learned anything from reading all those old blog posts from years ago, it’s that we learn and change and grow and do better when we know better. And the next step for me was deleting Facebook.

I guess we’ll just have to see where all this growing takes me from here.

Chris and I have different opinions on sticks.

Our house sits on a few acres in the country. Our trees were planted decades ago by my grandfather, as he turned the farmland he bought in 1970 into a home for his family of seven. We moved here in 2017, a few years after my grandfather died, a few months after my grandmother moved to an assisted living community.

Our house is old and so are the trees.

When a storm comes, when a strong wind comes, or, sometimes, when absolutely nothing comes, our yard will be littered with sticks and branches. Since we moved here, I’ve stopped dreading rain. We no longer have basements in the city that will flood if the storm drains gets too full. Now I have a thirsty garden with tomatoes and peppers and squash. As my grandpa used to say, “There’s no such thing as too much rain.” And, while some people in some places might feel differently, me and my house on the hill agree.

I work from home and use any excuse I can to take breaks from writing. This might sound lazy, but I’m a better writer when I walk away from the words for a bit. Going outside, taking a walk, picking up all the sticks in my yard—that makes the words come back. Moving makes the words become unstuck.

Sticks in the yard thrill me. I wait until I’ve rewritten the same stupid sentence five times, then I head outside to gather branches.

I pick up every little stick I see: small twigs that fit into the palm of my hand, medium-sized sticks good for a dog’s mouth, and large branches I have to drag to the burn pile. I want them all picked up. I want them all gathered into our fire ring.

I leave no stick behind.

This is the opposite of my husband.

He occasionally gets to the yard full of sticks before me. Maybe it’s the weekend, maybe he’s come home from work and I’ve not yet made it outside, maybe I did my laps already yet more sticks appeared. He’ll walk around the yard talking on the phone and grabbing sticks as he strolls.

But he only gets the big ones. He only picks up the large sticks, the ones we shouldn’t run over with the lawn mower, the ones you can see easily from the road or the porch or the swings. He doesn’t bother with the small sticks.

“They’re good for the yard,” he says. “Leave the little ones alone.”

He heard this from my aunt and tries to use it to his advantage. This drives me crazy. I don’t want the little sticks in my yard any more than I want the big sticks. I want all the sticks picked up. I want a yard without sticks.

I know if you ignore enough small sticks, they eventually become big sticks. They become piles in the yard, areas of sticks not broken down enough to help the yard do anything but refuse to grow grass. I know if you make enough excuses, more and more of those little sticks you ignore become medium-sized sticks you ignore too. It’s a slippery slope of ignoring sticks. It starts small and feels inconsequential. But then you realize the next size isn’t that big of a deal either so you leave those in the yard too.

It becomes—over time—a yard full of sticks.

It becomes—over time—easier to just not care about the branches either because it’s too late and we’ve ignored too much and now all the grass is dead.

The little sticks become big sticks if you don’t pick them up.

The little sticks can kill everything if you’re not paying attention.

I’d rather pick up the little sticks. I’d rather do the extra work right now to pick up the small ones so they don’t—one day—overwhelm the yard, and we wonder why we let so many sticks get by. I’ve lived just enough life to know that what we choose to ignore always comes back. Ignoring doesn’t make it go away; ignoring makes it come back bigger next time with more consequences.

A few sticks can become more sticks very quickly.

So I pick up the little sticks and the medium-sized sticks and the big sticks. I pick up the twigs and the branches. I walk around my yard because moving my body makes the words I’m paid to write come back, but it also means less yard work the next time I go to mow.

I always pick up the sticks. I love picking up the sticks. My body doesn’t always love it though; I’m almost forty and sometimes it’s hot outside and I’ve got to dodge the dog poop. But I never regret the work. I’ve never sat down on the porch after a few laps around the yard picking up sticks and regretted my choice.

Picking up the sticks has always been worth it. My current self likes it and my future self thanks me.

So I pick up the sticks.

This is, of course, not a story about sticks.