👋 Sometimes we’re big broken messes that Band-Aids no longer stick to
It's Monday. I'm here for you.
Hi, Friend! It’s me, Jen Glantz.
I go to Central Park every single Sunday. I walk the same route that circles around the Bethesda Fountain and Bow Bridge. It takes me 90-minutes. I stop to sit on the same bench. I say hi to Larry (a sweet older man who tosses fresh chicken to all the dogs walking by). I think about the best parts of my life right as I round the corner and pass the hotdog stand.
This Sunday, something was a little different. The trees were shedding.
The farts of wind made the trees swirl. Even the tourists who traveled from Mars to see the bright fall colors were spending most of their time kicking the leaves from under their toes.
They seemed…annoyed?
As if the trees were some kind of one hit wonder. Good for a season. Over their 15-minutes of fame. Next will be Fifth Avenue. The lights and glitter will fool them to feel alive.
Nobody will look at the trees until next year when they explode again.
The leaves are falling off the trees and there’s nothing the trees can do about it, just like how sometimes we can’t save the things that chose to leave us. The jobs that let us go. The people who inch away until they are miles from us. The ones who dare to say: I don’t know who you are anymore.
Or maybe the trees are pushing the leaves away, like the pieces of us we want to be part of our then versus our now.
Every couple of months we we shed too. Sometimes we dry brush the crap out of our lives to get the regrets off of us.
Adam says the trees in Central Park look dreary. Looks like winter already.
I think it looks like a fresh start? A Just wait, you’ll see. We are all capable of redemption, of an act two, of a late in the story plot twist.
Everything around you, soon, is going to make you feel like a failure for how you lived your year.
I beg you not to fall for any of that. Why should you trust me? My main resolution at the start of January was to make this my healthiest year ever. I wanted a six-pack! I wanted to stop basing every meal around pizza slices. But then I broke my nose the first week of January and then later developed debilitating vertigo and later later a bunch of gnarly stomach issues.
It was, without much of my doing, my unhealthiest year yet.
I didn’t fail at anything, ok? Because I didn’t try to do any of it in the way I imagined.
Instead, having the opposite slowly play out, made me the poster child for the cliche: we plan and the universe laughs.
I look at it like this. We want to fix fast. We want to transform as if we’re operating on roller blades. Sometimes it happens. But sometimes we’re big broken messes that Band-Aids no longer stick to. When we tug forward like this, and eventually, everything has to fall apart.
Maybe the trees have to let go of what they’ve carried all year long because it was flawed. It was all wrong. They were operating with the wrong instructions. They were ignoring the ickiness inside that grew bigger and bigger. Ickiness will bloom beauty too. But it will never feel right.
I don’t judge the trees for letting go of it all. I don’t judge myself for wishing I was ending the year as muscle-mani tofu-eating Jen Glantz. Instead, I look like i’ve been through a winter, or two.
People stop looking at you when you’re bare-faced. You become invisible when you struggle. Nobody wants a selfie with the person (or the tree) that’s half-assing the dance routine. Show me someone else doing it full out! I’ll snuggle up to them instead.
Look at yourself like you’ve got it all figured out. Eventually you will. Hope is a very powerful thing.
We have to let go of both our beauty and our pain. Shed some of it. Soon we’ll grow into what is next.
Every fall the trees start to plot how they will try again. And every spring they bloom.
Take care of yourself this week (ilysm),
Read this thriller on the plane. It’s fast-paced and has just the right amount of twists. But now I’m reading a rom-com all about a bridesmaid and it’s super fun.
Are we liking Hilary Duff’s new song? I can’t tell yet.
My go-to carry-on duffel bag. I love that it’s washable, good quality, and packs soooo much stuff in it.
Such a good gift for anyone who likes to play.
Homesick Candles: I sent this to a friend who was really missing NYC.
Storm Cloud: An unusual little item for a person who needs a pick-me-up on their desk.
Truly the most comfortable blanket in the world. I’m shocked at the quality for the price.
Thank you for reading this week’s pick-me-up. I adore you! I’ll be back in your inbox on Monday. Until then, hit reply and say helllloooo!
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