when the rain keeps coming back

dancing away the storm

Jan 14, 2025

Hi, sweets! Happy New Year ❤️ I am sending you all lots of love and warmth and coziness as you read this, and a gentle entrance to 2025. I am hoping that your year is wonderful and miraculous even if it doesn’t all go quite according to plan. Mine has already deviated from the plan, YAY, phew, expectations released!! (Tap the ❤️ button above to release your expectations, too. Ahh. Better!)

I am also very much thinking of Los Angeles this week, where I grew up, and home to so many beautiful people and places that are hurting immensely right now. If you’re able, here is a link to donate to wildfire relief efforts.

I wish I could tell you that I entered this new year with the eager conviction I held a few months ago, while the leaves were still golden, that this was my year of doing everything.

I think the Universe heard me and laughed, said hmmm let’s wait and see, and it wasn’t long before I found myself sitting at her table sipping a steaming bowl of Humble Soup. With crusty bread and butter on the side.

I was very excited for my Year of Doing Everything, because last year — and even the one before that! — was eclipsed, in part, by a Chronic Ailment. You know, the kind that whines incessantly in the background and occupies perfectly good headspace with thoughts of doctor appointments and exercise routines and what-ifs and cautionary tales and nights spent in the company of Dr. Reddit.

2024 was a year of seismic change: a heartbreak, a move, a new job. Through it all, my ~~mortal nemesis~~ unfortunate companion, Achilles tendonitis — a nagging ache in my left ankle — stayed by my side, holding steady as winter melted into spring bloomed into summer.

I first made his acquaintance whilst traipsing about Southeast Asia in my free-spirited backpacking youth (see: 2023). Without prompt care and attention, what began as a minor inconvenience turned, over time, into a capital-A Ailment. Standing and walking became monumentously challenging, let alone running, jumping, dancing; I felt tethered, as if I was clipped on a very short leash, whilst dozens of dreamy aspirations dangled just out of reach: concerts, festivals, hikes among the mountains and stars.

Even mundane activities, like grocery shopping (especially when stocking up on jars of pasta sauce and milk and olive oil — the heavy things!), or walking to the office with my laptop slung over my shoulder, or taking the trash out and the laundry up — became mountains in their own right, imperious, towering, impossibly tall.

Which is to say that last year, I paused many of my more frivolous hopes and pushed them aside to make room for MRIs and health insurance forms. There was a healthy dose of crying in public, and wishing at times that I could just lop off my ankle, amputate it and be done with the whole thing.

And then, in the second half of the year, supported by the newfound stability and strength of a signed lease, full-time job, and months of consistent physical therapy, I felt the leash1 unclip. I woke up one summer day and Mr. Tendonitis was gone, bags packed and left, and my heart literally leapt into autumn, bouyed into a world of freedommmmmm!

I was like a dog bounding through the grass, tripping over its paws: in September, skipping around Manhattan for work events scattered across the island; in October, hiking miles upstate, through apple orchards and amber canopies; in November, going out dancing and staying, giggling home arm-in-arm with the last stragglers in the wee morning hours. After months of stillness, I walked and biked and shopped and even dusted off my high-heeled boots (the ones with the flowers on them!).

Just look at that rainbow!!! Those colors! Eep!

And then I got very excited, maybe a little too excited, about getting strong! and warding off aforementioned Ailments once and for all. I marched into The Gym, a shiny foreign establishment which has always very much intimated me, and demanded A Membership, Please!

And so in December, as the naked branches of trees were strung with lights and the first snow fell, I laced my sneakers and pedaled and lifted and lunged. I attempted to befriend the squat rack (which still feels clangy and sweaty and yes, a bit scary, but we are slowly making each other’s acquaintance!!!). I pushed and pulled and pressed until what began as a familiar whispering ache in my ankle grew to a shout and said no more! and before I knew it Mr. Tendonitis was back, unpacking his bags and hanging up his coat. I was back to perching on banisters at concerts and pressing an ice pack to my heel after work and tucking a chair underneath my knee to hold my weight as I chopped vegetables for soup.

And yes, I did wear some very cute shiny black high heels to a holiday party, which quite possibly did not help.

That is how at the turn of the year, I found myself sitting on the floor, sipping my humble soup, old companion back in tow.

Luckily, as a notorious Haver of Ailments, I have learned a few things over the years.

One: healing often takes a magic and somewhat elusive combination of effort, patience, and trust.

Two: in a phrase I’m reminded of far too often, like maybe I should embroider it on a pillow, healing is not linear! I so wish it was, but no! Oh no. There are loops and upside-down bits and zig-zags and peaks and valleys and weeble-wobbles.

And three: while walking that meandering, unpredictable, mischievous path, we must keep putting one foot in front of the other. Doggedly.

This is a word I keep coming back to: doggedly. “Marked by stubborn determination.”

Here’s the thing: a Chronic Ailment can suck so bad. The metaphor I come back to most is a raincloud, giant and sopping and gray and wet, hanging over things and making them generally….soggy.

Even the loveliest of meals and beautiest of sunsets and warmest of hugs become…damp.

Grrr, how we might miss the sun! But the reality is that the cloud is visiting. And when we see it approaching, there are things we can do.

We can throw a fit and cry some tears and let it all out, because letting it out is good.

Then we can accept the cloud has come, and adjust accordingly. Don our rainboots and umbrellas! I’ve swapped in picnics for hikes, the pool for the gym; gathered ice packs and supportive footwear. (The shiny black heels are waiting their turn.)

And then we can do what I will call rain dances, which is kind of silly, but I think works for the sake of this metaphor?!, to shake the cloud away. Rain dances can be physical therapy, psychotherapy, medication…anything we can do to entice the sun to come out again.

I am learning that it helps immensely to embrace the rain dance very enthusiastically; to love it even. Or to at least try and befriend it, because what I have learned this year, and actually across many years, is that we will likely have to dance again, and again, and again.

Clouds can be sneaky. So often, just when I think one has cleared — insomnia, hip problems, tendonitis — and stop the dance (prescriptions, glute bridges, calf raises), it comes back. This is where doggedly comes in: stubborn determination, even in the face of setbacks, and disappointments, and obstacles!

So this year, my resolution is to…adore calf raises with a burning passion!!! To embrace physical therapy, doggedly, stubbornly, persistently, all the way to 2026 if I must! To dance even once the sun comes back out, until it’s part of my bones and the seasons change and the cloud dissolves into mist into air into light. So that I can go about embracing the rest of my life.

I like to remind myself that even under cloud cover, the important hopes — the soul-hopes — I had for last year ended up materializing in their own loopy way: building community, nourishing my friendships, getting settled in a new home. Focusing on my career. Unearthing and releasing old patterns to make space for the new.

While 2025 might not be the Year of Doing Everything (it was fun while it lasted, hey?), I feel hopeful that it will be a year of doing many things. And turning my attention to the gentler, soul-nourishing things: writing, watching movies, brushing my little brother’s hair. Cooking meals with my family, soaking up sunshine, soaking in the hot tub. Laughing. I know this cloud is just visiting, and that I can pull on my rainboots and pop open my umbrella and go about delighting in the miracle of my life.

I’m excited for a year of practicing doggedness, and courage2, and setting aside my expectations to make room for each moment as it comes. As the Universe so loves to remind us (thanks for the soup!), it’s all we can ever really do.

Xo,

Eden

P.S. Maintenance

The other day, my dad and I were chatting about his 2024 resolution to get injured less. He feels like he achieved it; I ask him what helped. “Maintenance,” he replied.

Nora Ephron called maintenance “what you have to do just so you can walk out the door knowing that if you go to the market and bump into a guy who once rejected you, you won't have to hide behind a stack of canned food.” She professed to spend eight hours each week dedicated to this very task.

While I think Mrs. Ephron (can I call her Nora?!) was referring to our physical appearance, and my dad was referring to staying physically healthy, I think they were both getting at a similar idea: maintenance, the sneakily time-consuming, decidedly unglamorous, but nonetheless essential set of habits that help us live all the other bits of our lives better.

Tweezing my eyebrows. Going to physical therapy on Tuesdays. Going to regular therapy on Fridays. Doing calf raises off a step. Swimming laps. Blow drying my bangs. Shaving legs. Putting on lotion. Brushing teeth. Stretching in the morning. Meditating afterwards. Journaling before bed, about my day, what I’m grateful for, what I’m planning for tomorrow. Slicing up carrots and storing them in water in the fridge so they stay fresh and crunchy. Drinking water. Refilling the Brita. Brushing up my eyebrows to nudge them towards a semblance of a shape from their unkempt morning scraggliness. Responding to texts. Making the bed. Doing laundry.

Maintenance.

And then, really, what even are the in-between bits?! What parts of life aren’t maintenance? Maybe work…and leisure. Work defined as what we do to make a living; leisure defined as what we do to enjoy our time. Travel. Music. Swimming in a river. Watching a show after dinner. Cuddling. Picnics. Neighborhood walks. Comedy shows. Movies. Camping trips. The good juicy bits. Jumping in the ocean. Reading a book.

If about half of our our waking hours are dedicated to work, how is the remainder divvied up? Some is leisure, and then how much of life is…maintenance? Maybe one-quarter? A good chunk, at least.

And so maybe another way of summarizing The Point is: How can we come to enjoy the maintenance?

girlhood

Discussion about this post