Resilience and Presence

Behind the Instagram smiles

A pause to breathe and rehydrate, a gentle squeeze and inhale of my daughter’s scent as I pass by, a brush of the hot summer skin of the other, just knowing they are there. Hearing the buzz of their energy as it clicks across the keyboards. We are all locked in, building. In this moment, we are all in the same shared space, home, creating.

As a mother of two grown children and a spouse who most often live spread across the globe, I am soaking in every second. This may just be for now, but it feels so good. This presence. We are all working here, hyper-focused. Yet, we stop, check in, do yoga, create and enjoy meals together, engage in deep conversations and some intensely competitive games with lots of laughter and even some dance moves in the kitchen. I wish I could freeze this moment in time, and yet, I look forward to seeing where all these passion projects will take each of us individually and together collectively.

That is the picture we get for the Instagram post. That is the magical Midsommar moment we capture and share. It doesn’t capture the tears, the loneliness, the defeat, the questioning of whether anyone would notice if I gave up, the fear of losing everything and everyone I hold dear, the anger, the resentment, the physical and emotional pain, isolation and everything in between. This year (or three) has been about survival, learning to be resilient and scrappy. It has also been about accepting help, gaining perspective, and going through the really messy part of the chrysalis where everything breaks and is rearranged to emerge as something completely new but made from the same parts.

Prioritizing for that which will provide, sustain and bring me joy. This week, I launch SalutVoisin, a community app I built as an experiment to relearn coding, using Claude code. My heart and energy remains devoted to my passion project WHOLE, for brain longevity and women’s health that will launch at the end of Summer. I feel proud of where I am standing now, or that I am standing at all. That said, I could not have done any of this without the relationships that I have built with my children, my partner, my friends, my family and my community. Each were critical contributors in so many ways. Even the hard parts of the relationships, the tough love, the prioritizing self care as a survival tactic when it was needed most. Learning to say no was just as important as learning to say yes.

This is the hard truth of midlife for me and for many women. Sometimes we have to hit a very low point to put into practice what we already know, we have to put on our oxygen masks first. I am refueled by the gift of presence that I have received this Spring and early Summer. Each day as I walk my garden, I am reminded that everything has its season, and just enough water is more important than too much. A little stress from drought builds resistance. And nothing tastes better than a well tended tomato picked at its peak ripeness, allowing the remaining on the vine to flourish in turn.

This is a love letter to each and every one of you, to thank you and remind you that you matter and the chrysalis is a container from which you can emerge anew to that and those who you love (and love you in return). Courage!