Y’all, my heart.
I love seeing Lucy play music with her GrandDonnie.
With everything going on, moments like this, they’re just so sweet and wonderful to share. And I think it’s safe to say, this kid will definitely be a musician. It’s going to be so fun helping her find her instrument and watching her learn. 😊
Well, I’m not really sure where to go from here.
The Accutane works. My face was clear all throughout the holidays and it felt like I got a little bit of my life back, and y’all, when I say that was amazing. Just, wow.
But the side effects. Oh my God, the side effects.
So, let me preface by saying that everyone is different, and everyone reacts to medicines differently, and I don’t want to scare anyone away from a treatment that might work very well for them. But I want to share my experience, just in case anyone needs validation, or has questions, or is just curious. This is definitely not the update I wanted to give.
Let’s start here. My face cleared up! Yay! My skin also dried out everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Every mucus membrane, and nothing I did to help with that side effect (lotion, an Omega-3 supplement, changing soaps and showering habits) actually helped at all. The dryness, though, I could handle. It was expected and wasn’t so bad. Well, not on my face at least. It was less than tolerable in other places.
Which brings me to my eyes. About two months into the treatment, after my dermatologist and I had agreed to up my dose (as is standard), my eyelids just went insane. None of my glands wanted to work. Everything just stopped up, and my eyes got all red and gross and watery, and my eyelids got really inflamed and swollen, and my lashes were all full of flakes and tear residue. And long story short, after a weekend visit to the eye doctor, I can confirm I now have ocular rosacea as well. Because Type 1 and Type 2 were not enough. Sigh. One steroid drop prescription and treatment plan later, and I’m doing a little better. But my eyes still aren’t normal, and I’m real tired, y’all, real tired of wearing my glasses instead of my contacts. Lucy is happy, though, and tries to pull them off of my face a few times a day.
Even the eyes, though, I think I could handle. Maybe. But I experienced some weird mental symptoms, too. My dermatologist did not think they were Accutane-related, but they coincided with the bump in my dose. My anxiety skyrocketed, and I started to have really strange, not-me thoughts about the hopelessness of life. I never think that way. I love life.
And I love my hair, which is now really thin at my hairline. I just don’t know if it’s worth it to lose my hair to clear my face, you know? They say that it’s temporary, but it’s very visible, and it makes me very uncomfortable.
I’m just generally uncomfortable these days, actually. My joints got super achy, and I’m also having some abdominal pain and really awkward, painful GI issues. Again, can’t say if they’re caused by the Accutane, but things are certainly not the same in my gut since I started the medicine.
About a month ago, my dermatologist recommended that I knock my dose back down. I tried that. No changes. So, I tried taking the pill only every other day. I still wasn’t happy about the side effects. So, I’ve just stopped the medication for now. Unfortunately, my face has started to break out again, especially around my mouth, which makes me feel so pretty. But I’m just not certain I want to continue. I’ve got an appointment at the end of the month to check in, and I plan to discuss all of this. We’ll see where we go from there.
I’ve suspected for a long time that there’s an underlying cause to this rosacea – hormones, maybe, or something to do with my gut, or maybe even my thyroid. Maybe that will be my next step. But for now, I’ll just be here, obsessively applying lotion and hoping that my stomach settles down and I can wear my contacts again one day.
I wonder how many times this year I will be called upon to grieve.
How many times will I grieve for the world, for senseless violence and gleeful cruelty and hatred turned into policy? And how many for my corner of it?
My uncle died yesterday after a short battle with aggressive cancer. He was a good man, though like so many others he wasn’t at his best all the time. I remember a year when he pretended to pour beer on my birthday cake. I also remember singing with him, seeing him smile and laugh and just be there with our family at my parents’ basement karaoke bar, which a family friend lovingly titled “Club Doozie’s.”
That family friend passed away in the fall, after a long battle with aggressive cancer.
Graham lost his aunt in the summer. Her daughter, sick in the end-stages of aggressive cancer, made it to the funeral, and died only a few days later.
And the big one. My dad.
My dad has cancer. I don’t know that he’d like me putting it out there, and to be fair it isn’t my news or my diagnosis to share. But he is mine. And my fear and my grief belong to me, too. He’s never even broken a bone, despite years of sports and motorcycles. His prognosis is good, as far as we know, but to see him struggling with this, to know that cancer might take him from me, feels like something out of a story. Not something out of my own life.
It’s the shock, I think, always. Even if you see it coming. It’s the shock, that moment of “this can’t be happening,” that drags you into the dark.
Right now, we’re living through a regime that wants us shocked. They want us so wrapped up in the news cycle, in atrocities and trauma and broken laws, that we don’t have the space for any other reaction. But grief is a reaction.
Grief is resistance.
To grieve in the face of such abject and inhuman malice, to be soft, to feel pain, that is resistance. To be sad when they want you to be scared, and to feel tears when they want you to feel your heart beat fast in your chest, that is resistance.
And grief is strength. To look sadness and tragedy in the eye and keep going, to feel deeply even when it hurts, to allow yourself that time and space and know that you have to feel it to get through it, that is strength.
This is not the post I’d intended to write today. Or, yesterday, as it were, but the day got away from me. I was going to write about my word of the year for 2026. It’s “LISTEN,” by the way.
But I guess it still works, doesn’t it? I’m up at 4:00 a.m. with a cold and a sinus infection, unable to sleep, taking this quiet time to write, listening to what my brain and my soul need – to get this down on paper, to get it out of my head. I’m listening to my grief, and letting it take its course. When I feel a little better, I’ll listen to my heart, and allow it to lead me this year – to the people I love, to the life I’m building, to the quiet, fallow places that help you grow.
And on that journey, I’ll keep listening to my grief, too. I’ll listen, and I’ll let it open me up like a wound and I’ll bleed out sadness and love, and I’ll share that love with everyone I can.
Because what else can any of us do, in a time like this?
Here’s good:
There is something so surreal and so absolutely,
achingly,
magically,
transcendently beautiful
about watching my mama rock
her granddaughter – my daughter – to sleep.
My heart can barely hold it.
And I know:
It’s not the wars that will keep us safe,
that will keep us going.
It’s the women.
Becoming isn’t just to be.
It is to make,
to create
to sew,
to choose a path and go.
It is to do,
and not get happened to.
It’s to wish that wish
and whatever it is,
to plant it,
tend it,
help it grow,
and in the working know:
Every day is new.
After over a year, we’ve finally sold our beloved Tail Feathers.
It’s a relief, and honestly, feels like a gift after the financial panic we’ve been feeling. We didn’t anticipate it taking so long to sell, but things in Northern Virginia being as uncertain and unstable and scary as they are…well, that’s all I should probably say without getting overtly political.
ANYWAY.
It’s been really tough on both our wallets and our hearts to carry it for so long, is what I’m getting at. And now, it’s done. And boy are we feeling lots of feelings.
It’s bittersweet, saying a final goodbye. It was the first house we ever lived in together that truly felt like a home, and the first we made our own. We’re heartbroken, and we’re relieved, and we’re happy to see it no longer sitting empty and waiting. We left it better than we found it, even if we left it sooner than we thought we would. I hope the new owners enjoy it, and take care of it, and fill it with joy and good memories. I hope they love it just like we did, and more.
With all the stress of the sale – and some health news in the family that is not mine to share – it’s not been quite the holiday season I wanted. But I’m still grateful that we are where we are, able to get back on even footing money-wise, here and happy and loved, and constantly chasing after our beautiful, brave Lucy, who is fascinated by all things Christmas. Sometimes you just have to choose to be happy, and this year, in spite of everything (again, not trying to get overtly political), I am choosing to be happy.
And I hope you are, too. I hope you have a wonderful and happy whatever you celebrate, and that your season has been full of peace and light and good things. As we come into Christmas week, I wish all of us warmth and calm, and love. So much love.
Merry Christmas, and here’s a big hug from me to you. I needed one, and now you have one, too.
We took Lucy to see Santa over the weekend, and well…
She wasn’t scared or anything, but just look at that face!
Bored. So bored. Just utterly unimpressed.
For comparison, this is how she looks at Merlin:
I mean, everyone should find someone who looks at them the way Lucy looks at Merlin.
And the funniest thing about it is, she’s obsessed with all things Christmas and Santa right now. I think maybe it just didn’t click that there was the big guy. But I bet it will next year!
Well, this was just wonderful. 😊
Winter is still my favorite, even now that I live at the beach these days. I never take snow for granted, generally but especially now, and I thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful evening. (And you bet I sat out on my porch in my pajamas and watched it fall!)
Old traditions now
become new.
I will never get tired of building
this beautiful life
with you,
my Lucy Blue.
Our beautiful sunshine girl turned two over the weekend.
Two magical years with this phenomenal little human. Graham and I feel so lucky to be Lucy’s parents.
We did a small get together with friends yesterday to celebrate. We had cake.
And a pizza party. Lucy loves pizza.
And her Papa Bill. (Isn’t this the sweetest picture ever? Oh my goodness.)
I am just amazed by her. She’s so smart and brave and curious, and she teaches me to be in the moment every day. I wasn’t sure, for a long time, if I wanted to be a mother at all, and I’m grateful – so, so grateful – that I’ve got Lucy in my life.
This is the season for giving thanks, and I’m thankful for my Lucy Elizabeth – that she’s strong and healthy and happy, and that I get to watch her grow up.
My heart is very full.
A Virginia Writer's Diary 