Today, republishing an essay from the archives.

“There are years that ask questions and years that answer.” – Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

This quote made me sit upright in my chair: wow.  It brought to mind Alison’s response to my jagged musings on 2017: “Some years pass kind of quietly and others you come out at the end a completely different person than when you started. It’s clear this one was the latter!”

Last year asked a lot of questions.  Come to think of it, last year asked a lot of me, full-stop.  It was an intense, unwieldy, incessant series of swoops and dips into stress, emotions, and challenges I’d not anticipated.  I became a mother, I recovered from a c-section, I closed a business, I moved cities, I bungled through a botched move, I parted ways with a home, I metamorphosed into an entirely new kind of work.  I did not always handle the turbulence elegantly.  I remember stepping into the glass-walled shower of our old Chicago home about eight or nine days after mini was born, turning on the water, and sobbing for no reason and every reason.  I am a crier by nature, but this was different: I could not give a name to the intensity of what I was feeling.  “Why am I crying?” I wondered, groping for the familiar shapes of disappointment, or frustration, or hurt, or tenderness and emerging empty-handed.

Now I know: it was the agony of change, offset by painkillers and hormones from mini’s delivery, shot through with the thrill and potency of new parenthood.

I wouldn’t say that 2018 has presented me with answers, exactly, as I still have only the haziest idea of what the future will hold.  But 2018 is an answer, even if I haven’t yet discerned its meaning.  It has the feel of resolution, of a page turned.  “Here, then: the next chapter.”

What about you?  Is 2018 a year that is asking questions or answering?

Shopping Break.

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+ Shop all my favorites here and Le Shop here.

+ I own many Dorsey pieces, but their Clemence necklace is my long-time favorite – easy to layer but elegant on its own against a bare neckline!

+ Tory Burch Romy Tote – perfect work/everyday mom bag. Find more of my favorite tote picks here.

+ Obsessed with these Rag & Bone widelegs!  Probably one of my top two or three most worn pairs of jeans.

+ One of my all-time favorite tees from Ayr – a perfect hybrid between a tee and a sweatshirt.

P.S. On Being High Maintenance to Be Low Maintenance.

P.P.S. Let Them Be Wrong about You.

P.P.P.S. So I’m Back to the Velvet Underground.