#10: This is only the beginning…. and we’ve already come so far!
A personal message from Sue.
Dear subscribers,
We have arrived at Post #10! Hurray!
In honor of this milestone, I’m offering you a different sort of post today. Not action-oriented or goal-driven, not asking you to think about a hard topic or write a challenging idea down. Instead, this is a pause-and-reflect missive…
We’re taking a moment to:
look back and be amazed by how far we’ve come,
reflect on the allies, ingredients, and synchronicities that got us here,
and get excited about where we’re headed!
But before we dive in, from my very core I want to express my unending appreciation for your readership, your comments, your likes, your support, and your sharing of posts.
I’m here to change the world… which can only happen in partnership with you.
The secret ingredients of The Luminist:
Being blown away every day, in a million ways.
I launched this newsletter on the sixth anniversary of my husband’s death. I’d been talking to people (incessantly!) about shining a light on death to help us console better, suffer less, and live more vibrant lives for years… because that is my personal experience.
I want to shout it from the rooftops!
I cannot continue living a life so full of meaning, connection, and — honestly — magic, without trying my hardest to bring it to you too. Without asking everyone who will listen to join me in living this way.
Ideas for posts pop into my head at all hours of the day. If you are part of my day-to-day life, after just about any conversation you hear me say, “I need to write about that!!”
There are topics galore yet to explore. I see each post as a delivery mechanism for information, stories, quotes, observations and wisdom that in turn makes you think, talk, and act… all in the service of building your own vibrant life.
Because when we talk about death, what we are really talking about is life.
While The Luminist is my passion project, my meaning maker, my purpose in life, I also have a day job that provides for my family! I am a globe-trotting business executive.
I recorded the first Luminist post inside the closet of my hotel room in Kuwait.
I listened to a small child giggling gleefully at her dad’s peekaboo game in the Brussels train station and added that to post #6: The radiance of dailiness.
I’ve written drafts on trains, planes, and in hotel rooms during 2am sleepless jags, somehow extracting words from my time-zone-addled brain.
Which brings me to the next ingredient:
Just the right amount of chaos & random connection.
Traveling shakes up my senses, opening me to the beauty of things I have never seen, and the beauty of conversations with people I know and don’t know.
There is nothing like flying 35,000 feet above the ground in a tin can over large distances to prompt your brain to think differently.
And there is nothing like serendipitous conversations with total strangers — taxi drivers, fellow passengers, people down the counter at the bar — to remind me of how important and universal this work is! I am exceedingly grateful to be let into the most tender parts of people‘s lives and to be trusted with their stories.
The Luminist thrives on input from other brains, other humans, other experiences… (Yes, that is a sneaky request for more comments!)
Collaboration.
Although the initial ideas are mine, my collaborator and editor Leona brings her own experience with death — and living a vibrant life — to what we produce.
We iterate through the post in a week, bouncing it back and forth like a pingpong ball, until we have finally created something that neither of us saw in the first draft — magic!
And finally, endless, endless, endless motivation to improve lives.
I am a fan the Substack
. In a post late last year, Paul shared his guiding star that brings him back to write over and over again:“Helping people live courageously so that they can thrive is one of the most important things in the world. I want to see people live the lives they are capable of, not just the ones they think they are allowed to have.”
Amen to that! I want to achieve a version of this through The Luminist too.
I want to see people live vibrant lives, not just the ones they think they are supposed to have — or society expects them to have — after loss.
Where that mission has taken us…
We’ve quoted Joan Didion and Bruce Springsteen, referenced the experiences of Mike Shinoda and Franco Harris, and talked about how Star Wars can be a salve to your wounds in the toughest times.
We’ve shown you beautiful photos of nature and the ceiling of the DC airport, silly cartoon drawings, and lots of selfies with my kids.
We’ve swelled to over 60 subscribers! (More endless & profuse gratitude to you, dear reader.) And in the next ten posts, we’re shooting to break 100.
And holy smokes… the paradoxes and insights we’ve uncovered about life & death!
Here are a few of the mental rubik’s cubes we’ve played with so far (with many more to come!):
Avoiding thinking about death makes it worse… not better.
By not talking about death, we’re making the monster under the bed scarier.
Death and loss are scary and hard and debilitating enough. Combining it with humans’ general fear of the unknown seems like twisting the knife.
What’s more, we are depriving ourselves of the opportunity to learn how to manage it better. To dance with it better. To make the rest of our lives better. Yes. To make the rest of our lives better.
~ #1: Why talking about grief and loss (not just when someone dies) really matters.
Equations, logic, limits just don’t work when trying to explain life & death (or the human experience in general).
Grief is not linear. (Just like love is not linear. Growing up is not linear. Pushing through limits is not linear. Accepting and surrendering is not linear.)
Grief is an individual experience and each griever's emotions will be different… At a different volume and intensity, showing up unbidden in the early days and continuously, sporadically resurfacing at times we cannot predict.
It is messy and disordered. It is the human experience. We should expect nothing less.
So why do we keep trying to fit it — fit ourselves — into boxes?
~ #5: Demystifying the griever’s mind.
The fullness of loss helps us remember the fullness of life.
Maybe it was by some unconscious choice, or maybe it was just time for the season of grief to change…
Whatever the reason, I began to notice my surroundings in a new way. I made a new discovery in the natural world every day that lit up my brain and my body with curiosity and wonder.
I felt like a child, but with the gratitude and appreciation of an adult… who never thought she would touch joy again. But now, I would never take it for granted again.
~ #2: Why I wouldn’t trade away the grief.
Magic, miraculous, divine are subjective titles… and thus available by choice.
While we search for fulfillment and/or happiness in all the modern places — money, prestige, beauty, success, pick your poison — the entrance to the path is hiding in plain sight. Daily sight…
The taste of a raspberry exploding in your mouth. The tinkling belly-laughter of a small child playing peek-a-boo with her father. The feeling of acceptance and intimacy and belonging as you gab comfortably with your good friend.
These aren’t unique moments! They are common denominators in many, if not all, of our lives!
~ #6: The radiance in dailiness.
Maybe we’re numb to certain miracles because they surround us.
Maybe we’re numb to others because they live inside of us.
Contemplating our deaths reminds us what matters in our lives.
Defining what we are actually afraid of helps us better understand the mystery of life.
Because it turns out many of us fear something more than dying — we fear not living.
~ #3: What are we actually afraid of?
When confronted with the abyss, we realize we have few offerings more powerful than companionship, support, and compassion.
When we lose people we care about, their disappearance creates a space in their shape… a space that helps us realize their true impact.
It’s like the outer trappings of the person fall away — the parts of them that were impressive, enviable even, but superficial — similar to the layers of a Russian nesting doll.
We forget their achievements and accomplishments because they pale in comparison to their core, their humanity, their heart — the part of them that we will never stop missing.
The part that made the world a better place.
~ #9: Life beyond the Immaculate Reception.
When in doubt, offer your compassion before your logic.
Bearing witness is about abiding alongside those who have lost — just being with them as they struggle through the waves in their journey.
Not fixing, not solving, not offering advice.
Just being.
When we are grieving, it is all we can do to survive — to float.
And someone sitting there with us — without explaining to us that we just need to learn how to swim, that we never should have been in the ocean in the first place, that they once had a friend floating in the ocean, or that all floating happens for a reason — dignifies us.
It honors that we are doing the best we can.
Connection is so much more than the sum of its parts.
When we receive, we also give something to the giver — the intangible but irreplaceable feeling of making a difference. Of not just being a helpless bystander. Of contributing to life-changing, even life-saving work.
1 + 1 = 11.
Everyone leaves with more than they had before.
Everyone feels more connected than they did before.
Everyone is fulfilling their own needs more than they were before (example: the burnt-out get to sleep and the antsy get to help.)
This is the new math we have to use when doing human calculations. Here, addition doesn’t exists.
It’s replaced by exponential expansion of caring, of connection… of love.
And after all that reflecting back, I hope you are wondering what’s ahead!
Where The Luminist is headed next…
Here are a few things I’m psyched to jump into in future posts:
Mystery is my religion.
Time is not just a unit of measurement.
Memory is not what you suspect.
Paradox is the closest we can come to comprehending life. (Quoting Carl Jung here!)
Looking forward to spending future Saturdays with you discussing these topics.
And looking forward even more to continued connection with you… and your vibrant life.
With heartfelt gratitude and excitement for what’s around the bend…
Until next Saturday,
Sue
Keep reading with these related articles from The Luminist:
thanks for the shoutout!
Really looking forward to those future topics!