This is me thinking out loud. If you’re here, thank you for sitting with it.

I grew up believing that vigilance was wisdom. In my family, you always sat facing the door. You stayed alert.

You didn’t relax too much. This was presented as common sense.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: the other shoe doesn’t drop on its own. It waits.

What I learned early was that certainty was unreliable. Things could change without warning. What looked solid often wasn’t.

You learned to live as if information might arrive late—or not at all.

We were trained in appearances. I could be in the middle of a screaming match with my mother or my aunt, and if the doorbell rang, it was instant smiles. Whatever had been happening disappeared on cue. This was normal. Efficient, even. A skill, really.

Authenticity wasn’t the goal. Containment was. Feelings were fine as long as they didn’t interfere with the story we were telling.

Some truths arrived late. Others were managed. Silence was framed as protection. You learned not to ask too many questions. You learned to read the room instead. This was considered maturity.

What’s odd is that my family saw me as loud. An extrovert. And I was—socially, performatively. I was showy. I was successful. That was an acceptable way to take up space. Achievement translated. It didn’t require clarification.

So I opted for what felt safer.

I stayed visible, but not fully self-determining.

There was a physical cost to all of this. Over time, that silence went somewhere. I ate my way into almost dying.

The other shoe, it turns out, doesn’t drop on its own. It waits.

Lately, I’ve been experimenting with not waiting.

I wouldn’t call it confidence.

I wouldn’t call it clarity.

It’s more like a pause where the old rules don’t quite apply, and no one has issued new ones yet.

I’m not sure what to trust.

But I’m paying closer attention to what no longer feels necessary—which, so far, is a surprising amount.

Well then…here we are.

XO

Ria

There’s a moment after your mother dies that has nothing to do with grief, at least not the kind people recognize. It comes later, quietly, when you realize there is no one above you anymore who knows how this goes.

The org chart flattens. Permanently.

You’re still someone’s child, technically. But not in the way that matters when bodies fail or time accelerates without asking permission. The final buffer is gone. The person who stood between you and the full force of life has exited the building, taking institutional knowledge with her.

I didn’t feel older. I felt exposed. Slightly unsupervised by the universe. Like someone stepped out of the control room and forgot to tell me.

My mother was a young mother, which meant there was never much daylight between her age and mine. I understood this intellectually, but not structurally. When she died, the illusion of distance collapsed. I hadn’t lost someone far ahead of me—I’d lost the person who made it feel like there was still plenty of time.

After that, time got louder. Not dramatic. Just insistent. Less someday, more pay attention. I noticed it first in my body, then in my thoughts, and eventually—in a way I didn’t expect—in how I looked at my children.

Being Less of a Parent

I didn’t feel a rush to be a better parent. That would have been cleaner. More socially acceptable. Instead, I felt an urgency to be less of one.

Less instructional. Less managerial. Less committed to turning every interaction into something useful.

I’ve also noticed an odd urgency to be less of a parent and more of a person in my children’s lives, which is ironic considering how long it took me to become a passable adult. I’m less interested in instructing them now and more curious about how I register as a human in their world. Not a life coach. Not a project manager. Just someone they spent time with. I find myself hoping they’ll remember experiences with me, not lessons—though this is rich, coming from someone who has absolutely tried to turn car rides into TED Talks.

Somewhere in this shift, I also became aware of how fluent we’ve all become in naming ourselves. Trauma. Attachment styles. Neurodivergence. Nervous systems. Origin wounds. I’m not dismissive of any of it. I’ve used the language. I’ve found it helpful.

But I’ve started to notice how easily it turns into a kind of babble. A way of staying safely analytical instead of relational. A way of explaining ourselves so thoroughly that no actual encounter is required.

At a certain point, I don’t want to be understood as a case study. I don’t want to be metabolized through a framework. I want to be met as a person—flawed, specific, occasionally irritating. Someone with a history, not just a diagnosis.

I think this has something to do with losing my mother. With realizing how we remember people once they’re gone. Not by their labels. Not by their theories. But by how it felt to be with them. The tone they carried. The weather they brought into a room.

I Still Want My Mother’s Approval, Which Is Inconvenient Given Her Current Unavailability

I wrote recently about Christmas—about baking endless cookies in pursuit of a mythical holiday readiness she installed in me early and enthusiastically. That instinct didn’t die with her. It just lost its supervisor.

She is not in the building.
The vacancy is real.
Structural.

And yet she’s everywhere.

I hear my mother in cooking. In decorating. In my appreciation for good clothing and beautiful textiles. In her very clear opinion about how far away my daughter and grandchildren live. In the pride I imagine she’d feel when I do something hard.

My mother believed I was Superwoman. There was nothing I couldn’t do. I didn’t always believe her, but lately I miss that certainty. Especially now, when I’m so busy un-becoming—dismantling roles, letting go of old performances—that I find myself missing the steadiness of her conviction when mine wobbles. It was nice, having someone who never questioned the premise.

The loss sneaks up on you like this. Not all at once. Not theatrically. Three years in, it’s easier—and harder—because it’s permanent.

I don’t want to frighten my children with mortality. I just want them rich in me.

I think that’s what I’m paying attention to now—not the end, but what lingers. What stays. How a person becomes part of the fabric without announcing it.

I’m still noticing.
Still listening.
Still learning how to stand here.

Apparently, I’m in charge now.

Well then… here we are.
XO,
Ria

About this space

:

This is where I think out loud and stay present.
No conclusions. No advice. Just attention.

Not long ago, I asked Maggie—my curated AI sidekick, brand manager, and thinking partner—to create an image of what my mental health looked like. I’d seen people doing this on social media. Curiosity…a questionable idea?

The image itself didn’t feel wrong. It matched how things felt internally. What surprised me was Maggie’s explanation—how she described my mind as organized, intentional, still very much online. Oh hell. That was certainly not the state of my current internal report.

Seventy and possibly nuts

From the inside, I was watching what I believed to be my breaking point. A kind of great weakness—physical, mental, possibly theatrical—had toppled a self-image I’d spent decades assembling. I was hovering, checking, assuming every twitch meant something terrible.

Meanwhile, from the outside, I still looked functional.

The gap between what Maggie saw and what I felt caught my attention. Not as reassurance. Just as information. I’d been narrating myself through a megaphone set permanently to emergency.

I’m fine

Somewhere in there, I realized I was still treating mental health like a class I should have tested out of by now. It made me notice how we tend to talk about mental health as if it’s supposed to be done—stabilized, resolved, crossed off a list. Like here’s a gift shop at the end where you buy a tote bag that says I’m Fine Now.

I am new here at Substack and am so excited to be reading about generations of women writing about claiming their lives—clarity, arrival, the sense that something has finally clicked into place. A woman in her twenties subscribed to my writing adding a comment that she liked the idea of powerful women who came before her offering perspective. When I wrote back, I surprised myself by saying there is no clarity—just different stages, different placeholders, depending on how old you are when you’re standing there.

Which immediately reminded me of my own quietly ridiculous belief that I’d already worked out all my trauma and mental-health shit and was, more or less, wrapped. As if the museum had closed. Permanent collection installed. Nothing new rotating in.

I love my kids’ generation. They’re fluent in mental health in a way mine never was—labels, language, shorthand passed around like M&M’s. Meanwhile, here I am, seventy, still double-checking my own work.

Tattoos, Diamonds, and Busy Bees

But the work is never finished. You’re always moving through rooms—some familiar, some newly unlocked, some you wander into by mistake and immediately want to leave.
Which sounds serene. It’s not.

My mind is always working. Turning. Busy like bees—building whether I’ve asked it to or not. After burnout and unanswered medical questions, I was hovering, checking, assuming every twitch meant something terrible.

So, is it really any surprise that, while I was asleep, my psyche dreamt up Lola, diamonds, and busy bees to work my shit out while I was supposed to be resting?

Which brings me back to the dream.

Because the Lola who showed up there wasn’t just my oldest friend. She was the one who ran off with me at seventeen to a tattoo convention—back when we were chasing subculture and the Diane Arbus edges of life. So, it was strange—and quietly funny—that the version of Lola my psyche summoned was older. Still unmistakably herself. Still bold. Still buying her own diamonds.

If my brain insists on working things out even while I’m asleep, it makes sense it would call in someone who’s known me across all the rooms. Someone who’s seen the early exhibits, the wild phases, the quieter wings.

And then, add bees. Apparently, my psyche prefers to work nights.

Well then… here we are.
XO,
Ri

a

Lately, the question I ask myself most often isn’t philosophical.
It’s operational.

Am I falling behind… or is this my wake-up call to finally slow down?

I don’t ask it casually.

I ask it because my body has been unreliable for years now.
Dizzy. Fatigued. Foggy.
Three years. Thirty-seven doctors. No diagnosis.

I ask it because so many of the things I was once certain about no longer hold.
About health.
About aging.
About the future.
About how life was supposed to unfold.

Slowing down used to feel like a choice.
Now it feels imposed.

That changes the math.

Christmas, Apparently

This all came into sharp focus at Christmas.

One day, I realized—too late, obviously—that Christmas was a full week closer than I thought.

Panic.

Suddenly I was baking. Cooking. Planning. Doing.
Cookies. So many cookies.

If you had looked at my Facebook page that week, you would have assumed a hoard of people were arriving on Christmas morning. Possibly with luggage.

Festive abundance.
Traditions upheld.
Competence on full display.

In reality:
Me.
My partner.
My son.
One good friend.

Four people.
One table.
No choir.

Yet I behaved as if I were hosting a lifestyle tribunal.
As if someone would arrive with a clipboard.
As if Christmas morning came with performance reviews.

My freezer is now filled with uneaten, slightly stale Christmas cookies.

Evidence.

Of expectations no one placed on me.
Of standards no one asked for.
Of pressure I generated entirely on my own.

The Pressure Wasn’t the Holiday

I wasn’t responding to Christmas.

I was responding to an internal script.

The Hallmark version.
The inherited version.
The version that once proved I was doing life correctly.

And I exhausted myself trying to recreate it for an audience that did not exist.

That’s when I saw it clearly:

This wasn’t about Christmas.
This is the pressure I live with every day.

Radical vs. Brutal Honesty

For most of my life, momentum validated me.
Deadlines created clarity.
Work proved worth.

I didn’t ask why I was moving.
I just moved.

The system rewarded that version of me.

Until it didn’t.

What I’m learning—slowly, imperfectly—is that radical self-honesty is not the same thing as brutal honesty.

Brutal honesty is often honesty with force behind it.
Truth as performance.
Truth with casualties.

You wanted me to be honest, people say—
as if honesty requires damage to count.

Radical self-honesty is quieter.

It doesn’t start with other people.
It doesn’t announce itself.
It doesn’t need witnesses.

It’s the daily decision to stop lying to myself in order to preserve an identity.

The Truth I’m Sitting With

Here it is:

I still tolerate intense internal pressure not because it’s required,
but because it validates the old version of me.

The capable one.
The fast one.
The one who could do it all.

That pressure reassures who I was.
And exhausts who I am.

The stress.
The drive.
The urgency I once admired.

It used to make me successful.

Now it’s the protagonist.

A Different Question

Slowing down doesn’t just threaten productivity.
It threatens the story I’ve told about myself.

If I’m not moving, am I disappearing?
If I’m resting, am I opting out?

So I’m asking a different question now:

What am I capable of today
without borrowing energy from tomorrow?

That’s not giving up.
That’s accuracy.

I don’t have this figured out.
I’ve stopped pretending that I do.

The brave, unstoppable version of me isn’t gone.
She’s just not in charge anymore.

I’m choosing accuracy over aspiration.
Listening instead of overriding.
Letting this no longer works be enough information.

Well then…here we are.
XO,
Ria

About this space: This is where I think out loud and stay present. No conclusions. No advice. Just attention.

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There is snow outside this morning.
The quiet kind.
The kind that briefly contains the world.

I’m making blueberry pancakes.

This feels almost absurd given what’s happening — not just out there, but everywhere. The headlines read like warnings we once believed belonged safely in history books. The tone of the world has shifted. It’s sharp. Unsettled. Your body knows it before your mind can catch up.

And still — Sunday morning.
Still — snow.
Still — blueberry pancakes.

This isn’t denial.
It’s survival.

When the world feels unrecognizable, we reach for what is recognizable. Not because we’re naïve, but because the nervous system needs somewhere to land. Ritual becomes a handhold. Ordinary things remind us we’re still here.

This is why my phone is off today.
Why my contact with others is limited.

It’s not withdrawal. It’s containment. There is only so much noise a person can absorb before it starts to erode something essential.

What unsettles me most isn’t just the turmoil — it’s how quickly coherence has dissolved. The rules feel scrambled. The language feels distorted. Shared reality feels thin. And in moments like this, comfort can look dangerously close to complacency.

So, there’s a negotiation happening inside me.

How do you stay awake without becoming unlivable to yourself?
How do you resist what feels wrong without hardening into someone you don’t recognize?
How do you hold onto what comforts you without surrendering your voice?

In my forties, I honestly believed I’d figured life out. I said — out loud — that I was living a big, unapologetic life without a single regret. I believed clarity was something you could arrive at and then keep, if you were brave and self-aware enough.

That confidence now feels… charming.
And incomplete.

Because here I am in my seventies, unbecoming so many things I once thought I had to become — not out of failure, but out of listening. What no one tells you is that your voice doesn’t stay fixed. It changes with age, with grief, with context, with history pressing in.

The voice I’m listening for now is quieter, but firmer. Less interested in being impressive. More interested in being true — even when true feels unresolved or inconvenient.

As cold as it is in my snowy studio garage, today I will paint.

I may paint nothing at all.
I may paint something extraordinary.
I will paint badly. I will paint well.

But I will paint — because right now it is the one thing that feels within my control. A way to say: I am here. I see this. I witness this. And I do not accept it.

Maybe today I will paint in shades of blue.

Blue for the melancholy that envelops me.
Blue for the hope that blue skies still exist somewhere beyond this.
Blue to anchor myself in mourning.
Blue for pancakes — and the blueberries in them.
Blue for the Patriots football team, playing today in the same snow out in Denver, the irony of the name not lost on me.
Blue because somewhere inside the paint, I suspect there is still light.

And when I’m done, I will write.

I will write to whoever will listen.
I will ask questions I don’t yet have answers for.
I will refuse silence — even when I feel helpless, even when I feel hopeless, even when I doubt that one person can make much difference at all.

I will go back inside and I will write — to say I was here,

I saw this,

and I did not look away.

Postscript:

When I say that after I paint, I will write, this is what I mean. Writing is how I place myself on the record — not to persuade or prescribe, but to witness. Calls, emails, letters, and words put into the world are logged, read, categorized; clarity carries further than noise. Essays, letters to editors, personal writing — these become traceable artifacts of a moment. Writing publicly is how I name what I see and refuse silence. In these moments of profound unease, it’s natural to feel a crushing helplessness, a sense that one individual cannot possibly shift the course of this shameful American history. But that feeling, while understandable, is not the whole truth. Your voice matters. Your senators and congresspeople need to hear it. Write to them. Demand they vote to not fund ICE. This is how we refuse to disappear quietly. Encouraging others to do the same is how I keep helplessness from taking hold. History isn’t shaped only by how votes land, but by who spoke, who noticed, and who chose not to disappear quietly.

TELL THEM NO MORE FUNDING FOR ICE.

TELL THEM WE’RE WATCHING.