I'd Choose to Be a Woman in Every Lifetime
Late Night Thoughts & Jalapeños in the Freezer 🌶️
So I’m lying there at 2 am again, you know how it goes. Phone in hand, about to do the thing we all do, scroll until my eyes burn and my anxiety finds seventeen new things to worry about.
But I didn’t.
Started pulling photos instead. Women who've made me feel less alone in this world. Strong women who've changed everything. I typed this one sentence over them:
“I’d choose to be a woman in every lifetime.”
Hit post. Phone down. Actually slept.
When I woke up, my phone was losing its mind. Thousands of messages from women saying the exact same thing. Every lifetime. Every single one.
Here’s what got me: Not just that they’d choose it again. But that they’d choose it knowing everything.
Knowing the weight that settles into our bones before we even understand what it is. The guilt we inherit. The way our minds run scenarios at 2 am. The impossible math of being everything to everyone while slowly erasing ourselves from the equation.
I’ve been reading these comments for three days straight. Women writing about their daughters who make them brave. Their mothers who survived things they’ll never fully know. The way they are raising their sons. Their friends who answered the phone at midnight, no questions asked.
Women saying: yes, it’s brutal; yes, I’d do it again; yes, we’re going to fix this together.
Here are just a few:
We hold impossible things at the same time. Rage and tenderness in the same breath. Exhaustion, and still somehow, hope. We can hold all the pain of it and still choose this. Still choose each other. Every single time.
Reading these thousands of messages, I remembered something I’d forgotten: we’ve never actually been alone in this. Not once. Not ever.
To choosing this lifetime. To choosing each other. Everytime.
Thank you for being here. For choosing to show up in this little corner of the internet we’re building together.
Growing up, my mom would take me to Walgreens for “just one thing,” and we’d end up standing in the magazine aisle for what felt like hours. She looked through every home and garden magazine, turning pages and pointing out rooms, until she finally picked a few to buy.
At the time, I didn’t know she was doing more than just browsing. She was collecting proof that beautiful things were possible. Even when life was hard, she tore out pages and pictured something in her mind that no one could take from her. She even drew her dream house years before she had it. But that’s a story for another time.
That’s what I want this to be for you: your weekly magazine moment. Something you actually look forward to opening. We gather the good stuff and save it for when we need it. We build this together, just like women always have, by sharing what’s good.
This week, I’m trying a new layout. Let me know what you like and what you don’t. We really are building this together.
Currently Into
Those handmade marble switch plates make you feel like you have your life together just by changing out a piece of plastic.
Sophie Cooney’s Stair Runners: Three years of screenshots. This is the year.
And Lowe’s olive trees for $39, mine’s been alive for three whole weeks, which is basically a miracle.
The Best Thing I Bought Wrong
Stay with me here. I grabbed Sleeping Queens, thinking it was for Hudson’s Yoto player. Wrong. It’s a card game. Almost returned it because, honestly, who needs another thing to lose pieces of? But on day 3 of Christmas break, we tried it.
My dad now texts, “Queens tonight?”
My brother, who hasn’t voluntarily played a card game since 2003, talks actual trash about stealing my Pancake Queen. We’ve played it maybe 20 times since Christmas. For $12, I accidentally bought the thing that makes everyone forget their phones exist for 30 minutes (45 if we go into overtime).
What I’m actually wearing:
Underoutfit’s Now Sunday set in navy. Got them Monday. It’s Friday. I’ve worn them three times. Already washed twice (spilled coffee, then Hudson’s juice box explosion). Here’s what matters: they still look new. I’ve spent embarrassing money on athletic wear that dies after two washes. These are $40. The math is mathing, and I am impressed!
My favorites: NowSunday Legging | Tank Cami | The Neckline Bra
The $3 solution:
Yellow legal pads. I have a drawer of beautiful notebooks that people have given me. Leather ones, handmade ones, ones that cost more than a nice lunch. My brain only works on yellow legal pads. I’ve stopped fighting it since my husband brought back a 3-pack.
What’s for dinner tonight:
Texas is pretending to be cold (38 degrees, we’re so dramatic), so it’s fideo weekend. Think tomato-y, noodle-y comfort in a bowl. The kind of thing that makes your house smell like joy.
Kitchen hack I can’t stop talking about:
Been freezing whole jalapeños and grating them over everything like fancy parmesan. Changed my whole life. Try it on eggs tomorrow morning, thank me later.
The Deep Dive: Everything Breaking in January Isn’t Your Imagination
Your furnace, your dishwasher, & that weird smell. January is when houses throw tantrums.
Made you the maintenance checklist I wish someone had given me before I googled “house making weird noise” at 2 am. Starting with: when did you last clean your dryer vent? (Not the lint trap. The actual vent.) Yeah, that’s what I thought.