My best life

Monday was one of those glorious late-February days that come along once in a never but this year have warmed the hearts and toes of many a Michigander for some reason I’ll leave to the meteorologists to decipher.

My to-do list looked at me crosswise, the items I’d dutifully promised to cross off still flagrantly uncrossed. I didn’t care. It was nice out. I grabbed a book and slipped out the back door.

I relish a walk that takes me past the yards and homes and hidey-holes in our neighborhood. I love strolling along, my eyes taking in the textures and the trinkets of other people’s lives, occasionally running across – not literally – an emboldened squirrel willing to play hide-and-seek with me on a tree trunk.

But I also love a good reading walk. Something about the rhythm of striding down a sidewalk makes the words of a good book better. You get some weird looks from other pedestrians once in a while, but nobody really minds as long as you don’t bump into a telephone pole.

I was getting ready to cross a street when a woman out walking her dog approached along the far sidewalk. We exchanged smiles as our paths crossed. She gestured cheerfully at my book.

“You’re just living your best life,” she said. “I love it.”

We went our separate ways, she with her cute doggo, I pondering what she’d said.

She clearly was a book person, herself. Book people recognize a good place to read when they see one. Her smile and friendly eyes said walking while reading struck her as something worth doing.

Interesting. In that simple moment, open book in my hands and sidewalk sliding under my feet, I was doing something someone else thought looked pretty doggone appealing.

*A brief side note, here: I’m currently finishing the book “Just Mercy” by Bryan Stevenson. It’s a serious nonfiction book written by an attorney who has fought fiercely against cruelty and injustice in our legal system. The book is intelligent, persuasive, compassionate, and deeply human, and it made me cry. I highly recommend it.

Living my best life, the woman had said.

I worry a lot that I’m not, in fact, living a very good life. I regularly feel like, somewhere along the way, I missed the instruction sheet everyone else seems to have gotten – the one that tells humans how to act, how to parent, how to be a Good Human.

If I were, indeed, living as best I can, I think I’d be kinder. I’d be less prideful. I’d have given my kids more wisdom as they grew and cooked better meals. I’d have dedicated my days to work that changed lives for the better instead of arriving at the half-century mark feeling like I’d contributed no more than about three years’ worth of meaningful work to the world.

I should do better, the voice inside my head tells me, harshly and without ceasing.

The woman with the dog wasn’t talking about that kind of good life, of course.

“Living your best life” is one of those expressions that pops up out of nowhere (the internet attributes it to either Oprah or a rapper, but who knows) and suddenly enters everyone’s vocabulary, not meaning a whole heck of a lot and running the very high risk of becoming exceedingly annoying.

Sure, it’s subject to overuse, and if you wanted to, you could say all kinds of negative things about the phrase. But, with my book on the sidewalk, I found myself warmed by it, at least for a moment.

Maybe I don’t do life as well as I’d like.

But, in that moment, I was doing something purely because it made me happy. And it felt good.

We’re never going to get it all right. Even if we tried our darndest, we’re still sinful beings who are going to stumble and fall and do dumb things and never measure up to whatever standard we set for ourselves.

But, in the midst of that, we get to experience joy.

I forget about joy sometimes. On gloomy days, when nothing seems right and I’m kicking myself harder than usual or throwing myself a little pity party because things aren’t going my way, I sink into a circle of never-gonna-get-better and refuse to consider happiness as an option.

And then a robin twitters from the top branch of a tree and your heart does a little skip and you remember: ah, yes. This.

Moments of joy may not last, and they may be brief. But we may as well dive into them with arms wide open, appreciating them for all they’re worth.

Walks with books, or with dogs. A warm cat purring on your lap. The cardinal outside your window, tilting his head this way and that as though he’s inspecting you. Your favorite can’t-resist song coming on Pandora as you’re writing a blog post (“Staying Alive,” obviously). Getting up, cranking up the volume, and having a little dance party in the kitchen. That first, delicious moment when you crawl into bed and nestle your head into the pillow.

Good moments. Little gifts. Bursts of joy that strengthen us for the battle.

Yesterday I wrote at my favorite Jackson coffee shop for a while. Near my table, a woman had taken ownership of one of the shop’s comfy-looking armchairs. An adorable hat with 1920’s vibes on her head, she had her booted feet propped up on one arm of the chair and was engrossed in a hardbound book that looked like it smelled good.

I had the urge to go tap her on the shoulder and tell her she was happy. That she was living, at least for the moment, her best life – that she should see it, feel it, soak it in and cherish it.

I didn’t, of course. I would only have interrupted her happy moment. Plus, people don’t just point out each other’s happiness. That’s weird, right?

Then again, maybe we’d be better off if we reminded each other to see the snippets of good in our lives so we don’t miss them, at least not quite so often.

Either way, I think it’s OK I didn’t go tell my coffee shop reader she was experiencing joy.

I’m pretty sure she already knew.

omg. lol.

Want to hear about something that made me happy yesterday?

A guy named Adam Newbold, who lives in Kentucky and understands computer language, created an online space where people like him can do small-scale computer-nerd things and talk about stuff they love.

The website's address? omg.lol.

I don’t remember how I found Adam's little corner of the internet, but I could tell right away that it was created by someone who was just doing his human thing, being neighborly and creating something he hoped might make people smile.

Humans really discourage me sometimes.   …I was going to say more about that, but I don’t think I need to. You’ve seen humans. You know what I mean.

Sometimes, though, they’re just really great. They give with their hearts and love with gusto and surprise you with kindness and put little smiley face hearts on their websites just to make people happy.

I like that a lot.

A couple of hours ago, I had one of those moments when you stand still in the middle of the kitchen, wondering when you’re going to feel like a Real Human Adult Who is Succeeding At Life instead of a kid in grownups’ clothing.

Maybe some people actually do achieve internal adulthood. Goodness knows, the people I admire most certainly LOOK like they’ve got it all together.

But I bet most people are kinda a mess inside like I am, at least sometimes.

And I think maybe it’s our messiness that makes humans so dang lovable.

Messy-inside people are the ones who know the importance of websites where people can be kind. They know the value of simplicity and generosity and cute drawings. They know how much it means to have some little, silly thing to be happy about.

Adam From Kentucky realized, because computer people know these things, that he could create websites ending in letters other than .com or .org. And he decided to have fun with that.

I don’t understand how any of this works, but I am now, thanks to Adam, the proud owner of the world’s simplest web page. It’s address? julieriddle.omg.lol. I just think that’s fantastic.

Not gonna lie, I’m not sure where I was going with this blog post. I know it isn’t saying much of anything. But blogs are intended to be places to put thoughts, and thoughts don’t always come out neatly. I needed this post for me, to try to tap into the fuzzy lump of feeling in my chest tonight that’s making me a little teary-eyed and I don’t know why.

OK, time to put the computer away. I hear a carton of cookie dough ice cream calling my name. If you are human and sometimes feel messy, know that you’re not alone. And if you want to make me smile, email me at the incredibly fun and totally legit address of julieriddle@omg.lol. Because sometimes being a little silly just makes you feel better. And we all need to feel better sometimes.

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I truly don't understand Adam's stuff. But you can check it out at home.omg.lol, if you want. I'm not endorsing anything you will find there because I'm not knowledgeable enough to do so. Oh, and he also made a cool calendar that's a whole year all on one piece of paper. You can find that at neatnik.net/calendar, if you're interested.

Following a truck

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Then again, most bad ideas do.

Just after daybreak last Thursday morning, I loaded my car and pulled out of the driveway of the little cabin I'd rented Up North. After spending the better part of three weeks working on a project in Alpena, I was eager to get home to my family downstate.

Weather forecasters firmly warned drivers to stay off the roads because of an impending snowstorm. But I missed home. I missed my family. And my son had a music recital that night, and I wasn’t going to miss it.

By the time I got going, snow had already clobbered my usual routes home through the middle of the state. But the storm hadn’t yet hit the east side, where U.S.-23 traces the shore of Lake Huron. I decided to give it a shot.

Yeah, I shouldn’t have done that.

I don’t know where I was when my windshield started to ice over. Even my newish wiper blades were no match for the wet, gloppy snow that thickened as soon as it hit my windshield, freezing to my blades and leaving a smear of slush right in front of my eyes.

I couldn’t turn the wipers off, or the snow would have blinded me like a car wash. And I couldn’t stop to clean off the ice buildup. By then, the roads had dissolved into white plains flanked by dark walls you only assumed were trees. There was no turning, no stopping. No buildings, no side roads, no anything but the white below you and the white around you and the deep, driving knowledge that any stray jiggle of the wheel or errant tap of the brake would send you careening into nothingness.

I’ve been a northern Michigan girl for a dozen years now. I’ve driven my share of snowstorms and had plenty of practice navigating a two-ton hunk of metal in complete whiteout conditions.

My coping strategy is to tune the radio to the most raucous song I can find, crank it up, and turn the storm into a dance party. The way I see it, freaking out about the inherent danger of the storm won’t make me a safer driver. I’m better off trying to get my body to un-tense and pretend it’s having fun. If headbanging to Queen helps, who am I to question it?

With Joan Jett blasting from my radio, I hunched and leaned above the steering wheel, trying to see under or around the slush blocking my view of what I assumed was still U.S.-23. I had passed through one small town and thought about pulling off the road, but no hospitable driveways presented themselves.

Besides, I was still following my truck.

Shortly after I turned onto U.S.-23, I found myself behind a white, mid-sized delivery truck. If it had logos on the side saying what company operated it, I couldn’t see them ― all I saw was the flat, dirty-white rectangle of its back end relentlessly ahead of me.

I can get as impatient as the next driver when I’m stuck behind a truck. Sometimes I make little runs around them in openings in opposite traffic, feeling a little superior as I dart back into my lane and take off at my higher speed.

But in the snowstorm, the truck in front of me became not a nuisance but a lifeline.

Swallowed by the angry snow, my windshield half iced over, I gratefully stayed behind my white truck, eyes on its backside.

I couldn’t see a lot, but I could see the truck. As long as it stayed on the road, I would stay on the road. I just had to follow.

Once or twice, the truck pulled away from me and half disappeared in the snow. “Don’t leave me,” I pleaded aloud, breathing with relief when I caught up to it again.

The truck’s driver had to wonder what she was doing out in that storm. (I don’t know if the driver was female, but that’s the image I had in my mind.) I bet she had a heck of a time seeing the road. I bet her window was freezing up, too.

I wish I knew what she was carrying and why she had to brave the drive. Even more than that, I wish I could thank her.

She didn’t know she was leading me. But, as she navigated her own difficult drive, she showed me which way to go and left tracks for me to follow.

She helped me be OK.

Storms don’t stop when the weather clears up. We all navigate our own tricky roads and fight our own battles, big and small. Sometimes we struggle to see what’s ahead. We get nervous and afraid and crank up the distractions to help ourselves cope.

In the jarring whiteness, often we only see ourselves, lost in the middle of it.

But we’re not alone on the road.

If we're lucky, we have someone ahead of us, whose example we can follow.

Other times, without our ever knowing it, someone may be following us, watching what we do and using it to help them stay on course.

The daughter, seeing her mother stand firm when the world tells her to be weak.

The son, learning from his father to answer anger with kindness.

The person behind you in line, listening to your patient response to the grumpy cashier.

Kids watching teachers and teachers watching kids. Brothers and sisters and hairdressers and construction workers and crossing guards, all watching each other, learning, following, keeping each other on the road.

I lost sight of my truck for the last time near Standish. By then, the snow was lightening. A stop at a gas station gave me a chance to clear my wiper blades. I kept my speed down and remained safely on the road the rest of the way home, despite the half-dozen cars I passed that had spiraled off of the road and into the ditch.

I wonder if anyone stayed safe because they were following me.

Do what’s right because it’s right, but also because you can lead someone else on the right path. Ask for help when you need it, knowing you’re showing someone else it’s OK to need each other. Stay on the road you want someone watching you to follow.

Easier said than done, of course. But we can try. We sure can try.

And, to the driver of that white delivery truck: thank you for helping me get home.

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If you’d like an email notification when I post something new on this blog, email me at juliemarshmallows@gmail.com or, if you can find it, share your email address in the appropriate signup box. I’m still wrestling with technology in my attempt to make that more findable.

I’d be honored if you would share this post with anyone you think might appreciate it. Especially if they drive trucks for a living.

Winter isn’t over, at least in Michigan. Stay safe out there. And if you do get caught in a snowstorm, well then, have yourself a little dance party!

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Oh, and a word about the photos: they are not from my drive. Yes, I DID think about getting out my phone and taking a picture of my frozen windshield and guardian truck as I was driving. But I did NOT do that, and I think I get credit for my self-restraint.

(The second photo is the only photo of falling snow I could find in my collection. Bonus points to any of my Alpena friends who can identify where it was taken.)

Numbers to make the blood boil

 *Author’s note: This post mentions domestic violence and may be upsetting for some readers.

After this post, I’m going to take a break from posts that talk exclusively about very serious topics. I need this to be a place where I can write about cross-country races and coffee shops and other everyday-life things. And the people who read this post need a break from heartbreak.

I will continue researching and writing about those serious topics – just not here. I need to find a place where I can join conversations already happening among people deeply invested in the same issues that spark a fire in me. 

For now, though, I can’t not say this.

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Nearly 50,000 Michigan women were hit, choked, kicked, drugged, cut, raped, stalked, threatened with a gun, isolated, financially trapped, terrorized, intimidated, harassed, or otherwise victimized by someone with whom they were in an intimate relationship last year.

No, that number isn't right. Not 50,000.

That’s just the number of women who reported the abuse to police.

Many abused women never tell anyone about the abuse. Studies indicate one in four women experience severe physical violence from an intimate partner in their lifetime.

One in four. One in freaking four.

I just attended the trial of a man convicted of strangling a 17-year-old girl to death, then shooting a 31-year-old woman he thought was going to rat him out to police.

So much of this case infuriates anyone who hears it. The senseless and utterly inexcusable violence makes the blood boil til it burns. No girl should die with a man’s hands around her neck, then be tossed in a back yard grave. No woman should lie lifeless in the woods for weeks, shot to shut her up.

But what burns hottest right this moment, several days after the jury handed down their guilty verdict, is not the violence that ended these two lives.

It’s the violence that came before it.

The same violence more than 50,000 Michigan women experienced last year.

Teenage Brynn was badly beaten before she died, with head-to-toe bruises left behind to bear witness.

Before she was executed in the woods, if witnesses were telling the truth, Abby was choked, hit, and screamed at by her killer when she wanted to leave. Witnesses said he treated Abby like property, taking away her phones and her liberty, using other people to control her, and, according to one witness, trying to sell her to his friends for sex.

The murders happened while the defendant was on bond for a domestic violence charge. A former girlfriend told police he pulled her from a car, snarling, “Listen here, bitch,” then shoved her onto a couch while she was holding their child. Another time, she said, he picked her up by her neck and threw her on the floor. He was good at cutting off her windpipe in a way that didn’t leave fingerprints, the woman told police.

Michigan State Police statistics report an alarming increase in strangulation as a weapon by domestic abusers. Last year, 326 Michiganders reported being strangled by an intimate partner ― a whopping 600% increase in the past decade.

And abusers who strangle tend to do it again, studies show. A certain grip, requiring very little pressure, can render a victim unconscious in seconds, giving abusers the feeling of control they crave. Repeated strangulation, which can leave no marks, can damage the brain and cause symptoms similar to dementia. 

Strangulation is also a predictor of worse violence. Statistically, a woman who has been strangled once is seven times more likely to eventually be killed by the person who strangled her than other women in abusive relationships.

Of course, abusers use many other tools to maintain power. They use verbal cruelty. They use bank accounts. They use their fists. Of the 70,000 people ― including men and children ― who reported domestic abuse in Michigan last year, 40,000 were assaulted by a “personal weapon.” That’s police lingo for hands, feet, knees, or any other body part that can inflict pain.

Good Lord. More than 40,000 women, men, and children, hit and kicked by people they thought loved them.

Just last year.

Just the ones who reported it.

These murders happened in a small city in a rural area where, as the locals say over and over, everyone knows everyone.

It’s hard to admit you’ve been hit at home in a town where everyone knows everyone. Where the person who hit you might coach the chief of police’s son in Little League. Where the unspoken rule is you stick by your family, no matter what, and when something goes wrong, you tough it out.

It’s happening so much more than we know.

And what we know is horrifying enough.

I don’t know how to end this post. I’m just mad, with a hopeless kind of anger. I don’t know how to make it better.

If someone is hurting you or someone you love and you want someone to talk to, you can call the Michigan Domestic Violence Hotline at 866-864-2338, or reach them by text at 877-861-0222.

You can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 800-799-7233 or text “START” to 88788.

You can also search Google for domestic violence resources in your area. Most are staffed 24/7 to listen, believe you, and give you whatever support you need.

If you suspect someone you know may be a survivor of domestic abuse, you can call the hotline numbers above or your local advocacy agency to learn how to help. Or visit thehotline.org/support-others.

Someone in your life is in some way dealing with domestic violence. Live with compassion. You never know who is watching to see if you could be their safe place.

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If you know someone who might appreciate this blog, I’d be honored if you would share a link with them.

If you would like to receive an email notification when I post something new, share your email address in the appropriate box to the right of this blog or, if you don’t see that, email me at juliemarshmallows@gmail.com and I’ll get you added to the list.

Pieces

When the defense attorney asked the forensic analyst to turn to page 57,378 in her report, I knew we were talking about a lot of data.

The analyst was there to testify about information extracted from numerous devices related to this week’s murder trial at the Alpena County courthouse. I wanted to see what a printed 57,000-plus-page report looked like, but she used a digital copy of the report, to my disappointment and the sparing of several trees.

The volume of data stored on the devices in our pockets is astonishing verging on terrifying. While data on some phones defied extraction, other devices yielded up all sorts of information about their users ― information attorneys will use to try to prove one man’s innocence or guilt.

They’ll use location data to try to show key players weren’t where they said they were. Cell tower pings, social media data, even an insurance company app promising Drive Safe and Save discounts track our every move on those pocket-sized spies.

Text messages referenced by the analyst will probably return later in the week, tools attorneys will use to catch witnesses in lies or show relationships were not what they seemed.

Presented quickly and out of order, the messages flashbulbed out-of-context snippets of life. Accusations, encouragements, calls for help. Threats of violence against one of the victims from someone other than the defendant. Relentless pressure put on the other to do something she didn’t want to do. An apparent drug deal going down. 

Affectionate words. Angry words. 

Bits and pieces. 

A trial is like that. Bits and pieces of information, told in a confusing jumble. The attorneys make clear that this point is significant and that fact is a zinger, but they don’t say why. Not yet.

They left by the back door the day Abby was killed, not the front. The child’s car seat was in the rear passenger seat. A receipt shows somebody transferred $2,000 the day of the first murder. The phone was in airplane mode.

Pieces. Eight hours a day of pieces.

The jurors sit and soak it in as best they can. They’re attentive, taking notes and asking good questions, probably working hard to fit all those pieces together without knowing what the final picture is supposed to be.

By tomorrow, maybe, we’ll start to hear from witnesses called by the defense. A new set of bits and pieces. In a few days, both sides will pour all those pieces into their respective boxes and use them to puzzle together their cases in closing arguments.

Both sides will have holes in their puzzles when they’re done. Big, important holes. It’s up to the jury to look at what’s there and see if it’s enough to convince them of what isn’t there.

It’s wearying, looking at all those pieces one by one. It’s so much for the jurors to take in. So much compounded trauma for the families of the victims, aching for some form of justice for the loved ones they can’t have back. How much easier it would be if we could just declare a verdict and be done with it, done with all those pieces and the thinking and the waiting and the hurting, because it all hurts.

We must look at those pieces. We have to wait. The people working with subdued fervor at the front of the courtroom have to fight like hell to fill in the picture as best they can, to get the right verdict, to prevent grounds for an appeal, to put the puzzle together.

As I type this, another witness is on the stand, giving the jury more pieces ― some of them true, maybe, and some of them maybe not true. I want to go home. This is not my fight. I’m full up of the bits and pieces and 57,000 pages and anger and hurt. I want to go back to worrying about what’s for dinner and the price of gas and not think about lies and texts and horrible, horrible photos. I want to let this all go and let it sink into the past, let people heal and other people hide and let life go marching forward like it’s going to do anyway, heedless of this middle-aged woman typing in the back of a courtroom.

But closing our eyes to bad things doesn’t make them go away. If I go home and do nothing, if we all stay home and do nothing, nothing changes. And something damn well has to change. Because the people involved in these murders are not the only people living these lives. Everywhere, teens are getting addicted to terrible substances that will alter the course of their lives. Drug dealers are exchanging text messages with buyers. People are fighting to escape a life they don’t want and failing. People are dying.

Maybe sitting here and bearing witness to what happened in this one case, in this one place, won’t make a difference.

But maybe it will.

Another witness just took the stand, one who endured crushing loss because of the murders. More pieces. More pain.

I need to listen. 

Murder trial: building anger

*Author’s note: This post includes information that might be upsetting to some readers.

Day four. Autopsies.

The morning’s testimony was easy. Members of a Michigan State Police dive team paraded in and out of the witness chair, dressed in neat suits and ties as they described plodding through chest-deep Alpena rivers with metal detectors, searching for gun pieces in the murk at their feet.

Then came the afternoon. The room rustled as a white-haired forensic pathologist with a dry sense of humor raised her right hand and promised to tell the truth.

When someone’s about to describe a murdered girl buried eight feet deep for eight weeks, you don’t necessarily want them to tell the truth. You don’t want to hear about strangulation marks and bruises from head to toe. You don’t want to know about burned skin preserved in the refrigerated coolness of the earth.

The judge warned trial spectators several times that the prosecutor was going to display graphic photos they might find upsetting. It was OK to leave, he told them.

Nobody did.

The prosecutor took the jury through a dozen, maybe 15 photos, splayed on the large-screen TV at the front of the courtroom. The photos depicted the naked body of a beautiful 17-year-old who, in her final months at least, lived as a meth addict, uncontrolled and fierce.

On the autopsy table, she became fragile, innocent, a child.

One doesn’t know what to expect to feel, viewing a real, not-sensational-TV-show human body that’s been through what Brynn’s body went through.

Police say her killer sat or kneeled on the girl’s chest and strangled her until she died. They say the alleged killer and an accomplice dug a hole, put Brynn’s body inside, and set it on fire before covering it with dirt and a cement slab.

The photos showed signs of that abuse, and of the passage of time before she was found.

As the photos progressed around Brynn’s body, one woman, then another, got up and left, hands pressed against their mouths. Someone else reached for a tissue.

Most of us, though, sat and looked. The photos made us sad, perhaps. Angry, yes. But we could look at this horrible sight and absorb it and move on.

I feel terrible even saying that. It feels so inhumane, so inhuman. I’m tempted to blame the fake violence that’s everywhere, inuring us to the real thing. But I don’t think that’s really it. Something else kept our eyes on the awful pictures on the TV screen.

When the prosecution called in another forensic pathologist, this time to talk about the autopsy of 31-year-old Abby, two people left after the judge’s warning. The woman sitting in front of me, a friend of Abby’s, took a deep breath, steeling herself.

Abby lived longer than Brynn, spending most of her life in tough environments from which she had little chance of escape. She ran with the wrong crowd, as they say ― maybe by choice, and maybe because she didn’t see any alternative.

Police found her at the base of a tree not quite three weeks after she was killed with a bullet. Any bruises in her upper body were gone, carried away by insects. 

Autopsy photos showed closeups of Abby’s colorful, elaborate tattoos, including the vibrant monarch butterfly on her ankle. Then they jumped to a closeup of the black, obscene hole in the back of her skull, black fractures radiating out from it like lightning.

The photos flipped to the fuzz-topped boots Abby wore the day she died. Her zip-up hooded sweatshirt. The elastic hair tie she wore around her wrist.

The photos make her real. Even if they are heartrendingly awful.

Maybe that’s why we could look at those photos. Because we need those murdered people to be real. Even if that meant seeing them in that horrible way.

Rural areas like Northeast Michigan might not be rampant with murder. But people get killed in those places all the time. Killed by the drugs merrily carted there by traffickers with a keen eye for an easy market. Killed by depression and desperation when those drugs, or other traps of hopelessness, convince them to raise their hands against themselves. Killed when they become someone that the people who love and need them no longer recognize because of the damned substances we cannot subdue.

It all makes me so angry. Those bodies in the photos make me furious. My fury, for the moment, has nowhere to go but into my keyboard, and a fat lot of good that does. But, as I was just telling my friend Katie, maybe if we all get mad at the same time, something happens. Something. I don’t know what. I don’t know what the fix is. But we need to be mad, damn it. People are killing our kids and imprisoning our adults and it’s absolutely not OK.

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Insert deep breath here.

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From the comments I’ve received after the last few posts, I think this topic is hitting some of you like it’s hitting me. I’ve asked in the past that, if you think someone you know might appreciate this blog, you share it with them. This time, I have a different ask.

I am not an online marketer. I am not socially savvy. I don’t know how to expand my little bloggy tirades out into the big, wide world. And I certainly don’t see myself as anyone particularly worth listening to. But I think other people are feeling what I’m feeling. And they might want to get mad with me.

If you know someone impacted by the crappy stuff of the world, someone who is aching from a loved one lost to addiction, who is upset about the factors that led to Brynn and Abby's deaths or who is just fed up with people being hurt, please consider sending them a link to this blog. I want to hear from them. I want to connect with people longing to figure out how we can do better.

Thanks.

For the record, when I said “it’s absolutely not OK” above, I really wanted to type a swear word instead of absolutely, but I couldn’t do it. I already swore enough to make my husband uncomfortable, and I thought I’d better not make it worse. Sorry, honey.

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My dippy blog email address is juliemarshmallows@gmail.com. Write any time.