I wanted England, where my family and I went in May on a long-obsessed-over trip, to overwhelm me with its Britishness. And it did, it totally did. We’re not exactly world travelers over here. There was a thrilling amount of novelty in BBC-style accents and a pocket full of foreign coins. Each strange new thing filled me with a giddy … Read More
Issue 29: Spring Will Heal You
In early March I got a message from a reader in Calgary, Canada, who was like, “I’m really struggling to love my city right now.” I said, “Girl, everybody hates their city in winter.” It’s weird because some data from Robert Putnam suggests that levels of social capital are higher the farther north you go. The theory is that in … Read More
Issue 27: The Joy of #Goals
As lovely as Christmas was this year—and believe me, eating cookies and bingeing The Final Table on Netflix satisfied the soul—I was like “BRING IT” to New Year’s. Fresh starts! Clean slates! Hooray! That I sing this particular hallelujah chorus won’t surprise anyone who’s read This Is Where You Belong—but it may surprise you that I still, despite all the … Read More
Issue 25: I Am Sitting on My Front Porch
You don’t buy a lot and build a brand-new house without thinking for about a bajillion hours about the kind of place you’d like to have. For my husband and me, those bajillion hours distilled down to a few core principles rooted in everything I’ve ever learned about place attachment: We wanted an infill lot in an existing neighborhood with … Read More
Issue 23: One Word That Changes Everything
Right before my friend Cristina moved to my town a few years ago, someone gave her this advice: Say yes to everything you’re ever invited to do. “Since you’re new in town, you’ll probably get invited to things. But you only get one chance, because if you say no, you probably won’t get invited again. So say yes.” So Cristina … Read More