no big secrets

What a tight spot for someone who feels most herself in the vastness of expanding space.

I have wanted to share some updates regarding Chris for quite some time, months and months really, the better part of this year. But I have hesitated to do so because, as with all of the stories and anecdotes generated by my family, they are not entirely mine to share. And yet, I have always found my most authentic doorway into connection through personal narrative, and my family’s stories are also the ones most my own. I know I am expressing nothing new here. This tangle of what is private versus what is secret is both profoundly intimate and spectacularly universal, and as someone who accesses understanding and integration through writing, I, too, appear to have been swallowed by the nuance between what I should and should not share.

This has been a mounting theme for me for the past several years in my life of writing, and I am of two completely opposing minds on the issue. On one side, I live frozen in fear, by what I cannot share, and on the other in which all beans are spilled, I am released on the other side of terror’s abyss and am finally free. Everyone is free. Made new and perfect and holy by how laid bare I have rendered us. I am not necessarily forgiven on the other side, but at least I am real. At least the knot of all of the things I am pressed to hold is no longer dragging me down to the ocean’s dark.

And it is not like I have any big secrets I am keeping. I do not. I would most likely already be dead if that were the case. It is just that it has become so interwoven in my body that I hesitate to share anything at all. Perhaps every parent who has been instructed to always request before posting anything of their growing children struggles with this. What is mine to share and what is not? But also, so much of my living is made real by virtue of this role. I live for me, yes, but mostly for you, let’s just be real about that, ok? And please do not hear that I think that is the function of a mother, or of any parent, but there is something so inherent about my mothering, having formed my consciousness as it is and as it continues to become, I simply no longer believe that it can be parsed. I haven’t believed that for a long time. The separation of meg and mom is a false split for me.

At any rate, I have been holding back. Or pulling back. I have stopped writing the stories, even though it is how I remember and understand them best. Writing them down is alchemical in that way. I feel myself pulling the stars closer every time I look deep inside a singular moment or string of sentences, or small actions shared between me and my constellation on earth. I remember the infinite every time I make it personal. It never fails. And yet, I am currently kinda failing it. What a tight spot for someone who feels most herself in the vastness of expanding space.

But here it is, in part. Chris is multidimensional. After months of stasis, blood draw to blood draw, levels that wouldn’t budge beyond their initial drop; his last one saw numbers so small that it gave us all real cause to celebrate. Especially him. He deserves it all. His adherence to the unrelenting rhythm of two pills on a twelve-hour clock is not only big discipline, but enormous faith. He is doing it. After 15 months of treatment, he has reached a deep metabolic response, which means both that his CML is undetectable without genetic testing and that if it holds here or lower in five years, he will be able to go off the meds. What a triumph for our guy.

Running parallel to this path of chronic illness and the scaffolding required to sustain treatment for what is, in the best case scenario, a handful of years, is the slow unfolding collapse of his work life within a company and an industry that he has occupied for nearly two decades. Sometimes change happens fast, and we all have to fight to keep up, and other times the erosion is so slow and so steady that we can convince ourselves beyond any doubt that it is not actually happening. This particular crumbling has been the latter. There have been a series of forks in the road, for a number of years; if we can allow ourselves to zoom out with any accuracy; and at every single one of these crossroads when there has been hope that perhaps things might get better now, things are gonna change, have a little faith, surely this must be the bottom; the shittier turn has continuously been made. There is no amount of doubling down that can save this ship now. It is well and truly fucked.

And unfortunately for us, we are tied to it. Not in a way that is completely impossible to untangle, but most certainly, we are part of the collateral for a much larger collapse. And now I will say the second thing in a manner of minutes that I imagine will make everyone who still holds to the lie of feminism gasp or cringe or, god forbid, both, and that is that Chris is our provider. He earns most of the dollars, secures the benefits, and is the one who doesn’t need a co-signer for purchasing a used Ford Explorer from the wheelin’ dealin’ Eastern Europeans. We decided long ago that I would be the pivot parent, the one who could always flex when needed, and that meant scrappy earning that looks a lot like an ever-evolving compilation of side hustles. A term I have a growing resentment for as it’s undervalued function within the machine of capitalism. Continue to work, but on your own time, with zero security or benefit, and please pay extra taxes for all of the employees that you do not have with imaginary cash from all of the unpaid labor you must continue to do because, oh yeah, you are a parent in America.

I digress but not really. It is a lot to carry. For Chris. And also for me as his co-conspirator in the struggle. But I do not have cancer. (knock wood knock wood) The stress he carries is unique to him and don’t they say something about stress being one of the leading indicators of literally every single co-morbidity? I’m not really asking. They do, and it is.

He has been scrambling like hell to make the dumpster fire function well enough to work and at the same time trying to piece together the next thing. Something that could float us enough to keep the abyss at bay. A bridge. A parachute. The bike industry is crickets. And the sense of betrayal I think he sometimes feels, though he is reluctant to admit it, is all too loud. The lack of a guarantee in every single aspect of life is sometimes just too much to handle. Especially when we have all been so well conditioned toward compliance within a formula that was never made with the health and well-being of any of us in mind.

I keep trying to divest. To nudge us toward expatriating someplace that recognizes that the US is no longer for us and we must flee to be free. Chris reminds me that his number one trade skill is his ability to craft the English language and it is hard to picture a version of reality in which he masters Norwegian in quite the same way. And I don’t really want to leave our place. Not really. Sure, March through May but that doesn’t count. I am too invested in the dream of the soil we stand on and the creative aspirations taking root inside of our growing offspring. I want them to have it all even though I know that the odds are slim inside the American Machine that they will ever find ease inside the oppression.

All of this is a lot. And even inside the grip of this moment in our lives I still feel mostly oriented toward the absolutely resplendent grace of this moment right now. The small phrases of insight uttered by my five-year-old, a particular slant of light or pairing of texture and color brought to life by my nineteen-year-old, or the raw and perfect here and now play as it elevates to excellence by my sixteen-year-old. There is breath here. Space for both my head and my heart to land and take solace. Some days it’s refuge too, but inside of the relief I try to remember to keep one part of me plodding forward in whatever ways I need to to keep my eyes open to circumstance and my senses attuned to the suffering that circles the planet and keeps us connected continent to continent.

This is just a part of my story as it bends and flexes halfway through 2025. But I am pretty sure there are parts and pieces that belong to all of us. It is not an easy time for humanity. It is not an easy time to love without limit. We are in it together as much as that often feels false. Thank you for reading. I hope things are as well as they can be in your world. And if not, I pray that whatever faith you can carry holds you well.