✎ June 11, 2025
It was a rich day.
I ended a contract that no longer aligned. It felt clean—like pulling a splinter before it gets weird and annoying. No second-guessing. Just a sharp moment of clarity in service of something deeper: secure attachment. Not just in relationships with people, but with myself. With the truth. This is the sharpening of discernment I’ve been practicing. One by one, I’ve been clearing the entanglements that cloud my energy. And with each clearing, the house—both literal and metaphorical—feels more spacious. More mine.
I’m back in rhythm with editing Burning Lindsay—Chapter 2 is sounding beautiful now that I’ve brought that process back in house. I’ve had in-home support every day this week, something I haven’t experienced in nearly a year. The girls are thriving with the presence of warm, playful adults while I work. I came home today from a solid writing session feeling light and inspired. Took a long walk, music in my ears. My Celtic Gaelic Folk playlist, on repeat. Lindsay always teased me for loving that genre so much. But it’s in my code. Ancient and familiar. The Gael Northwest by Dougie MacLean came on. It lifted me. I thought about who I’m becoming. About whether my dad will ever get to see that full version of me.
I reminded myself: he’s still here. He can still see. He can still listen—if not always clearly, then maybe energetically. Maybe he will get to see me soar. And maybe it happens faster than anyone expects. I’ve already proven time isn’t as rigid as we once thought. I cried a little. Grateful tears. Something inside my 45-year-old body is growing up, finally. All the fractured parts coming back into form. Not just the man. But the energy of the man.
Later, the girls and I rode our eBike through Forest Park. They love riding behind me in the cargo seat, zipping through the streets. We picnicked at Turtle Park and stopped by the Art Museum lawn to catch a bit of the free Hamlet production. We sat down far in the back. They got bored quickly. So we started riding home, dusk settling in.
Then it happened.
A small squirrel darted out in front of us, too fast to react. It did what squirrels do—zigzagging in panic—and then doubled back. The rear tire ran over it. I felt the bump. The crack. My anxious heart dropped. Juliet began crying, begging me to turn around. “We have to help it!”
I flashed back instantly to a memory from childhood. One I’ve never shaken. I had shot a squirrel once with a BB gun, paralyzing its back legs. I was horrified, and in my panic to end its suffering, I hit it a bunch of times with a stick. It only made things worse. It scrambled in fear. Confused. Dying in terror. Something broke in me that day. I never shot another living thing again.
I didn’t want my daughters to carry something like that.
We turned back. The squirrel was motionless on the sidewalk, blood pooling at its nose. The crimson streaks painted across the concrete told the story of its final struggle—its nervous system discharging the last bits of stored life as it tried to reconcile trauma and release its spirit.
“It’s dead, Daddy. We killed it.” Juliet wept.
We knelt beside her. I stayed cautious—worried about bites or disease—but Juliet instinctively reached out to offer comfort. Her little fingers stroked the soft fur. She was wide open, crying without shame. Phoebe was quieter but upset, too. Angry at me. Angry at the bike. It felt unfair. And it was.
We assumed the squirrel was male at first. I asked Phoebe what she thought. She paused and said softly, “I think it’s a girl.” I checked. She was right. A young female, barely more than a baby. Likely born this spring. This crushed Juliet even more. “She didn’t even get to live.”
We talked about how animals weren’t made for this world of machines and pavement. Their instincts—zigging and zagging to confuse predators—don’t work on speeding tires. Evolution didn’t prepare them for concrete. They die here every day from that mismatch. But this time it wasn’t abstract lip service. We were the machines. We were the mismatch.
The girls kept petting her gently. Stroking her back. Whispering to her. We started naming all the animals we’d known who had died. Our old pets. Childhood companions. Then I began to name mine too. Ones from decades ago. Now I was crying too. It was almost dark. Our rainbow bike wheel lights rotated slowly through the color spectrum, casting soft hues on the sidewalk as we huddled around her body. Cars whizzed by, indifferent. A sacred funeral was unfolding in plain sight, and no one knew.
Juliet asked to move her to a peaceful resting place. I lifted the squirrel gently and placed her in Juliet’s outstretched hands. We carried her to a big bed of yellow day lilies near the park. Phoebe wanted to help too, so we paused mid-procession. She cupped her small hands and received the squirrel with reverence. We found a little cave-like spot beneath the leaves, brushed them back, and laid her to rest. The girls placed flowers over her body. We said parting words. I apologized again.
I’m so grateful we turned around. I almost didn’t. If not for Juliet’s insistence, I would’ve probably biked us home, trying to avoid a late bedtime. But we would’ve missed all of this: the sorrow, the connection, the ceremony.
The ride home was quiet. We imagined her spirit running beside us, grateful not to have been left alone on the sidewalk. And I was left with a deeper appreciation for what it means to raise daughters with hearts this soft and strong. They keep demanding I pause. That I notice. That I treat the little-big things as sacred. And they’re right.
This, too, is what living looks like.
And this, too, is what healing feels like.
The next morning, I found myself sitting in the waiting room at the dentist’s office, typing this story from my handwritten journal while the girls took turns getting their teeth cleaned. As I reached the part about the funeral procession—the moment her small body was passed from Juliet to Phoebe—a woman chatting with the receptionist just ten feet away suddenly raised her voice to emphasize her point and called out, clear as day: “And it was Lindsay!”
I paused. Tears welled. It’s not the first time something like that has happened. The beautiful sound of her name shouted into my field just as I’m writing something sacred. As if to say, “I’m here. I see this. Keep going.”
She said it again, louder this time: “Lindsay.”
I smiled, my eyes wet, and kept typing.
From my fire to yours.