Limitless Expansion: Loss, The New Season, and The Crack in Everything

Hi guys!

I, once again, waited until the very last minute to put together this “very non-put-together” newsletter.

At first, I wanted to lightly talk about the season change, and how, inevitably, we change with it, the weather, the leaves, the color of the sky in the evening. But I didn’t know how much change I was about to face. And let’s face it, I had talked about that already, extensively.

I thought that I would mostly talk about the return to Los Angeles, the many ways this summer in Italy had changed me, how the re-adapting to life in America had gone, Catherine in pre-school full-time, etc.

But then I had to come to terms with the fact that I haven’t re-adapted yet.

It’s been a little over two weeks since we have come back, and so much else has changed that jet lag has been the easiest to recover from.

This past Thursday, in fact, Elis quit, unexpectedly; that’s why Catherine was with us on the show on Monday. And if you guys have been part of this community for a while, you know how much Elis wasn’t just Catherine’s nanny, she was our family.

So my heart is broken.

But this newsletter is not about Elis, because I love her very much, and I respect her personal journey in life; this is my blog, and there is a line I never cross when talking about other people: when it’s their life the story is about, well….then it’s not my story to tell.

Could have I stopped her? Have I done enough? How can I fix this?

I asked myself, over and over again.

I always want to fix things; but some things in life we cannot fix. In fact, what is broken for us, it occurred to me, may not be for the other person.

So we can accept the breakage, and trust it had to happen. Sometimes, that’s the only action we can take. We can only let life flow, be. Sometimes, we can only figure out how to move on, and how to be grateful for how things were before they broke.

Recently, I heard the expression limitless expansion, as in potential to limitlessly evolve, deepen. That’s how I have begun to live my days; I want to show Catherine that we have the chance to limitlessly grow. And yes, growing hurts, but it’s also very exciting!

When I was a child, I loved the weeks that preceded the beginning of the school year, those early September days when I would pick a new diary with my mom, maybe a new pencil case, new pens, pencils, books, and maybe, maybe even a new backpack, on a good year. I remember loving the sense of new, and oh, how much I loved leafing through the history book to see what I would learn in the new class.

I still love the first days of September. They are bittersweet like few others.

What I love about the season change is, in fact, the change itself.

I love the feeling of new and I find vital meaning in grieving the feeling of old.

I think that, ultimately, these are all the experiences that make me feel alive, that make me feel the scary and yet exciting sense of aging, of time passing, of limitless expansion, of evolution and renewal. And for something to renew, as we have often discussed, something has to die. It’s inevitable.

This all happened around the anniversary of the last show the band played together at the Hollywood Bowl, on September 25th of 2017; summer ended, we came back to Los Angeles, Elis left, I got a new car, Catherine began her new life in school all day, and my life as a mother became, all of a sudden, easier and more complicated. I have to re-arrange my time priorities, my schedule, my sleep habits, my eating habits.

I worry about what will happen when I”ll be busy with the promotion of the book and then I think: “I am not busy right now.” When I will be, things will change again, and they usually tend to work out. They may not be how I had imagined them, very limited in their restricted expansion, but they do tend to kind of fall into life, and life falls into them.

Is this what Leonard meant?

There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in…

My eyes are filled with tears as I write this, because there is a part of me that doesn’t want to let go of Elis, of the past, of baby Catherine, of the safe bubble I had built during the height of Covid, of everything as it was, good and bad, limited and limitless. But nothing is ever “as is”, because everything is changing as we speak.

I always attach so much to how things are that, even when I do benefit from the evolution I resist it.

A show on NPR that I love is: Reveal, because there’s always more to the story.

And I think that, with a broken heart, I am limitlessly expanding. Because today I can see that there is more to the story, to every story, mine, Elis’s, yours, and the one we will start writing tomorrow, in a new season.

Happy autumn everyone. I love you guys.

Updates:

– I didn’t get the Botox. I know myself, I was going for the forehead and not for the migraines. I don’t need it (Thank you mom and dad) and I am not ready;

– I have a new hybrid car;

– I am experimenting a bunch of new vegan recipes, so stay tuned for new and exciting food;

–  I started drinking my coffee back;

– I prefer overnight oats to oatmeal;

– Last week, I reunited with my oldest Italian friend in Los Angeles, Vanessa, and hugging her after years apart made me very, very, very happy;

– In a couple of weeks we should have a pre-order link to the book. Are you ready to help me make it a best-seller?