What are yours?
If any of the themes below resonate with you, I’d love to hear from you.
with love ✨, CATHERINE
Observations on moving, breathing and being. These are mine.
I’ve been writing them down since 2020.
I took a long pause. I’m back now.
On the loop
Phil Connors—Bill Murray in the 1993 film Groundhog Day—was trapped reliving the same day for something like 12,400 of them, by one popular estimate. By my count, I'm only 222 days into this latest stretch of unemployment. But the monotony of the last few months is real.
And, like the movie, there are lessons in it.
On being late
This was supposed to reach you Monday.
Most weeks it goes like this—I wake up, go for my morning walk, take care of my pets. Eventually, I make my coffee and sit down, two hours later, start-to-finish, hitting publish and send on this blog and newsletter. That's the rhythm. I didn't question it. Why would I? It's what I do. It's what works.
Until it doesn't.
On kindness
I woke up sweating. Not the typical 50-year-old-perimenopausal-woman sweats, nor the expected "it's a summer heat wave" sweats, but the "is my air conditioner working" sweats. And sure enough, my 1905 Victorian and its insufficient central HVAC system was, in fact, not working—in the middle of the 2026 heat wave, at the exact moment I happened to be a 50-year-old woman in perimenopause.
To say I was miserable would be an understatement.
On staying
The day started with a parade.
Capitol Hill in the morning. Marching bands, American flags, even the mayor. Red, white and blue everywhere. The sidewalks packed. Generations side by side.
I was there because D.C.’s home and about as local as it gets for me.
On being seen
A dear friend was in town for business last week. We've known each other 25 years—a work relationship that turned into a real one somewhere along the way—and we manage to see each other in person about once a year. So dinner at The Wharf had the usual shape. Catch up on the basics, then start going somewhere deeper, the way good friends do.
Somewhere in there he said something I haven't been able to put down.
On the motherland
I was born in Turkey, yet was only there for three months before moving back to the US through JFK Airport and New York City.
Perhaps this is why both places feel like home—the latter, New York, where I lived twice for nearly eight years in all. The former, less explicably, given I have no memory of it, somewhere in my bones.
On my island
I just returned from a week away up in Vermont. Including the retreat I'd been at, I was away for ten days. What a gift to be able to take the time for both solitude and solidarity in such a beautiful part of the country.
And...
On reviving
I drove through the country roads with a smile on my face. I can't easily verbalize the why behind it. Suffice to say—a short 48 hours on a sheep farm in Vermont revived more within me than I thought it might—or than I believed it needed to.
Six of us were brought together by one—the leader of the group. We started as strangers and left as friends.
