This phase of life is novel and, at times, uncomfortable. A few months back on Twirling Leaf, I wrote about how much I loved and was rocking midlife. Suspend judgment for a moment when you read this next line, but: I wrote that while my kids were away at sleep-away camp for a few weeks. Anyone who reads my writing, sees my social media posts, or knows me in real life would never doubt my love (and like) for my kids. But, you see, when Senya and Juniper returned home from almost a month of being on the East Coast without Collin and me, they headed into their first years of high school and middle school, respectively.

Now this was an emotionally turbulent transition for me for several reasons. One major reason was that we had homeschooled for most of the kids’ childhood. There was a brief stint in 2015 when Senya went to kindergarten at Topanga Elementary the year they were 5. And then we homeschooled until the 2021-2022 school year when both Juniper and Senya attended Mettawee Community School in Vermont for 3rd and 6th grade, respectively. Other than those experiences, our family has always homeschooled. That was one of the reasons that motivated me to return to Topanga when Collin was starting this new company, Mass Culture, based here in Los Angeles. He could’ve stayed remote (though being here has definitely helped launch the company further than if we hadn’t moved back, I think), but the allure of returning to Topanga and homeschooling again (versus the kids continuing to go to school for the remainder of their time with us) pushed me over the edge to decide that we all had a lot to gain from being based in California again. So, we got two more years of homeschooling for the remainder of Juniper’s elementary years and Senya’s middle school years. And for that, I’m grateful.
Over the years, homeschooling allowed our family to develop a very strong family identity. Whether we were in California, Arkansas, or Vermont, Collin and I created a family culture that became our sense of home. It was built on love, nature, adventure, and a sense of deep connection with each other and our lives. Sometimes we were riding around the US and Canada in an old RV for months at a time. Sometimes we were traveling in Thailand or Uganda or Costa Rica for months at a time. Then there were the four years we lived intensively on a mountain and homesteaded, and during this time, home became much more integrated into a physical place. Regardless of which iteration of homeschooling we were living, though, the continuity of homeschooling allowed us to embody our most core family elements in whatever way seemed best at the time. Essentially, whatever Collin and I imagined, dreamt, or envisioned, our whole family embraced. So, ending homeschooling this fall was a bigger change than I anticipated. That’s sort of how I do change; I leap and then I deal with the consequences once I’ve landed.

Another huge contributor to my confusion and disorientation in this new chapter is that I thought we were moving back to Vermont this past fall. And in this imagined version of life, I was going to run a farm while they were at school. So much about that did not work out. We had such high hopes in January of 2024 and those hopes stayed super high until August of 2024. They stayed high even when the Vermont Land Trust made it very clear that I would never be a real farmer in their eyes. My optimism stayed high when we sought out qualified farmers and—per the VLT’s requirements—made a 20 year contract with them to farm the 35 acres of agricultural land in order to be allowed to purchase it. I willed my hopes to stay high when the VLT kept kicking back the beautiful Memorandum of Understanding our qualified farmer friends had composed with the criticism that it had to be “disproportionately favorable” for the farmers and less favorable for us since we weren’t really supposed to be allowed to steward this land. Even though somewhere along the way, the dreaminess and sparkle of moving to the farm under these terms wore off, I still pursued it. But every time we list our house, a mudslide blocks the main boulevard as if the universe is sending a very clear message: stay put. Mudslides and wildfires don’t exactly make it a seller’s market. I will say, however, I can hear the birds and the frogs much more since the boulevard is no longer a thruway from the valley to the coast. It’s been different, though, than the return I envisioned to a life where home was an epic, sprawling physical place. Chickens, bees, gardens, a mudroom, barns, and acres upon acres of bouldery meadows and forest to explore was what I pictured our kids having to call home once again. This did not materialize as planned, and so our home has remained more an emotional construct with a small physical space to hold our family culture.
Maybe I was trying to return to an era and thought I could find it geographically. In some ways, I know that we can never go back. Like Heraclitus says, you can never step in the same river twice because you’re not the same person and it’s not the same water.
These changes became more apparent when Senya and Juniper started school at the Manzanita School here in Topanga this past fall.
I braced myself for them to start school in terms of the schedule change as much as possible. And honestly, the homework load was a lot less intense than I anticipated. This is because Manzanita—much like homeschooling—engages in a lot of the actual work and learning during the school day. So by the time they come home, they have written papers, done math problems, debated complex social and political issues, and even worked in a garden and built shelters out of Arundo cane as well. If you’re thinking, “Wow, that school sounds amazing!” Yeah. My kids thought so too. And that was something I didn’t realize would be difficult for me.

I had been used to being the adult my kids preferred. I was used to home being the place they felt most comfortable and inspired. I expected school to be a difficult transition for them. I expected them to return home after a school day and be exhausted and ready to decompress with me.
Instead, they would come home happy. Fulfilled. Enlivened. Inspired. They even would come home talking about how much they loved their mentors.
What fresh horror was this??? They don’t need me?? They don’t miss me during the day??
I was NOT prepared for that. But I couldn’t let them know that. I didn’t want them to worry about me or feel bad for me. So when one of them asked one day, with a hint of concern in their voice, “What do you do while we are gone all day, mama?” I tried not to miss a beat while my inner voice was like “don’t say all the home management or domestic type work you do. That will just sound pathetic to them because you did all that when they were home too. Say the things you love that you do that actually bring you life.” So I was like, “Oh, I am SO busy. Doing so much stuff. That I love. That keeps me reallllly busy.” This bought me enough time to compile a list to respond after they said, “like what?”
Now, fortunately, Los Angeles is the one place where when anyone asks you, “What do you do?” You can just reply with your hobbies, and that’s perfectly acceptable. No one is actually asking how you make money. They’re asking what you do that fulfills you or what your passion is. Or at least that’s how we all answer. So if you’re from out of town and you want to know how someone financially affords their life, you’re going to need to get specific about your question. Lots of people here make money doing whatever they need to do, and they define themselves by their art, their area of giftedness, talent, or creative passion. So the answer to the question, “What do you do?” is often answered by things like “I’m really called to tea ceremonies,” or “I’m a trail runner,” or “I’m a musician,” and really, that’s what they love. That is not how they’re paying their utility bills or putting exorbitantly priced gas in their cars. I have always loved that about living here. So, in a very short time, I was able to answer the question, LA-style:
“I trail run, I read books on and practice my herbalism, I write, I am perfecting my sourdough bread, and I still make time to manage our home life, even though I’m not homeschooling you guys anymore. There’s a LOT to do.”
To be honest, I answered with more feigned enthusiasm than what I actually felt back then. The first few months that they were in school were an emotional adjustment. I felt lost. I wanted to just enjoy my newfound time during the day, but I just felt extremely empty. I didn’t expect to love being a mom. I definitely didn’t expect to be a primary care-giver. But life kind of worked out that way after the one year that I was the income earner, and so for 13 years, I felt absolutely certain about my purpose and my work felt necessary and meaningful. The kids going to school changed that.
I guess that’s a big part of why I wanted to be a farmer. I needed something to fill the vast void that homeschooling and parenting young kids had taken. Goodness knows I tried—even when friends and strangers alike were like, “buuuuut, you’re not a farmer”—I was like, “well, that’s YOUR opinion.” And they were kind of like, “Is it, though?”
But let’s face it. I’m incredibly impatient. I am likely to plant a seed, stare at the ground, and declare that it didn’t work after 5 minutes (a lived eternity) of waiting. I don’t know that I’m cut out to be a farmer. Also, I am extremely relational and—as much as I hate admitting this because it feels embarrassing—I was so lonely in Vermont. My social needs were different than the average Vermonter, I think. I would text someone to ask if they wanted to hang out and grab a coffee sometime (trying to keep it super cas’) and I wouldn’t hear back for like three days and then the person would be like, “I have a social thing already next week, so maybe we can hang out next month.”
I’m certainly not reflecting on that to cast blame or even criticism; it’s just to note that—while I loved SO much of our life in Vermont and all the people we became friends with there—I did have some real struggles. It’s often easy for me to overlook this fact in my heartache to return to all that I miss there. But it’s an important part of becoming integrated as a person to look at all the facets of reality rather than just idealizing or devaluing.
Because a lot of people there were homesteading, farming, or doing other all-consuming types of work, they were pretty committed and overextended with their time in each day by virtue of just living their lifestyle well. I was homeschooling as my full time work, but my kids would play outside a lot independently, so I had the luxurious novelty of free time. I recognize that this was also partly due to privilege. Whatever the reasons, the result was that I was alone more than I liked. And that was really hard for me, and at times I felt unseen.
So, I’ve had to face these hard realities this past fall and winter. There is no perfect place to live, and there is also no place to hide from the effects of time.

Even so, we listed our house again in February, as planned, in an attempt to return to Vermont, but as the weeks become months and tick by without any interest from potential buyers, it’s given our family time to live into an unprecedented time of continuity and sustainability here in Topanga. Our financial situation is actually working which was not the case when Collin’s former company unexpectedly stopped paying him his “guaranteed payments” mere months after we had moved here. We saw our bank account get lower and lower as we hoped he could get Mass Culture to a point where it would offset the loss faster than our savings ran out. Fortunately, he and his fellow partners and employees at Mass and Brains on Fire are geniuses with integrity and a strong work ethic. Just as we hit a total eclipse of our bank account, the financial situation turned around. Turn around, bright eyes, indeed.
As I mentioned above, this has given me the space to enroll in a two-year herbalism course based in Ojai. I spend one full weekend a month at the Krishnamurti Center, where the Earth Island Medicinal Herb Garden is nestled in the Topa Topa mountains. I drive there with a fellow student who has become a new friend and we’ve spent hours upon hours now having the liveliest and most ADHD-infused conversations about every topic. I’m pretty sure if we drove far enough we could solve all the problems. We have very different life experiences and hence different perspectives on some issues, but we find each other to be absolutely delightful and hilarious. There’s mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s differing perspectives and the sense of humor we both have while addressing these differences.
So, the lay of the land of this novel chapter is such: the kids are in a school they absolutely love. I’m studying herbalism and having some time to invest in interests that have been dormant or on the shelf for a decade and a half. This has inspired Collin to start taking expeditions out into somewhere wild and natural one weekend a month. He leaves for Mount Whitney tomorrow on his first of these adventures. Our little Topanga town is resilient post-fire, and the people who remained or returned here feel more like kin now than ever…both here in Topanga and also the family and friends we have nearby. We are all trying to be resilient while being unsure when we will have access to the coast again, when our beloved trails will reopen, or when the businesses will have ample clientele and customers again. I’ve come to learn that there’s always going to be crazy stuff to weather. Some things that living in such a dynamic place teaches you are: to be resilient, to be adaptive, and not to get too attached to stuff. It literally all might burn down, so just be ready to grab the ones you love (human and otherwise), pack a go-bag with a few tokens of your most cherished or meaningful components in life, and in that bag, also pack way more underwear than you think you’ll need. Because honestly, life isn’t full of guarantees of what will or won’t happen. But we can choose how we respond to whatever life throws at us. And I’d personally prefer to be wearing clean underwear whatever happens.
So, this phase of life is evolving. My kids are growing up, and though that felt surreal in earlier eras, it is tangible now. We’ve got less than a handful of years with Sen before they likely move out and attend college. I don’t want to miss out on these years because I’m looking backward and being too mournful that the past is gone or because I’m scanning the horizon looking for an escape from the incessant march of time. I did have to grieve—with lots of tears, many nights wondering why it hurts so much to love so deeply, many sorrowful thoughts that the best is over— to be able to be present with and grateful for now. I’m sure this is cyclical work that will continue throughout the remainder of my life, but at this particular moment, I am able to feel grateful for what we’ve had, present with and invested in what is happening now, and excited for where we are heading.
It’s been a journey learning how to be here and now. But what a beautiful journey it is.
