In conversation with my past self

What I would tell a 22-year-old Mari

Announcements Announcements!!!

RETREAT: YOUR SACRED STORY
May 2-4, 2025 in Boone, North Carolina

I’m coming back to Art of Living Retreat Center in the gorgeous Blue Mountains to teach a weekend workshop on telling YOUR story. I’ll focus on writing stories from lived experience and memory, with optional art prompts if you’d rather draw it out. I’m also here to give you aaaaalllll the practical tips for getting published once you’ve put your life into words!

Getting There: I fly into Charlotte Airport and take the Hickory Hop Bus which is super easy and goes straight to the retreat center!
REGISTER HERE!

RETREAT: BUILDING CREATIVE MUSCLE
June 6-8, 2025 in Rhinebeck, New York

I’ll be at Omega Institute (for the first time!) teaching a brand-new workshop all about “getting in shape for a creative life.” Think of it as going to the Creativity Gym and getting a bootcamp workout! If you’re completely out of creative-shape or would like guidance creating a sustainable “personal training” plan for your work (this is just the BEGINNING of the metaphor, by the way :), you are so welcome to join us here! It will be messy, creative fun in a peaceful town at a stunning time of year.

Getting There: Easy peasy from NYC! Take the Amtrak from Moynihan Station to Rhinecliff, and from there is a 15-ish-minute taxi to Omega.
REGISTER HERE!

BOOK EVENT: WHAT TO DO WHEN YOU GET DUMPED
February 13, 2025 at 7pm in Brooklyn, New York

I’m back at Books Are Magic on Galentine’s Day to chat with mother-daughter dream team Hallie Bateman and Suzy Hopkins, who joined together again to write a big-hug-of-a-book about how Suzy nursed her heartache after her husband of 30 YEARS left her to pursue an old flame! Can you believe!!? We will be spilling the deets and healing our hearts together, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. It’s been a long time since I did a book event and I love them so. This one will be a (cry-filled) joy!!
REGISTER HERE!

SPEAKING OF WHICH…SEND ME YOUR LOVE QUESTIONS!!!

I love doing a love Q&A on Valentine’s Day! Ask about breakups, dating, singleness, relationships, whatever and I’ll answer from my heart and 20 years of experience in all of the above 💘

End of Announcements!!!

PHEW that was a lot. But I have one more! As I started writing this, I dropped my laptop and now half the screen is black and the rest is covered in rainbow stripes. Sorry for typos.

OKAY!

Last week I was in Santiago, Chile, where I spent the most formative year of my young adulthood.

Pre-smart-phone, pre-social-media, pre-frontal-cortex, it was a year of getting lost in every way…which is exactly what I would tell a 22-year-old to do.

For the most part, my complaints have stayed exactly the same (people just choose wherever they feel like standing in line!), and my joys are still intact (art everywhere, more than two single eyeballs can handle!).

But going back is strange. We know this.

If you go back frequently, you evolve at the same pace of the place; it’s subtle and manageable. Coming back after 15 years is jarring; old memories don’t integrate as easily into a new self.

It’s much easier for the brain to completely idealize the past or to dismiss it.

I’ve found myself making fun of my younger self for thinking a certain restaurant was so fancy, only to realize it’s kind of a dump. It’s simpler to separate all the selves rather than find a way to gracefully smoosh them together.

(Though my younger self would be so hurt by my mocking!)

Thus, a conversation with my past self, who diligently kept a journal…

22-year-old Mari:

I like the camaraderie of the night plane, the little community of anxious travelers who eat rolls wrapped in plastic illuminated by offensive fluorescence. We pretend we are friends, joking about the length of the flight and the small selection of movies offered to distract us from the 5 more hours. But in truth, these people around me, with whom I am eating and sleeping, are all strangers, and when it comes down to it, I am not cared for by anyone here.

No one in Santiago cares about me. I don't mean anything to anyone. Not yet. I will by December, but right now I am identity-less. No one there knows I only recently cut my hair; they will know me only with short hair. No one knows I hate mayonnaise, have particular eating habits, and have a sentimental attachment to Chilean wine. No one knows I'm vegetarian, or Episcopalian. No one knows Joe or Megan or the important people in my life...they probably never will.

And yet I will grow to know some people—know their mannerisms, know how they respond to things, know their fears. I will share inside jokes, and powerful memories with them. I will come back missing them, telling my Chicago friends about them.

Now Mari:

A continual refrain when I visited Chile this month was, “I’m so grateful for a life that never made sense in the moment.”

I can see your sweet putty heart trying so hard to make sense of a decision that didn’t make sense to anyone else.

Honestly, I STILL have trouble understanding why you moved to Chile, but THANK GOD YOU DID. What a gift that was to me!

You basically won’t feel like your life makes any sense until, mmm, age 38? And even then, it’s just starting to kind of take a blobby shape.

Right now, the people you admire most are the ones whose lives are a kaleidoscope-themed advanced jigsaw puzzle of decisions that didn’t make sense at the time, but became some colorful nameless form after a couple decades of lonely plane rides, rash hair cuts, and all the inside jokes that still make you laugh.

I've come to believe that, at least when moving to a new place is involved, belonging is very similar to owning. What makes me belong becomes what I own. I don't feel like I belong to Santiago because I don't have anything here...I don't have MY route, MY coffee shop, MY fruit stand, MY friends. And for that matter, I am not anyone's barista, anyone's regular customer, anyone's actual friend. For now, I belong to nothing and no one and nothing and no one belongs to me.

But in a couple days I will be somebody's teacher. I will be someone's employee, someone's acquaintance, and in two weeks, I will have a place to live and thus I will have MY apartment, and I will be someone's tenant, maybe even someone's really awkward houseguest.

I found a nice cafe today that can potentially be mine. Though I ended up staying there an hour longer than I had planned because I couldn't figure out how to pay.

Some day maybe I will take one of MY friends there and be able to say, "I'll take you to my coffee shop" and, then, "This is how you pay."

This entry makes me so excited for you, for all the things that will be YOURS some day.

I’m not talking about just coffee shops and rented rooms, but the entire world itself!

Right now, you suspect you were sent to the wrong planet. This one just is not it. And you feel ‘ownership’ over very little of it, including your own emotions—which embarrass and overwhelm you.

Years later, you’ll see how much of the world really is for people like you—a whole layer just for people who think they have a glitch in their souls.

Around the time I realized that, I watched a movie about Van Gogh (shoutout Willem Dafoe) and was moved to write this little note for all the yet-to-be-born shimmer stars like him who feel so out-of-place in the world, and yet make it a livable place.

You might relate to it:

“Dear Bundle of Stardust,

You’re about to be born a sensitive person in a world that doesn’t feel like it’s built for you. You will hear news stories that keep you awake crying, even 5 years later.

You will experience heartbreak that takes your breath away. You will be told “Get over it” and “Move on” with no ability or desire to do so, thrusting you into the nightmarish loneliness that says: “Something is wrong with you.”

You will hurt. You will hurt so much!

But the world IS built for you. You are going to appreciate the wisps of sunlight that dance on a Manhattan brick building in that golden color specific to December dawns. You will be moved to tears by music, starting before you know what music is. You will point out these things to others and they’ll call you names like ‘writer’ and ‘artist.’

Your loneliness will have a purpose, and the light will dance as though only for you.”

MY movie theatre, where I ended up spending most evenings in Santiago ❤️

MY neighborhood, Barrio Yungay, which is how I referred to it several times over the trip

22-year-old Mari: Just because things are not "how they used to be" or "how they were last time," I sometimes pass them off as not as valuable, beautiful, or ultimately beneficial as past experiences. But there is memory being seductive again—of course it is easy to think things were better before, because you see how they have worked out. In the present, you have no idea how it will work out. That is a lot less attractive than the neatly-packaged memories of yore.

I’m so glad you’re realizing this now!

Despite this surprisingly sagacious declaration, this sentiment will be something you wrestle with your whole life: idealization of the other. Other life, other person, other path. Some folks have celebrity crushes; you have Lives I Could Have Lived crushes.

I have a hunch this pain comes from the feeling that everyone else has a perfectly clear idea of how their lives will look: a singular passion, a vivid life dream, a firm stance on whether they are “outdoorsy” or not.

But you’ll find this isn’t true at all, even those gluten-free yoga teachers who found their perfect lipstick shade years ago (whereas you’re still looking—sorry).

All those other people, all those what ifs, all those shimmering memories, all those lipstick goddesses are every bit as complex as your present day self.

The key, and this will become much easier over time, is to feel more at home in your own life. Right now, you’re a newborn adult; everything is uncomfortable and wild because it is new!

Reaching your little baby adult arms out and grabbing for what you see is how you learn to handle longing and disappointment, and how you find all the wonders that will make life—your own particular life—beautiful to you.

I just want to be comfortable again. I’m sick of having to speak a language that’s hard for me and I’m sick of every small errand or chore taking everything out of me. Being foreign is hard!

But I think back to Fabulous Woman in line with me at Santander Bank, who approached the window so assuredly and easily, shimmying her way to the front.

How did she get so fabulous, so confident? Certainly not by always being comfortable. Certainly not. If she had stayed comfortable, she probably would not be wearing those embroidered boots, would probably not be so obviously a creative spirit, would probably not seek out vintage jackets and hand-made felt coin purses in her precious spare time.

I am off to Bank Attempt #5. Uncomfortable, difficult, complicated Bank Attempt #5. At this point I think I'd rather eat a filet mignon smathered with mayonnaise (I tried to think of the most disgusting meal I could imagine eating) than go back to Santander Bank, but if it brings me any closer to inner strength, inner confidence, and the ability to one day glide up to the teller and breezily retrieve my cash, perhaps while wearing embroidered boots...then I am up for the challenge.

In high school, you wrote in your diary that you wanted to become a writer some day. But first: you’d have to live.

And that’s exactly what you were doing here, even though you thought you were just going to the bank. (For the fifth time that day.)

Going outside your comfort zone is highly overrated, but allowing annoyance and inconvenience into your life is where the magic actually happens. I’m serious!

The best writing doesn’t necessarily come from deep grief and harrowing adventures, but simply in the friction of life that most people (understandably) try soooo hard to avoid.

Writing—a journey you discovered in Chile—is a trek through untamed wilderness. The terrain is unpredictable, sometimes treacherous, filled with jagged rocks, dense thickets, and muddy swamps. Yet, it’s in these untamed spaces—where the world hasn’t been smoothed out for you—that the richest stories take root.

Soil that’s too cultivated, too tame, can’t nourish anything wild or unexpected. If the ground’s been overly managed—weeded, plowed, and fenced off—there’s no room for anything new to emerge. No room for the raw, unruly truths that make a story (or life!) sing.

Real growth happens when the earth has been disturbed, when it’s full of unanticipated cracks and knots. It’s in those places—the difficult, rough-hewn terrain—that your voice will find its strength, and where your most authentic stories and moments will sprout.

I will be leaving Santiago at the end of this month—2 months earlier than planned. The reasons are many but most of them probably won´t strike you as all that important (¨lack of good Thai food¨ is on the short list). I must say I feel very un-brave for leaving and I feel very un-cool. Who thinks it´s cool to leave a project before finishing it?

This is quite funny to hear coming from you, because you’ll become The World Champion of Quitting in no time. Quitting will become one of your favorite hobbies.

It will take you years and years, and putting several therapists’ children through college, before you really learn to trust yourself.

(And we’re still working on that!!)

But, leaving Chile was one of the first times I see you trusting yourself (your body, your belly) rather than external voices (logic, mental static). I’m proud of you, you little pup.

Years later, you’ll write lovingly about the process of quitting, and so much of it I learned from you and something you said all the time at this age:

Trust the belly. The belly never lies.

I love Sundays in Santiago. I used to hate them, but now I love them.

I used to think Sundays were dead, overly-silent, lonely days in Chile, but now I see they offer the treat of enforced rest and relaxation...a mandatory Sabbath. Most businesses aren´t open so finding a bustling restaurant, coffee shop, or internet cafe is a gem. Everything and everyone is quieter, even the stray dogs—Santiago´s unofficial mascots.

People walk more slowly, start their days more slowly, wait on you more slowly. Why the rush? They know you have nothing to do. I used to think Sundays felt dead, but now I think they feel more alive than ever because they provide so much extra time and space to live.

I have two more Sundays left in Santiago. Thank you, Chile, for reminding me to slow down on these days, and to use up as much sacred time and space as I have to be quiet, be slow, and take a moment in my increasingly-hurried life to look around and thank God for the mountains, before leaving them until the next.

And thank you, Little Me, for a much-needed reminder that slowing down is essential to creativity: something that’s become harder for me to trust.

My “creative process” (whatever that is) has become soooo muuuuuch slooooower in recent years, as it feels more pressing to create quickly and regularly. If I were a caveman drawing on walls, this wouldn’t be a worry. But I am a homo sapien creating within this making-money framework, so it is a worry.

I hope I can remember these lessons from Santiago Sundays.

Slowing down is key to finagling extra space and quiet for our inner worlds. When we have empty space, we can hear quiet whispers, see the connections between unrelated dots, and sense that there might be another way through this one particular thought. That’s how ideas form.

It’s just how relationships formed and slipped into place in Chile. Unrushed afternoons, unplanned chit-chatter, and unhurried empanada shop encounters brought in easy friendship and flowing conversation.

If my relationship with creativity is a friendship—and I think it is?—it, too, benefits from a slow pace and a Sabbath.

I think most fondly about my first month in Santiago—that cold, quiet month of constant surprises. Even though I feel I have just returned home, I am dying to be traveling again, and I can only attribute that impulse to the fact that I only seem to truly live in the moment when first I arrive somewhere. I could not have been more in the moment than I was last August.

Now I am already settled in, already dissatisfied with the mundane. I love my friends so well, I like my routine, I enjoy this city, but I crave the freshness of new things.

I hope not to do so much reminiscing as much as building friendships in the here and now. I have such trouble staying put. I have such trouble being entirely here.

I constantly feel nostalgia for the past; I continually dream of the future. I want so badly to just love the little days I live here.

There’s nothing wrong with restlessness, you sweet nut!

Restlessness is how your brain learned to move and metabolize so quickly; the bonfire in your head was simply too capable of blazing through feelings and experiences! What a gift!

I know it’s uncomfortable to be itchy in your skin and anxious in your days, but I remember how life felt like a hot potato—it burned too much to stay put!

I think what you’re feeling there is aliveness. You’d move through Chicago like a walking flame, catching light and drawing in the energy wherever you were. Every conversation was kindling, igniting sparks that would crackle and pop, filling the air with the promise of something new, something else.

You won’t know it for years, but those thoughts, movements, and late-night talks over IPAs or whatever you drank back then would create lasting warmth with memories still aglow in a mind that has cooled down since.

Lately I do not feel very brave.

Pepper the Poet says that you’re closest to God when you take the biggest risks.

I clung to this reflection while in Chile; I thought it to myself every time I ventured to new wild territory alone, while riding that huge brown horse along the beach in Pichilemu and while taking an impromptu hike through the sun-streaked woods of Frutillar.

I also thought it to myself during more quiet acts of bravery—simply returning to my little magenta home at night after a day of teaching in the suburbs. It demanded a large amount of my own waning courage to speak about my day with Maria Victoria and Isaías in a language so largely strange to me, as they sat on the couch watching Argentinian dating shows.

I spoke the way Mischa Barton delivers her lines on The O.C.: I ran syllables together and hoped they in their complicated sequence would create some sort of meaning.

When people told me I was brave for moving to Chile, I always responded "No, this is easy—if I were actually brave, I'd stay in the U.S." When folks claimed I was courageous for exploring new lands by myself, I would respond, "No, this is easy—if I were actually courageous, I would travel with someone."

If I am to trust myself, I am actually being brave now.

It was easy to be your full Mari self in Chile.

It was very hard to be your full Mari self at a law firm in Chicago.

The bravest thing you’ve ever done is retain your full Mari-ness in the places that didn’t make it easy.

In Chile, I was constantly examining my life; I wrote in my journal nearly every day, or at least to dear ones who acted as journals (like the diaries in Harry Potter that write back to you)—canvases upon which to scatter all these thoughts, ideas, and reflections into something messy that actually looked cohesive at the end (see: Pollack, Jackson).

In Chicago it is not like this. I write to my mom, I write some emails and very short journal entries; I verbally-process with my beloved ones, but I draw few conclusions. The time it takes to sort out my own mistakes throughout my journey is significantly longer than the time it took in Santiago, when actions brought sudden revelations. I have never lived so viscerally and immediately before in my life.

Ah yes. Thus begins the era of you making mistakes, for the first time in your life really.

For much of your young adulthood, you were in a kind of cult of your own making: beholden to restrictions, regimens, rules, and requirements that had nothing to do with your body or soul. It was all up here (points to the space above your ears).

Mistakes weren’t allowed because your humanity in general wasn’t really allowed. You put a stop sign in front of instincts, hunches, body cues, and desires that would threaten your order and your rituals—a sane response to an insane world.

In Chile, you began seeing through it all. Your tight control started unraveling, bit by bit. It was scary at first; doubting one’s belief system is always scary!

But I consider your greatest accomplishment to be your resolve to live more freely.

Chile was a good baby step toward full freedom because, as you said, you had so much time and space to analyze every action. Not so much when you returned to Chicago (and had four more jobs than you did in Santiago)!

I know that was a disorienting time, questioning the creed you created for yourself in order to feel safe and controlled. But it was scary because you were being so so brave.

Adventures are wonderful and often needed, but they are not the ultimate, they are not the best way to live. Everyone I admire has a set of strong roots cultivated over many years of attentiveness to community and loved ones. I want to be a person I would admire. I want to develop stronger relationships and love more freely and care for my friends more fiercely. All things which are hard to do when you are constantly dreaming of further pursuit of the exotic.

In a few years you’ll discover the concept of “nondualism,” and it would really come in handy for you here. ;)

For now, will you listen to me if I tell you that all parts of you—all desires, all dreams—are equally valid?

You can have adventure and roots, community and longings. I can tell you think that one side of you is unruly and in need of a training session to become tame, but that’s not it.

It all belongs, girlie!

I got a birthday card from this guy I grew up with, and he wrote this little birthday poem which made me so happy:

“Who's the shiniest soul we know, whose eyes are bright and starry,
The most complete of hearts of us all, but still in progress?—Mari!”

The guy barely knows me, so I took it less as a compliment and more as a challenge!

We are all just a walking process, in progress, and we will be our entire lives—always growing, always changing. I think it's such a myth of facebook, movies, and a lot of chick-lit that once we "find" our "soulmate" or whatever, things will be complete. Once we have a job, a husband, and maybe even kids, we'll be satisfied. But I certainly hope I keep changing even after I have grandchildren!

There we go!

I love hearing that you’re beginning to mish-mash all your complexities and vargaries together into a Mari Stew.

I’m impressed by your new openness to change; you must get that from your fabulous mother, who says that every year she lives is better than the last.

Right now, you both live in New York (surprise!!!!), a change that was fueled by your desire for adventure, newness, and big dreams. All those things you thought you should have outgrown.

And guess what! In that pursuit of adventure, you did find community, you did root yourself, and you adore your mundane little days.

Just by being exactly yourself, you got what you wanted. And that’s what I hope you remember most from this conversation, 22-year-old MarMar.