The Real Problem You Are Having: Misidentification

Who is left when you are stripped of everything you thought was you? How Boundless became a journey back to the True Self. Plus, practices for coming home to the True Self

In Boundless, my memoir that publishes in the fall of 2024 (Atmosphere Press), I am stripped of all I think to be me. I am empty-nesting, but for me, as a single mother of twins, it’s an extreme sport with a snowboard-level thrum of danger. Two-thirds of my family will leave at once. 

Goodbye, being an active mother, the leader of a household, someone who has a family life.

Midway through the book, I can proudly say that I achieved the most-emptied empty nest in America. After moving across the country and back in one summer, I got spit up back at the shore of the house where I raised the twins. All that remained for me there was a leaky air mattress, my diploma from my MFA in Writing and five matching bar stools that stayed with the house because they felt more loyal to it than me. For three weeks, I waited for all of my worldly possessions to find me again as Atlas Moving took its sweet time.

Goodbye, all my things. I had a lot of things. Some of them were useful, like a bed. Most of t…