Today is the last official day of summer. I thought fall started on the 21st, but after a Google search I learned the seasons actually change on the 22nd this year. So I’m coming down to the very last minute with my promise to send one letter in each season. Anyway, here’s a quote I have been thinking about since I read it on the back porch of our cabin in the middle of August.
The place where we are, it forms us. This is one of the truest things I know right now, and it’s true for each of us, no matter where we are.
~Shannan Martin in her August newsletter, The Soup
During our most recent visit back to Bozeman, Brett and I attended our 20 year high school reunion. A classmate brought her yearbook to the family barbecue and Norah decided to flip through it to match the people from the pages with the people reconnecting all around her.
She found her way to the superlative section, where seniors chose one-word boxes to put each other in.
“Mom, I found you! You were the nicest,” she said. “And he was too!” She pointed to my friend who was voted nicest alongside me.
I smiled at her and confirmed that yes, that was the box I occupied in high school.
I didn’t forget about that title given to me. It felt good to be thought of as a nice person. But I wonder sometimes if I’ve held “nicest” too tightly. If it’s started to look like “push over”, “quiet”, “okay with the status quo” or “people pleaser”. Being nice is more nuanced than a simple smile, lending a helping hand or sitting with a lonely girl in the cafeteria.
There was a time when being nice was the most important thing. In fact, when Norah started Kindergarten I asked her each day, “Norah, what’s the most important thing to be at school?” And every day she would answer, “Kind. It’s most important to be kind, Mom”.
Norah is the one who first made me think about being kind in a more nuanced way. During that year in Kindergarten when she was getting daily reminders from me about the importance of kindness she came home one day and told me, "I just want to stand on a chair and gather all the boys in the whole world and tell them to just stop!"
“Stop what?” I asked. She looked at me like I could not possibly be serious.
“Just stop all the fighting!”
Last year, in fourth grade, her teacher told me that one of the best things about Norah is that she “knows how to stand up for others, even when it’s not convenient for her”. I was proud of this statement, and then I thought, Do I know how to stand up for others, or even myself?
I think I’ve spent my whole life so proud of the “nicest” identity that sometimes I quiet that voice that needs to be a little stronger, braver, to stand up for others or myself. But I’m learning. I’ll keep reminding Norah it’s important to be kind. Although, in her first week of fifth grade she came home and told me all about the Kindness Club she started with three of her friends, so I don’t think she needs a lot more reminding. The test for new Kindness Club members includes things like “Give your enemy a compliment” and “Tell me what you would do if you saw someone being bullied”. I guess she can keep showing me how to wrap kind up with being strong and brave and speaking the truth.
In the 20 years since high school, we have lived in a few very different places– Spokane for college with a summer in Italy, back in Bozeman for Brett’s first year of medical school, Seattle for 7 years, and we’ve been in NYC for 8 years now, although we have spent the last few summers at our cabin in a small town in Pennsylvania.
Each of these places has formed us. So what happens when we are uprooted and replanted so many times? I think we have to constantly check in with ourselves, to make sure that the places forming us are adding to but not chipping away at the core of who we are – whether that core includes kindness or humor or creativity or anything else that has always been important.
This is not only true of the cities and towns we live in, but of the other places we spend our time too – our schools, work places, houses of worship, even online spaces. They are all forming us to some degree. So if we get to the point where we feel like we might be losing the core of who we are, it might be time to check in about what we are allowing to form us. Because I don’t want to be idly formed, but to be my full self. I want to be part of the fabric that forms.
Brett and I were out to dinner for our anniversary and I asked him if he felt most himself in Montana, where we were at the time, or back in New York City. His answer was layered, and I guess I should have expected that since both places feel so much like home but have almost no overlap in the reasons why.
When he bounced the question back to me I told him I just didn’t know. I wrote on Instagram later that I realized I feel most at home when I’m with Brett, regardless of where that is. That’s true, but I think reading Shannan Martin’s newsletter helped me better understand why I feel like myself in both Montana and New York. Both places have contributed to my formation. The struggle comes in staying true to the core of who I am in every place I go.
Bozeman has changed in the 20 years since high school. But so have all of us who graduated. We’ve all been different places that have shaped who we’ve become. Hopefully, those other places have only added to the core of who we always were.
I want to bring my whole self wherever I am. I hope you do too. I hope you bring your whole self to your city or town, to your family, to your church, to your school, to your job, to your friendships. Bring your curiosities and doubts, your quirks and passions, your love and your longing, your gifts and needs. Bring it all. Because, yes, the places we are do form us. But it’s the people who form the places.
See you back in your inbox sometime this fall,
Jodie
P.S. A few more things to share:
Seasons of transition are a good time to evaluate the places and the people who are forming us. Here are some questions I’m asking during the transition from summer to fall this year.
What are the core traits most important to me? How do they look different in different places or seasons of my life?
How is the place I am now forming me? How have the places I’ve been formed me?
How am I contributing to the formation of the places where I spend time?
Am I compromising being my full self in any of the places I spend time? If so, what needs to change?
In case you missed it, here are a couple small things I wrote this summer:
For My Grandpa & My Son: A Collage Essay: When we found out Conor was a boy, I knew I wanted his middle name to be after my grandpa—Nicholas. I know that bestowing my grandpa’s name on my son does not magically knit his qualities into my son’s being, but every time I call him Conor Nicholas, it is a reminder for me to pray for these things to rise up in him—his work ethic, curiosity, willingness to help, his joy and optimism, the way he loves with all of who he is. For the past five years, I have seen so many of my grandpa's qualities rise up in my son, and it is one of the very best gifts I've been given. I've been working on this piece as a gift to both of them on and off for about a year, and I finally had the chance to give it to my grandpa during our visit to Montana.
In my last newsletter I told you about training for the Brooklyn Half Marathon. Here’s how the race went.
I’m still in a season where I’m keeping most of my writing close to my chest. Thanks for reading the few things I’m choosing to share.
Finally, as I looked back at the novels I read this summer, I realized how many of them had main characters deeply formed by the places they were from or the smaller places they spent their time. Here are a few I would recommend. (These are Amazon links. Order there if you want, or if a title looks good to you, go buy it at your local bookstore or check it out from your library.)
Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry
The Mothers by Brit Bennett
The Four Winds by Kristin Hannah
Normal People by Sally Rooney
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith