Learning to let go

Reminding myself to keep going and to trust what's to come. Plus, a look back at the summer of 1996.

Jun 20, 2025

Hello, fellow travelers. I’m writing from a corner coffee shop in Grand Rapids, a spot that opened not too long ago. We’re sitting out front at a picnic table on the angled, quiet patio, the late-afternoon sun warming my shoulders. The blue umbrella overhead coupled with a slight breeze keeps us cool on this 78-degree afternoon.

It’s my kind of day. A good book and iced coffee next to me, time to write, easy conversation with Emma and her best friend. Earlier, at the place across the street, we sat outside and ate crisp-cold salads with crunchy chicken fingers. It’s the very best kind of afternoon because we didn’t plan this all out; it just unfolded in that magical way that sometimes happens.

It’s also been a welcome reprieve, a break in between a lot of life stuff.

There’s been traveling for work and planning for a trip north next week, for Alex’s college orientation.

There’s sometimes-successful attempts at squeezing in book writing, served up with a side of self-doubt about whether I’ll ever complete a manuscript. And if I do, will it be any good?

Then there’s figuring out finances, an ever-evolving conversation these days for Joe and I, and also for us with our young adult kids. We’re thinking more and more about our next stage of life — what do we want our life to look like when it’s just the two of us, and how do we make these plans happen? — while also still being very much entrenched in and committed to helping our kids move along their own paths peppered with decisions about college courses, apartment renting, potential jobs, relationships and, for one of our kids, going through both a relocation to a new place and short-term moves to big cities for amazing study opportunities later this summer and early fall.

None of this is too major or insurmountable, or unexpected really — this is where we’re at in life, our family of five going in different directions. And in fact, so much is really good, exciting even.

And yet, there’s been a heaviness within me lately. I’ve noticed a rising anxiety about how things are going to work out. I’ve found myself at moments pondering what else I should be doing — and am I doing enough? Too much? — for my kids, for my marriage, for myself.

When did I become such a worrier? Maybe it’s this stage of parenting, maybe it’s all that’s going on in the world, maybe it’s my foggy midlife brain. D.) All of the above.

It all can feel like a lot, which is why moments like this one, sitting and just being and losing track of time in the very best way possible, are so good.

A few days ago I came across the Rumi quote. I wondered, do I let myself do this enough — do I have the faith to keep going forward in the midst of uncertainty? I’d like to think I do, but I realized that with all the things going on in my life right now — the kids getting older and leaving, the changes they’re each going through as they take their next steps, the conversations Joe and I are having about our next chapter as parents and partners and people — I probably could let go more and have faith in what’s to come.

It’s uncomfortable. At times, it’s overwhelming. But it’s worse, it seems, when I hold on to all of this tightly with the expectation that it’ll be packaged neatly and tied in a pretty bow.

Be patient, I tell my eager and exposed heart.

And also keep going, slowly and intentionally, with a lightness in your step. Emphasis on the lightness.

Hold on loosely and all that, right?

The way, I’m choosing to believe, will appear.

I’m here in west Michigan for work and to see Emma and Andrew, and also because this is the weekend I’ll be talking books and running/walking at an independent bookshop in Grand Haven, a beach town not far from Grand Rapids. I’m so looking forward to this, and it’s been wonderful to hear from some of you who are planning to be there! (Join us at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, June 21 at The Bookman, 715 Washington Ave. in Grand Haven!)

Being down here, I thought it might be a great time to revisit an older essay of mine, one that I’ve unlocked from behind the paywall. This one is about my connection to west Michigan and how this time of year in particular reminds me of the summer Joe and I met — 29 years ago this month! — and the time we discovered this part of the state together.

One starry night at Lake Michigan

June 2023

*Lake Michigan ~ Silver Lake State Park. August 2023*

Seeing the sand-strewn roads winding through the small town of Mears, I was reminded that I’d last been to this particular part of west Michigan for Ragnar races — road running events that involve running 200-ish miles relay-style up the coast, starting in Muskegon, north of Grand Rapids, and finishing in my hometown of Traverse City.

Running this race three years in a row as part of team Michigan Runner Girl introduced me to the quaint and lovely villages dotting the lakeshore. I’ve always believed you learn so much about an area by running or walking its streets and trails.

Before those races, back in 2013, we tent camped at Silver Lake, taking the kids on their first Jeep ride on the dunes. Having grown up near Sleeping Bear Sand Dunes in northern Michigan, which do not allow off-road vehicle riding, our then elementary- and middle-school- aged kids were in awe of the chance to drive the cherry-red 4x4 vehicle on the soft sand, cruising up and down the dunes all the way to the shoreline, where we parked and ate a breezy July picnic lunch with a view of Lake Michigan white caps rolling toward the golden-sand beach under a cloudless blue sky.

The kids whooped and hollered happily as Joe maneuvered the Jeep up and over those dunes, again and again, and I only got a little carsick but mostly couldn’t stop grinning over the simple joy of being outside, trying something so different and fun together, and watching the nonstop surprise and excitement on my kids’ faces. It remains one of our family’s most treasured summer memories.

And many years before that summer day, Joe and I visited Mears and Silver Lake State Park for the first time together. It was July 1996 — the summer we met— and I had two tickets to a Hootie & the Blowfish concert. I was interning at the newspaper in Traverse City that summer, my second summer doing so, and I was assigned to attend the concert and write a review of the outdoor evening performance steps from Lake Michigan and the Silver Lake dunes.

Joe and I had been hanging out for all of about two weeks or so at that point, but he was up for joining me. We drove my 1986 Ford Bronco II the hour and a half south to Mears and I’m pretty sure along with my notebook and pen I brought my Cracked Rear View CD—wait, it had to have been a cassette!—with its songs “Hold My Hand,” “Let Her Cry” and “Only Wanna Be With You” for the ride down.

Today, just before I sat down to write this, I rummaged through a few storage bins in our basement to try to find a newspaper clipping of this review I wrote — I know I kept it, that it had to be somewhere in the binders and binders of clips from my newspaper days, at Michigan State and then from my staff reporting jobs at The Lima News in Ohio and the Saint Paul Pioneer Press in Minnesota, all the way through to my freelance days after that.

This trip down memory lane reminded me of so many stories I’d nearly forgotten about and so many experiences meeting and talking with interesting people — I am so happy I have these keepsakes; they hold even more meaning now that decades have passed — but despite my digging I couldn’t find that Hootie & the Blowfish clip.

But I remember that night clearly, how carefree I felt watching live music so close to Lake Michigan on a starry summer night, and how happy I was to be there with Joe. I was 21, he was 29. I had a year left of college downstate; he was back in our hometown, figuring out what he wanted to do with his life. We drank beer out of plastic cups and I bummed cigarettes off strangers-turned friends who danced alongside us as the sun slipped lower in the sky. Later, we’d talk about how that was the night we started to fall in love with each other.

1996 meant no cell phones, no social media. Did we even take a camera with us? I don’t think so. I can’t scroll back for the memories, for the proof that we were there that very night. It struck me that I could search “Hootie & the Blowfish” and “Mears, Michigan” and maybe see what I could find out about the concert, if it would show up online somewhere. If nothing else, I wanted to confirm where it took place — we knew it was in Mears, but where exactly? Was it in the state park? No, that didn’t make sense. Did it actually take place on the dunes? That didn’t sound right exactly either.

Then it came to me, while I was down there with my co-workers to visit Silver Lake State Park. It had to have been Val-Du-Lakes, a resort in Mears; we passed a sign for it and seeing it rang a bell. That’s where the concert was held. And a cool fact about the venue: “Val-Du Lakes Farm Resort,” as it was called in the 1930s and 1940s, was named for the valleys, dunes, and lakes that surround it.

My online search for the concert didn’t result in a whole lot — I was hoping for an old photo or two perhaps — but I did find a few things, like this:

Hootie & the Blowfish. Date: 07/07/1996. Venue: Val-Du Lakes Amphitheatre. Featured Artist(s):. Hootie & the Blowfish. Attendance: 22,000.

According to the Val-du Lakes Resort website, through the late 1980s and early 1990s, some of the nation’s largest bands found themselves playing for thousands of fans at the Val-Du Lakes Amphitheatre. I also stumbled across this article, from earlier this year, that gives a great recap of the incredible concerts that once took place there.

Today, live music is still happening, just not big concerts anymore: The Val-Du Lakes Bar & Grill continues to feature live bands and entertainment on the weekends.

Searching for information about this long-ago concert took me down an internet rabbit hole. I’ve now decided I need to find an original poster of that concert and get it framed for our house.

27 years ago this summer.

What a trip.

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Learning to let go

Reminding myself to keep going and to trust what's to come. Plus, a look back at the summer of 1996.

One starry night at Lake Michigan

Tell us: are you letting go of anything in your life right now? What helps you keep moving forward?

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