I appreciate every single person who has joined me on this journey. Whether you’re reading one of these posts and then never coming back or whether it’s become a (very weird) part of your daily routine as it has mine, thank you for being along for the ride.

I keep hearing from folks that they see value in what I’m writing and in my very open and public journey through whatever this is and whatever it will end up being someday down the line, when there’s time for definitions and some sense of perspective. That time is not now.

When I started this Substack, it was in an effort to talk about the things we can all do, collectively, to make a difference and create a bit of light in a pretty dark world. I was disillusioned by all the cynics who say nothing matters and that we cannot do anything to push back the encroaching darkness. That’s why I called it What We Can. Because there are so, so many things we CAN do, either together or as individuals, to make a positive impact.

I haven’t stopped believing that, and also haven’t completely scrapped my original plans for the kinds of things I’d be putting out on this platform. But Kellie’s death has overwhelmed my capacity to think about so many things that I care passionately about, and so those plans are going to take a backseat to whatever this grief looks like, and however it grows and shapes me over time as a social worker, as a Quaker, as both a learner and an educator, and as a human being.

After the first couple of days, when I kept cutting and pasting the same text response about how I slept and what I was thinking to a few dozen friends and loved ones, I decided to create a website that could just update people on whether I needed help or not on a given day, like an informal Bat Signal of sorts (yes, I know I could have called it the Matt Signal, but quit distracting me). Although I poked away that second night at some HTML templates, I had to eventually admit that my heart just wasn’t in that project. And I already had this platform, so why not just stick whatever it is here instead. So that’s how we got here.

• Tomorrow is the two-week anniversary of Kellie’s death, and that fact is starting to hit home for me today.

• My sleep went a little bit backward last night, but I still slept more than six hours, which is a win.

• I voted today. You should too. If you’re reading this after the polls close, and you didn’t, that’s okay. But you’d better vote next time, or else.

• I also got an oil change I’ve been avoiding since July 2025. When I was General Manager of a quick oil change place in 1999, we charged $19.99 for one. Today, I paid $83. Kids today, the Strait of Hormuz, etc., etc.

• I worked on my final project for the class I’m taking and did the very best job I was capable of. At any rate, it’s turned in now, so the die is cast. I sincerely hope the professor takes pity on my soul and gives me the grade I deserve, not the grade I’ve earned.

• I’ve decided to push back one of the summer classes I’m teaching to the later summer session, meaning that I now have until June 29th to wrap up my design and prep work for it. I’m still teaching my other class starting two weeks from today, but this gives me some much-needed breathing room.

• Since I wasn’t even a little bit sleepy last night, I prepped and cooked three different meats at midnight instead, so that I could cook my famous chili in the crock pot. It’s made the whole house smell so great, and I can’t wait to enjoy that for the next day or two. If you want some of it, let me know. I reserve the right to eat all the leftovers myself (with the assistance of my dad), so reach out fast.

• Today is a better day than yesterday, by all objective measures.

Here’s a poem I would like you all to read. It’s by the always-incredible John Roedel. I’m not sharing it because I’m getting a whole lot of well-intentioned but terrible advice on how to grieve, but rather because it says what I would like to say (only more succinctly and with a fluency of language that I only wish I had). The whole idea of my grief as a coral reef is incredible, and I will be taking that metaphor and what it represents to me along for ride across the coming days and weeks and months and years and (hopefully) decades. So here you go:

I cannot read that poem without crying my eyes out. And so of course I’ve read it nine or ten times in a row. It sums up, very nicely, everything I want to say. So I’m going to leave it there today.

I appreciate you. Thanks for reading. More tomorrow.

Matt

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If you’ve texted or dropped something off or sent me happy thoughts today, thank you. Any distractions, today especially, are very welcome.

Sage was an incredible member of our family. Kellie and I could never decide fully about adopting children. We went through the foster parent training classes back in 2007, but ended up opting for grad school instead of a foster kid, which was probably the right call for us. We started talking about getting a dog around the same time, and eventually, after we got brave enough, we reached out to a few different rescues. Some of you might have heard this story, and that’s okay. We fell in love with a schnauzer named Mudd first. Mudd was terrified of glow in the dark objects, they said, and we really wanted to adopt him. So we submitted all the stuff and the rescue said we lost him to another family who moved more quickly. Then we fell in love with a shih tzu and went through the process again, and lost her too. Sage was try three.

Sage was a purebred Havanese, and she was being used as a breeder for an Amish puppy mill in Holmes County. When the mills get tired of a particular dog, they either kill them or drop them off at a vet to dispose of. That happened to Sage, and a Havanese-specific rescue named HALO snatched her up. We applied to adopt her the same day we saw her listing online, and then had an interview, along with two references also being interviewed on our behalf. (To Laura and Donna, if you’re reading this, you have our eternal thanks for vouching for our ability to parent Sage well.)

We had no earthly idea how to be dog parents. Sage had experienced a lot of trauma in her previous life, and nobody had any way to know how old she was. The rescue said she was afraid of men, especially men with beards, so they had misgivings about letting us adopt her based purely on that. But we loved her and wanted to give it a shot even if my beard was a major sticking point.

When we met her at the foster home, there were a whole bunch of dogs there. And they all wanted to meet Kellie and I. It felt like an endless parade of dogs racing up to us, but none of them were Sage. We eventually found her loitering around another room, avoiding us, anxious about who we might be. And she was beautiful and she was perfect in every way. Of course we brought her home.

And Sage was so, so hard. She immediately developed an intense love for both Kellie and I (but especially me, despite my beard). She had huge separation anxiety. She didn’t want to walk on a leash. She got sick no matter what food we ate her. She wasn’t a puppy, but graduated from puppy obedience class because she was so behind in her socialization skills (we were so proud of her). And she quickly became one of the most important part of our life together.

Sage kept Kellie company when I was gone a lot for grad school. Kellie’s grandma babysat her every day when Kellie started her own program. And those two developed a really strong bond as well.

After all the years we spent with Sage, we finally developed a sense of peace about the idea that we could keep someone else alive instead of just ourselves, we were responsible enough to remember that she needed food and water and treats and love even in the midst of our own stuff. She gave us so many gifts, and we felt like she was going to be in our lives forever.

When she finally died, we did everything we possibly could, and her body just gave out. She had been in our lives for thirteen and a half years, and it wasn’t long enough. That loss was the hardest thing I’ve ever made it through in my life. When I tell people that, I think they humor me. But they don’t realize that I’m being 100% serious. Sage was every bit as much our child that she would have been if she were human. If we adopted a human child who died after thirteen years in our life, that grief would be considered normal for us. But for a dog, some people will always minimize that loss, and that sucks.

I’m not counting Kellie’s death as the hardest thing I’ve ever made it through because I haven’t yet made it through this, and I’m not even sure what “making it through” looks like with this.

Grief is weighing very, very heavily on me today. And the best way to try and breathe in spite of that has been to talk to other people, so I’m talking.

• I slept for more than seven hours last time, for the first time in a long time.

• Two separate friends stopped in at two separate times this morning, and both of them happened to be here just as photos of them and Kellie and I popped up on our living room photo frame. The odds of that happening (with thousands and thousands of pictures on that thing) are very low, but it happened.

• I woke up twice last night to the sounds of Kellie sleeping in bed next to me. I don’t care whether it was in my head or whether I was dreaming about her or whether she’s haunting me, no matter what the logical explanation may be, it gave me such a huge smile of relief each time. What a gift.

• Speaking of gifts, my grading is completely done for the semester, thanks to some incredible friends/BSW faculty members who cleaned up my messes and made it happen. I’m forever grateful to all of you for helping.

• I spoke about this with a friend for the first time yesterday, and she said she’s mailing me two books that helped her survive similar losses in her life. I can’t wait to read them.

• It was very quiet in my house last night, and I gave up by 11:30 or so and headed to bed. Didn’t spill a glass of water all over the place, so my sleep was significantly drier than the night before (which is a plus).

• Kellie’s death certificates were delivered to my house today. What a weird sentence to type, even after almost two weeks of telling hundreds of people that she’s gone. They’re not something I like to look at, even though they’re a reality.

• My first counseling sessions are happening on Wednesday. I just couldn’t do it today.

• I’ve been looking all over my house for clean underwear for myself for the past week, and finally told my dad today (I was getting desperate). Turns out they’ve all been folded and sitting in a tub in the guest bedroom for a week now. Mystery solved! One of the downsides to having people who love you do your laundry is that they don’t know what you need unless you tell them. Mental note: tell them more often.

• Someone brought me matcha, and someone else brought me frozen Costco pizza and cheesy snacks. Both are incredible gifts, and I was very grateful to receive them.

• I spent a significant portion of my afternoon and evening pretty down and depressed. Thanks to everyone who did their best to try and help me self-regulate through the pain.

• The truth is, it’s a lot easier for me to retain anger and hold grudges at folks who do mean things and aren’t sorry in the slightest than it should be. I am consciously trying to spend less of my life hurt at the people who are not present and more of my life focusing on loving people who ARE present. That’s the trick. Thanks for helping me through this journey, as it’s just one journey of many I appear to be taking (almost entirely against my will).

I’ve also been inspired to publish something a dear friend of Kellie’s sent me this morning. I don’t want to have all the “public grieving” fun, so if you have a note or letter or thought you would like me to put in this newsletter for more folks to see, please send it to me anytime.

I’ll publish them anonymously (if I don’t hate them) and we can all relish the fact that grief is raw and real and something that happens both publicly and privately.

Oh, and if you have an issue with swearing, get over it. You’ll be okay. Kellie loved swearing, so it’s a very fitting tribute. Deal with it.

Here’s the first of what I hope is eventually a series (seriously, send them to me):

Letters From Kellie’s Friends, Part 1 (No, I Didn’t Write This)

Dear Kellie,

1. You’re a cunt. You didn’t really need to die yet. You suck. If you already forgot, the plan was for me to go first since you were always the better human being.

2. Also, I feel like your memorial around Memorial Day isn’t really you but I guess I’ll go.

Now that that’s out of the way, you ought to know that you were one of my first REAL friends and one of my first best friends. We were such good friends that I can’t even find any photos; they’re all cemented in my memory. You never saw me as different or weird and you’ll never know how much that means to me. Because we both knew how weird and different I was. And let’s be honest, you were a fucking weirdo too. But we never judged each other; only the assholes with whom we went to junior high and high school…but I mean, we were kinda the best people there right? I will never forget all the nights we spent together where your mom made her homemade pizza and we watched some dumb fucking shows, but I would never tell you how fucking dumb they were…i was just happy to spend time with a best friend in a nonjudgmental space. Anyway, i will never forget you, Kellie. You will always be one of my first best of the best friends. I love you and will always miss you.

That gave me so much joy to read when I woke up this morning, and I hope you got the same joy from it as well. Send me letters to Kellie, and I promise I won’t edit them in the slightest before putting them up here!

I reserve the right to not publish something that’s bullshit, though. Fair warning.

So as I try to continue stumbling through the double-barrel devastation of thinking about my sorrow surrounding both Sage and Kellie today, please send me all the positive vibes you have. I could use them.

Hugs,

Matt

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I’ve been remembering a lot of good memories we shared this morning, which has made me laugh more than it’s made me cry. That’s been good for my heart.

One of those good memories was our love of tattoos as a wearable art form and a concrete expression of something that carries great significance in our lives. I adore this picture of Kellie getting her first tattoo, because I caught her in a moment of ambivalence about whether she was making a good call or not. (She was.)

This same artist will be giving me a tattoo to memorialize Kellie a few weeks from now. I couldn’t have predicted that just a couple of weeks ago, but that’s the way my life is going.

My dad made us a fresh fruit salad (thanks again for the fruit, students) and an excellent omelet for breakfast.

Last night before bed was pretty uneventful. Having my dad here was not bad at all yesterday, as both he and I had work to do and so stayed out of each other’s orbit for big chunks of the day. It was nice to have him here, somewhat surprisingly. No offense intended there, but I’ve only ever had one roommate since 1996, so I wasn’t sure what to expect for day one. I don’t know how most roommate situations work, but I suspect I’m fortunate to have a roommate who keeps doing my laundry (I don’t think that’s considered typical).

Having done a grocery run proved really helpful last night as well, because it let me eat some ice cream and also a sandwich, rather than something desperate.

I attended our Quaker meeting today, which I really needed. Our spiritual community has been a real source of strength and support to me in this time of grief, as it was to us both before I lost Kellie. She would want me to stay connected to them, and so I have no choice (even if I wanted to). I really appreciated a message from someone today about the fact that what we see of someone in life is only a small part of the whole that represents them in the universe. That gave me some peace.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a question someone asked me in the first days after Kellie’s death, when someone said, “A lot of my friends have been asking me if Kellie was saved or not.” I wasn’t quite sure how to answer in the moment, and was taken aback that anyone would ask such a personal question in the immediate aftermath of such a huge loss. But I’m ready now, eleven days in, to provide a more substantial answer to that question. If you’re one of the ones who has been wondering, this is for you.

Kellie and I have been on a journey of spiritual exploration for at least ten years, and have found a home in the Religious Society of Friends for the past four or five years. Our Quaker meeting is the Ann Arbor Friends Meeting, and we have been truly happy being a part of this religious community. If you’re interested in the deeper nuances of Quaker faith and practice, there are a whole lot of places online you could learn more about that. My meeting’s website is at https://www.annarborfriends.org. I’m a Liberal Quaker, but most of you don’t need to know about the nuances of what that means other than the fact that I believe in inclusion, peace, the fact that each of us has a part of God within us and thus deserves respect and compassion, the importance of stewardship of the environment and each other, simplicity, the development of community, equality between people regardless of who they are, and integrity in the ways I behave in the world. Many Quakers, including myself also consider themselves to be Christian. Quakers have a long tradition of making a difference, and that fits well with who Kellie and I are. I believe that nobody has all the answers about spirituality and their place within the universe, and so anyone who is convinced completely that they know their beliefs are completely right is, by definition, very wrong about something. I believe we all have the ability and responsibility to try and do better at living a good life. I believe that God does not communicate only through the Bible or through religious leaders like pastors or priests, but communicates with those of us who are listening hard enough. If you ask a Liberal Quaker why we don’t have ministers, they’d probably tell you that’s because we are ALL supposed to be ministers to each other, and I think that’s absolutely beautiful.

I believe that we should be trying harder to make this world a fair and just place than just waiting around for the second coming, and that we have the responsibility to think about good we do on the Earth now instead of sitting on our hands and hoping for a better world after we die. Kellie agreed with me about all of this. I do not know where she is right now, but I think that we each have our own relationship with the Divine, and I am not worried about the state of her eternal soul.

I also feel that it is kind of gross for anyone to question her belief structure rather than trying to do their best to care for other people in the here and now. Maybe care about your own relationship with God instead of Kellie’s? In addition to all of the above, I believe that if your religion or your religious leaders are doing things that are harming other people or excluding other people or promoting arguably evil things, then you should probably look elsewhere for a path to righteousness. I am extremely confident that Kellie spent more time considering spiritual matters over the last four years than she had in her entire life and that she had finally found a religious practice which aligned with her beliefs (we both have). So if you ask me that question again, I will just direct you to this very long explanation. I am so, so grateful we found the Quaker faith when we did. And I’m so, so grateful for AAFM. If you’re wondering why you haven’t heard sooner about Quakers, even though we’ve been around since the 1640s, that’s probably in large part due to the fact that we do not typically proselytize and try to convert other people to our religion (at least most Liberal Quakers don’t). So we find other Quakers through our own seeking more than anything else. Many of us have found our way to Quakerism after experiencing religious trauma from other belief systems, and we are a diverse group who have diverse beliefs. There’s also no requirement to believe the same exact things as every other Quaker, and that is also something that appeals to me greatly.

My plan for today was to be kind to myself. I got some more grading done and plan to soon place myself at the mercy of those faculty who have very graciously agreed to take on whatever I can’t, so that I can at least be done with this incredibly difficult semester and move on with that aspect of my life.

I do have a huge final project for the class I’m taking, so that also took some of my time.

I went through a box of old papers today. Most of it turned out to be electric bills from like 2017 (isn’t it wild what we save?), but a few real gems were in there. I appreciated finding a photo of one of the first times Kellie went out with one of her best friends—that was a special time for her and a special memory for me to look back on.

I found that looking at a few of Kellie’s things made me incredibly exhausted. I’m betting that’s a defense mechanism, because I don’t want to think about the fact that she’s gone. Despite thinking about it almost every day, almost all day, my brain and body still resist something concrete like “get rid of an old electric bill”. I was thoroughly wiped out after just a few minutes spent on that.

This week, I am planning to see a few clients for the first time since Kellie died, so please hold me in your hearts as I dedicate some of my energy to other folks’ needs in addition to my own. Right now, on Sunday, I feel that that’s doable. We’ll see how it goes when it actually happens. I don’t want to let my clients fend for themselves, since we’re a team in the pursuit of their happiness and wellness. I also think that it’s very possible that the distraction of someone else’s needs may help me stop thinking about Kellie quite as much for an hour here or there.

I also need to get ready for the summer semester, which starts in two weeks. Kellie’s celebration of life is three weeks from yesterday. I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through that, but I’m not going to worry about it for at least another week or two. Then expect me to be all worry, all the time, until we get through that day.

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I slept just under six hours, and Coco made it through the night snuggled up with me instead of in her crate, which I really appreciated.

My dad moved in with me today, and that’s been fine so far (but we’re only on day one of this arrangement, so stay tuned to hear how it feels to have a roommate that isn’t Kellie).

My sister left town, like I said yesterday, and I miss her being here.

Kindness continues to abound. I wasn’t permitted to pay for my own matcha this morning, and also got an invoice from my lawncare company for $0, letting me know they were praying for me. I just get knocked sideways by how much people are going out of their way to say they see me and my grief and that they want to let me know I’m not alone. Thank you all for making me feel that way much of the time now.

I bought groceries for the first time since she died (well, our students bought me groceries). Either way, it will be lovely to be able to make a sandwich at 1:00am instead of whatever else I’ve been trying to eat.

I also cooked dinner for my dad and I tonight. The first time I’ve cooked for anyone but Kellie, the first time I’ve cooked a non-breakfast meal, and the second overall thing I’ve cooked since she died. It was fettuccine (which Kellie hated) and Mt. Carmel sauce, along with garlic bread and a spinach and kale salad. It was delicious. He’s now washing the dishes, which is a bonus.

I spent most of today trying to get control over some of my grading from this semester. It’s very, very slow going. I’m trying. I’m grateful to some other faculty who are going to help me close out the semester when I just can’t do any more staring at this laptop screen. At this point in time, I’m officially done with two of my three classes (minus the hard work of those incredibly kind professors—you know who you are).

I have my new glasses, and I love them! Speaking of kindnesses, my eye doctor’s office is closed on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. So do you know what the doctor and his staff did? Diverted the shipment from their office to their home in Ashtabula so they could drop them off directly at my house. Incredible, incredible stuff. I’m so grateful.

I’ve been pondering relationships a lot today—not just my own relationship with her, but also the relationships she had with others. Oh, and I also wanted to point out that I’d said she had two best friends in her life besides me, but I inadvertently counted wrong: she had three. Lots and lots of friends, but three that she considered besties. You all know who you are.

It’s hard not to think back through the course of our thirty years together and not blame myself for the times I was impatient with Kellie, or didn’t agree with her on something stupid, or had a fight that meant nothing to either of us except in the moment. I have a really tough time remembering any time I said something to her that wasn’t kind or compassionate.

So yes, of course I realize that we’re all human and that none of us is perfect. I lose my temper more than the average person (or at least I did with her). She would always think it was the funniest thing that everyone thinks I’m so calm and tranquil and measured in my emotions, because she was the only one I trusted enough to be fully myself around. She’s gone now, and so I don’t know what that means for me having an emotional outlet like that. It’s something I’m going to have to figure out someday—add it to the list.

But I wasn’t the perfect husband. I’ve never been that. Devoted and loyal to her? 100%. Best friends forever? Absolutely. But I just wish I had had fewer times when I introduced any stress or strife into her life. Those memories are just as present as the good ones, and if I could consciously get rid of something in my brain it would be those.

Kellie went through a lot in her life. She was the best person I’ve ever known, and she fit with me like fingers in a glove. But people haven’t always understood her or been kind to her. There were times in her life when she had so much love and support from people, and other times that have been pretty lonely for her. I always wished I could show folks who drifted away just what they were missing by not keeping her in their lives. When friendship ended for her, it was usually because someone prioritized someone else or something else, and she never understood what had happened. I’m the guy who goes to extremes to figure out what made that friendship fray and to try to save it, but Kellie wasn’t that way. She respected the people she loved and let them leave her life if that was their choice. That’s one way she and I weren’t exactly the same.

You deserved better than you got

Someone’s got to say it sometime because it’s true

People should have told you you were awesome

Instead of taking advantage of you

I hope you love your life now

Like I love mine

I hope the painful memories only flex their power over you a little of the time

We held on to hope of better days coming

And when we did we were right

I hope the people who did you wrong

Have trouble sleeping at night

People were mean to you

But I always thought you were cool

—John Darnielle

We have had endless conversations over the years wishing that some of our most precious people had stayed closer to us, and those situations caused her pain. She knew that that pain was the flip side of the love, though, and she’s always found it a lot easier to forgive than me.

If you’re one of those people, and have been really here for me these past ten days after not being in contact with us much for weeks or months or years, it’s okay. I’m certain that she is really happy that you’re giving me the comfort that you are, and it’s exactly what she would have wished for. I am getting a TON of comfort from you, and I’m really hopeful those connections will stay just as strong a month or a year or a decade from now as they are today. Because she loved you and I love you and I can’t be alone in the world.

If I can be honest (which is kind of the point of this whole newsletter at this time in my life, right?) I’ve had a hard time with that since Kellie died. Not, I will emphasize, because so many people love her and are publicly saying so and are being incredibly kind to me. But I’ve had a hard time with so much love directed her way in these hard days because I keep wishing with all of my heart that she had been able to hear any of them say those things about her, that she had been able to rekindle any of these relationships, that she had gotten the chance to hug you and cry together and feel the strength of those connections again.

I’ve been seeing this life different
Ever since I let you go
Fragile flowers in a field
Sixty stories made of steel
Birds above and business deals below

And I’ve been thinking bout our lifetime
Like I never have before
A hundred years or a hundred days
A hundred times no difference, babe
Promise you I’d want a hundred more

Don’t the question beg an answer
Don’t the song beg a dancer
Don’t you dare
Tell me that there
Ain’t more to this

And don’t our tears beg for laughter
I promised I’d love you forever
So don’t you dare
Tell me that there
Ain’t more to this
There’s more to this

—Marc Scibilia

Kellie was loved in her life, and knew she was loved in her life. But I strongly believe that connections between human beings is in short supply at this point in our history, and that we’re definitely in a crisis when it comes to our friendships. Everyone wishes they had more friends and wishes they spoke more often or were more closely-linked. And so every time someone tells me she was the best person in the world (which she was), I accept that along with a big dose of regret that she missed a lot of you an awful lot at the time that she died. I can (and do) experience both of those feelings at the same time, and that’s okay.

I wanted to close things out with some of my favorite pictures of some of Kellie’s favorite people in the world—our pups. We didn’t know if we could ever be good dog parents, and had a lot of doubts and fears about being responsible enough for keeping them alive. But Sage and Ivy and Coco gave Kellie and I more joy than I can reasonably articulate here without breaking down all over again. One of my biggest wishes, that I articulate out loud multiple times per day, is that she’s with Sage right now (and her grandma, and her dad, but mostly Sage).

This song has always been one of our favorites when it comes to articulating our relationship. It’s Riches and Wonders, by The Mountain Goats. And I really miss singing it with her and to her.

We are strong, we are faithful

We are guardians of a rare thing

We pay close, careful attention

To the news the morning air brings

We show great loyalty

To the hard times we’ve been through

We are filled with riches and wonders

Our love keeps the things it finds

And we dance like drunken sailors

Lost at sea, out of our minds

You find shelter somewhere in me

I find great comfort in you

And I keep you safe from harm

You hold me in your arms

And I want to go home

But I am home

—John Darnielle

Please, if you have someone who makes you feel like home, tell them that more often. Do it for me. Thanks. They need to hear it, and you need to be saying it.

XOXO,

Matt

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Here’s some data points on how it went:

• I had a truly awful evening last night. Just ugh. Those are gonna happen from time to time, but it was Not Good.

• …And then I got the best night’s sleep since Kellie died. Six hours and twenty-two minutes. That was actually a sequence of events which has given me a great deal of hope, because it means that I can have good days and bad days, but the quality of my sleep is not necessarily dictated by my day’s mood. Otherwise I’d be worried all the time that I was predestined to something bad later on.

• I did my private practice accounting nonsense for the first time in about six weeks, which meant I could pay myself!

• It also meant I could pay the mortgage, pay some other bills, etc.

• I cancelled Kellie’s cell phone today. Not because I don’t still call or text her, and not because I want another piece of her to be gone. Just because my bill was literally double what it had to be, so I felt like it was something I had to do. I charge up her phone and turn it on just to look at her pictures and videos, to see her perspective on the world in that way. The telemarketers will not stop, even now. If you were wondering, it took almost a half hour to cancel her line. And both the representative and their supervisor both tried to convince me to have someone else take over the line. At one point I had to say “My wife died, and we didn’t have any kids, and I am NOT giving a phone to my dogs.” It eventually happened, despite their best efforts.

• Three people reminded me to drink water today. The only time I drank any water was when those people reminded me of it, so make of that fact what you will.

• This was my sister’s last day here in Ashtabula before she needs to fly back to NYC for a few weeks. She’ll return for the funeral, of course. I’m so glad she’s been here in this time to do all she’s done for me. Kellie would be grateful too. Maybe she is. I’m pretty sure she is.

  

• I think I mentioned that some of Kellie’s students took up a collection for a really nice fruit basket and bouquet of flowers that both arrived yesterday. And then today, from out of nowhere, I received an absolutely massive Giant Eagle gift certificate, which (as I told them) was such a shock due to the fact that I’m working on my first grocery order since she died. The timing could not be more perfect. And the kindness on display from these students never ceases to amaze me.

• I had a quiet morning, an afternoon spent doing work that I didn’t want to do, and then this evening my dad, my sister, and the dogs all went on a trip to pick up pizza and ice cream.

  

• I ate my ice cream straight out of the container, because, as I told a friend later on, these are unprecedented times.

  

• I also bought some watermelon, because Kellie hated watermelon. And I had mushrooms on my pizza, for the same reason.

• I miss her every minute of every day. Or at least significant portions of every minute, which feels pretty constant from my side of things.

• Someone (another someone) had a heck of a time sending me a DoorDash gift card. First, thank you again. And second, if you’ve tried doing that in the last week and I didn’t ever acknowledge it to you, it probably never made it to me. I think I’ve solved the issue now—my phone was categorizing those messages as spam. Whoops. Sorry!

I continue to persist, somehow, putting one weary foot in front of the other. Sometimes I just feel so tired, you know? And if I’m this exhausted after nine days of this nonsense, how am I supposed to find the strength to stretch it into weeks and months and years?

That was a rhetorical question, and I know all the answers about how I’m going to process and deal with this and etc. etc. I’ve been supporting others through things very much like this for decades now. But this is Kellie, and the whole world needs to acknowledge that she was here, she did amazing shit, and now she’s somewhere else, which sucks for all of us.

I miss Kellie. She wasn’t supposed to leave yet. And that makes me grumpy lots of the time.

Sleep tight. I hope to do the same. Just have to make it through what Douglas Adams referred to as the Long, Dark, Tea Time of the Soul first.

Hugs to everybody,

Matt

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Last night was slightly less challenging than I’ve gotten accustomed to, which is a real blessing. I attribute that to two things:

1. There were at least four people who made it a point to reach out to me in the 10pm-2am Worst Time Slot of Matt’s Day. One of them, in particular, went deep with me about some of the trauma response I’ve been dealing with, and discussing that in the middle of the night (surprisingly) helped me a great deal.

2. I’m just so exhausted that I don’t see any way I could be alert enough to be as upset as ‘usual’.

I ended up having multiple really cathartic conversations with several folks, and that had a very positive effect, in addition to all the uncontrollable tears. Maybe those helped too, a little bit?

Anyway, here’s the last photo she and I took together. She would have hated me posting it. Both of us have our eyes closed, the dogs are looking opposite directions, nothing is framed right, the light is too bright. But I’m always going to cherish this picture, since it’s the last one we ever took. I wish I knew it was going to be the the last time we took a selfie together, out of hundreds and hundreds during our lifetime together.

After my tearful conversations last night, I then put together a piece of furniture Kellie had bought for the hall a few minutes ago but that I hadn’t had the time to assemble yet. It turned out that as usual, Kellie’s taste was impeccable, and that it’s exactly what I needed at that spot of the house. If you’ve been here this week and had Coco attempt to eat your shoes (or succeed), then you’ll be glad to know we now have someplace to put them that she can’t overcome. Yet.

I got a ‘good’ rating for my sleep score, and slept six hours and nineteen minutes, which is more than an hour longer than my average has been this week.

I also DoorDashed Taco Bell at around 1am, which was not a great dining experience but at least part of my order didn’t have a funny taste, so that’s something. If you’re wondering, the good part was my nacho fries (which always come through).

I have experienced more kindness and love this week than I can believe. It’s really been incredible, and I will never be able to repay any of you for everything you’ve done. Please know that.

I spent some time last night with a long-time friend who had a similar loss several years ago, and comparing notes was healthy for me, I think. She agrees on the late-night malaise, so that’s something that seems to be a constant across more folks than only me.

My dad and sister continue to valiantly soldier on through some of my clutter. I don’t think I could have figured out how to make my livable space more livable without them here. I can never thank them enough for dropping everything to spend this time caring for me in real life, not just sending thoughts and prayers (though I’ll gladly accept thoughts and prayers too). I feel wholly inadequate to the task of making them feel appreciated, because I’m the worst possible host right now. Under better circumstances, I like to think I would be way friendlier to them and everyone else. I don’t know whether circumstances will get better for me. I wish that wasn’t true.

As one example, just having my pantry clean and organized is going to help me immeasurably once I feel able to start cooking for myself, whenever that might be. I’ve been considering my options, and either I have to start cutting all my cooking portions in half OR—and hear me out—just eat twice what I used to eat. I could also just stop cooking entirely. Or I guess I could cook for other people, at least like one other person at a time (no dinner parties, please). So six months from now, if you want me to cook you something, check in and see. Who knows, maybe I’ll feel like it.

I’m trying to read without much success, which is distressing to me because that’s been my most valuable source of joy since kindergarten. I’m going to keep trying. It’s a time when I just zone out and can’t even get through a page. At least it is right now.

The biggest source of challenge for me right now is the fact that my wife has been dead for one week and one day, and yet the world is still turning on its axis. I miss her all the time and there’s absolutely nothing I can do to change that. You’ve probably heard the W.H. Auden poem that feeling always brings to mind, but in case you haven’t:

So that’s a cheerful little ditty.

Here’s the last photo we ever took of us kissing (again, out of many over the years). We had just gotten back home from the hospital in January, and thought everything was going to be okay. I’m always going to spend far too long looking at this photo and wishing I had made the most of every single minute with her over the next two months.

The second-hardest thing that I’m dealing with right now is the fact that there’s no way to make a lot of choices regarding my own level of vulnerability. When I lose my composure, as happens relatively often, I don’t get to choose who is in the room with me at the moment. People are going to reach out and offer support and ask what they can do, even if I want them to go away. And at the very same time, I do not want them to go away, because I do not want to be alone. That’s new.

I think that I’m dealing with this loss well in very small segments: for an hour here, and an hour there, I feel like myself. And then I remember. Then I don’t know how to cope at all. Lots of slices of both types of moment make up a whole day, and now, a whole week.

Not counting me, Kellie had two best friends in her entire life. One of them came over tonight and spent many hours with me, just being here, living in the moment and reflecting on the whole shebang. I feel so grateful to have had this time with her. And I’ve probably mentioned this before, but it is such a gift to me when someone wants to hear what’s rattling around inside my head in this moment of disquiet. I know I don’t have to feel indebted to everyone, but I do. Continually. I can never thank any of you enough, and I have grown to believe that I’ll spend the rest of my life thanking anyone who has sacrificed in order to care for me in this season. And it won’t be enough.

Pretty much all the time, in addition to my sadness I feel a great deal of regret, guilt and shame about not caring for other people enough across these last eight days. Caring for everyone is what I do, both personally and professionally. I hope I’m pretty good at it. But I’m not good at it right now. I want to reach out and encourage my students that are set to graduate a week from tonight, and let them know how incredibly proud of them I am. I want to tell my clients that I’m so sorry to have prioritized my own grief over the very real challenges that they trust me to work through with them. I want to tell my family that I want them to save their money and their time and go back to all the super meaningful and important things they were doing before they dropped everything to come and help me like this. I want to call Kellie’s clients, one by one, and tell them that she would never want to have caused them this sorrow and this pain, and that I can fix it.

But I don’t do those things because I’m too tired, or I’m too closed-off emotionally, or I really shouldn’t (in the case of Kellie’s clients). I also don’t do those things because as much as I wish I were better about helping everyone else and me at the same time, I am not handling this the way I want to. My friends and family aren’t the enemy, even if they won’t stop reminding me to drink water and won’t stop helping me even if I want them to. My clients aren’t holding a grudge, even though part of their healing process is on pause right now. Kellie’s clients want to care for her memory in any way they can. So if I have wronged you, or hurt your feelings, or acted less like myself than I should have, I regret it. I’m sorry for that and I’m sorry that this is so hard for me. I want to be making choices that honor Kellie’s memory, but I’m so tired and so stressed and so continually triggered all over the place. I told someone today that I’m not mad at them, I’m mad at the Grim Reaper. That was a real feeling, not a joke.

I DO appreciate every single person who has expressed care for me or love for Kellie. I have never done this before, and I’m sure I’m making mistakes all over the place.

Please don’t give up on me.

I’ll leave you with a happy photo. This was one of our traditional New Year’s Eve shots that we tried to do each year. It’s far from perfect, and I could pick its composition apart in all kinds of ways—but it was a moment of true joy for all four of us. I know it was, I still remember that night. It was truly special. I’m glad we had that night.

Tonight has been a rough one. I’ve sat in my despair for the past two hours. That hasn’t helped, but I’m having a difficult time shaking it. I’m gonna go and wash some dishes or something, I think.

Talk to you soon, whether I want to or not.

Matt

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Kellie and I had such grand plans for 2026. We’d been envisioning what it was going to be like when we could finally go into private practice together since at least 2012. My therapist told me 2026 was going to be our year, and we believed her (but it’s really not her fault that it wasn’t). Working together was kind of a dream. It’s a hard time for private practice therapists these days, since the current administration’s policies have destroyed the economy (and so many people view therapy as a luxury expense). But the real shock for Kellie was how many clients wanted to work with her in private practice. We had been prepared for things to be extremely slow for six months or so, but that never happened. She had far more clients than we ever planned on, and that never ceased to amaze her. I mean, I always knew what a fantastic clinician she was. But imposter syndrome is a hard nut to crack, and the validation of client after client choosing Kellie as a therapist was an ever-present reminder that other people valued her insights and skills as well. I’m grateful that she got that experience, even for a few months.

When you work in a counseling agency as we both have, you don’t have a lot of control over the type of referral you take—someone sends you five more folks to work with and that’s just how it goes. But private practice gives you the space to be much more selective and targeted in the type of client you think you’ll most click with. Kellie felt, for the first time in her professional life, that her entire caseload of clients were all perfectly suited to her, from a needs perspective and a personality perspective. These clients were her ideal clients, and I’m so glad that she got to end her career with this group of folks. They’re struggling, and there’s very little I can do to make this process easier for them. That’s a hard thing for me to face.

I started off making notifications to them myself, but those interactions did not go well. I would explain how sorry I was to have to tell them this news, then told them she was gone, and then would break down myself, and then every one of them would immediately say that their own grief was unimportant and that what really matters is that I’m okay. And then the next thing would be them offering to bring me food or offering to care for me in all kinds of other ways. Those calls were some of the hardest things I’ve ever done, and there’s no way I could have continued to make them. I was able to research and speak with an attorney and eventually write up a contract and BAA so that I could hire a friend and fellow therapist to have the vast majority of those conversations with her clients.

If you’re one of Kellie’s clients and you’re reading this (because it’s a small world and small community), I want you to know that the reason we haven’t spoken is not because I don’t care about you. The opposite is true—we haven’t spoken because I care about you too much, and that’s not the foundation for a good therapeutic relationship. It would not be healthy for me to hold on to you as a symbolic representation of Kellie, and it would not be healthy for you to care for me for the same reason. I’m sending out referrals to everyone in a couple of weeks, but know that I would work with every single one of you if it would help either of us. I just doubt that that’s the case. I know what she meant to you, and you need to know what you meant to her. And that’s going to have to be enough. I’m sorry.

And that brings us to the fact that it’s suuuuuper hard for me to stop taking care of other people right now, even in the midst of a time when everyone keeps telling me I’m supposed to prioritize myself. It’s a real learning experience, and it really sucks.

Today has been a day of deep introspection. I’ve made some progress in all kinds of areas, and I’ve also had a lot of time to just sit and think (though that’s not been a bad thing, not at all).

I woke up early-ish, at 7 something. Coco was not well-behaved enough to sleep with me last night, which is okay. It’s a work in progress. Ivy has been having some seasonal allergy issues, so I called the vet to get her prescription refilled so we can take care of that. We also did a midnight bath last night, and that seems to have helped a little bit at least. I got around five hours of sleep, which is pretty average for me these days.

The very hardest thing (I know I keep saying multiple things are the hardest thing, so maybe life is all just a collection of the hardest things) is filling my time. I don’t have anyone else to agree with on a TV show or a snack or bedtime or playing something, so it’s just an endless stream of decisions about how to spend a few more minutes of my day. I’m not at all used to that dynamic, and it’s really difficult. Hence the midnight dog bath. We had to figure out the best way to dry her, since Kellie’s job is operating the hair dryer.

This morning, I also made myself breakfast. It’s the first time I’ve cooked anything since before Kellie died, and I’m absurdly proud of myself for coming up with something I wanted to eat and actually making it happen. Baby steps.

Kellie was always deeply concerned by my dried-out feet, and she was the one who made sure that I was taking care of myself medically. I haven’t ever scheduled myself a dentist appointment, for instance. So I’m also very proud of myself that I applied medicated balm to my worst heel this morning. Again, baby steps (since it’s hard to walk regular steps if you don’t take care of your feet). Here’s proof. Coco deeply enjoyed licking it off my foot, immediately, but I’m sure she didn’t get all of it.

I’ve been catching up on work emails, delegating tasks that I don’t have the energy to do myself, and thanking every single one of you who’s doing something to try and ease this path I’m on. I don’t know what the future looks like, it’s way too far off to tell. But I know I cannot survive without the grace and kindness of all of you. So thanks for not leaving me to my aloneness and grief.

I appreciate the continued prayers, good wishes, and love.

XOXO,

Matt

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I think that speaks for itself, especially after 10. It remains to be seen whether I’m unconquerable or not. I’m pretty tired at the moment, so we’ll see.

The word of the day is ‘experiment’.

I have experimented in many ways over the years. My own particular flavor of brain chemistry leads me to seek out novelty in a lot of areas of my life. I like trying new hobbies (Is there anyone reading this that remembers my Etsy shop and foray into craft shows for my jewelry business? Bonus points for anyone who comments the name of that business!) I like trying new food, I like going on trips and sleeping in new hotel beds. I like exploring bookstores and forests alike. But that was all complicated for Kellie, as her particular flavor of brain chemistry led her to seek out safety and peace and, sometimes, sameness.

I can’t tell you precisely how the two of us made that oppositeness work, and work really well. But it did, as I’ve already established, and it worked pretty great for three decades. But I can’t say that it’s easy to articulate just how my desire for difference and her desire for similarity in most areas of our lives could have possibly made us both so happy. I think the core lies in the fact that I preferred eating new things, but was fine to go with the same restaurant if that’s what she needed on a given day. She preferred to eat the same food, but was fine to be brave and try something different if that’s what I needed on a different day. I think that might be part of the secret, upon reflection. Because that’s how we approached a lot of areas of disagreement. Of course we argued, and of course we didn’t even get along about everything (especially when I was hangry). But it was about who needed something especially strongly at a given time, and that seesaw swung back and forth on a regular basis.

I don’t think there’s a chance of me ever encountering anybody who is as accommodating as Kellie was. We evolved into that back and forth rhythm over the years, and I just felt so comfortable that if I REALLY needed Chinese food or a trip to a new bookstore or a weird candy, she would be okay with that. And that much of the time, we’d be doing and eating comfortable and familiar things, especially when that was what she really needed on a given day.

But Kellie is gone. Or, if not exactly gone, not here in a corporeal sense. So today was a day for experimentation.

Before I get into that more deeply, here’s a rundown of today’s data points:

• I got five hours and twenty-five minutes of sleep. Not my best, and certainly not my worst, night of sleep across the last week. I went to sleep pretty late because of picking my sister up from the airport late last night.

• Coco slept in the bed with me a second time, for the entire night! She was so well-behaved and so adorable and really enjoyed the belly rubs whenever I woke up.

• I saw my therapist for the first time since Kellie’s death. We’ve been chatting pretty regularly, but hadn’t had an actual session yet. You can pretty much guess how that went, I bet. She has been a really present source of support to me.

• If you ever see the candy called “Squashies”, buy them and eat them. Thank me later.

• A long-time mentor sent me a lovely set of wind chimes, and so my dad hung them next to the front door. It has given me a great deal of joy to hear them periodically throughout each day and night, since every time that happens I intentionally think happy thoughts about Kellie.

• My new un-chewed-upon glasses are supposed to be available for me on Thursday. Stay tuned for the dramatic reveal.

• I thought I had gotten a card in the mail, and got excited until I saw that it was an ad for Omaha Steaks. No, please don’t think you owe me a card. Or Omaha Steaks. At this point, I don’t have a clue where I’d put them, and would probably end up with steak poisoning or something.

• A person who’s really special to both Kellie and I got some enormous health news today, and I wanted to let them know (again) how happy that made me. There are good things in the world in addition to all the darkness, and your text reminded me of that. Thank you.

• An incredible person keeps trying to give me a massive DoorDash gift certificate, even though DoorDash does not want to apply the balance to my account as of this writing. I appreciate the thought and the effort anyway, though!

• My sister-in-law visited today, and we had a really nice time.

• So did yet ANOTHER friend, and it was just as great as it has been every time they’ve come since this happened.

• Kellie’s obituary went live today. If you haven’t seen it, please check it out. A lot of work went into writing it, because it’s so incredibly hard to encapsulate someone as incredible as Kellie in a few short sentences. You might think I’m a great writer (I’m really not), but Kellie was the obituary writer in the family. She produced bangers every single time, with just editing help from me. So the responsibility of writing this without just supporting her as she did it for me was a tall order. https://www.ducro.com/obituaries/Kellie-Renee-Butler?obId=48199587

• Before I forget, her calling hours will be 1-3:30 on Saturday, May 23rd. Her celebration of life will be from 3:30-4:30 that same day. Just so you’re aware.

So, some experiments!

1. A dear friend brought me a fish sandwich. This is a very brave experiment for me because I have literally never eaten any non-tuna fish food items for my entire adult life, due to Kellie’s dislike of fish. The fish tasted great, by the way. And so did the tartar sauce, which was a sub-experiment.

2. Another friend brought me a pineapple matcha smoothie all the way from Jefferson, unprompted. This wasn’t an experiment in eating something, since I already knew how much I loved that particular item. But it WAS an experiment in accepting an unprompted gift of love from someone without being uncomfortable. And I was able to take it, enjoy it, and not feel at all bad that they’d taken time out of their day to try and make me feel happy for a minute.

3. I had a conversation with my dad and sister that involved me being vulnerable and honest about having a hard time this afternoon. They took my discomfort and tears and other feelings into account and it ended up feeling really good to me (and hopefully to them as well). Three cheers for honesty and vulnerability, even if both feel excruciating sometimes.

4. I let someone else teach my classes last night and also tonight. Giving up that degree of control over what my students learn is very difficult for me to do.

5. I’m experimenting with letting someone else clean my mess. We’ll see how that goes and whether my discomfort at that state of affairs ever goes away.

6. In a truly bizarre moment, I spent some time flossing my teeth in my living room, along with three others who were also simultaneously flossing. Talk about sentences I never thought I would type.

7. Yet another friend is doing some of my final grading for the semester, which is a whole new level of control for me to surrender. So much surrendering, so much discomfort.

Experiments are great, and also very scary. Onward to tomorrow, which officially marks one week since Kellie’s death. I am not relishing the one-week anniversary, believe me. If you think of me in the vicinity of 4:15pm tomorrow afternoon, please send me positive thoughts. I will likely not be doing well at that point.

I would also like to be clear about something: None of you owe me, or Kellie’s family, or anybody else any particular reaction or response to her death. All of us are going to react and respond in a huge variety of ways to such an earth-shattering event. So you do not have an obligation to offer me food, or come and hang out, or give me a million dollars (though checks are always accepted, especially checks for a million dollars). I don’t have an expectation for any particular response from any particular person.

The response that I have a much harder time understanding is when people say “I didn’t say anything to you because I thought you didn’t want people to talk to you right now”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not MAD at anyone for not doing that. I’m really not. But we’re talking about what I understand versus don’t understand, and there has not been one interaction with a person offering their condolences that I have disliked or that I have felt was an imposition. I will never be upset with you for telling me you’re sorry. I’m pretty confident in making that promise.

I feel isolated and sad and not much like myself these days. If I don’t have the energy to say hi back, I’m probably just going to not say hi back. I am much more lonely than I am annoyed by the people checking in. If you don’t want to say hi, that’s totally your call. But don’t not say hi because you think I don’t want you to say hi. I want everyone to say hi, especially from 10pm to 2am, as I have previously established. If you don’t want to reach out, that is your choice. But don’t let your reason for that be that you thought it would not be welcomed. At this point, I would even appreciate hearing condolences from my worst childhood bully (it’s a toss-up, but if your initials are L.C., it just might be you).

Okay, so that takes us to 11:30. We’ve got this, maybe? Stay tuned.

Hugs right back to all of you,

Matt

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The loss of Sage was the worst I’d ever hurt in my life. She was truly a member of our family, and I don’t know how I made it through two years of sorrow from losing her. But I had that experience with Kellie to back me up and listen to me and cry with me and distract me.

This—this is worse. Orders of magnitude worse. And that’s not because I’m suddenly able to realize that losing Sage wasn’t that big a deal after all, or because I have some newfound sense of perspective that dogs are just animals and don’t matter as much as I initially thought. No, this is worse because Kellie and I were connected at the soul, and I feel like we still are (no past-tense needed for that). But she’s behind that veil that separates where we are now from where we'll be eventually, and so I don’t feel her presence the way I always did before. Not in a woo-woo kind of a way, it’s just different than it was five days ago.

So today was the kind of a day where you start off optimistic because of everything you managed to accomplish and then end up slightly less optimistic because of how hard everything was (but still happy that you pulled off another day). I’ll bet the German language has a word to encapsulate that feeling, but sadly, I don’t know German. So instead you just get to read a paragraph about my complicated feelings.

I felt cared-for today. I had a great variety of conversations with folks who love Kellie and I, both via text message and in-person. I got to talk with someone who has been out of my life for a while, and that made me really happy. I got up early and took Coco and Ivy to the funeral home to pick up Kellie’s wedding rings, which was a very difficult thing for me. The dogs helped, and so did having a funeral director kind enough to bring everything out to the parking lot so I didn’t have to parade the dogs around before 9am in the morning. My new-ish neighbor visited with baked goods and kindness.

My dad has put a lot of energy into projects that will hopefully make my life easier to live when the new normal gets here. I’ve tried my best to make peace with someone else cleaning up my messes. We sure develop such a strange relationship to shame, don’t we? I know that absolutely nobody in my life cares that my fridge is a mess, or that the baseboards need to be dusted, or that there’s literally tea in my cupboards right now that expired in 2018.

And I’m having to come to terms with the fact that maybe it’s okay to have help with some of the stuff I just can’t get to? So if any of you know someone awesome who might be looking for another house to help tidy up a few times a month, can you let me know?

But I still feel bad about it existing in my orbit, as though anybody has the time and energy to fulfill all our obligations AND also manage all the other household things. I’ve had to try and compartmentalize off my anxiety about judgment from other people about our home, though, because I just have so little control over any of the things happening in my life right now. As someone told me this evening, this is a time for preserving the energy I’ve got, since I have a finite amount of it and so so many things that take from that stockpile. I feel deeply grateful to my dad for doing these projects, and deeply grateful to all of you for saying hi or even just letting me know you see me and care about what I’m going through (or, much more meaningfully, letting me know you care about Kellie and the incredibly important legacy she’s left in this community).

Please hear this: you don’t have to be the friend or other loved one who does (fill in the blank) in order to be important in my life. You can just be who you are and give what you’ve got (even if that’s just a moment of kindness via text or Facebook comment or beaming it to me via happy thoughts). I have no way to conclusively prove your happy thoughts don’t make a positive difference for me, so have at it. It can’t hurt, right?

I got about 10% of my work to close Kellie out of the private practice done today, which was good. Every little bit helps. I just have to keep telling myself that, on and on. And eventually it’ll be done.

I had the great privilege of picking up my sister from the airport at midnight tonight, which I was excited to get to do, and which also gave me a reason to be occupied during my aforementioned shitty most-hated 10-2 time slot. I love my sister, and she and I don’t get to see each other often enough. I’m thrilled that she came to offer tangible support in what has become a pretty awful time in my life, and I’m so grateful for the time and energy and expense it takes for all of these people to ignore their own responsibilities to care about me. It’s pretty embarrassing if I stop to think about it, so I try to limit the number of times I tell people ‘thank you so much’ to two or three per day. I don’t want to be a bother, and I’m bothering everybody right now.

I’ve been reflecting on all the busy-ness and chaos that sometimes surrounds Kellie and I and all our multiple roles and appointments and service to all kinds of folks. People have told us both for many years that they don’t understand how we do everything we do. A hard lesson I’ve been learning this week is that the thing that gives me the energy to do all that stuff is the time we get that’s full of quiet and joy and peace from being in our safe home, surrounded by the love Ivy and Coco and Kellie and I have for each other, being happy and walled-off from everything that could sap our strength and intrude on this perfect interlude before getting back to the innumerable demands on our time and energy. And that time is now gone, or so substantially changed that I don’t recognize it as even existing anymore. It sometimes worries me to think about how I’m going to manage to function without my cocoon for the rest of my life. I hope that changes into something new that gives me peace and hope and joy in the future, but I’m sure not there right now.

So anyway, that’s where I’m at. It was a good day, it was a draining day, and I stopped to reflect several times about just how tired I feel. If you’re wondering whether I appreciate what you’ve done or how you’ve shown me you care about Kellie and I, listen: it meant everything to me. Absolutely everything.

Time to try and sleep.

XOXO,

Matt

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I slept pretty badly for the first couple of nights, which isn’t great for my mental and physical health (duh). I know I’ve spoken with many of you about how ingrained in my everyday routines and thoughts and patterns Kellie is, and I don’t think that’s something that will ever change all that significantly. I suspect I’ll always feel this horrific sense of wrongness about her not being here. Maybe time will make a dent, but I’d have to live to 78 to have as many adult years without Kellie as I’ve had with her, and that seems really far off right now.

Bedtime is a particular challenge for me. We have always been a couple that goes to bed at the same time. What that has meant, sadly, is that I have always forced Kellie to stay up with me far past a reasonable hour. It feels deeply off for me to go through my nighttime routine without her in my vicinity. I think my brain must be telling me that I’m neglecting her asleep on the couch or somewhere, and that I’d better wake her up to get her to bed ASAP. We have a king-sized bed, and that’s always felt pretty perfect for both our bedroom and our sleep patterns. But since that first night without her, our bed is no longer a comfort for me. It’s a place I spend some time, but it feels cold and huge and empty. I keep feeling like I’m laying on a bed in a hotel room somewhere and wishing I could be back at home. The obvious problem with that feeling is that I AM home, and that there’s no home I could pack up and drive to where she’s waiting for me with a kiss and a smile and a shoulder to lie my head against.

Last night I tried an experiment which worked relatively well—I piled up a ton of blankets and pillows on her side of the bed so that I was confined to my side. That felt a little bit like she was there, which was a plus. The other thing that helped was that Coco slept beside me (on the pile of blankets, of course) for the entire night. That’s only the first time in her life she hasn’t spent the night in her crate, and it felt special to have her stay with me. I hope to continue this trend. Some of you know the story of the FIRST time we tried letting her sleep with us a couple of weeks ago. It ended with her spending a significant portion of her evening chewing on my glasses, which means I had to see our eye doctor and pay several hundred dollars for new ones. And also that I’ve had to see many little bite marks everywhere I look for two weeks now. The new pair cannot come fast enough, y’all. So a night in bed with me was a step forward for both Coco and myself.

Today saw a significant dropoff in the number of check-ins and visits from folks. That’s a good thing (because it means people know I’m surviving), and also a good thing because it let me have a little space and time to myself. It’s a less-good thing because I found myself surprised at how much I missed carrying on forty text conversations all day. So there’s that. It would be lovely if I could just be given a bat-signal to shine into the sky when I’m lonely (or if a few dozen of you could work out a schedule of who’s going to text me from 10pm-2am). Either one, thanks.

But seriously, I spent time with my dad today, which was really nice. I also spent time with my mother-in-law, which was also really nice. I don’t know why it’s been so great just to be in the company of another human being—oh yeah—I do—it’s because I’m a frigging widower now.

The bulk of today was spent thinking about things I could do to avoid doing my homework, which resulted in me waiting until roughly 8pm to even start a huge project that was due at midnight. I suspect my motivation for the endless dithering was that the project would keep me busy through at least half of those 10-2 dark and despairing hours. Unfortunately, I finished the huge project up in an hour and a half, which meant I had dramatically overestimated how much of my evening I would be forced to think about something else.

So what happened? Well, I sat down to write a newsletter all about how I’m no longer a night owl, about how I dread the 10pm hour every single night because I know everyone else is snuggled down with somebody (even if that somebody is a good book or a cat) when I’m just here struggling. And what do you think happened next? My jerk of a friend texted me to ask how I was feeling. Which led to an hour and a half of me talking about how I wasn’t feeling great, but guess what? Even though it meant I had to do a ton of rewriting of this piece, talking to that friend about being sad made me a lot less sad. Funny how that works, isn’t it? Yes, I told her how much of a difference her random text had made in my life. Because it sure did. But I think it’s the hour and a half that followed that made the real difference. One person opens the door, the other person steps through that door, and then if all the variables line up magically, you get that conversation which really makes you feel like human connection actually exists, that you aren’t cut off from the rest of humanity permanently.

As one particular son of a bitch told me in 2001 when he was threatening to beat me up at work over something I hadn’t done, it takes two to tango. He then said to me and our supervisor after he’d gotten into a lot of trouble for his threats of bodily harm against me, “See, Matt—in West Virginia where I’m from, ‘it takes two to tango’ just means that we need to sit down and work out our differences like adults”. I guess that isn’t as applicable in this situation, though. It takes two of us to form a connection, it takes two of us to nurture and sustain that connection, and it takes two of us to work out our differences like adults (even if our only difference is the fact that you don’t want to get fired after threatening to beat up your co-worker). I guess what I’m saying is that if you act like a monster to me at work, I’ll probably still remember the interaction 25 years later. Oh, and I’m saying that friendships are hard, and that friendships with me are probably especially hard at the moment.

I’m trying not to be a bad friend, I promise. But I do hate that stupid 10pm timeslot which always comes, no matter what. Time keeps on timing, am I right? If only I could Groundhog Day it—but I know which day I’d do over again, and it’s not today. No, it’d be the last day I spent with Kellie. And I would cancel my classes and both of us would reschedule our clients, and I’d make her a big dinner, and we’d sit on the couch and hold hands with our dogs in our lap and some stupid TV show on in the background, and drink hot chocolate and smile, and we’d both be so happy. She’d know she was loved. And I wouldn’t have to keep looking at her text messages from just last week when she told me I should take that day off because I work too hard and just spend it napping with her instead.

We always have our choices, don’t we? We can’t predict what’s going to happen. We don’t know which days will turn out being the ones we relive in our heads as some of our best, or which days will turn out to be the opposite.

But what we absolutely do have the power to do is try to make the good moments, those moments of connection between us or connection with the universe, those moments when we spark joy or find hope in a hopeless place—make those moments outweigh the ones where we prioritize work, prioritize to-do lists, or prioritize all those unimportant things that feel so important when we’re in the midst of them.

I’m going to bed. Cross your fingers that the pillow and blanket pile works again for me tonight. And if you’re the person who brought me nine huge containers of soup, thanks again. The red lentil dal with spinach was incredible at midnight tonight, along with hummus and gummy bears. And some apple fritter bread, just for fun.

Hugs and kisses, and a chicken in every pot,

Matt

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I’ve been thoroughly touched by the massive outpouring of love and support for Kellie and I since the news of her death got out there. If you have called or texted or sent a Facebook message or dropped something off on my porch or have sent prayers out into the universe or even just thought kindly about me or lovingly about what she meant to you and your life, then you’ve done something that matters to me. And I want to thank you for that.

It’s such a surprise to me how everyone keeps rearranging all their priorities in order to be there for me. Not because we didn’t feel loved prior to this most terrible of weeks, but because I know just how hard this world makes it to focus on anything beyond the here and now. The connections between us as humans are vital and meaningful and incredibly valuable, but just like most of our most important self-care routines, they’re often the first thing that gets left on the back burner when we’re having a bad day or bad week or bad year.

The things on your to-do list aren’t busywork. They’re there because they matter to you, for the most part, and so it’s impossible for me not to feel at least a little guilt when you show up for me in some way. I know that you’ve moved something else aside in order to accommodate me in your day, and that moves me a great deal. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

That said, let me update you on where things stand with me right now. Keep in mind that this changes from minute-to-minute, and that I’m all over the place emotionally-speaking. I expect that to be the case for a long time.

Talk to me, tell me everything you see

The sun that’s shining lighter than a feather

And every day, the moon just sails away

The moon and sun are the keepers of the weather

Don’t know what I’d do, don’t know what I’d do

Without you

Don’t know where I’d go, don’t know where I’d go

Without you

Dragonfly, the clouds are rolling by

The wind across my back, I feel the shiver

Drive around, live from town to town

To the ocean of your love, I am a river

—Adrianne Lenker

Here’s a small snapshot of my day yesterday:

• I slept for five hours and forty-seven minutes (on Thursday night)

• I physically spent time with five or six people who were so, so kind

• I ate food three times (fast food brought by someone, food truck food brought by someone else, and soup brought by a third person. You all know who you are)

• I didn’t drink much water and spent most of the day wondering why I was so thirsty (duh)

• I texted with around 40-60 people

• I worked out the necessary contractual logistics with a friend who I’ve hired to legally and ethically finish notifying Kellie’s counseling clients of the situation

• I finalized arrangements for other faculy to take on Kellie’s summer and fall Kent State classes

• I completed writing her obituary

• I sorted through thousands of photos of Kellie to narrow them down to my favorite 61, and selected my top choice for the newspaper

• I worked out some necessary details for our private practice

• I lost track of how many people have offered food and a shoulder to cry on and anything I could ever possibly need or want

• Some dear friends stayed with me until around 4:30am

• At which point, I ate the aforementioned soup and went to bed around 5:30

If you’re wondering about arrangements for the funeral, calling hours and then a service will happen sometime on Saturday, May 23rd, at Zaback-Ducro Funeral Home. It’ll be live-streamed, I believe on YouTube. Our Quaker Meeting will also be having an online memorial service for Kellie, which will be after the one here. I’ll post the info for how to join those remotely so anyone who wishes can do it in-person or online.

Hey, I found the safest place to keep all our tenderness

To keep all those bad ideas, keep all our hope

It’s here in the smallest bones, the feet and the inner ear

It’s such an enormous thing to walk and to listen

And I’d like to fall asleep to the beat of you breathing

In a room near a truck stop on a highway somewhere

Well you are a radio, you are an open door

I am a faulty string of blue Christmas lights

You swim through frequencies, you let that stranger in

As I’m blinking off and on and off again

And we’ve got a lot of time, or maybe we don’t

But I’d like to think so, so let me pretend

These are my favorite chords, I know you like them too

When I get a new guitar, you could have this one

And sing me a lullaby, sing me the alphabet

Sing me a story I haven’t heard yet

—John K. Samson

So that’s the story of the comings and goings from yesterday. There are a million other things that happened, but there’s no way for me to record every hug, every moment of kindness when I broke down in tears, every person who waited for me to regain my voice or breath when I needed to stop talking for a second. If you have extended me this compassion, know that the universe will repay you someday, some way. I’m not dumb enough to believe that I can make it up to you all, no matter how long I live. There are too many acts of love for me to keep track of, and I probably couldn’t keep track of them in my head anyhow.

Something I’d like you all to hear:

I know you love me. I’m not judging you for calling and texting and coming here, and I’m not judging you for giving me space and not calling or texting or coming here. I have witnessed a huge amount of variation in what people want to give and are able to give to me, and none of these ways of offering support is better or worse than any other. Believe me, I’m not keeping track of who’s doing what. If you care about me, I’m pretty sure you’ve shown me that in some way over these last 37 hours since she died. And I appreciate you.

I don’t know what the rest of my day is going to look like, but I can promise you it will be full of a. tears and b. disbelief and dissociation and c. love and support.

Later, taters.

Matt

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The worst thing is that her presence--her utterly vital, utterly perfect presence--is so clearly felt by me in every single aspect of my daily routine. I can’t wake up without needing her beside me. I can’t watch a commercial on TV or listen to a podcast or read an article or piece of trivia on Twitter or an annoying comment online without needing to share that with her. Having her presence missing is like adjusting to losing an eye. You know the world is still there like usual, you just can’t see it because you’re MISSING AN EYE. I’m missing Kellie, and half of my world has gone dark.

Also on the list--though much lower--is the fact that there isn’t some dramatic story about how she went. She had been struggling with a lot of medical mysteries since mid-December, especially over the past month. We had started to adjust to her having some major mobility challenges. She was still seeing clients, teaching multiple social work classes, and loving her life with me and the dogs. It might be a lot more titillating for everyone if she had gone skydiving with a faulty parachute, or if she was lost in a dramatic search-and-rescue operation at sea, or even tragically swept up by a tornado. But nope. Kellie was the farthest thing from performative, and so it actually makes a lot of sense for it to be quiet and peaceful and without a lot of fanfare. With Kellie, you saw what you got--she was honest, she was sincere, and she didn’t want attention for attention’s sake.

We both got done with work around 4 that afternoon. I was headed out to run an errand, and she asked if I could help her out of her chair to go and use the bathroom. We walked down the hall together (she wanted me to be close in case her balance got wonky), and after we turned the corner, she took two or three steps and just collapsed. I screamed and she didn’t answer. She didn’t have a pulse and she wasn’t breathing. The ambulance crew arrived within six or seven minutes and told me pretty quickly that there was nothing they could do--she was gone. I just kept asking them over and over, “There’s nothing? Nothing you can do? Nothing at all? There’s nothing you can do?”

That’s the story of how our thirty years together ended up. She experienced no pain, and in fact probably didn’t even know it was happening. My therapist says that the last thing Kellie experienced was me steadying her in her walk down the hall, a truly tangible act of love, and that there’s something really special about Kellie knowing fully just how much I love her. I agree with my therapist, though I would absolutely swap out that final act of love for even thirty more seconds of talking with her, or even seeing her smile one more time. And if you ask me if I would trade my life for hers, the answer is unequivocally yes. She’s the one who deserves to be here, far more than me. I’m grateful that she doesn’t have to experience this pain in the same way I do. At least on her end of things, she’s got the absolute assurance that we’ll be together again (or I’m betting she does, anyway).

I’m so glad Kellie got to experience joining the private practice with me--for the last few months of her life, she was her own boss, and that gave her a great deal of joy. We were both positive, heading into 2026, that this was going to be our year for sure. But it wasn’t.

These last few months were hard--really hard. You don’t really necessarily understand loss of function and pain and the difficulties that go along with them until you experience both for yourself. I would gladly re-live the last few months over and over for the rest of my life if it bought me any extra time with her, so even those challenges are all relative, in the end.

As I’ve told more and more people across the past 30 hours or so, Kellie absolutely hated Facebook. She hated being performative, remember? She hated the insincerity of making a post for the likes or the fake engagement or as a way of pretending to support a cause. Kellie was all about doing the actual work.

Perfect example: Kellie saw a lot of transgender clients over the years. At first, she was randomly assigned a trans kid and had to make the most of it while trying not to make the situation worse for them. She was terrified of making a mistake way back then. We would talk about strategies for helping ease gender dysphoria and about different clinical approaches with that population, and she slowly built up her confidence with the client. And then she got another trans referral. And another. And before she knew it, she was working with a LOT of folks in the trans and gender non-conforming community. You know how it goes: one person tells another person who tells someone else that they’ve found a therapist who won’t treat them like a mistake. A mental health professional who values them as a human being who’s worthy of love and joy and believes they’re capable of having a great life. Ultimately, Kellie was asked by the county Mental Health and Recovery Services Board to teach a continuing education workshop on gender-affirming care and clinical strategies for supporting trans clients. She was terrified of that too--but it turned out to be a really great way to pass on some of the things she’d figured out along the way to clinicians who needed to learn that stuff. What does this example teach us? Kellie didn’t spend her time sharing memes on Facebook about supporting the trans community. No, she actually SUPPORTED them. And helped them to feel valued and seen. And helped others to do the same thing. Kellie was about the doing, not the posing. This is just one small example of what I’ve witnessed over and over and over in her life: Kellie did the work.

So now that she’s gone, I have to do the work myself. I have to make sure I’m walking the walk, for her. Someone told me today that Kellie was not only incredibly proud of everything I’ve done, but that she actively went out of her way to show everyone else that they should be proud of what I’ve done as well. She was the biggest cheerleader I’m ever going to have. And I need to show myself to be worthy of that faith she’s shown in me for 30 years.

People have told me today that she’s a shining light in the world. They’ve told me that she was the favorite professor they’ve ever had. They’ve told me that she helped them when no other therapist could. They’ve told me that she was special in a million small and large ways. My favorite thing has been hearing so many of our loved ones share what she meant to them (please, keep it coming). Friends have dropped off breakfast and a journal and Legos and miso soup (okay, those last three were one person). Friends have given me legal advice and made me laugh and made me cry and made me reminisce. Friends have reminded me about things I’ve forgotten, and long-lost friends have come back to let me know they love me.

I’m not on my own. Some part of Kellie’s here, somewhere, even if I’m still learning to discern the piece of her that still lives somewhere just outside my field of vision. I have family (both mine and hers) who love me. I have friends who won’t let me hide from them. I have my spiritual community, too. The only thing I don’t have is the only thing I really, really want. And that’s her.

She was only 49. We thought we had decades and decades left, but we didn’t. I’ve been telling folks to please not talk about her passing on Facebook. Part of that is because she hated Facebook, and part of that is because I’ve felt the need to try and control the narrative, to exert some tiny piece of influence over who knows what about this most terrible thing that’s ever happened in the history of the world. But it’s almost midnight on day two, and random people keep offering me condolences, so it appears that the news has escaped containment. And that means I need to stop trying to keep people from finding out. My wife is dead, and that’s never going to feel normal. Go ahead and spread it to whomever you think needs to know.

I miss her, and I know that so many of you do as well. Please spend the time you have left on this planet loving each other and letting them know you mean it now, not after they’re gone. And don’t just talk about making a difference--actually do the work, like Kellie did.

Forever hers,

Matt

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I don’t want that to be the case, so I’ve been reflecting on the best way to get back on this particular horse. For a number of reasons, it’s just been a real challenge for me to stay invested in all kinds of stuff for this first chunk of 2026. I plan to speak to some of those reasons later on, but the most important has been stupid run-of-the-mill medical stuff. My wife has had an array of medical crises since December, and then my own beleaguered immune system decided to give up and I’ve spent much of the last month struggling with my own medical nonsense.

For a period of almost two weeks, I even lost my voice, which was not a pleasant experience for me--though it might have been a pleasant experience for my students, my clients, my wife, and others who are doubtless exhausted at hearing me rant about all kinds of topics long after they’ve grown bored of the entire situation.

Being (literally, even if temporarily) voiceless was not great. It would probably have made me reflect on the value of patience and the importance of rest a lot more if I wasn’t completely without the energy to reflect on much of anything.

So, yes, I’m feeling better now. Finally. Thanks for everyone who checked in on either or both of us, and know that you’re very much appreciated. My voice isn’t entirely back, but I can now at least be heard, which is (as previously noted) a mixed bag for all those around me.

The question isn’t “Why didn’t I unsubscribe from that dead newsletter?”, though. It’s “What can Matt do to make it worthwhile to read again for folks who have completely forgotten it existed?”

I’m no stranger to blogging. I’ve lost count of the number of blogs I’ve worked on diligently (if temporarily) across the past twenty years or so. And that means I’m also no stranger to writing posts like this one, where I say I’m sorry for getting busy or bored and abandoning my best intentions. I really enjoyed the blog I wrote with my wife for a bit--that one was titled for a song which still gives me goosebumps. I loved the site (and message board, and other assorted projects) that I ran which was dedicated to a band that has now pretty much dissolved. And I got a lot of joy from the book review blog I stuck with for the longest out of them all.

I haven’t stopped listening to those bands. I haven’t stopped reading those books. But I stopped writing, across all of those platforms, because time is precious and because sustaining my attention on one project for the long-term is not something I typically do. There have been exceptions, such as my marriage (almost 28 years and counting) or my love of video games (40 years or so) or my obsession with books (longer than that).

So it’s not impossible to consider the possibility of me sticking with this too. Coming back to the world of semi-regular posts, staying engaged with my (small) readership, providing a ‘product’ that offers you all some perceived value of sorts. All of that is a possibility. It’s even an alluring possibility, at that. I still hesitate to guarantee you that I’m done with my self-imposed hiatus, though. Because I know the truth about how exhausted I’ve been pretty much since 2026 began. I know how easy it is to check out from things that take sustained mental effort, especially in the midst of everything that’s happening in the world right now. I can promise you that I’ll try, and that’s what I’ve got in me.

How about this: let me start with an update. Here’s an abbreviated list of some of the things that have been on my mind since we last spoke.

• The current immigration crackdown in this country is immoral, indefensible, and beyond evil. ICE does not need to exist. I know that my position on geopolitical borders isn’t shared by everyone, and I’m comfortable with that. Honestly? I would be happiest if we didn’t have guarded borders of any kind. It does not matter to me who enters this country or that country, because the concept of “countries” is a construct anyway. That said, if we are going to disagree with Matt and if our society really really cares about silly things like which side of an imaginary line you or I were born on, then our society is going to have some kind of immigration enforcement system. ICE is not a workable or humane part of such a system, and it needs to be shut down. If saying that puts me on some sort of a list, I’m pretty comfortable with that. They’re acting in ways that I see as unredeemable.

• I know I’ve said this before, but I’ll mention it again just for fun: I’m not an advocate of violent revolution in this country or any other. Peaceful movements have been far more successful, in far more sustained ways, throughout the course of human history. We need to change the way our system functions (and has functioned for a long time). We do not need to do that by killing people or fomenting violent uprisings. I’m a Quaker, and Quakers have been instrumental in a whole lot of societal change for the better across several hundred years now. We need peace now more than ever.

• This semester has been an unusual one. My program continues to get bigger and bigger, and the consistent message I keep getting from every single instructor in the program is that our students are so smart, so values-driven, and a real pleasure to teach. That’s been my experience as well. Our students are truly stellar, and working with them is such an honor. At the same time, it’s been hard for me to be as present for them as I usually am this semester. That’s not because I don’t care, it’s because I haven’t had the capacity. They have been very compassionate and understanding about that lack of capacity, and I cannot tell you how touched that has made me feel. It’s an all-around wonderful group of human beings, and also a dream job for me.

• I’ve been focused on returning to a world where I am more in control of my own stuff, not letting huge corporations allow me to rent things from them. One example of this is my music collection. I’ve gone so far as to purchase an actual digital music player and fancy headphones, as well as going through multiple old laptops to dig up my 13,000 old songs that I haven’t listened to for at least a decade. Rather than streaming music, I can listen to my weird faves without a subscription whenever I feel like it. It’s caused me to purchase so much music, and has been really good for my mental health. I strongly encourage you to do the same.

• I play Scrabble on my Ipad every single day, and have for several months now. There is a person named Bethany G. who seems to enjoy competing with me as much as I enjoy competing with her--we currently have around fifteen concurrent Scrabble games going. I don’t know why, but Bethany G. has also helped me a great deal with my mental health, without ever exchanging a word (beyond the thousands of words we’ve exchanged in-game). If you’re curious about how we’re each doing, I have currently won 35 times against her and she’s won 9 times against me. And yet she persists. Do you want to play Scrabble with me? Reach out! I’ve always got room for more Bethany Gs.

• Kellie and I have been enjoying a whole host of HBO Max shows lately, both old and new. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms and The Pitt are both delightful, we’re in the first season of a rewatch of The Wire, and Neighbors is simultaneously incredibly entertaining and also incredibly stressful. Thank goodness for good neighbors too, am I right?

• Our dogs continue to be the very best dogs in the entire world. Ivy spends much of her time relaxing, and could teach us all a lot about the value of rest. Coco spends much of her time trying to destroy and/or eat everything in our home, and has taught me that she will somehow not die despite consuming both orange Gatorade and red velvet cake with buttercream frosting over the past 24 hours (no, I’m not kidding). Neither ingestion was a LOT, but both were still more than a little concerning to us.

• I’m also reading a lot. I’ve finished four books so far in February. I’m halfway done with three others (one is a Young Adult novel about kids fighting against an authoritarian regime, one is about teaching and instilling a love for learning in the age of generative AI, and one is about practicing medicine in the future).

• Video games? Absolutely. Pipestrello and the Cursed Yo Yo, Hollow Knight: Silksong, and Mewgenics have taken up most of my gaming time so far this year. All are masterpieces.

• David Thomas, state representative to half of Ashtabula County, continues to propose and co-sponsor a whole host of ridiculous legislation. Just another reminder that if he succeeds in his obsressive quest to destroy the property tax structure of this state, we will all be very harmed by the resulting destruction of our state’s infrastructure. He’s making moves to harm libraries, schools, emergency services, local governments, people in poverty, LGBTQ+ people, and so many others. He doesn’t deserve to continue to remain in an elected position when he ignores the vast majority of his constituents’ will.

• Sarah Fowler Arthur, state representative to the other half of Ashtabula County (because Ohio’s GOP adores gerrymandering almost as much as they adore abusing their power and harming those with less privilege), continues to do very little to benefit any of her constituents. She DID post a lovely tribute to George Washington and his apparent penchant for prayer to celebrate Presidents’ Day, so that’s what she’s spending her energy on.

• I would love to write entire posts on a whole host of topics, and still have half-finished drafts about the changes to the student loan system (which are awful), more about the One Big Beautiful Bill and some of the ways it’s going to hurt all of us non-rich folks, about the ins and outs of running a private practice, odds and ends about stigma related to mental illness and addiction, more about homelessness, ruminations about the state of higher education, a discussion about Quaker history, some video game/music/movie/TV reviews, my thoughts on recipes (i.e. you should get yourself a recipe manager app that syncs across devices), and a whole lot of pictures of my dogs. See? Endless amounts of content at your fingertips, as soon as I write the dang things. That’s the trick, isn’t it?

• Donald Trump continues to try his very best to cement his reputation as one of the worst Presidents our country has ever had. Which is a real feat, if you consider Andrew Jackson or Millard Fillmore or a few others in that illustrious pantheon. He’s a bully, he’s cruel, and he is a morally-bankrupt pile of garbage. At his core, he cares about very little aside from money and power. Slowly, very slowly, people are starting to realize how badly he sucks. That’s not nothing.

• Vivek Ramaswamy continues to be an absolute mess of an Ohio gubernatorial candidate. How lucky for us that the GOP anointed him as their pick literally a year before the election! He’s worse than a joke--he’s a billionaire who cares about himself and his money and power (but little else). Bit of a trend developing there...

There is beauty and joy and love and kindness to be found in the world. Not only does it exist, but it exists all around you and me. We need to look a little harder for it right now than usual, but it’s there. I promise. My ask of you is that you spend some time looking for them, and when you find a glimmer, stop looking. Spend some more time just experiencing that thing that is enriching your life in that moment. The fear and doubt and hideous nature of so much that surrounds us in our lives can wait--live in the joy this week, as long as you can. You’ve earned it.

I’ll be back again soon, when I’ve got the time and space and energy. At least I’ll try my best to be back. Thanks for reading!

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I’ve been on a one-month break from my self-imposed weekly writing schedule, but I’ll re-start my regular posts early in 2026. It was a challenging fall semester (as I warned you it was shaping up to be), and I’ve needed the time to breathe and rest and re-calibrate. My wife and I are absolutely loving co-owning a business together, and our new schedule has been really great for both of us. Working for yourself brings with it great mental health benefits—who knew?

But 2026 promises to bring all kinds of new challenges and rewards, and I’m eager to continue processing those things out loud to a (small) audience, as well as using my (small) platform for good.

There are currently nine draft posts sitting here waiting to be finished and sent out into the world for your thoughts, so don’t worry—I have plenty to keep talking about. That’s never been my issue, as my biggest problem is narrowing down my focus for each week into (mostly) one main topic.

As you celebrate this New Year’s Eve in the tradition to which you are accustomed, even if that tradition looks like going to bed by 9pm, I want to send you all my love and gratitude for sticking with me, whether we have all the same opinions or not on some of the topics I’ve chosen. Expect me to continue my emphasis on what we can learn and what we can do to make the world a better place (in ways both large and small) as we head into 2026. No matter what the year brings, it’s going to be interesting. I promise.

If you keep reading, I’ll keep writing.

See you soon, pals!

XOXO,

Matt

(And here’s a super-exclusive bonus cute photo, as a little treat. You’re welcome.)

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This week, I’m thinking a whole lot about change.

In high school, what seems now like several whole lifetimes ago, my girlfriend had big plans for our future. She pretty much mapped out all the important things, and told me the way it was going to be—I was going to be a psychologist in private practice, and she was going to be my receptionist. That way, we could spend a bunch of time with each other, she could be involved with my business (well, it would be our business), and everything would be perfect. Lots of kids running around, too.

As you’ve probably guessed by now, none of those things ended up happening. She didn’t continue being my girlfriend after we graduated high school, I eventually came to my senses and realized that social work (not psychology) is what I’m meant to do, and I’ve always had a ton of jobs that didn’t involve running my own business. Oh, and no children (aside from our incredible pups).

I don’t say any of that out of a sense of regret—I’m really, really content with my life and the way it has turned out so far. I’m also really, really glad that I ended up marrying the best person in the world rather than that long-ago ex. For the most part, the mistakes I’ve made and the regrettable side quests I’ve gone on have all taught me valuable life lessons and ended up going pretty well, all things considered. So yes, many things ARE perfect. Just very different from what I thought they’d be back in the early 90s.

This is a season of change, for the world in general but also for my wife and I. Today marks the end of an era for our family, as it’s Kellie’s last day working at her current job. And that’s pretty weird for us.

I started at Community Counseling Center in January of 2005. At that point, I had a high school degree and a wide variety of work experiences in all kinds of jobs that had nothing to do with mental health or addiction. Kellie also started working there in January of 2014. Between the two of us, during our time at that agency we’ve earned two Associate’s Degrees, two double-major Bachelor’s Degrees, two Master’s Degrees, and three independent professional licenses. We’ve made (and then lost) more than a few relationships we thought would be lifelong. We’ve grieved the loss of Kellie’s grandmother and dad. Three dogs have become part of our family, and grieved the loss of one of those as well (which might have been the hardest of them all). It has literally been twenty-one years since at least one of us wasn’t employed by CCC, and that’s hard to wrap our minds around.

Think about all the changes you’ve experienced in your own life from your late 20s to your late 40s (if you’re as old as me). In many ways, the pre-CCC world for Kellie and I was a lifetime ago, and we were both very different people back then. Nothing has remained the same for our family between then and now. And so separating out our identity from that agency is, as you might imagine, an endlessly complicated proposition.

You may wonder why Kellie is choosing to leave now—the truth is, there wasn’t some dramatic split or change of heart. It just felt like the right time for her to make a change, and for both of us to be able to move past the CCC era in our lives toward something else entirely. We have both spent countless hours in service of that agency, and we’ve both appreciated the growth opportunities we were given while there.

There’s a well-worn trope in the mental health world that says the community mental health agency is a place for clinicians who are new to the field, and that once you get your independent license and a little experience under your belt, you’ll automatically move on. Once you’ve been taught enough at that training ground, the belief goes, you’ll seek out more money, more challenges, and a better work environment.

Kellie and I have both pushed back against that characterization of the nonprofit mental health world for a long time. We don’t think those types of agencies necessarily deserve that reputation, and we don’t think it’s a foregone conclusion that a person couldn’t spend an entire career doing good work at an agency where you feel at home.

We’re both really proud of so many good things that CCC has done in our community over the last twenty-one years. The agency has expanded dramatically, added on a bunch of new treatment options for their clients, and has engaged with the needs of a diverse county in a whole variety of creative ways. Kellie was hired to put a brand-new idea into place: she worked as an Access Therapist. That meant seeing any client who walked through the doors, focusing on their housing or food insecurity needs, collaborating with agencies and resources throughout the area to help increase that client’s stability, in addition to supporting them in taking steps toward their mental health and addiction-related goals. She was not only AN Access Therapist, she was THE Access Therapist. At that time, nobody but Kellie was doing that kind of work in our community, with such great scope and scale of potential needs. Today, CCC has an entire Access Team to fill that role. But when Kellie was doing it, it was all her. That’s something we’ll always be proud of. Kellie did incredible work with children, adults, older adults, families, and couples. She has done hundreds of diagnostic assessments. She has mentored students and new clinicians, and she has served on steering committees and helped to spearhead multiple clinical initiatives to the agency. She’s also been a loud and courageous ally to those in the LGBTQ+ community, as well as a voice within the agency advocating for training and acceptance of the incredibly important work gender-affirming care can provide.

I worked at CCC in a variety of roles, and ultimately ended up serving as a member of the leadership team. I applied (and got) millions of dollars worth of grants for the agency. I began numerous programs which are still in operation today, serving needs that nobody else was addressing in this community. Those programs focused on folks in need of accessible detoxification options, pregnant women who were in early recovery and needed housing and other supports, individuals who were on probation and parole and had struggled to maintain sobriety in community settings, and those who had experienced suicide losses. I helped bring peer support services to the agency, as well as recovery housing, as well as innovative approaches to MAT. I brought prevention services to the agency, as well as securing funding for the Clubhouse (and sketching out the renovations in MS Paint). I was even instrumental in making telehealth happen at CCC (thanks to an incredible therapist who moved out of state and is still doing her thing there). I like to think I was able to make a difference in terms of decreasing stigma related to mental health and substance use disorders on a community-wide level, and in terms of trying to shift perspectives toward a harm-reduction approach. I got to teach, to mentor, to build and maintain programs, and to watch the size and reach of the agency expand over time to where it is now.

Community Counseling Center has made a lot of changes over the years, and lots of them have been good ones. I remember where it was back in 2005, and it’s almost unrecognizably different now (mostly for the better). They’re about to make an even bigger change in 2026—CCC is merging with another long-established agency from Geauga County (Ravenwood) over the next few months. That’s been a change which is really bittersweet for Kellie and I, and we imagine we’re not the only ones in that boat. After 61 years of providing mental health and addiction services in Ashtabula County, CCC is turning into something else next year. And it’s doing that without Kellie and I.

When I brought the garbage out yesterday morning, I was forced by the snowy weather to grab a jacket out of the closet. For the first time in a couple of years, I wore a vintage Community Counseling Center jacket. It gave me a real sense of nostalgia to wear that jacket to pick up breakfast, wore it to the vet’s office, wore it when I ran another couple of errands. It felt like I was going back in time a little bit to have that familiar logo over my heart, and it was weirdly comforting.

You know as well as I do that nothing stays the same. Nothing ever does, no matter what. Yes, I’m not a CCC employee anymore, and after today Kellie won’t be one either. But that’s not the only reason why that jacket is obsolete, and why it represented such a throwback to me—that logo isn’t going to stand for this agency anymore in the new year. CCC is changing, and so are we all. We’re okay with that!

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Which brings us back full circle. More than 30 years ago (when Community Counseling Center was barely 30, and I was half that), my girlfriend dreamed of me opening a private therapy practice in partnership with her. That was never going to happen, for a full host of reasons. But that seed of an idea has been sitting there for Kellie and I over the decades, and tomorrow it’s actually happening, believe it or not.

Two years ago, I launched a private practice, and tomorrow, Kellie will be joining the practice full-time. We chose to call it As You Wish Counseling, since having the power to have a voice in your own care is something we massively value. Beyond that, most of you probably recognize the reference to a movie that was instrumental in the earliest days of our relationship. It just fits us, and never fails to make us smile! If you’re interested in learning more about Kellie’s therapeutic style, her Psychology Today profile is here. If you’re looking for an incredible therapist, I might know someone!

And, of course, you can always check out our practice information and reach out with referrals at our website, here.

I wish I had something stirring and meaningful to end this piece with—that I could share some morsel of wisdom with you that would make all the world’s changes feel meaningful, under our control, and like mostly moments of joy and empowerment rather than bringing with them so much fear and anxiety for us all.

But that wouldn’t be very realistic, would it? We all go through changes, all the time. Some of them feel like foregone conclusions (of course my beard would only turn greyer over the years), but some of them feel like they came out of nowhere, and like the very air is getting knocked out of your lungs every time you turn around. Most of the time, the changes we all navigate are some combination of the two. There’s anxiety there, but also hope. There’s deep relief for us at taking control of something we have wanted to do differently, or something new we’ve wanted to focus our attention and effort on.

Kellie and I are beyond excited at the opportunity to work with each other again, for each other, and to continue to build on our decades of making a positive impact in this community. We are thrilled to be small business owners together, to get to make decisions for ourselves instead of navigating decisions others have made for us, to live out our own values through our work.

For today, that’s enough!

My wish for you, this week, is that you are able to consider deeply the changes you’re going through, both the ones you’ve chosen and the ones that have been chosen by others, and figure out what you want your life to look like. You (probably) only get one of those, so shouldn’t you decide how to spend it?

Thanks for reading—you’re the best. Yes, you. :)

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Today, I want to tell you about the best person I know.

It’s probably easier to tell you about people that annoy me. I like people! My life’s work revolves around people! I would even go so far as to agree that we each contain a spark of the divine (as Quakers like to say, ‘that which is of God in us’). But that doesn’t mean I think most folks live up to that divine potential. I find myself disappointed in the lack of compassion around me, in the wasted potential for love and hope and positive impact, more often than I’d like. But today I’m talking about someone who is none of that.

When I met my wife, I was only eighteen years old. I had grown up overseas in Asia, and upon returning to the United States for college I was more than a little bit lost. The plan was for me to get a degree in Psychology and go into the mental health world, but I just had the vaguest idea of what that career path actually entailed. I went to an expensive private school with a pretty good psych program. I made lots of friends, ate lots of Taco Bell, spent lots of time online, and had a really great few months. What I did not do, however, was go to class. By Thanksgiving of that year, I was asked to leave.

I moved back home with my family, several states away, and that was a pretty low point in my life. When I met Kellie in a chat room online, I don’t know what I was looking for. Probably mostly someone who would laugh at my dumb jokes? I didn’t know anything about relationships or even much about myself. But spending those few minutes chatting with her felt like turning on a lightbulb in some dark corner of my mind—it felt somehow perfect, somehow just…right.

So we talked. And when I tell people that Kellie and I met online, I think they get an image in their heads of some dating app, or of endlessly scrolling texts. But this was early 1996, and just because we met online doesn’t mean it stayed that way. We started talking on the phone that first night, and those calls became a problem pretty quickly. Not because we were talking, but because of how much long-distance calls cost in 1996. Because right away, I couldn’t stand to not hear her voice for all those hours a day. Talking with Kellie became the most important thing to me, and even now (29 years later) it’s still one of my favorite things.

Let me tell you a little bit about Kellie:

She is kind, and truly cares about people. I know it’s easy to say that about lots of those you know, but when I say it about her, I actually mean it. Kellie would rather spend all her energy caring about other folks than spend any of that energy on her own needs. I’ve never met anyone who loves giving the perfect gift more than she does—when she’s had close friends in her life, she has spent endless hours making lists and plans about how to honor them and make them feel special on birthdays and holidays, or just random days in-between.

She is compassionate. Kellie believes that we don’t all have the same level of opportunities given to us, and her passion for social justice is endlessly inspiring to me. Without her in my life, I would never have developed that passion for myself. Kellie wants others to have a chance to do better, to be happy, to be able to move forward, and that is something that’s rubbed off on me. She has taught me so much about history and politics and other things that I didn’t have a clue about before her.

She would rather feel uncomfortable and awkward and yet still help someone else through a rough patch in their lives, and that selflessness is a unique quality. I haven’t met many people who are willing to put others ahead of themselves in that way. She is so inspiring, and so giving of herself. We should all aspire to be more like Kellie when resources need to be allocated (because she’ll put herself last).

She has a childlike sense of wonder about so many things—I’m endlessly drawn to her joy for Christmas, for Disney movies, for 80s pop culture, for flowers and other manifestations of the beauty in this world. I’ve mentioned here before how much cynicism and bitterness upset and even anger me. I think that the easiest way to trigger me is probably to say that everything is horrible and nothing will ever get better. Exposure to Kellie is the antidote to cynicism about the universe, and is probably one of my favorite aspects of who she is. She believes in the potential for positive societal and structural change, on a deep philosophical level, and that matters so much to me.

That said, one of my biggest downfalls has has always been my willingness to take others and their perspectives at face value. I have put myself and others into dangerous situations throughout my life by trusting people when I should have exercised a little bit of caution. I’ll pick up a hitchhiker, I’ll loan a stranger money to get their car towed, I’ll help find your lost dog (or child), and I’ll try to rescue you because you say you need rescuing. Kellie has been a balancing force to my endless optimism related to human beings, and that has kept me safer and kept us (mostly) able to pay our bills rather than giving away all our cash. Kellie is hopeful about the world and careful/pragmatic about people and their motives, and I need that in my life. I think we all do. She keeps me thinking about realistic outcomes when I want to ignore them.

Kellie loves her clients and her students. All of us social workers should care about the folks we work with, and many of us do! But Kellie truly goes far out of her way to make sure that their needs are met, and her clinical work with them has helped them move through some incredibly challenging times. Kellie’s clients are an incredibly diverse group. She works with those in the LGBTQ+ community (especially transgender folks), and helps them value themselves in spite of all the widespread hatred they face in today’s climate. She works with older adults, and makes them feel seen and valued, even if they’ve been left behind as they’ve aged. She works with teens and adolescents, and helps them figure out who they are and what they care about. She works with college students, and helps them clarify their values and find a path forward. She works with parents, with neurodivergent folks, with those who have suffered enormous losses and experienced trauma beyond belief. And she also teaches both undergraduate and graduate students who are aspiring to become social workers! Through all this work, she gives of herself and her life experiences and knowledge. She is such a steady, inspiring, compassionate force in the lives of those who encounter her professionally. As a fellow educator and fellow social worker, I want to be her when I grow up.

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As I said a minute ago, Kellie makes sure we are able to pay our bills. Beyond that, she makes sure they actually get paid. I think those are two different things, and that’s worth noting! She has always kept track of due dates and minimum payments and has been far more organized than me when it comes to unimportant things like making sure our water and electricity doesn’t get shut off. Here’s my favorite traumatic story about this quality: A few years back, Kellie was in the midst of a medical crisis. We knew she needed to go to the emergency room, and that she was very, very ill. We eventually found out that she had cancer and needed surgery, which is its own story. After we’d gone to the ER, they told us that she really should have gone via ambulance (it was that dire). But the point of this story is that Kellie didn’t let me take her to the hospital until after she had gone through all of our bills and payments due and written them all out for me, which took a couple of hours. She was determined to make sure to get them out of her head because she was sure she was dying and didn’t want myself and the dogs to lose the house and neglect all our bills after she was gone. Nobody but her would have prioritized everyone she cared about over her own life. That’s Kellie.

Kellie and I have worked together across a lot of different contexts: political campaigns, other volunteering opportunities, and more than ten years at a community mental health agency. In all of those environments, we have both been told dozens and dozens of times by well-meaning people, “I can’t believe you guys work together—I could never do that with my partner, we’d kill each other!” And our answer has always been the same: we would always, always, rather be sharing the same struggles, no matter the context. It’s easy to say that your partner is your best friend, but for Kellie and I it’s actually accurate. It’s hard for us both to understand the perspective that you want to share your life with someone else but don’t actually like each other very much. That’s not the case for us. Kellie is the best, and I’m far happier when I’m with her than when I’m not.

Kellie is a badass. I know that it may seem that she’s all touchy-feely, but she’s much tougher and capable of taking care of herself than you think. She’s also the Doc Marten-wearing chick who was cool enough to work at a record store (and also a bookstore, which is even cooler). She met Marilyn Manson before he was a huge thing! She’s had some truly great life experiences, like spending time in Japan and marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Kellie is reliable and brave and adorable.

Kellie’s so organized, she leaves me in awe sometimes. Maybe you don’t know this about us, but I would probably wear the same clothes until they literally fell into pieces. She makes sure we have laundry soap and food and toilet paper and underwear that are actually wearable. She keeps this household functioning as smoothly as it can, given our wild schedules. If I didn’t have her, I’d be a lot hungrier and smellier. This skillset is something that I am very lacking in, but she keeps us on track.

Kellie is forgiving. As much as I love and trust people, if someone has proven to ignore my boundaries or has broken my heart, it is really hard for me to find it in myself to mend that relationship. I’m far from vindictive, and never want to close the door on relationships, but I have a very hard time trusting them in the same way after something like that happens. Kellie has the ability to love people and keep on loving them, even if they don’t love her anymore. I’m forever shocked at how kind and caring she can be in the aftermath of a breach of trust, and hope I keep on learning from her and getting better at forgiveness myself.

Writing these words, I’m realizing that I could easily keep going for a few more hours. Kellie is absolutely my hero (and should be yours). Today is her birthday, and I just wanted the rest of the world to know how incredible a person she truly is. The universe would be a darker place without her in it. This is her birthday month, and should really be a national holiday, honestly.

Kellie should win Time’s “Person of the Year” Award. Plus the Nobel Peace Prize, while she’s at it. She is the very best person in the world, and that’s why I wrote this piece. If you know her, tell her hi and that you love her today. I’m very fortunate to have gotten to share 29 years with her, so far. And if you don’t know her, you should wonder where she’s been all your life. She’s that awesome.

See you next week.

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I promise it wasn’t intentional. Once again, I’m a pacifist, I swear! It’s just hard for me to keep my (virtual) mouth shut when I see folks spreading verifiably false claims. Chalk it up to me caring when people believe things that just aren’t true, which probably leads me into all kinds of conflicts. Just ask my wife, who is infinitely patient with me, no matter what. If I have to have character flaws, call this insistence on the truth one of them.

(If you’re not mad at me yet, just wait until I write a newsletter about the fact that the moon has zero impact whatsoever on human behavior—but that’s a topic for another week.)

What was the source of the strife? Well, a local restaurant posted “We have some exciting news, or at least we think it is! We are going to give beef tallow a shot. We are excited for this simply because it’s been shown to be a bit healthier than seed oils, and there’s the added benefit of the flavor and a better fry on the items we are making in the fryers. (they followed this with a bunch of hashtags, including #health and #food). No need to call the specific restaurant out here, since they’re just as much a victim of this false information as anyone else. I’m not mad at the restaurant, just at those who don’t realize how wrong they are. After seven hours, this post had 598 reactions, with four sad reacts and one angry one. That gives you some sense of just how many people believe this preposterous idea.

Let’s tackle a few elementary things right up front. Why am I immediately grumpy about this post? A few reasons:

1. The biggest proponent of using beef tallow rather than seed oils as of late has been RFK Jr., who made it a central part of his presidential campaign and now his Make America Healthy Again initiative within the current administration. Anything that man says deserves a healthy dose of scrutiny.

2. Wellness influencers have also been peddling the ridiculous idea that beef tallow is “healthy” for several years, and most of them are desperately trying to make money by any means necessary. Why would you believe anyone whose main motivation is getting rich off you and your credulity?

3. The whole idea of Make America Healthy Again as a “movement” has been focused around pseudoscience, misinformation, and the concept of an “obesity epidemic”, which may or may not even exist.

4. Anti-fat bias is a very real issue, and stigma around those with bigger bodies is not easy to navigate. Nobody should willingly contribute to (and worsen) this attitude.

5. Seed oils most likely offer some pretty positive benefits to our health.

6. Beef tallow most likely has a lot of negative effects on our health.

7. So much of the dialogue around this topic relates to “chemicals” and “processed food”, which is just another form of anti-science hysteria. EVERYTHING IS MADE FROM CHEMICALS.

8. There are all kinds of things that are deeply wrong with our current food infrastructure, and frying stuff in any kind of oil isn’t good for us—but there are many more issues with fast food (and some processed food) that are far worse for us than the oil it contains.

So where did this idea even come from? Here’s an interesting Wikipedia article on Seed Oil Misinformation that might benefit you in your journey related to this particular rabbit hole.

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As that Wikipedia article shows, the conversation around seed oils being bad for us started around 2018 or so, and increased dramatically after Joe Rogan did a highly-publicized interview with scam artist Paul Saladino (a psychiatrist who loves to assert things which have been disproven over and over and over again). Go here for a great science-based rebuttal of Saladino’s claims on the topic of seed oils. Wikipedia quotes Saladino as saying that “seed oils are the root cause of most diseases of affluence, including heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and liver spots”. I’ll bet you didn’t realize that’s where your liver spots came from! (Sorry, spoiler alert, it’s not. Liver spots actually typically come from exposure to the sun, and have nothing to do with your liver, as you can see in this article from the Cleveland Clinic).

What are seed oils? They’re most commonly defined as canola oil, corn oil, cottonseed oil, grapeseed oil, rice bran oil, safflower oil, soybean oil, and sunflower oil. Folks who believe in this nonsense commonly tend to call them “The Hateful Eight”, which IS the title of a fun Tarantino movie but is NOT a term that I plan to use anytime soon to describe ingredients in my kitchen cabinets.

One primary claim made by anti-seed oil people is that the extraction process used to make these oils leaves behind toxic byproducts (primarily hexane) in the oil itself. Basically, it used to be really expensive to mechanically crush whatever you were trying to squeeze oil out of, which meant that products with oil in them cost more. In the 1980s, hydrogen gas was used to squeeze the corn or soybeans (which created cheap oil, but were high in trans fats). If you’ve heard about hydrogenated oils, that’s where that term came from. Those trans fats raise our LDL cholesterol levels (which we don’t want). So after that, most oil producers began using liquid hexane to squeeze the seeds instead, and then burning off the hexane so that the oil was left behind. Those hexane-extracted seed oils have very few trans fats, which is a good thing.

Since hexane gas is toxic, and since nobody accused wellness influencers of knowing the difference between a liquid and a gas, they claim that oil derived from this process is toxic as well. Any studies that show that is causing a problem for people are either tiny or inconclusive, though. And both Europe and the US have done extensive studies and determined that this is not a huge matter of concern, since any hexane that actually enters our systems this way is a miniscule amount. So that’s claim number one: fear about hexane. I’d also point out that, ironically, some of the same wellness influencers that tell you hexane extraction makes seed oils toxic are simultaneously selling their own fish oil products to you that are made with the same hexane process.

Claim number two is about omega-6 fatty acids, and this is a fascinating one. Wellness folks tend to claim that these cause “inflammation” (which is a catch-all term that many things get blamed for by well-meaning non-scientists). As this excellent article points out, omega-6 fatty acids boost our good cholesterol (which, again, we want to have happen) . There has been some research that shows a correlation between a long-term diet containing a lot of omega-6s causing some intestinal inflammation, when compared to diets that include a lot of palm oil. This finding has resulted in the anti-seed oil people claiming that all seed oils do this, and that we need to stop the imbalance in our diets between omega-6s and omega-3s (which seem to help inflammation). But as the article goes on to point out, “Our body metabolizes omega 6s into all kinds of things--some inflammatory, some actually anti-inflammatory and health-protective”. It’s complicated! Generalizing these findings across a huge category of oils has no scientific basis, though.

Sarah Williams describes the complication around blaming it on inflammation in this piece, where she writes, “For decades, Gardner has hoped to find links between diet and inflammation but he said the immune system is still too poorly understood to make these kinds of associations when studying humans. So he is immediately skeptical of claims that seed oils cause inflammation — the body’s natural immune response to injury, infection or stress. His skepticism, he said, comes largely from the fact that there is no single test a doctor can order that fully captures the concept of inflammation.

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“Measuring inflammation with any current laboratory tests is incredibly complex and just can’t be done yet,” he said. “There are hundreds of immune markers, and we really don’t know which ones are signs of a healthy immune system.”

Because there is a lack of agreement on what the best metrics for inflammation are, and a poor understanding of what types and levels of inflammation are appropriate for a healthy immune system, Gardner said it is inappropriate for any food — whether seed oils, omega fats, or something else — to be unquestionably dubbed anti- or pro-inflammatory.“

Allison Kane, from Massachusetts General Hospital, writes,

“Critics of seed oils propose that the omega-6 fatty acids found in seed oils are the cause of chronic inflammation. The reasoning is that linoleic acid, the most common omega-6, is converted into arachidonic acid in the body, which is a building block for compounds that cause inflammation. While this may sound convincing, a 2017 meta-analysis of randomized control trials found that increased dietary intake of linoleic acid does not have a significant effect on blood concentrations of inflammatory markers. This is likely because only a small percentage, about 0.2%, of omega-6s is converted to arachidonic acid. What many anti-seed oil influencers also overlook is that arachidonic acid is also a precursor for compounds that fight inflammation in the body. Many studies, including 2023 research in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, show a higher intake of omega-6 fatty acids is associated with better cardiovascular health and improved glucose metabolism. The American Heart Association also supports the inclusion of omega-6s as part of a healthy diet to prevent cardiovascular disease.”

And the “ratio” argument doesn’t make any sense, either. In this piece from Johns Hopkins, Aliza Rozen writes, “A lot of discussion about seed oils focuses on a purported imbalance of omega-3s and omega-6s in most modern diets, which are heavier in grains and seeds compared to those of early humans. Some influencers claim that our consumption of omega-6s far outweighs that of omega-3s and that we should aim for a 1:1 ratio. The evidence does not bear this out.”

For those of you who say we need more omega-3s and fewer omega-6s in our diet, you know what’s an awesome source of omega 3s? Canola oil. How about that.

The third claim MAHA folks make about seed oils is that they provide “empty calories”. But again, Nargi writes, even advocates of swapping out fruit oils from avocado, olive, coconut and palm oil admit that no supply chain exists that would make this possible on a large-scale level. I think this quote from dietician and podcast host Jessica Wilson sums up the impracticality of that approach: “People are already stealing formula because they need it and it’s expensive. Making it more expensive with avocado oil or olive oil is terrifying to me.”

And the fourth big claim regarding seed oils relates to volatile compounds called aldehydes, which MAHA advocates believe are toxic. Unfortunately for this claim, studies that show issues with aldehydes (especially around cardiovascular problems and cancer) focus on us inhaling aldehydes, not eating them. There isn’t enough evidence to show that this is a huge issue on its own.

The truth is, our bodies are incredibly complex. The interplay between all the different things we eat and how they’re metabolized is impossible to break down and pin on any one thing. Our supply chain is also incredibly complex, and focusing on this one ingredient doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

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Most food that we eat contains some amount of seed oils, since they’re cheap to produce. And yes, our current food industry includes a lot of options that are cheap to produce and aren’t especially healthy for us. But the biggest issue with that food is the system itself, which can make it much more difficult for those with fewer resources to eat healthier, in addition to all the calories and fat and other not great ingredients the food contains (not to mention the environmental issues caused by this capitalistic food system of ours).

Sarah Williams (again, in her piece for Stanford) writes,

Illustrating this point, Nargi quotes James Curley, who writes The Natural Foods Geezer, saying he’s most concerned about

“the industrialized food system that’s delivering alarming rates of pesticide exposure, poor dietary choices for under-resourced people, and wholesale environmental degradation. He offers an analogy using tomatoes — one organic, one conventional. “People are like, which one is better? And I’m like, the organic tomato,” he says. “Why, is it higher in Vitamin C? No. Is it higher [in] lutein? No. Is it higher in antioxidants? No. Why is it better? Because this organic tomato was grown in a system that puts something back into the system, into the soil, into the preservation of tomatoes for my great-grandchildren. The other tomato was grown in an extractive environment where nothing is put back.”

So yes, of course, our food can leave a lot to be desired. Not necessarily because it’s processed or “ultra-processed”, though—there are many foods which are minimally processed which aren’t healthy for us. And processing doesn’t make it unhealthy for us. Let’s use more critical thinking skills than that, shall we? Here’s a good article that touches on a lot of my concerns about “ultra-processed foods”, which is, again, a topic for a whole different newsletter. We also haven’t discussed how complicated introducing more beef tallow makes eating out for vegans and vegetarians, either.

But moving on, if some of the arguments that seed oils are bad for us don’t have a lot of validity, is it very revolutionary to argue that they’re actually—maybe—good for us?

Let’s see what some experts say.

Back to this article, where Nargi writes, “In fact, it’s difficult to find a reputable report that does not present overwhelming scientific evidence in support of seed oils — especially as an alternative to animal fats“.

Okay, how about another one. The Johns Hopkins piece says, “Many arguments against consuming seed oils include the claim that it’s healthier to cook with lard, beef tallow, and butter, despite decades of evidence that saturated fats raise cholesterol and risk of heart disease and stroke. ‘Those data go back to the 1950s,’ says Gardner, who was part of the USDA’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee in its latest review of the USDA’s recommendations. He continues, ‘We reaffirmed the evidence that we’ve seen again and again, of swapping out the saturated fat from animal foods for cooking with plant oils, including canola, sunflower, and safflower.”

Are there more folks making these same points?

As Sarah Garone writes for health.com, “Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN, a registered dietitian and Wall Street Journal best-selling author of Health Shots, points to a 2024 study that found that consuming seed oils high in unsaturated fat was associated with numerous health benefits, including reduced risk of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes.”

And one more quote from Sarah Williams’ article wherein she interviewed Dr. Christopher Gardner, the director of nutrition studies at the Stanford Prevention Research Center. Gardner had another very relevant point to make:

And how about one last expert?

Alice Lichtenstein, professor of nutrition science and policy at Tufts University, is quoted here as saying “Several studies show that diets higher in saturated fats like beef tallow and lower in unsaturated fats like seed oils are associated with worse health outcomes.”

I think I’ve made that point just fine. So let’s talk for a minute about beef tallow. What is it? It’s the fatty deposits around the organs of a cow, also called “beef drippings” (which is gross). How about the supposed health benefits of beef tallow—are there any reputable sources advocating for that idea?

Michelle Dodd, a cardiovascular dietitian from the Cleveland Clinic, shares some concerns about the consumption of beef tallow in this article. She says,

“Beef tallow is so high in saturated fat that it’s a waxy solid at room temperature. Think of what that sort of substance does once it gets inside of you. It’s not good for your cardiovascular system. It’s not something you want to regularly use and consume…Beef tallow would not be a recommended dietary source for any sort of nutrient. Whatever you’re looking to get out of beef tallow nutritionally, you’ve got better options.”

That Cleveland Clinic article also states, “The American Heart Association advises limiting saturated fat to only 6% of your daily caloric intake. To put that in perspective, a tablespoon of beef tallow is almost the FULL daily amount of saturated fat recommended within a 2,000-calorie diet.”

Ick.

Okay, so if you agree with me that we shouldn’t be eating beef tallow (whether we eat seed oils or not), how about those who are using it as a “miracle skincare solution”?

I thought this was an interesting piece about this nonsensical idea. In it, Dr. Heather Rogers (dermatologist and clinical assistant professor) says,

Dr. Rogers also reminds us that “chemicals accumulate in fat, so beef tallow can contain harmful substances like pesticides if the cattle it came from were exposed to them. If you plan to use beef tallow on your skin, use products from grass-fed or organically raised cows.”

I’ll close this discussion of beef tallow with a quote from PETA’s very appetizing page about beef tallow, in which they state,

“Beef tallow may contain contaminants such as pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics. The toxins and pollutants stored in cows’ fat tissues eventually make their way into the humans who eat them. If you want to avoid acne and blackheads, avoid beef tallow on your skin as it’s comedogenic. Comedogenic substances block pores, which can cause blackheads. Don’t be surprised if you smell, either. Skincare companies and consumers alike typically describe the animal-like smell as “fatty” or “beefy.”

Yeah, no. I’m going to take my chances with seed oils over eating beef drippings. And there’s a less-than-zero chance of me ever wanting my face to smell “fatty” or “beefy”. Gross. And that’s not even bringing up the topic of unethical factory farming practices surrounding cows in this country, which are also pretty unappetizing.

I hope some of the many, many hundreds of people in my community who disagreed with me on this topic earlier this week will someday snap out of their beef stupor for a few moments and consider the silliness of arguing that beef tallow is healthy in any way. But even worse than the dangers of eating beef tallow (or rubbing it on your face) is the fact that seed oils might be way healthier than you think. I’ve done my best to demonstrate both points here. But don’t take my word for it—do the research for yourself! And if you catch yourself making some of the ridiculous arguments that my detractors on Facebook said to me this week, maybe take a breath, pause for a second, and actually look at what the research says. Here’s just a small sample:

• “Yeah…it’s gross to use natural things for food. Clown”

• “The less processing a food or ingredient has, the better…especially when you start throwing chemicals into the mix. What an odd belief that ultra processed foods are healthier for you.”

• “Yes it is actually a good fat in moderation. And extremely good.”

• “You are exactly correct and beef tallow is excellent and moderation and it is actually a good source of fat (moderation)”

• “Regardless of what the smart Google has to say…anything is healthier than seed oils!”

• “Seed oils are horrible. Animal fats are much healthier.”

• “My daughter uses it on her face as a face cream and she’s very young looking for her age at 57.”

• “The body knows what to do with natural food. Not synthetic & chemicals.”

So there you have it. The body knows what to do with your face reeking of melted beef drippings, apparently. And I’ll say again, everything is a chemical.

As Joe Schwarcz from McGill University writes, (since I can’t get past the sheer dumbness of the whole ‘chemicals are bad’ argument):

“If you buy a chemical-free product, you’re not getting a good deal. You’re buying nothing. A vacuum. What’s a vacuum? A space empty of all matter. And what is matter? Anything that has mass and occupies space. What is matter made of? Simple. Chemicals. Everything in the world is made of chemicals, a term that encompasses everything from simple elements like gold to incredibly complex molecules such as DNA. There are over fifty million known chemicals, both naturally occurring and synthetic. They are not good or bad, their safety and utility depend on which chemical we are talking about, how much of it, and in what context.”

If nothing else, I’ve hopefully given you a few things to think about. Please do some of your own research and don’t trust RFK Jr. and his mindless minions on this one (or any topic, ever). Beef tallow is remarkably unhealthy for you to eat. Seed oils might be healthy for you (and even if they aren’t, they’re far healthier for you than tallow). And please, please, don’t rub rancid melted cow fat on your face just because some random podcast host sold it to you.

With that, I hope you have a lovely rest of your week. I appreciate you reading this, and I appreciate you even more even more for thinking and learning and being willing to change your mind on stuff from time to time.

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It can be so easy for us to jump into the next thing without stopping to consider all the ramifications, and maybe especially easy for me. I’ve been telling people for decades that I’d rather be busy than bored, and that remains true. But sometimes that also leads me into making choices that ultimately make my life far more stressful than it would have been if I could have just settled for a little boredom. I’m not afraid of staying still, and I’m definitely not afraid of rest. I think I can comfortably juggle more tasks and responsibilities and roles than most folks, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes leaves me exhausted and overextended. And lonely, too.

One of my friends died this week. Her name was Anne, she was in her mid-90s, and she had one of my favorite smiles ever. Something that she was famous for was being unapologetic about her personal convictions. She didn’t mind if you disagreed with her, and she didn’t mind if you thought it was inappropriate to bring up a given topic in a given situation—she was going to tell you what she thought, and she was going to be consistent about her values and beliefs regardless of who agreed with her. We’re going to miss our conversations, her convictions, and (always) that smile. If I live to be 95 and leave behind a legacy like Anne’s, that will leave me pretty happy. (Not that I’ll ever feel that the work is done, since that’s never going to happen.) I miss her already.

As I’m working to process the weight of the world, the loss of Anne, and my natural instinct to embark on five too many projects at once, it’s put me in the mood to consider human connections and what they can give us (in addition to the costs they bring with them).

I know I’m not alone in saying this, but I wish I had more people in my life. It’s such a contradiction in terms—I spend well over 50-60 hours per week thinking about, caring for, and ministering to human beings, so by the time my teaching and counseling and volunteering are all over, you’d think I’d be done with them. Social work isn’t about making a concrete product, and you don’t end up with a tangible result at the end of it (unless you count the tangible positive impacts in folks’ lives at the end of a course of treatment, or the tangible degree and opportunities a student receives when they graduate). No, with social work we—the healthy therapeutic relationship you and I have built—is the product, or at least the vehicle that conveys the product out into your life. I’d argue that the same is true of my students and I, or mostly true.

Even as I build relationships all day, at the end of the day I’m still wishing that there were more folks who were an active part of my personal life. My wife and dogs are enough for me, and they feed my soul to an enormous extent. It’s not a matter of them not being supports to me. But folks aren’t really checking in with me a whole lot, and I wish they were. I miss my friends, and in my head at least, they miss me too. But I don’t know how to easily move past the missing to the “making plans” part of the equation.

One piece of the puzzle related to that distance is the fact that I’m not ignoring the continuing effects of COVID in the world. So I wear a mask in high-risk situations, use other multi-layered strategies to try and keep myself safe (such as using nasal sprays, mouthwash, and excellent air filters), and don’t eat in restaurants/attend concerts/expose myself to a lot of shared air whenever possible. You can feel any kind of way that you like about those choices, and I’m not interested in arguing with you about the data that leads me to make them (though I’m glad to pass along thousands of studies that show the long-term impacts repeated COVID infections have on our hearts and lungs and brains, among other things). So I think it’s possible that people don’t want to make me uncomfortable by trying to reach out, and it’s also possible that if you don’t see me around town as often, I’m just not as present in your mind as I used to be. And it’s also entirely possible that you’re waiting for me to reach out, or that you are too overwhelmed by the state of the world yourself and just don’t have the capacity right now. Which are all absolutely great reasons for this disconnection I’ve been feeling! That said, knowing about the causes isn’t the same thing as doing something to remedy them.

I’m not trying to make this piece just about me, though there’s no way to separate myself and my own experiences away from the topic of loneliness. At the same time, this shared theme of “not enough people in my life” keeps popping up for my clients and my students, so it has to be a bigger issue for many of us right now.

In her book “The Lonely Century”, Noreena Hertz presented data that showed folks across the world were struggling with loneliness and lack of connection well before 2020. Hertz points to research demonstrating that a majority of adults in the United States (and Europe, Asia, Australia, South America, and Africa) considered themselves lonely. But why is everyone lonely? And has this data been borne out by other researchers?

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This is an excellent piece from the Harvard Graduate School of Education that give us more numbers about loneliness in different types of people, based upon their Making Caring Common (MCC) project.

Here are three quotes that encapsulate their data. First:

Twenty-one percent of adults in the survey reported that they had serious feelings of loneliness. People between 30-44 years of age were the loneliest group — 29% of people in this age range said they were “frequently” or “always” lonely.

This is interesting to me, because although I’m older than this group, most of my counseling clients AND most of my students fall into this 30-44 range.

A second data point:

There were no real gender differences found — men and women experienced similar rates of loneliness — nor were there major differences based on political ideology or race or ethnicity.

This might not have been what you’d predict, but at least in this study, age is a far stronger predictor of loneliness than gender, political ideology, or race/ethnicity.

And data point three from this study:

There were notable differences between income but not education levels. Americans earning less than $30,000 a year were the loneliest — 29% in this category reported feeling lonely.

I think it probably goes without saying that if you’re living in poverty, you might well experience all kinds of challenges. It makes sense that loneliness is one of those. I’m also fascinated by their finding that folks with the lowest income level experience more loneliness, since the Bridges Out of Poverty framework by Ruby Payne spends so much time arguing that those in poverty are more socially-oriented than those in the middle or upper classes. I have all kinds of problems with the validity of Bridges Out of Poverty anyway, but that’s a post for another day. If you’re interested to learn more about criticism regarding Payne’s work (there are many), here’s a great article that looks at a lot of the concerns shared by plenty of us who have spent time considering matters of poverty and equity. But I digress.

Dr. Vivek Murthy (former U.S. Surgeon General under both President Obama and President Biden) has thought and written a lot about loneliness. He even wrote a book about it! If you’ve spent much time with me, you’ve probably heard me quote Dr. Murthy’s work on hope (another concept I’m deeply invested in).

As Dr. Murthy prepared to leave the office of the Surgeon General, he published a document that he called “My Parting Prescription for America” that has some really great perspectives on how he feels we can work on what he has termed an “epidemic of loneliness”. This “Parting Prescription” is an excellent read, and only a few dozen pages. You can find it here (it was on the website of the Department of Health and Human Services, but it’s since been deleted as part of the Trump Administration’s rampage against all things that represent human kindness and decency).

I’d like you to look at the following diagram that Dr. Murthy includes in his Parting Prescription. Then let it sink in for a minute.

His argument is that, in order to live a fulfilling life, we’re all faced with an individual need to focus on these three main goals (all of which he argues aid us in forming community, ultimately). I can look at Murthy’s model and easily point to the ways that I live out the value of Purpose in my life. That’s the easy one. Service is, similarly, not a huge stretch for me. But in the category of Relationships, I would argue that many of us fall short.

How do you feel you’re doing with dedicating some portion of your life to helping others, some portion of your life to doing meaningful stuff, and some portion of your life to connecting more deeply with people you care about?

It’s not that I don’t want to connect deeply with others. I could point to plenty of people who are friends and acquaintances of mine—I love lots of people, and I know they love me! I’m sure if I reached out to any number of people right now, at 9:50 on a Friday night, they’d be glad to hear from me. I’ll bet they’d even reply right away instead of being annoyed that I was bugging them late at night.

Real-time update: As an experiment, I just sent random messages to ten friends, and that guess was right. Seven of the ten got back to me within just a few minutes, which is far more than I would have predicted. Everyone’s tired after a long week at work, and not everyone is as connected to their phone as I am. And yet those seven conversations, even just briefly checking in, all made me feel more connected, and seen, and known.

It doesn’t really make sense that hearing back from someone would make me happy, since getting a text from someone can actually cause stress (because then we have to muster up the energy to reply, right?) As Tanyel Mustafa says in her great essay, “I Can’t Reply to Your Long Text Message After Work”, when we’re exhausted from everything else that happened in our day, hearing from our friends is sometimes more than we can handle. I hate the fact that connecting in this way can add a sense of obligation to the people I care about, especially in this time when there are so many demands on our time and energy. I appreciated Mustafa’s suggestion that you give yourself the permission to leave that message unread until you have the spoons to read, process and get back to whomever sent it. And if you’re one of my friends who got a random text from me tonight (whether you got back to me immediately or not), I love you. Thanks for being in my life. I’m glad that I have (at least) seven people who put up with my nonsense tonight.

Dr. Murthy closes his Parting Prescription with these words:

What I want for my children more than anything is for them to be healthy, happy, and fulfilled. I now know that community is the key to securing this hope. It will provide them with meaning and belonging. It will allow them to give and receive the love and support we all require. It will be the source of strength and solidarity they will need to protect what is good about the world and repair what needs fixing. Community will always help them find their way home…As I finish my tenure as Surgeon General, this is my parting prescription, my final wish for all of us: Choose community.

I’m not sure how to solve my loneliness, any more than I’m sure of how to solve food insecurity or addiction or any number of other challenges that any of us face. But not being sure is different than not wanting to do better. And I want to do better. So I’m trying to choose community, even when I’m exhausted from all the things.

I dare you to text someone and tell them a joke, or send them a picture of a sandwich, or let them know you think they’re pretty cool. It’s worth it.

Take care, everybody. See you next week!

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You can argue that Democrats are to blame for the shutdown (they are) or that Republicans are to blame for it (they are, too). Our government was built around the idea of shared governance between opposing viewpoints, of checks and balances across the three branches and of oversight that tries to ensure we don’t end up with a monarch. That system and those safeguards are being sorely tested now, and depending on who you ask, we’ve gone far beyond the point of no return. I’m not planning on debating either of those points in this newsletter, as they’re bigger than what I can possibly fit into the scope of one week’s installment.

Suffice it to say that I believe the Democrats are holding the line on an incredibly important point of advocacy, since when healthcare costs skyrocket that is going to kill an awful lot of people in this country. And even though I support them in this effort, people are going to suffer as a result of it.

I shouldn’t have to point out to you (but I will) that Trump and the Republicans passed the One Big Beautiful Bill—which is going to vastly increase medical debt in this country—at the same exact time as a judge (with the support of this administration’s Consumer Finance Protection Bureau) ordered the rollback of the Biden-era policy that prohibited medical debt from being added to Americans’ credit reports. It’s almost like Trump and the Republicans want to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of everyone else…but that’s a topic for another newsletter, too.

Since this thing is titled What We Can, I’ll remind you that my whole intention from the start has been to try and help those who read it envision things that we can do (learning is doing too). Right now, everyday Americans are just about to go off the cliff of “barely making it” into the pit of “not even remotely making it”. And you—yes you—need to do anything you can to help those in need. That help needs to be real, not performative. It needs to be targeted. And it needs to focus on things that we know actually help people in need.

Let’s talk about the scope of the problem first.

November 1st is when the government says they can no longer pay out benefits for SNAP (also known as food stamps) in addition to other food assistance programs. The government shutdown plan from the USDA said that they would use their emergency funds to fund SNAP benefits anyway, until President Trump announced that no, that emergency fund wouldn’t be used since it’s not an emergency. It blows my mind to consider how heartless a person has to be to declare that everyone else can starve for all they care, but that’s exactly what’s happening.

What is SNAP? It’s one piece of our social safety net in the United States, that attempts to do a few things. First and foremost, the reason why it’s run by the USDA is because it was originally conceived as an assistance program for our farmers. The government purchases crops from farmers and distributes them out to those in poverty, and everyone wins, right? It’s also a way to stop people from starving, which is a good thing (we all used to agree on this point).

This is a really good piece from USA Today about the folks who are about to be most harmed by the cutting off of these funds.

Who is eligible for SNAP benefits?

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says that for a household,

Its gross monthly income generally must be at or below 130 percent of the poverty line, or $2,798 a month (about $33,576 a year) for a three-person household in fiscal year 2025. Households with a member who is age 60 or older or has a disability need not meet this limit.

Its net monthly income, or income after deductions are applied for items such as housing costs and child care, must be less than or equal to the poverty line ($2,152 a month or about $25,824 a year for a three-person household in fiscal year 2025).

Its assets must fall below certain limits: in fiscal year 2025 the limits are $3,000 for households without a member who is age 60 or older or has a disability and $4,500 for those with an older or disabled member.

So we aren’t talking about incredibly wealthy folks here. We’re referring to people who are struggling more and more to be able to afford enough food to survive, especially given the fact that food prices just continue to rise under this administration. And beyond income level, what’s the breakdown of the types of people that SNAP supports? CBPP continues,

So households with kids, older adults, or those with a disability, pretty exclusively. The USA Today article shares this age breakdown, if you wanted a more granular look at specific groupings.

You can see that children from 0-17 make up almost 40% of SNAP benefits. And those are getting frozen on Saturday, regardless of the Republican narrative that “you can just go out and get a job”. How many five-year-olds do you know who are working full-time jobs to be able to afford food to avoid starvation? Yes, the Republicans are increasingly advocating for an end to the ban on young children working, since they don’t really seem to recognize the benefits of a healthy and happy childhood that’s spent not worrying about paying rent and buying food. As this PBS article shares, Republicans in at least ten states (including Ohio) have advocated for allowing kids as young as 14 to work in hazardous environments and to serve alcohol in bars.

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Project 2025, the Republican playbook that has been followed to the letter by the Trump Administration, mentions quite a bit about their intent and desire to overturn the Fair Labor Standards Act and allow minors to work in all kinds of dangerous places. This piece quotes the US Dept. of Labor in saying, “Since 2019, there has been an 88 percent increase in cases where children were found to be employed in violation of child labor laws.” They also note,

Recent cases, such as a 16-year-old boy in Wisconsin who died working in a sawmill after he became entangled in a machine, and another teenage boy in Pennsylvania who died after getting pulled into a woodchipper on a worksite, are tragic examples. In addition, despite fatalities, the DOL continues to identify children working in slaughterhouses and meatpacking facilities, long considered hazardous occupations not safe or suitable for minors.

Is this the America you want? A country where our children go hungry and/or work in sawmills and bars? It’s the America Donald Trump wants, and apparently the America many of his cronies want as well.

So despite the fact that we have billions of dollars which could be used to make sure that nobody goes without food stamps, this administration has chosen not to use the emergency money for this emergency (in an attempt to pressure the Democrats into allowing them to continue doing anything they want).

But guess what? Luckily, individual states are taking action to make sure their children, older people, and disabled folks don’t starve to death. That’s fantastic! In the absence of federal leadership or will to save those lives, plenty of states, run by both parties, are stepping up to make a difference.

Here’s a map from Newsweek and CBBP that shows the states that are not sitting around and waiting to see how many people need to suffer from food insecurity TWO DAYS FROM NOW.

You’ll notice one state conspicuously missing from that map (I say conspicuously because this newsletter primarily addresses Ohio-centric issues). Yes, this state has chosen to let our citizens starve. Let me be very specific: elected Republicans in Ohio have chosen to let our citizens starve.

Here, from AmericanProgress.org, is a chart of which counties in Ohio have the most residents who rely on SNAP benefits:

Ashtabula County, if you were wondering, has 17,221 SNAP recipients out of our 96,987 residents, or 17.8% of our population. That’s far higher than much of the state, though there are 1.5 million Ohioans currently receiving SNAP payments.

Elected Ohio Democrats have been trying to convince the Ohio GOP to use the state’s savings (the “rainy day fund”) to cover this vital food expense once SNAP payments from the federal government stop on the 1st. And what has been the response from our elected Republican overlords?

Here’s just a sample:

This week, Governor DeWine said we can’t use the Rainy Day Fund, but that he’s “reviewing and monitoring the situation”.

Matt Huffman (the Speaker of the Ohio House) responded to the Dems’ proposal to give state money to food pantries by saying “We do have food banks, but those aren’t necessarily tailored just to the folks who get SNAP benefits…There’s not the same income verification system, things like that.”

Jerry Cirino (the Republican Ohio Senator who’s dedicated the last few years to ending indoctrination from woke college professors instead of anything that might help a single Ohioan), said “It’s appalling because it fails to recognize why we have this problem, why we are in this fix in the first place, and where the solution lies. It’s not the federal government, it’s not the White House, it’s not the Congress in total. It’s the (U.S.) Senate Democrats, except for one. They lit this fire, and now they want us to bail them out and put out the fire.”

The Ohio Dems proposed an amendment to the budget bill today that would have allowed the state to use those 4 billion dollars in the Rainy Day fund to help Ohioans who are about to be cut off from SNAP and WIC. And it was immediately blocked on a party line basis, as every Republican opposed that proposal. Because almost 1.5 million Ohioans don’t deserve to be able to eat. I can’t get over Huffman’s argument that that people can’t be be given food assistance because—what—they’ll lie to get some free pasta and soup? And Cirino’s statement is in incredibly poor taste. The problem is not the Democratic Party—the problem is that Ohioans are going to go hungry, and the Republicans hold all the cards in this state at the moment due to their unconstitutional and illegal gerrymandered districts.

Update: I wrote the bulk of this newsletter last night, and in fairness’ sake need to point out that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed an executive order today promising up to $25 million to Ohioans who will be affected by this benefits freeze. That is a massive drop in the bucket, but it’s SOMETHING. It’ll be distributed in the form of $7 million to food banks and up to $18 million to Ohioans who are below 50% of the federal poverty limit. Keep in mind how few people that $18 million is likely to help (50% of the federal poverty limit means that they have income below $978 per month for a family of one, which pretty much ignores all of the working poor in this state.) At least it’ll count for everyone living off SSI, since that benefit is $967 per month for an individual. But still. The vast majority of Ohioans on SNAP benefits make more than a thousand dollars per month and are going to be ineligible for those $18 million.

I’m definitely happy that the state is using $25 million to try and help in this situation. It’s only .625% of the $4,000,000,000 rainy day fund that the state has for just such an emergency, but it’s something.

It’s inhumane, pure and simple. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake. And it’s just plain wrong.

Do you think that people get food stamps for their entire lives? That’s far from the case. This is an extremely temporary program for most people, which steps in when they’re in the direst of straits. Back to that CBBP article for a source on the numbers:

Most unemployed non-disabled adults aged 18 to 54 not living with minor children are limited to three months of benefits every three years, unless they are working at least 20 hours per week or participating in a qualifying workfare or job training program.

That’s right: three months of food stamps, unless you’re working, have a disability, or are a child or senior.

Also, it’s not a whole lot of money. You’ve probably seen some of the TikToks from people (usually people of color) acting offended at the suggestion that they work and saying they are getting hundreds or thousands of dollars per month for their ten kids. They’re fake videos, folks. It harkens back to the racist “welfare queen” trope from the Reagan years, and just like those stories, they’re made up. If you were wondering, that CBPP article actually tells us how much people get:

When was the last time you and your family only spent $6.16 per day per person on your food budget? Especially now, with today’s food prices? Nobody’s getting a million dollars in food stamps.

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This program is incredibly important, and Republicans have effectively cut it off starting this Saturday.

So your elected politicians are probably not going to help those in need in your community. I’m sorry it’s that way. It shouldn’t be the case. But they have decided not to care. That means it’s up to us.

And here’s where we talk about how we can make a difference. I present to you, below, a list of some things you can (and really should) do to make an impact. And you need to do them now, not days or weeks or months from now. Now.

What Can We Do?

As I said earlier, our efforts need to be concrete, targeted, and geared around strategies that we know actually help people. So a few thoughts:

• Posting on Facebook (or Instagram, or TikTok, or Twitter, or Snapchat) doesn’t do much good to anyone who is in need of food and other resources. If you want to use your platform to try and change minds, do that—keep in mind, though, that performative measures like this might make you feel better but do not actually help hungry people.

• Targeted strategies, leveraging larger groups of people in terms of both those helping and those getting the help, make much more sense than you donating a few dollars to a national organization. Mutual aid can be really important in trying times, and these are trying times. So look for a community of likeminded folks who you can combine your efforts with, and contribute to the need that exists within that community.

• There are already food pantries and soup kitchens and churches and homeless shelters in your area. There are already Community Action agencies and 211 and Catholic Charities in your community. There are already people (you may even know some of them) who are experts at collecting funds, distributing food and other aid, and figuring out those who need it most. Why on earth would you reinvent the wheel?

• If you are planning to donate to an organization, do a little homework first. Are they already at a pretty good place, financially-speaking? Maybe look for a smaller church or community center or agency that is likely to need the help more due to having a smaller budget to begin with.

• Consider the fact that money is always in short supply, but volunteers are usually even harder for nonprofits to come by. If you have the physical and mental ability to donate some of your time, and enough energy to do so, there are probably several dozen organizations that would LOVE to have you spend a few hours with them and helping others in a very concrete way.

• Do you have any extra food yourself? What about offering to share it with someone you know has less? In the spirit of mutual aid, maybe you could arrange a skillshare—I’ll bet that you could help someone else who has talents that might help you in your life. Why not trade?

• I realize that I already said that posting online is probably a waste of your time and effort, and is mostly just performative. All of that is true—but also, there are a small but extremely loud contingent of people who are determined to dehumanize and mock and cheer for the starvation of their fellow humans. When you see those people excited at the fact that people in their neighborhood will soon be struggling to stay alive, SAY SOMETHING. PUSH BACK. Make clear that hatred toward those living in poverty is unacceptable to you, and help to make that the norm in the online spaces you frequent.

• You can look on Facebook pages and websites for your local United Way, or call 211 or your local Community Action Agency, or just do a Google search—anything—to find existing agencies that are already publishing lists of food pantries and how to access them. Download, screenshot, and share those lists with anyone in your life who is struggling.

• There are likely to be many individuals, in the imminent future, who are unaccustomed to seeking out assistance from strangers but are otherwise going to struggle to have enough food to eat for themselves and their families. Normalize their situation, treat them with kindness and compassion, and help them.

• Don’t forget that there are also lots of marginalized individuals (such as many of those in the LGBTQ+ community) who might be reluctant to seek out help from religious-based nonprofits due to their history of religious trauma. If you’re donating time or energy or money, please try to seek out those organizations who provide specialized resources to those who come from these communities.

• On the topic of marginalization, undocumented folks were already generally ineligible for SNAP benefits. With the current climate of hatred and fear surrounding those who have entered this country in this way, they need a whole lot more help than usual. Also keep in mind that organizations that have been helping undocumented immigrants in the past are going to be stretched to their limits by this new crisis, so they’re in even more need of help than ever before.

• And while we’re talking about immigrants, there are millions of refugees and documented immigrants in this country who have nothing to do with the current fervor and bigotry surrounding the immigration debate—but who are still bearing the brunt of all that fervor and bigotry. Don’t forget that they need a whole lot of support as well.

• Advocacy makes a difference, too. Call and write to your elected officials. Make life uncomfortable for them until they do something about this, and at the very least don’t let them pretend that a little bit of help is all they need to offer (when they have the power to do much more than that).

As I said, this could never be an exhaustive list of every possible thing you can—or should—do to help those who are now on the verge of starvation due to the heartlessness of a few elected officials. I’m not trying to tell you what you have to do. I am, however, telling you that you have to do SOMETHING. What you do is up to you, but you’re going to think back on this time five years or ten years or twenty years from now, and you’re going to have to rationalize to yourself why you chose to do nothing. And none of those reasons will be good enough. What you can do, now, right now, is help. All of us have that obligation.

I’m hosting an impromptu meeting of a bunch of social work students from my program tomorrow. They’re begging for suggestions of things they can do to make a difference in the coming crisis, so I have provided time and space for them to brainstorm with each other and come up with a plan. My students are not wealthy. They’re mostly in their 20s and 30s, with some of them as young as 18 and some as old as their mid-60s. They’re from rural backgrounds, mostly, and the majority of them are the first ones in their families to go to college. But they want to organize amongst themselves, and they want to make a positive impact. I’ll keep you updated on what they decide to do, but I’m thrilled to see what they come up with and play some small role in their plan.

Figure out what you can do, and do it. That’s the assignment. Talk to you next week.

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Last week, a series of posts were made on a few local Facebook groups related to the claim that a local restaurant has allegedly hired someone with a sexually-oriented conviction. The gist of most of the hundreds and hundreds of comments related to that situation are essentially along the lines of “pedos should all be publicly hung”, “pedos shouldn’t have any human rights”, “they’d better fire that person or nobody should ever eat at that restaurant again”, that sort of thing.

Posts like that give me a lot of feelings, for a lot of reasons. I’ve spent a lot of time working with folks who are connected to the criminal justice system, including those with a history of sex offenses. Much earlier in my career, I also completed an 80-hour program that taught myself and my co-learners the basics of providing treatment to minors who are themselves sexually-oriented offenders. In addition, I participated in our local Second Chance Citizen Circle for many years, helping people come back to our community from incarceration, as well as running a pilot program with the state trying to reduce recidivism across those who had been convicted of a wide variety of crimes.

I care about human beings--deeply--and I also care about having compassion for others. I know how difficult it is for victims of violent crime and sexual assault, and have walked alongside many clients struggling with their traumatic pasts. I have also done the same with many people who have committed those types of crimes and will spend the rest of their lives trying to atone for those acts. I taught a graduate-level class on social work with child abuse and family violence for many years, and that gave me even more empathy for individuals on both sides of the equation--both those who have harmed others and those who have been harmed by others.

I know that I’m not alone in having done silly things as a kid. Growing up overseas, I know I benefited from the fact that when I made dumb mistakes, I got in all kinds of trouble (but not any legal trouble). I’ve always felt so much compassion for people who will forever be judged by everyone around them for choices they made on the worst day of their lives, because I know that could be many of us. I’m not saying everyone has the capacity to commit sex crimes, but everyone has the capacity to break the law. And that should be enough to give all of us pause when we start to dehumanize others.

In all this work and life experience, I have also found myself very concerned about the impacts of all this stigma and hatred directed toward those with criminal convictions. How does it make them react, how can they exist in the world and find any sort of redemption or forgiveness, and how can they ever be healthier or at least less directed toward harming others in their lives, if they’re treated with constant threats and dehumanization and such a massive degree of hate. In addition, one of the foundational values of social work revolves around dignity and worth of each person—I am bound by the ethical principles of my profession to care about everyone, no matter what they’ve done. Sometimes that’s harder and sometimes it’s easier, but it’s always worth it.

That’s the context. So after reading those comments, and getting more and more frustrated, I made a Facebook post on the 15th. Here’s the post in question, for your viewing pleasure.

I made this post out of frustration at the way that the folks in question were being attacked online, frustration at the perception that it’s wrong to ever give a job to someone with a legal history, and frustration that a restaurant which has been around for a long time (albeit under new ownership) would potentially be harmed due to this series of attacks.

Today, I noticed that I was invited by a friend to a local Facebook news group that I hadn’t previously seen. I thought “cool” and requested to join. Then I saw WHY my friend had invited me to the group, because this post was right on top.

I think I freaked my wife out a little bit with my reaction at seeing this online. Not because I was so upset, but because it just felt so weird to see myself pop up in this context. It was more than a little stunning. After I showed it to her, I held my breath and went to the comments. I know, I know—never read the comments. Still, I just had to see. The thing that mitigated a great deal of my stress is that everyone who commented (for the most part) was agreeing with me and choosing not to take the bait. I was glad to see multiple people who know me from the community coming to my defense, or at least liking the comments which were supportive of me.

But let’s stop for a moment and consider how scary this situation was, at least at first. The most worrying aspect to me (other than lumping me in with “pedos”) was that they’d gone to the trouble of looking up my profile on the library board’s website. That profile talks about my current employer, my prior employment history, the town where I live, even the fact that I own a dog. Any of those things could potentially have caused real problems for me, if the post had gotten any real traction.

And then I thought to look up the person who made the post, and that’s when things got a little weird. You can see that she goes by the name “Teri Shannon”. Her profile says she lives in my community, works at “Fiscal” and graduated in 2018. Her Facebook account appears to have been created the first week of October, at least both pictures linked to her account were uploaded that week. She has a public profile, with three liked organizational pages (two local restaurants and an organization dedicated to womens’ issues). And that’s it. Nothing else.

Here’s her profile.

Naturally, I ran her profile pic through a reverse image search.

Here’s her picture:

And guess what? Surprise—this isn’t an actual person (or if it is, it’s not an actual person’s photo). You can see below that someone used a photo from a stock photo site as their profile pic, and aside from that and their cover photo of a generic covered bridge, that’s all they’ve uploaded. As this picture shows, this stock photo shows up in multiple stock photo libraries online, and has been floating around since 2018.

In case you’re curious, it was originally uploaded to Unsplash (one of those stock photo sites where folks can download free pictures) by a guy named Ronny Sisson. In case you were wondering, he’s not local to me either.

In addition, there is no “fiscal” person for my county, so it’s a fake job as well. I’ve looked at the personnel directory for the county, and she’s not in it. As far as I can tell, there’s nobody with that name in this area. And the photo certainly doesn’t seem to align with someone who supposedly graduated in 2018.

If you’re curious, the second photo on her profile was taken and watermarked by a person who takes pretty foliage pictures and has no local connection either.

All I can conclude from this information is that someone made the decision to create a fake Facebook account in early October, and that the only thing that person has done with that fake account (so far) is request ownership in this local Facebook group and intentionally try to harm me and my public image by arguing that I’m “advocating for the pedos”.

If you were wondering, she did respond to some of the comments in the thread as well, this time suggesting that the library isn’t a safe place for kids due to my “troublesome thinking”.

It’s a weird feeling to know, for sure, that there is someone in your community who wants to hurt you. That happens, especially as someone who’s been out there in the quasi-public eye for a while. But having someone go to the trouble of creating a fake identity in order to do that same thing feels much more insidious and much less run-of-the-mill. It’s a pretty unsettling feeling, honestly, which is part of the point. I don’t know who’s behind this nastiness, but I’ve got my guesses. The end (for now) of this incident is that the admin of the FB group in question immediately deleted the post once I provided them with proof that it was a smear attempt from a fake profile. I’m not specifying the restaurant involved or the group where this happened, since neither of those are super relevant and I don’t want to further contribute to the pile-on effect.

I think it’s possible that some of you might benefit from hearing about my takeaways from this experience, which is one of my reasons for writing this post in the first place. My second reason for writing all of this up and putting it out there publicly is to ask for the help of all those who read it: not necessarily ONLY your help for me (in case the same thing happens again in the future). No, I’d like you all to be on the lookout for posts like this one, so you can try and take action to help all those whose lives could be negatively impacted by those who seek to do harm to others in this toxic, malicious, and underhanded way.

I’m a big believer in the power of collective impact, which refers to what we can do when we are on the same page and all dedicate our efforts and energy toward the same goals and aims. We can provide more oomph to a cause when we work together than when we work on our own.

It’s pretty clear to most of us that many aspects of our public discourse are currently broken, or at least seem broken a great deal of the time. ‘Toxic’ doesn’t even begin to describe how negative and nasty our interactions can end up looking, especially in a lot of online spaces. I’m a long-time veteran of the online world—I’ve been involved in virtual communities (including BBSs) going back to the mid-90s. But the types of trolling and rage-baiting and the doxxing and other types of toxic behaviors that I regularly see right now are in a whole different universe of nasty than they used to be. There are a lot of reasons for why this might be the case, but I think that there’s a real permission structure that exists for a small but dangerous group of people to do or say anything in order to harm others. The only thing that’s going to stop them from acting this way is if we defang those efforts, if we don’t allow ourselves to be silenced by those efforts, and if we eliminate that permission structure by making it unacceptable to act this way. That means calling it out when we see it. That means not feeding the trolls by giving them more opportunities to do more damage (but also not remaining silent). It’s a fine line sometimes.

When I look at the comments thread on that post, I’m very grateful to all those (both people who are in my life and those who don’t know me at all) who pushed back on the accusation against me. I’m also VERY grateful to the one person who tagged me in the first place (you know who you are, and I’m so glad you did)! Someone told me that one reason my friends and professional acquaintances who saw this post didn’t tell me about it could be because they didn’t want to make me feel bad, but let me tell you that it could have been much worse than it was (so far) if that person had never informed me. If you know me (or know anyone) then when you see someone making claims like this, I would argue you have a responsibility to push back when nastiness like this post pops up on your timeline. And if you don’t feel comfortable exposing yourself to danger as well, then you can always reach out to administrators, to the person in question, etc. behind the scenes instead of doing it publicly. But you have a responsibility to do SOMETHING. Want to know what you can do? You can stop nonsense like this from harming someone you know, or even someone you don’t know.

I have no real opinion on this restaurant, which is one factor that increases the absurdity of the whole situation. I’ve never actually eaten there, to be honest with you. But I don’t feel like treating their decision to give someone who has made mistakes in their past a chance as though it should be sufficient reason to (metaphorically) burn the place down is reasonable. If you saw a terrible car crash on the interstate, you might have the natural impulse to look out your window as you drive by. But you certainly wouldn’t stop your car, pull out a baseball bat, and take a turn smashing out some more of the headlights on the vehicles who crashed in the first place. Why would you see a post like that and contribute to the horrible toxicity of so many of these Facebook groups? Feel free to weigh in on your opinion, but I’m begging you to care about your values in these discussions more than you care about being part of a club who are doing their best to hurt others.

I’d also like to point out that yes, my post was set to private and friends-only (as you can see from the icon in the screenshot).

And yes, that means someone on my friends list is the one who tried to hurt my life and career, OR someone on my friends list passed on that screen shot to the person who did it. Both of those situations make me feel sick to my stomach, since I would rather feel a sense of trust and values alignment with the folks who are a part of my online community. That said, I am not going to go down the rabbit hole of culling my friends list and trying to make determinations about who hates me and who doesn’t. I don’t think that would benefit my mental health, and it also wouldn’t help my ability to stay connected with folks (which is something that matters a whole lot to me).

So if it was you, know that you have caused pain to me and those who love me. Not as much pain as you’d like, perhaps, but I hope the harm you did was enough for you to move on to your next target (or maybe decide to stop acting this way entirely). That’s probably overly-optimistic of me. If you’re the one who did this, and you continue to feel the need to try and damage me in the eyes of others, I’d urge you to spend some time considering your motivations for doing what you did and whether it’s truly representative of who you are and what you value in life. If you would like to have a conversation with me about your choice to spend your time to look up information about me, my wife, my previous and current employer and position on the library board (not to mention the time to create a fake account with fake photos and request membership in this group, in addition to the time it took to respond to comments in the thread), then I’d be open to having that dialogue with you. I don’t understand why you did what you did, and I think it was a horrific choice on your part. But I’m always glad to talk with anybody, even those who have made horrific choices (which you already know from the fact that I have no issues with doing therapy with those who have been convicted of sexually-oriented offenses). If you want to talk, let’s talk.

I’m glad to have a dialogue with anyone reading this about what more of us could do together to try and improve the quality of discourse as a community. That’s regardless of your political leanings or regardless of the lived experience you bring to the topic. Let’s talk!

That’s it for this week, folks. I hope you have the chance to rest and recharge this weekend, and that you’re doing your best to take care of yourself in the midst of everything going on in the world right now. Know that I care, I see you, and that there are lots of us out there who try to act in ways that are consistent with our core values of love, hope, caring and compassion toward others.

Take care, and stay safe out there.

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