(Written May 27, 2026 - Backdated for the ease of the Archive)
2025 was the year it felt like I finally started to gain the headspace to focus on something other than a divorce and dissolution of property process since 2020. I ended up needing to give nearly everything I had away. The space I finally found to live in NYC was already furnished and just didn't have room for my things, so various pieces of my home went to 4 other households. They weren't in selling condition or quality, but they were definitely still very useful for people who might need them. I'm down to some boxes and some clothes as far as personal possessions go, but life has taught me to not be attached anymore. Now I see anything I have as only temporarily in my possession, until it can be useful to someone else, or until it's no longer usable. Life looks a lot different when we make decisions from a place of stewardship rather than ownership.
In spite of starting to gain headspace, there are still aspects of my businesses that are in shambles in the online space. My domains were hacked and sold off or transferred to other sites or providers. Every single domain I owned- now up for ransom, auction, or just in someone else's possession. It's not the first time I've tried to operate without a website, but the process and expense of trying to rescue them has been outside of my bandwidth to deal with and a lower priority than what I need immediately to move myself forward. I do what I can without them and let whoever is paying to hold those domains for ransom just enjoy how unprofitable my unique business names are for anyone else and will continue to be for anyone other than me. Ultimately, my businesses have always relied on word of mouth over word of mouse.
Speaking of headspace, I finally got to solve one of the biggest problems from the last few years around having more headspace to think and focus! I finally found an office in NYC that has been a balm to all of my sensory sensitivities, coworking comforts, focusing needs, and made me feel expansive and productive every time I walked in the door. I toured tons of different coworking spaces and offices before I found the right fit, and once I found it, they also gave me an amazing deal I couldn't pass up that actually made it on par with just trying to work out of a coffee shop regularly, but with more security, sensory comforts, and unlimited amenities that helped me feel productive and well-resourced. I finished so many hard projects there and started so many hard projects as well. It was an investment in headspace and progress very well spent, but the expense also made for a year with zero profits after my limited financial gains. The true gains were in mental clarity and big life goal progress. After so many years of not having those things, I can say those things are worth far more than money. It's the headspace and clarity that gives the energy and presence of mind to create anything new or even respond to requests and proposals.
I try not to grieve how many years of creativity, income, education, and productivity I lost to managing nomadic/homeless living situations and divorce while having little to no financial security. Hardest years of my life to date. Survival was all I could do, but I sure did make it look fun and adventurous while I was just trying to survive! (Cue "I will survive" soundtrack...)
The hard years are the character building years. The years that change the way you look at other people who are struggling. You no longer feel sorry- you empathize and understand how quickly life could make a turn for the worse at someone else's whim and how hard it can be to crawl back out from that place. There are so many people who have carried me, supported me, uplifted me, and made sure my situation wasn't completely destitute, and I'm so grateful for every one of those people and always hope I left each person and space better than I arrived.
*Deep Breath* While I feel safer now than I was two years ago, I am still not as sustainable as I need to be in order to feel a greater sense of safety over my life at large. I know it's a process and it takes time to rebuild, especially after a total life fallout paired with COVID work fallout. One that I'm all too familiar with from many different moves, but now I have to make it work in new ways, rather than familiar ones.
One of the goals I had in 2020 that was stunted by needing to focus on survival was to apply for grad schools. I wanted to pursue counseling psychology to help me learn new ways of navigating the mental blocks that people place between themselves and realizing their goals. These were blocks that showed up in moments like just trying to figure out how to put a number on paper. I could see the fight/flight system kick in with a memory or thought brought on by a budget question with a client- and suddenly a client would be completely derailed from moving forward. I wanted to learn more about that bio-psychological process and how to more quickly bring people back into regulation and resolve to move themselves forward instead of preventing their own progress.
I knew how to navigate all sorts of other situations in consulting, but working with individual artists also means working with highly sensitive people who feel deeply and have an innate need for expression before they return to working balance needed for progress. If there were any shortcuts I could learn along the way, it would mean being able to help far more people do things that confidently expand their world and heal their wounds around value and worth.
In early 2020, I would have received some spousal benefit to get some tuition reimbursement at my spouse's college. In 2025, those benefits no longer existed in divorce, but I did receive some NY State TAP Funding support because of my financial situation, and some gifts to help me step back into education at BMCC to take prerequisites. To even begin an application for grad school, I would need to fulfill some prerequisite courses and obtain some academic letters of recommendation. BMCC felt like the smart and affordable way to go for satisfying both of those.
The new office space ended up being used primarily to invest my time and energy into online asynchronous college coursework. This kept me very busy, even on a part-time class load, when combined with the other things I was still navigating elsewhere in my life. I would have loved to have been more business productive, but I also knew I needed to take some short term losses in order to acquire some longer term gains.
In 2025 I was still very much entrenched in caretaking for others with little to no financial compensation. That's not a complaint, that's just the reality. It was a choice for peace of heart and mind to know the people I loved were cared for, getting to a better place, and being taken care of. The same way the people who loved me were there for me in my need with no compensation. My mother had an accident that required surgery and rehab level care. She had already communicated months earlier how concerned and scared she was if she ever had to be in rehab because of the stories from other people nearby. I know that healing is easier when you're not scared and when you're feeling cared for, so I became the rehab solution and live-in support system until she could build a new network of support around her to fill in after the intensive recovery period, with the goal of getting her back to a place where she could still travel and have mobility with support, even if she wouldn't be able to swim in all the waters she wanted to while her surgical scars healed.
My roommate also had a couple hospital stays that required some additional advocacy at the hospital, overnight fill-in care, and some additional support around the house. My partner needed support finding a new apartment in NYC, in the most competitive month possible to start searching for the first time. Then came the packing, the moving, the storing, the unstoring, and the moving again. My roommates dog was needing chemo treatments out of state in driving distance, but he needed to be in a different state earning the money to pay for those treatments, so I helped whenever I could. Lots of caretaking and labor in which the final payment is only peace of mind and heart. I was now helping other people survive the hard things, with the steadiness of mind and heart that we all get through it one way or another, but having support makes it easier along the way.
The world is far too short on caretakers, especially ones show up without financial compensation. That is something that the last few years have taught me- there will always be a job for the heart-driven caretaker- the needs far exceeds the supply. However, continuing to step into these caretaking situations also meant it was more difficult for me to focus on the things I needed to do to move myself forward, and no one else was going to do that for me.
When my first professor didn't follow through with a letter of recommendation promised for grad school, even after multiple follow-up reminders, I decided to sign up for a volunteer suicide hotline that promised a letter of recommendation after a year of service on the hotline. It's a well-known and established pipe-line for gold standard letters of recommendation in NYC graduate level psychology schools. It's the equivalent of doing clinical work, minus some of the more relational boundary issues, because it's anonymous and confidential. Getting through the training to work on the line is its own challenge, then spending a year doing the work and continuing to show up for it and work on ourselves in the process of doing it is a true test of internal dedication and character.
If you've ever considered changing careers and want a taste of what that life is like- I'd highly recommend volunteer work, interning, and apprenticing. Diving into the deep end of the environment, the pacing, the way it leaves you after you've done it- those are all very very informative aspects that cannot be learned in the classroom and must be learned by putting yourself in the environment and dedicating yourself to showing up for the work. If you can't show up as a volunteer on a hard day, it's not going to be magically easier to show up just because you're paid, it signals where you'll feel burnout instead.
I still haven't recovered the sustainable income level I'd like- but I also know what's most important to utilize in resources right now. My focus is on building a new set of career skills, and there are absolutely a greater set of sacrifices that come with doing it at a later point in life. This is the point in life when the work of caretaking becomes greater as well because are generationally sandwiched between littles who need care and elder parents who need care. Even though I don't have little humans, I have a dog in my life who has needs for daily cooked meals and doctor visits that I help out with.
So what do I count as work this year? Especially since I've started documenting things that could be considered unpaid labor and potentially replaced by paid labor?
Caretaking 161 Days = 44% of Work Year
- 85 Days Full Time House Care + Pet Sitting
- 15 Days In-Home Rehab Care
- 51 Days Travel Support/Care
- 10 Days Moving Support/Care
Volunteering as Professional Development Hours = 4% of Work Year
- 35 Training Hours
- 48 Hotline Hours
College Coursework as Unpaid Training Hours = 12% of Work Year
- 136 Summer Hours
- 216 Fall Hours
I gave 60% of my year to unpaid labor, or 219 Days, which is every weekday and a few weekend days, taking into consideration that most work days are 8hrs long to allow for commuting time and any sort of recovery outside of work. I did receive some cash gifts as part of the caretaking, however, they wouldn't even cover the travel expenses if I wasn't using airline miles and borrowed cars to get to the places I needed to be.
When I feel shame or guilt about what I haven't done or haven't accomplished, I think this type of documentation and breakdown makes it super clear where my time and energy has gone in place of doing more business building. The 40% remaining was recovery from caretaking and essential doctor, medical, or self-care appointments for myself, like the multiple dental appointments for crowns I needed to repair on the molars that had broken in the face of finalizing divorce stressors while managing other intensive care needs.
Pricing Workbook for Creatives ($35/book)
- 8 Books Sold Retail
I had zero energy to give to this project, but somehow books still sold anyway. The profit margin is around 70% as a self-published author, so this volume of books couldn't even pay for one month of office rent in NYC. I'm still very much open to collaborations on this project and/or supporting art and business coaches who want to lead others through this work. I know how transformative the process is because I tested it many times. I'm willing to give a great discount for anyone who wants to host workshops and sell the book at retail or include it as bonus value for their workshop. I just don't have the bandwidth to promote the project and support people moving through it properly right now.
Abundant Sphere - Reiki Healing / Medical Intuition / Spiritual Counseling ($150/hr)
- 1 New Client
- 1 Returning Client
Once again, zero energy for promotion or networking on this. Grateful clients still call and refer me despite all of my online evidence of operating being hacked and sold off. Still very happy to serve clients whenever possible. Most clients have been phone clients since COVID, and to be honest, I haven't checked in with my physical office in a while to see if the agreements are all still good for operation in person, but I can always operate on site if we have established trust and a liability agreement. The challenge is that this volume doesn't support the liability insurance needed to operate in professional spaces, so I probably should stay phone and internet based with this work until it returns to a level of supporting the liability insurance needed for in person work. The current revenue doesn't even support carrying cell phone service for the year, so right now it's part of the losses.
The losses were probably the biggest ever this year, mainly because I had the office expense, which was so essential to make progress on anything needed to move forward, but also killed any revenue I made and took a significant chunk of the survival funds keeping me afloat right now.
In previous years I would feel deep shame and judgement about all of this, but now I'm just so radically authentic and honest about it all, and putting it all in perspective helps me not come down on myself even more than I already do.
How can people believe your successes and find you inspiring if they never get to see the struggles you've gone through to gain them? I hope that one day I'll look back at these years of losses and choosing new long-term career development over cheap fast cash and feel like it was a smart move. That remains to be seen, but my story isn't over yet either. I've rebuilt before. This is a super honest picture of what it looks like to rebuild again.
Sanctuary Sustainable Institute & Retreat Center (research & info gathering)
This remains a big vision kind of goal and future stewardship project that gets to me to different sites with interesting education and happenings around sustainability. I explore opportunities and sites and teachings as they arise and can fit into my calendar, despite having no formal repository for all of this info gathering to be put into practice or expressed through a property yet.
The Van Hoosen Farm preserves some of the old farming methods before we had heavy machinery and industrialization - it's a representation of early machine farming without engine use.
The American Indian Community House hosted a White Pine Ceremony with Flower Essence and Tea, and it got me back into that space of tapping into the deeper wisdom we've forgotten around our plant medicines.
The Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club is such a great example of pairing recreation with environmental stewardship and I was so glad to learn about their programming to help manage the superfund site that is the mess in the Gowanus Canal.
The Westbeth Artist Housing may seem like an unlikely research site, but its an example of transitional residential and artist use to take a site that normally wouldn't be appealing for development based on the original construction and turn it into something that supports the artists and the community.
Grace Farms is a bit of a hidden architectural gem and I'm still debating what it offers me beyond a place to relax and reflect because I haven't been able to attend very many of the educational events, but it has been implementing sustainable practices and some eduction along the way.
The Lenape Nations Pow Wow was more of a community focused event, but there's always indigenous wisdom that cuts out the commercial interests to be found at their gatherings.
Randall's Island hosted a Sorgum Saturday, which is a native crop akin to corn that does well in our region but is highly under-utilized relative to other countries, however that means it's also not as genetically modified as our corn horticulture too.
The Kampong National Tropical Botanical Garden is a place full of unexplored natural magic that is still waiting to be fully tapped by caring researchers and careful environmental stewards with an intuitive mind steeped in traditional plant medicine. What if a you took a yoga studio, art studio, wine club, or CSA model, but used it to fund your research... that's where
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden comes in and its native plant research while using the lovely garden surrounds for all sorts of wellness and creative classes beyond the botanical variety if you just want to yoga among the orchids. There is a quiet but mighty team behind the conservation efforts of the
Madison Square Park horticulture team, from seed saving, to native plant pollinating, to public education- they take a small little plot of trees surrounded by massive infrastructure and still manage to keep the focus on plant health. The
NYC Bird Alliance does pop-up events all over the city to connect the avian and human residence in ways that increase awareness of each other.
The Ashokan Center was a place I visited once but didn't get to return to when I wanted to because life derailed me into caretaking immediate needs, but I love the way they combine their musical mission and their environmental stewardship practice. I finally got a chance to visit one of the
Appalachian Mountain Club sites this year as I've been curious about them for a while. Unfortunately dogs were not welcome, so an overnight stay in their recreation site wasn't possible, but it remains on my list to take advantage of whenever I can, even if its just one of their many day hike groups that launch from the membership leaders. Instead, we hiked up the Appalachian Trail to stay at the
West Mountain Shelter in Harriman State Park where dogs and humans and critters alike all gather.
Firsts and notable destinations of 2025:
Somehow, as part of caretaking, and in spite of everything, I still find so much travel as part of my life. I'm grateful for it because it becomes the joyful tradeoff in the midst of hardships. However, to be honest, I really only enjoy traveling with people I love, my family & friends. I have no desire or need to travel alone. I don't mind traveling to professional conferences for education or presenting or inspiration, but at the end of the day, if I don't have friends or family there, it's not as fun or enjoyable for me. Caretaking mobility concerns while traveling adds some challenges, but I feel better knowing people I love get to explore rather than stay home too.
One of the highlights of this year was doing my first wild National Forest backpacking camp-in and carry-out in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan on the Indian Trail between Lake Michigan and Lake Superior. Second backpacking highlight was taking the commuter rail from NYC to Bear Mountain and hiking up to and along the Appalachian Trail with a stay at a shelter spot overlooking NYC, while adding a 5lbs Chihuahua and an 8lbs Chihuahua Mix to the top and back as part of our carry load, including food and water supplies for all of us with no fresh running water sources along the way to resupply. I will never forget those stunning views as the reward for the journey. I had no idea what I was capable of until I did it, and I'm grateful to have a partner who helps make it all easier for a newbie backpacker to jump in and do the hard things.
- Groomed Run Snow Tubing in the Poconos, Pennsylvania
- Ocean Cay, Bahamas (but I was too sick to really enjoy it)
- Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos
- Amber Cove, Dominican Republic
- Nassau, Bahamas
- Punta Langosta, Cozumel, Mexico
- First Transatlantic Cruise from Florida to England
- Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain
- Casablanca, Morocco, Africa (7th Continent for me!)
- Stonehenge Monument, United Kingdom
- London, UK: Afternoon Tea at the Orangery in Kensington Palace Gardens, Changing of the Guards at Buckingham Palance with a King and Queen spotting separately in the same trip, Sitting in the Choir Loft at Westminster Abbey during Evensong, Afternoon Concert at the National Gallery, River Boat tour through the Thames River, and Sky Garden at Sunset.
- Maiden Voyage on a Brand New Ship, Norwegian Aqua, also a Transatlantic and eerily similar to the Titanic Journey from England to NYC with storm twists and turns along the way sending us south rather than north through iceberg territory.
- Easter Bonnet Parade, NYC (I've been wanting to see this forever and it lived up to the hype!)
- Fairfield Tropical Botanic Gardens, Miami, FL
- The Kampong Gardens, Miami, FL (there's a special deep environmental energy here)
- High Point State Park, NJ
- July 4th Fireworks at Taughannock Falls State Park, NY
- Ithaca Falls, NY
- Outdoor Movie on Coney Island Beach, NY
- Lake Mohawk, NJ
- Lake Champlain, NY
- Lenape Pow Wow, Prospect Park, Brooklyn, NYC
- Headlands International Dark Sky Park, MI
- Au Sable Light Station, MI
- Hiawatha National Forest, MI (Wilderness Backpacking)
- Randall's Island Urban Farm, NYC
- Appalachian Trail Backpack & Shelter Overnight, Bear Mountain, NY
- Long Beach, NY
- Vanderbilt University, NYC
- Westbeth Artist Housing, NYC
- Gowanus Dredgers Kayaking on the Gowanus Canal, NYC
- CCNY Marshak Science Planetarium, NYC
- Japan Society Exhibition of Chiharu Shiota, NYC
- New York City Poetry Festival, Governor's Island, NYC
- NYPL After Hours NIYU YURK Exhibition, NYC
- American Indian Community House White Pine Ceremony, NYC
- Book Tower Commercial Gallery & Residences, Detroit, MI
- Flyleaf, Grosse Pointe, MI
- Van Hoosen Farm, Rochester Hills, MI
- New Year's Eve in Times Square (but indoors with open bar and food and BATHROOMS), NYC
- First time returning to college for a new degree
- Got to sing along with Boy George and chat afterward at Moulin Rouge
- First time attending Drew Barrymore & Kelly Clarkson shows
- First time attending Great Gatsby on Broadway
It's nice revisiting all of the joys that could be squeezed in-between all the hard moments. Thank goodness NYC is full of so many FREE opportunities to do joyful and enjoyable things along the way without much travel distance. It makes all the rest of the hard things worth it, but we have to find ways to squeeze it in, or it can be too much hard and not enough joy to keep showing up for the hard stuff. If you took all the time to read this, you're a gem, and you're probably a family or a friend, and I love you!
