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Hey friends,

This week our country is celebrating its 250th birthday and — as the saying goes — I’m old enough to remember the last big one.

I was 6 years old in 1976. My family was living in a suburb of Philadelphia. And I actually do remember a little bit of it.

Sort of.

What I remember is bits and pieces of a day my mom, dad, brother, and I went to see the Liberty Bell. Maybe Independence Hall too. I’m sure we did other things. None of those memories stuck.

Here’s what did: a Liberty Bell pin with Snoopy sleeping on top of it. I remember wearing it and LOVING it.

That’s it. That’s the sum total of what I remember of the bicentennial.

Oh — and our mimosa tree. We had a pink mimosa tree in the front yard that was, and still is, my favorite climbing tree. Every spring the flowers bloomed and they looked like little dandelion puffs. That’s why I called it the pink puffy tree.

Snoopy pin. Pink puffy tree. That’s 1976 for me.

Why am I sharing this silly little anecdote? Because nobody knows what’s going to stick. Not you, not me, not the kids you’re about to drag to a fireworks show this weekend.

So don’t overthink it. Show up. Let whatever sticks, stick.

Happy 250th, y’all.

xx, Heather

Hey friend!

In honor of Father’s Day this week, I want to tell you about the day my husband, Josh, became a dad.

Josh and I were babies when we got married — 22 years old. At first it felt like we were playing house, like when I was a little girl. We settled into our first apartment in Louisville, Kentucky, flat broke. His salary with Russell Stover Candies was $19k plus a company car. The car was a lifesaver because we only had my car, the one I’d bought in college.

Things moved quickly. I got a job as a preschool teacher and he sold candy to every hospital gift shop, independent drug store, and small grocery store in his territory of central Kentucky.

We loved Louisville. My mom’s dad — Granddaddy — grew up just outside the city in a little town called Elizabethtown. His father had owned a local department store on the town square, Bethel’s. Here’s a fun fact about my Granddaddy: he became a physician but never actually graduated college. He had attended Vanderbilt as an undergrad and applied to the University of Tennessee’s early admission medical school program. He left Vandy with one semester left.

Growing up, I had heard tales of my Granddaddy taking my Grandmother to Churchill Downs for the first time. She was completely aghast that he would place $2 bets on the races. Remember, this was the late 1930s and my Grandmother was a “good Presbyterian girl.” Her opinion on betting changed when her horse won the first race!

At the time, it felt like a full circle moment that Josh and I got to go to the same place my young grandparents did. Did you know that when we lived there in 1993, the minimum bet was still $2?

A few months later, Josh was promoted and we were off to Springfield, Missouri. I can say with all honesty I hated Springfield. I know that because we had also lived in New Jersey, and Springfield was even worse. Springfield was where I got pregnant for the first time. We were over the moon. Unfortunately — or maybe now fortunately — I miscarried at 11 weeks. This probably has something to do with the fact that I am not a fan of Springfield. I distinctly remember saying to Josh about two weeks after the miscarriage, “I don’t care what you need to do or how hard you need to work — get us out of here.” Three weeks later he was promoted. We moved to Frederick, Maryland.

It was our third move in under 15 months. About a month after arriving in Frederick, I found out I was pregnant again. I didn’t know it was possible to be so nauseated. I could hardly walk across the room without throwing up. We decided I would not get a job. No one wanted a vomiting employee.

On September 3rd, 1995, I went into labor. Actually, I woke up at 6:20am with contractions. Thank God, because I was a week overdue and done being pregnant. We finally made our way to the hospital around 5pm. Things went as they were supposed to — until they didn’t. The baby was stuck, which meant the C-section I had so desperately wanted to avoid was unavoidable.

At 6am on September 4th, I got wheeled into the operating room. Josh was right by my side, looking anxious and excited. I was exhausted.

I don’t remember much about what happened next. I crashed on the table. All I know is I woke up later in a recovery room. Josh was holding this sweet little bundle up next to me. And do you know what my first question was?

Does she have red hair?

(Josh is a redhead. My mom and I had been hoping for a little redheaded girl.) I got my girl. She was as bald as a cue ball.

Here’s what I learned after the fact. My heart rate dropped suddenly and dangerously. A petite nurse literally grabbed Josh (6’1” and 220 lbs) and threw him out of the operating room. Another nurse caught him and explained that the doctor was performing an emergency C-section to save the baby and me.

I cannot imagine the fear he felt in those minutes. There he was, 24 years old, his wife in serious trouble, completely alone. Our families lived far away.

One of the nurses asked, “Do you need to call someone?”

Josh placed a call to my parents. They answered thinking all the joyous thoughts you have when a new baby is coming. When my mom picked up, he burst into tears trying to get out that there had been a complication — that I had crashed on the table, that the doctor was getting the baby out to save my life.

I’m sharing this with you the week of Father’s Day as a love letter to my husband. This is just one of the many times Josh championed for me. Against hospital policy he sat by me with the baby. Josh didn’t want me to wake up and not see him and our sweet girl.

This is the story of the day Josh became a dad. It’s also the day I knew — one hundred thousand trillion percent — that I had married the right man.

Happy Father’s Day, Josh.

I know this one is different. You’re in China for a trade show. The kids are all grown and doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing.

We did good.

xx, Heather

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I had some HUGE news to celebrate last week! The Nurture Method hit #1 on the Barnes & Noble best seller list!!! I talked to my oldest daughter shortly after I found out. Well, she surprised me again by writing about it. Without further ado here’s Emmy’s newsletter.

xx-Heather

My Nurturer is a Best-Selling Author

Brrriinnnnggg, brrriinggg, brrriiinggg- the old-fashioned telephone ringtone belts out of my phone beside my head. I look at my hatch clock, 10:15 a.m. Crap, I slept through my alarm, luckily I don’t have anything scheduled today. I roll over, swallowing my guilt. Brrinnggggg. My phone alerts me again. Momma’s calling.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Have you looked at the group chat?” she asks with a tentative chuckle.

“No, not yet. Give me a sec.” I put her on speaker and open our family group chat- The whole famdamily- consisting of myself, parents, siblings (Ben and Kate), and Ben’s wife, Kaitlin. “Oh cool Kaitlin sent the film photos from the beach” I say rubbing my eyes.

“Uh huh,” Momma says giggling.

“Wait,” I say, scrolling down further. “Best Selling Author? In multiple categories!!” I shriek now, jumping out of bed and earning a disgruntled huff from Georgie, who now is covered by the blankets I tossed aside.

“I know!!!” shrieks Momma back a little breathless.

“Ahhhhh!!!!! No way!!” I shout as I turn on my lamp and take a swig from my Owala water bottle. “Hang on, wait, let me open the attachment you sent!!” I gather myself a bit, grab my big green claw clip from my bathroom, and put my hair up so I can focus.

Walking into my living room I plop down in the remnants of my POTS nest from yesterday and open the attachment. “Holy shit,” I say more to myself as I scroll through. “Number 1 in Parenting, Number 2 in three different business categories- only second to Mel Robbins! This is unbelievable!!!” I say to her.

“I know!” Momma giggle-shouts back.

“Mom, this is the Barnes and Noble report!! Holy shit! Just holy shit!” I shout again and am jumping up around my living room. “That’s so much harder to do than freaking Amazon!!” I say. Now Georgie has joined me in jumping out of solidarity. “You fucking did it!!! I knew you could!!” I say breathlessly through my own giggle-shouts.

Momma laughs and I can tell she’s starting to get bashful as her laugh trails off. We are having none of that today. “Own it Momma. This is fucking awesome. You did this all by yourself. The harder way without Amazon’s bullshit and your own way.” I say sternly in the tone we have dubbed daughtering.

“I just can’t believe it,” she says.

“You should be so proud of yourself! I’m so fucking proud of you, but you should be so proud of you,” I respond.

“Actually I am,” Momma says. Good, I think to myself. I know how hard that was for her to say. “Daddy must be on a call, because I tried calling him, but he didn’t pick up. So you’re the first one I’ve called.” she says.

I giggle feeling special. “He’s got to be on a call. He’s going to be so pumped!” I say, still on speakerphone as I walk through my house opening curtains and dodging the clutter from my packing/unpacking mess of a front room.

“Wait, hang on Em, I’m ordering a pup cup for Nugget and myself a matcha,” she says.

“Naturally,” I respond laughing. This is just the best news. I know it’s her book, her work, her drive, her talent, but I feel this win in my bones.

I witnessed and lived the mornings where she’s up at 3:00 a.m. working, drives us to morning practices, making lunches for whoever didn’t have to be at school early, then to do another round of school drop off all before 7:15 a.m. Ben, Kate, and I learning to walk quietly into the house if it was before 6:00 p.m. because Momma might be on a call- only to hear the “Helloooo, how was your day?” as soon as she hung up (even if she only had 2 minutes till her next call).

My Momma, who I watched learn to accept and finally love (albeit quietly, but that’s her style) her sparkle and power.

My Nurturer, who said “Wait, why is no one talking about this?” and DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT.

To the badass woman who raised me- thank you for letting me see you and your story. I and all who read your witty words of wisdom are better off for it.

Be true to you Momma.

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My mother turns 80 in November.

In her mind, that’s the bridge year.

Her mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s at 80. Her mother’s mother too. So somewhere along the way my mom started joking that when she turned 80, we could just push her off a bridge. Save everyone the trouble.

I laughed when she said it. What else were you going to do.

But the calendar in her head has been ticking for a long time, and we are now six months out.

Here’s what I know about the women in my line.

My great-grandmother was a homemaker. My grandmother was a homemaker. My mother is a homemaker, and for the last twenty-five years she has also been my father’s full-time caregiver. Her body is riddled with arthritis. She and Dad didn’t get to live the life they planned. The retirement they pictured isn’t the one they got.

For four generations, the script was the same. A woman built a home. She raised the children. She took care of the people in front of her. She didn’t ask for much. She got really good at making do.

That was the inheritance.

I’m the first one who didn’t take it.

I am, between now and November, doing something I don’t have a clean word for. Call it a clearing. The women in my line handed something down to me, and I am quietly, deliberately, refusing to hand it down again. It’s not therapy. It’s not a worksheet. It’s a thing I’m doing by feel.

Josh and I started RSG Sales when my kids were small. My mom didn’t have a frame of reference for that. Working parent wasn’t a thing the women in our family had been. She didn’t know how to ask about it. She didn’t know how to be proud of it. She didn’t know what to do with the fact that I was building something she’d never built.

So things were smooth when I did what she thought I should be doing. They got messy when I didn’t.

The more I worked, the messier it got. The more successful, the messier still.

For a long time I read that as her being hard on me. Disappointed. Refusing to celebrate me. And some of it was. But underneath that — and it took me a long damn time to see it — was something else.

Fear. That she’d inherit her mother’s disease. That my dad would be alone or worse, with nobody to take care of him. That her own daughter had gone off and built a life she couldn’t see herself in.

Anger. At a body that hurts. At a life that veered. At a daughter who didn’t follow her into the kitchen.

It wasn’t about me. Almost none of it was about me. She just didn’t have language for any of it, so what came out was sharper than what was inside.

I’ve landed in a place of compassion and grace with her. That sentence sounds like a Hallmark card, so let me say it the real way: I stopped fighting her, and I stopped folding to her. Both. At the same time.

Compassion doesn’t mean letting your mother walk all over you. I am very clear on that. The boundaries I’ve built — and held — are what made compassion possible in the first place. Without them, I’d still be angry. With them, I can actually see her.

And I’ll tell you what — it’s a hell of a lot easier than rage. Rage takes a job. Compassion just takes a clear head and a closed door when you need one.

Here’s the part I didn’t see coming.

When I started thinking about what I inherited from my mother, I thought I was looking for the warm stuff. The recipes. The way she sets a table. The thing she said once that I still say to my own kids.

That’s not what I got.

What I got from her was a very clear picture of what I didn’t want to pass down.

I parented my kiddos with the door open. On purpose. I wanted them to feel safe. I wanted them to feel confident. I wanted them to be good people. I wanted to be the mother they could call when something was hard, without bracing first. Not because anyone modeled it for me. Because nobody did.

The instruction manual I got from the women in my line told me what a mother was. What a wife was. What a daughter owed. I read it. I closed it. I wrote a different one.

That’s the inheritance. Not money. Not a recipe. A picture, clear as day, of what I was not going to do.

My mom turns 80 in November.

I don’t know what that year is going to bring. None of us do. The thing I do know is that I am not going to spend the months leading up to it angry at her. I’m going to spend them as the daughter who finally figured out what to do with what she was given.

The women in my line carried it for four generations. I’m putting it down. My kids won’t pick it up because it won’t be there.

xx, Heather

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There’s a joke about middle children. They get forgotten. Overlooked. Stuck between the oldest and the baby and nobody remembers their birthday.

I don’t think that’s right.

I think the middle child is the messy middle. They get treated like a big kid when they’re with the oldest — pulled up, expected to keep up, told to act older than they are. And they get asked to be a role model when they’re with the youngest — pulled back, expected to set the example, told to act like they’ve got it figured out.

The middle is doing two jobs at once. And both of them are somebody else’s idea of who they ought to be.

Our son Ben is our middle child. Poor kid has a sister on each end.

When I tell you he’s the definition of the messy middle, I mean it as a compliment. He’s never met a stranger — that’s Josh in him. He’s a good little brother and a good big brother at the same time. I don’t know how he pulls that off, but he does. He’s always up for mischief. He teases his sisters. He teases me. He teases his dad.

He’s all the good, mixed up in the chaos of being in the middle of two people.

I’ve been thinking about Ben because I think that’s where I am right now with the book.

I’m not at “Now What?” Not yet. The book just came out. The launch hasn’t even cooled off. I’m not ready to stand at the front of the room and say here’s what’s next.

But I’m also not at the beginning anymore. The thing’s out. People are reading it. The work that took me twenty years to do is, technically, done.

So I’m in the middle. The messy middle. Not a clean before-and-after. Just the in-between. And the in-between is awkward, and the in-between is where most of us actually live.

What I’ve decided is that I’m not in a hurry to leave.

I’m not at “Now What?” I’m at “Who’s up for ___?”

I don’t know what’s around the next corner. I’m not pretending to. And I’m not ready to move on from talking about The Nurture Method like it’s already in the rearview.

So I think I’m going to hang out here a while. Cause a ruckus. Be the kid who teases both sides because she still gets to.

xx, Heather

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I’ve plopped myself down feet from the water and I don’t plan on leaving until dark.

Josh and the family are down here for the week. For the first time in 18 months, I have nothing on my calendar.

That’s not an exaggeration. I have been writing, editing, rewriting, launching, talking about, posting about, podcasting about, and sweating over The Nurture Method for a year and a half. Eighteen months of waking up with a chapter on my mind. Eighteen months of “I’ll rest after.”

The book launched April 28. Four weeks ago. And I kept right on going. Launch party. Instagram. The Amazon thing (don’t get me started). Screenshots flooding in from Barnes & Noble. Reviews. Interviews. The list of people I still need to thank.

I told myself I’d rest after the launch.

The launch came and went and the rest didn’t.

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So I said it’s time for a beach trip to fill my soul. Because at some point I had to look at the woman who wrote a book about not running yourself into the ground and ask her, with a straight face, when she was planning to take her own damn advice.

Here’s what’s happened in 48 hours of sitting in this chair.

I have, for the first time, looked at what I did.

I wrote a book. A real one. A whole one. With chapters and a cover and an ISBN. Somewhere right now there’s a woman reading something I wrote on the couch with Nugget next to me and Blue at my feet. A friend hollered at me across a coffee shop a few weeks ago holding her copy, tabbed and highlighted within an inch of its life, and I stood there like an idiot trying to figure out how to feel about it.

I couldn’t see any of that while I was in it. I was too busy.

The old me would soften this part. “I’m not bragging, but...” — y’all know the move. I’m not doing it.

I wrote a book. It is the biggest thing I have ever made on my own. Eighteen months, most of my sanity, every weekend for I can’t remember how long. And I hope it does for some woman out there exactly what I wrote it to do.

It took sitting in this chair to feel any of it.

Nobody warned me about the stopping part.

So that’s what I’m doing this week. The book is out. The work is real. And I’m going to let myself sit with that for a few days before I figure out what’s next.

The tide’s coming in and I’ve got a beach read to get back to.

xx, Heather

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The last two weeks have been a whirlwind. I have felt loved and supported. I have also felt intense internal pressure that has been completely self-imposed.

For a minute I thought those two things were tied together. That the pressure was the cost of the love. That when something you made finally lands, you brace.

That’s not what was happening.

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I want to tell you about my friend Tracey.

Tracey passed away a year ago after a brutal bout of cancer. She was one of the kindest, smartest, strongest, all-around badass women I’ve ever known.

Let me back up. I first met Tracey through my son, Ben. She was his friend Niko’s mom. For years she was Miss Tracey to all of us because she was just …

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After yesterday, I figure I owe y'all something good. So here's what I've got.

The Nurture Method comes out April 28th. And with it, I’m adding a paid option here on Substack — $5 a month or $55 a year.

Here’s what’s behind the paywall:

Permission Slips. The real ones. The weekly kind. Short, sometimes silly, sometimes the exact one you needed …

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We are 15 days away from the launch of The Nurture Method. Holy Moly!

I didn’t set out to write a book. It really started as articles that I turned into newsletters. One day it dawned on me that my articles and stories were something more. A structure began to take shape.

I certainly did not have it all figured out. Quite the opposite, really.

…

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I hate talking about myself. Like, I would genuinely rather go to the gyno. (TMI but true.)

But I’ve got 22 days until my book launches and I’m putting on my big girl pants.

The Nurture Method: A Real Life Guide to Raising Your Business and Your Family comes out April 28th. I’ve been working on it for almost 18 months. It’s got stories and less…

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I’ve got a question for you.

How are things? What are you up to?

How many of you started answering that question in your head with — “Oh my gosh! Things have been so busy!”

Have you ever noticed no one EVER says “Things are just wonderful. I have plenty of time to spend with my family, work is just a breeze, and I’m loving my (enter name of hob…

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There’s a number that sits in my craw.

$50,000.

That’s what it cost me — the first time — to learn one of the most important lessons of my business life.

I created a business called Sercy. It was a good business, genuinely. But it was the wrong business model for us at that stage. I had that low-grade hum of this isn’t right running in the backg…

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