Probably too long.

At some point you have to stop outlining, stop researching, stop rearranging chapters, and just start telling the story. So that’s what I’m doing.

Before the Streetlights Came On is a memoir set during the summer of 1978, when kids disappeared on their bikes after breakfast and came home when the streetlights flickered on. It’s a story about friendship, family, neighborhood life, freedom, and the secrets adults think they’re keeping.

The first chapter is available here on the blog for everyone to read.

After that, I’ll be serializing the book chapter by chapter for subscribers.

Future chapters will be available to subscribers on my X account and on Substack. If you’ve been following my writing for a while, this is probably the easiest way to read the book as it’s being written.

As a thank-you to those who choose to support my work, paid subscribers can receive digital copies of all of my books at no additional charge.

And because I still believe books belong on bookshelves, not just screens, I’m also happy to send signed paperback copies. If you’re a paid subscriber, simply send me a mailing address and I’ll get one in the mail to you.

Writing a book is a strange process. Most days it’s just me sitting alone with memories, trying to figure out what belongs on the page and what doesn’t.

Sharing it chapter by chapter feels a little terrifying, but it also feels like the best way to finally finish the story.

I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

The first chapter is available below.
— Jennifer

Before the Streetlights Came On

Chapter 1

“If we leave now, we can catch the end of General Hospital and still have time to play Barbies. Or we could stop at the drugstore and see if the new Tiger Beat is out,” I said to Hazel as we sat wrapped in towels on the deck at the pool.

The water was still freezing, but it was the first official day of summer vacation so nobody cared. Besides, you got used to it pretty quickly if you jumped right in instead of inching in slowly.

The University Club pool was packed with kids and only one or two moms in sight. None of our parents came to the pool with us. What fun would that be? There was a lifeguard, and they were strict about enforcing the rules: no running, no diving in the shallow end, and no wet swimsuits in the dining room.

Hazel squinted toward the deep end where a group of boys tossed a wet hacky sack at whoever was jumping off the diving board.

“Drugstore,” she said immediately. “Definitely drugstore.”

Hazel was my best friend. She moved into the house across from mine on the curve three years earlier, and we’d been inseparable ever since.

Before Hazel moved in, I mostly played with Lisa and Cynthia, the only girls my age on the block. Lisa once chased my brother with a baseball bat and nearly cracked his skull open. Cynthia was from Boston and pronounced things strangely. She said “cain’t” instead of “can’t,” which bothered me for some reason. I wasn’t allowed to say “ain’t,” and “cain’t” sounded a lot like “ain’t.”

Her whole family talked like that.

One time when I spent the night at her house, for breakfast her dad made bacon in the oven!

Whenever the three of us played together, somebody usually went home crying.

When Hazel moved in, that all changed.

Hazel was just as dorky as me, but in every other way we were opposites. She was tall and thin with straight black hair cut in a bowl shape by her mother. I was short, chunky, and had curly red hair that exploded the second there was humidity in the air.

I wanted hair like Cher. Long, black, perfectly straight hair that swung when she walked. Sometimes I wrapped a towel around my head and strutted through the hallway pretending I was her. I’d flick my hair with my hand and run my tongue across my lip just like Cher.

I never did it in front of Hazel, but if I had, she wouldn’t have made fun of me. She would’ve pretended to be Sonny and started singing “I Got You Babe.”

That was her gift. She was always ready to be silly with me.

We left the pool and walked down Summit Avenue toward Dale Street, our damp swimsuits making our shorts stick to our legs.

“Do you have any money?” Hazel asked.

“No, but we can charge it.”

My dad had an account at the drugstore because I was always picking things up for my mom. Cigarettes, prescriptions, magazines, whatever she needed. I could pretty much charge anything as long as I didn’t go crazy.

The drugstore had everything: Tiger Beat, Teen Beat, Seventeen, candy cigarettes, Bonne Bell Lip Smackers, and every kind of junk food imaginable.

My mom liked Cosmo, which she let me read after she was done with it, though most of the articles seemed to involve affairs, divorce, or how to keep a man interested.

Phil Donahue and Cosmo magazine seemed to put my mother in equally bad moods.

I grabbed the newest Tiger Beat and Teen Beat while Hazel headed for the snacks.

“Can we get Doritos?” she asked.

“Of course. Get the taco ones.”

We added Doritos, Snickers, Chuckles, and two pops to the basket.

“Do they have TAB?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“I’ll take one of those.”

I’d been drinking TAB since I was six because my grandmother thought it would help me lose weight. My brother got regular Coke. I got TAB.

I picked up a bottle of Revlon nail polish called Bold Bordeaux and held it toward Hazel.

“What do you think?”

Hazel looked horrified.

“My mom would kill me if I wore that color.”

“It’s just nail polish.”

“It’s sexy,” she whispered.

“I’m gonna get it. We can paint our nails tonight if your mom says you can sleep over.”

We brought our selections to the cashier, and I told her to charge it to my account. She bagged everything up and asked how my mom was doing.

“She’s doing good,” I said.

“Tell her I said hello.”

“I will.”

Outside, Hazel grabbed the candy bag while I carried the magazines.

It was hot out, but the giant old trees lining the streets kept things cooler. Lately, red circles had started showing up painted on some of the trees.

At first we made a game out of it, kind of like Pig at the bus stop. Whoever got their foot on the sidewalk stamp first yelled “Pig!” and touched somebody else, making them “it.” We started doing the same thing with the red circles because there was only one every few blocks.

There wasn’t much point to the game, but I noticed there were more and more red circles every week.

“Ew, stop!” I said to Hazel.

“What?”

“There’s something in your hair.”

I had to stand on my tiptoes to reach the top of her head. Hazel was tall for her age, and I was probably short for mine. I pulled a little green inchworm out of her hair.

“Oh look, he’s cute.”

“It’s an inchworm. We had them in California,” she said, peering at it.

“Should we keep him?”

“Nah. Put him back in the grass.”

I loved where I lived. My house sat on the corner across from a small park, a giant green three-story Victorian with huge elm trees lining the boulevard. I could see Hazel’s bedroom window from mine.

Lisa liked telling people we were rich because ours was the biggest house on the block.

I’m pretty sure she meant it as an insult.

I’m also pretty sure her house was bigger.

All the houses in my neighborhood were big, but they were filled with kids. At one point we counted all of them: babies, toddlers, teenagers who no longer played with us unless they felt like tormenting little kids. I think we counted nearly fifty.

There was always someone to play with, even if it wasn’t your best friend. All you had to do was knock on a door and ask.

We turned onto my block and slowed near the park.

“You want to come over?” Hazel asked.

“Yeah. Should I grab my Barbies?”

“Sure.”

We played Barbies all the time. I had Malibu Barbie and Ken. Hazel had her older sister’s Barbies, but she also had a really cool dollhouse we used as their house.

I had the Barbie Townhouse at my house, but the elevator never worked and the back panels were always falling off. Plus my brother bugged us constantly if he was home. Once he superglued my Barbie to his GI Joe to make it look like they were doing it. He thought it was hilarious, but I was mostly mad because it ruined a perfectly good Barbie, even if Daisy had already chewed off her feet.

“Just wait here,” I said. “I’m gonna run in and grab them. Mom’s already taking a nap and I don’t want to wake her up.”

“Okay.”

Hazel sat on the wicker swing and gently rocked back and forth while I ran inside.

At Hazel’s house we sat on the floor in front of the rattling box fan in her bedroom dressing the Barbies in different outfits, but we didn’t really play with them as much as we used to.

“Grease opens next week,” Hazel said.

“I know. We HAVE to go.”

“Do you think John Travolta is cuter than Shaun Cassidy?”

“No. But he dances better.”

This was probably the best week of the whole summer. Swim practice didn’t start for another week, and my school wouldn’t mail my grades home for at least two more weeks.

I wouldn’t get grounded, but my dad would be disappointed in me.

I hated that feeling.

“Hazel!” her mother shouted from the kitchen. “Is Jenny Brown staying for dinner?”

“Oh shit, what time is it?” I asked.

Hazel looked at the clock.

“It’s six.”

“I have to go. I need to get my mom up from her nap, get her downstairs, and make her a drink before my dad gets home.”

“Hazel!” her mother yelled again. “Is Jenny Brown staying for dinner?”

“No, Ma,” Hazel shouted back. “She has to go home.”

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That sounds darker than I intended, but it’s true.

Some families inherit jewelry or antiques. In my family, we pass around recipes for hot dishes, roasts, and bars capable of feeding forty people during a snowstorm.

I inherited The Settlement Cook Book from my grandmother, who claimed it was the reason she was able to attract my grandfather. The subtitle is The Way To a Man’s Heart, which tells you everything you need to know about the era it came from.

Apparently in the 1940s, men were easier to impress. You just needed a roast and a pie.

The cookbook itself is falling apart. The binding is taped together and several pages are stained from decades of butter, flour, and probably cigarette smoke. It looks exactly like a cookbook should look. Used. Trusted. Important.

James Beard’s American Cookery, the bible of American cookbooks and the one I still use when I want to make the perfect roast, belonged to my father.

I had to fight my brother for it after Dad died.

I won.

The Joy of Cooking and the Byerly’s cookbook were wedding presents. I paid an attorney so I could keep them both.

Divorce is expensive, but apparently not expensive enough to make me surrender a good cookbook.

A good cookbook is worth its weight in gold as far as I’m concerned.

Sure, there are thousands of recipes online now, but internet recipes somehow manage to make cooking feel more complicated instead of less.

First, there’s the printing issue.

I use my printer so infrequently that every time I turn it on, it behaves like I’m asking it to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere. There’s rebooting. Calibrating. Error messages. One blinking light that never seems to mean anything good.

For reasons no human being has ever been able to explain, I can print from my laptop but not from my desktop computer, which is sitting directly next to the printer.

Could I spend an afternoon figuring this out? Probably.

Will I? Absolutely not.

Besides, half the online recipes require you to subscribe to a newsletter before you can even print them. And that’s after scrolling through 3,000 words about someone’s grandmother and her strong opinions about mayonnaise.

I never make it that far.

Instead, I screenshot the ingredient list and spend the rest of the evening running back and forth between my kitchen and computer because I can remember every word to Grease but apparently cannot retain whether the recipe called for one teaspoon or one tablespoon.

I can’t tell you how many meals I’ve ruined this way.

Which is why I still prefer real cookbooks.

I like being able to open a book to a page someone used often enough to stain. I like handwritten notes in the margins. I like old recipe cards tucked inside. I like knowing the same recipe has survived multiple kitchens, multiple marriages, and multiple generations of people trying to feed the people they loved.

A real cookbook feels permanent in a way the internet doesn’t.

I like the fact that somewhere in my kitchen sits a tiny yellow cookbook called The Settlement Cook Book: The Way To a Man’s Heart.

Not because I think women need to cook to keep a man.

But because after two marriages, I respect the optimism.

I was only three at the time, but I still remember being gathered around the television with my family watching the moon landing. I remember the pale yellow nightgown I was wearing and not much else because, again, I was three.

But I watched it with my parents and my brother, along with 650 million other people around the world. It became one of the first “I remember where I was when this happened” moments many of us shared.

The next one was Nixon resigning.

Then John Lennon being shot.

Then the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.

Those events themselves were shocking, but part of what made them memorable was that everyone stopped at the same time to absorb them together. Back when “Breaking News” actually meant something important had happened and all regular programming came to a halt.

And it wasn’t always tragedy or history in the making that connected us.

Every Sunday night Casey Kasem counted down the American Top 40 and millions of us listened. In my area it aired from 7–10pm, right before another school week started. Most of us listened alone in our bedrooms but it still felt like we were listening toghether.

The next day at school everyone discussed it:
What was the long distance dedication?
What song hit #1?
Did you hear that new song debuting this week?

Radio did that.

Television did that.

Entire generations gathered around the same moments at the same time.

Every Boomer and GenX person remembers where they were when the final episode of MAS*H aired. Same with Cheers. Same with Seinfeld.

I’m realizing now that gatherings are what solidify memories.

Maybe that’s why adulthood can sometimes feel like one long blurry Tuesday.

I live alone, so days tend to bleed together unless I spend them with other people. Memories become sharper when someone else is there to witness them with you. The dogs help, but they can’t exactly say, “Remember that time?”

I sometimes wonder what shared memories will look like for younger generations.

Will they reminisce about a specific YouTube video the way we talk about the final episode of MAS*H or where we were when the Challenger exploded? Will they someday say, “Remember when MrBeast did that thing?” and instantly know exactly what everyone means?

Maybe they will.

But it feels different somehow because their experiences are so individualized and constantly replaced by the next clip, the next trend, the next algorithmically selected obsession.

We all used to stand around the same cultural campfire. Now everyone carries around their own tiny personalized screen.

Nothing makes people feel connected quite like collective memory. Shared references become emotional shorthand. Maybe that’s why GenX remains so stubbornly tied to one another. We experienced so much of life together, at the same time, through the same television shows, songs, news stories, and cultural moments.

Of course, humans have always gathered around shared experiences, even before television and radio.

I suspect pioneers formed many of their collective memories around survival itself. Tornadoes. Blizzards. Crop failures. Church on Sundays. The arrival of a letter after months of waiting. The rare moments the entire community stopped what they were doing and came together.

The details change, but maybe the need itself never does.

People need shared experiences because shared experiences are what turn time into memory.

I can still picture myself sitting at one of those kidney bean shaped classroom tables, the kind where the teacher sat in the curve while the rest of us circled around pretending to understand math. I opened my journal fully intending to write stories about my own life the way Laura did.

About thirty seconds later I closed it again because I realized I didn’t have any stories yet.

I was eight years old. My biggest hardship at the time was probably being told to turn off cartoons and clean my room. There simply wasn’t much material there yet.

Then life happened.

Stories started arriving whether I wanted them or not. Some joyful, some painful, and some confusing enough that I’m still trying to untangle them decades later. My mother’s mental health declined, my father’s life — and by extension all of ours — changed in ways none of us expected, and like a lot of people, I spent years reacting to life instead of consciously building one.

You make decisions from fear, survival, low self worth, or simply because you’re too young to understand how much your circumstances are shaping you in real time.

For reasons I still don’t entirely understand, I never seriously pursued writing when I was younger, despite wanting to be a writer for as long as I can remember. Looking back, I think the answer is actually pretty simple: I didn’t believe in myself yet. Not fully. I had ideas, dreams, and instincts, but not the confidence to trust them.

And I think a lot of people live this way when they’re young. Not because they’re lazy or weak or incapable, but because sometimes life arrives early and rearranges everything before you’ve even figured out who you are.
Some people spend their twenties building careers and chasing dreams. Other people spend those same years surviving difficult families, raising children, navigating loss, working jobs they hate just to stay afloat, or trying to recover from things they were never properly equipped to handle in the first place.

Life does not hand everyone the same starting point.

So like many people, I got on the hamster wheel of adulthood instead. You work, pay bills, raise children, take care of people, survive heartbreaks, deal with losses, and keep telling yourself you’ll get around to your dreams later when there’s more time, more money, or less chaos.

Then one day you wake up and realize later arrived twenty years ago.

The strange thing about getting older, though, is that while your knees get worse and you suddenly care deeply about comfortable shoes, you also start understanding things you couldn’t possibly have understood when you were young.

For example:

Life goes by incredibly fast.

I know every older person says this and when you’re young it sounds ridiculous because one bad week at work feels like a decade. But trust me on this one. Eighteen turns into forty in about ten minutes. Then forty turns into sixty while you’re looking for your reading glasses and trying to remember why you walked into the kitchen.
One day you’re eating Taco Bell at 2 a.m. with absolutely no consequences whatsoever and the next you’re researching anti-inflammatory foods because your shoulder has been “acting up” since April.

Take care of your body.

Not because strangers on Instagram need to witness your fitness journey, but because future you is going to be deeply annoyed by present you. Stretch now while your body still cooperates willingly because one day you will injure yourself doing something deeply humiliating like sneezing, sleeping wrong, or reaching for a sock.
And once you pass a certain age, every injury becomes a story.
Nobody over 45 simply “pulls a muscle.” We all become Civil War veterans.
“Honestly, I’ve never been the same since the mulch incident of 2017.”

Save money.

I know this is the most boring advice imaginable, but financial stress can swallow your entire life whole. Also, every appliance in your house is apparently in a secret group chat coordinating its destruction. Your refrigerator, water heater, and car will all fail within the same three-week period while your dog develops a mysterious limp that somehow costs $4,000 to diagnose.
Money may not buy happiness, but it does buy options, and options become incredibly valuable when life inevitably gets weird.

Peace is underrated.

I’m grateful for everything she has done and sacrificed for women everywhere, and I still cannot believe we live in a world where saying something so basic can cost a person their reputation, career, finances, peace, and relationships.

I understand why Sal might decide not to appeal the Giggle vs Tickle ruling, even if I hope she does. Either way, I will support her because she has shown more courage than most people ever will.

And the truth is, this issue is not limited to Australia.

We have the same problem in Minnesota.

Here, women are defined both biologically and by gender identity, which effectively means women no longer exist as a protected biological class. Same-sex spaces and single-sex sports only exist until a man decides he wants access to them.
And there are men like Roxie Tickle who seem to enjoy forcing their way into spaces created specifically for women.

This is not theoretical.

Minnesota’s women’s correctional facility in Shakopee, MN currently houses biological men who identify as women because state policy now prioritizes gender identity over biological sex. Women are expected to accept this as normal, even inside spaces where privacy, vulnerability, and physical safety matter most.

Once society stops defining women as an actual biological category, every protection and boundary women fought for becomes conditional. Sports, locker rooms, shelters, prisons, scholarships, medical research, privacy, safety — all of it disappears the moment society decides feelings matter more than biological reality.

Because laws are not written for the best people in society. They also have to account for the worst ones, and there will always be people willing to exploit policies like these for their own gain.

You probably have similar laws in your state too. Most people just don’t realize it yet because these changes happened slowly, buried under language that sounded compassionate and inclusive.

Language was the gateway drug.

Change the definitions, and eventually you change the laws.

Change the laws, and eventually you change the expectations.

Change the expectations, and eventually people are punished for noticing reality.

I’ve lost friends and family over this issue, and it has made ordinary interactions more complicated than they need to be. People weigh every word carefully now because they are afraid of social consequences, professional consequences, and being publicly labeled hateful for saying something they know is true.

And that fear was always the point.

What troubles me most is how many people admit they agree in private conversations, then immediately retreat the second the discussion becomes public.

We have created a culture where people are more afraid of social punishment than they are concerned about whether something is actually true.

If you speak honestly about biological reality, you are labeled a bigot by people who often know better themselves, but are too afraid to say it out loud because they do not want those labels turned on them.

But speaking the truth is not hatred.

I have known and liked people who identify as trans. Some of them fully understand that biological sex is real, even if they experience discomfort with their identity or choose to live differently socially. They do not demand that everyone around them deny reality or change the meaning of words to accommodate them.

This is not about hate.

I have compassion for people struggling with identity, mental health, loneliness, trauma, or feeling disconnected from themselves. Human suffering is real. But compassion should not require society to abandon biological reality, silence women, or force people to say things they do not believe are true.

Reality exists whether acknowledging it is socially convenient or not.

Men can never be women. Women can never be men. Boys cannot become girls, and girls cannot become boys.

It does not matter how many hormones someone takes or how many surgeries they undergo. You cannot be born in the wrong body. Removing body parts and altering hormones does not change a person’s sex.

You are still in your body.

And I think deep down, most people know this.

They are just afraid to say it out loud.

This only continues if ordinary people stay silent.

At some point, people have to stop whispering what they know to be true and start saying it publicly, even when it is uncomfortable.

I’m talking specifically about chin hairs, nose hairs, and eyebrows that have decided to express themselves like Andy Rooney.

Eyebrows

I was endowed with lots of hair. I come from a long line of men who had to shave their face twice a day and their back during the warmer months. Thankfully I am also a redhead so the hair on my body is blond or so light red it’s not very noticeable.

Unless you’re looking at my chin.

I entered the 90s with the kind of eyebrows only Brooke Shields could truly appreciate. Thankfully I did not pluck them into two tiny commas like the cast of Friends.

Mostly because I didn’t have time. There were just too many of them and I had a toddler to chase.
Back then my eyebrows behaved normally. A quick brush and they stayed where they belonged. Occasionally I’d wax the little stray hairs creeping onto my eyelids like squatters, but otherwise they were manageable.

Then I turned 50 and my eyebrows entered their “retired railroad conductor” era.

They didn’t thin out. They grew longer.

Apparently eyebrow hairs no longer stop at a reasonable length once menopause arrives. Now I have to trim them regularly, which feels like something that should only happen to old men who refuse to wear hearing aids.

And they aren’t just longer. Now there are black wiry hairs and random white hairs sticking straight up, refusing to lie down with the rest when I brush them into place.

And yet when I try to pluck those specific hairs, I can never find them.

Instead I end up plucking the perfectly innocent red ones and suddenly I’ve got a gap in my eyebrow like some kind of gang banger.

Part of me wants to see how long they’d grow if left alone, but I remember an important lesson from a Marie Osmond article in Tiger Beat sometime around 1979: brush the eyebrow hairs down before trimming them or the shape gets wonky.

She probably didn’t use the word “wonky,” but the woman knew what she was talking about.

Of course, at the time Marie Osmond probably thought she was dealing with normal eyebrow maintenance, not the advanced stages of eyebrow evolution.

I wonder how she’s handling it today.

Chin Hairs

I never used to have chin hairs. Then sometime in my 50s one appeared, got lonely, and invited friends.

Now it’s just whack-a-mole with tweezers.

I cannot bring myself to shave the chin hairs, even though it would be much faster and easier.

Instead I dermablade, which is still dragging a razor across my face, but somehow not shaving.

The worst part is you can feel the chin hair. Sometimes you can even see its shadow. But the second you look in the mirror to pluck it, it goes into hiding.
Which means out comes the lighted magnifying mirror.

A device specifically designed to destroy a woman’s confidence one pore at a time.
And somehow the tiny invisible chin hair you couldn’t find yesterday has overnight transformed into a black cat whisker strong enough to pick up satellite radio.

At this point my chin hairs are among the most reliable things in my life.

I can count on them in ways I was never able to count on my ex-husbands.

Like laundry and unsolicited political opinions on Facebook, they are simply always there for me.
There’s comfort in that.

How other people see these things and say nothing remains deeply troubling to me.

If I have spinach in my teeth or a three-inch whisker growing out of my chin, I would appreciate a heads up.

That’s just basic community service.

Nose Hairs

Thankfully I rarely notice my nose hairs because I’m short and most people aren’t looking up there anyway.
Small blessings.

Although every once in a while I catch one in the magnifying mirror and realize the situation up there is becoming less “lady” and more “retired fisherman in northern Minnesota.”

Aging is humbling that way.

You spend your younger years trying to become attractive and your 50s trying to keep random hairs from escaping your face in public.

Still, there’s something comforting in realizing most women my age are probably standing in front of the same terrifying magnifying mirror doing exactly the same thing.

Squinting. Plucking. Trimming. Pretending dermablading is somehow entirely different from shaving.
And hoping someone would tell us if the chin whisker became visible in public.

That sounds obvious, but judging by the current state of social media, it apparently isn’t.

I recently sat down with Hendrix for a long-form conversation about gender ideology, activism, transition and de-transition, social media, and the increasingly complicated legal and cultural landscape surrounding all of it. Hendrix is a former trans man, attorney, and advocate who now speaks publicly about the experience of transition, de-transition, and what it feels like to question beliefs that once shaped your entire identity.

It was not a screaming match. Nobody flipped a table. No one called for anyone to be canceled. Which in 2026 almost qualifies as groundbreaking content.

What struck me most during the conversation wasn’t outrage or politics. It was how much of modern life now revolves around identity, performance, and public approval. Social media has turned deeply personal experiences into movements, movements into brands, and brands into tribal warfare.

Once that happens, it becomes very difficult for anyone to say, “Actually, I’m not sure anymore.”
That uncertainty is what interested me.

Not because I think every person’s experience is the same, but because we’ve created an environment where nuance itself feels dangerous. You’re expected to pick a side immediately, repeat approved language, and stay inside the lines. If you don’t, people start looking at you like you just tracked mud across the living room carpet.

Hendrix talked openly about the emotional side of transition and de-transition, but also about the legal and cultural pressures surrounding gender ideology, healthcare, online activism, and public discourse. Some people will hear the interview and agree completely. Others won’t agree with any of it.

That’s fine.

The point of conversations like this isn’t universal agreement. It’s understanding how we got here and why so many people are struggling to talk honestly about complicated issues without immediately trying to destroy each other.

One thing I’ve noticed over the last several years is that social media rewards certainty, outrage, and performance far more than reflection. Algorithms do not care about nuance. Nuance doesn’t trend. Thoughtful people rarely go viral because thoughtful people tend to pause before speaking, and the internet prefers immediate emotional reactions delivered in all caps.

That creates a problem when discussing deeply personal topics involving identity, medicine, law, and culture. Real life is messy. Human beings are messy. But online discourse demands clean slogans and absolute certainty.

And honestly, I think a lot of people are exhausted by it.

You can feel it everywhere now. People are afraid to ask questions. Afraid to say they’ve changed their minds. Afraid to admit confusion. Afraid that one wrong sentence will follow them forever. We’ve built a culture where public opinion can shift overnight, but screenshots are eternal.

The interview with Hendrix touches on all of that.

Not as a political debate staged for clicks, but as a real conversation between two people trying to make sense of a rapidly changing world that increasingly demands ideological loyalty from everyone involved.

Whether you agree with Hendrix or not, I think there’s value in hearing firsthand experiences directly from the people who lived them instead of filtering everything through headlines, activists, corporations, or social media outrage cycles.

At minimum, it reminds us that behind every cultural battle are actual human beings trying to figure themselves out in public while millions of strangers weigh in from the comment section.

Which honestly sounds horrifying.

You can watch/listen to the full interview below. I’d encourage people to approach it with curiosity instead of combativeness, which I realize is basically asking the internet to do the impossible at this point.

You can watch/listen to the full interview below. I’d encourage people to approach it with curiosity instead of combativeness, which I realize is basically asking the internet to do the impossible at this point.

Not regular tired. Not “I need a nap” tired.

Existentially tired.

Tired of the constant political chaos. Tired of headlines that sound like satire but somehow aren’t. Tired of waking up every morning to find out another politician has said something insane, another media outlet is pretending to be shocked for clicks, and another group of people online is threatening to cut ties with their entire family over a meme.

And maybe the most exhausting part is that most of us don’t even know what’s true anymore.

That’s what made my recent conversation with Dave Van De Walle so interesting.

We weren’t trying to solve politics. Nobody needs another podcast where two people scream talking points at each other while pretending they’ve cracked the code to society. We were talking about something deeper than that.

How did we get here?

Because whether you lean left, right, independent, exhausted suburban mom, or “please stop talking to me about politics at brunch,” it feels like something fundamentally changed over the last decade.

And it did.

The internet didn’t just change how we communicate. It changed how we think.

There was a time when politicians still had room to be human because there was space between public life and private life. A scandal might surface weeks later through a newspaper investigation instead of being clipped, memed, weaponized, and livestreamed in real time by millions of people with ring lights and WiFi.

Now every moment is content.

Every opinion is performative.

Every bad haircut becomes a national emergency for 36 hours.

We’ve created a society where everyone is simultaneously broadcasting and surveilling each other, and then we wonder why everybody seems anxious and fake.

Privacy isn’t really privacy anymore. It’s just the temporary absence of exposure.

And politics adapted to that environment faster than the rest of us did.

Modern politicians aren’t just politicians now. They’re brands. Influencers. Content creators. Rage farmers. Celebrity hybrids engineered for virality instead of leadership.

Which explains why actual governance increasingly feels secondary to whatever clip is trending on social media.

Meanwhile the average person is sitting at home wondering why they feel disconnected, angry, overwhelmed, and weirdly hopeless all the time.

Because outrage is profitable.

Fear is profitable.

Confusion is profitable.

Keeping people emotionally exhausted is one of the easiest ways to stop them from thinking critically.

The irony is that most Americans probably agree on more than social media would have us believe. Most people want safe neighborhoods, affordable groceries, decent schools, functioning roads, and enough money left at the end of the month to enjoy their lives a little.

Revolutionary stuff.

But algorithms don’t reward calm, reasonable people who say, “I think there are probably nuances on both sides.”

Algorithms reward emotional reactions.

The louder, crazier, and more divisive something is, the further it spreads.

Which means many people are now consuming politics the same way previous generations consumed reality television. Not because it improves their lives, but because it keeps them emotionally stimulated.

And once you notice that, you can’t unsee it.

One of the things Dave and I discussed was how this constant cycle creates paralysis. People feel powerless because the problems seem too massive, too corrupt, too entrenched to fix.

So they disengage entirely.

But disengagement comes with consequences too.

Communities decay when people stop participating in them. Neighborhoods change when nobody feels responsible for them anymore. Institutions weaken when everybody assumes someone else will handle it.

The truth is, democracy was always supposed to require participation from imperfect, frustrated, skeptical people.

Not blind loyalty.

Not worship.

Participation.

That doesn’t mean spending all day screaming online. Honestly, that might be part of the problem.

It means paying attention. Staying grounded. Talking to people in real life. Refusing to let every issue become tribal warfare. Being willing to admit when something feels manipulative instead of instantly picking a team and defending it like your life depends on it.

Most importantly, it means refusing to surrender your ability to think clearly.

That’s becoming rare.

The good news is I don’t actually think people are as divided as the internet makes them appear. I think most people are quietly exhausted by the performance. They want honesty. They want sanity. They want conversations that sound like actual human beings instead of campaign interns fighting in a YouTube comment section.

Which is why conversations like this matter.

Not because Dave and I have all the answers. We don’t.

But because sometimes the first step toward clarity is simply recognizing the noise for what it is.

And once you do that, you stop feeling quite so powerless.

You start realizing that awareness itself matters.

That refusing to be manipulated matters.

That staying engaged without becoming consumed matters.

And maybe that’s where hope actually lives now. Not in perfect politicians or magical solutions, but in ordinary people deciding they’re done confusing chaos with truth.

The circus may still be running, but that doesn’t mean you have to buy a ticket.

Mother’s Day is this weekend and if you’re like most kids and husbands you forgot all about it and are frantically trying to figure out the best gift for the most important woman in your life.

Who are we kidding, you’re not even at the panic point yet, that won’t happen until Friday.

The good news is you can get most of these great gifts before Sunday so mom will think you were on top of things and you don’t need her anymore and now you’ve made her cry.

Good job.

As a mom and a former wife, I have had some of the best gifts ever, I have also received some truly bad gifts.

Do not under any circumstance give your new wife and the mother of your child an iron for any reason, but certainly not a gift on Mother’s Day. Irons are heavy and unless you have really good reflexes you’re going to have a goose egg on your forehead if you do.

Don’t ask me how I know.

So, without much fanfare here are the top ten Mother’s Day gifts. I have either purchased or received as a Mother’s Day gift all of these items except for the wine chiller but that should arrive by Friday.

The Batter Daddy – Seems like a strange gift to give your mom, but trust me, she will love it. There’s nothing better than knowing not only where your batteries are, but also knowing at a glance what you have on hand. Want to kick it up a notch? Fill the Battery Daddy with batteries before you give it to her.

A Picnic Table for Squirrels – I bought one of these last week and have been having the best time watching the little buggers sit at the table and eat their nuts.

Squirrel Proof Bird Feeder – Of course once you give the squirrels a picnic table you’re going to want to deter them from the bird feeders. This was the bird feeder that started it all for me. I’ve had this squirrel proof bird feeder for nearly 20 years and aside from the teeth marks on the top of it where they tried to chew their way in – it’s metal, they can’t chew through it – it looks brand new. When the squirrels shinny down the tube and grab onto the perch the perch starts to spin and it’s amusing as all get out. The squirrels get a little ride and all is good.

Birdbath with Solar Fountain and Camera – This was my Mother’s Day gift to myself this year and I can’t tell you how much joy it has brought me already even though I haven’t actually captured any photos of birds yet.

vertical garden w/ squirrel

Greenstalk Vertical Garden – This was a gift from my kids last year and I loved it so much I went out and got another one. They always have such fun colors and are always adding new features to the main garden. Last year I grew eggplant, carrots, radishes and kohlrabi in mine. I’ve never had so much eggplant. I highly recommend the base with spinner so you can rotate the garden so all sides get the most sun. We’ve had some pretty cold nights here, last night there was a freeze warning so I just put the patio covers over the vertical gardens and all is well. Much easier than covering a larger garden or a bunch of pots.

Over the Should Heating Pad – this was a lifesaver when I broke my shoulder a few years ago. All moms need a little pampering and this baby is perfect for pampering, no broken shoulder needed. Just let mom relax while you fix her breakfast.

Eye Massager – while mom is relaxing under the heating pad make it a complete spa treatment and treat her to this delightful eye massager.

Marble Wine Chiller – Never let mom’s wine go cold again. Not only is it functional, but it’s so pretty.

Of course mom needs a good laugh – my books 128 Small Things You Can Do Right Now To Make The World A Better Place and Ginger Snapped make the perfect Mother’s Day gift because they are written by a mother who’s seen it all and lived to laugh about it.

Ginger Snapped

I hope all you moms out there have a wonderful day and get to spend it with your family!!

It’s a big deal, even though I had been preparing for this day for a while now.

They were Gucci. Tortoiseshell. Probably a $500 pair even back in the 80s, but I got them for free because I worked for the ophthalmologist who referred all his patients to the optical shop that gave them to me. If I had actually paid for them, I’m sure I would have lost them within the first year or two. That’s just how that works.

I loved those sunglasses, mostly because they didn’t have those little nose pad things, which meant I could wear them as a headband — a very expensive headband, my optometrists have reminded me over the years — without them getting tangled up in my hair. In hindsight, that’s probably the only reason I managed to hang onto them for 38 years. They weren’t just sunglasses, they were functional.

Until you do the math. They were free, so not expensive to me, but even if I had paid full price for them, it works out to something like $13 a year, or 28 cents a day.

I’m not really sure the math is right, but it feels right.

I’ve lost these glasses before. Once, riding through the back hills of Wisconsin on my ex-husband’s Harley, they flew off my head while we were coasting down a hill. We turned around and went back for them, mostly because it’s illegal to ride without eyewear, but also because we weren’t completely reckless.

Over the years my prescription changed, so I replaced the lenses a few times, but eventually that stopped being an option because the frames were too brittle. So I got a new pair with an updated prescription and immediately lost them on a jetski while chasing seagulls with my nieces. We crossed our own wake, the jetski went one way, we went another, and my glasses hovered on the surface for a split second before disappearing into the cold, dark water. I did try to dive for them, but it turns out it’s hard to do any kind of deep seas – or lake as the case may be – diving in a life jacket.

I’m not sure that even qualifies as losing them since I know exactly where they are, but it still bothers me.

After that, I went back to the Gucci pair, and with each passing year I found myself more impressed that I had managed to keep track of them this long. I have size 4 Levi’s from the 90s that I’ve held onto just as long, but those are tucked away safely in a box in the attic. They’re not sitting on top of my head, exposed to wind, weather, and whatever else the day throws at me.

I lost the sunglasses about a week ago, although I couldn’t tell you exactly when it happened because I’ve been slowly transitioning away from them anyway. Last year I bought a newer pair, something a little more Ray-Ban-ish since the oval shape from the 80s isn’t quite as flattering on my softer, definitely not size 4 face anymore.

My eyesight seems to change depending on the day, or maybe depending on how much time I spend staring at my phone or my computer, so I’ve been rotating between readers, night driving glasses, and two pairs of sunglasses. It’s not exactly a system, more like a daily negotiation with my eyes.

Because of that, the sunglasses could have been anywhere. My car, one of my bags, the sideboard where I usually put them, or even a restaurant if I’d taken them off to switch to my readers and left them behind. None of that felt quite right though, because I’ve been so careful with them all these years.

What I did remember, vaguely, was taking them off because they kept sliding off the top of my head. Which means I must have been bending down to do something. And I also remember thinking, very clearly at the time, “I’m not going to remember where I put these.”

Which, of course, I didn’t.

Until this weekend.

I was out in the yard spreading mulch when I saw them sitting on top of the compost bin, like they had just been waiting for me to come back and get them. My 38-year-old Gucci prescription sunglasses, right where I left them.

Exactly where I knew they would be. Eventually. Once I remembered to look in the place I specifically told myself I’d forget.

Sitting there on the compost bin, it did feel a little like a sign. Not a big, meaningful one. Just enough to suggest I should probably deal with the box on my stairs before I get another threatening text.