Hey there,

With the current state of the world, I am finding it hard to trust in most of my insights or beliefs. Everything feels fluid and chaotic. While I find my feet, I want to share a glimmers post. It has been a while since I posted one of these. I am worried that they seem like filler caused by my desire to publish weekly. They are — at least a little bit. But they are also important, especially in chaos.

I hope that my glimmers help you recognize your own. Drop a glimmer or two in the comments or email me back directly.

Before I go any further — let’s do the housekeeping.

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Third, I say some personal and vulnerable shit every week. Say some vulnerable shit back. It’s called a community.

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Okay — back to it.

Glimmer 1: Earlier this year, I moved in with my sister and her puppy. While I am the kind of person who calls an elderly dog, a “puppy”, I do mean it this time. My sister’s dog is not yet a year old. She’s a little bit of an anxious pup, but we’ve been taking her to the dog park to try to desensitize her to other dogs and people. We went the other day and she did so well. She participated in a hardy amount of butt-sniffing, both dog and human.

Glimmer 2: When I say that I moved in with my sister, what I mean is that my sister and I moved into a new house together. If you have ever had roommates, you will understand these semantics. I love our house, and we are working on making it feel more like ours. This week, I brought home my rocking chair and set it up on our front porch. We had some gorgeous weather earlier this week and I spent a good bit of time sitting on my front porch and enjoying it.

Glimmer 3: I have been obsessing over a rock-climbing route for the last couple of weeks and had my last chance to work on it on Monday. Spoiler alert: I didn’t get it. HOWEVER, I was reminded of how much I love the climbing community. When I walked into the climbing gym on Monday, I was greeted with smiles and wave from the people I have become closer with over the weeks and months at this new gym. As I was working on this route, people who’s names I don’t know were cheering me on. Over the last couple of weeks that I have been working on this route, people who I thought were too cool to hang out with me were coaching me and cheering me on. So even though I am (very) disappointed that I didn’t get it, I am grateful for the community that I have found.

Glimmer 4: We got scary news at work about job security. I guess that is just the state of the world these days. My glimmer, however, is that I show up to work with a team of humans who recognize each other’s humanity. I have been on teams where receiving news like this would have made me feel alone, vulnerable, and scared. On this team, though, I still felt scared, but confident that I was not in this by myself.

I hope that you can understand my need for a lighter note today.

I don’t know what each of you is going through every day. I am sure that there is uncertainty, though. The point of Femme Futures is to remind you that you are not alone in your experiences, and I hope that I am able to do that for you.

Take care,

Zoe