Little Lytel Out and About

Has anybody else realized yet that karma is fake? I don’t mean that a higher power or cosmic entity doesn’t exist - I’m not here to have that debate. I mean, the idea that everyone gets “what’s coming to them” has felt less possible with every passing year. Growing up, I had a very specific idea of karma drilled into my head. That good things would happen to me if I was kind, and bad things would eventually happen to people who were bad. It was a comforting thought, as I drifted through my teens and twenties from one traumatic experience to another. As long as I was kind and just kept working hard, this terrible thing happening to me would eventually pass, and I’d be rewarded with something good. And all of these bad people, who did bad things to me and those I cared about, would suffer for it - maybe not now, but surely somewhere down the line. You know what really happened? Those people who were supposed to suffer, to get what was coming to them… they’re fine. They’re thriving, conti...

Last month, I got married.  I thought about marriage a lot as a kid. I dreamed of getting married under the sardine tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, a huge glittering ring to match the one my husband would put on my finger. I wondered who would come to my wedding, and if I would have to invite those family members that ignored me or, worse yet, bullied me to tears. I wondered what my husband would be like, if he would abuse and intimidate me the same way my own dad did to my mom. When I was with my ex, I doubted I would get married at all. I lost count of how many times I was told, both directly and indirectly, that I wasn’t “worthy” of being married. Even worse, for a long time, I believed it. In my own mind, I was the villain in everyone’s story, including my own. Those childhood dreams of a grand wedding faded with each grim reminder that I was monstrous, unlovable, unwanted. Tucker and I have been together for three years, and he never makes me feel that way. Every day, he ...

 Hi there! If we’re not friends already, allow me to introduce myself… My name is Rachel, I’m 32 and I was born and raised in central Texas. I lived there most of my life, except for a year that I spent teaching English in rural Japan (which you can read about on my old blog, Konnichihowdy ). It was after this fun and challenging year, when I came back to the States at the end of 2019, that I met Tucker, a funny, handsome guy from Boston, and we’ve spent just about every minute together since. In May 2020, at the height of the global COVID-19 pandemic, we moved from Texas to New England, specifically to the Seacoast region of New Hampshire. Although I’d been working in marketing for some time, I chose to take a step back and work in customer service in my new home. So far, I’ve been a cook, server, and most notably, a world-class barista (seriously, I make a great latte).   In June 2021, we got two cute little black cats, Omri and Scramble. We’ve had them since they were tiny...