💬 Thursday Thread: What's something you never saw coming in your life, but you've made the best of?
I thought I'd spend the rest of my life in California, yet here I am in Florida
In case you missed it this week:
A new podcast interview dropped featuring Jamia Wilson,
I wrote about why I moved to Florida,
I hosted a Substack Live conversation with
Keep scrolling for this week’s Thursday Thread…
I talked this week about my recent move to Florida and why I’m actually excited to be a blue dot in this red state. While not everyone has shared that sentiment, it was encouraging to see so many of you in the comments who have, or are, going through something similar. And that made me think about how sometimes surprises—even if they’re unwelcome—become incredible new beginnings. That’s what I’d love to hear about from you today.
👉 For today’s Thursday Thread, here’s what I want to know:
What’s something you never saw coming in your life, but you’ve learned to make the best of it? And what was that journey like?
Welcome to the Thursday Threads, a weekly chance for us to connect with one another in the comments. Join me and other readers as we navigate important discussions. And a note: a difference of opinion is always okay, being unkind to one another is not. Let’s keep these conversations respectful.
My new book Fired Up: How to Turn Your Spark Into a Flame and Come Alive at Any Age, is available for preorder! Out in June 2025, Fired Up will give you the formula for finding your unique spark and show you how to use it to start fires in your life. By preordering, you can enroll for FREE in Firestarter University, a year-long online program that includes live monthly workshops, workbooks and resources, accountability check-ins, and a community to help you succeed.
My answer to this is heavy, so I should add a content warning for child death, but I also think my answer may provide some comfort to others, so I share it in spite of its heaviness:
I feel grief with great intensity. That's probably why I'm a pacifist leftist. Every human being contains whole universes of possibility; their death marks the end of all of those universes. It's unbearable. I have never stopped grieving anyone I have ever lost.
So when I started having kids, I knew that I would never be able to cope with the worst. And I suppose I thought this fact would somehow shield me.
Except that when I was about six months pregnant, an ultrasound revealed that my daughter would not live long past birth. It felt truly like a nightmare. I kept waiting to wake up, but I never did. I never saw this possibility coming. I never thought I could survive being one of those women.
I survived. She did not. And I became one of those women. She did not die so I could be a better person, and I would still do anything to have her healthy and back. But I have made the most of it insofar as I have used her life as an inspiration to give more and do more in her honor. We can survive more than we realize, because we have to. The terrible things that happen to us can make us more sensitive to the suffering of others, if we allow ourselves to feel our own pain and use it as a way to connect to the pain of others.
Grief cracks you open. It's supposed to, because that's the only way you can re-emerge as something better. Let it do its softening work to make you better, then go make the world better.
Somewhere out there--many somewheres out there--there are mothers getting devastating news about their own children. Maybe some of them are reading here. I want them to know that the world will never be the same. They will never be the same. But there is a path forward.
I got laid off at 14w pregnant from Google. I had a horrible prenatal mental health journey and horrible health ramifications from switching ins companies at the top of my third trimester (when NY’s WARN notice ended and I was cut loose from the pay roll). I have since created an online community for 500+ other women laid off pregnant or on leave and we now have nonprofit status. What was driving me was this feeling that I was suffering in silence — with a blown up career — and surely there were others like me who were also suffering in silence. And if we could connect, we could build a structure of support that was lacking in our government and workplace laws/infrastructure/systems. We’d love to have you chat with us, Shannon, because what we’d like to do next is lobby. I think we are all fire starters 🔥