Marisa McFadden

I recently sat with an older mother who had returned to the world of preschool playdates and friendships based on the schedules and ideological compatibility of parents. At twenty years older than most of the parents around her, she was the outlier on so many fronts. Ill-equipped to navigate the conversations that played like background music behind the sound of children at the playground, because those conversations so rapidly vacillated between birthday parties, seed oils, and politics. When asked to share her views on any of these, she felt shamed from every direction.

"I have opinions on things like diapers and the decriminalization of marijuana like everyone else, but if I couldn't narrow the scope to fall into a purely anti-Trump stance, I might as well be chanting a pro-Nazi salute and asking to have Hitler's name put on my kids' birthday cake."

She voted for Obama twice, but that doesn't matter these days. She comes from a different time, pre-internet, post-9/11. She lacks the tenacity for playground political combat because, as she says, she's older and tired and just trying to make it to bedtime. The playground has become a John Stuart Mill debate session. Talk of Bluey is blended with talk of tariffs and immigration policy and the various ways to navigate raising children when half the nation supports Trump.

This woman, just six years prior, had been forced to live in an apartment the size of her first-floor bathroom during the pandemic. She had just started to feel like a functioning adult when the world stopped. But it wasn't the first time. It stopped at Columbine. It stopped on September 11th. It stopped when people were ripping open rooftops with their bare hands to escape the floodwaters of Katrina. It stopped at Sandy Hook, at Hurricane Sandy, at the first fentanyl death in someone's circle that wasn't supposed to be possible. Where she found herself now felt like surviving one form of cancer only to be diagnosed with another.

How to help. Where to help. Whether the help is actually helping or just fanning the flames. Whether her help will ostracize her from social circles. Whether it can make a difference at all.

This is not one woman's story. It is the story I hear every day, from parents and grandparents and teenagers across every political pocket and every socioeconomic group. The breakdown of civic engagement is not apathy. Apathy is passive. What I see is exhausted disbelief: people who showed up, who tried, who made the signs and attended the meetings, and left each time a little more hollowed out. The needle didn't move. Or it moved the wrong way. And they are not willing to be led anymore, not because they don't care, but because the model of one person changing the world has been sold to a population that is out of the energy required to buy it.

If democracy dies in darkness, civic engagement dies on couches facing coffee tables covered in DoorDash delivery, in front of TV shows that exist to make you forget you were ever angry about anything.

I know something about what it takes to interrupt that cycle. In my thirties, I founded the Easton Area School District Community Coalition in response to a budget crisis threatening 36 teacher layoffs and the music program that had been this city's ladder out of poverty for decades. I organized parents, teachers, and taxpayers who had never organized before. I wrote the press releases, appeared on the news, published the columns, and stood before a school board and a community divided against itself to argue that the choices being made at the top were being paid for by everyone at the bottom. I took the backlash. I stayed anyway. What that fight taught me I have spent the years since trying to articulate: change happens when someone shouts that change is possible. The how matters less than the whether. Keeping that candle lit across a divided, exhausted community requires the ability to read what is running underneath a room's anger or fear, and to find language that makes people feel seen rather than managed.

The work of Murmuration matters right now because it is one of the few organizations showing communities not just why change is possible but how, and doing it with data that has context, tools that have humanity, and language that meets people where they actually are. I have spent twenty-five years learning to do exactly that: write across every format for every kind of audience, interpret what a community is actually feeling underneath what it's saying, and translate that into words that move people toward each other rather than away. I am not writing about these communities from the outside. I live in one. Seven years ago I built a gathering space inside it that functions, intentionally, as a politics-free third space. One place in this city where people from every background and belief can sit together without having to perform their political identity. I understand what your research shows about belonging and civic participation because I watch it happen, and watch it fail to happen, every single day.

You'll find my current practice at creativespiriteaston.com. The work looks different from this role but the engine underneath is the same: I help people find their way back to the belief that things can change.

A fire recently ripped through a prime corridor in Easton, PA, a rebounding city in the Lehigh Valley that's becoming a hot spot for NYC and Philly transplants after the pandemic. The city's historic architecture and rich arts scene trail only slightly behind its role as a foodie paradise in the region. On its 80,000+ member community page, Everything Easton, a city galvanized to provide support for the displaced residents of this fire and the businesses that had been gutted. On the surface, the inclusive city is a model for what communities can be: a libertarian dream of individuals coming together for a common cause without the push or pull of government and bureaucracy. Free market capitalism and community values merging together to showcase the best of the human spirit and what a true community can be.

Third spaces abound in Easton, too. A book store hosts open mics and writers groups. A community art space hosts drum circles and paper crane making workshops. The city library feels like the utopian ideals of an early 80s episode of Sesame Street where colors and languages swirl together in harmony. A locally legendary jazz bar that is equal parts dive bar and music institution hosts drag queen bingo and deep goth dance parties that celebrate all sizes, shapes, and bodies.

This might seem like the poster for third spaces, and indeed, it may be to one group. If you wish to have something a little less left, the options in Easton are much less varied. Churches and bars are the only things on the menu. And while there are "foodie" festivals throughout the year that draw tens of thousands to the heart of this city, those festivals are not much different from a restaurant and bar. Eat, drink, be quiet about your leanings. Unless you're left.

And that's precisely the problem with the circulating notion of the loss of third spaces. In many places across the country, it isn't a lack of them: it's an intolerance for any that moves right of center. A person with centrist or right-leaning values may find that exploring the available third spaces involves tucking away certain parts of themselves in fear of being discovered, may involve too much religious dogma, or may just be a truly unhealthy way to move through life: hanging out at bars to socialize.

You see, third spaces aren't as absent from small cities and suburban areas as they once were. In many places like Easton, it's not the absence of a third space that is the problem: it's the political exclusion. An undercurrent of "with us or with them" flows in these spaces and makes them appeal to and feel specifically for people of a certain ideology.

The crux of the third space problem comes down to there not being enough opportunities for anyone to come together focused on something they all value without it devolving into politics and then divide. The coffee houses can only stave off the angry spoken word poet who has a bone to pick with the patriarchy for so long. Musicians drop in lines meant to stir up camaraderie through shared feelings over our current and former leaders, making any loss of division short-lived. Sports bars can show events on TV, but even a win like the American Men's Hockey team can only stave off the politics for so long. Churches aren't unpoliticized. Pickleball courts are possibly the safest because there's a lack of connection through shared stories.

The rowing problems of the American divide can still be solved if there is a concerted effort undertaken to create moments, places, and experiences that bring people together and keep politics at the door. And they can't be one-time things. These need to be places, experiences, and moments that can be returned to so that connections can strengthen, relationships can deepen, and the motivation to get involved in civic life won't be lost to polarization and contempt.

Society has rules for so many things. Most people still abide by stoplights. We still hold most truths to be self-evident. It's time to believe that people can come together by creating moments, events, and spaces for them to repeatedly engage with, under strict rules that political ideology be checked at the door.

On an instinctive level, humans know this is the answer. On a practical level, they just don't know how to get there. But if your community is in need of participation and presence, it behooves you to take this third place idea deeply seriously and commit money and resources to it.

According to data collected by Arctic, people without that third space are 20% less likely to become civically engaged. In the Lehigh Valley, Easton specifically, civic engagement has become synonymous with political discourse. And Arctic's data further shows a near equal percentage of people from each major party and independents share the very same base concerns about life, what makes it hard, how the day to day feels. What they don't share is the space to come together to be open and human about these things, form connections from shared experiences, and ultimately, maintain a steady presence in the civics of local and regional life.

The minefields are many and the risks for volatility amongst ideologically different groups is high. However, building models for politics-free third spaces could make a lasting difference on local and even national engagement levels. Giving people from all walks of life that one place where they can exist free from the uniforms of politics they often wear not only enhances the quality of life for individuals: it leads to statistically higher levels of civic engagement for longer periods of time.

The key is to create the kinds of spaces that support such an outcome.

Data suggests that, across the city of Allentown, residents have the desire to get involved and stay involved in local affairs. The financial strains of an unstable economy, low wages, and failing schools in the city means that, despite the drive, the energy to follow through simply does not exist. 91% of Americans struggle with burnout according to recent Atlas data, with nearly half of those numbers claiming extreme burnout. On the local level, this translates to a city population that is burned out to the point of not showing up, even when their own welfare might depend on it.

For residents like the ones facing extreme burnout here in Allentown, the opportunities to become involved have to be made as easy and accessible as possible. When parents are too tired to make dinner at the end of the day, they are highly unlikely to organize with community groups, which means waiting for those people to join a cause is practically futile. Instead, bringing the ability to join in and lend support to causes like tenant advocacy requires going to the places where the people are and making it as easy as possible on them to get involved.

Taking the pressure of how and when and for how long off of individuals can boost engagement in profound ways, and if done ethically, it can have a real impact on the quality of life for residents across the city. The residents of Allentown can be found at schools, in parks on the weekend, grocery shopping, and even at laundromats. Making the ability to engage in civic life easy to access is one half of the equation and an absolute must to see a rise in those numbers.

The other half is to make civic engagement a desirable activity to be involved in after a long day of work, another day of getting by on limited funds and unlimited pressures, and to show proof of product that these things can move the needle without adding to burnout. And, in fact, it can alleviate burnout.

The residents of Allentown are not disengaged because they don't care. They are disengaged because the cost of caring: in time, in energy, in the emotional labor of showing up and being present for one more thing, is simply too high at the end of a day that has already taken everything. The work of civic organizers, tenant advocates, and community leaders in this city is not just the work of policy and protest. It is the work of meeting people exactly where they are and making the path in as frictionless as it can possibly be.

They want to show up. The question is whether we're willing to make it possible for them to do so.

It was just me and this older man in a chapel yesterday.

I went to visit the Padre Pio Shrine, a place that I tell clients and friends about all the time. I learned about this place from a woman who was instrumental in my own spiritual growth. I don't think you need to be Catholic or be Christian to go there and feel something pretty powerful. The grounds are beautiful and quiet, there are people walking around in silent prayer outside, and there are people pouring their souls into prayers of devotion or prayers of desperation. That there's a place for people to go to do either means humanity isn't the dumpster fire we sometimes perceive it to be.

The little chapel inside this shrine has yellow walls, colorful statues of saints and Jesus and Mary. Some of the paintings are beautiful and some of them look like they belong inside the Denver Airport. When I walked in I expected to be alone. I hoped I would be anyway. Instead, there was an older man with a hat pulled down past his ears sitting in his coat staring at the altar just talking. To whom, I could not say.

I must have slipped in quietly or he must have lost his hearing because my wooden clog shoes kicked into about three different wooden things: the pew, the kneeler, the underside of the kneeler, and the sound carried through the space in ways that would make the second grade nun at my old catholic school hand out sentences to copy like my eternal soul's salvation depended on it.

Write, "I will not make noises in church," 500 times.

I sat down after making a racket and looked around. My purpose for driving all the way there had suddenly slipped my mind and I wasn't sure what it was I should be doing. No one was leading the show, no one was singing, no dead body was being rolled down the aisle; I wasn't used to being in church without the ring leader or a corpse. But the old man in the pew a few rows in front of me, sitting upright like he's talking to a friend across a booth in a diner, just kept talking. Not in any way that indicated he was desperate for answers and not in any way that indicated he was lost in a moment of divine connection.

It was hard to make out his words but he wasn't exactly quiet. His head would tilt to the left, look down, tilt up again. He would pause for a time and then suddenly resume like he was listening to someone and waiting for them to stop talking for him to respond. Sitting a few rows behind him, I noticed that I sat directly under this low hanging ceiling while he sat under an open ceiling that was bright and airy. It was kind of shaded where I sat and I regretted my seat choice but decided I was too embarrassed to move, after all, it wasn't like there was a "best seat in the house."

When in Rome, I do know how to do like they do. I knelt and did the sign of the cross and started listing off my "asks."

Healthy and happy kids, healthy and happy family, healthy and happy me. Money would be nice, but I don't need to win the lottery or anything. I'm willing to work for it, you know? A little patience and forgiveness for others, for myself. A definitive ruling on the safety of ozempic and other GLP-1's or a little more willpower. Hmm. Maybe can I talk to my dad while he's up there somewhere? Like, can you arrange a postcard or something? Finally, can you make the alien stuff just stop for a bit? A global pandemic this decade was really more than enough.

I ran out of things to say in my brain at some point and realized I was searching. Reaching in that way you do when you think you have to get it all out while you can before your turn is up. Nothing was coming so I did what we were taught not to do in catholic school which is the half-kneel (butt on edge of seat while kneeling). The confessional where this shrine's namesake once sat bleeding from his hands and his feet and his side was a few feet from me. I stared at it for a long while. Padre Pio would hear confession while in agony from the wounds he developed and tended to his whole life, wounds that were supposedly a miraculous gift from God. This little structure, the confessional, was taken from the monastery he spent his life in in Italy and brought here to the part of PA that time largely ignores. This spindly, wooden cage was displayed just feet from me and as I stared, I couldn't help thinking, humans are so strange. Here's this guy bleeding everywhere sitting in a cage so people can tell him all the bad stuff they did in hopes that they could get to heaven.

Fast forward 60 years here I am, staring at it, wondering if I can do a last minute addition to the list of asks and toss a vacation in there.

Why did I feel the need to drive an hour to be here? I wasn't lost (at the moment), I wasn't sad or fearful, I wasn't even particularly moved to connect with this part of my spirituality or faith. It was kind of like the times when I decide I've got some time on my hands and I should see what HomeGoods has new. A spur of the moment non-event. A Scooby-Doo style trance.

I just found myself here.

Admittedly, boredom crept in and my butt started to hurt from the half-kneel. I shuffled a bit and sat back all the way and used my foot to lift the kneeler back up and made another bang by overshooting my leg extension with my wooden clogs and made a wood on wood clack that echoed in the chapel. The only other person in the chapel was still the old guy rattling off his hoagie order to the great sandwich artist in the sky and he suddenly sat up and turned around in response to the latest sound. Maybe he wasn't deaf after all.

He was a gentle looking guy. An unremarkable looking guy, really. Probably a widow, I thought, probably living alone, probably hoping to hear from his son sometime soon. It could have all been true or just a flicker of pattern recognition in my brain; I suppose it doesn't matter though. What does matter is that he twisted himself as far around as possible to look directly at me. Face to face, eye to eye, just a few rows between us.

And for a second or two he just looked at me.

In regular life I have this habit of talking to anyone, anywhere. If an old person looks at me I will go out of my way to engage them in conversation and do my best to give them a reason to smile. It's always felt like a thing I was meant to do and I happily do it whenever I can. But, in this moment I was all but frozen in the empty chapel next to the confessional of a venerated saint, in the dark section of the room where the light did not hit.

I stared back for a moment.

Like the Scooby Doo trance was still in effect, without thinking, I lifted my palm parallel to my ears and I waved at him.

He smiled wide and waved back.

Then he turned back to the altar and laughed. Within a few seconds he stood up and walked out without looking at me and I was left completely alone in the chapel.

A few moments later, I stood up and walked out to my car, pondering the experience and wondering if I had spotted an angel on a pew in the middle of nowhere, PA or if I had simply been so desperate to avoid a day of family cleaning that I fled by minivan to escape. And if it's both, does that mean I should skip family cleaning day more often?

I get a lot of questions about "guides" from clients who frequent my studio. Friends and clients alike want to know how I connected with them in the first place, how I realized they were, in the classical sense, "spirit guides," and why any of us need them at all. Each one of those points has a whole different answer, each worth exploring, but, for today, I want to address one: how I met my spirit guides. More specifically, how I met my first.

Right off the bat, you should know, guides are like everything else; they come in all shapes and sizes, from all over the earthly, spiritual, and ethereal planes, and they come into your life in the most unexpected ways. Sometimes, you move through so much of your life with a spirit guide right there with you and never know it. And sometimes, you discover there was one with you all along simply because you learn how to spot them.

One of my spirit guides was physically present in my life until just a few years ago when she left this earth and now, she's with me still, I just have to reach out to her in different ways. Her name is Angie Abromitis, but to her grandchildren she is known simply as Grandma.

In my life I have been lucky enough to know all four of my grandparents. Until I was nearly 10, I had my mom's parents and my dad's parents all alive and a major part of my life. For a time, I lived near my dad's parents and I spent a lot of time with them out of need and geography. My dad's father, Red, died when I was in the 3rd grade and we moved the following year to the same town where my mother's parents lived. It was in this town, in this new place where my mother's family took center stage and it was in this time period where my grandmother, Angie, became my champion and protector.

At Jack and Angie's house in Hackettstown, it was a whole different ball game. Sure, there was other family around but, when my brother and I were spending time at their house, we were the center of their world and the sole focus of my grandmother Angie's energy.

If you had to have a champion for the awkward and insecure years of your life, there was no better candidate than Grandma Angie. Man, Grandma knew what was up. When we lived for years without TV, my grandmother would hear our sob stories about missing The Smurfs on Saturday mornings and worse yet, our beloved Pee Wee's Playhouse. "They're cruel!" she would exclaim as she ushered us into the living room and sat us down in front of a TV that not only had cable, but "Home Box." "Let's find you a show."

At home, my mom gave us snacks of sugar free candy from the health food store and 100% fruit ice pops. At Grandma's my brother and I each got our own bag of Orville Redenbocker's Flavored Microwave Popcorn. My flavor choice was always Sour Cream and Onion and my brother's was Caramel Corn. To wash down our freshly popped family sized bowls of popcorn, we were given ice cold cans of Coke Classic or ShopRite Brand Orange and Grape sodas. And, if we had to spend the night, we always got Dilly Bars from Dairy Queen, to boot.

Food wasn't the only way Grandma made me feel loved. Grandma was there to save me when my own parents wouldn't or couldn't. Once, when I thought aloud about joining the swim team and my parents dropped me off at a practice ten minutes later, my grandmother answered the payphone call to come get me. Upon my very first dive in the pool to warm up, I was seemingly attacked by a much larger, much stronger swimmer. Apparently when you dive in the pool to warm up you're supposed to start immediately swimming so that the swimmers standing in line behind you can follow suit. The swimmer behind me landed on top of me, sent me underwater, and tossed me around with her kicking thighs of steel.

I was a chronic quitter in a family of super-joiners. My brother, who signed up for everything and became an expert at it all, would only quit momentarily and that was only if a ref was making bad calls. But for me? I had a legendary track record of quitting everything.

Even still, when I stood at the payphone at the town pool dripping wet and feeling the burn of water in my nose, it was no surprise that my parents decided to make me go through the entire practice instead of coming to get me immediately.

"Pleeeeaaaasssseeee come get me!"

Who turns down a collect call from their kids when they're begging to be picked up? Parents of quitters, that's who. Who accepts a collect call from a barely intelligible caller named, "mrsa, Grandma PLEASE!"?

Damn straight, you know who.

"Will you accept the call?" Grandma sure will.

Grandma walked down her street and up the steps that led through her neighborhood and to the town pool promptly upon hanging up the phone. In her knee length skirt with her short sleeved blouse tucked in, she marched through the entrance, gave me a big hug, and said, "let's go" loud enough for the coaches to hear. And with her trademark squint-stare and condemning tone, she let them know that they had wronged me. Back to Grandma's I went. "Your parents are cruel." Hell yes they are, Grandma.

Grandma never asked me to go again nor did she ever bring it up. She gave me more than just the contraband that my parents had forbidden in our world. She gave me a safe harbor. She loved me no matter what, was there no matter what, and she said "I love you," no matter what. And she was beautiful and sharp witted and so much fun to talk with.

When Grandma learned that she had cancer, the bad kind, she didn't fight it. She just gave into the idea that her time was coming to an end and let the last weeks of her life move by with a quiet grace about her. She stopped doing the cooking but we all still congregated at her house to eat at her table with her. She stopped being able to leave the house and we all came and sat in her living room around her. And she stopped being able to really see but we all came to be in her presence to let her know we were all still there and that she was so very loved.

Grandma embraced the imminence of death so much that she welcomed the visit from my 5 children for the sole purpose of kissing her goodbye. My young kids each sat around her like normal, though they were aware that this wasn't a normal visit. And then she said goodbye to them and they to her. "Goodbye Gigi, we love you!" They all yelled that together as we left in a rather festive tone because it was too hard for me to leave on a serious or somber note.

One of the privileges of my life, besides being rescued from the clutches of the town swim team, was to be with Grandma during her last two days alive and to sleep on the couch next to her hospital bed the last night of her life.

When I walked into the house and up to my grandmother's bed for that last weekend of her life, having heard that she stopped speaking anymore, I grew terribly sad for this end. I leaned over and kissed my grandmother on her forehead and said loud enough for her to hopefully hear somewhere in her failing body, "I love you, Grandma."

Without moving, without showing a sign of being conscious in her body, she responded.

"I love you, too, Marisa."

And that was it. She never spoke again and she died about 40 hours later.

I think a spirit guide is more than just a benevolent being that yanks us back onto the sidewalk when we're about to get run down by a speeding car. I think they are more than just beings that exist on a plane that we can't see until we die and get to meet officially. I think a spirit guide is someone who sees your true nature at birth and sticks around you long enough to make sure you never forget how loved you are, how special you are, and how much you deserve to have candy and soda once in a while.

In my studio, when I do a healing session on someone, I reach out to my spirit guides. When I stand over someone's body on my massage table and I pray to be a channel for messages meant to heal, I ask my guides to come and be with me. I ask them to protect me, to aid me, and to help me.

And, as in life, Grandma always answers the call.

A spontaneous trip to the family reunion with my five children last summer saw Marisa "the chill" make an appearance for the first time in 10 years. Alice, my first kid, has a vague whiff of a memory of this mom existing during the first years of life but the other four kids swear that Alice is lying when she claims "it's all your fault that Mommy's always yelling." Chill mom and yelling mom cannot coexist in the same body.

On that trip to Buffalo, I drove a minivan full of hopes and dreams. Chill mom was indeed making an appearance and my children and I felt a calm settle in. There was nothing but us and the open road and the promise that Buffalo really would be unforgettable for a 5, 7, 9, 11, and 13 year old. The promise of unknown adventure ahead had my children playing with wind in their hands outside the car windows, singing with their eyes closed, and speculating what treasures this city could offer.

Okay, so I talked this trip up pretty good. Really, is there any other way to get kids on board for a 6 hour car ride to visit relatives in a city whose biggest draw for kids is that it's an hour away from Niagara Falls?

"And what's so hot about those falls anyway?" questioned one of my kids when the jig was up and we awoke in Buffalo, 6 humans in a two-bed hotel room next to a long shuttered up factory.

"Weeeeellllllll," I responded, "They're really big and you can see Canada on the other side."

The younger kids must have imagined waterslides and a wave pool somewhere nearby because surely there has to be more. They couldn't imagine my pledge of an unforgettable weekend going any other way. We just don't take these trips otherwise.

My older two had heard the rumors, though. "Oh my Goooood! Canada is just as boring!"

Rolling into Buffalo around 9pm the night before, there was no sign that I might be lying. We drove through the streets of Buffalo and headed towards my Aunt Kaki's house. On the way we passed a horse drawn bar. Yes, a bar, on the street, pulled by a horse. This horse drawn bar was all lit up and festive with adults sitting around a narrow table in the middle laughing and hollering while taking in the sights of the city, all the while Pitbull played over the speakers attached to the back.

We arrived at a tiny blue house with a white picket fence where my grandmother's sister hosted a congregation of children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, great grandchildren, great nieces and nephews, and just about anyone who had a dusting of her Barrett blood on them. For those few hours, there was laughter, there were hugs, there was explaining who people are and how they're related to my kids. And my kids were truly thrilled to be a part of this pre-reunion activity.

So, when we awoke in our hotel room the next morning, it was go-time. "Niagara Falls it is, kids!" A collective sigh of relief could be heard.

Naturally, I lost my keys somewhere in the room though so the momentum was starting to wane. Then we left a bag behind and tensions appeared. Then, as if to drive the point home fully that "Mommy the Chill Emperor" might have no clothes on, we found on our vehicle, that golden van parked on the empty street, a street where I swore I had heard the Holiday Inn Express attendant say we could park, tickets all over my windshield. Each one of the three spaced far enough apart from the other that it seemed the tickets themselves were not enough of a statement about the legality of where I parked and how I parked.

Its okay, though! "Chill Mom" let the kids know that tickets for a slew of offenses don't really mean much when you probably won't drive this car through this town again ever. "Let's go, let's go!"

Niagara Falls turned out to be a blast. In between tears from one and "I'm bored" from another, the kids actually did marvel at the rush of that water and the sheer force of those falls. It was honest to goodness fun and all five of my kids felt like explorers of the exotic knowing they were so close to the border of another country. Standing there in the mist, I watched my kids gaze at those falls and squint their eyes in the spray and the sun. Tears welled up in my eyes.

Sometimes, you see, it feels like certain things are impossible with a bunch of kids at these young ages. A long ride without my husband wasn't out of my realm of experience but, to be on the road for days with only the promise of distant relatives, a handful of noteworthy geographically significant stops, and one geological wonder to look forward to, it could have been a disaster.

After the falls we headed back past Buffalo and straight to the actual family reunion on the shores of Lake Erie. That afternoon we immersed ourselves in family and swimming in the lake and the always popular "Robber Bingo." My kids and I were far from home and in a place that seems much different than any they had seen before but, it was a slice of Americana and a moment in Barrett history and I had made the pilgrimage for the first time in my life as the only adult guest of my little unit. I had no dad with me, no brother, no husband, no mother. I was the one.

By now I bet you're wondering what a "Hail Mary" has to do with any of this. But there are consequences for chill mom and the reckoning would come. It always does.

This past Saturday I was coming out of the Lincoln Tunnel into Midtown Manhattan and looking at my GPS. I had my phone in my hand as I was driving and I just happened to make direct eye contact with a policeman standing on a corner that I was rounding. I pulled over before he even had to motion to me.

The police officer came to the car, I gave him my info, and he walked away. From the backseat I heard my only passenger, Julia, my 10 year old daughter, ask, "are you in trouble?" And then it dawned on me: I have a lot of outstanding tickets in the state of New York.

Chill mom had blown off paying for toll violations and parking violations and, while I was pretty sure Buffalo itself wasn't coming back to haunt me, I wasn't so sure about the 3 tickets for toll violations that I resigned myself to simply ignoring. The fines were pretty steep by this point.

The seconds moved by like hours and thoughts were erupting in my brain from a dark well of fear. What if chill mom was actually irresponsible mom? What if chill mom had to go to a city jail for the nearly $1,000 in toll violations that she chose to ignore? What if my child had to watch this happen?

"Hail Mary, full of grace, the lord is with thee…" Just like when I lied about losing my homework in the 2nd grade in Catholic School, I repented. I squeezed my eyes shut tight and swore to God that I would pay every ticket I ever receive again on time and in full. I was on my 10th go round of begging the Blessed Mother when the officer returned to my car window holding a ticket. I accepted it like a tween winning Jonas Brothers tickets and thanked him in the same fashion. There was no mention of tolls.

I opened my wallet and shoved the ticket in. When I looked up I saw that my daughter was staring at me in the rearview mirror. "Julia, we're good to go!"

The kid had grown up since the reunion trip. She is now one of the "older ones" and she can sniff out false mom advertising pretty effectively.

"Are you actually going to pay that, Mommy?"

Ugh… I'm struggling to answer that question.

Today, on my 42nd birthday, I'm feeling nostalgic for parts of my life that I haven't thought about in decades. In a lot of my blog posts I feel compelled to mine through the more obscure parts of my past to connect with aspects of myself that I've needed to bring out of the box and give value to once more. When I sit down to write, I often aim to bring to the page some truths that I've come to over time about life, spirituality, and family. What ends up erupting in my brain, these days especially, are moments from my middle school and early high school years. Maybe fully growing into my 42nd year requires that I spend a little more time with the 12 year old me. And so, today that 12 year old showed up in the weirdest way. But, she still had a lesson for me.

If you lived within a 45 mile radius of Secaucus, NJ in the early 90's, you might remember shows like 9 Broadcast Plaza. 9 Broadcast Plaza was a local and possibly early incarnation of the Jerry Springer Show and it may have even been more outrageous, more bawdy, and more over the top than anything Jerry was doing in his heyday. And it was a morning talk show!

9 Broadcast Plaza was a show that appeared on Channel 9 (WWOR) and it was broadcast from the studio at the same address in Secaucus. The show seemed endlessly long and I think it actually had a running time of hours, not minutes. This show gave a sick kid in the 90's something to be excited about when you were stuck on the couch during TV's dullest time of day.

Between The Price is Right and Days of Our Lives there was really nothing else to pick from for a sick adolescent girl. Being sick and stuck home back then was kind of a struggle. Times were bleak, channels were few, and tv, for the most part was a wasteland until "8pm Eastern Standard Time" when the tube came to life. Until I was 10, my family didn't have normal tv stations because we couldn't afford cable and when we finally got it I was like a kid crawling out of the desert and reaching a spring.

And then I discovered Channel 9 and Richard Bey, the host of 9 Broadcast Plaza. From that moment on, I developed a chronic case of what my dad referred to as "schoolitis." I was dizzy. I had headaches. I thought I might have mono for the 30th time. Honestly, maybe I had the flu. I should probably stay home and rest on the couch with Lipton Ring-O-Noodle soup, hot chocolate, some twin pops for my sore throat, and maybe some microwave popcorn.

Richard Bey, the host, was an integral result of Channel 9's redevelopment in the late '80s, a redevelopment that the NY Times indicated was "eroding the barriers between news and entertainment." On 9 Broadcast Plaza, you would see trailer park couples square off against the stripper and her fairly confused old man with the newborn baby of questionable paternity in a sumo wrestling match with the grandma waiting to be claimed by any one of the brawling couples as the referee. And everyone would be in the neon green and "hot" orange sumo gear and nothing else. And this show went on for hours a day!

We, of course, were not allowed to watch this garbage. A few kids I knew would be allowed to watch this kind of thing any time they wanted and their parents would let them. I was genuinely frightened by both these kids and their parents in those cases.

I often wonder if the excitement of catching an episode of 9 Broadcast Plaza had something to do with being deprived of actual tv for so long. What I'm discovering about myself as I raise my own kids is that, perhaps, the lack of access to certain things makes the having of them hard to regulate. When Cheerios is the junkiest cereal in your house and your friends are eating Kaboom, it can be hard to stick to a serving size when that Kaboom is finally within reach.

Weirdly, I don't have normal tv anymore. No one does, though. I don't watch reality tv or crazy talk shows even if they are within reach because that stuff just doesn't do it for me anymore. Nothing like 9 Broadcast Plaza would fly 5 days a week on basic cable in this day and age.

Nowadays, if given the chance to spend a day on the couch, I'll take watching something a little more politically correct with a medium sized bowl of Lucky Charms and 1% milk. It feels as though I've reached that age of maturity where watching Game of Thrones is what we adults do. This is thoughtful television, people.

As I reflect on my own upbringing and how it's affected my habits over the years, I feel lucky. I know that I can steer my kids to a middle ground somehow where Kool Aid isn't the most exciting part of their day and watching an absolute depraved spectacle on television isn't what they get "schoolitis" for. What's on that middle ground is anyone's guess though.

I have a brother named Patrick. He's my older brother by two years but I'm often asked if I'm the oldest because, at this point in our lives, I'm the mature one.

I don't see my brother much anymore. He's a serious alcoholic and he battles demons so dark that those who love him dearly have been collectively holding their breath tightly for 25 years. I miss him though and I wonder what he would have become had he not been swallowed by those demons.

It's just me and my brother and we grew up in Phillipsburg, NJ as the only grandchildren on our father's side. We lived by my dad's parents, by his sisters and brother, by family friends who still had Irish accents because they were fresh off the boat, and by the nuns and the priests who had initiated us into Christianity at birth. Our world was small and there wasn't a spot in our neighborhood where we didn't have family, a family friend, or our own friend.

Pat and I were cared for by my grandparents a lot. My parents were broke when we were growing up so one of them was always at work and we were often walking back and forth from my grandmother's house just a few blocks away.

Some nights, especially when the weather was warm, my dad would come to get Pat and I from "Grammy and Pop's" house and lead us home by way of other people's yards. We'd learned a path to take between houses and past swingsets and fences and vegetable gardens to make it from my grandmother's home to our own. I would protest this literal boundary crossing and ask to walk on the sidewalks but, my dad had a deep sense of belonging to this world and this world belonging to him.

My dad always took Pat places with him and encouraged Pat to follow in his life path. My dad went on hikes, went camping, went fossil hunting, went cave exploring, and went running and he always took Pat along. I didn't like a lot of that stuff and it showed. So I spent a lot of time with my mother and, when she was working, with my grandmother.

Pat was the football star of Hackettstown High school. His charisma and natural abilities made him the talk of our local papers and radio station. Number 10. Pat was the baseball star of Hackettstown High school and of all of the traveling leagues he played on. He was homecoming king. Of course. Prom king. Of course. And, of course, Pat was popular. A regular hit with the ladies.

Despite being good looking, popular, and athletic, Pat was also of high intelligence. He could rattle off obscure facts about fossils, lost cultures of the world, and music of the 60's and anything in between.

"Are you Pat McFadden's sister?"

The question. The goddamn question.

Introducing myself to teachers, coaches, old ladies, mechanics from two towns over: anyone who lived within 45 miles of home would trigger the same line of questioning and the same line of answers.

Pat's sinewy defiance took him all over the country. He perfected a new mode of exploration that I like to call "fuck you travel." His adventures through "fuck you traveling" are legendary, of course. And, it's a wholly enjoyable experience to listen to Pat recount one of the hundreds of his nearly impossible adventures. I won't recount them for you here, they're not my tales to tell, but, I will tell you that when my brother rolled into Hackettstown on his bike as the last stop of his cross country bike ride/bar bender, Dan Hirshberg was there to document it.

Because, of course he was.

When my dad died, it was kind of a shock to my brother. Alcoholism and a bit of denial had my brother oblivious to the seriousness of my dad's deteriorating condition. After all of their adventures together, from hiking the Grand Canyon to exploring the tribes of Siebaruit, Indonesia to gazing at the stars on a walk through backyards to collectively tormenting me all over the tri-state area, my brother never imagined that my dad could actually die.

Now, as then, my brother reaches out from time to time. Rarely does he grace us with a visit. My father has since passed on and the feelings that were there when Pat used to come home are no longer. There's no electricity to plug into anymore, no sunshine to bask in, no star to orbit. He's an alcoholic of the most severe kind.

My parents and Pat were the three necessary pieces to our four-piece puzzle. Now our family feels a lot like the children's puzzles that lay all over my house; you know that kind that are nearly pointless to attempt because one piece is definitely gone for good while another piece is lost in a chaotic and messy home with almost no hope of finding it.

Some days, too, the memories can make the reality of the present quite painful. Other days, I feel like making an attempt at working on the puzzle. With one piece gone, it won't feel as good to complete, it's true. There won't be that satisfaction of popping in that last piece.

But it is possible, even in the chaos and tumult of this life, that the other missing piece, my brother Pat, may turn up somewhere. It is possible that he will turn up and pop right back into his spot. If he does, he can help create the picture of a good and worthwhile life in the present while holding space to honor the memory of who we used to be.

I'm not giving up the search for Pat's piece. Finding it is still a possibility and that's a beautiful thing. If my brother were to turn up under a couch cushion somewhere, covered in crumbs and wrappers and lego pieces, my mother and I would happily dust him off and pop him into place.

My life isn't quite what I expected it to be. On paper, I might be in line for some kind of "trauma endurance" award but in my head and heart, I still think that, despite it all, life has been pretty amazing. Some might call this a kind of Stockholm Syndrome while others might pull the old Jewel "I lived in my car before I made it big" card and scoff at my trials. You know trauma, they say, is kind of relative.

In my early days, the worst trauma that I had experienced was in 1987 when a succession of deaths and a big move changed the playing field of life.

In the 3rd grade going into 4th, my grandfather died, my Aunt Winnie died, and my most favorite teacher in the whole world, Mrs. Kichline, died. And then my parents moved me from the safety of the small Catholic School that I and everyone in my family had attended to a public school in a town 45 minutes away where we were complete strangers and I was expected to make fashion choices every single day.

Somewhere between the grim reaper's extended stay and our move, I went to an 80 year old man with a barber's chair in his living room and I asked for him to "feather my bangs." The end result of that was a lot like when Helen Slater's character cut her hair off in The Legend of Billie Jean. Hey, fair is fair.

My brother and I went to school in our new town halfway through the school year with the exact same haircut that year. If I hadn't been wearing a black velour sweatsuit with frosty pink and silver stars on it, you wouldn't be able to tell us apart. Thankfully, it was clear I wasn't my brother when, on my very first day of school, I got out of the Dodge Caravan and slipped on a giant patch of ice and whacked my head on the car. Right in front of a boy who would later be seen in my memory as a mix of misunderstood troublemaker and decent kid. For a hot second, I got the decent kid as he came over and helped me up off the ground. It was a kindness I had not expected and I was grateful for it as I walked the Green Mile towards the entrance of the new school.

Later, that same boy had a field day reenacting my fall for the whole class.

Of course, I had some standard adolescent growing pains. Namely: a pretty hearty amount of poor self-esteem. One accident wherein my brother knocked my front tooth clear out of my head with a powerful backswing of his golf club and the road to a healthy smile was paved with "walrus" comments because of the shoddy fix, root canals (because of the shoddy fix), and some earnest questions about the difference in the color of my two front teeth for the better part of middle school. And, a dad whose life goal seemed to be making me want to hide in a dumpster every time he showed up to get me from school in his bright blue spandex sans underwear, his acid washed jean jacket with NO shirt on, chest hair shining in the sun, and a crapload of sweat running down his face.

One time my dad was kind enough to drive his famous "mobile locker room" right through the delivery gates and into the confines of the fenced off blacktop of my school. He pulled up so close in fact, that children couldn't leave the school without a bit of maneuvering past his car to begin the 15 yard walk off the fenced in blacktop to freedom.

Coming down to the ground level from the 3rd floor one day, I saw kids standing on the steps looking down through the window. There were laughs, there were gasps, there were people identifying my father by his spandex to the masses. And there was me. Coming down the steps and coming to the knowledge that my father had actually done it. He actually pulled right up to the door, got out of his car, stood next to it in his denim and spandex, and yelled, "hey, Ris!"

That day, with some luck, I managed to simultaneously avoid a sack, whisper yell "I hate you, Dad," and bust through the red rover style line of people hoping to see me get in the odiferous chariot and roll off the blacktop into the sunset.

Part of me was thrilled that day when I realized that I could manage to run more than a block at a time before stopping to suck wind. The other part of me was pissed that my brother and his friends decided to exit the building and actually get in the car with my dad and wave to kids like kings as my dad drove them slowly home. He drove them past all of the walkers. All of the teachers. All of the neighborhood mothers waiting to receive their children. All the while my brother and his friends waved out the windows and yelled my name.

At therapy, (I bet you had a hunch I'd end up there, right?), I still tell my talking buddy that I don't really think I experienced childhood trauma. Well, not past the season of death and our big move anyway. My childhood? Crap, I didn't live in a car with a voice like an angel and a crooked but enchanting smile. I didn't witness a great tragedy or feel unloved by my family. But, I was confused as hell about life. And, I was pretty resentful about some things. And, I felt a smidge out of place from time to time.

Yeah, only a little.

But, today, I sent my 14 year old daughter to school after I watched her agonize over the whiteness of her Vans and the fact that someone else had been wearing the same American Eagle jeans that she wore. And I hurt for her. She's had her own season of death. Her big move wasn't as big as mine but, she's experienced life transitions that were insidiously transformative. And, while she's not outrunning a guy who looks like he was just canned from Cirque Du Soleil "Funny Farm," she is trailed by what has to feel like a low budget, poorly run circus.

Trauma comes in many forms I'm learning. Some trauma though, some trauma is born from love. Loving too hard, loving too deeply, loving too many kids in my case; it's going to stick with my 14 year old for a lifetime. She's going to feel the trauma of being loved so loudly and proudly for the foreseeable future. This I know.

What I also know though, is that when I go to my therapist buddy and again explain that I feel as though I don't really have any childhood trauma, I'm being honest.

Somewhere along the way, the pain of those moments in my life gave way to the love that I saw around me. From the look of hope and fear on my mother's face as I entered a new school that day to the horror and sympathy I saw on my brother's face when I showed up with the exact same haircut he had or I smiled with my walrus tooth after the first of many root canals. I was surrounded by love in those traumas. I was surrounded by people who cared deeply for my happiness and well being despite being unable to control it at all.

With my dad, it's sometimes hard for other people to fathom how showing up like Lord of the Dance to create a spectacle at school pickup could be done from a place of love. It took me a lot of time to understand this.

It took me having my own children to really integrate this truth: he loved me how he was born to love.

My dad showed his love in hugs and humiliating experiences because he grew up the oldest of seven sisters and one brother with over 13 aunts and uncles closely involved in his life. He was raised to prod laughter out of people. He grew up learning the endearing art of showing he truly cared by not taking life too seriously and not missing a moment to laugh at the absurdity in every situation. He loved me by being there and being funny to almost everyone around.

I try to remember this when I crack jokes that simultaneously elicit laughs from friends while drawing out an eye roll and groan from my daughter. She may not be spared the kind of trauma that comes from a big, loud, crazy family but it is my deepest prayer that she knows some types of trauma are born out of love and that type of trauma is what makes us who we are.

Otherwise, Patty Hearst's got nothing on me.