Category Archives: Character

Remembering the Dead to Remember How To Live

10 years ago, on April 30th, I learned that Gabe Feld passed away. He was a member of my community in Boston. He was 24.

I didn’t know him tremendously well – I saw him at gatherings, had shared words and nods and smiles. But our community loved him, and what happened next really impacted my life.

Soon after he passed, a number of people within our community gathered around a bonfire to share stories of Gabe, and did so with his family present. His family didn’t always know this side of Gabe, but we shared our memories with them.

It was heartbreaking and it was powerful. Gathered in a circle around a bonfire in the backyard of a house on Wyman St in Jamaica Plain, I watched his family’s expressions. I watched people cry, and laugh, and all of us cry and laugh with them.

And while I was sitting there and listening to stories of Gabe, I selfishly thought of myself, and what would happen if and when I died.

I imagined who would mourn, and what stories they would tell of me.

I listened to all these stories of Gabe, of his yoga teaching and his fire spinning and his adventures, and I suddenly wondered if I was living the way I wanted to live – if I was living a life that upon my death, my friends would be able to gather and tell wild and fun stories of me, to share words that reminded them of me – to speak of my kindness, my intelligence, my heart, my passions, my fearlessness. The way they spoke of Gabe’s.

Would they say what I want them to say?

And then I thought about the fact that I can’t tell them what to say – I can’t control what someone might say about me once I’m gone.

But I can control myself, and the choices I make, and the life I live, and I can do things deliberately and with intention — I can live my life in a way that inspires people to say certain things about me.

I can’t control what they remember – but I can do my best to be memorable, and to be what I want to be remembered as.

Something shifted for me in the spring of 2009.

It took a break up that summer to push me through the next steps – but I remember Gabe’s memorial as the first moment where I choose this life.

I choose to write down words I always want to be remembered by. Adjectives and nouns I want people to use to describe me. I held those words close, and I started this chapter of my life.

I often credit my ex, Chris Baum, with helping me take the next bold move into the future – for inspiring me to move to Los Angeles, for ending things when he did, for pushing me out of my comfort zone and showing me I’d be perfectly okay.

But I don’t credit Gabe nearly enough. It’s weird because I didn’t know him closely – but his death, his memorial, it switched something in me, and started a path that others have helped me along – exes, lovers, friends, coworkers, mentors, strangers —

A year later, I set out to live 3,000 miles away from everyone I knew, and in my bag was a book with words I’d written down, of the legacy I wish to leave, and that all my choices, all my decisions, should remember those words.

Does what I do honor who I wish to be remembered as?

I live in many times:

I retell my past as vividly as I can, to remind myself of where I’ve been and what I’ve done.

I live as much as I can in my present, to truly give myself to the now and be what I want to be, and so I can tell these vivid stories as well when they are my past.

And I live in the future – by using who I wish to be as a compass for who I am now.

I even live in my death, by planning for it in this way.

2009 was a formative year for me in so many ways. And Gabe was part of that. And so were so many of my friends. And so are many of you.

It’s guided my activism, my online behavior, my offline behavior, my relationships, my work, and my decisions.

I remember sitting around a bonfire. I remember Gabe.

I am so very grateful. For all of this.

To Grammy…

My last living grandparent died a year ago, on August 28, 2015. My father’s mother.

Constance Jacqueline Bouchard Erickson. We called her “Grammy”. She was 83. I don’t have a happy memory to share, really.

I last saw my Grammy when I was about eight or nine years old. I don’t remember much except the smell of cigarettes and particular sensations, like the feeling of the upholstery of her couch and the way her voice touched my ears.

She and my mother disliked each other tremendously. From everything I’ve been told, they had two major things in common: they had the same birthday (November 27th) and they couldn’t stand each other.

Continue reading To Grammy…

The Winter Solstice

Though I’m a fairly agnostic atheist now, I was raised neo-pagan. My mother is a Druid High Priestess, my father a Wiccan priest. Several people have asked me to write about my experiences being raised this way — sometimes I consider it. In the meantime, here’s a snippet. Continue reading The Winter Solstice

The Formula for Wanting

My friend once asked me, why do we want what we can’t have?

It’s something I’ve thought about a lot. Living in Las Vegas, I saw many people let loose from their normal self-restraint, and watched as they deviated from the character they were, or pursued things far different than what they claimed to value back home. Continue reading The Formula for Wanting

Right Place, Right Time

The drop of a dubstep song and the scent of tequila: Las Vegas. A place where they pump extra oxygen into the casinos and clubs to keep you wide awake and dissipate the scent of cigarettes. I called it “home” for less than two years, but sometimes I feel I lived two decades inside them.

I like to believe that my life in Las Vegas made me a better person. It taught me so much about human interaction, the highs and the lows of life, and how you never know exactly what somebody else’s personal struggles are, no matter how perfect their makeup or how thick their wallet is. Living and working in Las Vegas was a study of the human condition – and how I can make someone’s day or night tremendously improved by my influence. Continue reading Right Place, Right Time

See Me

I have a lot of passions, some of which I advocate very strongly for. I think we all have things we care tremendously about, whether it is a way of life, or religion, politics or a particular hobby.

I hate to call myself an activist, I feel like it’s not the appropriate term for me, despite my level of political involvement. I would call myself a political writer, but I think I already explained in another post how I feel more like an “interpreter”. Mostly, I just live the life I wish to have – trying to be a positive example of the things I invest my time in. Continue reading See Me

The State of the Avens

Judd & I at the Tesla event. I was so excited I could barely handle it.
Judd & I at the Tesla event. I was so excited I could barely handle it.

I turned 27 this past Friday. The night before, I had the good fortune to attend the unveiling of the new Tesla Model D. Friday night, a small group of incredible people I am so grateful to call friends gathered for dinner to celebrate my birthday. On Saturday, I went to the premiere of a new documentary called The Culture High (which I recommend highly). On Sunday, I spent the better part of a day playing with my adorable little niece-of-the-heart. It was an amazing weekend. I am tremendously lucky for all the incredible events and people in my life.

I haven’t done a formal update about my life in quite a while. I guess now is as good a time as any. I’m calling it The State of the Avens, because we all know I’m a little too obsessed with politics and nerdy references. Continue reading The State of the Avens

The Interpreter

Wednesday night during an interview, I was asked to describe my writing style. I gave a little explanation about how I tend to speak from personal experience, I try to make the jumble of thoughts in my head accessible to other people, and to be conversational about it. I don’t ever want what I write to be difficult to read.

I started stewing over how this became my writing style, and hours later, I decided that blogging about the way I blog was not too meta for my own blog. So here’s my attempt at explaining it. Continue reading The Interpreter

I’m A Product of Feminism

I was born and raised as a feminist by my mother, who is exactly 40 years older than I am. My mother went to college in the 1960s in New England, where she tried to open a bank account but they wouldn’t let her unless her husband or father co-signed as an account holder. She wasn’t legally allowed to have a credit card until 1974. She got married in 1975, and legally, she had no right to refuse to have sex with her husband until the late 1970s in some states (and 1993 in others).

The Pill was introduced in 1960, but she couldn’t legally use it if she wanted to – it wasn’t until 1965 that the Supreme Court ruled married couples had a constitutional right to possess it, and wait, she wasn’t married yet – it wasn’t until 1972 that the Supreme Court ruled unmarried people also had a constitutional right to possess it. Then, of course, there was 1973’s Roe v. Wade, protecting a woman’s right to an abortion before fetal viability, though my mother told me often she’d never exercise that right. Continue reading I’m A Product of Feminism