family – Lofty Minded in Alaska

February 2026: A Snow Moon Letter

Dear Friends,

Since my last letter, I’ve received so many kind notes and in-person condolences. I’ve had phone messages and emails and a few hugs that cut through all the layers of talk and went straight to the heart. Something inside me must have known that I needed all of that, but now I know for sure that I did. To not feel alone, to not have to carry the heaviness of loss on my own, to know that grief is something we all share… it’s made me feel like I’ve got a place among you, and what we all need is to belong. So, thank you.

It’s an interesting thing that I’m doing, writing a letter to anyone who will read it, and I’m still trying to figure out why I feel compelled to do this. Maybe it’s an experiment in community. Maybe it’s just a free form way for me to write when I don’t always know what I want to say. Maybe it’s me reaching out a hand in invitation, saying, let’s do this thing together, let’s find something in common, let’s go wherever this takes us.

I don’t know why it took me so long to discover this, but in the last couple of years I’ve learned that I have a hard time looking people in the eye. I can have a conversation with just about anyone, and obviously I’m not afraid of sharing things about myself with others, but looking at someone else’s eyeballs kind of freaks me out. I watch people’s mouths when I talk to them and if I happen to make eye contact it almost stings. I immediately avert my gaze. Since becoming aware of this I’ve been working on looking at peoples’ eyes when I talk to them, but it’s not an easy thing for me to do. It feels like a fragility on my part. What is it I’m afraid of seeing? What is it that I’m afraid others might see in me?

There’s that whole notion of eyes being the window into another person’s soul, and I think there might be something to that, and that might just be what’s jarring to me about looking someone in the eye. When I make eye contact with another person, I sense that there’s an energetic connection, like a spark, and it startles me. Maybe I need to learn to stay in that uncomfortable space until it’s no longer uncomfortable. Maybe I need to learn to trust myself with that kind of energetic exchange because it feels kind of powerful. I’m curious to know if anyone else experiences this.

I think I’m going down this rabbit hole because writing these letters feels a lot like baring my soul, and yet it doesn’t freak me out. Maybe letter writing is my love language. Maybe it’s my attempt to make eye contact.

Anyhow, I hope there is something about these letters that makes you feel seen.

It’s been more than a couple of weeks now since that life-altering day I wrote about in my last letter. Without a dog, our house is quiet in a way it hasn’t been in the 35 years that Dean and I have been married. The temptation is to rush out and get another puppy but we’re trying to make ourselves wait a while. There are a few trips we’d like to take before we take on the responsibility of another dog, and this kind of quiet might actually be good for us to experience. At least that’s what we’re telling ourselves.

Also in the two weeks since I last wrote you, I’ve been to Florida and back. I’m still recovering from the trip and feeling a little raw from the mix of emotions that came from gathering with family to say goodbye to my nephew. After being with his mom and sisters and attending his memorial, I know more about him now than I knew before. The thing I heard over and over again from his family and friends is that Ellijah was a person who showed up for other people. When people needed him, he was there. It made me think about the people in my life who show up and it made me think about what it means to be a person who shows up.

I went to Florida because I needed to go, and somehow I thought that need was for my sister and her girls. In retrospect though, I needed to go for myself. I needed to remind myself that I belong to a family. We all started out in Colorado together, but over time we’ve scattered around the country. We’ve moved away from each other in non-geographic ways as well – politically, religiously, culturally – but when we were all in a room together I felt at home, and at peace. I didn’t know I needed that, but I did.

One highlight of the weekend was when we gathered for brunch the day after Ellijah’s memorial. Cousins, sisters, sons, daughters, nieces, nephews, parents, grandparents, friends, brothers, aunts, uncles all together around one long table. The little boys ran around the table with their toy car and dinosaur, and my niece’s beautiful baby got passed around to anyone who wanted a turn holding her. The waitstaff at the restaurant were endlessly patient with us, and kind, and for a few hours we had the time to just be together. None of us took it for granted, because who knows how much time will pass before we’re all able to share space like that again.

It’s mysterious the way things work; that tragedies can bring about healing, that new and beautiful relationships can blossom after loss, that priorities can come into focus when your heart is broken. It’s true personally and I have to hope that it’s true collectively.

And how are you holding up? What are you doing to take care of yourself these days? Do you have any good books to recommend? Any podcasts or music that’s helping you get through the intensity of this particular moment in time? I started listening to The Overstory by Richard Powers when I was traveling. It’s been recommended to me more times than I can count but I put it off because I haven’t been drawn to reading much fiction over the past few years. Of course it’s as good as everyone said it is and the writing is a miracle. Maybe it will launch me back into a fiction reading phase again. I hope so.

We’re in the middle of a dreary weather pattern here with no sunshine icons at all in the ten day weather forecast. I’ll try to dig deep and find some of that inner light to get me through; lots of hot tea, yoga, jumping on the rebounder I bought last winter, and as many beach walks as I can fit in. It’s a good time for garden planning and tea packaging, and of course for writing. We’re halfway between winter solstice and spring equinox now and we’re gaining almost five minutes of daylight every day-even if it is behind a thick layer of clouds. Already our slow days of winter are feeling numbered, so I might as well embrace them.

Have I told you yet that I appreciate you reading these letters? I hope this one finds you engaged in something meaningful and encouraged about some aspect of your life. I hope it finds you rising above the intensity of current events. I hope it finds you well-cared-for and well-fed and at peace. But if you’re not feeling or doing your best, that’s okay, too. Don’t be hard on yourself. Let yourself rest. Know that I’m rooting for you.

Thank you for being out there and for reading my ramblings, and if you feel so inclined, I’d love to hear from you. And if this letter encourages you to reach out to someone else, that’d be cool too.

Take good care until next time.

With love,

Teresa

And just a few more things:

*I’d love to share these letters with as many friends as possible, so please feel free to share this with some of your friends. Also, if you’re not already subscribed to receive an email every time I publish, please consider doing so. It’s free and will remain so.

* The family brunch I described above reminded me of this song and it’s been playing in my head ever since. ‘Crowded Table’ by The Highwomen. You might enjoy it, too.

*I’m a sucker for note cards and stationary and just because I write these letters online doesn’t mean I won’t find an excuse to go to the Homer Bookstore and buy pretty things to write on.

Peter Pauper Press, Inc. Copyright 2020 Illustration by Terri Foss

January 2026: A second letter

Dear Friends,

When I wrote my January letter earlier this month I didn’t expect I’d be writing another one so soon. I haven’t even responded to everyone who reached out and I’d hoped to do so before writing again. But I was encouraged by how many of you replied. My soul felt lifted by the conversations that were started. My hope for deeper connection going into the new year was buoyed, and so I’m here again because I could use that kind of boost again. Perhaps you could too?

I have to warn you though, it’s been a heavy week, and this letter may not feel like much of a boost. In fact if you’re feeling sensitive right now, you might want to wait on this one or give it a pass altogether.

I’ll start by telling you about a book I listened to a couple of months ago. The Comfort Crisis by Michael Easter is a book about confronting and even embracing the things in life that cause discomfort. It covers physical exertion, cold exposure and hunger – all things that have to do with our material existence, but it also considers existential discomforts such as boredom and the reality of our own impermanence. In the book, he talks about the Buddhist monks of Bhutan and their practice of contemplating their own deaths at least three times a day.

Recently I’ve been given plenty of opportunities to contemplate death, and this week in particular brought it into sharp focus.

Just after the holidays, our sweet old dog, the one we adopted after finding her on the side of the road fourteen years ago, went into decline. We recognized what was happening, and we knew our days with her were running out. Our care for her went from typical elder care accommodations to more of a hospice care situation. We fed her fresh ground beef and gave her extra cuddles. We carried her up and down the stairs and cleaned up after her when she didn’t make it outside. On Monday, I told my supervisor at work that I might need to take some time as we were getting close to having to make the difficult decision to have her put down.

Then on Tuesday morning I woke to a text from one of my sisters telling me to call her right away. That’s never a good thing to wake up to. I feared that the call might be about my 87 year old mom who’d just had a rough bout of flu and I braced myself before dialing my sister back. The news she delivered was not about my mom but about our nephew Ellijah, just 27 years old and the son of my youngest sister, who had died in the night after a tragic accident involving a gun. The exact circumstances of his death weren’t known at the time, and frankly they didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was gone, and whatever amount of pain and shock that I felt upon hearing the news were a million degrees smaller than what Ellijah’s parents and siblings were experiencing.

Then a sense of helplessness set in. We cannot undo death and we cannot ease the pain of a parent whose lost a child. We can offer comfort, express our condolences, shower them with love as best we’re able, but the hard truth is that sometimes pain has to be endured, and we have to allow those that are hurting to endure it in whatever way they need to. I can carry pain over the loss of Ellijah’s life, but that will not diminish the pain that my sister is experiencing. Comfort in her time of exquisite pain is the best I can hope for.

I was not personally close to Ellijah, but I kept in touch with him on Facebook. Interestingly, I feel like I know more about him now with the tremendous outpouring of fond memories and photos that his friends and close family members are sharing online. By all accounts he was silly and thoughtful and was an exceptionally loving uncle, brother, nephew, friend, son and coworker. And while none of that is surprising given what I did know of him, it’s beautiful to see so much love for him expressed so openly.

Like many of us, I have a love/hate relationship with social media, but I will say that this week I’ve been thankful for Facebook. It’s helped me know my nephew better. It’s given me a place to go to mourn. It’s helped me feel connected to family that’s thousands of miles away. And it’s a helpful and effective way for me to get this letter out to you, wherever you might be.

And writing this letter and knowing so many beautiful people are reading it is helping me process my own grief, and I thank you for being there.

I know there are many ways to go through grief. Lots of people prefer to keep it to themselves, but (obviously) I’m not one of those folks. I don’t share my grief to bring you down, and I apologize if that’s the effect this letter is having. I share because life is full of beautiful things and it’s full of hard things, and only sharing what’s good doesn’t feel completely honest. I promise I’ll share the good times as well so that I will not become the Debbie Downer of letter writers.

How are you? We’re just a couple of weeks into 2026 but it seems like a lot has happened. In terms of world events and politics, etc. it’s been intense and I have the sense that it’s going to be that way for a while. I keep reminding myself of the overall message of Easter’s The Comfort Crisis, which is that change for the better often comes from leaning in to discomfort. How do I lean into the discomfort of this time of chaos that we’re in? How do I show up for my family and my friends and my community? More importantly, what is my role in getting us through to the other side, whatever that other side might look like?

I’m looking for ways in which I’ve chosen comfort over growth in my own life, and there are plenty. One of them is my tendency to keep my convictions to myself.

The subject I’ve probably read the most about over the past two years is deconstruction from religious systems. I laugh about it because I deconstructed from my religion long before that word ‘deconstruction’ was a thing. I’m more in the reconstruction phase of my spiritual life and while organized religion isn’t the pathway I’m choosing, I still resonate deeply with the teachings of Jesus.

I am baffled and dismayed at how so many people who claim to follow Jesus don’t actually apply his teachings to their political convictions. It’s not my job to change anyone’s mind, but I am trying to become a person who speaks her own truth and I’m reclaiming the stories that formed my sense of right and wrong. On this subject, I highly recommend reading or listening to Separation of Church and Hate by John Fugelsang. It’s funny, because he’s a comedian, but it points out the ways that scripture has been used to justify policies and behaviors that are a far cry from the message Jesus brought into the world.

Are you feeling challenged to step out of any of your comfort zones? If you are, I’d be curious to hear about it.

I’ll tell you about a beautiful thing that happened in our town a couple of weeks ago, although it is also a story connected to death. I guess that’s just the nature of this letter, which is a reflection of this moment in time, and a reflection of life in general.

There is a fun-loving group of people in town that have taken it upon themselves over the years to bring the New Orleans spirit to Homer. They call themselves the Krewe of Grambrinus Social Aid and Pleasure Club and every February they march in the winter carnival parade with their instruments and costumes and spread their Mardi Gras joy. In recent weeks a number of the folks that were a part of this festive group have passed on, but they were honored with a Second Line procession down Pioneer Avenue on a frigid and sunny Saturday afternoon. Nearly 200 people showed up with instruments, white handkerchiefs for waving, and umbrellas for spinning. Tears and laughter and a big group of friends walking down the road making a bit of a spectacle of themselves reminded me of the Homer of many years ago. A lot has changed about this town over the thirty odd years that we’ve lived here, but it’s still Homer at its core, and I appreciate that.

Back to our sweet old dog, Gypsy. The same day we heard the news of our nephew Ellijah, it became clear that it was time to say goodbye to her. Some days are worse than others, and Tuesday hit us hard.

Sorrow comes in different degrees, and it’s hard to hold the loss of our dog on the same scale as the loss of a beloved nephew. Still though, our house feels pretty empty without her, and our hearts are heavy that our companion of fourteen years is no longer with us. There’s that saying that love is love, and it’s true. On the same note, grief is grief, and we’re holding it right now, on all it’s different levels. You might be, too. And if so, please know you’re not alone.

Thank you for reading this letter and for being on the receiving end of all I’ve had to say. I should tell you that even though it’s been a hard week for me, I am okay. In fact I am more than okay. My life is good and my hope is that yours is too.

Before I wrap up, I have a couple of things to ask of you. If you have a beloved pet, please give them an extra scratch or a special treat. Please thank them for the joy they bring into your life. If you’re prone to such shows of affection, please stick your face down into their fur and inhale deeply.

If you’re a praying person, please say a prayer for my nephew’s parents and siblings. If you’re a Quaker, please hold them in the light. If you are an atheist, please imagine a future for them in which the pain over the loss of their son and brother is less acute.

I believe that how we define ourselves matters very little compared to the love we offer. Please offer and accept all that you can.

I loved hearing from so many of you after my last letter and I hope you’ll continue to stay in touch. All the best to you until next time.

With love,

Teresa

And just a few more things:

*In my last letter I posted the Neil Douglas-Klatz Aramaic translation of the lord’s prayer and many of you found it meaningful. I’ll post a link to it again, in case you are interested: https://abwoon.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/APwlinks2020.pdf

*What am I talking about when I talk about prayer? Here’s something I wrote back in 2018 that still feels true to me today. https://loftyminded.com/2018/10/25/imperfect-prayers/

*Responding through the blog platform, even through “reply” will always leave a public comment. If you’d like to reach out to me personally, here is my email address tsundmark@protonmail.com

Uncomplicated

Sometimes the universe gives us gifts and last Friday I was given a row of three seats to myself on the first leg of my journey home from Georgia. I was grateful for the space for all the obvious reasons, but also because it was at 30,000+ feet in the air somewhere between Atlanta and Seattle that it hit me that my dog Ripple wouldn’t be there to greet me when I got home.

I left for Atlanta to visit our daughter a week prior, knowing there was a good chance that Ripple would die while I was gone. She’d been winding down for the past month, eating less, growing weaker, sleeping more. I said my goodbyes to her over the course of a five day weekend at home before I left, lying on the floor with her at times, telling her what a good dog she’d been, and thanking her for all she’d given our family, which is more than she could possibly have known.

I left on a Wednesday and she died at home late in the day the following Friday with Dean and Dillon beside her.

It was 2008. Adella was a sixth grader and Dillon was a freshman in high school when Ripple joined our family. One Friday afternoon, in the spring of the year, a young woman in Dillon’s math class picked a black curly-tailed puppy with a white patch on her chest out of a litter that was being given away in front of Safeway. Dillon’s well-meaning friend thought the puppy would cheer up her mom who was going through a divorce at the time but, as you might imagine, as sweet as the girl’s intentions were, the mom didn’t have the bandwidth for a puppy. Her answer to keeping the dog was a clear no, with instructions to deliver her to the animal shelter immediately. Dillon witnessed the whole exchange between the mom and the daughter and couldn’t bear the thought of the puppy staying at the shelter over the weekend, so he hid her inside his coat, smuggled her onto the school bus, and brought her home.

Our lives were pretty chaotic, so it’s questionable whether or not we were ready to add a rambunctious puppy into our mix of chickens and dogs and adolescent children. But it only took a few days for us to see that this quirky pup brought something to our family that we hadn’t even realized had been missing.

Family life is hard sometimes, and complicated, even when there’s plenty of love to go around. There are personality conflicts, and guesswork, and lots of trial and error. There are hurt feelings and frustrations and overwhelm. All of this can lead to a pretty serious existence.

Laughter is what our family needed when Ripple came to us. She brought us lightheartedness, and with her goofy antics she brought us together when it would have been easier for us to retreat from one another. She didn’t have to try, she just had to be her authentic self and she would crack us up. She provided us with comic relief that we desperately needed and offered us a common place to direct our love and attention. With Ripple nothing was complicated. We just loved her.

What can I tell you about this dog? Besides being ridiculously cute, she took her role as a companion seriously. Early on, on a road trip to McCarthy, she decided that I was her primary person, and from then on, whether it was down the hall to the bathroom or outside in a blizzard to feed the chickens, she would follow me. If I wasn’t home she’d just as readily follow someone else. She loved tromping around the yard and garden and trails with us and always kept an eye out for anything that didn’t seem quite right, which is how she became to be known as the property manager.

Every morning sometime between 3:00 and 5:00am she’d jump up on the bed and curl up against my legs. I was never sure if it was out of affection or her need to monitor my movement as breakfast time approached, but her warm body curled up against my legs every morning might be the thing I’ll miss most now that she’s gone.

One of Ripple’s rare and most puzzling traits is what came to be known as her “water noise.” Consistent throughout her life, before taking a drink of water she’d let out a noise. Sometimes it was a quiet whine and other times it a full blown spectacle of song, some combination of a howl and cry that’s nearly impossible to describe with words. It made us laugh every single time we heard it. The water noise was proportionately louder and longer the happier and more excited she was, and since she was always excited for breakfast her water noise was often the first thing we’d hear in the morning.

***

On the last day of my visit to Georgia, Adella and Ally took me to Atlanta’s historic Oakland Cemetery to stroll among the flowering trees and headstones. Other than a few gardeners and maintenance folks, we were alone.

Some of the gravestones were of those who’d lived full lives, like Mrs. Talitha Dison who was born on Feb 16, 1864 and died on Oct 29, 1937. Others were monuments to young men whose lives were cut short by war. On one family’s plot the two most elaborate monuments memorialized two children, a beloved son who died at age three and a daughter who died at age five. The siblings’ lives did not overlap, but followed one after the other. Four more siblings who went on to live long lives were born after the first two lived and died. Their headstones were modest in comparison.

As we walked the brick pathways between family burial plots it seemed natural to talk about those we’d known and loved who’d gone before us, grandparents, parents, friends, beloved pets. From there it was an easy segue to the subject of our own inevitable departures.

When we brought Ripple into our family we weren’t thinking about how we’d have to say goodbye to her one day, even though we knew it was part of the deal. Dogs go from playful puppies to aged elders in what seems like a few short years and watching their lives unfold reminds us that none of us are immune. We’re all the same in that way. Here for just a while.

Dean’s Aunt Kathy, who passed on just last year, told us one time that she believed our purpose for living was to learn how to love. I’ve thought about that so much and I’ve come to agree with her. Through this lens everything and everyone becomes a teacher. Good teachers don’t bring new things into existence as much as they help us see what’s already there, they give us a deeper understanding. Ripple was with us for sixteen years and our love for her was as pure as love can be. It was uncomplicated and unconditional, and even though she wasn’t always the easiest dog, loving her was the easiest thing ever. For our family, she brought to the surface what was there all along.