Welcome. I’m Ali, and this is what happens here.

After my husband was diagnosed with Multiple Myeloma on a day last July, just before I picked my kids up from camp and didn’t know where to go or what to say before going back home, I drove down a one-way street. Not because I wanted to hurt myself, and definitely not because I wanted to hurt anyone else, but because I felt like my home planet fell away into deep space right from beneath my feet. The planet where I used to know how to do things (like follow simple traffic laws), and where everything was at least a little bit familiar. But as cancer does, instead, almost instantaneously, our family was plucked out of our lives, off our well-worn path, and dropped onto a new planet. And ever since, I’ve been staying awake, dispatching from this beautiful nightmare. Dispatching the boundless love, the bottomless uncertainty, and traversing this new path that seems to run alongside the old one and yet is the territory of the unknown.

There is just no getting back to our old life; there is just learning to live this one.

I’m not an expert swimmer by any stretch, but I’ve got a lot of stories to share about how swimming is likely saving my life. Making me a better care partner. Parent. Writer. Human. Teaching me to walk the spiral geometry of sacrifice, surrender, and the scared. I’ve spent over a decade making a living across many types of word services (copywriting, branding, book doula, writing coach), and now I’m here, baring it all for you.

If you want, you can check out my publication archives.

Either way, let’s swim.

Thank you for being here. XO

Who doesn’t love a little housekeeping?

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