A little less lost, and maybe more fabulous

I may have been supporting my friend this past summer when I went to a boudoir open house for which she was managing the PR, but I can't pin the blame on her this time. Maybe the wheels started turning when another client I met at the open house talked to me about how her sessions in front of the camera were more effective than any of the hundreds she'd spent on therapy. I came to understand that, as utterly absurd as it sounds even to me, a boudoir session was something I needed.

My life flipped on its head these past couple of years. Even before the chaos of fostering and fertility treatments, over the past decade I‘ve spent a lot of time carefully flying under the radar, conforming and avoiding attention, and making some compromises that really hurt. In the midst of it all, I lost the mental model of myself that my photographer teased out: someone strong, beautiful on my own terms - without having to apologize for the lack of hourglass figure or feminine curves - and most importantly, joyful in my weird, wonderful skin.

This is me, who I want to be and who I am.

Looking at these photos makes me feel a little more brave. Even if the person that exists in my head can’t (yet) do something, surely that badass casually wrapped around her pole could. And oh, right, that's me! I’m hoping seeing myself from the photographer's angle takes me one step closer to reclaiming my sense of self and feeling a little less lost - and perhaps as fabulous as I deserve to feel.

A year of giving running a shot

Today was the 2025 Berkeley Half Marathon, the same race last year that kicked off my foray into running a year ago. At the time, I'd registered for the 2024 5k thinking it'd be a forcing function to lock myself out of any more IVF cycles despite the bad news from the 4th one, which we'd hoped would be our last. It didn't hold me back, and thank goodness for that, as the final three IVF cycles proved way more fruitful than the first four. I'd paid the race fee, so I showed up just a few days after my sixth of seven egg retrievals and did my best little jog, trying all I could to hold my pelvis steady as I most definitely wasn't medically cleared to be running. I finished respectably, 10th in my age range with an 8:40 mile pace. It was enough to light a fire in me.

January of this year came around and I was clear to use my body however I wished after a whole year of holding back. Despite being an avowed non-runner (track and field having left me heartbroken), I decided 2025 was the year to give it a shot. I locked myself in to a handful of 5k's scattered across the year, this being the last of them.

In the interim, I think we figured out if running might be for me. To the extent that I was still holding onto any 5k-related goals, I thought it'd be pretty fabulous to be able to run a sub-8-minute-mile pace without hating myself, that last part being the critical piece. Running can't be for me if it isn't a happy space. I don't need another round of chronic injuries and heartbreak. And today I reached that goal. I love the finish time, but I love my expression as I crossed the finish line even more.

Berkeley Half Marathon 5k!

It doesn't feel like I should be allowed to say the year I lost my grandpa and my beloved cat was a good one. But I'm not going to lie, I shed a couple happy tears on the bike ride home from today's race. This year has been a long time coming.

No good words

Sometimes there are no good words to convey a loss, to honor a life, and to acknowledge the passing from one stage to the next. For so long now, I've lived life with Chat by my side. From the first few months of grad school through all the messy relationships, the career and soul searching, the marriage, the moves, the forced separation under Trump 1.0, the often choppy waters of Neuralink, our first parenting experience, the many IVF cycles, and the recovery year that followed. Chat was a part of it all, and always had something to say. On Saturday, she told us her last thing: that it was time to say goodbye. She didn't go down without a fight with the vet, of course, but it took every last ounce that was in her. I thanked her for putting up with me all these years despite all my many fuck-ups, for which she was never shy in critiquing. 

There's no one left to sleep atop my head, no one to keep Mars and Lily in their place, no one to ensure Nicolas and I are definitely not allowed to cuddle at night. Sometimes there are people in life who are uniquely special, the kind you know you don't get two of on this journey. Chat was one of those: there won't ever be another cat so fiercely dedicated to me. So I know, don't cry because she's gone, smile because you had the privilege of sharing so much life with her. Still, the tears don't stop so easily.

I love that I work in a place where I could share the pain of the loss and the privilege of the time we'd spent together, where I've got a team of animal lovers who get it and who care enough to share a bit of the burden. Getting to be surrounded by these sorts of folks makes my heart a little less heavy.

That time I biked a mountain

One of my goals for the year was to re-engage in Neuralink, to find a happy new relationship as a heavy hitter at the company. To that end, it’s been an interesting year. I made the switch to the team I’d always hoped for, to the project I’d missed since it was canceled and I got shuffled off it in the summer of 2019. And not only is the work cool, I’ve now got teammates with whom I belong. They’re a bunch of folks who all escaped academia, who aren’t the Neuralink standard-issue Gen-Z engineers that make me feel a million years old. The new sense of belonging I've found at Neuralink this year has extended beyond the team: since the spring, I’ve been doing weekly runs with a Neuralink crew (and perhaps gaining a bit of a reputation around the office as a proper athlete, thank you very much).

Last year, I sorely regretted missing out on a company-sponsored bike ride, but a non-work friend talked me out of it for plans on which she subsequently bailed. As I was in the midst of my sixth IVF cycle, it may not have been the best plan to bike hard anyway. But this year, newly minted athletic reputation in hand, I was not going to miss out. Only, after all my training, my bike had other plans: on the day of the Napa Valley ALS ride, I got myself three flats within the first 23 miles and bowed out, wrapping up with a 14-mile run to find some way to honor the cause while I waited for my guys to wrap up their century ride (which the five of them adorably finished together). I can’t lie, it was all quite disheartening.

I hardly had it in me to shell out a couple hundred dollars more to participate in another company-sponsored ride just a month later when the Kelly Brush Ride for spinal cord injury was announced. But when a colleague reached out about a week and a half in advance to offer Neuralink funding to fully cover it, I could hardly say no. After all, it was just a 50-mile ride, and with all the 33-mile rides to work I'd done this year, that shouldn’t be too much to take on. I said yes, made some fairly back-bending arrangements to accommodate a party in SF the night before (crashing with a colleague I hardly knew on a mattress in his spare room surrounded by sporting equipment). Game on.

Neuralink friends trauma bonded over a ridiculously rainy ride through the mountains.

Early morning yesterday, while driving toward the event, I learned what I’d actually agreed to take on: this wasn’t some casual 50-mile roll through the park. I’d unwittingly signed up to bike 4000 feet of elevation around Mt. Tam when I’d not previously biked more than a few hundred. And, to top it off, the sky opened up as we made it to the starting line. My flimsy biking rain jacket purchased a decade ago for my commutes in Denmark was hardly a match for the weather. I had to bike with one eye open at times because the rain was whipping at us so hard it hurt my eyes. My poor colleague (who actually knows what he’s doing on a bike) stuck with me the whole time, and I can only imagine his boredom as I truly pushed my quads to their limits.

There’s a point of pride in being the slowest person to not give up. It taught me I was braver (and perhaps also sillier) than I imagined. It’s nice to know the years at Neuralink, with my adventurous world-traveling twenties slipping further into the rearview mirror, haven’t entirely stolen my sense of adventure. And it’s nice to have a friend who will waste four and a half hours biking with me around a mountain for which I am wildly unprepared.

Not nearly enough donuts

Among the assortment of races I committed myself to this spring in order to lock myself into a year of "giving running a shot" was one special one: the Alameda Donut Fun Run. I'd spotted the event last year while trying to find happy things I could do if I didn't opt into the final 3 rounds of IVF before 2024 came to a close. In the end, while I'm immeasurably grateful to my past self for opting into those 3, which overall yielded twice what the first 4 cycles did and have given me such greater peace of mind for our future, I still hadn't forgotten the race I left slip by. This year, I roped in a group of friends to team But I Am Le Tired and we made a morning of it. The only problem: not nearly enough donuts. Apparently, if you finished too quickly, you didn't even get a free donut (some great organization there). As I see it, those of us first to cross the finish line were the most motivated to run to our donuts, but I guess, as some folks say, nobody likes a quick finisher.

Team But I Am Le Tired at the Alameda Donut Fun Run 2025

I found myself a fancy croissant-donut and donut-sharked my way through it in celebration of my not-even-an-actual-5k success. (The race only even came out to around 2.75 miles!) Glad I hit up the event, wouldn't do it again. Loved getting to share the moment with friends.

Grand Reunion Tour - Final Stop of 2025

Check another state off the bucket list: this past weekend, I stepped foot for the first time in Washington state, after one major reschedule due to the nasty illness we caught en route home from Grandpa’s funeral.

Exploring downtown Seattle (and finally hitting up the Perennial Tea Room in person!)

It may not have been as warm as the originally planned visit, but the weather really held up for us. And what’s a cloud or two when in good company?

Making the most of a cloudy Saturday in the woods hiking to Talapus and Olallie Lakes.

We’ve missed Nate so much: he’s one of those friends you can just pick up with after time apart like it’s only been a minute. His decision to leave Neuralink has been one of the biggest hits I’ve taken over my years at this job.

Sunny Sunday on West Tiger Mountain

It’s so good to see a friend doing well and to get to enjoy his company in his element, from exploring (and photographing) Pacific Northwest nature together to enjoying drinks and food at cute restaurants and bars to savoring gooey dark chocolate brownies with coffee gelato over tea late at night in his living room.

A final taste of our time in Seattle with Nate

What more is there to say? I’ve missed my friend.

Escaping "should haves" and a reunion

I’m so overloaded with work, managing our new financial reality, and catching up on all the things that fell behind between the trip out east for Pop-pop’s funeral and the subsequent brutal non-Covid cold I caught en route home. I’ve hardly had a moment to digest this past week’s news. And news it’s been.

But maybe yesterday’s reunion with Anya, 8 years in the making, was a way to start processing. After all, she and I dove headfirst into all the “should have” life plans we’ve been throwing out the window since last we met. She turned in her “should haves” of stable wife, stable job, and fully paid mortgage for a new home, a fresh start, and a journey towards a career of passions sewn together. And I’m abandoning my “should haves” to chase a chaotic, validating experience where I’ll be raising fake twins birthed by some other extraordinary women while I juggle my unique path to parenthood and my role as the longest-tenured woman at an Elon Musk company, the world leader in neurotech, as a newly minted member of my dream team - next gen applications. I get to stay true to myself and the core knowledge that birth is not meant to be a part of my journey as a human. I know it to my core, the same way some people know they’ve been born into the wrong body. The concept of hosting another human inside of me would feel like my body’s ultimate betrayal. Maybe that makes me a little bit trans; I don’t know and I don’t really care. I feel right in my skin.

Clockwise from left: 1. a long-overdue reunion with one of my favorite sorority sisters, Anya. We're both traveling down our own uniquely unplanned paths, and I love it for us. I cannot wait to hear what adventures she'll have traversed by next we meet. 2. A little image I spotted today right when I needed it. 3. Me tonight after work, in the studio where I feel most comfortable in my own skin. I don't think this is what nearly-middle-aged nearly-a-mom (knock on wood) is supposed to look like, but I can't imagine it any other way.

I feel guilty for not being what I think I should be. I feel guilty to our future children for not being willing to sacrifice myself for them, the way so many other mothers would and do. Or as Nicolas says, I’m going to be a great dad.

I’m giving them what I can without losing myself. I’m trying to give them the childhood I wish I could have had, one with a built-in opposite-gender live-in bestie (I hope), someone like my childhood best friend Perri or my same-aged cousin Ryan. Inevitably it’s a childhood they’ll one day resent me for creating, but it’s the best I know to give.

So, about that news: we now know who those women will be, those incredible women who are going to bring our babies into this world. We met and picked them both this past week, and they picked us back. Holy crap. I feel such a debt of gratitude to them for giving me this chance at the kind of motherhood that will work for me, a second chance after we failed with James, a chance for something even better. I don’t feel I deserve this. I feel guilty for not for not telling them why we’re working with them. I wonder if they’d care; if they’d view me as a monster, the sort of monster I sometimes fear myself to be. What sort of mother knows profoundly that she will not host her own baby inside of her? Me, that’s who. I want to love them, I want to care for them, but I want to retain my own bodily integrity. And if I were a man, I wouldn’t have to wrestle with an ounce of guilt over this - there wouldn’t be a choice. There’d just be the basic biology of it all. But I never wanted a uterus. I still don’t.

What a luxury it is to have this privilege. How extraordinary that Neuralink has gifted me the means to take this exceptional life path and fate brought me a husband who’s willing to walk it with me. Of course, I also feel guilty about the privilege that goes with this journey. How very many exceptionally hard-working people will never get to enjoy the choices I have? I’m sorry the world cannot gift everyone the chance to live so luxuriously, so authentically. I cannot believe that I get to choose how many babies, and roughly when, and which biological sex - that I get to sculpt a family of my dreams that will never again conform to any more of my plans once those babies enter this world, just like any proper family, but this is a family that Nico and I are making profoundly on our terms. I don’t know why I got this lucky.

I’m working on letting go of guilt. Letting go of “should haves”. Loving myself for the crazy path I’m letting myself take, the one Nico’s letting me take without even needing to forgive me though somehow I still feel I need to forgive myself. It’s not easy.