This week, I talked with Laurie Collister, who lost almost everything in a house fire except 300 volumes of her own handwriting, and Colette Jane Fehr, a couples therapist who spent years married to a kind of silence before she found her voice.
This week, both conversations really made me think about the difference between a life that looks finished and a life that actually feels true.
Laurie watched her house burn down, and somehow the one thing that survived was the one thing she never thought to save, her own story, sitting there in 300 diaries like the universe was making a point she wasn't ready to hear yet. Colette built something that looked complete from the outside, the husband, the house, the whole picture, until she was sitting on a couch with a newborn, crying, and realized the person next to her wasn't really in the room with her at all. Neither one of them was lying about their life. They just hadn't noticed yet that looking finished and being true aren't the same thing.
"I remember looking at him and feeling and seeing where I was and thinking, we are not even on the same planet."
If something in that landed, here's where to go:
LAURIE COLLISTER
what happens when a fire takes everything except the 300 volumes of diaries that turn out to hold everything you need
COLETTE JANE FEHR
what it costs to keep the peace in a marriage, and what it finally took for her to stop
Until next time, Matt
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