You Can Be Terribly Unlucky and Terribly Lucky at the Same Time

We treat luck like a verdict. Like its decided once, and then that’s who you are — a lucky person or an unlucky one, case closed.

But that’s never actually been true, has it?

I’m writing this less than a week out from an anniversary of an event that caused my PTSD. It marks something that happened to me that I didn’t get to choose, that changed me forever. But I’m still fucking here, dammit.

Did you know that PTSD literally, actually rewires your brain?

So, yeah, I’m not fixed or cured. Like grief, PTSD never totally goes away. We- and here I mean me- become accustomed to living with this new version of ourselves that we didn’t consent to.

There is no ‘old me’ I can return to.

I wouldn’t choose that if I could, though, because that ‘old me’ is the one who didn’t recognize the red flags. The ‘old me’ is the one who went on the trip. She is not the same person who, afterward, got on that train to escape and come home.

That ‘old me’ probably wouldn’t recognize this version of me.

I hope she’d be proud of us though.

We survived, and I’m really, really fucking proud of that.

Grateful too.

Yesterday I made another loaf of handmade whole wheat sourdough. The weather has changed, though, humidity sitting around 81%, and yesterday’s loaf was a dense, undercooked, doughy mess that went into the trash instead of my belly. The starter is out on the counter, waking up to try again later today.

Such is life, really.

Sometimes things happen and they’re trash.

Gotta keep going regardless, in spite of waves hand at everything. Or, to paraphrase Margaret Atwood: Don’t let the bastards keep you down.

This morning the Chestnut-backed Chickadees returned to the yard. Henri, who today is 1 year and 7 days old, saw them. She is now obsessed with staring out the window in hope that they return.

They’ll return.

The Chestnut-backed Chickadees always return – just like my PTSD.

Both of those are true at once. Not “the good outweighs the bad” math. Not a silver lining stapled onto something hard to make it easier to look at. Just — both, fully, at the same time, without one canceling out the other. The anniversary doesn’t get smaller because the chickadees are back.

Part of how I’ve been navigating September this year is through creativity. It’s a wonderful place in my brain to spend time in, far removed from a whole lot of parts in there I’d rather not revisit.

The other day I was thinking about how Autumn officially arrives this week – on the calendar and in my yard too.

AND that got me thinking about that means there are roughly 13 weeks left in 2026 AND that got me looking at the calendar AND that got me noticing that in November the 13th is on a Friday AND that got me thinking about how that whole Friday the 13th thing is made up bullshit that we don’t have to agree with AND that got me thinking about luck in general AND how much of luck is what we make of something, regardless of what the something is AND that got me creating a new thing after years of not creating things to share.

AND that’s my whole premise behind Lucky 13.

The number 13’s had the “unlucky” label for so long that we forgot we’re the ones who get to decide what it means. Not by pretending the hard year didn’t happen. Not by manifesting our way past it. But by telling ourselves a truer story — one with room for everything that actually happened, not just the parts that fit a theme.

I built this practice, in part, because I needed somewhere to put both truths at once — the year that included something I wouldn’t have chosen, and the year that also included me, still here, still making things, still choosing sobriety one day at a time. If you’ve had moments that changed you forever — the kind you wouldn’t wish on anyone — you don’t have to reframe them into something they weren’t. You can also notice what else was true. What you carried. What carried you.

That’s not toxic positivity. That’s the whole picture.

So, yeah, I’d love for you to check out Lucky 13 AND I’d really love for you to join me, please.

Sending you so much love, till next time.