highhip

I remember standing in a misty Malibu canyon with all my camping gear waiting for @shailenewoodley to arrive. I had been assigned by @outsidemagazine to write a cover story about her as a 2024 Outsider of the Year. A sudden panic washed over me — was this a huge mistake? It would be my first night away from my baby daughter. I hadn’t slept on the ground in ages. And what if Shailene was….a nightmare? She was a dream. You cannot be a cynic and write about this woman. I’ve interviewed many people in my life, but I’ve never sat across from someone so guileless and so fierce. As @caradelevingne told me, “She is her heart. It’s not that she wears it on her sleeve. She’s just heart.” We all had such fun on this shoot that a crew member said, “We absolutely must reunite at the creek at least once a year!!” I didn’t have the heart to tell her that by the time this article came out, a house would be built where we camped. There’s no coming back to the creek next year. And no amount of pictures I can take will slow my daughter growing up. Shailene’s magic is the reminder to stay present. To let it all flow through you. To feel it all. That’s what it means to be a creature living inside nature, not apart. (Link in bio.) Big love to the talented, wild women who made this shoot possible: @cahlinetompkins @kriskriskris @caratripsalot @kyrajkennedy @goldentrashbagg

This is me sweating like a squeezed sponge in the Guatemalan jungle. Never did I imagine that my story would end up in the Best American anthology (a publication filled with my writing heroes). I wanted to make my writing group laugh. I wanted to make sense of things. I wanted to remind myself during a scary, uncertain time— you did this hard and beautiful thing. And maybe you can do a hard and beautiful thing again. Writing is a lonely gig. But the comments I’ve received on this one from friends and strangers have made me feel connected and alive. Your words have been my rocket fuel to keep at it, keep trying, and most of all keep writing about vagina-biting ticks. (KIDDING. THAT HAPPENS AGAIN AND I AM DEAD.) So thank you. The book comes out today. Link in bio. Love, MJ @marinerbooks #bestamerican2024

Dearest Lumi, a little under a year ago, we brought you home, and not knowing how to soothe you, I turned to song. I sang anything I could remember. I sang "Big Rock Candy Mountains", I sang Johnny Cash, I sang Particle Man by They Might Be Giants, I sang Scottish drinking songs I hope you don't remember, and I sang 30 made up verses of "Hush Little Baby". I rocked and swayed across the nursery. You howled, and yawned, and sometimes drifted off. Was I teaching you to dance? Were you teaching me? Maybe that's how it began. You have delighted in song ever since, laughing with glee at Yellow Submarine, shimmying your shoulders to Beyoncé, fist pumping to baby techno, and kicking and waving every time I strap you into the carrier and chant "She's ready to go". Tonight, at the end of a long and eventful birthday, at the end of a long and eventful year, Mama swayed with you and reprised one of those early songs, "I don't know why I love you like I do", and for the first time, you started to sing along. I close by borrowing a quote from your mother, musing (as she does) on your connection to the music of the spheres: Happy birthday, my daughter, my daughter, "the one who danced before she could walk."

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a Luma! One year ago today our little fire dragon made her debut on this mortal plane and I’ve been fall-to-my-knees grateful ever since. She’s gentle but fierce. Sweet and cuddly yet wildly independent. Unfazed by the Venice boardwalk, but unsure of the Vitamix. Lumi loves adventuring outdoors (ocean, mountains or front stoop will do), dancing to electronic music like Dad in college, ignoring babies at the park to follow the big kids around, hooting at every dog, squirrel and bird in her path, throwing wizard hands (where she zaps you with her tiny paws), eating her body weight in blueberries, rampaging with cousin Theodora, checking her fit every morning in the mirror, cuddling her beloved bottle of butt paste, and melting mama’s heart on the daily.

Thank you @longreads for naming "The Hungry Jungle" one of the 5 best personal essays across the interwebs for 2023. It was worth the tick bite for this honor! (Link in bio)

Hey friends! My new essay for @outsidemagazine is available in full-color illustrated glory on newsstands and digitally at the link in my bio! ⬆️ It’s about my 2017 trek to a secret gay wedding atop the ruins of an ancient Maya city in the remote Guatemalan jungle. It’s an adventure story. A rite-of-passage-in-your-30s-story. A little bit funny. A lot about surrender. Expect sweating. Illustrations by @_lynnbremner make me weak in the knees. Sharing cover with @nickofferman = RIP l am dead. ☠️ While pregnant with Luma I asked my writing group if I could read my “crazy story” about escapades in the Guatemalan rainforest for my friends’ adventure wedding. It featured my very own version of the Stand by Me leeches moment… 😳 Just for laughs. But as with so many of my “crazy” stories that I tell for a laugh, I quickly hit emotional pay dirt. Midway through reading it aloud I heard my voice crack. “Oh,” I told Nick afterwards, “This is a story about facing uncertainty.” He blinked in a kind but knowing way that said, “No shit, Sherlock." It seems obvious now why I’d be drawn to telling a story about uncertainty when I was about to give birth. Did I realize that while trudging through the jungle of writing it? Hell no. This one goes out to you, fellow adventurers, for whatever jungle you find yourself in. Hang in there. Just 20 more minutes. Massive thanks to the brides, @angela.weeks7 and @xitlali83 for whom my respect knows no bounds—and to our local guides, the rest of our merry band, and most of all to magnificent Guatemala. 🇬🇹✨ Ashley McCue Marlene Vasquez @mindjobyzness @justrowithit @tharre2002 @esthela930 @d5martinez 1st 📷 @thesarahpeterson Last 📷 @theroadmonkey #hiking #hiker #guatemala #elpeten #rainforest #expedition #adventure #misadventures #outdoors #outdoorlife #travel #travelwriter #travelwriting #womenwhohike #elmirador #mayaruins #jungle #jungletrek #destinationwedding ##hikerbabes #hikersofinstagram #memoir #memoirs #essay #essays #personalessay #truestory #nonfiction #creativenonfiction #writersofinstagram

No doubt the brides were trying to kill us. On this day six years ago, I was struggling on a remote trail in the Guatemalan rainforest. I'd never been anywhere so gobsmackingly gorgeous -- that wanted to eat me alive. Eager to escape my dating life and fertility journey back home, I'd followed Angela and Suley on a 5-day, 60-mile trek to their adventure wedding during the hottest, wettest time of the year. (My people are Northern European. Talk about a Finnish out of water.) 🥵 🇫🇮 But nothing has taught me more about surrendering to uncertainty and being absorbed by ecstatic joy than this wonderful, painful, crack-you-open-and-suck-out-your-juices adventure. I write about it in the July/August issue of @outsidemagazine ... and will post here when it drops. ⛺🐒🌴 Thank you magnificent Guatemala 🇬🇹, @angela.weeks7 and @xitlali83 ... our guides, and these intrepid beauties who let me walk alongside them: Ashley McCue Marlene Vasquez @mindjobyzness @justrowithit (our one dude!) 🏆 @tharre2002 @esthela930 @d5martinez Gear that keeps me safe and sane: @yeti @patagonia @lasportivana @smartwool @gossamergear #hiking #hiker #guatemala #elpeten #rainforest #expedition #adventure #misadventures #outdoors #outdoorlife #travel #travelwriter #travelwriting #womenwhohike #elmirador #mayaruins #jungle #jungletrek #destinationwedding ##hikerbabes #hikersofinstagram #memoir #memoirs #essay #essays #personalessay #truestory #nonfiction #creativenonfiction #writersofinstagram

I remember talking with the nurse practitioner at my OB's office about the possibility of freezing my eggs. I was single, 39 years old, and my fertility days were feeling oh-so-numbered. "I don't want to do it alone." I said. "It's expensive and seems... scary? Like such a long shot." "Yes," she said, with such big soft eyes that I had to look away, "It takes a lot of courage to go for what we want. It takes a lot of courage to try." I thought about what she said on the drive home. And for days afterwards. Despite setbacks and disappointments over the years, a sliver of light snuck in under the door. Maybe? Possibly...? What if I didn't let the door close completely in the very-unlikely-but-not-totally-impossible case that things could work out? Three months after a successful egg retrieval, a cute tall man with a very well-written profile on OkCupid sent me a note. And here we are. Happy first Father's Day to @theroadmonkey, twelve weeks into the role he was born to play! Thank you for being my statistical improbability, my dream come true... for being the patient, adventurous, golden heart of our family. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. I can't wait to teach our daughter to have the courage to try alongside you... to tell her this is what she came from. ❤️ P.s. Last photo is Lumi looking at Nick this morning.

How it started / how it's going... @highhip thank you for offering me the gift of letting me witness you as a mother. I can't wait to celebrate a lifetime of Mother's Days with you.

Lumi Jo, Your smile splits the sky like sunbeams. Your tiny cry summons me like the trumpet of war. You flail like an alligator, then stretch with the grace of Cleopatra sunning herself upon the Nile. Your mother, unveiled by you, stands radiant as an angel on the Day of Judgement. You demand to nap against my chest as I stroll the same streets and sweat through another shirt. You've flipped the table of my life, and the scattered pieces reveal themselves to be an artwork long foretold. May you guide me through the wild land of fatherhood.

Hello world! It's my pleasure to introduce you to Miss Luma Johnson Lesiecki ("Lumi Jo!" / "LJ!" / "Princess Applecheeks!") who beamed her way into our hearts and onto this mortal plane on March 27th at a whopping 9 pounds 6 ounces and 21 inches. 💖💫💞✨ Her name means "light" in Latin and "snow" in Finnish (my dad was a full-blooded Finn). She has the appetite of a tiny Clydesdale, loves exploring the wilds of our back deck, and, on occasion scares herself with her own poops. She's the light of our lives. Lumi baby, I write this with one hand as I rock your soft biscuit weight upon my chest with the other. I'd sooner tear down the house than get up and wake you. I've never felt stronger or more defenseless than this. You heave a tiny sigh and all the molecules of the universe realign.

Guess what? 💖💫💞✨