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Kale Chip meditation

I’ve been making kale chips like it’s my job. 🥬

It’s a super high-maintenance pain in the ass and a totally wonderful moving meditation.

Kale is weirdly impossible to find at supermarkets in Switzerland. You can’t get it anywhere. (What I would give for those cheesy kale chips they used to sell at Trader Joe’s.)

So when the community garden up the street set out a few bunches of Federkohl at the little roadside veggie stand, you’d better believe we jumped on that shit. I grabbed both for 2 CHF each, put my little coins in the Kasse, and triumphantly marched home to show my family.

Kale chips take forever to make and you eat the whole batch in like five minutes. They are such an investment. But a worthy one.

🥬 Wash the kale. (Right away, so you don’t get cute garden bugs all over your kitchen.)

🥬 One by one, tear the kale off the thick stems into small chip-size pieces. Put them in a bowl.

🥬 Salad-spin those puppies to get all the water off. They’re still not dry, so you have to lay them out one by one on a towel on your kitchen counter. Because wet kale = soggy chips.

🥬 Leave them out to dry for literally hours.

🥬 Come back later and drizzle a little avocado oil over them. Massage it all over the leaves. Every last bit. (This is where it starts to feel really meditative. Well, the tearing part too.)

🥬 Spread them out on baking trays. Sprinkle liberally with salt and garlic.

🥬 Bake at 150° C (sorry fellow Americans, I’ve gone to the dark side and don’t know what that would be in F. Google it.) You have to check them every minute after about 7 minutes. And then every 30 seconds. Because they go from soggy to burned in a flash.

🥬 Rotate the trays in the oven constantly. Like you would watch your toddler in Venice. Never looking away.

🥬 Finally take them out. Check that they’re crispy. Sprinkle on nutritional yeast to get that cheesy flavor.

🥬 Eat half of them stealthily as you call your family over. Then proudly watch your kid inhale three trays’ worth and bask in the knowledge that for one shining moment you are a superior parent because he is eating something green.

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A quiet corner of Chicago O’Hare

I had a six-hour layover in Chicago, so did what any yoga teacher would do: wandered the terminal until I found a deserted corner and then plopped my ass on the floor for a few surreptitious stretches. Ahhh. A necessary balm for the 21-hour journey.

Des Moines International was quieter. The tiny airport felt like all sky, and old carpet, and silence.

I was in Iowa last weekend, unexpectedly, for a heartbreaking family funeral. There is immeasurable suffering in the world right now — Gaza, Israel, Maine — but this slice of heartbreak was particularly tragic, for its youth. I was so grateful to be able to make the trip, and to spend hours in community and conversation with my family — in the same time zone, for once.

Distance from loved ones is one of the hardest parts about living abroad. I think there’s a perception that expat life is all roses, all the time; so many people have casually remarked about our “life in paradise” over the years. It is often wonderful, yes. And I know I’ve subconsciously not shared a lot about our life here in Switzerland out of fear of people resenting me, especially in those first few years when Trump was still President and we had managed to escape, when so many others wished for the same and couldn’t.

But this is one hard thing. Wanting to be with your people when they’re suffering, and being so damn far away. I was fortunate to be able to return this time around. But I feel increasingly aware of those inevitable realities of life that Buddhist teachings highlight so clearly: illness, aging, and death. They come for all of us. And they are as much a part of life as the highlight-reel moments.

Yoga and meditation are practices designed to work with suffering, both in body and mind. They’ve been largely co-opted by Shiny Happy People wearing stretchy workout gear and spouting bullshit about abundance and manifestation. But thankfully, these practices go so much deeper than that.

I love how portable they are. A towel on the hotel room floor for a yoga mat. Legs up the wall in Terminal 5. Box breathing on the plane.

Atha yoga anusasanam. Now is (always) the time for the yoga to begin.

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Five years in Basel

Today marks 5 years since we moved to Basel. FIVE!! We did that. 🥂

It’s a helluva lift to pick up your 4-year-old and move across an ocean to a country where you definitely don’t speak the language and you definitely don’t know what the hell you’re doing.

Driving to France or Germany weekly for groceries? Finding a pediatrician auf Deutsch? Navigating European shoe and clothing sizes? Living without air conditioning or smoke detectors? Finding a studio where I can teach yoga in English? Decoding appliance settings in Italian, French, and German?

Done. ✔️ Not easy at first, but done.

When we took this photo, it was literally the first time we’d been across the Rhine. After about two months, my heart no longer raced every time I had to pay the gas station cashier auf Deutsch. Five years later, my kid has a stellar native accent and our German is considerably less sh*tty. And I am proud to have learned a (hard) new language in my 40s.

Google Translate and GPS have definitely saved our lives countless times. (I can’t imagine living overseas without either.) More importantly, so has our amazing community. The relationships we’ve made here have become forever-friendships beyond what we ever could have hoped for. Truly the best part of this whole experience.

Thanks to everyone near and far who’s been a part of our Swiss adventure thus far. When we first moved here, we thought it might feasibly last only six months. Super proud to now have five years (and a lot more cheese and chocolate) under our belts. 🧀🍫🏔🇨🇭🫕

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Ruhezeit

In Switzerland, you can’t vacuum on a Sunday. You can’t mow your lawn or wash your car. (Unless you want to risk a hefty fine, or a cranky neighbor.)

The grocery stores are all closed, so you’d better stock up on Saturday, because you won’t be picking up any last-minute burger buns or an extra six-pack for your barbecue.

It’s Ruhezeit.

That’s German for rest period. Off-season. Quiet time.

The same rules apply from 10pm-6am. (Don’t shower or flush your toilet overnight.)

And from 12-1pm on weekdays. Craftspeople stop working. Children nap. Shops close. Put your brass instruments away and chill out for an hour over lunch.

We are loud Americans, and so of course we often forget this. Especially when we first moved here. We felt so. damn. loud.

After nearly five years, though, Ruhezeit feels pretty damn good. It’s like a collective cultural savasana.

On Sundays, instead of shopping or working, Swiss folks go hiking — in stark contrast to Americans’ Costco runs. They ramble along village streets for family walks, toddlers wheeling by on balance bikes. They sit on their terraces and watch the neighbors stroll past.

Something about this all feels so healthy, and balanced, and SANE. Simple. Conscious. (Especially the part about not shopping.) Being together, in their bodies, out in nature.

This Sabbath practice originated in Jewish and Christian traditions, but it continues, even as Swiss culture grows ever more agnostic.

There’s a lot of buzz lately about the idea that in white supremacist capitalist culture, rest is resistance. This is so true. (Thanks, @thenapministry.)

Ruhezeit reminds me that, quite simply, rest is also just HUMAN. And I’m grateful for this enforced weekly quiet, even as we still sometimes blow it using the blender for smoothies at 7am or hollering too loudly over a FIFA23 victory goal.

Find your off-season. Your Ruhezeit.

Take your savasana. Whatever that looks like. 🪷

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Everything is temporary

This is the most bittersweet time of year to be an expat. 🥺 Jobs change, contracts end, and people pack their families up to leave as soon as the school year ends.

Over the last few years, we’ve sent dear friends off to Ghana, Dubai, Singapore, England, Spain, France, Canada, Malaysia, Sweden, and more. Our little village just keeps churning.

Right now, folks are frantically selling off their cars and sofas and lighting fixtures — getting as physically light as possible so that they can return less expensively to their home countries, or move on to the next job somewhere else.

Being an expat means that your life abroad is tied to a job — and when that job ends, so does your permission to stay. But the folks you meet along the way become your immediate family, since none of you have blood family within hundreds (or thousands) of miles.

So living in an international community, you get really good at sad goodbyes, and super quick with warm hellos, and plan your life in weeks or months instead of years, as you all constantly hover in that liminal space of wondering: when will it be our turn? Should we bother hanging art on the walls?

The truth is, though, of course: everything is temporary. Living an expat life, this reality is exacerbated every single day. You know it won’t last forever. So you try to enjoy it while you can.

In places like where I grew up — Nebraska — a lot of people are born, stay for high school and college, settle in as adults, and spend their whole lives in the same community. It can be easy to forget, there amidst the illusion of permanence and safety, that even this is all temporary, too.

I like to think that, as bittersweet as this expat churn is, the “loving and leaving” that is our regular experience is just living deeply in relationship with the Buddhist and yogic teachings of impermanence.

That all things arise, change, and fade away.

Like an ocean wave. 

And when you know this, you become still. 

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There’s a better way

As an American living abroad, I am rarely patriotic — more often ashamed — and GUNS are one of the main reasons why. 😔

They’re also why we were so eager to leave.

Back in 2018, with my son approaching kindergarten age, the local Massachusetts school district he was due to attend went viral for teaching their kindergarteners to hide from active shooters to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.”

WTF. 🤬😤 (She says in the most yogic of righteously-angry ways.)

I don’t know what it will take to get the GOP out of the NRA’s pocket. I don’t understand how politicians can just turn away from children being slaughtered in schools.

I do know there’s a better way — a life without the fear of gun violence. We’re living it here. And while there are plenty of things about Switzerland, and Europe, that are far from perfect, I’ll take it if it means we don’t have to worry that our beloved babe will be shot in school.

Bless every soul lost to American gun violence. May they be free from suffering. May they know peace. 💔

Artist: @nikkolas_smith

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A slushy New Year to you

Back home in Basel after a week in the Alps. 

See those drab brown slopes behind me? Friends: climate change is REAL. 😔 

Europe’s been experiencing a massive January heatwave and the mountains are scarily brown, green, and bleak — no snow to be found in so many Alpine villages throughout France, Switzerland, and Italy.

Ski slopes are closed, gondolas shut down, and wildlife that doesn’t usually turn up until March is already wandering around. Hotels are renting out mountain bikes instead of skis. Unless you’re at super high altitude, it’s all just mud, slush, and melting ice.

But it’s not just the lack of snow. I wonder how these tiny family-run ski hotels and restaurants will survive in the years to come. Will a warming climate push them out? There’s a whole Alpine economy here that could just, welp, disappear. 🥺

On a lighter note: Happy New Year. I know we’re seven days in and you may have already chucked your resolutions. That’s ok.

It doesn’t really matter. You can always begin again.

Atha yoga anusasanam. The first Sutra. Sanskrit for “Now is the time for the yoga to begin.”

So yes, for sure, I’ll encourage you to unroll your mat and move your body a little more this week, this month, this year. Every bit helps. 🧘🏽‍♀️🤸🏿‍♂️

But also: floss your teeth. It’s a game changer. 🦷

And try oil pulling. Another regular Ayurvedic practice that works wonders. I’ve doubled down on it in this tough season of “let’s pretend the pandemic is over” mixed with schools full of flu and RSV and strep throat and anything else you can throw at kids.

Phew, 2023. Here we are. Somehow.

Take good care of yourselves. Go walk around a melting lake and feel the sun on your face and the wind in your hair.

It’s all connected. 🌲🦌

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Walk. Just walk.

There are a million fitness bros on the internet trying to sell you on bone broth and intermittent fasting and the evils of seed oils. F*&k that. 🙄

Just take a walk. Every day.

Start there. 🚶🏽‍♀️🌳🚶🏿

I’ve got a thing lately for urban design — in particular, the power of walkable communities. Living in Europe has stoked this fire. 🔥

One of the fascinating tidbits I’ve learned is that Americans often

1) Romanticize their college life — because it was the one time they lived in an actual walkable community with everything they needed and their best friends within a few minutes’ stroll, and

2) Yearn for the magic and charm of the vacations they experienced in walkable European cities like Paris or Barcelona or Prague or even, gulp, Disney World. Do you know what made them feel so magical? The mixed-use zoning that allows for cafes, apartments, and businesses to occupy the same block.

Did you feel it trick-or-treating last night? 🎃👻🍬 How great it felt to walk around your neighborhood and see people out and about and breathe the crisp autumn air and crunch leaves on the sidewalk alongside your littles and be in your body instead of strapped into an isolated metal bubble on wheels?

There’s wonder and wellness and connectivity in walking. Not to mention the power to save the planet. 🌎

It’s simple and accessible and you can do it with people you love. Or listen to a podcast and feed your brain and your spirit while you’re at it.

Our bodies are designed for this. Trust them.

You don’t have to pay for some expensive gym.

Being well — being every day embodied, out in the world, sharing space and breath and nature — doesn’t have to cost a dime.

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Chilly cobblestone moments

This morning my little family rolled out of bed and pulled on clothes we’d actually ironed and I applied once-a-year makeup and wore a real bra and not leggings (!!) to meet up with the always-wonderful Suzy Lou Photography for our annual family photos. 

(This is a quick behind-the-scenes shot from last year’s in the Alt Stadt.)

We met Suzy the first fall we’d moved here, back in 2018, when we’d only lived in Basel a few months and we weren’t sure how long we’d actually get to stay. The cityscape along the Rhine was the main character that year, and ever since, we’ve discovered different urban corners to create a visual history as our little guy grows (and as my husband and I both go grey).

It’s a pain in the ass to actually get properly dressed and put on lipstick and we’re often swearing at each other under our breath between snaps, but I’m so, so glad we’ve done this all these years. 

Expat life offers no illusion of permanence; everything about our Swiss reality could change in a heartbeat, depending on the job that allows us to stay. The rug can be pulled out from underneath it all at any moment. 

So I’m ever grateful to have taken the time for these chilly cobblestone shots over the years.

Thanks to Suzy for bringing Basel to life.