A Fuller, Better, & More Successful Life

What does that really mean?

Dear Friends,

I love memoirs. I always have. I am fascinated in people who have lived varied lives and specifically the arc of their story.

I want to uncover the person’s beginnings and what they had to overcome in order to reach their “pinnacle.” I read to learn what they can teach me on how to live “fuller, better, and more successfully.”

I have slowly, and until recently without cognitively even realizing it, been redefining what “fuller, better, and more successfully” means to me.

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Late last year I lost a close friend to illness. A woman, wife, and mother whom I admired and cherished our honest, cut-to-the-chase, no-holds-barred friendship. We had walked the same path in many profound ways that were unique from most around us.

I homebirthed both of my children. I practice homeopathy and Eastern medicine almost exclusively. I am a longterm nurser, a co-sleeping, family bedder with an attachment and authoritative parenting style. I am a deep researcher, a strong, independent thinker who marches to the beat of my own drum. I am actively raising two extraordinary (if I do say so myself) children with their own special and formidable personalities. And I have been neck — not knee — deep on a several year medical journey with one of my children working together to help him heal from a neurological injury.

I am a political activist for medical freedom, free speech, gun reform, and human rights. I am a philanthropist. I am a writer. I am a storyteller.

All of these character traits brought my girlfriend and I together.

I realize in briefly touching on our friendship, I am inclined to guard her story and respect her privacy. Intuitively it is clear to me that it is not my place to share what beliefs my friend held, that she and I shared, and what ideas we diverged on and debated freely. I feel comfortable to say that we were cut from the same cloth in ways that made us both feel seen, understood, and safe to discuss topics that in today’s culture wars, most of us are fearful to even broach, let alone honestly discuss, for the possible and very real backlash of being cancelled or erroneously and pejoratively labeled. I can also tell you that she was hilarious and the cover photography is a nod to her humor.

The hardest part of her passing for both she and I was that she was leaving too soon, too early, and too young. She was a mother of two young-ish children.

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Two months after she passed, I started Dudley The Fox and published my first letter to my children here. I had been writing for years but never shared my work publicly. Always with the central theme being a love letter dedicated to my children, ensuring that they understood unequivocally my unconditional love for them, how proud I am of them, what constitutes living a good, meaningful life in my opinion, the arc of my life, the mistakes I made and the lessons I learned, my hopes and dreams for them, my expectations of them, the repairs I owed them, and the list goes on.

What if my time got cut short? What do I want my children to know? What does it really mean to live a fuller, better, more successful life? What are the secrets that I have unlocked? How can I give them pieces of me that I want them to know, to carry with them, after I am gone?

Because this is the path I witnessed and I walked and I pondered and I shared a sliver of with my dear friend.

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Memoirs often point to an experience, character trait, or moment from an earlier time in the subject’s life that foreshadowed who they would once become. The seeds had been planted or already even sprouting. A premonition that only hindsight fully understands.

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The day of my close friend’s memorial services, upon opening up my Moon Calendar to read the daily insight, I received a very special message.

I do not believe in coincidences.

“Thank you my sweet friend for your counsel, once again. I love you and I miss you.”

xoxo ~ WRW