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5 days ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
I want to write about my daughter’s senior prom, and how she set out to look like a princess, in gentle defiance of the current prom dress aesthetic. She had me in tears when she came down the staircase at her friend’s house, stumbling in heels that she’d happily swap for high-top Chuck Taylors, waiting for me to tuck the sprigs of baby’s breath into her hair.
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1 week ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
This weekend, we’re prepping for a prom, a 16th birthday, visiting family, Father’s Day x 4, a last-minute work trip to plan, camp packing, college planning, work galore, an insurance debacle (oy), and a big exciting graduation. And then, there’s the news. So much news. And the sign-making. I had intended to share my Things I Love roundup this week, but you can see where my time went instead. Life getting in the way of life.
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2 weeks ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
In February of 2016, when we booked the earliest available Hamilton tickets for a random fall day — November 16 — we couldn’t have imagined that New York, Broadway, and the entire theater-loving community, would be on our 7th consecutive day of mourning the results of the presidential election. I don’t need to recount the shock and numbness we felt then. But you can imagine what a catharsis that performance was for us.
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2 weeks ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
Last night, I was extremely busy basking in a moment of long-awaited schadenfreude — as were we all — and not feeling guilty for even one minute. The Feud / Twitter War / Narcissistic Death Match between Trump and Musk wasn’t a “distraction,” or some 12-D chess maneuver to keep us from talking about “real problems.” It was real. It was inevitable. Sure, it lays bare the problems with big money influencing elections.
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3 weeks ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
Dee O’Brien was the teacher who made an eighth-grader fall in love with Shakespeare and Emily Brontë and Kate Bush. She taught with a voice bigger than her body, and a persona far bigger than her voice. She could recite sonnets from memory and wore purple as a rule. Sometimes, while reading a passage out loud in the wonderfully exuberant way that she did, her long black hair fell to the front and covered her chunky lucite 80s jewelry. She’d flip it back and I could stare at her earrings again.
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1 month ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
Now that I’ve gotten yesterday’s emotion dump out of my system…welcome back to Things I Love. There are a lot of good things and small joys in the world and I really do love finding them and sharing them with other people. Today’s list includes a life-changing quote, a movie worth streaming, a movie worth paying for, a collection of hilarious Instagram videos, the bag I’m desperately coveting, the homes I’m desperately coveting, and what I’m drinking now that the weather is warmer.
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1 month ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
A few weeks ago, I posted a simple statement on Threads. Just something I was feeling in the moment. You don’t even need to name him and we know exactly who you mean, said one commenter. The most relatable words I’ve read in a long time, said another. I keep trying to let it go, but every day there are new injustices and insults and outrages, wrote my friend Alexis.
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1 month ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
I have often sent my children out the door yelling, “Have fun storming the castle!”Or sometimes I say, “Have a great time tonight! Be safe! Make good choices!”I’ve always thought of this as my core job: To keep my children happy and healthy and safe, of course — but also to grow them into adults who make good choices. Even and especially when I’m not around. This weekend, my youngest daughter turned 18. An adult. I am now officially aparent of adults. Plural. Which is a whole thing.
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1 month ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
“Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of thirty dolls, you know, and maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally,” says the guy whose four-year-old son owned tens of dollars worth of stuffed animals and ride-on toys, when he was asked about the increasing impact of his fakakte tariffs. I’m Walking Here is entirely reader-supported and 100% broligarch-free. Subscribe to get new posts in your inbox.
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1 month ago | 
lgumbinner.substack.com | Liz Gumbinner
I became a Costco fan the day I realized that baby formula was so unconscionably expensive in my local pharmacy, they began locking it behind glass. Because the only thing a brand new mom likes more than overpaying for something that literally keeps her child alive, is the delightful uncertainty of waiting for a disaffected assistant manager with a key. Will he show? Will it be before or after the baby has a complete meltdown?
