-
1 week ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Subscribe to The Soup to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.
-
2 weeks ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
I’m writing this from my back patio as golden hour approaches. Birds chirp. Tires drone across Main Street. One block away, a dog barks. The clanging wind chimes lend a vague serenity. Life is tasty. Life is tragic. It’s June, and the mitochondria in every cell of our collective beings scream in unison - TAKE A BREAK! But we can’t. Not really. We’re not kids anymore. Life does not slow to a sticky stall just because the calendar says it’s June. But lean in - I have a secret… ((we are still allowed to play.
-
3 weeks ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Eons ago, the year after we moved into this house, I hosted a blog meet-up/sleepover on a whim, inviting the first 30 people who signed up to visit my home, where my friend Jolene hosted a Noonday party. (Remember those?) We spent that night hanging out in the lobby of the local Holiday Inn Express (if memory serves me, I shared a hotel room in my own town with three other women I’d never mettttttt!) The next day, we tooled around Goshen together, thrifting and eating.
-
4 weeks ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Earlier this spring, while the Indiana soil flexed its muscles and Midwesterners (humans?) everywhere inhaled a collective gasp of relief amid the existential dread, The Soup turned 5 years old. Guys, she’s out of pre-school! She’s a big kid!I remember sitting in my home office at the height of COVID and setting this up. IT IS STILL STUNNING TO ME THAT THIS HAPPENED. I have been an early adapter of *anything* exactly one time in my life - that time.
-
1 month ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
I just returned from 3 glorious days with my uber-adored Emily P. Freeman, hunkered down in the feral winds of Northern Michigan, where May still feels wintry, but we didn’t mind. We call this annual meet-up Shamily, because we are two writers who have spent decades honing our craft. Our combined potential is limitless. For 72 hours, we shared all the stories we’d been saving for the occasion. We brainstormed about work and dreamed about life. We watched the sun set over the lake - twice.
-
1 month ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Lately I’ve been asking myself, “Is this what I want my life to feel like?” I’m not sure why I started, or when. But let me tell you, when that thought flits across my consciousness, I often put my phone down and walking outside.1My friend Sam has been riding a Greyhound bus for days on end this week. She’s been sending me play-by-plays about schedules, delays, and seatmates. I go to bed and she’s in Memphis. I wake up and she’s made it to Chicago.
-
1 month ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Every Spring, I am reacquainted with the depths of my capacity to hibernate. I panic. I haven’t seen my neighbors in a meaningful way for months. I haven’t invited friends over in ages. This annual moment of clarity always makes me feel like a fraud. As someone who has built a career on community and togetherness, who do I actually think I am? Yes, I fall into the same rut every winter, but it’s so cozy and warm.
-
1 month ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Outside my childhood living room window there was a squatty, gnarled Eastern Redbud tree - my favorite variety, lavender shot through with sky-fire, the color of nostalgia. Now, as they blanket Goshen, I am nine again, watching oxygen fill the capillaries of another long winter. I am nine, scrambling up into the branches of perfume and wonder, crushing buds between my fingertips and rubbing them on my neck. I am incapable of foreseeing a future where I am left untethered in a wobbling world.
-
2 months ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Driving south on US31, the world is faded, half-alive. The try-hard sky shines weary, barely blue. The trees are all the dullest brown, scraped of seasons. Just sticks. We are all doing our best. Behind me, Silas and Ruby stare out the window and at their phones. I still feel the ache of a dream I had two nights ago of Silas, age six and wearing blue feetie-pajamas, explaining that he didn’t need me to drive him to school anymore. He drives himself. They are always every age at once.
-
2 months ago | 
shannanmartin.substack.com | Shannan Martin
Last week I sat in bed and, on a whim, pieced together an 8 second IG Reel using a photo I’d taken while mopping the floors at work. It was a close-up of the table next to the dishwashing window, where lunch guests deposit their trays. For the six years I’ve worked there, the table’s front leg has been braced by a plastic fork, industriously taped into position. It’s hard to imagine a flimsy plastic fork effectively keeping a hard-working table in business, yet the table stands.
