Blog

Routes

Kristine Binder
I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me.

There are some drives that are more than just getting from one place to another. Some roads carry memories in the pavement. Yesterday, without realizing it, I took one of those drives.
I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have. I think things show up when we need them, even if we don’t understand why at first.
Yesterday I had to take my fur-baby to the vet because he’s been limping again. The same vet who did his surgeries years ago. I had never been to this office which meant an hour drive each way, so I plugged the address into my navigation app and off we went.
What I didn’t expect was that the route would take me straight through pieces of my life I haven’t visited in years. Past the community college where I earned summer credits. Past the church where I got married. Past the YMCA where I took swimming lessons as a little girl.
Road after road that I hadn’t driven in forever somehow came back like muscle memory. Every turn familiar. Every landmark holding a story. And honestly? It was exactly what my heart needed.
At the vet, we waited for what felt like forever. Once everything was cleared and I was told it was age and arthritis….just like his momma….the vet and I were talking afterward, I could feel myself sitting right on the edge of tears the entire time. I told him I know my dog is getting older. I know that day will come someday. But not now. Please not now. And then I cried.
I told him how I recently lost both my parents and how strangely cathartic this drive had been for me. He asked where I grew up and I told him. Turns out he lives in that same small town now.
Ten years. I’ve been going to this vet for over ten years and I’m just finding this out now? Such a small world.
As I left, my GPS routed me home a different way and about a block from the vet was the marine store where my family spent so much time when I was growing up. Boats. Water skis. Snow skis. Equipment lined up everywhere. So many Saturdays with my dad walking through those aisles. So many summers built around the water. So many winters built around the snow.
And in that moment I wanted so badly to tell someone those stories. To laugh about them with someone who remembered. But the people who shared those memories with me are gone from my life now. Those memories belong only to me. That realization is both beautiful and heartbreaking.
As I drove, Grateful Dead playing through my speakers, I found myself smiling at every little thing I remembered. Each memory healing something in me. Tiny stitches closing up parts of a broken heart. It’s funny how grief works.
When your parents die, the good and the bad goes with them. They are the only people who really knew you from day one. The only people who knew every version of you. Every phase. Every family story. Every triumph and heartbreak and embarrassing moment and inside joke. And then suddenly that connection is gone. And sometimes when parents go, the connection to siblings and extended family changes too. The glue that held everyone together is gone. The person who softened tensions, organized holidays, insisted people stay connected, covered the cracks… they’re no longer here.
That grief is its own kind of loss too. The grieving of it all is layered. But like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences. I think those roads found me yesterday for a reason. I think my soul needed familiar places. Familiar turns. Familiar memories. I needed to remember that even though the people are gone, the stories are still here. The memories are still alive inside me. I carry the family lore now. I carry the history. I carry them.
And somehow that feels both unbearably heavy and completely priceless at the same time.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Complicated

Kristine Binder

I recently found a necklace after my mom passed. I was drawn to its simplicity and felt comfort in wearing it, though I could not explain why it felt different or where it even came from. I put it on and have not taken it off since. Lately, I catch myself reaching for it when I am anxious, twisting it between my fingers without even thinking, and I did not really understand why.
Today, on Mother’s Day, I was looking through old photos and found one of my mom and me on my First Communion day. And there it was. The necklace. I do not remember the necklace at all, but I remember the dress vividly because my mom made it for me. I remember how proud I was to wear something she created with her own hands. Proud that my mom made it just for me. Funny that I found that photo today. Mother’s Day. 
Mother’s Day has never been an easy day for me. Not as a daughter. Not as a mother. And now, especially not without my mom here. I think there is this expectation that Mother’s Day is supposed to feel soft and warm and easy. Beautiful cards. Perfect brunches. Matching smiles in photos. Everyone calling their mom their “best friend.” And if that is your story, I genuinely love that for you. But it has never quite been mine.
I did not have the quintessential mother-daughter relationship. My relationship with my mom was complicated. Layered. Heavy at times. Beautiful at times too. I loved my mother deeply. Fiercely. I admired her more than I can even explain. She was brilliant, accomplished, talented, respected, and capable of making absolutely anything feel elegant and intentional. She taught me to notice beauty. To appreciate history. To understand that there is value in tradition, in details, in doing things well. But being her daughter was not easy.
Her expectations were always high. Sometimes impossibly high. It took me years to understand that no matter what I achieved, accomplished, fixed, managed, or became, I would never fully make her happy in the way I desperately wanted to. That realization is painful to admit out loud because I know she loved me. She did. Absolutely. But love is complicated sometimes. People love from the places they know, and sometimes the way someone loves you is not the way you need to receive love. That has been one of the hardest lessons of my life.
Still, she shaped me into the woman I am today. Both because of her love and in spite of it. Because of her expectations and despite the weight of them. I carry so much of her in me. The good. The hard. The beautiful. The impossible.
Mother’s Day itself was never really about me. It was about honoring the mothers and women in the family first and foremost. The expectation of making the day special was always there. The planning. The pressure. The responsibility of making everyone feel celebrated and cared for. It was never about me. Ever. And honestly? I know how heavy that can feel. Thus I never want my own children to carry that kind of emotional obligation for me. I do not want them to feel responsible for my happiness. It took me years of therapy to figure out that I am responsible for my own happiness. I do not want my kids to spend their lives trying to earn love or approval or peace from me. That cycle ends here if I can help it.
And the truth is, I have not been a perfect mother. Not even close. There are moments I wish I could redo. Seasons I wish I had handled differently. Choices I made from fear, overwhelm, anger, survival mode, trauma, exhaustion. None of those are excuses. They are simply truths. I have apologized to my children, and I will continue to apologize when I get it wrong because I think mothers should. I think accountability matters.
I have always done the best I could with who I was at the time. And sometimes that version of me was struggling more than anyone realized. The reality is that each of my children got a different version of me as their mother because I was a different person while raising each one of them. Youthful. Older. Wiser. More wounded. More healed. More patient. Less patient. More financially secure. More emotionally exhausted. Every child enters a different chapter of our lives, and motherhood evolves whether we want it to or not. That does not mean the love was different. It means I was. And maybe that is the part nobody talks about enough.
Mothers are not perfect humans. They are simply human beings trying to carry the enormous responsibility of loving and shaping other human beings while often still healing themselves. We are flawed and fabulous all wrapped into one complicated package.
So today, Mother’s Day holds all of it for me at once. Love. Grief. Joy. Sadness. Gratitude. Regret. Admiration. Anger. Compassion. Longing. And maybe that is okay. Maybe motherhood was never meant to fit neatly into greeting cards and social media captions. Maybe the most honest thing we can do is tell the truth about it.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Photographs

Kristine Binder

There is something about photographs that only reveals itself when you are sitting in the middle of them, not just looking, but feeling them, and that is exactly where we found ourselves one evening right after my mom passed. The plan was simple, gather photos for her services, choose a few meaningful ones, and move forward. At the same time, my daughter was also looking for photos for her wedding tables, wanting to bring pieces of her childhood into a new beginning. What we did not expect was how quickly the evening would shift from a memorial task into something much deeper.
Three large storage containers were pulled out, filled with albums, loose photos, negatives, and decades of life. What started as sorting became hours of sitting together, laughing, smiling, and remembering. Each photograph held more than an image, it held a moment, a version of people and places that no longer exist in quite the same way. The room filled with stories that had been tucked away, and for a while, time felt less linear, as if the past and present were sitting side by side.
Photographs have a quiet way of holding on to what life changes. They preserve people as they were, places as they felt, and relationships in the seasons they existed. Even when families shift, whether through loss, distance, or divorce, those images remain steady. They tell a truth that is easy to forget in the middle of change, that love existed, that it shaped what came after, and that it does not simply disappear because life looks different now. Children are still made from that love, connected to it, even when its form has changed.
There is also something to be said about the person behind the camera, the one who is often missing from the frame, and in this case, that person was most often me. I was the one trying to record it all, to hold onto it in real time, to make sure that nothing slipped by unnoticed. So many parents spend years capturing everything, every angle, every milestone, every ordinary day that somehow feels worth saving, and I was no different. If anything, I leaned all the way in. My kids will tell you that I was always stopping, always turning back, always saying, “wait, just one more,” because I saw something I didn’t want to lose. There were plenty of groans, plenty of “oh mom… not again,” and more than a few dramatic sighs, but they also learned quickly that the faster they cooperated, the sooner it was over. It became our rhythm, my insistence on capturing the moment, and their reluctant, but very practiced, compliance.
It is easy to overlook that those photographs were never random. They were not just moments I happened to catch. They were intentional acts of noticing. I was paying attention, watching the small shifts, the quiet growth, the details that might otherwise be forgotten. I saw the moments as they were happening and, even then, I understood that they would not remain in that way ever again, so I did the only thing I knew how to do. I tried to keep them, the best way I could.
Photographs reflect that kind of seeing. They show smiles changing over time, hands growing steadier, rooms that once felt full, and ordinary days that, in hindsight, held more meaning than anyone realized at the time. They capture the in-between moments, before childhood gives way to independence, before voices deepen, before homes feel different, before time rearranges everything in ways no one can fully anticipate or comprehend.
In that way, photographs are not just records of what happened, they are evidence that it mattered. They hold onto the versions of people that existed in a specific moment, the ones that may not live in memory as clearly as we would like. They allow us to return, even briefly, to a time and place that we would otherwise continue to move further away from.
Sitting in that room, with one generation being remembered and another preparing to begin something new, it became clear that this is what photographs do. They bridge what was with what is coming next. They carry love forward, not perfectly, not without change, but faithfully.
And the truth is, I am still doing it. I am still stopping along the way, still turning back, still trying to catch the light just right before it disappears, convincing myself that this sunrise or that sunset simply cannot be missed before the day begins or ends. I am still capturing the moments, especially the ordinary ones that do not feel like anything special until they are gone, trying in my own way to hold onto them just a little longer, to keep them somewhere safe. If my camera roll is any indication, along with the millions of photos living on my phone and floating somewhere in a cloud I am not sure I fully trust or entirely understand, I have not slowed down. And yes, there are probably twelve nearly identical versions of the same sky, because clearly each one felt necessary at the time. Because even now, I know what I knew then, that these moments will not last.
And one day, when those photographs are held again, whether for a service, a wedding, or simply a quiet moment of reflection, the hope is that they are seen for what they truly are. Not just images, but reminders that people, especially my children, were deeply known, fully loved, and carefully noticed, even on the most ordinary days doing the most ordinary tasks. Because in the end, photographs are one of the ways we hold on, not just to what was, but to what mattered most.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Outside

Kristine Binder

I try to get outside every single day. To walk, to run, to move my body in some way, even when the weather is doing everything it can to convince me otherwise. Extreme heat, biting cold, wind that feels personal, humidity that is oppressive, it does not always make it easy, but I go anyway. Some days it is a long walk, some days it is shorter, and lately, if I am being honest, there is more walking than running as my body gently reminds me that I am not in my 50s anymore. And that is fine. I am still moving. I am still showing up.
People often ask why I am so consistent about it, and the answer is actually pretty simple. When I am outside, I am not distracted. Most days I do not listen to music, I am not on a call, and I am not catching up on a podcast or a book. I am just there, listening to the world. The birds, the cars passing by, kids playing somewhere in the distance, the ordinary sounds of a neighborhood going about its day. There is something grounding about it, something that pulls me out of my own head and places me back into the present.
Being outside forces me to look up. To look around. To notice.
And when I notice, I see things I might have otherwise missed. Small things, but meaningful ones. A flag fluttering in the wind. New buds coming up. The kind of details that are easy to overlook when life feels heavy or rushed. But when I slow down enough to see them, they feel like little reminders that there is still beauty here, still joy, still life happening all around me.
Yesterday, it was a hawk and a cardinal.
The hawk flew past me as I walked down the sidewalk, close enough to feel like a moment meant just for me. And then there was the cardinal. I could hear him for blocks before I ever saw him, that distinct call cutting through everything else. I knew he was there, so I kept looking, scanning the trees until I finally found him perched at the very top, like he had been waiting for me to notice.
The moment I did, and I took a picture, he stopped singing.
It felt almost intentional, like his job was simply to get my attention.
I kept walking for a few more blocks, and then I heard another one. Different tree, same song. Again, I looked up, found him, and again, as soon as I saw him, he stopped.
Coincidence, maybe. But it didn’t feel like one.
Because for me, the cardinal is not just a bird.
It is a constant reminder of my dad.
It is a reminder that he is still with me, that he is watching me, that somehow, in ways I cannot fully explain, he is still part of my life. And every time I hear that call before I see him, it feels like a gentle nudge. Like he is reminding me that if I slow down, if I listen, he will guide me.
I look for signs everywhere now. I move through my day asking the universe, sometimes quietly and sometimes not so quietly, to show me that my people are still with me. And I see them. In hearts that appear in unexpected places, in cardinals, in hawks, in flowers that seem a little too perfectly placed to be random. I choose to believe those moments are not accidents. I choose to believe they are connection.
But I also know this, I would miss all of it if I stayed inside.
Being outside clears something inside of me. With every inhale and exhale, something shifts. Something loosens. Something that has been sitting heavy inside my body finds a little more space to move and be removed.
Getting outside and moving my body during my divorce saved me. And that is not an exaggeration. It saved the fragile pieces of my mental health that were barely holding on at the time. It gave me somewhere to put the thoughts, the emotions, the questions that had nowhere else to go.
Over the past two years, while caring for my parents, it saved me again. In the middle of responsibility, stress, and anticipatory grief, those walks became a lifeline. A place where I could breathe, even if just for a little while. And now, in this new and different season of grief, I can feel it doing the same thing once more. It is helping me find my way back to myself, slowly, quietly, one step at a time.
There is something about being outside, about breathing in fresh air and feeling the elements against my skin, that makes me feel more alive than almost anything else. It reminds me that my body is still here, still capable, still moving forward even when my heart feels heavy.
It does not fix everything.
But it softens things.
And sometimes, that is enough.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Stillness

Kristine Binder

As a 60th birthday gift to myself, I joined a gym. This may not sound like a particularly profound milestone, but for me it felt like a quiet act of defiance against a year that had taken more out of me than I expected. I told myself that no matter what else life threw my way, this would be something I did for me. And somewhat to my own surprise, I have not missed a single day since I started. Every. Single. Day. Some days I work out harder than others. Some days it’s cardio, some days it’s weights, and some days the workout is generous enough to be described as “movement.” But I show up. Consistency, it turns out, is sometimes more important than intensity.
The one part of the routine I never skip is the sauna. Fifteen to twenty minutes in that heat feels like something is leaving my body that has been stuck there for too long. I’m sure there are impressive physiological explanations for why this is good for me, and I’m happy to claim all the health benefits experts talk about. But what I notice most are the mental ones. Sitting in that heat, sweating out the day, feels like a release valve for the parts of grief and stress that quietly accumulate in the body. Apparently grief is not only emotional, it is also very committed to setting up residence in my shoulders.
Most of my days are anything but quiet. Teaching means I am “on” from the moment I walk into the building. Decisions, conversations, explanations, encouragement, redirection…lather, rinse and repeat. My brain rarely gets a break. After school there are more conversations, more responsibilities, and the drive home is usually spent catching up with friends or returning calls that have been waiting patiently for my attention. My life is full of people, which is a blessing I do not take lightly, but it also means that stillness is not something that naturally appears in my day.
Then I get to the gym and something shifts.
No one there knows me. No one knows my story or the things I am carrying. No one knows about my grief, my pride, my resilience, or the complicated chapters that have brought me to this moment. To them I am simply another person on a treadmill or lifting a weight or quietly existing in the corner of the sauna. I am just taking up space, which turns out to be incredibly freeing.
It is the same now when I walk or run. I put my phone on do not disturb and go. No one is asking questions, no one needs answers, and no one expects anything from me. It was never that way before until now. I do not have to explain myself or justify my emotions or revisit demons I am not particularly interested in entertaining that day. It is just me and my thoughts. The ones I choose to engage with and the ones that show up uninvited, which…if we are being honest… is how most thoughts operate anyway.
Recently I have also attended a few meditation sessions, which has been an interesting development for someone whose mind has historically operated like a browser with 47 tabs open at once. I learned about the “monkey mind,” the restless mental chatter that hops from one thought to another without ever fully settling. Sitting in stillness does not come naturally to me. In fact, the first time I tried it, my brain seemed determined to remind me of everything from my grocery list I forgot to buy in 2007.
But something interesting happened afterward. When the meditation ended, I felt an immense sense of peace, followed by a kind of exhaustion that feels strangely familiar. It is the same tiredness you feel after running a long race. Apparently, sitting still with your thoughts can be just as demanding as running a marathon—who knew?
Grief has changed the rhythm of my life in ways I am still learning to understand. There is a natural tension in being human between belonging and solitude. We need connection, community, laughter, and the comfort of knowing someone else is walking beside us. But we also need solitude. We need quiet spaces where we can sit with our thoughts and make sense of the emotions that don’t always behave politely enough to appear on a convenient schedule.
When grief enters your life, that rhythm becomes exaggerated. Some days you crave the presence of other people because being alone feels like standing in an echo chamber of sadness. Other days even the smallest interaction feels overwhelming, and what you want most is silence. The pendulum swings back and forth between connection and solitude, and learning to follow that rhythm becomes part of the work of healing.
The truth is that much of grief is experienced alone. In those quiet hours, when the world is not asking anything of us, we sit with loss and slowly begin the difficult work of understanding it. In that stillness, sorrow begins to transform. It becomes deeper, more complex, and eventually…. if we allow it…. something that can expand our capacity for compassion.
My therapist and others who have gently guided me through this season keep telling me the same thing: the answers I am searching for will come in the stillness.
This is mildly inconvenient advice for someone who was raised to believe that movement equals progress and productivity equals worth. I was conditioned to stay busy, stay useful, and stay in motion. Rest was seen as weakness and sitting still was NEVER an option. If you were tired, you probably just needed to work harder. If you were struggling, the solution was to keep going in order to outrun it.
Stillness was never presented or accepted as an option.
So learning to sit quietly with my thoughts has become its own kind of practice. I am learning that movement does not always have to be loud or fast to count. Sometimes movement is subtle. Sometimes it is simply the act of allowing yourself to feel something instead of outrunning it.
Either way, I am worthy.
Either way, I am doing enough.
So these days I find myself gravitating toward the quiet places more often. The sauna. The treadmill. A long walk where no one knows my name and no one needs anything from me. No music, no books, no phone calls—just the noise of my own brain, which, depending on the day, can be the loudest sound in the world.
Learning to listen to that noise…. and eventually quiet it…. is a skill I am still developing.
Slowly.
And I am beginning to suspect that slowly might be exactly the pace that grief requires.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace