Today marks the first day of school for us in Austin. I mourn the end of summer, while I run hard at the school doors opening.
The last three months have been filled with so much love, just as much growth, and a fair amount of breaking up sibling fist fights. Milly learned to ride a bike, swim two lengths of the pool, code like an engineer, and dance like a hopes-to-be West End star. Ernie learned to dive like a belly-flopping pro, build Legos for 8-year-olds, walk four miles, mind the gap on the Tube, and share bites of his food with the rest of us.
The kids went to eight different camps, together, and loved each one. Then they had three weeks off, including a two-week holiday to see our family and friends in the UK. Milly adopted a British accent, which she left behind on the airplane home to Austin, and Ernie declared he likes being half American and half British, but when it comes to “football,” he thinks he’ll tell people he’s 100% from England.
I exercised a lot, perhaps inspired by the World Cup, which I loved watching and missed the second it ended. I learned to enjoy cooking again. I found an unexpected joy in making the kids’ packed lunches every morning because seeing their lunch boxes return home licked clean, knowing their bellies were filled with good, healthy food, made me feel like a good mom.
I worked a lot (what else is new), and also learned when to shut off. I read six books. I started writing my own book. I laughed and played a lot with my husband. And one week, we even had sex twice.
There were shit moments, too.
I didn’t make it back to Vermont this summer because we were overdue for a trip to the UK, and I missed my family, my friends, and the intensity of Vermont’s greenness in July. It left me aching on a few days.
My brother lost his best friend, and I hated not being able to hug him in person. Read was like an older brother to me growing up, and him dying made me look in the mirror and remember that we don’t know when our lives will get cut short, so we better enjoy them.
Jonny and his dad got into an argument when we were in the UK over something silly. It made me miss my dad. Being in England always makes me miss my dad. I brought one of his old Burberry rain trenches to wear while I was there, but in a very un-British turn of events, it did not rain once.
In fact, there was so little rain that on our final night in the UK, we were sitting at a restaurant in London when the room fell silent as every single patron's phone bleeped with a severe alert stating there was a very high risk of wildfires nationally. Milly responded, "I thought we moved from Topanga to escape wildfires. I didn't think they had fires in England." Me either, Mills.
Of all the things I did this summer, from the highs to the lows to the growth we experienced as a family, I'll always remember summer 2026 as the season I committed to hosting Chief Moms Walks each week, pausing only when we were across the pond. I showed up at 8am every Saturday. Sometimes bright-eyed, sometimes with a slight hangover, but I showed up. Some weeks, three women joined me, and other weeks there were 15+ women trekking around Barton Hills with me.
The number of women who attended the walk each week didn't matter to me, and it still doesn't. I didn't measure myself against the number of attendees. I measured its success based on whether I, myself, attended each week, because I set a goal and I wanted to stick with it.
I tell everyone that if some weeks no one else gathers but just me, that's okay. Because the routine and ritual of the walk gets me out of bed at the start of the weekend, giving me what I need, and returns me home to my family feeling refreshed. Through these walks, I've met new people, become closer with women who were once only acquaintances, got QT with some of my closest friends, welcomed teachers without children, but who are certainly caregivers in their own right, and I created a space for all of us to come together. A place we can show up as ourselves for ourselves, and for each other.
And showing up feels good. So does community.
Let’s keep at it.
Welcome back to the school year, Chief Moms.
