Thankful

on gratitude and fear

I apologize for sending this email a day late, I was sailing around Cape Hatteras and I grossly misestimated how sea sick I would get and how much cell reception would be available. This is also a more personal and current essay than many that I have sent. I was very anxious about sending it and how you all would receive it. I hope you enjoy, I will not make the tardiness a habit, and I am so thankful for you.

Xx

Hannah

PS: as an additional note to new readers—I am a woman and most of my audience is women, I often speak to readers as “my girls” and “my sisters in christ”. My intention is not to be gendered, you are one of my girls irrespective of your gender identity, I use it the same as many male gendered terms we use to address groups of people. Sisters in christ is a tongue in cheek reference to camaraderie. I am not evangelizing I am just being silly.

On Gratitude

Last Thanksgiving, I has a Negroni at the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo. I stayed in a large suite with a marble bathroom and elaborate white moulding everywhere. I wore a long, suede Loro Piana skirt with a Ralph Lauren sweater, a brown Birkin bag, and black patent Manolo pumps. (Do not match your shoes to your bag, so dated!) I believe we ate at the three Michelin Star restaurant in the hotel. What more could a woman want?

But, my girls, I was so sad. I felt isolated and crippled and lonely. I had around 100,000 TikTok followers but no other real career experience or prospects. I was married to a kind, funny, extremely intelligent man but I felt like we couldn’t give each other what we needed, I felt like I wasn’t quite myself anymore. Physically, I was uncomfortable with the twenty or twenty-five pounds I gained during covid. I thought I wanted a baby, though I wasn’t quite sure. I didn’t know how to fix anything and I did not know why I couldn’t- after coming from so little and having so much- just be grateful for the glamorous life I had. I spent five or six hours a day on the phone with friends.

(As a personal aside, Kate- you are my soul mate, I have many blessings but meeting a friend like you in my 30s is at the very top of my list. I love you so much.

MacKenzie, Gillian, Lauren, Christie, George, Maggie, and Jill, you are my family, I am so sorry that this year I have taken more than I have had to give, I am so grateful for every text and phone call, for all of the advice I did not take and for the laughs when I needed them most, I cannot thank you enough. I love you.

To my siblings, Jungle VIP I love you so much, I am sorry for all of the times I’ve disappointed you and thankful for the family we’ve found among the chaos, you’re my whole heart.

To everyone who has followed along, commented, read and listened: You all gave me the tenacity to make brave choices, a deep sense of purpose, and made me believe I was capable of making a life for myself. You have no idea how you have changed my life, I owe you a debt that I cannot repay. Thank you, I hope you’ll stick around.)

A few months later I was in the process of an amicable but traumatic divorce. I went to South Africa, because I knew people there and because my grandparents who raised me spent a few years living there and felt deeply connected to the country. Without a family home to venture back to, it was the only place I could think to go. When I came back to America, I bought a boat to live on. This Thanksgiving I sailed from Hampton, VA to Beaufort, NC around Cape Hatteras, in the open ocean- my first real passage on a boat. The seas were rough and I was very sick and cold and there was not turkey, much less a Michelin stared meal. I threw up and sipped gatorade while my boyfriend captained the boat and kept us moving quickly. I laid in a dark room without cell reception, too ill to read, alone with my thoughts.

This year, I am so grateful that I have the resources and courage of conviction to try something new. It is not lost on me that the combination of freedom and money necessary to do something as risky and expensive as moving onto a catamaran is extremely rare. I am grateful to my ex for his patience and grateful to my boyfriend for agreeing to go along with my insane, unconventional plan to live a nomadic life in the Caribbean. I am grateful for my friends and family and all of the conventional things.

I am also sad and scared, I am scared I will never have the baby that I gave up so much to have, scared I will never sell a book, scared I have already reached the peak of my life and that I am sliding quickly into tragic disarray. As silly as it sounds, I am scared I will never be able to buy another overpriced handbag. I am scared that living such a strange life will isolate me further from my friends and family and that I will end up alone. I have always been a bit unconventional, I cannot do things the easy way. I do not know if that’s because of self-sabotage or bravery.

In moments of fear- and my sisters in christ, I have had many moments of fear the past twelve months- we must keep on, keep making choices, keep acting, keep moving forward. The decision to pause for more than is absolutely necessary because of fear or regret is also a choice, also a use of time, also costly. Inaction does not stop the world from moving around us.

My dad was a state-champion swimmer and a swimming instructor. He, for many years, taught special swim classes for terrified adults who could not swim. I have heard he is a very good teacher. I do not know, he did not teach me to swim. When I learned to SCUBA, I almost failed the course. I was recovering from a cold and my ears were clogged, I also do not know how to dive. I am a competent but not a strong swimmer and I have always been scared to go head first into water. When I tried to learn as a kid, I water always rushed into my nose and gave me those horrible brain burns. During the basic scuba course, you are required to duck dive— to dive down, head first, while already in the water— about ten feet down and then swim several meters before surfacing. Every time I tried, my right ear throbbed from the pressure, I felt like I was suffocating, and I came up crying.

My friend Kate, a former lifeguard, took the course with me, “What’s going on?” She asked.

“I am so mad at my dad because he never taught me how to do this.”

“You can learn now.”

And I did.

In the Bahamas, where I plan to spend most of this winter and spring, the best way to consistently eat fresh protein is to spearfish. To duck dive much deeper than ten feet, to find a fish, to spear it, to bring it to the surface, clean, and eat it. I do not know if I will be able to do duck dive more than ten feet much less catch a fish while I’m deep in the ocean, the thought terrifies me. But I have made the choices, I have bet on myself and on this new life and on my ability to learn and work and innovate and create the life that I need. So I will learn. I will not fail because I will not regret betting on myself.

I am thankful for me, when I have nothing else, I have myself. You also always have yourself but I hope you have so much more.

I am so thankful for you!

All of my love,

Hannah Stella

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