The Alchemy of Hardship: Transforming Difficulty into Wisdom

Last Thursday at 6:30 a.m., something terrible happened: A beloved friend of mine died. And as if to hammer home the point, writing about returning to how things were just made no sense to me. So, I stopped.

Michelle Lewis was not just a friend and an icon in my Fort Greene, Brooklyn neighborhood—she was a community member. She was a How to Live subscriber and one of its most ardent champions.

Without fail, she’d send me a note every Wednesday after reading the new piece to tell me how perfectly timed it was, how much it helped her, or what she learned.

She was also the sort of friend who made me feel seen, valued, and cherished. No easy feat for someone who was also brash and proud, hysterically funny, irreverent, and found to be intimidating by those who didn’t know her.

She cursed, she was inappropriate, and we laughed our asses off together. But for a person who was proud, tough, and not particularly forthcoming with her emotions, she was very free with me, which made me feel special.

More important than that was her love for dogs: Michelle was a small business owner who cooked 600 dog treats every morning in her tiny Brooklyn kitchen and sold the treats to the local cafés, coffee shops, and other stores. Every morning, she’d go to Fort Greene Park, sit on the same bench, and give the leftover treats to the dogs.

There was no dog she didn’t know, no dog who didn’t love her.

They would wait for her to show up, sprinting across the park when they saw Michelle arrive. God help anyone who sat in that spot before she got there, or the dogs would jump all over the unsuspecting person. Michelle’s treats were so good that I held an intervention with my dog, Busy, and threatened her with rehab.

After being unable to write the original piece about returning to “normal” life, I thought about what Michelle loved most about this newsletter. As I perused her text messages, I saw that she most valued the bits of wisdom and advice I offered each week.

So to honor Michelle’s memory in this week’s newsletter, I will do just that and offer some of the best advice I have ever heard, thought, or given.

With wisdom from my sister Kara thrown in for good measure.

And, as always, I invite you to please add your advice/wisdom/insight in the comments.

Lack of attribution means I heard it from the wind, and out in the real world.

Modern man thinks he loses something—time—when he does not do things quickly; yet he does not know what to do with the time he gains except kill it. - Lori Gottlieb

My most profound insights don't go in the free version—they're distilled from my 27 years in therapy, decades of independent study, and work as a mental health advocate. These deeper dives are reserved for readers committed to going deeper.

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