Welcome, I’m Michelle.
I spent more than two decades as a litigator. I argued for a living, performed extroversion sixty hours a week, and optimized everything in sight. I was good at it.
It just wasn’t aligned with who I really am, or what I set out to do.
I’m a shy Midwestern girl who found her way back to herself slowly-through a kitchen garden, a pot of something simmering, and the kind of questions that don’t have verdicts.
Marygold Journal is where I write about what it actually means to live well.
Not the reinvention version-I tried that. I’m interested in something quieter. The ancient questions. The ordinary afternoons. What Aristotle called flourishing and what I’m learning to recognize in a meal I made from scratch, a marigold that came back, or a morning that asked nothing of me.
I read obsessively. I cook from scratch. I make my own skincare from tallow and calendula-the same flower that gives this journal its name, in honor of my grandmother Mary. I tend a kitchen garden in the Midwest and dream, seriously, of moving to Italy.
I’m here to pay attention, and write it down. To ask questions. To seek answers. To write from the void between selves-which is where I am currently. I want to share what misalignment costs. That slowness is a byproduct of getting it right. I use food as rhythm, philosophy as a compass and nature as a teacher.
If you’ve ever felt hollow on the inside, or are sitting with what to do since leaving it, stay awhile.
—Michelle
THE RHYTHM
I write one to two times a week. Often there is a “Sunday Table” essay —stories about food, memory and the rituals that bring us together. We discover a lot about ourselves in these moments tending a garden, navigating midlife, cooking a meal, living with the seasons.
Other times I write more interior, reflective essays—memoir style explorations of a life examined over time. Ordinary moments become a place to ask deeper questions and cultivate a more meaningful way of living.
At one point I thought I had to burn it all down. Now I’m learning to refine life more thoughtfully. Marygold Journal is where memory meets the present—and where the next chapter begins to take shape.
These essays are free. But if you choose to support my work, paid subscribers receive the Marygold Monthly, a thoughtful dispatch that includes:
One idea I’ve been refining;
One small ritual to try;
One question worth sitting with;
One seasonal note (food, rhythm, reset);
One quiet reminder.
