Grief is a strange emotion. For most of my childhood, I was lucky — I didn’t experience much personal loss. Death was something that happened on television or in stories my parents told about distant relatives I barely knew, people I didn’t have memories of or context to care about. My ADHD probably played a role too — even when something did matter in the moment, it didn’t always stick long enough to feel real later.

That changed after I turned 19, when my grandmother from Texas died. It was my first real loss. Then, at 23, it all hit at once: in the span of a few months, I lost a close friend with muscular dystrophy, my other grandmother, and my husband’s grandmother. It was a season of loss so compact, so relentless, that I didn’t fully process what had happened. I didn’t know it then, but that was when the auditorium of grief quietly came into existence.

It sat there, dimly lit — not on any map I could identify, but undeniably real. Some seats were already occupied by those losses, each one settled in with its own particular weight. And there were many more seats, still empty, quietly waiting.

The Click of the Lock

Burkley was our first dog — my husband and I got him early in our relationship, and he became a constant in our lives for nearly 18 years. He wasn’t just a pet; he was a fixture in the background of everyday life. For the last five years of his life, I worked from home, so we were together nearly 24 hours a day. He was always there: curled up nearby while I worked, trotting behind me from room to room, waiting at the door when I came back from errands. A significant portion of my thoughts were dedicated to his presence.

Losing him was staggering, although not entirely unexpected. We made the decision to end his life because he was suffering, and even though it was the right choice, it didn’t soften the blow. In the days and weeks that followed, I found myself crying during completely ordinary moments, like while out on a run, watching TV, or taking a shower. Evenings were worse. The grief would hit suddenly, overwhelming me without warning.

But what I noticed was that I wasn’t only grieving Burkley. His death had clicked something open — that hidden door — and through it came the sorrow of every other loss I’d ever carried. It wasn’t just one goodbye anymore. It was all of them.

The Door Opens

There’s a strange thing that happens when deep grief takes hold — it rarely stays contained. You think you’re mourning one thing, one being, one loss, one moment. But then the weight of it shifts, and suddenly you’re feeling everything you never fully processed. Every sorrow seems to wake up at once.

That’s what it felt like after Burkley died. It started with his absence — his empty bed, the hollow sound of the fluorescent light buzzing in the quiet kitchen in the morning without sounds of Burkley — but what came next was harder to name. I wasn’t missing only him. I was missing my friend who died years prior. I was missing my grandmothers. I was missing people I hadn’t consciously grieved in years. The door to the auditorium had swung open again, and the crowd inside stirred.

Grief is recursive like that. It loops. It layers. One loss hands off the microphone to another. Sometimes you’re not even sure who’s speaking through your tears — you just know you’ve been pulled in.

Inside the Auditorium

When the door opens, you don’t so much walk in as fall in.

The space is quiet like a held breath, heavy with expectation, like in a theater waiting for something to begin. The lighting is low, but soft enough to make out rows of seats stretching far beyond what you thought your heart could contain.

Some seats are clearly occupied. You recognize them immediately — the big griefs, the ones you’ve sat with before. They hold your gaze without apology, making you feel uncomfortable. Other seats are hazier with the losses you forgot you knew. Things like an old friend you drifted from before they passed, someone you didn’t know well but still feel the absence of, the pets, the relationships with the living that ended because you moved, or changed jobs, or quietly outgrew each other.

Then there are the empty seats. Those are the ones that stop you cold. You know they’re not empty forever and what will occupy them could be harder than what's with you right now.

You sit among them all. You don’t really have a choice. The room holds you — in that strange tension of being surrounded by grief and yet somehow not alone. You realize you’re not there with the people and pets you’ve lost — you’re there with every past version of yourself who’s grieved before. The nineteen-year-old who didn’t know what to do with his sadness, the twenty-three-year-old who was overwhelmed by too much loss too quickly, the you from just last week who didn’t expect to cry so hard on the hiking trail.

Each grief has a voice. Sometimes they speak at once. Sometimes they’re quiet, just sitting there with you. And for a while, you just let them.

Exiting the Auditorium

You don’t know when or how it happens, exactly. The grief doesn’t end — it just quiets. The room doesn’t empty — it just recedes. And eventually, you realize you’ve stood up. You’re back at the door.

You might have only been in there for a short while, or maybe it’s been a few days. Either way, while you’re relieved to be out, there’s a strange part of you that misses it — the consistency of emotional experience, the clarity of feeling. Brains are weird like that.

Intermission

Grief has had a way of reshaping me — not all at once, but over time, visit by visit. It’s rarely just about what I’ve lost most recently. Each new grief brushes up against the old ones, stirring memories, emotions, and versions of myself I thought I’d outgrown or left behind.

The auditorium never really closes. It’s part of me — a quiet, heavy space that fills slowly over time. Sometimes I stumble into it unexpectedly. Sometimes I choose to walk through the door. And sometimes I just stand outside, hand on the knob, not quite ready. It wasn’t until my dad died in 2020 that I finally saw the auditorium clearly — and gave it a name. It had always been there. I just hadn’t noticed it completely.

But if you find yourself inside your own auditorium, know this: you’re not alone. Not in that room, not in this life, not in your grief. They may feel overwhelming but remember it is made up of love. Every seat is proof that you’ve lived, connected, and cared. Intermission will come and you will get through this.

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.”
— From On Joy and Sorrow by Kahlil Gibran

One of the hardest-to-name feelings I live with is the sense that I’m always almost there — on the cusp of a thought, a breakthrough, a deeper understanding. I can feel the shape of an idea forming, but it slips just out of reach before I can hold onto it. It’s like trying to tune into a radio station (if you even know what a radio station is, lol) that’s just barely out of range — you catch the melody, but not the lyrics. I don't know if its the ADHD brain, but it's something I've struggled with all my life.

That feeling leaves me hovering in shallow work mode more often than I’d like. I want to go deep — into strategy, into clarity, into momentum — but my brain skims, skips, gets stuck. Sometimes I fight back with structure: I block off time, I write things down, I coax the ideas into form. And when it works, it really works — the flow comes, the spark hits, people feel the energy. But when it doesn’t, I know how it looks from the outside: like I’m avoiding the work, dropping balls, falling short.

That gap — between the magic I know I can reach and the reality of how often it escapes me — is one of the most frustrating parts of living in my mind.

I've been meaning to write up what's been going on since I left Shopify last year. ADHD brain makes me want to come up with a long well-written post with a storyline and quippy section titles. Well, then ADHD brain aborts the process because I get decision paralysis and never write anything.

I got laid off on May 4th, 2023. I was very upset by the whole situation, rage sold my SHOP equity, and then got rid of everything with the Shopify logo on it. Shopify was such a good fit for me and I was learning a lot. Losing that HURT. That catharsis helped me focus on how I wanted to spend my time being unemployed. I decided to start looking for a new job right away instead of taking a few weeks to decompress. I'm not entirely sure I'd do that again, but I wouldn't have found Figma if I had done that.

I stopped keeping count of the number of applications that I filed - easily in the 150 range for ones that weren't just clicking an apply button on LinkedIn. I also grasped onto the extra time in the day to go for longer runs, poke around the yard, and hang out with my doggos. I had a couple of great companies in the pipeline after a few months, one of them being Figma and the other 1Password.

I ended up moving forward with Figma because it was a combo of things I really enjoyed doing - leading a smaller but mighty team, and being the engineering lead of an entire product, the Figma Desktop app. I also loved using Figma on a regular basis at Shopify and Automattic, with FigJam being the culmination of the love for how it brought people together. There's something magical about working for a company that uses the product it makes to in fact make their product. 🤩

That's the update for now!

I was having a semi-philosophical discussion with a friend about hobbies, which inspired this post.

In my mind, I have a long list of things I want to learn. Technical things for work, technical things for personal projects, fun stuff, hobbies, etc. The ADHD brain in me makes it difficult to prioritize what I spend my time on. My friend mentioned that they've been spending so much more personal time lately on doing things unrelated to programming. That resonated with me as well!

We started riffing on hobbies. My dad filled his house with woodworking tools, metalworking equipment, cameras and studio lighting, electrical components, and beyond. I grew up witnessing how my dad experienced hobbies and find myself as an adult somewhat mirroring that. When I get into a hobby, I have to fight the urge to buy all the accessories. How can you possibly do hobby X without all of the tools possible?

Here's the thing - the absolute truth about most hobbies is you never really need much to start. Woodworking? A hand saw and a chisel is all you really need to create neat things. Photography? A disposable film camera is all you need. Cycling? A used bike is all you need. Running? Shoes and maybe non-chaffing underwear is all you need.

I hate having caches of tools for hobbies that sit there idle, unused, unrealized of their potential. It's the same feeling I get having a bookshelf full of books I haven't read yet. If I feel I need more accessories to want to do the hobby, it's an indicator I'm more into collecting those accessories than doing the hobby. Otherwise, I'll get overwhelmed with where to start with that hobby.

How do you like to manage your hobbies?

On April 3, 2013, I was sitting in the #devmke Freenode IRC channel talking to other developers in the Milwaukee (Wisconsin, USA) area. I saw a conversation about one of the people working from home and thought, what an incredible place this must be to work! For some reason, I had heard the name Automattic before – and after landing on the homepage, I realized why! It was because of WordPress and specifically signing up for WordPress.com to get an Akismet API key to prevent comment spam. When I saw a Mobile Wrangler job posting, I immediately applied. I got the offer in May and started near the end of July 2013.

Without really exaggerating, working remotely at Automattic has literally saved my life. I’ve learned more about how my mind works, how I approach work, what relationships mean to me, and what value I can bring to an interaction. I’ve learned how to lead like Aaron, embracing my own unique style of seeing the universe and helping inspire others to connect and create outcomes.

Every year (pre-pandemic), every Automattician would get together in one location for a week - called the Grand Meetup. My heart is sad that I won’t be at the next Grand Meetup. That annual event has created some of the fondest memories of my entire life. I’ve become friends with people that I still have yet to actually work with directly. That’s the power of the system there – we value our connections over the work. With those connections, we overlay the work after. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve turned those lunchtime conversations at the GM into conduits to get things done later. Meetups are critical to Automattic’s success.

Some of the highlights of my time at Automattic was with helping organize several of the Automattic Grand Meetup closing parties. In 2015 it was with the first Automattic band performance and the Jane Doze DJing, 2016 with a coworker and me DJing, and 2017 with MICK DJing. This all came from me plugging my phone into the PA system of the dinner tent in 2014, playing some of my favorite songs. Our favorite Chief of Staff, Rose, noticed everyone enjoying themselves and pinged me to help out in the following years. Little did I know that I would be negotiating performance contracts and coordinating an audio and lighting production crew in the next months. What a rush. Seeing the look on Matt's (the CEO) face walking into the ballroom before we opened the doors in 2015 was the best payoff ever.

For the last four and a half years I've been leading the Woo Mobile product teams, and it has been a joy. I started the team with just one other person and grew it into the group of 30+ people it is today. Mentoring & coaching four leads made me see how I could be a better engineering lead. I also got a chance to develop product management skills, wearing multiple hats. I’m so proud of everyone on the team (and everyone else we’ve worked with!) for getting the product to where it is today. I feel like I am leaving at a high point in my career there. Nine years will have been the longest I’ve ever been at a place before.

Automattic has been a great home for me and has helped me through a lot of bad times and given me a lot of good times. It wasn’t my intention to find a different place to work. I started looking at other companies for inspiration on defining my role better and for seeing where I should aim my career at. The side effect of that research was a little spark of excitement forming to try something different. Life is too short to not take some risks once in a while.

My last day at Automattic was Friday, June 3. I spent the last couple of weeks passing the baton off to a teammate and getting as much as I could out of my head for others. I had 1:1s with my boss, my team leads, and other Automattic employees wanting to say goodbye.

Those two weeks were tremendous in helping me process my exit. I posted my farewell notice, told the team, turned in my hardware, filled out the exit survey, had a final 1:1 with my HR rep, DJed one final Friday jam session, and then attended a farewell Zoom I planned. My team put together a very thoughtful farewell video and organized a couple gifts for me which were amazing. I definitely felt the warm fuzzies and the sense of loss we all were feeling. What a great group of humans! 🥰

I didn't stick around for my access to get cut in Slack - it was already an emotional day and waiting for that felt unnecessary. I walked away from my last day feeling a bit lonely which is certainly an artifact of not being in an office with other humans.

The departure process at Automattic felt anticlimactic. I'm not sure what else I had expected to happen, honestly. They celebrate new hires, new houses, new partners, and new babies, but don't really celebrate someone leaving at a company level. My farewell post had a LOT of heartfelt goodbyes and the process of reading and replying to them was cathartic. It helped me recognize my true impact on the company by hearing the stories of how I've helped shape the culture there and affected so many lives. That was priceless.

On the exit survey, Automattic asks "would you consider ever coming back to work at Automattic?". I answered truthfully:

Yes.

What's next? More details to come. 🤫