I used to think romanticizing meant your life had to look a certain way.

Linen. Slow mornings. Farmer’s markets. Coffee in the kind of mug that photographs well. A pace that gives you enough time to notice things. (pink and paisley… blah)

I spent years… if I’m honest… waiting for my life to reach the aesthetic requirements before I let myself actually inhabit it.

Here’s the thing I’m learning at my grandmother’s kitchen table:

The candle doesn’t make the moment sacred. The attention does.

A few weeks ago I sat down with my grandmother for what I thought was going to be an ordinary cup of coffee. She put something on in the background… vinyl, something from the early seventies, an artist whose name I’ve already forgotten but whose sound I won’t. It wouldn’t find me on any algorithm. Wasn’t in any playlist I’d curated. It was just hers.

And for about ten minutes, we sat in the kitchen and listened to music that existed entirely outside of the life I’ve built for myself.

And I thought: when was the last time I let something completely outside my own curation find me?

That is what I’m calling Summer at Grandma’s.

I came here to caretake. That word… caretaking… carries a specific weight. Obligation. Disruption. Something to manage around my real life.

The moment I renamed it, everything changed.

Because Summer at Grandma’s is different. Summer at Grandma’s has music you wouldn’t find. Books on shelves chosen by a version of someone you love from decades you never lived in. Wisdom that drops over completely ordinary cups of coffee in sentences that would never make it into a podcast… unrepeatable, available only if you’re sitting still enough to catch them.

When I was a kid spending actual summers at my actual grandma’s, I was too busy wishing I was somewhere else to know what I was in the middle of.

I’m not making that mistake twice.

Here’s the pattern I see most often in high-achieving women, and it’s the one I was living:

Everything becomes a “have to.”

Have to make the coffee.
Have to lead the meeting.
Have to show up.
Have to be present.
Have to perform the version of your life that looks like you have it together.

And somewhere in the accumulation of all those have-tos, the actual life drains out of the life.

The shift… the one that is both simpler and harder than it sounds… is from “have to” to “get to.”

Get to make the coffee, slowly, the way that smells like every good morning you’ve ever had.
Get to lead the meeting, which means there’s a team that trusted you to be there.
Get to take care of someone, which means there’s someone left to take care of.

This is not toxic positivity. This is not “just be grateful.” This is a neurological choice… because what we frame as burden stays burden, and what we frame as privilege begins to feel like it.

What we attend to, grows. What we call sacred, becomes sacred.

That’s the psychology behind romanticizing. It’s not an aesthetic. It’s not crystals and woo. It’s a decision about where you put your attention.

So here is my actual, un-curated guide to romanticizing your life… the version that works when life isn’t looking the way you planned:

Make the ordinary thing sacred by giving it your full attention. One thing, fully felt, is worth more than twenty things halfway experienced. The coffee tastes different when you actually taste it. Put the phone down. Be in the moment you’re in.

Rename what you’re in. Call it something that lets you be present instead of resistant. I’m not caretaking. I’m spending Summer at Grandma’s. The circumstance is identical. My relationship to it is completely different.

Look for what wouldn’t find you otherwise. The music not in your playlist. The book you’d never have chosen. The conversation that only happens when you’re still enough to have it. These are not accidents. They’re what’s available specifically because you slowed down.

Stop saving the good things for a better version of your life. The nice dishes. The good candle. The real coffee. The slow morning. You are not waiting to earn these. This is your life, right now, as it is. Use the good things in it.

Find what’s only available here. Every season… including the ones you didn’t choose… has something in it that exists nowhere else. Your job, before you leave it, is to find the thing.

Something my grandmother said this morning has been following me around all day.

She was telling me about a trip she took in her twenties. Before kids. Before life got loud. And she said, almost like she was reminding herself, “I think I was so busy being brave that I forgot to be there.”

I’ve been sitting with that sentence for hours.

Because I think that is the thing high-achieving women do better than almost anything else: we are so busy being brave… saying yes, pushing through, performing fine, proving we belong… that we forget to actually inhabit the life we’re building.

Romanticizing is the decision to stop being so busy being brave that you forget to be there.

I want to say one more thing before I close.

On the other side of this summer is adventure. Unknown, uncharted territory that I’m genuinely not sure I’m ready for.

But I’m learning something here, in this quiet, at this kitchen table, over these ordinary cups of coffee:

You don’t get to inhabit the big life if you haven’t practiced inhabiting the small one.

The softening was the first step. The romanticizing is the second.

Next week, we talk about what makes both of them sustainable.

Because the thing underneath romanticizing… the thing that keeps it working when life isn’t cooperating… is ritual.

Stay with me. 🤍

And forward along to anyone else that might enjoy following along…

What’s Next

If this is landing somewhere specific, I want to hear about it. Reply and tell me what you’re currently in the middle of… and what it would mean to start looking at it differently.

And if you’re ready to stop circling and actually start the work: the Grey Area Audit™ is a 30-minute conversation that shows you exactly where to begin.

Book at bywayofgrey.com/book or just reply here.

From the grey,
Laura