Holly's inner and outer freedom

Uncertainty is a requirement for hope.

"To be stuck, for as far back as I can remember, has been my greatest fear... Every decision I’ve made, be it career or relational, to stay or to go, to save or to spend, has been in the name of freedom, mine or theirs, which is, for me, movement, which is, for me, love.”

-Holly Starley, writer, editor, nomad

What does it mean to live unfixed? To untether oneself from the expectations of place, perfect health, career, stability—those markers of a life well-ordered? Holly Starley has been living the answer, shaping a life outside of the usual scripts, a life both intimate with the natural world and attuned to the ever-changing rhythms of the road. A writer, editor, and nomad, Holly embodies movement as an act of devotion, both to freedom and to an evolving sense of self. In our conversation, we explored what it means to embrace uncertainty—not just as a necessity, but as a guiding force, a form of wisdom. As she put it:

"To me, being stuck—feeling rigid, feeling not open to new ideas or new people—feels like the opposite of stability. We’re on this ball that’s traveling around the sun at seventy thousand miles an hour while it spins at a thousand miles an hour. Movement is what we’re doing all the time. And to me, being free—geographically, creatively, emotionally—is the most stable thing I know."

Holly has traveled by van, by bike, by foot, through landscapes both external and internal, collecting stories along the way. Her writing is lush and immediate, infused with reverence for the wild spaces she inhabits and the people she meets. But movement, for her, has never been about escape. It is about listening. To the land, to the wind, to the inner voice that asks again and again: What is needed? What is true? And in a surprising turn, life recently offered her a new definition of freedom—one she did not seek, but one she is learning to hold with grace. A diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis has altered the terms of her mobility, forcing her into a different kind of relationship with stillness. And yet, as she shares, even within this constraint, she has found an unexpected expansiveness—creative, expressive, deeply alive.

In this conversation, we talk about the nomadic life—its joys, its myths, its hard-earned wisdom. We talk about solitude, about community, about how the wild world reflects back our own impermanence. And we talk about writing: how memory shapes narrative, how we hold our past selves with generosity, how the act of storytelling can itself be a form of movement. Holly's perspective is a gift, a reminder that stability is not always about roots. Sometimes, it’s about trust—the trust to follow what calls, to let go of what no longer serves, and to greet each new horizon with curiosity.

Treat yourself to the first six chapters of Holly’s forth-coming memoir, Walking the East Coast and then subscribe to her newsletter so you won’t miss all the other treasures she shares.

(For those choosing to listen/watch the interview, a short addendum is at the end of this transcript where Holly expands on one of the questions. You won’t want to miss it so be sure to circle back to the transcript’s final paragraph.)

Kimberly

Holly, this is just so fun to have you here today. I think I've been looking forward to connecting with you for over a year. We had actually a possibility of it and then it fell through and then another possibility, but today, even though we are not in the same room, we are in the same state, I believe in Oregon.

But for those who haven't yet discovered the deep well of wisdom that is Holly, she is a brilliant writer, just lush, immediate prose. My god, I just went back and read a few—well, I've been doing my research for the last couple of weeks—but just now, I read one of your essays, The Sword in the Saguaro. I want everyone to read that essay and we'll talk about it. Anyway, I'm going to gush for a minute, but you're also an editor and a nomad. Someone who I think truly embodies the art of living unfixed and we'll get into why I think that. But from what I've learned through your essays and the memoir chapters that you have shared on Substack, you have shaped a life outside of the usual scripts embracing a kind of inner and outer freedom that is absolutely hard earned, wrestling with the complexities of life, but shared with this playful lightness of heart and a deep reverence for the beauty and mystery of life. So here we are with Holly.

Holly

That was a really sweet, beautiful introduction. And I've been looking forward to, like you said, we've tried to connect a couple of times and it's just so good to see your face.

Kimberly

I know, I know, it is wild. We know each other so deeply through the substack platform and yet truly there are some writers, I have no idea what their face looks like. Their icon might be a flower or something and so it's so uniquely special to fall in love with people and not have any sense of the physical form. So anyway, I wanna begin with a quote. I have a couple of my favorite quotes here with me, but for one of the quotes that you wrote, I think this was actually in one of your memoir chapters, you said, “To be stuck for as far back as I can remember has been my greatest fear. Every decision I've made, be it career or relational, to stay or to go, to save or to spend, has been in the name of freedom, mine or theirs which is for me movement, which is for me love.” It's just like such a perfect distillation of my experience of you. So let's begin by talking a little bit about this decision of yours to have a nomadic lifestyle and how has that changed you?

Holly

Yeah, so I have been drawn to a nomadic lifestyle for like, as long as I can remember, like when I was a kid and we would go on vacation and I would, I just loved watching the road out my window and pretend like I was going to stay wherever we were. Like we'd be, you know, hiking in the canyons and I pretend like I was going to stay in the canyons and make an house. So it's, it's been a lifelong thing. And this van is not my first time being in a nomadic life. I've lived in a 26 foot RV called the Leprechaun many, years ago, which was way too big for me. I have lived off a bicycle for a while. That was for like a month and a half just had everything in my pack, my panniers on the bike. And then I did a seven month trek up the US East coast with a backpack. So I've lived in a truck for a while. I've just done a lot of different periods of living in ways that are not, you know, brick and mortar. But I've lived in brick and mortar spaces too. I'm very much a yes/and and person.

Kimberly

It's interesting that you knew this from a young age and it wasn't really like, I don't think people were talking so much about the nomadic lifestyle back when I was young. I mean, we would get people who would have RVs in the Midwest and they would go on a trip, but it wasn't sort of a chosen lifestyle, except for some of the misconceptions that people have about that. So I want to clear that up just as we get started. Tell me what you, probably some things you've encountered on the road—what are some of the misconceptions about this lifestyle?

Holly

Yeah, you know, I was thinking about that. I guess I don't know for sure. This is Ruby, I'm in Ruby the van right now. She's a little bit janky, especially on the outside. She's old. This was like in 1996. She's scratched up. And I think there are a lot of, I get seen as like being down and out a lot of the time. And I have a funny relationship with that because, I have felt like, like push back against that. And then I'm like, What is wrong with you? There's nothing wrong with that. So that's been an interesting thing for me to confront. I don't really know what other misconceptions people have, but probably a lot.

Kimberly

Well, there, mean, of course you've seen Nomadland, correct? One of the things that was just so beautiful that came out of that was this wild sense of community that I think, you know, we don't have living on our crowded neighborhood streets in downtown Portland. And is that something, was that stereotypical or is that something that you've really experienced, this larger world, larger sense of community?

Holly

You know, I think that kind of also just depends on, it’s person-to-person. There is absolutely the opportunity for it. And I'll say that I actually met Bob Wells, the guy that is—a lot of the people in Nomadland are actually nomads. And Bob Wells is the guy that kind of looks like Santa Claus with the long beard in Quartzsite where Frances McDormand's character goes to kind of learn the ropes. So I went to that same gathering. And Nomadland certainly shows one way of living on the road, but there's a lot of different, there's people that are digital nomads in big, huge, expensive, you know, there's like $300,000, $400,000 vans out there, which is crazy. Yes, to your question, I have met just some really special people that I consider my, I call them my road family. We meet up again whenever we happen to be in the same area code and there's all kinds of gatherings for nomads so yeah, lots of lots of community opportunity.

Kimberly

One of the other things I remember you wrote, you said, “One of my favorite things about nomad-ing is the people I'm sharing the road with. While circumstances can can and do play a role, life without walls very often is or becomes a deliberate choice to live differently than the norm. And with that comes seeing differently.” So tell me how you see, how your vision has changed with this.

Holly

That's a really great question. One really obvious thing is that I do spend a lot of time in sort of what you think of as wild spaces. And so to wake up in the morning—I have tons of windows, I wake up when the sun comes up and I step outside and there's maybe jackrabbits running around or lots of birds singing and I've seen coyotes and I've had coyotes surround my van one night and just I think that it helps you to have this perspective where you're, it's more like a bird's eye view perspective. And literally I often will climb—like say there's a ridge outside my window and I think I'm gonna get to that one day—and I can climb and I remember there was this ridge I wanted to get to in the Arizona desert and climbing to the top of it and looking down and I could see these patterns of the nurse plants, well saguaros aren't nurse plants, but mesquites or ironwoods and then all this growth patterns that would just like continue on. In this particular moment, I was really close to the border and there was like a hut with the border guards that I had just seen the day before and the desert doesn't know boundaries like that. I'm just trying to get to another way of looking at life differently, like that you have to have everything with you that you need and you need so much less than you generally have which is kind of fun to be reminded of. I packed this down with a lot of things.

Kimberly

Well, but comparatively to anyone that has to fill rooms and rooms and rooms, it feels like your decision to live “unfixed” in a way is unfixed in the sense of locale, it's liberating you from this idea that most of us wake up thinking we need to have these things in order to be happy. And I do really read a lightness and a playfulness in your words, and that doesn't exclude hardship and all of that. But I wonder sometimes if some of that that I'm feeling from you is a result of this pared down existence to the things that really matter.

Holly

Yeah, I think that that does resonate. I think that that does ring true experience. And kind of to your point about the connections on the road too, you just have to you have to get in so quick. Which I think happens a lot. I mean, I think it happens probably with a lot of the people that we meet on Substack, too. And that's a lot of the way that you form such close relationships as people are just being really real. And there's not and you have to do that on the road. And there's also often you need help on the road or someone else needs help. And so there's a lot of opportunity to see kindness among just kind of all kinds of different people, which is another really good thing for perspective shift and just a reminder of how we're all the same.

Kimberly

It's easier to forget how similar we are and how basic our needs are when we have walls between us and we're making decisions that, you know, on a daily basis might not affect the person next door. But you probably feel those decisions and the circumstances and the outcomes of those decisions a lot more immediately with your neighbors. But I also think in solitude too. I mean imagine your relationships to solitude has changed as well?

Holly

Absolutely. Particularly like everybody else, I was affected by COVID. I had been at that point fairly new to van life, but I was doing it where I would go into a city for a couple of weeks and then out into the wild for a couple of weeks. And I was meeting all kinds of people and going salsa dancing in whatever cities I would come to and that sort of thing.

And then COVID came and I spent honestly probably three months where I did not see people other than to run and like refill my groceries or get my gas. I mean, I talked to people on the phone, but it was a lot of solitude and just really connecting with the world around me, which was out in BLM land, is Bureau of Land Management, empty wild spaces, National Wildlife Refuges and it was wonderful.

Kimberly

And immediately wonderful or was there a period of like, Woah, I'm really alone.

Holly

Well, there was a period of disconnect, the people that I loved were experiencing this thing in a very different way than I was. So there was that. And I was worried for people, I was worried for the state of the world. So there was, of course, that. But yeah, pretty immediately wonderful in terms of I was, I had a little bit of time where I thought, I had a few people say, Do you want to come and join our bubble and wait till this is over? And I was like, No. I was very happy with that decision. It was a wonderful time for me.

Kimberly

Do you think, I'm going back to the original quote that I shared when you said, “To be stuck is my greatest fear.” How has that evolved? I'm just curious because stuckness lives in a lot of different ways. We can be stuck within our emotions. We can be stuck within a room. What does that stuckness look like for you? What did it look like when you wrote that? And what does it look like now?

Holly

I think I wrote that pretty recently. I think that's a pretty recent piece. I'll tell you the one other thing that we’re probably getting to in a bit is that I have recently been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. And so that has been in the last like year and a little bit more has more than anything changed my relationship to stuckness. Because initially what alerted to me, I'll just say really quickly, it was ankylosing spondylitis, which is in the rheumatoid arthritis family and where rheumatoid arthritis attacks small joints, ankylosing spondylitis attacks larger joints. But I was alerted to it through just this pain that came on really swiftly and I was very unable to move very well for a long time. I physically was having, I mean, I was having to pull myself upstairs and I was like having a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. So it was, that was a massive change. And I was very, I went through a period of being very afraid that like everything was going to change and I wasn't going to be able to be geographically free and I was going to be stuck.

And then as life does, I had this sort of parallel braid that happened at the same time that opened me up to this whole different kind of unstuckness. Whereas like I've always sort of been someone that's like bucked any sort of constraints. So I seem like I've been very free. I as far as personal expression, as far as just writing the things that I wanted to write, working on writing my memoir and feeling okay to say that, I was really kind of stifled and hadn't done that for many, many years. And so having this pain sort of coincided with me having this period of expansiveness in terms of creativity and freedom. I think, you find gifts and whatever. It's weird to talk about it in that way, but like when you're in that kind of pain, like everything slides away. There’s no more people pleasing you, there's no more like saying yes to everything and like, oh I can do 16 hours a day so I can get this done for somebody and I can also do all the adventures. I've had to say yes to only what fills me up and just, there's just not space for anything else. And that has given way to this creative freedom, this freedom of expression that's like just been, wow, it's been kind of doing something I've always wanted to do. So it’s been very, very fortunate.

Kimberly

I love how you just said that and and the way you're weaving these pieces together you've had this theme of stuckness and the first way you broke free of that was through a nomadic lifestyle and then life's like We're gonna give you another version of stuckness and you get this chronic illness and then the thing that you were seeking probably originally—the freedom—you're finding now in a layer of that stuckness, which is kind of it's beautiful how life sometimes says Oh you think you needed this to be free but now let me show you. So never ever do i want to paint a bow on top of suffering but it's absolutely fascinating when someone comes to this realization, as I did with the stuckness I felt in my own body, of like, Oh this opened me to a whole ‘nother way of being that is actually freer than I thought when I was thinking I had to get rid of it to be free.

Holly

I have to tell you Kim that I came to your work right when I was just still like, What is going on and having this pain, and just like having your example of you talking about your own experience and then the people you talked to was just like, I needed that. So I just want to thank you. I'm gonna get choked up.

The work you do is so important. And like, this was even more recent, you did an interview with

Alisa Kennedy Jones

and she talks about this, her seizures and how there's this gorgeousness to it all. And I was actually sitting waiting for a doctor's appointment as I listened to that. But I was thinking, it gave me permission to be like, Yeah it's okay to see the gift in all of this and to not only be pushing for how do I fix it, how do I fix it, how do I fix it, so.

Kimberly

I'm so grateful to hear that. I think it's still percolating in the periphery of the society. People are coming to it on their own through their physical experiences. But we still like largely as collectively, we just want the fix. And I don't feel like I'm negating the fix, that's great. Pursue cures, that's great. But when it is the only thing, we lose this, our sense of self in that, or it gets caught up in living fixed instead of living well. And there are all these little “well” moments in between. And I hear that in your writing, so beautifully, like, and I know that you've experienced this pain. I interviewed someone with, and I'm not gonna pronounce it right, Ankylosing spondylitis. But I interviewed him last year and he was in so much pain. And so I have heard what you experience and it's no small thing. And then for you to pull up Ruby into a desert landscape and greet the sky and write about that.

Here actually I'm just going to read something that's just so beautiful. This was from Sword and the Saguaro.

She looks to the skies in sighs, gentle folds of green gray hills stretch towards slate colored foothills and silver mountains that rise like gratitude. The perimeter of her abode is a desert garden, a lanky mesquite, patches of prickly pear, a trio of saguaros without arms, fuzzy cholla.

And I just picture you stepping out of your van, maybe in pain, but in such gratitude. So tell me a little bit about the influence of the natural world and your nomading and how that's changed how you think about your own life and even maybe your chronic illness.

Holly

I have been definitely less nomadic since this chronic illnesses. It was about a year and a few months ago where I couldn't ignore the pain and I have been staying with my sister and my cousin who, normally I would not be in the Pacific Northwest at this time of year. I would be in the Arizona desert or in the California desert or something. But so just to clarify that point. I have been so fortunate in terms of people just offering support and being there for me and just letting me be near my doctors and be comfortable. And I'm certainly looking forward to getting back more, traveling a little bit more widely than I have, but still the natural world, I think it's a funny, I have a hard time calling it the natural world because I think where everything is the natural world. But yes, like wild spaces are still just huge. I mean, wherever I'm at, am looking for a river to walk or a forest to get into. It just recalibrates. I think of natural, the wild is like a mirror for us. I mean, it is, we're made, where all of us were made out of the exact same components. We're gonna be returning to the earth. It's just such a cyclical nature of existence. We're in the middle of these tiny little ephemeral moments in this big, gorgeous planet. And I don't know how that relates specifically to my understanding of this chronic illness. But I think it's really it's to my understanding of the world.

Kimberly

Is it a respite for you? I'm not sure, how are your symptoms? Is it a daily thing or are there flares? And how do you, even when you're not moving Ruby around, how do you navigate your relationship to the trail that you might want to go on? Or the tree that's outside of Ruby, does that change as you're feeling physical pain in your body? Or do you seek it even more then?

Holly

Probably both. I'm also extremely fortunate that AS has medication that it didn't not terribly long ago have much treatment. And it does now. And I'm responding super well to it. So I am having way fewer limitations physically. And it's kind of a new challenge. I need medication that needs to be refrigerated and so I've done a bunch of research and I found this little refrigerator that's like that size and can be solar powered so I can still do long treks if I want to. So yes getting outside even when there's flares and there has been times when I've been moving very very slowly I still went out almost every day to move. And like I said, during the worst periods, just moved like a eee, like an old person. But it still just is like an Ahh, a reminder of that bigger picture, that there's just so much more going on.

Kimberly

Yeah. It sounds like that bigger picture—I’m going back again to the stuckness—because it seems like that bigger picture is, it's like you came into this world going, I need the big picture. And no matter how you're going to get it, even in your imagination and your writing life, you get to visit that. It actually is something that I read when I read you. You often are braiding themes together within one essay. So you're looking at maybe the political landscape, and then you're also looking at something that's happening right outside your back door. So tell me, let's talk a little bit about your writing life and what how that's been, have you always been a writer?

Holly

Yeah, I've also always wanted to write. Straight out of college, I was a journalist for a short bit. And then my entire career has been sort of writing adjacent. I've been an editor for 20 years. I was the managing editor for a nonprofit magazine called The Quick Release that is site bicycling advocacy and done ghost writing and writing for hire. So I've always written. And I've always written personal essays that I shared with no one. But sharing work and looking for a publisher for a memoir I'm working on and stuff that that is fairly new.

Kimberly

Do you feel comfortable talking a little bit about that memoir? I'd love to. I know I've read the six chapters that you have, but now you're considering bringing another piece that you've been writing into that memoir. So share a little bit more about that.

Holly

Okay, so the one that I’ve shared the six chapters with on Substack is, I sort of conceived of that as a memoir of its own. And it was this seven month period when I was 30, I believe, that I traveled, sort of meandered along the East coast of the U.S. from West Virginia and I ended up in Montreal, Canada. And I was just gonna tell that story.

And then I'm also working on a memoir about my daughter and I was a teen mother and I gave her up for adoption and then we reconnected when she turned 18. And so that's the book, the memoir I've been working on that I was hoping to find an agent for, or am hoping to find an agent for, but I started realizing as you pointed out that I really like to braid things, and realizing that I kind of might want to braid that story in. So I stopped putting the chapters out because I was like, Well, let me figure out what exactly I'm going to do with these chapters before I keep releasing more. So I'm working on both of those braids right now.

Kimberly

When you're sharing your own personal stories is, we often also try to think of like, What are the universal themes that someone might relate to? What are some of those themes that you feel like you might be working on with this braiding these two together?

Holly

That's such a good question. I think maybe a universal theme is just the way that different periods of our lives and understanding sort of shape each other. You know, they, who is it? Gosh, someone talks about how we're all the different ages that we've ever been live within us. Like when i'm writing personal essays it's like I'm looking back at this creature who was was me or and that I'm gonna now make into a character and then this creature who is me the narrator that I'm also gonna make into a character and like what did she make of this or that and kind of each sentence leads to the next. That's a little bit going off into the weeds there, but I think that just who we are informs who we're gonna be and who we were.

Kimberly

Does that feel like an act of self love to as you look back on your younger self? For me, I know most memoirs are like the section of life and I was because I was just doing this for myself when I started writing the memoir, I was like, I'm gonna start with my birth. But but then like, looking back on some of these younger chapters, I hadn't ever, and so as an adult to hold myself in those scenes and in those emotions felt like a kind of reconciliation and an act of self-love.

Holly

Absolutely, and not even just with self, but a reconciliation with like anybody that exists in the world of whatever you're writing about, I think one of the most important things to me about writing memoir and personal essay where there are other people in your lives that are also going to be made into characters is to look at everybody with as much generosity as you possibly can, which to me is just the honest way of looking at life. I mean, we were all dealing with so much and we're all, most all of us doing the very best with what we have. And so going back through those time periods and just looking at everybody and everything in this generous way is really, really helpful.

Kimberly

Yeah, it seems like your nomadic life has also exaggerated that ability to see the just the many variations of this existence. I think we can find ourselves in our little communities and rarely look outside and go, Oh there's people that think something different. But I would imagine on the road you have met so many different characters.

Holly

Yeah, absolutely. You know, that's just true of me. I'm very, I want to talk to everybody that I meet. And I do. I talk to a lot of people and I'm just, just drawn to whoever and definitely talk to people with some very different beliefs than I have and that's okay.

Kimberly

Do you find that some of these connections that you make are become lifelong friends? So you touch and go, but you also are like, hey, I'm going to be here and let's meet up.

Holly

Yeah, and we also nowadays you've got social media and you've got phones. It's so easy to know where everybody is. I met a lot of people on that East Coast journey, which was before we had smartphones and social media was just sort of brand new. And so a lot of people that I would love to find and reconnect now and have, I don't even know their last name.

Kimberly

But you remember their face and you probably remember their laugh and a story they told. That's a lot like what we were saying about substack. It's like we might not, you know, have that one detail maybe of like what they looked like. But we have this heart and soul and meaty the meaty goodness, but you might not have a phone number to find out where they are.

So let's go back to the unfixing that you're experiencing now in your body. And to me also when we and when I think about the word unfixed it's unfixing our ideas of how we need to be in order to live fully live happily live whatever, and in our society we equate stability and fixedness in a way with rootedness, whether that's home or career or relationship. So tell me, how do you define stability in your life?

Holly

That's a good question and for sure something I get asked about a lot. I was on—it was just a couple years ago—but I was on a date with someone that was sort of new, he was a really sweet guy and we were walking and he kept saying, But when are you gonna settle down? Like when are you gonna settle down? And I kind of thought about it afterwards and of course I get asked that question in different ways, but I realized I feel settled. I think for me, stability, I mean, I find it in myself. I find it in my relationships. I find it in my connection with the world. I think one of my guiding principles in the world, and just the way I show up or try, the way I would aspirationally like to show up in the world is it's attributed to Maya Angelou, but I actually think a playwright said it first, but the whole, “I'm human, so nothing human can be alien to me,” and I really resonate with that which to me I think of all of us as community and so I think that that kind of is the reason that for me stability is not, is being able to move. I mean we're on this ball that's traveling around the sun at what like sixty or seventy thousand miles an hour, and movement is what we're doing all the time and people migrate and the creatures we share this planet with migrate and I don't know to me being, feeling stuck, feeling rigid, feeling not open to new ideas or new people or new opportunities, feels the opposite of stability to me. So being able to be free, if we're gonna go back to freedom, and to feel connected to everyone, that feels…

Kimberly

That feels grounding. Wow. Wow, that's so beautiful. I think I saw on notes last week or something, you're writing a piece on migration. Was that you? I imagine your spirit animal has got to be the bird.

Holly

I'm supposed to, yes. Or anything that moves.

Kimberly

Yeah, so what are you learning about when you're researching this migration?

Holly

Well, actually, it's on immigration.

Kimberly

Oh! Did I misread that?

Holly

I probably used the term migration, but I, yes, but I'm in conversation with a woman who's a humanitarian aid volunteer at the southern border. And so we're talking about the migration of people and the mess of immigration policy that's happening right now. And so it's just both sort of, you know, beautiful stories that just fill you with awe at people's resilience and what they'll do, you what people will do to take care of their families, and to come to safety. And then this complete opposite.

Kimberly

Well, you're the perfect person to be exploring this because of course people migrate for a lot of different reasons, but survival is at probably the core of that. And, and when you're able to, it's a sense of freedom. And, like you said that in that movement, they're finding stability. So, I really think that's just so profound what you shared there. I's a lesson that we all need to learn. Are you going to explore this theme a little bit more, how in movement we find stability? Because I want to learn more.

Holly

Yeah, definitely. I it's probably the theme of my life. So yeah, I think anything that I explore has a little element of that.

Kimberly

Do you have in your, let's see, it's winter now, but we've got spring coming. What does this look like this year ahead for you and what does the movement look like for you?

Holly

Yeah, that is up in the air. I don't know for sure. I need to do some more labs to see, to make sure that this newest medication I've tried is keeping me stable, which means keeping my inflammation levels down. And then I have tentative plans to, there's a couple of friends that I do a lot of canyoneering with often in Southern Utah. And we are tentatively talking about doing—I've always wanted to take Ruby down the coast of Baja, Mexico, and kind of just do the whole go around one, down one side and up the other. And so we're talking about possibly doing that. That would be more fall as in terms of the best weather time for that. And that'll probably give me some space to make sure this medication is doing what we're hoping.

Kimberly

And so where do you find between now and then, where does your movement live? I know, you know, like you mentioned earlier, creativity, is that is that where your spaciousness is going to be in the next six, seven, eight months.

Holly

Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And I'm also, you know, as far as physical movement, part of AAS is, which I think is a really fortunate part, movement is really key to staying out of pain. So like I need to be moving every morning. Like I either swim or hike or do yoga most mornings. So.

Kimberly

Do you travel with a journal wherever you go, like even when you go to the gym to go swim. You have a very philosophical perspective in the world and so I imagine you as somebody who's always like, I got to take that note down or I just had that thought and this has to live here. Is that part of your life?

Holly

No, not as much as you think. I mean, I always have a little log, But no, I don't. I probably should get better at that. Also, I'll make notes to myself or like send myself texts every once in a while.

Kimberly

Do you make the discoveries as you're writing then? Like when you sit down to write, are you the type that has an outline and you know the beginning, the middle, and the end where it's going to go? Or are you the type that more is like embodying this poetic place of just letting the words arrive?

Holly

I don't have an outline. I often just start with describing what I see around me or what I saw around me at the time. I definitely don't have a plan per se. I just kind of, like I said, I'm like exploring, I don't know what was in my mind at the time or and just kind of, yeah, so exploring what I thought and think and mostly what I see.

Kimberly

Mostly what you see. So you're very visual. You are, your writing is very visual too. I mean, it's visceral. So it goes beyond just what you see, I feel when you write. But there's a visual that I have with your words very clearly. One of the things that you wrote when you were talking about your daughter, it was sort of a painful line.

But I instantly saw the two paths. You said, “How had it not occurred to me that the days would fall like dominoes from a maternity ward in not one, rather two directions.” And instantly I was like, here you are living this life and thinking that somehow an adoption would sever yourself from the other life. But is that what you're saying that it did not?

Holly

Right, absolutely. My daughter was kind of constantly with me, which is a funny thing to say, all of all of my life. And then when she and I reconnected when she turned 18, that was just wonderful for both of us. And we're super close. We talked most days on the phone. We've been close for the last like 11 years. So, but in all that time, yeah, her absence was very much a presence in my life in a way that I couldn't, I was very young. I couldn't have anticipated at the time.

Kimberly

And you have met in person too?

Holly

Oh yeah, she lived with me for a few years.

Kimberly

Can I ask, did she reach out to you or did you reach out? She reached out to you? What was that like?

Holly

Yeah, well, you know, was my it was a stipulation of the adoption that she would have my information when she turned 18 should she want it. So I was very aware of her 18th birthday. Of course, I was always aware of all of her birthdays. It's really it's really beautiful. I called the adoption agency and it was like because I wanted to make sure they still had my updated information and they had gone out of business shuttered their doors and done nothing with the files. And I was like, Hh my God, how do I find her? Like, what should I do? And then I would say like, I can't remember, eight or nine days after her 18th birthday, she friend requested me on Facebook. She had found me on Facebook and I was like, Oh my gosh, oh my gosh. And then we just started talking and talked kind of like nonstop.

Kimberly

That must have been wild.

Holly

It was so wild and we're so similar. We're very, very similar creatures. In just like movement and sense of humor and philosophy. And so then it was just a few months later, I went out to where she was living and spent some time with her. And then she came out and spent some time with me. And then not long after that, moved in with me. I was not in a van. I was in a stable period of my life at the time. Thank goodness.

Kimberly

Well, but maybe someday she'll be like, Hey, Mom, can I hop in the van with you?

Holly

Well, she thinks she would want to. I don't know. I don't know. We've talked about that.

Kimberly

What are some of the challenges, like if you were to dissuade her from doing the nomadic lifestyle?

Holly

I mean gosh, there's a lot there. You need to be able to be happy and comfortable with things changing anytime. And I've had policemen knock on the door at three o'clock in the morning and tell me to leave. And you need to not be someone that like feels afraid being alone because if you're alone all the time it would be easy to be. I don't stay in places where I think I should legitimately be afraid. But you're alone in the middle of the wilderness and you hear the fishes crackling or the wind makes noises. And so you have to be comfortable with that. There's a lot of physical labor involved in just keeping your life going. You have to be comfortable with not really being able to for sure know. Well, that's the way I do it. I don't know if that's true for everybody else. I don't necessarily always know where I'm going to be sleeping. But sometimes I do. know, sometimes I plan.

Kimberly

But the not knowing is part of the joy of it for you, I'm hearing?

Holly

Yeah, I think so. Yeah.

Kimberly

Is that because there's a listening then that comes from that? Was it the Saguaro piece where you said, “We don't need more spears, we need more ears?” I would imagine there's an inner listening, obviously listening to others as well, but an inner listening that comes from a solitary life, from not always knowing where you're gonna sleep.

And then maybe, you the other word is intuition. Do you feel like that's something that you're engaged with in this lifestyle?

Holly

Yeah, I think so. I think so. And I think one of my favorite characteristics in myself or anybody really is curiosity. And I think if you're certain, it's just a lot less room for curiosity and for exploration.

I think you and I had an exchange where we were talking about like, uncertainty versus hope. And to me, uncertainty is a requirement of hope. Because if you're certain, what are you hoping for? I think hope is a really beautiful motivator and a beautiful, and we need it more than ever right now. So I think uncertainty certainly opens up space for that. And it's the thing that's true. We’re not certain about anything.

Kimberly

You said also that it opens you up to this—on the challenging side—things are always changing. So you're getting life, you're getting the truths about life in a very microscopic kind of way without all the stuff that we pad our lives with to pretend that they don't exist. It is a more nomadic, but also monastic life in that sense that you're getting these real—I just thought of Dylan, the gentleman that I was working with the last couple of years to write the book on his experience with ALS in this one essay he wrote about how the disease ALS has, it's just made him an extreme version of universal truths. I think in a way your chosen lifestyle and even having a chronic illness within that lifestyle is also giving you this extreme version of universal truths, which is quite beautiful.

Holly

And that's a generous way of saying that. Thank you so much.

Kimberly

I really admire your choices and I see how they, well, I see, I mean, I've known you for two years, but I read how they are shaping you. And in such a profound way. How do you continue to foster and nurture this optimism and this playfulness and this hope in the world where you know for certain that it is uncertainty and change.

Holly

Yeah, that's a great question. Continuing to—I was going to say to be able to evolve, to be able to open to new things—like for right now writing and hopefully in the foreseeable future writing is really filling me up, is really bringing me that sort of expansiveness that I have long craved in somewhat of a more profound way than the physical movement, which I don't want to be away from—I'd love to be geographically and physically free for as long as I want—but if you can be free, inside in terms of expression, that's a harder thing to lose no matter what happens. I think as long as I'm happy, as long as I feel like I'm evolving and growing and changing perspectives that don't really make sense anymore and learning and meeting new people.

Kimberly

I love what you just shared. I can't wait to like put it in bold and make it big because there is a sense of this hope that you carry in the uncertainty. And, but it doesn't stop there. It's like the uncertainty opens you up to curiosity and kindness and compassion and reverence and all of these it's like if only we could all just crack that shell open that we need so badly to be firm and strong and when it cracks open you're like Oh my god it's so beautiful here. I guess I that's what I hear you saying.

Holly

Thank you. I don't know if that's what I'm saying, but I love that you hear that.

Kimberly

I do hear that and I'm not the only one because I read comments and many people feel that in your words.

I love this quote—because the desert is really where you prefer to be, correct?

Holly

During the winter. I love the ocean, I love the forests, I love all the places. But I do write about the desert a lot.

Kimberly

You love it all, that’s right you’re nomadic!

You talk about rolling down the window and “feeling the desert's gamey tongue on your cheek.” The visual of that is just so sweet. And I mean, to me, it's sweet. Maybe some people would be like, Ew, god. But to me, bring on the gamey tongue.

Thank you so much for sharing this time Holly.

Holly

This has been so wonderful.

Kimberly

Thank you so much for sharing this time. It is really, really sweet to connect with you. I mean that, you have this hard earned wisdom that is not something that comes from choosing the comfortable life. And whether you choose it or not, I think it’s a little bit of both for you. But that’s an inspiration for many of us, to go Oh yeah, I can strip these layers, and still find the lasting peace and happiness you are finding. So thank you.

(And below is Holly’s addendum to my question about the universal themes in her forth-coming memoir—an important expansion and all the more reason to support and follow Holly’s work so we can rally behind such important, heart-rending and mending issues. Thank you Holly!)

Holly

I got lost in the sweet flow of the conversation and the gift of Kimberly’s attention and forgot to come back to one question I meant to answer more fully. The universal themes of my memoir in progress (which I aim to be shopping soon) include loss and grief, abandonment, forgiveness and reconciliation, choice and a woman's right to choose, sexual assault, patriarchal and religious restrictions, and liberation. Much of this feels timely. And moreover, the story of my reconnection with my daughter, my favorite human on earth, is a truly beautiful one I owe the shape of my heart to. So I can’t wait to share it.