It's quite possible I heard it wrong, but the other night someone said what I heard as "Soul Rich" and I thought it was a really cool term, so I adopted it. And #hashtagged it.

I'm reading this book about brain cancer that pulls at the pit of my stomach and also makes me laugh. It's called Shrinkage and it was written by Adam Corolla's right hand man, @BaldBryan, about surviving his glioma. It gives me crazy insight into what my dad must have gone through while he was sick, and while it's awful reading it sometimes because I watched my dad hurt and I don't really want to relive that, it makes me feel connected to him in a much more real way. Constipation and all.

What's weird about losing a parent as you're pouring the foundation of your adult life is there are so many big moments he hasn't been able to be present for physically - and they feel like they happened all at once: our engagement, our wedding, two kitten adoptions, our first home, all my friends having babies and many melodramatic life crises I would have asked him to talk me off the ledge of if I still could. I never dialed his phone number after he died. I didn't want to listen to his voice mail. It was all too much.

I think about him almost every second of every day. I love telling stories about him so Raz knows him through my remaining family. My heart swells when Raz says "I really would have liked Doug." Raz knew him in the depths of his disease. He didn't know my pre-cancer dad. He didn't know my dad in his full anal neuroses, kicking the tires of my car every time he came by, making me spaghetti and removing my plate fewer than thirty seconds after I finished.

And when I think about my life, even though it's not with my dad anymore, it is so, so #SoulRich. I'll lock our front door as I head out for work and think about what a cool thing we're building within those walls. I'll walk down the street and get myself all choked up with the anticipation of being warm in my home with the little family I'm creating. I'll cry hot, happy tears appreciating the love my friends and family have showered on us these past few years. Because they really don't have to. And because I'm much more tuned in than I've ever been. I'm glad for that. The tuned-in-ness.

We built these soul riches, and we worked hard. We'll never stop working.

Because I don't have him anymore, I get it all on such a different level than I ever have. I look at boats like my dad and I used to together and I know my life is full and my soul is rich. Rich in love, rich in happy, rich in family, rich in everything that cannot be measured. And because of that everything will always be okay.

So, here are some boats. We took these photos on New Year's Day in Edmonds, a cute little town slightly north of us.




I hope you know how to make your #SoulRich, and that loving your people hard always pays off, whether they're here or not.