Leftovers, Letting Go, and Laying Like Broccoli
Finding the good in what lingers, what fades, and what’s still to come.
I’ve been thinking a lot about leftovers lately. Not just the kind you pile onto paper plates and send home with your loved ones, but the grief that lingers in our hearts throughout this season. The reminders, both sweet and heavy, of the ones we’ve loved, lost, and learned from.
This year, leftovers carried me through. There was something grounding about knowing that even as the world felt like it was spinning faster than usual, I could pull a plate from the fridge and feel the sustenance of shared recipes or the gentle nudge of my grandmother’s kitchen.
As I baked pies with my youngest son, I swear I could almost feel the warmth of her stove and the sound of her voice. The veil between past and present felt impossibly thin, and for a moment, it was like she was there with us.
INT. GRANDMOTHER'S KITCHEN - SOMEWHERE IN MEMORY
The counter is crowded with cracked bowls and ancient spoons—ingredients plucked from backyard gardens and family-owned grocery stores. GRANDMA, a tiny but mighty medicine woman, moves with practiced ease, scooping batter into pie crusts while humming a hymn I don’t know the words to but feel in my bones. Smells of butter, spices, and the faint hint of affection in a film on the walls.
There’s no rush here, only rhythm—the warmth radiating from the oven and decades of offerings. TIFFANY ROSE, small and sun-kissed, perches on a stool, transfixed by everything from the creases in her grandmother’s hands to the casually added secret ingredients, desperately trying to memorize it all.
BACK TO PRESENT
Still, the past few weeks have been heavy. Maybe it was the world’s events, or maybe just the season, but I found myself in a kind of fog, weighed down by threads that felt more tangled than tethering, pulling me in too many directions to hold steady.
Then, one morning, I stood in front of my bathroom mirror, scissors in hand, and chopped off ten inches of hair.
There wasn’t much conversation or time spent reviewing years’ worth of bobs I’d saved on Pinterest. I just woke up, cut off my ponytail, and instantly felt a sense of relief. A seemingly small act that, for some reason, took so much weight with it.
Letting go is a ritual we all know well. Whether it’s clearing out a closet, cutting your hair, or deciding to release something you’ve outgrown. It’s a quiet act of making space for whatever comes next.
This time of year always feels like a shift. The days after our family feast feel like a deep exhale—the kind that gives you permission to rest in your fullness, hang twinkly lights just because they make you happy, and lay like broccoli with your kids watching your favorite movies on a loop.
There’s a cosmic buzz to it all—a hum of creativity and clarity that whispers: what’s for you will stay, and what isn’t will make room for what’s next.
As much as this season invites us to gather and connect, I’ve found myself wrestling with disappointment. A deep, gnawing kind of disappointment in people—one I thought I’d outgrown. I’ve been trying to practice openness, invite people in, and cultivate community. But somewhere in the effort, I forgot the lessons I’d taught myself about attachment.
I let my sense of wellness, safety, and joy drift too far from home—into the hands of others.
Not that people haven’t shown up, or that they haven’t tried, or even that it’s wrong to lean into relationships with more of myself. But it’s been a reminder, a tender but sharp one, to keep a closer tether to my own center.
And it’s not just me. I’ve noticed a common thread in conversations and timeline updates: the feeling that life is shifting, that old stripes need to be shed in favor of new spots. Whether it’s friendship breakups, big life transitions, or just the urge to shake things up, it seems like we’re all working through the question of what to hold onto and what to let go of.
So maybe that’s the thing—even in the mess, there’s a kind of goodness in knowing we’re all connected, guided, and held by some cosmic collective order. Evidence that even along the rough roads pushing us toward a new, more intentional timeline, there will still be moments of fullness, of rest, and of honoring the best bits of remembering.
A reminder to meet (or leave) others where they are without letting it pull us too far from where we need to be.
This season is teaching me to trust what stays and make peace with what goes. Maybe that’s the good we carry forward, the gift waiting in every letting go.
‘Tell Me Something Good’ is Tiff’s column, where she shares her real-time reflections, unpopular opinions, and general sense-making of life’s chaos in the pursuit of the highest collective good. Free to all subscribers of The Landline.