Small Adventures

Stories about life, loss, resilience, and finding our way back to ourselves.

Wendy Moulton Tate's avatar

Wendy Moulton Tate

Writer. Storyteller. Listener of lives.

recent posts

  • Leaving Fear in the Rearview

    Cancer stole my innocence and created the bravest version of me.

    Certain things change you. Some things change you forever.

    A cancer diagnosis is one of them.

    For me, it was a loss of innocence. I don’t think you’ll ever forget a call after a follow up procedure when they tell you to bring someone with you.

    Or the look in the eye of the radiologist gently holding your hand to tell you that you have cancer. Even if it’s a good prognosis. You’ll never be quite the same.

    In the days after the diagnosis, everything seemed brighter. Like whatever blinders I had on previously were snatched off my face.  Life was in technicolor. There was life before cancer. And life after. A line in the sand.

    I can remember them drawing the marks on my skin with a sharpie pen. The radiation is very precise. You can’t move in that sterile space. You almost have to hold your breath.

    But I had already been holding my breath. It seemed like a lifetime of holding my breath. Clenching. And still, with all that hyper vigilance, bad things sometimes happen.

    After every treatment, I would drink a mint tea and look out at the green space. Seeing the trees felt different. There was a new stillness in my body. I would walk on the beach. Feel the sand under my toes. The sunshine relaxing my tired body. I was determined to feel life. And to really see it.

    When I look back, sometimes I think to myself, how did I get through those eight years of losses?

    The loss of innocence that comes with cancer. The divorce that followed. The loss of what I thought would be my second chance at family — my blended family. The loss of both my father and stepfather.

    And one of the most devastating — my sweet pup, Chloe, who had weathered it all with me.

    Too many losses. It takes my breath away. With every loss, something in me shut down a bit. A protective shield formed around my heart. I felt like my “house” was blown up and demolished to the studs. A complete tear down of my life. Not to say there weren’t those people that were there through it all. Those people became my tribe.

    There will always be a little fear that never completely leaves my side. I’ve learned to accept it. But with that also comes more joy. An opening up again. To my one and only beautiful, imperfect life.

    It’s been eight years. I’m so thankful to be cancer free. There isn’t a day I don’t thank God for this gift of health. And even with all the milestones, the follow up scans, the Xanax beneath my tongue while I wait for results, the anxiety I had to claw my way through. There was a silver lining.  You start saying yes… to everything!

    And that’s when the cheesecake happened…

    I didn’t know when I started writing this that it would connect to something larger. But that’s been the theme of this year. Small steps leading somewhere new.

    The Bridge Year is still unfolding. More stories to come.

  • New York State of Mind

    Cities don’t change. We return different

    New York City. I was seventeen the first time I visited. A whirlwind weekend with my mom, newly single and, to me, surprisingly liberated and hopeful. I didn’t know it then, but that trip would shape me in ways I wouldn’t understand until much later.

    New York hits you in the face with its vibrancy. It shook me out of the fog I’d been living in after my parents’ sudden separation. I remember racing through the city in my “cool” Soho t-shirt, clutching my mom’s handwritten must-see list like a sacred map. Russian Tea Room. Greenwich Village. Fifth Avenue.

    We walked fast. We breathed fast. For the first time in a long time, I felt alive.

    It’s funny to realize she was much younger than I am now. A woman with her whole life ahead of her, refusing to let regret shape her next chapter.

    Flash forward to today. A similar pull of sadness, but for entirely different reasons. I thought I’d landed my dream job, only to have it yanked away in a parking lot in Costa Mesa. My much younger creative director asked if I wanted to “grab a coffee”.  I thought it was a check-in, maybe even recognition. Instead, with a flat tone and the slightest smirk, she told me I was done — right there, feet from my coworkers.

    Gut punch. Shock. Humiliation. The quiet grief of feeling unseen and discarded.

    Then came the deeper loss. Chloe.

    My tiny Shipoo, my shadow, my comfort for nearly seventeen years. She carried me through some of the darkest moments of my life. Losing her two months after losing my job nearly broke me.

    So, when I landed in New York again — this time with my daughter — I didn’t expect the city to do what it did when I was seventeen. But somehow, it did. It shook me awake again.

    Cities don’t change. We return different.

    Our first night, my daughter and I had drinks on a rooftop bar. The city stretched out around us. Twinkly lights, noise, endless possibility. I remember looking at her. Really seeing her.  And thinking, wow… I’m in New York with my daughter on her business trip.

    When I was her age, I was waiting tables and trying to snag a role in some low-budget student film. She was orchestrating a pop-up in the West Village for a real start-up. I didn’t want to miss that moment. I was proud mama bear, for sure.

    I’d visited New York many times in the years between. Grad school. Romantic trips. Birthdays. But this time gave me the same jolt I felt that first visit: open, receptive… alive. This time, I was broken in a different way. Older, yes — but still vulnerable to the kind of sudden change that knocks you sideways. The kind that dulls your senses and slows your brain. Where even simple decisions feel heavy.

    Sometimes you lose what you thought you needed… and it clears space for what actually matters. So here I am. Starting over. A little scared, yes.  But awake again.