My Summer Office Has Safari Wallpaper

This summer, my office is in a familiar place: my childhood bedroom in the Adirondacks. If you see photos or videos from me over the next couple of months, you might notice the safari wallpaper in the background. I picked it out when I was eleven years old, and somehow it has survived all these years.

Every time I sit down at this desk, I'm reminded that rooms can hold stories. This one certainly does. My mom helped me choose this wallpaper. Fourteen years ago, this is also the room where she died. On paper, it sounds like this room should be filled with sadness. But that's not what I experience when I'm here.

Instead, I think about my mom. I think about her laugh, her strength, and the little moments we shared in this room long before she became sick. I think about my dad, who cared for her with extraordinary patience, kindness, and love throughout her illness. And more than anything, I feel grateful that I had both of them.

Those experiences changed the way I think about estate planning. People often assume estate planning is about preparing for death. And in many ways, it is. But I've come to understand that it's just as much about caring for the people who are still living.

The right documents and the right estate plan can't take away grief but they can remove unnecessary stress, uncertainty, court proceedings, and family conflict during an already difficult time. They give the people you love one less thing to worry about when they're already carrying enough. Every will, trust, power of attorney, and probate matter ultimately comes back to people who love one another and want to make life a little easier for the ones they'll someday leave behind.

So this summer, while I'm working from a room with safari wallpaper that an eleven-year-old thought was the height of interior design, I'll continue sharing practical estate planning tips, real-life stories, podcast episodes, and behind-the-scenes glimpses from this desk in the Adirondacks.

If you'd like to follow along, I'd love to have you join my weekly email newsletter. Every Wednesday, I share practical guidance to help make estate planning and probate a little less intimidating, and, I hope, a lot more approachable.