LIVING REAL BLOG
Stories of transformation
from exhausting love
to authentic living
March 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
The Chinese New Year parade was the reason I got on the plane. San Francisco hosts the largest one outside of Asia, and this year felt different — this is the year of the Fire Horse, which comes around every 60 years, and I was born in 1966, the last time...
March 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
My husband bought me a trailer.
Not as a joke, not as a grand gesture — as a practical act of love. I was spending a lot of time at my folks’ house, helping care for my mom, and the house was full in the way houses get when life has been lived hard in th...
March 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
It's my brother's birthday this week.
Even though the last few years have made our relationship more complicated than a calendar event can hold, I still remember. We see the world differently — religion, politics, most of the things people aren't suppose...
March 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
I sat down to write something else this week. Then I turned on the news, and I couldn't get there.
So let me just say what's true.
I'm angry.
I'm angry that we appear to be at war — declared without Congress, without debate, without the accountability ...
February 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
I turn sixty this year.
Fire Horse year. Born 1966.
I've known about Chinese astrology for a long time. When I met my husband, we figured out together that I was born in a Fire Horse year—the combination that comes around once every sixty years. Twel...
February 2026 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
Today is Chinese New Year.
Last night we did what we often do — we met family at our favorite local Chinese restaurant. It’s become a rhythm for us. We gather there several times a year. Big round table. Shared plates. Passing dishes back and forth.
...Something's been shifting.
For months now, I've been writing every Tuesday — essays about anticipatory grief, boundaries, caregiving, and what it means to stay real when life asks you to perform.
And I've realized: these essays belong on Substack.
Here's why
The work I'm doing is intimate.
It's...
For the ones grieving someone who's still here
You only know what kind of story yours is when you know the ending.
I know mine is a love story.
Two weeks ago, I wrote about responding differently to my dad at Thanksgiving—choosing presence over performance, saying "quality not quantity" instead o...
December 2025 | Living REAL with Heidi Coleman
I’ve learned over time that I don’t really choose my Word of the Year.
It chooses me.
Only later do I understand why.
This practice has become a quiet tradition for me — one that invites reflection instead of resolution, meaning instead of measureme...
The Art of Loosening Your Grip
Last week, I shared about a moment with my dad that used to break me — and didn’t.
Not because it wasn’t tender.
Not because it didn’t matter.
But because I didn’t react from the old place.
That moment was evidence of something I’ve been learning all year — somethin...
The Moment That Used to Break Me
I'm writing this from the Oregon coast, watching seagulls play in the wind. I'm in a completely different space than when I wrote what follows - lighter, more present, grateful.
But this story from Thanksgiving is still true. And the lesson still matters.
Sometime...
Some years, the holidays arrive with sparkle and ease. Some years, they arrive with a weight you didn’t plan for.
This year, mine arrived quietly — and with loss.
My childhood friend Matthew died on December 4.
We met in third grade — two kids who understood each other long before either of us real...
