Welcome to Liz Explores!
I write to make sese of it all—the sadness, grief, and loss; the hope and the joy; the dreams and the longings; the moments I feel most alive, and the moments I can barely hang on.
Welcome to Liz Explores!
I’m so grateful that you’re here. My name is Liz Medford, and I’ve always dreamed of being a writer. After five years of running my business as a life coach and helping other people follow their dreams, I realized it was time to pursue mine! (I still enjoy coaching, but it’s been nice to add writing to my life too.)
I love adventure—hiking, biking, running, paddling, cross-country skiing—any way to move my body in nature, especially if I can enjoy it with my two dogs, Baxter and Laney. I’ve backpacked 750 miles of the Appalachian Trail, and I’ve peak-bagged the 100 highest mountains in New England twice (including a full round in winter—my logo is a photo from my finishing peak, an epic 20-mile slog through three feet of snow!). The White Mountains of New Hampshire are my home base, and I love exploring New England and beyond.
Ever since our wedding in 2020, my husband Seth and I have been pursuing our dream of starting a family. We experienced five miscarriages and endured a year of fertility treatments before deciding to take a break. We bought the Dream Catcher, our 1999 Roadtrek camper van, and I spent 15 weeks driving 14,000 miles solo to Alaska and back, with Seth flying out for our belated honeymoon.
I was on my way to Baja for the winter when we found out that our adoption application was finally approved, and I drove home to get matched with a child. Unfortunately, our adoption didn’t work out, and we are figuring out whether to keep pursuing parenthood, or get back on the road for more adventures.
I write to make sese of it all—the sadness, grief, and loss; the hope and the joy; the dreams and the longings; the moments I feel most alive, and the moments I can barely hang on. I struggle with depression and anxiety, and I think it’s important to talk about those things, too.
Thank you for coming along for the ride!
What to expect
I share “raw and relatable” stories from my life about infertility, mental health, and adventure. I usually write a few times a month, and when you subscribe, I send my essays straight to your inbox. There's no schedule, so every piece will be a surprise! Sometimes life happens and I disappear for a few weeks, and when I come back, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do. You get it all, whenever it happens!
How you can support my writing
If you enjoy my work, please like, comment, and share! You can download the Substack app to join the conversation, and follow me on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.
Join the Inner Circle
For just $36/year or $5/month you can subscribe to my Inner Circle, where I share my most personal writing (the stories that feel too raw to post publicly). For the cost of a nice book, you can read the book of my life as it’s being written, and support me along the way!
Subscribers at the Founding Members level ($250/year or above) get a free 60-minute 1:1 life coaching call to use for themselves or to give as a gift. You can learn more about my coaching here. I especially enjoy working with people who are going through infertility and loss, folks who are in a life transition and figuring out what to do next, anyone who gets stuck in self-sabotaging habits like perfectionism and people-pleasing, and fellow badasses who want support navigating the road to their dreams.
You can also give a gift subscription to someone you know, or donate a subscription to someone you don’t know (if you’d like to join the Inner Circle but don’t have the means, please reply to any of my emails or comment on a post and let me know).
I would love it if you’d hit reply or leave a comment and let me know what brought you here. We’re in for one hell of a ride together!
Talk soon,
Liz
p.s. Do you love listening to stories? Subscribe to my podcast feed and I’ll read them to you.
Got a minute? Come on over and introduce yourself in the group chat:
Here are some stories to get you started:
Auditioning to be a Mom
“Do I look like a good Mom?” I asked Seth the moment he got home from work. In fifteen minutes, a woman from the state foster care system would be knocking on our door for our first of three “home study” visits. She would be the person deciding if we were fit to be parents. If the home study went well, she would issue us a license that would allow us to …
Meet the Dream Catcher
“Turn around!” I shouted at Seth in the middle of our two-hour drive home from the fertility clinic in Vermont. “Did you see that?” “Of course, dear,” he said, giving me the side-eye as he put his blinker on and pulled into a dirt driveway to reverse direction.
The End of the Road
“I think I’m done,” I told Seth as he stirred under the covers to turn off his alarm clock. He rolled over in the early-morning light and squinted at me, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. I was uncharacteristically wide-awake for 6am. My bladder had awoken me in the wee hours, and unable to fall back asleep, I had been contemplating the future of my fer…
I Have Arrived
I wrote this piece on Thursday, August 10th. My posts have been delayed by long days of driving and no internet, but I have so much to share. I think it will be a book when I have time to write it all. For now I’m focused on living it! Would you like me to send you a postcard from Alaska?
Van Life and Mental Health
Five weeks ago, I pulled my 1999 Roadtrek camper van out of the driveway of my home in New Hampshire, waved goodbye to my husband Seth, and started bawling. The van was packed full of everything my two dogs and I might need to survive for the next 8 months, from tank-tops and sundresses to puffy jackets and wool socks, a year’s supply of medication, sha…
Celebrating Me
As I lie tucked into the blankets in my van under a cold starry sky, next to a glacial lake on a mountain pass somewhere near the borders of Alaska, British Columbia, and the Yukon, I am in awe of the woman who made this dream come true. The woman who thought ab…
Homeward Bound
I’m lying on the king-sized bed in the back of my 1999 Roadtrek camper van as it cruises down the highway, a dog curled up on one side of me, a pile of duffel bags and backpacks on the other, and a husband in the pilot seat. If you folded a map of Kansas in half, I’d be at the point where the vertical fold meets the horizontal line of Interstate 70. My vessel travels eastward at 75 miles per hour.
Soooo many your post titles have got my attention... I'm grabbing a cuppa and I'm going to have a read ! 🙏☕
B R A V E ❤️