how will you live like amy?

Amy Ettinger would be turning 50 on May 15, and wrote beautifully about how she had no regrets about how she had lived her life. She had a history of embracing creative risk and adventure, and wrote how putting friends and family first allowed her to face her terminal cancer diagnosis with a deep gratitude for the life she loved.

Amy's approach to life inspired her friends, her writing community, her students, and her readers. As her husband Dan wrote, Amy was "flooded with responses," to her first Washington Post essay, "which essentially asked: What would your life look like if you cared much less about what other people think of you? Could life be 'a series of moments,' and not the endless pursuit of stability over bliss, or working for some long-delayed dream of post-retirement fulfillment?" 

"I’ve always tried to say ‘yes’ to the voice that tells me I should go out and do something now," Amy wrote. "Even when that decision seems wildly impractical."

Amy embodied that philosophy when she rode in a clanking old ice cream truck through the streets of Bensonhurst as part of her country-wide investigation into America’s favorite dessert in her 2017 book, Sweet Spot: An Ice Cream Binge Across America. And she showed that spirit when she packed up her bags and took her husband and daughter on an impromptu trip to a goat farm in central Oregon to see a solar eclipse. Her credo was this: “Money always comes back, but if you miss out on an experience, the opportunity may never come back.” 

It brought Amy immense joy when she saw others taking chances, choosing adventure and happiness, making the most of their lives. In honor of her, and in the hope of keeping the inspiration she shared with all of us while she lived, let's share how we plan to live like Amy.