The Long Road to Love

Sometimes... You have to go backwards to move forward...

2026-10-20T16:07:55.861-06:00

Back when I was 14 years old, in the summer between 9th and 10th grade, a strange thing happened.

Usually, I spent my summers on my grandfather’s ranch near Steamboat Springs, Colorado. I was typically riding 4-wheelers, fixing fences, moving cattle, cooking ranch-style meals, washing a ton of dishes, hanging with my cousins, and generally being a hoodlum.

But that particular summer, a friend decided to end her life. My parents came back to the ranch to bring me home for the service. I was supposed to be gone for several more weeks because they were completely remodeling the 1,100-square-foot box we lived in. But I was home.

The service was strange. Helping the friends around me through the tragedy was also bizarre at that age. Being home in the summer with no plans felt like a foreign country.

I was lonely and struggling. I was thrust into helping my friend’s brother navigate her tragic passing while I was still trying to figure out how to process it myself. The entire world around me felt less predictable… and, if I’m being honest, a lot more like adult life than I was truly ready for in that moment.

I was desperately seeking ways to make life feel normal again. Carefree, like all those summer days before it. So I took my whirlwind world to the net. It always seemed to help.

One day… a turd-brown Subaru came honking down the road toward the neighbors’ house. I heard the whiny “beep beep” before my eyes witnessed the spectacle.

I was outside shooting hoops by myself because, back then, we didn’t have phones and all the other things kids these days use to entertain themselves. I recognized the vehicle. It belonged to a friend of my best friend’s big sister. He went to Florence High School, a town just a few miles down the road. The neighbor girls were friends with this kid, too.

But they weren’t home that day.

The Subaru backed out of their driveway and came back toward my house to ask if I knew where they were. Out stepped this cute boy, several years older than me, riding shotgun.

He had a funny East Coast accent. He was mouthy and said whatever was on his mind. I can still remember exactly what he was wearing: the flannel shirt that probably needed to find its way to the trash can, the trucker hat, the way his wavy hair fell just past his chin, and the way his lips curled around his devious smile.

The 14-year-old girl in me was very curious. He was something I hadn’t experienced just yet in my young life.

That MOUTH!

I wasn’t sure if I should be appalled or laugh.

I chose to laugh.

He was ridiculous.

Jeremiah’s dad and Jason’s dad had been best friends in New Jersey back in the day. Jay came out to Colorado for the summer in hopes of keeping him out of trouble back East.

What 14-year-old me didn’t know, when that Subaru pulled into her driveway, was that she had just met someone who would become a source of enduring, unconditional love. A true friendship that would stand the test of time. A human being who would stand beside her in the thick of it, casting stupid dad jokes with a Jersey appeal. Someone she could always laugh with, even when life was crazy.

After he left, we talked to each other every day. Probably drove my parents nuts.

He sent my mother and me flowers that first Christmas, and it became a tradition every year until it started hurting the feelings of either my love interest or his. He moved back to Colorado during my senior year of high school. We had big plans.

But when he got here… I chickened out.

Curating my entire life at age 17 seemed so absurd.

He came out here again one Christmas to spend time with me and my family. It became clear that our relationship was very platonic. But also, outright enjoyable.

He has popped up in my life, or I in his, during major turning points.

I remember when my oldest son was born. I was tired of trying to call everyone to spread the news about his medical condition and interventions. I was in my mid-twenties and scared shitless. I wasn’t entirely confident in my skills as a mother, and I had little support from his progenitor.

I decided to send out emails instead. Emotionally, it was an easier task.

Jason called immediately after receiving the first update and filled in with the emotional support I wasn’t receiving from my baby daddy. It was never sexual. He just wanted to make sure I was okay while I was falling completely apart.

I did not have the strength to get through that moment alone.

Of course, I had my parents and friends. But when you understand that someone completely unconnected to you by blood can give that much of a shit about what you’re facing, it changes your heart.

I didn’t feel so alone. It helped me feel like I could do all the things that having a sick baby meant.

We have fought our way through other love relationships on both sides, trying to get our significant others to understand the value of this relationship. They never have.

I always caused problems on his side of the fence, and he always caused problems with EVERY relationship on my side of the fence.

I have been forever grateful for this relationship that came into my life completely by accident.

For the past two years, both of us have been going through it. We’ve talked a big game about finally getting the band back together, and this time, he finally bought a ticket.

Thirty-five years of friendship… and for the last four days, we’ve done nothing but talk smack and hang out. We visited with my parents. Drove to a few places around Colorado he had been to and a few he had never seen before. Had some silly phone calls with his mom, who is beside herself that we are hanging out.

We laughed so hard we could barely breathe. We cried a bunch, too. Life has been hard.

We shared some tips for getting through the alone times. We thought about what it might look like to just let life be and enjoy each other while traveling. We made a pact to ride out this glorious friendship, no matter what.

Obviously, 35 years ago, the Universe felt it was important. Otherwise, we wouldn’t know each other.

I just dropped him off at the airport and have nothing but a grateful heart.

This full-grown woman had to call her mom on the way home. Otherwise, she would have been driving with her eyeballs leaking all the tears.

Did I know at 14 what that boy would mean to me today?

Do you know how lucky I am to know that not all men are unsafe, unkind, self-absorbed, or carrying ill intentions? A man who believes me to be worthy?

He’s been with me through all of it.

All. Of. It.

I feel so fortunate to know this kind of love.

No judgment. No wishing I were something I’m not.

He still sees me as the girl in her driveway shooting hoops. And I still see that boy with the funny accent, trucker hat, curly hair, and sass mouth.

I feel like the realization that I’ve never really had to prove myself to everyone, that I’ve never really had to earn love, that I’ve never had to feel alone or like I was never enough… has always been there in this relationship. I just never took the time to understand it until these last few days.

I often wonder why everything else has to be so hard. Why do we make our relationships so hard?

The answer, my friends, is that it doesn’t have to be so hard.

I will laugh for 30 more years over the last four days. I will feel loved from afar. I will feel like enough… worthy of all that I want out of my life.

I am such a lucky girl.

And I pray he feels that way, too. I hope he knows how much he means to me, but I vow to tell him every chance I get.

I hope for you… that you have something just as radical in your life. I hope you fight for it, because it is highly unusual. And I hope you cherish it.

Much love, Jason… always and forever.

Ascent: What is the story I tell myself?

2026-09-20T19:43:28.724-06:00

Have you ever heard the Story of the Seven Gates, ancient Sumerian folklore?

I’m working from memory here and half hearted research…

In this epic tale, our heroine, Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Goddess of Love and War, decides to descend into the underworld to attend the funeral rites of her sister’s husband. To do this, she has to pass through seven gates.

At each gate, Inanna is told by the gatekeeper that she must strip away something of her royalty—a jewel, a symbol of her power, her garments.

At every gate, she asks the gatekeeper why she must do this. And at every gate, the answer is essentially the same: Quiet woman, the ways of the underworld are perfect.

By the time she reaches the throne room, everything that marked her as Queen of Heaven has been stripped away. She is naked and vulnerable. She bows low before her sister.

She is judged by the lords of the underworld, struck down, turned into a corpse, and hung from a hook for three days and three nights.

But never fear.

Tiny creatures sent by the god Enki enter the underworld carrying the Water of Life. They encounter Inanna’s grieving sister, Ereshkigal, and rather than trying to fix her pain, they witness it. They mirror it. They meet her in it.

And somehow, that empathy opens the way for Inanna’s body to be given to them.

They sprinkle her with the Water of Life.

And Inanna rises.

So, what is that story I tell myself?

I am kind. I am strong. I am resilient. I am funny. I am so very smart. I am lucky. I am abundant. I am creative. I am alive! I am thoughtful. I am empathetic. I care. I am also the land of chances for people, for some reason.

Sometimes, I allow their potential to override their demonstrated behavior. Even when my physical reaction is a hard no.

Why?

Why do I let others back in after they have shown me who they are?

Someone treats me badly… I see it. I feel it. I understand it. And then I use my capacity for empathy, forgiveness and hope to argue myself out of what I already know.

I had to stop and ask myself some different questions.

Because ultimately, for as long as I can remember, I have lived under some version of:

Keep the peace.
Be nice.
Don’t make a scene.
Try to understand.
Accommodate.
Make other people’s discomfort my problem.
Compromise yourself for the sake of others.

And when I look at my life through the shadow side of the things I believe are my greatest strengths, it becomes clear why things in my life have turned out the way they have.

With empathy, I can say, “I understand why they did it.”

With compassion and care, I can say, “They were hurting, too.”

With a boundless sea of hope, I can say, “Maybe this time it will be different.”

With resilience, I can say, “I can handle it if it isn’t different.”

My loyalty allows me to say, “I don’t want to give up on people.”

And my willingness to forgive says, “I don’t want to hold this against them.”

Back at the end of February 2010, I was beaten badly by a man I had already given several chances.

We started our relationship when I was 20. He showed me then that I wasn’t his person when, without letting me know personally, someone else was more enticing.

It crushed me.

For nine years after, I played his game. He would often call or show up and disrupt the life I was trying to create for myself to pull me back in. And because of the shadows of my greatest attributes, I fell for it.

When the life he had created for himself came to an end, he came running back because I am safe and soft and forgiving.

For nearly five years, we had a tumultuous on-again, off-again relationship. I was relieved when he moved out of my house and into a different city.

But then he convinced me to leave behind everything and start fresh in that new city.

I did it without reservation. I jumped in wholly.

What I found was that things hadn’t changed.

I cashed in life insurance policies, picked up extra work, made adjustments to make sure my child and I could have some form of normal.

And then, February 2010…

I had never known that kind of violence, anger and hate.

It took me a few weeks to realize and process what had happened.

I should have called the police.

I did not.

All of the things that I know make me great worked against me.

I ended up fleeing.

I let people know what really happened.

In doing so, it opened me up to jabs from his family—letting ME know what a terrible person I was for saying something.

Not that the behavior that caused me to say something in the first place was terrible.

The shadows of my strong self abided, but only for a moment.

I ended up getting a restraining order.

I was trying to start my new life, and there were things I just couldn’t overcome.

I ended up going through a “Cord Cutting” ceremony with a dear spiritual friend. She explained that in order to cut everything tying us together, I needed to cut all positive and negative cords.

I assumed she was talking about the restraining order.

And so, after about seven months, I appealed to the court to get rid of the order.

The shadows of my formidable characteristics told me it was the right thing to do. I was living in the middle of my happy life and felt strong enough to maintain it.

But then I bumped into him in the wild.

He said he wanted to apologize to me.

I needed that apology, I felt.

What it did, however, was open the door to the cycle.

Within three months, I was stuck in it.

What he told me had changed, hadn’t.

He never raised a hand to me again, but I know there were times he wanted to.

Because of this, during mediation, I requested communication ONLY through a court-approved app. Something that can be monitored if needed.

I won’t look back.

I won’t deviate.

He has shown me who he is, and it’s high time I believe that more.

Recently, I was in a very short relationship with someone.

I earnestly thought he was a solid human. And maybe he is.

I knew it was going to be short because he had very specific plans to leave the city on a very precise date.

As that date neared, I learned there was someone else in the picture that I was not aware of.

We were headed out to our final goodbye dinner, and because I had said something before we left, that the lack of knowledge seemed a bit deceptive, it seemed too difficult for him to navigate, he turned around halfway through the drive to our destination.

Without a word, he dropped me off back at home and drove away.

And then the cycle continued.

He texted about a week later to let me know that he didn’t want it to end that way, so I agreed to try dinner again.

And then, about three weeks later, while I was out enjoying my life to the fullest, he let me know that he couldn’t live without me.

And then, about a month later, he showed back up in my city.

And for less than a week, enjoyed my company and all of my greatest attributes…

Only to leave town simply with a text message while I was working to let me know that I am too difficult because my life is too crazy.

I deserved to have this delivered to my face.

I wouldn’t have argued or tried to convince him otherwise.

But I deserved better.

If we back up to the night he turned around and dropped me off without a word…

What I felt in my body.

What I felt in my soul.

What I understood about my own feelings.

That should have been louder than the shadow of my strong characteristics.

Oh, that body of mine…

My body already answered the question.

I just didn’t like the answer.

That may be the hardest part to admit.

I didn’t lack information.

I lacked willingness to honor what the data meant.

I knew.

And then I explained.

I abandoned myself.

When does it become okay to say, “I love you, but that doesn’t mean I need to have you in my life”?

When can I say, “I forgive you. I understand why you did that. You are hurting, too. BUT I will not abandon myself anymore.”

What is the magic formula?

How many times will I allow this in my life before saying enough is enough?

I am coming to this question with honest curiosity.

I feel like no matter how hard I work on myself, this self-abandonment piece is so overpowering that I will always be stuck in this position.

It shows up with my children.

It shows up with my friendships.

It shows up at work.

It even shows up with my family.

I’m struggling with the fact that, in order to break the cycle, I may have to walk away from the version of whatever relationship in which I abandon myself and my inner knowing to keep it.

I have always been the woman who firmly believes there is always more love to give, more understanding to offer, more context to consider, more chances to extend.

I think it comes from truly observing and learning and loving others as they are.

This is all well and good, but I have come to realize that I am, more often than not, the only one who pays for all those chances.

It feels selfish and conceited to treat access to me like an exclusive club.

But I’ve also noticed that I often find myself completely depleted of energy after giving it away so freely.

Besides going back to the places where I’ve abandoned myself the most, healing as much as I can, and integrating those parts of myself back into this whole person…

Is my failure to fully trust myself and my true feelings in these matters simply the result of old patterns?

Does it really come down to the old saying:

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks?”

But is that really true?

I’ve been taking classes to learn new skills like dancing and elevated pottery.

I’ve been traveling alone.

Making art.

Finding new and interesting ways to teach.

Approaching galleries.

Changing how I parent.

Setting boundaries and learning boundaries.

Examining my own nervous system.

Questioning decades-old patterns.

I am literally teaching this old dog new tricks.

Maybe this is what I’ve been afraid of.

Maybe I’ve spent so much time learning these patterns and cycles that they are simply who I am now.

But then I remember something.

An old dog is STILL a living thing.

And apparently, so am I.

I don’t know, exactly, what the magic formula is.

I don’t know how many times it will take before this becomes instinct rather than extreme effort.

I don’t know if self-trust is something I can simply decide to have.

But maybe that’s not the point at all.

Maybe I don’t have to know how to ascend all seven gates today.

Maybe I just have to stop at the next one.

And when the gatekeeper tells me to surrender another piece of myself, maybe this time I’ll recognize...

the lie.

My compassion does not require my participation in my own mistreatment.

Full. Stop.

And maybe this is what rising looks like.

Not becoming harder.

Not becoming less loving.

Not becoming less forgiving.

Not becoming someone who never gives another chance.

Maybe it is simply becoming unwilling to leave myself behind in order to love someone else.

Inanna’s story does not actually end as neatly as the version I remembered.

She rises from the dead, but the laws of the underworld demand a substitute. Someone else must take her place.

There is more to the story.

There always is.

But maybe I don’t have to follow every part of it.

Maybe I can write my own ending.

Maybe I don’t have to sacrifice someone else to get myself back.

Maybe I don’t have to sacrifice myself, either.

Maybe the cycle ends here.

Please send the Water of Life.

I am ready to ascend.

I am ready to break this cycle.

I am ready to stop abandoning myself for others.

Today.

Right now.

A New Chapter...

2026-08-23T16:54:45.238-06:00

Last weekend, I attended a workshop with a dear friend called Awaken the Sovereign Self. Hosted by a former comedian with a foul mouth and an uncanny ability to make complicated ideas digestible, I walked away with a few things still turning over in my brain.

But more than anything, I walked away feeling lighter.

My learning didn't stop there. My gal pal and I went to dinner afterward, where we had one of those wonderfully meandering conversations about the things happening in our lives. Somewhere in the middle of it, she told me something a friend of hers, a widower, had said.

“She was the love of my life. But this is a new chapter.”

Something about that sentence lit up every light on my internal circuit board.

There was no dismissal of the past. No attempt to diminish the love that had existed. No pretending that losing someone didn't hurt.

Just an acknowledgment:

That was a chapter. And this is another one.

I had spent weeks trying to figure out exactly what sovereignty meant before the workshop. Merriam-Webster offers ideas like supreme power, freedom from control, and autonomy.

But what does it mean to me?

It's funny that I should ask.

The Universe has been doing its thang and showing me. Every day.

A few afternoons ago, I sat outside with my oldest while clouds rolled in. Lightning flashed, thunder followed, and big heavy drops of rain fell onto the hot ground. Sitting there in the cool breeze, I told him something I've been thinking about a lot lately.

I feel like I have spent my entire adult life jumping from one controlled environment into another with remarkable efficiency.

My junior year of high school, I started dating a boy. By the time I graduated, I had moved in with him. I became very good at being responsible. Paying bills. Making decisions. Thinking ahead. Managing the grown-up things, even though he was four years older than me.

From there, I moved into one form of coercive control after another.

And now, even after leaving my marriage, I sometimes catch myself feeling as though I am still living under someone else's rules.

The difference is that now there are children in the middle.

My youngest children navigate two households with different rules, different expectations, and very different energies. They grew up watching their father keep me on a short leash, and sometimes I see echoes of those old dynamics in the way they interact with me.

And if I'm being completely honest, I don't always handle that gracefully.

Sometimes I look at my children through the same lens I once used to survive their father.

That realization hurts.

Because then I feel sorry for myself. I think, Am I ever actually going to be free? Will I always have to walk on eggshells? Will I always have to wear kid gloves until there are holes in them?

But is that really the case?

That question followed me into the workshop.

For two hours, I sat in a hard metal folding chair listening to this colorful former comedian talk about Karma. Not karma in the casual “what goes around comes around” sense, but the ancient Indian concept of cause and effect... the idea that our actions, choices, suffering, and the way we process our experiences have consequences beyond what we can immediately see.

He suggested that we enter this life carrying a kind of karmic cloud... a magnetic field of sorts that draws experiences toward us so that we can learn, grow, and release what we carry.

I'll be honest.

My heart sank.

The idea that we might somehow magnetize the experiences we need into our lives made me bristle. I believe in reincarnation, but I'm also deeply skeptical of belief systems. I think this is one of the places human beings can accidentally surrender their sovereignty: when we stop questioning and simply hand our power over to a system that claims to know why everything happens.

For a brief moment, I thought, Well, Snakeoil Man, you've successfully identified my problem. Now sell me the solution.

And then he did.

Except the solution wasn't really his.

It was letting go.

He introduced several practices I already use to help regulate my nervous system, along with the Sedona Method... a series of questions designed to help us move toward an emotion rather than away from it.

How do I feel right now about ______?

Can I allow myself to feel this emotion?

Can I allow even more of it?

Could I let this go?

Would I let this go?

When?

The first time I really sat with these questions, I cried.

A lot.

Apparently, there are feelings that don't particularly care how articulate or spiritually evolved I think I am.

They just want to be felt.

And perhaps that is where sovereignty begins.

Not with control.

With the willingness to stop fighting what is already here.

I have spent a considerable amount of my life believing that freedom would arrive when the external circumstances finally changed. When the person controlling me stopped. When the relationship ended. When the paperwork was signed. When the money was settled. When everyone understood what had actually happened.

But what if freedom doesn't require any of that?

What if sovereignty means that what happened to me no longer gets to decide who I am?

This is where I find myself wrestling with an old story.

My divorce left me financially vulnerable in ways that were difficult to recover from. For years, my primary role had been staying home with our children. When I offered to return to insurance or find other work that might help financially, those ideas were repeatedly shut down. I had little savings and little credit history of my own.

When my marriage ended, the financial safety net disappeared with it.

I went to work.

I took on extra classes with my little business.

I pedaled my art.

I figured things out.

And eventually, I built a life.

Not a perfect one. Not an easy one.

But mine.

The house I live in now feels like one of those strange gifts life occasionally drops into your lap when you aren't looking. I looked at house after house within my budget and found mold, cat piss, and every other indication that perhaps the Universe had a sense of humor.

Then I found this one.

It was affordable. It was safe. It had a pool. I thought it was a joke... it wasn't.

It felt like someone, somewhere, had quietly moved a chess piece into place and said, Here. You can breathe now.

And I did.

I also promised my children that once the house sold, I would put some money aside for a beach vacation. We originally planned to go to North Carolina. When those plans fell apart, I got resourceful.

And somehow, through a little persistence and a lot of Priceline magic, my children and I ended up in Hawaii.

It was extraordinary.

And yet there is still a voice in the background telling my children that none of this should be possible.

That their mother has a big house.

That their mother takes them on vacations.

That their father works hard only to have to pay me.

And this is the part that hurts.

Not because I need anyone to validate the choices I've made.

I don't.

It hurts because children shouldn't have to carry the emotional accounting of their parents' divorce.

They shouldn't feel guilty for enjoying their lives.

They shouldn't have to decide which parent deserves their loyalty based on who appears to be suffering more.

And I can't pretend that doesn't make me angry.

It does.

Sometimes I am absolutely furious.

Sometimes I want to explain every detail. Every bill. Every sacrifice. Every hour I've worked. Every decision that brought us here.

I want to build the case.

I want everyone to know.

But then I remember:

I haven't let it go.

And that is my work.

Not his.

Mine.

I cannot control what another person says about me.

I cannot control the story someone else tells themselves about the past.

I cannot control what my children believe today.

And I certainly cannot force someone to have a conversation they are not emotionally capable of having.

What I can control is whether I continue living inside the story.

That doesn't mean pretending it didn't happen.

It doesn't mean excusing it.

It doesn't mean allowing harmful behavior to continue unchecked.

And it certainly doesn't mean abandoning my children in the name of being the “bigger person.”

It means I don't have to carry the hatred.

I don't have to defend my worth every time someone questions it.

I don't have to make myself smaller so someone else can feel less uncomfortable with the life I've built.

And I don't have to teach my children that freedom means winning.

Maybe freedom means something much quieter.

Maybe sovereignty is sitting on a porch while a storm rolls across the sky and realizing that you are still here.

Maybe it is feeling the anger instead of stuffing it down.

Feeling the grief.

Feeling the injustice.

Feeling all of it.

And then asking:

Can I let this go?

Would I let this go?

When?

I'm not sure.

But I know this:

It's not always smooth sailing on the waters of life.

I am learning to let my heart be my guide instead of hiding from what hurts or charging straight into every battle simply because I can.

I want to model something different for my children.

I want them to see that we can save and spend thoughtfully while still living fully.

That hard work matters.

That generosity matters.

That abundance doesn't have to be shameful.

That we don't have to apologize for enjoying the life we've worked to create.

And most of all, I want them to know that they don't have to carry the weight of the stories their parents tell about one another.

They are allowed to love us both.

They are allowed to have their own experiences.

They are allowed to grow into their own understanding.

And so am I.

Maybe this is what sovereignty means to me.

Not finally becoming untouchable.

Not controlling the circumstances around me.

Not escaping every person who has ever tried to control me.

But choosing, again and again, what I will carry forward.

Some chapters deserve to be remembered.

Some deserve to be grieved.

Some deserve to be understood.

And some?

Some simply need to end.

I don't have to suffer through this one again.

This is a new chapter.

The Soul selects her own Society

Emily Dickinson

The Soul selects her own Society —

Then — shuts the Door —

To her divine Majority —

Present no more —

Unmoved — she notes the Chariots — pausing —

At her low Gate —

Unmoved — an Emperor be kneeling

Upon her Mat —

I've known her — from an ample nation —

Choose One —

Then — close the Valves of her attention —

Like Stone —

c. 1862

Her Name is Pamela...

2026-08-15T16:46:42.863-06:00

My burning question this morning upon waking… knowing that hindsight is 20/20, would I do it all again knowing things would go the exact same way… and I would end up right here where I am today?

I used to think that I needed to get my eyes checked. Instead, I’m starting to understand this little life of mine better.

I stumbled upon a TikTok of someone promoting a book by an author I knew personally. Right before we stopped talking, he had forwarded a copy of one of his books before he sent it to the publisher. His exact words were, “Are you ready for your story to be told?” It was strange reading someone else’s perspective of me and my story after being rejected by me. The title of the book was Never Send a Monster. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it then.

As I watched this short video about his new book, I struggled a bit. It’s been nearly two decades, and his interaction with me still aids him in character development. Am I really that intriguing?

Bigger question yet… did you see me for me? Because it doesn’t feel like me.

It does feel familiar, however. I have been touching my way through all the past versions of myself, from tiny little me until yesterday. What I have found is that I’ve shielded myself from view in so much of my life because I was afraid to rock the boat. Of course, the me that feels certain has popped up from time to time. It’s like that teenage girl who went on a goth bender and dyed her hair black… then showed up to church and was rejected by all the tried-and-true huggers because of her hair. In that moment, I learned that the me willing to experiment and find new ways to express the depth of my heart and soul could - and would - be rejected.

Last weekend, I decided to put purple, my favorite color, on my hair. For some reason, it didn’t make my hair purple. Instead, it made my hair an ashy black. It’s always fun when I dye my hair. My natural auburn-brown takes color and chooses its own adventure, usually. I was worried kiddos and parents and co-workers would have something to say about their gothy/emo art teacher. But I’m in a space now where the people who know me aren’t that incredibly invested in judging me based on appearances. And if they are, I don’t give a damn.

It was a full-circle moment that I didn’t know I needed.

When I think about the many versions of me throughout the years… my own character development comes into play.

The introductory character here would probably be that cute little child with the big eyes and curiosity for days. I may have asked way too many questions and learned that most adults found my queries annoying. I had access to a dictionary and an encyclopedia… and learned to answer my own damned questions.

That girl eventually fell prey to genetics and packed on a few more pounds than the children around her. She learned to be awfully accommodating just so she’d have someone to play with at lunch recess.

There was the teenager… When she landed in high school, she looked like a totally different person. All of those boys who would never stop picking on her in years past suddenly changed their minds. The teenager finally felt seen, but only for one thing. There was still a depth inside that remained hidden.

When he walked into the radio station less than five minutes after speaking his name, it felt divinely orchestrated. And maybe it was… character development. When it ended, she felt robbed. Like she didn’t do her job, like she wasn’t the right “whatever he needed” her to be. She spent almost ten years in agony, thinking of every possible “What if?” and not being fully present in the life in front of her.

I’ve sat a lot with that girl… the one riddled with anxiety, the one who feels like she’s never enough, the one who is heavily critical and hides her true character, thinking that’s the problem. I have loved on her so hard and tried to present her with evidence that she is the coolest and sweetest… that the gut-wrenching ending that happened way, way back then really didn’t have anything to do with her, even though that’s how it was presented.

I’ve had to sit with the girl who made life choices from that place… the girl who sprinted to marry the next seemingly safe guy who appeared to like her more than she liked him. She didn’t know him… and he definitely didn’t know her. I remember overhearing a conversation that guy was having with a long-distance friend at the beginning of the relationship. The way he explained this amazing girl to this friend didn’t feel like me at all. And then he called me, “Punk Rock girl.”

Oh baby. Yes, I love Punk. I’m so much more than that. While everyone was awestruck by Nirvana… I was over here lusting after Trent… and Pretty Hate Machine was my anthem album. But I also adored the American Beauty long-stem roses planted in my garden. That girl eventually discovered Bauhaus, Type O, Dessau, Circle of Dust… And she also loved playing with kittens and puppies. She wore nothing but black and had an affinity for old creepy cemeteries, but also smiled a lot and made friends easily. She wrote deep, dark poetry that she never shared and loved her family fiercely… She worked at a mortuary but always sought connections with living, breathing humans. That girl still played small because, what do you mean I’m not good enough?

But I was only seen as a “Punk Rock girl.”

How about that overly optimistic girl… the one so excited for second chances? I never worked so hard to make something work in my life. Completely mortified that the ending was more like a true-crime story that didn’t have a chance to play all the way out… bloody and battered and humiliated and barely hanging on. That poor baby circa 2010 was something to behold. I love her so very much. Despite all the odds, she still managed to make honor roll, fall in love again, go out and enjoy life!

And then there was that girl who desperately wanted to believe what he said… that he “can’t do it without you.” Oh, that sweet, tender-hearted girl… longing for her very own love story. Always looking over her shoulder at the version of herself that learned something, but not enough to be confident in it. The woman who wanted to be indispensable. The one who believed that if she was necessary, then she certainly wouldn’t be abandoned.

That girl showed up and made it work. Owned up to her choices and still sought the best in every situation. She relished in easy motherhood. Playing with her babies. Teaching them her ways… her music… her ability to deeply think. She was a beautifully delicate human being, and I love her so much.

The light-bulb girl, though… the one who realized that she was in charge of her own character development. That the character presented back to her by men who never took the time to know her, who only desired to control her, break her, crush the spirit that made her so enticing to them in the first place, did not have the rights to write this story.

Real, snatch-your-soul-up-by-the-shirt-collar kind of love has two edges. The light and the dark. And I appreciate them both. When I truly express myself, I am loud… only because the contrast between black and white is significant.

My sweet nature invites people in who need it the most. I never want to be mean. I spent my younger years as the fat kid and know just how hard it is to thrive in that realm.

My desire to have connections has made me shelve parts of myself that seem too bold, daring, and intimidating to others.

My desire to be seen for who I really am leaves me trying to explain myself to a world that doesn’t care enough to observe or ask me first.

All those versions of me sitting sad, mad, frustrated, and unseen… looking back at the battlefield where I had become a knock-off character that never felt quite right… or remained the controlled whipping post because I allowed myself to be there. Or the Punk… Or the fat kid. The LOVER…

And then there’s the present version of me, giving MYSELF the connection and love that I have always deserved. Looking back, seeing that every single time I started fresh, it always worked out… just as it is right now. I always exceed my expectations… glimpses of my daring, bold, dark, sweet, loving self shine through.

If you’re watching, Will, and I know you are… can we incorporate more of that? The woman who finally picked up the pen herself, who decisively finds herself, loves herself, knows her worth, adores her life? Because that seems like a mighty fine character to me.

But honestly, you may have written characters based on me… I am writing the ending of this story.

Maybe the character I was always waiting for someone else to see is this woman finally learning to see herself.

I am so in love with this version of myself.

And to answer my burning question from this morning… Knowing what I know now, I wouldn’t wish any of it on the woman I love. But would I erase it? I don’t think I could. Every version of me brought another piece of herself home.

Inside every person is a world...
What you seek, you already are
The seeker and the sought are one
The lover and the beloved are one
All of this is one human being.

- Rumi -

When Enough Felt Abundant...

2026-07-18T12:36:14.336-06:00

This morning I woke with a smile on my face for no particular reason. The sun was up and bright, shining through the little crack in the wooden blinds finding its way right to the place on my face where my eyes call home. The light was warm and waking. Things have neither been particularly good nor bad… It wasn’t an extraordinary morning. Nothing miraculous had happened. Life wasn’t suddenly perfect. It was simply enough. I’ve just settled in the place of presence. The moment of right here and right now. And for the first time in a very long time… enough felt abundant.

Four years ago I stumbled across Be Here Now by Ram Dass at exactly the moment I needed it. I was exhausted from treading water, convinced I was failing at everything that mattered, even considering walking away from the life I'd built. The book didn't change my life overnight. It simply asked me one question:

Can you be here?

Life was the same mundane routine every day. Wake up, wake children, ready them for school, take them to school, try to sell my classes through my little art teaching business, USUALY an ungodly amount of laundry… feeling defeated with house cleaning, grocery getting and meal prepping. I also knew the heartbreak of yearning. I specialize in seeing the potential in others. It's my creative superpower. I see possibility long before I see proof. I’m also a diehard empath… which allows me to feel into situations and understand them from the inside out. I wish I had known that I could extend that same sort of grace to myself.

The me from four years ago believed that walking on eggshells and bracing for whatever walked through the door at 4:30pm was unconditional love. I didn’t quite understand that unconditional love WAS NOT taking on an incredible amount of stress, grief, anxiety… with a side of control and verbal and emotional abuse.

I remember one day in particular… an important conversation needed to take place… the man wouldn’t answer calls or text messages throughout the day… and near the time he was to arrive home, my heart was beating erratically and my stomach was in such knots that I thought I was going to throw up. He walked through the door with a scowl on his face, so I spent the rest of my evening moving into opposite rooms from him. Eventually, my stomach pain became an ulcer. My erratic heartbeat never found a diagnosis until about 3 weeks after he had moved out. It just stopped happening.

Honestly, that girl 4 years ago thought that she was WITH the love of her life and things would eventually become more balanced. What I didn’t understand was that when you partner with someone who has to have ultimate control of every situation as a coping mechanism, and once you allow that control, it never returns to you. Once control becomes the language of a relationship, one person begins speaking it fluently while the other slowly forgets the sound of their own voice.

But enters, “Be Here Now,” and my thought process began to shift slightly. The lesson that stuck with me the most was the story of experimentation with mind altering drugs… and then the realization that mind altering can come from meditation and presence without other stimulation.

Be present.

Observe THIS moment.

How does it feel in your body?

What can you love in this present reality? Right here, right now?

And then, just like the universe does… a dear friend sent me a meditation track from Baba Ram Dass… It’s titled, “Sit Around the Fire,” by Jon Hopkins, unknowing of my discovery of Be Here Now.

I knew I was an “ember” …I felt it…. The loss of my voice and making myself small turned my warm, expansive fire into a smoldering ember.

I’ve spent the last 4 years fanning that ember into flames. I landed my dream job. I’ve managed to be stable and secure on my own. I’m healing that which is inside of me that has held me back from my own full potential. AND, I became very aware of allowing others to be responsible for their own growth… for many previous years I sat back and stayed quiet… allowing myself to be treated awfully because my empathetic heart knew where the source of this came about.

Just because someone has a crappy childhood does not give them the right to control and demean others, which includes yours truly.

What I struggle with now is letting go the past versions of me… the versions that shrank, stumbled, thought that any or all of it was okay. In those moments, I become my own abuser… I frequently have thoughts about being such a “stupid girl.” I have to stop and remind myself that I don’t deserve that… not from anyone… including the present version of me that made it through.

When these thoughts come up, I try to run to a mirror and speak directly to myself at least three things I think are the most amazing about the girl in the mirror.

I make sure that I am focused on both of my reflection’s eyes. I take a few deep breaths. I speak something that I know to be true, “You are beautiful!” I sit with it for a moment to make sure my body doesn’t flinch. If it does, I repeat it to myself until it doesn’t. “I am love.” “I can do anything I set my mind to!” “I am kind!” “I am seen.”

A thought that has recently come up in this version of myself that is healing… I’ve always alleged that I wanted to be seen.

I think, today, it’s not about being seen… more about being witnessed.

Someone can glance at a painting while walking through a gallery. Or...they can stand in front of it long enough to notice the brushstrokes, the places the artist changed their mind, the layers hidden beneath the finished surface.

That's the difference between being seen and being witnessed.

I don’t believe I’ve ever been witnessed. I think that my willingness to spend my time with avoidant people… lovers and friends... is the reason for this. Nearly every major relationship in my life has been between me and someone who does not or cannot make room in their life for me. Relationships stay on the surface.

Recently, I had the opportunity to be a part of a short-term relationship with a man that didn’t spend much time talking about the weather. He always started conversations with me wanting to know how I was doing, what was my day like, cool things I observed in any experience… Our conversations were deep and curious. I feel like I actually got to know myself a lot more in the short four and a half months of time. Every interaction with him was powerful and meaningful. Which was quite intriguing, because I knew in the beginning it wouldn’t last long. I battled everything inside me to not become attached.

My favorite part of this entire experience is the fact that I don’t have to heal from it. While one moment was a bit tricky to navigate, everything else was easy… loving… exceptional.

I felt like a grown-up doing grown-up stuff at the ending of this phase of the relationship. We have agreed to remain friends as he journeys off to other places that his heart was calling him to.

While sitting on my front porch, as he relayed his plans to leave and how our adventures would end… neither sadness nor anger, disbelief or confusion were present. Rather, a wave of excitement and joy came over my body that I struggled to hide.

For months, knowing that this experience would be short lived, I tried my damnedest to not fall head over heels in love with this man. I failed miserably. And, my friends, I must report – it wasn’t that crazy feeling of, “I’d die without you,” that often gets portrayed in cinema. It was more a quiet knowing that each of us were allowed to be who we are and just let the magic play out when we finally reconvened after our outings in this world.

It was like the Universe, doing what it does best, sending me a kind of love that I did not know existed. Right into my lap… everything I’ve always wished that love was.

He showed up the night before he left with flowers and chocolate… just like our very first date. Then rode off into the wilderness on his new adventure.

I’ve been sitting with my initial reaction over the last few weeks. Excitement?

Yes. Some call me delusional, and frankly, I don’t give a damn. Before the crazy split of my marriage, I had this wild dream… I was running through all of these rooms that were connected. The man I was running with looked different in each room, but so did I. The only thing that remained the same was his eyes and his smile. But the final room brought me back to this recurring dream that I used to have when I was a pre-teen/ teenager. I walked down this gorgeous marble and gold staircase and at the bottom, walking up was this man’s silhouette that resembled Michael Hutchence (yes, the lead singer from INXS.) He didn’t just see me. He knew me, in all my forms. I knew him, in all his forms. We were witnesses to each other.

This most recent relationship feels like the jet fuel I needed to propel me into outer space, the place where I look back at Earth with a new understanding, a different perspective and willingness to venture outside of the ideas I had about my own destiny… destination.

I was never going anywhere ruminating on a relationship that broke my back and my spirit.

And for this change in perspective and experience through this recent relationship, I will forever be grateful.

I do not know what is around the corner for me. What I do know is that for no good reason, my heart feels expansive and excited. What I do know is that whatever is coming towards me feels ancient, familiar, and known on a soul level. And when I get done with the next many months of nothing but playing in my own sandbox…. I am willing to predict that the kind of love I have ALWAYS desired and ALWAYS deserved will be there for me. Whether from myself or another. I know what it is like… I don’t have to imagine it anymore.

This morning, the sun found me before I opened my eyes.

It wasn’t trying to wake me.

It was simply reminding me that light has always known where to find me.

Maybe, love works that way too.

Not the frantic kind.

Not the kind that asks us to become smaller.

The kind that witnesses us.

The kind that leaves us more ourselves than it found us.

Today, for no particular reason at all…

I woke up smiling.

Godspeed Wayne!

Wonder was Always the Destination...

2026-07-05T13:42:19.543-06:00

Back in September of 2001, ten days after the airplanes struck various locations in the United States, I bravely jumped on a plane and traveled to Paris, France at four months pregnant.

The funny story started as I was trying to oblige my older partner with the blessing of children. I was already stuck in the quicksand of the relationship before him and knew that nothing I did, no one I would be with, would much matter. I played along the whole time. My friends, my parents, everyone around me seemed to liked him… but if I am 100% honest with myself, he was never my jam.

When my doctor relayed that he was unsure as to why I was unable to have children, after countless invasive tests… All the money we had saved for daycare and nursery furniture and whatever else we may encounter… was used to purchase a giant many weeks long expedition to Europe. Just before jumping on that plane, I found out that I was, indeed, pregnant…. Wild.

It was a long flight… first to Montreal… then to Paris. I slept a bunch during the darkness of the flight, only to awaken as the plane neared the big city in the beautiful morning light, with the Eiffel tower and the stunning geometric layout of the city smiling at me. My heart was so excited. Never did I believe I was going to experience such a thing…. The girl from the small town…

As we deboarded and entered the space age looking concourse that is Charles de Gaulle, caught a cab to our quaint little hotel in Champs- Elysees, checked in and set our bags down. I had noticed an outdoor market on the way in. The man I was traveling with, apparently, did not get enough sleep on the airplane and wanted to crash at the hotel… but I was ready to adventure.

The bag that contained most of my things did not make the flight with us. So I needed to find a few things to make my trip a bit easier. I decided to catch the little market and hit up the pharmacy on the corner. I remember walking through the market with sheer wonder and awe. I picked up some dried fruits and a bit of cheese. I spied a chocolatier! I still have the bag the chocolates came in, to this very day. And then when I turned the corner… there it was… the Arc de Triomphe and the chaos of cars spinning around it. I did what anyone would do… walked towards it. I was not quite sure (yet) how to get to it. I sat on a bench and watched the madness for a minute. I was so amazed that I was experiencing something I had only dreamed of since I was young. (I mean, come on… 4 years of French Classes for some twerp living in Po-dunk Colorado???) I still have the picture I took sitting right here on my desk and I look at it frequently to remind me that nothing is impossible… that something amazing is right around the corner if you are willing to get out there and experience it.

I will not lie to you. I’ve had such a rough week. I’ve had many conversations with that little girl that lives inside. She has been sad and hurt and reminding me that in Psalms 116:11, it clearly states that, “All men are liars.” For a few days, that little girl wanted to collect evidence that her oldest fear was true…that people deceive, that love is unsafe, that opening your heart is foolish.

But I’ve been trying something different.

Every time I catch myself building a case against someone, I interrupt the story and say out loud, “Thank you for trusting me to love these men.”

It sounds strange, but it changes the question. Instead of asking, “Why did this happen to me?” I ask, “What does it say about me that I was capable of loving deeply?”

And almost immediately another thought follows: “I’m ready to receive love like mine, too.”

That doesn’t erase disappointment. It doesn’t make painful things painless. But it reminds me that a hard week is not a verdict on my worth.

What originally hurt that little girl? The one who believes that she must be different, act different, say something different, say nothing and do nothing at all? Why does she not have faith in herself?

About two weeks ago, when I knew the end was nigh, I made a game plan. I made myself a six-month promise: to become curious about what lights me up.

So, I’m showing up to gallery openings and live music. I’m taking a pottery class. I joined a photography group. I’m planning a solo trip to Santa Fe and Taos. I’m leaning into the mystical, the creative, the strange, and the beautiful. And somewhere along the way, I’m gathering the people who make me feel most alive.

The goal isn’t self-improvement. It’s self-remembrance.

I promised my children I would take them to a beach this summer. I tried to find my most inexpensive options (Teacher salary here…) and found trips to North Carolina were fairly affordable. I also had a friend in New Jersey that said, “Please come this way…”

But every time I purchase a Powerball ticket, I always dream that my first trip will be to Hawaii… my kids even get in on the scheming… “Mom, I need a new swimsuit to go to Hawaii…” they say to me, walking out of any convenience store with ticket in hand.

Out of curiosity, I investigated what it would take to get me and the littles to Hawaii… and to my surprise, it was less than $1,000 more.

Guess where we are going for family vacation?!

It was a moment when I allowed that little girl to get something that she wanted.

She’s tired of being judged. She’s tired of being overlooked or taken advantage of. She is sad about losing “friends.” She is tired of not taking chances.

My whole life I have done things the way that I thought I had to. There were only a few moments where I spread my wings and done things that I wanted to do… Like standing in amazement at the Arc, alone… or the thrill of punching the gas when the green light on the tree gives me permission… or applying for a house where the light that falls in brings my heart so much joy. Planning the next 6 months of my life with nothing but being curious about myself makes me smile.

So no, this past week doesn’t get to define me.

A week is not a life. A disappointment is not a destiny. One person’s inability to meet me where I am does not make me less worthy of being met.

I’m still the girl who wandered through Paris alone, turned a corner, and found herself staring at the Arc de Triomphe in complete awe.

I’m still the woman who believes that something extraordinary might be waiting just around the corner.

And for the first time in a long time, I’m not building a life around what I’m afraid of losing.

I’m building one around what makes me come alive.

And while it was fun getting to know another human being… I am so thrilled to center within myself. To allow myself to absolutely be in love with my own life that any experience such as this, just adds fun seasoning…

And perhaps that's what love has been trying to teach me all along.

Build a life that feels so rich, so curious, so deeply your own that anyone who joins you becomes a welcome companion…

I have always been the destination.

The cake was always mine.

Everyone else…simply the sprinkles.

Love after Love

Derek Walcott

The time will come

when, with elation,

you will greet yourself arriving

at your own door,

in your own mirror

and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say,

sit here.

Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was your self.

Give wine.

Give bread,

Give back your heart

to itself,

to the stranger who has loved you

all your life,

whom you ignored

for another,

who knows you by heart.

Take down the love letters from the bookshelf

the photographs,

the desperate notes,

peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit.

Feast on your life.

For Millennia, Forever...

2026-07-02T09:58:05.232-06:00

Ode to the forever

Beacon of light

For those that need my kind

Of Love

The most.

It happened again

This morning

As the ash fell from the heavens

Fires burning in every

Direction

Around me.

Love

Came out of witness protection

And splattered my heart

Across the

Sky.

I envision for millennia

The splattered pieces

Will fall to the earth

Like stars

And gas

That fashion nebulae

Or just remain a beacon

For those that need my kind

Of love

The most.

I hope to catch a glimpse

Before I die.

Of my kind of love…

Untitled: Perfect Lovers

2026-06-16T12:11:24.771-06:00

Oh June…

My blog is titled: The Long Road to Love. When I started writing 16 years ago, Love to me was merely a destination. Since then, I have changed my perspective on the matter and have decided that it is a current that our lives move through. It is what drives the car as we get to wherever it is we are going.

I recalled the other day, a piece of art that I learned about in one of my Art History courses titled, “Untitled – Perfect Lovers,” by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Simple to explain to you, it’s two identical clocks hung side by side displaying the same time… exactly. At the time, while learning of this piece, I hardly thought of it as art at all. I only had my own frame of reference… whereas all the “Lovers” under my belt never felt like they were on the same time, let alone the same time zone.

I thought of this piece the other day as I was picking up my phone to text this man that claims to love me, called me… it wasn’t a normal time for a call nor a text. We just happen to be thinking of each other at the exact same moment.

Former me would be desperate for clarity, answers… What does this all mean? Where is this going?

Present me is just grateful to be comfortable in my own skin. Happy to be independent and free. Thankful for an opportunity to experience what it means to come into the sphere of another human being with emotional intelligence and a desire to allow me to be seen, heard and experienced fully. I don’t have to pretend to be something I’m not. I don’t have to shrink myself to be swallowed whole. As I do amazing things in my career and education, I don’t feel like I’m in competition. I am allowed to shine and applauded for such things.

How did I get to this point in my life?

Honestly, I’m a little surprised by it myself.

Did I wave a magic wand? No.

I’ve been doing this EMDR trip with my therapist. A lot has come up for me. There is this space where I am working so hard to redirect my thoughts, align my actions, live entirely out loud, and trust that I am exactly where I am supposed to be.

I don’t think that we arrive on the day of our birth to learn to deal with the world around us. I am a firm believer that we are here to leave an imprint on the world around us, to enjoy being a human, to follow the path of love… the current… and allow ourselves to be a part of it.

Sometimes, I’ll mention everything I’ve gone through in my life and the ears that hear are so astonished that I’ve made it all the way through. It makes me uneasy and confused because I was there and nothing truly seemed like it would break me in that time. Yes, some moments felt really hard… like the birth of my first born in particular. I feel that I did what any mother would do… and that was whatever it takes. There was a time, looking at the odds, I assumed he wouldn’t be here forever, and moved forward knowing I had to make sure his little life was the very best I could make it.

Through these years of unpacking old wounds and trying to heal myself to become exactly who I know I am, I realized that I should be bringing that kind of energy to my own short little life. What can I do to make sure this is the very best little life I can make it, for me?

I spent so many years trying to understand what happened to me. Where did “I” go?

Somewhere along the way, I became the full-time caretaker of everyone else’s wounds, my own wounds, and my own survival.

I’ve examined every memory.

Analyzed every scar.

Dissected every relationship.

And while there is true value in healing fully, there came a point where I had to ask myself a different question.

What if I brought that same devotion to creating a life I actually enjoy?

What makes my little heart happy?

I joined a belly dancing class… I’ve always wanted to learn and have been trying to teach myself for YEARS. And while I’m not good at it… There was a time when I wasn’t good at walking either. I have so much fun in class!

I ask myself several times a day, “What would bring me the most JOY?” And I listen to it and do it… maybe it’s a drive thru Starbucks coffee… Maybe it's a snuggle on the couch with my babies... Maybe it is a walk first thing in the morning. Maybe it’s a motorcycle ride with this handsome guy I know. Maybe it’s sitting down to paint. Today I trimmed the hedge in front of my house and planted a tomato plant and pulled some weeds. I also sat in my forested backyard and took in how the morning light filters through the foliage of the trees.

I have an idea for a new painting that I’m hoping to sketch out and get started on today.

I know that giving myself permission to find my highest joy in each moment allows, “Untitled – Perfect Lovers,” to make sense to me. I am on my own time. My flow comes with content. Life seems Peaceful and so much more at ease.

Healing wasn’t learning how to survive my past…

Healing WAS learning how to participate in my present, fully.

Some things go absolutely right, listening to my highest joy. Some things don’t… and that’s okay too.

I know, without a doubt, that allowing myself to pursue joy, moment by moment is what has finally helped me to understand, “Untitled – Perfect Lovers.”

For years, I thought the artwork was about finding another person who moved in time with me.

Now, I wonder if it means something else entirely.

Perhaps, the first perfect lover is yourself.

The moment your thoughts, actions, values and desires begin keeping the same time.

The moment you stop forcing, chasing, shrinking, proving and performing.

The moment you trust your own rhythm.

Maybe that’s why life feels different these days. Not because I have arrived somewhere. But because, for the first time, I am finally on my own time.

Who made the world?

Who made the swan, and the black bear?

Who made the grasshopper?

This grasshopper, I mean—

the one who has flung herself out of the grass,

the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,

who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—

who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.

Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.

Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.

I don't know exactly what a prayer is.

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?

—Mary Oliver

The Girl in the Driveway...

2026-05-28T11:24:04.132-06:00

Can I tell you a story without scaring you away?

My therapist has decided to pull out the big guns. A waltz down EMDR way… with a side of Internal Family Systems. Mostly because in three years of therapy, all I’ve really done is blame myself for my predicament.

Turns out, much like the dust that forms stars, we brush against many people in this life before becoming that compact ball of fiery goodness.

She warned me that beginning this work might stir up things I packed away years ago and quietly forgot about. So I spent my day dusting off old boxes. It wasn’t entirely terrible.

There once was a girl standing in her driveway shooting hoops when a turd brown Subaru wagon came honking down the road and pulled into the neighbor’s driveway while they were away. A moment later, it backed into hers instead.

Out stepped her friend Jeremiah… and a strange handsome boy she had never met.

It was instant.

I can still describe the flannel he wore. The trucker hat. The Levi’s. The way his dirty blonde hair fell just past his chin in natural waves. And that dang smile.

That girl and that boy carried on a long-distance relationship for nearly four years. They called each other for every win, every loss, every ordinary Tuesday. They were babies, really.

There were “significant others” in their real lives from time to time, but he still sent flowers every Christmas and called every day.

Then one day, he decided to take the leap and move to Colorado.

And she was terrified.

Because suddenly it was no longer a daydream. It could become real.

By then, she had attached herself elsewhere, as they both occasionally did over the years, and she was so afraid of hurting another human being that she ignored herself entirely.

It didn’t turn out the way you’d expect.

That story became one of the boxes in the pile. One I may never have fully unpacked.

Still, it shaped me. It kept me searching for fated meetings, depth, meaning… that feeling of being fully seen.

And even now, nearing fifty years old, a good chunk of my heart still remembers what it felt like to talk to that boy… now man.

Sometimes I wonder what island sands we’d have our toes buried in had we followed through on all those daydreams. I wonder what my life might have looked like if I had followed my heart instead of my head. If I had worried a little more about my own happiness than everyone else’s.

That’s the question my therapist and I keep circling back to:

Where on my timeline did I decide it was more important to please everyone else before myself?

Part of me has been afraid to find out.

Because this characteristic has shaped nearly every interaction I’ve had with the world… publicly and privately. There have only been a handful of times in my life where I stopped the performance and allowed my true feelings to fully exist in the room.

And so we began.

The timeline.

Every important emotional event I can remember, positive or painful. Every story that still echoes.

Then she had me create a visual safe space… and a container for anything too overwhelming to hold all at once.

Because I have some training in brain development and trauma-informed care, I wasn’t entirely convinced this process would work.

What I do know is this: I have long rejected the idea of “blaming my childhood.” My childhood, in so many ways, was beautiful. My parents made sure of that.

To me, blaming my childhood felt too much like blaming them… the two people who have shown up for me with unconditional love over and over again.

I couldn’t do that.

But my resistance softened after taking a certification course focused on childhood brain development and trauma. We discussed how both large and seemingly small experiences can shape neural pathways during critical developmental stages.

For example, imagine a child who goes a week without enough food at twenty months old. The child’s brain learns something: hunger, uncertainty, instability, fear. Maybe the reality was simply that a loving single mother lost her job and was waiting for assistance. Maybe love never left the room at all.

But the nervous system still adapted for survival.

That adaptation gets stored.

Pathways reroute. Others close down.

As educators, we’re encouraged to look at the whole child… not simply the behavior in front of us. We meet them at the developmental age where the wound occurred and help gently reopen pathways that help them out of survival.

And somewhere on the drive home, through tears, I finally asked myself:

If I believe this about children… why wouldn’t it also be true for me?

The truth is, I entered this world soft and sensitive by nature. During those critical years of development, I grew up with a loving mother carrying an overwhelmed nervous system and a father struggling with alcoholism. There was love in our home, but there was also fighting.

My brother and I became less mischievous out in the open and more accommodating. We learned to be helpful. Easy. Pleasing.

Not because we were unloved.

But because children adapt.

And while both of my parents were deeply present in so many ways… and while I feel profoundly grateful to have witnessed my father heal his relationship with alcohol and my mother finally settle into a softer life… I was still a child absorbing the emotional weather around me.

No blame.

Just observation.

That distinction alone has changed something inside me.

Because now I can begin to understand that many of the stories I’ve carried, every heartbreak and attachment and fear of disappointing others, have all been filtered through those early neural pathways.

And the most hopeful part of all of this?

Neural pathways can change.

So here I am. Waist deep in old stories and new understanding. Learning how I came to view the world… and slowly, carefully, giving myself permission to view it differently.

Now is the Time

Hafiz

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child's training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

Hafiz is a divine envoy

Whom the Beloved

Has written a holy message upon.

My dear, please tell me,

Why do you still

Throw sticks at your heart

And God?

What is it in that sweet voice inside

That incites you to fear?

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you do Is sacred.

Learning to Orbit Myself...

2026-04-29T10:42:00.001-06:00

I wrote… but from a place of confusion.

Hours of pouring something onto the page, or so I thought.
But when I read it back, I realized… it wasn’t my heart speaking.
It was my head.

I received a video recording of my ex… completely trashing me.
Listening to his words, who I’ve “always been,” what I am, what I’m not…
“Good luck to the next guy.”

Hmm.

Then I had my week with my children.
And I watched, in real time, how words like that can shape and shift the way they see me… in just a matter of days.

It’s been incredibly hard to hold.

Years ago, during a long season of breaking, I painted nothing but faceless women… naked, exposed, undefined.

Then one day, something shifted.
Color came rushing back.
I started painting bold, vibrant, Native-inspired pieces… one after another, like something had been uncorked.
It poured out of me. Fast. Unfiltered. Alive.

About three years ago, I began praying for something different.
Begging for it, really.

Peace.

I wrote it over and over again in my journal:
“I have and I am so grateful for peace in my life.”

I didn’t know exactly what it would look like, but I had this image of me, on a quiet deck, coffee in hand, still in my pajamas, watching the sunrise…
not rushing, not striving… just being.

And this morning that’s exactly where I was.

So I scrapped the “poor me” version of this post.

I’m done being the whipping post for someone else’s unhealed version of reality.

Someone else’s interpretation of who I am, how I live, how I love.

I get to decide that now.

From the peaceful sanctuary I’ve built for myself… piece by piece.

I’ve become almost surgical about removing what doesn’t belong in my life.
Careful. Precise.
Like the chef at a brunch carving station, slicing away what doesn’t serve.

Sometimes I wonder what will be left.

But then I remember…
I’m still here.
Still breathing.

So today, in my slippers, coffee beside me, I’m casually looking at budget travel to Portugal… because it’s beautiful, and I’ve always wanted to go.
Belize and Bali are on the list too.

We’ll see which one calls me forward.

But what I really want to talk about today… is balance.

For years, more than I can count, I’ve felt like a spinning top at the very end of its motion.
Wobbling.
Off-center.

I made a habit of stepping back and letting others be the sun while I revolved around them.
Dimming myself.
Telling myself that staying small was somehow… enough.

But then I remembered something.

There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on this Earth.

There is room for all of us to shine.

And shine I have.

I received “Exemplary” on my final evaluation for the state.
I was asked to open my classroom to other educators.
Invited to facilitate at an art symposium this summer.
I sold more prints this month than ever before.
My Vagabond Canvas classes are full again.
My school art show was a success.

And tomorrow is my birthday.

Even with everything this past year has held…
I haven’t felt this kind of happiness in longer than I can remember.

It’s okay for me to be the center of my own orbit.
To be the star I revolve around.

But in claiming that… I also went inward. Deeply inward.
I poured myself into my work and my children.
Protected my solitude fiercely.
Said “no” more than I said “yes.”

And when I did say yes…
life surprised me.

New friendships. Unexpected connections.
People I might have overlooked before, now woven into my life in meaningful ways.

And slowly… I’ve begun to soften again.

To feel safe around men who are not my past.
To rediscover parts of myself I thought might be gone for good.

I’ve laughed.
Felt beautiful.
Kind.
Smart.
Playful.
HUMAN.

I feel more like myself right now than I have in years.

And most of all…
I have Peace.

Not the imagined version anymore.
The lived one.

But here’s what I’m learning…

Peace isn’t something you have.
Just like Love isn’t something you own.

They are energies you move through.

This morning, I wrote from the perspective of my future self: April 2027.

That version of me understands balance.

The Earth rotates around the Sun because of a balance between the Sun’s powerful gravity and the Earth’s inertia… high speed; forward momentum.

And maybe that’s what balance really is.

Not stillness.
Not perfection.

But movement… held in just the right relationship with itself.

So as I move through Peace, through Love,
through time, desire, and reality…

I trust that I am finding my way into that balance.

Beautiful Creature
Hafiz

from Love Poems from God

There is a beautiful creature living
in a hole you have dug,

so at night I set fruit and grains and little pots of wine and milk
beside your soft earthen mounds,

and I often sing to you,
but still, my dear, you do not come out.

I have fallen in love with someone
who is hiding inside of you.

We should talk about this problem,
otherwise I will never leave you alone.

The Most Important Love Story I Ever Told...

2026-04-09T17:29:00.003-06:00

“Love is an ever fixed mark…”

I woke up late…much later than I normally do.

I like to rise around 4:15, just to make sure I have time to journal, meditate, or sit with the early birds if it’s warm enough. That head-clearing time is the best start to my days.

When I started this new job, I created a small ritual that has helped me tremendously. I lay out my clothes for the next day, prepare my coffee, breakfast, and lunch… and remind myself, even when I’m tired, that “my future self will thank me.”

And she always does.

So when I woke up at 6:15 on Tuesday… I didn’t panic. Not even a bit.

I started the shower, threw on a shower cap, got dressed, put on my makeup, and pulled part of my hair up… messy locks that my students adore.

As I walked into work five minutes late instead of fifteen minutes early… still no panic.

I stopped to look at what was left of the blossoms and thought to myself:
This must be what it feels like to have a regulated nervous system.

Because in years past, my life was nothing but panic.
Everything felt like a five-alarm fire.
Every pebble in the road meant catastrophe.

My parents had dear friends that I absolutely adored... Alice used to say,
“It’s like pole vaulting over mouse turds.”

That was my life.
And I could never understand why.

Today, I had the day off… appointments with my girls.

When I dropped my youngest son off at school, kids and parents alike were waving. I even heard one kid yell, “Where are you going? We need you!”

This came on the heels of notes left behind after our art show… kids telling me they love me, that I’m “cool,” “nice,” and apparently the “G.O.A.T.”

And sitting at a red light, it hit me:

My whole life, I have just wanted to be seen for who I really am.

And somehow… all the love I’ve poured out into the world
has found its way back to me.

I felt like I had arrived.

Not in the way I imagined… but in a way that made me pause and realize:

Life rarely shows up how we expect it to.
But sometimes… it shows up exactly how we need it to.

Over the past few years, my perspective has shifted so drastically that my grief had to turn completely around.

I used to believe I stayed and tolerated so much because fate had knocked on my door.

But what I’ve come to understand through therapy and a stubborn “can-do” spirit is this:

I was the one standing in the way
of the life meant for me.

I had a chokehold on proving to people who discarded me
that I was worth loving, cherishing, choosing.

It never occurred to me.. not once in 27 years…
that what was meant for me would find me and stay.

Not because I proved it.
But because I already am..
sweet, funny, thoughtful, smart…
a chill, cool girl.

I’ve always been.

And then the dam burst.

And I was left standing in the aftermath… a partial foundation,
downed tree debris scattered in only one direction:

Truth.

My grief changed.

It was never about losing someone who loved me.

It was about realizing
I had never fully loved myself enough
to let what wasn’t meant for me
fall away.

I made myself small.
I walked on eggshells.
I took responsibility for someone else’s emotions,
someone else’s harm.

Mark Twain once said:
“If it’s your job to eat a frog, it’s best to do it first thing in the morning. And if it’s your job to eat two frogs, it’s best to eat the biggest one first.”

This was the biggest frog I have ever swallowed.

And if I’m honest… the hardest part has been forgiving myself.

When Rube was clearing out the house in Florence, preparing to move in with my Aunt Marianne, she gave me a number of things.

One was her college textbook… the complete works of William Shakespeare.

It’s worn now. The binding frayed from years of being held, opened, returned to.

Near the back lives the collection of sonnets.

One of them - Sonnet 116 - became my anchor nearly sixteen years ago, when I found myself discarded for the second time.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments; love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark

Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle's compass come.

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom:

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

I knew then that what I had experienced was not love.

I even wrote about it.

What I didn’t know yet…
was how to forgive myself for staying.

That part is still unfolding.

But I understand now:

I made mistakes.
And I am still here… living, breathing, and more than okay.

These days, my life is full.

Family.
Friends, old and new.
Men whose eyes light up when they see me.

Every interaction reminds me…
it is safe to try again.
To believe again.
To begin again.

Every hug from my children, my students, my people…
it all tells me the same thing:

Love has always been here.

Steady.
Present.
Unmoving.

An ever-fixed mark.

And now…
so am I.

I have written.
I have loved.

And finally…

I am learning
how to include myself in that story.

Let this be yours, too.

Let the play,
and the prose,
go on.

Voir Clair: I Was Never Meant to Be Afraid

2026-03-26T12:23:00.003-06:00

For a split second, I expected him to hang up.

In years past, I was a very busy, mostly stay-at-home mom. And while people who have never taken on that role might assume it makes for an easy life… with three little ones and one older child, it was anything but. Making sure diapers were changed, food was in the house, and the home didn’t dissolve into utter chaos was a full-time, all-consuming job.

Occasionally, I would get phone calls from the primary breadwinner, updates about a difficult client or whatever was happening in his world. And occasionally, I would be interrupted mid-conversation by tiny voices that needed something right then.

What followed was predictable.

I would get screamed at and told I shouldn’t have answered the phone if I didn’t have time for him… and then he would hang up.

That was my normal.

And it changed me.

It changed how I showed up with my children, depending on where I landed on the scale of emotional aftermath. Some days I was steady. Some days I was unraveling. Eventually, I just stopped answering the phone altogether.

Little moments like that quietly shaped the landscape of my life for fifteen years.

Some days, I still feel like a trained dog. My nervous system bracing on command. And maybe it will for a while… until I can teach myself that I get to sit, stay, and soften in my own time.

So, when I paused to respond to my child during a recent phone call… I expected the same ending.

Silence.

Too much of it.

I asked, cautiously, “Are you still there… or did you get bored and hang up?”

And he said, simply, “Why would I hang up? That’s kind of a douchey thing to do.”

And just like that… something in me cracked open.

I cried… not because anything bad had happened, but because nothing bad did.

Because my nervous system had been waiting… for softness.

Do you know how exhausting it is to brace for life?

I am so tired of bracing.

In 1697, Charles Perrault, wrote a piece titled Le Petit Chaperon Rouge. It was what the Brothers Grimm used as inspiration for Little Red Riding Hood in 1812. In Perrault’s version, there is no happy ending. The wolf beats Red in a race to grandma’s house. Eats the poor old woman, then climbs into bed dressed as grandma. He then invites the girl to remove her clothes and jump into bed with him. At the very last minute, the innocence leaves her and she realizes that what she is, in fact, laying next to is the wolf. Staring that beast right in the eye… One gulp. It was written as a cautionary tale to young women not to talk to swift talking strangers. This was the softest landing for a sexual metaphor in 1697?

I have always preferred the 1812 version that we all read today, where the hunter comes to the rescue, splays the wolf open to release Red and Grandma.

Second chances in life seem more deserved.

For a long time, I thought the pivotal moment in that story was seeing the wolf.

But now I think… sometimes the real moment of awakening is something else entirely.

Sometimes, it’s realizing you were never supposed to live in fear to begin with.

I’ve known for many moons now, that in order to REALLY regulate this old nervous system of mine, I would have to experience things in this life that have not been my normal. I’ve begged for it.

Its little moments, like not getting hung up on. OR… get this… a little “I’m thinking of you and can’t wait to get back..” card sent in the mail… I have talked and texted with this man multiple times a day. The card was truly unnecessary… But it is MY love language that he had no clue of. I often write myself little notes to be read at a later date… I haven’t received a surprise note such as this in over 20 years.

I think I could feel my heart open just a bit more…

At the beginning of the year, I thought seriously and deeply about what I wanted in my life… in my love life too, if ever given the opportunity to be a part of a relationship again. I made a list of all the things I’ve kept in my internal treasure box since the dawn of knowing anything about love.

Adventure

Motorcycle rides

Softness

Hugs

Holding hands

Long hair

Muscles

AND Love letters were on that list.

A girl can dream…. Right?

If I had half the mind, I should have made a Poppet Doll… the spur that started the idea of Voodoo dolls. It seems ancient enough to encompass the fairytale type of vibe I’ve been going for.

Before the year ended, I had what I can only describe as a “come to Jesus” conversation with the Universe.

A real one.

I remember asking, very clearly:

Please let me allow softness into my life.
Please don’t let me push it away just because I don’t recognize it.

I lit my candle and burned 12 intentions for my coming year… and the one left for me was this: “I know I am held in love by life, others and myself. I will allow love to find me easily.”

Maybe a billboard featuring a picture of me dressed as Bob Ross? Will that allow it to find me easily enough?

“…So beautiful appeared my death - knowing who then I would kiss,
I died a thousand times before I died...”

-Rabia al Basri_

The Acorn Knows...

2026-03-13T19:16:00.002-06:00

This morning I did my hair and my makeup… I loved how soft, sensuous and bouncy my curls came out. And then my warpaint laid down on my skin today like it was meant to be there. One final look in the mirror before heading out to herd cats, and I was stunned as to what was reflected back to me as Coldplay’s “Magic” played over the big speaker - not the typical findings on my shuffle. A soft, sweet, slightly spicy… luscious and divine creature. Interesting and fun. Smart yet humble. Heartbroken yet healing.

Call it magic…

The End is Present in the Beginning…

The acorn theory says that the entirety of the Oak tree is present in the acorn. My entire life was present in the embryo.

When I think back to dreams, aspirations and visions I’ve had for myself since I could remember… I know without doubt, that I’ve been coded to love.

It was an odd moment for me this morning. I usually have complaints. But today was different.

Odd, because I’ve recently met someone that has reflected back to me things that I know are there in my mirror, but I often ignore or criticize.

I feel like we all need a nudge from time to time, and boy have I received it….

I told him about something I found interesting and wanted to experience in my future. He instantly downloaded a book with all the information…

All of my children fell ill at some point this week, but particularly Tuesday. We had planned to hang out before he headed out to a completely different state for several weeks. And the most peculiar thing happened. He wasn’t mad. He didn’t yell. He didn’t blow me off for spending what should have been OUR time to take my munchkins to the urgent care. Instead, he showed up at my doorstep with a dozen roses and a box of the most divine Japanese chocolates. My heart skipped a few beats. There was no guilt. He didn’t force or beg. He just didn’t want to my entire day to be stress…

The peeping eyes of my children and their sickly palates covered in chocolate are rooting for this guy.

In the first weekend of February, my children and I went to a local Chinese Lunar Festival. We sat to watch the Lion Dance, a tradition to banish all of the negative energy of years prior to make a clean slate for the new year to arrive. As I sat and watched with bewilderment… drums so loud, I couldn’t even hear my own thoughts, pounding so hard I could feel the beat in my bones. My kiddos and I watched in amazement as the lions preformed feats of theatrics and acrobatics. We loved every minute of it. And in that moment I felt the rush of new, positive energy flood my landscape.

Since that moment, I have felt very thoughtful and intentional.

Looking back now, it feels a little like the universe was sweeping the stage. The lion dance clearing away the dust of old seasons… the acorn quietly holding the blueprint for what comes next… and somewhere out there, a red thread stretching patiently through time, waiting for the right moment to pull two wandering people into the same room.

The next weekend, I met up with one of my best gal pals for a “Galentines” day celebration. I was reunited with new and old friends while making a quaint little art piece. Drinking a fancy Raspberry Chocolate cocktail, we discussed woo-woo sorts of things… just as wild women should. A mutual acquaintance that sees the world a bit differently, as I do, was concerned with my absolute denial of dating apps. I explained that I’d rather meet someone organically… except I never do anything cool but work and work and mom hard. By the end of the evening Corey had me convinced that I should try… and so I did… half-heartedly. I didn’t fill out the entire profile. I threw up some really dumb pictures. Before I knew it, I had 397 emails from gentlemen that thought I must be the bee’s knees.

I responded to some of the emails so heinously, that I thought for sure I’d become the crazy cat lady before next year. I asked one dude if we were on the titanic, would he be a “Women and Children” first kind of guy… or would he be paddling away on a door singing Celine Dion songs? Not kidding.

I did make friends with this one guy who is an honest to God wedding singer.

And I did accept this one guy’s offer for a quick coffee meet up. Something in me told me it would be okay.

The man showed up with flowers and chocolate… That’s not normal, right? I mean, I haven’t REALLY dated that much… not really. I figured he was a try-hard and instantly became suspicious. But then we talked… a lot… even closed down the café.

That weekend after meeting, he came and picked me up… took me to an amazing restaurant… then we walked around and talked. If you had been a fly on the wall listening in, you wouldn’t have guessed that we just met. The conversation was deep and soulful… like talking to someone you’ve known for years.

Then… I went to dinner at his place… with friends and family… all in the first week. He cooked an amazing meal.

This connection has an ease to it that is one of the most comfortable things I have ever been a part of. And while it seems ridiculous to say at the very beginning… the acorn knows.

He told me that it's really easy to be sweet to me... Dang it. I always thought so...

My question for the last few weeks has been, what is too fast or slow?

When do I allow myself to just trust the flow?

How do I keep my brain from overthinking this whole thing?

Over winter break, when I was alone one night… I startled from my slumber… a dream that had me believing the thread that was tied to one of my toes had come undone because I could not feel the tension on it anymore. Straight up out of bed, I woke in a panic.

The ancient Chinese believed that an invisible red thread connects the people who are destined to meet. It is tied by the gods, binding two souls long before they ever cross paths.

The thread may stretch across years.

It may tangle itself through heartbreak, bad timing, wrong turns, and long lonely seasons.

But it never breaks.

In the earliest versions of the story, the thread is tied around the ankles of two people. In modern tellings, it is tied to the pinky fingers. Either way, the idea is the same: certain people are meant to encounter each other.

No matter how far they wander.

No matter how long it takes.

Maybe the tension faded because the thread was no longer tangled and taut. Maybe the other end is closer than it ever has been…

I don’t know if it’s anything more than friends. What I do know is that I feel like I’m standing on the threshold of something that will change the trajectory of my life. Maybe it just pulls me up and out of whatever this life has been lately. Maybe it’s one of the coolest friendships I’ve ever had. Maybe it’s the start of something totally new. Another human being willing to slow down with me, not force me to react to every pebble in the road...

Maybe the acorn already knows the oak tree it will become.

And maybe the thread already knows where it leads.

For now, all I know is that I have a bounce in my step and I’m laughing a lot more lately.

My shoulders have dropped and my breathing is deep and relaxing.

And that, my friends, is pure gold.

My newest painting...

2026-03-11T16:16:00.001-06:00

Two steps forward.
Three steps back.

Khalil Gibran once wrote that joy and sorrow drink from the same well.

My therapist says I’m sensitive. She says I probably didn’t get the attention I needed growing up.

Maybe both things are true.

It was December 20th, 2024. I had just survived my first week before winter break as a public school teacher.

If you’ve never experienced the week before winter break in an elementary school, imagine the stress a mom feels right before Christmas trying to make sure everything is magical and perfect… and then multiply it by about a thousand. Kids bouncing off the walls. Noise louder than a Van Halen concert in the 80s. Energy everywhere.

By the time I got home, all I wanted was a hot bath, earplugs, and a blackout mask.

Except I still had to make the Christmas magic happen at my own house too.

Instead, I collapsed on my bed and didn’t move.

When my partner got home, there was no “How was your day?”
No “Can I get you anything?”

If I’m being honest… he never did that. Not once. He never asked what was going on in my life.

Instead, he started in with the same old complaint: my new job took attention away from him.

He said he “can’t do this anymore.”

The argument turned to Christmas. Apparently, I hadn’t communicated every detail of everything I had handled for the holiday.

The irony?

I had handled Christmas every single year. Every stocking. Every plan. Every little piece of magic.

One year he had exactly one task… something we’d talked about weeks in advance…and he forgot. I ended up running to the nearest open gas station at 2 a.m. trying to find candy and little things to fill stockings.

But somehow, I was the problem.

I even showed him the text message thread marked “read”… listing everything I’d already taken care of.

It didn’t matter.

Because it was never really about being good enough.

Honestly, I still don’t know what it was about.

What I do know is this:

As I lay there on the bed, trying to calm my nervous system after one of the craziest weeks of my life, I realized something very clearly.

After everything I had done year after year… being a full-time mom, a brand-new public school teacher, and running a small business…I did not deserve what he was laying at my feet.

What I deserved was a hug.

What I deserved was empathy.

So I told him something I had never said before.

“I can’t do this anymore either.”

I told him I had never felt more lonely in my life.

I told him the way he spoke to me made him feel more like an enemy than a friend… let alone a lover or husband.

And if my efforts weren’t enough, maybe he should go find someone who could make him happy.

We only live this life once.

He looked stunned.

“That’s not what I was expecting,” he said.

Why?

Because every other time he had said he couldn’t do this anymore, it had worked like a threat. A way to make me scramble, to prove myself, to try harder so he wouldn’t leave.

But in that moment, something had shifted.

I wasn’t afraid anymore.

The pattern was suddenly crystal clear.

Gaslighting. Manipulation. Full stop.

A few days later he asked if I still felt the same.

Nothing had changed.

Not one thing.

He still carried around the same chip on his shoulder, as if I had killed his puppy.

What followed felt like jumping from the frying pan straight into the fire. I went from overwhelming stress at work to overwhelming stress in my own home…the one place that’s supposed to be a safe haven.

The place I had always tried to make safe for him.

After bad days at work, I gave him space.
I supported him at competitions, events, wherever he needed me.

But that support never came back the other way.

Some of the things he said in those weeks felt like they might break me forever.

He told me he had only married me because it was “the right thing to do.”

The irony?

I had told him I never wanted to get married again. I was perfectly happy the way things were.

At the time, he insisted he never wanted to be with anyone else.

So what was true?

He moved out quickly.

Left the kids with me.

Emptied the bank accounts.

Not once did he ask if we would be okay.

Not once did he ask if I needed help.

But what he tells people about me now is… astonishing.

The truth I eventually had to face was simple.

I gave myself to the wrong person.

He was always the wrong person.

Still, some weeks the grief shows up out of nowhere.

Weeks like this one.

I find myself crying out loud sometimes:

Please let this go.
Please let me go.
I just want to move forward.

I don’t love him anymore.

I don’t hate him either.

I just want the hurt to stop.

Some days I tell myself the grief is about never really knowing what it feels like to be loved fully and completely.

Some days I tell myself healing just takes time.

Other days I think it’s simply my nervous system returning to old pathways.

But there’s another truth too.

I have been loved fully.

By myself.

And something else is true.

Enough time has passed.

When you realize you didn’t actually mean that much to someone, it becomes surprisingly easy to flip the switch on them too.

I never long for him.

In fact, my body is physically repulsed by him now.

He doesn’t even look the same to me.

Love blinders are real.

And once you see clearly, it’s hard to put them back on.

Still, grief is strange.

Even when life is going well, it can tap you on the shoulder at the most inconvenient times.

Standing in line to pick up food for the kids.

On a date with a very handsome, kind man.

Greeting students at the door in the mornings.

Explaining to a room full of kids how art changed the moment the camera was invented.

And then one day it hit me.

Maybe this is okay.

Maybe all of it is okay.

Just like art evolves over time.

You can see the wind in The Starry Night.

This grief is just teaching me how to paint my life differently.

With creativity.
With whimsy.
With bold uniqueness.

I have faith in my future.

I can feel it evolving.

Learning to stand on my own two feet.

Making choices that are right for me… without shrinking them to protect someone else’s fragile ego.

And something tells me the painting ahead is going to be beautiful.

Why, Hello Sophia!

2026-02-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

Carl Jung proposed that we move through archetypal patterns… symbolic energies that shape how we experience ourselves and the world. These archetypes are not fixed identities, but states we live in and out of over the course of our lives. These theories have been used for decades… even down to the divination cards I use on the titled, “The Wild Unknown Archetypes,” by Kim Krans.

Then comes Erich Neumann who expanded on Jung’s ideas, outlining symbolic stages of feminine psychological development. While these are not lab tested maps, they have become working metaphors for a woman’s working psychological evolution.

I’ve had a chance to dive into this deeper over the last several months… pulling information from my dad’s old dusty “Psychology Today” text book and even several of my own from my time at the big kid school. You won’t find much… It’s almost as if the patriarchy was in charge of the information relayed to society. You have to dive deeper…

The framework is as follows:

Eve Stage – A woman will center her identity on relationship to survival, belonging, sexuality, attachment, and will largely identify herself through her partner bonds.

Helen Stage – Named after Helen of Troy, this stage is the awakening of personal attractiveness, autonomy and power. Here, her identity will shift from, “I belong!” to “I affect!” This identity is still strongly tied to how one is perceived.

Mary Stage - Inspired by the Virgin Mary, this stage of feminine identity corresponds with sublimating personal desire with acts of service, moral purpose and higher calling. It is the spiritualized feminine.

Sophia Stage – Sophia means “Wisdom” in Greek. In Jungian archetypal symbolism, she is divine feminine consciousness. She is not naïve, seductive or self-sacrificing. She is inwardly grounded, self-knowing and self-actualizing. She does not split her sexuality from her spirituality. She does not abandon herself to secure love. She does not weaponize independence. She can desire without needing.

These aren’t ladders we climb and leave behind. They’re lenses. We move in and out of them depending on love, loss, ambition, motherhood, heartbreak, healing.

I’ve been contemplating where I fall on this unofficial map. I don’t know that I am fully in my Sophia identity. I still feel the pull of Eve’s longing, Helen’s sparkle, Mary’s devotion. They haven’t disappeared. They’ve just grown quieter. What feels different is that I can see them now. I can choose when they speak.

If Eve is “I belong to someone,”
and Helen is “I am desired,”
and Mary is “I serve something higher,”
Sophia is “I know who I am.”

Where am I today?

It’s been interesting to lay these over the top of my life thus far and see how I have moved in and out of Eve, Helen and Mary at various times.

Here’s some truth… When I set the intentions that I plan to live my life by this year, I had no desperation. What I truly wanted for myself this year was to experience this life, fully, knowing that I don’t “need” anyone… Just to enjoy the beauty of myself. To love myself unconditionally. To know that I am held in this life through love by others and that love has a funny way of finding me… new and old stories… family and friends… Mostly, my mission was to define my identity on my own. Not tied to a single soul. Allowing myself to understand that love is an underlying current in my life took the pressure off and has allowed me to calm my nervous system, moving forward in confidence.

So when someone asks me, “What do you do?” My heart beats slow, but hard in my chest (you can feel it,) as I say “I am an elementary school art teacher and mother to four glorious babies.” But my identity is more than that today.

When I look back over my life, my ability to travel through these archetypes, my willingness to over-perform to win the appreciation of others (received or not) is why I have this amazing list of experiences I’ve had in my life. My life has been truly exceptional and blessed. I stand tall today able to hand you a list as long as Santa’s of cool things I have done, things I have accomplished, places I’ve been, people I know, things I do…

Yet I find myself in this liminal space unwilling to perform for others anymore. It scares me a bit. If I am no longer striving to be chosen or applauded, will I still chase the mountains? Will I still gather exceptional experiences? Can desire rooted only in personal meaning carry me through the rest of my life?

This doesn’t mean I’ve mastered anything. Some days I still catch myself reaching for applause. Some days I want to be chosen. The difference is that I notice it. And noticing feels like the beginning of wisdom.

What I understand of the Sophia stage is that a woman in this archetypal identity is not closed to love nor armored. She is specific, yet open. She is very precise as to who her door opens for.

A suitor of this woman in her Sophia stage, will not find the key through pursuit or performance, but the ability to meet her at this level. Someone who has done his own emotional work and carries his own direction and sense of meaning without expecting her to provide these things for him.

In essence, I have longed to be in this stage for most of my life. When I look at love through MY lens, I have always seen it as two people, not necessarily standing together, but each as a pillar standing on their own working together, but separately to maintain the structure of life. To share the load of living. To see the sunrise each day together, but to allow each to find the meaning of it within themselves.

When I pull archetype cards, one that has always stirred something in me is The Crone. In Kim Krans’ interpretation, she represents deep, earned wisdom… the woman who has lived, loved, lost, burned, and emerged sovereign.

I don’t believe I am The Crone. Not yet. But I recognize her. I recognize the pull toward her steadiness. Toward her refusal to perform. Toward her quiet knowing.

Perhaps Sophia and the Crone are not destinations, but invitations. Not titles to claim, but directions to walk toward. Not a woman who needs less love, but one who needs less proof.

What's your thermostat set at, Homie?

2026-01-31T16:49:00.000-07:00

So, what’s next… when the past has taught you all that it can?

I’ve been feeling for the last few weeks that it is imperative that I start looking forward instead of rehashing the past. While useful information is there in days gone by, I’ve also found that the loop won’t carry me into the future.

I’ve been working awfully hard on finding who I am now.

Back in my college days, I had this amazing professor for Psych 101. We discussed our own private utopia. In essence, all humans have a set number for their thermostat. If I like the temperature on the thermostat set to 68 degrees, all other temperatures will feel uncomfortable. This has become very apparent to me this last week as my oldest daughter and I battled over the temperature of my house. Sometimes I wondered if she was going though perimenopause instead of me. I turned the temp up for her… only to be met with, “I’m so sweaty and every room is too hot.” So, I turned it down.

After visiting my past and scoring over 10 million frequent flyer miles for doing so, I noticed that I don’t have to scrap everything and start over. There are still many things that make up my utopia today. But there are some things new that have come forward.

I also decided that this isn’t my ride alone. I have 3 younger ones with me on this trip into the future. We had a beautiful conversation about what we want our future days to look like. I found it comical that they reflected my own thoughts on many things. I was also surprised about their ideas on other things.

I should add some framing for context first… I have been practicing surrender at an accelerated pace. The biggest piece to this is radical understanding that NO ONE is coming to save me, I may never find love again… not romantically anyway… and I am okay with that. The amount of Peace I have in my life presently… someone would have to be awfully special to allow them into this space ever again. I still have hope, but I haven’t put my eggs into that basket. My children have noted several men that are in my day-to-day life that MAY carry feelings for me, but I am completely oblivious. I try to tell them, if I have to ask others if that’s true, that is confusion… I don’t want any part of that anyway.

Their idea is somewhat rooted in the Brady Bunch. Each child has asked for a step-brother or sister their age. HA!

They also want to make sure that the next guy spoils me rotten and can talk to me without yelling. I almost cried on that one. It means they saw it too, and I’m sorry to them for that one.

We have collectively decided to tighten up the budget so that we can afford to travel – they’ve always wanted to take a ride on an airplane and splash in the ocean. I am on board with this one.

We talked about taking advantage of experiences rather than stuff… This made my heart happy.

Sometimes the work is harder to drop the baggage you carry and have been carrying for so long than it is just keep carrying it.

It occurred to me that maybe, our own private utopia may not always be things that are “good” for us – just things that are comfortable for us… like the temperature on the thermostat.

My questions to myself as I try to fashion my way forward are, what other things have I adopted because they are comfortable for me? I’ve abandoned myself for so long in so many places… what else truly lands on that list?

Where do I stay quiet to keep a connection?

When do I give freely without being asked?

When do I feel more like myself, even when it’s awkward?

When do my shoulders drop genuinely?

What environments allow my breath to deepen naturally?

What kind of love would require me to stop proving?

What would it feel like to be chosen without the non-stop auditioning?

AND, if I trusted that my aging body is not a liability, what would I stop apologizing for?

The list of questions could keep going, but I think this is a great start. Finding my new utopia, my new thermostat setting is fun. There are some things about myself that I forgot I enjoy. Small comforts that make my heart open just a bit more and help me to realize that time plays no role in the understanding of self and living authentically. It helps to make boundaries easier with myself and towards others.

While we have plans to travel… I would like to think of my future less of a destination and more as the direction my nervous system now recognizes as home.

In my next chapter, comfort will look quieter. It won’t have to be louder or shinier, but it will absolutely be less braced. I’m learning to trust this life that doesn’t require CONSTANT vigilance and walking on eggshells. I am looking forward to the softness. My next chapter, while my imagination runs wild, understands that my biggest win lives inside of me, it always has … but now has room to breathe.

In my next chapter, love knows where to find me. It won’t be confusion or anger… it won’t be dismantling or controlling. Gratefulness for this spectacular life is my top priority, through highs and lows and all that in between. I look forward to the slowness that creates space to feel and not just react. I’m excited for the truth of who I am in this world allowed to emerge in this stillness…

This new season… new chapter feels so much more different than anything I have ever started in my life. It feels genuinely authentic and intentional. Not a destination… direction.

This week was so busy. But it was really good. I think including my children and allowing them to understand that their happiness and wellbeing is a big part of my own private utopia made a big difference. I was checking my kiddo’s homework before he stuffed it into his backpack… One of the questions he had to answer about the reading he did was, “How can you relate this character to your own life experience?” His answer was, “There are super heros in it and my mom is my Super hero.”

Some days the universe delivers the perfect temperature.

Don't worry... I fixed the panel myself

2026-01-22T20:05:00.002-07:00

I am the necessary interference…

The harmonic anomaly…

Tonight, as I sit to write, I think about all of my NOW moments.
I think back to sitting here one year ago, three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago… shall I keep going?

The woman I was ten years ago was so confused. I was definitely on autopilot. I pushed myself hard to get a grip. I was exactly where I thought I wanted to be, but something was off. So off the electric company could have been paying me—the switch was tripped.

What do you do when the lights go down?

I waited. Patiently.
I could always feel in my soul that something big was happening. I just didn’t know what that something was. I was thankful for what I had and I made the most of it.

The woman I was five years ago was terrified.
Just a year prior, I had married the man who consumed every part of me... from conversations with people who didn’t give a shit to daydreams and aspirations. I lived and breathed nothing but him.

I should have been standing in an ocean of elation.
Instead, I realized that saying I do changed nothing.

He would stare at the ring on his finger and mutter about how special he felt that someone would choose him. I had always chosen him. He didn’t always choose me. He still fought to win, not to understand. He still stomped around like a toddler who didn’t get his way. He still said some of the cruelest things to the person he claimed to love.

Nothing had changed.
And I was afraid I had made a terrible mistake.

But I waited.
Some of the best wines get better with age. A wing and a prayer…

The breaker wouldn’t stay on.

Three years ago, the woman staring back at me in the mirror finally said, You deserve to be happy.

So I went looking for the things that made me happy. I realized I had placed all of my eggs in the basket of him... of us. I stumbled into an opportunity to hang my art in a gallery and worked for months preparing for it.

On the day of the opening, he stole that too.

I sat on my deck, smoking a cigarette, about to leave early. My parents were taking the kids so I could participate in my own life. He showed up just before I finished... armed with excuses, explaining why I shouldn’t be mad.

He made it.

I listened to him manipulate the truth, and this time my eyes were wide open. Every other time this had happened flashed before me. He had been spinning stories like this for eons.

I felt gullible. Foolish.
How did I not see this before?

The circuit was fried.

Still, I waited. I assumed it was me. Maybe motherhood. Maybe I couldn’t focus. Maybe I couldn’t communicate clearly.

I pulled my energy way back... not because I wanted to. I wasn’t built for that. When I love you, I love the f*ck out of you. I often restrain myself, afraid I’m too much.

My dad has a saying: “The worst kind of alcoholic is the one with a head full of AA and a belly full of booze.”
That was me. A head full of understanding and a blown panel of fuses.

The woman I was a year ago wasn’t surprised.

If I’m honest... even with all the hurtful things he did and said at the end... I know it had to happen that way. He had to be the disrupter. The one who caused the system I had been operating under for 27 years to revolt.

And I was grateful.

I was scared.
But I was free.

Today, as I write to whoever reads these words, I understand this: everything is frequency. Everything is a symphony. When all chords... even the ones that sound like nails on a chalkboard... are played long enough, they find other chords and create harmony.

And when harmonies meet somewhere out in the universe, they create the most beautiful symphony you’ve ever heard.

Nothing is a mistake.
Nothing is right or wrong.
Every possibility is a strike of the string of life, aiming to become part of the whole.

And I understand now:

I am the exact dissonance this symphony was missing.

Every avenue, wave, frequency, chord would have brought me exactly here... just as I will ride out of here in whatever shape or fashion comes next.

There is no right or wrong.
Just chords bumping into each other.
Chords tethering. Tying.

Chords freeing and releasing...

My lights are on.
I fixed the panel myself.

Poem 1246

“The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.
Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.”
—Rumi

Burn the Map!

2026-01-11T21:36:00.005-07:00

Ah! A new year…

12 new chapters…
365 new chances… (I saw that on NYE… Totally stolen goods.)

Burn the map.
Life isn’t what you thought it was.

Yet here I am… spiraling in my past, examining every detail, trying to unearth the one answer that explains why I’m sitting here, where I am, and not where I thought I’d be. I thought I took all the correct steps. I thought I took all the right turns.

Instead, I kept adding more grief and shame to my bullshit sandwich with each discovery.

I’ve decided that this is the year I cut that out of my life.

Maybe I wasn’t made for straight lines.

It started with a handful of memories. Moments where my ex would casually bring up my “faults.” The ones I was already hypersensitive about. Dropped at random times, almost as if to remind me that I was damaged goods. Not quite right. Not perfect.

I learned to operate from that sense of self he so graciously handed to me.

Oh, I couldn’t possibly do that.
Be that.
Enjoy that.

Because I had extra hair on my body. Or a flat ass. Or “mosquito bumps” for breasts. Too many children. A faulty communication style. I did everything wrong.

My mind spiraled, briefly brushing up against all the things I could have criticized about him but never would. Because that would have been cruel. Hateful. Pointless.

So why did I accept it from him?
Why did I believe it was okay?

I did everything in my power to change myself to make him happy… and caught myself, just last week, still doing it. Still trying to be acceptable. To him.

I changed my clothes four times in a row, making sure every perceived flaw was hidden from the world. And in the end, what stared back at me in the mirror wasn’t really me at all.

What he did wasn’t accidental. It was a control tactic… one designed to keep me small, self-loathing, and disconnected from who I truly am. I think he believed that if he could dim my light, I might stay in the ditch with him. That way, he wouldn’t have to be alone.

Misery loves company.

I started noticing it in my daydreams. Those little glimpses of a future life. Every possibility bumped into his imagined disapproval.

He wouldn’t want me to do that.
He’d start an argument over that.
He’d make me feel terrible for wearing something like that.

As if his opinion of me still mattered.

What is this even about?

I thought I was healing. Letting go. Moving forward.

So where was this coming from?

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Yes, I am healing.
Yes, I am letting go.

But for twenty-seven years, my identity was intertwined with this man. He was my mirror. My witness. My measuring stick.

And my brain… my subconscious… is still running old programs in a brand-new life.

It’s like trying to tighten a screw with a wrench. When you’ve been programmed the same way for nearly three decades, it takes time to learn new tools. To exchange how you see, how you move, how you operate.

Subconscious reprogramming starts with nervous system regulation. I need to feel safe in this new life. I need new patterns. New thoughts. A new mirror… one that belongs to me.

A new witness.
Maybe that witness is only myself.
And the Universe.

A new measuring stick that says, Baby, you’ve always been enough. Always.

I have to stop choking down that old sandwich… the self-blame, the belief that I must keep carrying the burden of fault… when there are clearly patterns of manipulation woven into this story.

Now, when these old thought patterns surface, I meet them differently.

Ah, I say. This is a reorientation moment.

Because the question underneath it all keeps circling back to one thing:

If he didn’t exist at all…
what would this moment be about?

What would I say to myself?

So I wear the dress that shows off my curves… because I like it.
I skip leg and butt day because I’d rather watch a movie with my kids.
I don’t shave my legs every day because it gives me more time in my life.
I do what will bring me joy, right now, this moment without thinking for one second if he would approve.

And my peace is now intentional… not something I maintain for survival.

I get to be the cartographer now.

I don’t have to follow societal expectations or inherited ones passed down through generations. The roadmap is aflame, and I’m warming my hands by the fire.

I am being witnessed by life itself.

And I know it delights in me.

Raven Song...

2026-01-03T22:21:00.000-07:00

This year will be different.

This year will be different…I chanted to myself every day for weeks. Was I preparing myself for success or misery? I wasn’t sure…but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t surprised.

For many years, Christmastime usually lent itself to tension and arguments practically under the tree. There was always a source of contention, something to be angry about. I tried to be the calm, the peace, the one who made sure the magic of the season didn’t get left behind.

This year, I was determined not to feel that familiar angst and pressure…the nervous system dysregulation. The stress. The tears. The hold it all together for everyone else. I was determined to find my peace, no matter what.

And I did… though it required explaining to others that I wasn’t going to walk the road of years past. The days leading up to the holiday were busy, but virtually stress-free. The only real challenge was the babies, struggling a bit with things being different.

Which led me to thinking about all the Christmases of my past.
They were all first Christmases.

The year I was born.
The year I took my first steps.
The year I wished for my front teeth.
The first year without my Grandpa.
The first year with my boyfriend.
The first year with a new boyfriend.
The first year I was married.
The first year with a new baby.
The first year divorced...

You get the point.

Every year is different. What hasn’t changed is that celebrating with my family has always been a constant. I made sure the babies knew that was the most important part…to take it all in.

Have you ever had a massage from a blind man?

A few days after Christmas, I did. Ninety minutes of full-body, get-all-the-knots-out magic.

It was the strangest thing. I assume his sense of touch is more attuned than most… he found every knot in my body that I didn’t even know existed. But I also had to read the massage oil bottle to him to be sure he had the right one. I had to be very specific when asking for anything: which part hurt, which part needed more attention.

Something I haven’t been very good at- with anyone- because somewhere along the way, my brain learned that asking for what I need causes problems.

But for the first time, asking for what I needed didn’t feel like a burden.
It felt like participation.

When was the very first time I asked for what I needed and was made to feel undeserving? I’ve been working hard to figure that out…scrolling the Rolodex of memories. Was it a single moment, or a collection of moments?

I’m cautious of the idea of playing victim. I own my life in this moment. So, I wonder: do I need more life experiences where I give myself exactly what I need? Or more experiences where I am forced to ask for it?

When I left the massage therapist, my music app was still on shuffle. As I pulled out of the parking lot, the song that came on was “Raven Song” by Elephant Revival. At that exact moment, a raven flew nearly into my windshield, then landed on the ground near the stop sign ahead of me.

We locked eyes for a minute.
He cocked his head.
Cawed.
Then flew away.

The irony made me laugh out loud—and then I cried the rest of the way home.

Was it magic? It surely couldn’t just be a coincidence…

I keep asking the Universe to show me magic still exists... but I'm afraid it would have to slap me in the face or hit my windshield for me to believe it.

I don’t know how to explain this liminal space I find myself in as I’m nearing the end of the year… one of the hardest years of my life. I’m in a place of being so thankful that chapter of my life is over. But I’m also grateful for the years of being able to stay at home with my babies. For having a roof over my head and food in my belly, while the bare minimum… I am grateful.

This last time we were together spanned fourteen years. Nine years in, when he asked me to marry him, I really needed that. I needed to feel wanted. Worth staying for. Worth building a life with.

He didn’t mean it, though. Those were even some of his parting words…that he only married me because it was the right thing to do.

At the time, my heart and soul needed that feeling more than anything. Which made his words a gut punch I was not equipped to bear.

I’ve been trying to remember what brought me to him in the first place. The only thing I can truly recall is the spark. I remember, with explicit detail, the day he knocked on the door of the radio station…the smile on his face, how the air felt electric, even what he was wearing. I remember our first “date,” the laughter we shared.

I had never felt that with anyone before…and haven’t since.

The grief I carry comes from knowing it was always one-sided. I feel like I’ve been playing the longest-running game of make-believe, abandoning myself over and over and over again for nothing. I try to gather all the good memories before they slip away, but doing that keeps me suspended in a painful limbo…. grateful but knowing I deserved so much more; knowing I got what I wanted and still ended up here.

The truth is, it was a comfortable place for me.

At first, I thought my love was no good. That I was kidding myself, I was a sham. BUT…. No matter how much I loved him, clapped for him, lifted him up…I was never going to be enough. My love was never going to fix him or save him. Being the fat kid who had to be extra just to keep a friend…that’s my comfort zone. And that’s why I stayed.

My work now is to understand that my love is still worthy.
That my heart is not broken.
That I deserve healthy, reciprocal love that stays.

I want to remain that open-hearted girl who believes in the magic of this world. That some things happen for a reason, and some things are not coincidences at all. I want to believe that love between two people can heal more than it harms…and that sparks really do mean something. I hope that it doesn’t stray for too long.

So, I keep chanting to myself…

It will be different.
It will be different…because I am different.

12 Nights of Christmas...

2025-12-21T13:25:00.001-07:00

When reconstructing Notre Dame after a disastrous fire, scaffolding was used to ensure the safety of those workers.

I, too, am using scaffolding.

What do I want life to look like?
What do I want it to feel like?
How do I embody main character energy?

I spent a good portion of yesterday and this morning journaling, searching for the intentions I want to release over the next 12 nights… a ritual that has become steady in my life.

This ritual is fondly referred to as Rauhnächte, meaning the rough or smoky nights. Our ancestors, living by ancient Gregorian calendars, realized something curious: a solar year is 365 days, yet there are only 12 lunar cycles of roughly 28 days each. That leaves about 11 or 12 days unaccounted for at the end of the year.

They believed these days existed outside of normal time… when the veil was thinner, fate could be influenced, and the future could be glimpsed and shaped.

The ritual begins on the Winter Solstice and continues for 11 more nights.

You come to the first evening with 13 intentions for the year ahead.
What do you want to accomplish?
Where do you see yourself this time next year?

Think carefully.
Think honestly.
Imagine it in both your heart and your mind.

Write each intention down on its own piece of paper. Speak them aloud. Feel them. Envision them. Then fold each paper toward you at least three times. I keep mine in a beautiful velvet bag to hold them safely for the next few nights.

Each of the 12 nights, you get quiet. Blindly pick one intention… without looking… and burn it (safely; I use a candle) until it becomes nothing but ashes.

Do this for all 12 nights.

You will be left with one intention.

That one, you get to look at.

For 12 nights, you release the others to God, the Universe, or whatever higher power you believe in… trusting they will be handled for you. But that last one? That one is on you. Over the next year, you take steps, big or small, toward honoring and achieving it.

This ritual first called to me because I was learning how to release control without losing myself. Previous attempts at letting go had left me wandering aimlessly.

The first year I did this, the intention I was left with was simple:
I will be happy.

And I did it… even though it ruffled feathers. I began therapy. I started unwrapping my true self. I learned how to recognize happiness within me, without attaching it to people or things.

It worked so well that I did it again.

Last year, my intention centered on trust… after the depth of abandonment I had felt in my life. I was shocked when the Universe plucked my marriage away… along with friendships and long-held thought patterns. But what remained was for ME.

I remember the intentions I released, and just before the end of the year, the Universe hit the gas. And here we are. I have never known this kind of peace… even when my life may look chaotic from the outside. And the intention I was responsible for? That one’s covered.

This year, I want to remember how to stand in wonder again. I want to restore the balance of giving and receiving.

So here I go again.. this time with the deep knowing that this practice works for me. It has strengthened my faith in timing, my trust in the unseen, and my understanding that I play an active role in constructing my life.

Tonight, when I release the first intention, I trust that the Universe will adjust the experiences in my life… guiding me toward the arches, steeples, and color selections I’ve chosen for myself.

Because my foundation is strong.
It always has been.

What intentions will you set for 2026?
(Don’t tell me… tell the stars. They love you as much as I do.)

Turn Right 500 Feet from Here...

2025-12-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

What I truly want to place in your hands,

beloved,

has no shape.

There is no jar to hold it,

no sentence to ferry it from my heart

into yours.

Still...

I keep cupping my palms

as if light might finally agree

to sit still long enough

to be delivered.

You ask me

which turn to take,

what words to speak,

how to stop your heart

from arguing with itself.

And I smile,

for I know that secret ache:

the map you want

is folded somewhere

inside your own breath.

I cannot unfold it for you.

God knows... I’ve tried.

I’ve spent lifetimes trying.

But every time I lean close

to hand you an answer,

it dissolves into incense,

and all you smell

is your own longing.

So I point instead.

Here,

five hundred feet from this moment,

turn toward the place

where your courage stirs.

Then walk

until you hear

your soul knocking

from the inside.

Do not ask me how to open that door...

you were born with the hinges

already in your bones.

Yes, I know...

it is strange that so many

wander to me for counsel

as if I am some lantern

that has figured out

how to tame the dark.

I laugh sometimes,

because I am only learning

a half-step ahead of them.

And some days...

not even that.

But I do know this:

Every time I try to give

what cannot be given,

Love leans in

and whispers,

“Beloved…

your presence is already enough.
Your gentleness is instruction.
Your listening is a balm.
You guide best
by never pretending
you know the way.”

So I sit beside you

in the dust of this world,

offering nothing

but my company

and the quiet faith

that the path

will glow beneath your feet

the moment

you dare

to take the next step.

And somehow...

that becomes the gift

I could not give

by any other means.

~Mme. Pamela McCreight~

(The gal who was incredibly inspired by The Great Sufi Master, Hafiz)

The Year the Decorations Didn't Break Me...

2025-12-01T21:51:00.000-07:00

Last December, I shoved them into their boxes in a blur of heartbreak and survival mode. A year ago, I was drowning. And I’ve quietly dreaded opening those boxes ever since, afraid they’d pull me backward into a version of myself I’ve outgrown but still grieved.

But it didn’t go that way.

This time, I opened the first lid in the quiet of my new home... my safe little sanctuary... and instead of dread, something warm rose in my chest. A ribbon slipped out from the top and fluttered onto the floor, and just like that…not pain, not a punch, but gratitude.

A single tear slipped out, slow and honest.

It felt like growth.

Like letting go.

Like a new breath in a brand-new life.

Maybe it was the safety of these walls.

Maybe it was the softness I’ve finally allowed myself.

Maybe it was simply time.

But in that moment, something in me opened... and all the past versions of me stepped forward, as if they had been waiting for this exact day.

The Little Girl...

The beautiful dark-haired girl with the galaxy-wide eyes and that impossibly big heart. She’s been visiting me a lot lately. I used to tell her to be careful... don’t trust everyone, don’t give your energy to people who don’t deserve you. But recently, the conversation changed.

I started noticing that she still has dreams.

She still has hope.

She still carries our joy.

She still sees the world with wonder—wide open, curious, unafraid.

And suddenly I didn’t want to protect her from the world anymore.

I wanted to protect her spirit within me.

The Preteen...

The girl learning that the world can be cruel. The one who lost her grandfather. The one who first learned that her body, her appearance, her size somehow mattered to other people... and that their opinions could alter her entire experience of being alive. We’ve been talking too. I used to tell her, “What they say doesn’t matter. Just smile and keep going.” But that was never the whole truth. Now I tell her, “Let it sting if it has to—but don’t let it stay. Their opinions do not follow you into the life you’re building. Love yourself fiercely. To your very core.”

The Teenager...

The spunky teenage beauty who never quite fit into the world she was given. Who felt like Alice, always nibbling on the cake to make herself small enough to fit through doors never meant for her. We still talk, usually through music and memories. And I tell her now: “You were never too much. The rooms were just too small.”

The 20-Something New Mom...

Oh, this one is tender. The young woman terrified of messing up, terrified of not being enough, terrified of the weight and wonder of motherhood. The one who felt abandoned because she stepped into that role. Left to figure it all out alone. To her, I say: “You were never abandoned because you weren’t worthy. You were abandoned because they weren’t ready. But you did it anyway. You grew wings you didn’t know you had.” She still cries sometimes. But now, she also smiles.

The 30-Something Rebuilder....

The woman who had to start over—again. Who stepped up, moved forward with responsibilities, disappointments, debts, dreams… all while holding a brave face in public and a breaking heart in private. She fought her way through years of storms that should’ve drowned her. She learned how to rebuild a life from scattered pieces no one else could see beauty in. To her, I say: “You were not starting over. You were starting toward.”

Back to the Present Moment...

By the time I placed the last ornament on the tree, I realized something simple and stunning: I wasn’t just decorating a home. I was welcoming back every version of me who never had one. Those boxes didn’t hold memories of heartbreak. They held proof of survival. Proof of becoming. Proof of a woman who has grown into someone strong enough to hold all her past selves... and still create a future worth stepping into.

This year, the decorations didn’t break me.

They reminded me who I am becoming.

And I think… maybe that’s the real magic of this season.

Not the lights, not the tree, not the glitter... but the quiet realization that I am finally, truly, home!

Cora and Ellen

2025-11-16T20:54:00.000-07:00

Cora and Ellen

My grandmother, Ellen, had a sister named Cora. We fondly referred to her as Corkie. She had a knack for saying WHATEVER was on her mind no matter the company. Cork had no filter, no hesitation, no shame about letting her feelings be felt… something I am only now learning in my late 40’s. This woman had the audacity to strip down to nothing in the middle of our big family Christmas celebration one year because her dear sister, my grandmother, had gifted her a new bra. It happened. We have photographic evidence.

Corkie used to tell everyone that my grandfather was only home long enough to make the babies. There were a bunch of them too. If a few of them hadn’t perished through miscarriage or sickness, there would have been 10 of them, my mother included. Cora was not fond of my grandfather and his misgivings. He was a mason and a farmer by trade, with a wondering eye and a loose belt. My grandmother stuck up for him and his behavior until the end of her life. But I often wonder if it was because she would have to own up to allowing herself being treated the way he always treated her. My grandmother was a saint with one of the biggest hearts I have ever known. She deserved the world… and all the love in it.

My personal perception of my grandfather was much different than anyone else in the family. They knew him as a tyrant and a cheater. I was named after my mother’s late sister (only my middle name is different.) My grandfather would often call me Pamela Lou instead. I even received a savings bond as a gift one year in her name. He was always soft and kind to me. I never noticed in my younger years, and didn’t understand it at the time. But I did start putting the pieces together the year I received that savings bond.

I’m stating all of this because I am fully aware that the way in which we live our lives… and the process of living and understanding shape and mold us into the humans we are right now. The lens we use to comprehend the world around us develops with each encounter. I’m finally starting to recognize patterns in my life and why I think the way I do. One thing I am still trying to uncover like a crazed archeologist discovering a lost tomb in the Valley of the Kings, is why I won’t allow myself to truly feel some emotions. I’m supposed to be the nice girl. The giving girl. The one that doesn’t expect. The one that steps up and steps in. The cleaning lady. Super star mom. The stellar employee. The best friend. The pillar of support and acceptance. I’m supposed to have it together at all times. I’m supposed to be extremely forgiving. Extra loving. Palatable. How is this supposed to translate when you allow yourself to be a messy emotional human?

One of those emotions is ANGER. Of course, I get angry – but then always guilt trip myself for allowing it. And with the dangerous bit of background knowledge of how the brain and emotions truly work, I am armed knowing that anger is just a secondary emotion. There is always something resting beneath the surface of it. How will you ever find the canopic jars, though, if you can’t even break the seal to the tomb?

This last week, I allowed it. I allowed myself to be angry. I was so angry. And when I got to the precious 57 minutes of time with my very brave therapist, I let her know what a hotseat I had made for myself. She did something I didn’t expect. She clapped, whooped and hollered. She told me she was proud of me. She allowed me to vomit all of the things I was so angry about and then praised me for finally feeling the emotion. Truly allowing myself to feel it. She called it righteous anger.

I am so angry that he drug me through nearly three decades of my life, never fully committed. He left me the first time at the ripe old age of 21… We were having so much fun and everything seemed to be amazing. Then one day he stopped calling. A week or two later when I finally “got a hold of him” she answered the phone to tell me to stop calling and leaving messages. She was the barista, still in high school, at a place that he frequented and worked at on occasion. The next time, he physically beat the bejesus out of me. He choked me so hard that I nearly lost consciousness and wet myself. And while I was trying to process all that had just happened, he was out partying with a friend and met… her. A big busted blonde Ukrainian woman… and he was off to the races, leaving me behind to lick my wounds. Oh, he begged me. Told me it would never happen again. That he loved me and only me. The physical abuse part never happened. Instead, he went sideways by yelling and screaming so hard he frequently spit on me… forcing me to sit and listen to his laundry list of complaints, always telling me how inadequate I was followed by earsplitting loudness about how everything was always “his fault,” even though his words always circled back to how I needed to do better. Anytime I had something to say about the lack of intimacy, generally my only complaint, that happened shortly after my daughter was born, that became all my fault too. Oh, I’m sorry… You can’t get it up because I am no longer just that girl that does stuff, I’m the mother of your first born child? Like I haven’t been to that sideshow before… nor any other woman on the face of this planet… but please tell me how it’s all my fault. Fast forward to two summers ago when he was elected to the position of President of the Home Builders Association… he would sit at our family dinner table talking about this other woman with the “Long natural eyelashes” and how funny and sweet and kind she was. How she had her sh*t together… and you’ll never guess who he’s been talking to this whole time. I’m MAD! How did I fall for this, again and again… and again?

I was sitting at the DMV trying to renew my license plates a while back and was so angry with him. He took all sense of security when he left, the only thing I was hanging on to by the time we were done. When it was just us and the world was quiet, he told me I was the only one for him. That he wanted to grow old and gray together. This bubbled to the surface as I witness this beautiful aging couple on their afternoon outing that just so happened to be the DMV. I watched as they were so gentle and kind to each other and shared a giggle. It was all lies! All of it. Building an empire on the things he knew my heart wanted, only to rip it away whenever he felt the wind blowing. How did I believe his words over his actions?

I am angry that he uses my children as pawns. I am angry that he pretends to be this amazing upstanding citizen, when I know all the little dark corners he hides from everyone. I am angry that he acts like the victim when he causes more pain and damage to those he interacts with than a phlebotomist at Parkland Health Hospital. I am angry that I allowed this in my life, always giving him grace because the way he was treated when he was a child. Dude, you’re an adult now. Grow up and fix yourself. Stop acting like everyone has to put up with your bullsh*t because of your childhood injury… wearing it all like a badge and an identity that he believes allows him the right to harm all others in his path.

SCREW YOU for taking my softness and kindness and empathy… my giving nature and twisting it, wringing out every last drop of it for yourself… then kicking me to the curb more violently than a bag of trash. How dare you. You used me. You abused me. And I am fricking mad.

And I sat with it.

And sitting with this anger, I’ve found shame and guilt and sadness. It was lying just beneath… I could have barely scratched to find it.

She, my heroin trauma recovery coach, also said something so profound that I never even considered. That perhaps I had placed myself in situations with angry humans, on a soul level, in order to teach myself exactly what I learned this week. She said that eventually, I will learn that the weight and gravity of everything I have experienced in my life thus far is not truly all my fault the way I would have myself believe. And that once I am able to open up fully and live authentically, things would drastically improve in my life, not necessarily because of my circumstances, but in how I view the world and myself within it.

Feeling your feelings is what makes you human. It’s our radar system. It allows us to make sense of our space in this place.

So get mad. Feel it. Find the root of it. Give yourself some grace. Move on. Wash, rinse, repeat. And if necessary, try on that new bra that your beautiful sister lovingly gave to you in the middle of Jesus’ birthday festivities. Maybe anger isn’t the opposite of softness. Maybe it’s part of loving myself, fully, finally.

Emerald Ease

2025-11-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

Emerald Ease

A poem for the self I’m becoming

She does not claw,

nor chase.

She rests in sovereign stillness...

an axis of breath and bloom,

smelling of honeysuckle and warm stone,

watching monarchs make altars

of her open palms.

She is topography.

A living land.

Her spine,

a ridgeline crowned in wild sage.

Her silence

echoes with the hymns of cicadas,

the rustle of time

unwound.

There are no coffins here...

only canopy.

No flailing,

only flowering.

No scarcity,

only sun-warmed soil

and space for roots to wander.

Where Scarlett screamed in scarlet flame,

Emerald hums in chlorophyll and knowing.

She moves nothing.

She beckons all.

She does not beg to be chosen...

She is the choosing.

She is the sanctuary,

not the storm.

The exhale

after too many years

of holding breath.

In her presence,

my nervous system forgets

how to flinch.

My bones remember

what it means

to stay.

And I...

I am learning her language.

Not through noise,

but nuance.

Not by effort,

but emergence.

I no longer chase

the red of danger.

I lean

into the green of becoming.

Mme. Pamela McCreight 2025

The Mountain Rumbles When It Moves...

2025-10-26T16:13:00.000-06:00

This morning, my coffee maker let out its usual stretch… that low, contented “Om” as it finished brewing. The sound felt ancient, like the world humming its own awakening.

My new deck faces east now instead of west, and somehow that small shift says everything.

I watched the sun rise and light up what’s left of the forest in my backyard, the leaves are nearly done falling. I stepped onto the deck barefoot, coffee in hand, breathing in the crisp reminder that life keeps going… growing… no matter what we’ve shed.

Later, I jumped on the scale after a long, needed shower. It claims I weigh less than I have since high school. And it feels true… not just in my body, but in the interior design of this vessel. I am lighter inside.

At the counter, journal open, pencil ready, I chose truth. Only truth now… even when it trembles.

I’ve been reading through old journals, through the lies I told myself in the name of hope. For decades I wrote that it was just a season… that soon the leaves would fall, the land would rest, and spring would arrive right on time. I used nature’s cycles as camouflage, pretending the pain was purposeful growth. But the truth? I was protecting myself from the reality I refused to face… what I was intentionally living through in the hallowed name of love.

It’s hard to let go like the trees do… to live bare, exposed, fully in truth. But I’m learning.

In today’s world, it feels almost revolutionary to go through a breakup or divorce and still seek an honest understanding of what love really is. We talk about love as though it’s a possession… something to have or to hold. Or to ditch and forget. But love isn’t a thing. It’s a current. A frequency. It’s not a person or a promise; it’s an energy we move within when we’re brave enough to act from truth instead of fear.

A while back, I had dinner with a friend I’ve grown fond of. She told me about her divorce…and how she and her ex-husband still hold love for each other, still take time to care towards each other. I teared up, envious for a moment, wishing my own story had that kind of softness. How much easier it might be for my children if friendship could exist between us. But I had to reel myself back to truth…we were never truly friends. There hasn’t been enough distance between old patterns and new boundaries. Maybe someday, but maybe never. And that has to be okay.

I’ve traveled through every ache I once called love. I’ve owned my patterns, the ones that kept me hoping someone else would someday see what I saw…that maybe he’d finally recognize in himself what I already knew, and meet me there. When he left, then asked to come back just months later, his words told me everything: “I miss how you make me feel.”

It was never about me.
It was never about us.

The promises, the words, the dreams he painted…they were stories built on shifting sand. I used to believe I was the foundation. Now I see I was the builder, pouring my energy into walls that couldn’t stand.

I grew up in the Presbyterian church. Sunday school every week. Sometimes we’d sing for the congregation… I still remember one song about a wise man building his house upon the rock. I think about that now, realizing how I’ve come full circle.

Because here’s one of the hardest truths I’ve ever had to swallow:
I am the pattern.

The forgiveness.

The “turn the other cheek.”

The check out on myself to make others more comfortable.

It’s scary to admit that…to wonder if I’ll always believe what people tell me instead of what I already know. But even in that fear, there’s a gift. Because here is my truth:

In nearly every relationship I’ve ever had, I felt the love and magic. The spark, the frequency, the wonder. But what I’m realizing now is that it may never have been reciprocal. The love and magic were always mine…emanating from within, not reflected from without.

So maybe what I’ve been searching for this whole time is, in fact, inside of me. Maybe I’ve always carried what I was craving… the belonging, the tenderness, the validation. The little fat girl just wanting a friend. The twenty-something woman learning the difference between desire and devotion. The midlife woman praying not to become another cliché of loneliness (think Cats… and a lot of em.)

But I am not lonely. I am awakening.

I can feel the shift inside me…an ancient fault line stirring, pushing mountains of truth into the light.

This season of letting go feels different. It’s softer. Rooted. Real.
No fear. No masks. Just truth.

Sure, maybe I could have hung on a little longer. But to what end? When would I have mattered? I get to decide that now.

And that decision…that moment of reclamation…screams freedom to me.

Freedom laced with love.
Love not borrowed or bartered.
Love finally my own.

I am the mountain rumbling awake.
I am the fault line shifting.
And beneath it all, the earth hums back:
Welcome home.