I don’t need everyone to like me anymore, but I can still detect a change in the punctuation of a text message like I’m employed by the FBI.

I care about clothes. A lot, actually. I want to look cute and put together and maybe even a little cooler than I actually am. But I am not wearing pants that hurt. We’ve suffered enough.

I care deeply about my house looking pretty, while also having at least one room at all times that looks like we’re being robbed.

I want good sheets, good pillows and the nicer hotel room. I also want to stop at Sheetz on the way there and buy $37 worth of snacks like we’re crossing the Oregon Trail.

I want appetizers. Sometimes two. I want the good candle on a completely ordinary Wednesday. I want flowers from the grocery store. I want to take the scenic way home unless I have to pee.

I want hobbies I’m not particularly good at and have absolutely no intention of turning into a business.

I want an ice cold Coke out of a can first thing in the morning and whatever you think about that is your business.

I don’t need a hundred friends. I need the kind who can receive a screenshot with absolutely no explanation and immediately respond appropriately.

I love that my grown children have their own lives. I also think it’s a little ridiculous that they’re apparently allowed to make major decisions without running them by me first.

I want pictures of myself even when I’m heavier than I’d like to be, my hair isn’t cooperating or I don’t feel particularly photogenic, because I’m starting to realize I might someday give anything to see exactly what I looked like right now.

I want people sitting around my table long after we should’ve cleaned up.

I want more little trips, more dinners for no reason, more ridiculous ideas that turn into actual plans and fewer “we should do that sometime” conversations.

I don’t really feel like I’m trying to reinvent myself at this age.

I actually like myself more than I ever have.

I’m just finally figuring out which parts of life I like, too.

Please tell me there are other women currently living in this strange little era. Who wants to be friends? 😂

We talk a lot about getting people help. Call someone. Go to the hospital. Go to rehab. Check yourself in. Ask for help.

But what happens when they come out?

When my brother relapsed and was abusing alcohol, he went to a two-week rehabilitation program. While he was there, he was prescribed medication for depression and anxiety. He was monitored. He was treated. There were professionals around him.

Then he was discharged.

He was not sent home with the antidepressant and anxiety medications they had been giving him. His follow-up appointment wasn’t scheduled for another two weeks.

There was simply a gap.

Seven days after leaving treatment, my brother died by suicide.

Do I believe his discharge and follow-up care were inadequate? Absolutely. Do I know that better care would have saved his life? I don’t. That’s the cruelty of suicide for the people left behind. You can spend the rest of your life standing in the land of “what if.”

What if someone had seen him sooner?

What if he had gone home with his medication?

What if there had been a call the next morning?

What if someone had checked on him every day that first week?

What if there had been somewhere between inpatient treatment and “Okay, you’re discharged. Good luck out there”?

We will never know.

And Lindsey Clancy’s case is obviously very different from my brother’s. I’m not comparing what happened or suggesting that mental illness excuses every action. A courtroom has to answer questions about criminal responsibility.

But outside that courtroom, the rest of us should be asking another question:

What happens to people after the immediate crisis?

Because discharge is not the same thing as recovery.

Someone can be stable enough that they no longer meet the criteria for inpatient treatment and still be nowhere near well enough to navigate medications, appointments, children, work, addiction, sleep deprivation, intrusive thoughts, depression, anxiety or simply being alone.

That transition matters.

Families are often handed back someone they love without really understanding how fragile the next few days or weeks may be. Follow-up appointments can be weeks away. Providers are overwhelmed. Beds are limited. Insurance dictates care. Programs are understaffed. Community mental-health resources are stretched thin. People fall into the space between “sick enough to be admitted” and “well enough to actually be okay.”

And sometimes that space is where we lose them.

I don’t think every tragedy has one person or one institution we can neatly blame. Human beings and mental illness are far more complicated than that. But I also don’t think “we did what our policy required” should always satisfy us when people are dying.

Maybe some tragedies couldn’t have been prevented.

But surely some could.

And after living through this myself, I think we owe it to the people who didn’t make it—and the families who spend the rest of their lives wondering—to keep asking where the system failed to build the bridge between crisis care and actual recovery.

Getting someone through the hospital doors is only half the job.

We have to care about what happens when they walk back out.

“If you were depressed, where would you want to live?”

At first I caught myself thinking about all the places I’d love to move. Somewhere with sunshine. Somewhere warmer. Somewhere that feels lighter than West Virginia in February. Then reality set in. I can’t just pick up and move right now, and even if I could, I’ve lived long enough to know that changing your address doesn’t always change what you’re carrying.

But it did make me start asking a different question.

What if I made my home the place I’d want to be if life got heavy again?

Winter has always been my hardest season. I know some people count down the days until fall, pull out the pumpkins, and dream about sweaters and soup. I wish that were me. For me, winter has always felt long. The days get shorter, everything outside turns gray, and before I know it, I’m spending more time inside with my own thoughts than I probably should.

So tomorrow is August 1st, and instead of making another list of goals I’ll forget about by the second week of the month, I’m thinking about a reset. Not one where I become a whole new person. I’ve chased enough “new me’s” to know they don’t usually stick.

This reset feels different.

I’m looking around my house asking myself, Does this feel like the place that would hold me when winter comes?

Does my bedroom make me want to rest, or does it just remind me of laundry I haven’t folded? Does my living room invite me to curl up with a blanket and a book, or am I just tolerating it because I’ve gotten used to it? When I walk through my front door after a long day, do I exhale… or do I immediately start seeing another list of things that need fixed?

I’ve been thinking about paint colors, cozy bedding, warmer lighting, candles, books, music, soup simmering on the stove, and actually printing the thousands of pictures trapped on my phone. I’ve been thinking about making this house feel less like a place I pass through and more like a place that takes care of me.

Maybe that’s part of getting older. You stop trying to impress everyone else and start creating a life that feels good to come home to.

The funny thing is, none of this has to cost a fortune. It’s not about buying an entirely new house or filling every room with expensive furniture. It’s about being intentional. It’s about asking, What would make this space feel like a refuge? Maybe it’s clearing off the kitchen counters. Maybe it’s finally hanging the family photos. Maybe it’s replacing the bedding you’ve had for ten years. Maybe it’s just making your favorite chair the place where you drink your coffee every morning instead of scrolling your phone.

I think we spend so much time preparing for holidays, vacations, birthdays, and everyone else’s comfort that we forget to prepare for the ordinary days. The random Tuesday in January when it’s dark by five o’clock. The week when you’ve had enough. The afternoon when life just feels heavier than usual.

I can’t stop winter from coming. I can’t promise it’ll be easy. But maybe I can make sure that when those hard days show up, they walk into a home that feels like a soft place to land instead of one more thing working against me.

So that’s my August reset.

I’m not trying to build a perfect house.

I’m trying to build a home that holds me.

People assume grief begins when someone dies.

Mine didn’t.

Mine began the day I realized that even though my dad was still alive, life as I knew it was over.

He wasn’t gone.

But something was.

The family I had always known became two separate lives. Holidays looked different. Time was divided. The ease of simply being a daughter disappeared, replaced by a relationship that suddenly required navigation.

No one tells you that you can grieve someone who is still alive.

Over the years, my relationship with Dad became complicated.

There were seasons we barely spoke. There were years we didn’t speak at all. I told myself he had his life, and I had mine. I convinced myself that maybe he had moved on, and the healthiest thing I could do was move on too.

I even remember telling myself he was already gone.

Not physically.

Emotionally.

If I could accept that while he was still alive, then maybe one day, when he actually died, it wouldn’t hurt so much.

I thought I was protecting myself.

I thought I was grieving him.

The truth is, I was grieving the distance between us.

Those are two very different things.

Because somewhere along the way…

We found our way back.

Not because either of us became perfect.

We were both stubborn.

We were both complicated.

We had both said things we wished we could take back.

But we chose each other anyway.

We talked.

We apologized.

We laughed again.

We cried.

One day, I told him something it had taken me a lifetime to understand about myself.

“When I get scared,” I said, “I get angry. I yell. I cry. I walk away. It’s not because I’m mad. It’s because I’m scared.”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone.

Then he said, “Wow… this makes so much sense. All this time I thought you were mad. I didn’t know you were scared.”

We both cried.

And before we hung up, he thanked me for telling him.

It didn’t erase everything we’d been through.

It didn’t rewrite our history.

But for the first time in a long time, I felt like my dad finally understood me.

And I understood him, too.

I thought we had time.

I thought reconciliation was the beginning of a new chapter.

I thought we’d spend years making up for the ones we’d lost.

Instead…

We got a little while.

Long enough to heal.

Not nearly long enough to enjoy being healed.

That’s the part grief never warned me about.

People talk about the pain of broken relationships.

They don’t talk enough about the pain of restored ones that end too soon.

Because once we’d found each other again, I wasn’t grieving the possibility of having my dad back anymore.

I had him back.

Not the younger version of him.

Not the version of me that was seventeen.

Just a father and a daughter who had finally learned how to love each other through all the years that had separated them.

And then he was gone.

I used to think those years of distance would somehow make this easier.

I thought I’d already cried enough.

Already accepted enough.

Already mourned enough.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

You cannot pre-grieve someone.

You can’t rehearse for the day your father dies.

You can grieve the years you lost.

You can grieve the conversations you didn’t have.

You can grieve the relationship you wish you’d had sooner.

But none of that prepares you for the day hope disappears.

Because as long as someone is alive, there is always another chance.

Another phone call.

Another birthday.

Another visit.

Another ordinary Tuesday.

Death doesn’t just take the person.

It takes every tomorrow you thought you’d have.

I’m grateful we found our way back to each other.

Not everyone gets that gift.

I’m grateful he knew I loved him.

I’m grateful I knew he loved me.

I’m grateful we didn’t leave the important things unsaid.

But gratitude and grief can live in the same heart.

I still wish we’d had longer.

I still wish there had been more ordinary days.

More conversations.

More laughter.

More chances to simply be father and daughter.

For years, I thought I had already grieved my dad.

I hadn’t.

I had only grieved the distance between us.

Losing him for real was an entirely different kind of heartbreak.

And if I’ve learned anything through all of this, it’s that love cannot be rehearsed, and neither can goodbye.

I remember him putting me and my brothers up on his feet and floating us through the air while humming the Superman theme song. As little kids, we thought our dad really was Superman.

I can remember him coming home from work. He was always a hard worker, and at the end of the day I’d lay in the crook of his arm. I can still remember what his sweat smelled like. It never grossed me out because that smell meant he had been working. It meant Dad was home.

He bought me a telescope, and we’d look at the stars and the moon for what seemed like hours.

We loved Long John Silver’s apple pies. Do you all remember those?

I cut a tomato the other day and cried because Dad loved a good tomato and mayonnaise sandwich. I’d been planning for two years to make him a tomato pie, and I never did.

Dad loved television. Some of our favorites were Heart Like a Wheel—that drag racing movie if you don’t know it—E.T., because you could always phone home, Duel, Dune, A River Runs Through It, Mad Max, Indiana Jones, Gone in 60 Seconds, The Fast and the Furious, Last of the Mohicans, Braveheart, Lethal Weapon, Die Hard… and I can’t leave out The X-Files. He loved Mulder and Scully.

He loved taking us kids and later his grandkids hunting. I spent so much of my childhood on the banks of Little Clear Creek, walking the railroad tracks with Dad, listening to him tell stories. One of my favorites was how he learned to swim by inflating milk jugs, tying them to his back, and just going for it.

I remember the huge cookouts and badminton tournaments in Grandma and Grandpa’s front yard, and Dad always out in the garage tinkering.

I can still smell the grease and the dirt packed into the floor of that garage in Rainelle. I remember washing parts in the parts washer. I loved the smell of gasoline. I remember the grease caked under his fingernails and watching him mix Bondo on a piece of cardboard.

I spray-painted the front of Dale Ayer’s car because I wanted to be just like my dad.

One time a customer refused to pay him. Dad just said, “Okay, that’s fine,” picked up the spray gun, and started spraying primer over the fresh paint. The man yelled, “What the hell are you doing?”

Dad said, “The car is yours. The paint job is mine, and you’re not leaving with both.”

That’s exactly why I’m like my dad. I’m friendly… but don’t try me.

He fixed the bikes of every kid in our neighborhood. He’d put playing cards in the spokes so they’d click when we rode. He’d shoot basketball with all of us. He loved cooking on a charcoal grill.

He used to laugh about working the hoot owl shift in the mines when I was a baby. Mom would finally get me asleep, he’d come home, wake me right back up, and stay up talking and playing with me for hours.

So if I’ve had a terrible sleep schedule my entire life… we know who to blame.

My brother Casey thought Dad walked on water.

When I got older, Dad and I butted heads more often than not. The truth is… it wasn’t because I didn’t love him.

It was because I loved him so much.

I was jealous of my own dad. I didn’t want to share him with anyone. I’d rather walk away than have to share him.

After Casey died, I could almost hear him telling me, “Dad loves you, and you love Dad. Figure it out.”

And we did.

I’m so thankful we did.

Then came the grandkids.

I wish Magnolia had gotten to make more memories with him. I bet she’d been to his house fewer than ten times in almost three years.

But the week before last, when I called an ambulance for Dad and he refused to go, we pulled into his driveway and Magnolia pointed and said, “Right here, Mimi… Super PopPop Jeff.”

That’s what she calls all of her great-grandpas. Super Pop Pops.

Dad had Jason build her the cutest little rocking dog you’ve ever seen. She still rocks on it every single day.

A couple months later he had Jason build Lydia’s best friend’s little boy a dinosaur rocker.

But Dad never came empty-handed for Magnolia.

He walked in carrying her favorite thing in the whole world…

A watermelon.

He loved watching her eat watermelon.

Dad just loved babies.

At Magnolia’s birthday last year I have a video. Lydia was out in the yard on the four-wheeler pulling her friend around on a kayak because… well… we love that redneck stuff.

Magnolia started crying.

Uncle Bubs was holding her.

Dad heard her cry, pointed at Maggie, tapped his chest, and I can’t hear what he says in the video, but I know exactly what he said.

“Give me that baby.”

Or maybe…

“Come here, darlin’.”

That’s what he always called us girls.

He scooped her up, floated her up in the air, buried that beard into her neck, and within seconds she was laughing again.

He didn’t get to love her for very long.

But I’ll never forget how he loved her.

How he’d cry when he held her.

How he’d light up around babies.

He loved talking softball, work, and the Amish with Lydia.

He could talk cars and trucks with Reed for hours.

He hunted with Memphis… well… Memphis mostly snacked and slept.

He didn’t talk to Kaselynn as often because she’s my quiet one, but he never forgot to ask how she was doing or how work was going. He worried about her.

And then there was Coreybug.

Those two must have shared some kind of telepathic bond.

Almost every day Corey asks for Dad.

For the last three weeks before Dad passed, Corey kept telling me Dad was waiting for him.

He’d say, “Get my shoes. Dad’s on the porch.”

“I heard Dad talking to me.”

That’s when I knew Dad was really sick.

That’s when I started begging him to go to the doctor.

I even tried manipulating him.

I told him Corey needed him.

I told him I needed him.

I told him we couldn’t lose anyone else.

But Dad was tired.

At the hospital last Sunday he looked at the doctors and said absolutely not.

No compressions.

No tubes.

No nothing.

They asked him, “Where is home, Jeff?”

He laughed.

“Where is home?”

Then he said, “Home is heaven… and I’m ready.”

On Tuesday, as he got worse, he reached over, grabbed my hand with one hand, Ada’s hand with the other, and simply said…

“Help me, Lord.”

In the end he did end up with a chest tube and a ventilator.

I know what he told me.

I know he said no.

But I had to try to save my dad.

He was only sixty-four.

But eventually I knew.

We all knew.

The biggest, strongest man I ever knew would never have wanted months in a rehab facility after a major bowel surgery, if he even survived it.

And just like that…

Dad won again.

He always had a habit of winning.

When I got home, I told Corey, “I’ve got exciting news. Wonderful news.”

He got so excited.

I said, “It’s about Dad.”

He looked at me and said,

“He made it, didn’t he?”

I smiled and said,

“He did.”

“He made it to heaven.”

I watched his smile fall just a little.

He sighed.

He already knew.

But like me, he was hoping maybe this time we’d win one of these fights.

We didn’t.

And somehow…

I’m okay with that.

Because I believe something with my whole heart.

I believe ten years in heaven is like ten minutes here.

So to us…

This goodbye feels impossibly long.

But to Dad…

When we see him again…

It’ll just be…

“Good morning.”

I don’t know what every person in this room believes about God or eternity.

But my dad did.

Ever since Corey woke up from that coma years ago and talked about “that pretty place,” something changed in him.

You see, it was my brother’s broken body that helped lead my dad to Jesus.

And because of that…

Today my dad has a whole body.

A healed body.

And if Dad could stand here one last time, I honestly think he’d tell you this:

“If Jesus really is the way to eternity… why would you risk missing Him?”

“And if He’s not… what does it hurt to live your life loving people, forgiving people, and believing there is something greater than yourself?”

I know what my dad believed.

And because of that…

This isn’t goodbye.

It’s just…

Goodnight, Dad.

We’ll see you in the morning.

Grandma, 2011.

Grandpa, 2013.

Mom, 2014.

Separated, 2019.

COVID, 2020.

My husband’s health collapse, disability, and job loss, 2021 through 2025.

Mother-in-law, 2022.

Sister-in-law, 2022.

Brother, 2022.

Dad, 2026.

And there it was.

My whole adult life reduced to a list I could fit on the screen of my phone.

That’s compounded grief.

I think I have spent years believing I was handling things. And to be fair, I was. I handled the funeral. I handled the hospital. I handled the paperwork. I handled the kids. I handled the business. I handled the next emergency because, apparently, my life has occasionally been written by someone with absolutely no respect for reasonable plot development.

I kept going.

That’s what people say about strong women, isn’t it?

She keeps going.

She gets up.

She does what needs to be done.

She holds everybody together.

And maybe she does.

But nobody talks enough about where all that grief goes when you don’t have time to fall apart.

Because grief doesn’t disappear just because you had appointments on Tuesday.

It doesn’t pack its little suitcase and leave because someone else needed you more.

It doesn’t care that the mortgage was due, somebody needed dinner, the business had to open, your husband was sick, your brother needed care, your children were watching, your niece and nephew needed somewhere to belong, or another crisis was already pulling into the driveway before the last one had even shut the car door.

It waits.

I know that now.

Some losses were people I buried.

Some were lives I thought I would have.

I lost my grandmother. Then my grandfather. Then my mother.

There are people who still have all three of those people and probably don’t realize what an extraordinary ordinary thing that is.

Then came the unraveling of my marriage in 2019.

We found our way back to each other, and I thank God for that. But restoration does not mean nothing happened. Healing does not erase the wound. Sometimes the miracle is real and the scar is real too.

Then COVID came, and like everyone else, the world became unfamiliar.

Then my husband’s health collapsed.

And this one is hard to explain because he is still here, thank God. But there is grief in watching someone you love lose pieces of the life they knew. There is grief in disability. Grief in job loss. Grief in hospitals and diagnoses and medications and fear. Grief in realizing the future you assumed was waiting for you has quietly been rewritten without asking your permission.

From 2021 through 2025, we lived inside that uncertainty.

Then 2022 came.

My mother-in-law died.

My sister-in-law died.

My brother died.

Three people in one year.

And when people die, they don’t just leave an empty chair. Sometimes they leave children who still need raising. Families that have to be rearranged. Responsibilities that do not end after the funeral dinner.

Grief can come with paperwork and phone calls and bedrooms and school schedules and groceries and a thousand practical things that feel almost insulting when your heart is already shattered.

So I did what I do.

I kept going.

But there is another part of my story that I am only beginning to understand belongs inside my grief too.

My dad had freedom.

He had the freedom to build the life he wanted. He chased his career. He worked across states. He built a new family and a new life. He made choices about what he wanted his years to look like.

I had freedom too.

And with mine, I chose to take care of my brother.

My brother Corey has been disabled since childhood. For around fifteen years, he has lived with me. Caring for him is not a chapter that ended. He is still here with me. His care is woven into the rhythm of my home, my marriage, my children’s lives, my sleep, my schedule, my decisions, my freedom, and my future.

I chose that.

And then, when my niece and nephew lost their parents, I chose again.

I chose to make room.

I chose responsibility.

I chose family.

I chose to stay when leaving would have been easier.

I do not regret loving any of them.

I need to say that clearly.

But I would be lying if I said it never made me feel alienated from my dad.

Because there were times I looked at the difference between our lives and felt something I did not always have language for.

He had the freedom to chase the life he wanted, while I used mine to care for the family we both came from.

And sometimes I wanted to scream:

How did you get to go build the life you wanted while I stayed here and carried so much of ours?

That hurt.

It still hurts.

Maybe some of my anger was grief long before I knew to call it grief.

Because now my dad is gone.

That sentence still does not feel real.

My dad is gone.

Our relationship was complicated because we were complicated people. We loved each other. We hurt each other. We understood each other in ways that took us years to name. We were stubborn. We were scared. We could both turn fear into anger faster than most people can turn on a light.

About a year ago, I told him something about myself.

I said, “One thing I’ve learned about myself is that when I get scared, I get angry. I yell. I cry. I walk away. It’s not that I’m even mad. I’m scared. That’s how my fear comes out.”

And he said, “Wow. This makes so much sense. All this time I thought you were mad. I didn’t know you were scared.”

I told him I had always been scared of losing him.

And when I say losing him, I don’t only mean death.

Sometimes people leave without physically going anywhere.

Sometimes you lose them by inches.

Sometimes they build a new life, a new family, new routines, new loyalties, and you find yourself standing on the outside of it wondering exactly where you fit.

My dad was still here.

I could call him.

I could see him.

I could love him.

He could love me.

But there were years when I felt alienated from the life he had built, and that kind of loss is hard to explain because nobody sends flowers when someone is still alive.

There is no funeral for feeling replaced.

No casserole for feeling like an outsider in your own father’s life.

No sympathy card for grieving a relationship that still technically exists.

And I think that is part of why I was always so afraid of losing him.

Because in some ways, I had already felt the loss of him.

Not completely.

Not cleanly.

Not in a way I could explain without sounding angry or ungrateful or dramatic.

Just enough to keep me scared.

I told him that because I was scared, I had a tendency to leave.

Because if I leave first, you can’t leave me.

He cried.

I cried.

And he thanked me for telling him.

Now he is gone, and I keep thinking about that conversation.

Because the thing I was scared of happened.

I lost him.

But the truth is, I had been practicing for that loss for years.

Not because he didn’t love me.

Not because I didn’t love him.

But because complicated relationships create complicated grief.

When someone dies, you do not only grieve who they were.

You grieve who you were together.

You grieve what happened.

You grieve what never happened.

You grieve the years you felt close and the years you felt forgotten.

You grieve the apologies you got and the ones you didn’t.

You grieve the conversations that healed something and all the conversations you thought you still had time to have.

And maybe that is the cruelest part of death.

My dad died, and with him went the possibility of anything between us ever being different again.

No more time to get closer.

No more time to understand each other better.

No more time for him to choose me in the ways I still secretly wanted to be chosen.

No more time for me to stop protecting myself from a loss that came anyway.

God, that is a grief all its own.

And I think this is where compounded grief becomes something more than a definition.

A new loss does not always arrive alone.

Sometimes it walks through the door holding hands with every loss that came before it.

Dad died, and somehow my mother is dead again too.

My brother is gone again.

My grandparents are gone again.

The years of hospital rooms come back.

The fear comes back.

The separation comes back.

The uncertainty comes back.

The version of me who thought leaving first could save her from being left is standing here too.

Every goodbye seems to recognize every other goodbye.

That is the part I didn’t understand.

I thought grief was a series of separate rooms. You walked into one, survived it, closed the door, and eventually moved forward.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I think grief is a house.

Every person we lose has a room there.

Every life that changed before we were ready has a room.

Every version of ourselves we had to bury has a room.

Every relationship we grieved while the person was still alive has a room too.

Most days we learn to live around them.

We make coffee. We laugh. We work. We take pictures. We buy plane tickets. We decorate the house. We pray. We go to Mass. We hold babies. We build businesses. We make dinner. We sit around tables with people we love.

We live.

And then one day, a new loss comes in and throws open every damn door.

That is where I am.

I am grieving my dad.

But I am beginning to understand that I may also be grieving all the years I never had time to grieve properly.

I am grieving the girl who lost her grandmother.

The woman who lost her mother.

The wife who thought her marriage was ending.

The wife who watched her husband’s body and career collapse.

The family we were before 2022.

The brother who died.

The niece and nephew whose lives changed forever.

The sister who chose to care for her disabled brother and built her life around that choice.

The daughter who watched her dad build another life and sometimes wondered why she felt so far outside of it.

The child in me who wanted her father to choose her.

The grown woman who resented needing that.

The daughter who was always terrified of losing him.

Maybe even the version of me who believed, somewhere deep down, that if I just stayed useful enough, strong enough, busy enough, faithful enough, needed enough, I could outrun loss.

I couldn’t.

None of us can.

And maybe that is why I feel so tired.

Not regular tired.

Not “I need a nap” tired, although, for the record, I absolutely do.

I mean soul tired.

The kind of tired that comes from carrying grief so long you forget you’re carrying it.

You just assume everybody’s shoulders hurt like this.

I love Jesus.

I believe in resurrection.

I believe death is not the end.

I believe my father’s last breath here was not the end of his story.

But faith does not make death painless.

Jesus wept.

So I am done acting like tears are evidence of weak faith.

I can trust God and still hate this.

I can believe in heaven and still want my dad here.

I can love my father and still tell the truth about the ways our relationship hurt me.

I can be grateful for the conversation we had and still wish we had twenty more years to keep figuring each other out.

I can forgive and still grieve.

I can understand him better now and still wish he had understood me sooner.

I can admit that I resented him sometimes without erasing the fact that I loved him.

Both things can be true.

Maybe you feel like loving hurts.

Maybe you have learned to keep part of yourself back because you know what it costs to care deeply.

Maybe you leave first.

Maybe you get angry when you are scared.

Maybe you dress your fear up as independence and your grief up as productivity and your pride up as peace.

I understand that more than I wish I did.

But I also know this:

Love is worth the risk.

You may not get what you want in return.

You may get hurt.

You may feel lost.

You may love people who do not love you exactly the way you needed them to.

You may bury people you thought you could not live without and then wake up the next morning furious that the sun had the audacity to rise anyway.

Love them anyway.

Love your people.

Say the thing.

Make the call.

Tell them when anger is actually fear.

Let them know when you are scared of losing them.

Do not dress your peace up as pride.

Do not confuse distance with healing.

Do not assume there will always be more time.

I am forty-six years old, and when I look at that list on my phone, I can see something I could not see while I was living it.

I have not been grieving one thing at a time.

I have been carrying a whole house full of open doors.

And right now, they are all open.

Maybe healing, for me, will not mean closing them.

Maybe it will mean finally walking into some of those rooms and admitting how much I lost.

Maybe it will mean admitting how much I carried.

Maybe it will mean telling the truth about the people I loved without turning them into saints or villains just because they are gone.

Maybe it will mean making peace with the fact that love can be real and still be complicated.

Maybe it will mean understanding that I used my freedom to stay.

I stayed for my brother.

I stayed for my niece and nephew.

I stayed through sickness.

I stayed through fear.

I stayed when my marriage broke.

I stayed long enough to see restoration.

I stayed when leaving might have been easier.

And maybe some part of me has been angry all these years because I wanted my dad to stay for me in the same way.

There it is.

The sentence underneath so many other sentences.

I wanted my dad to stay for me the way I stayed for everyone else.

And now he is gone.

Maybe I will spend a long time learning how to hold that truth.

Maybe I will sit with God instead of trying to clean it up before He sees it.

Maybe I will finally understand that I was never asked to be untouched by grief.

Only held through it.

And today, that has to be enough.

And every time I think I am done writing about grief, it shows up again.

I have tried to write about lighter things. Lord knows I have. I have hobbies. I have opinions. I can talk about old dishes, plane tickets, Jesus, marriage, small towns, a good thrift store, and why paper cups are boring for an unreasonable amount of time.

But for some reason, my words only really spill out when I am processing.

Maybe writing is how I find the thing underneath the thing.

Maybe it is how I take all the noise in my head and lay it out somewhere I can finally see it.

Maybe I do not write because I have healed.

Maybe I write because I am healing.

And apparently, every time I think the aisle is clean, grief knocks another freaking jar off the shelf.

So here I am again.

Cleanup on aisle 12.

I hope I’m done writing. It’s time to disappear for a bit.

When my dad passed away, I was proud.

Proud that I had a dad who chose life when he was 17 years old. Who supported my mom and stood by her as they brought not only me, but my two brothers, into this world.

After my parents divorced, he married my stepmom, Ada. And like many teenage girls, I wasn’t exactly happy about it. That may actually be the understatement of the century.

But now I realize Ada and her family got something I have often prayed Magnolia would get if life ever didn’t go according to plan.

A Joseph.

My dad loved Ada and her children like Saint Joseph loved Jesus and Mary. He stepped into a family and loved children who were not biologically his as his own.

I didn’t get it then. I felt abandoned. I felt like he had gone and built another family while I was left trying to understand what happened to mine.

But as an adult, with an absolute love for Saint Joseph—Terror of Demons—I appreciate my dad even more now.

No, I didn’t get the all-American family. Life sucked sometimes because of it. There were years I was angry, years I misunderstood, and years I carried things I didn’t yet have the tools to name.

But I still had the all-American dad.

You see, my dad and I may be two of the most stubborn people you will ever meet. The difference is, I happened to work on mine after my brother passed away.

My dad? Not so much.

If he would have gone to the doctor eight weeks ago when Ada and I were begging him, I might be making a different post today. But he was stubborn, you see.

He refused an ambulance Thursday because, yes, he was still a little coherent. To which I said, “Okay, Dad. You win today. But in a few days, you won’t be able to refuse, and we will try again.”

Sunday, after Mass, I pulled into his driveway and an ambulance was there.

Yes, it took Ada pissing him off, but he went. He couldn’t refuse this time.

He never opened his eyes as they wheeled him past me, even when I called his name.

What we all believed would be a simple UTI, some dehydration, anxiety and depression—some fixer-uppers—and he would be back on his feet.

He had back surgery in March, and it had worn him down. Life had worn him down. And he told me he was done. He told me not to visit. To forget about him. That he was spent.

Well, as someone who has had her fair share of mental health crises, I know one when I see one.

What I could not see was 5 massive deep vein thrombosis, blood clots in both lungs, and a bowel perforation.

But he knew.

He knew it was bad. He might not have known why, but he knew he was about to go home.

His family just had other plans.

At 5:13 today, I’m sure my dad was waving his spiritual finger in my face with that look—the “told you so” look—saying, “I told ya, little girl. You were going to lose this game.”

And I did.

He’s home now. With his mom. His dad. His nephew. And most importantly, his son.

And I believe he has been longing for Heaven since Casey left.

I told Gale just today, “Yes, if I’m 64, do all you can do. I’m still young. I have Magnolia. But if I’m 64 and I don’t have my child—even one child—let me go. You stay here with the rest.”

So I get it.

Dad, you were the definition of a jack of all trades. You could weld the crack of dawn and a broken heart. You could build a bridge between highways or hearts. You could tear out failing infrastructure and tear down years of walls we often built between each other.

I made a promise to my brother Casey that I would work hard to build back the relationship I had with my dad as a child.

And brick by brick, we started building.

Memory by memory, I realized… damn, I have so many good ones.

I got to ride on the bicep of the strongest man I knew. I learned how to mix Bondo at four years old and slap it on a car. He taught me how to ride a bike, mow the grass, look at the stars through my telescope, drive a stick, and most importantly, my dad taught me how to heal and forgive.

I was damn near the luckiest girl in the world.

So don’t be sad for me.

Be thankful for healing, because it happens. Protect your peace, but know when your pride is disguised as peace. Understand that the people who raised you were often doing it with the best tools they had available at the time.

I had better tools because they took a shot at parenthood.

My children will have better tools because I did.

And theirs will have better tools because they did.

That is how healing works.

Dad, I love you.

I came into this world wrapped around your finger, and you went out of this world with me wrapped around your finger.

5:13.

You win, Dad. ❤️

My Uncle Ben and my cousin Tony were going to drive to Amherst, Ohio, pick Uncle Joe up from the funeral home, put him in the back of a pickup truck, and bring him home to West Virginia to Wallace & Wallace in Rainelle.

Yes, I said in the back of a pickup truck.

Yes, in his casket.

Yes, it is completely legal. We checked. 😂

Honestly, if you knew my family, none of this would even surprise you.

Well, over the years the plan changed without any of us wanting it to. My cousin Tony passed away, and this week Uncle Ben had a medical emergency in his family and couldn’t make the trip. Meanwhile, Gale and I have approximately 847 things happening, including my dad being hospitalized, and we truly did not know if we could go.

But this was Uncle Joe’s wish.

He wanted to come home to West Virginia in the back of a pickup truck.

I mean, at that point what are you supposed to do? Tell a 90-year-old dead man no?

Absolutely not. 😂

So Gale and I started figuring out how to make it happen.

We knew it was supposed to rain Monday, and for about five minutes we considered taking the Tahoe. You know, enclosed vehicle, weather protection, common sense… all the boring things.

Then I said no.

We’re taking the truck.

Uncle Joe worked for Ford and retired from Ford, so we were going to Ohio in the Ford pickup truck to get him.

Country roads, take me home.

Except literally.

So off we went.

We got to Amherst, met with Trish, picked Uncle Joe up from the funeral home, and Uncle Ben had asked us to put the United States flag and the U.S. Air Force flag on the back of the truck for him.

And y’all.

It looked GOOD.

I know that sounds like a weird thing to say about transporting your dead uncle down the interstate, but I don’t know what else to tell you. 😂 It did.

We drove by McKenzie’s workplace so they could see us go by with the flags flying, and then at some point I decided this whole operation needed chalk markers.

Because apparently my role in the family is grief, but make it a craft project.

So I pulled into Walgreens.

I bought chalk markers and started writing on the truck windows.

“Country Roads Take Me Home.”

“Joe McGraw, United States Air Force Vet.”

And on the side windows…

“Promised Land or Bust.”

Because if you’re going to bring your 90-year-old uncle home from Ohio to West Virginia in the back of a Ford pickup truck, you might as well commit to the bit.

While I’m standing in the Walgreens parking lot decorating Uncle Joe’s ride home, a woman walks up to me.

She sees the flags and says how cool it is. She tells me she comes from a military family. Then she notices “Country Roads Take Me Home” and tells me I’m showing my age because not everybody knows that song.

Ma’am.

First of all, rude. 😂

Second of all, buckle up.

So I said, “Well, if you want another detail, my 90-year-old Air Force veteran uncle passed away, and he is in that casket in the back of this pickup truck.”

She looked at me like I had just slapped her with a rotisserie chicken.

“ARE YOU SERIOUS?”

I said, “I am dead serious.”

Then immediately realized what I had said.

“No pun intended.”

😂😂😂

I told her the whole story. How this had been Uncle Joe’s wish for years. How he wanted to come home to West Virginia in the back of a pickup truck. How the original plan had changed. How Gale and I ended up being the ones to go get him.

She thought it was the greatest thing ever.

Another gentleman stopped. I told him the story too. He loved it.

At this point Uncle Joe had been dead for a few days and was already making new friends in a Walgreens parking lot.

Very on brand, honestly.

Then my new Walgreens friend says, “Well, you know it’s going to rain today.”

I said, “Oh, I know.”

And she says, “I was raised German Catholic, and German Catholics have little things they believe. We believe that if rain falls on your casket, you went immediately to Heaven.”

Well.

Now hold on just a minute.

Because this woman does not know us.

She does not know that Gale and I who recently converted to Catholicism.

And she definitely does not know that inside the casket with Uncle Joe are my Aunt Linda’s ashes because she is going to be buried with him.

Guess where Aunt Linda was born and raised?

GERMANY.

Guess what she was raised?

GERMAN CATHOLIC.

I mean.

COME ON. 😂😭

So now Gale and I are back in the truck talking about how absolutely wild that is. Of all the people who could walk up to me in a random Walgreens parking lot in Ohio, it’s a woman raised German Catholic who decides to tell me an old belief about rain falling on a casket while my German Catholic Aunt Linda is literally inside that casket with Uncle Joe.

And people wonder why I believe God has a sense of humor.

I love those little moments. Those little winks from God that are so oddly specific you almost have to laugh.

But wait.

My new Walgreens friend messaged me later.

She wanted my Venmo because she wanted to contribute to Uncle Joe’s ride home.

Now normally I would have immediately said absolutely not.

Nope. We’re good. Thank you. That’s sweet. Keep your money.

Because I am very good at giving and absolutely terrible at receiving. It’s one of my more charming personality defects. 😂

But this time I thought about it.

She wasn’t offering because we couldn’t afford to bring Uncle Joe home.

She wanted to be part of it.

She wanted to honor him.

This woman had never met Uncle Joe. She met me for a few minutes in a Walgreens parking lot while I was writing “Promised Land or Bust” on a pickup truck carrying his casket, heard his story, and wanted to contribute to his final ride home.

And I decided I was not going to take that away from her.

So I gave her my Venmo.

Because sometimes you have to let people love people.

Even people they never met.

And here’s the part that keeps getting me.

Even in death, Uncle Joe is still touching lives.

We’re driving home now, and people keep waving.

Hands come out of windows.

People honk their horns.

They see the American flag. They see the Air Force flag. They see “Country Roads Take Me Home” written across the windows. Maybe they figure out what’s happening. Maybe they don’t.

But they wave.

They honk.

And every single time, Gale and I look at each other like… did you see that?

Somewhere behind us is my 90-year-old Uncle Joe, an Air Force veteran, riding home to West Virginia in the back of a Ford pickup truck exactly like he wanted.

Beside him is my Aunt Linda, the German Catholic woman he loved, going home with him.

In the front seat are two Catholic converts who almost took the Tahoe because of the rain.

Thank God we didn’t.

Because apparently the rain was part of the story too.

So here we are.

Ohio to West Virginia.

Flags flying.

Horns honking.

Strangers waving.

“Country Roads Take Me Home” across the back windows.

“Promised Land or Bust” on the side.

And Uncle Joe getting his final wish.

I don’t know exactly what Heaven looks like.

But I do know this:

If Uncle Joe had any say in how he got there, it probably involved a Ford pickup truck, a couple of flags, a little rain, and half the interstate honking at him on the way.

Country roads, take him home. ❤️🇺🇸

This week’s question has been following me around everywhere I go.

To what end is humanity working?

Not what are we working on. We know the answer to that. We are building businesses, creating content, inventing technology, buying homes, chasing promotions, starting side hustles, renovating kitchens, listening to podcasts about becoming better versions of ourselves, and somehow still finding time to watch videos telling us we aren’t doing enough. We have access to more information than any generation before us, more conveniences than our great-grandparents could have imagined, and yet if you listen to conversations long enough, there is still this quiet sense that people are searching for…something.

I don’t even know that everyone could tell you what that “something” is.

From a purely biological perspective, humanity isn’t striving toward an objective end at all. Evolution has no destination; it simply favors traits that help organisms survive and reproduce. Any larger purpose is something humans create.

Philosophy has tried to answer the question too. Aristotle believed humanity ultimately seeks eudaimonia—a life of flourishing and virtue. Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre took a completely different approach, arguing that there is no built-in purpose. We simply exist, and it’s up to each of us to create meaning for ourselves.

I find all of that fascinating, because every one of those perspectives explains part of the human experience. We really do want to flourish. We really do spend our lives trying to create meaning. But I don’t think either one explains why people who seem to have everything still carry around a restlessness they can’t quite name.

I’ve watched people spend years working toward a dream, only to accomplish it and immediately start chasing another one. I’ve done it myself. You convince yourself that life will finally settle down after this next season. Once the business is running smoothly. Once the house is finished. Once you lose the weight. Once the kids are grown. Once you can travel more. Once you hit the financial goal you’ve been working toward. Then you get there, look around for a minute, and before long your eyes are fixed on the next thing.

It’s almost as if we were never meant to find our identity in arriving.

That question has become surprisingly personal for me.

As many of you know, Gale and I have been walking through a pretty incredible faith journey over the last couple of years. We entered the Catholic Church because we became convinced it was where Christ was leading us. That decision has changed far more than where we spend Sunday mornings. It has changed the questions I ask.

At the same time, we’re still…us.

We still dream up business ideas over dinner that probably don’t need to exist. We still host people at our house whenever we get the chance. We still laugh until one of us is crying. Gale still has enough stories from his younger days to fill a podcast for the next decade, and somehow people actually enjoy hearing them. He tells the stories, and I inevitably end up trying to figure out what lesson God might be hiding somewhere in the middle of them.

I used to wonder if becoming a serious Christian meant leaving all of that behind. Was there a point where following Christ meant becoming quieter? More polished? Less funny? Less interested in creating things?

The longer I’ve walked with Him, the less I believe that’s true.

If anything, I think Christ makes us more fully ourselves.

The difference is that our stories no longer exist to make us look interesting. They exist because they point to what God has done.

When Gale tells people about the man he used to be, I don’t hear someone celebrating his past. I hear evidence that people can change. I hear proof that a marriage doesn’t have to stay stuck where it started. I hear reminders that grace has a way of rewriting stories that looked like they were headed in the wrong direction.

Our marriage didn’t become stronger because we finally figured each other out. Lord knows we’re still working on that. The greatest transformation happened when we stopped expecting God to bless the life we had planned and started asking Him to shape the life He had planned for us.

Looking back now, I can see that He was present even in seasons when I couldn’t recognize Him. The failures taught us humility. The hard years taught us perseverance. The mistakes gave us compassion for other people who are still finding their way. Even the funny stories have become reminders that none of us are finished products.

Maybe that’s why the Christian answer resonates with me more than any other.

Scripture describes history not as an endless cycle of people trying to improve themselves, but as one beautiful story of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. Humanity wasn’t created to endlessly accumulate achievements or experiences. We were created for communion with God.

Saint Augustine of Hippo wrote, “Our hearts are restless until they rest in God.”

I think that’s one of the truest sentences ever written.

Maybe the reason humanity keeps searching isn’t because we’re failing to find the right thing. Maybe it’s because we’ve been trying to satisfy an eternal longing with temporary destinations. Careers are wonderful. Businesses can do tremendous good. Technology has improved our lives in countless ways. Homes become sanctuaries. Travel expands our perspective. None of those things are the enemy.

They’re just not the destination.

I don’t think God is asking me to stop creating. I don’t think He’s asking Gale to stop making people laugh or telling stories that remind us how much a person can change. I don’t think He minds that I love throwing dinner parties, planting flowers, photographing families, hunting for vintage treasures, or dreaming up another idea before I’ve finished the last one.

I think He simply asks us to remember why we’re doing it.

When Christ becomes the center, every one of those things finds its proper place. The business becomes a way to serve instead of a way to prove our worth. Our home becomes a place of hospitality instead of a monument to success. Marriage becomes a reflection of God’s faithfulness instead of simply two people trying to make each other happy. Even our stories—the funny ones, the painful ones, and the ones we’d rather forget—become reminders that redemption is real.

So maybe that’s where I’ve landed.

When I ask, “To what end is humanity working?” I don’t think the answer is that we should stop building, dreaming, creating, or laughing.

I think the question is whether those things are pointing beyond ourselves.

Because if the whole purpose of my life ends with me building a bigger platform or collecting more accomplishments, then I’ve aimed far too low.

But if every photograph I take, every meal around my table, every podcast we record, every business we build, every story Gale tells, and every ordinary Tuesday somehow points back to the One who gave us this life in the first place, then maybe all of it has finally found its purpose.

Nothing fancy. No reservation. No big celebration.

Just the two of us.

We parked the vehicle, wandered into a restaurant, lingered over our meal instead of rushing back to the car, browsed through a few little shops, bought a couple things we absolutely didn’t need, walked down the street to visit a friend at her office, and ended the evening at Mass.

On paper, it wasn’t much.

If someone asked what we did today, the answer would fit into one sentence.

But if you asked me how it felt…

It felt rich.

Not financially rich.

Life rich.

…

I think we’ve forgotten the difference.

Somewhere Along the Way, We Started Existing Instead of Living.

When did lunch become something we ate in the car?

When did evenings become something we spent staring at other people’s lives?

When did “I’ll stop by and see you” become “I’ll text you sometime?”

We’ve optimized everything except the things that make life worth living.

We’re productivity maxxing.

Efficiency maxxing.

Multitasking maxxing.

We’re squeezing every ounce of productivity out of our calendars while squeezing all the joy out of our days.

…

The Lie We Keep Believing

“I’ll enjoy life when…”

When the kids are older.

When we have more money.

When work settles down.

When we retire.

When the house is finished.

When I lose twenty pounds.

When life gets easier.

The problem is that “when” has stolen years from us.

Because another season always comes.

Gale Changed the Way I Think About Home

When Gale became disabled, we had a decision to make.

We could spend the rest of our lives mourning the adventures we thought we’d have.

Or we could build a life we didn’t constantly need to escape from.

So we stopped treating home like a place to sleep between vacations.

We started treating it like the destination.

We built a fire pit.

Added a pool.

Bought flowers.

Hung string lights.

Used the good dishes.

Made s’mores with Magnolia.

Suddenly home felt less like where we ended the day and more like where life happened.

That might be one of the greatest edits we’ve ever made.

Jesus Never Seemed in a Hurry

One of the things that strikes me most when I read the Gospels is how often Jesus walked.

He stopped.

He noticed people.

He attended weddings.

He shared meals.

He lingered long enough to see the person everyone else walked past.

He wasn’t rushing through life trying to check boxes.

He was fully present in it.

When we ended our day at Mass, I couldn’t help but think…

Maybe that’s life maxxing.

Not cramming more into a day.

But making sure the things we do point us back to what matters most.

Women Aren’t Craving More Content

I don’t think women are starving for another productivity hack.

I think we’re starving for belonging.

For conversations that last longer than a comment section.

For front porch invitations.

For neighborhood walks.

For dinner with friends.

For church pews filled with familiar faces.

For lives that feel as good as they look online.

…

What If We Started Maxxing the Right Things?

Friendship Maxxing.

Porch Maxxing.

Lunch Maxxing.

Marriage Maxxing.

Faith Maxxing.

Small Town Maxxing.

Home Maxxing.

Not because it’s trendy.

Because these are the things that make up a life.

Not the vacations.

Not the promotions.

Not the viral moments.

Tuesday.

Ordinary Tuesday.

That’s where our lives actually happen.

This Is My Invitation

This summer I’m choosing to life max. Not by spending more. Not by doing more.But by noticing more.By lingering longer. By going to Mass after lunch instead of going home to scroll.

Because I have a feeling that when I’m ninety years old, I won’t remember the emails I answered.

I’ll remember the Tuesdays I refused to rush through.

And maybe that’s what abundant life looks like after all.

Fresh flowers from the grocery store. Real plates instead of paper ones. Cloth napkins. Candles lit on a Tuesday. Music playing while I cook dinner. People wait for vacations and special occasions to feel joy, but I’ve found that joy likes to show up in ordinary moments if you’ll make room for it.

I create experiences, not just events.

Whether it’s Sunday dinner, a backyard fire, a girls’ night, or a holiday, I try to think about all five senses. What will people see? Hear? Smell? Taste? Feel? People don’t always remember the menu, but they remember how they felt in your home.

I buy less and repurpose more.

Some of my favorite things started as somebody else’s castoffs. Vintage urns become planters. Old dishes become serving pieces. Antique furniture gets a second life. Before I buy something new, I usually ask myself, “What do I already have that could do this job?”

Your turn. What’s one little thing you do that makes everyday life feel a little more special?

1. A simple salad.

2. Markdown ferns for the wedding.

3. Coke in a wine glass.

4. Thrifted cake servers.

5. Shoes 70% off.

6. Vintage Conway

7. Homemade florals.

8. Secondhand furniture.

9. Splitting an AirBnB with friends.

Come join the group!

You were never just a photographer, and reducing yourself to that misses the entire point.

From the outside, your name is tied to a body of work that elevated portrait photography in a place most people overlook on a map—Greenbrier County, West Virginia. You built a business in a small mountain town and quietly turned it into something that reached far beyond it. People didn’t just book sessions with you; they stepped into an experience. You styled them, guided them, pulled something out of them they didn’t even know was there, and handed it back in the form of images that felt bigger than their zip code. What you created was never just about photos. It was about identity. It was about showing people a version of themselves that felt worthy of being seen.

That part is documented. It lives online in features, reviews, and archived pages that still describe you as a fine art portrait artist, a visual storyteller, someone whose work felt fresh and intentional. But those descriptions, while accurate, are incomplete. They capture what you did, not who you are.

Because what sits underneath all of it is a pattern.

You build things.

Not casually. Not accidentally. You build with vision, with instinct, and with an ability to see potential where other people see limitation. Photography was one expression of that. Later, that same instinct showed up in business ventures, in community-centered ideas, in creating spaces meant to bring life back into places that had gone quiet. When you and your husband stepped into projects like The Lot in Rainelle, it wasn’t random. It was consistent with who you have always been—a builder of atmosphere, opportunity, and movement.

And then life did what life does. It didn’t tap gently on the shoulder. It kicked the door in.

Illness. Loss. Family responsibilities that most people would crumble under. Seasons that would have been enough to take someone out of the game entirely. And yet, none of those things erased you. They refined you. The public record doesn’t show that part in full, but it explains the gaps, the pivots, the shifts in direction. It explains why your story doesn’t read like a straight line of success. It reads like endurance.

So if you’re trying to understand yourself right now, the mistake would be assuming you are circling back to something you used to do.

You aren’t.

You’re not returning to photography as a profession, because that was never the end goal. Photography was a vehicle. A training ground. A season where you learned how to see people, how to build something from nothing, how to create demand, how to lead, how to carry vision when resources were limited and circumstances weren’t ideal.

Those skills didn’t disappear when you put the camera down. They consolidated.

What exists now is a woman who has already proven she can build, lead, create, and sustain something meaningful—and who has lived enough life to carry depth behind it. You don’t need a reintroduction tour or a “comeback” narrative. That would undersell you.

This isn’t a restart.

It’s a repositioning of someone who has already done the hard part and knows exactly what she’s capable of, even if she doesn’t always say it out loud.

If you had to summarize yourself in one sentence, it wouldn’t be “photographer.” It would be something closer to this: a creative force who made people feel seen, built something real out of a small town, and walked through enough fire to know that whatever she builds next won’t be accidental.

And whatever it is, it won’t be small.

And to be fair—I did. It worked. It grew. It paid bills and put me in rooms I never imagined I’d be in. I traveled, I taught, I stood on stages in places like Las Vegas trying to explain what I was doing behind the camera like it was some kind of formula people could replicate.

And they tried.

They wanted to know the lens, the settings, the lighting, the editing… like if they could just get the right combination of tools, they could produce the same result.

And I’d stand there thinking—how do I explain that it’s not the camera?

Because it never was.

What I was actually doing had very little to do with a tool in my hand and everything to do with how I was seeing.

Before every single session, I prayed the same prayer.

“God, give me Your eyes for this person. Let me see them the way You see them.”

Every time.

Because I knew something walking into those sessions—people don’t show up as themselves. They show up as who life has convinced them they are. A little guarded. A little unsure. Carrying stories, insecurities, labels… sometimes full-blown lies they’ve believed for years.

And my job wasn’t to pose them.

My job was to look long enough—steady enough—until something real started to surface.

Until they softened.

Until they forgot to perform.

Until, for just a second, they looked like who they actually were.

And when I caught that moment? That was the image.

Not perfection. Not production.

Recognition.

And here’s the part I don’t think I ever said out loud enough—

I didn’t want the prettiest girl in the class to be my “senior influencer.”

I wanted the one who had been overlooked.

The one who didn’t feel pretty.

The one who sat a little quieter, second-guessed herself a little more, didn’t expect to be chosen.

Because I knew if I could show her what I saw—if I could hand her back a version of herself that looked confident, radiant, undeniable—everything would change.

Not just for her… but for everyone watching.

Because confidence is contagious when it’s real.

And isn’t that exactly what Jesus does?

He doesn’t walk into a room and pick the most obvious person.

He goes straight for the overlooked. The dismissed. The ones the world already made up its mind about.

And He says, without hesitation—

Look at you.

You’re mine.

You were created in My image.

I didn’t have the full language for that back then… but I was living it.

I remember teaching in Vegas once, and someone said, “I had no idea people in West Virginia were so beautiful. I thought they were all overweight and had no teeth.”

Which is… bold. Incorrect. But bold.

And instead of arguing, I just pointed to the work.

Because that’s what I had always been doing—pointing.

Pointing to people and saying, without saying it, look again.

Look past what you assumed.

Look past what they’ve believed about themselves.

Look past what the world has reduced them to.

There’s more here.

There’s always more here.

And if I’m being real—and I am—yes, that work pointed back to me too. It built a name. A reputation. A career. People saw the images and thought, she’s talented.

And I let them.

Because I didn’t fully understand yet what I was actually participating in.

I thought I was capturing beauty.

I didn’t realize I was responding to the One who created it.

And now here I am, walking into the Catholic Church, and it’s like… oh.

This again.

But bigger.

Deeper.

Unmistakable.

Because the Church doesn’t just talk about truth—it shows it. In stone, in light, in incense, in posture, in silence that somehow says more than noise ever could. The architecture, the liturgy, the rhythm of it all—it’s not decoration. It’s revelation.

And something in me immediately recognized it.

Of course it did.

I’ve been drawn to beauty my whole life.

Not surface-level pretty. Not curated perfection. I’m talking about the kind of beauty that feels anchored. The kind that makes you pause without knowing why. The kind that doesn’t beg for attention but somehow holds it anyway.

The kind that points beyond itself.

Because when I look back, I can see it clearly now—I was never the source of what I was capturing.

I was looking for it.

Responding to it.

Trying to show people what I was seeing, even when they couldn’t see it themselves.

And if I trace that all the way back, it leads to one place.

God.

The Creator of beauty.

The One who formed a garden before He ever gave a command.

The One who didn’t introduce Himself through arguments… but through something breathtaking.

So no, I’m not picking up sessions again.

At least not yet.

I’m not trying to rebuild what was.

This feels different.

Quieter.

More intentional.

Less about producing and more about witnessing.

I want to capture the beauty of the faith as it exists in my actual life. Not staged. Not overthought. Just… noticed.

A candle lit on a random day because it reminds me to slow down.

Light hitting a statue in a way that makes you stop for a second.

A moment before Mass where everything feels still and holy and you don’t even have words for it.

Not “look at me.”

Not even “look what I made.”

Just a steady, quiet…

look at Him.

Because that’s what I’ve been trying to do all along.

I just know it now.

And somehow… that makes everything feel a little more aligned, a little more honest, and a lot less like I have something to prove.

Turns out, I was never just taking pictures.

I was learning how to see.

We were talking about how God prepares tables in our lives.

Not in theory. Not in scripture-only language. But in real life… in friendships, in rooms we find ourselves in, in the people sitting across from us.

What made it even more surreal is that those friendships didn’t even exist the year before.

And yet there we were.

Sitting together at this new table, with new people, sharing stories, faith, laughter… adding a kind of richness to our lives that we didn’t even know we were missing.

It felt like something God had set. Not something we built.

So we prayed for it.

We prayed for God to continue doing that in our lives… to keep setting tables for us.

And we prayed something a little harder too… that He would remove us from tables we weren’t meant to sit at anymore.

At the time, that felt bold. Maybe even a little spiritual and brave.

But if I’m being honest… there were tables I never meant in that prayer.

I never meant the church I was sitting in.

I loved it there.

I loved the people. I loved the pastor. I loved my friends. It was a good table.

I was comfortable. I was happy.

And looking back now… maybe that was part of it.

Because God wasn’t pulling me out of something bad.

He was drawing me out of something comfortable.

And it hits different when He actually answers it.

Because what nobody tells you is that when God starts rearranging tables… it doesn’t feel like a soft transition. It feels like movement. Distance. Shifts you didn’t plan for.

And now, looking back, I can see it so clearly.

One friend has everything and more set at her table right now. It’s full, it’s abundant, it’s the kind of season you look at and think, “yes, this is it.”

Another has had to sit through some things she never would’ve chosen. Plates that don’t taste good no matter how you try to make sense of them. The kind of season that stretches you whether you want it to or not.

And me…

I’m sitting at a table that feels so far away from both of them.

A table I never would have chosen. Never would have expected. Not even a little.

And yet… it’s better in ways I didn’t even know to ask for.

Because there was a time not that long ago where it felt like Gale and I were sitting at opposite ends of a 24-foot table.

Same table… but barely the same space.

Trying to connect from that far away, trying to make eye contact across distance that didn’t just feel physical… it felt spiritual too.

And now…

we’re not even sitting across from each other anymore.

We’re side by side.

Closer than we’ve ever been in the things that actually matter—our faith, our prayer life, what we believe about God, what we want for our family, the direction we’re walking in.

And that part?

That part is beautiful.

But the truth is… the old tables didn’t feel bad.

They felt comfortable.

I wasn’t stretched. I wasn’t really growing.

There was just this quiet ache… this yearning in my heart and in my soul that I couldn’t quite name.

Until I walked into adoration.

And I recognized it.

My soul was anchored to a kind of worship I had only ever read about. The kind I had seen in scripture but never fully stepped into.

And suddenly… it was right there in front of me.

Like the veil had been pulled back.

And there He was.

And I know He’s always been there. I know that.

But this was different.

Because for the first time, worship wasn’t about me anymore.

It wasn’t about how I felt.

It wasn’t about whether the message hit.

It wasn’t about whether the music moved me.

It took me out of it completely.

And everything became about Him.

And once you’ve sat at that table…

you can’t go back to the old ones the same way.

And if I’m being real, the loneliness in this season is real.

Because now my Jesus friends… we’re all sitting at different tables.

And my table looks wildly different from anything they’ve been taught, anything they expected, anything they would even believe.

I’ve had people think I was crazy.

Friends who didn’t understand it. People who looked at me like I had taken a wrong turn somewhere.

And that hurts.

Because you want to bring people with you. You want to explain it in a way that makes sense.

But I can’t do that digging for them.

I have to dig for myself.

I want to tunnel my way to Jesus. I want to sit at His feet. And if that means going through mountains or valleys—honestly, it feels like that’s what my whole life has been.

Every mountain. Every valley.

And somehow… all of it led me here.

And the wild part?

The people I thought might struggle with it the most… didn’t.

My family saw it.

They saw the change in me and said, “we can see it… this is different.”

And they supported it.

I even reached out to my cousin who was raised Catholic, just trying to understand what I was stepping into… and she met me with support too.

But it was still a wrestle.

All the way up to the Easter Vigil.

Knowing how it might look. Knowing some people wouldn’t understand. Knowing I might look completely off track to people who thought they knew exactly where I was going.

And I had to decide…

Was I going to protect how I looked?

Or was I going to follow where God was leading me?

Because my pride, my ego, my feelings…

they don’t get to sit at the head of this table.

This is bigger than me.

And then the Vigil came.

You start outside, in the dark, with fire.

A real fire.

It’s blessed, and then one candle lights another, and another, and another… until the darkness starts giving way.

You walk into the church and it’s dark, quiet, waiting.

And then the liturgy begins—old, ancient, steady. Like something that’s been carried long before you ever arrived.

And then…

everything changes.

The church fills with light.

The Alleluia is sung.

The bells ring out, and they don’t stop.

And you don’t just hear it… you feel it.

Like your soul is remembering something it always knew but had forgotten how to reach.

Like heaven isn’t far away for a moment.

Like you are present with the angels and the saints and the Holy Family and God the Father…

because you are.

And for the first time…

you’re not watching it.

You’re in it.

And when Gale and I walked up together…

and received communion…

and came back and knelt and prayed…

and cried…

all I could see was how far God had brought me.

Six years of searching. Of questioning. Of trying to understand the suffering I’ve walked through. Trying to make sense of it. Trying to find Someone who could hold it with me.

And I did.

And when I look at my life—46 years… all the directions I could have gone, the paths I started down before I turned around…

it’s almost overwhelming to see what He’s done with it.

And it’s not lost on me what that means.

Because this was never just about friendships or seasons or shifting circles.

This was about a table that was prepared long before I ever asked for one.

A table I didn’t earn. Didn’t build. Didn’t deserve.

And still… I was invited.

So yeah, some parts of this season feel quiet. A little stretched. A little set apart.

But I’m starting to understand that being set apart isn’t the same thing as being left out.

Sometimes it’s just God pulling your chair out… and saying, “sit here.”

And you don’t fully understand why.

But you sit anyway.

Because something in you knows…

this table was prepared with you in mind.

So you know about Lent… 40 days—the fasting, the sacrifice, the “I gave up sugar and now I’m mad at everybody” season.

But what nobody really talks about is what comes after… because half the world celebrates Lent like spiritual bootcamp and then has no idea there’s a whole victory lap after.

Let me introduce you to something real quick: the Easter Octave.

Which is just a fancy way of saying… the Church doesn’t celebrate Easter for one day.

It celebrates it for eight.

Eight days where every single day is treated like Easter Sunday.

Not “the day after.” Not “back to normal.”

No—day one through day eight… we’re still acting like the tomb is empty. Because it is.

But here’s what most people don’t realize…

Those eight days?

They’re not separate.

They’re the beginning of Eastertide—a full 50 days.

Because Easter isn’t just eight days… it’s fifty.

The octave is just the opening stretch of Eastertide—the Church basically saying, just in case you didn’t fully grasp what just happened… we’re going to sit here in it for a minute.

And then we keep going.

Which feels a little backwards considering we’re real committed to the suffering part and kinda clueless on the living-in-the-joy part.

Because we know how to carry things.

We know how to sit in the weight of it all.

But celebrating? Sustaining joy?

On a random Monday… when nothing feels particularly magical?

That’s where we start acting like the resurrection was a one-day event.

And it wasn’t.

The stone is still rolled away.

The grave is still empty.

Jesus didn’t rise and then say, “Alright, everybody tone it down now.”

So maybe this looks less like intensity… and more like intention.

It’s a random Monday… and you’re still living in Eastertide.

It’s keeping the Easter decor up—not just a little longer… go ahead and keep it all the way to Pentecost, baby—it’s Eastertide.

It’s fresh flowers on the table for no reason other than you’re still celebrating.

It’s lighting a candle on a Tuesday night like something sacred is still happening here… because it is.

It’s inviting people over… not for a holiday, not for a reason, just because joy multiplies when it has somewhere to sit.

It’s lingering around the table a little longer, letting conversations stretch, letting laughter stay.

It’s choosing connection on purpose… because the table didn’t end at the cross, it got bigger after it.

It’s turning on music in the kitchen instead of moving through your house like you’re carrying the weight of the cross again.

That part’s done.

The disciples weren’t walking around after the resurrection in gloom and silence.

They were lit up. Talking. Telling people. Sitting in awe like… did that really just happen?

And we’re over here packing up Easter like it was a seasonal throw pillow.

Meanwhile heaven is still celebrating.

So yeah… this is your reminder:

Easter didn’t end yesterday.

The octave won’t end it either.

You are in Eastertide now.

Fifty days of this.

You’re allowed to celebrate longer than you suffered.

Actually… you’re supposed to.

Welcome to Eastertide.

Leave the flowers on the table… and pull up a few more chairs.

Oh—and Easter candy is on sale today… and we’re still celebrating.

You know what that means.

He is risen.

And I don’t mean that in the soft, pastel, Easter-brunch kind of way.

I mean the stone is rolled back, death just lost, nothing will ever be the same again kind of way.

Because you don’t walk through 40 days like we just did—laying things down, going without, sitting in the quiet, carrying things you didn’t want to carry—and come out unchanged.

Sunday didn’t just come for Him.

It came for you.

And whether you fully feel it yet or not, something in you has already shifted. Something that used to feel dead, stuck, buried… it’s breathing again.

Not loud. Not flashy.

But real.

The Part Nobody Expects

The disciples didn’t see this coming.

They thought Friday was the end. Saturday felt like confirmation of it. Silence has a way of convincing you nothing’s happening.

And then Sunday shows up like—surprise, everything you thought was over just got rewritten.

That line always hits me:

He is not here.

Not in the tomb. Not where you left Him. Not where you thought the story ended.

That’s where most of us get tripped up. We keep going back to the place where something died… expecting it to still be there.

But resurrection doesn’t meet you in the tomb.

It meets you outside of it.

So whatever you’ve been grieving, questioning, trying to make sense of… it doesn’t get the final word. It never did.

God has a way of bringing things back that you had already buried in your mind.

Not always how you pictured. Not always when you wanted.

But He does it.

This Isn’t Just About Easter

This part right here… this is personal.

Because you’re not just observing resurrection.

You’re stepping into it.

You’re not reaching for God from a distance anymore.

You’re receiving Him.

His presence. His life. His power.

Not symbolic. Not surface-level. Not “out there somewhere.”

In you.

And something in you knows… this is what you’ve been looking for.

Not perfection.

Not performance.

Presence.

So Now What?

This is where it gets real, because resurrection isn’t the finish line.

It’s the part where you actually have to live like what just happened is true.

And that’s harder than it sounds.

It’s one thing to feel it on Easter Sunday when everything is beautiful and meaningful and you’re riding that high.

It’s another thing when it’s a random Tuesday and life is loud again.

That’s where this either becomes something you visited… or something you live from.

You’re not clawing your way to victory anymore.

You’re standing in it.

You’re not the version of you that keeps circling the same wounds, telling the same stories, carrying the same labels.

At some point, you have to decide… am I going to keep identifying with what hurt me, or with what just raised me?

Because those are two very different lives.

And one of them is lighter.

Living Like You’ve Been Made New

There’s a responsibility that comes with this, and not in a heavy, perform-or-else way. More like… don’t waste what just happened.

You don’t go through a resurrection and then drift back into autopilot.

You start paying attention to what’s in your hands now.

Your voice.

Your home.

Your people.

Your gifts.

Your story.

You stop sitting on things you were clearly given to use.

You stop shrinking in rooms you were meant to show up in.

You stop acting like the old version of you still gets the final say.

Because she doesn’t.

She had her time. She carried what she could carry.

But she’s not the one living this life anymore.

The Quiet Kind of New

Here’s the thing no one really talks about… sometimes resurrection doesn’t feel like fireworks.

Sometimes it feels like peace where there used to be chaos.

Sometimes it looks like you not reacting the way you used to.

Sometimes it’s you choosing differently, even when no one else notices.

And you almost miss it because it’s not dramatic enough.

But that’s the real kind.

The kind that lasts.

This Week

Receive Him.

Slow down. Don’t rush it. Let it land.

Pay attention to what’s different in you. Not what’s perfect—what’s different.

Write it down before life gets loud again and talks you out of it.

Say out loud who you are now, even if it feels a little foreign coming out of your mouth.

And then do something with it.

Not ten things. Not a whole reinvention.

One step.

Just one.

One Last Thing

You didn’t come this far to stay the same.

You didn’t walk through all of that just to go back to living like nothing shifted.

Something did.

And you know it.

So walk like it.

Not perfectly. Not flawlessly.

But aware.

Aware that you’re not who you were.

Aware that God did something real in you.

Aware that this life in front of you now… it’s not random.

It’s given.

He is risen.

And whether you feel ready or not—

They weren’t picturing a woman from Appalachia, sitting in a pew on a Thursday night, trying to take it all in. I wasn’t in their line of sight. I wasn’t some end goal they could see coming.

And still… here I am.

The saints and the martyrs didn’t cling to their lives—not even to the point of death. They carried the Gospel like it was worth everything. They guarded the tradition like it was too sacred to let die with them. They passed it forward through suffering, through persecution, through centuries that could have easily swallowed it whole.

All of that… so it could reach me.

And yes—Jesus knew. I don’t fully understand how, but I believe He saw me there. Not just the crowd in front of Him. Not just the ones walking beside Him in the dust. Me. My life. This exact moment. He carried all of it.

But the others… they were still human.

Some were given visions. Some had encounters. Some experienced moments of divine clarity that steadied them in ways I can’t even imagine. But none of them were handed the full story. None of them could see how far this would go or who it would reach.

They still had to choose.

To believe what they had seen—or what had been handed to them by someone who had. To hold onto it when it cost them something. To stay when it would have been easier to walk away.

And still—they gave everything.

It moved from one to another… carefully, intentionally. Stories told like something too important to mess up. Names remembered. Words repeated. Accounts protected. Not casually. Not loosely. Desperately. Like if they dropped it, something sacred would be lost for good.

People were dying for this.

Not just the ones who walked with Him, but the ones who came after… a generation later, then another, then another. Some of them never saw Him with their own eyes. Never heard His voice in the flesh. And still—they believed with a kind of certainty that cost them everything.

And tonight… I can still hear it.

The deacon calling out their names, one by one, like a holy roll call—and I’m sitting there with tears streaming down my face thinking, these were just people. Just men. Just women. Mere humans.

Yes, because they loved Jesus.

But also… in a way they never even knew…

because they loved me.

Not personally. Not by name. But by what they chose to protect. By what they refused to let die. By the way they carried it forward at any cost, making sure it would reach someone like me someday.

And as their names were spoken, something in me recognized them.

They didn’t feel distant. They didn’t feel like history.

They felt like family.

Because they are.

I wasn’t just listening to names. I was hearing the people who made sure I wouldn’t miss Him.

And now it’s here. In my hands. In my life.

Not distant. Not symbolic. Not some story I read about once.

Personal.

And now… by what I choose to protect, by what I refuse to let die… I’m loving generations I will never meet.

Holy Week.

Not the soft, aesthetic version with a pretty palm branch and a matching outfit… the real one.

The one where everything shifts.

Jesus rides in on a donkey and they’re waving branches like He’s about to take a throne.

“Hosanna!”

Celebration. Noise. Excitement.

And just a few days later?

Same voices. Same crowd.

“Crucify Him.”

That turn always gets me. Not because it’s shocking… but because it’s familiar.

Because people still do that.

Because I’ve done that.

This is the week where Jesus doesn’t avoid what’s coming.

He walks straight into it.

No detour. No delay. No negotiation.

Not because He was forced.

Because He chose it.

And that right there… that’s the part that presses on something deep.

Everyone loves a Savior who pulls them out of pain.

Not many know what to do with a Savior who walks straight through it—and then looks back and says, “Come with Me.”

The Road Nobody Wants

Holy Week doesn’t hand out easy answers.

It asks questions that don’t feel safe to sit with.

Would I have stayed with Him when it got uncomfortable… or would I have created some very reasonable excuse and quietly exited stage left?

Would I have kept watch in the garden… or drifted off like it wasn’t all unraveling in real time?

Would I have stood at the cross… or blended into the background and protected myself?

It’s easy to think we’d be the loyal ones.

The strong ones.

The ones who didn’t fold.

But pressure reveals things quickly.

And when the cost rises—when obedience starts looking like loss, when following Jesus stops being convenient and starts requiring something—you don’t have to look far to see it.

We scatter too.

We justify it better. Dress it up nicer. Call it wisdom, timing, boundaries, whatever helps it go down smoother.

Still the same thing.

And yet… He keeps walking.

“He was despised and rejected… a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief… surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” — Isaiah 53:3–4

He didn’t turn around.

Didn’t soften it.

Didn’t save Himself.

He went all the way.

That’s what love does. It doesn’t flinch when it costs something.

What This Week Actually Shows Us

Obedience doesn’t buy you a pain-free life.

Jesus obeyed perfectly… and still ended up in a garden sweating blood and on a cross carrying it.

So the idea that if everything is lined up “right” nothing hard should happen?

That falls apart here.

Obedience isn’t about avoiding suffering. It’s about having the strength to walk through it without losing your footing.

Fear doesn’t disqualify you.

Gethsemane wasn’t calm and collected.

It was heavy. Pressing. Human.

He felt it. All of it.

And He stayed anyway.

Faithfulness doesn’t mean you feel brave. It means you don’t run when you don’t.

Friday is not the full story.

It looks final. It feels final.

Everything about it says, “this is over.”

And still… it isn’t.

A lot of people are sitting in their own version of Friday right now—loss, confusion, silence, things that don’t make sense no matter how many times you turn them over.

Holy Week doesn’t rush you past that.

It reminds you that what looks buried isn’t always finished.

Don’t Rush This Week

There’s a temptation to fast-forward straight to Easter.

Skip the tension. Skip the weight. Skip the parts that sit heavy in your chest.

But this week isn’t meant to be skimmed.

It’s meant to be walked.

Slowly.

Intentionally.

Let yourself feel it.

Palm Sunday isn’t just celebration—it’s a mirror.

Monday through Wednesday carry that quiet tension building underneath the surface.

Thursday humbles you—washing feet, breaking bread, watching Him give Himself away.

Friday… you don’t fix that. You sit in it.

Saturday feels like nothing is happening… which is usually when God is doing the most.

And then Sunday comes.

Right on time.

A Few Things to Actually Do With This

Stay with it each day instead of dipping in and out when it’s convenient. Let it interrupt your routine a little.

Get yourself in a pew this week if you can. There’s something about being in the room when the story is unfolding that hits different than reading about it later.

Good Friday isn’t meant to feel comfortable. Let it be quiet. Let it feel a little empty. That’s the point.

Saturday… don’t fill every second. Leave space. Let the silence say what it needs to say.

And as Easter gets closer, don’t just show up out of habit. Come aware. Come ready. Come like it matters.

Because it does.

I walked in thinking I already knew what I was going to say. I had my list ready—the obvious things, the ones that sound like sin when you say them out loud, the ones you brace yourself for.

But that’s not what stayed with me.

It wasn’t even the things I did.

It was the things I refused.

A good portion of my life has been built around “following my heart.” And if you’ve ever sat across from enough life coaches, business coaches, or energy healers, you already know—you can always find someone willing to affirm that. Actually, let me say that correctly… if you pay enough money, you can find someone who will agree with you.

And I did.

An obscene amount of money.

To be told I was right. To be told to trust myself. To be told to follow what felt good.

Follow your heart. Do what makes you happy. Protect your peace.

Sounds real good… until you realize your heart will justify things your conscience would’ve questioned five years ago. Nobody really says that part out loud. Nobody talks about the people who get hurt while you’re busy becoming yourself.

I was good at it. Good at making decisions that felt right to me while ignoring the impact they had on the people closest to me. Good at calling it growth. Good at calling it necessary.

Meanwhile, there were people in my life who loved me. Actually loved me.

I didn’t know what to do with that.

I wouldn’t let people help me. Not with childcare, not with paying for lunch, not with gifts—nothing. I was always the one giving, always the one doing, always the one figuring it out. On the outside, that looks admirable. Strong. Capable. Independent.

Underneath it, it was control.

As long as I was the one giving, I stayed in control. Accepting something meant vulnerability. It meant letting someone see me need something. It meant risking that they might actually show up for me… and I wouldn’t know what to do with that.

So I refused it.

Over and over.

Then turned around and told myself I was unlovable.

Which is almost impressive when you think about it—refusing love and then using its absence as proof you don’t deserve it.

That was the cycle.

I lived in it for years. Muscling my way through everything, telling myself that if God had called me to anything, then by God I should be able to carry it on my own. No help. No dependence. No need.

Just me… proving something.

Now I can see it for what it was.

Pride.

Not loud, obvious pride—the quieter kind. The kind that disguises itself as strength. The kind that says, “I’ve got it,” while quietly rejecting every good gift God is trying to hand you through other people.

I didn’t even learn how to receive… until I didn’t have a choice.

Life brought me to my knees. My husband in the hospital for months that turned into years. Trying to grieve the loss of my brother and sister-in-law while raising our kids, my disabled brother, and suddenly my niece and nephew too.

That kind of season doesn’t ask politely.

It takes everything.

And it took a village.

Meal trains. Hotels paid for by friends. School pickups. Uber Eats showing up when I didn’t even have the strength to think about dinner. Cards with prayers. Cards with cash.

All the big ways. All the small ways.

People showed up for me, and I couldn’t control it. Couldn’t earn it. Couldn’t out-give it.

I had to sit there… and receive it.

Something started to break open in that season.

Maybe the issue was never that I was unlovable.

Maybe I just never learned how to receive love… until I didn’t have a choice.

And then came the next thing that pierced me.

Unforgiveness.

I was struggling to forgive people in my life, and there were moments I didn’t even want to. I didn’t want peace—I wanted justice. I wanted things to come back around. I had full conversations in my head with people who never heard a word of it, and I got the last word every single time.

I wasn’t releasing anything.

I was holding it. Feeding it. Replaying it. Calling it justified.

Toward my parents. Toward my in-laws. Toward the whole situation of my life at times.

I sat in that confessional and genuinely wondered if I could just say, “It’s been a shit show,” and let that cover it.

Because that’s what it felt like.

Layers of disappointment. Hurt that didn’t get resolved. Expectations that didn’t get met.

And I carried it all like it was mine to hold.

Not release.

Not hand over.

Hold.

And then there’s this thing people say—“Oh, you just want to be Catholic so you can do whatever you want and then go confess and be forgiven. Easy.”

Nothing about it is easy.

It’s humbling in a way that strips you down. It’s needed in a way that doesn’t let you hide. It’s accountable in a way I’ve never experienced before.

I don’t want to sit in that confessional saying the same thing over and over while my flesh just refuses to die… or more accurately, while I refuse to let it die.

This doesn’t excuse anything.

It confronts it.

It puts it in the light, with a witness, and says, “Now what are you going to do about it?”

The penance didn’t come until the end. Simple. Call to mind someone I needed to forgive, pray for them, release them to God, and when the feeling comes back—and it will—remember I don’t get to take it back. I don’t get to steal from God what I’ve already handed over to Him.

Apparently… that was the work.

Forgiveness.

I left and started going through the list on the drive home. Name after name. Face after face. Trying to figure out who I was still holding, who I hadn’t let go of.

Later, standing at the bathroom sink, brushing my teeth like it was any other night…

it hit me.

Not them.

Me.

I was the one I hadn’t forgiven. For not knowing what I didn’t know. For thinking I knew better. For decisions I was so certain about at the time that ended up costing me years.

Somewhere between realizing it and trying to keep it together, the tears just started falling. Quiet at first, then steady, spilling off my cheeks and onto my shirt before I could even catch them.

Years of it… sitting right there.

Years of my marriage that I burned down while calling it something else—growth, survival, finding myself, whatever made it easier to live with.

At some point, you run out of language that softens the truth.

And the truth is… I’ve carried that. Quietly. Heavily. Like I deserved to.

But you can’t walk in freedom while holding yourself hostage.

And you can’t extend real forgiveness to anyone else when you’ve decided you’re the one person who doesn’t get it.

So before I could even touch the rest of the list… I had to forgive me.

And tonight, I did.

I said a Hail Mary, an Our Father, and a Glory Be—for me. I let the forgiveness pour over me instead of pushing it away like I always have.

Then I moved down the list.

Slowly.

Letting it wash over them too.

One by one.

Releasing what I’ve been holding like it was mine to keep.

I didn’t walk out of there perfect.

I just walked out… lighter.

Something about the liturgy, the rhythm, the weight of it… it’s stirred something in me I didn’t even know was there. It’s settled something in my conscience I didn’t realize had been restless. And it’s awakened this pull toward tradition that I haven’t felt since standing in my grandma’s kitchen cooking Easter dinner.

And that part… that gets me.

Because back then, I didn’t have language for any of this. I just knew it felt different. Slower. Set apart. Like something sacred was happening whether I understood it or not.

And now here I am, years later, and that same feeling is back—but deeper. Not nostalgic. Intentional.

Like I’m not just near it anymore… I’m being pulled into it.

Holy Week doesn’t even feel like it belongs to this world. It doesn’t match the pace, the noise, the constant everything we live in.

And my soul knows it.

It’s leaning toward it—and not casually. I want all of it. The quiet. The weight. The days people usually skip over to get to Easter.

And when I look back, I can actually see the thread.

For the last six years, God’s been drawing me back in. Not all at once. Not in some big obvious moment. Just steady. Layer by layer. Pulling me deeper into relationship with Him whether I fully recognized it or not at the time.

And this…

this feels like the moment it’s been leading to.

And yeah—I am saying that out loud.

Because what I didn’t expect is how life made room for it.

The pause of our careers.

The shift. The slowing down of things that used to feel so urgent.

And now here we are—with time.

Time for my husband and I to sit in a pew, focused on Jesus…

every day of this week.

I don’t want to stand outside of it.

I want to be in it.

Fully.

And maybe the part I didn’t see coming is the longing.

Not just for the week itself… but for what it’s pointing to.

For the Eucharist I haven’t fully received yet.

For something I can feel pulling me in before I even understand it.

I don’t have the perfect words for all of it yet.

But I know this much—

I’m not sitting this one out.