The first journal I ever owned looked like this. I was in third grade.

It had hearts on the cover and a warning written across the front telling everyone to stay out. Apparently, I took my privacy very seriously. I carried it everywhere. Sometimes I’d take it outside and sit beside a stream to write. I didn’t know it then, but I had already found one of the first places where my questions were welcome.

I still have that journal. In fact, I still have every journal I’ve ever written.

They’re tucked away, each one holding the thoughts of a younger version of me. Every so often, I pull one down and begin reading.

What surprises me most is how familiar she feels. She already sounded like me. Those journals tell the story of my life. They also tell the story of how the page taught me to listen.

Over the years, I’ve heard people say they wish they had kept their journals. Others have shared the sadness of having them lost, discarded, or taken away.

Every time I hear that, I feel quietly grateful. Somehow, I never let mine go. I couldn’t have explained why then. I only know that some part of me trusted I would one day need to meet that little girl again.

Every time I open one of those journals, I expect to meet a younger version of myself. Instead, I keep meeting the same soul.

Even as a child, I wrote to make sense of the world around me. Writing became the place where I discovered what I believed. Putting my thoughts on paper helped me separate what felt true from what had simply been handed to me.

There was always a quiet knowing inside me that kept asking,

Is there more?

Many of those questions became prayers. I laid them at the foot of the cross because they felt too heavy to carry alone. Looking back, I can see those pages slowly changed my relationship with myself. They helped me recognize the quiet voice that had been there all along.

The page slowed everything down.

It gave me somewhere to lay my thoughts before reacting to them. Questions that felt overwhelming in my mind often became clearer once they found their way onto paper. Understanding unfolded one honest sentence at a time.

Years later, I began passing journals back and forth with out Kaden and Jessa. We still do. At first, they gave us time to think, to feel, and to listen before responding. Over the years, they’ve become part of birthdays, graduations, and other meaningful moments. A place to honor one another, reflect on who we’re becoming, and say the things we never want left unsaid.

Sometimes I wonder if, years from now, one of my children will pull one of those journals off a shelf and hear my voice the way I still hear the little girl in mine.

I was passing on a way of listening.

When I open those journals now, I find myself wanting to wrap my arms around that little girl.

She carried so much curiosity. So many questions. And so much hope that someone was listening.

If my writing offers anything, I hope it’s a place where you don’t have to rush your questions.

A place where you can stay with them long enough to hear your own quiet knowing.

Long before I found answers, I found a place where my questions were welcome.

I’ve been returning there ever since.

I’d love to hear from you.

Did you keep a journal growing up? Or was there another place where you learned to hear yourself more clearly?

I’d love to read your story in the comments.

And if you’ve been following along, thank you for being here. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more behind the journey of my debut novel, The Map Maker, a story inspired by many of the same questions about self-trust, curiosity, and the quiet ways we find our way home.

I’m grateful you’re here for the journey.

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Loneliness has a way of convincing us that we’re the only one who has ever felt this way.

Grief tells a similar story. It whispers that life existed before the loss and will begin again once we’ve finally made it through. We imagine healing as a destination somewhere beyond the water, where everything that hurts will finally be behind us.

For a long time, I believed that too.

Years ago, while writing my memoir, an unexpected image kept returning to me. I saw myself floating alone in the middle of the ocean, holding onto a life preserver.

It never made logical sense. I came from a large family. I wasn’t physically alone. Yet the image carried a truth I couldn’t explain.

Only years later could I see that I was giving shape to a part of myself that had been waiting to be recognized.

For me, one of those seasons was chronic pain. It introduced me to another kind of grief. Not the grief of losing someone I loved, but the grief of losing certainty. I mourned the body I once trusted, the future I had imagined, and the version of myself I thought I was supposed to become.

As a teenager, I spent years teaching swimming lessons and working as a lifeguard. At the time, I simply loved the water. It wasn’t until decades later that I recognized the irony.

The girl who imagined herself alone in deep water had spent years helping other people trust it.

One evening in the Mojave Desert, I stood beneath a sky filled with paper lanterns. On one I wrote Ancient Wisdom. On the other, Peaceful Well-Being.

As they drifted upward, I watched until they became indistinguishable from the stars. I remember thinking I was releasing something, though I couldn’t have told you exactly what.

I lingered after everyone else began walking away.

Then a little girl wandered over to me.

She couldn’t have been more than four or five years old. She held up her tiny hand, waiting for me to place mine against it. When I did, she looked into my eyes, smiled, and said,

“Look... we’re family.”

I had never met her before.

I didn’t know where her parents were or why, out of everyone there, she had chosen me.

Only then did I notice she was dressed like a little princess.

A wave of chills moved through my entire body.

I never saw her again.

But I’ve carried those words with me ever since.

Recently, I heard a lyric that reached past my mind and into recognition.

“Because the ones who’ve known the darkness know the value of the light.”

It gave language to something my heart had quietly known for years.

The ocean.

A lifeguard stand.

Lanterns.

“We’re family.”

For years, I believed healing meant reaching the shore.

Now I wonder if healing has less to do with escaping the water than learning how to live within it.

I wasn’t searching for a rescue.

I was learning how to keep my fire burning on the water, so that one day its warmth might help someone else find their way.

Perhaps that is what hope has been all along.

Not reaching the shore.

Not escaping the water.

But discovering that, even here, the fire can still burn.

The water never disappeared.

Neither did the fire.

Maybe they were never meant to.

If you’ve known loneliness, grief, or the quiet work of keeping your own fire alive, I’d love to hear what this essay brought up for you. Your stories often become part of the conversation in ways I never expect, and those conversations are one of my favorite parts of writing.

If you’d like to continue the journey with me, I’d love to have you here. My first novel, The Map Maker, will be arriving soon. If these essays speak to you, I think you’ll feel at home there, too.

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I’ve been wondering if gardeners have seasons too.

We spend so much time watching the plants change that we rarely notice we’re changing alongside them. Every plant asks something different of us. Some need pruning. Some thrive when they’re left completely alone. Others need gentle support until they’re strong enough to stand on their own. Over time, I’ve learned that gardening isn’t about making things grow. It’s about creating the conditions where growth becomes possible.

Motherhood, I’ve realized, has been much the same.

Lately, I’ve found myself wondering if motherhood has seasons too. Not just the obvious ones we celebrate when children are born, start school, graduate, marry, or become parents themselves. I’m talking about the quieter seasons, the ones no one prepares us for because they don’t announce themselves until one day you look around and realize something inside you has changed.

Looking around, I see our children building lives of their own. Graduate school. Marriage. Careers. Friendships. Homes in different parts of the country. The very things we spent years preparing them for. And somewhere in the middle of celebrating all of that, I began noticing that motherhood was asking something different of me, too.

I don’t think I recognized the beginning of that transition at the time. Looking back, I think it started three years ago.

An injury forced me to let go of decorating for Christmas the way I always had. The bins stayed in storage. The house was simpler. I assumed I’d feel disappointed.

Instead, something unexpected happened. Christmas still came. We still gathered. For the first time in years, I wasn’t quietly carrying the weight of making everything feel magical or wondering if anyone noticed how much work happened behind the scenes. The holiday was simpler, and so was I.

At the time, I thought I had simply learned to simplify Christmas.

Now I wonder if something much deeper was happening.

This week, that feeling returned.

Before I understood why, I noticed myself feeling restless. A little spicier than usual. Less willing to quietly go along. More willing to honestly express what I was feeling.

Years ago, I probably would have assumed someone else was the problem. Now curiosity interrupts that instinct. Instead of asking, Who is causing this? I’ve learned to ask, What is this trying to show me?

As I sat with that question, I realized I wasn’t grieving holiday plans. I wasn’t even grieving my children growing up.

I was grieving the quiet loss of an identity I had worn for decades.

Somewhere along the way, I had begun measuring my value by how well I could hold everything together. Planning the holidays. Remembering birthdays. Coordinating schedules. Creating traditions. Making sure our children had opportunities to build relationships with one another.

I quietly became the keeper of our family, and the truth is, I loved it.

Looking around now, I can see the harvest of those years. Our children genuinely love one another. Their relationships belong to them now, not because I arrange them, but because they choose them.

That was always the hope.

Motherhood wasn’t ending. It was simply asking something different of me.

At first, I thought I was grieving the reality that we may never again all be together for every holiday. Then I realized I wasn’t mourning memories I wanted to recreate. I was mourning an idea, the hope that one day our holidays would finally look the way I had imagined.

That realization surprised me.

I wasn’t grieving something I had lost.

I was releasing an expectation I had quietly carried for years.

And that’s when my garden spoke.

Every plant has different needs. Some are like wildflowers, happiest when they’re given space to grow where they land. Others need support for a season, not because they’re weak, but because what they’re are growing becomes heavy. They need someone to gently brace them until they’re strong enough to carry it themselves.

Our children have been no different.

Each one has needed something unique from me. More freedom. More structure. More reassurance. More space.

The goal was never to make them dependent on me.

The goal was always to help them become fully themselves.

I’ve spent years preparing soil, watering, weeding, protecting tender growth from the wind, and sometimes simply waiting. Then one day, almost without noticing, another season arrived.

Not just for the garden.

For the gardener.

There comes a moment when your greatest act of love is no longer doing more.

It’s trusting more.

It’s learning the difference between tending and interfering. Between supporting and holding on. Between love and control.

No one talks about this season of motherhood. There isn’t a ceremony for the day a mother realizes her children no longer need her in the same ways they once did. No one marks the moment she quietly removes the stake.

And yet, perhaps they should.

Because removing the stake isn’t something that happens to the plant. It’s something that happens inside the gardener. It’s an act of trust, a quiet blessing that simply says, I trust what we’ve grown.

For decades, my hands were full. Full of lunches and laundry, Christmas decorations and calendars, carpools and conversations. Full of holding space and making sure everyone had what they needed to bloom.

I thought the sadness came because my hands were becoming empty.

Now I know better.

They’re becoming available.

Available to write.

Available to wander through my garden with no agenda other than noticing what is blooming.

Available to follow curiosity wherever it leads.

Available to discover who I am beyond being needed.

Perhaps this is what every season has been preparing me for.

For years, I believed I was the one tending the garden. I never imagined the garden was quietly tending me, teaching me patience, discernment, and that love doesn’t always look like holding on. Sometimes it looks like stepping back, trusting the roots, trusting the seasons, and trusting what has already taken hold beneath the surface.

Perhaps the greatest lesson the garden has given me isn’t how to help something else bloom.

It’s how to recognize when it’s finally my turn.

Maybe this isn’t the end of motherhood. Maybe it’s simply the beginning of a quieter season, one where I no longer measure love by how many people gather around my table, but by the roots we’ve grown together.

I used to think I was tending the garden.

Now I wonder if the garden has been tending me all along, preparing me for the season when it would finally be my turn to bloom.

We're all tending something, and eventually, every one of us reaches a new season. If this essay resonated with you, I'd love to hear what season you're in. And if someone you love is standing at their own quiet threshold, I hope you'll pass this along.

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To be completely honest, I can’t even remember the last time I ordered a physical copy of a book. I’m usually an audiobook person. I love listening while I’m walking, gardening, or driving.

But for some reason, I ordered The Fire We Never Offered by without giving it much thought.

A few days later, I found myself recovering from a medical procedure, with several quiet days ahead of me.

Instead of reaching for my headphones, I picked up the book and raced through it. Not because I wanted to finish it quickly, but because I couldn’t seem to put it down.

What I didn’t expect was everything that happened around the book.

As I finished each chapter, I found myself writing a reflection and sharing it on . Without even realizing it, I had created my own little book club.

What began as a way to capture what was on my mind during a season of stillness became something much bigger. Conversations unfolded with the author and with readers from around the world. People saw different things in the same chapter. They challenged one another’s perspectives. Sometimes a comment would send me back to reread an entire section through a completely different lens.

It reminded me that we never really read a book alone.

We bring our own lives, our own questions, our own timing to every page. And when we share those perspectives with one another, the book continues long after we’ve closed the cover.

Looking back, I think that's what I'll remember most.

Not simply reading a beautiful book, but discovering the unexpected community that formed around it.

If you’re curious, I’ve linked my chapter-by-chapter reflections below. I originally shared them as Substack Notes while I was reading, capturing my thoughts in real time as the conversations unfolded. As I was gathering them for this essay, I realized I somehow skipped Chapters 1 and 12, but every other chapter is there.

Thank you, , for writing a book that sparked so many thoughtful conversations. And thank you to everyone who joined me along the way. You made this reading experience something I’ll remember long after I turned the final page.

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

People often talk about “finding your voice” as if it’s hiding somewhere, waiting to be discovered.

I don’t think that’s what happened to me.

I don’t think I found my voice. I think I learned to listen.

For years, I thought writing was how I figured out what I thought. Now I think it’s something else entirely. Writing has rarely been about thinking. It’s been about listening long enough for something deeper to become clear.

Curiosity was my first teacher.

Instead of rushing toward answers, I learned to stay with questions. I followed whatever quietly tugged at my attention, whether it was mythology, gardening, relationships, meditation, dreams, or the ordinary moments of everyday life. None of those interests seemed connected at the time.

Looking back, I can see they were all teaching me the same thing.

Pay attention.

Meditation deepened that lesson. People sometimes ask if meditation gave me answers. Not exactly. It helped me notice how much noise I had mistaken for my own voice. The fears. The expectations. The stories about who I thought I should be.

As those voices softened, something else became easier to hear. Not louder, just truer.

The mantras came next.

At first, I repeated them because I hoped they would change me. Over time, I realized they weren’t giving me new beliefs. They were reminding me of truths I already recognized somewhere beneath the surface.

Equanimity.

Freedom Mindset.

Peaceful Well-Being.

Sovereign Discernment.

Each one marked a different season of my life. At first I thought I was choosing the words. Looking back, I think the words were choosing me.

Then life slowed me down in a way I never would have chosen.

An injury took far longer to heal than I ever imagined. The life I loved suddenly became much smaller. I couldn’t explore the world the way I normally would, and I could feel myself becoming emotionally depleted.

Curiosity has always needed somewhere to roam. When my body could no longer wander, my imagination did.

So I wrote.

Not because I was trying to become an author. Because I needed somewhere for my imagination to wander while my body healed.

Around that same season, I completed a nonfiction manuscript called Soft Power. It held many of the same truths I write about today, but when I finished it, I realized it felt too raw to share.

I never felt like I abandoned Soft Power. It simply wasn’t the right form for those truths.

So instead of forcing it into the world before I was ready, I let it become something else.

That something else became The Map Maker.

Soft Power and The Map Maker weren’t different stories. They were the same story told in two different languages.

Looking back, I don’t think I was moving away from the truth. I was moving toward a different language for telling it.

The novel gave those truths another language. Through symbols, imagination, and a character named Solenne, I found myself writing what I couldn’t yet say directly. Not because the truth had changed, but because its language had.

I wasn’t escaping my story.

I was listening to it in a different language.

Only later did I realize I hadn’t written a different story at all. I’d been listening to the same one all along.

Now, when I sit down to write, I rarely know exactly what I want to say. Usually it begins with a curiosity. A sentence. An observation. A question I can’t quite shake.

Then I follow it.

Paragraph by paragraph, something begins to emerge that surprises even me.

People occasionally tell me that I have a gift for putting things into words. I appreciate that. But the experience from the inside feels different. It often feels as though the knowing arrived long before the language did.

The writing isn’t creating the truth.

It’s revealing it.

I’ve begun to wonder if this is true for all of us.

Maybe wisdom doesn’t always arrive as something new. Maybe much of our lives is spent remembering what we already know beneath the noise.

Perhaps finding our voice has never been about speaking louder.

Perhaps it has always been about listening more deeply.

Looking back, I don’t think I’ve spent the last decade becoming a writer. I think I’ve spent the last decade becoming a better listener.

Meditation became listening without words.

Curiosity became listening with my attention.

Writing became listening with language.

Different forms. The same conversation.

Looking back, I don’t think curiosity was ever about collecting answers. It was how I learned to listen.

Every book. Every meditation. Every conversation. Every garden bed. Every essay. Every question I couldn’t let go.

They weren’t leading me somewhere else. They were leading me back to myself.

And perhaps that’s what people mean when they say I’ve found my voice.

Not that I discovered something new.

But that I finally learned to trust what had been quietly speaking within me all along.

If you’ve been following my essays for a while, you’ve probably noticed that curiosity has been the thread connecting them all. It has also been the thread connecting my creative life.

In the coming weeks, I’ll be sharing more about The Map Maker, my debut novel, and the unexpected journey that led me to write it. If these reflections resonate with you, I’d love to have you along as the story continues. There’s so much more I can’t wait to share.

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Every so often, I come across something that meets me exactly where I am.

Sometimes it’s a book. Sometimes it’s a conversation. Sometimes it’s a walk through my garden or a quiet moment that changes the way I see the world.

And sometimes, it’s a song.

I often share the things that capture my curiosity because they’ve usually taught me something about myself. Fire and Tide by AkramUg is one of those discoveries.

I’ve listened to it more than a hundred times over the past few weeks. Not because I can’t get the melody out of my head, but because it has become an anthem for this season of my life. It gave words to experiences I’d been carrying quietly and reminded me that sometimes the things that make us feel most seen arrive in the most unexpected ways.

As I listened, I realized I wasn’t just hearing someone else’s story. I was recognizing pieces of my own.

At its heart, this song is about transformation.

It uses water and fire as symbols of two forces that shape us. Water teaches us to surrender, to adapt, and to keep moving. Fire transforms us. It burns away what no longer belongs so something stronger can emerge.

One lyric stopped me the first time I heard it:

“The woman in the water wasn’t who I was meant to find. She was only who I needed to be brave enough to leave behind.”

For so much of my life, I thought healing meant getting back to who I used to be. Now I see it differently. Every difficult season has changed me, and I no longer want to return to an earlier version of myself. I want to honor the woman those experiences have shaped.

Another line says:

“The ones who’ve known the darkness know the value of the light.”

That feels true to my own life. The hardest seasons I’ve walked through have also made me more compassionate, more curious, and more appreciative of ordinary moments. They taught me to notice beauty that I might have overlooked before. They taught me that our deepest wounds can also become the places from which we offer the most hope to others.

Perhaps the lyric that resonates most is:

“I stopped dimming down my fire just to make them feel their best.”

That doesn’t feel like rebellion to me. It feels like freedom.

There was a time when I looked outside myself for approval, belonging, or reassurance that I was enough. Over the years, I’ve learned to carry my own light. Not because life has become easier, but because I trust myself to find my way, even when the path is uncertain.

I’ve stopped waiting for other people to tell me who I am. I’ve stopped trying to become smaller so others feel more comfortable. Instead, I’m learning to stand fully in my own life with curiosity, compassion, and a quiet confidence that wasn’t there before.

I also love the imagery of the ocean.

The song reminds us that the ocean doesn’t cling to what has crossed its surface. It keeps moving with elemental grace. There is something deeply comforting about that. Life leaves its marks on all of us, but we don’t have to stay anchored to every storm we’ve survived. We can honor what shaped us without allowing it to define where we’re going.

Maybe that’s why this song has become such a companion for me.

It isn’t encouraging me to become someone new.

It’s reminding me that I’ve been shaped by both the tide and the fire.

The tide taught me to soften without losing myself.

The fire taught me to let go of the versions of me that were built from fear instead of truth.

Together, they’ve taught me to carry my own light.

Not because I’ve escaped the storms, but because I’ve discovered that the light was never waiting for me on the other side of them.

It was growing within me the whole time.

Thank you for reading. If these reflections resonate with you, I hope you'll stay awhile. I write about the intersections of story, healing, and the quiet wisdom we gather along the way. In the coming weeks, I'll also be sharing the release of my debut novel, The Map Maker, a story born from many of the same questions explored here. If you'd like to follow the journey, I'd love to have you join me.

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People often say, “It’s just a season.”

I’ve said those words too. For a long time, they brought me comfort. Seasons change. They come and go. They remind us that what feels permanent often isn’t.

But lately, I’ve been sitting with a different question.

What happens when a season begins to feel like a way of life?

Over the past five years, our lives have revolved around surgeries, recoveries, physical therapy, MRIs, specialist appointments, and waiting. Just as one thing begins to heal, something else seems to ask for our attention. Today, Chris came home from an orthopedic appointment with the possibility of another MRI and maybe even another surgery.

I was surprised by how angry I felt. At first, I thought I was angry about the timing, the insurance, the deductible, and the thought of starting over again. But as I sat with it, I realized my anger might be pointing to something deeper.

I think I’m grieving the uncertainty. I’m grieving how much space all of this has taken up in our lives. I’m grieving the realization that I no longer make plans without wondering what our bodies might have in store next.

I don’t know if this is a season anymore. I’m not saying it isn’t. I’m saying I honestly don’t know because I’m still in the middle of it.

Maybe that’s why I’m writing before I’ve found the lesson. I have a feeling I’m not the only person asking this question.

If you’re living with chronic pain, caring for someone whose body keeps asking for more, or carrying something that has lasted far longer than you expected, maybe you’ve wondered this too.

I don’t have an answer. Today, I just have the question. And for today, that feels honest enough.

There are some tables where you spend years trying to become someone people will welcome. You explain yourself more carefully, share only the stories that feel safe, laugh a little louder, help a little more, hoping that eventually something will click and you’ll finally feel like you belong.

For years, I believed that if people truly understood me, they would accept me. Looking back, I wasn’t searching for approval as much as I was searching for evidence that I belonged.

One day, I found myself asking a question I had been carrying for years.

“Do I really have to keep going there anymore?”

I called a friend. As we talked, I noticed something behind her and asked her to turn her phone around.

There, written across the sky, was a single word.

NO.

A complete sentence.

Whether you call it coincidence, a sign, or perfect timing doesn’t really matter. What mattered was what happened inside me. For the first time, I considered that I didn’t have to keep returning to places where I continually felt unseen.

That single word didn’t make the decision for me. It simply gave me permission to trust what I already knew.

From that moment on, something slowly began to change. I stopped trying to earn belonging. I stopped measuring my worth by the warmth or coldness of the room. Most importantly, I stopped asking people with little curiosity about me to become the judges of my value.

Instead, I quietly turned down the volume. Not out of resentment, but out of discernment.

The boundary wasn’t the end of the work. It was the beginning.

For a while, I could still feel the old parts of me wanting to be seen, understood, and accepted. Each time those familiar feelings surfaced, I had a choice. I could tighten, or I could soften.

Over time, I learned that every time I softened instead of tightened, I became a little more free. Not because anyone had changed. Not because the past had been repaired. But because I no longer wanted resentment to occupy space inside me.

Love, I’ve discovered, isn’t the absence of boundaries. Sometimes love is the boundary.

Now, when our paths cross, I don’t carry the friction with me. I don’t need anything from them. I simply meet them with kindness and continue living my life.

The freedom wasn’t that anyone finally accepted me. The freedom was realizing I no longer needed them to.

Belonging had never been theirs to give.

It had always been mine to claim.

That word in the sky disappeared within minutes.

The answer never did.

I’m curious... Have you ever stopped seeking someone’s approval? What helped you realize you already belonged? I’d love to hear your story.

And if these reflections resonate with you, I hope you’ll follow along as I prepare to release The Map Maker. While the novel is fiction, many of its emotional landscapes are rooted in lived experience. This story is one of them.

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Some books arrive at just the right time. Others wait patiently until we’re ready to hear them differently.

Chris and I recently listened to The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho for the second time while driving back and forth from Vancouver Island, BC.

The first time I listened, I admired the story.

The second time, I recognized myself within it.

Some books don’t change.

We do.

As Santiago followed omens and searched for his Personal Legend, I found myself reflecting on my own journey. Not because our stories are the same, but because the questions are.

What if our deepest calling isn’t something we have to invent, but something we slowly remember?

The book speaks of omens. Not as magic, but as attention.

The older I get, the more I wonder if life has always been speaking. Perhaps I just wasn’t listening.

Now I notice a feather resting quietly along the trail, light dancing across the water, fog lifting through ancient evergreens, and a heart shaped stone waiting beneath my feet. None of these moments prove anything. Yet each one invites me to pause, to look a little longer, and to remember that life is far more alive than I once believed.

Maybe the omens were never the point.

Maybe the transformation happens in the one who learns to notice them.

One phrase stopped me in my tracks.

I smiled when I heard it, not because it was a new idea, but because someone else had finally wrapped words around something I had been trying to describe for years.

Some of the deepest conversations of my life have happened without speaking at all. Standing beside Chris beneath towering trees. Watching sunlight shimmer across the water. Working in my garden. Sitting quietly enough that life begins to reveal itself.

Not everything important can be explained.

Some things can only be experienced.

But the moment that stirred me most came near the end.

As Santiago learns to become the wind, he discovers that what he has been searching for is not separate from him. In that moment, I wasn’t simply following his story.

I was recognizing my own.

For years, I have been growing into a belief that the Divine is not somewhere far away, waiting to be found. The same Presence that lives throughout creation also lives within me.

Not separate from me.

Within me.

As we talked about the book afterward, Chris shared something that stayed with me. He wasn’t just thinking about Santiago. He was thinking about Paulo Coelho.

Imagine knowing, from the very first page, that the treasure was buried beneath the sycamore tree where the story began. Imagine patiently crafting an entire journey that reveals what was true from the very beginning.

I smiled when he said it because it felt like another layer of the book’s wisdom. The treasure wasn’t created by the journey. The journey simply revealed what had been there all along.

That realization settled deep within me.

My Personal Legend has never been about becoming someone new. It has always been about remembering who I have always been beneath the fear, the conditioning, and the stories that taught me to forget.

As I sat with all of this, I realized the book had also changed the way I think about alchemy.

I’ve come to believe that alchemy is not the process of becoming someone else. It is the sacred remembering of who we have always been.

The soul has never needed to become anything. It has only needed to remember what it has always been.

What obscures it is the fear, the conditioning, and the stories that taught us to forget. The work of an alchemist is not to create the gold. It is to uncover what has been there all along.

When I closed The Alchemist, I realized it hadn’t given me a new philosophy. It had given me language for the life I was already living.

Perhaps that’s what I’ve been hearing all along.

The language without words.

A Personal Invitation

If this way of seeing the world resonates with you, I hope you’ll stay.

I write about my lived experience, the quiet wisdom of nature, meaningful relationships, curiosity, and the moments that invite us to remember who we are.

I’ll also be sharing the journey toward the release of my debut novel, The Map Maker, a story that grew from many of these same questions.

I’d be honored to have you along for the journey.

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Yesterday, I spent the afternoon taking graduation photos of my daughter Jessa.

As photographers, we’re always chasing the perfect light.

But somewhere between adjusting my camera settings and asking her to turn just a little toward the sun, I realized I wasn’t really photographing a graduate.

I was witnessing time.

There she stood in her cap and gown, smiling in a way that was both familiar and entirely new. I could still see the little girl who once filled journals with crooked hearts and “I love you, Mommy.” The teenager finding her footing. The college student discovering who she was.

And now...

This woman standing before me.

After the photos, we drove to a little secondhand bridal boutique.

Two years ago, while working there, she found the wedding dress she hoped she would one day wear. The women who owned the shop quietly held onto it, believing she’d come back when the time was right.

Yesterday she did.

The moment she slipped it on, her face said everything.

Some dreams don’t fade with time.

Sometimes they simply wait for it.

Watching her see herself in that dress was one of those moments every mother quietly stores away.

The kind you know you’ll revisit for years.

But if I’m honest, that’s not the memory that has stayed with me most.

It happened somewhere on the drive between two small Oregon towns.

Jessa was behind the wheel.

Charley was in the backseat wearing her big sister’s graduation cap. The three of us were singing I’m Yours by Jason Mraz at the top of our lungs. There is a three-minute video of that drive. It has become one of my favorite pieces of the entire day.

When I got home, I asked Jessa if she would be okay with me sharing it here.

She smiled and said,

“Is it actually okay if we keep that special moment between us and not share it to social media?”

My answer was immediate.

Of course.

Because the more I sat with her words, the more I realized she had given me something far more valuable than permission to post. She reminded me that not every beautiful moment is meant to be shared. Some memories become sacred because they belong only to the people who lived them.

So instead, I’ll simply tell you about it.

Maybe you have a memory like that too.

A long drive. A familiar song. A conversation you didn’t realize would stay with you forever.

The kind of moment that felt completely ordinary while it was happening...

Until time revealed that it wasn’t.

When I got home that evening, the house grew quiet.

I sat down to look through the photographs. Somewhere between those images and the memory of that drive, tears began rolling down my face. Not because I was sad. Because my heart had finally caught up with what the day had been asking it to hold.

It wasn’t just graduation. Or a wedding dress. It was the realization that time had quietly done what it always does. It had carried my little girl into womanhood.

Motherhood has surprised me in so many ways.

When my children were young, I thought my role was to teach, protect, and guide them.

Those things mattered. They still do. But somewhere along the way, my role gently changed.

Less directing. More witnessing. Less holding on. More paying attention.

Time never announces itself.

It doesn’t whisper, “You’ll want to remember this someday.” Instead, it slips quietly into ordinary afternoons.

Into long drives between small Oregon towns. Into songs you’ve heard a hundred times before. Into the way one daughter confidently reaches for the steering wheel while another proudly wears her graduation cap.

The milestones are beautiful.

Graduations. Wedding dresses. New beginnings. But I’ve come to believe they aren’t what stay with us the longest.

It’s the drive between destinations. The conversations that wander. The laughter that can’t be recreated. The songs that become part of a family’s history. The ordinary moments we almost overlook because we don’t yet realize they are becoming memories.

Maybe that’s one of the quiet gifts of growing older.

Not that time slows down. But that we become more willing to notice it.

To witness the people we love becoming themselves.

To let our hearts expand instead of trying to hold everything still.

Yesterday, I thought I was taking graduation photos.

Instead...

I spent the day witnessing time.

If stories like this speak to something in your own heart, I hope you’ll continue the journey with me.

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I’m currently preparing to release my first novel, The Map Maker, a story born from many of the same questions that inspire these reflections: How do we notice what truly matters? What shapes a life? And what quiet moments change us forever?

Thank you for being here.

I’m so grateful we get to witness this journey together.

There are moments that don’t begin as writing.

They begin with dirt under my fingernails, gravel beneath my knees, bees moving quietly from flower to flower, and thoughts arriving before I have time to polish them.

This morning, while working in my rock garden, I pressed record.

About halfway through, motherhood called me away.

A little while later, I returned to the garden.

Peace isn’t the absence of interruption.

Sometimes it’s simply returning to where you left off.

Rather than edit the interruption out, I’ve left both recordings together because that’s exactly how the morning unfolded.

If you’d like, press play and follow along below.

🎧 Part One: In the Rock Garden

Follow Along

Okay, I am out in my rock garden, moving rocks around and pulling weeds.

It’s one of my higher-maintenance areas, but I really enjoy spending time here because the work isn’t difficult. It’s simply slow. Cleaning away debris. Pulling weeds. Caring for what already exists.

This wasn’t a garden I designed. It came with the previous owners, and over time I’ve simply become its caretaker.

One thing that does drive me a little crazy is how light the gravel is. It blows into other parts of the garden, sticks to people’s shoes, and suddenly I have little white rocks showing up where they don’t belong. Someday I’d love to replace it with something heavier.

As I was working today, I found myself thinking about how important it is to notice where your mind goes while you’re gardening.

Gardening offers such a beautiful opportunity to let go and allow the rhythm of nature to guide your thoughts.

You can garden thinking,

“I have to get this done.”

Or,

“My back hurts.”

Or,

“This isn’t very much fun.”

That becomes one kind of experience.

But today I noticed something different.

Yes, I’m squatting.

No, I’m not exactly comfortable.

But I found myself thinking,

“This is probably good for my body.”

I’m stretching.

I’m bracing myself.

I’m reaching.

Mostly...

I’m simply loving on my garden.

What’s even more wonderful is that there are bees right beside me, doing their own work.

I chose an overcast morning because there are usually fewer bees, but there are still twenty or thirty of them nearby.

We’re simply sharing the same space.

They’re gardening.

I’m gardening.

We’re just cohabitating.

And I don’t feel afraid of them.

A little while later...

Motherhood called me away.

The weeds waited.

The bees kept working.

When I came back, I simply pressed record again.

🎧 Part Two: Returning to the Garden

Follow Along

Okay, I’m back.

I was interrupted by motherhood.

My other full-time job.

I was also thinking today about how I’ve started referring to myself as a gardener.

That’s never really been a label I imagined for myself.

I guess I always thought gardeners were people who knew a lot about gardening.

As it turns out, I think I’ve learned more instinctively than I ever expected.

By watching.

Watching how plants want to grow.

Learning when to leave them alone.

Learning when they need support.

Being respectful.

Not simply taking from nature, but giving something back.

When I prune or deadhead, it almost feels like I’m telling the garden,

“I care.”

There’s one invasive weed that insists on growing in the middle of one of my hedges.

Its stem is soft, making it difficult to pull from the root.

Every time I reach in, I come away with scratched arms.

I’ve even considered removing the entire shrub just to solve the problem.

But the hedge is an important part of the garden’s design.

So instead...

I tolerate the weed.

It annoys me.

But I care more about preserving what belongs than eliminating every inconvenience.

Isn’t life a little like that?

Sometimes our minds become preoccupied with what something costs us.

“I have this big garden... and now I have to do all this work.”

But what if we looked at it differently?

“I have this beautiful garden... and I have the time to care for it.”

I like where that way of thinking takes my mind.

I haven’t always thought this way.

I’m naturally a deep thinker.

I’ve always been curious.

I’ve always enjoyed looking at life from different perspectives.

But I noticed something today.

My curiosity has changed.

I used to garden while wondering how I could make my life more peaceful.

Back then, I spent a lot of time learning about equanimity.

Learning how to stay grounded in the middle of chaos.

With five children, chaos wasn’t something I could eliminate.

I wasn’t trying to create a chaos-free life.

I was trying to create a peaceful center within it.

Meditation became part of that journey.

Back then, I gardened while searching for peace.

Now...

I simply see peace everywhere.

I see it in the way plants grow.

In the way flowers bloom.

In leaves that fall.

In trees that scar, weather storms, and continue standing.

These days, when I’m in my garden, I’m not really thinking about how to create a more peaceful life.

I’m simply noticing how peaceful life already is.

Which brings me back to where I started.

I think it matters where our thoughts go while we’re gardening.

The frame of mind we bring shapes the experience we have.

If I show up with frustration, that’s often what I’ll notice.

If I show up with curiosity...

the garden has something to teach me.

People are much the same.

They often mirror back what we need to see.

Instead of becoming offended, maybe the better response is simply to become curious.

To ask questions.

To notice.

Not to assign fault or blame.

Just to move one step closer to peaceful well-being.

Because that’s what continues to guide me.

This growing sense that life doesn’t actually have to be hard.

What if...

it were easy?

Thank you for spending a little time with me in the garden today.

These recordings weren’t planned.

They weren’t written.

They were simply spoken while my hands were busy and my mind was free to wander.

Listening back, I realized I could hear something different in my own voice.

Less polished. More present. More... me.

I have a feeling this won’t be the last voice journal.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you for walking beside me.

Until next time,

🌿 Shelby

For the past few days, I’ve been trying to put language to something I suspect many women feel but struggle to name.

Not because it’s hidden, but because it’s nuanced.

When conversations about fathers arise, they often fall into extremes. The father who was wonderful. The father who was absent. The father who was abusive. The father who caused obvious harm.

But what about the fathers who loved their daughters, yet somehow left them feeling unseen?

The fathers who provided but rarely pursued connection. The fathers who cared, but not in ways that made their daughters feel chosen. The fathers whose limitations were subtle enough that their daughters spent years explaining them rather than grieving them.

I think many women carry that experience quietly.

Recently, I found myself feeling disappointed by my father. Not devastated. Not surprised. Just disappointed.

The details themselves were ordinary enough. A missed family event. A decision to spend time elsewhere. Nothing dramatic. Nothing that would make headlines in a family history. Yet I felt the familiar ache. Not because I expected something different, but because I didn’t.

That realization stopped me in my tracks.

For much of my life, I have worked hard to understand my father. I know his strengths. I know his limitations. I know the ways he expresses love and the ways he doesn’t. Over time, I adjusted my expectations accordingly.

What I didn’t realize was how much emotional energy had gone into understanding him.

If he showed up differently for someone else, there was a reason. If he missed something important to me, there was an explanation. If I felt hurt, I reminded myself of all the things he had done right.

And to be clear, many things were right.

My father is not a villain in this story. In fact, I think that’s what makes this conversation so difficult.

Many daughters carry grief that doesn’t fit neatly into the categories we usually talk about. Their fathers weren’t absent. They weren’t abusive. They weren’t cruel. They loved their daughters.

Just not always in the ways those daughters needed.

A father can love his daughter, and a daughter can still feel unseen.

The father who provided but rarely asked questions. The father who cared but didn’t know how to connect emotionally. The father who would help if called but rarely thought to call first. The father who loved his daughter but somehow never made her feel deeply seen.

These experiences can be difficult to name because there is no obvious wound. No dramatic story. No clear injury. Only a lifetime of small moments that quietly teach a daughter what not to expect.

So she adapts.

She becomes independent, self-sufficient, understanding, and reasonable. She learns to expect less. Not because she lacks worth, but because she has learned where disappointment lives.

I have spent much of my adult life focused on growth. I am someone who is pulled by vision far more than I am pushed by pain. For years, I resisted any narrative that suggested my life could be explained by “daddy issues.” That label never felt true. It reduced something complex into something simplistic.

What I am beginning to understand is that acknowledging an experience is not the same as being defined by it.

Every father leaves an imprint. The question is not whether we were affected. The question is what we do with that impact.

For me, understanding my father has brought peace. But understanding does not erase sadness.

Sometimes there is still a part of me that wonders what it would have felt like to be pursued instead of accommodating. Celebrated instead of understood. Chosen instead of simply loved.

Perhaps that is the conversation more women need permission to have.

Not a conversation about blame. Not a conversation about diagnosis. A conversation about longing.

About the fathers who loved us imperfectly.

About the daughters who adapted beautifully.

About the grief that can coexist with gratitude.

Because two things can be true at the same time.

A father can love his daughter.

And a daughter can still feel unseen.

Naming that truth does not diminish the love. It simply honors the experience.

And I suspect many daughters have been carrying that truth quietly for a very long time.

As I prepare to introduce The Map Maker to the world, I find myself increasingly interested in the stories we carry without language. The experiences that shape us. The assumptions we adapt to. The truths we quietly hold until one day we finally have words for them.

If this reflection resonated with you, I hope you’ll follow along.

There is more to explore.

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Recently, I came across a photograph from a chapter of my life that feels both familiar and far away. In it, I’m standing in front of a backdrop holding an industry award while a photographer takes my picture. Looking at it now, I find myself less interested in the award and more interested in the woman holding it.

She was capable, ambitious, enthusiastic, and still learning to trust herself. She was building a career, raising a family, and trying to figure out who she was in a world full of expectations.

Back then, I measured success much the way many professionals do: through goals, performance, growth, and achievement. What I didn’t know then was that some of the most valuable lessons I would carry forward had very little to do with sales and everything to do with leadership, identity, and self-worth.

During that season of my life, I worked for someone who was technically my boss, but over time became much more than that. Years later, when I think about the people who have influenced me most, his name is one of the first that comes to mind.

Tho I certainly didn't see him that way then.

He was an authority figure. He evaluated my performance. He challenged my thinking. He asked questions I didn’t always want to answer. And if I’m honest, I was still coming into myself. Like many young professionals, I was learning how to trust my own voice while also trying to meet the expectations of the people around me.

Looking back, I can see that what made him such an effective leader wasn’t that he had all the answers. It was that he wasn’t afraid to ask the hard questions. He challenged assumptions. He pointed out blind spots. He pushed me to think beyond what was comfortable. At times, that felt frustrating. Today, I see it differently. Encouragement without accountability feels good, but it rarely changes us. The leaders who leave a lasting impact are the ones willing to do both.

Years later, during a difficult professional chapter, he sent me a message that I still have saved.

The company was changing. My future felt uncertain. I was questioning where I fit and what might come next. His message included kind words about my accomplishments and contributions, but those aren’t the parts I remember most. What stayed with me was his reminder not to lose myself in the process.

He told me to stay positive. To stay solution-oriented. To keep building relationships. Then he wrote something that has stayed with me ever since:

“If you need to change your chapter, do it. But don’t let them change you.”

I was focused on what might happen to my career. Looking back, I realize he was focused on something entirely different. He wasn’t concerned about my title. He was concerned about my spirit. He was reminding me that circumstances change, companies change, and chapters end, but character is something worth protecting.

What I find especially interesting is that I saved that message.

I don’t have copies of my sales reports. I couldn’t tell you what my quota was that year. Most of the deals and metrics that once felt important have long since faded from memory. Yet somehow those words survived.

I think that’s because beneath all the professional encouragement was a much deeper message:

I see you.

Not just what you do.

Not just what you’ve accomplished.

You.

That may be one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person.

This same mentor often referred to me as a thought leader. He once told me that I was pulled by vision, not pushed by pain. He also joked that one of his biggest challenges with me was being mindful of my enthusiasm.

At the time, I took those comments as observations. Today, I recognize them as reflections. He was helping me understand qualities that I hadn’t fully recognized in myself.

After sharing this essay with him, he responded with a line that made me smile:

“It wasn’t about authority or metrics. It was about passion.”

Reading those words, I realized we had both been learning from each other all along.

When I look across my life now, I can see the truth in what he saw. Whether in business, parenting, writing, healing, or gardening, I’ve always been drawn toward possibility. I rarely move because something is broken. More often, I move because something feels alive. Something captures my curiosity. Something calls me forward.

And yes, enthusiasm has followed me everywhere.

It has opened doors, sparked conversations, created opportunities, and occasionally outrun patience and timing. But it is also part of who I am. The lesson was never to become someone different. The lesson was to learn how to steward those qualities with wisdom.

Perhaps that is what the best mentors do.

They don’t tell us who to become. They help us recognize who we already are.

They see strengths we overlook, challenge us when we’re playing small, and remind us of our worth when circumstances make us question it.

Back then, he felt like a boss.

Today, I see him as a leader.

The titles have faded. The projects have ended. The chapter itself is long over. Yet the impact remains.

Perhaps we all need people who help us trust the compass we already carry.

If these kinds of reflections speak to you, I hope you’ll subscribe and follow along. As I prepare to introduce my book, The Map Maker to the world, I’ll be sharing stories, insights, and pieces of the path that led me here..

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Someone asked a question today that got me thinking:

What is the best thing you’ve ever found?

The question reminded me of a photograph I took recently.

At first glance, it looks like a fern.

But if you pause and look a little closer, you’ll notice a tiny mouse tucked among the leaves, peering back through the greenery.

I almost missed it.

And perhaps that’s why the image stayed with me.

Because looking back over my life, the best thing I’ve ever found wasn’t an object, a place, or even a person.

It was curiosity.

Curiosity taught me to look a little closer.

Looking back, curiosity has quietly shaped almost every meaningful chapter of my life.

It has led me down trails I never intended to follow. It has introduced me to ideas I once dismissed, people I might have overlooked, and perspectives I never would have considered if I had been too certain of my own.

Curiosity taught me that there is almost always more to the story.

When something difficult happened, it encouraged me to ask, “What can I learn from this?” instead of “Why is this happening to me?”

When I encountered someone who saw the world differently than I did, it invited me to listen rather than defend.

When life didn’t go according to plan, it helped me view the detour as an education rather than a failure.

Over the years, curiosity has led me into books, conversations, gardens, dreams, myths, healing practices, relationships, and questions that continue to unfold long after I thought I had found an answer.

In many ways, it has become less about finding answers and more about remaining open.

I’ve noticed that certainty can be comforting, but curiosity is what keeps us growing.

It reminds us that people are more complex than our assumptions. That challenges often carry unexpected gifts. That there are entire worlds hiding just beyond what we currently understand.

The most interesting things in life are often hiding in plain sight.

Not because they’re trying to hide.

But because they reveal themselves only to those willing to pause, pay attention, and look a little closer.

And perhaps that’s the greatest gift curiosity has given me.

It has taught me that we are never truly finished becoming.

There is always another layer to uncover, another perspective to consider, another room within ourselves waiting to be explored.

So if someone asked me today what the best thing I’ve ever found is, my answer would be simple:

Curiosity.

Because through curiosity, I’ve found a thousand other things I never knew I was looking for.

If there’s one thing curiosity has taught me, it’s that the most meaningful discoveries often begin with a single question.

As I prepare to introduce The Map Maker to the world, I’ll be sharing excerpts, reflections, and pieces of the path that led me there.

If these ideas speak to you, I hope you’ll follow along.

There are still many more rooms to explore.

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Same siblings.

Different people.

Entire chapters unfolded between these two photographs.

The other day, I found myself standing in my daughter’s room talking about the next time all the siblings would be together.

Almost absentmindedly, I said, “Maybe everyone should introduce themselves as who they are today.”

We laughed at the absurdity of it.

After all, they’ve known each other their entire lives.

But the comment stayed with me long after the conversation ended.

Because the more I thought about it, the more I realized how often we assume we know the people we love.

Not because we aren’t paying attention.

But because history has a way of becoming a shortcut.

We remember who someone was ten years ago and forget to ask who they are today.

We remember the difficult season.

The heartbreak.

The struggle.

The role they played in the family.

And without realizing it, we begin relating to the memory instead of the person.

Lately, I’ve been noticing this in my own family.

As my children have grown into adults, there are moments when I catch glimpses of people I have never met before.

Not strangers.

Something more fascinating than that.

People I thought I knew completely revealing new parts of themselves.

A new confidence.

A different perspective.

A wisdom that could only come from living their own life rather than the one I imagined for them.

The truth is, growth rarely announces itself.

It happens quietly.

Between holidays.

Between phone calls.

Between the stories we share and the ones we don’t.

Entire chapters unfold while we’re busy remembering the last one.

I think this is especially true in families.

The longer we have known one another, the easier it becomes to see each other through old lenses.

The responsible one.

The sensitive one.

The independent one.

The one who always needs help.

These stories often begin as observations, but over time they harden into identities.

And once they do, they can prevent us from seeing what is right in front of us.

I’ve been wondering lately how much of love is not about knowing someone.

What if love is staying curious about someone?

What if the deepest relationships are not built on certainty, but on a willingness to keep discovering?

To ask new questions.

To listen for new answers.

To allow the people we love the freedom to surprise us.

Including ourselves.

Because perhaps one of the greatest gifts we can offer another person is to stop insisting they be who they were.

To release them from old stories.

To let them become.

And then to meet them there.

Again and again throughout a lifetime.

Maybe that’s what I was really suggesting in my daughter’s room that day.

Not that siblings introduce themselves.

But that they meet one another as if they were being introduced for the first time.

Not through memory.

Not through assumption.

But through curiosity.

Entire chapters unfold while we’re busy remembering the last one.

Maybe that’s why curiosity matters so much.

Not because the people we love have changed.

But because they never stopped.

And perhaps the next meaningful conversation begins with a simple question:

Tell me who you are now.

What began as a simple observation about my children has opened the door to a much larger exploration of relationships, identity, and what it means to truly see one another.

As I prepare to introduce The Map Maker to the world, I’ll be sharing excerpts, insights, and pieces of the journey that led me there.

If this conversation speaks to you, I hope you’ll join me as I continue sharing pieces of that journey.

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Yesterday my mother told me a story I had never heard before.

We were talking about journals.

I’ve always been a journal keeper. For as long as I can remember, I’ve written things down. Questions. Observations. Heartbreaks. Dreams. Confusion. Insights. The quiet truths I wasn’t yet ready to say out loud.

Somewhere in the conversation, my mother shared that when she was a teenager, her mother made her burn her journal.

As my mother spoke, I felt a wave of sadness wash over me.

Not for the journal.

For the girl holding it.

I found myself imagining a teenage Patricia watching pages disappear into smoke. Pages that likely held fears, hopes, longings, questions, and feelings she hadn’t known what else to do with.

And I wondered what lesson a young girl might carry away from a moment like that.

Not, Be careful what you write.

Something deeper.

Perhaps: Some truths are not safe to tell.

As I sat with the story, another realization surfaced. My grandmother had my mother burn her journal. Decades later, I found myself publishing words from my own.

The contrast stopped me in my tracks. And yet, alongside the sadness, I found myself feeling grateful. Not grateful that it happened. But grateful that my mother told me the story at all. Grateful that after all these years she was willing to share something so personal.

Over the last several years, we have had countless conversations about healing, self-love, family, and what it means to be human. We do not always see things the same way, but one of the gifts my mother has given me is her willingness to grow alongside me.

The fact that she shared this story feels meaningful in its own right.

It reminds me that some of the most meaningful shifts in our lives happen quietly, in ordinary conversations we almost didn't have… Sometimes it arrives through a simple conversation between a mother and daughter.

The older I get, the less interested I am in assigning blame and the more interested I am in understanding how things travel through generations.

Because as soon as I heard the story, another thought appeared.

I wonder what happened to my grandmother.

I don’t know.

I never will.

But I know enough about families to suspect that moments like these rarely begin with the person carrying them out.

Most of us inherit ways of being long before we realize we have them.

Some families inherit silence. Some inherit stoicism. Some inherit the belief that emotions should be hidden. Some inherit the belief that difficult truths are dangerous. And often these lessons are passed down by people who love us deeply.

That is the part that feels important to me.

Love and wounding are not always opposites. Sometimes they arrive together.

A mother can love her daughter with her whole heart and still pass along a fear she never chose for herself.

A grandmother can believe she is protecting her child while unknowingly teaching her to hide parts of herself.

The longer I live, the more compassion I have for the impossible task of being human.

We are all carrying things we did not create. We are all handing things forward, whether we realize it or not.

Yet something survived.

The desire to understand ourselves.

The need to make meaning of our inner world.

The longing to put feelings into words.

My grandmother had my mother burn her journal. But the impulse to write lived on.

Perhaps that impulse lived in my mother. Perhaps it lived in my grandmother. Perhaps it lives in all of us.

What was lost were the pages. What endured was the human desire to understand ourselves and be known.

There is an irony I cannot quite shake.

Today, many people burn written words as a ritual of release.

My mother’s journal went up in smoke too. But her story was not being released. It was being silenced. And yet somehow, decades later, it found its way back into the light.

What was once considered too private, too inappropriate, or too dangerous to write down eventually found its way onto paper again.

And this time, instead of disappearing into smoke, it was shared.

Not perfectly. Not all at once. But enough.

Enough to begin a different conversation. Enough to soften a little shame. Enough to help another person feel less alone.

Today, instead of losing a story, my mother and I sat together and talked about it.

That realization feels important.

Perhaps that, too, is part of the inheritance. Not only the wounds we carry. But the healing.

As I think about the generations that came before me and the ones that will follow, I cannot help but notice the ways the story continues to evolve.

My daughter recently earned a degree in American Sign Language Studies. My son earned a degree in psychology. They are the first two college graduates in our family lineage.

One chose to study communication.

The other chose to study understanding.

When I step back and look at the larger picture, I find myself wondering if the longing that lived in those journal pages never disappeared at all. Perhaps it simply kept searching for new ways to be expressed.

Before publishing this essay, I shared it with my mother.

Her response was simple:

“I love that you wrote about this.”

Then she gently corrected a few details I had remembered incorrectly.

I smiled at the irony.

The story that once ended with a journal being burned had become a conversation about how best to tell it.

And somehow, that feels like healing.

If you enjoy reflections on connection, intuition, and the wisdom hidden in ordinary moments, you may also enjoy following along as I prepare to release my upcoming novel, The Map Maker.

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Most of what I share here is nonfiction.

Reflections from my life.
Lessons gathered along the way.
Moments of curiosity, wonder, and discovery that have shaped who I am becoming.

Yet over the past year, another story has been quietly unfolding.

What began as a creative experiment during a season of healing eventually became a novel.

As many of you know, I am preparing to release The Map Maker. A story that has challenged me, surprised me, stretched me, and, in many ways, helped shape me as much as I have shaped it.

One year ago, if someone had told me I would be preparing to release a fictional novel, I likely would have laughed. In fact, when the idea was first suggested to me, I remember insisting that I wasn’t a fiction writer.

And yet, here we are.

Today, I wanted to offer something a little different.

Rather than writing about an experience from my own life, I wanted to share a glimpse into the fictional world of Solenne, the main character of The Map Maker.

While Solenne’s story is her own, many of the themes she explores will likely feel familiar to readers who have journeyed with me here for a while: healing, intuition, synchronicity, curiosity, and the mysterious ways life sometimes redirects us when we least expect it.

What follows is a short passage from Solenne’s world.

I hope you enjoy meeting her as much as I have enjoyed getting to know her.

The Feather

The feather appeared three days after the fall.

Solenne almost didn’t see it.

The morning air carried the damp scent of cedar and earth as she maneuvered awkwardly down the garden path, her injured ankle protesting every movement. The healer had assured her she would recover.

In time.

She was beginning to dislike those words.

In time.

Time suddenly felt abundant and scarce all at once.

The days stretched before her in ways they never had before. Long walks had become short ones. Simple tasks required planning. The familiar rhythm of her life had been interrupted, and beneath her patience lived a restlessness she could not seem to quiet.

She stopped near a planter overflowing with herbs and noticed a small feather resting against the soil.

Brown.

Ordinary.

Easy to overlook.

Yet something about it caught her attention.

She bent carefully, picked it up, and turned it over in her hand.

A feather.

Nothing more.

Still, she carried it inside and tucked it into the planter beside her kitchen window.

Weeks later, another appeared.

Then another.

One along a forest path.

One beneath a cedar tree.

One caught in the lavender growing near the garden gate.

Without ever making a conscious decision, Solenne began collecting them.

She placed them among her plants.

On windowsills.

Beside books she loved.

Small reminders of something she could not quite name.

She never spoke about it.

How could she explain a relationship she didn’t yet understand?

She only knew that whenever she found a feather, something softened inside her.

As though some forgotten part of herself had just whispered her name.

As the weeks passed, her world continued to shrink outwardly and expand inwardly.

Unable to travel as she once had, she spent her days surrounded by journals.

Stories she had written years before.

Questions she had never fully answered.

Dreams she had carefully tucked away for another season.

Sometimes she wondered if she was losing time.

Other days she wondered if she was finally finding it.

One morning, while turning a feather between her fingers, a thought arrived unannounced.

If you cannot travel outward for a while, perhaps it is time to discover the landscape within.

The words settled into her body with a quiet certainty.

Not as an answer. More as an invitation.

She looked around the room.

At the feathers. At the journals. At the unfinished pages waiting beside her.

And for the first time, she wondered if none of it was accidental.

Not the pause.

Not the stillness.

Not even the fall.

Perhaps life had not interrupted her journey.

Perhaps it had redirected it.

Years later, Solenne would struggle to explain exactly when everything changed.

There was no grand awakening.

No dramatic revelation.

Only a thousand small moments of noticing.

A feather.

A question.

A page.

A whisper of curiosity followed long enough to become a path.

And somewhere along the way, without realizing it, she became a map maker.

Not of roads or destinations.

But of the hidden landscapes that exist within us all.

If you enjoy reflections on connection, intuition, and the wisdom hidden in ordinary moments, you may also enjoy following along as I prepare to release my upcoming novel, The Map Maker.

Through the story of Solenne, I explore healing, curiosity, synchronicity, and the unexpected ways life calls us inward when the path ahead is no longer clear.

Sometimes the map appears all at once.

And sometimes it begins with something as simple as a feather.

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People sometimes ask how The Map Maker came to be.

The truth is, I never intended to write a novel.

In fact, if you had asked me a few years ago whether I would someday publish a work of fiction, I would have laughed. Not because I didn’t enjoy reading or appreciate stories. I simply didn’t think of myself as that kind of writer.

The story actually began with a broken ankle.

Unable to move much and suddenly gifted with more time than I knew what to do with, I found myself sitting down with years of journals. Not with a plan. Not with a publishing goal. Simply out of curiosity.

I began gathering stories, reflections, and experiences from my life and weaving them together into a nonfiction manuscript.

I did it for fun.

There was no strategy behind it. No grand vision. Just curiosity.

When I finished, I shared it with my husband.

After reading it, he said something I never expected:

“You should write a novel.”

I laughed.

“I’m not even a writer.”

Then I doubled down.

“And I’m definitely not that creative.”

Looking back, that may be one of the funniest conversations we’ve ever had.

Not because I was joking.

Because I truly believed it.

At the time, I thought writers were other people. Novelists were other people. Creative people were other people.

I had spent a lifetime filling journals, but somehow that didn’t count.

I had spent a lifetime paying attention to the inner world, but somehow that wasn’t creativity.

I had spent a lifetime finding meaning in ordinary moments, but somehow that wasn’t storytelling.

So I said yes.

Not because I believed I could write a novel.

Because I was curious what might happen if I tried.

That curiosity became a scene.

Then a character.

Then another chapter.

Eventually, it became a manuscript.

As the story began to take shape, something unexpected happened.

The story wasn’t the only thing evolving.

I was too.

When I first began writing The Map Maker, I approached it almost like an experiment. I wasn’t trying to become a novelist. I wasn’t trying to launch a writing career. I was simply following my curiosity.

But as the story unfolded, I found myself returning to the manuscript again and again.

Sometimes I would sit with a printed copy for weeks before picking it back up. Not because I was stuck. Not because I was avoiding it.

Because I wasn’t feeling called to it.

Then one day I would return and instantly know what needed to change.

A scene would deepen.

A conversation would shift.

A chapter would suddenly reveal what it had been trying to say all along.

The edits didn’t come from forcing.

They came from connection.

What I eventually realized was that I wasn’t waiting for inspiration.

I was allowing myself to catch up to the story.

As I grew, the manuscript grew.

As I became more embodied in my own life, I could see the story more clearly.

I wasn’t just learning how to write a novel. I was developing the skills, tools, confidence, and perspective necessary to bring this particular story into the world.

Looking back, it feels as though The Map Maker arrived exactly when it was meant to.

Not because the manuscript wasn’t ready before.

Because I wasn’t.

The story was teaching me how to become the person capable of carrying it. And perhaps that is what moves me most as I sit with the final edits today.

I thought I was writing a book.

What I was actually doing was becoming the person who could share it. The deeper work wasn’t writing the novel. The deeper work was learning to trust myself.

Learning to receive feedback without losing the essence. Learning to develop my voice publicly. Learning to talk about my work without apologizing for it. Learning how to be seen.

And perhaps most surprisingly, learning to stop saying:

“I’m not even a writer.”

Because the evidence was there all along.

The journals.

The nonfiction manuscript.

The stories.

The metaphors.

The curiosity.

The imagination.

The attention.

The only thing missing was my willingness to claim it.

When I look back now, I don’t think my husband was telling me to become a novelist.

I think he saw something in me that I couldn’t yet see in myself.

And maybe that’s why this journey feels so meaningful.

It’s not really a story about a book. It’s a story about identity. About the distance between:

“I’m not even a writer.”

and

“My novel is about to be published.”

That’s a remarkable distance to travel in a year. Not because I became someone new. Because I finally caught up to someone who had been there all along.

The older I get, the less I believe creativity is about inventing something out of nothing.

I think creativity is often about paying attention. Following a thread before you know where it leads. Trusting curiosity before certainty arrives. Allowing something to emerge before you fully understand it.

That has certainly been true of The Map Maker.

It began with a broken ankle.

A stack of journals.

A husband who saw something I couldn’t yet see in myself.

And a simple willingness to follow what felt interesting.

The irony is that I started this journey convinced I was not a novelist.

Now, as I prepare to release The Map Maker into the world, I realize the novel was never trying to convince me that I could write fiction.

It was teaching me something much deeper.

That sometimes we notice something before we understand it.

And if we’re willing to stay curious long enough, understanding eventually catches up.

The Map Maker came to be the same way most meaningful things in my life have come to be.

Not through certainty.

Through curiosity.

If you enjoy reflections on connection, intuition, and the wisdom hidden in ordinary moments, you may also enjoy following along as I prepare to release my upcoming novel, The Map Maker.

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I’ve spent much of my life believing that if someone was disappointed in me, I needed to examine myself.

And sometimes that was wise.

Sometimes another person’s reaction illuminated a blind spot I couldn’t see on my own.

But sometimes their disappointment was simply evidence that I had chosen differently than they would have chosen.

Learning the difference may be one of the most important skills I’ve ever developed.

For years, I treated other people’s reactions as information that required action. If someone questioned my decision, I reconsidered it. If someone disagreed, I looked harder. If someone seemed uncomfortable, I wondered what needed to change.

There is value in that kind of reflection. It keeps us humble. It keeps us curious. It reminds us that we do not see ourselves perfectly.

But there is a point where reflection quietly becomes self-abandonment.

A point where every outside voice carries more authority than our own experience.

A point where we become so committed to understanding everyone else that we lose contact with ourselves.

Sovereign discernment emerged for me when I began noticing that not every disagreement was a sign that I had gone astray.

Not every criticism was a correction.

Not every uncomfortable conversation meant I needed to change course.

Sometimes it simply meant that another person saw the world differently than I did.

That realization changed something.

Because I stopped asking, “Who is right?”

And started asking, “What belongs to me?”

Other people’s perspectives still matter to me. Their experiences matter. Their insights matter. I want to remain teachable. I want to stay open to being wrong.

But I’ve come to understand that openness and agreement are not the same thing.

I can genuinely consider another person’s perspective without adopting it.

I can listen carefully without surrendering my authority.

I can understand why someone feels disappointed without making their disappointment my responsibility.

Perhaps that is what discernment really is.

Not deciding whose truth wins.

But learning to recognize where another person’s experience ends and your own begins.

There have been moments in my life when someone else’s certainty felt more compelling than my own knowing. Moments when I assumed that if another person felt strongly enough, they must be seeing something I wasn’t.

Sometimes they were.

And sometimes they weren’t.

The wisdom was never in blindly trusting myself or blindly trusting others.

The wisdom was in staying connected to myself while listening.

In allowing feedback to inform me without defining me.

In remaining open without becoming untethered.

These days, I think less about being right and more about being honest.

Honest about what feels true.

Honest about what doesn’t.

Honest enough to change when new understanding emerges.

And honest enough to stay the course when it doesn’t.

Perhaps maturity is not certainty.

Perhaps it is developing a relationship with yourself strong enough that you can hear many voices without losing your own.

Strong enough to remain open without becoming porous.

Strong enough to trust that other people are allowed their truth.

And you are allowed yours.

If you’ve found yourself navigating the space between honoring your own truth and remaining open to the perspectives of others, you’re not alone.

These are the kinds of questions I’ve been exploring through my writing, my own journey of becoming, and the stories I tell.

If you enjoy reflections on connection, intuition, and the wisdom hidden in ordinary moments, you may also enjoy following along as I prepare to release my upcoming novel, The Map Maker.

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I’ve been thinking lately about the relationships we carry.

Not the relationships that flow easily, but the ones that require tending. The ones where we make the call, send the text, extend the invitation, remember the birthday, smooth over the misunderstanding, and keep the connection alive.

Often we do it without resentment. Sometimes we even do it with love.

Until one day we realize we’ve been carrying more than we knew.

For a long time, I thought acceptance and hope were opposites. I thought that once I truly accepted reality, hope would disappear.

But lately I’ve begun to wonder if the opposite is true.

Perhaps the cost of hope is that acceptance can coexist with longing.

We can see someone clearly and still wish things were different. We can stop expecting change and still feel disappointment. We can accept reality and still leave the door cracked open to possibility.

And maybe that’s what makes hope so expensive.

Not because it blinds us to reality.

But because it asks us to remain vulnerable to it.

Hope is often what keeps us carrying a relationship long after reciprocity has faded. Not because we’re weak. Not because we’re blind. Because we care. Because we love. Because we keep believing there is still something worth tending.

I was reminded of this recently when my father called and asked if I could drive him to and from a chemotherapy appointment.

At first, I hesitated. Then I decided I wanted to help. That’s who I am. I love taking care of people.

While we were talking, I invited him to a celebration that mattered deeply to me. Both of my older children had just graduated from college. He told me he was feeling pretty good and would try to make it.

And for a moment, I felt it.

Hope. Not a big dramatic hope, just a quiet whisper:

Maybe this time.

When the day came, he didn’t show. No call. No card. No acknowledgment afterward.

I wasn’t surprised.

But the disappointment felt heavier than usual. Not because I expected him to be someone he isn’t, but because I had once again opened the door to hope.

As Friday approached, I realized I no longer wanted to keep participating in a pattern where I was always the one showing up. For the first time, I found myself saying no.

And that surprised me.

Not because I didn’t care.

Because I did.

The hardest part wasn’t saying no. The hardest part was that I wanted to say yes.

Helping people is one of the ways I express love, which is why this experience left me feeling something I didn’t expect.

Not resentment.

Grief.

Grief that generosity sometimes needs protection. Grief that love isn’t always received with the same care in which it was offered. Grief that I can’t always give freely without eventually feeling unseen.

The more I sat with it, the more I realized this wasn’t only about my father.

I suspect many of us carry relationships.

We become the initiator, the organizer, the caregiver, the one who remembers, the one who understands, the one who keeps the connection alive.

And because we do it willingly, it can take years to notice the weight.

Until one day we set it down.

And suddenly realize how much we were carrying.

People often say, “That’s just the way he is.”

And they’re right.

I accepted that a long time ago.

What I hadn’t fully acknowledged was how much energy it takes to continually adapt to someone else’s limitations.

Eventually, you realize that acceptance and participation are not the same thing.

I can accept someone exactly as they are without continuing to carry the entire relationship myself. I can love someone without continually compensating for their absence. I can understand their limitations without making them my responsibility.

And perhaps most importantly, I can stop confusing acceptance with obligation.

For most of my life, the word no has felt heavy. Almost selfish.

Because when someone needs something and I can help, my instinct is usually yes.

Which is why this experience has left me reflecting on the meaning of no.

What if no isn’t rejection?

What if no is acknowledgment?

Acknowledgment of reality.

Acknowledgment of what hurts.

Acknowledgment of what I’ve been carrying.

Acknowledgment that love and self-abandonment are not the same thing.

What if no isn’t rejection? What if no is acknowledgment?

Maybe that’s the lesson hidden inside all of this.

Not that hope is foolish.

Not that acceptance means we stop longing.

But that there comes a point when reality deserves acknowledgment too.

Sometimes growth isn’t found in becoming less loving. Sometimes it’s found in becoming more honest about what hurts.

And sometimes acceptance isn’t the absence of grief.

It’s simply seeing someone clearly enough to stop arguing with reality.

If you enjoy reflections on connection, intuition, and the wisdom hidden in ordinary moments, you may also enjoy following along as I prepare to release my upcoming novel, The Map Maker.

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