August 26th, 2026

I have come to recognize so many things about myself this summer. At the beginning, I knew it would fly by. Now it is August, and somehow I have lived a hundred lifetimes while also blinking and watching it all disappear.

Today, as the cool mist of morning dissolves beneath the mountain sun. I want to talk about the power of feminine embrace and the way it can gather even the most broken pieces of us and gently fit them back together.

There have been times in my life when the loneliness of blurred faces felt like the only crowd I would ever walk among. Then I began to reach beyond myself. I stopped surrendering to the weight of this consuming world and started searching for the small, bright places where life was waiting for me.

Kindness was sharing coffee with a stranger. It was lingering for a few extra seconds to talk with the elderly woman next door. It was playing hopscotch with preschoolers and watching my clients find language for their heaviest experiences through the quiet magic of play therapy. It was paddle boarding down the river and asking absurd questions out loud every chance I got.

Love was my best friend stepping off her flight and falling straight into my arms. It was showing her the home I have built, aching for her to stay while still wanting her to build a home of her own. It was being surrounded by women, held by their laughter and their softness. It was giving people a second chance. It was holding onto hugs just a tad longer.

It was reading bedtime stories and playing spies with the children I babysat. It was teaching my cattle dog to swim. It was hiking the ridges, saddles, and valleys of breathtaking landscapes, rolling in the dirt, dipping into rivers and lakes, sleeping in cars, and dancing beneath the open sky to live music.

It was breakfast at the bakery. It was listening to the adventurous stories of a friend who had returned home, even if only for a little while. It was finishing book after book and standing in the middle of the road beneath a scattering of stars, feeling both impossibly small and entirely alive.

It was picking up a pen, a pencil, a paintbrush. 

It was perfect.