Day 4 & 5

Sometimes things are best combined.

When I got the insight and idea to share my June journey with you — a month of stories, struggles, strengths, and sacred truths — I hoped it would reveal what finds me in my free and what pulls me from my center. Especially in this season, around the anniversary that forever changed my life, my heart, and my human experience in this body and Soul.

But I didn’t consider that there would be days where sitting down to share might not be possible. That fatigue or fullness might take up the very energy required to fully express and intentionally create.

Still, I knew there was something within me saying: Share. And when I do — when I show up with courage and vulnerability — I often find that it somehow gives someone else the permission or invitation they needed to show up too. To do the brave and necessary work of navigating their own freedom.

So, here I am. In the early days of what I hoped would be a daily offering, also learning that sometimes it just isn’t possible — and yet, so much possibility still lives in that space.

This week, family has been visiting from Colorado. Family I see once every 1, 5, or even 10+ years. Family that feels so familiar and safe and true that when I’m in their gravity, it’s all I want to do — just be there. With them. In our laughter, in our catching up, in our remembering, and in our bridging. Building something bigger than the miles and time that keep us apart.

Like I shared on Day 3: true soul food. And it’s been absolutely delicious.

I’m trying to savor the moments and slow down the time. My heart knows that in just another day or two, they’ll head home — and what those goodbyes (or better yet, see-you-laters) do to me. It’s a love so big that grief has to live there too. So I’m steadying myself. Witnessing how sometimes that’s really all we can do:
Be present. Be open. Ride the waves. Feel the pulses, the contractions, and the expansions — all happening right there in the moment, and right here within the heart.

This visit is stretching us all.

Yesterday, my husband and I shared the pure bliss of our northern land and got to take the family to Mackinac Island. It’s been many, many years — and many, many transformations — since we had visited. And it was a first for our Colorado family.

We spent the day laughing as we biked around the island. I rode tandem with my aunt — and there will forever be an imprint of that memory on my body and spirit. The laughter. The sweat. The struggle of those inclines. The sheer joy of coasting down the other side.

Biking alongside Lake Huron with people I love — it’s a treasure I’ll keep with me for the rest of this wild ride as me. A little jumpstart to remind me of what it feels like to be free. Not tied. Not tangled. Untethered, uncertain, yet known.

This life is such a temporary and tragic thing — and yet, my god, it can be so beautiful.

I just want us to know that beauty.
I want us to live that beauty.
And nurture it, too.

Can you help me do that?
Can you help you do that?

Can you imagine what that would be?
And strive — not from grind or grasp — but from grace, toward that vision?

I understand so much tries to fill the space and time between where we are and where we want to be. But…

Can we, in our own authentic ways, find a way through?

I believe we can.
And I believe in you.

Use this here and now to believe in you too.