The Beauty of Not Belonging

Fun fact: I lived with a ghost once. A little girl. Every night after I put my children to bed, I'd sit in the living room to take my first deep breaths of the day. The ghost would pace the hall behind me, walking softly, never making a sound—other than those slowly padding footsteps. Every night, I'd sigh and tell her it was time for bed, and the footsteps would stop.

I think of her when my kids joke that I need a bell. Because creating a safe home while healing from childhood trauma is weird, because finding where you belong after a lifetime of feeling like an outsider is hard, and because no matter how healed you are, some scars never truly fade.

I'm five foot two but I am not a small woman, and still, I can enter a room with no warning. I've startled my kids countless times simply by appearing beside them—and once, I scared my oldest so bad, she burst into tears. All I did was enter the room. No anger, no animosity, no sneaking. I just walked through the door.

"God, Mom," she said, wiping her eyes. "Get a bell!"

And mostly, of course, they're joking—but I've often wondered how much of that instinctive silence was learned before I recognized what it was.

I spent a lot of time as a child trying not to be noticed. Trying to take up as little space as possible. To be quiet and stay out of the way. Don't ask for too much, don't feel out loud, don't draw attention.

I'm forty-two years old now, but in many ways, I'm still overcoming adversity no child should ever face. I'm still working on breaking generational cycles. Still learning to take up space. Still figuring out what it means to belong.

But sometimes I think about the girl who never believed she'd belong anywhere.

For the majority of my childhood, belonging felt like something only other people got to have. My parents divorced when I was four, and they both had horrible second marriages. My step-mother was psychologically unstable and often violent, but my father was trying hard to make the marriage work. My step-father was a prison-gang-affiliated ex-con, and that means everything any sane person would expect it to mean. My grandmother loved her family, but she was overburdened and overwhelmed. Her mother was aging and needed care, her husband was ill, two of her children were in impossibly dangerous situations, and she was already raising four grandchildren.

No room at the inn, indeed.

I lived in a lot of places. Apartments surrounded by bullies. Trailers where gang initiations were the soundtrack of the night. Houses where my father opened the front door with a shotgun by his side. Once, even a downtown hotel, where the music of the bar below drifted up through the floor as I slept. Mostly, I lived with family. My mother for a while, my father for a while, then back to my mother again.

But I felt alternately like a hassle to be managed and the rope in a tug of war—a piece in a game, a means to a win. Useful sometimes, but never unquestionably wanted.

Sometimes it was obvious, like the time my mom made me put everything I owned in garbage bags and call my dad to come get me. Other times it was more subtle.

I remember living with my grandmother in middle school, and I was an early riser just like her. I shared a bedroom with my cousins, so when I woke up in the mornings, I'd slip out of the room with a book, and I'd read in the living room while she drank her coffee. I didn't ask for anything. I didn't make noise or turn on the TV. I just wanted somewhere to be without bothering anyone. But sometimes she'd see me and roll her eyes and shake her head.

Eventually, I stopped going into the living room. I'd sneak into the bathroom instead, where I'd close the door as silently as possible, curl up on the floor, and read until everyone else woke up. And I don't think she meant for those moments to feel so brutally unwelcoming. Looking back, I think those early-morning cups of coffee were the only quiet moments she had, and she was probably just frustrated at having to share them.

But children don't always understand adult circumstances, adults don't always make time to explain, and I was a traumatized middle schooler, examining the silent signals of things I wasn't allowed to ask about.

My grandmother was an incredibly strong woman who carried impossible challenges without flinching. She pulled no punches, took no nonsense, and always seemed to know what to do. But she had a silly streak, too, and she loved giving prank Christmas gifts. Most of the time, they were funny, like the Hanson CDs taped into car magazines. Sometimes they were ridiculous, like the necklaces hidden in plastic pieces of fruit. But there was one year when the joke wasn't funny at all.

That year, everyone had presents. Except for me.

I remember watching everyone open their gifts. I oohed and aahed as expected, trying to be well-mannered and unbothered and as invisible as I felt in those moments. I didn't cry. I didn't ask why I got left out. I didn't leave the room. I just sat there. And eventually my grandmother went into the bathroom, waited a moment, and called to my mother for help.

They came back laughing, their arms loaded with presents for me. And I don't remember a single one of them. I remember being the only one without them. And sometimes, even now, I wonder what might have happened if I'd reacted differently. If I'd reacted normally.

I have children of my own now, and I don't have to imagine what they would have felt, as normal children who would never be subjected to that. So I wonder: What if I'd cried, or said I was hurt? What if I had asked, "What about me?" What if I had simply stood up and walked away?

I didn't come from a comforting family. I doubt there would have been hugs or apologies. Most likely, I'd have been told I should be grateful to be there at all.

I'll never know, and maybe that's part of why the scar still lies protectively over the place that was wounded. Because I learned early that silence was safety. By then, I'd already spent a year in a children's home—a fourth grader placed in a house full of older teen girls, because even there, I didn't quite fit where I should have.

And what's funny is, that year turned out to be one of the greatest gifts I ever received.

I shared a Jack-and-Jill bathroom with one of the other girls, and at night we'd sneak in there to talk. We'd put towels against the doors to block the light, we'd sit with our backs against the bathtub, and sometimes we'd talk until morning. That girl taught me to shave my legs. She taught me to make jokes out of hard times.

And when she found out I'd never seen Mary Poppins, she was stunned.

She and the other girls got the house parents to set up a movie night, and we piled onto the couches in the living room to watch. There were snacks and blankets and jokes and lots of laughter, and all I remember is the certainty that those messed up teens wanted me there.

And in a place no child should ever have been, in a home that should never have housed a girl my age, for a little while, people made room for me. Not as another thing to manage, another complication to juggle, or another problem to solve. They got excited about a child's movie, simply for the sake of sharing it with a child. They looked forward to the circus, simply to watch a little sister enjoy it for the first time. Because they didn't see a messed-up kid or a story waiting to be told.

They saw a person worth talking to. A child worth teaching. And even they knew the power in a spoonful of sugar.

*****

I still think about that little girl sometimes, especially now, as a mother. I listen to my children stampede through the house and I remember the girl who learned to walk softly and stay unnoticed. My daughter sings at the top of her lungs, and I think of the child who read in the bathroom to keep herself out of the way. The one who knew better than to cry when pain was gift-wrapped for Christmas.

Sometimes I wish I could go back, even for just a moment, to tell her something I didn't understand then. Something that might radically change the course of her life. I would tell her that feeling unwanted does not equal being unworthy.

Maybe the problem isn't that you're too much. Maybe it isn't that you're not enough, either. Maybe you're just in a place that doesn't have room for who you are.

I've carried the lessons of those years into adulthood in ways I never intended. Those lessons sit in the room where I lead students at church. They inform every conversation I have with my daughter's friends when she brings them to me (or they come on their own) for counsel and understanding. They are the foundation of a prayer that I will never leave any child wondering whether they're wanted.

And maybe they do complain when I appear unexpectedly. Honestly, maybe I do need a bell. But no matter how many times they roll their eyes or get mad or need space...they will never have to become invisible to earn their place in my home.

One of the strangest treasures of my childhood is that not belonging taught me what belonging should feel like. It should feel like making room and being wanted without having to earn it, even if it isn't practically perfect in every way. Because we all deserve a place where we don't have to disappear.

So until next week, stay visible. Stay silly. And as always...

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Survival Is Just The Beginning

Sometimes we hear things so often, we forget to actually listen to the words. It's why we hear favorite songs again years later and can't believe what we used to listen to. It's why a quote we've seen a thousand times suddenly lands in a new way. For me, this happens a lot with the Bible—not because a verse or story has changed, but because I have. The meaning of the words will shift suddenly, almost unexpectedly, into place. And because the words themselves remain the same, I think the thing that changes most is...well, me.

It happens with passages about healing and resilience, because they give me encouragement. It happens with stories about people overcoming adversity, because they give me hope. But it hits me hardest where trauma recovery is the transformation—in the places where moving forward doesn't mean forgetting where you came from, where pain and purpose truly mold a person into someone they couldn't have been before.

It's in those moments that I recognize faith as something more powerful than stereotype, and personal growth as more than a mental health trend. This morning in church, someone mentioned the story of a man unable to walk for thirty-eight years. It was a passing comment, but it got me thinking about life. And healing. And remembering. And how, whether you're a Christian or not, the concept behind Jesus's command to "take up your mat" might not always mean what we thought it did.

The story doesn't tell us how old the man was. It only says he was invalid, unable to walk for thirty-eight years. He could have been thirty-eight years old—or fifty, or seventy-five. We don't know.

In the story, Jesus asked the man if he wanted to be well, and modern teachings on this passage almost always imply that perhaps the man got so used to being helpless, he decided to stay that way. After all, he'd been lying for years on his mat, right there beside the healing pool of Bethesda, so why didn't he just creep closer as the years went on? Why didn't he just scoot over and roll in? Sometimes we even sprinkle a little shame into the teaching, because Jesus asked him if he wanted to be well, and he basically said, "Boohoo, so sad. I never seem to get there fast enough, and no one will help me."

Sometimes we make it seem like this man was stuck in his own emotional victimhood, laying year after year on that mat by the pool. But if he was truly incapable and truly without help, what did the accumulation of thirty-eight years look like? Maybe he was covered in sores or wrapped in the stench of his own filth. Maybe he was lonely, overlooked, or forgotten. Often, we simply paint him as lazy because his focus was on the help he didn't have, and we emphasize Jesus asking, "Do you want to be well?"

We love the authority that showed up when Jesus said, "Take up your mat, and walk." We love the miracle of a man who was crippled for nearly four decades and then suddenly wasn't, because it gives us hope in our own suffering...but I think we underestimate what Jesus didn't say. He didn't say, "Leave that mat and move on," or, "Walk away and forget about it." He didn't say, "Pretend it never happened."

He said, "Take up your mat, and walk." And I don't know about you, but if I was stuck on a mat for thirty-eight years waiting for healing that only came to the people around me...I'm not sure I could forget that. Even after the healing came, I'm not sure I could leave that mat behind.

I don't think we talk enough about that.

We like to think of healing as a process, by which we become the person we would've been if the hard thing hadn't happened. We think that maybe someday, when we've done enough and grown enough and learned enough and surrendered enough and taken back enough of ourselves, we should be able to look back with the right kind of separation. "It's over. It's in the past."

But what if leaving the mat behind is like only reading the end of a book? Because, make no mistake here—the mat is the bulk of the story. In that time, the average human spent less than eighty years in this life. This man spent thirty-eight of those years on that mat. 

When we look at it that way, it doesn't seem like much has changed, and maybe that's why the mat matters. I personally have a small collection of mats. I've stood, I've taken them up, I've walked away. I've carried them with me because they remind me of who I was and where I came from.

Some are woven with painful threads of divorce. Others are torn by the scars of abandonment. A few are worn thin because I laid on them too long or went back to them too often. Most of my mats spent long stretches of time heaped in the dark corners of my life because I didn't have the stomach or the skills to clean them properly—but I kept them. 

Because they wrote whole chapters in the story of my life, and the story wouldn't make as much sense without them.

Maybe that's why I do this. Not to rehash old things, but to share my own mats in ways that say, "I'm not that special. If I could get up, maybe you can, too." Maybe my sharing is my way of saying, "You're not alone by the pool."

And you know what...sometimes moving forward won't look impressive to anybody but you. Sometimes they don't know what it took to make that effort. Sometimes you're just getting from one day to the next. Some days, you're barely managing to get out of bed. Maybe it's the effort of one small choice, one more conversation.

Maybe for you, it means trying one more time, over and over again. Slowly flexing muscles you haven't used in a while. Slowly straightening the backbone you've been bending to keep the peace. Until eventually you make it to your knees, trembling and exhausted. And eventually, you climb to your feet, stunned by your own strength.

And somewhere along the way, you stop believing that getting stuck and staying stuck are the same things.

Either way, take up the mat, friend. And don't forget to carry it with you.

*****

I know there will always be people who skip to the end of the story. They want transformation without trauma. They want the happy ending, and sometimes they don't even care how it happened. Maybe that's right for them, wherever they are in this chapter of their own story...but for me, the beauty of a story is the journey it takes us on, and it just wouldn't be the same with pages missing.

I don't think you need to stay where you are. I think in some ways, we're all just moving from mat to mat, learning to stand over and over again. But with each new moment of stillness, each new devastating circumstance, each new lesson learned, we're reminded of what it feels like to be stuck. With each grueling climb to our feet, we gain understanding—and if we're brave enough to remember what it was like to lie on that mat, we find compassion for people still hoping for change.

There was a time when I needed someone else to believe getting up was possible before I could believe it myself. There have been times when I sat beside someone else and told them to get up. Some did it quickly, almost in obedience to a possibility they hadn't noticed before, but others needed a hand held, a shoulder braced. Some have needed an outright push. And I get it, because I've been there, too.

But maybe that's the power of the mat, covered in the scars of the past. It's not that the suffering was good or that "everything happens for a reason." It's just that some things happen whether we want them to or not. Some things are painful. Some things are unfair.

Still, healing from those things does not render them meaningless. The mat is more than a reminder of where you've been. It's evidence of what you've learned and where you've grown. 

I've always loved the idea that the things we survive become part of what we offer to others, because we can look back at (but not down on) someone still lying on their mat and say, "I know. It doesn't feel possible, and you can't see the other side yet. But this mat is not all that you are."

And for me, that's the magic of writing—because in a lot of ways, it's just me, taking up the mat. I can't change the things that happened to me. I can't erase the scars, rewrite the chapters, or become the person I might have been. But I can pick those things up and carry them. I can turn them over in my hands and absorb the lessons they offer.

And if I can put those experiences into words that make somebody else feel less alone, then that's the way I'll keep choosing to...

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Top Ten Pet Peeves, And The Trouble With Too Many Tabs

I love it when I sign on ready to share some meaningful behind the scenes moment, not only because I get to share something I've learned, but also because it's proof that I'm still learning. But the truth is, I have quiet weeks just like anyone else, and sometimes author life is actually...well, boring.

Some days pass peacefully, and instead of discovering some deep revelation, I just get out of bed, take my kid to school, go home and write, pick my kid up from school, eat dinner with her, and go to bed. Sure, I might read a little in between, or find something funny online, and my daughter and I often have long conversations I value deeply, but most of the time, those slow days are their own quiet kind of treasure.

The trouble is, they leave me without anything big to say—and here's a little fun fact about me: having nothing to say is SO. ANNOYING. So it was almost funny when I realized that maybe the things that annoy me are actually a great place for this post to land.

And it's not like I haven't talked about this before. I've mentioned rage-bait culture and why I generally refuse to participate. I've mentioned my trauma history and how painful it is to spend time around people who make it their hobby to piss everyone off. But pet peeves? Those little things that irritate me no matter how hard I try to look the other way? The everyday annoyances we all have?

Maybe today's a good day to get honest about mine.

A friend of mine recently finished reading the Freedom Series, and she texted me all the way through the second book (by the way, those texts are absolutely my new drug of choice, caffeine be damned). She told me how she shared parts of the story with her boyfriend, how Christine's trauma sat itself down and held hands with her own. She sent me quotes from sections she loved, told me when the story made her laugh, made her cheer, made her angry.

She told me how she felt about the end. She told me it's a true story—and when I said, "Not exactly, but it's based on real things that happen to real women," she put ten toes down and came back with, "It's a true story in my opinion." Because she found so much of herself in it.

Then she said, "I finished. I wrote a review. Never done one before." And she asked for more.

So I told her about Selkie, where I am in the process, and when to expect a new release. And I felt bad because I wanted to share more. I wanted to send screenshots and scenes. Pieces of Annie and Malik and the sheer beautiful magic of the Selkie Trilogy. I wanted to give her a promise that storytelling lives in the next story long after the first has ended, even when the two are not at all the same.

But then I thought about you. And I wanted to share with you, too. So I held back, planning to set up the Selkie page here on my author blog.

And honestly, that's where the peeves come in. I hate incomplete things. I hate a long to-do list. I hate holding back and I hate waiting and I hate the long-form admin that lives behind these stories that wake me up in the morning.

But I couldn't make the Selkie page right away because I had too many tabs at the top of this blog. Could I have made another one anyway? Sure, but it would've looked weird. Could I have set up the page and added it as a link in the sidebar? Sure, but it would've felt disconnected from the others. And thus began an entire day of effort, during which the Selkie page never actually got created and blog navigation made me want to tear my hair out.

Writing life is not all glamour, I promise.

So there I sat, consolidating three pages to make room for one. My favorite books, favorite products, and favorite Undaunted women are now listed together under "Top Tens." Just for fun, I also added a top ten list of things I've found myself wishing for. And by the end of the day, when it was finally time to set up that Selkie page?

Y'all, I closed the laptop, grumbled a couple of words Jesus wouldn't approve of, and went to bed.

And what's funny is that I ended up finding a list of my own Top Ten Pet Peeves a few days later, and it felt a little like my past self teasing my present self. "Keep it real, girlfriend, and don't sweat the small stuff." Which is hilarious, because that Top Ten list? It really is mostly small stuff.

But what can I say? I'm human, too.

*****

Sometimes there's no big revelation, and that's okay. Sometimes a quiet week sprinkled with minor irritation and ignorable grievances actually is the whole story. And even if this whole thing started because I needed a place to share information about the Selkie Trilogy, I think it all worked out just fine. The Top Ten page is up and I love it. The Selkie Trilogy page is up (excerpt included), and I love that too. I'm already checking my texts for tidbits from my friend, which is crazy because the new book won't release until January...

Exhibit A: We get impatient, too.

The thing is, it's okay if it took some rearranging to get there, because that's what life really is anyway. We're constantly changing, rearranging our views, our preferences, our hobbies, our habits. And yes, even our personal pet peeves.

And maybe the funniest part of this is that it all started with an impulsive trip down an unplanned administrative rabbit-hole, and I still ended up glad I took it. Either way, I'm proud of the progress. I'm proud of pursuing the best way instead of settling for the easy way. But most of all, I'm proud of another book that helped another reader...

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Beautiful Overwhelm: The Aftermath

I sometimes struggle to settle on the weekly topic for this blog because overall, my life is quiet. It's routine. It's slowing down again, finding balance after a storm of busy seasons marked by the kind of overwhelm and exhaustion inherent to the life of an introvert. Monday through Friday, my daughter has school. Wednesday evenings and Sunday mornings, we have church. Thursdays, I meet with my women's group. And other than a sprinkling of doctor's appointments and the constant drive to meet my own writing deadlines, the biggest variable is my Thursday group cycling through hobbies and activities we all enjoy as we learn and grow together as women.

There's a lot of gratitude these days, but I don't always feel like I have something new to say because most of the time, nothing new happened.

But the last two weeks have been so wild and wonderful and crazy, I'm struggling to settle on a moment because there have been so many beautiful moments in such a short time.

We've had a whirlwind of family time, where each day folded almost invisibly into the next. We probably drove over 1,000 miles in the last fourteen days. My daughter slept in five different beds. We ate so much junk food, fast food, and restaurant meals that my body went into full rebellion and my little one begged for salad. There were mornings when the first thing I did was check the calendar just to be sure I was starting the right day at the right time.

But even with emotional exhaustion poured over an absolute failure to find enough rest...we made so many amazing memories. And maybe I just haven't finished sorting them all out yet. Maybe I don't even need to, and maybe if you're feeling the same way, you don't need to either. I think it's okay if, just for once, we sit in the quiet and let those moments be what they were.

Hours spent with people we love. Memories we wouldn't trade. And you know what? It's probably okay if you need three to five business days for recovery, too. I know I do.

I'm writing this lying down, propped on the pile of white pillows I nest in every night at bedtime. The afternoon sun is moving over my building, slowly shifting its light over the colors of my bedroom, and I've let my hair down for the day. The fan is whispering quietly to itself, there's a loaf of gluten free garlic sourdough rising downstairs in the kitchen, and a fresh cup of coffee waits, steaming on the nightstand beside me.

My knee hurts, my head hurts, and I can't remember the last time I worked on a Selkie scene. I miss Annie and Malik. I miss the excitement and the magic of their story, the joy of rediscovering them as I work through this second edition in preparation for January's release date. I miss the note-taking and the anticipation of fresh adventure in Selkie III.

There's an almost-seventy-year-old bookshelf standing to my left—built by my great-grandfather in 1958, scarred but still sturdy, loaded down with books waiting to be read. Directly ahead is a wall unit filled with yarn waiting to become something beautiful. I look around and am faced at every angle with projects calling for attention.

There's laundry to be done. Travel products to be organized and put away for next time. A potted string of pearls quietly craving a drink. Always, always, there is a surface begging to be dusted. And for the moment, I'm leaving it all. Not only to prioritize this time I spend each week with you, but to reflect on the beauty of what it means to be overwhelmed.

So often, we think of gratitude as a good thing. Energizing and positive. Gratitude is that leap of joy that brings our hearts almost into our throats as we celebrate the blessings in life. And in turn, we think of overwhelm as bad. It's the sudden realization of having gone too far, pushed too hard, done too much. The draining that leaves us on the edge of bewilderment even as we carry on.

I'm learning that this is yet another place where two opposing things can be true at the same time—and that nothing is ever only good or only bad.

I spent these weeks with the fresh new generation of my family. My nephew, who I once carried at my shoulder, who I once cradled to my chest, who I once helped to teach and love and nurture, is now a Marine with a family of his own. His children are five and three, and I spent hours wandering with them, their little hands tucked into mine, watching adventure and excitement light in their eyes. And every moment was joy...but I'm tired.

I drove until I could hardly stand up straight when I got out of the car. Long hours spent sitting, watching the world fly by outside the window, my hands on the wheel, my brows furrowed as an apparently drunken GPS offered more wrong turns than a backwards NASCAR race. I knew my exhaustion was real when I saw it echoed in the eyes of my usually-tireless teenager...and I am incredibly thankful.

Two truths, opposite to their very cores, and still they exist side-by-side.

And after all that, we settled at home just in time for me to kick my daughter out of her own bed, dragging her into my room for a one-night sleepover. We made her bed with fresh sheets, vacuumed her floor, folded a quilt at the foot of the bed, and welcomed my brother back to our city for the first visit in years. We spent too much on groceries, my oldest daughter joined us for taco salads, we shouted and joked and stayed up too late watching movies. It was exhausting. And it was wonderful. And you couldn't pay me to trade those moments.

Yesterday, I had both of my brothers in my house for the first time in ages. One seven years older, one seven years younger. And there I stood between the two of them, listening to the quiet way they talk to each other, broken by bursts of laughter and private jokes and the silly parts of our father that live on in us.

So here I am, wrapped in a soft silvery blanket in my nest of white pillows, delightedly sipping sweet vanilla coffee as I process what those moments mean, where they came from, and what they'll lead to. I hear my daughter whispering to herself downstairs, singing in quiet bursts as she braves the mysteries of a new Minecraft world, and now and then, the air conditioner kicks on, circulating random garlic-scented promises of the bread I'll bake just in time for dinner.

The whirlwind has passed for now, but nothing feels quite settled yet.

And sometimes, maybe that's a blessing, too.

*****

As an emotionally intense person so often focused on personal growth—especially as that growth connects to and reflects on my Christian life—I think sometimes it's easy to expect clear lines. Good and bad. Joy and sadness. Gratitude and grumbling. But maybe these blended moments, and the capacity for contentment in them, are where we tend to lose the plot.

Maybe gratitude doesn't have to be gleeful to be genuine, and maybe it's okay to feel tired after feeling all the things. Maybe it's moments like these, where everyone has gone home and reality rolls in again. Maybe gratitude is right there in the basket of laundry soiled by adventure. Maybe it's the cluttered mind, still buzzing with memories that haven't quite found their places yet.

And maybe it's needing a little more silence than usual, a little more sleep, or a little more time to find yourself again after pouring everything out for the people and moments that matter most.

I don't think any of that makes the gratitude less real, and I think sometimes it's the beauty of the overwhelm that makes us recognize its value. Being grateful for something doesn't mean it has to be easy, and loving people won't always feel seamless. Beauty can still be exhausting...and that's okay.

Because we don't need to rush to sort those memories and lessons into tidy little boxes right away, and I wonder if leaving them scattered like debris in the aftermath of the storm is the best way to let them find where they belong, all on their own, in the stillness of a sunlit afternoon.

And maybe as those pieces of days gone by fall like magic into place, we smile and drink coffee that tastes like contentment. And those moments help us...

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Kennedy, Party Of One...Sometimes

There's a common saying that's so old we don't know where it came from, and while we can't credit its wisdom to one person, its truth is sometimes heavier than we'd like it to be. "It takes a village."

We say it when it comes to family relationships, finding community, spiritual growth, and the power of support. We use it as a balm to make ourselves feel better about learning to accept help when we'd feel safer leaning on self-reliance. We use it as an explanation when we talk about why we need other people and the value of a solid support system. And we arch our eyebrows and shake our heads as we contemplate the challenges of raising children, especially when it comes to single parenting.

I've spent most of my life being grateful when I'm able to be part of someone else's village. When I'm able to protect a friend in a scary situation, when I'm able to lend a hand if someone's overwhelmed—or share a couple of dollars when I see someone struggling to survive with less than I have.

But I was very much the black sheep in my family and, by extension, my daughters were treated that way, too. When my nieces received packages from my dad for the holidays, my mailbox stayed empty. When parties were thrown or gatherings were organized, I often learned about them after they'd ended. And I think I just got used to living my life as "Kennedy, Party of One."

I raised my kids without much participation from their dad, even when we were together. I scheduled and managed doctor's appointments, surgeries, long-distance medical trips. I maintained equipment, tracked prescriptions, and advocated endlessly. I did it with strength I didn't know I had, courage and resilience I shouldn't have needed, and a constant appreciation for every breath my babies took, because I've never forgotten the baby who never breathed.

I did as much of it as possible without asking for help, raising kids on a budget strained by disability and single motherhood. Raising children with less, while desperately fighting to make sure they never noticed. And "it takes a village" always made me a little sad, because I've spent most of my life going, "Okay, where it at, though?"

But maybe I'm a little nearsighted, because my "village" may be barely more than a blip on the map...but its shelter is far more solid than it seems.

Picture it. A dirt road, so settled there's no dust in the air. It's small and untraveled, shaded by old trees that whisper stories in their leaves when the wind blows. And off to the side, where a small town might be, there is one lone building. A little time-battered, a little worn, and maybe you look at it long enough to wonder how it's still standing.

At first glance, it stands alone. Perhaps occasionally a truck or trailer might be parked there as loved ones pass through, but there are no outbuildings. No sheds. No neighboring homes from which to borrow an egg or a cup of sugar when the canister runs low. Visitors may be frequent, and some almost make themselves at home...but only almost, and then they're gone again. And the house remains, haphazardly tended as time, energy, and money allow.

Hi. That's me. I'm the house. The blip on the map. Sometimes interesting, sometimes hospitable, but easy enough to pass on the way to elsewhere. A welcoming place to drop in and rest...for a while.

And maybe I've been looking at the blip all wrong, because it isn't surrounded by the noise of community and the intrigue of a fascinating stop. No sightseeing here, no major attractions. Just a place where the nightlife ends by eleven and the best local band is a tree full of cicadas.

Not a village, but it's more like an old-fashioned rest stop. A road-side inn. A place to grab a snack from the vending machine, empty your bladder, clean the garbage from the center console. It's the place where people go to catch their breath on the way from one phase to another...and then they're off to bigger and better things.

But man, a rest stop is solid, isn't it? We put our faith in a strong foundation, we lean tired shoulders on sturdy walls, and we accept nourishment we didn't know we needed until we saw it. And I wonder how often we really think about the things that hold the ceilings up.

If I'm the rest stop, then I'm proud of my foundation: concrete faith, poured so long ago it feels as solid as the earth itself. Formed by life lessons and gratitude, fortified by unexpected blessings, and strengthened by determination to keep trusting God no matter how much the earth quakes. I'm proud of the walls too, though, with every brick baked in memories of kindness and connection, each surface signed with someone's name.

The rest stop is always "XX Miles From" something else. Connected to a state, a county, a town...a village...but never quite part of what it's connected to. Not entirely alone, and rarely ever truly empty. Rest stops don't actually spend much time resting.

But this week, I got a little unexpected renovation.

A few miles down the road, there's a woman who knows the value of a rest stop, because in many ways, she is one herself. She's the quiet one who comes every morning to clean the windows and let the sun in. The strong one who fixes things when they get broken. The one who keeps the pamphlets organized and the fan running. The one who notices when it's time for a little extra TLC.

And she never asks for credit but it's hard to count how many of my bricks have her name on them, because I don't know the world without her in it.

This week, she locked the rest stop doors and put a little sign out in the parking lot that said, "Temporarily out of order." She opened the windows, turned the fan on blast, and let fresh air blow through a tired old building. Outside this metaphor, she let me do her a small favor...and proceeded to mold that favor into a blessing beyond measure.

My youngest daughter and I delivered my cousin's grandchildren and daughter-in-law to the airport in Nashville. My cousin couldn't get the day off work, and since my car sucks we did what we've done so many times before. We lived one life in two bodies. She made the vehicle appear, and I planted my butt in the driver's seat.

This short road trip turned into a mostly-spontaneous three-day whirlwind vacation, where my daughter and I had the most amazing time. I rested between outings. I got to give my daughter moments and memories we normally don't have access to. And instead of calculating how to make everything work, I got to watch proudly as my daughter openly celebrated every single moment. Not one grumble about what we didn't/couldn't do. Not one "wish we could."

It was three days of "Thank you, Mom." Thank you for showing me how to do this. Thank you for getting up early to find the restaurant I was hoping for. Thank you for a souvenir. Thank you for memories.

And the more blessed I was by those moments, the more I thought about the reason they were possible. The cousin who reads almost every word I write. The one who survived childhood beside me. The one I can always call, who knows she can always call me. The other, better half of everything I am.

Sometimes it's easy to overlook the steadiness of the ones who stay beside us. The ones who hold us up when we've been exhausted for too long. The quiet support of a wall that keeps standing. And, whether it's because we get comfortable enough to stop saying it or because our saying it makes them uncomfortable, maybe we don't always thank them the way we should.

So, to those who've signed the bricks that hold this rest stop together...thank you.

*****

The thing is, I've spent most of my life existing just outside of the village. Not entirely alone, and there have always been people around me. People who love me, who need me, who feel safer or stronger because of me. For some of those people, I help pour the foundation, and for others, I help build the walls. For many, I am the roof that protects them when storms roll in.

And maybe that's what I'm learning about gratitude. It's easy to be grateful for big things—the answered prayers and unexpected opportunities, the three-day adventures we otherwise wouldn't have had. It's easy to look at blessings that roll in like parades and recognize them for what they are.

But some of the greatest blessings are the quiet people whose names have been written on our bricks for so long, we stop noticing. They're the ones who don't announce that they're holding up a wall. They just keep standing there, and maybe that's what a village really is. Not a constant crowd or a steady stream of help and companionship, but just one person—or a handful of people.

Maybe it's the ones who have been part of the architecture for so long, we can't remember what the building looked like before they were there. The people who've known you since before you knew who you were.

We tend to talk about how "it takes a village" as though that village is just for the children, but I think it takes a village to be a person, too. And raising children with very little doesn't always mean raising them without abundance, because watching my daughter on this trip reminded me of something else I'm grateful for: she knows how to receive a gift in ways that I never had the chance to learn.

She notices without shame. She receives freely, and says thank you with no hesitation. She doesn't assume she's entitled, but she accepts blessings with unadulterated joy, and maybe that's one of the unexpected gifts of growing up without financial freedom. You learn that a little can be a lot when you understand what it costs.

I think that's what true gratitude is—not pretending we have everything we need, but recognizing the quiet things that hold us up when we stop long enough to notice. My foundation will always be my faith, but I'm learning new gratitude for the walls, too. Because a rest stop needs a strong foundation...but a place where people step in to sign the walls? Well, that's a home, no matter how small it seems.

And in this home, those walls made of memories signed by loved ones are the strength that helps us...

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Making Time To Notice the Good

Dolly Parton died this past week, and I'm still in shock. I never got to know her in person, of course, but she was one of those people who felt larger than life even from afar. She was sweet, funny, smart, generous. She never forgot where she came from or the life lessons she learned along the way, and for so many, she was a major part of turning difficult seasons into evidence of resilience. She cared about literacy, poverty, mortality. She cared about faith, identity, personal growth, and the kind of contentment you only find through purposeful perspective.

She wasn't perfect but she succeeded at leaving a legacy far beyond the catalog of her music, and I think part of what shocks me most about her death is the number of people suddenly willing to criticize her life. People who didn't know her question the authenticity of her faith based on a quote they saw. People who can never quantify everything she did question her philanthropy based on a thing she didn't do, or they speculate on what she didn't have based on what she did have.

If Dolly can come under such criticism in a world where so much is ugly but she wasn't...well, it made me think about gratitude and appreciation, and the way things look when we focus on noticing the good in the world around us.

And I don't just mean the kind of thankfulness that hits us in the holiday season when lights are sparkly and food is rich and gifts are flowing. I mean the kind that catches you off guard in the moments when you look at your life and realize the things you once prayed for have become the things you take for granted.

I've seen a lot of talk lately in the writing world about authors choosing to eliminate "spice" in their books. For some, it's religious conviction, for others it's simply the realization that on-page sex scenes aren't always necessary, and for still others, it's the writer's passionate desire to follow the current market in order to sell books.

Someone asked me if, as a Christian, I plan to do the same. And the answer? No, I don't.

"But...don't you feel, you know, convicted? Like, writing that stuff? As a Christian?"

And again, the answer is no.

Because I'm not writing sex. I'm writing lives. I'm writing growth and reflection and the way circumstances draw us from one heart change to another. Maybe it's a woman who hates everything she's ever seen in the mirror, but she finds her way to the kind of confidence that allows her to be naked and vulnerable and brave all at the same time. Maybe it's a woman who knows what it is to be violated, but she's learning that pleasure does not have to be painful. Maybe it's a man illustrating the truth behind "not all men," simply by being different.

And maybe that's where Dolly and I—and all of us—have something in common. We all know what it feels like to be misunderstood, or to have something so incredibly important reduced to the one thing that's easy to pick apart. So often, we look at that one thing we don't understand or the choice we wouldn't have made (or the chapter we wouldn't have written), and suddenly that's the only thing we can see. And then we shake our heads and close our eyes to something that might have been beautiful.

Maybe we saw a quote we didn't like about someone supporting something we don't agree with, so we cheat ourselves of the chance to admire someone who gave their all to being kind. Maybe we know there's a one-page sex scene, so we cheat ourselves of finding joy and meaning in four hundred pages of everyday blessings meant to encourage and uplift and inspire.

I think that's why I'm so grateful for my readers. They're men and women from all ages and all walks of life. They believe different things, come from different backgrounds, and each one relates to stories differently—but regardless of labels and categories, the thing that brings them together as readers is their willingness to look for the part that feels like it was written just for them. The chapter that makes them see themselves with more compassion. The snippet of dialogue that teaches them something they weren't aware of before. And yes, sometimes even the paragraphs that draw them deeper than the skin revealed in a sex scene.

Because I may be a glow-in-the-dark white girl, but my kitchen is full of flavor and I want my books to be that way too. I want my characters to feel real and their stories to leave readers feeling seen. I hope every reader finishes the last page feeling grateful because something touched them, not because the story pretends that everything is good, but because it notices when not everything was bad.

Sometimes, whether it's in a book or not, gratitude is being able to look at a life that didn't quite go according to plan...and realizing that in the end, the lessons we learned were worth the chapters we lived through.

Besides, reality is too zesty to write without at least a little "spice."

*****

Sometimes gratitude comes from unexpected places. Maybe you find yours in make-up and rhinestones, like Dolly. Maybe you find it in stories that help you understand or express things you've struggled to appreciate before, like me. Most often though, I think we find it hidden in unexpected moments of personal reflection—those sudden flashes of recognition that spark so quickly they're easy to miss.

I'm not grateful for every hard thing I've lived through, and I'm not going to romanticize pain just because I've survived it. But I won't ignore it either, because what I am grateful for is what grew in the aftermath. I'm grateful for a teenager who notices the water on the bathroom counter at church, and takes the time to clean it up. I'm grateful for people who encourage my progress without wondering why I'm not "there" yet. I'm grateful for the secret blessings so precious I can't bring myself to share them, like hidden jewels kept in the privacy of my own heart.

And maybe that's the part we get wrong about gratitude. Maybe instead of struggling to look at everything we've been given and declaring it all as good, we just need to stop and recognize the good we've been given, regardless of where it came from. Because we don't need to sanitize life in order to be grateful for it, and the truth is, we don't have to list our blessings or try to outline everything that comes next. Maybe all it takes is a little mindfulness, a little hot coffee, a little nod to the ordinary blessings we usually overlook, and the willingness to...

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The Magic of Looking Back

So much of what I write these days centers on personal growth and learning from the past, but growth and change depend greatly on trusting yourself and finding confidence in who you are. And I think sometimes we drive too hard toward the future.

Maybe it's because the past often comes with shame. Looking back, we focus on the string of mistakes, and we haunt our present selves with the things we should've done but didn't—or the things we shouldn't have done but did anyway. Too often, we believe that examining the past must mean accepting the regret.

Maybe for you, the past comes with anxiety. It's a list of all the things you wish you'd done, or wish you'd done sooner. Or better. It fills the present with pressure and the future with fear. But what if your personal reflection of the past is only a teacher preparing the present you for what the future you might be proud of? What if the lessons from the past are really just lessons for the future?

Last week, I wrote about what it's like to dig back into The Selkie Trilogy so long after it began. I've been a writer all my life, but that first novel was the first story I'd ever finished...so imagine the joy of completion when I published it, promoted it, and began to watch the sales roll in. Imagine the surprise when I realized the story wasn't truly finished at all, but was only the beginning of a grand adventure for Annie and Malik. Imagine the devastation of life hitting hard and having to watch that series fall, unfinished, by the wayside.

Today I'd like to share the absolute wake-up-early excitement that settles fresh every morning, in the place where rewriting a novel and rediscovering old work come together.

When I first came back to writing, I was expecting to notice creative growth because even when I wasn't publishing, I was still writing. Little scenes and snippets of dialogue. Occasional ideas for characters or plots. Blog posts I didn't share, poems I scribbled in the quiet moments of emotional turmoil. Devotionals and journals no one has ever seen.

My writing journey didn't end just because my author journey got stuck on pause, and in the years of public silence, I was privately becoming a better writer.

And then I went digging through The Freedom Series. I revised and expanded Fighting For Freedom, taking notes along the way, preparing to write Still Fighting For Freedom. And there were so many times when I sat alone during that process, face to face with my own growth as a writer. Not because the original version wasn't good enough or because I was no longer proud of it, but because I could see where my style had shifted and my technique had matured.

With the Freedom Series now complete, the next step is to finish the Selkie Trilogy, which will begin with Selkie's second edition, follow with Selkie II's second edition, and then wrap with Selkie III's debut. And what I'm noticing most vividly in this walk through these books is how they boost my creative confidence.

Are there scenes I'm rewriting? Absolutely. Is there dialogue that makes me cringe? For sure. But oh, the bones of this story, you guys. The nod to ancient Selkie folklore is so solid. The connective chemistry of the character cast is undeniable. The foreshadowing is on point. The curiosity and suspense are everything I would have wanted them to be.

There was a moment when I sat back and stared at the screen, wondering if maybe this was evidence that I hadn't grown at all, after all. That maybe fifteen years ago, I was already as good as I was going to get. And I'll be honest, I kind of psyched myself out. What if I can't live up to this when it comes time for the third book, when the whole story depends on strong world-building? What if young me had some kind of skill or ability that faded over time, like the red in my hair as it shifts toward streaks of silver?

The thing about true courage is that it's open.

So I talked with a friend and I put it all on the table. The shame I felt over versions of past-me who couldn't juggle a decade of crisis and open discouragement while writing anyway. The fear of a future-me who couldn't live up to the hype present-me was trying to rebuild.

And this friend looked me dead in the eyes and said, "Stop it. Look at what you did back then." They said, "Look at what you carried. When the seed of writing was planted in dead soil and utterly starved for nutrients, look how you watered it."

And they were right. Because in early mornings when the sun hadn't risen yet, I was pouring words onto paper. Still practicing my craft in small ways, even when big things didn't seem possible. In late afternoons when the sun beat down and the heat felt unbearable, I was there, shading precious growth in stolen moments with my phone in my hand, fertilizing not only a dream but a set of skills I still hoped would bloom.

The plant, once sprouted, cannot help but look different from the seed it sprouted from. And yes, sometimes plants need change. We move them, we shade them, we warm them, we prune them, all in the hope of shaping something to be proud of.

In my home, there are currently five large plants—or six, depending on how you look at it. One of them is a pair of miniature pepper plants that grew by accident. A spinach seed failed, but in the fertile compost this pair of peppers sprouted with no one's permission, simply doing what seeds are meant to do. And while I grieved the spinach failure, I'm still celebrating the peppers almost two years later.

Another is a lemon sapling grown from a grocery store lemon seed, a nearly three-year-old experiment that lives in an artificially sunny corner of my office. I don't know if I will ever make lemonade from its fruit because I've never grown a tree before, and I have no idea what I'm doing...but it's two feet tall and its reedy little trunk is finally starting to branch. When I look for evidence of growth and success, it's there in the baby leaves slowly opening. It's there in mature leaves covered in waxy shine. And if I cut one of those leaves and crush it, success wafts from the mortar in shades of citrus.

My daughter is like that (both of them actually, but only one lives at home now), too. Fed and watered and carefully nurtured to maturity, my youngest is approaching eighteen years old. She's thinking of college and career choices and what it will be like to have what she calls, "adult money." She thinks of learning to drive and finding a partner and someday creating a home of her own, and I can't cut leaves from her branches. But when I look for evidence of growth and success, I see it in her brilliance. I see it in the way she works so hard to overcome the limitations of Autism. I see it in her concern, not only for her own future, but in her gratitude and concern for mine.

And that fifth—or sixth, depending on your pepper perspective? Well, I guess that plant is me.

*****

My point is, I'm still growing too. And while it's true that sometimes we look backward because we're stuck, sometimes we look backward because we've finally grown enough to appreciate what we couldn't see before.

In the trauma of my childhood, I could never have predicted the rise of a strong and at-least-mostly confident woman. In the rebellion of my teen years, I'd have laughed at anyone who told me someday I'd be a faithful Christian giving her best to what she feels is God's purpose for her life.

And in the early days of my walk as a writer, even when I could imagine a fanciful picture of a shelf full of books with my name on them...I would never have pictured the life I'm leading now, with a head full of characters waiting to be brought to life and a collection of readers who began with the man who called me Scheherazade.

Looking back will always carry evidence of failure. It will always show us the steps we missed, the opportunities we ignored, and the effort we should have put in. But beneath those things, there will also be a buried treasure of potential growth. Those missed steps may have accidentally led us directly to where we needed to be. Perhaps those opportunities we didn't take advantage of left room for other opportunities we fell in love with. Perhaps the effort we didn't have the emotional energy for is still waiting there too, fully charged and prepared to launch us toward our futures.

And maybe that's why I think it's only in looking back bravely that we find what we need to move forward, and...

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