Who is in Your Orbit?

Friendship, Stories &

Unexpected Connections

“We Are All Made of Stars” was originally inspired by a desk that found its way into my home, and how a friendship found its way into my life.

Who is in your orbit? Who is part of your constellation?

Eighteen months ago, I wrote these words as part of Tattered and Mended. At the time, I was reflecting on a desk. Or at least, I thought I was.

Looking back now, I realize it was never really about the desk at all.

It was about connection.

It was about the curious way our lives intersect with people we might never have met otherwise. A conversation. A purchase. A shared story. A simple exchange that somehow grows into something much larger.

The desk came from a woman named Sherri.

Like many things that find their way into my studio, it arrived with a history already attached. Scratches from use. Evidence of a life lived. Marks left by hands I would never know. I brought it home because I could see possibility in it. I could imagine what it might become.

What I did not expect was that the desk would introduce me to a friend.

Sometimes life unfolds that way.

We think we are collecting objects when, in reality, we are collecting stories.

The older I get, the more I believe that none of us travel through life alone. Every person who crosses our path leaves something behind. A lesson. An idea. A memory. A piece of encouragement. Sometimes a wound. Sometimes a blessing. Often both.

I have met people because of a race track, a quilt, a candle, a piece of jewelry, a class, a blog post, or a simple "hello."

Many of those encounters lasted only a season.

Others became friendships.

A few became family of the heart.

Looking back across the years, I can trace my life through these connections. Like stars scattered across a dark sky, each one may seem separate on its own. Yet when viewed together, they form a constellation.

The pattern reveals itself only after enough time has passed.

When I met Brian, I could not have known how profoundly his life would shape mine.

When I lost him, I could not have known that grief would eventually lead me toward healing work.

When I enrolled in massage therapy school, I could not have known it would introduce me to sound healing, yoga, and a community of people seeking wellness.

When I met a kind gentleman who was living in Murphy, North Carolina, I could not have known that Jim would become the twine to my kite, helping me stay grounded while still encouraging me to fly.

When I bought a desk from Sherri, I certainly did not expect to gain a friendship.

And yet here we are.

Life has carried us both through new chapters since those early conversations. We don't see each other as often as I'd like, and we're long overdue for a visit. As it does for all of us, life has been busy unfolding… bringing joys, challenges, changes, and growth. But some connections have a way of enduring, even when time and distance stretch between visits.

And that friendship remains one of the unexpected gifts that desk brought into my life.

Every one of those moments felt ordinary at the time.

Most stars do.

A single star rarely captures our attention. It is only when we step back and look at the whole sky that we begin to see the pattern.

Perhaps that is why I love old things so much.

Old quilts.

Old photographs.

Old letters.

Old furniture.

Each one reminds me that everything and everyone carries a story.

The desk now serves a different purpose than it once did. Like so many things in my life, it has been repurposed, reimagined, and given a second chapter.

Maybe that is what we do, too.

We gather pieces from those who came before us. We carry forward the wisdom, kindness, creativity, and courage that others have shared with us. We add our own experiences to the mix. Then we pass something meaningful on to the next person who enters our orbit.

A friend.

A student.

A child.

A stranger.

A reader.

A fellow traveler.

The truth is, none of us shine alone.

We are illuminated by those who loved us, encouraged us, challenged us, taught us, and walked beside us. We are stitched together from countless encounters, conversations, and acts of grace. We are connected in ways we rarely recognize while they are happening. And perhaps that is why this story still resonates with me all these months later.

Because a desk became a friendship.

A purchase became a conversation.

A conversation became a connection.

And a connection became part of my constellation.

When I look up these days, I am reminded that the same elements that formed the stars are found within each of us.

Maybe that is why we are so drawn to one another.

Maybe we recognize something familiar.

Maybe we are all carrying little pieces of light.

Maybe we are all made of stars.

Who has become part of your constellation? I'd love to hear about the unexpected friendships, chance meetings, or ordinary moments that changed the direction of your life. Leave a comment below and share your story.

Purposed, Pressed, Preserved, Paused

Some titles arrive before we fully understand them.

Purposed, Pressed, Preserved, Paused was originally written as a chapter title for Tattered & Mended. At the time, it was meant to describe some of the things I have always been drawn toward creating and collecting: pressed flowers tucked between pages, vintage paperweights preserving tiny worlds beneath glass, and the quiet beauty found in objects that hold memory. It spoke of preservation, of keeping beauty safe, of honoring stories that deserved to be carried forward.

Eighteen months later, I find myself returning to those same words and realizing they were quietly speaking about more than objects.

Funny how life does that.

Sometimes we write words believing we understand them, only to discover later they were patiently waiting for us to grow into them. Looking back now, these words feel less like a chapter title and more like breadcrumbs left along a path. Because somewhere along the way, I realized I have lived each of them too. I have known seasons of purpose and seasons of pressure. Seasons of preservation and seasons of pause. And perhaps that is why certain words continue calling us back. Sometimes they are not simply something we wrote. Sometimes they become something we are still becoming.

"To everything there is a season, a time for every purpose under heaven..." Ecclesiastes 3:1 NKJV

There are seasons in life that arrive with certainty. They come carrying celebration and movement, and we recognize them immediately for what they are. A wedding day. A graduation. The birth of a child. A long-awaited prayer finally answered. We know how to hold those moments because they announce themselves. They fit neatly into photo albums and family stories. They become milestones we point toward later and say, That was the beginning. But not every season enters our lives that way. Some seasons arrive quietly. They do not announce themselves at all. They slip into our lives gently, almost unnoticed, and before long we realize they have settled beside us, unpacked their bags, and changed the landscape without asking permission.

These are often the seasons that leave us with more questions than answers. Seasons that feel suspended between where we have been and where we thought we were going. Seasons where plans become uncertain and timing no longer makes sense. They are the seasons that seem to stretch endlessly before us, asking us to wait when we would rather move, asking us to trust when we would rather understand. If I am being honest, I think many of us spend a great deal of our lives trying to outrun these seasons. We hurry ourselves forward. We search for clarity. We ask for open doors and visible signs. We become restless in stillness because stillness often feels far too much like being left behind.

Pause can feel uncomfortable. It can feel like standing in a hallway while everyone else seems to know where they are going. It can feel like sitting at a station after the train has already left. We begin comparing our timelines to everyone around us. We wonder if we somehow missed a turn or delayed things ourselves. We ask questions we rarely speak aloud. Did I take the wrong path? Have I somehow fallen behind? Why does it feel like everyone else is moving while I remain standing still?

But life, over time, has been teaching me something different. Something quieter and gentler than striving. Perhaps not every pause is empty. Perhaps not every still season is a delay. Perhaps some pauses are sacred places disguised as interruptions.

I have always been drawn to preserved things. Pressed flowers tucked between book pages. Old photographs whose edges have softened with time. Quilts stitched together by hands no longer here. Letters folded and unfolded so many times they seem to carry fingerprints and memory in equal measure. I have spent much of my life gathering things others may overlook because I have always believed objects can hold stories. Sometimes they become evidence that a moment mattered. Sometimes they become reminders that love lived here once.

Pressed flowers have always fascinated me in particular. Fresh flowers are vibrant and lively. They stretch toward sunlight and dance with every passing breeze. They fill rooms with fragrance and beauty. Yet pressed flowers tell another story entirely. They surrender their original shape. They become quieter somehow. Their colors soften. Their movement disappears. They flatten beneath weight and time. And yet they remain. Not exactly as they were before, but beautiful in an entirely different way. They become less about the bloom itself and more about what they carry forward.

I sometimes wonder if people are not so different.

Life has a way of pressing us too. Grief presses us. Love presses us. Responsibility presses us. Caregiving presses us. Change presses us. Loss presses us. Time itself presses us. And while we are living through those seasons, it rarely feels poetic. It rarely feels meaningful while we are standing in the middle of it. Most of the time it simply feels heavy. We wonder whether life is changing us into someone we no longer recognize. We wonder if we are losing pieces of ourselves. We wonder whether the pressure is flattening us in ways we will never recover from.

Perhaps that is what makes these seasons difficult. We notice what feels different long before we understand what remains.

There have been seasons in my own life that felt suspended in this way. Seasons where I could not understand what God was doing. Places where the road ahead seemed hidden and where life no longer resembled what I had planned. Not because everything was falling apart, but because life was unfolding differently than I expected. And perhaps that carries its own kind of grief. There is grief in plans changing. There is grief in identities shifting. There is grief in becoming someone new before you understand who that person is becoming.

No one really prepares us for the spaces between chapters. Those waiting rooms of life where we are no longer who we once were, but not yet who we are becoming. The world celebrates visible growth and forward movement. It applauds accomplishment and productivity and milestones. But nature has always spoken a quieter truth. Seeds disappear beneath soil before they ever bloom. Roots grow in hidden places. Bread rests before it rises. Winter itself appears still while life quietly prepares beneath the surface. Creation understands rhythms that many of us spend years resisting.

Perhaps we were never meant to bloom continuously.

Perhaps rest was always meant to be part of becoming.

Perhaps preservation itself is holy.

Because preserved does not mean forgotten. Pressed does not mean ruined. Paused does not mean abandoned.

There is a phrase I keep returning to lately: Pressed is not ruined.

Because I think many of us quietly believe otherwise. We believe hardship damaged us. We believe grief changed us beyond recognition. We believe waiting somehow stole time from us. But maybe those seasons gave something too. Maybe they taught us tenderness. Compassion. Strength. Perspective. Maybe they softened places certainty once occupied. Maybe they taught us how to sit beside someone else's sorrow. Maybe they widened our understanding of grace.

Some things cannot be learned while running. Some things can only be discovered while waiting.

And perhaps that is what preservation really is. Not abandonment. Not punishment. Not delay.

Care.

Intention.

Love saying, This still matters enough to keep.

Maybe there are seasons where God quietly places us between pages for safekeeping. Holding us while hidden work unfolds. Holding us while roots deepen. Holding us while healing catches up to us. Holding us while the next chapter slowly prepares to turn.

So if you find yourself in a season that feels pressed or paused, perhaps this week offers a gentle reminder: You are not behind. You are not forgotten. You are not unfinished. Some things are not lost at all. Some things are simply being preserved.

And preserved things often become the stories we carry closest to our hearts.

What if the season that feels like a pause is not holding you back at all... but holding you safely until it is time to bloom again?

As I revisit these words, I realize I no longer see them only through the lens of pressed flowers or paperweights. I see pieces of my own story there too. Maybe that is what time does. It gently returns us to things we thought we understood and offers us a different view.

So this week, I am curious:

Where in your own life have you been purposed, pressed, preserved, or paused?

Which word feels like the season you are living right now?

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments, or simply carry the question with you this week. Sometimes the answers arrive slowly. Sometimes they unfold like flowers pressed between pages, waiting patiently for us to notice them again.

The Yes I Would Choose Again

There are choices in life we make with confidence. Some arrive with spreadsheets and pros-and-cons lists, practical plans, and neat little timelines.

And then there are choices that arrive more like weather. They sweep in unexpectedly. They rearrange furniture in your soul. They alter landscapes you didn't know existed.

Love has always felt more like weather to me.

Lately, as I continue reflecting on the stories within Tattered & Mended: Soulful Stories of Life, Love and Legacy, I found myself sitting with Brian's chapter again. The chapter The Tattering and Mending I Didn't Choose. Even the title still catches in my throat a little.

Because if I'm being truthful, there were many things in that story I would never have chosen. I would not have chosen illness. I would not have chosen fear. I would not have chosen hospital rooms, hard conversations, or watching someone I loved walk a road I could not walk for him.

No one stands in line asking for heartbreak.

No one says, "Give me the chapter that will split me wide open."

But here's what I keep coming back to:

I chose Brian.

And if given the chance... I still would.

Every time.

Life has a funny way of asking us questions long after a season has passed.

Would you do it again?

Would you choose the person if you knew the ending?

Would you step toward love if you knew it would one day ask everything of you? Those questions feel easy when life is light. Harder when you've lived enough years to understand the cost of loving deeply. Because love always costs something.

Time.

Presence.

Pieces of yourself.

The willingness to be changed.

I think when we're young, we imagine love as arrival. We imagine the wedding photographs, anniversaries, family vacations, and growing old together with matching rocking chairs and inside jokes. But real love? Real love turns out to be built in ordinary Tuesdays.

In showing up.

In staying.

In learning a person's laugh.

In understanding their silences.

In memorizing the shape of their joy and the geography of their pain.

Love becomes thousands of tiny yeses.

Not one.

Thousands.

And looking back now, I realize Brian gave me things that never disappeared when he did. He changed the trajectory of my life. Not all at once. Not with grand speeches. But in small ways that became mountain-sized over time. There are people who enter our lives carrying gifts they don't even realize they hold.

Some hand us courage.

Some hand us perspective.

Some hand us healing.

Some hand us a mirror and quietly show us parts of ourselves we hadn't met yet.

Some leave fingerprints on your soul that no amount of time can erase.

Brian was one of those people.

His story inside Tattered & Mended is, of course, his own. And I won't give away all the pages here because some stories deserve to unfold in their own timing.

But I will say this: The chapter isn't only about loss.

It isn't only about grief.

It isn't only about the mending I never wanted.

It's also about choosing.

And choosing again.

About discovering that some loves become woven into us so deeply they stop feeling separate from who we are. Years later, I can still trace the threads.

I see them in my work.

I see them in the way I care for people.

I see them in the way I sit beside pain rather than run from it.

I see them in my understanding that life is fragile and sacred and wildly beautiful all at once.

The story changed me. But then again, maybe love always does. Perhaps that's the risk we quietly agree to when we say yes to people. We allow ourselves to be altered.

We hand another human being a needle and thread and say:

Here.

Help stitch yourself into my story. And maybe that is what I understand now that I couldn't have understood then. The tattering wasn't the whole story. The mending wasn't either.

Love was.

Still is.

If I had known every twist. Every ache. Every impossible moment. Every goodbye. I still would have said yes.

I would still choose him.

And perhaps that is one of the bravest things our hearts do. Not that we love. But that after being broken open by love, we remain willing to say yes again. Maybe that's where healing begins.

Not in forgetting.

Not in undoing.

But in honoring what was beautiful enough to choose twice. Or a thousand times over.

Some stories leave scars. Some leave gifts. Sometimes they leave both.

And if you're carrying a love that changed you, perhaps today is a good day to ask yourself:

Knowing all you know now...

Would you choose them again?

And perhaps, somewhere in the answer, you'll discover something about who you've become.

If you feel inclined, and have not purchased your copy you can find it here. If you have read this, I would love to hear your take on it. Possibly share if you have had a similar experience?

The Color We Give Away

There are weeks that feel like conferences.
And then there are weeks that feel like mirrors.

ReBloom was not simply an event on a calendar for me. It felt more like stepping into a greenhouse filled with women in different stages of becoming. Some were blooming wildly. Some were dormant after a hard season. Some were cracked open. Some were quietly beginning again.

And somehow, woven through the conversations, the workshops, the laughter, the exhaustion, the creativity, the tears, the nesting, the repotting, and the sacred act of trying again… there were flamingos.

Not in the loud, kitschy way the world often uses them.
Not lawn ornaments or neon vacation postcards.

But as symbols.

Living metaphors.

Little pink messengers standing in the middle of the week, asking many of us the same question:

What happens when we give so much of ourselves away?

Before ReBloom, I had painted a flamingo.

At the time, I honestly did not know much about them. I was simply drawn to the image. The curve of the neck. The elegance. The softness hidden inside such startling color. Something in me understood the bird before my mind did. That happens sometimes with art. Our hands know things our hearts have not caught up to yet.

The painting came from intuition long before understanding.

Then this week happened.

And suddenly the symbolism of flamingos found me all over again.

I learned that flamingos can lose their color while raising their young. The brilliant pink feathers that make them so recognizable begin to fade because so much of their energy and nourishment is being poured into their chicks. Their bodies literally give of themselves during nurturing. Their color drains as they feed, protect, and sustain new life.

I have not stopped thinking about that since.

Because how many women have done the same?

How many mothers?
Caregivers?
Artists?
Healers?
Partners?
Friends?

How many of us have looked in the mirror after years of pouring into everyone else and quietly wondered where our color went?

Not because we failed.
Not because we were weak.
But because we loved deeply.

That realization landed differently at ReBloom because the entire week seemed to revolve around this idea of repotting.

Repotting is uncomfortable. Anyone who gardens knows this.

A plant can outgrow even a beautiful container. The roots begin circling themselves. Growth becomes restricted. Water runs through too quickly. The thing that once protected the plant eventually becomes the very thing limiting it.

And so you loosen the roots.

You disturb the soil.

You move it.

Not because it is dying, but because it deserves room to continue becoming.

I think many of us arrived at ReBloom carrying root-bound versions of ourselves.

Not ruined.
Not broken beyond repair.
Just confined by old containers.

Old expectations.
Old identities.
Old griefs.
Old stories.
Old versions of ourselves we had long since outgrown.

Some of us have spent years being strong for everyone else.

Some of us learned how to survive so well that we forgot how to rest.

Some of us became so focused on keeping others alive that we stopped feeding the parts of ourselves that once danced, painted, dreamed, wandered, laughed, wrote, sang, created, explored, and rested without guilt.

And there, in the middle of a gathering called ReBloom, stood the flamingo.

A creature that loses color while nurturing life. Yet here is the beautiful part no one talks about enough:

The color comes back.

Flamingos are not meant to stay pale forever.

With rest, nourishment, and time, the vibrancy returns.

I think many women need to hear that.

Especially the ones who have spent years believing depletion is simply their permanent address.

It is not.

You are allowed to recover your color.

You are allowed to become vibrant again.

You are allowed to need replenishment too.

That realization changed the way I looked at the painting I had created before the trip.

When I painted that flamingo, I thought I was painting beauty.

Now I think maybe I was painting resilience.

Maybe I was painting the sacred exhaustion that comes from loving fully.

Maybe I was painting the quiet hope that color can return after seasons of giving.

Maybe I was unknowingly painting women.

The older I get, the more I realize that creativity often arrives before comprehension. Sometimes our art introduces us to truths we are not yet ready to speak aloud. The brush becomes a translator for the soul.

That flamingo painting now feels like a breadcrumb left behind by an earlier version of me.

A reminder.

A prophecy.

A mirror.

Because if I am honest, there have been seasons in my life where I have absolutely lost my color.

Grief can do that.

Caregiving can do that.

Survival can do that.

Building a business can do that.

Holding families together can do that.

Trying to remain hopeful through heartbreak can do that.

You keep pouring and pouring and pouring, believing love means constant output. And one day you realize your spirit feels faded around the edges.

Not gone.

Just dimmed.

And perhaps that is why gatherings like ReBloom matter so much. Not because they magically fix our lives in a weekend. But because they remind us we are not alone in the cycle.

They remind us that seasons exist for a reason.

They remind us that repotting is not failure.

They remind us that women gathering together is not frivolous. It is medicine.

Something holy happens when women tell the truth around tables.

When they create together.

When they laugh from the belly instead of the throat.

When they cry without apologizing.

When they say “me too” and mean it.

When they remind each other that exhaustion is not the same thing as purpose.

When they hold space for both grief and possibility at the same time.

There was something else I kept thinking about this week too.

Flamingos are rarely alone.

They gather in colonies.

They move together.

They protect one another collectively.

Even their nesting happens in community.

That part struck me deeply.

Because somewhere along the way, many women were taught that independence meant isolation. That strength meant carrying everything silently. That asking for help somehow diminished capability.

But nature tells a different story. Even flamingos raise life in community.

Maybe we were never meant to do all of this alone.

Maybe reblooming requires witnesses.

Maybe healing accelerates in safe company.

Maybe becoming is easier when someone reminds you that you are still beautiful even in seasons where your feathers look faded.

I think about all the women who came to ReBloom carrying invisible stories.

The ones rebuilding after loss.

The ones navigating transitions.

The ones rediscovering creativity after years of tending everyone else first.

The ones wondering if it is “too late.”

The ones quietly asking themselves whether they still matter beyond what they produce for others.

And I wish every one of them could understand this:

The fading was never the end of the story.

It was evidence that you loved.

Evidence that you nurtured.

Evidence that you gave life.

But now?

Now it may be time to nourish yourself too.

To rest.

To create.

To laugh.

To make strange beautiful art.

To sit under twinkle lights with women who understand.

To repot your life if necessary.

To loosen the roots around old beliefs.

To step into a larger container.

To allow yourself more room.

To become again… to savor.

I keep returning to the image of that flamingo painting.

What once felt whimsical now feels sacred to me.

Not because flamingos are perfect symbols of femininity or beauty. Honestly, they are awkward creatures in many ways. Long legs. Strange sounds. Gangly movements. A little wild around the edges. Which somehow makes the symbolism even better.

Becoming is awkward too.

Growth is rarely graceful while it is happening.

Repotting gets messy.

Healing gets messy.

Reclaiming your color gets messy.

And still…

The flamingo stands.

Bright against the waterline.

A reminder that what fades can return.

A reminder that nurturing others and nurturing yourself are both sacred acts.

A reminder that beauty is not the absence of exhaustion, but the willingness to bloom again after it.

ReBloom gave many of us more than inspiration this week.

It gave language to things we were already feeling.

It reminded us that we are cyclical beings.

Not machines.

We are allowed to rest after pouring out.

Allowed to evolve.

Allowed to begin again.

Allowed to become more ourselves with age instead of less.

And perhaps that is the real symbolism of the flamingo for me now.

Not simply beauty.

Not simply motherhood.

Not simply color.

But restoration.

The return of vibrancy after a season of giving.

The sacred understanding that what was poured out can also be replenished.

And maybe that is what art has been trying to teach me all along.

Sometimes we paint the lesson before we fully live it.

And maybe that is why I cannot stop thinking about the flamingo painting I created before ReBloom.

At the time, I thought I was simply painting something beautiful.

Now I wonder if I was painting a future understanding of myself.

A reminder waiting patiently for me to catch up to it.

Because after this week, after all the conversations about nesting, repotting, becoming, nurturing, exhaustion, creativity, and growth, I look at that painting differently now. I see layers I did not yet understand when the brush first touched the canvas.

I see the woman who gives deeply.

I see the seasons where color fades.

I see the quiet resilience of continuing to stand in the water anyway.

And maybe that painting is not finished after all.

Maybe it is waiting for new texture.
New color.
New light.

Maybe it needs a few finishing touches now that I understand flamingos better.

And perhaps, if I am being honest…

Now that I understand myself better too.

Because ReBloom reminded me that there are parts of us that do not need to be replaced. They simply need room to breathe again. Room to stretch new roots. Room to recover their color after seasons of pouring into everyone else.

Repotting does not erase what came before.
It honors the growth that made the old container too small.

So maybe I will return to that painting.

Not to repaint her entirely.
Not to cover who she once was.

But to add the wisdom that came later.

A little more depth.
A little more softness.
A little more understanding of what it means to nurture and still return to yourself.

Maybe that is what reblooming really is.

Not becoming someone entirely new…

But finally seeing the beauty, meaning, and sacred survival woven into who you have been all along.

I think she needs her friends :)

When Life Changes Everything

The Tattering and Mending I Didn’t Choose: A reflection from Chapter 5 of Tattered & Mended

There are some chapters in life we step into willingly…
and others that arrive uninvited, settling into our story like a storm we never saw forming.

This one was never on my list.

It wasn’t something I dreamed about, prayed for, or planned into the rhythm of our days. It came quietly at first, then all at once, reshaping everything I thought I knew about love, time, and what it means to stay.

There is a kind of mending that feels creative…
like stitching together scraps of fabric, choosing colors, textures, intention.

And then there is this kind.

The kind where the thread is handed to you
and you don’t get to choose the pattern.

When Love Changes Shape

There is a moment, one you don’t recognize at the time,
when love begins to change form.

It deepens. It stretches. It asks more of you than you knew you could give.

Not in grand gestures…
but in the quiet, daily decisions to remain.

To show up.
To hold steady.
To become something you didn’t know you would have to be.

This chapter of my life wasn’t about fixing what was broken.

It was about learning how to be present inside what couldn’t be fixed.

And that is a different kind of strength altogether.

The Sacred Work of Staying

We don’t talk enough about this kind of work.

The kind that happens behind closed doors…
in long days and longer nights…
in whispered prayers and moments where you have to gather yourself before walking back into the room.

There is no applause here.
No audience.

Just love…
in its most stripped-down, honest form.

The kind that says:

I am here.
Even now.
Especially now.

And somewhere in that space, something begins to shift.

Not the circumstances…
but you.

What Mending Really Means

I used to think mending meant making something whole again…
restoring it to what it once was.

But this chapter taught me something different.

Mending isn’t always about restoration.

Sometimes… it’s about integration.

It’s about carrying what was,
what is,
and what will never be again…
all in the same breath.

It’s about allowing love to remain,
even when the story changes in ways you never would have chosen.

A Quiet Invitation

I won’t tell the whole story here.

That belongs to the pages of Tattered & Mended.
To Chapter 5.
To the places where memory, love, and loss are woven together in a way that can only be fully understood by walking through it.

But I will say this:

If you have ever found yourself in a season you didn’t choose…
If life has ever handed you a thread you didn’t ask to carry…

You are not alone in that.

And there is a kind of beauty… quiet, steady, sacred…
that can still be found there.

Some mending isn’t about fixing what was broken…
but about honoring the love that remains.

If this piece speaks to you, I invite you to sit with it…
and when you’re ready, step a little deeper into the story inside Tattered & Mended.

I would love to hear what parts of it meet you where you are.

Where the Eagles Fly

Some stories feel like they’re written in ink…
steady, grounded, easy to follow.

And then there are stories like Rhonda’s…
the one that feels like they were written in air and light… shifting, lifting, asking you to look again.

There is a reason the eagle shows up in so many of our metaphors, our scriptures, our quiet daydreams.

It lives where most of us only visit in fleeting moments…
above the noise, above the rush, above the weight of everything pulling at us from below.

But what struck me most in Rhonda’s chapter wasn’t just the image of the eagle…

It was the journey it represents.

Where the Eagles Fly isn’t about pretending the valleys don’t exist.

It’s about what happens when you’ve walked through them long enough to recognize their patterns… when you begin to sense that maybe… just maybe… there’s another way to move through life that doesn’t require carrying everything the same way you always have.

There’s a quiet unfolding in this story.

Not rushed.
Not loud.
But deeply intentional.

One that doesn’t announce itself with grand declarations…
but instead reveals itself in small shifts of awareness, in moments where something inside whispers,

“Look again.”

And that’s where this chapter gently holds you.

Right in that space between what you’ve always known…
and what you’re beginning to understand.

There’s a tension there.

A stretching.

It can feel uncomfortable at first, like wings learning their own strength.

What I love about Rhonda’s story is that it doesn’t offer easy answers.

It doesn’t tie things up in a neat, predictable way.

Instead, it invites you into something deeper:

Perspective.

The kind that only comes when you’ve lived enough life to know that not everything needs to be solved… some things need to be seen from a different height.

Eagles don’t flap endlessly to stay in the sky.

They rise on currents that are already there.

They wait.
They watch.
They trust the lift.

And somewhere within these pages, you begin to feel that truth settle in… that maybe strength doesn’t always look like effort.

Maybe sometimes it looks like awareness.
Like timing. Like surrendering to something greater than your own striving.

There’s also a quiet thread of courage woven through this chapter.

Not the kind that demands attention…
but the kind that shows up when no one is watching.

The kind that chooses to keep going, to keep trusting, to keep rising,
even when the path ahead isn’t fully clear.

You may find yourself reading this story and thinking about your own life…

The places where you’ve been circling the same thoughts.
The places where the ground has felt heavy beneath your feet.
The places where you’ve wondered if there’s more, but haven’t quite known how to reach it.

And without saying it outright, this chapter gently reminds you:

There is.

Not by escaping what is.

But by allowing your view to expand.

By recognizing that the very winds that once felt like resistance…
might actually be the thing carrying you higher.

If you’ve been walking through the pages of Tattered & Mended, this is one of those chapters that feels like a turning point.

A quiet exhale.
A subtle lift.
A reminder that becoming doesn’t always happen in the doing.

Sometimes it happens in the rising.

And if you haven’t stepped into these stories yet, this one will meet you right where you are…
without asking you to rush, without asking you to have it all figured out.

Only inviting you to see differently.

I’d love to know when you read it:
what shifted for you?

What did you notice from a higher view?

You don’t have to fight the wind to move forward…
sometimes it’s already trying to lift you.

From Darkness Light Is Found

(A reflection inspired by Emily’s story in Tattered & Mended)

Sometimes a story doesn’t begin where you expect it to.

Not at the start…
not at the moment everything changed…

but somewhere in the middle…
where things feel uncertain,
where the air is heavier than it used to be,
and where you’re not quite sure what comes next.

That’s where Emily’s story meets us.

Not as an introduction,
but as an unfolding.

There are seasons in life that don’t ask for permission.

They arrive…
and suddenly, the landscape looks different.

Familiar things feel distant.
Simple things feel heavy.
And the person you once were feels just out of reach.

Emily found herself in a season like that.

And while I won’t tell you the details of how she got there.
That’s part of what makes her story worth reading.
I will tell you this:

She didn’t turn away from it.

There is a quiet kind of courage
that doesn’t look like strength from the outside.

It doesn’t make noise.
It doesn’t try to prove anything.

It simply stays.

Stays when it would be easier to run.
Stays when the answers aren’t clear.
Stays long enough to begin to understand
what the darkness is asking of you.

Emily chose that kind of courage.

What unfolds in her story isn’t a sudden shift.

There’s no single moment where everything changes.

Instead, there is a slow return.

A noticing.
A softening.
A willingness to believe that something more is possible…
even before there is proof.

And maybe that’s what makes her story feel so close to home.

Because most of us won’t have a dramatic turning point.

Most of us will have moments like these:
where the light doesn’t rush in…
but gently finds its way back.

Through connection.
Through presence.
Through someone sitting beside us
when we don’t have the words.

There is something sacred in that kind of light.

The kind that doesn’t overwhelm,
but steadies.

The kind that reminds you, quietly,
that you are still here.

Still becoming.
Still capable of holding both the weight
and the wonder of your own story.

I won’t tell you how Emily’s story unfolds from here.

Not because it’s being withheld,
but because it deserves to be experienced
in its own time,
in its own rhythm.

But I will say this:

What she walked through did not diminish her.

It revealed something deeper.
Something that could only be seen
once everything unnecessary had fallen away.

If you’ve ever found yourself in a season that felt unclear…
if you’ve ever wondered if the light would return…

her story will meet you there.

You’ll find it in Tattered & Mended: Soulful Stories of Life, Love and Legacy…
held gently within its pages, waiting for the moment you’re ready to turn toward it.

Some stories don’t need to be explained.

They just need to be felt.

Soul Threads

A reflection from Tattered & Mended

When I think about the phrase soul threads, I don’t picture something bold or obvious.

I picture something quieter.

A thread you almost don’t notice at first…
until one day you realize it has been holding something together all along.

There are people who come into our lives like that.

Not with fanfare.
Not with a grand entrance.

But with presence.

Steady.
Faithful.
Woven in so gently that you don’t fully understand their impact until you’ve walked through something hard … and realize they never let go.

Misty is one of those people.

And her story, Soul Threads, carries that presence from beginning to end.

Some stories are built around big moments.

Clear turning points.
Before and after.

But this one moves differently.

It moves through connection.

Through faith.
Through friendship.
Through the quiet, steady reminder that even in the hardest seasons… we are not alone.

There are seasons in life that stretch us.

Seasons that ask more of us than we feel prepared to give.

Seasons where the questions feel heavier than the answers.

And in those moments… it’s easy to feel like we have to carry it all on our own.

But we were never meant to.

What I felt so deeply in Misty’s story wasn’t just what she walked through…

It was how she was held while she walked through it.

Held by her faith.
Held by God.
Held by the presence of women who stood beside her … not to fix, not to rush the process, but simply to be there.

There is something sacred about that kind of friendship.

The one that doesn’t disappear when things get hard.

The one that leans in closer.

The one that reminds you who you are when you feel like you’re losing your footing.

We don’t talk about this enough.

The importance of women walking with one another through life… not just in the light, but in the weight of it.

In the uncertainty.
In the waiting.
In the moments that don’t make sense yet.

There is a strength in those connections that can’t be manufactured.

It’s built over time.

Through shared conversations.
Through quiet check-ins.
Through showing up … again and again … even when there are no perfect words.

And somewhere within those relationships … something else is woven in.

Something deeper.

A connection to God that often reveals itself most clearly when we are walking through something we cannot carry alone.

Sometimes that connection looks like peace that doesn’t make sense.

Sometimes it looks like strength you didn’t know you had.

And sometimes… it looks like the right people showing up at exactly the right time.

As I wrote Tattered & Mended: Soulful Stories of Life, Love and Legacy, I began to see how often these threads appeared.

Not just in Misty’s story… but throughout the entire book.

The way faith, friendship, and shared experience create something stronger than any one of us could build on our own.

We are not meant to do life in isolation.

We are meant to be woven together.

Supported.
Seen.
Carried when we need it… and strong enough to carry others when it’s their turn.

Misty’s story is a beautiful reflection of that truth.

A reminder that even in the hardest moments …
there are threads holding us.

Threads of faith.
Threads of friendship.
Threads of love that do not break under pressure… but instead, pull tighter… stronger… more intentional.

And maybe that’s what Soul Threads is really about.

Not just the connections we see…

But the ones we feel.

The ones that remind us…
we are never walking alone.

If you feel drawn to stories that honor both the weight and the beauty of life…
stories that reflect the importance of connection, faith, and the people who walk beside us…

I believe this chapter will speak to you.

Soul Threads is one piece of the larger story woven throughout Tattered & Mended.

And each thread… tells a story worth holding onto.

If you’ve already read it, I would love to hear what it meant to you.

And if you haven’t yet…
this may be your invitation.

A gentle thought to carry with you:
Who has walked beside you in your hardest seasons…
and how did their presence remind you that you were not alone?

Pieces of My Heart

Mellisa’s Story … A Becoming … Pieces of My Heart
From Tattered & Mended

Some stories don’t just live inside a book.

They shape it.

They shift its direction.
They deepen its meaning.
They quietly ask everything around them to rise to meet them.

Mellisa’s story was that for me.

When I began writing Tattered & Mended, I thought I understood what it was about.

I believed I was gathering stories of love, memory, and the beauty of what remains.

And in many ways, that’s true.

But somewhere along the way …
Mellisa’s story entered and something changed.

Not dramatically.
Not all at once.

But in that quiet, unmistakable way where you realize:

This is asking more of me.

Mellisa’s story wasn’t rooted in grief.

It wasn’t about loss in the way we often expect stories like this to be.

It was about becoming.

About standing in that in-between space …
where who you’ve been no longer fits,
and who you’re becoming hasn’t fully taken form yet.

She didn’t come to me looking to hold onto the past.

She came carrying pieces …
of her life, her experiences, her unfolding …

and somewhere within that, there was an unspoken question:

What do I do with who I am now?

That question stayed with me.

Long after our time together.
Long after the pieces had been placed.

Because it began to echo into the pages of the book itself.

Up until that point, I had been writing from a place of honoring what was.

But Mellisa’s story invited something more.

It invited me to write toward what is becoming.

To see each story not just as a reflection …
but as a continuation.

Not just something to preserve …
but something still in motion.

It shifted how I saw every piece that followed.

The textures felt different.
The meaning deepened.
The stories began to breathe in a new way.

As if the book itself had taken a quiet step forward.

There is something powerful about witnessing someone in the midst of their becoming.

Not finished.
Not defined.

But willing.

Willing to be seen.
Willing to step into what’s next, even without certainty.

And that’s what Mellisa offered, not just to me,
but to the heart of Tattered & Mended.

A reminder that we are not meant to stay who we were.

That the pieces we carry are not only remnants …

They are raw material.

For growth.
For expression.
For a life that continues to unfold.

There is a season for everything.

A season to remember.
A season to release.
A season to gather.
A season to become.

And sometimes …
one story holds the doorway between them all.

Mellisa’s story did that for me.

It changed the trajectory of the book.
It deepened my understanding of the work.
It reminded me that this isn’t just about what we’ve lived …

It’s about what we are still stepping into.

Pieces of My Heart is not a chapter about something ending.

It’s a chapter about something beginning.

A quiet invitation:

If you’ve read Tattered & Mended,
I would love to know what part of the book stayed with you.

Which story lingered a little longer…
which piece felt like it was speaking directly to you.

And if you haven’t read it yet,
this chapter, Mellisa’s story, might just be the place to begin.

Because somewhere in these pages…
you may find pieces of your own story.

Not as something to look back on.

But as something still becoming.

After the Bloom

There is a moment after something long-awaited arrives
where the world grows unexpectedly quiet.

Not empty…
just still.

The kind of stillness that doesn’t ask what’s next,
but instead leans in close and whispers,
can you stay here for a minute?

For so long, I was moving toward something.

Toward the book.
Toward the stories finding their way onto the page.
Toward this birthday, this turning of a decade that felt both significant and sacred.

There was a rhythm to it…
a hum beneath my days.
A sense of becoming that carried me forward, even when I couldn’t quite name what I was becoming into.

And then … it arrived.

The book is here.
The pages are no longer just mine.
They are in your hands, in your homes, in your quiet moments.

And I find myself here … in the after.

After the bloom.

We talk so much about the blooming.

The becoming.
The courage it takes to begin.
The vulnerability of sharing something that has lived inside of you for so long.

But we don’t often talk about what comes next.

What it feels like
when the petals have opened…
and there is nothing left to push toward.

Only something to receive.

I’ll be honest …
this part surprised me.

I expected joy, and there is joy.
I expected gratitude, and there is so much of it.

But there is also a quiet I didn’t anticipate.

A slowing.

A gentle settling into a space that feels less like doing
and more like being with what has already been done.

Maybe this is what the seasons have been trying to teach me all along.

That blooming is not the destination.

It’s a moment.

A beautiful, visible, often-celebrated moment,
but not the whole story.

Because after the bloom …
comes integration.

Comes rest.
Comes the quiet work of letting what has been created
find its place in the world … and in me.

I think about the flowers I’ve brought into my home over the years.

Not the ones still rooted in the garden,
but the ones gathered, placed in a vase,
set where I could see them as I moved through my day.

Cut flowers.

They are never meant to last forever.

And yet … we don’t bring them in expecting permanence.

We bring them in for their beauty.
For their presence. For their aroma.
For the way they soften a room,
or catch the light just right in the morning.

We know they will fade.

And still … we choose them.

Still … we enjoy them.

Not for how long they last,
but for how fully they are experienced while they’re here.

And maybe this moment is a little like that.

Not something to hold onto tightly
or measure by how long it stays exactly as it is …

but something to be with.

To enjoy.
To notice.
To receive while it is here in this form.

Because even this … will shift.

Not in a way that diminishes it,
but in a way that carries it forward
into whatever comes next.

So this week, I am not asking myself what’s next.

I am not rushing to fill the space.

I am letting myself sit here
in the after.

Holding what has come to life.
Honoring the path it took to get here.
Allowing myself to feel the fullness of it
without immediately reaching for the next beginning.

Because maybe this, too, is part of the becoming.

Not just the reaching …
but the receiving.

Not just the bloom …
but what comes after.

You don’t have to rush past the moment you prayed for.

You are allowed to sit in it.
To feel it.
To let it become part of you
before you begin again.

Turn, Turn, Turn… There Is a Season

Spring has arrived!

A Threshold of Light

When I hear Turn, Turn, Turn … To Everything There Is a Season, the song made famous by The Byrds, almost without thinking, I find myself recalling the very words of Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.

“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven…”

“Turn, Turn, Turn” was pulled directly from that scripture, by Pete Seeger in 1959, which speaks to the natural cycles of life and God’s timing. It reminds us that all things … birth, death, planting, healing, weeping, dancing, even war … have an ordained time.

It is one of many favorite passages for me … and it resonates especially now.

There is something about this week that feels like a quiet exhale.

Not loud.
Not urgent.
Just … full.

Spring has arrived, and with it, that gentle invitation to begin again.

And here I am, in my final days of my 50s, standing in a space that feels both reflective and expansive … a place where I can look back with tenderness and forward with excitement that doesn’t need to rush.

Welcoming the Season

We gathered this past weekend for our Spring Equinox sound bath session.

Different paths.
Different stories.

There were women from different decades of life in the room,
and still, the stories that surfaced felt deeply familiar:
woven with the same threads of love, loss, healing, and becoming.

It reminded me how little separates us when we are willing to be seen.

There was a softness in the space … an openness that didn’t need to be explained. As the bowls were played and the room settled into stillness, something unspoken began to unfold.

The intention we set was simple:

Renewal.
Softening.
Allowing.

Not forcing change … but making space for it.

What We Choose to Nurture

Spring doesn’t ask us to have it all figured out.

It asks us to tend.

To notice what is ready to grow.
To gently return to what matters.
To water what we want to see flourish.

As I’ve been sitting with this season, I’ve been asking myself:

What do I want to nurture now?

Not what needs to be rushed.
Not what needs to be proven.
But what feels true enough to grow slowly.

There is something sacred about choosing that kind of pace.

A Week of Quiet Milestones

This week has held its own quiet celebrations.

Finished quilts folded with care … each one carrying its own story.
A walk by the water, where everything felt clear without needing explanation.
Moments of stillness that somehow said more than words ever could.

And woven through all of it …

The nearing release of Tattered & Mended: Soulful Stories of Life, Love and Legacy.

This book has been a long unfolding. A gathering of stories, of memory, of meaning … of the things we hold onto and the things that shape us.

To see it arrive now, in this season, feels right.

Not because it is finished … but because I am ready to share it.

The Gift of Who Has Walked With Me

I found myself this week thinking about the people who have crossed my path.

The ones who stayed.
The ones who came for a season.
The ones who taught me something I didn’t even know I needed.

My family.
Jim … steady, grounding, always there.
My clients, who trust me with their stories, their stillness, their healing.

There is a quiet gratitude that sits beneath it all.

A knowing that none of this happens alone.

And that the life I live … this creative, soulful, simple life … is something I get to choose.

That is not something I take lightly.

The Privilege of Aging

There is a tenderness in approaching this next birthday.

A deeper awareness of time … not in a way that feels heavy, but in a way that feels meaningful.

Aging is a privilege.

Not everyone gets to arrive here.

And with each year, I feel a little less concerned with what doesn’t matter … and a little more rooted in what does. Maybe even a bit stoic. Accepting what I cannot change and making efforts on what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

Presence.
Connection.
Creating something that means something.

And maybe most of all …

Listening.

Listening in Awe

Lately, I’ve been listening more than I’ve been speaking.

Listening to the rhythm of my days.
To the quiet nudges.
To the way life unfolds when I stop trying to control every part of it.

There is something deeply humbling about it.

To realize that this life … as simple as it may seem … is also incredibly rich.

And that what’s ahead doesn’t need to be chased.

It just needs to be met.

What Comes Next

I don’t have a long list this week.

Just a feeling.

A full heart.
A sense of readiness.
An excitement for what is unfolding.

Spring is here.
A new decade is just ahead.
A book is about to enter the world.

And I am standing in the middle of it all …
grateful, grounded, and open.

There is a time for beginnings.
A time for reflection.
A time for gathering what has been … and a time for stepping into what is becoming.

And maybe this is simply that moment.

A season …
just as it was always meant to be.

Prepare, Root, Harvest

Preparing the Garden

As the two-week countdown to the release of Tattered & Mended begins, I find myself reflecting on the quiet blessing of giving, and the way small offerings, like seeds in a garden, often take root in ways we never expect.

There is a joy that comes in the act of giving.

Not the kind that asks to be seen, but the quiet joy that comes from placing something thoughtful into another person’s hands.

These past few weeks have felt a little like tending a garden.

There has been preparation, patience, and the steady rhythm of small daily work. Emails written. Pages edited. Photographs chosen. Words shared. Conversations with friends and readers who have walked alongside me for years.

And now, suddenly, we are only ten days away.

Ten days until Tattered & Mended finally makes its way out into the world.

Preparing the soil for garden season.

Rooted Before the Bloom

Anyone who has ever planted a garden knows something important.

The beauty we see above the soil is only possible because of what is happening beneath it. The seeds planted, or the plants’ roots first. Then the nurturing.

For a long time, this book has been quietly growing quietly in my life.

Through stories.
Through loss.
Through the objects we carry that hold the memory of the people we love.

It has grown through the long seasons of becoming, moments when I didn’t yet know what the final shape of it all would be.

And now, as the days move closer to launch day and my 60th birthday, I find myself reflecting on something that has become very clear to me this year.

Before we can share our gifts with the world, we must first be rooted in who we are.

Rooted in our values.
Rooted in our stories.
Rooted in the quiet knowing that what we are creating matters … because we matter.

The Gift Within the Giving

One of the unexpected blessings of preparing this book has been the reminder that creativity itself is an act of giving.

Every story shared.
Every piece of art.
Every handmade object placed into the world.

They are offerings.

Little lanterns along the road that say,
You are not alone in this.

When someone reads a story and sees themselves in it …
when a memory awakens in their own heart … that is where the real magic happens.

Giving, it turns out, is not about what leaves our hands.

It is about what grows in the space between us.

When a Flutter Finds Its Way

Just this week I was reminded again how far a small act of giving can travel.

Back in January, as part of the Gifting Art Project, several of the paperweights I created were given away through a nomination process. People quietly submitted the names of someone they felt could use a small moment of beauty or encouragement.

One of those pieces, a little butterfly captured in glass, recently made its way into the hands of the person who had been nominated.

Later that day my phone rang.

On the other end was the woman who had received it.

Her voice carried that unmistakable tone people have when something meaningful has just happened. She told me how the piece had caught the light on her table and how she kept turning it gently in her hands, noticing the details.

Then she shared something unexpected.

There was a connection between butterflies, a dear friend of hers, and that friend’s late husband. The kind of story that feels too sacred to repeat in full, a private thread woven between memory and love.

But as she spoke, I could feel the goosebumps rise on my arms, the tears in my eyes and the joy in my heart.

Sometimes the things we create seem to know exactly where they are meant to land.

A small object.
A quiet flutter of beauty.

And somehow it arrives in the very place where it is needed most.

Moments like that remind me that giving is rarely just about the object itself.

It is about the connection it carries.
The memory it awakens.
The way something simple can suddenly hold a much deeper meaning than we ever could have planned.

And in those moments, I am always left with the same quiet thought:

Perhaps we are not just making things.

Perhaps we are sending small messengers of care out into the world.

And in that moment I was reminded that giving is very much like planting a garden … we never quite know where the seeds will take root, only that when they are offered with love, they almost always find the soil they were meant for.

Flutter

Aligning With the Roots

At the beginning of this year, I chose five words to guide me.

The first was Align.

And as this quarter is unfolding, another word quietly stepped forward beside it.

Rooted.

Because alignment without roots can easily be blown off course.

But when we are rooted in what matters most, our path becomes clearer.

Our choices become steadier.

And the work we offer the world grows from something deeper than ambition.

It grows from truth.

A Garden Nearly Ready

These final days before the book arrives feel a little like standing at the edge of a garden just before the first blooms appear.

The soil has been turned.
The seeds have been planted.
The roots have taken hold.

And now we wait.

Not with impatience … but with gratitude.

Gratitude for the people who have supported this journey.
Gratitude for the stories that shaped these pages.
Gratitude for the simple, sacred act of creating something and offering it forward.

In many ways, this book is a garden of memories.

And very soon, it will be harvest time, and I will get to place it in your hands.

A Gentle Reflection

As you move through your own season this week, I invite you to ask yourself:

What am I planting right now?

And perhaps even more importantly…

Where are my roots growing deeper?

Because every meaningful harvest begins exactly this way.

Quietly.

Beneath the soil.

And in just a couple of weeks, I’ll have the joy of placing this little garden of stories into your hands.

The Long Road to Here

Sometimes life asks us to pause long enough to notice how far we’ve come before stepping into what comes next.

A Moment at the Doorway

There are moments in life that feel like standing in a doorway.

Not quite in the room you are leaving.
Not quite in the room you are entering.

Just there … pausing long enough to notice the weight of what has been and the quiet pull of what is coming next.

This is one of those moments for me.

Later this month I will turn sixty.

That sentence feels both ordinary and extraordinary when I write it down. Sixty years of living, loving, losing, learning, creating, rebuilding, and becoming. When I was younger, sixty sounded like a distant place where you eventually arrived if you were lucky.

Now that it is almost here, it feels less like an ending and more like a widening of the path.

A deeper breath.
A softer understanding of what truly matters.

Around the same time as this birthday, something else I have been tending quietly for years will step into the light.

A book.

A gathering of stories about the objects we carry through life … and the meaning they hold long after their practical purpose has faded.

But if I am honest, the book didn’t begin when I sat down to write it.

It began long before that.

Where the Stories Began

It began in the stories I grew up hearing.

At kitchen tables where memories were shared between bites of food and laughter. In the hands of people who saved things not because they were valuable, but because they meant something.

A worn piece of fabric.
A button tucked into a jar.
A feather found along a quiet path.
A photograph softened by time.

Objects like these may look small from the outside, but they carry entire worlds within them.

They hold the weight of love.

The tenderness of loss.

The quiet proof that a life was lived, that someone mattered, that a moment once existed that was worth remembering.

Over time I began to notice something.

People don’t just keep objects.

They keep stories.

And sometimes those stories simply need a place to land.

In my own life, creativity became that landing place.

Sometimes it showed up through paint.
Sometimes through stitching pieces of fabric together.
Sometimes through writing.

And sometimes through simply listening when someone placed an object in my hands and began telling me where it came from.

Those quiet moments have always felt sacred to me.

A Pause Along the Path

The other day I found myself walking a quiet path with an umbrella in hand during a passing rain.

The sky had not fully cleared yet, but there it was: a rainbow stretching across the horizon like a gentle reminder.

I stood there for a moment thinking about the long road that had led me here. The storms, the unexpected turns, the seasons of rebuilding.

And then the colors appeared, just as they always do, when the light finally meets the rain.

Sixty years of walking this road, and I am still discovering the beauty that waits just beyond the storm.

The Work of Mending

As this birthday approaches, I find myself looking back across the years with a kind of gentle curiosity.

What did I carry with me from one season to the next?

What did life ask me to lay down?

What did I learn to mend?

The truth is that none of us move through life without a few tattered places along the way.

There are moments that stretch us.
Moments that break us open.
Moments that ask us to gather the scattered pieces and decide what we will do with them.

Some people choose to hide those places.

But I have come to believe something different.

The places where life unraveled us are often the very places where meaning begins to take shape.

Where compassion deepens.

Where creativity begins to grow.

Where we learn that brokenness and beauty are not opposites, but companions.

The Threads That Connect Us

The stories I have been writing are not just about objects.

They are about the way our lives are stitched together over time.

About the way memory lingers in the things we hold.

About the quiet ways we become who we are meant to be.

And perhaps most of all, they are about honoring the lives that touched ours along the way.

Because none of us arrive here alone.

Every one of us carries pieces of the people who shaped us.

Their laughter.
Their wisdom.
Their traditions.
Their love.

Sometimes even their belongings.

And through those small, tangible things, their presence continues to ripple forward.

That realization has been one of the greatest gifts of this journey.

Standing in the Clearing

Turning sixty doesn’t feel like arriving at the end of something.

It feels like standing in a clearing where I can look back at the winding path behind me and see how every step, even the difficult ones, led here.

And just ahead, another path waits.

Still unfolding.
Still inviting curiosity.
Still full of stories that have yet to be told.

For now, I am simply pausing here … grateful for the long road that led me to this moment.

And for the stories that are just beginning to find their way home.

Gathering With Creative Women

There is a particular energy that rises when women gather with intention.

It is not loud.
It is not performative.
It hums.

This past week, seven of us from The Turquoise Iris Journal met in the Brentwood and Franklin area of Tennessee for our annual in-person mastermind and retreat.

This was my first time attending, and I was really looking forward to seeing everyone.

Some of these women I had only known through screens and shared documents. Others I have known for years. Yet the moment we walked into the same room, it felt less like introductions and more like recognition.

We came to work.
We came to dream.
We came to deepen.

And we did all three.

The Sacred Work of Women in Conversation

We often underestimate what happens in a room where women are both safe and ambitious.

We planned editorial calendars.
We discussed content strategy.
We mapped upcoming issues.
We shared business wins and honest frustrations.

But between brainstorming sessions, something far more important unfolded.

We listened to each other.

Not listening to answer.
Listening with your whole body … breath steady, posture open, fully present.

When women gather this way, walls lower without anyone announcing it. Stories come forward that would never appear in a public post. Vulnerabilities surface. Dreams are spoken aloud that have only been whispered in journals. And the tears and the hugs. The realization that we have more in common than we are different.

It becomes more than a mastermind.

It becomes a remembering.

From Online to In Person: The Gift of Embodied Friendship

There is something sacred about moving from pixels to presence.

To hug someone you’ve only seen in squares on a screen.
To hear laughter without a speaker.
To notice the way someone gestures when she talks about what she loves.

Friendship shifts when it becomes embodied.

You realize that the woman whose writing moves you also drinks her coffee slowly. That the one who speaks boldly in meetings also tears up when she talks about her unfulfilled dreams and expectations. That strength and tenderness coexist in ways that are impossible to capture fully online.

We cooked together.
We walked.
We shared meals around a table that held laughter and our stories.

Work and play were not separate categories. They braided together naturally.

And that, to me, is the beauty of women who build things together.

A gift from my friend BJ. She gave us each one. They were choosen for the word that she felt captured our gifts.

The Creative Current

Something else happens when women gather around shared creativity.

Ideas multiply.

One sentence spoken across the table becomes a theme.
One vulnerable story becomes … a reminder of our similarities.
One wild idea becomes a future event.

Creative energy is contagious in the best way.

There were moments when I looked around the room and felt the quiet awe of it all. These women are not just contributors to a journal. They are artists. Writers. Wives. Mothers. Business owners. Leaders. Dreamers.

They are beautiful.

Each one carries her own story.

And when those stories sit together at one table, something larger forms.

A current.
A collective intelligence.
A shared momentum.

Sound as the Thread That Settled Us

One of the greatest honors for me during our time together was introducing these women to sound therapy through two early morning sessions.

Before the planning.
Before the brainstorming began.

We gathered in quiet.

The bowls were placed in the front, and centered in the room. The tones rose slowly, gently filling the space we had already filled with conversation the night before.

And something shifted.

The mind softened.
The nervous system exhaled.
The room felt held.

It was deeply meaningful for me to share this part of my work with women who know me primarily as a writer and curator. To let them experience the frequency beneath the words. The stillness beneath the strategy. For me to facilitate this beautiful gift of sound.

Sound does something conversation cannot.

It bypasses explanation.
It settles what is stirred.
It integrates what has been spoken.

By the second morning session, I could feel the difference in the room. The ideas flowed with less strain. The collaboration felt more grounded. There was spaciousness around our ambition.

To witness these women receive that experience, to see their shoulders drop and their faces soften, hear them exhale, see their tears … felt like weaving another layer into our friendship.

Not just intellectual support.
Not just creative partnership.
But nervous system safety.

And that matters more than we often acknowledge.

Support Without Competition

There is an old narrative that says women compete.

That narrative did not enter the room.

What entered instead was celebration.

When one shared a win, we all felt it.
When one voiced a fear, we leaned closer, not away.
When one needed clarity, the others offered perspective without ego.

This is what healthy female friendship looks like:

• Honest feedback delivered with care
• Celebration without comparison
• Space to grow without shrinking
• Accountability without shame

It is powerful to be surrounded by women who are building businesses, writing books, creating art, leading communities … and who still choose softness with each other.

In a world that often asks women to armor up, we practiced something else.

We practiced trust.

Why Women’s Friendships Matter

On the ride home, I found myself reflecting on how essential this kind of gathering is.

Women’s friendships are not extra.
They are not indulgent.
They are not optional.

They are stabilizing.

They remind us who we are when we forget.
They hold our vision steady when we wobble.
They mirror back our growth.
They gently call us higher.

They are necessary.

For me, friendships like this feel ancient. Circles around fires. Stories shared under open skies. Wisdom passed through conversation and shared bread.

We may now meet in rented homes, but the essence remains the same.

Connection.
Support.
Witnessing.

What I Am Carrying Forward

I came home with notes, plans, and even more excitement for what is next.

But I also came home with something far less measurable.

Gratitude.

For women who show up.
For conversations that reflected, “I see you.”
For laughter that heals without announcing itself.
For mornings wrapped in resonance and shared stillness.
For friendships rooted not in convenience, but in shared becoming.

There is something deeply strengthening about knowing you are not building alone.

And perhaps that is the greatest gift of women gathering.

Not just the work accomplished.
Not just the strategy refined.
But the harmony created when women choose to support one another in both voice and silence.

Why I Wrote Tattered & Mended

Such a labor of love … my passion project … proof day!

Today is preorder day.

That feels surreal to type.

Before I share links, bundles, signed editions, or special offerings … I want to begin at the beginning.

Because Tattered & Mended: Soulful Stories of Life, Love, and Legacy did not start as a product.

It started as a question.

What do we do with the things that hold memory?

Not the polished heirlooms. Not the china behind glass.

I mean the worn denim jacket tucked in the back of a closet.
The tie that still carries a faint trace of cologne.
The fabric from a muumuu.
The pin worn to a wedding.
The saddle bag promised years ago and rediscovered when the timing was right.

I have always been drawn to what is left behind.

Because what is left behind is rarely the end of the story.

Often, it is the beginning of becoming.

The Beauty of What Is Held

For years, I have taken what others might discard and turned it into something wearable, holdable, blessable.

Weathered belts became bracelets.
Spoons became jewelry.
Faded shorts became a crossbody bag.
Ties became a jacket.
Flowers from funerals were carefully dried and layered onto watercolor-washed handmade papers, placed behind glass, and accented with touches of gold.

Layer by layer, the memory settles. Nothing forced. Nothing pierced. Just gently held between light and time.

What I began to notice was this:

The transformation was never just about the object.

It was about the permission.

Permission to grieve.
Permission to remember.
Permission to continue becoming, even after loss.

Grief Is Not the End … It Is a Threshold

When Brian walked through his journey with ALS and eventually left this earthly life, I learned something I could never unlearn:

Love does not disappear when a body does.

It changes form.

It moves into memory.
Into ritual.
Into scent.
Into fabric.
Into the way we hold ourselves when we remember.

Years later, when my mother passed during the pandemic and I could not sit beside her in her final hours, that understanding deepened.

What do you do with that kind of absence?

You create.

You layer petals between glass.
You melt wax into vessels that glow.
You gather fragments and ask what they might become.

Because becoming does not stop when someone we love is gone.

In many ways, it intensifies.

Why Stories Matter

Each chapter in Tattered & Mended follows a woman who took something deeply personal and allowed it to become art.

An ornament made from a mother’s clothing.
Ties reimagined from a father’s wardrobe.
Paperweights preserving fragments of handwritten notes.
Dried flowers layered carefully into heirloom pieces that hold both fragility and light.

Layering is an act of trust. Each petal rests upon another, not stitched into place but allowed to belong. Grief, too, arrives this way. In layers. In transparency. In quiet weight. And when given space, it becomes something luminous rather than something heavy.

We live in a world that rushes grief. That expects resilience without ritual.

This book slows that down.

It says:
Your story is not an inconvenience.
Your memory is not clutter.
Your longing is not weakness.

It is part of who you are becoming.

The Why Beneath the Why

If I am honest, this book is also a love letter.

To my mother, who taught me to create with whatever was in reach.
To my father, who handed me that saddle bag with a grin that said history still matters.
To Brian, who taught me that presence is the greatest gift we can give.
To Jim, who has stood beside me through interviews, edits, and printing setbacks.
To every person who trusted me with their story.

And perhaps quietly, to myself.

Because writing this required courage.
It required patience.
It required trusting that I, too, am still becoming.

This is not just a coffee table book.

It is a record of what happens when women refuse to throw away what still holds love … and instead allow it to shape who they are next.

Why Preorder Matters

Today, as preorders open, you are not simply purchasing a book.

You are saying yes to preserving stories.
You are supporting art born from sustainability and reverence.
You are honoring the sacred work of becoming.

This first edition marks the beginning.

If this book speaks to you …
If you have ever kept something because letting it go felt like losing someone twice …
If you sense that grief and growth can live in the same space …

I would be honored to have you join me at the beginning of this journey.

Preorders are officially open today.

Thank you for witnessing this becoming with me.

Rocking Toward Bliss

Rebloom Retreat May 2025

I recently watched a short contemplation about the Fire Horse, the Chinese New Year … a reflection on pace, intensity, and the way life can surge forward if we let it. I expected insight. Something philosophical, perhaps. Instead, what arrived was stillness … not what comes because everything outside has gone quiet, but the quiet that finds its way inward after a season of constant motion, the one that feels familiar, almost like coming home.

Over the past year, my rhythm changed without asking my permission. A traumatic moment, my father’s heart attack, shifted something deep inside me. Life tapped my shoulder and whispered, slow down. I didn’t respond immediately, and certainly not perfectly, but eventually I softened into a different tempo.

I began paying attention to what truly mattered.
Not how much information I could gather,
but the wisdom already living within me.

After watching that contemplation, a memory surfaced … or maybe more accurately, a story I’ve heard so many times it feels like memory. I could see myself on my childhood rocking horse, leaning forward with each push, the motion growing bigger and bolder. My father used to laugh when he told it, saying I would giggle louder and louder with every forward swing. He also admitted it made them nervous; they were certain I’d tip it over or fall at any moment.

I never did.

What stayed with him was the joy.
What stayed with me, apparently, was the motion.

There’s something almost poetic in that: the early love of rhythm, the forward pull, the sense of becoming one with the movement rather than trying to control it. I sometimes wonder if that was the beginning of my affection for horses, not just the horses themselves, but the feeling they carry. Even now, being near a horse brings an unmistakable calm over me. Their quiet strength, their steady breath, the way they respond to energy rather than noise … it all feels familiar. Perhaps that gentle rocking back and forth planted something deeper than anyone realized … a comfort with motion, a trust in momentum, a partnership with movement rather than resistance to it.

Riding with Jim on our honeymoon 2014 … a Horse year.

I was born in 1966, a Horse year. It’s the same era that carried the spirit of the Summer of Love, innovation, and cultural change. There’s poetry in that timing. A life that began in a season of collective acceleration now finding deep appeal in the quiet center between breaths. The world galloped forward, and here I am, discovering the grace of a gentle rock instead.

These days, my work feels simmered rather than rushed.
Ideas unfold instead of being chased.

I feel less drawn to cramming knowledge into already full spaces and more drawn to listening, really listening, for understanding. One fills shelves. The other fills the soul.

Cumberland Island 2022

Bliss, I am discovering, isn’t a burst of fireworks or a grand arrival.
It is a rocking motion.
A returning.
A recognition of the wisdom that has been present all along, simply waiting for room to speak.

Physically, mentally, spiritually, this season of life feels less like a race and more like a rhythm. The world still moves quickly, but I no longer feel compelled to match its speed. There is a certain freedom in trusting my own pace, in allowing insight to rise naturally instead of forcing it to appear.

I think of that rocking motion often now … the forward tilt, the backward return, the gentle certainty of movement without urgency. Somewhere along the way I realized that bliss isn’t always found by galloping ahead. Sometimes it is found in the quiet back-and-forth, in the simple act of slowing enough to hear the wisdom that has been within me all along.

Pensacola 2022

Behind the Pages: When Publishing Isn’t Perfect

There is a quiet myth about publishing that I am now learning.

It goes something like this:
You finish writing.
You upload the files.
A pristine proof arrives.
You exhale.
The book is born.

Reality, however, is far more human.

This week, another proof arrived for my book. I opened the package with the same flutter of excitement I’ve felt every time … that mix of anticipation and reverence that comes from holding months, sometimes years, of thought, memory, and effort in physical form.

And once again … there were issues.

Not something we missed.
Not the sort that comes from missed edits or overlooked margins.
But technical hiccups. Formatting quirks. Small misalignments that ripple across pages like tiny pebbles tossed into still water.

Houston, we have a trim problem!

For a moment, frustration knocked at the door.

I let it in just long enough to acknowledge it, then I remembered something important: publishing is not a straight line. It is a spiral. A return. A refinement. A conversation between vision and execution.

The proof stage is not a failure.
It is a collaboration.

It is where the book quietly asks, “Are we ready yet?”
And sometimes the honest answer is, “Almost.”

There is something deeply humbling about seeing your work in this unfinished state. It reminds me that creation is rarely glamorous. It is iterative. Layered. Patient. A little messy. Very alive.

There is an alignment issue on their end … all of our photo pages have an unintended gap :(

I think many of us imagine that artists and authors reach a point where everything flows without friction. The truth is: friction is part of the process. It polishes the final piece. It slows us just enough to notice what matters.

This week’s lesson wasn’t about perfection.
It was about persistence.

Each proof, each correction, each unexpected delay is not a step backward. It is a step toward clarity, toward honoring the work enough to let it become what it is meant to be, instead of rushing it out the door just to say it’s done, and frankly I, we, have worked to hard just to put it out there.

If you are creating something right now … a book, a business, a painting, or even a new version of yourself … and it isn’t unfolding in a straight, smooth line, take heart.

Progress sometimes looks like pause.
Refinement sometimes looks like repetition.
And becoming often asks for more patience than we planned to give.

This week, emails have been sent about print quality.
Questions have been asked.
Adjustments are in motion.

So … we wait.

But it is a different kind of waiting now … not the waiting of uncertainty, but the waiting of almost. The kind where you can feel the finish line just ahead, even if you cannot quite step across it yet.

We are so much closer than we were yesterday.
So much closer than last month.
And each small correction brings this book one step nearer to the hands and hearts for whom it was written.

Stay tuned.
The story is still unfolding … and I cannot wait to share it with you when the pages finally land exactly as they are meant to.

Almost is not failure. Almost is the doorway to refinement.

If you’re on your own creative journey, I’d love to hear what you’re bringing to life this season.

The Quiet of Snow

Snow changes a place without asking permission.
It does not arrive to impress or announce itself. It comes quietly, almost apologetically, and yet everything bends in response.

When snow begins to fall, the world seems to enter into a quiet agreement. The usual edges soften. Distance shortens. Sound retreats, as if it has been gently called home. Even time loosens its grip, no longer demanding progress or productivity, only presence.

Snow has a way of revealing how loud life has become.

What we notice first is not the cold, but the hush. The way familiar spaces feel altered without being rearranged. The way the air itself seems to listen. There is less urgency in movement, less insistence in thought. The world feels briefly unburdened of explanation.

There is something deeply invitational about snow. Not an invitation to retreat, but to reverence. To step more slowly. To pay attention to what remains when the noise pulls back.

We move differently when snow is present. Our steps shorten. Our bodies grow more aware. We notice the way breath gathers in the chest, the way cold sharpens the senses, the way quiet settles not just outside us, but within.

And in that stillness, something ancient remembers how to speak.

And when we pass through it, we leave very little behind.

A set of tracks.
A soft disruption.
The only evidence that someone was here at all.

Snow holds the memory of its travelers without commentary. It does not name them. It does not keep score. It simply bears witness, until even that disappears.

The Quiet of Snow

Snow does not arrive with announcements.
It comes like a held breath.

The world softens first.
Edges blur.
Sound learns how to whisper.

Footsteps become careful,
as if the earth itself is resting
and we are guests passing through
a sacred room.

Our tracks are the only witnesses,
brief signatures written in white,
gone almost as soon as they appear.

Snow quiets what has been loud for too long.
It settles arguments,
pauses momentum,
smooths the sharp corners of thought.

There is a kind of mercy in it.
A reminder that nothing needs fixing right now.
Nothing needs explaining.

Under snow,
everything is allowed to be unfinished.

The fields rest.
The branches bow.
The ground receives what it has been waiting for.

Snow teaches us that stillness is not empty.
It is full of listening.

The Quiet Leaves a Trace

When the snow melts, the world will rush back in. It always does. The noise, the pace, the expectations return as if nothing happened. Roads clear. Schedules resume. The hush lifts.

But something has happened.

The quiet leaves a trace, even after the evidence disappears. Long after the tracks are gone, the body remembers what it felt like to walk more gently. To leave less behind. To move through the world without needing to announce itself.

Snow reminds us that not all presence requires permanence. Some moments are meant to pass through us, not stay. Some truths only arrive when there is nothing competing for our attention.

Even after the snow recedes, the earth remembers who crossed it.
And perhaps, so do we.

Snow doesn’t ask us to explain what we felt while standing in it.
It simply asks whether we noticed.

If this piece stirred something quiet for you, you’re welcome to leave a trace here.
Not a conclusion. Not a performance.
Just a small mark of having passed through.

What did the quiet of snow reveal to you?

Snow has a way of softening the world without asking anything in return. This week’s blog isn’t about winter or weather, really. It’s about what happens when sound steps back and presence steps forward. If you’re craving a few quiet moments, I left a path open for you here.
Read when the world feels loud.

Not for the Faint of Heart (That’s How I Knew It Mattered)

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”
— Anaïs Nin

I submitted my book this week … and I realized something I didn’t expect to feel so deeply:

This wasn’t for the faint of heart.

Not mine.
Not anyone’s.

Because submitting a book isn’t just uploading files and clicking a button. It’s not simply “done.” It’s not a tidy finish line with confetti and a clean exhale.

It’s a threshold.

It’s standing in the doorway of something you made with your own hands and your own history, holding it out into the world, and realizing … this is real now.

And suddenly, it hits you.

This isn’t just a project.
This is a piece of your life.

The truth is … I felt exposed.

I don’t mean in a dramatic way. I mean in a quiet, honest way.

Like the kind of vulnerability that doesn’t announce itself.
It just shows up in your body.

A tight chest.
A lump in your throat.
A long stare at the screen.

Because when you’ve poured yourself into something that carries memory, grief, legacy, love, and the type of healing you can’t always explain … you don’t hit “submit” and skip away like it’s nothing.

You hit submit and realize you’ve offered your heart in public.

And for a moment, you wonder if you should pull it back.

But here’s what I know now:

If it scares me to share it, that’s usually the part someone needs most.

Not the polished part.
Not the perfect part.
Not the “look how productive I’ve been” part.

The real part.

The part that cost me something.
The part that required tenderness.
The part that asked me to be brave in a way that had nothing to do with confidence.

Because confidence is loud.

But courage … courage is often quiet.

Courage looks like showing up even when your voice shakes.
Courage looks like creating anyway.
Courage looks like saying, “This matters,” even when you’re not sure who will understand it.

This book asked more of me than I expected.

I knew Tattered & Mended would be meaningful. I knew it would be personal.

But I don’t think I fully realized how much it would ask of me until I reached this moment.

Because the stories inside it aren’t just words on paper. They are lived. They are carried.

They hold the ache of missing someone.
The strange holiness of keeping what remains.
The way grief lives in the fabric of ordinary things.

And they hold something else too:

The beauty of transformation.

The way a piece of cloth can become a keepsake.
The way a garment can become a story.
The way a woman can become herself again, one stitch at a time.

The fear didn’t mean I was doing it wrong.

This week reminded me that fear isn’t always a warning sign.

Sometimes fear is simply the nervous system recognizing:

“This is big.”
“This is sacred.”
“This is new.”

Sometimes fear is the cost of stepping into visibility.

Sometimes it’s the price of letting something private become shared.

And sometimes it’s proof that what you’re doing has weight, and meaning, and a pulse.

Not for the faint of heart… but for the willing.

For the ones who have lived through hard things and still believe in beauty.

For the ones who are learning how to carry love and loss in the same hands.

For the ones who are tired of rushing past their own feelings.

For the ones who want to make something meaningful out of what remains.

This is what I keep coming back to:

The things that matter most rarely come easy. They come honest.

And maybe that’s the whole point.

A gentle reflection for you (if you’re in a brave season too)

If you’ve ever stood at the edge of something you created … and felt that same tender fear, I want to ask you this:

What are you holding back because it matters so much?
And what might happen if you let it be seen anyway?

Because maybe the trembling doesn’t mean you’re not ready.

Maybe it means you’re standing in the exact place where growth begins.

And maybe, just maybe …

Not being faint of heart is simply another way of saying: You’re alive. You’re healing. You’re becoming.

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen …”
— Brené Brown

What’s one brave thing you’ve done recently that didn’t feel “easy” … but felt true?

Tattered & Mended: The Story Behind the Story

Apron I made for my mother when I was twelve.

There are some projects you choose …
and then there are the ones that choose you.

Tattered and Mended didn’t begin with a business plan or a publishing checklist. It began the way so much healing begins, quietly. In the background. In the soft places of life where grief lives, where love lingers, and where the heart keeps reaching for something it can hold.

For a long time, I thought I was simply making art.

But somewhere in the process, I realized I was doing something deeper.

I was learning how to hold what remains.

Because when we lose someone we love, the world doesn’t just feel different, it is different. And yet … their presence doesn’t disappear. It changes form. It becomes memory. It becomes scent and sound. It becomes certain songs you can’t hear without tearing up. It becomes a kitchen chair you still glance toward. It becomes the way your hands still reach for them in the dark.

And sometimes, it becomes fabric.

A denim jacket that still smells like home.
A flannel shirt that once held a heartbeat.
A stack of quilts folded carefully and put away because the idea of using them feels like erasing something sacred.

If you’ve ever held onto something like that, you already understand the beginning of this book.

The Why

I’m writing Tattered and Mended because I believe we all carry stories, and many of them are stitched into the things we keep.

This book is about grief, yes.
But it’s also about love and legacy.

It’s about the way love doesn’t end, it transforms.
It changes shape.
It asks for a new language.

And for me, that language has often been made of thread and needle, paint and paper, scent and warmth, texture and time.

I’ve come to understand something that surprised me:

Mending isn’t what I do.
It’s who I’ve become.

Because mending is not just repairing what was torn.
It’s learning how to live again.
It’s learning how to carry what hurts without hardening.
It’s making something beautiful without pretending the broken parts never happened.

The Process (The Part People Don’t Always See)

The process of creating this book has been equal parts art and reverence.

Each story begins with a woman, a man, a life, a loss … and a handful of pieces that mattered. Sometimes those pieces come from a cedar chest. Sometimes from a closet that hasn’t been opened in years. Sometimes from a box that has traveled through multiple moves because no one could bear to let it go.

And then we begin.

I listened.
I asked questions.
I learned who the person was, what they loved, what they wore, what they carried, what made them laugh, what made them who they were.

Then I began to create.

Not to replace what’s gone, because nothing can do that.

But to honor it.

To shape something wearable, repurposed, and tangible that says:

I see you.
You’re not broken.
You’re becoming.

Sometimes the sewing is the easy part.
Sometimes the hardest part is simply holding the weight of the story with tenderness and care.

There are moments I sit down to sew, and what I really end up doing is remembering.

There are moments the fabric feels like a doorway, and I have to pause and breathe before I step through … a threshold.

And there are moments when I realize the most sacred part of this work is not the keepsake itself, but what happens in the person receiving it.

Because it isn’t just clothing.

It’s a continuation.

It’s a way of saying:
Love still lives here.

What This Book Is Really About

On the surface, Tattered and Mended is about up-cycled garments or keepsakes created from cherished relics.

But underneath, it’s about something more timeless.

It’s about how we carry legacy.
How we hold memory in our hands.
How we make meaning from what remains.
How we keep going, even after the unthinkable.

It’s about the courage it takes to let grief transform you instead of closing you down.

And it’s about creativity as a holy act, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s honest.

Because there is something deeply human, deeply sacred, about taking what was torn and saying:

I will not waste this.

I will make something from it.

I will let it become part of my healing.

Why I’m Sharing This Now

I’m sharing this now because I’m still in the middle of it.

I’ve created.
I’ve listened.

I’ve gathered stories and shaped them into something worthy of the people they represent. And I think there’s something powerful about letting you witness the process, not just the finished product.

We live in a world that celebrates the “after.”
The polished.
The final reveal.

But I’ve learned that the most meaningful parts of becoming happen in the “during.”

The quiet.
The in-between.
The slow stitching of a life being rebuilt.

And that’s where I am.

A Gentle Invitation

If you’ve ever loved someone deeply and didn’t know what to do with the love after they were gone … this book is for you.

If you’ve ever kept a shirt, a scarf, a quilt, a jacket, not because it was valuable, but because it held them … this book is for you.

And if you’re in a season where you are learning to mend, not just fabric, but your own heart … I hope you’ll stay close.

I’ll be sharing more behind the scenes as Tattered and Mended continues to unfold, story by story, stitch by stitch, arrangement by arrangement.

Thank you for being here.

Thank you for witnessing.

And thank you for believing, as I do, that what’s been torn can still become beautiful.

Closing Blessing

May what we’ve lost become what we carry with tenderness.
May what we mend become what heals us too.
And may every thread of love find its way forward.