Loosening the Stays - What Remains

It always surprises me how quiet it feels after.

One moment everything is alive—the air humming, voices layered, laughter catching in the corners, light hitting glass and crystal and scattering in every direction like the whole space is breathing—and then it’s gone. You pack it up, drive home, take off the heels, loosen the corset, and suddenly there’s nothing holding that energy in place anymore. It leaves your body slowly, like a tide pulling back, and you’re left in the stillness, trying to understand what just moved through you.

I felt it this time more than ever.

Not just the excitement, not just the high—but something fuller. Something that didn’t belong to me alone. Maybe it was the people. Maybe it was the energy in the room. Maybe it was the crystals—God, there were so many this time, catching the light from every angle like the whole place was charged with something just beneath the surface. Whatever it was, it stayed with me. And yesterday, I felt the drop. Slow, heavy, real. The kind where you find yourself trying to rebalance, to ground, to take care of yourself after giving so much of your energy away. I laughed to myself at one point, calling it a post-market hangover—but there’s truth in that. You don’t walk away untouched.

Because what stays with me isn’t what I sold. It never is.

It’s the moments that had no reason to happen, the conversations that weren’t leading anywhere, didn’t have a purpose, weren’t trying to become anything—and somehow, those are the ones that root the deepest.

Like someone noticing my lashes. Such a small thing on the surface, easy to brush past, but it wasn’t about that. It was about loss. About trying to find a way back into herself after something shifted that she didn’t choose. And in that moment, there was no transaction, no role to play, no “vendor” or “customer.” Just two people standing there, and space. Real space. The kind where someone feels safe enough to ask a question they might not ask anywhere else. The kind where you don’t rush the answer—you just stay. You meet them there.

And then somehow, in the same day, conversations turn in ways you could never plan. One moment you’re talking about your work, the next you’re talking about life, about homes, about routines—and suddenly you’re being asked if you’re taking on new cleaning clients. And you laugh, because of course that’s part of you too, and somehow it all fits. Nothing’s forced. Nothing’s separate. Just threads crossing where they’re meant to.

Family, friends, new acquaintances—faces you recognise, and faces you’ll remember long after the tables are packed away.

And then the quiet ones. The unexpected ones. A gentleman leaning in just enough to catch you off guard with a compliment on your outfit. Simple. Kind. No weight behind it, no expectation—just something offered and gone. And it lands more than you expect it to.

It all lands.

And standing there—in three-inch heels, cinched into a corset, topped with a hat, fully and unapologetically myself—I realise how little any of the surface actually matters. How we show up matters. How we hold space matters. How we let people be exactly who they are, even for a moment, without needing them to change or explain themselves—that matters.

I didn’t feel like I was there to sell anything. I felt like I was there to witness. To meet people where they were. To let them land, even briefly, in a place where they didn’t feel judged or rushed or unseen. And somehow, that creates something far more lasting than anything exchanged across a table.

I go into these spaces thinking I’m offering something—my work, my words, my time—but I leave every single time feeling like I’ve been handed something back that I can’t measure. Something that fills me in a way that doesn’t spike and disappear, but settles deeper, slower. It’s overwhelming in the quiet after, in the best way. Like realising that what you’re actually building has nothing to do with numbers or outcomes or how much you move in a day.

It’s something else entirely.

Something that lives in the space between people. In the pauses. In the willingness to stay a little longer in a moment that didn’t need to matter—but did.

This is what I’ll keep showing up for. The moments that aren’t meant to be anything—and somehow become everything.

Second Gear - The Next Ride

I’ve been thinking a lot about dreams lately.

Not the ones that come and go while we sleep, but the ones that stay with us—the quiet kind that sit just beneath the surface of our everyday lives, waiting for the moment we decide to listen. I’ve never been drawn to the kind of dreams that look good on paper. Big houses, fancy cars, the polished version of success… none of that ever really spoke to me. What I’ve always chased is something a little harder to explain. I’ve wanted to know how far I could push myself before something gave out. Not in a reckless, self-destructive way—although I’ll admit, sometimes it’s probably looked like that—but in a way that felt like testing the edges of who I am.

I grew up learning how to find my own way. Being the youngest of eight meant life was already in full motion by the time I arrived, and somewhere in that space, I found a kind of freedom. No one was really standing in my way, which meant I got to decide who I would be and how I would move through the world. Maybe that’s where it started—that belief that if I wanted something, I could go after it. Not perfectly, not always wisely, but fully. I don’t remember ever questioning whether I could do something. The answer was always yes. The only real question was how.

Last year, that question took shape in a very specific way. I had planned to run the Bruce Trail for my 49th year. It felt like the kind of challenge that made sense to me—something long, demanding, something that would ask a lot and give just as much in return. But life doesn’t always line up with our plans, and mine shifted in the direction of a total hip replacement. Even then, I wasn’t ready to let go of the version of myself that keeps moving forward, so I ran as much as I could right up until the surgery. Looking back, I can see the stubbornness in that, but I can also see the refusal to let something I loved slip away without a fight.

When running was no longer an option, I didn’t stop. I changed direction. Somewhere along the way, without overthinking it, I found myself on a bike. It wasn’t something I had planned or trained for in any traditional sense. The idea just arrived, the way these things often do for me, and once it was there, I knew I had to follow it. So I gave myself seven weeks to prepare after years of being mostly inactive and set out to ride over 630 kilometres. I did it on a junior bike, on a hip that had been quietly failing me for longer than I realised, and somehow, I made it through.

That ride stayed with me. Not because it was perfect or fast or impressive in any traditional sense, but because of what it asked of me. Long days, steady effort, pushing through discomfort and doubt, finding strength in places I hadn’t needed before. It was different from running. Less explosive, more enduring. And in that, I found something I didn’t know I was looking for—a deeper kind of resilience.

I carried that from Delhi to Gravenhurst over a series of weekends, showing up each time with whatever I had left to give. Some days it was motivation. Other days it was sheer determination. And if I’m being honest, there were moments where it was nothing more than raw, unprocessed emotion pushing me forward. But I finished it, and shortly after, I stepped into the next chapter and got my new hip.

And everything changed.

Healing didn’t feel like slowing down. It felt like being given something back. Within weeks, I was moving again, working again, and by the time my birthday came around, I was dancing without hesitation. There’s something powerful about realising your body can meet you where your spirit has always been. Since then, I haven’t really stopped. Early mornings, long days, full schedules—it’s a rhythm that feels like home to me. It’s not about being busy. It’s about being alive in what I’m doing.

And now, I feel that pull again.

It’s familiar, almost quiet at first, but steady. The kind that doesn’t go away. So I’m listening. I’m going back to the same route I rode before, but this time I’m not breaking it into pieces. I’m riding it straight through, day after day, letting the experience unfold in a different way. I want to see what’s changed, not just in my body, but in me. I want to feel the difference, to understand what this next version of myself is capable of.

And the truth is… I already know this isn’t where it ends.

Because somewhere in the background, there’s already another idea taking shape. If this ride goes the way I feel it might, next year I won’t be stopping where I did before. I’ll keep going. Past Gravenhurst. Past the point where it once felt like enough. I’ll follow the trail all the way to New Brunswick—over 2,600 kilometres, on the same bike, with the same quiet determination—just stretched across something bigger, something that asks even more of me.

I think from the outside, a life like this can look chaotic. Maybe even a little unpredictable. But there’s a kind of clarity underneath it all that I’ve come to rely on. It’s the understanding that time isn’t something we have endless amounts of, even though we like to pretend we do. It’s the awareness that the things we keep putting off, the dreams we keep quiet, don’t disappear—they wait. And the longer we ignore them, the heavier they become.

I’ve lived on both sides of that. I’ve told myself there wasn’t time, that responsibilities came first, that maybe certain things just weren’t meant for me anymore. And all it did was slowly take something away that I didn’t even realise I was losing. So I made a choice, at some point, to stop doing that. To stop negotiating with the part of me that wanted more.

Because the truth is, this life we have is the only one we get. And it’s not meant to be lived halfway.

So if there’s something calling to you—something that keeps showing up no matter how many times you push it aside—maybe it’s there for a reason. Maybe it’s asking you to trust it. To follow it. To see where it leads.

That’s what I’m doing.

Shifting into second gear… and going.

It Doesn't Have to Make Sense - Move Anyway

Humans have a quiet way of convincing themselves of things—not because they’re true, but because they feel safer to live with than the alternative.

I don’t think we’re actually afraid of failure. I think we’re afraid of the moment we have to call something a failure—when it doesn’t happen by the time we think it should, or in the way we imagine, and suddenly it feels like it means something about us. Because failure needs a timeline. It needs an expectation. Without those things, what is it really?

Just experience.
Just movement.
Just something that doesn’t go the way we planned… yet.

I’ve always been someone who believes I can pull things off—big things, unrealistic things, the kind that don’t make sense on paper. And that part of me got labelled early.

Imaginative.
Over the top.
Too much.

For a while, I believed it. I’d try to quiet that part of me. But every time I did, things in my life got chaotic, fast. It took me a long time to realise that the gift of optimism wasn’t the problem—it was the direction.

So I stop pushing it down.

I build a life that actually supports it. Not blindly—never blindly. What looks like instability from the outside is me learning, constantly. Hairdressing, personal training, nutrition, yoga, aesthetics, massage therapy, herbal remedies… the list goes on. I follow what I’m drawn to and build a foundation that doesn’t fit into one title, but shows up in everything I do. Because knowledge is powerful—the more you understand, the more you can adapt, adjust, and trust yourself in the moment instead of relying on guesswork.

A year ago, I made a decision to bike 600 kilometres across Southern Ontario on a busted hip. That doesn’t make sense on paper—but I don’t live my life on paper. I understand my body, I trust my training, and I do it. Then I had my hip replacement. Six weeks later, I was back at work. Eight months later, I’m running again. And now I’m planning another 600-kilometre ride—on a brand new hip, not even knowing how it’s going to respond.

At some point along my journey, it stopped mattering to me what people think. And when that happened, fear went with it.

When I was younger, I unconsciously adopted a motto: no expectations, no letdowns. It wasn’t about lowering the bar—it was about refusing to let expectations become limits. Not because I don’t care, but because I care enough to show up fully without attaching my worth to how something turns out.

You don’t need certainty to move forward.
You don’t need guarantees.
Trust that you have the knowledge to figure it out.

Because fear needs witnesses. It needs judgment. It needs the possibility of being seen as having failed.

Remove that, and what you’re left with is freedom.

There’s a difference between ego and that kind of trust. Ego says it has to work—there’s no other option. What I follow allows for risk. It allows for the unknown. It moves anyway.

So I don’t believe in failure the way I used to. I think a lot of what we call impossible… is just what we’ve been taught not to try.

The moment you stop letting other people decide what’s possible for you—

Everything changes.

Fool’s Light Under a Pink Moon

A full moon falling on April Fools’ Day feels almost too precise to be accidental.

Not ironic.
Not playful.

Intentional.

Like something unseen has chosen this exact moment to pull the veil just thin enough that what’s been sitting beneath the surface can finally be felt for what it is—without distraction, without noise, without the comfort of pretending not to notice.

They call it the Pink Moon, though it never arrives in that colour. It’s named for the wild phlox that bloom quietly this time of year—soft, persistent, and unapologetic in their timing. They don’t wait for permission. They don’t announce themselves. They simply appear, as if they’ve always been there, just waiting for the right conditions to be recognised.

And maybe that’s what this is.

Not something new.

Something revealed.

Because not everything enters your life with clarity. Some things arrive as a shift in the air, a subtle change in how a moment feels compared to how it should feel, a quiet awareness that builds without asking for your attention until one day you realise it has had it all along.

It’s easy to call that confusion at first.

Easier still to laugh it off.

That’s what April Fools has always offered—a way to brush past truth without having to hold it. A way to say something real and soften it just enough to retreat if it isn’t returned. A built-in escape route that lets everything remain safely undefined.

But there comes a point where something refuses to stay in that space.

Where the energy becomes too consistent, too steady, too undeniable to keep folding into coincidence.

Where what you feel no longer flickers.

It holds.

And once it holds, it asks something of you.

Not action.

Not explanation.

Recognition.

Because there is a difference between uncertainty and restraint, and they don’t feel the same—not when you’re honest with yourself about it. Uncertainty drifts. It wavers. It questions. But restraint is quiet. Intentional. A choice to remain still in something that is already understood.

Time moves differently inside that kind of knowing. It doesn’t rush you. It doesn’t demand answers. But it doesn’t wait forever either. It moves through the almosts, through the hesitations, through the moments that feel like they’re standing at the edge of becoming something more, just waiting for the slightest shift to tip them one way or the other.

And eventually, even the softest truths reach a point where they stop asking to be discovered… and start asking to be met.

This moon doesn’t create anything. It reveals what’s already been standing there.

Patiently. Quietly. Without force.

Just visible enough now that it can no longer be unseen.

And maybe that’s all this is.

Not a question.
Not a confession.

Just a moment where something real is allowed to exist without disguise.

Because some things don’t need to be said out loud to be known…

but they do wait to see if they echo back. 🌙

Control — The Comfort We Cling To

I don’t think I ever would have called myself controlling. Not in the way we imagine it—tight fists, rigid plans, needing everything to go exactly right. I’ve always seen myself as someone who flows, someone who listens, someone who adapts. But lately, I’ve been sitting with something quieter. A realisation that didn’t arrive all at once, but slowly… like a thought that kept returning until I finally stopped to listen.

And strangely enough, it started with AI.

There’s so much resistance around it right now. So much fear woven into the conversation, like it’s something that’s going to take over, replace us, unravel everything we understand about the world. And maybe some of that unease is natural—we tend to pull back from what we don’t fully understand. But the more I’ve watched people react to it, the more it’s felt like something deeper than that.

It doesn’t feel like fear of AI.

It feels like fear of losing control.

Because when you strip it back, it’s just a tool. Something we interact with. Something that reflects what we bring to it. Something we can learn from. And yet the reaction to it has been so strong, so emotional, almost defensive… as if it’s threatening something fundamental.

And maybe it is.

Maybe it’s pressing on that part of us that wants to understand everything, predict everything, stay just one step ahead of whatever might come next. That part of us that wants to feel safe… by feeling in control.

When I turned that inward, I could feel it in myself, too. Not loudly, but in a small, almost invisible way. The pause before a decision. The need to think something through just a little longer. The quiet waiting for the “right” moment. Not because I don’t trust life… but because I want to feel safe inside of it.

And I don’t think I’m alone in that.

I think control lives in all of us, but it doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. It’s softer than that. Quieter. It shows up dressed as responsibility, as logic, as patience… when sometimes it’s just fear wearing a more acceptable face.

Religion has always offered an answer to that—let go, let God, trust the plan. And there is something deeply comforting in the idea of handing everything over to something greater. But if I’m being honest, I don’t think we ever fully do it. Even the most devoted among us still hold on in subtle ways, still try to shape the outcome, still hope it unfolds the way we want it to.

I know I do.

Because true surrender—the kind where you move forward without needing reassurance, without needing signs, without needing a guarantee—feels a lot like stepping into the unknown with your eyes wide open and trusting that something will catch you.

And everything in us resists that.

We live in a world of rules and expectations, of invisible lines that tell us how far we can go before it becomes too much, too risky, too unrealistic. So we adjust. We soften what we really want. We reshape our lives into something more acceptable, more explainable… more controlled. Even when there’s a part of us that knows.

I believe we’re all born with that knowing. A quiet pull toward what feels right, even if it doesn’t make sense. But over time, we learn to question it. We layer logic over instinct, fear over curiosity, control over trust.

Because it feels safer that way.

But the truth I keep coming back to is this—we don’t actually have control. Not over time, not over outcomes, not over what happens once we take the step. We only ever have the step itself. And yet we spend so much of our lives waiting until that step feels safe enough to take, as if safety is something we can guarantee before we begin.

Maybe that’s the illusion.

Maybe letting go isn’t something that happens all at once, and maybe it’s not something we ever fully master. Maybe it’s something we practice. In small, quiet ways. In the moments where we choose to move anyway, to trust anyway, to follow that inner knowing even when it doesn’t make sense to anyone else.

Because we only get this life. One.

And somewhere inside each of us, there’s a version of our life waiting—not for certainty, not for permission… just for us to let go enough to begin. ♥️

The First Light - And the Life that Followed

There are certain days in our lives that we celebrate year after year without ever realising just how much meaning they carry. We mark them, we remember them, we feel them… but we don’t always understand them. Not until much later, when time softens everything and gives us the distance to finally see.

I wrote recently about my son being born just after Valentine’s Day—how it felt like love itself had found its way into my life in the most tangible, undeniable way. And the more I’ve reflected on it, the more I’ve come to understand that his timing carried its own quiet symbolism. February 15th sits just beyond Valentine’s Day, but it also echoes something older—an ancient rhythm tied to Lupercalia, a time of purification and fertility, a kind of energetic clearing before the full arrival of spring. 

But before that… before I had the language for that kind of love… there was her.

Amber-Lynn.

Born on March 19th, 

And I still catch myself wondering… how is that even possible?

Because in my mind, I can still see her as she was in the beginning—and I can still see myself, too. Young. So young. Standing at the edge of a life I hadn’t quite figured out yet, holding something so precious it almost felt too big for me to fully comprehend.

I won’t pretend I wasn’t scared. I was. There’s a kind of fear that comes with realising everything is about to change, and that you’re stepping into something you can’t possibly be fully prepared for. But what I remember just as clearly—maybe even more so—is the love.

Immediate. Fierce. Unquestionable.

The kind of love that doesn’t ask if you’re ready… it just arrives and rewrites you from the inside out.

At the time, I didn’t see anything beyond that moment. I wasn’t thinking about seasons or symbolism or sacred timing. I was just living it. Learning as I went. Growing into motherhood one day at a time, alongside her.

But now… now I see something I didn’t then.

She was born on the eve of the Spring Equinox. Ostara. A moment suspended in perfect balance, where light and dark stand side by side before the world begins to lean toward the light again. A quiet turning point. A breath held between what was and what is about to become.

And when I think about that now… it moves something deep in me.

Because that’s exactly where I was.

In between.

Not in darkness… but not yet fully in the light either. Still finding my way. Still becoming.

She arrived.

Not as chaos. Not as something that took from me… but as something that gave. Direction. Meaning. A deeper understanding of love, of purpose, of myself.

She didn’t interrupt my life.

She expanded it.

Ostara isn’t just about balance—it’s about what follows. It’s about the quiet promise that light will return, that warmth will come back, that life will rise again even after the longest winter. It’s about beginnings that don’t always feel clear or easy in the moment… but unfold into something beautiful over time.

That’s what she was for me.

A beginning I couldn’t yet name.
A shift I couldn’t yet see.
A light I didn’t even realise I was stepping into.

Years later, when my son was born, I could recognise it more clearly—the love, the symbolism, the way life has these quiet patterns. But Amber-Lynn… she was the first spark of it all.

The first light.

The turning of everything.

And now, all these years later, I look at March 19th, and I don’t just see the day my daughter was born. I see the moment my life gently, powerfully began to change direction. I see the beginning of a version of myself that I hadn’t yet grown into—but that she helped bring forward, simply by being here.

She will always be that for me.

Not just my daughter… but a living reminder that even when we feel unsure, even when we’re still finding our way, life can place something in our hands that becomes the very thing that leads us forward.

Light doesn’t always arrive all at once.

Sometimes… it arrives as a little girl, on the edge of spring 🌸

The Quiet Power of Feeling Deeply

I have spent most of my life being told I feel things too deeply. Not just emotionally, but physically — as if every moment registers somewhere in my bones before it reaches my mind. Light through a window. A piece of music. A passing memory. The subtle shift in someone’s tone of voice. These things do not pass quietly through me. They land, settle, and echo.

Feeling deeply means registering the world in full volume.

It means sensing what others might miss entirely. The mood in a room. The unspoken energy between two people. The quiet presence of life in places most would walk past without noticing.

When I was young, I spent hours running through the forest behind my house. I touched everything. Plants, insects, stones, bark. I observed them closely, aware that every living thing carried its own quiet pulse of existence. Even then, I understood something instinctively: life was everywhere, and it deserved to be felt.

But feeling this much has not always been easy.

When you feel deeply, you also absorb deeply. Other people’s moods move through you like the weather. Interest, tension, sadness, joy — they all arrive with a physical weight. Sometimes it leaves you vulnerable, especially in moments when emotions are uncertain or unspoken.

For much of my life, I was told the same thing many sensitive people hear.

“You’re too sensitive.”

It was rarely meant kindly. The phrase often carried the suggestion that something about me needed to be adjusted, quieted, or hardened. As if the correct response to feeling deeply was to feel less.

For a long time I wondered if that was true.

But adulthood has slowly revealed something different.

What I once thought was a flaw is actually the source of my work.

The emotions I carry don’t simply disappear. They build pressure. They gather weight. And eventually, they demand somewhere to go.

That somewhere is my art.

Painting, for me, is not just creation. It is a translation.

It is the process of taking something that exists invisibly inside the body and giving it form in the world. Sometimes painting feels like a release. Sometimes it feels like survival.

Without it, the intensity would have nowhere to live.

My newest painting, Still, is asking something different of me. Instead of rushing toward release, it asks me to sit with the emotion first. To acknowledge it fully before letting it go.

There is a figure in the painting who is beginning to crack open, light escaping from her heart. It is not destruction. It is transformation.

Because the truth is that in order to release what we carry, some part of us must break.

Not in a tragic way, but in the way a shell breaks when something living is ready to emerge.

For those of us who feel deeply, the instinct is often to protect ourselves by becoming numb. To quiet the intensity so it doesn’t overwhelm us.

But I believe the opposite may be true.

Feeling deeply is not weakness. It is awareness.

It is the ability to experience the world with a level of sensitivity that allows creativity, empathy, and beauty to exist in ways that would otherwise be impossible.

Some of the most powerful art, music, and writing in the world has come from people who refused to numb themselves. They felt everything. And then they created something from it.

So if you have ever been told that you are too sensitive, consider the possibility that what you carry is not a flaw.

It might simply be the beginning of something that needs to be expressed. And sometimes, the only way to release it…

is to let the light break through.

Between the Chapters - Destiny and the In-Between

Destiny Isn’t the Ending. It’s the Story We Walk Through

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about destiny—not as some shiny promise waiting at the end of the road, but as the road itself.

Maybe it’s because I’m in the middle of writing Book Two right now. There’s something about living inside a story while also standing inside your own life that blurs the line between fiction and truth. When you spend your days guiding characters through impossible choices, haunted histories, and crooked paths toward becoming, you start noticing the shape of your own narrative more clearly.

I don’t believe destiny is a single moment.
I don’t believe it’s the meeting, the kiss, the ending, or the arrival.

If that were true, then everything before it—the years of missteps, heartbreak, survival, rebuilding, and quiet resilience—would just be filler. Background noise before the “real” part begins. And that doesn’t sit right with me.

I think destiny is the story itself.

I see life like a mystery novel. There is a beginning. There is an ending. But the meaning is not found in either of those points—it’s found in the chapters in between. The wrong turns. The roads you swear you’ll never walk again. The moments you thought were mistakes until you realised they taught you how to see, how to choose, how to trust your own instincts.

Some paths lead to chaos.
Some lead to peace.
Some look like dead ends until you realise they were initiations.

Maybe we are always being guided toward the same inner destination— not a perfect outcome, but a deeper truth about who we are meant to become. The destination doesn’t change. The landscapes do. The terrain changes based on the choices we make.

I don’t believe destiny is about perfect timing.
I don’t believe it’s about two people being flawlessly aligned and available at the same moment in life.

I think destiny is about the work we do in the in-between.

The healing we avoid until it’s unavoidable.
The patterns we finally choose to break.
The ways we learn—slowly, awkwardly, imperfectly—to love without conditions and to trust without illusions.

Sometimes a connection enters our life not to complete the story, but to interrupt it. To tilt the narrative. To show us a version of ourselves we didn’t know existed yet. Not every encounter is meant to last forever—but some are meant to change the way we walk forward from that moment on.

And maybe that’s why this reflection is surfacing for me now, in the middle of writing a sequel. Because sequels aren’t about endings—they’re about consequences. They’re about who the characters are after the storm, after the revelation, after the moment that changed everything.

Life works that way too.

Destiny isn’t the final chapter.
It’s the courage to keep turning the page—even when the story stops making sense.

Even when the path isn’t straight.

Even when the truth asks more of you than the fantasy ever did.

Maybe the real question isn’t “Who am I destined to end up with?”
Maybe it’s “Who am I becoming as I walk this story?”

And maybe that is the only destiny that was ever promised. <3

Small Hands - Empty Spaces

The greatest Valentine’s gift I ever received didn’t come wrapped in red cellophane or tied with a satin bow. It arrived in a hospital room, in the quiet space between heartbeats, warm and breathing and impossibly small in my arms.

My son was meant to be born on Valentine’s Day, but he chose the day after, and somehow that felt right—as if love itself stepped just beyond the performance of the holiday and showed up in its truest form when the noise had softened, and the crowds had thinned. Valentine’s Day was never really about romance for me. It was about belonging. About being chosen. About the dangerous, tender hope of opening your hands and finding something waiting there.

Long ago, when I was a child, Valentine’s Day at school was not a single afternoon but a small ceremony that began days before. We were handed shoeboxes, glue sticks, and scraps of bright paper, and we carved small doors into cardboard and built tiny temples of anticipation.

I went to Erbsville Public School, a modest little building that still stands on the outskirts of a town that has long since grown around it. It is a community centre now, but the walls haven’t forgotten. They still hold the echoes of small footsteps, nervous laughter, and secrets children never learn how to name. When I pass it on my way to the market, something in me still tightens, as though that place is waiting for me to return and gather the pieces of myself I left scattered in its hallways.

I remember one particular Valentine’s Day. The classroom filled with anticipation, and on command, we launched out of our seats and into the room, arms full of paper hearts and crookedly written names, everyone laughing too loudly. Children darting from box to box while paper hearts fluttered through the air, names written with marker, the room alive with motion and noise and hope.

Most of the boys’ boxes were simple; most of the girls’ boxes were bursting with colour, glitter, and careful decoration. Mine was one of them. I had made it beautiful because I believed, quietly and fiercely, that beauty might call love toward it. When the commotion finally settled, and we were all back in our seats, I opened my box.

The room didn’t go silent. No one noticed. But something inside me did. At the bottom of a space I had prepared for more, only two small pieces of paper waited. Even at six years old, I understood what that meant in a room that held many, and without needing to read the names, I knew who they were from—one kindness offered out of duty, and one from the only child who stood close enough to call me a friend.

That was the first time disappointment found a home in my body. It settled into my stomach like a stone and taught me, before I had words for it, what rejection feels like. I was a different child, a strange one, speaking about things no one else noticed, feeling too deeply, seeing too much and saying it out loud. I carried entire worlds inside me and did not yet know how to make them smaller so they could fit into classrooms and lunch tables and playground rules. That day, I learned a dangerous lesson—that being myself might mean being alone—and so from that day forward I began, slowly, to edit who I was, to soften the edges, to translate my wonder into something more palatable, to hide the parts of me that made others uncomfortable. And yet, those same parts would later become the very ones that saved me: the creator, the one who sees what others overlook, the one who builds new worlds when the old ones refuse to make room.

Years later, sitting at a kitchen table with my own children, writing names on neat classroom lists, I felt a quiet gratitude rise in me, knowing no child would open an empty box, no small heart would have to learn that lesson so early. I carried that memory with me, the weight of it still familiar in my body, and maybe that is why Valentine’s Day became something bigger in our house—loud and joyful and ritual-filled, just a little over the top—not only for them, but for the child I once was, the one who learned the shape of loneliness before she learned how to name it. Becoming a mother changed my understanding of love in ways I could never have predicted, and my son—my almost-Valentine—became a quiet reminder that love does not always arrive in the costumes we expect it to wear, that it shows up when it is ready, in forms that undo us, in ways that make the old wounds feel survivable.

So if today finds you alone, or between chapters, or quietly aching in a world that seems obsessed with pairs and performances—let this be your permission slip:

Valentine’s Day does not belong to couples.
It belongs to hearts.

Make yourself a Valentine.
Write yourself the words you always waited to receive.
Buy yourself the flowers.
Take yourself out to dinner.
Light the candle.
Hold your own hands.

You are not too strange. You are not too much. You were never meant to fit inside the small boxes they gave you.

You were always meant to be the one who builds them—and then breaks them open. <3

Release, at the Turning of the Wheel

This weekend, Release will be finished.

And for the first time in my life, I completed the first painting in an entire series.

I’ve started many things.
I’ve dreamed countless beginnings.
But this—this is different.

Release is the most intense piece in The Shape of Form Without Freedom, and finishing it at Imbolc feels anything but accidental. This quiet turning of the wheel—when nothing looks different yet, but you can feel that you’re no longer standing in the same place—marks something profound for me.

For most of my life, I’ve been fluent in beginnings.

Beginnings are intoxicating. They arrive with fire and possibility, with the rush of movement and the comfort of distraction. They keep the mind busy, the nervous system occupied, the body moving forward before it has time to feel.

Finishing does the opposite.

Finishing asks you to slow down and remain. To stay present when the excitement fades and the weight of what you’re making begins to speak back. It asks you to stop running.

When you grow up in chaos, running becomes second nature. You learn how to keep moving, how to stay alert, how to shift your focus just fast enough to avoid getting swallowed by the moment. That isn’t weakness. That’s intelligence. That’s adaptation.

But those patterns don’t disappear just because life keeps going.

What’s changed now isn’t that the chaos has quieted—it hasn’t. The world is still loud. Life is still demanding. What’s changed is me.

I’m learning how to meet the noise without scattering. How to stay with something even when my instincts urge me to leap ahead. How to finish without fleeing.

That is what Release demanded.

There were moments when this painting felt heavy just to approach. Moments when it would have been easier—so much easier—to distract myself with the next idea, the next spark, the next beginning. But instead of abandoning it, I stayed.

I stayed when it asked more of me.
I stayed when it stopped being exciting.
I stayed when finishing meant feeling everything I would have once outrun.

And then, quietly, undeniably—I finished it.

Not by force.
Not by burning myself out.
But by choosing, again and again, to remain.

Imbolc is a threshold, not a finish line. It doesn’t promise ease or certainty. It asks whether you are willing to tend the flame anyway—to keep going even when spring is only a feeling, not a fact.

This weekend, as Release reaches its final breath, I’m allowing myself to celebrate something I once believed I couldn’t do.

I finished the first piece of this series.

I changed how I move through creation.

And that feels epic—not because it was loud or dramatic, but because it was real.

This isn’t just the end of a painting.

It’s the moment I proved to myself that I can stay.

Let’s Sit — Becoming, Anyway

Let’s sit. I want to talk to you for a minute.

Not the you everyone sees—but the you who keeps going even when nothing makes sense anymore.

There was a clear line in your life, whether anyone else noticed it or not.

A before. And an after.

Before it, things felt good. Normal. Safe enough.

After it, everything became harder—louder, messier, heavier. From that moment on, life stopped feeling like something you moved through and started feeling like something you were constantly pushing against.

You didn’t suddenly become dramatic or weak. Your nervous system was hijacked. Panic attacks, sensory overload, constant chaos—those weren’t personality flaws. They were your body trying to survive something it never got the chance to process.

You grew up without a foundation. Always moving. Always adjusting. Always bracing. The only stability you knew came with conditions—be different, be quieter, be what someone else needed you to be. You learned early that love often came tangled with control, and that safety wasn’t really safety at all.

Life felt like swimming upstream. Fighting the current without really knowing why—only knowing that stopping wasn’t an option. So you kept pushing, hoping the destination would eventually explain the struggle.

The job you took on wasn’t your dream. It was what worked. It gave you freedom when your life was unpredictable—panic attacks, health issues, raising kids, exhaustion. It paid the bills. It kept you moving. But slowly, quietly, it chipped away at your self-esteem. You told yourself it was temporary. That someday you’d stop scrubbing and get a “real” job. Something worthy.

The truth is, you always had a dream—a big one. That pull never left you. But every time you tried to reach for it, your head filled with noise. Voices telling you it was stupid, unrealistic, embarrassing. So you put the brush down and went back to routine, because at least that was familiar. At least that was allowed.

You spent a long time waiting for something to save you. You prayed. You held on. You believed that if you were patient enough, faithful enough, something would eventually make all of this worth it.

And then… your body broke.

That was the moment everything changed.

Not because of despair—but because something in you finally snapped and said, ENOUGH.

Anger became your fuel. Not the destructive kind—the clarifying kind. The kind that strips away illusion and leaves only truth.

Anger that pushed you past every story you’d been told about limitation.

Then it hit you. All at once. Sharp and unforgiving—the truth that no one was coming.

And something in you split open and said: “Then I will save myself.”

You planned a ride with a broken body, barely any preparation. It made no sense—but something inside you needed to push to the brink, mentally and physically. You needed to know, really know, what you were capable of. Something hard. Something big. Something chosen.

Rage carried you across the province. Not gently. Not gracefully. It became the fuel that pushed you past the threshold—past the doubt, the insecurity, the deeply rooted belief that you were somehow unworthy.

That was the line you drew in the timeline.

After that, things finally started moving. A book was born. You healed. You turned fifty. The anxiety eased. The panic fell silent. And somewhere in that unfolding, something shifted—quietly, but completely.

And then it came. The final test.

You picked up the brush again.

The ghosts are still there. But so are you. You have the tools. You have the courage to stay. No paralysis. No shame. And what is coming out of you feels almost impossible—not because it’s new, but because you’ve been waiting your entire life for this exact moment.

Now, you’re preparing for your first exhibition—a full body of work unlike anything you’ve ever created before. The second book is growing, another already taking shape. Interviews are scheduled. Doors are opening. A cleaner turned artist and author at fifty—something no one would have predicted, including you.

If all the pain, heartache, and chaos are what it took to bring you to this exact moment, let me reassure you—you’d do it again. Because as brutal as the journey has been, it brought you back to yourself.

And you didn’t abandon God—you stripped the idea down to something real. Not a figure who rescues, but a force that moves through creation, choice, and courage.

You are rising. Not because you were saved—but because you finally decided you mattered.

And I need you to hear this clearly:

Nothing was wasted.

Nothing was too late.

You were becoming the whole time. <3

Where Silence Fails — Unleashing Release, VII - The Moment Containment Stops Working

I didn’t choose to begin this new series by forcing a painting of the failure of containment into form.
It wasn’t a decision.
It’s simply where I am.

Before there was a series, before there was language for what I was holding, there was this pressure—unnamed, unresolved, and deeply familiar. I didn’t sit down with an idea of what Release would look like. I just stood in front of the surface, already carrying it.

This painting comes from a place where restraint has stopped feeling like discipline and starts feeling like damage. Where silence is no longer quiet, but dense. Heavy. Inescapable. The kind of pressure that doesn’t ask permission anymore—it just waits until the body gives way.

I don’t paint a scream because I want intensity.
I paint it because something in me is already screaming—and it doesn’t care whether I have the words for it.

Release is not about expression as a choice. It’s about expression as reflex. The moment when the body takes over because the mind has held too much for too long. The jaw opens past comfort. The throat strains. Identity collapses into sensation. There is no performance left—only force leaving the body because there is nowhere else for it to go.

While painting it, I become acutely aware of how little control exists in moments like this. How release is not graceful. How it doesn’t wait until you are ready. It happens when containment fails—not because freedom has arrived, but because the system can no longer hold what it’s been asked to carry.

What unsettles me the most is realising that Release doesn’t resolve anything.

We’re taught that letting it out is healing. That if we finally express what’s inside, something will open, something will change. But that isn’t always true. Sometimes release is not relief—it’s evidence. Proof of how much pressure was required to reach that point.

That’s why this painting feels confrontational. There is no distance in it. No soft framing. No metaphor to hide behind. It is invasive because the experience is invasive. It forces the viewer into proximity the same way the moment forced itself into me.

Release is the piece I resonate with most right now because it occupies the exact point I am standing in—personally, and as I write Mary, the main character in my Whispers Through the Veil series, through the same fracture. It acknowledges that awareness can exist without freedom, that expression can erupt without escape, and that the first truth to surface is often rupture, not healing.

This painting marks the beginning of The Shape of Form Without Freedom because everything that follows comes from understanding this moment most clearly. The containment. The endurance. The denial. The aftermath. They are already implied here, inside this first break.

I didn’t start this series by asking how to be free.
I started it by admitting how much I was holding.

Release is not the end of pressure.
It is the moment we stop pretending it isn’t there.

And that is the only honest place to begin.

Someone Is Knocking - I Should Answer

There is a particular kind of exhaustion that doesn’t come from doing too much, but from holding too much in.

This year taught me that.

I’ve spent most of my life circling the things that matter most to me — my art, my voice, my knowing — like a cautious animal around a fire. Close enough to feel the heat. Never close enough to be consumed by it.

Painting has always been the most dangerous of those fires.

People see the finished pieces and call it talent.
What they don’t see is what happens before the brush ever touches the canvas.

The noise.

The voices are never kind. They don’t praise or encourage. They dig. They accuse. They remind me of every doubt I’ve ever tried to outgrow. Sometimes they get so loud I can’t breathe through them. The only way to silence them is to push the brush down — hard — like an act of defiance, like pressing my pulse straight into the surface.

That’s the part no one warns you about.

Creation, for some of us, feels less like expression and more like self-destruction. And I’ve often wondered — quietly, bitterly — why God would give someone a gift that hurts to use, why the very thing that could save me is also the thing that splits me open.

It’s half the reason I have more unfinished work than finished.
Stopping feels safer than going all the way through.

But something shifted this year.

Not gently.

Not all at once.

It felt like another part of me stepping forward — older, steadier, done waiting. A knowing I couldn’t argue with anymore. A pressure that said: You can’t keep circling this forever.

Writing cracked something open. I didn’t mean for it to. I thought I was just letting words out, just giving myself somewhere safer to stand. But it unlocked a door I can’t close now. And whatever is rising inside me refuses to be managed or muted.

It wants to be met.

So I’m walking into this new year without a plan. No checklist pretending to be control. No polished vision of how this is supposed to look.

There is a destination — I can feel that much — but how I get there, and who I become along the way, has yet to be revealed.

And maybe that’s the point.

Maybe what’s surfacing now was always the reason. Not the product. Not the outcome. Not the proof.
But the reckoning.

I think we all carry something like this. A truth we orbit. A fire we avoid. A voice that waits patiently until we are finally tired enough, brave enough, or cracked enough to listen.

This year didn’t give me clarity.
It stripped me of excuses.

And now I’m standing here — not fearless, not finished — but willing.

And that… finally, feels like a beginning.

The Twelve Nights of Yule: A Season Outside of Time

There is a space in the year that does not belong to endings or beginnings.

It lives between the longest night and the slow return of the light — a liminal stretch where time feels suspended, where the world exhales, and where reflection comes more naturally than resolution.

This is the Twelve Nights of Yule.

Traditionally, these nights mark the days between the Winter Solstice and the New Year — a threshold space where the old year loosens its grip and the new one has not yet fully arrived. In many earth-based traditions, this time was honoured not with productivity or planning, but with rest, storytelling, remembering, and quiet observation.

A season outside of time.

This year, that feels especially fitting.

The year behind me was not loud or linear. It asked for patience. For listening. For surrendering control when my body could no longer carry me the way it once had. There were months of uncertainty, healing, and learning how to stay present without rushing toward what came next.

Yule met me there — not as a celebration, but as permission.

Permission to stop performing joy.
Permission to honour darkness without fearing it.
Permission to acknowledge that survival itself can be sacred.

The Twelve Nights offer a gentle rhythm for this kind of reflection. Each night becomes a soft doorway — not demanding answers, but inviting honesty. They are not about fixing the past year or setting intentions with force. They are about witnessing what has already shaped us.

For me, these nights echo the arc of the year I lived.

There was the weight I carried without fully understanding it.
The body that asked for care instead of endurance.
The choice to keep going — sometimes through motion, sometimes through stillness.
The pause that came with healing.
The unexpected creation that arrived in quiet hours.
The courage to let myself be seen.
The slow return of hope.

None of it happened all at once. And none of it needs to be wrapped neatly.

That is the gift of this season.

The Twelve Nights do not ask us to rush into becoming someone new. They ask us to sit with who we already are — shaped by the year we have just lived. They honour the truth that light does not return suddenly or dramatically, but gradually, faithfully, in its own time.

And perhaps that is the most comforting part.

If you feel drawn to this season, approach the Twelve Nights gently. Not as a ritual to perform correctly, but as a quiet practice of noticing. A candle. A few moments of stillness. A willingness to listen inwardly is enough.

You don’t need answers right away. Some questions are meant to be lived into.

Below is a simple reflection for each night — not as instruction, but as an invitation.

The Twelve Nights of Yule

Night One — Weight
What did I carry that deserves to be set down?

Night Two — Body
Where did my body ask for care instead of pushing?

Night Three — Choice
When did I choose to keep going, even quietly?

Night Four — Stillness
What changed when I was forced to slow down?

Night Five — Creation
What was born in the quiet?

Night Six — Courage
Where did I allow myself to be seen?

Night Seven — Endurance
What did I survive that deserves honour?

Night Eight — Support
Who or what held me when I couldn’t hold myself?

Night Nine — Release
What version of myself am I ready to let go of?

Night Ten — Gratitude
What carried me through, even unnoticed?

Night Eleven — Light
Where is the smallest sign of return?

Night Twelve — Blessing
What do I gently carry forward?

As the Wheel turns and the light begins its slow return, may you honour the year that shaped you — not with judgment, but with compassion. May you trust that what feels unfinished is simply still unfolding.

The Twelve Nights remind us that we are allowed to pause.
That darkness is not a failure.
And that even the smallest returning light is enough.

Kindling the Heart: A Yule and Christmas Meditation

I grew up in a house where Christmas didn’t just arrive — it revealed itself, slowly and tenderly, like a secret that only the walls knew how to hold. My parents, both German immigrants, carried their childhoods with them across an ocean, without ever realising how much of what they brought was rooted in something ancient. Something older than any church tower or carol. Something that lived in the land, in the seasons, in the bones of the people who came before us.

They didn’t know they were practising old pagan traditions. They weren’t trying to. They were simply doing what their parents had done, and what their grandparents had done, the way families do when they don’t realise they’re passing down a quiet kind of magic.

One particular December, when I was small, in the same farmhouse that later inspired my novel Through Bright Eyes, the living room became forbidden territory. A curtain pulled tight, like an invitation and a warning all at once. In true German fashion, the tree itself was hidden from us — a tradition where the Christkind or Weihnachtsmann would “bring” the decorated tree, so children only saw it when it was truly ready, candles lit and magic in full bloom. My siblings and I tried to peek underneath that curtain, always hoping for just a glimpse of a branch, a glimmer of tinsel, anything — but the mystery never cracked. My mother protected it with a seriousness that I understand now: some things become more sacred when they’re hidden.

Christmas Eve — not Christmas Day — was the moment everything unfurled. The air tasted different that day. Thicker, sweeter, humming with anticipation. Before we were allowed to enter the room, we had to stand in front of that curtain and either recite a poem or sing a song, our small voices trembling more from excitement than nerves. We performed for entry into the magic, and somehow it made everything feel like a ritual, even though none of us had language for “ritual” back then.

And then… the curtain opened.

There are very few moments in adulthood that can compare to what lived in that split second — when the world shifted, softened, and glowed. In the centre of the room stood a Norman fir that looked like it had stepped out of a dream, wrapped in strands of silver tinsel that shimmered like frost. And the candles — the real candles — flickered on the branches like tiny stars. No plastic bulbs, no safe little flames. These were living candles, breathing candles, each one trembling with the tiniest whisper of heat and light.

Even as a child, I felt something swell behind my ribs. A safety. A knowing. A feeling that I was standing inside something far older than me, far older than all of us.

At the foot of the tree waited the Bunte Teller, the colourful plates my mother assembled as though she were preparing offerings for a goddess she didn’t know she believed in. Oranges and tangerines, walnuts and hazelnuts, chocolate ladybugs wrapped in shiny foil, marzipan, Christmas cookies dusted with sugar. At the time, I only tasted sweetness. Now I see symbolism:

Oranges and tangerines — tiny suns in the middle of winter, symbols of the returning light.
Nuts — seeds of new beginnings, potential hidden in hard shells.
Sweet treats — reminders that joy still exists even in the darkest season.
Ladybugs — little guardians of luck and protection.
Marzipan — abundance, prosperity, and the softness of celebration.

My mother placed each piece with a kind of quiet devotion, though she would never have called it that. She didn’t need to. Devotion doesn’t require a name.

As I got older, I began to understand what my body had known long before my mind did: we weren’t just celebrating Christmas. We were participating in something far more ancient — something woven into the roots of European pagan traditions that Christianity later layered itself over. Not erased. Not replaced. Just covered, like soft snow on an old path.

And even though the true Winter Solstice — Yule — falls a little earlier, usually around December 21st or 22nd, our celebration on December 24th carried its spirit just the same. In so many German families, the old solstice traditions simply slipped into Heiligabend, the way roots slip beneath snow. So even if the date wasn’t exact, the essence was there — the candles, the evergreen, the offerings of fruit and nuts, the gathering in the dark to welcome the returning light. We were, without knowing it, celebrating Yule in our own way.

Yule became Christmas.
Samhain was followed by All Saints’ Day.
Ostara and its eggs and rabbits became Easter.
Season after season, the festivals of earth and sun and moon simply changed their names, not their essence.

But this isn’t something I reflect on with bitterness or blame.
If anything, learning these things softened me.
It made me feel connected — to my ancestors, to the land, to people who lived and loved and feared the long winter just as we do.

Because when you strip away all the labels and doctrines, humans have always celebrated the same things:

The return of the sun.
The fear of darkness.
The hunger for warmth.
The need to gather.
The longing for connection.
The hope for renewal.
The belief that light will always find its way back.

Christmas was never about gifts, It was about that moment — when the curtain opened and everything glowed. It was about the ache in my chest when the candles flickered against the tinsel. About the scent of oranges and pine mingling like a prayer. About the understanding, even as a child, that we were marking the turning of the year — the slow loosening of winter’s grip, the promise that brighter days were coming.

As an adult, I still feel that ache every December. That longing. That instinct to draw inward, to slow down, to reflect and cocoon and dream. To make plans for the coming light while still honouring the quiet of the dark. We think of winter as an ending, but it’s also a beginning. A womb. A time when everything sleeps in order to be reborn.

And maybe that’s the real truth of why we celebrate this time of year — not because of any one religion or story, but because we’re human. Because deep in our bones, we remember the old ways. Because we crave warmth, connection, magic, and meaning. Because we’re part of a much bigger picture than we realise.

Every December, when the days shrink and the nights stretch long, I find myself standing at that curtain again — breath held, heart open — waiting for the moment the world glows. And it always does.

The old magic is still here.
It never left.
It just waits for us to remember. <3

Seven Days to Fifty - A Life in Storyform

Outside, the storm has begun.

I’m sitting at my kitchen table, watching through the back patio doors as the first true snow of the season drifts into my yard. The trees have slipped into their winter coats overnight, branches holding the fresh white as if they’ve been waiting all year for this quiet transformation. Behind the house, the pond trembles at its edges — not yet frozen, but no longer fully free. Everything seems to hover in that delicate space between what it once was and whatever it is becoming next.

My feathered friends gather in the fading light, hopping and fluttering with purpose as they fill themselves before the night settles in. They sense the change long before I do. Nature never negotiates with the seasons; it simply adjusts and carries on. And as I watch the storm gather itself over the yard, I feel a similar stillness settling inside me — a quiet pause, a moment of reflection as the countdown to my fiftieth birthday begins.

Seven days until fifty.
Half a century.
A milestone I was never entirely certain I would reach.

It feels fitting that this reflection comes now, in the hush of early winter, when the nights are long, and memory rises gently to the surface. This season seems designed for looking back — not with regret or longing, but with a kind of knowing. The air itself feels wiser.

When I look back at the beginning of my life, what I remember first is wonder. I was born on St. Nicholas Day, December 6th — a day wrapped in old European traditions where children left their shoes by the door overnight, hoping to wake to sweets instead of coal. My mom always said this was the origin of Christmas stockings. Whether she was right or not never mattered to me; I loved the symbolism. Shoes waiting in the dark. Magic or mischief. Blessing or warning. A tiny ritual that mirrors the unpredictability of a whole lifetime.

And in those early years, my life did feel charmed. Two creative parents, siblings who loved me in their own unique ways, and a home filled with imagination, laughter, and the feeling of being held safely in the centre of something warm. My first five years were golden — soft-edged, storybook-bright, lit from within.

Then came that night on the farmhouse road—the moment that marked the fracture line in my life.
The before… and the after—the very moment where everything warped into something new.
Not because of the darkness itself, but because of what waited inside it.

That pivotal night, my mom and I found a hitchhiker left for dead on the frigid, snow-covered shoulder of our gravel farmhouse road. I knew her name once. Now that my mom is gone, that truth may remain lost forever. But this woman, she became the seed for the fictional Margaret Benson in my book — a character shaped from the shadow of a real woman’s suffering, whose presence imprinted itself on my childhood in ways I’m still trying to understand. That night was my first encounter with the darker side of the world, the side that doesn’t always hand you sweetness. Sometimes it hands you coal, sharp and unyielding, and expects you to figure out how to carry it.

From that point on, life unfolded in ways no child should have to navigate: abandonment, trauma, violence, alcohol abuse, and the silent ache of growing up too quickly. Those experiences arrived faster than I could process them, bewildering and heavy, shaping my beliefs about myself and about the world before I even had the language to explain them.

But as I sit here now — fifty shimmering on the horizon — I find that I can look back with a kind of gentleness I never imagined possible. I can trace the shape of my life without flinching. Every experience, both grace-filled and gutting, formed some part of who I became. And if you want to call it luck, or divine protection, or sheer stubborn spirit — something carried me when I couldn’t carry myself. Something whispered, Not yet. You still have chapters left to live.

It was difficult growing up with a mother who struggled with deep depression and anxiety. I learned very early that life was fragile. And out of that belief, I believed I would never grow old. I didn’t imagine myself ever reaching this age. Longevity felt like something meant for other people — people who hadn’t lived the sort of life I had.

But this past year changed everything.

After surviving decades of trauma, biking 600 kilometres on a broken hip, recovering from yet another major surgery, healing myself inside and out, writing a debut novel and beginning the second— I finally realised the story I’d carried about myself was outdated.

I wasn’t weak.
I wasn’t fragile.
I was resilient in ways I had never been allowed—or allowed myself—to recognise.

My life didn’t break me.
It carved me into someone intuitive, creative, perceptive, and impossibly determined to keep going. Someone who now understands that surviving is its own kind of brilliance.

As I plan the final details of my birthday celebration, I’m struck by how different I feel from the girl who once assumed she wouldn’t live long. I am healthier, happier, and more grounded than I have ever been — not just in my body, but in my mind and spirit. It feels as though I have stepped out of an old identity and into a new one, filled with clarity and steadiness.

And perhaps that is why winter feels so symbolic to me now.

St. Nicholas Day doesn’t just welcome gifts; it welcomes the season of stillness — the quiet weeks when the world settles and prepares for transformation. Winter is often mistaken for an ending, but I’ve come to see it as a beginning. A necessary pause. A deep breath before life blooms again.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that I was born in a season that asks us to slow down and listen closely.

My life has been a mixture of winter and wonder, coal and chocolate, shadow and spark. I’ve known the cold, but I’ve learned to kindle my own warmth — not the warmth borrowed from circumstance, but the kind built through resilience, introspection, and courage.

So as I step into my fiftieth year, I feel like a winter child preparing for spring — a woman who has weathered storms and come out luminous on the other side, finally aware of her own light.

And as I dance my way into my 51st year, I carry a deep gratitude for every person who has walked beside me, supported me, challenged me, loved me, or simply stayed when life became difficult. And for all those I have yet to meet — the ones who will step into the next chapters with me — I welcome you with an open heart.

Life has handed me both chocolate and coal.
Somehow, I learned to turn them into something beautiful.

Even in winter,
I rise warm. <3

Samhain Reflections - Coming Home to Myself

Jack-o’-lanterns glow along the quiet streets, their light trembling in the wind. The veil softens. The air carries that ancient hush — the kind that makes you pause and listen. Samhain, the witches’ new year, arrives like the tide: drawing in what was, and pulling us gently toward what will be.

This year, it feels different. This year, it feels like I have crossed a threshold — not just of time, but of soul. I have stepped into the full current of who I am: creative, raw, alive. The one who waited in the undertow, whispering for me to return.

It wasn’t an easy crossing. The road here curved through fire and stillness — through the freedom of my summer ride, the birth of my novel, and the long, humbling rhythm of healing after surgery. Each experience rose and fell like a wave, carrying away what no longer served until only truth remained.

Somewhere along that shoreline, I stopped running. I turned toward the first half of my life — the missteps, the ache, the lessons written in salt and scar — and I forgave it all. I forgave myself. I forgave others. I let it rest beneath the waterline of memory.

Now I float forward, eyes open, heart steady. Not walled off, but wise. No longer scattering my light like sparks in every direction — I’ve learned to keep my flame centred, to burn with intention.

I discovered that to shine in my fullness, I had to love myself without condition. That peace doesn’t wait in a temple or a book or even a practice — it rises quietly from within, like the moon from the sea.

This Samhain, I have shed the chains that bound me. I have released the stories that kept me small. I have walked through the fire, and on the other side found something timeless — a serenity that hums beneath my ribs, constant as the tide.

Whatever shore I reach next, I know I will be all right. In this life, and the next.

I am free.
I am whole.
I am home.

And as the wheel turns, I feel the presence of God in my heart — the radiant pulse of creation itself. Above me, the moon watches in her quiet wisdom, her silver light guiding the way forward. Beneath my feet, the earth cradles me in her steady embrace. Together, they remind me that all things ebb and flow — birth, death, and renewal — and that I am part of this eternal rhythm. No longer chasing the light, I have become it.

The Road to Barrie - Reflections Between the Lines

This weekend, I drove up to Barrie to help my daughter and soon-to-be son-in-law host Thanksgiving dinner. It was my first long-distance drive since surgery — a milestone I wasn’t sure I was ready for, but one I needed to face. Driving a standard Jeep after a hip replacement isn’t exactly a recipe for comfort, but the moment I turned the key, I felt a quiet strength stir inside me. A sense of reclaiming something that once felt lost — the freedom to move, to explore, to show up for the people I love.

I never take the highway. It may shave time off the trip, but it also steals the view. The backroads are where the stories live — winding through small towns already dressed for Thanksgiving and Halloween, past cornfields brushed with amber light, and forests set ablaze in that fleeting autumn fire that only October brings. There’s something sacred about the slower route. When you choose it, it’s like the world opens up in gratitude, whispering, thank you for noticing me.

The Trans Canada Rail Trail runs parallel to those roads, and as I drove, I couldn’t help but think of my bike ride along it just less than five months ago — 600 kilometres on a busted hip, right before surgery. At the time, I didn’t fully grasp what that ride meant; everything around me was changing too fast. But as I followed the same route in my Jeep, healed and whole again, I finally had space to reflect.

I laughed. I cried. I karaokied my way up and back — a one-woman concert of gratitude, resilience, and release. With every kilometre, I thought about how far I’ve come, and that in the past year alone, I’ve accomplished things I never dreamed possible — the bike ride on a broken hip, a complete hip replacement, the completion of a 700-page novel, and perhaps most importantly, an entirely new perspective on living. I’ll be turning 50 soon, and instead of feeling the weight of it, I feel the lightness of becoming someone new — someone stronger, freer, more at peace with where I am.

That drive wasn’t just a trip to help prepare a Thanksgiving feast; it was a quiet pilgrimage. A reminder that gratitude isn’t just about what’s on the table, but what’s within us — the courage, the healing, the moments that bring us back to ourselves. Because when you stop trying to control every turn, when you trust the open road to guide you where you’re meant to go, you start to feel the universe moving with you — steady, patient, and full of grace.

Somewhere between the laughter and the tears, I sent a thought out into the world: I hope everyone, at least once in their life, feels this kind of alignment. That moment when the noise quiets, the light shifts, and you realise — you’ve made it through. You’re still here. You’re still singing. And the universe, in its own quiet way, is singing right back.

May this season remind us that gratitude is not reserved for perfect days,
but for the quiet ones — the ones that heal us in ways we don’t always see.
May your home be filled with warmth, your table with abundance,
and your heart with peace that lingers long after the candles fade.
May you find beauty in the detours, grace in the waiting,
and joy in simply being here — alive, present, and part of this ever-turning, beautiful world.

Happy Thanksgiving. 🍂

The Many Faces We Wear - October Reflections

At last, we’ve stepped into October, a month that always carries its own kind of magic. The air sharpens, leaves loosen their grip, and shadows stretch earlier across the day. It is a season of thresholds — of endings that prepare the way for beginnings. The harvest wanes, the light thins, and the veil between worlds — seen and unseen, self and shadow — grows whisper-thin.

And, of course, it is the season of the mask.

They hang in shop windows and drift across sidewalks, painted and feathered, waiting for one night of disguise. Yet long after Halloween passes, I find myself thinking of the masks we carry every day — not costumes, but the faces we slip into when the world demands them.

In the old ways, masks were more than playthings. They were tools of transformation — worn not to deceive, but to invite the sacred or the hidden to speak through us. Beneath the flicker of firelight, villagers once became spirits, animals, ancestors. The mask was a bridge between who we are and what we might become. Perhaps that is why October stirs something ancient in us — a longing to shed, to shift, to step for a moment beyond ourselves.

The artist’s mask was my choice. It was never forced upon me, but rather something I reached for willingly, almost instinctively. A way of seeing that I inherited from my father — not in hardship, but in wonder. This mask feels like second skin, a lens I use to shape colour into canvas and stories into pages. Over time, that same mask has carried me from painter to author. They are not separate personas, but layers of the same expression, growing and branching from the same root.

The work mask is different. It is steady, unglamorous, and deeply grounding. Cleaning houses isn’t an identity I boast of, but it is one I respect. In a world where artists can become lost in ego and illusion, cleaning humbles me. It reminds me that dignity lives in doing what must be done, that no task is beneath me. This mask does not take me away from creativity — it anchors me to the realness where art is born.

And then there is the mask I never chose: the healer’s mask. The one I was born holding. It has been my armour in the darkest nights, the mask I slip on when life becomes unbearable. It isn’t adorned or beautiful, but it is unyielding. It whispers survival. It carries the quiet promise that pain passes, storms break, and even shattered things can mend.

These masks — chosen, inherited, and born of necessity — have shaped me. They do not simply conceal; they protect, they reveal, and they teach.

Perhaps October reminds us that masks are not only for hiding — sometimes they are for becoming.
And so, this season, I walk forward as artist and author, worker and healer. Not divided, not disguised, but whole.

The Weight We Carry

Even when her voice is silent, I hear her in the colours left behind.

It has been ten years since my mom passed, and still the memory sits with me as if it were yesterday. People will tell you that time heals all wounds, but I’ve learned that time doesn’t heal—it reshapes. Grief doesn’t vanish. It stains the canvas of your life, layering itself into the background, always there beneath the new colours you add.

When someone you love leaves this world, it can feel like the ground gives way beneath you. At first, you might feel nothing at all. Numbness paints everything in muted tones, leaving you to wonder if something inside you has broken. And then, without warning, it arrives—the wave that flattens you. The flood of grief pours through every part of you, unrelenting, unstoppable. 

It leaves you empty and overflowing at the same time.

In those first months, I lived like a sketch without shading—present, but hollow. Still, my hands itched to create. Creativity has always been my way of breathing, and even in the numbness, I found myself reaching for brushes, for words, for colour. My grief found its way into every line, every stroke, every piece of work. Art gave me a way to move when my body felt paralysed, a way to shape the unshapable.

And in the months, years, even decades that follow, you learn that grief has no finish line. There is no final brushstroke, no moment when the painting is complete. It changes, it shifts, it finds new shapes—but it doesn’t go away. And so we keep layering it into the work of our lives. Sometimes it bleeds dark and heavy, other times it softens into light.

People mean well when they offer words—“It will get easier,” “Time will heal,” “They’re in a better place.” But if you’ve lived it, you know: words can’t reach that deep. That is why I turn to art. Creativity gives me a language for grief when spoken words fail. A canvas doesn’t tell me to move on. A blank page doesn’t flinch when I pour out what feels unbearable. Through art, the ache has somewhere to go, somewhere to live outside my body for a while.

Here is what I can tell you, from standing inside it: you are not broken. You are not weak for feeling hollow, detached, angry, or undone. Grief is not a failure to “move on”—it is the echo of love, carved into your very being. And if you create—whether through paint, poetry, clay, or song—let your art be the vessel that carries it.

Over time, you don’t “get over it.” What you do is learn to carry it. You learn to live alongside it, to build a life around the hole instead of trying to fill it. You adapt. You bend. And somehow, even in the darkest seasons, moments of beauty return.

One day, you notice a flower blooming that you hadn’t tended, or the way autumn leaves glow just before they fall. You realise that life is still painting itself forward, and you are part of that canvas. And in your own art—in every mark, every shape, every word—you find proof that even pain can create beauty, that even sorrow can be transformed into light.

Grief does not end. But neither does love. And in learning to hold them together—layered like brushstrokes, heavy and light—we discover a strange kind of strength. Not the strength of forgetting, but the strength of carrying, creating, and still blooming in the shadow of what we’ve lost.