When you flip back through the many pages of the journals I’ve kept over the years, from time to time you will find a page or two left blank. These pages represent a pause, a breath. Preceded by a significant ending, and (often in hindsight), followed by the start of something new. You’ll find these pages in between childhood and motherhood. Before and after my father’s death. The beginning and ending of love, and life’s unfurling phases.

Life as we knew it in 2020 came to a screeching halt. I took a long, deep breath, and for the first time in my life, spent a lot of time being still. Listening. Learning. Stillness found me not just in between the words on the page, but in my real life. In my mind, in my heart.

I paused to ask myself plainly. I stopped looking in the mirror, through the lens of social media, through the eyes of anyone and everyone I knew to tell me what was right for me and my soul and my spirit. I made a new and firm and solid commitment to sobriety, to the Divine, and to my inner wisdom to ask, “What do you need?”

And the answers rang clear about what I want. Now and in the future.

And then, terrified, I spoke my truth. I apologized along the way, and I was overwhelmed…but I stayed the course, placing faith in a higher power. I was sparing in my explanations, and I was certain.

So here I find myself.

I just turned 35 and have two divorces behind me.

I am 35 and raising an incredible daughter, 13-years old.

I am 35 and have finally learned how to live in my body, how to stand in my truth, and I am steadily writing new storylines.

I have spent my life in search of home, and at 35, I discovered it was within me.

To new beginnings.