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Feeling Pushed to My Limit While the Snow Keeps Falling
As predicted in yesterday’s post, When Stress Comes From Every Direction and You’re Still Standing, I woke up feeling pushed to my limit. Round two of the texting drama started. Apparently my partner committed two unforgivable offenses: Let’s start with the obvious. The man works from 4 pm until 6 or sometimes 7 am, Monday through Friday. He works nights. He comes home when most people are making coffee. Of course he sleeps during the day. The expectation that he should be awake and available to respond instantly to texts is unrealistic. Second, we are not setting up auto deposits into a bank account we have no access to. We…
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The Friends Who Hold You Together When Everything Feels Heavy
If you’ve been following since the first of the year, you already know it’s been a lot. We’ve been blessed and stressed at the same time. We moved. We rebuilt. We set boundaries. We navigated tension. And somewhere in all of that chaos, I’ve been thinking about the friends who hold you together when your life feels like it’s constantly shifting. Because I would not have survived this past year without mine. The One Who Came and Got Me My oldest friend lives in South Carolina now, but our story started when I was nineteen. I was working for Waffle House, INC. with her brother. I was fresh out on…
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Setting Boundaries With Family When Your Not a Child
I knew this was coming. Back in my January 7th post, Trying to Stay Calm While Everything is on the Line, I said I had a feeling this would turn into an issue of setting boundaries with family. I said if we got the place, my partner’s mom would still try to control how we show up, how we live, and how we handle things. Welp. I was right. She showed up yesterday. She texted from the parking lot, which gave me exactly zero time to mentally prepare. Not that anything needed to be done. I’ve been unpacking and cleaning nonstop since we moved in. The house is fine. We…
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Getting Ready to Move
Today feels different. There is an energy in the air because we are officially getting ready to move, and it no longer feels like a distant possibility. It feels real. Tomorrow is move-in day. After months in this basement and all the tension that has come with it, the idea of leaving feels like breathing again. I did not realize exactly how heavy this space has felt until we started packing it up. Meeting the Facebook Marketplace Lady Part of getting ready to move today includes meeting the woman from Facebook Marketplace who offered to donate a bunch of items to us. We are going to inventory everything and figure…
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Trying to Stay Calm While Everything Is on the Line
Welp. Today is the day. The day we finally get to tour the place we applied for and meet the guy who owns it. I woke up already tense, because trying to stay calm while everything is on the line feels nearly impossible right now. Of course, it can’t just be a simple “show up and be ourselves” situation. My partner’s mom has turned it into a whole production. She’s telling us how to dress, what to wear, making my partner shave his beard, all of it. Like we’re auditioning for something instead of just trying to find a place to live. Then came the part that really set me…
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Waiting for Answers Without Breaking
Waiting for Answers Without Breaking: It’s Harder Than You Thank Today is January 5th, and we are still sitting here waiting. Waiting to hear if we got the place. Waiting for a call, a text, anything that tells us what happens next. At this point, waiting for answers without breaking feels like its own full-time job. What makes it harder is that the landlord was so confident he wanted us moved in by today. January 5th. And yet, here we are, with no approval, no denial, just silence. My partner’s mom is handling the communication, and she plans to reach out this afternoon to see where things stand. I’m grateful…
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Creating While Exhausted
Still Creating While Exhausted: Writing, Waiting, and Holding On Lately, I have been thinking a lot about what it means to still be creating while exhausted. Not just tired, but emotionally wrung out, physically drained, and stretched thin in every direction. Today feels like one of those days where everything is heavy, and yet, somehow, I am still here, still building, still hoping. Back at the beginning of November 2025, I started writing a novel for NaNoWriMo under my pen name, Ravyn Vale. The book is called The Burning Bride, the first planned novel in a four-book series called The Fire Court Saga. I poured myself into it and made…
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My Daughter’s Birthday Far Away
My Daughter’s Birthday Far Away, and the Love That Still Shows Up Today is my daughter Chloe’s 11th birthday, and I honestly do not know how that sentence is real. Eleven. Somehow the tiny baby I once held is now a full-on human with opinions, interests, and a personality that keeps evolving right in front of me, even from far away. Celebrating my daughter’s birthday far away never gets easier, but it has taught me a lot about love, grief, and showing up in different ways. Chloe lives in Georgia with her dad, and I miss her like crazy. That part never stops hurting. But I refuse to let distance…
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Starting Over in 2026
Starting Over in 2026: Tired, Hopeful, and Still Standing If I’m being honest, starting over in 2026 feels less like a fresh start and more like dragging myself across the finish line with one shoe missing. 2025 was brutal. In August, we lost our home. Not “downsized” or “moved on purpose.” Lost. We ended up in my partner’s mom’s boyfriend’s basement, which sounds temporary and harmless until you live it. It was toxic. Constant tension. Drama that clung to the walls. The kind of environment where you never really exhale. About a week later, I landed in the Emergency Room with chest pain. What I thought was anxiety turned into…
