I'm still working on telling my story. The short version is: you name it, I've probably experienced it—including watching a plane crash in my front yard when I was seven. My childhood also included trauma much closer to home. I grew up experiencing mental, physical, and emotional abuse within my family. Those experiences shaped me in ways I'm still coming to understand. But that isn't the whole story of my family, either. We continue to work together to acknowledge what happened, heal old wounds, and find healthier ways forward. Healing doesn't erase the past, but it has given us the chance to build something different from it. By 18, I had run away from home and moved in with the man who would become my husband. For 20 years, we lived, loved, and fought our way through life together—sometimes with each other, and often with the world. Building our family wasn't an easy road. I experienced both primary and secondary infertility, as well as several miscarriages. We had four children together; three are living. We said goodbye to our second son just two hours after he was born. Ten years and a few months later, I said goodbye to the love of my life after we were struck by an oncoming vehicle that crossed into our lane. And somehow, life kept going. I'm still homeschooling our kids, and in what was either an act of insanity or possibly just stupidity, I moved us to my parents' homestead. Oh, yeah. There's that, too. My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer in 2021—and then bought a 40-acre homestead. Because apparently our family doesn't do anything the easy way. And because our family doesn't do anything the easy way: my kids and I currently live in a 500-square-foot tiny house on the homestead, along with our three dogs and three cats. Between all of us, we also have four goats, eight chickens, some guineas, four Heilan coos (aka Highland cows), seven dogs, and four cats on the homestead. I'm still working on telling my story because, in many ways, I'm still living it. I'm not here because I have grief figured out or because I've reached some magical place where everything is okay. I'm here because I've experienced loss, trauma, love, heartbreak, and the strange reality of having to keep living when your life looks nothing like you thought it would. And I'm here to walk alongside others who have experienced some of those things, too—to listen, to share what I've learned when it's helpful, and to remind people that they don't have to carry all of it alone. One of my favorite lines comes from Brandon Sanderson: “What is the most important step a man can take?” For me, that question has taken on a very different meaning over the years. There have been times when moving forward meant finding my way through a life I never expected to be living, and others when it meant simply getting through the next hour. I don't have all the answers. I'm still healing. I'm still learning. I'm still figuring out what life looks like from here. But I do know this: The most important step is the next one. So that's what I'm doing. One step at a time. And if you're trying to take that next step, too—you don't have to walk it alone.