Tag: family

Finding My Footing

I didn’t notice the ground at first.

There was no moment where things clicked into place. No deep breath followed by relief. No sense that I had made it through something. If anything, it was the opposite. The days just stopped surprising me in quite the same way.

That’s how footing arrived.

After a year where everything felt unstable, predictability began to creep back in. Not because life got easier, but because fewer things changed from one day to the next. The shape of my days started to repeat. Mornings followed a familiar pattern. Appointments landed where I expected them to. Fewer decisions felt urgent. Fewer moments demanded that I brace for impact.

It didn’t feel like progress. It felt quiet.

I noticed it first in my body. My shoulders weren’t as tight. I wasn’t flinching every time my phone buzzed. I slept a little more, not well, but better than before. My body figured it out before my mind did. Something had shifted. The ground wasn’t solid, but it wasn’t moving under my feet every time I stepped.

That’s when I realized I was finding my footing.

Not everywhere. Not all at once. Just in enough places that I wasn’t constantly correcting myself mid-step.

A lot of that steadiness came from the things that didn’t move.

My son’s needs didn’t pause while everything else changed. Neither did my goddaughter’s. School still started at the same time. Appointments still had to be made and kept. Medications still needed to be managed. Meals still needed to happen. Dogs still needed to be walked.

There was no room to wait for clarity.

Parenting didn’t provide answers, but it provided structure. It gave the day edges. It gave me somewhere to put my weight. Showing up wasn’t heroic or meaningful in the way people sometimes describe. It was necessary. It was grounding.

Some things didn’t shift. I built around them.

That responsibility didn’t make life lighter, but it made it steadier. It pulled me out of my head and back into the day in front of me. It narrowed my focus in a way that helped. When everything else felt provisional, the kids anchored the present.

Finding my footing didn’t mean feeling safe. It didn’t mean feeling confident. It didn’t mean believing the worst was over.

It meant knowing where I could stand.

There are still plenty of places where the ground feels uneven. There are still unknowns that sit just outside the frame of my days. There are still moments where I feel the urge to brace, to anticipate, to prepare for something I can’t name yet.

But I’m not slipping the way I was before.

I’m not steady everywhere. But I know where the ground holds.

For now, that’s enough.

The Transition Year

It’s the start of another new year.

This one doesn’t feel like it’s asking for resolutions—the kind that usually get abandoned before the month is out. It’s not about exercising more, losing weight, eating better, or drinking more water. It’s not about learning French, or guitar, or drawing, or how to cook something impressive.

This year isn’t about optimization.

There will be fundamental differences this year. Not because I’ve planned them carefully, but because change is already in motion. Last year was when many things fell apart. As a result, I’ll start this year one way, and by the end of it, some of the most basic facts of my life will be different.

2025 was loss.

2026 is transition.

Transition is uncomfortable. It’s unstable. It’s the in-between where nothing is settled yet, but nothing can go back to the way it was. There’s no clean narrative arc. No before-and-after clarity. Just movement. Unstoppable movement.

It’s not rebuilding yet.

It’s not new beginnings.

It’s packing things up without knowing exactly where they’re going.

There’s grief in that. And uncertainty. And more questions than answers.

But there’s also something honest about it.

This year isn’t asking me to reinvent myself. It’s asking me to pay attention. To stay upright while things shift. To keep showing up for my son, for my goddaughter, for the responsibilities that didn’t disappear just because everything else changed.

If 2025 was the year everything fell apart, then 2026 is the year I learn how to move through what’s left.

Maybe 2027 will be the year of something new.

I don’t need to decide that yet.

The Lost Year

This has been an extremely difficult year.

Not difficult in a single, dramatic way.

Difficult in the slow accumulation of loss.

The kind that doesn’t arrive all at once, but keeps showing up until you realize you’re standing in a year that no longer resembles the one you started in.

My father passed away this fall.

It was slow, and then it was fast. Months of watching a body fail, followed by an ending that still came as a shock. His world had grown smaller. His body no longer cooperated. His mind, at times, betrayed him. He was unhappy in ways that couldn’t be fixed.

His death brought grief. And guilt. And the familiar questions that arrive uninvited:

Should I have spent more time? Should I have been more patient? Should I have done something differently?

It also brought relief. And that’s harder to admit out loud. Relief that he wasn’t trapped in a body that no longer worked. Relief that the suffering had ended. Relief that the waiting was over.

I am grateful that we moved him closer. Grateful that my son got to know him. That he saw my son play baseball. That he showed interest in my son’s life, even as his own was narrowing. Those moments matter. They don’t cancel the loss, but they soften its edges.

Work added its own quiet weight this year.

For much of the year, I was in a role that wasn’t a good fit. The frustration built slowly, then all at once. Fear kept me there longer than I should have stayed. Responsibility did too. The job search dragged on, heavy with uncertainty. I eventually landed somewhere new, which brought some relief—but even that has continued to shift. The year ends without the sense of stability I hoped for.

My son still hasn’t seen the benefits we were hoping for from DBS. In fact, he’s having more seizures now than he was at the beginning of the year. When you’ve lived with uncertainty for this long, you’d think it would lose its power. It doesn’t. Each setback still lands hard.

My goddaughter’s health has changed as well, requiring more care, more attention, more presence. The needs don’t slow down just because you’re already stretched thin.

There have been other changes this year, too. Big ones. The kind that rearrange the shape of your life without asking permission. The kind that leave you trying to find your footing in a version of the future you didn’t expect to be standing in.

This year can’t end soon enough.

It feels like a year of subtraction. A year where things were taken faster than they could be replaced. A year where even gratitude felt heavy, like another thing I was supposed to hold carefully and do “right.”

And still, some things remain.

My son.

My goddaughter.

My dogs.

My health.

A few friends.

A job. Insurance. Shelter.

I don’t list these things to balance the scales. They don’t erase what was lost. They just exist alongside it.

I’ll carry them into the new year. I’ll keep showing up for the kids. I’ll keep working toward better outcomes where I can, and accepting limits where I can’t. I’ll keep looking for steadier ground.

This year feels like the floor.

Not the ceiling.

Next year isn’t about rebuilding what was lost. Some things can’t be rebuilt. Some things shouldn’t be.

Next year is about making something new.