The winter of 2019 used to feel far behind me.

Tonight it feels like yesterday.

Like I stepped through a door I thought had been closed.

Old trauma.
My voice silenced again.
Fear that lives in the body before the mind even catches up.

It feels like someone took a knife to scars that had finally sealed and said,

Here. Feel this again.

And suddenly everything is familiar in the worst possible way.

2019

That year…I wasn’t sure I would survive it.

If you’ve read my book, you know I’ve lived through my share of moments.
Moments where the weight of life – the situations, the people, the silence – threatened to suffocate me.

Those moments filled the years from 1979 to 2017.

I thought I knew what hardship looked like.

Then came the years 2019 through 2026.

And they have outdone anything I ever imagined my life would hold.

People like to call it resilience.

Resilience:
the ability to withstand difficulty.
the ability to bounce back.

They say it like it’s a compliment. And maybe it is. But I hate that word. Not because it isn’t true.

Fuck – look at my life.

I hate it because accepting that word means acknowledging what came before it.

The pain. The damage. The moments where I didn’t know if I would make it through.

To be resilient means I would have to tell my side.

I would have to be vulnerable. I would have to disclose things that are easier left unsaid. I would have to open myself to judgment. And worst of all…I would have to hope someone might understand.

“It’s the hope that kills you.”
– Sir Peter Ustinov

When I look back now, I see all the ways I tried to protect myself.

Boundaries built like barricades.
Lines drawn hard in the sand.
Walls stacked brick by brick.

I thought that was safety.

I thought if I built them high enough, nothing could reach me again.

What I didn’t understand then was that safety and hope are not the same thing.

Safety hides.

Hope reaches.

Hope whispers that maybe – someday – someone will see you. Really see you. Hear you. Understand you.

And when that hope shatters…It doesn’t just hurt. It breaks something deep inside you.

Seven years later and here I am.

Trying to close wounds that were reopened. Trying to quiet fears that are whispered back into my life. Trying to find my voice again. And still choosing to live by the values that matter to me.

The person I get to choose to be. Love. Kindness.

People hear those words and think they’re soft. They aren’t.

Inside love and kindness lives an entire universe:

Tenderness.
Adoration.
Humanity.
Warmth.
Concern.
Compassion.
Goodwill.

And the truth is, those values dismantle your defenses. They strip away the armor. They make you human in moments when your instincts scream for self-preservation.

So when the world feels heavy again, I lean into something else: Gratitude.

A friend and her husband prayed “Kick butt. God be with her.”

Simple words.

But they landed exactly where I needed them.Because the truth is I would never have made it this far alone.

The texts.
The calls.
The visits.

Friends and family who show up when life cracks open again. Just when I think I’ve fully felt the support around me, someone finds their way back into my life and reminds me again how deeply loved I actually am.

And that fills me with a gratitude that is hard to explain.

And well my kids! My kids have been incredible through all of this.

They’ve somehow learned the delicate balance between supporting me and still living their own lives.

They have their feelings too – of course they do. But they trust the process. They trust how I communicate my pain. They trust that we will all come through this. And they fill my days with life. Joy. Peace.

And then there was him.

Given our history, most people would assume I could never get past the pain he once caused.

But life is complicated like that. Because I have never experienced a love so pure. A friendship so honest. A man so aware of himself and the world around him.

I don’t believe I would have made it through 2025 without him.

His friendship.
His support.
His accountability.

And most of all, his love.

When hope feels thin – threadbare at best – he reminds me that the hope I held onto seven years ago has been renewed that much more as he continues to show up and hold me in love during my darkest moments. 

Tonight, that matters more than I can explain.

I heard a quote that stayed with me. “I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.”

So tonight, I choose.

I choose myself.

Every step forward.
Every boundary held.
Every moment where I refuse to let the past define the future.

Step by step.

I am choosing who I become.

Seven years later, the past still knows how to knock on the door.

Sometimes it kicks the damn thing open.

But it doesn’t get to live here anymore.

Not the fear.
Not the silence.
Not the version of me who believed she had to survive everything alone.

That woman carried me this far.

But the woman I am now gets to decide what happens next.

And step by step…

I’m choosing me.

with all my love, xoxo j