We all have a story

We All Have a Story

Nine years ago, I made a choice that would reshape everything I knew about myself. With a heart fractured by loss, I packed up my life and moved to a place where I was nobody's daughter, nobody's neighbor, nobody's history. I was just a woman starting over, carrying only what remained of who I used to be.

I left behind more than a house—I left a universe I had spent years creating. The magical, storybook place where my two children had grown up, where music and laughter echoed through rooms filled with the memories of bedtime stories and kitchen table lessons. I left the rich tapestry of our homeschooling community, the professional networks I had cultivated, the business I had built with my own hands and heart.

The honeybees went silent without me. For thirteen years, I had tended those botanical gardens, each plant chosen with intention, each pathway laid with purpose. It wasn't just landscaping—it was sanctuary. An oasis carved from city concrete, where beauty grew wild and healing happened quietly.

People found their way to those gardens when their worlds fell apart. They came to sit among the flowers when words weren't enough. The grieving mother who needed somewhere to remember her child. The newly divorced man who sat on the bench until sunset. The cancer patient who found strength in watching things grow. The survivors of abuse who discovered they could trust beauty again. The addicted who came to remember they were more than their struggles.

I understood their pain because I had walked those same dark paths. Loss, divorce, the weight of human suffering, the ache of neglect, the grip of addiction—these weren't abstract concepts to me. They were chapters in my own story, scars that had taught me how to recognize the wounded.

But here's what I learned in those gardens, and what I carried with me when I left: loss is woven into the fabric of being human. It's not a detour from life—it's part of the journey. And if loss is inevitable, then so is our capacity to heal, to grow, to begin again.

Resilience isn't about being unbroken. It's about gathering the pieces and creating something new from what remains. It's about leaving behind the life you thought you'd live and having the courage to discover who you are when everything familiar falls away.

Nine years later, I understand that moving away wasn't just about healing from heartbreak. It was about learning that we are not our circumstances. We are not our losses. We are not even our beautiful gardens or the communities that knew us best.

We are the ones who choose to begin again.

And sometimes, that choice to start over becomes the most beautiful thing we've ever created.