experience – The Wandering Turtle

Clapping for Myself

For years I’ve been the person who circles birthdays and work anniversaries or sets email reminders for the bosses. I make sure the cards get passed around, that everyone has a chance to sign them, that no one is accidentally overlooked. It’s one of those small, invisible things that helps people feel seen and important to us. Ironically, this past Saturday marked my own fifteen-year anniversary with the company, and while there was a card because that’s what we do, no one actually remembered that it was fifteen years.

I’ll admit, it hurt more than I expected.

Not because I wanted a party or a speech or some grand display of appreciation. Fifteen years just feels significant. It’s not one project or one busy season or one good year. It’s fifteen years of showing up. Fifteen years of solving problems, learning new systems, adapting to new leadership, celebrating victories, surviving disappointments, and quietly carrying responsibilities that rarely fit neatly into a job description. When I stop to think about everything the last fifteen years has held for me it makes me want to weep.

For most of the weekend, I found myself waiting for someone to notice. Someone to say, “Fifteen years…that’s a long time. Congratulations.” When that moment didn’t come until I reminded someone this morning, I realized how easy it is to let other people become the keepers of our accomplishments. We wait for someone else to decide whether what we’ve done was meaningful enough to acknowledge.

But maybe that’s asking other people to do a job that belongs to us.

No one else has lived my fifteen years. No one else knows the mornings I walked into the office carrying burdens no one could see. No one else remembers every challenge, every deadline, every difficult conversation, every time I stayed because leaving wasn’t an option. No one else saw the tears shed in the car on the way home or behind a closed door. I know what those years cost me. I also know what they taught me. If anyone is qualified to decide whether they were worth celebrating, it’s me.

I’ve spent much of my life believing that recognition had to come from somewhere outside myself. A promotion. A compliment. A thank-you. A remembered anniversary. Those things are wonderful when they happen, but they’re unreliable places to build your sense of worth. People get busy. Calendars get full. Good intentions get lost. If I leave my value in someone else’s hands, I’ll spend far too much of my life waiting. I already have spent too much of my life waiting.

So this year I’m choosing something different. I’m choosing to tell myself congratulations. I’m choosing to recognize the woman who kept showing up, even when it was the hardest thing to do. I’m choosing to honor the years of faithfulness, resilience, and perseverance that no one else fully witnessed because I was the one living them. There is something surprisingly freeing about realizing that I don’t need permission to be proud of myself.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts that comes with experience. We eventually learn that while it’s wonderful to be celebrated by others, it’s just as important to become someone who can celebrate herself.

So here’s to fifteen years in one place – through storms and life’s ugly curveballs. Good job!! You built a career one ordinary day at a time. You weathered seasons that would have made other people quit. You kept going when it would have been easier not to. Whether anyone else remembered the milestone or not, it was real.

And that’s worth celebrating.

Blessings y’all – Amy

The Hardest Part of Vacation Isn’t Leaving

For weeks before a vacation, my mind slowly begins checking out. The countdown starts, and every day seems to stretch on forever. Work isn’t necessarily harder, but it’s harder to focus because part of me is already picturing ocean views, new cities, long dinners, and mornings without an alarm. The anticipation makes time crawl.

Then, almost without warning, it’s over.

One day you’re standing on the balcony watching the sunrise over the water, promising yourself you’ll remember exactly how peaceful you feel. The next, you’re standing in your kitchen surrounded by suitcases, trying to remember if you have anything clean to wear to work while your phone buzzes with emails that somehow multiplied while you were gone.

I’ve always thought the return home is harder than we admit. We spend so much time talking about planning the trip and soaking up every minute while we’re away that we rarely acknowledge what it feels like to step back into normal life. There’s an expectation that we should simply unpack, get a good night’s sleep, and be ready to jump right back into our routines. As if our minds can flip the same switch our luggage wheels do when they roll back into the closet.

For me, it never works that way.

Vacation reminds me of a slower version of myself. I notice things again. I linger over meals instead of rushing through them. I spend time on myself whether that’s remembering to wash my face or wearing makeup. I stop looking at the clock every thirty minutes – heck I lose track of what day it is. I find myself paying attention to conversations, sunsets, architecture, gardens, and the little moments that somehow get crowded out by everyday life. It isn’t that responsibilities disappear; it’s that they stop being the only thing occupying space in my mind.

Coming home means trading that version of myself for the one who measures her day in meetings, deadlines, laundry, grocery lists, and overflowing inboxes. Even if I enjoy my life, the transition feels abrupt. It’s almost like emotional jet lag. My body may be back home, but part of my mind is still wandering the beaches or listening to waves against the side of a ship.

I’ve started to wonder if that’s why the first few days back at work feel so exhausting. Maybe it isn’t because the workload is overwhelming. Maybe it’s because we’re asking ourselves to shift gears too quickly. We expect our minds to go from complete freedom to complete productivity overnight, and that’s asking more of ourselves than we would in almost any other situation.

When we cross time zones, we accept that we’ll need a few days to adjust. We don’t criticize ourselves for waking up at odd hours or feeling tired in the middle of the afternoon. We understand that our bodies need time to catch up. Yet when it comes to returning from vacation, we expect our minds to make that adjustment instantly.

Maybe they need time, too.

I’ve learned not to rush myself on this process. Cause if I do I get hella angry at having to work for a living lol. I like looking through the photos while the memories are still fresh instead of letting them sit on my phone for months. I’ll make one of the recipes we discovered while traveling or listen to music that reminds me of where we were. It’s my way of allowing the trip to come home with me instead of pretending it ended the moment the plane landed.

The older I get, the more I realize that the purpose of vacation isn’t simply to escape work. It’s to remember who I am when work isn’t occupying every corner of my thoughts. That version of me—the one who slows down enough to notice beauty, laugh a little more, and breathe a little deeper—isn’t someone I want to leave behind every time I unpack my suitcase.

Maybe that’s why re-entry feels so difficult. We’re not just returning to work. We’re trying to hold onto a version of ourselves that we rediscovered while we were away. And perhaps the real challenge isn’t getting back into the routine. It’s figuring out how to bring a little bit of vacation thinking into ordinary Tuesday afternoons, long after the suitcase has been put away.

Blessings y’all – Amy

The Songs That Hit Deep

A few weekends ago, I was on a girls’ trip in the Texas Hill Country. We were driving down a two-lane highway, the kind that stretches out in front of you with no particular urgency, and Cody Johnson was blasting through the speakers. My best friend and I were singing at the top of our lungs, laughing, missing half the words, and completely unconcerned with how ridiculous we sounded. It was one of those simple moments that doesn’t feel significant at the time, yet somehow you know you’ll remember it forever.

As the miles rolled by, I found myself paying attention to two songs in particular: ‘Til You Can’t and The Fall. Not because they were new to me, but because certain songs seem to evolve as we do. They mean one thing when we’re young and convinced we have all the time in the world, and something entirely different after life has taught us otherwise.

If you got a chance, take it, take it while you got a chance
If you got a dream, chase it, ’cause a dream won’t chase you back
If you’re gonna love somebody
Hold ’em as long and as strong and as close as you can
‘Til you can’t

Loss has a way of changing the lens through which you see everything. Before grief, songs about taking chances, loving deeply, and embracing life can feel inspiring. After grief, they feel urgent. They become reminders that none of us know how much time we have with the people we love or how quickly the life we know can change. For those of us who have buried someone we never wanted to lose, those messages aren’t theoretical. They’re lived experience.

There was a time in my life when I would have given almost anything to avoid the storm that was coming. If someone had offered me a glimpse into the future and shown me the heartbreak, the fear, the sleepless nights, and the years of learning how to carry grief, I would have begged for a different path. I would have chosen certainty over pain every single time.

But somewhere between then and now, something shifted.

Sitting in that truck, singing those songs with the windows down, I realized that knowing everything I know today, I would still do it all again.

The ride was worth the fall
The fall was worth the smiles
The smiles were worth the tears
Tears were worth the miles
Miles were worth the pain
Pain was worth it all
It’s all worth this life
Life is worth the ride
The ride is worth the fall

That may sound strange to anyone who hasn’t experienced profound loss, but I suspect those who have will understand immediately. I wouldn’t choose the pain because the pain itself has value. I would choose it because the love was worth it. I would choose it because every beautiful thing that came before the loss mattered. And I would choose it because surviving that storm shaped the person I became afterward.

If I hadn’t lived through those years, I wouldn’t have the life I have today. I wouldn’t be Tim’s wife. I wouldn’t be the mother I am. I wouldn’t be a Mimi, experiencing a kind of joy that my younger self couldn’t even imagine. I wouldn’t have learned that people can break into a thousand pieces and somehow still find a way to rebuild. I wouldn’t understand how grief and gratitude can occupy the same space, each making the other more visible.

The truth is that so much of who I am today was forged in circumstances I never would have chosen. That’s one of life’s great paradoxes. We spend so much time wishing away the hard chapters, only to discover later that they became part of the foundation for some of the most meaningful things in our lives.

Maybe that’s why those songs lingered with me long after the trip ended. They aren’t really about loss. They’re about life. They’re about recognizing that every day is an opportunity to show up fully, to love people well, to take the trip, make the call, say the words, and stop assuming there will always be another chance. They remind me that while none of us can avoid the falls, we can decide what we do with them.

As we continued down that highway, in the pouring rain, friendship, and music, I felt an overwhelming sense of gratitude. Not gratitude for the storms themselves, but gratitude for what waited on the other side of them. Because while I would never wish those experiences on anyone, I can honestly say that the life I have today—the people I love, the perspective I’ve gained, and the joy I now recognize in ordinary moments—exists because I survived them.

Sometimes a song is just a song. And sometimes it’s a reminder that the hardest chapters of our lives don’t get the final word. Sometimes it’s a reminder that while we may not get to choose every storm, we do get to choose what we do with the life that’s waiting for us after the clouds finally clear.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Sunday Scaries

I’ve spent a lot of time lately thinking about the Sunday scaries and wondering why they seem to hit me harder than they used to. It’s a strange phenomenon because nothing has actually happened yet. The work week hasn’t started. No difficult conversations have occurred. No crises have landed in my inbox. And yet, sometime on Sunday afternoon, I can feel my body begin preparing for battle.

My shoulders tighten first. Then comes the restlessness. I’ll find myself unable to fully enjoy whatever I’m doing because my mind has already left the weekend and started living in Monday. By Sunday evening, my thoughts are racing ahead through the entire week, trying to anticipate every possible problem that could arise. A difficult meeting becomes a catastrophe. A simple conversation becomes a confrontation. A challenge becomes a disaster before it has even had a chance to exist.

What fascinates me is how convincing these fears feel in the moment. As I lie in bed staring at the ceiling, unable to sleep, every worry seems completely reasonable. My brain presents each one as an urgent issue that requires immediate attention. Surely if I think about it long enough, I can solve it before it happens. Surely if I prepare for every possible outcome, I can somehow protect myself from disappointment, stress, or conflict.

The problem is that by the time Monday arrives, I’ve often lived through the week once already. I’ve attended the meetings in my head. I’ve had the arguments. I’ve received the criticism. I’ve rehearsed the failures. My body responds as though these things have already happened, even though they exist only in the stories my mind has created.

I’ve often heard people say that anxiety is worrying about things that will probably never happen. While there is certainly truth in that, I’ve realized that explanation has never fully resonated with me. Part of what makes the Sunday scaries so difficult is that life has taught me that not every fear is irrational.

There have been moments in my life when the thing I was worried about actually happened. There have been phone calls I didn’t want to answer, conversations I dreaded having, and losses I desperately hoped I could somehow avoid. Some of the hardest chapters of my life arrived after periods of knowing they might be coming. When you’ve lived through enough heartbreak, enough uncertainty, and enough grief, your brain begins to believe that its job is to stay one step ahead of pain.

Looking back, I can see how that survival instinct developed. If I can anticipate every possible outcome, maybe I won’t be blindsided. If I can identify every risk, maybe I can prevent disaster. If I stay alert enough, perhaps I can keep the people I love safe and protect myself from being hurt again.

The problem is that a mind trained to watch for genuine threats doesn’t always know the difference between a life-changing crisis and an ordinary Monday morning. It responds to an upcoming meeting with the same vigilance it once reserved for truly difficult seasons. It treats uncertainty as danger. It mistakes worry for preparation and anxiety for control.

What I’ve started to understand is that my Sunday scaries aren’t really about the week ahead. They’re about my relationship with uncertainty. They are the result of a mind that desperately wants guarantees in a world that refuses to provide them.

The irony is that all those hours spent worrying never actually give me what I’m looking for. They don’t make me more prepared. They don’t eliminate risk. They don’t provide certainty. They simply rob me of the one thing I actually possess in that moment, which is the Sunday evening sitting right in front of me.

While anxiety constantly reminds me that difficult things are possible, experience has taught me something equally important. I’ve survived every difficult season that has come my way. I’ve survived grief. I’ve survived loss. I’ve survived disappointment, uncertainty, conflict, and change. Not because I successfully predicted every outcome, but because when life demanded something of me, I found a way through it.

Maybe that’s the lesson I’m slowly learning.

The goal isn’t to convince myself that nothing bad will ever happen. Life has already proven otherwise. The goal is to trust myself enough to know that whatever happens, I will deal with it when it arrives. I don’t need to carry the entire week before it begins. I don’t need to solve Wednesday’s problems on Sunday evening. I don’t need to sacrifice today’s peace in an attempt to purchase tomorrow’s safety.

The truth is that this moment deserves my attention just as much as whatever waits for me tomorrow. The conversation with my husband. The dog curled up nearby. The last few quiet hours of the weekend. The sunset outside the window. These things are real. The disasters my mind is rehearsing are, for the most part, only possibilities.

Monday will come whether I worry about it or not. The week will unfold in ways I can predict and in ways I can’t. What I can control is whether I spend Sunday evening living the life that is actually happening or preparing for one that may never arrive.

And if experience has taught me anything, it’s this: I am far stronger than my anxiety gives me credit for. The same strength that carried me through the hardest days of my life is still here. I don’t need to spend Sunday night rehearsing every possible disaster to be ready for whatever this week brings.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

Twenty-Six Years??

Twenty-six years ago today, I started the first of only three jobs I’ve had in the last twenty-six years.

I arrived in Dallas young, hopeful, and carrying a lot of expectations. I was convinced that moving here might help repair my relationship with my mom. Like so many things in life, that story didn’t unfold the way I imagined it would. We never found the relationship I was hoping for. For a long time, I viewed that as a disappointment. Now, with the perspective that only time can bring, I see that life was busy giving me something else and I’m very much at peace with letting that relationship go.

What Dallas gave me was time with my grandparents.

Not the dramatic, movie-worthy moments. The ordinary ones. Family dinners. Holidays. Conversations I don’t fully remember but would give anything to hear again. Time around the dominos table. I got years with them before they left this earth, years I might not have had if life had taken me somewhere else. Looking back, that gift was bigger than the one I thought I was moving here to receive.

The last twenty-six years have been packed with more life than I could have imagined when I unpacked those first boxes. They gave me my children, who somehow transformed from little kids needing rides and reminders into adults building lives of their own. A precious grandchild I never expected to get to watch grow. They gave me a marriage with Fred that shaped me in ways I still recognize today. That chapter brought love, growth, laughter, challenges, and eventually grief. The kind of grief that settles into the corners of your life and quietly changes the person you become.

And then, when I least expected it, life gave me Tim.

Sometimes I think about how strange it is that some of the best things in our lives arrive after we’ve already decided we know how the story is supposed to go. Tim is my safe place, my biggest supporter, and my favorite person to come home to. He watches over me, takes care of me when I need it, celebrates my victories, and somehow still manages to make me laugh when I’m taking life too seriously. After everything we’ve both walked through to get here, I don’t take a single day of it for granted.

Professionally, these years have been just as significant. I’m approaching fifteen years with TLC, which feels impossible to write. Fifteen years. There are memories tucked into those years everywhere I look. People who taught me things, challenged me, frustrated me, encouraged me, and became part of my story. Some have long since moved on. Others are still part of my day-to-day life. Together we’ve navigated growth, change, success, uncertainty, and enough stories that I could probably fill a book.

Lately, though, I’ve become more aware of time. Maybe that’s one of the unexpected parts of getting older. Not because I feel old—I absolutely do not feel old enough to have spent twenty-six years in this industry—but because I can suddenly see the years stacked behind me. Twenty-six years ago doesn’t feel like a lifetime ago. It feels like a few chapters ago. Yet somehow, in that time, I’ve watched grandparents leave this world, children become adults, coworkers come and go, and entire seasons of life pass by before I realized they were ending.

There are days when that realization feels a little heavy. Time moves faster now than it used to. The calendar pages flip quicker. The milestones arrive sooner. The people we love get older. We get older.

But when I look back over these twenty-six years, the feeling that rises above all the others isn’t sadness. It’s gratitude.

Gratitude for the relationship that never became what I hoped, because it led me to relationships that became more than I could have imagined. Gratitude for the grandparents who loved me so well. Gratitude for the children who made me a mother. Gratitude for the years with Fred and the lessons that came from loving and losing. Gratitude for Tim and the joy of discovering that life can still surprise you.

Twenty-six years ago, I arrived in Dallas hoping for one thing.

Instead, I got a life. And while it hasn’t always been easy, I wouldn’t trade a single chapter.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Pressure of Free Time…

There’s a very specific kind of giddiness that comes with a long weekend as an adult. It starts sometime around Thursday afternoon, when you realize there’s an extra day sitting out there waiting for you. By Friday, it feels full of possibility in a way regular weekends never quite do. One extra day somehow tricks your brain into believing you suddenly have time to become fully rested, productive, creative, organized, and caught up on life, friends, and family all at once.

The mental list starts building almost immediately. You’re going to sew. Clean out a closet. Take a nap. Water the plants. Sit outside with a glass of wine and actually relax for once. Maybe read. Maybe organize. Maybe do absolutely nothing for a little while and not feel guilty about it.

But somewhere between all the possibilities and all the pressure we quietly place on ourselves, the long weekend starts feeling less restful and more overwhelming.

At least it’s that way for me.

Because instead of simply enjoying the extra time, my brain starts trying to carefully distribute it. Even now it’s sitting here whirring trying to figure out what I’m going to jump off this chair and get done. If I spend the afternoon sewing, I probably should’ve been productive. If I spend the day cleaning and organizing, I’ll feel disappointed that I never actually rested. If I sit still too long, I start mentally calculating all the things I “should” be doing instead. If I worked a little Monday somehow my week next week won’t be so bad. And somehow having too many choices leaves me oddly stuck, drifting from one thing to another without ever fully settling into any of them.

Then suddenly it’s Monday evening. The weekend is over. The house still isn’t completely done. Half the projects remain untouched. The rest somehow didn’t feel restful enough. And despite having an extra day off, you’re still tired and somehow emotionally unprepared to go back to work.

I think part of the problem is that many of us have forgotten how to let free time simply exist without turning it into another thing to manage well. 🙋🏻‍♀️ We approach long weekends with such high expectations. Surely this is the weekend we’ll finally catch up, recharge, reset, organize life, and become the version of ourselves who has it all together.

But maybe that’s too much pressure to place on a few open days.

The older I get, the more I think the best weekends are rarely the ones where everything gets done. They’re usually the quieter ones. The ones where you laugh a little, rest a little, wander through a project because you want to instead of because you scheduled it, and maybe sit outside at the end of the day with a glass of wine realizing you didn’t maximize every minute… but you lived in some of them.

Maybe the goal of a long weekend was never to fix our exhaustion in the first place. Maybe it was simply meant to give us a little room to breathe.

Blessings Ya’ll – Amy

Putting the Scoreboard Down

I think some of our most exhausting habits begin so early in life that we barely recognize them as habits at all. For me, one of those has always been comparison… or maybe more accurately, keeping mental score.

I think it starts younger than we realize. As kids, we notice who has more chores, who gets away with doing less, who is praised for helping, and who somehow manages to avoid responsibility altogether. In our home as kids the only way to get anything positive was to work harder and wait for a pat on the head like a dog who did something good.

Somewhere along the way, many of us quietly learn to measure fairness through effort. We begin tallying who is contributing more, who is carrying the heavier load, and whether things feel “even.” At the time, it probably seems harmless. Maybe even responsible. But over the years, that mental scoreboard can become so automatic that we carry it into adulthood without even realizing it. The problem is, comparison rarely brings peace. Mostly, it brings exhaustion.

The older I get, the more I notice how much mental space comparison takes up when we allow it to. We compare workloads, responsibilities, energy, effort, marriages, homes, parenting, accomplishments, friendships, appearances… and before long, our minds are constantly evaluating instead of simply living. We become hyper-aware of imbalance. Hyper-aware of fairness. Hyper-aware of who seems to carry more and who seems to carry less. Hyper aware of those who seem to move through life without a care in the world while we’re breaking under the load of trying to be enough.

And while some level of awareness is normal, constantly measuring ourselves against other people slowly steals something important from us. It steals contentment. It steals gratitude. It steals the ability to be fully present in our own lives because part of our mind is always glancing sideways into someone else’s lane. Comparison is the thief of joy.

I don’t even think most people who struggle with comparison are shallow or judgmental. In fact, I think it often comes from being conscientious. From caring deeply. From growing up believing that hard work, dependability, and responsibility were tied to our worth and value in life. So when we encounter people who move through life differently, it can quietly (and sometimes loudly) frustrate us more than we’d like to admit.

But lately I’ve started wondering how much peace we lose trying to mentally manage fairness everywhere we go. Because no matter how observant we are, we never fully know another person’s story, capacity, struggles, personality, or burdens. And even when imbalance does exist, carrying resentment over it rarely improves our own lives. Most of the time, it only makes our hearts heavier.

I’m beginning to think peace comes from putting the scoreboard down. Not lowering standards. Not pretending effort doesn’t matter. But choosing to stop making comparison the background noise of our lives. Choosing to focus more on how we want to live than on whether everyone around us is doing things the exact same way. Choosing to focus on what we can do and letting the rest of it go. Letting someone else carry the “enough” weight for a while.

Maybe that starts with catching ourselves when comparison creeps in and gently redirecting our thoughts. Maybe it means practicing gratitude for our own lives instead of constantly evaluating someone else’s. Maybe it means spending less time keeping emotional tallies and more time protecting our peace. Maybe it means learning that we can do our best without needing life to feel perfectly “fair” at all times. Maybe it means turning it over to God in prayer and asking him to take away the weight.

Because the truth is, comparison almost never leaves us feeling lighter. Peace does.

Blessings Y’all – Amy

The Joy of Being a Certain Age….

There’s a quiet, unspoken club you join at a certain age. No one sends you an invitation. There’s no welcome packet. Just one day you wake up and realize…oh. This is happening.

And suddenly, your body has opinions. Strong ones.

The joy of being “a certain age” is that you finally know yourself—what you like, what you don’t, what you’re willing to tolerate, and what you absolutely are not. The irony, of course, is that just as your confidence settles in, your internal thermostat packs up and leaves town without notice.

One minute you’re perfectly fine. The next, you’re peeling off layers like you’re in the middle of a Texas heatwave…in February. Then five minutes later, you’re reaching for a blanket like you’ve been dropped into a walk-in freezer. There is no rhyme or reason. You are both the sun and the Arctic, sometimes within the same hour.

Sleep? That used to be something you did without thinking. Now it’s a strategic event. You go to bed tired, maybe even exhausted, and still find yourself staring at the ceiling at 2:17 a.m., mentally reorganizing your pantry, replaying conversations from 2004, and wondering if you should repaint the living room. When sleep finally comes, it’s light, unpredictable, and often interrupted by—what else—a sudden need to throw off the covers because your body has decided it’s time for another internal bonfire.

And then there’s the irritability.

It sneaks in quietly at first. Little things. Harmless things. Someone chewing too loudly. A cabinet left open. A text message that simply says “k.” You find yourself thinking, is it me…or is everyone just a little extra lately? The answer, of course, is complicated. You’re not wrong—but you’re also not entirely right. Your tolerance has shifted, your patience has thinned, and your filter? It’s been significantly edited.

But here’s the part no one talks about enough: underneath all of this, there is a strange, steady kind of joy.

Because with the temperature swings and the sleepless nights comes a clarity that wasn’t always there before. You stop pretending. You stop over-explaining. You stop bending yourself into shapes that don’t fit just to keep the peace. You start choosing comfort over expectation, honesty over politeness, and rest over proving something.

You learn to laugh at the absurdity of it all—standing in front of an open freezer at midnight just to cool down, kicking off blankets and then pulling them right back up, apologizing (sometimes) after snapping over something small. You recognize that your body is changing, yes—but so is your perspective.

You become more protective of your time, your energy, your peace. You learn to appreciate your grandbaby’s giggle as the purest sweetest sound on earth.

And maybe that’s the real joy of being a certain age.

It’s not that everything feels easy—because it doesn’t. It’s that you finally understand what matters enough to keep, and what you’re allowed to let go. What you will and won’t tolerate from the youth around you. Even if you’re doing it while fanning yourself with the nearest magazine and wondering if you’ll ever sleep through the night again.

Blessings y’all – Amy

The Sun, the Moon, and the Trap of Comparison

It has become incredibly easy to look at someone else’s life and quietly decide that you are somehow behind. Behind in success, behind in happiness, behind in parenting, behind in health, behind in just about everything. The internet has given us a front row seat to everyone’s highlight reel. We see the vacations, the perfectly decorated homes, the thriving businesses, the glowing smiles in family photos. What we don’t see are the quiet, messy, complicated parts of life that everyone carries behind the scenes. And yet, if we’re not careful, we start measuring our ordinary Tuesday afternoons against someone else’s carefully curated moments.

I came across a quote recently that stopped me long enough to really think about it: “Don’t compare your life to others. There’s no comparison between the sun and the moon. They shine when it’s their time.” It’s such a simple image, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The sun and the moon were never meant to compete with each other. The sun doesn’t look at the moon lighting up the night sky and think it’s somehow falling behind. It doesn’t rush the horizon trying to prove it can shine brighter. And the moon doesn’t apologize for not lighting up the middle of the day. They simply show up when it’s their time.

Life has seasons that feel like bright sunshine. Things move forward easily. Plans fall into place. You feel productive, hopeful, and confident that everything is working the way it should. But life also has seasons that feel more like moonlight. Those are the quieter seasons. The slower ones. Sometimes they’re the seasons where you’re healing from something, learning something hard, facing uncertainty, or just trying to make it through the day without letting worry take over. Those seasons can feel uncomfortable, especially when everyone else seems to be standing in the sunlight.

But the truth is, the moon is just as necessary as the sun. The world needs both. We tend to celebrate the bright seasons in people’s lives — the accomplishments, the milestones, the moments when everything seems to be going right. What we rarely see are the quieter seasons where people are rebuilding, recovering, grieving, growing, or simply learning how to keep moving forward. Some of the most important growth in life happens in those darker skies. When things slow down enough for us to listen to ourselves. When life forces us to reevaluate what actually matters. When we learn patience, resilience, and grace in ways that sunny days never quite teach us.

Comparison assumes that everyone is living on the same timeline, but that has never really been true. Some people are standing in their sunrise years. Others are in the bright middle of the day when everything seems clear and certain. And some of us are walking through a quieter stretch where the light looks different. None of those seasons mean someone else is ahead. They simply mean it is their time to shine in a different way.

The sun and the moon never rush each other. They never compete for the same sky. They simply take their turn lighting it up. Maybe life works a little like that too. Maybe your season right now looks different from someone else’s, and maybe that’s exactly how it’s supposed to be. It doesn’t mean you’re behind or that you’ve somehow missed the moment when everything was supposed to happen. It might simply mean that right now you’re walking in the softer light of the moon, and there is still something beautiful about that kind of glow.

Eventually the sky shifts again. It always does. The sun rises, the moon returns, and both continue doing exactly what they were meant to do — shining when it’s their time.

Blessings y’all – Amy

Learning to Live With the Weather

For a long time I thought depression and anxiety were problems to solve. Something broken in me that I needed to fix or snap back together.

Like a puzzle with the right pieces hidden somewhere. If I just worked hard enough, prayed enough, exercised enough, organized enough, went through enough counseling, or “thought positively” enough, eventually I would arrive at the finish line where they no longer existed.

But that’s not really how it works.

Depression and anxiety aren’t always dragons to be slain. They’re more like weather patterns that move through your life. Sometimes the skies are clear and bright and everything feels easy. And sometimes the clouds roll in without warning and the air gets heavy and dark.

For a long time I kept trying to conquer the storm.

I thought if I could just be stronger, or more disciplined, or somehow “fix” myself, the clouds would disappear for good. When they didn’t, I felt like I was failing some invisible test everyone else seemed to be passing.

But somewhere along the way I realized something important.

This isn’t something I conquer. It’s something I learn to live with.

Some days the sky is blue and the sun is warm and I move through life easily. I laugh, I create, I plan, I feel hopeful. Those days remind me that the storm isn’t permanent. But other days the clouds roll in again. Anxiety hums quietly in the background of everything. Depression makes even small things feel heavy. Getting through the day can feel like walking through deep water. Dealing with other humans, especially at work, can feel insurmountable.

And those are the days when I have to remind myself that storms are not personal failures.

They are just weather.

I’ve learned that living with depression and anxiety isn’t about eliminating the storms. It’s about learning how to ride them out without believing they will last forever.

Some days that means doing the smallest things and counting them as victories.

Getting out of bed.

Taking a walk.

Answering one email.

Not yelling at someone who probably deserves it and more importantly not taking it out on someone who definitely doesn’t deserve it.

Small things that other people might not even notice can feel like climbing mountains on the hard days.

And that’s okay.

One of the greatest gifts through these storms has been having someone who loves me through it. Someone who doesn’t expect me to always be sunny and easy and carefree. Someone who understands that sometimes the weather in my mind changes without warning.

Someone who stays anyway. Tim is amazing that way.

There is a quiet kind of grace in being loved through your storms. Not fixed. Not judged. Not told to simply “snap out of it.” Just loved — patiently and steadily — while the clouds pass through.

That kind of love doesn’t erase depression or anxiety.

But it makes the storms easier to weather.

Over time I’ve stopped measuring my life by how often the clouds appear. Instead, I’m learning to measure it by how I move through them. By the resilience that grows quietly inside the hard seasons. By the compassion I’ve learned for myself and for others who are fighting battles no one else can see. I’ve also learned it’s ok to cry and feel the things I feel – no one else has to understand the storm raging inside me.

The truth is, many people are walking through storms we know nothing about. Depression and anxiety are invisible companions for millions of people. Some days they whisper. Some days they roar. But they do not define the whole landscape of a life.

They are just part of the weather.

And like all weather, they change.

The sun returns eventually.

The air clears.

The world feels lighter again.

Living with depression and anxiety has taught me something I might never have learned otherwise: strength isn’t always loud or heroic.

Sometimes strength is simply surviving.

Staying in the middle of the storm.

Staying in the middle of the uncertainty.

Staying long enough to see the sky clear again.

And if you’re someone who walks through these storms too, I hope you know this:

You are not broken.

You are not weak.

You are simply learning how to live with the weather.

And that is a kind of courage the world doesn’t talk about nearly enough. And isn’t nearly patient enough with.

Blessings y’all – Amy