The Vortex

 About eleven years ago, while talking to God as I often did, words came out of my mouth that surprised me.

“God, if this is all there is to life, I’m ready to come home.”

The moment I said it, I stopped.

At that time, my life was full. I had recovery, friendships, creativity, women I sponsored, and a partner I loved deeply.

There was nothing wrong.

And yet, beneath the life I had built, I felt a longing I could not name.

Not for something different.

For something deeper.

So I opened my hands.

And surrendered.

Not knowing that everything was about to change.

What followed was not a dramatic event.

It was a slow unraveling.

The life that had once felt solid began to shift beneath my feet. Relationships changed. Certainties dissolved. Doors I expected to remain open quietly closed.

Again and again, I found myself standing in unfamiliar territory.

At first, I resisted.

I searched for answers, explanations, and certainty.

But the deeper invitation was not to understand.

It was to trust.

Looking back, I can see that I had entered what I now call the vortex.

A space between what was and what would be.

A place where old identities fall away before new ones are formed.

A place that feels like loss while something sacred is quietly being born.

I did not know it then.

I only knew that God had answered the prayer I never meant to pray.

The years that followed carried me deeper into that unknown space.

Things I once depended on no longer held the same meaning.

Roles I had identified with began to loosen their grip.

Even my understanding of God was being transformed.

There were seasons when I felt suspended between worlds—

no longer who I had been,

not yet who I was becoming.

It was uncomfortable.

Sometimes lonely.

Often confusing.

Yet beneath it all, something steady remained.

A quiet presence.

A gentle knowing that even when I could not see the path, I was not walking it alone.

Over time, I began to understand that the vortex was not a punishment.

It was an invitation.

An invitation to release what could no longer carry me.

An invitation to trust what could not yet be seen.

An invitation to come home to a deeper relationship with God, with myself, and with life itself.

The transformation was not happening around me.

It was happening within me.

And perhaps that was the answer to my prayer all along.

The Greatest Gift

 When I look back at the woman who first walked into recovery thirty years ago, I barely recognize her.

So much has changed.

Some of those changes fill me with gratitude. Others carry a touch of sadness. Parts of me have been lost along the way, and sometimes I miss who I used to be.

The early years of recovery were not easy.

I walked beside my daughter through her illness. I buried her. Later, I lost my brother, my husband, and eventually my mother.

Grief became a familiar companion.

Yet alongside the losses, something else was happening.

I was changing.

With the help of recovery and therapy, I began untangling old patterns. I learned healthier ways of living, loving, and relating. Some people welcomed those changes. Others drifted away.

Recovery gave me  a new life back, but it also cost me some relationships.

Still, there was so much joy.

There was Jack—my soulmate, my companion through so much of life’s journey.

There was creativity, laughter, friendship, and the simple pleasure of making beautiful things with my hands.

And slowly, over time, something I never thought possible happened.

I learned to love myself.

Not perfectly.

Not all at once.

But enough to look in the mirror and say,

“I love you.”

Those years held some of the deepest sorrows of my life and some of the greatest joys.

And when I look back now, I see that recovery gave me many gifts.

But perhaps the greatest gift was this:

I found God and I found myself.

Trusting My Intuition

 Last night was another difficult night with bladder pain.

The pain kept waking me, and almost immediately my mind began searching for a reason. It wanted to blame something I had eaten. For the past year, I have lived with many restrictions, afraid that food might be the cause of my suffering.

But recently, I made a different choice.

I chose to trust my intuition.

While my mind searches for physical explanations, something deeper in me believes my body is asking for attention, not punishment.

There is grief here.

Old grief.

Some of it belongs to my relationship with my sister. Some of it belongs to choices that still weigh on my heart, including the pain of rehoming a beloved pet many years ago.

My mind wants answers.

My intuition wants honesty.

Today, I am choosing not to fight what is here.

Not to analyze it.

Not to run from it.

Instead, I will make room for the grief.

I will invite it to sit beside me.

And perhaps, in being welcomed, it will finally have a chance to speak.

The Sister Wound

 Some wounds are easy to name.

This one isn’t.

When I think of my sister, I think of confusion.

As children, we did not get along. I didn’t trust her, and she likely didn’t trust me.

As adults, things became more complicated.

We laughed together. Shared holidays, conversations, and pieces of our lives. At times, she felt like a friend.

And yet, beneath the surface, something never felt safe.

I often felt two versions of my sister existed at once—the one who loved me to my face and the one who spoke differently when I wasn’t in the room.

For most of my life, I pushed those feelings aside.

I wanted to believe we were closer than we were.

She was often the first person I called when I was hurting. I shared secrets, fears, and parts of myself that were precious to me.

Again and again, I chose trust.

And again and again, something inside me felt betrayed.

For sixty years, I swallowed that truth.

Not because I didn’t see it.

Because I didn’t want to.

The loss of a sister’s love is a painful thing to face.

Eventually, something inside me could no longer pretend.

The relationship ended.

Not with understanding.

Not with closure.

Just with a quiet recognition that I could no longer abandon myself to preserve the illusion of what I wished our relationship could be.

Today, I don’t know if I am completely over the hurt.

The betrayal.

The disappointment.

Perhaps healing is not about erasing those feelings.

Perhaps it is about allowing them to be true.

And sitting with them long enough to discover what remains after the grief has spoken.