A Letter on the Village That Isn't Quite There Yet
I've done harder things than this. I've parented through deployments and lengthy separations. I've managed months alone while pregnant and so violently sick that twice-weekly trips for IV fluids became part of the routine. I've handled illnesses, emergencies, and the ordinary chaos of raising children without another adult coming through the door at the end of the day. I know how to do hard things. So why does this particular season feel so much harder?
A Letter on Being Comfortably in Love
New love was wonderful. There was excitement in discovering one another, in learning what made the other laugh, in the electricity of every new touch and the endless desire to close the space between us. There are pieces of that beginning I can still remember with startling clarity, and I would never diminish what was beautiful about them simply because we are no longer there.
A Letter on When Anger Has Something to Say
I don't think every anger needs to become something. Sometimes anger is grief with somewhere new to go. Sometimes it grows out of hurt that has been sitting quietly for too long. And sometimes it is the alarm that sounds when something we value has been pushed hard enough for us to finally see where the boundary is.
A Letter on Being the New Kid Again
I suppose those of us living this strange, transient military life learn much the same thing. We become practiced at being new. We learn how to introduce ourselves again, how to explain where we came from and how long we expect to stay, and how to smile through that uncomfortable stretch when everyone else seems to have people and we are still trying to figure out where ours might be.
A Letter on Letting Life Take Shape
We aren't completely settled, but we are no longer constantly moving. For the first time in a while, the question isn't where we're going next. It is what our life here is going to look like. Somewhere in the middle of unpacking, I found my planner. I carried it through the entire move, but when I opened it, I realized I hadn't written a single thing in it for the entire month of July.
A Letter on Not Being Settled Yet
But what I am beginning to understand is that life does not wait for that moment. It seeps in earlier, unevenly, while we are still learning where things go and how days are supposed to work. It becomes ours not all at once, but in fragments we only recognize later.
A Letter on Knowing Yourself
Because it has not happened once; it has happened every time. Every move has rearranged the details of my life, and every time, without fail, I have found myself rebuilding the same kinds of things—not the same rooms or the same routines or the same relationships, but the same patterns underneath them: the same desire for rhythm, the same instinct to gather, the same need to create something that feels like steadiness even when everything else is shifting.
A Letter on the Road Home
That is the rhythm of this life: new roads, new places, new beginnings, over and over again, until the unfamiliar becomes familiar and then, just as quickly, becomes something we carry away with us.
And then, every so often, there are these roads—the ones that do not ask to be learned again, the ones that do not need a GPS, the ones that have held you before you ever thought to question whether you belonged there.
A Letter on Being Known
This life asks us to begin at the beginning over and over again. We walk into new places and offer our names, our stories, the pieces of ourselves that make sense in the moment. We explain who we are, clarify how we fit, and build understanding from the ground up, one conversation at a time, until something like familiarity begins to take shape. We become practiced at it—learning how to connect quickly, how to find our footing, how to create something meaningful even when we know it may not last forever.
A Letter from the In-between
Military life asks this of us more often than most: to exist in spaces that are temporary, to find ourselves between beginnings and endings, to carry on in seasons that feel unfinished. The instinct, at least for me, is to move through it quickly. To fill the time. To look ahead. To prepare for what comes next.
But there is very little to prepare for here.
A Letter on the Shape of an Ending
I am ready for what comes next. I need to say that plainly, because readiness and sadness are so often mistaken for opposites. I am ready for the adventure ahead.
And still, I want to end this well. Not perfectly. Perfectly is too heavy a word to place on a PCS, or on a family, or on a heart already holding too many lists.
A Letter Written in the Middle of Change
Anticipation before anything happens, and not the dramatic packout days later when everything is wrapped and carried out and the house begins to look less like yours with every passing hour. This is quieter than that. This is the middle stage, the one where life still looks mostly normal while pieces of it quietly become inaccessible.
A Letter on Preparing Without Leaving Too Soon
Little by little, part of your life begins orienting itself toward the future long before you physically arrive there. The next chapter starts introducing its characters and plotlines early, slipping bits of foreshadowing into the pages of the life you are still living now.
And if you are not careful, it becomes very easy to start reading ahead instead of remaining where you are.
A Letter to My Military Children
You, my darling Bun and Bean, have packed up your worlds and carried them across miles to places most children only dream of. You have said goodbye to friends and classrooms, to homes that held your laughter, and to places that were once ours. And each time, you have stepped forward, not without fear, but with courage that shines brighter than your uncertainty.
A Letter on the Things We Carry
As we begin the slow work of preparing for another move, I am reminded that our homes are made of more than what movers can wrap and label. Beyond the cardboard and the checklists lies something deeper: the visible keepsakes that tell our stories, and the invisible weights and wonders that shape our days. It is these pieces of history, these fragments of memory, and these treasures that anchor us to who we are.
A Letter on Anchors and Roots
Home is not always something we return to. It is something we recreate. In lives that are constantly moving, our traditions, rituals, and repeated ways of gathering become our anchors. They allow our roots to grow wide instead of deep.
A Letter on Embracing Imperfect Homes
We have never lived in a house that fit us seamlessly. Not in size, not in layout, not in the way a dream home is described in glossy language. Given the nature of this career, we may not for many years to come. But I have come to understand that there is a subtle difference between acknowledging limitation and living in quiet resistance to it.
A Letter on Finding Steadiness in Routine
There is a particular relief that comes from knowing where you are meant to stand in a day. Not because the day is easy or especially gentle, but because it is known. The constant decision-making quiets. The internal bargaining softens. You are no longer asking yourself, at every turn, what comes next.
A Letter on Carrying the Light Forward
Tradition, I’ve learned, is where memory becomes motion — a continuity of light passed hand to hand, glowing differently in each new keeper’s palm. It honors where we come from and welcomes what we discover along the way.
A Letter on Being Pulled in Two Directions
There is no right answer to the question of where you “should” be this December. There is only the truth of what your family needs, and the quiet courage it takes to honor that.