Love isn’t always a feeling. Sometimes it’s a choice. Sometimes it’s a lifeline.

In eight weeks, I’ll be backing out of an empty driveway most mornings. This entry holds space for the quiet ache of change, the miracle of healing, and the deep, braided truth that grief and gratitude often arrive hand in hand.

Ten months later, the road looks the same—but I am not. Healing hasn’t meant forgetting. It’s meant learning how to breathe again as I walk the same path with a softer heart.

Packing light isn’t just for suitcases — it’s a quiet, brave decision about what we carry in life and what we’re willing to let go. In this season of movement, I’m learning that the lighter we travel, the freer we become.

Emotional healing is slow, often quiet, and full of unexpected turns. But in the soft spaces where we learn to listen to our lives, we just might become both stronger and more tender than we ever imagined.

Nothing prepares you to look death in the face and keep moving — but I wasn’t alone. In the days following Luke’s accident, it was the faithful, steady presence of others that carried me so I could carry him.

I wore the same worn pair of glasses every night for the first eight weeks of Luke’s hospitalization, not just to see — but to stay ready, present, and near. Even now, when I reach for them, I’m reminded that our bodies hold memories our minds have long tried to release.