I have experienced many life changes over the past seven years, but the most profound change began in 2023. And honestly, nothing really happened.
I moved into a new home.
I became a grandma.
I declared it my pivot year.
I chose myself.
There wasn't one dramatic moment that changed everything.
Just a slow year of pivot, surrender, and self-uncovery.
It felt as though a fog had begun to lift, drawing me into a deeper life of contemplation.
I believe we all enter the world with something uniquely our own. A temperament. A personality. A soul already known by God. "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you." — Jeremiah 1:5
Yet we also enter the world completely dependent on the environments that shape us. Long before we're old enough to choose, we're learning to belong. We discover which parts of ourselves are welcomed, which feel like too much, what earns approval, and what feels safest to hide.
As children, we don't consciously decide to do this. We adapt.
Those adaptations help us navigate the world we've been given. But over time, they can become patterns. Eventually, it's difficult to tell the difference between who we truly are and who we've learned to be.
For years, I fell into the self-discovery loop. Read a book, check off the list. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
But it was that year of deep self-reflection when I realized that I'm not on a quest to discover myself.
I'm on a quest to uncover myself.
The woman God created has never been missing. She has been layered beneath expectations, survival strategies, fears, and the quiet adaptations that once helped me belong. I don’t need to discover her; I need to uncover her.
By 2023, I thought I had already changed dramatically. Divorce had reshaped my life. I had rebuilt my home. I had begun healing.
But I had only scratched the surface.
It wasn't until 2025, while writing Untucked, that I went even deeper into my own self-uncovery.
Even now, I wouldn't say I've arrived. There is no final destination. It feels more like gently untucking another layer, then another, allowing the soul to keep unfolding. Which often returns me to the little girl I remember at five years old.
She was curious. A little sassy. Full of light. She talked with God as though He were sitting beside her. She hadn't yet learned to measure herself through someone else's approval.
Somewhere along the way, life began teaching different lessons. And it’s my body that remembers the lesson before my mind does.
It remembers the sting of criticism.
The fear of abandonment.
The feeling that love could be uncertain.
So I became very good at criticizing myself before anyone else could.
And I became the first to abandon myself before anyone else could leave.
Until eventually, I became whoever I thought I needed to be, depending on who stood in front of me.
And it wasn’t until recently that I found myself standing in my living room, looking around at the life I've slowly built. And almost without thinking, an old question surfaced.
What would they think of my life now?
Maybe for you, "they" is a parent.
A spouse.
A friend.
Someone whose approval once mattered deeply.
And in that moment, I realized the conversation wasn't happening in the room.
It was happening inside me.
My life has finally become mine. I no longer need to imagine their judgments or opinions in my mind. I don’t need to arrange my life so it makes sense to someone else.
I have nothing to prove.
These walls hold no secrets.
So I really do have to ask myself, where am I still creating a narrative around another person?
The gift of that moment wasn't the answer.
It was noticing the question at all.
I realized I wasn't actually answering to them anymore.
A pathway that had quietly existed for decades was simply closing.
I almost missed it.
I released the expectations that had quietly traveled through relationships and generations.
I released the belief that love must be earned.
I released the version of myself that was still asking for permission to become who I already was.
I don't write these words to diminish anyone's memory.
I write them because healing requires honesty.
Every person in my life has shaped me in some way. Every season has left its imprint. I wouldn't erase any of it. Even the hardest chapters became part of the story that formed me.
But there comes a moment when we must ask ourselves:
Do these patterns still belong in the life I'm creating?
The old patterns don't usually disappear all at once. Sometimes they return disguised as second-guessing, over-explaining, or quietly looking outside ourselves for permission. But now I recognize them for what they are, just familiar habits quietly asking whether they're still needed.
For me, that has become the deeper work of self-uncovery.
Uncovering the person who has been there all along.
The woman God knew before I took my first breath.
The woman who no longer needs to fit in because she already belongs.

Peace,
​J~

​Making Room
I hadn't planned on redecorating my home this summer.
It all started with a chair!
When you are short like me, finding the perfect chair becomes a quest because furniture, like many things in our world, is not designed with shortness in mind.
That quest turned into moving bookshelves, pictures, and mementos I had carried from one home to another because they once meant something to me or had been passed down over the years.
Some held beautiful memories.
Others quietly belonged to a life I no longer live.
Letting Go…
I love objects around me that tell stories. A vase full of stones from hikes and travel, an old photo, a book from my childhood. These things remind me of where I've been. I’m sentimental like that.
But now, I find myself asking, do these things still belong in the life I'm creating?
Healing has a funny way of showing up in ordinary moments.
Like standing in the middle of my living room, holding something I’ve looked at every day for years and realizing it no longer needs to occupy my space or my attention.
Over the past few weeks, I've donated furniture, rearranged rooms, replaced pieces that no longer felt like me, and welcomed more openness into my home.
And in that feeling of openness, I see why I kept parts of my past within eyesight. They were familiar. But it wasn’t about the item; it was about the version of myself it represented.
In the past seven years, I've redesigned so much of my life. I’ve spent time discovering what matters to me and how I want to live my most authentic life. So why was I still making space for pieces that belonged to someone I’m no longer?
It was a recent EMDR session that seemed to unlock something in me. I found myself standing in my quiet living room imagining the opinions of people who are no longer part of my life. Some have passed. Others have simply moved on.
The conversations weren't real. But the feelings were.
It made me think of how often we continue decorating our lives around voices that are no longer in the room.
And that felt like another level of growth…
Recognizing that the people who shaped us don't have to continue shaping every decision we make.
We can honor them without living beneath the weight of their opinions or expectations.
We can love them and still choose differently.
The Quiet After…
As my home has changed, I've realized something else has been changing too.
The constant hum inside me has grown quieter.
For much of my life, I lived in survival mode. I didn't know what it felt like to move through the world with a settled nervous system because I'd rarely experienced it.
Now I catch myself simply being.
I can't seem to stop looking around my home.
For the first time, the space around me feels like it reflects the life within me.
Every piece feels like it belongs.
So do I.
Peace,
J~

I've begun to notice that when life becomes quieter, different questions emerge.
The past few weeks, I've found myself wondering how much of our lives is part of a divine design and how much is shaped by circumstance, choice, and free will. Are we born with a purpose already woven into our souls? Are the people who cross our paths placed there long before we ever meet them? Or are our lives simply the unfolding result of countless decisions made by ourselves and others?
I thought about the people who have shaped my life. My parents. My former husband. Friends who appeared at exactly the right moment. People whose lives unfolded in ways entirely different from my own, yet somehow our stories intersected. How many events had to occur for our paths to cross? How much was chosen? How much was given?
Of course, I don't expect to solve a mystery that theologians and philosophers have wrestled with for centuries.
But as I sat with the questions, I noticed something more important than finding an answer.
The questions themselves have changed for me over the years.
There was a time when my questions were born out of survival.
How do I get through today?
How do I keep everything from falling apart?
What do I need to fix next?
When the nervous system lives in a constant state of vigilance, there isn't much room for contemplation. Every ounce of energy is devoted to getting through the next hour, the next day, the next crisis.
Lately, though, I've noticed something unfamiliar.
A quiet within me.
My nervous system no longer seems to believe that every moment is an emergency.
From that quiet emerged not only different questions, but a different way of inhabiting my life.
What is life inviting me to notice?
Perhaps that is one of the quiet gifts of healing.
The spaciousness to wonder again.
I do believe that some of the story was written long before I arrived. Maybe certain scenes were always going to unfold. And maybe there is more improvisation than I will ever understand.
I don't know. And that’s the beauty of it. I don’t have to know.
My calling is not to read the entire script.
My calling is to be fully present for the scene I'm in.
To deliver my lines honestly.
To love the people who share the stage with me.
To trust the Director even when I cannot see the next act.
For so much of my life, I was simply trying to survive the performance.
Now, I find myself awake within it.
And as I sit on my porch in the quiet of the evening, watching the sun set after the rain, and feeling the peace that has slowly settled into my nervous system, I notice something else has changed.
I'm no longer asking, Who do I need to become?
Instead, I find myself becoming more aware of the One who has been present all along.
Transformation doesn't happen when I finally convince myself that I am enough, worthy, healed, or whole.
It happens when I stop trying to define myself at all.
Identity isn't something I achieve; it's something I receive.
Life doesn't begin with a declaration of who I am.
It begins with the quiet realization that I have always been seen... always been known... always been loved.
The more I rest in that Presence, the less I feel compelled to define myself by labels, achievements, failures, or even healing itself.
Perhaps this is why the questions have changed.
The need to know has slowly given way to the freedom to wonder.
To trust that whether my life is a sacred contract, a tapestry of countless choices, or some beautiful mystery of both, I do not walk it alone.
I simply have to be present.
Present to this moment.
Present to the people before me.
Present to the quiet whisper that has been there all along.
And perhaps that is what it means to live Untucked. Not finally knowing who I am, but resting in the One who has always known me.
 Peace be with you,
J~