Thank you for all of the wonderful feedback on my first newsletter last month! I look forward to sharing this space with you on a monthly basis, as we move towards the release of my debut memoir, “The Other Side of Yet.” 

I want this to be a transparent and safe space, so I must start this edition with a confession...I intended to send this newsletter out a couple of weeks ago.

My daughter, Gabrielle, was tragically murdered just weeks before her 8th birthday in 2017. August 2nd marked what would have been her 12th birthday. It is a difficult and heartbreaking time every year, as you can imagine. I watch her peers continue to grow and develop into beautiful young men and women while seeing her image frozen in time as she was stolen too soon. So, I had to give myself a little grace and focus on my self-care during her birthday week, instead of putting extra pressure on myself to push out a newsletter.

I'm sharing this not because I imagine you were waiting with bated breath for this to arrive in your inbox, 😊, but because I'm sure you can relate. You have probably had times in your life when you've created artificial pressure for yourself.

Our stories are all different, but the human condition of struggles with grief, loss, disappointment, isolation, and disappointment, are all the same. So much of life is predicated on how we write the chapters fate allows us to write in response to the chapters we perhaps wish were never written on the page.

How are you authoring your narrative where you can? 

Are you allowing what has happened to you to define you?

In these inflection points, when we are faced with an intersection between previous pain and potential promise, I challenge you to pause and say “yet.” Tell yourself that despite what has happened to you your story is not over. Give yourself the grace to feel and perhaps like me, there may be things in your before that you always carry with you. And yet, there is so much life can still offer you.

No matter how far down the road you go, there will still be speed bumps along the way. It could be a birthday reminder as I faced earlier this month, or a movie, a song, or a chance encounter. Something from your before that triggers past pain, betrayal, or disappointment. That's OK. Just keep going. Gift yourself grace. You do not have to get it right every day, you just have to keep going.

I look forward to going on that journey together. See you in September.