Honoring My Pieces
The Inner Sisterhood Who Never Stopped Saving Me
When the Summer Fell Apart
This summer was…shit.
Pure, unfiltered shit.
Yes, there were glimmers of joy — the last being a gorgeous women’s retreat I had planned for a year, held with twenty incredible women. That retreat wrapped on July 21st. The night before, on the 20th, we’d thrown a luau to close out our sacred weekend before everyone packed their cars and headed back to real life.
In the midst of the celebration — and several glasses of rosé — my phone rang. A familiar name. A work call. It wasn’t random; even through the blur of celebration, I knew what it meant. I knew exactly what that call was about.
I hit decline. Not out of avoidance, but out of self-preservation. I had carved out one rare weekend to escape the reality of 2025, to be surrounded by sisterhood, to feel…happy. And I wasn’t ready to let the world in.
But I knew. I knew. That call would be the beginning of the end of something I had poured my heart into for nearly a decade.
The Call That Marked an Ending
I had made it halfway through the year without being hit by government cuts, forced career endings, or cancelled missions. Those six months gave me a false sense of buffer. But deep down, I knew it was coming. I’ve spent my entire adult life inside government work in one way or another — supporting missions, mitigating risk, keeping people safe. Work that mattered. Work that shaped me.
Declining that call was an act of rebellion in a life where I had rarely allowed myself softness. The next morning, exhausted and hours from home, the phone rang again. This time, I answered.
The voice on the line delivered the news I had already narrated in my mind. It was, indeed, the beginning of the end of an era. We didn't spend much time in tears. Instead, we remembered all we worked through. We laughed — the kind of laughter that holds back grief. But that laughter didn’t carry me through the rest of the summer.
When the Avalanche Doesn’t Stop
Because in real life, when the avalanche hits — it never hits alone. The fallout snowballs. And it did. Family troubles crashed in. Home life shook. One hit after another, the kind that pile on when life decides to test every crack in your foundation.
My world grew so unrecognizable that my spirit whispered what I already feared:
Nothing will ever be what it was again.
I’ve survived pain before. I’ve rebuilt myself out of dust. But not this time. This time, I fell into a deep, dark ocean with no sense of up or down. No light. No direction. I was drowning — and while I was drowning, I still had to live.
I had to mother. I had to be a wife. I had to cling to what remained of my career. I had to function while breaking. And I did none of it gracefully.
Breaking, Loudly
I broke loudly. I cried. I screamed. I said things you only say when hope has left the room. I was not inspiring. I was not strong. Not in the ways people tend to celebrate. At least…that’s what I thought. But something was happening beneath the surface.
When My Pieces Showed Up
Even though I wasn’t rising, I was surviving. I was swimming, fighting, refusing to disappear. And somewhere deep inside, a call rose up — not from who I was then, but from every version of me I had ever been.
My pieces showed up.
The messy little girl who dreamed.
The teenager who believed I was gold.
The young mother who found purpose in love.
The thirty-something divorcée who rallied through devastation.
The forty-something woman who found love again and mothered five children from hard places.
All of them. Every version of me.
They assembled like a rescue team. They told Summer-2025-Me to cocoon. They took over the survival swim. They placed a cup of tea in front of me, sat me at my computer, and insisted I stay put until I remembered what I was capable of. I didn’t know they were building a dome around me - holding back the storm until I could breathe again. But they were. I was not alone in myself.
Cocooning Into Creativity
One day, my teenage self — the one who always knew I was meant for something creative and wild — guided my fingers to the keyboard.
I wrote. I wrote until I remembered I existed beyond my titles and losses. I remembered I was a woman who loved deeply and was deeply loved. Then something unexpected happened… My words became my paintbrush.
My stories turned into visual art — my pain, my memories, my joy spilling into digital canvases. Night after night, my literary language found its skin. With every creation, the ocean lightened. With every image, I floated closer to the surface. Until one day, I broke through.
Breaking the Surface
Tired. Unsteady. Unsure. But breathing. I looked up to see what remained — my husband, my children, my job (the part that survived), my friends, my community. And behind them, in the shadows, I saw a family of women smiling at me:
The woman in her 40s. The woman in her 30s. The young mother. The teenage firecracker. The messy little girl.
My pieces. They waved. They waited. And I ran to them.
Seeing My Pieces Clearly for the First Time
As I held them — every former version of myself — I realized something painful and beautiful: I had judged every single one of them.
The little girl with asthma and husky pants — too different.
The teenager with curves — never enough.
The young mother — unsure.
The divorced thirty-something — fat again, ashamed, convinced she was washed up.
The svelte weightlifting survivor — only allowed to exist after I hid the hurting one in shame.
The forty-something mother of many — glowing, but still criticized for her changing body and neurological challenges.
I had walked through life calling myself a confident warrior, yet I had shamed every warrior who came before me. But on that shoreline, I saw the truth:
They were beautiful. They were necessary. They were loyal.
And they had never once abandoned me.
The Reclamation of All My Selves
Once I gathered my pieces, I left shame in that deep ocean. I brought all of me forward. Every woman I’ve ever been. Every version that fought so I could live.
And together, we decided to wear our collective spirit on the outside. I returned to the dream I had shelved for years — helping women reconnect to themselves. Helping them find their pieces. Helping them swim out of their own deep oceans and toward the shoreline waiting for them.
A Closing Promise
My story pulled me back to myself.
Now I want it to pull others too - to help them love every piece that carried them, to help them honor the inner sisterhood still holding them together, and to finally untie the old, suffocating knot of shame.
With Many Wishes for Acceptance of Your Many Pieces, Your Inner Sisterhood….
