I’m sitting at Fort Monroe Beach, phone in hand, having just captured a dolphin diving into the Chesapeake Bay. The photo isn’t perfect—I caught it mid-plunge rather than the graceful arc I was hoping for, but there’s something poetic about that timing. Just as this dolphin was embracing its element, I was having a most profound realization about my own.

For the first time in almost two years, I’m alone. Tony and Calista are at sleepaway camp, and I’m discovering something I took for granted: having them in my life is probably one of the biggest reasons I don’t sink into depression anymore.

It’s not what you might think. It’s not their emotional support or companionship, though those matter deeply. It’s simpler and more practical than that; I never stop doing things. There’s always someone to care for, always something to create, always purpose driving my days forward. The constant motion of love keeps me from the stillness that once swallowed me whole.

Even now, with them away, I’m maintaining those protective rhythms. Up for sunrise at Yorktown Pier. Off to the gym. Then to my newest role—caring for Jack.

The Teacher Who Became the Student

I met Jack’s brother Fred during one of my sunrise rituals. Fred was moving to the Philippines and needed someone to help his paraplegic brother with the daily tasks that are challenging from a wheelchair—getting the mail, taking out trash, tending his garden. What I didn’t expect was how much Jack would teach me about reframing limitations into tools for freedom.

Here’s the thing: Fred could help Jack transfer into his wheelchair. I can’t lift him. So Jack is learning to do what he never had to do before—navigate the chairlift down to his electric wheelchair by himself. What could have been seen as abandonment or increased limitation has become empowerment.

Jack doesn’t see his wheelchair as a prison anymore. He sees it as his vehicle for independence, his tool for navigating the world exactly as he was designed to. When he masters that sequence—manual chair to chairlift to electric wheelchair—he gains the ability to leave his house, to engage with life beyond his bedroom walls.

Watching Jack’s transformation, I see my own journey reflected back. I don’t view my bipolar disorder as a disability anymore. It’s just part of who I am—and more than that, it’s become a tool that allows me to interact with the world in the unique way I was designed to.

Discovering God’s Fingerprints in Old Words

This revelation about tools and purpose has sent me on an unexpected archaeological dig through my own writing. I’ve spent this past week organizing all my old blog posts into what I’m calling “Two-Hour Tuesdays, two volumes of writing night binges trimmed and bound.

For four years after my divorce at 30, I wrote every Tuesday night for exactly two hours. I never planned ahead, just sat down and let whatever needed to come out flow onto the page. I thought I was just processing post-divorce life. What I’m discovering now, reading through hundreds of posts, is that I was unknowingly exploring mental health themes years before I knew I had a mental illness to explore.

Every metaphor, every analogy was building toward understanding how my bipolar brain worked. Those Tuesday night sessions replaced the therapy appointments I’d had with my psychologist Dr. Bogin back in upstate New York. Writing became my unconscious therapy, my way of trying to make sense of something I didn’t yet have words for.

The contrast between the two volumes is striking. Volume 1 shows me stable and hopeful, everything making sense. Volume 2 reveals an obsession with what I didn’t have—no child, no husband, life not looking like I thought it should. I was caught in a scarcity mindset that consumed my creativity and stole my joy.

It’s painful to read those pages and watch that girl fall apart, but I have such grace and compassion for her because she was doing the best she could with what she knew. She was trying to make sense of something she couldn’t understand in that sacred space every Tuesday night.

And now I see it—God held me faithfully in His grasp all that time. That blog was His idea, birthed in me in 2015. Fort Monroe has been this anchoring safe place where I’ve come to meet Him for years. Even when I thought I had run away from Him, I could never outrun God.

The Divine Timing of Tools

Do you believe in providence? I do. God gave me a pen in sixth grade, right when my bipolar symptoms were starting to emerge. I didn’t know then that there was power in that pen, but He did. He equipped me with my healing tool before I even knew I’d need healing.

Poetry became song lyrics became blogging became my memoir: Coming Out: Fearfully, Wonderfully, and Bipolarly Made. Each evolution prepared me for the next, creating a pathway from confusion to calling.

From Scarcity to Sanctuary

Today, watching a young couple with their infant walking past me on the beach, I still got a tear in my eye. At 42, I still have a deep longing for a child of my own. I still wonder sometimes if I’m running out of time, but Writer’s Growth has grown me; that’s not where I focus anymore.

I focus on what I do have. A husband who sees my worth. A stepdaughter who calls me Mom. This book that feels like ministry. A calling from God to help people somewhere on the mood disorder spectrum find their own tools for freedom.

Even though I’m in the same position of feeling like time might be slipping away, it doesn’t really matter because I don’t give it my words anymore. My blogs, my journals… they’re not about a girl and all she lacks anymore. I see what God has given me, and I have deep gratitude for these gifts. I can declare with pride that I am fearfully, wonderfully, and bipolarly made.

Tools for Freedom

Jack’s wheelchair. My pen. The dolphin’s powerful fins. We’re all designed with tools that allow us to move gracefully in our intended element, even when that element once felt foreign or limiting.

That dolphin I photographed wasn’t struggling against the water—it was embracing its medium for freedom. The bay isn’t a barrier; it’s home. The pressure isn’t punishment; it’s what allows for the graceful dive, the joyful breach, the purposeful movement through depths others can’t navigate.

I think about how Jack’s brother could have kept helping him into that wheelchair indefinitely. How I could have stayed in confusion forever instead of picking up that pen. How that dolphin could have stayed safely in shallow water instead of diving deep.

Tools unused, in any event, become decorations. Gifts unopened become burdens. Elements unexplored become prisons instead of playgrounds.

Sitting here at Fort Monroe, watching the sun set over the same waters where that dolphin dove this afternoon, I’m grateful for the divine timing of it all. The pen that found my hand in sixth grade. The blog that birthed itself in my heart in 2015. The wheelchair that’s teaching Jack independence. The bipolar brain that’s become my ministry.

We’re all designed to move gracefully in our intended element. Sometimes the thing that looks like limitation is actually our vehicle for the deepest, most joyful freedom we’ll ever know.

What tools has God placed in your hands that you’re still seeing as limitations? What element feels foreign but might actually be your designed home? Sometimes our greatest restrictions become our pathways to the most authentic versions of ourselves.