A stranger watched me shoot at Denbigh and called it beautiful chaos in motion. Four days later the sun disappeared, and I found out what I'd been chasing.
life
The Wildfire Sun: Beauty from Ashes
The sun went red because something far away was burning. The glory I was chasing was refracted grief. And I finally understood why I feel so right beneath it.
Enough, Without the Fireworks
Three years ago I wrote that I was enough without the fireworks, and hoped it was true. This year, by the river, I found I could hold both the rare light and the daily one.
New Every Morning: 30 Days of Chasing the Light
Thirty mornings at one pier on the York River, and the sky never repeated once. What thirty sunrises taught me about mercy that's new every morning.
Perception Changes
I spent this week fixing a photograph. The cover came back too dark, and the fix wasn't more light, it was raising the shadows until the buried detail came back up. I've been thinking about that ever since, because it's the truest thing I know right now.
Going Through the Motions
I don't feel alive, but I was grateful for breath in my lungs. For quiet. For stillness. I keep showing up. Sunrise. Gym. School. Sea glass. Repeat. The daffodils came back, so will I.
The Tree That Bends but Doesn’t Break in a Hurricane
I woke up this morning a Palma. On the fifty-fourth anniversary of my grandmother's death and the third of Joshua's, I walked to the water at sunrise carrying a name that is mine again. Here's what I know about palm trees: they're designed for hurricanes.
What the Fire Couldn’t Touch
Mama Marci mailed me a letter last week. It was in Joshua's fireproof lockbox—one of the things he chose to protect from everything that could destroy it. I didn't know it existed. He never told me he kept it.
How Thin the Line Is
Tomorrow, Joshua would have turned 47. He died on St. Patrick's Day, 2023 — suddenly, unexpectedly, the way death sometimes comes. I'm catching up with him now, and I've been thinking about how thin the line is. How suddenly a photo becomes a memorial. How the living keep aging while the dead stay still.
Resilience, Revisited
Last spring, I wrote about chasing sunrises and what they taught me about resilience. I thought I understood it then. I've since learned that sometimes you don't bounce at all—and maybe that's the point.
