What I’ve come to understand is that trust doesn’t start with other people.

It starts with whether we are willing to return to the parts of ourselves we once had to leave behind.

2025 was the year of a reunion with my daughter. Or maybe, more honestly, the year I met her for the very first time.

When you carry unresolved trauma in your body - on a nervous system level - there is nothing it doesn’t touch. For years, I didn’t truly see Scarlett. I saw my own scared parts, my lonely parts, my unhealed wounds staring back at me through her eyes.

This year, something shifted.

Over the next four and a half years, I worked with psychedelic journeys very intentionally - never casually, never to escape - more like stepping stones. Each experience helped me gently unwind layers of complex trauma and attachment wounds that had been stored in my body for decades.

The best way I can describe it is this: It felt like fear was being flushed from my body on a cellular level.

Our little family may not fit the conventional script, but it is rooted in something deeper than appearances: presence, integrity, and love that refuses to turn bitter.

If there is anything I know now, it is this:

Stay.

And if there is anything I would say to anyone walking a dark road right now - anyone standing at the edge of a cave they’re afraid to enter - it is this:

Stay, stay, stay, dear one.

I was wandering Value Village when I spotted them - twin elves, brand new, sealed in a box. They were, quite honestly, the creepiest little things I’d ever seen. Wide eyes. Slightly haunted smiles. Absolutely not cute by traditional standards.

Which made them perfect.

And so they became Snicker and Doodle.

“In the second winter of my singleness, I found myself ravished - not romantically, not erotically, but cosmically - by a love so extravagant it made my knees soft and heart unclench.

By a grace that didn’t ask me to sacrifice anything except the belief that I was alone.”

I’ve spent years meeting these parts with curiosity and compassion. I’ve walked through darkness and found light. And in recent months, I’ve tasted something that felt like heaven on earth—ease, presence, and the kind of joy that makes you forget what it was ever like to be lost.

Which is why I didn’t see it coming.

The stuckness before the storm.

Years of therapy taught me what that vigilance really was — a part of me doing her best to protect the little girl underneath, the one who believed she’d never be beautiful enough, never be chosen, never be worthy of belonging. That young part equated beauty with safety, and competition with survival.

There were seasons — however brief — when independence became my survival mechanism.
I stood tall in my heels, chin lifted, pretending I didn’t need anyone.
And maybe I really believed that for a while.
Because when your heart’s been broken, independence feels like safety.

For years, I ran a company.
And my ego whispered, “Boss b!tch. Look at you.”
But at night, under the weight of my own striving, I’d collapse under the blankets and weep.
I can’t even count the number of times I whispered through tears, “I’m so tired. I’m so fucking tired.”
Decades of upstream caught up with me.

I’ve spent most of my life untangling my relationship with Jesus — or maybe more accurately, with the version of Him I was handed as a child. This isn’t a story about leaving faith or finding it again in some conventional way. It’s a story about coming home. About the body. About repair. About the quiet, holy places where fear loosens its grip and love finally takes its rightful seat.

I used to think the kingdom of God was somewhere up there in the sky. But that day, Michael showed me it was right here— in sunlight, in kindness, in shared cake between strangers. The kingdom isn’t earned. It’s received. It’s already woven into the fabric of ordinary moments.

I ended my marriage, and some have called me selfish. Perhaps they’re right. Perhaps I am.

But before you decide, let me tell you a story…

I can’t tell you how many times I landed on the floor of my kitchen or the floor of my den. How many times I lay face-down, crying until I thought I had no tears left. Wailing. Screaming. Dying a little death each time. And then, another day would arrive, and with it, more tears.

Growing up, I was told masturbation was evil. That if I did it, I should cut off my hand.

But the truth is, by then, I already wanted to cut my hands off…

Twenty years ago, one of my mentors, Father Paul—a wise, gentle priest from a Catholic community in northern Ontario—shared something with me that I never forgot.

“You should date someone through all four seasons—an entire year—before deciding to commit your life to them.”

This morning, Arend and I walked into City Hall to file for divorce. What I felt wasn’t grief. It was freedom.

I know that may sound confusing…