Carried by the Tide

“Aloha ‘Oe: A Farewell, A Beginning — Honoring the echoes of goodbye and the quiet beauty of letting go.” There’s something about farewell songs that carve into the heart—not because they end something, but because they hold the ache of everything worth remembering. “Aloha ‘Oe,” Queen Liliʻuokalani’s tender goodbye, wraps itself around me like the arms of someone you never wanted to let go. The melody lingers—soft, slow, resolute—like a memory that refuses to fade. It’s not j

Sometimes, in the stillness between sorrow and surrender, heaven comes quietly into view. Since Friday night, my heart has not been quiet. Three hymns have played on a loop in my mind—not from a speaker or a playlist, but from some place deeper. Like echoes of comfort trying to reach me across the distance of grief I’m only just beginning to feel. How Great Thou Art. It found me in the clearing skies. In the bells that rang when the world was briefly still. In the moments whe

“The cosmos doesn’t call often — but when it does, it whispers directly to the soul.” I never expected to see the northern lights in South Carolina once — much less four times. Back in 2024, the sky surprised me twice: first in May, when a geomagnetic storm painted faint colors over the fields, and again in October, when the horizon glowed in soft waves that didn’t feel real. I remember thinking, This is it. This is my once-in-a-lifetime shot.  If I ever wanted to see the aur

A Note for the Grown-Ups Penelope I wasn’t sure I was ready to love again. When my sweet Calliope — a long-haired calico with eyes like wisdom itself — passed away on Labor Day in 2017, it left a hole that felt impossible to fill. People told me, “One day you’ll open your heart again,” but I couldn’t imagine it. Love was joy, yes, but it was also risk — the risk of heartbreak.   Then one stormy night in 2019, a kitten’s life and mine collided. She had been thrown from a movin