Private

I am a private person.

Which feels strange to say for someone who posts deeply personal essays on a website for the world to read (if they so desire).

It also feels strange to say for someone who will basically tell anyone anything about me if they ask.

Sometimes I feel like a fraud. An imposter.

Who am I to write these pieces?

I try very hard not to give advice in my posts. I have a strange theory about advice.

Advice kind of… sucks.

I don’t want it most of the time. I just want someone to listen.

Every time I have taken advice that went against what I knew in my gut — even if it was more logical, more strategic, more socially acceptable — I have regretted it. The only decisions that have ever truly felt right in my life came from me.

Not from someone else.

That’s where the privacy comes in.

I will talk endlessly about deep and personal matters — but only once they have come to a resolution in my own head.

Not solved.
Not healed.
But settled.

I have talked about my mental health for twenty years because that’s when I came to terms with it. Not resolved it — came to terms with it.

I can talk about my dad’s death now because I have come to terms with it. But it took me a decade, maybe more, to say it out loud without unraveling.

I am not healed from it. I’m not sure we ever fully heal from losing someone like that.

But I have made peace with the reality of it.

The things I struggle to talk about — or write about — are the things I have not yet come to terms with.

The things that fog my brain.
The things too tender to name.
The things that don’t make sense to me yet.

The things I cannot sit down at a computer and write my way through.

When I publish essays, I look at the analytics. I look at what people are reading. What they are clicking. What they are sharing.

Those metrics matter.

But they cannot determine what I write.

What makes it onto this page are the things I have processed enough to exhale. The things I have wrestled with long enough to form into sentences.

Writing is how I come to terms with things.

I guess you could call it art.

It’s curated in the sense that I don’t publish everything I write. Some things are just for me. Some things are not meant for public consumption.

But it is not curated in the sense that it is fake.

What you get from me here is real.

It is happening or has happened.

It is the version of the story I can stand inside of without collapsing.

When I look at the metrics, my most-read essays are about faith and church.

If I wanted clicks, that’s what I would focus on.

Faith is something people feel deeply about. It is also something I feel deeply about.

I have come to terms with parts of my faith. There are still parts I am actively working through.

And I will never come on this blog and tell you what to do with yours.

We all have to work that out for ourselves.

I am not here to advise you.

I am here to tell you stories — about my life, my faith, my grief, and my healing.

Advice is not my forte.

I believe you already have inside you what you need to do in your own life.

If this space is anything, I hope it is a safe landing.

A place where you can breathe.

A place where you can read someone else’s processing and feel a little less alone in your own.

My most private struggles are the ones I do not ask advice about.

And yet — somehow — answers still find me.

Through books.
Through music.
Through conversations I wasn’t expecting.
Through essays.

I hope, sometimes, I get to be that for someone else.