**“Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.” Brene`Brown**
**Winter in Narnia. Peachtree City, Georgia, December 2024**

The Morning Everything Shifted

I woke up that morning knowing something in me had shifted.
It had been a few months since that fateful night when everything fell apart with one simple question.
That story is for another time. This story is about me—the moment I realized I would survive what had been my biggest fear come true. The loss of my marriage, saying goodbye to the person I have loved dearly for twenty-five years. The ending I did not see coming. I loved this little life we had created for ourselves in my small hometown. It was all gone now. I had no control over its ending. I did, however, have control over how I handled it. I handled it with the dignity and grace that we all deserved.

I had been reading Dr. Brené Brown’s work for years, but during those first few months of private grieving, I lived and breathed Braving the Wilderness.
I was knee-deep in the ache of wanting to become the woman I knew I could be—the woman I had always hoped to be before my life unraveled.

What I didn’t know then was that this book, this season, and this pain would become the precipice of my rising—my braving—my choosing to overcome every fear that had ever followed me- my rumbling with the truth that had landed me here, and how to never end up here again.

Joy Comes In the Morning

He was beside me—but no longer mine. The sun was beginning to peek through the curtains. My heart was racing, my breath unsteady, and the furthest distance between two people, I discovered, was the mere inches between us in this bed. How could I be so physically close to him, and yet, so far away?

The weight of the moment was more than I thought I could handle.

I gathered enough courage to whisper, “Will you please hold my hand one last time?” “Why?” he asked, with complete sincerity.

“I’m just so afraid.”

He did.

But he didn’t look at me. And I couldn’t look at him. In truth, we hadn’t been able to look at each other that intimately in a long time.
We lay there on our backs, staring up at the ceiling, two people in the quiet in-between of no longer being together
but not yet fully separate. It was a strange, tender liminal space.

From that place—eyes fixed upward, not on each other—he said gently,
“I was never worried about you being okay. You’re the strongest person I know. You’re going to be better than okay.”

The Words That Held Me

“Belonging so fully to yourself that you're willing to stand alone is a wilderness—an untamed, unpredictable place of solitude and searching.
It is a place as dangerous as it is breathtaking, a place as sought after as it is feared. The wilderness can often feel unholy because we can't control it,
or what people think about our choice of whether to venture into that vastness or not. But it turns out to be the place of true belonging,
and it’s the bravest and most sacred place you will ever stand.”
I had read that passage every day during those long days and nights. Reckoning with the new reality I was facing, clinging to it like a lifeline because everything felt out of control.

It’s Time to Tell the Children

It was February 2019, pre-pandemic. No one knew we were divorcing except a few trusted hearts. Now, it was time to tell our children. We would tell them all individually, and at different times—They were grown now, but still our children. There is no way to avoid the devastation, as much as I wanted to, with all my might. Another thing I could not control.

Our therapist had shifted us from marriage counseling to divorce counseling. I did not even know that existed. Divorce, we had always said, was not an option. Until it was. We would have to tell our parents next, knowing it would break their hearts. I had been thankful for the time in private before we told our people. I am thankful for the time I had to grieve before I would carry their grief. There are no words to describe the weight you carry when you know your words are going to crush another person’s heart.

But, God.

You don’t spend twenty-five years building a life together and think you can simply tear it apart without shattering.

And yet, with all those heavy conversations ahead of me, the fear that pressed hardest against my chest was this:

I had never, in my entire adult life, been completely on my own.

**Broken…but trusting the One who would sustain me. Christ Church Frederica, St. Simon’s, Georgia. February, 2020**

My Moment of Becoming

Looking back now, I can see it so clearly:
That morning was my first brave.
My first breath of self-belief.
My first step into the wilderness that Brené describes—unpredictable, untamed, holy in its own way.

**This is the face of brave—before I even knew I was brave. Small town, Georgia, February, 2020**

I didn’t know the map.
I didn’t have the answers.
But I had a wild, beating heart that refused to quit.
And that was enough.
Because on that morning—months after my world fell apart—I knew this truth for the first time:
I would brave the wilderness.
I would rise.
I would become.
I would find my way home to myself.
I belong to me now—
me and my wild, brave heart.

I am writing the end to my own brave story.

**“I AM the Wilderness!”**
**Redwood Trees. Big Sur, California. January, 2024**

"There will be times when standing alone feels too hard, too scary, and we'll doubt our ability to make our way through the uncertainty. Someone, somewhere, will say, 'Don't do it. You don't have what it takes to survive the wilderness.' This is when you reach deep into your wild heart and remind yourself, 'I am the wilderness.'" Brené Brown, Braving the Wilderness