03/18/2026
Full Circle.
I didn’t think life would bring me back here.
Not with keys in my hand and a past still breathing through the walls.
This house raised parts of me that most homes I experienced couldn’t hold.
My nervous system knew it before I had words for it.
This home was safe.
This person was safe.
This felt soft.
This was where as a child, my shoulders could drop without permission.
I sat in that little rocking chair,
the one with the heart carved out of the back of it, like someone knew even then I’d need somewhere to put mine.
She read to me like time wasn’t real,
like the world couldn’t touch us
if we stayed inside those story book pages long enough.
Outside, we fed horses that lived behind her,
watched birds stitch the sky together,
pretended life didn’t unravel people.
But it does.
I watched it take her memory in pieces.
Not all at once, just enough each day to make you question what kind of universe allows forgetting everything to feel like surviving.
She fed a dog that had been gone for years.
Left bowls out like love could outlive death
if you just refused to acknowledge it.
Maybe that’s what I’m doing now, refusing to let this house die.
Because time didn’t just pass through here, it stayed.
It settled into the floors,
clung to the corners,
waited for someone who remembered
what it used to feel like to be held.
So now I’m here.
Hands dirty, back aching,
pouring myself into something
that once poured into me.
An as-is sale, they said.
Like grief.
Like memory.
Like healing.
No guarantees.
No promises.
Just you and whatever’s left
trying to make something whole again.
I walk these rooms with her in my chest, hoping she can feel it.
Every nail, every brushstroke, every pass with the carpet cleaner, every breath is a quiet conversation with her absence.
“I didn’t forget you.”
“I won’t let this fade.”
“I’m building something you’d be proud of.”
Maybe that’s what full circle really is.
Not everything coming back perfect, but coming back yours.
I get to raise my family inside the same walls that many times held me together as a child.
I get to turn survival into something softer.
I get to take what was left behind and call it home.
And somewhere in the creak of the floors,
in the light through the windows,
in the silence that doesn’t feel empty anymore,
I know she’s still here rocking gently, heart carved open, watching me rebuild what never really left.
Thank you all for your patience as I navigate working on a home for my little family to grow in.🫶
