Threshold

Some experiences do not end when they end. They continue inward, reshaping the ground beneath you until you can finally stand without asking permission.

These pieces were written from within that reshaping

Not as messages to anyone else. But as a record of returning to myself.

The Birthday Wish Never Received

*****

This is not a message that was sent to me. It’s a piece I wrote - an imaged birthday wish - because sometimes closure is an inside job. I’m sharing it here for anyone who has ever waited for words that didn’t come.

*****

Happy Birthday, Billie.

I don't know if I have the right words, or if words from me carry the weight they should, but I wanted to say this anyway.

I hope today finds you somewhere peaceful. Somewhere that reflects who you are now, not who you were when I last stood beside you, but who you become through everything you've had the courage to face and live.

You’ve always had a way of moving toward life with intention. Even when things were uncertain. Even when it would have been easier to stay still. I admired that in you. I still do.

I'm sorry for the ways I fell short. Not just in how things ended, but in the moments when you deserved steadiness, and I didn't know how to offer it. You gave me more honesty than I knew how to hold at the time.

I hope this year brings you music that feels like home. Rooms that recognize you. People who meet you fully and without hesitation.

Wherever you are today, I hope you feel celebrated, not just for what you do, but for who you are.

Happy Birthday, Billie.

*****

I wrote this because the road has taught me something about listening: not all silence is absence. Sometimes it is an invitation - to turn inward, to name your own worth without waiting for permission. This letter isn't about rewriting the past. It's about honoring the present. The life I've built. The voice, I trust. The quiet certainty that nothing essential was lost - only clarified.

“Closure is not something we receive. It is something we practice.” - Billie Eidson

*****

The Snow Leopard

The First Breath That Was Mine

I didn’t plan on clarity that night.

I wasn’t searching for it, or bracing for it, or trying to make sense of anything at all. I was simply standing in my kitchen, barefoot on the cool floor, letting the day fall away from me.

The house was quiet in the way I used to fear—that hollow sort of quiet that can make you feel like you’ve vanished. But something was different this time. The silence didn’t press in on me. It opened.

Max was asleep in his usual place, small and certain, breathing his steady little rhythm. The last light of evening stretched itself across the counter, soft and unhurried.

And somewhere inside that stillness, a truth settled: I no longer needed to be reflected back to feel real. I didn’t need someone else’s recognition, or apology, or attention to steady me. I didn’t need to chase clarity from someone who had none to give.

I had finally stopped negotiating my own worth. It wasn’t dramatic. It wasn’t triumphant. It was a single, steady note—quiet but unmistakable—rising from a part of me I had abandoned without knowing it.

That moment became the hinge. The turning. The first breath that was mine.

I didn’t understand the full meaning of it yet. I just knew something in me had come back online—a voice I had silenced, a knowing I had postponed, a presence that no longer dimmed itself for anyone.

Later, I would understand: This began long before that night. It began the moment instinct spoke. The first quiet didn’t come when he said, “I’m going home.” It came in the breath after.

Cold. Precise. Final.

The night had been warm with music. A rare ease between us. For a moment, it felt like something had returned.

Then the shift. Subtle. Familiar. The soft withdrawal of presence. The emotional retreat I had trained myself to ignore.

And then the words. Detached. Already leaving.

“I’m going home.” Something ancient rose in me before I could stop it.

Not thought. Not strategy. Instinct.

The snow leopard who had waited too long in the shadows stepped forward.

Steady. Unmistakable. Primal.

“Get the F*** out of my home. Get out of my space. Get out of my life. And take everything with you. You won’t be coming back.”

The words arrived fully formed, drawn from somewhere older than reason. It startled even me. But beneath the sound, there was no chaos. Only clarity.

He left. Quickly. And the quiet that followed was nothing like the quiet I had feared all my life. Not the hollow quiet of abandonment. Not the trembling quiet of uncertainty.

This quiet had shape. This quiet had breath. This quiet made room for something small and fragile inside me to emerge.

In that stillness, I felt her. The cub I had been protecting without knowing it. A beginning no longer in danger.

And the truth arrived, soft and unmistakable: The roar was not the rupture. It was the release.

She did not know she was a snow leopard.

She had lived most of her life in gentler terrain—open valleys where warmth was shared easily, where her instincts to love, to tend, to remain, were not questioned but welcomed.

She believed that if she stayed calm enough, patient enough, loving enough, safety would remain. And for a long time, it did. Until the day it didn’t. The shift was not announced. It rarely is.

It came in small moments at first. Subtle inconsistencies. Words and actions no longer aligned. The slow erosion of trust that happens grain by grain.

She stayed longer than her nervous system wanted her to. Long enough to know when safety was no longer present. And when that knowing arrived, her body did what it was designed to do.

It protected her. Not to destroy. But to save.

Slowly, the mountains within her grew quiet again. She returned to herself—not the version that had tried to remain smaller to preserve connection, but the one who had always lived beneath that compromise. She did not lose her softness. She lost only her willingness to abandon herself to keep it.

And somewhere, high above the terrain she once tried to survive, the snow leopard walks forward now-alone, but not lonely.

Whole.

Unapologetic.

Free.

Loving those Committed to Misunderstanding You

There is a particular kind of strength required to stop explaining yourself.

Not because you have nothing left to say, but because you finally understand that being understood was never within your control.

Some people meet you only through the limits of their own perception. They see what confirms their comfort. They hear what preserves their narrative. They do not step beyond themselves to find you where you actually live.

For a long time, I believed that clarity could be created through effort. That if I spoke carefully enough, loved generously enough, remained patient enough, understanding would arrive.

But understanding is not something you can earn through endurance. It is something another person must choose. And when they do not choose it, your work is not to reduce yourself until you fit inside their view. Your work is to remain whole.

There is no victory in being fully understood by someone who cannot meet you. And there is no loss in being misunderstood by someone who was never capable of seeing you clearly.

The real work is quieter. It is the decision to stop negotiating your own reality. It is the decision to stop offering yourself as evidence. It is the decision to stand, without explanation, inside your own knowing.

This is not bitterness.

This is freedom.