Every experience leaves you with something.
Not the events themselves — those fade and shift and change shape depending on the season you are in when you look back at them. But the lessons underneath the events. The things that got into you so deeply that they became part of how you move through the world without you even realising it.
These are mine. The ones that came from the years before Carter. The ones that were already in me when I walked into that nightclub in my white dress not looking for anything. The ones that — looking back now — I can see were exactly what I was going to need for everything that came after.
SOME PEOPLE SEE YOU BEFORE YOU SEE YOURSELF
Someone told me when I was young that I was not built to work for someone. That I was a leader. That one day I would do great things.
I was a teenager. I did not fully understand what she was giving me. I just received it the way you receive things when you are young — without fully appreciating the weight of them.
But it stayed. Through every season where I felt small or overlooked or like I was disappearing into someone else’s story — it stayed. Not as arrogance. As a compass. A quiet internal reference point that said — this is not who you are. You are built for something larger than this moment. Keep going.
I am still waiting on the great things financially. But the knowing — the deep settled knowing that there is a purpose in me that is bigger than whatever season I am currently surviving — that has never left me.
That is the gift of being seen clearly by someone who loves you. It gets into you and it stays. And on the days when you cannot see yourself clearly it does the seeing for you.
Find the people who see you that way. And when they tell you what they see — receive it. Even if you are not ready to believe it yet. Store it somewhere safe. You will need it later.
THE PAST DOES NOT HAVE TO DICTATE THE FUTURE
My father grew up in a home that was not what it should have been. He did not talk about it much. He did not need to. What he did instead was something I consider one of the most significant things I have ever witnessed.
He looked at where he came from and chose to go somewhere else.
Not arrogantly. Not full of pride. Just quietly, daily, in the ordinary moments of raising his children — he chose differently than what had been modelled to him. He broke the cycle by simply refusing to repeat it. It was only in my late 30’s that, after making an excuse for Carter one day, did my dad tell me about his childhood and why having a less than perfect childhood does not excuse adult behaviour.
It taught me something I have returned to again and again across the hardest years of my life. That where you come from is not where you have to go. That the patterns handed to you are not sentences you have to serve. That the most powerful thing a person can do is look at their own history clearly and say — this stops with me.
I have tried to live that. Imperfectly. But genuinely.
FAITH IS NOT A FEELING — IT IS A DIRECTION
I did not choose my faith the way you choose a belief system as an adult. It was there before I had words for it. Woven into the fabric of my upbringing in the quietest possible way — not forced, not performed, just present. A leather bound bible. A father who read it. A mother that spoke on her faith. Conversations that assumed God was part of the picture without making a production of it.
What I have learnt about faith is that is constant. Whether you choose to constantly turn to it or not does not mean that God is not waiting for you.
It is a feeling – a warmth in your heart that thaws away the pain.
A shelter that covers and protects you through the storm. It does not mean the storms cannot get you, but the storm will always pass.
A companion – when you feel so utterly shattered, and your heart is in a million little pieces, and no one understands your pain – faith does.
When you are lost and have no idea which way to turn, it gives direction.
There have been times — many of them — when I could not feel it. When I prayed into what felt like silence and received nothing back that I could identify as an answer. When the gap between what I believed and what I was experiencing was so wide I could not see across it. When I asked why my prayers were bot being answered, and I wondered what the point was.
But I kept going anyway. Not because I felt it. But because I chose it. Because I turned toward it out of habit and history and the deep stubborn knowing that it had held before and would hold again even when I could not feel it holding. And then, one day, you wake up, and you realise that – your prayers were answered. You were heard. You were being looked after. In the way that God does though – in the way that is best for me. Not in the way that what I thought was best for me.
That is what faith actually is. Not the easy prayers of the good seasons. The direction you keep facing when you have run out of everything else.
KNOWING YOUR WORTH IS NOT ARROGANCE — IT IS ARMOUR
I knew my worth before anyone taught me to call it that.
I was not available to whoever showed interest. I had a standard for myself that I held quietly and firmly and I made no apology for it. Looking back I could have been kinder in my delivery sometimes. But the boundary itself — that I do not apologise for.
What I did not understand then — what I understand now with painful clarity — is that knowing your worth is not just a nice quality to have. It is armour. It is the thing that keeps you from disappearing completely into someone else’s version of who you are. It is the thread that leads you back to yourself when you have been away from yourself for a long time.
I held onto that thread through years of being told in various ways — not always in words, sometimes in actions, sometimes in absences — that I was not quite enough. Not attractive enough at the wrong moment. Not exciting enough. Not rich enough. Not fit enough. Not whatever enough.
I held onto it because somewhere underneath all of that I still knew. Not always loudly. Sometimes barely. But I knew. I knew MY truth. Who I was.
And that knowing — that quiet stubborn refusal to fully believe the diminishing version of myself — is what I came out the other side with still intact.
Guard yours. Whatever it costs to hold onto it — it costs more to let it go.
LOVE DOES NOT REQUIRE AN AUDIENCE
My mother is not loud. She does not demand attention or fill rooms with her presence or make sure everyone knows what she has given.
She just loves. Quietly, consistently, without condition or the need to be thanked for it.
Her and my Nana are what I think of when I think of the word faithful. Not faithful in the religious sense — though that too. Faithful in the human sense. The showing up sense. The I will be here regardless of what this costs me sense.
Watching that — growing up inside that quality of love — taught me something about what love actually is. That it does not need to be seen to be real. That the most significant love in a life is often the quietest. That the people who work in the background, who hold things together without credit or ceremony, are often the ones holding the most.
I have tried to love like that. As a mother especially. Not perfectly. But with that same quality of — I am here, I will keep being here, this does not require your acknowledgement to be true.
The world will tell you that love which is not seen or celebrated or reciprocated is wasted. I do not believe that. I think it is some of the most important love there is.
RESILIENCE IS NOT SOMETHING YOU HAVE — IT IS SOMETHING YOU DISCOVER
I did not know I was resilient until I needed to be.
That is always how it works. You do not find out what you are made of in the easy seasons. You find out in the ones that ask more of you than you thought you had to give. The ones where you are certain — genuinely certain — that this is the thing that will finally break you. And then it does not. And you look back and you think — oh. I was stronger than I knew.
I have had that experience more times than I can count across the years this blog covers. The moment of being certain I could not take any more. And then taking more. And then more after that.
I am not telling you this to sound impressive. I am telling you this because I think a lot of people reading this have had the same experience and have not named it correctly. They call it surviving. They call it getting through. They call it not having a choice.
It is resilience. It is one of the most profound human capacities there is. And you have it. Even if you have not needed it yet in the way I needed it. Even if you are in the middle of needing it right now and cannot yet see that you are going to come through. Honestly, even now, as I am sitting typing this, I still have those moments. But!
You are going to come through.
I know because I did, and continue to. And I am not special. I am just someone who keeps going because stopping is not something I am willing to do.
That is all resilience ever is. Keeping going. One day at a time. Sometimes one hour. Sometimes just the next breath.
And then the next one after that.
WHO I CHOOSE TO BE
There is something important in that word. Choose.
Because who I am going forward is not simply what the years made me. It is also what I decide to do with what the years made me. And that decision belongs to me. Every day. In the small moments and the large ones.
I choose to be someone who tells the truth. Even the uncomfortable parts. Even the parts that make me look less than I would like. The truth is more interesting than the theatrics and I have lived enough to know that the performance is not worth what it costs.
I choose to be someone who loves without losing herself. I know now what it costs to disappear into someone else’s story. I will not do that again. Not because I will not love deeply — I will, I am made for it. But because I now understand that loving well requires having a self to love from.
I choose to be someone who trusts her instincts. All those years of knowing things before I could prove them and then talking myself out of it — I am done with that. The instincts were right. They have always been right. I treat them accordingly.
I choose to be someone who keeps going. Not grimly. Not as a performance of strength. But in the genuine ordinary faithful way that has actually been my pattern all along even when I could not see it.
And I choose to be someone who believes that the best is still ahead. Not naively with rose colored glasses. But genuinely. With the kind of hope that has survived everything I have put it through and come out the other side still intact and still pointed forward.
That is who I choose to be.
It took me a long time to get here.
Every single step of the getting here was worth it.
Even the ones that nearly broke me.
Especially those.
Love, Sloane
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