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Wanting Does Not Make Us Weak

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 Many of us are taught to distrust our own wanting. We are encouraged to be practical. Grateful. Reasonable. Content with what we have. We learn to lower our expectations before anyone else has the chance to disappoint us. We learn to silence needs that might make other people uncomfortable. We learn to call our desires selfish, unrealistic, embarrassing, or too much. Eventually, some of us become so skilled at making ourselves smaller that we forget how to ask what we actually want. Not what would be easiest. Not what would keep everyone else comfortable. Not what we believe we are supposed to want. What do we want? That question can be surprisingly difficult to answer. Wanting is vulnerable. The moment we admit that we want something, we also admit that we do not currently have it. We open ourselves to rejection, disappointment, judgment, and the possibility that someone may tell us we are asking for too much. Sometimes it feels safer not to want anything at all. But denying desi...
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The Shape Healing Takes When No One Is Watching

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 Healing rarely announces itself. It does not always arrive as a breakthrough, a revelation, or a dramatic moment when everything suddenly makes sense. More often, it happens quietly. It happens in the choices no one sees. Getting out of bed when staying there would be easier. Answering the message. Making the appointment. Setting the boundary. Trying again after disappointment. Resting without calling yourself lazy. Walking away from something that once felt impossible to leave. These moments may not look significant from the outside, but they are often where healing truly begins. We tend to imagine healing as a straight path. There is a wound, then there is recovery, and eventually there is a version of ourselves who no longer hurts. But that has never been my experience. Healing circles back. It pauses. It moves forward, then slips sideways. It brings old pain to the surface at unexpected times. It can make us feel strong one day and completely unprepared the next. Sometimes we ...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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Raised by Wind, Rooted by Survival

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  The Wyoming wind does not ask whether you are ready. It arrives when it wants to—hard, sudden, and impossible to ignore. It rattles windows, bends grass flat against the earth, lifts dust into the air, and finds every loose edge in a roof, a fence, or a person. You learn quickly that there is no arguing with it. You brace yourself. You lean into it. You keep moving. Long before I knew the word resilience, I understood what it meant to live in a place that demanded it. Wyoming is beautiful, but it is not always gentle. The landscape is wide and exposed. There are few places to hide from the weather. The summers can be dry and relentless. The winters can feel endless. The wind can move across the plains with nothing to slow it down. Growing up here taught me that survival is often quiet. It is not always dramatic. Sometimes it is simply getting up and doing what needs to be done. It is pulling your coat tighter, checking the doors, securing what might blow away, and carrying on wit...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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Taking My Place at the Author Table

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  No one tells you how vulnerable it feels to sit behind a table filled with books carrying your name. Writing is often private work. It happens quietly, in early mornings, late nights, stolen lunch breaks, and moments when a sentence refuses to leave you alone. For weeks, months, or even years, the story belongs almost entirely to you. Then one day, you place it on a table. You arrange the books so the covers face outward. You straighten the bookmarks. You check the price signs again, even though you already know they are correct. You wonder whether anyone will stop, whether they will pick up a book, and whether they will recognize some part of themselves inside the words you wrote. On August 8, I will be participating in the Fireweeds Festival at the Campbell County Public Library here in Gillette. I am excited, grateful, and carrying more nerves than I expected. I have attended events before. I have talked about my writing, shared poetry, and introduced people to the stories tha...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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Why I Wrote Raised by Wind

 There are places that don’t just hold your memories. They shape them. For me, that place was the stretch of Wyoming prairie between the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills. Wide-open space. Hard weather. Dust in the corners. Chores before comfort. Wind that never seemed to rest. It was a place of beauty, yes, but not the soft kind. The kind that got under your skin. The kind you didn’t always understand while you were living inside it. Raised by Wind came from that place. At first glance, this poetry collection may look like a book about Wyoming, prairie life, childhood, or rural memory. And in many ways, it is. The poems carry fence lines, gardens, chores, dirt roads, storms, seasons, and the kind of silence that only exists where the sky has room to stretch. But the deeper I worked with these poems, the more I realized this book was never only about the land. It was about what moved through it. The wind. The Place That Raised Me I grew up in a landscape where the weath...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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The Author I’m Still Becoming

 I used to think becoming an author would feel like crossing a finish line. One day, the book would be done. The cover would be finished. The files would be uploaded. The publish button would be pressed. And then, somehow, I would feel different. More certain. More official. More prepared to stand in front of people and say, “Yes, I’m an author.” But what I am learning is that becoming an author does not happen all at once. It happens in layers. It happens the first time you take your own work seriously. It happens when you keep writing after the excitement wears off. It happens when you revise the scene instead of abandoning the story. It happens when you send the newsletter, post the update, set up the author table, and talk about the book even when your voice shakes a little. And it keeps happening long after the book is published. Saying the Word Out Loud There is something strange about calling yourself an author for the first time. At least there was for me....
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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Behind Every Finished Book Is a Private Storm

 A finished book looks simple from the outside. A cover. A title. A buy button. Maybe a smiling author photo. Maybe a social media post that says, “It’s live!” From the outside, it can look like the book simply appeared one day, polished and ready, as if the author walked calmly from idea to publication without tripping over doubt, edits, formatting problems, marketing decisions, or the terrifying little voice that asks, What if no one cares? But behind every finished book is a private world most readers never see. There are messy drafts. There are scenes that do not work. There are sentences you love that still have to be cut. There are hours spent staring at one paragraph because it almost says what you mean, but not quite. There are also the ordinary interruptions of real life. The job. The laundry. The dogs. The appointments. The groceries. The dishes in the sink. The days when your brain is ready to write, but your body is tired. The days when your body fin...
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Location: Gillette, WY, USA
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