I have truly been on a journey in my 46 years on this beautiful, brutal, breathtaking earth.
Sometimes, when looking back and reflecting on my life so far, it’s easy to see only the pain. Moments when the world felt heavy, dark and unkind. When life bogs you down, and the more you struggle and fight to get free, the further down you sink. The days begin to blur and hope? Hope seems like an expensive luxury.
But then one day
Just a little. Just enough.
Some days, it’s just putting on clean clothes.
Some days, it’s not quitting—even when everything in you wants to.
That counts. That’s growth.
And growth often hides in the quietest corners.
It shows up in the resilience to get out of bed.
In the whisper that says, “Tomorrow might be better.”
In the tenderness we offer ourselves after a stumble.
Barely blooming is still blooming.
And that is more than enough.
But long before I had the words for any of this, I was a little girl, building entire worlds from wind and wildflowers.
I was Mustang-wild—vivacious, curious, wide-eyed and barefoot.
The world was big and magical, and I found safety in the trees when there was none inside the house.
Our home was a weathered trailer on an acreage, tucked beneath the arms of old white poplars and maples. It sat on land that once belonged to my Baba—a place where the earth remembered everything.
A mile up the gravel road was my grandparents’ farm—the big farm in my mind. Where cows bellowed, chickens scattered, and fresh peas waited to be picked from the garden. Where the youngest uncles might be home, ready to play kick-the-can until the sun bled into the fields.
To get there, I’d pack a lunch in a makeshift sack like the travelers I read about in my adventure books—because make-believe made everything feel safer, fuller, possible.
Closer to home, there was a patch of land I claimed as my own sanctuary: a line of giant boulders in the field, visible from the picture window. I imagined they were islands, each one home to a different world I created and ruled. The rocks listened. The trees whispered. The birds brought messages from the forest.
That world was mine.
And in that world—I was safe.
I was powerful.
I was loved.
In a life that often left me powerless, creativity and nature became my lifelines. They taught me how to hear things others couldn’t. How to trust my inner knowing. How to survive long before I had the language for survival.
This is where Barely Blooming begins—not with perfection, but with imagination as refuge, and healing as a slow, sacred rebellion.
Barely Blooming is still blooming – and sometimes barely is just enough.
Barely Blooming 