Dear Readers (longtime, casual, and those who have drifted in suddenly with the tides),

I dare not bother to see how long it’s been since I last posted: it’s been at least three months I believe.

Some might be disappointed by my absence while others hardly noticed, and I have to give myself grace in stepping away from my unpaid work to attend to my life outside of the internet. 2026 has been busier than expected. Not only have I been juggling job searching again as my short-term role comes to an end this year, but my dad’s health has been on a rapid decline. I took an emergency trip to my hometown to see him in June after he was hospitalized in late May. He is hospitalized again and will remain there. He is in need of a donor heart and has been undergoing the numerous steps that precede this lifesaving operation. There are no guarantees he’ll get a heart, but we are appreciative this opportunity is available and will follow all the rules required to buy him more time.

In the interest of protecting his privacy, I won’t have anything further about his hospitalization to share at this time.

Coping in such difficult circumstances looks different to everyone. I was already struggling with his third heart attack last fall and his hospitalization in May. When we got the news that his future depended on a new heart, things got very real for our family that we could only control so many variables and had to rely on the support of our local community and medical community moving forward. A GoFundMe was established to help defray some costs we couldn’t control through other resources–I am grateful to the many people who contributed either to the GoFundMe or in-kind to help out my parents so I could funnel resources out of the emergency fund my husband and I have grown towards flying my daughter and I home to visit while my husband stayed at our residence to take care of our dogs. It would have been painful to not make the journey home, and I realize many families don’t have that privilege when loved ones are sick, particularly if loved ones are overseas or if the person wishing to travel is undocumented and must stay put due to the current administration’s targeted efforts to remove them from this country.

There’s a book that has long been on my “To Be Read” list, and with good timing, it appeared at my local public library as an omen to weather the storm we’re passing through. Written by Katherine May, it’s titled, Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times. I’m nearly done with it, and I will likely consider buying my own copy to have on hand for other future hard times. My original intent was for it to soothe me through my own health issues–two years into an autoimmune disorder diagnosis journey that continues to unfold–and now its purpose is more to guide me through my feelings that I will never have enough time with my dad and I’m not ready to lose him. I know this as a child who lost her mom at 16. I feel the Universe should reward me with more time with my dad to make up for my early loss, but also that’s not how life works out sometimes. Each day I am confronted with “This might be our last day.” so I check in and make sure we have some sort of of conversation. Today’s not a great one since my stepmom had to put their 15-year-old dog down and that’s hitting my dad hard, but we still deserve a conversation. It centered on grief and pain are ok to hold. As much as I said it to him, it was an important mirror to hold up for myself as well because I struggle with letting others see me be vulnerable.

And in that vein, here’s this beautiful passage from Katherine May’s book that serves me today and might serve someone else I don’t know.

“A hospital creates a particular kind of winter. Jenny Diski captures it well in Skating to Antarctica: the layers of sterile white that offer both discipline and comfort, often at the same time; the sense of personal obliteration. It’s a temple to a certain kind of faith, the residual trust that there is a higher authority who knows the answers, who can save us.”

~Cheryl