Another Christmas

There are moments when you realize life will never return to what it once was. The moment itself is brief, almost unremarkable, but the awareness stretches far beyond it, settling in and refusing to leave.

I don’t pretend to understand life. I move through it the only way I know how, by following the rhythm of days, keeping pace with what comes next. Not because I have answers, but because stopping isn’t an option. Giving up isn’t on the table. So, I do the simplest, hardest thing there is: I keep going.

The holidays have a way of slowing time just enough to make you look back. They invite reflection—on years when life felt fuller, when meaning arrived more easily, when the future didn’t feel quite so loaded. Those memories surface without asking permission, bringing both warmth and ache in equal measure.

These days, life feels less about building and more about enduring. Not in a dramatic sense…….there is no grand despair here. Just the steady act of survival. Showing up. Moving forward. Allowing the days to pass, one after another, trusting that persistence itself holds its own purpose.