Hammock Time: Tuition Paid for Lessons Learned…

You don’t really meet yourself until life kicks you in the teeth.

And even then, it’s not a handshake — it’s a brawl.

You meet yourself in the wreckage.

When the job is gone. When the love story falls apart. When the diagnosis comes.

When the phone rings at 2 AM, and you already know before you even pick it up that life will never be the same again.

That’s when the real introductions happen.

I am 1,638 miles from where I first began this journey —

and somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t just crossing states.

I was crossing into new versions of myself.

The 1970s me — wild, barefoot, loudmouthed Aussie — wouldn’t recognize this 2025 me: rolling across America behind a therapy chariot named Gertrude, chasing thunderstorms, sunrise by sunrise.

The 1990s me, who packed up her heart and followed a boy across an ocean at 21 years old — she’d probably shake her head and smirk at me now.

I guess that’s tuition paid for lessons learned.

Costly? Absolutely.

Worth it? In a way you only understand once you’re on the other side, still standing.

By 2001 and 2002, the biggest, best life lessons were born: my son and my daughter.

They’re 24 and 23 now — strong, stubborn, brilliant humans who had to weather more storms by age seven than most people do in a lifetime.

They lost their dad far too young.

And I learned that grief isn’t just about losing someone you love.

Sometimes grief is about losing pieces of yourself you thought would be permanent.

The girl who thought she had more time.

The woman who thought she could hold everything together by sheer force of will.

Grief strips you of your old armor.

It guts you.

And, if you let it, it builds you back into something softer, braver, wiser.

I read once — somewhere between a cheap motel Bible and a conversation with a woman outside a Dollar General — that hospital walls have heard more honest prayers than churches ever have.

I believe it.

Pain doesn’t care about your bank account or your business card.

It levels the playing field.

It makes humans human again.

And right when you think you’re too broken to keep going —

Life sends you a reminder.

Tonight, some new campers moved into the little cabin next door.

Locals — sweet, big-hearted people who came out here to relax, to laugh as a family under the lazy hum of country music floating through the trees.

Soft. Gentle.

Their kindness, their simple joy, spilled over onto me like a quiet prayer.

No big speeches. No grand gestures.

Just a soft reminder:

You are not alone.

Not ever.

Not with God walking beside you.

Not with the stranger who smiles at you when you need it most.

Not with the world still stitching you back together with every small, beautiful moment you’re brave enough to notice.

Because after 1,638 miles and a million silent prayers whispered into the wind, I know one thing for sure:

Alone, we are nothing.

And maybe — maybe — that’s the most beautiful thing about it.