Tomorrow I turn 56 and ten years ago tomorrow, Tom received the preliminary diagnosis of ALS. My birthday has never been the same.

It’s strange to realize that a decade can pass and still feel close enough to touch. Ten years. A full lifetime in some ways. A blink in others.

When Tom was diagnosed, we made an agreement — not out loud like a contract, but in that quiet, serious way you do when life has just punched you in the gut.

I would not waste another decade. Because I had done that before.

After we lost the twins. After John. After surviving a 24-week preemie and everything that came with that season of trauma. Ten years went by, and I floated. I was present, but not living. Breathing, but not building. Existing, but not awake. It took a full decade for me to realize grief had quietly stolen my thirties and the early part of my forties.

When ALS came into our home, Tom and I both knew — if I wasn’t intentional, ALS and his death would take another ten.

That realization is the fire that drives me now.

It’s why I leaned into the grief instead of running from it.
Why I went to therapy.
Why I let the hard conversations happen.
Why I chose to feel everything instead of numbing it.

It’s why I refuse to be sad about growing older. Aging is a privilege Tom was cheated out of.

Every line on my face is time he didn’t get. Every trip, every adventure, every wild “why not?” decision — none of it is luck. It’s work. It’s courage. It’s dragging self-doubt, guilt, and fear into the passenger seat and driving anyway.

I have been told on a few occasions that I’m lucky to be living this life.

I’m not lucky. I’m brave. When fear shows up — and it does — I remind myself: I can do hard things.

I don’t really feel like I have a choice. Or maybe I do. But something in me refuses to let death, depression, or ALS steal one more minute.

And yet — here’s the part I didn’t expect to write…Even in this full, intentional life… I am alone.

Grant and I are building something beautiful. It works for us. It’s steady and real and grown-up. We are committed. But commitment in your 50s and 60s is different than commitment in your 20s and 30s. We both have histories. Children. Grief. Long marriages behind us. We know we can count on each other. But when crisis hits? When something shakes the ground?

There is still this quiet, instinctual thought: I’m on my own.

I don’t know if that’s widowhood.
I don’t know if it’s surviving long marriages.
I don’t know if it’s trauma rewiring the nervous system to never fully relax.

Maybe when you’ve buried the person who was your “always,” some part of you never again believes in absolute permanence.

Maybe when you’ve lived through loss that rewrote your DNA, you carry independence like armor.

This post wasn’t supposed to be about that. But apparently, ten years has a way of pulling the truth to the surface. Here’s what I know on the edge of 56:

I am not the same woman who floated through her thirties and let ten years slip by unnoticed.

I am a woman who has loved deeply, buried her husband, grieved honestly, and still chooses life.

I am still scared sometimes. I am still alone in ways I don’t fully understand. And I am still moving forward anyway.

I have learned that time does not pause for grief. It either carries you quietly away… or you decide to stand up inside it. The last decade held diagnosis, decline, death, rebuilding, fear, therapy, love again, and more courage than I knew I possessed.

I did not float through the past ten years and I will not float through the next. The next ten years are not something I’m waiting to see happen. They are mine to build. Mine to risk. Mine to live.

And I intend to live them fully.