Greetings my feral, dark, and bright ones,

Yesterday morning, June 15, 2026, the first day of Monsoon Season in Arizona, the sky broke open at four in the morning, a rolling wave of thunder that literally shook the walls and pulled me out of sleep. By five, the storm was looming large right over the roof—a magnificent, fierce display of jagged lightning, heavy wind, and thick desert rain. It was the exact kind of tempestuous, beautiful morning that demands your full attention.

Before heading out to the freshly screened patio to watch it, I stopped. I picked up the heavy black box holding Mom’s remains. We were supposed to be sharing this air differently. The plans were all there: she was going to move out here to Arizona to live, or we were all going to head to Tennessee next year. Depending on what her doctor had said back in April, I was either going to fly out to get her or arrange an escort. Whenever the monsoons hit in previous years, I used to call her, put the phone on speaker, and let her listen to the roar of the desert sky. She loved it. I’d go live on Facebook or post videos just so she could see the sheet lines of rain. She’d always tell me to be careful, and I’d always tell her not to worry. She worried anyway, because that’s what moms do.

So, we sat together on the patio, listening to the first storm of the season.

I cried hard for a while. It’s only been six weeks, and the miss is a heavy, constant ache. But as the rain poured, a strange, long-buried feeling started to rise up from somewhere deep inside: the absolute urge to write. Not the structured prose of daily blogging, but the raw, intuitive kind of writing that used to flow without effort. The poetry, the haikus, the lyrics to songs long forgotten because the physical notebooks they lived in were destroyed by others years ago.

Mom was the one who encouraged that side of me when I was in high school. She saw that I loved to read, saw the quiet creative streak, and wanted me to be a writer. It’s complex, looking back. There were deeply abusive, dark times—there’s no sanitizing that. But there were also times when she genuinely saw the potential in her children and pushed them toward it.

The storm seemed to unlock a floodgate of those finer, softer memories. She taught me cross-stitch, embroidery, and ceramic painting. I still remember a ceramic bunny I painted, painstakingly detailing its teeth, which she kept and was so incredibly proud of. She encouraged the drawing, the writing, and the music. I played the flute—practicing until I hated it, as kids do—and sang soprano in the chorus. When I wanted to play softball and tennis, she was behind it. She wasn’t the total monster she was often made out to be. She had her good moments, even if the bad moments eventually raged so loud they took over the landscape. Sitting there in the cool air, I found myself whispering an apology to her for how easy it is to forget the good things when the shadow of the bad is so large.

With that memory came a sudden, electric urge to create in ways I haven’t touched in decades. This monsoon woke up something that had been dormant for half a lifetime. I felt a sudden craving to buy a real sketchbook and charcoal pencils. To pick up a camera and take quiet, intentional, unrushed photographs of life. Even my relationship with my hobbies shifted in a split second; I looked at the dark, heavy diamond paintings I’ve accumulated during the darker eras of my life and realized I want them gone. I want to trash them or give them away. Everything inside me is demanding a shift toward brightness, freshness, and genuine health. The art, the house, the office, the clothes—everything needs to be clearer and brighter now.

Yet, sitting on the chair, the weight of how to actually execute that change felt paralyzing. I opened my laptop, typing out a long, raw stream of consciousness to an AI interface just to process the sheer volume of emotion, using the screen like a mirror to understand the tangled thoughts. When the laptop closed, an internal voice told me to go further.

By 5:30, I walked out from under the patio roof and sat right in the rain. I pulled a folding chair next to the fire pit, let the water drench my skin, and cried out to the universe, to the ancestors, to the gods and goddesses, asking for absolute clarity. The thunder rolled, lightning cracked across the valley, the wind whipped up, and I just sat there demanding strength and direction.

The reality of my life right now is stark. The final pillar of my foundation has left this earth. My biological sperm donor is still alive, but we don’t speak—and if you ask certain people, they’ll say that separation is my doing. They’re entirely right. It is my doing, because I refuse to let a narcissist treat me like garbage anymore. But with Mom gone, the structure is empty. My pillars were my grandparents—Grandma and Grandpa Todd, Grandma Herrmann—and Mom. They were the people who molded me. They were the ones whose approval I spent my entire existence chasing, changing myself like a chameleon to fit into their vastly different boxes. It was an exhausting, fracturing way to live. The real me was always hidden deep inside, dying to break out but terrified of disapproval, terrified of being told I wasn’t loved or wasn’t enough.

Now that the final pillar is gone, the silence is deafening, and it brings the most fundamental questions a human can ask:

• Who am I?
• Who have I ever really been?
• What actually makes me tick?
• What makes me happy?
• What makes me smile?
• What is my actual favorite color?
• My favorite scent?

The list is entirely long and blank. There are so many questions left to be answered.

As those heavy questions swirled, the storm began to break. The sun peeked through from the east, catching the chinaberry tree across the alleyway and making every single raindrop on its leaves glisten like glass. Then, a massive double rainbow arched completely over the house. It was so close and vivid it looked as though the first arc touched down directly on my roof. I ran back to the patio, grabbed Mom’s box, and held it up to the sky so she could see it too. It felt like an intentional spark of hope.

When the clouds rolled back in and the downpour started again, I carried her back to safety so the box wouldn’t get ruined. I stayed out there, completely drenched, sitting alone in the quiet power of the weather.

For the first time in nearly 56 years, there is no one influencing me. There is no one telling me how to live, how to behave, or who to be. How on earth do you navigate that? How do you smoothly make the transition from a lifelong people-pleaser to an authentic self when you don’t even know what your favorite color is yet?

It’s an uncharted space. So, to the gods, the goddesses, and the ancestors who watch over this house: I am asking for clarity. Help me find the compass needle. Help me navigate toward peace, serenity, happiness, and whatever the true version of myself turns out to be. The storm has cleared the air; now it’s time to see what grows.