Come Write With Me — October 23, 2026

Greetings my lovelies,

A little heads-up before we begin: You might want to grab some tissues for this one. I’ll do my best to sprinkle in my usual humor, sarcasm, and a little colorful language, because apparently I can’t discuss life’s deepest emotional wounds without occasionally being a smartass. But this prompt took me somewhere I wasn’t expecting, and parts of it might tug at the heartstrings. So grab your magic bean potion, keep those tissues handy, and settle in. We’re about to get a little personal.

Today’s writing prompt asks, “What Have You Completely Changed Your Mind About?”

Well, isn’t that a loaded question to ponder over a cup of magic bean potion?

At first, I couldn’t think of a damn thing. Have I changed my mind about food? Fashion? Books? Aging? Sure, probably. I’ve lived long enough to watch trends disappear, come back, and get marketed to a new generation as if someone just invented them. Somewhere out there, somebody is calling a fashion trend from my teenage years a groundbreaking new aesthetic, and I need them to understand that we already survived it once.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that my biggest changes haven’t been about what I wear, what I eat, or how I decorate my home.

They’ve been about people.

And that’s a much more complicated conversation.

I Thought Family Would Always Be Family

When I was younger, I had a picture in my head of what life would look like at this age.

I imagined a big, loving family. Children who remained part of my life. Grandchildren. Birthdays, holidays, celebrations, and family gatherings where everyone showed up, ate too much, laughed too loudly, and made memories together.

I imagined friendships that lasted a lifetime. People dropping by, phones ringing, invitations being extended, and a house that regularly filled with the people I loved.

I never expected perfection, and I still don’t. Frankly, expecting perfection from another human being is a little ridiculous. We’re all flawed, we all have our quirks, and every last one of us is capable of getting on somebody’s nerves. Families argue. People disagree. Someone inevitably gets irritated about something ridiculous, and somebody else brings it up again at Thanksgiving twenty years later.

I didn’t need everyone to agree, behave flawlessly, or live according to some imaginary set of rules. I simply believed we could love one another, accept our differences, and keep showing up for each other.

That’s family, right?

At least, that’s what I believed.

I also believed that when tragedy struck, families came together. Whatever disagreements existed, the loss of someone you loved would remind everyone how precious and short life really is.

And you know what? I still believe that, at least for myself.

Losing someone I love doesn’t make me want to hold tighter to grudges or push people farther away. It reminds me how little time we actually have together, how many conversations go unfinished, and how quickly the opportunity to make another memory can disappear.

What I’ve changed my mind about is assuming everyone else will feel the same way.

I’ve learned that isn’t always what happens.

Sometimes the people you thought would be beside you aren’t there. Sometimes siblings become strangers. Sometimes you discover that sharing a childhood, a last name, or even the same grief doesn’t guarantee you’ll share a relationship.

My sister Ginni and I are the only two surviving children in our family now, and we don’t speak.

There was a time when I couldn’t have imagined that being my reality.

But here we are.

I Thought Loving People Was Enough

I used to believe that if you loved people, accepted them, forgave them, and made an effort to maintain a relationship, that effort would eventually be returned.

I believed in seeing the good in everyone.

Some people might call that naive.

Maybe it was. But I actually liked that part of myself.

I liked believing people meant well. I liked giving people the benefit of the doubt. I liked thinking that even when someone behaved badly, there was still something good inside them worth discovering.

And you know what?

I still believe that.

What I’ve changed my mind about is the idea that believing in someone’s goodness means they’re going to treat you well.

Those are two very different things.

I’ve learned that you can love someone with your whole heart and still be unable to have a healthy relationship with them.

You can forgive someone and still need distance.

You can understand why someone behaves the way they do without accepting the way they treat you.

And perhaps the hardest lesson of all is realizing that you cannot maintain a relationship all by yourself.

Friendship, family, marriage—whatever the relationship—it takes more than one person showing up.

I’m not interested in relationships where affection and acceptance come with a list of conditions. I don’t believe I should have to agree with every opinion you have, live exactly as you do, or become a different person just to earn a place in your life.

We’re human beings, not matching sets of dinnerware.

We’re supposed to be different.

As far as I’m concerned, the basic rules are pretty simple: don’t hurt other people, don’t hurt yourself, and don’t hurt animals.

Beyond that, can we please allow people to be themselves?

I’ve Changed How I See My Mom

This might be the most profound change of all, and it certainly didn’t happen overnight.

My relationship with my mom was complicated. There was hurt, anger, and a great deal of pain throughout my childhood and adult life. For much of my life, I understood her through what I experienced as her daughter. I knew the things she said, the ways she behaved, and the hurt those experiences left behind.

When you’re a child, you don’t look at your parents and see two people with entire histories that began long before you arrived. You see Mom and Dad. You see the people who are supposed to love you, protect you, and make you feel safe. You don’t sit there analyzing their childhood experiences or wondering which dreams they abandoned along the way.

And frankly, you shouldn’t have to.

It wasn’t until much later in my life that I began to see my mom differently. As I grew older, I started thinking about the girl she had been before she was ever responsible for raising children. I began looking at pieces of her life that I hadn’t fully understood when I was younger, and eventually I found myself asking questions I never would have thought to ask as a child.

Who was she before she became my mom? What did she want from life? What happened to her before I was born? And how different might everything have been if she’d been given a better beginning?

My mom was only sixteen when I was born, three days away from her seventeenth birthday.

I was born prematurely, arriving weeks before I was expected. And there she was, still a teenager herself, suddenly responsible for a baby when she hadn’t even finished growing up.

When I think about sixteen now, I don’t picture a grown woman prepared to navigate marriage, babies, bills, and all the responsibilities that come with adulthood. I picture a teenage girl who should have been thinking about school, friendships, first loves, and what she wanted to do with the rest of her life.

My mom wanted to become a veterinarian.

She talked about that dream. She loved animals, and there was a time when she imagined a future spent caring for them. But she never finished high school, and the life she once pictured for herself never became reality.

And that wasn’t the only thing she lost.

As I came to understand more about her childhood, I learned about experiences no child should ever have to endure. She had been abused by people who should have protected her, including members of her own family. Her early life was marked by pain, uncertainty, and experiences that left wounds long before I entered the picture.

When I was younger, I couldn’t have looked at my mom’s behavior and immediately connected it to the frightened, hurt girl she had once been. I was too busy living through my own experiences with her.

It took growing older to begin understanding that people don’t simply appear in the world as the adults we know. They carry childhoods with them. They carry disappointments, abandoned dreams, memories, and sometimes terrible things that were done to them.

That realization didn’t erase what happened between my mom and me.

I need to be very clear about that.

Understanding why someone may have become the person they were does not excuse the pain they caused.

My mom’s childhood wasn’t my responsibility. Her lost opportunities weren’t my fault. And the things that happened to her didn’t make the things that happened to me acceptable.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve found myself able to hold two truths at once.

I can remember the mom who hurt me, and I can feel compassion for the little girl who was hurt long before I was born.

I can wish my childhood had been different while also wishing hers had been different.

And sometimes, when I think about her now, I imagine being able to travel back in time. Not to change some tiny detail or prevent an embarrassing fashion choice, although heaven knows the seventies and eighties gave us plenty of opportunities for that.

I imagine finding my mom when she was still a girl.

I’d want to tell her that she deserved to be safe. That what happened to her wasn’t right. That she deserved the chance to finish school, discover who she was, and pursue her dream of becoming a veterinarian.

I’d want her to know that her life could be about more than surviving what other people had done to her.

And yes, part of me wishes I could have encouraged her to take a different path before she became a teenage mom.

Not because I believe my existence was a mistake, but because I wish she’d had the freedom to choose her future without so much pain already behind her.

I didn’t see any of this clearly when I was young.

I see it now.

And that change in perspective has allowed me to feel a kind of compassion for my mom that I wasn’t capable of feeling when I was still trying to make sense of my own childhood.

Then, during the final eighteen months of her life, something else happened that I never expected.

Our relationship changed.

Following Ronnie’s accident, my mom began showing me a compassion and tenderness I hadn’t known from her before. Later, after she suffered a stroke, I helped care for her from a distance.

For the first time, I was getting to know a different side of my mom.

Shortly before she died, she told me that having me had changed her life for the better. That I was the best thing that had ever happened to her.

I cried.

I asked her why she’d never told me that before.

She couldn’t give me an answer.

And then, far too soon, she was gone.

I am grateful beyond words for those eighteen months. I’m also heartbroken that we didn’t get another eighteen years.

I recently traveled to California, and I found myself wishing I could call her from there. I would have sent pictures, told her about my adventures, and excitedly shared my Billy Zane story.

Nothing extraordinary needed to happen during that phone call.

I just wanted to tell my mom something wonderful.

Instead, I have her ashes in an urn I chose for her.

I love her. I miss her. And I wish we’d had more time.

What I’ve changed my mind about is that a person can be more than the worst things they’ve done. I can acknowledge what happened in my childhood while also loving the mom I came to know near the end of her life.

Both truths belong to me.

I Haven’t Given Up on People

Here’s the part that might surprise some people.

After everything I’ve experienced, I haven’t stopped believing in people.

I’m more cautious now. I recognize patterns I might once have overlooked. I understand that forgiveness and reconciliation aren’t the same thing.

But I still believe people can change if they genuinely want to.

I still believe relationships can be repaired when both people are willing to do the work.

And I still believe that disagreement shouldn’t automatically mean the end of a friendship or family relationship.

We’ve become awfully comfortable throwing people away because they think differently, vote differently, believe differently, or simply refuse to live according to someone else’s expectations.

I’m not talking about tolerating cruelty or abuse. I’m talking about the ordinary differences that make us individuals.

I don’t want a world where everyone has to agree with me.

Good Lord, how boring would that be?

I want a world where we can disagree, laugh about it, pass the potatoes, and still invite each other over next Sunday.

Maybe that sounds old-fashioned.

I’m perfectly fine with that.

So What Have I Really Changed My Mind About?

I’ve changed my mind about what family guarantees.

I’ve changed my mind about how much effort one person can reasonably put into a relationship.

I’ve changed my mind about the difference between forgiveness and allowing someone to hurt me again.

And I’ve changed my understanding of my mom, her life, and the complicated relationship we shared.

But I haven’t changed my mind about the importance of love, kindness, loyalty, friendship, and family.

I still want the gatherings, the celebrations, the phone calls, the laughter, and the people who show up simply because they want to be part of one another’s lives.

I still believe those things are worth having.

Maybe I’ve simply learned that I can’t make other people want them with me.

And if I could say one thing to my younger self, it wouldn’t be to stop trusting everyone, stop caring so much, or harden her heart before the world gets to it.

I’d tell her:

Don’t give up on people.

Just remember that you deserve people who don’t give up on you, either.

Rae with love 💜