A Life Lived in the In-Between
If you’ve ever felt like your life didn’t feel “big enough” or “hard enough” to share — this is for you.
I’ll be honest — I’m not really sure where this post is supposed to fall.
It doesn’t feel like an introduction, and it doesn’t feel like a conclusion. It’s not a milestone or a turning point. It’s just something that has weighed heavy on my heart for a very long time.
For years, I’ve felt like I had something to share — but never felt worthy of sharing it.
So much of what gets shared feels like a highlight reel.
The big wins.
The dramatic survival stories.
The moments that make people stop scrolling — my life never felt like it belonged there.
It wasn’t a tragedy.
It wasn’t a miracle.
It didn’t rise especially high or fall especially low.
It lived somewhere in between.
There was a time when I did share more. Very recently, actually. Zach and I had a YouTube channel — Nomadic Habits. It was monetized (after years of hard work), and we shared travel vlogs regularly. Moving days. Wide open views. Beautiful places.
From the outside, it probably looked like freedom.
But the truth was, we traveled mostly for Zach’s work.
And I struggled with that.
Not because the places weren’t beautiful — they were.
Not because the experiences weren’t real — they were.
But because I didn’t feel worthy of telling the story the way people expected it to be told.
I felt like I had to plan fun weekends just to have something to film. Like I had to turn real life into content in order to justify sharing it. And somewhere along the way, it started to feel like a performance — not because it was fake, but because it was incomplete.
We weren’t traveling to escape work.
We were traveling because of it.
And I didn’t know how to explain that without feeling like I was misleading people — even when nothing we shared was technically untrue.
So slowly, I pulled back.
To this day, that choice has left thousands of people wondering where I went, what I’m doing now, and why — especially after sharing a film where I said I wanted to share my life with an infant on the road… only to go quiet, again.
But what do you do when your life looks exciting on camera, and yet feels completely ordinary behind it? When the beauty is real, but the narrative feels off? When your story doesn’t fit neatly into adventure or hardship?
You stay silent. So — I went quiet.
Because even after all the effort it took to build a monetized YouTube channel, I still never felt like my life earned a category.
I’ve always lived a very blessed life. A privileged one, in many ways. I’ve had my health. I’ve seen beautiful places. I’ve stood in red rock deserts, watched the Gulf swallow the horizon, crossed borders both literal and emotional. I’ve lived on the East Coast, the West Coast, and slept in parking lots. I’ve survived tornadoes in a van and quiet heartbreaks that never made good stories.
I also spent parts of my early twenties living out of my Jeep Liberty, working long shifts as a waitress, navigating relationships that left me smaller than I entered them — mentally and physically bruised in ways that didn’t feel dramatic enough to explain, but heavy enough to carry.
I didn’t survive a disease.
I didn’t climb to the top of something extraordinary.
I didn’t fall far enough to be inspiring, or rise high enough to be aspirational.
So I kept asking myself: Who would this help? Why would this matter?
And then I became a mother.
And suddenly, the in-between felt like the most important part of the story.
I want my son to know that his life is not measured by extremes. That it’s okay if he never lives in the highlight reel — and it’s okay if he does. That it’s okay if he never falls into the lowest lows — and it’s okay if he has seasons that break him open.
I want him to know that a life doesn’t have to be exceptional to be worthy of being shared.
Most of life happens quietly. In the middle. In the days that don’t go viral. In the seasons that don’t come with captions or climaxes. And I think that’s where people actually live — even if it’s not where the attention goes.
And motherhood has only deepened that truth — teaching me that so much of what matters most happens quietly, in ways I never expected.
So this is me choosing to share the in-between.
Not the polished version.
Not the curated one.
But the honest one.
Because I want my child to grow up knowing that his life — wherever it falls — is enough. And that there is value in telling stories that don’t shout, but still matter.
This isn’t a highlight reel.
It’s a life.
And it’s worth telling.
