Under the bridge downtown…

‘This is a helluva place to wake up on Father’s Day,’ I said to my friend in a video message I sent her this past Sunday.

Paying homage to the name of the brand-new hotel, Sleep Inn, built on the edge of our beloved town and perched on the bank of the Tennessee River, I let my sweet husband and daughter…sleep in.

I ventured down in search of coffee, a workout and the sunrise.

Instead, I found myself enveloped in a space that shifted my life’s trajectory more than any other place I’ve ever been- under the bridge where my dad took that fatal jump back in December of 1982.

My friend replied to my video with a text telling me she loved me, how proud he would be of me and asking, ‘Do you ever think about who you would be right now if he were alive?’

My response:

‘I don’t so much think about who I would be right now. Because truthfully, I feel as though who you are as an adult is a very personal and independent choice. The fabrics that make you up can be woven by others, for sure. But, I think I would be exactly who I am if he were still alive; however, I think my everyday approach to living might be a little different and my childhood would’ve been vastly different.’

I deeply believe in choosing our own lives rather than living lives that choose us.

I dislike the word trauma. Not because it isn’t real, but because I think it has become overused, softening the weight of its true meaning.

I often say we are all recovering from our childhoods. So many of the things that happen to us while we are growing up help shape us, but shaping and defining are two very different things.

Wherever you are in your own life, it is my hope that the trajectory-changing experiences you’ve endured do for you what they did for me: gave me internal strength, an open-minded perspective, a positive work ethic and a standard that continually moves the baseline.

As well as a story I feel is worth telling…