The Call to Adventure 

I was a woman holding up the sky.

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Running a home like an empire,
offering sanctuary I never received,
baking cookies with trembling hands,
mowing the lawn, fluffing the pillows,

curating the perfect life

while dying in silence.

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My home was beautiful —
every room a prayer,
every corner touched by love,
every gathering a spell I cast
to create connection, safety, belonging.

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But I was the primary provider.
The one holding the bills, the meals, the yard, the emotions,
the mask.

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I slept little, spoke less.
Tried harder.
Worked longer.
Pushed through the pain, the resentment, the betrayal.
Kept the yard tidy while my spirit frayed beneath it all.

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And still — I believed I was failing.
Because the rules were rigged,
and the game was not meant for my liberation.

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The trauma of the marriage —
the gaslighting, the addiction, the shame,
the daily erosion of my self-worth —
was something I carried like a sacred secret.
I was loyal to a fault,
always accommodating,
always trying to keep everyone else happy
while I forgot how to breathe.

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Night after night, the dreams came:
a hooded man trying to break in.
Always in the shadows.
Always just outside.
And I would run around locking the doors,
desperate to protect this life I had built.

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Until, one night…
he got in.

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That was the beginning of the end.

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That was the first real whisper.
Not from fear,
but from something older and deeper —
a wild knowing beneath the wreckage.

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It began as a question I dared not say aloud:

Is this really what God wants for me?
A life of quiet suffering dressed up in piety and success?

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I had built a cage and called it safety.
I had kept my family secure,
but I was not safe within myself.

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There was a whisper in the wind,
a tug in the soul,
a sacred discontent I could no longer ignore.

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The facade had begun to crack.
The health issues had begun to speak.
The dreams had begun to prophecy.

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And the longing had begun to rise —
for peace, for freedom,
for people I could trust,
for a life I didn’t have to survive.

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I didn’t know how to leave.
But I had begun to hear the call.

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And once the wind touches you,
you cannot unknow it.