It’s snowing today. The kind of steady, quiet snow that doesn’t announce itself with drama. One minute, the world is the same familiar gray; the next, it’s wearing a brand-new coat like it got up early and decided to reinvent itself before anyone else woke up.

I stood at the window with my coffee, watching the flakes fall in that hypnotic way they do, and I had the same thought I always have on the first real snow of the season:

How can something look so different in such a short amount of time?

Yesterday, the grass was patchy and dull. The sidewalks were tired. Everything felt like late-November leftovers—used, softened, fading into the background. And now? The whole neighborhood looks like someone whispered “reset” into the sky, and Mother Nature obliged.

There’s something beautiful about how fast a landscape can change. How quickly the familiar can turn unfamiliar. Or, if you’re lucky, how the things you’ve stopped noticing suddenly catch your attention again.

Snow days always make me think about the quiet ways life shifts. Not the big plot twists—the ones people write books about—but the subtle changes that happen while you’re making coffee or opening the blinds or taking the dog out. The moments when you look up and realize something in you has softened or sharpened or straightened itself without asking permission.

I’ve had years where the change felt like a blizzard—loud, disruptive, impossible to ignore. Losing Ken was like that. One day my life looked one way, and the next, the ground beneath me wasn’t the same anymore. The landscape changed overnight, and it took years to learn how to walk on it again without slipping.

But most growth doesn’t look like that. Most healing doesn’t either. It’s quieter. Slower. Less cinematic. It’s the emotional equivalent of watching snow accumulate—you don’t realize how much has shifted until you step outside and feel your feet sink into it.

I think that’s why today hit me the way it did.

I looked outside and realized the world had changed while I wasn’t paying attention. And then I had to admit something:

So have I.

Not dramatically. Not with fireworks. Not with a before/after photo worthy of a wellness influencer. But in the small, meaningful ways that actually matter.

The way I’m softer with myself than I used to be.
The way I’m clearer about what I want to build in my writing life.
The way I’m finally letting myself imagine a future without flinching.

It happened slowly, then suddenly—just like the snow.

Hudson, of course, has no philosophical commentary to add. He just wants to eat it, roll in it, and track it all over the house like the world’s happiest interior designer. But even he feels it: the shift in the air, the invitation to move differently through the neighborhood, the instinct to pause at the door and take it all in before bounding forward.

Maybe that’s the real lesson today.

Sometimes the landscape changes quickly, but our job is to stay awake enough to notice it—and brave enough to step into it.

The world is brand new outside my window right now. And in some ways, I guess I am too.

Snow has a way of reminding me that nothing stays the same forever—not grief, not joy, not the version of ourselves we thought was permanent. Things change. Sometimes slowly. Sometimes overnight.

And when they do, the only thing to do is open the door, breathe in the cold air, and take the first step into whatever comes next.

If you want more of these quiet reflections—and the first look at what I’m changing, building, and stepping into for 2026—join me in my newsletter. It’s where the real story lives.