Faith disarms fear by making it visible and choosing trust anyways.
My husband left yesterday.
He is in the military and has been sent away for six months, something we had no say in. Last night was my first night without him since our wedding, and I’m existing in a strange space right now.
There is a version of faith I used to think that I understood. The kind where everything is stable at home, life is predictable, and each day has a routine way about it that makes it predictable and easy to explain. This is not a normal day for me, and I am uncovering that there is another kind of faith. It is the faith you learn when everything looks the same but feels no different. When the day is full of children and motion to keep your mind busy and your heart full…then the quiet of night arrives, and the stillness is deafening.
I am learning that when your body is afraid, small physical reminders become a tether. A shirt that still carries his scent, waking on his side of the bed, choosing to use his favorite mug for my morning coffee. Ordinary objects, yes, but also enormous anchors.
Because fear is loud, and if I am honest, it knows my name.
I am learning that faith doesn’t pretend that fear is not there. Faith names it. Looks it in the face. And refuses to let it drive. Because when we lean into trust, fear is disarmed.
This is the kind of faith I am writing about this week. The kind that helps us discern what is true so we can disarm our fears.
Sometimes the way out of the shadows is not through force, but choosing to move toward the light together.
Strength through togetherness.
Sometimes it is easy to mistake the shadows for truth—especially when you’ve been walking in them for so long.
Voices echo.
Shapes distort.
And what is real can begin to feel uncertain.
This week’s Letter to the Netherwood is about togetherness. As practice. As a form of discernment. As a way back to truth when fear starts inventing endings in the silence.
In Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince, Sera and Lily experience this again and again. The world shifts, the forest disguises itself, and doubt tries to blur what they know is real. But the turning point isn’t the absence of fear, nor is it a map.
It is the decision to stay connected.
There is a kind of strength that rises from standing beside one another, through the quiet presence of someone who does not turn away. Togetherness doesn’t always feel comforting. Sometimes it is simply proximity while your mind tries to spiral.
But light returns differently when it is shared.
It steadies. It clarifies. It reminds us what is real.
If you’ve been walking through something heavy—if the shadows feel convincing, if your mind keeps trying to invent endings—this letter is a gentle invitation:
Find one person. Reach. Not to be rescued, but to be accompanied.
Where have you been trying to walk alone, and what would it look like to reach for togetherness this week as a way back to truth?
A reflection on work, purpose, and the moment we decide what kind of life to teach our youth.
Today, my 15-year-old son told me he wants to get a job.
He is an artist and an animator. The kind of person who sees things before they exist.
When I asked him why he wanted a job, he gave an answer that felt both logical and deeply familiar: he wanted money so he could support himself and pay for the things he needs to become a better artist.
And that gave me pause.
Because beneath that answer was a lesson so many of us absorb early and rarely question:
Work first, so you can afford to become what you already are.
The more I sat with that, the more I realized this is not just a parenting question. It is a leadership question.
We often inherit a model of success that teaches people to separate survival from meaning. We normalize trading time, energy, and originality for the promise that one day, after enough proving, enough earning, enough exhaustion, we might finally have permission to invest in what we are actually gifted to do.
And then we wonder why so many people feel disengaged.
Why calendars are full, but people feel disconnected.
Why capable, creative individuals lose clarity, energy, and conviction over time.
I see versions of this everywhere, in workplaces, in culture, and if I am honest, in myself too.
Leadership is not only about driving outcomes. It is also about recognizing when a system is teaching people the wrong lesson.
In that moment with my son, I realized I had a choice. I could reinforce the default script, or I could challenge it.
So instead of telling him to get a conventional job first, I asked a different question:
What if your art is the thing that begins to support you?
What if he started offering commissions, building a portfolio through real collaboration, learning how to translate other people’s ideas into work that carries both skill and value?
That conversation was about more than money. It was about whether we teach people to delay their calling or develop it.
As leaders, parents, managers, and builders of culture, that question matters.
Because every system teaches.
Every norm shapes identity.
Every repeated message tells people something about what is practical, what is valuable, and what kind of life is available to them.
We do not just teach people how to work.
We teach them what kind of future they are allowed to imagine. Or better yet, that the future they imagine themselves is allowed.
And I think more of us need to stop and ask:
Are we helping people build lives that are sustainable, integrated, and meaningful?
Or are we simply preparing them to function inside systems that disconnect them from who they are?
That is not a small question.
It may be one of the most important leadership questions we can ask.
Love is everywhere in our culture—and most often, it’s framed as romance.
Walk into any bookstore and you can feel it on the shelves. Story after story that teaches us, love is the bond between two lovers, the cinematic kind that makes your heart ache, and your tears spill over. And trust me, I’m not above a good romance.
But love is larger than that.
A lantern for the path. Love is the light that does not fail.
The kind of love I write into Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince is more fundamental, more shared, more reverent. It’s the love carried in a child’s mind through a parent’s voice. The love between siblings when one of them is hurting and the other doesn’t flinch. The love between friends who stay steady in the hard moment. The love that returns home again—not with perfection, but with choice.
In the Netherwood, love isn’t always dramatic. Sometimes it’s practical. Attentive. A small act done with care that becomes shelter simply because of the hands that offered it.
That’s why this week’s Lantern Note is simple:
Not every bright thing is light. Even a beautiful voice can mislead. Not all things are true as they appear.
Love is what remains when the forest grows quiet. Love is the light that does not fail.
If you’d like to read the full Letters from the Netherwood letter with quotes from the book and a deeper reflection on the kinds of love that hold us, you can find it here:
The choice between providing and being present, and the family bond we build in the hours we’re given.
Familial bonds are one of the core themes woven through Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince—not only between the two sisters, but through their mother, too. Even in the dark Netherwood, she is with them. In the lessons she taught. In the boundaries she held with gentleness. In the internal voice she helped shape inside her daughters.
I wrote that relationship the way I hope to shape my own children.
But I haven’t always been this version of myself.
I became a mother at seventeen—young, independent, still wrapped up in the shallow worries of high school, and then suddenly confronted with a sacred new reality: someone else needed me. It brought me back to my center. It taught me what love asks of us.
And then life demanded trade-offs.
In the years that followed—through instability, a rocky first marriage, and the weight of being the provider—I entered the workforce and slowly fell prey to the corporate machine. Long days. Early drop-offs. Late pickups. Minutes together in the morning. An hour at night. Weekends filled with adventures meant to “make up for it.”
But the truth is: when you’re gone that much, other people begin shaping your children’s inner world more than you do.
The pandemic brought us home—and it showed me, with aching clarity, what presence actually does. It gave me the chance to relearn my children, to rebuild connection in the daily, and to rewrite the voices in their heads with kindness, steadiness, and truth.
This week’s full Letters from the Netherwood letter goes deeper into that story—how familial bonds are built, what absence costs, and why so many parents are forced to choose between providing and being present.
Question for you: Have you ever had to choose between providing and being present—and what’s one small way you protect your family bond this week inside the life you actually have?
Content note: the full letter includes references to relational instability and abuse. Please read gently.
The future is unwritten, and each of us holds an author’s quill.
We are at a moment of great moral conscience and consequence.
Collectively, we stand at a precipice. A fracture. A divide. Somewhere between where we’ve been living for decades and where we will go from here. The next chapter is not something that simply happens to us. It is something we are choosing—decision by decision, day by day—with our hands still on the pen.
And I can’t stop thinking about the contradiction we are sold.
We’re told that one little choice doesn’t matter, that one person cannot shape the future. Yet in this same reality, we are also sold the opposite lie—that one person can single-handedly change the trajectory of the world order.
Both cannot be true.
The moments we choose matter. They shape our own world first, and then the interconnected world of our relationships, our neighborhoods, our communities. Most of the time, those ripples travel farther than we ever get to witness.
This weekend has made that truth feel painfully visible. Reports from Tehran describe fuel depots struck and burning, toxic smoke blanketing the city, and rain turning black and acidic as soot and chemicals fall back down.
It is a reminder that our headlines are not abstract. They land on bodies. On lungs. On children. On the air.
Which brings me back to the point:
Change starts small, and in the quiet places no one sees. In the moments where you choose to be intentional instead of automated.
Trust is one of the deepest themes woven into Sera, Lily, & The Fox Prince. Not as a soft idea, but as a backbone. As an invisible thread that holds when fear gets loud, and doubt tries to speak in a voice that sounds like your own.
I didn’t realize how personal that theme was for me in my youth through my early twenties.
There was a season in my life when I trusted with all of myself—open, full-bodied trust that didn’t keep a tally. And then, little by little, trust began to fracture. My parents divorced but remained close for a time… until a new influence entered the picture and relationships shifted in ways that changed the shape of my world. Later, in my early twenties, I found myself in a marriage where self-sacrifice was not romance—it was survival. If you want more of that context, it lives in my Wild-hearted Bravery letter.
After enough breaks, I developed certain “truths” that were really just protection in disguise:
Everyone will let me down eventually. Trust nobody. Enjoy it while you can… until the other shoe drops.
That “other shoe” became an inevitability I carried—armor that felt like wisdom.
But therapy, time, and healing love have taught me something different: trust can be rebuilt. Not blindly. Not perfectly. But humanly—through repair, understanding, and the steady proof of someone who continues to show up.
This is the fervent kind of trust I wrote into the heart of the Netherwood. It is the kind that holds even when fear arrives wearing a familiar face.
A Milestone for Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince has been reached!
Today I am sharing an accomplishment that I honestly had not even considered before it happened.
On February 26, 2026, Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince was named #1 New Release in Classic Coming-of-Age Fiction on Amazon!
I am so deeply grateful. This is a celebration that I am holding onto for the moment is the direct result of craft, leadership, and identity.
Craft is the quiet part that people don’t always see. It’s the countless revisions. The belaboring over each and every punctuation. It’s learning to uncover the magic of what your story is actually about and having the courage to rewrite it until it finally matches the feeling in your chest you want to emulate.
Leadership, in the indie author world, often looks like leading yourself. Choosing consistency and learning how to be disciplined. Creating the structure behind creating and keeping to imaginary deadlines where no one else is holding you accountable. Holding to those standards even when you’re bone tired.
Identity is what remains when the excitement wears off. The sentence you return to when you’re not sure that you are supposed to be doing this. I am a writer. I finish what I start. I create worlds.
If you’re new here, Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince is a YA fantasy about two sisters, a forbidden forest, and the kind of courage I call wild-hearted bravery—the bravery that shows up while your hands are still trembling.
If you want the story behind the story, the real-time journey, the world-building, and the quiet truths that built this book—come join Letters from the Netherwood on my Substack.
Thank you for being here. Thank you for believing in this world. The Netherwood is calling—and today, I’m answering back, and I wish you would join me too.
I coined the phrase wild-hearted bravery because I needed words for a specific kind of courage. It is the kind that doesn’t wait until fear disappears. It is kind to show up while your hands are still trembling.
When I was younger, bravery looked loud, quick-witted, fearless, and unbothered.
But adulthood taught me something important. That the bravest moments are not always dramatic. Sometimes they’re quiet. Sometimes they cost you comfort. Sometimes they mark the moment you remember yourself.
In this week’s letter, I share two stories. One story is from my tweens. Another is from my early twenties and still lives in my bones.
In the latter, I was postpartum and healing from a cesarean section. I sat at a kitchen table across from a man who had spent years tearing me down. His voice rose. The apartment tightened. My children got unnaturally quiet—the kind of quiet that acts as an alarm.
And then something rose in me.
Not confidence. Not certainty. Not a perfectly planned speech.
A boundary.
“You will not speak to me like this in front of my children at the dinner table.”
That moment did not fix everything overnight. But it drew a line in the sand. It was the beginning of choosing protection, truth, and dignity—even while fear was present.
If you’ve ever felt that inner fire rise, you are not alone.
Please help me welcome the Netherwood into the physical realm.
I’ve been working hard behind the scenes to bring these pieces to life. I have been taking time proofing details, refining the feel, and making sure that our first pieces of merchandise feel like a true extension of Sera, Lily & The Fox Prince…not just “swag,” but a story that you can hold.
If you have started your adventure into the Netherwood and you feel like you can practically step into it, this experience is my sought-after ideal state. This is the next best extension, with more immersive merchandise coming soon!
Now available in my official author shop on Shopify
These were designed as reader keepsakes, little forget-me-not physical remembrances to keep on your bookshelf, planner, and the pages you return to over and over again. Little reminders of trust, friendship, and wild-hearted bravery.
Bookmark Bundle – $16.99
This is the bundle that you can bring with you, a portal you can tuck into your current chapter plus instant digital access so the story is always within reach.
This includes, an official Netherwood Bookmark, instant access to the eBook, and companion materials.
This is the easiest way to support the project and bring the story home in one click.
If your kiddos are like mine, then these small pieces of the Netherwood are priceless. They can be scattered into real life to bring the Netherwood into the physical realm. Place them on a water bottle, laptop, or journal. Add them to your Kindle case, or anywhere you want a reminder of courage, friendship, and the kind of magic that asks you to bring your wild-hearted bravery.
This includes, a quote sticker, a Fox Prince cutout, and an exclusive Netherwood-themed design.
These are best for gifts, stocking stuffers, book decor, journaling, and really anywhere you can place a sticker!
Finally, we have our polished, collectible reader extra that makes this book feel real to me. This is made for people who underline lines, dog-ear pages, and keep a story close long after finishing the closing chapter.
This is best for nightly reading rituals, a simple gift, or even your bookstagram flat lays!
When you support this project, you are supporting more than a shop update.
You’re helping me to keep building good-natured stories for our young people. Stories that are rooted in trust, friendship, sisterhood, and wild-hearted bravery. The kind of stories that leave readers feeling steadier, softer, and stronger.
The simplest way is to buy a book. You can also add a little Netherwood keepsake to pair with this new read.
Help me bring more light-forward fantasy into this world.
And keep an eye out because more merch drops are coming soon, and they are genuinely so much fun. With each one, I think of my daughters, whom I wrote this story for.
This is a small-batch first drop, and I will restock as quickly as I can depending on demand. If you have been waiting, I recommend grabbing what you want now so you don’t have to wait for the restock!
If you’d like to be the first to know when the next items launch, join the newsletter or follow us on social media.
