Sabrina Giacalone

Tag: motherhood

  • What Faith Feels Like

    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.

    Read the full letter on Substack: What Faith Feels Like to Me

    Yours in ink,

    Sabrina

  • The Unsung Cost of Our Society

    The Unsung Cost of Our Society

    The choice between providing and being present, and the family bond we build in the hours we’re given.

    Storybook-style painting of a mother and three children sitting together in a glowing forest clearing, symbolizing family bonds and quiet moments of wonder in the spirit of the Netherwood.

    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.

    📜 Read the full letter on Substack: Unsung Cost of Our Current Society

    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.