Some places raise you. Some places catch you when you fall. And if you’re lucky, you get to carry both in your heart forever.
Dear Northern Indiana and Northwest Pensacola,
I’ve lived between your breaths—one crisp and cornfield-sweet, the other warm and briny with salt and pine. I know your moods like my own. I’ve memorized the way the sky folds down at dusk in both places, different colors, same comfort.
Northern Indiana,
You raised me in quiet meadows and long stretches of farmland. Your trees stood like sentinels, and your silence taught me how to listen. I still dream of the way snow falls here—thick, hushed, and holy—and how the wind cuts so clean it feels like starting over. Your fields are empty but never lonely. Your sunsets stretch for miles, soft and slow, like they’re in no rush to leave.
You were my first lesson in stillness. In patience. In how beauty can look plain at first—until you stay long enough to notice the wildflowers on the roadside, the frost patterns on a February window, the way the stars show off on clear nights. You taught me how to pay attention.
I’m back here now—home again in the place that built me. And I love it more than I ever did before. Maybe I had to leave to see you clearly. Maybe I had to grow up to realize you were never as small or quiet as I thought. You are rich with memory and meaning. You are peace and place.
And then there’s you, Northwest Pensacola.
You who welcomed me later, when my heart was tired and hungry for warmth. You gave me open skies and Spanish moss, sandy trails and birds that sound like laughter. You gave me Gulf breezes that made me feel like maybe, just maybe, I could exhale again.
Your live oaks wrapped me in their long arms. Your wetlands whispered secrets I’d forgotten how to hear. Your thunderstorms rolled in like a mood, quick and loud and then gone, like my own grief.
You’ve held me in hard seasons, offered me orchids blooming from trees and herons tiptoeing through water. You showed me how wildness and softness can live in the same breath.
I long for you often. I miss the air, the light, the sound of frogs after dark. I can’t wait to come back—to walk your trails, breathe you in, let you remind me of who I was when you held me. Pensacola, I’ll visit as many times as I can. Always.
I carry you both in me—
Indiana’s steady hush and Pensacola’s lush chaos. You are my anchors and my wings. My deep roots and my soft landings. My before and my becoming.
Thank you for the way you’ve healed me without needing words.
For the spaces you gave me to walk, to cry, to breathe, to begin again.
With all my love,
A grateful wanderer between two worlds
