There comes here comes a moment—quiet but thunderous—when you realize you’re no longer asleep. You’re no longer numb. You’re standing at the threshold between the life you’ve been surviving and the life you were meant to live. And once your soul catches that first breath of clarity, there is no unbreathing it. No unknowing. No turning back.

It doesn’t always arrive with fireworks or a big life event. Sometimes it sneaks in during a mundane commute. Or while standing barefoot at your kitchen sink. Or in the echo of your own sigh when the job you once prayed for starts to feel more like a weight than a win. It’s a whisper that says, “This isn’t it. You were made for more.”

And once you hear it, you can’t pretend you didn’t. That’s the cost of awakening. You can’t unsee the cage when you’ve glimpsed the open sky.

I have been at the crossroads lately caught in the tension between gratitude for what is and grief for what isn’t. I asked for a life of meaning and was handed a box with someone else’s label. I tried to shrink myself into it. Tried to make it fit. But truth has a way of expanding us. And once you start stretching toward the light, there’s no folding yourself back into shadow.

This post, dear reader, is my line in the sand. It’s the place where I stop waiting for permission. It’s where I say, I will no longer abandon myself for comfort, approval, or a paycheck. I choose aliveness—even if it’s inconvenient, even if it’s messy, even if it terrifies the part of me still craving certainty.

Because here’s the truth: life is not a dress rehearsal. There are no guarantees. And the longer we wait for the perfect moment, the more moments slip through our fingers like grains of sacred sand.

We owe it to ourselves to live—really live—while we still have breath in our lungs. To notice the golden spill of sun on the floor. To taste laughter in our mouths. To build a life so true it makes us weep with gratitude.

You want to be happy? Then choose it. Not someday. Not when the kids are grown, or the job is secure, or the love finally comes. Choose it in this moment, with whatever fragments you’re holding. Piece by piece. Breath by breath.

So I ask you: What path will you choose today?

Will you keep sleepwalking through a life that asks you to shrink? Or will you rise and take your place in the radiant unfolding of your own becoming?

We are not promised forever. But we are given now. And that is a sacred enough beginning.

Live wide open. Listen to your sacred ache. Let it guide you home to yourself.

With love and light.
Nadine