Today started like shit. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, which is hard to do when you’re waking up from an otherwise empty bed. Or maybe that’s the problem. But anyway, I digress. I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, which these days feels like any side. Things were strained. My knee grew a new lump – or two actually. With no joint space, too many surgeries, and far more fun than it should be able to handle, I need to take a weekend off from snowboarding.

That makes me feel left out – even though my kids want to include me and our friends want to include me, the right move is to not go and rest my knee. And everything else that’s hurt at present. My butt. My back. My shoulders. All of me. I am so tired of being in this broken body, so I suppose if I want it to heal, I should give it time to do just that.

Then work was well, work. Busy. Crazy. Some bad. A lot of good. A ton of great. A few phone calls. A few that really mattered. A few that really made me smile. My favorite person. My incredible kids.

Eating dinner with Shell, waiting for Morgan to come home, we were laughing and I realized something. We laugh every day. We have fun every day. Not some days, not most days. All days. It’s something we live by. Even on the hard days we smile and laugh at least once a day. It’s something my family didn’t always do, and something that I didn’t even realize we do until I had the stark contrast between how we live and what life looks like elsewhere.

Laughing, hugging, smiling every day is such a powerful part of healing. It heals from the inside out. From the heart and the soul, until the mind forgets and lets go of all the pain and hurt and poison it held on to.

Thank you. Thank you to my kids for loving me. Thank you to my kids for accepting me and caring about me. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for wanting me to be included and helping when I am broken so I can heal and not be left behind. Thank you for making me laugh with you every single day. And above all, thank you for being you, incredible human beings that just made me laugh with you again.

TV together. Family movie night. Weekend snowboard trips. Sushi and a movie. All the things we do together, these things make us stronger. Help us talk through the hard stuff. Work through the rough days. And figure out the shit we have no idea how to figure out, together. Like what happens when families collide, or when lives change, and talking through how things can sometimes change for the better.

Not all change is bad, you know. There are good things on the horizon. Sometimes it takes a little (lot) of blind faith. Deep breaths. Taking a moment to remember where you are standing, what the ground looks like under your feet, and how to find solid ground so that the damn foundation you’re building lasts not just for now, but forever. Sometimes the hardest thing to do is just walk across the street or out the door – feels a mile to my feet, too. Or a million. I’m not sure.

I can tell you what I am sure of, though.

I am sure that I’m right here. I am sure that I am not going anywhere. I am sure that this is home, and this home is filled with so much love and laughter and conversation and openness from the serious to the silly. Like a roller coaster, but the best kind. The kind that you just need to ride yourself to experience it all – the ups and downs, the thrills and laughter and smiles. We’ll get here. We will all get here, together. Life is different out here. We laugh more. We live bigger. It snows higher. We love harder. Longer. Forever. Come join us.