dear finn, my family is my choice

on becoming a medium and tracing golden threads through loss and love

Dec 04, 2025

demember 3rd, 2025

dear finn,

as i sit here on this snowy day, with the first snowfall of the season brushing against the windows, i feel called to bring parts of a previous piece back again. i wrote it on father’s day, and it was one of the first things i ever shared here.

as we are approaching the winter solstice now, i have changed so much since i first wrote it back around the time of the summer solstice, and the writer i am today is different than the woman who sat down back in june, yet the heart of it still feels true as ever.

i also want to honor that this is the first holiday season where i feel able to have the decorations up again. last year was the first year of celebrating the holidays after the memories surfaced, and we learned of the harm that had taken place in years past. my heart broke open in a way i will never be able to fully describe. all the years i had been a parent, i thought i had been creating magic, and instead, for those i was meant to protect, i had not been able to stop it from becoming a time of dread, and the truth of that stopped my world.

so last december we packed the holiday cheer right back into boxes, as it was too triggering, and i began secretly chain-smoking american spirits instead. i did it because i was destroyed from the inside out, and because it gave me an excuse to step outside alone and regulate my nervous system for a few minutes at a time. i would sit on our land, hidden from the kids, trying to stay with the gut-wrenching truth of what was real instead of drifting into a kind of forced holiday denial. last year was rough, finn, and i know you saw all of it.

this year is different. this year has been a year of deep healing, and the kids and i feel safe again, and i believe your support from the other side has played a huge part in that. today i am listening to christmas music and i feel a lightness i have not felt in years. and yes, i quit smoking a few months into the new year, because i could not be a yoga-practicing boulder mom in her forties with a cigarette habit. it was never going to work. tobacco helped regulate me for a moment, but substack has become a far healthier way to sit still, and i say that with a smile.

as i bring this piece back, i want to honor the father you were, finn, both to your biological children and to the two soul daughters who loved you as their own. your presence, your quiet strength, your love that had no conditions attached, all of it made us who we are. and this season feels like the right time to say it aloud.

here is the piece as i wrote it then, woven now with the woman i am today.

june 15th, 2025

happy father’s day, my love.

your presence still threads through this house and through this family and through this heart. you still father from the other side. you show up in dreams, in signs and in those moments when i am tired or unsure. when i wonder if i am doing it alone, you arrive and your presence is always subtle but undeniable.

today, as the world celebrates fathers, i write this with you beside me, quietly streaming in from the other side.

and on this day finn, i want to honor you.

i want you to know something that happened this year that would have moved you deeply. both girls chose to take your last name, and they did it without hesitation. they did it because you were not a stepdad and not a stand in. you were their real father. you were the one who showed up. you were the one who loved them in a way that asked for nothing. you gave them a sense of safety that changed their entire lives.

they chose your name because your love became their home, and because your steadiness shaped them, and because being fathered by you felt like being truly seen.

you were that kind of father, finn. you were the steadfast and gentle kind of parent. the kind that listened to them deeply and taught by being present. the kind who let them be exactly who they were. you weren’t perfect, finn, but your intentions were always so pure. just like your heart that still shines through to us from beyond the veil.

you were that kind of husband too. you were steady and soft and loyal. you held our family with your whole heart even while cancer took so much from you. your love did not waver though. it never faltered and never will. i know this now.

the girls chose your name because they chose you. because you are still their father in every way that matters.

finn, you showed me that presence does not end with form, and you became the golden thread that still holds me, even when i cannot see it, time and time again you have shown me that you never truly left.

as i write this to you finn, i have to share that i have stepped back from other online platforms to focus on the new community i have found here on substack. something in me said to go quiet and go inward, away from the hustle culture of other social media, so i listened. this place feels different in a way that is more genuine and more heart based. people here are kind, finn. they show up with honesty and softness, and they let me show up the same way.

this community asks us to arrive as we are. it asks for presence and not performance. i feel like i can finally be myself here. i can write from the inside out. this is where i come home to myself and to you.

when i first started writing here, my second piece was about you dying, and it poured straight out of my body, as if a damn was breaking. it felt so good to place that truth where others could hold it with me. so i want to keep tracing what opened after that, because our connection did not end when you died. i feel you with me every day in the quiet ways only spirit can touch a person who is paying attention.

i have always been spiritual, and i always believed we came here for something more, and after you died, i began reading about becoming my own medium. i was not trying to channel for anyone else. i simply wanted to stay open to what moved through and around me. i now believe this is something we all can do. it is not a special talent. it is a remembering, and it returns when the world is quiet enough and when we are broken open enough to let the light in.

that is how you began meeting me in the in between, finn. you were not gone or far away, you were simply on a different plane and changed in form. in this way your presence slowly became part of my ordinary days.

it does not mean the grief didn’t swallow me whole so much of the time, shutting you and your light out of my world completely, because that happened a lot too. i also want to honor that truth. but tonight i am writing about the light, while still holding all the pain with honesty.

finn, i do not feel you as a memory from our past. i feel you as something living in the now. our love does not stop, just because your physical heart did. our love continues as a current that never fades. so much of what is unfolding traces back to that truth, and all the grief, and all the love, and all the becoming are all connected to you.

you are the golden thread through so much of what is ocuring for me.

you showed me that love continues beyond the body, and once i trusted that, something shifted, and other presences began to come too. some belonged to people i never knew in life and some to those i knew only briefly, but your presence opened the doorway, and once it opened, others stepped through.

you may have been the first, yet others come now too, as a steady unfolding. it feels like love arriving through different doorways of spirit.

and now i want to honor your father, david.

he has become a quiet presence in my life as well. i never knew him in the physical, and he died of cancer, just as you did, and at nearly the same age. you kept a photo of him in your office, and every time i passed it during your final year, something inside me would stir in frustration. he was described as kind and stoic, and i watched you grow more stoic as your illness progressed. i was terrified, and i was angry, not only at the cancer, but at the lineage and the silence so many men hide inside. i blamed a father i never knew.

which is why i was so surprised when david came to visit me that first time.

i remember that night so clearly. i was lying in bed before a family gathering for our nephew’s birthday. as i drifted toward sleep, he appeared, not in words, but in images. he showed me ring oak, the land where your family gathered for generations. i saw him holding you and your siblings as children, and the images came like memories that were not mine. i felt the pride and the steadiness of a father who truly saw, and then i felt it extend to me. he did not see me as someone who married in. he saw me as part of his own. it melted my heart, finn. to be loved like that from a father figure. it was pure, unconditional love, and it made the tears start streaming down my face.

the second visit was almost a year later in new york. i had taken the kids to the city for the first time, and we were staying with your youngest brother. we arrived very late, and when i went into the closet for linens, i found a hand-drawn portrait of your dad, the one shown at the top of this post. that night i picked it up and looked into his eyes, and the same gentle but strong current of unconditional love moved through me and brought me to tears again.

they say spirits often reach us through images or in those liminal hours when waking and sleep overlap, and that moment held both. i cried on the couch after i got the kids settled into bed, because when a loving spirit touches you like that, it cracks something open.

and when your heart cracks open in such a way, it is much like kintsugi, where the break is not hidden and the gold light makes it beautiful.

that night i felt your father’s love wash through me, and i was grateful to have a place to land in your brother’s home, and i was grateful for the quiet, the kindness, and the feeling that even in grief and even in uprootedness, love still knows where to find us.

since this time, family has come to mean something different to me now. it has become all of you who connect with me here, and it has become the ones who choose to show up when we need them most.

my life is becoming something new. i have found a place for the quiet fire in my chest to burn bright. i can write about love and spirit and everything that lives in the spaces no one can take from me. the stories do not stop just because some people cannot hear them, and healing never waits for permission.

i was broken open long before i had words for it, and i learned to leave my body before i knew how to do many things, but i am here now, and i remember now. i am healing, and i am grateful to be doing it with the kids, and with this community of loving writers. you are all walking beside me in every way you can.

substack has become a safe place to tend my voice, one ember at a time. i do not need to prove anything to anyone now. all i need to do is honor what has been broken and honor where the golden light continues to stream through.

i have carried a longing in my heart for as long as i can remember, and now, quietly and fully, i have begun to receive love back in. finally i feel that i have started to come home.

if you are here reading this still, thank you for being my witness.

and thank you, finn, for being the love of my life this time round and in all our other lifetimes as well.

love,

forever and always,

venus

thank you for being here, it truly means the world. i love hearing your thoughts, if you feel called to comment.💞

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