when it becomes safe to speak

a reflection on no longer being alone as 2025 comes to a close

grief has a way of isolating you even when your life looks full from the outside. days move forward and children need you, meals somehow make it onto the messy table, but inside, there’s a silence that grows heavier the longer you keep swallowing what’s living on the inside with no one so see it.

but now this space has become a place where i can stop holding it all alone. and for this i am forever grateful.

i started writing here in may, and in my first piece, i wrote about the first time i ever “channel-wrote,” which was really the first time i heard my higher self come through me. like waves breaking on the shore, words and words and more words filling the pages of my little backpacking journal during a three-day fasting solo in the colorado rockies. after that, i opened the floodgates and began writing here about what had lived only in my private journals:

what it was like to lose finn to cancer. i also wrote about a friend from my kids’ school who died suddenly, and how she came to visit me, just like finn did, from the other side.

but then summer travel and single parenting took over, and i stopped. i almost forgot i’d even begun. and by august, the idea of continuing to live my life in a vacuum as a single, widowed mom was becoming truly unbearable. i couldn’t go on without more community, without a reason to live that wasn’t only my kids.

i wasn’t suicidal.
i wasn’t clinically depressed.
i was just… over it.

i remember feeling so desperate one night that i wrote a late-night facebook post, kind of like i’m writing right now, at midnight, and i asked a question out into the void that i didn’t know how else to ask:

how many of you have gotten to this point as well?
just so ready…

earlier that same day, i had asked finn for one word to give me hope. one word to help me keep showing up for myself and my family. one word to help me understand why it felt so hard sometimes. and instead, he gave me three. i heard them with a breath and a pause between each one:

love.
strength.
patience.

it felt like he was blessing me with them. i remember i was out walking the dogs in our fields when i heard the words, as if he had spoken them directly into my ear. as if he were out walking our land with me. and that night, i wrote what i decided to call,

my vow to the universe—

i am ready.
i will no longer shrink, hide, or do it all alone.
i vow to keep my heart open and my light unhidden.
i will not apologize for the power, wisdom, and beauty that i carry.

please, god. i am ready.

a few days later, the unverse responded, as is so often the case, when we finally fall to our knees and beg for help. it is when we truly surrender that we are always rewarded.

whispers of words to be written began arriving in my dreams right before waking, several sunday mornings in a row.

sunday—the day of rest. the holy day of the sacred, living, giving sun.

even though i had forgotten my plan to write on substack, the dream whispers kept coming. they arrived like posts, already mostly formed as ideas, just waiting for me to write them down.

but the truth is, these words had been a long time coming.

the summer before finn was even diagnosed, i went on a girls’ trip to maui, and it was my first time traveling without kids in more than a decade. one of the biggest takeaways from that trip was a quiet knowing that i was going to need to write a book about my life. even though i had journaled on and off, written plays as a grade-school teacher, and done some songwriting in my twenties, i never thought of myself as a writer.

but when you have a life calling, and the timing is eventually right, the universe has a way of ringing you over and over and over—until you finally answer.

and so i finally answered. and i began to write.

at first, like most of us here, there was little to no engagement.

until one day, lying on finn’s grave, i decided: fuck it. i’m just going to post whatever comes to my mind. and that turned out to be a lot.

i posted note after note after note. one about how freeing it felt to post twelve thoughts in a row. how my adhd brain finally had room to breathe.

and then people came…the note resonated and began to buzz around.

i found you. you found me.

carl jung once said,

“loneliness does not come from having no people around you, but from being unable to communicate the things that seem important to you.”

i wasn’t lonely because i was alone.
i was lonely because it wasn’t safe to be me.

before this point in my life, i was surrounded by toxic people, always repeating the trauma patterns of my upbringing. then finn died, and i remembered so much. i had to walk away from so much. and it was eating me alive to keep it all in.

but the song, brave, by sara bareilles would shuffle onto my playlist again and again, and every time it did, i knew it carried a message meant just for me, as if finn were singing it to me all day long.:

“say what you want to say.
i want to see you be brave.”

it was as if the universe were whispering to me over and over, to just to finally stop swallowing the truth. and so i had to eventually get the memo and start. sometimes we take a while to get there but once we do…

for now it is safe to be me.

and so now i post all day long. and i read you all day long. i open my phone when my kids are engaged or at school, and i’m here with you.

some might call it an addiction, but it doesn’t feel like that to me.

it feels like i’m home.
it feels like i’m finally being seen.
it feels like i found my calling.

it feels like a reason to be excited for the second half of my life, instead of waiting to meet finn again on the other side.

you’re the reason for this.
and i love you all for it.

and i want to thank you for being brave with me. i see you showing up, sharing what needs to be shared. your words carry so much light.

thank you. i love you.

love always,

venus

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

i am a writer, speaker, and musician devoted to healing and embodiment. i share essays, poetry, and original music through venus consciousness. i’d love to walk this path with you. 💞