June 27th, 2026.

Dear Granny May, I’m not sure what I’m doing, but I feel like I have to do something. Writing journals to myself daily and feeling like I can’t move on into a new season of life without all of the heaviness I’m carrying isn’t working for me anymore. I was so excited to get here this week to spend time with my dog. I thought somehow he would bring me back to life with laughter and joy like you did 8 years ago when I picked him up from Austin. You know, I spent my entire childhood wanting to be just like you. In every room, you were the brightest light, and now I’m terrified of the path that it took you to. Your last season was full of suffering and loneliness. You even lost your ability to make flowers and had to close your gift shop. How does this make sense in a world where the saints seem to sift away into sorrow and the selfish live lavishly as they’re celebrated by the masses? And how is it justice? I came home to a three-page letter for my daughter. She confessed her loneliness and her depression, but then went on to speak about her greatest fear. She said, “It will come on the day that God takes me off of this earth.” I know how she feels because I remember a time when I felt that your love was the only thing that anchored me here. We never even had a disagreement. You loved me like I was heaven sentent directly to you, like I was your special gift. I don’t think I realized how much you truly did anchor me because without you here, I feel like I don’t belong. Not in a sense of unconditional love, anyway. I’ve never found it or felt it from anyone but you. Sometimes I wonder if you prayed for that. I’ve heard stories about your state of mind before you found out about me. Bryce says, “When I was born, you came back to life and you had joy and laughter for the first time in a long time.” My daughter said in her letter, “Mom, you’ve always said that you wanted to be like me, a bright light in this world. I hope you know that you’ve accomplished that. She told me that I’m the most loving person she’s ever known. I don’t feel loving anymore, though, Granny. I want to be, and I fight with all that I have left to be present for her and to be kind to others. But I’m learning that when someone doesn’t feel loved or wanted, they begin to think there’s no point in trying anything anymore. Everything hurts me so deeply. It’s as if my heart has been bloodied and beaten so badly even the slightest look of disdain or the smallest word of criticism touches fire to an open wound. And I don’t know how to hear granny. I don’t know how to make myself strong again or even look in the mirror and like what I see. People say we have to love ourselves before anyone else can love us. And I’m terrified that if this is true, nothing could make me lovable again. Speaking of terror, my daughter said that she prays daily to meet someone like me. She wants a loving man in her life. And it hit me hard because that’s been my prayer too, at least over the last 11 years. Ever since I watched that Nicholas Sparks movie, I have had a seed in me for real love. The kind of love that is willing to sacrifice, lay down his pride, ego, and taste of everything in this world that it has to offer. just to realize that the one thing he wants is me. That all the glory of this earth could never hold a candle to my love. I thought I found him for a moment. Not because his words or actions proved that kind of devotion, quite the opposite, but it was because I thought that it was you that led me to him. The most beautiful I have ever felt was when I was with him. I felt seen and heard. I felt desired and I felt vulnerable and safe to be a version of me that I had have that I had kept hidden my whole life. He walked into my world without warning. Turned it completely upside down and then took me to the rocks crashing against the shores of Malibu where we looked up at the stars together. My knees felt like they were going to give out from underneath me and my heart like it had never beaten before in my chest. Tears flowed down from my face and I didn’t even know why. I felt like I had been touched by heaven. Later that night, I told him that I thought I might be in love with him. And in that moment, everything changed. He tried to convince me that I was just rebounding for my divorce. And he said that he could never be the guy I wanted him to be. Heartbroken doesn’t define what I felt in my chest as I slept alone that night in the Burbank Boutique Hotel. The next morning, I got an alert from Facebook with a message that I had written about you making your transition into your heavenly home. The timestamp on my phone that captured his hand reaching to the stars, holding up his cell phone app of the constellations match the exact time hospice reported you taking your last breath. I’ve been trying to figure out what this means ever since that day, February 23rd, 2020. A week later, the world shut down and he popped back up in my text messages shortly after, but not exactly as a prince charming. He told me that he had been sleeping with someone else. The magic left. It never came back. But months later, I woke up and saw Jesus standing in my doorway holding up a purple suitcase. I then had a number of dreams with my ancestors warning me that I needed to leave. So, he convinced me to come to LA. I put my resume on LinkedIn and in the summer I moved to Orange County. I don’t know what I expected. A miracle from God, I guess. Eight months later, I left and returned to Houston with mold poisoning, an empty bank account, and a broken heart. I surrendered it to God. I stopped asking why and stopped staring at the pictures we took on that magical night in Malibu. I tried to go back into real estate and put my old life back together. That’s when the weird dream started again. One morning, I woke up with a strange voice inside of me saying, “Remember who you are. Remember the book.” I never told a single soul about the manuscripts that I wrote back in 2015. Nor did I remember that I had even written that book. It was a fiction novel about a woman who lost her husband tragically and wrote a documentary that was turned into a film project. A man working on the set who was trying to play the part of her ex-husband, pursued her and won. He somehow brought her heart back to life and then he left and went back to his life in Hollywood. The similarities between what had transpired in my real life and the events surrounding the character that I named Skyla were astonishing. That night, I pulled up my California lover’s Instagram page and saw that he was standing in front of a buggy being pulled by two white horses as he said repeatedly, “It’s me. It’s me.” Again, not exactly my prince charming. He was entertaining his followers while on a cross-country tour with a game show. Not missing me for sure. I was horrified. Was I living inside of my own fiction novel? Was he in the script playing the character I called Chance? Did I need therapy or maybe a mental ward? After this strange sequence of events, I started having dreams about flying and airplanes. Then one night, I decided to apply for an airline job as my daughter simultaneously picked me up to surprise me with tickets to the flight museum at NASA. On this same night, Mr. California posted a picture of him on stage in front of an airplane. I’d like to say that the next three years in the clouds were full of magic, miracles, and happily ever afters. For once again, I thought I heard and saw in dreams and in visions what God wanted me to do. But the last three years have been full of pain, confusion, and wishing upon a star with no response. Granny, I just left LA again and moved back to Texas again. Austin, this time, how do I end this cycle? How do I feel normal again and escape this dark cloud of confusion that seems to be chasing me everywhere I go? How do I trust myself again? My intuition, my sanity, my walk, seeking to hear God’s direction, and my ability to discern his goodwill and my own shattered dreams. How do I stop believing that you somehow had a hand in all of this? And when will I know what to believe again? Was I led into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan? Or was the sovereign Lord writing something into my story that my feeble little human mind simply can’t grasp? Am I wrong for asking all of these questions and pleading with our heavenly father to give me clarity? All I truly want is the truth. I want to trust to believe again in goodness and love and miracles and second chances. But after these past seven years, I don’t even know how to trust myself. Granny, that man played me like a fool. And I don’t know why God let this happen when I prayed without seizing. And now I don’t know how to be put back together again. I’m the woman every man has walked away from since I was 5 years old. the woman who loved with her whole heart and writes this letter today with a broken heart. I wish you could be here to tell me that I’m okay and to tell me that I’m still special and I’m still loved. I really miss you. Well, if you get this message, can you ask God to forgive me for being so stupid and naive? Also, can you ask Jesus to heal my heart? Tell him thank you for sending Sarah last night with a job for my daughter today. And if it’s his will, please ask him to help her get a permanent role out of this opportunity. Also, will you ask God to help me find a new job, too? I got the email today that I was denied the permanent transfer to Austin. So, in August, I now have to go back to LA again. Please tell God I can’t do this anymore. My heart literally cannot take any more of California. Please tell him I need a miracle to help me get grounded here and to get on with whatever is best for me now. I don’t want to go back there and sit in hotel rooms crying about what never was, guilting myself for what I believe to be true and wasn’t. By the way, Damian flies in tomorrow. I’d really love it if you could ask God to help me help him. Thank you to my angeL…