The Quiet Goodbyes: A Reflection on Loss, Love, and Growth

This blog is mine. It’s my diary, my lighthouse, my living thing, not a marketing robot. I can post as much or as little as I want. I can cry here. I can celebrate here. I can fall apart and rebuild here. It’s a home for my thoughts. It’s where the right people will come to find not just my books, but my heart.

This entry isn’t a cry for pity. It’s a moment of telling the truth about what it feels like to let go of what you thought would love you back. Thank you for reading it with a tender heart.

There are goodbyes we say out loud, and then there are the quiet ones, the ones we never wanted, never spoke, but felt all the same.

This week, my heart has held both the weight of grief and the warmth of joy, creativity, and deep love. The quiet ache of loss still creeps in, but so does the pulse of everything beautiful that is still growing.

When you create something from your heart, a book, a dream, a future you can almost see, you naturally hope the people around you will be there. You picture them showing up, not just with words, but with presence, with the kind of steady loyalty that says, "I see you. I'm proud of you."

But the hardest part isn’t when people say hurtful things. It’s when they don’t say anything at all. They’ll share a meme, but not the most meaningful thing you’ve ever done. The absence echoes.

It’s not about being dramatic, it’s about acknowledging the truth of what’s happening without making excuses for people. I don’t have to sugarcoat the reality of how their absence feels. I’m learning I can be real about being hurt without explaining it away.

I used to think my love could fix the silence. I believed that by being the one who always shows up, I could somehow make up for the quiet. But there’s only so much love I can pour into a place that never echoes back.

Sometimes the support you crave doesn’t come from the places you thought you needed it most. Sometimes the loudest absence is from the very people you held closest. It hurts. It will always hurt. There is no pretending otherwise. Some heartbreaks are not loud. They happen in the quiet places where you once sowed your deepest love.

I spent years trying to nurture something that was broken long before I arrived. I loved as hard as I knew how. For a little while, the band-aid held. For a little while, I believed love could fix it all. But brokenness has a way of surfacing. Ugly truths claw their way out, no matter how much hope you pour over them.

Even knowing that, a part of me still held on. I wanted so badly to believe love could be enough. That the people I showed up for would show up for me in return. Sometimes, they don't. And the hardest part isn’t the shouting or the leaving. It’s the quiet. The absence. The way they pretend you never mattered at all.

And that's the real heartbreak. It's not really about "them," they were just the trigger. It’s about realizing how deeply I wanted to be loved. How fiercely I tried to make a family out of broken pieces. How hard I fought to matter.

I feel sick even posting this, because some old part of me still worries that telling the truth will make people roll their eyes or think, "boohoo, poor baby." Some part of me thinks if I’m not grateful enough, everything good will be ripped away. But I’m learning that gratitude and grief are not enemies. Grief doesn’t cancel gratitude. Grief doesn’t mean I’m not thankful for the friends who do show up, or for the beautiful things still growing. It just means I’m human.

I am learning, painfully, that stepping into your future sometimes means leaving behind the people you gave your whole heart to. Not in bitterness. Not in anger. In mourning. And then, in freedom.

And in the middle of it all, I miss my mom. I miss her steady love, the way she could make even the hardest days feel survivable. I miss the way she would have seen all of this, and seen me, and wrapped her arms around my breaking heart.

Still, in the quiet spaces where old expectations fall away, something beautiful has happened. I’ve been so surprised by the kindness of my friends. Friends I can go months without talking to, who are still my biggest cheerleaders. Friends I’ve met on the internet, friends I’ve never seen face-to-face, who have become an invisible marketing force, lifting and encouraging me in ways that take my breath away.

This season has taught me to lessen my expectations of others, not in sadness, but in freedom. To be grateful for every morsel of love, every unexpected kindness, every whispered “I see you” from near and far.

So today, I honor the heartbreak. I let it exist without shame. I let it teach me without hardening me. I choose to keep going. I choose to keep creating. I choose to believe that somewhere out there, the love I have given to the world will find its way back to me — not always from the places I expected, but always from the places I needed.

Quiet goodbyes make room for louder hellos. And for that, I am trying to be grateful.

Fifteen Miles Out

Calvin (Dar) and The Coyote

Grief punches a hole in your heart so big, there aren’t enough words in the world to fill it.

For me, I tried to fill it with stories. I wrote a book. I gave him a cap and a wave and a quiet goodbye by the fire.
But grief…grief doesn’t work like that.

When Mark and I drive down that road, I feel it coming, that wave of anxious grief that starts even before we see the house.
Not the garage.
Not the driveway.
It starts where the smoke used to rise, from the fire that was always burning. But there’s no smoke now. No fire. Just the memory of it. And still, it hits the same.

Sometimes, fifteen miles out, it starts in my chest. I know Mark feels it too. He can’t even say the words. I just look at him,
and then we’re both crying. Because you don’t need words when you’re both carrying the same weight.

Some small part of me still whispers, “We’ll just stop and see who’s there.” But it’s never him. And even though the stops have mostly stopped, the memory of them lingers. Because he was always there. Waiting. With a cold one, a grumpy smile, the kind that came with a furrowed brow and a twinkle in his eye, and a story you’d already heard a hundred times but never wanted to end.

Calvin meant a lot to a lot of people. Many knew him longer, knew him deeper, and still, the space he left behind feels impossible to fill. And no one feels that more than his wife. Her grief is deeper than I can speak to, an everyday ache that none of us can imagine. What I feel is only a shadow of what she carries.

And then there are the fishing buddies, the hunting crew, the wonderfully wild misfits who knew his laugh in the early hours,
and his stories long before I ever heard them.

There are his brothers, his cousins, his nieces and nephews, the kids and the grandkids, a family who knew the inside jokes and the old stories that only belong to people who go back.

They miss him too. In their own ways. We all do. Because everyone has a Calvin, don’t they? That person who made the world feel a little lighter,
a little louder,
a little more theirs.
And when that person is gone, it leaves something that can’t be patched or filled. Not really. Everyone carries that grief in their own way. Sometimes it’s loud, sometimes it’s quiet, sometimes it hits fifteen miles out with no warning at all.

That’s why I wrote this book. Not just for Calvin, but for anyone carrying a grief that doesn’t go quiet. For the people still trying to find words for someone who was never just one thing. I hope it helps. Even just a little. I hope it feels like sitting by the fire with someone you miss, and letting the stories carry what words can’t.

Calvin and the Coyote is now available on Amazon and here on the site: www.fireflyandfog.com/books

If this speaks to you, please feel free to share.
And if you’ve got a “Calvin” of your own, I see you.

A Post About Dead Moms (Relax, I have one, so I can say it)

I miss my mom.

My mother died over twenty years ago. And I am still finding her. In the ache. In the air. In the things I whisper into the kitchen light when no one else is home.

She made Easter magic. Real magic. Lace bonnets and handmade bunny suits. Hundreds of dyed eggs scattered across a lawn of shrieking kids. She didn’t just host the town egg hunt, she became the heartbeat of it.

She gave love the way other people breathe: freely, effortlessly, constantly.

And I miss her.

Not in a softened, “time heals all” kind of way. Not today. Today, I miss her so hard it squeezes from the inside out. Like your ribs folding in on themselves. Like your heart just got ambushed by a memory that still knows your name.I miss her in the middle of doing things I’m proud of, because she should be here to see them.

I’ve been writing books. Building a home from words and wonder. Creating things that feel sacred. And all I want is to hear her say, “Oh Jen… I knew you would.”

But I can’t call her. I can’t send her the link. I can’t hear her laugh or tell me which part made her cry. So I’m crying for both of us. Crying because no one cheers like your mother does. Because she was always the first to show up and the last to leave.
Because I was always hers. And because some grief doesn’t whisper, it roars.

She used to say, “The more you cry, the less you pee.” No one ever really knew what the hell she meant,
but it always made us laugh through the snot and the tears. Because she believed in a big cry. She knew how to ride the waves.

She is why I love vintage.
She is why I save chipped things.
Why I believe the worn and weathered are worth something.
Why I think stories live in objects and memories live in light.

She would have loved this moment, this messy, marvelous, hard-won moment where I’m finally doing the thing. The big thing. The real thing. The thing she always saw in me, even when I couldn’t.

Maybe love like that doesn’t die at all. Maybe it just changes shape, and lives in the fire we carry forward.

If you're aching today...If Easter brings more memories than candy...
If you're holding it together with duct tape and whispered stories...
I'm with you.

Let it out.
All of it.
(You’ll pee less, apparently.)

With all my heart,
Jen

Juggling, Grieving, Creating... and Still Catching Fireflies

I don’t know how to explain what my life looks like right now.
I just know that at 51 years old, I’m finally starting to feel like myself. And it’s wild.

This whole creative tornado… launching books, building a website, running a vintage shop… it’s beautiful and deeply weird and sometimes too much. Like most big life shifts, it’s also a mirror. And when you look in that mirror long enough, you see who’s really still standing there with you. That part is both heartening and heartbreaking.

Right now, I’m:

• Running my Etsy shop

• Shopping for it

• Listing and shipping vintage finds

• Writing (and rewriting) three books

• Doing my own graphic design

• Learning to edit videos, record audio, and market like I know what I’m doing

• Walking that exhausting tightrope between “I’m annoying,” “I give up,” and “OH MY GOD THIS IS ACTUALLY WORKING”

• Feeling waves of grief, especially for my mom and for a friend

• Trying to make time for fishing with Mark, and for just being with Mark

• Babysitting my granddaughter

• Paying bills

• Folding laundry

• Feeling everything

I know I’m lucky in a thousand ways. I have a roof over my head, people who love me, and the ability to create something from nothing. I’m not blind to that.

But knowing you’re lucky doesn’t make you less tired. Or less overwhelmed. Or less human.

I had to pull back from the never-ending dumpster fire that is this country. I haven’t stopped caring.
I still write the letters, call my reps, speak out when I see injustice. I will always do that. But I can’t let it consume me, or it’ll eat the part of me that creates. And if that happens... they already won.

Choosing to create something joyful in the midst of all this mess, that’s not selfish.
It’s survival. It’s also power. I never fully understood that until I started living it. Joy is resistance. Kindness is resistance. Telling soft stories with sharp edges and hope buried inside them... that’s how I’m staying upright.

And no, this isn’t about winning an award for doing too much. I don’t want a trophy.

I just want a little cabin on the seashore.
I want to write.
I want to paint.
And I want to catch fireflies.

So if you’re here, reading this, maybe you’re juggling too. Or maybe you’re grieving. Or building something. Or trying to feel like yourself again. You’re not alone. And you don’t have to be perfect to make something beautiful.

Let’s carry it together.

Jennifer

P.S. Got thoughts?
Feel something? Think something? Trip over your shoelace on the way to the comment box?
Me too. Say hi below. I read every one and carry them with me longer than you’d think..