After sharing some of my thoughts here, I realized I’ve never really explained who I am or why this quiet little space exists in the first place.
I come from a very ordinary working-class family.
For the first fourteen years of my life, we lived in a small 1970s-era trailer house. But as a child, I never really thought much about where we lived or what we lacked. What I remember most is that my parents were present. My childhood was filled with attention, routine, laughter, and love.
I had dreams and aspirations like anyone else. I wanted to go places. Build something meaningful. Create a successful life for myself.
So I did what many people were told to do—I went to college. I spent years and money chasing degrees that ultimately got me nowhere close to the life I actually wanted.
Still, I kept moving forward.
I built a career and eventually began making very good money. From the outside, things probably looked stable and successful.
But privately, my life was becoming increasingly unhealthy.
I went from sleeping around in my younger years to becoming deeply embedded in a toxic long-term relationship marked by addiction, shame tactics, emotional instability, and fear. Fear of leaving. Fear of starting over. Fear of admitting that the life I had built was not good.
Then I became a mother.
And motherhood changed me in ways I cannot fully explain.
For the first time in my life, I was forced to think entirely beyond myself. Loving my child awakened something in me that shifted the direction of my life completely.
Motherhood softened me while also making me stronger.
It forced me to confront the environment I was living in and the things I had normalized. It made me realize that what I tolerated for myself was no longer acceptable for someone entrusted to my care.
And slowly, motherhood led me out.
Out of the chaos.
Out of the rage.
Out of the instability.
By the grace of God, I never fully fell into substance or alcohol abuse myself, though I came close enough to dysfunction to understand how easily it happens.
My life did not transform overnight. It changed slowly through conviction, responsibility, faith, and an increasing desire for steadiness instead of chaos.
Over time, that desire reshaped nearly every part of my life:
the kind of relationships I pursued, the marriage I hoped to build, the way I parent, homeschool, gather, and create a home centered around faith, steadiness, and family life.
It also shaped the reason this space exists at all.
Pillar & Pace was never meant to be about perfection, aesthetics, or pretending to have life mastered.
It was born out of a longing for steadiness.
A belief that ordinary faithfulness matters.
Home matters.
Children matter.
Gathering matters.
Slowing down enough to listen to conviction matters.
And maybe that is also why I remain mostly faceless here.
Part of it is intentional.
Part of it is protective.
And part of it comes from pain.
Years ago, something happened to me online that deeply affected me. It shattered parts of me emotionally and changed the way I view visibility, exposure, and public life on the internet.
I became fearful afterward.
Not fearful of people, but cautious of what happens when pieces of your real life are handed over too freely to the public.
I do not share that for sympathy, and I do not feel called to explain every detail of it publicly. But it changed me.
And the older I get, the less interested I become in building a life centered around constant visibility, performance, or exposure.
I don’t believe every meaningful thing must be fully displayed online in order to be real or trustworthy.
I want to protect the life I am building, not trade it away for attention.
So I remain quiet here in many ways.
Not because I have everything figured out.
Not because my life is perfect.
But because I know what it feels like to long for something steadier.
And maybe you do too.