Sitting in Story

I have been quiet lately, but sitting with a lot to say.

Some of you saw that I was driving across the country, and then I seemed to disappear. The truth is, I have been sitting in story.

Here in Birmingham, I am finishing two manuscripts that have been waiting for me to slow down enough to be fully present inside them.

There is a difference between writing words and sitting in story. Sitting in story makes you careful. You begin to notice how layered memory really is, how one moment can live differently inside two people. It becomes less about getting the words down and more about honoring what they carry.

The longer I am present within these pages, the more I understand that stories are a kind of inheritance.

They may never become bestsellers or sit in a bookstore window. Their only home may be a family bookshelf, a book that might not even be opened until long after the storyteller is gone.

But the story exists and that feels important to me.

Memoir writing is life-giving and, at times, heavy. Holding someone else’s memories requires gentleness and listening closely, a lot of times to what is unsaid. There are moments when I wonder if I have chosen the right words, or if perspective has shifted over time.

And still, these stories deserve to be birthed.

This is the work I feel drawn to. Not just writing, but stewarding a story. Helping someone gather the threads of a life and shape them into something that can be held.

If you have ever felt the quiet pull to write your story, or to preserve someone else’s, it does not have to be loud to matter. Sometimes legacy is simply something your children or grandchildren can reach for one day and say, “This is where we came from.”

For now, I am here, listening and writing, finishing what has been entrusted to me.