Some confessions don't come easy. This one took years.

In this episode, Vanessa opens her journal to the chapter of her life she has debated sharing the most. A struggling marriage, a boundary she was responsible for protecting, and a choice that cost her nearly everything including her graduate program, her family's trust, and at her lowest point, her will to live.

This is not a story about excuses. It is a story about what happens after the worst thing you have ever done, and whether that thing gets to be the only thing you will ever be.

If you have ever believed the worst version of yourself is the only version left, this one is for you.

Intro and Outro music: A Healing Inside by Lilli Lewis | www.folkrockdiva.com/2020/

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Grief will take you under like a tsunami if you let it. Sometimes the only thing that keeps you afloat is learning to look for peace in the smallest, most unexpected places.

In this episode, Vanessa opens her journal to the darkest season of her life, a cousin's unthinkable act, a fiancé lost to heroin, and a father she never got to properly say goodbye to. Through a Wiccan client who found her sister in a tree, a family whose granddaughter visited them in dragonflies, and a woman who asked God for a single red Lego, Vanessa traces the question she kept asking after her father died: what does a sign actually look like? The answer came in threes. Three dolphins on a Facebook ad. Three dolphins on a statue outside her resort in Guam. Three dolphins on a coffee mug her mother left out without knowing why.

If you are in the middle of something heavy and wondering whether anyone on the other side is listening, this one is for you.

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Intro and Outro music: A Healing Inside by Lilli Lewis | www.folkrockdiva.com/2020/

Some of the hardest decisions you will ever make are the ones nobody else will understand, and you make them anyway.

In this episode, Vanessa opens her journal to the day they buried her father, a day she spent not in a church pew but on a lake in a fishing boat, in the place where she always felt closest to him. What looks like a daughter who didn't show up is really a story about a woman who chose peace over obligation, grace over expectation, and a last memory of her father laughing at her for wearing makeup on a fishing trip over one of him lying still in a casket. Vanessa traces what her father meant to her, the one consistent man in her life who never stopped telling her she was enough.

If you have ever chosen yourself and had to sit quietly with other people's disappointment, this one is for you.

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Some lessons don't come from therapy books or breakthrough moments. Sometimes they come from a stranger in a tiny fishing boat who doesn't speak your language but somehow says exactly what you needed to hear.

In this episode, Vanessa opens her journal to Okinawa, September 2023, a new country, a new job, and the quiet ache of learning to be single again after nearly five years with someone she thought was forever. Through a series of journal entries written to a love she hadn't met yet, she traces the slow unraveling of a woman who had spent years walking on eggshells, loading the dishwasher the right way, remembering to order the Pepsi, apologizing for stepping through a garage ceiling.

If you've ever confused love with the feeling of constantly failing someone, this one is for you.

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Some people walk into your life for a season, and you spend the rest of it wishing the season had lasted longer.

In this episode, Vanessa opens her journal to Tracy, the stepsister who became family, a stepfather whose drinking turned the holidays into something to dread, and a night in Prairieville when she ran barefoot through the dark on a gravel driveway not knowing if her mother was alive.

What starts as a story about a little girl hiding under a bunk bed with her dog and her brother is really a story about what we carry when the people who were supposed to protect us didn't, and what it costs us to finally let it go.

If you've ever had to forgive someone not for their sake, but for your own, this one is for you.

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Some wounds don't announce themselves. They just wait, quiet and patient, for the next time life hands you the wrong moment to fall apart.

In this first episode, Vanessa opens her journal to a little girl in a yellow pageant dress who didn't hear her name called, a father who packed his boxes and left, and a woman in a red dress who ended up face down on a bathroom floor over a man who never showed up. What looks like a story about being stood up is really a story about a little girl who decided, long before she had words for it, that she wasn't enough. And about the people who stayed anyway, including a grandmother who prayed angels over her and a friend who took an eight-hour bus ride just to say, "It's still Vanessa."

If you've ever measured yourself by the people who left instead of the ones who never did, this one is for you.

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Some wounds don't announce themselves. They just wait, quiet and patient, for the next time life hands you the wrong moment to fall apart.

In this first episode, Vanessa opens her journal to a yellow pageant dress, a red one she wasn't sure she deserved, and a date that ended on a bathroom floor. What looks like a story about a man who didn't show up is really a story about a five-year-old girl who decided, without anyone telling her, that she wasn't enough. And about the friend who showed up anyway.

If you've ever caught yourself crying over something that felt too small to explain, this one is for you.

An introduction to what this podcast is about, and a glimpse of what's to come.

Your host, Vanessa Courtney opens the pages of her journal and invites you into the stories that shaped her: heartbreak, grief, loneliness, and the quiet moments that taught her the most about resilience, hope, and beginning again.

Don't forget to follow this podcast on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

We're happy to have you here! 🤎