Page 144 of Chasing Wild
My chest tightens. I remember what it felt like to want something so badly it scared me—to wonder if life would ever line up the way I hoped.
I don’t say anything, just squeeze her hand across the little patio table.
We all go quiet for a while. Some grief doesn’t need words. It just needs someone to sit in it with you.
We fall into a soft, easy silence, and I remember how loud my thoughts used to be. How certain I was that I’d never be enough. Knowing the women seated around me, the ones I love unconditionally, struggled with their own battles about balancing careers and relationships, makes me realize how normal it is. The challenge between belonging and becoming.
Looking at the large park surrounding the Imperial Palace—the calm in the midst of one of the world’s busiest cities—I realize that’s what Wild Bluffs has always been to me. A place where I can find peace. Where I can be myself.
“I’m so glad,” I say after a long moment, “that we have such deep roots. Not just the land, or the house, or the family dinners. But knowing you can go out into the world and come back. That the door’s still open. That the people you love are still here.”
Emotion swells in my chest.
“It’s why I told Jaxon we need to spend more time in Wild Bluffs now that Gwen is born. Slow down—not stop. Just make sure Gwenie has some roots of her own when she’s ready to come back home.”
“Wild Bluffs will always be home,” Kelsey says.
“And we’ll always be a little bit wild,” Bryn adds with a wink.
We clink glasses.
As we sit there, each of us lost to our own thoughts, Jaxon’s voice floats out from where he’s singing Gwen back to sleep: “Chase your wild, little thing, and then come back home.”
And in this moment, with my family beside me, I know—we all did.
