Three Months of Sunsets

There is a version of me that thought I would have spent the last few months refining a product that I started to create. 

Instead, I spent them in near silence.  

Three months ago, my sweet dog Macy was given days to live. Three months later, I can’t sleep because tonight we saw our last sunset together.  Tomorrow a vet will come to our home and help her pass because her loyalty is strong, but her body has given in. In these months, I’ve become a full-time student of caregiving, uncertainty, grief, nervous system regulation, and the uncomfortable reality that life rarely pauses while we are trying to survive it.  I did my damndest to freeze time. 

I haven't shared much about this time with many people. I just wanted to disappear, in all honesty. I have been living through something that required me to stop performing and start paying attention.

At first, I fought it.

I missed networking events. I declined styled shoots. I said no to opportunities that, in another season, I would have exhausted myself trying to say yes to. And every time I said no, I felt the familiar discomfort of stepping away from the version of myself who believed that being valuable meant always being available.

You know what?

The world didn't end.  In fact, I am not even sure anyone has noticed.  I started to weigh things out, like is leaving the house to go do this worth missing this time with my girl?  Everything became a decision. Everything had intention.

She followed me everywhere I went in the house, despite how labored she was and so, I stopped filling my days with so much unnecessary movement.  Each thing I did, I calculated to see if it was really all that important, including time on my computer or scrolling on my phone.  Was this worth leaving her for?  

In the beginning of her diagnosis, I made her steak and boiled chicken and took her to the lake to see the sunset every day.  Initially, I was devastated that I couldn’t take her to the beach again, but the Universe blessed us by creating one that had never been there at the lake next door.  Macy’s Beach.  She got stronger as the days went on.  As we collected the sunsets together. 

Somewhere in the liminal.

I cried through the first two weeks of sunsets, knowing that she wasn’t going to make it.  In my mind I wrote this post that I am writing now.  The one that I explain why I hadn’t written a newsletter or blog post.  I would title it Five Sunsets.  But then there were ten.  Then twenty.  I brought her to the lake every single day that I could and even on her bad days, she perked up and ran to the water's edge. This new ritual sustained us both. I stopped counting. Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn't counting how many sunsets she had left. I was learning how many I had been missing. I had to choose to allow the lake and sun to fortify us and live in the present for my sanity and survival through this.

The sun, the movement, the responsibility of caring for another living being, and the ritual of showing up for that moment became the most important part of my day. In three years of living here, I had never truly allowed myself that consistency.  

And those minimal tasks I allowed myself, they were important.  They were chosen to complete me in a time that I have felt so very unstable and out of control.  

I painted a wall I had almost finished three years ago.

I painted my front door and changed the film on the glass to the one I had dreamed of before I even moved into this house and now rainbows dance across my kitchen floor in the mornings.

I decluttered spaces that had become storage for versions of myself I no longer wanted to be. I had joined a Feng Shui membership just before all of this and I decided to actually use it.  I began looking at my home, my health, my work, and my life through a different lens.  I started maintaining morning and evening rituals that I had only ever wished I could do before.  I learned I could have, had I prioritized myself instead of my work.

Sitting with my thoughts, listening to my body, learning to maintain instead of build…that has been a tough road to travel.  I am accustomed to burning hard and building something.  Then tearing it down and making a space look as if what I built was never there.  Maintaining?  Who knew that was my missing piece.  Who knew that going slowly, choosing exactly how I move and what I consume mentally or physically, all at a snail's pace would take me from frustrated, to a place of knowing that almost hurts if I let it.  

I knew I needed to write this today because while I have been grieving through this time, I don’t know how I will be tomorrow.  The quiet might just swallow me.  At least for a while.  

But I will be back and I will carry the lessons, the loyalty, the pause to decide if something is worth my time and effort.  I built a foundation over these last three months that I would not have been able to secure if I had not been in this silence.  Afterall, I learned that foundations aren’t built when things are all wonderful.  They're built in the moments when life asks whether you'll keep showing up anyway. Even when showing up looks different than it used to.  My system that I was creating before this actually helped to sustain me when I was faltering.  I will finish this product to share it with other women who operate from obligation over intention, too. I know this is a legacy I want to leave behind.  

What I've learned these past few months is that the systems we need most are not designed for perfect days. They are designed for the seasons when life becomes real.

When you're caregiving.

When you're grieving.

When your body asks you to slow down.

When your plans change.

When your heart is breaking and you still have to figure out how to provide.

The routines that survive those seasons aren't built on discipline.

They're built on ritual.

On compassion.

On flexibility.

On returning to yourself over and over again and on sitting in the quiet.  This story doesn’t have the happiest ending and I in this moment, I am still in it.  

I'm still learning and I am still rebuilding. But I am also still here. And maybe that's the lesson I've been trying to learn all along.

Thank you for being here, too.

With gratitude,

Jen

Our last sunset. Today, July 21, 2026