One Year

Love, it turns out, doesn’t arrive with fireworks.
It arrives like morning light through curtains - quiet, steady, unassuming. You don’t always notice when it first touches your face. You only realize, somewhere along the way, that you’ve stopped flinching from brightness.

A year ago, I said yes again.
Not just to a person, but to the idea that love could be good. That it could be gentle. That it could hold what the world had worn thin.

Because I knew, before you, what it was to make vows in fear. To love from scarcity, to serve from survival, to give until there was nothing left to give. I knew how to perform devotion. I didn’t yet know how to receive it.

This past year and the few before it have been quiet work.
Not the kind that photographs well, not the kind that glitters - but the kind that steadies. The slow re-teaching of trust. The unlearning of flinch. The everyday courage of being known and still loved.

There is a holiness, I think, in that kind of love.
The kind that doesn’t rescue but rests beside you. The kind that listens instead of fixes. The kind that holds space for both joy and grief without rushing either away.

This year has been that kind of love.
And I am still learning to believe it.

To my husband - thank you for the way you love quietly. For the steadiness that doesn’t need to announce itself. For the laughter that breaks tension, the kindness that never asks to be seen, the safety that asks nothing in return.

And to the woman I was before you - thank you, too.
For not giving up when it would’ve been easier to decide that love was a trick of the light. For doing the long work of healing enough to recognize good when it came. For daring to hope that love could be rebuilt on honesty instead of performance.

One year in, and I’m still astonished by the softness of this ordinary miracle.
That love - real love - doesn’t have to prove itself. It just keeps showing up. Quiet as morning. Steady as grace.