Holding Grief and Dreams at the Same Time

I thought I’d be going into the New Year a lot differently.

The new year tends to come with an unspoken expectation: know exactly where you’re headed. Have a vision. Set the goals. Kick the year off with a bang.

And normally, that’s my pace.

I usually enter January full of hope, expectancy, and big dreams. I like the clean slate feeling. I like believing that effort and intention can shape what comes next.

But the news I received at the end of November 2025 has rocked me to my core.

My sister has stage 3 breast cancer.

I still don’t know how to make sense of that sentence. How does that even happen? How do you keep moving forward with your own life when the life of the person you know most deeply, outside of yourself, suddenly feels suspended, fragile, and hanging in the balance?

The truth is, this news has both grounded me and paralyzed me.

As I’ve tried to step forward into 2026 and look ahead, I’ve found myself deflated. I don’t even know how to create goals right now, yet at the same time, it feels like creating them is the only way to keep living. To keep going.

And that tension feels wrong somehow. Almost selfish.

My sister’s life is at a standstill as she navigates treatment options, pauses her career, and fights to live. Meanwhile, I’m pushing forward with my own plans and my own goals, as if nothing has changed.

Except everything has.

As I look at what’s in front of me, I see all these hurdles, limiting beliefs that seem to rise up at every turn. And I’m starting to question them. Are they lies I’ve believed for years, lies that have kept me from walking fully in my identity? Or are they caution cones, meant to slow me down, redirect me, and guide me toward a safer path?

I think they’re the former.

For so long, I’ve viewed the place I live as a hindrance to success. A limitation. Something to work around. But I’m beginning to wonder if my discontentment with it has been the real obstacle all along. I think about how many people might feel the same way, discontent with their town, their season, or their circumstances, waiting for a future version of life to finally feel settled.

Our area is transient. People come and go. And sometimes I wonder if that transience has made me hesitant to invest deeply too, whether in businesses, in community, or in what’s being built here. I’ve told myself stories about why certain things won’t work or why certain dreams feel harder in a place like this. But maybe that narrative, too, is just another lie I’ve quietly accepted.

What I know is this: I still want to show up authentically in what I’m creating. On my platform. In my work. In the words I share. I want to add value to people’s lives without pretending that everything is tidy or resolved, without waiting for life to feel more stable or certain before I begin.

I want to build a community that wants realness. Whole, honest conversation. People who can hold both grief and dreaming at the same time. People who want to grow, to become the best versions of themselves, and to walk fully in their God-given identity, even when life doesn’t make sense.

And maybe that’s the hardest part of all.

I don’t think any of this can be buttoned up into a perfectly beautiful bow. There isn’t a clean takeaway here. No five step plan. No polished conclusion.

Just tension.

So I find myself here, asking questions I don’t yet have answers to.
Where do I go from here?
Where do I start?
What do I do?
Do I do nothing at all?

I don’t know.

But maybe naming the questions is the beginning.

xo, Tessa