Inner Weather

posted July 17, 2026

The Girl at the Door

Dear Little Corner,

I had one of those dreams that lingers long after waking—not because it frightened me, but because it felt like it was trying to say something.

My husband and I had found a space in an old building that we were planning to renovate. As he showed it to me for the first time, there was a massive curtain hanging across one room. I walked toward it, curious more than anything, and before I could even pull it back, something unseen reached through and grabbed me. I tore myself free, but I knew whatever was behind that curtain was still there.

Later, we were discussing getting a license to rent out one room in the building. My husband worried someone might stay there and die because the place felt haunted. I, on the other hand, was thinking ghost enthusiasts would probably pay good money for the experience. Even in dreams, apparently, I'm trying to turn haunted places into something meaningful.

The dream shifted again.

This time we were staying in another room with a man who was simply "our business partner." I never saw his face. I just knew who he was. My husband stepped into what we had decided would become a bathroom, and I followed him. I was trying to be playful, trying to seduce him, when suddenly something overtook me. I wasn't myself anymore. I began growling, trying to attack him with my hands and nails.

Then came a knock.

I looked down and saw a pair of tiny feet beneath the door.

For some reason, I fought desperately to keep the door shut.

The business partner asked quietly, "Is this your daughter?"

I opened the door.

I picked her up and hugged her.

And instantly, whatever had possessed me was gone.

I've been thinking about this dream ever since.

At first, I wondered if it was simply about fear. The only moment I actually felt afraid was when something reached out from behind the curtain and grabbed me. That image stayed with me because anxiety often feels exactly like that. You're simply walking through your life when something unseen suddenly has hold of you.

But it was the little girl that kept pulling me back.

This isn't the first time she's appeared.

Over the past few months I've had several dreams involving a baby girl or very young daughter. In one, I unexpectedly gave birth to a baby girl. In another, my husband was frightened by the pregnancy and afraid of what it would mean for us. Years ago we had a pregnancy scare, and although he never told me he would leave, I remember carrying that fear anyway. The dream echoed that old wound, but with one detail that feels important now: even in the dream, he still held the baby.

This newest dream feels like another chapter in the same story.

What's interesting is that the little girl wasn't my daughter—not really. I have a daughter, but this child wasn't her. She simply carried the feeling of being mine.

I can't help but wonder if she represents something else.

Maybe she's my inner child.

Maybe she's a new part of myself that's slowly being born.

Maybe she's creativity, wonder, or the quieter life I've been trying to cultivate.

Maybe she's something I don't yet have words for.

I also keep thinking about the business partner. He never fought the darkness. He never rescued me. He simply asked one question that changed everything.

"Is this your daughter?"

Whether he represents an archetypal guide, an observing part of my own psyche, or something more spiritual, I don't know. I don't feel the need to decide.

What I do know is this:

The darkness wasn't driven out through force.

It ended the moment I opened the door and embraced the child.

I don't believe every dream is prophetic, but I do believe dreams can become conversations. Rather than rushing to explain them away, I'm learning to sit beside them and ask what they're trying to teach me.

For now, I'm less interested in identifying the haunting than I am in paying attention to the little girl who keeps returning.

Perhaps the question isn't who she is.

Perhaps it's who she's becoming.

What part of you keeps knocking at the door, waiting to be recognized?

Still Gathering,
Theresa

posted July 2, 2026

Wonder Finds a Way

Dear Little Corner,

Lately, life has felt like one of those overgrown summer gardens after a long stretch of rain — wild, tangled, verdant, blooming faster than I can keep up with, and somehow still beautiful.

There is so much happening all at once. The planning. The printing. The binding. The ordering of books and curriculum and supplies. The endless gathering of pieces for a school year that hasn’t quite begun yet, but already lives in piles and tabs and stacks around me. We even got a new printer, one that can hopefully keep pace with all the pages and plans I keep dreaming into existence. There’s something both exhilarating and overwhelming about this part — the quiet architecture of a year before it becomes real. Before the lessons are opened. Before the pencils are sharpened. Before the rhythm settles into our days.

It feels like I am building a small, invisible scaffolding for the future. Page by page. Spine by spine. Decision by decision. There is a strange devotion in it, this work no one really sees. The hours spent comparing, choosing, preparing, imagining. The hope tucked into every printed sheet. The quiet belief that somehow, with enough intention and enough grace, these scattered materials will become a living, breathing year.

But then the glimmers come.

The cucumbers hiding beneath the leaves. The kids running outside to check the garden like it’s their own tiny kingdom. The way rain can make everything look enchanted, like the whole yard was waiting for permission to bloom. Rescuing a fledgling from the dogs and being reminded, in that sudden flutter of panic and tenderness, that there is life everywhere right now — small, fragile, feathered, tenacious, becoming.

There have been little pockets of magic tucked into ordinary days.

Starting Kingdom of Ash has felt almost ceremonial, like opening a door I already know will close behind me. This series has had such an unrelenting grip on me, and there is something nearly heartbreaking about reaching the end of it. I’m not ready to leave these characters or this world behind. I’m not ready to say goodbye to the ache and the fire and the impossible hope of it all. I’m not ready for the finality of it, for that strange grief that comes when a story has lived inside you for so long and then suddenly asks you to let it go. And honestly, Sam Cortland and lavender soap? I will never recover from either.

There is something profound about the way fictional worlds can become emotional landmarks. How a name, a sentence, a scent, a sacrifice can lodge itself somewhere tender and stay there. How a story can find you in an ordinary season of life and make everything feel a little more mythic. I think that is part of the ache of finishing a series like this. It isn’t just the ending. It is leaving behind the version of yourself who was still discovering it.

We went to the movies and let the world go dark for a while, sitting together in that strange, reverent silence where everyone is watching the same story unfold. There is something almost sacred about that, too — the hush, the glow, the collective surrender. For a couple of hours, no one needed me to solve anything. We just sat in the dark and let ourselves be carried.

We slipped into the pool late at night because this heat wave has made even the evenings feel oppressive, with feels-like temperatures in the triple digits and air so heavy it seems to hover rather than move. But the water still offered a brief reprieve from the sun, a small mercy at the end of a sweltering day. The kids laughing. The night air warm and languid. The water catching little fragments of light. The kind of moment that doesn’t announce itself as important, but settles somewhere deep anyway.

And then there’s the new Thermador induction cooktop, which feels like such a grown-up kind of joy — but joy nonetheless. After feeding a big family for so long, there is something almost luxurious about a cooktop that can actually keep up with us. Two large pans at once. No awkward size restrictions. No fighting for space. Just room. Room to cook. Room to move. Room for the kind of family meals that somehow begin as a logistical puzzle and end with everyone gathered around, fed and full.

I think that is what I keep noticing lately: the ache and the magic are not separate. They live right beside each other.

I can feel overwhelmed by the planning and still be grateful for the life we are building. I can feel tired of all the minutiae and still love the vision behind them. I can feel stretched thin by the daily work of home and family and still recognize that this is the very life I once longed for in some quiet, wordless way.

It is not always peaceful. It is not always picturesque. Sometimes the house is loud, the plans are too much, the emotions are too big, and I wonder if I am doing any of it well enough. Sometimes I feel like I am carrying invisible ledgers of everyone’s needs, everyone’s moods, everyone’s futures, trying to balance them in the margins of my own becoming.

But then there is a cucumber in a child’s hand. A book waiting on the nightstand, already breaking my heart before I’ve even finished it. A pool shimmering softly in the dark. A fledgling tucked back into safety. A garden heavy with rain and blossoms. A cooktop with enough space for the life we actually live. A movie ticket. A shared laugh. A meal being made. A summer night that feels, for just a second, like an incantation.

Maybe this is the work right now — not to wait for life to feel simple before I call it beautiful.

Maybe the glimmers are not proof that everything is easy.

Maybe they are proof that even here, in the middle of the mess and noise and worry and wanting, wonder still finds a way in.

Still Gathering,
Theresa

posted June 5, 2026

A Slower Place to Share

Dear Little Corner,

In January, I did something I had been trying to do for a long time.

I walked away from social media for a month.

At first, it felt strange to step outside of a place I had grown so used to checking, sharing, scrolling, and disappearing into. But then something unexpected happened. I started to feel more present in my own life. I read more books in one month than I probably had in the entire year before. I played more. I laughed more. I noticed more.

The little things — the glimmers I had been looking past — started to feel brighter again.

It was mentally exhilarating, like opening a window in a room I didn’t realize had gotten so stuffy.

In February, I announced that I was leaving social media. I said I had outgrown the need for it, and I meant it. But within another month, I found myself right back there. Wasting time. Comparing my life to other people’s. Sharing pieces of my days while also feeling quietly drained by the place I was sharing them.

And that’s the hard part: I don’t actually want to stop sharing.

I love letting people into the little pieces of our life — the books, the garden, the homeschool days, the family moments, the strange and beautiful things I notice. I still want to share with the people who truly want to see. I just don’t want to keep living inside a feed that constantly pulls my attention toward things I never asked to carry.

Social media had become a time stealer, and I was tired of giving so much of my life away to it.

So I started building my own little nook of the internet.

A slower place. A quieter place. A place with a bit of that old-internet magic I miss so much. Somewhere I can breathe a little easier and share the real me instead of trying to condense my life into reels, captions, and stories that disappear.

I suppose some people would call this a blog, but to me it feels more like a scrapbook, a journal, a family record, and a small act of rebellion all rolled into one.

That’s what Gathering Wonder is becoming.

A place where the magic and the messy can sit side by side. A place to keep the moments I don’t want to lose. A place where I can grow, reflect, remember, and simply be myself.

And maybe the people who truly want to see will still come find me here — not because an algorithm placed me in front of them, but because they chose to click the link and wander over.

I hope you’ll join me here.

I think I have so much more to share than what could ever fit inside a feed.

Still Gathering,
Theresa