02/16/2026
Mama & Dada
These pictures hold two people who have lived more life, more fear, more hope, and more heartbreak than most marriages ever touch…
two people who became parents through our miracle named Olen, who learned grief through a baby boy we never got to hold, and who watched Teaks fight his way back into this world more than once. Teaks heart stopped twice, and somehow he came back-
and we know Teaks is a miracle child who shocks people just by existing, a living reminder that impossible things sometimes choose us.
But in all that hospital living, all that trauma and waiting and praying, we felt a split we never wanted a distance from our Olen that tore at us in ways we still don’t have words for. Loving one child from a hospital bed while missing another from miles away is a kind of ache that rearranges you. And somehow, through all that breaking, our love didn’t soften
it hardened,
sharpened, came out stronger and more stubborn than before.
We’ve cried in the same corners,
fought in the same storms,
and held on to each other even when our hands were shaking.
Some days we pass each other like shadows in the chaos the mess,
the beauty,
the exhaustion,
the trying.
Some days I see you clearly,
and some days we miss each other completely
even while standing inches apart.
But we’re still here.
Still choosing.
Still staying.
Not leaving.
We started with distance
Texas and Alabama,
FaceTime calls that made my cheeks ache from smiling,
and a honeymoon full of your clumsy dance moves
that were somehow both ridiculous and attractive.
Back then, life felt light.
And then everything cracked open my PTSD hit hard,
and you were left holding a sadness you didn’t understand,
a heaviness you didn’t know how to carry
but somehow did anyway,
even when it bent you in ways no one else saw.
I look at these pictures and I see the wrinkles, the wear,
the way life has carved itself into us.
But I also see the faint outline of who we were,
and the stubborn, imperfect love of who we are now.
I love you, and I’m angry with you,
and I’m annoyed by you,
and I’m grateful for you
all at once, all the time.
Love can be beautiful, but it can be really ugly too,
and we’ve lived both sides without walking away.
This isn’t tempting anything
it’s just the truth of us.
Rare and wild things have always found us,
and somehow we’re still standing,
still choosing each other in the middle of it all.
We stay.
We aren’t leaving.
And that has to mean something.
Because through every storm, every miracle, every loss,
every moment we thought we couldn’t take one more breath,
I know this with a kind of certainty life can’t shake out of me:
I don’t just have someone with me
I have you.
The one person shaped by the same fires,
marked by the same miracles,
carrying the same impossible story in your bones.
What we have isn’t perfect,
but it’s rare, and it’s real,
and it’s ours
the kind of love that doesn’t just survive the unthinkable,
it understands it in a way no one else ever could.
And hey,
I wrote all this,
and yes, the eye rolls are still here,
and the love is still here too.
Both of them, right in the middle of all of this
which feels like us.
Love you babe.
