Originally written in December 2022, this post was inspired by photos of my parents’ first home—the house that meant the world to them and became a complicated place for me. It held both growth and grief. Hope and heaviness. With a fresh perspective and poetic rewrite, I’m sharing this story again. For anyone who had to find peace in the middle of pain—this one’s for you.  Skelly🏡💗-

Growing Pains (A Memory in Two Tones)

They called it home.
Their first home—
a ticket out of the neighborhood they fought so hard to leave behind.
A decent house with big dreams built into every corner.
Fresh paint, new plants, a garden that bloomed with hope.
They poured their pride into that place—
Every update was a declaration that they made it.

It meant the world to them.
But to me…
it was a battleground and a sanctuary,
a place where walls remembered both
the loud arguments
and the whispered prayers.

I grew up inside those walls,
but they didn’t always hold me gently.
I had to carve out a place of peace,
steal stillness from the chaos.
On the front patio,
I’d sit and let the sunlight wash over my shoulders
while the wind danced in the aspens
and windchimes sang from next door.
That’s where I’d breathe—really breathe.

My long brown hair would lift with the breeze
and I’d pretend I was somewhere else,
lighter than the weight I carried.
There, I wasn’t the daughter of disappointment or conflict.
I was a dreamer, a writer in the making.
That small square of porch was holy ground to me.

Life, of course, didn’t pause for poetry.
One day, you’re a kid with scraped knees and silent prayers,
and the next,
You’re making impossible decisions
with no right answers.
Bills pile up, health fades,
family fractures,
and the noise—
it never stops.

Now I watch my own kids shoulder their grown-up worries,
and I ache in silence,
wondering if the strength I’ve passed down
is enough to carry them.
No more cookies and cartoons to fix a broken heart.
Only truth.
Only time.

The world doesn’t warn you
when it hands you a “last time.”
No alarm for the final laugh around a dinner table,
or the last morning you didn’t carry the weight of something heavy.
We waste too many days
trading peace for pride,
joy for control,
connection for comparison.

That simple house—
their hope,
my hardship—
still lives in me.
Not in the chipped tile or the painted trim,
but in the lessons I lived out on those steps.
I found God there.
I found myself there, too.

Even now, with everything behind and ahead of me,
Jesus remains.
Through every cracked wall,
every loud night,
every quiet prayer—
He stayed.

It wasn’t a perfect home.
We weren’t a perfect family.
But even in the mess,
there was meaning.
And somehow,
even now,
there is peace.

SK-

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