I wanted to let you know that the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is officially available.

This is the full 12-week guided journal I’ve been writing alongside the essays here — the one I originally made fo…

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Love it and want to send it to friends? You can order it on Amazon here.

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The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is available on Amazon here.

📖 This Week’s Essay

BECOMING

You didn’t come this far just to come this far.

This is it — the last week of the Uncorked Journal.
It’s supposed to be smooth sailing from here, right? Finish these prompts and boom, you’re living your unfettered, amazing, fully uncorked life.

Hahahahahahahahahaha.
No.
If only.

I’ve worked my way through this journal a couple of times, and each round has helped me in ways I didn’t expect. And here’s the reality of this journal: integration is not linear. It’s not a neat staircase. It’s not even a spiral. It’s more like trying to braid river water — you get moments of shape, moments of clarity, and then the whole thing shifts again.

Lately, all my thoughts about “becoming” keep orbiting one thing:
One of my dearest friends is dying.

He has inoperable tumors in and on his heart. He has a wife, two young sons. He has family and friends. A whole globe of people who carry stories about him like lucky talismans.

And this mantra keeps echoing in me:
You didn’t come this far just to come this far.

He didn’t.
He came far. He lived far. And the legacy he leaves behind will keep moving outward long after his heart is done here.

Today I’ve been crying off and on because he posted what was likely his last Facebook update last night. He was smiling, he looked strong. He looked as if he were gearing up for another grand adventure.

Maybe he is.

Honestly, he always was.
He spent time teaching in Guam. He rafted some of the toughest rivers in the Northwest. He kayaked to Alaska, piloted sailboats across the Atlantic. If the word “uncorked” ever needed a human example, it was him. Wild in the best ways, but also deeply grounded — a teacher, a husband, a father. I met him back when we were feral raft guides with more nerve than wisdom, and I watched him become someone even more extraordinary.

Now I’m doing this ridiculous thing where I keep checking Facebook to see if he’s online. Looking for the little green dot next to his profile picture as proof of life.
I toggle between grief and magical thinking — whispering prayers, manifestation mantras, bargains, anything to tilt the universe back toward keeping him here.

It’s been eleven hours since that post. He might just be resting. Or he might already be gone.

Wherever he is, whatever threshold he’s on, it’s not lost on me that this week’s journal theme is “Becoming.”
Because that’s exactly what he’s doing now.

And it raises the harder, quieter question beneath all the journaling, all the growth work, all the “becoming” talk:

If our time is limited — and it is — then who am I becoming right now?
And is it who I actually want to become?

That’s the real core of this week.
Not perfection. Not clarity tied in a bow. Not the end of a little journey of self-reflection.
But motion.
Choice.
Direction.
A willingness to keep going — not because life is tidy, but because you didn’t come this far just to come this far.

The journal prompts include:

– Who am I becoming?
– What do I want to bring with me — and what will I leave behind?
– What is my next brave step?

We’re not meant to answer these in beautifully scripted prose.
We’re meant to answer them honestly, even if it’s messy.
The becoming happens in the honesty.

And in the living that comes after.

💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

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Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is available on Amazon here.

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📖 This Week’s Essay

When I think of power—especially women’s power—I get a vision of Beyoncé, hair wild and divine, dancing in front of a wind machine. That’s the cultural image burned into our collective brain: big voice, big stance, big hair. A billboard of confidence.

I’ve never done that.

I doubt it would help.

Whatever power I have hasn’t come from choreography. And I don’t care to manufacture a moment that looks powerful just so I can convince myself that I am. That kind of spectacle has never been my territory.

I think I prefer the kind of power that doesn’t need a spotlight. Something less performative, more intuitive.

The trouble is, when I look for concrete examples—proof that I’ve retained or built power—it’s hard to name a single, cinematic moment. My strength has never arrived with a soundtrack. Half the time, the grittiest, most soul-unearthing thing I do is simply get out of bed.

But power doesn’t disappear because it’s quiet. It disappears because we stop recognizing it.

When I got divorced the first time, I left the country for four months and traveled Southeast Asia with nothing but a backpack. From the outside, it looked like a dramatic escape from reality. And yes, it was an escape—but it was also a return. A recharging. A reconnection. A reclaiming. Maybe more accurately, an unearthing of a power I had buried under years of shrinking myself for the sake of love.

For reasons I didn’t fully understand then, I shut myself down in relationships. I’ve seen many women do the same, especially the ones my age and older. It’s not personal; it’s generational. Our mothers and grandmothers lived in a world where a woman’s survival depended on staying attached to a man. They couldn’t own property. They weren’t paid fairly. They couldn’t move through the world safely or freely without male permission. So they trimmed themselves down to stay protected.

And they handed that skill to their daughters.

Be quiet.

Be agreeable.

Don’t be too emotional, too sensitive, too intense, too loud, too anything.

We inherited the idea that being loved required being smaller.

So we learned to fold ourselves up. To hand over our edges. To dim our own damn lights, thinking this would buy us acceptance, warmth, belonging. We believed self-erasure was a currency.

And for a long time, it felt like it was.

But here’s the truth I finally had to face:

No matter how much power I gave away, the love and acceptance I wanted never came.

The shrinking didn’t save me.

The dimming didn’t protect me.

The self-abandonment didn’t earn me anything but distance from myself.

The reflective practices in the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal are really about undoing that damage. They’re a reclamation of power disguised as reflection. A way of practicing “yes” to ourselves again after years of automatic self-denial.

We never truly lost our power.

We handed it over—inch by inch—believing we had to.

Reclaiming power begins the moment we stop bargaining with our own disappearance.

And maybe power isn’t the wind-machine moment, but something quieter and less dramatic.

Maybe it’s the choice to return to ourselves after years of being gone.

💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

Subscribe now

Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is available on Amazon here.

📖 This Week’s Essay - Belonging

I’m 55 and I live in my parents’ basement. I have barely-manageable facial hair. And, in the immortal words of Jane Austen, I have no prospects. I haven’t outgrown my love of horses. I still want to be a writer when I grow up.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating — I own my parents’ house, so I live in my own basement technically. I did grow up and become a writer. But the facial hair statement is completely true.

A couple of years ago my friend Kathy (the one I did the world tour with) was visiting. I was up to my eyeballs in chores and tasks, bumbling around in my overalls, covered in dirt. And she said, “you really belong here.”

Those words resonated in my soul. I do belong on this ranch, on this mountain, in this town. I’ve left and always returned. I’ve done the “Dorothy” from Wizard of Oz so many times I’ve lost count — swearing I had to leave, leaving, and crying “there’s no place like home!”

It is a peaceful, zenlike feeling to know you belong and to be where you belong. It’s perfect alignment. It’s like feeling “whole”.

I am also fortunate enough to have a tribe of friends I call my “board of directors”. I lean hard on them for support, fellowship, guidance, and that sense of belonging. Somehow we’ve all found each other and known early on that we belonged together. If someone calls an emergency bonfire meeting on a Monday night, we show up. If someone needs a 2 a.m. phone call from a campground restroom, we answer.

I explained to my friends that I was back on speaking terms with a man I’d dated and broke it off with. I apologized to them, because the break-up was tumultous and gritty, and they walked in lock-step at my side through it all. I swore I wouldn’t drag them through that kind of drama again.

And Amy just smiled and said, “It’s fine, we’re with you all the way.” And they nodded.

As a horse-crazy girl, the biggest challenge for me was trying to catch my horse. I wasn’t a great horse person, and it’s easy to look back on my childhood and understand why my horses high-tailed it to the other end of the field when they saw me coming. What is hard to believe is that they tolerated my clumsy hands and crazy ideas to begin with. I had dreams of becoming a veterinarian at one point and spent an inordinate amount of time bandaging any animal unfortunate enough to cross my path. Dogs wore pillow-case slings, cats were unwillingly swaddled, and horses barely tolerated their poorly bandaged legs. It’s a miracle any of us survived my “health care” regime. My horses were wise to evade me.

As an adult horse owner, a lot has changed. It is one of my favorite things in the world to step out into the horse paddock and have the entire herd amble up to me, sniffing my hair and coat, greeting me, and choosing me.

That’s the feeling I was literally chasing as a kid (and an adult, many times), trying to shoe-horn that alignment when it was right there in front of me, free for the asking, ready whenever I was.

💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

🪶 About the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal

This essay is part of the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal, a 12-week guided writing journey I created because I needed it first. Each week brings:

• an original essay (free for all readers)

• journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companion exercises (for paid subscribers)

At the end of the series, the full Uncorked Cowgirl Journal workbook will be available as a downloadable PDF ($25 value). Paid subscribers get early access, plus bonus content and invitations to live journaling sessions.

👉 How it works:

• Free subscribers get the weekly essay.

• Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

  • All prompts, rituals, and AI tools

  • Bonus essays and reflections

  • Access to the complete downloadable workbook when it’s released this fall

So if you want the whole uncorked experience, consider joining as a paid subscriber — it’s the best way to support this work and take yourself deeper.

Subscribe now

✍️ Journal Prompts – Week 10: Belonging

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📖 Desire

Somewhere along the line, we learn it’s dangerous to openly share our desires.

At best, we’ll be discouraged. At worst, we’ll be told we’re foolish or naïve — that desire is impractical, unrealistic, even selfish.

Artists who want to make a living are told, “That doesn’t pay — get a real job.”

Dreamers are told to grow up.

But I cling to the idea that we wouldn’t have our desires if they weren’t meant for us. That desires are given to us as coordinates on a map. Desire is more than “want”, it’s destiny.

I grew up in a very non-horsey household. The only person in my family with any equine experience was my father. He’d had polio as a boy, and in those days, options for getting around were limited. My grandfather solved that by getting him a donkey — Abe — who hauled my dad everywhere, even on his newspaper route.

Dad grew up, went to college, outgrew Abe, and that was the end of his foray into the wonderful world of equines.

I, on the other hand, was born with a rabid love of horses. For no reason. We lived in town. But even as young as three, I remember the surge in my chest whenever I saw one. It was something written in my DNA, the desire was there long before I even knew what a horse was.

There was a time I tried to not be horse crazy. It wasn’t practical. Horses are expensive. I wasn’t good enough. I needed to focus on building a career. The excuses came easy — all the sensible reasons to abandon something wild.

And for about ten years, I did.

Then my mother got sick with ALS. When it came time to move her in with my brother, I went to help her pack up her life.

In one closet, I found a large file box labeled “Travel.”

Inside were only two torn pages from an old Sunset magazine — a story about a place in Ireland she wanted to visit.

That was it.

A box, a label, and two small seeds of longing she never planted.

I sat on the floor and ugly-cried. I knew what that box meant. She had planned to fill it with ideas for where she’d go and photos of where she’d been. But life got in the way. She raised us, farmed, volunteered — always serving others, never herself. And Ireland remained pages in a box.

We eventually moved her into assisted living.

I bought my dream horse.

Mom died a week after that.

The memory of that box serves as guardrails for me, especially when “desire” and “sensibility” are at odds. It nudges me back on the path, in the direction of my desires.

💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

Subscribe now

🪶 About the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal

This essay is part of the **Uncorked Cowgirl Journal**, a 12-week guided writing journey I created because I needed it first. Each week brings:

• an original essay (free for all readers)

• journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companion exercises (for paid subscribers)

At the end of the series, the full Uncorked Cowgirl Journal workbook will be available as a downloadable PDF ($25 value). Paid subscribers get early access, plus bonus content and invitations to live journaling sessions.

👉 How it works:

• Free subscribers get the weekly essay.

• Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

  • All prompts, rituals, and AI tools

  • Bonus essays and reflections

  • Access to the complete downloadable workbook when it’s released this fall

So if you want the whole uncorked experience, consider joining as a paid subscriber — it’s the best way to support this work and take yourself deeper.

✍️ Journal Prompts – Week 9: Desire

Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is available on Amazon here.

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📖 This Week’s Essay

The Body Remembers

Have y’all read The Body Keeps the Score? If you haven’t, put it on the list — but brace yourself. The book lays out how our bodies store both physical and emotional trauma, and some of the stories are hard to sit with.

I love that this theme lives in the journal because the work you do here can get deep — and the body shows up in the work whether you invite it or not.

The first time I really noticed how emotions and injuries live together was during a massage. I called him my “massage guy” because “masseuse” sounded kinky and “massage therapist” sounded bougie. He was a sweet, calm man. Totally chill. And as he worked on my neck I wanted to jump up and deck him. Not a mild annoyance — full-on, lights-out, make-him-question-his-life-choices rage. I had zero reason to want to hit him. He was still kneading my upper back.

“Wow,” he said. “You really have some tension in here.”

WHAT? Had I accidentally made an aggressive noise? Had I been growling?

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“You just really have some angry muscles in your neck and back,” he said, still putting himself at risk of being decked.

I knew I was stiff, but I’d never connected anger to stiffness. The next thing I knew I was crying silently as he continued. Fear and overwhelm and anger surfaced, like something old had been poked awake. I admitted, “I feel like I want to hit you.”

“Please don’t,” he chuckled.

Then he explained what the area was probably doing — storing old trauma. It landed. I’d broken my C1 a couple years earlier and spent months in a brace. I’d hunched and guarded my neck, like armor I forgot how to take off.

The body tightens, it guards, and it holds the things we might think we’ve resolved. When you sit with the kind of journaling prompts that come with this week’s theme, your body might show up in unexpected ways. That’s okay. That’s part of the work. Drink some water, soak in a tub, please don’t hit your massage guy.

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💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

---

🪶 About the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal

This essay is part of the **Uncorked Cowgirl Journal**, a 12-week guided writing journey I created because I needed it first. Each week brings:

• an original essay (free for all readers)

• journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companion exercises (for paid subscribers)

At the end of the series, the full Uncorked Cowgirl Journal workbook will be available as a downloadable PDF ($25 value). Paid subscribers get early access, plus bonus content and invitations to live journaling sessions.

👉 How it works:

• Free subscribers get the weekly essay.

• Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

  • All prompts, rituals, and AI tools

  • Bonus essays and reflections

  • Access to the complete downloadable workbook when it’s released this fall

So if you want the whole uncorked experience, consider joining as a paid subscriber — it’s the best way to support this work and take yourself deeper.

Subscribe now

Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is available on Amazon here.

---

📖 This Week’s Essay

Joy

I was about ten when my sweet Uncle Pat said, “You’re just a ray of sunshine, you know that?” I figured it was because he didn’t know me very well — he lived clear across the country. Even then, I didn’t think of myself as particularly vibrant or joyful. Definitely not a ray of sunshine.

Still, I’ve always hung on to that line because I liked how it sounded. I liked the way it felt to be seen as someone who could light up a room. I don’t think Uncle Pat meant “able to scorch ants on the sidewalk” or “starts fires easily,” though the latter was true. Especially in the kitchen.

Now, here I am — Kathy and I on our world tour — a phrase I never imagined saying without irony. I could never picture myself traversing the globe in one continuous arc, hopping from one wonder to the next. Honestly, I thought I might die before we ever left. That kind of life, I assumed, was for someone else.

We are at Lee’s Ferry, camping on the banks of the Colorado River, day two of our Grand Canyon tour and day five of the “Two Bats in a Bronco” road trip.

And I feel incredibly, outrageously, ecstatically grateful. Joyful, even.

It’s easy to be joyful when the sun’s on your face and your best friend’s at your side. But when life goes gunny-sack — when everything unravels — how do you find it then? Real joy, not that militant optimism of forced smiles, dead eyes, and verbal diarrhea of cheerful platitudes.

Eff that.

My mother lived for years with ALS. It’s a slow, cruel disease — torture for the person inside the failing body, and a special kind of hell for those who love them. My brother Ben and I divided up duties and did what had to be done: hospitals, nursing homes, insurance calls. We were her eyes, ears, and voice. And we still had jobs, families, lives of our own.

She’d lost the ability to swallow or cough, so phlegm collected in her throat, threatening to choke her at any moment. She used a speech device, Stephen Hawking-style, to type what she needed. Her word for the suction machine was “mucus.”

Over time, Ben and I developed a Pavlovian gag reflex to the word.

“Mucus.” I just choked on my coffee typing that.

Eventually, Mom succumbed to ALS. Then came the estate, the paperwork, the meetings with lawyers. In one of the last, the attorney stepped out to make copies. Ben and I slumped in our chairs — exahusted at the end of a long road.

Ben lifted his fist in weary congratulations. “Fist bump,” he said.

“Mucus,” I replied.

We bumped fists and burst out laughing, tears streaming by the time the lawyer returned to find us red-faced and hysterical.

Since then, “mucus” has been our shorthand. One text — mucus — and we’re back there again, laughing and remembering Mom. A whispered “mucus” in a crowded room and we’re doubled over, recalling her antics.

Like the time she leaned her electric wheelchair all the way back, chuckled, then sat up again. “What’s so funny?” Ben asked. She typed: “That’s how I get the farts out.”

That was her joy — practical, perfect.

And somehow, it became ours too.

If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that joy doesn’t always come on a ray of sunshine. Sometimes, it comes wrapped in mucus.

I have to go now. I need to text my brother.

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💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

Read on for the journal prompts, rituals, and AI prompts that go with this week’s theme.

Subscribe now

🪶 About the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal

This essay is part of the **Uncorked Cowgirl Journal**, a 12-week guided writing journey I created because I needed it first. Each week brings:

• an original essay (free for all readers)

• journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companion exercises (for paid subscribers)

At the end of the series, the full Uncorked Cowgirl Journal workbook will be available as a downloadable PDF ($25 value). Paid subscribers get early access, plus bonus content and invitations to live journaling sessions.

👉 How it works:

• Free subscribers get the weekly essay.

• Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

  • All prompts, rituals, and AI tools

  • Bonus essays and reflections

  • Access to the complete downloadable workbook when it’s released this fall

So if you want the whole uncorked experience, consider joining as a paid subscriber — it’s the best way to support this work and take yourself deeper.

Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is available on Amazon here.

📖 This Week’s Essay

I woke up again last night, my room dark except for the glowing alarm clock: 3:00 a.m. I flipped my phone over—messages, voicemails, texts, reminders. Her reminders are unrelenting.

Her latest failure was colossal and so easily avoidable. She just had to make it to the airport on time. She was the “tech nerd” in charge of all the bookings, yet somehow they missed the bus, paid an ungodly fare to get there, and—flustered—lost her checked bag. And then she cried. Honestly, she doesn’t deserve friends or the contents of her precious luggage. If she can’t get her act together, maybe she doesn’t deserve the adventure she’s on either.

But that’s just me.

I don’t usually hold it against people if they’re born on the “unfortunate” side of attractive. But my god, that woman has never taken a decent photo. Half the time she looks like a dude. No wonder she’s single. She needs to lose at least 30 pounds. I try not to judge others, but she’s exceptionally easy to find fault in.

And I can’t even remember all the dumb things she’s said. It’s like verbal halitosis. She overeats, under-exercises, over-explains, wears a fake smile, has saggy boobs, and is sprouting a beard. She’s not particularly nice or smart, has zero talent, ruined her friend’s trip of a lifetime, and is so ugly that people crop her out of photos—if they bother to include her at all.

I have a low opinion of her, but that’s just me.

So why is she living rent-free in my head? Why am I reliving every single one of her failures at 3 a.m.?

Because at 3 a.m. she has to pee.

And because she’s me.

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I call it the witching hour—those wee hours when my brain brings up every failure, real or imagined, like a lowlight reel of how to be an awful human. I’ve offered more gracious forgiveness to men who betrayed me, strangers who cut me off in traffic, and people who’ve abused me in universally unacceptable ways beyond just mispronouncing my name.

But myself? I’ll gladly create space in my mind for the grudge against me. I’ll even feed it.

The only thing that’s ever helped is finding other people who experience the same level of self-loathing—discovering that maybe it’s not just me.

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This series runs here on Substack for 12 weeks. The complete workbook is available for purchase on Amazon here.

In a lot of ways, it’s kind of fun being a sentimental packrat.
I have a superpower: I can attach meaning to everything — slips of paper, old receipts, even actual living beings. It’s a lovely thing, I guess, to have that kind of capacity for love. But maybe it’s also a slightly neurotic way of anchoring myself. As if letting go of the objects might mean letting go of the memories. Or the love itself.

I’ve always been cautious when it comes to losing love. Even the hard kind.
Letting go doesn’t come easy for me — not with people, not with things, not even with old shopping lists and leaky perfume bottles.

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I was in the basement, deep in a decluttering mission. You know the kind — clearing out things that didn’t “spark joy” or add any other value to my life.
The house is the old family home, and it had absorbed the leftovers of the dead — my father’s old books, my younger brother’s Armani suit, my mother’s treasures, oddities, and keepsakes. I come by my packrat tendencies honestly.
Among mom’s treasures:

• Her teacup collection (which I obviously kept)

• A hand-sewn wool skirt-and-jacket suit (gifted to my niece)

• Shopping lists from 1974 with items like raisins and carob chips

• A nearly full bottle of perfume

I tucked the shopping list into a shoebox. The fact that she once tried to sneak carob chips into our diet was proof that, for all her sweetness and kindness, she was clearly a deceitful and corrupt woman with no moral boundaries. (Obviously.)

The perfume gave me pause.
Mom didn’t wear it much — Dad got headaches. But I wiggled the stopper loose and gave it a sniff.
And bam.

There it was. Her purse.
I remembered she used to carry the perfume in her purse — a detail I’d completely forgotten — and it would leak just enough to mingle with the smell of the spearmint gum she always had in there.
That scent combo was her.

Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is now available on Amazon here.

📖 This Week’s Essay

Oooooookaaayyyy…

This is my weak area. I really don’t have great stories about times I’ve set boundaries. I mean, there was the time I sat outside a hotel with a pair of binoculars and a Thermos of coffee, waiting for my boyfriend to come out so I could verify he was with another woman. It sounds unhinged, but it was one of the smartest and most self-protective things I’ve ever done. (It’s also a story for another day, preferably when I’ve had wine.)

So, I thought I’d share some of my own journaling on boundaries.

And it’s a blank page.

Y’all…

I was raised a people-pleaser. A chronic self-silencer. An expert at making myself smaller so as not to upset anyone around me.

I am not qualified to speak about boundaries.

Here’s what I do know (trigger warning: DV):

When I was four, I was visiting my grandparents on their farm. (Side note: I come from a long line of oddly proud alcoholics. Violence is basically baked into the family pie.)

Gramps was in a rage. Grandma was cutting vegetables for dinner. I don’t remember what set him off, but suddenly he blindsided her with a slap across the face. Before the weight of that moment could settle in my belly—when it was still just a shiver in my spine—Grandma whirled around and buried her paring knife in his forearm.

“Next time it’ll be in your fucking heart,” she snarled.

My fear instantly mixed with something else. Pride? Empowerment? Stark terror? My childhood wasn’t without violence, but I had never seen anyone fight back before. Until that moment, I didn’t even know it was an option.

My brother and I grew up talking about that story with a weird sort of reverence, while also laughing at her audacity. Gramps was 6’2” and built out of baling wire and logging chains. Grandma was 5’4” and scrappy, but physically no match for him.

For a long time—decades—I thought that was how boundaries were maintained. You fight back. You retaliate. You shrink until you can’t anymore, and then you explode.

Now I understand that for what it was: reactive abuse. A desperate attempt at self-protection.

What I never understood back then was that real boundaries would have meant my grandparents never got together in the first place. Or that she would have left him.

I used to think the lesson was: retaliation is empowering.
Now I think the lesson is: good boundaries protect you from ever needing to retaliate.

So anyway. Clearly, I still have some journaling to do. Which, honestly, is the point of this journal: exploration and maybe growth.

And also, realizing that stabbing people is not the same as setting boundaries.

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💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

🪶 About the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal

This essay is part of the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal, a 12-week guided writing journey I created because I needed it first. Each week brings:

• an original essay (free for all readers)

• journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companion exercises (for paid subscribers)

At the end of the series, the full Uncorked Cowgirl Journal workbook will be available as a downloadable PDF ($25 value). Paid subscribers get early access, plus bonus content and invitations to live journaling sessions.

👉 How it works:

• Free subscribers get the weekly essay.

• Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

  • All prompts, rituals, and AI tools

  • Bonus essays and reflections

  • Access to the complete downloadable workbook when it’s released this fall

So if you want the whole uncorked experience, consider joining as a paid subscriber — it’s the best way to support this work and take yourself deeper.

Read more

GRIT

This week’s theme is “Grit”. Don’t worry if you’ve never had a major sky-diving accident or “overcome great odds” — you still have grit and I see you!

The big, cinematic, Hollywood story of grit is inspiring — but everyday grit deserves to be celebrated, too. Sometimes it takes a tremendous amount of perseverance just to get out of bed. To roll over, poke a toe out from under the warm cloud of blankets into the cool morning air, and commit to going further.

The temptation to stay put isn’t just a lure — it feels like a biological demand. Like needing to pee when there’s no bathroom in sight. The urge won’t be denied. But people or animals depend on you to put that cold toe down on the floor and convince the other foot to join it. You depend on you. One foot. Then the other.

And then you remember why you’re struggling to get up, and the pain washes over you like a tidal wave. You’re sore for no reason, hollow except for hurt. Maybe it’s heartbreak. Maybe it’s the stress of a looming deadline. Bills. Chores. Dirty dishes. Meetings with people you don’t like. The endless reminders of goals unmet, credibility questioned, self-discipline gone missing. You’ll work out tomorrow, you tell yourself. Today’s big workout is just standing up.

You may wonder if this is depression.
It might be.
Or maybe it’s exhaustion from trying to eat elephants. You know the joke: how do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Well, maybe you’re just really damn full of elephant.

And always, there’s the self-loathing that waits for you when you’re awake. Meeting that head-on takes real grit.

At home I keep a two-cup coffee maker on my nightstand, programmed to brew at 5 a.m. — if I’ve had the foresight to fill it the night before. It’s my way of removing obstacles on my way from a horizontal to a vertical orientation. The smell of coffee makes the transition gentler, though not easier. It still takes fortitude to rise.

I think about those self-proclaimed morning people. I’ve seen early mornings. I’ve even had early mornings — usually when I had to meet one of those aforementioned morning people -- and found myself well-accomplished with hours of daylight to spare. Sometimes I am a morning person. But sometimes I’m not. And on those days, grit is the only thing that gets me up.

Grit isn’t always a comeback story. Sometimes it's just a “get up” story. It isn’t the highlight reel. More often, it’s the quiet, stubborn act of swinging your feet to the floor and facing a day you'd rather sleep through — and forcing yourself to be present for it.

So here’s to your grit. To your perseverance and your strength. To your bad-ass self for getting out of bed on the days you didn’t want to, or didn’t think you could. Here’s to your progress on that elephant, bite by bite — and to many more days ahead.

💡 Want more?

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal includes the full set of prompts, deep-dive exercises, and optional rituals for all 12 weeks — plus exclusive AI-powered bonus prompts that respond to your own writing.

🪶 About the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal

This essay is part of the Uncorked Cowgirl Journal, a 12-week guided writing journey I created because I needed it first. Each week brings:

• an original essay (free for all readers)

• journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companion exercises (for paid subscribers)

At the end of the series, the full Uncorked Cowgirl Journal workbook will be available as a downloadable PDF ($25 value). Paid subscribers get early access, plus bonus content and invitations to live journaling sessions.

👉 How it works:

• Free subscribers get the weekly essay.

• Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

  • All prompts, rituals, and AI tools

  • Bonus essays and reflections

  • Access to the complete downloadable workbook when it’s released this fall

So if you want the whole uncorked experience, consider joining as a paid subscriber — it’s the best way to support this work and take yourself deeper.

Read more

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing journey. Each week I share a journal theme and related essay (free), along with journaling prompts, rituals, and AI companions for paid subscribers. The full workbook is now available on Amazon here.

Rogue River

My oar blade dipped with a quiet gulp into the glassy green surface of the Rogue River.

Blossom Bar. An innocent name for a boulder garden that had claimed a life just two days earlier.

David rowed ahead of me in his raft, his oars slicing cleanly. He scrambled to the top of his load of gear as the boat touched the beach above Blossom. The instant the raft kissed sand, he tied off to a rock and vanished into the wild azaleas and red-barked madrone—without so much as a glance back.

The metallic tang of fear coated my mouth as I angled for the narrow strip of shoreline he’d left me. The summer air hung heavy with the scent of Douglas fir. I breathed deep, my chest tight.

By the time I reached the scouting rock, David was already descending. He was the first person I’d met who could make silence feel like violence.

The day before, David and I rowed the gear boats, arriving at camp long before the guests in their paddle rafts. Our job was to choose the site and build a small village: tents, cots, a kitchen, toilets, a circle of camp chairs. I thought the way we could raise a whole camp in two hours was proof of our compatibility, proof that we fit together.

David saw it as an excuse to drink beer and smoke pot without inhibition.

“Hey, Doll, you wanna tie me off real quick?” he slurred, tossing me the frayed end of his bowline. I trudged up the sand bank and hitched it around a large boulder.

“If you can’t tie a knot, tie a lot!” he joked. He knew my knots were better than his. By then, we’d reached the stage of our relationship where my competence made him cruel.

I woke the next morning to my name echoing off the canyon walls. David stood on shore, coiling his bowline. The knot I’d tied still gripped the boulder. The other end—where it should have been tied to his raft—hung empty.

He shook the rope in my face. “I told you to tie me off!”

My chest clenched. “I did. You must have—”

“You didn’t! My raft is gone!”

The other guides stared at me, their silence heavier than his shouting. I bit back tears as we hurried downstream. We found the raft bobbing in an eddy a quarter mile away, intact and harmless. David’s cold silence boiled around me long after.

From the scouting rock I studied the entry to Blossom. I’d run it a couple of times before. The crux move at the top had to be near-perfect or you could count on a long day pulling your boat off the “Picket Fence”—a row of picket-shaped boulders that pinned rafts, kayaks, and humans effortlessly.

Below me, David shoved his raft into the current and climbed in, never glancing back. He made it clear he didn’t care whether I made it through alive. A sharp contrast from the man who, two nights earlier, had stroked my cheek and said the moonlight on my hair made me “silvery and beautiful.”

I checked my rigging, making sure my load was balanced, then eased my raft into the pool. I reached down, scooped cold water, and splashed it on the back of my neck—my ritual before big rapids. A quick scan of the eddy below showed David already clear, rowing lazily downstream. Not waiting. Not watching. Willfully absent.

Fine. Blossom demanded my attention.

The glassy pool funneled toward the entry. I spun my raft so the stern led at an angle to the current, waiting for the exact moment. Too soon and I’d hit the guard rocks; too late and I’d be slammed into the Picket Fence.

The river dropped out from under me, roaring in my ears. I tried to breathe steadily, though it felt like riding a bull while being shot from a cannon. Pull. Pull. Quick check. Another stroke, and the stern punched through the eddy-line. The current seized the bow and spun my raft forward.

Then I saw her. The woman who lost her life earlier that week —blue jacket, orange vest—pinned against the Picket Fence, the river pressing her body to the rocks. A shiver ripped through me. Two hard strokes and my raft lurched into the Beaver Slide, skimming down a slick of green water. Her body disappeared behind me.

At the bottom I pulled into Celebration Eddy, shaken but intact. Relief, grief, and dread tangled in my chest. I mourned the woman I had no time to honor, and I braced for David’s cold silence.

But the river had already taken something from me—my old self. The one who played small. The one who bent to an addict’s delusions. The one who thought she had to earn her right to exist.

As David rowed on without me, he may have thought he’d proven my smallness. Instead, he gifted me the knowledge that I could carry myself through death, fear, and whitewater. That I was never meant to be bound. That I was fine with space. Fine with silence. Fine with the wild.

I was untethered.

And I was free.

I splashed cold water on the back of my neck and slipped back into the current of the Wild & Scenic Rogue River.

Continue below for guided journal prompts, rituals and AI companion prompts that go with this week’s theme. And stay tuned next week for Week 4 — Grit.

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“First, I have to tell you—you’re tough as shit,” said the lead physician, looking down at me in the hospital bed.

The sheets were gritty with trail dust, twigs, and sagebrush. I'd been scooped off the trail like a campfire burrito—wrapped in dirt, debris, and a generous dose of shock.

“You’ve got eight broken ribs in your back on the left side, two more broken in the front, a lacerated liver, lacerated spleen, a separated left shoulder, and a small nick in your left lung. Doesn’t look like that last one will be a problem. We’ll be keeping an eye on it.”

I blinked.

I didn’t feel tough. A few hours earlier, after pulling myself out of the dust—my horse having flipped over backwards and crushed me into the trail—I’d felt as close to death as I ever had. When the ambulance arrived and pumped me full of ketamine, I felt… high. For the next six hours, I ping-ponged between x-rays, CT scans, and blinding pain during transfers. The dilaudid would kick in, and then I’d be high again.

But never once did I feel tough.

Mostly, I felt high. Or, thanks to the contrast dye they give you for CT scans, like I’d peed my pants.

“We’re going to keep you a couple days and see how things go, okay?” the doctor said through his mask. There were others with him—maybe residents, maybe figments of my fever dream. He might’ve introduced them, but I only remember fragments from that day. I don’t remember the actual wreck at all.

That might be for the best.

Two days later, they discharged me with a tote bag full of prescriptions and a vague warning to “take it easy.”

My freedom lasted about six hours.

Back home, I got dizzy, nauseous, short of breath. I figured I’d confused my meds. I wanted to sleep it off. My husband—a ski patroller and former paramedic—took one look at me and said, “You’re dying.” He called ahead to the hospital and raced through town, screeching to a stop at the ambulance entrance, where we were met with a stretcher.

Turns out I’d been bleeding internally since the wreck. Blood had filled the pleural sac around my lungs, and my left lung had collapsed. I’d gone into shock from blood loss.

It was, as they say in the medical world, “not good.”

After emergency surgery to cauterize the bleeding in my spleen, and a second procedure to drain the quart of fluid from my pleural sac and re-inflate my lung, I spent a week in the post-op wing of the hospital.

My BFF never left my side. She walked the halls with me, ordered my meals, and bought me a back scratcher when the pain meds gave me the itchies.

There were moments when I wondered if that was the end of my riding career. I didn’t know if the trauma would keep me from ever riding again. I didn’t know how I’d keep the trail ride business going if I couldn’t even climb back into the saddle.

The fear lingered like an aftershock—quiet, but constant. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to test it. I was grateful my mind had blocked out the moment of the wreck. I knew I’d try to ride at some point, and I wanted to do it strictly for the love of riding. Not because I had to. Not to prove anything. Not to be “tough.”

The horses had a different take on my progress.

They didn’t gently coax me back like in a Disney movie. Things were out of order, and they knew it. The food lady needed to be riding again. It was the way of things.

One day, I saddled up my mare Wrigley, swung a tentative leg over the saddle, and rode her at a walk out into the vineyards. Wrigley’s energy is never “quiet.” She has strong opinions and high expectations. She’s more “rip the Band-Aid off” than “nurture through trauma.”

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There are entire sections of bookstores, libraries, and the internet dedicated to “quitting your job to chase your passion” (QYJTCYP™). I’ve read most of them. After several failed attempts that ended when I lost interest, I wrote it all off as snake oil. Few people even know their passion, let alone can make a living at it. Mine were drinking wine and riding horses. Who was going to pay me for that?

One winter I was sprawled on the couch watching reruns of Matlock and The Andy Griffith Show, wadding up toilet paper and stuffing it up my nose to stop the constant drip. I burrowed under every blanket I owned, shivering and sweating in turns. My throat burned, my eyes burned, and every muscle ached.

Blame a fever dream or the questionable amounts of ‘quils I was drinking straight from the bottle — DayQuil to survive feeding the horses and chickens, NyQuil to sleep through the rest of the day — but somewhere in there I decided the toxic people at my toxic job were killing me. The flu was just a symptom.

That week on the sofa was the first time in over a year I didn’t cry when I woke up.

Possibly related to my ‘quil dosing, I started a business based on my “passions.” I registered the name, bought the domain, built a basic website and booking system. All I was missing was a couple of beginner-safe horses.

Not exactly the process the QYJTCYP crowd recommends.

That’s how Red Mountain Trails began — trail rides through the vineyards around my farm. I imagined it growing into a ranch, with trucks, fancy saddles, and, of course, the day I could quit my damn job.

My husband and I agreed to give it three years. At the end of that, we’d either quit the business or I’d quit the damn job.

When it comes to quitting responsibly, you’re supposed to weigh things like finances, growth, health, and benefits.

I just hated my job.

I was a “software engineer,” which suggested I built working programs. In reality, I was a software breaker. I tested code and reported where and how I broke it — which did not endear me to the people who wrote it or the project managers herding us to a finish line.

As a people-pleaser, I was a bad fit.

The day after I gave notice, my washing machine quit — without the same polite two weeks I’d given my employer. It hummed, groaned, and shuddered without ever actually doing anything. In title it was a washer; in practice it was a noisy bucket.

I have a theory that before big changes, especially positive ones, resistance shows up — sometimes as doubt, sometimes as external trouble meant to keep us in our lane. The broken washer was the latter, instantly triggering the former. I wasn’t even out the office door yet, and already my budget was busted.

In a bid to save money, I bought a used washer. The delivery guys set it up, left, and I started a load. This washer was also a glorified bucket — a livestock trough with a digital display. It looked like a washer, but the most it could muster was a weak whimper.

With every pile of laundry growing on my bedroom floor, I thought about rescinding my resignation. But I knew at work, I was just like the washer — making noise but not accomplishing much.

The appliance store sent two guys to fix it. Alone when they arrived, I got an uneasy feeling — one of them gave off definite prison vibes.

“We’ll be back tomorrow at four with the part,” one said.

I doubted it. And I was a little afraid. My husband was out of town. Either they weren’t coming back, or they were, and I’d end up in pieces in a canal.

I walked over to the neighboring vineyard and found Cesar and Salvador, two workers I often chatted with in terrible Spanish. Using a translation app, I asked if they could be there when the appliance guys returned. First they thought I wanted them to fix the washer. Then they thought I wanted them to beat up my husband. Finally, Cesar’s face lit up. “Ahhhh! For proteccion!”

“Yes!” I said.

The next afternoon, right on time, they arrived. Cesar reached under his vest and pulled out a revolver. “For proteccion!” he said proudly. “We have licenses!”

This was not the kind of “presence” I had in mind, but I appreciated their readiness.

The appliance guys never showed. Cesar and Salvador were a little disappointed; I was relieved.

Eventually my husband returned, hauled the broken washer to the appliance store, and parked it in the doorway until they refunded our money. I bought a new machine.

I worked out the rest of my two weeks at the software job, then devoted myself to the horse business full-time.

It worked. Best move I ever made.

Continue below for six guided journal prompts, four rituals and three AI companion prompts that go with this week’s theme. And stay tuned next week for Week 2 — Wreckage.

Journal Prompts:

Choose one or two prompts per day, dedicate some time to each, and write about them. 10 minutes is usually a good starting point.

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There was a time, not long ago, when I didn’t know what I wanted, what I felt, or who the hell I was anymore.

I kept saying yes when I meant no. Kept showing up when I should’ve stayed home. Kept twisting myself into something smaller to fit inside someone else’s story.

And then, everything came apart. The horse flipped. The marriage cracked. The truth came roaring in like a dust storm. And I was left with a pile of wreckage and the unbearable question: Now what?

What came next wasn’t tidy. It wasn’t Instagrammable. It was wild, excruciating, and 100% mine.

The great thing about owning our b.s. is that we have complete control over it. I knew I wanted to move forward—and that I had the power to—but I didn’t know how.

So I started writing.

I wrote through grief, through rage, through the unspoken things I thought might ruin me. I wrote to understand what happened.

Then I wrote to understand who I was without all the things I thought defined me. And somewhere in all that writing, I found a spark—the part of me that had never really left. The part that still believed in joy. In truth. In trail dust and reinvention.

That’s what this journal is for.

It’s for the questions you’re ready to ask—and the truths you’re brave enough to write down.

It’s a place to rage. To grieve. To cuss and cry and laugh and dream. It’s a place to come home to yourself.

So take this journal and write like no one’s watching. Write the things you’ve never said out loud. Write your story, in your voice, for no one but you.

And if you ever feel like you’re too much?

Let this be your reminder:

You were never too much.

You were just never meant to be bottled up.

📚 What This Series Is

The Uncorked Cowgirl Journal is a 12-week guided writing experience—one part memoir, one part journal, and one part wild truth serum.

Every Tuesday, I’ll share a new essay that taps into a weekly theme—something messy, real, and deeply human.

You’ll read the essay, reflect, and (if you choose) journal about how the theme fits in your own life.

✍️ How to Use It

You can:

Follow along for free.

Journal in your own notebook.

Go deep or skim the surface.

But if you want the full experience—the journal I made for myself and now offer to you online — you can follow along with the series and in October grab the downloadable version with all the goods:

✅ 12 weeks of themed journaling

✅ Over 60 journaling prompts

✅ 12 weeks of rituals for clarity, courage, and connection

✅ AI prompts to deepen your reflection

✅ Bonus content, live journaling invites, and more

🪶 Our 12-Week Journey

Week 1: Uncork Yourself – You’re not too much; you were never meant to be bottled up.

Week 2: Wreckage – Sometimes the breakdown is the breakthrough.

Week 3: Wildness – “Tame” was never your story.

Week 4: Grit – What gets you back in the saddle after you fall.

Week 5: Boundaries – Not today, Satan. Or Tuesday. Or ever again.

Week 6: Forgiveness – We forgive because we deserve it.

**Week 6 (Bonus!):Memory & Meaning – What we carry, carries us back.

Week 7: Joy – Joy is an act of rebellion.

Week 8: Body – This body has carried you through every storm.

Week 9: Desire – What if wanting isn’t selfish, but sacred?

Week 10: Belonging – Home isn’t a place; it’s a feeling we give ourselves.

Week 11: Power – We aren’t reclaiming our power. We are remembering it.

Week 12: Becoming – You didn’t come this far just to come this far.

🚪 What’s Behind the Paywall

Starting next week, weekly posts will continue for everyone—but…

🔐 Paid subscribers ($8/month or $80/year) get:

• The full downloadable Uncorked Cowgirl Journal ($25 value, coming in October)

• All journal prompts & weekly rituals

• AI prompts for deeper reflection

• Bonus essays + subscriber-only content

• Invitations to live journaling sessions

✨ Your First Taste – Week 0: Uncork Yourself

5 Journal Prompts (Choose one or two a day, or use them all)

1. The Unspoken Truth – What is one thing you’ve never admitted out loud—even to yourself—because you were afraid of what it might change?

2. The Smallest Version of You – Think of a time you twisted yourself into something smaller to fit someone else’s story. What did you lose in the process?

3. The Wreckage Moment – When was the last time everything came apart? Write every gritty detail, without tidying it up.

4. The Spark That Survived – Even in your hardest season, what part of you never really left? Describe her in detail.

5. Too Much or Just Right? – Finish this sentence: If I stopped bottling myself up, I would… — and keep writing until you surprise yourself.

🌿 Ritual: The Bottle Break

You’ll need:

• An empty glass bottle or jar

• A marker or slips of paper

• A safe outdoor spot or trash bin

Step 1: Write down every belief, habit, or “should” that’s kept you small.

Step 2: Hold the bottle and say: “I am not here to be quiet, tame, or small. I uncork myself now.”

Step 3: Smash it (safely) or throw it away with intention.

Step 4: Breathe in fresh air; exhale the old stories.

🤖 AI Prompts

1. Deepening the Truth. Copy the text below and paste it into your favorite AI tool. Select a section of your journaling from above and paste it where it says, “PASTE ENTRY” and submit the prompt.

I’ve written the following journal entry: [PASTE ENTRY]. Help me uncover the hidden patterns, assumptions, or beliefs in my words that may be keeping me “bottled up.” Suggest 3 follow-up questions I can ask myself to go deeper.

2. Future Self Uncorked. Copy the text below and paste it into your favorite AI tool. Select a section of your journaling from above and paste it where it says, “PASTE ENTRY” and submit the prompt.

Based on the journal entry I’ve written here: [PASTE ENTRY], imagine and describe my life one year from now if I fully “uncorked” myself. Be specific, sensory, and bold—no shrinking me down.

Subscribe now