Joy among Clouds, Blessings among Challenges, Hope for Connection

Milwaukee, WI October 2025 

I orignally wrote this post the summer of 2026 and chose not to post it. I have decided to post this at a random day and time. Only God knows. Life has continued to through various challenges my way and yes, I have broken down a few times. I am finding more joy among the clouds, more blessings among the challenges, while I still hope for connection.

As my sister’s and I visited with my dad the last weeks of his life in October of 2016, we reconnected as the adult women that we have become. Though I am the baby of the family and am often seen through that lens instead of a 55 year old woman. I sometimes shake my head at it, but have given up the fight And allow them to see me as they want to. That time in 2016 was a very challenging time in our lives, especially for me. My emotions were sadly less about my father’s passing, and more about where I did or did not fit in that life. My parents separated and eventually divorced when I was 8 or 9 years old. My sisters were in or entering their teens. It took many conversations for us to truly realize how different our growing up experiences were. They have memories with my dad, that I didn’t have. I was surprised and enjoyed when they would share memories with me of funny stories or vacations that I was too young to remember. I think they were a bit surprised at the limited time I had or spoke with my dad over the previous 30-35 years. We spoke 3-4 times a year and we typically saw each other twice a year. They was a time between 16 - 18 years old that I saw him more because he moved a few miles from my home. He taught me to drive and even traveled to Maryland with my mom and I to visit my sister. It was just how things were between us. He was more of a friend than a dad. We talked about our relationship several times and were good with it. Not that I didn’t long for the father-daughter relationship, but I had been burned one too many times to trust it. My sisters had very different relationships with him and I am glad for that.

My sisters are both caregivers. That is a blessing that they have been born with. I often felt that it was a skill that I was personally missing and when I was with my sisters it would make me feel less than. Don’t get me wrong, I can care for people, but it is not innately inside of me. At times I still wonder what my blessing is? That is for another post. As my sisters and I were reconnecting, we were struggling with our roles in the not so good, stressful situation. Both being caregivers, but different communicators, I was witnessing that I was not the only one struggling with the dynamic. We did finally find our words and were able to talk through things. I had suggested having a Pow and Wow debrief every evening. We would each share one pow, negative thing that felt like a sucker punch that we experienced during the day. We would end on a blessing and share one wow, a positive thing or something that made us laugh or smile during the day. I feel that we connected even better after these little debriefs. We continued to call each other and share them, even after we had returned to our home states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Ohio for a couple months. I miss those sessions of talking to one another. Lives began to fill up with grandchildren and other life stuff and the conversations moved to Marco Polos video chats, to weekly text messages and eventually the occasional texts with a lot of fluff of updating the happenings in our lives, but not how we, as an individual, were feeling.

There has been a lot of pows happening on all sides of the board this summer. As positive as I try to be, I find the mundane, trivial inconveniences of life pulls me into a negative space. I don’t want to saccharin sweet and cover life with daisies and sugar. I want to remain authentic. I miss the debrief of the day that made me feel connected. I miss the laughter over someone else’s wows.