The Value of Face Value

Take a look at the woman in these photos.

What's your first impression? Go ahead, be honest with yourself.

Maybe you see someone confident. Put-together. Full of life, clearly thriving. Maybe you think she's fun, magnetic, someone you'd want in your corner. Maybe she looks like someone who has never had a hard day in her life.

Or maybe — and some of you will relate to this — your gut goes somewhere else entirely. Stuck up. Arrogant. She thinks she's something. First impressions cut both ways.

Either way, you made a call. Quickly, instinctively, and probably with a fair amount of confidence that you were right.

That's what we do. We are wired to read the surface and move on.

But what if the surface is just a veil?

What the Veil Hides

Now look at this one.

Same woman. Same blonde hair. Same person you just sized up in two seconds flat.

She is sitting alone on the floor of a church. Not in a pew. On the floor — cross-legged, head bowed, inches from a casket draped in flowers and a jersey with the number 19.

Inside that casket is her daughter, Ava.

Ava was killed in a murder-suicide — by her father. My husband.

These are my final private moments with my baby girl before the doors of that church opened and the rest of the world came to say goodbye.

No camera crew. No audience. Just a mother and her daughter, and a grief so enormous it could only be held on the floor.

Now go back to your first impression.

Does it hold?

The Difference Between Knowing and Connecting

This is exactly why I can't let perception be the end of the story — for any of us.

Knowing someone, sharing a network, being a familiar face in someone's feed — none of that is connection. Not really. Connection is what happens when two people decide to go deeper. When shared values, lived experience, vulnerability, and authenticity are exchanged. When there is a genuine investment in each other — not just a mutual follow or a polite handshake.

The woman laughing in that first photo and the woman on that church floor are the same person. Both are real. Both are true. And you would never have known one existed without the other.

That's true for most of us.

We are all walking around with a version of ourselves that the world sees — and a version that lives in the quiet, sacred, unseen spaces. And real connection is what happens when someone earns the right to witness both.

What I Want You to Know

I love sharing the good stuff. I genuinely believe that joy is real, that stupendous love is possible, and that a full, beautiful life is worth fighting for — even when fighting feels impossible.

But I also know that the highlight reel isn't the whole story. It never is.

On the surface I look great. I'm okay. I'm healed. I'm thriving. And, and, and…

But that's the veil talking.

The truth is that my life includes a depth of loss that most people will never have to know. And I share that — not for sympathy, not for shock — but because I think most of you reading this have your own floor. Your own church. Your own grief that the world never got to see.

You showed up anyway. You put on the outfit, took the photo, and smiled for the camera. And you carried something enormous underneath it all.

That is not weakness. That is one of the most human things there is.

Dig a Little Deeper

The richness of a stupendous life — one truly full of love — doesn't live on the surface. It lives in the messy, complicated, sacred, beautiful underneath.

So if something here resonates — if you feel seen in these words — I want to invite you to go deeper. With the people in your life. With yourself. With me.

Because the real stuff has always been beneath the surface.

Do you still love it?

Good. That's where we begin.