Windkeeper

Some mornings I wake up and wonder how the hell we got here.
Not in a regretful way, more in that staring at the ceiling, “what day is it?” kind of way.

Coffee goes on. The sun creeps in. My husband still asleep, and I’m just sitting there, aware of the fact that we have no clue where we’ll be sleeping next week.

And not in the “how adventurous!” kind of way people romanticize. In the ‘we actually don’t know’ kind of way.

We’ve traded certainty for something less defined. We left the old systems behind: the calendars, the paychecks, the “shoulds.” And now we’re out here living in an RV, boondocking in random patches of land, setting intentions into the quiet, listening for what the earth mirrors back.

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There are no life manuals for this.

Nobody tells you how intense it is to build a life from intuition alone. To love someone through meltdowns, through panic attacks, through the disorientation of waking up and not recognizing the landscape. No one talks about how survival mode doesn’t just shut off once you opt out of the system; it follows you, sometimes louder than before.

And yet, we keep going.

Some days it feels like we’re just stringing together moments, hoping they hold. Hoping the WiFi works. Hoping our EBT balance lasts. Hoping we made the right call by leaving the last place. There are errands to run. Water to find. Laundry. A blog to build. Energy to conserve.

But in between all of that, there are things we couldn’t have planned for: a random blue bracelet hanging on a tree that feels like a message, the way my husband sings when he finally feels safe, that one brunch where the bagels and coffee were actually perfect, the quiet kind of magic that shows up when you’re so tired you stop performing.

We’re not trying to sell you a dream here. This is the part most people don’t post about; the part where you break down at a Walmart because everything is overstimulating, and the only thing that helps is sitting in the front seat and breathing in unison and taking back our power.

This is what it’s like to live without a map.
Raw. Exposed. Sacred.

Not lost, just feeling our way forward.
We might not know where we’ll be next week.
But we know we’re in it together.

And for now, that’s enough.

We didn’t fucking choose this.
We didn’t wake up one day and say, “You know what sounds fun? Losing everything. Burning it all down. Living out of an RV while our bodies unravel from trauma and our nervous systems scream for rest.”

No. This wasn’t some spiritual retreat. This wasn’t a curated van life fantasy with Pinterest sunsets and clean bathrooms. This was collapse. This was the death of everything we were told would keep us safe.

This was survival after being bled dry by a world that demanded our silence, our labor, our masks.
But when it all came crashing down, when there was no white picket fence, no miracle check, no backup plan…

We chose ourselves.

We chose the raw truth over performative wellness. We chose stillness over hustle. We chose each other when no one else stayed. We chose the fucking ground because there was nowhere left to fall.

People love to romanticize this kind of narrative. “Wow, you’re so brave!” or “Wow, you’re so resilient!” they say, from the comfort of their stable homes and predictable lives, like it’s a compliment. Like our survival is proof the system works. Like our capacity to endure makes the suffering acceptable.

But this isn’t bravery. And this isn’t resilience.This is refusal. Refusal to betray our own souls. Refusal to keep grinding ourselves into dust to make other people comfortable.

This life?

It’s not cute.
It’s not marketable.
It’s blood and bone.

It’s sensory overload in a grocery store parking lot.
It’s crying on the floor because you can’t find a water refill station and you’re too tired to care.
It’s choosing one more fucking time to not give up.

This path chose us.

But we chose what mattered: truth. sovereignty. each other.

And maybe that means we lose the safety nets.
Maybe that means we walk alone sometimes.
But we are not apologizing for saving our own lives.
This world tried to flatten us.
Tried to tell us we were too much, too broken, too sensitive.

But we are still here.
Still sacred.
Still fucking choosing.