Big Honor 📣

Friends—

I’m honored (and still catching my breath a bit, post Pine Mountain EXTREME race!) to share that my poem “The Box” was awarded Honorable Mention in the Rhyming Poetry category of the 94th Annual Writer’s Digest Writing Competition—selected from nearly 3,800 submissions across 45 countries.

This isn’t just a writing win—it’s a witness.

“The Box” was born from silence, prayer, and a small cardboard box that once held nine miraculous medals. I didn’t write it for applause—I wrote it because it carried something too sacred to stay unwritten: my story, my survival, and the still, small voice that whispered: God sees. Even here. Even now.

To have this poem recognized—is something I hold with deep humility and quiet awe. My name and poem will appear on WritersDigest.com later this fall. AND, I’ll get a fun graphic for my website!

This isn’t just a mid-year check-in. It’s a look at what I’ve walked through to still be standing.

I’ve faced betrayal, burnout, and broken systems. I’ve lived through the kind of silence that tries to bury you. But I kept showing up. I kept writing. I kept praying. I’ve rebuilt rooms in my home and reclaimed parts of myself in the process.

I’ve found strength in sacred spaces—some made of bricks, some made of people. I sang in a choir I never thought I’d join—because I was the quiet ballet dancer, trained to move without making a sound. I had never really learned to use my voice… until now.

This is the story of how I kept going.

Not because it was easy.

But because the call was louder than the silence.

👉 If you need a reminder that healing is possible—read this. 💒🩰

Four years ago, I planted red poppy seeds and prayed for beauty to grow from broken ground. Nothing came—until now.

This is not just a story about gardening. It’s about finding hope in the silence, grace in the waiting, and peace in the places the world overlooks. It’s about quiet strength, sacred timing, and the unexpected ways God shows He sees us—even when no one else does.

If you’ve ever felt unseen, unheard, or planted in pain—this story is for you.

👉 Come see what finally bloomed. 🌱⛪️📿🥀🪻

There’s something about standing in the dust with a mic in your hand that stays with you—especially when you know what it took to be there.

This is the final installment in a four-part series that’s never just been about rodeo. It’s about what it means to stand your ground when no one else is standing with you. About motherhood, faith, betrayal, and the kind of grit that doesn’t wash off. It’s about showing up—even when the credit doesn’t.

In Part IV, I return to the arena where everything collided: my son’s eleventh birthday, my college graduation, and a sacred assignment someone else tried to take. But I didn’t let go. Because that story—like the dust I carried home on my boots—was mine.

My son called me after Sunday Mass to tell me his flying lesson went “really fun.” He’s growing up fast. I’m juggling a full-time job, emergency management training, faith commitments, a home restoration, and prepping for an agility test. Life is full—but so is my heart.

This series isn’t over. More stories will come. I just can’t say when.

But I promise: when they do, they’ll be rooted in truth. Just like this one.

Click to read the full story + watch a special video of my son’s first flying lesson.

In Part I of When the Dust Settles, I shared the story behind a sacred rodeo weekend that collided with my college graduation and my son’s eleventh birthday — a story of homecoming, heartbreak, and holding on. Part II dug even deeper, bringing readers behind the lens as I filmed from the dirt itself, capturing not just a rodeo, but a testimony — of identity, integrity, and invisible grit.

Now, in Part III, everything breaks open.

Just weeks after being quietly passed over for a role I’d already earned, I was hit in a downtown intersection — my car totaled, my dominant hand broken, my work and wellbeing pushed past the brink. What followed wasn’t sympathy, but silence. And yet, I kept walking. Kept reporting. Kept holding onto my faith.

This chapter includes something especially close to my heart: a video of my son taking his first flying lesson — a small reminder of the legacy I’m building, one story at a time, one step at a time.

Click this chapter to read Part III — a story about what it really cost me to be seen, and why I kept going anyway.

And stay tuned for Part IV: Two Years Later, and I Still Remember the Dirt — where I reflect on how far we’ve come, what I still carry, and what happens when your truth refuses to be cut.

Part II: Dust in My Teeth, A Story Worth the Fight

Last time, I took you into the red clay and grit of a rodeo arena — and into the deeper terrain of motherhood, sacrifice, and a career I fought for the hard way. I told you how I almost lost the story that was mine to tell — a story born from the same dust that raised me.

In Part II, I go beyond the headlines. I work the rodeo from inside the rails, capturing not just the action, but the soul of a place and the people who live it. You’ll meet young riders chasing grit over glory, and see why this story wasn’t just worth telling — it was worth fighting for.

And in Part III? You’ll find out what happened when the dust settled — and why it took losing almost everything before anyone finally saw what I had built.

When the Dust Settles isn’t just a blog series — it’s a reckoning. A reclamation of stories that were nearly stolen, silenced, or stripped down to something unrecognizable. It’s about the cost of telling the truth in an industry that too often rewards the loudest voices, not the most lived-in ones. These aren’t just reflections. They’re records — of moments I fought to cover, of stories I had to defend just to tell, and of the quiet, unwavering grit it took to keep going when no one was clapping.

This first chapter — A Rodeo, a Graduation, and a Birthday I Wouldn’t Miss — starts where so many things in my life converge: a dirt arena, a video call with my son, and a camera in my dust-covered hands. It was supposed to be just another summer assignment. But for me, it was personal. I didn’t just cover the rodeo. I came home to it. And when they tried to take that story from me, I did something I rarely did: I said no.

Because some stories are more than headlines. They’re heartlines. And this one? This one was mine.

— Aimée

A Story That Shaped Me: A Reflection on Faith, Loss, and Legacy

I brought a simple box of medals to church, hoping for a quiet blessing. I didn’t expect a packed First Communion Mass, an unsettling encounter, or the spiritual resistance I’d face. But that morning became a turning point—a moment where grace met spiritual warfare, and I was reminded that God sees what others ignore. This is the true story of how I stood firm, found clarity, and reclaimed something deeper than I came with.