October 18th 2026

   Right alongside it comes The Sip List, a small cookbook packed with all my favorite seasonal drinks. Both of these darlings hold a special place in my creative soul, and yes, they are completely Alpha-Gal friendly. In the middle of balancing word counts and design proofs, finding this story thread of simple comfort was a sweet gift I did not realize I needed.

   To be completely honest, I am more than ready to bid this year goodbye. While 2026 brought great strides for me as an author, as a human being it has tested every single drop of my strength. My year started with chemotherapy treatments for cancer discovered right after Thanksgiving 2025. Today is October 18th, 2026, which means I am officially six months out from my very last chemo session. That is a milestone I hold dear, yet the quiet relief did not last long.

    On September 2nd, my sweet mother passed away. After battling severe dementia at its absolute worst for over five years, she finally went to live with our Father, Lord, and Savior. She is finally at peace. Still, the loss hit our family hard—my four siblings, her eleven grandchildren, and twenty great-grandchildren are all missing her dearly.

    Just as I was starting to make peace with her absence, life threw another severe storm. On October 12th, my dear husband suffered a stroke and a seizure. It was brought on by scar tissue over the speech center of his brain from a previous stroke fifteen years ago—one initialized by a terrifying low blood sugar drop below twenty that by all rights should have left him in a coma. As a Type 1 diabetic who is also a kidney and pancreas transplant recipient, he is a true fighter. But spending two days in a hospital two hours away took everything out of me.

    No sleep. Endless waiting. The longest week of my life.

    Facing four months of chemo was frightening, but the raw stress of almost losing him felt so much harder to handle than my own brush with death. Even when every character whispering in your head falls silent and the world feels like a blank page wiped clean by grief, you just keep stepping forward. You anchor yourself in love and keep breathing. You can read more about that part of my story over on my cancer blog at journey.rlbdesigns.com.

    To every creative soul wrestling with heavy burdens on your own pages today, know that you are not alone. What are you holding onto on your pages right now?