The Puzzle

My favorite childhood toy was my box of 64 crayons with the sharpener and the Stawberry Shortcake coloring book.

As I grew up I began to do puzzles with my Mom and Grandma.

There was something magical about opening the box, dumping hundreds of tiny pieces onto the table, and knowing that somewhere inside the chaos was a beautiful picture.

The first job was always the same.

Find the edge pieces.

Build the border.

Only then could the rest of the picture begin to make sense.

I think that's what the second half of life actually is. A puzzle we didn't get to see the box for.

For years, you've been collecting pieces without knowing it. A marriage. A career. Kids who needed you every hour of every day and then, seemingly overnight, didn't. Griefs you didn't have time to feel. Small joys you didn't have time to notice. Roles you said yes to because saying no felt selfish, or dangerous, or simply unthinkable.

At the time, none of it seemed connected. It was just Tuesday. And then another Tuesday. And another.

Then, somewhere around 45, or 50, or 55, something shifts. The kids are grown, or the career has plateaued, or a marriage ends, or doesn't, or a body forces a pause you didn't ask for. And suddenly you're standing over a table covered in pieces, wondering how you got here and what you're even supposed to be building.

I know that table. I've been sitting at mine for a long time now, sorting edge pieces from the middle, trying to find where my own border begins.

Here's what I didn't expect: I had help. A small group of women agreed to sit at the table with me — not to build it for me, but to help me see the edges more clearly. Their questions, their honesty, their willingness to say *I see that piece differently than you do* — that's what let the border start to take shape.

But yesterday I had a moment I wasn't expecting.

I realized I'd been staring at the picture on the box for so long that I assumed everyone at the table could see it too.

They couldn't.

They were holding individual pieces. I was holding the picture. And that wasn't anyone's fault — it's just what happens when you've lived with something in your heart longer than anyone else has had the chance to.

I think that's true for you too, whatever your version of this table looks like.

Maybe you're the only one who can see how the pieces of your last twenty years actually fit — the career you built, the family you raised, the losses you carried, the quiet resilience nobody clapped for. Maybe the people around you are only ever handed one piece at a time: one bad week, one good photo, one version of you. They don't see the whole picture. They can't. Only you can.

That's not isolating. It's just the truth of being the one who lived it.

And here's the part I keep coming back to: you don't have to have the whole picture finished to be proud of what you're building. I'm not proud today because everything is in place. I'm proud because I didn't quit when the table looked messy. I proud because this morning, I walked back to the puzzle instead of walking away from it.

That's really all any of us are asked to do. Not perfection. Not a finished picture. Just the willingness to come back to the table, one piece at a time — trusting that the picture we've been carrying in our hearts all along will eventually become visible. First to us. Then to everyone else.

If you're sitting at your own table right now, surrounded by pieces that don't seem to connect yet — I see you. Keep going. The border is closer than you think.

Until then...

I'll keep building. I hope you will too.