Three Days. Three Thresholds.
Some thresholds you see coming from a distance, the way you watch a coastline appear on the horizon. Others arrive suddenly, like a door swinging open in a place you thought was a wall.
The past three days have been both. Three days, three thresholds, each one a passage into a deeper knowing of who I am, where I come from, and how I see the world.
On the first day, I stood under the flarelight of memory, my grandfather’s presence vivid as if he had just walked into the room. I thought I already knew his stories, the war, the wounds, the letters home. But this time, I heard one I had never known.
My uncle told it in fragments, the way memory sometimes comes. My grandfather was in the trench, shrapnel lodged in his forehead. He had already learned what the night would hold: soldiers around him bleeding out, and no help coming until morning because the human waves would not stop until dawn. He was alone. And yet, in that darkness, he had a book in his hands.
Twenty seconds of flarelight, that was all he had at a time, scattered here and there through the long night. Twenty seconds to see enough to read as many words of hope as his eyes could take in before the dark returned. I didn’t know why that image rooted so deeply in me, why my chest ached hearing it, until later.
What I hadn’t realized in that first telling was that he wasn’t reading to pass the time or distract himself from fear, he was reading to hold on. Later, my uncle told me the exact page number: 475. I found the words. I read them over and over and over again. And then I understood.
I understood because I have lived my own darkness, not the darkness of a battlefield, but the darkness of surrendering to my alcoholism. I know what it is to live in the long night, and I know what twenty seconds of flarelight feels like. That was all it took, the twenty seconds it took for me to say, “I need help.” Those twenty seconds became the thin thread that carried me through the last three months of my drinking, even in my darkest moments. That flarelight guided me until I could step fully into the day.
That’s why I felt pulled to him in that story. My grandfather and I, a lifetime apart and in very different wars, both chose to trust our higher power, even when we couldn’t yet name it, to carry us through the darkness. And that connection to my higher power has only grown stronger with each passing day.
It is as if our timelines bent toward each other, his trench and my present, until we could stand side by side in that shared knowing. Not just reaching into the past, but meeting in the middle, both of us holding the light until the next flare came.
It wasn’t the only story that stayed with me that day. Another surfaced, one I had never heard before, and one I have no memory of living. I must have been three or four years old. My grandfather had passed away, the services were over, and everyone had returned to my grandparents’ house. My uncle said the house felt like it had a hole in it, the weight of my grandfather’s absence pressing into every adult, every older grandchild.
But me? At such a young age, I couldn’t possibly understand the reality of what had happened. No one was speaking of it in front of my grandmother, who was in the kitchen, cleaning. Cleaning to keep her hands busy, to keep her mind from the pain. If I am like her at all, and I think I am, we share that trait, though I have since learned to use it to work through rather than avoid.
My uncle told me that I simply walked into the kitchen and, without hesitation, asked, “Do you miss him?” My grandmother turned to see her youngest grandchild’s face and simply said, “Yes, I do.” That was it. A moment so small in action, yet so sharp in memory for those who witnessed it.
I wonder now, how did I know? Even if someone had told me he was gone, how did I know what that truly meant? And why, at that age, would I know to ask my grandmother of all people? These are the kinds of stories that sit heavier and deeper now. And to know that such a moment happened, but that I have no conscious memory of it, makes it even more intriguing, like a thread that has always been there, waiting for me to pull.
The second day was rooted in work, though I couldn’t shake the lingering feeling of the ceremony the night before. I had a meeting that had been rescheduled from earlier in the week, and of course the timing fell perfectly, on the Lions Gate Portal. And the meeting? Exactly the type of aligned connection you’d expect at this point.
I met with a woman to collaborate on a preview we could share with the world before Thrivewell’s physical space is ready. We spoke about our journeys, our struggles, our hopes, and our dreams. Hours passed like minutes. It became clear there was a reason I had been pulled toward her, and a reason she accepted my invitation so readily. What I didn’t expect was that while we began shaping the preview I want to release for Thrivewell, I was also given a preview of myself in my role as Founder.
In the middle of our conversation, there was a moment where I could help her cut through the noise, the distractions, the doubts, the chaos life can so easily layer over the truth, and see more clearly the path forward. How to stand in her authentic self. How to trust that her voice matters. To leave a mark on someone’s life in that way, in real time, is humbling. And it felt like only the beginning.
When I came home, I cleaned the garage, part ritual, part reflection, and sat with the feeling of it all. That’s when the questions started rising, not from doubt or fear, but from a desire to understand: Why is all of this happening now? How do I read the signs better? How do I trust my intuition, my gut, even more than I already do?
The third day took me deeper into my own mind. I began to understand my inner workings at a new level. I’ve always known that when I see something in my mind’s eye, I see it as a finished thing, not as a rough idea, but as if it already exists, complete down to the smallest detail. The grain of the wood. The way the light falls across a floor. The scent in the air. I used to think this made me “just a dreamer.” Now I see it for what it is: a gift.
And this realization explained something else: why I have always excelled in the business world, especially in process and operations. When a challenge or gap appears, I don’t just see the problem, I see the solution, fully built. I can see how to construct it from the ground up, identify the skills needed to make it happen, teach those skills to others, and put systems in place to hold it accountable over time. I never fully understood why this came so naturally to me until now, it is the same wiring, the same gift, applied in a different arena.
I see the end result, and then I work backwards through every layer until I can bring it into the world, piece by piece, with precision. This is how I have been able to see Thrivewell so clearly, not as a wish or a someday, but as a place that already exists inside me. My work is simply to translate it into reality.
The third day was also the most subtle, and maybe the most important. It happened under the light of the Sturgeon Full Moon, a moon known for abundance, resilience, and the strength to persevere through the long haul. The sturgeon itself is an ancient fish, a survivor of deep waters, thriving in conditions where others cannot. To have this moon rise on the heels of the first two days, carrying its message of endurance and reward after persistence, felt almost uncanny.
It was on this day that I crossed the threshold into showing this part of myself without apology. I’ve long feared that sharing the full scope of how I think and see might invite misunderstanding, that people might mislabel me, judge me, or, worst of all, decide I’ve “lost it.” But the timing of these three days in a row, the flarelight of my grandfather’s story, the aligned meeting on Lions Gate, and now the Sturgeon Moon, made it impossible to ignore the message: that the very vision I’ve been tempted to hide is the vision I’m here to honor.
But these three days have anchored something deeper: the confidence to show this side openly, to speak it aloud, to let it be seen without flinching. I understand now that my mind doesn’t work “in spite of” me, it works for the life I am here to build. The very wiring I once questioned is the architecture of my purpose. And it is not my job to dilute the truth of what I see to make it easier for others to accept.
These thresholds, of self-trust, of release, of clarity, have left me changed in ways that feel permanent. I can’t go back to doubting the gifts I carry, or hiding them for safety.
I have always believed that the vision for Thrivewell was building me as much as I was building it. After these three days, I know that’s true. And I know the path ahead, while still long, is lit, not just by the stars above or the flarelight of those who came before, but by the steady fire I carry within me now.
Three days. Three thresholds. And on the other side: a Founder who is no longer afraid to stand in the fullness of what she sees.
But I don’t think these thresholds are just mine. We all have our own flarelight moments, those brief bursts of clarity in the dark, when we’re given just enough light to take the next step. We all have meetings that arrive in perfect timing, conversations that shift something inside us, days that pull us deeper into the truth of who we are.
So I’ll leave you with this:
What were your last three thresholds?
Where did you feel the flarelight break through, even if just for seconds at a time?
And what part of yourself are you ready to stop hiding, to trust more fully, to carry forward into the life you’re building?
The path ahead belongs to all of us. And perhaps the greatest gift we can give each other is the courage to share the light we find, no matter how brief, until the next flare comes.
With courage in the dark and gratitude in the light,
Kelley