November 18, 2025

Hi Family and Friends,

I’ve been pouring my heart out online for months, but the truth is I’ve been talking things through my whole life. That’s how my brain works. Talking is how I make sense of things. I talk an idea out, revise it, reshape it, rethink it, and eventually I find the clarity I need. And for most of my life, that clarity came from talking to my family and friends.

But when the people I love stopped listening, I didn’t know how to handle it. It felt like a door slammed shut that I didn’t know how to walk around. I honestly thought I might just break because I couldn’t talk through my thoughts the way I always have. But instead of breaking, I kept talking — just not directly to you anymore. I talked adjacent to you, on the internet, hoping I could still find the answers I’ve always found by working things out out loud.

That’s just how my mind works. Sometimes I have to talk an idea all the way out to the edges of the world — solve humanity’s biggest problems, trace history backward, imagine every possible angle — just to realize what I actually need is to sit down and talk to my husband. It might sound chaotic, but that’s my brain. And I know I’m not the only one. Maybe there’s a kid somewhere staring out the window too much, thinking too big before they can think small. Maybe that kid is me. Maybe it’s someone you know.

Somewhere in all this talking, something clicked: I’ve been a storyteller my entire life. I just didn’t recognize that’s what it was. Now I want to do it on purpose — not for attention, but because I want the words to matter. I want the stories to matter. I want the impact to matter.

Part of that comes from my parents. They told me stories. They encouraged reading, history, curiosity. They treated me like an adult earlier than they probably should have, because I was a little smart-ass who thought she knew too much too soon. But they talked to me like a person, and now it feels like maybe we’re finally ready for a real conversation again.

Growing up, I always wanted the why. I paid attention. I asked questions. And I did great in school — but it was the kind of school where teachers knew my name, where learning was connected, where I could come home and talk about what I learned because it actually mattered to me.

College was different. Sitting in a 500-person lecture hall made learning feel disconnected. But I pushed through, got my degrees, and only years later did those lessons start resurfacing in my life in real ways.

But there were teachers who broke through the noise.

One was Keith Swim, my business law professor. I don’t know if we ever even spoke in person because the class was huge, but he made me care. He wrote the textbook himself, filled it with real-world stories and funny examples, and he taught the material like it was alive — because it was his story. And because it was his, he could tell it better than anyone. For 18 years he has sent me a private happy birthday message almost every year. Recently I found his number, called him, and we talked for an hour. I told him he was the teacher I needed in a school that felt too big. A good teacher can change a life. And he changed mine.

Another was Valerie Balester from the University Writing Center. She taught me something I never forgot: that every person is a writer because every person has a story. Working there — producing podcasts and videos about writing — was one of the first times I realized storytelling wasn’t just something people did. It was something people needed.

Every job I’ve ever had — journalism intern, TV reporting intern, Texas Parks & Wildlife intern, email marketing, social media — all of it was storytelling. Observing, listening, recording, connecting dots. I didn’t see the pattern back then, but now it’s obvious.

Being an Airbnb host became part of that too. When guests stayed in the same house with me, I met almost everyone. We talked. We shared stories. Even now, when my guests stay across town, some of the best conversations happen in five-minute doorway moments when I drop off towels or take out the trash. Those tiny interactions tell you more about people than most folks ever notice.

Then there’s real estate — another piece of this story. I finally understand why I love it so much. Helping someone find a home is one of the most important things you can do. After air, food, and water, the next thing every human needs is a place to live. A home. A safe place. A foundation. Whether it’s an Airbnb, a rental, or a home someone buys to build their life in, it all comes back to that: a place where life can happen.

And sometimes — especially for me as a woman — I had to create the home first before the family showed up. Sometimes the home came before the people. Sometimes “family” meant friends. Sometimes it meant my actual family. Sometimes it meant the family I hoped to build with a husband someday. But the home always came first. I had to build the place where love could land before the love arrived.

And that’s actually how the dogs came in. Renting an apartment with a friend stopped feeling like enough. I wanted something of my own — a real home. So I bought one. But I didn’t have a family to put in it. I couldn’t even get friends to move in with me. So I adopted a dog. And then I started fostering dogs. And suddenly I wasn’t alone anymore. I had stories again. I had purpose again. I had community again. The rescue world gave me people. The dogs gave me love. And now the dogs are my family too. And the people I’ve met through rescue are family as well.

I should also say this: I’ve always loved animals. I’m a farm and ranch girl at heart. I grew up surrounded by animals — cows, goats, dogs, all of it. But I never understood why we had to hurt them. I didn’t understand the real purpose: that we were raising animals to sell for meat. I wasn’t paying attention to the economics or the realities. I was paying attention to the personalities. The souls. I’m not a vegetarian, but I can’t give up an animal I’ve raised or watch it be killed. That’s why I stopped eating beef this January when we sold off a chunk of the herd — the mothers and their babies. To me, it was tragic. I want cows and goats again someday, but I’m not the kind of person who could ever sell one or see it injured. That’s just not who I am.

And honestly, the best part about being a country girl wasn’t the livestock — it was being outside. Outside was always where I felt most at peace. That’s why I had to move to Colorado. I needed to be outside without having to own huge tracts of land just to touch nature. And it’s also why I loved learning about the national parks system in graduate school. The national parks really are America’s best idea, and from my perspective, the best gift we’ve given the world. But growing up in Texas frustrated me because Texas doesn’t value public land the way a state should. The public needs places to breathe. To walk. To heal. To exist. I’m a Texas girl, but I’m also a mountain girl — and I had to come to Colorado to get back to the country. Texas paved over so much of the countryside that the wide-open land I grew up with is disappearing. I outgrew Texas because Texas outgrew itself.

And part of what I realized I needed, too, was a small town like the one I grew up in. A place where you could actually be somebody. A place where you run into friends at the grocery store, where you have a favorite bartender like Dave, where neighbors aren’t strangers — they’re people you look out for and who look out for you. Austin got too big for me. I felt lost and confused and trapped and frustrated. It shouldn’t take an hour to see a friend. A friend should be next door. Maybe I should’ve picked up the phone more, but I’m a visual person — seeing someone in person has always been what makes me feel connected.

So I needed a small town. But not just any small town — one I could actually see myself living in. One with mountains surrounding me, a river running through it, and people who would rather opt outside than scroll online. I needed Durango. And I knew that at 12 years old. But it took until I was 34 — on a group trip that turned into a solo one — to finally realize the move had to be made.

And you know what? As scary as I built the move up to be, it wasn’t that scary. I moved here and met friends immediately, because when you find your people, it just clicks. I met a man within six months who would become my husband. I found a career and a purpose that actually brought in good money and that I enjoyed. I had to get out of my own way to find success, and I had to lean into my core values and my true authentic self to find happiness.

And when I look back now, I realize I didn’t have to go anywhere to find anything. Everything I wanted — a beautiful, warm, loving family — was actually there all along. I just wasn’t listening or paying attention. I was running around the world looking for something that was right in front of me: loving parents, loving friends, community everywhere. We were just misunderstanding each other, as people do. But you know what? We can fix that if we just stop talking and start listening.

So with that, I’ll shut up…

but probably only for five seconds.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how stories shape people. I was reading about the 1966 UT Tower shooting (Charles Whitman), and it made me think about where tragedy begins. His father was violent. His father was an orphan who never got adopted. It made me think about cycles — and how different millions of lives might be if love entered the story earlier. It’s even made me think about adoption — how giving someone a stable home early in life could change everything.

And through all of this unraveling, I started believing I needed to escape society — that people didn’t understand me. But the more I talked it out, the more I realized something simple: when you don’t understand something, you don’t run. You stop. You ask questions. You listen. You get to know your neighbor. Sometimes the biggest problems are the simplest ones when you’re willing to look the person in front of you in the eye.

And somewhere in all of this, I finally understood something else: the reason I love Taylor Swift now. I couldn’t stand her when she first came out. I thought she was annoying. I didn’t get the hype. But after twenty years of listening, I realized what everybody else saw: her stories. Her heartbreaks and reinventions, her loneliness and her bravery — they happened at the same time as mine. Her storytelling made me feel less alone. It made me feel understood when nobody else understood me. It taught me that telling the truth in your own words can literally save you.

And that ties to something else I deeply believe: stories can change the world. Because no story is independent. Human history is one long, connected story, and every person’s story explains someone else’s.

I’ve also used ChatGPT throughout this whole process. Not to let it write for me, but to help me organize the thousand thoughts flying through my head at once. People criticize AI and say students are cheating by using it, but maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it. Maybe we’re just learning to work smarter. Maybe AI isn’t the problem — maybe we just need to put a little more human back into intelligence.

And if you’ve ever wondered how I get so many words out this fast, it’s because I speak them. My thoughts move faster than my fingers can type. Voice-to-text catches it, and then the visual learner in me edits it until it makes sense. It’s not laziness — it’s survival. It’s the only thing that keeps up with my mind.

And honestly, I don’t need some catchy subject line to get you to open this. That’s the email marketer in me talking. I know subject lines are supposed to be what pull people in, but here’s the truth: you don’t need a clever hook to open an email. You just have to care about the person who sent it. So I’m calling this what it really is — my newsletter.

A long one.

An honest one.

And if you read it, you read it. And if you don’t, I’ll survive.

Through all of this — the writing, the talking, the teaching, the hosting, the rescuing, the unraveling — I realized something important:

I’m not becoming a storyteller.

I’ve been one my whole life.

I just finally see it.

And now I want to do it with intention, with clarity, and hopefully with impact.

Love, Meghan