(gentle music) - When I was seven, my friend's mom gave me a ride home.

I didn't get rides home often because I lived way up at the top of a mountain, outside of town.

We were not on anyone's route home.

But on that day, as I gave her directions of the winding road, my friend's mom suddenly stopped.

"Oh no," She said, "there's a dead end sign.

We must have gotten lost."

And to be honest, that was the first time in my life I had ever seen that dead end sign, but I suddenly understood exactly what it meant.

"Oh no," I said, "keep going, I live at the dead end," and I did.

Actually, I lived a little bit past the dead end.

You get to the end of the pavement and you take a ride onto the gravel road.

It was an old logging road that had become our driveway.

My family was the last house on the road before it became truly impassable.

And after that, there was nothing but wilderness for miles.

Our home was quiet, simple, tucked into the mountainside far from the neighborhoods and sidewalks.

My mom stayed at home and my dad built houses.

We had a garden for food and most of our meat came from deer hunting.

We picked blackberries off the side of the road and sometimes there was even enough leftover after we ate it all for jam.

We had every pet imaginable.

Started with dogs and cats and then fish and goats and pigs and lizards and turtles, and a couple exotic pets my brothers brought home as well.

My grandparents lived on the same mountain, and we went to their house frequently because they had a drawer in their kitchen with full-sized candy bars just for the grandkids.

That mountain was rugged and real, and it was all I knew.

I felt proud of my roots, thankful for what I had.

I was grounded.

But I grew up and I left the mountain.

I went to college, I got married, and eventually I moved to Atlanta.

It was exciting.

It was full of lights and motion and possibilities, but the mountain was still home.

I moved a few more times before settling here in Virginia, and that's where home started to shift for me.

I had children, I built a business, and daily life started to take shape, not just in routine but in identity.

One day after visiting my parents up on the mountain, I was driving away and I realized something.

I wasn't leaving home anymore, I was heading home to Virginia.

That was my home now.

I had created my own life, my new home.

It was a home I was responsible for creating for others.

Home was no longer a place that I returned to for comfort, it was something I provided.

I wanted to give my children the warmth and safety that I had known.

I wanted our home to feel peaceful, beautiful, sacred.

I worked from home and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Home was my safe place.

And then Covid hit.

And at first I was excited.

Two weeks, my whole family home, I was super mom.

We were doing puzzles, we were reading books, we were doing school.

It was a blast.

I would do anything just to keep us entertained.

And as we all know, that lasted much longer than two weeks.

We took on major remodeling projects.

We painted everything in the house.

I even started a garden, not very successfully.

I did everything I possibly could to carve out our little piece of paradise in the city.

But somewhere along the way, home began to lose its warmth and I began to lose pieces of myself.

The walls started to feel like they were closing in, and no matter how much I painted or rearranged, I couldn't shake the heaviness I felt deep in my chest.

I felt lonely in a full house, disoriented in a place I was supposed to feel the most grounded.

The air felt different.

What once felt like a refuge slowly became a place where I questioned everything, including myself.

Home had always been my safe place.

But during that season, it became the place where I unraveled.

I felt like my own dead enzyme.

I was pouring everything I had into creating a home that felt warm and safe for everyone else, but inside I was falling apart.

I was exhausted in ways I couldn't explain.

I questioned everything about who I was, what I wanted and what I was doing.

Worst of all, I second guessed my own instincts.

I felt invisible in my own life, unsure of my own voice, like I was fading from the inside out.

And the hardest part, no one around me knew.

I kept showing up, I kept smiling.

I kept checking the boxes and made dinners and memories, picnics and vacations.

But behind the scenes, I was unraveling thread by thread.

But in that unraveling, a quiet part of me kept going.

I didn't pack up or run, I stayed, I breathed, I listened to myself, and slowly I began to rebuild, not the walls but myself this time.

I stopped searching for home in fresh paint or healthy dinners or anyone else's version of peace, I started listening to what was already inside of me.

The irony is I had been there before, faced with a sign that said dead end, knowing in my gut that it wasn't.

At seven years old, I told my friend's mom to keep going because I lived past the dead end sign.

And now all these years later, I realize that I still do.

The road and my life didn't stop at the dead end, it turned to gravel, it got rough.

But I knew the way forward then, and I know it now.

Thank you.

(audience cheering and applauding) (gentle music)