These past several weeks, my shares have been inspired by the mindfulness teachings of Hugh Byrne. This week, my share unexpectedly comes from a book that wasn’t part of my current “curriculum.”

During a recent visit with my mom, I began reading a novel written by my grandfather. I knew him as a poet of mountains and hollers, a man who loved his natural world deeply, writing about it long into the night after his daily work as a surveyor was done. What I didn’t realize was that, well into his later years, he had also written a novel featuring characters wrestling with love, resentment, belonging, and the desire for a simpler life.

As I turned the pages, I found myself wondering not just about the story he wrote, but about the feelings he might have carried — and the ones we inherit in ways we don’t always recognize.

The novel follows a young man named Jack, raised in wealth and emotional distance, who leaves behind the expectations of his upbringing in search of something more real — specifically, Violet, a young woman deeply rooted in her Valley of the Vye-Vye. Through his experiences with her good-hearted people in this Eden-like environment, he slowly opens his heart and releases the resentment he has carried toward his mother since childhood.

What stayed with me most was the tenderness beneath it all — the sense that my grandfather understood the healing love we yearn for when facing the “hurts that all children experience.” And the bravery. Without easy research, he imagined lives far from his own — a Chicago social world, a rebellious “hippie” spirit, a beauty pageant interrupted by a father’s fierce devotion to his people and their land. Even late in life, he was still expanding, still asking questions, still creating.

Reading his words, I began to notice how often his characters were asked to let go — of resentment, of status, of certainty — in order to return to something simpler and more alive.

It made me reflect on this winter season of my own life, this quiet releasing of old habits and expectations, and how the work of letting go may stretch far beyond a single lifetime. Perhaps each generation writes its own version of the same journey, searching for belonging, forgiveness, and a deeper sense of home.

I’m still sitting with all of it — the questions, the wonder, the feeling of being in conversation with someone who is no longer here, yet somehow still speaking.

Here’s to the stories that find us when we least expect them… and to the gentle letting go that ripples across generations, shaping who we are becoming in ways both seen and unseen.