True North Thoughts

Tag: relationships

  • The Difference And What It Taught Me

    I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between knowing someone and treating them well.

    Sometimes people stay connected out of habit—history, routine, shared chapters—and we call that closeness. But real closeness isn’t access. It isn’t constant contact. It’s respect, awareness, and the ability to show up without making the other person carry your weight on top of their own.

    I’ve also learned that not all disrespect is loud. A lot of it shows up quietly: assumptions, one-size-fits-all advice, and comparisons nobody asked for. The kind of talk that sounds harmless if you’ve never had to grind for stability—if you’ve never had to think through consequences, tradeoffs, and the long game just to keep life steady. Over time, that creates distance, because one person feels understood and the other feels managed.

    I don’t need anyone to fix my life. I don’t need big speeches or grand gestures. I need relationships that feel even—where support doesn’t come with a scoreboard, and where being “helpful” doesn’t turn into talking down to someone who’s still fighting for footing.

    I’m not angry. I’m just paying attention to what actually feels healthy. And I’m giving myself permission to choose peace without making a production out of it.

    If this post made you feel some sort of way, consider reaching out to the person who came to mind. Closing the gap might be the start of repairing what’s strained.

    If you’ve been on either side of a friendship that’s shifted—whether you were the one holding on or the one stepping back—feel free to share your thoughts in the comments. What did you learn? What helped? What do you wish you said sooner?

    And if this hit close to home and you don’t want to say it publicly, you’re not alone. Leave a comment and I’ll reach back out, or just say “connect” and we can talk. Sometimes having one steady conversation is enough to start moving things in a better direction.

    If you think someone else might need this, share it. You never know who’s quietly trying to figure out the same thing.

  • Snow, Silence, and the Questions I Can’t Ignore

    Saturday morning, before my eyes were even open, the world was already moving. A quick snow squall had blown through at dawn, leaving a thin fresh coat of white across the ground — not much, just enough to remind me that winter is fully here now. The kind of snowfall that doesn’t slow anything down, but quietly announces the season in its own subtle way.

    I woke to the sound of my father calling my name, his voice cutting through the grogginess that still clung to me. Half-asleep, I asked why he woke me so early. His reply came simply, the way it always does this time of year: “It snowed.”

    And that was that.
    No time to think.
    No easing into the morning.

    Just the familiar shift from sleep to responsibility.

    I got up, pulled myself together, and headed out to find salt and start the morning rounds. The air was cold, sharp enough to wake me faster than any alarm clock ever could. The ground crunched under my boots, the way it only does after the first real touch of winter. Another day of work was already waiting for me before the sun had fully taken its place in the sky.

    While that wasn’t my whole day — only a few hours, really — it gave me something I didn’t realize I needed: time to breathe, to reflect, and to catch up with friends and loved ones I hadn’t spoken to much this week. As I made my rounds and handled the morning tasks, I found myself having real conversations again. Not rushed check-ins, not stress-driven calls, just simple moments of connection.

    And what struck me most was how okay everyone seemed to be. No emergencies. No crises. No situations that needed me to jump in and fix something that felt impossible to fix. Just normal conversations. Just updates. Just life.

    There was a calming feeling in that — a sense of relief I didn’t expect. It’s rare these days to have conversations where I don’t feel the weight of needing to problem-solve or carry someone else’s burden. Sometimes you forget how peaceful it can feel when talking to people doesn’t require you to react, rescue, or repair anything. Just listening, laughing, catching up, being present.

    For a few hours, that was enough.
    And if I’m being honest, it was exactly what I needed.

    As the day drew on, I found myself sitting here writing this, and the same thought keeps circling in my mind: I need to make changes in my life — real, significant ones — to give my children the happiness they deserve. The question now is what that change is supposed to look like.

    Do I try to move back to that small, quiet town with nothing around it, simply to give them what they’re asking for? Do I uproot everything again so they can be reunited with the friends they miss and return to the school they feel connected to? These questions repeat themselves in my head like a loop I can’t pause.

    Deep down, I know exactly what it feels like to be moved away from the place you grew up, from the friends who shaped your childhood, from the streets and hallways that felt like home. I’ve lived that pain. I still carry pieces of it. And maybe that’s why this decision weighs so heavily on me. I don’t want my kids to feel the same loss I felt.

    But the reality is complicated. That small town doesn’t offer many steady, year-round jobs. Going back means risking financial instability — and once you fall behind in a town like that, it’s not easy to climb back out. I have to think about stability just as much as I think about their happiness. I have to balance the emotional cost with the practical one.

    These thoughts pull at me from both sides, and the truth is, I don’t have an answer yet. But owning that uncertainty feels like the first step toward figuring out what comes next.

    Part of what makes this decision weigh so heavily on me is that I’ve already lived the aftermath of being moved away. I know what it feels like to suddenly disappear from the world you grew up in — to become the kid whose picture ends up on a yearbook page titled “Students We’ve Missed.” At the time, seeing my face there hit me in a way I still remember. It was a strange mix of comfort and sadness: comfort that people still thought of me, sadness that I wasn’t there anymore to be part of those memories. And even though a few friends reached out through social media back then, it wasn’t the same as actually being present — being part of the inside jokes, the hallway conversations, the moments that shape who you are.

    I don’t want my children to feel that same quiet ache. Yes, today they can message friends, FaceTime, send snaps, scroll through updates — but is that really enough to replace the feeling of walking into a school where your best friends are waiting for you? Is that enough to replace the comfort of being known, understood, and surrounded by the people who grew up alongside you? Social media kept some of my friendships alive, but not all of them. A handful reached out to me — and I’m grateful for that — but I don’t know if my kids would be as lucky. Not every child gets reconnection. Not every friendship survives distance. And that’s a truth I can’t ignore.

    And so the debate lives on inside me, a steady pull between past and present, as I keep weighing whether going back might finally offer my children the sense of belonging I spent years searching for.

    As I sit with all of this, I’m reminded that life doesn’t hand us perfect answers. It hands us choices, and sometimes those choices come with a weight that doesn’t let you sleep easy at night. I’m a father trying to rewrite a story I once lived, hoping my kids never have to feel the same emptiness I carried when I was pulled away from everything familiar. I want their friendships to last, their memories to stay rooted, their sense of home to be something steady — not something they lose in the shuffle of life’s hard decisions.

    But wanting something and knowing how to make it happen are two very different things. I’m still sorting through the fears, the what-ifs, the financial realities, and the quiet hope that maybe I can get this right. Maybe the path ahead won’t mirror the one behind me. Maybe I can break the cycle instead of repeating it.

    All I know is this: my kids deserve a version of life that feels whole. And whatever decision I end up making, it will come from a place of wanting their world to be better than mine ever was at their age — more stable, more joyful, more connected.

    If you’ve ever stood at a crossroads like this — torn between the past you remember and the future you want to build — I’d genuinely love to hear your story.
    How did you make your decision?
    What helped you move forward?
    What would you do differently?

    Your wisdom might be exactly what someone else, maybe even me, needs to hear tonight. More to come soon have a safe and enjoyable evening.

  • 2005: A Year That Changed Everything

    2005: A Year That Changed Everything

    The year was 2005, and my life had been turned upside down by family issues that forced us to pack up and leave the town I’d grown up in. At fourteen, change doesn’t just feel big — it feels earth-shaking. One moment you’re rooted in everything familiar, and the next you’re staring at boxes, car trunks, and an uncertain future. I didn’t know it then, but that move would become one of the most defining shifts of my life.

    Uprooted Overnight

    The move wasn’t optional — it was the only way to keep our family intact. Even now, there are parts of that time I’m still working through, pieces of the story that feel too complicated or too personal to unpack fully. But I can say this: leaving wasn’t easy, and starting over felt like standing on shaky ground.

    My mother eventually found a small farm for rent in Upstate New York. When I say “middle of nowhere,” I mean it — twenty minutes outside of town, perched on top of a mountain where the world felt both enormous and eerily still.

    I remember the crunch of gravel under the tires as we drove up the long, winding driveway for the first time.
    The wind carried nothing but the rustling of trees.
    The nights were darker, the stars brighter, the silence heavier.

    No neighbors close by, no kids my age, no familiar landmarks — just fields, sky, and the kind of quiet that almost echoes.

    But surprisingly, that quiet didn’t crush me. I’ve always been the keep-to-myself type, and the solitude gave me something I didn’t know I needed: space to breathe. Space to think. Space where life finally slowed down, even if the circumstances were heavy.

    A New School, Old Fears

    Starting school again was another challenge entirely. Anyone who’s ever switched schools as a teenager knows the feeling — the nerves, the hallways that seem too wide, the faces that all blur together. But for me, the hardest part wasn’t being new. It was knowing what — and who — I left behind.

    I lost my routine, my Explorer program, and the friends who knew me better than I sometimes knew myself. The new school’s staff and students were welcoming, and I made friends quickly, but that didn’t erase the ache of leaving the people who shaped the first fourteen years of my life.

    Some friends eventually learned what happened through social media. One of them — someone I’d known since preschool — wrote me actual letters after I moved. Handwritten notes from home, filled with pieces of my old life. They were reminders that I mattered, that I wasn’t forgotten, that connection could survive distance.

    Years later, that same friend sent me a photo from our senior yearbook. There was a page titled “Students We’ve Missed.”
    And there I was — my photo and name printed in a school I no longer attended.

    Seeing that hit me like a punch to the chest.
    It was the first time I allowed myself to believe that maybe I still belonged somewhere.
    Maybe I wasn’t gone from their story after all.

    It inspired me to reach back out — even to people I’d barely spoken to before. Some replied, some didn’t, but reconnecting mattered. It reminded me that roots don’t always disappear just because life pulls you in a new direction.

    2006: Joining a New Fire Family

    In 2006, I turned sixteen and finally became eligible to join the fire department in our new town. They didn’t have an Explorer program like back home, but they had Junior Firefighters for ages sixteen to eighteen. Even with past experience, walking through that firehouse door brought back every old fear — the worry, the doubt, the feeling of being the new kid again.

    But something was different this time.

    On the day I applied, my father and brother applied, too.
    Suddenly it wasn’t just my path — it was ours.

    The joining process was structured: fill out an application, have it reviewed at a meeting, attend a month of drills, then be voted in. After thirty days, all three of us were officially welcomed into the department.

    Training became something we shared as a family.
    Sitting side-by-side in fire classes.
    Learning the basics.
    Pushing each other.
    Growing together.

    We couldn’t take Firefighter 1 right away because my brother and I were still under eighteen, but we completed every smaller class we could. Those early steps became the foundation for the firefighters — and the people — we would later become.

    What That Chapter Taught Me

    Looking back, it’s impossible not to feel the weight of what that move took from me — and everything it quietly gave me.

    I lost childhood friends.
    I lost familiarity.
    I lost the comfort of knowing where I belonged.

    But I also gained new people.
    New mentors.
    New friends who saw me for who I was becoming, not just who I had been.
    A tighter bond with my father and brother.
    And a deeper sense of resilience that still follows me today.

    Those years taught me that life doesn’t always give us warning signs or smooth transitions. Sometimes the hardest chapters end up guiding us toward the people and places that change us for the better.

    Every friendship — the ones that stayed, the ones that faded, and the ones still ahead — has shaped who I am.
    Every goodbye taught me something.
    Every new beginning added something I didn’t know I needed.

    Your Turn

    We all have moments like this — a move, a change, a loss, a beginning that felt like an ending at the time.
    Moments where the ground shifts beneath you, but years later you see the growth it led to.

    Have you ever had a chapter like that?
    A time when life pulled you away from the familiar?
    A moment that felt painful but later made sense?

    If you’re willing, I’d truly love to hear your story in the comments.
    Your experience might be the reminder someone else needs today.