For Kimberly, and the beautiful family who carries James’s light forward, There are moments in life when someone we have never met still manages to leave a quiet imprint on our story. A kindness, a presence, a way of loving the world that travels farther than we realize. Your husband was one of those rare people whose light reached beyond the boundaries of his own life and found its way into the hearts of strangers like me. This letter comes from that place. Years ago, in 2011, I went through an ectopic pregnancy that nearly took my life. I lost the baby and part of my fallopian tube, and the doctors warned me that I might never be able to have children. What followed was a long, strange, and disorienting season of healing. My body was recovering from surgery, and my heart was trying to make sense of a kind of grief that is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. The curtains stayed closed most days during that time. Not always because it was night outside, but because it was a dark season inside. Sometimes grief has a way of dimming the world for a while. Jamie and I spent those months mostly in bed, binge-watching TV while life slowly stitched itself back together around us. During those months of bed rest, when the world felt very small and very quiet, I found myself returning to old reruns of Dawson’s Creek. It was something simple. Familiar. A small pocket of comfort on days when everything else felt uncertain. Jamie sat beside me through every episode. We watched the entire series together during that season of healing, and without realizing it, the show became tied to that memory of love sitting quietly beside me in the dark. Sometimes a television show becomes more than a television show. Sometimes a song becomes tied to a season of life so deeply that years later it still echoes through memory like a quiet lighthouse. The funny thing is that when we streamed it on Netflix, the original theme song wasn’t even there. Licensing had changed somewhere along the way, and a completely different intro played instead. Jamie and I both looked at each other immediately. “Wait… that’s not the song.” Anyone who grew up with Dawson’s Creek knows the real one. That opening melody is practically etched into memory. And even though the version we watched that year was different, the echo of the original still lived somewhere in the background. At the time it was just a television show. Years later, I would realize it had quietly become something else entirely. Years passed. Life moved forward the way it does, slowly and then all at once. And somewhere along the way another small thread of inspiration appeared on a tiny pixelated scene app we like to call Instagram. The path that led me there actually started with another artist whose work has inspired me for years. Christina Sutra has this beautiful, earthy creative spirit that radiates kindness and imagination through everything she makes. One day she shared something with genuine excitement. Kimberly Vanderbeek had reposted one of her reels. She shared a video afterward about what a cool world it is when creativity and kindness cross paths like that. Curious, I clicked over to Kimberly’s page. And almost immediately I understood the excitement. Kimberly’s page carried a kind of calm that’s hard to describe unless you’ve felt it. There was a groundedness there. A quiet sense of presence. Motherhood, nature, spirituality, family life all woven together in a way that felt sincere and unforced. The kind of energy that makes you pause for a moment and breathe a little slower. I followed her almost immediately. For a long time, that’s all it was. A quiet corner of the internet where I occasionally stopped to absorb a little bit of peace. Over time, through her posts, I began to see glimpses of her husband as well. James. At first it was just small moments. A reflection here, a story about fatherhood there, a glimpse of family life. But the thing that kept standing out was the way he spoke about the people he loved. There was a softness to it. A sincerity. The kind of presence that doesn’t try to perform goodness but simply lives it. And the more I watched their world unfold through those little windows of social media, the more something about it felt familiar. Not because I knew them. I didn’t. But because the love between them was visible in the quiet ways that real love tends to show itself. In the way he looked at her. In the way she spoke about their family. In the way their children moved through the world. Curious, thoughtful, grounded. You could feel that they were building something beautiful together. A life full of intention. A life full of light. And sometimes when you witness that kind of love from the outside, it does something strange to the heart. It reminds you of the places in your own life where love has quietly carried you through the hardest seasons. For me, those memories went all the way back to that dark bedroom in 2011. Back to Jamie sitting beside me while Dawson’s Creek played softly in the background and the world slowly started to come back into focus again. Not long after I had been following their story for a while, something strange happened. The kind of strange that you don’t quite know what to do with afterward. A few years ago I had one of the most vivid dreams I can remember. In the dream I was standing in a quiet room filled with warm light. Kimberly was there, in a bathtub, giving birth. The room felt calm and peaceful in a way that dreams rarely feel. Everything moved slowly, like time itself had softened. James was beside her. He was holding her shoulders, brushing her hair back, kissing the top of her head, and whispering encouragement while she breathed through the moment. There was nothing frantic or fearful in the scene. Only steadiness. Love. The kind of calm strength that makes the world feel safe. From where I stood, I could see her shoulders above the water and his hands gently resting around her. And behind them was this incredible light. Not harsh. Not blinding. Just a radiant warmth pouring into the room like sunrise. The dream felt less like watching something happen and more like witnessing something sacred. A moment where love was so present that it filled the entire space. When I woke up, the dream stayed with me for days. It felt too vivid to ignore and too strange to fully explain. About two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant with our daughter Gracie. Maybe it was just the wild mystery of hormones. Maybe it was my mind weaving together the quiet inspirations I had been absorbing for years. Or maybe it was simply one of those strange moments where the human heart recognizes beauty so deeply that it echoes into places we don’t fully understand. Either way, the image of that light never really left me. And over time it became something I recognized again and again whenever I saw their family sharing pieces of their life with the world. That same light. When the news came that James was battling cancer, it felt like the kind of moment that makes the whole world pause for a second. When he passed, the sadness rippled outward in ways that were hard to explain. Not just because of the loss of a public figure. But because it felt like the world had lost someone who genuinely believed in kindness, presence, and family. Someone who believed that life was meant to be lived with intention. In the days that followed, I saw a video one of their daughters shared. It was one of those moments that stops you in your tracks. She spoke calmly, thoughtfully, with a kind of wisdom that seemed far older than her years. At one point she said something that struck me deeply. She talked about how people often say, “I know what you’re going through,” when someone loses a parent. And she gently explained that they don’t. Because every grief is different. Every loss is its own story. She was right. I lost my own father years ago, and even now I would never presume to understand the exact shape of the grief she carries. Grief has a strange way of revealing both the best and the hardest parts of the human heart. I know that from experience. When I lost my own dad, it broke me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. Loss invites many voices into the room. Comfort, questions, memories, and sometimes opinions that were never really needed in the first place. But grief doesn’t need commentary. It needs kindness and light. There was another profound moment in her message that stayed with me even more. She spoke about something her dad had told her. He told her to keep believing in miracles. Even when things didn’t turn out the way everyone had hoped. And when she said those words, something inside me shifted. Because suddenly it felt so obvious. The miracle he believed in was sitting right there in front of the camera. In her courage. In her calm. In the wisdom she was sharing with the world. She is the miracle. All of them are. The love he poured into the world didn’t disappear when he left it. It lives on in the family he helped raise. In the light that still shines through his children. And in the quiet strength that continues to ripple outward through the lives he touched. It’s strange how words and songs follow us through life. Sometimes they arrive during ordinary moments and attach themselves to memories so quietly that we don’t even notice at the time. And suddenly an entire season of life unfolds again in the space of a few notes. Now that silly TV show intro carries something else. A reminder. A reminder that life moves quickly, that love matters deeply, and that the moments we share with the people we care about are never as small as they seem at the time. That familiar line still drifts through my mind sometimes. A reminder that if you look hard enough you really can find beauty and light in the dark. I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over. Maybe that’s the quiet lesson hidden inside all of this. Not to wait. Not to wait to tell people they matter. Not to wait to recognize the light in the lives around us. James seemed to understand that instinctively. Through the way he loved his family. Through the way he showed up as a husband and a father. Through the kindness and presence people continue to describe whenever they speak about him. Even someone who never had the chance to meet him can see the constellation he left behind. A constellation made of love, courage, and the beautiful family who carries that light forward. And sometimes, when the world feels heavy, it’s comforting to remember that light has a way of traveling farther than we ever realize.
New Kids on The Block : You Got It ( The Right Stuff) Film: The Wizard
Brandon Hart : Dealing With
Tears for Fears : Everybody Wants To Rule The World Film: Tesla
Brandy: Sittin' Up In My Room
For Kimberly, and the beautiful family who carries James’s light forward, There are moments in life when someone we have never met still manages to leave a quiet imprint on our story. A kindness, a presence, a way of loving the world that travels farther than we realize. Your husband was one of those rare people whose light reached beyond the boundaries of his own life and found its way into the hearts of strangers like me. This letter comes from that place. Years ago, in 2011, I went through an ectopic pregnancy that nearly took my life. I lost the baby and part of my fallopian tube, and the doctors warned me that I might never be able to have children. What followed was a long, strange, and disorienting season of healing. My body was recovering from surgery, and my heart was trying to make sense of a kind of grief that is difficult to explain to anyone who hasn’t lived it. The curtains stayed closed most days during that time. Not always because it was night outside, but because it was a dark season inside. Sometimes grief has a way of dimming the world for a while. Jamie and I spent those months mostly in bed, binge-watching TV while life slowly stitched itself back together around us. During those months of bed rest, when the world felt very small and very quiet, I found myself returning to old reruns of Dawson’s Creek. It was something simple. Familiar. A small pocket of comfort on days when everything else felt uncertain. Jamie sat beside me through every episode. We watched the entire series together during that season of healing, and without realizing it, the show became tied to that memory of love sitting quietly beside me in the dark. Sometimes a television show becomes more than a television show. Sometimes a song becomes tied to a season of life so deeply that years later it still echoes through memory like a quiet lighthouse. The funny thing is that when we streamed it on Netflix, the original theme song wasn’t even there. Licensing had changed somewhere along the way, and a completely different intro played instead. Jamie and I both looked at each other immediately. “Wait… that’s not the song.” Anyone who grew up with Dawson’s Creek knows the real one. That opening melody is practically etched into memory. And even though the version we watched that year was different, the echo of the original still lived somewhere in the background. At the time it was just a television show. Years later, I would realize it had quietly become something else entirely. Years passed. Life moved forward the way it does, slowly and then all at once. And somewhere along the way another small thread of inspiration appeared on a tiny pixelated scene app we like to call Instagram. The path that led me there actually started with another artist whose work has inspired me for years. Christina Sutra has this beautiful, earthy creative spirit that radiates kindness and imagination through everything she makes. One day she shared something with genuine excitement. Kimberly Vanderbeek had reposted one of her reels. She shared a video afterward about what a cool world it is when creativity and kindness cross paths like that. Curious, I clicked over to Kimberly’s page. And almost immediately I understood the excitement. Kimberly’s page carried a kind of calm that’s hard to describe unless you’ve felt it. There was a groundedness there. A quiet sense of presence. Motherhood, nature, spirituality, family life all woven together in a way that felt sincere and unforced. The kind of energy that makes you pause for a moment and breathe a little slower. I followed her almost immediately. For a long time, that’s all it was. A quiet corner of the internet where I occasionally stopped to absorb a little bit of peace. Over time, through her posts, I began to see glimpses of her husband as well. James. At first it was just small moments. A reflection here, a story about fatherhood there, a glimpse of family life. But the thing that kept standing out was the way he spoke about the people he loved. There was a softness to it. A sincerity. The kind of presence that doesn’t try to perform goodness but simply lives it. And the more I watched their world unfold through those little windows of social media, the more something about it felt familiar. Not because I knew them. I didn’t. But because the love between them was visible in the quiet ways that real love tends to show itself. In the way he looked at her. In the way she spoke about their family. In the way their children moved through the world. Curious, thoughtful, grounded. You could feel that they were building something beautiful together. A life full of intention. A life full of light. And sometimes when you witness that kind of love from the outside, it does something strange to the heart. It reminds you of the places in your own life where love has quietly carried you through the hardest seasons. For me, those memories went all the way back to that dark bedroom in 2011. Back to Jamie sitting beside me while Dawson’s Creek played softly in the background and the world slowly started to come back into focus again. Not long after I had been following their story for a while, something strange happened. The kind of strange that you don’t quite know what to do with afterward. A few years ago I had one of the most vivid dreams I can remember. In the dream I was standing in a quiet room filled with warm light. Kimberly was there, in a bathtub, giving birth. The room felt calm and peaceful in a way that dreams rarely feel. Everything moved slowly, like time itself had softened. James was beside her. He was holding her shoulders, brushing her hair back, kissing the top of her head, and whispering encouragement while she breathed through the moment. There was nothing frantic or fearful in the scene. Only steadiness. Love. The kind of calm strength that makes the world feel safe. From where I stood, I could see her shoulders above the water and his hands gently resting around her. And behind them was this incredible light. Not harsh. Not blinding. Just a radiant warmth pouring into the room like sunrise. The dream felt less like watching something happen and more like witnessing something sacred. A moment where love was so present that it filled the entire space. When I woke up, the dream stayed with me for days. It felt too vivid to ignore and too strange to fully explain. About two weeks later, I found out I was pregnant with our daughter Gracie. Maybe it was just the wild mystery of hormones. Maybe it was my mind weaving together the quiet inspirations I had been absorbing for years. Or maybe it was simply one of those strange moments where the human heart recognizes beauty so deeply that it echoes into places we don’t fully understand. Either way, the image of that light never really left me. And over time it became something I recognized again and again whenever I saw their family sharing pieces of their life with the world. That same light. When the news came that James was battling cancer, it felt like the kind of moment that makes the whole world pause for a second. When he passed, the sadness rippled outward in ways that were hard to explain. Not just because of the loss of a public figure. But because it felt like the world had lost someone who genuinely believed in kindness, presence, and family. Someone who believed that life was meant to be lived with intention. In the days that followed, I saw a video one of their daughters shared. It was one of those moments that stops you in your tracks. She spoke calmly, thoughtfully, with a kind of wisdom that seemed far older than her years. At one point she said something that struck me deeply. She talked about how people often say, “I know what you’re going through,” when someone loses a parent. And she gently explained that they don’t. Because every grief is different. Every loss is its own story. She was right. I lost my own father years ago, and even now I would never presume to understand the exact shape of the grief she carries. Grief has a strange way of revealing both the best and the hardest parts of the human heart. I know that from experience. When I lost my own dad, it broke me in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time. Loss invites many voices into the room. Comfort, questions, memories, and sometimes opinions that were never really needed in the first place. But grief doesn’t need commentary. It needs kindness and light. There was another profound moment in her message that stayed with me even more. She spoke about something her dad had told her. He told her to keep believing in miracles. Even when things didn’t turn out the way everyone had hoped. And when she said those words, something inside me shifted. Because suddenly it felt so obvious. The miracle he believed in was sitting right there in front of the camera. In her courage. In her calm. In the wisdom she was sharing with the world. She is the miracle. All of them are. The love he poured into the world didn’t disappear when he left it. It lives on in the family he helped raise. In the light that still shines through his children. And in the quiet strength that continues to ripple outward through the lives he touched. It’s strange how words and songs follow us through life. Sometimes they arrive during ordinary moments and attach themselves to memories so quietly that we don’t even notice at the time. And suddenly an entire season of life unfolds again in the space of a few notes. Now that silly TV show intro carries something else. A reminder. A reminder that life moves quickly, that love matters deeply, and that the moments we share with the people we care about are never as small as they seem at the time. That familiar line still drifts through my mind sometimes. A reminder that if you look hard enough you really can find beauty and light in the dark. I don’t want to wait for our lives to be over. Maybe that’s the quiet lesson hidden inside all of this. Not to wait. Not to wait to tell people they matter. Not to wait to recognize the light in the lives around us. James seemed to understand that instinctively. Through the way he loved his family. Through the way he showed up as a husband and a father. Through the kindness and presence people continue to describe whenever they speak about him. Even someone who never had the chance to meet him can see the constellation he left behind. A constellation made of love, courage, and the beautiful family who carries that light forward. And sometimes, when the world feels heavy, it’s comforting to remember that light has a way of traveling farther than we ever realize.
New Kids on The Block : You Got It ( The Right Stuff) Film: The Wizard
Brandon Hart : Dealing With
Tears for Fears : Everybody Wants To Rule The World Film: Tesla
