Once in a Lifetime: Drowning in Echoes

Lauren Nixon-Matney • December 26, 2025
Once in a Lifetime: Drowning in Echoes

Talking Heads: Once in a Lifetime

 

The water runs.


A slow, steady stream, swirling down the drain in quiet, hypnotic loops, disappearing before it can be traced.


I watch, but I’m not really watching.


My hands move scrubbing, rinsing but I don’t feel them.


The motion is automatic.


I blink, and my reflection stares back at me in the window above the sink.


Not just my face, but everything behind me...


A home filled with pieces of a life I built, a life I love.


And yet, in this moment, it feels as though I’m watching it all from behind glass.


“And you may ask yourself… how did I get here?”


The lyric surfaces like an old thought, looping through my mind, circling back in on itself.


How did I get here?


How did I move from one version of myself to another, without ever noticing the shift?


Somewhere along the way, time started slipping

through my fingers.


Somewhere along the way, I stopped feeling the weight of the days.


Somewhere along the way, I started floating through them instead.


Time Slips:A Life in Fragments


The past pulls at the edges of my mind.


It rushes in not as a story, but as flickering moments, half formed and shifting in flashes.


A bonfire crackles against the night.


The air smells like burning wood and autumn.


Laughter moves through the trees, warm, familiar.


For a moment, I can feel the heat on my skin.


But before I can reach for it, the moment fades.


The Teenage Years:The Numbness of Survival


The cold seeps in.


Normangee, Texas. A town that feels like it exists in the space between moments.


A trailer park. A space too small, too dark, too empty.


Electricity that worked sometimes.


Hot water that worked never.


Nights spent staring at the ceiling, feeling nothing, waiting for time to pass.


No money. No car. Sometimes, no food.


A life that didn’t feel like mine.


There were two versions of my mother.


One burned bright, laughing loud enough to shake the walls, dreaming fast enough to outrun time.


She could make life feel electric—wild, golden, bursting with possibility.


Her energy could set the whole world on fire.


And then...


The stillness.


The weight of silence pressing against the walls.


A shadow behind her eyes, something too deep for words.


She would drift, fade, disappear into herself,

and I would hold my breath, waiting for the return of her fire.


I never knew which version of her would wake up each morning.


I never knew how long she would stay.


But I loved her in every season.


Through every storm, through every silence, through every light that flickered and fought to stay.


I still do.


Time passed. Days blurred.


I floated through them, waiting to be somewhere else, someone else.


The Rhythm of a Life Interrupted


A drumbeat.


A Texas night.


Trey behind the drums, keeping time, locked into a rhythm that feels bigger than us.


Bobby on guitar, a song filling the air, laughter in between the music.


Trey was alive in a way that made you feel more alive, too.


And then...


A night that doesn’t feel real.


The kind that splits time in half.


Trey was gone.


A town brought to its knees in a single night.


His mother’s screams at the funeral.


The weight of silence that followed.


The way it never really felt real.


The way it still doesn’t.


Some things, you never get over.


The Music Fades…


A dimly lit coffee shop:Shaky Ground, Lake Charles.


The hum of conversation, the smell of coffee, the low buzz of an amplifier warming up.


My brother on stage, the glow of the lights cutting through the haze.


His hands move across the guitar, lost in the music, in the moment, in something bigger than either of us.


I watch from the crowd, feeling the sound pulse through my chest.


I am alive.


And then...


The memory flickers.


The scene shifts.


The music distorts, warps, stretches.


A different stage, a different night.


Bobby again years later, on tour.


I watch from the side of the stage this time, the energy of the crowd electric, moving in waves.


The music is loud, alive, vibrating in my bones.


I don’t know if I have ever felt more present than in moments like those.


But even those nights—those real nights—slip through my fingers now,

echoes of a room I can no longer step into.


The Void:Losing Time, Losing My Dad


The water still runs.


I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here.


I think about the time that has passed since losing my dad—


How I drifted through time, how life continued even when I wasn’t sure I was part of it.


Some days felt endless.


Other days vanished before I could register them.


I laughed. I lived. I kept moving.


But was I present?


That’s the worst part, isn’t it?


Not just the grief, but the fear of waking up one day


And realizing you weren’t really here for any of it.


The flood of memory feels like falling backward into water sudden, consuming, impossible to resist.


Somewhere beneath the weight of time, I can still feel the ache of what was lost before it had a chance to exist.


My first pregnancy ended before I could even hold the word mother in my hands.


And yet, the grief arrived as if I had carried it full term.


The anxiety followed relentless, sharp, shapeless.


Days stretched into months, and I floated through them, afraid of a body that had failed me, afraid of time slipping forward before I was ready.


Jamie:A Steady Hand in the Chaos


My mind wanders, and memories flash like lightning bolts.


The times we packed up everything and moved, just because.


Driving through states with no plan, no direction,

just possibility stretching out in every direction.


And then...


The rain.


Warm, heavy summer rain, falling in thick sheets.


Jamie and I, soaked to the bone, dancing in the downpour,

barefoot in the front yard, barely newlyweds,

laughing like we had all the time in the world.


Water pooling in our footprints, hunting for crawdads,

thunder rolling in the distance.


It felt like something out of a dream,

like for a moment, the world had paused just for us.


The memories keep looping, cycling, pulling me under,


Until a touch brings me back.


Jamie.


His presence is like gravity, something steady, something real.


His arms find me, his voice cuts through the fog.


A Tether Back to Now


The water still runs.


Jamie pulls me close.


My children laugh.


A sound so light, so golden, it fills the spaces between the past and now.


I let it pull me back.


The past is still there, tucked into the edges of my mind.


The loss, the love, the echoes of every version of me I’ve ever been.


The weight of time still lingers.


But for now...


I am here.

RESUME THE RHYTHM:

DRIFT THROUGH A CONSTELLATION OF MEMORY

Searching For Stars

By Lauren Nixon-Matney July 5, 2026
Buddy Holly : Last Kiss Pearl Jam: Last Kiss Cover
By Lauren Nixon-Matney July 5, 2026
My favorite literary phrase of all time is spoken by Josephine March, written by Louisa May Alcott in Little Women. “I like good, strong words that mean something.” You, my dear, you say good, strong words that mean something. You put good, strong words that mean something into the world, and I thank you so very sincerely for that. You have made such an incredible impact on my life, and on my outlook on beauty and aging. ⸻ I stumbled across your incredible fashion sense on Instagram and was completely hooked on your vibe. I absolutely love fashion. I always have. I’ve definitely had my own kind of zany style over the years. So when I saw you, I was like, OK, yes, she is amazing. I love this energy. ⸻ The way you put things together, the confidence, the energy, it makes you wanna get up, go into your closet, and actually enjoy getting dressed again. And for a woman approaching 40, who’s had three children and has had many of her own struggles with who am I, what’s my fashion, what’s my energy, or what’s my style, You just felt so damn refreshing and inspiring. So I hung around, but what really hooked me wasn’t just the style, it was you, the essence of you. The way you talk, the honesty, the fact that you just say things straight, no fluff, no sugarcoating, no trying to be anything other than exactly who you are.. and somehow that makes everything you say sound even more profound. ⸻ The impact your message was having in my life became undeniable. It wasn’t just something I watched for enjoyment anymore, it was something I actually began feeling, and carrying with me. I grew up in a time where it felt like there was an expiration date on women. Like if you didn’t fit into a certain mold, or size, or type… your worth somehow became less. And then life happens. You grow up. You age. Maybe have kids. Your body changes. Your priorities change. Somewhere in the middle of all of that, you can kind of lose your sense of… who am I now? What’s my style? Who am I supposed to become? Am I too late for something? What even feels like me anymore? So for a while, I think I actually bought into that idea without even realizing it. The idiodic notion that maybe I had passed some invisible point where things were supposed to quiet down. Tone down. Fit into something more “acceptable.” Or the grand illusion that I was out of time to follow my passions! But watching you… that narrative just started to fall apart. The way you show up, the way you speak, the way you move through the world so fully as yourself… it made me realize that aging isn’t something to fear or shrink from. If anything, it’s where things start to get really good. It’s where you get bolder. More comfortable. More you. More beautiful. ⸻ What you’re doing matters so much. The way you show up, the way you speak, the way you fully own who you are, it doesn’t just stay on a screen. It carries through pixelated waves. It reaches people like me, in real life, in real moments, and shifts something quietly but powerfully within us. So I just wanted to say thank you. For your honesty, your energy, your style, your voice… all of it. You have inspired me, Searching for Stars, and undoubtedly countless women all over the world more than words can truly translate. Thank you, for being you!
By Lauren Nixon-Matney May 6, 2026
Okay, so I asked God for a sign this week… and I didn’t make it easy on Him. I had just seen this video about asking for a sign, about how God answers, about how He delights in it… and something in me just… recognized that. Like, oh. I’ve felt that before. Lindsey, it was your video. And the second I heard it, I remembered something. I remembered a time, years ago, back in that early, foggy, pinkless season of motherhood, when I had asked for a sign too. I had prayed, really specifically… really honestly… “God, just show me I’m okay. Show me I’m on the right path.” And I asked for a blue butterfly. I didn’t see it right away. I waited. I wondered if I had imagined the whole idea in the first place. And then, not long after, life moved us somewhere new. A new place, new energy… the kind of move that feels exciting and terrifying all at once. They handed us the keys… and right there on them… was a blue butterfly. And I remember feeling that same quiet recognition. Like… okay. And then, a couple months after that, with prayers inside us building for a second child, we went to a park. One of those ordinary days that turns into something you don’t forget. And there were butterflies everywhere. Hundreds of them. Yellow, filling the air, lifting all at once like something out of a dream. And right in the middle of it… one blue butterfly. I just stood there, overwhelmed, because I knew. I knew I had been heard. Nearly one year to the day later, our second child was born. And then… life kept moving. Time passed. Things got busy. Full. Loud. Beautiful… but a little hazy, too. Somewhere along the way, I think I stopped asking like that. Fast forward. I’m sitting with my kids on New Year’s Eve, going into 2025, talking about goals and dreams. The kind of things you say out loud but don’t always fully claim. “I’ve always wanted to write.” And my daughter, so sure, so certain, just looked at me and said, “Then make it your New Year’s resolution.” And something about the way she said it… she didn’t question it. she didn’t overthink it. She just… believed it was possible. So I did. I started building something I’ve carried in pieces since I was in high school. Old notebooks, scattered thoughts, songs, memories… things I’ve never really known how to explain out loud. And for the first time, it felt like someone actually got it. So I got to work. Writing with a baby asleep on my chest… voice notes, typed drafts, music playing in the background… piecing together old memories with new ones. And I love it. I really do. But if I’m being honest… I started to wonder. Is this meaningful? Is this worth the time? Is this something good… or just something I want? And more than anything… I wanted to know if it was something God saw as good. Not just something that looked meaningful… but something that was. So I sat down, quietly, and I prayed. And I said, “God, if this is something I’m supposed to keep building… if I’m on the right path… if this is your will for me… please just show me. Give me a sign.” And I paused… because I knew I couldn’t ask for something easy. I had asked for butterflies before and blue jays have been unusually common in our backyard lately. I needed something specific. Something I wouldn’t just brush off. I looked over… and saw this little pink and white poodle sitting on my daughter’s shelf. And I laughed a little and said, “Okay God… show me a poodle.” almost sarcastically thinking… well, this one’s going to take a little more effort. But of course… Not even 48 hours later, we ran into Burlington. We were just there to grab socks and shoes for my toddler, her sandals were bothering her. Quick in, quick out. We ended up wandering a little. We’re headed to checkout… and my husband steps down an aisle, picks something up, and goes, “Okay, I know this is ridiculous… but we need this for the office.” And he had no idea. Nothing about my prayer. Nothing about the poodle. I’m barely paying attention yet. And then he turns it around. It’s a painting. Of a poodle. Not just a poodle… a poodle in a full business suit… sitting at a desk… reading a newspaper. I just… stopped. A business professional poodle, for the office we’re building together, a space where I can write. Like everything in me went quiet for a second. Because of all the things in the world I could have asked for… of all the ways that prayer could have been answered… it was that. I remember thinking, smiling, fighting back tears of joy… of course it is. Because I had asked for something specific. And apparently… He has a sense of humor. Also, just to make sure I didn’t miss it… because let’s be real, God definitely knows how to show out… the very next place we went… was Petco. And there was this real poodle. Then again. And again. Every aisle I turned… I kept running into it. And that feeling came back. The same one from before. Quiet. Certain. seen. beloved. Lindsey… Thank you so much, you reminded me to ask. You reminded me that God doesn’t just hear us… He answers. Not always in big, overwhelming ways… but in ways we’ll recognize. In ways that feel personal. Specific. Sometimes even funny… like they were meant just for us. And Lindsey… I just want you to know how much I appreciate all of what you’re doing. Your energy, your humor, the way you show up so fully as yourself… it matters more than you probably realize. You make people laugh, you make motherhood feel seen, and you bring light into spaces that can feel heavy sometimes. But there is also so much more than that… God really radiates through you. In the way you speak, in the way you encourage, in the way you remind people to keep going and to keep believing. It’s powerful. And it’s beautiful to witness. What you’ve created with “get your pink back”… that message, that reminder… it’s reaching people. It’s lifting people. It’s giving something back to women who feel like they’ve poured everything out. And that matters. It really does. I’m so grateful I came across your video when I did. And I’m really looking forward to everything you create next… especially your writing. You’re doing something good here. Keep going. Please never stop casting your light into the world… it really does break through the darkness.
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