Where in the World is Dakota?

There are dates that etch themselves into the soul—not because time demands it, but because life does. Dates that return each year like a tide—steeped in memory, thick with echoes—carrying reminders of the moments when life cracked open in ways we never saw coming.

For me, November 20th holds the imprint of worlds that shifted beneath my feet. Seasons of unexpected breaking. Chapters where everything familiar suddenly felt fragile. It’s a day layered with grief and courage, endings and awakenings, unraveling and the quiet, painful becoming that only comes when the ground gives way beneath you and you meet rock bottom.

But this year… this year feels different.

Somewhere between Novembers, something inside me refused to stay buried. Something ancient and fierce. Something that knows what it means to burn and still rise.
A spark that refused extinction. A flicker of wings forming even in the smoke.

The part that understands fire not as a destroyer, but as a refiner.

I’ve learned that we don’t rise after the ashes settle—we rise while they’re still falling. We rise when our knees shake, when our breath trembles, when the night feels too long and the heart feels too tender. We rise not because we are unbroken, but because something inside us whispers, “Not yet. There is more.”

So this November 20th isn’t a memorial of what shattered—
it’s a testament to what survived.
A marker of who I’m choosing to become.
To what is being rebuilt in me.

A reminder that I survived the fire because of HIM.
A reminder that I can step into the beauty, strength, and softness I had once hid away—
a reminder that even scorched wings can learn to lift again.
To be the woman who learned to rise while the embers were still warm.

And maybe… in the quiet places of hope, in the spaces where God writes the endings we can’t yet see… some things are not destroyed by fire at all.
Some things are refined and pruned by it.
Some things wait—like embers—ready for breath to bring them back to life in ways only He knows, when He determines the season is right.
Because the Author doesn’t stop writing just because the chapter breaks. He holds the pen steady, even through smoke, writing love stories that outlive the flames.

I don’t know what the next chapter will hold.
But I know this:
I am still here.
I am still rising.
I am still healing.
Still becoming the woman the fire couldn’t take.I carry the light of every flame that tried to undo me—
a phoenix glow God Himself rekindled.
One faithful step, one day at a time.