Welcome back to Soft Days Collective, friends. Come on in, settle your shoulders, unclench your jaw, and stay awhile. The windows are open, an iced coffee is sweating onto the coaster beside you, and somewhere outside the trees are swaying in that familiar North Shore breeze that always seems to whisper, slow down, you’re home now.
Summer has finally arrived along the North Shore of Lake Superior, and I have been trying to savor every fleeting second of it. The kind of savoring that looks like dirt under your fingernails from the garden, sunscreen lingering on your skin after an evening paddle, and the ache in your legs after wandering wooded trails long after golden hour should have ended. These days, I find myself chasing quiet moments at the cabin, coffee in hand while loons call across the water, trying to soak in our impossibly short season before it slips through our fingers again.
As promised in this week’s earlier post, there has been something sitting heavy and tender on my heart lately. A thought that has followed me through long walks, campfires, and those in-between moments where your mind gets quiet enough to finally hear yourself clearly.
Lately, as I continue learning who I am beneath all the expectations, noise, and survival instincts, I keep circling back to one truth:
So much of the person I am becoming is rooted in the people who raised me.
And if I am being honest, I do not think I have thanked my parents enough for that.
I am lucky enough to have a relationship with my parents that has deepened with time. Not because we are perfect — far from it — but because we kept choosing each other through every hard season. Through slammed doors, difficult conversations, misunderstandings, tears, growth, and healing. We stayed. My mom always says, “We may be big and loud at times, but we love hard,” and if there has ever been a sentence that perfectly describes my family, it is that one.
So today’s post is less of an article and more of a love letter.
A soft thank you to the two people who shaped me in ways I am only now beginning to fully understand.
1. Kindness & Respect
One of the greatest gifts my parents ever gave me was teaching me how to move through the world with kindness.
Growing up, I heard the phrase, “You don’t have to like someone, but you do have to be kind and respectful to them,” more times than I can count. At the time it sounded simple, almost obvious. But the older I get, the more I realize how rare and important that lesson truly is.
My empathy did not appear out of nowhere. It was built in small moments. Watching my parents help neighbors without hesitation. Seeing them treat strangers with dignity. Learning that every single person is carrying a story you cannot see.
Because of them, I learned that compassion is not weakness. It is one of the strongest things a person can carry.
As a teacher, a friend, and simply as a human being trying to leave gentle footprints behind me, I carry that lesson everywhere. In a world that often feels sharp and divided, kindness still feels revolutionary to me.
And I owe so much of that to them.
2. Work Ethic
Uffda. This one is entirely my parents.
“If you want it, work for it.”
That mindset was woven into my childhood so deeply that now it lives in my bones. My parents taught me that hard work is not about recognition or praise — it is about integrity. It is about being the person who shows up. The person who jumps in to help before being asked. The person who keeps going when things are difficult.
Neither of my parents handed me an easy life, but they handed me something more valuable: the belief that I was capable.
And even now, when life feels overwhelming, I hear echoes of those lessons in my head. Keep going. Keep trying. Do it right. Be dependable.
But what I appreciate most is that as I have grown older, they have also reminded me that rest matters too. That productivity is not the price of love. That boundaries are healthy. That softness and hard work can coexist.
I think I needed that reminder more than they know.
3. Love for the Environment
This one belongs to my dad.
If you have ever met my dad, you know exactly what I mean when I say he is a character in the very best way. Loud laughs, endless stories, strong opinions, and a heart that beats in rhythm with the wilderness.
Some of my earliest memories are tied to the outdoors. Fishing trips. Campfires. The smell of pine needles warming in the sun. Listening to stories about the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness like it was some sacred place just beyond the edge of the map.
At the time, I do not think I realized what he was giving me.
He was teaching me reverence.
For the earth. For silence. For stillness. For the kind of healing that only happens when you are sitting beside water with people you love.
Funny enough, it did not fully hit me until adulthood. Until I finally started allowing myself to pursue the things that genuinely lit me up inside instead of the things I thought I should love.
Now, I understand why I feel most like myself among the trees. Why kayaking at sunset feels spiritual. Why gardening feels grounding. Why my nervous system softens the second I hear waves crashing against the shore of Lake Superior.
My dad planted those roots in me long before I knew they were growing.
4. Following My Passions
My parents have never asked me to become someone smaller, quieter, or easier to understand.
And that is a gift I will spend the rest of my life appreciating.
From the moment I realized I was wildly uncoordinated and sports were absolutely not my calling, my parents encouraged me to lean into the things that did spark something in me. Books stacked on nightstands. Ancient history rabbit holes. Creative ideas. Big dreams. Meaningful work.
They never mocked my curiosity.
They nurtured it.
As I have grown older, my passions have evolved with me, but my parents have remained the same steady presence in the background. Asking questions. Looking at photos from adventures. Listening to my ideas. Supporting the things that make me feel alive, even if they do not fully understand them.
There is something profoundly healing about being loved for exactly who you are instead of who someone hoped you would become.
My parents gave me that kind of love.
5. Unwavering Support
This is the hardest one to write about because I do not think words can fully capture what it means to have people refuse to give up on you.
Some of you know pieces of my story. Growing up was not always easy for me, and neither were my late teens and early twenties. There were years where everything felt painfully heavy. Years where I was trying to untangle my brain while also trying to figure out who I was underneath all the hurt and confusion.
And through all of it, my parents stayed.
Not perfectly. Not without mistakes. But faithfully.
They gave me room to feel big emotions. They sat with me through heartbreak, fear, anger, and uncertainty. They learned alongside me. Especially after 2017, when I hit one of the lowest points of my life, my parents worked tirelessly to better understand how to support my uniquely wired brain and the things I was struggling with.
Looking back now, I realize how much love existed in those moments.
Not the loud cinematic kind.
The quiet kind.
The kind that drives to pick you up.
The kind that answers the phone no matter the hour.
The kind that sits beside you in silence when there is nothing left to say.
The kind that keeps believing in you even when you cannot believe in yourself.
I would not be who I am today without that kind of love.
And maybe that is what keeps catching in my throat lately as I move deeper into adulthood. Realizing that my parents were never trying to raise a perfect daughter. They were simply trying to raise a human being who knew she was loved.
And they succeeded.
So Mom and Dad, if you ever read this:
Thank you for every sacrifice I was too young to notice.
Thank you for every difficult conversation.
Thank you for every moment you chose patience over giving up.
Thank you for teaching me that softness is strength.
Thank you for loving me loudly, fiercely, imperfectly, and unconditionally.
These days, some of my favorite moments in life are the simplest ones. Sitting together laughing until someone is crying. Listening to my dad tell the same wild stories for the hundredth time. Watching my mom slowly become not only my parent, but one of my best friends and favorite Disney companions. Existing together at the cabin while the sun slips behind the trees and nobody feels the need to fill the silence.
Things are not perfect. No family is.
But my parents did the best they could with what they had, and somehow through all the messiness and beauty of life, they helped shape me into someone kind, empathetic, resilient, and wonderfully quirky.
I think that is something worth honoring.
And if there is one thing this season of life is teaching me, it is this:
Love does not always look grand.
Sometimes it looks like packed lunches, patient listening, late-night drives, rainy cabin weekends, hard conversations, inside jokes, and people who keep showing up for you over and over again.
Sometimes love looks exactly like home.