Phoenix, Undiluted

People are often confused when I talk about my love affair with Phoenix. They can’t quite understand how someone could want to pull up roots and move sixteen hundred miles away.

The truth is, my roots here have always been a little shallow. I never built a life around a spouse or children. Both my parents and my only sibling are gone. And the Deep South, as much as I love it, has always carried an undercurrent for me. A quiet reminder of loneliness, of decisions made for me, of a life I sometimes feel like I’ve been watching instead of living.

Phoenix changed that.

Not all at once. Not loudly. She didn’t demand anything from me. She simply… woke me up. Asked me to pay attention. To notice the light, the rhythm, the stillness. To slow down long enough to feel something real and then to trust it.

For the first time in my life, I felt like I was participating.

And there is another layer to it, a layer that is too important to overlook. I spent thirty years of my life in service to alcoholism. And yet, I have never taken a single drink in the Southwest.

Not once.

Every moment I have experienced in Phoenix has been clear. Undiluted. Honest. I have felt everything there exactly as it was meant to be felt. Without numbing it, without softening the edges, without stepping outside of it.

There is something sacred in that.

Because Phoenix didn’t just give me a place to visit. She gave me a place where I could finally show up fully for my own life.

And once you’ve known what it’s like to be fully present in a place that asks nothing of you but your attention, it’s very hard to go back to anything else.

I’m going back again in July, for the week of my birthday.

I’m not returning to Phoenix as just a visitor this time. I’m showing up as the version of myself that she’s been quietly shaping.

I’m bringing my laptop, my words, and a small stack of books. Not to sell, but to give, if the moment feels right.

I will know what it feels like to be a writer in Phoenix, which has quietly been the goal all along. Even before I realized it.

And if I strike up a conversation with a local while I’m in a café, or coffee shop, or quiet lunch spot, which somehow always happens, I can finally hand them a copy of Phoenix: Permission to Exhale, look them in the eyes, and say:

“Here. I’d love for you to have a copy of this. I actually wrote it for you.”