a sister and a song.

My sister holds a very special place in my life, and I can't imagine navigating the ups and downs of life without mine. It's a bond that I see mirrored in my mom’s relationship with her sisters and in the lives of my friends who have sisters. While I can’t speak to the dynamics between brothers, it seems like God decided our family needed plenty of strong women. My parents had my sister and me, Haley has three daughters, and Travis and I have two. We’re certainly blessed with an abundance of estrogen!

For those of you with sisters, whether by birth or by choice, you know exactly what I mean when I say that Haley and I have our own unique language. We can communicate with just a look or a single word—like “michikambo”—and we instantly understand each other. That unspoken connection runs so deep that it’s almost like a secret superpower. Board games with us as partners? Forget it, we will always win. This connection has carried us through countless adventures, shared pains, and joys. When one of us hurts, the other feels it too. We’ve both faced moments of isolation, heartbreak, grief, and rejection. Yet, we’ve also shared the highest of highs, and through it all, we’ve remained by each other’s side.

There’s a song on Post Malone’s new country album called Nosedive that features Lainey Wilson, and it really struck a chord with me the first time I heard it. The lyrics go:

“Sometimes you're drivin', sometimes you're stallin'

Sometimes you're flyin', sometimes you're fallin'

But there's still beauty in the nosedive.”

That line about beauty in the nosedive hit me hard. It’s in those nosedive moments, when everything feels like it's falling apart, that we learn the most about ourselves. As humans, we tend to avoid these hard moments at all costs, but it’s often in the middle of them that we realize what we need to change or do differently. That’s where growth happens, and I believe that sharing stories of our own nosedives with our kids can help prepare them for the inevitable, even though they’ll still have to learn from their own mistakes.

I’m grateful to be the younger sister, even if it’s only by 13 months. Haley has always been the one to go through things first, guiding me when it’s my turn to face something similar. When Victoria was diagnosed with cancer, I knew a nosedive was coming. Both Haley and I had cared for our dad as he battled and eventually passed away from cancer in 2017, but facing a child’s illness was a whole new level of pain we weren’t prepared for.

These days, when Haley says, “I know I have no idea what you’re going through,” I actually think she does. Our bond is so strong that I feel like she carries my pain with me, just as I would for her. We’ve recently found ourselves laughing about the ways we’ve tried to shield our daughters from pain—obsessing over their friendships, social media posts, boy problems, even overanalyzing their text message tones. The reality is, no matter how much we try, we can’t protect them from every hurt. They will mess up, just like we did, and they will feel pain because of it.

If my own mother could take away the pain I’m enduring now, she would in a heartbeat. But the truth is, pain is part of the journey we all have to take. Our tickets to heaven are non-transferable. Everyone must walk their own path through suffering—whether it's for our children, our parents, or ourselves. Instead of trying to prevent pain, we need to be ready to catch those we love when they nosedive. The fall is often messy and painful, but having someone there to lift you back up, offer you water, and restore your spirit can make all the difference.

It’s okay that we can’t shield our loved ones from pain. Pain is part of being alive, part of the price we pay for the joy and love we experience. We just need to learn from our own nosedives and be there as a safety net when those we love inevitably face theirs. In the end, it’s the love and support we give each other that keeps us going.