Welcome to The People We Collect: Where the Story Begins

Some of you have been here since Mike passed.

Some of you found me through dance.

Some through Broken Arrow.

Some through the law enforcement community.

Some because our kids crossed paths, our careers crossed paths, or life simply put us in the same place at the same time.

And somewhere along the way, I realized something:

We are all here because of the people we collect.

The ones who stay for decades.

The ones who are only meant for a season.

The ones who break our hearts.

The ones who help put them back together.

The ones who challenge us, save us, frustrate us, love us, leave us, teach us, and sometimes unknowingly change the entire direction of our lives.

And occasionally, after everything has fallen apart, the person we end up collecting is a version of ourselves we never knew existed.

That is where The People We Collect begins.

Not with a perfectly healed person sitting on the other side of something difficult.

With me.

Right here.

Still becoming.

So, Who Am I?

I'm Andrea.

I'm a mom, daughter, sister, widow, friend, girlfriend, entrepreneur, and former police sergeant.

I have a mini farm.

I've been educated in classrooms and on streets.

I've spent much of my life doing things methodically, intentionally, and—whenever possible—by the book.

For years, my career meant walking into some of the hardest moments of other people's lives. I learned how to function when things were chaotic. How to make decisions when emotions were high. How to help people through moments they never imagined experiencing.

What I didn't expect was that one day I would become the person standing in the middle of one of those moments.

And then another.

And another.

In the span of a year, the life I had spent decades carefully building seemed to unravel.

I lost my husband.

I became a widow while trying to help two incredible kids navigate the loss of their dad.

There were legal issues.

Financial uncertainty.

The loss of my career.

Questions about my future.

Questions about my identity.

Questions I didn't even know I was supposed to be asking yet.

It felt like someone had taken every piece of the life I knew, thrown it into the air, and left me standing underneath it trying to figure out what would come back down.

And somewhere inside all of that chaos, I noticed something else.

The people who showed up changed me.

Not because they could fix what happened.

They couldn't.

Not because they always knew the perfect thing to say.

They didn't.

They changed me because they reminded me that I didn't have to carry every piece of it alone.

Grief Is Bigger Than Death

When most people hear the word grief, they think about death.

I understand why.

But I've learned that grief has a much larger vocabulary.

We grieve people.

We grieve marriages and relationships.

We grieve friendships.

We grieve careers.

We grieve financial security.

We grieve dreams.

We grieve homes.

We grieve the future we were certain we would have.

And sometimes, we grieve versions of ourselves.

The woman we used to be.

The family we used to recognize.

The life that once felt predictable.

There are seasons when life doesn't politely ask whether we're ready to change. It simply changes, and suddenly we're left trying to figure out how to become someone capable of living inside this new reality.

That's what The People We Collect is really about.

It isn't about staying stuck in what hurt us.

But it isn't about pretending it didn't hurt either.

It's about honoring what happened while continuing to create a meaningful life.

Because healing, I've discovered, isn't about finding your way backward.

There may not be a backward anymore.

Healing is learning how to move forward while carrying the love, lessons, memories, scars, and people from before with you.

Why "The People We Collect"?

I've been thinking about this idea for a long time.

We spend so much of our lives collecting things.

Homes.

Degrees.

Titles.

Money.

Awards.

Clothes.

Furniture.

Achievements.

But when I think about the moments that have actually shaped my life, they aren't things.

They're people.

Teachers.

Friends.

Neighbors.

Coworkers.

Family.

Children.

Mentors.

Teammates.

Strangers.

The person sitting beside you on an airplane.

The person who sends a text at exactly the moment you need it.

The friend who sits in your kitchen when there is absolutely nothing left to say.

The person who makes you laugh during a season when you weren't sure laughter would ever feel natural again.

The person who sees something in you before you're capable of seeing it yourself.

Some people teach us how to love.

Some teach us how to let go.

Some show us exactly what we never want again.

And some remind us who we've been all along.

Not everyone is meant to stay forever.

That doesn't make their presence meaningless.

They leave fingerprints.

They become part of our language, our memories, our courage, our boundaries, our stories and eventually, the person we become.

I think that is one of the most beautiful and complicated parts of being human.

We are constantly collecting people.

And they are constantly changing us.

Rebuilding Doesn't Always Wait Until You're Ready

One of the strangest things about rebuilding a life is discovering that life doesn't necessarily wait for you to feel prepared.

Sometimes an opportunity appears while you're still grieving.

Sometimes you build a business when the timing makes absolutely no sense.

Sometimes you laugh while you're still heartbroken.

Sometimes you discover a new dream before you've finished mourning the old one.

Sometimes you fall in love while part of you is still grieving the love you lost.

Those things aren't mutually exclusive.

I think we have a tendency to imagine healing as a straight line:

Something terrible happens.

We grieve.

We heal.

Then we begin again.

My experience has looked nothing like that.

I'm grieving and building.

Missing and discovering.

Remembering and becoming.

Being a widow and allowing myself to be a woman with a future.

Trying to protect what was and making room for what could be.

There is an and in almost every part of my life now.

Maybe there is one in yours, too.

What You'll Find Here

I need to make something clear from the beginning:

I do not have all the answers.

I'm not creating The People We Collect because I've reached some magical finish line where everything makes sense.

Quite the opposite.

I'm still figuring a lot of it out.

What I can offer is honesty.

Here on the blog—and on The People We Collect podcast—we're going to talk about grief and healing, but we aren't going to stop there.

We're going to talk about reinvention.

Entrepreneurship.

Building something from nothing.

Motherhood.

Relationships.

Mental health.

Identity.

Leadership.

Purpose.

Faith.

Failure.

Success.

Love after loss.

Friendships that change.

Families that change.

The people who show up.

The people who don't.

Starting over when you never wanted to start over in the first place.

And the strange, beautiful experience of realizing that a life you didn't plan can still become a life worth living.

Some stories will hurt.

Some will probably make us cry.

Some will make us laugh.

Some may make us uncomfortable.

And some might make you recognize a piece of yourself you haven't had words for yet.

That's what I hope happens here.

Maybe This Isn't the Life You Planned Either

Maybe you're here because you've lost someone you love.

Maybe your marriage ended.

Maybe your career disappeared.

Maybe you're becoming an empty nester.

Maybe a friendship you thought would last forever didn't.

Maybe you're starting a business that scares the hell out of you.

Maybe you're falling in love again.

Maybe you're trying to decide whether you're allowed to.

Maybe absolutely nothing catastrophic happened, but you looked around one day and realized you don't recognize yourself anymore.

Or maybe you're doing something even harder:

Building a new life while you're still grieving your old one.

If that's you, you belong here.

You don't need to have everything figured out.

I certainly don't.

What I Can Promise

I won't always have perfect words.

I won't pretend healing is linear.

I won't tell you to "just stay positive."

I won't wrap difficult experiences in pretty language just to make them easier for other people to digest.

What I will do is show up honestly.

I'll share the messy parts.

The hopeful parts.

The absurd parts.

The funny parts.

The parts I'm proud of.

And the parts that still hurt.

Because I believe authenticity creates permission.

When one person is willing to say, This is what this actually feels like, someone else realizes they don't have to hide quite so much either.

Maybe when I tell my story, you'll feel safer acknowledging yours.

Maybe when one of my guests tells theirs, you'll finally find language for something you've carried for years.

And maybe somewhere along the way, we'll all feel a little less alone.

Who Are the People You've Collected?

That's the question I want to leave you with.

Who changed your life?

Who shaped you?

Who stayed?

Who left?

Who showed up when everything was messy?

Who taught you how to love?

Who taught you what you deserved?

Who made you braver?

Who reminded you who you were?

And maybe the bigger question is this:

Who are you becoming because of them?

For a long time, I wasn't sure I was ready to tell these stories.

Truthfully, I was still trying to survive some of them.

But I'm starting to wonder if healing isn't something we wait to talk about until everything is okay.

Maybe healing is allowing people to walk beside us while we're still becoming.

That's why this space exists.

That's why I'm writing.

That's why I'm starting the podcast.

And that's why I'm so grateful you're here.

Welcome to The People We Collect.

Take care of yourself.

Take care of each other.

And never underestimate the people we collect along the way.

We're just getting started.