You know… for some people, family really is just another F word.

It means something different to everyone. For some, it’s sacred. For others, it’s complicated. For many of us, it’s both.

For much of my life, I was what I’d call an orphan soul—searching for a place to land. I longed to be part of a group, a team, a clan. I wanted to feel unconditionally loved, wanted, and safe. And while I didn’t have a consistent blood family in my life, I was unofficially adopted by many over the years.

For a while, I even joked that I had it better than most—because I got to pick my family based on who was having the most fun during the holidays. I’d float from house to house, heart in hand, trying to feel like I belonged. And for a time, that worked. I survived on borrowed belonging. Until one family invited me in—and meant it.

They didn’t just let me in.
They kept me.
And that changed everything.

When the Asbes met me, I was at my absolute lowest.

In 2018, I didn’t leave the farm—I crawled away from it.
A shell of myself. Exhausted. Fractured. Barely holding it together.

I had spent years in a business partnership that became abusive in every possible way—emotionally, psychologically, physically, sexually, and financially. By the time I got out, I wasn’t just burned out—I was completely depleted. Not physically safe. Not emotionally intact. Not financially or mentally stable.

And I was carrying the grief of losing my friend Taylor to suicide. I had promised to visit him—but instead, I was back at the farm, cleaning up messes I didn’t make, trying to keep the wheels turning and the lights on. Trying to hold everything together when everything was falling apart.

When he died, all I could feel was guilt. I blamed myself for not showing up.
For choosing survival over connection.

I was devastated.
Embarrassed by how much I’d allowed to be taken from me.
Weak. Directionless. And drowning in shame.

What I needed wasn’t a fix or a strategy.
I needed a soft place to land.
Somewhere safe enough to fall apart and start again.

To Humpty Dumpty myself back together—one piece at a time.

And somehow, right when I needed it most, the Asbe family said yes.

Some of the best people I’ve ever known.

It started with Alexis Asbe—a visionary, a truth-teller, and the greatest mentor I’ve ever had. I didn’t arrive with a grand plan. I arrived with a willingness to show up, to contribute however I could, and to rebuild myself through service and purpose.

Alexis met me with open arms and high standards. I became her right hand—trusted, reliable, quietly effective. She gave me my favorite job title to this day:

I was the Ninja.
I got things done—and nobody ever saw me coming.

We were a good team. I supported her work, and she supported my healing. In making her feel safe and steady, I started to feel that way myself—for the first time in a long time.

She invited me to move into Hummingbird Hill, a sanctuary of a house where her mother-in-law and her mother-in-law’s sister lived. It became my landing pad. My cocoon. My miracle.

But none of that would’ve happened without the quiet, sovereign nod of approval from the family matriarch:
Judy Asbe.

Judy didn’t know me.
I was just a friend of her daughter-in-law’s.
But she said yes.

She welcomed me into her home.
Into her family.
And she never took it back.

Her generosity and willingness to take a chance on me, is something that I’ll never stop being grateful for. It changed my life.

Judy was barely 5 feet tall, but her presence could part a crowd. She was a nurse, a mother of four, a grandmother, a lake lover, and a woman whose opinions were rarely uncertain. Her motto was: “I’ll do it myself.” And she lived it.

One of my first memories of her is from a test-run retreat I helped Alexis host on a houseboat in Lake Shasta. Judy came along to help anchor the boat. And there she was—in her 70s—swinging a sledgehammer to drive stakes into the shoreline like it was nothing.

Didn’t ask for help. Didn’t want it. Wouldn’t accept it even if you insisted.
She just did the damn thing.

Watching her swing that sledgehammer—fierce, focused, and unapologetic—inspired me to believe I could be strong again, too. If she could anchor a houseboat in her 70s, surely I could anchor myself. Surely I could rise from my breakdown and turn it into a breakthrough.

In that moment, something shifted. I saw what resilience looked like in real life. And I started to believe it might live in me, too.

Over the years, life took me many places, but my bond with the Asbes never wavered. We worked together. We played fiercely competitive card games and trash-talked like it was an Olympic sport. We laughed. We cried. We loved.

They stopped being “the family I stayed with.”
They became my family.

And Judy—Nana—sat at the center of it all.

She wasn’t overly warm. That wasn’t her style. But when she hugged me? When she said “I love you”?

It meant everything.

She didn’t just let me in.
She loved me in real, tangible, steady ways.
And it changed my life.

This week, I received word that Judy is nearing the end of her journey here.
She’s beginning that gentle crossing—one foot in this world, one in the next—carried, as always, by her quiet strength.

We knew this season would come.
But no amount of knowing ever makes it easy to let go of someone who made you feel like you belonged.

And as Judy prepares to leave this world, another maternal figure reappears.

After 15 years apart, my birth mother—Charlie—has come back into my life, now facing the early stages of Alzheimer’s. There’s no resolution there. No tidy bow. But there is symmetry.

As one mother figure exits, another re-enters.

It’s a reminder that there’s a season for everything.
A rising. A setting. A space in between where we become who we’re meant to be.

And in that space, I’ve been held.
Not just by one woman, but by many.

I’ve been divinely intervened upon again and again by maternal figures I didn’t expect—but desperately needed.
Mom Bec, who saved me as a teenager.
Alexis, Nancy, Judy, and the entire Asbe clan who helped me rebuild as an adult.

They helped me Humpty Dumpty myself back together.

They took family off the “F-word” list for good.

Because here’s the truth:
Just because you didn’t come from a happy, healthy, loving family…
Doesn’t mean one can’t come from you.

Just because someone didn’t give birth to you…
Doesn’t mean they can’t love you as their own.

And just because there’s no paperwork or shared DNA…
Doesn’t make the love any less sacred.

They say blood is thicker than water.
But the full quote is:

The family we choose can be just as real—sometimes more so—than the one we were born into.

Being someone’s chosen family—and being chosen yourself—especially when you’re not polished or perfect—that kind of love doesn’t just soothe the pain.
It heals the wound straight through to the soul.

And Judy?

She chose me.

Please take a moment to send a loving thought to the Asbe family.
They’ve shown me what real love looks like—quiet, consistent, and fiercely unconditional.
Hold them in your heart with me as they navigate this sacred transition.

With so much love,
— Sunny