“Did you know I love this hard because of you?
And I’ve been learnin’ it’s a journey, as I’m walkin’ in your shoes
I’ll pass along all of your lessons
Took some time but I got your message
If you ever wonder why I’m bulletproof
It’s all because of you…”

These words haven’t left me since last night.

Matthew and I decided to be wild and crazy. We went out on a Tuesday night for an 8:00 pm concert in DC. I bought the tickets months ago to see Calum Scott, fully committed to pretending we are still the kind of people who don’t think twice about a late night.

But let me be honest… when I saw there was an opening act I didn’t recognize, my first thought wasn’t excitement… it was, how long is this going to last and how tired am I going to be tomorrow?

And then she walked on stage.

Jamie Fine.

And within minutes, she wasn’t just singing… she was reaching into something I didn’t even realize was sitting so close to the surface.

Lately, I’ve been drawn to simple things. Quiet things.
Like the bird feeder outside my window.

When we moved into our new home, it was one of the first things I put up. It started small with finches, robins, doves. And then one day, a cardinal. And like so many people who have lost someone they love, I let myself believe it might be my mom stopping by to say hi.

Because when you love someone that deeply… you don’t stop looking for them. You just start looking differently.

Monday, though, something unexpected showed up.

A raven.

I froze. It felt… different.

I almost Googled it—“Are ravens common in Maryland?”—and then laughed, remembering Baltimore’s team. Instead, I emailed my dad and sister.

My sister replied with one word: “nevermore.”

Of course she did.

She was referencing The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe*—a poem about grief. About being stuck in it. About not being able to move forward.

So I read it again.

And this time… it hit differently.

Because if I’m honest, I know what it feels like to be stuck there.

A big part of why I needed to leave Central Texas was because I couldn’t breathe in the middle of that grief anymore. It wasn’t just losing my mom, but it was reliving those final months over and over again, everywhere I turned.

Grief has a way of getting loud.
Heavy.
All-consuming.

And if you’re not careful, it convinces you that staying there, holding onto the pain, is the same thing as holding onto the person.

But it’s not.

Just the day before, I told Matthew something that felt almost foreign coming out of my mouth:

“I feel like I can finally exhale.”

And then the raven showed up.

I didn’t see it as a symbol of being trapped.

I saw it as a marker.

A moment.

A quiet whisper that said… you can let go and live.

And then there was that song.

That reminder that the love we were given doesn’t disappear.
It becomes part of us.

It’s the reason we love harder.
Show up bigger.
Keep going when it would be easier to shut down.

That’s what Love Louder means.

It doesn’t mean the pain goes away.
It means we refuse to let it be the loudest thing in the room.

We choose love anyway.
We choose connection anyway.
We choose to keep living… fully, deeply, imperfectly anyway.

Maybe being “bulletproof” isn’t about not feeling pain.

Maybe it’s about allowing yourself to feel it… and still choosing to move forward.

To carry their love with you but not as something that weighs you down, but as something that lifts you up.

Something that pushes you to live bigger.

To love louder.

Last night, an artist I didn’t even know gave words to something my heart has been trying to say for a long time.

And today, I’m listening.

Not to the grief.
Not to the fear.

But to the love.

Always the love.

Louder than anything else.