Author: Kelly Thomas

A Wrist Full of Memories

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

Friendship bracelets are small. Tiny threads knotted together. Yet they hold something enormous. Each one is a quiet act of devotion, hours spent twisting color into pattern, time given freely, care folded into every loop. They are gifts, yes—but also promises: that someone is thinking of you, that someone is holding you in their mind and heart while the world keeps moving.

At camp, bracelets crowd wrists like little galaxies. Staff and counselors wear them stacked, layered, every knot a story, every color a memory, every frayed end a summer lived fully. I have always loved that—seeing wrists full of stories, realizing how every friendship leaves a mark, small but permanent. And I have always felt naked without them. Bare wrists feel empty, like space without stars, like a body missing its constellation.

Every New Year, I cut mine off. They fray, fade, and become ragged—like old memories that ache to be remembered but can’t be worn any longer. I save them, of course, tucked into boxes, jars, envelopes, working slowly on a way to frame them so they are not lost. And then I start again: fresh threads, fresh intentions, new stories woven into the colors of my life. It is a ritual, a rhythm. A way of telling myself that no matter what has passed, there is always a way to begin again.

This year, everything feels different. I won’t be at camp. I won’t see the wrists stacked high with tiny galaxies. I worried I would have to get used to bare arms, to empty mornings and quiet wrists, to the loss of the small, steady comfort of bracelets wrapping around me like old friends. I feared the hollow space where devotion used to live.

And then my best friend sent me two.

Two bracelets, carrying her across the miles. Two tiny, twisted threads that are more than thread—they are proof that love travels. That care is patient and persistent. That even when seasons end, even when places close, even when the rituals of your life change, some bonds do not fade. I put them on my wrist, and suddenly my world feels stitched together again. The threads hum with memory, with laughter, with late-night confessions, with sunburned afternoons, with quiet mornings, with all the moments that have ever mattered.

Friendship bracelets are small. But small things can hold infinite weight. They carry our devotion, our longing, our constellations of memory and care. They remind us that even when life moves on, even when summers end, even when we are no longer who we were, love can still wrap itself around us, knot by knot, thread by thread.

And somehow, in that simple act of giving and receiving, I am whole again.

What We Carry

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Some people see five gallon buckets and think of chores they’d rather avoid.

They’re paint-splattered in the corner of a garage. Caked with drywall mud. Left behind after a job is finished and everyone’s already moved on. Cheap plastic. Replaceable. Something you grab when you need it and forget when you don’t.

On a farm, they become something else.

Five gallon buckets are essential to farming in a way that’s hard to explain until you live inside the rhythm of it. They’re there before the sun fully clears the horizon and still there when the light finally gives up. We use them to haul water to livestock tanks when hoses freeze solid or won’t reach far enough. We use the gator to carry feed from the barn to a small standalone trailer, buckets lifted and set down again, lined up inside where they’ll sit overnight, safe and dry, waiting. The next day, those same buckets are picked up again and carried into animal pens, one slow trip at a time, until everyone is fed.

Sometimes they hold tools. Sometimes they hold salt or minerals or whatever you needed to grab without thinking. Sometimes they’re empty, which somehow still feels like a promise, like they’re waiting for the next thing that needs doing.

They wear the work. Scratches from fences and trailer edges. Dents you don’t remember making. Plastic dulled by sun and weather. The handles squeak. One always seems to leak just enough to soak your boots, and you don’t remember which one it is until it’s already dripping. Dirt clings to the sides. Mud cakes the bottoms.

We have an array of them. Blues and whites and reds. Loud pinks that don’t belong anywhere else on the farm. Buckets with hardware store logos. Buckets from places we passed through once and didn’t think we’d remember. There’s a quiet joy in finding new colors and new designs, in something so practical still managing to feel personal. Like each one has a small story pressed into its sides.

They don’t get cleaned as often as they should. They don’t get put away neatly. They lean against barn doors, ride in the back of the gator, wait by gates and pens. And somehow, they’re always close when something breaks or spills or needs to be carried right now.

Farming is full of things like that. Tools that don’t look like much. Work that doesn’t photograph well. A life built from small, physical acts, repeated until your body remembers them even when your mind is tired.

Five gallon buckets aren’t romantic. They don’t make good stories on their own. But they live in the spaces between tasks. In the weight of water carried by hand. In the hollow sound of feed hitting the bottom. In the pause when you set one down, wipe your hands on your jeans, and look out across the pens before lifting it again.

Out here, they’re part of how the work moves forward. Part of how days are held together. Quiet witnesses to the fact that someone was here, doing what needed to be done, and will be back tomorrow to do it again.

The Brutal Beauty of Winter

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

We’ve reached that part of winter where South Dakota stops pretending.

The forecast has settled into a long stretch of below zero temperatures, the kind of cold that doesn’t care how tough you think you are or how many layers you pile on. This cold is brutal. It cuts straight through coats and sweaters like they’re suggestions, not protection. The wind doesn’t knock. It slams into you, steals your breath, and leaves you staggering for half a second while it whips loose snow into tiny glass missiles that sting your face and hands.

Any exposed skin burns instantly. Not metaphorically. Actually burns. Raw and angry and aching within seconds.

The cold doesn’t stay outside either. It seeps through the windows, through the walls, through the cracks you didn’t know existed. It settles into every room like an unwelcome guest, making the idea of leaving a warm bed feel almost offensive. Even inside, there’s always a chill riding the air, a reminder that winter is very much in control.

This is the kind of cold that makes your whole body ache. Your nose runs, and before you can even wipe it, it freezes, an uncomfortable, ridiculous reality of arctic temperatures. If your gloves get wet, they stiffen and harden, crusted with frost, no longer flexible or warm, just cold armor against colder air. Everything feels sharper. Heavier. More exhausting.

And yet, somehow, this depth of cold brings beauty with it.

Winter sunsets feel more vivid, like the sky is making up for everything it’s taken away. Colors burn brighter and linger longer, purples bleeding into pinks and oranges in ways that feel almost unreal against the frozen landscape. The air is clearer, crisper, and the light carries farther.

Frost clings to trees and fences, delicate and quiet, turning ordinary branches into something almost sacred. Every twig is outlined in white, every field dusted and still. The world feels paused, held in place by ice and breath and silence.

On days like these, the sky sometimes gifts us sun dogs. They’re bright spots of light that appear on either side of the sun, caused by sunlight refracting through ice crystals suspended in the atmosphere. Basically, the cold is so intense that the air itself sparkles. Halos form. Light bends. The sky shows off.

I saw them on Saturday, soft and glowing, but the sky was thick with clouds and I couldn’t get a good photo. Still, just seeing them felt like a quiet reward for enduring this kind of cold. Like winter saying, I know this hurts, but look what I can do.

I hate this level of cold. I really do. I hate how it makes everything harder and slower and more painful, how it drains energy before the day even starts. But I love what winter creates. I love that even in the most unforgiving conditions, there’s still beauty pressing through, still light bending and colors burning and frost turning the world gentle.

Maybe that’s why it sticks with me.

Because winter doesn’t soften. It doesn’t apologize. But every once in a while, it lifts the veil just enough to remind us that even here, especially here, there is something worth noticing.

And I hope I see it again soon.

Constellations Beneath The Surface

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I think I am in my whale shark era.

It began small, a stuffed whale shark in a zoo gift shop, its skin dotted with tiny white stars, and I felt something in me recognize it. Not joy, not comfort, not surprise, but recognition, as if a part of me that had always existed far below the surface had finally surfaced just enough to say, yes, this is what I am. Something immense. Something patient. Something that moves slowly and carries the weight of its own existence without asking for notice.

Whale sharks are the largest fish in the ocean, and yet they do not dominate. They move like time itself, deliberate, mouths open, letting the water pass through them. They do not chase. They do not fight. They do not hurry. They do not need to be understood. They glide through currents that would crush anything else, and still they are gentle. I have fallen in love with their enormity, with the quiet certainty of their being.

Their backs are painted with constellations, a thousand tiny stars scattered across vast, dark skin. No two patterns are the same. They carry the sky on their bodies, a universe in motion, traveling alone through oceans that stretch farther than the mind can hold. And I think of myself like that sometimes—alone, yes, but not lost, marked with constellations that only I can see, carrying my own silent light through waters that are deep and unknowable.

I have carried so much already. Loss, exhaustion, nights where the silence pressed against me and I thought I might break. I have braced myself for the world to take what it wanted, and still, here I am. Still, I am moving. Still, I am learning how to let the weight exist without breaking me, how to float in it, how to let the current carry me.

There is awe in that stillness. There is awe in being so large, so slow, so deliberate, and so alone, and yet so fully alive. There is awe in the constellations that mark a creature’s skin, in the way the stars travel with it even when no one else can see. I want that for myself. I want to be immense and quiet and star-marked, to move through the dark water and let it hold me, to let the depth exist without shame or explanation, to let the currents trace the shape of my body and the shape of my scars and the shape of everything I have learned to carry.

Even in the silence, even far below the surface where no one notices, the stars still take note.

I want my life to feel like that. I want to glide through it with the vastness of the ocean in my chest, carrying constellations across my back that no one can ever fully map but that are there anyway, that shine anyway, that mark me as real and enduring. I want to move slow, I want to hold weight without apology, I want to exist with patience, with awe, with quiet light, with the kind of presence that does not need to be witnessed to be real.

This is my whale shark era.

Vast and patient, gentle and immense, alone but full of constellations, moving through dark water without spectacle. Letting the stars mark me, letting the ocean hold me, letting the silence shape me. Letting myself exist without explanation. Letting the awe of it reach me, all of me, until even I can see it, even I can feel it.

Even here, far below the surface, even in solitude, even in silence, the stars still take note.

Things I Still Believe In

/ Kelly Thomas / Leave a comment

Dear Santa,

I know it has been a long time since I wrote to you, but something in me felt pulled back to this small tradition, this quiet magic. Maybe it is the season itself. Maybe it is the kind of year I have had. Maybe it is the part of me that is still trying to believe good things can find their way to me. I do not know exactly why, but I do know I wanted to write.

This year has felt heavy in ways I never expected. It held moments of beauty, too, but also a kind of tired I cannot always explain. I think you understand that sort of thing. I think you have seen many hearts trying their best to keep going, even when they feel worn thin. Mine is one of them.

I am not writing to ask for anything extravagant. I think what I want most is a little steadiness. A small piece of peace that stays long enough for me to breathe again. I want warmth that lasts even after the lights come down. I want hope that does not slip through my fingers the way it usually does.

There are a few real things too. Simple things. A winter that is not too harsh. A soft morning to rest in. A day where my body does not hurt and my chest feels light enough to carry. A moment of laughter with the people I love. A reminder that I am not as alone as the dark sometimes tells me I am.

I would also love something symbolic. A sign that the year ahead will be kinder. Something small that tells me I am still allowed to believe in goodness, even after everything. Maybe it comes in the shape of a sunset or a handful of stars. Maybe it is a quiet reassurance I do not have to fight as hard as I used to. I would be grateful for whatever form it takes.

I know many people ask you for big things, impossible things, and maybe this letter is strange. But I think the heart of Christmas has always been this gentle honesty. The kind that shows up in simple words and quiet wishes. So here is mine.

Please bring a little light to the places in me that have been dim for a while. Please bring kindness to the people who need it most. And if there is room, please bring something soft for me too. Something that reminds me I am still growing, still healing, still here.

Thank you for reading this. Thank you for listening to the small voice in me that still believes in wonder. I hope you have safe travels, clear nights, and warm cookies waiting wherever you go.

Sincerely,
Kelly

Color At The Edge Of A Barren World

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Tonight’s sunset wasn’t the boldest I have ever seen.
It didn’t streak across the sky in wild ribbons of fire or paint the clouds in colors that demand you stop everything just to feel alive. But after a week swallowed by grey, a week of barren fields and frozen winds and a world that looked like it had forgotten how to breathe, this small burst of color felt like a hand reaching out of the cold.

The kind of cold we had today doesn’t lend itself to beauty.
It bites through coats and gloves and makes your eyes water the second you step outside. It turns every inhale into a sting and makes even short walks feel like a punishment. The days have been long and heavy, the kind where the sky barely changes and everything feels muted or asleep.

That kind of winter wears on you.
It settles into the quiet places.
It makes you wonder if the sun remembers how to rise for you at all.

So when it finally pushed through tonight, just a thin line of orange pressed against the horizon, just enough pink and gold to soften the clouds, I felt something loosen inside me. Not joy. Not relief. More like a reminder. A small, almost trembling insistence that even the bleakest stretches eventually break.

There is something tender about sunsets like this.
The quiet ones.
The ones that don’t announce themselves.
The ones that look like they are offering whatever little light they have left, hoping it will be enough.

It hit me harder than I expected.
Maybe because everything has felt so dim lately.
Maybe because I am tired in the way winter makes you tired, tired in the way that comes from carrying invisible things for too long.
Maybe because every day has felt like it blends into the next, all of them silver and silent and cold.

But tonight, the sky remembered color.

It was not spectacular.
It was not loud.
But it was present.

And presence alone can feel like a miracle after so many days of nothing but grey. After so many hours of wind that cuts through you and fields that look lifeless and mornings that never fully brighten.

I stayed longer than I needed to, watching the last thin glow disappear behind the line of trees. The air stung my face. The cold settled deeper. But it felt worth it.

Because even if tomorrow returns to grey, even if the frozen world closes in again, at least I had this one moment. This one quiet offering of beauty. This one reminder that winter does not get the final word.

For a brief moment, color pushed through the cold.
For a brief moment, the world softened.
For a brief moment, I remembered that I am still here too.

The Night The Sky Couldn’t Hold Itself

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If you’re wondering what you’re looking at, these are star trails.

They form when a camera stays still long enough to notice what we usually rush past. It holds its breath, holds its place, and lets the Earth turn beneath it. We’re the ones moving, but the long exposure makes it look like the stars are the ones wandering, sweeping their light across the night like they have somewhere gentle to be.

I think that’s why I love them.
Because they prove something I keep forgetting.
That movement doesn’t always look like progress.
Sometimes it looks like staying in one place long enough for the truth to catch up to you.

What I can’t stop staring at is the reflection in the water.

That doubled sky.
That echo of light.
Like the world was so full that it overflowed and spilled itself into the stillness until even the dark had to carry something bright.

There is something almost painfully tender about that.
How the sky didn’t shrink itself or dim itself or apologize for being too much.
It simply became two skies instead of one.

And maybe that is what hit me.
The reminder that even in silence, even when my days feel stuck or small or swallowed by their own shadows, things are shifting.
Healing is shifting.
Grief is shifting.
I am shifting.
Not loudly. Not obviously. But undeniably.

The water didn’t move, but it mirrored the stars anyway.
And some days I feel like that.
Quiet, unmoving, like nothing is changing at all.
But maybe I am reflecting things I can’t see yet.
Maybe the parts of me that feel still are actually catching light I didn’t know was reaching for me.

I stayed out by the water longer than I meant to.
The grass was cold.
The night smelled like winter trying to arrive too early.
And I felt that familiar ache in my chest, the kind that comes from wanting more than I can name, from missing things I can’t explain, from holding hope and exhaustion in the same trembling hand.

But the stars kept tracing their slow arcs across the sky.
They didn’t hurry.
They didn’t need to.
They simply kept going, one thin line at a time, drawing proof of their persistence in the dark.

I think I needed to see that.

Because lately I have been feeling like I am barely moving.
Like I am suspended between worlds, South Dakota and Virginia, past and future, memory and whatever comes next.
But the camera caught movement my eyes couldn’t.
And maybe that is true for my life too.

Maybe I am changing in ways I won’t recognize until later.
Maybe this season is a long exposure.
Slow, quiet, honest.
Capturing shifts I won’t understand until I step back and see the trails.

Maybe you are in one of those seasons too.

If you are, I hope you remember this.
Stillness is not stagnation.
Quiet is not failure.
And even on the nights when you feel like you are holding your breath, the sky is still moving, and so are you.

A Sky That Breathed

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The northern lights came last night.

Not the way I always imagined. Not wild or brilliant or loud. Not the kind they write postcards about or chase across Icelandic skies. These came soft. Unannounced. Almost hesitant. Like maybe the sky forgot it was allowed to be beautiful here too.

It started with a haze—green stitched across the clouds like breath. A red glow spilling out near the edges. Faint. Fainter than the photos. But I could see them.

With my own eyes.
Not through glass or lens or screen.
Just me. And the sky. And the dark.
And a kind of light I didn’t know I needed.

I’ve wanted to see the northern lights for as long as I can remember. It’s been one of those “someday” things, tucked onto a dream list I rarely say out loud. I always pictured them bold—exploding across a frozen sky in a place far from here. I always thought I’d have to go chasing them. Far. Cold. Alone.

But they came here.
To this farm.
To this quiet stretch of November.
To this version of me I’m still learning how to carry.

And maybe they weren’t loud. Maybe they weren’t the grand, breathtaking show I always pictured.
But still—they came.
And I saw them.

And it moved something in me.

Because we’re six weeks from a new year.
And I don’t know how I feel about that yet.

There’s been so much ache this year. So many days where the silence got too loud. So many moments where I felt like I was watching the world move and burn and spin without me. I’ve been holding a lot. Letting go of more. Some things I’m still not ready to name.

But last night, just for a moment,
the sky reminded me that not everything is lost.

That even faint light still counts.
That beauty doesn’t have to be loud to be real.
That wonder can still find me, even here, even now.

I still want to see the Iceland lights someday.
The big ones. The unforgettable ones.
But maybe I needed this kind first.

The quiet kind.
The kind that shows up when you stop expecting it.
The kind that doesn’t fill the whole sky, but still fills you.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s enough for right now.

After The Rain

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This was April.
Mud season in South Dakota.
The kind of spring that doesn’t arrive all at once. It shows up in pieces. A little green here, a little sun there. Then rain. Then snow again. Then more rain. The kind that smells like thawed dirt and wet air. The kind that makes you believe something new might still grow.

We wait for it all winter.
We wait through the deep freeze, the dark mornings, the quiet that settles into your chest. We hold out for the day when the ground softens. When you can walk across the field and feel it shift under your boots. When you can breathe a little easier, even if nothing has bloomed yet.

That was one of those days.
It had just rained, and the sky cracked open for a minute. A rainbow stretched itself across the farmland like a whisper. You had to look up to see it, but it was there.

That’s our Gator in the front. Mud-streaked, worn in, still running. And the John Deere behind it, a little older, still waiting to be needed. Out here, the work never really stops. The equipment doesn’t ask what season it is. It just keeps going.

Spring felt like a beginning.
We watched goat kids find their footing in the mud. We hoped the frost hadn’t killed the roots. We looked for the first wildflowers on the edges of the fence line. Life returned quietly. Slowly. But it returned.

And now, months later, we’re preparing for winter again.
The sun sets earlier. The mornings are colder. You can feel it coming.

We check the machinery.
We fix what needs fixing.
We stack feed.
We make lists.
We brace ourselves.

This is the rhythm.
Hope, followed by work. Life, followed by stillness. We wait. We begin. We prepare. We do it all again.

But I still remember that day in April.
The softness after the storm.
The rainbow over the field.
The reminder that no matter how long or harsh the winter is, spring will come again.

The land always circles back.
And so do we.

Will I Ever See You Again?

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I’m writing this from the sky.
Somewhere between what was and what comes next. I boarded the plane, found my seat, and now I’m watching the clouds blur into something I can’t quite name.
And still, somehow, I feel stuck.
Suspended. Like I am paused in a doorway.
One foot in the past and the other not sure where it is going to land.

Over the last few weeks, I said a lot of goodbyes. Some short. Some silent. Some that felt like the kind of goodbye you don’t come back from. And somewhere in nearly every one, the same question found its way to the surface.

“Will I ever see you again?”

And the truth is, I do not know.

I wanted to have a better answer. I wanted to say yes. I wanted to say of course. I wanted to say absolutely. I wanted to make promises, even if I was not sure I could keep them. But I have learned that sometimes the kindest thing you can do is tell the truth, even when it breaks your own heart.

And the truth is that life is not a straight road. It loops and turns and takes you places you never expected. And I do not know where this chapter is going to lead me. I would love to come back to Virginia. To the porches and backroads. To the trails and the tucked-away corners. To the places that held me when I did not have words. To the people who stood by me through all of it.
To the mountain views, yes, but also the little things. The streetlights and sidewalk conversations. The small-town moments and quiet kind of love I found scattered across this state.

But I have also left something behind. Something heavy. And not all returns are healing. Some just reopen wounds that have not scarred over yet.

There is a version of this story where I do come back. Where I visit in the fall or the spring. Where we sit on couches or church steps or trailheads and pick up right where we left off. Where the leaves still change.
Where the air still smells like woodsmoke and memory. I hope that version exists. I hope I get to live it.

But if I do not, please know this.

I loved this place.
I loved these people.
I loved this chapter of my life, even when it broke me.

And I will carry it with me.
All of it.
The memories.
The quiet hellos.
The brave goodbyes.
The moments I was seen and the ones I never found words for.
The laughter I will replay. The silences that taught me how to stay.

Virginia will keep breathing without me. That is how it works. The wind will keep moving. The leaves will keep falling. The sun will keep setting over the ridges and rooftops. Over the porches and roads and places I may never stand again.

But I hope you remember I was here.
I hope you know you mattered.
I hope we find our way back to each other in some season or some sky.

For now, I am flying.

And part of me is still there. Curled up on Megan’s couch. Watching the leaves dance. Wondering if maybe, just maybe, this is not an ending. Just a pause.