Day 1–2 · Arrival in Panama City

The Sound of Belonging

After long delays, we finally arrived in Panama. It wasn’t quite night—just that deep equatorial dusk that falls fast, when one moment the sky is gold and the next it’s ink.

And then, through the noise of the airport, a voice called my name.
“Kim!”

It was Sofía, our niece from Cali, smiling and waving across the customs hall. Three flights, three countries—finally together, laughing at the timing.

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Field Notes from Panama: Sea Heart Reflections

The sea heart is both native and nomad — born of the rainforest, carried by the river, and received by whoever finds it.
It belongs everywhere water flows.
To hold it is to hold a piece of the forest’s endurance — and the sea’s promise that what drifts is not lost.

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When Our Children Turn Away: Walking Through the Unresolved

“Even here, in the quiet dark of the soil, something unseen is beginning to grow. This is the shape of grace—slow, tender, faithful.”

There are moments in motherhood that undo you—not because of noise or chaos, but because of the silence that follows words you never wanted to hear.

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Waking Up to Myself: Mothers Are Born Persons Too

“I nearly forgot I was a person.” Somewhere in the middle of 16 years of diapers and dishes, meals and messes, lesson plans and laundry, I misplaced myself. Charlotte Mason once wrote, “If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children when these are overdone, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play” (Charlotte Mason, School Education). But I had long since forgotten what play even looked like for me.

Reading Leah Boden’s Modern Miss Mason has been like hearing an echo of something my soul already knew but had buried under responsibility: play isn’t frivolous, it’s sanctuary. It awakens wonder, refreshes our souls, and guards us from idolizing our role as mothers. As Boden writes, it “awakens our intellect, provokes our sense of wonder, and refreshes our souls” (Modern Miss Mason).

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