Our Family
The People Behind Storybrook
Storybrook may have begun as a name for a little place in the woods, but it has never really been about a house.
It is home.
It is where Brett and I are building a life, where family comes and goes, where Cayden raids the kitchen, where phone calls stretch across states and oceans, where there is usually a project half-finished somewhere, and where Meadow has apparently decided that no one should ever have to walk from one room to another alone.
Some of the stories I write and the work I do through Storybrook are deeply personal because they grew here—in the middle of marriage, motherhood, loss, change, ordinary life, and the people God has given me to love.
So it only feels right that you meet a few of them.
My Steadfast
Brett is my husband, my best friend, and the person most likely to hear me say, “I have an idea…” and discover twelve minutes later that we apparently have a new project.
He has believed in Storybrook from the beginning, even during the seasons when it existed mostly in conversations, notebooks, half-written pages, and things I was trying to explain before I entirely understood them myself.
Brett is practical where I am imaginative. He thinks about how something will actually work while I am already picturing what it might become. Around here, he is usually building, repairing, researching, moving something heavy, figuring out technology, or patiently listening while I rethink something we thought we had decided three days ago.
I gave Brett the name Steadfast in my Storybrook stories because it reflects so much of who he has been in my life.
The name fits for reasons deeper than simply being dependable. We have lived enough life together to know that love is not built only from beautiful moments. Sometimes it is built through choosing one another again, learning, forgiving, staying, growing, laughing in the middle of the mess, and trusting God with the chapters we are still writing.
Storybrook may have begun in my heart, but Brett has been part of building it with me every step of the way.
Brett
Jeremiah & Rebecca
Jeremiah is my oldest son, and somehow the little boy I once worried over has grown into a man with a life, marriage, responsibilities, and adventures of his own.
After years of military life and distance, he and his wife, Rebecca, are finally close enough for weekly dinners now—and I do not take that for granted. There is something especially sweet about having your grown child close enough to sit around the table with regularity instead of loving him mostly through phone calls and miles.
And Rebecca has been such a gift to me too.
After being a boy mom for so many years, I am ridiculously thankful to finally have a daughter. 😂 She and I have our own things now—getting our nails done, antiquing, shopping, wandering through places we probably do not need to buy anything from and somehow coming home with something anyway.
I love watching Jeremiah and Rebecca build a life that belongs to them—their own traditions, decisions, memories, challenges, inside jokes, and future.
Motherhood changes as children grow. You stop being responsible for writing so much of their story and begin receiving the privilege of watching them write it themselves.
That transition is beautiful.
And occasionally rude. Because apparently children are allowed to become adults without first asking their mothers.
Cayden
Cayden is our youngest, and life with him has taught me more than once that beginnings do not get to decide endings.
He is funny, practical, independent, and happiest when a subject connects to real life. He loves the outdoors, hunting, cars, gaming, figuring out how things work, and approximately anything that seems more useful than a worksheet designed simply because someone thought teenagers needed another worksheet.
We homeschool him here at Storybrook, which means school sometimes looks like grammar and algebra at the table or researching wildlife in our woods, learning about money, working on the property, or figuring out what adulthood is actually going to require.
Cayden is in that strange in-between season where childhood is behind him, adulthood is beginning, and so much is still being figured out.
I love watching him discover what interests him, what kind of work fits him, what he believes, and what kind of man he wants to be.
That season carries its own kind of hope.
Chief Shadow, Property Inspector & Mama of Everyone
And then there is Meadow.
Meadow is our long-haired German Shepherd, although I am becoming increasingly convinced that she believes her actual job description is Family Supervisor.
She follows me everywhere. And I do mean everywhere.
If Cayden is upstairs, she will wander up to check on him and hang out for a while. If Brett is working on something, she sits nearby watching with her head tilted as though she would like him to explain exactly why he has chosen such an inefficient method. She gathers toys and treasures into favorite little spots, patrols the property, and somehow manages to keep track of everyone without appearing particularly stressed about any of it.
She also seems to mama everybody.
There is something wonderfully uncomplicated about the love of a good dog. Meadow does not care what kind of day anyone has had, whether something went according to plan, or whether we have checked everything off the list.
She just knows where her people are.
And apparently believes they should remain within eyesight.
She arrived at Storybrook after the vision for this place had already begun taking shape, but now it is difficult to imagine the place without her.
Meadow
Our Family, Near and Far
Our family is big, and it reaches far beyond the people who live beneath our roof.
Some are close enough for ordinary days and dinners around the table. Others are loved across miles, different states, facetimes, changing seasons, and busy lives.
While we love sharing pieces of our lives here, there are some loved ones whose names or photographs you may not see on these pages. They prefer their privacy, and we respect that not everything belongs on the internet, especially when younger children are involved.
So here at Storybrook, you will get to know a lot of our family. Others we will simply love a little more privately.
They are still just as much a part of our story, and they are deeply loved.
The Life Behind Storybrook
Our family is not perfect.
We have known joy and disappointment, beginnings and endings, mistakes, loss, change, distance, laughter, complicated chapters, and seasons when God seemed to be writing something very different from what we expected.
Maybe that is one reason Storybrook could never have been built around the idea of perfect lives.
I do not believe that is where the most meaningful stories live anyway.
They live around kitchen tables. In long phone calls. In marriages that keep learning. In grown children building lives of their own. In teenagers trying to figure out who they are becoming. In people we miss. In relationships we protect rather than explain. In ordinary evenings when a dog is asleep at our feet and, for a few minutes, everyone we love seems somehow close.
This is the family behind Storybrook.
Some of our chapters will find their way into the things I write.
Some will remain ours alone.
But all of them have helped teach me the same thing:
There is always more to a person’s story than what can be seen from the outside.
And that truth is woven into everything we do here.
- Michelle