My blog surprised me again this week. Back in October, I crossed 15,000 views and thought I’d reached my high-water mark for the year. Now, barely a month later, I’m staring at an even bigger number:

20,062 views—with a full month still to go.

That’s more than last year, more than the year before, and more than I ever expected from this little mountain corner of mine. Apparently, these memoir stories I write from a quiet oasis in the wilderness of Virginia keep finding their way into far-off places—and into the hands and hearts of readers I’ll never meet yet somehow feel connected to all the same.

But 20,062 isn’t really a number. Not to me.

It’s the sum of moments someone chose to spend with my words. It’s a cup of coffee that went cold on a stranger’s table because they lingered. It’s a pause in someone’s busy day. It’s a late-night scroll where someone said, without ever typing the words, “I’ll stay a little longer.” Twenty thousand tiny gestures of yes in a world full of noise.

And the deeper truth behind that math—the part I keep circling back to—is that this milestone isn’t about reach or visibility or bragging rights. It’s about what it represents in the long arc of a life. I’ve lived enough years, and carried enough stories, to know that readers don’t show up unless something in the writing rings true. They don’t return unless the voice feels familiar, honest, worth sitting with. They certainly don’t keep climbing toward 20,000 unless the stories hold something real.

So this isn’t a celebration of views.

It’s a quiet acknowledgment that I’ve kept faith with my own voice—through reinvention, through loss, through love found unexpectedly, through the strange and luminous chapters that have made up this year. And somehow, astonishingly, readers have kept faith with me.

And yes, threaded into the margins—without ever mentioning Gary by name—is the quiet steadiness that has shaped this year in ways I’m still learning to articulate. Love doesn’t call attention to itself; it simply widens the edges of your life. It softens how you move through the world, deepens the tone of your voice, and reminds you that being read is wonderful, but being seen—fully, gently, without hurry—is something else entirely.

This year, more than any before, has reminded me that showing up with a story is an act of hope. And reading one is, too. Somewhere in that exchange—when the writing meets the reading—something human and steady is created. Something that matters.

So here I sit, on a chilly Thanksgiving week, taking in this milestone not as a trumpet blast but as a simple moment of gratitude. Gratitude for the readers who knock on my digital door day after day. Gratitude for the chance to tell the stories I’ve carried for decades. Gratitude for the ways this year has widened, softened, and surprised me—and for the quiet presence that keeps teaching me that the best stories are the ones we live, not just write.

I didn’t expect this climb to 20,062. But I’m grateful for every step, every reader, every quiet yes.

And with a month still to go, I’ll just say it now—

Thank you.