One Hundred Thursdays

I started writing these blogs in February 2024, when Woodhaven was just beginning to take shape. Mulberry was our starting point, home to a small group of boys, and one of our dedicated staff members and I were piecing together a makeshift high school program as we went. We were preparing to purchase our New Hope Lane campus, but so much of what Woodhaven would become was still only beginning to emerge.

At the beginning, there was no real plan. I was not trying to build a weekly series or create a body of work. I wrote when something felt important enough to say. In those first months, that meant every few weeks, whenever there was something on my heart that needed a place to go.

The first piece was called A Mother’s Path, Shifting Pain into Purpose.

That title says a great deal about where I was then.

Back then, pain sat much closer to the surface. Writing gave me somewhere to place it. Those early pieces came out of the things I was trying to understand: love and its limits, milestones that felt heavier than they should have, what people carry quietly, what seasons can teach us, the mistakes I had made, and the small things I was learning as I went.

Even then, many of those reflections grew out of conversations with other parents. But much of what I was writing about still lived just beyond reach. I was writing toward something I believed in before it fully existed. I could see its outline, but I was still imagining what it might become.

Then came graduation in 2024.

If you had walked into Woodhaven that day, you would have seen sawdust, unfinished spaces, and a place very much still under construction. We had to hold the celebration outside. If it had rained, we would have needed a very different plan. There was nothing polished about it. And still, it was beautiful.

We had students living at Mulberry who had already been through so much. Some had made abrupt transitions. Some were trying to find steady ground again in the middle of change they had not chosen. And there we were, celebrating them anyway. Their work. Their progress. Their future. The place looked unfinished, but what mattered most was already there.

That day has stayed with me because it captured something essential about Woodhaven in those early months. So much was unfinished, and so much was uncertain. But there was joy. There was hope. And there were bright futures in front of those graduates.

That same day, a parent I had known for a couple of years said something that caught me completely off guard. She told me she loved the blog and asked when it came out because she felt like there was a rhythm to it.

A rhythm to it?

I remember thinking there was no rhythm at all. Then I had the surprising thought that maybe there should be.

And somehow, in that moment, I decided on Thursdays. I did not know then that Thursday would eventually become family group day at Woodhaven, a day I genuinely look forward to every week. But maybe it makes sense that they found each other. Thursday became a day for showing up, for connection, for staying close. It feels right that the writing lives there too.

Since then, the blogs have kept coming. Through ordinary weeks and difficult ones. Through progress, setbacks, celebration, doubt, and all the smaller moments in between that often matter more than anyone realizes. I did miss one particularly difficult week last May, and I still remember that.

One early blog was called From Pain to Passion to Purpose, and in many ways that is what has happened. The raw pain I carried, through my own alcoholism and through watching my loved one struggle, has softened over time. What grew in its place was purpose, and passion, and a clearer sense of why this work matters.

One afternoon, shortly after opening, one of our new residents was anxious about his first family visit. His family was anxious too. There had been so much chaos before, so much strain. The structured visits during treatment had not given them real time together, only supervised moments. So I joined their first afternoon visit at Woodhaven, unsure if they wanted me there, but deciding to be present anyway.

We played Rummikub. We ate birthday cake. We sat together in a way that felt easy and real.

I watched that boy settle into himself as the afternoon went on. And I watched his parents’ faces change. The worry that had been there at the beginning slowly gave way to something else. Hope, maybe. Or simply the quiet pleasure of being together without anything falling apart.

That afternoon, with the Rummikub and the birthday cake and his parents’ faces slowly relaxing, was the moment I understood what Woodhaven actually was.

I was no longer trying to imagine it.

It was right in front of me.

And the writing changed too.

That dad became an incredibly important person in our community. He shows up for other families. He shows up for his son. And this past Christmas, he took all of my blogs and turned them into bound volumes.

By then, the writing was no longer mostly about what I hoped Woodhaven could be. It was about what I was actually seeing here. Not perfectly, and not all at once, but truly. It was about watching people change, and about the moments that could easily be missed if no one stopped long enough to notice them.

Sometimes I share the blogs with our residents. Many of them arrive without much confidence, and it is their actions, their growth, and their perseverance that inspire so many of these pieces.

I think often about one resident in particular. Before coming to Woodhaven, he had made some painful choices. But one day I watched him do something kind for me, completely unprompted and with no wish to be noticed for it. It was small. Quiet. Easy to miss. But it stayed with me all day. Not because it was dramatic, but because it was sincere. It reminded me how much goodness can live inside a person, even after hard chapters. When I shared the blog he had inspired, I watched him read it. I could see something shift. That is a moment I will never forget.

For the first few days after Christmas, I just carried those books around.

I did not really show them to anyone. I brought them back to New York with me. I kept them in my bag. I took them out and held them, then put them back again. The next day, I did the same thing.

I have dreamed of writing a book for a long time, and I am still not sure when that day will come. But seeing all of those hours and all of those words bound together, alongside the faces of these remarkable young men, was deeply moving.

Because these pieces were never all mine.

They were made of the people inside them. Of growth, of hope, of hard things survived, and of small moments that mattered more than they first appeared to.

And then I realized that the writing was never meant to stay with me.

That had always been the point.

These blogs were meant to be shared. So I brought those books back to Woodhaven and placed them in the Zen Den, where they belong. Not as something to keep, but as something to return.

What began, for me, as a way to survive something painful slowly became a way to recognize what was growing around me. Woodhaven has grown since those early days of sawdust and uncertainty. So have I. But the most important part is that the boys and their families have grown too.

It has always been the people.

The ones who came here in fragile moments. The ones who trusted us before there was much to point to besides hope. The ones who stayed connected. The ones who kept showing up.

That is what these blogs have really been about.

I feel grateful that I have had the chance to witness so much of it.

And I think that is why I will keep going.

Sometimes I wonder if I have anything left to write. But I have come to understand that it is not really about what is left in me. It is about what the boys and their families keep giving to me.

The stories keep unfolding.
The growth keeps unfolding.
And so, somehow, does the writing.

In the end, this was never only my story.

It is all of ours.