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If someone had asked me years ago what I thought my life would look like, I would have painted a very different picture than the one I live today.

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Like many people, I believed life would mostly unfold according to the plans I made, the dreams I held, and the faith that guided me. I imagined a future filled with family, love, purpose, and the ordinary moments we often take for granted. I never imagined that life would lead me down a path I never expected to travel.

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My journey toward what I now call my “new normal” did not begin with a single event. It began with a series of experiences that changed not only my circumstances, but also the way I viewed life itself.

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Fifteen years ago, I lost my father unexpectedly. He was one of the greatest influences in my life, teaching me perseverance, faith, and the importance of never giving up. Although I could not fully understand it at the time, many of the lessons he taught me would become the foundation I would rely on during some of the hardest years of my life.

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Then, over the course of the last several years, life changed in ways I never could have imagined.

I lost my mother, who was not only my parent but also my best friend. I watched my husband, Bernard, fight through a life-changing illness that nearly took him from us. I experienced the heartbreaking loss of my daughter, Ella Gloria Jean, during pregnancy. And I said goodbye to my lifelong friend, Beth, far too soon.

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Each experience changed me.

Each challenge forced me to confront questions I never expected to ask. Questions about faith. Questions about purpose. Questions about how to continue moving forward when the life you planned no longer exists.

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For a long time, I believed healing meant finding my way back to the person I had been before. Eventually, I realized that was never the goal. Life was not asking me to go backward. It was asking me to learn how to live in the life that was now in front of me.

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That realization became the beginning of my new normal.

Along the way, I discovered that grief and gratitude can exist in the same heart. That love does not end when circumstances change. That strength sometimes looks like asking for help. And that hope does not always arrive all at once—it often returns quietly, one day at a time.

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Writing became part of my healing journey.

Through A Love That Survived, Our New Normal, and Hello Ella Gloria Jean, I began sharing not only my story, but the lessons I learned while living through it. These books are deeply personal, but my hope is that readers will also find pieces of their own stories within them.

Today, I continue learning what it means to live with joy and sorrow, faith and uncertainty, memories and new beginnings. I have learned that healing is not about forgetting. It is about learning how to carry both the pain and the blessing, the loss and the love, the grief and the gratitude.

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If your life has been changed by loss, illness, disappointment, or circumstances you never expected, I hope you know that you are not alone. I hope you find encouragement, hope, and perhaps even a piece of your own story within these pages.

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Thank you for being part of this journey with me.

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Because a new normal is not the end of our story.
It is simply the place where the next chapter begins.

— Keisha Patrick