I’m writing a memoir.
There. I said it out loud, in a place where I can’t take it back.
I decided on Saturday. Somewhere on the Canyon Ridge Trail, sitting on a bench, looking down at the trees below with the breeze blowing across my face — I decided. I’d been carrying the idea for a long time, the way I’ve carried a lot of things. Quietly. Without telling anyone. Pushing through to the next chapter and the next one and the next one because that’s what you do when you have kids to raise, a firm to run, a life to build, and a self to keep together.
But on that bench, something was different. I didn’t cry. I was too busy breathing, thinking, and just releasing. I pulled out my phone and recorded chapter one into a voice memo, right there. The first chapter of the book I’ve been carrying inside me for I don’t even know how long.
It felt liberating.
Here’s the thing about my life: I have so many seasons, so many chapters, so many stories. And I don’t want to let them die when I die.
I want to leave my story for my children — especially my daughters.
I want them to know the woman I was before they knew me. I want them to know the seasons I lived through, the choices I made, the ones I’m proud of and the ones I’m not. I want them to know what I survived and what I built and what I had to set down to keep going. I want them to know me — not just as their mom, but as a whole person who lived a whole life before and during the one they remember.
And if my story finds its way to someone else who’s lived a season similar to one of mine — if it helps even one woman recognize herself in what I went through — then it’s worth writing twice over.
For most of my life, I buried things to survive. I pushed through what I couldn’t process, hid what I couldn’t carry openly, and kept moving because moving was the only thing that worked. It got me here. I’m not mad at the woman who did that — she did what she had to do.
But on that trail on Saturday, I stopped. I set something down that had been controlling me for 38 years. And when I started walking again, lighter, I realized something: I don’t have to keep burying things to survive anymore.
I can write them down instead.
That’s what the memoir is. An honest look at the good and the bad — especially the parts I tried to hide, the parts I kept buried, the parts I pushed through to get to the next chapter. The parts I never told anyone because telling them felt dangerous.
It’s not dangerous anymore. It’s just true.
I’m going to write it on the trail.
That’s where the clarity comes. That’s where I can hear myself think — and hear what God is trying to tell me. Outside the trail, the noise drowns it all out. On the trail, the noise stops, and what’s underneath finally has room to surface.
So that’s the plan. I hike. I walk. I think. I record. And piece by piece, voice memo by voice memo, the book becomes a book.
I’m a CPA firm owner. I know how to run a long project. I know how to show up on the days I don’t feel like it, how to break something overwhelming into pieces small enough to carry. Running a firm and writing a memoir share more than most people would think. Both ask you to keep showing up. Both reward the woman who trusts the process.
I’m trusting the process.
There’s more I’m sitting with right now — answers I’ve recently gotten about how my brain works, about what I’ve been carrying, about why some seasons hit harder than others. I’ll share more soon.
For now, all I want to say is this: I’m 50. I’ve been a daughter, a wife, an ex-wife, a mother, a grandmother, a CPA, a runner, a hiker, a survivor of more than I’ve ever told anyone. And I’m just getting started on the next part.
This is Lupe 3.0.
Chapter one is recorded.
To my girls — when you read this someday, I hope you know I wrote it for you first.
With love and trail dust, Lupe
Runmom_6 