Woman in the Desert

Beloved,

There is something I have never spoken aloud until today.

Before I launched Alabaster Publishing,

before I uprooted myself from New York,

before I fully understood the woman I was becoming,

I carried a dream that followed me like breath.

I dreamed of a desert.

Not the desert of war,

though I once walked that landscape too.

Not the sand of conflict,

though my body remembers Desert Storm

in ways I still cannot fully name.

No — this desert was different.

In this dream,

the sky was a fierce pink at dusk,

wide as freedom,

deep as healing.

I was dancing —

barefoot, unafraid —

and each time my feet touched the sand,

the earth lifted beneath me,

and fire ignited.

Not the fire of fear.

Not the fire of destruction.

The fire of becoming.

I asked God for years,

“Why the desert?

Why fire at my feet?

What are You trying to show me?”

Today I finally understood.

A friend asked me,

“How are you holding up?”

And without hesitation, I said,

“I became fire.”

She whispered back,

“The warrior way.”

And suddenly the dream unfolded.

The desert was not the place of my trauma.

It was the place of my transformation.

The fire was not chasing me.

It was answering me.

It rose because I rose.

I was not being tested.

I was being revealed.

This is why the dream came before my move.

This is why the image on my book cover felt familiar.

This is why Alabaster Publishing poured out of me

like oil I had been carrying for years.

Because now,

as I break silence,

as I release letters,

as I pour truth and healing into the world,

I realize—

I am no longer the woman surviving the desert.

I am the woman who sets it alight.

I became

the flame,

the voice,

the oil,

the warrior,

the jar-bearer,

Open, broken and fire.

This is why I am launching now.

This is why the timing is divine.

This is why the desert called me back in dreams.

Not to remind me of war—

but to show me that the war is over.

And the fire in me

finally has permission

to burn.

Poured out in revelation,

Poured out in peace,

Poured out in oil and love—

From my alabaster jar to yours.