Introducing Cody: When Life Brings You Back to Yourself
There are moments in life that don’t make sense while they’re happening, but later you look back and realize they quietly changed everything.
Cody is one of those moments for me.
If you would have told me a year ago that I would fall in love with someone who makes me feel this safe, this soft, this understood… I probably would have laughed and changed the subject. At the time, I was coming out of a chapter that hurt me deeply. I was trying to figure out how to be okay again while pretending I already was.
I had become really good at being independent. Really good at carrying everything myself. Really good at acting like I didn’t need anyone.
And then somehow, life brought me back to Cody.
We first met years ago, back in 2018, at our annual camping trip. I had already known his sister Candace and brother-in-law Brian since I was 18, so he kind of naturally fell into our circle. Back then, there was no romance attached to it. We were both living completely different lives. There were campfires, crawdadding trips, late nights laughing with friends, and memories that at the time just felt like normal life.
He became friends with everyone, including my ex, and for years he was simply someone in the background of my story.
Then life moved on.
Until August of 2025.
I had bought tickets to see Sam Barber for a relationship that no longer existed. Honestly, looking back now, those tickets became symbolic of a life I had outgrown but hadn’t fully let go of yet. So I posted them for sale.
Out of nowhere, Cody messaged me asking if they were still available because his daughter Rylee loved Sam Barber and the show was sold out.
We hadn’t talked since 2019.
And yet there he was.
We talked back and forth figuring out details, and for some reason I just had this feeling in my gut telling me to give him the tickets instead. No reason. No expectations. Just intuition doing what intuition does.
The only thing I asked in return was that when Indigo played, he had to sing it loud.
The next day, I was at the Scandinavian Festival with my best friend Erica when I ran into Brian and our friend Mikey. Literally seconds later, Cody and Rylee walked up too.
It felt weirdly aligned. Like one of those tiny moments the universe quietly nudges together without you realizing it yet.
I remember thinking how good it was to see him after all those years.
And honestly? I thought that would be the end of it.
A week later, he messaged me again thanking me for the tickets and telling me how much fun they had. Then he offered to take me out to dinner to repay me and buy me a bottle of tequila.
Which… if you know me, you know that part mattered.
At first I completely shut it down. I wasn’t looking for anything. I wasn’t trying to open myself back up. I think part of me was honestly scared to.
But Cody has this way about him. He’s persistent without being pushy. Confident without making you uncomfortable. Steady in a way that slowly makes your walls stop feeling necessary.
So eventually, I said yes.
That dinner changed everything.
We sat there for hours talking until we were literally the last people left in the restaurant. No awkwardness. No pretending. No trying to impress each other.
Just ease.
And I remember driving home realizing I felt something I hadn’t felt in a really long time.
Safe.
Not surface-level safe. Not temporary safe.
Deeply safe.
The kind of safe where your nervous system finally relaxes.
The kind of safe where you stop feeling like you have to carry everything alone.
That’s who Cody became for me.
He somehow found every stubborn, hyper-independent part of me and softened it without ever trying to change me. He never demanded softness from me… he simply created an environment where it naturally came out.
He brings me back into my feminine constantly. He makes me feel beautiful, adored, protected, and honestly… like a goddess most days.
And somehow he does it in the smallest ways.
The way he reaches for my hand in public without thinking about it. The way he randomly pulls me into his chest while we’re laying on the couch just to snuggle me for a second to kiss my forehead. The way he grabs my butt walking through the kitchen and then gives me that stupid little wink like he’s proud of himself.
Or my favorite… when we’re laying in bed at night and he randomly starts giggling before sending me the dumbest video imaginable because “it reminded him of me.”
It’s those little things.
Those ordinary moments that somehow became healing for me.
Life with him is never quiet for long though because Cody is a complete busy body. There is always something happening, somewhere to go, someone to help, or some random adventure he’s dragging me into. Between work, being involved with the Tri County Chamber of Commerce, helping with the local food bank, raising his two beautiful daughters, and somehow still finding time for everyone else, he rarely sits still.
And honestly… I love that about him.
Most people see Cody as the loud one. The strong personality. The goofball who jokes too much and keeps everyone laughing. The guy who people don’t always take seriously until they see how hard he works and how deeply he shows up for the people around him.
But me and his girls?
We get the softer side.
The quieter side.
The side that loves deeply and protects fiercely.
And that part of him is something I hold very close to my heart.
He calls me his “little hippie” because I believe in crystals, astrology, moon phases, energy, intuition… all of it. And instead of making me feel silly for those things, he leans into them with me.
When I lost my spark, he noticed before I did.
He’s the reason I came back to my crystal business the way I have. He pushed me to believe in it again. He went to gem shows with me, talked rebranding ideas with me, listened to my visions, and reminded me that this little business of mine mattered.
He reminded me that I mattered. And boy did I need that.
If I had to connect Cody to a crystal, it would absolutely be Septarian, the Dragon Stone.
Grounding. Protective. Confident. Steady. Strong communication. Emotional stability.
That crystal feels exactly like his energy.
Not chaotic. Not confusing. Not inconsistent.
Just solid.
The kind of energy that makes you exhale.
And the funny thing is, he’s naturally drawn to Septarian too. Like somehow the crystal already knew before I did.
This relationship wasn’t something I planned for. It came into my life during one of the messiest, most healing seasons I’ve ever walked through.
But maybe that’s the beauty of it.
Sometimes love finds you while you’re rebuilding yourself.
Sometimes the right person shows up when you least expect it and gently reminds you that you do not have to be strong all the time.
That it’s okay to soften.
Okay to be held.
Okay to let someone love you loudly.
And at 35, I can honestly say this feels like the healthiest, safest, most genuine love I’ve ever known.
Not because it’s perfect.
But because it’s real.
And somewhere between Sam Barber tickets, tequila, dumb videos, crystals, couch snuggles, and a man who somehow makes me feel both grounded and free at the same time… I found my way back to myself again.