I keep circling back to this thought: tears are for the jealous heart. Maybe that sounds harsh, but I’ve seen it enough times to know it’s true. I’ve cried rivers for things that mattered—losses that cut deep, moments too heavy to carry alone. It isn’t grief, it’s envy in disguise.

People weep not because they’re broken, but because someone else held the flame they wanted for themselves. I’ve been on both sides of that. When I was young, I remember watching other girls move through the world with a kind of ease I didn’t have—fathers who loved them without condition, families who held them instead of throwing them away. I never cried for myself. I cried because I wanted their life, their safety, their softness. That’s jealousy, and it burns hotter than sorrow ever could.

The past few months have forced me to stop and look at what’s right here, in my own hands. I realized I have everything a woman could ever want: a home that holds me, work that still gives me meaning, a wife who has been my companion through storm after storm, and, yes, a circle of friends. That last part surprised me most. I spent years convinced I didn’t belong anywhere, that I was missing some secret piece everyone else had. And yet, when the world finally broke me—after forty-six years of holding myself upright against it—I saw the truth. The friends had been here the whole time. I just had to stop fighting long enough to notice them.

Now, older, I’ve learned that jealousy is a thief that steals your own story while you’re busy coveting someone else’s. Tears don’t water the ground—they rust the hinges of the heart until nothing swings open. I can spot it now, clear as day: the brittle smile, the turned head, the wet eyes that are less about pain and more about spite.

I’m not sure which is worse—to be the one envied, or the one doing the envying. Neither sits well. Both rot you in different ways. I’ve been envied for surviving things that nearly killed me, which makes no sense. People forget survival isn’t a medal, it’s scar tissue. Still, I hear the quiet resentments, the “must be nice” comments about my farm, my work, even my marriage. They don’t see the fire I walked through to get here.