40 over 40: Meet Joelle
Before you read her story, I want you to know this: some women carry more than we could ever see at first glance.
When I photographed her, I saw strength. But strength has layers. Behind her smile is a story of unimaginable loss, resilience, reinvention, and love that refused to disappear even in the hardest seasons.
This is not a story about “overcoming” in the neat, tidy way social media often tells us healing should look. It’s about surviving the unthinkable, rebuilding after heartbreak, carrying grief and hope at the same time, and discovering who you become after life changes everything.
Her story moved me deeply, and I’m honored to share it with you.
I was a mom of 4 boys, a role that felt like both a calling and a wild, beautiful storm. I was a pastor's wife for decades, steady in the front row, carrying the weight of other people's stories while tending quietly to my own. I thought I understood resilience. I thought I knew what it meant to be strong. I never could have imagined what was coming. But life doesn’t ask for permission: it unfolds moment by moment, reshaping you whether you're ready or not. My journey has been one of reckoning, rebuilding, and unexpected awakening.
My story of loss began in 2012, when my dad died suddenly at 64 from a Heart Attack. I thought I had known the worst pain, not realizing it was only the first fracture, teaching me how to breathe through grief, even though nothing can fully prepare you for what came next.
2017, the year everything split open. My son Noah, my precious moment, bright-eyed, warm 21-year-old, came home from work, said he didn’t feel well, lay down to take a nap, and never woke up. An Aortic Dissection stole him silently and without warning. It rewired me. My world dropped away, and yet, I was expected to keep breathing, moving, mothering, living. Grief like that doesn’t soften; you grow muscles around it. You learn to walk while carrying what no one else can see.
I wasn’t alone. My living boys, Zach, Aaron, and Micah, were grieving too. They became the reason I kept getting out of bed, even on the impossible days. Loving them and watching them navigate heartbreak with resilience and tenderness has been one of the hardest yet greatest privileges of my life. I love them with a fierceness that feels like both armor and oxygen.
2018, because life wasn’t finished testing me: a house fire a week before my 27 – year marriage ended. Losing a home and a partnership at the same time felt surreal- watching my past burn while my future dissolved. A long goodbye to a life built in faith and habit and hope. It was another unraveling, another forced rebirth.
In 2020, as the world itself fractured, my personal life shifted again. My mom, slipping into Alzheimer's, came to live with me. I became her memory and her guide. At the same time, I was beginning a new relationship. Learning to hope again while also starting a new job to support myself. Reinvention wasn’t optional; it was survival.
Looking back, I don’t fully understand how I held all of it. But I did. And I'm still here. Still growing, learning, and loving. Stronger in the cracks. Softer where it matters.
I carry Grief and Strength. Memories and Longing. Exhaustion and Gratitude. Hope. I carry the version of myself before loss and the one who walked through fire- literally and figuratively. And most importantly, I carry Love: for my children, my parents, the life I've rebuilt, and the woman I’ve become through the storms I never saw coming.
Aging for me isn’t about decline. It's about clarity. It's knowing what matters and letting the rest fall away. Life breaks you open, but it also offers ways to be pieced back together through love, purpose, and the quiet moments you survive without realizing it
This is my story. Not neat or polished. But real. And far from finished.
