P.J. Hamilton's Blog: Stories from the Heart of the Piney Woods

I learned how to love my momma long after I needed her to love me.

By the time she moved in with me, she was sick, tired, and still just as stubborn as ever. Some things don’t change with age, they just slow down enough for you to notice them more.

That first six months…it was a whole life packed into one season.

I had two young kids, a husband working out of town, a job that didn’t pause just because life got heavy… and now my momma, living in my home, needing me for just about everything.

Everythi...

I still remember that night because I was so tired I could barely think straight.

The house had finally gone quiet. The kids were in bed, lunches were done for the next day, backpacks by the door. Tim was out of town, so it had been one of those stretches where it felt like I was living two lives at once, one at home, one everywhere else.

And there I was, standing in the kitchen, surrounded by baskets.

Not small ones either. Big, heavy, overfilled baskets. Thirty of them. Ribbon, tissue paper, bags...

There’s a version of this story I could have told…where I looked strong.
Capable. Like I had it all handled. But that wouldn’t be the truth.

👉 I wasn’t just overwhelmed…I was carrying things that were never mine to carry.

PJ Hamilton

A Note from PJ
There was a time in my life when I believed it was my responsibility to hold everything together… for everyone.

I didn’t question it.
I didn’t push back.
I just carried it.

Until one day… I realized I didn’t even recognize myself anymore.

You could smell it ...

There’s a version of this story I almost didn’t share.

Not because it’s dramatic…but because it reveals something I didn’t want to admit about myself.

👉 I didn’t have a boundary problem. I had a self-abandonment pattern.

There was a time in my life when I didn’t know how to say no, so I just kept saying yes… and hoping I could manage whatever came with it.

I was a single mom, and I was doing everything I could to do it right. Work all day, be present for Kyle, and make sure he never fe...

This week, I’m sharing a story that still sits deep in me.

As Easter approaches, I’ve been thinking about what it really means to be made new… not in a perfect, polished way, but in the middle of real life.

The kind of moments that don’t feel like beginnings…but end up changing everything.

Today’s story is one of those moments for me.

One box of macaroni and cheese. An expired can of pumpkin pie filling my mom had given me… I don’t know, maybe a...

I stopped at the bank on the way. Not my bank. I didn’t have one. No checking account. No cushion. No safety net. Just a paycheck in my hand that I had to cash in person…because when you’re living that close to the edge, you don’t get the luxury of waiting for anything to clear.

Every dollar mattered. Every dollar already had a place it needed to go before the day was over.

Toddler Pull-ups.
Rent.
Gas.
Food.

I stood there at the counter, watching the teller count it out. Bills sliding across that litt...

When I was little, there was a patch of clover that grew in the strip of grass between our house and my Granny’s.

Not just a few clovers either.

A whole bed of them.

On warm afternoons I would flop down on my stomach right in the middle of that patch, the cool earth beneath me and the soft clover leaves brushing against my arms. Then the hunt would begin.

I’d push the clovers aside one by one, studying each tiny leaf like a scientist on the verge of a major discovery.

Three leaves.

Three leaves.

Three ...

Funerals have a way of gathering people you haven’t seen in years.

Some arrive with familiar faces softened by time. Others appear like distant branches of the same tree, people you somehow belong to but never really knew.

Today was one of those days.

My husband’s family had gathered to say goodbye to someone I always found to be one of the kindest souls in the room.

In many ways, though, the gathering itself felt different than the family gatherings I remember from years ago.

Because when the matria...

It all started when I became a single mother in my twenties.

Before children, I never once gave a second thought to a public restroom. I walked in, did what I needed to do, washed my hands, and left.

Then my son started crawling.

And suddenly bathrooms became strategy sessions.

I remember standing in a public restroom stall one afternoon, looking down at the tile floor and thinking, there is absolutely no way I am putting my child down there. The floor was sticky in places, damp in others, and I did...

There is a very particular kind of exhaustion that comes from moving your child to another state. It isn’t simply physical fatigue, though there is certainly plenty of that. It’s a layered exhaustion, emotional, mental, and somewhere deep in your bones, especially when you are Texans attempting to haul a trailer full of furniture through actual snow.

Not the polite, decorative snow Texans like to romanticize. Real snow. The slippery, nerve-rattling, confidence-eroding kind that turns every overpa...