Our Story

There’s a house by the water near Florida’s Emerald Coast, and it’s the truest home I’ve ever known. 

It smells like salt air and fresh coffee. Sand never really stays outside. And that porch has heard a lifetime of stories and singing.

When I was little, I’d wake up at my Nana’s house to the smell of coffee and the sound of neighbors pulling up chairs, at the kitchen table in the morning and out on the porch as the day warmed up. She always had lemon cake waiting, and whoever wandered in got a slice and a seat.

Nobody was a stranger at Nana’s table. That was the rule.

If you showed up, you belonged.

Come summer, the afternoons belonged to the porch. We shelled butter beans, ate watermelon with a little salt, and waited for homemade ice cream to finish churning while the grownups talked and laughed the afternoon away.

That’s the kind of love I come from. A family that never measured it out or asked who had earned it. They simply made room. One more chair. One more cup. One more person who needed somewhere to land.

I’ve spent my whole life trying to love people the way they did.

Out loud.

All the way.

On purpose.

Then came my granddaughter.

Before she was even born, I started writing songs for her. Love letters, really. I wanted her to know she was loved long before she ever arrived. The songs became stories. The stories became books.

Somewhere along the way, Nana by the Sea was born.

Most mornings now, it’s just me, a cup of coffee, and Bubby.

Bubby is a cat who wandered onto the porch one day, looked the place over, and decided this was home. I seem to have a habit of collecting strays. The house is full of cats who found their way here and never got turned away.

Bubby is different, though.

He’s the one beside me at sunrise, waiting for a head rub while we watch the water together.

That’s what Nana by the Sea really is.

A cup of coffee on a porch.

A song written for a grandchild.

A place where the door is open, the chair is waiting, and nobody has to earn their seat at the table.

Because the truest thing I know is the same thing my Nana taught me all those years ago.

If you showed up, you belonged.

You still do.

Welcome home.

Nana