There are journeys we plan, and journeys we are called into. After my wife passed nearly three years ago, I became a quiet traveler—wandering, grieving, watching life from a distance. For two years, I drifted. A gypsy in spirit. No roots, no map. Just a compass shaped like longing.
Then, by what some might call accident—or others, divine order—I ended up in Eufaula.
The lake had a calmness I hadn’t felt in years. I settled into a modest home with wide windows and waterlight, thinking it would be a pause in my wandering. But the restlessness remained. I wanted to write. I wanted to belong.
So I walked into the Eufaula Indian Journal. No appointment. No expectations. Just a heart full of hope. I offered my services as a freelance writer, expecting a polite brush-off or maybe a referral. Instead, I met Shauna Bilyeu—editor, publisher, and, as I’ve come to learn, keeper of something far greater than a newspaper.
We spoke for a half hour. I barely remember the words. But I remember the feeling. It was like sitting across from someone I had somehow always known. A quiet familiarity. Her presence radiated calm—not the kind that silences, but the kind that welcomes. I left that meeting with more than permission to write. I left with a thread of purpose.
As weeks passed and stories unfolded, I found myself returning—not just to the paper, but to conversations with Shauna. She would ask about my writing, my thoughts, my past—and somehow always listen between the lines. There was no pretense in her questions. Just genuine attention.
There’s a steady sense of rightness in her company. A peaceful tether I don’t fully understand. Sometimes I wonder if, in some mysterious symmetry of the universe, she carries a spirit familiar to mine.
I once read that Alexander Posey’s wife was named Minnie. When I learned that, the name echoed like a memory I never lived. And I quietly wonder—is it possible? Could she be somehow connected, across time and spirit, to that first muse of Posey’s heart?
Posey was a Creek poet, philosopher, and founder of this very paper. He wrote with grace and wit, with humor and pain. He died far too young, swept away by the river he so often wrote of. And yet, his presence lingers—in the ink of old columns, in the bend of trees leaning over the water, in the silence that surrounds truth.
When I first read his poems, I felt something break open in me. His rhythms. His observations. His solitude. His searching. It all felt eerily familiar. I sometimes wonder if I’ve picked up the pen he left floating in the river that took him. Not as a replacement, but as a continuation. A whisper through time that says, Write. Observe. Belong.
Through Shauna, I began to meet others in Eufaula who seemed lit from the inside out.
Kim Bud Sheryl Jerry Daphanie None of them knew me before. But somehow, all of them see me now.
This town has become something more than a place. It has become a balm. I write regularly for the Journal, capturing the quiet beauty of lives well-lived, the gentle power of kindness, the unnoticed miracles of ordinary days.
I no longer chase what’s next. I write. I breathe. I listen. And in the act of listening—to people, to nature, to my own grief—I find myself returning. Not to who I was, but to who I’m becoming.
Somewhere between loss and arrival, wandering and stillness, I found my path. Or perhaps, the path found me.
I offer this not as a confession, but as a comfort. To those who have lost, to those who wander, to those who wonder if peace will ever come: it does. It may not roar. It may not announce itself. It may arrive in the form of a newspaper office, a stranger who listens, or a spirit who still writes through you.
