When Everything Fell Apart, I Got a Job at the New Coffee Shop

There’s something about the smell of espresso and the quiet hum of conversation that makes a person feel like maybe—just maybe—peace is possible again.

When I walked into Mocha Town, our town’s brand-new coffee shop, I didn’t know I was walking into a lifeline.

I was just a tired mom—juggling kids, managing a household, and barely keeping up with the reality that my grandma, my last living parent figure, was sick and in a rehab facility. I’d been running on empty for weeks, rushing from home to school, gymnastics, appointments, hospice to hospitals. Trying to care for her, my kids, my marriage, and everyone else who needed me… while quietly, silently breaking apart under the weight of losing my grandpa—my father and favorite person in the world.

Grief is a funny thing.. it doesn’t ask permission. It just floods in. But I didn’t have time to let it take over. Not this time. I was too busy surviving.

And somewhere in the chaos, I realized something painful: I’d spent years giving pieces of myself to everyone around me, but I had nothing left for me.

So when I got the interview offering me a full-time job at Mocha Town, I said yes… even though everything in me was trembling. I hadn’t worked outside the home in years. I’d been a stay-at-home mom, running my little art business and I was still deep in the middle of a personal storm. What kind of person starts a new job during the worst season of her life?

Apparently, me.

But what I didn’t know then—what I’m just starting to realize now—is that this sweet little coffee shop, with its quiet mornings and steady rhythm, was exactly what I needed.

I met a man there, the owner who looked me in the eye during my interview and told me I had a light in me, that it was like I was an angel that walked thru his front door. I don’t think anyone had said something like that to me in a long time. So I knew then, I was right where I was supposed to be. Something about him felt familiar, like a stranger I’d known forever. Like we had been friends for eons. I saw a spark in him, too—a quiet simplistic determination to build something good, something beautiful in a hard world. And I knew, somehow, that his business needed me just as much as I needed it.

He offered me the job on spot.

So I said yes.

Despite everything around me falling down, i went with my gut and said yes!

And every morning since, I’ve shown up. Still tired. Still grieving. Still sorting through years of trauma I never had the space to name. But I’m showing up. For the shop. For my kids. For myself.

I started 12 weeks of rapid transformational therapy with a therapist in London. We’re unearthing things I buried so deep, I forgot they were mine. Childhood pain. Deep losses. The roots of why I forget myself so easily and love everyone else so fiercely. It’s terrifying. It’s freeing.

This is the first time in my life I’ve said: I want peace. And I’m willing to work for it.

Mocha Town isn’t just a coffee shop to me. It’s a symbol. A soft beginning. A place where, for the first time in forever, I get to sit in silence for a moment between lattes and think, Who am I really? What do I want? What makes me feel alive?

I’m not all better yet. I’m not sure healing ever happens in a straight line. But I’m here. I’m showing up. And for the first time in years, I believe something new is possible:

That I can be present. That I can be whole. That I can build a life that includes me in it, too.

So here’s to little beginnings. To coffee shops and kind strangers you just met. To therapy and truth-telling. To being lost—and brave enough to start the journey home.

Healing doesn’t happen overnight—and it sure isn’t tidy. Some days I still feel like I’m unraveling. But now, I’m unraveling on purpose. I’m no longer just surviving—I’m searching. Peeling back the layers. Giving myself the care I’ve spent an entire lifetime giving to everyone else.

Mocha Town isn’t just a coffee shop. It’s a sanctuary. A turning point. A reminder that even in the middle of grief, exhaustion, and fear, there can be quiet beginnings. That peace doesn’t always arrive loudly—sometimes, it’s in the way the light hits the counter at 7 a.m., or in the rhythm of steaming milk, or in the kindness of a stranger who believes in you before you remember how to believe in yourself.

To make coffee for the people in the very town I grew up in. A town that has held both the best and hardest parts of my story. A town that has felt dark at times… but somehow, this small, warm space in the middle of it has been lighting me up from the inside out.

It’s humbling and strangely healing to serve lattes to familiar faces—to be a part of their mornings, to offer something comforting, even if just in a cup. In doing so, I’ve found comfort, too. Filled my own cup.

This is where I begin again. In the stillness between orders, in the bittersweetness of grief and growth. I’m building a new life—one brewed slowly, and carefully with intention.

One where I get to matter, too.

And maybe that’s the most sacred thing of all.

Thank you God, for leading me thru that door.

Who knew, I’d find myself, at Mocha Town.