Verre De Mer

The first time I picked up a piece of sea glass, I didn't know it would become the symbol of my life.
It was just a small, green fragment; smooth, weathered, and quietly beautiful. But something in it stopped me. I turned it over in my palm, feeling the way the edges that once could have cut someone were now soft enough to hold.

It hit me then: this was me.

Once sharp.
Once shattered.
Now transformed by the very waves that tried to destroy me.

That's the story of "Verre de Mer" (sea glass in French). But, to me, it's always been more than that. It's a love letter to the ocean, to survival, and to the woman I have become.

I have always been drawn to the sea. Its rhythm, its pull, its ability to both heal and humble you. I grew up near water, and even when life felt impossible, I'd find myself driving toward it. The ocean never asked me to be anything other than honest. It did not care who was right or wrong, or what had been said about me. It just kept showing up, wave after wave, whispering: come back to yourself.

When I started writing this book, the name came to me before the first chapter ever did, "Verre de Mer".
I did not know exactly why at first, only that it felt right. Like a whisper from something greater. Later, I realized part of why I loved it so much was because of how it sounded. It is such a beautiful, romantic phrase: "Verre de Mer." It sounds mysterious, intriguing, almost like a secret. And then, when you find out it simply means sea glass; it's somehow even more beautiful.

That's me.
Something that sounds complicated, but at its heart is simple.
Softened by time, made beautiful by what I survived.

In Italian, mare means "sea." That small connection between the French and Italian felt like my lineage calling home. The merging of old worlds and new meanings. My blood carries stories from both strength and sorrow, and the ocean became the language that united them.

Sea glass begins as something ordinary: a bottle, a window, a fragment of something once whole. It's only after years of tumbling, breaking, and surrendering to salt and time that it becomes something extraordinary. That's what this journey has been for me, a softening, a surrender, a remembering.

People sometimes ask why I chose "Verre de Mer" as the title instead of something more English or direct. But that's the point. Healing has never been simple. It's layered. Fluid. Beautiful and foreign and familiar all at once. Just like me.

Each word in this book is a piece of glass I once thought I'd lost; fragments smoothed by honesty and saltwater tears. Together, they shimmer. Proof that beauty doesn't disappear when things break. It just changes form.

Now, when I walk the shoreline with my daughters, I tell them:
"Every piece you find has a story. Some were once sharp, discarded, forgotten. But the ocean took them in, softened their edges, and sent them back. Not as what they were, but as what they were meant to be."

That's what I want them to know about me too.
That's what I want them to know about themselves.

We are not what broke us.
We are what survived it.
We are Verre de Mer.