The Gift of Presence

Posted August 31Aug 31

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I’ve been thinking a lot about presence lately.

Maybe it’s because I’m coming up on my birthday in a few days, or because I skipped a Saturday post to pack boxes, wrangle kids, and buy wood for the flooring project that is inevitably going to test my patience and Craig’s knee joints this week. Maybe it’s because Rowan wasn’t feeling well yesterday and instead of writing, I found myself sitting beside him, slowing down, just being with him in the stillness.

Whatever the reason, presence has been on my heart.

The thing about presence is that it doesn’t require a passport, or a perfect view, or even a carefully orchestrated moment. And yet, I’ve lived enough of life to know that presence does sneak in when you least expect it.

Sometimes in the middle of a waterfall hike in Oregon, sometimes around a fire in the woods with my children bundled in blankets, sometimes at a dinner table with too much noise, too many elbows, and just enough laughter to make you forget the dishes waiting in the sink.

I’ve had the joy of traveling to many places. I’ve camped under the wide expanse of desert sky, and I’ve walked through bustling cities where the air itself felt like energy made visible. I’ve taken my children on adventures across borders, through museums and musicals, into mountains and rivers, teaching them not just about geography but about wonder.

And yet the thing I remember most from every trip isn’t the itinerary, it’s the faces. The laughter. The inside jokes that made no sense to anyone else.

Presence is not in the where. It’s in the who.

I think of sledding trips when cheeks turned red and fingers froze, and still the kids begged to go “one more time.” I think of fishing excursions where we caught more sunburns than fish, but everyone swore they’d seen “the big one.” I think of the prayers, the closing words I have whispered every single night for 27 years, words so stitched into our family fabric that my children could repeat them even in their sleep.

It’s wild when you think about it. Twenty-seven years of the same prayer. Thousands of nights, thousands of moments, one thread weaving them all together. Some people might think it monotonous, but for me, it’s a heartbeat. A rhythm. A gift of presence that has carried my children and me, through storms and sunrises alike.

And then there’s Craig.

The warrior of my heart. The protector. My earth angel. Sometimes I look at him and I swear I’ve loved him for a thousand years, like every path we’ve walked separately was always leading here. With him beside me, even the ordinary feels extraordinary. A grocery store run. A walk by the lake. The long car rides when the conversation meanders from childhood memories to half-baked plans for the future. Presence becomes love when it’s shared.

I am blessed. Not in the Instagram-perfect, hashtag-polished sense of the word, but in the gritty, real, this-is-my-life sense. I am blessed with children who are each their own constellation of uniqueness — bright, wild, tender, brilliant in their own ways. I am blessed that Levi is here after his accident, breathing, laughing, creating, teaching me daily that survival can turn into thriving.

And then there is Damieon, my grandson. My heart warrior. The boy whose laugh is pure medicine, whose strength humbles me more than anything else in this world. Every time I see his smile, I am reminded that joy is not found in ease but in endurance. That little soul has taught me more about presence than any book I’ve ever read or written.

He is here, now.

Fully.

And being with him reminds me to be, too.

I am blessed to watch my eldest daughter’s strength, the kind of strength that doesn’t come from choice but from necessity, from the fire forged in the furnace of motherhood and resilience. Blessed by my clients, souls who have entrusted me with their stories, who have allowed me to walk alongside them in their healing. Blessed by friends who’ve walked in and out of seasons, but who have never really left my heart.

Even the pain has been a blessing.

The suffering. The nights when I thought I would break. The heartbreaks and betrayals, the loneliness and uncertainty. They carved me open. They hollowed out the places where joy could take root. And in their wake, I’ve come to know gratitude in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

My guides.

My guardians.

My angels.

I’ve felt them for as long as I can remember, sometimes whispering, sometimes roaring, always reminding me that presence isn’t just about what we see, but about what we feel.

And then there’s the passion, the crusader spirit that God has put inside me. Sometimes it’s exhausting to carry a fire this big, but more often than not, it’s the reason I wake up in the morning.

To write.

To love.

To fight.

To keep saying the words that others are too afraid to say.

Every heartbeat. Every breath. A gift.

Sometimes we forget that. Sometimes we get lost in the noise, the hustle, the what’s-next of it all. But slowing down, being present, that’s where the real magic is. That’s where joy lives. That’s where God shows up, not just in the monumental but in the mundane.

This is what I wanted to capture in my books, too.

Sober Sex is not about banishing alcohol or demonizing weed. It’s about asking: why do we reach for them? Are we softening into presence, or are we escaping it? Are we saying yes with full consent, or are we numbing our way into disconnection? That book was born from presence, from my own hard-won journey of returning to authenticity.

Empowered but Empty is my wrestling with the world we live in, the promises of modern feminism and the cracks it’s left in our families, our relationships, our hearts. It’s about stripping away the noise and coming back to what matters most.

And The Voice That Made You — that one is pure presence. A hundred poems of dialogue with the Divine, words that came not from striving but from sitting still long enough to listen.

All three are pieces of my story, but more than that, they are invitations into presence. And this week, for my birthday, they are all just $2.99 on Kindle. Not because the words are cheap, but because the gift of presence is worth sharing widely.

So today, as I write this, I feel the hum of gratitude in my chest. For my family. For my clients. For my readers. For my guides. For every single messy, beautiful, holy ordinary moment that has stitched my life together.

Presence is the real gift.

And it’s the one I don’t want to miss.

The gift of presence is available to all of us, but sometimes, we need a little reminder to slow down, breathe, and return to ourselves. That’s why I write.

If you’ve been craving more honesty, more depth, more real conversation around intimacy, family, healing, and faith. My books are my offering to you.

As always loving you from here,

Rene Schooler

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This post was previously published on medium.com.