Instagram story viewer> @stephaniehw> Posts

Stephanie Walker

@stephaniehw

67.8K

followers

1597

following

Sky spectator + Nature adventurer + Joy finder + Loud laugher + Wild wanderer + 🇮🇱🇺🇦✡️

POSTS STORIES REELS TAGGED

Download All

You died a year ago.

You were my cousin. You were a best friend. You and I were made from the same DNA.

You were born six months after me. We grew up as sisters, despite the physical distance.

At large family gatherings held each summer when we were children, I remember how we begged our parents to let you come and stay for the week. It was the week of summer festivals and I remember our hands intertwined as we rode the amusement park rides and tried to win stuffed animals.

You became a teacher, married, and had four children. I loved the life you built.

I remember the phone call four years ago. You had cancer. The doctors gave you five years to live.

And you did what I knew you would do. You lived. You took your husband and four small children to see the sights of the world during the summers. You kept teaching. You underwent experimental treatments. You lost your beloved long hair. You prayed for a miracle while talking openly to your children about your future death.

I sit in the sun now. It’s warm and the wind caresses my own very long hair and skin. I smell my perfume mixed with fresh grass.

The day you died felt terribly familiar. My college roommate and best friend died of cancer 7 years earlier.

Cancer took my best friend in 2018. Cancer took you, my cousin, on June 14, 2025.

Both of you were young. Both of you told me to keep living happily after you were gone.

I look at our texts. I look at our photos together. I wonder if your children will remember you? Our family is still in the lives of your children. But will they remember YOU?

As people walk and drive near me, I look up at the sky and back down at my phone screen. The world is still turning. My heart still thumps. I am alive.

Tragedy has found my family for generations and I have lost two best friends and a cousin now to death.

My eyes blink and I’m reminded that your death was not in vain. Nor was the death of my best friend, Michele, in January 2018.

Your death taught me to wring every drop of life from each single second.

You are missed, Andrea.

But I smile.
Just as you did.
And just as you told me to do.

#sunset #sky #sunsets #life #love by @stephaniehw

3

0

2 months ago

Happy New Year!

I’m sitting in a dimly lit room with music pumping from speakers. Sinking into the seat, I reflect on the last 12 months.

I posted once on my grid this year. I took time away from posting to focus on the present moments, the people who matter most, and activities that made my heart pound a little faster.

I can’t reclaim time or go back to the past. The present moment is meant for memories and living. I vowed in 2024 that in 2025 I would make more memories and try to live with no regrets.

This year was beautiful. I learned and invested in my body, mind, and soul. Did all go as planned? No. But plans rarely go smoothly for 365 days in a row.

I look ahead to the new year and I’m ready…ready to grab more memories, invest more time and energy into being the best version of myself, and keep laughing, connecting, working hard, relaxing, and enjoying each second of this wondrous existence.

I’m grateful for the people who were a part of my 2025, no matter if they played a small role or were more present.

I don’t like New Year’s resolutions. I don’t make them. I choose a word and focus on it for the entire year. My word for 2026 is gratitude. Yes. Giving thanks for the good and the not so good.

The cold air is mingling with my fingers now. I warm them and keep typing to the beat of the music flowing around the room.

I desire more sunsets, more sunrises, more laughs, more intriguing conversations, more joy, more connections, more love, more peace, more trips, more creativity, and more beauty in 2026.

As the year ends, I wish you the best in life.

Here’s to another year… by @stephaniehw

3

337

9 months ago

It’s my birthday.

Golden sun is warming my hair and wind is gently blowing it over my shoulders and back. I’m sitting outdoors, working and typing on my laptop. I smile as I write this now. I look up at the sky and give thanks for each day I’ve been given to see this world. I’ve been busy with travel and major life events, so have not posted on this page in several months. Sometimes a creative break is necessary. But I’m back. And I’m a year older.

I spoke to my family on the phone earlier. I always enjoy hearing my mother and father recollect the days of my mother’s pregnancy with me and leading to my birth. She was 29 when I was born. My father was almost 28. I was their first child. My mother and father married and six months later my mother found out she was expecting me. My mother had an easy pregnancy. No cravings, nausea, or abnormalities.

She went into labor in the middle of the night and my father drove 35 miles to the hospital. My mother pushed for hours. I was not moving. They attached monitors inside and outside her to monitor me. My heart rate started to drop. The doctors made the decision that a c-section was the only way to get me out. My mother agreed and was given pain medicine. She prayed with my father. My grandparents and great-grandmothers also prayed fervently. I was born at 1:26pm on a beautiful and warm day.

I was welcomed into a family with beautiful earthly love. I was given gifts and blessings by so many people my parents knew and my mother recorded each gift or blessing in a book. I have it now.

I will never complain about my age. I’m a millennial. Each day is the best gift no matter what it holds. Each breath is holy.

My goal on earth is to bless others. Even on days when I am weary I know my mission is to give to others in the unique ways only I can do. If our paths crossed in real life, on here, or in both settings, it’s not random. I believe nothing is random.

Here’s to another year.

Here’s to life. by @stephaniehw

3

284

2 years ago

What brings you happiness?

The last few months have had me turning to my trusted happiness sources more than ever before in my life. The summer has been good yet a bit tumultuous when it comes to injury and the turmoil in the world.

My happiness is found in clouds and a colorful sky. I simply can’t resist the way the sun illuminates the clouds. I also saw the northern lights yet again. It was a late Sunday night in August and I made the drive to the middle of a country road with no traffic and saw the colors flaring into the sky with the meteors.

Praying and delighting in the wonder of G-d (I use this method of writing that word due to my view of how holy the creator is) and the creation that is here brings me happiness. I look around me and the world is so deeply flawed YET full of so many good humans. I find my connection to G-d strengthened when I pray. If you think you must enter a synagogue, church, or mosque to pray, try praying when you watch a sunset or enjoy the smile of someone you love. It adds so much depth to any experience.

I have been writing profusely and listening to music. I was outdoors playing music from my phone, singing aloud (badly), and watching a patch of sunflowers sway back and forth under the hot sky. I felt full of happiness and such joy. I started to dance, my long hair blowing in the wind, my hands clapping, and my body moving to the melody and lyrics.

I write everywhere about everything. The words float from my mind into my fingers. Writing and creating doodles makes my heart feel like spilling over. I’ll witness a stranger smile at me and the sky explode in color, which prompts words to erupt from my mind about these beautiful experiences.

Happiness is present in this photo of the beauty of a sunset. It was one of my favorites from this year, taken in Ohio. The purple and pink colors come so rarely. I was flowing with joy to capture this moment.

Joy, gratitude, and happiness is always present. What makes you truly, divinely happy? taken in Ohio by @stephaniehw

3

382

2 years ago

How do you deal with stress? What helps you?

Stress is unavoidable for us. Whether it is from our job, our personal relationships, finances, health, or a combination. We all have it in some form at some point.

I have been trying to master the art of dealing with stress my entire life. I have indulged in journaling, meditation, prayer, breathing exercises, exercise, painting, drawing, reading, being in nature, and taking photos.

The last few years have pushed my tolerance for stress. I find that going outdoors and feeling the grass under my feet helps to calm my nerves. I pray. Yes. I believe there is a creator. Connecting in prayer and meditation with this creator helps to restore peace to my body.

A week ago, I cracked a tooth. The dentist said since I’d already had a root canal, there was nothing he could do to save the tooth and it would have to come out. The first appointment they had for an extraction was two weeks away. Over last weekend, the pain gnawed at me. I called the dentist again on Monday and they told me to come in at noon.

I had teeth extracted when I was younger in preparation for braces and to remove my wisdom teeth. But this was the first as an adult.

I tried to relax in the dentist chair as the assistant explained the directions for care after the surgery. The tooth that cracked was the last tooth in the very back of my mouth on the lower left. It wouldn’t be visible that it was gone. (I am getting a dental implant to make sure my other teeth don’t move.)

The dentist came in and, unfortunately, had to take the tooth out in two parts. This involved forceps and a lot of pulling. My body was quite literally almost coming out of the chair with the pulling down to my tooth. “Just breathe,” he told me as he pulled. I took depth breaths and envisioned I was outside witnessing a sunset and praying.

I’ve spent the week recovering. But I’m happy I managed the stressful situation. I imagined I was on the beach in Massachusetts watching the sky at Nantasket Beach in Hull. I took this photo there in 2018. It was a peaceful day. A serene time devoid of stress.

How do you manage stress? What gives you peace and calm? taken in Massachusetts by @stephaniehw

3

271

2 years ago

What is the weather like where you are living or staying?

The return of summer here has come with temperatures of 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Within a short period of time, sixty degree days turned into suffocating heat and humidity.

I stood outside in the sweltering temperatures and even as my hair whipped in the wind, I felt beads of perspiration wetting the sides of my face.

I used to long for the intense heat and bright sun, often outdoors with friends or tanning (I gave that up and always use sunscreen). I loved the way the heat felt like a comforting massage to my limbs. I loved the way it warmed the water of the pool and of the ocean. I loved the exhilaration that the heat brought out in people. Especially as a teen, summer meant staying out very late and meeting with hundreds of people from other towns in streets and parking lots in one particular city. Those nights were full of magic that I will never forget.

I travelled a great deal during the summers and I was lucky to have parents who did not mind heat. We walked miles in cities, hiked mountains, and spent much time outdoors in the sweltering heat. There was only one time when my mother went on an amusement park ride in York, Maine in the heat, felt sick after, and we had to summon managers. After a half hour in some air conditioning, she was fine. And we finished our day at that amusement park.

I particularly loved summer not only for the heat but for the sunsets. They were brighter, richer, and seemed to last for an extended period of time. Lightening bugs always flourished as the sunset painted the sky.

Now, I still love the endless summer sunsets that go on for an hour and sweep across the sky.

This image was taken over a decade ago in Salem, Massachusetts with an iPhone 4. And while it is of low quality, it brings me back to the intense heat and memories of a different and much earlier time in my life.

My soul lives for colors, clouds, and summer. taken in Massachusetts by @stephaniehw

3

330

2 years ago

Have you ever seen the northern lights (also known as aurora borealis)?

I long dreamed of witnessing this rare occurrence. When I was a child, my mother often spoke about traveling to Alaska to see them. She showed us photos in books. It was one of her dreams. And it became one of mine.

On May 10, I read about the large geothermal storm that could make northern lights visible. I impatiently waited. On Friday evening, alerts started pouring in on my phone. My social media feed from local friends (and those all over the USA) was flooded with photos, videos, and messages imploring others to just stand outside and look up.

I did not go anywhere. I went out to the yard and looked north. I had grabbed my iPhone and pointed it northward. I could not believe what I saw—and then it became visible with the naked eye. Pinks, purples, greens, and a tinge of yellow danced before my eyes for a half hour.

Others were outside and we marveled at the sight. I cried. My soul gripped with seeing them in my bare feet in the dewy grass.

I gave no thought to composition. I simply enjoyed what I saw and what my phone captured in the moment.

After being outside for about two hours, I went back indoors. I reflected that just a month earlier I had witnessed a total solar eclipse from my backyard. It was also a poignant experience that touched my soul.

I got little sleep last weekend because I was too excited at what might be seen in the sky.

I’ve seen a total solar eclipse. I’ve now seen the northern lights. These soulful experiences will stay with me for the rest of my life.

The photo I chose to share is the first I took while standing in my front yard. It is not a work of art. But it is the photo that brought me to tears.

My first photo of the northern lights. by @stephaniehw

3

296

2 years ago

Today is my birthday.

I was born in the decade of the 1980s on a warm spring day. My mother recalls the unusual heat of that season. She spent the previous week walking around the neighborhood to try to induce labor. I was five days late. I was her first. So she walked. And walked. And waited.

At 1am my mother awoke with labor pains and my father drove her to the hospital 30 minutes away. After 12 hours of hard labor, the doctors noticed my heart rate dropping. My mother was tired. “We have to get her out,” they said to my parents. My mother gave consent for a c-section. I was born. I became the only girl and oldest of three children.

I don’t feel my age mentally or physically. I feel younger…and it’s as though my mind can’t comprehend my actual age. I’m a responsible adult yet I’m still excited by books, the sky, items that smell good (perfumes, in this case), watching shows from my childhood, good music, friends, animals, and being around my family.

I never complain about aging. It is a privilege to live each second. I lost loved ones at young ages and I lost my best friend in 2018 to cancer. I am aware of life and its fragility.

I’m only reminded of my age when another human brings it up. I tore my meniscus (cartilage) in my right knee last year, had an MRI, and saw an orthopedic doctor. When I said I couldn’t believe I tore it, he said, “Tends to happen with people of your age.” And that’s when it struck me that I don’t pay attention to my age unless someone else makes reference to it.

I am grateful beyond measure to breathe as I write this. Each one is a gift. I sit here with a smile as I write this, listening to music. I look back on my decades. I’m filled with immense gratitude and profound appreciation for the people who’ve made my experience on this planet all that it is and who have contributed goodness.

Life is short. Even if we live to be 120, it’s still short. I take pleasure in scenes like this one…full of life and color.

Thank you all for bringing kindness and joy to my earthly life.

I’m just happy to be here. taken in Ohio by @stephaniehw

3

406

3 years ago

What’s one sight in nature that you won’t forget?

Have you witnessed the aurora borealis? Have you seen wildlife most only read about in books? Have you had your heart stuck in your throat on top of a mountain or fluttering in your chest near the ocean?

I can’t pinpoint one moment or sight that I will never forget. There are too many.

Each day, I awake. I check the clouds and rejoice when I see that’s full of color. It’s the same in the evening. I constantly glance at the sky, wondering what will happen.

Each day leaves me grateful for at least one item in nature. Whether it’s a small bud on a tree or a bird perched on the branch or the clouds lighting up—I’m grateful.

I grew up in an area ravaged by tornadoes. The sky before several of the tornadoes was eerie. It was yellow, it was orange, it was pink, and purple. Those skies were frightening and yet inspired awe.

I’ve been on mountains with the wind whirling my hair and I’ve been at the ocean with the grainy sand under my feet. Nature always reminds me it’s a force to be reckoned with as it gusts on the summit or waves pummel the shore.

I remember one late summer morning that I woke up for sunrise. It was endless, with a mixture of colors and tones. It was expansive and deep. It stirred me. I won’t ever forget it.

What is a sight you won’t forget? taken in Massachusetts by @stephaniehw

3

431

3 years ago

Do you live where you grew up?

I was born in a small town nestled on a large lake in Ohio. While I was endeared to the tiny town, I desperately craved to escape the familiar streets.

I did a great deal of traveling while I was growing up and my parents allowed me to see sprawling mountains and crowded city streets. I walked in the peaceful ocean and wandered bustling urban areas. I was given a diverse travel experience.

Traveling gave me thrills. It still does. Even if it’s to a new city or rural area, I’m eager to explore. I am eager to immerse myself in that location.

I’ve moved many times as an adult. I left my hometown. I love it but I don’t regret leaving. And I have no desire to move back to it. It was a chapter in my life that closed after my high school graduation and when all of my remaining family moved out of the town.

I am curious if people chose to stay in their hometown or if they chose to move away. I know many people who still live in my hometown and I know others who left and never looked back.

I love the excitement of a new city. A new town. New neighbors. New sights to visit. New people to meet. New roads to wander.

In some way, the unfamiliar feels more at home in my soul.

If I had children, I would have chosen to make one particular place a home. But I do not have them and like the way I can come and go and move when I choose to do so.

The lakes and ponds where I grew up in the state of Ohio are still beautiful. And sometimes I go back to inhale nostalgia. And witness a sunrise or sunset. Just like I did with this image. It was magic.

Do you live in the city or town where you grew up? taken in Ohio by @stephaniehw

3

410

3 years ago

Do you make resolutions in the new year?

If so, what are the resolutions?

The previous year has just ended. I’m writing this now, in the dark and in the depths of the night. I find my creative spark comes alive when darkness falls. I ponder life.

Many years ago, during the night, I was writing and listening to music. The new year was a few weeks away. I started to see posts on social media of resolutions others were adopting in the new year.

I do not make resolutions. I do not think waiting for a specific time is helpful to me.

I change my life as it comes. I make a conscious decision each day whether to go forward or backward. Why wait when a change of direction can be made now?

When confronted with a problem I try to resolve it. I dislike waiting. Perhaps this is why I do not utilize resolutions made at the beginning of a new year?

I sit with my soul and it tells me what needs to change. It happens often. I am constantly trying to change and evolve.

The new year invites hope, excitement, and new dreams. Possibilities flood the mind of what “could be” in the next 12 months.

As 2024 enters, I find it feels more like spring than winter. Rain and warmer temperatures have not allowed the snow to stay. My mind recalls the snow from a few winters ago and how it felt as though it occurred daily. A far cry from this season.

I wish you a wonderful new year.

Do you make resolutions or new goals? taken in Ohio by @stephaniehw

3

392

3 years ago

What is one of your favorite songs? One.

My favorite song led me astray.

I was holding my phone while at a stop sign and as I waited for traffic to pass, I flipped to my “starred” playlist on Spotify. I eantrd to stream my favorite songs. When I did that, it disconnected me from Google Maps.

As I tried to connect to the Maps again, I realized there was no cellular reception in the rural area. I had no idea which direction I needed to go—and no map loaded.

My favorite song started to play, as I have it available in offline mode. And I shook my head in dismay that my desire to have it playing caused me to get lost.

There was no safe area to park or turn around and cellular reception was not coming back.

Miles later, there was a road to turn around on; though it was barely visible. I thought the car was going to get stuck going uphill. Suddenly, the sky opened up and I was in a rural neighborhood. And the view and foliage mesmerized me.

No other cars were on the road. But the landscape gave me goosebumps. It was a setting not to be found by anyone unless they lived here.

Pulling over at the side of the road, I took in the hills and homes that seemed untouched by tourists, leaf peepers, or photographers.

My favorite song was still playing on repeat.

I continued a few more miles and cellular reception finally returned. I downloaded a map and then went back the way that I came—past the otherworldly scene.

Fleetwood Mac’s “Gypsy” was responsible for my time spent lost. And I loved it even more than I thought I could.

What is your favorite song? taken in New England by @stephaniehw

3

202

3 years ago