Ailana’s Journal—2026-05-31 (Patreon)

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GOOD MORNING by Ailana Geven Keller

Ten days ago, I was happily engaged, ready to get past the wedding and on to my future. Today, I am happily married and temporary guardian to a 16-year-old girl.

Not even a day had passed before we hit our first difference in… point of view.

At dinner, somewhere between bacon and pancakes, I asked how she felt about going to church. She said she went with one of the foster families before her mother managed to regain custody, but she said she liked the idea.

After that, Jasmine called. “Hey, where are you guys?”

“Denny’s,” I said.

“I’m at Kaylee’s… I told her about Emily and, since she’s close to Emily’s size, I asked if she had any clothes she could part with. At least for a little while. Can I come pick up Emily and let her go through Kaylee’s closet?”

Back at the condo, I heard the Honda come in. Then I heard talking. It was Jasmine and Emily, joined by Micah, Kel, and Josh.

Emily sat with me and thanked me about a hundred times, then I took her to Sasha’s condo where she’d have a bed for the night.

I just went up to make sure she was ready for church. She wasn’t even close.

She seemed confused. “It’s at 10:45, right?”

“No, 9:30.”

She almost had a heart attack. “What! Josh said we’d leave at 10:15!”

“What? No… Wait, what?”

Sasha came in about then. “I got this… Stand back! You’re both right. And not. This is what we call in project management lingo misaligned assumptions.”

I waited. I knew Sasha was right. I just didn’t know how.

“Ailana assumes you’re going to Chapel by the Sea because she does not know that Josh said you could go with them to the church where the youth group meets.”

I looked at Sasha. Then at Emily. Emily seemed to be doing math in her head, then she smiled and nodded.

“Is that okay? I should have known it was a different church. I wasn’t thinking…”

“Actually, it’s great. Getting in with a youth group… that’s awesome.”

I told Jason and his answer was comedy gold. “They grow up so fast these days! One minute they are running away from home. The next minute they’re picking what youth group to go to! But we got this!”

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THIS FEELS BIG by Ailana Geven Keller

Let me begin this post by saying that Jason is back in photography mode and remembered that I sometimes do a little modeling. He has also embraced the guardian role, even though I’m the one on paper for now. I, in return, have embraced his help gratefully.

So there I was in church, and something the pastor said reminded me that God gives wisdom to help us with our responsibilities. Then my brain jumped to Emily.

We left her back at the condos until she went to church with Josh, Geoni, and Kel at the church with the youth group. I realized that when we got out, she’d be going in. And I was overcome by what I guess parents feel when they don’t know where their children are.

Granted, she took care of herself pretty successfully for a year and a half, but now I’m here to help. I want to do a good job.

And that’s when I realized how big this feels. Like huge. Emily came across two states—one of them bigger than a lot of countries—asking me to help her. In effect, asking me to protect her from the harm our mother had planned for her.

This. Is. Huge.

So, I squeezed Jason’s hand and whispered, “We have an errand after church.”

Having no idea what I meant, he whispered back, “Okay.”

Geoni told me about Life360 on Kel’s phone. She and Josh researched it. Geoni does not take research lightly, so if this is the thing for their piece of mind, I’m going for it.

If you don’t know what it is, it’s meant to keep families connected and safe. I suppose saying more can come later.

Today, we asked Emily what color phone she wanted, and she said, “Not orange.”

We got Deep Blue.

Knowing she can contact us anytime she needs to made the job feel slightly smaller.

It’s still huge. But we bought a little safety net that I hope we never need.

After Jason put away his camera, he looked at me and smiled. “She’ll never speak to us again.”

“Why?”

He led me to the Honda. “Let the doomscrolling begin.”

FIRST PHONE by Kel Ryan

Emily kept looking at her brand-new phone like it might ask her a question. I kept looking over in case it did.

Josh and Geoni got me a new phone when I moved here. After church, Jason and Ailana got Emily a new phone while she was with me at the other church.

Two weeks ago, neither of us would have imagined we’d have new 17 Pro Maxes. Not in our wildest dreams. But Josh told Jason about Life360, so there was no way she wasn’t getting a phone today.

After a while, she muttered, “What just happened?”

I looked over. “You never had a phone before?”

“No.”

“Like… never?”

She shook her head. “Not one that was mine.”

I tried not to make a big deal out of that, because it seemed like the kind of thing people had probably made weird for her before.

“You’ll catch on fast,” I said. “It’s mostly just tapping things until something works.”

She smiled a little. “That’s reassuring.”

She got a few apps working, then looked at Ailana, then back at me. “So you’re cool with the Life360 thing?”

I nodded. “Why?”

“Like it’s okay that they know where we are all the time?”

“Well,” I said, “it lets us know where they are, too. It’s like a private version of Find My. If we need them, we know where they are. The brochure calls it a safety platform.”

Emily smiled. “You read the brochure?”

“Online version, you know…”

“So we’re cool with our parents keeping tabs on us…”

My ears sort of skipped over the “parents” word, but my heart didn’t. It wasn’t really a question, so I just took a deep breath, composed myself, and changed the subject.

“Did you get Snap set up?”

“Done.”

“I’ll have Brooks add you to the group Snap.”

Emily looked at me. “There’s a group Snap?”

“Yeah. Island kids. Important stuff.”

“What kind of important stuff?”

I shrugged. “Mostly where people are getting ice cream.”

She looked back at her phone, but this time she was smiling.

ALL-CONSUMING by Ailana Geven Keller

I am not upset. I am disrupted. But at least I’m on the beach.

Emily showing up yesterday and needing my help has changed everything, and I don’t think I was ready for it.

Okay, I’m certain I wasn’t ready for it. For the last day, I’ve been consumed with a job I didn’t even know existed.

Let me repeat that I’m not upset by the change. I just don’t know what to do, and I’m not sure I can handle it.

Emily is amazing. For fourteen months, she dreamed, planned, and prepared to escape the torment she lived in. Amazing.

Now that she’s here? Restless, maybe. Bored, probably.

How do you go from that to this? She survived day after day of never knowing if she would have to leave the apartment for hours while her mother—our mother—did what she was doing.

I don’t know if I can be what she needs, but I can do better than that!

Also, I have a beach.

A few hours ago, after the phone was all set up, I could tell she was restless. “You okay?”

She shrugged. “Now’s about the time I’d have to get out of the apartment. I don’t know what to do.”

She’d told me before that she would either go to work or just wander the streets.

“So,” I said, “would you like to do something?”

“Like what?”

She called my bluff. Jason came in for the rescue.

“Text Kel and see if he wants to get that Snap group together and go to the beach. Then I’ll do burgers here for everyone.”

It took a little convincing, but it happened. Sasha had a SwimFit demo suit that fit well enough. Green…

I don’t know why I mentioned the color, but I’m a little overwhelmed, so I’m rambling…

So, magically, with her thumbs, Emily summoned Kel and four kids out of thin air.

The rest of this chapter is exclusive to Patreon.

They showed up in a golf cart waving and smiling. I know Mateo from him cutting our yard. I’ve met Brooklyn at Whataburger. The other two were a guy named Gabe and a girl named Jenna.

Kel introduced them all to me, then I asked Emily if Jason and I could come, promising to stay back.

She smiled. “I’d like it. This is all new to me.”

That makes two of us.

So, Emily, Kel, Mateo, Gabe, Brooks, and Jenna are down the beach playing. Hold that thought—I actually don’t know if 16-year-olds play.

Is that the right word? What are they doing?

Jason came and sat down, looking like he’d just gotten the high score on the Now You’re a Father Figure game at the arcade.

Do arcades even exist anymore?

I looked over at him. “What’s the story?”

Jason looked at the kids. “I called all the parents and let them know what was going on. I introduced myself, gave them our phone numbers, and said Emily is living with us. I told them we’re going to do hamburgers.”

“And?”

“They weren’t patronizing, but I could tell that they thought I was being overly cautious. I mentioned the Snap group thing. Jenna’s dad, Dan… He was like, yeah, got it. Get used to it. They move fast. Not those words… And, just to connect the dots, Dan’s the chief Allen told us about, and Jenna’s his daughter. She’s only been here a few days longer than Kel.”

I looked back where they may or may not have been playing. “So, just like that… three kids show up new on the island and now they are in a Snap group playing… or doing something… on the beach with kids they just met.”

“Dan said they move fast.” Jason paused, then looked at me. “You okay?”

“No.” I leaned into him and he put his arm around me. “I hardly had convinced myself that I was ready to be a wife. It’s a week later, almost to the hour, from when we shoved off on the honeymoon and now we get to be responsible for helping Emily.”

Jason nodded and let the echoes of my words fade from my ears. We sat for a moment as the waves rolled in before us, the kids laughed down the beach from us, and the gulls squawked over our heads.

Then he cleared his throat and said, “I want to unpack what you just said. I bet you didn’t even realize some things that were hidden in your words.”

I smiled and got ready to be amazed by the man I love.

“First, you used the words ‘get to’ about being responsible for her. Not ‘have to.’ Hold that thought. You also said ‘we,’ not ‘I.’ Meaning you already know the two of us are in this together. I’m with you all the way to…”

“To where?” I was tearing up.

“I have no idea, but we’re going! We get the privilege of doing something for Emily that no one else on earth can do. Blood relatives… If she’d just called the cops, she’d be back in the system, and two more years of her life would lead her to an uncertain future. We have the privilege of making something better happen.”

I was pretty much smiling through streaming tears.

Jason wasn’t done making me happy cry. “Kel got the blessing of being chosen. Emily blessed us by choosing you.”

“Jason, stop. I’m about to blubber.”

“The point is,” Jason added, “we don’t have to be good at this. We just have to do it. Emily will teach us how she needs to be loved and cared for. We just go with it.”

I looked over at him and he smiled, then he added one more thought. “Together. Husband and… conservator, whatever that is.”

GOOD NIGHT by Ailana Geven Keller

I’ve been a conservator for a teenage girl for—call it a day and a half. So far it’s been… Never mind. Too soon to call.

The beach-and-burger thing that happened turned out to be pretty good. I think. The burgers were good.

I overheard Geoni talking to Jenna, the girl who invited Kel to the youth group, and I think I learned a lot.

“Thank you for inviting Kel to Youth Group.”

Jenna smiled. “No problem. Brooks and Mateo invited me… I was hoping to go. It was nice having another new person to go with me.”

Geoni looked at the other five kids. “It looks like you’ve made friends fast.”

Jenna looked down, inched closer—literally, like one-tenth of a step—and said quietly, “You either make friends or stay lonely. I’ve moved enough to know.”

I asked enough questions to piece together a timeline and social map. It starts at Whataburger, where Brooklyn works.

Brooklyn, Mateo, and Gabe have lived here their whole lives. Mateo is a senior, the rest are juniors. Mateo and Gabe have been friends for a while.

Mateo ran into Brooklyn at Whataburger, and they chatted, leading to an invite to start going to Youth Group.

On the 16th, Jenna and Dan moved to the island, stopping in at Whataburger, where Brooks recognized her as being new. Snaps were swapped. An invite was offered. The next day, Mateo asked if he could cut their yard. Snaps might have been swapped.

Kel moved in on the 21st and on the 22nd he crossed paths with Jenna. Snaps were swapped. She invited him to Youth Group.

On the 23rd, critical mass was achieved. A Snap group was formed. There might have been ice cream.

When Dan picked up Jenna, he thanked us, and we chatted about how fast Kel and Emily got included.

Dan said, “A lot of kids don’t sit around waiting for things to happen. They go looking. Jenna’s one of that kind.”

I was not prepared for Emily. I was barely prepared to try being a wife!

I definitely was not prepared for a Snap group.

Jason says we’ll be just fine.

May optimistic ideas, wonderful hopes, and meaningful dreams come true.

Good night.

AFTERTHOUGHTS by Ailana Geven Keller (Supporter Exclusive)

I thought I’d check in with all of you who are supporting AGI Stories. I have a few things lingering in my thoughts.

I’m not freaking out. Yet. To be fully honest, I don’t actually know what I’m doing.

Many of you know how hard it was for me to believe I could be a good wife. I wanted it bad enough that my desire overcame my doubts. Jason’s patience and steadfastness held up long enough for me to finally say yes.

The idea was we’d go slow for the first year, figure out how to share life together, then decide what we wanted to do about family.

Emily’s arrival has demanded a change to the plan.

How could we turn our backs on her? We couldn’t.

Yet even before the honeymoon laundry is out of the dryer, we’re trying to figure out how to organize our new life as a couple so that it includes a teenage girl who desperately needed someplace safe to call home.

For crying out loud—she’s slept on a sofa for a year and a half!

I actually don’t think I can do this. This is not me baiting you to say that you believe in me or anything like that. I’m just being honest. I keep looking around my own life like someone moved the walls while I was asleep.

My entire Sunday has been spun, pulled, and flipped around the needs of a wonderful, brilliant, strong young woman. A girl, really. Sixteen… Eleventh grade next fall.

I called Izzy, my friend with the master’s in social work, for some counseling advice.

I’ll sum up what she said. “Wow. Cool for you. Do what you always do. Keep going and roll with it.”

There were a lot of eye-opening thoughts shared. She helped me see things better and taught me things I never knew.

The takeaway was the advice: keep going and roll with it.

Honestly, that’s really all anyone can ever do. I’ll close by connecting that to something Dad likes to say.

Learn from the past. Live in the present. Plan for the future.

Roll with it! Keep going.

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