2026 August - Emerald Coast Woman Magazine - Magazine - Page 4
T
here’s a particular morning in late August when
you can feel it before you can name it. The light
comes in a little lower. The air holds just a hint less
humidity, though we’re still weeks from anything
you’d call cool. The pool 昀氀oats get packed away. The
backpacks come out. And somewhere between the
last beach sunset of summer and the 昀椀rst school drop
off, we cross a threshold we don’t always talk about
out loud.
This issue lives in that threshold.
We talk to moms sitting in quiet kitchens after
the bus pulls away, learning that grief and relief
can share the same morning. We meet Kesha
DeShields, who earned her black belt as a Master of
Taekwondo in Fort Walton Beach, proof that strength
has no expiration date and no 昀椀nish line. We visit
WeaponUp, where sword and yoga combine into
something that asks you to move with intention
instead of just moving.
We sit with a mother who turned unimaginable loss
into a children’s book, writing her daughter’s story
into something that now helps other families facing
a cancer diagnosis 昀椀nd their footing. We follow a
food truck in Navarre serving Turkish tradition
one plate at a time, and we step inside Anchorage’s
Bridge Transitional Program, where a house becomes
something closer to home for children who need one.
And we catch up with Joanna Cotten, a Santa Rosa
Beach hometown girl whose voice found its way out
of the quiet and into rooms far beyond ours.
Alongside it all, The Emerald Edit brings you the
season’s skincare, style, and wellness essentials,
and What She Wears shows you how Emerald Coast
women are dressing for these in between days, when
summer hasn’t quite let go and fall hasn’t quite
arrived.
Every ending makes room for something new. This
one is no different.
With gratitude,
Publisher & Editor
Emerald Coast Woman
Saltgrass Publishing
04 | Publisher’s Notes • Emerald Coast Woman
