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When I moved back to New Jersey after nearly 20 years in San Francisco, I was starting over in more ways than one. I had grown up on the Jersey Shore, but I'd left when I was 18 in search of adventure, and returning all those years later felt much more like moving somewhere new than coming home.
It was also an incredibly difficult chapter personally. We were in the middle of the pandemic, and I had lost Kam and then my Gram within a couple of months of each other. I was grieving, adjusting to a completely different life and trying to imagine what my community might look like here. Through all of it, Miglia was beside me.
I don't know what I would have done without her.
After so many years in San Francisco, I'd grown accustomed to being surrounded by a culturally diverse, creative and incredibly accepting community. I wanted to find that again, but I wasn't sure whether I could.
Somewhere in the back of my mind, though, I'd always thought I might eventually end up in Asbury Park. There was something about the mix of artists, designers, musicians and other creative people that reminded me a little of the San Francisco I loved. People had moved here from bigger cities looking for a different pace of life, and that was exactly what I was looking for as I began coming full circle back to New Jersey.
What I couldn't have predicted was how instrumental my dog would be in helping me find my people.
Miglia and I are attached at the hip. Nine times out of ten, if you see me walking down the street, she's with me. She comes to work, runs errands with me, eats meals with me and goes to the beach with me. She sleeps beside me at night and lies at my feet while I work.
Anyone who has a social dog probably knows what happens next. People talk to you.
Miglia is the ultimate icebreaker. Someone stops to ask about her, the conversation keeps going and suddenly you've learned where they live, what they do and who you both know. Over time, I started realizing just how many relationships in my new life had begun because Miglia put me in the right place and gave someone a reason to say hello.
One afternoon, I was at dog beach when a woman suddenly yelled, “Colleen?”
I looked up and, quite honestly, didn't immediately recognize her. She ran over and told me she followed me on Instagram, then quickly added that there was more to the story. She and her husband had met me years earlier at Dwell on Design, and she owned several CMD pieces.
A few moments later her husband, Mat, walked up, and suddenly I remembered the three of us talking in Los Angeles back in 2012. Mat had seen on the CMD mailing list that I was moving to Asbury Park.
The woman was Kitty, who you may recognize along with Mat from my Hand Project and the story where I introduced them as Hand Project models.
After all those years, our paths had somehow crossed again on a dog beach in New Jersey simply because I had brought Miglia along. Even better, Kitty and Mat lived in what would soon become my neighborhood. We became close friends, and their dog Penny became one of Miglia's besties.
Of all the places we could have run into each other again, it still makes me smile that that's how it happened.
Another friendship began at the same dog beach.
Every day, Miglia would make a beeline for Ciara and Joe and their dog, Pablo, as though she'd known them forever. Naturally, we started talking. I eventually learned that Ciara was the woman behind Brinn bags, and we'd talk shop while I drank my morning coffee on the beach.
One day, I happened to ask whether she knew any local photographers.
“Oh yes,” she told me. “I also do photography.”
Of course she did.
I looked at her work and hired her shortly afterward. Through Ciara, I met many of the local people who appeared in the first Hand Project. She was incredibly connected throughout Asbury Park, and what began as our dogs running toward each other on the beach grew into years of working together, mentoring, photo shoots and, most importantly, friendship.
Ciara, Joe and Pablo became dear friends of mine and Miglia's.
Sometimes I imagine Miglia trotting over there thinking, Hey Mom, I found your new Asbury Park photographer.
Kitty and Mat and Ciara and Joe are only two examples. There have been so many introductions, conversations and friendships that I can trace, at least partially, back to Miglia.
I'm not going to give her all the credit. Sorry, Migs. But she became one of the building blocks of this new life I was creating.
That's particularly meaningful when I think about how uncertain I felt when I first arrived. I had left a community I'd spent nearly two decades building and wondered whether I would ever feel that sense of belonging here. Now, Asbury Park feels so much like home that sometimes it seems as though I never left New Jersey at all.
Maybe that's part of why I originally called Miglia my “community builder.” She didn't build it for me, exactly. She just kept leading me out into the world, putting me in the path of interesting people and making introductions in the particular way only a very social dog can.
Miglia has been my constant through one of the biggest transitions of my life. She's my companion, my protector, my coworker, my beach buddy and apparently a rather talented networker.
It's cliché to say a dog is your best friend, but sometimes clichés exist because they're true. I've never felt more connected to another living creature, and when I look at the life and community that grew around us after moving back East, it's impossible for me to imagine this chapter without her in it.
If you come see us in Asbury Park, there's a pretty good chance you'll meet the woman herself. She wears CMD colors beautifully and naturally, and she'll always be one of the greatest gifts of my life.
Leave Miglia a little hello in the comments. I promise I'll pass it along.
With love from both of us,
Colleen (+ Miglia)
© Colleen Mauer Designs. All rights reserved.
Published: May 19, 2023
Updated: August 24, 2026
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