It’s been like this for over a year. I said 2026 would be different, that I’d hit publish, that I’d push out each thing I created. All I see is the same as always. No comments. No sign that anyone needs me to keep going. And still, I try some more.
Maybe I’m not putting in enough effort. But it doesn’t feel like that, it feels like I’m creating, and creating and then once in a while someone will actually like something I’ve shared and that little flicker is usually enough to keep me going. I notice nothing seems to really hit.I can’t help but wonder if this is even something that should.
Nevertheless I still continue to push, because I believe in the work I want to share. I truly believe in journal therapy. It’s something in my own life that has truly helped me, and I want to be able to share that with people.
That what my PDF was always meant to be. A starter. A way to show people how easy it can be to begin. even when starting feels like the hardest part. It does like the hardest part. Once you start, it brings a kind of relief I can’t fully explain. That’s what I wish for anyone who comes across it.
I could give you a list of reasons life, work, the weight of everything I’ve been carrying but honestly? Sometimes the people who write about healing need a minute to just be in it without documenting it. This past month has been that for me.
But I’m back. And I’m coming back with something that’s been living in my Moleskine notebook for the past two weeks, taking up space in the best possible way.
I’ve been writing down 100 things I want.
Not need. Not should have. Want.
You’d think that would be easy. It is not.
The first ten come fast. A house. Peace. More money. Travel. Health. You write them down feeling good about yourself, like yes, I know exactly who I am and what I’m building toward. And then you hit item eleven and something shifts.
Because now you have to go deeper.
Now you’re not just listing the obvious things you’re being asked to get honest about the quieter ones. The ones you’ve talked yourself out of. The ones that feel too small to say out loud or too big to believe. The ones you stopped wanting because someone once made you feel like you shouldn’t.
That’s where the real work is.
I’m not going to share my list with you. That feels sacred to me it lives in my notebook, between me and God and every ancestor who’s ever rooted for me. But I will tell you what the process of building it has felt like, because I think that’s actually the part worth talking about.
Around item 30, I had to get honest about things I’d been quietly grieving versions of my life I thought I’d let go of but apparently hadn’t. Around item 50, I started laughing because some of what I wrote felt ridiculous. Audacious. The kind of thing you whisper, not say. And I wrote it anyway.
It’s uncomfortable. In the best way.
By item 70, I was crying. Not from sadness from recognition. Like something in me had been waiting for permission to be seen.
Here’s what I’d tell you if you want to try this:
Start without rules. Don’t organize by category, don’t second-guess what belongs. Just write. Let it be a mess. Categories will find themselves.
Don’t edit while you’re building. The moment you cross something out because it feels silly or selfish or unrealistic, you’ve started lying to yourself. This is not the place for that.
Sit with the discomfort when it stalls. It will stall. That stall is usually pointing at something important. What you can’t name yet is often what you need the most.
This isn’t a vision board exercise. This is an excavation. You’re not just dreaming you’re deciding. There’s a difference.
April tried to humble me. It worked. But here’s what else happened.
April came in with punches I wasn’t ready for. The PDF I’ve been pouring into for two months is still sitting quiet with no sales. Writing slowed down in a way that scared me a little.
Friendships I thought were solid started showing cracks. Unexpected situations landed one after another and I had to just absorb them. But April also gave me things I didn’t expect to need as much as I did. I saw Naika live.
I walked into an Edgar Allan Poe themed speakeasy and let that be everything it was. I got to go to BookCon.
I stood under the cherry blossoms and let that mean something.
I started documenting what I’m building in a way that feels real. Those moments carried weight. They reminded me I’m still someone who shows up for beauty even when things are hard. So here’s what May is going to be about for me. Getting back to the page. Even if it’s one paragraph. Even one line on a hard day, that counts.
Getting back to moving my body, even if it’s just half a mile. Submitting my poetry. Exploring. Traveling somewhere. Actually being in spring before it disappears.
And this May I turn three years. Three years since a moment that should have ended me and didn’t. I don’t always understand why I’m still here.
Some days I’m still looking for the answer. But I am here. And that means I have to keep going, keep creating, keep finding the light even when I have to squint to see it. April was a teacher.
I came into this month ready I had a poem read I wrote for seven days straight like I remembered who I was and then life didn’t ask permission it never does anxiety filled the pages I meant to write on tears took the hours and I had to hide them because there is always something that needs me more than I need to create now it’s two days till the end and I am standing here counting what I didn’t do like that’s the only math that matters and this poem will probably be another one nobody reads they’ll say I support you and mean it the way smoke means something before it disappears you saw it it was real and then it wasn’t I keep writing into that into the almost-there into the hands that wave and then go quiet but I had a poem read I wrote for seven days I kept a dream alive inside a life that keeps trying to convince me it’s the only thing real that’s not failure that’s someone fighting with everything she has This Month knows what it cost me that’s enough
I woke up early and I was excited. Doors opened at 10 but I knew better than to show up at 10. This was a convention people had been talking about for months. So I got there early, and sure enough, when I turned the corner to find the entrance, the line was already wrapped around the block.
I waited at least 45 minutes before they let us in. And when they did, it was a massive amount of people spread across four floors. All I could think was: we are all here for the same reason. We love books. That was it. That was the thread connecting every single person in that building. Later I found out that while I was inside in awe, absorbing everything, studying the room, people were online complaining that it was too crowded. And I understand that. But that’s not what this is about. This is about what it felt like to be in the room. I didn’t go as a fan this year. I went as a writer doing her homework.
I walked those floors with my eyes wide open, asking myself: what does this feel like from the other side of the table?
Because that’s where I’m headed. I told myself right there, out loud: next year, I’m coming back as an author.
I met some incredible people. I picked up books that called to me. I picked up a little Edgar Allan Poe magnet and now he lives on my writing wall, staring at me every time I sit down to write.
Only a matter of time
I sat on a Naturepedic mattress at a booth, held up a book, and let someone take my picture like it was the most natural thing in the world, because it was.
I stood in front of a backdrop that said I See Books In My Future and I believed it.
Con mucho amor. That’s what one of the authors wrote in my book. With much love. That’s the energy of BookCon, underneath all the crowds and the chaos. People who made things, sharing them with people who needed them. I needed this day more than I knew. The floor was packed. My feet hurt. I was tired before I even got there. And still, I left full. That’s the writer’s life, isn’t it? You show up tired. You find something that feeds you anyway. You go home and you write about it. See you next year. On the other side of the table.
Manifesting where I will be coming next year w my book
Today marks 20 years since my oldest daughter’s passing to SIDS and I thought I’d share 20 things I wish people understood about grief:
“They’re in a better place” doesn’t make the missing stop. Both things can be true and still hurt.
“Don’t be sad” is not comfort. It’s a request for your silence.
“They wouldn’t want you to cry” maybe. But grief isn’t about what they want anymore. It’s about what love does when it has nowhere to go.
“You’re lucky you have other children” is one of the cruelest things you can say to a grieving parent. Children are not interchangeable. Every single one is irreplaceable.
“Just smile” means make me more comfortable with your pain.
Grief has no expiration date. None.
Twenty years later, that is still your person. That is still your baby. Time does not shrink that.
It comes in waves. I can be fine right now and crying in an hour for no reason other than love.
Sometimes the wave hits in the middle of a grocery store. Or a gym. Or a Tuesday morning.
You learn to carry it, not lose it. It becomes part of how you walk through the world.
Anniversaries are not just dates on a calendar. They are full-body experiences.
The ones who feel it most are the ones who say the least about it.
Grief is lonely. Not because no one cares, but because no one else loved them exactly the way you did.
Sometimes I just need someone to say I’m here. That’s all. No fixing. No advice. Just I’m here.
Silence from the people you expected to remember hurts in its own quiet way.
Putting up a face is exhausting. But sometimes it’s how you survive the day.
You don’t grieve less over time. You just get stronger between the waves.
A favorite book, a song, a smell any of it can bring them back in a rush. That is not a breakdown. That is love.
Grief is not weakness. It is the proof of how deeply you loved.
My child will always be my child. In this world and the next. No amount of time, distance, or “looking on the bright side” changes that.
If you are grieving today, I see you. You don’t have to explain yourself. You don’t have to be okay. You just have to keep going, and you are.
There is something almost magical about the way the earth just decides to shift.
No announcements. No countdown. Just one morning you step outside and something in the air feels different. Lighter. Like the world exhaled.
Today is the first day of spring, and I need you to feel the full weight of what that means.
The spring equinox is the moment when light and dark are perfectly balanced, and then, just like that, the light starts to win. Day by day, little by little, there is more brightness than shadow. That is not just science. That is a message.
Whatever you have been carrying through the winter, whatever felt heavy, stuck, frozen in place, the season is literally changing around you. The ground that looked like it had nothing left in it is already doing the quiet work of becoming something new. That is what seeds do. That is what we do.
New beginnings do not always arrive with fanfare. Sometimes they arrive on an ordinary Friday, with a cup of something warm in your hand, and a feeling in your chest that says this is it. Something good is coming.
I believe that feeling. I am choosing to believe it today.
If you have been waiting for a sign to start again, to try again, to hope again, let this be it. The first day of spring on a Friday, the end of one week and the start of everything new.
I want to talk about something that I think a lot of creators sit with but don’t always say out loud. Sometimes you put something into the world not because you know it’s going to land, but because you believe it’s important. Because something in you said this needs to exist. And that reason that one is enough. I didn’t create what I created because I was chasing numbers. I created it because I thought it could help someone.
Because it meant something to me. And that meaning doesn’t disappear just because the response was quiet. We live in a world that measures worth in metrics. Likes, views, shares. And it’s easy to let that math talk you out of your own conviction.
But I keep coming back to this: if you share something true, something you genuinely believe in, you’ve already done the thing. The reach is secondary. The intention is the foundation. Not everyone will want what you have. That’s not failure. That’s just how it works. Your people are specific. Your message is specific. And specificity takes time to find its audience. So keep sharing what matters to you.
Not for the validation. Because it’s important. Because you think it’s important. And that’s the only reason you ever needed.
There is a version of you that already knows the way. Quiet, not because there is nothing to say, but because the noise of everything else has been louder. The to-do lists. The grief you’re carrying. The version of yourself you keep trying to be for everyone around you. That part of you has been waiting underneath all of it, patient as the moon, holding the truth of who you actually are. This is for that part of you.
We talk a lot about finding ourselves, as if the self is something we misplaced, like keys or a good pen. But what if you were never lost? What if you just got… covered? Layer by layer. Year by year. Expectation by expectation.
Alignment isn’t about becoming someone new. It’s about returning. It’s the exhale after holding your breath too long. It’s recognizing your own voice again after months of only hearing everyone else’s. It’s soft, and it’s sacred, and it takes exactly as long as it takes.
I created 7 Days of Alignment because I needed it myself. Not as a therapist. Not as an expert. As a woman who has stood at the crossroads of who I was and who I was being called to become, and needed somewhere to put it all down. To write it out. To sit in the discomfort of my own becoming without running from it. Seven days. Seven affirmations. Seven invitations to stop performing and start listening. Each day holds one truth to carry in your body before your mind wakes up and tries to take over.
One prompt that asks you not to have the answers, but to have the conversation, with yourself, with the divine, with the parts of you you’ve been avoiding. This isn’t a challenge. It’s not a program. It’s a clearing.
You don’t need to be in crisis to use it. You need to be in transition, and aren’t we all, always, in some kind of becoming? Maybe you’re standing at the edge of something new and can’t quite name what’s shifting. Maybe you’ve been feeling the pull to go inward but don’t know where to start. Maybe you’ve been running so long you forgot what it feels like to be still. This journal meets you where you are. It does not ask you to be healed before you begin. It asks you to show up, imperfect, unsure, tired if you need to be, and write.
The page is where I have always found my way back to myself. Before I was a poet. Before I was a mother. Before I survived the things that tried to take me out. I have always trusted the blank page the way some people trust prayer, because for me, they are the same thing. 7 Days of Alignment is that: a prayer you write to yourself. And when you close it on the seventh day, you won’t be a different person. But you will be a clearer one. A little more anchored. A little more you.
Download it. Light a candle. Begin. The version of you that already knows the way has been waiting long enough.
I didn’t set out to create a journal. I set out to survive. There have been seasons in my life where the only thing that kept me grounded was writing.
Not pretty writing. Not polished writing. Just honest words on a page that helped me figure out what I was feeling when I couldn’t say it out loud.
That’s what 7 Days of Alignment is born from. It’s a seven-day guided journal for anyone who is in the middle of something grief, change, becoming, all of the above.
Each day gives you one affirmation to hold in your body and one prompt to take you deeper. No experience required. No perfection expected.
Will you take the challenge?
Just you and the page.
I’ve been working toward this for a while, and I won’t pretend it didn’t feel vulnerable to put it out into the world.
But if even one person picks this up on a hard day and feels a little less alone because of it, then it was worth every bit of courage it took to hit publish.
So check it out HERE if you are ready to give yourself 7 Days of Alignment.
Honest storytelling as a form of healing. 