Honest storytelling as a form of healing.

Category: Posts

  • What I’m Carrying vs. What I’m Choosing

    What I’m Carrying vs. What I’m Choosing

    There is a misconception that before we choose joy, creativity, adventure, or growth, we must first set down everything heavy.
    As if life hands us a clean slate and says, “Now you may begin.”
    That has never been my experience.
    What I am carrying right now is not light.
    There are bills that do not care how tired I am.
    A deadline that sits in the corner of my mind no matter what else I am doing.
    Early mornings that begin while most of the world is still asleep.
    Conversations that are still unfolding inside my life.


    Questions that have not found answers.

    Responsibilities that do not pause because my heart needs a moment to catch up.
    Some days it feels as though I am carrying an entire house on my back.
    Yet somehow, I keep choosing things.
    I choose the poetry class.
    I choose to sit among strangers and talk about words as if they matter, because they do.
    I choose to keep building Lines Between Living even when no one is asking me to.
    I choose to write blog posts before dawn.
    I choose therapy.
    I choose difficult conversations.
    I choose hope when cynicism would be easier.
    I choose to make plans for a future that has not proven itself to me yet.
    The strange thing is that none of these choices make the weight disappear.
    The inquiries still exist.
    The bills still arrive.
    The uncertainty remains uncertain.
    The grief still taps me on the shoulder when I least expect it.
    The tension lives on.
    Maybe that is the lesson I keep resisting.
    Perhaps life is not asking me to become lighter before I move forward.
    Perhaps it is asking me to carry what I must and choose what I love anyway.
    I don’t know if that is strength.
    I don’t know if it is stubbornness.
    Most days I cannot tell the difference.
    What I do know is this:
    Tomorrow morning the alarm will ring long before sunrise.
    The responsibilities will still be waiting.
    And so will the poem.
    Both are true.
    I am carrying one.
    I am choosing the other.

  • June: Stay Focused, Follow Through

    June: Stay Focused, Follow Through

    Here we are half the year already gone. Six months behind me, six ahead. That stopped me for a second.

    I’m not making a list of twenty things this month. I’m making one promise: stay focused, follow through.

    This year has been full of beginnings. June is where I get steadier with them.

    Three things I’m holding onto:

    Focus. Less scattering, more finishing. Doing the one thing in front of me instead of the ten I could be doing.

    Self-care. Not the bubble-bath version the real kind. Rest that actually restores. Saying no so I can mean my yes.

    Showing up here. Communicating with you more consistently on this blog, not just when life is loud. Steady, honest, present.

    Not louder. Just steadier. That’s the whole goal.

    So tell me what’s the one thing you’re following through on this June? Name it. Saying it out loud is how it starts.

  • I hit publish, and then I just sat there

    I hit publish, and then I just sat there

    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.

  • What Happens When You Sit Down to Want 100 Things

    What Happens When You Sit Down to Want 100 Things

    Words are your power

    I haven’t written here in almost a month.

    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.

    Will you give this list for yourself a try?

  • Lessons learned

    Lessons learned

    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.

    May is going to be a celebration.

  • As This Month Ends

    As This Month Ends

    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

  • A Whole New World

    A Whole New World

    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
  • A new Never ending Wave

    A new Never ending Wave

    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:

    1. “They’re in a better place” doesn’t make the missing stop. Both things can be true and still hurt.
      1. “Don’t be sad” is not comfort. It’s a request for your silence.
      2. “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.
      3. “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.
      4. “Just smile” means make me more comfortable with your pain.
      5. Grief has no expiration date. None.
      6. Twenty years later, that is still your person. That is still your baby. Time does not shrink that.
      7. It comes in waves. I can be fine right now and crying in an hour for no reason other than love.
      8. Sometimes the wave hits in the middle of a grocery store. Or a gym. Or a Tuesday morning.
      9. You learn to carry it, not lose it. It becomes part of how you walk through the world.
      10. Anniversaries are not just dates on a calendar. They are full-body experiences.
      11. The ones who feel it most are the ones who say the least about it.
      12. Grief is lonely. Not because no one cares, but because no one else loved them exactly the way you did.
      13. Sometimes I just need someone to say I’m here. That’s all. No fixing. No advice. Just I’m here.
      14. Silence from the people you expected to remember hurts in its own quiet way.
      15. Putting up a face is exhausting. But sometimes it’s how you survive the day.
      16. You don’t grieve less over time. You just get stronger between the waves.
      17. 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.
      18. Grief is not weakness. It is the proof of how deeply you loved.
      19. 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.

  • Go Bloom: A Love Letter to the First Day of Spring

    Go Bloom: A Love Letter to the First Day of Spring

    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.

    Happy Spring. Happy Friday. Happy new chapter.

    Go bloom.

  • Why Share Anyway

    Why Share Anyway

    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.