Please forgive me I thought I had posted this earlier in the week. It’s been an interesting one, but I’m back on the groove. I hope you enjoy. Thanks again for stopping by.
Back with another reflection for you.
Some weeks ask us to dig deep. Others simply ask us to notice.
Growth doesn’t always arrive with dramatic breakthroughs.
Sometimes it appears in the quiet moments: the conversation you almost avoided, the boundary you finally honored, the feeling you allowed instead of pushing away.
This week’s prompt is an invitation to pause and listen to the version of yourself that’s emerging now.
Take your time. There are no perfect answers here.
Only an opportunity to meet yourself with honesty and compassion.
And I don’t know about you, but that number made me stop for a second.
We are more than halfway through the year.
Remember those goals we wrote down in January? The promises we made to ourselves? The things we swore this year would be different about?
Where are we with them?
I’m asking myself the same question.
This isn’t about beating ourselves up for what we haven’t accomplished. But I do think it’s time to buckle down. To be honest with ourselves. To look at the year so far and ask:
What have I actually done with the goals I said mattered to me?
So, I’m making a conscious effort to share one journal prompt every week.
But I don’t want to just throw a pretty prompt onto the internet and disappear.
I’m going to work with the prompt too.
Throughout the week, I’ll sit with it, write through it, and see what comes up. Then, at the end of the week, I’ll come back and share some of what I wrote.
I’m doing this alongside you.
For week one, I’m asking:
What part of yourself have you been quietly trying to return to?
Will you give yourself those 5 minutes?
Maybe week 29 is the week we stop waiting for January to try again.
Today is the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year.
While we are gifted more daylight, summer always feels fleeting. We wait for it through the cold, welcome it with open arms, and before we know it, the leaves begin to change and the winds of autumn remind us that another season is turning.
Perhaps that is why I love summer so much.
It reminds me not to wait.
My heart wants to experience more light.
More mornings spent outside before the day grows busy. More walks beneath blue skies. More moments feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin and the breeze moving through my hair. More reminders that life is happening now.
This season, I want to travel, explore, learn, write, and continue building the life I dream about.
I want to finish my Journal Therapy certification. I want to continue writing and creating. I want to collect experiences instead of postponing them for “someday.”
Because summer teaches us something important:
Nothing lasts forever.
Not the cold. Not the storms. Not even the longest day of the year.
So while the sun lingers a little longer, I intend to linger with it.
To enjoy every bit of light available to me.
To say yes to adventure.
To step outside more often.
To breathe deeply.
To be present.
My soul is calling for sunshine, fresh air, new memories, and the kind of joy that can only be found when we fully participate in our own lives.
So this Summer Solstice, I am making a promise to myself:
To seek the light. To follow curiosity. To embrace the season. And to remember that life is meant to be experienced, not simply endured.
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 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
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.
Funny how it feels like time is slowly shifting, but still moving slow.
Not gonna lie at first I thought it was just the season. All that glum, grey cold weather. The seasonal heaviness that was becoming a storm I couldn’t escape. I told myself that if we could finally get some warm sunshine, it would solve everything.
Finally, March arrived. The trip I’d planned with my youngest to the Botanical Garden to kick off the month was a go. Color, warmth, making memories with my little girl. It was gonna be a win-win.
But life had other plans.
Friday night I had a slight cough but I also have asthma, and my body was achy from a long hard work week, so I brushed it off. Saturday arrived with a headache and that same cough still hanging around. I said nope, took a vitamin C, and even went for a run. Had to stop midway. I told myself I just hadn’t run in a bit and the cough wasn’t helping, so I went and got a pedicure instead. At least I’d do something good for myself to set the mood for the fun time ahead.
But once I was done, I felt my body say: are you done?
I’ll admit it, I’m stubborn. I took some cold meds and more fluids and kept the plan alive in my head. I got up early Sunday after doing asthma treatments through the night. That should’ve been my sign right there. Maybe going into the city wasn’t a good idea.
But I mustered on, got dressed, and we headed out only to turn back midway because I got sick on the train.
From there it snowballed into a whole week of missing work. I was that sick.
And I still couldn’t see it. Couldn’t see that my body was trying to tell me to slow down.
That is when we need to stop and listen. Or at least that’s when I need to stop and listen.
You see, I have a lot of things on my plate. I admit I want them all done ASAP. But that’s the thing about life it doesn’t care about your timeline.
Again, we are not in control no matter how much we plan. Sure, sometimes that works. But when it won’t, it won’t.
You can have everything mapped out, color-coded, scheduled down to the hour, and life will still walk in, pull the tablecloth, and watch everything slide. Not to destroy you. Maybe just to remind you that you are not in charge of the pace.
Sometimes the pause is the plan. And your only job is to rest inside it until it’s time to move again.
I’m learning that no matter how carefully I plan, life will always have its own version of events. And maybe that’s okay. One moment at a time is still forward motion.
Honest storytelling as a form of healing. 