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
Let me ask you something. Have you ever journaled your heart out, wrote until your hand hurt or your phone battery died, got everything out that you were feeling and then closed the notebook and felt exactly the same?
Yeah. Me too. And for a long time I thought that meant journaling just wasn’t working for me.
What I didn’t know was that there’s a big difference between venting on the page and actually doing journal therapy. And once I understood that difference, everything changed.
Venting is dumping. You’re getting it out, releasing the pressure, letting the words catch what your body couldn’t hold anymore. And listen sometimes you need that.
There’s nothing wrong with it. But venting alone doesn’t move anything. You drain the tub and it fills right back up. Because you never asked where the water was coming from.
Journal therapy is different because it asks you to do something after you write. It asks you to slow down and get curious about what just landed on the page.
What’s really going on here? What is this feeling underneath the feeling? What does this remind me of? What do I actually need right now? Those questions are where the real work is. That’s where things start to shift.
It’s not about writing beautifully. It’s not about having the right words or the right format.
It’s about being honest and then being willing to look at what you wrote. The journal stops being a trash can for your emotions and starts being a mirror. And mirrors show you things that are true even when they’re uncomfortable.
If you’ve been journaling for a while and still feel stuck, this might be exactly why. You’ve been releasing without reflecting.
That’s not failure. That’s just a missing piece. And the good news is you can add it starting today.
TRY THIS TODAY:
Write about something that’s been bothering you for five minutes, no filter. Then stop, read it back, and ask yourself one thing: What is the feeling underneath this feeling?
Write for five more minutes from that place. See what opens up.
Do you want a structured way to go deeper?
I created 7 Days of Alignment : A journal that takes you from surface-level writing to real, soul-level clarity. You can purchase it here
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.
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.
A couple of months ago, after watching a rom-com of all things, this poem arrived.
It reminded me that inspiration doesn’t ask permission. It doesn’t care if the source is high art or a late-night movie. It simply taps you on the shoulder and says, pay attention.
With a weekend that centers everything around love, this feels like the right moment to share
Love is a chamber already loaded. One wrong trigger and something vital ends. They tell us it lives in the heart this soft red symbol we never see working until it fails. love can be known as euphoria, as breathless light. It’s also been known as being collapsed on a bathroom floor, tiles cold against the cheek, trying to remember how to breathe. From there love lives inside a clear bubble. Visible. Watched. Marked do not touch. Strong enough to exist. Fragile enough to shatter. Maybe one day it will swell with courage and burst. For now, it stays still beating carefully, on purpose.
Love isn’t always roses and violins. Sometimes it’s courage. Sometimes it’s caution. Sometimes it’s survival.
Honest storytelling as a form of healing. 