Honest storytelling as a form of healing.

Tag: writing

  • When Everything Feels Amplified

    When Everything Feels Amplified

    There are days when nothing catastrophic happens,

    yet everything inside me feels louder.

    The thoughts move faster.

    The body feels heavier.

    Ordinary moments carry more weight than they should.

    I’ve learned not to panic when this happens.

    Emotional intensity doesn’t automatically mean something is wrong.

    It doesn’t mean I’m unstable.

    It doesn’t mean I’m failing.

    Sometimes it just means I’m aware.

    Intensity is what happens when I stop numbing.

    When I’m no longer distracting myself enough to avoid what’s stirring underneath.

    When something in me is outgrowing the version of life I’m currently living.

    It shows up as restlessness.

    As heat in the chest.

    As a quiet refusal to keep settling.

    I used to interpret this feeling as a problem to solve.

    Now I see it as information.

    It’s asking questions.

    Where are you misaligned?

    What are you tolerating that you’ve already outgrown?

    What would it look like to choose yourself here?

    I’m learning that I don’t need to escape intensity.

    I need to hold it long enough to understand what it’s pointing toward.

    Not every strong feeling is a crisis.

    Sometimes it’s a compass.

  • 14 Reasons Valentine’s Day Is Overhyped (and I’m Not Sorry)

    14 Reasons Valentine’s Day Is Overhyped (and I’m Not Sorry)

    What do you think about this day?

    1. It’s been aggressively commercialized.

    Love didn’t ask to be packaged in red cellophane and sold at a markup.

    2. It’s literally rooted in martyrdom.

    Nothing says romance like a day born from execution and religious confusion.

    3. Love should be practiced daily, not scheduled annually.

    If affection needs a calendar reminder, that’s not romance that’s maintenance.

    4. Flowers and candy prices are straight-up offensive.

    The same bouquet last week was half the price. Miss me with that capitalism.

    5. You can’t get reservations anywhere you actually want to eat.

    And even if you could, the prix-fixe menu is a scam in disguise.

    6. It creates pressure instead of intimacy.

    One person feels judged for “not doing enough,” the other feels undervalued if nothing shows up.

    7. It turns love into a performance.

    Public posts, forced smiles, curated moments who is this really for?

    8. It reinforces outdated relationship roles.

    Men are expected to prove, women are expected to receive. We’re tired.

    9. It ignores every kind of love that isn’t romantic.

    Friendships, self-love, chosen family, healing none of that gets a card aisle.

    10. It magnifies loneliness for people already struggling.

    A whole day dedicated to reminding people what they don’t have is cruel, actually.

    11. It rewards bare minimum behavior.

    One grand gesture doesn’t erase a year of emotional absence.

    12. It confuses spending money with showing care.

    Real love is consistency, not receipts.

    13. It encourages comparison instead of connection.

    Someone else’s roses don’t mean your relationship is lacking social media just lies loudly.

    14. If love is real, it doesn’t need a holiday to survive.

    And if it only shows up on February 14th… that’s your answer.

  • Facing the Week’s Battle

    Facing the Week’s Battle

    This week had a way of testing me.

    It started on Monday,

    when I knocked down my own tower and finally let myself see what it is I want to work toward. Tuesday came and the feelings didn’t leave. They lingered, pressed in, asking to be acknowledged.

    So I began to encapsulate them, to plan because planning is part of what I’m building now.

    By Wednesday, Thursday, and now Friday,

    the lesson became clear: support matters.

    Not a crowd. Not a circle for show. But someone who listens really listens who acknowledges the trials, who tries to understand.

    I may not have what people call a group of friends, but having support that hears me

    has made all the difference. In this journey of entering my sovereignty, I know I have to stay true to myself.

    I know I have to keep going. This is a hard hill to climb.

    But knowing I have the ability to succeed and the drive, and the support is what’s keeping me moving forward, even now.

  • Pressure Makes Diamonds

    Pressure Makes Diamonds

    My alarm goes off well before the sun even considers rising.

    3:00 a.m. blinks back at me, blurry and unforgiving.

    I lie there for a moment, knowing I want to hit snooze but also knowing I won’t.

    I sit up anyway.

    I grab my phone and remember I didn’t even set out what I’m going to wear.

    The exhaustion from yesterday has settled deep into my legs, heavy and familiar.

    And the thought comes, quiet but clear:

    this is not where I’m supposed to be.

    Still, I push myself up.

    Because I need to do this.

    Because this will be part of my story.

    Part of what I went through.

    They’ll say it’s easy work.

    Minimal tasks.

    Nothing to complain about.

    But those minimal things drain my soul,

    because I know deep in my bones that I am meant for something else.

    I layer up for another winter day and wonder if maybe it’s just seasonal depression.

    Maybe when the light returns, when the warmth does, this feeling will fade.

    And then the nudge comes again:

    No. This isn’t that.

    So I write this as a reminder to myself

    if it’s true that pressure makes diamonds,

    then I will be the biggest one ever found.

  • Doing Hard Things (Even When Your Soul Isn’t in It)

    Doing Hard Things (Even When Your Soul Isn’t in It)

    Doing hard things when your heart is elsewhere is one of the most exhausting acts of adulthood.

    There are moments when your spirit has already left the room. You’ve renounced a situation internally emotionally, energetically, spiritually but your body still has to show up. Duty calls you into places you’ve already outgrown. And no, you can’t always just walk away. Not yet.

    So you stay.

    Not because you’re weak.

    Not because you lack courage.

    But because responsibility, timing, and reality sometimes require endurance before release.

    This is the part no one romanticizes: continuing on while your passion lives somewhere else. Knowing you’re meant for more, yet tending to what’s in front of you because walking out prematurely would cost you more than staying a little longer.

    I’ve done this in every form

    a job that drained me,

    a relationship that had run its course,

    friendships that no longer fit the version of me I was becoming.

    And here I am again, standing at a crossroads, holding a double-edged sword. One side is survival. The other is vision. Both are sharp. Both require intention.

    What keeps me moving forward is this:

    I know this is temporary.

    There’s already a countdown in my mind.

    The work I’m doing now is not wasted it’s preparation.

    Sometimes thriving doesn’t look like joy.

    Sometimes it looks like discipline.

    Sometimes it’s simply keeping your word to yourself while you build the bridge out.

    If you’ve ever stayed somewhere longer than your soul wanted to, I see you. And I’d love to know what was it for you? A job, a relationship, a friendship? What did you learn while you waited for your moment to step forward?

    This isn’t the end of the story.

    It’s the part where the groundwork is being laid.

  • Filling your own cup

    Filling your own cup

    On a daily basis, we rush.

    Coffee to go.

    A lid slapped on top of a life we don’t have time to sit with.

    But today was different.

    Today, I made my coffee at home.

    In my own cup.

    At my own pace.

    Do you fill your cup?

    I walked around in my slippers, no destination, just presence. I stood by the window while the icy winter weather wrapped itself around the streets, everything slowed and hushed, and for once, I didn’t feel late to my own life.

    I thought about what’s coming.

    About what I want.

    About what I’ve been avoiding by staying in survival mode.

    And it hit me just like I took the time to make that cup, I have to make my future. Deliberately. Patiently. With my own hands. No rush. No shortcuts. No “to-go” version of the life I actually want.

    This week marks the return to what I was always meant to be focused on. Not scrambling. Not reacting. But tending.

    Because I can’t bloom properly if I’m always running.

    And neither can the life I’m building.

  • What really is it?

    What really is it?

    What’s your dream job?

    I was going to write about journal therapy today.

    About how I’m working on it.

    How it’s becoming something.

    But the truth is simpler and heavier.

    The only reason I’m surviving right now

    is because I put pen to paper.

    That’s it.

    I’m deeply agitated by the job I have.

    Yes, I’m grateful for it.

    It pays the bills or tries to.

    But gratitude doesn’t erase exhaustion.

    It doesn’t cancel resentment.

    It doesn’t make me less human.

    I’m tired of putting on a face.

    What would you be doing!

    Tired of pretending I care about questions that don’t require conversation

    questions answered on a board directly in front of us.

    Read it.

    What do you think you’re really asking me?

    If you’ll have a job?

    And if I say no, what then?

    What does that do for me?

    Nothing.

    You don’t actually care about me.

    And I’m done pretending otherwise.

    Every day, I come home and write.

    Because I have to.

    Because there is too much inside me

    too much I’m not allowed to say out loud,

    too much I have to contain to survive the day.

    So the page holds it.

    I dream of the day I wake up

    and go to a café with my laptop,

    sit among people who gather to listen,

    not because they need something from me

    but because my words offer something to them.

    I want to tell them how hard I fought.

    How many times I tested myself.

    How long I stood in places that drained me

    until I finally chose myself.

    For now, all I have is this small corner.

    Maybe no one reads it.

    Maybe no one ever does.

    But know this

    I am fighting tooth and nail

    to make this pen and paper mean something.

    Someday.

  • The Cost of Pulling Back

    The Cost of Pulling Back

    Pulling back has a cost.

    That’s the part no one prepares you for.

    There’s a quiet loss that comes with no longer being immediately available.

    With not filling the space just because it’s empty.

    With choosing not to explain yourself into comfort for others.

    Journal therapy has helped me sit with that cost instead of rushing to justify it.

    When I write, I can see what pulling back actually asks of me.

    It asks me to tolerate silence.

    It asks me to let misunderstandings exist without correcting them.

    It asks me to stop proving my care through exhaustion.

    None of this feels good at first.

    There is a loneliness that shows up when you stop overextending.

    Not because you’ve done something wrong,

    but because familiarity dissolves when you no longer perform it.

    The page doesn’t argue with me about this.

    It doesn’t rush me toward empowerment language or quick clarity.

    It just shows me the exchange.

    What I lose when I pull back.

    And what I lose when I don’t.

    That’s where journal therapy lives for me 

    not in pretending there’s no grief in choosing myself,

    but in letting the grief be seen without letting it decide for me.

    Pulling back isn’t avoidance.

    It’s an audit.

    And sometimes, the cost of staying is higher than the cost of leaving.

    So I write.

    Not to feel better.

    But to stay honest long enough to choose well.

  • Breaking One At A Time

    Breaking One At A Time

    Last week was about saying the thing out loud.

    Naming it without softening it.

    This week is different.

    This is about staying after the truth is spoken.

    Journal therapy isn’t relief.

    It’s containment.

    The page holds what the body has been carrying

    so it doesn’t spill into every conversation, every silence, every night.

    Nothing magically changes after honesty.

    The job still exists.

    The weight still shows up in the morning.

    So this week, the practice looks like this:

    Write one sentence that tells the truth

    without fixing it.

    Notice where the tension lives today

    Pause and pick up the pen

    and let that place speak first.

    Name where your energy went

    without asking it to make sense yet.

    Finish the sentence,

    “I am no longer explaining why I ___.”

    End the page knowing this:

    Nothing is resolved,

    but everything has a place now.

  • Permission

    Permission

    By Friday, most people are tired of trying.

    Not because they failed 

    but because effort has been constant, quiet, and unseen.

    This is usually where the inner voice gets sharp.

    Where we start measuring the week by what didn’t happen.

    Where we decide we’ll “start again” on Monday.

    I’m practicing something different.

    Permission.

    Permission to let the week be what it was.

    Permission to stop tightening my grip on meaning.

    Permission to rest without narrating it as avoidance.

    Journal therapy, for me, doesn’t always look like writing things down.

    Sometimes it looks like not interrogating myself for a few hours.

    Not asking:

    • Did I do enough?

    • Did it matter?

    • Did anyone notice?

    Just letting Friday be a soft landing

    instead of another performance review.

    Some weeks don’t need closure.

    They need kindness.

    And today, that’s enough.