Life Lately
Life can get so crazy and time can get away from you. Sometimes reflecting on your current state of life can help you to recenter and return to yourself. Here are some of my “life lately” reflections:
Lately, I’ve been hyper-focused on perfection and obsessing over small details because it makes me feel in control in an ever-devolving state of the world.
Lately, I’ve been craving home-cooked meals and solo dinners at my dining room table.
Lately, I’m working on establishing a better nighttime routine so my body has enough time to recharge.
Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about bike rides in Foster Park and trying to get my bike ready for the Summer.
Lately, I’m allowing myself to sit with uncomfortable emotions and being patient with myself as I work through them.
Lately, I’m practicing positive self-talk because there is enough negativity in the world and I don’t need anymore in my head.
Lately, I’m loving the skin I’m in and the body I inhabit because I feel most centered when I am just myself. Nothing else.
How has life been for you, lately?
The Beach
April is a complicated month.
There is so much to celebrate and yet so much to grieve. I have to admit that this April has hit me harder than I anticipated. And at the same time, this April has excited me in ways I never expected. Like I said, it’s complicated.
April holds two core parts of me—survivorhood and poetry. It’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month and National Poetry Month. In past years, I’ve shown up outwardly—at events, in community, in celebration. But this time, I’ve been quieter. More reflective. Keeping to myself.
After honoring 17-year-old Bre in February, something shifted. The ceremony was powerful, but it also stirred things I hadn’t felt in a while. Flashbacks. Old memories finding their way back to the surface. A reminder that PTSD and healing is not linear, and that some parts of me are still tender.
So instead of writing, instead of celebrating, I’ve been sitting with something else.
Grief.
There are two death anniversaries I mourn. The heaviest one being my childhood best friend. It’s been a year since her death but I still can’t accept that she’s gone—at least from this life. I get angry thinking about moments she’s missing. I cry when I revisit my favorite childhood memory of her—laughing and chasing each other on the Indiana Dunes Beach.
I thought of her on the beaches of San Diego. I looked for her in every sunrise. I found her in purple-sparkled seashells tucked in the sand beneath the waves of the ocean. I heard her laugh echo into the horizon during every sunset. And I wished I could go back in time—to live that beach day with her one last time.
The same way I wish I had more time with my Grandma Isabel. She loved the beach—from what others have told me and from the pictures I sifted through in her Bronx apartment in April 2024. It was hard, listening to the memories. The laughter. The sadness. The life of a woman I barely knew, yet felt deeply tethered to through the love and care she passed down to my mom.
Sitting on Ocean Beach in San Diego, I listened intently to the waves lapping the shore. I breathed in the salt water air and imagined my Grandma Isabel smiling into a camera—wisps of her dark hair blowing in the wind, waves rolling in the background. A wet beach littered with stones and seashells.
The same scene depicted in her obituary photo.
Walking in the cold water, sand squishing between my toes, I wondered if Grandma Isabel’s footprints were forever imprinted on the beaches she loved.
And I wondered if it was her footprints I felt pressing into the sand instead of my own.
Small Joys, New Roots
There’s something about this time of year that feels like a quiet exhale. Spring is just on the horizon and new life is on the verge of budding. The light lingers a little longer. The mornings feel less heavy. Everything seems brighter.
And I’ve started to notice small joys . Little moments that just make me smile.
Opening my windows on spontaneous rainy nights.
Breathing in the fresh air as it drifts into my apartment.
Baking bread in the late night hours and trusting myself through the process.
Cooking a meal and savoring the leftovers.
Late night conversations with babe and naked cuddles under warm covers.
Celebrating poetry book anniversaries and revisiting the words in my books.
Simple. Quiet. Small joys.
I think growth is often like this — not loud, but soft and steady. Rooted. Almost invisible at first. The kind that happens underground before anything blooms.
The kind of growth I’ve been craving.
More mornings that feel intentional instead of rushed.
More presence. Less technology.
More laughter over meals.
More genuine connection.
More space in my schedule for rest, rooted in intention.
More memories made in private with people I love dearly.
I’m being transferred to a new pot with fresh soil. And patiently allowing my roots to deepen throughout this season of growth.
Spring doesn’t demand. It unfolds.
And I think I am, too.
Photo by Olivia Rosth, @oliviarosth
12 Years A Surv;vor
February 18, 2026, I held a private, sacred ceremony at 3:15am sitting at my dining room table. A ceremony dedicated to celebration. A moment to pause and look back at just how far I have come.
February 18, 2014, I was raped. In the bedroom of my childhood home. I was 17. It changed my life forever.
I buried this trauma within me for years. It wasn’t until I started therapy while in college that everything came to the surface. Flashbacks. Hypervigilance. Night terrors. Debilitating phantom pains. I was psychologically reliving the rape all over again.
My escape was alcohol —disguised as college partying. I always had vodka in my dorm room, hidden in bins and folded into clothes in my closet. Alcohol made me forget. It provided me a temporary numbing for my pain. It was my cure for PTSD. Sometimes I would flirt with death and take sleeping pills after a night of binge drinking. Almost like a game I played with God to see if He would finally take me away…but He never did. Because He knew I had a greater purpose. He valued my life even when I didn’t.
Years of therapy forced me to look in the mirror and face my fears. I learned about all the weight I was carrying. Weight that wasn’t even mine to worry about. As I peeled back the layers of my trauma, I discovered healing. I discovered a whole new perspective on life — one filled with opportunity.
Life has been a whirlwind since that fateful day back in 2014.
But what a blessing it is that I chose to live it anyway.
In an ironic twist, I fell in love with Life in a way I never could with dying.
12 years a survivor. Forever to go.
New poem on the Poems page.
Grief: Three Things I’m Sitting With
Lately, I’ve been sitting with a few things. Not to solve them. Just to notice them.
1. A feeling
An unresolved ache of missing Grandma’s home. A constant throb that threatens to burst through the levee I built for my tears. I feel it most when I drive past her house. She still owns the house. It still stands on the southside of town but there is no glow to the windows. No warmth to its presence. A mere shell of its former self. It’s just not the same without her there.
2. A realization
This ongoing ache is meant to prevent me from ignoring my grief. As painful as it is, this ache keeps me present in times when I just want to mentally disappear. To numb myself out. It keeps me grounded in my pain so I can continue to grow through my grief. It’s a blessing and a curse.
3. A practice or intention
I’m learning to allow myself to grieve. This change is hard and emotionally grueling. I’ve literally watched myself go from being cared for by my grandma to becoming her caregiver. The roles have reversed but the love remains the same, if not stronger. I need to lean into that love when grief becomes so heavy. Easier said than done, but I am trying. That is all I can do.
Photo by Peter Herrmann, @tama66. *Not my grandma’s house.
New poem on the Poems page.