To anyone who hears me,

The past can be beautiful, and inspiring, a trove of memories that you come back to visit on a rainy day. For some like me, the past can be dark, scary, and have such a strong pull that you remain in a cyclical pattern, becoming the worst version of yourself more with every tug.
The 13-year-old me first placed the blade on my skin, 21-year-old me made the deepest cuts that would last my lifetime. 14-year-old me took her first sip of alcohol, and 23-year-old me depended on that alcohol because she couldn’t see the opportunity for brighter days. 14-year-old me smoked her first cigarette and 24-year-old me couldn’t go an hour without one.
You see, I have a pattern of addiction tendencies. I would crave whatever would take the internal pain away, though that pain was only intensifying. I was self-destructive and lacked a love of life. I was empty, hopeless, and lost.
Until the fall of 2018. I had recently turned 24 and took a pregnancy test, though I wasn’t expecting much since they were always negative. To my surprise, this one was positive! I didn’t know that this would ever be possible for me and I was a mixed bag of emotions, hope being the brightest. I had lost a baby before through miscarriage and I carried that fear with me until at least 20 weeks pregnant. Every day though, I felt hopeful.
I would place my hand on my tummy and talk to her (I just had a feeling she was a girl), telling her of my day, promising her that no matter what, she and I would get through anything put in our path.
This feeling of hope and promise of new life brought on a version of Christine that I had never met. She was scared, of course, but was so much more fierce than ever before. She had a reason to push on, to brave face any situation because another depended on her. Once I met her and held her in my arms, all of the dark and empty past melted away.
I vowed to her and myself that I would never hurt myself again. Even in the darkest of times, I would hold on to hope and believe that everything happens for a reason and this beautiful girl was brought into my life for the biggest and best reasons of all. She is my little teammate and my best friend. She loves me endlessly, fills me with unfathomable joy, and gives my life purpose.
Now, as a mom of two, I cannot help but look back at the fall of 2018 knowing that my life was going to drastically change and that was the turning point. I no longer drink alcohol, I don’t smoke. I no longer wish to self-harm or self-destruct. I am focused on bettering myself each and every day not only for my benefit but because I am raising two profoundly unique and wonderful children.
They have a mom with a dark past but one that works each day to make a brighter future. The mom that they will know is one that will fill their cups, teach them, and guide them through the highs and lows that life will inevitably bring. They will see a mom with a love for life, herself, and her family.
I thank God every day for giving me children, and for changing my life. Without them, I don’t know who or IF I would be any longer. I’m so eternally thankful and have no doubt that those two positive tests changed my world forever. A mother is who I was born to be.

Sincerely,
An infinitely blessed mommy.

I am not a lazy girl
So I’m working on me
This person that I can be
Is much better than before
I feel like a winner
Because I try and try
To let life not pass me by
I am always wanting more

I am wanting happiness
I admit when I am wrong
And I know it won’t be long
Until I am filled with glee
I live an honest life
Filled with love and hope
I know that I can cope
So now I’m much more free

I have skills at my disposal
I have learned so many things
I’ve earned grace and wings
To do with as I please
I help others that are in need
And I feel good inside
I don’t try to hide
My emotions are at ease

But what I love the most
Is the feeling that I get
When I’m myself and yet
This person that I know
Has changed before my eyes
I don’t know where I am going
But I know that I am growing
I follow my own flow

Dear self,
I salute self because of the numerous trials, errors and sudden oppositions which were unfortunate that self had to endure unwanted and definitely no forewarning…. of the tragic loss of self’s son. The eldest son who was like the brighter of the earth’s sun which was the blessing from the womb which made self smile and heart leap with every bit of his age as self raised him to be such a great child with much bravery and grace.
Until that one particular day, that day self wouldn’t have expected that call we as parents, we as mothers dare to imagine that apprehended call which we don’t bear easily and fear the most.
It was October 4th, 2023which was the last of his unspoken breath …. that nightmare call that self didn’t deserve to hear the alarming voice on the other end of the phone line about her son, her eldest baby’s death…. Self’s mind goes spiraling…as her voice was unwinding a holler that was way deeper than the ocean’s wave …. Transition, opposition tell me , explain to self how could this happened on today?
Life happens, Life hurts and Life brings trauma and serves self pain which isn’t on the menu ! Although, this has happened to me, I must say I salute self , dear self because my bittersweet and torn soul has turned into a inspiration and celebration of good memories where self can laugh and smile again as the sun shines upon me as if he too is smiling back because his legacy has left a great inspiring impact as a great brother, awesome father to his son where his wisdom,great talents and love of 38 years upon this planet shall live on….Self I did an amazing job as to raising, loving and teaching my eldest boy …. my first joy and always will be… my first born son! I Salute Self

I am 25.
This is a mood board, sprawling
Swatches of ambition, photographs pinned of places yet to see,
And pastel whispers of what feels true, but I think I like who I am becoming.
I drink an oat milk latte and walk around the house remembering who I was at 24—
Drafting text messages, never sent;
Creating worlds in fictional novels, characters that understood;
Spraying lavender on the pillow sheet, scaring the restless away.
I could write a million words about who I used to be, but I am 25.
I am floating and celebrating this chapter, feeling it expand and contract.
Everything has become clearer—homemade pasta, fuzzy socks, wearing lingerie, lighting cinnamon candles—(because) I didn’t love me.

I am 25. I’ve learned
To believe in my melancholy and that sometimes, things are out of my control; to taste the sweetness in the back of my throat, where my fear quietly waits; to turn pages, and write with fountain pens, and love myself in ways I have never.
I am 25 and I think I like who I am becoming.

Hello friend,
I never thought I would get an opportunity to write anything to you other than perhaps a ulogy. I can’t believe we made it to 45. There were times I didn’t think you would see 30. Been through alot teen pregnancy, mental health diagnosis, a severe drug addiction it has been a wild ride to say the least. Here we are though. Living. Existing, and the best part is the sense of peace we have now. No more praying to get through the day. No more running. No more games. We got here though, fighting tooth and nail for every chance and every change. We learned that if you go out with no make up on the world doesn’t stop. We learned that going to bed at 8 instead of going out at 10 is ok. That solitude and silence is welcomed and not scary anymore. We are not perfect. Far from it but we are progressing. We are growing. There is a sense of calm over us these days no more chaos. We may even have become a little boring compared to our former self. A little set in our ways. I remember the days though that we prayed to be exactly where we are right now. Remember the day you got your first apartment? We kept looking at the keys over and over amazed that someone trusted us enough to have our own space. Our own little piece of this world. That happened only 3 years ago but that gratitude and the awe of being given a chance has not subsided. So yes…we made it. Things are good. Somewhere right now someone is praying to be where we are. Hoping to one day get that key and to embrace the silence instead of fearing it. So in conclusion I would like to say I’m proud of us, …of you. Never would I have thought we would get this far, but here we are. I don’t know what the future will bring. All I can say is hold on tight my dear because this crazy ride isn’t even close to being over.

BE SOMEONE

When we sang, my friend’s mom would twist the fork of her body around in the computer chair to lid her sobbing. She knew it would make us laugh and fall out of our harmony, break our flow. The three of us were tied by the strings of our guitars and the dialect of language, a love language, from braising music together. We spoke in a unique tune, a way that transported us to a private recording studio, with a record deal, where we were about to go on tour. That’s a song we hummed in secret, where you dream that you can “be someone” like Tracy Chapman promised. I think we just wanted to be happy. Together, we were happy. Away from the lockers, the bells, painting our faces, and trying to navigate the buried, shunned and often self-loathing hours of being a kid. Because the math textbooks didn’t have a formula for how to not hate yourself.

So we sang. It was an elixir that couldn’t be administered by spoon. It was as elusive and intangible as trying to pack kisses into a jar. We were goosebumps and we were infinite within the growing pains of high school, the urge to hide under a hoodie of “not good enough,” the pressure to be something you know not yet, the terror that you’re different, and no one else carries this backpack full of grief in your peculiar way. We all felt it but not when we sang in the basement of my friend’s house. Not when we sang together.

Twenty years and counting since we’ve performed on stages, at clubs, in a basement, or a garage and I finally understand why her mom cried. She adored the music, but she was witnessing love swaying, leaping through airwaves, tickling her skin and earlobes. Love that leaked an aroma from our voices and poured into a giant vat of Sunday sauce and noodles, slow-cooked, upstairs on the stove, made by my friend’s mom with the drippings of our voices. We were comfort food.

The terror and demons rotted in the weighted bags on our backs. The stench of queer love fermenting in the hidden pockets, eating disorders eating away at the cloth, family trauma burning holes through the bottom. A symphony of agony. But we could go home, set the grief on the carpet for a few hours, and believe we were good. And we were so good. Not just the three-course meal of our voices, although our friends and classmates treated us like rock stars when we performed. I mean the way we harmonized to fill the wounds of ourselves, even if just for a two-minute song. We knew how to heal one another’s pain through the synchronization of an “us,” a belonging.

Decades of dust have piled on my diaphragm, the guitar’s body warped from humid cries. If you don’t use it, you lose it. And we lost it. We are now notes in different songs and different states, the way some music leaves your life for a while.

I wonder about her, and why she deleted me from her song. I wonder if the three of us knew it would be the last time we sang together whenever that was, and what we sang, and if my friend’s mom was there turning around in the computer chair to hide her crying. Like she knew. I sing the songs now, alone, through discordant chords on my guitar and a voice register that lives lower, that can’t reach those high notes. Can’t reach them. I crack through the ballads, the melodies missing the two other strings of harmony.

But, still I do it because it beckons me, the way falling in love during childhood lingers flavor that you crave for the rest of your life, that you can taste without it touching your tongue, without it being there. And they crawl into my ear when I least suspect it, especially on a Sunday, when I just want to sit with a bowl of pasta. For two minutes, they are with me and I’ll never stop singing with them, because it will always remind me I can “be someone.”

Hello friends,
I’m Andrea and I’m an addict. So cliche trust me I know. It’s true though seriously I am. Drugs, food, shopping any and all things impulsive I’m in. Drugs is the front runner in my list of truths though. My favorite. I was able to look in the eyes of the people I was talking to, I was social, I felt “normal”. I thought I fit in and I thought I was so relevant. I was a mom, an employee, a friend. A functioning addict …a true member of society. I spent many a days looking out the window asking why and how did I get here? I spent many a nights working and hustling to support a now raging habit. I new death was imminent. One more contaminated move and it was over. I didn’t want to die. I just didn’t want to feel. Anything. I looked in the mirror one day and what I saw shocked me. My face with fresh sores picked through paralyzing bound of anxiety. My eyes looked a 100 years old while me skin aged a lifetime. I knew I needed to change. So I did. About ten years now. I’ll say though nothing prepares you for sobriety. All those buried feelings come right back to the surface. Raw, rare and exposed. It’s wierd to feel again, to feel human. I know now what I say matters, I hear my voice and I like the sound of it. There’s so much I don’t know. 20 years of hiding and wishing i was normal, which is just a setting on the dryer by the way…I’m now at a place of acceptance. I’m in recovery but am I truly recovered? I have urges sometimes….fleeting thoughts of getting high. The process. The chaos. The feelings or lack there of. I miss it sometimes, but not enough to ever go back. I’m lucky….I got out. I have a second chance, and I’m eternally grateful. I don’t know a lot but I know I just need to keep hanging on because my journey is so far from over. Thank you. We do recover.

Dear Fellow Beautiful Beings,

Everyone knows someone, if not personally then most likely in the tabloids, or countless movies and tv shows, who have suffered from some kind of substance abuse. But what about when that narcotic is another human being?
Welcome to my world!
It’s a tricky one cause there is no bottle of booze or jar of pills to put down. It’s all stored in that hidden place of shame and dread. My brain! Which apparently thrives on giving great power to the opposite sex, allowing them to completely occupy my cranium like a cancer. It’s an obsession in my psyche that at times, feels so incurable and hopeless, I end up questioning a reason to exist.

I apologize if that was too brazen of a start, but I’m almost fifty- And honestly, I’m just really sick of the pain.

This is probably foreign to most of you, but if you’ve never completely ruined your whole day just waiting for one person to text you back, consider yourself extremely lucky.

I’m not writing this because I know any answers or solutions, only that I know the addiction, and have, at various times throughout my life, suffered greatly from it. If you are reading this and can relate just know you can reach out to me after your peers refuse to hear that “assholes” name once more!
If you don’t have a close friend afflicted with the same mental illness, forget them having any understanding of your pain, they instead just deem you as weak.
Which makes you stop relaying any obsession related feelings or actions to them, leaving you even more alone in your pain. This is not at all a criticism of the frustrated friends I have had over the years….
Just a statement I felt I had to address for anyone that has been in the same shame filled predicament and felt they had no one to reach out to.

I wish I could have more open conversations with female friends, but just like a guy assuming all women are insane, the first female response I receive is too often “that guy’s an asshole, or narcissist.” Or both. I don’t buy it to be that black and white. But maybe that’s because I have been called crazy ever since I can remember.
My friends may be right, and these guys may be complete douchebags, but I am the one who should be more harshly judged. Majority of these guys showed their cards from the beginning, and I kept going back. Recklessly betting with my emotions, knowing the house always wins.
I am the one that needs shock therapy for spending a large chunk of my life vying for the love of several emotionally unavailable human beings! And the last one was a Raiders Fan. As if my shame wasn’t embarrassing enough!

I’ve spent a huge majority of my adult life grasping for the undying affection of the opposite sex. Desperately wanting random, various men to love me, all while picking the absolute worst candidates for the job.
What’s that famous quote “I don’t want to be a part of any club that would have me as a member”?
If someone likes me too much and too quickly, I automatically assume there is something very wrong with them. Cause why would they choose me?
Or maybe I just love a good challenge…

I spent the years of 2009-2012 being completely obsessed with a guy I never even kissed. To the point I knew his daily schedule and would try to time my walks to the gym to correlate when he was leaving his local AA meeting across the street.
In case you didn’t believe me when I said this wasn’t based solely on sexual contact…

I’ve had a few healthy relationships in my life, and about four completely unhealthy, obsession filled, several years long casualties. I’m writing this in desperate hopes that this “last one” is exactly that.

I fell in love in early 2020 with who I now hope is my last bad habit.

And yes, I did sleep with this one and the sex was amazing. But he was insistent that we were just friends. I would wait around till he wanted to see me again, which was usually about every three weeks, just the type of annoying cycle every woman is used to.
Eventually I was literally breaking my own heart for an hour of what I thought was the deepest love I had ever felt for another person of the opposite sex.

Complete ecstasy followed by a month of tears, and sad desperate angry texts, usually in the vein of “why don’t you love me?”

Is there any more of a turnoff?

At least once a month I would plan out what I was going to say to him when he contacted me. Usually, a very dramatic monologue about why I did not want to see him anymore. Desperately hoping every day that he would text me so I could tell him why I don’t want him to text me anymore.
Literally, the definition of insanity…
Please contact me so I can tell you why I no longer want you to contact me!

But of course, he never did. He didn’t need to. I wouldn’t make it two weeks without convincing myself that if you love someone you should check in and see how they are doing. Which in turn would result in him offering to come over and who am I to say no? I could die tomorrow.
Carpe Diem!!
Still trying to figure out if my brain is a blessing or a curse…

I tried being with other people but it just felt mediocre, and why settle for a buffet when I can still get the Filet Mignon?
These are the justifications my brain makes.

The more months that passed, the more seriously I began to ponder that this self-destructive, depression inducing behavior, could actually turn to real serious self-harm. It’s already a challenge going thru this menopausal mid-life change.

After three years of desperate yearning and too many thoughts of disappearing, I suddenly became insistent that he be my last depression-filled, self-destructive, obsession.
If I didn’t finally change, I was going to die. Not necessarily because of him, but because he was just the next protagonist in the story of my life of men I have chosen to destroy me.
In a desperate quest to find the silver lining in what felt like a no-win situation, I forcefully embraced the mindset that the universe keeps giving me the same challenge until I conquer it. I made it my personal emotional boot camp to stick it out with him until I no longer felt like I needed him in order to survive.
I kept going back to him while doing intense personal therapy to make sure I would never choose another one of these killers again.
This sounds like insane behavior, but until I learned why I gave him and countless others a key to all my happiness, I knew I would have just repeated the same behavior with someone new.
I have run thirteen full twenty-six mile marathons, and watched An Officer and A Gentleman at least a dozen times.
Just like Richard, I don’t back away from a challenge.

After many long walks accompanied by motivational podcasts, and hours of the best spiritual hot yoga (shout out to CorePower Yoga) I no longer cry from the ridiculous thoughts that I desperately need him in my life. I also no longer have anger toward him.

I do my best to look at every situation as one that comes from a place of love. Whomever I am tortured by is quite possibly in turn tortured by somebody else. I don’t know these guys personal stories. I just know I don’t want to blame them anymore. “Hurt people- hurt people.”
I’ve been looking so hard for validation from others instead of just getting it from myself.

I have no answers or any hint of a cure. I’m not sure there even is one, except that similar to being an alcoholic, I just take it One Day At A Time.
The one thing I have learned is that it’s not always real. Not every thought I have in my head is fact. It took me till the age of about forty-two to learn this, but better late then never I guess. So now when the negative thoughts and hours of dialogue I pretend to have with a guy rejecting me plagues me to the point of tears, I don’t fight it. I grab some Kleenex and cry and just imagine those bad thoughts are like a horrible radio station I am forced to listen to till it runs out of battery.

This article hits on a chunk of my life that resulted in depression, but I’d like to end it by reassuring all of you wonderful people who were caring enough to read this till the end, that I am very good. I practice amazing self-care every day, and I am constantly grateful that this is quite literally my only problem in life. What’s a little mental illness?!
At least I’m not a Raiders Fan…

Sincerely,

Jen Murphy

God struck my heart like lightning
Giving my life a brightening
Since then, my hope is in the Lord.
Connected like a power cord.
A heavenly guide by my side
Together we shall abide.

It was a Thursday morning, just like any other. I got up, grabbed a cup of coffee, took it back to my bedroom, turned on the news and scrolled through my phone like any other morning. At 6:00 am I hopped in the shower, hoping I’d get out the door a bit earlier so I could get to the our teacher’s union meeting which was scheduled at school before class started. I walked down the hall, grabbed my lunch, toasted a bagel and off I went. Little did I know, that morning, November 8th, 2018 would be the last time I’d be surrounded by your loving walls.

You welcomed us about 18 years ago, after moving from a smaller home in town. I remember thinking you were so much more luxurious home—you had central heat and air instead of a wall heater. You had a large, open kitchen instead of a small galley kitchen. You even had two separate rooms—one for family to gather—the other for the adults to mingle. Well, the adult mingling didn’t happen as often, but the family gatherings were abundant. Our little family had about 6480 dinners often while the television was showing some funny sitcom–a handful of other celebrations happened in the dining room and outside on the patio. Birthdays were shared—by my estimates you hosted about 72 of them. You even hosted a Thanksgiving celebration where my entire family came—long before things got complicated. You even hosted two high school graduation parties. Special events which make me smile.

I loved your beautiful gas fireplace insert where I spent many nights healing from my broken ankle last December. I’ll miss the days of sitting on the sofa, feeling the warmth of your beautiful fire.

My favorite memories come from our beautiful Christmas celebrations. The fireplace mantle which our stockings hung, the tree which stood tall on display in the front window—it all looked so spectacularly gorgeous. I always loved how your bright lights which hung from the roof’s edge, would shine during the Christmas holiday. You knew just how to bring Christmas cheer to our family. For that I thank you.

I’m also thankful for all the baths in the tub…a nightly ritual. Many books were read, while I soaked my often weary bones. Many tears were shed while soaking. Many worries were released. Those nights will be missed.

Our family will forever be thankful for keeping us safe each night. Many happy nights, some sad nights, but most importantly many restful nights were spent in your bedrooms. Those nights will no longer happen. Sadness. Tears. Restlessness. Anxiousness. All used to be comforted by you. No longer.

I will forever be grateful to you sweet home for housing our family BBQs on your patio. And I’m especially thankful how your fences took such care of our beloved Akitas—Kuma, Bella, Hopey and Odin. They played, they healed, they ate and they thrived in your yard. Thank you.

Our kitty River also loved stalking the critters outside your yard at night. A time or two she’d climb up your old oak trees, getting stuck then needing rescue. All of our furbabies were thankful for the space to roam and explore.

I’m heartbroken that I won’t be able to sit and drink coffee, or wine from our patio with my friend any longer. The flowers, birdhouses and hummingbird feeders will forever be missed.

Your occasional snowy winters, beautiful spring mornings, chilly fall evenings will just be distant memories. Your gorgeous camellias are no longer—the days of cutting one of your red or pink flowers which had always reminded me of my mom will no longer be. For that I’m sad.

What I’m especially thankful for is how comforting you were to me during my grieving days and subsequent years following the deaths of both my parents. You helped me heal—your four walls brought extreme comfort to me. You listened to my tears—my fears—my aching heart.

I bid you farewell my sweet home. The beautiful sunsets and sunrises viewed from your windows, will no longer be. My heart is broken, but I’ll remember our time together forever. Love to you always, me💕

It’s March. Spring is starting to peek through the clouds.
I’m trying to move slow. I’m trying to be easy.
I’m working hard just to breathe.
I’m pining for control over my own body,
My autonomy feels out of reach.

I am reminded how I felt at sixteen, when I made the choice to starve.
Then I am reminded of the Palestinian children and men and women,
Dark eyes pleading while they wither away,
Bombs reflected back into our view.
I am humbled.

I am not the same as I once was.
Gratitude exists, albeit forced at times.
Growth and healing is an active choice.
I let myself transform.

Chapter 327
Today i turned 33.
Happy birthday to me!
Though those challenges through those dark visions i seen in my dreams last night was an attack to my esteem.
Waking up to clouded skies and high winds this morning shifted my perception thinking “ maybe its the heavens blowing in the winds of change for me?
I decided to walk.
First I headed to the barber shop for a fresh cut, now Im feeling myself.
With my head phones on out the door. Taking a trip to the coffee house down the road for a hot cup of Black Seal .
A soiree of Happiness filled my heart , through the first sip with a bone chilling scent of sweet almond, reminiscent to the decadent amaretto with notes of decanter liqueur twirling in the mix .
Big smiles from the coffee house barista with a full house of beings bantering amongst themselves, listening to the constant bells of the door opening and closing to those coming and going in.
Finishing my cup i swift my way out the door, “Its time to go to the art store.”
I purchased some spray paint for my project so eager to rush home and pour my heart onto the canvas before its time to go pick up my daughter. For a number of days leading up til today, Ive reflected on how far Ive came.
“I always viewed my life as a book filled with riddles, altered dimensions blended with moments of joy and memories of a journey convulsing with supernatural happenings as most would deem as some of the more stranger things”.
None the less, indeed it is a new chapter, my life has consisted of many chapters left with cliff hangers and some unsolved mysteries all that lead to this new book as i stand at the edge of the mountains ready to plummet into my next book of life leaving karmic ties of the past behind.
At this very moment i cant help but to smile, as the sun shines finally beaming in Gods love and light upon my face typing this letter about my excitement for the best things to come.
As it just dawned on me of how today itself is like a metaphor, “ Waking up to gloomy clouds and high winds. Like the swirl of a storm coming in, to cleanse but by days end, the sun will shine again”.
Typically i would over indulge in sweet cakes , red wine and a side of cajun wings and fries for my birthday but im on a slight fast for the weekend as i prepare for the gift to take a trip swaying in earths sacred medicine.
Im so excited for the venture, for i know it’ll open the roads out of my mind with hidden text in this next book like a sacred scripture etched in peruvian mountains, or hieroglyphs upon the cave walls like the Grand Canyon perhaps?
For there is a burning desire and deep love to further find myself as I thread on, with expanded wings into the unknown.
This chapter is just a binacular scope to getting closer to my dreams as i further on to slay the minifibers of fear nestling on the hairs of my skin.
“Its like beating the finally boss at the end of the game and the credits roll in”
327 is like a code to my inner matrix that im breaking similar to a complex rubix cube of suduko written in hebrew language.
And though to the outer world my inner being is in fact complex, i see it as a hidden passage way to a secret garden no man has had a hand in creating.
A chapter within a chapter… except i am the creator of my story that was already written.
“Speaking now from the thoughts of my Higher Self, the future self”
Doctor Strange disguised as the thinking woman, whose peering into the multiverse of self, reading the foot prints like a sand dune of sanskrit , eyes zoomed in like a magnifying glass.
Its interesting how vivid the imagination is within my mind but then again its sightings of truth that my memory has stored from millions of generations I have lived through out time.
“Im ready to get started and re-remember this chapter of 327, only this time, i am sure to live far beyond the age of 33 this lifetime.

Heading into uncharted waters
without a sac that is weighing her body down.
The subconscious brings forth the auteurs—
no longer trapped in some town.
A narrow bumpy path lies in front
next to one that could have been the easy way.
While a stunt—
pushed her astray.
A knight sweeping her before the fall
catching the princess off guard.
Freezing so he gives her the shawl—
tightening the grip protecting her from debarred.
The sun rose in the east
as the butterflies increased.

Dreaming of my Romeo
as he appeared out of the blue.
Allowing a change in tempo
giving an experience that’s all so new.
In the midst of the fog
you swept my feet from under.
Often forgetting the monologue
due to our hearts starting the thunder.
Snapping away from the bygone
with my love alongside.
Creating a foundation we can build on:
both living for the ride.
Connecting through the depths of our eyes—
having the spirits harmonize.

The most mind alerting experience that changed my perception on life was my first time sitting with AYAHUASCA. It was a day ill never forget, alot of changes took place at the start of 2020 for me. First, was a blessed trip i manifested to go to sedona Arizona for a few days , 2 days after new years day in January. The year before on new years eve in 2018 , i prayed to God and my spirit family for a sense of relief and a way to become closer to The Great Spirit and self, after attempting suicide the morning of December 9th of 2018. I was then being monitored by relatives at the time for about a month or so after that notion.
The night of New Years while spending the night over my families house, i sat in the basement after midnight, still feeling shattered on the inside.
It was like as if it was still the day that i decided in those moments when i was so fed up and ready to leave this world, that the angel of darkness had wisped away the light of my soul to keep, due to the empty void in my heart as i cried out for grievance from the constant unfortunate events that had rapidly transpired the past few years from the various forms of abuse I endured. Unknowingly my life was going in a downward spiral of a noiseless pit full speed and I had no clue. “ I was too busy drinking and dancing my sorrows away once upon a time”.

While in Sedona i found a sense of peace for the moment, learning simple healing modalities to reset my vagus nerve, eft tapping etc. I cried through the Angel healing session, as well as on the guided hike with the practitioner that followed into the creek before the mountain peak view.
There in Sedona I felt home being in the red earth desert land. Viewing the Grand Canyon was a surreal moment by it self. Staring into the massive gapping drop of mountains that formed a bowl like ridge as if it was a wondrous abyss to freedom. Though silence flooded the cool air , In my mind I felt as if there were many faces of passed on loved ones shaping the jagged edges in the mountains. “These were my ancestors”, the spirits of the Southwest spoke to me but without words, the same whispers i heard that night sitting in my families basement that told me, this was the place I needed to come for refuge.
As of now i realized me and those distant mountains have had many pastlives together, as far back to a time where they actually had the ability to speak back ( somehow Merlin comes to mind as i am typing this). They called out to me the night i cried for a wish of deliverance, “Not knowing it was a motion for me to come home”. After my short lived experience though the most memorable at that time in my life, I of course wanted to peer deeper into the supernatural world and learn more of who i was , though its deemed taboo to this world, I was lead to a man in a serendipitous moment. Again i asked the universe to meet a Shaman somehow , then met one at a crystal shop weeks after, giving short sessions for cleansing at a limited time.
After we spoke and i shared some of the tumultous happenings, he felt inclined to discuss sacred medicine with me , thats when i was lead to an Ayahuasca retreat in the month of september in 2020 ( what a year for a spiritual awakening) .After hours passed, once the medicine settled in, underneath the open stared sky that night , laying before a huge bonfire i felt the drift taking hold. An intense 5 hour purge of consistent tears and sobbing weakened my body to finally surrender all of the hidden hurt and pain Ive held dormant since a child came bursting through in the trapped door, hidden in the folds of the cortex of my mind.
There was this one moment when something told me to lay my head down upon the grass as i was rubbing the ground shaking from the hurt; when i seen my mother appear in the grass as if a glass floor was beneath me , literally. She told me to touch her hand ,reaching upward toward me and said “I m right here with you, im here, im here”.
Seeing my mother made me so happy i grieved harder, for she had passed away the day before Mothers Day unexpectedly in 2019. That shocking moment too was another stabbing ache of pain that left a scar within my heart. Another out of this world moment from that experience with momma Aya was when i was walking up the deck stairs and everything was rippling, even the touching of door knobs with grid lines forming behind everything. It shed light that the world that we live in is indeed holographic and not real, though to our naked eyes it would seem as if what we see on a day to day basis was in fact truth, but i KNOW it to be different. Ever since, my life was never the same, but for great reason.
As of now Ive had other experiences that have made an important impact on my life , it most definitely gave a reason why The Great Spirit would not let me leave this earth so soon when i attempted too. Though a late bloomer – I found purpose, with reasons why were all here is much deeper.
“Its bigger than you and me”.
So now everyday i am doing my best to be the best version of myself as I continue to walk hold hands with God and the many creeds of celestial family that guide me.
“Thank you for listening”