Unaltered Voices

For years, a question lived in the back of my mind. It was quiet but heavy, shaping how I showed up in the world. Why me? Why do I never get the same empathy I see poured into others? This morning at 8am, the answer showed up not once, but twice. Two posts back-to-back that finally closed the chapter on a question I didn’t even realize was still bleeding me. And in that moment, I felt a shift. A release. The truth is, the signs are always around us. Answers don’t come how we imagine, but when they’re for us, there is an inner pause causing us to slow down and take in the information. This was mine. Here’s the raw question:   Why is it that when I’m drowning, the people closest to me never reach out a hand the way I’ve seen them do for others? I watched my mother, grandmother, and aunts pour compassion into people who created their chaos, without judgment, shame, or lectures. Just help. But me? I was treated like the problem. Ashamed. Dismissed. Degraded. I’ll never forget the day I...

I’ve been trapped in the same book. Rewriting the chapters that always ended the same. A story of repeated cycles finding my way out, only for the same spirit in a different form to drag me back to the same start. Love didn’t free me. Parties weren’t freedom either. New friends felt familiar, like déjà vu wrapped in false hope. Same script, different cast. But today, I set the book on fire. Forty-one years of recycled pain, burned to ash. This next book? It will not be predictable. It will not repeat. The characters will be new. The ending a plot twist no one saw coming. I’m leaving it all behind. You will never see me the way you knew me. I won’t return to this space, this energy, this endless grieving I’ve carried for the last twenty-one years. Today, with pen in hand, I write freedom. Freedom to create. Freedom to choose who gets access. Freedom to taste joy without apology. Freedom to do me for me. To everyone from the prior book, I wish you the ...

  Have you ever really paid attention to the advice people give you? When was the last time you were out with your girls, chatting it up, and you mentioned a situation in your relationship, only to be met with advice that made you pause? It sounded good, but deep down… something was off. Maybe you’ve opened up to a friend about the toxic relationship you were finally escaping, and she advised you to stay because “at least he pays all the bills.” Or maybe a relative told you, “A man will be a man,” while his betrayal was destroying you emotionally. And let’s not forget the advice from certain religious leaders that has kept women stagnant for decades, never empowering them to rise, only teaching them to stay low, silent, and humble, even when their spirit was dying inside. Seriously, pay attention to what people are saying to you. A lot of the time, the advice people give reveals more about their mindset , their hidden feelings about you , or their need for control than it does a...

  Why do I keep getting lost? Every time I claw my way back to the path, Something pulls me sideways, Detours me into darkness, And my hands fumble for hope I can’t seem to hold. The last time, I lost it so far back It took me years to trace my footsteps. I found pieces of myself in the lost and found, Hidden between the faded pages of old messages, Where I met my ex And thought maybe they were the way forward. But they weren’t. They were just another maze That swallowed me whole. Another time, I lost hope And stumbled on it again in a new opportunity A fresh door, a small light. But every time I sink, It takes forever to climb back out. Searching for keys that were right in front of me Doesn’t compare to losing something I sometimes handed away willingly. Growing up, Hope slipped from my hands so many times That I had to rebuild it from scratch. You’d think after that, I’d have learned to hold it tight. But here I am again, Empty-handed, Looking around for a ride to go pick it up....

  I’m reading Untamed by Glennon Doyle, and one line stopped me in my tracks. She wrote about how she once believed that happiness was the only feeling we were meant to keep , and everything else was a problem to solve, fix, or numb. I understood exactly what she meant. So many of us were taught that if we’re not smiling, we’re broken. If we’re not joyful, we’re doing something wrong. And anything uncomfortable, anger, sadness, grief, anxiety should be buried, silenced, or quickly managed so we can “get back to normal.” But what if those feelings are part of our normal? When I was coaching, one of the things I was most passionate about was teaching my clients how to feel , not fix, suppress, or analyze, but just feel . Because most of us don’t know how. We were never taught. We learned to hide. To busy ourselves. To smoke. To drink. To binge. To people-please. To take pills just to quiet the ache. I’ve done it. I used to take pain meds to escape what I didn’t have the tools...