Growing Pains

  • Love or power

    I never really believed in love but I did believe in power. Love never felt attainable, at least to me anyway. Power felt far easier to acquire. I didn’t grow up believing in the Disney fairytales even though my childhood nickname was Sleeping Beauty. I wanted to be strong and powerful not pretty or dainty.…

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  • Note: This post was originally posted on my now deleted substack on October 31, 2025. I am currently taking college courses online via Zoom almost a decade after completing graduate school. It has truly been a humbling experience, as I am no longer the youngest person in the room. I have wisdom that I did…

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  • Twenty six things for 2026

    I wrote a rather ambitious list of twenty six things that I want to accomplish in 2026. Two have already been completed which means that I have twenty four left. Writing on this site is one of my goals for the year and I almost forgot about it. If I’m being honest, my brain is…

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  • I don’t think that I’m eloquent enough to capture all of the emotions that occur when someone you know dies. I’ve tried for the past seventeen years to understand my own grief and begin to understand the way in which grief impacts others. Needless to say, I have failed on both counts. Something that I…

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  • Rise Against is a punk rock band from Chicago – a point that they gladly recall at their show in Asbury Park back in July 2021. The lead vocalist Tim McIlrath occasionally stopped to speak to the crowd about all the injustices in the world. I, one of very few Black fans, gesture to the…

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  • I’m about five years too late with this post but it’s taken about that long to begin to process my own trauma around the pandemic. I see that the world has decided to collectively move on from the lockdown days of the early pandemic. Honestly, it never felt appropriate to comment on what was happening…

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  • I’m holding onto a website that I’ve been using since I was 17. I’m in my thirties now. It’s actually crazy to think that I’m so egotistical that I need to stay on an app that does not serve me. It’s broken and trashy. I hate it. I want to give up what no longer…

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  • There are no more boogeymen to blame for my trauma so it’s time to confront the next phase of healing – the inner teenager. This means that I have to examine my relationship with social media. I have a deep love/hate relationship with it. The beginning of this journey started with lesser known sites like…

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  • A tale of two Winters

    January Winter doesn’t feel the same anymore. I miss the bitter cold Winters of my youth. The ones where the cold would sink into one’s bones. It physically hurt to breathe. Those are the winters that I miss. Because I could make an excuse for the tears in my eyes. Tears of sadness, frustration, anger.…

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  • I’ve been crying lately at the most seemingly random times. This healing journey is no joke. Did you know that you have to feel your feelings and not rationalize them away? I sure didn’t. Now, a wave of emotion hits me and I crumble where I stand. Feeling negative emotions after being hurt feels like…

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