Resilience
-
Some people arrive like seasons, beautiful, necessary, but always meant to leave. You never did. You stayed. When the world grew quiet, when grief swallowed whole conversations, when there were no words left worth saying— you stayed. You stood beside me through hospital rooms and empty nurseries. Through birthdays that hurt and anniversaries that stole…
-
There are nightswhen the world expects meto carry everythingwith steady hands. The memories.The grief.The questionsthat never learnedhow to answer themselves. So I step outside. The air is cool,the stars indifferent,and the lighter clickslike the beginningof a conversation. The smoke doesn’t promiseto fix me. It doesn’t erasethe empty chairs,the court dates,or the namesI still whisperwhen no…
-
Some call it escape. Maybe they’re right. But sometimes it’s the only place my shoulders remember how to unclench. The world demands I carry grief like it’s weightless. Cannabis asks nothing. Only, “Sit for a while.” So I do. I breathe. I watch thoughts stop colliding long enough to hear my own heartbeat beneath the…
-
Maybe one day I won’t have to choose between relief and proving myself. Maybe one day healing won’t come with conditions. Maybe one day I’ll light a joint without wondering who might judge the smoke. Until then, I’ll keep choosing the future I’ve been fighting for— one clear morning at a time.
-
They might test my blood. They’ll never test the nights I stayed awake rocking babies. They’ll never measure the panic attacks I survived sober. They’ll never weigh the meals I forced myself to eat, or the mornings I got out of bed when depression begged me not to. Sometimes being a good mother looks nothing…
-
They’ll always have an opinion. Too loud.Too quiet.Too broken.Too healed.Too honest.Too much. They’ll call art a wastebecause they cannot seethe pieces of my soulpressed between the lines. They’ll ask why it doesn’t rhyme,as though painhas ever followedsomeone else’s rules. They’ll laugh at the wordsthat kept me breathing,dismiss the pagesthat carried mewhen nothing else could. They’ll…
-
They speak in easy sentences,as though motherhoodis measured by a single meal. A chicken nugget.A bedtime missed.A moment caughtwithout the thousandthat came before it. They don’t countthe mornings I rosebefore the sun remembered my name.They don’t countthe tiny hands reaching,the tears I soothed,the stories I readfor the hundredth time. They don’t carrythe grocery bags,the sleepless…
-
They see the smoke. They don’t see the panic attack that never happened. They smell the flower. They don’t smell the sleepless nights it softened. They judge the ritual. They never witnessed the battles it helped me survive. Funny, how the loudest opinions so often belong to people who’ve never carried your pain.
-
They say a mother is born with her child,But mine was forged in storms. In hospital lights,In whispered prayers,In fear that stole my breath. She was bornWhen I chose courageEven while shaking. She was bornWhen exhaustion became routine,And love became instinct. She was bornHolding babies with one arm,And holding herself together with the other. I…
-
I didn’t quit because I stopped needing it. I quit because tiny hands needed me more. There are nights when sleep still hides, when food still tastes like cardboard, when anxiety paces the hallway inside my mind. And sometimes I remember the little green flower that once taught my lungs how to breathe again. But…
Between Bruises and Blooms 