healing
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On seasonal relationships, small acts, and the ripples we never get to see I looked them up on a whim, really. I was visiting my parents, staying in the neighborhood where I used to live when I was young and broke and piecing myself together after something I didn’t yet have words for. Something about…
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There was a time when my entire garden was a stoop. A small landing outside my front door, a staircase, a few square feet of sunlight. For nearly ten years, that was my outdoor space — and I made it into something. Hanging baskets spilling over with flowers and strawberries. Pots crowded with basil and…
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The Exits I Built For a long time, my evenings had a ritual. Not an intentional one. Not the kind you design or feel proud of. More like a groove worn into the floor by the same path walked too many times. I would come home — from a hard day, a frustrating meeting, a…
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Every morning, I dragged myself out of bed with a heaviness that had nothing to do with being tired. On paper, I had everything I’d worked toward—a legal career that perfectly matched my decade of property management experience, clients who needed my expertise, financial stability. I was succeeding. So why did I feel like I was…
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A Winter Morning and a Quiet Book This morning I walked the dog in the rain. Southern California rain — the kind that feels almost apologetic, soft and uncertain, like it isn’t quite sure it belongs here. And when I looked up toward the horizon, there was Big Bear, snow-covered and distant and somehow completely…
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At the start of this year, I bought myself a set of plain stationery. Just notecards and envelopes — nothing fancy. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would do with them. Then my Crisis Intervention Training began. For just about sixty-six hours over several weeks, I sat in a room at the Center for Community…
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After slogging through White Trash and what feels like months of dense nonfiction, I needed something different—something quick, fun, and most importantly, hopeful. Enter Kirsten Miller’s Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books, a novel that delivered exactly what I was craving. Set in the small Georgia town of Troy, the story centers on Lula Dean, a self-appointed…
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Content warning: This post discusses collective trauma, violence, and vicarious trauma in advocacy work. I keep returning to a question that has no easy answer: How do we do this work—how do we bear witness to suffering, how do we advocate for justice—when the world feels like it’s burning around us? This morning, I watched…
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I dream of libraries almost every night. Not the bright, modern kind with floor-to-ceiling windows and café corners, but the old ones—dim, wood-paneled, smelling of aged paper and possibility. In these dreams, I’m always studying something. Sometimes it’s a literature class where we’re dissecting symbolism in a novel I’ve never actually read. Other times, I’m…
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What happens when government shutdowns cancel victim advocacy training and cut $72 million in survivor services? What does it mean to pursue victim advocate certification while democratic institutions erode and funding for trauma-informed care disappears? On October 18th, I wore yellow and stood with millions of others across the country at the No Kings National…