Category Chaos and Grace

Day 83 - Today is Valentine’s Day. Which feels like an interesting moment to think about love. Not the glittery version the internet sells. The real thing. Before the past year, I probably would have described love in...

Day 82 - Something about the past year has given me a kind of clarity I didn’t have before. I wish it had come from a gentler teacher. But clarity rarely does. When something violent disrupts your life,...

Day 81 - Today I had a simple realization while I was drinking coffee. My life is expanding again. For months it felt like everything had narrowed into survival. Healing. Processing trauma. Rebuilding safety. Necessary work. But narrow....

Day 80 - Something that makes me smile lately is realizing that the world is still deeply interesting. For a long time after the assaults, my brain was focused almost entirely on safety and recovery. Survival mode shrinks...

Day 79 - There’s a particular kind of confidence that develops after you’ve survived something catastrophic. It’s not the flashy kind people perform on social media. It’s quieter. But it’s also unshakeable. Because once you’ve walked through the...

Day 78 - Something I worried about after everything that happened was that I might lose my softness. Not physical softness. The emotional kind. The ability to care about people. The instinct to notice beauty in small moments....

Day 77 - One thing that has always fascinated me about human beings is how complicated we are. Every person walking around in the world carries an entire internal universe that nobody else can see. Private fears. Private...

Day 76 - There’s something strange about surviving something that should have destroyed you. Not beautiful in the romanticized way people talk about resilience. Trauma is not poetic. It’s not a spiritual retreat. It’s not a tidy life...

Day 75 - There’s a feeling I’ve been noticing lately that’s hard to put into words. It feels like standing on the edge of something new. Not a specific event. Not a big life decision. More like the...

Day 74 - Something happened today that reminded me how strange the healing process can be. I was standing in the kitchen making coffee when I realized my shoulders were relaxed. That might sound like nothing. But for...