#memior

On a Saturday night I’m spending time with my mom. Just the two of us on our way back to her apartment after a night of bar hopping. Personally, I don’t drink. I leave the partying up to her. Drunkenly she confides in me something she's been feeling for a while. A secret I’m not at liberty to tell, but she slurs a sentence I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. We come to the last glowing red light before reaching her complex and she says “I’m ready to be a grandma.” I quickly respond with “well good luck with that!” She elaborates that she’d be okay with just being a grandmother to my cousins’ children. I drop her off and go home to my apartment, alone. 

Above my refrigerator there is a box. A gray box with little white flowers. Sometimes I take it down and open it up just to remember her. The items in the box belonged to a girl named Lucy. She had light brown curly hair, big eyes, and a beautiful smile. A beautiful little girl who I never met, because she was never real. Just a dream, a shared dream. She’s the baby I would’ve had if things had 'gone to plan'. Instead I’m alone. From my old life, what I miss the most was the promise of her. How can I miss something I never had? I constantly beat myself up over this thought. I understand that I was unhappy and unwell in my old life. I travel the country and see so much music and make so many memories. I’m living my childhood dream. But when I return home, I just can’t stop thinking of her. 

If you were to ask me now, I would say “I don’t want kids, I'm having too much fun.” What I’m really trying not to say is that I did want a child. I spent many years wanting a family. In another timeline I live in a house with my husband, and down the hall from my bedroom is a guest room. Eventually that room would transform into a nursery. Lucy’s room. The timeline I’m in, there's none of that. Just the box above my refrigerator. 

My Roommate From Hell, by Cale Dietrich

Young Adult Fiction | LGBTQ | Humor | Romcom

Owen is not going to college to have fun. Nothing is going to stop him from achieving his goals: study hard, get a good job, and set himself up for the rest of his life. The last thing he needs is to have a loud, obnoxious, and infuriatingly hot roommate. Especially since said roommate just so happens to be the prince of hell.

-- goodreads

📖 Books on Deck:

Where Rivers Part: a Story of My Mother's Life, by Kao Kalia Yang

Non-Fiction | Memoir | Hmong People | Laos Refugees | War

Born in 1961 in war-torn Laos, Tswb’s childhood was marked by the violence of America’s Secret War and the CIA recruitment of the Hmong and other ethnic minorities into the lost cause. By the time Tswb was a teenager, the US had completely vacated Laos, and the country erupted into genocidal attacks on the Hmong people, who were labeled as traitors. Fearing for their lives, Tswb and her family left everything they knew behind and fled their village for the jungle.

-- goodreads

The In-Between Bookstore: A Novel, by Edward Underhill

Fiction | Sci Fi/Fantasy | LGBTQ | Time Travel

When Darby finds himself unemployed and in need of a fresh start, he moves back to the small Illinois town he left behind. But Oak Falls has changed almost as much as he has since he left.

One thing is familiar: In Between Books, Darby’s refuge growing up and eventual high school job. When he walks into the bookstore now, Darby feels an eerie sense of déjà vu—everything is exactly the same. Even the newspapers are dated 2009. And behind the register is a teen who looks a lot like Darby did at sixteen. . . who just might give Darby the opportunity to change his own present for the better—if he can figure out how before his connection to the past vanishes forever.

-- goodreads

Sea of Rust, by Robert C Cargill

Fiction | Sci FI/Fantasy | Androids | Post-Apocolyptic

It's been thirty years since the apocalypse and fifteen years since the murder of the last human being at the hands of robots. Humankind is extinct. Every man, woman, and child has been liquidated by a global uprising devised by the very machines humans designed and built to serve them. Most of the world is controlled by an OWI--One World Intelligence--the shared consciousness of millions of robots, uploaded into one huge mainframe brain. But not all robots are willing to cede their individuality--their personality--for the sake of a greater, stronger, higher power. These intrepid resisters are outcasts; solo machines wandering among various underground outposts who have formed into an unruly civilization of rogue AIs in the wasteland that was once our world.

One of these resisters is Brittle, a scavenger robot trying to keep a deteriorating mind and body functional in a world that has lost all meaning. Although unable to experience emotions like a human, Brittle is haunted by the terrible crimes the robot population perpetrated on humanity. As Brittle roams the Sea of Rust, a large swath of territory that was once the Midwest, the loner robot slowly comes to terms with horrifyingly raw and vivid memories--and nearly unbearable guilt.

This is just a writing piece I’ve been writing that is also going to be apart of my memoir.

Word count: 400

Summary: A reflection on realizing my marriage wasn’t what I thought it was—how closeness turned into distance, love into transactions, and ‘us’ faded away

I have never felt so far apart from someone who was supposed to love me and be there for me.

The beginning of our relationship was great—we had our honeymoon phase, but it felt like it ended faster than I expected. We got married two years into our relationship. The truth is, I married him to help him get a green card. When he asked me, he tried to make it seem like it was only because we loved each other. Or so we thought….

Part of me wanted to say no, my intuition was telling me no, my body was telling me no.

But I said yes because I felt like I owed him. He got me out of my abusive parents’ house. He gave me a new home—a place that was supposed to feel peaceful. What I didn’t realize was that I was walking into the same kind of situation I had just left. Slowly, I started to recognize my parents’ relationship in my own marriage.

I felt so distant from him. More like his opponent than his partner. Sometimes my husband would nitpick and argue with me, and in those moments, he felt less like my partner and more like my father—

and I felt like a child all over again.

At the time, I truly believed he was my forever person—before everything went downhill. Why wouldn’t he be? We were vulnerable with each other, both emotionally and physically. He had seen every part of me, and I had seen parts of him. We had seen each other’s scars. He could point out every scar on my body with his eyes closed. We shared secrets and opened up about things other people might judge us for. I thought that type of closeness was permanent

The hardest part about realizing your relationship is over is losing that sense of safety. You stop being a safe space for each other. You stop asking about each other’s day. Feelings start to matter less. Conversations turn into arguments. Even sharing a bed starts to feel overwhelming.

The relationship became more transactional.

If you do this for me, then I’ll do this for you.

I’ll only show up if you do the same.

We stopped doing normal things together. We stopped watching The Rookie on Sundays. We stopped going to Rocco’s on Fridays. We stopped working out together.

***Sorry, this series is coming in hot and late. Catch a breath and stay tuned for the next step in the series****

Most of our lives aren’t shaped by big turning points. They’re shaped by what we tolerate, repeat, and return to, the relationships we lean on, the habits we move through on autopilot, and the comfort zones we rarely question.

In Week 2 of this series, we’re turning toward those quieter influences.

This part of the journey isn’t about fixing anything or making drastic changes. It’s about noticing, with honesty and compassion, where comfort has been helpful and where it may be costing you something deeper. We’ll explore the difference between relationships that keep you safe and those that help you grow. We’ll look at daily habits not as productivity tools, but as reflections of how you treat yourself when no one is watching. And we’ll gently examine the comfort zones that once protected you, but may now be holding you back.

If you’ve ever felt like your life looks “fine” on the outside, yet something inside you feels undernourished, this week is for you. Each post offers space to reflect rather than react. To make small, intentional shifts instead of forcing transformation. To choose alignment over familiarity, one step at a time.

As you read, I invite you to move slowly. Let the questions land. Notice what resonates and what feels a little uncomfortable in a meaningful way.

You don’t need all the answers yet. You just need a willingness to look.

~Sometimes awareness is the first step towards peace~

My story starts as many trauma survivors’ stories do.

Abandoned by one parent. Abused by another. Passed between strangers. Starved. Neglected. My childhood was anything but loving. My parents split early on, and I was tossed back and forth between them and their hateful partners. Both of my parents struggled with drug addiction and alcohol abuse. I was dropped off at my grandparents’ house more times than I can count, always framed as me being “too much to handle.” Custody battles dragged on for years, until eventually my mother moved out of state, leaving me in my father’s care.

By the time I was eight years old, I had already experienced molestation, attempted suicide, and abuse severe enough to send me to the hospital. I lived in and out of different homes, never staying anywhere longer than six months. New stepmothers. New step-siblings. Constant instability.

By sixteen, I had given birth to my first child. A year later, my second child was born. I was still in high school, had no support from my father, and lived in constant fear that my own father would take my children or that they would end up in foster care. So I did the only thing I knew how to do to survive, I ran. I escaped to my grandparents’ home out of state, leaving behind the abuse and the only world I had ever known.

But leaving didn’t mean the pain disappeared.

I struggled deeply with PTSD and anxiety from years of childhood trauma. I was in and out of psychiatric hospitals, trying desperately to become stable enough for my children. After a failed attempt on my life, I was forced to face a reality I could no longer avoid: something had to change. A couple of years later, I sat at my grandmother’s wooden kitchen table and signed adoption papers, placing my children in her care.

It was the hardest decision I have ever made—and likely ever will make. But it was also the moment I broke the cycle. My children would have a life that I could not give them at the time: safety, stability, and love.

After that, I entered a very dark chapter. Years filled with partying, sex work, and complete mental collapse. During one hospital stay, I met my first true best friend—someone I’ll call Angel. She had a similar upbringing and had also signed adoption papers for her children. Through long conversations and shared understanding, I slowly began to find my footing. Healing wasn’t linear. Some days I was strong; many days I wasn’t. Even now, I still have moments where I struggle. Even being on intensive medications and therapy, I felt dead. At this point, I had 2 brain surgeries, a new pacemaker, and was getting ready for another major surgery on my lung.

Then one day, standing in a Walmart aisle, dissociating while silently planning my death yet again, a woman stopped me. A stranger. She pulled me into her chest and held me. For what felt like hours. I broke down.

I soaked her shirt with years of pain, grief, and exhaustion. She held me and told me I was loved. That I deserved to live. That love isn’t something you’re handed, it’s something you create. She told me about sunflowers. When the sun isn’t out, they turn toward each other so they can still stand tall and bright. Later that day, driving home in the middle of February, I saw it, a single sunflower growing in the ditch along my road. Bright. Strong. Impossible. Something clicked inside me. A spark. A light. The beginning of believing I could become someone I was proud of.

And so I did.

I left the worst abusive relationship I had ever been in and spent the next year focused entirely on myself. It wasn’t easy. There were days I did nothing but cry. But slowly—steadily—things changed. My health began to improve. I began to lose the depressive weight that I had been carrying for so long. But more importantly, my inner world changed. My anxiety went from requiring multiple medications daily to barely any during the week. My depression no longer drained the life out of me. My PTSD episodes, once lasting weeks, now last minutes.

I am not fully healed, and I may never be. But going from being suicidal my entire life to waking up grateful to face each day is nothing short of extraordinary.

Change is possible. Growth is real. Cycles can be broken.

Healing takes effort, persistence, and patience, but it is worth it.

You can live a life worth living. You can find peace. You can be happy.

Thank you for reading my story. I hope this helps ignite a spark within you, a reminder that healing and personal growth are possible. If you feel called to share your story or need someone to talk to, please reach out. I look forward to seeing you stand on your own feet, finding your light, and smiling again. 

You can do this. 🌻

4 Weeks. 12 Posts. One Month to Move from Surviving to Fully Living.

Last December, I began a writing series on my WordPress blog called The Life You Choose—a space for reflection, truth, and gentle awakening. Life (and a stubborn computer delay) asked the series to pause. Now, as I expand where I write and who I reach, it feels clear that these words are meant to travel farther.

So I invite you to walk this path with me.

Over four intentional weeks, we’ll step out of survival mode and into clarity, courage, and meaningful transformation. This isn’t about dramatic reinvention or overnight change. It’s about remembering who you are—slowly, honestly, and with intention.

Together, we’ll look at where you’ve been settling, call back the parts of yourself you’ve left behind, and take small but powerful steps toward a life that feels aligned, peaceful, and truly your own.

What This Series Will Cover

 Week 1 — Awareness & Self-Check

We begin by becoming aware.  Where are you settling? Who around you is lifting you—or weighing you down? Does your environment support your peace?  Awareness is the doorway to change, and this week we’ll open it with honesty and compassion.

 Week 2 — Relationships & Habits

We shift into the patterns and connections that shape your daily life. Which relationships feel safe but stagnant? What habits drain you, and what habits support your inner world? Where are your comfort zones protecting you—and where are they holding you back?

 Week 3 — Self-Connection & Boundaries

This week, we turn inward. You’ll explore how to choose yourself, how to say no without guilt, and how to reclaim your time and energy. This is about learning to honor your needs without apology.

 Week 4 — Action & Transformation

Finally, we step into movement. You’ll make intentional changes—small, sustainable actions that build real momentum. We’ll explore what it means to design a life that feels like home and to make choices rooted in your values and purpose.

Why This Matters

Choosing your life—truly choosing it—is an act of courage. Awareness is uncomfortable. Boundaries are uncomfortable. Growth is uncomfortable. But settling… that becomes suffocating. This series was created to help you reconnect with yourself, one layer at a time, and remind you that you’re worthy of a life that feels good, grounded, and aligned.

 What You Can Do Right Now