inspiredodyssey daily prompt, Featured

Time for Self-Care – A Requirement – Not a Choice

We choose to do things. Every day we make choices about whether or not we go to work, meet people, call people, go to that place, make that meal. But are there choices you find yourself regretting that you didn’t make that day? That USED to be self-care for me. I would run myself ragged taking care of everyone else, every single day, while neglecting the ONE important person in the whole world it matters to. Me. My body. My soul. Time for God. Time for peace. Time for rest. REST. The thing we neglect so easily, even though it is such an important part of self-care.

With the work I am doing with my therapist, I am learning about different faces of self-care. I uncovered a repressed memory from my childhood in which the girls in my class made up a horrible name for me and said awful things about this person. Because I wanted so badly to fit in, I actually joined in the ridicule. Until one day, one of the girls couldn’t take the guilt anymore. She pulled me aside and said, “The person they are calling fat, ugly and disgusting is YOU.”

I was humiliated. Destroyed. For a chubby 9-year-old just trying to fit in, I was absolutely crushed. I cried for months afterward. I never told my parents either, simply because I didn’t. What could they do? Call their parents? Make the girls hate me more?? So I swallowed it. Stuffed it away. Apparently, I stuffed it SO deep down that when the language resurfaced in adulthood, I was the one saying it. Fat. Ugly. Disgusting. I had taken that brutal knife and turned it toward myself. Funny thing, that transference, isn’t it?? When a man rejected me – fat, ugly, disgusting. When I gained five pounds of water weight – fat, ugly, disgusting. Over and over again.

Then stepped in Self-Care wearing a Supergirl cape (and NOT that drunk mess 2026 version, I’m talking about my Helen Slater from 1984). I started slowing down. I started really looking at the woman in the mirror I had been calling fat, ugly and disgusting.

My therapist gave me a practice. TWO TO FIVE MINUTES A DAY. Tops. THAT’S IT. Start one practice that you do EVERY DAY. No negotiation. It is NOT a choice. It is a requirement. This is the time I give myself every single morning for self-care. It may not fit inside some perfect little definition of what self-care is “supposed” to look like, but this is what I am STARTING with. And so far, I haven’t missed a day in eight days.

Last Saturday, that little non-negotiable practice took me somewhere I had somehow managed not to really see in the entire three years I have lived here: City Lake Park in my own town. I stopped. I walked. I looked at the water, the fountain, the trees. I was there. And what started as one little act of self-care somehow opened into an entire morning of peace.

That matters because I have had other routines I tried to keep. I had a night cream routine, a brush-my-teeth-with-the-new-fancy-electric-toothbrush routine, a make-sure-all-my-makeup-gets-wiped-off routine, a leave-in-conditioner-stays-on-my-scalp-giving-me-that-cool-freshness-every-night routine. GREAT routines. Did I stick to them? NOPE. Cream, toothbrush, special makeup remover, leave-in conditioner – all sitting on a shelf, abandoned.

This form of non-negotiable self-care is what my former health coach used to constantly drill into my head. Her mandate was ONE non-negotiable walk a day. It didn’t matter how long. It only mattered that you DID IT. I stuck to that really hard for a while, but apparently if there isn’t a drill sergeant screaming at me, I am not doing it.

I think most of us like to believe we have discipline, but honestly? We have selective discipline. Discipline not to have a drink? Sure. I am five years sober. Discipline to keep up with my nightly skincare routine? Not so much.

But I think I have made a real breakthrough with this daily practice because I finally stopped demanding some gigantic transformation from myself. It is a small step. I can’t go to the moon, so I better stop trying. But I can look up at the moon and say, Yes. I see you today. I can give myself two minutes. I can take the walk. I can stop long enough to notice the lake that has been sitting in my own town for three years waiting for me to see it.

And maybe that is what self-care is beginning to mean to me. Not some perfect routine I buy supplies for and abandon on a shelf. Not another giant plan I fail to follow. Just one small thing I refuse to negotiate away.

Because last Saturday, City Lake Park finally saw me.

And, maybe more importantly, I finally saw myself.

inspiredodyssey daily prompt, Featured, Professional Growth

The Right Environment = The Right Mindset

It is almost a no-brainer when people say, “You’ve got to have the right mindset to be successful.” But how exactly is that achieved? What do you do? Where do you start? Do you sit there with ChatGPT and have it create some elaborate 14-step plan for you?

You and I both know, through all the AI nonsense, you are absolutely NOT sticking to that plan.

I recently joined the Small Business Center at a local community college right behind my house. I went to a community college early in my career, and I absolutely loved it. Community colleges really are exactly what they advertise themselves to be: places for the community to learn and grow.

It was extremely serendipitous that I met the director of the Small Business Center while line dancing; yes, line dancing, lol, at the Continuing Education building every Tuesday night. She gave me her card, I came in and signed up, and suddenly I discovered this absolute gold mine of resources available to small businesses in the community, especially entrepreneurs.

So, what the heck does any of this have to do with having the right mindset?

Well, after being NYC-driven for so many years in my career, I am used to going to work. Getting dressed. Leaving the house. Sitting at a desk. Having somewhere I am supposed to be and something I am supposed to accomplish while I am there.

Working from home is an entirely different animal.

It requires an incredible amount of discipline because comfort can absolutely become a HUGE problem when you are trying to be productive. There’s the TV. There’s your ridiculously comfortable bed. There’s the couch calling your name. There’s the kitchen. There’s the random pile of stuff across the room that suddenly becomes incredibly important to organize the second you’re supposed to be doing actual work.

And there goes the productivity plan for the day.

What I’m starting to realize is that, for me, having the right mindset has a whole lot to do with having the right environment.

Mindset is influenced by what is around you.

It doesn’t always come from sitting at home and forcing yourself through sheer willpower to become disciplined overnight. Maybe that works for Wonder Woman and Superman. It does very little for the rest of us.

So I decided to stop fighting myself.

I have blocked out two hours a day, skipping Wednesdays because I actually want to get out and network in the community. Every other weekday morning, somewhere between 8 a.m. and noon, I find two hours to go to the Small Business Center with my laptop and work. Really work.

I bring my notebooks, pens, notepads, highlighters—the whole damn office supply aisle, basically. I even have their desktop computer at my disposal in an Executive Office designed specifically for small business owners.

And guess what?

It’s working.

I have already scheduled a meeting with my second client. I have more usability research hours blocked out. I am sitting down and actually getting things accomplished instead of spending half the morning thinking about everything I should be accomplishing.

I have been more productive than I have been in years.

And I have the miracle of community colleges to thank for part of that. I have the resources available to small businesses here in North Carolina to thank. But I also have to give myself some credit for finally having enough sense to recognize something very simple:

My home is not conducive to productive work.

I love my apartment. It is my sanctuary. It is where I relax, watch movies, write, eat, sleep, and live my life. But maybe that is precisely the problem. My brain knows that place as home.

The Small Business Center feels like work.

The moment I walk through the door with my laptop bag, sit down at a desk, pull out my notebook, and start setting everything up, something switches on in my brain.

Okay. We came here to get shit done.

And suddenly I do.

So, if you want the “right mindset” to be successful, maybe Step One isn’t changing your entire personality, buying another planner, making another vision board, or asking an AI to design the perfect life you’ll abandon by Thursday.

Maybe Step One is much simpler:

Change your environment.

Get the hell out of the house.

Get dressed. Pack your lunch. Grab your laptop. Go to the library, the community college, the Small Business Center, a quiet café, wherever you can sit down and actually feel like you came there to work.

Because sometimes half the battle isn’t convincing your brain to become productive.

Sometimes you just have to put your brain somewhere that productivity makes sense.

And for me?

Apparently, all it took was a laptop, a good ole peanut butter and jelly sandwich, an Executive Office,

and meeting the right woman at line dancing.

Lol.

Stay tuned.

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

“We All Need a Little Chaos Sometimes”

Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City life was pure chaos on a daily basis. It was hardly the little kind, but honestly, it was exactly what I needed. I learned how to survive, think on my feet, count change without consulting a phone screen, walk through a crowd without getting trampled, and ride the subway without allowing anything, or anyone, to mysteriously “poke” me. Lol.

That fast-paced life prepared me for the one I live today. Absolutely and completely.

Three years ago, I was being sentenced for a crime I maintain I did not commit. But I knew nothing about the justice system. My parents were so scared. I was completely scared. My public defender was so certain I would lose at trial that I accepted the charges rather than risk something worse.

My faith in God, and in justice, was tested beyond anything I could have imagined.

The chaos of that chapter, the life I lived with my ex-husband, was definitely not the kind I needed. That chaos landed me in jail. It tore through my sanity, my safety, my freedom, and nearly everything I had left.

But the life I have built beyond that conviction has its own kind of chaos, and this time, much of it is welcome.

There is the chaos of church work: solving little-old-lady problems, bringing Communion to people who cannot attend Mass, speaking Scripture from the podium, helping at fiestas, novenas, pancake breakfasts, fundraisers, celebrations, and whatever else someone suddenly needs five minutes before an event begins.

There is the chaos of reading on the radio for people who are blind or visually impaired. There is the chaos of chasing a big break in voice acting, figuring out equipment, recording lines, correcting mistakes, and trying again when technology decides it personally hates me.

That kind of chaos means I am participating in my own life. It means I have somewhere to go, something to contribute, and people who count on me.

Life is substantially harder with a criminal record, though. There is a particularly painful kind of chaos in filling out job application after job application and reaching that condemning little box:

Have you ever been convicted of a felony?

God help me, that question burns every single time.

There was no mercy for the alcoholism, the crack use with my ex-husband, or the severely manic state I was in when everything happened. The system reduced an entire human collapse to a charge, a conviction, and a box that will follow me for the rest of my life.

Before all of this, I had never lived a criminal life. I had built a twenty-year career in Human Resources and Finance. I knew payroll, systems, numbers, rules, deadlines, and responsibility. Then suddenly, one terrible period of my life seemed to erase all of it.

It felt like a professional death sentence.

But that is often where God shows Himself, in the places where every ordinary route appears closed.

Far away from New York City, in a small North Carolina town, a modest Catholic church opened its doors to me, baptized me, and changed the entire direction of my life.

I am a woman who has always lived and breathed numbers. I want things to add up. I want the equation to make sense. So, when Jesus came to me on the floor of that jail cell, Muslim-born, broken, terrified, and completely lost, I followed Him the way He asked me to.

And I mean that quite literally.

I followed Him to His Church, the Church I believe He entrusted to His apostles. I chose the Catholic Church because I see it as the apostolic Church, reaching back through history in a direct line to Jesus and the people He first sent out into the world.

That is how I understand it. That is how I live it.

Now my life is filled with the joyful chaos of Catholic community: crowded parish halls, children running around at fiestas, prayers being whispered through novenas, trays of food appearing from every direction, elderly women asking for help, volunteers scrambling to find missing supplies, and somebody inevitably wondering who has the church keys.

That chaos is most welcome.

When I first thought about whether we need chaos, my mind also wandered, somewhat disturbingly, to Norman Bates.

“We all go a little mad sometimes.”

Granted, Norman Bates is not exactly the ideal spokesman for emotional wellness, but the line still has a point. Life can become so still, so repetitive, and so numb that sometimes something has to shake us awake.

I would never call everything that happened to me a blessing. Some chaos is destructive. Some of it leaves scars that do not disappear simply because the story eventually improves. I would never recommend the road I took to get here.

But I also know that if my life had never been shaken apart, I might still be trapped in that room at my parents’ house, surrounded by liquor bottles, buried under a decade of depression and repeated hospitalizations, believing that nothing would ever change.

My ex-husband pulled me out of that room, although the life we created together eventually became another kind of prison. That relationship broke open a life that had already gone numb. What followed was terrible, but it forced everything hidden into the light. There was nowhere left to run, drink, or sleep my life away.

And now?

Now I live independently in a beautiful apartment that belongs to me. I have friends, responsibilities, faith, purpose, and a social life so full that sometimes I need to schedule time just to sit down and breathe.

I have parents who crossed states and rebuilt their own lives to help save mine.

I have a church family that trusts me to stand at the podium, carry Scripture in my voice, and bring the Eucharist to people who need comfort.

And I have the love of a man who is complicated, gorgeous, sexy, bashful, hungry for me, and somehow still shy enough to ask whether I truly believe he is as beautiful as I tell him he is.

“You think so?” he always asks. Yes, sleepy bear. I really do.

So, do we need a little chaos to shake things up?

Absolutely.

Not the kind that destroys us for sport. Not the kind that traps us in addiction, danger, or despair. But the kind that interrupts a life we have stopped living. The kind that pushes us through a door we were too frightened to open. The kind that scatters the old pieces so we can finally see what is worth putting back together.

Chaos may have shattered the life I once knew.

But grace taught me what to build in its place.

And apparently, I needed a little madness to discover just how much life was still waiting for me.

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

Not Breaking in the Silence – New Health Coach

 

There is a lot of radio silence in my relationship.

That is just the truth of it.

We have evolved to a point in this long-distance thing where constant contact is simply not realistic. His life is incredibly full, incredibly burdened, and wrapped up in responsibilities I honestly cannot even fathom. Children, obligations, exhaustion, life coming at him from every direction; I knew that going into this. I understood from the start that loving him was never going to look neat or easy.

But understanding something and not hurting over it are two very different things.

When I miss him, I miss him terribly. The long silences can stretch for days, and no amount of maturity or perspective makes that ache disappear. It still hurts. It still catches me off guard. It still leaves me staring at my day thinking, now what do I do with all this love, all this wanting, all this energy?

And that is exactly where the positive change comes in.

Instead of blowing money on nonsense, comfort shopping, or anything else that gives me five minutes of relief and leaves me exactly where I started, I finally made a real investment in myself: I hired a health coach and personal trainer. And let me tell you, that felt huge. Not glamorous. Not cute. Huge.

My mom, especially, is so proud of me, and that means a lot. Because one of the deepest hits to my self-esteem over the years has been my weight. After thyroid surgery, everything seemed to spiral. My body changed so fast it barely felt like mine anymore. Add in the chaos of chasing my ex-husband and his insane drug habit, and somewhere in the middle of surviving all that madness, I completely let myself go. And I do mean completely. Gaining 50 pounds in three months will do a number on anybody’s confidence.

So, this feels bigger than fitness. Bigger than calories or workouts or whether I skip the lava cake this weekend.

This feels like me finally coming back to myself.

And the timing could not be more perfect. I am in a season of my life that is full in a way I never thought possible. Not perfect, not easy, not painless; but full. Rich. Expanding. I have a life now. A real one. An independent one. A meaningful one. If Mr. California is burdened and short on time, then I can take all that “missing him” energy and pour it somewhere that actually builds me instead of draining me.

And believe me, my life has been opening up in ways that still leave me stunned.

I became a Eucharistic Minister, which means I now get to bring Communion to the sick; something that feels deeply sacred to me. I read on the radio for the blind twice a month, and there is something about it that is hard to even explain. It is joyful in a way that sneaks up on me. I am back at the podium every Monday at Mass doing the readings, which feels like its own kind of holy foreshadowing, a steppingstone toward finally using my voice the way I always knew I was meant to. The second part of the podcast I guest starred on about my life was just released and got such beautiful feedback. My voice acting work is slowly beginning to stir and show signs of life. Doors keep opening that I never, ever thought would open for me.

And now this.

Now, the health coach. The trainer. The commitment. The choice to stop abandoning myself.

No, my relationship is not ideal. Some people would probably look at it and say it does not even count. That is their business. To me, it is heaven in its own strange form; knowing that somewhere across the miles is a shy, bashful, incredibly sweet man who loves me the way I always wanted to be loved when I was a teenager. The passing-notes, decorating-his-locker-because-he-is-so-damned-cute kind of love. The kind that feels rare. The kind you do not confuse with anything else. The kind that never needs help finding a spark, because whenever we come together, the whole thing is already on fire.

But in the meantime, while life stretches and grows and sometimes goes painfully quiet, I am building something too.

I am rebuilding my confidence.
I am rebuilding my body.
I am rebuilding the way I see myself.

And I have to tell you, that feels powerful.

For the first time in a long time, I am not just waiting for life to happen to me. I am participating in it. I am shaping it. I am investing in it.

And who knows? Maybe somewhere in the middle of all this, I really do end up with that killer body.

But even more than that, I am becoming a woman I can feel proud of again.

And that, to me, is the real change.

 

Stay tuned.

 

inspiredodyssey daily prompt, Journal

From the Floor of a Jail Cell to the Body of Christ

I think everyone is unique because of their story; what they survived, what broke them, what found them, and what finally brought them home.

Mine was chaos for most of my life. A downward spiral. A wreckage. A long season of self-destruction that felt like it would never end.

And yet tonight, somehow, I came full circle.

Tonight, I took an oath to become a Eucharistic Minister.

Even writing that sentence feels unreal.

I am not going to hide the fact that I am a proud Catholic. In fact, part of the reason I am so unapologetic about it is because of my Muslim heritage. I know the difference now between a faith that made me feel constantly watched, measured, and punished, and a faith that met me in my ruin and loved me anyway.

That is my truth.

I spent my whole life feeling punished by Allah; for every desire, every rebellion, every time I tried to use my voice, every time I dared to want something beyond obedience and fear. But I will say this as plainly as I know how:

Allah didn’t find me on the floor of that jail cell five years ago. Jesus did.

I know the difference because I felt Him.
I called for Him.
I begged for Him.

And there, in the filth and the collapse and the absolute end of myself, I told Him I would never drink again. I vowed myself to Him.

And what I felt back was not condemnation.
Not disgust.
Not punishment.

Just this:

“Follow Me.”

After that, things became very black and white.

Before then, Christianity had mostly come to me through movies, books, and Christian friends. I never knew what church I would choose if I ever became Christian. But once Jesus came for me, it became strangely clear. I didn’t hesitate. I joined the Church He told His apostles to build. I chose the Church that traces itself directly back to them. I chose to be Catholic.

And for a woman whose life has always loved mathematics, precision, and things adding up, the calculations made perfect sense.

That doesn’t mean it was easy.

When I spoke to Father, he asked if my family would be okay with it; almost like he was quietly wondering whether I’d be disowned, or worse. And honestly, if I were living in an Arab country, maybe that fear wouldn’t have been dramatic at all. But I told him what I know to be true: West Indian Muslim culture is often far more Americanized than the most traditional Arab expressions of Islam. And besides, I only really cared what my mother and father thought.

My mother came and supported me.

My father made the trip too, even though he couldn’t quite bring himself to walk into the Catholic church. He stayed in my apartment. But the fact that he came that far, that he came at all, meant everything to me. That was love, too. Imperfect, complicated, but real.

This Easter marks the anniversary of my baptism. And what has happened in just one year is nothing short of a miracle.

I don’t use that word lightly.

So many doors have opened. So many things I thought were dead in me came back to life. I now have a real chance to tell my story of redemption and salvation out loud; the whole ugly, holy thing. The story of how every Easter for fifteen years, I ended up thrown into psych wards in some manic unraveling. How I drank with my pills for over a decade and did nothing with my life except become a burden to my parents. How I sat in sex chatrooms online, showing my body to any man who would give me five minutes of attention, hoping that maybe one of them would stay and save me. How my life split wide open when I married my husband and went on a drug-fueled crime spree that landed me in jail. How that relationship was steeped in abuse. How he introduced me to crack and literally put the crack pipe in my mouth because I refused to touch it myself.

That is part of my story.

So is the shame.
So is the mania.
So is the degradation.
So is the pain.

I am not cleaning that up for anyone’s comfort.

There was anguish for so many years. So much suffering, so much self-hatred, so much wandering around like a ghost in my own life. And all that time, strangely enough, the Catholic Church was just… there. Quietly in the background. Waiting.

There was a church off the main road near the place I went for therapy. I used to go there after drinking an entire carafe of wine, completely numb, trying to sedate myself out of existence. I would sit outside in the garden near a statue of Mary and tell her how ashamed I was; how I felt like I was a disgrace to women everywhere.

Then one day, a verse I had come across somewhere came back into my head:

“Ask and you shall receive. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door will be opened to you.”

So I did.

I walked up those church steps for the first time in my life, a complete sinner, and I knocked on the door.

No one answered.

Well, maybe not no one.

The door was open.

And He was there waiting for me.

I walked inside and sat in those pews and cried for an hour. I was in complete awe of what I was feeling, what I was seeing, what had found me there. That was the first of many times I returned to that empty church, carrying all my wreckage with me.

And now?

Now I am living a life that would have been unimaginable to the woman I was back then.

Tomorrow, I begin at a local radio station doing broadcasts for the blind. Every Monday at Mass, I stand at the podium and read Scripture aloud to the congregation. My voice carries now, the same voice I once believed was sinful for a woman to use too proudly, too boldly, too loudly.

And tonight, I was ordained as a Eucharistic Minister.

It is now my privilege to bring Communion to the sick and the homebound, to carry the Body of Christ into places of suffering and loneliness, to do in some small way the work Jesus Himself pioneered.

What an honor.

What a sentence.

From the floor of a jail cell…
to hands that now hold the Body of Christ.

That is my story.

That is what makes me unique.

Not because I am special in some glamorous way. But because grace reached all the way down into a life like mine and pulled me up anyway.

It makes me unique.
It makes me redeemed.
It makes this a story like no other.

inspiredodyssey daily prompt, Inspiration

Childhood Crush Becomes Real Life Love

Star Trek: The Next Generation has got to be one of the shows I’ve obsessed over since childhood and well into adulthood. Commander William Riker had my heart for most of my adolescent years, totally unbeknownst to me that years later I would fall in love with my own “Mexican Riker,” and that it would become an ongoing joke between us. Mr. California loves it when I call him Mexican Riker. Just this past Saturday, we spent hours browsing different Riker-themed TNG shirts based on famous episodes. He picked The Royale because it was one of his favorites, and the shirt looked really, really cool. I even found myself watching that old classic episode again this week, mostly because I was thinking about my hunky Mexican Riker, but also because it has always been one of my favorites too. It’s one of the best things me and Mr. California share, this bond through nostalgia that we aging romantics absolutely love.

I have to say, though, all this happiness and fun comes with a price. I have been living in silence for months in this relationship because of the aftermath of my bipolar episode in 2024. Imagine Riker in the episode Frame of Mind. He goes through one of the most terrifying experiences imaginable, trapped in a mental institution and unable to tell reality from delusion. That is exactly where I was two years ago, and it absolutely terrified Mr. California. I still don’t know how our relationship survived that, especially since I was gone for three months in different hospitals, and he had no idea what had happened to the love that had changed his life forever. Since then, there has been a huge wall between us, a boundary he put in place, one I keep bleeding into with reassuring, loving voicemails and emails. But it is costing me. My resolve is breaking down. I can no longer sustain reaching out into the void for him, loving him out loud the way he used to love me, without getting much in return. It is costing me my dignity, my self-respect, and honestly, it humiliates me on a daily basis.

But there is one thing I learned, especially through Star Trek: The Next Generation. For all its themes of love and romance, everyone had a purpose. A goal. A job. Something they believed in and were proud of. That was the utopia of it all. No war, no greed, no scrambling for meaning, just peace, exploration, and becoming. I remember watching that as a child and dreaming of a future like that, a life where I was working toward something bigger instead of destroying myself over whether or not a man calls me. That is the lesson here. The wonder. The growth. The bigger picture. Mr. California does love me. He absolutely does. But he is confined by a life that demands everything from him, and our dreams changed course because of what my manic episode did to both of us. He is no longer the man who loved me out loud the way he once did. Maybe I hold on so tightly because I still hope I will get that version of him again someday, even when he tries to shut that door. He loves from fear now. I don’t. And that is one of the hardest things I have ever had to swallow.

But I remain hopeful. I still look at the stars. I still watch Riker on my screen with those dreamy eyes, and I still spend my nights with my Mexican Riker and his dreamy voice. At this point in my life, I have no husband, no children, and yet I live the most independent life I have ever had. Nothing can buy the freedom and joy I have today. Me and Mr. California always knew it would be years before we could build a life together, so this is my time to shine. My friends. My mom and dad. My beautiful work in my church. The voice acting career I am just beginning. My new position at a radio station, on air, helping put together radio programs for the blind.

This is my destiny. This is my purpose. Between jail, institutions, and homelessness, I truly have gone where no one has gone before.

And somehow, the future has never looked brighter.

 

Stay tuned.

 

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

The Purple Silk Robe That Breathes His Name

In all my years of dating, loving and wildly crashing through relationships like the chaotic, romantic tornado that I am… no man has ever given me something personal. Not truly. Not something chosen with intention, or tenderness, or the soft knowing of who I really am.

And then……..

Enter Mr. California.

A man who is shy and reserved and holy in that quiet altar-boy way, but also deeply romantic when he thinks no one is watching. A man who once loved me so boldly, so loudly, so unapologetically that the echo of it still rings through his present silences. A man who hides now, yes, but who once opened himself to me with all the vulnerability of a man who had waited his whole life to love like that.

And from him came the best, most personal gift I’ve ever received.

It’s impossible not to love him.

When we were together, before everything broke open, I was absolutely undone by him. Completely in awe. Floored that someone could love me with that much softness and hunger at once. It felt like God handed me a miracle and said, “Here. Try not to drop it.”

And then the bipolar episode came.
The mania.
The calls.
The texts.
The crushing loss of reality that cracked something inside both of us.

A year later, we’re still living with the aftershocks.
His distance.
His fear.
My shame.
My spirals.
The ghost of who we were, standing beside who we’re trying to be now.

But at Christmas… something changed.

He sent me a gift so intimate, so shockingly thoughtful, that the old him—my wildly romantic boyfriend—peeked through again like sunlight pushing past storm clouds.

A purple silk robe.

My favorite color in the world.
Soft and slippery against my skin.
And somehow, to my joyous surprise, in my exact size.

Do you know what that meant to me?

This man who has seen me cry over my weight, who has heard every self-loathing insult I hurl at my own body, who knows that I hide from mirrors like they’re armed and dangerous…he wrapped that very body in silk.

A bigger woman.
A woman ashamed of her curves.
A woman who calls herself fat and ugly on her worst days.

He said, without saying, “I see you. I know you. I want you beautiful in this.”

I wear that robe almost every day now. Not just because it feels decadent as hell, but because it’s proof; living, breathing proof, that the man I love is still in there. Behind all the guilt and fear and silence… he is still choosing me in small, sacred ways.

And here we are now, having more sex, more closeness, more tenderness than we expected to reclaim. No official label. No neat definition. Just two people finding their way back to something that once blew the doors off both our lives.

He’s afraid, yes. But he keeps coming back. And every night we spend together, every whispered confession, every shy “probably” when I tease him, every sleepy sigh when I call him my Sleepy Bear…I love him a little more.

For the first time in my life, I’m experiencing a love worth waiting for.

A love that survived madness, silence, thousands of miles, and the wreckage of who we used to be.

One day, I hope he loves me out loud again, the way that purple silk robe already does.

Stay tuned. 💜

inspiredodyssey daily prompt

From Wreckage to Grace, What Time Has Taught Me

They say time heals all wounds, but I’ve learned time doesn’t erase anything. It doesn’t make the wreckage less ugly, or sand down the sharp edges. It teaches you how to live with the brokenness, and maybe even find the grace in it.

I’ve lived through chaos and come out cleaner, clearer, and louder in love than I ever imagined.

Five years ago, I put down the bottle. Five years sober. And if you know addiction, real addiction, you know it’s not just about the drink. It’s about what you’re trying to drown. The ache. The silence. The shame. The feeling that your heart is a loaded weapon, and you’ve never been safe holding it.

I spent years spiraling in jail cells both literal and emotional, convinced I was unlovable, too much, too broken. And I clung to people who mirrored that belief back to me. My ex-husband was one of them. He was beautiful chaos, seductive, unpredictable, and dangerous in the exact way my addicted soul recognized as “home.”

But loving him nearly destroyed me. His madness danced too close to mine. And I finally had to ask myself a question I’d never asked before: What if surviving meant walking away from the drama I mistook for destiny?

I did. I left. And the leaving hurt more than staying ever did.

But I walked straight into something deeper: the slow-burn miracle of healing.

And then there’s Mr. California. God, Mr. California.
The great love I wasn’t ready for when it first found me.
And maybe, in many ways, neither was he.
He met me at the crossroads of my undoing.
He touched everything in me that matters.

Our story is one of phone calls, emails, spiritual intimacy, and a hunger so holy it changed the shape of my desire.
But it’s not a fairytale. It’s a pilgrimage. A messy, sacred one.

Because I have bipolar disorder.
And there are years of my life where the highs took me too far, and the lows almost took me out.
Mr. California has seen it, the mania, the spirals, the devastating ache of silence.
There were times I begged, raged, collapsed.
And times he retreated, overwhelmed by the storm of me.

But still, somehow, we are here.
Still circling each other in a rhythm older than fear.

And somewhere along the road of that love, he led me to my faith.
He spoke softly about the Eucharist, about the prayers his mother once whispered.
He reminded me that reverence was not weakness, it was a form of desire.
And I followed the scent of that holiness all the way to the Church.

I was baptized in tears and starlight, late one April evening.
Carrying Mr. California in my heart like a relic.
Because before I ever knelt at the altar,
I worshiped in the sanctuary of his voice.
He became my cathedral, the place where God first whispered,
“This love is not an accident. It’s an invitation.”

And when I was finally strong enough to serve,
I found the purpose I had always been aching for.

Now, I work with the homebound and the elderly.
I pray with them. Listen to their stories.
Hold their hands through loneliness, sickness, and dying.
And in those quiet rooms filled with age and grace,
I feel more alive than I ever did chasing chaos.

This is the calling I was born for.
To love the forgotten. To carry the sacred.
To show up for others the way I once begged someone to show up for me.

So what has time taught me?

It’s taught me that nothing is linear.
Healing doesn’t walk a straight line, it dances, stumbles, and loops back around.
Love isn’t always loud or labeled, sometimes it’s a man showing up quietly, just when you think you’ve lost him for good.
Sobriety isn’t a finish line, it’s a daily choice, a private triumph no one claps for but God.

And my heavily stigmatized bipolar?
It’s not my failure.
It’s my fire.
It’s made me tender and brave and so exquisitely alive.

I don’t see time as a thief anymore. I see it as an alchemist.
It turned my shame into story.
My heartbreak into holy hunger.
And my survival into something I can finally be proud of.

I am not who I was in the jail cell.
I am not the girl who let my ex-husband gaslight her into forgetting her own worth.
I am not the desperate voice mail left at 3am.

I am a woman becoming.
Becoming whole.
Becoming wise.
Becoming the kind of love I once begged to receive.

And every year that passes, I get to look back and whisper:
“Thank God I stayed. Thank God I kept becoming.”

Stay Tuned.

Daily writing prompt
How do significant life events or the passage of time influence your perspective on life?
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inspiredodyssey daily prompt

My Biggest Complaint: Soul-Crushing Silence

If I’m brave enough to tell the real truth, ungraceful, unapologetic and messy, I have to admit this: what I complain about the most is silence.

Not the peaceful, sacred quiet kind that feels like rest.
I mean the hollow kind.
The echoing kind.
The kind that makes your chest feel like an abandoned room.
The kind that feels like being forgotten.
Like being quietly set aside.
Like a sentence handed down for loving too much.

I complain about waiting.
About hoping.
About checking my phone too often.
About staring at empty spaces where reassurance should live.
About the space between messages, between promises, between moments of closeness that never quite settle into certainty.

I complain about loving with a heart that refuses to be quiet.

I complain about the not-knowing, so much emotional limbo of almost, maybe, soon, someday.
About caring more than feels dignified.
About longing so loudly it sometimes disguises itself as frustration, impatience, or anger.

But if I strip it down to the bone, here’s the confession underneath the complaining:

I don’t complain because I’m shallow.
I complain because I’m so damn fragile.
I don’t complain because I’m ungrateful.
I complain because I’m wounded.

Sometimes it feels like I’m being punished for the size of my own heart.
As if loving deeply is a crime.
As if longing is something I should apologize for.
As if the depth of my devotion is a flaw that needs to be corrected by distance, silence, and restraint.

It can feel like I’m being taught, over and over, that wanting is dangerous and no good.
That hope should be smaller.
That love should be quieter.
That the price of depth is learning how to suffer politely.

I complain because I feel like I’m always the one reaching.
Always the one waiting.
Always the one trying to make peace with uncertainty while my chest quietly caves in.

My complaints are grief in disguise.
They’re devotion with nowhere to land.
They’re love pacing the floor, restless and unsheltered, aching to be answered.

I complain because I feel too much, way too damn much,
because my heart doesn’t know how to do anything halfway,
because when I attach, I attach with my soul,
because silence can feel like abandonment even when it isn’t meant to be.

And beneath all the venting, spiraling, and overthinking, there’s a softer truth I don’t always say out loud:

I’m not angry.
I’m aching.
I’m not bitter.
I’m grieving.
I’m not dramatic.
I’m hurting,
and trying to understand why love sometimes feels like a punishment instead of a gift.

Maybe what I complain about the most
isn’t other people,
or circumstances,
or fate.

Maybe I complain about
how much I love,
and how much it hurts to keep loving anyway.

And maybe that isn’t a flaw.

Maybe it’s a confession.
Maybe it’s evidence.
Maybe it’s proof
that my heart is still fiercely, painfully alive.

Daily writing prompt
What do you complain about the most?
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inspiredodyssey daily prompt

What Love Really Looks Like (Positive Examples)

There are many forms of love, but never in my life have I felt it as fully as I do today. Not in big, fancy ways or dramatic declarations, but in something quieter, steadier. I feel it in my independence. In my freedom. In the people who surround me now. And maybe most importantly, I feel it in the way I am finally learning to love myself.

That’s the evolution, I think. The love I’m giving myself is starting to show itself back to me through others. My giving nature hasn’t disappeared, I still love deeply, openly, but now, for the first time, I’m giving that love to people who meet me with care, respect, and reciprocity. That changes everything.

My friends are the backbone of this love. Truly. From my best friend I met on Bumble for Friends (because yes, adult friendship is a dating app now), to my two cornerstone, survival-level friends back in New York who know every version of me, to my soul-sister friends at church; the women I serve alongside, pray with, laugh with, and do holy work with. And all the beautiful souls in between.

When I spiral, when depression tightens its grip, when bipolar chaos tries to hijack my thoughts, when I start to disappear into myself, these people breathe life back into me. They ground me. They remind me who I am when I forget. I honestly don’t know where I’d be without them, and that alone feels like a miracle.

And then there are my parents, my mom and dad, who hold the highest honor in my heart. When I walked into the darkest chapter of my life, the one that led straight into jail and homelessness, they didn’t hesitate. They gave up their entire life in New York. Everything familiar. Everyone they loved. And they came to North Carolina, to a place they didn’t know, just to save me. Just to take care of me. Just to make sure I lived.

If that isn’t a positive example of being loved, I don’t know what is.

And then there is Mr. California. My sleepy bear. The man who introduced me to his world and gently taught me a different way to love, without anger, without possession, without codependency. A love that feels holy and chaste and wildly alive all at once. He makes me feel like a teenager again, (in the best way), full of wanting, butterflies, hormones, and hope. It’s bliss, honestly. I laugh at myself sometimes because it all feels so innocent and X-rated all at once, lol.

There are hard moments, of course. His silence hurts. Distance is not kind. But even that is teaching me something important; how to love outside of him, not collapse into him, not disappear when he’s not there. That lesson is painful, but it’s also sacred.

Through all of this, the most important love I am learning to give is the one I give myself. Living alone can be incredibly hard. My bed misses the man I love. My heart does too. And when I spiral, I forget how deeply loved I already am. That’s something I still struggle with; I fall hard, I forget the bigger picture, I suffer more than I need to.

Maybe that’s where a gratitude journal comes in. If I can just find the discipline to keep one, it might help anchor me on the days my mind tries to convince me that I am all alone in the world.

But the truest, most positive example of being loved?

I woke up today. I got another day. Another breath. Another chance to try again.

That kind of love, the kind that keeps showing up no matter how many times I’ve fallen, can only come from God.

And that, more than anything, is what carries me forward.

Stay Tuned.

Daily writing prompt
Can you share a positive example of where you’ve felt loved?
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