Tag: faith

  • Lay It Down or Let It Crush You: A Mother’s Day Reflection

    Lay It Down or Let It Crush You: A Mother’s Day Reflection

    There comes a point in every soul’s story where you’re asked to lay down what you thought was love—or risk letting it break you.

    That’s the thing about burdens: we don’t always know when they stop being sacred and start becoming self-destruction. But eventually, if we’re honest, we feel it.

    That’s the core of this message.

    You can carry the burden until your knees give out, insisting it’s strength. Or, you can listen to the whisper that says, “Lay it down,” because true strength isn’t brute force. It’s not in how long you hold on. It’s in knowing when to release—when to grieve, and when to grow.

    Brute strength—the kind that resists surrender—is fear in a steel mask. But surrender? That’s wisdom. That’s love maturing into understanding.

    This isn’t a love story between me and someone else. It’s a love story between who I was and who I’ve become. It’s the story of two souls—two versions of my own soul—and how only one of them eventually realized that the weight of love, when carried alone, becomes grief.

    That grief, if left unprocessed, becomes blame. Becomes resentment. Becomes bitterness. Becomes the ghost of a life I never got to live.

    The version of me that held on so tightly was trying to preserve love by never letting go—even of the dead. Even of ghosts. But the version of me that learned to let go understands now:

    It’s not about letting go of the ones we’ve lost. It’s about letting go of what keeps us from healing. Letting go of the pain we wrapped ourselves in like armor. Letting go of the misunderstandings. Letting go of the old wounds that kept us from breathing fully.

    I couldn’t shrink myself any longer to fit into the versions of love that others offered. And they couldn’t stretch themselves to meet me in mine. That wasn’t failure. That was fact. Then, in the case of my mother, she died.

    Maybe—just maybe—there’s a higher realm where we meet again, whole and healed. Where all the versions of us come home to each other. Where they are not in conflict, but in communion.

    Until then…I carry them forward. I no longer miss them the way I used to—because they’re not gone. They’re right here, quietly guiding me home.

    I love you, Mama.

    Happy Mother’s Day.

  • Higher-Self.

    Higher-Self.

    If You’re Looking for You | A Letter from Your Higher Self

    If you’ve been trying to speak to your higher self—if you’ve been reaching inward and hearing nothing but static, or searching for the version of you that feels like home—and fear you’ll never find it?

    Your higher self begs to differ.

    In fact, it has a message for you.

    Dear One,

    I’ve been here the whole time.

    In the quiet moments you almost forgot to notice. In the breath that steadied you before the next wave came. In the flicker of clarity just before you gave up.

    You’ve looked for me in a thousand places—in approval. In achievement. In distraction. In someone else’s eyes. In the longing that never quite gave you what you needed.

    And I never blamed you for that.

    This world taught you to search everywhere but within. But I have always been here. You may not recognize me right away, because I don’t raise my voice. I won’t argue with your fears. I won’t fight the chaos to be heard.

    But I am patient.

    I speak in the language of peace, and I wait for your permission to return. I know what you’ve carried. I know what has made your heart weary. I’ve felt every ache and echo, every quiet panic, every time you swallowed your truth just to survive the moment. I’ve felt the loneliness, even in crowded rooms. The pressure. The shame. The masks.

    But let me say this clearly:

    There is nothing wrong with you. You are not broken. You are becoming. Your tenderness is not a weakness. Your depth is not a burden. Your need for rest is not laziness. Your yearning for more is not greed—it’s remembrance.

    You are remembering what it feels like to be whole. You came here for more than survival. You came to wake up. To remember your own name, not the one the world gave you, but the one your soul has always carried.

    You came to love in a way that rewrites timelines. To rise without leaving your softness behind. To walk with grace, even after everything tried to make you hard.

    So here’s what I need you to know:

    You are safe now. You don’t have to perform anymore. You don’t have to shrink. You don’t have to apologize for being too much or not enough. You are allowed to rest. You are allowed to change. You are allowed to outgrow the stories that once kept you warm.

    You are allowed to come home to yourself. And when you do—when you drop back into your center and remember me—you will feel it: The stillness. The truth. The freedom. It’s not something you earn. It’s something you return to.

    I’m here. I always have been.

    Welcome back.

    ~Your Higher Self

    entry three — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.

    entry three, full view.
  • Breath.

    Breath.

    A reflection on the holy ache of love—how it lives in us, how it shapes us, and how, sometimes, we must let it breathe without us. This piece belongs to the fire-lit quiet where survival and love coexist.

    Love isn’t a choice.
    It isn’t a decision.
    It is a default. A divine state.
    The way breath happens without trying,
    without knowing—
    that is love.

    That is our love,
    whether for a song or a story,
    for animals or a wild wind,
    for a vision,
    or a soul.

    We are love.
    We have embodied it… become it.

    This is the weight we carry.
    This is the fire within us that lights the way
    for so many—
    but feels like burning alive
    for us.

    And in times of heartache,
    when the world sharpens its noise,
    when grief coils into our chests,
    we do not run—
    we retreat.

    We ache for the world
    because we are still tethered
    to the breath of it.
    We have done our part, we have
    showed up, and done our work.

    Make no mistake, we continue to.
    From the shadows, in our tonal silence,
    our love still flows.
    Reverberates.
    Echoes.

    We do not walk away because we are cold.
    We step away simply because we are melting.
    We step away… to survive.
    That is what survivors do.

    We do not stop loving.
    We stop offering our tangible lives, for a time,
    to those who can not—or will not—feel us.
    Those who may never know…after all,
    they have forgotten even themselves.
    We pause.

    To love like this,
    to grieve like this,
    is to carry the holy burden:
    to hold light for others
    while burning through
    your own bones.
    But it is also
    to breathe.

    So if we disappear,
    if we go quiet,
    if we bow out—

    know this:

    It is not rejection.
    It is not retraction.
    It is survival.
    Because we do not want to die
    along with what is dying.
    Instead, we love from a distance
    while allowing what is dead to rest.

    Love is not a thing we give.
    It is what we are.
    When we cast ourselves back into silence,
    it is to return… to the breath.
    To the fire, before we burn out.
    To the only place
    where the burning becomes light again.

    Like love itself, it is not a choice.
    We must.

    entry two — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
  • Devil’s Backbone (Again)

    Devil’s Backbone (Again)

    Some shots from Devil’s Backbone…

    You don’t know what someone is dealing with…what they’re going through. Sometimes a person can be confident and also anxious, look healthy but be sick, look happy and be miserable, look good but feel ugly, act hopeful but feel hopeless, smile and be broken, or never smile at all and be happy… You don’t know. So unless you ask, don’t judge. Don’t assume. Sometimes a person you see every single day or think you know very well can be fighting battles you know nothing about.

    Be kind.