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On Montana… and Other Things.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

There’s a feeling I can’t quite shake, and I don’t know if I’m finally naming something true or just circling around it the way you circle a place you once lived.

I’ve been watching Yellowstone. Not for the plot, not even really for the characters, but for something harder to explain—something in the landscape. Montana looks like something I’ve been missing without knowing how to say it out loud. It feels like home in a way that doesn’t ask for permission. It feels like my nervous system exhales there, even through a screen.

And I keep noticing what that does to me.

Because it isn’t just the land. It’s what the land holds. The men in it. The kind of masculinity that isn’t performative, or emotionally absent, or brittle in the way I’ve known it. It’s grounded. Quiet in a way that doesn’t avoid feeling, but contains it. And that contrast has been messing with me.

I think I used to believe I hated men.

But I don’t think that’s actually true anymore.

I think I was exhausted. I think I was responding to a very specific version of masculinity I kept running into—one that didn’t know how to stay present, or speak emotionally, or meet me where I actually am instead of where it was comfortable for them to be. And when you run into that enough times, it starts to feel like a category problem instead of a context problem.

But Montana complicates that. So does watching men who feel like they were shaped by something older than ego. Something quieter. Something steadier.

And it makes me ask questions I haven’t wanted to touch.

Not in a dramatic way. Not in a sudden rewriting of everything I thought I knew about myself. More like… a soft unraveling of assumptions I didn’t realize I was still carrying.

Because I keep coming back to this: maybe it was never about rejecting men entirely. Maybe it was about never really being met by one in a way that felt safe enough to stay open.

And then there’s my dad.

He sits at the center of all of this, honestly. Not as a contradiction, but as a kind of anchor. The first real example I ever had of what masculinity can be when it isn’t trying to dominate a room or disappear from emotion. He’s the utmost of my affection. That doesn’t feel complicated to me. It feels clean. Certain.

And I think, in some quiet way, he’s part of why I notice the absence of that elsewhere so sharply.

It isn’t that he set a standard I expect everyone to meet. It’s that he showed me something real exists at all.

So when I say I miss Montana, I don’t just mean the mountains or the air or the space to breathe. I mean I miss the version of myself that feels possible there. I miss the groundedness. I miss the feeling that life doesn’t have to be constantly braced against.

It’s almost spiritual, the way it pulls at me. Like something in me recognizes it before my mind can explain it.

And I don’t know yet what to do with that pull.

I don’t know if it means I’m changing, or remembering something, or just finally getting honest about what I actually want.

But I do know this:

It’s not as simple as “I don’t like men.”

It’s more like—I’ve never really had the chance to meet the kind of man who feels like Montana does.

And maybe that’s the whole story. Or maybe it’s just the beginning of one.

Either way, I’m paying attention now.

Quiet Aftermath

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

People want breakup stories. Clean cause and effect. Something they can file away as “this is what went wrong.” At least I did. But the truth is usually messier than that. It’s layered. It’s timing. It’s emotional history colliding with a new connection that feels bigger than your nervous symptom can realistically hold. 

Before this relationship, I had already lived through the collapse of an engagement. Two, actually. 

That kind of ending doesn’t just disappear because time passes. It rearranges you. It changes what you expect from love, from stability, from yourself. After that, I got sober. I rebuilt slowly. Quietly. Away from social media and everything I knew. I tried to become someone who didn’t rely on chaos or intensity to feel alive. Someone who could sit with themselves without needing to escape. 

And I did manage to build something stable for a while. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a real effort. It was learning how to exist without numbing everything I felt. 

Then, I fell in love again. 

After 3 years of celibacy, connection hit differently. It wasn’t just attraction or companionship – it felt like a flood into a part of me that had been sealed off for a long time. I didn’t realize how starved I had been for emotional intimacy until I had it again. And once you feel that kind of connection after deprivation, it can become incredibly hard to separate love from survival. 

I started reorganizing my life around that feeling. Not in one dramatic decision, but gradually- emotionally first, then practically. The relationship became a center of gravity without me fully noticing it happening. 

That’s something I understand more clearly in hindsight: it wasn’t one choice that changed everything. It was a slow accumulation of small ones made under emotional intensity. 

And intensity is where things get complicated, especially with Bipolar II Disorder. Because emotional states can come with a kind of certainty that feels absolute in the moment. Not because the compulsions are correct, but because they feel undeniable. Love can feel like fate. Hope can feel like instruction. Fear of loss can feel like urgency. 

Looking back, I can see how much of it was happening inside me: the attachment, the longing, the meaning I was assigning to everything, the way my nervous system latched onto connection after years of holding myself apart. 

When it eventually started to unravel, what hurt wasn’t just the loss of the relationship itself. It was realizing how much of my stability, identity, and emotional regulation had quietly become intertwined with it. 

And then I had to face everything underneath that – the grief from before, the sobriety I had worked for, the parts of myself I had been trying to protect – all still there, still unresolved, now fully exposed again. 

Not because someone took them from me. 

But because I had been carrying them alone all along. 

And I want to be clear about something I’m still learning how to hold without collapsing into shame or resentment. 

I’m not resentful. 

I don’t look back at this with anger toward a person, because that isn’t what this was. What I see now is 2 people trying to love each other without the tools or understanding to recognize what was actually happening underneath the surface. My symptoms would flare – my emotions would spike, my attachment would intensify, my fear would get louder than my logic – and what I needed in those moments was stability, grounding, and understanding. 

But neither of us really knew that at the time. 

So instead of support there was distance. Instead of clarity, there was confusion. Instead of naming what was happening, we both reacted to it. I can see now how easily that can look like pushing away and being pushed away, when in reality it was just 2 nervous systems trying to protect themselves without language for what was going on. 

I don’t believe that means what we had wasn’t real. 

I think it was real – just unsustainable in the way it formed, because it was shaped by intensity, timing and unrecognized mental health dynamics I didn’t yet understand myself. 

And I’m learning to hold that truth without turning it into a story of blame or failure. 

Just honesty. 

Just grief. 

And they understand that sometimes love isn’t enough when neither person knows how to speak the language of what’s happening inside them. 

And I’ve been thinking about how this doesn’t only live inside romantic relationships. 

It shows up in families too. In friendships. In anyone trying to love someone who is struggling with mental illness without having the language for what’s happening. 

Sometimes people don’t leave because they don’t care. 

Sometimes they leave because they don’t understand what they’re seeing. Or they don’t know how to stay close to something that feels unpredictable or overwhelming. And sometimes they disappear not out of cruelty, but out of their own fear, confusion, or emotional limits. 

And on the other side of that, it can be devastating. 

When you’re the one struggling, their distance can feel like abandonment. It can feel like proof that you are too much, too unstable, too hard to love. It can reinforce the deepest fears you already carry about yourself. 

Both things can be true at the same time. 

There can be real pain in being left. 

And there can be confusion and helplessness in the person who leaves. 

I don’t say that to soften what it feels like to be the one who stays behind – because that pain is real and heavy and it lingers in the body long after the moment is over. 

I say it because I’m learning that mental illness doesn’t just affect one person. It moves through relationships. It distorts communication. It creates gaps where language should be. And if you don’t know what you’re looking at, you can mistake symptoms for personality, or intensity for incompatibility, or crisis for rejection. 

I wish I had known that sooner – about myself, and about others. 

I’m still learning how to hold all of it without turning it into blame. Without turning it into shame. Without erasing the love that existed just because the connection couldn’t survive in its original form. 

Some things are real and still don’t last. 

And that truth is painful – but it’s also where understanding finally begins. 

There are 2 relationships that I keep thinking about when I try to make sense of all of this. 

One is my ex-girlfriend, who I loved romantically. One is my brother, who I’ve loved and looked up to my whole life.

And what connects them in my mind isn’t blame – it’s distance that formed during moments neither of us fully knew how to handle. 

I’ve been on the side of intense emotion, spiraling symptoms, and not having the right words to explain what’s happening inside me. And I’ve also been on the other side, watching someone I love disappear into something I didn’t understand, not knowing how to reach them without making it worse. 

Both experiences leave a kind of silence behind them. 

But I don’t see either of them as villains in my story. I don’t even see them as failures. 

I see people doing their best with the tools they had at the time. 

And I can finally say I’m trying to do the same. 

Not to rewrite what happened. Not turn it into something it wasn’t. Not to force it into meaning that erases the pain. 

Just hold it more gently than I did before. 

Because I don’t want the ending of these relationships to be resentment, or confusion, or self-blame. 

I want it to be understanding – even if that understanding arrives late, even if it arrives slowly, even if it takes everything I’ve been through to finally see it clearly. 

And maybe, that’s the only kind of closure that actually lasts. 

Swimming in Circles.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

A title that would probably only make sense to who this was written about.

It’s getting late. My room is finally clean after weeks of being in complete disarray. (Bi-Polar will do that.)

Laying in bed, I’m getting pretty tired as I’m trying to get back into a consistent routine. I opened my phone to scroll for just a moment and I heard Walking Away by Justin Bieber.

It hit me like a gut punch so hard it nearly took my breath away. I swiped away immediately but 5 seconds was all it took. 

It’s kind of crazy how a song can completely unravel you in under thirty seconds. Especially as I’ve been actively avoiding any and all music that gives me even a fraction of that visceral response. One second I was fine – or at least pretending to be (let’s be honest, I haven’t been fine for a minute now) – and the next I felt this heavy, sick drop in my stomach like every memory of her came crashing back all at once. 

And that’s the part that nobody really wants to talk about or deal with when you’re trying to move on… or at least I don’t. Time passes. Life keeps happening. You go to work, answer texts, laugh at things, pretend you’re healing. But then life gets quiet for a second. A song comes on. A smell hits you. A memory slips through the cracks. And suddenly you’re right back inside the grief like you never left. (Which maybe you didn’t because you’ve been avoiding it all together.) 

Tonight, I see her everywhere. 

In every lyric. Every silence. Every memory I’ve been trying so hard to outrun. 

I think what’s hardest for me, what really breaks me, is knowing I burned that relationship to the ground almost by myself. There’s no comforting version of the story where I can blame timing or distance or fate. I can’t even say I walked away. I hurt someone I loved deeply, and now I have to live with the weight of that every single day. 

Some regrets don’t stay in your head – they live in your chest. In your stomach. In your throat. They follow you around like ghosts. 

I keep replaying everything. Every moment I should’ve been better. Softer. More patient. Sober. More honest. Less afraid. I keep wondering if there was one conversation, one choice, one version of me that could’ve saved everything before it all collapsed. 

And even though deep down I know we weren’t meant to work, and even though I know staying together undoubtedly would have kept hurting both of us, I loved her so deeply that I genuinely don’t know how to picture a life without her in it. And tonight, that’s sitting on me like a thousand pounds directly on my chest. 

So many of my decisions after losing her were made out of hurt. Out of rejection. Out of desperation to distract myself from the reality of what I lost. I kept trying to convince myself I was okay. Trying to move on too quickly. Trying to numb myself with anything and everything. Trying to fill silence with noise so I wouldn’t have to sit alone with what this actually feels like. But the more days go by, the harder it becomes to pretend this doesn’t break my heart. 

I’ve tried to move on in all the wrong ways. 

Distractions that didn’t last. 

In people who were never her. 

In pretending I was fine when I wasn’t. 

In convincing myself that if I just stayed distracted enough, I wouldn’t feel it anymore. 

But grief doesn’t disappear just because you ignore it. It waits. It lingers. It finds you in the quiet moments and plays everything back in high definition when you least expect it. 

And in all honesty, there’s a part of me that hates myself for how long I’ve been running from that truth. 

I don’t know how to rewire my mind after years of loving someone. I don’t know how people just wake up one day and stop carrying another person inside of them. She became everything. The biggest part of my day, my future, my understanding of love itself. And now I’m standing in the middle of the aftermath trying to figure out who I even am without her, or who I was even before her. 

And maybe that’s the hardest truth of all is that I’ve finally accepted that it’s over. 

Not in the dramatic way movies portray heartbreak. Not all at once. Just slowly. Quietly. Painfully. Like something sinking to the bottom of the ocean. 

I think part of me kept believing there would be another conversation. Another chance. Another version of us someday in which it could work. But I know that’s not reality. 

There’s this unspoken idea that you’re not supposed to talk about something if it didn’t work out- like if it ends, it somehow becomes less real, less meaningful, less worth saying out loud. But I don’t adhere to that in the least. Because whether it was right or not, whether it was meant to work or not, it meant everything to me. 

She meant everything to me. 

But that’s the problem, isn’t it? 

Because when you love someone while still being deeply broken yourself, you don’t just love them – you lean on them in ways no one person can carry forever. You start needing them for more than they can realistically give. And when life really bears down on you, it requires a kind of love that doesn’t flinch, doesn’t fracture, doesn’t leave when things get heavy. 

And unfortunately for me… I didn’t always know how to stay fully present in it. I may not have physically walked away from the relationship, but I escaped in other ways. I numbed myself. I lost myself in addiction and avoidance and everything I thought would make it hurt less. 

And in doing that, I lost her. And I lost myself too. 

I don’t know how to begin grieving something that once felt like home. 

I used to tell her I’d see her on the other side of healing – like we would both become whole again and somehow find our way back to each other in a better form, in a better time.  

But now I don’t think that’s what this is. 

I don’t think I’ll see her on the other side of healing anymore. .

Because some things don’t come back around. Some loves don’t circle back to each other. Some endings don’t reopen into beginnings. 

And I think I’m finally starting to understand that this isn’t something I’m supposed to hold onto until it turns into something else. It’s something I’m supposed to put down, even if my hands still shake when I do it. 

I loved her. I really did. Not halfway. Not temporarily. Fully, messily, imperfectly. With everything I had at the time – even when I didn’t know how to give it properly. In so many ways I still do – I don’t know if that ever goes away, and I don’t know if I would ever want it to.

I think I’m finally at the place where loving her doesn’t mean keeping her anymore. 

It means letting her go. 

Not because she didn’t matter. Not because what we had wasn’t real. But because it was. Because it shaped me. Because it hurt me. Because it changed me. Because it deserves to stay what it was instead of being dragged through what it can no longer be. 

So this is where I stop reaching for her in the dark. 

This is where I stop turning memory into something I can live inside. 

And if she ever comes across this… 

I don’t need anything from her. I don’t need a response. I don’t want to reopen anything that life has already closed. 

I just hope she knows she mattered. Not briefly. Not conditionally. Not quietly. 

She matters to me in a way that doesn’t end just because we did. 

She will always matter to me. And for that, I’m extremely grateful.

There was no way I was going to be able to go to sleep with that all sitting with me, so I’m leaving all the thoughts, all the heartache, all the memories and all the tears here, at least for tonight. 

On Choices.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

Running. 

Ironically, I hate running when it comes to physicality and I love it when it comes to my circumstances. Unfortunately for me, I do both. 

Typically, if I’m in a good place holistically, I’m doing the one I hate and when I’m in a really bad place holistically, I’m running away – from everything and everyone. To those who know me, I’m known for it.

But regardless, it’s something I always end up doing one way or the other.

It’s extremely rare that God ever forces my hand in anything. I can count on one hand the number of times He’s done it. Usually, if He’s leading me somewhere and I’m running away from it, He just lets me make enough mistakes to pile up to ruin whatever plans I’ve made for myself until I begrudgingly run back to Him, only to do the bare minimum to make myself feel better.

It’s usually only a matter of time before I’m off doing my own thing again. 

It’s been about a month(ish) since God took my entire world and flipped it upside down, very much forcing my hand this time. 

I was running way too fast in the wrong direction, again, and I believe He had had enough. Both because I was gambling with my life and also because He’s given me about 4 years now of doing things my own way. 

I was dabbling in substances, spending time with people that I had no business being around and drinking myself into oblivion in a very short amount of time. All the while, crying out to Him and wondering why I felt like I was quite literally losing my mind and had NO peace. 

My behavior was completely unhinged, compulsive and destructive and I no longer cared. I was willing to do whatever it took to just not feel the emptiness that was consuming me. 

When I finally came out of the bender I was on, my first thought was to run. To run back to rehab. To run back to my hometown. To run to somewhere new. To run literally anywhere that would get me away from the environment that I had built and demolished in as little as a few weeks. (Realistically, this was a long time coming…) 

The thing I’ve learned about running away is that everywhere I’ve ever ran to, I was still there. I couldn’t outrun myself however, I was arrogant enough to think that I could outrun God. Never happened. 

In my trying to figure out what I was going to do and where I was going to go, God made it quite literally impossible to not stay where He had me. Nothing panned out and nothing pulled through, when usually it happens pretty easily. He made my circumstances so impossible in fact, that for a time, I couldn’t even leave my apartment if I wasn’t leaving on foot. 

For lack of a better term, at 33 years old, I was very much grounded by my Father (God, not my Dad to clarify!) . He had taken away my car, my safety nets, my sources of comfort (numbing) and my ability to choose where I went next. Again, He had enough. 

God gave me a choice. 

Either I allow Him to do what He wanted to do with my life or I could continue in the same loop of insanity and take my chances with my life. I know that His grace is sufficient and I know that He is rich in mercy, but I suddenly got the sense, and I felt it to my core, that there would come a point when His grace runs out and where would I be when it did? 

This question changed everything for me. 

It wasn’t just about getting sober anymore. It wasn’t just about whether I can be a lesbian or not. It wasn’t about just redeeming my reputation or trying to salvage relationships that had been strained. It wasn’t about going to church or AA or not sleeping around or getting my life back on track. 

It was about realizing that I had a choice. And that choice was a mark of His grace all in its own right. Not everyone gets that. Not everyone is given the opportunity to try again or to get right with Him. I’ve watched it over and over again in the lives of people that I loved dearly that I’m sure that not one of them ever thought that the choice they made would be their last on this earth. 

God has given me more grace than I could ever put into words. More than I could ever write down or document. I’ve gambled with His grace more times than I can count and in my pride, truly thought that I could just continue to live however I wanted and do whatever I wanted, with whomever I wanted, and still be right with Him. 

In this past month of God disconnecting me from everything I leaned on and filled my life with, I started to question whether that was true or not.

I wanted to believe God was who I wanted Him to be, not who He is. He is gracious yes, but He requires much from those who call themselves followers. I said the words, claimed I loved Jesus, yet nothing in my life would have reflected that. In fact, I had posted a picture of a bible study I was doing, and a good friend of mine messaged me saying “oh the lesbian is now super religious?” He was completely kidding and didn’t mean it with any ill intent, however for someone who has claimed to love Jesus with all of her heart her entire life, it was jarring to hear how others saw me vs. how I saw myself.

Nothing in my life would have told you that I’ve given up everything to deny myself and follow Him. If anything, I was living in complete hypocrisy – praising Him with my mouth and denying Him with the rest of my life. 

I will say, He may have forced my hand to some extent, but he has been so patient and so kind to me over these last few weeks. He reminded me of who I was before I walked away. I had forgotten and have been on a completely unsuccessful mission to figure out who I am now. 

And Thank God. 

I was trying to find myself in the world when I was never called to that. He had called me to ministry. To discipleship. To learn a completely opposite way of living than what’s comfortable. He called me to trust that if I kept my eyes on Him, who I was wouldn’t matter anymore, because it was never about me. And that without Him, I will always be lost and searching.

I remember when I decided to up and follow my own path about 4 years ago, a dear friend and spiritual mentor that’s known me since I was little, pulled me aside and warned me. She sat before me with tears in her eyes and said “ If you decide to walk in this, if you decide to walk away from Him and everything He’s brought you out of, your words won’t matter, the world will love you and you will sacrifice having Him.” 

My heart was so hardened at the time, it just made me mad and honestly, I think I ran away faster. I had made my choice. I chose myself. I chose the life I wanted. And my life has never been the same. Another failed relationship that I banked everything on only to feel like I was never enough and completely unloveable in the end, heartache, addiction, legal issues, broken friendships, broken trust, the inability to move on from things that were hurting me… the list goes on. Just brokenness in every way.

Years later, the Holy Spirit brought those words back to my memory, and I wept over them. 

Not because I was sad entirely, but more so because I was so grateful that He didn’t let me die in that, when I could have several times over. That He gave me yet another opportunity to turn my life back over to Him. That my life didn’t end in rebellion, brokenness and addiction.

Choosing Jesus, and I mean truly choosing Him, isn’t the easy choice. It’s excruciating at times. It will cost you everything. It will mean changing the way you think, changing the way you speak, changing the way you respond to circumstances and people, changing who you surround yourself with, changing what you allow into your space and who has access to you, changing what you listen to, changing what you watch, changing what you talk and joke about… I mean the list is endless. He requires much of those who say yes to Him, and honestly it’s never convenient. 

BUT… 

There is peace. There is joy. There is contentment. There is faith. There is hope. There is freedom. There is knowing that you are not alone. There is HIM and I promise you, that is everything. 

I have often fallen into wanting the things Jesus could give me more than I actually wanted Him. As He’s brought me into this place of what I can only refer to as anonymity, he’s stripped me of everything. My identity. My desires. My plans and my wants for my future. 

But in exchange, as I’ve chosen obedience, He’s given me Himself. His presence. His wisdom. His strength that I certainly don’t have on my own. 

In a world that focuses so much on I and me and making it happen for myself I’ve had to allow Him to reframe everything. I’ve had to let Him teach me His way.

For me it looks like choosing no contact when I desperately want to text them. It looks like staying off of social media (for the most part) instead of scrolling for hours. It looks like surrounding myself with a Godly community even when I’m aggressively uncomfortable. It looks like giving up music I’ve loved for years. It looks like waking up early every day and opening my Word instead of turning on my TV. It looks like saying no to sex, alcohol, binging, isolating, numbing and instead getting on my face before the Lord and feeling everything as He breaks my heart wide open. It looks like deleting photos and phone numbers. It looks like staying exactly where He has me instead of running away even when I’m crawling out of my skin with restlessness and anxiety. It looks like walking/running down to the beach everyday even when I’m too tired and would rather stay on my couch. It looks like worshipping Him through the tears and the temptation instead of choosing the immediate gratification. It looks like discipline and routine. It looks like praying about everything and allowing trusted voices in my life to help me because I can’t be trusted to make healthy decisions on my own yet. It looks like having to accept the decisions I made even just weeks ago and choosing to thank Him for saving me instead of condemning myself and worrying about what other people are going to think. It looks like letting my life speak for itself moving forward instead of trying to prove myself.

My prayer is that in time, I will be unrecognizable to the people who knew me even up until about a month ago. That was a lesser and far crazier version of myself than who God ever intended me to be. That person was selfish, a liar, a manipulator, a controller, an addict and a hypocrite. I was an extremely broken person who lacked boundaries and who thought love was ultimately about myself.

As far as I’m concerned, that person doesn’t exist anymore. Not because I’m some self-righteous person sitting on her high horse or just choosing to ignore everything I’ve done and said, but because an extremely loving God saved my life over and over again, and in the light of what He’s done for me, radical change and everything I have is the only appropriate offering I can give Him. 

I’m so grateful He gave me the choice to do things differently. I’m so grateful that I found a wonderful little church and godly people to walk beside. I’m so grateful for the desire to know Him. I’m so grateful for a beautiful place to live for the time being. I’m so grateful He never turned His face from me and never lifted His grace off of me. I’m so grateful He ruined all of my plans and gave me a new life. Certainly not an easier one, but one that doesn’t have darkness hanging over me to the point where I don’t even want to live it anymore. 

Voddie Baucham, one of my favorite Pastors, said it like this, and it resonates so deeply at this point in my life… 

“I may not be where I want to be, but Hallelujah, I’m not where I was.” 

Still Becoming…

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

I wake up and I already know. 

Not because I remember everything clearly – but because of the weight. It’s sitting on my chest before I even open my eyes. Heavy, familiar, impossible to ignore. 

My mouth is dry, my head is dull, and there’s this quiet dread creeping in like it’s been waiting for me to wake up so it can fully settle. 

I check my phone. 3:07 p.m. 

What day is it? I’ve completely lost track. I’m sure it’s only Friday… It’s Tuesday. 

Of course it is. 

Half the day is gone and I wasn’t even living it. Just hiding from it. Sleeping doesn’t even feel like rest anymore – it feels like avoidance. Like I knocked myself out just to not be conscious inside my own head. 

I lay there longer than I should. Staring at nothing. Thinking about everything I don’t want to think about. 

What I did. 

How easy it was. 

How fast I folded. 

It replays in flashes, not even full memories – just enough to make my stomach turn. And the worst part? There’s this sick, quiet voice in the back of my head that’s not even surprising. As if to say, yeah…. This is what you do. It was only a matter of time. 

I hate that voice. Because it sounds like me. 

Getting out of bed feels pointless, but staying in it feels worse. So I just sit there, stuck in between, scrolling my phone like I can outrun the feeling. I can’t. It’s in my body now. It’s in the way my chest feels tight, the way my thoughts won’t land anywhere without turning dark. 

I start doing that thing where I bargain with reality. 

Maybe it wasn’t that bad. 

Maybe I can just reset tomorrow. 

Maybe no one has to know. 

Maybe someone DID hack my instagram and phone and messages and phone calls…

But underneath all of it is the truth, loud and steady: 

You knew better. And you did it anyway. Not once at this point, but for days in a row now. 

That’s the part that cuts the deepest. Not the act itself – but the awareness. The fact that I watched myself cross the line a long time ago and said nothing. That the last relapse wasn’t that bad. Like I was split in two – one part screaming, the other part already too far gone to care. 

At this point, as Brad Pitt once described it, this thing had me on my back.  

Basic things feel hard now. 

Showering feels like a chore. Eating feels like something I have to force, if I even can. Texts go unanswered because I don’t even know how to pretend to be normal right now. Everything in my life suddenly feels slightly out of reach, like I’m behind glass watching it instead of actually living it. 

And there’s shame. 

Not the soft kind. Not the “I messed up, I’ll do better” kind. The kind that makes you want to disappear and draw completely into yourself. 

The kind that says if people really saw this version of you – the one who caves, who lies to themselves and everyone around them, who keeps going back to the same thing – they wouldn’t recognize you. Or worse, they would. 

I sit with that for a while. Too long, probably. 

Because the truth is, this isn’t just about one relapse. 

It’s about the pattern. The cycle. The part of me that keeps choosing something that wrecks me and then has to wake up and live in the aftermath like this. 

3 pm. Alone. Heavy. Trying to figure out how to exist in my own skin again. 

And the scariest thought isn’t even “why did I do it?” 

It’s – 

What if I do it again? 

This brings me to today. 

A few days sober, technically. But it doesn’t feel clean or triumphant – it feels like I’m walking through fog and I can’t see where I’m going or what’s on the other side. Like everything is slightly muted, slightly off, like I’m here but not fully in anything.

My brain is slow, my emotions are unpredictable, and there’s this constant low hum underneath it all that I can’t shut off. It’s not loud enough to name, but it’s there. 

This is the part no one celebrates. 

The in-between. The early days where nothing feels fixed, just exposed. 

And I’m writing this because I’m too good at hiding. Too good at smiling just enough, responding just enough for people not to worry, showing up just enough that no one keeps asking me deeper questions. I know how to disappear without actually leaving. I know how to shut people out in a way that’s almost scary. 

And that’s exactly where this thing has always grown – in the quiet, in the isolation, in the spaces where no one can see me clearly. 

I think that’s why I refuse to keep being silent about it. Why I refuse to keep sitting in denial and just waiting for my character to suddenly change. 

Because when people picture someone struggling with this, they often picture something obvious. Something messy and visible and easy to label. (I’ve been there before too). But a lot of the time, it looks like me – functioning just enough, hiding really well, slowly unraveling in private. 

And no one likes to talk about that. 

Or if they do, they soften it. They make it more palatable and easier to swallow. Less uncomfortable. 

I don’t want to do that. Not this time. 

Someone recently asked me if putting such vulnerable things about my life out there is even a good idea. What if it makes people uncomfortable? What if it upsets or embarrasses someone? 

And honestly – yeah. It might. 

But hiding hasn’t done me any favors. Silence hasn’t protected me. If anything, it’s protected the addiction – even when I wasn’t drinking. It’s giving it space to grow without resistance, without exposure, without consequence. 

I’m over that. 

I might be someone who has relapsed more times than I can count. Someone who has fallen on her face, made the same mistakes, sat in the same shame over and over again. 

But there has never been a time I didn’t get back up. 

Not once. 

Bruised, embarrassed, exhausted – yes. But I get up. 

And I’m not sharing this because I’m proud of the mess or because I need anyone to tell me I’m strong. I’m sharing it because I know exactly what happens when I don’t. 

My addiction thrives in secrecy. 

It survives in isolation. 

But it does not survive in vulnerability. 

And I’m done giving it somewhere to hide. 

So I will keep writing. 

Not just when things are messy. Not just when I’ve fallen apart. Not only when everything feels like it’s burning and I need somewhere to put out the smoke. 

But also when it’s quiet. 

When it’s uncertain. 

When nothing dramatic is happening and that’s exactly what makes it hard – the in-between days where I don’t know if I’m healing or just pausing, where I can’t tell if I’m moving forward or just standing still in the thick of the fog, unsure of where I am, and hoping it counts as progress. 

Those are the moments that usually get lost. The ones no one really documents because they don’t feel important enough. They’re either too painful, or not painful enough to be compelling, not joyful enough to celebrate. Just… existing. Floating. Unclear. 

But I think that’s where most of life actually happens… Especially for me right now. 

So I want to write it all. 

I want to write about the mornings where I still feel heavy but I get up anyway. The days where I don’t feel fixed, but  I don’t fall apart either. The quiet decisions no one sees – choosing not to isolate, choosing not to spiral, choosing to stay present even when everything in me wants to disappear and hide. 

Because healing isn’t just the big turning points. It’s not just the relapse or the breakthrough or the dramatic before and after. 

It’s the slow stitching in-between. 

And I don’t want to only remember my life as a series of extremes – broken, then better, then broken again. I want the full thread. The continuity. The small, almost invisible moments where something in me shifted and I didn’t even have language for it yet. 

Maybe that’s what this becomes. 

Not just a record of what I survived – but a testimony built in real time. Not polished. Not edited for comfort. Just honest enough to hold the truth of who I was in each version of it. 

So that one day, when I’m further on the other side of this,  I can look back and see it clearly. 

Not just the falling apart. 

Not just the getting back up. 

But everything in between that quietly made me someone who stayed. 

Here Again

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t plan to be here again. 

That’s the part I keep circling back to – the quiet confidence I had this time felt different, that I had it under control – or at least was well on my way to. And then something shifted, or maybe it didn’t. Maybe it was always there, just waiting. 

I replasped.

Hard enough to make my heart sink as I write this. And even typing that feels heavier than I expected, like the words themselves carry shame I haven’t figured out how to put down yet. 

Anyone who knows me and knows my journey of the past 7 or so years of trying to get sober, of trying to figure out how to live sober, knows that relapse is not unfamiliar to me. In fact, it’s been more consistent than my actual sobriety. That’s a hard truth to have to swallow and come to terms with. Yet, it hasn’t stopped me most times from going back. 

In fact, a lot of times, I think it’s what drives me back. The shame of it all. 

It feels like it escalated so quickly – like one moment I was steady and the next I was right back in it, full force. Addiction raging and suddenly I couldn’t see the way out. But if I’m being honest, I don’t know if that’s true. I think I want it to be sudden because sudden feels easier to forgive. 

If it “just happened”, then I don’t have to look too closely at everything that came before it. But there were signs, weren’t there? Subtle shifts in my thinking, in the quiet justifications, the moments I chose not to pause and check in with myself or anyone else. 

I keep asking how I got here again, like it’s a mystery, but part of me knows it wasn’t one step – it was a series of small ones I didn’t fully notice, or maybe didn’t want to acknowledge. 

I think the hardest part to admit is that it doesn’t feel like I just slipped- it feels like I’ve been slowly giving up on myself for awhile now. Little ways, quiet ways, choosing what’s easy over what’s right, telling myself I’d try harder tomorrow.

And now it feels like that’s caught up to me, like the people around me can see it too, and maybe they’re starting to give up in their own ways. And I can’t say that I blame them. 

That’s what hurts the most I think – that this doesn’t just live inside me. It spills out onto everyone who cares about me, and somehow I feel like I’m the one causing the damage while also being the one stuck in it. 

I feel alone in a way that’s hard to explain, like even when people are there – reaching out, trying to support me – I’m separate from them, watching myself disappoint them in real time. And I want it to get better so badly, I want to feel different, to be different – but the work it takes to actually change feels so overwhelming that I don’t even know where to start. (Or start over again, I should say.) 

And that’s the trap isn’t it? Because picking up a drink cuts through all of that for a few minutes. It softens the edges, quiets the noise, makes everything feel manageable – until it doesn’t. Until those few minutes get shorter and shorter, and I’m left chasing something that barely even works anymore. Something that not only doesn’t work, but is intent on destroying my life. 

Even though it doesn’t feel like there’s hope right now, I know – somewhere deeper than my emotions – that there is. Because God has never been dependent on how I feel. He isn’t a God of fleeting comfort or temporary relief; He’s a God of promise. 

And I’ve lived that before. I’ve walked through darker, heavier seasons than this and somehow, every single time, He’s been steady when I wasn’t. Faithful when I drifted. Present even when I couldn’t feel Him at all. So I know He’ll do it again – I just don’t know how to hold on in the meantime, and that’s the part that feels almost unbearable. 

Maybe that’s where surrender comes in. Not the kind that feels peaceful or resolved, but the kind that costs everything. 

Letting go of the person I thought I loved. Letting go of the life I was trying so hard to build and control. Letting go of the version of myself I keep trying to force into existence. And trusting – really trusting – that maybe everything needs to be undone before it can be rebuilt the right way.

That maybe, I need to step back and let Him rearrange what I’ve tangled, rebuild what I’ve broken, and carry what I was never meant to hold on my own…. Even if it means starting all over again.

I don’t write any of this to impress anyone or to turn it into something meaningful for other people. If anything, it’s the opposite. I write because I need somewhere to be brutally honest with myself, somewhere I can come back to years later and see the bigger picture I can’t always see in the moment. 

Because when I look back over the years, over entries written in completely different headspaces, I can’t ignore the pattern – God has been faithful even when I’ve been completely lost and out of my right mind. 

It hasn’t been random.

It hasn’t been pointless.

Even when everything felt chaotic, He was still doing something underneath it all. And if I’m really honest, the times my life has gone the most off track are the times I stepped out of where He had me and decided I knew better. I chased my own way, my own timing, my own desires and my own control- and it’s never once ended well for me. And still, I keep going back to that, like I forget every lesson as soon as things start to feel okay again. 

So I write because this is the only place, outside of numbing out, where things get quiet enough for me to actually think. 

Where I can sit with the confusion instead of running from it. Drinking makes everything go silent for a moment, but this – this is different. This is where I try to make sense of things that don’t make sense to my very human, very limited mind. 

Where I can be messy and unsure and still somehow feel like I’m not completely lost in it. Where I can remember, even faintly, that there’s something bigger happening than what I can see right now. 

Right now I don’t feel strong. I don’t feel redeemed or even remotely put back together. I feel like something in me has been scraped raw – like I can still feel the damage in my chest, in my hands, in the way I keep replaying everything I wish I could undo. Everything I wish I could unsay. 

There’s a heaviness that sits in my body like I can’t outrun it, no matter how much I want to disappear from it for a while. And I hate that I did this again. I hate the version of me that reaches for something that destroys me just to stop feeling things for a few minutes. I hate how quickly it becomes a cycle I recognize and hate, but still step into. 

But if I stay here long enough – past the shame, past the spiral, past the urge to shut it all down – I know the only way forward is through honesty and small, deliberate steps back toward life. Not fixing everything at once. Not becoming someone new overnight. Just stopping the bleeding where it is, one choice at a time. 

Reaching out instead of isolating. Telling the truth instead of hiding it. Letting the discomfort exist without feeding it. And trusting that even now, especially now, I am not beyond repair. I don’t have to feel ready. I just have to not disappear from myself again. 

If this is the version of me the world sees right now – struggling, messy, trying and failing and trying again – I don’t want that to be the whole story to my life. I don’t want to be remembered for the nights I gave up on myself or the ways I numbed out when things got hard. I want to be remembered as someone who kept coming back. 

Someone who fought for her life even when it felt impossible. Someone who loved deeply, who cared, who didn’t stop believing that God could still make something beautiful out of the broken pieces. 

I want to be remembered for choosing to get back up, over and over again, even when no one saw it, even when it felt pointless. Not because I did it perfectly – but because I didn’t stay down. 

So this is where I am. 

No clean ending, no neat redemption arc – just me, sitting in the wreckage of my own choices, telling the truth about it. I don’t have a breakthrough to wrap this up with. I don’t feel fixed. I feel exposed, tired, and painfully aware of how easily I can lose myself. 

But I’m still here. 

And maybe that’s the only honest place to start again – not with confidence or clarity, but with nothing left to hide. If there’s any way forward, it has to begin here, in the mess, with me choosing – however weakly, however imperfectly – not to run from it this time.

To be continued…. 

To Gina and Megan.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

Days go on. 

Life goes on. 

Yet, I don’t know how to live with the questions. 

They don’t come gently – they rip through me. 

What did I miss? 

What didn’t I say? 

Why didn’t I see it? 

Why didn’t I do more? 

I keep thinking there had to be a moment- just one – where I could’ve reached you. Where I could’ve said the right thing in the right way and it would’ve cut through whatever was hurting you enough to make you put the drugs/needle down. To make you stay. I replay our conversations like if I study them hard enough, I’ll find the exact moment you decided “do it just one more time”. 

And God, that thought is unbearable. 

Because I would have done anything. 

Anything. 

I would have sat with you all night.

I would have answered every call. 

I would have fought for you even when you didn’t have the strength to fight for yourself. 

I would have carried your pain if it meant you didn’t have to feel it anymore. 

You didn’t deserve the kind of pain that made using feel like the only option. That numbing out was the only option – even if it cost you your life. And it kills me that I didn’t understand how deep it went. That maybe you were drowning right in front of me and I didn’t see it for what it was. 

I hate that I couldn’t save you. That no one could have saved you. 

I hate that I’m still here living a life that you should be a part of. That I still reach for my phone to text you. That I still think “she’ll love this” before it hits me all over again that you’re gone. 

You’re just gone. 

And it doesn’t make sense. It never will make sense. 

There is this ache in my chest that doesn’t leave – it just changes shape. Some days it’s quiet, and other days it’s so loud I can’t hear anything else. Because I don’t just miss you – I miss who I was when you were here. 

I miss telling you everything I couldn’t tell anyone else. 

I miss reading vocab words to you straight from the dictionary. 

I miss arguing with you about why I can’t make you homemade granola or croutons. 

I hope wherever you are, the pain stops. I hope you’re not hurting anymore. I hope you know how loved you were, even if it didn’t feel like it. 

And I’m so, so sorry that love wasn’t enough to keep you here.

I would have saved you if I knew how. 

I still wish I could. 

But as much as I want it my way, it’s His not mine. 

I have to believe Jeus was there when it happened – that He saw your pain, held you in it, and carried you somewhere peaceful when it got too heavy. I have to believe you’re resting now. 

Safe. 

Whole. 

And I know that someday, we’ll meet again – painting under the trees, next to the flowers. 

Begin Again.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

There’s something about spring that feels deeply personal. 

All winter long the world sits quietly – bare branches stretched against grey skies, gardens emptied, the earth cold and still. Everything looks like it’s gone dormant, like life has stepped away for a while. And in many ways, we do the same. 

Winter has a way of stripping things down, it slows us. It quiets us. Sometimes it leaves us feeling just as bare as the trees outside our windows. 

But then slowly, almost imperceptibly at first, spring arrives. 

It doesn’t rush in loudly. It comes in small ways – the soft return of birdsong in the morning, the first stubborn shoots of green pushing their way through the soil, the way the air suddenly smells different. Warmer. Brighter. Alive again. 

When you live surrounded by the woods, you feel it even more. 

The forest begins to wake up around you. The birds return first, filling the quiet mornings with a kind of music that winter had taken away. The sunlight starts filtering through the trees in softer, warmer beams, reaching places it hasn’t touched in months. And when you step outside, you can feel it immediately – the gentle warmth of the sun on your face, the crispness of the air that still carries a hint of the nearby ocean. 

There’s something about the mix of pine, damp earth, and salt water that makes you breathe a little deeper. 

And then come the colors. 

After months of muted browns and grays, little bursts of color begin appearing everywhere – tiny wildflowers along the trails, soft green buds on the trees, bright blossoms scattered like confetti across the landscape. It’s hard not to notice how intentional it all feels. 

God could have made the world in simple shades. The trees could have stayed brown, the flowers could have bloomed without color, the skies could have remained a quiet gray. 

But instead, He wove beauty into creation. 

He painted wildflowers in soft purples and yellows, filled the trees with bright new green, and scattered color across the earth in ways that serve no purpose other than to delight us. It’s a quiet but powerful reminder of His kindness – that He didn’t just give us a world to live in, but one meant to be enjoyed. 

Every bloom feels like a small love letter written into nature… It’s why I love it so much. 

A reminder that we are cared for. 

And something inside us responds. 

Spring is more than a season. It’s a reminder that dormancy isn’t the same as ending. That the quiet seasons of our lives are often the ones preparing us for something new. 

After months of feeling still, we begin to reawaken. 

We start rediscovering the little joys we forgot we loved – the warmth of sunlight on our skin, the sound of birds chattering first thing in the morning, long walks where the air smells clean and the world feels awake again. Even familiar things feel new, as if we’re seeing them with fresh eyes after being tucked away for so long. 

These moments seem small, but they carry a kind of magic. 

They remind us that joy was never gone. It was simply waiting. 

Spring also has a way of reconnecting us with old versions of ourselves. 

The part that loved spontaneous plans. 

The part that laughed easily. 

The part that felt hopeful about what was ahead. 

Those pieces were never lost during the quiet months. They were just resting beneath the surface, like seeds waiting patiently under frozen ground. 

And when the season changes, they begin to rise again. 

But spring doesn’t only bring back who we used to be. It introduces someone new, too. 

The person we are after the quiet seasons is never exactly the same as before. We carry the lessons winter gave us – the resilience, the surviving hard or heavy moments. When we step back into the light, we do so as both our past and our future selves at once. 

That’s the beauty of reawakening. 

We don’t have to choose between who we were and who we’re becoming. Spring teaches us that growth is layered. Old roots support new blossoms. What was once bare can bloom again in ways we never expected. 

Maybe that’s why spring feels so emotional sometimes. 

Standing outside, feeling the sunshine warm your face while the birds chatter above you and the ocean air drifts through the trees, you realize the world never truly stopped. It was only resting. 

Waiting for the moment it could begin again. 

And maybe we were too. 

Spring whispers something gentle but powerful to us every year: 

You are allowed to begin again. 

The Places Where Grief Finds Me.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

Grief has a way of appearing in the smallest moments. 

Not always in the dramatic ones. Not always in the anniversaries or the days we expect to hurt. Instead, it slips quietly into ordinary life – while driving somewhere familiar, hearing a song on the radio, or when something funny happens and your first instinct is to reach for your phone. 

And then you remember. 

Last year, within six months of each other, two of my dear friends left this world. Even now, it still feels surreal to say that out loud. There are moments when my brain simply refuses to accept it, as if at any moment they’ll pop back into the rhythm of everyday life where they’ve always belonged. 

So often something will happen – a piece of news, a ridiculous story, a good book, a beautiful song, a small victory, a bad day – and they are two of the first people I would have called. 

I still feel the impulse sometimes. The automatic reach toward the phone. The thought forming before reality catches up. 

And then, there’s that quiet pause where I remember they’re not here to answer. 

Songs have become time machines. A few notes of the right one can transport me instantly – back to a car ride (specifically the Teen Challenge van), a laugh that went on too long at a completely inappropriate time, a conversation that felt important even though at the time it seemed ordinary. Music has a way of carrying people with it, and sometimes it feels like pieces of them are still moving through the world that way. 

I hear those songs and for a moment it’s like they’re nearby again. 

Losing them has shown me something I never fully understood before, but has been a long lesson in the making – in fact it’s where this blog was born from: grief isn’t just pain. It’s also evidence of love. 

The depth of missing someone is proof of how deeply they were woven into your life. Every moment I wish I could tell them something, every story I wish they could hear, every time I laugh and instinctively think they would love this – those moments are the shape their friendship left behind. 

Grief is the shadow of love that doesn’t have a place to land anymore. 

And strangely, there’s beauty in that. 

There’s beauty in realizing how rare it is to find people who become part of the way you experience the world. The kind of friends who would have been on the other end of every phone call, who would have understood the story before you even finished telling it, who somehow made life feel bigger simply by being in it. 

Life feels even more fleeting than it did before. 

It’s fragile. Temporary. Precious in a way we often don’t realize until we’re forced to I think about all the things I wish I could still tell them – updates about life, small daily observations, things that would only be funny to them. 

Sometimes I still say those things out loud, half joking, half hoping the universe carries the message somewhere. 

Because love doesn’t really disappear. It just changes form. 

It lives in songs. 

It lives in memories. 

In the quiet instinct to share something with someone who shaped your life. 

And maybe that’s one of the strange gifts grief gives us – it keeps the people we love woven into the way we move through the world. 

So when a song plays and I think of them, or when something happens and my first thought is to call them, I try not to push the feeling away. 

Instead, I let it stay for a moment. 

Because missing them means they mattered. 

And what a beautiful thing it is to have had friendships that still echo this loudly, even after they’re gone. 

Carrying Both – Of Motion and Stillness.

~ The Fragrance of my Mother ~ Leave a comment

“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory.” – Dr. Seuss

Time is funny like that. 

In my twenties it felt like motion- airports, new cities, late nights, early trains, always somewhere else to be. My life could fit in a suitcase. I would leave on a whim and the world felt enormous and wide open. I chased sunsets in unfamiliar places and lived off curiosity, wine and adrenaline. 

Now my thirties look quieter. A cozy apartment tucked into the woods. Mornings that start slow. Familiar trails, familiar mugs, familiar peace. Trying to grasp sobriety.  A life that doesn’t move so fast. 

And if I’m honest, sometimes it’s conflicting. 

Some days I miss that girl who was always on the go, who collected passport stamps, boarding passes, train tickets and stories like they were oxygen. Sometimes I even grieve that life a little. The freedom, the chaos, the constant motion. 

But I’m learning that this is life too. 

I’m learning how adventure doesn’t always look like a boarding pass or running away. Sometimes it looks like building a life that feels safe. Sometimes it’s learning to stay. Sometimes it’s learning how to be still. 

There are moments I feel a little lost between those two worlds – the wanderer I was and the woman learning to put down roots. But slowly, I’m figuring out how they can exist together. 

How to keep the curiosity. 

How to keep the adventure. 

How to carry that girl with me, even here. 

Maybe time doesn’t ask us to choose who we were or who we’re becoming. Maybe it’s just teaching us how to bridge the two. 

The traveler and the homebody. 

The chaos and the calm. 

And somehow… make a life that holds them both. 

Earlier tonight, I was looking through old photos, and my heart ached a little for that rush of adventure again – the unknown streets, the fleeting sunsets, the dizzying freedom of it all. But there was also a quiet excitement, a curiosity about what life is going to look life moving forward.

How will I carry the girl in her twenties who roamed the world into the woman in her thirties who now calls this cute little place in the forest home? 

I suppose only time will tell, and somehow that feels like the adventure I’ve been waiting for all along…