I saw her that morning

not you

her

the little girl

who learned early

that people leave

she was sitting there

behind your eyes

watching me move

around the kitchen

quiet

hopeful

already preparing herself

for disappointment

and I wanted to tell her

not this time

not him

you’re safe here

but I didn’t know yet

that I was still learning

how to stay

so I became

the thing she always feared

another person

who saw how tender she was

and still chose the door

I’m sorry

not just to you

to her

the one who risked everything

to let you show up

that morning

the one who sat there

with worried eyes

and decided

maybe this time

is different

she was right about me

before I was

I just got there too late

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I know that you’re here, reading this because of the way things have become… maybe it’s always been that way. It’s just our time to experience the fractures, the brokenness, the way unprocessed feelings and wounds can cause havoc on interpersonal relationships.

Maybe we didn’t notice this shit before because we were so deep in our youth that the seriousness of what it takes to cultivate a deep relationship didn’t really register. Still, nevertheless, here you are because the title of this sparked your interest, and here I am, nervous as fuck because I’m about to be the most vulnerable I’ve ever been in my entire life.

I’m directing this towards the men because every woman I know…. I know many…like many….like seriously…. so many lol, all of those women are talking to a professional, all of those women are in a mode of self reflection, all of those women make their mistakes but at the same time, their introspection allows them to lean inward and with the tools they have from therapy and or the practices that allow them to process their lives… they are figuring their own shit out so that their wounds are less likely to bleed on others, especially the ones whom they care about.

Now, there will be men who don’t agree with me, there will be men who visit this article and read with different eyes because the women I’m speaking of may not exist in their world, or maybe they are so stuck in their own shit, not taking accountability for their actions and choices that they can’t really see those women for whom they truly are.

I want to start by saying that because of my own interest and self-awareness, because of my own depth… I can have some really powerful conversations with women in general. The women whom I’ve met, the women whom I’ve shared space and time with, energy or love, the infinite and ever-lasting conversations…. the majority of those interactions have been like rich pure water for my soul.

I have had some of the deepest connections in terms of life introspection and conversations about the world, this ecosystem, this realm, and how we exist…

I have had some of the most enriching and powerful discussions with women, so I am not really one to approach anything that holds women up as examples to follow with hate or anger.

Despite a couple of terrible experiences romantically and one horrific happening in my childhood… my relationship to women has been so fulfilling because to me, they hold the light of all things, the love of all things, and they do it so fucking well.

I don’t want to make this too long; it doesn’t necessarily need to be, but I do want to allow it to breathe because there are parts here that will be heavier, maybe not that much for the reader, but mostly for myself.

One of the ways we can protect women… and I’m directing this to anyone who pursues women, anyone who dates women, anyone looking to enter a relationship with a woman… is by getting into therapy.

The protection of the heart, soul and mind is just as important as physical protection and I think we as men get so wrapped up in the physical aspect of what protection means that we forget to take care of our minds, our heart and soul and we miss the connection between self care and the ultimate protection of those we care about, especially the woman we claim to care for and love.

I am guilty of this, yes, even me. Performing that I’m okay when in truth, I’m not. Refusing to ask for help even when I need it the most and looking a partner dead in the eyes, making a promise to her that everything is okay when everything within me is falling to ruin. Thinking… well, I can beat a motherfuckers ass if need be, if there was ever a threat to her beautiful life… not fully realizing that the things I left unchecked within me could pose the biggest threat… a threat to a place that so many of us ignore… her emotional well-being.

This woman looked me in the eyes and said, " Go back to therapy”, so self-aware that she leaned into me to see what I couldn’t, she knew I needed it, for myself, for the ones I love, and for the relationship, but of course, we, as men… we got it, it’s not a big deal… I can handle it, so on and so forth. My response was that I didn’t have the capacity to take on therapy, which I realize now that I was just being a scary ass %#%###, afraid to go inward, afraid to pull up this one experience, afraid to venture back into the dark to shine some light on what needed to be worked on.

Claiming to not have space for the very thing that would have provided me more room and space in my heart and mind has to be one of the stupidest things I could have ever thought, and I’ve been in a mirror with this, so often, like… wtf were you thinking…. I wasn’t thinking, or maybe my base of thinking was rooted in fear. It was rooted in a lack. It was rooted in shame, stubbornness, and the idea that her being right meant that I was wrong about myself, and in truth, the mirror that she was had reminded me that I needed to be doing more about the traumas I’d experienced in my life.

When I was in the 5th grade… mind you, I just stopped to stare out the window for about 5 minutes, pondering if I should even type this part out, but there is a freedom that I need in this moment… I need this…

WHEN I WAS IN THE 5TH GRADE…. I was sexually assaulted by a young woman, so much older than me. I won’t go into a broader detail of this right now, but I feel that it’s important to say, to share. I would later discover, when I was older, that she was groomed by a man, way older than she was. And while what happened to me was fucked up, that information compelled me to give her compassion. I recently discovered that as this was happening to me.. as it occurred several times… I had begun to write about it… and while from a place of anger or a version of betrayal because of the trust that she was given, the writing morphed into my desperation to soften my own heart…even though I didn’t have the full language of what it meant to transmute something… I started writing about the good things in women; I started highlighting the positives. I think that kid, at that time, was saying… “ yes, this person is doing this thing that feels a bit hurtful and confusing, but also, not every woman is like this, and also, I mustn’t let my pain turn into hatred because she is not every woman I’ve known or will meet. “ and in a crazy way, as many of times that I’ve told people why my writing is the way that it is…. this has been something I’ve left out because I had decided to keep this truama a secret…

So… the writing you know me for, the writing that has inspired you for so many years… it was birthed from this intuitive desire to keep my heart soft and open to the women who would go on to water my life in some of the most beautiful ways.

In a way, I was protecting myself by protecting my image of women as a whole. And I do want to take this time to say thank you to the women who have cared about me and even the ones who have loved me in a season or two. Around that time, I had considered taking my life… shit, I genuinely tried, and I’m here in this moment, grateful that I didn’t. I’m grateful to be sitting here, writing to you and sharing a part of my life that filled me with shame and a version of pain that at times makes me feel like I’m hard to love.

I’m better as I write this, I’ve been doing the work around it but this ties to this piece because most of the men I’ve known, have held on to something, they conceil things, they lie about their experiences and they believe they’re being tough, they believe that being a man means holding that shit in, they believe that their trauma is a burden… there are also men who use the things that they’ve gone through as excuses and a reason as to why… you.. the reader… should continue to enterain them and here in this moment, I want to reject that notion and say that I don’t want to be one of those men or to be known as a man who uses their trauma as a device to further waste a woman’s loving energy.

As my relationship surpassed a year, I knew I needed to open up about this with her. I briefly mentioned to her that there was something I wanted to share and that I would at a later time. I carried shame around it, but also this guilt because I felt that I was lying… withholding something from someone who had been so open with me. That wasn’t something we did, withhold, but I was… and when it came time to give an explanation about something that was associated with the thing that I had refused to talk about, I ran, and that is its own version of betrayal to a person who had chosen to run toward you, not away.

I say all of this to say…. that a man can’t fully show up in the ways in which you deserve if he’s not processing and doing the work. Consistently, thoughtfully, intentionally.

A man can’t love you the way you deserve if he isn’t taking care of himself… mind, body, and soul.

A man is not worthy of your time and attention until he is able to give time and attention to healing himself, and healing is a continuous work; it is endless, just as love can be, and committing your life to a man who disregards the health of his mind and heart will break yours in the end.

I have always been the voice of reason for my readers, but in that relationship, there were moments when I showed up like the man I warned you about, simply because I had disregarded my own mental health and remained stubborn when someone who loves me was trying to encourage me to heal.

And I will never do that again. I will never ignore or neglect myself, one, because I love myself and I want to be my very best version, not perfect but aligned, and two, self-neglect is a path to neglecting the people who genuinely care about you.

So… when you are engaging with a man, talking, in courtship or whatever they’re calling it these days, ask him what he is doing for his mental health, ask him what his practices are, and see what his thoughts are on therapy. Stoicism works. The gym is cool, run clubs are fine, but there is so much more that can be done to reach the parts that can only be touched through a therapy that reaches beyond the surface.

The man who wants to care for your heart is willing to care for his own.

The man who will protect your mind will be mindful of his own.

The man who will keep you safe is the man who creates room for safety by going inward and working on himself. Healing is like a renovation; healing makes space for love, both receiving and giving.

AND I AM NOT EXEMPT FROM ANY OF THIS NOR ANY MAN WHO THINKS BEING FAITHFUL OR BEING A PROVIDER OR BEING “ KIND “ IS ENOUGH.

IT ISN’T.

WE HAVE TO DO MORE FOR THE WOMEN WHO WE CLAIM MEAN THE MOST TO US. AND THIS IS ME OWNING MY SHIT SO THAT I CAN CONTINUE TO WORK ON MYSELF.

And to the women who have been mirrors to their partners, even in relationships that ended badly or in a hurtful manner, he may not say it, but I want to take this moment to apologize on behalf of us and say, thank you. And to the woman who held the mirror up to me, thank you so much. I needed that, and I hate that I hurt you while learning this lesson.

I heard you. I’m still listening.

(I hope there are no errors here, I can’t bring myself to re-read it right now, but I hope it lands, I hope it reaches you…)

Thanks for reading.

I’ve been cycling between in-person therapy and using what is convenient for the moments I can’t move around the way that I want, and since taking on more responsibilities of raising my kids, I have found that Better Help has been a go-to, either early morning while getting my son ready for school or in the evening after I put my kids to bed. Press the button below if interested.

Better Help

i was thinking it was you

i was thinking we would fall

slow into each other’s arms

thought i had it all

i was counting out the years

the way the light would fill our hall

i was building something quiet before you built a wall

and i had the ring picked out

knew the restaurant,

knew the speech

had the questions no one asks

you had the dress i’d never see

i was thinking baby names

the kind that carry weight and grace

something soft for a daughter

something strong for a son’s face

i was thinking sunday mornings

coffee cold before we’d wake

i was thinking forty years

now i’m thinking my mistake

and i had the neighborhood

the yard, the school two blocks away

i had the christmas

i would give you

all those ordinary days

somewhere there’s a version

where i’m still

where the quiet doesn’t shatter

and i never lose my will

somewhere there’s a table set for more

and i’m not the reason she walked out the door

goodbye songbird

i almost heard your yes

goodbye songbird we almost made

we were blessed

i had the future in my palms and it slipped right through

goodbye songbird god i almost had a life with you

I love courtship, I love getting to know someone. I’m never in a rush to fuck, and the surface shit has never been exciting to me. I’m a sapiosexual. I knew this before I knew there was a word for it.

I’ve only been in three serious relationships, serious as in the years and energy spent, the sort of high stakes that come with the intention of blending your life with another individual.

My first serious relationship lasted from high school to my early 20s, and it shaped the way I view relationships and a potential partner. I see relationships as a place to build, an attempt to nurture and extend a thing into something that could possibly last. I love to be alone, so the idea of entertaining someone for pure entertainment disgusts me, like… typing that just made me feel sick.

I learned early, I guess… the way my high school sweetheart demanded we move slow because her old soul wanted tiny flowers picked freshly from the grounds near the gymnasium so that she could put them in her freshly braided hair, or how we sat for hours while she ignored the B2K hype in exchange for Neo soul. We vibed, we chilled, we laughed and got to know each other for whatever small interests we had at that time, and I often got the sense that I was earning something from her…. time… energy…. presence… trust, the list goes on.

I think, between the way I was raised, the profound bars, the gems… the sayings, the quotes, and the threats lol… helped shape the way I was to engage with a person whom I had an interest in.

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I love women… not for some of the same reasons as other men do….

I love the way women alchemize their experiences into something that even I can’t articulate here on Substack. My entire family is mostly women, and I have had some of the most beautiful connections, chance encounters, and platonic friendships with women.

The aura of a woman, the energy that thrives within her despite whatever is happening in her ecosystem.

I used to sit at my mom’s feet, just to listen to her advice, to bask in her energy, knowing that her aura was rooted in perseverance and a deliberate, intentional style of fighting to get to where she was…. I miss that, and if things didn’t go the way they did… I’d be leaning my head on her shoulder right now for the love and the energy.

I never really saw women as objects or hobbies, and so, at the slim chance that I am even remotely interested in someone, I would rather approach the pursuit as a garden, not a trash heap.

I would rather see if we can connect before anything else occurs… I know that potential gets thrown around like a bad word now a days, especially in the modern dating world but the potential I speak of is the one where two people in mid discussion discover that they genuinely align on some real shit, and that real shit gets compacted and placed into the foundation, and with each connection, everything they may be building can be sat upon something strong.

So naturally, the shit I see people post about, TikTok videos, reels, and Substack notes that express frustration around dating just doesn’t appeal to me, and when I don’t like a thing, I don’t engage.

But I think society tricks you into believing that in order to find someone, you have to find them in a way that keeps you coming up short.

Okay… so that felt like a rant… but let’s get into this shit and get you pointed in a direction that doesn’t require you to waste anymore of your time….

There’s a quiet violence in the way we talk about dating now, as if everyone agreed on the terms, as if we all signed something. The situationship that drags on for months without a name. The breadcrumbs disguised as effort. The slow fade dressed up as mystery. The performance of detachment we’ve all been told is maturity. We call it modern, but it isn’t modern. It’s just neglect with better branding.

And somewhere along the way, you were told this is what love looks like now. That you have to lower your expectations to be loved at all.

That if you want clarity, you’re asking for too much.

If you want commitment, you’re moving too fast.

That if you want to be chosen with intention, you’re not understanding the culture. The culture is wrong. The culture is not your covenant.

Here’s the truth no one wants to print….so I’ll leave it here…

….modern dating is not the rule. It’s a trend. And like every trend, it survives only as long as enough of us keep agreeing to it. You can leave. Not loudly. Not with a hashtag. You can simply stop participating in something that was never built to honor you.

Opting out doesn’t mean opting out of love. It means opting out of the script. Opting out of the panic. Opting out of the algorithm that keeps showing you the same kind of person wearing a different face. Opting out of the idea that you must be available to anyone who shows mild interest, that you must perform mystery, that you must compete with women who aren’t even in the room.

What you opt into is slower. Quieter. You opt into the kind of patience that knows the difference between waiting and wasting. You opt into the standards you keep when no one is watching. You opt into the version of yourself who can sit alone on a Friday night without mistaking the silence for failure.

You opt into noticing who texts you when there’s nothing to gain. You opt into love that doesn’t make you smaller to fit through its door.

Here’s how the opting out looks in practice. You stop responding to energy you wouldn’t seek out. You stop translating someone’s confusion into your fault. You stop calling it dating when it’s really just rehearsal. You stop treating every conversation like an audition for a role no one’s actually casting. You stop confusing being wanted with being chosen, because they are not the same word and they have never meant the same thing.

You will be called too much. You always have been. By the same people who never gave you enough.

And there will be a stretch of quiet. There has to be. The quiet is not punishment. The quiet is the room being cleared so the right thing has somewhere to sit down. The quiet is your nervous system learning that peace isn’t boring, it’s just unfamiliar. The quiet is where you remember what your own voice sounds like underneath all the noise of being available.

You are not late. You are not behind. You are not the only one who feels like the world has forgotten how to love on purpose. You’re just one of the first in your circle willing to say it out loud.

Modern dating is not the rule. It’s a room you walked into. You’re allowed to walk back out.

I hope this helps…

A 1985 photograph by Yoshi Omori of Pina Bausch'scompany, Tanztheater Wuppertal, in Los Angeles.

The mind is the first place real intimacy lives.

Most people skip it. They rush past the talking stage like it is just the lobby before the real thing begins. But the talking stage is not a waiting room. It is the room. It is where you find out whether the person across from you is someone you can actually build with, or just someone you are drawn to in the temporary way that attraction works before reality sets in.

When the beginning is rooted strictly in conversation and communication, something clarifying happens. You realize quickly, sometimes painfully quickly, just how rare it is to find someone who meets you where you actually are. Not where you present yourself. Not the version of you that is easy and agreeable. The real place. The complicated, still-becoming, fully honest place. Most people cannot meet you there. And that is not a criticism. It is just the truth of how uncommon real alignment is.

Two people who like each other are not rare. Two people who genuinely align, in the way they think, in the values they hold, in what they believe they deserve, and what they are willing to give, that is rare. That kind of alignment does not come from proximity or chemistry alone. It comes from conversation. From asking the right things. From being willing to hear the answers even when they are inconvenient.

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In 1997, psychologist Dr. Arthur Aron found that interpersonal closeness could be meaningfully accelerated through sustained, escalating, reciprocal self-disclosure. The depth of what two people share, and in what order, shapes how quickly they truly see each other. Questions are not small talk. They are architecture. They are how two people build something before they have anything to show for it yet.

Aron et al., “The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 1997

A 2022 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences confirmed what many of us have felt long before any research named it: compatibility, the specific and particular alignment between two specific people, is one of the strongest predictors of whether something real actually develops and lasts.

Chemistry is common. That kind of alignment is not.

The talking stage is where you find out if it exists.

The 50 questions below are organized into four phases that mirror how a talking stage naturally moves.

Some are about the other person.

Most are about you.

All of them are designed to prepare you to show up to something real as someone who already knows who they are and what they are building toward. Because the goal is not just to find someone.

The goal is to find someone and actually be ready when you do.

Read more

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I studied you like you were a puzzle. Like if I just understood you well enough, I could argue with you, reason with you…fuck…. make you make better choices.

I was wrong about you.

You’re not a puzzle.

You’re a choice.

You didn’t do the work.

You went to therapy and heard hard things and decided they didn’t apply.

You sabotaged good things because you were terrified they were too good. You’re the coward making my decisions, burning down what I tried to build. Every relationship that imploded. Every person who finally got tired of trying. Every time I said I wanted better and then fucking proved I didn’t.

…That was you. That was always you.

I was wrong to keep making excuses for you. Wrong to call it trauma and leave it at that.

Wrong to act like understanding why you’re broken means you get to stay broken.

Wrong to let you hide behind my pain like pain is permission. It’s not.

And as I’m standing here looking into this mirror, staring at my reflection, at the part of me that has destroyed so much in my life, I am finally done talking to you.

Because you were never the problem.

I was.

It was my desire to give you understanding while neglecting my need for more, my need for better, my need to be better, my need to evolve, my need to separate myself from the part of me that has done more damage than I would have wanted.

I was so wrong about you, and admitting this allows me to finally get it right…

I want you to know that first, because I think you did too. Maybe you made promises to yourself in January. Maybe you felt it, that rare feeling of standing at the beginning of something and actually believing it would be different. I felt that. I was building something. I was excited. I was moving toward a future that felt like mine.

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And then somewhere between then and now, the path I was on broke open into something else entirely. And I have to be honest with you about that, because honesty is the only thing worth offering here. The breaking was mine. Not the world’s. Not someone else’s. The cracks that appeared, I had carried them in long before this year began. I just did not know how to look at them yet. I own that. Fully. And I am not saying it to punish myself. I am saying it because owning it was the first step toward something better.

I am writing this from that breaking point. Not from the other side of it. Not from some healed, arrived, figured-it-out place. I am writing this from the middle of the reroute, and I wanted to reach back and find you here, in the middle of yours.

Because if you are reading this on day 135 of a year that did not go the way you planned, I need you to understand something.

The breaking was not the punishment. The breaking was the message.

Every time you fell, there was something inside that fall trying to speak to you. Every time you failed, every time you let someone down, every time someone let you down, every time the thing you were building collapsed, every time the relationship ended, every time the plan unraveled. None of it was random. None of it was simply misfortune. All of it arrived carrying something you needed to know.

The fall is a messenger. Most of us are so busy being ashamed of the stumble that we never stop to read what it brought us.

I had to stop. I had to look at what I had been avoiding inside myself. I had to be grateful, truly grateful, for the moments that humbled me, because those moments told me the truth when I was not telling it to myself.

That is a hard thing to ask of yourself. Gratitude for your mistakes. Gratitude for the version of you that did not know better yet, that loved the wrong things, that held on too long or let go too soon, that chose comfort over growth and called it peace.

But I am asking it. Of myself first, and then of you.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not proof that hoping was foolish. You are somewhere in the middle of a lesson that is still being written, and the fact that you are still here, still getting to tomorrow, still trying to understand what this year is trying to tell you, that is not failure.

That is the work.

The year is not over. And neither are you.

Whatever fell apart, whatever rerouted, whatever cracked open in you between January and now, look at it. Not with shame. With curiosity. Ask it what it came to teach you. Ask it what you needed to see that you could not have seen any other way.

The message is always worth more than the path you lost.

I am learning that right now, right beside you.

Yours always, Sin

Music This Week

“ Better Days “ has officially been released. I love this song for many reasons, one of which is that it was written by my favorite songwriter, Bianca “Blush” Atterberry, and it also marks a new sonically expressive era for singer Naomi Sharon. This comes after the release of “ Miss That “, also written by Blush.

I added it to my “ on repeat “ playlist on Spotify. Also, featured here is some of the music I’ve been listening to this past week.

Movies This Week

Of all the films I’ve seen this week, HOKUM was really satisfying. For about two minutes after the initial scene opening to the film, I had this sensory experience, something about the darkness in the theater and the way the lighting was set up while our main character sat at a computer screen, writing… like I am now.

This film felt like an intellectual horror film, not because of the words in the script or a high-brow style of acting, but in the way it takes horror tropes and enhances each of them so much so that it feels entirely fresh and new. Of course, I love the hues, the browns, the greens, the nature, and the vintage style of the main setting. I’m not sure how long it’ll be in theaters but there’s something about the sound design heard through large speakers that really made this movie an intriguing and eerie watch! (Damn, I have to use this in my letterboxd review...)

I also saw an early screening of Mortal Kombat II, which is in theaters today! This one continues the story effortlessly, and if you enjoyed the first outing, you’re in for a fucking treat! The action was exquisite, and the story was very coherent.

Sentimental Value was a therapy session, a film that I will return to several times over. It’s best for a slow day, a Sunday, or while it rains. It’s easily one of the best films I’ve seen all year. Perfect in my eyes.

FIND ME ON LETTERBOXD

Books This Week

I’ve been rereading “The Will to Change “, my first reading of it altered an aspect of my thinking at age 22, and I’m hoping that at age 37, there’s more. I picked it up at the top of this year, so… expect a write-up on what I took from it this time around, maybe in the fall after I’ve gone over my notes.

Henry Dumas… I’ve been so silent about him over the years, but I’m ready to talk about him…. soon, here. I’d occasionally leave a flower that I plucked from the parks here in New York City at the location where he was killed as a silent tribute, but I want to give him a full write-up eventually, and so, I’ll save what I want to say until then. If you’re interested in his work, start with “ echo tree.”

After I finish the second film feature screenplay, I’d like to move slowly into TV, this book is helping me understand “ great television “ but most importantly, helping me figure out where to put my full attention. TV (The Book): Two Experts Pick the Greatest American Shows of All Time by Alan Sepinwall and Matt Zoller Seitz offers some of the best essays and deepens the understanding of what makes a television series iconic.

Favorite Quote or Affirmation

I read a quote this past week by Carl Jung that said..

"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely."

I’ve been meditating on that….

Have a beautiful weekend, and thank you for spending your time here with me.

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Why am I talking like this… you see… as I am typing, I am speaking these line out loud, so closely that it would appear that I’m reading it like a teleprompter, the only difference is that my lips know what is next before my fingers have typed it.

I am settling in to the difference, sitting within change, contemplating my next move, waiting for a late dinner that I’ve ordered because watching this movie made me lose all concept of time and I hadn’t eaten today, nor did I want to cook. The movie is “ Watching The Dectectives… “ have you seen it? Maybe not, I think it went under the radar.

I’ve been randomly thinking about cottages, remember cottage core, that moment when people on social media started dressing like Bridgerton characters? I wonder if they still do that, it would suck if that was just a trend, a short phase, seems like too much of a thing to do for a short while but that’s the internet isn’t it…

I %&*# %*# twice a week ago, after dropping my kids off to their mother and experienced an ego death unlike anything I had ever experienced before… that and the EMDR… I think I wrote that right… apparently, every one of my friends have done it and forgot to put me in the loop… but essentially, that cocktail of actions made me believe that I had one more book in my bones, I quickly shook that belief out of myself because I have a date with another industry, a new fate and purpose. I’m listening to a voice note from A.L. as I write, nodding my head because what I’m hearing is actually a mirror to my own recent experiences. And it’s therapeutic to know that you are not the only going through whatever it is that you’re going through and you’ve probably reached this point of this substack, wondering what the hell am I even going on about but I am just following this urge to tap my fingers on the keyboard in a way that produces something coherent….and now, I must add something here that will make all of this worth it…. wait… lets plug this sale, insane sale…. on my book.. huge sale…

77% OFF

So… here it is…

Life does not always arrive in neat chapters with clean beginnings and satisfying endings. Sometimes it arrives like tonight. A late dinner, a forgotten movie, children breathing in sync, a voice note from a friend who doesn’t even know they’re healing you in real time. Sometimes life arrives exactly like this. Scattered. Quiet. Full.

And maybe that’s the whole point….

You don’t have to have it figured out. You don’t have to know the next move before you make it. You just have to stay present long enough to notice that what you already have, right now, in this exact, imperfect, still-becoming moment, is actually the thing you once prayed for.

The children are asleep. You made it to another Monday. Something in you cracked open recently and instead of falling apart, you sat on the floor in the dark and heard music in it.

That is not small. That is everything.

So wherever you are reading this, whether you’re waiting on your own late dinner, or lying awake convincing yourself you’ve fallen too far behind, or quietly wondering if the best of your life has already passed, I need you to hear this:

It hasn’t. You haven’t. This is not the end of your story. This is the part right before the turn.

Stay in it. The melody is still playing.

Good night…

or Good morning…

wherever you are..

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I have this fear that when I die, the keeper of my work will not know what to do with it and so, this is me, controlling what I can and sharing it with you.

This, the words here, this work of expressions represented an entire era that I scrapped but maybe, I’ll eventually put that in front of your eyes, as well…

All the things that I may have believed would never touch the light of day…

So, enjoy, and come back and tell your friends, share this with someone…

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Thank you for reading…

I appreciate you…

Maybe, I share more?

Not the version of you that holds everything together, so no one worries.

Not the version that laughs first, so no one notices the ache underneath.

You. The entirety of your soul…

The one who reads these words in the quiet and wonders if anyone has ever truly wanted to know her.

I want to know her… I long, to know her..

But I need you to know something first, and I need you to sit with it instead of running from it.

I am not perfect. I never will be.

I arrived here still carrying things I haven’t fully put down yet, still learning which parts of me are love and which parts are just old wounds pretending to be personality.

My ego still surfaces sometimes like a thing I thought I buried. I am still in the work of it. Still becoming.

And I am sorry for that.

I am sorry that I cannot offer you someone finished.

I am sorry that loving me will sometimes mean loving a man mid-sentence, mid-lesson, mid-correction.

That is not the fairy tale you may have wanted.

I know that…. I know it very well…

But here is what I can offer you, and I mean this with every quiet part of me that has survived everything it wasn’t supposed to.

I will show up. Every damn time…

Even afraid.

Especially afraid.

Fear has never been a good enough reason for me to abandon something worth protecting, and you are worth protecting, you are worth loving and fighting for.

Your softness, your history, the way you love people who don’t always deserve it… all of it.

I will not look at those parts of you and decide they are too much.

I just can’t bring myself to do something like that.

I will look at every inch of you and understand that the world did not teach you how to be loved properly, either. And I want to apologize if I ever show up in a way that makes you feel that I lack the understanding of your depth.

But I will try. Every day, I will try.

I want to learn how to love you in the specific language of all that you are and in what you will become.

Not how I’ve loved before, not what I’ve been taught love looks like. YOU.

What you need.

What makes you feel safe enough to stop performing…

I want to be the place where you exhale.

I am not asking you to fix me or save me or be patient with the damage that I’ve made no effort to address…. I am not asking you to wait on someone who isn’t moving in the right direction…

That is not this.

I am asking you to walk alongside someone…

…who is actively choosing growth, actively dismantling the ego, actively becoming someone worthy of what you’re brave enough to offer. YOU.

And I know I sound like a fucking broken record when I say this, but I’ll say it again and again because I need to know this and remember it as well… but….

…you deserve a love that does not make you feel like a burden for needing things.

You deserve someone who asks how you are and means it, who remembers what you said three weeks ago because you matter enough to be remembered.

You deserve to be chosen quietly, intentionally, softly, consistently, on ordinary days when there is nothing romantic about it.

I want to be that for you.

I am willing to become more than what I even knew possible, for the sake of myself and for the sake of being in a position to fully appreciate YOU.

I am willing to grow into that for YOU, US, and a FUTURE.

And if you’ll let me, I will spend however long we have making sure you never have to wonder again.

Imperfect, open, and always willing….

I am here.

— SIN

They did it at work. They did it with their families. They did it with their friends. They swallowed their opinions, softened their needs, and made themselves smaller so the room could feel more comfortable. And then they brought all of that into their love lives and offered it to someone who was never really there to receive it.

What makes it worse is this: the person on the other end usually knew exactly what they were doing. People who want the comfort of a relationship without the weight of one have a type. And a people pleaser is it. They are easy to spot. They give without being asked. They accommodate without being pushed. They stay without being begged. To someone emotionally unavailable, that is not a green flag. It is an open door.

Where THIS SHIT Really Starts

People pleasing does not start in relationships. It starts much earlier than that. It starts in the home.

At the dinner table… where the mood of one person could change the temperature of the entire house.

Psychologists at Hargan Psychology have identified that people pleasing behaviors most commonly develop in childhood as a way to secure love and safety, in homes where a parent’s approval was conditional on good behavior, where conflict was avoided and emotions were suppressed, or where a child was praised primarily for being helpful and easy. That is not a personality type. That is a child learning the fastest route to feeling safe.

For many people pleasers, managing others was not a choice. It was a requirement. Maybe there was a parent who needed to be handled carefully. A home where keeping the peace meant suppressing the self. A version of love that only showed up when you were agreeable, useful, or small enough not to cause trouble. And so they learned. They learned to read the room before they read their own feelings. They learned to give before they were asked. They learned that their needs were the last thing on the list, and sometimes they did not make the list at all.

By the time they are adults, none of this feels like a pattern. It just feels like who they are.

The giving.

The accommodating.

The way they will quietly reshape themselves to make everyone around them more comfortable. It feels like kindness. It feels like maturity. What it actually is… a survival skill that never got retired.

Damn…. and This is How They Get Spotted

Here is what nobody talks about. The person who wants all the warmth of a relationship with none of the responsibility is not careless in how they choose someone.

They are deliberate. And they are patient. (THESE MOTHERFUCKERS)

They get close enough to watch first. They position themselves inside the ecosystem, close enough to observe how a people pleaser moves through the world. And what they see tells them everything. They watch how this person shows up for their friends, how they are always the one who remembers, who checks in, who gives without being asked, and never sends a bill. They watch how the family leans on them, how the workplace depends on them, how the people around them absorb the very best of who they are and rarely, if ever, think to pour anything back.

They notice the quieter things too. The way a people pleaser talks themselves out of being hurt. The mental gymnastics they perform just to make sense of why someone treated them poorly. The grace they extend to people who have not earned a single drop of it. They watch them shrink in social settings, absorb uncomfortable moments to spare others, and apologize for things that were never their fault. They listen to the excuses a people pleaser makes for the people who disappoint them, and they understand something important… this person has a very high threshold for being let down.

Research published in the Exploratio Journal confirms that people pleasers are less interested in material returns and more focused on approval and the relationship itself. That distinction matters more than it sounds. It means that to keep a people pleaser close, you do not have to offer much.

You do not have to show up consistently.

You do not have to give them security or honesty or a future.

You just have to make them feel, occasionally, that you see them. That you appreciate them. That the relationship means something. A little warmth, carefully timed, is enough to keep someone waiting who has spent their whole life being grateful for crumbs.

And then they notice something else. Something that should be obvious to everyone in this person’s life but somehow never gets said out loud. This people pleaser is exceptional. They are the friend everyone calls first. The one holding the family together. The most capable person in the room at work. They carry more than their share in every space they occupy, and the people closest to them have grown so comfortable receiving that they stopped acknowledging it a long time ago. There is no recognition. No reciprocity. No one pulling them aside to say, I see how much you give,e and I want you to know it matters.

That absence is the open wound. And to someone with emotionally malicious intent, an open wound is not something to heal. It is something to use!

Their eyes light up because they now understand the full picture. This person is starved for acknowledgment. They are fluent in giving and have rarely been taught what it feels like to genuinely receive. They will not demand much. They will not walk away easily. They will rationalize poor treatment and reframe neglect as complexity. And they will work harder to make a half-committed person feel whole than they have ever worked for anything.

What makes it worse is that some of these people are not strangers at all. They are already inside the ecosystem. A friend who has watched all of this up close and files it away for a convenient moment.

A colleague who clocked it from across the room. Someone who already knows exactly how much this person gives and has quietly decided they would like some of that for themselves, without paying the price of actually showing up.

Think about Tom Hansen in 500 Days of Summer. A man so fluent in devotion, so willing to pour himself into someone, that he spent nearly two years loving a woman who told him on day one that she did not believe in love.

We watched it and called it romantic.

It was not.

It was a people pleaser building a religion, a deep belief… a cathedral for someone who never asked to be worshipped. And the saddest part is that Tom is not fictional to a lot of us. We have been him. Or we have cared about someone who was.

THE YEAR OF LETTING GO by r.h. Sin

What It Looks Like Inside that shit… the Situationship

Once a people pleaser is inside a situationship, the same patterns that made them easy to target become the very things that keep them trapped.

They do not ask where things are going because they do not want to seem like too much. They celebrate the small moments of closeness and quietly talk themselves through the long stretches of distance. When something feels off they do not say so. Instead they go inward, turning the hurt over and over, searching for a way to make it make sense, looking for the reason that has nothing to do with the obvious one.

They adjust. Constantly. They make themselves easier to be around, softer in their expectations, more flexible in what they are willing to accept. And every time they compromise on something that mattered to them, they tell themselves it is not a big deal. That this is just how things are right now. That patience is a virtue, and love takes time, and maybe if they just give a little more space, it will grow into something real.

It does not grow. It feeds.

Because the person on the other side is not confused. They are comfortable. And comfort, for someone who never planned to commit, is exactly what they were looking for. The people pleaser’s silence reads as acceptance. Their flexibility reads as permission. Their continued presence, despite being given so little, reads as confirmation that nothing needs to change.

This is the corrosion. Not one dramatic moment. Not a single conversation that breaks everything open. Just a slow, quiet erosion of self that happens one swallowed feeling at a time. One more week of waiting. One more excuse made on someone else’s behalf. One more morning of waking up undefined and deciding to stay anyway.

Okay.. okay, one more thing before you go…

If any of this feels familiar, I want you to hear this clearly and without judgment. You did not end up here because you are naive. You did not end up here because you loved wrong. You ended up here because you were taught, long before this person ever arrived, that your needs were negotiable. That keeping the peace was more important than telling the truth. That being chosen halfway was still better than risking the ask and being told no.

But here is what that lesson cost you….

It cost you the full version of what you actually deserve. And the person who benefited most from that lesson was never going to be the one to correct it.

You are not too much.

You have just been spending your energy in spaces that were too small for everything you carry.

The right relationship will not require you to shrink.

It will not leave you overthinking silence or making excuses for absence.

It will not take your giving… as a given and offer nothing in return.

You are someone worth choosing. Fully. Loudly. On purpose.

And the moment you believe that, really believe it, is the moment a situationship stops feeling like something worth waiting out.

Yours truly,

Sin…

Part of my reflection this morning was based on what happens when an individual is hurt… the way they interact with the pain and the outcome, the aftermath of the dust settling.

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When you hurt a person, the first thing they choose to do is dismantle the bridge before considering that you might actually cross it, and this bridge can often be a metaphor for all the ways in which they attempt to erase you from their life

We… all of us… We underestimate how quickly people destroy the very infrastructure that would allow for a return, for repair… for that possibility or chance to reconcile, and we do this shit so fast without thinking about the mathematics of it all…and the destruction has nothing to do with what anyone says, it’s the action, it’s the decision to engage in a level of erasure that furthers the need for both people to protect themselves. Further making that former place more unsafe than previously believed.

There is no thought given to the fact that destroying the bridge means they can’t return either and that healing, that new growth and change… all of it continues, but if there’s nowhere to come back to, they will never experience it.

There’s a year….a moment in your life where something in you begins or needs to wake up, it’s like you’re supposed to reconnect with a version of yourself you lost somewhere along the way, but you’re fucking terrified because you know that reconnection will uproot things in a way you’re not prepared for…it’ll alter the life you’ve built, even the one that has been seemingly better than where you’ve been.

You stay in survival mode, lost in your triggers, trying to navigate old wounds… that’s a losing battle, and you remain in a vibration so low you can’t find the way out.

And then you make mistakes, real ones, and the more you refuse help or tap into resources, you become someone you don’t recognize, and someone you love watches you fall and decides that failing means you’re falling away from them.

But here’s what a therapist will tell you… if you’re ready to hear it… the awakening isn’t always a slow climb, some of the time… It’s just remembering: sometimes you wake up one morning and remember who you were becoming before you wandered out of alignment and got lost, and that remembering changes everything instantly. You don’t necessarily needs months or years.. You just need to remember, you just need to be open enough to see.

And when you’re in that place of clarity… when you finally reconnect with that original direction, that beautiful starting point, the past place that used to be a present where the future was brighter, that original self with that original plan… You realize something that breaks you open all over again…

The person who was supposed to hold space for your return, the one who promised to stand by you in your time of need… already burned the bridge; they did it so fast, without a second thought. They did it without ever considering that you might actually wake the fuck up. That you may actually lean into change, and without knowing where you are on the spectrum of finding your way back, that change could be that fast.

So, you stand there, a little different, resting and renewing, healing now, leaning forward into your support, remembering that you knew what to do all along and you just needed a refresher, a moment of quiet, a chance to regain composure, but you walk to the place where the bridge existed, only to find that there’s no way back.

This is how it often plays out, but every bit of it is necessary. I need you to understand that, and I need you to see the message in how things are handled after so that you can understand what to do next.

It’s in this moment when you have to accept something that feels impossible to accept…. the bridge was destroyed because they didn’t believe you could be different and now… You get to be different anyway.

You still get this opportunity to become who you were becoming but this time, silently, without needing them to witness it, without needing permission.

“ I am not who I was because I now remember who I was becoming.”

That’s the moment… that’s the exact fucking moment, that’s the whole quantum leap of it all. That’s when everything fully shifts because you realize the ending wasn’t a failure. It is simply a redirect.

Every interaction, the pain, the ways you were handled… it was all information, pointing you back to the life you actually wanted, pointing and pushing and forcing you back to yourself.

So you take that shit, you take every bit of it, you own every single part you played, you take the lessons, you honor what took place, and you give full acceptance for all the ways you were wrong in how you mishandled things, more times than you would have liked to.

You fully accept the way they chose to handle their hurt, and then you just go, silently… respectfully but completely.

The bridge that was destroyed doesn’t define your direction, and it was part of the map, but it isn’t a place you’re allowed to go because it isn’t there. Sometimes, when people do what is best for them, they are actually helping you discover the best choice for yourself, and this is that.

And here’s the truth about this awakening thing… this remembering… it happens fast for some of us, there’s no time frame on it… everyone is different and that’s okay… the quantum leap is real but the work doesn’t end there, therapy isn’t a moment, it’s a practice, it’s a continuous reconnection with the self you’re becomoing, the longer you stay in it… the more you see, the more clarity you gain, the deeper your healing, the more you realize you’re not just returning to who you were but you are becoming someone more whole. You are becoming someone stronger, someone you may not have even believed was possible.

It’s important that you speak to someone… I’ve begun to remember just how vital that is… having that support and just being able to spend a moment.. opening up to someone who is prepared to listen…

BETTER HELP

And that’s the real redirect… that’s the real life. Not the one you lost, the one you’re actually building.

And it’s completely okay if certain people will not experience it. It’s okay if they don’t want to; that’s their choice.

And you get to keep building anyway.

KEEP THESE AFFIRMATIONS

I accept that some bridges were never meant to be crossed again.

I accept that some bridges were never meant to be crossed again.

I am healing whether they witness it or not.

The ending was not a failure. It was a redirect.

I remember who I was becoming, and I chose that version.

My growth does not require their belief in me.

The work continues even when the bridge is ash.

I am different now, and that is enough.

What they will not experience is not my loss.

I am building a life that matches my original plan, enhanced by everything I learned.

The mathematics of the bridge burned teaches me where I’m meant to go.

A therapist once told me…

15 years ago…After I lost two really close friends in the span of three weeks to death, the version of you that knew where you were going before you got lost is still in there. they’re not gone.. they’ve just been quiet, and sometimes all you need to do is stop running long enough to hear that version of you again…

Stop trying to figure out the next step and just remember the original plan… remember what you wanted before you lost… before other people's needs became louder than your own voice.

Remember what you wanted before you entered survival mode…that version of you has always known the way… they always did… You just have to trust them enough to follow, and I think about that now…. I think about how tragedy teaches you to survive but survival teaches you to forget… how loss can make you run so far from yourself that you fail to recognize the person you have become, it halts you, it makes you forget what you wanted out of life, sending you in a direction you could possibly never come back from but that original version… the one who had dreams before grief rewrote the map, that version is still resting inside of you, waiting for you to be still enough to remember them… waiting for you to stop apologizing for wanting to go back to who you were becoming before everything changed… you know the way home and you must reconnect with yourself to get there..

Better Help

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JOURNAL PROMPT

What am I rushing through that deserves more of my attention? What am I afraid will happen if I slow down?

MICRO-ACTION

Eat one meal today without your phone, without a screen, without multitasking. Just the meal. Just this.

AFFIRMATION

Slowing down is not falling behind. It is how I actually live my life instead of just moving through it.

I needed you naked, not for the body even though that matters as well, but I need you stripped down… to the parts of you that didn’t wear a costume. In full transparency… I wanted your heart laid open like a book on a page you wanted me to read or an invitation to a place that isn’t on your map.

Your mind spilling your wants and your wounds across the surface.

I needed your soul bare enough

that I could see what you actually desired

versus what you’d been taught to settle for…

I needed…damn, oh how I needed to see all of you because anything less felt like a lie we were both telling.

You see.. when a woman is fully visible like that… when she stops protecting herself long enough to truly display the full architecture of her wants and needs, that’s when a profound version of devotion becomes completely possible. And it’s not the kind that lives in bodies alone, it’s the kind that consumes… it pulls her stress from her shoulders, down into her thighs, and passes my lips as if to become mine. Leaving me open to devour her pain the way hunger works. Something that sits with her wishes and helps them all come true.

Queen, I needed you naked so I could meet every part of you. So… I could be the thing that understands so that being with me, only and always meant that you’d never have to perform again…

One of the most fucked up things I unraveled a couple of years ago in therapy was that, rooted in this belief, I chose partners who made it easier to be this way; I chose relationships that had the right amount of toxic energy to allow me to be rigid in the realm of love, places where expressing my own pain would fall on death ears and so, the silence was made necessary because the words wouldn’t have mattered to begin with.

Again, thinking I was being strong, but in truth, I was just fucking up my own energy and disappearing.

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Even here, now, there’s a version of me that sat next to someone I cared about and almost tricked myself into believing that I should say nothing in that moment, something as small as a compliment or an expression of love because I had been taught that caring too much was a vulnerability and vulnerabilities were exits… the frustation with myself after saying many things rooted in love to this person and somehow thinking that this moment would equate to me doing or saying too much, or being too soft… a sweet sentinment made unnecessary by own overthinking and over internalization rooted in everything I learned through my life experiences.

And it’s mostly my fault, I’m so much older, and I should know better, but still, I struggle, I stay in my head when I should really be completely in my heart when in the company of someone who loves me. I have believed that love was a path to getting hurt, and a painful version of “ love “ has been my most familiar experience because that is what I chose because of that predictability and how it made me think that I was being safe. But in truth, I was playing myself out of being in a relationship that allowed me to give everything that I’d been afraid to share.

So much of that eventually changed, not so much my full belief or lack thereof, but because of the partner I’d fallen for. The first time I admitted that something hurt, I felt like I had failed. Like I had handed someone a weapon, but she didn’t use it against me, she leaned in and moved closer, and that undid something in me that I didn’t even know was twisted and knotted the fuck up!

I have been learning that real strength is not the absence of deep feelings, pain, or discomfort. True strength is feeling everything and choosing not to let it turn you cold or, at the very least, bouncing back and snapping out of it after you’ve given yourself the opportunity to feel it all.

Real strength is saying.. you know what… I’m hurting without making you hurt someone else, or taking out your pain on the ones who care the most. It is being soft enough to be known and brave enough to stay fucking open no matter what!

I am still learning all of this, and some days, I still go quiet when I should say something. Some days the old reflex kicks in, kicks my ass, and I build the wall before I even realize I’m doing it. I’m trying to get better at catching it faster now… trying to avoid that urge to bottle it up and drink it down forcibly.

That is the work, refusing to perform toughness for an audience that never asked for it and showing up honestly for the individuals who want to know me for me.

Admitting you’re in pain or hurt or upset is the whole point and has never been a sign of weakness. It takes strength to be honest about the state of your mind, body,heart, and emotions.

Therapy always made my writing better, and as much as I love helping you through my words, just as someone has encouraged me to go back into it… I want to take this time to encourage you to get back or start therapy as soon as possible…

I’ve encouraged it a couple of times throughout the years, here on this platform… I’ll share a resource below, hit the button if you’re interested…

BETTER HELP

Also, for those of you who have been here for some time, taking in my words and being a passenger in my life and my understanding of the world around me, thank you.

There have been times when I’ve felt so lonely and down and out, and writing to you has brought me so much joy over the years, so thank you for sharing your time and energy with me and for allowing my words to enter your life so deeply.

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What began as small ideas and fragments as far as bones has turned into a story that I believe will play well on the big screen one day. It’s centered on something that I feel like.. my readers.. you.. will enjoy with a tinge of twists and mind fucks that I love whenever I’m watching a film. I think I’ll do one last edit….before figuring out that next step..

Film is my second love, I’ve gone back and forth between bookstores and movie theaters, and writing screenplays just feels like the obvious next step…

When I’m writing, I’m also envisioning what it will look like visually, the tones, the music, the locations, the characters, their voices, their attire, etc. I think this has so much potential, and I wanted you to know about it first.

This moment is so vital for me because once I do a thing for the first time to completion, the floodgates open, and I’m able to continue to do it in flow… that same feeling of emotion that I had when I had written my first book is the same wave that hit me this morning. I dropped to my knees, all dramatic like….new ground, new chapter, new adventures… this is what I feel, and I hope you’ll come with me for this ride…

I’ll share updates and more information soon…

Also, if you’re on Letterboxd, come find me… and feel free to recommend movies here in the comments…

LETTERBOXD

down on both knees

in awe of you

my arms stretched

toward your light

your aura shines

in full luminosity

vibrant hues cleanse

my fucking eyes

your thighs

the shape of something godly

a complex universe of divine feeling

and knowledge and understanding

of rhythm and movement

resides in your hips

my lips

they water

my tongue eager to speak

to tell of the tale

of the woman

that has made my knees weak

your face card is lethal

your soul, so fucking gorgeous

your lips, the shape of love

your eyes hold my future

I love you

I want you

I see you

JOURNAL PROMPT

Where did I internalize the idea that I am hard to love? Is that actually true, or is it a story someone else’s limitations wrote about me?

MICRO-ACTION

Write down three things about you that the right person would be lucky to receive. Not your achievements. Your qualities. The way you love.

AFFIRMATION

I am not hard to love. I was in the wrong hands. The right ones exist.

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I want you to know that “ a midnight moon “ is now available for over 70% off for a limited time…. see the button below and grab one for yourself or a friend…

A Midnight Moon

There is a very heavy and specific kind of loneliness that only comes for you at night. Not the loud kind, nor the kind that makes you cry on the floor. The quiet kind, the one that sits beside you on the couch while you’re doing everything right…while you’re healing… growing and becoming someone you’re finally proud of, and still… the moon is full, and you are empty in ways you can’t explain to anyone who hasn’t felt it, and so your eyes arrive here so that you can feel seen…

You’ve done so much of the work, you’ve read the books… You even learned to hold yourself the way you once begged someone else to.

You’ve built something real inside of yourself, something steady, something completely yours and you love yourself now to the fullest extent or at the very least… you’re learning to… which is good enough but to be completely honest, sometimes the warmth of self love isn’t romantic enough.. it doesn’t reach itself across the bed… it doesn’t laugh at the thing you just said like it was the most funniest thing it’s ever heard…

You know this, but you don’t say any of this out loud because it sounds like you’re ungrateful, and there’s a part of me that wishes you’d read that last part again, the paragraph above this… but this time, out loud and maybe in front of a mirror if possible. The healing is real, but you just want to be loved by someone who chooses you, and those two things can exist at the same time…

You see… the moon doesn’t judge your emotional truths, it watches.. full, curious and patient… a little indifferent, the way beautiful things tend to be.

You sit with it, that longing, you don’t chase it away… You don’t dress it up as something more spiritual than it is… it is what it is… You want someone… You want the ordinary magic of another person knowing your name in the dark and tracing it on your skin with their fingers… and that desire is not a wound… it is not evidence that you haven’t healed… it is proof that you are human and alive and still open, even after all the shit you’ve been through…

That alone is not a small thing…

The moon is out tonight…and so are you, full and a little lonely, lighting up a sky that doesn’t always feel like it was made for you…

But you’ll stay here… you’ll keep showing up for yourself even when showing up feels like sitting alone in the quiet and admitting that you long for more…

That was never a weakness

That’s the bravest thing a woman can do…