There’s a shift that happens deep inside—quiet at first. It’s not loud or glamorous. No big signs. No applause. Just a whisper that something has to change. That you can’t keep living this way. That there’s more to life than pain and pretending. For those of us walking through the trenches of...
It’s strange how something so small — a pill — can feel so heavy in your hand. Some days, I catch myself glancing over my shoulder when I take my medication, as if I’m doing something wrong. It’s not the medication itself that burdens me; it’s the fear of what others might think. There’s still a...
Mental health is a silent struggle many of us carry. Pair it with recovery from substance use, and the weight can feel unbearable. As someone who’s been through it, I can tell you this: the fight is real—but so is the hope. There were seasons in my life when addiction became my way of coping with...
Yesterday was my birthday. It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t wild. There were no parties, no balloons, no crowds shouting my name. But it was clean. It was quiet. And it was mine. I used to think I had to feel a certain way on my birthday. Euphoric. Grateful. Overjoyed. But some years, especially in...
If you’re reading this and you’re hurting, I just want to start by saying: I see you. Not with the surface-level “how are you?” kind of seeing, but the deep, gut-level knowing. I know what it feels like to sit in a room full of people and still feel a thousand miles away from everyone...
There’s this unspoken rule in society that tells us not to talk about the hard stuff. We’re expected to smile through our struggles, keep quiet about our anxiety, and pretend depression is just a bad mood we’ll snap out of. I’ve learned that when people hear the words mental illness, they sometimes...
There’s a part of me that still flinches when I think about it. The days I lost. The people I pushed away. The way I let myself drown and called it survival. Addiction doesn’t show up like some monster you can fight. It shows up like relief. Like the answer you’ve been searching for. It tells you...
