This Time Last Year

This time last year, my life was nearly unrecognizable.

I had just published my first book, Tapes in Drag: Poetry & Remorse, a personal and painful unraveling that took everything in me to release and let my art live outside of me.

But what I didn’t expect was the ruckus it would cause inside my marriage.

Something about the honesty in my words, the depth of the wounds I excavated, reawakened triggers and insecurities I thought we had both outgrown. Instead, it stirred the shadows still hiding beneath the surface: unspoken resentment, old abandonment wounds, the subtle power struggles we had learned to ignore.

Suddenly, I wasn’t just navigating the vulnerability of being a published author. I was managing emotional fallout in my most intimate relationship.

It wasn’t until I removed myself from the situation — physically, emotionally, spiritually — that I could finally breathe again.

That’s when the real healing began.

I disappeared for a while. Not completely, but enough. I wasn’t posting. I wasn’t promoting. I wasn’t “building.” I was surviving. And in that quiet space, I showed up in smaller, more intimate ways in the lives of the people I loved. The ones who held me without needing me to perform.

I faced my shame. My sadness. My anger.
And piece by piece, I started coming home to myself.

Now, looking back, I realize that the breakdown wasn’t a setback. It was a sacred interruption. It was the foundation of my book So, I Married My Shadow: Poetry & Reflections...and path to self-actualization.

Here’s to what a year can do.
Here’s to the courage to become.