It’s amazing to think about who I was a year ago compared to now. The confidence I’ve gained just by being consistent, the drive and hunger I have for my craft…writing has always meant something to me, but in the past year I feel like I’ve claimed it for myself. My children, becoming a mother, is such a huge part of that.

And in this place where the running inner monologue runs free: who saw The Odyssey? What did we think? I’m giving my deep takes and my fangirl moments (Antinous can get it, always 😅).

Thank you for dropping by and hanging out with me.
Hugs, scribbles, and all that jazz ✨

Join the conversation and comment with your thoughts below!

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In my deepest despair.

That is the place where I realized joy is not happiness.
It is the unassuming power that fuels hope for tomorrow.

This piece contains reflections on grief, depression, Black sorrow and resilience, spiritual ache, and thoughts of wanting to disappear, alongside themes of healing and joy.

I grew up in the black church.

If you’ve been reading my blog for any amount of time, if you’ve known me or interacted with me at all, you’d know this

Rhythm on 2 and 4, lap scarves, and call and response. So much of my essence was loud and alive at church. I took a lot of that for granted.

Until it fell away in my adult life.

The churches of my youth don’t exist, not in the same way at least. And again, maybe much of that is colored by my age. My cynicism and experiences may have made me more jaded, less willing to give these “new age” places of worship the benefit of the doubt.

It was inherent for me, simple and easy and normal, to be loud and boisterous on Sundays. We woke up to Bobby Jones on BET, got dressed singing through the latest hits in gospel radio, which continued on our drive to church…and continued as we walked through the church doors.

The church mothers used to call me a church mother, at the ripe age of five years old. The only little baby who could sing the lead in Balm in Gilead, who knew a church step better than most seasoned saints.

It’s funny how in my adulthood, you’ll rarely find me saying more than an “amen” to myself in church service and prayer circles. It’s funny how whatever set of factors and stimuli and variables that have combined over the past couple of decades have left my boisterousness, my audacious and loud praise and worship, as a thing of the past.

Blackness is joy as protest.

Joy, for Black people, has never been escapism. It has been survival. Worship. Defiance. Proof that even suffering could not fully sever us from beauty.

Our very existence, in skin so brown and luscious, living lavishly and with the kind of audacity that takes up space through a simple facial expression.

Our music, our movement, our fun and free is something that many try to replicate, and yet…you just can’t.

That’s why when we hear certain songs, see certain artwork or experience certain movies. When we walk into someone’s home, when we talk on the phone with that customer service rep, when we see the curl of someone’s kitchen at the back of their heads…

We know. Recognition dawns and the ancestral legacy that none of us can escape fills the space between us. I see the joy of black and brown women expressed on corners of the internet and at coffee shops through people I’ve never met.

And yet, within our movement and expression, I feel connected. Demon nor dementor could stop God’s greatest gift to us from saving us, time and time again.

Our collective freedom is found in our joy. It was the slave’s greatest ally.

It’s that moment through the tears that we laugh and find survival in the midst of our pain. That joy shines the brightest. It’s like Jesus himself is shaking us out of it, pumping power into our veins.

It doesn’t make sense. And still, it is our fuel, our very lifeblood.

I’ve had to fight for joy in my adult life. It’s not something that came as easily after my brother announced his divorce and our relationship disintegrated. Not easy to manufacture in a church where you’re told to shut up and sit down, where racism and white supremacy run rampant in a place where you used to feel liberty to be yourself…and you’re told that ‘yourself’ is no longer welcome.

When you watch your mother fall into depression, your father fight for relevancy and prestige among people who ASKED HIM to work in the space of ministry…

(You’ll have to read Daddy’s book if you want more of that story.)

It was an uphill battle to experience joy when my first boyfriend was white and also would become my everything, but I simultaneously felt lost and discounted and confused entering a family so severely different than my own. Navigating growing up and love and relationships and planning a wedding and early marriage all in the midst of college and questions and doubt and fears.

Joy felt like it was siphoned.

When COVID hit, it felt like my baseline was varying degrees of depression. Praying that the scale wouldn’t continue to dial up in my isolated state. Watching the world burn and feeling like in the midst of the fire, people were trying to quell it with a water gun.

A worldwide fire burned and we stood back and said: “Wow. That’s crazy.”
And continued watching Tiger King.

I felt less joyful than I should when my first daughter was born and they wheeled her away to the NICU. I felt ripped in pieces, like a failure, like someone had taken anything that felt real and relevant and alive inside me and stomped it out.

Words like “oxygen rate” and “sleep score” and “feeding rate”.
MLs and Synthroid, thyroid disorders and medical discrimination clouded a time that should have been nothing but…happy.

It was the artist, Raye, who helped me remember the embodied experience that music brings to our healing. How joy and expression aid in us experiencing life again. Her music understands something I’ve only recently learned: hope is most believable coming from people who have suffered.

It was the vulnerability and creativity and ingenuity that coexisted through each track of her latest album that display for all of us how connected our unique experiences are in this life, how much we need to hold hands with the rest of the world.

How art creates the interconnectedness that we
desperately need right now.

It was the resilience I read between her lyrics that made me look this bitch up and ask, who is this? And where did she get all this oil??

Raye’s words have been healing me for the past decade, and I didn’t even know it. She’s contributed heavily in the music space, particularly on a song that was a major part of my healing about 7 years ago:

“Step out your estimate. Step in your essence and know that you’re excellent.”

When I was my most broken version of myself, young and confused and distraught and lost, those words lifted me up. Those poetic and poignant lyrics brought me out of the gutters and back to my knees, back to the holy God who created my very being. Who held me tenderly and gave me strength. The strength I needed to be reminded me of who the f*ck I is, am and was.

Joy found me in tears. It found me through strings, African drums, and a reminder of my heritage. The return to self that I experienced in Beyonce’s Bigger was enough to prepare me for seasons I had no way of knowing would come my way.

It took real loss for me to understand the power of joy, the supernatural nature of it. Losing my mother didn’t just gut me. I’ve told this story a handful of times, but in case you’re new here…

Hi, my name is Aubrey and I lost my mom 4 months after giving birth to my first daughter. We had like a month of faux bliss before she was ripped from us by that son of a bitch cancer. It was a brutal and frankly unfair experience. The feeling that I had been robbed in cold blood is something that still chills me, to my bones.

I’ve tried not to ponder too deeply on my mother’s diagnosis—it feels too ironic that she would end up with lung cancer. She was a beautiful vocalist, never smoked a day in her fucking life, and the healthiest woman I’ve known.
When the doctors told us, I felt like someone was playing in my face.

I vividly remember the moment we found out my mother was going to die. In the oncology office, the doctor hadn’t even said the words. It was the cadence of her walk, the sag of her shoulders, that told me.

I sat with my dad in that oncology office, during our only appointment with her, where she looked at us with sorrowful eyes and explained that the type of lung cancer my mother had was the single strain without any hope of a cure of treatment.

I did this while lactating into my portable breast pump.
And juggling the new responsibilities of motherhood.
And working a full time job.
And simultaneously trying to enjoy what I was grappling with would be my mother’s final days and hours.

And singing praise and worship at my brother’s church.
And being there for my dad.
And balancing the massive influx of calls and texts and well-meaning family with their ideas for treatment plans and miraculous healing centers.
And juggling the ripples of frayed family dynamics and drama.
And then lightly beginning to think about funeral planning and what her wishes were, cleaning out her closet and throwing away her things. Her LIFE…

**Trigger Warning**

My brain and my nervous system were stretched to a degree that, y’all, I say this without trying to be provocative: I could have literally killed myself.

I can see it so clearly, the choice to end my life. The idea that this could be something that would alleviate the pressure.

Maybe she and I could be together.

Maybe I wouldn’t have to navigate all of the uncertainty that she helped appease in this life alone.

Maybe all of the other unresolved shit that I’d have to face on my own, could evaporate.

The thought never fully rooted itself. And I’ll tell you why.

Joy. Incarnate.

Through my baby girl, my daughter. She saved me. God saved me through her.
Through the joy I experienced through her life.

No one wanted to utter the words, but I knew someone had to.
Mom was going to die.

I said it to myself, repeated it in my brain over and over again. I got in my car and called my brother, who was grappling in his own way with the reality of this warped nightmare we were all in. As we wrapped the phone call, I sat in the parking lot of my apartment complex.

I felt numb. There were no more tears, no more fighting the inevitable.

My mom was hoping for a miracle, but I knew it was over. I felt it deeply, this tear, this ripping apart. Her soul departing from my own being. It was as if she died in that office when we got the news that her prognosis was terminal, and not the couple of months later when she actually took her last breath.

Through it all, I still had to go in my front door and face my little baby. This living and breathing pure little person who wasn’t colored by the harsh reality that was life.

Who was a living manifestation of Mommy’s prayers for a miracle.

My daughter’s breaths, her cries, her little fingers and toes. Her coos and giggles. The way she so naturally and easily curved into my bosom. The ease with which she identified me as this important thing in her life, how simply being near me meant comfort and safety. The day her eyes lit up with recognition as she saw my face for the first time…

That was when I knew too. That there was more to joy than this feeling of satisfaction. She was the living and breathing proof that there was a source.

Something much deeper than a superficial happy could ever give me.

I tapped back into my black church roots soon after my mom passed. I found every single old school gospel track I could remember my mom singing in our house, every choir song my dad directed at church, every old Mary Mary album and every praise and worship track I had helped lead.

I blasted them all throughout our house. And we found joy in a hopeless place.

Every single day, without fail, we would play music in our house. Every day, all day. And not just little kiddie nursery rhymes. Our daughter knew Snarky Puppy and Marvin Gaye and Cece Winans before she spoke her first word.

I rediscovered Israel and New Breed during my quest to flood my home with joy. And the timing was…impeccable. I found this video presentation of them at Essence fest. They performed outside and, because it was still COVID-era, people were in their cars.

As my momma took her final breaths, I was learning to breathe again.

Happy. That’s what we’re chasing when we chase joy.

And there’s an important distinction between the two feelings, the two states of being. It’s easy to spiritualize joy through praise and worship, but I think it’s so much deeper than that.

Raye is tapping into something so human, I think it’s the very nature God longs for us to realize: our worship is our most vital weapon, a superpower.

How arrogant for us to believe that worship is limited to CCM.

In the months and years following this season of my life, God’s joy, God’s presence, had become a palpable thing to me. It is everywhere, They are everywhere. Another prime example of this: Renaissance.

A lot of my daughter’s first year of life feels like an actual cloud of survival. I was trapped in a world of depression that manifested through overcompensation. But it’s a fog, like I had a ton of lead lying over my eyes.

I can mark the end of that insurmountable weight.
It was the the opening riff of I’m That Girl.

It quite literally LEVITATED me from my mattress. And as the tracks played, I realized how pain and healing weren’t meant to be experienced in isolation. That dancing through the tears builds a kind of community that is fearless, tenacious.

I found joy in the music, in the shared experience that this life is some SHIT, but we are all overcomers.

How incredibly disconnected we are from the supernatural work that happens when the girls get together, take shots of Patron, and dance through the tears, through the pain.

Because some of my truest healing came in the form of shaking ass with my best friends. When I felt alive again, I wanted to connect with myself, with the world, with my husband, with my daughter.

I wanted to grow and thrive and try to connect the brokenness I had experienced with the purpose I still served this world.

And the work, the words, flowed from there.

I sing these words with all three of my daughters every morning. To remind them, and myself, that joy is our birthright. Something meant to be experienced in our darkest moments and celebrated in our triumphs alike.

There is no room for chains in my life anymore. I’m too busy spinning in circles, dancing with my babies in the kitchen.

And so, don’t you give up, you beloved and valuable creation. Gather your girls (or your gworls), step outside and feel some grass beneath your toes. Breathe in the air. Let the tears fall. And remember:

David danced too.
And we all have a right to feel the sun.

AN: This is my love letter to the creators, because we need you. We need art, we need joy, no matter how painful.

If you find yourself suffering, always know there are people who want to help. And you can find that help here.

It is my prayer that your night may end, and your joy may come swiftly. Thank you to RAYE for the reminder.

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Today, I talk a lot about my own journey in figuring out what it looks like to be in a spiritual community today, what I wrestle with as I’m within my own church community, and how our own cognitive dissonance even keeps us from living out a life Christ challenges us to…together.

And you better believe, a written blog post around this topic (and its many sub-topics) is soon to come…

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No one knows what I go through on Mother’s Day.

There are certainly assumptions. The grief, the loss of my mom a few years ago, is the most glaringly obvious. And yes, her absence rings out each year as this holiday approaches.

What y’all don’t understand is that her absence lives with me every single day.

I’ve had to learn to live in the midst of grief. I’ve had to evolve and grow into a new Aubrey who is without her mother, her comfort, her safe space. And there are times when that weighs on me. Other times—most times—I am grateful for who I’ve become both in spite of and because of that loss.

Mother’s Day is complicated because all three of my babies were born in April. And two out of three of them, the twins, spent Mother’s Day, my first Mother’s Day with them earthside, in the NICU. So my holiday with my newborns was spent surrounded by monitors and praying for the day I would hear those liberating words: They get to go home today!

And Simone, she came home like two days before the holiday. I was deeply affected by leaving her in the hospital after she was born. I felt like I had failed, as if by leaving her there I was leaving my heart. I spent the weeks immediately following her birth, the birth of my first child, wrapped in depression and anxiety and grief. I would pump and weep and eat a little bit.

And through it all, my mom was there to comfort me.

I brought Simone home, and my mom had set up our apartment with balloons and Mother’s Day cards and gifts. She called me and we wept and cried. And then, she wrapped up the call with a final suggestion:

”Your sister-in-law is hosting a Mother’s Day tea at the church this weekend. I know you just brought the baby home, but I was wondering if you’d want to get dressed up and go?”

My daughter was born in 2021, and COVID was still alive and rampant and scary, especially for a brand-new mommy who had spent her pregnancy in the full pandemic level restrictions and protocols. Not to mention, I am old school (and my mom taught me to be), so bringing babies out before they were at least a month old felt wrong to me.

And besides, we had next year. That’s what I had told her. I was already counting down the days.

We found out about her stage four lung cancer a month later.

It is the single largest regret I have, that I didn’t spend my mom’s final Mother’s Day with her.

Mother’s Day was my mom’s favorite holiday. If we forgot it, she would lose her shit. (I’m not exaggerating, am I, Daddy?) And I was her only daughter, whom she was ecstatic to finally be able to be a grandmother for.

Mother’s Day is complicated because I’ve spent my whole life feeling like I got the rotten end of the stick. I was born later than my brothers, so I spent a lot of time watching and living through their experiences, hopeful for when I got them. And it felt like my versions were always tainted.

My senior prom was moved to a random airport hanger in the middle of nowhere.

My dad almost missed my graduation because his flight got canceled.

My wedding was filled with extra layers of family drama that were both brand new and stressful to navigate.

My pregnancy happened during a once in a generation global pandemic.

My daughter’s birth was an early induction that resulted in my newborn being admitted to the NICU for two weeks.

And so, I was really looking forward to the simplicity of normalcy. I just wanted a normal experience of being a mom on mother’s day…with her mom.

And now…

It has taken me some years to unpack the feelings, the complexity of my grief. But it’s because of my daughters that I’ve had to. I refused to give them a childhood marred by my own disappointment with life.

My mom never did that.

I spent a lot of my oldest daughter’s first year of life really sitting and remembering my mother. I thought a lot about my childhood and how joy-filled and safe it was. But that happened in the midst of a lot for my mother.

A woman who had two older children and was probably beginning to explore who she was outside of birth and care-taking and the traditional women roles within the home, who suddenly had an infant daughter to care for. With two teenage sons.

There were days I know she was tired. And stressed. And probably frustrated.

And yet…all I felt as a little girl was endlessly cherished and wanted and loved.

It’s so interesting to consider my mother’s frame of mind when I was a little girl. And I feel more connected than ever with her, and she’s not here to share in that. This is the real grief for me.

Because all of the stories she shared in the car—we spent a lot of time in the car—and the nuggets of wisdom she’d share while we were cleaning the house and the moments when she’d drop off a pack of new underwear or buy some socks when I didn’t need them. All of that makes so much sense now.

I find myself caught in similar habits and patterns as I care for my family. Anticipating the need before it is vocalized. Noticing the nuanced emotions, the undercurrents that come with mothering that are just as spiritual as they are natural.

I understand the lessons behind the stories. The encouragement she gave me that she’s spent her whole life feeling “weird”, but as she’s gotten older, she embraced it. How she laughed and lived out loud, without apology…but in private, would feel self-conscious and shy.

I remember the times when I’d walk into her bathroom and find her in front of her mirror, pulling at the little fupa that carried me and my brothers. And how she’d complain…and I would emphatically tell her how beautiful I thought she was. And the times I’d find her in tears while getting dressed, only for us to end up giggling together as I helped her pick something to wear.

I get all that now…each and every time I interact with one of my daughters.

In my oldest, I remember how I would sneak into bed with my mom every single morning. And so now, when she does exactly the same thing, I hold her a little closer. And how she has so much to say…I remember my mom quoting to me to “watch my mouth; it will be the thing that will get me in trouble.”

I see now that she was speaking of herself.

In my oldest twin, I see the tenacity and boldness my mom lived with. The adventurer who loved white water rafting and (eventually) laughed when I jumped off of a cliff in Mexico. The way that she’s loud and silly and so perceptive. And her high soprano voice that mirrors my mom’s song.

And finally, in my youngest. Her namesake: Corinne Leigh. There are pieces of my mom that the rest of the world rarely met. The soft and sensitive side that I feel so honored to have known well. The Leigh Ann who was an introvert at heart; who was selective and didn’t let just anyone get too close. Who loved blankets and comfort and consistency. But who was incredibly witty, who let the filter down when she felt safe.

My Mom left breadcrumbs for me within my girls.
I want to leave some breadcrumbs for them too.

Many people in my life, I know (trust me, y’all, I am quite perceptive) have been tripping over the ways I’ve been sharing my heart out loud. Some of the topics I’ve explored, the evolution in my thought and theology…it’s been a journey for me.

But a very necessary one. Call it my mecca.

I think so much of what my mom grieved for me was the ways she wanted me to keep evolving. And her longing to witness and participate in that.

I remember she kept telling me, in her final days, that she wanted more time with me. And I hated when she said it because 1) it was like a knife twisting in my side; I wanted it too, desperately. But 2) it felt like a slight slap in the face to the relationship we had already shared.

We were very close; she was my best friend (truly). I told her absolutely everything, and like a good mother, she often didn’t even need me to say anything. She could read me better than anyone. She could read most of the people she encountered that way.

But what I understand now, after years of growing and changing, is that what my mom wanted was to see the truth settle in my bones: that I was a marvelous and altogether unique masterpiece. God’s design, Their precious daughter.

As I’ve walked out my womanhood, as I’ve tasted and seen of God’s goodness, Their REALNESS, the clouds have cleared. Grief helped me to see the endless splendor of Their goodness. And furthermore, to understand the depths of how They long for us to know we are enough.

It is not only my legacy, but my mother’s, to loudly become. To shout from the rooftops that God created and designed me, designed her, designed my daughters in their fullness. Every nook, cranny, desire, and imperfection is intentional.

I long for my daughters to carry that with a lot less shame. It is my deepest prayer for them. The prayer of their grandmother: that they would know, deeply know, the Spirit of the True and Living God made all of them. And they are altogether beautiful in Their sight.

And so Mommy’s words still ring true.

My body belongs to me.

Wait for the one God has for me.

In everything, give thanks.

In everything. She taught me that when she lost her mother.

Losing my mother gave me so much of her essence. I can only hope a little bit rubs off on these little girls…

I don’t think I have to hope too much though. They are already doing it.

And I fully intend to pull out the toilet paper BDSM whips at their bridal showers too.

Mom, I don’t just miss you. I am you, in so many ways.

And your eagle wings are still somehow extending down from that spiritual plane where the ancestors reside.

Give Grandma and Auntie hugs for me. And know that down here, we are doing just fine.

I know you’re smiling. And you’ll always rock my world 🤍

AN: Enjoy Mommy’s favorite song, and dance along with the women who rock your world too.

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I’m taking a little hiatus from posting long-form content on here to focus on my book. In the meantime…here are some thoughts on the recent cancellation attempt of Kevonstage.

And more deeply, some insight into my view of how the church needs to pursue the deeper work of truly understanding the call from our Messiah. Our call to love radically in the face of our own discomfort. Discomfort that is bred from teachings within the church that may not have been as true to contextual understanding as we’d like to believe.

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They are my lifeblood.

My mother, dearly missed with every breathing second, was and remains central to the kind of woman I aspire to be. She has colored so many facets of how I relate to the world around me.

My aunties, both in blood and name. Those women who dared me to think differently. Who made me laugh and blush. Challenged my thinking and tended my heart. Who embraced me in tears and prayers.

My grandmothers, those Omas who color our lives with prayers before we even exist. Who break rules and boundaries to make us be known and whole. Who endured more than we could fathom, trying to craft the legacy of strength, courage, and beauty I bask in today.

My daughters are the center point of who I am every day. They are my drive, my push, my desire to be and become. It feels like the most ironic part of my being that in the absence of so many women I cherish, God would supply me with three little blossoming women to keep me going.

Friends, coworkers, random women I encounter online, in media, in mind…the experience of being and becoming woman has been so important, so powerful to me.

Women. We are some damn magic.

And so, to close out Women’s History Month, and to put a button on some of the deep processing in my own becoming, I wanted to uplift the voices of women who have shaped me, inspired me, and challenged me to become.

Women who, like me, in their own ways, dared to become.
Dared to step out.
Dared to share words of healing and wisdom and sorrow with the world, not knowing who they might impact.

These three women have impacted my life with their boldness and audacity. Enough that I felt maybe I could step out on the water too.

Honoring them is honoring us.
And so, I invite you into their worlds for just a moment.

Dara, one of the most creative women I know, continues reinventing herself, surprising both herself and the world with the multifaceted nature of becoming. The journey it is. The way a person can be many things and still be wholly, fully themselves.

Mallakah, my dear Arab sister, who has leaned into her roots and heritage in a way that links us. In a world centered in whiteness, assimilation, and quiet, we both dreamed in romance and whimsy as girls—and somehow found ourselves still dreaming as women, though now with the scars and bruises to show for it. Her becoming is rooted in the ancestors who spoke her essence into being. And now, she stands firm and tall in that.

And finally, my big sister, Cristina. A woman who has overcome…some shit. And still stands. Still grieves. Still feels. With daughters of her own who fuel her becoming. In the absence of her mother, she shared my own. She’s been a sister to many, a friend to even more.

We read the assurance in her prose. We feel the weight of Black womanhood—rage, resilience, survival—woven into every line. It is a painful inheritance, but one that somehow becomes a foundation for the world around her.

I invite you into their words, their art, their hearts.

Dara

When I asked these women to contribute to this piece, Dara answered that call in a way that felt so her. She didn’t just write about becoming. She built something out of it.

Using my affirmation deck, Becoming Dara, as my answer to the call (very fitting).

The woman I am today was shaped by the willingness to stop and look honestly at myself. I found myself in a season of deep introspection where nothing went unexamined: who I was, what I believed, how I spoke to myself, what I had been carrying, and what it had cost me.

For a while, it felt like becoming someone entirely new—until I realized I was becoming the me-est me yet.

The frustrating thing about becoming is that it is, in fact, a journey and not a destination.

Out of that reckoning came The Becoming Dara Affirmation Deck—a self-created card deck built around six categories: trust, worth, courage, voice, body, and expansion.

It is past me, reminding current me of exactly what I need to hear.

There’s something so powerful about creating language for yourself when no one else gave it to you. About becoming your own mirror. Your own reminder.

Mallakah

My literary sister was one of the first to say yes to this piece—and for good reason. Her becoming feels like a return as much as it does a discovery. Remembering what was always there, just waiting to be claimed.

The verb “become” means to begin, and I remember being a little girl being asked, “What will you be?” However, upon reflection, the adults never asked me when I began. I’d like to think I began as soon as I took my first breaths. My cries were poems, songs, and stories that have been interwoven in me on a molecular level. Hundreds of years of being carried in the women before me has given me the skill that I have to write and create.

Throughout life, I was met with voices from overbearing family members comparing me to the cousins in the Balad (country in Arabic) who were lawyers, doctors, engineers. I’d be asked, “Habibti, what will you be?” Have they ever considered that my writing is all those things? I deliver justice with my words. The worlds that I build are structurally sound, engineered to withstand time. My poems are salves and medicines for the wounds that the world has inflicted upon us.

They seemed to have forgotten that we come from a place where the arts were something of value and highly treasured—and I let their forgetfulness affect me.

I walked in a fog as I tried to find my place in the world. I am a sister, daughter, wife, friend. Even though I love those titles endlessly, I still felt like something was missing. They are titles that benefit others in some ways, but what title is self-fulfilling?

I spent so long running from the talent and truth, only to come back to the thing that brought me childlike wonder—Writer.

Through my experiences and endless love I am becoming the woman I was destined to be. I am creative, loving, beautiful, smart, and Arab. I am the woman that the women of my past dreamt of.

From one runner to another, it’s a beautiful thing when we stop and notice that our becoming has been there all along.

Cristina

These words speak for themselves.

Piece by Piece

Most people talk about womanhood
as if it arrives all at once.

A birthday.
A milestone.
A marriage.
A child.
As if one day
the world quietly nods and says,

now, you are a woman.

But that is not what I have seen.
Womanhood doesn’t arrive suddenly.
It unfolds quietly and gradually
through experiences shaping you
long before you understand
what they are doing.
Before I even knew the word ‘woman’,
I was a quiet girl
learning the choreography of expectation.
Sit still.
Cross your legs.
Don’t speak too loudly.
Be seen not heard.

Good girls, I learned early, take up less space.

So I folded myself small
and called it obedience.

My becoming didn’t begin with confidence.
It began with caution.
Caution in rooms where I was expected to be quiet.
Caution in spaces where being Black meant
my tone could be misunderstood
before my sentence was even finished.
Caution in relationships that taught me
love and safety do not always arrive together.

Like many girls
I learned how to perform
what people expected a “good woman” to be.
Polite.
Controlled.
Measured.

My mother died
before I could learn from her
what it meant to grow into a woman.
My father wasn’t around
to show me how a woman should be loved,
protected, or valued.
I didn’t inherit an example.
I had to search for it in others.

So womanhood stayed mysterious for a long time.

Life had to teach me.
God had to guide me.

As a child, Catholicism gave me a saint’s name
I wasn’t born with.
A ceremony meant to make me new.
An expectation I didn’t know what to do with.
A religion I didn’t have full faith in.
But becoming is never that simple.
No ritual declares it.
No moment announces it.
And most of the time it’s not celebrated.
The real transformations
came much later.
Through heartbreak.
Through disappointment.
Through grief.
Through moments when people
felt entitled to my trust
without ever earning it.

Soon I found myself standing in rooms
where I was the only one who looked like me.
Rooms where strength
is mistaken for aggression.
Rooms where every sentence
had to pass through caution
before it reached the air.

So I became more aware.

I learned restraint.
I learned how survival
sometimes looks like silence.
And somewhere along the way,
love began to teach its own lessons.
Mine was the kind that teaches you
how close you can stand to someone
and still feel unseen.
The kind that quietly reshapes
a woman’s understanding of herself.
Those lessons didn’t destroy me.
They rearranged something inside me.

They forced me to unlearn.

To release the silence I was taught to keep.
To release the versions of myself shaped only
to make others comfortable.
Because becoming a woman
is not just about what you gain.
It is also about what you refuse to carry.
Somewhere between heartbreak and healing,
I began to understand something.
Womanhood isn’t a role you inherit,

It’s a consciousness you grow into.

Resilience built from experience.
Joy that survives grief.
Stories you refuse to let disappear.

Womanhood is something you assemble
from memory,
truth,
and courage.

Piece by piece, a woman appears.

So when people ask who I am becoming,
I don’t say perfect.
I don’t say healed.
I don’t say finished.
I say aware.

Aware of my voice.
Aware of my strength.
Aware that every experience
has been shaping me into someone
I could not have imagined years ago.

Because becoming is not a destination.
It is a conversation between who you were
and who you are brave enough to become next.

I am still having that dialogue.

Now I watch my daughters
standing at the beginning
of their own becoming.
Girls learning the world.
Girls learning themselves.
But their foundation
will not be built on silence.
I will teach them that
womanhood is not about perfection
or containment.

Womanhood is about courage.

The courage to keep discovering
who you are,
even when the world
tries to name you first.
And if they ever wonder
what becoming looks like,
I hope to show them

a mirror of themselves.

-cristinarenette

If you are a woman still daring, still seeking, still searching…
May you find yourself in good company here.

We are the force that creates life. We birth and bleed and break and build.

This world needs the stories of women, because it is through our reckoning that we learn to see with a fierce rawness. One that makes space for so many.

Let this herstory above carry the legacy my Omas, my aunties, my sweet daughters have poured into me. The one my mother left in her sweet songs.

Beautiful in essence. Complex in execution. And so necessary, we are.

AN: I’m so thankful to the women who contributed to this piece. And to all of the women who took a moment to read our words. Hopefully, our becoming encourages your own.

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You’d find them everywhere.

In the margins of my study Bible, in my Twitter bio, in every journal I owned. In the crevices of my subconscious. In my posture, the way I talked to boys, the way I talked to myself.

The words weren’t just written down. They were embedded.

Proverbs 31.

I imagine many of us—the late bloomers in Christ—weren’t concerned with the quiet neglect our brand of self-talk created. The erosion of self-image, self-worth, self-esteem. When your entire framework for womanhood is built around restraint, there isn’t much room left for curiosity. Or for that slow, natural process of growing up. The unique and special experience of girlhood.

This sacred time in our lives was often marred by something ancient living inside of us. There was a Mosaic-law-abiding feminine living inside many of us. A version of ourselves already trained to monitor desire, to anticipate judgment, to behave as though we were being watched.

I always considered myself a girly-girl. I loved clothes, loved makeup, loved princesses and playing house and dolls and high heels. I spent a lot of my time with my mother, and much of the rest I spent by myself.

Looking back, I can see the vacuum around me. Not an absence of love (never that), but an absence of language. I didn’t have access to a framework for understanding myself that went beyond what was permissible and appropriate.

That vacuum created its own kind of conditioning.
And from it, confirmation bias.

Palatability became my goal, over authenticity. My goodness meant being pleasing and manageable, to the point where my own imperfections, my own wants and needs that existed outside of that, became things to ignore, squash, and destroy.

And I didn’t think of it as suppression then. For me, it was the path towards righteousness. In the sight of a God who also saw all of the hidden things. I conveniently tried to forget that last part.

Being true to myself was my greatest sin as a child.
But it would be my greatest triumph as a woman.

Who else grew up with Barbie?

I was obsessed with her. The dolls. The house. The castle. The clothes. The shoes. The accessories.

And the movies.

I’m a Disney girl through-and-through, but y’all…The Princess and the Pauper? With THE Martin Short cast as the villain? It’s an all-timer.

Those movies held up a mirror to so much more than the romance I dreamed of. They gave me the license to dream of a world where I didn’t have to be just a sheltered little church girl. A world where a Black girl could be bold and ask big questions. Someone soft and beautiful. And maybe even a little bit rebellious.

I gravitated toward these stories, and not because I wanted to be them. They were allowed to feel in ways I didn’t always know were available to me.

Oddly enough, I’ve found a lot of the most hidden pieces of myself in the whitest of characters. There’s a liberty, a kind of audacity, that white girlhood is allowed to carry. A freedom to be loud, messy, dramatic, and expressive. Encouragement to take up space without apology. That experience is nurtured in ways that many Black girls spend a lifetime fighting for.

It’s why Ericka, the indentured servant who longed to be a concert singer in The Princess and the Pauper, spoke to me more than Akeelah making it to the National Spelling Bee.

It’s why Laura Ingalls Wilder and her prairie-girl life in 1800s Minnesota captured my imagination more than anything Penny Proud had going on in 2000s California.

Those girls were allowed to be soft. Romantic. Dramatic. Adventurous. And somewhere inside me, I wanted that too.

I think I longed to feel feminine and alive in my own skin. Beautiful in a world that rarely modeled it for me. And I longed for that within a system that told me those things were dangerous. That a woman’s “charms,” as Proverbs puts it, were fleeting.

So while the stories I loved invited me to dream…

The theology I inherited taught me to bury those dreams, to be careful with the very parts of myself those dreams awakened.

Of course, we’re talking about Proverbs 31.

Before the Bible thumpers rush in to beat me back into submission, hear me out. I touched briefly on this passage in my last post, but it deserves a deeper look here.

Because there’s a deep intersection between how women’s worth is defined, the violent ways our bodies are viewed and interpreted across culture, and the quiet theology that shapes how we see ourselves.

Sex. Purity. Virtue.

Our worth became tied to a biological phenomenon known as the hymen. Something internal and invisible to anyone who didn’t know you intimately, yet something that felt branded into our souls for the world to judge.

Virginity becomes our dowry.

In a world where a lot of women don’t even know who their father is, let alone have one negotiating their price.

I spent the better part of my youth obsessed with the idea of purity. I owned several purity rings. My friends and I spoke often about the responsibility we carried as women to save ourselves. I crafted an identity around who I believed Proverbs 31 was calling me to be.

But my body entered the conversation early.

I sprouted breasts at nine. I started my period at eleven.

I’ve seen the celebratory scenes in movies and TV shows, where womanhood arrives like a beautiful rite of passage. That was not my experience at all.

Those moments were instead filled with anxiety and shame. My mom spent shopping trips looking for bras that wouldn’t “enhance” too much, worried about my modesty, and looking at undergarments became a mechanical and clinical process. I just needed something that would keep my nipples covered without drawing attention.

My period became another signal that my body had to be monitored, disciplined, and kept modest. I had violently painful cramps, and while my mom normalized that process for me, it was something I was taught to keep to myself. Summertime was always an awkward time for me. I had never learned to use a tampon because it was “inappropriate” for me to wear them.

By the time I reached adulthood—well into my marriage, actually—I realized something almost absurd.

I had never allowed myself to buy things, do things that made me feel good.

I never went looking for clothes that made me feel vibrant and feminine. I shied away from the dresses that showed a little leg or tops that allowed my cleavage to exist without apology.

I had grown up curvy and busty in a white Anglo-Christian suburb, constantly negotiating the tension between my body and the environment around me.

I learned early that being held tenderly was a fantasy. That longing too loudly was dangerous. That sexiness was something to manage, not embody.

And so I wrestled with the scriptures. Because I wanted to feel beautiful. And sexy. And alive in my own skin. But that desire felt too close to rebellion against the God I longed to please.

So I went looking again. I read. I searched. I prayed. I cried.
I wrestled honestly with the woman God had made in Their image.

A woman I had spent years quietly learning to hate.

And my study revealed that I had been striving for the wrong type of woman. That we’ve been reading God’s word to women all wrong.

I’m going to hold your hand when I say this: Proverbs 31 ain’t got shit to do with your purity. And it took me way too long to see that.

As I started grieving the version of myself I had spent so many years perfecting, I began to look at her differently. I started trying to see her through the eyes of Jesus. And in that process, the warm and inviting words of welcome I had always associated with Him brought me back to Proverbs.

This time, I read it with His lens in mind. And what I found left me breathless.

This passage, this poem, is not a checklist for sexual purity. It doesn’t demand smallness or invisibility. And it certainly does not promise a husband as payment for good behavior.

That was never the point.

Proverbs 31:10-31 is a celebration of womanhood in its fullness.

This poem, Eshet Chayil (“A Woman of Valor”) as known by the Jewish tradition, is a song of praise customarily read as a part of Shabbat.

And according to the Jewish Women’s Archive:

“…imagining this prayer in its original context, a time in which domestic labor was the primary way for women to express their value, it remarkably and beautifully honors unseen labor performed in the home.

While this can feel limiting in a modern context where unseen labor, performed by individuals within the household or others beyond, is often overlooked, this prayer captures a snapshot of a time when its recitation was a meaningful way for women to be seen and honored for their service.”

In a world where women were often treated as property, God offers something radical: visibility, agency, and palpable respect.

Proverbs 31 is a song of knowing, esteem, and love. With that context, we are invited to recognize ourselves in it.

We see a portrait of a woman whose life carries weight and dignity, and God’s license to us to celebrate her resilience and power. Her, our, being.

In this portrait, I see a woman who is economically savvy, communally invested, spiritually grounded, and wildly competent. And I hear God’s voice as He champions our unique ability to be our whole selves unapologetically, and to be cherished for it.

Decode the agricultural metaphors and ancient economic language, and what you find is not a perfectly-placed porcelain doll.

You find:

A woman with agency.
A creative.
A community builder.
A businesswoman.
A partner.
A faithful steward.
A woman whose life reflects devotion.

God is interested in a tapestry far richer than needlepoint and recipe books. Which makes this passage an invitation for all of us to consider a life oriented around wisdom, care, creativity, and devotion.

When Proverbs 31 is reduced to a chastity badge, we flatten this holy blessing into something transactional. We give up our vibrancy and color.

And really, what are we trading? What do we theoretically get in return?

I think a lot about my own “goods,” and how long I went ignoring that they were even there. How worried I was about my own product—my own body—and how it would eventually be received by someone else.

I was so focused on protecting it that I was afraid to even see it. Afraid to appreciate it for myself.

There is already a deep shame attached to women’s bodies in general. But tack on targeted Bible studies, True Love Waits pledges, a few of those sticky-tape/dirty-gum/used-up-eraser metaphors, and enough fearmongering from our parents and church leaders… and you find yourself believing that deep unfulfillment might just be the price of purity.

Because your reward is simply that you did it. That you didn’t let someone else touch you.

Or that you didn’t touch… yourself.

TRIGGER WARNING FOR THE REMAINING
PEARL-CLUTCHERS IN THE ROOM

We’re about to talk about masturbation.

I cannot tell you how many times I searched for answers on this. Scriptures. Articles. Opinion pieces. Praying to God, praying to Mary, praying to the trees. Just trying to get some answers on what the hell a girl was supposed to do with a desire to remain “untouched” by others, but still living inside a body with a biological need for release.

I was taught that my physical pleasure was a gift reserved for my husband. Something created to be enjoyed with someone—and ultimately by that someone.

So not only was premarital sex against the rules. Premarital anything was.

I remember watching movies where the leads would fall into bed together in a moment of passion. I remember seeing couples my age making out at the movies. Seeing people grinding and dancing at school events.

And I judged them hard, honey.

And then went home and flicked my bean.
Then cried, disassociated, and pretended it never happened.

That cycle broke something in me.

All of my earliest memories of arousal—those little flutters in my stomach, the curiosity of my own body—became tangled up with regret and shame. The beautiful discovery of sensual touch was replaced with guilt.

I became that unfeeling porcelain doll.

Sometimes I wonder what it might have been like to feel allowed to know my own body. I wonder if I would have been less afraid to venture into the dating world. Less awkward around men. Less confused in the early years of my marriage about what turned me on and what actually made me feel good.

I wonder if I would have felt beautiful as a teenage girl with full breasts and an even fuller brain. A girl who was intelligent and witty and generous and creative…who was also allowed to be sexy. Allowed to enjoy feeling alive in her own skin.

I wonder if I would have suffered as much physically. If I might have carried less anxiety. Fewer tension headaches. Less pain during my cycles, during sex. Less fear living in my own body.

And now I look at my life and laugh a little.

Because somewhere along the way, God emboldened me to start talking to the church girls about the joys a vibrator can bring to your life. About how regular orgasms can actually help regulate your mental, emotional, and physical health.

Right in time for me to start preparing to raise three daughters.
Life is funny like that.

I wouldn’t be the mom, the woman, I am today without this journey.

I wouldn’t feel empowered enough to live in the glory of my internal feral goddess. A piece of me that God made, too.

I wouldn’t be able to see myself as clearly as I do now, in all my beautiful imperfections.

Self-touch has made me more aware of and grateful for the beautiful body God has given me. And less afraid to live in it.

I first started grappling with that gratitude when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter.

There is nothing, absolutely nothing, like carrying a child. And that’s not to say everyone has to experience it. But it is wholly unique. Physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually.

The transformation that happens internally and externally is astonishing.
In many ways, we are made new.

Feeling your baby grow is one thing. But watching how your body evolves to carry that child, to nurture and nourish them, is something else entirely.

Your breasts fill with milk when your baby cries.
Your ears suddenly hear the faintest whimper from the other side of the house.
Your body instinctively curves around your child in the middle of sleep.
Your legs grow strong enough to carry three forty-pound kids at once.
Your hair falls out after your baby has drained every last nutrient from your body.
Your cycles quietly begin preparing, month after month, to create life again.

That’s womanhood. Constant transformation, internally and externally.

When we know and understand what these bodies are capable of, we can celebrate the miracle God did in creating women.

And one of the greatest injustices we are handed (yes, handed) is ignorance about our ever-evolving and transformative bodies.

So when we talk about pleasure centers, when we consider the parts of our being that were literally designed to help us feel good, it becomes almost comical how quickly we shut down the conversation.

As if those fires were never meant to be tended. We almost mock God with that logic.

Why would He design our bodies so intricately if they weren’t meant to be known? If they weren’t meant to be explored with care, curiosity, and respect?

And honestly… who in their right motherfucking mind tries to assess the terrain without ever learning the landscape?

Who do I look like coming to my partner, my husband, saying, “you’re not doing it right”…when I didn’t even know what right felt like?

Which is exactly what happened, by the way. And we just looked at each other like:

Here’s the even more wild part: I spent many years confused and ashamed about the things I liked and wanted…because I wasn’t supposed to know I wanted them yet. But I did.

I read really filthy books as a teenager. I loved steamy romance. I lived on Fanfiction.net, especially during the Twilight era. And I definitely snuck out and saw Fifty Shades of Grey opening weekend my junior year of high school.

In the midst of all that curiosity, I still carried deep shame about my own body.

I had a regular relationship with self-stimulation. It was something I found deeply relaxing, but as soon as it was over, it felt like a bomb cyclone of shame hit me. It existed as a secret compartment of my life. Something hidden away, something never spoken out loud.

Eventually, that secrecy just became normal.

I’ve shared before about how this tension showed up in my marriage. But how shame and denial affected my relationship with myself is a much deeper story.

I didn’t know how to be embodied. And that was a terrifying place to live in.

I realized, a year into being married, that I never knew what I liked about myself.

My body, my mind, my soul—all strangers to the image I had spent years trying to project. If some part of me didn’t align with the Proverbs 31 woman I imagined I was supposed to be, I quietly rejected her.

And that realization went far deeper than relationships.

I hadn’t learned how to fall in love with myself. I hadn’t learned how to follow my own curiosity or lean into the things that genuinely brought me life. Everything I did needed a purpose, a justification, an agenda that made it respectable.

Even my career choices carried that same logic.

In college, I majored in education. At first, it made perfect sense in my mind. Teaching felt like a natural extension of service. It fit neatly into the future I imagined for myself as a wife, a mother, a helper, a doer.

But as I moved deeper into my studies, I realized something surprising: I actually loved the concept of education. I loved the way knowledge could unlock people. The way wisdom could free someone’s thinking.

But outside of that, I hated the education system.
And I had no desire to join it.

And it took me years to admit that—even to myself.

Because the education world gave me something else: credibility. A role where I could be valued and praised for serving others, while quietly ignoring the parts of myself that still hadn’t been explored.

It was a mask I wore well.

I had found a profession that fit comfortably inside the expectations I had placed on myself. And it was especially attractive as a Black woman navigating systems that were more than happy to celebrate my labor while overlooking my individuality.

For a long time, I almost let them play me. (That’s another blog post.)

Recently, though, something much smaller forced me to confront all of this.

I was standing in my closet. Postpartum with three kids, exhausted and overdue for a wardrobe refresh, I started sorting through my clothes.

I realized two things almost immediately:

1. I hadn’t really purchased my own wardrobe since my mother passed away. *In fact, when she died, I inherited most of her clothes. Many of her pieces were still hanging there.

2. Almost none of these clothes accentuated my body.

Most of those clothes had been chosen by my mom, with little input from me. My chest was always covered, my shape softened or hidden. My mom had always been particularly protective about that part of my body.

As a girl mom myself now, I don’t blame her 😅

But standing there in that closet, another realization crept in.

My breasts are sexy. I have a nice cleavage. I have new curves that I earned carrying my babies that I now wear with pride. Imperfections that have this crazy ability to make me feel simultaneously powerful and slightly insecure.

And damn it—I want to wear things that make me feel good about myself.

When my eyes started watering, the emotion settled deep.
I had never actually considered what made me feel attractive.

Which meant the idea of feeling sexy, even within a healthy, loving sexual partnership, still felt foreign to me. The epiphany left me feeling embarrassed, a little confused.

And yes… deeply ashamed, but for a totally different reason.

Somehow, on the journey to becoming, I had broken myself down.

So, I sit here with you.

Still learning from the ways I neglected myself. Still determined to romanticize this beautiful life I’ve been given.

It’s hard enough to be honest about our needs. But learning that language for the first time as an almost thirty-year-old, postpartum, married (to a white man) Black woman who lost her momma?

That’s where I find myself.

I didn’t always care much about conversations around patriarchy or feminism. Maybe that’s because I’m not someone who naturally gravitates toward “ism” labels. I’ve always been wary of systems that try to flatten people into categories. Nuance matters too much to me for that.

But somewhere along the way, I encountered the words of the great Alice Walker.

And womanism quietly made its way into my theological imagination.

I’m still a baby womanist. But the essence of it feels right. Walker offers a vision of the world that resonates deeply with the experience of Black women—a world that honors our wholeness, that understands our need for community, for the village, for spaces where we are fully seen.

And that vision feels closer to God than the narrow script of chastity and silent submission.

I know my story into knowing, into becoming, isn’t your story.
I know sex and sensuality isn’t everyone’s passion or form of liberation.
I know some of us may feel uncomfy with ideas of self-pleasure and scripture coexisting.

But I think that coexistence might actually be the point.

To be seen and known as women, collectively, is where our strength lives.

There are breadcrumbs in our individual experiences. Wisdom we can gather from one another that doesn’t require us to live identical lives or make identical choices.

Our vulnerability is power. Our honesty is how we hold hands.

I’m not here to convince you of anything except your own worth.

But I do hope that somewhere out there, some twenty-something woman stumbles across these words and recognizes herself in the mess.

I hope she learns that her unraveling might actually be the beginning of her becoming. That in the messy gray spaces of life, God is not abandoning her. He is shaping her, slowly turning her into something vibrant and unexpected.

A rainbow, a kaleidoscope that captures color in the light.

And if the metaphor is too much for you, I'll say it plainly:

You are altogether beautiful, beloved. And woman-to-woman, knowing that is your true superpower.

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We’re talking more about why I write so much about love, sex, and romance, and I also talk about what’s coming in the next few months.

Join the conversation and drop a comment below!

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Let me tell you a sad tale of passion left unrealized.

Growing up, romance was treated like a reward, something I was striving for. Something earned through obedience. I wasn’t allowed to live inside of it. It wasn’t something discovered or explored. Not something felt through desire.

As I dreamed of my future, being held tenderly started to feel like a fantasy. That loud yearning in my chest was dangerous and unpleasing to God.

Sexiness, attraction, chemistry. These concepts became things to manage, not embody. Which is wild, when you really think about it.

Longing is human. The way it blooms in each of us is different, yes, but it is far from unnatural. And yet, for so many women, especially those raised in faith spaces, that part of us was trimmed back and disciplined into silence.

When a woman’s longing is treated like a liability, she doesn’t become holy.

She becomes untethered.

We need to long and be longed for. And when that experience is stripped from us, when it is postponed indefinitely as a prize for perfect behavior, cynicism sets in. And our roles within committed relationships can feel more dutiful than alive.

Where is the justice for romance? Where is the fight?

Not the Instagramable, smut-fantasy desire. But that feeling in our gut that makes us feel alive within covenant.

Somehow, that got lost in our Sunday sermons.

A lot of my first romantic experiences were full of contradictions.

Don’t expect too much, but don’t settle for too little.
Be open to surprises, but make sure you maintain your standards.
Be chaste and pure, but also attractive and affectionate.

I had whiplash.

No one told me how to actually engage in real-world romantic companionship—only how to avoid doing it wrong.

So I didn’t really date in high school. I was focused on finding “the one” by the ripe age of fifteen. There was no point in entertaining anything casual if we weren’t discussing covenant and calling.

Which, in hindsight, is wildly hilarious.

I picture the poor boys on the receiving end of my interrogation energy. I rarely wore anything I couldn’t wear to Bible study, and most “normal” teenage activities weren’t on my agenda. A lot of them often mistook me for a member of the faculty.

Casual dating? Fooling around? Adolescent curiosity and awkward exploration? All of that felt beneath me. I was waiting for my destiny to appear in front of me during Biology. (Thanks, Twilight.)

And as a result…chiiiiiile, the delusions I had.

Young Aubrey did not want a boy. She wanted a grown man.
With a plan.
A 401k.
A parenting philosophy.

Above all else, she wanted a man who understood biblical marriage.

Let me pause here and clarify: I don’t think encouraging girls to know their worth is wrong. I don’t think choosing not to date in high school is foolish.

(In fact, I would love it if all three of my little girls chose to be celibate little angels from the ages of 15-25.)

But I think of all of the reasons I, and many others like me, chose not to explore. The ultimate being this idolized, idealized construct of what God had designed love and commitment to look like.

That is a prescription for not just sustained delusion. I’d argue this would be enough to make anyone feel like their individual selves must disappear before entering God’s most elite club.

I wasn’t choosing this restraint freely. I was performing preparedness for an institution I had been taught was the ultimate prize.

When a girl spends her formative years obsessing over an idealized version of covenant, one she is often handed without context, she doesn’t learn how to experience love.

She learns how to rehearse it, which will always collapse under the weight of true intimacy.

It all started on a drive with my mother, as many of these things do.

I credit my mom for so many of the best parts of myself. And as a mother now, I give her more grace than critique. I hope my girls will one day feel free enough to lovingly name the places I missed, too.

For my mom, it was love and sex.

From the earliest age I can remember, she repeated one phrase like scripture:

“Wait for the man God has for you.”

I don’t believe that sentiment was evil. Mommy was sincere in her intent.

But sincerity does not protect a message from distortion.

Because “wait” slowly turned into “suppress.”
And “God has for you” slowly turned into “don’t trust yourself.”

We’d watch princess movies, and when they rode off into the sunset, my mom would subtly affirm that this was the reward realized. The good girl who waited, the faithful heart who was chosen.

Barbie found Ken. Cinderella found her prince. And apparently, Walt Disney had been reading Proverbs.

By the time I was a teenager, I was writing letters to my future husband, a man, a BOY, whom I had not yet met. I prayed over him like he was a deployed armyman overseas, covering him for life’s many battles.

It was a romantic notion, and hindsight is 20/20. Because I can see now that my hopeful preparation was actually an obsession disguised as obedience.

I gotta tell y’all, the whole time I had Proverbs 31 in my head as a litmus test.

I wanted the husband known at the gates.
I wanted wisdom and kindness on my tongue.
I wanted to be clothed in strength and dignity.

I believed it was my job to prepare my heart for a man who hadn’t even appeared yet.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped asking who God created me to be because I was too busy rehearsing for the wife I thought I was supposed to become.

And somehow, the expectation got distorted, the image made into something palatable…and boring. The perception became this lifelong commitment offering us safety and stability, structure in a way that becomes transactional. Do these things correctly, and your love life will flourish. Perform your little white picket fence existence, go to church on Sundays, raise your 2.5 kids, and go to heaven together someday.

For all that talk about faithfulness and virtue…where is the passion?

Covenant was preached, but not chemistry.
Commitment was encouraged, but not curiosity.
Submission was enforced, but not mutual fire.

My husband and I did not “remain pure” in the eyes of the church before our wedding ceremony. I remember how taboo that used to feel to me. And that left its mark on me as we walked towards the aisle.

I told my husband shortly after we were engaged, shortly after we moved from our hometown to a city 3 hours away to finish college together, truly alone for the first time in our relationship…that we needed to remain celibate until our wedding.

That was almost 9 months away.

Before this, he and I had been engaging in quite passionate physical intimacy. It was fun, liberating, and truly foreign to me. I felt vibrant in a way that I had no real words for. I learned about the pieces of myself, a self who is actually pretty physically touch-averse, that had needs.

We had taken a trip to Cleveland in college, a secret trip no one knew about. I remember planning it, the Airbnb we picked out together. The restaurants we chose were close by. The concert we attended. The walks around downtown. The movies on the couch.

And yes, all the sex.

We had no money, had to meticulously plan to afford the trip. But when I tell you, we both walked away from that weekend together totally sure that we wanted to do life together…it was beautiful. It’s still a top 3 trip for us both.

We were liberated. No parents or church or voices in our ears. We simply got to be and try to see what it looked like to coexist in such an intimate way.

This, along with all of the other trysts we’d engaged in, replayed in my head over and over and over as I stared at the diamond on my left hand. In the months after Cam proposed, my brother went through a divorce, and I kept questioning what was right, what kind of love God honored.

And I kept wondering about the “right way” to go about things. And so, I felt we needed to re-right the course.

Hence: a 9-month celibacy purgatory.

Cam was a wonderful sport at the time. But man, did that create a nice little wound for our first few years of marriage. For us both. Because the only reason I felt like we needed, like I needed, to do this was to absolve myself of the deep-rooted shame that we weren’t “pure” on our wedding night.

Somewhere, my brain had separated the excitement and pleasures I had allowed myself in our dating life from the Proverbs 31 wife I was called to be. The wild and free woman he had gotten to know had all of a sudden become a buttoned-up Southern Baptist. And he had just committed his life to her.

The change-up was crazy.

We got married, had a honeymoon, and rediscovered the intimacy we had before we had said “I Do”, and I thought the whole ordeal was buttoned up just right.

And then, we came home.

I started my wifely performance. Trying to be sexy, trying to fulfill the things I was meant to. And what I figured out pretty quickly was that I didn’t have the language or the literacy for that character, for that act. And so much of it was focused on what he needed.

I didn’t know my own needs, and I had never asked my partner to help me meet them. I had never considered how Cam found himself attracted to me, nor did I have language for what parts of myself I found attractive.

I had never asked these questions. It wasn’t appropriate before marriage, right? And it certainly wasn’t something I felt comfortable discussing with anyone in my circle.

And so, we found ourselves, as many of the young Christian couples in the western church do, circling a question we dreaded and didn’t want to admit. But it’s real, and I’ll admit it for the rest of us: did we make a mistake?

That’s hard work for two barely twenty-year-olds to confront in the midst of work, college, and brand new adulting. But after these many years of us unpacking and unlearning, I gotta tell y’all: it’s so much deeper than youth and inexperience.

We are selling an experience in the church that lacks depth, and I just don’t believe that’s all that God has for us.

If Biblical marriage is supposed to reflect Christ and the Church, why are we so afraid of passion?

If covenant is sacred, why do we treat chemistry like a liability?

If God created bodies, desire, pleasure, longing—why have we acted like marriage was meant to neutralize them instead of ignite them?

I think much of the confusion stems from a few central teachings that have been handed down to us without much interrogation:

Our understanding of abstinence and adultery,
Our views of roles within marriage, and
Our expectations of one another built on narrow readings of both.

Most of us are simply trying not to sin.
We’re trying to be who we were told we were called to be. But…who is that? Who are we stretching toward? What are we striving for?

The images of marriage we inherit from Scripture aren’t as clean and sentimental as we sometimes pretend. When we read the Bible honestly, without polishing it for Sunday school, we see something far more human. And far more complicated.

Marriage as a contract.
Virgin women as currency.
Land, lineage, and legacy driving decisions more than romance ever did.

Many of the laws in the Old Testament were protective within that world. They were guardrails in a brutal social system where women had no real power, and survival depended on family structure and inheritance. God was working within the structures humanity had built.

But those structures were still ancient. And formed by people who were inspired by God. And our goalpost is entirely different.

Today, we rarely see marriage as a strategic move to preserve farmland. Women are not property to be exchanged; chattel slavery is illegal. And we operate in a world that at least claims to value emotional safety, consent, and personal agency.

Yet, we often cling to marital frameworks shaped for a society that did not have those societal standards. Would it not be natural, then, to read God’s message through the lens of the world we actually inhabit? To discern God’s words and what they were always pointing toward?

This is not a case for moral chaos. It’s an invitation into moral depth.

Honoring God becomes bigger than simply regulating who we have sex with and when. It becomes about honesty, mutuality, sacrifice, integrity.
It becomes about how we treat one another’s bodies and hearts.

These are things scripture speaks about far more than the wedding night technicalities laid out in Mosaic and Levitical law.

If we look at, for example, Deuteronomy 22, I doubt we see most of these actions as something we’d seek to emulate:

“Suppose a man marries a woman, but after sleeping with her he turns against her and publicly accuses her, saying, ‘When I married this woman, I discovered she was not a virgin.’

Then the woman’s father and mother must bring proof of her virginity to the elders at the town gate… and they must spread her bed sheet before the elders. The elders shall take the man and punish him… The woman will remain the man’s wife, and he may never divorce her.

But suppose the man’s accusations are true… The woman must be taken to the door of her father’s home, and there the men of the town must stone her to death… In this way, you will purge the evil from among you.”

— Deuteronomy 22:13–21

At face value, this is horrifying. And it should be. The punishment reflects a world where a woman’s virginity determined her economic survival and her family’s honor. It places value on something quite superficial that then informs the value and worth of a person based upon something irreversible in nature, once crossed.

It’s the core of our views around purity and goodness.
But look closer.

Within this brutal system, the law also punished a husband who falsely accused his wife. It regulated deceit. It attempted to curb exploitation in a world where men often had unchecked power. And it publicly vindicated the woman who was wrongfully accused.

What I see in a law like this is not God celebrating sexual policing. I see God meeting a violent system and placing limits on it.

We no longer live within that system, and if we inherit the rule without examining the system it was regulating, we risk building rules that prioritize compliance over flourishing. We set up marriages to exist as bartering tools instead of mutually fulfilling covenants that honor God and the families we build as fruit.

In what modern context would we require “proof” of virginity?
Or stone a woman for sexual history?
We reject those outcomes instinctively. And rightly so.

So the deeper question becomes: what was God moving people toward?

Throughout Scripture, over and over again, we see the same themes rise to the surface: Justice. Mercy. Faithfulness. Mutual care.

Righteous living is alignment with the heart of God. I don’t believe that heart is quite as limited as we’d like to think.

Which is why I find it stunning that nestled within stories of war, exile, prophecy, and redemption, we are given an entire book dedicated to desire.

Song of Solomon. A sweet savor.

Unapologetic, embodied, mutual, erotic celebration of love.

Delight.

I recently began studying this beautiful book through eyes that can see how much God longs for us to experience pleasure. In many ways.

We are so clinical about the experiences God allows us, but I think scripture supports a deeply emotive and sensory being who made us to be in touch with those sides of ourselves as well.

When I first read Song of Solomon, as a teenager, two things were constantly running through my head:

1. “Are they married??”

2. “Surely this is a metaphor for something more spiritual. Surely, we aren’t talking about…that.”

Proof of our clinicalness. Because what God would cosign two lovers carrying on like this?

The reality, as I’ve settled into married life and experienced love, is that this is exactly what I long for. The great lover and being the desired. Exploring that desire within safety and mutuality. Enjoying my lover and my lover enjoying me. Friendship, kinship, joy, liberation.

The endorphins that rise and fill me as I type these things are physiological proof: God delights in our delight. God wants us to long for this.

This kind of poetry was not accidentally put here.
God canonized erotic poetry.

I remember being confused, as a teenager, about where this came from. Immediately, I went the allegory route. That felt safer and more comfortable than the idea that God might actually mean…that the tree stood for…and the berries on her…

However, now I see something even more beautiful playing out in these verses. God is showing us a picture of what is later described in Ephesians. This frequently misinterpreted and misquoted verse has sent many a woman into the hallway during Sunday sermons:

^“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord…just as the church is subject to Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her…husbands ought to love their own wives as their own bodies”

-Ephesians 5:22-28

I know our first reaction to this scripture is within the framework of submission and subordination. Yet, we conveniently omit the call to mutual submission that prefaces this section in verse 21.

I encourage you to see these verses through eyes colored with the Song of Solomon.

The relentless lover lavishes his lover with compliments, gifts, and…erm, gifts…throughout the poem. He is extravagant in the ways he shows his love for her. And I’d liken it to the extravagant way that Christ loves us.

Isn’t mutual pleasure one of the clearest forms of cherished love?

In the same way, the woman is so enamored by her lover. She longs for him desperately, hunts him down even. Determined to experience his love. It reads like the best, most God-breathed steamy romance.

It also encourages us to lean into that kind of pursuit. That is flowing with mutual consideration. And respect. And awareness. And safety. And emotional intimacy. And consent.

For many of us, we battle with our desire to follow these “Godly” rules (as we’ve established above, many of these rules are based on ancient societal norms) and with what our bodies naturally respond to.

And so it becomes difficult, awkward even, to relate naturally within our romantic relationships. We’ve gotta check the boxes first. We cannot simply feel, enjoy, and trust ourselves before learning to trust someone else.

And this addresses consent.
Because when the lie becomes “well, he’s my husband, so it’s my duty—”

Hard stop, sis. Passion that feels like duty isn’t love.
Or at least, not the type we should be in pursuit of.

Instead, we should be in pursuit of this:

“My lover stands above the young men in town.
All I want is to sit in his shade,
to taste and savor his delicious love.
He took me home with him for a festive meal,
but his eyes feasted on me!”

-Song of Solomon 2:3-4

I don’t know how we read this and then shame couples for exploring their love. Learning of one another. Yearning for this kind of desire, yet being so afraid ourselves of figuring it out.

How exactly do you expect to know how to feel this way and never discuss or embark upon understanding your partner intimately before your wedding night?

It’s important to God that we know how to be playful and fun and flirtatious.

And I’m sorry, y’all, but I simply don’t believe in a theology that says:
“White-knuckle your desire for years, suppress every curiosity, fear your own body… and then magically wake up on your wedding night uninhibited and ready for mind-blowing intimacy.”

Sexual intimacy is not a reward for rule-keeping. It’s a skill. It’s a language. It’s a practice.

In this passage, I read of a God who tells us it’s natural, a celebration of who he created us to be, for us to express our love.
To call out what we find attractive.
To feel sexy and sexual and embodied.

What I don’t see in this poem is a preoccupation with a ceremony. Rather, it is preoccupied with devotion, longing, and mutual pursuit.

Exhibit B, from the relentless lover himself:

“Oh, get up, dear friend,
my fair and beautiful lover—come to me!
Come, my shy and modest dove—
leave your seclusion, come out in the open.
Let me see your face,
let me hear your voice.
For your voice is soothing
and your face is ravishing.”

-Song of Solomon 2:10-14

The man is spitting game, and we should all be taking notes. It is a miscarriage of justice that we never discussed this book in my premarital counseling sessions.

We are rarely honest enough about what it takes to know someone well enough to entrust them with our hearts and our bodies before walking down the aisle. There’s a skill, a muscle that takes time to build, if we can hope to engage in fulfilling lifelong partnerships.

Thankfully, it’s never too late to learn.

A modern relationship that honors God embodies safety.
That’s holy. And it’s really, really sexy.

What’s not sexy? Repression and regret.

The church has often confused control with purity. And then, purity becomes repression instead of integrity, leaving carnage in its wake.

The real issue is our misinterpretation of what pure living looks like to Christ. And to take His words, God’s words, completely out of context and force people to distrust their own discernment is one of the most dangerous ways we can interact in relationships.

Our baseline understanding of love and respect should be our relationship with ourselves. And if we’ve been taught not to trust our own instincts, to kill them off, to bury them…where does that leave us?

It leaves us vulnerable to abuse and to abuse. The side effects will pile up if we aren’t clear about the misdirection we’ve been given. And how they directly oppose the teachings of Jesus himself.

The emotional depth and care we should express toward one another is modeled for us by Christ through many of His interactions with the outcast, the condemned, the imperfect.

Notably, when we look at John 4, we see Him engaging the Samaritan woman at the well.

Now, I love this story for many reasons, one of them being the way this moment goes down. This interaction is not romantic, and I don’t view it in that way. He dignifies her; approaching and engaging her at all as a Jew was a bold move. And when they do speak, he is honest, but without humiliation. He offers truth as an invitation and doesn’t coerce her into anything.

I notice the baseline posture of Jesus. How he sees us before he heals. How he dignifies before he corrects. How he listens before he leads.

There is a genuine, pure love Jesus showed this woman here. And I think instead of reading that conceptually, we often look in the weeds for the ways He redirects and sanctifies. This is intimacy without the need for control. Selflessness modeled for us through emotional interaction.

This moment models for us how God is encouraging us to step outside of what is acceptable, what is deemed “proper,” to show someone they matter. To show someone you’re willing to see their perspective. To show someone that you aren’t a walking rulebook, but a person of multitudes and feelings and depth and empathy.

Seems to me those would be important traits for us to carry out in our romantic relationships. But we’re instead told to give everyone a litmus test of perfection. And anyone who shows up with their own views and history that doesn’t align with our own pious perfection isn’t worthy.

That’s just one lane we lose essence in. Gender roles are another.

In the Ephesians verse I mentioned earlier, I find so much liberation in the reading of the entire letter. It changes our understanding of Paul’s charge to the husband and wife. It helps us to see that, in actuality, he’s spitting some hard truths that are conveniently skipped over in most of our interpersonal interactions.

That word submission. It’s a charged one. And there are a ton of discussions about its origins, its cultural place, and the context for women at the time. But I don’t even think all of that analysis is necessary when we consider: Paul was talking about mutual submission. Before he even talks about the role of the “wife” in scripture, he tells us to submit to one another in love (Eph. 5:21).

My assistant pastor said it really well in a recent TikTok she made:

If we are unwilling to make those kinds of changes, to face challenges we don’t want to, to trudge through late night arguements and health battles and personal evolutions that don’t fit our personal agendas…is it really love?

When we do lean into that kind of work, I’ve found, personally, that it is quite the uncomfortable confrontation with the self.
(More on that in my previous blog post)

Submission is not hierarchy. It’s responsiveness, a beautiful display of knowing that gives the other the kind of security that lets them know they can land safely here.

Emotional safety is something more modern, not something we see covered in the Mosaic and Levitical structure we discussed earlier. That system aimed to protect women from ostracization and isolation (which would lead to death).

We need to ask ourselves what the risks to women, to each other, are today. And many of the abuses we suffer today can (and do) happen within marriages.

Many have preached “stay no matter what” without context. And as a result, those same people have cosigned harm within a structure intended to be safe. Christ taught us to love our neighbors, and love doesn’t abuse.

And so I guess, the real question becomes: do we see our lover as our neighbor?

Someone worthy of a love that embodies their needs above our own?
Someone worth our time and sacrifice?
Someone worth learning, and studying, and knowing?
Someone worthy of passionate intimacy?

Aren’t they worth variety and spice and excitement and flirtation; aren’t you worth that? Don’t you want delight? Pleasure? Mutual enjoyment and fulfillment?

Don’t you want your marriage bed to feel like a celebration, not a compliance meeting?

Read Hebrews 13:4 again, but this time not as a warning. As permission.

What if we radically overthrew the system?

What if we encouraged one another to engage in safe sex as an act of care for their partner’s physical and emotional well-being?

What if we taught about the importance of emotional intimacy and mutual submission as a baseline for how we care for one another?

What if we spent time unpacking the harm that’s been done around sexual desire and were clear about the rules of consent? For men and women?

What if we learned to communicate honestly with our partners? Without fear of judgement? What if we created an openness that allowed one another to flourish?

And above all: what if we were less obsessed with rule-keeping and more committed to loving one another well?

There is wisdom, there is discernment, there is that gut feeling that maybe you shouldn’t make that late-night phone call to that number that you know will probably mess up your 5-year-plan. But how much of the behavior we try to avoid is born from secrecy, not desire? From shame, not sin?

How much of the behavior we try to avoid comes to the surface because we refuse to be honest about our desires and needs?

I believe we need to invest time in that. In teaching one another how to care well for each other’s hearts, and when we fall short, learning how to engage better next time. Creating spaces without shame and condemnation to ask honest and real questions in the church. And get a non-church answer, offering practical, realistic wisdom.

Because we don’t stone the non-virgin women anymore. And we don’t force people to marry their assailant. And we don’t exchange brides as bartering chips for land.

Let’s make marriage sexy again, in Jesus Name.

Let’s make our pursuit of holy living an embodied experience that doesn’t exclude our humanity; it engages it.

It sees us with the eyes of our Creator, who made us to feel all of these beautifully complex emotions.

Let’s make our love stories something we can celebrate with wine, like Jesus himself showed up to the party. Let’s allow the love of Christ to flourish in a way that makes others see the beauty and vulgarity and humanness of choosing another person and being dedicated to showing up for them in return, through all of life’s ups and downs.

That kind of love is Christlike. That kind of love is attractive. That kind of love does the work of evangelism without uttering a word.

Biblical marriage, Biblical love, is something we should all want. Especially when you realize good morning texts and sex positions are just as sacred to your covenant as sacrament.

God’s love is not sterile.
It is embodied.
It is joyful.
It is attentive.
It is intimate.
It is altogether wonderful.

That, beloved, is some very good news.

AN: What a way to close out love month. Leave your thoughts, comments, and 🌹 below!

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I’m really excited to get into a topic that is really special to me…sex! As a church girl, I really didn’t have the space to articulate the thoughts, dreams, feelings, and very real desires I had in this part of my being. In fact, I’d argue that most of the girls in my circle were dealing with varying levels of suppression.

Unravelling the web of what we deem acceptable to God and what He’s really calling us to is an important part of my ministry. Especially as a #girlmom, I hope that my daughters have a little more guidance and liberation as they grow into their bodies and experience the highs and lows of romantic love.

Join the conversation and drop a comment below!

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February has always held a tender place in my heart—maybe it’s my inner romantic, maybe it’s my brown skin, but this month makes me especially soft toward girlhood, beauty, and the stories we tell about love.

So it only felt right to share a small piece of my book with you now.

These characters have become family to me, which makes this a little terrifying. What you’re about to read is raw and lightly edited—offered with trust and a lot of feeling. I’ve changed the names for now (protecting the IP and my own nerves).

Consider this a quiet preview.
A moment of becoming.

Without further ado…

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My favorite Jordan Peele movie is Us.

As someone who really doesn’t enjoy the horror film experience, I think that admission may surprise some people. And yet, in that discomfort, he brought out something frighteningly human. I relate to the fears of Adelaide Wilson—because who actually wants to confront their own brokenness head-on?

That movie sent me into a spiral of unsettledness. The parallels he drew between ourselves and our inner worlds, the mirroring between what we suppress and what lives just beneath the surface—I couldn’t look in a mirror for weeks. No joke. Yes, some of that was the imagery. But I think Jordan forced me to face things I had been avoiding.

It’s unsettling to look at yourself in the mirror.

Not horrifying. Not necessarily about body image or self-esteem. No—the hardest part about mirrors is the honesty they demand. When we stop curating and start observing, when we take real stock of what’s there…man, is that humbling.

A mirror forces you to confront what is.
Not what you hope for.
Not what you’ve curated.
Not what you’ve tried so hard to hide.

It’s all right there. And if you stare long enough, it starts to speak.

Life is filled with reflection within reflections. Moments that weren’t meant to be mirrors somehow become exactly that.` Moments where we come face-to-face with versions of ourselves we thought we had already outgrown. And that, my friends, is deeply inconvenient—and absolutely by design.

I can only speak personally. My own journeys—in marriage, in faith, in motherhood—have introduced me to myself over and over again. And let me tell you: every one of them has kicked my entire Black ass. Twelve times.

When I became a wife, I knew some kind of shift was coming in my life. I expected dips and turns—finances, love languages, schedules, expectations. How often I’d be expected to “give it up.”

What I didn’t expect was the crash course in me. Breaking down to atomic levels, the presentation, on a platter, of who Aubrey Simone actually was. I thought I knew who she was. Or certainly, who she was becoming.

And yes, some of it was just the chaos of your twenties doing what your twenties do best. I get why people thought we were insane for marrying so young. When I look back at who I was at 20 versus who I am now? Lord.

There was an innocence to it all at first. These quiet moments were when I stopped trying to be the palatable child and began stepping into who I hoped to be as a woman. I’d always been pretty sure of myself, but I quickly realized I was sure of who I had been told it was okay to be. And marriage unraveled the layers.

The hidden questions, doubts, and desires. The roles I wanted to play that I had never auditioned for. The gap between how I believed I deserved to be treated and how I actually showed up in my relationships—the labor it takes to care for myself, inside and out. The lack of care I grew up believing was normal.

This wasn’t just immaturity. It wasn’t simply, “oh, she's just a kid.”

Marriage, the presence of a person whom I had entrusted with so many intimate pieces of myself, brought out questions that I simply couldn’t believe he had the CAUCASITY to ask me.

But marriage really did its refining work on me. Marriage held up that mirror I spent years sprinting away from. Avoiding. Pretending it didn’t exist. Calling it demonic, even.

Because, as Rev. Lizzo told us, truth hurts.

The truth is: when I entered marriage, I didn’t love myself.

I loved a character. There was a girl whom I had attempted to kill off in my little stage play, which I lived out every day. And that girl, somehow, had been noticed by my husband. And he was confused as to why I had been so determined to keep her at bay. He loved that girl…so why couldn’t I?

There was a hidden desperation I was too proud to name out loud, a thirst for affirmation and praise that bred silence. Very little of that girl inside got a voice; I was willing to compromise her very existence for something that had little to do with my own fulfillment.

The deficit of my own self-love bled into every interaction, every friendship, every moment that I clung to external validation. I didn’t realize I was trying to fill something that I didn’t even know was empty.

And my husband? He got the brunt of it.

I was more in love with the idea of who we could become than I was present in who we already were, especially behind closed doors. I didn’t know how to be vibrant, flirty, sensual—because I was too afraid of how I’d be seen if I allowed that part of me to show up.

What a mess.

I think the church girls are masters at avoiding mirrors. They’re demonic anyway.

We’re taught that it’s safer to suppress what we might find in the mirror. That unflattering exposure, this window into our soul, may actually be the thing that helps us evolve, survive, and thrive in this life.

I host a women’s bible study on Mondays, and at a recent session, I posed this question to the group:

Where have you felt tension between who you are as a woman and what church spaces have implicitly or explicitly expected of you?

The responses were telling, so telling. Because with every comment, even with all of our diverse lived experiences, we understood what one another was referencing. The diminishment. The assumed roles. The docility. There’s a subtext we’re given as women within the Western Christian faith that is really quite limiting.

I grew up with a version of faith that offered a very specific image of what a “godly woman” looked like. And like many other young Christian girls, I upheld that standard with honor. I didn’t feel coerced into certain choices I made as a teenager within the faith. In fact, many of the choices I made were earnest and filled with a worshipful reverence for the King. I simply wanted to live in a way that honored Him.

And yet…

There was very little consideration for my own presence within that kind of faith dynamic. It’s seemingly contradictory, right? That we are told to “humble ourselves at the throne of grace”…and how our somatic experience of self-denial can present pretty traumatic damage to our inner worlds.

I lived inside that contradiction for a long time. Because how could I be a fully present young woman while remaining obedient to my God?

I didn’t have language for this back then, but I think what I was trying to do was simply love God well. I wanted to honor Him, but I didn’t know how to do that without disappearing myself. No one taught me how to do that.

Enter: crisis of faith, of selfhood, of worth, of identity.

When we hand young girls a neat little study guide for what the holy woman looks, walks, and talks like, I think we often mean well. But I also think we underestimate what that does to them when their real lives don’t follow the script. We sit in teen girl Bible studies and make promises that lean more toward fantasy than reality.

And they grow up. With many left confused about why their performance didn’t, in fact, produce their happily-ever-after. I can tell you how disjointed and untethered that can feel. I lived that.

I risked withering away within myself, not learning to embrace who I was, who I was created to be. For a long time, I thought the problem was me.

I remember distinctly the moment I chose to start listening to secular music more regularly.

It was a conscious decision I made in the sixth grade. Not my first moment of selfhood, but the first time I chose it.

One evening, when my mom and dad were at a counseling session (my dad was a pastor), I turned on MTV during their 5 p.m. hour of music videos. The top hits would stream, an activity you would assume was perfectly innocent. But this activity was very much prohibited in our house.

That is when I heard Misery Business by Paramore for the first time.

Anyone who grew up in the late 90s and early 2000s knows the emo-punk, white-boy garage-band era. I was late to that party. My world had been 88.7 RadioU (Central Ohio’s premier Christian punk station) and the CD walls of our local Christian bookstore, Moments with Majesty. Britt Nicole, Stacie Orrico, Natalie Grant, Mary Mary, BarlowGirl…these artists were the soundtrack to my childhood.

So, when I finally heard the wails of Hayley Jaquisha Williams? I levitated.

The moment that first chorus hit, something in me cracked open. When I recovered, my brain chemistry had permanently changed. I ran to YouTube, played it on repeat until I knew every note. And then, I needed more.

That same year, my mom bought me an mp3 player. One of the ones with no screen. And that thing became my gateway drug. Pandora’s box opened.

I started ripping library CDs, sneaking non-Christian music onto that little device like contraband. I felt wildly convicted while doing it—especially when I bought songs that didn’t preach Jesus with the iTunes gift cards I begged for every Christmas.

But in that small rebellion, I found pieces of myself.

I met heartbreak through Keyshia Cole.
I learned a little empowerment from Keri Hilson.
Through Katy Perry, I got to experience adolescent girlhood in real time.
Rihanna made me feel free.
And Beyoncé Gisele Knowles Carter herself finally gave me language for my Black girlhood, that experience I had never really heard celebrated aloud.

I was in deep. Deep in sin. 🤣

But then, something unintentional began to unfold.

One day, I read an article about Paramore and discovered Hayley Williams had grown up in the church. She spoke openly about southern evangelical culture—how it shaped her, how it shaped her music.
And suddenly, I felt kinship.

I didn’t have the language for it then, but something in me loosened. The guilt softened. The chains didn’t fall all at once, but they certainly rattled.

I realized I wasn’t trying to run from God. I was just trying to find myself.

I started learning how many of the artists I loved had grown up in faith—and how many had left it altogether. Some had found freedom. Some had found emptiness. Some could no longer package the performance they had been raised to give.

And as much as I loved their music, that scared me.

I didn’t want to abandon God.

I wanted to coexist with myself. I needed a way to be embodied and faithful. Curious and devoted. Honest and holy.

It’s interesting how my mom experienced this evolution. She didn’t run these internal analytics. All she knew was that she had said no to anything that wasn’t of God.

But over time…she started listening. And now I can see that she began to see me.

Our kids can be mirrors.

Parenthood is one of the most humbling mirrors I’ve ever encountered. Like marriage. Like leadership. Like anything that demands vulnerability and responsibility at the same time. These roles press us into moments that expose what’s really under the surface, and that’s whether we’re ready or not.

When my mom uncovered my secret music stash, she was livid. She used to crush every CD that didn’t come from Moments with Majesty, the Christian bookstore I grew up going to. The MP3 player I illegally downloaded music onto was flattened into disjointed metal and wiring the day she heard Jeremih crooning birthday…ugh.

She was a woman of deep conviction. Of rules. Of protection. Of consistency.

One time, I got smart. I turned on 97.9—our local pop station—and BLASTED it while I got dressed. Dave & Jimmy’s morning show flowed right into Ryan Seacrest and the latest analysis of pop-culture drama. Radio-safe hits with no curse words played loud and proud, and I sang right along.

She couldn’t technically argue with it, and I’m pretty sure my dad also tried to mediate on my behalf. He always did.

But here’s the funny thing: eventually, I started to catch her humming along. Songs like Girl on Fire and Firework became more annoying than enjoyable when she would belt in her loud soprano during our car rides.

And it wasn’t just music. When Twilight came out in 2005, she was vehemently against it. Vampires and the spirit of lust—a recipe for Satanic influence (🤣). But by the time the last movie dropped in 2012, she was just as distraught as the rest of us when Carlisle’s head went flying. (Sorry. Spoiler.)

Her buy-in meant everything to me.
Because being able to play my music out loud meant I didn’t have to hide anymore.

And I think that’s what she was slowly learning: control doesn’t keep kids safe. Presence does. Curiosity does. Love does.

Hiding and phoniness have always bugged me. I hate double standards. I hate living one way in private and another in public. Authenticity has always felt like the deepest exhale. And yet, I rarely found that kind of honesty in the curated faith spaces of my youth. Youth groups. Summer camps. Places that preached one thing but rarely felt lived in.

Notice, I said curated spaces.

Because the candid ones? The car rides with my mom. The facials with my esthetician aunt. The random visits to my sister-in-law’s when my niece was a newborn—those conversations showed me that life has a way of revealing you to yourself, whether you want it to or not.

And so I could keep running.

Or I could face the music.

I found myself at this crossroads when my eldest daughter was born.

My mom was getting sicker by the day. And I had just brought home my first baby. The juxtaposition felt almost comedic—so absurd that I wanted to pretend I wasn’t terrified.

Because every time my mom called, she coughed. Hard. Every time she visited, she talked about how tired she was. She collapsed a week after my 20-week ultrasound. She cried often. She sent messages that felt like goodbyes, pouring out wisdom in ways that made my chest tight.

I knew for months that she was going to die. But I didn’t want to face it.

And then…I heard my daughter cry for the first time.

I watched her tiny face contort, and I clung to her in a way that felt more terrifying than anything else around me—because suddenly, I could see myself in her. Small. Helpless. Grasping for comfort.

What a shitty reflection.

And yet, what an honest one. That was the moment I stopped running.

I hired a therapist. Started medication. Made my bed. Stopped ordering Uber Eats every night. Began rebuilding what had quietly collapsed inside me.

Not just grief, not just postpartum. Years of neglect, suppressed needs, and emotional malnourishment I had mistaken for discipline. One look at my reflection showed me how much I had normalized the pain I lived with.

And so mirrors stopped being metaphorical for me. They became medicine.

Being honest is scary.

I haven’t met anyone in this life who is honest all of the time. Consider all that we give up when we start facing our demons. That first look at the things we so desperately want to hide can be jarring.

I would also like to submit to you that it is only your first step into freedom. Real liberty comes at an even greater cost. The more we strip away, yes, the more we can feel the load lift. But it’s acceptance that forces us to stop, look, and then move accordingly.

To take in what we see, what we don’t see. What we’re disappointed by, what we cannot change. What we can change but refuse to—and the reasons why. The choices, the fears, the hurdles. The successes, the hopes, the moments of levity. It’s all-encompassing. And it’s raw. The fallibility of our humanity can feel crushing.

And yet…

I find so much hope there. So much promise in that first step. In the moments we choose to face and accept and try something new. There’s a power in that—an audacity—that can take us to places we never imagined.

I had been learning how to look for years. Through love, through God, through the versions of myself I tried to abandon.
Marriage showed me the parts I tried to hide.
Faith named the parts I tried to perform.

But my daughters, they made the reflection unavoidable. They showed me who I was becoming.

I thank God for the gift of my children, who pushed me here. They didn’t save me, but they forced me to look. They mirrored me into becoming. Through their joy, I found my laugh in the midst of pain. Through their tears, I found the strength to become the woman they needed me to be.

And now, I can stop and stare at my reflection for a totally different reason. That girl…she’s kind of a bad bitch.

She’s vibrant. Hopeful. Daring. Sexy. Compassionate. Less guarded. Free.

And damn… she’s beautiful. I’m beautiful.

Apparently, there’s a first time for everything.

AN: Thank you for reading! These songs inspired my words. Check out tracks 12-17 below👇🏾

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I went to bed last night feeling burdened.

Burdened by the state of this country, the weight of parenthood, financial math that never adds up, the absence of simple things I cherished as a child.

And then, when sleep finally found me, I dreamed.

Dreaming has always been a sacred space for me—a place where I commune with myself and with God. It’s where the thoughts I’ve run from, and the messages from the Lord I haven’t had time to process in my very full, very busy life, tend to surface. What I don’t have language for during the day often finds me there, at night.

It’s one of my favorite parts of sleeping: the way images move through my mind, a stage that feels both unconscious and fully awake.

In this dream, I painted a scene that was chaotic, and beautifully so. Come along with me as I move through it, reflecting from those deeper places beneath the noise.

My family was going on a trip to Europe together. It was current day, but somehow my mom was alive in this dream. That’s not an uncommon thread for me—many of my dreams feature my mom as I imagine she would be in the current configuration of my life.

Grief is an ever-present yet rarely invited fixture in my life. That hoe.

Anyway, back to the dream. Europe. Family trip.

My oldest brother and his family were coming on this holiday as well. I can’t remember if my husband or kids were there. It was mostly me, my perspective as I navigated the airport. And I was a little untethered, but alive with possibility.

Friends appeared, too. One of my closest friends was there—not joining our trip, but heading off on her own adventure. This is very true to her character in real life. Something about her presence felt deeply inspiring: her wanderlust, her fearless embrace of the wild, her ability to live boldly while still feeling safe.

The airports were uncrowded. The workers were friendly and efficient in quiet, grounding ways. Yet even amid the excitement, there was a beat of tension so real that it felt oddly comforting. I can’t imagine the moment without that undercurrent.

As the trip unfolded, my parents arrived at the airport only to realize they’d left their passports at home. My mom began to fuss and cry. My dad went steely and argumentative—impatient in ways he never was even a decade ago. That stubborn, indignant resolve came alive in that moment, in ways I’ve only begun to notice since Mom passed.

In the dream, I didn’t stop. Which tracks—I don’t collapse in chaos.

I jumped into action, determined to keep the momentum and excitement alive. I called my brother (who was somehow still at church) and asked him to help. He was noncommittal in his reply. I didn’t know when the passports would arrive, or if they would at all, but I pressed forward anyway.

I walked toward the gate alongside my friend, her excitement spilling over into mine as I dreamed aloud about strolling down the streets of London. As my passport was stamped (out of order, yes—but hush, it’s a dream), I exhaled.

And there, on the other side of the gate, sat my godmother.

She is another maternal presence in my life—someone I’ve often equated to the comfort of Whitney Houston’s fairy godmother in Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella: rare, timely, and completely grounding. She smiled. We embraced. Tears streamed.

She called me beautiful. Filled with light, her “star,” as she’s always dubbed me. I held her face in my hands and just looked. I took in the wrinkles she so artfully disguised, the red lips she always wore, the warmth of her voice, the richness of her perfume.

She used to feel like home. And here she was, exactly when I needed her.

We laughed about my parents’ drama. About my body, changed from carrying and delivering babies. About a face one of the TSA workers made. About her husband, whom I was surprised to hear she was still married to.

Laughter was shared, warm and rich and healing in its presence. The look she gave me held me in place, firmly planting me in the now and not on what I needed to be doing for everyone else.

And as we parted, we promised to meet again along the river Seine.

I woke up with so many feelings.

Wanderlust. Because I am overdue for a damn vacation.

Nostalgia, as I held my mother again. Dreams are the only place I get to feel her touch now, and this night, her arms around me felt palpable.

Anxiety. That comforting undercurrent and my toxic friend I hate to love.

And grief—but not just for my mom. For the people and feelings I hadn’t encountered in so long. Some who were in this dream.

My godmom, the friends I no longer talk to.

…and some who were absent altogether. My other brother, who was both absent from this dream and, presently, my real life.

This dream forced me to face truths I’ve been carrying quietly for a long time.

I miss the family I grew up with. That longing is real and constant. I’ve worked incredibly hard over the past few years to rebuild a circle that shattered when I turned eighteen. And that circle has only thinned as this decade has gone by. I long for something familiar and comforting, and that’s a luxury I don’t always have access to.

I am more resilient than I give myself credit for. Chaos may swirl around me, but I keep moving forward. I’ve hesitated to praise this trait because, rightfully, I’m cautious about glorifying Black female trauma. And still, there is an innate power I’ve tapped into. A supernatural strength, born of ancestors and sustained by Christ, that helped us survive atrocities that, frankly, many of y’all could never.

I am healing, and I’m proud of that. I can name brokenness more clearly now. I can redirect energy. I can feel deeply without abandoning myself. I can offer grace for the ways my feelings don’t always align with the woman I’m becoming.

And finally, my desire to dream is blossoming again. Dare I say, blooming.

The creator in me is alive and well. She’s been stripped of pretense and performance, ready to live out Psalm 119 and Jane Austen imagery in tandem. There is heat and heart here. A rhythm that is holy and sexy and vibrant and soft, all at once.

The ashes are settling.
The oil is rich.
The mosaic was always there.

Audacity is a divine gift. It’s freeing me from plastic smiles and inviting me into cracked heels, morning breath, and the sleepy honesty of real life. It’s taken years and tears to get here, but I’m starting not to give a damn anymore. And I say that with reverence. God’s revealing light has given me such a clear view of the mirror, and that authenticity has set me ablaze.

Duality is another God-given gift I’ve embraced. How our souls can feel aligned while our minds spiral with fear and anxiety—that tension feels like the most honest thing I know. The questions, the doubts, the messiness…I don’t really think we reach our fullest potential without interacting with all sides of ourselves.

And of course, creativity. Our ability to take these brains and form ideas and make something? I’ve taken that for granted. Surely, we all have that thing that draws us in, that spark from something altogether ridiculous and magical and impractical.

Writing has always been that for me, my heart laid out on the page. I’ve been doing it since I could barely hold a pen. I’ve filled journals with nonsense and masterpieces. I’ve lied to myself on the page. I’ve feared my own thoughts. I’ve tried to decide what was acceptable to want, to say, to imagine. I looked for ways to make it, to make creating, something practical.

I’ve found, however, that art rarely makes sense to anyone at first. The most beautiful writing, for me, was always the flowy, nonsensical stuff. I think I found my voice in the clouds, playing with words and language in a way that allowed me to bury the lead. And so, it’s been liberating for me to bring those words to life in a way that reaches people. Speaking plainly in a way that is no longer afraid of my truest thoughts. (That audacity, man.)

Here I am. Older, messier, wiser, but deeply familiar. She’s still that Black girl on the floors of Southeast Library, obsessed with stories and tales of love, whimsy, and intellect. That girl was measuring herself against people she was never meant to emulate.

Now, I’m just emulating myself.

Softness saved me.
And motherhood softened me even more.

I imagined I’d be the stereotypical Black mom who didn’t take no nonsense—and don’t get me wrong, my oldest knows not to try me.

But I also pause. I listen. I consider.

And in hearing her fears and dreams at four years old, something in me reopened. The little girl who wanted someone to enter her world and let the magic thrive. There’s something so simple and daring and vulnerable about that. Stepping inside a world that isn’t colored by the depressing truths we know in our adulthood.

It’s a real shitty world out here. And I think we’re desperate for singular solutions in a world built on contradiction.

But maybe that’s the point.

Dreaming allows contradictions to interact in ways reality resists. That interaction refines us. It reminds us we need one another. Belonging, after all, is one of our most basic forms of safety.

Don’t you belong in your wildest dreams?

My daughter is one of the most creative and imaginative kids I’ve ever been around. She thrives on these moments when we embrace her world. I see a spark in her that is scarily reminiscent of myself—daring me to say, “well baby, this isn’t real.” Because she knows that already.

And yet, she dares to dream anyway.

She’s also so practical, comically so for a 4-year-old. Making declarative statements about who she hopes to be and how she hopes to accomplish it. She’s a problem-solver, but really, it’s the creative in her that has been allowed to thrive. If there’s no lemonade, she’ll go find a way to make some. And if there is truly no lemons, or water, or sugar…she’s going to find something that looks like a pitcher and fill it with ripped pink paper and get a cup and tell us it’s pink lemonade.

It’s that kind of spirit that taps into something childlike and wonderful. We’re missing that in the world.

As we head into a new year, I hope the most literal among us find a way to dream again. That in a world drowning in facts, algorithms, and AI, we remember the one thing machines can’t give us: God-given imagination.

I dare you to dream. Of big, passionate love. Of birth and creation. Of hope that outlives darkness and the tired games of conquest men with tiny…egos…love to play.

For now, I’m going back to sleep.

I hate waking up from a good dream. Part of me wants to finish the scene and wander Europe with those spirits by my side.

There’s another part of me entirely that loves the mystery of a good dream that’s been interrupted. The possibility of that story, it leaves a window open for me to dream in full color and consciousness. While I’m changing diapers and analyzing scripture, I can pause and wonder who else showed up for this mysterious getaway to England and France.

Or, maybe it’s okay to rest in the knowing that some resolutions only come when we release them. In sleep, our minds quiet the noise. They give us space to process, to heal, to dream—fully awake in the subconscious.

We carry so much tension, so much chaos, so much anxiety in our bodies. When we finally dream, it can feel unfamiliar, almost unsafe. But there is beauty there. The wandering is safe, because even in the midst of danger, we will wake up. And then, reflect on the journey we embarked on in slumber.

So really, it seems to me that maybe the world needs to go to sleep.

And maybe by dreaming, we all uncover something that looks like hope. Maybe that hope carries us back into the real world, ready to love it better. A love that shatters fear, opens us up to something new, refreshing. Healing.

I don’t know. Those are my hopes. But then, maybe, I’m just a dreamer.

AN: Check out my writing inspo playlist! Happy New Year, my friends. More stories and softness and many more exciting things are on the way in 2026. Straight to you, straight from me.

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I’ve been a long-time musical theater fan, but had never seen Wicked. Seeing these movies was a lifelong dream realized, but what I wasn’t prepared for was how much deep thought it would invoke in me (and how it would create a theater nerd within my husband).

Dive in deep with me while we explore the themes of our flawed humanity and how much good is found within the wicked condition we live in.

Oh…and is his…😳…REALLY made of straw now!?

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When I talk about current events, I find myself in a melting pot of emotions.

I’ve always been drawn to the news, and in another life, I probably could have been a journalist. The pursuit of truth, the layers of context, the nuance—the stories of our messy, yet gorgeous, human experience—fascinate me.

But these days, the news is exhausting. Everything feels like its own living organism. Much of our information is bloated with its own ambition and the subtext of political corruption. And trying to digest all of that while raising little ones? Phew, a bitch is tired.

Our world is ruled by overstimulation and anxiety. We used to call it news; now it feels more like trauma porn.

I grew up watching news–morning talk shows humming in the background while we ate breakfast, Oprah exposing someone’s mess as my mom folded laundry, the evening anchors becoming familiar faces as I got older. I was the kid who actually got excited when my social studies teacher rolled out the projector for CNN Student News with Carl Azuz, followed by riveting classroom debates about everything we had just seen.

Taking in those topics, learning the reality of the world around me at such a tender age was heavy at times. But that exposure trained those of us who took it seriously to think deeply. We were able to form our moral compass, to see how the patterns of our past could easily become the prologue of our future.

And now, decades later, I see those patterns playing out again. You ask any church mother about it, and she’d quote that line from Ecclesiastes: “There’s nothing new under the sun.”

And honestly, she wouldn’t be wrong. We humans are a hot and predictable mess.

A lot of different Aubreys show up when I consume the news, my inner world constantly at war in the midst of the noise: the modern woman who cherishes traditional values, the hungry Jesus-follower who longs to see love in action through His Church, the soft girl who loves to fantasize and romanticize, the strong Black woman (ugh) who has had to fight to flourish. The writer, the worshipper, the wife, the woman.

These versions of me wrestle for the mic every time I try to form an opinion, an experience that is not unique to me. I find it incredibly important to point out what may be obvious to some: we are all shaped by our experiences—our upbringing, our hurts, our hopes. They make us who we are and inform the ways we consume the world around us.

It’s hard for us to be honest about that. I know I’ve spent years softening myself to keep my opinions palatable. In that, I often avoided powerful insights that helped me better see the world through someone else’s eyes.

Values are constructed by something so simple, we often forget to name it: our feelings.

There’s a hesitancy for us to acknowledge that the ways we feel matter. We must be honest about those feelings. They inform the ways we interact with one another, and they make us more aware of this concept called empathy.

Because at our core, we all just want to be understood and validated in our right to be and feel. When someone invalidates that experience, they brush against our natural inclination to protect those values we hold dear, that define us.

This might sound like a tangent, but honestly? It’s the whole ball game. We have to recognize how little we are willing to honor our intellectual, emotional, and even moral differences. And that disagreement is a gift, not a threat. It lets us learn something new without losing ourselves.

And it’s through that lens I challenge us to see how truly alike we all are.

I don’t think we’ve lost compassion, but I think we’ve misunderstood its definition. We’ve built walls around it to protect ourselves from the ache of being human in a hurting world. But compassion is supposed to ache; it’s supposed to cost us something.

We scroll past war and wildfires between skincare ads. We refresh death tolls like weather updates. We debate real lives like hypotheticals and mistake outrage for righteousness.

We are desensitized–to the pain of others and the pain our own words can create. And then, in the aftermath, we help curate the carnage we’re consuming.

I find that in our disconnect from one another, we’ve deluded ourselves in a way that removes the humanity from those who are unwilling to look through our lens. We “well, what about-” every lived experience, then act shocked when people tell us to, respectfully, fuck off.

Part of me gets it. Part of me wants the simplicity. No arguments. No discomfort.

But it is that friction that makes us human.

That’s not to let people off the hook for the type of hatred and bigotry we see around us. But I think if we step back and think deeply, just for a moment, we might see that many of our silos are built on the fear of letting people feel.

Feelings can’t be managed by us or for us. They are shaped by experience.

Much of my patience for others stems from two things: my faith in Jesus Christ and my interracial marriage.

People love to remake Jesus in their image. Some on the right picture a white knight cleansing the world of impurity. Some on the left praise His radical acceptance while skipping His challenge toward holiness.

Neither camp seems ready to face that He came for all of us—the morally ambiguous and the self-righteous and everyone in between.

Proof of this can be found laid out in Matthew chapter 5. I love this sermon because, for all of His plain speaking (which Jesus rarely gives us), He challenges our very human nature and provides us with an image of the heavenly intention behind our design.

What sounds simple on paper becomes the hardest thing we’ll ever do. It’s natural to want our version of justice, to watch our enemies squirm as our point is proven. Their wrongness should be called out, and the ways they hurt us should be met with an equal and fair consequence.

But Jesus doesn’t see it that way. In fact, His words are strikingly direct:

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Matt 5:44)

Much of the guidance we’re given in scripture brushes up against our natural urges. We are living in the midst of brokenness as broken people. And as my assistant pastor often says, this reality is not prescriptive so much as it is descriptive.

When we continue on in this passage, Jesus describes that God’s version of justice doesn’t align with our human perspective. So when God tells us things like “he causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt 5:45), I don’t think we like the reality of how that plays out. It’s a far more nuanced worldview than we like to admit.

Jesus didn’t float around hugging people who did awful things. He called out the Pharisees and invited them to learn more. He stood beside Judas, who sold Him out, and blessed him.

He hung on a cross next to murderers and prayed for their forgiveness.

I’m no Jesus, but that example shapes my reaction to the world. It turns other people’s brokenness into something that grieves me instead of fueling rage. That kind of reaction isn’t natural; it’s divine.

Imagine if we all led with that kind of grace. If holiness meant wholeness again.

Now, I recognize I am speaking to a certain audience in my above anecdote. So, for anyone outside the Christian faith, let me offer another perspective.

I married into a very white, fairly conservative family—well-read, thoughtful, often saying things that clash with my lived experience. I’ve had to decide what I’ll tolerate and what I won’t. Where honesty meets love, and boundaries grow from wisdom.

When we all get together, I often find myself faced with conversations laced with microaggressions and perspectives that hit a nerve. I’ve had to learn how to navigate this over the years. What am I willing to accept? And who am I accepting? Would I allow myself to be belittled or my identity to be abused (whether intentionally or not) knowing how they spoke, thought, and felt about certain issues?

Honesty, transparency, vulnerability, and time have allowed me the space to answer these questions without losing myself, and to gain relationships that I cherish dearly.

Yes, we disagree. Plenty. But we also laugh and cry and experience the fullness that vulnerability introduces to a dynamic. When I let myself see the full picture of who they are—where they come from, what shaped them—it widens my view of them.

And yes, there is a level of tolerance. Not a cosign, but a kind of patient endurance. I do my best to respect them while making sure I’m not silenced in the process. A decade in, we’ve refined one another. I’ve learned to respect their freedom to choose as I protect my own.

We can’t control people, only ourselves. And yes, sometimes distance is healthy. But cutting off everyone who thinks differently? That’s childish.

Growth needs friction. We thrive in rigorous and thoughtful spaces. We become better; our views are sharpened, refined by those perspectives and people. And the other way around…we plant seeds, and they need to be tended to in order to thrive.

How can we expect the world around us to change if no one is willing to sit at the table together?

Yes, the world is filled with bigotry and miseducation. And…

I wonder. I just wonder what it looks like when we can put ego aside and try. For one another, for a world built on community instead of comparison.

I quoted scripture above, so I figured I’d balance it with something a little more universal. I even tried to wedge “We Are the World” in here at one point.

The funny thing is, that song doesn’t even fit the cadence I use. And honestly? In the world we live in right now, it barely even fits us anymore. It aspires to something so daunting, seemingly unattainable.

We don’t act like a global choir. We barely act like we’re in the same group chat most of the time.

Most days, it feels like we’re all just trying to survive the same crowded, overheating, anxiety-soaked planet. Doomscrolling the same tragedies, worrying about the same kids, sending the same “Lawd, I’m tapped out” texts to the people who try to keep us sane.

We forget how connected we actually are. How much impact a small shift in compassion can make. How much damage a single act of cruelty can do.

“We are the world” sounds wonderful when you sing it. But living like we actually belong to one another? That’s the real challenge; that’s the part we’ve lost.

So maybe the question isn’t whether we are the world. It’s whether we’re ever going to act like it again.

I tried molding this post into something topical.

I could talk about the hurricane in Jamaica.
Or Trump ignoring court orders about SNAP.
Or the blue wave.
Or the government shutdown breaking records nobody wanted.
Or the Epstein files.
Or Gaza, the Congo, Venezuela, Ukraine.

Pick a headline. Any of them works. Because the common thread in all of it is this: we are the affected ones.

We are the ones being shaped, stretched, and shaken by the world we’re watching. And yet somehow we spend more time fighting each other about the “right” way to feel than actually tending to the people living through it. We play directly into a game we were never invited to win.

A couple of weeks ago, Scott Galloway, an NYU professor and businessman, announced a book about the crisis young men are facing. Upon reading this news, my first thought was, Oh, they’re going to ‘love’ this one.

Because who gives a shit about the condition of men today? And what a sad sentiment, because while men have absolutely fueled a ridiculous amount of harm in this world, pretending they don’t need care or guidance now doesn’t fix anything.

Somewhere along the way, we turned empathy into a limited resource. We decided who deserves it and who doesn’t. And that practice just creates another cycle of wounded people wounding others. There is a difference between accountability and neglect.

To be clear: this is not a free pass for anyone’s cruelty or ignorance. It’s simply me acknowledging the uncomfortable truth that we are all capable of the darkness we condemn in others. And we hate admitting that.

What we’re experiencing right now is a collective purge. The ugliness is coming up and out. And if it’s going to heal, it’s going to take a love that is actually courageous. The kind of love that listens, that chooses nuance, that knows when to turn off the news and when to lean in.

We are in a new epidemic of disconnection. Isolation is a poison.

And community, interdependence is the antidote.

So as I wrap this (mercifully long) think piece, I’m making a promise to myself, and to you, my beautiful readers. I promise not to drown in the heaviness or the headlines. To keep creating, keep connecting. To stay awake to the small joys right in front of us.

There’s a lot of chaos in the news. But my God…so are we. And because of that fact, there’s a lot of connectedness there, too.

Before you go, I put together a playlist of the songs that shaped this piece (and honestly, shaped me).
If you want to keep the vibe going, you can listen here.

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Welcome back to my corner of Beyoncé’s internet, y’all. I swear I’ve been fighting for my life to make it to this keyboard. Between diaper blowouts, toddler meltdowns, school drop-offs, and the sniffles that seem to arrive with every season change.

It feels fitting, honestly. Me here, juggling my dreams and my babies. That tension is a whole sermon in itself.

Lately, I’ve been feeling humbled—by motherhood, by womanhood, by the way my worldview keeps shifting with each season of life. The things I thought I understood as a child, a teenager, a single young woman, and even as a newly married DINK (dual income, no kids) have all evolved now that I’m on the other side of a fantasy I once prayed for.

And to be completely honest? I’m a little bamboozled. This shit is not what I expected. It’s far from the clean hacks of those mommy TikTok reels or the seamless choreography of Sandra Lee and Martha Stewart.

They be lying in those podcasts, y’all.

You know the type. The “exposés” disguised as deep insight, the co-hosts nodding emphatically with a “yeeeaasss,” acting like they’ve just discovered a new element. We fall for it every time, hooked on the illusion of profound relatability.

So when I saw Ayesha Curry’s latest Call Her Daddy interview, I braced myself for what was coming. The commentary. The think pieces. The inevitable hell storm. And right on cue, the internet fell for it again.

Because this isn’t really about her interview. It’s about our collective obsession with diagnosing and validating each other’s pain; our need to turn every confession into content, every emotion into discourse.

Well, if you can’t beat ‘em…

I remember when Ayesha first sat down years ago for a roundtable with her mom and sister-in-law. She was open about what it felt like to live in the shadow of NBA culture. How she could love her husband deeply and still feel unseen. How fame and overexposure could create the kind of isolation that made her question her own desirability.

That conversation lit a spark in me; one that I don’t know I would have tended had she not spoken to that silent struggle many of us good girls live with.

See, I was the girl who went to high school and felt invisible and small. And if I’m honest, I still feel that way sometimes.

I’ve always been a little dorky and at times awkward. I grew up going to Wednesday night bible study and spending my Saturdays at choir and dance rehearsals (I can’t twerk for shit). I was never at the bars and clubs flirting because I was engaged at 19 and married by 20.

A body marred by stretch marks, boobs that sag and are frankly just too big for my frame (nah, for real, I have back pain).

We often see the face of the bold seductress. The ‘Ms. Steal Your Man’ archetype. The head cheerleader giving head in the locker room, sainted by the same boys who’d call girls like me ‘wife material.’

Rarely do we give a voice to the woman who wasn’t necessarily unattractive; rather, maybe she was just forgettable, living more inward than out. Maybe she didn’t fit the demographic or the social beauty standard.

Maybe she was simply too much sauce for the basic bros in her vicinity.

And so she sinks back into the crowd. Buries herself in overperformance. And little by little, she’s unable to see herself as desirable.

Ayesha named something I had never quite found language for. That strange complex so many of us church girls carry, the one that keeps us polished, modest, untouched, and somehow invisible. The expectation that we’ll be desirable but not too much; that we’ll be virtuous but never hungry; that we’ll make ourselves small in the name of holiness.

And that doesn’t even take purity culture into account.

The countless lectures on waiting for the one God had for me. And God bless my mom, she meant well.

But when my husband and I had sex for the first time…I cried. Bad tears. Because we weren’t married and I felt like a whore.

Furthermore, the shit didn’t feel good. And I didn’t know how to tell him that for YEARS.

Like many of us, Ayesha grew up in this culture. Her high-school sweetheart pursued her and proposed, and it felt natural to say yes. Why delay what God had already joined together? Why question the timing when every sermon and song had told you this was the goal?

What room is there for individuality when you’ve already found the one your soul loves? What can singleness offer a woman who has been taught her greatest purpose is to be chosen?

The heart behind her words, the weight of choices made inside a framework that promised fulfillment…that resonates. Loudly.

This next part is a tricky space to explore. One that risks sounding ungrateful, maybe even sacrilegious to some.

Because what happens when you do adore your husband and kids, but still find yourself looking back at the goalposts you ignored, overlooked, or didn’t even realize existed in the first place? The ones you still, sometimes, long for?

What’s left for you then?
Where do you fit?
How do you reconcile that tension?

So, class, here’s the question I keep circling: are we really so small-minded, so incapable, of holding both joy and discontent in two hands at once?

Because I think it makes us deeply uncomfortable to admit the truth. That people can suffer inside safety and contentment.

We don’t know what to do with that.

I can speak to this from the inside.

I was that girl who grew up dreaming of being pregnant, barefoot, and in my husband’s arms. Most of my pretend play was spent with baby dolls, reenacting childbirth like a scene I couldn’t wait to star in.

I had two imaginary husbands (Eric and then Dominic, as my Disney princess obsession shifted over to Barbie’s Princess and the Pauper).

By the time I hit my teens, I was ready to get married as soon as it was legally possible.

I built my career goals around eventually being a mother, choosing what I thought would offer “balance and flexibility” for family life in a career as an educator. (Cue laughter from anyone who’s ever met a teacher.)

You don’t realize the consequences of your choices, good choices, when you are young. This is a concept that I’m introducing even now to my 4-year-old:

Consequences are just that, the result of a choice you make. They aren’t all bad.

They just are.

I think a lot about the choices that led me here. Do I regret anything?
The simple answer is no.

The layered, more complicated answer—the one I rarely say out loud—is harder to admit.

See, I admire Ayesha for saying the quiet part out loud. For admitting that as blessed as we may be in love and life…there are moments and points of disappointment and disillusionment that accompany the joy. And that experience is incredibly human.

It’s also a common one for women to face.

I think of how each generation has broken ceilings and unraveled the tangled webs of misogyny and patriarchy in new ways. But even with every breakthrough, the well-oiled machine keeps turning. The brokenness doesn’t disappear with progress.

And we bring all of that into adulthood, right at 18. Fresh and doe-eyed, our options immediately become limited by nothing but our own mental gymnastics. Facing the pressures of what we want vs what we’ve been told and conditioned to want.

Like Ayesha, I had my ways of wanting, but I was never bold enough to admit them.

I carried the pressure of being the youngest in a dynamic family, one of the only women, the daughter of a youngest daughter whose own dreams maybe never fully bloomed. A Black girl in a white suburban neighborhood. A product of Western Christian ideals. A dreamer, a nurturer, a romantic. A closet freaky-deek and a book nerd, all at once.

All of it slammed together in my head, warring for attention. But I was too self-contained, too type-A to give myself room to breathe in all of these tiles of my mosaic. And, of course, too young to even begin sorting through it all by the time I graduated high school.

And then, like Ayesha, I fell in love.

Somewhere in that swirl of identity and expectation, I found a boy who saw me—the invisible girl, the overachiever, the romantic—and I wanted to be seen by him forever.

And alongside all of those pieces of me was a girl who had longed to be wanted. Who had waited, like all the good Christian literature told me, for the one who would be my heart’s song and ride off into the sunset with me. And when I found him, I was ready to snap him up. And I did. And the beautiful thing I found in the midst of this fantasy was a partner to help make these dreams a reality.

Cam and I built the kind of partnership that helped one another balance, that challenged much of our upbringing, and that complemented the deficits. And I leaned into that…hard.

And it wasn’t until about 2 months after our wedding, the summer after his sophomore year at the University of Pittsburgh, that all of the mosaic tiles came crashing down.

But with a new marriage, my own schooling, and a career path in place, there was no room for those pieces to land delicately.

So they shattered.

I feel like the story of my early marriage is the textbook reason the seasoned folk advise young couples to “wait it out” before going down the aisle. And this comes from a woman who looks back on those years, reflects on the battle scars, with pride.

Doesn’t mean everyone should do it. Doesn’t mean I necessarily should have.

Ayesha is telling us the same cautionary tale while tending her own graceful garden. It blooms through the storm, not after it. And this garden reminds us that blessings can come even from the soil we’re still learning to grow in.

Alongside our relationships with our husbands growing deeper, we changed too. And in my marriage, I felt it and wanted to run and hide. It was like watching a pimple pop. Or maybe, less gross, when the first bloom of a flower shows in spring. It’s beautiful and gruesome at once. If you think about it, those petals breaking open the stem…that’s how I felt inside.

And I was petrified of how my husband would take that. Or how I would show up in our relationship with these new dynamics at play.

Without rehashing the mess of those early years, let’s just say we landed somewhere more grounded by the time our kids rolled around. And sitting here years later, more settled, with a fully formed prefrontal cortex…I’m honestly grateful for so many things.

The care and wisdom of my parents and how they raised us to have a firm foundation in our faith. An incredibly supportive husband who has always been there to catch me when I fall, stumble, or even get the slightest scrape. A God who never crashed out on me, even when I did on Him several times.

I’m also more sure of some things. The way grief and joy coexist. How closed doors aren’t always a bad thing. How self-love begins with authenticity.

And the value and importance of naming your disappointment. Out loud. Before it’s too late.

Ayesha speaks to the many women who live silent lives of passivity without naming the ways they long to soar.

There’s a silent struggle that happens when you’re made to feel small. You begin telling yourself the lie that you don’t matter. That you are undesirable. That what you have to offer is inconsequential.

Unspoken disappointment doesn’t disappear; it just shifts form. It seeps into our homes, our marriages, our mothering.

It becomes harder when you have children to see or even prioritize your desires. It feels selfish—it is selfish. There is a constant tug of war between their needs and your own, and they always win. They should always win.

That’s motherhood.

And so, when we walk into that role with our own demons, it’s easy to become a woman who sinks into a depressed monotony, content to elevate our partners with little regard for our own needs.

I almost was one of those women.

And so I understand the longing for validation, for someone to see me. To let my voice sparkle in rooms and entice a group of people. I’m not talking about adultery or attention-seeking. I’m talking about the ache to feel alive in your own body again. To remember that before you were ‘Mom’ or ‘Mrs. so-and-so’

You were a woman who shimmered.

Sometimes I long to captivate the men who can never have me. To feel that power in my own skin again.

Maybe that’s what Ayesha’s story, and mine, are really about: to let them and myself know that I’m still that girl.

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It doesn’t look the way we always imagine.

Whose life ever ends up the way it was initially planned? We sit with our dreams and our careful intentions, but most times we end up gathering pieces of the crash on the other side.

And it is what we find in the rubble.

Whether that thing is a sacred treasure buried beneath, or a new discovery that was only attainable upon our landing site.

It is that thing we spend our lives chasing after.

There are careers and empires. Families and love stories. Adventures and voyages.

These larger-than-life ideas look so beautiful on vision boards.

But when we go to sketch out the practicum, the ideology behind attaining such lofty goals, that’s where we stumble.

And it is what we find in the midst of that scraping around in the dark.

I find a lot of clarity in writing in this kind of abstract. I’m allowed, in this space, to dance around larger topics with mythical language and poetic phrasing. Because naming it can feel scary, vulnerable.

Sitting with your it can be like staring into the barrel of a gun. Only you’re also holding the trigger.

I think as we age, we hopefully become less afraid of the ammunition, of what will come once we do pull it.

I’m approaching a birthday next month, and I find myself a bit reflective, which is not uncommon for me. This year, I’ve been softer with the more childlike pieces of myself. I’ve leaned into those vulnerable spaces that felt altogether whimsical and unimportant growing up.

And I’m healing there.

Holding baby Aubrey’s little hand as my mother’s shadow lingers, wishing alongside her that we could enjoy her embrace together just one more time.

Living in the world of imagination alongside Aubrey the child, writing stories down on paper that used to only dance in my dreams.

Engaging with the hopeless romantic heart in teenage Aubrey, leaning into a new layer of my marriage, simply sharing the ways that I long (in the past and present) to be loved.

Introducing myself to “young woman” Aubrey, who spent most of her time fitting a facade and living in shame; her desires, once laid dormant, are now welcomed into the light.

It, for me, is rooted in knowing— being known, knowing myself. And the love that flows from it all.

I haven’t always given myself the room to simply be known; remaining amniable always seemed the easier route, not matter how much I was clawing out my insides.

So, it’s been a real journey, allowing myself a voice, a valuable place in the discourse. And in that, to voice my dissatisfaction. My therapist once told me that I had a real issue with admitting to disappointment, and ever since, I’ve really sat and looked at my life through that lens.

How heartbreakingly true.

There were so many moments that, in the middle of the deepest cuts and wounds, I found my smile. I assured the world and deluded myself that I could handle it—maybe a function of overcompensating as the youngest, wanting to keep up with the grown-ups. Maybe a way to pretend that the unpalatable truths inside weren’t real.

And to keep from disappointing myself.

But in that, I negotiated little pieces of my own needs and desires to put on a face of compliance and docility.

When I met my husband, at the ripe age of 17, I remember he called me out on just that. And I was immediately pissed.

I remember those words like a record scratch, a moment in time where I felt something truly shift inside. So much of who I thought I knew was rooted in that kind of survival. And I thank God every day that Cam was bold enough to see it and say it when he did. Because it saved my life.

I got a taste of being known, and I was hooked (hence why I married him 3 years later).

It began to find me in this moment.

I don’t think I knew what it was until I began being honest about what it was not.

Not some life of performative church positions.

Not a career filled with singing gigs and record deals.

Not a black token politician in speaking circuits throughout DC and the education world.

Not as the wife of the minister or music director or rapper (thank you Jesus for your hands of protection).

Not a woman fueled by fire and fury; filled with anger and vengeance for all the wrongs she’s faced in this life.

Not perfect, not totally healed, not even totally definitive.

This life does not look the way I wanted it to.

My mom is dead. My brother is estranged. My husband and I have student loans and three kids. I didn’t finish college. I gained more weight having babies than I’d care to admit.

But man, am I satisfied. Truly satisfied. Supernaturally, so.

I don’t even mean that on no super holy, woo-woo crap either. I mean, there is a deeply rooted kind of satisfaction that I can’t fully explain to you. And yes, I could simplify it to the fact that Jesus kept me, *quickens*.

(He did, incidentally.)

But the deeper and more raw answer? I stopped hiding from my truths.

I acknowledged the pain that I had neglected and gave it a name. Abuses I suffered in silence. The people and places that ignored me, that still try to overlook me. The credentials I don’t have that make me feel small. The perceptions that I’ve tried so hard to uphold that ultimately created this Barbie-doll version of me. And that version isn’t real.

I opened myself up to those deeper moral and theological questions. And if you want more of that journey, you can read through my diary of a reformed church girl series. In short, I found a more honest relationship with the Lord that allowed me to see Him more clearly…and became even more closely held in Their embrace.

I addressed the physical needs, wants, and desires I thought made me dirty. I explored in the sheets—alone and alongside my husband. Had deeply honest conversations with him, real intimacy rooted in truths that can’t be hidden. The passion I ignored and called sin has made me a much more sensual and in-touch (*teehee*) woman. Oh my, the beauty my body has; this body that God created that I ignored out of fear.

Go ahead and clutch your pearls. I’m through hiding what God has done.

Your girl did the work, y’all. And now, it isn’t so much of a chase.

These days, I’m slowly unraveling more of myself, and I’m trying to cherish the in-between moments.

Having children has made me especially sensitive to this.

And not so much that they grow quickly, and it’s hard to watch (though that is a factor). Rather, you watch this process start all over again. The chase, the hustle, the discovery.

And you find yourself telling your children to slow down; allow it to find you.

One day, my four-year-old mentioned to me how she planned to never have children, because she didn’t want to face the pain of childbirth (yes, my FOUR-YEAR-OLD said this, lol). I replied that I thought that was a completely valid reason and she was free to make that choice, but that it was also okay if she changed her mind. But she was ADAMANT— “NOPE. Never having kids,” she said.

And in that moment, I had one of those oh-my-God-I-sound-like-my-mom moments, when I replied, so casually,

We spend so much of our youth chasing and trying to understand and feeling behind. But the sooner we can sit and breathe deeply, observing how finite this moment is, the more we grow to appreciate our bruises and failings…we begin uncovering it. Or maybe, it uncovers us.

The beauty in the rubble, the hidden treasures, the gift found in the old.

The heartbeat in our chest, the blood pumping in our veins, shared laughter among friends and some foes, and the absolute mosaic of imperfection.

It, I’m learning, isn’t a destination. It is a presence.

A quiet knowing.

A discovery of, a return to, self.

The full-bodied exhale of a woman no longer running from herself or from the God who designed her.

It is honesty held with tenderness. Desire no longer swallowed. Worship without performance. A life less curated and more true.

It is what you find when the striving stops and the Spirit remains.

And if I never find another stage, another title, another moment of direct affirmation…

I’ve still found it.

And baby, that’s enough.

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Thank you, truly, for your support. Your reading, sharing, and feedback are all treasures I hold close to my heart.