I don’t think Anthony Bourdain was really talking about garlic. I think he was talking about the satisfaction that comes from participating in an experience. And I can’t stop thinking about how we’ve optimized ourselves out of so much of what makes life feel alive (!!!)

Somewhere along the way, convenience stopped being a tool for me and became the goal without even realizing it. Every corner of my life has been optimized, outsourced, and automated. What privilege! But also…in making life easier, had I accidentally made it emptier? I started wondering what other parts of my life I’d optimized away.

✦

When was the last time I walked thirty blocks instead of taking an uber because it was “faster”?

Or bought the whole pineapple instead of the pre-cut one?

Or stood in line for a coffee instead of ordering ahead?

Or said yes to a favor knowing it’d completely throw off my afternoon?

I stopped asking, “What would make today feel fuller?” and started asking, “What’s the most efficient way to get through it?”

In church, I learned that volunteering is supposed to feel inconvenient. You’re giving something of yourself (time, comfort, energy). “It’s not supposed to fit perfectly into your schedule…we have to avoid just giving our leftovers,” my priest (and bestie) Father Jim would say. I feel like true love operates in the exact same way. It’s giving of oneself.

✦

What does it really mean if it only ever comes easy? (Don’t get me wrong, I think love itself should feel easy…but you know what I mean).

It’s not just our love for other humans that gets diluted by convenience. I think our love for life does too. How many conversations never happened or detours have I skipped because I chose the fastest way instead of the most interesting one? I would have lost witness to so many pockets of life. Being less productive makes my life richer. A paradox I’d never thought I’d say.

✦

I think my first realization of this was during my apartment swap in Copenhagen. There was no dishwasher. No washer-dryer in the unit. *GASP* The horror!!!

And yet, by the end of my trip, I genuinely looked forward to cooking my meals, putting on my favorite songs, and giving my dirty dishes a bubble bath while I sang and swayed my hips in a private concert for my Danish neighbors across the hall…in my underwear (to Olivia Dean of course).

I felt hot. It felt romantic. I felt like I was flirting with the universe.

✦

And while it’s a tale as old as time: Can you really be thankful for something (and understand its magnitude and weight) when it’s simply handed to you?

I think about this with my career too. If convenience is the enemy of romance, then maybe the algorithm is the enemy of art. I’ve dedicated five years to storytelling on social media, and some days the appeal of the slow burn completely disappears. I struggle to find purpose in it. But then I remember this:

The things that ask something of us often become the things we cherish the most.

✦

When I think about how much I’ll cherish and rightly steward the blessing that’s on its way because of the love, trust, time, consistency, and inconvenience I’ve poured into it, I can’t help but feel like it’ll all be worth it.

I’ve lived a life of incredible convenience these past couple of months. And while it’s comfy...it also felt empty. Robotic. Monotonous. Just... bleh. I’d rather have a life that feels alive with vitality and struggle and joy. A life that asks something of me. Most of all, a life that feels undeniably human.

✦

Of course, I’m not suggesting we throw away our dishwashers or swear off Uber Eats forever. Convenience isn’t always a bad thing; I think it’s one of the greatest gifts modern life has given us. But maybe it shouldn’t always win. Maybe not every inconvenience is a problem waiting to be solved. Maybe some of them are invitations to notice, participate, and earn the experience and the satisfaction that comes with it. The ones that deepen our relationships…those are ones worth choosing.

✦

So here are a few ways I’m devoting myself to making my life a little more inconvenient, for a good cause. (Kinda like a romantic rebellion if you will…)

• A no-buy clothing challenge for August.

• Walking everywhere I can (yes, even heat waves).

• Knock on my friend’s door instead of sending the text.

• Doing the favor I'd normally text my way out of.

• Leaving my headphones at home.

• Buying the garlic that still needs peeling.

• Let the errand become the outing.

I’d like to participate in my own life again. Would you join me?

Te quiero mucho,

Sarita

TW: this writing contains mentions of anxiety, OCD, intrusive thoughts, suicidal ideation, and disordered eating. Please proceed gently.♡

Remember. How good we are at forgetting when it’s time to forget. As if the life-altering rumination that was practically all we knew never existed. I never want to forget what happened to me in January of 2023. Not in a weird “oh, poor me, can’t let go of this victim identity” kind of way, but more in a “how much have I grown into a woman I am proud of because of it” kind of way. What an irony, given that that season, what I coined “Sarita’s Great Crash-Out of 2023,” was just that: the worst crash-out of my life. And this Mental Health Awareness Month, I thought it would be fitting to tell my story.

It was a long time coming, so let me set the scene: perfectionist, only child of Latino immigrant parents, growing up carrying the weight of a thousand quiet pressures I couldn’t name. I wasn’t enough. Not rich enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough, not skinny enough: the things that matter in the pre-adolescent mind, I guess. But a thought-life lacking love of any kind was a dangerous thing. My poor girl. The heavy expectations you subjected yourself to suffer through. Let me hold you tenderly, to make up for the “normalcy” I showed you. I’m so sorry. I forgive you. Come here.

This is not to say I don’t look back at my childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood with sweetness. There were One Direction birthday cakes eaten on kitchen floors and prank calls gone wrong and first kisses that lasted two seconds and felt like forever and long summers that smelled like sunscreen and fake freedom. Underneath it all, though, was my not-enoughness, sitting dormant, ready for the right trigger to come out for its infamous appearance. How paralyzed I felt by it. How ashamed. I didn’t understand my big feelings. I couldn’t bear the thought of revealing anything other than perfection. And here’s the thing: I was great at pretending. Smiling and waving while my insides were falling apart. Meanwhile, my outsides were getting stuffed away in a suitcase en route to a new city, a new life, with about one thousand dollars to my name.

✦

Enter, stage left: New York City. Circa 2021.

New York City is like getting a mirror held up to your face to show you exactly the things you’ve been hiding. Come to New York City, baby: all your dark shadows revealed to you at once. Would you like the matinee or evening show?

I did every possible thing I could to numb, to look away. My numbing of choice was social media, among other things. The decision to leave corporate life to become a full-time influencer (a decision I will never regret) further fueled the social media addiction and captured every last drop of my attention. When I wasn’t consuming like a monkey, I was producing like a machine. Cue the not-enoughness. I felt like I had something to prove. I had to be worthy of being an influencer. I had to prove I deserved it, even if I didn’t fully believe it myself. No one in that space who was extremely successful really looked like me, so where did I fit in? But it didn’t matter. I had the whole aesthetic. I had to prove that I belonged, even when I was the last one convinced.

I remember a house party, the kind where everyone in the room was the clout-chasing type. My friend kept getting recognized across the room. I kept getting looked through. The rage that came over me was something I wasn’t prepared for. I isolated myself in a corner, stiff and silent, unable to enjoy a single second, unable to be happy for the people I loved most. I was so ashamed of myself. But that’s what the not-enoughness does. It shows up uninvited and seems to take the whole night hostage.

And then there was the Kiehl’s shoot. My face was going to be the face of a campaign for skincare, something I had genuinely only dreamed about. I should have been soaking in every second. Instead, I spent the entire time sick to my stomach over a situation with another brand that was placing blame on me for things I couldn’t control. I physically could not be present for one of the happiest moments of my career. To this day I think about that. Anxiety didn’t just follow me to the hard moments. It followed me to the best ones too.

Performing perfection was also a way to fill the not-enoughness. As my life became more and more perfect online and less and less so in real life, that gap kept growing: wider and wider and wider. A gap big enough for sadness, anxiety, and so many other things to come crashing through. Career and the lust for fame became my identity and the object of all my desires. “Fame is a Gun” was kind of the soundtrack to my life at this time. “I always wanted more,” to quote queen Addison Rae. MORE. More pictures, more parties, more money, more nights out, more comparison, more secret envy, more doom scrolling, more main character syndrome. I consumed content that told me to be more, do more, want more. MORE MORE MORE. I was chasing a version of myself I could never quite reach. I was a volatile thing, living entirely at the mercy of emotion. Living in a paradox of inner and outer world. Everything had to be in my control, and everything felt hard. I was f***ing exhausted, and it showed.

✦

First, my hair started to fall out.

Not a little. Enough that I’d board a flight to Miami once a month just to get cortisone injections across my entire scalp. I’d sit in that chair, stare at the ceiling, and tell myself it was just stress. Just stress. Then came the stress-induced throat closures, which is as scary as it sounds. I never knew when it would strike, and next thing I knew, I couldn’t swallow and would choke on my food. That was incredibly unfortunate for me at the time, as food was another one of my numbing choices. And finally, after putting band-aids on all of these things and convincing myself I was fine, my body said enough, and sent me a warning I could not ignore: my panic attacks. Screaming, crying, shaking were second nature to me. My heart was always pounding. I couldn’t ever catch my breath. My ability to interact properly as a normal human being was slowly fading away. I didn’t feel safe in my own mind.

I always thought people with anxiety were dramatic or asking for attention. Turns out they weren’t. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me every time a panic attack struck. It’s like my heart was going to explode. I really can’t describe the feeling any other way. And so I went, many a time, to the emergency room, thinking I was being hospitalized for something else, while still being in denial that it was because I was mentally unwell. After all, mental illness doesn’t really exist in a Latino household. But one day, multiple hospital bills later, I realized I was too far gone. I couldn’t function anymore. I couldn’t shower without feeling like I was being chased by a bear. Fight-or-flight had become my baseline. I needed to go back to Miami to be taken care of by my parents. I needed to see a psychiatrist. I needed to take something, do anything. The joy of healthcare in America: all it took was my tear-stained eyes and my inaudible rambling of a story in exchange for a box of pills.

Do I think it could have gone another way? Not really. I was dealing with the weight of years of self-inflicted emotional wounds. I also believe that somehow, taking Prozac was meant to be part of my story, so I could warn others to listen to your body and catch your anxiety early, or to try to regulate your nervous system in other ways before signing that little medication slip. Because here’s the thing about SSRIs: the anxiety is supposed to get worse before it gets better. I asked my psychiatrist at the time, “What do you mean it’s supposed to get worse? I feel like this already is the worst!” But little did I know…

[A note I want to be clear about: I will always be a proponent of taking medication when it’s necessary. I believe in it. For many people, medication is life-saving. This was simply my personal experience adjusting to it while already in crisis. The healthcare system in America is deeply flawed, and I, as well as others, have been a witness to that firsthand.]

✦

Life trying to heal and adjust to my medicine at my parents’ house looked a little like: no social media, night sweats, daily walks, tears, sleeping (or lack thereof) in my parents’ bed, being held at night until my panic attacks subsided, comedy movies I could barely concentrate on to make me laugh, liquid food and purées because my throat closures were ever stronger and my appetite nonexistent. It took me up to an hour to drink a can of soup. I lost 20 pounds in one month. I couldn’t recognize myself. Nobody was the wiser.

I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety and acute OCD. Now the mental illness was feeling a little real. I was feeling a little better, I guess. My focus was just the struggle to survive. But when I look back, those days are all mushed together. I just remember feeling so alone and isolated, watching from the sidelines while everyone else was living their healthy lives. My intrusive thoughts became ever more unrestrained, and I took every single one as truth (this was the part that was “supposed to get worse before it gets better”). They looked like: What if you never survive this? Don’t pick up that knife, it’s scary. What if something really, really bad happens? What if you wake up and everyone in the house has passed away? I would lie there and wait for them to pass, not knowing if they would. What scared me the most was how much darker my thoughts had become. It freaked me out because I thought these thoughts were a reflection of my character. On the one hand, I felt so relieved to be taking tangible steps to get better, but on the other hand, the ruminating and now life-ending ideation had me convinced I couldn’t make it out. I lost my chispa, my spark, and with it, my hope.

✦

And then there was one night. No, one moment. Wait, actually: a suddenly. I had a suddenly.

I was having an hour-long dinner (as I did) and my dad comes up to me and says, “I know you hate it when I talk about the faith. But I think you should consider coming to God. There’s truly nothing else I can tell you to do…can I pray the Rosary for you? You don’t have to do anything, just sit there.”

A begrudging suddenly.

You may have noticed that I haven’t brought up faith or God at all up to this point, and that’s because there was none in my life. It truly just did not exist. In fact, I hated that it was shoved down my throat by my dad growing up, weaponized by people I saw on TV, and taught at my private Catholic school in fear-mongering ways that mind-boggled me. Being Catholic sucked because the people sucked. Everyone seemed broken, and people were using it as a morality boost, or really weird people were just a part of it that made me cringe. No, thank you. I am not the one.

But now I was desperate and fighting for my life. Normally, I would’ve rolled my eyes and walked away. But at that moment, something in me said yes. I couldn’t not try it. And so I looked at my dad, held his hand, and he led me to a quiet corner of the house. He started the Rosary, and I, astonished by my own desperation, joined along. These prayers were ingrained in me from the womb, so trust me, I knew the words. But did I really know the words?

Then it was there. My suddenly.

For a millisecond of a millisecond of a millisecond, my heart stopped racing. And same with my mind. It was fleeting, but it was there. Sure enough, the pain and anxiety came back, but I was struck by my suddenly. If this was what one reluctant moment in prayer, one moment of connecting with a higher power, connecting with my Creator felt like, well then, what would an intentional pursuit of God look like?

Suddenly: hope.

✦

And so new routines were added to the rotation: prayer, reading the Bible, watching faith-based media, Sunday Mass. I learned so much during this time, most ardently about how I had been correlating the Catholic faith with the imperfect people who ran the religion, and not truly getting into the deep meaning of it all. The Bible, the words that come out of Jesus’s mouth: that is what I decided to focus on, build a relationship around, and take at face value. Everything else, everything said by a human being, I always took (and still do take) with a grain of salt and prayed over to see whether it aligned with myself, my life, and most importantly, the teachings of Jesus Christ and the Bible.

All the messaging I was absorbing was true love and light. Trust me, I was a self-help book connoisseur for years leading up to this moment, but there was just something different and life-giving about the Bible. As if through osmosis, these words were healing me. Jesus says “do not be afraid” around 70 to 100+ times in the Bible, depending on the translation.

I realized for the first time:

I didn’t need to be perfect.

I wasn’t even called to be.

I just needed to be who I truly was, the person God created. I was even allowed to be imperfect. I was allowed to be all of it. And so I finally started believing that peace was my birthright, and that fear had no place in my heart. My mind was renewing. It was becoming a place I actually wanted to be. I started to imagine God with a watering hose, cleaning every little crevice of my brain for a new identity. My body sometimes struggled to keep up, and panic attacks were still a thing, but a girl with a will and a purpose to live again is a force. And I was a force. The darkness was not going to bring me down, even if my body was a little slower to keep up.

I didn’t want to numb anymore. Slowly but surely, I started eating and actually enjoying food again. I slept through the night with no interruptions. I stopped being afraid of my own thoughts and was able to sit in silence and feel okay (what a concept)! I began to live again. But this time, I did it in a way that was loving to myself and, as a result, to the people around me. I was ready to be a vessel for all that love and light that further reveals God’s face to the world. Oh my gosh. Did I just become a Jesus freak? I certainly thought so, and really didn’t care. I got my butt on a plane again to NYC. This Jesus freak was ready to go home (my other home, you know what I mean).

✦

Through prayer, which is simply talking to God, I built a relationship. I had always wondered: does He talk back? How? And yes, He does. In laughter. In cooking with friends. In naps without guilt. In a salvaged relationship. In feeling the sun on your skin. In passing your favorite tree on a hot summer day. In realizing a friend shares your birthday. In eating your favorite homemade dish. In realizing that writing is your passion after so many years of putting it down.

Are you listening?

I don’t want this to sound like a trap or propaganda for faith, because trust me, been there and hated that. But this is, in all honesty, hand to my heart, my unfiltered story. Over time, the medication finally got over the “worse” hump and into the “better” one. I still take it today. Meditation, breath work, affirmations, healing self-talk, social media detoxes, clean eating, work-life boundaries, community and friendship not centered around social media: all of it is crucial in the betterment of my heart, body, and soul. But I believe the one who planted that desire in my heart when I didn’t want to live anymore is Jesus. Every embarrassing thing I ever did online. Every time I performed for approval and felt empty after. Every 3am spiral. He knew about all of it, and He came anyway. He carried every ounce of shame, fear, and not-enoughness I’ve ever felt. He took it all to the cross so I could live free. And if you were the only person on this earth, He still would have done it. That’s how loved you are. That’s how enough you are. You don’t have to perform. You don’t have to earn it. He already decided you were worth dying for. So if you feel far from God, if you feel like a hot mess, just know: He’s already waiting to walk with you. Let Him hold you and change your heart. He just wants to be close, so let Him in.

✦

And so “Sarita’s Great Crash-Out of 2023” finally reaches its climax and falling action.

But even though the curtain should be called and that piece of the story is done, it was truly just the beginning. It felt like the start of my life as a new creation. Peace beyond understanding. Breathing, like really breathing. Being okay, and accepting the anxiety lapses and the triggers very imperfectly, but still with grace. And that leads me to where I am today, three years later.

I’ve had waves of anxiety since then, but each episode, I show up stronger and more capable to handle it. Because each of these are data points that reference my growth as a woman with a regulated nervous system who wants to live a life of joy and fun and share that with others. Truly, the work never stops. Pain doesn’t disappear. But an anchor to my life and protecting my peace is something I became devoted to through my mental health crisis. I can look at that New York City mirror with curiosity and love and see back a radiant, smiling girl, made in God’s image, that is still becoming.

And that is all I can ask for.

♡ If this essay brought anything up for you, or if you’re struggling in ways that feel heavy or scary, please reach out to someone you trust or seek professional support. You are deeply worthy of help, care, healing, and a future that feels lighter than this moment does right now.

U.S. & Canada: Call or text 988
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
International support: https://findahelpline.com

Te Quiero Mucho,

Sarita

I think we overcomplicate the meaning and purpose of life a lot. Honestly, no matter how close we get to universal truths about it, we will never have full certainty. And maybe that is okay.

The ideology I subscribe to is that the meaning of life is to give and to serve with love. Under that, so many other beliefs and ways of living fall.

But getting to that realization, and actually staying rooted in it, is not linear. It is realizing you finally got it, then getting distracted by life and missing the point. It is coming back to it, then drifting away again. It is the constant ebb and flow of remembering and forgetting. And even in that, there is so much struggle. So much discomfort. Grappling with existentialism, with the unknown.

My inner monologue goes something like:

Why, why, why? I want to know it all. Why do I forget and make it hard for myself? I got it again! Life is AMAZING. This sucks. Why can I not know it all? “Sarah,” I remind myself, “to know it all is to be God, and you are not.”

And then the cycle repeats. Life goes on. And you hold on to the pieces of purpose you find around you.

In laughter. In cooking with friends. In naps without guilt. In a salvaged relationship. In feeling the sun on your skin. In passing your favorite tree on a hot summer day. In realizing a friend shares your birthday. In eating your favorite homemade dish. In realizing that writing is your passion after so many years of putting it down.

I find God, and in turn purpose, everywhere.

I may not be able to piece it all together perfectly, or say it as eloquently as I wish I could, but I know there is meaning in everything. Everything matters.

✦

Every once in a while, though, I hear a reflection that completely rocks my world. And it all started with one of my favorite people on earth: Jim Mayzik. My best friend, Father Jim…his homilies speak to me in a way that no one else’s can.

One time, he spoke about how we are held in existence every second of every day by God. Every millisecond. Every breath we take. Every heartbeat is willed by our Creator. He focused on breath, and he asked: can you spell the sound of it? The closest thing, he said, would be Ya (inhale) weh (exhale). And that is God’s love for you. For your very being.

✦

And from then on, I fell in love with the word Yahweh.

But Yahweh was not always Yahweh. YHWH is actually called the Tetragrammaton, which just means “four letters.” In ancient Hebrew, vowels were not written, so people only saw: YHWH. The name was considered so sacred that ancient Israelites would not dare say it out loud. Instead, they would say Adonai, which means Lord.

And what does Yahweh actually mean? The best way I can describe it is: the God who simply is. The name Yahweh comes from the Hebrew word for being itself. When Moses asked God who he was, God said: “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). I AM. Present. Constant. He is a God who is always, in everything, including right now, in the breath you are taking as you read this!

✦

Here is where it gets really fascinating to me:

I keep breath work and positive affirmations very near and dear to my heart, especially given my own mental health journey. I know what it feels like when your own mind works against you, and breath work was one of the first things that actually gave me something to come back to. Slowing down your breath shifts your entire nervous system out of stress and into rest, improving mood and lowering anxiety. It is the one thing always available to you. The first thing you are told to focus on during a panic attack. And then there is this: one of the most powerful ways to rewire your subconscious mind is through the repetition of positive affirmations. And what do most of them start with? I AM.

I AM blessed with the ability to see my beautiful potential.

I AM thankful for the abundance of opportunities that come my way.

I AM grateful for the peace and harmony in my life.

Even affirmations have God interlaced within them. Coincidence? I think not.

✦

As theologians have long reflected: the first thing a newborn baby does is inhale. The last thing a person does before death is exhale. Every breath in between is sustained.

And so not only does God will our existence through our breath and everything else, but He is the breath. He is in us. We are literally saying God’s name every second of our lives. Breathing is dependence, connection, and presence.

The Psalmist knew it too: “Let everything that has breath praise the Lord.” (Psalm 150:6) Every inhale, an act of worship.

You do not have to believe everything I believe for this to mean something to you. But I hope the next time you breathe, you feel it a little differently.

✦

So yes, I have a favorite word.

I love how it is spelled. I love that it uses the forgotten, underrated letters of the alphabet. I love that against my will, if I were to get a tattoo, I would probably put it on my body. I love that as I write this, I want to make a watercolor painting of it to hang above my bed.

But most of all, I love what it reminds me of.

How involved God is in every second of our lives. How watched over we are. How loved we are. How much we matter. How much everything matters.

So I invite you to do the same.

Breathe in. Hold for four seconds. And breathe out.

Yahweh.

Sources

Britannica, “Yahweh” / Exodus 3:14 (NIV) / Psalm 150:6 (NIV) / Scientific Reports, “Effect of Breathwork on Stress and Mental Health: A Meta-Analysis of Randomized Controlled Trials” (2023) / Cell Reports Medicine / Stanford, “Brief Structured Respiration Practices Enhance Mood and Reduce Physiological Arousal” (2023) / Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, “Self-affirmation activates brain’s reward centers” (2016)

Pictures sourced from Pinterest.

Then I had a moment of clarity: maybe my desperate need to agree with everyone actually stems from a fear of being misread or worse…¡¡¡GASP!!! the deeply exhausting need to be liked by people I don’t even know. This notion stopped me saying anything real. BUT F*CK! I’m over it.

I want to disagree. I want to have such a strong stance that it doesn’t even matter if someone pushes back, because it’s something I believe with my full chest. I want to be the most disagreeable woman you know. And here’s something apparently unfamiliar to internet culture: there’s a world where you can disagree with someone’s stance (most of them, at least, as long as they don’t deal with basic human rights and the dignity of the human person - something very black and white and non-negotiable in my opinion) AND STILL BE FRIENDS! WOW.

If you’re feeling too agreeable lately, I recommend making a likes and dislikes list for yourself too. You’ll probably feel like Nicole Kidman walking out of divorce court.

So here is my unofficial official likes and dislikes list.*

*subject to change, as I grow and evolve. It’s important to constantly challenge the narrative we tell ourselves, it’s the only way we stop being stagnant. Like, have you ever “loved eggs” your whole life because that’s just what you’ve always said, and then one day you wake up and it’s the most disgusting thing in the world? Yeah. That. Self-discovery is imminent and ever-happening. So let’s get into being a hater for the sake of healing. (A crazier juxtaposition has never been said.)

Edamame and celery. Literally the only two foods I cannot stand. I have shivers down my spine just thinking about them.

When someone wrote a play using my likeness and the character I was based off was a total b*tch. There’s a lot of lore here that I’m not sure if I’ll ever uncover.

Low vibrational music disguised as pop hits. WHY are some of the catchiest songs about how life sucks and you keep attracting terrible men? What are you doing to my SUBCONSCIOUS MIND. But also I can’t stop listening. STOP. (And now that we’re here, I share my truth: I didn’t like the new Harry Styles album. Also, didn’t like Bieberchella).

Scary movies. No, not even for the plot.

Lazy people. How have you gotten away with having the job you have if you do the bare minimum and you’re literally so bad at it???

The fact that I still cannot get into matcha. Why does it taste like grass? Please, may I turn 27 and wake up with a changed palate and frontal lobe. I’m begging.

Ill-Intentioned, Mean-Spirited Haters. Let me explain: there’s a fine line between good gossip and bad gossip. The former is an anthropological retelling of true events with fun one-liners sprinkled in. The latter is letting someone catch a stray just for the heck of it. Why are we doing that? You’re weird. I won’t be engaging. (Okay, fine: gossip is gossip in God’s eyes, so maybe this whole point is irrelevant. Moving on.)

Ill-Intentioned, Mean-Spirited People. I’ve met most of your favorite influencers. They suck!

That STICKY feeling. Music festival porta-potties. The subway on a hot day. Petting one too many dogs. It’s why I shower twice a day and I will not be apologizing for it.

Prolonged eye contact with my crush that makes me believe he might actually be into me. Followed by daydreaming about it. Followed by the crushing realization it’s probably just limerence.

All my exes. I know you’re reading this. Hi!

Writing in cursive. It looks so pretty and no one can read it unless they really try. Feels poetic.

Karaoke Night but it’s just the Hamilton soundtrack.

The sea view from my NYC apartment in full light. The fact that I can type that out and it’s REAL? I love the sparkles reflecting off the river and the disco ball in my living room on a cloudless day. It’s like a sunlight party I get to bathe in every single morning.

Addison Rae.

Vintage musicals. Funny Face, Singin’ in the Rain, An American in Paris. The moment those men start doing a lil tap number…OOF. They really don’t make ‘em like that anymore. The only exception is La La Land. And yes, Ryan was robbed of that Oscar.

Prolonged eye contact with my crush that makes me believe he might actually be into me. Followed by daydreaming about it. Sans the moment when I realize it’s probably just limerence.

A long shower after a looooooong day. The steamier, the better. Bonus points if you’re heading to a girls dinner post-beach day. But straight to bed works just fine too.

Kissing in a museum. I’ve never done it but I’m sure it’s probably magical.

When something in French class finally clicks. Je suis trying.

Hanging out with my best friends and then having that moment when you realize you are so grateful to have them in your life.

In the spirit of being disagreeable: I want to note that I restrained myself from adding a disclaimer that says “if you do any of these things, I still love you” to the “things I HATE” list. Maybe I still love you. But I also still find you annoying for doing those things. And honestly? Isn’t that just true love?

Maybe being a hater is about being a lover first.

Te Quiero Mucho,

Sarita

“How did you build this life for yourself?” It’s one of the questions I get asked most. The real answer has never felt honest. How do I tell people that I nearly destroyed myself chasing my reality? Is destruction truly the price of admission?

My early years of internet visibility were marked by crying, comparing, and an obsession with being chosen. My inner monologue went something like,

“Why am I not blowing up?
Why her and not me?
When will it be my time?
I work harder than everyone else…when does it pay off?”

I went to sleep thinking about numbers. I woke up thinking about numbers. Every moment became potential content. Three or four years of that pace left me with stress-induced hair loss, throat closures, and panic attacks (a period I personally refer to as Sarita’s Great Crashout of 2023). My health went down as my numbers went up.

Surely, there had to be a better way.

I am the daughter of immigrants. My parents left Colombia and built a life in the United States from scratch. My papa used to say, “All I want is for my children to rise above me.”

After years of overachieving, I did. I speak and write in perfect English. I moved to New York. I became financially free. It was enough for him. Why wasn’t it enough for me?

Since childhood, we’re taught to work hard. To value busy over idle. To equate rest with laziness. Somewhere along the way, ambition blurred into identity. Work stopped being something I did and became something I was. I was bound to hustle addiction. Then my therapist said something that altered my brain chemistry: “Your career moves fast. Your life doesn’t have to.”

My career is intense, competitive, public, and hard. My life does not have to mirror that pace. I had never considered that those could be separate. I could compartmentalize…what a concept! That sentence became the catalyst for my hyper fixation with stories of ease.

Stories of Ease

Most top of mind right now: Alyssa Liu, the Olympic figure skater it-girl who has taken the internet by storm for her childlike joy on the ice.

At the height of her career, she took a year-long hiatus due to burnout. When she returned, play had become the north star of her art. The process mattered more than the outcome.

She said in an interview:

“Winning isn’t all that and neither is losing. It’s just something that happens. It’s the output. What matters is the input and the journey. I take breaks even now, and I think that’s the way to do it.”

The more I read about her fascinating perspective ( and her cool halo hair) the more I wondered whether I had confused suffering the cost for excellence.

Around the same time, I started reading a book called Slowing Down to the Speed of Joy. The author argues that modern life trains us to live at the speed of urgency, rushing from one task to the next, convinced that if we just finish everything on the to-do list we’ll finally arrive at what matters. But that moment never comes. Joy, he suggests, doesn’t exist at the speed of busyness. It appears when we slow down enough to live intentionally, to notice the moment we’re in and align our time with what actually matters.

And in The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron approaches creativity from a completely different but oddly complementary angle. She writes about recovering a childlike relationship with creativity, one rooted in curiosity, play, and experimentation rather than performance or applause. The work becomes less about producing something impressive and more about staying open enough to create at all. Creation is allowed to be bad, messy, and imperfect. Both books I highly recommend getting into if any part of this essay struck a chord.

You can still be ambitious and zealous. But there is a subtle, heart-led posture that distinguishes striving from surrender. To remember that if there were no audience, I would still want to make something beautiful. That might be the truest metric of all.

The Book of Ecclesiastes unsettled me (in the best way) in a similar fashion to Alyssa.

“Vanity of vanities,” it opens. “All is vanity.” A fancy way of saying: everything is fleeting. Everything slips through our fingers. Everything we cling to eventually dissolves. Or if you are nihilistic leaning: Everything is meaningless.

And yet, tucked inside that bleak meditation is an unexpected invitation:

“A person can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in their own toil. This too, I see, is from the hand of God.” (Ecclesiastes 2:24)

Simply finding enjoyment in labor is not indulgence. It is a gift. It’s the only thing we’re called to do when it comes to work. Not overdoing it. Not underdoing it - it’s not sentándose y rascándose el ombligo, as my mamá would say. Not obsessively mapping out the two-, five-, or ten-year plan like we can bend the future to our will.

Because at the end of the day, we will never understand the full picture: If I had “blown up” prematurely, would I have been too young and naive to survive it? Did I need Sarita’s Great Crashout of 2023 for character development? Is not knowing part of the point? Part of being human means not being God (duh). It means living in the “I don’t know.” Maybe the point is not control and be hungry to know every single detail. Maybe the humility of not knowing is the whole exercise.

This realization led me to pray a terrifying prayer: “God, if You are not coming with me to the destination I want so badly, do not take me there.”

I do not want a success that costs me my soul.

After the Crashout

In the aftermath of my crashout - a story that will one day get its own chapter in this Substack universe - I found God. I found community. I found practices that reminded me to touch grass and remember that social media is, at the end of the day, an imaginary world. Even though I’m not where I once expected to be by now, I’m learning to build my life and work in a way that feels far more sustainable.

But here’s the uncomfortable part: since the crashout, I haven’t experienced that same explosive growth on social media. Which challenges the old narrative in my head. There’s a voice that still whispers lies: “See? When you slow down, nothing happens. When you stop grinding, you disappear.”

But I am determined to stay the course. I refuse to re-enter burnout just to prove something.

When I filmed the first season of my podcast, I scheduled nearly the entire season in one week. Multiple guests a day. Dawn-to-midnight shoots. Technical issues. Cancellations. Constant pressure. People kept asking if I was excited. I wasn’t. I was exhausted.

On the days when I had multiple guests, I felt like a machine. On the days with one guest, I felt more like myself. Busyness was stealing the joy of the new passion project I had prayed for. I am human. I am still learning.

Devotion has become my diary for thinking through these questions in real time. The podcast is where I borrow wisdom from others. My Substack is where I process in real time. Both are spaces where I am learning to pay attention and have fun, even if that includes lessons learned the hard way.

I still don’t know whether I had to break myself to get here. I don’t know whether my excruciatingly slow growth to influencer “stardom” has been mercy or missed opportunity.

But I do know this: Just because I haven’t yet experienced true joy and ease as the vehicle of success doesn’t mean it’s impossible.

What a privilege it is to try again.

This time not at the speed of panic, but at the speed of joy.

And maybe one day, when someone asks how I built this life, I’ll have a new answer.

Te Quiero Mucho,

Sarita

When I was little, I wanted to be a pop star.
And I think somewhere along the way, I lost the plot.

Dreams and possibility, daydreams of a glamorous life on stage, wrapped in sparkles and sequins began to be stifled and locked away in a chest under my bed that dared not be seen.

And it’s important to note: Pop star didn’t just mean pop star, it mean pop star.
It meant anything was possible. In my eleven-year-old definition, it meant I could have anything I wanted, be anyone I wanted: go to the moon, face my bullies, marry Justin Bieber. The world was my oyster.

The chest started collecting dust. Thick layers of it. Under my bed. And in its place, clouds of lies and limitations moved in their place. Whispers of quiet rules and “realistic” plans that changed with time as the box itself did.

I. THE GOOD GIRL

In high school, my box was simple: “the quiet one,” “the nice one,” the girl who went home instead of to parties. And I told myself I was fine with that. Actually, I told myself I was above it. I was morally superior because I liked studying and being alone and going to bed early.

But if I’m honest it’s just the part of me just decided: “This is who I am. And I’m not allowed to want more than this.” So I didn’t try to be seen. I didn’t try to be loud. I didn’t try to take up space. I made myself small…and called it being humble.

Small Enough to Be Safe. That was my first box.

II. THE UNDOING

Then I went to college.
And I left my bubble.

And suddenly my new box was the opposite.

I wanted to be the girl who questioned everything.
Belief. Rules. The version of myself I grew up with.

I dated people who believed nothing I believed.
I wanted to prove I could survive outside the world I came from.

And for a while, that felt like freedom.
But eventually, it just felt like… another costume.

Like I traded one label for a cooler one.
But I was still dressing for a role.

Loud Enough to Be Free. That was my second box.

III. THE GIFT WRAPPED GIRL

And then the internet happened. This box came with compliments. And opportunities. And numbers that made it feel real.

I became: “the fashion girl,” “the lifestyle girl,” “the girl who does cute little routines and perfect days,” “the girl who teaches people to grow on social media,” “the girl that…”

And I loved it.
I still love parts of it.

But somewhere along the way, I started asking myself: “Would I still be doing this… if no one was watching?” And that question messed me up a little. Because I realized I was starting to perform my own life, instead of living it.

Palatable Enough to Be Loved. The box I still struggle with today.

And still, underneath all of it, there was (and sometimes still is) a dull ache. A longing for something divine. For a kind of otherworldly freedom that would give me space to devote myself to dreaming again. Because I went numb from the busyness and distractions and day-to-day performance of being a person in the world.

I needed a space where my pop star princess could run wild: no embarrassment, no cringe, mistakes allowed and encouraged, a space with no weight of approval, no hunger for applause. Returning within to remember what a life lived in pure devotion feels like.

These days, I’m thinking about that chest under my bed again. I can see light cracking through the seams, glowing from the inside. And I want to open it. I want to uncover in the version of me that returns.

So I’ll ask you this: Will you be by my side while I do? And maybe…open yours too?