Day 6

Last night, something broke free in me.

This morning: no hostage negotiations. Only kindness. Thoughts came and my inner child said, nope. You promised. The thoughts were cloud-like. I wasn’t forcing anything, or attaching shame for not.nocent — and asked how I could have said all of those things to her. How I could have passed off so many insecurities to this child before she’d had a chance to form her own identity.

I knew the answer. These were inherited.

But no more.

I took them off like a weighted backpack with nothing of mine in it.

After that — the logistics took care of themselves. I talked with my son and helped him with some college stuff. I showered. I decided I wanted to do nothing but exist, eat, and get my kids their souvenirs. No pressure to make the most of it. That thirst has cost too much. So I let it go.

Today has been easier.

I cried hard. I envisioned myself as a child — so small, so in

Is this what inner congruency feels like? What wholeness feels like?

I’m no fool — the negotiations, the pressure, the should will come back. But my body today is in exhale, and I am on the verge of tears with gratitude.

I’m glad this dam broke last night. That I lay there sobbing, sweating, apologizing to the child within me.

Because today, I am one step closer to whole. I came here to surf, take marketing pics, and instead I lost a piece of myself and gained some peace for myself.

I let the child drive.

What did we do? I’m so glad you asked.

We noticed architecture. She is interested in homes built with earthen materials. She’s been looking at Gabion walls — today she saw one and needed to see the entire structure.

She loves to take pictures of sticker clusters on doors and light poles. She does not like schedules or rigidity. And today, while eating lunch, she really enjoyed reading Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act.

Alcohol used to quiet my mind. Now it’s confrontational.

Three mojitos in at a beachside bar — a kid who looked like my oldest, playing with his dad.

You know us writers. We probably write more about our oldest children. Not because we love them more. They’re symbolic. The first will always represent the threshold.

I ugly cried at that bar. Each tear a dollar paid for access to a memory. A happy dagger in my heart and throat.

I need to get home before dark.

Note to self: Buy those Hollywood bug-eyed glasses. Better concealment for ugly crying.

Also — I think I’m afraid of the 4th drink.

Not bad driving today, kid.

Day 7

Today I had a client call. So I get to experience what everyone else will feel — working from here.

It went really well. The internet was unexpectedly reliable for a full hour on Zoom. After the call, I wrote this:

When you get there, map the terrain.

A very dear friend and client said this to me about the underworld. And when he said it, a whole path lit up in my mind.

It should not be the goal to hasten our journey through the darkness. If we are going through it, there is a reason. So — sit. Look around. Remember the landscape. Name the characters. Talk to them. This likely isn’t your first journey here, and it won’t be your last.

Our instinct when we find ourselves here is always: how do I get out as quickly as possible? But if you leave too quickly, you may not make peace with the characters. You may develop the hubris of thinking you don’t need a map.

This terrain — this mythical area of our lives — is brought about by leaving what is comfortable, whether forced upon us, sought out, or some combination.

You may look at others who have been here before and wonder why they seem so calm while you’re fighting against a riptide.

The answer is simple: they tried fighting before. It didn’t serve them. So they sat with it. They mapped the terrain. They confronted the shadows — oh hey Jerry, how’s it going? — and now it’s a second home.

This is the path of integration. Individuation. Wholeness. The spiritual journey — depending on who you’re talking to.

The path through is not to rush past it but to do the counterintuitive thing.

Stay. Not forever. Just long enough to receive.

Day 8: I flew to Albuquerque to meet my mom. A whole other story…

Then I learned about rats.
That they’re smarter than we give them credit for.
That a rat will help a fellow rat
before it helps itself.

That reframed something in me.

Maybe the Gods look at us the same way —
not with contempt
but with the particular awe
reserved for things more alive than you.

I sat in a hospital room once
while they cut my son open.
I looked at the machines, the gloves, the gauze,
the medicine moving through tubes.

Crooked system. Yes.
But humanity built this.
Built these things to save each other.
To lessen what the other one suffers.

The Gods don’t know how to do that.
They’re disembodied.
We are not.

We feel.
We are irrational.
We hurt people we love
and love people who hurt us.
We try and fail.
We try and don’t.

Some of us feel it so intensely we leave early.
That’s not weakness —
that’s how much this costs.

Women carry portals inside them.
Where once only she stood,
now two.

We make art.
We make violence.
And sometimes —
when harmony breaks through —
love.

Mind-altering,
addicting,
wound-healing,
wound-causing
love.

The Gods watch us choose love over the easier path
and cannot compute it.
They watch us get caught in traps
and gnaw our own leg off
to bring dinner home to our rat kids.

And here’s the thing about rats —
they didn’t start the plague.
They were blamed for it.

We keep choosing the ones who blame us
and loving them anyway.

The Gods can send tornadoes.
Hurricanes. Floods.
Split the sky with lightning.

But they will never live this messy life.

They will never understand
why the logical choice loses.
Why we hurt ourselves.
Why we help each other
even when it costs us.

And so they watch.
They toy with us.
They feign disgust —

but disgust is just jealousy
with better posture.

They are jealous of the hunger.
Of the forgiveness that doesn’t make sense.
Of the hope that survives insurmountable loss.
Of humans who have been wronged by other humans
and still —

still —

choose to stay human.

And it wasn’t even being behind that made me angry.
It was watching myself
do the same thing to my kids.

Yeah, they had less baggage with me.
I broke some cycles.
Couldn’t escape others.

But my kids deserved everything.
And I gave them less than.
Because less than was all I had.
All I knew.

And yet —
I love my parents.
Because they broke cycles too.
They did better than their parents did.
They sat on the floor crying more than I’ll ever know.
They sacrificed. They tried.

And I still had to raise myself.

Had to tell myself I deserved better
while they kept showing me with their actions
that I should accept less.

What breaks me
is that none of this makes me angry on behalf of the child I was.
Only on behalf of my kids.

That tells me everything
about how much of myself
I was willing to give up.

How many times I sat on the floor
trying to hold three truths at once —

I was still a child who needed love that never came.
I was a mother trying her fucking hardest.
I was a mother failing.

All at the same time.

I used my body as a shield.
Took everything the world threw
so it wouldn’t reach them.

But I only have so much body.
And the shit still got through.

Now I hear myself say the same thing
my parents said to me
in their most desperate, beseeching voice —

I did my best.

Fuck.
Me too.

Day 4

HRV high 40s. Recovery in the green.

Yup. That’s what I needed. See girl — when we don’t rage against our body, it tells us what it needs. The only thing we need to be raging against is the machine.

Seriously. No cap. No sarcasm. You’ve practiced this in controlled conditions, and now you’re doing it in real time — traveling, alone, in a foreign country. I’m proud of you.

The flood wanted to start the moment I had my wits. The mail I brought with me. The Instagram comment. The website rebuild —

STOP.

Slow it down. Grace. Okay. We can’t keep walking two miles into town and back — that’s a semi-urgent problem, solve it today. But first: green recovery day, beach workout before anyone wakes up. Then coffee. Then a bike. I can’t offer more than that.

So — after negotiating with myself — I head to a secluded beach nearby. I do my workout with the resistance bands I brought. I dance a little when the right song comes on. People start arriving.

That’s my cue. Workout complete. We were dragging it out anyway.

Back to my room. Sand everywhere. One task: transportation.

Two iced lattes at The Bakery. I wasn’t expecting to write, but it’s flowing

Then — the bike. Ollies, from Google. Ten dollars a day for five days. Two hundred dollar deposit. Thirteen percent to use a card. Fifty-six dollars total, for freedom. The bike is ugly. I chose it because it has a basket.

I hop on. Shit — where’s the brake?

No hand brake. That’s how silly this bike is.

But this bike is fucking gold.

I ride and feel like a child — the same feeling as the first time I ever rode. New found freedom.

I stop at a store to buy a bikini. One is not enough. You need three. You’ll cycle through them and because it’s so wet here, they won’t fully dry — but that’s not even the issue. You need three styles.

The play bathing suit — the one you do all the activities in.
The sexy bikini — the one you don’t really get wet but you like to be photographed in.
The utility-kini — cute, but you could run in it if you needed to.

Also, any of these can accidentally be bled on. Then you’re left with two.

The person working was a man from Argentina. Fellow surfer. His English much better than my Spanish. He pointed out some spots, asked what I did for fun. I told him I liked to surf but it’d been about a year, and that I filled the void with surf skating. He’d just started surf skating. He invited me to join him.

The striking thing is how quickly and easily you get folded in.

I’m not an extrovert. See exhibits A through E: me negotiating with myself just to leave the house and attempt to exist near other people. I’m weird around my own people. I’m still weird abroad. Anyone who thinks that changes when you travel — doesn’t travel.

But here, if I want to eat, if I want a bike, a bikini — I don’t just have to speak, I have to shittily attempt a language I’ve only quarter-ass learned, and sometimes just admit defeat: hablas inglés?

And if you’ve ever spoken the words they should just learn the language — shame on you. Sometimes you have to do things before you’re ready.

Day 5

Negotiations happened in bed before any coffee was consumed.

I think I never experienced loneliness — not because I wasn’t lonely, but because loneliness requires silence. Loneliness doesn’t scream like anger or wet your panties like lust. It’s a slow, quiet submission.

I’m lonely

I’ve been lonely a long time. Even surrounded by people, I didn’t feel it — there were always more pressing emotions, and children to raise. Both mine, and the ones inside me that were never parented.

Ugh. I sound pathetic. I think too much.

I was going to iron out logistics today — book the bus back, change my flight, extend the Airbnb. None of it got done. I biked to Playa Hermosa, took pictures and videos through town. No workout. Recovery was yellow. I was sluggish and a little pissy — at myself.

I biked back and lounged until around 1400, when I decided nuts alone weren’t going to cut it. I didn’t want to be around people, let alone people in another language I barely understand. I settled on Manzu, a beachside restaurant. I hadn’t eaten beachside yet and it’s my favorite — it feels so luxurious. A piña colada. Ceviche with fried plantain chips. The water, the sun, the beach. Perfect.

The worries from home seem far away. There is only this moment.

Until they aren’t far away anymore.

What if they’re an illusion? What if they were always an illusion — keeping me busy, consumed, noisy, always trying harder, burnt out? It’s a hard loop to break.

But then again — maybe I don’t actually like the beach. Maybe I just like who I am here. Slower. More adventurous. More physical. Sexier. Making friends.

But even this place is curated. Day in, day out happens here too. Bad days happen here too.

I want to build a natural house that doesn’t eliminate any of the mature trees on the grounds, but builds around them. I could see the blueprints when I looked at a clearing — that’s the living room.

Fuck. I miss home. Not really. I don’t have a home. I miss the feeling of being a kid and thinking other people have it together.

I’m going to be me anywhere I go.

My oldest son is in Texas. My youngest at Nags Head with his girlfriend’s family. The guy I met never messaged me back. Actually, neither of them did — not the one from FL, not the local. Maybe there’s something about me that just repels people.

I want to go to my room.

I want to and I don’t want to. I feel so small right now. I want to expand.

I just broke up with my boyfriend right before this trip. Ended a client relationship. More proof.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for solo travel.

Read more

This is the first of three dispatches from a scouting trip to Malpais, Costa Rica. I went looking for logistics. I found something else.

Day 1

Up at 0400. Uber to GSP. 0700 flight to IAH. Flight was 15 minutes late, so I ran to my connection to SJO. I had time — they were boarding group 3 and I was group 5. I squeezed in a quick pee.

I was supposed to be on a bus in San Jose at 1500. My flight was originally scheduled to land at 1221. This one would be late by about 20 minutes — flying around a storm. It had been a while since I’d been here and I wasn’t sure how long immigration and customs would take.

The line was endless. While I waited, I bought an eSIM through HolaFly and activated it right there in line. It worked immediately. Once I got to the counter, it was quick. Where are you staying — that’s all they wanted.

Straight to baggage claim, then customs, where I put my phone on top of my bag and nearly lost it forever. It’s a good thing I run a mental checklist every time I move.

Phone.
Keys.
Wallet.

Shit. Where’s my phone?

The driver was nice. Twenty-two dollars for a cab about a quarter mile away. Still safer than walking. I got there around 1400.

This part of travel reminds me of my military days. Hurry up…and wait. Fellow travelers sitting on floors with luggage, waiting for their rides.

I had an hour. My phone needed to charge, and airlines stopped serving real food sometime around COVID and never started again. I was starving. The last place I wanted to eat was Denny’s.

But there I was.

Bourbon glazed chicken, veggies, two glasses of water while my phone recharged. I paid and walked out straight into the Transporzuma bus driver. He showed me his list. I found my name. He helped me load on.

Checkpoint 2 — success.

We drove an hour and a half, maybe two hours, to the ferry. On the way we stopped at a grocery store. Water, a chocolate bar, plantain chips — which I grew to love the last time I was here. Denny’s was wholesome but I knew if I didn’t get some fat in me, I’d be feeling those hunger pangs in my sleep.

At the ferry I grab my bags and get in line. A woman is struggling behind me, so I hold the ropes while she gets over.

Instant friendship.

It amazes me every time — the speed of depth, and the fleeting nature, of these transient travel friendships.

Her name is Melissa. She’s taken this ferry to Santa Teresa before, so I follow her lead. We store our luggage on the deck and head up top. The floors are slippery as fuck.

Melissa takes a spill. She’s okay — re-awakened a two-week-old knee injury. Myself and two Ticos help her up. She has conversational Spanish, so she handles it. Once she’s seated, I grab a Coke Zero and get her some ice.

She’s from Switzerland. Around my age, I think. She was married, but her husband passed away in an accident. We both want to be closer to the ocean. The ice melts and I get her more. We talk like old friends, with lulls of silence that don’t feel awkward. I ask what she would miss if she moved to Costa Rica.

Her family. The movies — but then she immediately realizes she hasn’t been in any meaningful way, so no. Just family.

The sun sets while we’re in transit. Spanish music. Chatter. We arrive. I help Melissa with her bags down three stories of wet, slippery boat. We load onto the next bus. An hour later, the first stop is mine.

I hop off. Melissa thanks me. We part ways.

That was it. I’ll probably never see her again.

I made it to my bed around 2100 CR time, which was midnight mine. I was out.

Day 2

I set out first thing for coffee.

About a 15-minute walk to Santa Teresa. I stop at the first coffee shop I see. Vanilla latte to go.

Holy fuck, it’s good.

I decide work-work isn’t the assignment. My work here is to get oriented — to know this place well enough to guide people when they arrive. So I keep walking. I walk the entire main drag. Then I find a beach inlet and walk back on that side.

I watch surfers — beginners in the white water, intermediates and advanced in the lineup behind them. It looked so hard to paddle out to. I keep walking, wondering how many times I’ll surf while I’m here.

By this point I am sweating my motherfucking ass off. I’m AZ born, no stranger to heat. I am, however, a stranger to humidity.

Also: the more cuss words, the more serious it is.

I was sweating so hard I got a dehydration headache.

A stranger pulled up beside me. He noticed I was keeping his pace. We walked and talked like old friends. He’s from FL, just applied for rentista residency here. His girlfriend passed away a couple years ago. I think he noticed the sweating, because he suggested we stop and get something to drink. We sat at a touristy bar called the Beach Banana and sipped bottled water, getting to know each other the way children do on a playground.

We grabbed lunch. Exchanged contact info. Parted ways. He had a tattoo appointment and I had more exploring to do.

I walked about 30,000 steps that day. Sweating. Not drinking enough water.

That evening I grabbed groceries and drinks to enjoy on the beach while the sun went down.

It was beautiful

.

Day 3

I woke up with a headache and feet that felt like someone had taken all the bones out and put them back wrong.

I made it to town again, but my dogs were barking. I needed a different mode of transportation. That was certain.

Midway through the day I got a nosebleed. Then another. Twenty minutes of bleeding before it finally clotted. The heat, the exertion, not enough water.

I was also reminded, for the first time since leaving, of my physical limitations. That five months ago, I was writing my will and ready to die.

Baby steps, my love, I told myself.

I went back to my room. In and out of sleep, drinking water, snacking on leftovers. Watching Brooklyn 99.

A younger me would have launched a full mental assault on myself for wasting a day. But even on this off day, I’d walked more than normal, taken marketing shots, done the smart thing.

Tomorrow is another day, so act like it, my love.

I let myself rest. My mind didn’t wander or conjure plans or make demands. I was too tired.

It felt good. To be tired. Too tired.

I’ve had to be so delicate with my body for the past few months. Now I know the cost of skipping the rest. Getting this tired is also a good thing — it means I’m expanding my capacity. My recovery was in the red. HRV in the 20s.

I felt it.

The next week, she returned. Same spot, same day. She was now inviting him to watch by creating predictability.

She began the ritual.

Ate. Drank. Skin dewy from the humidity. Hair purposefully wild and unkempt.

Her selected wardrobe today was for easy access, not concealment. Short, white, cotton dress. No panties.

She could feel the moisture build, the sweat between her thighs and the lubrication between her lips. She had never been so wet in her life. She smiled to herself, biting her lip as she walked to her altar.

She laid her blanket down like every time before. She poured her red wine like every time before. Her hand shaking this time. Her nipples trying to break free of her dress before she even touched them. Even the birds surrounding her had gone still, as if they too were waiting to see what would happen.

The forest went quiet.

Then footsteps. Slow. Cautious.

Her heart began to pound. What if it wasn’t him? What if he had reported her? What if it was a bear, or some other animal looking to make her dinner?

It was him.

The man approached slowly, as if observing a beast in the wild, not wanting to scare it away. His eyes met hers and asked if it was ok to be there, without saying a word. She responded without a word. She massaged her breasts through her dress, moved her hand down, drew up the hem, and exposed herself. Glistening. On display.

She showed him the wetness. Proud. Like a glossy spider web she then licked from her own fingers with great joy.

He was in light blue joggers, a plain black shirt that fit him well. She could see his arousal through the fabric and was pleased.

He kept eye contact.

He began to acknowledge his erection, stroking slowly through his pants, then exposing it with excruciating patience, as if moving too fast might shatter whatever fragile, electric thing existed between them. His cock was hard, thick, straining. His face had shifted from awe into something else entirely. Intense concentration. Drinking in every detail, holding every sensation, refusing to miss any of it.

Every slow movement was a question of permission. Every movement she made in continuation was permission granted.

Without speaking. Without touching. This felt intimate.

He stroked himself to match her rhythm, imagining himself between her legs. God, he could hear her moans. Was this the siren’s song? She wasn’t even touching him and yet he could feel the grip of her. He imagined hovering above her, tasting her, then using that sweetness to tease her the way she had teased him.

He wanted to cum already. But not until she did.

Who was she?

He heard her breath speed up. Watched her fingers circle faster and faster. He sped up too.

She came loudly, violently. And so did he. Spilling into the earth.

He thought: I have to go.

She came for what felt like an eternity. Then she fell asleep, for how long she didn’t know.

What the fuck just happened.

She was proud of herself. She had done something bold. She had let herself be seen. So she returned the following week, as usual.

The man appeared again.

But this time, the wild woman heard another voice. A woman’s voice.

The man had brought his wife. She hadn’t noticed the ring on his finger before.

The wife was classically beautiful in all the ways the wild woman was not. Shoulder length blonde hair, perfectly kept. Blue eyes, piercing features. Conservative clothes that revealed just enough to show she had taken great pride in her appearance. There was something sharp and deliberate about her, the kind of woman who controlled every room she entered by never appearing to try.

The man and the wife began to kiss. He moved to do more. She denied him, shamed him, called him a pervert.

“What if someone were to see us? Are you so lustful you can’t wait until we get home? To our gorgeous house? This is insane.”

As they rustled around, the wild woman thought the wife saw her.

“Wait. I think I saw someone out there. In a white dress.”

“There’s nothing out there,” the man said. “Let’s just go home.”

The wild woman wondered why he had brought her here. Perhaps it was an offering. For the wife to observe him the way he had been observed. For him to show her, without words, why he couldn’t bring himself to walk away from this trail. But instead what she witnessed was sad. Not pitiable. Just sad. She had been there before. Shamed for her untamed sexuality. She knew exactly what that cost a woman.

The following week, she didn’t know what to expect. She figured she would never see the man again. Clearly he was torn.

She performed her ritual anyway. The trail was quiet as usual, cicadas humming in the canopy above, the light golden and thick.

This time she grew bolder.

The man was the only one she had ever seen venture this path. So she decided to undress fully.

I wonder if I can cum from the sun touching my skin, she thought. From the light touch of sweat that whispers by.

Her body nude, golden, stretched along the blanket. Skin gleefully lit by the sun above. Breath rising and falling in rhythm with her fingers. No makeup, no perfume. Completely raw. The neat bun she began the day with had long given way to something more primal. It framed her face like a crown of untamed fire.

And then.

Footsteps.

One set. Familiar.

She didn’t look up.

She didn’t need to.

This time, the man didn’t stop at the treeline.

He broke from it. Toward her.

Stay tuned for Part IV…

I took photos. For me, first. And then I thought — you should see this too. Not because it’s performance. Because it’s the opposite of that. This is what it looks like when a woman stops hiding.

The rest is behind the paywall. Because some things are only for people who showed up.

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And I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice. But the thing about creativity is it doesn’t give a damn about your posting schedule. Life moved through me this season and I had to let it. I won’t apologize for being human, especially now, especially here, in the middle of this AI content flood where everything is optimized and nothing is felt.

I am not a machine. I never was.

The numbers climbed and it was fun to watch. But that’s not why I do this. I do this to metabolize. My grief, my joy, my rage, my confusion, I write it, I dance it, I sing it out of my body. I feed birds. I sit alone more than most people would be comfortable admitting.

This is my witness. All of it.

Below the paywall, you’ll find five minutes of me dancing. Because the assholes have found Substack too, and some things still belong only to us.

I’m still here. Wilder than ever. Still me.

Read more

Her hand slid beneath her dress, exploring familiar curves, hips, scars, taut thighs. Cotton panties, plain and now soaked. She drifted. The dress concealed everything, just in case. But no one came.

She played for a while, came loudly, then packed her things and left, slightly disappointed that no one had caught her in the act. Still, she felt alive. Exhilarated by the risk, even if imagined.

She went again the next week, same time, same place. But this time, everything felt electric. It became a ritual. A ritual she began to anticipate, hold like a secret.

She dressed with intention. No panties, no bra. The same white dress, now sheer enough to reveal the curve of her nipples when the wind moved through. She looked at herself in the mirror: aging, beautiful, battle-worn, soft and strong. Wild dark hair, full lips, fierce brown eyes. Her face still lovely, even as time edged closer.

Before she left her house she turned, pulled up her dress, bent over. Looked at herself in the mirror. She rarely saw herself this way. Rarely paused to admire the beauty others so often consumed.

She reached between her legs and slid her fingers, slow, exploratory. Her body responded. She watched herself become wet, slid a finger in, teased herself to the brink, then grabbed her basket and left.

She returned to the same spot, laid out her food, sipped champagne, and settled onto the blanket. She was giddy, hopeful. Maybe today, someone would see her.

She felt everything.

The warmth of the sun on her skin, hugging her like a blanket. The wetness in the air that felt like a lover’s hot breath on her neck. The sweat that beaded on her collarbone, dripped down her chest, pooled, then dripped onto her breasts and let them show through the white dress. The wind that blew by offering short respites from the damp, thick air.

She caressed her nipples through the dress so she could watch them rise. She slid her arms out of the thin straps and pulled the top down.

She spread her legs open enough, leaving her panties on but sliding them to the side. She liked to tease herself by dragging her fingers along the outside, tracing along every hungry piece of skin. Closing her eyes, she put her palm on her hip bone, the spot that drove her crazy. She took her middle finger and parted her lips slowly, wetting it by sliding it around the edge of her opening.

One hand played between her legs, the other on her hip, breasts pulled free and bare to the world. Her skin glowed, olive-toned and flushed. Her dress drenched in sweat. Her fingers teased, dipped, gathered nectar to rub against her clit. She was a vision. Wild, raw, divine. A woman alone in the woods, chest rising, legs parted, a dress bunched around her hips.

Then, a sound. A rustle.

She paused. Pulled her top up. Nothing.

She kept going.

But then she heard footsteps.

A man appeared, just ahead of a small group of hikers. He saw her. She saw him. Their eyes locked.

She sat like a deer in headlights. Unable to move. Her expression didn’t ask for forgiveness.

It asked a question.

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What will you do with this moment?

He held her gaze, then quietly redirected his group, leading them away. As he turned back once more, he smirked, half reverent, half wild, and disappeared.

This was what she wanted. To be caught.

She finished herself off, leaving her fingers inside as she came. She liked to feel the pulse in aftershock.

She lay there for a moment, breathing deeply. Dress up, exposed, breasts out, glistening and sweaty. The intensity of it lulled her to sleep. Just briefly. A secret contract, a moment of being caught and yet preserved. It was all so surreal.

This wasn’t the kind of thing good citizens did. And yet, she was just an engineer. Educated. Modest. Well-behaved.

A good girl.

I used to wake up gasping and shaken to my core from the nightmares, but the last year?

Silence.

Sleep had been a relief.

Until recently they started again.

Violent, disturbing, unforgettable.

Less like dreams, more like warnings.

More like initiation.

Dream One: The Sleep Trial

I needed money badly. So I volunteered for a medical study - a sleep trial. A year of sleeping while doctors observed my body and mind. I signed the forms.

They dressed us in white hospital gowns and led us to sterile rooms lined with beds. Bright fluorescent lights, too clean, like a hospital without warmth. I remember, lying down, surrendering to what I thought was safe.

But at some point, I woke up. I wasn’t supposed to wake up. Not yet. And I realized. It wasn’t a sleep trial.

It was a brothel.

While people lay unconscious in their beds, others came in to rape them. One after another, bodies used like they were no longer people.

I panicked. Tried to run. The halls were endless, fenced in by tall gates topped with razor wire. My bare feet slapped against the cold tile. My gown snapping at my knees as I sprinted.

A guard caught me.

And to make an example of me, he took a hook, shoved it through my cheek, and dragged me outside. He attached me to a tree, left me there overnight so everyone could see what happens to people who try to escape.

That’s how the dream ended.

Dream Two: The Mall and The Smoke

I was working for a financial firm - but it was in a broken down mall, where a store used to be, the mall half empty, crumbling, outdated. My first clients came: an Indian family. They told me they had an SUV and could give me a ride.

But when we walked out, it wasn’t an SUV. It was a two-seater truck. We all crammed inside, the husband, wife, their son, and me. Lying to my face as though it were normal. I was furious, but climbed into the vehicle anyways.

The mother drove. In a wide-open parking lot, full of empty spaces, she deliberately parked in front of another car and slammed into it. On purpose.

Later, back at home - dirt houses, almost Aladdin-like - N (no name for anonymity) appeared. He told me he wanted to get me a job where he worked. Something top secret. Something I wasn’t supposed to ask questions about.

In the sky, I saw three enormous smoke clouds, billowing out of huge smoke stacks: two were black, one red. They felt like omens, unnatural, heavy and demanding attention. I asked N if he knew what they were, he shrugged it off.

He pulled me into a dilapidated mansion. Inside, every room was a nightmare. Naked people, blindfolded, mutilated, living in cages. Their genitals cut and broken, some, non-existent, like eunuchs. They tried to fuck each other anyway, desperate, while political officials laughed, dressed in nice clothes, mocking them, telling them they couldn’t

Finally, I was lead to a bedroom to meet someone powerful. I shook his hand. Behind him, more mutilated bodies tried to copulate. He made a pass at me, and I snapped. Rage. I stormed out, certain they’d never let me leave alive.

But the door was wide open. No one stopped me.

I wandered through the streets. Civilization on one side, the uncivilized on the other.

I think to myself, “do we want more freedom, or more safety? Can’t have both.”

I crossed over. On the uncivilized side, I found an Indian woman selling beautiful hand made dresses. I bought two.

I walked further. The secure phone N had given me rang. I didn’t even know the protocol - was I supposed to answer in private? Did it matter? I picked up anyway.

A voice told me: “You didn’t get the job. Your profile is too public.”

That’s where the dream ended.

I don’t know what they mean.
But the smoke stacks felt important.

August 5th, 2025

From B.

Today was a rough day. Coming back from the four-day break after seeing y’all — just hit hard for me. On top of that, not doing much today. We did a claymore class.

AIT is going to be interesting since it seems like a lot more sitting around until the big events. But it will be alright. Just no freedom for another eight to ten weeks. The last two should be more lenient. A lot of this is going to be mentally challenging instead of physically challenging.

Today was rough thinking about family and maybe not getting enough time. It’ll be all good. How was the drive back from here? It’s supposed to rain here till next Wednesday.

I miss y’all to death. I miss Dad and Grandad and Nee Nee to death. I never get used to leaving family. I’ve done it so much but never get used to it.

I love you to the stars and back and I wish nothing but good for your new business. I’ll call you this weekend about Ondara. Soon enough I’ll see all the family singing everyone’s birthday.

♥️ Love,

B.

August 12th, 2025

From Mom

Hey Puppy Dog,

The drive home wasn’t too bad. I have never gotten used to the goodbyes either — they never get easier. I don’t think I want them to, though. To love deeply sometimes means to feel all of the other stuff deeply too. All we can do is move through it.

There is a song that comes on every now and then that reminds me of you leaving home and heading off onto your own path. When it comes on, I sit down — no matter where I am — and I let it all move through me. The sadness, the pain, the grief, the pride. I honor the moment and the gift of being able to love so fiercely that goodbyes feel like an unbearable pain, a fist squeezing your heart.

The song is “You’re Gonna Go Far” by Noah Kahan:

So pack up your car, put a hand on your heart,

say whatever you feel, be wherever you are —

We ain’t angry at you, love.

You’re the greatest thing we’ve lost.

The birds will still sing, your folks will still fight,

The boards will still creak, the leaves will still die.

We ain’t angry at you, love.

We’ll be waiting for you, love.

This came on the other day when I was skateboarding in a parking lot. I stopped and looked up at the sky and saw the most beautiful sunset. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky other than this bushel of clouds all gathered right at the front of the setting sun — so that the sun could light up the clouds from behind, and all of the sun rays pierced through different parts of the clouds. I couldn’t help but gasp when I saw it. I would have completely missed out on this masterpiece had I not honored that moment.

I’m so lucky to have had you as my son. I always knew you were only on loan to me. You didn’t belong to me or anyone else. I was just lucky enough to be chosen as your Mom. And being your Mom is the greatest, most challenging, and most beautiful journey I have ever been on.

Seeing you graduate made my heart spill over for you. For the first time, I looked at you and saw a man standing where my sweet baby boy used to stand.

I miss you so much, puppy. So, so much. I cannot wait to see you again. I’m gonna start planning now. I hope that training is going well. Did someone get in trouble? We didn’t get a call or text last weekend. How are all of your friends doing? How was their time with their families?

I miss you.

Time will fly.

I will see you soon, love.

— Mom

After you got in your Dad’s car and headed off, I sat in my car and cried. Alone. Or I thought I would cry alone. And then Sam and my Mom came over.

We hadn’t spoken in a long time. I wasn’t sure if we ever would again. There was so much scar tissue over our relationship. But in the moment of seeing you walk into the sunset — in the culmination of goodbye — there was nothing to lose. No greater pain to be felt. And so when they came over, I opened myself up. To a relationship with my mother. A new chapter.

What follows are the messages we exchanged in the weeks after.
Unedited.
As they came.

Me → Mom

This past week, I saw the most beautiful side of you I’ve ever known — the one that emerged when you finally dropped your sword and just were my mother.

My heart has ached for that side of you for so many years. I always wanted to believe she was still there — and now I know she is.

For much of my life, I thought you didn’t love me. I carried that belief like a wound — and because of it, I settled too many times. I convinced myself that if my own mother couldn’t love me, maybe I wasn’t worth loving at all. But that belief always led me back to you.

Now I see you — the real you. The one who’s had to defend everything, all the time. I understand that kind of exhaustion. I armor up around you too. But I think we’ve both grown tired of that weight.

If you could see my heart now, you’d see the yield of your labor. You taught me strength. And most of what I’ve achieved — whether I realized it or not — was to prove I was worthy of your love.

I see you now — not just as my mother, but as a woman learning to live without always needing to fight. I don’t want to battle you. You are a formidable opponent — the one who taught me how. But I think it’s time for us to teach each other a different kind of strength. The kind that lives in softness, vulnerability, and peace.

I love you. I do need you. I always have.

So much of what you’ve seen me do, thinking I was brave or strong — I had no clue what I was doing. I just wanted you to see me.

Have a safe flight.

Mom → Me

If I were to die today, I would be the happiest woman in the world.

You have given me a beautiful gift — compassion and understanding. For most of my life, I figured nobody really cared, nobody wanted to hear me. All I’ve ever wanted was to be heard.

You are my firstborn. Until Sam and Steph came, it was just you and me against everybody else. My promise to you is to be forthcoming with my emotions and my truth. I want you to know that I am truly proud of you. No matter what the future holds, you need to always know that.

My only prayer now is to figure out a way to spend more time with you and the boys. I see them growing into such wonderful men — but it only reminds me that I’m getting older. I hope our futures can somehow intertwine. I would love to make some beautiful memories while we all can.

I love you very much.

By the way — your message was beautiful. I really do love you. I wish I could get my words out like you do.

Me → Mom

I’m fucking bawling again.

I felt your heart in every word. I know it’s not always easy for you to share what’s inside — and I want you to know that I see you. How is this the hardest part of life? We’ve been through so much. But this feels like being naked at school.

You don’t have to have perfect words. This is exactly what I wanted — just you. Vulnerable, fierce, flawed, still showing up. I think both of us carried a lot for a long time, and it’s such a relief to start putting some of it down.

Let’s keep meeting each other here — without the old armor. Rewriting what was written before we had choices.

B. was what brought us together. But we are doing the work.

When you said it was you and me against the world — I finally understood it. I feel that same bond with B. Losing it would break me.

P. and B. are night and day. P. came here knowing the rules of the world and how to move within them. B. came to question everything — to ask for more, from the world, from me, from himself. For a long time I wanted to quiet that part of him. But that wasn’t his mission. He came to wake us up.

P. reminds me that life is light. B. reminds me that love should demand more of the world.

Both of them exist because of you. You made me strong enough to take the blows of life without letting them touch my children. I could not have been as sensitive as I am without the steel you gave me.

Now I see that your hardness was love. You were teaching me to forge my own. You knew what the world does to idealistic, sensitive, beautiful women — because you had been one.

I can see you as a young girl, eyes wide and soft, wondering why kindness had no place here. You became hard because it was the only way to survive. You kept that child alive the only way you knew how. You fought and bled and cried in private, still believing someone might one day understand.

I do.

You protected us. You built daughters who could survive basic training, war zones, heartbreak — and still build beauty from the wreckage. I am here because of you.

And I would be ungrateful if I stopped here. Everything you endured — everything the women before you endured — demands that I carry the story further. We’ve been silenced, shamed, burned, and pitted against one another because our power frightens the world. No more.

I see your power. I honor it. But I hope the fight is over now, and that your soul finally gets to rest.

I now remember you. We were friends once, long before this life. Two unruly women sitting by a fire, drinking ale, laughing too loud, raising children side by side. Your fierceness was my shield; my softness was your rest. We vowed to meet again when the world was ready for us. And here we are. The same fire, the same vow. Only now the story continues through my sons.

This is how we change the world.

Mom → Me

I met your dad in California when I was 17. I fell for him hard — and he fell for me. He was sweet, funny, and very affectionate. He treated me like I was the greatest thing on earth.

When we went to Arizona, I was alone and scared. But when I met Mimi, I felt like I belonged right away. She was patient with me in a way nobody had been. She knew I had no proper upbringing, that I grew up without a mom.

But Mimi grew up in a different time. When I got pregnant with you, she was embarrassed. You’re supposed to get married first, she said. Once I started to show, I was no longer allowed at family functions. One day your dad and Mimi sat me down and told me I needed to go somewhere to finish out my pregnancy. They sent me to a shelter for unwed pregnant women in Flagstaff.

So from then on, all I had was you. I was alone and pregnant. Your dad would come on weekends but had to stay in a hotel.

After I had you, I told your dad I was moving back home with my dad — to be around family, because I didn’t think I belonged in his. I told him I’d come through Arizona so he could see you, since he hadn’t yet. When I came back, he took you in his arms and walked into the house. The next morning he told me he didn’t care what his family thought — that I was to stay, and he would take care of us.

When I told you it was you and me against everyone else, I literally meant that. You were my saving grace in a time when I felt nobody really cared. It stayed that way until I got pregnant with Stephanie — that’s when your dad and I got married, and in the Thorns’ minds, everything was right in the world.

When Mimi first saw you, she was head over heels. She held on to you so tight and didn’t want to go home. She was so helpful showing me how to be a mom to a newborn. I want you to know this not to be disappointed in her — it really wasn’t her fault, it’s just how she was raised. But it was just you and me.

You’re right that I wanted my girls to be strong and independent. I didn’t want them to be like me. What I didn’t realize was that I was being just like my dad — never showing affection, just telling everyone what to do. No real compassion or sensitivity. In his eyes, only the strong survive.

I have told Sam time and again how strong you are — facing the uncertainty, not knowing what’s around the corner, but facing it head-on. I never had that kind of courage. Especially when things with your father started getting hard. But I loved him with everything I had, and part of me still does. I hold on to the good we shared.

Your words made me relive things I haven’t thought about in years. I cannot believe how accurately you summed it all up. It feels like chains have been cut.

I know what to say in my head — I just can never get the words out. I always seem to screw it up.

I wish I could have had another day with you, face to face. You’ll always be my baby girl. My Sumu Baby. You’re one of the things I’ve done right.

I never meant to hurt you or make you feel unloved. I hope you know that. And thank you for giving us another chance.

Me → Mom

I’m glad you wrote it out — now I can read it again and again.

I could feel you in every line. Not the version the world forced you to be. Just you. Thank you for trusting me with your story. Thank you for letting me see the little girl who had to grow up so fast, and the woman who kept everything together through the storm inside.

You did so much with so little.

But you were wrong about one thing. We’re more alike than I ever admitted. The bravery you see in me — I’m fucking scared all the time. Some days I break before I even move. You already did all the things you think I’m brave for. You moved to Arizona. You prepared to raise me alone. You left Dad when you’d had enough. None of that was certain. All of it was terrifying. You faced the unknown long before I did — and maybe it didn’t feel like courage because you were tuned to survival. But that’s what courage really is.

Where do you think I learned it? You planted a seed in me — filled with your hopes and dreams, whispered in ways I didn’t understand but still carried. You showed me how to walk into the unknown with my heart broken, my body tired, my child in my arms, and still hold my head high. The part that keeps me going? That’s all you.

I even named her — Rosa. She’s the warrior in me. We’ve had conversations, her and I, because she doesn’t always trust me to lead. But lately, she’s been letting me more and more.

Part of me is sad I didn’t have you in those moments. Part of me knows it was part of my course. If I came here to learn strength, I couldn’t learn it with the most fierce warrior by my side. I had to walk alone. I was in survival mode, with one mission: to keep the world from taking from B. and P. what it took from you.

For so long I thought I was raising them in spite of your coldness. That wasn’t true — and it wasn’t fair. You were just trying to survive.

You said you replayed your childhood reading what I wrote. Did you see it through a different lens? How did it feel to revisit it now?

I feel so much — happiness that we found our way back, sadness over the time lost, grief over the pain between us. I did blame you for a lot. I think I needed to. I needed somewhere to lay my pain, and I’m sorry that meant laying it on you.

I can’t imagine not having connection to my boys. Now I understand what that must have felt like for you. It would be my greatest fear — to have my pain and sacrifices ignored or recast as villainy, when in truth there was no one who sacrificed more. Every time they hurt, I hurt. I took on people and things that terrified me because I was more terrified of my kids having to face them alone. I cried in private, fixing myself so no one knew.

Deployment — God. It felt like my heart was being ripped out of my chest. Torn between duty and the ache of missing moments I’d never get back. Hearing their voices change through the phone.

I think women are a dangerous thing to have in the military — not for the reasons people think. We don’t fight fair. We fight to kill, to burn everything to the ground, just to make it back to the pieces of our hearts we’re protecting.

We are dangerous.

I’d love a day together — just us. I want to hear your stories. I’m grateful that even after everything done to you, you tell them with such neutrality. That’s your quiet kindness — the one I never saw until now.

When we see each other next, I want to do something sacred. I want you to say a prayer in your faith, and I’ll say one in mine. Let’s each bring something to burn — a symbol of what we’re ready to release. The stories that weren’t true. The chains that kept us small. The weight that never belonged to us.

Let’s give it back to the fire.

Mom → Me

I once told my mother — thank you. Thank you for showing me how not to be like you. She was surprised. I told her that because she left, I learned how to fight. Because she left my father with six kids, and I watched what he went through to care for us — sacrificing his happiness just to make sure there was always some kind of mother in the house — it taught me that I would move heaven and earth before anyone ever took my kids from me.

I never got the chance to thank my dad. I learned so much about him after he died. Even telling you now makes me cry.

In many ways it was his coldness, his hardness, that taught me how to survive. Only after he died did I realize how much he loved me. He just didn’t know how to show it.

I watched him — every expression, every movement — trying to figure out who this man really was. I see his movements in other people now, and it always takes me back. How he cared for his animals, his plants, his trees. He was feeding them, nurturing them, watching them grow. He focused on them because he didn’t know how to focus on us.

It was through music. Dad always said he couldn’t express himself to us — but he’d find a song, play it, and say: this reminds me of you. That was his way of saying I love you. That was his way of saying I’m sorry.

He tried to say goodbye to me when he was dying, but I wouldn’t let him. He had asked all of his children for forgiveness and told each of them he loved them — except me. I wouldn’t let him. Because if he said it, that meant it was the end.

My dad and I fought, just like you and your dad. He thought distance would heal. I’ve realized now — that’s how I treated you. When you said you never wanted to talk to me again, I told myself that someday, with some distance, it would heal.

My grandchildren have brought out the side of me I’d longed for — the one I used to be before the hardness set in. It’s easy to love grandchildren. There are no expectations. They just want to be loved. You get a second chance. All the mistakes you made with your own, you know not to make with them. It’s why you had such a special relationship with Mimi. And I want to be that for my grandchildren.

I also think Mimi deserves to be thanked — for how you’ve raised your children. Without her, you wouldn’t have known the kindness, compassion, and patience required to raise your boys. So for that, I thank her.

It was coming back to the Lord that gave me strength to become who I wanted to be inside. Like your Rosa, I go for walks and talk to God to find my footing. As I grow closer, I find more peace. I know He is real, and I am thankful.

Someday I’ll leave this earth, and you’ll truly be without your parents — and it’s going to be hard. But I can do one thing: make sure you know that I love you. Before I take my last breath, you will know that you are loved. That’s one thing I didn’t get — and it’s one thing I can give you.

Me → Mom

It will be hard when you leave.

But remember who you raised.

Our hearts will break — but we’ll look back with tenderness, not criticism. I’ll carry your story so it isn’t forgotten or rewritten. So that you are remembered as a fierce warrior fueled by a love she didn’t always know how to express — but who showed up anyway. And kept showing up, even when it hurt. Especially when it hurt.

Whatever you wanted to say to your dad that you didn’t get to say — he knows, Mom. He knows.

There is no love more selfless than the love from parent to child. We don’t learn the full depth of forgiveness until our children come and crack us open, test us, break us — and still, we love them. So he knows. And any wrong you think you did by him, he’s long forgiven.

What matters is that now you see him differently. He probably just wanted to be seen too. And you see him. He lives through you.

You carry the stories of your mother and father without villainizing them. You give back what was theirs to hold, and you keep what is yours to heal. That is growth. That is raw feminine strength — to hold all of that and still soften. This is how you broke through chains of silence. This is what you taught me.

And do you see it now? Everything you admired in me came from the seeds you planted. Because you changed your path, I could change mine. You modeled reconciliation. You grew. You let love persevere, even when your kids didn’t call it love.

Even my business — when I think of the logo and the slogan, I think: holy shit. There she is. My mother. Flow over force. The wave. There was never going to be a forceful reconciliation between us. It had to flow as we each took our own paths to healing — finally to B., when all things collided, and we met as two women grieving old versions of our kids. It all had to happen. And you have touched every part of my life.

Mom, you didn’t fail us. You were exactly the mother we needed. You completed your assignment. Our evolution is proof of your success. You bore the crucible, and I was the flame born from it.

I am no longer the child who needed your approval. I am the woman you raised me to be, who carries your legacy forward. And now I have even more power — knowing I have your love. That I always had your love, even when I thought I didn’t.

B. and P. bear the crucible of knowing both dark and light in what we’ve passed them. They will be the generation that integrates the warrior and the gardener. They will be the men other men look to. Look at what beauty we’ve created, Mom. Look at what our pain became.

We did this.

You’ve been holding grief, resilience, hope, fear, and longing — all inside one body that never stopped showing up. And I didn’t see it. I was too busy surviving what you had already survived for me.

Through your armored language, you were always telling us you loved us. We just didn’t know how to hear it.

It breaks my heart to realize how heavy that’s been. And how your body has paid the price for never truly resting.

You raised me to be strong enough to take my share. And that’s my promise to you now. I’ll take back what’s mine. I’ll stop letting you carry what was never yours to hold.

I’m sorry I made you the villain in my story. I’m sorry I made you carry my pain and blame and then turned away when you were tired. I am so, so utterly sorry, Mom. Words are failing my meaning right now. But my actions will prove it in time.

If we speak of the past, we speak of the women we were — the women we’ve forgiven. Not who we are now.

And I don’t want any more apologies from you about the past, okay? It is set and we have persevered.

Only now. Only forward.

You can set the armor down.

Mom → Me

You are an amazing woman and I’m proud to call you my daughter.

I wish I could give you a hug.

Our journey and our story are not finished — and we will walk it and write it together.

I’m going to call you later to talk about Puerto Rico. Right now I’m going outside to get some vitamin D. ☀️

July 1st, 2025

From B.

Hey Ma, the gas chamber wasn’t that bad — it just reminded me of that one time we made jalapeños and butter chicken with the strawberry jam. I had to recite the soldier’s creed in the chamber.

So is P. staying out of trouble lately? I saw a few weeks ago he got into a fight and punched a window out of the bus. He seems to be partying a lot and I’ve been worried about him. But it’s probably not anything too bad. He’ll go through the same pain I went through when he leaves the den. Then he’ll assimilate.

Have fun in Oregon with the family and send me pictures. I’ll be there next year.

I qualified with my iron sights last week — got a 34/40. I’m about to qualify with CCOs this week, which is just a scope. Right now it is 5 AM and I am tired as shit. But I hope P. is doing better. I heard he’s been working a lot.

I love you Mom. Let me know how everyone is doing this week. I think this weekend is y’all’s family reunion. I’ll try to call y’all on Sunday but my phone bill pay is fucked up. I got paid so you can put my card on autopay so it automatically pays. Let me know how Klamath, Oregon is.

I love you Mom.

July 8th, 2025

From B.

Hey Ma, today we were in the sun all day shooting. The Army has made me lose my love for shooting — just because you shoot for two minutes and sit around and wait for hours on end. The hardest part of Basic is being able to keep it together when you’re bored out of your mind.

Tomorrow we go on an overnight range day. We shoot with gas masks on and our lasers to qualify shooting with all of our equipment. That’ll be fun. We had an overnight field training exercise two weeks ago and I had a blast with my platoon and other platoons. We were hungry as shit but it was pretty fun still.

I did my AFT yesterday and got a 476. Last time I got a 454. I would have got 485 but my drill sergeant was being a prick. Been getting fed more since combatives is coming around. Throw some grenades, get qualified on that, do the Forge, then be done with BCT. Then get to the fun part — AIT. I can’t wait till I can drive again and listen to music and eat a high protein meal.

I shot okay today for having four hours of sleep. They must think I’m a robot or superhuman. Wish I was with y’all in Oregon for the family reunion. Are y’all going to visit T.R.?

This week I might not have my phone since a couple of people in my platoon got into a fist fight and then went to another platoon and fucked up their beds. So we got smoked and our phones taken — but who knows. My DS is pretty cool and tries not to punish the whole group for one or two people’s actions.

But I love you Mama ♥️

Send me letters on the fun things you and the family did in Oregon. Tell the family I love them and miss them ♥️

—

Hey, this week wasn’t too bad. I shot a lot and will continue to shoot till Saturday. After that it’s onto combatives — we have to grapple with the drill sergeants. So far BCT is a joke. You have weak people who have no business being in the Army, let alone as infantrymen. I see this and realize that I used to look at this as something very hard and unachievable — now I realize there are a ton of people here who just get pushed through.

But on a good note, this is almost over and I’ll head onto AIT which will be better and go by quicker. Soon I’ll have my four-day break and be able to eat something that actually gives me nourishment.

Since I’ve been here I’ve gotten significantly weaker, slower, and less athletic. My AFT: 13:49 two-mile run, 3:40 plank, 46 push-ups, 1:49 sprint-drag-carry, and 340 lbs deadlift for 3 reps.

But despite doing better on my test, I have gotten physically weaker. The only reason I did better was mental toughness. Without that I wouldn’t have done nearly as good. It ain’t too bad here.

Let me know how P. and the family are doing at the reunion. Let me know how Klamath, Oregon is. Tomorrow I wake up at 3:30 AM. Today I woke up at 3:30 AM. I’ll see you in a few weeks Mom — I love you, be safe. Let me know how Ke. is.

—

This letter is to both you and N.:

Although in the other paper I was talking about the negative sides of BCT — it isn’t horribly bad. Most people here think they are better than you for some reason. I’ve met some of the most stupidest, laziest people I have ever met. Other than that it’s been like summer camp.

I can’t wait till one day I can travel wherever I want with no one telling me what to do. I can’t wait to travel to see you and the family without having to ask my boss if I can take time off or not. That is my ultimate goal in life — financial freedom. This is only temporary. I love you family — y’all stay safe and have a good reunion.

Let me know if y’all catch any fish. Next year I’ll be there ♥️

July 11th, 2025

From B.

Mom,

Today we shot again. We have been shooting all day every day. They are definitely training me to be what they need. I can run a 13:49 two-mile on a Monday with ease. Twenty more days and I’ll be done with BCT.

I will say — I am much better at the pattern recognition and awareness part than anything. Sometimes the training exercises don’t feel realistic, so it’s hard not to go through the motions. I can’t wait till I’m out of here doing real shit. Can’t wait to train MMA and make money from fighting in the UFC. I can’t wait to have more control over my life.

Dad and Grandad are coming down for Turning Green. My friends here are cool. We have been going to different church services every week — the Pagan church, the Muslim mosque, the Mormon church. This week we’re going to the Jewish services. I’ve tried not to laugh at all of them but it is very hard.

Tomorrow will be our last day shooting, then onto combatives. The last week will be the Forge and BCT Graduation. The days are going by pretty fast and I’m enjoying it.

I am better at what you said in that letter. Reading people, seeing who they’re looking at while they’re talking. The way they say it, the micro expressions they make.

This week has been hard — not because of the physical but the sitting around all day. But after tomorrow we should be more active. I’m damn near done with BCT, Mom. This is a good marking point for my success but it definitely won’t be the end.

I love you Mom. I thank you for believing in me and Dad for believing in me. You don’t know how much that means to me.

July 18th, 2025

From Me

We just got back from our trip to Klamath Falls, Oregon. N. and I drove from Kentucky to Monterey to pick up P. Br. came and hung out for about a week before that and it was really nice — it was fun to watch him and P. reconnect. It was like no time had passed. We got to Richmond on the 10th, flew into Klamath on the 11th. We stopped in Ashford and had lunch with S., K., and Ni. Then we headed to our home for the week. It was nice — we had an exercise room, a theater, two floors, two decks, and a hot tub. Later that day we went and listened to music and waited for A. and the boys to show up. Not much that day — we were all exhausted. You know how that first day is.

The next day we rented a boat on Lake Klamath and tried to go swimming. It was freezing!! No joke. So we treated it like the polar plunge challenge — and guess what? Everyone got in! Even A. and even Ke. N., W., and I did a full lap around the boat. We had to come up with a safety plan — that’s how cold it was. I went first so I could pull W. up if his legs stopped working, then W. in between N. and I so that N. could rescue him if his legs gave out. We fished a little bit — we kept seeing grips of fish (as M. calls them) but didn’t catch anything. Ke. told me that he loves fishing and I asked what his favorite part was and he said “catching fish” — LOL.

We went to a different spot to fish, and the most magical thing happened.

S. and K. were only able to make it for those two days. The dates were not picked on purpose and we all forgot what day it was. But I didn’t. I knew none of it was an accident.

It was July 12th.

We were on the water — one of Dad’s favorite places — laughing with our kids and making memories. Everyone was family. And right before we decided to head back in, an eagle landed maybe thirty feet from us. Long enough for every single person to see it and take pictures. Then it took flight. It was beautiful. The mountains in the background, the lake below us.

I saw the sign. That we are creating legacy from ashes. That A. and I are becoming the Elders — and the Elders are happy with us.

I don’t know what the afterlife is like, but I reckon it took Dad, Mimi, and Poppy all working together to send an eagle. I thanked them. And later I reminded A. of what day it was and she smiled, teared up, and said “of course it is. It makes sense.”

We later found out that Klamath is known for their blue-green algae, which is toxic. None of us got sick since we were swimming in the cold part where the algae can’t grow. The boat was janky and we had wondered why there weren’t more people on the water on a hot day in July in such a beautiful place. Now we knew why.

Later we went and ate at one of the only places to eat in Klamath. It was expensive and the food was mid. Br. and P. got virgin piña coladas and again we went to bed exhausted with nothing left in the tank.

Oh! That morning we did a little high-intensity run down to the lake. It was S. and K.’s workout app — in the group it was S. and K. of course, Ni., N., L., and I. It was so beautiful for so many reasons. We talked about you and thought about what you would be doing if you were there. I even made some B. heads to bring you on all of our adventures.

After dinner we started a new tradition. I had gotten a birthday cake and candles and we sang happy birthday to everyone. It was a long list — kind of awkward — but we laughed at ourselves and enjoyed a slice of cake even though we were all tired and already stuffed.

So that was the first couple of days. I will write more tomorrow — we have a lot of unpacking and cleaning and work that has piled up. No complaints though. Our hearts are so full they are bursting. We can run on this for a while.

To be continued…

Oh! N. and I will be there for the whole graduation weekend. P. is coming with your Dad and Grandad. Br. said he would come (we will see) — we are trying to get Ko. to go. A. said that either her or M. would be there but they were trying to find a way for both to go. They will only be there for the day of the graduation. We are planning on going to their place for Thanksgiving.

It helps ease the sadness to know we will stay connected through the year. We created this. It has grown. And you will be the one to continue to place importance on it and remind everyone when they forget. And then someday we will be the ones sending you and your kids eagles — and you will know the feeling of deep pride, love, and sadness all at once.

I love you Puppy. Keep going. Keep doing what you are doing — you are on the right path.

Love, Mom

July 19th, 2025

From Me

Hey Puppy,

I figured the gas chamber wouldn’t be too bad for you since we gassed ourselves out so many times — LOL. It was training. Totally did it on purpose for ya.

P. is in transition, I think. Br. too. They’re both inundated with possibilities and having a hard time choosing a path. P. does seem to be partying a lot. I hope it’s just a phase — there is so much more to life than that.

34/40 with iron sights?? That’s amazing, puppy! I knew you would do well with that. The scope will be even easier. The boredom — the “hurry up and wait” — always pissed me off too. It won’t stop after basic. It will be less and less, but there will still be quite a bit of it.

Tell me more about the overnight field training — we didn’t have that in the Air Force. Is it like camping? What did you eat — MREs? Those always made me constipated. How long did it take before you could poop?

Combatives — you will LOVE that. I think the Army does a lot of BJJ. That’s how I learned it. What is the Forge? AFT from 454 to 476 while losing muscle? That IS mental toughness! Do you know what kind of training you will get in AIT? Will it be more shooting? I imagine different weapons and learning how to take them apart and put them back together. We used SPORTS: Slap, Pull, Observe, Release, Tap, and Shoot for weapon jams.

Who is the Drill Sergeant that was being a prick? I’ll kick his ass. Maybe he was being hard on you to challenge you. I figured the physical stuff you would be miles ahead with.

At least you are getting paid to do nothing and you have a whole other family of brothers and sisters for when you leave the service. This will set you up for whatever path you choose later. You have always had an entrepreneurial intelligence and have walked your own path — so I can see you becoming a business owner. Best thing I can tell you: get as much free education as you can while you’re in. If you can come out of the Army with money saved, a bachelor’s in business, a GI Bill for you or your kids, and access to a VA loan — you will have a lot of tools at your disposal.

Now that you have seen the inner workings of Army Basic Training — how this thing that used to seem hard and unachievable is actually very achievable — I want to tell you that this is the same with a lot of things in life. Basic is hard. But you were also prepared. And being prepared made it achievable, and in some ways, easy. Most things we think of as out of reach are actually right there, ready for us to take them. The “hardness” is meant to discourage those who lack heart and commitment. Anything you commit to — is yours if you are willing to commit. Remember that.

Recognizing patterns and awareness is something that will always set you apart. As a soldier, it will help you predict movements, danger, people’s feelings beyond the words. As a business owner, it will help when dealing with partners, employees, or trying to predict the market.

I think it is so cool that you are going to different church services every week! I wish I had done that! Which has been your favorite so far? What are your friends like? What are their names? Stories? How did you become friends? Have you had to take any extra duties? Did you volunteer for anything?

Honey — you don’t need to thank me for anything, and especially not for believing in you. Someday you will understand why — but for now, just know that raising you and P. was the greatest honor and most rewarding adventure this life could have given me. I was meant to be your mother and I take that seriously. I used to think when you turned 18, it would all be over. But it’s not — it’s just changed. Our roles have changed and so our relationship changes too. What a wonderful revelation. Thank you for choosing me. 😊

Love, Mom

Once I got the news that you were leaving for the Army, it hit me — this chapter was really closing. It felt different than when you went to live with your dad. You were still a kid, still under his roof. But this decision… this marked the shift. The true turning point from child to adult.

It was bittersweet. For a moment, I grieved. I mourned the end of the chapter where I was the adult and you were the child. But then I realized — through your letters, your calls, and from my own experience — that this isn’t the end.

It’s just an inflection point. Life changing sharply.

And though you’re grown now, you’ll still need guidance. That’s what I’m here for.

Your choices are yours to make, my love. And let me tell you this now: You will not do life perfectly. You cannot be perfect. And even if you could — how fucking boring would that be?

So here’s what I offer: I’ll guide you when you ask. I’ll be an open ear when you need to vent. I’ll be a shoulder when you need to fall apart. I’ll offer one get-out-of-jail-free card (hopefully unused).

And I’ll always be a place where you can be fully yourself and lay your armor down.

Life only gets harder from here — but guess what? You’ve got your own Army. Look around. See how deeply loved and supported you are? Lean on us. That’s what your elders are for. We’ve got a shit ton of experience… just not much energy left. You’ve got all the energy and all the time.

I hope these words — and the memories that come with them — bring you comfort whenever you need reminding of how profoundly loved you are.

PART ONE Before You Left — Early Letters

April 23rd, 2025 — KY

From Me

I just got the news that you will be leaving for Army Basic Training on May 18th. What an exciting time for you my love! I am filled with happiness, pride, fear and sadness. I have watched you through the years through all of the parts. The beginning, the middle and the end. Not the true end — but the end of this chapter and on to a new chapter with new characters. No matter what though my love, we will always be here; cheering you on, sending you love and hoping that this chapter brings you EVERYTHING! Challenge, novelty, excitement, failure and wins, but most importantly, growth.

I know that you can literally do anything. And no — I’m not blowing smoke up your butt like you always thought I was. I know you can do anything — because you are one of the most annoyingly stubborn and determined people I have ever known. No cap.

So — believe in yourself. But if there are days when you can’t, just know that I believe enough for both of us. I know you. I love you. I have seen the work you’ve put in and I am so fucking proud of you!

I love you to the Stars and back,

Mom

April 23rd, 2025 — KY

From N.

B.,

I watched you grow up from afar, so seeing you now and the man you are becoming is truly awesome. Your Mom tells me stories and talks about you daily. I know you’ll accomplish so much in this life and the Army is a small step in a big path. Can’t wait to hear about your future successes.

Get out there and kill it like we all know you will!

— N.

April 24th, 2025 — Tulum, Mexico

From T.R.

B. Russell Baby,

Driving Momma Crazy! I have loved you since the day I saw your sweet face. The love and challenges you pushed your parents through is and will always be what they both needed. I’m proud of you, you little shit. If you ever need anything, call me.

I ♥️ you, fucker.

♥️ T.R. (IYKYK)

May 5th, 2025 — AZ

From Aunt S.

Hey B.,

I am so proud of you. You have a big long journey ahead of you and I know it might be tough or scary at times but I know in my heart you will do great, make the right decisions, and you will be amazing. I love you with all of my heart. To the stars and back. Don’t ever forget that. I am excited to see the man you become. Always remember the family and myself will always be there for you no matter what.

Be strong, be brave, never back down.

I ♥️ you B.

♥️ Auntie S.

May 5th, 2025 — AZ

From A.

B. —

I want to start by saying that I love you. You have grown into a wonderful man and I am so proud of the choices that you are making. I imagine that this next chapter of your life will be challenging but very rewarding. I know that the sky is the limit for you and your future will be amazing. Please know that M. and I will always be there for you. Reach out with anything you need. We cannot wait to hear from you and learn about all the great things you are doing.

Love,

A.

May 5th, 2025 — AZ

From L. and W.

B. —

We love you so much. I bet you are super nervous but excited for the next chapter of your life. I know you know what you’re doing but I want you to always remember that we will always be thinking of you.

Love,

L. and W.

May 5th, 2025 — AZ

From R.T.

B.,

We are so proud of you and I just know you will be doing amazing things in your life. We will miss you, we love you very much. ♥️

“In truth a family is what you make it. It is made strong, not by the number of heads counted at the dinner table, but by the rituals you create and share with family, the memories you make by the commitment of time, caring, and love to share and show one another. By the hopes for the future you have as individuals and as a unit.”

Love,

R.T.

May 6th, 2025 — CA

From Aunt S.R.

B.,

Congrats on your enlistment to the Army. I completely understand why you did. I was a soldier once and appreciate some of the things I learned and experienced. My life wouldn’t be the way it is without the Army. Let me know what questions you have and I’ll do my best to answer them. I love you and I am so proud of you. Let us know when your graduation is, I’d love to come see it.

I love you my sweet boy.

Love always,

Your favorite Aunt S.R.

May 24th, 2025

From B.

Hey family, today is very boring and so will tomorrow and the next day and so on until Friday. I just wanted to let y’all know that I will see you as soon as I possibly can. One day we will have all the time in the world and all the money so we can do whatever we want whenever we want. I will always be there for you and will always be around for you, my family.

There is no amount of money in the world that can buy the love I have for you. For you give me motivation, discipline, honor and respect. For you I will get rich to be able to see you everyday and travel to various places.

May 25th, 2025

From B.

Today was boring — just woke up, went to eat, then church, and came back and took a nap. I just wanted to say I love you family and I will be back to visit, and it won’t be too long.

Basic training starts in 5 days, on the 30th. Then after that is AIT, then after AIT I’m going to go to RASP. I will have 72 hours after basic to celebrate and hang out with family. Then after RASP I will try to see y’all before I head to my next duty station.

But tell everyone I love them and will always be there — even if I am not there physically, my spirit and my soul will always be with you.

Love,

B.

Dear Family, my life is going good. I sold my life to the Army for 4 years but I might like the life for a bit. But probably not for long. I need to have my freedom and be able to do what I wanna. But these 4 years are for grinding — for RASP, my business, and MMA. The Army will be a good prompt to start my life.

But I thank you — Mother, Father, Brother, Cousin, Uncle, Aunt, Grandpa, Grandma — for making me into the young man I am today. It really does take a village. Just know I appreciate everything you have done for me. Now it is my turn to return the favor.

May 26th, 2025

---

From B.

Dear Family, everyday life here is becoming easier and easier to get used to, working out everyday. I still miss all of you to death and can’t wait to see y’all.

When I am done with my contract I will be rich and we can go anywhere we want and do anything we want without ever worrying about money. We can have family reunions every month or every two weeks. I love every single one of you guys and can’t wait to see ya.

I hope all of you keep on living your lives and make the best of it and be the best you can be — even though that is hard, it can be done. Just know no matter what happens I will always be with you. I hope you guys are having a great day and continue to live an endless, fruitful life.

Thank you for paying for my phone bill Mom. When I get out I’ll go to a Verizon and get it sorted out. I know me and you have not always seen eye to eye but just know I love you to the stars and back, and that I apologize for all the back talking I did before I left to live with Dad.

May 27th, 2025

From B.

Today was a good day. Each day is becoming easier and easier. This message is to all of my beloved family — send or show this to my family, even if you don’t see eye to eye with them. At the end of the day, life is short so I might as well make the best of it by loving my family and becoming successful so I can help you out just like you helped me when I was down.

These 4 years of the Army are going to be grinding years to give you — my family — the life you deserve since you did everything for me. It is time for me to proceed and help out.

One day I will buy Crown King back so we can relive our great grandmother’s and grandfather’s memory whenever we want. But all of this is just words with no action — so you will see.

Hey Ma, this is B. I miss you so much and wish I could have more time with you. Although I am doing something that takes a lot of my time, I will always make time for you and Dad and family. Being in here really showed me what truly matters. It’s not money, it’s not a job or anything material — it’s about spending as much time with people like you, Dad, P., the cousins, M., R., A., S., and all my family in Virginia.

I miss you all and one day I will have a job and financial freedom to see you and family everyday. One day I will have a house for you and Dad so we can travel together and have a multigenerational household.

I’ve realized that family is all we got — and that’s not even guaranteed. Seeing you last weekend really put things into perspective. That that might be the last time I see Grandad or Dad or you or P. or Nee Nee or Colton — so my mission now is to make a ton of money to buy me more time with all of my beautiful family.

Love,

B.

June 6th, 2025

From B.

Hey Ma, let me know how the family is doing. What’s P. up to? I miss y’all more than ever before. You never know what you have until it’s gone.

Basic isn’t that bad — they just try to make you break. But one day I hope we as a family can live together as a multigenerational family. Being away has made me realize how important that is. I lost my whole support system. Friends are good but they are not the same as family.

Family is everything, which is why I want to have as much time as possible and travel with the family. I will be rich and no one will have to have a job. I love you Mom — tell everyone on Dad’s and your side I love them. Tell everyone at the family reunion that I love them and let me know where y’all are going.

I graduate BCT August 1st and get my blue cord on October 29th. My basic training buddies said hi.

Just update me please because I won’t have my phone for a while. I might get it tomorrow but that’s not guaranteed. I’m sending this to 300 S. Calhoun Street since you’ve been in Charleston lately. How’s N. doing? Let me know what y’all are doing for the family reunion and where y’all are going. Let everyone know I love them and miss them and will always be there — even if I’m dead or away, my soul will always be with my family.

Tell Ke. I love him and miss that little boy — give him a hug and kiss for me. Tell M., A., S., and the rest of the boys I love them. And is P. staying out of trouble?

Today is June 6th, 2025. Let me know when you get this. I love you Momma ♥️

June 10th, 2025

From B.

Hey Mom, just know I’ve been thinking about the family. One day I hope we can live near each other so we can see each other more often and go traveling together.

Some days are easier than others. The mornings are the hardest but it’s not too hard. I love the family — please let them know that.

I wish I spent more time with you and Dad. The hardest part is leaving you behind. I wish to have a multigenerational household one day. I will make it happen. One day we can travel whenever we want as a family. I hope you can see my children and be a grandma.

It feels like almost yesterday we were in Florida doing 7 days with you and 7 days with Dad. Now I’m in the Army. This is why I want to spend as much time with you and Dad and the family as possible. I don’t know why, but no matter how much time passes, I will always miss you.

---

June 15th, 2025

From Me

B.,

I don’t have all of the right words to say. You’re in the middle of the becoming, and that alone is courageous — because most people will never become. They will stay comfortable. What you are doing — forcing yourself out of comfort — is something that will shape you in ways no one can predict. This is the fire that forges the man inside of you, that sharpens your blade. I can hear it in your voice, even when we don’t talk. I can feel the season of your life change.

I want you to know something — I see the man you are becoming, and I love him. Not for what he does, or what path he chooses or what choices he makes. I love him because he’s you.

Son, you have always carried something ancient in you. A protector, rebel, leader. And I know it can feel confusing right now, like the world is trying to carve you into something smaller — but sweetheart, you were not built for small. I saw this in you from a young age and it both terrified me and also made me want to protect it.

No matter what — I am always in your corner. Even when you’re scared, even when you change your mind, and especially when you’re unsure — I love you even more then.

One day at a time my love, one foot in front of the other. You do not have to figure everything out right now. You just need to stay open to yourself. Don’t let the world or the discomfort or the fire burn you alive. Let it call forth the strength that has always lived inside.

I love you to the stars and back!

Hey — have you seen any hawks or eagles or cardinals? When I was hanging with P., we saw a bear — right after I asked him if Dad ever visited him. I know he is watching over you. He used to write to me while I was in basic and would always sign off with “run forrest, run!”

I miss you B. Take care of yourself. Your soul, as much as your body. I can’t wait to see you and it will be soon!

Love — Mom

June 16th, 2025

From Me

B.,

This one is short.

Remember who the fuck you are.

Not the kid B. The man you are being called to. Do you hear them? Your ancestors, whispering to you when you are paying attention? In the birds, the animals, even the people you meet — messages.

Stay open. You are on the path to becoming.

I. Love. You.

— Mom

June 16th, 2025

From Me

Dude! I just saw all of the pics from the confidence course! I sent some to the family! That looks like fun! Well, except for the gas chamber. How was that? Some people have worse reactions than others. I hope it didn’t suck too bad.

I keep the family updated on ya — I just shared your address. I bet you are killing the physical stuff. Do you go to church on Sundays? When I went, it was always a big cry session LOL — one place where the DIs don’t yell at you.

Man — I keep looking at these photos — thinking about all you young men who chose to do this. In this day and age, that’s so rare. I am proud of you son. More than I will ever be able to express.

A quote you once said springs into my head: “It is better to be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.”

But you know what’s better than being a gardener OR a warrior? Being both — fully integrated. You have the heart and strength of a warrior and the soul of a wise gardener.

B. — I miss you. Your absence at the reunion will be felt but also understood and respected. The reunions will always be here — you are doing what you felt called to. And there is nothing more important than to listen when your soul calls you into motion.

It’s not about the right or wrong decision — that doesn’t fucking exist when it comes to what you do with your life. And guess what? Even if you do everything “right” people will still judge, mock, criticize — so do what the fuck your heart and soul drive you to. Fuck everyone else. Throw up your middle finger and walk on. You got shit to do son. No time to worry about the opinions of morally corrupt idiots.

I ♥️ you Puppy.

Love — Mom

June 24th, 2025

From Me

Hey B., it’s Mom. It was so good to hear your voice and hear about how you are crushing the PT. Although, I have to say — I totally called it. You’ve been training your ass off since you were 14. I am so fucking proud. Everyone is. We talk about you and think about you more now than ever before because you are out there doing something important and brave.

This isn’t about basic training and all of the physical and mental tests they put you through. This is about your character. Choosing a path less travelled, leaving the nest, going towards the unknown and not backing down. You are rising up into the uncomfortable unknown and learning more and more about yourself. Things that men on their deathbeds look back on and wish they’d have had the courage to do.

Your life will be challenging my love. But not because you are broken. But because you don’t settle.

You challenge yourself, you challenge shitty systems, and you seek out growth like you will die without it. Because you will — not physically, but in the way that has become accepted in our society. You saw that and you fucking rejected it, quietly, respectfully — but like a stoic badass with the middle finger to the world. That is what makes you different.

The truth is — everyone could do this. But they choose not to. Your character wouldn’t let you sleep without knowing you are challenging yourself and trust me when I tell you — this type of character will make your life so rich and full. Your mind, body, relationships — familial, romantic, brotherhood, your work — whatever you choose to do after this — these will fill your heart. You will live and love fiercely. You will die a thousand deaths shedding old skin as you go while others can’t even bear the pain of living one life.

And there aren’t accolades or awards for choosing to live this way. In fact, pain, loss, grief are going to be even more deeply felt. But that is living. A strong body, a healthy mind, a soul in tune to the world.

You used to ask me why life was so hard for you — and I didn’t have a great answer for you then. This is why life is hard. Because you don’t fucking settle and it devastates you when the people you love do.

You also used to tell me that you didn’t know what it meant to be a man. Half of the world telling you to “fuck bitches, get cars and money” and the other half telling you that your anger and violence are inappropriate. But you were already a man when you questioned them.

Don’t you see? Being a man is living in your truth, it’s an open heart, it’s anger when the world has created comfort to keep people complacent. And by the simple act of being you — you were already defining what being a man is. For yourself.

Train hard, take it seriously, lean on your new brothers and sisters, invite them to lean on you. The world will test you in beautiful and awful ways. Be you. Be. You. The money will follow if you do this. Listen to your heart, follow the call.

I love you Puppy.

To the stars and back.

Yesterday a darkness inside of me came out. A new kind of fire. A fire many mothers before me have known.

B. is not just my son — he is love. The world received a gift when he came here, and on smaller scales, I watched as the world tried to change him. I watched as he searched for identity, as he carved his paths — sometimes choosing dangerous and unfulfilling ones.

Yesterday the flame was different. White hot. Not at an actual deployment or news of the unspeakable, but at the realization that in B. is a soul so radiant, so rare, that the thought of losing him feels like the entire fabric of my being and my reality would collapse. I sat on the floor and wept and raged, screamed and cried as my body could not contain this new fire. Language failed as I thought of the unthinkable. A piece of my heart is in the belly of a machine that doesn’t give a fuck about his radiance.

And if the worst — the unspeakable — happens, and I fucking pray to all of the Gods it doesn’t — I will burn down everything. I will reign down hellfire in the most devastatingly calculated way to make sure no one ever forgets.

As I write this, I am putting it to sleep for now. I will let it sleep in preparation. But I need to name it. It is there. Ready.

This isn’t me unraveling. This is me preparing. Preparing for what may come — because that’s what mothers do for their children.

This warrior mother is not reckless, but she is dangerous. I won’t temper or apologize for her — she is the holy dark side of my love. No deep love is only light. This fire is surgical and strategic. Savage.

This fire has one purpose.

And it knows his name.

This pairs well with Some Nights by fun.

I forgot these existed.

I found them the way you find old photographs in a coat pocket — not looking, not ready. And suddenly she was right there. Twenty-something, standing postured and loud and strong, holding her unit together while her soul shook like a loose window in a storm.

She didn’t write these for anyone. There was no audience, no craft, no intention. Just a woman trying to bleed out enough feeling to function the next day. To put on the uniform. To not cry in the dayroom.

She almost never cried in the dayroom.

I read her words now and I feel something fiercer than nostalgia. Something closer to grief. Not for the deployments, not for the years — but for her. For how hard she was working just to stay intact. For how little anyone saw it. For how little she let them.

I wish I could find her. Sit down next to her on that plane, or in that dayroom, or on the kitchen floor she probably never let herself fall onto yet.

I’d tell her: you are not performing strength. You are made of it. But even things made of fire need tending.

She wouldn’t have believed me.

She wasn’t ready to.

These writings precede something I’ll share soon — letters between my son and me while he was in basic training. But before those, you needed to meet her. The woman who raised him. The one who deployed twice, who counted down days, who hugged strangers because she needed it as much as they did.

She was already Persephone. She just didn’t have the name yet.

Countdown

As the days keep moving forward, there is one sure thing — time keeps going. With or without you.

I genuinely thought that by joining the military I would be helping. Making a difference. 9 years later and I feel like my existence in the military is actually counter-productive to what I believe in. The waste of money alone sickens me. The obesity in the military is an overwhelming reminder that those people take 0 pride in the uniform they wear, and it is simply a formality.

My first deployment I begged and pleaded to go. I wanted my time there to mean something. I wanted to protect something or someone.

I got a gun, some Amn, and we watched people work all day. That was it. For 6 months.

That 6 months away I couldn’t even look at pics of my beautiful boys. It hurt too much. It hurt even more that they believed I am a hero when I know I am not.

How can I make them understand why I am leaving when I don’t even understand it?

I want to protect and defend my country. Now it is my turn to go again and this is not what I want.

My sons just turned 5 and 6. When I get back I will be back in time for them to turn 6 and 7. Every day is one day closer.

I will never get used to this.

22 Feb — Rain vs Sun

Time is ticking faster and so is my heart. I leave 7 March and every moment of every day I am at my breaking point and on the verge of tears. I wonder all the time whether I am doing this right. I walk alone in my own thoughts a lot. I want to drink up every last drop that life has to offer.

My boys have developed into young men with robust personalities. Their minds are capable of so much. I just hope they understand.

At every moment I feel like screaming at the top of my lungs and then curling up into the fetal position to cry until I had nothing left.

But then what? I’d still be leaving in 13 days.

The sun and my mood are usually in direct correlation with each other.

What I need to get better at is learning to appreciate the rain as much as the sun. The rain has a purpose. It’s JUST as needed as the sun. Once the rain goes away, the sun is appreciated all that much more.

But to love the rain...I don’t know if I could ever do this.

I will learn to appreciate the rain for all its purposes, but I will NEVER love it. I will take more time to love the sun.

13 days of sun left. 8 months of rain.

“you are my sunshine, my only sunshine. you make me happy when skies are gray. you’ll never know dear, how much I love you, please don’t take my sunshine away”

7 Mar

I am sitting on the first plane to take me away.

There has been so much to write about, but not enough time to write about them — which is a good thing. I can honestly say that while the clock ticking over my head has been ticking louder and louder, I have not only counted the seconds, but made the seconds count.

I spent a whole special day with my Goatie Bell and a special day with Bobus. A day where I just said yes to whatever they wanted and I just enjoyed my kids.

I am leaving for 8 god damned months.

I am not ok. I am ok with this. Anyone who has ever truly loved understands this concept.

Tomorrow I will wake up to a bunch of no one and nothing. No fat little marshmallow cheeks, no warm clammy hands to hold, no sunshine.

There is a huge hole in my heart that cannot be filled.

I worry what will happen to me as a person if I choose to numb myself to these things. These things that SHOULD elicit emotional response. I refuse to do it.

I just want to hurt somehow other than this. Feel anything other than this.

7 May

God it hurts so bad...to talk to my sons and hear how time is aging them in ways I don’t even get to see.

Hearing their voice again awakens a slumbering sadness that is only awakened by their voices. I can see pictures of them and somehow it doesn’t register as harshly. To hear their personalities developed in their voices, and the change from babies to young men — that is something I think always breaks a mother’s heart.

The only thing that can heal these wounds is the kisses and random hugs these young men give.

I miss them...

?? — Numb

A door with hundreds of keys. I shake it to hear the keys rattle in unison. I keep shaking it for — I don’t even know how long.

The sound drowns out all other chaos, sound and thought, as I think about the purpose of all these keys. Half of which probably have none.

No one likes to throw away a key. What if it unlocks something. Something that needed to be secured.

And then I think of the symbolism behind locks and keys.

And then I am snapped out of my reverie.

“Why are you doing that?” someone asks.

Good question.

16 September 2013

I had just finished my workout after a really shitty day. I grab my dinner and head to the dayroom to eat in solitude.

Then I see her.

A young blonde girl in uniform trying to hide her tears as she hastily grabs her stuff to leave. Something that is sadly refreshing in this town of emotionless drones.

I asked her if she was ok. She said she was fine, as she tried to hide the fact that she had been crying.

Being here, there really is no place to cry in private — with dignity. You have work, your room shared with 2-3 other girls who would inevitably ask questions, a bathroom stall which kind of takes the dignity part out, or the shower which is efficient, but it’s hard to plan out an emotional outburst.

I don’t know this girl. Never met her. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out she wasn’t ok.

I put my dinner down and I hugged her.

Without asking what was wrong, I told her all problems are temporary and that everything would be ok.

I don’t know whose day had been made more — mine or hers. I think I might have needed that hug. A real hug from someone who needed it as much as I did. It’s been a while since I’ve felt that.

I know that I am getting old when I start to find philosophical meaning in every damn thing that happens, but they say things happen for a reason.

I am thankful for that girl, that hug, and the courage to hug a stranger.

Grief and action.

It’s January 8, 2026. I pitched a client today.

The call went well.

This week work has been busy.

Yesterday a woman was killed by an ice agent. In public in broad daylight.

Today. 2 more.

I went on a run today.

It felt like I was training for something.

Not a marathon. Something.

Even I don’t know what yet.

He thinks he is entering a battlefield.

He does not realize he has walked into my dining hall.

He throws his little words, those sharp toys he thinks are weapons, those brittle syllables meant to warp me into fear.

And gods, the filthiest part?

I let him try.

“Whore.”

He spits it like venom.

Because nothing tastes better than a man offering me his rage, thinking it’s a weapon when it’s just an appetizer.

Call me a whore. Go on. Roll it off your tongue like you think it cuts me.

All it does is show me the blade you’re falling on.

He doesn’t know that each insult he flings lands at my feet, hot and quivering, like an offering.

He doesn’t know that every time he tries to shrink me, he reveals the exact place where he is hollow.

This is the humiliation he can’t outrun, and he’s just... handing it to me.

There’s something obscenely intimate about the vulnerability he reveals while thinking he’s cornered me.

The way his voice cracks on the hardest syllables.

The way his hands shake when I don’t flinch.

I don’t need your body. I don’t need your touch. I don’t need your dominance fantasies.

I feast on the way you break yourself trying to break me

His rage peels him open. His shame spreads him wide. His panic gives me the sweetest view of the soft underbelly he has spent a lifetime armoring.

And I devour it.

Not his flesh—I’m a queen, not a scavenger.

I take something richer.

Every insult is a confession he didn’t mean to make.

Every slur is the sound of his knees buckling.

Every attempt to shame me is another involuntary surrender of his power, pressed right up against my sovereignty.

This is my feast.

I savor every last drop.

I swallow his shame whole.

I meet his fury with a slow, deliberate smile.

I watch the honey-thick panic of a boy who thought he was a man until he met a woman who has kissed her own darkness and called it by name.

I thrive on the exact place he collapses.

I sit on my throne made of his ruin, and let him burn himself out in front of me.

Let him empty every insult he knows.

Let him choke on his borrowed power.

Because the moment he reaches for that final word—that desperate, sputtered, miserable last gasp:

whore—

that is the moment the feast is complete.

That is when he shatters.

That is when his masculinity spills onto the floor like wine he never learned to hold.

A gasping, bitter prayer to a woman who does not kneel, who does not flinch, who does not ask permission to take up space.

A woman who will use his collapse to sharpen her edges.

And after he finishes offering me his smallness in the only language he knows, I wipe my mouth clean, smooth my hair back into place, press my lips together until they gleam—

and leave him kneeling there in the wreckage of his own making.

I have shit to do.

He wanted to unmake me.

But the truth is simpler:
I ate well today.

When I began, I wasn’t trying to build anything. I was just trying to survive. To speak what I’d swallowed. To write in stone the things I used to believe made me crazy, wrong, too much: desire, grief, power, shame.

The words came like blood, and they didn’t stop.

I remember the night. I felt like shit. I’d driven six hours to no home, not knowing where I would sleep that night. No money. Paying debt with debt. Reduced to everything I owned packed into my shitty little car. Pages and pages of scribbled words until something finally took form. And then. I danced. Naked and free.

In a move of boldness, or perhaps desperation, I posted. My vulnerability in every sense of the word. Nakedness, raw words, fantasy, love.

I woke up afraid.
But what I received wasn’t judgment. It was support.

I’ve never wanted this to become a task or a job, so I’ve protected it in my own way by taking time away when I need to.

For now, paid subscriptions will get you nothing more than early access by a week. I’ve decided to keep everything open and accessible. Because this isn’t about scarcity.

Thank you for your support, in whatever form it comes.

This isn’t a platform for me.
It’s an altar that I lay my inner world on.

If you want to know where it all began, read The Preacher’s Whore: Part I.
That night, I didn’t have a home, but I had words.
That story was the seed of everything that has grown here.

I imagine us as a circle of chairs, mismatched, ancient, modern, stolen from kitchens and churches alike. Each one filled by someone who knows the ache of becoming. Someone who’s cracked open and crawled back, dirt still under their nails.

Thank you for helping me face the underworld.
For sitting with me in the dark.
For not turning away when it gets heavy, erotic, or holy.

Author’s Note
I still don’t know where all of this is heading. I just know it’s real. I write to stay alive, to stay honest, to stay human. Thank you for reading, for feeling, for being part of this strange and beautiful remembering.

War, famine, and collapse may return. But healed humans will face them differently. Instead of passing on unprocessed rage, fear, and abuse, we will meet chaos with coherence. Healing is the only preparation that prevents humanity from looping endlessly through the same patterns.

The ancients brought ritual, witness, and ceremony—nervous-system co-regulation disguised as song, as circle, as shared meaning woven into every wound.
The modern world has brought us diagnostics for PTSD, population data on trauma, insights into allostatic load, structured therapies, and public health that can scale across nations.
For the first time in history, enough of us live with material safety to shift from survival into integration. Maslow’s ladder still maps: once breath and bread are secure, the psyche hungers not just to endure, but to metabolize.

In an age of comfort, strength must be self-selected.
This is the new crucible.
When given the freedom to stay safe, soft, shallow—will you instead step into fire?
Will you throw yourself on it until nothing remains but your truest form?

I remember my oldest son, beginning his training in MMA, marveling at Russian fighters.
He told me, “Mom, no one here in America will ever be as good as them. They’re hardened by their country. We’re too soft.”

And he wasn’t wrong. Hardship forges strength that cannot be faked. But later, I came back to him and said,
“Maybe the Russians are stronger. But the ones here who choose to put their bodies through trials when comfort is everywhere—don’t they carry a different kind of strength? Look around. Most never move their bodies, never nourish themselves. But those who do, who train and fight anyway—that is ancestral. That is strength not because they had to, but because they chose to.”

Cultures hardened by famine and war have resilience pressed into their bones. But in an age of ease, chosen hardship becomes its own rare power. It is precious, evolutionary, a kind of voluntary selection pressure. The ancients were forged by circumstance.
We are forged by choice.

In the earliest phases of humanity, survival was non-negotiable.
Hunt or starve.
Freeze or burn.
Live or die.
Trauma and resilience were constant companions.
Strength wasn’t optional—it was survival.
Today, the sharpest edges are blunted.
Food, shelter, and medicine buffer us from the elements.
This is progress, yes, but it tempts us into forgetting how to endure.
Without friction, body and spirit atrophy.

So the initiates appear—the ones who choose hardship.
They lift heavy when softness would suffice.
They plunge into cold when warmth is easy.
They meditate when distraction is cheaper. They speak truths that cost them comfort. They create art, businesses, movements, knowing failure is more likely than applause. This is not masochism. It is remembrance. It is ritual. It is calling hardship back into the circle—not because we must, but because ease alone leaves us hollow.

When hardship is chosen, it reshapes the nervous system, the will, the very identity.

It declares: I am strong not because I had to be, but because I decided to be.

Humanity itself now stands at such a hinge. Like an individual nervous system, this pause of comfort is necessary—it allows trauma to surface, to be named, to be worked with. But if comfort becomes permanent, we stagnate. The self-selectors are already pulling us forward: fire walked into, not fled from. Armor polished, even as they tend the garden.

My own path mirrors this rhythm. Childhood trauma pushed me into survival and numbness.
I ran on overdrive, achievement after achievement, high-functioning but hollow.

Then came the reckoning: my children, my divorce, my father’s death shattered the walls, the false love revealed itself as fraud, and I burned everything to the ground. But from the ashes, I did not crumble. My anger became fuel. My emotions, once cast as failure, revealed themselves as fire—superpower, purifier, god-given tool.

Now I move in sovereignty: strict boundaries, fierce self-love, flourishing in work, in writing, and in creation.

Humanity follows the same arc. Prehistory was survival. Ritual healers carried the line.
Modern science and comfort gave us the pause. Now the recognition of hidden wounds rises—slavery, genocide, patriarchy, suppression.
Old systems collapse.
A rebirth of hybrid healing begins, weaving somatic with spiritual, scientific with mythic.
We are not getting weaker.
We are finally strong enough to look inside without dying from it.

This is not weakness. It is the fiercest act of survival yet: healing not just the body, but the lineage, the psyche, the species. The last cycle birthed kings and warriors. This cycle is birthing healers. And if the wheel turns again—if famine and fire return—it will be healers who keep the flame alive.

So no, this era is not soft. It is surgical. We are not abandoning the old ways; we are remembering them, and pairing them with everything we have learned about bodies under siege. That is how cycles are broken: not by returning to hardship, but by using safety to do the hardest thing at last—to feel, to integrate, to repair.

This, too, is evolution.

You cannot do trauma work while you are in it.
You cannot metabolize grief while you are still running from the saber-tooth. The nervous system needs stability before it can risk an inward gaze.
Only once safety settles into the bones does the real reckoning begin.
Humanity as a whole is in this same place: standing in a pause our ancestors never had, carrying the backlog of unprocessed pain they could not afford to name.

This is where physiology sharpens the myth.
Chronic stress does not live only in the mind; it etches itself into flesh. Researchers call it allostatic load—the wear and tear of a body forced to survive on overdrive.
When the chemistry of vigilance never resets, heart disease rises, immune defenses falter, the brain itself rewires.
Survival keeps us alive, but it erodes us.
That is why safety matters: it is the precondition for repair.

The trauma field has confirmed what ritual once intuited.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences study revealed that childhood wounds echo across a lifetime, shaping lungs and livers as surely as they shape minds. Trauma is not “just in the head.” It shows up in heart attacks, autoimmune disorders, shortened breath and shortened years. Even inheritance is no metaphor. Trauma ripples across generations through epigenetic signatures, scars that carry memory without words. We are built to remember, sometimes against our will.

And yet—how quick we are to believe the myth of “weak times.” That catchy line—hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men—isn’t ancient wisdom at all but a trope from a 2016 novel. It endures because every generation likes to imagine it was the last strong one. But the truth is more complex. Hard times forged resilience, yes. But good times forged space, reflection, the ability to name scars instead of merely bearing them. Spare capacity is not weakness. It is the soil in which deeper strength takes root.

My son once told me, “I’d rather be a warrior in a garden than a gardener in a war.” At the time, I paused and nodded. It sounded wise, but it felt unfinished, like a half-truth. Later, while he was in basic training, the line returned to me. And I realized: basic itself was his garden and his war, his self-selection, his crucible. He had chosen it, not because he was forced, but because his soul called him into it.

So I wrote to him: You know what’s better than being a warrior in a garden or a gardener in a war? Being both. Fully integrated. Carry the heart and strength of a warrior, yes—but also the wisdom of a gardener. That is wholeness. That is sovereignty.

At first I was sad he had gone. It felt like another loss, another absence. But with time I came to see it differently. His initiation was his to claim, not mine to grant. His absence at the reunion is not betrayal, it is fidelity—to his own path. Because reunions will always be here. But the call of the soul cannot be postponed.

And this is what I told him: it isn’t about right or wrong choices. Those are illusions. Even if you do everything “right,” people will still criticize, mock, and judge. So you may as well listen to the deeper summons. Do what your heart demands. Walk on. The world will chatter, but you have work to do.

That is where comfort becomes crucible. Not in shielding us from hardship, but in giving us the space to choose it. To step into fire when we could have chosen ease. To integrate warrior and gardener. To claim initiation not through famine or war, but through a sovereign act of selection.

We finally drew enough breath to stop sprinting, to stop bracing against famine and fire, and to begin the harder work: healing.

Our ancestors knew rhythm, ritual, witness.
We know diagnostics, data, the nervous system translated into charts and scans. The task before us is not to choose one or the other, but to braid them together. Because comfort is not the enemy of strength.

Comfort is the crucible—the hidden forge where iron is tempered, where wounds can be tended instead of ignored, where strength takes its true shape.

For most of human history, survival drowned out reflection. There was no room to name trauma, only the urgency of making it through another day.

Only when safety, surplus, and time expanded did humanity gain the space to turn inward—to name wounds, to tend them, to weave ritual back through science, body through meaning, story through data.
Softness, then, is not decay but the soil in which repair becomes possible.

Maslow glimpsed this truth decades ago: when basic needs are secure, higher growth awakens.

Before clinics, there were always healers. Survival was the work, and yet alongside it came herbs, chants, the press of a hand against fevered skin, the keening circle of women carrying grief with sound.

Trance, drum, and story reminded the body it was not alone. Trauma was unnamed because there was no time to name it.

Death, famine, war were constants, and healing meant only keeping the tribe alive until morning. Shamans and ritualists worked where physiology met trance, long before clinical language offered the word “regulation.”

Later came the Asclepieia, the healing temples of Greece. In these sanctuaries of Asclepius, patients bathed to purify themselves, balanced their bodies with diet, offered prayers, and lay down in the abaton to dream their way toward healing.

Serpents moved freely through the chambers—not omens of evil, but companions of renewal, shedding their skins as the sick shed their suffering.

And yet, somewhere along the way, the thread was broken. We carried the serpent’s staff forward as the emblem of medicine, but severed it from the story that gave it power. We threw the baby out with the bath water. Ritual, incubation, the circles of witness, the reminder that healing is as much meaning-making as it is mending—all of it was discarded as superstition. What survived was only what could be sterilized, charted, and quantified.

Still, the hunger resurfaces. People light candles in hospital rooms. They whisper prayers in surgical waiting areas. They turn to acupuncture, reiki, sweat lodges, herbalists. Not because these are quaint, but because the body remembers what the culture forgot: healing has always been more than chemistry. And even now, the World Health Organization records that traditional medicine remains the first recourse for much of the globe. These ancient logics never disappeared.

Hippocrates, daring in his own way, wrote in On the Sacred Disease that epilepsy was not divine punishment but natural cause—the first flicker of secular medicine. Yet the older logics resurface again and again, braided with biomedicine. We are not inventing healing. We are remembering it.

Naming came later. When survival loosened its grip, we began to recognize what had always haunted us.

World War I gave us “shell shock.”
Vietnam, “post-Vietnam syndrome.”
In 1980, PTSD entered the DSM-III, and with it came research, funding, treatment.

Safety had created enough distance for curiosity to arise. Comfort allowed us to ask why the men who returned from war drank themselves numb, lashed out, or went silent.

My own grandfather served in a MASH unit in Korea. I don’t know if he was drafted or if he volunteered. He never told me. He died silent. I heard once that he drank, but by the time I knew him he was only soft and kind.

Then he was gone—not young, but before I could know him as a man. His silence was a scar without a name.

And this is the truth: only when society had enough comfort, enough spare breath, did we begin to name scars like his.

It is up to us to put words to the silence. But we cannot make the same mistake again and discard the gold with the dross. Healing is not only soft light and whispered prayers. We cannot lean so far into the veil that we forget the body still needs the furnace—stress, sweat, sex, hunger, labor. These are some of the last threads that tie us back to our animal selves, and yet we have tried to clip them, to live sanitized and neutered lives.

We have choice now. That is the gift of comfort. But choice is a double-edged thing. Too many choose only ease. And comfort without friction is not crucible at all—it is sedation.

And here is where the work begins. Comfort is not the enemy. It is the raw material.

The question is not whether we will have it,
but what we will do with it.