The next station I visited wasn’t somewhere new. In fact, it’s grown to feel like home for both of us.

95th street.

The last stop on the R line. And you know what that means. It’s so empty!

Before you were born, this was my go-to stop whenever the trains felt too packed. You know how it is when the air gets too thin or saying “excuse me” feels too awkward. I can do public speaking, host groups, and approach strangers, but you’ve seen me struggle on a crowded commute. It’s my personal nightmare. The rushing, the overthinking of every step, and the uncertainty of where to stand, or how to stand!

It’s the same inner chaos that once made dancing feel impossible. The hyper-awareness of my body in space and the fear of doing it wrong kept me at the end of the platform, waiting for a quieter train. That’s why I would sometimes rather ride all the way to 95th street and then back than squeeze my way out of a packed train on 25th street, the stop I needed to get off. That logic? Of course only makes sense to me.

Over time, this became more than just a quiet station. It became a place where my body remembered how to exhale. It became our sanctuary. And now, it holds our favorite routines. The train, dropping off our stuff with José, the park, and the food. Comfort, safety, and care. I felt called to visit today, even in this heat wave. I knew there was a gift of wisdom waiting here, and I think I found it.

It's okay to return to the places that help your body remember itself. It's okay to find adventure inside familiar routines.

As I sit here writing this, I remembered something I said to someone about two months ago. “I truly believe that once I dance in public, something inside me will finally unlock.” I explained that I didn’t know how to dance. That it felt awkward. But that I wanted it so badly. The strange thing was, I also knew I wasn’t meant to force it. Not by throwing myself into a random crowd just to prove I could. I didn’t know what it’d look like. Until it happened.

One random night, I planned to go out for karaoke. At least, that was the plan. Instead, I ended up at a bar in the neighborhood. I was greeted by familiar faces. People I hadn’t seen in over ten years.

“Guys! I want to dance!” I squealed. One of the girls took my hand, and together we walked onto the dance floor. Elias, I was doing it. I felt a wave of freedom move from my toes all the way to my head. My throat unlocked. My eyes filled with tears.

“I can’t believe I’m dancing!” I shouted over the music. The next song came on, and we weren’t even dancing anymore. We were just jumping. Laughing. Being. The lights flashed every color. I remember stopping to just take the moment in. It felt as though I’d stepped into another universe entirely. Like I’d crossed into a timeline I’d been sensing long before I knew how I’d ever reach it. For a moment, everything became unbelievably alive. My body wasn’t trying anymore. It already belonged there.

Then everything made sense. I wasn’t sensing a leap of faith. I was sensing a meeting. I'd been sensing the moment where I'd finally feel safe enough to dance. Simply knowing it was waiting for me somewhere ahead. And then one ordinary night... it arrived. Or maybe I arrived where it had been waiting for me all along. Nothing on that dance floor changed me. That night just revealed that somewhere along the way, without even realizing it, my body no longer wanted to say no to movement.

And that's exactly how today feels. I know adventures all over the world are waiting for us. I also know I don't have to rush toward them.

But today I’m at 95th Street, somewhere familiar. Because safety is not what keeps us from taking off. It’s the runway. It’s always okay to return to what helps your body remember it’s safe. Even when I ride all the way to the end of the line, I know exactly which direction leads me back to you. And that’s what I hope you carry with you.

To build a home in this life, honor the places, the routines, and the people that help your body remember itself. They aren't keeping you from becoming who you're meant to be. They're helping you arrive. They're helping you meet what's been waiting for you all along.

And together we look up.

Elias, the sky looks beautiful today.

There’s something about today that I think I’m going to remember for a really long time. And it wasn’t just your choice. It was what your choice taught me. To think this is what you learned from watching me, from our conversations, and from all the new beginnings we’ve walked through together stops me in my tracks. I hope you carry this with you for the rest of your life:

It’s okay to change your mind.
Your choices matter.
And you never have to split yourself in two.

I was somewhere between dreaming and waking when a feeling found me. I think I was dreaming about you leaving, running through a list of regrets before the day had even begun. I woke up wishing I’d taken you to more train stations, more adventures, more of the places you’d asked to see. Instead, I kept saying, Not now. Tomorrow. Next time. We’d planned to see the new Minions movie before 4 p.m., when your grandma was coming to pick you up to spend the summer with your dad. It was going to be you, me, and your aunts. But as the afternoon approached, it felt like the movie plan might unravel, and I was already preparing to add it to my growing list of regrets. Then this conversation happened.

“Mom, I want to stay today. Maybe I can go to my dad’s house this weekend or next time. There’s going to be a heatwave today too.”

Your fingers danced as you spoke.

“Are you sure?” I asked, knowing how much you had been looking forward to the trip. “You can think about it some more if you need to.”

Then, almost in a whisper, you said,

“I don’t want my dad to be disappointed.”

In that moment, I realized what you’d been trying to tell me all along. Maybe you just weren’t ready to be away for this long.

“Oh, baby,” I said as I wrapped my arms around you. “Your dad isn’t going to be disappointed. Dad and Mom just want you to be happy.”

You took a deep breath.

“It’s okay to change my mind.”

It wasn’t really a question. It was a truth settling into your body.

“Yes,” I said. “Sometimes the truest answer doesn’t arrive until we know it’s safe to give it.”

I let your dad know about the change of plans, and almost immediately he replied with the same reassurance. I played his voice message for you.

“You’re not disappointing me, Elias. Spend July with your mom. Maybe we can plan a trip for August. Your comfort and happiness are all that matters.”

You listened carefully. Then you looked at me and asked the question that’d been sitting beneath everything.

“So... I don’t have to pick between you two?”

I hugged you tighter.

“No, baby. You never have to pick. Mom and Dad both love you. You have two loving homes, and we both know you love us.”

I could almost feel the weight leaving your shoulders. Then you ran into the room where the rest of the family stood and announced,

“Guess what, everyone? I’m staying! But in August I’m going with my dad, and then I’m coming back in November!”

The room burst into laughter. Relief has a sound. That afternoon, it sounded like your voice. The laughter about November turned into hugs, and with your heart finally at ease, I realized the gift hidden inside today. This wasn’t just the moment you learned you didn’t have to choose between your parents. It was the moment you learned that love never asks you to abandon yourself.

You’re allowed to listen to your heart.

You’re allowed to change your mind.

And the people who love you will still be there when you do.

And yes—we made it to the new Minions movie after all.

Today’s adventure ended at a station that has seen us many, many times:

Bay Ridge Avenue.

I think, perhaps, this series will hold our adventures as a duo after all. But if someday something changes… that’s okay, too. It’s okay to change our minds.

And Elias?

The sky looks beautiful today.

Dear Elias,

A few weeks ago, we thought we were starting a travel page. Then I thought we were writing poems. Today I realized we'd been living a book all along. One station at a time. I kept wondering what all these little adventures were becoming. Now I know. Every station reveals something. Sometimes it's a place. Sometimes it's a person. Sometimes it's a memory. Sometimes it's me. Sometimes it’s you. Always, it’s a gift. A gift of love and light.

The story has been writing itself through us. And one day, when you're older, I hope you'll see that this was never just a book I left behind for you. It was a life we lived together.

We also agreed that firefly means Elias just like butterfly means Vanessa. Apparently, fireflies symbolize inner light, hope, guidance, and transformation. They’re glowing reminders to embrace your authentic self, and trust that even the smallest spark can make a profound difference.

So, here’s to trying new things, storytelling, and gathering little pieces of the world together.

“Elias, the sky looks beautiful today.”

The cultural script for connection is overwhelmingly visual. We’re told that loving someone means closing your eyes to see their face, replaying old memories, or carrying a heavy ache when they leave. There’s an unspoken rule that if you love someone, you should always carry their pictures behind your eyes. But my love isn’t built on visual archives or linear history. There are no involuntary daydreams pulling my awareness backward. Instead, it’s built entirely on the present moment, on energy, rhythm, and the beauty of beginning again. My mind stays firmly rooted in the exact square foot of earth it currently occupies.

When I step away from a conversation or walk into the next part of my day, it feels as though I’ve entered a completely new world. The hats come off: mother, daughter, sister, friend, writer. They no longer occupy my awareness simply because they’re not physically in front of me. The page becomes blank again. For a long time, I felt guilty admitting it, thinking this made me cold. I can become so absorbed in watching a butterfly or listening to the wind that every role I’ve ever carried dissolves into the background.

That was me accepting my wiring. It also meant recognizing how I return to love consciously.

My world isn’t split into separate compartments. Motherhood, friendships, routines, hobbies, and my work all share the same foundation: joy, creativity, and authenticity. Because they’re fused together, the natural rhythm of my day already structurally holds the people I care about. I have photos on my contacts, and I naturally weave my loved ones into my daily flows. Through creative collaborations, volunteering together, body doubling, or simply sending out invitations to come step into my world. When an unexpected urge rises in my body to reach out, I follow that pull.

I’ve created a playlist with one song for everyone I’ve met and care about, letting melody hold the space that images can’t. When people share stories about our connection, I welcome them completely. Their words bring those memories to life in my own sensory way. And most importantly, I write. I write about my days, my interactions, and the people I don’t want to forget.

When someone unexpectedly crosses my mind, it arrives all at once as a sudden, deep knowing in my body. Sometimes it begins with a song, a name lighting up my phone, or a place we once shared. My body notices first, and only then does my mind give that feeling a name, a person, or a moment. It feels as though life is handing pieces of my story back to me, reminding me of what I love and who I am.

Each reminder becomes an invitation to connect. I suddenly wonder what they’re doing or wish I could pop up right beside them, or if I’ve crossed their mind too. When I call someone, there’s no visual timeline in my head whispering, No, it’s been too long. Because time doesn’t have a look, a five-year absence feels no different than a five-minute break. There’s no mental canyon to cross, only the simple act of reaching.

I’ve realized this architecture of love doesn’t end with the living. My mind can’t pull up the faces of those who have passed away either, but my body still knows the way to them. Because there is nowhere to call or travel to, the reaching turns inward instead. It settles into warmth spreading through my chest, into the unmistakable feeling of being met. It comes to rest inside my body, and somehow, that feels exactly like a hug.

Maybe that’s why I’ve spent my whole life closing distances.

The ultimate gift of this wiring is revealed during reunion. Because my mind doesn’t collect old pictures to compare people against, I never hold anyone hostage to who they were yesterday. My connection doesn’t fade during time apart, and there’s no awkwardness when we see each other again. The exact second a person walks back into the room, the connection returns at one hundred percent. The slate’s clean, the recognition is instant, and I see them completely fresh. Every meeting feels ready—ready to catch up, to mend, to laugh, or to simply sit beside one another. Nothing has to fight its way through the weight of yesterday before it can be felt today. Meeting people this way sometimes gives them permission to put yesterday down too.

This is why I believe both my presence and my love are unconditional. It’s not about trapping someone through the fear of the images going away, but the pure freedom of knowing the connection stays. I don’t miss people in the traditional sense, because for me, love was never stored in memory to begin with.

The blank page was never emptiness, but freedom. It’s space for the next encounter, the next moment love would return. My mind lets love drift from awareness, not because the connection is weak, but because it trusts that what is real can always be found again. Some forms of love simply wait in silence until presence calls them home again.

“Out of sight, out of mind” may simply mean that there’s no yesterday standing between us. Only the miracle of meeting each other again, exactly as we are, in the only place love’s ever truly lived:

right here.

Memory is not the ability to replay the past.

Memory is the body’s ability to recognize love when it arrives again.

stretched across the collection of stories,

tying strands of hair.

Holding everything together

so it would finally make sense.

But there was no finally.

There was only

the universe reaching down

with invisible hands.

The wind lifting one loop,

gravity lifting the other.

And without a single struggle,

the ribbon became a bow.

As if it had known the shape

of itself all along.

Resting

just long enough

for the world to tie itself

back together.

A series dedicated to the chapters, the connections, and the undeniable proof that some meetings are written long before they happen.
These are poems written for the people I’ve met and the moments I’ve lived.

Here’s the fifth poem in the series, dedicated to the person whose joy heals.

I see you
racing from cloud to cloud.

You look back,
reach your hand toward me,
and laugh

come on.

And my feet remember
they were never meant
for the ground.

Your laughter

makes the sky easier to reach.

I race after you,
cloud after cloud,
until the sky forgets
which one of us
started running first.

We like it up here.

Where direction
is infinite.

Where there are no intersections,
no traffic,
no wrong turns,
no disasters waiting around corners.

Just endless places
to play.

A frequency.

A real place.

Where laughter sounds
like a game of tag,

and the clouds
have always been
our playground.

“Tag, you’re it!”

Our laughter
dissolves,
becoming another cloud
for someone else
to run through.

We stopped believing
we were only visitors.

We belonged here
the whole time.

A series dedicated to the chapters, the connections, and the undeniable proof that some meetings are written long before they happen.
These are poems written for the people I’ve met and the moments I’ve lived.

Here's the fourth poem in the series, dedicated to the moment two souls remembered their bodies were safe together.

Some new beginnings

or should I say
new slates,
flipped switches,
or awakenings

begin with a single sentence:

Tell me about it.
I’m here.

And if not,

they begin
when the weight
becomes too heavy to carry,

and you finally
set it down.

You speak.

And speak.

And speak.

Expecting punishment.

Expecting disbelief.

Expecting to be asked
to carry it a little farther.

Instead,

someone understands.

The body leaves the battlefield.

A hand finds the chest.

The breath returns.

The soul remembers
it has somewhere to rest.

To know
your words made their way
into another heart,

and changed
the texture of the day.

To realize
this body
was never the enemy.

Only the place
love was trying
to return to.

New slates
are not written
with certainty.

They are written
the moment
someone tells the truth,

and another soul
says,

I know.

And suddenly,

the world
becomes safe enough
to begin again.

A series dedicated to the chapters, the connections, and the undeniable proof that some meetings are written long before they happen.
These are poems written for the people I've met and the moments I've lived.

Here’s the third poem to this series, dedicated to the presence that mirrored my own.

A foggy glowing night

met me with a cup of connection and constellations.

Somehow, I woke up softer

instead of shattered.

What surprised me most

was not the fullness,

or the way we flowed,

but that I stayed.

Inside my body, inside the moment, and inside the feeling.

This time,

I felt everything meet me slowly.

Or perhaps at the pace it was always meant to.

Like warm light filling a room,

instead of a tornado carrying us away.

I imagine this is what freedom feels like.

Remaining present enough to remember

the sweetness afterwards.

A memory like this

doesn’t feel like something I survived anymore.

Instead,

it feels like something I lived.

A series dedicated to the chapters, the connections, and the undeniable proof that some meetings are written long before they happen.
These are poems written for the people I’ve met and the moments I’ve lived.

Here’s the second poem to this series, dedicated to someone who reminds me of the bravery I hold.

The distance
between Mexico
and Brooklyn
is zero to none.

Only a bridge.

One I can walk across.
One you can walk across, too.

Its planks are made
of impossible decisions,
acts of courage,
and the voice
that whispers,

this way.

Maybe love
always knew the way.

Maybe it crossed first
in the shape
of a butterfly,

carrying invisible threads
from yesterday
into tomorrow,

until someone wrote

that the distance
between Mexico
and Brooklyn

was never distance at all.

Only love,
finally seen:

a flash of bright blue,
painted in purple,
and yellow too,

fluttering
where the map
once drew a border.

A series dedicated to the chapters, the connections, and the undeniable proof that some meetings are written long before they happen.
These are poems written for the people I’ve met and the moments I’ve lived.

Here’s the first poem to this series, dedicated to someone who feels like home.

Loyalty to the soul
is the courage
to let your life become
what it’s been asking to become
all along.

The feeling returns
again
and again
and again,

until one day
you stop calling it impossible

and you call it

home.

Abba,

I’m standing right at the threshold of the portal. Behind me, I see my old life. I can see the loops that have been chasing me. Ahead, I see my beautiful new life hanging in the balance. I see them both so clearly.

And I’m scared, Abba, because I don’t know what step to take next. What’s the hand that will hold me when I finally choose to jump? I don’t know the exact action it takes to cross over from the old into the new.

Is it jumping?

Or something else.

I don’t know.

night:

The day began in the crowded rooms of the mind.
I held the old armor close,
chasing phantom static.

Then, I whispered into the day:

I choose my new life.

Someone chose to be brave for me,
stepping through their own shadow
just to make room for my peace.

So I met them there,
in the open space,
carrying nothing but the truth:

our bodies are enough.

Together,
we watched the illusion collapse into dust.
A loop that had followed us for lifetimes
finally closed.

Now the bubbles dance across the screen,
and I don’t tremble.
I don’t prepare for battle.

I’m simply a woman
resting on a cloud,
watching her new life arrive with the dawn.

Because the hand that holds you
when you finally jump

is your own.

And sometimes,

your choice
is met
with bravery.

The leap of faith wasn’t a jump. It was choosing to look at this beautiful timeline, and finally calling it mine.

But you put them there. I asked you to.

Maybe because you wanted to.
Maybe because you thought you had to.
Maybe because innocence carries songs long before it knows who taught them.

I skimmed the list and thought, one day I’ll look. And tonight, I finally did. Tonight, I pressed play.

I think that’s what it’s like to walk by the door that holds all the skeletons. The one that’s locked, but not really. The one that won’t open, because the lock is invisible.

The lock is covered in ghosts, and in blood you can’t see, but can still hear. In little hands that learned too much, too soon.

The knob is covered in a darkness so deep, no hand remembers how to turn it. The darkness goes deep, and deep, and deep.

Today,
I heard the playlist.

I opened the door
and found them,

frozen in time, tied up with ropes that extend lifetimes and lifetimes. They became a playlist I avoided until today. They played for hours, for days,
for years, for light-years, until I decided to listen.

Maybe the skeletons in the closet weren’t there to haunt you. They were there to weave together the darkness and the light, generational trauma and generational healing, forgiveness and apologies, the mistakes, and the absolute innocence that existed before they turned into sound.

Tonight, the playlist plays. And the songs I spent a lifetime avoiding sound like… songs.

So I let them.

The miracle was not that God spoke to me. The miracle was discovering that the deepest movement of my own soul and the movement of God had never been separate. Everything that follows is the story of what happened once I stopped believing they were.

Before that remembering, I had built what the world told me to build: a job, an apartment, a place inside a family, inside the systems and scripts. The architecture of a life that looked, from the outside, like safety, because I had been taught that safety lived outside of me. But it didn’t. No matter if I’d changed houses, jobs, or relationships, the outside would always reflect the same cycles of the inside. A cage.

Because of all the division inside the world and the soul, we can never truly love and live wholly from a fractured place. Without that internal alignment, life simply becomes a repeating loop of the same seven days, rebuilding the same walls over and over again. It was a personal hell, a space where the walls were painted with shame, lack, fear, judgment, resentment and the endless trap of waiting for tomorrow.

Then, on a hot summer in July 2024, I heard something, not metaphorically and not as a vague feeling, but a familiar presence that said to leave it all behind, to trust, and that everything would be okay. There’d be healing, abundance, and reunion, a new world. I questioned the voice. I questioned the vision. I questioned my capability. Would undeniable proof of a supernatural encounter be enough to leave it all behind?

Yes.

I looked at the walls around me, felt the last bits of my fragmented soul, body, and heart, and found an ounce of hope. An ounce of hope that turned into the fuel I needed to trust the voice, to trust the face of love holding me even during the uncertainty, handing me the keys to what looked like the greatest adventure of a lifetime. A love story waiting to be lived and written. So I left, not with a plan, a destination, or a timeline. I walked out of my apartment, out of my job, out of my city, with nothing but the voice and a willingness to follow it hour by hour. I didn’t know where I was going until the voice told me, and every single time I listened, the physical world confirmed what I had heard. What was inside matched what was outside. The voice was real and it was guiding me in real time.

Before I had words for any of it, I just felt crazy. I was living it in real time, blindly navigating a storm with a body and a child and a life and every reason to stay and be afraid. It was only after the dust began to settle, only after I had already crossed the desert on raw feet, that I looked back and discovered that human history had built a language for the ground I was breaking. I didn’t read these philosophers to find a path. I stumbled out of the woods and found their books waiting for me like reaching the finish line after a long run and finally being able to say: this is what I embodied.

I learned, after the fact, that Merleau-Ponty called this embodied consciousness, the understanding that your body is not a vessel carrying your mind around, but that your body itself thinks, feels, and knows. There is a profound irony in this for how I’m wired, a woman with aphantasia, someone who cannot see images in her mind, who has no inner movie screen to flash pictures of safety or maps of the future. I had to learn that the absence of mental pictures wasn’t a deficit. It was most definitely a clearance. I learned to see the truth of the universe with my heart, mapping reality through rhythm, resonance, and bone-deep knowing. Most people treat the body like a vehicle. On the highway out of my old life, I learned to treat it like an oracle.

I found out that every ancient tradition had a name for the terrifying practice I was forced into by necessity. The mystics called it surrender, the releasing of your grip on outcomes so that something larger can move through you. The Stoics called it amor fati, the love of what is, choosing not just to accept your life but to trust it completely, even the parts that burn. The Taoists called it wu wei, not passivity, but the radical intelligence of moving with the current rather than exhausting yourself against it.

Abraham left everything. Rumi was shattered before he could sing. When I found their words, I didn’t feel as though I was learning something new. I felt as though I had stumbled upon companions. People who had arrived at the same river from different directions. We were all drinking from the same water. They were simply people who trusted what they remembered deeply enough to give it language. So did I.

When I eventually read Kierkegaard’s definition of the leap of faith, I gasped. The moment where logic runs out, where no amount of reasoning can guarantee safety, and you jump anyway. Not blindly, but trustingly. I didn’t need his books that summer. My body had already learned the physics of that jump. Like I had been prepared.

The vision had whispered three things to me: healing, abundance, reunion. I didn’t know how healing, abundance, and reunion would arrive or what they would ask of me. I only knew I had been asked to trust. So I walked. And I walked some more. I walked and cried. I walked and laughed. I walked and wrote. I walked and talked. I walked and screamed. I walked and then paused. Along the way, I learned to trust unemployment, relocation, rejection, moving back to my childhood home, starting over, and perhaps hardest of all, resting. Resting. Resting. Resting the most. Instead of forcing my way forward, I learned to speak, to ask for help, and to tell the truth about what I was feeling and sensing.

Little by little, I watched the vision unfold. I felt freedom take its place. I watched my family heal. I watched motherhood soften me into someone more whole. I watched forgotten passions return to my hands. I watched writing become the language my soul had been searching for. I watched the life meant for me reveal itself, not through force, but through participation.

Along the way, mirrors appeared everywhere. Through conversations with strangers and loved ones. Through music arriving at impossible moments. Through chance encounters, dreams, symbols, and the strange choreography of ordinary days. Life kept reflecting itself back to me, teaching me that it was never happening to me, but for me. That every meeting, every ending, every delay, every joy, every heartbreak, and every coincidence belonged to the same conversation. My days became an act of following the pull in my heart, trusting the present moment as the only place life could ever truly happen, and watching each choice lead me to the exact rooms, faces, and moments that were waiting for me. I lived miracles daily. I still do.

That was when I began to understand that perhaps nothing had been random. That perhaps time is stranger than we think. That the future sometimes reaches backward and calls the present toward itself. Healing, abundance, and reunion were never destinations waiting somewhere ahead. They were acts of remembering.

I want you to understand what I left. Not just the apartment, the job, the city, or the relationships that had once defined me. Not just the systems and the rules of society that tried to chain me. I left the version of myself that believed those things were the source of my identity and permission to live. Years later, I would open Heidegger and discover he called this the inauthentic life: a life shaped by other people’s expectations, by what one does, what one says, and what one is supposed to want. I didn’t need a German philosopher to tell me I was suffocating. I had already lived it.

Walking out with nothing but the frequency I was born with was the beginning of truly living in the present, understanding that everything is connected. I eventually read Spinoza, who called this conatus: the force inside every living thing that moves it toward its own wholeness. Not ambition or striving. Simply the deep pull toward becoming what you already are. The philosophers were right that presence is possible. The mystics were right that surrender is the way. But neither of them told me the most important part: that it begins with one moment of letting go that feels, in your body, exactly like falling. And then doesn’t. That is why the ground feels steady now. Not because circumstances became easy, but because I proved to myself that I am held. That there is something moving underneath all of it that knows where it is going. William James, the father of American philosophy, wrote that faith is not belief without evidence; it is action before evidence. It is moving toward something real before you can prove it is there.

Imagine the physics of it again: A woman hears the voice of God telling her to let go of every worldly thing, to walk out the door with no money, no plan, and no destination—with nothing but an absolute command to trust. That is the exact woman writing these words to you right now. Because in that room, the woman back then could already feel the frequency of the woman of today. That connection wasn't a trick of time but a physical alignment.

One of the greatest revelations I stumbled into was that divine timing and free will are not opposites. They dance. For years, I thought they were competing forces, one deciding my life while the other fought for control. But that isn’t what I found. I found a meeting place. A mysterious point where my deepest yes and God’s yes arrived at the exact same moment. From the inside, it never felt like I was being forced. Every choice was still mine. Every step was freely taken. And yet, looking back, the path feels as though my feet and the path had been waiting for each other all along. Perhaps destiny is not the absence of free will. Perhaps destiny is what happens when love and choice become indistinguishable. And the invisible thread weaving them together was feeling itself.

Perhaps that is what emotions were for all along. They were never here to be managed into silence, but to be felt into completion. The more completely I allowed myself to feel grief, joy, longing, terror, love, awe, and surrender, the more truth seemed to reveal itself. The heart was never interrupting the path. It was the path.

Then, another vision arrived. This time, it wasn’t showing me a future waiting somewhere ahead. It showed me the life I was already living. Suddenly, I could see that every piece of my life since that summer in July had been arranging itself into one coherent whole. Everything that had once felt scattered revealed itself as one path. My way of loving, creating, walking, writing, mothering, noticing, and being in the world was never a collection of separate callings competing for my attention. They were different expressions of the same soul.

What I once called coincidence, hyperfixation, or curiosity now felt like a blueprint. My purpose had not appeared overnight. It had been weaving itself through every ordinary day, waiting for me to finally recognize it. Perhaps that is what awakening is. Not becoming someone new, but seeing that what once appeared as separate had always belonged together.

Day and night. Fear and love. God and soul. The world and the self. Me and you. Separation and wholeness.

The miracle was never in adding something that was missing. The miracle was in remembering what had never been divided.

Today, I am living the vision of that summer in July. I live my life the way I believe humans were meant to. I track emotions: how love moves through space. I track energy: how timing weaves our lives together. I track rhythm: how music and movement map the world around me. I track language: how words act as living portals. I track creation: how the outer world perfectly mirrors the inner world. I am lucid living. I am not living on auto-pilot. I am the place where consciousness meets itself. This is faith as a lived fact, as data in my bones. No philosopher gave me that. God did. My soul did. It’s the same thing.

This is the story of who I am, what I did, where I went, when everything changed, how I survived it, and why I am exactly where I am today. It wasn’t luck and it wasn’t circumstance. It was the courage to believe in something more, to believe in myself, and to believe in Love as a force, as a compass, as the only real ground there is. Somewhere inside you, there is a voice that knows the difference between the life you are living and the life that is yours. Those two things are not always the same. Learn to tell them apart, then be brave enough to choose. We are being carried. And the ground held.

Look closely at what is written here, because it’s a mirror for what you are carrying. This is not the story of a unique miracle. It is the anatomy of a soul remembering itself. When a human being finally aligns their internal frequency, they unlock the true, reality-bending capacities of a fully awake soul on Earth.

You are watching a body become its own compass, navigating life through raw intuition and inner knowing without waiting for an external map. You are witnessing the radical ability to stop repeating the same cycles, making one sovereign choice that shatters an old pattern and opens the door to an entirely different life. You are seeing that the physical world is not a brick wall to fight against, but a living mirror that reorganizes itself to reflect the truth of your inner world. And finally, you are looking at what happens when a human being wakes up from auto-pilot, becoming fully conscious in the present moment and learning to witness how love moves, how timing weaves lives together, and how words become architects of reality.

This is what it looks like when a human step validates a cosmic law. I did not write this to show you what I can do. I wrote it to remind you who you are when you finally stop resisting the pull.

In the end, I ended up writing my love story. And it became the most important thing I’ve ever written. Not because it proved anything to the world, but because it finally gave language to the miracle I had been living all along. I know that in publishing this piece, my empire arrives.

Heaven on Earth.

With love, and the kind of peace that only comes from having been genuinely lost,

Vanessa Leah

Separation creates suffering. The leap dissolves separation. The body remembers before the mind understands. Free will and divine timing dance together. Feeling reveals truth. Reality mirrors inner alignment. Love is the ground.

“Look, a butterfly!” I squeal, glancing over at Elias. I wonder what he’s thinking because he doesn’t respond right away. Then, suddenly, he says, “Let’s chase the butterflies!”

The words surprise me in the best way.

The further we walk, the more butterflies appear, dancing against the open sky. “Mom! We’ve seen eight so far!”

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that many butterflies in less than five minutes on 36th Street.

“Elias, did you know Vanessa means butterfly?”

He’s focused on something ahead,

“I see a Vanessa!”

I burst out laughing, the sound fluttering down the pavement. “Oh my gosh, you’re so right. There’s a Vanessa.”

He grins at his own joke.

Elias decides he wants to go to the McDonald’s on Fort Hamilton Avenue. He loves the PlayPlace there. To get there, we walk alongside the cemetery, tracking the fluid movement of the D trains rolling by.

“Mom! Quick, take a picture!”

I snap the photo.

“You did a great job,” he says.

So I take a few more. Just to keep the moment alive.

3:40 p.m.

Elias is already running around, playing with his new friends. I hear his voice carry across the room, proudly announcing that it’s almost his birthday and that he shares it with Grimace. I laugh.

The afternoons are led by him. My nervous system already knows this block of time is reserved for spontaneity. For the beautiful plans neither of us can predict. Over time, I’ve realized this boundaryless space gives Elias an incredible sense of freedom. It makes the rules easier to hold later because his body isn’t constantly bracing against control. When he’s regulated, I’m regulated, mirroring each other.

Following Elias has also reintroduced me to my own free spirit. It has led us into unexpected adventures and toward beautiful souls. We’re simply observing the patterns and letting the day find us.

“First the PlayPlace, then the D train to Coney Island, then back to 36th Street.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

“It’s a good plan,” he repeats.

5:30 p.m.

Elias runs back to tell me it’s time for the D train. We make our way to the 9th Avenue station. When the doors open, I swear the breath leaves my body. The train is packed. My sensory nightmare.

We squeeze inside. I look down at Elias. He’s watching the city through the window while I focus on anchoring my breath.

A few stops later, I tell him we need to get off. We sit together on the station bench.

“The packed trains make you uncomfortable, Mom?”

I nod.

“We’ll wait for the next one,” I tell him.

We always find another way. Neither of us has to force our bodies to be somewhere they don’t want to be. That’s why we talk about our plans, our feelings, and our signals, especially when the world gets too loud. We make room for each other. We wait, we listen, and we hum.

It’s the language of stars.

6:00 p.m.

The next train arrives. It’s completely empty.

Elias looks at me and smiles. We find our seats. He turns toward the window, bathing in the light.

He’s looking at the sun. And I’m looking at mine.

7:00 p.m.

We make it back to 36th Street. We’re met with a surprise.

“Look! There’s a butterfly in the station!” Elias shouts.

I stop in my tracks. I am shocked to see a butterfly here. Beneath the concrete, miles away from the open sky, completely underground.

“Wow! That’s nine now,” he continues.

We’ve been searching for our own wings in the corners of the city where beauty flies and where beauty isn’t supposed to survive.

Elias takes my hand because he wants to record the incoming train. “Mom, don’t be nervous about the train coming in fast.” He remembers I told him that lately, fast trains make me feel like I’m on a roller coaster.

I squeeze his hand. “I won’t. Record your video for YouTube,” I encourage him.

I count to ten in my head as the rumble grows louder.

This time, my heart doesn’t drop.

Welcome to my life.

7:20 a.m.

I wake up three minutes before my alarm clock. Whaaaaat. That’s easily one of the best feelings in the world. It shocks me a bit because I stayed up until 4:00 a.m., and I thought that there’d be a chance I’d sleep right through the sound. Usually, my body only overrides sleep like this when I’m excited for something. But what’s happening today? Maybe my cells know something my conscious mind hasn’t caught up to yet. I lay in bed for a few minutes, letting the stillness settle, before pressing play on our morning playlist, the random, beautiful mix of favorite songs that Elias and I curated together.

Lately, my days have felt more like me. It feels as if I’m finally done bracing. The ground beneath me feels entirely steady, or rather, I’m realizing the ground was steady the whole time, and I was just the one spinning. Recently, the fog cleared. I was able to see, in my own aphantasia way, of course, the exact intersection where my passions, my dreams, motherhood, routines, responsibilities, and neurodivergence can gracefully coexist. They balance out into a single path where I don’t have to stretch myself thin, trade pieces of my soul, or lose myself entirely. It’s a place where I no longer have to choose between love and fear. The separate fragments I’ve been living have finally aligned into one purpose, a space where I won’t get burned out because my cup is naturally overflowing.

Today, I feel like I am only at the very beginning of the road, but at least it is finally the Vanessa road. The thoughts that hug me good morning are full of reassurance: You knew it.

My friend is going on maternity leave soon, and I am stepping in to help run her shop. It is the perfect arrangement, an opportunity to earn income and connect with new people while preserving the sacred, flexible space I need to focus on my writing and continue shaping what I feel. Today, I won’t be going in for training. That’s okay.

Okay. Time for the music now.

9:00 a.m.

It happens right after drop-off. I’m hit with an immense wave of mom guilt. Why does my frustrated tone still come out sometimes? I whisper the question to the sky as I walk the familiar streets of Sunset Park. I sit heavily with the feeling until, slowly, I feel a warm blanket wrap around my body. Here’s the data that arrived in my bones:

When we were children, there were moments when our frustrated tones would slip out, or our overstimulated behaviors would surface. We were taught those things were “wrong” and “bad.” We were conditioned to believe that adults had to be flawless, that they didn’t deserve grace, creating an impossible distance between the child and the grown-up.

But what would I tell the little girl inside of me? Actually, not just the little girl, but the eternal soul within me. The consciousness that has never changed, even as the biological body expanded.

I would tell her: Your son set his boundary. You apologized and explained. Your baseline is safety. The language of stars runs in your family.

A poem begins to take shape in the center of my chest. I can feel the rhythm of it, so I stop and write:

the mind
wanted a fortress.

a flawless grown-up
who never slipped,
never raised her voice,
never took up
too much space.

but the matrix cracked
in the front seat
of a car.

“i am unavailable,
my mom.”

what a beautiful code.

not rejection.

a boundary
made of light.

a mirror
held up
by a child
wearing my face.

the sky opened
its hands.

your spirit
is the exact same frequency
as his.

follow that.

I felt the entire distance between adult and child collapse right there on the sidewalk. What if we could just stay here, locked into the remembrance that under all the heavy roles we play, we’re really just skin, energy, and starlight? Would we remember our souls already know the way, together? That we’re not here to teach each other but to learn together. Looking at the ones after us, we’re not meeting an empty vessel we need to fill with instructions, but meeting an equal soul navigating the exact same vastness from a different vantage point. Like learning how to navigate our own sensory world and emotional portals through their boundaries, while they learn how to navigate their own humanity through our transparency and apologies. It’s an interactive, living classroom. A remembering and a return. I stay with myself during this moment of expansion.

9:20 a.m.

I decide to walk for a bit. I want to get as many steps as I can in, so I put on my newest playlist called celebration, something I felt would be the theme of the week. I’m so excited because the playlist is full of all my current hyperfixations. I could replay each song over and over again. I stop by Belen’s shop on the way to grab a shake, where I see the zumba class has already started.

“I’ll join soon!” I say as I giggle out the door. I really want to learn how to dance. Something tells me I’ll learn in that shop. Soon, soon, soon.

10:20 a.m.

The bus is approaching when three numbers catch my eye: 777! I tap my phone to the OMNY reader and look up.

“Good morning! The bus says 777!” I say excitedly to the driver.

“You noticed! Yeah, I drive this bus often. It also has 666 right next to it,” he replies, matching my enthusiasm perfectly.

“What! No way!”

He points directly to the numbers. Right then, all I can think about is Elias saying, “six, seven.” I tell myself I’ll take a picture of it when I get off.

The bus ride is incredibly calming. The playlist continues to roll, and I just watch the world go by through the glass. I notice the traffic, the storefronts, the faces, the fluid movement of the street. Everything seems to match the exact rhythm of my songs. I can’t help but smile.

10:55 a.m.

“I’m going to take a picture of the bus when I get off, so don’t drive off!” I tease the driver as we reach my stop. But I’m completely serious. I need that picture.

“Of course! It’s my favorite bus too,” he says.

“It’s going to be a lucky day for you,” I tell him. He smiles warmly and says thank you.

I step down onto the pavement and snap the picture, already unable to wait to show Elias. I wave to the driver as he pulls away. I zoom into the photo on my screen to make sure I got the shot. The driver’s genuine smile makes its way right through the glass of the window. I really hope his day stays as bright as he felt in that moment.

Oh, I should start walking again. I have someone to meet for breakfast. I promised her I wouldn’t forget to visit her.

11:00 a.m.

I arrive at Taquitos y Café in Bay Ridge. I am greeted by Araceli’s teasing and warmth. She tells me she has to leave soon, but we still make sure we have breakfast together.

I have my usual: two eggs, cecina, nopales, and avocado. Yum, yum, yum. On the wall, the TV is broadcasting a segment on energies.

“Do you believe in astrology?” she asks me.

“I believe in intuition,” are the words that come out. I wasn’t entirely sure how to word exactly what I believe in yet. As if on cue, someone walks through the door.

Araceli helps the customer. She’s a natural, letting her know about the menu and the salsa bar, making sure to fully understand her order, but most importantly, making sure she feels genuinely welcomed. I take another bite of my food and smile at the woman.

“Vanessa, show her the drinks!” Araceli calls out as she steps behind the counter. I walk over to show the customer the fridges, but before I can say a word, she asks, “Is that your mom?”

“Oh! No, she’s my friend. A family friend,” I reply. “But I do see her and love her like a mother figure.”

“I could tell!” the woman says. “I sense the energy between you and her, and it’s just so warm and full of care.” I think back to the TV segment Araceli and I were just watching a moment ago.

“Wow! It seems like you can track energies well,” I say, stepping eagerly into her world. I don’t mention yet that I’m the exact same way. I’m just curious and excited to meet someone who shares this frequency.

“Yeah! My body tells me what’s for me and what isn’t,” she explains. “The hairs on my body raise when something doesn’t feel like me.” I nod, already completely drawn in. “When I walked in here, I was hit with a frequency of safety and warmth. So I decided to stay. I’ve passed by this place many times but never actually walked in… today, something just told me to go inside.”

“As if nothing is an accident,” I venture, “and we are just observing patterns of the world, watching how meetings and interactions and our days come to be and play out?”

Her eyes widen.

“Exactly!”

She asks what I’m working on because she sees my laptop. I tell her that I’m taking a leap of faith on my writing. I ask if I can include her in this piece, and she says, of course. Her name is Shirmaine. She lets me know a bit of her current reality, and I can sense things clicking into place for her, too. I don’t want her to leave because my soul craves more conversations like this. But I know I’ll see her again soon.

“Next time we’ll have lunch together!” we agree.

“Come back again soon,” Araceli says.

My heart smiles again.

12:00 p.m.

Araceli has to leave now. She asks if she’ll see me later.

“Who knows where Elias will take me today!” I laugh.

“Well, if I don’t see you later, for sure I’ll see you Friday! For Elias’s birthday. Let’s cut him a cake here. We’ll get him pizza. Bye, mija.”

I wave, take out my laptop, pop in my headphones, and start writing this piece. The first song is Don’t Look Down by OneRepublic. As if the song title was mirroring to me the way I feel, as if I’m soaring through the sky.

We are loud, and the walls don’t mind. We just anchor ourselves to the way we fit, the frequency, struck by the lightning, completely undone, riding the wave of our pulse.

In that life, we leave our handprints on the mirror. Our heat fogging up the glass with our own wild weather.

In that other world, we don’t brace for the fall. We just let the twist hold us.

We stop questioning the shape of our meeting. We stand still, and finally give it a name. We just let our love speak for us.

The world tells you healing is a long path. A mountain of fixing, dragging your ghosts behind you just to earn the right to breathe.

But the world didn’t get the story quite right.

It’s not a long path. It’s a second of remembering.

You look into the mirror and stop running.

There’s no sickness in the glass. Only majesty. The sudden realization that beneath the survival, the essence was never damaged. Only hidden.

One soul arrives with half of the truth: the remembering.

Another arrives with the other half: the return.

The mountain was always an illusion. There was nowhere to climb.

Light touches light. And suddenly, you’re exactly who you’ve been the whole time.

Perhaps they were always the same thing.

What if healing isn't going back, or a long road ahead, but one second of recognition so powerful that every illusion and every wall simply falls away? What if the one meant to live this story, steps forward?

aphantasia, and love.
aphantasia, and pleasure.
aphantasia, and remembering.
aphantasia, and knowing.

aphantasia.
aphantasia.
aphantasia.

love.
love.
love.

the music plays.
the water gets hotter.

my hands reach for the red string.

i strum it,
play it,
and let it loosen
the last pieces of the wall.

i think i don’t know who is waiting
on the other side.

i think i don’t know
because i cannot see you.

i keep strumming the string,
trying to force a picture.

trying to borrow a photograph
from a room that never had windows.

trying to remember skin
by painting light
onto a blank sky.

chasing a ghost.

chasing a memory
that refuses to become an image.

but it doesn’t sing.

it doesn’t open.

the mind with a clean slate
refuses to play pretend.

i know what’s next.

i know what i feel.

i know who i feel.

the surrender.

i stop chasing the picture
and simply say your name.

i say
i love you.

to the air.

with trust.

with my whole heart.

and suddenly,
the stars come out.

they reach my soul,
my body,
my mind,
and the place
where communication happens.

in a matter of seconds,
you arrive
at the door of my skin.

our energies meet
and recognize themselves
without re-introduction.

i stop asking my mind to see
and instead ask my heart to know.

because a mind with a clean slate
doesn’t love through pictures.

it loves
through the truth
of what is.

I once wrote a list. I laid out a page of wishes, little stars scattered across the paper, each one holding something I hoped to receive one day. But the days kept moving, and so did I. I lived. I opened. I felt. I was indecisive. I was clear. I wished I could be in two places at once. I wished to hide. I led. I listened. I paused. I played. I recorded. I shared.

And one day, I found my way back to the list. The stars on the page glistened. The stars on the page mirrored something. The stars on the page twinkled. Perhaps because I was shining brighter than ever before. The love I poured onto that page when I wrote about you, for you, was the very same love that carried me here. And I don’t want to keep this list to myself anymore. I want to share our love with the world.

I say our love because love has never felt singular to me. If this love exists so fully within me, I trust that it exists somewhere else too, waiting to recognize itself. Because love transforms. And I know that by witnessing it, others will remember their own. So if you ever read this, will you see a reflection of yourself too?

Here's what you feel like to me.

We were meant to meet inside the code of the universe. A man who remembers that life is pattern and oneness, tracing the same invisible rhythms I’ve been dancing with all along.

He was meant to be safety in its truest form. Gentle. Patient. Whole. Leaving no room for loops of anger or ghosts of addiction. A sanctuary where my mind, body, and soul can finally blend.

He was meant to see straight through the silence. Unafraid of the unknown, the depth, or the unmasked version of me. Understanding the quiet canvas of my aphantasia. Knowing that a mind with a clean slate only loves with more somatic totality.

We were meant to be an electric team. Business partners. Grounding force. Vision and routine. Traveling. Making music, art, and documenting our adventures through photography and videos. Getting lost in the streets of New York, the world, and finding heaven right there in each other’s eyes.

He was meant to hold the circle of my life. Loving my son completely as his own. Holding my heart with care. Celebrating my voice, my stories, and my endless talks. We'd be a rhythm of stimming, laughter, and flow. And one day, the air will clear. He will look at me and say the word only we know. And across the span of lifetimes, my soul will remember it was home all along.

Someone once scoffed at me and said,

“Good luck finding someone like this.”

I smiled. Because somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t writing a shopping list. I was writing a mirror. Every wish I placed upon that page was simply another way of describing the love that already lived inside me. The list wasn’t a map leading me somewhere else. The list was showing me myself. I wasn’t searching for safety. I was remembering it. I wasn’t searching for freedom. I was becoming it. I wasn’t searching for love. I was learning to recognize my own.

And maybe that’s how we find each other. By becoming so fully ourselves that love has no choice but to recognize itself.

When this letter finds you, I hope you see a reflection of yourself here too. Because I think that’s what love has always been. Two mirrors remembering they were made of the same light.

Stars. ♡

One earbud out and one in. I welcome you, and I’m not bracing. And of course I’ll tell you the story of how I know.

There was a feeling that followed me around for a long time, one I’ve written about before across years of entries. A feeling that’s warm, a feeling we call. It moved loudly outward but stayed invisible inside me because I wasn’t noticing the source, I was simply expressing it. It poured out of me like a river of stars, something that felt so natural yet seemed to have no value within the walls. I felt it in music, in tiny moments that could have been nothing, in the moments my soul quietly said, “here.” The feeling didn’t have a name and I didn’t have language for it, but I wrote about it anyway. I danced with it as much as I could because it was mine, and I never stopped believing in it. Especially when we’re taught to ignore that feeling and to stay within the walls, the walls that not only restrict movement but restrict time.

We’re taught what to move away from. We’re taught that whatever remains must be what’s safe. Or at least that’s what I believed for a long time. But this feeling was bigger than the word “safe.”

Safe: being free from harm, danger, or risk.

So what if the safety we know isn’t the safety of what could be? The trust of what could be? The world as it could be?

Reading back through my writing now, it feels surreal to watch its true name unfold. On a warmer than usual Thursday, when I cried a cry I didn’t know why, my body was remembering something my mind couldn’t, and it wasn’t pain. It was most definitely surrender, something that didn’t give up, something that felt like it could exist simply because I feel it. I was trusting my feelings, trusting my heart, when it was the only thing I knew to be real.

This feeling was safety in its truest form, not the absence of danger and not the relief of escaping something, but safety as love’s true form. It was whole as it was, it deserved to be named, and it was meant to be seen.

The feeling’s name was freedom.

What if safety, time, and love are the same thing. All waiting for you to accept them as yours. Accept them as you. Accept them as the reason you’re here, because you’re here to stay.

One earbud out and one in. I welcome you, and I’m not bracing. We’re no longer standing in two different places. We’re in the place with no walls, where time lives as love.

Because the feeling,

because freedom, finally has a name, a face, and a body to live in.

Mine.