Tag: peace

  • Commencement Season: Tassels, Tears, and One Last Trip to the Snack Bar

    There’s something strange about graduation season. For four years, students spend most of high school counting down to the end of school—talking about summer, freedom, and escaping homework forever. Then suddenly, during the final few weeks, everyone starts walking around campus like they’re in the last ten minutes of a movie. People who normally sprint…

  • Life Is A Notebook

    I came across this idea the other day, and it stayed with me longer than I expected— the kind of thought that doesn’t just pass through, but settles in. Maybe it’s the way we hold onto moments—like scraps of paper, like old notebooks tucked away in drawers. Every now and then, something reminds you that…

  • Throwing Words Into the Wind

    Let me tell you a story…something I learned about myself, and only fully recently acknowledged. This won’t be a confession of weakness, nor a tale of courage or inner strength. Those are just labels. And the truth is, labels are strangers to far more people like me than most realize. If anything, this story is…

  • Beer Sunset…

    Beer Sunset…

    The kind where the day exhales slowly, where the bottle sweats in your hand like it’s been working just as hard as you have, and the sky turns that dusty orange you only notice when you finally stop moving. It’s porch steps and quiet conversations. It’s the hum of distant traffic mixing with crickets warming…

  • Out of the Dark to Find Me Again

    So last night, I had a realization. Not one of those cinematic, lightning-strikes-the-soul kind of realizations. No dramatic music, no sudden gasp into the void. More like… sitting there, minding my business, and boom—my brain quietly taps me on the shoulder like, “Hey… you good?” And apparently, I wasn’t. Or at least, my writing wasn’t.…

  • The Burden of Grief

    This comes not as a confession, but as a quiet observation—drawn from conversations with those who have known loss, who have carried grief quietly and persistently. Grief is both deeply personal and inherently human, connecting us even as we navigate it alone. It is born of shared experience, of listening, of trying to understand. What…

  • Dichoso El Árbol

    Music. For most, it is simply entertainment. For some, it fills the silence. For others, it is just noise, or a distraction from what weighs on the mind. But for a smaller number, music is more—it is healing, it is connection, even a kind of spiritual touch. For me, it is a bit of all…

  • Like Therapy – No Appointment Required

    Life is a journey—and what a messy, beautiful one it is. There are peaks that make you feel invincible, and valleys that make you question if you packed the right shoes.  Triumphs feel like fireworks; failures feel like stepping on Legos in the dark. Each stumble, each victory, leaves a little mark, whether we notice…

  • So I like Coffee and Quiet Moments! What are ya gonna do!?

    Quiet mornings are sacred. That’s where thoughts line up, memories wander in, and the day hasn’t started asking for things yet. It’s the opposite of chaos. And I’ve always had a soft spot for those in-between moments—the ones that feel a little like the 1980s, before the radio clicked on and the house officially woke…

  • Several Hundred Words Later

    We’ve all been there. Not as heroes, not as villains—just as silent witnesses to someone else’s emotional eruption. That strange moment when you realize you’re no longer part of a conversation, but the audience to a performance you never bought tickets for. You don’t interrupt.You don’t argue. You simply stand there, nodding politely, mentally taking…

  • Before the Day Notices Me

    I’ve written about the morning quiet a few times, and usually that quiet is accompanied by coffee. And so here I am, writing about that morning quiet while enjoying said quiet…and coffee. There’s a particular kind of peace that comes from alone time and coffee just for coffee’s sake. Not a meeting. Not a reward.…

  • Someone asked me today how I was doing.

    I am tired…. …of being strong. …of feeling sad. …of not having answers. …of needing a break. …of this continuing heat. …of not enough sleep. …of feeling tired. But, I am grateful, and thankful… …that I am alive. …for my family. …that I have a place to live and food on my table. …that I…