Morning Entries

Sometimes, I think you get the worst of me, but today it was clear that I have simply given you all of me. I have allowed myself to be my best and my worst in your presence and more than anything I have been more than what I knew. The better version of mothering and care and you’re the loving proof of my all. You tell me today how you wish you knew more of me. To have seen me at 7 or 13 and a glimpse of me at 21, filled belly with all 10 pounds, of you. How it could have been to be my friend on all the playgrounds of all the cities I was dropped into and if a hug from you would have changed the trajectory of my life and if having a friend like you would have steered my heart to choose better than your Father. You reach for me and my hands release the coffee cup I’m using as a security blanket and in that moment I feel love billow from your hands all the force of life lives in one single brush of your skin, milky and young and of my own DNA and in that moment I can almost feel a lifetime that we once lived out - not as mother and daughter but as soulmates on a playground best friends holding each other in a love that can only be known through many life times lived side by side. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

The heart wants what the heart wantsas though the soul has already known the destined path ahead and does not caution the human about the bumps and bruises, joys and sorrowsfor how can one fully understand the ecstasy that comes from love at the highest form in tandem with the duality of suffering once that love ends?our small brains would never quite understand the concept with the experience of its touchfor the human begs to be protected from scars it has yet to carry on its own fleshAnd yet love is simpleand the only truest currency along with time, of coursethe pair measures this life- provides bliss and yet mocks us in the processCandles flicker and provide a room of lifeshared meals and the type of all-consuming love that only bodies can feelAnd then all at once the flames flicker out and remind us that time will always win and every moment is to be enjoyed – the good, bad and mundane.The light will always have an end just like the days and the years and eventually this life altogetherHow silly we are to attempt to control the days with such vigortrying to will existence into and onto calendars and clocks. Alarms and schedules.Life laughs at us in the form of hiccups and inopportune long lines. At traffic lights and freeway jams and of course missed flights.And without fail we are all left pointing fingers and playing a tireless game of blameHow cute time comes out unscathed in the end – an innocent bystander. I imagine her a cool tall blonde dripped in leather with a mischievous schoolgirl smirk worn like a signature perfume that enters the room before one arrives and lingers well after one departs… Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I have no desire for adventures in far off landsOr romantic rendezvous with men that I make up 90% of who they are while they show me a meager 10% of character that intrigues me just enough to entertain messy top lipped sessions in dark corners. And, I clench my breathes awaiting for that vibrant 10% to be unwavering past the first few hours in anticipation for weekends holed up in a bed I call my own if only for the credit card hold with my name on it. And we play house and pretend it’s not as rented a fantasy as the apartment we christen every last inch of.No, now I only desire for a man to waltz into my life in the middle of an ordinary sunny day and declare with every inch of Nobel dullness that he can conjure up and simply declare I’m him and you are her.No more second guessings or tireless games of chase. For we leave all of that to the daredevil amateurs with far too many years left to make mistakes and enjoy the in-between months of sullen broken hearts.I only desire the romantic gestures that comes with assurance and clarity.An old world patina of a life well lived. Fine lines upon a face that have been broken in as slight evidence of summers spent in Mallorca and Puglia and the Moroccan desert. An exhale exists between us in the knowing that this is finally it. A glow of golden safety that only a child of countless abandonments can truly be intoxicated in and drunk off the mundane of quiet commitment.A flash of youth still sparkles in the truth of words exchanged in the hours where the living is less alive and the dead seem to reside. There is no room left for broken promises, unfaithful actions or the otherwise. We settle into a life that is comfortable and familiar as one’s favorite old sweater slipped into after a long day of battling the friends and foe of this life.Yes, quiet commitment sounds right. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

June is an island. And the only inhabitants are my girl and me.June is an island of anticipations and in-betweensLong days of list making and preparations for the voyage ahead.We hold each other tighter these days as death and loss has become real to her - both the loss of people and the fading of childhood she so desires to do over again - even if just the last five years she says, while we lay on her bed in the cocoon of her childhood bedroom. One single wall painted powder pink in the home numbered 45 on a street named after a mountain.Our walks are longer here on our island - there is an awareness of life playing out and we don’t want to miss a moment. So we stop at favorite old trees, breathe in the jasmine that lines the over grown paths we can still walk through with eyes closed. Climb up neighborhoods that played backdrop to seasons of brokenness and bliss and we remember days before the dog and laugh about the scooter that was stolen from the front porch that one summer.She cries in the shower when she thinks I can’t hear her and all that water reminds me of the waves from a very different June on an island off the coast of Spain where I found myself. I whisper a prayer to God that she too find herself like her mother did - but to make it sooner than 36.June on our island feels like the last sip of an Italian cappuccino in the early morning before the day beginsThat moment of pause and anticipation before a long adventure aheadThe familiarity of espresso and thick milk that teases every taste bud - and you can’t tell if it’s the best coffee of your life or the timing and settingThe chatter of crowds around you blurs into a symphony of voices turned into your private concertoThe relaxed nature of your posture because there is nowhere to be now only someone new to becomeAnd the foam lingers upon the top lip as a reminder of the decadence of life once enjoyedJune is an island of lingering in the past while we await the boat to our future. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Breeze of change teases me on familiar neighborhood walksThe thought of being a childless mother comes often enough that we have made friends with one another nowand this new relationship invites me to begin the arduous process of untethering an invisible velvet ribbon that runs from my youngest daughter and IEverywhere I turn is a subtle reminder of a magical yet tragic childhood all three of us played out The world is our living museum of a thousand memories I’ve attached the girls names to all of them WildflowersOld glass jars that filled meticulously made potions of the dayIce cream shopsTorn sheets of paper made into delicate Mother’s day cardsCourt house benchesParking lot that played host to pick ups and drop offsChipped platesBirds singingEven silent rooms, hold meaning nowAnd yet there is a knowing that even this life we’ve lived has always been on borrowed timethat indeed nothing is permeant, every-thing changesnothing and nobody actually belongs to us in the end.I stand on the edge of reflections…that to mother was always a necessary loss to find myself Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

We darted in and out of the winding corridors,cobblestones under our feet.Yellow of lemons battles the yellow of sunshinethat fights its way through lush green cocoons.Leather sandals, thin enough for my blood to glide over generations past, as I stub my foot more times than I can keep track of.Tourists never understand: the true backdrop is in fact not the multicolored dwellings that hug the Tyrrhenian Sea made famous in photos—but rather the climate,which cannot be captured on film.The summer heat is dry yet damp, and all-consuming.Sweat pooling at the nape of my lower back.My body always begging for an Italian of every variety.Even old men hold an odd attraction,and I let my mind play with the idea of being bedded by a tall, tanned man with white hair.My hands entertain how it might feel to get lost—and found—before I’m pulled back to the thickness of citrus in the air, a slight bergamot essence teasing my tongueAfter all, it is the mission of the momentto find the decadence of lemon creamthat only comes from a place like this.I always smell of sex here.Men fall into my arms, and I secretly love it.She hates it.Her lips say “I love you,” yet her eyes speak a language only souls understand. She fails to realize I am fluent in this foreign tongue.“One Delizia al limone for two people,” in my perfect Italian.She looks at me with an ever-complimentary smile—it's hard to make out the gleam of the knife in her teeth.It was the last meal we shared before the chapter of us was closed and drowned in the very sea we sat admiring that morning over silky full-fat cappuccinos.I felt the end while our spoons scraped through the layers of decadence, a familiar mirror of these friendship layersThick.Gluttonous.Sweet.Rich.But will make you fat if devoured too many times. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I was definitely born in the right generation this time around.A glowing red society that breeds high achievers and truth seekers.Biohacking, habit stacking, and every inch of one’s day turned into a personal CV—played out like a movie in your mind.This generation feels the crunch of time on our backs.To pause means to acknowledge the dire truth: we are running against a clock.Holding our breaths and waiting for the other shoe to drop.The last straw.The rug to be pulled.While we load our days with something- anything, that might say I was here, even for a little while, and this is what I was able to do with it all. So it’s no surprise that I’m uncomfortable in the doing nothing and in the stillness of life.By the time I drop into my app’s meditation, it’s almost done.But there are moments nowthat have only come with age.I embody some semblance of a wise woman.I cosplay a gray-haired Italian nona.Where I can walk without tech in my ears,listen to birds, and actually hear—between the veil of society and nature’s ancient medicinal melodies.And then there is the coveted five minutes I allowbetween the rituals of a rigorous bedtime routine.It’s rather cruel how the sting of my eyes is the cuefor my hand to relinquish the book from my grip.And only then can I flop over in unison,letting my own pages close for the day.The surrender of the body, bred by the red society,shifts into an ache of nothingness.Her mind loops and spins and twirlswith opening lines of poetry and songs waiting to be composed.The fight to pull her body upfrom the delight of this delicious nothingness—to write it all down in a flurry, in hopes to be one of the greats.The sweet surrender of nothingness wins Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a knowing that comes with age—that everything is, in fact, finite, that loss is on the other side of every joy-filled moment.Years 35, 36, 37, and 38 saw me holding my breath in anticipation for the proverbial other shoe to drop. The heavy, concave ceiling due to crash in over me any day now. And the aged Moroccan rug to be pulled out from underneath the feet I was desperately trying to plant somewhere between the known and foreign versions of a life I was creating.Any sudden movements could spell out disaster.And then there are the moments where finite is replaced with infinite, and you’re somewhere soaring above all anxieties, and lightness all but takes over the entirety of the human body your soul inhabits.You’re united at last with what it might feel like to be a child again—a place where time felt endless and there was no question in your mind that you would awake the next morning, along with all the people you love—safe and sound and ready for more. Next days meant newness and all the unread books of life were stacked higher than your little eyes could make out through the cascade of sun that drenched your days—even in the rain.39 feels like the marriage of these two foes. A truce was called after they realized there would never be a clear winner, that the finish line is indeed death at the end of every road. So I stand hand in hand with the reality of both. To my left, finite bows her head to my life, exposing every memory made as a reminder to relish in the variety of moments—dare they be traffic lights, brutal fights, and otherwise. To love and cherish my adored ones with everything I’ve got. Hug longer. Feel deeper. Smile with a purpose to cure pain. Allow myself to get drunk off the words that cross the lips of those we love, for we never know what last words our ears may hear.To my right, infinite wears a silk robe in just the right shade of gold, so attractive it lures my librian taste. He is perfumed with the endless possibilities of life, and I am high off the energy of his aura. He reminds me that time is to be used to fulfill my deepest desires. Touch, taste, feel, plan, and execute. Reach high and big and farther. Do it all now; squeeze out every last drop.I guess this is the gift of being human—to feel it all and make peace with the past, present, and future, not favoring one over the other, but enjoying each like a well-balanced meal. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Help me speak up on behalf of…Every womanEvery motherEvery daughterEvery childless wombHelp me speak up on behalf of the ancestors I am directly connected to,Whose blood flows through my veins, intertwined in this lifetime and those before.Dear God, allow my voice to be pure honey to the ear,Wrapping every version of me that has ever been here A healing rapture where the divine and this life collide,Crashing into one another, free from a timeWhen voices were silenced and pain was stuffed down into bodiesThat waged war on themselves from the inside out.Help me speak up on behalf of every truth that has been locked away in caves,Warned with knives to throats never to come out.Anoint my actions to speak louder than words,My hands to hold with love that divinely comes from You.Let my presence be peace—blanketed even the smallest of cracks—Please allow me to speak on behalf, of You Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Truth be told—she suits youI'm 39 now, and truth is the only thing I allow to escape from my lips.So here it is—No one would ever be enough for you in the end.I saw it then, and now you are living proof of this consequential truth playing out.Here we are, post-2022.Wedding bliss—I guess it’s all but faded by now.Perhaps that’s why I’m hearing from you?Never too far out of reach,I see your tan fingers pulling at other women from the Rolodex labeled Variety.She was stunning in Greece, up on a hillside overlooking the sea—They showed me the pictures.I smiled politely.I thought, she’s nothing like me…Blonde, yes, but enhanced in a way I could never be.What, 10–15 years your junior?I wondered what the story was there,But it doesn’t matter anyway—it never does.We seek and attract all the brokenness in us.And perhaps that’s why we could never be.Always trying to align, give it a try.Days of almost and what could be—our napalm and illicit drug.Me, never letting you get away with anything.You, never saying quite the right thing.No, really—she suits you perfectly.Nothing like the wild dreams of you and me. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

There’s a certain envy that creeps in—I wish it weren’t truewhen they happen across my days,these light sprinkles of people who know very little about this type of pain.They’ve never been tied to the fences of fate,where mothers lash out and fathers forget your birthdate,or what sits in your body after all these yearsafter being ripped from a home filled with women who swooned over you, only to be sentenced to a life where the warden says,No, baby, I love you, yet locks you in a cage.They only know long summer days,riding bikes through the streets,their mothers and fathers waiting patiently—because that’s what kids do.They test boundaries, and then they ride back, carefree,to a hot meal and a chair that stays in placeWhat it must feel like to be that free.My envy turns to prayer that they remain this naïve and never know what it’s liketo be juggled and jumbled,lied to for the sake of keeping secrets,held hostage as collateral damage.To stuff one’s face with love,because the truest love comes wrapped in conditions.To know that all laughter, bliss, and earthly possessionscome with a price tag—to act right, to not step out of line.I know what it is to walk through emotional landmines,to be woken up in the middle of the nightWhere even your sisters try to hide the very lie—that they despise your existence.Truth be told,I am the walking reminder of a failed marriage,evidence of deeds done in secret.Oh, to be free. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I think I’d like to come back as a house the next go ‘round—To be cared for, treasured, and adoredTiny feet coming in and out over every doorTo be the backdrop of life—wide-open moments and secret, private events.Newlyweds trying on Mr. and Mrs.Roses, hydrangeas, fig trees, and an old olive out backI’m watered, pruned, and admired atScrubbed floorboards on Saturday morningsBabies bornOld bodies restSouls transition to what’s nextNights kept up in both worry and gleeFurniture carefully sized up to fit just rightFights that break the silence of the nightLoss and suffering—and a safe place to hideYeah, I’d come back as a house…And host of every party, whether for 50 or just oneA kitchen dark, the fridge light on at midnightA bit of chocolate frosting escapes to the floor—he leaves it for the dog.The porcelain of a toilet becomes a comforting thronethrough bouts of illness and regrettable takeoutI’d be the backdrop of every breakdown and breakup,the moments of enough is enough.And he moves out, and she stays put,and the children shut themselves in their rooms.Pipe bursts, the carpet gets ripped out—I never liked those colors anyway.Fireplaces once filled with wood, mantles adorned with holiday trims.A place of firsts and lasts and many a second chance.Yeah, I think I’d like to come back as a house. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I watch youI observeThe acts of powerful siege against who you won’t dare let yourself beLies come far too easily, for someone so young. And, there I amBiting my tongue from the sidelinesI wonder how your body must feel,To be in a constant state of abandonment.I don’t understand how you wallow in itPerhaps that’s why you keep your distance—You know how quickly the two of us can smell it,Pick up on the subtle notes of discontent.Your carefully crafted world of make believeDoesn’t stand a chanceWhen your feet touch the wood floors of a place you grapple with calling homeShifts right and left,Trading long gazes for glances,Maneuvering around truths for muffled acquiescence,of a life you settle into.But your presence lingers when you leave—Heavy and longing and beautiful as your faceI miss you so much, on occasions it takes me back to the Great War.and there I am, mourning people that still breatheMore than anyone should.I know love and releaseI know the truest meaning of don’t take it personallyI have been molded to be a keeper of loving unconditionally—When they lie and leave you for deadI know that’s where the love residesPraying on my knees, night and day,For a dark-haired girl to returnBut this time, not to me,But to herself.Butterflies floated through the air on my walk this morning Through the neighborhood you know so well—yeah, it misses you tooWe both cling to a knowing,A whisper: she’ll get there.But not with usOn her own.I love you today, tomorrow, and every second in between…For now you keep your distance. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I watch myself unravel and recoilTrying to place a name—Compunction,Shame,And at times…ignominyThat uncontrollable shake the body makesinvoluntarilyfrom the memories of each and every horrible mistakemadeby no other hands than the two that belong to me.Oh, yeah, all the allowing?Too many years of better judgment taking a backseatAs though I don’t have full autonomy over meSomewhere in me begged to walk out the door or claim morethan what this poor man with burnt ashes lay at my feetAs though I belong here amongst the scraps from the floor I polish myself,makeshift beds that belong to someone else.Selling myself for free— in fact, paying them to use me.Each one telling me-to my faceI deserved so much more, while I let them violate me.They are all an afterthought to my days now Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I pour myself—all of my selves—onto the pages,in hopes of not bleeding unintentionally on anyone close to me.I seek out the safety of virgin-white, crisp pages,whose only dutyis to absorb the blunt force trauma of that day's scream.The pen and paper—a trusted security blanket.Except this time, it won’t be used to cushion the furniture in the moving truck,only to fly off the freeway, never to be seen again.She said it was okay—I was getting too old for baby blankets anyway.I would later realize that blanket was the last thing the other family wrapped me in.So I crawl to the warm refuge,where it can be held no longer for fearof the scattering shards boiling up and over.The page praises and taunts,assures me that nothing is off-limits.No need for cordial tones or niceties,no benefit of the doubts or excuses for all the families.No one is safe—especially not me.There, I cry and thrash in agony,revisit all the scenes.They welcome any opportunity for me to live life twice—to wallow a bit in hopes and dreamsthat never came to be. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

The way his fingers graced the finely tuned keys pulled some kind of apparition out from underneathA hot southern summer blues of a memory—but I know it didn’t belong to meRattles and echoes of distant ancestors reside in my body, their blood pulsating through me,their experiences imprinted somewhere subconsciously.My mind wanders toGerman Jews on trains—there is a break in the treeand I can’t help but wonderhow many might still be listed as family.I think of Black slaves in the fields and a woman in fearof the French men in suits who take pride in their catch of the day.A torn dress soiled in unimaginable duty-but it’s how we got here.All of them, a thread of my lineage.I think of Spaniards in small towns, praying in candlelit churches, a blue glow upon insurmountable dreams.A green-eyed woman boarding a ship for promised land called Mexico and the Indigenous people met. A trade of European village life for spices and a wild freedom.They all belong to me—my blood is imprinted with stories.I wonder if I somehow pay for the debts of their days or reap the good karma they may have accumulated?Sometimes, in the middle of the night, I jump up to find a woman—perhaps a grandmother coming through,yet another mother’s mother I never knew.She haunts me on occasion, or perhaps she is attempting to be a messenger, unsure how to make her presence ever-present to a child who could not place her face in any room. But I feel her blood and choices and taste a familiarity in gumbo and chicory coffee you can only buy on Bourbon Street.I pause on a sentiment from a Rabbi I heard recently, words inscribed into my very psyche:"The day that you were born is the day that God decided the world would not be perfect without you." Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

When Everyone Has Gone HomeIs that the hardest part?Mounds of dirt settle and sink back into the earth.Gravestones gradually collect dust.Perhaps that’s the hardest part?Pieces of their lives—represented in cups, jeans, and trophies—All sold off,Given away to charity,The last bits rummaged through on the curbside of the old house.Surely, that’s the hardest part?The endless lists have all been checked off.Rings and notification dings have all but evaporated over the weeksGrass starts to grow over top.New birth follows loss.It’s the circle of life, after all—ready or not.It feels like this is the hardest part…You fight for the last moments with brooms and mops in hand,Battling debris locked behind countertops.Left with yourself now in the deafening silence of it all.I know this is the hardest partIt’s the realization that it’s not just the loss of them—but also the loss of you.Catching a glimpse in the mirror of someonewho used to look like a girl you once knew.Lingering longer still,searching through the years you let your life slip away—in and onto the someone else’s that piled up. The silence is defeating.Truth screams out in the night.This, this right here, is the hardest part.This is the season of finding you. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

My body is twisted to the left,Torso on a bolster,Head stretched out in some impossible position—Criminal for adults, but natural for babies.There is something in the smell of a yoga studioThat nearly lulls one to sleep—A drop of Far East essential oilMixed with the earthy wood floors,A tinge of sweat lingering as an afterthought.Eyes droop heavy,Lids barely open,Lashes blurring what little vision remainsIn the dimly lit room.Veins and age—signs of life.My face inches from my hand,Breath heavy with achesThat belong to pain I've carried for 38 years.I eye the small hills of blood tunnelsBeneath smooth olive skin.God this vessel has a story to tell,It’s been here, there,And everywhere in between.I think of clenched fists and white-knuckled grips—Of survival,Of clawing for second chances.Handshakes and hand rubs,The sweetness of a newborn’s cheekAgainst the side of an index finger.Wooden spoons gripped in palms,Masa under fingernails that - don’t belong to meItems from every season of lifeArranged and rearranged on shelves high and low,Praying to catch the plates and bowlsBefore they hit the floor.Shards of glass and splinters,Remnants of rusty nails—They’ve left their mark,Like the scars of words spoken from venomous mouthsRecollections of the exact fingersThat caressed the lips of a lover.And the same fingers usedto wipe tears from your own cheeksWhen they’ve left.The diapers changed, the snack plates made.The scrubbing of walls and toilet bowls,The frantic clean-ups of rooms in disarray.All evidence of a life well-lived,Held between two palms and ten fingertips. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I allow my mind to take me through a journey that tells the story of being chosen. Some years, the thread is thick and easy to follow; pain matching the crimson red of that thread—even now, there is an ache in my hips that pain belongs to.Waiting to be chosenWaiting to be lovedWaiting to be acceptedWaiting for a proper familyWaiting for a mother that is saneWaiting for a father to come backWaiting for my body to fit into places, spaces, men, lives, jeans, and blousesI’m too old for this s**t, and the gig is up.Looking back now on the events, it was the last time I waited to be chosen by anyone.It was a declaration—Made silently to all the bleeding parts of every version I had ever shapeshifted in and out of—On a busy street packed to the brim with life—children and mothers and brothers and husbands & wives all decked out in pink on a Sunday in October, where the cold is just now touching the air, and the body can finally feel the chill of a very welcomed Fall approaching.My phone rings incessantly. I try to ignore it through the photos I’m capturing and the people I am hugging.I finally call back, phone tight to my ear while my free hand plugs my exposed one, in hopes of drowning out the life behind me.“He wants to see you.” She doesn’t even greet me with a hello…Initially, her words felt like I was winning the family lottery.My eyes jaded, couldn’t see then the truth of the painting.The truth—he had won, and I was his golden ticket.He remains the ashamed receiver.Perhaps that’s why he sends flowers by the dozens over the last 14 months. Even now I have to reserve cabinets and shelves to store all the vases of their remains.Now I wait for no one.And release the aches in my hips—A pain that belongs to versions of me that no longer fit that no longer exist Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I’m told that’s me on my first birthday,I’m told that’s my grandmother holding meA moment captured in time—she in her prime,joy upon her life,the baby that belonged to the apple of her eye.Wrapped in white lace like a cherub angel in the arms of grace,held by a woman who would go on to bebrokenfrom the loss of me—and of a life she prayed, day and night,the rosary,to be more than it ended up to be.Piñatas lay at my feet, somehow becominga staple at every partyshe threw for me,1,000 miles from my first oneAnd in my imaginings, I like to believeshe is on the other side of that moment I see,sharing laughs with a whole family,cooing over me—the angel baby on her hip in the next moment after this,as she wipes the bit of milk that escaped my lips,where she asks the party guests to be quiet a bit,for she just put me down in my very own crib.Where she was present for more than just the birthof her daughter, who would go on to bethe spitting image of her father who represented hurts and pains and irreversible truths. It would be three years before she’d returned,shifting this perfect image once captured in time,distorting the precious lightof a grandmother’s eyes—upon a granddaughter whoencapsulated every hope and dreamshe, herself, never knew, she could be. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Why do we stay longer than we need to?Longer than we should?Staying past our welcome and well past the fun—Of life, of love, of places and spacesWe never won…Mythical trophy of reassurances—of “good job” and “well dones”If we’re lucky enough, in our elegant design of martyrdom, we might just find Someone to reward us with validating wordsAs we lick the wounds from Being nearly burned and charred, until our insides all but fall apart,Bodies sit like a badge of honor—because, see,It’s someone else’s fault.Like there was no other option, no power to choose—Like all the red flags and warning signsSomehow eluded you.To the tragedy ahead—Should we stay just a little bit longer?Waiting for our happily ever after.But we’re well past the expiration dates.No, we don’t get to change that fate,To bring dead marriages back to lifeOr rusted friendships to magical sparkles of lightYou’ve outstayed your welcome. It’s done.Move on—quickly,With a walk with a run—damn, sprint if helpsBe grateful. Transition in peace.If it’s for you, it will return.And if it doesn’t—you learned. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I know it exists.I haven’t felt it in human form just yet.I hold out and continue my work,Making choices to abstain fromRelationships of all sorts—Particularly ones labeled stepping stones as suchTo the greatest love story ever felt or touchedBecause these days, I have become hers, and she, mine—The keepers of our own light.But I know it exists.An extravagantly peaceful love.When I think of you, I touch my lips,Scarlet heat boiling up from all the places of youI have yet to know, discover, and be acquainted with.But I know it exists.A man who couldn’t fathom a tear shed on his account,And if liquid gold ever fell upon my cheeks,He’d quickly retrieve it,Placing that moisture upon his own face—For close is never close enough to him.And Spanish guitar is the backdrop to our days.We welcome seasons of rain,If only to cry, to shed, to be made brand new again.And we quarrel, and we play—In Rome, Geneva, and Spain.We exist in places where breath aloneIs our private ecstasy.Yes, pain resides, as it always does,And we take it in—Lost jobs, birthed babies, gravesites.But we never let pain win in the end.Because here, in this life with you,that really exists a place for two, souls to meet—To face all sides: good and bad,evil and blind,Where we fall apart and build back up.But in that same extravagant love that brought me to you—And I will muster the words on my deathbed,When it’s all through,That I’m glad I waited patiently for you.Lips burn in a sacred, unexplainable intelligence that…It really does exist. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

My mother once told me a story when I was a little kid.Her mother had disappeared.They didn’t know if or when she would come back. I was told she had thrown in the towel on her life as a mother to ten and a wife to an old man. And even as a nine-year-old girl myself, I admired that action. Something about that story told me you don’t have to live in a hell—whether created by your own hands or someone else. Her actions said, Go ahead and save yourself.I recall the awe in my own mother’s tone, a grasping for her own power at thirty-nine years old. The years her arms held a little baby in a foreign land, a child fathered by a man who ended up not being THE MAN of her dreams—or eventually, mine.The power of my mother’s mother, the one that declared you don’t have to stay there, lives in me.I guess that’s my grandmother’s legacy—the power to choose and the power to leave. To admit to yourself, this is killing me. Even if the ten children who came from her own body became collateral damage, there is still beauty in saving yourself for the sake of all of them. I feel her imprinted power of choice still alive in me, and perhaps that’s why I too was able to leave.It is said that my grandmother eventually returned—relief in the eyes of those she left behind, of course. My mother said it was the only time she ever saw her father cry.Mary was different upon her return to the home that had once felt like a death sentence—a place where she was never alone. Her skin, her hair, her body—renewed.I pray a little bit of my grandmother finds you too.On the days when the hell of your life starts to burn at your feet- Mary comes through- You don’t have to stay here, go ahead and save yourself even for the sake of just you. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

When life feels overwhelmingly vast , and your world narrows to your own face, your own life, and your own challenges, go to the edges of the earth—where the ocean meets the sand.Baptize yourself in its shattering cold, leaving the remnants of your human guise in its saltwater. Bask in the perspective of the limitlessness before you, so grand that its blue ripples can only be measured in time.Remember that you are one of many who have crawled to this very spot, hands sinking into thousands of dust-like grains, seeking refuge from a shared yet solitary human experience.You are one of many who have found healing in the medicine of this place—on the edges of the earth, where the ocean meets the sand. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I see you in old Chevy trucks with rust around the edges and in Mexican-colored blankets that cover the seats.If I’m lucky, I hear you in their engines when I pull up to a stoplight, and for a second—I’m 14 again, and you’re taking me to school before another grueling graveyard shift at the steel mill. You glance over with a bit of angst and say, “I’m sorry this truck embarrasses you, babe.” We both laugh in that truth.This is a moment I wish I could return to—to tell you all the things I love about that truck and our early mornings, just us. To tell you that now, from the other side of youth, I see so clearly: there was no place I’d rather be than in that old Chevy truck with you.I smell you in fresh New Mexico chilies that somehow land on my plate, even when I didn’t order them.I still linger over every bite of BBQ chicken with a bit of char on the tops during summer evenings.I touch you every time my hand lands on a page in the Bible.I meet you at the edge of the shore, where the sand meets the sea and heaven opens for a second—just long enough for humanity to meet their loved ones who reside out in the distance, on the other side. The other side of health issues, traumas, and broken marriages. Where it doesn’t matter how much money one makes.I watch you in your purity there on the sea, in your own small boat, wrapped up in unimaginable peace. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Here I relax in my skin and for a moment I live here and let myself unravel what that all feels like. I let the sun dance along my neck and shoulders, and we both laugh aloud to see how long it might take before the red sinks in. No matter—I am hereAnd when I'm here, I’m a writer and a poet and songstress that has no kids. I am thin without trying, and there are no stretch marks on my skin. I spend my mornings in the trees and my afternoons by the shore. I write of love and pain and the depths of wanting more. I wear shirts that reveal my belly button to the world; insecurities don’t exist here. My friends are Nonna’s I meet in the alleys while they make fresh pastas with hands that look like a grandmother’s I never knew. And on occasion, I escape to Rome to play and hang around the centuries-old cafés and get lost in small streets, and I let my love affair with Italy completely take over the entirety of me. But I vow never to smoke. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Stench of MeI can sometimes smell a scent of her. I welcome it even. I let it wash over me for just a moment, like an addict pressing their lips to the bottle again.The versions of who I was and wasn’t play out in the cinema behind my eyes.I watch back the years I begged on my knees for better. A better bank account, better clothes, better car, better clients, better home, better relationships, a better body, a better man, and a better life—but never a better me.Now, when I listen with THESE ears, I hear clearly. A whisper from God always telling me, “Ask me to help make you better.”I was never asking to be better; I was demanding better be made all around me instead. How can the bones be rotting and still care for the beauty of blessings? How could the smell I was drenched in keep any of the goodness on my wish lists? I was oozing pain and bleeding out on everything. I was not praying to be made better but for God to plant fragrant flowers around the stench of me. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Every good thing must come to an end, they say, and I feel the brewing of this season coming to a close. A season others on the outside would call my single years, yet I call my solo journey to self-discovery. A road that not many in my camp of female friends have ventured down, and if they did, many could not make it past the first lonely, steep climbs up those mountains and even steeper, dark valleys below.It was my pilgrimage to meeting God within me. The journey to my own womanhood. I was a tribe of one, with only the ancestors in the shadows to lead the way and angels at my sides for protection—protecting me from the wolves of the world and, many times, even myself.I heard somewhere that ‘how we handle endings is how we handle anything.’ How we show up or show out- avoid and hide, says everything. Character is not built in the welcoming warmth of a beginning but in the various closings of chapters, hard conversations, and season transitions. The endings filled with bitterness and malice dripping from our lips.The endings draped in longing for a ghost who made us a party of one at every table we sit. The earth-shattering, abrupt endings that shift entire worlds, forcing us to stand at gravesites and contemplate loss at its very core.I have come to find there is almost a fear of endings in us all. Clinging to the known no matter the conditions we’re dealt. The too-tight shoe we’ve been accustomed to or the lived-in relationship that is slowly killing you. It’s curious how we lock ourselves in for the sake of staying the same and avoiding the evolution of change.But then again, endings can be a celebration and oftentimes a long exhale. Sadness fades, and anticipation takes its place, for my new beginning is on its way.The sadness has all but evaporated from my days, and appreciation is what remains. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Last night you came to me in my dream.I was quite surprised in a way that the mind tries to search for meaning like a grocery store list, each reason collecting another check mark next to the item, knowing that when I get to the bottom there will be nothing left—no explanation to bring me comfort. It felt right and wrong all at once. But it was a dream…Lies would pour from my mouth if I ever attempted to not acknowledge the goosebumps that ran down my arms from shoulder to index finger, creating in me a tingle of magic when you said the name of your favorite book. I recall being stunned into a mute state, my brain processing far too quickly to formulate any proper sentence. After an uncomfortably long pause, I said, “It’s mine as well.” I knew something, we both did. The body knew it then, and the body knows it now as I welcomed you into my dream last night.I can’t quite replay it all except the feeling and the one detail that keeps my thoughts hostage all day…But it’s a dream, and I am pulled from it slowly as I come into consciousness and my eyes begin to flutter open. It’s 5 a.m. I am in my bed alone. You belong to another. But for a night, you were mine, even if I consciously don’t understand why. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

If one more person reminds me of my strength I think I will scream out in unadulterated aching shrills until it all pours out of me and topples onto every last one of them. I will muster the last ounces of my strength to vomit the very words they want to pin me to, “Here, here is all my strength”.It seems I was born strong all 10lbs of me landed here in some packaged labeled “strength”. Every muscle on my 5’8 frame is evidence and fact that I am still here standing through insurmountable upheavals to prove it. Yes, you are strong, my body concedes.But can I be more?Can I also be fragile and gentle and vulnerable and at times frail and able to fall apart like other women doCan you look at me with concern and empathy and not just wide eyed admiration and soft echos of unspoken envyCan I be more than the valleys I’ve trudged through? More than the mountains I’ve climbed and the steep peaks I’ve made it to? More than the blistering storms i’ve weathered? More than The bleeding heart I’ve miraculously mended whole again and again and yet again.Can I be more than this strength category you’ve placed me in crowing me in the glory of obstacles overcome? Can I be more than your strong friend? Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

We didn’t share physical things. My precious heirloom only time. 378 days of knowing truth but that truth not bringing us closer in the end. I came in like a savior to close the deal and wrap up loose ends. Represented Hail Marys as the clock of time ticked down on the hands of her life. Possession’s of the flesh being secretly sized up amongst the direct blood line. There I stand in the aftermath hand in hand with time. printed images and hand written letters reeking of someone else’s heirloom a cedar box to hold all the pieces of a life suffocated in silence. They all belong to a woman I will never know, like they know. I am the observe of a life that touched so many- they say. I remain an outsider hand in hand with time. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

In my adulthood I collected strangers like a tourist collects seashells on every beach they are lucky enough to step foot on. Searching out all the unique ones along the shoreline, holding out for the sparkling shells that glimmer just right when the sunbeam hits its alabaster insides. Carefully wrapping the shell in a used tshirt so tightly I was sure no damage would ensue on the voyage home. There in my home, they would be placed in a unique position, adding to the character of that wall or shelf. Each shell representing a feeling of a place that allowed me to feel less alone and more at one with others. I was collecting friends now you see, but this time if I left a place they would still come with me, unlike the 16 years of my youth that saw friends sink away like quicksand in my memories as we fled to our next home town. But here on this island I was collecting myself and not collecting strangers. I’m collecting the little fragments of my earliest memories under the shade of the palms. I am collecting pieces of the story as I baptize myself in the sea. Pieces of my past. Pieces of a Father who in reality never left. Pieces of a Mother who lied as often as the TSA guard instructed the long airport line to “keep it moving, people”. We sit by the sea. Venus energy between us. Three women. Then a fourth. All who have experienced motherhood in some way, shape or form. Something about this moment feels sacred. Rock meets the sea. We all meet in a form of sisterhood we’re unconsciously aware of. Wombs have felt the heaviness and responsibility of life. Each knowing the creation that lives within and the one that spills over onto pages.It’s there she ask’s me to ask myself what will this story, my story, accomplished. I am speechless for once. It’s like I’m the thick lava rock I sit upon and her question is an abrupt shockingly cold Mediterranean sea wave, crashing into me, carrying with it all the ancestors that ever swam in those waters. It’s thick. Her question, like the sea spanned out in front of us, filled with so much more than what the naked eye can see nor the human ear can hear. It’s a question that only the soul can hear and only the soul can answer. Here I collect myself. Here I do not collect strangers. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

I come from a place where people leave and truth is whatever she decides it to be. From cardboard boxes and new zip codes and numerous first days of school. I come from foreign lands across the Pacific. hazy cities of concrete structures. apartment buildings near the shore and my very first best friend is the kid Orland Navarro who lives Nextdoor. I come from a place where I begged for more - something resembling a life like the girls I met on the playgrounds floors. I come from a place where I couldn’t wait for something more I couldn’t wait until it was my turn.But they, they come from a small town that smells of citrus and the neighbors care to know your name. Where doors aren’t locked and the barista knows your tastes and the schools are peppered with love and care the moms and dads stay together there.And in a way that’s where I come from too. A place I created and curated and pick and choose - all the goodness of life, no matter the cards dealt to you.In this hundred-year-old home we measure our days in love and snack plates and elaborate playdates. A place where traumas still exist but we move through them with depth and grace. It’s ok to cry here they know it’s safe and the house is the backdrop for all our beautiful days.Seasons change and dreams fall away and in their place new shapes begin to reinvent our days. I come from a place where I couldn’t wait for my turn and I created something more. Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

This poetry stared back at me today from atop the shelf of my coffee cart. A remnant of my daughter’s tea consumed earlier this morning. On most days I would quickly scold her about leaving a dirty cup on the shelf but today the unwashed cup was my Muse and welcomed reminder that beauty is indeed not caused or even really created for that matter - but rather it just IS. The beauty falls all around me now tracing itself on the chipped paint of the windowsill that belongs to a home numbered 45 with a meaning of the deepest comforting love in numerology speak. Beauty IS early morning hours before the sunrise and the blistering cold on my feet that grazes the hundred year old wood floors as I sink deeper into the pleasures of coveted silent routines. Beauty IS the memories that fill this house and thus my consciousness of the innocent adolescence that is my children’s collective childhood. Beauty IS ages 18, 20 snd 39 and the glimpses of all the ages past; if I’m lucky they appear like an outline in the mirror that’s hung there all these years. Here in my home bare feet in the beauty of life not because it was forced but simply because it just IS.XO,Ash Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe

Though it fought hard over these last 6 seasons, the decades of age caught up with the fence. Hanging on by one rusted legacy nail a mere wiggle away from letting go and releasing its most decayed board to gravity whom begged for its submission to natural order.I was told the wind came in all of a sudden like some Wizard of Oz hurricane only native Californians could associate wind with. Santa Ana’s cross our lips often but hurricane winds were as foreign to us as shoveling snow in January.I was too removed at the time to fully comprehend, my feet planted in a Spanish island 6,000 miles from the chaos of what a living science fiction novel turned reality was ensuing back home. I was detached.The fence far from my mind and the state of our future foggy as I allowed myself the indulgence of an illusory existence; where birds sung to me at dawn over a backdrop of cotton candy skies laced with the lightest whispered winds. My taste buds jealous I could not capture the sweetness of what my eyes gluttonously consumed with ease.It was easier to let the light in then and it is always easier to let the light in when life feels free of decay, turmoil or grief. When conditions are peaceful. When money is plentiful and the fridge is full. When you’re removed from the tests and triggers and hard truths - the light comes flowing in because it’s easy to do.But it’s days like these when human rights are removed and people who praise the same Christ as you somehow fight to the death for a version of their own individual truth. When a reverend begs Mercy based on the doctrine of our shared book she somehow becomes public enemy number one and her witch trial follows suit.The days are long and the nights come too soon. Division comes in every shape and form because that’s what they want us to do. Sister against sister, brother against brother and all of humanity against the truth of a tired Mother Nature.The only unity we have is in the query, “how did we get here?”This fence plank sits as an answer to a question. The broken board once belonged to that fence.250 years of decay creeping in giving way to separation in the end. The Fence disappears for a moment and in its place indigenous lands appear up in flames.The answer seems all too painstakingly clear, let it all break and decay for the light begs to come through.XO, Ash Get full access to Diary of a Life Well Lived at diaryofalifewelllived.substack.com/subscribe