A picture can make survival look effortless.
It is not.
People might see my pictures, or anyone’s pictures, or a video of someone doing the latest trend on TikTok, and wonder what is really going on behind the scenes. They might look at someone who is struggling and think:
For someone who says they’re doing badly, they look pretty good.
But what you are not seeing is the person crying on the train.
You are not seeing the person screaming into the refrigerator. The person trying not to fall apart before work. The person having to choose, again and again, to stay. The person going through intense therapy with a therapist who specializes in generational trauma and abuse, while also seeing another therapist, and a psychiatrist, and doing every kind of healing work they can think of just to be okay enough to walk out the door.
You are not seeing the journaling. The shadow work. The breathwork. The sound work. The appointments. The check-ins. The moments where I have had to ask for help because I finally understand that asking for help is not weakness.
It is survival.
It is love.
It is me choosing myself.
I may look put together in a photo. I may be able to make a reel. I may be able to go outside, do my job, care for others, and appear functional.
But I am not pretending to function.
I am functioning.
And I am functioning because I have people in my life who love me. Because there are people who do know what I am going through. People who check in. People who listen. People who do not need me to perform wellness in order to be worthy of their care.
I am functioning because I am finally learning how to love myself too.
Because I am finally starting to know that I have worth.
Because I am doing the work, and the work is not easy.
For years — and I mean since I was a child, if you haven’t been reading up — I did not value myself enough to recognize the people I had in my corner. I let myself believe I had no one. I let myself believe that the wrong people were the only people.
More recently, I was manipulated into thinking that what I feared was true: that I was alone, that I was too much, that I did not matter, that the only person I had was the very person helping me disappear from everyone else.
So I pushed people away.
And yes, I had the wrong friends too. I had people around me who were not actually for me. But this season has taught me the difference. It has shown me who is here. Who checks in. Who stays. Who lets me be messy and still sees me as worthy of love.
It has shown me what I have.
It has shown me what I need.
It has shown me that I am not as alone as I once believed.
I used to mistake isolation for truth.
I used to believe the people hurting me were the only ones who would stay.
I know better now.
I am blessed.
I am grateful.
I have learned so much, and there is still so much left for me to do.
I still have intensive outpatient therapy ahead of me. I still have healing to walk through. I still have loops to close. There is still so much pain that does not show up in a picture.
You do not see me crying at night. You do not see me crying in the morning. You do not see the anxiety, the ache, the heartache, or the moments where I go into the darkest parts of myself and have to find my way back.
You do not see the ancestral pain.
The pain of my mother. The pain of my grandmother. The pain of my family. The pain they endured and survived. The pain I now understand was never only mine.
That knowledge hurts.
It hurts to know that what I have carried, they carried too. It hurts to know that my healing is not only for me. It is for them. It is for the parts of us that were never given language. It is for the women before me who had to swallow everything and keep moving.
So yes, the picture is one thing.
But I am not great.
I am not magically healed.
I am not doing amazing.
I am doing something.
I am getting better.
I am getting stronger.
Not because the pain disappeared.
Not because everything is fixed.
Not because healing has become easy.
I am getting better because I am finally letting myself be helped. I am getting better because I am doing the work. I am getting better because I am learning how to tell the truth without letting the truth destroy me.
I am getting stronger because I am not carrying this alone anymore.
I am getting stronger because I am showing up for myself too.
I am doing the work to get myself right. For me. For the people I love. For the people who love me. For the people who need me. For the versions of me that deserved better and are finally receiving it.
This is not about proving anything to anybody.
This is just the journey.
Because nobody really knows what another person is carrying. Nobody knows what it takes for someone to get up, get dressed, go to work, pay bills, see their friends, take care of their family, and keep existing when their body wants to collapse.
And no, I cannot just lay in bed forever and wail.
Honey, in this economy? In this year of our fall of Western Civilization 2026? Hah. Tuh.
Not with these bills and soaring inflation. Not with people and pets depending on me.
No, baby.
You have to do things.
You have to work. You have to function. You have to exist. So you find ways. You find tools. You find people. You find breath. You find the Creator. You find your ancestors. You find the tiniest thread and you pull yourself forward with it.
I am not going to abandon myself again.
I have lived longer than some wounded part of me ever thought I would. I have survived too much. I have carried too much pain to let misery be the thing that takes me.
So yes, I may look pretty good for someone who has been through so much.
That does not mean it has been easy.
It means I am doing the work.
No apologies.
Only gratitude.
To the people who stayed.
To the help I finally allowed in.
To the people who love me without needing me to perform wellness.
To my ancestors.
To my spirit guides.
And to myself, for not abandoning me.