Day 4:

Day 10:

What do you need to let go of?

I need to let go of the trauma my parents put me through. I need to let go of everything that happened to me growing up and instead become a better person because of it. I need to stop swearing off people, things, and opportunities because I am terrified of ending up like my parents.

My mom and dad were so toxic together that I used to hope that they would divorce but they "stayed together for the kids." But that is bullshit, they stayed together because it was easier and because they were selfish. And I look back and I refuse to ever go through that and because I am holding onto that I have been so scared to love that I have closed off completely. I think that I am unlovable.

I know that it is all in my head but there are so many years of watching my parents hate each other, makeup, abuse each other, dance, drink, and smoke themselves to death, and the cycle would just continue.

I do not want to fall into that cycle but I fear that I have created a whole new toxic cycle instead.

Day 7:

Do you hold grudges against others that could be let go? What’s your motive for holding onto them?

If there is one thing that I have begrudgingly learned from my late father, it is the ability to hold a grudge. Pride meant everything to him and as an adult, I am realizing that I am my father's daughter. There are friends who I am sure have matured and realized their mistakes but I am still stuck in the past. I am holding on to the thread and the memory of them screwing me over. It hurt my feelings to know that someone I loved at one point in time could negate my feelings entirely and purposely hurt me.

I think I hold onto them because I do not want them to ever happen to me again. I don't want to look like an idiot forgiving someone for continuously screwing me over. At the end of the day, while I am scared of being hurt, I am terrified of looking like a complete idiot. So, in turn, I hold onto things and they are always at the forefront of my mind.

I do truly hope to let go of those inhibitions one day and just let things come and go as the universe wishes it but I know I'll have to work hard to get there one day.

– Audrey Hepburn

Have I ever mentioned how strained my relationship with God was growing up? Because from a young age, I was afraid of Him but also taught to love him. I was taught to depend on Him and to pray for forgiveness, for the most minuscule things imaginable. That never quite sat right with me but He had been a part of my life so long I just could not let Him go. But there came a point where I felt like I was talking but no one was around to hear it.

I was hollow inside and tired of being ignored. Why is it that I have spent my whole life begging for help and being left to fend for myself? It sucks but I never felt His presence, I felt His absence.

So one day, I got fed up and decided that I wanted to pray to someone who I knew would listen, someone who I knew would not judge, someone I knew would not require blind servitude, and someone I knew I would never have to beg for forgiveness. How did I know all of this? Because I conjured her up.

I imagined all of the things my Goddess would have and Fida is the first thing that came to mind. She is radiant, powerful, and understanding, and asks for very little in return. I do not need to revolve my whole life around Her because I know She is in my heart. Call me crazy or delusional but since I found my own personal Goddess, things have been looking up.

I pray to Her and I know She is lying down kicking her feet, listening to my every word, and Her presence is all the comfort I need. She is a girl's girl and I know She is looking out for me. But being a girl's girl, I know that she loves cute little trinkets and gifts, so I make sure to thank Her for being a part of my life.

Day 1:

How does the feeling of envy show up in your life?

For me, envy shows up in the sense of self-doubt. I will look at someone's life and what they have and compare it to what I do not have or how I do not look. I will look at strangers and friends and wish that what they had was me. I will look at someone happy in their career, happy in their body, or happily in love and seethe with envy.

It always comes down to, why not me? Why am I stuck in a rut that I can't climb out of? Why are good things in life never in the cards for me?

I am always stuck in a poor me cycle and I am realizing that I am blinded by the fact that I am getting in the way of my own happiness. My negative thoughts have encompassed my life for as long as I can remember I quite simply do not know how to be anything else. But I am tired, I am tired of being someone hoping and wishing from the sidelines, and have decided to take my fate into my own hands.

I will be the catalyst of change in my life and I will shed the skin I have conformed to and start anew.

Healing is difficult and facing my trauma is one of the things that I have dreaded the most in my life but the generational curse ends with me.

My aunt died two days ago and while we were not super close, I feel her loss so profoundly. I have experienced so much death in my almost 30 years and it never gets easier. I got to the hospital just as they were taking her away and I wish I had arrived a few minutes later. I wish I never had to see them unwrap her like a mummy so I could say goodbye. She was cocooned and buckled in and all I could do was shake. Because even though I have been to too many funerals to count, I had never been around someone who just took their last breath. All I could think about was my dad in that moment and how the last time I saw him he was basically a vegetable in the bed. I begged him to move on so that he and everyone else would no longer be suffering. At that moment, all I could think about was how is just dust in a tomb somewhere. The thought of someone just leaving this universe as if they were never even here is so unfathomable to me.

Death scares me so profoundly and sometimes I feel like it is looming over me. That at any moment my life will be taken from me and I will be just a memory for everyone around me.

“It was one of the best days of my life, a day during which I lived my life and didn’t think about my life at all.”

— Jonathan Safran Foer Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

The Kelpie by Herbert James Draper (1913)

Heart Frog and Butterfly Frog by Nat Power.