After I was born, my mother had many, many miscarriages. I vaguely remember her being rushed to the hospital or her coming back home with a heart of gray and dark. I grew up thinking her dislike of me was due to what I took away from her when she housed me. I emptied her…
As I waited for the Toronto Courts to finalize my mutually-filed and straightforward divorce, I thought writing a novel based on my marriage was a good idea. By that time, I had done enough bad writing to know that my characters had to be three-dimensional, even the villain should have a past that garners empathy…
Last week, we got a peek into the chambers of the Beckham family palace as the oldest son, Brooklyn (I love this name, by the way), announced over Instagram that he wanted no contact with his celebrity parents. I intentionally use the word “peek” here because we have no real understanding of the intricacies of…
I’m friends with all my exes, but two. With one of them, I don’t want to keep in touch, and with the other, he doesn’t want to keep in touch with me. Not keeping in touch is hard when you want to, or your trauma brain thinks you want to. For me, wanting to keep…
A couple of years back, someone I met on Hinge wanted me to get on a call, something I don’t really like to do as an introvert who hates speaking on the phone. But I humored him because I will generally give anything safe a try once before I rule it out. “What’s your favorite…
I learned a new word today – Salvation Fantasy. Registered trauma therapist, Kina Wolfenstein (@cptsdtherapist) mentioned this in an Instagram post that I was meant to see today. Because yesterday, while falling asleep, I fell into a salvation fantasy: I thought of how “cool” it would be if my last ex came back and apologized…
When I separated and divorced from my ex-husband a few years back, I also left my corporate career and sprang into coaching and freelance writing, destabilizing my financial security along the way. My first-ever therapist advised me against this career pivot, but I fired her and jumped ship anyway. I’m not the only person who…
2025 was the year of the snake. The year of shedding and the year of snaking around. I, too, shed multiple times this year like a snake that usually sheds four to twelve times a year. I shed friendships with low attunement towards my needs, remnant habits from my past versions, scrambling around like a…
Virginia Woolf said famously in her book A Room of One’s Own, “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” I have a copy of this book, a one-bedroom condo of my own, but sometimes the fiction doesn’t flow as well. Perhaps what’s missing is the…
Imagine a long, lustrous river that skirts along a valley. Perhaps, the river of life. Lots of trees, shrubs, and massive stones on its banks. When it rains or the winds take all control, these riverbank dwellers are thrown into the river, blocking the river’s flow. The river stays stuck for some time based on…