• Letter to Myself

    Dear 2026 Kirsten, This year, do it for you. Not to make someone like you, not to keep the peace, not to stop someone from getting mad. Don’t let the fear of losing someone chain you in place. The ones who are truly worth your heart won’t walk away. Be kind, but don’t shrink yourself…

  • Trying to be Okay with Alone

    I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to be alone. Not just physically, but emotionally. I do have people in my life—friends, acquaintances—but they all have their person. Someone they turn to when things get hard or when something wonderful happens. I don’t have that. When I’m crying, there’s no one to sit…

  • When Friendship Stops Feeling Safe

    I keep circling back to one question: what actually matters in a friendship?For me, it’s always been honesty. Trust. Reliability. Consistency.The things you can lean on when life feels shaky. I don’t know if it’s because I’m hurt, but I’m not sure I see those in you anymore.And it makes me wonder—was I blind before,…

  • When Belonging Feels Out of Reach

    Lately, I’ve been sitting with a heavy truth: I don’t feel like I belong anywhere. Not in rooms filled with laughter, not in quiet corners of conversation, not even in the spaces I’ve carved out for myself. It’s a strange ache—this feeling of being a burden, of not knowing how to ask for help without…

  • Still Stuck on Someone Who Can’t Be Mine

    I used to get butterflies before dates—the excited kind, full of possibility. But since him, I hesitate. I sit in my car, staring at the clock, wondering if it’s even worth going. Will this new person be a distraction, or will I silently compare them to him the whole time? I don’t know why he…

  • Letter to my father…

    Dear Dad, I know, deep in my heart, that alcoholism is a disease. I know you didn’t choose this—no more than anyone would choose to suffer from cancer. Still, knowing that doesn’t lessen the pain of watching it pull you further away from us, from me. I understand you carry a heavy past—a pain that’s…

  • When Promised Aren’t Spoken, but Felt

    I know I have no right to be upset—you never made me promises. But your actions told a different story. You were there, every day, making space for me while making sure other where pushed away. You made me believe in something, made me feel chosen. And now, you’ve changed. You tell me it’s unintentional—that…

  • The Fragile Facade: Hiding Pain in Plain Sight

    I wear a mask. Not the kind you see, but one that hides the fractured pieces of who I really am. Deep down, I feel like a fraud. Imposter syndrome claws at my mind, whispering that I don’t belong, that I’m unworthy, that I’m deceiving everyone around me. The noise in my head is deafening,…

  • Coffee Trend

    If I were to sit down for coffee with my younger self, 18-year-old me wouldn’t have shown up. She’d be curled up in bed, staring at the ceiling, drowning in a silence that screamed louder than words. At 18, my world had been shattered. Trust—something so fragile—was obliterated by someone who took what wasn’t theirs…

  • Filling the Silence, Fighting the Shadows

    There’s a certain weight to the pain I carry, one that lives not in fleeting moments but in the marrow of my being. It’s heavier than the ache of missing someone—it’s the ache of simply being. I watch as the world moves on, as people breathe through their sorrows and nights dissolve into mornings with…