Every morning, as I step into my office and settle at my desk, I'm greeted by a collection of pillows. Each one is unique, some handcrafted with love and care, all given to me by women who have profoundly impacted my life. These pillows are more than just decor…

About a year ago, I was doing a deep clean of an old filing cabinet, one that had seen some of the final years of an abusive and toxic relationship. I hadn’t looked at many of the files in that cabinet in over a decade as they stirred up memories that, in my darkest days of healing, would threaten to tear me back down. But on this day…

Every so often, life serves up a reminder in the most unexpected places… almost sounds like the opener to a Tolkien novel. But recently, while enjoying a meal out, I cracked open a fortune cookie to reveal a slip of paper that read…

4,599 Days

Four Thousand Five Hundred Ninety-Nine Days

It took me exactly 4,599 days from the day I embarked on my first attempt at a Doctor of Philosophy degree to the moment I completed my Doctor of Education degree. Nearly 12 and a half years—a period marked not just by academic pursuit but…

Our society is built around a mentally, emotionally, and physically unhealthy premise that we need to be working, hustling, and grinding in order to live. That we only deserve to rest when our jobs are completed. But whose subjective opinion determines when the work is done?

HARD PASS.

I’ve used this phrase over the last few years in my lexicon, mostly in jest during comical moments with friends and family when talking about things that I really don’t want to do… or eat. And trust me, there are a LOT of things I don’t want to do or eat. We’ll save my pickiness for another post.

Affinity spaces… (takes a deep breath)…

The truth is, I’m not the same person I was a week ago…a year ago…before the pandemic wreaked havoc on the world.

I can’t remember the first time I realized I wanted to be a cheerleader. It might have been the time my parents took us to an East Carolina University game when we lived in North Carolina. I was around seven years old at the time. It might have been noticing the cheerleaders on the sidelines while my dad was watching sports on TV. I just remember that it became a “thing” for me for many years to come, just short of an obsession.