Perhaps, our hearts started healing now in 2025.

This was in the comment section of a video where the creator, “Thealezander,” made a reel about not forcing a smile any more because he can genuinely smile now.

I didn’t start this year with any single resolution nor any champagne-drunk optimism. In fact, on January 3rd I cried very much. First week of January I cried. February I cried, March I cried and smiled, April I cried and smiled. 

May has shown me I can be that girl with chipped nails, very old hair, rough skin, and a journal full of dreams and hopes preparing for exams.

In May I got my retreat moments and in a way the morning light hits differently. It hits not because I have been walking in darkness but I have only been dealing with things I cannot speak nor share properly without feeling like the next person didn’t quite understand.

I have lost and sat with myself. My conclusion is we may never win in something’s and it is best to consider them your losses. Count them and move on.

That way something will shift, quietly, you don’t see the need to run away from the image of you. You permit yourself to show up ugly, raw, and not performative in any way because you’ve already shown up in the place of prayer and have been assured.

It is an assurance without fanfare, without warning, sometimes without our permission.

Now the last cry was on an ordinary Tuesday. I was just moving through motions I have perfected over months of just getting by. This was ugly crying. The kind that comes from somewhere so deep you forgot it existed. Snot and all. The kind that makes you sit on your kitchen floor because your legs simply won't hold you up anymore.

I sat there, bewildered by my own body's rebellion, wondering where these tears were coming from. They felt old, like they'd been waiting patiently in some corner of my chest, accumulating interest. Grief for things I thought I'd processed. Grief for losses I'd never properly named. Grief for the person I was before life started its early test and trial for strength and courage. 

lol in this 2025: our hearts decided they were done with pretending.

All around me, I've watched people I love suddenly confront ghosts they thought they'd buried. A friend called me last week, voice thick with tears, saying, "I don't know why I am crying about my father now. He died three years ago." Another sent a text at 2 AM: "I think I'm finally angry about what Grace did to me that one time." These conversations happen in whispers, as if we're confessing secrets to ourselves.

There is something about this moment in time that's demanding honesty from our hearts. Many people will spend their life in survival mode and forget we are first human beings and we are allowed to be and feel. So life will bring you to feel. The world keeps spinning so fast that we don’t have time to process what has broken us, what keeps breaking us, and sooner than later I pray, may your soul and spirit decide enough is enough and it is time to sit.

The beautiful thing about unaddressed hurts is that they don't disappear—they wait. They wait with the patience of flowers in winter, knowing their time will come. And when it does, when they finally surface demanding to be seen, it feels like drowning and breathing for the first time all at once.

To heal to be a healer is more like the weather—unpredictable, soft pours, sunny, sometimes violent, always changing the landscape of who you are. To show you that even nature morphs so you ought to as well. Seasons change, purpose gets layered, and you will continue to be a human being.

Those times when you smiled when you wanted to scream. All the times you said "I'm fine" when you was disintegrating. All the dreams you buried to make room for reality. All the love you gave to people who couldn't hold it properly. All the ways you abandoned yourself to keep everyone else comfortable. You will grieve for those times. Your body will require you to sit and give yourself recognition. 

Don’t carry old pain alone.

Don’t be haunted by ghosts everyone else has forgotten. We are all walking around with hearts full of untold stories, unprocessed grief, unacknowledged pain. We're all trying to figure out the human experience.

The miracle is that we're finally allowing ourselves to fall apart. There's courage in letting the façade crumble. Allowing our real hearts to come to us.

I watch for signs of this homecoming everywhere now. In the way my friend admitted she's been angry for years and is just now learning it's okay. In how my sister finally said out loud that our childhood wasn't perfect yet we pretended.

And if you're reading this thinking you haven't had your moment yet, if you're still waiting for your heart to come home, I want you to know something: it will happen. It's something that happens when you're finally ready to be honest about your experiences and stop running from yourself.

Thanks for reading. 💕