Portugal tabs crowding my browser with visa notes, apartment numbers, budget spreadsheets...

My phone is face-down beside me, its pink case catching the yellow light from the lamp in the corner, right next to the last of my tea has gone cold on the nightstand.

Where is my husband?

Plain and alive in the quiet, a bottomless ache hollowing in my chest.

My whole life, I’ve learned how to hold myself. I know how compare timelines, build a databases of spreadsheets, and sit with my jaw tight for three hours until the numbers stop scaring me.

I lay in bed and scroll — clicking between visa requirements and neighborhood maps and cost-of-living threads… and I can feel two lives being lived concurrently.

One life is on the screen: Deadlines, documents, date ranges.

The other life, I shouldn't admit…

I want my husband here.

I told myself I was building a full strong life by myself, learning how not to need what could not be guaranteed.

I mastered being the woman who do everything in my own: handle all the difficult conversations, hold everything together, remembers launch strategies, deadlines, backup plans — stacking structure atop fear.

I know her well. She sits at the desk right in front of a gold-curtained window currently called home with her color coded digital and physical notebooks writing clear next steps in neat lines. She makes coffee each morning and drinks it while it's hot — despite waking with her mind already running through project phases.

She still wants her husband.

Why is the desire still there? Haven’t I built enough?

Isn’t my life meaningful enough to ignore the space there for him?

Aren’t I disciplined and self sufficient enough for this desire for marriage to be unnecessary?

It catches me now in ordinary places — clear & exact.

In the grocery store, when I reach for two of something and stop. In the car, when I hear myself talking out loud and there is no one to answer. In the small pause after I have figured something out alone again. In bed with nothing but the lamp on in the room soft, all my plans laid out in front of me.

My life is full of beautiful effort, creation energy, and thoughtful becoming of everything I have built with care.

I am not wandering through blank days waiting to be completed.

I know how to build a life.

So well that I forget to ask whether I was ever meant to build all of it alone.

I have held my phone in the middle of the night, thumb hovering over a man's dating profile, looking at his neat little prompts and cropped photos and feeling my whole body go flat. The glow on my face. The silence in the room. The strange, dead feeling of trying to locate something sacred inside a marketplace. A smile in one square. A joke in another. A line about travel. A line about tacos. A line about looking for someone who doesn't take life too seriously.

I stare. I lock the phone. I set it down. My hands collapse by my sides with no left but how tired I am.

I love Love.

But I’m tired of systems that make love feel thin.

Offline dating is no better. Just has different lighting. The same strained energy in a different room. The same feeling that I am supposed to make myself more available to things I already know I do not want. The same subtle pressure to loosen my standards and call it openness, to be chill enough, flexible enough, modern enough, detached enough to move through the machinery without complaint. My body rejects it before my mind has finished the thought. My shoulders go tight. Something in me pulls back.

The hardest part is both desiring something so deeply and how quickly the world tries to make that desire feel embarrassing.

I tucked my desire for marriage under other goals and held it the way you might hold a bruise — carefully, off to the side, not looking at it directly.

But the desire remains.

It stayed.

Through jobs, endings, foundings, plans, launches, openings, expansions.

It stayed because it was never a flaw.

I snuggle warm in bed exactly as I am now — soft focus spread through lidded eyes, smushed under calming comfort with a pillow protectively pressed flat against my chest, watching blue-gray dusk followed by dawn light pool through my pink curtains, knowing…

I do not want to build a life that proves I can do everything alone.

And the thought underneath the thought?

I am tired of trying to transcend what I actually want.

The fight against the longing stopped.

It never meant anything bad about me. It never needed to be polished into something acceptable. It was never evidence that I am behind, weak, insufficiently healed, or less evolved than women who seemed more detached.

Now when the question comes, I soften and let it come, without bracing against my heart’s desire.

Where is my husband?

Sovereignty, for me, is not without longing.

Nor is is it becoming so self-contained that nothing touches me, or where I finally earn some polished distance from wanting, or where I learn how to need less.

My life is full of artful gifts, clarity in plans, creative work, intentional expression, and joyful expansion.

Still, when the screen goes dark and there is nothing left to optimize for the night, I can feel the outline of what I am no longer willing to pretend I do not want.

Where is my husband?

"just be yourself!"

"be authentic."

Whatever that means…

When is it "appropriate" to be your authentic self?

I'm tired of justifying who I am.

I long to just be me.

Initiation into liberation:

I give myself full permission for my own space dedicated to being all of who I am.

To fully experience and express everything within me, no matter how messy.

How cathartic, witnessing and expressing Me; raw and activated, without needing to be understood.

Without fragmenting myself.

Without apologizing for being sensitive or emotional.

The articulation of my inner world is art pouring onto a canvas.

My heart is big and beautiful; its vulnerable sensations and sentimental intensity are strength.

All of me is welcome here.

And all of you is welcome, too.

Living under my job's control ate away at me.

I rehearsed and replayed over and over in my mind exactly how I planned to defend myself against another decree I disagreed with, enraged to fight for my autonomy.

But kicking and screaming couldn’t escape what I truly ran from.

What if I devoted to my own values in my own creative business but failed?

Wading through my raging fear masquerading itself within, I finally landed in a state of acceptance.

It was up to me to decide if I had the courage to design my life's work.

I trusted myself, and created my own way.

From grievances came clarity that unlocked my gifts, developed my creative skills, and channeled my creations into portals of freedom in my own business.

Inner turmoil transmuted into creative energy that fueled my own ideas through projects that lit me up with clients I love. I nurtured my creative ideas and solved problems through my domains of mastery.

My creative work became an expression of my soul's art, for the love of creating.

Following my intuition unites my body of work with art, expression, love and devotion.

What needs to be expressed through you?

My ex-boyfriend dumped me, my former friends abandoned me, my hair fell out, and I lost my sanity. Rejection, inadequacy, and abandonment ate my remains like vultures.

Get over it.

I had bigger problems to fix, like finding enough income sources to survive.

Deep down, I was just a scared little girl afraid of the big bad world, worried about everyone seeing that I wasn’t perfect, wishing daddy would love me unconditionally and protect me from it all.

I rebuilt the shattered parts of myself, laser focused on personal development and professional projects, productive and prolific.

My hair grew back thick, full, and long down my back while pilates shaped my body and yoga calmed my nervous system.

I fell in love with my soul's dimensions, my heart's sensitivities, my mind's complexities, and made true new friends who understood all of me.

My sacred self acceptance & self love rituals revealed suppressed artistic gifts that desired expression and actualization.

Meanwhile, I'd thought I'd found the key to security in this big bad world: the perfect big girl job to handle all my adult responsibilities.

Then, I got trapped in golden handcuffs.

A depleted insomniac lying awake at 3am stressed from a job that stole my joy and drained my life.

Long hours, no days off, and achieving income goals kept me company.

I'd fought to finally make enough money to live comfortably, and here I was fully providing for myself.

But no matter how perfect a job seemed… no matter how eagerly I accepted the offer letter for financial oasis… Sooner or later, I always ended up hating every job and resenting every day working there, demeaned by customers, powerless against bosses, and ashamed of myself.

Stuck repeating this soul crushing cycle.

Why couldn't I just suck it up and be happy with my salary?

Why struggle chasing passion and risking failure?

It became unbearable being constantly controlled by my boss and forcing myself to do a job I hated.

I finally went all in on my own creative work.

I committed to my own vision, my own business, my own terms.

Yet my successful 6-figure business adulting and ‘be your own boss’-ing meant more big girl responsibilities: marketing, sales, taxes, running my own company; I did everything on my own.

More grown-up work that distracted from my desire for You.

Still, I fantasized about being daddy's little girl.

Alone in the darkness of my shadow, I sat in my shame, facing the fear cramped in the pit of my stomach, my weak hands shaking, my throat constricting.

I breathed deep, let tears flow, movement as my medicine, regulating my runaway rumination that loses control and wants to end everything.

I integrated this beautiful shadow along with all my dimensions, no longer rejecting parts of me.

I acknowledged my primal need to be loved and allowed my deepest desire to be fulfilled.

I'm a full-spectrum Goddess who creates worlds bigger than my body can hold, overflowing with innate femininty, who cries when baring the depths of my soul. I’m a radiant sun warming the universe in love, an infinite ocean with intimate depths to explore.

I nourish my queen body temple with luxurious fresh nutrition. I no longer dishonor me with what does not feel good inside of me.

I bathe my body temple in natural elixirs, grateful for Mother Nature taking care of me.

I devote to my rituals and routines that structure my world and allow me to flow with my creative gifts.

My spa days are non-negotiable.

My inner little girl replenishes, daydreams, plays, creates and celebrates.

And I relax into my heart's longing to love You.

Gently, my sensitive heart blossoms, slowly opening up for love, safely making space for You.

The moment I deleted the Instagram app off my phone, I got my life back. 

Completely missed out on the “is TikTok getting banned¿” situation (idk where they landed with that) and Twitter’s what the hell of a #TransformationTuesday into X…  

All were irrelevant.

I was finally free. 

I didn't want to Tik or Tok. I didn't want to do anything on the ‘gram. I didn’t fucking feel like it. I (still) don’t know what the login to my Twitter is and not really feelin’ Threads. Wasn't a priority to me. Plain and simple. 

Social media's evolving environments exhausted me. My brain overloaded by frantic short form content that auto-played into rabbit holes so the algorithm could feed me more. 

Lost in the noisy cluttered sea of people telling strangers what to do on the internet, I couldn't bring myself to care about trends or if I seemed interesting, authentic, or engaging.

I didn't want to spend hours figuring out how to edit fleeting TikTok Reels that depreciated over time, and I was tired of whipping out my phone (or dropping it) trying to get the shot.

I couldn't tolerate eroding my life satisfaction, provoking depression, or triggering anxiety any further on platforms like Instagram and TikTok that build their UI to mimic the same addictive properties as gambling. 

Being on social media felt like being forced to play Squid Game. The prize was tempting, but the stakes were deadly. 

Despite my efforts to “just post it” anyway, I was losing my mind inconsolably, drained and unsafe from simply opening the feed, and begged myself to stop. 

I needed the choice to opt out. 

So I just stopped posting.

I blocked social media apps from opening on my phone and freed my headspace, no longer thinking about posting. There was much more room to enjoy my life on my terms as I preferred.

I watched my favorite movies with my mom, cooked new recipes, adopted a cat, nurtured my illustrations and writings, launched and grew a prolific blog, booked out my studio, and opened a school, built a lifestyle business, caught up on cool animes, wrote novels, read awe-inspiring books, explored Vietnam, got into yoga & pilates, lost weight, stopped putting off creative projects, made soulmate friends, discovered my soul’s art, and allowed total immersion in my life's moments — fully aware and present. 

My studio worked with the world’s coolest queen clients (without posting on social media), my revenue quadrupled, I saved hours of screen time, and my mind relaxed into relief.

Depression and anxiety dissolved as my brain, finally relieved from frantic overstimulation, could calm and rest. 

I fell asleep around 11pm, slept past 11am, and took naps in the middle of the day, recovering from a lifetime of hypervigilance.  

My life slowed down, deepened, and received my full attention.

I took a 5-year break from social media. I opted out, relaxed into presence, devoted to my soul’s art, and it was 10/10 would recommend. 

Now I'm starting my Substack because I’m inspired to share my reflections in this lovely universe that I’ve grown fond of.

Here on Substack, I get the opportunity to sit with the intentional ideas that each of you publish, spend time loving your creations, and let the works of thoughtful writers enrich me.

My publication is my playground, free from destructive “needs” and “shoulds” and “musts”.

I never thought it would be possible to enjoy a platform. Yet, I learn to love again.

Hello new friends. 

I’m happy and grateful to be here with you.

What do you enjoy about Substack?

day 245 of my sobriety

I thought it would be impossible to live without alcohol.

But I don't miss it yet.

Not even a little bit.

I'm still learning how just be in my body.

Not intellectualizing fear.

Not running from stress.

Not numbing social anxiety.

Just being in my body, feeling my full range of sensation - unconditionally.

I don't yet know why this sobriety journey chose me.

As if 3 mimosas at Sunday brunch or 2 margaritas at Saturday dinner before a movie was ever a problem for me.

But the question kept coming up...

Does alcohol really feel as good in my body as I believe it does?

No. It really didn't.

Now I think I see why I don't miss it…

Sinking into every innate sensation teaches me how to rest in the full spectrum of my mind and body's experiences, no matter how uncomfortable and overwhelming.

Now I feel Me, deeply.