Clarity

AIR — The Thought That Changed the Wind

What’s the weight of a lump before you name it?

Before you speak it aloud, before it becomes a diagnosis or a destiny?

What is the shape of silence when it’s wrapped in skin?

It was there—on my chest, under my fingertips, between thoughts.

And I didn’t tell a soul.

Not because I was afraid. But because I needed a moment where this body was still mine.

Because saying it out loud would’ve made it real.

Because I’ve spent years tending to everyone else’s panic and I didn’t have space for mine.

Until he saw it.

And suddenly, my body became an offense.

Not a vessel. Not a temple. A secret I didn’t share quickly enough.

No “Are you okay?”

Just ego. Just accusation. Just air thick with unspoken blame.

And that’s when the question started forming—not about the lump.

But about the life I was holding it in.

⸻

EARTH — The Bed I Made and the Bed I Left

I went to the doctor the next day.

Quiet. Alone. Efficient.

No tears. No chaos.

Just breath and motion.

When I got home, I didn’t dramatize.

I laid in the bed I had made.

The one I had been sleeping in for years.

The one built on quiet sacrifices, folded laundry, and tiptoed truth.

And I said:

“Some things are going to have to change.”

He didn’t ask what needed changing.

He didn’t ask if I was scared.

He asked if I was leaving him.

And that told me everything.

Because when a man hears your fear

and responds with his own survival,

he’s already left you.

So I laid down.

Turned away.

Faced the wall.

And let the truth settle like stone:

This is not where I belong.

WATER — The Ache That Made Me Holy

I drove to the lake.

Because water listens.

Because God speaks softer when you’re sitting still.

I cried without needing a reason.

Or maybe I had too many to count.

I cried because no one had ever taught me

that a lump could be a message and not a sentence.

I cried because I had spent years surviving proximity to a man

who didn’t know how to see me when I wasn’t smiling.

When I came back, I wasn’t healed.

But I was clean.

Like something sacred had touched me in the wind and told me:

You are not going to die from this.

But something else might.

The next morning, I sat in front of my mirror.

Hat turned backwards. Light hitting my face.

I was already different.

He asked why I wasn’t talking to him.

I told him the truth.

And that truth made him rage.

Shouting. Spit. Names flung like knives.

Bitch. Ungrateful. Cold.

I moved through the house,

and he followed like a storm without a name.

But what broke me was not his voice.

It was theirs.

My children. Sitting still.

Unfazed.

As if this was a song they’d heard before.

And I realized—

they had.

FIRE — The Death That Freed Me

I left.

Not because I was weak.

Because I remembered.

I am not the silence you shout over.

I am not the mother you disrespect in front of her sons.

I am not the body you ignore until it threatens to leave you.

I am the woman who survives what she never deserved.

I am the fire you thought would never rise again.

I am the one who looked cancer in the face and kept her softness intact.

I found out it wasn’t cancer.

But it was a wake-up.

A holy rupture.

A burn I will never bandage over.

You don’t get to be loud in my house anymore.

You don’t get to be right in rooms I built in silence.

You don’t get to taste the fruit of the bloom you tried to bury.

Because now I know who I am.

And baby—

I’m not afraid of fire.

I am what survives it.

She Rises

Quote:

“The moment you chose yourself, everything started healing.”

Life Lesson:

You teach people how to treat you by what you continue to allow.

When you stop accepting disrespect, you start attracting alignment.

Practical Tool:

Start your day with a “non-negotiable” list:

Write down 3 things you will no longer tolerate,

and read them aloud in the mirror before you leave the house.

Let it be your boundary ritual.

Advice:

You don’t owe anyone the version of you that tolerated pain in silence.

The moment you decide to stop shrinking is the moment your rebirth begins.