Today marks day three of a quiet but powerful decision I made as this year began: to live with intention.
For most of my life, I’ve lived ahead of time. My mind has often rushed forward, planning, anticipating, worrying about moments that haven’t arrived yet. Somewhere along the way, that habit turned into anxiety. A few weeks before the year ended, a simple truth settled into me: faith and fear cannot coexist equally. Neither can faith and anxiety. One always dominates the other.
And the only place faith can truly live is in the present.
So I started journaling at night. Not to analyze my future or solve tomorrow’s problems, but to reflect. I write what happened during the day, then I write how I felt about it. That’s all. No projections. No what-ifs. Just what was, and what is. That small shift has been grounding in a way I didn’t expect, it gently pulls me out of my head and back into the moment I’m actually living.
This morning, I woke up with that familiar tightness, subtle anxiety, no clear reason why. Instead of spiraling, I reminded myself of my intention: stay present. Live today as it unfolds. I didn’t have a plan. I didn’t force structure. I simply allowed the day to be.
And it was beautiful.
As I reflected tonight, I realized how effortlessly the day flowed. I enjoyed every piece of it. What struck me most was recognizing that there was a time in my life when a day like this would have overwhelmed me. A time when being exactly where I was, surrounded by the people I was with, would have triggered anxiety instead of peace. Back then, this moment would have felt heavy.
Today, it felt light. Easy. Free.
That’s why 2026 excites me, not because I know what’s coming, but because I know how I’m choosing to experience it. If life has always managed to work out even when my heart carried anxiety, I can only imagine how much more aligned it will feel now that I’ve made a conscious decision to stop worrying about things that haven’t happened yet.
One day, I’ll read back on these journal entries and see the growth I can’t fully measure right now. I don’t know where life will take me, but I do know this:
January 3, 2026 was a genuinely beautiful day. And I’m grateful I honored it with intention.
Last night I had the sweetest dream. It wasn’t anything grand or wild, just simple, but it left me with such a tender feeling when I woke up. In the dream, I was dating someone wonderful. We’d only been together about a month, and his family was celebrating a birthday. He asked me to come with him.
What struck me most wasn’t him, but them. His family was genuinely happy to have me there. I sat with his mom and sister, and we talked for what felt like forever. It was easy, warm, and welcoming. For a moment, it felt like home.
When I opened my eyes, that’s when it hit me: I’ve never really experienced that in my real life.
Yes, I met my kids’ father’s family, but it wasn’t this big, meaningful “we’re introducing her” moment. I was just the person who came after his last relationship, and it didn’t feel special. After that, the men I dated either weren’t close to their families or weren’t “ready” to bring me into that part of their lives. I’ve even been in long relationships, one, two years, where no one in their family even knew I existed.
And so this dream made me realize something about myself. I’m not just looking for love, I’m looking for a sense of belonging. My own family circle here in Miami is small, it’s really just my mom, my brother, my kids, and my nephew. That’s it. So deep down, I think I’ve always wished for a partner whose family would welcome me, too. To feel like I wasn’t just dating him, but being embraced by the people who raised him, who love him. I want to be someone’s “plus one” where the whole family is actually excited to see me walk through the door.
And this isn’t me being sad or saying, “poor me.” It’s just me realizing, thanks to a dream, what my heart has been quietly hoping for all along.
Because love, to me, isn’t just two people, it’s the way lives intertwine. It’s walking into a room full of people who aren’t blood but still feel like family, and knowing you belong there.
Maybe the dream was only a dream. Or maybe it was a reminder: don’t settle for anything less than the kind of love that feels like home.
Last week was a rough one for me. If you read my last blog, you know I had a moment of deep despair. A moment where I finally decided to surrender, not give up, but surrender. There’s a big difference. In my prayer, I asked God the questions I’ve carried quietly for so long: Why me? Why am I still alone? Why haven’t I lived the life I envisioned, one filled with adventure, meaningful friendships, joy? It’s not for lack of being a good person. So why?
In that prayer, something shifted. I realized I was tired, tired of asking those questions, tired of trying to manipulate life into giving me what I thought I should have. I was exhausted from carrying it all. And in that surrender, I realized something that broke me wide open: I’ve never truly lived for myself.
My entire adult life has been centered around my children. I became a single mom when they were just two and three years old, and I made the choice to put my life on hold to be present in every possible way. Even on weekends they weren’t with me, I’d turn down plans and stay close to home, just in case they needed me. I felt guilty doing things without them, so I simply didn’t. I didn’t go out. I didn’t travel. I paused me. And over time, as I continued saying “no” to friends and family, the invitations stopped coming.
Then, the day after my surrender prayer, something happened. I got into a minor argument with my son. I was upset because he had plans to go out of town again, yet another weekend away. He’s in college now, and most weekends, he’s gone. I felt hurt. I told him so.
And his response stopped me cold: “Mom, you need to let me live my life. I’m entitled to live my youth.”
He didn’t say it to hurt me. But it did hurt, because I realized, he was right. I’ve given my whole life so that he and his brother could live theirs. I’ve sacrificed willingly. And yet, in that moment, I saw the truth: they never asked me to. I chose that. I did it out of love, but I also clung to it because it became my identity.
That day, I cried, hard. But for the first time, I didn’t cry because I felt empty. I cried because I was being shown something: It’s time to let go. It’s okay now. My boys are 20 and 21. It’s okay to live again. It’s okay to make plans, to go out, to travel, to enjoy life. That doesn’t make me less of a mother. In fact, it’s what I need to be the best version of myself, for them and for me. It’s time I model what it looks like to love others without losing yourself in the process.
And just when I thought that was my big lesson for the week… the universe handed me another one.
This past weekend, I had a moment of weakness, a familiar one. I caught myself almost falling back into an old habit: filling the silence, the loneliness, the space… with something that no longer fits.
I dated someone for two years, a good man, kind and thoughtful, but deep down, I knew from early on that we weren’t right for each other. My journals don’t lie. Entry after entry, I wrote about how I felt unsettled. I stayed because I felt bad. Because he had no family and mine became his. Because guilt can be a powerful prison. I broke up with him multiple times, and each time, he took me back with hope in his heart. To him, I was everything he’d prayed for. And maybe he was settling, too, because truthfully, I never prioritized him. I didn’t give him the love he deserved.
We’ve been out of contact for seven or eight months now. I hadn’t thought about him much at all, until he posted a picture with a new woman on social media. He looked happy. And just like that, I felt something. Not love. Not regret. Just… triggered.
Right before that, he’d left a box of my things with my mom. And the timing? Let’s just say it wasn’t accidental. He knew my family followed him online. He wanted a reaction. And sadly, I gave him one. I even found myself debating whether to reach out. I thought: Maybe I’ll just suggest coffee, just to see if he still wants me. Because I know he would. He told me countless times—no one would ever replace me. But then…
I caught myself.
This was a test.
A test of my surrender. A test of whether I was really ready to stop repeating patterns that don’t serve me. A test of how I handle the waiting.
And that’s where my couch theory comes in.
I look at surrender like this:
It’s like having an old couch you’ve finally gotten rid of because you know it no longer fits. Maybe it didn’t match your decor. Maybe the energy was off. Maybe it was never the right couch in the first place. So you let it go. You sell it. It’s gone.
Then you go out and buy a brand-new couch, the perfect one. The one that suits your mood, your style, your room, your life. But it’s custom. You meet the person who’s going to build it, and you tell them you trust them. You give them a plan, show them exactly where the couch will sit, explain how it should feel in the space. “I trust you to build the perfect couch for this room,” you say. They nod with confidence and tell you it will take four to twelve weeks to build, before delivery.
So now what?
You have no couch.
Your choices:
Sit on the floor and wait patiently.
Go back and drag the old couch back in, the one you already decided didn’t work.
Hop on OfferUp and buy a temporary couch. Something cheap. Something fast. Something that doesn’t match your vision but fills the space, for now.
But we all know what happens: that quick fix ends up costing more in the long run. It doesn’t feel right. It doesn’t fit. And when your real couch arrives, now you’ve got to do the work of getting rid of that temporary one, again.
So here I am, waiting. Sitting on the floor, metaphorically speaking. Not recycling old couches. Not buying stand-ins out of loneliness. I’m holding out for what’s meant for me. For what fits.
Yes, it’s hard. Waiting always is. But this time, I know what I’m doing. I know what I deserve. I know that filling space just to feel full isn’t the answer. I’m not here for quick comforts anymore. I’m here for peace, alignment, and truth.
So no more recycled couches. No more temporary stand-ins. No more mistaking loneliness for love.
Years ago I remember calculating how old I would be when my kids graduated high school. I remember thinking, “wow, I will be 42. I will still be so young with an empty nest.” Just the thought made me sad thinking about what my life would be like and how empty it would be. Fast forward to 42, and I have one leaving home to go to Boston for college while the other stays to go to school here. Thankfully, I won’t have a completely empty home, but surely half of my heart will be missing. I am excited for their new venture. I know they both will go on to do big things. That being said, knowing that my life is drastically different feels so empty. No more running around to take them to practice or to try to make it to a game directly after work. My days are now about me. Work, home, work, home… that is the routine. So, I find myself these days trying to circle back to my method of ‘coping to change’ by finding the silver lining. For example, reminding myself that I will have time to put my needs first. If I am invited somewhere to do something that interests me, I will no longer have to look at a calendar to confirm my kids don’t have anything scheduled. I can travel and do things I want to do without feeling the guilt that I am taking away from time with my kids. My whole life I put these things on hold because I didn’t want to miss any part of their life. However, now I have time. That being said, I really wish I could hold on to them little. If you ask me, I prefer a life on hold because it means my favorite people are experiencing it with me.
I realize it is time to reinvent myself and see what I want to invest my time in. Something that fulfills me. I know I will figure out what this is. For now, I will enjoy the last 31 days of my youngest born home with me. I will put my life and days on hold for any slim chance that he is home so that I can enjoy every minute of what is left. Life is changing and I am coping.
Wow it’s been 4 years since I have written a blog in here. So much has happened in the world. I feel like life paused in a sense yet kept moving. I don’t really even know how to explain that, but given we all experienced the pandemic, I think most people will understand what I mean.
I have been feeling out of sorts lately, as though I am not living my purpose. I started to do this years ago and, in a sense, I feel like putting my thoughts into words helped me and so many people sharing the same experiences as me. I stopped for a while because I was afraid to be vulnerable around people. Especially people that actually know me in real life. Even people that contributed to the pain I speak of. However, I realize that being raw is necessary. It doesn’t matter who reads it or what people say, there are people that need my experiences to help them cope and get through their own. In no way am I a professional at this. I just had to figure out how to rise above my emotions and troubles. I can’t even lie and say I did it gracefully. There were times that I was a hot mess. I may have handled things immaturely and it hindsight, even those reactions are a lesson.
With this blog I want to take it back to the beginning. Though the emotions aren’t as raw as if I was writing the story as it happened, the memory is still vivid in my mind. I want to detail life from the beginning of divorce to now, as my children recently graduated high school. Life as I know it is changing and those feelings of emptiness creep in my heart at times. Empty nesting is real and I want to be here helping us all get through it together.
I hope whoever stumbles on this blog leaves feeling better than when you found it.
Affirmation Of Visions 