3 Things Men Can Teach Us
Take a sick day like a man. Say no like a man. Walk into rooms like you own them — like a man.
The Dark Side of Female Friendships: Wolfsbane vs. Monets
I approached adulthood with an overgrown innocence that made life both whimsical and dangerous.
I’ve always loved people. There’s nothing that waters my garden more than human connection. To build bridges, to let people in, and to be let in. I believed people. I trusted their words. I wholeheartedly felt that everyone I encountered was good and wanted to spread goodness.
Until I was scorned. Until I no longer saw new people as exciting opportunities to grow, but as warning signs. Until I lost confidence not only in the human race, but in my own ability to judge and assess situations. Do you know how terrifying, how debilitating it is to lose confidence in that? It was a loss of independence. I no longer felt safe, or able to keep myself safe. I clung to those who withstood the test of time and shut everyone else out.
Why?
Because I encountered both wolfsbane and Monets.
LUCKY
Today, I want to crush the lemons whole, let the sourness seep between my fingers, and drip onto the whole world.
But then, in the midst of the congestion in my mind and on the road, I saw you across the street.
Everything stopped. All the thoughts fluttering angrily around me dropped dead. A flock of birds had gone down in a blink.
Roots
I choose to bloom so boldly that you cannot trace back my roots. I choose to bloom so fully you’ll assume I was one of the lucky ones, the chosen ones with roots so divine, they cease to exist. I choose to bloom so fiercely that you’ll be so enthralled by the present, you won’t even think to look back. I choose to bloom. Do you?
“Love is Holding Your Bags for You”
Many times, I still believe it. That I deserved your violation of my pride and dignity.
And many times, I settle for: but you did carry my bags.
Only later do I realize, it was never about me.
Just collateral damage.
While I will always love you despite it all, some things will change.
You will never carry my bags again.
If you love someone, tell them. A Love Letter to Me
If You Love Someone, Tell Them
A Love Letter to Me:
I want this to be a reminder—if I ever get lost or begin to doubt myself—that this contentment once lived within me. That I have loved me. And that all it took was being a good person… and that’s all it will ever take.
in the name of love
Hurt
"The worst pain I have ever felt was not from someone I didn’t know, but from the people I loved the most. It’s very confusing when the people who would burn the whole world down to protect you are the ones you need protecting from."
Healing
"My love is when I’m angry, I will protect you from me. I will slaughter my own beasts with all my might before they ever reach you. I will water down the rage with anything and everything I have, even if it costs me."
Commitment
"My love is granting you the best versions of me. It’s saving the best parts of me for you. It’s rationing my resources to ensure you get the absolute best."
How Does One Exit the Stranger Danger Phase?
So what makes us feel close to people?
What builds those invisible ties we can’t see, but our entire being swears by?
It’s in the way our shoulders rest around them… It’s in the way our breathing slows, like we’ve finally taken a seat in this race we call life. It’s in the way we smile around them—soft, eye-crinkled, effortless. It’s in the way we just be—without a thousand mental obstacles before our words come out.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
I tried so hard to show you, but you still can’t see me.
It’s so important for me to be seen as I am, not as any version unjustly imposed on me. If they dressed me in a mask that does not suit me, it’s not me—I’d scrub it off feverishly until my skin bleeds, just for them to see what I believe is the real me. The irony of it not lost on me, losing pieces of me just to show you me. Exposing my vulnerabilities, undressing all my layers, giving them an unobstructed, bird’s-eye view look of me. Only to set the perfect target shot, voluntarily walk into the line of fire under the pretense of standing up for what I believe in, just to surrender myself to their predatory claims. Shots fired. And I walk away carrying nothing but losses and the burden of recovering.
A Series: Lessons I learned teaching in my 20s
You tear my gardens apart, and they still bloom for you.
You burn my harvest, but it would rot anyway if anyone else touched it.
You eat my heart out, and it still offers itself.
A Series: Lessons I learned teaching in my 20s
Sometimes, it’s not your competition that wants to see you fail, it’s the ones closest to you, the ones you tried to pull up with you. Betrayal doesn’t always scream; sometimes, it whispers behind polite smiles and backhanded praise. I gave someone power they never earned, and they used it to try to break me. But I’ve learned to sharpen my senses, to spot the silent saboteurs. And most importantly, I’ve learned that their hate was never really about me, it was a reflection of everything they feared in themselves.
On Days When Nothing Feels Right, Be Grateful For:
There are days that feel like the whole world is conspiring against you, targeting you, where nothing goes right, and self-pity seeps in like a fog. On those days especially, I’ve learned to stop and remind myself: my problems are someone else’s peace. My life, even on its worst day, is someone else’s dream.
I bet if you look hard enough, you’ll find at least 7 things to be grateful for.
Here are mine. This is part 1.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
Finals week—the worst and best moments in teaching always happen then. When students pass by my office to check their final grades, I’m exposed to people’s best, worst, and most honest selves.
There’s one student I’ve taught many times throughout her university journey. She was one of the most dedicated people I’ve ever met—perfect attendance, literally never missed a lecture, and always gave everything she had. During her last course with me—right before graduation—we sat together to review her grades, and for the first time, she had done well on her exams. She ended up earning an A. In the middle of reviewing her grade, she started crying. I asked her if they were tears of joy, and she nodded.
Her friend, who was with her, laughed and told me she always cries and that they always joke about it.
But in that moment, seeing the contrast between someone crying tears of joy and someone standing tall, guarded, I realized: I’d rather be sensitive.
Regardless of the price.
I’d rather be recklessly kind.
I’d rather be expressive with my love, fear, sadness.
I’d rather not sacrifice all emotions just to avoid one.
I’ve been hurt, and I’ve survived it.
I want to live life free-falling into my feelings, indulging in them all.
I don’t want to hold back or dip my toe; I want to dive heart first.
A series: Lessons I learned Teaching in My 20s
Kind. Patient. Quiet. Calm.
Those were the words he used to describe leadership.
It’s so elating to know that amidst a sea of destruction, I had planted a flower, and it had grown bright and glistening. That someone could see me not as I am but as the person I aspire to be. It makes me think of the kind of world I hope we build together:
A world where being patient is praised, and being kind is powerful.
4 Feelings I Wish I Could Materialize
I wish I could bottle up the way I feel in those moments—different types of elation. I wish I could materialize the state I’m in, keep it in pill form, so I can access it again and again, despite you. I won’t be greedy—even if it’s limited, I’ll ration it. Just knowing I could relive it on demand, without actually using it up... even that would be enough.
It’s the way you look at me, unprovoked—across the room, in the midst of heated conversations I’m not a part of. I lose myself in that look, in the way you really see me. You see the girl trapped behind my eyes, unmasked, bare—and it doesn’t scare you. You stay.
The room fades, the noise, the people, the weight of my thoughts... gone. It’s just us—this stillness, this fleeting magic, this sense of beauty that feels so rare it must be borrowed from somewhere else. It makes me feel like I’ve found it—the thing everyone’s chasing in life. It makes me hopeful.
But before I get too accustomed, the realist in me rips my eyes away, erasing the moment in a blink. And I wonder—was it ever real? Or just a fragment of my imagination?
I tell myself I can’t afford to feel this good.
Because most of the time... it doesn’t feel remotely as good as that.
It’s the little things, always.
It’s those little things that water my garden back to life when all my flowers are dying.
Micro-affections that make me realize how much more I can love myself.
It’s the little things.
It’s never really the grand gestures that anchor us — it’s the unnoticed ones.
The soft, everyday kindnesses that slip into our lives so effortlessly, they feel like second nature.
A bag strap bought for a journey you didn’t worry about.
A seat exchanged without a word.
Hands that lift weight you never asked to be carried.
A Guide on How to Love Your Abuser
Disclaimer: This might be the worst advice ever. It’s so subjective.
Abuse is different for everyone — dependent on the type, duration, etc.
This is from my experience.
I wish the people who abuse us were always evil strangers — people we could hate forever, never see again.
Burn any memory of them from our brains. Scrape them clean from our hearts.
But more often than not, your abuser is someone close to you.
A family member. Someone you can’t cut off. Someone you don’t want to cut off.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
The Price of Thick Skin
When the boy first entered the room, he came running in, screaming “Salaaaam!” with a big smile.
And as soon as that introduction was made—“the one who lost his mother and has no one else to care for him”—I could see the light escape his eyes. His entire body deflated, and his face settled into such a disconnected expression.
As if he had disengaged from the here and now.
Even now, as adults, humiliation breaks our bones.
And they never heal back the same way.
In his eyes, I saw me.
A Series: Lessons I Learned Teaching in My 20s
God loves me.
I can’t sleep. I toss and turn in my bed replaying certain scenes I’ve lived through—so mundane, so ordinary. If you could overhear, you’d be bored by the nothingness of it all, but surprised at how much space they took in my head.
My heart would not stop racing—it felt like an endless stream of horses thundering, and my chest was the arena. Every one of their loaded feet slammed against my ribs, the weight crushing into me.
That’s what my anxiety looked like.
Anxiety takes different forms for everyone. That was mine. Such an unruly beast. The more you attempted to slaughter it, the stronger it got. I was fright in human form. Fidgety. Irritable. A radio of worst-case scenarios you couldn’t turn off.
Until…
I found God.
My shelter became the feeling when my head touched the ground in prayer. My unloading dock—my anxiety unpacking itself. I felt so much lighter when I lifted my head. Like I had left the weight of the world on the mat.
It wasn’t the formal prayers. It was talking to God the way I talk to myself—unfiltered and unmasked.
And the reminder that saved me?
God loves me.
A love letter to Writing
I don’t know who leads who — does my writing inform me, or do I inform my writing?
Sometimes when I read my blogs, I’m enlightened by the content as if I’m learning something new.
It’s as if those thoughts didn’t come from within me; contrary, they are coming to me with newness so unfamiliar.
Sometimes even when I reread it instantly, I still can’t recognize myself between the words.