I’ve been thinking a lot about ritual lately and not in a performative way, not as aesthetics, but as a way of returning to myself and returning home. After revisiting the ritual chapter in The Spirit of Intimacy by Sobonfu Somé, something inside me softened and opened. Her words reminded me that ritual is simple. It is personal. It is honest. Ritual is intention. Ritual is sincerity. Ritual is openness. It begins with knowing that everything we need already lives within us.

There are parts of me that I am still learning to look at without flinching. Parts that aren’t soft or holy or enlightened. Parts that crave, ache, cling, or enjoy things I wish I didn’t like. Parts that came from survival, not intention. I don’t judge them anymore. I just want to understand them. There was a time in my life when intensity felt like love. When someone checking for me, showing up unannounced, being territorial or possessive felt like passion instead of control

Lately, I’ve been feeling triggered in ways that caught me off guard. A familiar ache rose in my chest when I noticed old connections resurfacing. These were people who saw me at my lowest, people who disappeared when I needed gentleness, people whose judgment still lingers in the corners of my memory. It hit me. They witnessed a version of me that wasn’t my truth. They saw me in survival mode: overwhelmed, grieving, unraveling. They mistook that moment for who I was. And tha

This trip didn’t go how I expected but maybe it went how it needed to. I thought I was coming here for connection, girlhood, laughter, shared memory. Instead, I ended up spending most of it with myself. And honestly… I think that was the real assignment. I learned how to choose me without guilt. How to move at my own pace, even if I’m the only one moving. How to communicate without yelling, without shrinking, without overexplaining. I realized I can say this isn’t working for