emberrisen

Tag: emotional honesty

  • Feeling Everything at Once

    Feeling Everything at Once

    Lately it feels like all my emotions have decided to show up at the same time. Anger, sadness, fear, hope, exhaustion — all layered on top of each other until I can’t tell where one ends and the next begins. Some days I feel like I’m seconds away from tears, even when nothing specific has happened. Other days I feel a kind of quiet rage, not loud or destructive, but sharp enough to remind me that something inside me is still hurting.

    It’s strange to feel so full and so empty at the same time.

    Like there’s so much in me that wants to come out — to be spoken, to be understood — but I don’t always know how to say it. And even when I do, I’m scared of being misunderstood. I want to be seen, but I’m afraid of what happens if someone actually looks closely. I want connection, but I’m afraid of exposure. It’s a tug‑of‑war inside my own chest.

    And layered under all of that is the pressure of everyday life — the feeling that I need to be more present, more engaged, more patient, more everything. I want to show up fully for my daughter, not just in the practical ways but in the emotional ones. I want her to feel me there. And at the same time, I’m trying to figure out how to build more stability for us, how to bring in more income, how to create a life that feels secure. It’s a lot to hold, and some days it feels like too much.

    I think part of what I’m feeling is grief — not just for what has happened, but for what didn’t. I’m grieving the life I once imagined for myself, the version of love I thought I would have, the future I believed was waiting for me. I’m grieving the softness I thought would fill my home, the partnership I thought would meet me, the steadiness I thought I’d grow into. And I’m scared sometimes that I’ll never have any of it, or that I won’t be able to create even a small piece of it.

    But underneath all of that fear, there is still a very real desire to show up in the world as the person I know myself to be in my quietest moments — kind, caring, generous, warm. Someone whose presence makes people feel seen and appreciated. Someone who leaves others feeling a little lighter, even if they don’t know why. I want to be that person more often. I want to live from that place instead of from the fear and the ache.

    And maybe the reason I want to give that feeling to others is because it’s the feeling I’m longing for myself. To be seen without having to perform. To be understood without having to explain. To be held without having to earn it. To be met with gentleness instead of judgment. To feel like I can exhale fully in someone’s presence.

    I don’t have answers yet. I don’t have a neat ending to this.

    But I do know this: feeling everything at once doesn’t mean I’m failing. It means I’m human. It means I’m healing. It means I’m still hoping, even when hope feels heavy.

    And maybe that’s enough for right now — to name it, to feel it, and to keep moving through it one breath at a time.

    🎧 Listen to the companion song: Hold Me Here

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • When Writing Opens the Doors You Closed Long Ago

    When Writing Opens the Doors You Closed Long Ago

    I’ve been writing a lot lately, and I need to be honest: it’s ripping me open. Not gently. Not gracefully. Just open. I sit down to write something simple, something reflective, and suddenly I’m remembering things I’ve spent years trying not to remember. It feels like my past has decided it’s done being quiet.

    Writing has always helped me breathe, but right now it feels more like it’s forcing me to inhale air that burns on the way in. Every sentence seems to pry up a floorboard I nailed down decades ago. I didn’t expect this. I didn’t want this. And I’m not pretending it feels good. It feels like hell.

    But I also know — in that deep, inconvenient way truth works — that this is part of healing. Not the pretty part. Not the part you post about. The part that makes you want to crawl out of your own skin.

    Some of this is being stirred up by the world — the Cornell 7 situation, the “I am Jane Doe” reels that keep showing up like they’re trying to tell me something. But most of it is coming from the writing itself. Writing slows me down. Writing makes me honest. Writing is a kind of excavation, and excavating means hitting rock, hitting bone, hitting things you didn’t want to see again.

    What’s rising spans my entire life:
    the first time a man hit me;
    the night I was drugged and raped in my high school parking lot;
    the friend who tried to force himself on me;
    the roommate who told me I must have misunderstood because “he would never do something like that”;
    the moment when I was five and a boy I trusted turned off the lights in my bedroom to show me things no child should ever be shown.

    These memories have lived in locked rooms inside me for decades. Now the doors are swinging open, and I’m standing there with no idea how to hold all of it. I don’t know what to do with these memories. I don’t know how to sit with them without feeling swallowed. I don’t know how to unpack them without falling apart.

    I only know they’re here. And pretending they aren’t would be another kind of harm.

    There is a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from remembering things you survived before you even had language for survival. It’s a heaviness that sits under the skin, a rawness that makes even simple tasks feel weighted. I keep reminding myself that this is movement — that healing isn’t just the soft parts, the clarity, the breakthroughs. Healing is also the shaking hands, the sudden flashbacks, the nights when sleep feels impossible because your body is replaying scenes you never wanted to witness again.

    It feels brutal. It feels unfair. It feels like too much.
    But it’s also an opening — painful, necessary, honest.

    I don’t have answers yet. I’m not writing this because I’ve reached some neat conclusion. I’m writing it because this is where I am: in the middle of remembering, in the middle of healing, in the middle of gathering the pieces of my past that keep rising to the surface. I think some of these memories will become future posts — not to sensationalize them, but to reclaim them. To honor the girl I was and the woman I’ve become.

    For now, I’m letting the writing lead. I’m letting the memories come. I’m letting myself feel what I couldn’t feel then. And I’m trusting — even when it feels impossible — that this opening is part of becoming whole.

  • The Song That Finally Said What I’ve Been Carrying

    The Song That Finally Said What I’ve Been Carrying

    I wrote a song this week that I didn’t expect to break me open. I thought I was just trying to capture a feeling — the weight of single motherhood, the exhaustion of holding my daughter’s emotions and my own at the same time. But when Suno generated the lyrics, something in me cracked. I listened once and cried. I listened again the next morning and cried harder.

    It wasn’t because the song was sad.
    It was because it was true.

    For years, I’ve carried this quiet ache: the pressure to be her safe place, the fear that I’m not doing it right, the guilt that hits me when I lose patience, the prayers I whisper after she falls asleep. I’ve never really said any of it out loud. I’ve never written it down in a way that felt honest. I’ve never let myself admit how heavy it all feels.

    But this song did.

    It put words to the moments I usually hide — the hallway tears, the tight chest, the way I replay every mistake in my head, the way I kneel beside her bed and ask God why motherhood feels so big and why I feel so small. It captured the part of me that tries so hard it hurts, the part that loves her fiercely and still doubts myself every single day.

    Listening to it in the morning, when the world expects me to be steady and functional, made the truth even louder. Morning tears aren’t about overwhelm. They’re about recognition. They’re about hearing something that finally matches the inside of your chest.

    This song didn’t make me cry because it was dramatic.
    It made me cry because it was accurate.

    🎧 Listen to the companion song: Weight I Carry

    It said the thing I’ve been carrying alone: that I’m trying, and I’m tired, and I love her more than anything, and some nights I don’t know if I’m enough.

    I don’t have a hopeful ending for this story yet. I’m still in the middle of it — still learning how to hold both her heart and mine, still figuring out how to breathe through the guilt, still praying for strength in the dark. But writing this song, and hearing it sung back to me, reminded me that telling the truth is its own kind of relief.

    Sometimes the weight gets lighter when you finally name it.

    And maybe that’s all this song needed to be.

    If any part of this met you where you are, I share more reflections by email.

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  • The Part I’m Allowed to Have

    The Part I’m Allowed to Have

    I used to wonder whether wanting things for myself meant I loved my daughter less. Tonight, sitting in the dark of her room while she fights sleep, I’m realizing I’ve stepped into a new layer of that question.

    The wanting isn’t the problem anymore. I’ve made peace with that part — the part of me that dreams, reaches, imagines a fuller version of myself. I don’t feel guilty for wanting things that exist outside motherhood. I don’t feel like it threatens the love I have for her. That piece has settled.

    Now I’m wrestling with something different: What am I actually allowed to have?

    And maybe allowed isn’t the right word. It’s not about permission. It’s about impact. Some of what I want — some of what I need — might require time away from her. It might, someday, mean changes to her world. Not dramatic ones, not harmful ones, maybe not even noticeable ones. But changes all the same.

    And I’m struggling with that. Struggling with the idea that my becoming might shift her landscape.

    I know I’m not the first parent to sit in the dark and ask these questions. How much of myself am I allowed to claim without taking too much from her? How much impact on her is too much? And how much impact on myself is too much when I deny what I need?

    Can I have it all — the things that make me feel whole — while still being the mother she deserves? Can I have it now, or do I wait until she’s older? Is there a right answer, or do we all just wing it and pray we’re doing right by our children and ourselves?

    Tonight, I’m trying to believe that my longing and my love can coexist without competing. That I can grow without fading, and she can grow while watching me become the kind of woman I hope she someday feels free to be — whole, present, and still her own.

    🎧 Listen to the companion song on Suno