What the hell happened in 2025?

Dad came home from the hospital at the beginning of 2025. It took a year, but thankfully he has recovered and maintained most of his independence.

Mom’s terminal illness reached stage 7 out of 7 earlier this fall. My incredible community is propping me up as I fight for the rights to ensure my mother has a dignified transition at home with me in 2026. The truth of her family, and the generation cycles they embody have come to a head. At every turn I have been painfully validated. As bell hooks taught us, care is not the same as love, but sometimes it is the absence of love that teaches us what we really need and who we really are. My mother deserves a space where she can be comfortable, joyful, and have personalized care. My heart aches for her (as it always has), but she knows I’m still here, and she bursts into tears or starts dancing whenever she sees me.

In honor of my mother, I became a CASA (court-appointed state advocate) for queer and Black foster youth across LA county in 2025. And as part of my growing and thriving chosen family, there are a handful of new babies in my orbit. I am so excited to step into my fabulous queer aunty era and already carving out weekends for aunty adventure time in 2026.

Randomly, and I mean when I was not looking at all, I fell in love during the summer. We just got back from a Christmas road trip up the coast to Seattle and will continue perfecting our camp kit in 2026.

I completed one year at Moonwater Farm and served over 60 systems-impacted youth. I now have a torn ACL and invaluable hands-on knowledge of what it takes to maintain a space of growth and community.

I read 20 books, worked on a novel, wrote a short film, and revisited my Master’s thesis with an entirely new perspective on the seeds I planted for my own blossoming 8 years ago.

Many cycles have come to a close. I am frighteningly powerful and silently broken at the same time. As mother Morrison said, “Sometimes you don’t survive whole...you just survive in part, but the grandeur of life is that attempt. It’s not about that solution. It is about being as fearless as one can and behaving as beautifully as one can under completely impossible circumstances....survival, blossoming, endurance...those things are just more compelling intellectually if not spiritually....We are already born. We are going to die. So you have to do something you respect in between.”

Most importantly, I have survived, and I am what my mother always wanted me to be — happy.