Some Days Are Heavier Than Others

My Roots for Rising

Healing Out Loud. Unapologetically

This blog exists because silence almost swallowed me whole.

My Roots for Rising is where I heal out loud without apology, without performance, without shrinking the truth to make it easier for others to digest. I write from the root, where pain, love, exhaustion, and resilience live, so healing can rise honestly.

Some days are harder than others.

Some days are harder than others.

There was a time when I thought about death the way people think about escape—not because I wanted to die, but because I wanted the weight to stop. The constant demand. The responsibility without rest. The feeling of being unseen while still being required to carry everything.

What kept me from crossing that line wasn’t hope.
It was fear.

Fear that it wouldn’t work.
Fear that I would survive it and end up paralyzed.
And my children.

Knowing I had children with someone who was a low-functioning parent, knowing they would be left unprotected and unsupported, kept me here. That truth anchored me more times than I can count.

I didn’t want to disappear.
I wanted relief.

Around that same season, I remember the first surgery—the moment I learned I had dermatofibrosarcoma protuberans. They cut me down past the muscle. I was told I wouldn’t be able to walk for months. That I would need physical therapy. That my body needed rest, stillness, care.

But trauma doesn’t wait for doctor’s orders.

I walked sooner than I was supposed to. Not because I was strongbut because I was afraid. I told myself fuck that because I knew the home I was returning to wasn’t safe. The luxury of sitting still and healing did not exist for me.

As I lay there hungry, married, and alone there was no one to care for me. No protection. No nurturing. No softness. Even in recovery, I was still responsible for myself.

It was days like this that made me question my existence.

Was I loved?

I had made endless sacrifices for a family that was not biologically my own—for someone I loved deeply—yet protection was never present. I gave loyalty, labor, patience, and pieces of myself, believing that love would eventually show up as safety.

It never did.

Every day felt like hell not loud chaos, but a quiet, relentless mental prison. Responsibility without refuge. Commitment without care. My mind became the only place I could retreat, forcing me into intellectual solitude just to survive.

That kind of exhaustion doesn’t scream.
It whispers.

It shows up as numbness.
As imagining escape.
As wondering if rest only exists somewhere beyond this life.

Looking back now at 43, I understand something I couldn’t name then. I didn’t know what love actually was. Not real love. Not safe love. Not love that shows up when you are weak, stitched, and vulnerable.

I didn’t learn what love felt like until I left.
Until I chose myself.
Until I stopped confusing endurance with devotion.

Understand this. Not every day will you have it all together. Some days are going to be heavier than others, and that doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means you’re human.

Crying is okay.
Purge the pain.

Lord knows I had many crying days, and some were far worse than others. I had to unlearn accepting pain as my normal. For a long time, I wore pain like it was my skin until that skin grew too many scabs. Until surviving stopped being strength and started being self-betrayal.

You’re not going to have everything together all at once. Healing doesn’t work that way. Take it one day at a time. One choice. One boundary. One breath. Some days, just staying is the work.

But hold yourself accountable for you.

Not in a harsh way, but in a protective one. In the way you wish someone had protected you when you were vulnerable, hurting, and unseen.

Because at the end of the day, when everything else falls away, the one person you must live with, choose, and stand up for is yourself.

And that choice, repeated daily, is how rising begins.

Follow along as the PhD journey begins not as proof or redemption, but as expansion rooted, earned, and chosen.