Journal

21 Jul, 2026

2007 was not an easy year. When my elderly mother moved into our already overcrowded house, each family member had to adjust to the uncomfortable reality of living with an elderly parent. First, we had to move and rearrange rooms in the house we had initially planned for three family members.

14 Jul, 2026

The peace in our home was already fragile when my mother came to live with me. What followed was a quiet unravelling shaped by differences related to faith, distance, and long-held resentments. Sharing a home forced those differences into the open and pushed me to draw boundaries I had long avoided.

7 Jul, 2026

Years after our divorce, Daniel and I were still firing at each other, this time with Nintendo tanks instead of words. Beneath the laughter lay a history of rage, survival and uneasy peace, where love, conflict and resilience coexisted under one unpredictable roof.

30 Jun, 2026

Scientists discovered something remarkable just over a century ago. During pregnancy, a few of the baby’s cells cross the placenta and take up residence in the mother’s body. Years later, even decades later, those tiny cells can still be found in her heart, her lungs, her brain, and even in healed scars.

23 Jun, 2026

When Daniel asked to stay with us for a few weeks, I believed there were still boundaries I could enforce, still a life I could protect. I had not yet realised that, by letting him in, I was beginning to build a life I would not be able to leave.

16 Jun, 2026

These years stripped my life down to its barest bones. Losing financial stability forced me to sell our townhouse. The loss of my two boys hollowed me out. Distance and circumstance turned us into strangers. Despite the grief, Karen and I started rebuilding our lives almost from scratch.

9 Jun, 2026

Alcoholism is a relentless disease that strips away dignity, trust, and stability. For sixteen years, I lived inside its shadow, trying to hold together a marriage that was quietly and steadily coming apart. Alcoholism is ten times worse, ten times more harmful than any cancer.

2 Jun, 2026

We did not plan this life; it gathered itself around us. In our new house, somewhere beyond the city, beneath an old pepper tree, we start learning again how to be a family in a new way, but cancer strikes again, and old ghosts from the past reappear.

26 May, 2026

I understand emotional intelligence as the ability to manage emotions with empathy and care. In 2002, after surviving cancer, I found joy with my children and friendship with Annie. At a workshop, a cruel remark about cancer shattered us, reminding me how deeply emotional illiteracy can wound.

19 May, 2026

In ICU shortly before Christmas, sleep was impossible at 3 AM. My heart was skipping and racing while machines beeped and honked around me. So I did the only reasonable thing: I conducted them. To Jingle Bells. Quietly, nervously, and slightly absurdly, I turned chaos into something almost musical.