✍️ Journaling My Becoming

The Moment It Began

I reached a point where I knew I had to get my shit together.

Not in a panic.

Not out of shame.

Just a deep knowing that if I didn’t start documenting this journey — really seeing myself — I’d stay on autopilot.

So I slowed down. Got real.

I started paying attention to my thoughts — not just the surface ones, but the ones underneath, the ones I used to ignore.

I wanted to know what was driving me. What excited me. What made me shut down or pull back.

I didn’t try to fix anything at first. I just watched.

And in doing that, I began to understand who I really was — not through the stories I told people, but through the moments I caught myself mid-thought and chose to stay present.

Seeing Without Judgment

I stopped labeling myself as broken or wrong.

I just was.

And that was okay.

That shift gave me space to start making conscious changes — not to chase happiness, but to create clarity.

The more I saw myself clearly, the more control I began to feel — not over the world, but over how I met it.

And then something unexpected happened.

The Tortilla Trigger

I got triggered by a conversation.

About tortillas.

Of all things — tortillas.

But it wasn’t about tortillas. It was about a memory.

A moment that took me back to Joplin, Missouri. A breakfast stop with my father on the way to Mexico City. He was served cold coffee — twice. The waitress didn’t care. It wasn’t a mistake. It was a message.

That memory stayed with me.

So when someone casually asked me, “Corn or flour?”, I felt a wave of something.

Like — When the fuck did flour become the default?

And beneath that… a voice:

Why do people travel to other cultures just to try to change them?

That was my trigger.

And it cracked something open in me.

Triggers as Teachers

I’ve been doing this long enough now to know that triggers are doors.

I don’t walk away from them anymore — I walk through them.

They’ve taken me back to childhood, to moments that shaped how I saw myself, to the places that hardened me because I thought no one else would protect me.

And so I’ve built practices that keep me grounded in that work:

Gratitude. Stillness. Sitting with myself before the world asks me to show up.

The Morning Ritual

I started a morning ritual. It’s simple:

Wake up.

Breathe.

Reflect.

Be grateful for something real.

Then I sit. I listen. Sometimes I write.

I also do something I never thought I’d do —

I talk to myself in the mirror.

I say things I never heard growing up.

I tell myself I’m safe. That I’m loved. That I’m enough.

And at first, it felt awkward.

But it’s different now.

I’ve learned to look myself in the eye and mean it.

It’s still emotional. Even writing this now, I feel it.

But I know that what I’m doing is rewiring something.

Not pretending I’m healed — but showing up for myself so consistently that one day, I realized…

I don’t need to be saved.

I already am.

The Ongoing Practice

This journey doesn’t come with a timeline.

It’s not linear. It’s not tidy.

But I’ve started.

And for me, that changed everything.

What I think, I become.

And I’m thinking with intention now.

🌅 Reflection Prompt

What story about yourself do you keep repeating — and what would happen if you stopped believing it?

Can you start writing the story of who you really are, one honest page at a time?