I have my 1st ever event: What tha Grief?!?! Please come out and support. Check events please!!! What If This Is the Week? This week gets me closer to November. And if you know, you know. But before November gets here, I need to spend a little time in October. Because this week holds some things that could change the trajectory of the rest of my life. And I am standing here with faith in my heart, hope in my spirit, and tears in my eyes. All three. At the same damn time. And

THE SANCTUARY: I'M LITE BECAUSE THE LIGHT NEVER LEFT Everybody Can't Come in This House, and Everybody Ain't Qualified to Tell Me How to Live in It P.S. Before you start reading, understand that this is a grown-woman conversation about emotional intelligence, trauma, grief, faith, boundaries, and the work required to heal. There will be scripture. There will be accountability. There will be some profanity. There will be some uncomfortable truths. And there will be no apologie

Mama Lion Is Dead. I have an announcement to make. Mama Lion is dead. And before somebody sends me a text asking if I'm okay— Yes. Actually, I think for the first time in a very long time, I am becoming okay. Not because everything is okay. It's not. Let's be very fucking clear about that. I have experienced enough death in the last few years to know the difference between something being okay and God keeping me while absolutely nothing around me feels okay. And in the last n

P.S. — BEFORE YOU READ THIS.. Yesterday's version of Shantrael died again. So this P.S. has to come at the beginning. What you're about to read is probably a version of me you've never seen before. There are curse words. There is anger. There are questions. There is shit that isn't pretty, and there are places where I say fuck because fuck is the word that tells the truth. And before anybody gets uncomfortable with that while simultaneously being comfortable with everything I

Today, I feel like a butterfly slowly coming out of the cocoon. Not re-emerging in full soar mode. Not yet. I’m timid. But I’m strong. I’m looking both ways. Peeking out. Part of me wants to crawl my ass right back inside because at least the cocoon became familiar. But here’s the problem: Once you break the cocoon, you can’t live there anymore. And mine is broken. Boundaries have been tested.Relationships have been broken.The wool has been pulled from over my eyes. And for m

He Ain’t Ask for My Help I’m sitting here after one of the hardest years of my life thinking, Damn. I really didn’t think it could get much harder than what I had already survived. Because if you know anything about the last eleven years of my life, you know. The end of my twenties through the end of my thirties was filled with trauma, triggers, grief, advocacy, hospitals, emergencies, PTSD, loss, fighting, praying, surviving, rebuilding—and somehow finding enough strength to

The Apology Has to Be as Big as the Disrespect I have to tell the truth about something. When you're going through a season unlike anything you've ever experienced before, you tend to reach for the tools that worked the last time. Especially when you've done some work on yourself. You think, Okay. I've survived something before. I know what to do. So when I lost Jaxon, I tried to grieve him using some of the same tools I used when I lost Darren. But there was one problem: I h

COURT IS STILL IN SESSION: Please Know Your Position I took a break. Not because court was adjourned. Not because the case was dismissed. Not because I ran out of evidence. Court was simply in recess. And baby, court is back in session. So before we begin, I need everybody to understand something: Some people come into your life for a reason.Some for a season.Some for a lifetime. Please know your position. And if something I say belongs to you, pick it up. If it doesn’t, leav

Before the Order of Business: Check Your Heart Posture I have been sitting with something. And before anybody thinks this is about them, let me go ahead and say this: I don’t know who this is for. It might be for you. It might be for somebody sitting in a boardroom. It might be for somebody leading a ministry. It might be for somebody running a business. Hell, it might just be for me. But God has been dealing with me about heart posture. Not performance. Not titles. Not how m

IT IS MY PLEASURE TO INTRODUCE YOU TO NOLIN KAI' TAYLOR Today, I am grateful. Gratefulness is flowing from my heart. And this morning, gratefulness looked like waking up with a head tucked into the crook of my neck and some little feet planted directly in my back. I don't even know how that's physically possible. But apparently toddlers are very limber. And I laid there and thought: God, thank You. Thank You for this. Because what I know to be true now is that I had to operat

HIS. PERIOD. I know who I am. God said I’m His. Period. A revelation happened today. I always knew how to be Jaxon’s mom. I knew how to be Darren’s mom. And I will admit something that has been hard for me to even understand myself: I have struggled with being Nolin’s mom. Not because I don’t love him. I love that baby with everything in me. But I have never been the mother of a neurotypical child. I don’t know this kind of motherhood. I knew how to be the mother who advocate

The Levees Broke: I Finally Cried for Jaxon P.S. before I even begin: I don't know what version of me is writing this. Yesterday, I thought I did. Lately, I have had a few mornings where I woke up and thought, Oh. I recognize this girl. She was here yesterday. That might not sound like much to somebody who has never had grief rearrange their identity every twenty-four hours, but to me, that was progress. Because for a while, every morning has felt like meeting another version

Mama Lion Is Dead. Shantrael Is Here. SHE DIED YA'LL...... I have come to realize something. And maybe I had to get quiet enough to hear it. Maybe I had to lose enough. Maybe enough had to fall apart. Maybe enough people had to leave, disappoint me, misunderstand me, stop showing up, or simply become part of a season God was closing before I could finally understand: I don't have to fight anymore. Not every day. Not everybody. Not everything. And certainly not battles God nev

We’ve Been Naughty by Being Nice Today, I met Jehovah Gibbor. Or maybe I didn't meet Him today. Maybe I finally realized who had been standing beside me while I kept trying to fight for myself. Jehovah Gibbor. The Mighty Warrior. And today? My spirit of war has been activated. Not because I suddenly want to fight everybody. Not because I'm angry and looking for somewhere to put it. I'm activated because I'm tired of watching weapons form and then questioning God because they

REVELATION There is something I need you to understand before you read this. I am not using Scripture to make my story sound spiritual. I'm discovering that Scripture has been sitting underneath parts of my story that I didn't even know how to name. That's different. This isn't me finding a Bible verse to put on top of something I already decided. This is me living something, getting quiet enough to finally understand it, and then realizing: Wait. God already showed us this.

YOUR BODY AND HEART DOES... There are moments in time when your heart stops. It breaks. It shatters. You can't catch your breath, and you don't know why. Nothing happened. No phone call came. No bad news arrived. Yet everything feels heavier. You move slower. The tears come easier. The silence becomes louder. You wonder if you're getting sick. You wonder if you're simply exhausted. Then, if you've lived with grief long enough, you stop asking what's wrong. You ask a different

Drawing Near "Draw near to God, and He will draw near to you." — James 4:8 There are nights that change your life. Not because something extraordinary happens. But because God quietly changes the way you see Him. This is one of those nights. It didn't begin in a closet. It began with a conversation. Earlier that evening, I had one of the most meaningful conversations I'd had in a long time with Family is was POWERFUL :). We talked honestly. Not to fix me. Not to convince me.

Today is day two of being back to work. My anxiety is high this morning. I couldn't quiet my thoughts, so before I logged on, I came outside to get them out of my head. Maybe if I can empty some of what's spinning inside of me, I can start the morning a little lighter. I feel like there are chunks of my life missing. Not memories. Pieces of me. When I look back over my life, caregiving was never part of the plan. I never imagined that my greatest purpose would become keeping

Please Don't Forget About Me I go back to work TODAY I've stared at that sentence for weeks, hoping it would eventually feel normal. It doesn't. People keep saying, "You're going back to work." But I'm not going back. The woman who walked out of that office four months ago isn't the woman walking back in. She left carrying one life. I'm returning carrying multiple. One son I buried. One son I buried years before him. And one little boy who still wakes up every morning expecti

Week Four, Day Six Friday, July 24, 2026 Tomorrow my son turns six. Every time I try to say those words, I have to stop. Because tomorrow isn't just Jaxon's sixth birthday. Tomorrow is the birthday of a little boy who now celebrates in Heaven. And today... today is the anniversary of the last day I believed everything was going according to plan. Because of Leap Year, the calendar aligned perfectly. It is Friday again. The same Friday. Six years later. The last Friday before