And So I Rise

Today I found myself thinking about where my story truly begins. The beginning seems obvious, but which beginning? My life has had many beginnings, each with its own lessons, its own scars, its own magic. So the real question becomes: which castle do I walk into first?

I think I’ll start at the place I once believed was the end. It sounds strange, but it’s the doorway that shaped everything that came after.

For so much of my life, I chased what I was taught to want — my version of “happily ever after.” And just when I finally reached it, I lost it. In losing it, I nearly lost myself.

In September 2017, I married for the first time. He was a wonderful man who cared for me in the ways I had always longed for, and in many ways, needed. We had been “ships passing in the night” for years, crossing paths without ever truly landing in the same place — until one day, we did. And for a moment, it felt like the universe had finally aligned.

But life had other plans.

Though I had known him for more than a decade, we were married only two months before I lost him. He passed away in our home, in the chair I bought him for Christmas, watching his favorite pastime — anything sports-related — with my sweet dog Takara curled in his lap. The pain and trauma of that moment nearly destroyed me. The emotional and financial toll was more than I thought I could bear. There were many days when I didn’t want to be here anymore. I couldn’t find a reason to keep going, and I truly believed everyone would be better off if I simply faded into memory.

It took four years before I felt anything close to normal again. In that time, the people I expected to support me disappeared, and the ones I never imagined would show up became my foundation. To this day, I am in awe of the souls who stood beside me when I had no idea how to stand on my own.

My healing journey was not linear. It was pain, tears — and tattoos.

Sometimes healing from one pain requires another kind of pain. My ink became my story. Of the three tattoos I got during that time, two of them hold the essence of how I made it through the storm. Both, fittingly, contain a phoenix. The phoenix became my symbol of survival — my anchor to life, my reminder that I had already lived through the fire.

One tattoo carries a quote I found in a jewelry store advertisement, but it spoke directly to the core of my healing:

“I survived because the fire inside of me burned brighter than the fire around me.”

From those flames, I rose. I gathered the pieces of myself and put them back together — only to realize the pieces had changed. I wasn’t the woman I had been before. I didn’t know how to be her anymore. So I went searching for the woman I needed to become.

And that’s where the journey truly began.

I said goodbye
— to the version of me who lived in darkness,
— to the woman who no longer wanted to live,
— to the castle that held me captive for so long.

And I began walking toward my next great adventure.