Category: Uncategorized

  • The List That Comes With Spring

    Spring always seems to arrive with a list. Not the gentle, poetic kind you imagine when the snow starts melting. No, the real version — the one that sits on the kitchen table, scribbled across scraps of paper and the back of envelopes. Because as soon as the light comes back, you suddenly see everything…

  • When Bail Means He Goes Home…. But We Don’t.

    Two men recently went before the court.One had no history. No long list of allegations. He was accused of breaching a no-contact order. Bail was denied. He went into custody.Another man was already facing multiple criminal charges. He had previously breached police conditions. He breached his bail again. He was arrested, held overnight, brought before…

  • The Pause is Not the End

    Court is paused.There is a continuance. That sounds heavy. It sounds ominous. It sounds like something to fear. But strangely—unexpectedly—I am calm. I can’t share my testimony. I won’t. Not because I’m hiding anything, but because the process matters, and the court is paused, not finished. What I can share is what it feels like…

  • If I Could Love That Hard in the Wrong Place

    “To love at all is to be vulnerable.”— C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves I’ve looked back at it now—really looked.At how bad it was.At the different forms it took, the different ways it showed up. Some of the things are easy to name. You can see it when a mug smashes into the wall behind…

  • Nine Days Away: Waiting, Fate, and the Space Between

    Maya Angelou“Nothing can dim the light which shines from within.” I went to write this when it was ten days away.I started it — and then I didn’t finish.Now it’s nine.Time doesn’t feel linear right now. It feels fluid. Like in films where something disturbs time and everything ripples — a wave rising, slowing, hovering…

  • The Comfort Zone Isn’t Comfort — It’s Survival

    My brain was never designed for happiness.It was designed for survival. That’s why I still scan rooms.Why I choose corners when I can.Why I sit with my back to the wall. It’s why I still park my car facing down the driveway, angled away from the house — ready for a quick escape. Those instincts…

  • Hogmanay to the Horizon: Reclaiming the Season, One Threshold at a Time

    The Winter Solstice — Surviving the Longest Night Before Hogmanay.Before resolutions.Before the noise of a new year. There is the Winter Solstice. The longest night of the year. For thousands of years, people marked this moment because reaching it meant one undeniable thing: you survived the darkness. After the solstice, the days begin to lengthen—slowly,…

  • Reclaiming Christmas After Domestic Violence

    When the Season Is Still Haunted, but We Keep Going Anyway I still hate Christmas. That feels important to say — not because this year was a failure, but because honesty matters more than appearances. We did many things right this year.We tried hard.We made new memories.And yet, Christmas still carries ghosts. That is the…

  • Living Between Sunrises and Bedtime Stories

    The Rhythm of Dark Mornings and Ordinary Days I get up for work in the dark now. It has become my normal. There is something comforting about being alone in a warm, quiet house before the world stirs. The darkness and I have spent enough time together through years of insomnia that we feel like…

  • When a Family Court Judge Invited My Rapist to Amend His Criminal Bail Conditions : How the System Betrayed Every Survivor

    How a family-court recommendation tried to erase my bail protections and forced me to relive the trauma the criminal system was meant to prevent. Many of you know from my previous posts that I am involved in ongoing court matters. My own criminal case goes to trial early next year, and two of my children…