I'm a mother of two young girls. I was pregnant with my first in 2015-2016, and my second in 2020-2021.

Both pivotal years in our political/social landscape here in the United States. Many people think 2016 was a turning point - with Trump first coming into office. And of course, we all remember what 2020-21 brought - so much death, fear, and a huge shift in how we worked and related to each other.

My girls are now 5 and 10 years old.

I remember how afraid I was with my first.

If you don't already know who Andrea Gibson is, I implore you to look them up.

I've written about them in the past, and every time I read their words, or see a video of them performing, my heart always breaks open.

It's like a release, a recognition, a remembering what my soul is made from - what I'm truly meant to be. I recently came across a prompt they gave and decided to write a poem based on that prompt and wanted to share it here.

Here's what Andrea wrote:

She makes me remember that life doesn't always need to feel heavy with grief, or heaviness. She pulls me out of my depression, and reminds me to smile again.

Don't we all need someone or something like that in our lives?

What is that thing for you? What or who makes you smile? What pulls you out of the dark places?

What I'm Learning Lately:

A question I’m pondering is - what am I clinging to around my identity that I use as safe harbor?

I don’t always like labels.

I often want to be free of them.

But to be human means that I’ll be bucketed into all sorts of labels.

Are you liberal or conservative? A parent, or single? Spiritual or atheist? It’s almost as if we’re asking - are you good or bad?

It’s reductive.

We judge from our labels. Yet we want to break free of them.

You’ve been taught to try harder when things don’t feel aligned — but what if the deeper truth is that you’ve been trying to shape yourself around things that your heart doesn’t even really want.

Wanting ease isn’t laziness. It’s wisdom. And choosing ease — in a world that glorifies struggle — is a radical act of self-trust.

Start by challenging the lie that success demands you leave yourself behind. You don’t need to grind your way to the top just to feel empty when you get there.

That path leaves us depleted, disconnected, and constantly questioning ourselves.

It ignores this nuance: that performing or trying can coexist with knowing and honoring yourself.

You don’t have to abandon yourself to be successful.

Ambition in denial of ourselves, is an empty exercise. When we abandon ourselves in the name of ambition, achievement becomes hollow.

It will always lead to losing ourselves for the sake of some external reward.

It might look good on the outside - but inside, we’re tired, broken, and disconnected.

Our bodies know it before our minds do. The stress. The confusion. The skin that breaks out. The sleep that won’t come. The voice that won’t speak.

I wonder if you are anything like me - commuting through chaos every day, juggling the after-school schedule, checking work emails at stop lights - it can feel like life is speeding by.

Living in Chicago can sometimes feel like living in purgatory….Traffic purgatory. 😫

All of our fish are dead.

I can hear the humming of the tank, the bubbling water flowing through the filter. Just sitting there empty. They died long ago. Four small fish, slowly dwindling down to none.

Each loss was dramatic in some way to my daughter. “Pinkie’s DEAD?! Noooo!” 😭

My alarm just went off and I feel the comfort of sleep and of my little three-year-old cuddled up against me, the sound of her gentle breathing makes my heart swell with love for her.

In those few short minutes, I feel warm and safe.

I pull her close to me, to smell her skin, and give her kisses on her tiny resting face, inhaling the familiar scent of childhood - the sweetness of sleep.

On my walk this morning through my neighborhood, I couldn’t help but notice all the Halloween decorations transforming homes into something magical—like an eerie but playful celebration of the season.

You may think you need to move forward, but really, maybe you just need to pause.

Self-loathing is a real struggle. If you know the experience of feeling crushed under the weight of your own thoughts, your own judgments and criticisms, you know how absolutely engulfing it can be.

Let's gather our voices. Let's speak from the inner recesses of our hearts. Let's give voice to light.

Let's raise the frequency so that our light can reach even the darkest of places, and pull others out of despair, anger and hopelessness.

Because that is the space where pain flourishes, where violence rages and breeds.

I wrote a letter to my fear.

In fact, my fear has a name. Two names actually.
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Here’s a look into who I am: I’m Mari. ☀️ Or Marisol. (Or Mari-cucha. 🤣)

I’m a Mom, a wife, a Puerto Rican woman. I’m a coach. I’m a facilitator. I’m a former accordion playing, guitar dabbling creative.

I’m a dreamer. I’m a Scorpio. Rising Saggitarius. Whatever that means…..I’m not quite sure. 🤔

This is a story about speaking aloud and opening, unfolding, creating.

Anaïs Nin: "And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Describe the truest, most beautiful world you can imagine.

A few months ago, I made an initial attempt to journal this and what came out turned into something slightly different than what I expected.