I was so excited for Grace and I to head to Oklahoma for Memorial Day weekend. The Thursday before we left my therapist told me to be aware of when my 7-year old self and teenage self showed up during the trip. She's so, so good. Last fall I had I planned a link up for my mama's kids and their kids but the plans were disrupted. My mama has 7 kids and amongst all of us there are 15 grandkids spanning from a couple of months to 18 years old. We all live between Tulsa, Oklahoma

It was on no one’s bingo card that I would be pregnant in New York City less than one year after moving from the South. I was never someone who thought the idea of having kids was lit. As a hyper independent woman with mountains of childhood trauma, a high value of her own time and space and endless big dreams, it was a no for me. Having children meant my sense of freedom would be completely turned upside down. I had been thugging it out from a young age in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I spent my 39th birthday back in Houston with sisters across 3 decades. Life has given me plenty of lemons to deal with. But it has also given me soulmates that have pulled up throughout this journey with water and honey to make up the sweetest abundance of lemonade that I am living today. I rented the perfect AirBnB and had a chef and bartender come take care of us while we reminisced on stories from the last 20+ years, talked endlessly about the ups and downs of motherhoo

I received a picture and text from my mama that said “loving this smile, thank you daughter for giving me my life back, love you”. For as long as I can remember she’s been wanting to get her teeth together, after years of neglect and all kinds of substance abuse things. At the end of 2025 I told her that I would pay for her to do her extractions and get the denture set that she’s been wanting. And the week of her 55th birthday, she has them. Glory. The same week, I was eati

I had The Soul Tape 3 blasting when I drove down Canal and over the Manhattan Bridge for the very first time in my own car. The Alchemist really ate with that “when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” . That's real. I left Houston at 5am on Saturday morning with the last of my belongings crammed into my car. A few months prior I had sold almost everything in my apartment and moved in with my homegirl. It took me 2 days and 24 total ho

There’s a running joke between us 3 that I have a terrible memory. ‘Shani, do you remember such and such from high school?’... ‘Girl, no’. I’m slowly learning that when your nervous system lives in a constant state of chaos, it interrupts the memory process. High school definitely has more pockets of memories for me than my younger years. By that time I had already built up an armor from years of struggle and was fighting back against the traumatic circumstances of life. I wa

A dollar, a dream and a printed MapQuest. It was 12am on a late summer night and I was hitting the road solo to Houston. My fresh start was 500 miles away. The car was overflowing with everything I owned with no clear view out of the back window. Walmart bags of college dorm goods from a $300 layaway that I paid off throughout that 2005 summer. I had completed my high school requirements a semester early and worked my ass off to save up for August. At the very last minute I

Dear Mama, 16 and pregnant. I understand why you hid it from your parents for as long as you could. Your own childhood memories riddled with drugs, raging alcoholics, violence. Racism. You knew they’d be livid that you’d soon give birth to a little mixed girl. But you chose motherhood, still. What a blessing it was to end up at that alternative school that had a daycare on site where you could balance growing up, being a teenager and a mama. Thank God for your grandma, Merl