"I chose me. I chose them."

My marriage was hell, he was verbally abusive, he put his hands on me, and I stayed a lot longer than I should have. What he did was his choice, not mine, but how long I stayed was mine, and I own that completely. I was the common denominator in how long I let it continue.

Most women give until there's nothing left and call it love. It isn't love, it's the absence of a boundary they were never taught to respect in themselves. I did the same thing for years, gave and gave and told myself it was devotion, when really I just didn't believe I was allowed to stop.

"Your reality is only as good as you make it."

Then I fell in love with a man, and it was night and day from my marriage. He wasn't meant to stay forever. He was meant to teach me how to love myself, how to respect myself, how to get out of the "my body, my choice" mindset I kept using to justify hurting myself.

Losing him felt like losing a piece of myself, but really what was happening is I was getting a piece of myself back that I'd buried for years.

That relationship cracked me open enough to start a real self-tantra practice, not the sexual kind people assume when they hear the word. At its root, tantra is about knowing yourself, and I'd already been on that path of self-reflection for years before that relationship even started. The tantra work began after I left my husband, not because of the new man I was with, he was just where I finally got still enough to see myself clearly.

I surrendered for a few years after that, stopped hustling and grinding the way I always had, and had to find balance instead of proving something. I faced demons I'd been avoiding for a decade, three years of depression, and I worked through every bit of it holistically.

"I am the messenger."

On the other side of that, I started seeing myself again, the version of me the world had drowned in negativity for years. Strangers who've never met each other, in completely different places, keep calling me sunshine. My name means bright and clear. I think I'm just becoming who I was as a kid again, except now I've got wisdom, boundaries, and discernment I didn't have then. I live in California now. I'm sun-kissed. I'm brighter. I'm happier. I'm more supported than I've ever been.

I'm telling you all of this because it's true, not because I need anything back from you. If it lands somewhere in you, it lands. If it doesn't, that's fine too, I still needed to say it out loud.

What I have is wisdom and a real perspective for women who've been taught to deny responsibility for their own suffering, who keep looking for someone else to blame. You are the common denominator in your own life.

I'm a vessel, a mirror, I will see you and help you see yourself. I left a marriage that cost me my identity, and it took me years to find my way back to my body, my softness, my fire. This is me, telling you what actually happened.