Grit & Grey

I started reading this book called "Maybe you should talk to someone" by Lori Gottlieb and I loved it so much I stayed up until 3am last night/this morning reading it. Lori writes about her work as a therapist in tandem to her own experience getting therapy after a huge breakup, and ladies and gents, she just gets it. She is unapologetically honest - she allows herself to wallow, she pokes fun at herself, and then she gives herself credit for moments of clarity in a way that allows the reader to grow with her. She is truly an artful story teller. I love that her way with words is unpretentious, classy, and subtly hilarious. I want to post-it my house with her quotes. Suffice it to say, she is helping me heal and she doesn't even know it. I got the book rec from a friend named Vaibhav via random text (a few weeks before I publicized anything about my parent's divorce). He was my acting intern medical student when I was 3rd year resident in the medical ICU. I remember...

After a rough couple of days, today has been a good day. I'm sitting in Coffee Tree Roasters. The temperature is perfect and sunlight is pouring in from the open store front. There is conversation all around. People feel happy. And I'm actually in one of those pleasant study moods where I'm curious about the material I'm reading, I'm okay with my slow but steady pace, and I'm okay with intermittent distractions (like writing this blog post). I wrote an Instagram post a few days ago where I was more open than usual. I wrote about dealing with my parent's divorce, the grief and feeling of death that has enveloped my family, and how I found solace in the gratitude I had for my bag of groceries that day. I ended the post asking people to not post "stay strong girl messages" and only post what they were grateful for. It was super fucking vulnerable and I immediately regretted posting it. People who didn't know me started responding, reaching ou...

My mom has been traveling Italy with her friends this last week. During the day, she sends me some of the most breathtaking photos I have ever seen, and for brief moments, I feel this comforting sense of calm and normalcy. Like Mom has come back. Mom is strong. Mom is surviving . At night, though, reality sets in and the texting and late night crying begins. She's not sleeping. She is hopeless and lonely. She can't imagine ever being happy again. I can't be a replacement for dad. I remind her too much of dad. She is grieving . And it feels like there is no space for me to grieve. I tell her I am peddling the water everyday, choosing to stay afloat and choosing to believe that wave after wave will not pull me or her under. I tell her that she is doing so good already, that I am proud of how far she's come, that I'm amazed that she can even get out of bed everyday to put one foot in front of the other. I tell her all the cliches I know, that time heals all, all the f...