Dearest Cocoa, Today marks one month (31 days) since you’ve been gone. I don’t know how we’ve survived this long without you. It honestly doesn’t feel like it has been a month, and yet, somehow, it has felt like an eternity. I wake up each day thinking about you and fall asleep each night wondering how your day has...

I attended a running event last night after work to celebrate National Latina Day. It was a 5K run/walk, and I opted to just walk with LC. Yesterday also marked one month since Cocoa was able to walk. We honored her memory by walking alongside her in spirit. A month ago today, she had lost the ability to use three...

📌 I'm a little behind in putting up my #bookshelf books for 2026 but it's in the works. 📚 Book 18 of 2026 - Finished (8/19): The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman (5/5⭐) When I picked up this book, I honestly didn't realize it was ~694 pages. I started it at the end of July, and it felt like the book just...

I'm a little behind and just realized that Bear blog now gives users the option to add a Previous and Next to a blog post template. This allows readers to navigate to your Previous or Next blog post without having to go back to your Archive / Blog list. If you have been using this, you may have noticed that these...

It's absolutely on brand for me to start a new series, Life Lately, disappear for a couple of months, and then come back without mentioning it again. It was not on purpose, I promise. I even had a draft from May 24th that I never got to post (and will never post). Let's just start over again, before it even began....

The past few days have felt HEAVY. I'm consistently pushing myself to keep going, but lately it feels like I'm walking through molasses. I continue to float aimlessly, moving forward without really knowing where I'm going. Most of the time, I probably seem okay from the outside. Underneath it all, I'm struggling in...

IYKYK. Related: Cocoa is finally home again Reply by email

Bought 2 pins to add to my collection today. Sometimes you just see pins at a store and they immediately call to you. These pins did exactly that. I thought they were very appropriate for how I've been feeling lately. Reply by email

For the entirety of Cocoa's life, people constantly misspelled her name when referring to her, even if 98% of the time the spelling was literally RIGHT IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES. It has always bothered me, and there was a 50/50 chance on whether or not I corrected people. It all depended on the situation. There were...

I was drawn to the Stop sign turned art, so I decided to take a photo of it -- in Guerneville, CA Related: We The People Matter Reply by email

It's been 21 days since we've had to say goodbye to my soul dog, Cocoa. It has not gotten easier, but I am trying to learn how to hold the grief that is within me. I have hard days, and then harder days. There has not been any easy days. I don't know when those will come. I don't think it will be any time soon. We...

With everything that’s been going on in my life, it’s been really hard to focus on myself. I took almost a month off from running, but this week I decided to start back up again. My first half marathon is in ~96 days, which is both exciting and honestly a little terrifying. I originally set a goal for myself to...