Intimate Strangersss

  FIELD GUIDE IN ACTION An Ordinary Day with Extraordinary Visitors Morning — Dreadcrash™ That familiar drop landed before I even stepped out of bed. I named it. Made tea. Kept moving. Doorway, not sabotage. Late Morning — Spankfuse™ Plans changed without warning. Instead of scrambling to fix it, I stayed in my lane and let others handle their own chaos. No rescue, no overstep. Afternoon — Griprash™ Watched someone repeat a cycle I’d already offered a shortcut for. Dropped my shoulders. Unclenched my jaw. Let their door be theirs to open. Not mine to force. Evening — Soulhalt™ Got an invite that pulled me into an old role. Politely declined without guilt. Rested ground. A Conversation with a Warning Label Shared truth with someone stepping into deep waters. Offered clarity without fearmongering. Sovereignty intact. Takeaway: Every Horseman can arrive on an ordinary day. The power is in keeping your seat when they do. ☕ Buy me a coffee ...

✨ Healing Through Expression ✨ 🇵🇷 Imagine growing up in a house where it was normal — encouraged, even — to share knowledge, talk openly about dinero , or name betrayals without fear. A house where your voice was seen as a healing instrument instead of a nuisance. Well…that wasn’t my house. When I learned something new and wanted to share it, it was often met with: “Get out of here! Go find something to do. Or I’ll give you something to do.” Usually, that something was an adult task (like folding fitted sheets or fixing the lawnmower) that nobody ever showed me how to do. 🤦‍♀️ 💸 The Money Taboo Money in our house was like Voldemort. You know — He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. There were so many mixed messages: 💰 “Money is evil.” ⛪ “Give 10% of your dinero to the church.” 🪙 “Help the poor — they’re more important than you.” It was confusing. Many of us didn’t want to know anything about money. We just wanted to get our ...

  🌋 BEGINNING: What Happened to Us They called it “corrección” , but it felt more like castigo . They said it was “por tu bien” — but the words came out sharp. They meant to love us, maybe… but their tongues had trauma in them. Spanish words that hit like chancletas: ¡Cállate! ¡Estás loca! ¡Siempre con tus cosas! 🩴 🧸 The niñ@ inside of us? Scared. Frozen. Convinced that being small, quiet, or perfect would stop the noise. 🎧 The teen in us? Started wearing headphones. Not to vibe… but to survive. Because if they couldn’t hear the insults, maybe they wouldn’t stick. (Spoiler alert: they stuck.) 🌎 The young adult in us? Now over-apologizing at work, flinching at kindness, not knowing if this is “anxiety” or just regular Tuesday. We start Googling things like: “Is it normal to feel guilty for existing?” That’s internal violencia . Passed down like arroz con trauma. 🍚💀 🫁 MIDDLE: What the Body...

🧬 Generational Fog (a.k.a. “My family’s just like this”) Let’s talk about the patrones we were born into — the ones nobody explained, but we somehow followed anyway. Control. People-pleasing. Silence. Sometimes it’s not even just ours. These roles run in families. 🧃 About 30 years ago, I started waking up to the Puerto Rican intensity I was raised in — like how arroz con habichuelas with pork or chicken wasn’t just food. It was law. 🍚🍗 And then I did the unthinkable. I went full-blown Vegan . And gluten-free. 🌱✨ 🇵🇷 That’s when they really lost it. Split wigs everywhere. “But... how are you gonna get your proteína ?” They thought I’d joined a cult. I hadn’t. I just left the kitchen script. And then I found Buddhism. Not instead of Christianity — just alongside it. I was curious. I was changing . 🧘🏽‍♀️ My family didn’t take it well. The Buddha over Jesús? All hell broke loose. But so did I. And I haven’t looked back. We don’t need to fight our...

🧬 What No One Noticed — But You Are Now 🫧 You grew up with invisible feelings, so you longed to be seen. Your lineage learned to survive by hiding truth — now we’re remembering how to name it, without shrinking. 🛒 "No big deal, just crying in aisle 7 because I never learned how to have needs." 🪻 You were parentified, so closeness got tangled with merging. We come from people who stayed fused for safety. Now we’re learning: it’s safe to belong and still be ourselves. 📡 "Me: I need space. Also me: Where are you? Are we good?" 🌊 You didn’t get boundaries, so every relationship feels like too much — or not enough. Your ancestors couldn’t afford personal space. Now we’re discovering what it means to take up sacred room. 📱 "I love boundaries. I keep them in my Notes app and forget to use them." 🌈 You didn’t see emotional regulation modeled, so you wait for one person to fix it all. Before us, silence or collapse was the only optio...

If You Didn’t Know, Now You Know 💬 If You Didn’t Know, Now You Know This isn’t a summit, a course, or a TED Talk. This is just someone who had to learn the hard way… and decided not to keep it to themselves. I wasn’t born knowing how to care for myself. In fact, I was trained out of it — trained to keep the peace, smile politely, hold my bladder, and never make anyone else uncomfortable by existing too loudly. So if you feel like you’ve been faking adulthood with zero manual, welcome. You’re not broken. You’re under-parented, overexposed, and possibly still running on fumes from 1998. 🧠 Five Survival Needs They Forgot to Teach Us And no — this isn’t a checklist for how to “do better.” We don’t shame babies for not knowing calculus. So we’re not shaming grownups who never got these basics modeled. Let’s just… name it. Laugh a little. Breathe a lot. 🌬️ Breathing (Yes, Really) Turns out, *not breathing* is a trauma ...

✨ Why Are We Taught to “Love Our Enemies”? ✨ We weren’t wrong for asking. Maybe nobody ever slowed down enough to explain it to us — from a safe place. 🥣 🔍 What We Might Be Noticing Sometimes we hear words that sound kind — but feel confusing. “Love your enemy” can be one of those. It lands like a puzzle piece from a box we didn’t open. So maybe we can look at it together — gently, curiously — like kids holding a question up to the light. 1️⃣ In Spiritual Spaces 🔔 In some spaces that speak about spirit and peace, we’ve heard this idea before. It may have been meant as a way to stop cycles — the kind that spin forever when hurt meets more hurt. Maybe it was someone’s way of saying: “We don’t have to carry what they gave us.” 2️⃣ In Our Own Minds 🎧 Sometimes, we notice that staying angry takes a lot of space inside. It doesn’t always leave room to think, to breathe, or to dream. It’s not wrong to be angry. That feeling is honest. We...

🥣 Post-Combat Childhood: The Sequel Nobody Asked For 🇵🇷 Some of us didn’t come home from a war. We came home to one. 🪖🛋️ Not everyone had a chancleta thrown at them with Olympic precision, but if that rings a bell… bienvenido. This doesn’t read like a guide — more like a mirror. The kind that didn’t hang in our homes. Just a small flashlight in a hallway nobody walked down with us. This one’s for the kids who became bodyguards without signing up. 🧃🫠 Maybe papá yelled at things no one could control. 🌪️ Maybe mamá cried while stirring arroz and said, “I’m fine.” 😭🍚 Maybe everyone around us kept performing as if nothing happened — even when everything did. 🤡 We didn’t put on armor. We turned into it. 🛡️ So yeah, there’s flinching when someone slams a drawer. Guilt for saying “I’m tired,” even when the exhaustion is loud. Explaining ourselves — over and ...

Support for Women in Crisis – We Are Seen 💬 Short Answer (We Matter): This blog doesn’t feed us or house us. (Physically) But in a world that treats us like ghosts, it names our pain. It reflects our truth. And sometimes, being seen—without being fixed— is the first reason to keep going. 🧭 Deeper Reflection (From Us, For Us): We know what it’s like to sit in a public place, hungry, ashamed, invisible, trying to hold it together. We’re not looking for someone to save us—we just need something real to hold on to. This blog doesn’t pretend to fix our lives. But it does something many of us have lived without for too long: 🕯️ It validates our emotions. It speaks the quiet things out loud. The grief, the numbness, the ache to be acknowledged. It doesn’t rush us or judge us. It says: “You’re allowed to feel this.” That alone can feel revolutionary. 🫂 It speaks with compassion, not correction. We...

💥 Wait... That Wasn’t Love? 🔮 Why So Many of Us Confuse 💗 Love, 🍑 Sex, and 🫱🏽‍🫲🏿 Intimacy — and How to Start Untangling It. Some of us never got the memo. I overheard my 10-year-old granddaughter saying she couldn’t wait for her little 2½-year-old sister to have twins. These kids grow up in a home that’s more chaos than refuge — no safe haven, no honor. (⚠️ I’ve said at least five times, "You’re too young to be talking about babies and marriage!" Don’t rush to grow up.) Some never had a safe table where someone said, “This is love. This is just desire. That right there? That’s not intimacy — that’s trauma reenactment.” What I heard growing up was, "Don’t come home pregnant or I won’t be responsible." By 14, five of us were kicked out, treated like slaves, beaten because we weren’t “like the Jacksons” or the Sugarhill Gang. We learned from chaos. From novelas. Fro...

Can I Finish My Sentences, Please? | Inner Child Healing + Soul-Up™ Regulation 💛 Activating a Protective Instinct for the Self I used to just want to finish one sentence. Just one full thought… without someone waving me off, turning their back, or sighing like I was too much. What I needed wasn’t correction. It was space. But I grew up around people who didn’t even know how to give that to themselves — let alone to me. 🧯 And when I finally spoke? They acted like my feelings were the emergency. 🛑 Lo Que Aprendí... And What It Cost In my house, silence was survival. You didn’t speak up unless it was safe — and it was rarely safe. I was told to obey, to smile, to stop crying — "before I give you something to cry about." And still, somehow, I was expected to feel whole. 🤨 Maybe I gave off a vibe that I didn’t care about myself. But truthfully, I didn’t know how to. I was a mosaic of generational m...

✨ I Wasn’t Supposed to Copy. I Was Supposed to Collaborate.™ 🪞💬🧃✨🇵🇷🌙🪘🥭🪇🪔🌽🧿💃🏽 I wish someone would’ve whispered it to me as a kid: You’re not here to copy. You’re here to collaborate.™ But how could they? Collaboration wasn’t encouraged where I came from — it was punished. With humiliation, silent treatments, beatings, confusion, and spiritual shut-downs. 🕯️ So I didn’t grow up learning how to co-create with life. I learned how to stay safe. I mirrored others. I copied. Even when it felt wrong. Even when it made my insides twist. 🥭 And that still shows up. Even now, collaboration feels tricky. I don’t want to do it someone else’s way. I don’t want to lose myself. So sometimes, I keep to myself. Not because I’m cold — but because connection has felt like pressure. Pressure to be like them. Y no gracias . That’s why this blog matters to me. It’s not just a space — it’s a refusal. A refusal to keep mir...

🧬 We Were Raised By Nick, Diana & Nes—But We’re Not Staying There™ Some of us were raised by Nick . ✨ The one who believed performance would protect him. 💼 Who clocked in emotionally like it was his job, until he vanished inside of it. Some of us were raised by Diana . 👑 Who smiled through shame and called it strength. 📿 Who prayed out loud but punished in silence. And then there’s Nes . 👹 The phantom that whispers: “You owe me.” 🗡️ The twisted teacher who calls revenge fair . 🩸 He doesn’t destroy outright—he destabilizes. Turns our values upside down. Confuses control for justice. And calls it wisdom. We were just trying to survive them. 🍼 Dancing between their needs, their moods, their silence. 🧢 Learning to read a room like our life depended on it—because it did. We learned: If we stayed invisible, we’d be safe. If we worked hard enough, we’d be loved. If we waited long enough, someone holy would come rescue us. 😣 But ...

🧿 Intimate Assumptions™ Some “I Love Yous” are really just quiet control. Some silence? Just fear with good manners. 🤐 We weren’t just raised—we were programmed. Taught to be polite. Not powerful. Useful. Not honest. Even when the vibe felt off... Smile. Sit still. Be nice. 😬 So we learned: 🕶️ Smiles can lie. 🧃 Sweet words can distract. 🙏🏽 “For your own good” can mean “shut up and behave.” And the worst part? We thought it was love. 💔 Some of us became peacekeepers. Pretend-laughers. Charmers with anxiety. 👋🏽 ¡Hola trauma response! Pero ahora... ahora we’re catching on. 🇵🇷💡 We don’t want fake calm. We want the kind of peace that doesn’t feel like walking on cáscaras de huevo . 🥚🚫 💥 We’re done confusing: — Nice with Safe 😇 — Smart with Kind 🧠 — Charisma with Commitment 🧲 — Silence with Growth 💤 We’ve been linguistically played before. 😒 By poets, pastors, playas—even your tía que ora por ti but goss...

✨ I Left Because My Spirit Said No ✨ 🗣️ Mi dignidad no está en venta. I was working at a school. Teaching. Helping future professionals get licensed and find their rhythm. Real supportive, real intentional. The kind of “doing the most” that comes from love... and maybe a little trauma response. But behind my back? Whispers. Side-eyes. Conversations I wasn’t invited to—but was definitely starring in. 🎭 Team members. Students. Some folks I had just helped that morning. So I did what any recovering people-pleaser trying to practice nervous system safety would do: I named it. I said: “This is gossip. This is harmful.” Brought in someone else to back it up too—because receipts are spiritual these days. A few days later, I stood in that same space, and I told the truth. No drama. Just tears. “I’m leaving. I know something’s been happening behind closed doors. And I value myself enough not to stay where my intention to uplift is being misunderstood or misused.” P...

Intimate Assumptions™ “Intimate Assumptions™” sound like the language of false closeness — the lies spoken like truths, the silence mistaken for peace, and the value of your voice constantly measured against what you should be to others. Welcome to the House of Riddles y Mentiras. 🤥 This is where I grew up — 🏠 + 🤥 + 🌋 = 💥 This was never really a home or a haven — just a house, and a haunted riddle, where truth went missing and lies dressed up like tíos, tías, and abuelos. Really, we’re related to all the Puerto Ricans. 🇵🇷 Um, yes but no. Big-time setup for Intimate Assumptions™ of the worst kind. “Familiar = sameness.” What a joke. It means some more of the same childhood connections. Bad news. I didn’t even think to speak my truth — I was taught that survival meant being useful, quiet, 🤐 busy, invisible, 🫥 and handling adult responsibilities I had no business or skills to carry out. I was a kid, yo. Why did they keep having babies? Y’all ain’t raisin...

💌 Guilt-Trick Delivery, Express Shipping™ Emotional Outsourcing & Inner Peace Theft Guilt-trick Delivery™ You know the type: they don’t yell, they don’t curse—they just drop the guilt in your lap and call it love. 🍽️💣 It sounds like: • “I guess I care more than you do…” • “I’m only saying this because I care…” • “Wow. I would never do that to you.” Suddenly, you’re defending yourself, over-explaining, or shrinking to make things smooth again. Let’s be real: That’s not concern. That’s emotional pressure in a glittery outfit. 😬 And for those of us raised in chaos, guilt became the quieter grenade. You learned to read the room better than you read yourself. It’s not just manipulation. Sometimes it’s survival. But cariño… just because it’s familiar, doesn’t mean it’s truth. That’s Not Shame—Just Shadow™ work. 📦 Express Shipping™ Ever been vibing just fine until someone starts venting—and five minutes later, you’re spinning out, making phone calls, canceling...

🌚 Intimate Assumptions™ When Communication Isn’t Connection Sometimes we confuse nice talk with safety. We confuse peacekeeping with peace. Y cuando eso pasa? Our inner compass starts glitching. 🧭💫 If you’ve ever walked away from a conversation thinking, “Wait… what just happened?” — this one’s for you. 🫠 We’re not here to decode everyone else. We’re here to trust ourselves better. Because let’s be real: some people say just enough of the right thing to keep you guessing. They smile when they lie. They quote Rumi with a side of manipulation. They text “grand rising” 🌞 but ghost your feelings. 😂 Te amo? No — te manejo. 🥴🚩 It’s giving: emotionally confusing but aesthetically pleasing. Been there. Escaped that. Building boundaries now. This isn’t about hypervigilance — it’s about Sacred Self-Confrontation™ . It’s asking yourself mid-scroll, mid-situation, or mid-text thread: “Is this real — or just rehearsed...