I’m Okay With Not Being Okay

These last few weeks/months have been difficult. It’s been hard to find joy and hold on to it when there have been more reasons to mourn & retreat inwards. Every day provides evidence of who we deem deserving of life, respect, compassion do not look like me or the communities I belong to. I’m constantly walking a tightrope of tension within my personal relationships with family and friends.

In these last few weeks, months, days I haven’t been okay & I’m working on finding some semblance of what that looks like for me. Healing isn’t linear & neither is the journey of learning about what brings me comfort, soothes my conscience, how to be accountable to my self & communities, what it means to live a feminist life in this tenuous time, & what fuels the vibrancy of my imagination so that my dreams may be in technicolor.

Today I take pause to return to the pockets of happiness that buffer these very deep lows. Desserts, quarantine hair transformations, the magic of our air fryer, makeup & snack care packages from my fellow makeup-enthusiast Stephanie & my PhD husband Easton, my four legged pups, long bubble baths, FaceTime calls with friends far in distance but close to my heart, the suspense of watching #LittleFiresEverywhere with @lifeofbusybird (who just became a professor & sent me crab legs!!), summer bops à la Kehlani/ChloexHalle/City Girls, Peloton motivations, crying when I need to, abolitionist teachings, watercolors, finding a Black woman therapist (🙌🏾) & domesticity w/ my husband.

It's always easiest to dish out the advice and encourage others to keep finding the happiness and magic in our lives, and it's time I try to do the same.

Kristian Contreras

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