I was walking around the golf course yesterday morning when I thought about the word ‘love’. I say “I love you” all of the time, and I mean it in the unconditional way because how many times do people really hear that. I was telling a friend yesterday that I say it because I feel it. When I went to Italy and I connected with the Sicilian Michelin Star chef, we told each other “I love you”. The maturation of cultures with empires that have fallen hits differently. They understand the world and the nature of humanity in a way that the infantile America just can’t. He and I had that conversation, too, on my 42nd birthday in a hotel room in Caserta on the heels of my almost being kidnapped by four predators on the way back to see him—he’d implored me to go back to Gaeta after we met on what would’ve been Sean’s 40th birthday two days earlier, offering to cook for me at his apartment, not knowing it was my birthday, and that, respectfully, was an offer I couldn’t refuse. Leave it to a Sicilian to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Gangsta AF, y’all.
But it’s true. America acts like the toddlers of the world. When my brother was a toddler, he’d run into any bathroom and announce that “Superman is stronger than God”. How patriarchal (insert lol here). But America is the only country that has to have a military presence anywhere…America is the only country that has to purport it’s own greatness (um, show, don’t tell…also know that “greatness” isn’t demonstrated in conquering…it’s demonstrated in character). America makes demands. Our president, D-Tiddy, is having the biggest toddler meltdown on the planet, and if you’ve ever parented a three-year-old, you will fully understand this and totally get it.
I constantly hold the mirror up because some people show me what I do not want to be, even though—yes…overwhelm happens to all of us, but America has acted out of fear and defensiveness, and while it may be applicable in the foosball, a good defense is not always the best offense. Staying in your own lane and focusing your attention (and energy) on doing good and meaningful things…on having a higher purpose for good is. But I digress because this is about unconditional love.
In the winter and early spring of 2025, I was no longer on Facebook after learning there’s a cult of tens of thousands—and now I realize, millions, of men (and women) who hate women, though, I don’t think they “hate” them. I think they resent them. I think they’re envious of them. I think they are scared of them. I think they want to be them and be with them. They want to control them because of their own desire.
In the past—pre-patriarchy, goddess worship was the world order. The womb was considered sacred—we are the bearers of life. In fact, thirteen years ago today, I fulfilled that sacred human contract and gave birth to a beautiful and wonderful baby. This time thirteen years ago, I was laying in a hospital bed—probably grading papers for my University of Phoenix students, in labor though thankfully…with an epidural (that was my birthing plan). I wasn’t able to deliver naturally…I never dilated, and after we lost Jude, I had to have cesarean deliveries for my and my babies’ safety.
In the time of Cleopatra, women weren’t lusted after—their bodies were respected, admired, protected. They were valued…not objectified. The patriarchy externalizes everything, so all of the divinity within the woman, once that institution was implemented, began devaluing women, and over the course of generations, as people forgot, history was bastardized and rewritten with invaluable truths and chapters being discarded to fit a false narrative, which is collapsing in real time as those of us born for this time woke up.
My chef called me a goddess. He saw the divinity in me, and if you’ve never been with someone who worships you like a goddess, who tells you how magical you are, then you really don’t get it. But I also learned how to see the divinity in a man, and I also learned how to show up to be with a man who would revere you in such a regard.
Real men, like the chef, are secure in their ability to show love and to make it. They know how to say they love someone, and unconditional love…once again…hits differently. When I came home, I immediately met another younger man, and we had a nearly year-long on and off-again situationship. He was wonderful and perfect (for me) in every way. Our compatibility set the bar at a level that I only dreamed of. He reminded me of what a man should act like when he is with a woman. My mistake was not upholding the standards that the chef told me I should uphold, and I had to rectify that…even if it meant hurting myself.
Women aren’t made to pursue. We should be pursued, but men should also respect a woman’s “no”. He should accept it and not take it personally. But lustful men, entitled men, they don’t know how to do this. They are so sensitive to rejection and so consumed by ego that they don’t know how to accept “no” and believe if they keep pursuing, they will eventually get a “yes”. They will eventually wear a woman down.
I do not say “no” to be pursued. I say “no” because that is a full sentence, and if I make up my mind, I’m not changing it. I have already discerned what I want and what my standards are, even if it meant breaking my own heart to do it. But I also knew that if I was to continue in a relationship where I wasn’t being fully chosen, eventually, when it ended—and it would—nothing lasts forever, it was going to caught me immeasurable needless suffering. And I love and respect myself more than that.
People will do what you allow. So, I had to modify my approach. I still very much love the person I fell in love with, and I have no hard feelings toward them. And, arguably, I have love and compassion for everyone, but some people’s behavior can be so controlling, entitled, unaccountable, and deplorable that I block them entirely. They are the bastions of this crumbling empire…of the patriarchy…of fascism, and so long as they cling to the old ways, so, too, will they fall.
My opinions on this forefront, and my powerful words in my writings in 2024 drew attention and ire from these people, and I was group stalked and subsequently cyberstalked. It took me back to a place of fear and hyper-vigilance, much as I was in in the fall of 2019 when Sean died—his death…also a consequence of the power and wealth—greedy patriarchal system. The system governs with fear, which means that everything that you believe if you’re living in fear is actually in direct opposition to what’s real and what’s right, and my words struck the fear of God into these people who can’t stand the mirror of truth.
I was gifted the right words and mindset by one of my many, many earth angels, and I was able to realign, but I still had a great deal to learn, but I will say that as time moved on, and through that writing on Substack, I had more and more helpers even if systemically, people still behaved selfishly. I can’t fault them for that. I’ve had my moments of selfishness, too. But in response to the mysterious messages I’d get, I’d write…and as I gave other people compassion and acceptance, so, too, did I learn to give myself that grace for the multiple mistakes I made along the way.
As an empath, when I hurt others, I also hurt myself. I feel everything with so much intensity…which is why I also know that the inverse is true. I love intensely, and I want the people who may never hear those words or who rarely to hear those words to feel that they are loved and seen and valued. This is often conflated as romantic love, but it’s not. It was when I was with my person who I was with after Italy this past late March that I said, “I am in love with you,” when we were together, and that was the pivot point. I’d been saying “I love you” to him, but that one little preposition was the game changer, and the universe, operating supernaturally as she does, started to work and influence me in much the same way it did when I was in Roatan, and I blocked the number of someone with whom I almost repeated the same pattern as I had in the fall of 2019 with the abuser I dated for almost half a decade—the one who had their flying monkeys group stalk me.
Yeah…in the midst of all of that while I was learning these lessons about love and healing from adolescent trauma and learning to value and respect myself like a grown woman, I also was being group and cyber stalked, which again—was a mirror to show me what I needed to see…it was a microcosm of the elite’s macrocosm…basically the same kind of entitlement but on a trailer park budget. I studied it. I looked at patterns. Once you start to notice patterns, they’re painfully obvious.
People who are stuck in the systemic framework all act the same. It doesn’t matter who they are or what they do—they’re all operating on the same outmoded hardware.
The trauma of being stalked and cyberstalked has very real and documented side effects. It mirrors schizophrenia, which can be a born disorder out of trauma, but it can also come on the same way bipolar and borderline do. I was schizoaffective in 2025, and I was briefly retriggered into schizoaffective in 2026 because the pattern had to repeat, so I could right wrongs in the framework and see the totality of the big picture that I’d missed previously. I had to see it and live through it to actually “get it”, and what I needed to understand was about love…about how women should be treated.
My chef told me that women are goddesses. Women are smarter than men. Men should pay for a woman while respecting that the woman can have her own resources. Italian and Latino men—and I presume French, pursue and commit. And men are supposed to respect women…not have a wandering eye or go after another woman when they have the one they initially desired. When they say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned—bet. Just ask the wanker who abused me. One of my best friends—a goddess in her own right, thanks much, said that she will burn a bridge while she’s standing on it—which same. I say I will raise Hell just to burn it down again, and I have—repeatedly, and will likely continue to do so until accountability comes back into style like it’s the freaking Gucci.
I finally learned to respect myself. What I am learning now is to show myself the love and compassion that I tend to give to others, and I am finally—finally taking my time back. I am not responding to things that are not for me anymore. I am always going to be kind, respectful, and compassionate, but I am focusing on what I want, and I expect that to be respected. My love is a gift. Love is a gift. I give it freely and without condition—and by that I mean my words of love, but my time is expensive, and I do not give that freely anymore. One of the themes of the cyberstalking was attention (energy) and time.
Here’s the only stuff that matters based on my experience—love and time. Love is the only power worth fighting for, and time is the only currency that’s worth a damn. Your attention is energy, and energy is power. When people try to take your time, they are taking your energy and attention and resources, which depletes your power. When Foxy told me to “protect your energy—protect your energy at all costs”, she was giving me some of the most precious advice I could ever receive, and I have been dialing that in ever since.
In February 2026, I went to Costa Rica, along the way back, I wept. I had started to write in a memoir for Sean heeding the words of a friend, Charlotte—also a brilliant writer and beautiful soul—who said she worked on some of her memoir writing at a retreat. I made Costa Rica my own retreat because the one to Savannah—hosted by Charlotte and her husband, actually, was canceled. I started to write, and I wept. I cried and cried and cried for humanity and just…for Sean, for us, for our family, for what this all had cost.
I have been forced to confront all of my fears. I can’t say I handled them all with grace, but I’ve always tried to make amends and to heal the things that were flawed and broken. In the summer of 2024 when I reparented through my writing, my parents took it personally that my memoirs of childhood events were mentioned. They felt criticized, and emotionally, that was extremely damaging. I understand how Boomers were raised and why they are they way they are, but that doesn’t negate my own needs in terms of love, compassion, and support. I do get that from Sean’s parents. My parents have helped tremendously, though, and I don’t discount that at all.
My biggest fears have been that my parents would try to take my kids from me because on my first widowed Mother’s Day in 2020, my mom suggested they adopt my kids, and I thought it was a joke. A hurtful joke. My children were the reason I didn’t blow my fucking brains out in December of 2019 when I wrote my first and only note. I knew that they thought I hung the moon, and they were innocent, and they’d suffered enough. They would never understand why their mommy left them. I had to stay…even though I did finally understand how my dear childhood friend Staci had taken her life in July of 2019. At the time, I wondered—how could she have gotten to that point, and after Sean died, after I was treated like an object by the men who pursued me, after I was in an emotionally abusive relationship with the devil, I understood. (He love bombed quickly and then promptly started emotionally abusing me—I have journals…I even have a piece of writing, a letter to Sean, from December 28, 2019 where I kept saying—I need to be alone, I need to be on my own, and saying he was a mistake, and yet I stayed…because…I didn’t know how to love or value myself because of conditioning and still having so many little-t traumas to heal from childhood that were the direct result of systemic patriarchy, which treats children and women like objects that exist solely for the sake of pleasing men. And respectfully, absolutely not.)
In the winter of 2025 when I was being stalked by the patriarchal cultists—after I found out about the 70,000+ men in a local cult who hate women, who attack any woman who is single, who attack any woman who is speaking out, who are so entitled and controlling, I worried for my children’s safety. I also knew I was falling apart. I wasn’t able to take care of them. I had to let my parents help me. I had to let my kids stay with my parents. My kids say that I didn’t tell them I was going to let them stay there for such a long duration, but I don’t recall if I did or didn’t. I just apologize. And I regret not a damn thing about having to do that even though it has caused me so much mental anguish. Because of that bastard who couldn’t just let go and his flying monkeys, because of entitlement and control, I had to confront that fear. I had to accept that I would have to mend things later.
But I went on to learn more about how to protect and defend myself, how to stand on my own two feet, and how to realize that nobody was coming to save me. I had to save myself. I had to really learn how to put on my own air mask, and I had to learn how to win like a woman. I had to learn to be the goddess that my chef saw in me because I believed she was real. But I did…eventually…when the pattern reset.
Joe Cain Sunday comes up repeatedly in the narrative pattern. I woke up the day after Valentine’s Day with my sweet love—the one I had the situationship with, and we decided to do the Joe Cain party. My love had already told me to write the story, but the story wasn’t over—I had unresolved threads that had to be tied up. I needed to tie up the loose ends. But still, I was touched someone valued me enough to give me a challenge, so I took it…and I’ll do it.
I can always tell when the universe is acting…the zone feeling, it’s like drinking liquid luck. You just know that the world is going to spin in your favor that day. And that day—it did. I went home, found a gift in the mail from a friend who lives in Florida, and I got ready and bounded back to his place. We drove downtown and parked near Washington Square Park. We walked over to a friend’s house party and then to the Joe Cain street party. I saw so many wonderful people. It was so magical. And then I saw the man who ghosted me, the one who I hadn’t seen since he literally skipped out of my house, waving bye, the day after I got back from Roatan, and the timeline jumped.
It brought back an absolute swirl of memories, and suddenly things started to align, and knowing—not suspicion, knowing that comes from claircognizance came to me in pieces. When Mercury went into retrograde on February 26, it was like pieces of the puzzle just started moving into place and all of the micro-signs and little things just made complete sense, so I called out the devil by name because I was ready for it to be over.
You cannot make someone love you right. You cannot make someone be accountable unto themselves. You cannot force anything. You cannot control another person. I cannot nor could I control or stop these people from engaging their behavior, but I could control me. I could control the attention I gave to them, and in effect, that’s what I did. I let myself go into the matrix one more time, so I could break free in perpetuity.
It’s over as far as I’m concerned. I turned the situation over to a detective—I am letting men, the law hold the devil accountable for physically assaulting me in 2023, and I am letting the law hold the cretin who showed up at my door on September 26, 2024 who sexually assaulted me on February 15, 2025, exactly one year before that Joe Cain party where it all started coming back to me (insert Celine Dion here) accountable. That’s them! Get them!
This is how the patterns work…when I came back from Costa Rica, I cried the entire flight home. It was just that I needed the reprieve from the miasma of America—I felt the miasma when I came back from Roatan. It’s surreal. I literally remembered the name of everyone I met in Roatan, and as soon as I crossed the threshold at the Louis Armstrong International Airport in New Orleans, I forgot. I sat next to a beautiful woman at the Dooky Chase in the airport because—finally I was going to try Leah’s iconic fried chicken—and we talked…I know she and a friend just took a trip, she lives around Atlanta, she has an adorable little nephew, but damn if I couldn’t remember her name. It was like, ah, the fuckening.
When I came back from CR, I stayed at The Lafayette in New Orleans. The next morning, I went to San Lorenzo where I met a lovely server and had the best pasta carbonara of my life (I will be going back for it). She recommended a book to me called The Alphabet and the Goddess, which is where I started to understand how the written word was used to raise the patriarchal pyre and isolate and control women. Women weren’t allowed to be traditionally educated, as we know, and we also know how the Catholic Church didn’t allow reading. I was thinking of this the other day, too—if you’re operating on what you’ve been told rather than what you’ve learned and synthesized for yourself…you’re doing it wrong. You’re a sheep. And that is a ba-a-a-a-ad way to live. I have been there. Zero stars. Will not return. Shut that place down.
The funny thing is…you know how men have secretaries and things like that…how a lot of men aren’t really that good at writing and education because it’s been considered feminine over the “manly” roles and jobs and things…they took what the patriarchy used to raise itself, cast it off, made women do that work, and now women are the ones who wield the power of words. The pen is mightier. I literally do spell work because I write. That’s why I keep saying writing memoir heals you. Writing gratitude manifests for you. There is very real power in the gift and ability to write. But it’s already done. They raised the pyre, but we are lighting the fire because we have the magic in us (this “we” pertains to anyone who is not part of the system). Sparkle and shine.
It’s not about power, though, it’s about equality. It’s about flipping the fear and falling into faith, and while I wrote about it in 2024, I had to really live it to dial it in—much as I have with protecting my energy. This is my time.
Thus…the day after Joe Cain Sunday this year, as I said—the pattern came back in like fire, my oldest, the one whose birthday is today—the one born at 7:12 AM thirteen years ago—got COVID. She was sick for two weeks. My other two got it the week after she did, and then I got it. When I got it, my kids went and stayed with my parents. Meanwhile, I was once again trying to make sense of things and solve this complex puzzle—I wanted to finish the story, and I had to right the wrongs.
In the fall of 2024 I didn’t report the devil for DARVOing me…for running his pathetic smear campaign in 2023 or for having his flying monkeys (cash apologies only, boys) come at me because I was worried he’d unalive himself because I just know a lot about human psychology, and I understand cowardice…which is not the same unaliving as it is when a person has been invalidated, abused, unloved, and tormented because of some controlling egomaniacal entitled abuser. Just an FYI.
But I was mistaken. I should’ve asked for real help. I should’ve gotten the police involved sooner. I should have not tried to control things that I could not, so I happily turned over my entire portfolio of evidence to a detective in April of 2026. I will let nature take its course. I am grateful for the ways I’ve been supported. I had to have one more total mental break before something shifted.
It was exactly one year after Sean’s 40th birthday that I ended my situationship. I did so respectfully and diplomatically…determining we were friends. This man is the most like Sean of anyone I have met since losing my sweet best friend and partner. He will be a wonderful father one day. He’s met my kids a couple of times, and he’s great with them. He showed up to help me at my house, and he taught me how to use power tools. Where I was never prepared because infantilization is real, he was, and he taught me so much. I will always love him for that…and just for how he treated me when we were together. I felt truly loved and cherished. But a situationship is low-vibe, and goddesses do not do low vibe….
I loved him so much that I actually gave him Sean’s shoes from Italy…from our honeymoon. That was one of my most cherished belongings among the things that were Sean’s. I do not regret it because I know how to read the signs, and if Sean’s shoes are going to be filled out in this world—literally, then it should be by someone with the character to wear them like a god in his own right. I have no son here, and I have no need to keep things that are simply going to sit. My holistic therapist told me early on to bless and thank the things we have that we give away for their service to us but to know they’ll be a blessing to whoever receives them. I certainly hope that they are.
I eventually returned the rest of the clothes that my situationship person left here when they were helping me build shelves in the garage. Intuitively, without planning, I wrote a letter to them because I had made some mistakes in how I ended things as a direct result of all of the puzzle pieces shifting in my mind, and I owed him an apology. He wrote back to me, as he said that he would, and I wrote back to him. I sent a letter in the mail that he either got yesterday or will get tomorrow. I’m sure at some point our paths will cross again, and I know he was being honest when he said that we don’t have a future together.
As I wrote—I cannot have more children naturally, and he wants a child. That’s his dream. My dreams are more simple…I just want to write. Yes, I want to be successful…yes, I want to travel…yes…I want to maybe one day find love, but this process has helped me to fully decentralize men, and oddly, I’ve found that in doing that…I’ve decentralized alcohol, which is funny…I was very aware that my biggest vice was on par with the devil (though, alcohol is much better for you than men like that dude), but once I decentralized men and really, really, really started to focus on myself and my writing and my dreams, it dissolved. It’s great! I still like wine, but it’s like, eh. You know, take it or leave it.
As for my family…we are still recovering. After I had my nervous breakdown on April 6 when I deleted Facebook again, my parents and I seem to have shifted. Maybe it was because I asked my mom for help, something I couldn’t do in 2019 when the devil was isolating me from my family, and when I was self-isolating because the reality is that when you go through a seismic life shift, you don’t know who you are, and if you don’t have a solid emotional support system, you are very vulnerable to predators like the devil. Thusly, I cannot speak highly enough of doing the damn work.
I had to make healing my priority in 2019. I had to save my own life, and if have done so repeatedly in spite of massive adversity. I have had to start over repeatedly, and I will do it as many times as it takes. I am a consummate survivor.
Lately I have had ennui. It has been seven years since Sean died, and I recognize what the universe is telling me it’s time to do—it’s time to grieve losing Sean. It’s time to write that story. It’s time to grieve letting go of a man like Sean. But it’s time to write that story, too, and to let go. It’s also time to cry for the little girl who was too much.
My middle daughter is so much like I was as a kid—emotionally. Super extra with a dial that’s either way up or way down. She cried for an hour when she left space camp last week—much in the same way I cried when I left Costa Rica, so I didn’t tell her she was being silly. I didn’t invalidate her. I didn’t try to get her to stop. I just let her cry. I let her cry even though we were in public. I just let her have her emotions and feel her way through them. I didn’t cry when Sean died…there wasn’t a safe place to do it. I cried to the man I gave Sean’s shoes to, laid in his arms, and asked “how could people do this” after I saw that person on Joe Cain Day, and the world’s energy started to swirl around me. I cried when I realized other trauma from things I forgot but that arrived as knowing. I do wonder how people can be so cruel and selfish. Do they not feel what they feel and do they not want to protect other people from such needless suffering?
When my daughter came into my room yesterday where I was having a quiet moment on the bed—when I feel like crying, I always isolate because I don’t want to make my emotions the center of attention, my daughter came in sad again about space camp. She is so sensitive and aware of other people’s emotions. My youngest daughter is back with me again about 24/7. She inherited my intelligence…only she’s smarter. My middle daughter inherited my emotions and gift for writing only she’s more intuitive and empathetic. My oldest inherited my sharpness and gift for drawing…only she’s already surpassed me. My middle daughter goes back and forth between my parents’ house and my house, and my oldest mostly stays there for now.
I finally learned how to let the village help. We really aren’t meant to do this alone, and while I’ve never been alone, I understand the signs. My middle daughter was mourning space camp again because she decided to write a book about it. She misses her friend who she made who is back in California. I didn’t realize this was the cause of her ennui when she came into my room yesterday where I was dissociating (good times—thanks CPTSD!), so I suggested she write about it, and she burst into tears and said, “That’s what I’m doing and it’s making me sad!” Hello, Amy from Costa Rica. Ahhhh….
I gave her the advice that I give myself—it’s okay to do nothing. It’s okay to just sit. It’s okay to take the pressure off. It’s okay. It really is okay to just be, and it’s definitely okay to cry. There was a lot of hugging and cuddling yesterday.
The work has been worth it. I went to Hell and back and burned to the ground and rose from my own ashes a thousand times it feels like—and that’s just been in the last two years—but I’m finally ready to begin for the last time, and I’m finally ready to and I finally have the time to write our love and life story. And then…I’ll write the other one.
I say we are all connected like Rio Celeste, like a river that runs through all of us because we are, and my friend sent me a link where Glennon Doyle uses the same metaphor to describe our connectedness. We all have our boats—our purposes, our priorities. We can’t take on every issue, but we have what we have…mine is love and relationships. I had a wonderful marriage. Sean and I figured out how to, and I had to wake up to reality to realize that people don’t just grow up and get it. Sean and I were rare. We were special and unique. I had to see how other people existed in relationships and get the hell out of that situation to awaken to my purpose. I had to learn what unconditional love really felt like—I will never forget the moment that I truly felt unconditional love wash over me. It was a total holy shit moment. And then I had to start sharing it, and I’ll continue to do so.
Because I love you. Just the way you are—imperfectly perfect.