Negativity 

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I try not to post when my posts will certainly be shrouded in negativity. I try to stay silent and stomach the worst of it on my own. I try not to burden others with the incessant failures and fissures in my life. I try to avoid the constant bad news. I do find myself reaching out to a select group of strong friends who, I am thankful, have not forsaken me despite the constant shit storm I seem to spread everywhere I go.

I try to balance my vast and dark negativity with optimistic hopes and a fervent belief that it will all be ok. I don’t really have any of that right now. I can’t think of anything nice to say and I have no words to describe my current mental, emotional and physical state. So I will simply describe my present moment and you can use your imagination to fill in whatever you think might be wrong with me tonight.

I am sitting in a King Soopers parking lot paralyzed by the events of the day. While I was in the grocery store, listlessly wandering because I failed to think of anywhere better to go, I saw a little girl riding one of those penny horses they have by the exit. She had long dark hair and a contagious smile. With each rock of the horse she squealed with joy, smiling at every passerby, as if daring them to find as much joy as she had in that moment. Even I, in my crotchety, hopeless and devastated state smiled with her, wanting her to live in that joy as long as possible. As she smiled so fully I tried to conjure the last time I felt joy like that. I couldn’t think of anything. Not that my life doesn’t have beautiful joyous moments but all my conversations even with those who are the most wonderful, are peppered by the perils of my recent past and my vulnerability and raw and ragged and in everyone’s face. And I perform. I perform joy as though it is ingrained into the fabric of my being. I joke and strive to bring others forward in their journey through laughter. I just am so devastatingly heartbroken right now.

I thought the worst news I would get this week is that I was in fact right about my spinal fluid. I have a CSF leak and I am once again facing a path that only ends in brain surgery. I did get that news and it wasn’t super fun to hear but there was a certain comfort in knowing. 

It’s not in and of itself horrible news. I mean at least I was right. I don’t feel right very often anymore so maybe I will take my doomed CSF leak as a win.

And today, I started out thinking today I will be productive, I will matter. I won’t wallow in my depression, I will reclaim the scraps of the person I thought I was and the woman I can’t recognize anymore and I will work and I will feel close to important in my performance of wellness. 

That’s when I got a message and took a call that changed how I see my present world. Nobody died, so don’t let your imagination get too far away from you. I won’t give the details because it’s not just about me but suffice it to say it was a call that broke what was left of my fractured heart. It was a call that shattered my fragile reality. 

I have always been intensely honest and vulnerable in my interpersonal interactions and generally, it has served me well. But today? It made me seem weak, it made me feel helpless. I was lucky to have some amazing people prop me up in the intervening hours but still the feeling of dread won’t leave me. Maybe in time. If time is a gift I receive in my lifetime, maybe it will help me. 

So here I sit, stuck, dreading my return home. Dreading the moment that the quiet sets in and the complex interactions of various life events takes over. I sit here trying with all my might to conjur joy. It’s hard, in this moment, to remember what joy feels like.

But hey, at least I was right about something this week. :/

Peace and love,

Samira

Lonely in pain

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I don’t like to be redundant, so I won’t describe my pain again. But, I don’t know if it is too redundant to say that I am in it, pain, that is.

I spent the last 40 minutes wailing like a baby and fumbling with drug bottles. You see, I had a rough night, I have a pinched nerve and my head was achy from a day of me trying to act like a quasi- healthy person (meaning I tried to go to Marshalls and run some errands without first taking meds to keep the pain at bay). My body was paying for this moment of normalcy. 

I knew normal was fucking overrated.

Then, this morning as I very gingerly stepped outside with the dogs, they saw a dead rat lying in the sidewalk and lost it. They yanked. I weighed my options, pry a dead rat out of their mouths after chasing them across the highway or hold tight and let the headache that had been creeping in take over.

I let the headache win.

It took over my body.

So now I wail and cry and play my songs and wrap myself in ice packs and write it all down here so it feels just the tiniest bit less lonely to be totally, completely, utterly in pain. 

Tomorrow I get the lumbar puncture to test for my CSF leak. Maybe that answer will lead to some relief. Maybe it won’t. But it feels like a step forward (a scary step forward, but a step nonetheless). So that my friends, is progress. There is always hope as this is the part of life that is suffering, and I must believe that with great suffering, great joy will reveal itself.

Or some crap like that.

Peace and love,

Samira

“Samira eats her words day”

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Today was supposed to be the day that the doctors used their most accurate test to prove me wrong. I think it’s called a radio nuclear cisternogram. They were going to put a scary needle in my back, fill me with some kind of magical, radio-active, glow in the dark potion, and track my CSF. They were going to prove to me without a doubt that all this leaking and pain is not CSF.

If you’re late to the party, after 5 months and 4 surgeries to fix a CSF leak, I came away convinced that I still have one and the doctors were convinced I didn’t. We tried to “agree to disagree” for a while but that is really easier said than done when you’re the one in horrible pain and watching what could potentially be brain juice drip out of your nose. I fought hard to get the doctors to stop dismissing me and then spent weeks psyching myself up for today’s lumbar drain. I spent the weekend naseous and pretty darn depressed and overwhelmed by life.

Then yesterday as I was looking around in amazement at the way I had gotten everything done in time to take today off, I got a voicemail that today’s procedure was rather unceremoniously cancelled. Something about not having the right dose of whatever they need a dose of. It was a mix of relief, and then stress that it would happen later, and then deflation, and now, frustration.

Today was supposed to be the day the docs served me up some humble pie and proved to me I wasn’t leaking so that maybe, just maybe, I could relax for a moment without the fear of infection or pressure headaches. It was supposed to be “Samira eats her words day,” the day I get told that my body and symptoms and intuition are wrong and that I can move on to find anther cause of my pain and my dripping. 

That was all supposed to be today, but now, it’s just Tuesday.

Peace and love,

Samira 

Pain 

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For the last hour I have endured severe pain. It is what I would describe to doctors as a ten out of ten. It makes me naseous and steals my spirit. It’s the saddest face on what I term the “happy face scale” that nurses give you when you’re laid up in the hospital.

I try like hell when the pain comes to maintain perspective. I try to remember the joys of my everyday. I try to calm my central nervous system with different sensory inputs. I breathe deeply with intentionality. I imagine a meadow and all kinds of other crap that my mind tells me will calm me down. I play a song on repeat, it lulls my cries as I strive hard to imagine my body anywhere but here. I try to trick my brain. I tell it that these are happy thoughts and try to conjure memories of joy. It works for a moment but I am so tired of being tired that my body gives in to the insidious fear. 

My breath gets shallow. I start to wonder what will happen to me if this happens to me at work, or during a class I am teaching. Will I keel over, succumbing to pain? Will my body rally? I wish for a fleeting second that I wasn’t alone but then I think that this private intimate moment of pain would be the worst to share. My body, mind and spirit are vulnerable and shaky. You can’t see me this way, no matter who you are, nor would you want to.

My shallow breath turns to deep cries. It is the sound of a  kind of mellow drama you find at the end of a film where a true love is lost. It feels so starkly inappropriate to cry out in my room all alone but it’s all my body can do to to let the pain out. I hear familiar lyrics offering me a rhythm I can breathe with…. “Because death is just so full, and man so small… But there will come a time with no more tears, and love will not break your heart but dismiss your fears….with grace in your heart…”

I choose to believe the gentle words despite my pain. I opt for the security of a manufactured idea of love and life and light. I choose to believe if I close my eyes and give my body rest that this too shall pass. 

My breathing pattern slows, my eyes get heavy. I breathe through the pain and learn to sleep with it and hope for more joyous moments in my tomorrow. Even if it ends in pain.

Peace and love,

Samira

Update for updates sake, so you’re not offended by my silence 

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Since my last post many of you have reached out to me with you empathy, friendship and solidarity. I am so grateful. I am also lost for words. I don’t know how to explain what is happening, the seriousness or lack of seriousness, so I have stayed silent. I don’t know how to say thank you for having my back, so I say nothing at all. I have pushed myself to the silent corners of my mind, made myself invisible the way others often have and have become unsure what to say. So I apologize. I am sorry I have no words, but know that I do just have gratitude for your endless kindness. 

So I figure if there were ever a time for clarity and updates it is now. After 4 weeks of waiting with my local neurosurgeon to address my MRI, I have grown frustrated. It has been since June that my fear of a CSF leak has been dismissed as routine allergies. I also had my scans sent to the doctor in Arizona who is, by all accounts, the most recognized expert in this field. I have waited patiently for a response but was beginning to get a bit anxious, so yesterday I called. As it turns out they never received my scans so those will be sent by the facility here in Colorado on Monday. I was also able to leave a message for a doctor in the practice there.

I didn’t anticipate hearing back until they’d seen my scans. They called me back last night.

You should know that EVERYTIME I see a Phoenix area code on my phone my heart sinks just a bit. You see, being right about my diagnosis is not what I want. I just want to be heard and acknowledged. I want to be honored. Anyhoo… A doctor I am familiar with called me, spent time asking thoughtful questions and suggested the next step would be a clinic visit with the dignified expert himself. He took me seriously. He listened thoughtfully. He made no promises or predictions, just evaluated what I was saying and gave me an actionable next step.

It felt good to be heard. 

Then the fear sank in. What if I am right?! What if I am leaking?! What if I need more surgery?! School starts Monday, I am working no less than 4 jobs and I don’t get time off. They told me to rebuild my life and live and I did and I am so scared of letting everyone down. So scared of losing what I have scaffolded around me.

More than that I am scared to disappear again. I am scared to fade into the background of interpersonal conflicts that long ago stopped being about me and began being about pride, hurt feelings, and ego. I am scared to disappear behind medical tests and doctors notes, evaluations and stiff medical jargon. I am scared that the peace and contentment I have worked hard to instill in my present will fade away as my desire to be seen, heard, and acknowledged just as I am exponentially grows.

The other day I dyed my hair black and blue, like a superhero. Perhaps it was a childish angsty act of a woman endeavoring to be seen. Maybe not, it didn’t feel like much at the time, but maybe seeing this cartoonish version of myself will make me know that the only one who can save me and make me present and see me, is me. Maybe my outward body will give me strength. 

For now the fear seems to be winning so I am working on showing myself compassion. I was finally listened to and that is a small victory and I cannot let that fade away in the fear that I will fail at all the tasks that lay ahead as the semester gets set to begin. It’s just that it feels a little hard to breathe. 

Peace and love,

Samira

Listen to me

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I wake up and I can feel the familiar drip down my throat. I remember this, I remember it from January, it feels the same just not as rapid. I swallow and decide to follow doctor’s orders. It’s nothing, you’re fine. I get up and trudge to the door to take the dogs out. I step hard as I try to keep hold of them. I feel that familiar liquid slide out of my nose. Ugh. Ignore it. It’s nothing. The doctor, the nurse, they said it was nothing. Keep walking. I step again as I yawn. The yawn is all it takes to force the liquid out of my nose. I’m leaking CSF onto my hand now. It’s allergies. They told me it was allergies. Actually they told me it was “snots” in a text message with a smiley face. I feel patronized and ignored. Perhaps they see my sense of humor as an invitation to ignore me. I feel confused.

I feel angry. This is not allergies. My brain is losing the fluid that cushions it. The repairs didn’t work. 

Please listen to me. I call and I beg them. Please, take me seriously, these are not the protestations of a hypochondriac. This is real. 

I yawn again, more liquid pushes out. The tension and pressure of the yawn causes pain. I’m inside now. I cover myself in pain sprays, menthol and warming balm. I crawl back into bed. The phone rings as the medicines kick in and take me away. I wake up to a voicemail from the doctor’s office.

They’ve listened to me! They have answers or at very least they are acknowledging that I need their help. I have felt so helpless.

I gently push play and press the phone hard against my working ear. I hear the chipper voice of an NP.

“I just wanted to talk with you directly about your symptoms and the leak and how most of your symptoms are unrelated.” 

The message goes on.

Translation: I’m calling to tell you that I don’t believe you. I am calling to tell you that I refuse to hear you. I am calling to tell you that I will not acknowledge you. I am calling to tell you that I am the expert, you are the layperson, and you don’t know. I am calling to tell you that no matter your protestations we refuse to see you as you beg to be seen.

They call me young. They call me dramatic. The women in particular act like I need to grow up. They erase my pain. They erase my struggle. They erase the repeat surgeries and make me feel hollow like some ghost that is haunting the wrong people with the wrong unfinished business. They make it seem like my questions are irrational, as though I am making this up. They make me feel helpless. They render me invisible.

I have a message for them: only I can advocate for my life. Only I can feel my pain and I refuse to be erased because my problems are inconvenient for you. Hear me. Honor me and trust that I am not a paranoid patient and recognize me. Help me or I will find someone who will.

I recoil in anger, the anger not helping my pain. I pull the blankets over my face, I wrap ice packs around my head and I force myself to sleep, hoping that when I wake up I can be seen, that I will not be dismissed and I will cease to be invisible.

Peace and love,
Samira

Lesson learned

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They say if you love someone let them go. I don’t know who they are, but they don’t tell you that if you let go of someone you love, or they let you go that it hurts like a stupid son-of-a-bitch. That’s what they don’t tell you. They also don’t tell you that they are assholes that demean and diminish complicated life experience into trite and novel, neatly packaged sayings. They also don’t warn you that heart break, tied to a brain tumor, tied to chronic physical pain is an anchor waiting to sink you to the bottom of the ocean.

They suck. This is why I don’t swim in open waters.

They don’t tell you that filling your time won’t fill the void left by failed love and the feeling of disenfranchisement that comes with newly acquired disability. They don’t tell you your disability will make you feel sad and left out when you watch those you let go fly away. They don’t tell you that some people won’t fly back. They don’t tell you because that won’t fit into the nice package they use to pacify you. It’s too messy for that box we like to put our problems in. They don’t warn you what life can really be.

And if you are lucky, which I know I am when I am not wallowing in my own self-pity, your friends and family will lift you up. Mine have done that. But, they? The “them” that makes the clean little sayings and just throws them in the face of your suffering, well they can go to hell. And they can stop being ridiculous.

Forget them, instead of whoever that magical they is I have a beautiful family and family of choice that loves me each and every day, and they won’t cover me in optimistic dribble for its own sake. They will stand behind me as I fight to claim whatever life it is that stands before me. And I will stand behind them as they each forge forward into their own lives.

That’s the they I want on my side. The real people. The ones who care and eat $40 dollars of candy with me for no reason other than we can because we are alive. Or the ones that take the time to visit me and share in ice cream cups and brunches. Or the ones that hug you so tight you feel fully alive for that moment once again. The ones that wait up with me and come visit me. The one’s I do my best to show up for too. They won’t forsake me because my life cannot be solved in a series of neat little sayings that get painted on neat little crafts to be bought and sold on Etsy.

They believe in me and I believe in them. 

So in my moment of stress I go back to Jim Carrey, in the quote I often overuse from his graduation speech last year. And that, my friends is where I leave you tonight, “Oh, and why not take a chance on faith as well? Take a chance on faith — not religion, but faith. Not hope, but faith. I don’t believe in hope. Hope is a beggar. Hope walks through the fire. Faith leaps over it.”

Peace and love and for tonight gratitude and healing,

Samira

Routine

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I have a routine for bed time. I am not by nature an organized or regimented person, I don’t go to bed each night at the same time or wake up each morning with the sun. Each night and each morning are a careful balancing act of desires, expectations, and capabilities. Being “in-recovery” or “sick” or “with tumor” or whatever you want to call it has forced a routine on me. Each night after I wrangle the dogs I find myself exhausted and weary. I find the closest, softest clothes and put them on. In slow measured movements I go to the edge of my bed and sit facing the nightstand. I carefully put some organic wound cream on every mark along my arm left there from an IV. I rub what’s left into my hands and set about taking my vitamins. This vitamin for that, this one for headache, that one for inflammation. I don’t know if they are helping, but I take them each night. Then there is a careful balancing act as to what to take next. I see bottles of heavy duty pain killers starinng at me. They promise to dull the pain but leave a list of side effects that steal my spirit. Some nights if I know I have to get up early I cannot risk it so I take tylenol and hope for the best. I quietly send strength to my liver with every swallow of the tylenol. Some nights I break a Valium in half, thinking something is better than nothing. Other nights I take nothing at all, risking the unknown of what my body will do without the conscious and constant attention to its movements. I am slow and measured through the day, with night comes a recklessness that I cannot always trust. I often wake up in a ball, it’s 3 am and I am sweating, straining hard against myself to protect myself from the pain. Most nights I lay down on my non-deaf ear, trying hard to drown out the sounds of young, happy partiers outside in my building. I wrap my head in a pillowcase with an ice pack inside. I turn on Netflix on my iPad, and the light of whatever show I’ve seen a million times carries me off to sleep. 

That’s my routine. 

It’s not sexy. It’s not fun. And yet, there’s a comfort to it. There’s a comfort to knowing what to expect at my best and at my worst. I have a routine. It keeps me going. It makes me feel somehow in control, capable. It makes me know I am strong, independant, powerful, and managing my condition.

People keep asking me if my leak is better. I dodge the question and make jokes about the very real twist-top test tube the doctor gave me to collect fluid from my nose that I carry around in my bra. I feel like I am leaking and the doctors insist, perhaps more for their own comfort than mine, that they can’t have failed again. I feel a mix of regret and anger for not going back to Arizona for my surgeries. I feel irritated in the unknown of being told I am fine while my body screams otherwise. I tell myself it is the fear talking , I tell myself to stay present and to choose to believe that I am cured. I also then tell myself that that is stupid hooey and belief will only get you so far. So then I tell myself not to be a cynical asshole and around and around we go. And all of this exists not apart from the dramas of every day life, the pitfalls of career choices, interpersonal conflict, depression, joy, physical function and disfunction. So I look for comfort. 

I find comfort in my routine.

Organic wound cream: check; vitamins to cure me: check; pills for pain: check; ice pack: check; repeat sitcoms: check; belief I am cured: sort of check, but really, NOPE. 

I hope tonight, you all find comfort in something.

Peace and love,
Samira

Progress is a stupid son of a bitch

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I recently thought I had made progress on the emotional side of healing. The physical side, well that was a mess, and my CSF just can’t seem to want to stay in my body so we do what we can do. And I secretly hope that Herbert hasn’t grown and I hope and hope that one day I can live a life like the happy people you see in magazine ads, the ones that don’t seem to have brain tumors or problems, or stress (or body fat). Through various events, let’s call them set backs, I felt like my emotional progress was, well, set back. For the first few days I was so mad and busy being victimized by it that it didn’t really do much. It was a “how dare the world steal all the progress I had made?! How dare it rip away my proclamations of healing and replace them with wounds and scars and well, crap” kind of moment. I know, that’s a very specific kind of moment. It was a moment that allowed me to be loudly indignant with tears bubbling up in my eyes (and dripping out of my nose because my whole face is just all jacked up). After I realized I was partially responsible for my setbacks in my inability to handle anything at all, I then got really down on myself. It was a “if you were just a bit stronger, louder, more able to speak your mind, maybe your life would be less of a shitstorm” kind of moment. Again, I know, specific. It was a let me shine my insecurity on you because I don’t know what I did with my light. Then I realized that that is all bullshit and that no matter what you do right or wrong often forces in the world, structures that have been built up, are too big for us to dismantle on our own. Sometimes we can’t know if we dripped spinal fluid on a stranger. Sometimes things are too big for us to break down. So we can slam our poor, reconstructed skulls up against them until we break, but very little will change. It doesn’t serve to blame yourself. I didn’t do this to myself and while I didn’t not do this to myself, feeling like a loser gets me nowhere.

So now I am in this moment. It is not a really fun moment. It’s a “life got hard and it took your energy and you feel listless while alone but need to regain the strength to survive mentally and physically and emotionally in your own home even though it is hard as shit and you just want your mommy” kind of moment. I know, it’s just so specific. And it’s so problematic. I want my support system but I want them to do what they are doing, enable me and support me as I struggle to my own two feet. I just don’t really want it to be hard. 

And that’s the thing about progress, it’s up and down and back and forth and there can be no forward with no backward. Life got hard. That does not mean I am not blessed, because I know I am. I have resources and friends and just the most beautiful family. I am drowning in blessings. That doesn’t change that this moment — the mysterious nature of recovery, not knowing if you are sick or well, having lost an emotional core of yourself, not fully being able to name who you are — is a difficult moment. 

Last night I was lucky enough to see my Mommy (yes I am emotionally 3 years old right now) and my sister and her kids as they brought my little pups home to me. We had pizza and watched TV and at the end of the night, as my sister was begging her kids to get ready to go, they begged to stay with me. With me! Messed up, often too tired to play, broken-hearted me. Every time they want to be with me it fills me with joy. As she left my niece threw her arms around me and said, “Mimi, I love you.” I told her I loved her too. “That’s because we are best friends,” she replied as she put her whole head into the hug.  

So I have those really really beautiful moments to give me hope when it just feels really hard. I have my little best friend and a lot of really amazing people cheering me on. And yea, I backslid in my progress and my face is still leaking, but going backward just makes me know how badly I want to go forward. You see when life gets hard it’s a hell of a lot easier to give up than not. But every day I wake up, look at my pups and the pictures of people I love all around me, I catch my uneven but strong eyes in the mirror and I choose to live. Even when living means quietly trudging through the mud until we figure out how to pull ourselves out of it.

Peace and love,

Samira

Like a yo-yo

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Sometimes I feel ok. Those times I think, alright if it is spinal fluid seeping out of your nose all day long, you’ll figure it out. Sometimes I feel sick, physically and that makes me sad and that’s not great but I medicate, literally, and then I feel ok. But mostly I feel sad.

I want to name that sadness here and now so I can claim it, sit with it, learn from it and then deal with it. I also want everyone to know it is okay to be sad. It is also okay to know that being sad does not negate the immense gratitude you feel towards the amazing people around you. It’s important to name our feelings as we have them. Of course other things like physical and emotional therapy will also help and I want to make an important note that while it is scary it is okay to ask for help. I know I need some help tackling this emotional battle and physical battle so I have lined up resources for myself. That being said, I am sad. 

I have this pit in my stomach that has grown for days. It is a pit that like the beginnings of an ulcer I ignored while I shoved down pizza. Only in this case pizza was my inability to face my clear contempt for everything that’s happened to me. Ultimately, I am tired. I try through each surgery and recovery period to rally and to smile and to empower the people I have assembled around me to support me. This, this is exhausting. And yes, I agree it is not my job to support my supporters but it is my nature to nurture and I love them all so much. It is difficult though. 

I am different from most of my family in a way. I’m sure they all figured that out a long time ago when I transitioned from a squirly, bleeding heart kid to a true activist adult. I am willing to forsake myself for a cause. I constantly battle between my cultural roots and my radical, feminist outlook steeped in a deep knowledge of feminist disability studies. I honor where my family is from and our beliefs with all that I am. I also honor all that is in my heart with all that I am. And anyone out there that has a heart knows that often our hearts are conflicted. These conflicts often become apparent at times of trauma. So when I see the dents and bruises in my support pack, all these people I love, who often don’t know or do know and do not love one another, beginning to give way I want to lift them up, to make them happy, to bring them joy and smiles. I want to protect and take care of the people I love. Often in doing so, I have found I have silenced myself, and maybe unnecessarily so. What do I want? Who do I need by my side? What do I need in this moment to survive? I can’t hear the answers in my head because all I can hear is the deafening desire to make sure everyone I love is okay even as they seem to be cracking and breaking. 

I want to fix it. Even though every fiber of my being tells me that our lives do not exist to be fixed I want to fix it. And I cannot. I cannot fix the emotional wounds of past wrongs. I cannot fix my physical wounds, I can only run my hands gently over the scars and hope and hope they heal and teach and inspire my life in some way. I cannot protect or fix the hurt that exists in people. But most of all I can’t hear myself. I can’t hear my voice. I want the chatter in my head that is telling me to fix everyone and everything to stop so I can hear myself. 

I can’t hear myself, but I mean, I am completely deaf in one ear (ba dum cha!) Get it? It’s a hearing joke. 

Sometimes I feel bad for people who are my friends on social media, because my rants about the state of the world and mostly funny posts have been replaced with health updates and me ruminating selfishly on my illness. And then I tell myself not to feel bad because I don’t need to protect everyone on Facebook from my sadness or anger or humor or politics or whatever. But like everything in my life I have this urge to just make it right. It’s just really hard when I can’t hear myself think so “right” becomes the arbitrary sum of everyone else’s desires.

So much of who I am is tied up in the complex relationships I have. I cherish those. So much of who I am is different from the woman I embody in those relationships. From today forward, in an attempt to quiet the anxiety I feel rising in my heart, I am going to seek my voice. 

My voice is beautiful, messy, complicated and maybe unpopular. 

My voice is strong in its faith in humanity.

My voice will connect my heart, body, mind and soul to the people around me. 

My voice will heal this disconnection with myself. 

My voice is beautiful.

My voice will be heard.

And at the end of the day, though a bit overwhelmed with a complicated life in a complex world I am so grateful to my family and friends for showing up for me in droves. I may make a mess of everything in my cooky little head but to me you are all love and to me, you are my heroes.

Peace and love,
Samira