One More Mile

We often spend our lives performing. We rehearse our smiles in the mirror, curate our personalities to fit the rooms we enter, and offer up pieces of ourselves like sacrifices all in the hopes that someone, eventually, will tell us we are enough.

For a long time, I believed that my value was something I had to earn. I thought that if I could just be helpful enough, funny enough, or "together" enough, I could finally secure a permanent seat at the table. I lived in a constant, quiet state of auditioning for my own life.

But grace has a funny way of showing up in the "later days."

This book is not a manual on how to be perfect. It is a collection of moments where the mask slipped, where the "kikay" and the "krung-krung" met the raw reality of survival, and where I discovered that I was being loved even when I wasn't trying to be lovable.

If you have ever felt like an outsider in your own circle, or if you have ever looked at a room full of people and felt entirely invisible, these pages are for you. You are not a project to be fixed or a mess to be hidden. You are a person to be known.

As you read, I hope you stop looking for the exit and start looking for the door the one that has been waiting for you to simply walk through and be yourself.