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This morning, I started weaker in will than I had hoped. I had three or four cigarettes right after waking up, but instead of beating myself up over it, I took a different approach. After my shower, I decided to space them out to 45 minutes apart, then gradually extended it to an hour and fifteen minutes before going to bed tonight. As the night goes on, I’ll stretch it to an hour between smokes, just in case I have trouble sleeping. This slow, intentional spacing has already taken me from three packs a day down to just one in...

So, I started my smoker’s journal the day after the first class. It consists of notes on every cigarette I have—time, location, who’s around, and anything else I notice. The first thing that jumped out at me? I was smoking every 15 minutes. Yeah, you read that right. That’s 3 packs a day. Seeing it in writing was a bit of a wake-up call. So, I pulled out my phone, checked the time, and decided to push it to every half hour. Just like that, I nearly cut my smoking in half. That was a solid start. But then I...

  In my younger years, I earned a degree in Business from Fullerton College. Through several economics courses, I developed a keen understanding of financial ethics. Yet, having spent my entire adult life within the mental health system, I’ve witnessed firsthand how the system prioritizes profit over people. Our government and politicians constantly assure us that funding mental health programs will help the poor and vulnerable. But the reality? Poverty is growing stronger while those funds seem to line the pockets of wealthy investors, middle-class graduates, and insurance companies running scams. What we’re told is meant to help us often...

In the whirlwind of life, it’s sometimes the people we call family who push us toward the greatest challenges—and sometimes, the greatest growth. For those who’ve followed my journey, it’s probably no surprise that my fanbase seems to have one recurring wish for me: to detach from the influence of my toxic family and take flight as an artist. Both goals are challenging, but both are possible. My family no longer speaks to me, and while this distance offers relief, it has also left a void—a need for something else to serve as my source of connection and grounding. In...

Grieving is a deeply personal journey, and though the stages of grief are often discussed, they’re rarely experienced in a neat, linear order. The five main stages—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance—can take years to work through. Here’s how they unfolded for me after my father’s death. 1. Denial When my father died, I was numb. I went to the funeral, but it felt like a strange, surreal experience, as though I was watching it all unfold from the outside. I was unaware of the true impact of his passing, stuck in a fog of disbelief. In this state, emotions...