Creating Better Moments

August 9th, 2023 my mother died. After a major health scare in 2020, she had been diagnosed with Chronic Heart Failure. Being the baby of the family and known to be squeamish, I wasn't told how dire her condition was. And after seeing her remarkable recovery from the first health scare, naively, I believed that the worst was behind us. Later I learned she had known her death was coming sooner rather than later and was preparing for it. I summarize all that to say, I was ill-prepared for her death.

I was very close with my mom, so as you can imagine the grieving process has been hard for me. Especially since the day before she died, we talked on the phone like we always did. She sounded healthy and happy. I know it’ll take a lifetime to heal from this, but after indulging in unhealthy coping mechanisms, I decided it was time to get out of my depression nest and rejoin the world.

In one of my sessions with my therapist, I expressed that I want to live in the moment more and enjoy the present, rather than worrying about the past and future,

“but it’s hard to live in the moment when all these moments suck.”

Currently, I’m 28, single (getting over a failed situationship), broke in one of the most expensive cities (LA baby!), not in my dream career (SAG Strike crushed those dreams), and my mother, who I considered to be one of my best friends, died. Yea, this moment sucks BUT… what if I can try to make it a little bit better?

That’s where this blog comes in! I’m determined to not let grief win and make me a dull, hollow shell of myself forever. I’m also tired of the narrative that I need a man to be happy in my late 20s. So I've decided to go on my own little grieving/self discovery/singleness journey. I had the idea to take myself on self-love dates:

1. To leave my apartment and get out of my grief bubble

2. To rediscover who I am and what I like

3. To learn to enjoy my singleness

I want to make my moments better, so I can enjoy living in them.

And since a girl’s barely working at the moment and has time on her hands, I figured why not document this life journey and see if it resonates with anyone else going through the same thing. So these upcoming blog posts will be all about my dates and any epiphanies I have along the way.

Since staying "in the present" is also one of my goals, my posts about self-love dates will also have a “Free/Affordable things to do in LA” vibe because sure I’d love to fly off to Bali to help with this healing process, but a girl ain’t got it like that quite yet. So buckle up and get ready to come on this healing journey with me to find myself in this new world without my mom, to overcome depression and grief, and to enjoy my singleness. And hey, who knows, I could also set myself up for a serendipitous meet-cute (I'm a romantic. I can't help it!)