Unveil the Stories, Relive the Art—A Journey Through Healing and Expression

Of the roles I play, mother is where I take center stage. Is it difficult? Sure is, but the easiest part is loving my children. It’s everything on top of having children that’s hard. It’s maintaining a spotless home, preparing balanced meals & trying not to resent the job that take’s my time away from them, while holding on to the gratitude of being able to provide for them. It’s coping with hormonal changes & prioritizing mental health, but speaking to my therapist thinking I should keep some to myself. 

It’s getting enough sleep, you know sleep when they’re asleep, but get things done while they’re asleep & make sure they haven’t fallen off the bed, the temperature is just right, check if they’re still breathing & snap a quick picture of how beautiful they look when they’re asleep & then get lost in your album of favorites “wow I loved that onesie” 1 year 2 years 3 years worth of memories that’ll have you crying & laughing in just one swipe thinking maybe another baby would be just as nice… kind of sleep.  It’s loving your postpartum body - what it looks & feels like what it does & can not do. It’s appreciating my familial support, but learning and unlearning from them even if they take it as an insult. 

It’s the guilt that consumes me when gentle parenting wasn’t as gentle or when I walked out the door for the me time I didn’t realize I needed. It’s the resentment you didn’t think you’d feel at times for your partner, no matter how much they do or don’t, your little ones will always want you more & the way you do things feels better at your core. It’s the complexity of being among the first in your circle to have a child - the self isolation, but also feeling isolated, knowing you might not have made it, but it would’ve been nice to be invited, kind of hard. 

My hard isn’t your hard though. Some days I kill it other days it almost kills me, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, right?

“You’re supermom” they say. But what they don’t see is I broke down behind closed doors and that my Instagram stories never show rough copies. They don’t see the intrusive thoughts that had me questioning if I was enough. Giving my kids the world while mine was falling apart because loving them was by far the easiest part. It rained on me, but never on their parade. 

What they don’t see is when I lost myself for one too many days. I can count on one hand how many asked if I was okay and one of those gems is the woman that has me on display today…

 Dear Natalie,

You don’t have to be Wonder Woman all the time. And this journey will humble you and teach you it’s okay to be soft and strong. Let go and allow people to love and pour in you and it will not be easy to get out of the journey. 

There are days you will cry in your room and wonder if you are doing a good job, but you are, keep going. Having a psych brother doesn't help the situation but please learn the family you come from you can not allow this to control the family you are creating. Focus on your mental and not let this make the situation worse. Your daughter needs you more than ever, even while fighting the daily battle. Postpartum is hard and challenging but allow yourself to go through it and feel every emotion so when your daughters go through this you can help them the best way you can from experience. 

Oh yea, you are pregnant with another one which make it’s hard because you are still trying to process the first one, but God will carry you and send you the right people are to believe but you will get there please learn to be patient with yourself as well and stop being your worst nightmare. 

Please this time around take care of yourself the best way you can.

Personal Journal: Darkness in the COVID ICU

I never thought I'd find myself in such a dark place. As a nurse practitioner, I've always been the one holding it together, the one others lean on. But COVID stripped away that facade.

Every morning, I'd drive to the hospital past those refrigerated trucks—makeshift morgues filled with the patients we couldn't save. The streets were empty, apocalyptic. I'd suit up in PPE that left marks on my face and enter rooms where people were fighting for every breath.

I remember one patient—mid-50s, no underlying conditions—who was talking to me one minute, then coding the next. I called his wife afterward. Her sobs through the phone haunt me still. I helped clean his body afterward, placed him in a bag, and watched as he joined the others in those trucks.

Coming home to my empty house on Long Island was the hardest part. I'd purchased it right before the pandemic hit—such terrible timing. What was meant to be a milestone of achievement became a silent reminder of my isolation. No one to share my burden, no one to hold me when the tears came.

I started having these vivid thoughts about dying alone in my bed. Sometimes I'd cry myself to sleep, hoping I wouldn't wake up. I'd imagine my funeral—family and friends gathering briefly before returning to their lives. What was the point of all my academic achievements if at the end I was just... nobody? Just another Haitian-American man who worked hard but ultimately left no legacy, no children, nothing of significance.

My mother raised me alone after my father left when I was three. She remarried when I was 16, but by then, the damage was done. I never had that male presence showing me how to be a man, how to sustain relationships. The pattern continued when two close male friends distanced themselves right before COVID hit. More abandonment, more proof I wasn't worth staying for.

The suicidal thoughts started gradually. First just passive wishes, then actual plans. That's when I knew I needed help. 

Therapy exposed so much—my anger toward my absent father, my belief that marriages always fail (like my parents'), my pattern of sabotaging intimate relationships before they could sabotage me. My speech impediment from childhood had returned in the form of social anxiety, despite years of considering myself an extrovert.

Being Haitian-American with a single mother, I was raised to be strong, to overcome. "Lè ou fèt nan soufrans, ou pa konn sa ki doulè" (When you're born in suffering, you don't know what pain is). But COVID taught me that strength sometimes means admitting when you're drowning.

I questioned God constantly. How could a God who loves me put me through this? Make me witness so much death? Leave me so utterly alone? I had no answers then. Some days, I still don't.

From a young age, I felt like I was always being held responsible for something—and somehow always doing it wrong. As the eldest daughter with a younger sister and emotionally unavailable parents, I often felt more like the parent than the child. My parents never seemed to have the mental or emotional capacity to show up in the way I needed. So I did what many eldest daughters do: I stepped in. I did my homework, made meals for me and my sister, applied to college, tried to be well-rounded, involved, dependable—for everyone. For my friends. For my family. For my parents, who were fragile in a way I could never fully speak about. Fragile in a way that made me feel like if they broke, I’d be the one picking up all the pieces.
 

And yet, I’ve always carried this deep sense that I wasn’t doing any of it right. Whether it was leading a club at school, working in customer service at a job I never felt suited for, being an artist in high school, or trying to show up in romantic relationships—it all felt like I was just missing the mark. If I never learned to do things "right," who was going to save me from a life that felt... miserable? Was this just it for me? A life of constantly falling short?
 

I started to wonder if I was just like my parents—needing parenting even as I was trying to parent others. What if people could see it? What if they saw how wrong I was doing everything? What if I’m taking care of my body the wrong way, and MS will effect me the way its doing my mom now — and will leave me unable to walk, like her? What if I fail to protect myself from addiction, the way my dad and sister couldn’t? Would I just keep repeating the same cycles?
 

“When will you believe in yourself, Laurel?” I started asking myself.

And what I didn’t realize was that the belief I needed didn’t have to come from some grand epiphany—it could come from the quiet, consistent love of God and sisterhood. My sisters. My Sorors. They helped me remember who I was by asking me to be exactly that. I opened myself up—volunteering to help, to create, to serve. I offered my art, my design skills—things I had dismissed as meaningless for so long—and something started to shift.
 

For the first time in a long time, I felt like I was doing something right. Things I talked to God about for years started to appear in my life and a new sense of faith and belief become a reality for me.
 

They believed in me in a way I hadn’t believed in myself in years. Even when the responsibilities grew, I felt inspired instead of crushed. By allowing myself to create more, instead of consuming or numbing myself to cope, I realized I could help others express themselves too. I could give their visions form and beauty through design—and in that, I found a way to take care of others safely, all while following a new path that felt like it was designed and aligned for me all along by God.

I had never dared to call myself an artist, even though art was the one constant in my life that always felt right and never went away. But through creativity and the faith of my sisters, I’m beginning to envision a life I’m actually excited to live—a life I feel ready to be responsible for. A life I won’t shrink from.