This feels weird. Like, really weird.

Almost Her has been my little corner of the internet where I’ve laughed, spiraled, overshared, healed, romanticized my life, and occasionally exposed myself just enough to make future me nervous.

And now, I’m taking a break.

Not a dramatic, “I’m disappearing into the woods never to be seen again” kind of break. More like, I need to step away so I can come back better, shinier, and slightly more unhinged in a productive way.

I’m going to miss this. I’m going to miss sitting down every week to write and turn my life into a story, even when my life felt like a mess wrapped in a bow. I’m going to miss the little “xo, jade💋” at the end of each post like I’m signing a love letter to whoever’s reading.

A big part of this decision comes from something I’ve been doing behind the scenes for a couple of weeks: The Artist’s Way.

If you don’t know what that is, it’s basically a 12-week creative recovery program where you write “morning pages” every day and do different exercises to start reconnecting with your creativity, and your sanity, and your inner child, and your slightly chaotic artist brain.

It sounds simple. It is not simple.

It has been freeing, uncomfortable, weirdly emotional, and extremely clarifying. Somewhere in between writing three pages of nonsense every morning and questioning my entire existence, something clicked. I realized that I don’t just want to talk about the life I want. I want to build it and I finally have some idea of how to do that. Right now, that means making space.

As much as I love this blog, it takes energy. Creative energy, emotional energy, main-character-narrating-her-life energy. And lately, I’ve been feeling something shift. Opportunities, ideas, and momentum. The kind of things that don’t politely knock on your door. They barge in and say: “Hi. If you don’t focus right now, you’re going to miss this.”

So, I’m choosing to listen. Not because I’m giving this up, but because I’m taking myself seriously.

I won’t lie. Not writing next week already feels like forgetting to text someone you talk to every day, but I also know this feeling is a good sign. It means this mattered. It means this became part of my identity. It means I showed up. And that version of me isn’t going anywhere.

This is not the end of Almost Her. This is just a pause. A “main character disappears for a few scenes and comes back with a better outfit and a clearer plan” kind of pause because I have things to do.

Big things.

The kind of things little Jade dreamed about when she was watching Disney movies and imagining a life that felt so far away, and now it doesn’t feel as far.

Thank you for reading, for being here, for spiraling with me. I already know I’ll be back with better stories, better lessons, and probably even more chaotic plotlines.

But for now, I’m off to go build the life I keep writing about. And trust me, it’s going to be worth the wait.

xo,

jade💋

Well, my sanity called and she wanted me back, so I simply had to oblige.

You see, I mistakenly left her somewhere between a master’s degree in psychology and the Richard Rodgers Theatre. As a result, I missed a week of posting and had my quarterly existential crisis where I worry about never getting the life I actually want.

Needless to say, I’ll be avoiding that particular spiral moving forward if I can help it.

What triggered this was a reality many independent artists eventually run into: we do not live in a society that is built to support us, especially not right now. So most of us end up with what I like to call survival jobs. The kind that fund the art until the art can fund itself.

And then there’s social media. Apparently, I’m supposed to grow a following big enough to sustain a music career, which sounds great in theory... except I have no idea how to do that for music. I could figure it out for a regular business. That’s different. I’d happily pay someone to teach me if I could, but I can’t. So here we are.

I graduated this past December with a degree in psychology. Naturally, I had a plan. Graduate, get a remote job, use part of the income to fund my music, save the rest, move to New York, and eventually get a master’s in musical theatre.

Efficient. Logical. Beautiful.

And then the job market humbled me immediately.

I applied to over 300 jobs and didn’t get a single interview. So, like any rational person, I pivoted. I started a business centered around helping women self-actualize in a society that benefits from our self-abandonment, which I love, but businesses take time to make money. In the meantime, I still need a job.

So now I’m stuck in this loop of: “I need a job. I tried that. Okay... now what?”

And this is where the story takes a turn.

Because apparently, the answer was watching Legally Blonde for the first time.

Yes, I was one of the last people on Earth who had never seen it. But something in me said to press play, and it ended up being exactly what I needed.

There’s something incredibly refreshing about watching someone be intelligent, ambitious, underestimated, and still completely herself.

It made me start thinking about going back to school for psychology. Not as a lifelong identity, but as a strategic move. Something that could actually help me get a job without applying into the void forever.

But music is not optional for me.

It’s not a hobby. It’s not a “maybe someday.” It’s the thing that makes me feel like myself. So anything I do has to support that, not slowly suffocate it.

Which means: no five-year licensing programs, no paths that consume my entire life, and definitely no careers that drain the light out of me.

And for a second, I thought that was my only option.

I genuinely believed that if I wanted stability, I had to become a therapist, which meant years of school, licensing, and delaying everything else I care about. I thought it was that... or nothing.

And underneath all of that there was a quieter fear that I wouldn’t be able to hold both versions of myself at the same time.

The brainiac and the starlet.

Because if I lose the part of me that creates, performs, and feels alive, then what exactly am I building all of this for?

But after doing more research (and finding my sanity), I realized something I wish I had understood sooner:

I don’t have to choose. There are paths that allow me to be both.

To be intelligent and creative. Strategic and expressive. Grounded and a little bit sparkly.

I can be Elle Woods and Sabrina Carpenter at the same time.

And maybe the problem was never that I was “too much.” Maybe it was that I was trying to divide myself into something smaller, more acceptable, more manageable.

But choosing yourself doesn’t mean choosing one version of yourself. It means choosing all of you, even the parts that don’t seem to go together at first.

xo,

jade💋

Plot twist: there’s no blog post this week!

I had a bit of an off week and gave myself permission to rest instead of rushing something just to hit a deadline and honestly, it was the right call. I’m feeling so much better now, it’s just slightly too late to pull together something that feels like me.

We’ll be right back to our regularly scheduled programming next week with something worth the wait.

Thank you for always being here. I adore you.

xo,

jade💋

I didn’t think I could be more controversial than I already was, and yet... here we are.

In a world that has so much beauty and diversity, we still hold onto some very black-and-white ways of thinking. Conservatives date conservatives, liberals date liberals, and anything else might as well be a modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet.

In some ways, I understand why.

Compatibility in core values is one of the most important aspects of a relationship, and more often than not, those values tend to align with political affiliation.

But sometimes, they don’t, and that’s where things get complicated.

Allow me to explain, using the psychology degree I had many emotional breakdowns over.

As humans, we love to categorize people and things as good or bad. Our brains don’t like gray areas because gray areas require effort, and the brain is always trying to conserve energy. It’s the same reason people stay in toxic situations and why breaking bad habits is so difficult. I’m not saying everything deserves a gray area, but there’s more room for it than people think.

It also doesn’t help that we live in a society that reinforces this way of thinking. We’ve been conditioned to always associate political affiliation with character, so if someone is on the “wrong” side, we assume they think the wrong things, believe the wrong things, and are the wrong kind of person.

So, I can’t help but wonder, have we traded genuine connection for ballots?

I’m a liberal and a feminist, which means I would never be with someone who fundamentally disrespects the choice, autonomy, safety, or humanity of others. But that doesn’t mean I would never date a conservative.

As a matter of fact, I have, and he was one of the greatest people I’ve ever known.

To this day, I still consider it the best connection I’ve ever had, even though we broke up two and a half years ago.

My rules for dating are simple:

I must feel safe with him.

I must feel free with him.

I must feel respected by him.

I must feel admired by him.

1 must feel like myself with him.

He gave me all of those things and more.

And what stood out the most was that it wasn’t something he did just because he was attracted to me. That was simply who he was. That was his baseline.

Which made me realize something I hadn’t fully understood before:

Someone’s political affiliation can be just a small part of who they are. It’s shaped by their upbringing, their environment, their experiences, and sometimes even just what feels familiar or aligned with the world they grew up in. It doesn’t automatically tell you how they love and how they treat people.

Now, I will say this. There are still things I struggle with.

For me, the harm caused by our current administration outweighs the good, and I believe that equal rights and safety should always be the priority when choosing who runs our country. So part of me still has a hard time understanding how someone can value those same things and still support the Republican party, but I understand it more now than I did before.

l’ve been thinking about all of this a lot lately, especially because it’s looking like my career may place me in the public eye. My brand and personality are rooted in female empowerment, freedom, and self-expression, and I found myself wondering: what happens if I fall in love with someone who’s different from me politically?

How do I explain that to the world?

To my audience?

Even to my friends?

Because not everyone sees nuance. Not everyone makes space for gray areas.

Needless to say, Purple Hearts has become a bit of a comfort movie for me.

If you haven’t seen it, it’s about a liberal singer named Cassie and a conservative soldier named Luke who can’t stand each other, but end up getting married for military benefits and, of course, accidentally fall in love.

If that isn’t the most perfect enemies-to-lovers story, I don’t know what is.

But beyond the romance, what makes the story interesting is what it represents: two people who are fundamentally different learning how to see each other as human first.

And maybe that’s the point.

So, to answer my own question...

My values as a feminist don’t change based on who I date. They’re rooted in how I live my life and how I show up in the world, and I would only ever be with someone who allows me to exist fully as myself without shrinking and without compromising who I am.

At the end of the day, I’m kind of a hippie at heart. I just want to love people without overanalyzing every difference.

I don’t think love requires ideological sameness. I think it requires self-awareness, respect, and the ability to let someone be different without making them the enemy or losing ourselves.

And maybe, just maybe, we’ve been asking the wrong question this whole time.

xo,

jade💋

I went on Netflix looking for relaxation. Instead, I found a panic attack inside a documentary... oh joy.

Of course, I don’t live under a rock. I’m fully aware that there are many... questionable men in our society. I’ve even encountered a few myself.

A girl I used to be friends with in high school actually knew Tristan Tate when we were in college, and she somehow (but not surprisingly) believed that he and his brother, Andrew, weren’t detained in Romania despite the very real video footage of the arrest because apparently, he told her they weren’t.

Needless to say, she and I grew apart.

Anyway, I decided to watch Netflix’s Inside the Manosphere, and while most of it wasn’t new information, it still felt like Cinderella’s castle from Disney World was sitting directly on my chest.

I also felt like Giselle from Enchanted when she falls out of her animated fairytale and lands in New York City. Disoriented. Disturbed. Confused beyond reason.

I’ve always known this manosphere/red pill world existed, but I never paid close attention. I prefer to keep my brain feeling like Barbie’s Dream House. Not Ken’s Mojo Dojo Casa House.

But as disturbing as it was, I couldn’t help but notice something fascinating from a psychological standpoint:

These influencers have created the perfect roadmap for how to make men even lonelier than they already are.

So, naturally, I present to you: The Male Loneliness Roadmap.

Step 1: Convince Yourself That Women Are the Enemy

If you can blame someone else for all your problems, you’ll never have to look inward. No therapy. No self-awareness. No emotional growth. No uncomfortable truths. Just vibes, denial, and a deep commitment to misunderstanding half the population. Apparently, healing is overrated. And, even worse... emasculating.

Step 2: Replace Self-Awareness With Podcasts

Why reflect when you can just press play? Why ask women what we actually want when you can listen to men confidently explain it for us? According to them, women only want luxury, money, and a man to fund their lives. That’s great, because if you never learn that what we actually value is depth, emotional intelligence, and genuine kindness, you’ll never have to become any of those things. Efficient.

Step 3: Make Misogyny Sound Like a Fairytale

You can’t be obvious. That ruins the whole thing. The key is to soften the language.

You don’t control women, you “lead” them.

You don’t limit them, you’re “protecting their peace”

You don’t dismiss feminism, you just think it’s “unhealthy for women.”

Wrap it in soft words, a calm tone, and the promise of being “taken care of,” and suddenly it almost sounds romantic. Almost.

Step 4: Avoid Women Who Might Challenge You

Surround yourself with women you can outtalk, outmaneuver, or easily dismiss. Because being around intelligent, self-assured, respected women would require you to actually rise to their level, and that sounds exhausting. So instead, create an environment where you always feel like the smartest person in the room. Even if you’re not.

The End

And yet, men wonder why they’re lonely.

It’s a mystery. Truly.

As for me, l’ll be returning to Barbie’s Dream House, where everything is pink, sparkly, and most importantly, peaceful.

No podcasts required.

xo,

jade💋

A little messy, a little unconventional, and totally incapable of getting over her ex.

To be fair, I’m always a bit unconventional, but I digress.

A couple of nights ago, while I was trying to fall asleep, my “ex,” Mr. Steel, found his way into my mind. If you’re unfamiliar with Mr. Steel, I suggest you read this blog post: The Ghost Who Couldn’t Resist Me in Red Lace.

Now, I’m certainly no stranger to missing him, but this time it was... different.

I’ll spare you the details, but let’s just say if those thoughts were made into a movie scene, it would come with a “parental discretion advised” warning.

This hasn’t happened in over two and a half years. I don’t even remember the last time he and I talked about doing anything sexual, which is part of the reason I left him.

Usually, when I miss him, it feels like sadness, gray skies, maybe some Adele playing softly in the background.

Not hotel rooms, sparkly night skies, and Sabrina Carpenter songs coming to life.

So it begs the question... what does this mean?

Are we meant to be together? Most likely not.

Am I not over him? Well, yes. We’ve established that.

Do I work too much and need to get laid? Ding ding ding!

But unfortunately, there seems to be a shortage of men I can actually tolerate, so I’m off the market for now.

If I’m being honest, every fiber of my cinematic being wants to reach out and invite him back into my life, but I’m tied to my better judgment because I know myself.

I know that if I went back to him at this point in my life, there would be an intermission five minutes into my one-woman show: The Girl Who Was Born to Be a Star.

Not because of him, but because of me.

We have history. He matters to me. And I’m not entirely convinced I could hold both him and the level of focus my life currently demands without something slipping through the cracks.

And I refuse to let that “something” be me.

It would be World War Ill on Planet Jade, and quite frankly, we don’t have the budget for that production.

So, because I value my sanity, I will continue to create, help women, be whimsical, and I will not text him… yet.

xo,

jade💋

I’ve never understood why some men think “you’re not like other girls” is a compliment.

Maybe it’s because uniqueness is generally a good thing, and yes, l am unique. But I’m also the sum of so many other women I’ve encountered throughout my life.

I wear red lipstick because of Snow White.

I sing because of Miley Cyrus.

| love theatre, reading, and writing because of my mother.

I am strong because of my mother.

I want to help women because of the countless women I’ve watched get hurt in my personal life and in the media.

The list goes on.

Recently, I saw an Instagram reel of the scene from Beauty and the Beast where the castle transforms back into a beautiful, vibrant place after years of darkness and decay. The text on the screen said something like, “This is what would happen if women took over the world.”

And honestly, I don’t think that’s too far off.

Call me crazy, but I feel like women possess a kind of magical power that has been suppressed for centuries through patriarchal conditioning and misogyny.

Think about it. We can grow life inside our bodies, we have strong intuition and emotional intelligence, we have the ability to influence the world around us simply through presence, creativity, connection, and beauty.

Historically, women have been linked to witchcraft, spiritual power, temptation, and even the fall of mankind. Entire systems of control were built around monitoring, restricting, or punishing female autonomy.

For centuries, women were literally persecuted for traits that are now praised in leadership and psychology. Intuition was called witchcraft. Emotional sensitivity was labeled hysteria. Independence was seen as rebellion. Millions of women were punished, silenced, or erased simply for existing outside the narrow roles society allowed us to occupy. When you look at history through that lens, it almost feels like the world has always been slightly afraid of what women might become if we were truly free.

This raises an interesting question: Why would women be so heavily controlled throughout history if we were truly powerless?

Obviously, I don’t know with absolute certainty that women possess some hidden supernatural abilities. I’m not God and I didn’t create the female species, but I do believe there is something powerful about us that has been misunderstood, feared, and suppressed.

Even though we’ve often been labeled the “weaker sex,” we’ve also been labeled the greatest sinners.

All I know is this: women are extraordinary, and I pity any man who doesn’t see it.

xo,

jade💋

xo,

jade💋

Never in my days did I think ableism would work in my favor.

In the eyes of much of society, disabled people are not worthy of being parents or even being sexually desired. I’m no Charles Darwin, but I do know we weren’t exactly winning popularity contests in the caveman days.

Humans were wired to avoid anyone who couldn’t pass on “valuable” genes or who posed a perceived threat. Evolution had its own brutal social hierarchy.

It was the high school hallway of survival. Only the elites won.

So of course, that mentality trickled its way into the 21st century, where disabled women are often cast as The Wicked Witches of Planet Earth. Undesirable. Scary. Lonely. Miserable.

Burn me at the stake, why don’t you?

It’s no wonder one of my doctors found it ridiculous that I was required to take a pregnancy test before starting a medication. Or that a man once told me he couldn’t fathom the idea of anyone being attracted to me, simply because of my disability.

Aside from those moments and the occasional ableist assumption, I haven’t dealt with many fire-breathing bigots. Just the occasional spark.

In fact, I’ve had a relatively normal dating life. And by normal, I mean shockingly annoying and occasionally fun. Most of the time, it’s not even annoying because of my disability. It’s annoying because... men.

But that’s not the point.

The interesting twist is this: oppression has accidentally aligned with my personal choice.

I don’t want children.

I used to want kids and I do love them, but it wasn’t an informed decision. It was a decision made on autopilot. Everyone around me had kids or wanted them, so I assumed I would too.

Thankfully, I dodged that bullet before it went right through me.

While many childfree-by-choice women endure interrogation, doubt, and condemnation from others, I’ve been spared most of it. People always assumed motherhood was off the table for me anyway.

There were many paths that people assumed I wasn’t qualified for, and that was frustrating. But with motherhood, they happened to be right.

I want my days filled with music, performing, traveling, reading, writing, friendship, financial independence, helping women, and creating joy.

Why would I choose pregnancy and motherhood when I have other beautiful options?

What others see as tragic exclusion feels like intentional expansion to me. What they assume was taken from me is something I don’t even want to carry.

Being childfree adds to my life. More time. More peace. More possibility. More money. More me.

And if I had to guess, part of society’s discomfort with disabled women traces back to the patriarchy as well.

There are men who believe a woman’s primary value lies in her ability to be a wife and mother. If we can’t or won’t fulfill that role, we become useless in their eyes.

Frankly, that’s fine by me.

I love being an invaluable woman to invaluable men.

What some call an unchosen tragedy is my chosen happy ending.

xo,

jade💋

Ladies and gentlemen, this is where it all began.

The year was 2006. There I was, a 4-year-old girl completely enchanted by Hannah Montana (and Miley Cyrus). She was everything to me and everything I wanted to be. Beautiful, creative, strong, funny, kind. I even wanted to be blonde like Hannah... it’s a good thing that never happened.

Somewhere along the way, Miley sparked something in me.

My passion for music.

The 20th anniversary of Hannah Montana is next month and while my brain is still trying to compute the fact that I’m apparently old enough for that to be true, I’m forever grateful I got to experience that era of girlhood. There has never been and never will be anything quite like it. It shaped me more than I even realized at the time.

Miley really did raise a whole generation. She showed us that it’s okay to change, evolve, and dream bigger than the world expects you to. She gave us core memories that will last a lifetime.

This week, Disney blessed my Instagram feed by announcing a 20th anniversary special and as you can imagine, my inner child levitated.

As little girls, we watched a young woman carry two identities. One under the spotlight. Magnetic, confident, powerful. And another where she could just be a teenage girl worrying about boys, mean girls, and grades.

At the time, it felt glamorous.

Looking back now, I think what captivated me most was the idea that we could be multiple things. That we didn’t have to choose just one version of ourselves. That we could be ambitious and soft. Extraordinary and normal.

I always knew I was anything but ordinary. I didn’t know why for a long time, but I knew I felt something electric whenever music was involved. I knew I related to Miley and Hannah in a way I couldn’t explain.

Underneath the blonde wig and the fabulous outfits we all begged our parents for, Miley was a girl who quietly changed my world.

She gave a 4-year-old version of me permission to dream.

And for that, she will always be a legend in my book.

xo,

jade💋

February 14th isn’t just Valentine’s Day for me.

It marks something that changed my life when I was still in high school.

I’m choosing to take this week off from the blog and honor that quietly. I’ll be back next week.

Hold your people a little closer today.

xo,

jade💋

This isn’t a cinematic, glamorous, Bonnie-and-Clyde kind of story.

It isn’t romantic at all.

It’s about loving someone who crossed a line that can’t be uncrossed.

Someone whose choices fractured a family.

Someone you’re not really allowed to talk about, even when they shaped you.

You know the stereotype of the “weird uncle”? I have one of those.

But he didn’t start that way. Not to me.

When I was a little girl, he was one of my favorite people in the world. He was funny, charming, magnetic. He made me feel special. He was the “cool uncle.” The one who always showed up with gifts, even though his life never seemed to fully come together.

We had the best times together.

My bed used to sit right next to a window that faces the driveway, so I could see who was coming and going. He was the only person I knew who drove a white van, and whenever it pulled up unexpectedly, I felt pure excitement. His arrival felt like magic.

That magic only existed because I was a child, and he was hiding parts of himself from me.

He’s been difficult for as long as anyone can remember. Even as a kid, he was intense, restless, drawn to things that scared other people. By the time he was 17, my grandparents didn’t know what else to do. They sent him to live here in America with my dad, hoping he might be able to help.

My dad tried to help him many times. Gave him chances, structure, support, but nothing helped. As a child, I didn’t understand any of this. I didn’t know there was anything to understand. To me, he was just someone I loved.

I didn’t learn the truth until I was older.

When I was about 10, he disappeared from my life without explanation. When I asked questions, I was given softened answers. The kind adults use when the real story is too heavy for a child to carry.

Eventually, my dad told me the truth. Slowly. In pieces.

I won’t share the details publicly. Not to protect him, but to protect myself. Because it’s deeply uncomfortable to admit that I still love someone whose actions caused great harm. If he were anyone else, l wouldn’t care about him at all.

But he isn’t anyone else.

He’s my uncle.

Over the years, we stayed connected. Less and less as time went on. Lately, it feels like he’s a shadow of who he once was. Conversations are strained. There’s a sense that whatever was broken was never really repaired.

Last weekend, I went to dinner with my dad and his wife. My dad mentioned that he had recently seen a photo of my uncle. I asked to see it, and he warned me it wasn’t good.

The last picture I had seen of my uncle was maybe eight years ago, when I was a freshman in high school. He looked fine. He looked like himself.

He doesn’t look like my uncle anymore. He looks worn down. Changed in ways that felt irreversible. Like someone who had been fighting for a very long time, and losing.

The image was almost blinding. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

He used to feel larger than life. Now he looks like the physical consequence of too many bad choices, too much violence, and no desire to get help.

Over the past few years, l’ve found myself. I’ve learned how big life can be. How much opportunity there is to build something beautiful and meaningful. And because of that, it hurts even more to think about who my uncle could have been.

Part of me is angry that he couldn’t just get his shit together for me, for my brothers, for the people who loved him. But another part of me understands that some people never learned how to feel safe inside themselves.

He wasn’t our parent. He wasn’t responsible for us. But he mattered. He had a place in our lives. And there were so many moments growing up when I wished he was around.

The version of him I knew when I was a child no longer exists, and I will never see that version again.

I studied psychology, so I understand why I still care. I know about attachment, memory, and grief. But knowing why doesn’t make it feel any less wrong.

Loving someone dangerous is disorienting. It’s numbing, and I’m so sorry if you can relate.

xo,

jade💋

I feel bad for God.

So many of his followers seem to have missed the entire point he was trying to make.

Most Christians are taught about God in a way that turns him into a rigid, intimidating authority figure. Harsh, judgmental, and discriminatory. I’ve always found that strange because if someone is afraid of something, their instinct is to run away from it. So if the goal is to bring people closer to God, why present him as someone so unapproachable?

Fear has never worked on me. Not in faith, and not in the way I was raised. It never made me more obedient or loving. It only made me pull away.

Being told that who I was needed to be corrected didn’t feel holy. It didn’t feel safe either. It just made me feel wrong for being myself.

And the thing is, I was never a bad person. I was just different. I always felt that God still loved me, so l never understood why anyone else cared if I dressed sexy instead of modest, only went to church on Easter and Christmas, or had sexual experiences with men I knew I would never marry.

I have God in my life. None of that other stuff really matters.

Fear doesn’t come from God. He’s a God of love, peace, and kindness. The monster humanity has turned him into doesn’t make sense and it has caused so much pain.

Real love doesn’t come with conditions. It doesn’t say, “I love you as long as you conform to who I want you to be.”

The loudest way to love someone is to love them as they already are. And when that isn’t possible, I don’t believe in trying to force change. I believe in letting go.

The moments that have felt the most divine and sacred to me have come through music, cinema, theatre, and choosing my life intentionally instead of blindly following what everyone else does.

Faith feels quieter and more peaceful to me this way. More honest. Even if it doesn’t look valid to anyone else.

xo,

jade💋

How could I ever want a normal life after that?

I grew up on Hannah Montana, musicals, Barbie, Disney princesses, and wizards. They taught me that life should feel light, sparkly, hopeful, and fun, and that dreaming big wasn’t optional, it was the point.

But of course, society doesn’t let women dream in peace.

There was always this idea that I could do anything, but only within the quiet boundaries of what “normal” looks like. I could graduate high school, get a degree, and give my life away to marriage and motherhood without ever questioning it. People do it every day. It’s expected. It’s safe.

And because I have a physical disability that could have killed me by the age of two, the fact that I even graduated high school was considered miraculous by the people around me.

I was proud of myself, of course. But it never felt miraculous to me. It felt normal. This is just what people do, I thought. Everyone around me did it, so why wouldn’t I?

That’s when I realized that even “you can do anything” came with invisible boundaries. Because I had only ever seen one version of life, that version felt inevitable.

Generation after generation, the story never changed

So, I decided my life needed a different one.

A story where the princess finds happily ever after within herself and her dreams.

It took me about twenty years to understand that.

When you grow up surrounded by only one path, that path feels unavoidable. And for a long time, I was okay with that. But deep down, I always knew something about me didn’t quite fit. I just didn’t know why.

Being the modest, quiet good girl never felt natural.

Eventually, I realized that running with the wolves was the best plot twist I could have asked for.

I want New York City instead of the suburbs. Music videos instead of maternity photos. Friendship, growth, and ambition instead of rushing down the aisle to a mediocre man.

I’m a showgirl after all.

And showgirls never do mediocre.

xo,

jade💋

Men in my family. Men I’ve dated. Men I don’t even know. Whenever my nervous system is fried, 90% of the time it’s because of a man, even if he’s technically a “nice guy.”

At this point, I’m exhausted. My nervous system is begging for a full detox from men.

When I was a little girl, I was obsessed with romance and happily ever after. Think Charlotte La Bouff from The Princess and the Frog or Charlotte York from Sex and the City.

But I had a nurse at the time who was an elderly woman, and she gave me some very real elderly-woman wisdom.

She told me that I didn’t need to center my life around men and relationships, even as a teenager. That I should focus on myself and my education instead.

At the time, I didn’t get it. I thought she was just being a love curmudgeon, but when I became an adult, it finally made sense.

Men should be a bonus in life, not the center of it.

I’ve seen too many women give everything to men who gave very little in return. Men with varying degrees of stupidity, ranging from “please lock him up and throw away the key” to “he makes watching paint dry feel thrilling.”

And for what?

Just to be chosen?

Just to say they have someone?

Just for a ring and a baby?

That baby is the one who suffers most when a woman creates life with someone who wasn’t worthy of her love, her body, or her legacy.

The concept of keeping someone in your life who doesn’t make you feel happy, alive, and safe in every way is very strange to me. I’ve watched friends and family members do that, and it’s heartbreaking and confusing every time I see it.

This world is so big and beautiful. There’s so much opportunity to build extraordinary lives, so why would I keep anyone in my world who makes both the world and myself feel small?

Now, I do have a psychology degree and a fair amount of life experience, so I understand that many women stay in these relationships because they’re dependent, manipulated, emotionally broken down, staying for the kids, or simply don’t believe they deserve better.

Even though I never centered my adult life around men, I still dated casually for fun.

Turns out, it wasn’t very fun.

The bar is so deep in the pits of hell that men can’t even handle a casual relationship anymore. I thought men preferred casual dating, but I missed one important detail: they prefer it as long as they can do less than the bare minimum and still get between your legs.

Unfortunately for them, I may be too fabulous for less than bare minimum.

I still believe in love and happily ever after. I just don’t believe it should be taken lightly.

So for now, I’m taking a break from dating, and I’m choosing girlhood.

Female friendships.

Creativity.

Learning.

Making money.

Building my dream life without a man driving me insane.

I think that’s the real secret behind “the soft life” everyone talks about.

Women are realizing that men are rarely the ones who give us softness and healing. Many of them are emotionally stunted. Women, on the other hand, are natural caretakers, healers, and givers. Of course we can give that to ourselves, and to each other.

Now I’m off to make my life sparkle in pink and gold.

xo,

jade💋

Between looking for a job, writing this blog, writing music, producing, recording, and posting on social media every day, it seems that I have drastically disconnected from my sexuality.

It’s not that the desire has completely left the building. It just relocated. Instead of living in my body, it slowly made its way up into my head, somewhere between my song ideas, marketing strategies, and hustle culture.

That is not a very sexy place for desire to live. Although I could probably write a few good songs about it.

I’m very happy and blessed to be busy doing the things that I love, and I wouldn’t trade my career path for anything just because it might give me more free time.

Still, I miss that connection to myself and to other people.

It’s important to me.

I’ve seen so many women neglect their sexuality or feel ashamed of it.

And for what, exactly?

You guessed it. The patriarchy.

He’s such a bitch, isn’t he?

Men get to have all the fun without judgment, and women are expected to be two opposing things at once:

The saint and the slut.

Before we’re married, we’re told to keep our legs closed and our minds pure or no one will ever want us and we’ll be single cat ladies forever.

After we’re married, we’re expected to flip a switch and suddenly become a porn star in bed after years of being conditioned to believe that sexual expression is the death of our morality.

My parents never pushed that narrative on me directly, but I grew up around a lot of devout Christians, so the echoes of that mentality eventually found their way into my subconscious.

What my parents did do, however, was never talk about sex at all. As if my siblings and I simply dropped out of the sky and landed on their doorstep.

It turns out that saying nothing still says something.

I was never particularly uncomfortable with sex or romance. If anything, I was probably the most comfortable with it out of anyone I grew up with. But there was always a quiet message somewhere in my mind that sex couldn’t just be neutral. It had to be dramatic. Emotional. Heavy.

Why else would my parents be so silent about it?

As I got older, I found more peace with my sexuality and had a grand old time.

When I was 18, I had a man in my life for two and a half years who made me feel alive, feminine, and deeply wanted. He was slightly older, far too attractive for me to focus in my economics class, and a complete needle in a haystack.

I didn’t have to rely on just myself to nurture my sexuality back then. I had him.

Now I don’t, and while I’ve had connections since, most were either short-lived or just bad. Dating hasn’t felt consistently fun since I was 19, which is partly why my libido decided to take a trip to Narnia.

For a moment, I felt like Samantha in that episode of Sex and the City when she thought she “lost her orgasm.”

I felt like a part of me was missing and begging to be found again.

I never want to be a woman who feels like sex is a chore. I never want to lose that part of myself.

So, I found her.

Ideally, I’d like to have a man-friend help me out with this because I miss flirting and chemistry and being desired by another person. But my options here in the suburbs are... uninspiring, to say the least.

So for now, I’m flying solo.

What I realized is that desire never really disappears. My body wasn’t broken. Sometimes that part of us just goes dormant for a while, and it’s up to us to nurture it the same way we’d nurture a relationship with someone else.

At the end of the day, she always finds her way back home.

xo,

jade💋

Manhattan on New Year’s Eve looked exactly like the snow globe my brother gave me for Christmas the year before I moved here.

My nurse lifts it from the dresser for me, placing it gently in my hands while my dress is still half-zipped. I give it a small shake and watch the city blur into glittering motion. Snow drifts over tiny buildings.

I marvel at its beauty, and at the quiet, surreal fact that I now live inside the snow globe.

The clock on my phone changes to 9:00 p.m.

I should start heading over to Anne’s apartment for the party. Anne is my best friend in the city, and she lives directly across the hall from me. There was no chance I was leaving the building tonight, but I also didn’t want to sit home alone pretending New Year’s Eve was just another night.

So what do best friends in New York City do when no one wants to go outside but everyone still wants to have a good time?

They throw a fabulous house party, of course.

My nurse finishes zipping up my dress and hands me my clutch. As she turns to help me get ready to head out, I realize something is very wrong.

I forgot my shoes. Of course I did.

She laughs softly, turns back toward the dresser, and slips my heels on for me. As she does, my eyes drift back to the snow globe.

Something is different.

The city inside it is gone.

In its place is a pink bedroom, unmistakably familiar. A wooden armoire stands across from a twin bed.

Barbie dolls are scattered across the bed. A stack of Disney princess DVDs leans crookedly against the wall.

Inside the globe is me at 5 years old, sitting cross-legged on the bed, making Barbie have a baby because at the time, motherhood felt like the most inevitable thing in the world.

My goodness. I was so peaceful, and... a damn cute kid.

If only I knew what was coming.

I close my eyes and ask my nurse to give the globe another gentle shake.

When I open them, I’m sitting in my middle school cafeteria. I see myself sitting at a table with my three best friends at the time: Hannah, Jaime, and Sabrina. This era was the purest version of girlhood. My friends were everything to me.

I watch us laugh, lean toward one another, whisper secrets. I smile at memories of sleepovers, not paying attention in class, talking about boys, periods, and sex long before any of us had real experience with any of it.

It was only two years after my parents separated. My world had just cracked open. I was fragile, but somehow expected to be strong. Expected to grow into a decent woman while everything at home felt uncertain and unstable.

At school, though, I had the girls.

They made me feel safe. They made me feel chosen. With them, I could just be a 12-year-old girl for a few hours a day.

But some things can’t stay the same forever.

Hannah never treated me very well. We were children and didn’t know how to regulate our emotions, let alone our friendships. My mother never liked her. She saw through Hannah long before I could.

Eventually, I ended the friendship when it became too toxic to survive.

We were kids. I don’t hold resentment.

She’s simply a past life now.

Jaime stayed in my life longer, but she is no longer here.

She was killed in the school shooting at our high school when we were freshmen. I had already come home by the time it happened, but that night shattered something in me. It remains one of the worst evenings of my life.

When I tried to imagine my future after that, everything went dark for a while.

I didn’t know how to keep moving forward after experiencing something like that, but Jaime was kind. She was generous. She was endlessly selfless. I knew she would want me to be great.

So I did.

She was also the funniest person I’ve ever known. There was never a moment together that didn’t end in uncontrollable laughter.

She’s tattooed on my ankle, and on my heart.

Now it’s just me and Sabrina.

We don’t see each other as often anymore. Adulthood will do that, but when we do reunite during holidays or long breaks, it’s as if no time has passed at all.

Sabrina knows a version of me that most people never will. We grew up side by side. We became women together. She will always hold a sacred place in my heart.

She is kind. She holds space. She is brilliant.

I’m endlessly lucky to know her.

A tear slips down my cheek as I ask my nurse to shake the snow globe again.

Now I see myself at 18, sitting at my high school graduation.

That ceremony was one for the ages. Who knew mass trauma earned you VIP treatment from the entire country?

In the words of Ed Sheeran, “I found my heart and broke it here.”

High school was magical and terrifying all at once. I wouldn’t return to that version of myself. I always felt like I was sitting halfway off a cliff.

But my goodness, I lived.

I fell in love twice. Maybe three times, though one might have just been teenage infatuation. I made new friends. I got hurt. I went to pep rallies and homecoming dances. I went to Sabrina’s sweet 16 where people were caught having sex in the bathroom and the news spread through the entire house within minutes.

I wrestled with purity culture, then I had a sexual awakening.

Praise be.

I really should go to the party now. Anne is only a few steps away, but the snow globe seems determined to keep talking, so I ask for another shake of the globe.

This time I’m 20, sitting in Round Up Country Western Nightclub with a couple of friends. I had just broken up with the man partially responsible for my sexual awakening, and I was devastated.

So, I called my girls, e danced until 4 in the morning, and I made a new friend that night.

The coping skills of a 20-year-old might not be ideal, but they are certainly entertaining.

What I didn’t know then was that this was the year something quietly clicked into place.

Somewhere between heartbreak and late nights, between dancing and trying to feel okay again, I found my way back to myself.

This was the year I started making music.

The year I stopped running.

The year I realized this was what I had been meant to do all along.

I didn’t recognize it as purpose in the moment, I just knew something felt different. Like I had finally come home.

I ask for one final shake.

This time, I’m staring at a movie set.

This has to be a malfunction. I’ve never been on a movie set.

I see myself go in front of the camera, wearing a corseted, poofy teal dress with long sleeves. Something straight out of the 1700s.

Wait a minute. The 1700s and a teal dress… Oh my goodness gracious.

It hits me all at once.

I’m looking into my future.

I’m Eliza Schuyler-Hamilton.

It’s a dream I’ve carried for years, and I can’t stop the tears from coming. I don’t care whether it’s Broadway or film. I just want to be Eliza, but there’s something especially magical about translating a stage story to screen and the freedom to deepen a character’s inner world.

I’ve always imagined myself there.

The snow globe slowly fades back to Manhattan.

My phone buzzes in my hand. Anne, undoubtedly wondering if I’ve been kidnapped.

Before my nurse sets the globe back on the dresser, 1 press it to my chest.

Every version of me needed to exist exactly as she was. Some of her still lives inside me.

I wouldn’t be who 1 am without her.

I catch my reflection in the mirror one last time before heading across the hall.

I love you, you’re okay now.

xo,

jade💋

We make Christmas pink over here.

And by “we,” I mean me, the girls, the gays, and the theys who are simply too fabulous for red and green.

What can I say? I’m just a girl.

Even though I grew up in South Florida, I never really had a traditional red-and-green Christmas. My mom always decorated our house in gold and silver, which meant everything sparkled and felt elegant and timeless.

A few years ago, it finally occurred to me that I could decorate my own room for Christmas. Naturally, I chose my favorite color. Pink, paired with silver and white.

It’s elegant. It’s soft. It feels like me.

Honestly, if Christmas were a person, it would absolutely be a woman.

Think about it: sparkles, presents, music, drama, and decorations that glitter to the heavens. I simply don’t believe a straight man came up with all of that willingly, which does make me wonder why so many of the figures associated with Christmas are men.

The patriarchy strikes again.

Anyway, I digress.

Christmas has always fed the most extra, glamorous parts of me, and for that alone, it earns its title as the most wonderful time of the year.

Also, I will absolutely move to New York City. I’m just not pretending I won’t complain about winter.

I’m a Brazilian-American woman born and raised in South Florida. I’ve never been outside of Florida, and the coldest temperature I’ve ever experienced was Orlando when it was in the 40s or 50s.

Needless to say, I don’t do well in the cold, but the heart wants what it wants.

At least New York winters are beautiful, even if they’re brutal. My apartment will be pink and glamorous enough to make staying inside feel romantic when necessary.

Pink Christmas for the win.

And now, a question for you:

What’s your Christmas personality?

xo,

jade💋

I may never know.

Why? Well, because I could’ve been in a committed relationship, maybe even married by now, but I simply don’t want that.

That would most likely be a disaster right now. It probably would have been a disaster at any point in the last five years. One of the main reasons being that I’m prioritizing myself, my career, and my future so intensely that the male species doesn’t feel very interesting to me most of the time.

Then, on the rare occasion when I do meet a seemingly decent man, he usually turns out to be... not so decent which only fuels my overall lack of interest.

I would much rather be working on my passions and making money than talking to a man who thinks I want to see his penis within the first 15 minutes (or less) of meeting me when I have given exactly zero indication that I do.

Recently, a man was genuinely surprised, and disappointed that I wasn’t impressed by his penis.

The math is really simple, guys:

I didn’t ask to see it, I’ve known you for about 2.5 seconds, therefore l am 0% impressed.

That said, I do enjoy humbling men who genuinely believe the sight of a single appendage is about to change my life.

Anyway, back to my ancestors, who are potentially clutching their pearls at my life choices.

I wasn’t alive back then, obviously, but I’m almost certain that many of the Brazilian women in my family before my mother didn’t have many options. Their lives were largely shaped around marriage and children.

Even today, in Brazil, it’s common not to move out of your family’s home until you get married. It’s not necessarily about control, it’s more cultural. Marriage is still assumed to be the eventual outcome, so the mentality often becomes: “you’ll get married anyway, so what’s the point of moving out on your own?”

But my siblings and I were born and raised in the United States of America, so naturally, we do whatever we want and give our parents heart attacks while doing it!

My 19-year-old brother, Gabriel, moved out this year to attend college 3 hours away, and I will be moving to New York City at some point in the near future to get my master’s degree in theatre and live there for the rest of eternity in a pink princess apartment.

My point is this: I have options that my ancestors didn’t, and I want to take full advantage of them because that freedom is a blessing.

This is not me saying that all men are bad, or that no one should ever get married again.

The right kind of men can be a lot of fun. I enjoy attention from those men and I would like to get married someday, but I won’t die if that never happens, and I will never keep a man in my life at the cost of losing myself or my dreams.

I haven’t felt ready for a serious relationship since I was 17, and if I’m being honest, I don’t think I was ready back then either. I just didn’t know it yet.

While I still don’t feel ready now, I think I could be open to it if someone truly special came along. Someone deeply aligned with who I am. Someone made for me.

If I ever do get married, it will be after I’ve created the life I want for myself, and it will be to someone who can fit into that life without either of us losing ourselves.

But if a partner isn’t adding to my life, then I will gracefully (or not so gracefully) show him the door.

For now, I’m perfectly happy letting men be people I occasionally have fun with while I become the best version of myself.

I don’t know whether my ancestors were content with the lives they lived. Maybe they were. Maybe they weren’t. But I like to think that at least some of them would be happy for me.

And now, a question for you:

Do you think you could live the rest of your life without finding true love? Why or why not?

xo,

jade💋

As I write this, I’m two days away from graduation, and I’ve just had a quiet, lovely realization.

I’m no longer the same woman who started at FAU four years ago.

I’ve grown. A lot.

I carry more ambition now. More purpose, more clarity about who I am, and I see so much more for my future than I ever did before.

It may not look the way I would’ve imagined back then, but it’s infinitely more aligned with my spirit.

And even though my heart belongs to New York City now, I will forever cherish my college years in South Florida.

The tailgates where I could show up knowing no one and still leave with new friends.

The packed downtown nightclubs where my friends and I never let a drink go to waste.

Sorority recruitment, where I went into a room full of pastel colors and princess energy before I had learned how to embody any of that myself. So, I showed up in jeans and a cropped halter top anyway.

The... questionable men I dated.

It’s the beauty of being young.

Graduating college feels strange. Dizzying, even. I’m relieved to be done with academic stress, papers, deadlines, and exams. But I also know that graduating means stepping into a life that looks nothing like the one l’ve lived so far, and that’s scary.

But it’s also my dream, and I deserve it.

We don’t always realize how far we’ve come unless we pause to remember who we were. Looking back at old versions of ourselves can be grounding. It reminds us that even if we haven’t reached our dreams yet, we’re much closer than we used to be.

So, what’s next for me?

For a long time, I didn’t know how to answer that question, which stressed me out. But now, I finally have an answer.

First, a job. Then, the dream I’ve been talking about all along.

New York City.

And now, a question for you:

What are some things that you can do to ease your anxiety about the future?

xo,

jade💋