In 2013, I remember longing for a new life.

Not just in a surface way—but deeply, physically, emotionally. I wanted restoration. I wanted to feel whole again. I wanted something living, something growing, something that would remind me that my body and my life still had purpose after everything I had been through.

I thought that “new life” had to look one way.

I hoped that by my birthday, or not long after, I would be pregnant—that life would be inside of me again. That somehow, that would restore what I felt had been taken. Looking back now, I understand that what I was really grieving wasn’t just what happened to me, but what I felt it took from me: my sense of control, my sexuality, my innocence, my normalcy.

I wasn’t just hoping for a baby.

I was hoping for me.

Fast forward to 2025.

On my birthday, something incredible happened—but not in the way I once imagined.

There was life.

But it wasn’t growing inside my body—it was something I had already carried, nurtured, and brought into the world in a different way.

My book.

My words.

My story.

That day, at my book signing, I realized something that hit me deeply: I did receive new life. Just not in the form I once expected.

I created something.
I gave birth to something.
I shared something that could live, breathe, and impact others.

And in doing that, I felt something return to me—something I thought I had lost forever.

Not my past.
Not my virginity.

But something greater:

My voice.
My power.
My ability to create life from pain instead of being defined by it.

There’s something sacred about that.

Because what was once taken from a place of harm, I answered with creation. What tried to silence me became the very reason I spoke louder. What felt like loss became the foundation for something living and real.

My birthday in 2025 wasn’t just a celebration of age.

It was a rebirth.

A reminder that life can come back to you in ways you never expected—but in ways that are just as real, just as powerful, and maybe even more meaningful.

I didn’t go back to who I was before.

I became someone new.

And she creates life with her words.