Writing Myself Home

Backstroke & Breakthroughs – Post #22

I didn’t start Backstroke & Breakthroughs because I had it all figured out.
I started writing because something in me was unraveling, and I needed to trace the thread.

Each week, I sit down with memories that used to scare me.
Moments I thought I had buried deep enough to forget.
Wounds I learned to joke about.
Successes I wasn’t sure I was allowed to celebrate.

And then I breathe.
And then I write.

This blog has become more than a project it’s become a practice. A ritual. A weekly return to my truth.

I’ve always carried stories. From the middle of a household of eleven. From locker rooms, from swimming pools, from hospital beds, from radio booths and fundraising events and DEI workshops no one wanted to pay for. I’ve carried the weight of being both needed and ignored. Of being praised and still underpaid. Of being told I’m “Important,” while doors stay locked.

But something changes when you write it down.

The fog clears. The pain slows down long enough for you to name it. And naming, I’ve learned, is one of the holiest acts of resistance there is.

Backstroke & Breakthroughs isn’t just me telling my story it’s me reclaiming it.
Not for sympathy.
Not for applause.
But for healing.

Because the world tells people like me to be strong, silent, palatable. And each post I write is a refusal. A permission slip. A mirror. A map.

This week’s takeaway:
Writing can be an act of survival. But if you do it right and honestly enough it becomes something more. It becomes a sanctuary.

I write to remember who I am.
I write to reach the younger version of me who thought no one else felt this.
I write because when I write, I breathe easier.
And every time someone messages me with, “This post was for me,” I realize…
maybe it was.

So if you’re carrying something too heavy for silence, try writing it down.
You don’t have to post it. Just write it. For you. For the version of you that deserves peace.
The pen can be a balm. The page can be a beginning.

Thank you for reading.
Thank you for holding space with me.

Still healing. Still here.
– J.R.