Dear Diary,

This section was written from a bed.

Not rest—stillness. The kind that arrives uninvited and takes your plans, your pace, and your independence with it. These pages live in the pause between healing and living, where birthdays pass horizontally and holidays come and go without movement.

Here are the quiet truths: turning forty without standing, celebrating from bed, realizing who shows up and who doesn’t, learning gratitude alongside grief. Humor survives here. So does disappointment. So does hope.

I didn’t write this season to be strong or inspiring. I wrote it to be honest while everything else was stripped away.

This wasn’t the year I walked into.

It was the year that reshaped me—flat on my back.