The Stories That Woke Me Up

Hi there, and welcome. 

If this is your very first impression of me because you’ve landed on my featured blog, you are most especially welcome. You’ve arrived at a time when I am in the middle of something tender and raw: the process of rebuilding myself. Not just as an individual, but as a voice, a brand, a storyteller, and a woman.

This is my newly curated website. It isn’t just a digital home, it’s a space I’ve created with care, because I’ve realized that the stories I tell matter. They shape me, they shape how you see me, and perhaps, if I’m lucky, they might shape you too.

2025 has been strange. Strange in the way that forces you to pause and really pay attention. For months, I felt like I was watching my own life from the outside, disconnected and unable to step in fully. It was unsettling, like being trapped behind a glass window. 

I’ve come to understand that this is what it feels like to grieve the person you used to be while trying to embrace who you’re becoming. 

Growth, I’ve learned, is beautiful when you look at it from a distance. But up close, it can feel like loss.

Last year carried milestones that reshaped me:

• I turned 30, and with that came a wave of reflection I wasn’t quite ready for.
• I published my first book, a dream I had carried since childhood.
• I completed a leadership diploma, stretching myself in ways I didn’t think I could.
• And for the first time in my life, I stayed in one job for an entire year, and I still genuinely like it here. That stability, too, felt like growth.
   

But this year pushed me deeper. I found myself wrestling with faith, questioning God, questioning everything I thought I believed. And oddly, that struggle didn’t drive me away. It anchored me. My doubt became a doorway. I discovered that God isn’t threatened by my questions; if anything, they drew me closer. And in all of this, I remembered that God is, after all, the greatest storyteller.

The growth I am experiencing has not come gently. It caught me off guard. It broke through my autopilot. There is a part of me that has been long gone. That part went with the traumatic experiences from my early twenties. 

This growth, It woke me up. I found myself suddenly present, suddenly caring again about myself, about the world, about the lives of others. Recently, I’ve been asking harder questions about feminism, not as a concept I nodded to in passing, but as a lived reality. What does it mean to be a woman in this world? What does it mean to exist freely, fully, and safely as a woman? These questions matter to me now in a way they didn’t before.

And I can trace this awakening to stories. I’ve been reading works that refuse to let human suffering stay invisible:

• Cockroaches by Scholastique Mukasonga, a harrowing memoir of survival and memory.
• Salt to the Sea by Ruta Sepetys, which turned a forgotten tragedy into something unforgettable.
• The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah, which taught me about quiet resistance and love in impossible times.
• The Diary of Anne Frank, each page a reminder of how hope and humanity persist even in the darkest corners.
   

These books cracked something open in me. They made history breathe. They turned distant conflicts into intimate encounters. They transformed statistics into names, faces, and beating hearts.

That’s the power of storytelling; it makes you care. It reaches across time and space, bridging lives that would otherwise never touch.

And so here I am, becoming. A woman who feels deeply. A woman who is learning to think critically, act intentionally, and bear witness. I am not who I was last year, and I suspect next year will change me again. But today, I know this:

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• Words pulled me out of the fog.
• Stories cracked me open.
• They helped me make sense of what felt senseless.
• They reconnected me to others, and to myself.
   

When I first began sharing my writings publicly, my only goal was simple: If I can reach just one person, then it’s worth it. I still hold on to that truth 5 years later.

Because stories heal.
Stories inspire.
Stories breathe life.

And honestly, I don’t know who I would be without them.

So here I stand in all my becoming. A writer. A woman. A witness.

Let’s see where these stories take us.

Yours truly,
Tikia with Grace