BEHIND THE WORDS
The woman behind the words.
I've never been particularly good at keeping my heart inside my chest. So I started keeping it in lowercase and capitals.
A LITTLE INTRODUCTION
Pull up a seat.
I'm Necole. A mother, a writer, and a woman who has never been particularly good at feeling anything halfway.
I have a habit of finding metaphors in ordinary things, asking questions that don't have comfortable answers, and turning the contents of my head into paragraphs before I've figured out what they mean.
Sometimes I'm funny. Sometimes I'm furious. Sometimes I'm writing about something that happened eight years ago because apparently my heart hasn't gotten the memo that time is supposed to move forward.
Most of what you'll find here began as something I needed to say, even when I wasn't sure I wanted anyone to hear it.
BEYOND THE PAGE
I contain multitudes. Most of them are arguing.
I'm a mother, a chronic overthinker, a collector of songs that sound like open wounds, and someone who can find an existential crisis in something as ordinary as taking out the trash. I have a soft spot for the underdogs, an unreasonable attachment to October, and a habit of assigning sentimental value to things most people would have thrown away years ago.
I believe people are complicated. That laughter and grief can occupy the same room without either one being an impostor. That you can be grateful for your life and still have days when living it feels impossibly heavy. I believe in asking uncomfortable questions, changing your mind when you learn something new, and never confusing kindness with an obligation to make yourself smaller.
I'm equal parts sentimentality and sarcasm, tenderness and stubbornness. I can write three thousand words about the human condition and then spend twenty minutes trying to decide whether a text message needs an exclamation point. I haven't figured out how to make any of these versions of myself take turns, so I've mostly stopped asking them to.
THE REASON FOR THE WORDS
I write because I don't know where else to put it all.
I don't always write because I've figured something out. More often, I write because I haven't. Because there's a thought that won't leave me alone, a memory that keeps finding new places to ache, or a feeling I can't quite name until I see it sitting on a page in front of me.
These are my journals. Not carefully constructed lessons disguised as vulnerability, not stories with the difficult parts conveniently edited out, and certainly not evidence that I've mastered the art of being human. Sometimes I contradict myself. Sometimes I write something on a Tuesday that I no longer believe by Friday. Sometimes I spend three thousand words trying to understand something and arrive at the end with exactly as many questions as I had when I started.
I've written from places I wouldn't wish on anyone, but I've also written about ordinary mornings, ridiculous conversations, the people I love, and the strange little details that make a life recognizable as your own. I don't believe every beautiful thing has to emerge from something terrible. Sometimes something is beautiful simply because it happened, and I was paying attention.
I share these pages because I think there's something profoundly human about letting someone else witness the unfinished parts of us. Not because I have answers to offer, but because somewhere, someone might recognize a feeling they've never known how to explain. And perhaps, for a moment, neither of us will feel quite so alone in it.
BEFORE YOU GO.
Make yourself at home.
Stay awhile. Read something. Find a piece of yourself in something I wrote about mine.