Today is my birthday.
And today, Tennessee is scheduled to execute Christa Pike.
There is something unsettling about those two things sharing the same date.
One is a day that marks the continuation of a life. The other is a day the State has designated to end one.
Before I reflect on another year of my own life, I find myself thinking about hers.
And maybe that is fitting. Because so much of what I have written here over the past year has been about people whose lives intersect with systems that have the power to decide what happens to them.
When I restarted my blog last year, I didn’t know what it would become. I didn’t know if I’d stay consistent. I didn’t know if I’d have anything worth saying week after week. I just knew I needed to write again — for clarity, for discipline, for myself.
What I did know , even then, was that my work was rooted in calling. That justice wasn’t just my job; it was the place where my faith, my mercy gift, and my quiet nature met. My first post after restarting was about that truth. I didn’t know it would become the thread running through everything I wrote this year.
I wrote about mercy, about scripture, about standing with people who’ve been silenced by systems that were never built for them. I wrote about the tension of being a Black woman in indigent defense. I wrote about grace in the trenches. I wrote about the cases that stayed with me long after the courtroom emptied.
What I didn’t expect was how often those themes would return — not because I planned them, but because the work kept demanding to be named. Justice kept showing up in my drafts, in my reflections, in the stories that wouldn’t leave me alone.
And the injustices I’ve seen this year still infuriate me. Racial injustice. Economic injustice. The way the mentally ill and unhoused are treated like problems instead of people. I don’t sugarcoat it — it pisses me off. Not in a way that makes me bitter, but in a way that reminds me why I do this work. Why I write. Why I keep naming the things this system would rather leave unspoken.
And what infuriates me most is the hypocrisy — the way systems claim to care about safety, dignity, and rehabilitation, but spend their money fighting the very changes that would make those things possible. Texas was just ordered to provide air conditioning in all its prisons, and instead of complying, they’re appealing. Alabama has been told for years to address the in‑custody deaths in its prisons, and instead of cleaning up the facilities, they fight every lawsuit that tries to force their hand.
It’s hard to watch states spend more energy defending cruelty than correcting it. Hard to watch them pour money into litigation instead of humanity. Hard to watch them resist reforms that would save lives. And if I’m completely honest, it pisses me off, because the people who suffer the consequences are the ones with the least power to fight back.
Somewhere along the way, writing became more than discipline. It became witness. It became clarity. It became the place where my voice stayed steady even when my body couldn’t. I’ve written every week or pretty close to it for over a year now. Through exhaustion. Through silence. Through cases that stretched me. Through moments when my literal voice failed but my written one didn’t. I didn’t know what this blog would become, but it became a record — of calling, of clarity, of justice, of mercy, of becoming.
And now, standing at the edge of another birthday, I can see the arc of the year more clearly. The work shaped me. The writing steadied me. The calling deepened. The mercy widened. The quiet sharpened. The storm gathered.
I began this blog by saying advocacy doesn’t always roar, sometimes it whispers. A year later, I still believe that.
I’m still whispering.
And I’m still moving mountains.
