This past weekend, I crossed the border into Tijuana.
It wasn’t planned — just a spontaneous couch-surfing gathering, a house full of travelers and wanderers from all over the world.
It reminded me of a version of myself I hadn’t met in years.
Before the heaviness, before the endless ache, before loss became the language I spoke best — travel was the only place I felt at peace.
After my parents were killed, I didn’t know how to exist in one place anymore.
So, I ran.
To every continent. To anywhere I could disappear and be someone who wasn’t the girl who lost everything.
But travel didn’t stay an escape for long.
Somewhere between foreign train rides and hostel hallways, it became a form of living.
A reminder that maybe, just maybe, life wasn’t done with me yet.
I learned that there’s power in being among strangers who have endured more than you — people who have known pain and still choose to laugh, to love, to rebuild.
When I worked as a human trafficking advocate, I met survivors who had lost everything — yet their eyes still held warmth. They taught me that healing isn’t the absence of pain, but the courage to keep living with it.
I didn’t wish their horrors upon them, but in their presence, I felt seen.
Their resilience mirrored the parts of me I had buried.
It gave me purpose.
It gave me a reason to keep believing that even shattered souls could still create light.
That became my rhythm for years — moving, connecting, rebuilding, learning what it meant to be human again.
Until last year, when the world broke open once more.
đź•Š The Call That Ended the Silence
It was a late afternoon when my phone rang.
Luna’s mom.
Her name flashing on my screen felt familiar — comforting even.
But her voice was trembling.
“Epiphany…” she said softly, “she’s gone.”
The world stopped.
For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
Then came the denial — the shaking, the screaming, the whispering no, no, no until my throat went raw.
I remember collapsing to the floor, the phone still pressed to my ear as I begged God to take it back.
Luna.
My Luna.
My best friend since I was 9 years old.
🌾 The First Time She Loved Me
We met in elementary school, two awkward girls in a world that didn’t know what to do with us.
That year, I had already learned what death looked like. I carried grief that no child should ever know.
Most people didn’t know how to talk to me after my parents were gone — they avoided me, stared from a distance, whispered when I walked by.
But not Luna.
One afternoon, I was sitting alone on the playground. My hands were shaking, my chest tight — I had just overheard something cruel, someone saying, “She’s the girl whose parents died.”
Luna walked up quietly.
She didn’t try to fix it. She didn’t say sorry.
She just sat beside me.
After a few seconds, she reached out and held my hand.
We were only eleven, but her presence carried the kind of wisdom that most adults never find.
She didn’t talk — she just let me exist beside her without judgment.
That’s when I learned what love really feels like — not the kind that tries to save you, but the kind that stays.
From that day forward, she became my constant.
The one person who saw me beyond the tragedy.
She grew into the kind of woman who could read the silence in my voice, who’d show up before I asked, who’d call at midnight just to make sure I was still here.
Luna became my mirror — my anchor — my soulmate.
đź’” The Day I Lost Her
When her mother told me she had passed away, I felt like the air had been ripped from my body.
I thought I had mastered grief — that after my parents, nothing could break me the same way again.
But this loss shattered me differently.
Because losing Luna wasn’t just losing a friend — it was losing the witness to my life.
The one who knew everything.
She knew the child in me that still flinched at sudden goodbyes.
She knew the woman who built a life out of ashes and hope.
She knew every secret, every scar, every moment I pretended to be okay when I wasn’t.
When she died, all the progress, all the healing, all the “I’ve come so far” words I’d told myself — they crumbled.
I became that little girl again, alone on the playground, wishing for someone to hold her hand.
I didn’t speak her name since the funeral, almost a year ago.
Not because I forgot her, but because saying her name felt like reopening the wound.
It felt like confirming that she was really gone.
🌙 The Weekend That Brought Her Back
This past weekend in Tijuana was the first time I spoke her name out loud since that day.
It wasn’t planned — nothing about the trip was.
I just felt a pull.
Maybe it was her.
The house was filled with travelers — people who lived freely, without maps, without plans, without fear.
They cooked, sang, danced, and cried.
At one point, a woman from Argentina shared her story about losing her brother.
Her voice broke halfway through, and she whispered, “Sometimes I feel like he’s still here.”
And something in me cracked open.
I whispered, “I know what you mean.”
And then, without meaning to, I said her name.
“My best friend’s name was Luna.”
The room fell quiet.
The weight of it hit me — the sound of her name in my own mouth after so long.
And then I felt it — that warmth, that familiar energy — the same one I felt when I was eleven, sitting beside her in silence.
It was like she was there again, saying, “See, Piph? You’re still living. You’re still mine.”
That night, I cried — not the quiet, careful tears, but the kind that come from your bones.
I cried for her, for my parents, for every version of me that learned to keep surviving.
And when the tears finally stopped, I laughed.
It felt strange, but honest.
Like life was still capable of holding both.
đź’« Luna, This Is For You
Luna, my love, my constant — this is for you.
I don’t know if you can hear me, but I need to say this out loud anyway.
Thank you.
Thank you for loving me unconditionally — not by blood, not by gender, not by expectation, but simply by soul.
You taught me what true love is: the kind that stays, the kind that sits beside you in silence and never turns away.
The kind that sees every version of who I’ve been — the child, the survivor, the woman still learning how to breathe — and loves them all anyway.
Do you remember all those countries we dreamed of visiting together?
You’d joke that we’d open a tea shop in Bali, rescue dogs in Peru, and live by the sea somewhere quiet.
I can still see the way your eyes lit up every time we planned the impossible — as if the world couldn’t tell us no.
Last month, I opened the old box of letters you sent me over the past twenty years.
Each one in your careful handwriting, always ending with a doodle or a joke — even during your darkest seasons.
Reading them broke me open.
I cried for hours, realizing I’d never get another one.
That I’d never hear you say, “Piph, breathe. You’re doing too much again.”
You had this way of grounding me, even from miles away.
And now there’s silence.
I kept waiting for a sign, a dream, something to let me know you were near.
But maybe this — me writing this — is the sign.
Luna, I’m sorry it’s taken me this long to speak your name again.
Almost a year of pretending silence was loyalty — that if I stayed still, you wouldn’t fade.
But now I understand: keeping quiet doesn’t keep love alive. Living does.
So this weekend, I spoke your name into the air.
I said it while the ocean wind brushed my face, while laughter filled the room, while I remembered how alive life can still feel.
I dedicated every story, every smile, every breath of freedom to you.
Because in that moment, I knew — I wasn’t just living for me. I was living with you.
Your kindness lives in every word I speak.
Your courage in every survivor I hold space for.
Your laughter in every breath I take when the world feels too heavy.
Through the work I do, through the lives I touch, through every person who finds hope in the spaces I create — you live on.
You’ll always be my soulmate.
My sister.
My compass.
Thank you for showing me what love looks like beyond this world —
Love that doesn’t end.
Love that rebuilds.
Love that reminds me to keep saying yes to life, even when it hurts.
I promise you this: I will keep your memory alive, not through pain, but through life.
Fully. Fearlessly. For the both of us.
I love you, Luna. Always.
✍🏾 Reflective Journal Prompt – Living with Grief
Grief doesn’t disappear with time — it becomes part of the architecture of your life.
You learn to build around it, to carry it gently, to live beside it.
Some days it sleeps quietly in the corner. Other days, it knocks at the door and sits beside you until you remember what it took.
Living with grief means learning to coexist with a ghost — the kind that doesn’t haunt, but hums softly through everything you do.
You learn to laugh without guilt, to love without fear, to speak the names you once buried in silence.
That’s what I’m learning now.
That love never leaves — it just changes form.
And that living fully isn’t a betrayal of the dead; it’s the greatest way to honor them.
Because every time I say yes to life, Luna lives too.
Journal Prompt
Think of the person who first showed you what real love felt like — the one who stayed when the world walked away.
Ask yourself:
“How can I carry their love forward?”
“What would it look like to live for them, not just without them?”
Write them a letter — one you may never send — and tell them what they taught you, what you miss, and what you’ll do to keep their light alive.
đź’› Beneath the Silence
A space for those walking through grief, healing, and rediscovery.
If you’ve lost someone who was your home, may this remind you: grief may never stop knocking — but you can still open the door and let love walk back in.
With Love,
Epiphany
