It’s 10 p.m., the house is vibrating with chaos, and I’m trying not to lose my shit. Zuma’s bouncing on my bed like she’s auditioning for Cirque du Soleil, asking for snacks, milk, and maybe the moon while she’s at it. The tapping on the wall is like a tiny poltergeist saying, “Hey, let me join in!” My chest feels like it’s hosting a sold-out panic attack convention, and to top it all off, Zuma’s straw is making this God-awful squeaky noise, like she’s doing it on purpose to see how close she can get me to the edge. Spoiler: she’s nailing it.
“Zuma,” I begged, practically on my knees. “Please, just try to feel my energy right now. I’m dying. My chest is tight. I’m this close to a breakdown. Can you please just relax for five minutes?”
Did she relax? No. Did she double down on the squeaky straw? Absolutely.
I escaped to the kitchen for a breather and came back with the milk. She’s sitting on the bed, slurping away like she’s on vacation, and hits me with, “Can we pull cards?”
Cards. At 10 p.m. With this energy. No. No, no, no. But here’s the thing—this kid has the persistence of a debt collector, so I gave in. Begrudgingly, I grabbed the deck, shuffled half-heartedly, and tried to drown out the madness.
The Card That Jumped: Insight
As I’m sitting the cards down, the top one jumps off the deck. Not slides. Not falls. Jumps. Zuma’s eyes go wide like we’ve just witnessed a miracle, and honestly, I’m not far behind her.
“I feel like I need to flip this,” I said, staring at the card like it was about to give me life advice. I turn it over: Insight.
And, of course, it’s Insight. The universe is nothing if not predictable. I explain the card’s meaning to Zuma, which boiled down to: Listen to your gut, lady. You already know the answers. And I knew it was true. I’d been ignoring my intuition for weeks, maybe months, desperately seeking external validation instead of trusting myself. I should’ve just tattooed “Send Help” on my forehead at this point.
I put the deck back in the box and set it at the foot of the bed. We were done. Or so I thought.
The Rogue Card: Let Go
I turned to grab a shirt from my closet, and when I turned back, the box was open. The stack of cards was face down, except for one card flipped face up: Let Go.
“Zuma,” I barked, “did you touch the cards?”
She didn’t even look up from her cup. “Nope. You did that.”
I know I didn’t. I closed that box. I know I did. But there it was—Let Go, staring at me like a smug little ghost whispering, “I told you so.”
This one hit hard. Let Go was basically the universe screaming, “Seriously, woman, how many times do we have to say it? RELEASE. YOUR. SHIT.” I read the meaning to Zuma, which was essentially: Let go of the fear, the control, the garbage you’re clutching to like it’s some kind of emotional security blanket. And I thought, Fine. Okay. I get it.
The Chosen Card: Alignment
At this point, I figured, why stop now? I shuffled the deck one last time and pulled Alignment. Because, of course, Alignment was the grand finale. It’s the card that says, “Do what we’ve been telling you, and you’ll finally get your life together. You’ll feel good. Things will work. You’ll stop spiraling every Tuesday at 3 a.m.” No
Lightbulb! Or a Folding Chair to the Face
I was sitting there, staring at those cards like they’d just been caught cheating on me. —Insight, Let Go, and Alignment—and it finally hit me. Not like a gentle realization. No, it hit me like a folding chair to the face at a WWE match. Kingston had been right all along. This kid—my kid—knew I had the answers. He trusted me to figure it out, even while I was too busy spiraling in self-doubt to trust myself.
If this had been about him, about Kingston’s life or needs, I wouldn’t have hesitated. Not for a single second. If someone tried to tell me what my kid needed, I would’ve laughed in their face, hit them with a verbal one-two, and gone on about my business. My gut was gospel when it came to him.
So why can’t I do that for me? Why am I out here treating my own intuition like the last kid picked for dodgeball?
The Universe on Repeat
Let me back up. For the last month—or let’s be real, my entire life—the universe has been screaming the same thing at me on loop:
• Trust yourself.
• Let go of the crap weighing you down.
• Start loving yourself already, damn it.
• Surrender control and stop micromanaging your misery.
• Be rewarded with the life you’ve been too scared to admit you deserve.
And do you know how frustrating it is to hear the same advice over and over when you already know the answer? It’s like Googling “why is my life a mess” and every search result says, “Clean your room, Karen.” I’ve talked to three mediums (yes, three), prayed to God, vented to pigeons, and flipped cards until the deck begged for mercy. And every single time, I’ve gotten the same response: “You already know.”
I’ve been chasing validation my whole life, desperate for someone to tell me what I already know. And the universe, God, Kingston—take your pick—has been patiently repeating itself like, “Are you done yet? Can we move on?”
What My Boss Tried to Tell Me
Tonight, I’m sitting here trying to erase the trauma I never knew existed when I remembered something Bubby and I talked about. Kingston knew. Of course he did. That little sage in Spider-Man pajamas had it all figured out weeks before he left.
We were sitting together, talking about God and what was going to happen after he left for Heaven. Kingston, in his perfectly blunt way, looked at me and said, “When I go to Heaven, I’m going to have to fire you.”
“Excuse me?” I said, choking on a laugh and a sob at the same time. “You can’t fire me. I’m your mom!”
“Well, I’m your boss. You work for me,” he said, dead serious. “And when I go with Jesus, your job here is done.”
It stung, but he wasn’t being cruel. Kingston never wasted words. He was telling me something important: that he trusted I’d figure out what came next.
So I asked, “Okay, boss. If you’re firing me, what am I supposed to do? What happens to me when you’re with Jesus?”
“I know what you’ll do,” he said with the confidence of a CEO delivering a keynote speech.
“Well,” I said, half joking and half desperate, “since you’ve got this direct line to God, can you ask Him real quick? What will I do next? What will I be when I grow up?”
Kingston closed his eyes, pressed his fingers to his temples like he was trying to channel divine Wi-Fi, and went quiet. Zuma and I just sat there, holding our breath like we were about to get the answer to life itself.
Finally, Kingston opened his eyes, looked straight at me, and said, “God says…”
My heart was pounding. Kingston never let me ask God questions, and here he was about to deliver the answer to the question I’d been dying to know—my life’s purpose. I felt like I might actually burst sitting there, waiting for my tiny guru to drop the biggest truth bomb of my life.
Then he pointed at me, completely serious, and said, “He said I can’t tell you.”
I literally dropped my soda. “What?! Are you kidding me?” That was not what I expected to hear. At all.
“What?! Oh, come on, Kingston!” I shrieked, already laughing through the tears.
But he just shrugged, like he couldn’t be bothered. “God says you already know. He said he’s been telling you your whole life.” Then he hopped back onto his iPad and moved on, end of discussion.
The Takeaway
That moment has lived rent-free in my head ever since. Kingston knew I had the answers, even when I refused to believe it. He trusted me completely, even when I was floundering.
And in that moment, it hit me: I’m done playing small. I’m saying it loud and clear—I want to live. Not just drag my ass through another day, not just survive like I’m the star of some never-ending reality show called Barely Hanging On, but actually live.
If Kingston could look at me with all the faith of a tiny Buddha in a Minecraft hoodie and say, “You already know,” then maybe it’s time I stop asking tarot decks, mediums, pigeons, God, random street signs, or the guy who bagged my groceries last week for a different answer—and start living like Kingston and believe in myself.
