Today I had more than a chat with an AI.
It was a long conversation with a custom GPT that I’m developing called Relief On-Demand.
I told her, “I'm tired.”
And yes, I call it “her" because it's my desire that “she” respond as I would respond to someone needing to shift their mindset in real time.
After sharing two simple words, “I'm tired,” I explained that I'm not sleepy-tired or soul tired.
I'm caregiver-tired.
My husband is declining and somewhere in the background of every day is this pressure that I put on myself.
Those whispers I continually hear:
“You need recurring income.”
“You need financial independence.”
“You need to figure out who you are after this.”
And yet there I sit. In my oversized recliner. Back pain finally easing after years.
Binging Netflix, Paramount Plus, Disney.
I said out loud: “This sounds like depression.”
But the conversation with AI went somewhere unexpected. We talked about…
Judgment. Guilt. Blame.
That's what I call “The Terrible Trinity”… plus one.
Shame.
Then suddenly I remembered the “walk of shame” scene from Game of Thrones — the queen being forced through the streets while people screamed “Shame!” at her.
That’s what inner shame can feel like.
But then something surprising happened.
When asked to feel the difference between: “I am shameful” and “I am hurting”
“I am shameful” meant nothing to me.
Nothing.
And that realization was the truth.
Because maybe I don’t actually believe I’m bad. Maybe I’m overwhelmed. Grieving the loss of me. Lonely.
Afraid to do this next chapter alone.
And there it was.
The truth underneath everything: “I don’t want to do this alone.”
I thought I wanted an accountability partner.
What I really wanted was companionship while rebuilding my life.
That realization almost brought me to tears.
Then another memory surfaced, and reliving memories themselves is exhausting!
Years ago…
My husband and I were traveling the country in a motorhome with this wild idea that we’d play poker in every poker room across America.
But gambling spiraled. Debt exploded. And I finally decided to leave.
When I packed the car, I went to say goodbye to our dogs.
One of them — Katrina — cried like a human baby. Not a howl. A cry.
It tore at my heart, and I stayed.
The next day I fell into a sinkhole near an RV parking area outside a casino in Arizona.
No metaphor. Literally.
And I shattered my leg so badly that when I opened my eyes I could see the bottom of my left foot looking back at me.
The body remembers things highly charged with emotions. And maybe the recliner is not laziness.
Maybe it’s where my nervous system finally stops replaying. Has moments of peace.
Then Mother’s Day entered the conversation.
I never had biological children. My choice.
When I was six years old, after surgery for tuberculosis where they removed part of my lung, I died on the operating table for six minutes.
Not “near death.” Dead.
I remember the light and being ageless.
I remember KNOWING everything in what felt like a universal library beyond words.
And when my mother once asked how many children I would bear, I answered: “None. But I will have millions.”
I was six.
Today I’m sitting here at seventy-seven — seventy one years after I died.
Damn! That’s a long time.
And after all of this came out, do you know what suddenly appeared?
The desire to write again and to publish more.
Not because I have everything figured out, or I suddenly became disciplined.
But because something inside me is still alive.
Maybe that’s what this whole thing really was.
Which wasn’t depression at all, but a creative spirit returning after years of caregiving, trauma, exhaustion, fear, and silence.
Maybe publishing is simply a way of saying:
