Kat Musings

Standing at a crossroads, surrounded not by roads but doors. Only in the dark could I feel the weight of the key already resting in my palm. William Blake (1757–1827), The Night of Enitharmon’s Joy (also known as Hecate), c. 1795.

I wrote this back on March 9, 2026, on social media before I started my blog, so I wanted to put it here so it had a place to be remembered. Obviously, like all of us, I’ve been pondering our current military conflict with Iran and wanted to share some thoughts. Dialectical thinking is the ability to hold two truths at once, even when they seem to contradict each other. I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means in the context of family and friends serving in the military

I didn’t set out to find a hidden history, but I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on LGBTQ+ history within the Catholic Church, and I keep ending up in places I didn’t expect. While official Catholic teachings have often drawn boundaries around questions of sexuality, gender, and relationships, the historical record tells a much more complicated story.The deeper you look into the Church’s past, the harder it becomes to tell the story of Catholicism without also acknowle

As a queer person, I never imagined I would one day write a letter to the Pope. Yet there I was, sitting at my computer, addressing an institution that once caused me profound pain. For much of my life, Catholicism felt like a door that stayed closed. I grew up in it. I made my First Communion. I knew its prayers, its rhythms, its silence. It was part of my family, my culture, my inheritance. But as I came to understand myself, I also absorbed the message, spoken or implied,

I started graduate school four years ago. I started on a whim after COVID, after spending a year mostly inside. Before that, I had already been in a long process of rebuilding myself after my marriage ended in 2017, almost a decade of weaving that life back together in different ways, not all of them linear or clean. Learning to date and be in relationships again felt like a kind of trial by fire. Or maybe more like accidental exposure therapy, just repeatedly stepping into s

I am so tired of looking up from the floor of our arguments, tracing the high, sharp edge of your condescension. I have been right here, texting you all day. Answering, replying, giving you attention, saying yay to what you built, only for you to decide it wasn't enough. Because I didn't cheer the way you wanted, you chose to feel abandoned. You hand me an accusation wrapped in sarcasm, blaming me for a crime I never committed. And when I offer a genuine bridge: It wasn't my

One thing I love about poetry is how metaphor and story can hold truth. My poems are moments in time, feelings translated into stanza. And although all my work holds truth, it is not always objective truth. It is truth in feeling, truth in the moment, truth in theme. I think people often approach poetry or song as if it is autobiography or fact. But poetry lives in a different kind of truth. It can be emotionally true without being literally true. The poets, mystics, philosop

I’ve been thinking a lot about the psychological idea of integration, or the process of bringing different parts of ourselves into a more coherent whole. Lately, though, I find myself drawn to a different word: reconciling. I feel like I am in a major period of reconciliation right now. I am working on reconciling my heritage and spirituality by attending Mass again. I am reconciling the younger version of myself with the person I am becoming as I prepare to enter the counsel

I’ve been thinking a lot about Saint Thomas the Apostle, AKA “Doubting Thomas.” I’ve talked about my current spiritual journey back toward Catholicism and my experience attending Mass in other posts, but I wanted to share some thoughts. I don’t fully agree with all of the Church’s dogma, but I’ve found myself drawn to something else entirely: its tradition, metaphor, art, history, mysticism, and heritage, all woven together into something that feels lived rather than purely i

He’s throwing accusations like grenades reality warped like a fun house mirror Meanings feel unstable I second guess everything where is my backbone each new text a jolt We’re both swirling through infinite mirrors a power struggle I wasn’t the problem we are the problem Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion (c. 1944), Francis Bacon

It’s not fair messages, but no real dialogue. You reach for connection, but not for me in the ways I need. I don’t know how to say no, how to let go. My heart doesn’t stop beating just because it ended. And you know my Achilles’ heel, how to make me kneel. I have to stop the pain from recurring. I have to learn to believe in consistency. Antonio Canova, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, c. 1793

Burnt out. Run down. Like a cigarette smoked to the filter still burning my fingers while pretending it doesn’t hurt. I keep pouring from an empty cup. Keep showing up half-human half-static. The tarot reads: Hanged Man. Sacred pause. Reversed King of Pentacles. Stop. The High Priestess. Rest. Unplug the wire. Let the signal drop. Let the static fade. And I am just a body left in the dark. The Magdalen with the Smoking Flame (c. 1635–1637) by Georges de La Tour

I am tired of translating hunger into softer language tired of folding myself into patience while my needs sit untouched between us like unopened letters I am tired of reaching first of asking gently then clearly then breaking when even my breaking goes unanswered love should not feel like standing at a locked door with bleeding knuckles hoping someone inside finally hears me because somewhere between the begging and the silence I remembered something: I am the prize. not a b

I keep thinking I am the pattern instead of the person inside it a hand learning the shape of loss before it happens a mouth rehearsing apology like it is a language I was born speaking I say I am trying to go slow but I am trying not to disappear first You say you need safety before coming closer I hear not yet not yet not yet and my body translates it into history the way rooms used to close without warning the way love became something I had to earn by being smaller I am a

And somehow just when the squall begins to swell my tether tightens my anchor appears no warning no announcement just tires on gravel a quiet intrusion into the ordinary air like the world decided to be gentle for once he says I just felt like I needed to come no map no reason just the pull and I don’t ask him to explain miracles inside the house is too small for what rises in me when he hugs me I fold like weather giving way and I don’t mean softly I mean finally I didn’t kn

May 10, 2026 Today, on Mother’s Day, I’m feeling the pangs of grief. It is my Grammy’s first heavenly Mother’s Day, ten months without her here. My grandpa passed away in March 2024, so today holds the ache of missing them both, and of how quickly absence becomes part of time. This year has also carried two unexpected losses among my friends. My dear friend, Dylan Lane Sepulvado, passed away unexpectedly on February 11, just months before what would have been his birthday in

I don’t know what the ignition was in childhood that catapulted my attachments interpreter stabilizer fixer I learned early how to read absence as if it were a language The pattern repeats itself in different names I once called mine same distance same return to silence I recognize it sooner now the way it begins how quickly I start listening for what isn’t said how silence asks to be explained I answer anyway We were always in motion boxes half-opened goodbyes already practi

And somehow I found a way to forge my own path to march to my own drum I hum the chants to my own tune Opinions are louder than gongs sometimes everyone speaking toward the air everyone certain small altars of being right everyone carving the world smaller with their mouths offering pieces of each other to invisible crowds saying too much too fast and somewhere in all of it we stopped hearing not for agreement just for the quiet weight of another life I think we are losing th

She arrives like weather that forgets it is weather all voltage, all sudden brightness like the room loses its footing before I do Her stories do not stay still they shift when I look directly at them I stop asking for certainty and start collecting fragments She is all restless movement itching at her own skin, shifting in her seat like her body cannot decide where to land she asks me questions like she is building a map but leaves herself half drawn edges missing, details w

Not everyone is privy to my presence. Not everyone gets access. I decide the threshold. Who enters. Who learns the shape of my light. My silence is not permission. My distance is not cruelty. I have learned what it costs to leave every window open, to mistake every knocking for love. What remains is mine. My quiet. My fire. I am learning that closed doors can still hold warmth. That chosen hands arrive gently. That light does not owe itself to every passing shadow. Those who