LIVIA'S BOOKLET

  I learned the hymn before I learned my own name, faith handed down like heirloom silver, worn but holy. My mouth shaped hallelujah the way elders taught me— soft knees, bowed head, belief pressed into bone. Back then, heaven answered quickly, or maybe I didn’t yet know how to hear the silence. Now my hallelujah limps. It arrives bruised, breathless, missing notes. It rises from a chest tight with unanswered prayers, from nights where God feels like a closed door and I am knocking with hands already bleeding. Still, I knock. There is steam in my prayers— not desire of the body, but the heat of longing, the ache of wanting God to be near now, to touch the wound, to say my name again. Faith sweats when it’s worked hard. Mine has labored in the dark. I have cried into scriptures until the ink blurred, tears baptizing verses I no longer understood. Purity became a question instead of a crown, obedience a heavy garment in a burning room. I stayed. I always stayed. Silence became my san...

  I folded my hands around the memories like they were still warm, like they could explain themselves. Once, they fit me perfectly— every habit, every promise, every quiet yes sat in my chest and called it home. I did not question the joy then; I lived inside it the way you live inside skin. But seasons change even the truest shelters. What once fed me began to ask for blood, and what made me whole learned to take pieces instead. I stayed longer than wisdom allows, calling it loyalty, calling it love, pretending the ache was just growth and not the sound of myself thinning out. Letting go was not brave—it was brutal. It felt like tearing down a house I built with my bare hands and faith. I mourned the version of me who believed that right things stay right forever, that feeling safe was a permanent state and not a fragile agreement with time. Now I walk away without apology, but not without grief. I carry the sorrow like a scar that still remembers pain. Some things save you only f...

This year opens like a wide horizon, unwritten and breathing, calling us forward. We step out of yesterday’s shadows, hands empty of regret, hearts full of resolve, learning that beginnings are not fragile— they are brave by nature. We fortify ourselves with lessons learned the hard way, brick by brick, truth by truth. What once wounded us now becomes armor, what tried to break us now reinforces our spine. We are not starting over empty— we are starting over equipped. Change arrives without apology, and we welcome it with open palms. We loosen our grip on what no longer fits, shed old skins of fear and smallness. Growth demands motion, and we move— not because it’s easy, but because it’s necessary. And here we rise into the promise of greatness, not borrowed, not delayed, but owned. This new year doesn’t crown us—it dares us. To build boldly, to dream louder, to live fully. We step forward fortified, transformed, ready to become everything we survived to be .