“Life happens when you’re busy making other plans” is a quote that has been circling my mind lately.

I was supposed to graduate in June after four life-changing years of my undergrad in Fashion Business in Florence, Italy. I had signed a contract for my dream apartment to stay at least another year in the city to dedicate myself fully to writing and creating. I had plans to travel, visit friends, enjoy having control over my life for once. To stick to my very calculated schedule to share all of the exciting things I have been working on with you—But life had other plans.

I decided to drop everything a couple of weeks ago when I learned my dad’s cancer treatment wasn’t working and he had to start chemo and radiation asap.

I realized I was too sick myself to commit to working as hard as I needed to in order to graduate like every other person in my class.

I realized my life was so wonderfully and painstakingly different from everyone around me, and separating myself from our shared context made a great deal of friendships dissolve overnight.

I had to uproot the home I thought I had been building on at the blink of an eye and return home to Colombia to support my dad and my family.

Simultaneously, I got interviewed and featured in the 40 under 40 list back here in Colombia, got to travel to Coachella with Pinterest, hit 500k subs on here, have been having the most exciting and creative momentum of my life, collaborating and speaking with some incredible people.

I feel so connected to my purpose to make the world better and connect with something larger than myself. I am feeling such immense gratitude I’m still attempting to grasp how this is all real.

I landed yesterday morning after packing years of my life up in a couple of days, not saying goodbye to anyone, feeling a part of me get left behind attempting to seek closure.

At the same time, I was attempting to finish the post announcing the new era of IOD (which has been an ongoing project for months now), but my cat had a terrifying medical episode so we had to drive her to the er vet and now shes hospitalized for at least a couple of days. I cried so hard I could barely open my eyes.

I don’t think I’ve ever experienced such an insane spectrum of emotions in a matter of weeks. I didn’t think it was possible to deal with such grief, devastation, and fear while experiencing this amount of abundance, connection, and joy.

These have been the most insane weeks of my life and I want to show you how life is absurd, ambivalent, and everything but linear, and that’s exactly what I want to make sure I’m sharing with you here. Not some polished idealized version of how to optimize ourselves, that despite the milestones, these are fueled by all of the difficulties of life and not allowing them to hold us back from living.

I want to show you what being human looks like in spite of all of the hollow picture-perfect performances we’ve gotten used to accepting as other’s realities—especially on social media, and yes, including Substack.

In any case, thank you for being here. I hope this reminds you to give yourself grace, meet yourself where you are at, and allow yourself to move through the complexity of feelings at your own pace.

I’ll be sharing more on this new chapter of IOD hopefully soon, making sure I give myself the space to enter this new chapter of my life as well <3