GABRIELA YARELIZ

No Small Act

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I went from listening to a podcast about Alix Earl vs Alex Cooper (I don’t know these people, but it’s all people can talk about) to Oprah talking about the Hoffman Process (I landed there after the heartwarming Emma Grede podcast).

I was walking from an appointment, and the sun was showering us with gracious rays of warmth. A part of me anxiously wanted to pull out my phone and open the Outlook email app, but then, I stopped myself. I looked around at the bright avenue and the invitation to live sunk in. I started walking and ended up at the edge of the neighborhood. As I walked, I relaxed into the cadence, and freedom started to sink in. I had taken the afternoon off from work, and as I usually do, I had difficulty shaking off the week. But every step I took away from my work laptop and resisting the urge to open the apps in my pocket made me more defiant and free. The weight started lifting. I started to breathe deeper.

I felt the sunshine on my face, and released my to do list.

These are ordinary moments, but they are not small. They make up the acts of defiance that make us feel alive. The robotic autopilot starts to glitch and sputter to a stop. Suddenly, we feel the blood pumping through our veins. As I walked, I did a full circle, and started to feel the exhaustion settle in. It was sweet. I had accomplished something and beat electronic despair. That is no small act.

I invite you to do the same.

Musings About Magic Rice, Meetings, Poison Control, and More

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I found a magic rice.

It cooks in six minutes. I don’t know what that sorcery is. I looked for it again this week like it was a sack of magic legumes and didn’t find it. I am on the hunt for Brad’s Organic Basmati Rice. (After years of feeling pure antipathy for rice, I am on a rice kick).

Staff meetings shouldn’t be longer than 45 minutes, and they most certainly should not be two hours of the day.

This morning, I was so on autopilot, I can’t remember if I spit out my mouthwash or accidentally swallowed it. It’s Thursday, and this is where we are at. (It was a minuscule amount, so I am not worried, and you should not be either. There will be no calls to Poison Control. Plus what would I tell them? I am not sure if I ingested it? Lord.)

Yesterday was Earth Day, and I was only outside for my commute, which made me sad. I will try and get outside midday, today. Wherever you are— get outside.

I got a text yesterday from a friend that started with “Wellness Check” Wednesday. We all need an occasional wellness check, which reminded me that May should become a month of medical appointments and check-ups. Have you done your annual check-ups and blood panels?

We need to keep each other accountable, and take care of ourselves. This is your PSA.

The trains from Brooklyn into Manhattan have been an absolute dumpster fire, lately. They make the morning a choose-your-own-adventure situation.

Tomorrow is Friday. Deep breath. We are almost there. And no matter where this train goes or whether I find that rice again— my breath is minty fresh.

This Week’s Favs 4.22.26

“Confidence doesn’t come from believing in yourself. It comes from having done the uncomfortable thing enough times that your nervous system stops flagging it as an emergency. Because nothing is actually hard, it’s just unfamiliar.” Layla Shaikley

This new Blake Shelton song touches the heart!

This message:

“Maybe because my mind is always overflowing, chaotic, holding a hundred ideas and emotions at once, my body and my mind flourish in quiet spaces. I crave symmetry because it calms me.” Garance Doré

I don’t know guys… I wanted to look like Mandy Moore, Gwen Stefani or Nicole Richie, and they are still fire.

My icons are still aspirational:

Botox and a fountain of youth, I tell you.

Keep it aspirational. Stay inspired. Remember what Cara Alwill said— it is going to be the Glitter Pink Bombshell Summer. You can find us all mentally in 2003. I got so inspired this weekend, I slathered self-tanner on (I am still pale), and washed my hair. I wore velour. I am inching toward this Glitter Pink Bombshell Summer.

I started the year with a Pvolve challenge, and I am deep in the Jennifer Aniston one. It has been a fun one, and I am obsessed with the P3 trainer with the handle. It’s happening. I keep wondering if I can copy everything I did in high school (ok, not everything), and then feel the energy I had back then. Time is an energy thief.

How is your week going? What has inspired you?

Renovations

“Renovating teaches you something life does too: the plan almost never goes as expected.

But the version that happens instead is usually even better.” Danielle Bernstein

Evolving

By: Gabriela Yareliz

How silly that we want to return to familiar places yet we ourselves are not the same.

Maybe it’s the notion that something we loved is no longer. But I suppose we must give space to everything to grow, evolve and be reborn.

A New Prayer

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Have you ever prayed, “God, show me how good life gets”? (Mantra from Alyssa Hermann)

I wonder what would happen if we did pray this prayer.

Thirty days, and then, we all come back here and share what happened.

An Opening

“There’s something humbling about realizing your timeline isn’t real…

[it] felt like an expiration date.
Now it feels like an opening.”

Danielle Bernstein

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I always want to play a game, but we never have enough people to do so. I got this new conversation game from Wilde Paper that I wanted to open, so we did that.

The weirdest thing happened in that as the game progressed, I was irked by two things— I felt that we players were not playing with the vulnerability the game requires, and as I looked at the questions, I felt like I couldn’t answer half of the questions, and the ones I could answer, had sad answers. I was disappointed by the actual answers I did have.

Sometimes, things intrude and remind us of how little has worked out for us as desired. A flood of shame and disappointment leave us soaked. I ended up in a crappy mood and deeply in my head.

I think I have been even more in my head because I am going back home soon after years of not being back. Which I guess isn’t home anymore because nothing is the same. It’s a place I likely won’t recognize. It’s my husband’s first time visiting, and I am not sure how it works to introduce someone to a place you barely recognize yourself. The last time I was there I felt very dependent and ended up just tagging along, and this time I want it to be different.

I want to see it through a different lens. I want to see it with some detachment. It can be very hard to go back to places where you felt broken or like a different person. I suppose that happens to all of us at some point or another. I wonder how it will be different seeing everything, not through a lens of manic survival but maturity.

When you have lived in as many places as I have (there are 8 grades from elementary through middle school, and I went to six different schools during that span), and everything is different, you realize home is a figment of memory and imagination. Everything you knew doesn’t exist anymore. Poof! You sort of belong nowhere and nowhere belongs to you.

This time of year feels slightly triggering due to past loss and deep confusion. There is that.

Along with all of this, I am approaching a birthday. And birthdays remind us of the timelines we built in our heads and either how accomplished or how behind we feel. I am trying to shift my slightly sour and exhausted disposition before then.

I was reading Danielle Bernstein’s Substack, and she had that quote I included above. It made me wonder what would happen if I reframed self-imposed expiration dates and that feeling of displacement and foreignness with the thought that this is an opening.

An opening for what?— we do not know. That is the tricky part with dealing with uncertainty. But an opening for something.

I have two weeks for a true shift. I am trying. As someone who has not felt healthy all of 2026, I am a bit of a Debby Downer. (I literally have these Christian healing affirmation cards to keep spirits up, healing is coming. This is where I am at). But it needs to happen. I can’t enter a new year hyper-fixated on random bits. Entering a better headspace is always a choice, and it’s not always easy and requires intentionality, but it’s possible.

Going to continue leaning into gratitude and agency. The tension I keep feeling in the pit of my stomach will need some release— movement, I guess?

If anyone knows that you can end up in the most unexpected places, it’s me. That has definitely been a theme in my life. Home can be found inside, and we can belong to each other. And every minute of time we get is a gift. We never know when the clock will run out on us.

Sometimes, things feel messy, but it doesn’t mean good isn’t around the corner.

All these mixed circumstances and feelings just mean an opening is here.

Retreat to the 90s: Pop-tarts, Fitting Rooms and Paradoxes

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Have we made everything too complicated? *Plays Avril Lavigne “Complicated”*

Cigarettes are always bad, kids, but the meaning of the image above hit home with me. What the hell were we doing in the 90s? I guess doing exercise aerobics videos (remember the step?) and there were crash diets. But it was also the era of Kelloggs and Pop-tarts for breakfast, pizza at least once a week, and with said pizza— a nice crisp and cold soda.

Sure, magazines told us what celebrities were wearing, but they were reasonable outfits you could copy the concept of, if you wanted to, without shattering the bank. We wore Old Navy flip flops in every color. We found gems we wore for years on a rack in TJ Maxx, Ross or JC Penny. Or Walmart (do you remember the Olsen twins line? Omg). You could buy normal clothes where the skirts weren’t too short and the shirts weren’t cropped. You could actually try clothes on before you bought them. (Returns and shipping are an entire industry).

Work was less complicated, too. When you were at work, you were at work. When you were home, you were home.

Music wasn’t the soundtrack of memes and posts, it was the soundtrack to real life. Radio was radio, and not just one ad after another.

Things don’t get simpler— they get dumber. We get weirder and more overwhelmed and confused. What does going back to basics look like in a modern world like ours? It all feels so paradoxical—

We pause to increase speed later.

We disconnect to connect better.

We block out influences to become inspired.

What will it take? (Says me in my health protocol). Did the matcha and supplements complicate things? Or did our environment start killing us all slowly?

And to the most fundamental question of all— do I just need a Pop-tart?

Employee Mentality, Podcasts, and Heat

By: Gabriela Yareliz

This week has been hot and humid and has contained a flurry of so many thoughts…

I read this great post on the psychology of the eldest daughter. If you are an eldest daughter, this will resonate.

Danielle Bernstein wrote about getting a new phone and spending eight hours without a phone while transferring her phone data. She said she went on the most present date of her life. When was the last time you went phoneless?

I am on my Flo Living supplement protocol. A month and a half caffeine-free. Just in time for every place to have strawberry matcha, sigh. Hanging in.

As mentioned in previous posts, I am listening to every Emma Grede podcast out there. I can’t wait to start her new book. One of the most recent podcasts I listened to (How to Fail) had two takeaways that struck me:

You are responsible for your life’s balance; and
You must get out of the employee mentality. We fictionalize people’s power over us, but this, too, is a choice.

Are you an employee or a boss in your mind?

I also enjoyed this David Grutman podcast (loved to hear his love for Miami and Florida) and this interesting and vulnerable podcast with Kevin Boehm.

“The first time you live in your car, you think that this is going to make a good book someday.” Kevin Boehm

Fitness-wise, I still feel pretty lost and uninspired. (Working on that). This unexpected heat has us all AC-less and feeling like we are doing heated yoga or something.

Is it warm where you are? Any good podcast recs? What are you reading? When can you leave your phone behind? What has been unedited, streaming through your mind?