Love Received

By: Gabriela Yareliz

When a loved one has passed, we still think of them every day. We love them. We miss them. There would be no point in missing someone we won’t see again, but it’s like we know. We know this is not the end.

I wonder what happens to all the love accumulated over a time of absence. The love, the prayers, the silent moments. I like to think that, someday, when we are all reunited again, we will be told by our loved ones that they received the most beautiful gift. That they received it all. Maybe in some beautiful box or glow. That they were overwhelmed by its steadfastness and beauty. By its abundance.

I can only assume they would experience as much, because that’s the thing about love— it’s never wasted, it never fails, and it endures all things. God is love. It’s all encompassing, ever present, and never failing. It’s eternal.

And so, I am confident it will be received. And given that love is timeless, we receive, too. It’s an enduring mysterious gift that overcomes all.

A Middlemarch Summer

By: Gabriela Yareliz

There she was on the train, staring into her copy of Middlemarch by George Eliot. I like Middlemarch. I even read my favorite New Yorker writer’s book that pulls themes from it, Rebecca Mead’s My Life in Middlemarch. Virginia Woolf (one of my all time favorites) said that Middlemarch is “one of the few English novels written for grownup people.”

There aren’t too many people who are as masochistic as I am when it comes to reading classics. Given the reader’s age (she took forever to turn that page), I quickly understood it must be some sort of summer reading, perhaps. That or the book is having a new moment since it’s 1871 publishing. And if that’s the case— listen, mazel tov.

As I observed, I had been listening to an excellent podcast on fiber (guys, fiber can protect you from cancer. More on this later. Check out the pod)—when my thoughts were interrupted, and I got distracted thinking about the joys of summer reading.

There was something predictable and exciting about a summer reading list. I’ll never forget that summer I spent sitting on a church kitchen counter at a vacation Bible school reading The Odyssey in between manning the snack shifts for the kids.

Summer is for fiction. I don’t read fiction often, but when I do, I find I gravitate toward it in the hot summer months. Maybe, it’s the idea that if you can’t travel or go away— you can have your mind travel and get away. It’s a time for mental adventures.

Do you have a summer reading list? I am on book #34 of the year and still scheming for ways I can squeeze in more books. I didn’t read much in the past two months, but I will be diving into some books soon.

I am curious though— what is on your list? What was your favorite summer reading book? Mrs. Dalloway shook me to my core. Those are feelings you never forget. The books I read as a child changed me forever. They shaped me deeply. I saw this beautiful homage to the American Girl books the other day, and I was reminded of this. Books that taught about virtues like courage, goodness and integrity.

Books hold power. Something magical, almost. They get engraved in the soul. The written word is something mystical. This is why we must choose carefully. I find it to be no accident that what God left us was a book. I am sure there is more to this than we could ever imagine or understand.

If you don’t have a book you are reading, find yourself a gem and see what you find. It may be a memory that lasts forever.

Ideas for NYC: Open Letter #4

Dear Eric Adams (NYC Mayor),

We need to discuss the bridges and tunnels. Let’s start with the bridges. The Macy’s Firework Show on July 4th utilized the Brooklyn Bridge nicely. The best part of the show was the American flag waterfalling off of the Brooklyn Bridge. The projections on the Brooklyn Bridge were fun and innovative. An excellent way to cut costs and still have something visual.

Why not have something like this year round? Not the fire, but the fun projections on the sides of the bridge. You can honor different holidays, advertise movies and other types of partnerships— the City can make some cash. And let’s face it, due to your mismanagement and the mismanagement and corruption of Bill de Blasio, the City needs every penny it can get. Just an idea. Maybe, with that cash, we can stop throwing our veterans out on the street. Another thought. Take it or leave it.

Let’s go to the tunnels. There are a million things we can say about the trains. God help us commuters— all of us. But today, I want to focus on paint notices.

Many of us endure the commute through distraction. We read, we listen to podcasts, and every so often, we lift our gaze (avoiding eye contact with lunatics) to see what station we are rolling past or through. Each station has a personality. We know which stations have certain tile (Canal Street has the Chinese characters on the tiles), and some stations have a certain color of paint on the columns.

I have noticed that stations that were painted a jovial light yellow are now being painted black with zero notice. The black/dark grey paint is a terrible choice. It makes the station look as sinister as it actually is. Please stop doing this. Pick a better color. The City serves us a plate of crap every day, but at least make it pretty and let it have a garnish. A little mind game never hurt anyone.

Most importantly, New Yorkers should be informed when a station is changing. Today, I got off at a station to switch to an express train and a formerly yellow station was black. I was there LAST NIGHT, and it was yellow. I felt disoriented and lost. It took me a minute to make sure I was where I was supposed to be. I glanced around the darkened station wondering what nightmare I had stepped foot in. This is not cool. Many New Yorkers will be confused and miss their stop. Imagine the elderly and the monolingual non-English speakers? All of us lost in the darkness in different ways. We already expend a lot of energy dodging death. We don’t need to spend more mental energy to make sure we aren’t lost.

Stop making unsafe and dirty spaces look dirtier, darker and creepy. The City is hard enough to navigate as is. Find brighter colors that make us feel hopeful. No one wants to die in a black station. At least let me have the last thing I see be a bright yellow.

Also, the Verrazano bridge has that beige cover again. See Letter #3 for more on that. You know I am always paying attention. Thank you for your time and attention. Fix the vibes, Adams. How do you expect anyone to re-elect you when the City keeps decomposing under your watch?

Wishing us all bright yellow days despite your incompetence. Sigh.

The Real Scandal

I don’t remember how I ran into this clip because I don’t follow this host, but it is on point.

I am still mind-blown that this administration, who declared itself to be the face of accountability, truth, restoration of trust in institutions and transparency is now praying we will all just forget about this. Ghislaine Maxwell was scapegoated— she is in prison (and rightfully so), but apparently there were no clients to this trafficking ring. None.

“This was not a small or isolated operation. Dozens of devices. Thousands of photos. Labeled photo albums. Surveillance tapes. Blueprints.

Foreign passports.

This wasn’t one man with a dark secret. This was infrastructure. Logistics. Coordination.

A system.

There’s a massive digital footprint.

Hundreds of hard drives, USBs, CDs, backup servers-some labeled with things like “nude girl pics book 4.”

Travel logs. Employee directories. Video tapes.

The real question:

Why hasn’t this been fully disclosed to the public?

Intelligence involvement isn’t a stretch An Austrian passport with Epstein’s face.

Honeytrap-style setups. International mobility.

Too much precision, too much reach, too many decades undetected.

This isn’t wild theory.

It’s a logical hypothesis.

The System’s silence is itself evidence if anyone else had even 1/10 of this material— underage photos, coded filenames, flight logs— they’d be under a prison.

But here?

Crickets.

No prosecutions. No answers.

That’s the real scandal.

Our Institutions are on trial

This is bigger than Epstein.

It’s about media complicity.

Justice deferred.

Power protected.

Truth buried.

Until this case is fully revealed, every elite institution carries a stench they can’t wash off.

To dismiss this as “conspiracy” is to admit you no longer believe in accountability.

Truth about Epstein is not morbid curiosity.

It’s a civic test.

And every day we fail to demand answers, we normalize elite immunity.

If we don’t confront what’s in those files…

We’ve declared that truth in America is now negotiable.

That justice is a luxury of the unimportant.

That power is a shield for the perverse.

The Epstein case isn’t over.

It’s the Rosetta Stone of public trust.

And if we don’t get to the bottom of it, we’ll never restore what’s already been lost.”

[Words by @glennbeck]

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

The Emergence of Joy

“Happiness requires that you find meaning – and meaning comes from suffering.” Arthur Brooks

By: Gabriela Yareliz

SamySam on Instagram has an infectious energy I admire. He stands there and hollers his signature, “Life is goooooood,” and then, does a little dance. I just want to bottle that energy up and keep it in my pocket. I wish my serious, high-strung self had an ounce of the swagger and pep that man carries.

The world lacks joy. We often opt to approach life from an angle of victimhood, self-righteousness, dread, fear, worry, complaint, ego, ingratitude, stagnation in the past, control. These are postures of our false self. None of these postures leads us to joy.

Joy makes us unstoppable, Erwin McManus says. I want more joy. I think we have reduced joy to something it is not, though.

Joy seems to have so many expressions. It can seem like satisfaction and gratitude. It can look like knowing you have and are enough. It can be quiet and brimming or it can be jubilant and announced (like SamySam). But what seems to be constant is that true joy is a solid thing, and it comes from an unexpected source— often if emerges from the ashes like a phoenix. It emerges from hardship, suffering and sorrow. It emerges as a contrast to its background and context. It shines out of darkness. It is strength.

I think part of why joy makes us unstoppable is because it comes out of a context where, by some miracle of God, we are still standing. It is a proven type of strength. I suppose this is why scripture calls the joy of the Lord our strength. (Neh. 8:10) It becomes a cycle. Joy emerges from the struggle like a lifeboat, and then, when the next struggle arrives, we use it to sail through the next storm.

“But I’ve come to realize that I find joy in the hardship, in the struggle, in the process of becoming.” Gor (Mixtapes from Gor)

Today, if at any point you feel the postures of your false self, remind yourself that life is good. You have a boat that can get you through the storm. It’s a type of strength called joy.

The Client List

By: Gabriela Yareliz

I am annoyed.

Suddenly, there is no Epstein client list. This was said by the same people who previously said they were reviewing it (Pam Bondi, Dan Bongino, Kash Patel…). This administration, like the ones before it, is protecting pedophiles and criminals. They lack integrity, and they think we are stupid.

Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt deflected, as every press secretary does, and insulted the intelligence of the American people. This is not transparency.

(If you are interested in a body language analysis tied to this, check it out here. What I love about body language analysis is it confirms what our gut is telling us. It doesn’t lie. As members of a society that often tells us to ignore what our eyes see, I am a big believer in growing in gut intuition).

Views from the Train Seat

By: Gabriela Yareliz

Another day, another set of observations from the train and curiosities. A bald tattooed man is deep in his book. He feels the need to read while leaning, full body, into the aisle. He makes faces while he reads like he is performing for us. Like a mime Reading Rainbow.

The air is thick and sticky. A larger woman opens her enormous black Rebecca Minkoff bag and pulls out a jar of Talenti gelato (I kid you not). She whips out a spoon and starts shoveling ice cream into her mouth like she is racing against her own melting. She is determined to stay cool. The young man next to me smells like he had a bad bathroom day. Like he was lactose intolerant and ate a tub of ice cream. He smells like waste. (I have a weak sense of smell, so if I can smell it, it must be strong). He fidgets a lot. We weaves in and out of sleep. His hair, cut in a shape that resembles a broom, nods from side to side. Was he food poisoned? Ugh. The worst. We smell him with compassion.

One young woman with beats on and big blue eyes seems to be crying while clutching a box she is definitely trying to return and drop off at UPS. It has no label. It does have that battery drawing. Under the box, she has a white Stanley cup between her legs.

Two women in their 20s with bright shirts are sitting across the aisle from each other and having a full blown conversation across the aisle. They gesture and take up space, looking like they are about to pat-a-cake.

Some men get on. They look like trouble, and they wear NY Yankees hats even though they don’t look like they have watched a day of baseball in their lives. Please, they would definitely be bored.

One woman is grading papers, even though she looks like she is in high school herself. A woman wearing scrubs chugs Celsius gripped between her acrylic nails.

I glance out of the window and see a local train competing with our express train. It beats us to the station and doesn’t even wait. It rattles away. The soiled man next to me pulls his shirt over his nose. I am confused. Is he going to vomit now? God help me. The girl with the UPS box gasps as she watches the local train vanish into the tunnel. Talenti lady had put away her ice cream to bolt for it, but then, she relaxes into her slower pace realizing that train waited for no one.