The Arrival
Yesterday I walked into a room and ran into women who have known me for years. Women who hugged me like they meant it. And somehow, standing in the middle of all of that familiarity, I felt like someone they had never fully met.
Not because anything was wrong with the room. The room was beautiful. It belonged to my friend Kia, who celebrated her fiftieth birthday yesterday the way only Kia could, not with a party, but with a gathering. There is a difference.
A party is for fun. A gathering is for purpose.
And if you know Kia, you know she does not do anything halfway. She is one of those women who carries wisdom and warmth in equal measure, who is full of life and completely down to earth all at once, who genuinely believes in women and has dedicated herself to helping them see their dreams and their purpose all the way through to their full potential. Being invited into a space she created intentionally is an honor. I do not take it lightly.
The theme on the invitation said Permission for Her Mission.
And so I showed up. An hour late because I was so excited the night before that I could not sleep and did not finally drift off until almost five in the morning. But when they say God's timing is the best timing, when I walked in, things were just getting started. And the moment I crossed that threshold I felt it.
The kind of air that only exists in rooms where women who have done real work on themselves gather together. Heavy with something holy. Warm with something genuine.
And the hugs. Ya’ll. The hugs.
I have never been a big hugger. Some combination of trauma and introversion I have always chalked up to just being who I am. But the hugs I received yesterday were not the quick side hugs or the polite pat on the back while already looking over your shoulder for the next person. These were the kind of hugs where you feel it long after the person has let go. The kind where you know without a shadow of a doubt that they do not want to release you. The kind that make you want to turn around and find someone and love on them the exact same way.
I did not realize how much I had been missing that until yesterday.
But here is the thing I need you to understand. That room was not for me. It was Kia's room, Kia's moment, Kia's fiftieth. I was simply a guest. And yet God, being exactly who He is, used someone else's celebration to unlock something in me that I have been carrying for a long time without the right words for it.
That is just how He works. You show up for somebody else and He has something waiting for you at the door.
You have to understand something about who I have been for the last decade.
In 2014 God started me on a healing journey I did not see coming. I did not know it was a healing journey at the time. I just knew something was shifting. And what came out on the other side of that first season was a version of me that I can only describe as a soldier. Bold. Fearless. Unashamed. Unapologetic. I heard what God said and that was the only voice that mattered. I disrupted rooms. I had hard conversations nobody else wanted to have. I showed up loud and honest and unafraid and people knew exactly who they were getting when they got me.
And I loved her. That version of me. She was necessary. She was real. She was everything God needed her to be for that season.
But somewhere around 2021 something in me got tired.
On December 31st of 2020 I found my biological paternal family for the first time. And something in me exhaled in a way it never had before. And I thought, okay. I think I am done. I think the hard part is over. I think God is ready to move on to somebody else and I can just go live my soft life now.
I genuinely felt relief about that. Not grief. Relief. Like turning in your badge after a long shift and thinking I did my part. Somebody else can take it from here. I was done being a soldier for the Lord. You can keep that.
And then June of 2021 came. And my son was in a car accident that nearly took his life.
And I found out on the night of that accident that I was not retired. Not even close.
Because the faith that rose up in me in that hospital was something I had never felt before. Not even in my boldest seasons. It was quieter than what I had known. But it was deeper. And it was unshakeable. And somewhere in that ICU waiting room I understood that God had not moved on to somebody else. He had just been preparing me for a weight I could not have carried any earlier than right then.
What I did not know in that hospital is that the season I was entering was going to be the hardest one yet. Not because of the accident. But because of everything the accident cracked open in me that I had never let myself fully feel.
From 2022 to 2025 I was running on anxiety I did not have language for. I just knew I did not feel like myself. I knew I was on 10 about things that probably did not deserve a 10. I knew I was living every single day like it was an emergency. And I did not know why because from the outside things were actually moving. Unashamed was growing. We bought our first home in 2025 after 16 years in an apartment that held more trauma than I ever fully acknowledged. My grandchildren were here and I was pouring everything into them. Things were happening.
But I was not okay.
In 2024 I had my first panic attack. And I finally had to admit that what I had been calling spiritual warfare and pressing through and just needing more prayer was actually PTSD. Real, clinical, in my body, affecting my daily life PTSD. From a life that by anyone else's measure would be called traumatic.
And here is the thing I want to say carefully...and slowly because it matters.
I never let myself call my story traumatic. Not really. Not fully. Because I did not want to be a victim. Because I looked at everything I endured as steps ordained by God. Because I told myself everybody has their own things to carry and mine were just mine.
And that was true. And it was also a way of not giving myself permission to say what happened to me was hard. It left marks. And those marks have been running my nervous system for years without my permission.
I was a foster child. I was removed from everything familiar. I was adopted. I rebuilt myself from the ground up more than once. I carried grief and uncertainty and the particular loneliness of not fully knowing where you come from. And I did all of that while showing up bold and fearless and unashamed for everyone around me.
I was never not healing. I was just healing out loud for everyone else while quietly bleeding in private.
In December of 2025 I finally started taking anxiety medication. And the first few months of 2026 were me getting used to what it felt like when my brain actually slowed down. When my walls started coming down one by one. When the fog I did not even know I was living in began to lift.
Around May of 2026 I felt it for the first time.
Like I had wiped the fog off my glasses and could actually see. Not just see life. Feel it. Feel color. Feel the texture of ordinary moments that I had been moving through too fast to actually experience.
And I got quiet. And I got soft. And I got still in a way that the soldier version of me never could have tolerated.
My family and I moved out of the apartment that held sixteen years of hard memories and into a home we had prayed for. I started protecting my peace like it was the most valuable thing I owned. I stopped living every day like it was an emergency. Things that would have sent me spiraling became things I could simply handle and move on from.
And slowly, without announcing it, I became someone different.
So yesterday when I walked into that room and felt like a stranger to the women who know me, I understand now what that feeling was.
It was not disconnection. It was arrival.
The women in that room know Sana Latrease. The brand. The disruptor. The bold truth teller who showed up loud and unafraid and changed rooms just by walking into them. They know her because she was real and she was powerful and God used her mightily.
But the woman who walked in yesterday is just Sana.
Not smaller (well maybe a little smaller). Not less. Not a dimmed version of what she used to be.
Just Sana. Softer. Stiller. More selective. More rooted in herself than she has ever been in her life. A woman who has finally stopped performing her healing and started actually living inside of it.
And here is what I keep coming back to.
My name. Sana. In Spanish it means healing.
I have spent my entire life being a vessel of healing for other people. Foster youth. Families. Communities. Women who needed someone to say the hard thing out loud so they did not have to say it alone. And all of that was real and all of that mattered and I do not regret a single moment of it.
But I think God named me before I knew what I was carrying. I think He knew that the healing I was called to pour out would one day require me to receive it for myself. To sit in it. To let it do its full work in me before I went back out into the world.
And yesterday, sitting in Kia's room, receiving her gift of a space that gives women permission to step fully into their mission, I realized that this is mine. Not the bold loud version of it. The deep quiet rooted version of it. Still unashamed. Still bold. Still a truth teller. But from a place of wholeness now instead of wounds.
I have not lost myself. I have become who I always was.
Just Sana. And for the first time in a long time, that is more than enough.
Before you go I want to leave you with something to sit with.
If you are in a season where you do not recognize yourself. Where the people who love you know a version of you that you are slowly outgrowing. Where the bold fearless thing you used to be feels far away and you are not sure if that is growth or loss.
It is growth.
The quieter version of you is not the lesser version. She is the deeper version. The one who has done enough work to stop needing to be loud to be powerful. The one who has finally made peace with her own story instead of just telling it to everyone else.
And I want to ask you one question before you close this page.
What have you been calling strength that might actually be avoidance? What have you been calling faith that might actually be fear? And what would it look like to finally give yourself permission to say, what happened to me was hard. And I deserved better. And I am still here. And that means something.
You are not losing yourself. You are meeting yourself. Maybe for the very first time.
And she is worth knowing.
Happy birthday Kia. Thank you for creating a room where women can exhale. You will never fully know what yesterday gave me.
Be Loved and Free - Sana 🩵
Comments