What Milo's Journey Taught Me About My Own

Learning the difference between being needed and being chosen.

Field hospitals are not homes. I have been going through life like a doctor in an emergency room. People I meet usually need help—emotional, mental, financial. They show up in my life, and I spring into action. I listen, I love, I care for them. I give everything without reserve to patch them up and get them back on their feet. And then they leave. They move on, and sometimes they do it without as much as a backward glance or murmured gratitude as they depart my life.

As I write this, my 63rd birthday is two days away. 2026 opened with emotional and mental upheaval for me. If you have followed my posts regarding the spiritual practice of casting the Dilogun, you know that in December I had an Odu appear on the mat that predicted a time of storm and devastation. I have been living with the effects of that devastation for the last several months, and as I approach my birthday, I have realized that the storm has had the benefit of clearing the landscape of my life of old concepts and ways of thinking.

I always thought that my writing, although a part of me, didn’t reflect my emotional state. I didn’t let who I was bleed into the work. The characters stood on their own—their emotions, needs, and wants were separate from mine. They had agency. I realized recently that this was just a conceit on my part.

Most of you have read Blood Match. It was my first fiction offering here on Substack, but it isn’t the story I want to talk about. The story I want to speak about—the story that has shown me something that was buried deep within me—is Milo’s Journey.

Milo’s Journey is a story that has special meaning for me because much of the cultural and spiritual system included in it is one I lived for many years as a teenager and young adult growing up in the Bronx. But it wasn’t until recently that I realized I had included something else in that story.

As the story progresses, we come to a place where one of the characters has an emotional breakdown, and the collapse is triggered by something still unknown to him. It resides in the body, not in the mind, so there are no words for why.

José experienced a trauma which we find out is related to feelings of abandonment—the feeling of “why am I not enough for people to stay?” Milo, who loves José with all that he is, steps in and, through presence, holds him during this moment. He doesn’t fix it, but he supports. He says, “I’m here, whatever you need, and I’m not going anywhere.”

When I wrote the chapters chronicling José’s breakdown, I was in the midst of my own storm. Those chapters came from a place deep within me, and maybe it was grace or magic, but they began to open me to a revelation I had not fully understood yet.

During the writing of those chapters, José had come in and sat with me—his pain, his heartbreak, his trauma of always feeling like he was never enough for people to choose. All of it came into me from him and out of me onto the page.

It was at that moment Milo stepped up. He was there—dependable, supportive. He was the one who said, “I see you. I know what you’re going through. I will help you carry it until you can carry it on your own.”

It was at that moment that I realized what I had been circling for weeks—that I had created a life where people could come for help but moved on once they had received what they needed.

Milo and José had shown up to reveal a hard truth. I was both of them, and they were me.

I had spent time in relationships creating spaces where people could heal, and I also watched those people walk away from me once that healing was complete.

Holding space, giving support, and then watching things fade away.

For years, my life and relationships ran like a field hospital—a place where people could come, get their wounds patched up, get back on their emotional, physical, or financial feet, and then move on. I was the waystation on their journey, not the destination.

So where do I go now? What changes for me now?

In this moment, I think back to José’s words to Milo at the end of Chapter 25, Those Who Stay. He says that he is learning to trust that there will be people who will show up for him and be willing to stay.

And so I’m learning to trust that I am worth staying for.