The Manifesto

A Declaration of Functional Faith

We were never promised serenity.

We were promised nothing at all — and learned to build meaning from that deficit.

This is our doctrine of reluctant devotion:
gratitude written in the margins, spite baptized as survival.

Here, healing is not a performance but a practice of staying alive creatively — one unwilling breath, one honest sentence, one reluctant resurrection at a time.

We reject the idea that progress must look peaceful.

We believe in art that limps toward beauty and still gets there.

We believe that exhaustion counts as participation.

And we believe that laughter — especially the bitter kind — is proof that divinity has a sense of humor.

Every page of Begrudgingly Grateful: A Manifesto for Healing out of Spite, NOT Serenity was written in the aftermath of pretending to be fine.

It is both confession and construction — a field manual for those who outgrew their coping mechanisms but not their curiosity.

If you found this place, you were probably looking for permission.

Consider it granted — begrudgingly, reverently, and with a wink.