Hello, Gritty & Sweet Gang. On this Monday night in Kansas City, the atmosphere in my apartment is a flurry of conflicting emotions. The narrator's low, solemn voice draws me into the terrifying unraveling of a psychopath's double life as I'm engrossed in a compelling true crime documentary on my laptop. In the meantime, my weekend culinary experiments have resulted in a pot of spaghetti simmering on my kitchen counter. And the upbeat rhythms of Stray Kids' most recent song provide a happy background in my headphones. I am caught between the cozy warmth of home-cooked meals and the unsettling depth of dark stories, and this is the juggling act of my life. Those who know me well know that my world is a peculiar concoction of vivid, creative expression and morbid curiosity. I'm frequently enthralled with the finer points of true crime investigations, analyzing the psychology of deception, or figuring out a manipulator's strategies. It's similar to my ...

Hey, Sweet & Gritty Gang! Yes, I have a problem with true crime and I’m not afraid to own it. We’re not watching another Netflix docuseries today. We're going to peel back layers right here in our own backyard: Kansas City. As a Black woman, and a native of this sprawling, complex, and sometimes heartbreakingly familiar city, my relationship with true crime isn't just about morbid curiosity or solving a puzzle. It's layered. It’s personal. It's about seeing the patterns, the silent narratives, and the stark realities that often get glazed over on Fox4 retellings. So, pull up a chair, maybe grab a strong cup of coffee, because we're about to take a deep dive into one of KC's true crimes, through a lens you might not find on your average blog. The Unseen Recipe: When Narratives Go Missing You ever feel like certain stories just don't get the same airtime? Like a crucial ingredient was left out of the recipe altogether? In true crime, especially here in Kan...

Well, you can’t have your cake and eat it too, right? Wrong. You can. If you build your very own bakery from the ground up. This is what recovery has looked like for me, a native of Kansas City, Missouri, and a Black woman. It’s not always sunshine and rainbows, this is for sure, but it is possible to make something of yourself. Recovery has taken me from being a child in Kansas City’s redlined community to substance use following the loss of my fiancé. I took the necessary steps and found recovery on November 5, 2020. In this post, I will be telling "The Sweet and Gritty Gang" how I am baking this brand new life of mine. Wanna know a secret? Since becoming a student again comes the ability to write how I want, when I want. Recovery is allowing me to finally write about myself. For the longest time, my writing was about loss and what came with that, or the hazy feelings in between. Recovery is helping me find the time and the freedom to tell my story —the story of an introver...

  A familiar, wailing sound of a siren rings in my ears.  It’s not coming from outside my window, but instead from the small speaker of my laptop as I get sucked into yet another true crime documentary.  To some people, watching true crime could be a weekend evening activity – a touch of morbid curiosity, an unsolved puzzle while viewing from the couch. For me, watching true crime is a delicate  balancing act.  On one hand, there is the attraction of the perverse, the ability to get lost in the darkness of humanity; on the other hand, there is the very real possibility of falling into previous thought processes and behaviors that would otherwise leave me staggered. There are, of course, parallels between my recovery and true crime as well.  Recovery is a process that, like a true crime documentary, has its peaks and valleys.  Recovery can have shocking plot twists and deep moments of investigation.  The best crime shows are the ones that review th...