Beyond the Crown: A Reflection from the Castle

A journey through Castelo de Sao Jorge, Lisbon

It was a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I was in Lisbon for my birthday trip and decided to visit Castelo de Sao Jorge. I walked up the winding cobblestone path toward the church, my hands brushing along the stone walls, stopping to touch the rough bark of the trees that lined the ascent. I don’t know what drew me to feel the ancient textures—instinct, maybe—but the moment my fingers made contact, something inside me shifted.

The stones felt heavy, almost alive with memory. The trees felt like ancient witnesses, holding secrets and moments that longed to be released.

There was a weight in the air—not the kind that suffocates, but the kind that lingers after a storm has passed, lingering before the light can fully break through. And as I reached the church, a wave of emotion washed over me. Not beauty. Not wonder. Not reverence.

Sorrow.

A deep, overwhelming sadness pulsed through my chest and rose into my throat. It lived in the stillness behind my eyes. It felt older than me, a grief that did not belong to this moment yet was somehow awakened by it.

I thought about the hands that built this place.

The labor that carved each stone.

The sweat that soaked the earth beneath it.

The bodies discarded so that this grand view could stand.

I thought about faith used as a leash. Salvation promised like currency. Prayer wielded as a tool of control. I could almost feel the breath of those who believed suffering was holiness and endurance was redemption. A trance of salvation that never arrived.

This place is beautiful—truly beautiful.

But beauty built on the backs of the broken is a different kind of beauty.

It tastes like iron. Like salt. Like unfinished grief.

Standing there, I understood something I’ve felt before but never spoken aloud:

“I am not royalty. I am something beyond.”

So many who look like me cling to the mythology of golden crowns—the fantasy of thrones and kingdoms and royal bloodlines. It’s comforting to imagine we come from power and gold and glory. Because it is easier to rewrite history as triumph than to face the truth of displacement, erasure, unpaid labor, and exploitation. It is easier to say “We were kings and queens” than to admit that many of our ancestors built thrones they were never allowed to sit on—physically, spiritually, or through the brilliance of their labor.

I understand why the myth exists.

I understand why people need it.

But my soul won’t let me subscribe to it anymore.

Illusion is still captivity. And calling myself royalty would be performance—a mask to hide the rawness underneath. I’m not interested in pretending. My purpose doesn’t permit it. I’m not searching for borrowed dignity. I am committed to living the authenticity of my being.

I seek clarity.

I am healing. I am a healer. And real healing is inconvenient. It is personal. It is silent. Its impact is loud. It doesn’t look like grand TikTok speeches or profound Facebook posts or glossy Instagram slogans. It looks like this: standing alone in a foreign country, tears falling without permission, cleansing dust from sacred stone in the burn of a setting sun. Surrounded by topiary trees shaped like the ones I planted in my own garden—coincidence or intention. Words of a Portuguese lineage spoken long before I knew they were true.

The soul always finds its truth.

And truth rarely arrives gently.

It arrives like a break.

Like a breath.

Like a release.

Like a tear.

As I walked away from the church, I remembered how I felt standing inside the Vatican. I felt nothing. No reverence. No connection. No spark. If anything, I felt a sharp urgency to leave, as though every second inside was a betrayal of something sacred. The gold, the spectacle, the engineered awe—it felt hollow and manipulative. A monument to power masquerading as devotion.

I remember thinking: This is wicked. I want out.

And I left unchanged.

But here, without marble or gold or ceremony, I felt everything.Here, in stone shaped by centuries of suffering, I felt presence.

I felt honesty. I felt memory. I felt the tension between glory and agony, between faith and deception, between the past and this exact moment in time.

Here, I felt human.

And in that stillness, in that quiet confrontation, something opened in me—a loosening, a reckoning, a freedom.

I don’t want a crown.

I don’t want a throne.

I don’t want mythology.

I yearn for truth. Honestly.

I’ve learned myself beyond the theft of my elders’ history, and beyond the illusions that tried to fill the void. My existence comes from strength, not performance. I feel without shame. I live awake—not entertained by distraction.

“I am not royalty. I am something beyond.”

Not higher. Not lower. Just beyond.

Beyond imitation.

Beyond identity constructed to impress.

Beyond scaffolding built to protect brokenness.

Beyond titles meant to compensate for loss.

I am a soul learning itself in real time.

A witness to what is and what was.

A body carrying the echoes of ancestors without needing to pretend they wore crowns.

I am the embodiment of many in the presence of one.

Becoming. Aware. Sovereign.

Aligned.