Both the Beautiful and the Brutal

I didn’t plan on going to Belize. But six days after my father died, and just hours after learning the man I loved had built our relationship on lies and emotional manipulation, I booked a ticket. I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. But I knew I couldn’t stay in the wreckage.

This is what I found instead.

Coming to Belize was a last-minute decision. I came because life had kicked my ass, and I needed space away from reality.

So I sought adventures and manatees.

I free dove for live conch.

I swam in sacred caves, hiked through jungle, made new friends around every turn,

and flirted a little, too.

I ate fresh seafood under a palapa while jamming to Kendrick Lamar with people I love.

And I rediscovered: me.

I came here carrying a heavy backpack — grief over my dad’s death, and the heartbreak, confusion, and anger of learning the reality I had trusted before and during all of 2024 and well into 2025 was built on and maintained by ongoing withheld truths, control, and carefully crafted deception.

But Belize held all of it.

The ocean didn’t ask me to smile.

The reef didn’t care if I cried.

The wind didn’t ask me for kindness as it whipped my skin.

And between the salt and the sunshine, I emerged with clear eyes, a lighter heart, and the renewed knowledge that I can hold both the beautiful and the brutal,

but that doesn’t mean I have to.

By Katherine Tatsuda

Katherine Tatsuda writes from the fire—grief, loss, betrayal, survival—and from the quiet power of what comes after. Her work is rooted in radical vulnerability and the conversations most leaders and speakers avoid. She is the voice behind Reinvention Modeled, where clarity becomes strategy and healing becomes authenticity.