Mayté Frías

Grateful to @maytefrias for all her contributions as Staff Advisor to the UC Regents for the past two years. Thanks, Mayté!

@ucprez @ucprez I am the one who is grateful for the opportunity to serve our great UC in this way. What an honor it has been!

@NathanRathge Not running around like a headless chicken for a hot minute sounds 👌🏼

@maytefrias What's next?

Water waist-deep. Never going back to shore. Future is wet and salty and will choke and burn again. Aching for what was and will never be again. Aching for what never was and will never be. Bracing and hoping for the tide that will sweep away again. (CD, 7, 4062026)

Renegotiating how to exist without a constant threat. Not making sense of it. Not grateful. Not strong. The whiplash of what was survived but not processed. What just happened? Getting ready for the next wave. (CD, 6, 222026)

Coming up for air after being held under longer than realized. Water still running through the nose. Touching sand, tasting salt. Looking back, forward, then back again. Not happiness. Not relief.

For a moment allowing to exist without bracing. Still waist-deep in the water. Not rushing into calm but rather stalling. Tears without a narrative. Or nothing at all. The body doesn’t trust sudden shorelines.

Why does cancer recur many years later? And what can be done to prevent that? new feature @Nature nature.com/articles/d4158…

Refusing to beautify what is brutal. Refusing to sanitize, romanticize, or wrap in meaning. Unwilling to dress the wound. Standing in the middle of the wreckage. How did this name get written on the door? (CD, 5, 12242025)

Gasping for air through the onslaught of the waves. Salty, burning water barging in, rearranging everything. Choking on what is supposed to keep alive. Shore is right there, just out of grasp. Both submitting to the force and pushing to stay a float. Is that even possible?

Ugly, vulnerable, and unwilling. Eroded, defended, mapped, aimed at, invaded, standing. Keeping swimming with water in the mouth. Surviving almost involuntarily, without a triumph.

Showing up daily, being positioned, burned, reminded. Lying shirtless, millimeters calculated to spare the heart. Reduced to a target. Reassessing, questioning, revisiting, second-guessing. Fighting and resenting having to.

Showing up daily, being positioned, burned, reminded. Lying shirtless, millimeters calculated to spare the heart. Reduced to a target. Reassessing, questioning, revisiting, second-guessing. Fighting and resenting having to.

“Do not be absent for too long, then come and ask about how I am, details die with time and stories change.” — Mahmoud Darwish

The Hungarian cat curse. Momma and the meaning of life. Yalom.

“-… is it possible that you didn’t know that we humans have only one life? … -… if we have new lives and don’t remember the old ones, then it still means that this life -this existing me, the consciousness that there is right now- is long to perish. …

-… how you stand it? How can you take pleasure from any part of life, any activity at all, with death looming ahead and only one life? … -… perhaps death makes life more vital, more precious. The fact of life bestows a special poignancy, a bittersweet quality…