Category: Uncategorized

  • Lessons from Slowing Down: What My Body Needed to Feel Better

    Lessons from Slowing Down: What My Body Needed to Feel Better

    “Take care of your body. It’s the only place you have to live.” ~Jim Rohn I used to think tiredness was a personality trait. I was the person who could work fourteen hours, sleep five, and do it again. I wore my exhaustion like armor. It proved I was serious. It proved I was dedicated. It…

  • How to Feel Safe When Panic Feels Dangerous

    How to Feel Safe When Panic Feels Dangerous

    “Anxiety isn’t you. It’s something moving through you. It can leave out of the same door it came in.” ~James Clear Years ago, I had a panic attack while driving across a bridge, and I thought I might die that day. Suddenly my heart started pounding. My breath became shallow and tight. My chest felt…

  • How I Lost Myself in a Controlling Friendship and What I Know Now

    How I Lost Myself in a Controlling Friendship and What I Know Now

    “The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” ~Søren Kierkegaard I didn’t lose her all at once. I lost myself first—slowly, quietly, in the way that only happens when someone you trust makes you doubt everything you think and feel. She was magnetic when I met her. Warm, intense, the kind…

  • How Being the Strong One in My Family Became a Trap

    How Being the Strong One in My Family Became a Trap

    “The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places.” ~Ernest Hemingway My grandmother had just died. My sister and I had come from the room where her body still lay, and we were standing in the elevator in silence when the doors slid closed. My sister looked at me and said,…

  • How to Overcome Ultra-Independence and Receive Love and Support

    How to Overcome Ultra-Independence and Receive Love and Support

    “Ultra-independence is a coping mechanism we develop when we’ve learned it’s not safe to trust love or when we are terrified to lose ourselves in another. We aren’t meant to go it alone. We are wounded in relationship and we heal in relationship.” ~Rising Woman Do you feel like you have to do everything on…

  • The Powerful Insight That Helped Me Worry Less and Sleep Again

    The Powerful Insight That Helped Me Worry Less and Sleep Again

    “Surrender is not about giving up. It is about letting go of the illusion of control.” ~Judith Orloff Watching my mother lose her memory while I was losing mine felt like a cruel preview of my future—until I learned that stress, not genetics, was writing my story. It was 3:47 a.m.—again. I’d been awake since…

  • Breaking Free from Self-Consciousness and Erythrophobia

    Breaking Free from Self-Consciousness and Erythrophobia

    “Shame is the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging.” ~Brené Brown I used to call myself a “beetroot.” It was a label of defectiveness that my inner critic screamed at me every time I felt the heat rising in my cheeks. For years,…

  • To the Wounded Parent Who Wants to Do Everything Right

    To the Wounded Parent Who Wants to Do Everything Right

    “The greatest gift you can give your children is your own healing.” ~Dr. Shefali Tsabary Am I doing too much or not enough? Am I screwing my child up? Am I being too hard on my child? Am I being too soft? Am I spending enough time with my child? Do I help too much? Should…

  • Why I Gossiped and What I Now Do Instead

    Why I Gossiped and What I Now Do Instead

    “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss people.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt I stopped gossiping when life humbled me. I didn’t realize at the time, but what I thought was just innocent girl talk with my friends was really a way to escape my own shame and insecurity. I had this quiet, ongoing sense that I wasn’t…

  • What Happens When the Strong Friend Finally Asks for Help?

    What Happens When the Strong Friend Finally Asks for Help?

    “We don’t build trust by offering help. We build trust by asking for it.” ~Simon Sinek I have always been the strong sister, partner, and friend. I didn’t make a conscious decision one day to be the strong one and stuck to it. It became who it was from a very young age, being the…