Tiny Buddha

Tag: heal

  • How to Calm Anxiety That’s Rooted in Childhood Wounds

    How to Calm Anxiety That’s Rooted in Childhood Wounds

    “Anxiety is a response to a nervous system that learned early on it had to protect itself.” ~Dr. Hilary Jacobs Hendel

    Anxiety shaped much of my life—how I showed up, how I held myself back, and how I connected with others. For years, I didn’t even know what it was. I just knew the pounding heart, the tight chest, the trembling hands. I knew the shame that followed every “failure,” big or small, and the fear I would never be enough.

    For a long time, I thought I was the problem. But anxiety isn’t a moral failing. It’s a part of me that learned to survive in environments where my emotional needs weren’t met, where fear and shame felt louder than safety.

    Where It Started

    The roots of my anxiety began in childhood.

    I was in first grade when I brought home my school report card and saw that I ranked seventh in my class. At that age, I didn’t know if that was good or bad. I was just excited to tell my dad.

    When he came to pick me up, I smiled and shared the news innocently. Instead of a hug or encouragement, his eyes glared at me. His sharp, aggressive tone cut through me as he shouted, “It’s bad!”

    Looking back, I can see his reaction came from fear—that my performance might limit my future and that shaming me would push me to improve. But as a child, I couldn’t see that. I felt shocked and humiliated. My small body trembled, and my younger brain concluded:

    “I’m only worthy of love if I perform better.”

    The next semester, I ranked third. My dad bragged about it to everyone, and I felt brief relief. But the fear returned quickly:

    “What if I can’t keep this up?”

    That was the beginning of a belief that no matter how much I achieved, I was never “enough.”

    This pattern followed me for decades, surfacing in unexpected places. As an adult, I would freeze with anxiety at gas stations, trembling as I pushed my motorbike forward even when no one was rushing me.

    Eventually, I connected it to another childhood memory: my dad shouting at me to move faster in line at a gas station, his glare and sharp tone burning into me again. When processing this as an adult, I realized he had a good intention—to move things along for the other people waiting. But before I began my healing process, my nervous system was wired to react to the present as if I were reliving the past.

    Even years later, the anxiety lived on in my body, and I didn’t know how to process it.

    The Breaking Point

    I carried this unprocessed anxiety into adulthood. When I was five weeks pregnant, my partner was in a tragic accident that left him in a coma for two weeks before he passed away. Suddenly, I was alone, grieving, and without money to survive.

    I didn’t have the privilege of avoidance anymore. Grief, financial instability, and the responsibility of carrying a child forced me to face emotions I had buried for years.

    This was when I learned the practices that helped me stop spiraling and regain my composure.

    10 Tips That Help Me Prevent and Manage Anxiety

    Important note: These tips are not a substitute for therapy, medication, or professional diagnosis. They are complementary practices to help restore balance and create a sense of safety in the body.

    1. The gratitude shift—turn anxiety into information.

    Instead of berating the intense sensations anxiety brings, I now try meeting it with gratitude. Anxiety is my body’s built-in alarm system.

    When I feel it rising, I say, “Hi, anxiety. I see you doing your job. Thank you for showing up.”

    Then I ask:

    What is this sensation trying to tell me?

    Where is this coming from in my history?

    What action can I take now to feel safer and more supported?

    This small act of acknowledgment makes space to feel more in control and invites curiosity instead of fear.

    2. Slow down and simplify your life.

    Too many distractions can block memories and emotions from surfacing. Simplifying my life gave me mental space for self-awareness.

    I released unnecessary obligations, overpacked schedules, and numbing habits like endless scrolling. When I slowed down, I could finally hear myself and recognize what was driving my anxiety.

    3. Trace the roots through quiet observation (and fasting).

    Closing my eyes and observing the first persistent memories that surface often reveals the root of anxiety.

    When I couldn’t afford therapy, I used intentional fasting to access clarity. (If you decide to give this a try, I recommend consulting with your doctor first. This is my personal spiritual practice, not a universal recommendation.) I started slowly with:

    • A twelve-hour fruit and vegetable fast, then
    • A twelve-hour water fast, then
    • A full-day fast (6 a.m. to 6 p.m.)

    Each time hunger arose, I named my intention out loud through prayer or journaling: “Please show me the root cause of this anxiety and how to release it.”

    Fasting, for me, was a deliberate way to quiet external noise so buried memories and insights could surface.

    4. Catch the first emotion—shock.

    My body often stores layers of pain, and shock is usually the first overwhelming emotion. If I can name it quickly, I can interrupt the spiral.

    For example, when I was feeling overwhelmed as a mother, I’d sometimes snap at my daughter. I’d get frustrated and angry with myself, but after fasting, the memory of my parents snapping at me came up quite vividly.

    Remembering this, I allowed myself to see, acknowledge, experience, and accept how painful and shocking it was for me to be treated that way.

    5. Write in detail what shocked you (and other emotions).

    After naming shock, I write the exact details of what triggered it: the sudden glare, the change in tone, the clenched jaw, the slammed door.

    Then I name the other emotions as honestly as possible: fear, humiliation, sadness, anger, or betrayal—whatever is true in that moment.

    Being radically honest in this process helps me release the experiences that I previously stored as trauma.

    6. Grieve the losses.

    Once I release the shock, I let myself grieve. I cry for the safety, compassion, and respect I needed but didn’t receive.

    Sometimes I use music to amplify the sadness so it can move through me. This isn’t weakness—it’s how the body processes pain instead of storing it.

    7. Name the unmet needs.

    Grief opens the door to understanding my needs.

    “When I was shouted at by my dad after making mistakes, I felt unsafe and ashamed. My need for emotional security was violated.”

    “When I was only praised for achievements, I felt unseen. My need for consistent acceptance was neglected.”

    Naming needs clarifies what’s important so I can ask for it clearly and assertively as an adult. It’s empowering to name the hurt and see how it helps me understand my emotional needs better.

    8. See the context—compassion for your parents’ limitations.

    Fasting and becoming a mother helped me understand the hardship my parents faced. Parenting a neurodivergent child with limited resources, little support, and financial stress is overwhelming.

    This doesn’t excuse the harm, but it helps me hold two truths:

    1. Their actions hurt me.
    2. They were also struggling humans who lacked the tools to parent better.

    This perspective softens resentment and breaks cycles.

    9. Write down the worst-case scenarios.

    While processing the past experiences that have contributed to my anxiety can help decrease anxious feelings in the present, it also helps to challenge how I think about the future.

    When I spiral, my brain floods me with worst-case scenarios. Positive thinking never helped—it only deepened my fear.

    Instead, I confront the fears by writing down every possible worst-case outcome, even the most extreme. I’ve lived through homelessness, earthquakes, and tragic losses. Pretending they couldn’t happen again didn’t work.

    By naming them, I strip them of their power.

    10. Prepare intuitive actions and identify help.

    After writing the worst cases, I ask:

    What is the first intuitive action I can take to prevent or reduce the impact?

    Who is the first person I can contact for help? Who else could I reach out to?

    Writing these down gives me agency. It tells my nervous system, “I’m not helpless. There are things I can do and people I can ask for help.”

    —

    Anxiety is a part of me. Experiencing the spiral because I didn’t know how to name, process, and communicate it sucks.

    I’m still a work in progress when it comes to maintaining composure consistently, but I feel empowered knowing that I’m mastering emotional intelligence—skills I can pass down to my child.

    Healing is not linear, and some steps will feel harder than others. But with consistency, these practices can help you restore a sense of safety, reclaim your agency, and soften the belief that you must always be on high alert.

  • Healing Without Reconciling with My Mother and Learning to Love Myself

    Healing Without Reconciling with My Mother and Learning to Love Myself

    “Owning our story and loving ourselves through that process is the bravest thing that we’ll ever do.” ~Brené Brown

    Several years ago, I wrote a heartfelt letter to my estranged mother, articulating my deep feelings about her perceived lack of empathy and care. My intention in writing the letter wasn’t to ignite conflict; it was to sincerely share my perspective.

    Rather than lashing out with blame, I expressed my profound sadness about feeling parentless and the struggle of raising myself without parental love and guidance, something I desperately needed at times.

    I bared my soul, detailing the emotional turmoil our relationship has had on me as an adult, and expressed the longing for connection that always seemed just out of reach.

    After completing the letter, I did something I thought at the time was a bit reckless: I mailed it. Now looking back, I realize it was a courageous step toward advocating for my emotional health, confronting my truths head-on.

    I had no expectations and was prepared for any outcome, including silence, which often felt like our norm. However, mailing it felt like a cathartic release and was undeniably liberating.

    Months passed without a response. I had kept my expectations low but remained hopeful that perhaps she would reflect on what I had shared and gain some insight into our dynamic. Then, almost nine months later, I found myself at a family gathering out of state, and she was there. I had a vague notion that she might show up, but I hadn’t put too much thought into it.

    A rush of panic enveloped me, especially knowing my children didn’t even recognize her. My husband supported me, rubbing my back to help me through the initial shock of seeing her after so many years.

    As conversations swirled around me, I felt an odd sense of being at an event together yet acting like strangers. Though it wasn’t much different from before, I had openly shared a vulnerable part of myself in that letter, which she never acknowledged receiving.

    During the gathering, we barely spoke; our unresolved past loomed between us like an unbridgeable chasm. As the event was wrapping up, my family and I collected our jackets to leave, and then she walked over to me.

    With a sincere expression, she said, “You were right, and I’m sorry.” That was all that passed between us, and then I left. As I walked out the door, a wave of sadness crashed over me, not just from the validation but from the acknowledgment of our painful reality.

    In that moment, I recognized that while the deep understanding I’d once yearned for might never materialize, that exchange marked a significant turning point in my healing journey.

    Through this process, I learned invaluable lessons about boundaries—how to say no without guilt, to stop explaining myself, and to recognize when emotional distance is an act of self-respect rather than rejection. I discovered that safeguarding my emotional space was not just essential but necessary for my well-being.

    Although my connection with my mother remains the same, my inner transformation has been profound.

    I still grapple with sadness that my children will not know their grandmother, leaving me with a wound that is still healing. However, I have learned the art of giving and receiving love in healthier ways. I prioritize open communication with my children and partner, ensuring that their feelings are validated, something I wished for during my upbringing.

    Not everyone is fortunate enough to have their experiences acknowledged. Many of us carry the weight of unvalidated pain, silently wishing for recognition that our feelings matter. The journey of writing a letter reinforced the power of self-love as a transformative force, even in the absence of answers or sincere apologies.

    Self-love for me is about nurturing inner compassion for myself and understanding and recognizing the validity of my feelings, independent of external validation.

    The seeds of self-love began to flourish in my twenties with small acts of kindness toward myself, moments of self-forgiveness, and the courage to question the beliefs I’d carried since childhood.

    It was a crucial period when I started to challenge the idea that my worth depended on pleasing others, and I allowed myself to feel fully—to name and honor my emotions without shame or self-censorship.

    During this time, I began seeing a therapist, which offered me a safe space to examine how my sense of worth had been shaped by my mother’s unpredictable affection and the silence that shaped me when it was withheld.

    Books like Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsay C. Gibson and The Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown helped me understand and reframe these patterns, guiding me toward self-compassion and a more stable sense of self-worth.

    With the support of a nurturing chosen family and the continued guidance of therapy, I’ve been able to unravel beliefs that no longer serve me—such as the idea that my worth depends on others’ approval, that my emotions should be contained to keep the peace, and that love must be earned through perfection or compliance. Letting go of these patterns has allowed me to reclaim my sense of self and to honor my feelings as both valid and necessary.

    As I contemplate this recent encounter with my mother, I see the evolution of my perspective since I began advocating for my emotional well-being. I’ve come to understand the delicate balance between expectations and reality—the longing for a different kind of relationship coexisting with the acceptance of what is. It’s a balance that asks me to hold compassion for her limitations while still protecting my own heart.

    Each lesson I’ve embraced about self-love has become foundational—learning to set boundaries without guilt, to speak my truth, and to treat myself with the same tenderness I once reserved for others.

    These shifts have reshaped not only my relationship with myself but also how I engage with the world around me. Now, I give and receive love in healthier, more meaningful ways, ensuring that my relationships are grounded in mutual respect and appreciation.

    This healing journey has profoundly shaped my approach to parenting. I aim to teach my children the significance of setting boundaries and advocating for their emotional well-being, rather than simply seeking to please others or maintain peace at all costs. They see a mother who is honest about her feelings and who takes care of herself instead of abandoning herself, which serves as a powerful lesson that goes beyond words.

    While my relationship with my mother may never be what I hoped for, it has guided me toward a fuller sense of self and a more authentic, balanced way of loving. And I’m committed to continuing on this healing journey. I’ve unearthed the strength within me to heal and evolve—strength that exists independent of external acknowledgment.

  • When the Person You Love Is Disappearing into Addiction

    When the Person You Love Is Disappearing into Addiction

    “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and myself at the same time.” ~Prentis Hemphill

    I thought I had seen the worst of it. I thought I knew what it meant to watch someone you love disappear into addiction. My mother taught me that lesson long before I was old enough to truly understand it.

    Growing up, I saw her sink deep into heroin. I learned to read the signs before she even spoke. I knew when she was high. I knew when she was lying. I knew when she was gone, even when she was sitting right in front of me. And there was nothing I could do to stop it. I was just a child, powerless in the shadow of a disease that stole her piece by piece.

    Now, decades later, I am living that heartbreak again. Only this time, it’s my husband.

    It’s a different substance—alcohol instead of heroin—but the same slow disappearance. The same unpredictable moods. The same sense of walking on eggshells, wondering which version of him will walk through the door. And the same helplessness, watching someone I love unraveling, knowing I cannot save him.

    But there is one thing that’s different this time: me.

    The Moment That Broke Me Again

    It was just another night that should have been nothing. That night we had gone out to a comedy show, and at first, everything was great. Good times, laughing, reminiscent of the old times, and yes, drinks were flowing, and everyone was in good spirits.

    But as the night went on and he had a few too many, things shifted. He started acting out a bit—being loud, joking in ways that felt disrespectful. There was a couple sitting in front of us, the woman also drunk, and her partner looked embarrassed and frustrated.

    Somehow, he and that couple’s energy fed off each other, and before long, he started flirting with her right in front of me.

    Later that night, when I brought it up and told him how hurtful it was, he said, “Why are you upset? None of this matters.” He explained that it didn’t matter because, in his mind, I wasn’t going to do anything about it anyway—that I wouldn’t leave or hold him accountable.

    That was the moment that really broke me, because it showed me exactly how little respect or value he placed on my feelings and boundaries.

    Those words stopped me cold. At first, rage flared, hot and bright. But then something in me shifted.

    I heard not just the words, but the pattern behind them—the pattern I’d been ignoring.

    I realized this wasn’t the first time he’d humiliated me, embarrassed me, or disrespected me. It wasn’t the first time he’d gotten drunk, lashed out, and expected me to sweep it under the rug. And it wouldn’t be the last—not unless I changed something.

    Boundaries, Therapy, and the Pushback

    We are still together, but the way we are now is not the way we were before. We are doing the work.

    Therapy has been instrumental in addressing the root cause of his alcoholism—unpacking generational patterns and confronting the reality of what we’d normalized.

    For me, it meant recognizing that many behaviors I tolerated weren’t love but survival mechanisms shaped by my childhood. For him, it meant accepting that seeking help wasn’t weakness but courage.

    The first hurdles were admitting the problem and agreeing to seek help—both met with pushback.

    As an African American man, my husband struggled with the stigma around vulnerability, especially regarding mental health and addiction. Generational beliefs had taught him that asking for help threatened his sense of strength.

    Early therapy sessions were marked by defensiveness and silence, but patience and difficult conversations slowly shifted his perspective, especially when his mother told him that he was mirroring his father. She began telling him stories of how his father’s drinking affected their marriage. Even though she stayed with him, if things were different, she would have left.

    She also told him that I am not her, and if he doesn’t make a change, I won’t stay because I don’t have to. He realized that he was choosing alcohol over our relationship, but he didn’t know how to separate it from himself, as it has been a part of how he functions for so long.

    It is an inner struggle he is facing, but with honesty, strength, and dedication, he will continue to fight to become the true man he and I know he can be.

    The Work We’re Doing

    Therapy has helped me understand that contrary to what I experienced growing up, love without respect isn’t love at all.

    On my end, it’s been about patience and empathy, without excusing harm. On his end, it’s been about acceptance, accountability, and a willingness to face the truth, even when it’s ugly.

    We’ve set clear boundaries. If he crosses those lines, there are consequences.

    One boundary he must not overstep is respect. I love my husband, but I love myself just as much. I also told him if it comes to separation, just know I didn’t leave—you did when alcohol became more important than our relationship.

    We both understand this is a difficult situation that requires understanding and compassion, but consequences are final and forever life-changing. This mustn’t continue because this isn’t living. It’s just existing, and I choose to live.

    The progression is day by day. We still encounter stalemates, and we embrace them and push through them together. I know he truly wants to get better, not just for us but mainly for his own well-being.

    We have agreed that the cycle stops here, even if it means rebuilding everything from the ground up.

    Choosing Myself Without Leaving

    Choosing myself doesn’t mean walking away right now. For me, it means staying without losing myself. It means protecting my peace, even in the same home. It means no longer excusing disrespect just because it comes from someone I love.

    I am not the same person who silently absorbed my mother’s chaos. I know now that I can’t heal someone else by destroying myself.

    Some days, it’s still heavy. Some days, I still see my mother’s shadow in the bottom of his glass. But I’m learning to separate his fight from mine.

    I love him, but I love myself too. And I am finally learning that those two things can exist together—as long as I hold the line.

    If you are in a relationship touched by addiction, know this: you are allowed to choose yourself. You are allowed to demand respect. And you are allowed to break the cycle, even if you stay.

  • The Hardest Person to Be Honest with Is Yourself

    The Hardest Person to Be Honest with Is Yourself

    “You cannot heal what you refuse to confront.” ~Yasmin Mogahed

    At sixteen, I walked out of my mother’s house with track marks and a half-packed bag. No big fight. No slammed door. Just the silent resignation of someone who couldn’t look his mother in the eye anymore. I wasn’t leaving home—I was bailing on it. On everything.

    I didn’t know the word “addiction.” Well, I knew it; I just didn’t understand it. I didn’t know that the flu I kept getting was withdrawal. I thought I was just weak. A loser. A burnout who couldn’t even use the right way.

    Over the next few years, I would burn through twenty-two treatment centers and detoxes. Not metaphorically. I mean actual beds, actual paperwork, actual roommates, each one thinking they’d seen someone like me before. I gave every counselor the same script:

    I’m ready this time. I just need a reset.

    I’d be out within days. Sometimes hours.

    I wasn’t ready. I wasn’t even close.

    The Real Lie

    You’d think the biggest lie I told was to my family. Or the judges. Or to all those people who loved me even when I gave them nothing back.

    But the worst lies? They were internal.

    I told myself:

    “This is just a phase.”

    “I can stop if I want.”

    “I’m only hurting myself.”

    I convinced myself that survival was the goal. Not growth. Not connection. Just survive the day, or at least numb it out enough that it passed quietly.

    That internal voice doesn’t yell. It whispers. It’s slick. And when you’re lonely, exhausted, and chemically dependent, it becomes your best friend. Your only friend.

    A Moment I Can’t Forget

    One night in my early twenties, I found myself strapped to a hospital bed in Delaware after a suicide attempt that didn’t go as planned. I came to with tubes in my arms, the taste of iron in my mouth, and the sterile white ceiling staring back at me like it knew something I didn’t.

    There was no grand awakening. No movie-scene moment with tears and violins. Just silence, and this strange, unfamiliar feeling: I’m still here.

    Something cracked open that night—not in a way anyone else could see, but in the quiet back room of my own awareness. A voice I’d been ignoring for years—maybe my whole life—started whispering a little louder.

    I didn’t listen to it right away. I moved to Florida not long after, trying to outrun the damage and the shame. Spent nearly a decade bouncing through treatment centers, sober houses, friends’ couches—living on repeat. That voice showed up now and then, like a static signal in the background. But I was still too busy numbing out to really hear it.

    And then one day, years later, something changed. I finally stopped trying to shut it up. I sat still long enough to let it speak.

    The first thing it said wasn’t poetic or profound. It was blunt. Look around. So I did.

    And what I saw hit me like a slow-building wave:

    I was in Arizona. Thousands of miles from my family.

    I had a daughter, two years old, living in another state—barely part of my life.

    I missed everyone. I missed myself. And I was scared.

    That voice didn’t accuse or condemn. It just kept going:

    You’re allowed to want more. You can change. Start now.

    Where I Finally Stopped Running

    I got sober in Arizona on September 26, 2010. But the real work, the soul-level renovation, started in the days and weeks that followed.

    There was no lightning bolt, no sudden surge of motivation. Just a quiet commitment to stop lying to myself.

    Healing came in moments that felt ordinary:

    Brushing my teeth in a sober living house and actually looking in the mirror. Making it to a job on time. Letting someone ask how I was—and answering without deflection.

    I learned that sobriety wasn’t just about quitting substances. It was about telling the truth. Especially to myself.

    I stopped performing. I stopped pretending I was fine. I let myself want better, and then, I started doing the boring, uncomfortable, necessary things that actually create change.

    Arizona, the place I’d originally come to because of a fling, became the ground where I finally planted roots. The place where I learned how to show up—not just for others, but for me.

    What I Know Now (That I Wish I Knew Then)

    We don’t change because someone tells us we should. We change because something inside us starts to believe, however faintly, that we’re capable of more.

    The catch is: You have to stop bullshitting yourself first.

    That means:

    Calling out the voice in your head that wants to keep you small.

    Sitting in discomfort without escaping.

    Letting people in, even when it feels like exposure.

    You don’t have to have it all figured out. Most people don’t. But you do need to get honest about where you’re at, and what that place is costing you.

    Sometimes rock bottom isn’t a single event. It’s the accumulation of tiny self-abandonments that pile up until there’s barely any of you left.

    For Anyone in the Thick of It

    If you’re reading this in the middle of your own mess, I won’t throw platitudes at you. Life isn’t a Hallmark movie, and recovery isn’t a montage.

    But here’s what I can offer:

    You’re not broken. You’re buried.

    There’s still a version of you under the pain, the denial, the self-sabotage. And that version doesn’t need to be created from scratch; it just needs to be remembered.

    You don’t need a plan. You need a moment. One honest, gut-level moment where you stop running. That’s enough to start.

    And yes, it’ll be uncomfortable. But growth always is.

  • Relief from Relentless Thoughts: Reclaiming My Mind from OCD

    Relief from Relentless Thoughts: Reclaiming My Mind from OCD

    “Don’t believe everything you hear—even in your own mind.” – Daniel G. Amen

    This quote might sound like something you’d read on a coffee mug or an Instagram quote slide. But when your own mind is feeding you a 24/7 stream of terrifying, intrusive thoughts? That little phrase becomes a survival strategy.

    Sure, I have lots of strategies now. But they weren’t born from a gentle spiritual awakening or a peaceful walk in the woods. They were born out of a relentless, knock-down, drag-out fight with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). A fight that started when I was a kid and stole years of my life.

    Let me be blunt: OCD is not quirky or cute. It’s not about liking things tidy or being “a little type A.” It’s a full-body, panic-inducing disorder where your brain screams, “You are in danger!”—even when there’s no actual threat.

    It’s counting in desperate loops. It’s having rituals you don’t understand but can’t stop doing. It’s fear that feels like a gun pointed between your eyes, triggered by nothing more than a thought. I know because I have OCD, or I guess I should say “had” OCD.

    Life with OCD: A War Inside My Head

    From the time I was young, my brain was hijacked by fear. Fears that something terrible would happen. That I’d lose people I loved. That I’d be misunderstood, unworthy, unforgivable. These thoughts didn’t just whisper—they screamed. And my body listened: sweaty palms, racing heart, shallow breath. Over and over, even though nothing was really wrong.

    To cope, I created rituals—compulsions that promised relief but never delivered. I’d roll my neck a certain way, flex my wrists, blink, swallow, count in rapid-fire succession—anything to feel right again. But it never really worked. Four was my magic number for a long time. I could fly through sixty-four sets of four faster than you’d believe. Still, the anxiety roared back every time.

    Want a picture of what this looked like? Here’s one from high school: I’m sitting at the kitchen table. I glance—again—at the round straw basket on the wall. I roll my neck, flex both wrists, blink, swallow. Damn it. Not right. I start the sequence again. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. Again. And again. Four sets of four, done four times. Still not right. I’m drowning in invisible urgency while everyone else is just trying to eat dinner.

    I had objects in every room of the house, each one assigned to a ritual. A cherry wood clock. The edge of a curtain rod. A fluorescent light tile. I didn’t choose this. I didn’t even understand it. And I definitely didn’t enjoy it. OCD stole my time, my energy, and my sanity. If I didn’t do the rituals, I was consumed by dread. If I did them, they were never good enough. It was a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t existence.

    Thoughts That Terrified Me

    The content of my fears changed over time, but the intensity didn’t. Sometimes the dread was vague. Sometimes it was specific and disturbing—violent images, inappropriate sexual thoughts, blasphemous phrases. I obsessed that I’d pick up a knife and hurt someone. That someone I loved would die because I breathed the wrong way.

    I couldn’t write without rewriting. I couldn’t look in a mirror without fearing I’d become vain. I drew invisible lines on the floor to protect people. I had to sit a certain way, speak a certain way, think a certain way. And God help me if a “bad” thought popped into my head mid-ritual—I had to start all over again.

    At one point in college, while stuck in an endless loop of trying to put a piece of paper in a folder “just right,” I ended up stabbing a pencil into my thigh out of sheer mental exhaustion.

    I truly believed I was broken.

    Finding a Name—and a Way Out

    I didn’t even know it was OCD until I stumbled across a book and then saw a video showing other people’s compulsions. It was a holy shit moment. You mean someone else can’t fold a towel just once either?

    Once I had a name for what was happening, I could begin to untangle it. I learned that my brain was sending false messages—and that I didn’t have to obey them. A psychiatrist once explained it with a triangle: Most people’s thoughts bounce between points and move on. Mine got stuck in the triangle and just spun endlessly.

    Knowing that helped. But what really changed everything was discovering mantras.

    How Mantras Helped Me Rewire My Brain

    My mom—who also struggled with OCD—started making up little phrases with me to cut through the noise. The one that changed everything?

    “That’s a brain glitch. I don’t have to pay attention to that.”

    It sounds simple, but that phrase became a mental lifeline. It helped me step back, call out the OCD lie, and redirect my focus. It was a way to challenge the urgency of the thought without getting pulled into the ritual. And it worked—not overnight, but consistently, over time.

    Then I read Brain Lock by Jeffrey Schwartz, which broke down the exact same strategy: identify the thought, reattribute it, and refocus. I realized—I’d already been doing that with my mantras. They were helping me rewire my mind. That realization was empowering. I wasn’t just surviving anymore. I was retraining my brain.

    Mantras, OCD, and the Messy Middle of Healing

    Slowly, imperfectly, I stopped fighting my thoughts and started getting curious about them. I began to notice how fear hooked me—and how I didn’t have to take the bait.

    My mantras started piling up on sticky notes everywhere. They were grounding. Sometimes funny. Sometimes serious. Sometimes just sarcastic enough to cut through the noise in my head. But they worked. They reminded me of what was true. They gave me just enough space to respond differently.

    Because here’s the thing: OCD doesn’t run my life anymore. Sure, the tendencies still flare up under stress—but I have tools now. I have perspective. And I have mantras.

    Not the fluffy kind that pretends everything is fine. The gritty, scrappy, fiercely compassionate kind that says:

    • Yes, your brain is being loud right now—and you’re still allowed to rest.
    • Uncertainty is uncomfortable, not dangerous.
    • You are not your brain.
    • You can let go. Even if you have to do it a hundred times.

    If you’re someone who struggles with relentless thoughts—whether it’s OCD, anxiety, or just the everyday noise of being human—I hope this inspires you to craft your own phrases, rooted in your values and the kind of life you want to move toward, or mantras that remind you to ignore that harsh inner critic and the fears that lurk in your mind.

    You’re not alone.

    Your thoughts are not always true.

    And you are allowed to let go of thoughts that do not serve you.

    Even if you have to let go over and over and over again. That’s okay. That’s the work.

    Don’t believe everything you think. But start believing that you can heal.

  • When Love Isn’t Enough: How I Found Healing After Emotional Abuse

    When Love Isn’t Enough: How I Found Healing After Emotional Abuse

    “You can’t save someone who isn’t willing to participate in their own rescue.” ~Unknown

    You and I have been doing the work. Talking. Writing. Processing.

    Everything I’m focused on right now—in my healing, in my spirit, in my writing—is love. Becoming love. Living in love. Returning to love.

    And yet, there’s a chapter of my life that continues to whisper to me: Why wasn’t love enough?

    I spent nine years in a relationship that left me anxious, confused, and small. I was always on edge. Walking on eggshells, never knowing whether I’d be met with affection or fury. He could be charming one moment and cruel the next. A Jekyll-and-Hyde personality I came to normalize.

    I stayed longer than I like to admit because I believed, deep down, that my love could heal him. If I just loved harder, more purely, more selflessly, maybe I could soften his edges. Diminish the rage. Make him whole.

    But no matter how hard I tried, it didn’t work.

    He still raged. He still criticized. He still looked at me like I was the problem.

    Eventually, I had to face a truth I never wanted to admit: Love, at least mine alone, wasn’t enough to change him.

    The Lie We’re Told About Love

    So many of us are raised on the idea that love conquers all. That it’s our job to be patient, forgiving, and understanding. That if we just hold space long enough, people will change. Heal. Transform.

    But here’s what I’ve learned the hard way:

    • Love only transforms when both people are willing participants in healing.
    • Love cannot live where there is no safety.
    • It cannot grow in an environment ruled by control or fear.
    • And it cannot thrive when one person is constantly shrinking just to survive.

    The Roadblocks to Leaving

    Leaving was complicated. We didn’t live in a bubble. There were family, friends, colleagues, and the church, each with strong opinions.

    “God hates divorce.” That was the message drilled into me. Sometimes in whispers. Sometimes in shouts.

    In the church, women are told to submit. But submission, to me, always meant a mutual dance. A respectful exchange of give and take, compromise, and safety. Not suppression. Years later, I finally heard the words “submission without suppression,” and something clicked.

    Another moment of clarity came when I heard: God cares more about the human in the relationship than He does about the institution of marriage. That truth was liberating. It helped me accept that even if I wasn’t being physically abused, I was still being harmed in ways that mattered.

    At the time, I thought I was in a crisis of faith. But my soul knew better: it wasn’t faith that was broken. It was people. My spirit whispered that the path forward wasn’t in saving the marriage.

    It was in saving myself.

    The Cost of Leaving

    Leaving wasn’t just about walking away from one man. It meant losing entire circles of connection.

    My ex’s family had been part of my daily rhythm with shared meals, holiday gatherings, and weekend adventures. That familiar pattern disappeared overnight.

    Even friendships I thought were my own slipped away. Some didn’t understand my choice. Others quietly withdrew, perhaps uncomfortable with divorce itself, or perhaps with me choosing a new path. I’ll never know for sure.

    The losses were painful. I had to sit with the ache, mourn the empty spaces, grieve the old circle. But slowly I began to see: some people are only meant to walk with us for a season. Growth means outgrowing certain spaces and opening to new ones.

    Healing came with the release of those no longer meant for me, so I could make room for the ones who were.

    What I Know Now

    It took years—and therapy, journaling, truth-telling, and self-forgiveness—to admit that I wasn’t weak for staying. I was loving. I was loyal. I was trying.

    But the love I gave wasn’t being received. It wasn’t reciprocated. And it wasn’t respected.

    Here’s the radical truth I finally embraced:

    My love was never the problem. It was real. It was whole. It was enough.

    But it could never replace the work someone else refused to do.

    Leaving Comes in Bursts and Choices

    Leaving doesn’t happen all at once. It comes in bursts and choices.

    There was the physical leaving, which involved moving out of our home and subletting a college apartment that no thirty-six-year-old should have to reside in.

    And then came the months of separation and eventually divorce—difficult conversations, compromises, and grief. Along the way, a new friendship was strengthening and shifting.

    From the day I met Jim, I was drawn in by his smile, his laugh, his kindness. Over time, a deep trust and mutual respect developed. As the distance between my ex and me grew, Jim and I grew closer. We came to a crossroads, another choice.

    The New Love I Choose

    When I first left, I clung to the idea of remaining friends with my ex. Coffee together. Kind words. Civility. But I quickly realized two things: first, that wasn’t in his nature. And second, it wasn’t fair to Jim.

    Jim listened patiently as my ex talked about “winning me back.” Then, with kindness and clarity, Jim said, “You need to choose, because I’m not going to stay in limbo while you figure things out.”

    It wasn’t an ultimatum meant to control me. It was a boundary meant to protect his heart. And in that moment, I felt the difference between destructive love and healthy love.

    Healthy love stands firm without hostility. It respects both people. It asks for clarity, not chaos.

    Today, my life looks radically different. I’m in a partnership built on respect, kindness, trust, and healing.
    A relationship where I feel safe, seen, and loved without having to earn it.

    And yet, sometimes I still look back. Not with longing but with tenderness for the woman who stayed.

    The woman who tried. Who hoped. Who believed love could fix what was broken.

    To her, I say:

    You were doing your best with what you knew at the time. It’s okay that you thought love could be enough. It’s okay that you tried. And it’s beautiful that you eventually walked away.

    If You’re There Now

    If you’re in a relationship where love feels like walking on eggshells, where you’re exhausted from trying to be “enough,” hear this:

    • You don’t have to fix anyone.
    • You don’t have to stay to prove your love.
    • You are not the reason they’re angry, critical, or cruel.

    You are allowed to leave in the name of love. Especially the love you owe yourself.

    And if you’re in the messy middle, give yourself grace. Know this: it’s okay to love again and still feel trauma. To still get triggered. To mourn, rage, regret.

    It’s okay to cry, even when you’ve moved on and built a healthier life. Tears are part of release, part of healing, part of love finding its way back to you.

  • Shifting Out of Survival Mode: Healing Happens One Choice at a Time

    Shifting Out of Survival Mode: Healing Happens One Choice at a Time

    “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” ~Viktor Frankl

    It started as a faint hum—a sense of unease that crept in during the isolation of the pandemic. I was a licensed therapist working from home, meeting with clients through a screen. Together, we were navigating a shared uncertainty, trying to cope as the world shifted beneath us.

    I could feel the weight of their anxiety as they talked about their spiraling thoughts and struggles to feel grounded. What I didn’t realize then was how much of their turmoil was a reflection of my own.

    During those months, I gave my clients all the tools I knew. We talked about mindfulness, grounding exercises, and ways to reconnect with a sense of safety. But the truth? These conversations often felt hollow. It wasn’t that the tools didn’t work in theory—it was that they didn’t land in the body. Fear, disconnection, and panic had rooted themselves deeper than words could reach.

    I began to think, “What would it take for us to truly feel safe again—not just talk about it?” That question became the seed of a larger realization, one that would shift my focus entirely.

    The Missing Piece 

    Years ago, when I first trained as a therapist, I learned about bilateral stimulation (BLS). At its core, it’s a method of gently guiding the brain to process emotions through rhythmic left-right movement. You’ve probably done it yourself, without realizing it—tapping each knee while stressed or walking back and forth to clear your head.

    Clinically, BLS is used in therapies like EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), which helps people process trauma in a way that feels safer and more contained.

    The science behind it is remarkable, but what truly struck me was how intuitive it felt. Trauma often leaves us stuck—in our minds, in our bodies, and in our fight-or-flight response. BLS created subtle shifts, allowing people to process without getting overwhelmed. It was a solution that existed not just in the mind but also in the nervous system.

    Still, I hesitated to fully explore using it beyond therapy rooms. My focus was on the tools within my comfort zone—strategies, worksheets, and techniques that worked well enough. But everything changed when the hurricane hit.

    When Trauma Becomes Personal 

    Hurricane Helene arrived when we were already worn thin. My community in Western North Carolina was still grappling with the fallout of the pandemic, and now, this immense storm came to claim what little stability we had left.

    The destruction wasn’t just physical—it was emotional. Entire neighborhoods were uprooted, including mine. I found myself not as a therapist observing trauma, but as a human immersed in it. Days turned into weeks of survival mode. Displaced families. Empty cupboards. Sleepless nights listening to the rain pound against temporary roofs. My own nervous system was in constant overdrive—frozen between fear and exhaustion.

    And yet, in the fragmented moments of stillness, I noticed something. Healing wasn’t happening in grand gestures or revelations. It was in the small, quiet choices to keep moving forward—packing what I could salvage, helping a neighbor clear debris, or holding my daughter’s hand as we waited in line for supplies. It struck me how easy it is to feel powerless after trauma. Everything feels broken. But healing isn’t about fixing everything at once. Sometimes, it starts with reshaping one moment.

    Lessons from the Debris 

    Trauma changes us. It rewires not only how we view the world but also how we feel within it. I’ve worked with countless clients stuck in the aftermath of trauma—unable to sleep, flooded by overthinking, fearing everything will fall apart again. I thought I understood what it meant to feel this way. Living through the hurricane taught me just how layered and consuming it can be.

    What I learned, though, is that healing is possible. It doesn’t come with a single moment of clarity but rather through consistent, small acts of care. Here are the lessons I carried from that time, ones that I hope may help you too if you’re feeling stuck in survival mode.

    1. Your body speaks—start listening. 

    Trauma often lives in the body long after the event has passed. It’s easy to ignore the signals your body sends—tightness in the chest, a restless mind, or even chronic fatigue. But healing starts with awareness.

    Take note of how you physically feel when panic strikes. Are your shoulders tense? Is your breathing shallow? Engage in small practices to reset your body’s rhythm, like walking, stretching, or even tapping your hands alternately on your thighs.

    2. Safety is built, not found. 

    After trauma, our nervous systems often stay in survival mode, scanning for the next threat. This makes it hard to trust—others, ourselves, or even moments of calm. Rebuilding a sense of safety takes time and consistency.

    Find routines that ground you, like starting your day with a cup of tea or ending it with journaling. These rituals remind your nervous system that you’re not in immediate danger anymore—that it’s okay to exhale.

     3. Healing requires community. 

    One of the hardest things about trauma is the isolation it brings. Whether it’s pride, shame, or sheer exhaustion, it often feels easier to close yourself off. But connection is where healing happens.

    During the aftermath of the hurricane, it was the smallest gestures from community members—sharing meals, checking in, or listening—that reminded me I wasn’t alone. Don’t be afraid to reach out or accept help, no matter how small it feels.

    4. Reset as many times as you need. 

    Healing isn’t linear. You’ll have good days and hard ones, moments of clarity followed by setbacks. That’s okay. The key is learning to pause when you need to rather than pushing through. Whether it’s a deep breath, a short walk, or time to process your emotions, each pause is a chance to reset and start again.

    Moving Forward, One Step at a Time 

    The hurricane didn’t just strip away homes—it also stripped away my old idea of what it means to heal. I used to think it was something that happened after the chaos subsided, when everything was back in order. But I’ve learned that healing works differently. It happens in the middle of the mess, through small, brave acts that remind you you’re still here. You’re still trying.

    Whether you’ve lived through a storm, a personal loss, or a chapter filled with uncertainty, know this: healing isn’t about the destination. It’s about the choices you make in the moment—the choice to pause, to breathe, to ask for help, or to forgive yourself for not having it all figured out. One quiet, powerful choice at a time, you can rebuild.

  • The Song That Surprisingly Brought Me Back to Life

    The Song That Surprisingly Brought Me Back to Life

    “Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.” ~Maya Angelou

    I used to believe that healing and personal transformation required a lot of effort—writing page after page in a journal or getting up at the crack of dawn to carry out a morning routine, to name a couple.

    When I moved through a phase of numbness—or the tunnel of darkness, as I now call it—it was frightening, and there seemed to be no end in sight. But one song found me at the right moment and changed everything.

    In under five minutes, it achieved what all the tools and knowledge I had couldn’t: it made me feel something.

    That moment reminded me that healing and moving forward don’t always need rituals or words—sometimes, all it takes is the right sound at the right time.

    Before that moment of awakening, my life felt like a loop. Day in and day out, everything was the same. My being was on mute—nothing resonated, and I walked through life hollow, flat, and disengaged.
    Each day felt like the one before. I was disconnected but longing to feel something. I put pressure on myself to fix whatever this was. And when it didn’t work, I pushed harder and harder.

    I tried all the things I had learned over the years: deep breathing, meditation that only amplified the noise in my head, journaling until my hand ached, lighting salt candles, and still, I couldn’t seem to connect with myself.

    There was only stillness, but it didn’t feel peaceful. It felt strange and disorienting—a kind of stuckness. A sense of being that portrayed me not as a person anymore, but just a body moving through the motions.

    Yet nothing changed. None of the knowledge I had made a difference. The tunnel seemed to cave in on me, leaving me feeling like I was nothing—like I’d never get anywhere again.

    Then, one day, I pressed play on “Wild Flower” by RM of BTS. I can’t remember exactly how I found it, but I do remember being alone, just trying to de-stress.

    It was one of those moments where you click on something without really knowing why—just a quiet, inner nudge. BTS had come into my life a few months earlier, and I was most drawn to RM. That day, something in me—the part that still carried hope—asked me to click on this song, this video. And within seconds, everything shifted.

    In an instant, my body stopped and took notice. From the opening that hit me like a firework to the first notes and spoken words (in Korean, which I didn’t understand), I felt something again. I couldn’t believe it.

    I went from numbness—from nothing—to goosebumps, tears streaming down my face, and tension leaving my body.

    The emotion in RM’s voice, the chorus sung by Youjeen, and the sound of the music itself—it was the reminder I needed that I was still alive. Still here.

    That song became the catalyst for me to open up, to feel again, and to realize there was a way out—a way back to myself.

    At first, I didn’t understand the lyrics, and I didn’t even try, because it didn’t matter. What mattered was the rawness in the delivery, his voice full of emotion that anyone could understand. The longing, the ache, the release—all of it was enough.

    Later, when I looked up the words, it only deepened the meaning. Sentences like “When your own heart underestimates you” and “Grounded on my own two feet” felt like direct messages to my soul. Like someone finally saw me—not for who I was pretending to be, but who I was beneath all the effort.

    In that moment, I realized I didn’t need to do more. It was about opening up just a little more and receiving what this song was giving me.

    I didn’t need to journal, dive deeper into personal development, fix myself, or hustle. That moment reminded me: just being with the music was enough.

    While journaling gives me insight into myself and my life, music gives me the emotion I need to feel in order to start healing.

    And then a quiet question rose up in me: “What if healing doesn’t have to be earned or hustled for?”

    What if we don’t need to constantly work on ourselves to be okay? What if some parts of healing are actually about stopping, softening, and letting something bigger hold us, even just for a moment?

    That one song became that moment for me. It cracked something open. And once it did, I didn’t fall apart. I began to come alive again, slowly, quietly, but surely.

    I still love journaling—it’s a consistent part of my life—but now I know that healing can begin in silence, in sound, and in surrender.

    Since then, I’ve had many other moments where music became the medicine I didn’t know I needed.

    Sometimes it’s a gentle white noise—a crackling fire mixed with rain. Other times, it’s a beat that makes me move, cry, or sing.

    But “Wild Flower” was the beginning, the song that reminded me feeling is possible again. That numbness isn’t permanent. And that sometimes, we don’t need to search for the right words. We just need to listen.

    I encourage you to notice what songs find you and how they make you feel. Because maybe today, your healing begins with listening.

  • The Trauma Keeps Talking—But My Voice Is Now Louder

    The Trauma Keeps Talking—But My Voice Is Now Louder

    “Turn down the volume of your negative inner voice and create a nurturing inner voice to take its place.” ~Beverly Engel

    After the abuse ends, people think the pain ends too. But what no one tells you is that sometimes the loudest voice isn’t the abuser’s anymore—it’s the one that settles inside you.

    It whispers:

    “You’re broken.”

    “You’re used.”

    “You don’t deserve better.”

    And over time, that voice doesn’t just whisper. It becomes the rhythm of your thoughts, the lens through which you see yourself.

    That’s what I mean when I say the trauma keeps talking.

    Living with the Echo

    In the months after my assault, I didn’t have words for what I was feeling. I just knew that every choice I made seemed to come from a place of damage.

    I found myself in situations that felt eerily familiar—letting people use me, letting hands roam without question. I wasn’t saying “yes” because I wanted to; I was saying it because a voice inside had already decided I wasn’t worth more.

    And to anyone watching from the outside, it might have looked like I was reckless. But inside, I was just tired. Tired of fighting a voice that seemed louder than mine.

    Why We Stay Stuck

    Trauma has this way of rewriting the script in our heads.

    It convinces us that we’re not the same person anymore, that we’re tainted beyond repair. And because we believe that, we keep choosing situations that prove the voice right.

    It’s not that we want to keep hurting ourselves. It’s that the part of us that knows we deserve better gets buried under layers of pain and self-blame.

    I remember once thinking, “What’s the point of saying no?” I felt like I’d already lost the right to draw boundaries.

    Looking back now, I realize that wasn’t me speaking. That was trauma—still in control.

    The Turning Point

    For me, things didn’t change overnight. There wasn’t a single moment when I woke up healed. But there was a moment when I got tired of losing to that voice.

    I remember looking in the mirror and realizing, “If I keep going like this, the abuse wins forever—even without him here.”

    That realization didn’t silence the trauma, but it gave me a reason to fight back.

    I started doing small, almost invisible things to reclaim myself:

    Saying “no” even when my voice shook.

    Choosing one safe person to tell the truth to.

    Permitting myself to stop—to pause—before walking into another cycle that would hurt me.

    Each of those choices felt impossibly hard at the time. But with every pause, with every “no,” the voice of trauma got quieter.

    Healing Is a Process, Not a Snap

    I used to think healing meant waking up one day and feeling nothing.

    Now I know healing means learning to talk louder than the trauma.

    It means choosing—again and again—to believe a different story about yourself.

    If this is where you are—if the trauma is still talking and you feel powerless to shut it up—I need you to know something:

    You can stop. You can pause. You can turn around.

    Not for anyone else—for you. For your peace. Your sanity. Your healing.

    What I Want You to Remember

    I won’t insult you by saying, “Just snap out of it.” That’s not how this works.

    But I will tell you that one pause, one moment of reclaiming yourself, can change everything.

    It’s not easy, I know. But it’s possible. And it’s worth it.

    You deserve better than pain on repeat. You deserve to be more than what was done to you.

    If you’re reading this and the trauma is still talking, please hear this from someone who’s been there:

    The voice isn’t you. You’re still here. And you’re allowed to fight for a story where the abuse doesn’t win.

    I may not have all the answers, but I know the terrain of this road—the stops, the setbacks, the slow turning around. And I want to walk it with you, one better choice at a time.

    Because healing isn’t out of reach. You just have to start talking louder than the trauma.

  • The Grief No One Talks About: How to Heal After Losing a Soulmate Pet

    The Grief No One Talks About: How to Heal After Losing a Soulmate Pet

    “Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~Anatole France

    When my cat Squiggles died, I didn’t just “lose a pet.” I lost a part of my identity, my greatest source of comfort, and my sense of home.

    Squiggles was the one constant in my life through every milestone, every heartbreak, every version of myself I grew into over the course of two decades. I had her since the moment she was born, and for almost twenty-two years, Squiggles was my constant companion, my emotional support, my soul-kitty.

    But no matter how much I prepared myself, nothing could soften the blow of saying goodbye and being forced to live without her.

    As a therapist, I tried to apply all of the coping mechanisms I’ve learned over the years. But the human in me wanted to reject them all. I was just too deep in my grief.

    So I turned inward. And over the past two years, I’ve been learning how to live with the loss of my soul-kitty. Not get over it. Or try to forget. But live with it.

    Here are five things that helped me cope with life without her.

    1. I validated the pain of my grief.

    I knew the loss of Squiggles was going to be devastating one day, but knowing it didn’t make it easier. What it did do was help me validate just how deeply it hurt.

    I didn’t try to hide how sad I felt. I cried every day for weeks. I canceled plans. I moved slowly. And instead of shaming myself for how awful I felt, I tended to the pain.

    Even though many people out there might think, “She was just a pet,” to me, she was everything.

    There’s a term for this kind of mourning: disenfranchised grief. It’s when your grief isn’t recognized by society in the same way a human loss might be. That doesn’t mean the grief is less real. It just means others may not understand how impactful the loss is.

    The bond I had with Squiggles was deeper than many human relationships. I’ve heard countless people say the death of their pet hurt more than the death of a relative. I believe them. I felt it.

    So I reminded myself daily: This was one of the most significant relationships in my life. I’m allowed to be this heartbroken.

    2. I tried to find balance.

    As a therapist, I’m well-versed in the idea that “the only way out is through.” But when you’re in the middle of overwhelming grief, feeling your feelings can quickly turn into drowning in them.

    So I did it in small doses. I yearned for her. I cried. I talked to her. I allowed myself to remember.

    And I also gave myself permission to take breaks from my grief when I could.

    In the early weeks, I couldn’t imagine feeling anything other than sorrow. But slowly, I started allowing myself to step back from the pain. I gave myself a night out with friends. I practiced guitar. I gardened. I let myself laugh without feeling guilty about it.

    And here’s the truth of taking breaks: It does not mean you’re moving on. It means you’re doing the best you can to survive.

    Joy and grief can live side by side. One doesn’t cancel out the other.

    3. I stopped saying “should.”

    Grief doesn’t follow logic. Or timelines. Or “shoulds.”

    And yet, they still popped up:

    “I should be feeling better by now.”

    “I should get rid of her things.”

    “I should be grateful I had her for so long.”

    At some point, I realized those “shoulds” were self-judgments in disguise. So I started replacing “should” with “could,” or “would like.” Sometimes I just asked, “Who says?”

    Who says I have to move on quickly?

    Who says keeping a box of her things means I’m stuck?

    Who says I’m grieving “too much”?

    Grief is a unique experience for everyone. No one knows how long the acute pain will last. For me, it has been about two years. My grief isn’t as all-consuming, yet I still have days where it hits me like a wave.

    And now, two years later, I cherish those moments when the grief hits. Because it connects me back to Squiggles.

    4. I connected with others who understood.

    One of the most painful things about losing a pet is how isolating it feels. That one being who knows you in and out is no longer there. It feels incredibly lonely.

    Friends didn’t always know what to say. People who had never had a close bond with a pet didn’t understand why I was so shattered.

    Talking to people helped, but only if they really got it. The people who had been through their own soul-pet losses were the ones who I felt most comfortable with. And it helped.

    Eventually, I created an online community where pet lovers could gather after losing a pet. A soft place to land where you don’t have to explain why you’re still crying six months later, or why it hurts more than you expected. People just get it.

    This community has become a huge part of my healing. And I continue to witness the power of connection every time someone shares their story, their pet’s name, or even just their pain.

    5. I used creativity and art to express how I felt.

    In the beginning, the only way I knew how to stay connected to Squiggles was through my sadness. But as time went on, that love started to move through me in different ways.

    I started gardening. Being in nature and witnessing seeds bloom into flowers reminded me of the circle of life and the connectedness of all beings.

    When I really missed Squiggles and didn’t know what to do with myself, I’d express my emotions through poetry. Or draw every detail of her little face, the patterns in her fur, the way her paws tucked under her body. I looked through old photos and let my emotions guide me.

    These small creative acts didn’t fix the grief. But they gave it somewhere to go. They gave me a way to keep loving her and helped me bring new forms of beauty into my life, even in her absence.

    If you’ve lost a soulmate pet, please know that you’re allowed to take all the time in the world that you need to grieve. Our pets are members of our family and a huge part of who we are. The grief you experience is simply the love you have for them, just in a new form now.

  • The Truth About My Inner Critic: It Was Trauma Talking

    The Truth About My Inner Critic: It Was Trauma Talking

    “I will not let the bullies and critics of my early life win by joining and agreeing with them.” ~Pete Walker

    For most of my life, there was a voice in my head that narrated everything I did, and it was kind of an a**hole.

    You know the one. That voice that jumps in before you even finish a thought:

    “Don’t say that. You’ll sound stupid.”

    “Why would anyone care what you think?”

     “You’re too much. You’re not enough. You’re a mess.”

    No matter what I did, the critic had notes. Brutal ones. And the worst part? I believed every word. I didn’t know it was a critic. I thought I just had “realistic self-awareness.” Like everyone else had a little tape playing in their head on repeat, telling them how flawed they were. Turns out, that voice was trauma talking, and it never seemed to stop.

    My Inner Critic Wasn’t Born, It Was Built

    CPTSD doesn’t just mess with your sense of safety. It hijacks your internal dialogue. When your early life feels unsafe or unpredictable, criticism becomes your compass. You learn to scan for danger, to anticipate what might trigger rejection or anger. You start blaming yourself for things that weren’t your fault, just to keep the peace.

    Over time, you don’t need anyone else to tear you down; you’ve got that covered all on your own. The critic lives inside. It’s relentless. It’s like a hyper-alert security guard that’s been working overtime for decades. One who has a bone to pick.

    My inner critic wasn’t trying to be cruel. It was trying to protect me. Twisted, but true. It believed if it shamed me first, I’d beat everyone else to it. If I kept myself small, or perfect, or invisible, I wouldn’t become a target. If I could control myself enough, maybe the chaos would leave me alone.

    That voice became familiar. And familiarity, even when it’s toxic, can feel like home.

    The Turning Point: When I Realized That Voice Was Lying

    Healing began the day I noticed a strange disconnect. The people I cared about didn’t talk to me the way my inner critic did. They weren’t disgusted when I made mistakes. They didn’t roll their eyes when I showed up with all my messy feelings. They didn’t act like I was a problem to be solved or a disappointment to be managed. In fact, they were… pretty warm. Even when I wasn’t “on.”

    This realization felt like looking in a funhouse mirror and suddenly seeing my true reflection. If they weren’t seeing me through the lens of judgment and shame, who was I really listening to? That voice in my head, or the people who cared?

    That was the moment I started to doubt the inner critic’s authority. Because that voice? It wasn’t truth. It was trauma. A protective but outdated part of me that no longer needed to run the show.

    How I Actually Started Healing (the real first steps)

    The very first real step wasn’t dramatic. I noticed the mismatch, my head yelling “you’re a mess” while everyone around me treated me like a person, not a problem. Once I noticed that disconnect, things shifted from “this is just how I am” to “oh, maybe this is something I can change.”

    So my early moves were small and boring, but they mattered.

    I booked a therapist who knew trauma work and stayed long enough to stop the band-aid fixes. I learned one therapy that actually landed for me, Internal Family Systems, which helped me stop fighting the critic and start talking with it. I started writing, not to fix myself, but to give that voice a page to vomit onto so I could see how ridiculous and repetitive it sounded in black and white.

    I also leaned on a few safe people, friends and a therapist who would call me out when the critic lied and remind me I wasn’t actually the person I believed I was, over clouded with shame.

    The harder work, though, was going underneath the critic. The voice was just a symptom. What sat beneath it was grief, anger, and fear I’d carried since childhood. For the first time in therapy, I wasn’t just trying to outsmart the critic, I was learning to sit with those younger parts of me who never felt safe. That’s when healing really started to shift: not by silencing the critic, but by finally listening to the trauma underneath it.

    I Didn’t “Silence” My Inner Critic, But I Did Start Questioning It

    Some days, that voice still shows up, loud and obnoxious. Healing didn’t make it disappear. It’s still there, popping up like an annoying pop-up ad you can’t quite close.

    For years, the critic zeroed in on my appearance. I carried so much shame and self-hatred that I didn’t need anyone else to tear me down, I was already doing the job for them. Trauma and CPTSD made sure of it. Even when no one said a word, the critic filled in the silence with insults.

    But I learned to give it a pause button. Instead of obeying it automatically, I started getting curious.

    One morning, I caught my reflection and the critic immediately sneered: ‘You look disgusting.’ Normally, I’d believe it and spiral. But that time, I paused and asked: Whose voice is this really? It felt like my child abusers. What’s it trying to protect me from? Probably the fear and shame rooted in that abuse. Is it true, or just familiar? Familiar. That shift didn’t erase the shame instantly, but it gave me a crack of daylight. Instead of hating myself all day, I was able to shrug and think, yeah, that’s the critic, not the truth. That tiny pause was progress

    Sometimes I imagine my inner critic as a grumpy, overworked security guard who’s stuck in the past. He’s cranky and exhausted, working overtime to keep me “safe,” but he’s also out of touch with the present. I don’t hate him. I just don’t hand him the mic anymore. These days, I keep him behind the glass with metaphorical noise-canceling headphones on. He can rant all he wants, but I’ve got Otis Redding and boundaries turned all the way up.

    What Actually Helped Me Push Back

    Therapy: Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy helped me see the critic as just one part of me, not my whole self. It gave me tools to speak with that part, instead of battling it.

    Writing: Putting the critic’s voice on paper was a game changer. Seeing those harsh words in black and white helped me realize how cruel they really were.

    Safe People: Talking openly with trusted friends and therapists helped shatter the illusion that I was unlovable or broken.

    New Scripts: Instead of empty affirmations, I practiced gentle reality checks: “It’s okay that part of me feels that way. That doesn’t mean it’s true.”

    Compassion: Learning to treat myself like a friend rather than an enemy—clumsy, imperfect, but worthy.

    Why This Matters: The Cost of Believing the Critic

    Believing that inner voice isn’t just uncomfortable, it’s dangerous. It shapes how you show up in the world. It keeps you stuck in self-doubt. It makes you shrink when you want to grow. It convinces you to stay silent when your voice needs to be heard.

    For years, I hid behind that critic’s fog. I avoided risks, pushed down feelings, and avoided intimacy because I thought I wasn’t enough. That voice stole years of my life. I lost people I cared about because I couldn’t believe I was good enough or deserving of love, and that does a number on you.

    Healing isn’t about erasing the critic, it’s about learning when to listen, when to question, and when to change the channel.

    I’m thankful that, with therapy and the work I’ve put into my healing, I’ve been able to reclaim some of that space for myself. It’s by no means easy and there are a lot of starts and stops, but it is worth it. I am here today testament to that.

    If You’re Living With That Voice Right Now

    If your inner critic sounds convincing, like it has a PhD in your failures, I get it. I lived there. But here’s the truth:

    You are not the sum of your worst thoughts. You are not the voice that calls you a burden.You are not unworthy just because you’ve been told that.

    That critic might be loud, but it’s not honest. It’s scared. And scared doesn’t get the final say.

    You get to question it. You get to rewrite the script. You get to take up space, even if your voice shakes. Even if it whispers, “Who do you think you are?”

    Because the answer is: Someone healing. Someone trying. Someone finally learning that voice isn’t the truth anymore.

  • Could Curiosity Be the Best Medicine for Chronic Illness?

    Could Curiosity Be the Best Medicine for Chronic Illness?

    “Whether you think you can, or you think you can’t, you’re right.” ~Henry Ford

    We’ve all been there: happily ticking off life’s checkboxes, certain we’ve cracked the code, until—bam!—life decides otherwise. Divorce papers, layoffs, grief, or unexpected illness—life’s curveballs don’t discriminate.

    For me, it was a sudden mystery illness at sixteen. What should have been a simple infection changed the trajectory of my entire life. Doctors were at a loss, tests offered no answers, and I was left navigating an uncertain reality, desperately clinging to control as my lifeline.

    One day I’m cheering at the Friday night football game, and the next I’m navigating a seemingly endless string of endoscopies, colonoscopies, biopsies, EEGs, EKGs, psych tests, countless blood tests, and still no answers.

    I remember the day it all went wrong.

    I was in high school watching a movie at a friend’s house when we burned the popcorn. Annoying, sure, but not a cause for concern. Except for me, the room started spinning, and my head felt like it was going to explode, so I stepped outside to get some air.

    Next thing I know, the cute boy I had a crush on found me passed out in the driveway. This was the beginning of chasing symptoms that were only getting more mysterious and increasingly worrisome.

    Navigating a chronic mystery illness as a young adult felt impossible, devastatingly unfair, and inconsistent. One week I would think the worst was behind me, finally able to put my life back together, and the next I was blindsided once again by some new symptom.

    My friends were getting jobs, going to parties, dating, and discovering who they were while I was curled up on the bathroom floor. By my twenties, leaving important meetings at work to throw up blood in the bathroom was my normal.

    The hardest part was never knowing if I could trust my own body. Was I going to wake up healthy or in excruciating pain?

    I spent years in victim mode, trying to “get it right,” believing if I tried hard enough I could control my way out of the problem. If I could just anticipate every twist, I’d never feel blindsided again.

    Spoiler alert: it didn’t work. My health spiraled, my relationships suffered, and financial problems and self-medication replaced self-compassion and security. No amount of control shielded me from the inevitable messiness of being human, especially a human with a chronic illness.

    Along the way, there were so many rock bottoms I’m not sure I could choose one pivotal moment. By the time I was approaching thirty, I had been on state disability and was taking so many meds that I was having paranoid, suicidal thoughts. It was clear that whatever uphill battle I was fighting wasn’t working, but I didn’t see another way out, and I was too young to give up. I think they call this being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

    There was nowhere to go for advice or more answers, and that is the loneliest I have ever been. The unknown was sitting there, staring me in the face, playing a game of chicken.

    Despite any evidence that I was going to win, I wasn’t going to back down either. So I walked away from traditional treatment plans, which weren’t working anyway, and focused on what I could control: my mindset and my attitude. It was time to learn how to make proverbial lemonade from a batch of rotten lemons.

    To preserve the small amount of sanity I had left, curiosity became my lifeline. Since resisting or controlling reality didn’t work, what if I got curious about it instead? This wasn’t about blind optimism, toxic positivity, or magical thinking. Frankly, manifesting and cosmic trust felt too far-fetched for someone who didn’t know if they would be able to physically or mentally get out of bed.

    I needed something practical, something that felt grounded and possible. “What if?” helped me suspend reality just long enough to see things in a different way. It shifted from a challenging self-experiment to my new guiding principle.

    • What if my body wasn’t betraying me but teaching me something crucial?
    • What if every upheaval wasn’t punishment but an invitation to deeper self-awareness?
    • What if I could find a way to be happy, even if life wasn’t what I thought it would be?
    • What if I wasn’t broken; I just needed to do things differently than other people?
    • What if it didn’t need to be this hard?

    Over time, curiosity helped me open a new reality, one where my biggest pain was also my greatest teacher. I was forced to practice sitting in the discomfort of the unknown and am all the better for it. Eventually, I was diagnosed with a mitochondrial disorder, but at the time, treatment options were limited, so my diagnosis didn’t provide any more certainty than before.

    The road was long and bumpy, to say the least. I mean, there was an entire decade I was hopeless, jobless, and puking blood on the daily. But along the way, my medical journey forced me to embrace a new narrative, one where I didn’t see myself as sick. I changed my relationship to not only my body but also to how I look at life. What felt like a limitation was the key to unlocking my liberation—I just didn’t know it at the time.

    While not a magic pill, this shift helped me heal and stay healthy for almost ten years. Little did I know that another curveball was waiting for me on my fortieth birthday.

    After suffering mold poisoning due to a water leak in my apartment, my mitochondrial disorder came back in full force. I was puking blood on the bathroom floor and all. This time, I wasn’t sixteen, and I had the tools to reclaim my power when everything around me was falling apart. Instead of spiraling about my lack of control or the unfair circumstances, I had the framework to move forward.

    This didn’t change my very real and painful challenges. It didn’t lessen the financial blow or logistical upheaval to my life. But it did allow me to traverse a relapse with the curiosity I needed to move forward calmly and confidently, despite this new uncertainty.

    If you’ve struggled with Hashimoto’s, perimenopause, gut issues, chronic fatigue, back pain, depression, or any other unwanted diagnosis, maybe you can relate. That’s the thing about chronic illness—the symptoms may be different, but the pain of knowing how to move forward is usually the same.

    My lessons were hard-earned, but they helped me transform pain into possibility when everything felt uncertain, and hopefully, they can help you too.

    My three steps to navigating life’s uncertainties:

    1. Curiosity is the door to possibility.

    When life inevitably disrupts your carefully laid plans, allow yourself the space to grieve the loss of your expectations. Let yourself feel the pain because acceptance is key to moving forward. Then gently ask, “What if?”

    This can feel disruptive at first because, if you’re like me, you’ll cling to the reality you know like a life raft in a stormy sea. But if you can’t even entertain a different outcome for a moment, then nothing will ever change.

    • What if my body isn’t failing but asking me to slow down?
    • What if ending this relationship allows space for a deeper connection?
    • What if losing my job is forcing me not to settle for good enough?
    • What if this situation is asking me to finally face a hard truth I’ve been hiding from?

    This isn’t naive positivity; it’s a powerful cognitive shift. Curiosity disrupts habitual thinking and creates space for new truths you previously couldn’t imagine. When you explore different realities, you can start seeing opportunity where before all you saw was pain.

    Action: List your current struggles. Beside each, write down one bold, curiosity-driven “What if?” question. It isn’t wishful thinking—it’s challenging yourself to open your mind to a new possibility.

    2. Radical responsibility is your personal power.

    We’re all storytellers, weaving meaning into the events in our lives. For years, my narrative was, “This isn’t fair,” “Why did this happen to me,” or “I’m sick, so something’s fundamentally wrong with me.”

    While not great for my mental health, this narrative provided comfort because there is safety in certainty—and if you’re the victim of your own story, you don’t need to change. But comfort came at the cost of my agency. Even if it isn’t your fault, you are responsible for the state of your life because what you don’t change, you choose.

    Over time, I recognized that while the limitations of my illness were real, my identity didn’t have to be defined by them. Radical responsibility doesn’t mean blaming yourself or anyone else for life’s twists. It means reclaiming your ability to choose how you interpret and handle those events.

    I eventually chose to rewrite my narrative: my illness wasn’t proof I was broken; it was evidence of my resilience, a catalyst for growth, and my greatest teacher. This allowed me to create a reality where I wasn’t just enduring a chronic illness; I was thriving and learning how to become the best version of myself.

    Action: Write down a belief that’s keeping you stuck. Rewrite it starting with, “I choose to believe… because…” Then decide if that belief is serving you, or if you want to make a different choice. Notice how this shift feels. You control the narrative, not the circumstance.

    3. Community is the key to courage.

    Facing uncertainty alone is overwhelming and counterproductive. Who you surround yourself with not only provides support; it shapes your reality profoundly. I learned quickly that surrounding myself with people who validated my struggles instead of my growth kept me spinning in cycles.

    Statements like “Life isn’t fair,” “There is never enough,” or “That’s just how things are” are everywhere, but they become silent saboteurs. What you say and who you spend time with shape what you believe is possible for yourself and others.

    Finding people, places, and hobbies that support your curiosity, challenge your perception of what is possible, and encourage your evolution are essential. I’ve been moments away from quitting countless times, only to be saved by those who reminded me of my strength and progress. I look at the people around me with deep love, gratitude, and respect because how they show up in the world reminds me of what’s possible.

    Action: Reflect honestly on your relationships. List people who inspire courage and growth and those who reinforce limitations, even if they mean well. Prioritize nurturing the supportive connections.

    The Takeaway

    My experience navigating a lifetime of chronic illness has taught me that you can’t fight the inevitable, messy parts of life. They aren’t always fair (or fun), but you can find freedom instead of fear during the liminal spaces. Embracing uncertainty, however uncomfortable, has shown me that when everything is unknown, anything is possible.

    If you’re skeptical, I understand—I’ve been there. But what if the unknown isn’t something to fear but something to explore? What if embracing uncertainty is the secret superpower you’ve been looking for?

    Whether it’s dealing with chronic illness or any other unexpected plot twist life throws your way, stepping into the unknown isn’t easy, but trust me, it’s so worth it. On the other side is a life that is authentically, unapologetically yours—messy, imperfect, and profoundly liberating.

  • The Lie of Packaged Healing and the Truth About Feeling

    The Lie of Packaged Healing and the Truth About Feeling

    “Emotions are not problems to be solved. They are signals to be felt.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

    We’ve been taught to package our emotions like fast food—served quick, tidy, and with a smile. Americanized feelings. Digestible. Non-threatening. Always paired with productivity.

    If you’re sad, journal it. If you’re angry, regulate it. If you’re overwhelmed, fix it with a three-step plan and a green juice. And if that doesn’t work? Try again. You probably missed a step.

    This is how we sell emotional healing in the West—marketed like a self-improvement product. Seven-minute abs. Seven habits. Five love languages. Follow the formula. Find the peace.

    But what if the formula is the lie?

    As a mental health therapist, I’ve lived it on both sides. I’ve sat in the client chair, feeling broken because my sadness didn’t resolve after enough gratitude lists. And I’ve sat across from clients who whisper their grief like a confession, wondering what they did wrong because they still feel something.

    They aren’t doing it wrong. They’re just human.

    Healing isn’t about “doing” our feelings. It’s about learning how to actually feel them—without the compulsion to justify them or translate them into something useful.

    You owe no explanation for your feelings.

    And still, even knowing that, I get caught in it too.

    I, too, am a product of this culture—a place where feelings are only tolerated when packaged properly. Not too loud. Not too long. Preferably resolved by morning.

    Because of that, there are days I feel a deep aloneness. But I’ve come to realize the aloneness isn’t a flaw—it’s a longing. A longing to be witnessed in the fullness of my humanity. Not fixed. Not analyzed. Just seen.

    I don’t need validation. I don’t want to defend how I feel. I just want space. Presence. Room to let the feeling pass through me.

    The loneliness reminds me how deeply I’ve been shaped by a culture that fears emotions unless they come with an action plan.

    So I’ve learned to hide mine from most people—not because I’m ashamed, but because they’re afraid. People are afraid of their own feelings, so of course they’ll fear the vulnerability of mine. Most people in this country don’t know what to do with real feelings. And the doing has become the problem.

    That fear of being too much or too messy is rooted deep not only in American culture but also me.

    That part inside me judges the part of me that feels sadness at times. She calls it weakness. Not out of cruelty, but out of fear. She believes that if she can shame that part, a much younger, more authentic part that lives inside me, she won’t risk being shamed by others.

    I’m sure many other Americans have this exact same part inside them as well.

    We have to be tough, suck it up—whatever that even means.

    The part of me that gets sad. The part that gets afraid. The part that feels lonely. These are parts I exiled long ago. But I am beginning to bring them home to me. The parts that are terrified of taking up space. They don’t know yet how precious they are.

    They’re not just tender. They’re wise. They’re the intuitive, empathetic, deeply alive parts of me. The parts our culture has spent countless centuries trying to forget.

    But I won’t forget those parts. Not anymore.

    I speak to them now, with clarity and compassion. I tell them: You are allowed to feel without defending it. You are allowed to take up space without apologizing for the weight of your truth. Expand. Don’t shrink.

    The sad one. The scared one. The one who wants to hide. The one who’s learning to stay. Even the critic. They can all exist inside me—side by side—without contradiction. Without shame. Without needing to explain themselves to anyone.

    I will no longer betray them because others betray their own parts and project their self-betrayal onto me.

    There’s a whole galaxy inside me, and there’s a whole galaxy inside of you. Of course no one else will fully understand it.

    What matters is that I do.

    And I’m learning… I’m not here to be understood. I’m here to simply be me—and to allow all that resides in me to be, too.

    And maybe you are, too.

  • What Heals Our Nervous Systems

    What Heals Our Nervous Systems

  • How I Broke Free from a Narcissistic Family System

    How I Broke Free from a Narcissistic Family System

    “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”~ Carl Jung

    My mom had always been invested in real estate. I remember snacking on open house charcuterie years before we finally purchased a house to flip—the first of four. By the time I was eighteen, we’d moved five times.

    I knew our family was falling apart by renovation number three.

    I had spent the previous few years experiencing suicidal ideation and was now on a strict cocktail of seven or so psychiatric and neurological medications.

    My brother was in his sophomore year of college, on academic probation, and coping by mixing alcohol with benzodiazepines.

    My mother was expanding a highly ranked vocational services program while struggling with hyperthyroidism and unidentifiable gut health issues.

    My father was often missing, either executing his latest scam (upcharging my friends’ parents on cases of local wine) or pursuing the buyer of our latest fixer-upper, who eventually became his second wife.

    I couldn’t see the difference between a faulty house and my faulty family. There were constant leaks (tears), water damage (resentment), and cracks in the foundation (domestic violence), and yet there was character, familiarity, and history worth saving.

    My family would have rather remained in denial of our structural instabilities, but the increasing severity of my suicidal ideations left me no choice. If I were to survive, I had to dig through the walls of our house and remove whatever was making me sick.

    The Inspection

    The first step in the renovation process is identifying the problem areas: what can be saved and what must be removed.

    Growing up in a narcissistic family system leaves a child with no baseline to compare to. Narcissistic abuse often isolates physical violence to certain people or excludes it entirely, so traditional models of domestic abuse are not comparable.

    Identifying narcissistic abuse is an act of decoding a series of games and behaviors that mimic that of an infant. Pathological narcissists are psychologically frozen in the primordial mind, exclusively concerned with getting their needs met without concern for their effect on others.

    My father’s unpredictable conduct was like a mold that had spread into every room of the house: insidious, nearly undetectable. He was rarely physically violent but constantly psychologically toying with us.

    Common behaviors included hiding necessities, like keys and wallets; ignoring calls, texts, or even our physical existence; triangulating arguments between family members; and harshly punishing mistakes while finding serious offences humorous. The effects of his volatility appeared in a variety of health issues amongst the rest of us. My brother developed a chronic stomach illness, my mom started losing circulation in her hands, and I began experiencing pseudoseizures.

    For the sake of my health, I could not continue living in a mold-infested home; both my physical and psychological well-being were compromised. By the end of my inspection, it had become clear that exterminating my father from the home was integral to my recovery. Too much damage had been done. Gutting the house was the only chance I had at saving it.

    Demolition Day

    There is no clean or precious way to demolish a house. Ripping out vinyl flooring and knocking down drywall is a messy process. Dust scatters everywhere, glass breaks, and rodent feces are found within walls. If one wishes to undergo such a renovation, they must accept that a mess will be made and cleaned up later.

    Identifying my father as a narcissistic abuser released me of the narrative that I was mystifyingly crazy, but it also made him crazier. He became firmly unapologetic, insults and neglect were more pointed, and the physical violence amplified. I was rebelling—as normal teenagers do—but my dad responded with harassment, physical intimidation, and complete emotional abandonment.

    My compulsive self-loathing morphed into rage. The harm I had been inflicting inward began unfolding outward in bouts of verbal assault, criticism, and bullying. I remember once screaming profanities and threatening suicide to my ex-boyfriend after I had found out he had been hanging out with a group of our friends without telling me. No one was safe from my wrath.

    The threads of my father’s personality that were embedded within me had to be explored in their entirety. They had to be acted out and mirrored back at him for the illusion to be shattered.

    In defense of my autonomy, I weaponized his insecurities, verbally recognized him as an abuser, and learned to play his game. I was not the character he had made of me: the cowardly, mentally tortured weakling. I could be volatile, ferocious, and wicked. I could be like him.

    By the last renovation, my father’s mental illness had become undeniable. The fighting was constant and precisely unveiled his intemperate nature. After we sold the house, my mom filed for divorce from my dad, and I cut all contact with him. This August, it will be ten years since I’ve spoken to him.

    When I finally finished tearing through every wall, counter, and cabinet, I discovered the mold was not the only issue; the foundation was rotten too. Cutting contact with my father did not cure my depression or anxiety because he was only one cog in a faulty machine.

    Weak Bones

    To properly inspect the foundation of a house, one must calculate how each pillar supports the others. For a house to be stable, the materials must be solid, the architecture perfectly calculated, and the ground level.

    In systems of abuse, the abuser is not simply a bug that infiltrates and poisons what would be a normally functioning software; the players within these systems are puzzle pieces, all equally contributing to a complete picture. Identifying the role each member plays is integral to deconstructing the family system and potentially saving it from collapse.

    After four or five years of therapy and self-study, I accurately identified each family member’s role in the system: The Narcissist, The Enabler, The Golden Child, and The Scapegoat.

    One of the burdens of the Scapegoat in the family system is they’re the only participant living in the shared reality yet surrounded by people motivated to remain in a delusion.

    The Narcissist trains each member of the group to deny their reality in favor of his or her perception, which makes it difficult for all parties to differentiate reality from fantasy.

    The Scapegoat’s ego strength is usually underdeveloped, making it difficult to maintain the position that they can see through the familial matrix. But the pain of abuse makes reality less deniable for them than, say, the Enabler, who believes they can escape the abuse by remaining in denial, or the Golden Child, who is championed and protected for validating the Narcissist’s perception.

    Whether they adhere to the delusion or not, the Scapegoat is never rewarded by the Narcissist, nor allied by the other family members.

    This is also the best part about being the Scapegoat. They are the most overtly abused and yet the most likely to recover. There is no value in pleasing or maintaining a connection to the Narcissist nor upholding the false narrative they’ve crafted.

    There is no motivation to remain in the fantasy, therefore they have nothing to lose in destroying it. If the Scapegoat can deconstruct the self-loathing, victimized role they’ve been cast in, they can escape the system.

    Removing the Narcissist does not necessarily unbind each character from their role. Just as my self-identification with mental illness had assisted my father in creating a Scapegoat of me, my mother’s martyrdom made an Enabler of her, and my brother’s mirroring of the behavior made a Golden Child of him. Once the Narcissist is excavated from the system, each member has to deconstruct their relational patterns and personal identity to properly engage in healthy relationships.

    For years, my role as the Scapegoat exempted my family from embracing their own responsibility in fostering my father’s verbal and psychological abuses. Even after my father was ostracized, my identification with “mental illness” made me an easy patsy for my family member’s own dysfunction.

    They didn’t need to look within themselves to find a leaky pipe; they could point to my hospitalizations, failing grades, and diagnoses. In order to save myself from the dysfunction, I had to become healthy, so undeniably healthy that the damage could not possibly be coming from me.

    Starting from Scratch

    Tearing down the residual structure is quicker but just as messy as the demolition process. Every trace of the familial programming within the child must be broken down and examined. Homogenous relationships coined by codependency and self-destruction must be excavated from their life.

    The child has to accurately differentiate appropriate and inappropriate behavior from both themselves and those around them before walls can be built to protect them from compulsively engaging in more unhealthy behavior.

    Building the frame of oneself is an act of identifying core values and beliefs: “What matters most to me? How do I expect to be treated? What will I not stand for?”

    I had to swing to the other end of the pendulum to discover which bits of my upbringing were authentic. Every trace of my upbringing had to be removed from my sense of self: politics, humor, religious beliefs. I became artistic where my family was business-minded, empathetic towards those they would have laughed at, and honest when they would have lied.

    I became unrecognizable; the preppy, conservative, private school girl morphed into an edgy leftist with a theater degree. I moved from coast to coast, desperate to escape any identification with my past self. I successfully removed an array of self-destructive habits: boundaryless friendships, hypersexuality, and self-identification with mental illness. The house I had built was sturdy and spotless.

    In the end, I discovered that my family members and I don’t entirely share the same values, we do not follow the same moral code, and we are not driven by the same aims, but we are not total opposites. New builds are stable but sterile. I needed to sift through the parts of myself I had thrown away in order to feel complete.

    Scavenging the Rubble 

    After the construction is finalized, the few remaining remnants of the previous house are piled in the lawn, waiting to be sorted. Some of it is junk, but other bits are sentimental relics of the old home, too precious to leave behind. Beams of original hardwood, vintage furniture, and iron bookends are saved and repurposed as charming decor.

    Children of narcissistic family systems grow up not as themselves but as a projection of the narcissist’s experience of the child. The child’s honest self isn’t just neglected; it is punished and suffocated. Even identifying preferences is a difficult task.

    When I first began searching for my true self beneath the programming, I would have preferred to have found I have nothing in common with my family or the holographic self that had been projected onto me. It’s tempting to order everything new. It can feel clean and picturesque, but truthfully, I couldn’t decorate myself from scratch. If I were to live authentically, I would need to integrate the parts of myself I would have rather abandoned.

    In order to determine which remains could be repurposed, I had to ask myself, “Is this piece mine or something that was instilled in me?”

    It’s been almost a year since I moved back to my hometown, and I’ve found that these streets that contain my childhood are also beacons leading me back to my missing parts. My charm, my humor, and even my storytelling abilities are all traces of my family members. The timid, morose young girl formed by my upbringing is a character that contributes to my depth. To remove either from my personality would be a denial of my own complexity.

    I am still in the process of completing my home, and there is comfort in knowing that it will never end. I may shut a door too hard, causing a frame to fall and need replacing. I may inherit silver from my grandmother that needs polishing. A house needs constant updating and maintenance; we are always renovating ourselves with new experiences, information, and outlooks.

    What’s important now is that I have a place of my own. I am not a living projection created by my upbringing, and I can recognize what is mine and what has been given to me. I am a stable, individual structure with my own design and shape, all of which come from within me and nowhere else.

  • I Lost My Father—and the Illusion of My Mother

    I Lost My Father—and the Illusion of My Mother

    “Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ~Eckhart Tolle

    In July 2023, my father died in a tragic accident. We were devastated—my sisters, my mother, and I. Or so I thought.

    What followed in the months after his death forced me to confront the truth of my mother’s emotional disconnection, a truth I had sensed but never fully allowed myself to see. In losing my father, I also lost the illusion of the mother I thought I had.

    A Sudden Exit

    By September, just two months after my father’s death, my mother packed up and left the home we had just helped her settle into. She moved from Florida to Alabama to be with a man she had secretly loved for years—her high school crush. A man she had long referred to as her “co-author.” I will call him Roy.

    He had been a nightly fixture in her life for a while. She would stay on the phone with him late into the evening, even while my dad slept in the next room. She always claimed it didn’t bother my father. But looking back, I wonder if he just swallowed the discomfort, like so many other things.

    Let’s take a step back. In 2022, my sister and I bought a home for our parents to retire in comfortably. We thought we were giving them a safe and loving space to grow old together. But before my father even passed away, my mother had already planned her escape. The house we bought wasn’t her sanctuary. It was a stopover.

    She didn’t ask us for help moving. She didn’t even warn us. She bought new luggage, made quiet arrangements, and disappeared. We were suddenly bombarded with text messages filled with excitement: stories of her “new life,” her “adventures,” and her rediscovered love. She glowed with freedom while the rest of us were still gasping for air.

    A New Life, A New Name

    By January—six months after my father died—she was married to Roy. She changed her last name. She discarded decades of shared identity with my father like she was shedding an old coat. She left behind his ashes. She left the framed photos that we had prepared for his memorial. It was as if he had never existed.

    But it wasn’t just him she left behind. She also abandoned her daughters. Her grandchildren. Her great-grandchildren. A family many would cherish, tossed aside like clutter.

    Her new story was one of long-suffering redemption. She recast herself as the woman who had endured a marriage with a difficult man and had finally, after decades, found joy. The truth? She had slowly detached from the rest of us for years—investing more time in writing projects and Facebook groups aligned with Roy’s interests, and less in her own family.

    Her new husband had also just lost his spouse, only days after my dad died. The narrative practically wrote itself: two grieving souls who found each other through fate. But those of us watching from the outside knew the foundation had been laid long before the funerals.

    The Pain of Rewriting the Past

    Eventually, my sisters and I had to step away. We had asked for space to grieve our father—kindly, repeatedly. But every boundary was met with denial, deflection, or emotional manipulation. There was no recognition of our pain, only excitement about her “next chapter.”

    Sometimes I wrestle with the urge to correct her version of events. In her telling, she’s the eternal victim: a woman finally liberated, only to be judged by ungrateful daughters who refused to be happy for her. But I’ve learned that arguing with someone’s internal mythology rarely leads to healing. It only deepens the divide.

    So, I let go. Not of the truth, but of the need for her to see it.

    I grieved deeply—not only for my father, but for the mother I thought I had. I began to wonder: Had she ever wanted children? Had she ever truly been emotionally available? Was it all performative?

    Those are hard questions to ask. But once I allowed myself to see her clearly—not as the mother I hoped she was, but as the woman she actually is—I began to feel something surprising: relief. And eventually, acceptance. Accepting that a parent is incapable of giving you the love you needed is one of the hardest emotional tasks we face. But it’s also one of the most liberating.

    Breaking the Cycle

    There were red flags in childhood. My mom wasn’t nurturing. She often complained of pain, stayed stuck on the couch, irritable and disconnected from the rest of the family. I walked on eggshells around her. I can’t recall warm, playful memories. That emotional void quietly shaped me in ways I didn’t fully understand until recently.

    I developed an attachment style that drew me to avoidant relationships, repeating old patterns. I didn’t know how to ask for what I needed because I had never learned to recognize my needs in the first place.

    Through therapy, reflection, and support, I began to break the cycle. But it required giving up the fantasy. It required grieving not just the loss of my parents, but the loss of the childhood I wished I had. This is not a story of blaming parents, but rather one of gaining a deeper understanding of my mother to better understand myself.

    I want to be clear: I have compassion for my mother. She grew up with mental illness in her home. She wasn’t nurtured either. She didn’t learn how to attune, connect, or show up. She may have done the best she could with what she had.

    But compassion doesn’t mean ignoring harm. I can hold both truths: her pain was real, and so is the pain she inflicted.

    The Freedom of Letting Go

    I’ve stopped hoping for an apology. I’ve stopped trying to explain myself. And I’ve stopped trying to earn her love.

    Instead, I’m investing in the relationships that nourish me. I’m giving myself the emotional safety I never had. I’m allowing myself to feel it all—the grief, the clarity, the compassion, the peace. Letting go of a parent doesn’t make you cold-hearted. It means you’ve decided to stop betraying yourself.

    Because here’s the truth I’ve come to accept: we can love our parents and still recognize that the relationship isn’t healthy. We can give grace for their pain without sacrificing our own healing. And in some cases, we can—and must—walk away.

    There is freedom in seeing our parents as they really are—not as idealized figures, but as complex, flawed humans. When we hold onto illusions, we gaslight ourselves. We call ourselves too sensitive or too needy when in reality, we’re responding to unmet needs that have been there all along.

    To me, that doesn’t mean sitting in resentment about what you didn’t get from your parents; it means figuring out how to provide that for yourself as an adult. If we don’t examine those early wounds, we carry them forward. We struggle to trust. We tolerate toxic dynamics. We confuse love with emotional labor.

    Understanding where it all began leads to healthy change. We can choose different relationships. We can choose ourselves.

    And that, I’ve learned, is where healing begins.

  • Raised on Their Best Intentions—Healed on My Own Terms

    Raised on Their Best Intentions—Healed on My Own Terms

    “Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~Kahlil Gibran

    There are two versions of me.

    There’s the one I am now—the grounded, present woman who holds space for others, who guides people toward healing, who walks barefoot through the grass and whispers affirmations while sipping her coffee.

    And then there’s the other version. The one who barely made it. The one who used to stare into her fridge not out of hunger but as a distraction from the ache in her chest. The one who didn’t feel at home in her body. The one who was certain no one could ever understand the weight she carried, let alone help lift it.

    If you’ve ever felt pain that rewired your entire being, you know:

    Trauma doesn’t just live in the mind.

    It takes root in the bones, in the pauses between conversations, in the way you flinch when someone raises their voice—even slightly.

    For years, I was operating on autopilot. From the outside, I seemed fine. But internally, I was haunted by invisible wounds and unspoken memories.

    Then came the moment I will never forget—when I confronted the very people who gave me life.

    I was in my twenties. I’d been carrying years of resentment, confusion, and heartache. Every harsh word, every time I felt small—it all built up inside me.

    And I finally let it spill out during an emotionally charged conversation. I brought up a pattern that had deeply impacted me, hoping to be heard.

    I expected remorse, maybe even repair.

    But instead, I heard: “We did the best we could.” It was calm, maybe even resigned. It wasn’t unkind, but it felt like a door closing instead of opening. In that moment, I felt both understanding and a quiet ache, realizing we weren’t going to meet in the middle.

    Those six words didn’t offer relief. They didn’t soften the years of damage. Because understanding your parents’ limitations doesn’t erase your pain. But it does offer you a choice:

    To carry it forward. Or to finally put it down.

    That was the turning point.

    I realized I didn’t want to live stuck anymore—stuck in old stories, like believing I had to suppress my emotions to keep the peace, or that loyalty meant silence; stuck in shame and in patterns I didn’t choose. I wanted to heal. Not just for myself, but for every version of me that had felt unseen.

    So I started to write.

    Not for anyone else, but for me.

    When I couldn’t speak the truth out loud, I wrote it down. My journals became confessionals. My pen, a lifeline. My pain, my teacher.

    Eventually, I found tools that helped me dig even deeper—meditation, somatic work, subconscious reprogramming, hypnotherapy.

    I learned that the subconscious mind is like a computer. It stores everything you’ve ever believed about yourself—especially the painful parts. If you don’t update the programming, you’ll keep replaying the same loop:

    I’m not enough. It’s my fault. Love has to be earned. I must stay small to be safe.

    And when you realize that you can change that inner script? That’s when everything shifts.

    In 2020, I became a certified hypnotherapist. But truthfully, that was just the official title. My real training began the day I stopped running from myself.

    Through that work, I began to rewire old beliefs, release trauma stored in my body, and speak to my younger self with compassion instead of criticism.

    I finally started to feel free. Not perfect. Not enlightened. But freer.

    Free to cry and not apologize for it. Free to take up space. Free to stop fixing everyone else so I could finally tend to myself.

    Today, I help others do the same.

    Not because I have all the answers, but because I remember what it felt like to not even know which questions to ask.

    And if you’re reading this right now, I want to say something I wish someone had said to me: You are not broken. You are not behind. You are not unworthy. You are a soul who has walked through fire—and you’re still here.

    Healing is not linear.

    You will have days where you feel like you’ve regressed, where the sadness feels fresh, where you question everything. That’s okay.

    Progress isn’t perfection. It’s presence. And your presence—your willingness to look at your pain instead of running from it—is what will change your life.

    You don’t need to hustle your way to healing. You just need to return to yourself.

    So here’s what I’ve learned, in case it helps you:

    1. Triggers are teachers in disguise. They point to wounds that need tending. For me, being interrupted or talked over would trigger an intense emotional response—one rooted in earlier experiences where my voice didn’t feel valued. I also noticed that certain tones of voice, especially condescending ones, could instantly make me feel small.

    2. You are allowed to feel anger at those who hurt you and compassion for the fact they didn’t know better.

    3. The body holds trauma, but it also holds the key to release. Pay attention to your breath. Your posture. Your gut feelings.

    4. You can forgive and still hold boundaries, like saying no without over-explaining or stepping away from emotionally unsafe conversations. I’ve also created space by recognizing when it’s not my role to carry someone else’s emotional process—especially if it comes at the cost of my well-being.

    5. You can grieve and still grow.

    And most of all: You can rewrite your story at any time. Because you are not your past.  You are the author of your next chapter.

    So let it be one of reclamation.

    Let it be the moment you stop shrinking and start rising. Let it be the chapter where you stop surviving and start living.

    You are the light you’ve been looking for.

  • Rebuilding Myself After Divorce: How I Found Healing and Hope

    Rebuilding Myself After Divorce: How I Found Healing and Hope

    “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi

    I never imagined I’d be here at forty-nine—divorced, disoriented, and drowning in an identity crisis. I had met him just before my sixteenth birthday. He was all I knew. We built an entire life together—nearly three decades of marriage, raising children, shared memories, traditions, routines. And then, one day, it all collapsed with five haunting words: “I need some space, Heather.”

    At first, I thought it was a phase. But the space became silence, the silence became separation, and soon after, I was signing divorce papers. The man I had built my entire adult life around was gone—and I was left looking in the mirror, asking, who am I without him?

    I wasn’t just grieving a relationship. I was grieving myself. The version of me that had given everything. The version that bent and adapted and compromised for the sake of “us.” And underneath the heartbreak was a heavy cocktail of blame and resentment—toward him, toward myself, and honestly, toward time.

    I blamed him for blindsiding me, for giving up, for not fighting for us. I resented him for having the freedom to walk away while I was left holding the pieces of a shattered dream. But deeper down, I blamed myself for not seeing the signs. For ignoring the subtle shifts. For losing myself in the process of trying to keep a marriage alive that had slowly stopped breathing.

    The truth is our marriage ended because we grew apart. I had started evolving—becoming more spiritual, more curious, more self-aware. He didn’t come with me. And after years of unspoken tension, emotional distance, and mismatched values, we were no longer on the same path. Still, even with that understanding, it didn’t make the grief easier.

    For months, I was in survival mode—smiling through social events, working, taking care of my responsibilities. Outwardly composed. But inside? I was crumbling. The nights were the hardest. That’s when the questions haunted me:

    What did I do wrong? Why wasn’t I enough? Will anyone ever love me again?

    Then, one quiet afternoon—nothing particularly special about it—I sat in my bedroom, surrounded by silence, sunlight pouring through the window, and I just… stopped. I was exhausted from my own thoughts. There was no dramatic trigger—just an overwhelming stillness that finally gave space for a new question to enter:

    What if this isn’t the end? What if this is the beginning of coming home to myself?

    That was the moment everything shifted. I decided I was no longer going to be the woman waiting to be rescued. I was going to become the woman who rescued herself.

    Heartbreak lives in the body. And mine was screaming.  Tight shoulders, restless sleep, a dull ache in my chest that never left. I had spent so long disassociating from my body—ignoring its cries while tending to everyone else’s needs.

    But healing demanded presence. So, I began walking the dogs daily—feeling my feet on the earth, breathing deeply again. I returned to gentle movement through Pilates. I swapped comfort food for nourishing meals that made me feel alive. Each small act of care was a message to myself: You matter. You’re worth tending to.

    The most toxic place I lived in wasn’t my house post-divorce—it was my own mind. The narrative was cruel: You failed. You’re too old. You’re fat. You’re unlovable. You’ll always be alone.

    But I started catching those thoughts and asking, Would I say this to my daughter or my best friend? Of course not. So why was I saying them to myself?

    I started journaling affirmations: I am enough. I am healing. I am lovable. I am whole. Slowly, my inner critic softened. I began rewriting my story—not as the woman who was left, but as the woman who rose

    The next chapter was the most magical—and the most confronting. When your life revolves around someone else for nearly thirty years, you forget who you are outside of that. I began to remember.

    I remembered I love writing.

    I remembered how healing it is to dance barefoot to music I adore.

    I remembered my curiosity, my dreams, my longing for meaning.

    I began meditating each morning, journaling. and going on solo nature walks. I talked to my guides, my angels. I cried. I created sacred space just for me.

    And slowly… the woman I was before him, and the woman I was becoming after him, started to meet. And they liked each other.

    Healing isn’t a straight line. Some days you feel fierce. Other days, fragile. But both are part of the process.

    Even now—with a wonderful new man in my life—grief still visits me from time to time. Milestones like our children’s weddings or the births of our grandchildren have stirred old emotions I thought I’d already processed. Moments where the “what was” collides with the “what is.”

    But now, instead of meeting that sadness with shame or self-judgment, I greet it with compassion. It’s okay to hold joy in one hand and grief in the other. That’s what healing really looks like.

    If you’re in the middle of your own heartbreak, here’s what I’ve learned that might help:

    Care for your body: Movement, nourishment, rest. Your nervous system needs it.

    Challenge your inner critic: Speak to yourself with the love you gave so freely to others.

    Rediscover your essence: You are more than someone’s partner. You are a soul, a fire, a force.

    Let go with love: Blame binds you to the past. Forgiveness sets you free.

    You are not broken. You are rebuilding. Every tear, every setback, every breakthrough is sculpting a more radiant, wiser version of you.

  • Mindful Parenting: How to Calm Our Kids and Heal Ourselves

    Mindful Parenting: How to Calm Our Kids and Heal Ourselves

    “When we show up for our kids in moments when no one showed up for us, we’re not just healing them. We’re healing ourselves.” ~Dr. Becky Kenedy

    I wasn’t taught to pause and breathe when I was overwhelmed.

    I was taught to push through. To be a “good girl.” To smile when something inside me was begging to be seen.

    I was told to toughen up. Not to cry. Not to feel too much.

    But how can we grow into resilient humans when we’re taught to hide the very feelings that make us human?

    I thought I was learning strength. But what I was really learning was how to disconnect.

    And I carried that disconnection into adulthood… into motherhood… into my work… until it begged to be healed.

    Becoming a Mother and Seeing Myself Again

    When I became a mother, the past resurfaced in ways I couldn’t ignore.

    As a school psychologist, I had spent years working with children, guiding them through emotional regulation, supporting teachers and families, and creating safe spaces in classrooms and therapy rooms. But nothing prepared me for what would rise when my own child began to feel deeply.

    At the same time, my soul sister, Sondra, was walking through a similar reckoning.

    She had spent years creating spaces for children to express themselves through story and imagination, yet still carried parts of her own childhood she hadn’t been taught how to hold.

    We were doing meaningful work in the world, but our children cracked something open. Their meltdowns, their restlessness, their big emotions… all of it held up a mirror.

    And instead of just reacting, I saw something deeper: myself.

    Because even with all my tools and knowledge, I was still learning how to sit with my own feelings too.

    When I Teach My Child, I Re-Teach Myself

    That’s when I truly understood: When I teach my child mindfulness, I’m not just raising them. I’m re-raising myself.

    I’m learning to do something I was never taught: To feel. To breathe. To stay present in the discomfort. To hold space without fixing or fleeing.

    And through that process, I’m healing parts of myself that had been quietly waiting for years.

    I remember this moment clearly:

    My child was on the floor, overwhelmed by emotion. The kind of meltdown that pulls something primal out of you. Every instinct in me wanted to yell. To leave the room. To shut it down.

    But instead, I paused. I sat down. I took a breath. And then another. I whispered, “I’m here.”

    That moment wasn’t about control. It was about connection. And that’s what changed everything.

    What Mindfulness Looks Like in Real Life

    I used to think mindfulness had to look calm and quiet, but it’s not perfect.

    • It’s not silent yoga flows and lavender oils (though we love those, too).
    • It’s pausing before reacting.
    • It’s whispering affirmations under your breath when you want to scream.
    • It’s sitting beside my child, breathing together, without trying to make the feeling go away.
    • It’s placing a hand on your heart and remembering that you are safe now.
    • It’s letting your child see you regulate, repair, and return to love.
    • It’s letting a tantrum pass, not because I stopped it, but because I stayed.
    • It’s about building homes and classrooms where children don’t have to unlearn their feelings later.

    It’s not about perfection. It’s about presence. It’s about co-regulation, what children truly need to feel safe.

    Because kids don’t calm down by being told to. They calm down when their nervous system is met with ours. With softness. With breath. With safety.

    That’s mindfulness.

    That’s the real work.

    Healing Myself, Healing My Lineage

    The more I practiced this way of parenting, the more I realized I wasn’t just helping my child feel. I was healing emotional patterns that had lived in my family for generations.

    I lived in a loving family, but trauma was hard on them. They didn’t know how to regulate their emotions. They didn’t know how to sit with discomfort, how to process instead of project.

    So they yelled. They shut down. They pushed through, just like they were taught. And that became the blueprint I inherited, too.

    I am part of the first generation trying to raise emotionally attuned children while still learning how to feel safe in my own body.

    And it’s not easy. It’s sacred work. It’s spiritual work. It’s lineage work.

    Because every time I whisper “I’m here” to my child, I whisper it to the younger version of me who needed it too.

    There are moments, gentle, almost sacred, when I hear my child hum softly while striking a chime, eyes closed, saying,“This sound makes my heart feel better.”

    No one explained resonance. No one showed them how.

    And in that moment, I remember: our children come into this world with a knowing we spend years trying to reclaim.

    We believe we’re the teachers. But in their stillness, their play, their pure presence, they become the ones guiding us home.

    Planting Seeds of Calm

    One day, my son looked up at me with tearful eyes and said, “Mommy, I just need you to sit with me.”

    And in that moment, I realized: so did I.

    That moment changed everything. It was the beginning of a softer way. A new rhythm rooted in breath, presence, and remembering that we’re not just here to teach our children how to regulate; we’re here to learn how to stay with ourselves, too.

    I began to notice the magic in slowing down. To listen. To honor what was happening inside of me so I could meet what was happening inside of them. Not with control but with connection.

    Every time a parent sits on the floor and breathes with their child, something ancient is rewritten.

    Every time we name emotions instead of shutting them down, we break a pattern.

    We don’t just raise mindful children. We raise ourselves.

    Because the truth is: Every breath we teach our children to take is one we were never taught to take ourselves.

    And now, we get to learn together.

  • The Whisper That Saved My Life When I Was Drowning

    The Whisper That Saved My Life When I Was Drowning

    TRIGGER WARNING: This post references rape and suicide attempts, which might be distressing for some readers.

    “Our lives only improve when we are willing to take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” ~Walter Anderson

    This was my third psychiatric hospitalization after my suicide attempts.

    On this visit, something shifted. All I knew at that moment was, for the first time, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

    There was no window or clock. Just blank, pale walls I’d been staring at for twenty-one days.

    I lay there, shattered and broken in a way that felt beyond repair. It shouldn’t hurt this much just to be alive.

    Then I heard it—a whisper from deep inside me. It was little Jennifer, saying, “There has to be more to my life than this.” I didn’t recognize this voice yet as my inner child, but that whisper marked the beginning of my healing. It was the moment I stopped running and decided to stay with myself.

    I used to be so embarrassed by how my life had unfolded. I never believed I’d share my story with anyone, let alone write about it publicly. Now, I’m ready to tell the world.

    We rarely discuss grueling topics openly—mental health, suicide attempts, codependency, and shame. That silence is killing us one secret at a time.

    If you’re reading this and you’re where I was, I want you to know you’re not alone. No matter how broken you feel, you are worth fighting for.

    Before that hospital stay, I had spent years surviving. Much of that survival was wrapped around someone I loved deeply. I’ll call him Ethan.

    He supported me through surgeries, breakdowns, and diagnoses. Even after we broke up, we stayed entangled in each other’s lives, emotionally dependent and clinging to a connection I didn’t know how to navigate without.

    My world shattered around me when I was raped. Then my rape kit and other records went missing.  That’s when my second suicide attempt happened, landing me in the ICU. I felt violated twice, leaving an internal scar on me.

    I was consumed with rage at the world and myself. I didn’t trust anyone. I pushed everyone away, even the ones trying to love me. Friends and family didn’t feel safe. Nothing did.

    I couldn’t face the reality of my life, so I buried my head in the sand of online shopping, sleeping, and eating. It reached the point where I couldn’t function on a day-to-day basis.

    My nightmares were so intense that I’d wake myself up screaming. Then I’d look down and realize I had ripped my sheets in half while I was sleeping. I was terrified to fall asleep.

    When I was awake, it felt like I was fading. I didn’t even recognize myself anymore. The fear and depression were so heavy, I couldn’t be touched—not even by things that were supposed to feel normal.

    The shower water hitting my skin would make me flinch. The blow dryer made me panic. I had crying spells that came out of nowhere. During flashbacks, I would grind my teeth unconsciously and crack a tooth.

    After the rape, I was unable to remain in the apartment where the assault had occurred. Thankfully, being the kind friend he was, Ethan let me move back into his apartment, which I had previously lived in when we were dating.

    I fell apart in every way. I hadn’t showered in weeks and was still wearing the same Victoria’s Secret flannel pajamas, which had become loose from constant wear over the weeks.

    My hair was a wild lion’s mane, the kind you’d expect from a creature lost in the jungle, only ever softened when Ethan sat me down and brushed it with gentle care. The cold hardwood floors shocked my bare feet during those brief journeys from bed to bathroom or kitchen, my only ventures in a world that had shrunk to the size of his apartment.

    Ethan would leave for work before sunrise and return to a dark apartment. He’d turn on the kitchen light and see chocolate wrappers and tissues scattered across the floor, evidence that I’d been up, if only briefly.

    He gently encouraged me to shower but never made me feel ashamed of myself. He still hugged me every day.

    After two years of caring for me, he reconnected with someone from his past. That night marked the beginning of something new for him and the unraveling of what little stability I had left.

    I remember thinking, “How can he fall in love when I’m dying inside?”

    I stayed curled up under my pink furry blanket as I watched life pass by. Heavy tears slid down my face and soaked into the only thing that still brought me comfort.

    Every time he left the apartment to go out with his new girlfriend, my chest ached with a mix of emotions that flooded me. Jealousy, anger, and confusion bubbled up so fast I couldn’t make sense of it. I felt abandoned, forgotten, and replaced.

    As the hours went by after he left, my mind started to race. I imagined what she looked like, what they were doing, and whether he was happier with her than he ever was with me. The thoughts consumed me and fed my depression, and I started binging on food to numb the pain.

    He was just a human being attempting to continue with his life, but in my broken state, I saw it as evidence that I was unrepairable, that everyone else could heal and move forward except me.

    The problem was that I didn’t have a life to return to. I had no identity outside of him. I didn’t know who I was, what I liked, or how to care for myself emotionally.

    When I no longer felt needed, I lost my sense of worth.

    That whisper lingered with me. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was my inner child—little Jennifer—asking me not to give up on her again. Healing her became one of the missing pieces I didn’t even know I was searching for.

    For years, I had relied on Ethan to soothe me when I didn’t have the tools to relieve myself. He gave me love when I hated myself, and care when I couldn’t function or forgive who I had become. In many ways, he was mothering the parts of me that I had never learned to nurture.

    It took me over a year to stop my old habits when I got out. I finally deleted all my dating apps and promised myself I wouldn’t use men, shopping, or food to escape anymore. I was choosing myself for the first time.

    I started buying myself flowers and offering the compliments I used to beg someone else to say: “You’re brilliant. You’re beautiful. I’m proud of you.” Now, I was becoming the one who gave myself the love and attention I was always seeking.

    I began going on self-love dates. At first, it was just five minutes of listening to music. Then it became six, and eventually seven. Sitting alone with my thoughts was excruciating for someone like me, who had always escaped with weed, alcohol, or other people’s company.

    I didn’t know how to manage my restlessness, but I kept showing up. I added one more minute each week.

    Eventually, I wore the prettiest dress and took myself to cafes, meditation classes, and movies. I didn’t know what I liked, so I made a list. I wanted to become someone I could count on. Slowly, I began to love my own company. The woman who once couldn’t stand being alone became someone I looked forward to getting to know.

    Those self-love dates didn’t just build my self-esteem—they became the foundation of finding myself.

    Each outing helped me rediscover little pieces of myself. I realized I was funny. I could make myself laugh.

    I no longer needed distractions. I never would’ve known any of this if I hadn’t kept showing up and learning who I was underneath the pain. Looking back, the most life-changing thing I ever did was stop abandoning myself.

    If I had loved and valued myself back then the way I do now, I still would’ve been heartbroken when Ethan moved on, but it wouldn’t have broken me the way it did. I would’ve known I could survive it and still build a life worth living.

    We build our relationship with ourselves just as we do with someone we’re dating.

    Remember when you first met someone and stayed on the phone for hours, even when you were exhausted, because your curiosity about them kept you awake? That same childlike curiosity is what we need to bring to our relationship with ourselves.

    Loving yourself isn’t a luxury. It’s essential. When you build a strong bond with yourself, you don’t fall apart when someone else leaves. You’re no longer waiting to be chosen.

    That’s what I was learning on those self-love dates. I asked myself many questions, explored my thoughts, and gradually began to learn about myself.

    If you’re feeling lost or unsure of who you are without someone else, start with these gentle questions:

    • Is there a book, song, or movie you’ve been wanting to try but haven’t had the chance to yet?
    • Think of a food you loved as a child but haven’t had in years.
    • What would your younger self be sad about that you stopped doing today?
    • What small detail, like an outfit, a scent, or a song, used to make you feel alive?

    The answers don’t need to excite you right now. They’re just starting points, tiny threads to follow when you’ve lost the map to yourself.

    If asking yourself these questions feels overwhelming, start with something smaller. Whisper to yourself: ‘There’s still hope for me.’ Because there is.

    Even in my darkest moments, when I couldn’t imagine ever wanting to live again, hope was waiting quietly beneath all that pain. Sometimes, the tiniest spark of hope is enough to keep you going until you’re ready for the next step.

    Those questions lead to curiosity. Curiosity leads to action. And action becomes the first step in finding your way back to yourself.

    You don’t need to wait for someone else to choose you. You can start by choosing yourself.

    That whisper I heard in the hospital became the roadmap to finding me.

    My biggest regret is not choosing little Jennifer sooner. I kept waiting for someone else to save her, but she’d been waiting for me to bring her home all along.

    If there’s a quiet voice within asking for you to focus on more than just your survival, please listen to it.

    It might feel impossible now, but that whisper holds the truth you’ve searched for everywhere. Your journey back to yourself may not look like mine, but I promise you this: you are worth fighting for.