Tag: wisdom
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Lessons from a Former Overthinker: How to Start Really Living
“Rule your mind, or it will rule you.” ~Buddha
I used to be trapped in a cycle of overthinking, replaying past mistakes, worrying about the future, and mentally holding onto every thought, just as I physically held onto old clothes, books, and my child’s outgrown toys.
The fear of letting go—whether of physical items or persistent thoughts—felt overwhelming. But I didn’t realize that this habit of mental hoarding was keeping me stuck in place.
The Anxiety of Letting Go—My Last Day of School
One of my earliest experiences with mental hoarding happened on my last day of school in 1996 before my tenth-grade board exams. When my class teacher wished us “All the very best, children, for your board exams,” I suddenly realized—it was my last day in school. This thought had never crossed my mind before, and it hit me hard.
I’d spent over a decade there—eleven or twelve years—growing up, laughing, learning, crying, sharing tiffins, and living through every moment with my friends. The idea that I would never return to that life left me feeling overwhelmed with anxiety and sadness.
On that day, when I returned home, I couldn’t eat lunch, nor could I sleep well. I clutched my pillow tightly, as if I could stop time from moving forward. I kept replaying all the moments, all the memories. The playground where I ran and played, the tap I used to drink water from, the desk where I sat every single day, the blackboard where I nervously wrote answers. But what truly gutted me was I would never see some of my friends again.
Back then, there was no Facebook or Instagram to keep in touch. If you missed a day at school, you had to ask someone in person what happened, what they did over the weekend, and what their summer vacation was like. School was the only way to stay connected. I felt like I was losing a part of myself.
I missed my evening’s Taekwondo practice. I didn’t even have the energy for dinner. I just went to bed, but my mind was restless, spinning.
The next morning, I woke up at 3 a.m. I didn’t know why, but I felt like I needed to run. So, I dragged myself to the stadium where I used to train. I ran with all my strength, threw punches and kicks into the air, and let out loud screams with each movement.
Sweat drenched my body, but I didn’t feel tired. Instead, I felt the tension leaving my body. As I sat on the ground, watching the first rays of the sunrise, I realized that time does not stop for anyone. Every ending is a new beginning.
This was the first time I truly understood the power of movement and mindfulness in releasing emotional baggage. I had been hoarding memories, but by physically engaging with my emotions—through running, punching, and embracing the new day—I let go of the stiffness in my mind.
This was my first lesson at the age of fifteen: that sometimes, the hardest goodbyes bring the lightest hearts.
Unanswered Questions—Learning to Let Go
In 2002, I faced another instance of mental hoarding, but this time it was about unanswered questions and emotional attachment.
There was a girl from my school days who had been more than a friend. After school, we lost touch—there were no mobile phones or social media back then. For five to six years, I never considered pursuing anyone else, always wondering what she would think if I did. Her presence lingered in my mind, keeping me from moving forward.
Finally, in 2002, after seven long years, I went to the school where she was working as a teacher. There was a function happening that day, and amidst the crowd, I gathered the courage to propose to her.
Tears filled her eyes as if she had been waiting for that moment, but she neither said yes nor no. Instead, she spoke three lines, turned away, and left. I stood there, unable to move, as if my feet were rooted to the ground. It felt like a part of me had been left behind.
For days, I couldn’t concentrate on my studies. My mind replayed those three lines over and over, searching for answers that weren’t there.
One day, while battling my thoughts, I was hitting a tennis ball against a wall, lost in frustration. In anger, I hit it too hard, and it rebounded faster than I expected. I jumped high to catch it, but when I landed, I felt a sharp pain—a hairline fracture in my right foot. The doctor put my leg in a cast, and for forty-five days, I was confined to my home.
During that time, I had no choice but to sit still. With nothing else to do, I turned my focus entirely to studying for my CA-Inter exam. As I immersed myself in my studies, I noticed something—the memories of that day no longer haunted me. Without realizing it, I had stopped searching for answers. I appeared for my exam soon after my cast was removed and passed successfully.
At the age of twenty-two or twenty-three, I learned a profound lesson: Some questions don’t have answers, and the more we chase them, the more they consume us. The key is to stop searching for meaning in every unanswered moment and move forward.
The Power of Letting Go
A turning point came during my corporate nine-to-five job. I felt like a bird in a cage, desperate to fly but held back by uncertainty. I wanted to quit and start my own business, but I spent two years mentally hoarding fears.
What if I fail? What about my financial responsibilities to my wife and three-year-old son? The constant loop of overthinking paralyzed me. I finally broke free in September 2012, when I quit my job and became a sub-broker in the stock market. Letting go of fear was liberating. I no longer had to be answerable to anyone, and I had the freedom I had always dreamed of.
This experience taught me that, just like physical clutter, mental clutter keeps us stuck.
Another powerful realization came to me in 2020 when my son insisted on buying a 55″ smart TV. I had been holding onto my old CRT TV, the very first thing I bought with my income back in January 2006. It wasn’t just an appliance—it was a symbol of my early struggles and achievements.
I remembered how I had gone to Shimla for work in a friend’s car and excitedly purchased it on the way. Though outdated, it still worked, and I clung to it, not because of its utility, but because of the memories attached to it. Letting go felt like erasing a part of my journey.
But in November 2020, I finally gave it away to someone in need and welcomed the new TV. It was only then that I realized that unless you make space—whether in your home or your mind—new things, new opportunities, and new ways of thinking cannot enter. This lesson extended beyond possessions; it applied to thoughts, regrets, and self-imposed limitations.
Regret is a Waste of Time—Lessons from Professional Life
I started investing and trading in 2009. Back then, I bought stocks that were trading in two figures and sold them after holding them for a few days or months at a 5-10% profit. A decade later, some of those stocks were trading in four figures, and the thought of what I could have gained was painful. The regret of “What if I had held onto them?” haunted me.
But then, I reflected and realized that every decision I made—both buying and selling—was mine, based on the conditions at the time. Just as some stocks grew tremendously, others that once traded in four figures lost their value completely. I have clients who call me daily, expressing regret about missed opportunities. They saw a stock at a lower level, hesitated to buy, and later saw it jump by 25% or more. The cycle of regret is endless.
Over time, I have trained myself to stop overthinking past trades. Now, I focus only on my present trades, whether I make a profit or a loss. If an opportunity presents itself today, I act without hesitation instead of dwelling on missed chances.
This experience taught me an important lesson: If we cannot change our past decisions, there is no use in regretting them. Instead, we should focus on what we can do now.
The Biggest Lesson—Accepting Life’s Impermanence
The biggest lesson I learned came from an unexpected place, one that I never imagined would leave such an impact. In the northern part of India, especially in Punjab, where I live, there is a festival called Basant Panchami, celebrated with much joy and enthusiasm. It usually falls in January, and one of the key traditions is flying kites.
In 2018, the festival was on January 22nd, and the day before, I went to the market with my younger brother to buy kites and strings. We were both passionate about flying kites since childhood, and that day, we were thrilled, full of laughter and excitement. We spent the morning playing music, dancing, and flying kites together, just like we had done for years.
But what I didn’t know, what I could never have predicted, was that day would be the last time I would experience this with my younger brother. In June 2018, my brother left this world, and that was the moment I fully grasped the weight of what I had lost.
From that day until the Basant festival in 2025, I kept the nineteen kites we had bought that day, unable to fly them, because they reminded me of him. It felt like if I flew those kites, I’d somehow be letting go of the only piece left of him. Each year, as the spring festival came around, I would hold on to those kites tightly, preserving the memory of the day we spent together.
But this year, something changed. At the 2025’s Basant festival, I finally let go. I flew those nineteen kites. As they soared in the sky, I realized that we had bought those kites to celebrate, to enjoy life, and my brother would have wanted me to do the same.
Holding on to them, keeping them safe, was just a way of avoiding the truth: life moves on, and sometimes, the more tightly you hold on to something, the more you lose in the process. It reminded me that, like the sand slipping from your hand when you grip it too tightly, life too must be lived with openness and acceptance.
That realization hit me hard: life is like a moving train. We are all passengers on that train, and eventually, each passenger leaves when their station arrives, while others continue their journey. Every living thing on this Earth will vanish one day. Holding on to the past, to memories, to the “what ifs,” only weighs us down.
I had been hoarding my thoughts and emotions for so long, thinking I could preserve them and keep them safe. But this lesson—through the act of finally flying those kites—helped me realize how destructive overthinking can be.
It was time to stop hoarding my memories and emotions. Life is constantly moving forward, and holding on too tightly to what’s gone only prevents me from enjoying the present.
I learned that it’s okay to let go, to free myself from overthinking, and to embrace what is happening now. Just like the kites in the sky, my brother’s memory will always be with me, but I have to live my life fully, without fear of letting go.
The lesson I learned is simple yet profound: stop hoarding your thoughts, free yourself from overthinking, and allow yourself to truly live. Life moves forward, and so must we.
Final Thoughts
Freedom from mental clutter is possible. Once I let go of the thoughts that no longer served me, I made space for clarity, courage, and growth. And just like my career shift, I realized the only way to truly move forward is to stop hoarding and start living.
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Sometimes Not Forgiving Is a Powerful Step Toward Healing
“You should be angry. You must not be bitter. Bitterness is like cancer. It eats upon the host. It doesn’t do anything to the object of its displeasure. So use that anger. You write it. You paint it. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it.” ~Maya Angelou
My mother left when I was five. Dad told me that for a little while I stopped talking, which is hard to imagine because now I never shut up.
Apparently, I disappeared into myself. The doctors called it selective mutism. Two years later, my father’s second wife, Trish, would try to hug me, but I froze, arms pinned to my side, rigid against her affection.
When I was older and I asked Dad what happened, he said he and Mom had been having problems, so she went on a bird-watching cruise to the Seychelles. During a stopover, she met a rugged, bearded, successful world wildlife photographer in the lobby of an African hotel. Frank and Patricia fell in love and immediately left their spouses and kids.
In time, my mother became a talented photographer in her own right. She and Frank traveled continents to capture award-winning photos of animals for National Geographic and the like. Together, they published beautiful coffee table books.
In 2004, both Patricia and Frank died within a month of each other. Frank from cancer, Patricia in a fiery car crash. My sister told me state troopers found a blood-stained snapshot of all five kids inside Patricia’s wallet. The picture was of my three brothers she’d had with my father and my sister and me, who she adopted as babies from two different moms, years after she got her tubes tied.
“Girls,” she told my father. “I need two girls.”
Years ago, I looked up Patricia’s obituary online. I found one attached to a blog written by a fan. At the end of a glowing description of her renowned career was a mention of Frank and that she was “mother to three boys.”
No mention of me or my sister. Whoever wrote the obituary decided we didn’t exist, or maybe they never knew we existed. My sister, who’d stayed in touch with Patricia, seemed okay with the omission. She insisted the picture in Patricia’s wallet proved she thought about us.
“And your comment on the blog was mean,” she told me.
“With all due respect,” I wrote in the blog comments, “Patricia left her five kids” (I’m her youngest daughter) “to go sow her wildlife photographer oats. So yes, she was a talented photographer, but she wasn’t a mother.”
In one picture I found of Patricia and Frank online after they died, Frank had his arm around her in front of a small white tent in Africa.
She was leaning her head against his shoulder, smiling and content. Her face was plump and ruddy and naturally beautiful. Her short, dark, curly hair was windblown, and she was wearing a tan photo vest, khaki shorts, and chunky hiking boots.
In her former life, Patricia was a full-fledged Audrey Hepburn type. An upper-middle-class, small-town New Jersey suburbanite with cinch-waisted elegant dresses, black heels, and pearls. In one Polaroid, my mother smiled for the camera as she carried a paper-footed crown roast to the perfect holiday table set for her husband and five kids.
I was two months old when my parents adopted me. I never once resented my birth mom for giving me up (I found her in 2016, and we’re close).
When I was old enough to understand how hard it must be for a woman to give up a child, I felt sorry for my birth mother. I knew women who gave up their baby did it out of love and desperation. And that it probably ripped their heart out forever. I knew long before I knew anything about my birth mom that giving me away wasn’t personal.
It was selfless.
But mothers who roam the globe with a lover, who give birth to three boys, get their tubes tied, and then adopt two girls to complete the set don’t leave their children for selfless reasons.
They leave because motherhood was a mistake. Because domesticity felt like prison.
“The ugly ducklings” Patricia once told my father about me and my middle brother. Mike stuttered and, like me, wore thick glasses.
When I was older, I’d drag information out of my dad about Patricia. He never wanted us to know Mike and I were her least favorites. That we weren’t perfect enough.
During my sophomore year in college, I sent my mother a short letter. “I never understood why you left the family. Please help me understand.” Then I told her what was going on in my life.
“It was your father’s lifestyle,” she wrote back. “The drinking and fancy parties and spending too much money. It wasn’t you. We were fighting all the time. It wasn’t about you kids.”
Except that when you leave your kids, it is about the kids.
That was our only contact until my late twenties during my youngest brother Chris’s wedding. Patricia smiled awkwardly as we walked toward each other in the hotel reception hall.
We stood in front of each other but didn’t hug. She smiled, looked nervous, and told me, “Look how beautiful you are!” For the next few hours, we chatted about the wedding, my job, and my husband, who sat next to me.
Frank sat between us at our table. Polite but protective. Privately, I was furious at how nonchalant my once-mother seemed. Of course there was too much to unpack, and a wedding wasn’t the place. But Patricia acted like we’d simply lost touch.
A few years ago, when my husband and I were talking about that day, he told me that at some point I whispered to Frank, “Tell Patricia I want nothing to do with her.” I couldn’t stand the façade for one more second. So I went silent.
I don’t remember saying that. But I’m sure I did. Because if my mother had wanted to be in my life, when she got my letter during college, she would have said so.
In 1998, when I became a mom, the resentment for Patricia I’d managed to mostly bury resurfaced with a vengeance.
I was horrified that a mother would leave her children. I felt a maternal protectiveness with my own daughter so visceral and overwhelming that rage bubbled up for my own mother.
I pictured my five-year-old daughter coming home from kindergarten. Getting off the bus and running to hug her dad. I pictured her giggling and holding her vinyl Blue’s Clues lunch box. My husband handing her gummy snacks and a juice box in the kitchen. I pictured him scooping her up and sitting her on the couch next to him. My daughter’s happy feet swinging.
“Where’s Mommy?” she asks as she sips her juice box and her blueberry eyes sparkle.
“Honey, Daddy needs to tell you something. Mommy is um, gone, and she’s not coming back. It’s not your fault, honey, really, it isn’t. You didn’t do anything wrong. But Mommy is, well, Mommy is confused even though she really, really loves you.”
Years ago, I decided that I can’t do with my mother what therapists and clergy suggest when someone hurts us.
“Work to forgive. It’s not about saying what they did was okay. It’s about letting go of anger and resentment. When you do, you’ll feel better. Stop giving over your power to bitterness.”
But the abandoned five-year-old child in me refuses to forgive my mother. I could, but I won’t. Not because I’m consumed with anger. I’m not. Because forgiving, however that looks (journaling, prayers, letters to Patricia I never send), feels disingenuous.
“I forgive you” feels like a lie.
Over the years my hurt and anger toward my mother have shifted. Not to forgiveness exactly, but to a new understanding that only ambitious woman-turned-mothers understand.
Because I was that mother.
After I had my daughter, I left the workforce as a career professional, ambitious but constantly told daily during my pregnancy, “Once you see that baby, nothing, I mean nothing else will matter.”
Three months after maternity leave, I went back to work part time. Six months later, I left for good.
I’d been diagnosed with fibromyalgia and was racked with chronic body aches and brain fog. My babysitter and I were at odds, but mostly I left because I “should” be at home. My husband never pressured me. I pressured me. Judgmental parents didn’t help.
During my mother’s era (the 1950s), after women graduated college, they got married and had kids. They never talked about their own needs. There were no mom group confessionals. Ambition and having an identity crisis weren’t things. Taboo.
Women sucked up their angst and exhaustion with coffee and uppers, with martinis and Valium (“Mommy’s little helper”). Smile. Nod. Suffer.
It wasn’t until the nineties that books came out about motherhood and ambivalence. About loving your kid but hating x, y, z. Suddenly the floodgates opened, and mothers got raw and honest. (Remember the book The Three Martini Playdate?)
I struggled with being grateful but bored at home. With craving an identity outside of motherhood. Of course I loved my daughter. I went through surgery and months of infertility procedures to get her.
My child was everything to me, but not everything for me. When I became a parent, gradually, a tiny part of me understood why my mother left.
And in that, accepting my mixed bag of emotions softened my pain and rage.
Unlike my mother, I’d had a thriving career and my own identity for over twenty years. But Patricia went from college to marriage to motherhood. She’d skipped over herself and who, it turned out, she wanted to be. Unburdened by domesticity, free to roam the world.
I realized that if my mother had stayed, she would have resented her kids and the life she felt called to embrace. Her resentment might have been more damaging than the abandonment.
Still, forgiveness isn’t always the answer. Saying “I forgive you” has to feel sincere. It has to come from a place of genuine release. A willingness to see the harm and accept its wrongness, then fully let it go. Into the ethers, washed from our heart and psyche.
My vision of my mother is less villain now and more a woman who should never have given in to society’s pressure to have kids. As soon as she got married, she pushed my dad to start a family, even after he told her over and over they weren’t ready financially.
It’s ironic that after she died, she left a chunk of money to Planned Parenthood. She knew. Motherhood isn’t for everyone.
Forgiveness is nuanced, yet it’s been taught throughout the ages as magical in its transformative powers. “Forgive, let go, and you’ll be free.” And more often than not, that’s true.
But for me, I owe it to my five-year-old self not to completely forgive my mother. Gentle non-forgiveness is what I call it.
Most of my destructive bitterness is gone. But if I’m honest, some anger still sits in me. Because I want it there. Protective. Righteous. But no longer seething. Anger wrapped in necessary truth. That my mother was selfish. That my mother did real damage.
I guess holding on to some anger feels like I’m choosing to be an advocate for my five-year-old self. But mostly I think it’s to avoid the harder emotions of pain and rejection. And because letting go of all my anger feels fake.
For me, being authentic sometimes means accepting that not all anger fades. And that it’s okay. (In fact, allowing anger instead of repressing it can actually be beneficial for our health, according to psychologist Jade Wu, so long as we don’t act aggressively.)
In the wake of my mother abandoning our family, she left behind five broken kids, all of whom bear emotional scars. Scars that showed up in devastating ways. Addiction, cruelty, despair, loneliness, low self-esteem, hoarding, attachment issues.
I know ultimately my mother needed to be free. That staying would have done more harm than good. But children aren’t puppies to surrender when caregiving gets too hard.
There were dire consequences to my mother leaving to find happiness. Irreparable damage. I saw it. I felt it. Trust destroyed. And because of that, I can never fully forgive.
“I pray you heal from things no one ever apologized for.” ~Nakeia Homer
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How to Get Out of Your Own Way and Bring Your Dreams to Life
“We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used when we created them.” ~Albert Einstein
For a long time, I lived under the illusion that I was solving the problems standing between me and my desires.
Whether it was love, success, or the kind of life I dreamed of, I believed I was taking the necessary steps to create what I wanted. But what I was really doing (without realizing it) was keeping those things forever at arm’s length.
I was trying to create something from the same conditioning I’d adopted to navigate a difficult childhood, and all it did was reinforce the self-concept I’d walked away with (low self-worth and feeling “unreal” and inferior) and create more circumstances that reflected that self-concept back to me.
This happened across the board.
Early on in my business, I’d pour everything into creating an offer—a course, a program, something I deeply believed in.
I’d work tirelessly, build a sales page, send out an email, and if the response wasn’t immediate, if people didn’t sign up right away, I wouldn’t send another email (or ten) or look at the data and refine accordingly.
Instead, I would assume that something was wrong with me. That I needed to be better, work harder, explain myself more, train more, throw it all away, and start over.
What I wasn’t seeing was the most basic thing every successful entrepreneur knows: sales take time, and people need multiple touch points before they buy.
I couldn’t see that. So I’d abandon ship too soon, leaving money on the table and keeping myself stuck in a cycle of proving, perfecting, and starting from scratch. This lasted YEARS.
The very same pattern shaped my love life in my twenties.
I wanted deep, healthy, genuine love more than anything, but…
I gravitated toward men who were emotionally unavailable and mirrored the same early-life relationships that affirmed my low self-worth.
And when a relationship was killing me, when they didn’t commit or were inconsistent, withholding, or dismissive, I didn’t think, “Hmmm, maybe they aren’t the right fit for the deep, healthy, genuine love I want, and it’s time to let this go and look for what I want.”
Instead, I thought, it must be me.
I was sure if I was better—more lovable, cooler, thinner, more normal, less broken, more aligned with their wants, beliefs, and perspectives—things would change.
But they didn’t. And I’d leave these relationships with a reinforced sense that I was not enough, and the problem was me, not the kind of men I was picking. Which kept me attracted to men who reflected that back to me.
It was an unconscious feedback loop.
The same thing happened with one of my biggest life decisions—moving to Tuscany.
For years, I knew I wanted this life. I pictured myself in the Italian countryside, building a life that felt expansive, rich, and connected to nature. But I kept telling myself I wasn’t ready. That I hadn’t accomplished enough. That I’d allow myself this when I was somehow “good enough” to deserve doing what I knew I wanted to do.
But this time I interrupted my pattern.
I asked myself, “What if I stop trying to make myself good enough for what’s already in my heart and just take the steps to make it happen?”
I’ve been living on this Tuscan hilltop for two and a half years.
That moment showed me something big:
The conditioning that tells you to keep fixing yourself, that tells you anything that’s not working the way you want it to boils down to a deficit in YOU, stems from deep childhood wounding and is the very thing keeping your desires out of reach.
The problem isn’t you. When you think you’re the problem, you focus on fixing yourself, which robs you of your power to address the real issue and create the life, love, friendships, business, and bank account you’re already worthy of.
Back then I wasn’t really finding the right business strategy—I was trying to make myself good enough and hoping my business would do that for me. It didn’t.
I wasn’t really creating healthy relationships—I was trying to be chosen by men who were incapable of real intimacy. Never lasted more than a couple of years.
I wasn’t really building the life I wanted—I was trying to become the kind of person I believed was “worthy” of it.
None of this actually moved me forward. It was just a feedback loop that kept me stuck in the same cycle.
But when I started separating my present desires from my emotional baggage and past distortions of how to get from A to B, everything changed. Life started happening instead of me waiting to be given permission for it to happen. You know what I mean?
If you find yourself spiraling inside your own feedback loop, I invite you to ask yourself:
- Am I treating every setback as proof of my inadequacy instead of seeing it as data and feedback that lets me know what I need to adjust to get to where I want to be?
- Am I trying to be “better” for people who are fundamentally incapable of giving me what I want?
- Am I waiting to feel “good enough” before I allow myself to take the steps that would get me there?
Because the problem was never you. And the moment you stop trying to fix yourself for what you want—and start taking the steps to claim it—you’ll finally see just how much was always available to you.
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Don’t Postpone Your Life: Why We Need to Live Fully Now
“Life doesn’t allow for us to go back and fix what we have done wrong in the past, but it does allow for us to live each day better than our last.” ~Unknown
It’s funny how from one day to the next your entire world, the core of your belief systems, and the way you live life just change. It’s even funnier how sometimes you don’t even notice it happening until it already has. One day you wake up and realize you are brand new, your old self has been lost, and your new self has been found.
Let me take you back to when it all changed for me…
I lived in the typical box of a straight-A, hardworking, overachieving, need-to-be-it-all/do-it-all kid. From someone who grew up with scarcity as a looming cloud haunting me through each and every decision, the foundation of my mindset, specifically regarding “success,” was built on outward achievements. Almost as if checking off boxes outside of me would somehow magically bring me a sense of inner peace.
When I was in first grade, I got my first 100 on a test instead of 102 with extra credit. To most people, especially children, this is still a perfectly acceptable grade. (And it’s only first grade—who cares, right?)
I did. I cared so much, too much. I had a complete meltdown, beating myself up over not being good enough/smart enough, all because of one single extra credit question. I felt as though I needed to punish myself for not being perfect, so clearly, I was a little bit ambitious, to say the least. With two accepting and supportive parents, this high-strung striving for greatness was fully self-inflicted.
Within me lived a desperate need to work hard now so that I could enjoy later. I embraced the idea of not enjoying life until xyz had been completed in both the most impactful and most irrelevant life decisions.
When you are so deeply immersed in a cycle of unachievable reward systems, when do you ever have a moment to truly enjoy life? By constantly striving for an unattainable life in the future, I learned that there will always be something more you could be doing, and this can prevent you from living a full life in the present. Doing in the now forever trumps the pleasures of later.
With these beliefs strongly in place, I was on the road to overworking at a job I didn’t align with for the sole purpose of enjoying a few moments here and there on days off actually doing what I liked—what made me feel alive. And unfortunately, this is the expected lifestyle of many people nowadays.
It was mine for a period of time, and this mindset stuck with me for years… until it all changed, of course.
During this whirlwind of unhealthy looping behaviors, life outside of me was still existing. Waves were flowing, cycles were ending, the sun was rising, and my grandma was deteriorating with Alzheimer’s disease.
This is the moment that set in motion the unlearning of my past beliefs and the implementation of my current values. Her disease was the divine trigger that initiated the switch from me doing life to living life.
To take you through my grandparents’ journey, bring to mind those “movie loves” that you think can only exist in the realm of make-believe. The love that you can feel just from watching from afar. My grandparents were the expression of that. Young love—regardless of age.
He was a man with three jobs, and she was a working woman taking on the rather heavy load of raising two children. They put their current time on the line for a better future for their kids—the ones they had and the ones that lived inside themselves.
Before a time when I existed, they lived out the mindset I once so heavily believed in. My grandparents worked hard, that blue-collar-hard, so that when the time came and life had settled down, they could finally enjoy the life they had been waiting for.
As the work had ended, it was as if life had begun. With the well-earned money, these lovebirds traveled the world and were eager to see it all. And that was the plan—work hard now, play hard later… until later was met with sickness and, therefore, was never lived.
My grandfather was a fit man watching his own body betray him as cancer entered and his hope left. And somehow this, as I observed, had been less painful than watching the woman he had created a life with forget who he was.
My grandmother went from a lively, active woman to a child needing to be fed, dressed, and bathed. With my grandfather battling his own health issues and trying to take care of my mentally lost grandmother, it was as if none of it mattered. The money, the time, the hard-work—just like that, gone.
Watching the regret, pain, and heartbreak weigh so deeply on the ones I loved, a shift, more like a full-body revolution, began to swirl within me. Nothing is more uprooting than seeing someone who has lived an entire life from start to finish have regrets of not living sooner.
This pivotal moment shook me to my core; it woke me up in both a startling and subtle way. The regret looming in the air served as a reminder that life is meant to be lived today.
I was forced into the understanding that I can’t, nor do I want, to save my life for later. To enjoy after, to live and to feel in the future. Because what if my “later” ends up like theirs? Unfinished and lost, remaining only in their dreams, not in their realities.
With these heavy understandings, slowly, my approach to life began reflecting this lesson. The lesson that later may never come, that life doesn’t wait for you.
So, here I am today. Writing to you from Italy as a girl who packed up her life and left one day. As a girl with dreams to feel, experience, create, and truly live.
My plans of making lots of money, going to school, and creating a career that wouldn’t fulfill my heart and soul died. The experience of seeing the world, making big and brave decisions, and laughing my way through heartbreak and massive transitions—that is being alive. I feel alive. This life that was once so trapped in a box, a box that wasn’t for me, that made me small—it is gone now.
Today, I live freely and fully not only for me but also for them. For my teachers that came to me in the form of grandparents, for the souls that made me realize and recognize my own. Even though they are no longer here, I am living this life for them.
Life takes turns we can’t anticipate, turns that live outside our realm of fathom. We don’t know where we will be, who we will be with, and what we’ll be doing there. But what we do know is that we need to be there for it, wholly and fully, with our hearts and souls.
Later might not look the way you expect—it might not be there at all. So take the chances, even if you’re scared. Play in the rain to feel alive, sing at the top of your lungs, and dance like nobody’s watching. Because there is nothing like living in the now. It is all we have.
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A Message of Love and Support We All Need to Hear
“When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark.” ~Unknown
There are moments in life when pain feels consuming—when it lingers, reshapes us, and forces us to confront parts of ourselves we’ve long avoided. Recently, I found myself in one of those moments.
I was overwhelmed, unraveling, and isolating, trying to make sense of emotions that felt heavy. In that space, I wrote this message to a close friend—someone who has stood by me through my highs and lows, yet someone I now realize I haven’t always shown up for in the way they deserved.
This is more than just a letter. It’s an acknowledgment of the weight we carry, the way we heal, and the importance of holding space for those we love.
It’s a reminder that pain doesn’t need to be rushed, that healing isn’t about fixing but about remembering we were never broken to begin with. And most importantly, it’s a promise—to my friend, to myself, and to anyone who has ever felt unseen—that we are never truly alone.
Here’s my message…
You know, these past few days, all I’ve done is sleep, think, cry, and listen to music. I haven’t left the house unless it’s for work, and even then, I feel like I’m just going through the motions.
I’ve been letting myself feel everything—choosing to sit with it—even though it’s terrifying. It feels deep and raw, and sometimes it pulls me into places so heavy, I wonder if I’ll ever find my way out. But strangely, in all of that darkness, it feels like something within me is shedding and peeling away. It’s painful, but at the same time, it’s healing. It’s the kind of pain that comes with growth, even when it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.
I know this probably sounds heavy, maybe even overwhelming, but something triggered this—something connected to an old, deeply rooted wound for me—and it’s forced me to sit with emotions I’ve been carrying for a long time. The impact I’ve had, it’s hard to explain, even to myself, but I feel like something has shifted—in life and within me.
Here’s what I’ve come to realize: Pain doesn’t need to be rushed. Healing doesn’t need to be rushed.
Sometimes, we just need to let ourselves be in our feelings, even when it’s messy and hard. And what I’ve learned is that we can hold space for our sadness without letting it define us. By sitting with it and not running away, we give it a chance to teach us something about who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re headed.
I know sitting in it for too long isn’t healthy. But there’s a power in honoring your emotions, in giving yourself permission to feel what you feel without judgment. It’s an act of love and compassion toward yourself, a reminder that your pain is valid, your journey is valid, and you are valid.
Without diving into the whole story just yet—which I promise I’ll share with you when the time feels right—I want you to know that I see you. I appreciate your patience with me through all of this, and I need you to know how much love I have for you.
I know it hasn’t been easy for you. For a while now, there have been so many moments that have felt overwhelming, and many wounds have reopened and been re-triggered.
If I could go back, I would’ve shown up differently in every single moment you trusted me with your feelings. I would’ve made sure you never felt shame for feeling the way you did. Instead of trying to fix it, I would’ve sat with you in the discomfort and reminded you that your emotions are not a burden and that you are worthy of love even in your hardest moments.
I see now how important it is to let someone feel their feelings fully and to hold space for them without judgment or pressure. I wish I could’ve done that for you every time. But what I can do now is show you, moving forward, that not everyone will let you down. Not everyone will leave.
My love for you runs deep. I see you. I see all of you—your strength, your softness, your beauty, even in the hardest moments. And I need you to know, without a shadow of a doubt, that you are loved. You are enough exactly as you are, and I am here for you. Always.
I invite you to keep sharing your feelings with me. I’ll hold space for you in the way you deserve and remind you every single day that you are loved and seen. You don’t have to carry anything alone, and there is no rush to be “okay.”
Take your time. Healing isn’t about fixing yourself; it’s about remembering that you were never broken to begin with. It’s okay to feel deeply. It’s a sign of your humanity, your courage, and your capacity to love. Be gentle with yourself. Compassion isn’t just something you give to others—it’s something you deserve to receive, especially from yourself.
And no matter how heavy things get in life, remember, you’re not alone, and healing is not linear.
I’m here, and I’ll keep showing up for you as you show up for yourself.
I love you.
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How Grieving a Dream’s Loss Built Hope for a New Life
“Our painful experiences aren’t a liability—they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.” –Dr. Edith Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible
The loss of an unrealized dream sent me spiraling down, down into the darkness. A darkness filled with a despair and hopelessness that I had not known before.
It was safer and more comfortable for me to attribute all my grief to losing a loving mother-in-law suddenly in the beginning of 2023. Her abrupt absence not only in my life but also in my husband’s and daughter’s lives was incredibly hard.
Though the loss opened the portal of grief, there was more I hid. When I was still in a tender place, intangible losses and a health scare came.
The loss that completely broke my heart was when my husband and I made the joint decision to end our dream of trying to have a second child. A shared dream since early on in our relationship and a dream of mine since long before.
Neither of us could have anticipated my unexplained infertility diagnosis and the four-year-long, beautiful, broken, and growth-filled road to parenthood. Throughout the entire journey, I still held onto hope that we would one day have two children.
The visceral, raw grief that came after we made the decision shocked me. When we had first honestly discussed this idea, I felt excited to build our life as a family of three. I deeply knew our family was complete.
But once we made the decision, grief I did not want or know how to feel consumed me. Grief for all that had been lost. For all that wouldn’t come into being in the future. Invisible to the outside world.
At first, my negative, self-critical talk took over, giving me a hard time for what I was going through. Full of self-judgment, regret, anger, and shame. Overcome with grief, I had forgotten I didn’t have to believe that voice and could be kinder to myself.
Mornings were the toughest. Each day, I would wake up with the weight of unshed tears under my eyes. Though I had slept well, my whole body was heavy and weary. My mind felt foggy. I’d forget small things, which wasn’t like me. Seemingly simple tasks took so much energy.
After dropping off my daughter at preschool, I would sit in my living room alone. I had no motivation to do anything. If I didn’t have a work meeting to prepare for or immediate deliverables to complete, I’d distract myself on my phone, numbing. This unhealthy morning cycle would continue for a while.
Once I started working, I would get in a rhythm and focus on the projects in front of me, which I did enjoy.
My body and psyche knew what had happened was significant. It would take time for my rational mind to catch up. I would need to allow myself to have my full experience of grief.
An Expanded View of Grief
Developing an expanded view of grief and processing my experience with a grief therapist began to help.
One of the first concepts I learned is that there are different types of grief. Through Atlas of the Heart, a book by research professor, author, and podcaster Brené Brown, I understood I was dealing with both acute and disenfranchised grief.
Acute grief is the intense grief that occurs during the initial period after a loss. I was not familiar with disenfranchised grief.
Brown writes, “Disenfranchised grief is a less-studied form of grief: grief that ‘is not openly acknowledged or publicly supported through mourning practices or rituals because the experience is not valued or counted [by others] as a loss.’ The grief can also be invisible or hard to see by others.”
My grief not only felt invisible to the outside, but also, I hadn’t valued the end of an unfulfilled dream as a loss at first.
A second concept was to focus on integrating grief into my life. My therapist shared that it’s not about moving on after experiencing a loss; it’s about moving forward, integrating our losses with how we live our lives.
A third concept came from psychologist and Holocaust survivor Dr. Edith Eger’s book The Choice: Embrace the Possible. Though she had been through unimaginable suffering, she gave a message of hope and healing.
She shared, “When we grieve, it’s not just over what happened—we grieve for what didn’t happen… You can’t change what happened; you can’t change what you did or what was done to you. But you can choose how you live now.” We could choose freedom, joy, and love over suffering.
What Helped Me Cope and Rebuild
I began to shift my experience from resistance to instead supporting myself during this period of grief. I started to accept that simply getting through my day was enough. These approaches can be beneficial to anyone experiencing grief, especially if it feels invisible.
1. Support myself and be supported
Once I remembered that I could support myself, my entire grief experience became more manageable. I already had tools to be kind and compassionate to myself. It was a matter of intentionally using them.
I began a practice of noticing and bringing in. Noticing my self-critical voice and, instead of getting caught up in it, bringing in self-compassion and kindness. I would say statements to myself like: It’s okay to feel this way. This is really hard. May I be kind to myself. Sometimes, I visualized wrapping myself in love.
I began to turn toward myself with kindness and love. To be there for myself. To process my experience through writing.
I opened up in close relationships and with my therapist, where I did feel listened to and accepted to share my struggles.
2. Feel my difficult feelings and bring in the light
One day, when I was meditating, I noticed what was happening in my body. I opened to the intense sensations. Before I knew it, I’d gone through a shorter version of Tara Brach’s RAIN practice. This had been a fundamental practice of mine when dealing with infertility, but I likely hadn’t done the full practice in years. The practice remembered me.
This framework means:
- Recognize what is happening.
- Allow the experience to be there just as it is.
- Investigate with interest and care.
- Nurture with self-compassion.
Once the exercise came back to my consciousness, I spent time each morning feeling my painful feelings.
One morning, at the end of the RAIN practice, I intuitively brought in light and love. Another time, I started saying a lovingkindness meditation to myself. I began to incorporate bringing in aspects of positivity after feeling my difficult feelings.
3. Go on awe walks
My grief was the heaviest in the darkness of the winter in Colorado. Toward the beginning of spring, still overcome with grief, I started going on awe walks. Awe walks, a term from Dacher Keltner, are walks where you shift your attention outward. Your task is to encounter something that amazes and transcends. Every day, I looked for new signs of spring at the trail near my house.
I would have missed most of the early signs if I hadn’t been seeking them: flower buds, tiny green leaves forming on branches, the first yellow wildflower blooms that peeked out from behind tangled branches. Then one day, I looked up and saw a canopy of green covering the trees overlooking the trail. Spring had fully arrived.
I discovered that growth starts small; it’s barely noticeable at first. Pay attention to changes happening, to what’s building slowly. It’s the foundation for what wants to come forth. And the bigger message is that winter comes first; only after going through winter is spring possible.
4. Embrace fallow time
Toward the end of the spring, I was getting tired of the heaviness of continued grief. I journaled frantically that I wanted a project. Something new to give my attention to. I longed to experience the energy of summer.
Grief still had more to teach me, though. The next day, my deepest wisdom instead shared with me to embrace “fallow time.” The term is from farming. Allowing the land to lie fallow is a technique where nothing is planted for a period of time. The goal is for the land to rest and regenerate.
Fallow time was asking me to continue to honor the nothingness where dreams once were. To rest in the space before building the next beginning.
I opened to allowing the vastness of where there once was something linger without trying to rush to the next thing.
I discovered that this clearing is where the potential for what’s next would emerge.
5. Reconnect with hope
I had attached so much hope to the outcome of having two children. While hope for a realistic outcome is important and kept me going, I found out its limitations when I let go of the dream.
But hope is so much vaster than that.
One day, I unexpectedly felt the energy of expansive hope. Called transcendent hope, it is broad hopefulness that something good can happen. This form of hope reignited a light deep within me.
Hope to build the beautiful life in front of me that I had once longed for, honoring the dreams, losses and imperfectness.
6. Rebuild possibilities and dream again
Grieving and dreaming felt at odds with each other initially. It turns out, grief would create an opening and space for what wanted to emerge next. Grief was my winter season, my fallow time. It was like planting flower seeds in the fall that won’t bloom until the next spring.
I would first need to accept the past and close this chapter of my life. Then, I could connect with the potential of dreaming again.
The dreams I most wanted to nurture in 2023 were coaching and writing. In the first half of the year, the dreams moved ever so slowly or seemingly not at all.
During this time, I was taking the Playing Big Facilitator’s Training coaching program but had no energy or motivation to start building coaching as I intended.
I also kept trying to write a personal essay about aspects of my infertility journey but felt blocked. I started but kept getting stuck. So instead, I journaled, with writing prompts such as a few things I don’t know how to write about.
Something profoundly shifted within me in September 2023. I became drawn to rebuilding what could be possible in my life.
The personal essay I had attempted to write for months flowed. A story about choosing to focus on personal growth and well-being amid the challenges of burnout and infertility. The final piece would later be published in Tiny Buddha in 2024: How I Found the Good in the Difficult.
As Dr. Egar shared in her book, it was about an experience where I had choice.
September was also the month I started a positive psychology coaching certification program. One reason I selected this coaching program is because positive psychology and mindfulness had been so impactful to me while facing infertility and burnout. Simultaneously, I began offering career, life, and well-being coaching.
I had to go all the way through the intensity of the grief to understand Dr. Egar’s wisdom: “Our painful experiences aren’t a liability—they’re a gift. They give us perspective and meaning, an opportunity to find our unique purpose and our strength.”
I received so many gifts when facing infertility and burnout. Transforming my relationship with myself and my life was the most wondrous. This painful time period was the gateway, on so many levels, for me to connect with a greater sense of meaning and overall well-being. To shift to work that felt more fulfilling. To rediscover my creative self-expression, especially writing, which surprisingly impacted my personal life and work. To uncover a dream to coach others in creating change that matters to them.
My experience in a grief cocoon profoundly changed me. On the other side, I have felt more at home in myself. More at peace with my past challenges. I have sensed wholeness. With a deeper appreciation of integrating it all—the grief, pain, gifts, gratitude, and joy. I am choosing to move forward with renewed hope for fully living my life and honoring my dreams.
