Blog Posts

The Lonely Ache of Self-Worth That No One Talks About

By Emily Brown in Blog

“The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.” ~Kahlil Gibran

They don’t talk about this part.

The hardest part about knowing your worth—after doing the work, setting boundaries, and getting crystal clear on what you want—is the ache.

Not just any ache. The ache of being awake. The ache of knowing. The ache of not settling.

I remember the first time I walked away from someone who didn’t mistreat me but who also didn’t quite meet me. I had spent years unraveling my old patterns: the people-pleasing, the over-giving, the “maybe this is …

How I Found My Midlife Roar in the Beautiful Mess of Perimenopause

By Lais Stephan in Blog

“Menopause is a journey where you rediscover yourself and become the woman you were always meant to be.” ~Dr. Christiane Northrup

I recently had a healing session with a dear client of mine.

“Before we begin,” she asked, “how are you?”

I blinked and said, “Oh, you know, the usual. Just navigating perimenopause. Hallucinating about living alone without my partner one minute and panicking about dying alone the next.”

She burst into laughter.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I find myself browsing apartment listings weekly. Good to know I’m not the only one.”

Ah, yes, the sacred scrolls of apartment …

When Your Body Is Carrying More Pain Than You Realize

By Lori Deschene in Blog

If you live with chronic pain, you already know how exhausting it can be. Not just the physical sensations but the constant trying—trying to push through, trying to find answers, trying to explain something that feels invisible to others. The search for relief can become its own full-time job, and it’s easy to feel discouraged or alone.

Over the years of running this site, I’ve heard from many people who’ve felt trapped in their bodies, like life was happening around them, not with them. I’ve also connected with many people who learned to bury their feelings (a struggle I know …

When Your Body Betrays You: Finding Strength in a New Identity

By Micaela Becattini in Blog

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

I didn’t know what it meant to grieve a body that was still alive until mine turned on me.

It began like a whisper—fatigue that lingered, strange symptoms that didn’t match, a quiet fear I tried to ignore.

Then one night, I collapsed. I woke up in a hospital room I didn’t recognize, attached to IVs I hadn’t agreed to, surrounded by medical voices that spoke in certainty while I sat in confusion.

It wasn’t just a diagnosis I was given. It was a line in the sand.

Before …

The Great Horned Owl That Kicked Me Out of Burnout

By Heather Allen in Blog

“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~Lao Tzu

I’d known for months that I was burned out.

The kind of burnout that creeps in quietly—behind your eyes, in your spine, in your calendar. I was volunteering in raptor rescue, monitoring eagle nests as the busy season ramped up, juggling consulting work, supporting adoption placements, writing, creating. I was showing up fully in every space except the one I lived in: my body.

And yet I refused to let go. I told myself it was just a busy season. That if I …

The Hidden Lesson in Projection: It’s Never Really About Us

By Allison Briggs in Blog

“What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.” ~Don Miguel Ruiz

For most of my life, I didn’t fully understand what projection was. I just knew I kept becoming the problem.

I was “too much.” Too intense. Too emotional. Thought too deeply. Spoke too plainly.

Again and again, I was blamed, misunderstood, and cast out for holding up a mirror to things no one wanted to see.

But in my forties, I began doing …

A Quiet but Powerful Shift: How Slowing Down Transformed My Life

By Mike in Blog

“Slow down and enjoy life. It’s not only the scenery you miss by going too fast—you also miss the sense of where you are going and why.” ~Eddie Cantor

In today’s hyper-connected and fast-paced world, slowing down isn’t just rare—it feels almost countercultural.

For years, I tied my identity to productivity. My self-worth hinged on how much I could accomplish in a day, how many boxes I could check. The busier I was, the more valuable I believed myself to be. But that constant need to perform left me mentally and emotionally drained, disconnected not only from others but …

You Don’t Have to Be Strong All the Time

By Aruna Joshi in Blog

“Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is to ask for help.” ~Unknown

We live in a world that praises strength—especially quiet strength. The kind that shows up, gets things done, and rarely complains. The kind that’s resilient, dependable, productive. But what happens when the strong one quietly breaks inside?

“You are a superwoman!”

“You’re so reliable!”

“You’re the glue that holds everyone together.”

I wore those compliments like badges of honor. For years, I believed them. Not just believed them—I built my identity around them.

I’ve always been a multitasker. A jack of all trades. I managed work, home, …

When the Body Freezes: On Love and Grief in Midlife

By Lais Stephan in Blog

“I was constantly seeking a balance between mourning what’s already been lost, making space for the time and moments we still had left, and making sense of this complicated process that felt like my heart was split between two contrasting realities: hope and heartbreak.” ~Liz Newman

There is a quiet heaviness that begins to settle into many of us in midlife.

It doesn’t announce itself with drama. It slips in through unanswered emails from an aging parent, through half-slept nights spent wondering how we will ever afford live-in care, or whether that one fall they had was the beginning …

When Friendship Is One-Sided: Letting Go of Someone Who Was Never Really There

By Jennifer Tomlin in Blog

“Finally, I realized that I was never asking too much. I was just asking the wrong person.” ~Unknown

Friendship should nourish the soul. And in my life, for the most part, it has. I have a small, longstanding circle of friends steeped in a long-shared history. We’re basically a real-life, thirty-five-year-long John Hughes film.

However, every now and then, a hornet in disguise has buzzed into my life and stung.

He was one of them. A bad sting.

Love Bombing

Right off the bat, knowing him felt amazing.

I was still reeling from the aftereffects of living with an abusive …

Finding Balance Through the Full Spectrum of Emotion

By Tony Collins in Blog

“As a solid rock is not shaken by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame.” ~The Dhammapada, Verse 81

Some moments lift you like moonlight. Others break you like a wave. I’ve lived through both—and I’ve come to believe that the way we move through these emotional thresholds defines who we become.

By thresholds, I mean the turning points in our lives—experiences so vivid, painful, or awe-filled that they pull us out of our usual routines and bring us face to face with something real. Some come in silence, others with sound and …

The Song That Surprisingly Brought Me Back to Life

By Birgit Livesey in Blog

“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 …

How to Be Well in Unwell Times

By Lori Deschene in Blog

If you wake up anxious these days, you’re not alone. Between the news cycle, global uncertainty, and the chaos of daily life, it can feel like the world is spinning faster than we can catch our breath.

I’ve been feeling more anxious than usual myself lately—partly because of everything happening in my own life, and partly because so much in the world feels beyond our control. And yet, even in times like these, it’s still possible to find a sense of calm—to create a small pocket of peace within yourself that isn’t so easily shaken by what’s happening outside.

That’s

…

The Enormous Cost of Being the One Who Holds Everything Together

By Shona Keachie in Blog

“For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.” ~Virginia Woolf

There’s a kind of work in our society that doesn’t come with a title or pay, and for a long time, I didn’t even notice I was doing it. I just lived inside it. It shaped my days, my stress, my identity.

These days, I see it more clearly. I can name it now. I don’t only live inside it, but I still return to it—especially as a parent, especially when things stretch thin. The difference is now, I pause. I reflect. I ask myself if I have to

…

Full Circle: Reclaiming the Me Who Felt Most Alive

By Natasha Ramlall in Blog

“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” ~T.S. Eliot

In my early twenties, I packed a backpack and boarded a plane alone with a one-way ticket to Southeast Asia. It was a move that baffled my father, inspired my friends, and quietly terrified me.

I was drawn by something I couldn’t fully articulate at the time: a craving for freedom, truth, and a kind of belonging I hadn’t yet known. What I didn’t realize then is that this two-year …

The Trauma Keeps Talking—But My Voice Is Now Louder

By Ibukun Oluwaseun Adesina in Blog

“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

…

The God I Lost, the One I Found, and the Faith That Changed Me

By Lara Charles in Blog

“I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God.” ~Rumi

There’s a particular kind of heartbreak that happens when you realize some of your prayers are going nowhere.

There’s a painful silence that follows unanswered calls. Yet, despite the ache, I can still feel the pull to pray to the God outside of myself—that old reflex to place faith in something bigger, some invisible force in the sky, who, apparently, can make things happen magically here on Earth.

But it doesn’t always go that way, does it?

I prayed my cancer would go …

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

By Paige Rechtman in Blog

“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 …

The Weight of Regrets and the Choice to Live Better

By Tony Collins in Blog

“It is very important for every human being to forgive herself or himself because if you live, you will make mistakes—it is inevitable. But once you do and you see the mistake, then you forgive yourself and say, ‘Well, if I’d known better I’d have done better.’” ~Maya Angelou

I’ve lived long enough to know the difference between a mistake and a tragedy. Some of what I carry falls in between—moments I wish I could redo, things I said or didn’t say, relationships I mishandled, and opportunities I let slip through my fingers. They don’t scream at me every day, …

From Pain to Peace: How to Grieve and Release Unmet Expectations

By Paul Wong in Blog

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

Before 2011, I had heard many spiritual teachers talk about “accepting what is.” It sounded nice in theory, like good mental information to chew on. But it didn’t feel embodied. I understood it intellectually, but I wasn’t living it.

Then I attended a weekend intensive with a teacher I deeply respected, and something in the way he explained it hit deeper. It wasn’t just talk. The essence of his words turned a spiritual idea into something I could start to live.

In that talk, he shared a …