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From People-Pleasing to Self-Trust: How to Come Back to Yourself

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“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~Carl Jung

Where did I want to go out to eat?

The question was straightforward, and the answer should have been easy. But as my mind flipped through the options, my thoughts weren’t focused on what I wanted. Instead, I was preoccupied with making the right choice, the one least likely to cause tension.

Yes, my partner had asked where I wanted to go. But over time, I learned that answering honestly often came with consequences. My choice might be questioned, dismissed, or turned into a debate. If …

Phone Down, Eyes Up: How to Really See the People We Love

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“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Judy was three the first time I missed it. She had spent a solid ten minutes stacking every couch cushion on our living room floor in Vancouver, building what she clearly considered an Olympic-grade landing pad. She climbed up on the couch, stretched her arms out wide, and gave me that look. You know the one. The look kids give you right before they do something that makes your heart jump into your throat.

“Baba, watch!” she yelled.

My phone was in my hand. It was …

What My Body Taught Me: 13 Surgeries, One Coma, Countless Powerful Lessons

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

I was born with spina bifida. When I was ten years old, doctors told me I might not walk again after a surgery that would change my life.

I don’t remember every word they said, but I remember the feeling, the air shifting in the room, the adults speaking carefully, the quiet that followed.

Paralysis was a possibility.

By that point, my body already knew hospital ceilings well. I had been through multiple surgeries before I fully understood what surgery meant. …

What’s Really Happening When Your Thoughts Spiral at Night

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“The anxiety is not the enemy. It is the messenger. The mistake is killing the messenger instead of reading the letter.” ~Unknown

It’s 3 a.m. I’m lying in the dark, planning my own funeral.

Not because anything is wrong. My family is safe. There is no emergency. But my brain has decided, with complete confidence, that the headache I had this afternoon is something fatal. I am already thinking about who will come. Who will cry. Who will move on faster than I’d like.

An hour earlier, the same brain decided my career was ending. I have a presentation tomorrow—and …

5 Quotes for Hard Times (and a Free Ebook)

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Sometimes everything feels like too much, and it’s hard to use all the valuable lessons you’ve learned when life requires you to use them all at once. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what you’re facing and alone with all your struggles.

I’ve felt this way on and off for the past year and a half, as I’ve been dealing with significant stressors in nearly every area of my life. Since I know many of you are in a similar place, I’m offering my Guide to Overcoming Hard Times for free, along with 18 other digital …

The Pressure to Dream Big and the Beauty of Wanting Less

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“What if I accept that all I really want is a small, slow, simple life? A beautiful, quiet, gentle life. I think it is enough.” ~Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui

Why do we feel such pressure to dream big? I think it starts in childhood when parents, teachers, and other adults start asking the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

One of the many problems with this question is its premise. In the classroom, at church, at youth camp, and at home, you are not alone, and you’re able to hear, understand, and internalize how others might answer …

The Seven Strengths: A Rare Free Training

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Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how easy it is to feel overwhelmed—by the news, by life, by everything we’re carrying day to day. I know I’ve been feeling this lately.

And when things feel like a lot, the question becomes: How do we stay grounded in the middle of it all?

If you’ve been wondering this too, I have a feeling you’ll appreciate The Seven Strengths—a free, live 7-day global online course taking place May 13–19.

It’s all about building the qualities of mind and heart that help you access your calm center no matter what’s gong …

When Self-Awareness Turns into Overthinking and How to Stop

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“Be gentle with yourself. You’re doing the best you can.” ~Unknown  

For years, I believed self-awareness was the answer to everything.

If I could just understand myself better—my triggers, my patterns, my childhood wounds—I would finally feel calm. Stable. Healed.

So I read the books. I journaled every night. I replayed conversations in my head, analyzing what I said, what I meant, and what I should have said instead. I studied my reactions like they were puzzles waiting to be solved.

At first, it felt empowering.

I was becoming “conscious.” Reflective. Emotionally intelligent.

But slowly, something shifted. Instead of feeling …

How to Tend to Yourself When Being Vulnerable Feels Raw

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“Vulnerability is the only path through the wall that separates us from each other.” ~Brené Brown

Every time I share something deeply personal—an article, a post, a piece of my story somewhere or to someone—there is a part of me that lights up with energy. I feel a sense of urgency, a pull to share now. A belief that some humans will need to hear it, relate, and feel less alone. And often, it helps me make sense of my own experiences, too. Even if I’m not always conscious of it, there is a higher reason guiding me.

Storytelling is …

If You Feel Lonely Around People, Here’s Why

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“The loneliness of the connected age is not about being alone. It’s about being unseen in a crowd.” ~Unknown

For a long time I thought I was broken.

Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, persistent way—the kind you learn to manage so well that most people can’t tell, and eventually you almost can’t tell either.

I had a full life by any external measure. Work I cared about. People around me. Invitations to things. And yet there was this gap I couldn’t close—a feeling I can only describe as being on the wrong side of glass. Present in …

Growing Up Without a Family: From Survival Mode to Thriving

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“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ~C. S. Lewis

I started life in a poor household with one parent who left when I was very little, never to be seen or heard from again, and another who stuck around but made it very clear I wasn’t wanted and I had ruined their life by existing.

For some reason, I never had any contact from either of their parents, my grandparents, and very little to no contact from their wider families.

So, as a young child, I knew …

Escaping an Abusive Situation: The Hardest Parts and Greatest Lessons

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

I watched my son get hit by his father, and something inside me finally broke open.

Not broke apart. Broke open. There’s a difference.

For years, I had absorbed the chaos. I had made myself smaller, quieter, more accommodating. I had convinced myself that if I could just love harder, be better, try more, something would change. But in that moment, watching my child suffer at the hands of the man who was supposed to protect him, I understood with absolute clarity that nothing I did would ever …

Gratitude: The Amazing Superpower Inside Us All

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“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~Marcus Aurelius

Gratitude.

It used to be a very triggering concept for me, and sometimes it still is.

It’s been a process to unravel what it means to me and to be okay with days where I am in active trauma or grief, when I feel there is nothing to be grateful for. It’s okay to be in those places.

Gratitude is but one of the plethora of tools I’ve used to shift my perspective on …

How I Stopped Overexplaining and Found Calm in Conflict

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” ~Viktor Frankl

For a while, I forgot about that space.

When conflict entered my life—first with my employer, then with my insurance company—I didn’t react explosively. I didn’t fire off reckless emails.

I did something that felt far more reasonable.

I built arguments.

I constructed careful, layered explanations. I mapped policy references, contextual details, and logical connections. I laid out what felt like a complete reticulum of ideas in my defense. If I could make my case airtight, I believed, it would …

The Wedding Dress Metaphor: A Powerful Lesson on Being Authentic

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“True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” ~Brené Brown

This past year, during a season of transition in my life, I started working part-time as a bridal stylist at a wedding dress store. It was something I had quietly dreamed about for years. I’ve always loved wedding dresses for their artistry, their structure, and the way each one feels like its own separate world of intention and detail.

But what has surprised me most hasn’t been the beauty. It’s been the these dresses revealed important lessons about confidence and …

We Are Allowed to Age: Why I Don’t Care That I Look Old

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“When there is no enemy within, the enemies outside cannot hurt you.” ~African Proverb

It is just past ten in the morning on a Tuesday.

My wet boardshorts and blue tank top are drying at lightning speed in the sweltering South Indian sun.

I am feeling alive and exhilarated after my surf session in the surreal blue, bathtub-warm Arabian Sea.

Surfing waves consistently has been my goal for the past two years, and I’m doing it. Which is pretty awesome considering that I never thought I would surf again.

The trauma and fear from a surfing accident ten years ago, …

How Dry January Improved My Brain Health and My Life

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“You are not stuck with the brain you have. You can make it better.” ~Dr. Daniel Amen 

At the beginning of the year, I had this whole list in my head about the benefits of Dry January: drop a few pounds, sleep better, get those bright white eyes everyone raves about. The standard results you think you would get if you avoided alcohol for a month. But I should have known; my body had something else in mind.  

Truthfully, the real reasons are much more complex. Alcoholism runs in my family. I’ve never thought I had a problem, but

…

Boundaries Begin Within: A Simple Insight That Changed My Life

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“I used to tolerate a lot because I didn’t want to lose people. Now I set boundaries because I don’t want to lose myself.” ~Anonymous

I used to feel stretched and depleted in my own life, drained by obligations, and confused about why I felt overwhelmed even when everything looked ‘fine.’ At the time, I didn’t connect this exhaustion to boundaries at all. I simply knew the way I was living required a lot of me, even though I couldn’t yet name what this was really about.

For a long time, I didn’t have language for what was happening …

When Your Kindness Flows Easily to Others but Not to Yourself

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“Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” ~Louise L. Hay

There it was—glaringly obvious on the page. An embarrassing typo stared back at me from the backside of a brochure I’d received from the printer. A brochure I wrote, laid out, and yes, gave the final sign-off to produce.

My stomach tightened as tears welled up in my eyes.

“You idiot,” I screamed silently at myself.

In an instant, flashes of similar mistakes I’d made over the course of a long career in communications rushed in, piling …

Moral Injury: When the People Meant to Protect You Fail

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“Trauma is not what happens to you, but what happens inside you as a result of what happens to you.” ~Dr. Gabor Maté

Most people think trauma comes from what frightened us.

But not all trauma is rooted in fear. Some wounds come from betrayal—when something violates our sense of right and wrong, and we’re left to carry the cost alone.

This kind of injury doesn’t happen simply because something bad occurred. It happens because a moral line was crossed—by a person, an authority, or a system we believed would protect us. What follows isn’t just pain but a lasting …