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What Helped Me When My Life Felt Uncertain and Unstable

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“Sticking with uncertainty is how we learn to relax in the midst of chaos, how we learn to be cool when the ground beneath us suddenly disappears.” ~Pema Chödrön

Evicted. The word stared up at me from the letter in my hands.

It was the summer of 2022, near the tail end of the Covid pandemic, when life was supposed to be settling back into normal—or so my husband and I had hoped.

I read the letter again. My chest tightened.

We’d always paid our rent on time. We’d never broken the terms of our lease.

Our landlord was selling …

How Better Communication Changed My Relationships and My Life

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“When we avoid difficult conversations, we trade short-term discomfort for long-term dysfunction.” ~Peter Bromberg

Have you ever looked around at other people’s lives and wondered, “How do they do that?”

How do they seem so steady, so connected, so… together?

From where I stood, there appeared to be a certain kind of person—someone confident, kind, thoughtful, and at ease in her relationships. And because she enjoyed her relationships, she seemed to enjoy her life.

I was not her.

For a long time, I thought I was the “nice” one in my relationships because I avoided confrontational conversations. But …

What Letting My Dad Go Taught Me About Love

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“Some of us think holding on makes us strong, but sometimes it is letting go.” ~Hermann Hesse

My dad was intubated, so he couldn’t say the words back to me.

I told him I loved him anyway.

Instead, he slowly pointed to himself and then to me.

“You love me too?” I asked.

His eyes widened ever so slightly, and he nodded gently, giving me the biggest response his body could offer. I held onto that moment like it was something solid in a room where everything else was slipping away.

It was the last moment we had together before

…

Embracing Slow Growth: The Big Turning Point That Never Came

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“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that’s the hard part.” ~ BoJack Horseman

If you’d told eighteen-year-old me where she’d be at twenty-eight, she would have laughed nervously and changed the subject.

That was her move, by the way. Laugh it off. Deflect. Eat another biscuit.

She was the girl who cried in bathroom stalls and called it “being sensitive.” The one who said yes to everything because no felt too dangerous. The one who googled “how to be more confident” at midnight and then did absolutely nothing about …

The Simple “Analog Basket” That Helps Me Unplug

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“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.” ~Anne Lamott

You know that familiar routine: an exhausting day at work, a long commute, children, errands, messages, dinner, and notifications.

And then—finally—rest at the end of it all.

A soft, welcoming couch that curves in all the right places. A new episode of a beloved series that whisks you away to a rugged farm in rural Montana. And some short videos that make you laugh: AI-animated cats reviewing street food, influencers in wigs enacting the bickering of a married couple.

The flickering screens distract …

From Blending in to Belonging: My Journey Out of Self-Consciousness

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“True belonging only happens when we present our authentic, imperfect selves to the world. Our sense of belonging can never be greater than our level of self-acceptance.” ~Brené Brown

For years, I felt like I was always one step behind everyone else.

Not in a way I could prove. Not something visible or measurable. It was quieter than that—persistent, internal, and hard to name.

It felt like everyone else had been given something I missed. An unspoken understanding of how to move through life. How to talk without overthinking. How to walk into a room and feel like you belonged …

On Staying Light in a World That Feels Bleak

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“Love life more than the meaning of it? Yes, certainly.” ~Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

When I was a child, there was a special moment during dusk when the old sodium lanterns switched on in the streets, morphing the world from one of saturation into one of yellow monochrome, and it always made me sad.

One such day, my dad asked me why I became so quiet during those evenings. I wasn’t sure what to answer—how did he not feel the same way?

The evening had just begun, and the ditch outside had started freezing. Looking through the window, I …

Overcoming Self-Sabotage: Why Good Things Felt Like a Trap

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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~Carl Jung

I was sitting in my therapist’s office when she asked me a question that made me freeze.

“Tell me about the last time something good happened in your life.”

I opened my mouth to answer, then stopped. My mind went blank. Not because nothing good had happened, but because I genuinely couldn’t remember letting myself enjoy any of it.

She waited. The silence felt heavy.

Finally, I said, “I got a promotion three months ago.”

“And how did that feel?”

“Terrifying, …

How I Broke My Painful Relationship Patterns for Good

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“Sometimes we fall for the same mistakes because we haven’t learned to love ourselves fully.” ~Unknown

As long as I can remember, my relationships followed the same script.

At first, there was charm. Attention. Sweetness. Intensity. That intoxicating feeling of being seen and chosen, sometimes for the very first time.

Then, slowly, the cracks appeared.

It started small. A comment like, “You’re overthinking it again,” said with a laugh when I tried to express how I felt, and suddenly I went quiet, wondering if maybe I was the problem.

Then came the silence, and instead of questioning it, I found …

The Small, Unexpected Ways Grief Stays with Us

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“The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it.” ~Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

My friend Diana’s WhatsApp profile picture is of herself hugging her dog, Zibby.

Every time her name comes up on my phone, there they are. The two of them in a tiny square. I’ve seen that photo so many times I stopped really looking at it.

Until recently.

Zibby wasn’t just a dog. She was part of the whole rhythm of their life, the mornings and the evenings and all the …

The Subtle Ways You Lose Yourself in a Toxic Relationship

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“Emotional abuse is any pattern of behavior that undermines a person’s sense of self-worth and reality.” ~Beverly Engel

At first, the changes were small.

I stopped wearing that outfit everyone liked because they said it didn’t look good on me. I let certain friendships fade because it made him uncomfortable. I laughed less at things he didn’t find funny.

I face-checked myself to make sure my expression was pleasing to him. I shrank just slightly, in ways no one else would notice.

Then it got bigger.

I stopped trusting my own judgment because he told me I was too sensitive. …

My Father Taught Me Love Is Something You Earn; He Was Wrong

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“One of the hardest things I’ve had to understand is that closure comes from within. Especially difficult if you’ve been betrayed by someone you love because you feel like you gotta let them know the pain they caused, but the peace you seek can only be given to you by you.” ~Bruna Nessif

A photo of my father handing me a tennis trophy has hung in my living room for years.

Even now, if I stare at it too long, I can feel the old rush: pride, relief, belonging. For most of my life, that photograph served as proof that …

What Helped Me Heal from a Breakup and Create a Life I Love

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“Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.” ~Nelson Mandela

First, I slept in a snow shelter at -20°C.

Second, I stood alone on a stage in Montreal and tried to make strangers laugh.

Third, I stuck out my thumb on the side of a highway with nothing but a backpack and hoped that a stranger would take me home, 1,200 kilometers away.

I did all of these things deliberately, on purpose, as part of a project I called my Year of Fear. The idea was simple: face one new personal fear every month for a …

The Cult of People and What It Means to Be Free

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“Sometimes walking away is the only way to stop walking away from yourself.” ~Unknown

I was between sessions. My TV was on in the background—something I’d half-started watching called The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu—as I walked into the kitchen to make myself some lunch.

It’s about a group of Mormon wives who became TikTok famous and got into what they call “soft swing.” In one scene, a young woman argues with her mother, who has a long list of rules about how her daughter should behave. The daughter has been avoiding church, tiptoeing around the threat of …

Why I Couldn’t Stop Reacting (Even Though I Knew Better)

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“Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.” ~Shinichi Suzuki

I knew exactly what to say to my narcissistic mother. I just could never say it.

For twenty years I studied every technique in the book. Gray rocking (becoming emotionally neutral and unreactive). Broken record (calmly repeating the same boundary). Don’t JADE (Justify, Argue, Defend, Explain). I could explain these strategies to a stranger at a coffee shop with complete clarity.

But when my mom was sitting across from me at dinner, pushing every button she knew I had, all of it vanished. Every single time.

My

…

Learning to Speak Up When You Were Taught That Your Feelings Don’t Matter

By in Blog, change & challenges

“A proper grown-up communicates clearly and assertively.”

This is something I have heard many people say.

By that definition, I wouldn’t have been classed as a proper grown-up for most of my life.

There was a time when I couldn’t even ask someone for a glass of water. I know that might seem crazy to some people, and for a long time I did feel crazy for it.

Why couldn’t I do the things others did without even thinking about it? Why couldn’t I just say what I needed to say? Why couldn’t I just be normal?

Those questions …

When You Feel Trapped in a Life That Looks Good on Paper

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“When something isn’t right for you, it has a way of letting you know. Not in one big announcement, but in a thousand small nudges.” ~Martha Beck

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee one morning when a thought slipped in that I hadn’t let myself think before: This can’t be the rest of my life.

There wasn’t one dramatic moment I could point to and say, “This is why I have to leave.”

Part of me wished there had been something obvious, some clear betrayal or breaking point I could point to and say, “…

What Happened When We Chose Not to React in Anger

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

A few months ago, I was on a crowded highway with my wife and son. Traffic was barely moving. Vehicles were inching forward, one small gap at a time, with the usual impatience hanging in the air.

Suddenly, there was a loud bang. It sounded like something had burst.

For a second, I didn’t understand what had happened. Then I realized a motorcyclist trying to squeeze through the narrow space between cars had hit us. His side bar

…

How to Heal on a Deeper Level After Moving On

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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~C.G. Jung

For twelve years, I believed I was the architect of a perfect life. I had the “Summa Cum Laude” degree, a respected career in human services, a devoted husband, and two healthy daughters. I had checked every box on the “Success” list. I truly thought I had outrun my past.

But trauma has a way of waiting. It doesn’t disappear just because you stop looking at it. It simply goes underground, like a silent program running in the background of a …

The Beautiful Gift We Give Without Even Knowing

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

Five years ago, my son missed a basketball tryout.

We had been out of town, and by the time we got back, the rosters were already set. I made a few calls anyway, hoping someone might give a kid a late shot. One coach said yes. He had a spot left, and he was willing to take a chance on a name he’d never heard from a father he’d never met.

That coach became one of my closest friends.

I started coming to practices to help …