Menu

Blog Posts

The Tattoo That Marks 13 Years of Healing After Abuse

By in Blog

“When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

In June 2011, I got a Facebook friend request from a guy I vaguely knew from college. We’d never dated, never even been close, but I knew him by reputation. Charming. Vain. The kind of guy who always had someone.

He’d just been hired to teach at my school, where I was about to start my fifth year as a counselor. He framed the request as wanting to connect as colleagues, so I accepted.

When school started that August, he made it a point to show …

Why We Keep Accepting the Same Painful Relationship Patterns

By in Blog

“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” ~George Santayana

I was gone about two hours.

I’d gone to see my stepbrother, who lived nearby. My girlfriend didn’t want to come, so I told her to rest, and I’d be back soon.

When I got back to my father’s property, where we lived in the camper we’d bought together, it was gone. So was she.

She’d packed my clothes into a bag and left them on my father’s porch on her way out. That told me everything I needed to know. The camper was the only place …

From Hyper-Independent to Human: Learning How to Accept Help

By in Blog

“Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome.” ~Brené Brown

It happened on a regular Tuesday night over the smallest thing. I was cooking dinner after a really long, exhausting day at my job. I spent the whole day fixing problems for everyone else, and I was completely drained.

I reached into the cupboard to grab a heavy glass jar of pasta sauce. It slipped right out of my fingers and smashed all over the hard floor.

Red sauce splashed across the white cabinets, …

When Doing More Is Really an Attempt to Control the Outcome

By in Blog

“Uncertainty is the only certainty there is, and knowing how to live with insecurity is the only security.” ~John Allen Paulos

I refreshed the analytics page even though I had checked it only a few minutes earlier. The number had not changed, so I opened the project, reread the opening line, tested a button, and returned to the dashboard. My shoulders were tight and my eyes felt dry, but I kept moving between the same pages as though one of them might suddenly tell me what to do next.

The work was finished for the evening. Everything important was functioning, …

When “Nothing Is Wrong” Keeps You in the Wrong Life

By in Blog

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

I was twenty-eight years old, standing in front of a mirror, reaching for my lipstick.

I couldn’t put it on.

I was engaged. A wedding was ahead of me. The invitations, expectations, and imagined future were already gathering momentum.

Nothing was visibly wrong.

That was the problem.

As I looked at my reflection, I could not find myself inside the life I was preparing to enter.

There had been no betrayal, no dramatic confrontation, and no single moment I could point to and say, “There. That …

The Year I Tried to Optimize My Way into Love

By in Blog

“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.” ~William Bruce Cameron

I noticed it halfway through the conversation.

We were outside a café on a warm Saturday, close enough to the next table that I could hear someone laughing behind me. The person across from me was telling a story about getting lost on a hike, because they had been certain they could manage without a map, and they were laughing at themselves as they told it. I laughed in the right place.

Then my attention slid. Sense of humor, strong. Conversation, easy. …

Why Rest Should Be a Priority, Not a Reward

By in Blog

“In an age of constant movement, nothing is so urgent as sitting still.” ~Pico Iyer, from his TED talk “The Art of Stillness”

It was a Tuesday in late September, the kind of afternoon that feels borrowed from summer. I had a work deadline at 5:00. I went to the park anyway.

I spread a blanket on the grass, unpacked a little cheese and some fruit, and poured tea from the thermos I’d filled mostly out of habit. I had a book in my bag that I never opened.

For two hours, I sat outside in the middle …

How “Doing Fine” Was Actually Holding Me Back

By in Blog

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers

For most of my life, the story looked like a straight line going up. I never hit bottom. This isn’t that kind of story.

And for a long time, that was exactly the problem.

From the outside, my life looked good. I had built things I was proud of and a family I love. If you knew me, you would have said I was doing well, and you would probably have been right.

So this isn’t a story about hitting bottom. …

Emotionally Overwhelmed? 5 Simple Practices That Can Help

By in Blog

“Whatever you’re feeling, it will eventually pass. You won’t feel sad forever. At some point, you will feel happy again. You won’t feel anxious forever. In time, you will feel calm again. You don’t have to fight your feelings or feel guilty for having them. You just have to accept them and be good to yourself while you ride this out. Resisting your emotions and shaming yourself will only cause you more pain, and you don’t deserve that. You deserve your own love, acceptance, and compassion.”  ~Lori Deschene

One cry a day. I have used this four-word phrase to defend …

When the Old Life Doesn’t Fit but the New One Isn’t Clear Yet

By in Blog

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ~Maya Angelou

There’s a strange season in life when the old ambitions no longer fit, but the new ones haven’t fully formed yet.

A year ago, I asked myself a simple question. Not a vague one. A very practical one.

Is there something I need to do right now to begin fulfilling my purpose and be happy?

And for the most part… nothing. No inner wisdom. No clear message. No cinematic download from the universe. Just silence.

At one …

When “Protecting Your Peace” Is Really Avoidance

By in Blog

“Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.” ~Anonymous

My sister called four times before I picked up.

Not four times in one day—four times over three weeks. Each time, I watched her name light up my phone, felt something tighten in my chest, and set my phone face-down on the counter.

I told myself I was protecting my peace. I’d read that phrase everywhere that year. It was on water bottles, on Instagram infographics, on the lock screens of women I admired who seemed to have figured out something I hadn’t. Protect your

…

How the People We Love Live On in Us

By in Blog

“What we have once enjoyed deeply we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.” ~Helen Keller

Growing up, I thought my father was a pack rat.

He never seemed to throw anything away. Bent nails. Odd screws. Washers without matching bolts. Short pieces of lumber that looked too small to be useful. If there was even the slightest chance something might come in handy someday, he found a place for it in the cellar.

I couldn’t understand it.

Why save things you could replace for a few cents at the hardware store?

He would …

A Simple Question That Helps When I Feel Anxious

By in Blog

“In every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks.” ~John Muir

I used to think life was like an obstacle course, a series of hurdles you either cleared or stumbled over. For a long time, I stumbled a lot.

What I didn’t realize then was how easily repeated setbacks can turn into a habit of expecting the next one. After a while, you stop living in the present and start waiting for the other shoe to drop.

After I graduated from college, I followed the path I thought I was supposed to take. I moved to Philadelphia …

I Broke My Patterns and Love Still Didn’t Last

By in Blog

“When a flower doesn’t bloom, you fix the environment in which it grows, not the flower.” ~Alexander Den Heijer

 He was intelligent, well-read, and kind. A good father, careful about protecting his kids from meeting partners too soon. A man with a life philosophy, who kept his word, who told the truth with an honesty that didn’t flinch—and it wasn’t a performance. He wasn’t afraid of healthy conflict; he could sit in a hard conversation without disappearing. And he also happened to be tall, dark, and handsome.

He checked almost every single thing on my list. And I mean that …

When Your Sadness Starts Coloring Everything

By in Blog

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

A few weeks ago, I moved to a new city for a new job, leaving behind a quiet hill town where I had built five years of friendships, routines, and a version of myself I understood well. I told everyone, including myself, that I was excited. Mostly, I was. But underneath the excitement was a grief I hadn’t fully named yet.

I didn’t notice it arriving. I only noticed what it left behind.

It was an ordinary afternoon when I …

When Your Feelings Were Never Safe at Home

By in Blog

“The fuel of life is feeling. If we’re not filled up in childhood, we must fill ourselves as adults.” ~Jonice Webb, author of Running on Empty

I was nine years old the first time I taught myself how to disconnect completely from my emotions.

It started with a secret I wasn’t supposed to tell, a classroom that turned on me by lunchtime, and a mother who had nothing left to give me the exact moment I needed her most. By the end of that day, I understood the one rule my whole family lived by, even though nobody had ever …

Healing Is Happening Even When You Can’t See It

By in Blog

“One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” ~Marie Curie

I almost didn’t go to my cousin’s wedding.

Not because I didn’t want to celebrate her. I did. But the thought of walking into a room full of people who knew the version of me from two years ago felt unbearable.

They knew that version well.

The one who cried in bathroom stalls at family gatherings. Who smiled through dinners while silently replaying an argument from three days earlier. Who drank a little too much at Christmas because it was easier than …

Once You See the Relationship Pattern, You Can’t Unsee It

By in Blog

“When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.” ~Maya Angelou

The weekend started like any other family visit. Our family was in town, and it began with real excitement. Kids running everywhere, chocolate chip muffins in the oven, homemade ice cream for our guests, the ordinary, happy chaos of everyone existing in the same space.

On the second day we noticed one of the visiting kids had a runny nose and was rubbing her snot all over herself as she was grabbing our toddler to hold her. She loves babies, and we adore that about her. …

How to Suffer Less When You’re Waiting for Answers

By in Blog

“Rule your mind or it will rule you.” ~Buddha

Some mornings I wake before dawn and lie still, listening for signs that the house is awake.

A cough down the hallway.

The sound of a drawer opening.

Water running softly in the kitchen sink.

My mother is ninety-seven years old now, and before my feet even touch the floor, part of me is already listening for proof that the world has not changed overnight.

When I hear movement, I exhale.

Only then do I reach for my phone.

I tell myself I’m just checking messages. But lately I’ve realized I …

The Wholeness I Found When I Lost Someone I Love

By in Blog

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

The room didn’t change when she left. The chair was where it had always been, angled toward the window the way she liked it. What changed was that I could finally see the shape of the thing I’d been leaning on, now that it wasn’t there to lean on anymore.

For a long time, I called what I felt “love,” and some of it was. But underneath the grief was something I was slower to admit. A lot of what I missed wasn’t her. It was the version of …