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Pay What You Can for 21 Days of Laughs and Light

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My electric toothbrush has seen it all.

I usually look in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth, and for a while last fall, I often cried when I stared into my own eyes.

I did my best to hold it together in front of my sons—most of the time, anyway. But the mask often cracked when I met my own gaze. Deep sobs set to the gentle hum of my sonic. Life was just that overwhelming—with medical issues, a loved one’s shock diagnosis, and countless other challenges too numerous to list.

Then one day, after months of carrying more …

I Spent Years Chasing Love Until I Finally Chose Myself

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“The only people who get upset when you set boundaries are the ones who benefited from you having none.” ~Unknown

For most of my life, I lived with a quiet ache, a longing I couldn’t quite name but always felt. I wanted to be chosen. Not just liked or tolerated, but fully seen, wanted, and loved.

That longing shaped so many of my choices. I over-gave in relationships, staying in situations far longer than I should have, and shrank myself to be accepted.

I didn’t know it at the time, but I was trying to fill an emptiness that had …

The Lie of Packaged Healing and the Truth About Feeling

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“Emotions are not problems to be solved. They are signals to be felt.” ~Vironika Tugaleva

We’ve been taught to package our emotions like fast food—served quick, tidy, and with a smile. Americanized feelings. Digestible. Non-threatening. Always paired with productivity.

If you’re sad, journal it. If you’re angry, regulate it. If you’re overwhelmed, fix it with a three-step plan and a green juice. And if that doesn’t work? Try again. You probably missed a step.

This is how we sell emotional healing in the West—marketed like a self-improvement product. Seven-minute abs. Seven habits. Five love languages. Follow the formula. Find the …

The Hidden Link Between Self-Rejection and Social Anxiety

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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

Last year over lunch, my friend, Jess, confessed something to me that hit me right in my gut because I’d been there too—that exact same lie, that exact same fear.

Out of nowhere, she blurted out, “I need to cancel.”

“Cancel what?” I asked.

She burst into tears. “I RSVPed yes to Jen’s wedding months ago, but it’s this weekend, and I just… I can’t do it.”

As she sobbed, she …

The Small, Simple Acts That Shifted Me Out of Survival Mode

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“True healing is not a straight line. It is a spiral. You come back to things you thought you understood and see deeper truths.” ~Barry H. Gillespie

I used to believe healing would be obvious. Like a movie montage of breakthroughs… laughter through tears, epiphanies in therapy, and early morning jogs that end with a sunrise and a changed life. But that’s not what healing looked like for me.

It looked like dragging myself out of bed with puffy eyes after staying up too late crying. It looked like brushing my teeth when everything in me whispered, “Why bother?” It …

Planning Without Panic and Learning to Live in the Now

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“You can plan for a hundred years. But you don’t know what will happen the next moment.” ~Tibetan proverb

Some days it feels like a fog I can’t shake—this underlying fear that something painful or uncertain is just around the corner.

I try to be responsible. I try to prepare, make good choices, take care of things now so the future won’t unravel later. But beneath that effort is something harder to face: I feel helpless. I can’t control what’s coming, and that terrifies me.

Maybe you’ve felt this too—that tension between doing your best and still fearing it’s not …

From Burnout to Bliss: The Beauty of Therapeutic Art

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“It takes courage to say yes to rest and play in a culture where exhaustion is seen as a status symbol.” ~Brené Brown

“You have burnout.” I listened to these three words in a trance, said thank you, and got off the call with the doctor.

Part of me had known.

The endless days I spent in bed staring at the ceiling with no motivation to do anything. The inability to focus on my screen. And the sudden bursts of tears when I saw yet another meeting pop up in my calendar.

I knew all of this wasn’t normal. That …

How I Broke Free from a Narcissistic Family System

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“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”~ Carl Jung

My mom had always been invested in real estate. I remember snacking on open house charcuterie years before we finally purchased a house to flip—the first of four. By the time I was eighteen, we’d moved five times.

I knew our family was falling apart by renovation number three.

I had spent the previous few years experiencing suicidal ideation and was now on a strict cocktail of seven or so psychiatric and neurological medications.

My brother …

How to Enjoy Food and Feel Good in Your Skin

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Have you ever felt like fat and food were your enemies? Like everything would be better if you could just lose weight—and eat whatever you want without consequence?

I felt that way for much of my childhood and teens, when unresolved trauma and low self-esteem led to a long battle with food and my body.

I struggled with bulimia for over a decade, starting at twelve. And though I technically “recovered” in my early twenties, I spent years after trapped in rigid food rules and a lingering fear of eating the “wrong” thing.

It wasn’t until my thirties that I …

I Lost My Father—and the Illusion of My Mother

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“Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.” ~Eckhart Tolle

In July 2023, my father died in a tragic accident. We were devastated—my sisters, my mother, and I. Or so I thought.

What followed in the months after his death forced me to confront the truth of my mother’s emotional disconnection, a truth I had sensed but never fully allowed myself to see. In losing my father, I also lost the illusion of the mother I thought I had.

A Sudden Exit

By September, just two months after my father’s death, my …

Left-Side Pain: A Powerful Messenger for My Abandoned Parts

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“The body always leads us home… if we’re willing to listen.”

For over a decade, I lived in a body that tried to tell me something I wasn’t ready to hear. But eventually, it got louder—loud enough that I could no longer ignore the message.

It started with migraines—always on the left side.

Then came a string of sinus infections and dental issues—again, always on the left.

Lumps formed in my left breast. Then pain in my left ribs. Then a left-sided numbness that made doctors run MRIs for multiple sclerosis. Every test came back normal. And yet my body …

Raised on Their Best Intentions—Healed on My Own Terms

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

There are two versions of me.

There’s the one I am now—the grounded, present woman who holds space for others, who guides people toward healing, who walks barefoot through the grass and whispers affirmations while sipping her coffee.

And then there’s the other version. The one who barely made it. The one who used to stare into her fridge not out of hunger but as a distraction from the ache in her chest. The one who didn’t feel at home in her …

The Truth About Why I’ve Ghosted People (and What I’ve Learned)

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“Ghosting is cruel because it denies a person the chance to process, to ask questions, or to get closure. It’s emotional abandonment, masquerading as protection.” ~Dr. Jennice Vilhauer

I never set out to ghost anyone.

In fact, I used to hate ghosting with the burning fury of a thousand unread dating app notifications. I told myself I’d never be that person—the one who disappears mid-conversation, fails to reply after a good date (or sends a very bland thank you message), or silently vanishes like a breadcrumb trail to nowhere.

And yet… here I am. Writing a post about how I’ve …

How Two Simple Lists Completely Transformed My Life

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“Happiness turned to me and said, ‘It is time. It is time to forgive yourself for all of the things you did not become… Above all else, it is time to believe, with reckless abandon, that you are worthy of me, for I have been waiting for years.” ~Bianca Sparacino

I didn’t know who I was.

That realization hit me like a punch to the chest after I ended a decade-long relationship and canceled my wedding six weeks before it was supposed to happen.

I remember standing in my kitchen one morning, staring at the floor, and thinking, I have …

Rebuilding Myself After Divorce: How I Found Healing and Hope

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

I never imagined I’d be here at forty-nine—divorced, disoriented, and drowning in an identity crisis. I had met him just before my sixteenth birthday. He was all I knew. We built an entire life together—nearly three decades of marriage, raising children, shared memories, traditions, routines. And then, one day, it all collapsed with five haunting words: “I need some space, Heather.”

At first, I thought it was a phase. But the space became silence, the silence became separation, and soon after, I was signing divorce papers. The man I …

How to Speak from the Heart: Let Your First Word Be a Breath

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“Mindfulness is a pause—the space between stimulus and response: that’s where choice lies.” ~Tara Brach

We’ve all been there.

A sharp reply. A snide remark. A moment when we said something that didn’t come from our heart but from somewhere else entirely—a need to be right, to sound smart, to prove a point, to stay in control, or simply to defend ourselves.

What follows is the spinning. The knowing that what was said didn’t align with our soul. The overthinking, the replaying of the moment, the rumination, the regret, the tightening in the chest, the wish we could take …

Can You Live a Meaningful Life Without Being Exceptional?

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“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” ~Alan Watts

As I enter the later stage of life, I find myself asking questions that are less about accomplishment and more about meaning. What matters now, when the need to prove myself has softened, but the old voices of expectation still echo in my mind?

In a world that prizes novelty, speed, and success, I wonder what happens when we’re no …

Mindful Parenting: How to Calm Our Kids and Heal Ourselves

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“When we show up for our kids in moments when no one showed up for us, we’re not just healing them. We’re healing ourselves.” ~Dr. Becky Kenedy

I wasn’t taught to pause and breathe when I was overwhelmed.

I was taught to push through. To be a “good girl.” To smile when something inside me was begging to be seen.

I was told to toughen up. Not to cry. Not to feel too much.

But how can we grow into resilient humans when we’re taught to hide the very feelings that make us human?

I thought I was learning strength. …

When Growth Comes with Grief Because People Still See the Old You

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“In the process of letting go, you will lose many things from the past, but you will find yourself.” ~Deepak Chopra

There’s a strange ache that comes with becoming healthy. Not the physical kind. The relational kind. The kind that surfaces when we’re no longer quite so wired to betray ourselves for belonging. When we stop curating ourselves to fit into spaces where we used to shrink, bend, or smile politely through the dissonance.

Years of hard work and effort, slowly unwrapping all those unhealthy ways of being in the world, cleaning off my lenses to see more clearly …

The Whisper That Saved My Life When I Was Drowning

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TRIGGER WARNING: This post references rape and suicide attempts, which might be distressing for some readers.

“Our lives only improve when we are willing to take chances, and the first and most difficult risk we can take is to be honest with ourselves.” ~Walter Anderson

This was my third psychiatric hospitalization after my suicide attempts.

On this visit, something shifted. All I knew at that moment was, for the first time, I wasn’t in a hurry to leave.

There was no window or clock. Just blank, pale walls I’d been staring at for twenty-one days.

I lay there, shattered and …