Not All Wounds Show Up as Sadness
From Blending in to Belonging: My Journey Out of Self-Consciousness
“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
“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
“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
“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
“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 …
