One of the Most Underrated Forms of Mental Rest
How I Changed My Life in the Middle of Chaos
“Do what you can, with what you’ve got, where you are.” ~Squire Bill Widener
For years, I had a private deal with myself: I would really change when life became manageable.
When work slowed down. When the family was okay. When I had more energy. When there was less stress. When I could finally focus.
The problem was that life never signed that deal.
At my heaviest, I weighed 465 pounds. I had learned how to live inside a body that made almost everything harder while also becoming very good at explaining why now was not the right time to …
From Anxious to Free: The Surprising Power of Acceptance
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change.” ~Carl Rogers
For over a year, I woke up at 3 a.m. almost every night.
I would lie there in the dark, my heart pounding, my mind sprinting through the same loop: What if I can’t handle my job? What if I lose my income? What if I spend the rest of my life alone?
Eventually I would fall back asleep around dawn, then drag myself through the workday like a ghost—exhausted, flat, and pretending to be fine.
I wasn’t just going through a …
When Helping Becomes Controlling: What I Learned About Fear and Love
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” ~Carl Rogers
There is a part of me that really, really loves vitamins.
Like…a lot.
I have always been endlessly fascinated by health, which means I can spend a wildly unreasonable amount of time talking about inflammation, mitochondria, blood sugar, nervous systems, magnesium, and all the other things that make most people’s eyes glaze over while my little heart lights right up.
So the vitamin-loving part is real.
Very me.
And, as I recently discovered while sitting beside my swollen-faced fiancé in urgent …
Why I Always Thought Other People Were Upset with Me
“Don’t take anything personally. Nothing others do is because of you.” ~Don Miguel Ruiz
I used to walk into a room and check everyone else’s emotional temperature before I noticed my own.
A tightened jaw meant I should get quieter. A distracted answer meant I’d done something wrong. If my partner sighed while unloading the dishwasher, I’d go back through the last hour looking for the mistake that caused it.
I called this empathy. It felt like attentiveness, and honestly, I was proud of it, because I noticed things other people missed.
What I didn’t see was that I wasn’t …
