If You Can’t Let Go of All Your Worries
How I Stopped Being the Victim of My Own Story
“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” ~Søren Kierkegaard
A few years ago, I was catching up over coffee with an old friend I’ll call Ray, a trusted mentor. He’s a few years older than me, silver-haired and down to earth, the kind of man who listens with his whole heart.
We were at a small coffee shop near my house. I told him about my first year as a director, how I’d gone from being a counselor whose identity was built around listening and connecting to suddenly managing budgets, writing evaluations, and holding people …
I Don’t Miss My Ex—I Miss Who I Was with Her
“Nostalgia is a file that removes the rough edges from the good old days.” ~Doug Larson
I don’t miss Zinia.
I miss the Zinia I made up.
The real Zinia—the one who fought with me for hours over things that became bigger than they should have, who said things I told myself I’d never forgive, who was wrong for me in ways I kept pretending weren’t there—I got rid of all of that somewhere along the way.
I kept the laugh. The chemistry. The way she got my humor without me having to explain it. The conversations that ran till …
The Truth About Time That Most of Us Avoid Facing
“The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” ~Oprah Winfrey
My father died at forty-nine.
I was young when it happened, still soft in the way grief makes you when you are not yet equipped to hold it. I was so consumed by the loss itself that I never stopped to do the mathematics of it. Forty-nine years. That is all he got. Forty-nine years to do everything he wanted to do, to become everything he wanted to become, and to say every word he still had left inside him.
I did not let …
How Better Communication Changed My Relationships and My Life
“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
“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
What Helped Me When My Life Felt Uncertain and Unstable
“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 …
