What a Beautiful Thing
If You Feel Lonely Around People, Here’s Why
“The loneliness of the connected age is not about being alone. It’s about being unseen in a crowd.” ~Unknown
For a long time I thought I was broken.
Not in a dramatic way. In a quiet, persistent way—the kind you learn to manage so well that most people can’t tell, and eventually you almost can’t tell either.
I had a full life by any external measure. Work I cared about. People around me. Invitations to things. And yet there was this gap I couldn’t close—a feeling I can only describe as being on the wrong side of glass. Present in …
Growing Up Without a Family: From Survival Mode to Thriving
“You can’t go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending.” ~C. S. Lewis
I started life in a poor household with one parent who left when I was very little, never to be seen or heard from again, and another who stuck around but made it very clear I wasn’t wanted and I had ruined their life by existing.
For some reason, I never had any contact from either of their parents, my grandparents, and very little to no contact from their wider families.
So, as a young child, I knew …
Escaping an Abusive Situation: The Hardest Parts and Greatest Lessons
“The wound is the place where the Light enters you.” ~Rumi
I watched my son get hit by his father, and something inside me finally broke open.
Not broke apart. Broke open. There’s a difference.
For years, I had absorbed the chaos. I had made myself smaller, quieter, more accommodating. I had convinced myself that if I could just love harder, be better, try more, something would change. But in that moment, watching my child suffer at the hands of the man who was supposed to protect him, I understood with absolute clarity that nothing I did would ever …
Gratitude: The Amazing Superpower Inside Us All
“When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive—to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.” ~Marcus Aurelius
Gratitude.
It used to be a very triggering concept for me, and sometimes it still is.
It’s been a process to unravel what it means to me and to be okay with days where I am in active trauma or grief, when I feel there is nothing to be grateful for. It’s okay to be in those places.
Gratitude is but one of the plethora of tools I’ve used to shift my perspective on …
How I Stopped Overexplaining and Found Calm in Conflict
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” ~Viktor Frankl
For a while, I forgot about that space.
When conflict entered my life—first with my employer, then with my insurance company—I didn’t react explosively. I didn’t fire off reckless emails.
I did something that felt far more reasonable.
I built arguments.
I constructed careful, layered explanations. I mapped policy references, contextual details, and logical connections. I laid out what felt like a complete reticulum of ideas in my defense. If I could make my case airtight, I believed, it would …
The Wedding Dress Metaphor: A Powerful Lesson on Being Authentic
“True belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are; it requires you to be who you are.” ~Brené Brown
This past year, during a season of transition in my life, I started working part-time as a bridal stylist at a wedding dress store. It was something I had quietly dreamed about for years. I’ve always loved wedding dresses for their artistry, their structure, and the way each one feels like its own separate world of intention and detail.
But what has surprised me most hasn’t been the beauty. It’s been the these dresses revealed important lessons about confidence and …
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