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Posts tagged with “Change”

How I Stopped Being the Victim of My Own Story

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“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 …

The Truth About Time That Most of Us Avoid Facing

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“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 …

What Helped Me When My Life Felt Uncertain and Unstable

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“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 …

Embracing Slow Growth: The Big Turning Point That Never Came

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“It gets easier. Every day it gets a little easier. But you gotta do it every day, that’s the hard part.” ~ BoJack Horseman

If you’d told eighteen-year-old me where she’d be at twenty-eight, she would have laughed nervously and changed the subject.

That was her move, by the way. Laugh it off. Deflect. Eat another biscuit.

She was the girl who cried in bathroom stalls and called it “being sensitive.” The one who said yes to everything because no felt too dangerous. The one who googled “how to be more confident” at midnight and then did absolutely nothing about …

When You Feel Trapped in a Life That Looks Good on Paper

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“When something isn’t right for you, it has a way of letting you know. Not in one big announcement, but in a thousand small nudges.” ~Martha Beck

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee one morning when a thought slipped in that I hadn’t let myself think before: This can’t be the rest of my life.

There wasn’t one dramatic moment I could point to and say, “This is why I have to leave.”

Part of me wished there had been something obvious, some clear betrayal or breaking point I could point to and say, “…

When You Realize You’ve Outgrown a Friendship

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“Sometimes growth doesn’t look like becoming more—it looks like leaving behind what no longer fits.”

For a long time, I believed that outgrowing a friendship meant I had failed at it.

That belief took root early, at boarding school, where friendships weren’t just social—they were survival. We didn’t see each other for a few hours a day. We lived together. Ate together. Studied, slept, and grew up side by side.

There was no going home to reset. No space to retreat and recalibrate. Friendship wasn’t optional—it was the environment.

So when I later began to outgrow one of those friendships, …

The Hidden Cost of Trusting the Universe More Than Yourself

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“You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean in a drop.” —Rumi

The last days of the year felt like the right time to let go. I stood in my backyard with twenty-five years of journals—thick notebooks filled with prayers, confessions, and late-night spirals—ready to release them to the flames.

I wasn’t being dramatic. I was being deliberate. I stopped daily journaling several years ago.

For years, I’d used these journals as a kind of inner courtroom, constantly building a case against myself or others. Every page held evidence of failures, proof of my profoundly …

Finding Peace When You Don’t Know What Comes Next

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

For as long as I can remember, I’ve been the kind of person who plans everything.

My calendar was color-coded, my to-do lists perfectly alphabetized, and I could tell you what I’d be doing six months from now almost down to the hour.

I thought control meant safety. If I could organize my world tightly enough, maybe nothing bad would happen.

For a long time, that illusion worked. I graduated near the top of my class, got a good job, and built …

How I Found My Midlife Roar in the Beautiful Mess of Perimenopause

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“Menopause is a journey where you rediscover yourself and become the woman you were always meant to be.” ~Dr. Christiane Northrup

I recently had a healing session with a dear client of mine.

“Before we begin,” she asked, “how are you?”

I blinked and said, “Oh, you know, the usual. Just navigating perimenopause. Hallucinating about living alone without my partner one minute and panicking about dying alone the next.”

She burst into laughter.

“Oh, thank God,” she said. “I find myself browsing apartment listings weekly. Good to know I’m not the only one.”

Ah, yes, the sacred scrolls of apartment …

The Great Horned Owl That Kicked Me Out of Burnout

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“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.” ~Lao Tzu

I’d known for months that I was burned out.

The kind of burnout that creeps in quietly—behind your eyes, in your spine, in your calendar. I was volunteering in raptor rescue, monitoring eagle nests as the busy season ramped up, juggling consulting work, supporting adoption placements, writing, creating. I was showing up fully in every space except the one I lived in: my body.

And yet I refused to let go. I told myself it was just a busy season. That if I …

What If Growth Is About Removing, Not Adding More to Your Life?

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“Maybe the journey isn’t so much about becoming anything. Maybe it’s about un-becoming everything that isn’t really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place.” ~Paulo Coelho

For years, any time I felt sadness, insecurity, loneliness, or any of those “unwelcome” feelings, I jumped into action.

I’d look for something new to take on: a class, a language, a project, a degree. Once, in the span of a single week, I signed up for language classes, researched getting certified in something I didn’t actually want to do, and convinced myself I needed to

…

The Beautiful Losses of a Childhood Moved to the Philippines

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“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ~Alan Watts

I must admit, dear reader, that I wasn’t always a fan of change—not even a little. I wouldn’t say I entered this world naturally inclined toward new or unfamiliar things.

Like many children, I found comfort in routine—the joy that comes from ordinary moments repeating themselves. Whether we realize it or not, repetition builds a mental framework that quietly defines our comfort zones.

Maybe that’s where identity begins, slowly shaped over time. And perhaps that’s why, …

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 …

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 …

When You Outgrow Where You Live but Can’t Yet Leave

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“Living in the moment is learning how to live between the big moments. It is learning how to make the most of the in-betweens and having the audacity to make those moments just as exciting.” ~Morgan Harper Nichols

There’s a peculiar grief that doesn’t often get named. It lives in the moments when you’re neither here nor there. When you’re packing in your mind but still waking up to the same kitchen.

When your soul says go, but your bank account or relationship or circumstance says not yet.

It’s the grief of the in-between, an ache I’ve been swimming in …

How to Reconnect with What You’re Hungry For

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“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” ~Anaïs Nin

What is it about us that makes us wait for permission? To do what we want. To be who we are. We wait until we’ve “earned” it, until we’re thinner, smarter, more talented. Until we’re finally good enough.

Everyone has dreams, right? Some want to travel. Some want to write a book. Others dream of running a marathon. Or something smaller: a bold haircut. Or something bigger: quitting a job that drains you.

And …

The Surprising Reason Many People Are Still Stuck

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“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anaïs Nin

I never imagined I’d be fired.

It wasn’t because I didn’t have the qualifications or experience. In fact, I had built a successful academic and consulting career. I had studied leadership, organizational behavior, and human development. I had read the right books, taken the right classes, built the right résumé. I was, by all appearances, doing all the right things.

But after …

From Injury to Insight: A New Kind of Yoga Practice

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“Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn’t you—all of the expectations, all of the beliefs—and becoming who you are.” ~Rachel Naomi Remen

For years, yoga was my safe space—the place where I felt strong, grounded, and whole. My practice wasn’t just physical; it was my sanctuary, my moving meditation. So, when a shoulder injury forced me to change the way I practiced, I wasn’t just in pain—I was lost.

At first, it seemed minor. A nagging soreness, nothing I hadn’t worked through before. I convinced myself that more movement would …

The 5 Qualities You Need to Change Your Life

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“In any given moment we have two options: to step forward into growth or step back into safety.” ~Abraham Maslow

Have you ever wondered what true personal development requires? What it truly takes to change your life?

I have, and it’s a question I have been asking myself for years.

As someone who was on a journey that could better be described as personal decline than personal development, I felt stuck living a life I hated.

Around two years later, after having improved or completely changed every aspect of myself that I didn’t like, I can honestly say I am …

The Truth About Rainbows: Hope Doesn’t Always Look Like We Expect

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“If you have ever followed a rainbow to its end, it leads you to the ground on which you are standing.” ~Alan Cohen

There’s nothing more exhilarating than riding in a Jeep through masses of standing water. With each push forward, my friend Angela expertly maneuvered through enormous puddles, sending fountain-like arcs of aquatic glory past my passenger-side window.

This was joy to me.

It was a welcome reprieve considering the past couple of years had unraveled in ways I never saw coming. In fact, this watery wonder, cruising through the quaint streets of the beloved beach island I …