Explore by Theme
-
We stop wanting so we don’t have to accept grief
I care more about achieving outcomes than almost anything else in my life. When something I want feels out of reach, I don’t sit with the wanting – I shut it down. I spent weeks unable to list a baby carrier for sale. I told myself I was being indecisive. But I was just avoiding the grief of accepting I might not have another baby. Wanting is more comfortable for me to feel.
-
Self-blame is a strange leap we don’t notice making
When something goes wrong, I turn the mirror on myself. What did I do, what can I learn, what’s mine to own. Most of the time this serves me. But when I’m not understood by someone, the same practice betrays me. I only know my story – not what they perceived happened, not the story they live inside. The mirror only reflects what is known to me. The failure is believing the mirror was reality.
-
Your mind doesn’t need to know
People say you need to name your emotions to release them. My body has been teaching me something different. I don’t always know what I’m feeling or why something hurts. I’ve learned I can let it go without knowing. The sensation moves whether or not my mind has a story.
-
Pulp happens before the butterfly emerges
I don’t change through discipline or friction. It happens in a moment. A belief crumbles. The old version of me ceases to exist. Values realign instantly. I’m not who I was, and not yet who I’m becoming. I just live inside the new version long enough, and the compounding is what people call transformation.
-
Beliefs keep you safe when you don’t trust yourself
I used to believe hangry would always happen whenever I was hungry. Fasting wasn’t even on the table. I encountered enough information to make me curious to try it. What I learned wasn’t that I could fast. It was that my belief was a self-imposed limitation that crumbled with self-trust.
-
The quiet days don’t count themselves
My dog gets attention when she’s doing the wrong thing. This trains her that doing right things isn’t worth being seen for. I do it to myself too. The days I don’t produce don’t register. I only count when I’m fixing.
-
They think they want to know, but they often can’t handle it
Every workplace tells you to call it like it is. Name the blocker, speak up, be direct. So I did. What I didn’t see is that most people confuse thoughts for emotions and emotions for thoughts. What you thought you said isn’t what they received. You named a problem. They felt an attack. The ideal of putting emotions aside in the workplace is fiction.
-
The gap between what you do and what you wish you did is not laziness
I painted a dresser. I hosted a birthday party. I sewed a doll. I bake enough bread so that our family always has bread. I go to yoga most days. I grow some fruit and vegetables in our backyard. I still call myself lazy because I don’t live in a clean house and I’d rather learn about taxes than do something about it.
-
Asking is the cheapest way to learn and the most expensive thing to be seen doing
In my twenties, I asked questions at work and got in trouble for it. Everyone thought I was disrupting the training, wasting the trainer’s time, jeopardizing the project. It got escalated to senior management. I almost got cut. Then the project ended and I was the only one who understood the assignment. I paid for that understanding in reputation. Most people aren’t willing to. They learned the cost before I did.
-
The box is invisible from the inside
The system you know is designed to keep you managing, not thriving. And because you can’t see outside it while you’re in it, you don’t suspect the system. You suspect yourself. Then something happens – illness, exhaustion, loss, your rock bottom – and it changes your shape enough that it doesn’t fit anymore.