“New beginnings are often disguised as painful endings.” ~Lao Tzu During the Great Recession I lost my business. And I was devastated. My business partner and I built the company from an idea we were kicking around over wine into a thriving brand strategy agency. We had twenty employees. We had a cool studio office. We were winning creative…
“Grief never ends … But it changes. It’s a passage, not a place to stay. Grief is not a sign of weakness, nor a lack of faith. It is the price of love.” ~Unknown “Thank you for letting me know.” The moment I hung up the phone, the tears came. I was confused and caught off guard. Why was I…
“We often block our own blessings because we don’t feel inherently good enough, smart enough, pretty enough, or worthy enough. But you’re worthy because you are born and because you are here. Your being alive makes worthiness your birthright. You alone are enough.” ~Oprah Winfrey When I was a little girl, I loved making cute drawings at school and…
Anyone who knows me well knows that I battled with food and my body for years. I struggled with bulimia for over a decade, starting when I was twelve. My eating disorder was in many ways a coping mechanism in response to trauma, but early programming around food didn’t help. I ate to soothe myself. I ate to stuff…
“Sit with it. Instead of drinking it away, smoking it away, sleeping it away, eating it away, or running from it. Just sit with it. Healing happens by feeling.” ~Unknown I had no idea I had so many feelings until four years ago. I became sober and immediately started overflowing with emotions—emotions I never knew I had. I stopped…
“Allow yourself to be bored a little. In our world full of distractions, create some space for nothingness.” ~Unknown My roommate sat in the kitchen, eating his late home-cooked dinner, and commented with a half-mocking smile, “Ah, you’re still living.” The words hung in the air, awkwardly playful but sharp enough to sting. They echoed something larger: the subtle…
“This is not where your story ends. It’s simply where it takes a turn you didn’t expect.” ~Cheryl Strayed He had the courage to say what I couldn’t. “It’s not working anymore.” It didn’t make any sense that we were breaking up. We loved each other so much. We had been talking about getting engaged. Our couples therapy was…
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” ~Arthur Ashe It was a quiet evening at Boat Quay. The sun was setting, casting warm golden hues over the water, and the air smelled faintly of salt and street food. I was sitting on the riverbank with a close friend, my head heavy with thoughts that…
“Not all who wander are lost.” ~J.R.R. Tolkien Sometimes as humans we lose sight of our profound inner resourcefulness—the wellspring of creativity and strength that has kept humanity reinventing itself over and over again. It happens to everyone. We get lost in comfortable routines, become discouraged from trying new things, and forget how to play. When life feels disappointingly…
“The truth will set you free, but first it will make you miserable.” ~James A. Garfield When the email finally came, it felt like a trap snapping shut. Its words were carefully spun—half-truths and veiled accusations twisted together to shift blame and obscure the real issue. For years, I had brushed off these moments as quirks or misunderstandings. But…
