“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” ~Carl Jung Where did I want to go out to eat? The question was straightforward, and the answer should have been easy. But as my mind flipped through the options, my thoughts weren’t focused on what I wanted. Instead, I was preoccupied with making the right choice,…
“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh Judy was three the first time I missed it. She had spent a solid ten minutes stacking every couch cushion on our living room floor in Vancouver, building what she clearly considered an Olympic-grade landing pad. She climbed up on the couch, stretched her arms…
“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ~Khalil Gibran I was born with spina bifida. When I was ten years old, doctors told me I might not walk again after a surgery that would change my life. I don’t remember every word they said, but I remember the feeling, the…
“The anxiety is not the enemy. It is the messenger. The mistake is killing the messenger instead of reading the letter.” ~Unknown It’s 3 a.m. I’m lying in the dark, planning my own funeral. Not because anything is wrong. My family is safe. There is no emergency. But my brain has decided, with complete confidence, that the headache I…
Sometimes everything feels like too much, and it’s hard to use all the valuable lessons you’ve learned when life requires you to use them all at once. It’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of what you’re facing and alone with all your struggles. I’ve felt this way on and off for the past year and a…
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about how easy it is to feel overwhelmed—by the news, by life, by everything we’re carrying day to day. I know I’ve been feeling this lately. And when things feel like a lot, the question becomes: How do we stay grounded in the middle of it all? If you’ve been wondering this too,…
“What if I accept that all I really want is a small, slow, simple life? A beautiful, quiet, gentle life. I think it is enough.” ~Krista O’Reilly-Davi-Digui Why do we feel such pressure to dream big? I think it starts in childhood when parents, teachers, and other adults start asking the question, “What do you want to be when…
“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…
“Vulnerability is the only path through the wall that separates us from each other.” ~Brené Brown Every time I share something deeply personal—an article, a post, a piece of my story somewhere or to someone—there is a part of me that lights up with energy. I feel a sense of urgency, a pull to share now. A belief that…
“Be gentle with yourself. You’re doing the best you can.” ~Unknown For years, I believed self-awareness was the answer to everything. If I could just understand myself better—my triggers, my patterns, my childhood wounds—I would finally feel calm. Stable. Healed. So I read the books. I journaled every night. I replayed conversations in my head, analyzing what I said,…
