“Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss people.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt I stopped gossiping when life humbled me. I didn’t realize at the time, but what I thought was just innocent girl talk with my friends was really a way to escape my own shame and insecurity. I had this quiet, ongoing sense that I wasn’t measuring up personally or…
“We don’t build trust by offering help. We build trust by asking for it.” ~Simon Sinek I have always been the strong sister, partner, and friend. I didn’t make a conscious decision one day to be the strong one and stuck to it. It became who it was from a very young age, being the firstborn daughter. I was…
“Our bodies communicate to us clearly and specifically, if we are willing to listen.” ~Shakti Gawain As a child, I was never taught to regulate my emotions. I learned instead to override them—pushing through stress, swallowing tears, and even hiding a cast at dinner, afraid that showing what had happened to me would create anger instead of care. By…
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” ~Soren Kierkegaard Let’s be clear: This isn’t an article about positive thinking. This isn’t an article about how silver linings make everything okay. This isn’t an article about how your perspective on anxiety is all wrong. The kids call those things “toxic positivity.” No toxic positivity here. This is an article about my lifelong relationship…
“I will not teach or love or show you anything perfectly, but I will let you see me, and I will always hold sacred the gift of seeing you—truly, deeply, seeing you.” ~Brené Brown The first time my kids saw me truly cry was Christmas of 2021. My oldest was sixteen, and my youngest was twelve. They had just opened…
“She remembered who she was, and the game changed.” ~Lalah Delia The scale. Those dreaded words and those dreaded numbers. It can strike fear in the heart of any generally happy human. We look at guidelines and BMI charts and always think, “It should be lower.” Have you ever been having a perfectly good day and suddenly think, “Maybe…
“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…
