I discovered that it is possible to viscerally feel love toward her, even after years of disdain and dissonance. What’s more, that love has made room…

I lived in a town called Penrith at the bottom of the mountains, named Blue because the dense population of eucalyptus trees gives off that hue from a distance. I always welcomed that drive.

The thing is, I’m a human first. And it seems that when I stop to notice and peer outside the lens of my conditioning, two things are almost always true...

I sat back one day and was shocked at how I’d managed to write myself out of everything I had been working on. Where was I?

So, as you might imagine, my efforts to create certainty became a coping method. It was one of the ways my nervous system learned to create safety.

I just thought regulation meant finding your zen as quickly as possible, with the commendable goal to be more and more unbothered by life’s rocky moments.

I recognized this voice. It belongs to the part of me that seeks control in order to avoid something. As I stayed with her, I sensed what was behind the bracing. A wounded part that is so very afraid.