A poem capturing my journey into deeper vulnerability, without erasing myself, for the sake of love.

The mountains have always done something to me. As a girl, they gave my heart somewhere to untangle things I didn’t yet know how to understand. Years later, driving another winding mountain road, I found myself meeting that younger version of me again.

Returning to social media has brought some old feelings of failure and insignificance back with it. I’m wrestling with how to seek an audience, care deeply about being heard, and stay connected to myself when the room feels empty.

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...

A childlike conversation with the stars about trust and the dark.

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?

Poetry for the soul searching for herself, in all the noise of how to be. Maybe you can pull up a chair, read these words, and just stay for a while, here, in the invitation to just be.

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 found myself facing the same trigger years later, along with all the familiar sensations: panic, urgency, shame, and the desire to escape. I wondered whether I was back where I started. Sometimes it takes me a while to notice that something is different. That I am different.

There are moments, big and small, in my life that have me smiling, feeling encouraged by a sense of healing, greater capacity and depth…

I thought regulation meant finding my zen as quickly as possible, with the commendable goal to be more and more unbothered by life’s rocky moments. But the truth is I do care. I care very deeply. And trying to shut it off never worked.

So I started gathering pieces of other people as reference points. The way they lived, their resolve, their creativity…

It is a kind of oxymoron, a weird, squiggly journey, to start with such an adverse concept of self, only to find that love and wholeheartedness are about coming home to your own body, thoughts, emotions, and process… to own your story.

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.

For months I’ve been holding myself in this tension, between empathy and the fear of failing them. And then one morning, wisdom whispered something beautiful.

The part of me that feels anxious… she’s allowed to be here. When I feel critical, she’s allowed to be here. When I feel scared, she’s allowed to be here.

An ode to my beautiful niece, Evie Grace, whose passing on this day in December 2017 first unearthed my journey with grief.

After a lifetime of hyper-vigilance, it feels almost strange to notice that my default is slowly, gently shifting toward rest, joy, and peace. This journey began the moment…