I remember becoming aware of my own patterns of perfectionism long before I understood them as a survival response. At the time, I still believed I needed to be fixed. So I approached this as a problem I had to solve…

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. The desire to avoid made sense, because her pain is overwhelming. The pain of not being enough, of rejection and criticism, of grief, and of self-abandonment.

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. She reminded me that my purpose is not to create perfect versions of myself. My purpose is far more poetic, meaningful, and tangible than perfection. Thank goodness...

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. The girl that feels shame in a memory that visits me, she’s allowed to be here. This memory is allowed to surface and show me these parts of myself that I’m still learning how to hold.

But there’s another way of listening. One that doesn’t replace the story, but gently expands the space we’re listening from. A more honest and regulating way. It is when we invite our attention to how the experience is felt in the body. Nothing needs to be pushed away or replaced. As we widen our listening to include sensation…

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 I was conceived, but it came into conscious focus after the birth of my second child, my wonderful boy Jace; when being the “perfect” mom was no longer possible.

What I eventually discovered is that self-abandonment never leads to healing or love. When I stopped trying to fix myself and instead practiced presence with my pain, my limits, and the way my body, heart, and soul meet the world, growth could begin. But it required me to slow down.

Curiosity has become one of the most powerful tools in my healing. Approaching myself with questions instead of judgment softens my inner world and reconnects me with the parts of me that fear being seen.

I often think of resilience like going to the gym and realizing that a certain muscle group has been over-activated. It’s been working incredibly hard to keep things moving and functioning, compensating for an underlying imbalance. To correct this, we don’t shame those muscles, cut them out…

Showing up like this isn’t always easy. It asks for patience, presence, and vulnerability. It means stepping back from my own reactivity, letting go of the immediate need to fix, control, or be “right.”

I’m learning that my limiting beliefs aren’t just false narratives to override with my mind. They are responses; signals pointing to stories that have been held in my body, unfelt, unprocessed, and unhealed.

What I didn’t realize at the time was how my response to these sensations shaped their intensity. In trying to oppose them, push them away, or force a different experience, they only intensified, getting stuck in the body. Any peace I grasped at felt temporary, a kind of escape rather than true ease.

This old programming runs on an endless search for validation. The belief that I must keep proving, striving, and shaping myself in order to survive while the life I long to flourish in remains just out of reach.

I know how this can sound. Talking about happiness as a beauty practice can feel cliché, or even insensitive. I have a relationship with depression, so I understand that happiness is not something we can command or manufacture on demand.

They’re usually pointing me toward a part of myself that got stuck in rejection or shame. A younger part that didn’t feel seen, chosen, or safe. Instead of pushing that part away or trying to think my way out of it, I turn toward her.

Then the nuance found me and disrupted everything. I realized that despite the initial success, the changes were not sticking in a lasting, meaningful way. I struggled to stay consistent when life brought unexpected detours, detours that carried grief…

Being self-aware hasn’t always been kind to me. For a long time, it kept me stuck in my head, anxious, intellectualizing, dissociating, ruminating. I would analyze, plan, and process endlessly, thinking it was helping me, yet healing and connection always felt out of reach. It was like learning all the theory about how to solve a problem, only to feel…

For most of my life, I believed that change required pushing harder, being different, being “fixed.” I thought something inside me, or in others, needed correction in order to feel whole or connected. That relentless striving left me exhausted, frustrated, and stuck in cycles of shame and judgment.