This morning, I woke up to a group text with a TED Talk by Luvvie Ajayi Jones, author of Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual. The message was about speaking up. Not softly. Not politely. Not in a way that makes everyone else comfortable. It was about speaking your truth, standing in your values, and being willing to yell when whispering is no longer enough. And if you know me, you know I love waking up to messages like that. I love reminder texts. I love phone

My dad asks us the same question on almost every phone call and every face-to-face visit: “Are you happy?” He asks it so often that sometimes we ask him first, before he gets the chance. “Are you happy, Dad?” It has become one of those family things — something we laugh about, something we expect, something that feels so completely him. But the older I get, the more I realize that question is not small. It is not casual. It is not just something he says to fill the silence. I

Eighteen means adulthood. Eighteen means diploma. Eighteen means they can vote, sign papers, make decisions, move out, start their lives. It means they can walk across a stage, shake someone’s hand, and suddenly the world looks at them like they are ready. But every parent sitting in that auditorium knows the truth. They are not ready. Not fully. This year, the graduation flurry in our house belonged to my son, Matthew. My beautiful, sweet little boy. The baby who was basical

Every June, the world gets a little louder, brighter, sparklier, and significantly more rainbow-covered. Basically, Target throws up glitter, corporations suddenly remember gay people exist, and everyone starts arguing about flags like we’re preparing for a very dramatic game of Capture the Rainbow. And honestly? I love it. I love Pride Month. I love what it stands for. I love the people who fought, screamed, marched, cried, loved, and refused to disappear so the rest of us c

Last night, I sat quietly listening to the sounds of my son, my nieces and nephews, and all of their friends laughing. They had just celebrated my niece’s graduation, and everyone was gathered at our Airbnb. They were eating, drinking soda, telling stories, and filling the room with the kind of laughter that makes a place feel alive. It was loud and joyful and chaotic in the best way. I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were saying at first. I was just listening to

This morning, before the day had even fully started, I got a message from a friend that simply said, “Remember when you fell?” followed by “I love you.” And immediately, I knew exactly what she was talking about. She was referring to the time we were late to a sound bath. You know, the kind of experience where everyone is supposed to be peaceful, grounded, quiet, breathing deeply, and fully committed to their zen. Well… enter me. Instead of gracefully slipping into the room u

As I’ve aged, I’ve become more and more of a hippie woo-woo, “the spirits are calling me” kind of person. As a therapist yep…pretty much the same add in talking about genitalia and nerve endings mixed with a lot of standing in your own truth and owning your own desire. I light candles. I pray to God. I pull tarot cards. I get readings. I listen to my gut, my body, my dreams, the weird feeling in my chest, the random song that comes on at the perfect time, and whatever inv

Holding the unseen weight of loving someone with mental illness There is a growing openness in how we speak about mental health. We are naming anxiety. We are naming depression. We are naming trauma, healing, and the courage it takes to seek support. And this matters. But there is another layer—quieter, more complex, often unspoken. What happens to the nervous system, the heart, and the body of the person who is loving someone through it? This Is Not a Spectator Experience L

There is a kind of letting go that feels like loss, and then there is a kind of letting go that feels like love. For a long time, I think many of us are taught that letting go means giving up, walking away, shutting down, or pretending something did not matter. But real letting go is not cold. It is not careless. It is not a lack of love. Sometimes, letting go is the deepest expression of love we can offer. It is the moment we stop fighting what is no longer aligned. It is th

Trusting yourself again isn’t something we talk about enough in therapy. Not just boundaries or coping skills or communication—but the thing underneath all of that: how do you actually know what’s right for you? Not what sounds good. Not what keeps everyone else comfortable. Not what avoids the awkward conversation. I mean you. Your body. Your gut. That quiet inner voice that says, “this feels right”… or “absolutely not.” We throw around the word intuition a lot, but for

(From someone who’s seen behind the curtain… a lot) Most relationships don’t fall apart because of some big dramatic betrayal. We are often able to get through one time betrayal. They fall apart because of what people stop doing, what they start tolerating, and what they refuse to work through. I see it every day. People come in thinking they have a communication problem. What they actually have is a consistency problem, a resentment problem, or a we stopped choosing

I’m not saying my body and I are in a full-blown toxic relationship… but if we were on couples counseling intake paperwork, I’d definitely check “communication issues.” You know that time in therapy when your therapist asks “why are you still in this relationship?” You answer as through it was so painfully obvious “because we love each other.” I do love my body, my physical form including curves, muscles, bone structure…all of it, but damn it seems it doesn’t have the same

There are moments in healing that don’t look the way we expect them to. Moments where you cry harder than you thought you would, like something in you finally cracked open after being held together for too long. Moments where you say something you’ve been carrying for years, and it doesn’t come out perfectly, it comes out real. Moments where anger shows up instead of peace, and it throws you off because you thought healing was supposed to feel calmer than this. But this is th

There’s something about bare feet on the earth that reminds me who I am. Not the woman rushing through emails, meetings, and responsibilities. Not the mom, therapist, business owner, the planner, the fixer of problems. Just me. A little wild. A little messy. Hair probably unwashed, feet definitely dirty, heart wide open. Some people call it grounding. I call it coming home. When my bare feet press into the dirt, the grass, the sand, something inside me exhales. The noise quie

Have you ever left therapy feeling worse than when you started? Have you ever closed your computer screen and thought… what the hell am I paying this therapist for? Maybe you came in feeling okay. Maybe even good. And somehow, in less than an hour, you left feeling raw, emotional, and wondering why you opened that door in the first place. Now you have feelings you didn’t expect. Maybe a little homework. Maybe a lot to think about. And part of you wonders: Why am I eve

I moved a week ago. It feels strange to even write that not because moving is unusual, but because I haven’t moved in 14 years, and because this is only the second time in my entire adult life that a move wasn’t tied to a partner, a roommate, or some survival-based transition. Two years after the divorce, we leave the home that sheltered our memories and stitched us back together. What once held our healing now releases us to the softness and joy of a new place. But this move

I wasn’t a difficult pregnancy.But I was born into a life that didn't want me... My parents were just 18 when I arrived—teenagers trying to raise a baby while navigating chaos, domestic violence, and a constant lack of stability. Somewhere in that storm, the story formed that I made everything worse. I was told I was a “bad baby.”Too loud. Too needy. Too much.So much so that when my mom got pregnant with her third child—my brother—people cried. They offered condolences, hel

People love mentally ill folks when they don’t know we’re mentally ill. When they think the quirks are charm, the humor is personality, the “different” is something interesting instead of something stigmatized. But the second the truth is shared—medication, diagnoses, history, healing—the entire tone shifts. Suddenly every emotion is a symptom, every reaction is an episode, every boundary is a disorder acting up. People stop listening to the person and start listening to the

Childhood trauma does not stay in childhood. It settles into the body. It becomes instinct. It quietly teaches us how to survive connection long before we ever learn how to feel safe inside it. We don’t grow out of trauma. We grow around it. And unless it is healed, it shapes every relationship we enter, romantic or otherwise. When love in early life was inconsistent, conditional, or required us to be smaller than we were, we did not learn what we deserved. We learned what we

In therapy, there are moments where disclosure can be helpful. Sometimes it builds connection. Sometimes it offers normalization. And sometimes disclosure is just about the therapist needing to say their own new thing out loud. Because of that, as therapists, we really have to stop and ask ourselves: is this disclosure for them, or is it for me? Those of you who work with me, have read my book, or have poked around our website know that I am bipolar. Bipolar doesn’t rule my l