Wanting It Isn’t Enough (A gentle invitation to choose your values, not just name your pain)

If you’ve been following along for a while, you know this hasn’t been a blog so much as a breadcrumb trail. A winding path through emotion, memory, resistance, and return. And if you’re just joining me now, welcome. You’re stepping into the middle of something deeply human.

We’ve covered a lot already, maybe more than most would dare to in such a short time. We began with the tension between authenticity and the world’s relentless push to put us back into boxes, the struggle worth fighting for. We explored what happens when you don’t fit in, and the courage it takes to live fully as yourself, even when it means facing adversity. We challenged the lie of toxic positivity, and we peeled back the layers of how anxiety hijacks even our best-laid plans.

From there, we turned inward, into the places where swallowed feelings sit heavy and unspoken, stealing our breath. We mapped out the doshas, one by one, not as abstract theory, but as living energies worthy of honor. We talked about what it means to not be a problem to fix, to see imbalance not as a flaw but as a signal calling us home. I laid out the terrain of Ayurvedic care and how small, intentional shifts can create real momentum, even in seasons of grief and fatigue.

We stepped into the paradox of growth, how it sometimes feels like loss. I told you the story of waking up in a life I hadn’t yet escaped, naming the ache that rises when the vision we hold doesn't match the ground beneath our feet.

Then came rest. Silence. Space.

We honored what it means to be disconnected, not as failure, but as a call to realign. We checked in on the heartbreak of watching people refuse the help they asked for, and we remembered that sacred silence often does more than noise ever could. We explored the deep impact we have even when we think we’re invisible. Then, the next step: The Path Unfolds As I Walk It, a reminder that we don’t need to have it all figured out to keep going.

Most recently, we began something new. A series or a reclamation I call The Gospel of the Dark Feminine, the start of a bold return to ourselves, our voice, our rage, and our truth.

That brings me here. To this moment. To this next thread I feel tugging at the hem of your heart and mine, the quiet, persistent question:

What happens after we name the pain?

What if awareness isn't the endpoint?
What if clarity isn't enough?
What if the next step… is choice?

We all have those quiet longings we carry, tucked between the lines of our to-do lists, whispered in moments of stillness, or blurted out in frustration when life doesn't look the way we imagined. We say we want change. We say we’re tired of the chaos, the overwhelm, the weight (emotional or otherwise). We name our exhaustion, our stuckness, our dissatisfaction. And then… we do nothing with it.

Not because we’re weak. Not because we’re broken. But because it’s easier to talk about the pain than it is to move through it.

At a certain point, though, naming the pain becomes its own kind of trap. We tell the same stories over and over again to our friends, our therapists, our journals and yet nothing shifts. Awareness becomes a substitute for action. Complaints masquerade as transformation. We start to confuse venting with growth.

The truth is, longing isn’t the same as choosing. And until we’re willing to make new choices, nothing really changes.

You Can’t Skip the Part Where You Decide

Here’s something we rarely talk about in self-help spaces: not everything we say we want is something we’re actually willing to choose. You can want to feel better, to look different, to have a more peaceful life. But if you're not making time for the practices, boundaries, or changes that would make that possible, then it’s time to ask a harder question:

Do I want this thing, or do I just want to want it?

It’s a brutal reckoning, I know. But here’s the thing, there is so much freedom on the other side of honesty. When you stop pretending you value something just because society says you should — and start aligning with what actually matters to you. You reclaim your power.

Maybe you don’t care about having a six-pack. Maybe your sanity matters more than spotless baseboards. Maybe you don’t want to climb the corporate ladder. Maybe you’re just tired. That’s allowed. You’re allowed to want what you want. You’re also allowed to not want what you don’t. But be honest. Don’t chase goals that don’t belong to you. Don’t punish yourself for outcomes you never actually chose. And please don’t spend your precious energy feeling guilty for not “achieving” something that you never really valued in the first place.

What You Choose Tells the Truth

We often think of values as abstract, these lofty ideals we write in our journals or talk about in workshops. But your real values are not what you say; they are what you do. They show up in your calendar, your spending, your relationships, your energy. If you say you value wellness but skip every opportunity to rest or nourish yourself, that’s information. If you claim you value presence but are constantly overstimulated and overscheduled, that’s information. If you dream of writing a book but never carve out even ten minutes to put pen to paper… that’s information too.

This isn’t a call to shame. It’s a call to clarity.

Sometimes what we value in theory is simply not what we’re choosing in practice and until those two things align, we will feel the friction. That friction is not failure. It’s an invitation.

Your Brain Will Fight You So Expect It

Even when you do start choosing what matters, don’t expect it to feel easy. The brain is built for survival, not transformation. It loves routine. It clings to comfort. It registers change, even good change, as potential danger. So when you start showing up differently, your brain may interpret it as a threat. It will whisper, “Why are you doing this to me?” It will reach for the dopamine hit of scrolling, the safety of procrastination, the thrill of chaos. That doesn’t mean you’re failing. It means your biology is working exactly as designed. True transformation often begins in discomfort. Like the caterpillar who turns into complete goo inside the chrysalis before emerging as something new, you may have to surrender to the mess before the clarity comes. That middle place, where nothing is certain and everything feels unfamiliar, is where the magic happens. But only if you stay in it long enough to let the metamorphosis occur.

So Here’s Your Invitation

Let this be a season of choosing. Of getting honest about what you actually want, what you’re truly ready for, and what you're finally willing to release.

Ask yourself:

• What have I been holding onto not because I value it, but because I think I should? Be real here…we all are told what we should value but we don’t personally value it. We want that cake over being skinny.

• What do I say I want, but never make time for?

• What goals, standards, or expectations am I ready to lay down? Especially those that we don’t want but hold onto because we are told to want them.

• What am I finally ready to choose, not just name? This is the thing you want to become action not just words.

You don’t need another productivity hack or another self-improvement plan. You need clarity. You need alignment. You need to stop lying to yourself about what matters.

Because once you stop pretending, you can finally begin.

The Gospel of the Feminine Story

Imagine a tapestry woven not just with threads of time, but with the very essence of those who came before us. In this opening, I want you to see the picture clearly: a grandmother carrying her unborn daughter, and within that daughter, the tiny, silent egg that will one day become you. It’s a beautiful and almost mystical truth: the matrilineal story is one of inheritance not just of genes, but of experiences, emotions, and untold strengths.

As we step into this story together, we want to look closely at how that maternal lineage carries the echoes of our foremothers. What happened to them, what shaped them, and what they silently passed down through generations is still humming in our own bones. This is not just about biology; it’s about the powerful, deeply human narrative that has been quietly carried forward, waiting for us to reclaim it.

Now, as we stand at this intersection of past and present, I invite you to pause and look inward. The patterns you live with today, the ways you navigate the chaos of this world, are not just your own, they are threads woven from generations before you. One day, they may be threads passed on to those who come after.

Take a moment to recognize the patterns in your own life. How does the stress of the modern world shape your body, your mind, your heart? Are there echoes of your grandmother’s resilience in the way you face challenges, or whispers of her fears in the way you respond to uncertainty?

This is not to place a burden on your shoulders; it’s to illuminate the power you have in this very moment. You are the living culmination of all that came before, and you have the profound ability to transform those patterns for those who will follow. Recognizing where you stand in this lineage is the first step to reclaiming the feminine story and shaping a future rooted in awareness, healing, and strength.

So, as we close this introduction, here is where our journey truly begins. Together, we will weave a tapestry that combines the threads of science, the power of storytelling, and the depth of spirituality. This is a narrative that honors the wholeness of our experiences and the lasting impact they carry. We’ll explore how the stories of our ancestors live on in our cells, how the science of epigenetics meets the wisdom of ancestral memory, and how embracing these layers can help us become more fully aware, more fully healed, and more fully alive. This is an invitation to step into the fullness of your own story. To see yourself not just as an individual, but as a living, breathing chapter in a much larger narrative. Through that recognition, to find both healing and empowerment in the stories you choose to tell from here on out.

The Science of Inheritance and Epigenetics

Now that we've stepped into the heart of our story, let’s gently unfold the science that helps illuminate these generational threads. Epigenetics might sound like a big, technical word, but at its core, it’s simply the story of how our genes respond to the world around us. In the earliest moments of life, as we develop in our mother’s womb, we’re not just receiving a set of genes from our mother and father. We’re also receiving a whole world of subtle influences. Our mother gives us more than chromosomes, she gives us the cytoplasm, the environment of the cell, the mitochondria that power our physiology. Within those tiny powerhouses are more than 30 genes of their own, carrying the echoes of generations past.

Epigenetics is, in essence, the way our genes can be turned on or off by the environment around us. The experiences of our grandmother, whether it was the stress of a difficult era, the resilience she showed in the face of hardship, or the nourishment she had or lacked, all create signals that influence how our genes express themselves. In this way, the science of epigenetics is a bridge. It connects the stories of our ancestors to the ways we experience life today. It helps us understand that the patterns we carry are not just random; they are part of a larger, deeply human narrative of adaptation and survival.

One of the most compelling illustrations of epigenetics comes from the grandchildren of those who survived the Dutch famine during World War II. Researchers found that these descendants often struggled with obesity and metabolic issues, even though they themselves never experienced famine. It was as if their bodies "remembered" the deprivation their grandparents had faced. The genes had adapted to hold onto calories, storing fat as a protective measure against a threat that was long past.

Just as we see with the descendants of the Dutch famine, another poignant example comes from studies of children born to mothers who lived through Hurricane Katrina in the United States. Researchers found that the children of mothers who were pregnant during the hurricane often displayed a heightened stress response and were more prone to anxiety. It was as if the storm’s upheaval had left a mark not just on the mothers but on the very biology of the next generation.

By focusing on this example, we see a clear and tangible link: the immense stress and uncertainty experienced during a natural disaster can tune a developing child’s stress response system to be more sensitive, almost like an inherited echo of the mother’s fear and resilience. This gives us a modern lens to understand how deeply interconnected our stories and our physiology truly are.

In both the Dutch famine and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, we see that our genes are not just static blueprints. They are storytellers, adapting and responding to the world our ancestors lived through, and in turn, influencing the stories we live out today.

The Burden of Inherited Stories

To truly understand the burden of these inherited roles, we need to look at how these stories were born. Imagine the generations of women who came before us, living in times where their value was often tied to their ability to marry well, to bear children, to maintain a household in a particular way. Over time, these expectations became woven into the fabric of family life, passed down like heirlooms from mother to daughter.

These stories exist because, in many ways, they were once survival strategies. In a world that offered women few choices, fitting into these roles was a way to ensure security, social acceptance, and stability. The problem is that as times changed, these old narratives didn’t always evolve. Instead, they became burdens, pressing down on women who wanted to define fulfillment on their own terms.

So we find ourselves carrying these stories without always knowing why they exist. They persist because they were once a form of protection, a way to navigate a world that was less forgiving. Now, even as we live in a time of greater freedom, those old patterns can linger, whispering that we must be everything to everyone, or that we must follow a certain script to be worthy.

Before we begin rewriting our stories, we have to begin with remembering. Not in the clinical sense of genealogy, and not in a glorified sense of ancestral worship either but in the deeply human act of pausing long enough to consider where our stories came from. The women who came before us, our mothers, our grandmothers, and those even further back were not weak. They were surviving in the only ways they were allowed to. They didn’t have therapists or journaling prompts or Instagram reels reminding them to breathe. They had reputations to protect, children to feed, wars to live through, husbands to placate, and entire decades of emotion they had to swallow silently so the children wouldn’t see. Some of them were cold not because they didn’t love us, but because the world hadn’t given them permission to love themselves. Some were angry because no one had ever made space for their grief. Some passed down the very pain they tried so hard to escape because no one ever taught them that another way was possible.

This doesn’t mean we excuse harm. But it does mean we trace it. We hold space for the complexity. We acknowledge that our lineage is not made up of saints or villains, but of women doing the best they could with what they had. Now, with gentleness, we ask: What do we want to carry forward and what are we finally ready to lay down?

Because here is the truth that lives in your bones: you are not just a product of your past. You are not simply continuing a pattern. You are the turning point. You are the moment of clarity in the lineage. You are the one who can look at what’s been inherited not just in blood, but in behavior, in silence, in shame, and say, “I choose differently now.” That doesn’t require rage. It doesn’t require a clean break. It just requires a willingness to see. To see the pattern. To see the pain. To see the places where love tried and failed and maybe never made it through the door, and to make a different choice anyway.

You get to honor your lineage while interrupting the parts of it that no longer serve. You get to hold your grandmother’s strength and still reject her silence. You get to look your mother’s sacrifice in the eye and still build a life that includes rest. You get to stop performing the roles that no longer fit you. You are allowed to stop carrying what doesn’t belong to you. You are allowed to stop believing that pain is love, or that burnout is proof of your worth. You are allowed to choose presence. To choose softness. To choose a new story, one that your future descendants will inherit not as survival, but as a beginning.

Because your life is not a dead end. It is a doorway. Someone, someday, will be grateful that you walked through it.

Recognizing the Strength in Our Story

We’ve talked about how the story lives in the body. We’ve talked about how it shows up in spirit. Now I want to bring us to the place where those two meet in our blood, our bones, and in the very chromosomes we carry. Because here’s what’s true: every single one of us carries an X chromosome. Regardless of gender identity or biological sex, the X is a constant. And that chromosome is more than a strand of DNA, it’s a thread, tether, and a living library. It holds within it the maternal line, the mitochondrial line, the part of us that reaches all the way back to the beginning. That’s not poetry. That’s science. It’s also magic.

When I did my 23andMe test, I was curious, sure. But I didn’t expect to feel what I felt when I saw my matrilineal line traced back through time. I watched as it moved across continents, through deserts and into forests, through hardship and into survival. My family line likely began in the deserts or tropics of Africa and slowly made its way north. And I found myself wondering what they carried with them, what hunger, what hope, what grief, and what strength. To walk toward the unknown and survive it? That’s not just endurance. That’s sacred.

And then I started seeing it in myself. I looked at my broad hips and my strong thighs and that small but stubborn layer of fat that always sits right over my uterus, and for the first time I didn’t see shame. I saw protection. I saw my Irish ancestors, famine survivors, colonized people, women who had to hold onto energy because the world gave them no guarantees. My body remembered their story, even when I didn’t. And while I’ve spent years criticizing that softness, wishing it away, I now understand it for what it is: an echo. A truth. A reminder that I am the result of thousands of women who made it through.

That story doesn’t just live in the curve of my hips, it lives in how I was raised. My mother grew up in a home where love wasn’t spoken aloud. Her mother, born into a strict Catholic family in the 1930s, had been hardened by a system that taught women to serve but never to soften. But my mom chose differently. She didn’t always get it right, none of us do, but she made sure that love was felt in our house. She interrupted the pattern. And because of that, I’m able to sit here today and say that I have a deeply loving relationship with my own daughter. That’s the power of one woman saying, “No more.”

Call to Action: Tracing the Threads of Your Story

As we come to the end of this journey, I invite you to begin your own exploration. We’ve talked about the power of our lineage and the stories carried in our genes, and now it’s time to connect that to your own life.

Step One: Reflect on Your Maternal Line

Take a moment to think about your grandmother. If you’re willing, go back as far as you comfortably can on your maternal side, but let’s begin with her. Consider the patterns or traits that she embodied. Was she a warrior in her own way? Was she nurturing, resilient, or perhaps a keeper of certain family traditions? You might want to journal about her life, her habits, and the ways her story has shaped the generations that followed.

Then, do the same reflection for your mother. Think about the qualities she passed down, the strengths she carried, and how her experiences influenced you. This is not about getting lost in the past, but about understanding the threads of your own story and how they connect you to a long line of remarkable women.

Step Two: Reflect on Your Present Self

Now that you've explored the stories of your grandmother and mother, turn your focus to yourself. Take some time to reflect on the qualities you carry within you today. What strengths, values, or habits have you inherited from the women who came before you? And where have you chosen to disrupt old patterns or create new paths that are uniquely your own?

In your journal, write about how you see yourself in this moment. Consider the ways you’ve blended the legacy of your lineage with your own individual spirit. This is a chance to acknowledge your role as both a continuation of the past and a creator of the future.

Step Three: Looking to the Future

With an understanding of how science meets spirit and how the past has shaped you, let’s turn our gaze to the future. Think about the steps you can take to help ensure a healthier, stronger future for the next generation. This might mean consciously passing down stories of resilience, creating an environment where children feel seen and heard, or modeling the kind of self-care and self-compassion that breaks old cycles and fosters new growth.

If you’re not a parent yourself, consider how you can be a positive influence on the children in your life such as nieces, nephews, or the children of friends. By embodying the lessons of both your lineage and your own personal growth, you help create a ripple effect that empowers the next generation to thrive.

A Note on Changing the Story

As we wrap up this reflection, remember that not everything is set in stone. If you’ve uncovered anything in your family’s story or in your own patterns that feels uncomfortable or worrying, know that it’s absolutely okay. Our stories are not immovable. We have the power to make new choices today that can resonate for generations to come.

You are not bound by the past. Instead, you’re empowered by the knowledge of it. Each day, you have the ability to shape a new chapter, to create healthier patterns, and to write a story that reflects both where you’ve come from and where you want to go. Your lineage is a source of strength, and your future is a canvas of possibility.

References

Bleker, L. S., de Rooij, S. R., Painter, R. C., Ravelli, A. C. J., & Roseboom, T. J. (2021). Cohort profile: The Dutch famine birth cohort (DFBC)—A prospective birth cohort study in the Netherlands. BMJ Open, 11(3), e042078. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2020-042078

Tees, M. T., Harville, E. W., Xiong, X., Buekens, P., Pridjian, G., & Elkind-Hirsch, K. (2010). Hurricane Katrina-related maternal stress, maternal mental health, and early infant temperament. Maternal and Child Health Journal, 14(4), 511–518. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10995-009-0486-x

The Gospel of Feminine Qualities: What We Choose To Exalt

This week has been heavy, and it has left me thinking about the bigger picture, about what happens when we live life so out of balance, and when the qualities we honor and lift up as a culture become lopsided.

This is part of why I began writing The Gospel of the Feminine in the first place: to explore what we call the “Dark Feminine.” Not dark because she is bad or evil, but because she has been hidden away, shamed, repressed. The Dark Feminine holds all the qualities we’ve been told to silence such as compassion, nurture, and the insistence that everyone’s dignity be honored. She is the quiet force that fixes another woman’s crown without making a show of it, who wants everyone to rise together.

Yet, we live in a society that does not value those things. Instead, we glorify their opposite. We glorify the hyper-masculine: domination, aggression, conquest. We idolize the warmongers and the fighters. Even our entertainment reflects this obsession, the hero’s journey almost always ends in violence. The hero is almost always a man with a weapon, wiping out “the bad guys,” who are conveniently of whatever nationality or identity we are vilifying at that moment.

Once upon a time, the bad guys were Germans. Later, they were Russians, think of Red Dawn, where the imagined horror was Russian boots on American soil. For decades now, the “bad guys” have been Middle Eastern men, Muslims, people whose faces and faiths have been flattened into a single caricature of danger. We cheer as they are killed on-screen. Meanwhile, we laugh at films that center the feminine gaze. The movies that lead with love, tenderness, empathy, and relational healing. We call them “chick flicks,” dismiss them as trivial.

Then we wonder why our society is so fractured.

Look at the people we exalt in real life. Men who lie, who boast of harm, who abuse their power. Donald Trump is the clearest example, a man convicted on 34 felony counts, who bragged about sexually assaulting women, who has a long record of racist statements and behavior. This is a man who took out full-page newspaper ads condemning five Black boys in New York, the Central Park Five, despite there being no proof they had committed the crime they were accused of. Yet he is elevated to hero status, turned into an icon, hailed by some as a savior of the nation.

Why are those the qualities we choose to look up to?

Why do we glorify aggression but scoff at compassion? Why do we trust bullies but doubt peacemakers? Why do we dismiss feminine qualities as soft or weak when they are the very ones that have kept communities alive through the worst of times?

These are the questions I want to explore next week. Because until we examine why we keep exalting war over wisdom, violence over vulnerability, and hardness over humanity, we will continue to build a society that reflects those values. When we do, we shouldn’t be surprised when fear, anger, and division keep repeating themselves because they are the natural fruit of what we keep planting.

Who Are We Being Protected From?

Before we flow into the next blog, I need to pause here and name something that feels essential to this conversation. Our previous generations conditioned men to believe that so much of this behavior was acceptable and conditioned women to stand by them while they did it.

Charlie Kirk’s wife is a prime example. She stood by him, smiling brightly for the cameras, even as he said on a public podcast that if one of their daughters were raped and became pregnant, that child would still be brought into the world regardless of the harm done to his daughter’s body or mind. This is a man who actively worked to strip women, including his own daughters, of their rights to bodily autonomy, and she stood beside him and beamed. I have to ask: why?

I think I know why, at least in part. Because he afforded her a lifestyle.

I’ve seen this dynamic in my own life. Lately, I’ve struggled to recognize my own mother. The woman who once taught me kindness and compassion, who modeled those qualities for me as a child, seems to have reserved them only for her children and her family. Somewhere along the line, they stopped extending beyond the walls of our home. And when I look back at the men she chose, I see the pattern clearly. They reflect the damage done to her.

Even my maternal grandfather, who I loved deeply and have fond memories of, was a hardened man. A child of the Great Depression, WWII veteran,truck driver, and provider. The quintessential “manly man.” He was also one of the only men in my life who did not hurt me, and I think I always knew that on some level he loved me. But I never once heard him say the words “I love you.” His first wife died young, leaving him with two daughters, and within months he remarried not because he was ready to love again, but because he didn’t know how to raise children on his own. Affection was not part of the deal, provision was.

I see this same story repeating itself now in my mother’s marriage. Last Christmas, my husband asked my stepdad what he was getting my mom for a present. He just looked up at the ceiling and said, “This house, that’s her gift. I already got it for her.” As though a roof over her head was the pinnacle of affection. My mother is married to a racist, a bigot, a sexist, a man who looks down on anyone he deems beneath him and yet she stays, because he affords her the lifestyle she is living.

This is what I mean when I say “kept woman.” This has been the arrangement for generations: women remain silent, we tolerate the harm, and in exchange we are given security. But this is largely a white woman’s privilege. Black women did not have this option, they had to work, they had to fight, they had to earn their keep twice over.

That is how we’ve arrived here. The masculine has taken over every facet of our public and private lives, and the bar for men has been set astonishingly low. As long as a man keeps a roof over his family’s head and food on the table, he is celebrated as a “good man.” God forbid he changes a diaper, then we treat him like a saint. We use words like “babysitting” when he watches his own children for an hour so his wife can take a shower, as though parenting were not also his responsibility.

Women do these things every single day, without applause, without recognition, without being called heroes for it. And that is the heart of what I am saying: we have lowered the bar for men so far that simply meeting the most basic requirements of partnership and parenthood is treated as exceptional. Meanwhile, women are expected to give everything, hold everything together, and carry the emotional labor of entire households, quietly and without complaint.

This is not accidental. It is generational conditioning and it is the system we have inherited. Here’s where I think we need to go deeper.

Because when men think about who they idolize, they often pick the man who looks the strongest, the man who could do the most damage if he had to. They gravitate toward the action hero, the soldier, the man with the gun. Often, they assume that this is what women want too: the muscled-up version of Hugh Jackman, flexing in his Wolverine glory. But if you look at where women are actually looking, you’ll see something else entirely. Women are buying the magazines where Hugh Jackman is in a soft knit sweater, smiling gently, baking something in a cozy kitchen. That is what feels safe. That is what feels approachable. So why do we as a culture keep lifting up the man who can do the most harm as our idea of security? Because it doesn’t actually make us feel safe.

There was a survey that asked women, “What would you do if there were no men on earth?” The answers were heartbreakingly simple: go for a walk at night, wear the outfit I love without fear, jog with headphones on, sit on a park bench and read in peace. Just ordinary things that many men take for granted. Which raises the question: if men claim they are here to protect us, who exactly are they protecting us from? The answer, almost every time, is other men. Men who rape, harass, stalk, murder, and abuse. Men who commit the overwhelming majority of mass shootings. Men who make public space dangerous for women.

This is something we need to sit with. Because if protection from other men is the foundation of masculinity, maybe the problem is not that women need to be protected, maybe the problem is that men are the ones we need protection from. That is where I want to take my readers next week. Because there is a story behind how we got here, and it is a story about the feminine, a story that has been buried for generations, a story I am beginning to untangle as I reflect on my own mother, my own lineage, and the generations of women who came before me.

Feminine Qualities Are Not A Weakness…They Are Our Superpower

What I really want to do at the end of this post is call us to something higher. I want us to start questioning why we keep equating softness with weakness, and why we’ve allowed ourselves to believe that the qualities we call “feminine” (compassion, patience, gentleness, nurture) are somehow lesser. These qualities are not luxuries or nice-to-haves in society. They are not naïve. They are not weak. If anything, they are the very qualities that demand the most courage from us.

Anger is easy. Bigotry is easy. Sexism, anti-intellectualism, and narrow-mindedness are easy. They are knee-jerk reactions that require no self-awareness, no reflection, no accountability. They give people permission to lash out rather than sit with their discomfort. But compassion asks something harder of us. Love asks something harder. Patience asks us to stay present when we want to run away. Understanding forces us to sit in the tension between our own pain and someone else’s and search for connection instead of reaching for a weapon. These things take time. They take energy. They take strength.

Women know this strength in our bones, even though we’ve been told for generations that we are weak. We have been told we are fragile, that we need protection, that we are too soft for the world, when in reality, we are some of the strongest creatures walking this earth. God forbid we hand a period cramp simulator to a man, one of those devices that sends electric pulses to mimic the pain many women live with monthly, because you will see him double over while most women stand still, calm and collected, saying, “Yes, I’ve felt worse.” Because we have felt worse. We have bled through the night with pain so sharp it took our breath away or made us vomit, and still we would get up to take care of children, go to work, and keep the house running. We have endured childbirth, ruptured cysts, fibroids, endometriosis, hemorrhages… pain that has split us open and left scars and we have gone back to work before we were even fully healed. I went back to work two weeks after giving birth and was considered lucky that I had that much time.

This is not weakness. This is resilience. This is strength.

I think this is where we have to push back against the narrative that compassion, love, and care are lesser qualities, or that they make us vulnerable in the wrong ways. These are not qualities to hide or be ashamed of. They are not weaknesses to “balance out” with toughness. They are the strongest forces we have, and they are exactly what our society needs right now if we are going to move forward in any meaningful way.

That is where I want to leave you today, not with an answer, not with a neat conclusion, but with an invitation to sit with this and to question the story you have been told about strength. Next week, I want to continue this conversation by telling The Feminine Story, about what happens when these qualities are buried, about the cost of living in a world where the masculine has taken over everything, and about what it looks like to bring these hidden qualities back into the light where they belong.

Reframing the “Feminine” Qualities

Before we close, I want to offer you an exercise, not as homework, but as an invitation. This is an exercise in reframing how we see the feminine, and by “feminine,” I don’t just mean women, but the qualities we have labeled as feminine for generations. Too often, these qualities are dismissed as soft, submissive, or weak. What I want you to do as you read this list is to notice those thoughts when they come up, the little voice that says, “Yes, but isn’t compassion just enabling?” or “Patience is fine, but isn’t it just passivity?” Then I want you to gently push back. I want you to consider what it might mean to see these qualities as strengths, as vital skills that our culture desperately needs. Because if we want to move toward a society that heals rather than fractures, that nurtures rather than destroys, these are the qualities we must learn to exalt, honor, and embrace. If we keep glorifying aggression, domination, and violence as the highest forms of strength, we will continue walking a path that leads only to more division and eventually, to destruction.

Compassion
• Why it’s seen as weak: Considered overly emotional, naïve, or enabling “bleeding heart” behavior that lets people take advantage.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Compassion takes courage. It forces us to see the pain of others without turning away and inspires change more effectively than fear or punishment.

Patience
• Why it’s seen as weak: Interpreted as passivity or a lack of ambition, “just waiting around.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Patience is active endurance, the ability to hold steady through discomfort and make wise decisions instead of rash ones.

Empathy
• Why it’s seen as weak: Said to cloud judgment or make people “too sensitive.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Empathy builds trust, helps resolve conflict, and allows us to understand what motivates others, essential for leadership and community.

Gentleness
• Why it’s seen as weak: Mistaken for fragility or submissiveness, “too soft to handle the real world.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Gentleness is controlled strength. It diffuses volatile situations and turns conflict into collaboration.

Nurturing
• Why it’s seen as weak: Dismissed as invisible “women’s work” that doesn’t matter outside the home.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Nurturing sustains life, it grows people, ideas, and communities. It’s the foundation for long-term success and stability.

Cooperation
• Why it’s seen as weak: Labeled as “people-pleasing” or lacking individuality.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Cooperation creates networks of support and allows for collective strength, producing solutions no single person could achieve alone.

Forgiveness
• Why it’s seen as weak: Viewed as letting people off the hook or avoiding accountability.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Forgiveness frees the forgiver from bitterness, making space for healing and growth.

Vulnerability
• Why it’s seen as weak: Treated as dangerous, a sign you can be hurt or taken advantage of.
• Why it’s actually a strength: Vulnerability is courage in action. It opens the door to intimacy, trust, and authenticity.

Intuition
• Why it’s seen as weak: Dismissed as irrational or “just feelings.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Intuition is subconscious pattern recognition, a survival skill honed over generations that gives insight beyond data.

Emotional Expression
• Why it’s seen as weak: Framed as dramatic, unstable, or “hysterical.”
• Why it’s actually a strength: Expressing emotions in healthy ways prevents them from festering and leads to better decisions and deeper self-awareness.

As you sit with this exercise, I want you to ask yourself: how much longer can we keep living this way? How much more will we have to endure, as a society, as a species, before we finally say, enough is enough?

At what point do we lay down our arms, literally and figuratively, and choose a different way? At what point do we stop glorifying anger, domination, and cruelty, and start exalting compassion, patience, and understanding?

Because if we are serious about building a world that is safer, kinder, and more just, it will not come through more violence. It will not come through louder shouting or deeper division. It will come only when we have the courage to see these so-called “feminine” qualities for what they truly are: powerful, resilient forces that have the strength to transform not only our communities, but our future.

The Gospel of the Feminine Self

I’ve been carrying a weight lately, though I didn’t notice how heavy it had become until recently. It’s not the kind of tired that sleep fixes. It’s the kind that settles into your bones, the kind that lingers in your breath, the kind that makes even small joys feel muted. And when I started looking closely at why, I realized it isn’t just one thing. It’s the way my life has splintered into a hundred little pieces, and every piece keeps asking for more.

I wake up every day and move between so many different roles that it’s no wonder I feel fractured and exhausted. I’m a wife, a mother, a program director, an instructor, a Ph.D. candidate, a creator, a writer, a coach, a friend, an activist, a community coordinator, the list goes on and on. Every one of those identities needs something from me. Every one of them asks to be fed, maintained, and perfected. And I have been trying (really, I have) to keep all of them alive, all at once, as if giving less than one hundred percent to any part of my life means I am failing. But the truth is, there’s only one of me and lately, I have been waking up tired and angry.

I wanted to understand that anger. I wanted to find the source of this exhaustion, so I started searching for answers outside myself. I thought maybe I’d find clarity, something validating, something that made sense of this constant stretching-thin that so many women experience. So I went to the one place we all go when we’re lost: Google. I typed in “roles of women,” expecting something modern, nuanced, maybe even hopeful.

What I found stopped me in my tracks.

The very first definition I read said the roles of women are “diverse and evolving, spanning the traditional responsibilities of caregiver, mother, and homemaker to modern roles as professional, entrepreneur, leader, and activist in all sectors of society.” At first glance, it sounded fine, even progressive, maybe. But the longer I sat with it, the more frustrated I became. Because every single role listed was defined by what I could offer to other people. My worth, according to this narrative, lives entirely in my ability to serve: to raise, to provide, to lead, to heal, to nurture. It framed womanhood entirely around my usefulness.

And I thought, maybe that’s just the women’s page. So I searched “roles of men,” curious to see how that narrative was framed.

And that’s when the bottom dropped out.

The very first sentence I read said, “The role of men encompasses evolving traditional, contemporary, and individual expectations.” That single word, individual, hit me like a lightning bolt. The men’s narrative starts by centering him, his inner world, his desires, and his expectations. His identity is rooted in who he is, not just what he produces. And I sat there staring at those two definitions side by side, and something in me cracked open.

Because nowhere in the roles of women was there room for me, my individuality, or my wholeness. For the parts of me that exist outside of service, outside of output, outside of performance. I will be honest, I don’t even know if those parts exist because they are so far buried under the roles I need to fulfill. It would take an entire archeological team to unearth them. That’s when I realized why I’ve been so angry. Somewhere deep down, I’ve been waiting for the world to hand me permission to stop performing, to stop holding all these fragmented roles together with both hands. But that permission isn’t coming. It was never coming. There has never been a definition written that makes room for all of me. Maybe that’s why I need to write one myself.

When the Fragmenting Begins

If I’m honest, I don’t think this fragmentation starts when we grow up. I don’t even think it starts the moment we take our first breath. I think it begins before we are even born.

We live in a world where, more often than not, we already know the baby’s gender long before we ever meet her. The moment those words appear on the screen, “It’s a girl!”,  something subtle, almost invisible, starts to happen. She hasn’t yet drawn her first breath, but pieces of her are already being claimed. She will be someone’s daughter. Someday, someone’s wife. Likely someone’s mother. She’ll be a sister, a friend, a caregiver, a homemaker, and a coworker. Without even realizing it, we begin breaking her into roles before she’s even had the chance to decide who she is.

Boys, though… boys are treated differently. Boys are born whole. They carry their father’s name, his lineage, and his story. There’s an unspoken wholeness granted to them by default. But girls? Girls are fragmented before they’ve even opened their eyes and the breaking doesn’t stop there.

As we grow up, that fragmentation deepens. We’re told, in a thousand quiet ways, who we’re expected to be. At school, we learn not just our ABCs and long division, but the hidden curriculum: how to be the “right” kind of girl, the “right” kind of student, the one who doesn’t make waves, who learns quickly when to stay quiet, when to smile, when to accommodate. underneath it all, we learn something far more dangerous: that our boundaries are negotiable.

When we’re little, we hear phrases like “boys will be boys” or “he’s only teasing you because he likes you.” These messages seem harmless, but they are the opening cracks in the foundation. They teach us early on to ignore discomfort, to reinterpret violations as affection, and to make room for other people even when we don’t want to. Every time we swallow those lessons, a piece of us splinters away. Because here’s the truth: boundaries hold us together. They are the walls that keep the Self intact. Without them, we become fragments scattered across the expectations of others. A fragmented woman is easier to control.

This is why the breaking starts early and why it never stops. The more broken we become, the easier it is to keep taking pieces of us away. When we grow up, the consequences become even clearer:

We still can’t tell men no without calculating the risk of violence, shame, or backlash. We’ve learned to make our refusals sound soft, polite, palatable, or to pretend that we might be open, even when we aren’t. Not because we want to, but because survival demands it. Even as adults, we’re trained to manage their reactions before we’re allowed to consider our own safety.

I don’t think this is accidental. The closer women get to wholeness, the harder the world pushes back. You can see it everywhere right now, in every headline and every political fight:

·       The stripping away of abortion rights, because how dare we claim sovereignty over our bodies.

·       The attacks on no-fault divorce, because how dare we choose freedom over obligation.

·       The framing of the so-called male loneliness epidemic as our fault because the narrative is always that women exist to soothe men’s unmet needs, and if we refuse, we’ve broken something in society.

Even the projections about the future, like the warnings that nearly 45% of women may be single by 2030, are framed as a crisis, not a choice. The subtext is clear: women are supposed to serve, to accommodate, and to be available. When we aren’t, the entire system convulses, grasping for control.

Because wholeness, a woman choosing herself fully, terrifies people and rips the fabric of society. It always has.

So the chipping continues, boundary by boundary, piece by piece. We are served up on platters, our labor, our beauty, our bodies, our emotional caregiving, asked constantly, “What part of you can I take today?” When we begin to refuse, society calls us difficult, broken, selfish, or unnatural.

But maybe we’re none of those things. Maybe we’re simply trying to remember who we were before the splitting began.

The Costume Changes

This fragmentation isn’t just emotional. It isn’t just an idea or a metaphor, it’s embodied. It lives in our muscles, our breath, our voices, our posture, and the choices we make about how to enter a room. I see it in myself all the time, but it hit harder when my husband pointed it out. He notices when I pick up a different mask, when I slip into a different version of myself. He can tell when I’ve stepped into my coaching voice…soft, measured, warm, or when I’ve shifted into my clipped, confident professional voice for a Zoom meeting, stripped of anything that might sound too personal. He hears the playful lilt I use when speaking to my daughter and the lower, steadier cadence when I speak to him. He notices before I even do.

It's not just my voice. It’s my posture, the way I stand, the clothes I choose, the way I hold myself. It’s the tilt of my head, the way my shoulders soften or tense depending on what the moment demands. These aren’t imagined fragments; they live in my body. This is the hidden choreography women are taught from a young age: the art of compartmentalization. Each role comes with its own costume, its own approved movements, its own script. We become fluent in switching, toggling between fragments without even realizing it anymore. One minute we’re the poised professional presenting to a client; the next, we’re crouched on the kitchen floor tending to a crying child; then we’re answering texts from a friend in crisis; then stepping into caregiver, mediator, partner, mother, teacher, and coach all within the span of an hour.

We learn the art of becoming palatable. We read the room, sense what’s welcome, and shape ourselves into whatever form will keep the peace, meet the need, or ensure belonging. We master transformation, constantly shape-shifting into whichever version of ourselves is most acceptable in the moment. But the cost is staggering. Every costume change carries a weight. Every mask leaves an imprint. The body keeps score. Our voices tighten. Our shoulders rise. Our breath gets shallow. Our nervous systems stay on high alert, constantly scanning for cues about who we need to be and what we need to hide. Over time, it gets harder and harder to remember who we are underneath it all, who we were before the splitting began.

Here’s the part I need to name clearly: this isn’t universal. Men, broadly speaking, are granted a freedom women are not. They get to show up as themselves, messy, unpolished, unfiltered, and the world, by and large, accepts them. For women, authenticity is rarely safe. We learn early that we cannot bring our whole selves anywhere. We can’t let coworkers know too much about who we are personally. We can’t bring our professional selves home to our families. We can’t show our tenderness in spaces where strength is expected, and we can’t bring our strength into spaces where we’re supposed to be soft. So we adapt. We curate ourselves, carefully selecting which fragments are safest to show and which must be hidden. We become offerings, holding ourselves out on a platter:

Do you need my care?

My body?

My work?

My comfort?

My silence?

My smile?

We learn to serve and, in that constant serving, in that endless translation between roles, we exhaust ourselves into forgetting. We scatter so many pieces of who we are that we grow too tired to gather them back up again, too depleted to imagine gluing ourselves whole.

Maybe that’s part of how the system sustains itself. Because if we’re drained from the performance, if we’re always tending to everyone else’s needs, we have no energy left for reclamation.

Standing here, I can see how deep this goes. I can see how this early breaking, this lifelong habit of splitting ourselves into fragments, makes us more vulnerable later. Because at some point, all the roles we’ve been trained to carry start falling away. We give, and we give, and we give, until the giving becomes who we are and then one day… it shifts.

The kids grow up and leave, and suddenly the identity of mother, that whole, consuming part of us, is no longer needed. Menopause arrives, and with it, the quiet ending of another role society told us defined us: the potential to bear children. Another fragment slips away. Time passes, our faces change, our bodies soften, and the world tells us beauty is fading, another piece gone.

But here’s what I’ve come to understand: the “empty nest” was never the house. The nest was her. The roles we once wore like armor, mother, caretaker, fixer, nurturer, were never just responsibilities; they were the scaffolding holding up our sense of self. When those roles fall away we’re left with the silence inside. The nest isn’t empty because the children are gone; the nest is empty because we’ve given so much of ourselves away that there is nothing left to return home to. We become, in many ways, like the Giving Tree at the end of the story, stripped bare, branches gone, bark peeled away, and hollowed out from decades of handing over pieces of ourselves until there is nothing left but the stump. Then there we are, sitting in the quiet, whispering the same question over and over:
“What do I do now?”

Some of us pour ourselves into new identities: charity work, community care, teaching, nurturing other people’s dreams when our own feel too foreign to reclaim. Others cling tightly to the remnants of the roles we once carried, gripping the identities we built our worth around as if letting go of them would erase us completely. And some of us… we simply get lost.

But this isn’t the end of the story.

This isn’t about rebuilding the fragments we once were, forcing ourselves back into old costumes or roles we’ve outgrown. This is about something harder, something deeper: stitching together a whole new narrative that belongs only to you. A story that isn’t borrowed, trimmed, or rewritten to fit someone else’s expectations. This is the point where we begin to turn inward, where we stop asking who we used to be and start asking who we are when the masks fall away.

The Mosaic of Me

I don’t have a tidy takeaway or a list of five bullet points to help women reclaim their identities. What I do have is something much harder to write about, an invitation into a much bigger question. Because somewhere along the way, we stopped being seen as whole people and started being seen as roles.: caregiver, mother, supportive partner, good employee. In losing the clarity of our individual identity, we also lost the permission to center ourselves.

It’s wild, isn’t it? The way society hands out invisible job descriptions based purely on the body we were born into. As if genitalia alone determines whether we’re allowed to be the center of our own story or are expected to constantly orbit around others. For cisgender, heterosexual men (especially those performing traditional masculinity) centering themselves isn’t questioned. It’s assumed and supported. They’re encouraged to pursue fulfillment, identity, and personal growth as if it were their birthright. But for women and for anyone who embodies the feminine or performs roles of care, the unspoken rule is different: don’t make it about you. We’re handed this role of support system, caretaker, and background character. Our “self” is allowed to exist only in relation to others: someone’s wife, someone’s mother, or someone’s employee. Our identity becomes a disjointed mosaic of what we do for others instead of who we are for ourselves.

But just because we care deeply for others doesn’t mean we must disappear in the process. We can still be loving, generous, dependable people and choose ourselves first. That’s not selfish, it’s foundational. It’s the principle they repeat every time we board a plane: secure your own oxygen mask before assisting others. Not because you don’t care, but because you can’t help anyone if you can’t breathe. The same is true in life. You can’t keep showing up for your kids, your partner, your community, or your job if you are gasping for air emotionally, mentally, or physically. Yet, the moment we even think about putting ourselves first, something inside us hesitates…Guilt…Fear…That old echo of conditioning whispering, “But what if everything falls apart without you?”

But here’s the thing, this isn’t about everything else. This is about how we reclaim the Self, and I do mean Self with a capital S. The part of us that exists before the roles, before the responsibilities, and before the fear. The part that simply is.

But reclaiming that Self requires us to get honest about what we’re afraid of.

I know what I’m afraid of. I’m afraid of letting go. I’m afraid that if I stop doing what I do, it won’t get done. I’m afraid of the resentment that might come if I ask for help. I’m afraid of the judgment I might face if I say “no” or “I can’t” or “that’s not mine to carry.” But more than that, I’m afraid that I’ll be left holding the ball, just like always.

It’s funny, actually, this metaphor of “the ball.” It showed up today, in the most mundane moment. I went to the store to get carpet cleaner for the stairs. They’ve gotten bad, stained, dusty, and neglected. When I told my husband what I was doing, he asked why, and I said, “Have you seen the stairs?” He paused, nodded, and I added, “I’ll get kiddo to help.”

He responded the way a lot of people do, out of reflex, out of comfort, “It’s her day off. Don’t make her.” Instantly, I felt that familiar guilt rise up in me, the guilt that tells me just do it yourself. But instead, I pushed back. I said, “I need help. I don’t know when it happened, but cleaning the stairs has somehow become my job and it shouldn’t be.” He started making excuses: his knees, his discomfort. I used that small spark of speaking up and responded, “I get it. My back hurts too.” (for those who don’t know I have extensive back injuries due to my accident in the military). In that moment, something shifted. He looked at me and said, “You’re right. We should be splitting this.”

That small moment was actually a very big one. I named something I normally would have swallowed. I let go of the fear that he’d deflect or dismiss me. I stopped holding the ball silently. And that’s the thing I want to ask you: what are you afraid of? Are you afraid the ball will fall? Are you afraid no one else will catch it?

But most of all, is it even your ball to hold?

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about dropping everything. We’re still going to take care of the essentials like our kids, our health, and the people we love. We’re still going to honor our values. But in all those other spaces where we’ve been conditioned to quietly pick up the slack, to carry what isn’t ours, and to hold it all together while no one notices the toll, what if we just dropped the ball?

What if we didn’t ask permission to let it go?

Because when you drop the ball and nothing truly falls apart, you start to see the cracks in the story you were told. The one that said you’re the only one holding this family, this job, and this life together. The one that kept you glued to the floor out of guilt.

But your feet? They aren’t glued, not anymore.

Once you realize that, you can take that same glue and use it to start piecing yourself back together. Not in the shape you used to be. Not in the role you were assigned. But in the shape that fits you now. The Self that’s been waiting.

That’s why I call this the Mosaic of Me. Because I’m made of fragments, yes, but I am not broken. I’m not ruined. I’m assembled with intention now. Each piece tells a story of what I’ve handed over, and what I’ve taken back.

I’ll leave you with this: if I don’t choose myself, if you don’t choose yourself, who will?

Because when no one else does, and we do it anyway, we become whole again.
Not perfect.
But true.

A side note:
Let me be clear about something... I’m not dismissing men or pretending they don’t carry wounds of their own. They do. But those wounds, including their origins, their consequences, and their healing, are not mine to define. I can only speak from where I stand, from the landscape I know. Part of what I’ve had to unlearn is the belief that it is my responsibility to carry the weight of their healing. We are conditioned into that role early, too, the silent expectation that we will soothe, accommodate, and fix. How many times have we seen the story play out? The tired cliché of “I can fix him” still hums beneath so many of our cultural narratives, shaping us long before we even know it. But here’s the truth I’ve come to: that role isn’t mine anymore. It never should have been. Men will need to turn toward their own work. They will need to reckon with the systems they built and sustained, the same systems now harming them, and find their own way forward. That labor of healing, of repair, does not belong to me simply because I am a woman. When we finally set that piece down, when we refuse to carry what was never ours, we take one small step back toward wholeness. So, this space isn’t for that narrative…and I am not sorry for that.

The Gospel of Feminine Joy

I was coming down the escalator at this comic convention over the weekend, carrying the weight of a long day of promoting our show and selling my husband’s artwork, when I paused for just a moment and let myself really look around. The hum of voices, the flashing lights, the glitter of costumes. The whole place felt alive, electric, like stepping into another world where magic and play weren’t just allowed but celebrated.

Everywhere I looked, there were young girls, teenagers, and women in their early twenties, dressed in the full glory of their characters with flowing capes, intricate armor, beautiful wigs, and bold makeup. They were radiant, unafraid, fully inhabiting the parts of themselves they loved most. In that moment, I felt this unexpected twinge deep in my chest, a mix of jealousy, sadness, and longing.

I realized, standing there, that I missed this. Not this exact convention, but what it represented: the freedom to play, to take up space, and to embody joy so unapologetically. When I was their age, there would have been no way in hell I could have afforded to go to something like this, even if I’d known it existed. Back then, scraping together enough money for a movie ticket or a night of roller skating was a stretch, and conventions like this weren’t really part of my world yet. I was a teenager in the late ’90s and early 2000s, well before comic culture exploded the way it has now. There were no sprawling convention centers packed with fans, no elaborate cosplay weekends, and definitely no Instagram-worthy snapshots of community and belonging.

And even if there had been? I doubt I would have gone.

Because being a girl who loved comics and animated shows like Batman: The Animated Series (one of my all-time favorites) wasn’t something you celebrated back then. Being “geeky” wasn’t cute. It wasn’t trending. It was something you learned to tuck away because, as I heard over and over again, “that’s not what girls do.” Girls didn’t wear superhero shirts. Girls didn’t play video games. Girls didn’t spend hours drawing characters or obsessing over storylines. Girls were supposed to be soft, pretty, and quiet.

So I learned early what so many of us learn: to shrink. To suppress the parts of myself that lit up, to swallow my curiosities, and to pour my energy into becoming the kind of girl the world approved of.

That’s the story we were told, isn’t it? That “feminine joy” had a rulebook: Be delighted by cooking, sewing, and decorating the house. Find your deepest fulfillment in getting married, having children, and keeping everything running for everyone else. Always available, always giving, always tidy, always polite. And if you didn’t find joy there? Well, the assumption wasn’t that something was wrong with the story. The assumption was that something was wrong with you.

Standing on that escalator, watching those girls twirl, laugh, and pose like they belonged, I felt that clash inside me. The grief of missed chances, the mourning for a younger me who wanted so badly to exist freely but couldn’t find the space or the permission to do it. Yet, underneath the grief, something else stirred.

Something rebellious.

Because the gospel of feminine joy, the one we were never given, the one so many of us are writing for ourselves now, begins right here: in remembering. In honoring the ache of all the times we silenced ourselves. In naming the ways our pleasures and passions were dismissed and in finally, defiantly, choosing to reclaim them.

This isn’t just my story. It’s ours.

This moment, this grief, and this longing, they’re collective. They live in our bodies. They live in the questions we weren’t allowed to ask and the rooms we weren’t invited into. But they also live in the parts of us that are still wild, still alive, and still hungry for the joy we were told we couldn’t have.

This gospel, this reclamation, is the invitation to step into that joy anyway.

The Script We Were Handed

Somewhere along the way, someone slipped us a script. Maybe it was hidden in glossy magazine ads, tucked into old TV commercials, or whispered in the way mothers, grandmothers, and teachers smiled when we “behaved.” A script telling us what joy should look like, who we should be, and how happiness should always be measured by the ways we served others.

I think back to those 1950s and 60s advertisements. You know the ones with the perfect housewife smiling in her spotless kitchen. She’s wearing a crisp dress and a little white apron without a single stain, holding a platter with dinner perfectly displayed. Her husband lounges behind her in his chair, pipe in his mouth, and newspaper unfolded, satisfied. The children are dressed neatly, sitting straight, eyes shining for the camera. And she? She is radiant, glowing, fulfilled…or so we were told.

This is where feminine joy began to be defined for us: in propaganda. In curated images designed not to reflect truth but to sell us a dream. Alongside that dream came the darkness we weren’t supposed to see. At the same time those images were flooding magazines and living rooms, doctors were handing out pills. “Mommy’s Little Helper”, that’s what they called them. Valium prescriptions climbed, numbing women into quiet compliance while feeding the illusion of contentment.

In 1966, The Rolling Stones captured the reality buried beneath the perfect pictures:

"Mother needs something today to calm her down.
And though she’s not really ill, there’s a little yellow pill.
She goes running for the shelter of her mother’s little helper,
And it helps her on her way, gets her through her busy day."

This was the trade-off: perform the role, swallow the discomfort, and medicate the longing. Feminine “happiness” became a façade: something curated, polished, and manufactured rather than embodied.

The role itself was narrow and suffocating. Joy was framed through service: being a good wife, a good mother, and a good caretaker. There was little space left for curiosity, creativity, or personal exploration. Women learned early that intrinsic desires were expendable; that the “self” could be neatly folded away like a napkin at a perfectly set table. Over time, our individual wants, wildness, and internal rhythms were silenced beneath an identity scripted for us.

The Modern Echoes

Now, here we are today, decades later, pretending that script disappeared. It didn’t, it just shapeshifted.

Now, “women’s happiness” is framed around impossible expectations: be a devoted mother, a flawless partner, a high achiever at work, and a keeper of the home…all without showing strain. When we can’t possibly do it all, society whispers that we are the problem. We’re told we lack balance, discipline, and organization. But I don’t buy that.

I don’t believe the problem is that we can’t “have it all.” I believe the problem is that having it all was never supposed to define us in the first place. The script was flawed from the beginning, and yet here we are, still performing it and still measuring our worth by what we accomplish for everyone else.

If I’m honest, that realization stings. Because I feel it in my own life, too.

Where It Lands in My Life

Every year, someone asks me what I want for Mother’s Day, and every year, I laugh. I laugh because the answer is always the same: I want to be left alone. I want a day where I’m not needed, not performing, and not responsible for anyone else’s comfort.

So that’s what I do. One day out of 365, I lock myself in my room, eat tacos, and play Fallout (New Vegas, 3, or 4 depending on my mood) for hours on end. No cooking, no laundry, no endless to-do lists. It’s just me, my Xbox controller, my favorite game, and my happiest version of solitude. If someone were to make an action figure of Natasha, it would come with a Fallout disc, an Xbox controller, a taco, and yes, my phone. All my little symbols of freedom.

Yet, I get one day. One single day out of an entire year to experience joy that belongs fully to me. I know I’m not alone in this. Most women don’t get even that much. Some never get a day at all.

The Picture-Perfect Struggle

I think about the videos I see on TikTok, the ones where women plan elaborate family photo shoots. For many, that one picture, that one beautiful, curated snapshot, is their sliver of joy. They buy the outfits, do their hair, dress the kids, organize the details, and fight tooth and nail to get their family on board.

Yet, so often, their partners complain. The kids resist. The entire process drains them before they even reach the studio. But they do it anyway, clinging to the promise of that single moment: the perfectly framed photo where, just for an instant, everyone looks happy. It’s not about vanity. It’s about carving out one thing, that one expression of care for themselves, one place where they can breathe and see beauty reflected back at them.

But even that moment is mired in exhaustion, resistance, and the invisible labor required to make it happen. Joy becomes something earned, something fought for, instead of something freely claimed.

The Turning Point

Maybe that’s what’s breaking us. We’ve been sold this lie about what joy should look like and we’ve been taught to squeeze ourselves into the smallest possible box to fit it. We’ve traded authenticity for performance, individuality for expectation, freedom for approval.

But here’s the quiet, dangerous truth the old scripts never wanted us to know:
authentic joy is rebellion.

Joy that isn’t curated.
Joy that doesn’t serve anyone else.
Joy that exists simply because you do.

If the world profits from your exhaustion, then the act of resting, choosing, playing, and feeling deeply that is your revolution.

Joy Is a Rebellion

There comes a moment when something stirs inside of us . A discomfort so deep we can’t ignore it anymore. It’s that quiet knowing that whispers at first, then grows louder with time: I can’t keep living like this. It’s the realization that if we don’t draw the line, no one else will.

Because here’s the truth: no one is going to guard your happiness for you. Not the spouses or partners who assume you’ll pick up the pieces. Not the parents who expect you to make yourself endlessly available. Not the friends who lean so heavily without ever giving back. Not the bosses, the managers, or the coworkers who swallow your time without apology. Not the kids, who, without malice, believe we exist as an extension of their needs.

For so many of us, joy has been pushed to the edges of our lives. We’ve been conditioned to believe our worth lives in what we give: in the meals cooked, the schedules managed, the roles we play, and the pieces we hold together. We’ve learned to measure our happiness by the happiness of everyone around us, often without even noticing how many times we’ve set our own aside. We are taught, explicitly and quietly, to fear the word “no,” to feel guilty when we take up space, and to believe that boundaries are selfish.

But joy, real, unfiltered, authentic joy, is not selfish. It’s a rebellion.

Rebellion begins when we decide to stop waiting for permission. It begins the moment we say: This part of my life, this time I carve out for myself, is mine. It is sacred. It is non-negotiable. That is your happy time, and it deserves to exist just as much as anyone else’s needs do.

Happy time can be small, quiet, and simple. It can look like watching an episode of your favorite show without waiting until everyone else is asleep. It can be a Saturday afternoon where you take the car and wander the aisles of your favorite bookstore or mall while someone else handles the kids, the pets, the dishes, and the endless list of responsibilities. Maybe it’s a glass of wine and a good murder mystery. Maybe it’s a drive to the beach, slipping your toes into the sand, and cracking open that book you’ve been meaning to read for months. Maybe it’s planting something new in the garden, losing yourself in the dirt and the silence.

But here’s the main thing: the boundary has to be firm. Your happy time isn’t up for negotiation and protecting it isn’t up for debate. Unless it’s an emergency. I am talking someone is bleeding and needs to be rushed to the hospital. If it isn’t a true emergency, your time belongs to you. That might mean saying no to friends. It might mean asking your partner to pick up the pieces you usually manage. It might mean letting the kids cry when you don’t share your snack or when you take ten minutes behind a closed door. That’s okay. You’re teaching them something powerful: that joy matters. That your needs matter. That your boundaries are not flexible and that is ok.

Because here’s the secret we were never told when we choose ourselves, the world doesn’t fall apart. When we protect our joy, we show the people around us how to protect theirs. That ripple effect? That’s where the real rebellion lives.

Reflect + Reclaim Your Joy

Take a moment and sit with these questions, not from the roles you play, but from the core of who you are:

• What does authentic joy look like for you?

• What lights you up inside, simply because it’s yours?

• Where can you carve out happy time, even just 30 minutes, to reconnect with it?

• What boundaries will you need to protect that time?

• What obstacles tend to get in the way? How can you meet them differently this time?

Write it out. Speak it aloud. Share it with me in my Substack post or over on my social media pages. Start the conversation not just with me, but with yourself. Because the act of naming your joy is the first step in reclaiming it.

The Gospel of Feminine Sensuality

For the Women Who Were Never Allowed to Win

This chapter is for the women who were told they were too much, or not enough…sometimes in the same breath. For the ones who were expected to make magic with half the resources. To be beautiful, but not vain. Intelligent, but not intimidating. Warm, but never needy. Ambitious, but quiet about it. For the ones who learned how to lead without a title, who carried vision into rooms that never made space for their voice.

You were shaped in a system that was never built for you. A machine that demands your perfection only so it can dismantle you once you achieve it. A society that holds you up as a spectacle, not a sovereign. That taught you to be likable before you were ever taught to be whole.

It’s not you. It was never you.

It’s the culture that criticized you in your youth for being desirable, and now criticizes you in age for no longer trying to be. It’s the media that demanded your submission, your seduction, your self-sacrifice and then laughed when it devoured you. It’s the bosses who promoted the boys who did less. The lovers who praised your strength but punished your boundaries. The headlines that weaponized your body, your voice, and your choices. The ones that still do.

This chapter is for the ones who remember the 90s, not just as a moment in fashion or music, but as the decade that shaped the public imagination of what women should be. It’s for the girls who watched Pamela Anderson smeared for embracing her body, and Madonna crucified for claiming her sexuality. For the women who see those same faces today, one choosing to age naturally, the other choosing not to and witnessing how both are still condemned.

You cannot win a rigged game and this one was never meant to let you.

But there’s a power in naming that truth. There’s liberation in refusing to shrink, contort, or apologize for taking up space in your own life. This chapter is not about asking permission. It’s not about fixing what was never broken in you. It’s about remembering. Reclaiming. Refusing.

Because they figured out long ago what we’re just beginning to believe: that our power doesn’t destroy, it creates. And creation is the one force the machine cannot control.

Pamela: The Spectacle and the Sacrifice

She was never just a blonde in a red swimsuit.
She was a symbol, a manufactured fantasy wrapped in sun-kissed skin and stretched across the pages of every teenage boy’s hidden magazine stack. But to stop there is to miss everything that mattered. Because Pamela Anderson was not born a sex symbol. She was made into one and the cost of that transformation was a life.

Pamela emerged in the public eye during the early 1990s, a time when the media machine was ravenous for spectacle. It didn’t want depth. It didn’t want truth. It wanted women who could be devoured with the eyes, flattened into centerfolds and consumed between commercials. Pamela fit the mold too well. Not because she lacked substance, but because she had the kind of beauty that made people refuse to look any deeper.

From the moment she posed for Playboy, the narrative was set:

You are here to be looked at.

You are here to turn men on.

From there, the performance began.

Baywatch turned her into a slow-motion fantasy, a lifeguard goddess whose body was ogled more than the beach she was meant to protect. Each episode was a ritual: the running scene. That crimson suit. The bounce of her breasts, the splash of saltwater, and the illusion of urgency all staged to arouse. She was there to “save lives,” but what the world really tuned in for was the performance of desire. Her body became the spectacle, her face the brand, and her name…a punchline.

And then came the tape.

The violation of her privacy was not met with outrage, but with snickers and downloads. The world watched her be exploited, and then mocked her for it.
She deserved it, they said.
She shouldn't have filmed it if she didn’t want people to see.
As if intimacy recorded between spouses somehow voids consent the moment it’s stolen.
As if a woman’s body, once made consumable, could never again be private.

Pamela became the poster girl for the male orgasm, celebrated, yes, but never respected. She was both fantasy and target, worshipped and ridiculed, desired and discarded.

But Pamela’s story doesn’t end in tragedy.
It turns lowly, quietly, and then all at once into reclamation.

In her memoir Love, Pamela and the Netflix documentary that followed, she finally told her own story, and on her own terms. Her voice, so long overshadowed by her image, broke through. She wrote in free verse. She spoke with vulnerability. She allowed the audience to see what they had missed all along: a woman who was thoughtful, witty, deeply sensitive, and for decades, completely misunderstood.

She spoke of longing, artistic dreams, and of being dismissed.
She laid bare the pain of being everyone’s fantasy but no one’s beloved.

Now, in 2025, Pamela has done something the machine never expected:
She has stopped performing.

She walks red carpets with no makeup, her bare face framed by soft gray waves. She wears linen and flats and lets her body age. She posts unfiltered photos, gardens, paints, and laughs without trying to be pretty. She grieves without apologizing. She has become profoundly ordinary in the most radical way.

Because for a woman like Pamela Anderson, to stop performing is the ultimate rebellion.
To age on her own terms is to spit in the face of every headline that told her she only mattered when she was young, hot, and silent. A product to be objectified and devoured.
To choose softness over spectacle, presence over persona, is nothing short of revolutionary.

Pamela Anderson is no longer anyone’s fantasy.
She is her own person and that, more than anything, is what makes her dangerous now.

Madonna: The Woman Who Would Not Be Contained

She didn’t survive the 90s.
She ruled them.

And not just the 90s. Madonna has touched, turned, and reshaped five entire decades.

The 1980s weren’t pastel and polite.
They were loud, synthetic, sugary, and strange.
They pulsed with contradictions: neon headbands and Reaganomics, glittering capitalism and underground rebellion. Then into that paradox stepped Madonna Louise Ciccone, wrapped in lace gloves, rosaries, and layered bangles; half teenage fantasy, half walking contradiction.

She didn’t wait for permission. She didn’t soften her edges to blend in. She brought Catholic guilt into the club, danced on the edge of every taboo, and turned pop stardom into a performance art of persona. Songs like Borderline and Lucky Star gave her an accessible girl-next-door gloss, but Like a Virgin is where she showed her hand, tongue in cheek, iconoclastic, and completely self-aware.

Parents gasped and critics rolled their eyes.
But girls copied her look.
Boys were obsessed.
Madonna laughed all the way to the top.

If the 80s introduced Madonna, the 90s baptized her in scandal, strategy, and reinvention. No symbol captures the moment quite like that Jean Paul Gaultier cone bra.

It wasn’t just a bra.
It was a war cry.

On the Blond Ambition World Tour, Madonna stood on stage in that sculpted, pointed corset like a pop warrior: part dominatrix, part saint. It wasn’t designed to flatter the male gaze. It was designed to pierce it. The cone bra exaggerated femininity into something surreal, almost alien, like armor for a woman who knew her body had always been the battlefield. This was not submission. This was command.

Alongside her, voguing dancers from New York’s ballroom scene moved like liquid geometry, turning Black queer joy into high art on an international stage. It was defiant, inclusive, unapologetically sexual, and absolutely iconic.

In a single breath, she turned underground queer culture into global sensation. Vogue was not just a song; it was an invitation to be seen.

But Madonna wasn’t done.

In 1992, she dropped the Sex book, a silver-bound, photo-laden manifesto that made conservatives foam at the mouth. Simultaneously, she released Erotica, an album steeped in desire, dominance, and the politics of pleasure. The backlash was immediate. Stores banned her. Pundits called her a whore. The Vatican condemned her.

She didn’t flinch.

She understood something most pop stars never learn:
The only thing more powerful than being loved is being unignorable.

Just when critics tried to write her off as too raunchy, too old, and too controversial…she transformed again.

In 1998, Ray of Light arrived like a revelation. Gone was the provocateur of Erotica, or rather, she was still there, but now she was also the seeker, mystic, and a mother. The woman who had danced through fire and emerged wiser, glowing, more whole.

Her voice was rawer, richer.
The beats were electronic, textured, and transcendent.
She was no longer chasing pop trends, she was the trend.

Songs like Frozen and The Power of Good-Bye offered emotional resonance where once there had been provocation. The Kabbalah-red-string-on-the-wrist era began, and spirituality found its way back into the music.

Through it all, Madonna remained a mirror to culture’s obsession, fear, and craving for feminine power. She was never just reacting to the times. She was sculpting them, provoking them, pulling them forward, and often before they were ready.

It’s complicated.

She was your childhood idol. The woman you dressed up as for Halloween, the reason you begged for lace gloves and teased your hair and danced around your bedroom to “Like a Prayer.” She was untouchable and raw, mythic and real. When Ray of Light came out, you didn’t just listen, you absorbed it. That album wasn’t just music. It was sacred. And two decades later, Frozen still lives in your playlist like a spiritual relic from a version of you that still believed in transformation (at least that’s what it is for me).

Yet, here we are. Watching her evolve again and this time, it stings.

Not because she’s failed. Not because she’s faded. But because she’s still here. Still trying, changing, and saying “No” to the script that says women should fade into silence once we reach a certain age. Madonna is in her sixties, and she is not going gently. Her face has changed, yes, dramatically. The internet calls it “unrecognizable.” The tabloids rip her apart, mocking every filler, every nip, and every surgical rumor. Yet what really unnerves people isn’t the procedures. It’s the defiance. She doesn’t apologize for not aging “gracefully”, she dares to keep playing the game by her own rules. Just like always, she plays to shock the system.

She’s not peddling nostalgia. She’s releasing TikToks, kissing younger dancers, flaunting fishnets, and sampling new sounds. She knows what the kids are doing on social media and she knows what the kids don’t know: She wrote the damn playbook.

And still, the public howls.

"Act your age."
"Grow old with dignity."
"You’re embarrassing yourself."

But here’s the thing: We don’t get to have it both ways.

We punish women for aging.
We punish women for trying not to age.
We punish them for staying silent.
We punish them for being too much.

So what does Madonna do?
She embraces the punishment like she always has and turns it into power.

What makes this moment so disorienting isn’t Madonna…it’s us.
It’s the way her choices force us to confront our own internalized misogyny. How many of us, raised in conservative households or steeped in media that taught us to be ashamed of wrinkles and sexuality, flinch at the sight of a woman who refuses to become invisible.

Here’s the real twist:
Even now, she is still not safe from criticism, not even from those of us who once loved her best.
Because Madonna is doing the opposite of Pamela Anderson.

Pamela, who stepped into aging with softness, who stripped away the makeup and let her skin tell the story, has been criticized for “letting herself go.”

Madonna, who has fought against time tooth and nail, reshaping herself again and again like a living work of art,and has been criticized for not letting herself go enough.

And this is where we start to see the truth:
The problem isn’t how women age.
It’s that they age at all and refuse to apologize for it.

So Madonna, like she always has, walks directly into the fire. Her current era may be less commercially successful. It may be harder for her to find the same footing she once had in a world now obsessed with 19-year-old influencers and 15-second fame cycles. But she is still fighting for something much bigger than a chart-topping single. She is fighting for the right to still be here: loud, messy, outrageous, sexual, spiritual, experimental,and, above all, human.

This is where the story turns.
Because it’s not just about Madonna anymore.

It’s about what the Machine does to women who won’t play by its rules.

As we shift into that next chapter, we carry this question with us:

What does it cost a woman to stay visible in a world that only values her when she is young, silent, and pleasing?
What does it mean when she says: I’m not done yet?

The Machine

It doesn’t matter what you do. That’s the truth for women, and it's a bitter one. You can age gracefully. You can fight it with everything you’ve got. You can bow out. You can opt in. You can disappear or you can stay on the stage, screaming with every fiber of your being to still be seen. No matter what you choose, you will lose. Because this machine, this soulless, relentless, double-binding system, was designed that way. It’s not broken. It’s functioning exactly as intended. It is designed to consume women, flatten them, ridicule them, mold them into icons, chew through the flesh of their humanity, and then discard them for daring to show signs of being real.

Look at Pamela. She stepped back. She aged naturally. She let her face move, her hair grey, and her voice deepen with time. She was criticized for letting herself go, for no longer being the fantasy. For not keeping up and getting “old.” But then look at Madonna. She did the opposite. She fought it. She said, “Fuck getting old,” and meant it. She got the surgeries. She stayed on top of the trends. She’s more plugged into the pulse of Gen Z than most of the people my age. She has refused to vanish. She has stayed Madonna. Still…still…she is criticized. Her face becomes a punchline. Her body a battleground. She is “too much,” “too desperate,” “too old to be doing this.” So here’s the conclusion:

There is no right way to be a woman.

Not in this machine.

Not in this world.

I’ve sat with this question more times than I can count: Why? Why is it that no matter what we do, we lose? Why are we never enough and always too much? Why are we too loud, too quiet, too old, too young, too wrinkled, too frozen, too clothed, too exposed…why? What is it about women that is so threatening that we have, across time and culture and religion and science and politics, been reduced, dismissed, controlled, ridiculed, and erased?

I’ll tell you the truth. I think it’s because women are powerful in a way that terrifies the hell out of men. Not power like muscle. Not power like war. But power like origin, blueprint, and the original intelligence of life.

Even the way science explained women…explained us…has been shaped by men. For so long, the dominant narrative was that the sperm was the active on: the hero and the seeker. It was the sperm who charged forward, pushed through obstacles, and fertilized the passive little egg waiting there to be rescued. That story was told so convincingly that it shaped textbooks, metaphors, and cultural perceptions for generations. But it was bullshit. It was always bullshit.

Because now we know better. We know the egg is not passive at all. The egg releases chemical signals, attractants, that guide the sperm SHE WANTS. The egg chooses. The egg opens. The egg decides which sperm makes it through. The egg is not just some damsel waiting to be fertilized by the strongest, fastest knight. The egg is the sovereign gatekeeper of life. The sperm is just a wind-up toy. It moves forward because it's designed to, aimlessly, blindly, until it either gets lucky or gets blocked.

Even then, that’s only the beginning. Because the egg, the woman, brings more than just 23 chromosomes. She brings mitochondrial DNA. She brings the powerhouse of the cell. She brings the spark, the template, the infrastructure, and she brings the body, breath, heartbeat, womb, space, and warmth.

She brings the future.

You know what? That knowledge, the ancient, sacred truth of the feminine, terrifies men. It terrifies the machine. Because it reveals something they never wanted us to see: that the power to create life, to carry forward the future, already lives within us. That power is wild, cyclical, intuitive, and natural. The machine cannot replicate it. It cannot control it without first making us forget it exists. That’s why it has always worked so hard to bury it under shame, under doctrine, and under endless labor and distraction. Because once we remember what we are capable of, the illusion crumbles. The machine becomes what it truly is: a fragile construct, unnatural and unnecessary. When it falls, life will not end. Humanity will not collapse. In fact, we might finally begin to grow and evolve.

The Y chromosome is shrinking. That’s not feminist theory, that’s evolutionary science. It’s slowly eroding. When women give birth to sons, studies have shown the more sons a woman has, the more likely it is that at least one will be gay or more feminine. Not because of culture, not because of propaganda, but because the body adapts. Because the feminine is more needed and nature knows it. Nature adapts to preserve what is essential.

Why do you think women go through menopause? Because we are needed longer. We are needed beyond reproduction. We are needed for our wisdom, our memory, our ability to care, guide, and preserve. We’re the keepers of culture, healing, continuity, stories, and life. Evolution knows that. So it shuts down reproduction to extend our lives. It gives us more time and presence.

All of that unacknowledged brilliance is a threat to a system that was never built to honor it. A system built by men, for men, to keep women in their place. So whether you choose the path of Pamela, or the path of Madonna, you are still walking through the same minefield. Because the machine doesn’t care about the choices you make. It only cares that you never feel free making them.

This is the part where we stop playing the game. Where we start asking who the game was made for. Where we start dismantling the entire damn board.

The Rise of the Truth

And here’s the kicker. While the machine continues to grind its gears, trying desperately to convince us that men belong at the top, while it deifies their mediocrity and polishes their insecurities into marble busts, we’re seeing cracks in the armor. Real cracks. Cracks that are being lit up by something unshakable: truth.

Because the truth is finally starting to surface in ways even the patriarchy can’t fully ignore anymore.

Women are better leaders. Not just in theory. Not just in anecdote. But in data. In peer-reviewed research. In boardrooms, budgets, crisis management, and everyday leadership alike.

Companies with at least 30% women in leadership are more financially stable. That’s not fluff. That’s measurable, repeatable, peer-reviewed fact. Diverse leadership doesn’t just “feel good”, it works better.

Women outperform men on nearly every key leadership trait. We’re talking compassion, intelligence, emotional regulation, communication, integrity, creativity, collaboration, and decisiveness. Women score higher on leadership effectiveness by an average of 9% and in times of crisis, that number spikes even higher.

When everything is on fire, it’s women who lead the way through it. From political office to pandemic response to community organizing, it’s women who consistently demonstrate the right mix of steadiness and adaptability. They show up with empathy, with clarity, and with a moral compass still intact.

And still, somehow, men hold the majority of leadership roles.

Why?

Why are we still pretending the best person for the job is a man in a suit with a weak handshake and a god complex?

Why are women having to fight tooth and nail to get into roles they’re already better suited for?

Why are we asking women to prove their worth over and over again while men are handed the keys to kingdoms they didn’t build and don’t know how to run?

Here’s the uncomfortable truth for the machine: it knows.

It knows that if women were fully empowered, if they were given the seats, the salaries, the support, they would not just match what men have done. They would transform it. They would restructure it. They would burn down the dysfunction and build something humane in its place. Women don’t just lead differently. They lead better and that terrifies the system.

Because if the machine lets women lead, then it also has to admit that men were never the natural-born leaders they were told they were. It has to admit that power doesn’t belong to the loudest, the most aggressive, or the most entitled. It has to admit that everything it's been protecting was built on sand.

So instead, it clings to the lie. It reinforces the myth. It punishes women for being too competent, too confident, too commanding. It praises men for simply showing up, even when they wreck everything they touch.

But the tide is turning. The studies are piling up. The stories are spreading. The illusion is cracking. Women are rising not because the system made space but because they are done asking.

That’s where we go next.

Where Strength Meets Sensuality

By now, you might be wondering, what is the point of this blog? How does this tie into The Gospel of the Dark Feminine? Why Madonna, why Pamela, why any of this?

Here it is:

This is where sensuality meets strength.

The Dark Feminine is not just about rage or reckoning. It’s also about reclamation. It’s about what happens when we stop apologizing for our softness and start recognizing it as part of our power. When we stop separating the sacred from the sensual. When we allow ourselves to be complex, layered, contradictory, radiant.

Women are beautiful.

Women are mystical.

Women are sensual.

There is something about women that stirs the soul. We smell good. We look good. We feel good. Our skin can be soft as petals, our voices melodic, our presence magnetic. We are the ones who know how to cradle, to coo, to comfort. And yet…we are not fragile. That softness is not weakness. That sweetness is not submission. That beauty is not bait, it’s birthright.

This is why Madonna matters. This is why Pamela matters. This is why the archetype of the seductress—the siren, the courtesan, the so-called “whore” matters. Because within her lies a dangerous truth: she does not need your permission to exist.

She is not waiting to be saved.
She is not dressing for your approval.
She is not soft for you.
She is soft for herself.

She can turn that softness into steel when needed. She can wield it as seduction, as spellwork, as sacred rage in silk gloves. This is where dominance flips the script. When I say the feminine comes out on top, I mean it in every way possible. Yes, I mean sexually. I mean emotionally. I mean spiritually. We were made to ride the rhythm of the world not to be ridden by it.

If you want proof that this energy is alive and well, look no further than the Gigi Club in Wuhan. There, something sacred is unfolding. Something ancient and erotic and deeply modern all at once. A dancer, perhaps named Guo Zhe Zhe, takes the stage in flowing Hanfu garments, dressed not in the armor of the patriarchy but in the ancestral threads of her people. She dances only for women. The audience is entirely female. There are no male gazes. No one performing for patriarchal applause. No one shrinking themselves for palatability. Thos performances are stunning. A marriage of flexibility and control, softness and ferocity, sensuality and sovereignty.

She moves like liquid confidence, like myth reborn. Her body tells a story the world rarely lets women tell: that our sensuality is ours. That our beauty need not be bartered. That eroticism, in its purest form, is an act of not performance. Watching her feels like worship. Not of her body, but of the energy she channels. She becomes a living altar of what the Dark Feminine really is: strong, sure, luscious, and unapologetic.

This is what this blog is about. It’s about reclaiming her. Your inner Madonna. Your inner Pamela. Your inner seductress. Your inner witch, queen, priestess, and whore. Because they all live within you. And the machine fears each one of them.

So we’re going to call them forward.

We’re going to tell their stories.

We’re going to let them lead.

Reflective Practice: Owning Your Sensual Power

Find a quiet space. Light a candle, not to worship some outside force, but to honor the flame within you. Sit with yourself, fully present. Let your body be exactly as it is, clothed or bare, adorned or undone. Close your eyes. Breathe into your pelvis. Breathe into your chest. Breathe into the places you’ve been told to hide.

Now ask yourself:

• Where have I been taught to fear or diminish my sensuality?

• When have I performed softness for others instead of embodying it for myself?

• What part of me is aching to be witnessed, not consumed, not judged, but simply seen?

Feel your answers. Let them rise. Then move, slowly, intentionally, in a way that feels delicious to you. This isn’t a performance. This is ritual. This is reclamation. You are not moving for an audience. You are dancing for the divine that lives within your skin.

Now whisper to yourself:

“This body is mine.
This power is mine.
This softness is sacred.
This sensuality is my own.
I do not perform. I embody.
I do not shrink. I rise.”

Let that be your prayer. Let that be your gospel.

Closing: The Gospel Lives in You

The Gospel of the Dark Feminine isn’t just a story about the women we’ve admired, or the systems we’ve defied. It’s a living text, written in your hips, in your voice, in your refusal to shrink or be silenced.

The Dark Feminine doesn’t beg for approval. She doesn’t barter with her beauty. She doesn’t compartmentalize her sensuality to make others more comfortable. She is Madonna in a cone bra, Pamela in red one-piece armor, Guo Zhe Zhe dancing only for women: fluid, fierce, and gloriously untouchable.

Now, she is you.

You, with your softness sharpened by wisdom.
You, with your pleasure reclaimed from performance.
You, with your power no longer leaking from old wounds, but rising from rooted wholeness.

You do not need to be palatable to be powerful.
You do not need to be silent to be sacred.
You only need to be: fully, freely, fiercely.

So light your candle. Breathe into your body.
Let the gospel rise from your bones.

The Gospel of Women’s Rage

This is the gospel of the woman who carried too much, too long.
The one you ignored until her silence cracked and her hands caught fire.

This is not burnout.
This is not exhaustion.
This is rage.

Not petty rage. Not hormonal rage. Not overreacting rage.
But sacred, righteous, ancestral rage.

The kind that is earned.
The kind that shakes generations loose.
The kind that doesn’t burn the village because that’s not what women do.
She doesn’t destroy. She doesn’t annihilate. She disrupts.

She causes discomfort until you learn.
She steps back and lets the consequences unfold.
She makes you sit in the mess you created and figure out how to clean it yourself.
She doesn’t fix what you broke after you ignored every warning.
She watches, steady and unsparing, while you finally feel what she carried for too long.

But why now? Why this turn in tone? Because for too long, I’ve focused on healing, resilience, softness, and hope. I’ve preached integration,balance, and compassion. All of those are still true but they are only half the story.

The other half is anger and for too long, I’ve bypassed it. We all have. Because women have been taught to fear their rage. That it’s dangerous. That it’s destructive. That it makes us like them. But this is not their rage. This is not rage that abuses or dominates. This is the rage of being heard but not listened to. This is the rage that comes when you do the work, rise higher, love harder and they stay the same.

This is the rage that transforms.

The Cracking Point

It started as it always does: I was polite. I was clear. I was helpful. I was ignored.

Then one day, one small thing too many lands in my inbox or on my shoulders, and I snap. Not outward or immediately, but deep inside something breaks and it will never go back the way it was.

You see the look on my face, and suddenly you’re listening, but it’s too late. You don’t get to ignore the whisper, disregard the request, and only respond to the rage. You don’t get to hear me now and think you’re entitled to stay.

This is the rage I feel standing in the pantry, looking at the Tupperware haphazardly stacked where once I had nested them like Russian dolls. That small moment, seemingly unimportant, becomes the spark. Because I have done too much already to now have to turn around and find what I tried to maintain completely destroyed.

It creeps up slowly, but like a rolling stone it builds momentum, until it escapes in a bloodcurdling scream of absolute rage. Rage that I have been disrespected time and time again. Ignored until I feel invisible. I scream to no one and everyone in the empty house (everyone but the dogs, who have already hidden from my wrath).

It was the rage at the cardboard box I ripped apart with my bare hands because it was better than lashing out physically at someone, speaking over my need for space and distance, despite the headphones I wore specifically to be left alone.

It’s the rage I feel as I write this. Because I’m done hearing how hard everyone else has it while the help I asked for went unnoticed, unanswered, and unvalued.

The Pattern

But this isn’t just about me. This is the pattern we see everywhere. It's in the woman who has been asking her husband for ten years to help carry the emotional labor. Then, when she finally files for divorce, he starts going to therapy and starts showing up. But she’s already gone. It’s too late.

It’s in the woman who shows up to work early, stays late, overperforms without recognition, and then one day... stops. She does exactly what she’s paid to do and no more. Then suddenly people notice, why aren’t things getting done? Why isn’t she available? What changed? They were always capable. They just didn’t care until it they were left carrying the load.

It’s in the mother who saves a snack for herself and doesn’t share. Not out of cruelty. But because she realizes she is a person. Not just a mother and she’s allowed to want something just for her, without feeling shame or guilt.

This is about boundaries. This is about not explaining them anymore. This is about the moment when she stops fixing, stops performing, and stops asking.

This is about the moment when she lets herself get angry.

The Shame of Female Anger

We’ve been taught that our anger is dangerous. That it makes us unlikeable. That it means we’ve lost control.

Because when men get angry, they get results. When women get angry, they get dismissed. “Oh, she must be hormonal.” “Are you on your period?” “God, why are you so emotional?”

We are told to calm down, to lighten up, to be kind, or to fix it. When we finally explode, after putting down countless nets of grace, we are suddenly the villain. They don’t remember the warnings. They don’t remember the pleas. They only remember the moment we stopped being nice.

And worse, they expect us to clean it up. They want us to feel bad for the damage. They want us to make them feel better.

No.

Not anymore.

Rage with a Story

Our rage is not random. It has a lineage. It has evidence. It is the conclusion drawn from every time we were expected to give more than we got. Every time we were expected to be the bigger person while someone else got to stay small. Every time they waited for us to snap so they could call us crazy, but never acknowledged that they were holding the scissors.

We are done being cut.

This rage is holy.

It is intelligent.

It is earned.

The Archetype Awakens

This rage is not reckless. It is archetypal.

Think of Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman. She wasn’t just angry. She was transformed. She walked into that apartment, torn and tattered, said “Honey, I’m home,oh, I forgot, I’m not married,” and heard her own loneliness played back to her on a loop. That was her cracking point. From that breaking came power. She didn’t go out to cause chaos for chaos’ sake. She defended the vulnerable and more importantly, she taught the vulnerable how to defend themselves. She didn’t swoop in to save them like a hero. She showed them they were strong enough to save themselves. That they didn’t need a man, a savior, or permission. That they could do it themselves while wearing heels and skin-tight leather.

She didn’t need saving.
She became the consequence.

That is what feminine rage looks like when it transforms.
Not a tantrum but a transmutation.

I see it, too, in Harley Quinn, especially in Birds of Prey, when she is no longer tethered to the Joker or filtered through the male gaze. Her rage becomes a reclamation of her own narrative, her own pleasure, and her own chaos on her own terms. The sisterhood of that film, each woman awakening to her own power, mirrors the awakening we feel in ourselves.

But not everyone sees themselves in comic books. So let’s stretch further.

There is Medusa. In some tellings, she had already been through enough, assaulted in the temple of a goddess she served faithfully, blamed not just by society, but by the gods themselves. Turned into a monster not because she was evil, but because she was beautiful. Because her beauty had been a threat. Yet, in that monstrous form, she finally found her power. She was given a cave for reprieve, a place to be alone. Men were warned: do not enter. Do not look. Do not take from her again. But they did and her gaze turned them to stone, not out of survival, but as a consequence. Her story is not one of victimhood. It is one of divine boundary setting.

There is Kali, the goddess so often misunderstood. People fear her because they see the blood, the fire, and the destruction. But they forget, she destroys what needs to be burned. She clears the illusions that keep us bound. From her ashes, new life rises. Her rage is nature’s rage. Her dance is liberation. Her presence is a reckoning.

Her love is fierce enough to remake the world.

There is Audre Lorde, who reminds us that our anger is not only valid but vital. "Every woman has a well stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal and institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.” Her words dismantle the shame of female anger and reconstruct it as fuel for transformation.

We can turn to music, to the voices of feminine rage in song, raw, powerful, and deeply ancestral. The song of generations of angry women to the voices of women who sing what many of us cannot say.

From Björk’s elemental keening in “Pluto,” where she screams: “Excuse me, but I just have to explode / Explode this body off me,” a howl of complete shedding and transformation.

To Nina Simone’s searing protest in “Mississippi Goddam”: “You don't have to live next to me / Just give me my equality,” a line delivered with unwavering clarity, shaking both conscience and complacency.

To Fiona Apple’s simmering self-liberation in “Fetch the Bolt Cutters,” where she declares, “I’ve been in here too long,” breaking free from invisible chains with a whisper turned command.

Alanis Morissette, whose raw delivery in “You Oughta Know” hurls the truth like a thunderclap: “And I’m here, to remind you / Of the mess you left when you went away,” giving voice to every woman who swallowed pain while smiling through gritted teeth.

These aren’t just songs. They’re battle cries. They’re prayers. They’re refusals to be quieted.

These are not stories of ruin. These are stories of rebirth.

You may not wear leather or carry a sword but your rage, too, has an archetype.

Your rage has purpose.

Your rage is not the end.

It is the rite of passage.

So let her in. Let her rise. Let her show you what you’ve been too afraid to name.

And then…become her.

The Reckoning

This is what happens when we stop centering everyone else. This is what happens when we realize we can walk away from one-sided marriages, leave behind draining friendships, say no to the boss who keeps piling it on, and hold onto the snack without guilt.

It’s not cruelty or selfishness but a reclamation.

When they ask what changed, why the silence, why the exit, why the roar, we will not be the ones to explain. Let them sit with the echo.

We will be too busy building the world that should have always existed. A world where women do not have to break in order to be believed.

The Gospel of Feminine Rage is not a warning. It is a beginning.

We have felt it. We have named it. Now we alchemize it.

This week, I invite you to create your own Feminine Rage Practice.

1. Create Your Feminine Rage Playlist. Find the songs that speak to the storm inside you. Choose lyrics that cut through the silence. Include anthems that remind you of your power. Add tracks that bring you to tears, and others that make you want to scream-sing in the car. Then, take time to listen—let the sound move through you. Let the rage be witnessed.

2. Choose Your Feminine Rage Role Models. They could be singers, authors, characters, ancestors, or activists. Who has embodied righteous anger in a way that made you feel seen? Who told the truth when no one else would? Who stood firm when it would have been easier to stay silent? Write their names. Study them. Most importantly, ask yourself why you chose them.

3. Reflect and Reclaim. For each song or role model, ask yourself:

   • What specific qualities do they embody?

   • How do they express their anger?

   • What boundaries do they hold?

   • How can I integrate this into my own life?

This isn’t about glorifying rage for its own sake. This is about learning how to hear it. How to harness it. How to turn the fire into fuel.

Let your playlist be a prayer. Let your role models be your reminder. Let your reflection be the spark.

The Path Unfolds as I Walk It

Lately I’ve been sitting with this feeling: direction without destination. I’m writing, teaching, mothering, building, holding (doing all the things) and yet there are days when the horizon feels fogged in. I can tell I’m moving, but toward what? I can feel the work burning bright, but for whom? Some days that uncertainty is a whisper; some days it fills the whole room.

When I was younger, someone told me a story that still lives in my bones. There was a person standing in a pitch-black room. No light, no map, and no obvious way out. They knew they couldn’t stay where they were, so they lifted one foot and took a step. Their foot met a stair. They still couldn’t see but they took another step and landed on another stair. Step by step, still blind, they climbed. After what felt like forever, their hand found a doorknob. They opened the door and stepped into the light.

That story reminds me that fear of the unknown can do one of two things: it can freeze us in place, or it can build a quiet, necessary strength, the kind you only grow by moving anyway. Sometimes the staircase doesn’t reveal itself until you start walking. Sometimes the door to the light only appears after we’ve been in the dark long enough to know we never want to live there again.

Maybe that’s what growth really is, not a straight line, not a five-year plan, but something truer and more organic, like a seed.

A seed doesn’t know the garden layout or the weather forecast. It’s pressed into darkness and covered. No applause or certainty that it will take root and sprout. Yet it still begins. It sends roots down first, anchoring itself where no one can see. Only after rooting does it reach upward. It doesn’t burst through the soil on day one., it waits. It gathers strength. Then one morning, without permission or certainty, it breaks the surface and turns toward light it never actually saw, only trusted.

That’s where I am right now. Maybe that’s where you are too, in the rooting season. Not stuck or behind, simply rooting quietly, stubbornly, and securely. If that’s you, hear me: you are not lost, you are growing in the dark.

I told a student recently, and I’m reminding myself again here, that time, care, and rest fix everything, especially when you add a dash of patience. We don’t need to see the entire path to take the next right step. We can trust the process, trust nature, and trust the quiet work our roots are doing beneath the surface, even when nothing appears to be changing above ground. That’s the truth of this entire journey: healing isn’t always obvious. Sometimes, it looks like stillness, a conversation that softens something sharp inside, or it’s the moment you let yourself nap instead of push through. That’s what time, care, and rest really mean. Time to sit with the discomfort. Care through connection and speaking with someone who can truly hold space. Rest that nourishes and allows us to come home to ourselves. Throw in a bit of patience that says, “You will get there in your own time” and you have the magical spellwork of taking advantage of the great space called Unknown.

If you’re standing in the dark room, we’ll walk together. If you’re the buried seed, we’ll root together. The light will come. The sprout will break through. When it does, you’ll recognize the direction, not because someone handed you a map, but because:

The path unfolded as you walked it.

Sitting with Discomfort

Before we can move forward, we have to start with what’s here. To be completely honest, often what’s here is discomfort. Not just the vague sense of unease we like to brush aside, but a heavy, complex weight that reveals everything we’ve tried to avoid. Discomfort is not the enemy, it’s a messenger. Just like any messenger, it’s trying to deliver something essential: a message we’ve often refused to receive.

Discomfort doesn’t show up arbitrarily, it has purpose. It signals that something is misaligned. Something is unspoken or being neglected. Sometimes it whispers, sometimes it roars. But it always invites us to listen, not fix. This is the point where we need to override the instinct to find a way to make it better and to do it now. This isn’t about rushing to feel better, it’s about becoming better acquainted with what is. It is an invitation to identify the trauma, the pain, the heartache, and the wounds that have scarred us but also shaped us into who we are now. It helps us to see how we have trained our mind and body to react in those moments to protect us. Then we ask ourselves, "Does this help me or hurt me?" At this point, we are simply acknowledging where we are. We are not working to fix it. We are just sitting with it so we can understand.

This kind of presence takes courage. Because discomfort, when we truly sit with it, reveals the stories we’ve inherited, the pain we’ve swallowed, the boundaries we’ve abandoned. Sometimes the discomfort we feel is sadness, the kind that sinks in when we realize we’re alone, or worse, that we’ve been carrying someone else’s story as our truth. Other times, it’s grief: the deep ache of realizing the life we built, the one we were so sure would satisfy us, doesn’t fit anymore. To grow, we’ll have to walk away from it. That means leaving behind pieces of ourselves, relationships that no longer nourish us, and expectations that have been silently choking us for years.

Then, there’s the fury. The kind of rage that simmers beneath the surface when we realize we worked so hard, followed all the rules, and yet the path we were sold was never ours to begin with or was rigged/broken from the start. That we were taught to shrink, to obey, to doubt ourselves (ladies, I'm looking at you). Especially at this age (as I am writing this at 41 years old). Even more so when we’ve already poured so much into everyone else (moms, dads, and caregivers especially). This type of betrayal sucks and being angry about it is a perfectly normal response, but one we often deny ourselves.

To sit with discomfort is to say, "I am willing to hear the truth of myself". It's also acknowledging the truth of what has been done to you. It is the first act of honesty. It’s not passive; it’s radical and it is necessary. Because if we don’t pause long enough to listen to what hurts, we will carry that hurt with us into the next chapter, relationship, and opportunity. We will repeat the same cycles, call it fate, and wonder why we still feel unfulfilled.

The only way forward is through and the only way through is by honoring what’s real, even if it’s uncomfortable.

Especially if it’s uncomfortable. That’s where the wisdom lives. That is where true change and the end of toxic cycles begins.

Accepting Uncertainty as a Trust Fall Into the Self

From that initial honesty, we step into uncertainty. Not because it's easy, but because it's real. Accepting uncertainty isn’t a passive surrender, it’s an active declaration of trust. Not just in divine timing, or the unfolding of nature (though those things matter), but in ourselves. Our ability to be with what is. To respond with presence and to rise when it’s time.

It’s a trust fall but not the kind where someone else catches us. It’s the kind where we realize we are the net. That there’s a self within us capable of catching what falls.

This kind of trust doesn’t come from theory, it comes from experience. Every time we take a step forward without full clarity and survive it, we build trust. Every time we face discomfort and resist the urge to numb or escape, we strengthen it. Every time we tell ourselves, “I don’t have the full map, but I know the next right step,” we become more rooted in our own wisdom.

Self-trust grows when we choose to focus on what is in our control. That might mean getting up and making the bed. It might mean saying no when we’d usually say yes. These choices, small as they may seem, signal to our nervous system that we are safe with ourselves.

Safety is the foundation of self-esteem.

As Dr. Christine Carter (2020) wisely points out, “To best cope with uncertainty, we need to stop complaining.” Instead of fixating on the problem or waiting to be rescued, we can shift toward the outcomes we desire. Carter explains that “rescuers tend to give us permission to avoid taking responsibility for our lives,” while emotionally supportive friends or therapists “see us as capable of solving our own problems.” This shift from helplessness to ownership changes everything. It allows us to take back our agency and engage with the mess of life in a more empowered way. This is the groundwork for resilience.

Nicole Whitting (2022) expands on this by encouraging us to “have our own back.” She writes, “Developing a resilient relationship with failure and uncertainty is essential for personal growth. This entails supporting oneself through trials and errors, acknowledging that while outcomes may not always be predictable, one’s ability to navigate and adapt to them is within our control.” In other words, we stop waiting to be saved and start becoming the one who saves ourselves, again and again.

When we take action from this place of grounded self-trust, we stop fearing failure so deeply. We see each misstep as part of a larger unfolding. We begin to understand that even when things don’t go to plan, we have the tools to regroup, realign, and try again. This isn’t just about grit. It’s about grace. The grace to believe that we are enough. That our inner wisdom is trustworthy. That no matter how uncertain things feel, we are not powerless.

Connection as Clarifying Mirror

We aren’t meant to walk this journey alone. But here’s the thing, connection isn’t about trauma-dumping or venting into the void. True connection is a space of shared presence, where we can speak and be heard, not just in our pain but in our process and our becoming.

When we speak aloud, we give shape to our inner world. We stop the mental ricochet of thoughts trapped in our minds, the ones that bounce like rubber balls in a sealed room, growing louder with each echo. Talking externalizes those thoughts, allowing us to see them more clearly and respond with wisdom rather than reactivity.

This isn’t just poetic, it’s physiological. In Human Physiology: Expression of Veda and the Vedic Literature, Dr. Tony Nader (2014) describes how the brain processes sound through an eight-step sequence, transforming vibration into meaning. When we speak and hear our own words, we engage this process consciously. We become both speaker and listener, both sender and receiver. That moment of inner resonance, when we truly hear ourselves, can spark insight that silence alone may not reveal. Think on this for a moment. Have you ever had a moment where you heard yourself speak and thought, “woah…that came from me?” or “wow…I said that?” That’s because when the thought is able to leave the echo chamber of the mind, take form as sound, and then go through each of those 8 steps, it becomes fully realized and our brain is able to process it physically, mentally, and emotionally. We are able to see that we already know what we need to do, we already know the process, and we know ourselves better than anyone else. From that point, we can move forward with confidence, our friends don’t even have to put in much effort other than holding space for us.

So, find your people.

The ones who don’t rush to fix, who know how to hold space, who meet your truth with tenderness instead of discomfort. Let your words be spoken in the presence of someone who sees you, not just the polished parts, but the raw, unraveling edges too. Let your truth leave your body and land in a space where it can be witnessed, held, and reflected. Not to fix you but to free you. Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in relationship, when the nervous system begins to feel safe, not just because you said it out loud, but because someone stayed and listened.

Turning Presence Into Practice

Once we’ve acknowledged our discomfort and accepted the uncertainty, the next step is gentle action. Not frantic scrambling for solutions. Not impulsive leaps that lead to more chaos. But small, steady steps that move us in the direction of self-trust and alignment.

This is where intention becomes our compass. Rather than trying to control the whole map, we start with what’s right in front of us. What do I need today? What would nourish me—not numb me? What would support my nervous system instead of overwhelm it?

But intention is only half of the equation. To truly move forward, we also need a way of thinking that matches our depth and complexity. This is where we embrace critical, creative, and holistic thinking, not as academic tools, but as soul-level practices that help us see clearly, imagine freely, and integrate fully.

Critical thinking helps us challenge our assumptions. It allows us to ask: Is this thought true? Where did I learn it? Does it still serve me? Especially in moments of uncertainty, critical thinking gives us the courage to pause before reacting. Then we discern what’s real from what’s fear-driven, inherited, or outdated. It’s not about judging ourselves. It’s about examining our patterns with compassion.

Creative thinking gives us space to dream beyond the binary. When life feels stuck, creativity opens windows. It allows us to play with new possibilities, to imagine outcomes we’ve never considered, to tap into resourcefulness that exists beyond logic. It doesn’t always mean art. Sometimes creativity looks like asking a better question, flipping the script, or simply saying, What if there's another way?

Holistic thinking is the glue. It’s the awareness that everything is connected: mind and body, inner and outer, past and present. This kind of thinking honors nuance. It understands that healing isn’t linear, that people are more than their worst moment, and that solutions are often found in the spaces between disciplines. It reminds us that our nervous system, our relationships, our environment, and our beliefs all influence each other. It also reminds us that true change happens when we tend to the whole.

Together, these three ways of thinking form a powerful triad. They help us reclaim agency without bypassing complexity. They let us move forward with both logic and intuition, grounded in presence but open to expansion. When we apply them, whether to a decision, a conflict, or a life transition, we’re not just reacting, we’re responding consciously.

As Dr. Diane Sliwka (2025) reminds us, focusing on short-term actions within our control is a powerful way to reduce anxiety and regain a sense of agency. So, we look for what we can do. Maybe that means drinking water. Maybe it means responding to that one email. Maybe it means resting when the world insists that we hustle.

The key is not the size of the step, it’s the direction.

Even the smallest move made in alignment with our well-being plants a seed for change. And just like a seed, that change needs tending. It needs consistency. It needs care. And it needs the quiet permission to grow at its own pace.

The Courage to Pause

Pausing in the middle of uncertainty is not easy. In fact, it can feel terrifying. When we don’t know what’s around the corner, our nervous system goes on high alert. We stay busy, distracted, and always looking over our shoulder. Not because we’re weak, but because we’re wired to survive. Stillness can feel threatening. When we stop moving, we start to feel. And sometimes what we feel is fear, or sadness, or the spinning unease of rumination.

But rest is not a luxury. It’s a strategy. It’s not avoidance, it’s an act of courage. Dr. Diane Sliwka (2025) writes that when rumination feels excessive, we can shift our focus to planning as an antidote. Journaling, mapping out next steps, or simply imagining a few grounded scenarios can help us feel more prepared, more anchored. And it’s in moments of rest, when the body is calm enough to think clearly, that we can begin to do this kind of reflective planning.

Even the military understands the necessity of the pause. When I was deployed, we weren’t in a constant state of combat. We had R&R (Rest and Recuperation) baked into the rhythm of our deployment. Leadership would check in if we didn’t take it, concerned that we might be spiraling into burnout. It wasn’t indulgence. It was necessity. It was protection of the mission and of ourselves. We would be wise to offer ourselves the same.

In a way, this is the wisdom of the Earth itself. You can toss a seed into any soil, and it may grow. But if you nourish that soil, fertilize it, care for it, make space for it to breathe, that seed has a far greater chance of thriving. The pause is the fertilizer. Rest and self-care are what strengthen the roots before the sprouting begins.

So even if it feels uncomfortable, even if the silence stirs old fear, remind yourself: I am safe in this moment. I can stop,  soften, and replenish.

Then remind yourself:

 “When I do, I don’t lose momentum. I gather strength.”

Turning Insight Into Action: A Self-Guided Practice

You’ve walked with me through some hard truths:

·      Sitting with discomfort

·      Learning to trust yourself

·      Trying to think differently

·      Connecting with others

·      Finding the courage to pause

But what do we do with all of this? How do we carry it into our real lives, especially when the path is uncertain?

This section isn’t about fixing your life in five easy steps. It’s about building a relationship with your inner knowing—one step at a time. Below is a self-guided practice structured around three stages:

1.     Reflect,

2.     Reset,

3.     Respond.

You can walk through this in one sitting or revisit each step over time. You might want to grab a journal, a pen, and a quiet moment to yourself before diving in.

PART 1: REFLECT: Understand What’s Present

This is where we begin, by getting honest about what’s here. Not what should be here. Not what we wish was here. But what’s real.

Instructions: Use the following prompts to name what you’re feeling, what’s unclear, and what’s trying to get your attention.

·      What feels uncertain in my life right now?

·      What emotion keeps surfacing lately: fear, anger, grief, numbness, something else?

·      When I sit with that feeling, what is it trying to tell me?

·      What part of me wants to be heard but I’ve been avoiding listening?

Coaching Tip: Remember, you’re not here to solve anything yet. You’re here to witness. This is the pause. You’re a newly planted seed who needs time to take root. Let yourself rest in awareness.

PART 2: RESET: Come Back to Center

Now that you’ve named what’s present, it’s time to nurture yourself before moving forward. Just like settlers on the frontier or soldiers on deployment, rest is a strategy. It’s not giving up. It’s gathering strength.

Instructions: Choose one of the following actions. Keep it simple. Small acts matter.

·       Body: Drink water, stretch, lie down with your hand on your chest. Remind yourself: I am safe in this moment.

·       Mind: Write down the 3 things on your mind right now, then give yourself permission to only focus on the one that’s most important.

·       Heart: Text someone you trust and say: “Hey, I could use some connection. Can we talk soon?” Let yourself be seen.

·       Planning (Not Ruminating): Following Dr. Diane Sliwka’s guidance (2025), turn rumination into planning:

o   What’s one possible scenario I’m worried about?

o   What’s one small way I could prepare for it?

Metaphor to Anchor This: A seed will grow in any soil, but it thrives in fertilized soil. Self-care is that fertilizer. Rest, nourishment, connection…these aren’t luxuries. They are how we strengthen the self so that action comes from alignment, not exhaustion.

PART 3: RESPOND: Take a Gentle Step Forward

Now that you’ve listened and cared for yourself, it’s time to act. Not from panic. Not from pressure. But from presence.

Instructions: This is where we use critical, creative, and holistic thinking together.

1.     Critical Thinking (Discernment):
Ask: What do I actually know to be true in this situation?
What is a fact vs. a fear? What is the truth vs. a belief? What needs more information before I decide?

2.     Creative Thinking (Possibility):
Ask: What if there’s another way?
Like we explored earlier, there are infinite ways to arrive at the same truth (2 = 1+1, 3–1, 4÷2…). What’s a nontraditional or imaginative solution I haven’t yet considered?

3.     Holistic Thinking (Integration):
Ask: What does my whole self say: body, mind, and spirit?
What step feels aligned, even if it’s small or uncertain? What feels nourishing and forward moving?

Now, write this sentence in your journal:

Today, the step I am choosing to take is: _______.
I choose it not because I’m certain, but because I trust myself to keep walking.

Final Reflection

Uncertainty may shake the ground beneath us, but it can also become sacred ground. A place where we slow down, re-center, and rediscover the steady pulse of our own becoming. This is not a detour, it is the path. Every pause, every act of reflection, every small decision rooted in care rather than fear… it all counts. You are not lost. You are learning to listen. You are not behind. You are aligning. The beauty is, you don’t have to do it all at once. You don’t have to have it all figured out. You simply return (again and again) to the truth that you are worth tending to, even here, especially here.

So take the next step and if the next step is rest, then let it be deep and unapologetic. If the next step is action, let it be gentle and intentional. Because the real work isn’t about chasing certainty. It’s about remembering who you are within it.

You don’t have to know the entire path to take the first step.
You don’t have to be fearless to move forward.
You only have to be honest, gentle, and willing.

The rest unfolds in motion.

References

Carter, C. (2023, October 18). How to live with uncertainty. Greater Good Science Center. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_to_live_with_uncertainty

Whitting, N. (2024, April 26). 10 ways to calm your mind and body in times of uncertainty. Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/how-to-live-with-uncertainty

Sliwka, D. (2025, February 14). When rumination feels excessive, focus on planning as an antidote to anxious feelings—Feeling prepared for different scenarios can help. UCSF Health. https://www.ucsfhealth.org/education/planning-as-antidote-to-anxious-feelings

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. (2016). Science of being and art of living: Transcendental Meditation (Rev. ed.). Penguin.

Nader, T. (2014). Human physiology: Expression of Veda and the Vedic literature. Maharishi University of Management Press.

When the Mirror Finally Catches Up: Recognizing Your Real-Time Impact

I didn’t expect to feel emotional when I turned in my annual faculty self-assessment. I was simply following protocol, checking off accomplishments, listing courses taught, aligning with outcomes, adding service hours. But as I scrolled back through everything I had done this past year, I found myself… surprised. Humbled, even.

I had taught multiple courses across semesters, managed a full undergraduate program, published two books, made steady progress on my PhD qualifying exams, supported my husband’s small business, ran a household, and (miraculously) still managed to practice daily self-care and show up fully present for my child. When I looked at it all together, the reflection looking back at me was different. The mirror finally caught up to the truth of who I’ve become.

Yet, how long did I walk past that mirror without seeing any of it?

How often do you move through life like that?

We keep going. We reach a milestone and barely pause before our minds leap to the next.

No breath.

No reflection.

No celebration.

Just: what’s next? What if we shifted that? What if, instead of racing to the next big thing, we honored the small wins that built the bridge beneath our feet?

The Wobbly Steps That Matter Most

Dr. Lindsey Godwin tells the story of being in an airport when a toddler just learning to walk captured the hearts of everyone around him. Each time he stumbled, strangers broke into applause. “Something beautiful happened,” she writes. “Strangers—young and old, from every background and corner of life—began cheering him on.”

It made her wonder: When did we stop cheering for our own wobbly steps?

That moment, watching a one-year-old stumble and rise again, cheered not for perfection but for effort, holds a profound truth. We begin life being celebrated for trying. Not for mastery. Not for speed. Just for trying.

But somewhere along the way, we begin attaching worth to outcomes. Success becomes defined by big, public milestones: the degree, the job, the house, the launch. When those things feel far away, our day-to-day effort can start to feel invisible, even to ourselves.

The Science of Small Wins

Harvard professor Teresa Amabile and psychologist Steven Kramer, in their research on motivation, coined the term The Progress Principle. What they found was simple but powerful: motivation doesn’t come from giant breakthroughs, it comes from recognizing small, consistent progress.

Every time we acknowledge even the tiniest step forward, we light up the brain’s reward system. A hit of dopamine is released. We feel good. That feeling good makes us want to keep going. This becomes a psychological upward spiral, an engine of self-belief and sustained momentum.

In contrast, when we dismiss those little wins or skip over them entirely, we short-circuit that loop. Then we burn out. We start to believe that our effort isn’t enough. We move the goalposts so fast we never even touch them. Our goals, hopes, and dreams become unattainable.

But Let’s Get Real: Why Don’t We Celebrate?

Psychologist Dr. Melanie McNally writes about her high-achieving client “Jada,” a CEO who accomplished her annual expansion goal six months early, but immediately moved on to planning her next major acquisition. When McNally suggested she pause to celebrate, Jada looked baffled, even uncomfortable. It had never occurred to her to celebrate. She didn’t even know what that would look like.

If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone.

Somewhere along the line, we were taught that rest is weakness, that celebration is self-indulgent, and that humility means downplaying our success. We were taught to keep climbing. And so we ignore our wins, big or small, and risk losing the very motivation that fuels us.

But science, and spirit, say otherwise.

According to McNally, when we celebrate wins, we reinforce positive behavior, reduce stress, and strengthen our capacity to learn from what’s working. Celebration isn’t just joy, it’s neurological integration. It’s memory. It’s growth.

What if we don’t do it? That’s one of the fastest tracks to burnout. Christina Maslach and Michael Leiter, authors of The Burnout Challenge, name “insufficient reward” as one of the six core causes of burnout. Translation: if we never acknowledge our efforts, our nervous system eventually stops caring. It stops trying and goes numb.

You Deserve the Reward, Not Just the Results

Melissa Russell from Harvard Summer School breaks it down further. Celebrating small wins helps us stay motivated, form good habits, and maintain perspective when setbacks inevitably happen. And those wins don’t need to be dramatic.

Some days, it’s enough to:

• Wake up and take a short walk.

• Set a boundary you used to ignore.

• Send the email you’ve been putting off.

• Feed yourself something nourishing.

• Say no to something that drains you.

• Say yes to something that lights you up.

Every one of those moments is a win. Every one is a step forward.

What Happens When You Do Celebrate

When we do pause and recognize our progress, something changes. We start to feel our momentum again. We build self-trust. We deepen our emotional resilience. We begin to see the long road not as a burden but as a series of meaningful, connected steps.

The pauses and acknowledgements… they’re contagious. Sharing your small wins builds connection. It gives permission to others to do the same. Just like that airport crowd cheering for a toddler, your joy creates a ripple of encouragement in your community. It changes the culture.

When McNally’s client Jada finally told her friends about her early expansion win, they surprised her with a dinner and celebrated her success. That night became more than just a reward, it became a memory of love, support, and sisterhood. The kind of moment you carry for years.

So, What About You?

What have you done this week that deserves to be honored?

What step did you take, however shaky, that helped move your life forward?

Even if no one else saw it. Especially if no one else saw it.

Your mirror is waiting to catch up.

The Self-Assessment Exercise

A quiet moment to name what matters, one win at a time.

This isn’t the kind of self-assessment you turn in to a boss or professor. This is one you gift to yourself. No grades. No judgment. Just you, sitting down to recognize the honest, meaningful work of living your life.

You don’t need anything fancy. Just a piece of paper, your journal, a notes app on your phone, or even the back of a receipt in your purse. You can do this.

Step-by-Step Instructions:

1. Find five minutes today (or this week) where you can sit quietly.
   Light a candle if you want. Make some tea. Put on a playlist that makes you feel seen. This is a sacred moment with yourself.

2. Answer the following questions in writing or out loud:

   • What did I do this week that required effort, even if no one else saw it?

   • Where did I show up, even when I didn’t feel like I had much to give?

   • What emotional, mental, or physical challenge did I move through with grace or grit?

   • What small task did I finally cross off my list?

   • What am I proud of—even just a little?

   (Tip: If you feel stuck, scroll back through your texts, calendar, or camera roll. You’ve likely done more than you remember.)

3. Write a personal affirmation that reflects your effort this week.
   It doesn’t have to be poetic or profound. It just has to be true.
   Try starting with:

   • “This week, I…”

   • “Even when it was hard, I…”

   • “I’m proud that I…”

4. Optional: Keep a “Done List.”
   Each day, jot down just one thing you accomplished. By the end of the week, you’ll have a powerful record of how you kept going, moment by moment.

This practice can become a powerful reset when you’re tired, doubting yourself, or losing momentum. You don’t need to wait for someone else to hand you a certificate of recognition.

You are already the witness to your life.

Be a kind one.

Be a generous one.

Be a true one.

The Mirror Affirmation Practice

A visual ritual to witness your small wins in real time

Sometimes we need more than a journal prompt. We need a physical space, a visual reminder to anchor ourselves in the truth of what we’ve done. That’s where the mirror affirmation exercise comes in.

This practice invites you to use your own mirror…yes, the same one you brush your teeth in front of…as a daily space of celebration and acknowledgment. Whether it’s the bathroom mirror, a hallway mirror, or even a small one taped to the back of your closet door (I created one you can print off and tape anywhere!), the idea is simple:

What You’ll Need:

• A mirror in a place you’ll see often or print off the one below

• A pad of sticky notes

• A pen or marker

• A willingness to give yourself credit, one win at a time

How to Do It:

1. Each day, write down one small win on a sticky note. Just one. Something real. Something you did.

   • "I folded the laundry right out of the dryer instead of letting it wrinkle."

   • "I sent that email I was dreading."

   • "I drank water before coffee."

   • "I read Natasha’s blog today instead of doomscrolling Instagram."

2. Stick it to your mirror. Add it wherever there’s space. Watch your reflection get surrounded by proof that you are showing up for your life.

3. Say something kind to yourself. Every time you pass that mirror, whether you’re brushing your teeth or just walking by, take one second to acknowledge the effort behind the sticky notes. A simple, “You’re doing great,” or “I see how hard you’re trying,” can go a long way.

4. End-of-week reflection: On Sunday (or whatever day feels like your week’s end), stand in front of that mirror. Take each sticky note off one by one and read them aloud to yourself. Let them land. Then, take a moment to say:
   “I did all of this. I showed up. I am proud of me.”

You can then choose to keep the notes in a jar or notebook or even start fresh the next week. What matters is this:

You saw yourself. You acknowledged your efforts. You were not invisible to your own eyes.

Final Thoughts: Cheer for the Wobbles

You don’t need to wait for the perfect moment, the final milestone, or the public applause. You don’t need to hustle your way into self-worth. You’re already showing up. You’re already trying.

That’s enough to start cheering.

So stand up. Look in the mirror. See yourself clearly.

And this time, don’t look away.

A Note From Me to You

Before you go, I want you to hear this directly from me:

The little things really do count. Not just symbolically. Not just sentimentally. They count because they hold things together. They are the quiet stitches in the fabric of a life that works.

Every time you fold that load of laundry, you are making sure your family wakes up to clothes that are clean, soft, and ready to wear. You’re wrapping them, and yourself, in a kind of unspoken care.

Every time you manage to squeeze in a meal between responsibilities, you are choosing to nourish your body, even when time and energy are running low. That matters. You matter.

Every time you take a few moments to read something like this blog, you are feeding your mind and spirit. You are giving yourself space to reflect. That’s not small. That’s sacred.

I see how easy it is to overlook those things. I’ve done it too. But I want you to pause here, just for a breath, and let yourself feel it:

You are showing up. You are doing the work. You are holding more than most people will ever know.

Still, you are here.

That is extraordinary.

I’m proud of you.

References
Amabile, T., & Kramer, S. (2011). The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. Harvard Business Review Press.
Godwin, L. (2024, October 29). Why we should cheer for life’s wobbles. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/possibilitizing/202410/why-we-should-cheer-for-lifes-wobbles
Maslach, C., & Leiter, M. P. (2022). The Burnout Challenge. Harvard University Press.
McNally, M. A. (2024, June 12). From small steps to big wins: The importance of celebrating. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/empower-your-mind/202406/from-small-steps-to-big-wins-the-importance-of-celebrating
Russell, M. (2024, May 30). Why celebrating small wins matters. Harvard Summer School Blog. https://summer.harvard.edu/blog/why-celebrating-small-wins-matters
Wang, W., Li, J., Sun, G., et al. (2017). Achievement goals and life satisfaction: The mediating role of perception of successful agency and the moderating role of emotion reappraisal. Psicol. Refl. Crít., 30(25). https://doi.org/10.1186/s41155-017-0078-4

Let the Snow Fall: The Sacred Power of Silence

There’s a silence that’s not empty, but full. Full of breath, full of potential, full of things just beginning to stir.

In the Vedic tradition, this space is known as the gap, the moment between sound and sound, action and reaction, breath and breath. It’s not nothing. It’s everything. The field of all possibilities. The wellspring of creativity, healing, and renewal. The place where something new is born, not in noise or motion, but in pause.

Yet… in our world, silence is so often mistaken for absence. It gets mistaken for laziness, disengagement, or failure. Stillness is seen as stagnation. Rest is seen as weakness.

But what if silence isn’t the end of something? What if it’s the beginning?

Lately, I’ve been sitting with that.

After months of effort, writing, creating, coaching, researching, parenting, posting, I found myself quietly hoping that something would catch. That one post, one offering, one moment would ripple just a little wider. I told myself I didn’t need the applause. I told myself if just one person resonated, it would be enough. Then someone did. A single person reached out to say, “I came to your page for inspiration, and my energy instantly shifted. Thank you for sharing your light.” That meant the world. It really did. But if I’m being honest, I wanted more, not out of ego, but out of hope. Hope that the work I’ve poured my heart into might actually land somewhere. Hope that all the seeds I’ve been planting might finally start to bloom.

Instead, I was met with… quiet.

At first, that quiet felt like defeat. But then I remembered the snow.

When I lived in New England, snowstorms weren’t just weather events, they were landscapes of transformation. During the heaviest storms, when the flakes were thick and falling fast, you might expect chaos, loud sound, and some dramatic shift in atmosphere. Instead, what you got was silence that was a deep, all-encompassing hush. It didn’t matter how much snow was falling or how high it piled at your knees. The world became soft, still, and sacred. There was something magical about it, a reverence that settled over everything.

I later learned the reason: snow absorbs sound. Like natural soundproofing, it dampens the noise of the world. But you don’t need science to explain what the soul already knows: that silence can be holy. Silence can heal. Silence can be a form of protection.

I think that’s what I’ve been needing lately. Not more input. Not more content. Not more pushing. Just a moment in the snow. Because honestly, I often feel like I’m getting buried in layers.

The layer of the job.
The layer of the PhD.
The layer of parenting.
The layer of keeping a business afloat.
The layer of trying to stay visible in a system that rewards only the loudest voices.

It builds up, and suddenly you’re knee-deep in expectations, deadlines, logistics, and worries.Iin that storm, it’s easy to forget the power of a pause. But when I return to the silence, even for just a breath, I remember:

I am not lost.
I am regenerating.

In Vedic thought, the gap, the silent space, is not just a void. It is source. It’s where sound collapses before it reforms. It’s where insight arises before it takes shape. It’s where the soul rests before it reaches again.

We all need tha, especially those of us trying to build something honest. Because the silence isn’t punishment, it’s preparation.

So if you’re in the quiet right now…

If your work feels unseen,
If your voice feels small,
If the world feels loud and you’re tired of shouting into it…

Step back. Let the snow fall. Let the hush wrap around you like a balm.

You’re not behind.
You’re not forgotten.
You’re not failing.

You’re just in the gap and it is not empty. It is alive.

Let yourself be still long enough to hear what’s rising in you.
Let yourself be soft enough to receive what’s next.
When you’re ready… return.

But not because you have to be louder.
Return because you’ve remembered how to listen.

When You Throw the Life Vest and They Swim Away

Every week, I sit down to write.

Not because I have a giant team behind me. Not because I’m chasing likes or brand deals. I write because I’m listening to my clients, my students, and my friends. I write because I care. I write because this field of mental health, wellness, and transformation is full of nuance, trauma, and silent pain, and because so many of us are trying to live better lives without falling apart in the process.

I make it accessible (aka completely free) with no paywall, no funnel, no catch.

But let me be honest for a moment.

Last week, I looked at the analytics for my website. Not even in the double digits. My Substack has 11 subscribers. My Instagram sits at 68 followers. My social content, carefully created to support and extend the blog, often goes unseen. What hurts most isn’t the numbers. It’s that the people who say they want support, who ask for wisdom, who vent about their struggles… often scroll right past it.

They’ll share a meme, repost a bestseller, drop $26 on a hardcover copy of the latest pop psych book by someone with zero credentials in mental health. But they won’t read a free blog post from someone they know, who actually works in the field, teaches in it, and is getting a PhD in it.

Here’s the kicker: I don’t even want to coach my friends. That’s not ethical, and it’s not what I’m offering. What I am offering is guidance, insight, and support in a form that respects their boundaries and mine.

So why does it feel like no one wants it?

Why We Push Away the Help We Say We Want

The truth is, vulnerability hits differently when it’s close to home.

When someone you know shares wisdom, it feels personal. It might hit too close. Maybe there’s fear:

“What if they judge me?”

“What if they talk about me?”

“What if they see too much?”

The risk of being seen is often greater than the risk of being lost.

And that’s the paradox: we cry out for help, but when the life vest comes from someone who knows our story, we reject it. Not because it’s not valuable but because it feels too vulnerable.

The Glamorized Self-Help Machine

Meanwhile, the self-help world keeps growing. But let’s be honest about something else: many of the voices who dominate that space are not experts in healing they’re experts in marketing.

Mel Robbins was a criminal defense attorney turned motivational speaker. Mark Manson has a degree in international relations. Sylvia Browne, who once built an empire off “spiritual readings,” had no formal education. James Clear (whose work I actually love and use) studied biomechanics. Stephen Covey had business and religious education degrees…not clinical psychology.

What do they have in common?

• Publishers.

• Teams.

• Money.

• Visibility.

What many of us have?

• Lived experience,

• deep study,

• accreditation

• … and no reach.

There Is Too Much Talent Trapped in Poverty

A quote I saw recently said: There is too much talent trapped in poverty. This landed hard. Because I am that quote.

I created my website. I design my posts. I write, edit, upload, and promote completely alone. I am bootstrapping wisdom while others are outsourcing it. I’m not bitter. But I am frustrated because I believe in what I do and I know it works.

I just wish more people would see it.

Maybe that’s the final piece of this post:

If you’ve been feeling lost, struggling to find your footing, asking for help… and you’ve got a friend who’s out here creating resources for free check them out. Read their blog. Share their post. Let them know you see them. Because the real magic doesn’t always come with a marketing team or a book tour.

Sometimes, it comes from the person who’s been quietly listening to you this whole time.

Knowing Where I End: A Note on Boundaries

There’s one more piece I need to speak to because today, I hit a boundary.

I want to be clear: a boundary isn’t about controlling someone else’s behavior. It’s not about demanding support or telling people what they should do. A boundary is about self-respect. It’s about saying, “This is how far I go. This is what I’m able to give right now and no more.”

The truth is, I pour hours into this work. I write blog posts that are researched, cited, edited, and carefully crafted. I publish a weekly Substack to deepen the conversation for those who want to walk a little further with me. I create 19 social media posts every week, each one a small offering meant to connect, support, or uplift. This week, I’ve felt the weight of doing all of that without receiving much back.

So here is my boundary: this week, I’m giving less.

Not out of resentment. Not out of spite. But out of clarity. I’ve reached my edge, and instead of pushing past it in the name of productivity or perceived obligation, I’m honoring it. That’s what a boundary is, a line drawn in self-trust and I hope if you need to draw one too, you know you’re allowed.

Because generosity without boundaries becomes burnout. And connection without reciprocity becomes depletion.

I’m not giving up on this work. But I’m giving myself space to breathe and I invite you to do the same.

The Trap of Disconnection: How Loneliness is Quietly Harming Our Health and Our Humanity

We don’t talk enough about how much things changed after COVID.

Not just the obvious changes like mask mandates, Zoom fatigue, supply chain issues. I mean the deeper stuff. The way we relate to each other. The way we show up (or don’t) for our communities. The growing silence between what we feel and what we express. The way disconnection has gone from an emergency measure to a normalized habit. The truth is, it’s hurting us more than we realize.

We are social creatures. Human connection is not a luxury, it’s a biological necessity. Touch, laughter, eye contact, shared experiences....these are the things that literally regulate our nervous systems. Studies show that positive social connection triggers the release of oxytocin, reduces cortisol (stress), strengthens immunity, and supports cardiovascular health. When we don’t have enough of it, we start to fray at the edges (Holt-Lunstad, 2024).

Since the pandemic, those edges have only gotten sharper.

A 2022 report from the World Health Organization noted a 25% increase in the prevalence of anxiety and depression globally (WHO, 2022). Women and young people were hit hardest. People with preexisting conditions like asthma, cancer, and heart disease were also significantly more likely to experience mental health challenges. A comprehensive review of global data showed increased risks of suicide and self-harm among youth, and greater severity of symptoms in women.

But even beyond the statistics, many of us feel it. The conversations that don’t go as deep. The invitations that don’t get returned. The events that feel too exhausting to attend. The instinct to withdraw. The fear of being too much, or not enough. The hesitation to reach out, because you don’t want to be a burden or worse, be ignored.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot. I was born in the 80s, raised in the 90s, and became an adult in the early 2000s. I graduated high school in 2003 and went into the military. Back then, connection felt more organic. Even though we lived out in the country, I was willing to walk through the cow pasture to play Go Fish with my grandma or hang out with my grandpa. I would walk up the hill, about a half mile or so from home, to meet up with the nearest neighbor kids. I was almost always surrounded by people (being the oldest of 6 it was hard not to be lol). When I needed time alone, I would climb to the top of a tree with a book but I always came back down and into the fold.

In the military, connection was still central. I was the president of our booster club. We built morale through barbecues, family days, dunk tanks, shared laughter. I don’t just remember the events, I remember the people.

But after COVID, that changed.

We moved from New England to South Carolina months after the restrictions were lifted. In the beginning, we opened our doors. We hosted neighbors and tried to recreate that sense of connection. For a while, it seemed possible. But slowly, people stopped showing up. They moved away and new neighbors arrived, but didn’t introduce themselves. I now live in a neighborhood with close to 100 houses and only know five names.

I don’t hear backyard laughter. I don’t smell grills. I don’t hear music or kids running around. We’re all living here but somehow not living with one another. Even when I try to connect, through hosting events or joining classes, most people stay on their phones, don’t talk, and don’t engage. Even the community group I started with over 300 members only has a handful of consistent participants. This group was made after hearing the call of many who stated their loneliness and disconnection plainly. Yet, despite offering the opportunity for connection with likeminded people, the opportunities go largely ignored.

I don’t know how we got here, and I don’t know how to fix it. But I want to. That’s what this post is about. Trying to name what’s happening so that maybe, just maybe, we can begin to shift it. Because, if we really want to live healthy lives supported with good habits, we need a community...we need each other.

Julianne Holt-Lunstad’s  2024 study, Social Connection as a Critical Factor for Mental and Physical Health, sheds light on how severe the impact really is (Holt-Lunstad, 2024). Her findings? 

Social disconnection is just as dangerous to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. 

It's an independent predictor of mental and physical decline, and yet, we rarely treat it with the same urgency. Holt-Lunstad urges that the long-term consequences of the pandemic and the growing influence of digital technologies are accelerating this crisis. We are more isolated than ever, and less equipped to deal with the emotional, physical, and societal fallout.

Here’s the insidious part: disconnection feeds disconnection.

It’s like a trap door. You pull away to protect yourself because vulnerability feels risky. You stop reaching out because the silence hurts. You convince yourself that isolation is safer, more convenient, even preferable. At first, maybe it is. But over time, it hardens. It becomes a pattern, a norm, or a wound that never quite heals.

Unfortunately, it’s also being reinforced by culture.

We live in a world where productivity is praised above all else. Where taking time to be with your community is often framed as inefficient. Where rest is seen as laziness. Where asking for help is equated with weakness and where hyper-individualism (“handle it yourself, tough it out, pull yourself up”) is sold as empowerment.

But connection isn’t weakness.
Connection is a survival skill.

In fact, Summa Health published an article in December 2023 outlining five surprising health benefits to socializing (Hubbard, 2023):

1. Boosts mood and reduces stress: Socializing reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety through the release of endorphins.

2. Improves quality of life: Connection increases self-esteem and a sense of belonging.

3. Reduces risk for chronic disease: Loneliness triggers stress responses that worsen physical health.

4. Slows cognitive decline: Social interaction keeps neural pathways active and strong.

5. Encourages healthier habits: You're more likely to eat well, move more, and care for yourself when you're surrounded by supportive people.

Now we’re learning something else:

Social media doesn’t count.

Kaiser Permanente published an article in 2025 highlighting that passive social media use often increases feelings of loneliness and comparison, rather than reducing them (Kaiser Permanente, 2025). The act of scrolling without genuine engagement can reduce self-esteem and increase self-judgment. The curated highlight reels we consume only intensify feelings of inadequacy and isolation. In fact, Dr. Michael Torres explains that the more time spent passively on social media, the worse people tend to feel. It doesn’t replace the power of real, embodied interaction: eye contact, shared laughter, and unfiltered conversation.

Another article on social media and mental health (Bounds, 2024) further highlighted the impact:

• Filters and appearance-focused content contribute to poor self-image.

• Social comparison heightens FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) and depression.

• Cyberbullying and harassment are major risks for youth and adults alike.

• Dopamine-based addiction patterns lead to unhealthy validation cycles.

• Screen time is displacing real-world connection and social skills, especially among teens.

We’ve been sold the illusion of connection through screens, but the body knows better.

In Ayurveda, we speak of Ojas (pronounced Oh-jus), the vital essence that sustains life. It’s built not only through food, but also through what we take in energetically: our thoughts, our conversations, our relationships. Ojas is nourished when we are in loving community, when we laugh, when we touch, and when we feel safe enough to be seen.

Connection Builds Ojas

Here’s the metaphor that really helped me make sense of it:

Social media connection is like junk food. It’s engineered to satisfy the craving without providing true nourishment. It gives the illusion of fullness but leaves the body—and heart—starving for what really matters. It’s like living off a box of microwaved Velveeta shells and cheese: fast, easy, maybe comforting for a moment, but ultimately depleting.

In-person connection is organic food. It nourishes Ojas. It supports immunity, strengthens our minds, balances our emotions, and grounds us in presence. Unlike the $5 bag of baby carrots at the store, this nourishment doesn’t have to be expensive or rare. It can be found in a conversation, a shared meal, or a spontaneous laugh.

We’ve been sold the illusion of connection through screens, but the body knows better.

In Ayurveda, we speak of Ojas (pronounced Oh-jus), the vital essence that sustains life. It’s built not only through food, but also through what we take in energetically: our thoughts, our conversations, our relationships. Ojas is nourished when we are in loving community, when we laugh, when we touch, and when we feel safe enough to be seen.

Connection builds Ojas.

That hug? That laugh? That long conversation over tea? That’s medicine.

Just like the Bhagavad Gita reminds us, lasting peace doesn’t come from chasing external desires, it comes from resting in the stillness within and recognizing our shared humanity. As Krishna teaches,

“He who sees the self in all beings and all beings in the self, such a man of wisdom does not feel any hatred.”

So this week, I want to gently challenge you to take one step toward reconnection. Nothing big. Just… something.

Connection practice:

• Compliment a passing stranger.

• Call your friend instead of just texting them.

• Invite someone for coffee (and actually make a plan).

• Tell someone you appreciate them and why.

• Ask someone how they really are and listen.

The world doesn’t need more perfection. It needs more people reaching out.

If you're looking for a place to start, I'm holding that space here.
You are not alone.
We are not meant to be alone.

References

• Holt-Lunstad, J. (2024). Social connection as a critical factor for mental and physical health: Evidence, trends, challenges, and future implications. DOI: 10.1002/wps.21224

• World Health Organization. (2022). COVID-19 pandemic triggers 25% increase in prevalence of anxiety and depression worldwide. Retrieved from: https://www.who.int/news/item/02-03-2022

• Hubbard, D. (2023). Five Surprising Health Benefits to Socializing with Others. Summa Health. Retrieved from: https://www.summahealth.org/flourish/entries/2023/12/five-surprising-health-benefits-to-socializing-with-others

• Kaiser Permanente. (2025). Does social media make you feel lonely? Here’s why and how to avoid it. Retrieved from: https://about.kaiserpermanente.org

• Bounds, D. (2024). Social media’s impact on our mental health and tips to use it safely. Betty Irene Moore Fellowship. Retrieved from: https://www.bettermindshealth.org

The Power of Rest

I used to get horrible migraines.

In my early 20s, I was riding high on youth, fueled by adrenaline, ambition, and way too much caffeine. I didn’t understand the subtle ways my body whispered warnings. So, it started screaming. My migraines were blinding. They hurt so badly I would vomit. Light, sound, and even movement became unbearable. Still, I refused to stop. I would recover, get another morphine injection, sleep for a day or two, and then return right back to the same grind that landed me there in the first place.

Until one day, I realized something.

The migraines weren’t random. They were warnings from my body’s alarm system blaring, “STOP.” When I started to actually listen, I began to heal.

Over time, I noticed a pattern: the more I built rest into my routine, the less the migraines came. The more I paused, the more space I gave myself to recover, and the more resilient I became. Now, if I start to feel that old ache creep in, I stop, breathe, and return to stillness. Usually, that’s enough.

Because I’ve come to understand: rest isn’t a luxury. It’s a strategy.

Rest Is Not the Absence of Action, It’s the Foundation of It

Too often we confuse rest with weakness, laziness, or stagnation. But from both ancient wisdom and modern science, we learn something different: rest is a sacred part of growth.

“It’s not emptiness, it’s potential.”

From the Vedic tradition, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi spoke of something called the Gap. This place is a moment of stillness, but it isn’t empty. Instead, it is filled with possibility. He explained that when activity comes to a stop, what follows isn’t just rest, it’s a space where anything can emerge. The Gap is that sacred pause between an inhale and an exhale, between action and result, between asking a question and receiving the answer. It’s not a void. It’s where creativity, healing, and insight are born.

When we allow ourselves to rest, we’re not doing nothing. Instead, we’re entering the richest space of all: the space where transformation begins. Rest is not stepping out of life, it is stepping deeper into it. It is what allows new ideas to rise, solutions to present themselves, and inner clarity to settle.

Maharishi taught that when activity ends, it doesn’t lead to nothingness, it leads to a place where anything can happen. The pause is not empty; it’s open. It’s the fertile soil in which clarity and creativity grow. What follows rest isn’t nothing, it’s next. The power of that next step lies in the quality of your pause.

Science Agrees: Rest Is Multidimensional

In her insightful research, Margareta Asp (2015) found that rest is not just stillness. It is being in harmony between motivation, feelings, and action. Asp describes the rhythm between rest and non-rest as essential for health. Rest includes:

• Letting go in confidence

• Being accepted without judgment

• Dwelling in calm and peace

• Perceiving pleasurable sensations

Non-rest, on the other hand, is not just busyness. It’s disharmony, a dissonance between your drive and your capacity. Staying in that space too long leads to depletion, despair, and disease.

That’s why rest must be deliberate, conscious, and it must be diverse.

The Seven Types of Rest

According to the American Psychological Association (Abramson, 2025), rest isn’t just about sleep. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith defines seven types of rest we all need:

1. Physical Rest: Not just naps, but massages, stretches, or simply lying down.

2. Mental Rest: Breaks from problem-solving, journaling, or allowing mindless moments.

3. Emotional Rest: Permission to stop performing, to cry, and to speak your truth.

4. Social Rest: Retreating from draining interactions and choosing soul-nourishing ones.

5. Sensory Rest: Less screen time, less noise, more time in stillness.

6. Creative Rest: Replenishing your sense of awe with beauty, nature, or joyful hobbies.

7. Spiritual Rest: Returning to meaning, connection, and quiet reflection.

Each type speaks to a different kind of fatigue and each one leaves its own clues. If your body aches and your eyelids feel heavy, it might be physical rest you’re lacking. If your thoughts are racing and you can’t concentrate, your mind may be crying out for mental rest. If you feel emotionally threadbare or like you're always performing, you probably need emotional rest. Start by observing where you feel most depleted. That’s your cue.

Why We Resist It and Why We Must Stop

Jimmy Evans (2024) writes in Psychology Today that most people set aside almost no time to actually rest. We associate rest with being unproductive or indulgent, fearing that if we slow down, we’ll lose our edge, fall behind, or let people down. But what really happens when we don’t rest?

We fray, we forget, and then we burn out. Worst of all? We become disconnected from ourselves.

Evans outlines three key insights that offer a springboard for redefining our relationship with rest:

1. Rest is a generator of energy, mental clarity, and wholehearted caring. This isn't just poetic. Think of rest like a deep breath in the middle of a chaotic day, not a stop sign, but a reset button. It's that quiet in-between moment where the pressure eases and space opens up. Instead of pushing through burnout, rest lets you pull from a deeper place inside. It’s not about quitting, it’s about reconnecting. That pause? That’s the place where possibility lives. When you rest, you’re not falling behind, you’re gathering the energy to leap forward.

2. Most people barely allow themselves any true rest. Hustle culture tells us that to stop is to fail. But this is a social and cultural conditioning that must be questioned. If we’re always in motion, when do we reflect? When do we realign? When do we remember what we’re working for in the first place? This is why so many of us, especially women, find ourselves burning out. We're following rules that deny us permission to stop.

3. Gentle tweaks to our routines, brief pauses, quiet space between tasks, a moment of breath, can help us reclaim it. Rest doesn’t have to be a dramatic overhaul. It can be small: a walk without your phone, a deep breath before a meeting, a moment in the sun before opening your laptop. These are our entries into the Gap. These are our deposits into the energy bank. Remember, as we explored in a previous blog, small changes are powerful. They ripple outward and rest is the softest, strongest ripple of them all.

Rest isn’t the opposite of productivity. It’s what allows productivity to flourish.

It is the hidden generator of momentum, resilience, and inner peace. When we fail to rest, we stop evolving. We become machines running on fumes, disconnected from the very life we’re working so hard to build.

Reclaiming Rest: Cultural and Personal Reframing

We live in a culture that worships hustle and demonizes rest. The constant pressure to be “on” has left us unable to distinguish between activity and progress. Productivity has become the measure of worth. And in that model, rest is failure.

But here’s the truth: rest isn’t laziness, it’s leadership and it’s ownership of your energy. It’s a form of spiritual rebellion against systems that benefit from your burnout. We weren’t made to be machines. We are cyclical, rhythmic, and dynamic beings.

To rest is to reclaim your rhythm.

Start by refusing the internalized shame around rest. Rest doesn’t require permission. It requires intention. Let’s stop viewing rest as something you have to earn. View it as something you must build with care and respect. Because your body, your mind, and your spirit are all sacred.

Gentle Integration: Rest as a Practice

Here’s a simple way to begin building rest into your rhythm:

1. Reflect: What kind of rest are you most depleted in right now? (Emotional? Mental? Creative?)

2. Reclaim: Choose one small way to invite that type of rest into your day. Ten minutes, that’s all it takes.

3. Ritualize: Pick a time (before work, after lunch, before bed) to pause, even for 60 seconds. Let that pause be a ritual, a return to yourself.

4. Reframe: Remind yourself: “This isn’t wasted time. It’s my way back to harmony.”

5. Restore: Let this moment be enough. Let it be your drop in the ocean. You don’t need a vacation. You need a rhythm.

How I Practice Rest in My Daily Life

Part of my daily rest comes at the very end of my day before I get into bed. I’ve created a detailed self-care routine that signals to my body: it’s time to stop.

I take a hot shower where I exfoliate and use scents that are pleasing to me and make me feel good. I go through my facial routine, gently massaging the tension out of my jaw and temples. I follow this with a self-massage known in Ayurveda as abhyanga (pronounced aw-bee-ah-n-guh). First lotion, then oil, something moisturizing and soothing, always with calming scents that help my nervous system settle.

Then I brush my teeth, braid my hair, and slip into comfortable, silky pajamas. These actions aren’t about vanity, they’re about reclaiming the end of my day as mine. They’re my way of closing the day with intention and ease.

I also try to keep Sunday as a sacred pause. No work, just home. Sometimes that means laundry but I’ll throw a load in and then play a video game while it runs. I sprinkle rest in with things that need to get done. I do what feels good in my body, what helps me feel grounded, and what makes me smile. That’s rest too.

Rest, for me, is a patchwork, a practice, and a promise.

It’s not always perfect. But it’s mine.

Final Thought: You Are Not Empty

When you pause, when you rest, when you do “nothing”… you’re not empty. You are full of potential.

Rest doesn’t delay your growth. It nourishes it.

It doesn’t block your creativity. It awakens it.

And it doesn’t take away your power. It restores it.

Let this blog be your weighted blanket. Let it be the Gap, that sacred space between breath and action. Then let your return from it be stronger, clearer, and more full of life than before.

You don’t have to earn it. You only have to allow it.

References

• Asp, M. (2015). Rest: A Health-Related Phenomenon and Concept in Caring Science. Global Qualitative Nursing Research, 2. https://doi.org/10.1177/2333393615583663

• Abramson, A. (2025). Seven types of rest to help restore your body’s energy. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2025/05/seven-types-of-rest

• Evans, J. (2024). Why We Should Encourage Our Minds to Rest. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/prescriptions-life/202401/why-we-should-encourage-our-minds-to-rest

• Nader, T. (2014). Human Physiology: Expression of Veda and the Vedic Literature. International Maharishi AyurVeda Foundation.

Waking Up in the Life You Haven’t Escaped

There’s a kind of despair that doesn’t scream. It doesn’t throw plates or slam doors. It settles in slowly, tightening around you until you can’t remember what hope felt like. It’s the kind of sadness that comes when you wake up and realize you’re still in a place you don’t want to be, still in a body that hurts, a life that feels like it was dropped on you instead of chosen by you.

I felt that despair in a burn rehab unit. I don’t know how long I had been there at that point. It was long enough that the initial shock had worn off, and the pain had faded into something quieter but heavier. I had started physical therapy. I could move. I could sit up. I could walk a little. But everything about me was tired.

My room had a wallpaper border near the ceiling, soft ocean tones, gray-blue seashells wrapping around the top edge like a beach I couldn’t escape. I’m sure it was meant to be calming. But to me, it was a cruel reminder. That wallpaper was the first thing I saw every morning, and with every glance, it reminded me: You are still here. You are still in this room. You are still in this body. You are still in this life that you didn’t choose.

One morning, I had a dream that I was home. It wasn’t just comforting, it was convincing. I believed, with every fiber of my being, that what I had gone through was just a dream. In that moment, I thought I was waking up in my own bed, in the comfort of my real life. I could hear my boyfriend and his friends laughing in the living room. Everything felt normal, familiar, safe. Everything was exactly the way it had been before the accident. When I opened my eyes, I was still smiling.

Then I saw the wallpaper.

I broke.

I started crying because I thought things had changed. I thought maybe the pain had passed. I thought maybe the storm had lifted. But no. I was still in that damn room. Still wearing someone else’s hospital gown. Still trying to piece together how I had gone from a normal life, a boyfriend, a career, a social life, to being trapped in a bed, unable to care for myself, covered in third-degree burns because of someone else’s mistake.

This wasn’t grief. This was desperation. It was the feeling of hitting the bottom and realizing that there is no clear ladder out. There’s only you, and the choice to keep climbing, even if your legs are shaking.

People ask me all the time: How did you do it? How did you survive that? Where did the strength come from?

I tell them: I had a picture in my mind. I knew what I wanted life to feel like. I couldn’t always see how to get there, but I could feel the shape of it: the safety, the warmth, the freedom. I wasn’t willing to let go of that picture. Even when it hurt. Even when it felt like it would never come.

It took years. Just over seventeen, to be exact: May 2008 to now, June 2025. From that seashell wallpaper to now. No, my life isn’t perfect however it is mine. It is built, not inherited. It is chosen, not assigned. I wake up now in a space that I love, doing work that lights me up, surrounded by people who don’t ask me to conform.

I still carry the scars. I always will. Some you can see and some you can’t. But I didn’t let that wallpaper define the rest of my life.

If you’re in a space right now that feels like a cage, if you’re waking up in a reality you didn’t choose, a pain you didn’t cause, I want you to know this:

You’re allowed to be angry. You’re allowed to feel trapped. You’re allowed to feel it all.

But please don’t let this room become your forever. Don’t confuse the middle for the end.

You’re still becoming, even in this. Especially in this.

One day, the life you dreamed of, the one that kept you going, will be the one you wake up in. You will know exactly what it took to get there.

But before we talk about healing, we have to talk about what we do with the pain. Because despair can make us disappear. It can bury us in silence, in smallness, in self-blame. Or it can provoke something powerful. It can wake the rage that refuses to let this be the end.

That’s the invitation I want to make with the rest of this piece, not to break under the weight of despair, but to burn through it. To feel the frustration, the anger, the sorrow, and to ask: what now? What do I do with this? How do I use it?

Because if the despair didn’t kill your spirit, it lit something in you. That fire is yours to work with.

Your Anger Is Valid, Now Use It

But until then, let’s talk about what no one tells us: it is okay to be angry. It is okay to feel trapped. Especially for women, especially in a society that tells us to be grateful, to be graceful, to endure. We are taught to apologize for our sadness, to justify our rage, and to explain our exhaustion.

But anger is a signal. Sadness is a truth-teller.

Feeling stuck doesn’t make you broken. It means your spirit knows you were meant for more.

Those feelings are not weaknesses. They are wisdom. They are the soul’s way of saying, “Not this. Not anymore.”

What if we stopped hiding our frustration under a smile? What if we honored our sadness instead of rushing past it? What if we understood our anger not as a failure of character, but as a function of clarity?

The truth is: we don’t heal by pretending we’re okay. We heal by giving ourselves permission to be exactly where we are, messy, mad, aching, and choosing to love ourselves there anyway.

Your emotions are not the enemy. They are the map. And anger? Anger is not a detour. It’s a compass. According to research by Thomas, Smucker, and Droppleman (1998) in their phenomenological study It Hurts Most Around the Heart, women often describe their anger as a complex and confusing mixture of emotions, hurt, frustration, disillusionment, building over time and triggered by violations of their core values. These triggers often stem from unfair or disrespectful treatment, or a lack of reciprocity in relationships. The study found that when anger was kept inside, women felt helpless and powerless. When it exploded outward, it often brought shame or a sense of lost control. But when women used their anger consciously, to restore justice, to reclaim respect, to demand relationship reciprocity. They reported feeling a sense of true power. This is the kind of anger that clarifies instead of confuses, strengthens instead of silences, and leads us back to ourselves.

You do not have to explode to be powerful. You do not have to suppress to be good. Anger doesn’t have to be a loss of control. It can be a return to it.

So if you’re feeling rage at what was taken from you, what you’re still fighting through, or how long it’s taking to rebuild, honor it. Use it. Let it move you toward justice, toward wholeness, toward the life that reflects the truth of who you are.

Because every time you feel deeply, especially when it’s inconvenient, especially when it’s fierce, you are not regressing. You are reclaiming.

Reclaiming your anger doesn’t mean lashing out. It means choosing to channel it thoughtfully, intentionally, powerfully. The truth is, most of us were never taught what to do with anger. We were taught to hide it, shame it, and fear it. But as author Rebecca Traister reminds us, women’s rage has always been a force for change. It’s what fueled movements for suffrage, civil rights, reproductive rights, and equity in every form.

We don’t need to suppress that fire. We need to learn how to work with it.

As Jill Suttie writes in her Greater Good article, How Women Can Use Their Anger for Good, anger is what psychologists call an activating emotion. It is one that propels us to engage rather than withdraw. This is exactly what is needed to drive not just personal healing, but collective change. Drawing on the work of Soraya Chemaly, Suttie explains how women have long been socialized to suppress their anger to maintain likability and perceived femininity. But suppressed anger doesn't vanish. It festers, often leading to depression, anxiety, and disempowerment.

Instead, Chemaly argues that when women consciously engage their anger, they can begin to undo centuries of social conditioning. She suggests practices like developing emotional self-awareness, reframing anger as assertiveness rather than aggression, and channeling rage into deliberate, courageous action. "Anger, not sadness, leads to perceptions of higher status and respect," Chemaly writes. It’s not just about venting. It’s about redirecting that fire to burn down what no longer serves, and to illuminate what must be rebuilt.

Your anger is not a liability. It’s a signal. It’s a source that, when honored rather than hidden, it becomes a tool for change personally and societally.

This is where the concept of sublimation becomes crucial. As Allison Abrams, LCSW-R, explains in her Psychology Today article The Power and Shame of Women’s Anger, sublimation is an adaptive defense mechanism. One in which the energy of a biological impulse, such as anger, is transformed into socially or morally constructive action. Rather than turning our rage inward or unleashing it in a way that harms others, sublimation invites us to use our anger for advocacy, creation, and change.

Anger doesn’t have to be ugly. It can be strategic. It can be beautiful. It can be the thing that finally breaks the silence. When we channel it through conscious action, we begin to heal not only ourselves, but the systems that taught us to stay quiet in the first place.

A Gentle Practice: Turning Anger into Action

If you’re holding anger right now, try this:

1. Name It Without Judgement. Sit quietly and ask yourself: What am I angry about, really? Is it the event? The disrespect? The loss of control? The feeling of being unheard?

2. Trace It to Your Values. According to research, women’s anger is often linked to violations of deeply held values. Ask: What value of mine was violated? Fairness? Respect? Safety?

3. Move It Through Your Body. Anger is energy. Move it. Shake. Dance. Walk. Scream into a pillow. Do what your body needs to release the static without hurting yourself or anyone else.

4. Choose a Conscious Response. Ask: What needs to change? What boundary needs to be set? What truth needs to be spoken? What action can I take to honor my anger without burning everything down?

5. Close With Compassion. Place your hand on your heart and say: "My anger is not wrong. My anger is a guide. I trust it to show me what matters."

This isn’t about becoming reactive. It’s about becoming responsive with clarity, with courage, and with care.

References

Abrams, A. (2020, February 23). The Power and Shame of Women’s Anger. Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/nurturing-self-compassion/202002/the-power-and-shame-womens-anger

Suttie, J. (2018, October 4). How Women Can Use Their Anger for Good. Greater Good Magazine. https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/how_women_can_use_their_anger_for_good

Thomas, S., Smucker, C., & Droppleman, P. (1998). It hurts most around the heart: A phenomenological exploration of women's anger. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 28(2), 311–320. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1365-2648.1998.00785.x

When Growth Feels Like Grief: The Hidden Losses of Healing

The idea for this week’s post came from a quiet conversation during a coaching session. A client sat across from me, hands folded in her lap, and said something I’ve heard too many times to count:

“I know I need to change. But what if that means losing everyone I love?”

Her words echoed something ancient in me. Because I’ve heard it before from friends, from students, and from the small voice inside myself in moments of transformation. This fear isn’t irrational, it’s relational. It’s rooted in how we’ve learned to bond and belong. Our earliest attachment patterns, shaped by caregivers and environments, influence not just how we navigate relationships, but how we face change. If you developed an anxious attachment style, your nervous system may interpret change as abandonment. If you lean avoidant, change might stir fears of vulnerability and dependence. Even a secure attachment doesn’t make grief vanish, it simply helps you move through it with more trust. So, it’s not just about making a change. It’s about untangling the invisible threads that tie your identity, safety, and connection to what you’ve always known.

We talk so much about growth as a good thing but we rarely talk about the grief that tags along. How we process this grief often traces back to our earliest attachment patterns. If you have an anxious attachment style, grief might surface as overwhelming panic or fear of being left behind. If you're more avoidant, you might push the grief aside, convincing yourself it doesn't matter. Those with fearful-avoidant styles may swing between desperately clinging to what's familiar and pushing it away out of fear. Even those with secure attachments will feel the sting of loss, just perhaps with more tools to move through it. Understanding your attachment style can help you meet your grief with greater compassion and self-awareness, rather than shame or judgment. This grief isn't proof that you're failing. It's proof that you're feeling and that’s part of the path forward.

Real growth will cost you. And often, the price isn’t just effort or time. It’s identity. It’s community. It’s roles you once played and people you once trusted. These roles and relationships were often shaped through the lens of attachment, ways you learned to stay connected and safe in your early environment. If your identity was built around meeting the needs of others to avoid conflict or abandonment, changing that identity might feel like betrayal. If your sense of belonging was tied to self-sufficiency and emotional distance, opening up might feel threatening. This is why letting go can feel like standing at the edge of a cliff. You're not just releasing patterns; you're confronting the nervous system’s deeply embedded belief that change equals danger. But it doesn't. It equals possibility.

This is the grief we don’t talk about but we should.

What You May Be Grieving

We tend to associate grief with death or separation. But grief is much more subtle and ever-present during a healing journey. Here are some of the hidden losses that surface:

1. Old Identities:

These are the masks we wore to survive. Often shaped by our attachment styles (The Attachment Project, 2025) and early family dynamics, these identities offered protection, praise, or a sense of stability in an otherwise chaotic world.

• The fixer: Always managing the chaos. Maybe you learned that if you solved everyone's problems, you wouldn’t be the source of them. Real-life example: The child who soothed arguments between parents becomes the adult who over functions in every relationship.

• The strong one: Never allowed to fall apart. This might have started with praise for being “mature for your age,” which became a cage where vulnerability felt like failure.

• The helper: Defined by what you do for others. Often rooted in a fear that love must be earned through sacrifice. This identity may stem from an anxious attachment style, where keeping others happy felt essential to avoid abandonment.

• The invisible one: Kept small to stay safe. Perhaps the best way to survive was to disappear into the background. Avoidant attachment can often fuel this role. Better to rely on no one than risk being disappointed.

These identities were never flaws. They were strategies. But healing asks: Can you thank them for what they offered, and then let them rest.

2. Familiar Dynamics:

These are the relationship patterns and emotional blueprints we inherited from our earliest environments. They include the roles we played, the unspoken rules we followed, and the ways we kept ourselves safe. This is often at the cost of our authenticity. For example, maybe you learned to calm everyone down during conflict to avoid being a target. That same instinct might now show up in your adult relationships as people-pleasing or emotional suppression. Maybe you grew up in chaos and felt most alive in intensity so now, calmness feels unsettling. These familiar dynamics can reappear in friendships, romantic partnerships, and even in how we relate to institutions like work or school. When we begin to heal, we start to notice how these dynamics no longer serve us. But releasing them can feel like losing a map we've always used, even if it led us in circles.

Healing invites us to replace these survival strategies with more conscious choices. But first, we must name them. Not to shame ourselves, but to understand them. Because when you can see the pattern, you can choose something new. The chaos you were used to

• The trauma bonds you mistook for love

• The emotional caretaking that made you feel needed

3. Family Roles (Wegscheider, 1981):

We often adopt specific roles in a dysfunctional family system. These roles are survival strategies, ways to navigate emotional minefields, reduce harm, or secure love and attention. While they helped us cope, they can become barriers to growth in adulthood. Let’s define a few of the most common roles:

• The Golden Child: Always praised and held up as the ideal. In adulthood, this role often leads to perfectionism, people-pleasing, and a fragile sense of worth tied to achievement.

• The Hero: The overachiever whose success hides family dysfunction. Heroes tend to carry immense pressure, burnout easily, and have difficulty asking for help.

• The Mascot: The comedian or entertainer who deflects pain through humor. In adulthood, this can lead to emotional avoidance and a struggle to be taken seriously.

• The Identified Patient / Black Sheep: Blamed for the family’s problems and often the truth-teller. This role can lead to shame, isolation, but also deep self-awareness.

• The Lost Child: Quiet, withdrawn, and overlooked. Often struggles with self-worth, decision-making, and feeling unseen in adulthood.

• The Enabler / Caretaker: Maintains appearances and smooths over dysfunction. Becomes overly responsible and self-sacrificing, often putting others' needs far above their own.

• The Parentified Child: Took on adult responsibilities too soon. May struggle with boundaries and feel compelled to rescue or manage others.

These roles can shift over time and overlap, but they all share a common goal: emotional survival. Healing asks us to name these roles, understand their origins, and gently begin to step out of them, without shame. Because these roles were never your whole identity. They were your training wheels. Now it’s time to learn how to ride without them. often adopt specific roles in a dysfunctional family system. These include:

• The golden child: Seen as the family’s pride. In adulthood, may struggle with perfectionism and external validation.

• The hero: Overachiever who masks dysfunction. Often burned out.

• The mascot: Uses humor to deflect pain. Can feel unseen or trivialized.

• The identified patient/black sheep: The scapegoat for family issues. Often the truth-teller.

• The lost child: Quiet, overlooked. Tends to struggle with identity and direction.

• The enabler/caretaker: Holds the family together, often at their own expense.

• The parentified child: Took on adult responsibilities too early. Often drawn to dysfunctional relationships later in life.

4. Coping Mechanisms: We all develop coping mechanisms to manage discomfort, navigate trauma, and survive painful or unstable environments. At the time, these patterns likely served an important purpose. They helped you stay connected, avoid punishment, reduce anxiety, or make sense of chaos. But what protects us as children can restrict us as adults.

Common examples include:

• Perfectionism: If being flawless was your way to earn love or avoid criticism, you may now hold yourself to impossible standards.

• Overworking: A constant hustle might have helped you feel useful or kept you from sitting with emotional pain, but it can lead to burnout and emotional disconnection.

• Emotional withdrawal: If showing emotions led to rejection or ridicule, you may have learned to shut down or numb out rather than risk vulnerability.

• Self-deprecation as humor: Laughing at yourself before others can was a way to gain control over pain but it can mask deeper wounds and reinforce low self-worth.

These mechanisms don’t disappear just because we want to heal. They feel familiar. They work until they don’t. Healing requires us to gently recognize when these habits no longer serve us. You may feel exposed without them, or unsure how to navigate life without your usual strategies. That’s normal. Letting go of these patterns might feel like losing a part of yourself, but in truth, it's making room for a version of you who doesn't need armor to feel safe. Perfectionism

• Overworking

• Emotional withdrawal

• Self-deprecation passed off as humor

These patterns were adaptive once. They protected you. But now they are in the way. And letting go of them feels like stepping off a cliff without a safety net.

Healing isn't just about what you gain. It's about who you're no longer willing to be.

Loyalty vs. Liberation

Here’s the tricky part: what if the things you need to let go of are tied to the people you love?

There’s a reason we stay stuck. Sometimes it’s not the change we’re afraid of. It’s the disloyalty it might imply.

• If I speak up, will I betray my family?

• If I stop shrinking, will I outgrow my friends?

• If I heal, will I still belong?

These aren’t abstract questions. These are the quiet battles that play out in real life. Every time you feel guilty for choosing rest or doubt your worth because you’re not following the path someone else laid out for you.

This is where metaphor meets reality.

We’ve all heard about the crabs in a barrel, popularized by Booker T. Washington in his 1901 book, “Up From Slavery”. When one crab tries to climb out, the others pull it back, not out of malice, but because that’s what’s familiar. Familiarity often masquerades as love, even when it’s stifling. Now compare that to the capuchin monkeys from a well known study (Barnes et al., 2008). One monkey could reach a food bowl, while the other couldn’t. The first monkey pulled the bowl closer, not for its own benefit, but to help the other. That’s the power of unconditional support. Not “I’ll love you if you stay the same,” but “I’ll love you even as you grow.”

So ask yourself:

Are you surrounded by crabs or capuchins?

Are the people around you pulling you down or pulling for you?

I’ve lived this. My own liberation came when I stopped being loyal to the version of me my family wanted. My father had a clear vision of how I should live, one based on his values, not mine. My mother, my siblings, and everyone seemed to follow a familiar script. I was the one who stepped out of that mold. For a long time, that felt like betrayal. I worried I was selfish, ungrateful, and wrong.

But here’s what I’ve learned:

Living according to someone else’s vision isn’t loyalty. It’s self-abandonment.

Since choosing my own path, I’ve earned degrees, launched a business, found purpose, and am now pursuing a PhD. Things I never could’ve done if I stayed small to keep the peace.

So now it’s your turn.

Look at your life.

• What version of you are you being loyal to?

• Who are you still trying to please?

• What would happen if you released that loyalty and chose liberation?

This isn’t about cutting ties recklessly. It’s about cutting cords consciously with love, truth, and courage. Because loyalty that costs you your authenticity isn't loyalty. It’s bondage dressed as belonging and you deserve more than that.

You’re Not Failing, You’re Feeling

If healing feels hard, that’s not a sign that you’re failing. It’s a sign that you’re feeling. And feeling…is a lot. Especially if you’ve spent years building up emotional scar tissue through numbing, distraction, over-functioning, or hiding parts of yourself to survive. These protective strategies become deeply woven into the nervous system. When we begin to peel them back, even gently, the rawness underneath can be disorienting.

From an Ayurvedic perspective, this disorientation is not weakness. It’s evidence of movement, of internal shifts in the flow of prana (life force) and manas (the mind). Change challenges the mind-body system, especially when it's been locked in compensatory patterns for years.

Different doshic imbalances show up in different ways during times of transition:

• Vata (air + space) resists routine but desperately needs grounding. When change accelerates, Vata individuals may feel anxious, scattered, or overwhelmed. Their minds may race with "what-ifs," and their bodies may respond with digestive upset, fatigue, or insomnia.

• Pitta (fire + water) craves structure and control. The loss of a role, identity, or plan can spark irritability, anger, or physical inflammation. The Pitta mind resists surrender, it wants to solve the discomfort. But healing is not a problem to be solved. It's a process to be supported.

• Kapha (earth + water) clings to familiarity and routine. Letting go of people, coping mechanisms, or patterns, even dysfunctional ones, can trigger depression, stagnation, or numbness. Kapha may say, “I’m fine,” but underneath is a heaviness that feels immovable.

What we call "resistance to change" is often just the nervous system trying to protect you from perceived danger. Not because growth is unsafe but because difference requires energy. Energy your body isn’t used to allocating toward uncertainty. This is where Ayurveda and neuroscience speak the same language: The unfamiliar requires more processing power. And if you’re already tired, overwhelmed, or emotionally threadbare, even beneficial change can feel like a threat. So let’s flip the script.

When you feel the urge to run, shut down, or control every detail…pause.

Ask yourself: What am I suppressing to avoid growing?

Because according to Maharishi AyurVeda, the single greatest cause of imbalance is the suppression of natural urges. This doesn’t just mean holding back a sneeze or skipping a meal. It means:

• repressing emotions.

• Stifling your voice.

• Pretending you're okay when you're not

• Forcing yourself to fit where you no longer belong

Each time we deny our natural drive to grow, we distort the flow of prana and increase ama, the toxins that accumulate from unprocessed experiences.

But there’s good news: Your nature is to grow.

As Maharishi taught, “The nature of life is to grow.” Growth is not something you must force. It’s something you must allow.

Healing doesn’t ask you to push harder. It asks you to feel what you’ve been avoiding and trust that what emerges from that space is not a breakdown but a beginning.

So let the grief rise.
Let the feelings come.
Let the system shake a little as it reorganizes around a new truth.

You're not regressing, you're realigning and that is sacred work.

IV. Making Peace with Letting Go

We think healing means being free of pain. But often it means honoring what pain protected us from. It means grieving the parts of our lives that kept us safe, even when they held us back. You are allowed to grieve the old version of you. You are allowed to miss the familiar. You are still allowed to move forward.

You can love what was and still choose what’s next.

This is like the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. He’s standing at the edge of a massive chasm, desperate to get to the other side. There is no visible bridge. Just empty air. But the path forward requires a leap of faith. He steps and only then does the hidden bridge appear beneath his feet.

That’s what letting go feels like. You may not see the path but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.

Reflection Activity: Honoring the Grief of Growth

1. Name what you’re grieving. Is it a role? A relationship? A coping mechanism?

2. Ask yourself: What purpose did it serve? How did it help you survive?

3. Acknowledge your feelings. Sadness? Guilt? Anger? All are welcome.

4. If your best friend were grieving this, what would you say to her? Write it down.

5. Now say that to yourself. Out loud.

Finally, place your hand over your heart and say:

Thank you for what you were. I honor your role in my survival. I choose now to grow.

Healing doesn’t mean you don’t look back. It means you learn to keep walking anyway. Whatever you’re leaving behind, you’re allowed to grieve it. You’re allowed to miss it. And you’re still allowed to outgrow it. Even the most beautiful cage is still a cage. You don’t owe your loyalty to anything that asks you to abandon yourself. Healing will always feel like stepping into the unknown. But here’s the secret: you’re not stepping into nothing. You’re stepping into yourself. The path is there even if you can’t see it yet. And with every step, the ground rises up to meet you.

References

Barnes, J. L., Hill, T., Langer, M., Martinez, M., & Santos, L. R. (2008). Helping behaviour and regard for others in capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella). Biology Letters, 4(6), 638–640. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2008.0410

The Attachment Project. (2025, May 26). The Four Attachment Styles: How They Form and How to Recognize Them. https://www.attachmentproject.com/blog/four-attachment-styles/

Washington, B. T. (1901). Up from slavery: An autobiography. Doubleday, Page & Co.

Wegscheider, S. (1981). Another Chance: Hope and Health for the Alcoholic Family. Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behavior Books. pp. 85-88.

The Delicate Dance: Discipline, Flexibility, and the Truth About Change

Yesterday, my family and I went out furniture shopping. After months of dealing with a couch destroyed by our husky’s zoomies, we were finally ready to upgrade. While we were browsing, the woman helping us struck up a conversation. She asked what I do for a living, and I told her about my work: the books, the coaching, the research, the writing. She smiled and said, “That’s so needed. I’m one of those people who knows what to do, I just don’t have the discipline.”

That sentence really resonated. Not because I haven’t heard it before, but because I’ve said it before and maybe you have, too.

We often mistake discipline for deprivation, for gritting our teeth and muscling our way through a transformation. We think we have to become someone else to change. Someone stricter, sharper, and less feeling. But that’s not how the body works or how nature works, either. When we approach change like a military bootcamp, our bodies revolt, sometimes quietly, sometimes loudly.

What Rigidity Really Does to the Body

When we force ourselves into rigid discipline, we trigger the stress response. Whether it’s a crash diet, a cold plunge into an intense new routine, or demanding motivation without emotional support, the body interprets it as a threat.

Under stress, the prefrontal cortex, home to our logic, planning, and long-term thinking, starts to go offline (Arnsten, 2009). That’s because the body thinks it’s in danger. The baton is passed to the amygdala (fear), hippocampus (memory), and hypothalamus (homeostasis), which are all lower-brain regions that respond emotionally and instinctively (Ulrich-Lai & Herman, 2009). So we start making decisions not from clarity, but from panic, self-doubt, or shutdown.

Meanwhile, the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis is sounding the alarm, releasing cortisol and adrenaline. Digestion slows, inflammation increases, and we feel tired, foggy, or achy (McEwen, 2004). Sleep becomes disrupted, mental focus is diminished, and the body begins to experience low-grade chronic inflammation, which can lead to discomfort and emotional dysregulation (Besedovsky et al., 2012).

This is where burnout begins and why so many people who start with good intentions find themselves exhausted, binging, or giving up. In fact, severe food restriction has been shown to elevate cortisol and increase the likelihood of binging (Tomiyama et al., 2010).

We are not just fighting bad habits, we’re fighting our physiology.

Other consequences of rigid discipline include:

• Rebound behaviors, such as binge eating or abandoning routines altogether

• Increased guilt and shame, when perfection isn’t sustained

• Physical symptoms, including headaches, digestive issues, and fatigue

• Mental exhaustion and decision fatigue, which undermine self-trust, making us question if we are doing the right thing.

• Disordered relationships with food, exercise, or self-worth, stemming from all-or-nothing thinking

Discipline, Strictness, and Restriction: What’s the Difference?

We often use these terms interchangeably, but they carry very different energies:

• Discipline is self-guided. It’s rooted in purpose and self-respect. It can also be rooted in codes of behavior that lead to punished when broken. Healthy discipline is aligned with values and creates consistency over time.

• Strictness is externally imposed or performative. It often stems from fear, control, or comparison. It means we never break the “rules”, no matter what.

• Restriction is usually deprivation-based. It’s about removing or denying, often without room for flexibility or compassion.

When we think we need “more discipline,” what we usually need is a shift in energy from punishment to partnership.

Part II: Ayurveda and the Cost of Rigidity

Ayurveda gives us another lens to see this through. The three doshas (remember those from previous blogs: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha) each respond differently to rigidity.

• Vata (Air + Space) needs routine to stay grounded, but not chains. Too much rigidity leaves Vata feeling trapped, scattered, or rebellious. A better approach is rhythmic structure with room to breathe, flexible anchors, not rigid walls.

• Pitta (Fire + Water) thrives on structure, but can overdo it. Rigidity overheats Pitta, leading to irritability, inflammation, and eventual burnout. They crash not from lack of effort, but from overexertion without emotional regulation.

• Kapha (Earth + Water) appreciates consistency, but rigidity adds to their natural heaviness. They may slow down, withdraw, and lose their spark entirely. Instead of igniting change, rigidity can extinguish their inner fire. Instead, depression and procrastination takes hold.

Ayurveda doesn’t praise discipline for its own sake. It praises balance and honors effort that aligns with nature. Not effort that fights against it.

Part III: The Dance of Flexibility and Self-Control

So what do we do when we want to change?

We learn the dance.

Discipline isn’t a whip. It’s a rhythm. It’s choosing to show up with grace, not punishment. Flexibility isn’t laziness, it’s intelligent rest. It’s learning when to bend so we don’t break.

It’s the difference between:

• Forcing yourself to meditate for 30 minutes and resenting it...

  vs.

• sitting down for 5 minutes because you know it nourishes your nervous system.

It’s the difference between:

• Eating "perfectly" all week and then bingeing because you're depleted...

  vs.

• nourishing your body with intention and leaving space for joy.

The secret isn’t in the rules. It’s in the relationship you build with yourself.

A Reflection Activity: The Middle Way

Let’s explore your own dance between discipline and flexibility.

1. Recall a time you "failed" or didn’t follow through.

   • What were you trying to do?

   • What was the pressure or story behind your effort?

2. Without judgment, describe how your body felt during that time.

   • Was there tension? Fatigue? Hunger? Frustration?

3. Name the emotion underneath.

   • Were you overwhelmed? Lonely? Ashamed? Confused?

4. Now imagine a friend you adore is feeling exactly this.

   • What would you say to them? How would you support them?

5. Now say that to yourself. Out loud. In the mirror. In your journal. Let it land.

6. Ask yourself: What would balance look like next time?

   • What’s one small step that feels like a choice, not a punishment?

Remember: One Snickers bar isn’t a failure. Five in a row might be a flag. But what matters most isn’t how many bars you eat. It’s whether the choices you make feel aligned with the life you want to live.

Change doesn’t require war. It requires relationship with your body, rhythm, and inner wisdom.

You don’t need more discipline.
You need more kindness.
From there, the rhythm will come.

References

Arnsten, A. F. T. (2009). Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410–422. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2648

Besedovsky, L., Lange, T., & Born, J. (2012). Sleep and immune function. Pflugers Archiv - European Journal of Physiology, 463(1), 121–137. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00424-011-1044-0

McEwen, B. S. (2004). Protection and damage from acute and chronic stress: Allostasis and allostatic overload and relevance to the pathophysiology of psychiatric disorders. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1032, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1196/annals.1314.001

Tomiyama, A. J., Mann, T., Vinas, D., Hunger, J. M., Dejager, J., & Taylor, S. E. (2010). Low calorie dieting increases cortisol. Psychosomatic Medicine, 72(4), 357–364. https://doi.org/10.1097/PSY.0b013e3181d9523c

Ulrich-Lai, Y. M., & Herman, J. P. (2009). Neural regulation of endocrine and autonomic stress responses. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 397–409. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2647

The Ayurvedic knowledge can be attributed to my time as a student, instructor, and faculty member at Maharishi International University (miu.edu)

The Wisdom of Effort

Yesterday, my daughter Zoey and I found a fledgling bird on our patio. It was soaked from rainstorm that had pushed through, unable to fly, and clearly not okay. It fluttered toward some birdseed but couldn't take off. I thought maybe it had just left the nest too early and gotten hypothermic. So, we dried it gently with a towel, made it a warm and safe nest in a box, and set it inside to rest through the storm. I did everything I could. I researched, reached out to people I trust and who have raised birds, and even asked ChatGPT.

But when I woke up the next morning, the bird had passed away.

I cried.

Not because I didn’t try hard enough but because I did. I did everything right. I laid out the best plan I could. I followed through with care. I used all the tools, all the wisdom, all the love available to me. Yet it didn’t matter. It didn’t work out the way I hoped.

That moment held something sacred.

Because here’s what no one likes to admit:

We can do everything right and still fail.

We can have the knowledge, the resources, the mentors and still lose the job, still mess up the launch, still fall short of the goal. The world does not always bend to effort. However, that doesn’t mean effort is wasted.

This is where many people give up. They hit a wall, feel the sting of failure, and convince themselves they’re not cut out for what they had hoped to achieve. They stop trying not because they’re lazy, but because trying but being unsuccessful hurts. Because effort without reward can feel like futility.

But I want to offer a different perspective:

Effort itself is a form of wisdom.

It tells you who you are.
It shows you what you value.
It builds something in you, even when the outcome looks like loss.

After burying the bird under a crepe myrtle in my flower garden, I sat quietly. My heart was heavy, but I knew I had honored its life. I had also honored my effort.

As I sit writing this at my desk I have looked out my bedroom window, where a small bird feeder is suctioned to the glass. I have noticed something beautiful: a flurry of birds came and went all day long, eating the seed I had put out. My effort for one bird may not have panned out, but the care I offered continued to ripple in ways I hadn’t seen.

Not every effort is fruitless. Some just bloom in different directions.

Maybe that’s the lesson I needed most.

In our home, my husband and I tell our kids the same thing over and over: “We don’t expect perfection, just effort.” Didn’t get the grade you wanted? That’s okay. Did you try? Then we’re proud. We celebrate that.

Because effort is all we ask.

And if I believe that for my children, if I teach them that trying is more important than succeeding on the first try, then I need to offer that same grace to myself. To honor my own effort and recognize the sacredness in showing up, even when the outcome isn’t what I imagined.

So today, I want to invite you into this reflection with me.

Where in your life are you giving everything you’ve got, even if the outcome hasn’t matched your hopes?
Where have you quietly honored effort, even when no one noticed?
Where have you dismissed your progress just because it didn’t come wrapped in a win?

Let’s change that.

Let’s reclaim the wisdom in effort.
Let’s stop seeing setbacks as proof we’re not enough, and start seeing them as invitations to keep going.

Because (the towel, the box, the care, the research, the love) you gave something of yourself. That is not nothing, it is everything.

So today, refill your feeder.
Notice where your effort still ripples.
Celebrate the sacredness of trying.

Even when things don’t go as planned, your effort is never wasted.

It’s the root of wisdom.
The start of change.
The seed of every real shift.

Reflection Practice: Honoring Your Effort, Even When It Didn’t Work Out

Take a few quiet moments with a journal or your notes app. You don’t have to fix anything, just bring gentle awareness. This is not a time for judgment. Instead, approach this moment with kindness and curiosity.

1. Recall a time when things didn’t go the way you hoped.
It could be something big or small. A job you didn’t get, a conversation that went sideways, a personal goal that didn’t land.

• What happened? What did you hope would happen instead?

2. List the effort you gave.
Think about all the ways you showed up.

• Did you prepare? Research? Try something new? Seek help? Stay consistent?

• Write down everything you can remember doing, even the invisible effort.

3. Set aside judgment. Gently notice what you’re feeling.

• What emotions come up as you revisit this moment?

• Where do you feel them in your body?

• Is there any shame, regret, anger, grief? Can you name them without rushing to fix them?

4. Detach the outcome from your identity.
This is just something that happened. It is not who you are.

• What stories are you telling yourself about this “failure”?

• If you were watching a friend go through this, what would you say to them?

• Would you offer grace? Encouragement? A reminder of their heart?

5. Offer that same kindness to yourself.

• What would it feel like to believe effort still matters, even when it didn’t “work”?

• Can you write yourself a short note of compassion or encouragement as if you were your own best friend?

6. Ask: What did this effort build in me?

• Did it clarify what matters to you? Strengthen your resilience? Teach you something new?

• Even if the result wasn’t what you wanted, what did the process grow in you?

7. Close by affirming your effort.
Take one deep breath. Say (or write):

“I tried. I showed up. That matters.”

Let that be your offering to the day. You are not defined by what went wrong. You are shaped by how deeply you cared.

The Power of Small Shifts: Why Motivation Starts with Meaning

We all love the idea of a fresh start. New Year, new you. The vision boards, the meal plans, the gym memberships. It feels like this time will be different. But come the second Friday of January, aka “Quitter’s Day,” many of us find ourselves sitting on the kitchen floor, spoon-deep in a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, wondering why we just can’t seem to make the change stick.

It’s not that we’re lazy. It’s not that we don’t want it badly enough. It’s that we’re trying to change without aligning our goals with the three pillars of sustainable motivation:

• Our personal values

• Our environment

• Our expectations

Let’s break these down.

1. Values: The Fuel Behind Motivation

Here’s the truth: if a goal doesn’t truly matter to you, you won’t stay with it. Not when life gets hard. Not when you’re tired, overwhelmed, or pulled in six directions.

Take me, for example. I would love to exercise more. But right now, I value my PhD work, writing, and content creation more than I value hitting the treadmill. That’s not a failure, it’s clarity. This clarity allows me to be intentional with how I spend my time. It also helps me to feel less guilty when I have spent all day behind a computer writing my blog, making social media posts, and adding to my study proposal.

We often skip this step. We set goals based on what we think we should do (eat better, move more, write the book, be more productive) but never stop to ask: Do I actually value this? Or am I just absorbing someone else’s expectation?

Your values are not just personal. They’re shaped by your culture, family, relationships, and worldview. Sometimes, your goals are in direct conflict with the deeper programming you've inherited. Are you chasing someone else’s idea of success? Are you setting goals from a place of shame, guilt, or comparison? If so, your motivation will wither the moment life gets hard.

To truly understand whether a goal aligns with your values, it helps to examine the layers that construct them:

Family & Inner Circle Values

These are the messages you grew up with or absorbed from those closest to you. They can show up in statements like:

• “Hard work means long hours.”

• “Rest is lazy.”

• “You need to be successful to be loved.”

These internalized beliefs can run the show without us even realizing it. You might say you value health but if your family modeled hustle culture and skipped meals, it may feel “wrong” to slow down and eat mindfully, even if it’s what you want.

Social & Cultural Values

These are the broader messages from your community, culture, or society. They often come in the form of norms, media, or shared ideals:

• “Thin is better.”

• “Success means money and status.”

• “Mothers should sacrifice everything for their children.”

These values are tricky because they can feel like truth when they’re really just repeated messages. If you’re trying to live more intuitively but constantly see influencers glorifying grind culture, you may feel conflicted, torn between what your soul needs and what the world praises.

Personal View Values

These are the values that emerge when you slow down and ask, What truly matters to me?
They sound like:

• “I want to feel good in my body, not shrink it.”

• “I value peace more than productivity.”

• “Joy matters just as much as achievement.”

This is where clarity lives. These are the values that give your goals longevity, because they’re rooted in your truth, not someone else’s template.

When your goals reflect your personal values, not the ones handed to you, they begin to nourish you instead of drain you. They feel like home. And they’re much more likely to stick.

This is why so many people struggle with resolutions. The goal doesn’t match the value. When it does, motivation becomes renewable.

Ask yourself: Do I truly care about this, or do I just feel like I should?

2. Environment: Make the Right Choice the Easy One

Motivation isn’t just willpower. It’s design.

You can have the clearest intentions and strongest desires but if your surroundings are set up to support your old patterns, you’ll default to them every time. Not because you’re weak, but because your brain is wired for efficiency.

If the cookies are front and center on the counter while the fruit is buried in the crisper drawer… guess what you’re reaching for at 9 p.m.?

If your sneakers are tucked away in the back of the closet and your cute-but-painful shoes are at the front door, you’re not taking the stairs, you’re taking the elevator.

If your phone is your alarm clock, your day probably starts with social media noise instead of intention.

We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our systems.

Your environment is your system.

This is where intentionality comes in.

When you’re trying to form a new habit or live in alignment with a goal, your environment has to reflect that change. Ask yourself:

• Does my space support the behavior I want to build?

• What’s in my line of sight?

• What’s easy to reach?

• What feels like a friction point?

Even subtle shifts can make a difference. Prepping your journal and a pen next to your bed. Setting out your walking shoes and water bottle the night before. Organizing your pantry so the nourishing options are visible first.

Here’s the truth:
At first, it will take effort. Your brain won’t love it. It prefers familiar, energy-efficient loops. But the more you repeat the new behavior, and the more you prime your space to support it, the easier it becomes. Familiarity is comfort, but comfort can be re-trained.

Eventually, the fruit on the counter becomes the default snack.
The shoes by the door become an invitation.
The open journal becomes a ritual instead of a resolution.

The environment you build becomes the behavior you embody.

So take a moment. Look around.
Is this space designed for the version of you you’re becoming or the version you’re trying to outgrow?

If it’s the latter…no shame. Just information. Now you know where to begin.

3. Stretch, Don’t Snap: Finding the Sweet Spot Between Real and Ideal

Sometimes, without realizing it, we build our goals like we’re writing a script for someone else to star in.

The version of us who never skips a workout.
The version who loves meal prepping and color-coded calendars.
The one who wakes up early, never loses her temper, and always has the energy for one more thing.

We imagine her clearly and then try to force ourselves to be her. But here’s the thing:
That version of you? She’s a vision, not a villain.
She’s aspirational but she’s not in charge.

Because the you that’s here, right now, navigating real-life deadlines, messy emotions, limited spoons, and noisy households—is the one actually doing the work. She deserves goals built for her. We think motivation is about how badly we want it but the real secret is in how well we build it.

There is a delicate balance between challenge and attainability., where we want to be and where we are.
If a goal isn’t challenging, we get bored. It feels like we’re not progressing.
If a goal isn’t attainable, we burn out. We feel like we’re failing before we even begin.

When we make a goal for where we want to be, we don’t honor where we are. We set the bar too high and, after a while of trying to reach it, we give up.

So what’s the sweet spot?

It’s that walk that gets your heart rate up but doesn’t leave you limping the next day.
It’s swapping your afternoon soda for sparkling water not cutting every indulgence cold turkey.
It’s journaling for five minutes while your coffee brews instead of expecting a 90-minute morning ritual.

These small, thoughtful shifts add up especially when they’re aligned with who you really are right now.

Real Self vs. Ideal Self: Who’s Setting the Goal?

This is the hardest, and most powerful part of change.

We all carry two versions of ourselves:

• The Real Self: The version of you that exists in this moment. With your current energy, schedule, responsibilities, and emotional landscape.

• The Ideal Self: The version of you that’s been curated in your mind. She’s fit, balanced, radiant, accomplished, endlessly motivated… and somehow has more hours in her day.

Here’s the catch: most of us set goals from the perspective of the ideal self. When the real self can’t keep up, we feel like failures. But you’re not a failure. You’re just not her. Not yet.

Being honest about where you are today is not weakness, it’s strategy because only from truth can we build something that lasts.

So how do you tell the difference?

Ask yourself:

• Does this goal feel exciting or obligatory?

• Am I trying to earn worth or honor it?

• Would I still pursue this if no one saw me do it?

• Am I making this change for me, or for someone else’s approval?

Self-concept isn’t static. It’s built and shaped over time through your values, your past experiences, your relationships, and your aspirations.

And when your self-concept is rooted in who you are rather than who you think you’re supposed to be, you’re finally free to grow from a place of wholeness, not lack.

Remember:

You’re not behind.
You’re not broken.
You don’t need to “fix” yourself to be worthy of care, rest, or joy.

You just need to start where you are.
With goals that stretch you but don’t break you.
With intentions that grow with you not against you.

Ask yourself: Is this goal based on who I am today or who I wish I were already?

The Motivation Formula

Lasting motivation = Values alignment + Supportive environment + Attainable expectations

If any one of those is missing, you’ll find yourself slipping into old patterns, not because you’re broken, but because your system is incomplete.

Want to test this for yourself?

Reflective Exercise: Aligning Your Goal with What Actually Works

Take a moment to think about a goal you’ve struggled to achieve. Maybe it’s one you’ve revisited over and over—always with the best of intentions, but never quite making it stick.

This isn’t about blame or failure. This is about getting honest—so you can get strategic.

Now, ask yourself:

Does this goal align with what I truly value right now?

Not what you wish you valued. Not what others think you should value. What matters most to you in this current season of life?

• What parts of your life are getting your energy, attention, and care?

• What do you protect time for even when things get busy?

• Are you setting this goal because it feels authentic, or because it feels expected?

If your goal doesn’t line up with your current values, motivation will fade fast.
Ask: Can I adjust this goal so it honors what I actually care about?

Is my environment set up to support this goal or sabotage it?

Look around you. Your environment is quietly influencing your choices all day long.

• Is the healthy food easy to grab, or buried in the crisper drawer?

• Are your sneakers by the door or still in a gym bag under a pile of laundry?

• Is your journal on the nightstand or is your phone winning the bedtime battle?

Your habits are shaped by what’s visible, accessible, and easy to engage with.
Ask: What can I shift in my space to make the desired behavior the default behavior?

Are my expectations for myself realistic and sustainable?

This is where the ideal self often takes over, creating a version of success that requires you to be a totally different person with limitless time and energy.

But here’s the truth:
The real you, the one juggling work, family, fatigue, and real emotions, needs to be the one your goals are built for.

• Does this goal make space for your current responsibilities?

• Is the timeline doable without burning you out?

• Will this goal still make sense on your hardest day?

Challenge can be motivating. But if the goal isn’t attainable, it becomes punishment.
Ask: What’s the sweet spot between stretch and sustainability?

Is this goal for the real me or the fantasy me?

If you feel stuck, it may be time to gently revise your goal, your plan, or your pace. Not because you’re weak, but because you’re wise enough to adjust instead of abandon.

Use these prompts to realign:

• What can I simplify without losing purpose?

• How can I better support myself in following through?

• Where am I trying to become someone I’m not, instead of becoming more of who I am?

Ready to Go Deeper?

My Breaking the Cycle journal workbook is designed to help you walk through this process step by step. It’s gentle, insightful, and rooted in real-world change, not fantasy.

You can find it in the Workshops and Offerings section of my site.

Final Thoughts

Change isn’t about flipping a switch. It’s about rewiring a path and that takes time, intention, and grace.

Every small step you take is a signal to your nervous system, your mindset, your identity:
This is who I’m becoming.

You don’t need a perfect morning routine, a color-coded plan, or the motivation of a superhero.

You just need honesty, alignment, and the courage to begin where you are.

Let that be enough, for today, and for the next right step after that.

Because real transformation doesn’t come from pushing harder.
It comes from building smarter.
It comes from rooting change in who you actually are.

And when that happens?

The shift is no longer a struggle.
It becomes a coming home.

References

Boer, Diana, and Klaus Boehnke. “What Are Values? Where Do They Come From? A Developmental Perspective.” Handbook of Value, 1 Oct. 2015, pp. 129–152, academic.oup.com/book/7143/chapter/151694667?login=true, https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198716600.003.0007.

Cherry, Kendra. “What Is Self-Concept?” Verywellmind, 29 July 2024, www.verywellmind.com/what-is-self-concept-2795865.

Clear, James. Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones. New York, Penguin Publishing Group, 16 Oct. 2018.

Magazine, Psychologs. “Ideal Self vs Real Self.” Psychologs Magazine | Mental Health Magazine | Psychology Magazine | Self-Help Magazine, 9 Jan. 2024, www.psychologs.com/ideal-self-vs-real-self/?srsltid=AfmBOoqUreCpRbBnXfUexobWIpOjNaljOyfLEFAIwcKz2BKYyQZZp_hB. Accessed 30 May 2025.

Ponizovskiy, Vladimir, et al. “Social Construction of the Value–Behavior Relation.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 10, no. 934, 1 May 2019, pdfs.semanticscholar.org/aefe/636ac006618cde29e82baa9c0ef1c3fb0c4d.pdf?_ga=2.56974122.1258809790.1601865472-1207177935.1600132914, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00934.

Stone, Allan, and Nicole San Roman. “The “Why” Matters: Setting Successful Goals.” UNM HSC Newsroom, 2024, hscnews.unm.edu/news/setting-successful-goals.

Taylor, Jim. “Personal Growth: Your Values, Your Life.” Psychology Today, 7 May 2012, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-power-prime/201205/personal-growth-your-values-your-life.

Yale University. “Hit the Mark When You Set SMART Goals | It’s Your Yale.” Your.yale.edu, 2024, your.yale.edu/hit-mark-when-you-set-smart-goals.

You Have the Map: Now Let’s Walk the Landscape

Over the last few months, I’ve written a lot about the Ayurvedic view of the mind, about emotional suppression, about what it means to honor your Prakriti, your natural self. We’ve explored how imbalance arises, what it feels like in the body, and what it looks like in the mind. We’ve looked at the monsters we carry and the internal landscapes we try to ignore. In short, I’ve given you the map.

But a map doesn’t mean much if you don’t know how to use it.

So now, we shift.

This next phase is all about integration. It’s about what you do with the wisdom when the baby’s crying, the bills are due, your boss is being impossible, or your heart is just tired. It’s about using what you’ve learned in real time, in real life.

I want to start sharing more content that brings this home. Down from the theory and into the kitchen, the workplace, the school pickup line, and the hard conversations. Because healing doesn’t just happen in our journals or on the meditation cushion. It happens in the small, daily decisions we make when no one is watching.

In this new series of blog posts and social content, you’ll find:

• Simple self-awareness prompts tied to dosha principles

• Examples of everyday moments and how imbalance shows up

• Gentle practices that help you re-align with your nature without perfectionism

• Real-life stories, small wins, and vulnerable lessons

So if you’ve read the previous posts and thought,

“This all makes sense, but now what?”

this is your invitation. You already have the map. Let’s start walking the path together.

Stay tuned: we’re about to make Ayurveda real, relatable, and rooted in daily life.

When Life Happens…

Here’s the truth: I’m writing this while balancing a full-time job, pursuing a PhD, raising a teenager, and running a business with my husband. Add in meals, sleep, meditation, movement, and trying not to drown in emails and it often feels impossible. Because, honestly, it is impossible. We were not made to handle all these things on our own. The idea of the “nuclear family” or even the two working parents raising kids on their own is a completely new concept in the timeline of humanity. It isn’t how we were made to work and operate.

So if you’re reading this thinking, “I can’t even keep up with basic self-care,”

I see you.

I am you.

I want you to hear this clearly:

Life happens, and that’s okay.

That’s more than just a motto. It’s a mindset.

What is life? Life is the bills, the traffic, the constant appointments and after-school activities. It’s the takeout pizza you ordered because you were too tired to cook. It’s the cereal for dinner on a Tuesday and…

It is all okay.

This society lacks grace, especially self-grace.

How can we live authentically without grace? How can we face our inner monsters without grace? How can we honor our natural recipe without grace?

What is grace? It’s courteous goodwill or unmerited favor. Let those words sink in:

courteous goodwill and unmerited favor.

Ask yourself, why do you believe you don’t deserve that?

You deserve that 10-minute warm water foot bath with aroma oils. You deserve that soothing oil massage after your shower. You deserve that hot cup of herbal tea before bed.

But even more than that, you deserve the grace of saying: I am doing my best. Even when your best is a bowl of cereal.

Because the first step when life gets chaotic isn’t to try harder. It’s to meet yourself with grace.

The second step? Choose one small thing to do for yourself each day.

These aren’t big, showy moments. They’re small, sacred ones that carry maximum impact.

For me, it’s my nightly routine. A warm shower and an oil massage. A message to my nervous system: I’m here. I care.

But this isn’t just about me. This is about you.

Because I know I’m not the only one trying to keep it all together. Maybe you’re caring for others. Maybe you’re navigating grief. Maybe you’re just doing your best to make it through another day.

You don’t need a perfect plan. You need a moment of presence.

So take this blog, this message, and let it be your pause, your breath, and your reminder:

You are not behind.

You are not broken.

You are not failing.

You are a human being, navigating the mess and the magic of life like the rest of us.

You are allowed to start small.

Let’s bring this into your life. Not in the way of “fixing” anything. Not with one more expectation on your already-full plate. But with one gentle invitation: start small.

Pick something nourishing. Something grounding. Something that helps you feel a little more like you. Drink a warm glass of water. Step outside and breathe. Place your hand over your heart. Say something kind to yourself.

And just as important, let something go. Let go of the self-criticism over the skipped workout. Let go of the guilt over takeout. Let go of the pressure to show up as anything other than who you are, right now, in this moment.

You are allowed to start small.

Pick one small thing today that supports your balance. Pick one small thing you’re ready to let go of. That nagging guilt over dishes in the sink? The skipped workout? The cereal-for-dinner shame?

Grace lives in the letting go.

Let both be acts of love.

Life happens. And that’s okay.

Imbalance Is Not a Flaw: Understanding Your Body’s Signals Through Ayurveda and Science

Life isn’t built for perfect balance. It’s full of demands, responsibilities, stressors, and unexpected shifts. Whether it’s work, school, parenting, caregiving, grief, or just trying to get dinner on the table, most of us aren’t living in ideal conditions. That’s not a failure. That’s just reality.

In Ayurveda, imbalance isn’t a flaw, it’s a signal. It’s the body’s way of saying:

“Hey, I need a little help here.”

But too often, we treat imbalance like it’s a moral weakness, like if we were better we’d never feel scattered, sluggish, irritable, or anxious.

Let’s change that story. Let’s talk about imbalance with honesty, science, compassion, and hope.

What Is Imbalance in Ayurveda?

Your Prakriti is your original constitution, the unique blend of Vata, Pitta, and Kapha that was set at conception. It’s your Ayurvedic fingerprint. But your Vikriti is your state after conception. It arises due to the influence of lifestyle, environment, diet, seasonal changes, and more. Vikriti is not just a surface-level disturbance; its roots run deep.

According to Ayurveda and the Vedic tradition, imbalance stems from Pragya-aparadh (pronounced Praw-gee-yuh-aw-Paw-rod), the mistake of the intellect. Maharishi describes this as the loss or forgetting of Samhita (Sam-hee-tah), our inner wholeness. Through the pull of Maya, the dazzling diversity of the world, our awareness gets drawn outward and away from its source. It’s not that the Self is lost; it’s just forgotten. This disconnection gradually pulls us out of alignment with natural law. We don't stray because we mean to. We simply lose our inner compass.

The result is a misalignment in thought, speech, and action, and over time, the doshas (Vata, Pitta, and Kapha) fall out of sync. This is the deeper meaning of Vikriti: an imbalance in the field of consciousness that becomes expressed in the body and mind.

Healing is the journey back to memory. Back to Samhita. Back to the wholeness that was never truly lost.

Here’s the key:

imbalance is temporary.

It’s fluid.

It’s fixable.

But only if we understand what it looks and feels like.

How Each Dosha Looks in Imbalance

• Vata Imbalance may look like anxiety, forgetfulness, poor sleep, dry skin, bloating, constipation, headaches, pain, or feeling “ungrounded.”

• Pitta Imbalance often shows up as irritability, inflammation, acid reflux, diarrhea, red & inflamed skin, inability to fall asleep, impatience, or burnout.

• Kapha Imbalance might feel like fatigue, depression, congestion, sluggish digestion, greed or hoarding, or resistance to change.

Too often, we mistake these imbalances for personality traits. “I’m just an anxious person.” “I’ve always had a short fuse.” “I’m naturally lazy.” These aren’t truths., they’re adaptations. They’re signs you’ve been carrying more than your body is built for.

The Science of Chronic Stress and Why It Matters

Recently, I spoke with a friend who’s highly educated in health and wellness. They know the benefits of meditation, movement, nourishing food, and rest. But life has thrown them off balance, and they haven’t been able to keep up with their usual practices. They were being really hard on themselves.

So I reminded them of something crucial:

when the body is under chronic stress, it shifts into survival mode.

Stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline flood the system. When this happens repeatedly, the body starts conserving energy by shutting down “nonessential” functions, like the logical thinking of the prefrontal cortex. Decision-making becomes reactive instead of thoughtful. The part of your brain that makes rational, aligned choices goes offline.

This pattern has a name: the Stress-Induced Deliberation-to-Intuition (SIDI) model. Under pressure, we revert to habitual behaviors because it requires less mental effort. The brain chooses what feels familiar, even if it isn't aligned with our goals.

That’s why you’ll reach for cake instead of a salad on a hard day. That’s why routines crumble when you’re overwhelmed. That’s not a failure. That’s your body doing its best to survive.

For more on the effects of stress on the body I highly suggest reading "Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers" by Robert Sapolsky. It is a great and scientific deep dive into why chronic stress, well...sucks. 

Healthy Isn’t Binary. It’s a Spectrum

Now that you understand the ancient wisdom and modern science behind stress you also need to know this...

Health isn’t a checkbox. It’s not “you’re either doing everything right or you’re failing.” We need to let go of the all-or-nothing mindset.

Health is a spectrum. And doing one small thing, like drinking warm water throughout the day, breathing for a minute, or choosing veggic sticks over chips, is a win.

So if you haven’t been eating perfectly or meditating daily, please hear this: you’re not failing. You are in a moment. And that moment will pass. Progress isn’t made in perfection. It’s made in presence. It’s made every time you choose to listen to what your body needs and offer it a little kindness instead of judgment.

A Somatic Awareness Practice: Listening to the Body’s Whisper

Imbalance doesn’t always speak in words. Sometimes it shows up as tight shoulders, a clenched jaw, a restless belly, or a heaviness in the chest.

The body carries what the mind won’t say out loud.

By tuning into those sensations, you can begin to understand what your body is asking for.

Try this simple exercise:

1. Pause and find stillness.
   Sit or lie down in a comfortable, quiet space. Close your eyes or soften your gaze.

2. Take 3 deep breaths.
   Inhale slowly through the nose, exhale through the mouth. Let your belly rise and fall. Let yourself arrive.

3. Scan your body.
   Gently bring your attention from the crown of your head down to your toes. Don’t rush. Ask:
   Where do I feel tension? What feels dull, heavy, or tight? What feels open, warm, or alive?

4. Notice without fixing.
   Choose one area that calls your attention. Just sit with it. What is this part of your body trying to tell you? Is it asking for movement, rest, nourishment, release?

5. Respond with kindness.
   Place your hand over that area and take one more deep breath. Say to yourself:
   “I hear you. I’m here.”

Let this practice be a conversation, not a correction. Over time, you’ll begin to rebuild trust with your body, and you’ll start to catch the whispers before they become cries.

You Are Allowed to Be In Progress

There is nothing shameful about needing time. About starting again. About adjusting what health looks like depending on the season you’re in.

You are not behind. You are not broken. You are not a problem to fix.

Imbalance is not failure.

It’s just your body waving a flag and asking for your attention.

Start small. Be gentle. Begin again.

Homework: The First Step Toward Balance

As I write in my book Breaking the Cycle: Identifying & Removing the Habits That Hold You Back, you can’t change what you can’t see. The very first step in reclaiming your balance is awareness.

So here’s your invitation:

Start noticing. Without judgment, begin to track what throws you off and what brings you back. What drains you? What restores you? When do you feel most yourself?

Journal Prompt: Where in my life am I feeling off balance? What are the habits, environments, or patterns contributing to this?

Don’t rush into fixing. Just start to see. Awareness is the beginning of every transformation.

If you want more support, structure, and encouragement in this process, Breaking the Cycle walks you through it step by step. You can find it on my website and through the link in my bio.

References

American Psychological Association. (2021, October). Stress in America 2021: Stress and decision-making during the pandemic. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2021/october-decision-making

Kanbara, K., & Fukunaga, M. (2016). Links among emotional awareness, somatic awareness and autonomic homeostatic processing. BioPsychoSocial Medicine, 10(16). https://doi.org/10.1186/s13030-016-0059-3

The Decision Lab. (n.d.). How stress redesigns decision making. https://thedecisionlab.com/insights/health/stress-redesigns-decision-making

Walden University. (n.d.). How stress impacts decision making. https://www.waldenu.edu/online-masters-programs/ms-in-clinical-mental-health-counseling/resource/how-stress-impacts-decision-making

Well+Good. (n.d.). Anxiety and decision-making: How stress impacts your brain. https://www.wellandgood.com/anxiety-stress-decision-making

Yu, R. (2016). Stress potentiates decision biases: A stress-induced deliberation-to-intuition (SIDI) model. Neurobiology of Stress, 3, 83–95. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2015.12.006