The patterns I still carry, the ways old experiences can show up in the present, and my effort to sort out what I am remembering from what is actually happening now. Recovery, pattern recognition, regulation, and slowly gathering new evidence.
I’ve been sitting with a word that has always troubled me, a state of "being" that feels out of reach: happiness. There seems to be so little capacity out there to make space for those of us whose life experiences haven't exactly been a gifted accumulation of things that make you say, yeah, this is good, I want to keep doing it. Perhaps the hardest truth to accept is that my upbringing never provided the raw materials or the architecture…
Even the gentlest slope can be dangerous. Subtle choices and unnoticed paths can lead to profound consequences.
Observing a year of pain, growth, and resilience — the subtle ways people show up when we are most vulnerable.
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.” — Winston Churchill
A reflection on appeasement as a survival strategy within coercive, high-control relationships and family systems.
I’ve been reflecting on how, in my family—and unironically, in the family of the man I had children with—belonging was not rooted in mutual care, nuance, or individuality. It was rooted in alignment with the people who had decided, and been supported in believing, that they mattered more. Agreement equaled safety. Divergence tracked as threat. There was no space for statements like, “I see it differently,” or “I’m hurt,” or “I need something else,” or even the simple, honest, “This…
“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” — James Baldwin
Letting Go Each day, I live with the ache that I may not see my children again. We may not have another real conversation or moment of closeness. That may be the outcome when children grow in a system that teaches them to diminish me, and when they have no outside support to question that story. I can see how neatly the story lands if I’m “too much,” or if I “opted out.” But I didn’t opt out of love.…
