“Sometimes walking away is the only way to stop walking away from yourself.” ~Unknown

I was between sessions. My TV was on in the background—something I’d half-started watching called The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives on Hulu—as I walked into the kitchen to make myself some lunch.

It’s about a group of Mormon wives who became TikTok famous and got into what they call “soft swing.” In one scene, a young woman argues with her mother, who has a long list of rules about how her daughter should behave. The daughter has been avoiding church, tiptoeing around the threat of excommunication, and trying to hold onto her freedom without losing her family.

I stood there watching, lunch forgotten, because something in it stopped me.

She’s struggling between who she truly is and belonging. And isn’t that just the human condition?

We crave connection. We are hardwired for it, for better and for worse. But connection to the tribe comes with a price. It always has. You follow the rules. You tuck in the parts of yourself that don’t fit—sometimes small parts, sometimes enormous ones—and in exchange, you get to belong. It’s a transaction. Just without a dollar bill changing hands.

The implicit agreement is this: earn your place, stay in your lane, and the group will keep you. It’s a kind of token economy. An unspoken loyalty contract. And most of us sign it before we’re old enough to read the fine print.

I Was in a Cult for Forty-Three Years

It wasn’t a religious cult. There were no robes, no compound, no charismatic leader asking for your savings account. It was subtler than that and more pervasive.

It was called the cult of people. The cult of people is the one most of us are born into.

It’s the constant noise of other people’s needs, opinions, and expectations.

It’s the performance of connection—the seeking of external validation, the addiction to being liked, needed, included.

It’s organizing your entire inner life around what the people around you can tolerate.

It’s making yourself small enough, palatable enough, agreeable enough to keep the peace and keep the people.

For forty-three years, I was a devoted member. I didn’t know I was in it. That’s how cults work.

Seven Years of Deprogramming

Nearly seven years ago, I started leaving. Not intentionally, at first. It came as a byproduct of things I didn’t choose—the pandemic, raising a child with special needs largely on my own, and the slow, unglamorous work of therapy. I started to see, for the first time, just how much reaching and earning and contorting I had done most of my life. How much of myself I had tucked away to stay connected to people who needed me manageable.

I didn’t want to earn anymore. But I didn’t know what or who not earning would make me.

So I found out.

Seven years of tears. Of loneliness that had no bottom. Of massive anxiety attacks in the middle of ordinary days. Of heartbreak and losses I didn’t see coming. Of watching my circle get smaller and smaller and sitting with the terrifying question of whether I had somehow caused it. Of feeling, at times, like I was in hell.

I don’t want to paint this as something beautiful, because it hasn’t been. But it has been something. And it hasn’t been wasted.

What Deprogramming Actually Looks Like

In actual cults, deprogramming requires distance. You have to step away from the group that demanded your self-betrayal—physically, emotionally, sometimes permanently—before you can begin to see the water you were swimming in. The same is true here.

When you start creating distance from the cult of people, a few things happen.

First, it looks like something is very wrong with you. You get quieter. You stop performing. You decline the invitations you used to accept out of obligation. Your circle shrinks. The people around you—still inside the cult—don’t understand it, and some of them take it personally. Because in the cult, withdrawing is the most threatening thing you can do. The cult needs your participation to survive.

But something else happens too. Since you’ve already been abandoned by the people who couldn’t follow you into honesty, abandonment loses some of its power. You stop lying to yourself to stay connected. You start seeing the implicit agreements you’ve been making your whole life—all the ways you made a deal with the group, traded pieces of yourself for belonging, and called it love.

You start seeing clearly. And clarity, it turns out, is both the gift and the grief of this whole process.

The Both/And of It

Here’s what no one tells you about leaving the cult of people: it doesn’t feel like freedom right away. It feels like loss. It feels like loneliness. It feels like you made a terrible mistake.

And at the same time, underneath all of that, something else is growing. Something quieter and steadier. A self that isn’t performing. A voice you can actually trust. An internal compass that works because it isn’t being scrambled by everyone else’s signals.

This is the both/and that healing actually looks like—not either/or, not broken or healed, not lost or found. Both. Simultaneously. Breaking down and breaking through at the same time. Sad and longing and also, somewhere underneath it, knowing you deserve better. Making all the right decisions and still watching things fall apart. Hearing the voices in your head that tear you down and still—still—holding the younger version of yourself with kindness.

That’s not weakness. That’s what it actually looks like to be a human being in the middle of becoming more honest.

The Road to Freedom

I’m not fully deprogrammed. I don’t know if that’s even the goal. I still get lonely. I still sometimes feel the pull to earn my way back into rooms that cost me too much. I still grieve the connections that couldn’t survive my becoming more myself.

But I’m more comfortable with the sadness than I used to be. It doesn’t scare me like it did. I’ve learned to sit with myself in a way I couldn’t before—not because the discomfort went away, but because I stopped running from it.

This is what I know now: the same thing that means no one is going to save you is also the thing that means no one gets to stop you. The aloneness that felt like abandonment turns out to also be the open road. When you stop organizing your life around what the group can tolerate, you find out—maybe for the first time—what you actually want. Who you actually are. What you’re actually capable of.

That’s not a consolation prize.

That’s the road to freedom.

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“Knowledge is not skill. Knowledge plus ten thousand times is skill.” ~Shinichi Suzuki

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“A proper grown-up communicates clearly and assertively.”

This is something I have heard many people say.

By that definition, I wouldn’t have been classed as a proper grown-up for most of my life.

There was a time when I couldn’t even ask someone for a glass of water. I know that might seem crazy to some people, and for a long time I did feel crazy for it.

Why couldn’t I do the things others did without even thinking about it? Why couldn’t I just say what I needed to say? Why couldn’t I just be normal?

Those questions would just feed into the shame spiral I was trapped in at that time in my life.

But the question I should have been asking myself was not how I could overcome being so damaged and flawed, but how my struggles made sense based on how I was brought up.

Because based on that, I was perfect, and my behaviors made perfect sense.

I was the child that was taught to be seen and not heard.

I was the child whose feelings made others angry and violent.

I was the child whose anger got her shamed and rejected by the person she needed the most.

I was the child that got hit again and again until she didn’t cry anymore.

I was the child whose needs inconvenienced those who were in charge of taking care of her.

I was the child whose wants were called selfish, attention-seeking, or ridiculous.

I was the child who was made wrong for everything she felt, wanted, or needed.

I was the child who was called a monster for being who she was—a child.

I was the child that grew up feeling unwanted, alone, and entirely repulsive.

So why would that child ever speak? Why would that child ever share anything about herself? She wouldn’t, would she? It all makes sense. I made sense. It was a way of living. A way of surviving.

I had been taught that I didn’t matter. That what I wanted or needed and how I felt was something so abhorrent it needed to be hidden at any cost. And I did it to avoid getting hurt, shamed, and rejected. Even when I was with different people. Even when I was an adult.

That pattern ran my life. I just couldn’t get myself to say the things I wanted and needed to say. It felt too scary. It felt too dangerous. It was too shame-inducing.

So if you struggle to express yourself and feel embarrassed about that, I get it. I did too. But I need you to know this: It’s not your fault. It was never your fault.

And yes, life is harder when you didn’t get to be who you were growing up. When the only way you could protect yourself was by being less of you. When you could never grow into yourself because that would have gotten you hurt. When you couldn’t learn to love yourself because that was the biggest risk of all.

But today, that risk only lives on within you. In your conditioning. And that’s where the inner healing work comes in.

For me, that meant getting professional support to help me learn how to safely connect to myself and my truth, and how to banish the critical, demanding, and demeaning internal voice that told me my feelings, needs, and wants were wrong.

It meant learning to regulate my nervous system so that I could get past my fear and be honest about what worked for me and what didn’t. This was a major turning point in my relationships because I started to represent myself more openly and assertively, which meant that my relationships either improved dramatically or I found out that the other people didn’t really care about me and how I felt.

It also meant opening up emotionally and learning to understand what my feelings were trying to tell me. Since I’d learned to avoid and suppress my emotions growing up, I knew it would be challenging to truly get to know myself.

I had the great opportunity of reparenting myself—giving myself the love, affection, and attention I didn’t receive as a kid.

And that’s what ultimately allowed me to finally feel safe enough to express myself.

The relationship I had with myself started to become like a safe haven instead of a battleground, and my life has never been the same since.

Everything on the outside started to align with what was going on inside of me. The safer I became for myself, the safer the people in my life became, which allowed us to develop deeper, more meaningful and intimate relationships.

So I know that that kind of change is possible. Even if it doesn’t feel like it right now. I know that it is possible because today I am the most authentic and expressed version of myself I have ever been.

Just look at everything I am sharing here with you. That’s a far cry from asking for a glass of water.

Today I no longer choke on the words that I was always meant to speak. I speak them.

Today I no longer hold back my feelings. I feel them. I share them. Freely.

Today I no longer deny my needs and play down my desires. I own them. I meet them. I fulfill them.

Today I own who I am, and I don’t feel held back by toxic shame in the ways that I once did.

Back then I would have never thought this was possible for me.

I hope that in sharing my story and my transformation you will follow the spark of desire in you that wants you to express yourself. To share your thoughts and desires. To express what it’s like to be you. To finally get to meet more of you and eventually all of you.

That’s what you need to listen to. Not the voice of fear or shame. Not your conditioning. Not anything or anyone that reinforces your inhibitions or trauma.

You were born to be fully expressed. That was your birthright. That is the world’s gift.

Just because the people who raised you didn’t understand you as the unique miracle that you are, that doesn’t mean that you have to deprive the world, and yourself, of experiencing you. More of you. All of you.

It’s never too late to open your heart and share yourself in ways that feel healing, liberating, empowering, and loving to you.

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“When something isn’t right for you, it has a way of letting you know. Not in one big announcement, but in a thousand small nudges.” ~Martha Beck

I was sitting at the kitchen table with my coffee one morning when a thought slipped in that I hadn’t let myself think before: This can’t be the rest of my life.

There wasn’t one dramatic moment I could point to and say, “This is why I have to leave.”

Part of me wished there had been something obvious, some clear betrayal or breaking point I could point to and say, “There. That’s the reason.” Then I wouldn’t have had to rely on my inner experience alone. My husband hadn’t cheated, and I wasn’t being mistreated. From the outside, my life looked stable, respectable, even successful. I had built it around loyalty, commitment, and doing things the “right” way.

I had gotten married at nineteen and was deeply involved in my church, even mentoring newly married couples. On paper, I was living the life I was supposed to want.

But something in me had changed. At first, it showed up as a quiet kind of exhaustion, not the kind that sleep fixes, but the kind that comes from forcing yourself through a life that no longer fits. I woke up tired and went to bed tired, and even on days when nothing was particularly wrong, everything felt heavy.

It felt like I was moving through my life instead of living it.

The Thought That Wouldn’t Go Away

That thought kept returning: This can’t be the rest of my life.

It showed up in quiet moments, folding laundry, driving to the store, standing in the shower. Nothing dramatic was happening, but I kept feeling the same jolt of recognition: something about my life no longer fit.

Each time it surfaced, I pushed it down by reminding myself to be grateful, by listing all the reasons my life was good. But it didn’t go away. It got harder to drown out.

So I did what I knew how to do. I tried to figure it out.

I read self-help books, listened to podcasts, and asked friends what they would do if they were me. Most of them said some version of the same thing: If you’re not happy, you should leave. But even as they said it, I knew I wasn’t going to. Because I was terrified of what it would mean.

I kept telling myself it wasn’t bad enough to leave, and that was the problem. If something had been obviously wrong, I think I would have trusted myself faster. But when your life looks fine from the outside, it’s easy to talk yourself out of what you feel on the inside. You tell yourself you’re lucky. You tell yourself other people have it worse. You tell yourself wanting something different must mean something is wrong with you.

Because I had no clear reason to want something different, I kept asking myself, “Why can’t I just be happy? Why can’t I just be grateful for what I have?”

I wasn’t asking because I didn’t know. I was asking because I didn’t want the answer to be what I already knew. I wanted someone to give me permission to keep things the same—to tell me this was just a phase, that I’d get over it.

Somewhere along the way, without meaning to, it felt like I had opened something I couldn’t close. I tried to put the lid back on. I tried to go back to how things were. But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t un-know what I knew. The life I built fit who I used to be, but I wasn’t that person anymore.

If This Is True… Then What?

That realization made things clearer, and a lot scarier. Because if I wasn’t that person, then who was I?

If I fully acknowledged what I was feeling, it meant everything could change, not just my marriage but my sense of who I was. I had built my life around loyalty, commitment, and being sure. So I kept circling it, because not knowing what came next felt easier than admitting what was already true. I didn’t know who I would be if I stopped being that person.

For someone who had always been clear on who I was and what I was working toward, not knowing felt like losing the ground beneath me.

For a while, I kept trying to think my way to certainty before doing anything. But eventually, I got tired of waiting to feel sure. I was ready to do something about what I already knew.

I asked a coworker about a therapist she had mentioned, made the call, and showed up to the appointment. No one looking at my life would have seen that phone call as a turning point, but I did. It was the first time I acted like what I felt mattered.

I was no longer just sitting with the thought. I was responding to it.

In that first therapy session, I realized how disconnected I was from my own feelings. The exhaustion and overwhelm I had been carrying for years weren’t just stress. They were signs of how long I had been pushing my own experience down. It had felt normal for so long that I didn’t know there was another way to live.

As I kept working with my therapist, I started noticing how hard it was to answer simple questions about how I felt.

In one session, I told her about leaving home at nineteen because my dad was an alcoholic and it didn’t feel safe to stay. I couldn’t afford to pay the bills on my own, and in the Bible Belt culture I grew up in, marriage felt like the only real option.

She asked what that experience had been like for me, and I said something like, “You just do what you have to do.” She replied, “But what was it like for you? What was your experience of feeling like you had no good options?”

I started reaching for words like “unfair” and “impossible.” Then she asked, “Did it make you angry?” I burst into tears. I was furious, angrier than I had ever let myself admit. Angry that I didn’t feel supported. Angry at the rules I grew up with that made me feel like I had no choice. Angry at myself for giving my power away and staying in a situation that wasn’t supportive of me for over a decade.

And I had never recognized it or allowed myself to feel it. No wonder I had worked so hard to stay busy, stay grateful, and keep going. Some part of me had been trying to protect me all along.

But once I started being honest about what I felt, something began to shift. I found my voice. I could hear my own intuition again. I stopped moving through life on autopilot and started making choices with more intention.

A couple of years after that first phone call, my external life looked completely different. I had divorced my husband, and we remained good friends. I had left my corporate job and started a freelance business, something I had wanted for years. I had also found the love of my life.

And all of it began with a thought I tried so hard to dismiss: This can’t be the rest of my life. At the time, I thought that thought was a problem, proof that something was wrong with me. What I understand now is that it was the beginning of finally listening to myself.

What I Understand Now

Looking back, I understand something I couldn’t see then: the lives that are hardest to leave aren’t always the worst ones. Sometimes they’re often the ones that are fine, the ones that give you no clean reason to go.

So when something in you starts asking for something different, it’s easy to call it selfish, dramatic, or ungrateful. But that voice is not always asking you to blow up your life. Sometimes it’s only asking you to admit that something no longer fits. That’s often how change begins, not with a dramatic decision, but with the moment you stop pretending you don’t know what you know.

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“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response.” ~Viktor E. Frankl

A few months ago, I was on a crowded highway with my wife and son. Traffic was barely moving. Vehicles were inching forward, one small gap at a time, with the usual impatience hanging in the air.

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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” ~C.G. Jung

For twelve years, I believed I was the architect of a perfect life. I had the “Summa Cum Laude” degree, a respected career in human services, a devoted husband, and two healthy daughters. I had checked every box on the “Success” list. I truly thought I had outrun my past.

But trauma has a way of waiting. It doesn’t disappear just because you stop looking at it. It simply goes underground, like a silent program running in the background of a computer, waiting for the right key to be pressed.

When I was twenty-one, I escaped from a ten-year, on/off toxic relationship that had consumed my entire adolescence. At the time, I didn’t have the words “narcissistic abuse” or “gaslighting.” I just thought he was a man who couldn’t get his act together. He went to jail and I moved on; I built a fortress of a life.

And then, twelve years later, I bumped into him. We’ll call him X.

The Return of the Familiar

It wasn’t a calculated move. It was an extreme chance encounter that felt like a lightning strike. Within weeks, the fortress I had spent over a decade building began to crumble.

I did the unthinkable: I separated from my family. I broke apart the peace I had cultivated to go back to the man who had nearly destroyed me as a girl.

From the outside, it looked like madness; from the inside, it felt like an irresistible pull. It was a biological “homecoming” to my nervous system that I had never actually healed; I had only suppressed it. My mind and body felt like magnets to the familiar trauma, disguised as “true love” and a “happily ever after.”

Within a month, X’s mask slipped. The same jealousies, the same mental games, and the same chilling gaslighting returned. But this time, I was different.

I was an adult. I was a mom. I was finishing my master’s degree and learning about abusive relationships at this very time, and I had spent years working in the human services profession.

And suddenly, I had the epiphany.

The Holes in the Wall

I remember standing in a cramped, crappy apartment—the one I had moved into just to be with X. I wasn’t DIYing a dream home like I had planned. I was holding a putty knife, trying to patch holes in the drywall that had been put there by X’s fists.

As I smoothed the spackle over the damage, the absurdity of the moment hit me with the force of a tidal wave. Here I was, a high-achieving professional, a woman who taught others about empowerment and boundaries, hiding the physical evidence of my own destruction. I was literally trying to cover up the holes in my life, hoping that if I made the surface look smooth enough, I wouldn’t have to face the rot underneath.

I realized that my entire “success story” over the last decade had been a version of this spackle. I had spent twelve years painting over the “adolescent me” with layers of professional accolades and academic achievements. But because I hadn’t addressed the original trauma of my youth, the foundation was still brittle.

At the first sign of heat—the first encounter with my past—those layers cracked.

That’s when I saw the “ghost in my system.” I wasn’t fighting the man standing in front of me; I was fighting a version of myself that had been stuck at age twelve. I had “moved on” at twenty-one, but I hadn’t integrated the experience; I had simply built a beautiful life on top of a broken foundation.

The Turning Point

I left that apartment. I went back to my family and did the grueling, messy work of repairing the damage I had caused. But this time, the “work” was different.

I wasn’t just healing from the mistake of my thirties; I was finally reaching back to that twelve-year-old girl and telling her, “I see you now. We’re going to fix the foundation this time.” I had to learn the hard way that we often mistake a change in scenery for a change in soul.

We think that because we have a house, a career, and a “perfect” family, we have outgrown our struggle. But healing is not a matter of time; it is a matter of awareness.

Lessons from the Foundation

Through this journey of losing and finding myself, I discovered three truths that changed how I view personal growth:

1. Success is not a substitute for stability.

You can be a high-achiever and still be highly vulnerable. Many of us use “doing” as a way to avoid “being.” My career success was my armor, but it didn’t make me immune to old triggers.

2. You cannot fix what you haven’t defined.

For years, I didn’t realize I was an abuse survivor. I thought I was just “strong.” It wasn’t until I used my professional training to look at my own life objectively that I could name the beast; but once you name it—gaslighting, narcissistic abuse, trauma bonding—it loses its power over you.

3. The “why” is in the roots.

I had to stop asking, “How could I be so stupid?” and start asking, “What did that twelve-year-old girl need that she is still looking for?” When we approach our mistakes with curiosity instead of contempt, we find the roadmap to the cure. Contempt keeps us stuck in shame; curiosity leads us home.

The Power of Giving Back

I realized through this experience that while I was lucky enough to have the education to eventually catch myself, so many people are left wandering in the dark without a map. Not everyone is ready or able to access traditional therapy or support systems. Those paths can often feel expensive, time-consuming, or even intimidating when you are already in a state of collapse.

I now believe that one of the most powerful steps in our own healing is the act of sharing what we’ve learned. Giving back isn’t just a kind gesture; it is a therapeutic necessity. When we translate our private pain into a public resource for others, we finally strip that pain of its power to shame us, and we turn our “devastation” into a “blueprint” that someone else can use to find their way home.

Practical Steps for Rebuilding

If you are currently standing in your own “broken apartment,” wondering how to start patching the holes, here is what I have found to be most effective:

1. Audit your foundation.

Stop looking at the “new paint” of your current success and look at the original wood. Ask yourself: Am I reacting to what is happening today, or am I reacting to a ghost from my past?

2. Name the beast/ghost.

Don’t just say you are “stressed.” Use specific language—whether it is gaslighting, a trauma bond, or a nervous system spiral. Once you name a pattern, you are no longer a victim of it; you are an observer of it.

3. Find a way to serve.

Even if it’s just sharing a single truth with a friend or posting an honest reflection online, the act of helping someone else navigate their challenging circumstances is often the very thing that pulls us out of our own.

The Ongoing Commitment

If my own mid-life crisis taught me anything, it’s that healing isn’t a destination you reach and then stay at forever. It’s a commitment to checking your own foundation every single day. It’s about making sure that the life you are building is one you actually want to live in – not just one that looks good from the street.

While the devastations we face are often our greatest teachers, my hope is that by sharing my story, I can help others leave the quagmire of confusion and emotional pain much sooner than I did.

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“The most precious gift we can offer anyone is our attention.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Five years ago, my son missed a basketball tryout.

We had been out of town, and by the time we got back, the rosters were already set. I made a few calls anyway, hoping someone might give a kid a late shot. One coach said yes. He had a spot left, and he was willing to take a chance on a name he’d never heard from a father he’d never met.

That coach became one of my closest friends.

I started coming to practices to help out. Then I kept coming back. Five years later, I’m still his assistant coach, and somewhere along the way, a basketball court became the place where one of the most meaningful friendships of my adult life took hold. He’s forty. I’m fifty-two. He tells people I’m like an older brother to him, and I don’t take that lightly.

We talk several times a week. About basketball, yes, but also about our kids, our fears, what we’re proud of, what keeps us up at night, and the bigger questions that don’t have easy answers. We laugh often. We’re there for each other. And we’ve both said, more than once, that what we have is rare. Not because we agree on everything, but because we see each other. The real stuff. The soul underneath the surface.

That kind of friendship is harder to find than people admit.

Which is why what happened recently stopped me cold.

He had been up for a new job, a role that would be a game changer for him and his family. I knew the opportunity was on the horizon, but I didn’t know the timing.

When my phone rang the other day, I picked up the way I always do. We fell into one of our usual conversations, easy and unhurried. Silly jokes. Updates on the kids. The kind of talk that doesn’t require effort because the comfort is already there.

No pep talks. No last-minute prep. No mention of anything high-stakes. Just two guys talking about nothing in particular on an ordinary afternoon.

The next day, he reached out with an update. And then, almost as an afterthought, he mentioned that during our call the day before, he had been sitting in a waiting room, just minutes from walking into his interview.

I sat with that for a moment.

“You didn’t tell me,” I said. “I had no idea you were sitting there in the middle of all of that.”

He laughed the way he does. “I know. I didn’t want to talk about the job. I just wanted to talk to you. It kept me calm. Thanks, man.”

I’ve been thinking about that moment ever since.

I wasn’t doing anything remarkable. I wasn’t coaching him through the moment or offering wisdom about pressure and performance. I was just being myself, which is the only thing I know how to be when we talk. But for him, in that waiting room, our ordinary back-and-forth was exactly the footing he needed.

He just needed a reminder that a world existed outside that office. A world where he was already known. Already liked. Already enough. And without either of us planning it, that’s what our conversation became.

I’ve spent a lot of years measuring my value by the visible things. The advice I gave that someone used. The moment I said the right thing at the right time and watched something useful happen. We tend to think of impact in those terms, the big gesture, the obvious intervention, the moment we can point to and say, “I helped.”

But my friend reminded me that presence is its own kind of power. Not the dramatic kind. The just-answer-the-phone kind.

There’s something I’ve learned from five years of watching him coach my son.

The kids who grow the most under his watch aren’t always the most talented. They’re the ones who feel seen. He has a gift for looking at a young person and communicating, without making a speech about it, that he believes in what’s already there.

My son has become a better basketball player over these years. But more than that, he’s growing into the young man he was always meant to be. And a key part of that is because someone took a chance on his name on a list and then kept welcoming him back.

That’s the thread. Coming back. Paying attention. Being present and paying attention without an agenda.

We move through our days as the main characters of our own stories. We’re managing our own pressures, our own timelines, our own private concerns. And in doing so, we sometimes forget that we’re also essential characters in the stories of the people around us. Although we don’t always know which scene we’re in for someone else.

There are days when I feel like I don’t have much to offer. The path forward isn’t clear, and I wonder whether I’m contributing anything of any real value.

And then I think about my friend sitting in a waiting room, not wanting to talk about the moment ahead of him, calling because the sound of a familiar voice was the one thing that could settle his nerves and remind him to come back to himself.

On the days when we feel smallest, we might be the thing holding someone else together. We might be the calm in a storm we didn’t even know was happening.

We don’t need to be extraordinary to matter. We just need to be present. To answer the phone. To come back to practice the next day. To say yes to a name on a list when everyone else has already moved on.

My friend took a chance on my son five years ago and in doing so, gave both of us more than he’ll ever fully know. I hope that somewhere in our conversations, I’ve offered him something back. Even on the days when it felt like nothing more than two people just hanging out and talking.

We never truly know when an ordinary moment becomes the thing someone needs the most. But we can choose to keep answering, keep returning, and trust that our presence and attention are exactly enough.

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“A big part of financial freedom is having your heart and mind free from worry about the what-ifs of life.” ~Suze Orman

During my upbringing, my parents often fought about money since we didn’t have much of it. My mom was more of an occasional spender, while my father would go as far as making me wear shoes that were a size smaller just so he could save money.

This conflict of opposites created real tension in our home, and eventually, my dad instructed my mom to give my father her entire salary so he could manage it. She had to ask for an allowance even for things like menstrual pads or coffee. Today, I understand that this type of dynamic is called financial abuse.

When my mom left my dad, it was very difficult for her to support our family financially since she was making less money than my father while they were together.

Even in spite of that, she wanted us to have more. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was twelve years old, and my mom took me to a clothing store called Mango. I loved that store but could never buy anything from there because it was outside of our price range.

I noticed a simple black sweater and immediately fell in love with it. I showed it to my mom. It was around $20, which was a budget for our groceries for the week. And as any child would, I started begging her to buy it for me. Eventually she gave in and said okay.

I remember we were standing by the register. She was to my right side, and when I looked at her, I could not only see but literally feel the stress she was going through by spending $20 on a sweater she couldn’t afford. My excitement was immediately replaced by profound guilt and shame that I was the reason she was stressed and sad.

Although I didn’t realize it for many years, this was a defining moment when I unconsciously decided I wasn’t deserving or worthy of having more money or making good money.

Years later, when I began my healing work, I understood that these seemingly small and insignificant moments shape the way we see money, how we feel about it, and whether we believe we deserve it or not.

At first, this seemed to have a positive effect. In my twenties, I became an extreme saver.

When I was twenty-two, I moved to the US. During my first year as an au pair, I lived with a generous family and still managed to save, believing I was good with money.

After my year was up, I moved to Florida on my own and started to become aware of how the financial system works in the US. My husband at that time told me I needed to build credit because, well, everybody does it. We all need credit to live in this country. So I got my very first credit card. This was the time when my saving muscles began to weaken.

The standard of living I was used to in Slovakia was different here since I was starting from zero. Being a customer service representative, my mani-pedis, haircuts, and the desire to live the high life because I was in America ate a significant portion of my earnings while leaving me high and dry at the end of the month.

Looking back now, I’d say the breaking point happened when I had a tooth emergency. I woke up with my right side completely swollen and had to rush to my dentist for an emergency appointment.

I had insurance, but I wasn’t aware that often there is a significant portion you must pay out of pocket. Once the emergency was averted, I was standing at the reception desk, handing the receptionist my insurance card. After a few moments, she looked at me with a smile and said, “Your total out of pocket is $1,600.”

I froze, cold sweat pouring over my anesthetized face. Say what? I don’t have $1,600. She looked at me again, smiled, and said, “That shouldn’t be a problem. We have a payment plan available.”

And that’s how my path of debt cycles began.

Could I sit here and tell you that the reason I was in such a bad financial position was the system or the bankers and lenders that so freely offered me their money? Of course. But that is a very small part of the equation, and it actually isn’t the reason I ended up broke.

After about eight years of personal loans, medical debt, a car loan, and about six credit cards, I hit rock bottom and eventually filed for bankruptcy.

One thing I couldn’t wrap my head around was that I was responsible, reliable, and capable in other areas of my life, but when it came to money, I was failing horribly. Even my payment history was perfect because, well, I was a responsible borrower. Later on, I used to joke that I was responsibly broke.

The bankruptcy was a turning point for me. Once everything was over and my case was settled, I remember sitting on my bed in my studio apartment, asking myself: “How did I actually get here?”

After I reflected, I recognized that it was a combination of three things. First, I never healed my money blocks and beliefs, which affected my income level. Second, I refused to educate myself about money. And third, I was using debt as a way to finance my lifestyle, although I couldn’t afford it at the time.

Once I sat with this for a while, I made a commitment to myself that I would never again find myself in such a financial position. I decided to face my financial fears head-on and purchased my very first financial book, Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.

As one of the first steps, he suggests you should save your first $1,000. I couldn’t see how I would be able to do that, but I stood strongly in my faith. I started with $50. Then it was $100, $200, and eventually, within two months, I saved my first $1,000.

Saving my first $1,000 was less about money and more about self-trust while rebuilding confidence in my choices. Suddenly, I felt more capable and reliable when it came to money, a feeling I wasn’t familiar with.

Step by step over the years, I started to make healthier financial choices. I opened my first brokerage account and started investing, and no matter what point system a credit card company offers, I am staying away from having any.

Looking back at this journey of financial struggle and how I tied it to my self-worth, there are three pieces of advice I’d offer when it comes to money.

1. Address your financial trauma.

Whether people grew up with money or without it, many of us have financial limiting beliefs that hold us back.

Five minutes in a clothing store with my mom at the age of twelve directed another twenty years of financial stress for me. Money directly affects our nervous system as well as our mental and emotional well-being.

Of course, for people who are truly struggling or living at poverty level, financial stress is inevitable. But for many of us, a paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle is a combination of bad financial habits, a negative relationship with money, and a lack of financial knowledge.

Addressing your relationship with money won’t only help you understand your current financial situation but also uncover deeper wounds you might be carrying, like feelings of unworthiness or a desire for validation. Money problems are often symptoms of a deeper issue.

2. Spirituality and money can coexist.

I grew up atheist, so when I started to explore spirituality later in life, I developed a certain obliviousness toward money. I saw it as something materialistic that didn’t belong in the spiritual world.

I later realized that spirituality became another way for me to avoid my financial trauma, justifying that I was above money and could manifest my way out of being broke. Although I’m not minimizing the power of attraction and manifestation, I think it’s important to be practical and logical when it comes to our finances.

The hardest lesson was learning that I can’t reach higher states of consciousness or heal much of my trauma when I’m stuck in constant survival mode and my nervous system is paralyzed by fight-or-flight mode because I don’t know how I’m going to tackle my rent next month. We must take care of the survival aspects of our life before we can dive deeper.

3. Learn about money.

There are so many negative financial statements we hear all the time. Things like “money can’t buy happiness” or “money is the root of all evil” when in fact, there is nothing wrong with being interested in money, understanding it, and effectively working with it. Money is simply one of the many essential aspects of living a healthy and balanced lifestyle.

You don’t need to strive to be the richest person in the world, but understanding your budget, having an emergency fund, and saving for retirement are the basis of your financial health.

When I started learning about money, it gave me a sense of empowerment and competency. It made me feel more confident, gave me clarity, and brought a sense of peace into my day-to-day life. There is so much I was able to accomplish on a deeper personal level and heal because I wasn’t consumed by daily financial stress.

Today, I no longer carry the shame of that moment at the register. Instead, I carry the knowledge that I am capable, worthy, and deserving of financial stability, and so are you.

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“Being a people-pleaser may be more than a personality trait; it could be a response to serious trauma.” ~Alex Bachert

Growing up in a home, school, and church that placed a lot of value on good behavior, self-discipline, and corporal punishment, I was a model child. There could have been an American Girl doll designed after me—the well-mannered church girl with a nineties hair bow edition.

I was quiet and pleasant and never got sent to the principal’s office. Complaining and “ugly” emotions were simply not allowed. Though I was very rambunctious and “rebellious” as a toddler, all of that was cleansed from my personality by the time I was school-aged.

I had no other choice. I felt unsafe in my body at the slightest hint that someone was upset with me. It was enough to tame my inner rebel, at least for many years.

I carried this pattern into adulthood. I found myself in jobs with supervisors who would fly off the handle at every opportunity. I worked extra hard, more than anyone else, to avoid getting in trouble. When my colleagues got yelled at over their mistakes, they laughed with amusement under their breath—but when the anger was directed at me, I was ridden with anxiety.

How could my coworkers brush off our manager’s anger, but I felt triggered for hours afterward?

It took me many years to learn the answer—that some of us are conditioned from a young age to develop a deep-seated fear of losing our sense of belonging and safety in our relationships. To cope with this fear, we develop strategies to safeguard ourselves, which, for some, turn into a habit of people-pleasing.

There’s one clear common denominator for people-pleasers—feeling beholden to others. You put your needs last and feel obligated to manage everyone else’s happiness. You’re hypersensitive to being judged, shamed, and rejected. You worry about what other people think about you. You overextend yourself to be helpful. When you dare to stand up for yourself, you suffer from anxiety and guilt.

When you don’t address and change these patterns, you may eventually feel resentful, frustrated, and angry. It compromises your emotional and physical well-being and contributes to an overwhelming sense of powerlessness.

And it lights a blazing fire under your ass.

Because we aren’t responsible for juggling other people’s emotions.

We don’t owe anyone comfort.

We’re not a charity receptacle for others’ emotional venting, unhealed trauma, or misdirected anger.

Our time, energy, and well-being are not up for negotiation.

And we don’t deserve the guilt-tripping manipulation.

Truthfully, we cannot control how other people show up in our relationships, but we can change our patterns of powerlessness and take back our lives, and it doesn’t have to compromise our genuine desire to care for others.

Brain Ruts

It’s not a mystery what you should be doing in lieu of carrying the burden of responsibility that comes with people-pleasing.

You need to set boundaries, speak your truth, be more confrontational, use your voice to advocate for yourself, separate your feelings from others, and put your needs first.

Which begs the question—what’s getting in the way of you taking these steps?

Though you may feel the need to change your patterns through sheer willpower or more self-discipline, that isn’t the answer.

You don’t need to read useless books about how to “grab life by the horns” or “grow some balls” (ew, gross!).

You don’t need to muscle through debilitating anxiety or guilt.

You don’t need to give up your generosity or empathy to take back your power in one-sided relationships.

You don’t need to be “thicker-skinned” or less “sensitive.” (Your sensitivity is a gift.)

Here’s the little-known truth about people-pleasing—it’s a learned pattern that gets “turned on” in your unconscious mind over and over again.

Whether it’s avoiding conflict, freezing up when you need to speak your truth, or feeling guilty, people-pleasing is a survival strategy. And all survival strategies are a set of automated behaviors, thoughts, and emotions that repeatedly get turned on unconsciously.

In a sense, you’re not fully in control of how your people-pleasing habits show up. Which is why just “trying harder” doesn’t work, because you can’t beat the speed at which your unconscious mind is turning on patterns.

Ninety percent of how we show up in life is unconscious and based on our past. Your brain needs to save energy, so it’s automating your decisions, behaviors, and feelings for you. Think of your bad habits as brain ruts.

Every time a people-pleasing habit is presenting itself, your brain is riding down the same neural pathway, deepening the grooves, much like how a dirt path naturally forms over time if you keep walking over the grass.

This well-worn path appears to be safer and easier than walking through the wild, unruly grass, which feels unfamiliar, dangerous, and risky to deal with—you fear being judged, shamed, or rejected out there. Just the thought of standing up to your evil mother-in-law turns on the anxiety.

But you’ve reached a point where you long to be in the wild grass. It represents the life you could be living—taking up space, effortlessly putting your needs first, being in your pleasure, and feeling amazing in your emotional well-being.

So how do you take the leap into the metaphorical grassy field of your “hell yes” life?

By planting new seeds in your unconscious mind and watering them on a regular basis.

Planting Seeds

If people-pleasing wasn’t a problem for you anymore, what would be possible in your life?

Imagine a scenario where you’ve already reconfigured the pathways of your unconscious mind and you feel exactly how you want to feel, showing up exactly how you want to, and it’s just easy. You’re confident, powerful, and unapologetic.

Whose rules would you stop following?

What boundaries, enmeshed in barbed wire, would you put in place?

Whose misdirected emotions would you feel bulletproof against?

What responsibilities would you shamelessly give up?

What self-indulgence would you treat yourself to?

What truths would come spilling from your mouth? (Truths that are SO electric, that you feel you might burst if you don’t say them right now!)

There’s a reason it’s so intoxicating to fantasize about our ideal life. We’re wired to “believe” what we imagine because a part of our brain doesn’t know the difference between what is real and imaginary. It’s the same reason we get emotionally pulled into TV and movies. You do realize it’s acting, right?

When the critical thinking part of your mind goes quiet—as it does when you’re getting wrapped up in a good story—you’re accessing your unconscious mind, where all habits are formed. It’s where we’re most swayed, influenced, and sold on ideas.

To get out of a people-pleasing brain rut, you need to plant seeds in your unconscious mind to “influence” yourself to show up the way you want in your life. Done with repetition, these seeds help build new neural pathways, making it possible to be your best self at home, at work, and in your community.

One of the most powerful ways to plant seeds is to visualize while in a deeply relaxed state of mind. Here are some tips on how to get started.

Start in the Right Frame of Mind

Visualization works best when you’re feeling relaxed and calm in your body. If you’re actively triggered, self-regulate your emotions before jumping into visualization.

One quick and easy way to do this is to combine a breathing exercise with stimulation of the acupressure points on your wrist. Grab one wrist with the opposite hand and squeeze. Take one big inhale, hold at the top of your inhale for a couple seconds, and then exhale twice as long. Repeat two to three times. Once you feel nice and grounded, find a quiet place without any interruptions so you can focus and go inward.

Get Specific

The brain works in very specific, finite ways. If you want to be a badass who lives life on your terms, what exactly does that look like? Imagine yourself in specific places, taking specific actions, feeling a certain way about it. Focus on actions like speaking your truth, confronting people, feeling confident, setting boundaries, etc.

Repetition Counts

Your mind needs enough new information on who you want to be in order to generalize the changes into your life. You don’t need to visualize for long periods of time—two to three minutes at a time is enough, but be sure to make it a part of your routine. Try starting with a handful of times a week.

Water the Seeds

Take real-life action that supports the person you’re becoming. Your brain and nervous system are always learning and adapting when you show up in new ways. It’s like providing the proof to yourself that yes, I can do this. Start with small steps. Choose places where you want to put yourself first and practice using your voice to advocate for yourself. Be tenacious about doing this work—the confidence and bravery you crave will naturally emerge.

“Anxiety isn’t you. It’s something moving through you. It can leave out of the same door it came in.” ~James Clear

Years ago, I had a panic attack while driving across a bridge, and I thought I might die that day.

Suddenly my heart started pounding. My breath became shallow and tight. My chest felt constricted, and a wave of dizziness washed over me.

I was driving sixty miles per hour, and there was nowhere to pull over. The bridge stretched for miles, suspended over open water, and I was alone in the car.

A terrifying thought shot through my mind:

Something is seriously wrong.

I gripped the steering wheel and tried to keep driving, convinced I might pass out before reaching the other side.

In that moment, it felt like my body had completely betrayed me.

For a long time afterward, I was afraid to drive and lived in quiet fear of that feeling returning.

I began avoiding certain activities and situations. I constantly monitored my body for signs that another attack might be starting. Even when I appeared calm on the outside, a part of me was always on high alert.

If you’ve experienced panic attacks, you may know this feeling well.

The racing heart. The dizziness. The sudden sense that something terrible is about to happen.

It’s not just uncomfortable—it’s terrifying.

And most people experiencing panic believe the same thing I did:

Something must be seriously wrong with my body.

But what I eventually learned changed everything.

The Body Isn’t the Enemy

The first idea that really shifted things for me was this: the sensations of panic feel dangerous, but they aren’t.

They’re your nervous system sounding an alarm.

When we perceive danger, the body activates a natural survival response known as fight-or-flight. Adrenaline floods the bloodstream, the heart beats faster, breathing quickens, and muscles prepare to react.

This response evolved to keep humans alive.

If our ancestors encountered a threat, like running away from a predator, their bodies needed to react instantly. When the nervous system is regulated, the rest-and-digest response prompts the body to naturally return to a relaxed state once the threat has passed.

However, if the nervous system has been under stress for a long time, it becomes imbalanced. The fight-or-flight response is working on overdrive, and the rest-and-digest response no longer functions properly. The body doesn’t relax.

The outcome: the nervous system sometimes sounds this alarm even when no real danger is present.

This was definitely true for me. I was a single parent, living in San Francisco, running a wedding photography business (hello, super-stressful career).

I was in the car dealing with insane traffic for hours each day: A two-hour roundtrip commute getting my daughter to and from school, client meetings, evening engagement photoshoots…

I photographed weddings most weekends, leaving three to four hours ahead of time because wedding photographers aren’t allowed to be late. Ever.

Rest was something I dreamed about. I was consistently exhausted, burnt out and on edge, and there was no end in sight. So yes, my nervous system was basically fried, which meant my panic attacks became more and more frequent.

I lived in terror of the next attack.

When the body releases adrenaline unexpectedly, the sensations can feel overwhelming.

Many people interpret these sensations as signs of catastrophe.

Am I having a heart attack?

Am I about to faint?

Am I losing control?

Those thoughts create even more fear, which causes the body to release more adrenaline.

And just like that, a cycle forms:

Sensation → fear → more adrenaline → stronger sensations.

It can feel like being trapped in a panic loop you can’t escape.

The Shift That Changed Everything

My healing didn’t begin with trying to control the panic.

It began with understanding it.

For the first time, I saw that my body wasn’t malfunctioning. It was responding exactly the way it had been designed to respond.

My nervous system had simply learned to stay on high alert.

Once that understanding settled in, something subtle but powerful shifted.

The sensations of panic were still uncomfortable, but they no longer felt like proof that something catastrophic was happening.

They became signals from a nervous system that had been carrying too much stress for too long.

And nervous systems can learn new patterns.

Learning Safety Again

I realized that healing from panic isn’t about forcing the body to calm down.

In fact, fighting the sensations often makes them stronger.

Instead, the process involves helping the nervous system relearn what safety feels like.

Sometimes that looks like slowing the breath. I practice a simple breathing technique I call “four-six breathing.” You close your eyes, then inhale, counting to four, then exhale, counting to six.

The longer exhale slows your heart rate and sends a message to the nervous system: “We’re okay.” This activates the rest-and-digest response, and the body relaxes.

Sometimes it means allowing sensations to pass without resisting them. The sensations of a panic attack can be uncomfortable or intense, but they’re not dangerous. Once I understood this simple truth, it was easier to be with the sensations, knowing they came and went, like an ocean wave.

Sometimes it’s simply learning to trust that the body knows how to return to balance. Healing wasn’t an all-at-once event but a gradual process. As my panic attacks became shorter and less intense, I felt more confident, because I knew exactly what to do to care for myself.

Eventually, they went away and have never returned.

Some people believe that panic attacks can’t be cured, but I’ve found that this simply isn’t true.

With practice, the nervous system learns a new pattern and begins to recognize that the alarm is no longer necessary.

The response becomes less intense.

Episodes become shorter.

Eventually, many people find that the cycle of panic dissolves entirely.

A Different Relationship with the Body

My panic attacks were once so severe that I was afraid to drive for years. Today, I drive without fear. Road trips have become a favorite hobby and a meditative experience. This past summer I drove more than 3,500 miles around the country—by myself.

I move through the world with a sense of trust in my body that once felt impossible.

What I discovered during my healing journey eventually became the foundation of a new way of life:

Listening to my body’s signals instead of overriding them.

Prioritizing rest because it’s a key component of health.

Unearthing my own deepest wisdom and ability to maintain my energy, vitality, and well-being.

Gathering tools and practices that allow me to be peaceful and grounded, no matter what’s going on in my life.

Being the calm, confident, joyful person I wanted to be.

Because the truth is this:

If you experience panic attacks, your body isn’t broken.

It’s trying to protect you.

Sometimes healing begins not by fighting what we feel, but by understanding it—and in that understanding, the body slowly remembers how to feel safe again.