I hit play on his message, gasping as I learned that Raissa was in the ICU. She had been battling cancer since May. I hadn’t even known she was sick.

I went to bed, dreading the moment I would have to tell Joy and Coral the next day.

On Saturday, I told them she was sick and might not make it. They were sad and quiet, uncertain how to respond. As I ran that morning, listening to worship music, I prayed for a miracle, leaving room for and trusting God’s will, whatever the outcome. I looked through old photos of Raissa and our girls and Chris and reminisced on the life we shared for two years, a time that felt so far from my present reality. I cried.

When I woke up Sunday morning, there was a text from Raiane, one of our other former au pairs and Raissa’s close friend.

“She didn’t make it.”

I know this moment too well. Three times over.

On Feb. 9, 2021, it was my dad calling to tell me Chris, my ex-husband of 15 years, Joy and Coral’s father, had passed away.

On Oct. 23, 2024, it was Lindsey, my friend from college, calling to tell me Ashley, my dear friend and college roommate, was gone.

On Oct. 18, 2026, it was Raiane’s text.

I told Coral in the kitchen. “That’s so sad,” she said.

I told Joy in her room. She said the same thing.

Later that day, I heard Joy break the silence in the car. “Did Mom tell you about Raissa?”

“Yes,” Coral said. Nothing more.

Oh grief. There you are again.

Mostly grief lies dormant and rests quietly in remission until it’s jarred awake by a new death, like it was this past weekend. It’s back. “Gosh, I was hoping I didn’t have to feel you again.”

That’s what I felt when I found out about Ashley a couple of years ago too. I wanted to put the grief back to bed and pray it would take an eternal nap.

Grief, a predictable companion with the most unpredictable nature. It comes as an inconvenient, intrusive visitor, in the middle of a band concert or Best Buy. Tears, the dizzying feeling of sadness rising up, heart aching once again.

I remember my daughters’ therapist saying after Chris died, “It’s so hard to counsel children after death because it’s so permanent. Every other challenge I can at least tell them that it will change, even if it never actually does. Death I cannot.”

Death I cannot.

I remember coming in after one of Joy’s sessions. During her play therapy, she had taken the dad doll from the playhouse and buried him in the sandbox across the room, leaving the mom and two girl dolls in the house. So physical and practical, absent of the impossible emotions I was feeling, but deeply true and sad. A 6-year-old’s way to process grief: Daddy, buried in a sandbox across the room, is no more.

It’s been five years since he died, and over time, the pain of losing him has blended into the landscape of our lives. It’s something that defined us and changed us, that we will never forget, but it is woven into our story, our new life now.

The grief still arises here and there, watching the girls practice their instruments or play soccer together. “I wish he were here to see this!”

The surest reality of life is death. We forget that we don’t have forever with the ones we love. And we may have less time than we realize.

As hard as it feels, might we find a way to celebrate grief as the grandest expression of love lost? Might we welcome it into our hearts and allow it to have its way with us?

“Grief, I’ve learned, is really love. It’s all the love you want to give but cannot give. The more you loved someone, the more you grieve.”
— Jamie Anderson

The love I had for Chris became grief five years ago, and it’s still with me. Now my love for Raissa is making that same turn.

Grief is love’s final chapter.

So let me go back to the earlier chapters, to the love. If I could still write each of them a note, here is what it would say.

Chris, you are the father to my children. And how beautiful they are! Full of life! Thank you for bringing them into the world with me. Thank you for loving them. Thank you for loving me. Thank you for the life we made together for the time we were together. I loved your music, and I loved your appreciation for the NBA, good food, and beer. We had a lot of good times together and made some unforgettable memories. I cherish the trip we took to Italy and watching you cry when Vivaldi filled the church we stumbled into by accident. I cherish the moments you and the girls played music together in your studio. I get to witness your living legacy every day in them. What a gift!

Ashley, there is no one on this earth who can dance and sing with me the way you did. You would do every Beast of Burden move with me and sing Lionel, screaming out of open car windows without missing a word! I loved your smile, your laugh, and your disposition. I could be fully me with you, and you with me. I loved the trip we took with Erin to Turks and Caicos months after Chris died. You asked me what I needed, I said a vacation, and that’s exactly what we did! What a gift to have a friend like you. No matter how much time passed, I knew we could be right back where we were on Pritchard Street senior year. Thank you for being a friend.

Raissa, it is rare to have a young au pair in your home who teaches you so much through how she interacts with your children. Aren’t I the one who was supposed to be teaching you about my children? God sends teachers in the most unexpected forms. You were so loving and affectionate with Joy and Coral, and also the perfect disciplinarian for them. They adored you and respected you! And so did Chris and I. But no one loved you quite as much as our dog Ringo. You two had a special bond, since he was a stand-in for the dog you’d left behind in Brazil when you came to live with us. You loved life, live music, and being with your friends. You always had the best Halloween costumes. The most memorable was Maleficent, and it was so adorable to see you beside Coral as Cinderella and Joy as Superwoman. Thank you for loving our girls as if they were your own. They carry a piece of you with them.

On Monday morning at 5 a.m., after a particularly shaky Sunday, I sat once again by the fire, covered in the same blanket that warmed me on Friday. I felt anxious and unsteady, freshly awake, ready to join God in my quiet devotion time. I sipped my matcha from my favorite mug and felt the urge to write a card to my husband. He was leaving for Las Vegas for work for the week, and in this fresh grief, I wanted him to know how much I love him. I got up from my comfortable spot, found a cute card in my stationery stash, and wrote him a note of deep appreciation for the man he is to me and the girls. I folded it into the envelope, sealed it, put his name on the front, and hid it inside his iPad, knowing he’d find it there later.

Then it came. Somewhere over the middle of the country, on his way to Las Vegas, he opened his iPad, read the card, and texted: “Thanks for the card, babe. Just made my day.”

This love note, he got to read.

Both ended up changing my life in ways I never expected.

The easy one first. I decided to take the summer off to be with our kids, and I haven’t wanted to trade trail walks, baking brownies, movie nights, candle making and all the ordinary magic of summer for opening my laptop to write. This is the first summer since my girls were born that I haven’t had full-time care for them, and I have cherished it in a way I didn’t fully expect. Proud (and grateful) mom here.

The other reason I haven’t written? This story surprised me as much as anyone, and inside it, an unfamiliar version of myself started showing up.

Two incidents a few weeks apart made it impossible to keep looking away from something that had already been quietly happening inside me. I’d been craving a change in my work for months, but I couldn’t see the path. Every option I imagined felt irresponsible or flat-out impossible, so instead I kept doing what I’ve always done: I worked hard, showed up, and prayed that clarity would eventually find me.

The first gut-check came during a catch-up call with one of my dearest, oldest friends. I told her how much joy writing had been bringing me. She complimented my articles and then casually mentioned that her mom had read them and was “worried about me.” We laughed, I explained that writing has always been a way for me to process life, and we moved on.

But over the next several weeks I couldn’t stop thinking about that comment. I didn’t think she was right, exactly. But I couldn’t rule out that she wasn’t wrong either.

Then came the second one. Jon and I walked into a party and were greeted almost immediately by someone we know with a freshly poured glass of rosé. She insisted I have one too, even though I’d quit drinking eighteen months earlier, because she’d been reading my Substack and thought I could use it. Ouch.

Her comment, which was meant to be harmless and funny, stuck to me like Velcro. It woke me up in the wee hours of the morning, wondering what people saw when they read my words. Am I coming across as miserable and helpless?

I’ve learned that when something rattles me, there’s usually truth in it worth excavating. After the irritation and embarrassment settled, I realized something surprising. I didn’t need a glass of rosé. I needed my life to look different. Not different like a haircut. Different like a whole new floor plan.

Long before that party, Jon and I had already been talking about the future. I’d been telling him I wanted more margin, more friends, more community, more presence with our family, more overall joy. But as I sat with those desires, another truth slowly emerged, one I could barely say out loud: I didn’t want to keep working the way I had been. At least not now.

That realization felt incredibly strange. I’ve been an achiever and an earner for as long as I can remember. Jon and I met working together — that’s where we fell in love.

Somewhere along the way, earning money got tangled up with being relevant. I don’t think I realized how deeply those roots ran until I started imagining a version of my life where I wasn’t bringing home a paycheck. Honestly, it wasn’t really the money that scared me. (Okay, it was a little bit about the money.) But mostly it was the question hiding underneath it: who am I if I’m not producing?

In early May, while Jon was away on business for a week, I spent an entire day at our kitchen table with my laptop and a screen full of open tabs. With Claude’s help I started running numbers - our income, expenses, the last four years of working / living together, every scenario I could think of. I kept adding more data, trying to make the picture more accurate.

Looking back, I wasn’t really building a case for Jon. I was building one for myself, and I don’t think I fully realized that at the time. If I could prove that the salary he paid me simply circled back into supporting our household, then maybe wanting to step away from work wasn’t impossible.

I talked with friends and my sister before Jon came home. I felt the nervousness of sharing a truth that was hard to admit to myself, much less the man I love and will be marrying in a few months.

I wasn’t sure how he’d respond. He’s one of the most supportive people I know, but being financially dependent has always been deeply uncomfortable for me. Part of me worried he would reject the idea. Part of me worried he would reject me. Underneath all of that was fear: if I wasn’t earning money anymore, would I still be relevant? Would I still matter?

I told him I had a proposal for him and we scheduled time to talk. The next morning we sat down together at the same kitchen table where Claude and I had spent hours conversing just days before.

We paused to pray first, centering our thoughts on God and our connection to each other. Then, with a heart full of love and a stomach full of butterflies, I walked him through my proposal. I didn’t get down on one knee, like he did when he proposed, but I was quite possibly more nervous than he was that night.

I remember feeling mechanical, steady enough to get through the proposal document but almost on autopilot. I think I was doing what I’ve done through a lot of hard seasons over the last several years: taking one faithful step at a time before I actually felt ready.

When I finished, Jon asked thoughtful questions. We talked. We listened to each other. And over the course of that conversation he offered me permission to explore a different life.

That conversation became the beginning of my summer off, and what has now become an indefinite sabbatical.

I wish I could tell you I floated into this new chapter with total peace, assurance and affirmation. I didn’t. After the initial relief that the conversation was over, and excitement for this new chapter, came anxiety. Crushing anxiety.

I’d wake up at 4am many mornings, wondering how we’d make it work, wondering who I’d be without the juggle and struggle of being a working mom. On the worst nights, I’d reconsider the whole thing and start figuring out what job I could do next. Prayer and deep breathing got me back to sleep some nights, but many times, the sleep never came again.

I’ve spent years teaching and learning how to regulate my nervous system, and I’m grateful for that work. But somewhere this spring I realized that being regulated is not the same as being joyful. Sometimes the discomfort we’re feeling isn’t because we need another breathing exercise. Sometimes it’s because the landscape of our lives needs to change.

These last six years have held more change than I ever imagined. Loss. Love. A move. A blended family. A career that has shaped me in beautiful ways. I’ve learned how to stay steady through a lot of chaos. Now I’m learning something different. I’m learning to choose a life that feels truer, instead of just getting better at enduring the one I already had.

I still don’t know exactly what comes next. Will I work again? Will I start a new career? Will I get bored? Will I be a bore?

I continue to have mixed feelings, but with each passing week I notice a little less anxiety and a little more trust. I don’t know exactly who I’m becoming. I only know I couldn’t become her by continuing to live my old life story.

I feel the relief of not having work running in the background while spending time with my kids. I feel the uncertainty of how this new way of life will shape Jon and I’s relationship as we get married this fall. I feel confident that through the mix of emotions, God’s got me and is shaping my next chapter. Maybe that’s what this season is asking of me—not certainty, just enough faith to keep becoming someone I haven’t met yet.

Yesterday, the day before his birthday, I was walking the trail behind our house when I saw it. A beautiful red-tailed hawk moving through the woods — unhurried, deliberate, flying low enough through the trees that I stopped mid-stride and just watched until it disappeared into the branches. Then I found him and took his picture.

Hi, Chris. Tomorrow’s your birthday.

The hawk has been ours since a few days after he died, back in the early, raw days of 2021 when everything was still shock and disbelief and the girls and I were just trying to find our footing in a world that had suddenly become unrecognizable.

I was driving with them in the back seat, when we passed the studio apartment I had rented just the year before, after he and I separated. And in that exact moment, just as we were passing it, a hawk came flying directly across my windshield, wings fully spread, so close to the glass that I flinched, so close I could see the detail of its feathers. The whole thing lasted maybe two seconds.

I didn’t think. I didn’t reach for comfort or scramble for something reassuring to say. The words came before I even knew I was speaking.

That’s your dad.

Not as a wish. Not as a mother doing her best to soften an unbearable thing for her daughters. It came as knowing, the way certain things arrive in the body before the mind has had a chance to weigh in. And something in the girls received it the same way, quietly and completely, the way children receive truth when they hear it.

From that day on, the hawk has been ours.

We see them everywhere now — on the trail behind our house, circling above the soccer field, perched on a powerline as we pass on the highway. And without needing to decide or discuss it, one of us says:

There’s Dad.

The girls have told their friends about it. They’ve pointed to the sky on the playground and explained, with the particular matter-of-factness of children who have no patience for things being more complicated than they are, that when a hawk appears overhead, it’s their dad checking in.

I love that they carry this so naturally, without embarrassment, without needing it to make sense to anyone who doesn’t already feel it. And I love that it came from him, that in the middle of all the loss and the silence and the absence, he found a way to give them something they could point to, something that moves through the sky above their heads and says I’m still here.

In Native American tradition, the hawk is a messenger and a guardian, a creature of extraordinarily sharp vision who sees not only what is directly in front of it but what lies far ahead on the horizon. Hawk medicine carries the energy of awareness and protection, the sense that there are forces watching over us, caring for us, holding us in their sight even when we cannot feel them close. Hawk says: you are not alone. I am still keeping my eye on you. Look up.

I didn’t need a tradition to tell me any of that. I knew it already, in my bones, in the two seconds that hawk filled my windshield five years ago. But there is something quietly comforting about knowing that people across cultures and centuries have looked up at a hawk and felt exactly this, that something larger was present, that love is not extinguished by death, that it finds its way through, one form or another.

Chris was 47 when he died. Today he would have turned 51, and there is a particular grief in that arithmetic that anyone who has lost someone too young will recognize immediately, the grief not just of the life that ended, but of all the years that keep accumulating on our side of it while his number stays frozen. We keep getting older. He stays 47. And every birthday, I have to hold both of those things at once: the life that was, and the life that keeps going without him in it.

The hawk helps me hold both.

It is a symbol of hope for us, a symbol that life goes on in ways we don’t always have the eyes to see, a symbol that we are watched and cared for and loved even from the other side of whatever this life is. He is still keeping his eye on his girls. I believe that with everything I have.

Happy birthday, Chris.

You need to write The Hard Times Playbook. That was the whole message. Share the tools. Share what got you through.

I wept. One of the biggest cries I can remember. Right there in the middle of the trail.

I’d gotten ideas before. But this one didn’t feel like mine. It landed like a lightning bolt wrapped in a whisper, a download from the Divine. A seed God trusted only me to grow.

I told Jon. I told one of my best friends. I jotted a few notes in my phone. And then I left it there.

For two years I’ve carried it. Turning it over. Wondering if I’m equipped. There are people who’ve endured much harder things. Why me?

A few months ago, Jon said it out loud, casually, like he was mentioning the weather. “I think you should write The Hard Times Playbook. A lot of people are going through hard times and need help.”

Self-doubt won again. Nothing happened.

Then came a particularly hard day, and afterwards, a phone call with two girlfriends, the kind of conversation that puts the oxygen back in the room. (Thank you, Natalie and Lauren.)

After that, I opened my laptop and created the file.

Creating that file brought the invisible idea to life.

Here’s what I know to be true: we’re not taught how to move through hard times. We’re taught to numb out, to keep going, to slap a smile on and soldier through. We’re taught resilience. We’re taught grit.

But we are rarely taught how to grieve.

We hear about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. We hear almost nothing about Post Traumatic Growth — about who we become because of the hard thing. More compassionate. More empathetic. More gracious. More whole.

I don’t claim to be a guru. I am a guide.

I know what’s given me life as I’ve navigated divorce, losing the father of my daughters, moving to a town where I had no family or friends, blending a family, a debilitating eye condition, and the emotional tidal wave of perimenopause. These have been the hardest years of my life.

Through my own grit, and by the grace of God, I’ve learned (and taught) tools to help people resource themselves. To expand their capacity to hold whatever they’re facing.

Being ReSourced. That’s what this is about.

Not pretending the hard things don’t happen. Not staying positive. But being with the rupture. Doing the inner work. Tending to your nervous system. Finding the right support to slowly, steadily shift into the life that exists on the other side.

There is no going back to who you were before. There’s only leaning into who you’re becoming because of it.

Last week, at the Scaling.com Spring event, I had another download. Jon and I were co-leading the retreat with hundreds of entrepreneurs, when after a Wisdom Circle, a woman shared her a-ha: she was going back to her mission. The whole reason she started her business in the first place.

The word mission exploded in my chest like a firework.

I thought: The Hard Times Playbook isn’t just a book for my daughters. This is a mission for everyone who’s struggling. For everyone who feels lost and alone in the middle of a hard thing, the way I did.

And then I thought of the people I love who have lived — and are living — inside the unbearable.

Chris. My beloved ex-husband and the father of my girls. He lost his mother, and just days later, he was gone too, leaving my daughters without their dad.

Ashley. My dear friend and college roommate. She endured devastating loss over the 20 years I called her my friend, and in the end, the weight of her grief became more than she could carry. I miss her every day.

Emily. My dear friend who is right in the thick of it, holding her twelve-year-old daughter through cancer, through losing her leg, through things no mother should ever have to face.

And Whitney. My client, carrying a kind of heartbreak that arrived without warning and rearranged everything — her family, her identity, her daily life — overnight. She’s rebuilding, one day at a time.

Each of them deserve(d)s a lantern in the dark.

I think about what Chris and Ashley needed that they didn’t have. I think about the moment the pain became too big, and whether the right tool, the right word, the right person showing up and saying I see you might have changed something.

I’ll never know.

But I know this: there are people walking around right now in that same darkness. People who are white-knuckling it through grief and loss and change and overwhelm. People who are one hard day away from breaking. People who need someone to say — I see you. I’ve been there. And here’s what helped me find my way back.

That’s who this book is for.

For the ones who are still here, still fighting, still wondering if they’re going to make it through, maybe even sensing their pain as a pathway to their deeper purpose.

You’re going to make it. And more than that, you’ll hardly recognize the beautiful human you’ll be on the other side. I’m here to witness your transformation, to help you find your way.

The Hard Times Playbook is coming. And I cannot wait to put it in your hands.

The pond ice melts, the ground tenderizes, and tiny specks of green pop up high and low, sprinkled like confetti. Temperatures rise, it rains instead of snows, and even though there might be an abrupt drop here or there, slowly and steadily the turtles return to lie on the sunny rocks, the birds come back singing and building nests, and my nasal passages start dripping. Spring has sprung.

Gradually, then suddenly.

I went to the dentist this week to get a cracked filling repaired. I hate going to the dentist, and one of the less-celebrated gifts of perimenopause is that my teeth have had their own strong opinion about my changing hormones. Six fillings in the last year was plenty, without having to go back for a re-do.

Sitting in the chair, kneading a squishy stress ball in both hands, my hygienist looked up and said, “You don’t seem as anxious as you were in October.”

I smiled, released my grip on the squishy, and recognized that she was right.

I hadn’t noticed a dramatic shift — you rarely do from the inside — but since she named it, I could feel the truth of it settling. I’ve been committed to resourcing and self-care, including EMDR work I wrote about here, and I’ve been on a steady dose of the right hormones for me. Something has quietly changed. I am less anxious than I was.

We tend to think that change should feel like teleportation — one version of ourselves blinking out, a new one arriving in its place. But that is almost never how it works.

Changing identities unfolds gradually, then suddenly.

I was first introduced to this idea during the pandemic, when I had the pleasure of interviewing Susan Scott for a women’s community event. In her book Fierce Conversations, she writes that we succeed or fail one conversation at a time — gradually, then suddenly. And further: “The conversation is the relationship.” Which means we build and erode our closest bonds not in the big moments, but in the accumulation of small ones, until one day we look up and realize something has irrevocably shifted.

That landed in my body as true the moment I heard it.

The phrase itself traces back further, to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises. In a quiet, alcohol-soaked exchange, a man is asked how he went bankrupt. “Two ways,” he says. “Gradually, then suddenly.” We become and un-become different versions of ourselves the same way — in relationships, in identities, in the long slow work of healing.

This week in our Conscious Leadership Accelerator, two veteran participants shared something that stopped me. After years of showing up to resource themselves and practice new ways of being, they noticed they were suddenly different. Situations that used to hijack them feel quieter now. People who used to be triggering just... aren’t, in the same way.

They almost missed it. Because when we’re inside a transition, we mostly notice what hasn’t changed yet. We notice the gap between where we are and where we wish we were. We long to be further along the path than we are, and in that longing, we walk right past the progress we’ve actually made.

But here’s what I keep coming back to.

The ground doesn’t announce that it’s thawing. The bird doesn’t send a memo that she’s on her way back. The green doesn’t ask permission before it appears. The whole magnificent shift from winter to spring happens in a thousand small, unremarkable moments — and then one morning you walk outside and something is simply, undeniably different.

You are no different.

The resourcing you’ve been doing, the hard conversations you’ve finally had, the moments you paused before reacting, the slow and steady work of becoming more yourself — all of it is accumulating beneath the surface into something you can’t quite see yet. You may not feel like you’ve arrived. You may still be longing to be further along. But if someone who knows you looked up right now and really paid attention, I suspect they might say what my hygienist said to me.

You seem different than you did.

Trust the gradual. Spring always comes, even in Ohio, even in perimenopause, even in the long seasons that make you wonder if anything is changing at all.

It is.

Gradually, then suddenly.

Lately, one of those for me has been my kitchen junk drawer. Every time I opened it to find a pen, a hair tie, chapstick or a ruler, I was pulled into a fierce game of tug of war, often losing to an errant bag of fishing bait or an orchid stake.

Last weekend I finally decided to tackle not one, but three junk drawers in our kitchen. I dreaded the whole undertaking, but somehow found myself with a rare quiet Saturday morning at home and decided to go for it. I pulled the trashcan close, opened the first drawer, and began. Trinket by trinket, I threw away 75% of the contents of chotchkie purgatory, because if I were more decisive and disciplined, that crap would have gone in the trash a long time ago.

This “trash it” method only worked because I was alone. Had Jon or the kids wandered in, they would have begged to keep a pointless this-or-that they’d otherwise forgotten about. They did not get in the way of my mission. Thank goodness!

Cleaning the junk drawer felt so good that I started eyeing the rest of the house, and have since conquered the drawers and closets of two out of five kids’ rooms. Full scale Spring Cleaning operation — officially underway. I opened and closed those newly emptied drawers a million times just to admire my masterpiece. Purging and organizing made me feel more spacious, free, and at peace.

In the middle of all of it, I found myself thinking about why junk drawers exist in the first place, and I realized the answer had nothing to do with mess or disorganization.

A junk drawer is where things land when they don’t have a home. Or more accurately, when we haven’t yet taken the time to decide where that home should be. Sometimes it’s things we might need later, sometimes things we can’t bring ourselves to throw away, and sometimes things we simply don’t want to deal with in the moment. It’s less about being disorganized and more about being undecided, and once I saw it that way, I couldn’t unsee it.

Because I do the exact same thing in my own life — just without the drawer.

A calendar filled with commitments I said yes to before I’d really checked in with myself. To-dos that follow me from week to week, not because they’re essential, but because I haven’t been willing to admit they’re not. Conversations I’ve been meaning to have, decisions I’ve been meaning to make, beliefs I’ve carried for years that don’t quite fit anymore, but that I haven’t taken the time to question.

So much of what I carry isn’t intentional. It’s just unexamined.

Every item in that drawer, at some point, required a decision: keep it, find it a home, throw it away. And instead, I chose to put it somewhere I wouldn’t have to decide. “I’ll Deal with that Later” is a pretty effective short-term strategy.

Clutter buys us time, protects us from having to make a call, from having to let something go, from potentially disappointing someone — or ourselves. In that way, it’s actually kind of brilliant.

But it’s not free.

Every time I opened that drawer, I felt it — not in a dramatic, obvious way, just a small almost imperceptible friction, a subtle irritation for something that should have been simple. And when I paid closer attention, I recognized that same feeling humming in other corners of my life too. Not overwhelming, not urgent, just a quiet, constant undercurrent of there’s a lot here.

Cleaning the drawer didn’t fix my life. But it shifted something inside me, not because everything was suddenly organized, but because for one hour I made decisions I had been avoiding for far too long. Over and over again, I chose what stayed and what went. And there was something quietly powerful about that — like a reset, not just of the drawer but of something deeper.

I don’t think the goal is to eliminate junk drawers entirely. I have five kids, and honestly that feels both unrealistic and unnecessary. Life is full, and there will always be things that haven’t found their place yet. But I’m starting to see the value in returning to the practice of clearing them out — not as a one-time event, not as some declaration that I’ve finally gotten my act together, but as a quiet reset I can come back to whenever things start to feel a little crowded.

Because it’s not just about the drawer.

It’s about the slow accumulation I don’t always notice — a commitment I said yes to without really meaning it, something I’m holding onto out of habit or guilt or the vague sense that I might need it later, a belief I haven’t questioned in years. A pen here, a calendar obligation there, an old story I keep lugging around. None of it dramatic, just a slow, steady filling-up, until one day I open the drawer — or my calendar, or my mind — and feel that familiar resistance. Not wrong, just full.

What struck me most wasn’t how good the drawer looked when I was done. It was how I felt — a little lighter, a little clearer, like I could finally see what was actually in front of me without having to dig through everything else to get there.

Maybe that’s the real point. Not to have less, not to be perfectly organized, but to create enough space to actually choose.

The drawer will fill back up — of course it will. But now I know I don’t have to keep everything that finds its way in. And maybe that’s the shift: not becoming someone who never has a junk drawer, but becoming someone who knows when it’s time to clean one out.

So here’s my invitation to you.

Find your junk drawer — the literal one, the calendar one, the mental one, whichever one has been quietly nagging at you. Pull the trashcan close. Give yourself a rare quiet hour, alone if you can manage it. And just start with one trinket at a time.

You don’t have to tackle it all at once. You don’t have to overhaul your whole life. You just have to be willing to pick something up, look at it honestly, and decide — keep it, find it a home, or let it go.

That one small act of deciding is more powerful than it sounds.

And I have a feeling you already know exactly which drawer to open first.

My first week away, I spent Spring Break in Florida, soaking up every precious drop of sunshine and boogie-boarding with our kids. I can still feel a distant surge of joy remembering each sandy moment I pushed up after an effortless ride to shore. Ahhhh…

The following week, back in cold, gray Ohio, I faced one of the most difficult post–Spring Break re-entries I can remember. I felt like a child savoring a popsicle in the heat of summer, only to have it slip from the stick and melt into the concrete, beyond saving.

One glorious detail I loved leaving behind was my weekly to-do list. I awoke each day in Florida and allowed the day to have its way with me, the same way I allowed the ocean waves to carry me on my boogie board.

In fact, making our weekly family calendar and Monday to-do list was the starting point of a steep downward spiral into my first week home.

After that decline into a rather shitty week, I have a new perspective - I’m genuinely unsure whether making a to-do list is helpful or masochistic.

I love planning and I’m decent at it. The problem is, once I make my weekly to-do list, I feel like a runner at the starting gun of a race I can never finish.

The to-dos never go away. There’s always something that needs my attention. And as time marches on through the week, more tasks find me.

• A dentist appointment because my filling cracked and flaked as I was flossing before bed.

• A school email that somehow requires three logins and a PDF upload.

• An Amazon return jostling around in my front seat.

• A group text thread I haven’t responded to that keeps growing and nudging me.

• A “quick” work task that becomes an unexpected project.

I know I cannot be on perpetual vacation. I’m a middle aged woman living in the time-space continuum of working motherhood. But isn’t there something I can do (or not do)?

One option to resolve this conundrum is to stop making my weekly to-do list. I have tried that. I don’t even want to talk about the disaster. At this stage of life, if it doesn’t get written down, it has zero chance of actually getting done.

If I’m going to continue to have a list, I’ve come to realize my only option for sanity is to change how I hold the list in my psyche.

Before I go on, let me divulge what it feels like on the inside to have undone tasks.

Behind.
Frantic.
Frenetic.
Overloaded.
Overwhelmed.
Unable to fully exhale.

Can you relate?

It’s a perpetual weighted vest but not the kind that’s touted for longevity. (In fact, I think it’s negating any positive impact wearing my weighted vest is getting me).

The other day my fiancé Jon explained that he once heard a podcast of a high powered CEO explaining that at any given time he has hundreds of tasks that need his attention, and that he succumbs to the fact that he’s never going to get through them all. As a leader himself, Jon said he has kept that in mind ever since.

Why am I not more like this man?

And how did I get this way?!

I think it was years of school assignments I diligently completed for the grade, for the honor roll, for admission into college. Every task led to a finished class, a predictable and finite result. From Kindergarten through two Master’s degrees—slow roasted to perfection.

Life does not work this way. And yet, somewhere along the line, I internalized the expectation that it should—that if I just stayed focused, stayed disciplined, stayed on top of things, I would eventually reach the end of the list and feel done.

But there is no end. There is only more life.

I think I might re-phrase this as ‘forging a healthy relationship with productivity.’ (Should I add it to my to-do list?)

This newfound relationship starts with knowing one thing deeply—I am not what I do. I’ve heard that sentiment for years, but it’s never fully landed. It orbits around me like the Earth around the Sun, pulling at my energy without ever quite becoming something I can stand inside of.

Of late, one way I’ve begun to feel more at peace with this is recognizing that I am a child of God. I am here because He put me here. And everything that is in my life is here for a reason, even the undone to-dos.

Especially the undone to-dos, because they’re where my conditioning meets the reality of a life that cannot be completed.

What I am beginning to see is that the tension I feel has far less to do with the list itself and everything to do with the belief that I am supposed to finish it.

There is no finish line. There is only a life that continues to ask for my attention, whether or not I ever catch up to it.

So the practice is not to conquer the list, but to become someone who can remain steady in the presence of what will remain unfinished.

This morning, my to-do list is exactly as I left it—full, unfinished, quietly accumulating—and yet I’m experimenting with the possibility that nothing has gone wrong.

That I am not behind, but alive inside of a life that does not begin and end with my to-do list.

The waves are different out here now. They look like endless emails, errands, and unfinished tasks—rocky in their own way.

But the invitation is the same—not to outrun them, but to let them carry me, even if I never reach the shore.

Coral is a goalie and Joy is a center midfielder. I played growing up, so I have a deep love for the game.

This particular weekend required a three-hour drive to a tournament with their club team and, if I’m honest, I had a little dread heading into it. A full weekend away means zero downtime (and I really love my weekend downtime!).

But it turned out to be an absolute blast.

The girls played beautifully. And they ended up winning the whole tournament.

And somewhere in the middle of all the cheering, pacing the sidelines, and holding my breath during tense moments on the field, I noticed something surprising.

I was experiencing the games differently.

And I had a sense there was a reason for that.

Just 24 hours earlier, I had been sitting in a therapist’s office doing a half-day EMDR intensive, deep inside old emotional terrain.

A few weeks ago I mentioned in another article that I had been preparing for an EMDR intensive. It was meant to address a very specific challenge in my life: anxiety while driving and some issues with my eyes (binocular vision dysfunction).

What I discovered in the process was that the driving anxiety and eye challenges weren’t the root of it. Underneath was something much older and deeper, a feeling that I was responsible for soothing other people’s difficult emotional experiences.

During the session, we traced that pattern all the way back to the womb.

My mother lost her father one week before I was born (he was shoveling snow to ensure they could get to the hospital and had a heart attack).

The grief she carried at the time was profound, and in the session, I could feel her sadness in my tiny body inside of her. Totally surreal.

As we worked through the session, it became clear that from before I was born, my nervous system learned to feel other people’s emotions very deeply, and then take responsibility for soothing them.

You might call it empathy.

You might call it clairsentience (the ability to feel what’s going on inside other people).

In many ways, it has served me well. As a facilitator and coach, being able to sense what’s happening emotionally in a room is one of my greatest strengths.

But like many strengths, it has a shadow.

Through the course of my life, feeling what other people were experiencing quietly turned into something else.

I didn’t just feel their emotions, I felt responsible for them.

I stopped witnessing people’s experiences and instead merged with them.

That’s why the moment on the soccer field caught my attention.

As my daughters played, I could feel the intensity of the games in my body. The excitement. The nerves. The tension that comes when the score is tied and time is running out.

If you’ve ever watched a game with me, you know I’m not exactly a quiet sideline parent.

I’m into it.

But this weekend felt different (though I’m certain I didn’t actually look any different to the other parents).

I could feel everything happening on the field, but I wasn’t inside it.

Before, I would have been emotionally merged with their experience, almost trying to manage it from the sidelines. My body would tighten with every mistake or missed opportunity. My mind would race with hopes that things would go their way.

This weekend, the emotions were still there, but there was space around them.

I could feel their experience without becoming responsible for it.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized how many of us do this.

Especially those of us who are naturally empathetic.

We feel people deeply.

Their anxiety.
Their disappointment.
Their excitement.
Their pain.

And without even realizing it, we step into their emotional world as if it’s our job to manage it, fix it, or carry it for them.

But true empathy doesn’t require that.

Empathy is not emotional merging.

It’s witnessing.

Feeling someone’s experience doesn’t mean you have to carry it.

Interestingly, the same capacity that felt like a wound is also what shaped my life’s work. The whole “pain to purpose” scenario, where our battle scars become our competitive advantage.

The ability to sense what’s happening emotionally with individuals or a group is one of the reasons I’m able to facilitate the kinds of transformational experiences that I do.

The wound and the gift are often two sides of the same coin.

The very thing that challenged me most in life also shaped the work I now do in the world.

But part of growing, healing, and maturing is learning how to hold those strengths in healthier ways.

Feeling without carrying.

Witnessing without fixing.

Loving people without losing ourselves in the process.

On Friday I was sitting in a therapy office processing a lifelong pattern of absorbing other people’s emotional experiences.

On Saturday I was standing on the sidelines watching my daughters play soccer.

For the first time in a long time, I could feel everything happening on that field, the excitement, the tension, the joy of winning, without stepping inside it.

I was still deeply engaged.

Still cheering.

Still holding my breath when the ball came flying toward the goal.

But I was no longer trying to control the outcome from the sidelines.

And in that small but powerful shift, I realized something that felt both freeing and long overdue.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do for the people we care about is simply to witness their experience.

Just stand nearby and cheer them on while they play their own game.

And maybe, for the first time, let that be enough.

I know that kids tend to have abundant energy (where does it go in midlife?), and maybe in my youth being still would not have been the right thing for me (or maybe it would have been — I am a Projector in Human Design and was most likely just riding on the sacral energy around me). Fun fact: I was also a kid that put myself to bed and never had to be asked to go to sleep at night. Exhausted after so much go-go-go.

Much of that pattern continued into my teens, twenties, and thirties. Go-go-go. Crash. Rinse and Repeat.

But now in midlife, and after learning more about being a Projector, I know to the depths of my soul that stillness is a point of power, the birthplace of intentional transformation. I know this not only from my own lived experience, but also from leading thousands of people through transformational experiences over the years.

Different Human Design types carry different levels of energy and output.

And yes, there are times in our lives when transformation chooses us — through an unexpected death, a job loss, or a divorce. In those moments, chaos becomes the starting point of transformation. And of course there are times when taking action is the fulcrum to change.

However, I have found that when we are itching for a new way, craving a change, or looking to transform something in our lives, the most effective move is often the opposite of what we expect.

Getting still.

I was reminded of this again yesterday.

I led a virtual VIP coaching experience with a glorious client. And before we did anything, I led her through the SPIRAL of Transformation — a six-step process that combines somatic practice, space, questions, and reflection to help bring clarity about what matters most and identify a vision for what’s next. [SPIRAL stands for Stillness, Purging, Identifying, Realizing, Activating and Learning].

This is very much a mind + body + soul experience.

And here’s what that looked like.

We did fifteen minutes of breathwork using an Othership track. I briefly enrolled her in the SPIRAL process and the importance of starting with Stillness. Then I gave her a few questions to reflect on…

What wants to be born?
What’s a new possibility I want to create?
What’s a positive change I’d like to see?
What’s a challenge I’d like to overcome?.

From there, I gave her space and some light background music. I breathed deeply and stayed present. I put nature scenes on the screen. And for about ten minutes, she wrote her responses.

After that, she shared what came up for her and I reflected back. She felt calmer and more present and had clarity on the direction forward. From there, we moved on to the next stage of the SPIRAL.

Making the time and space to get still, and to be witnessed by someone, allowed her to see, hear, and feel things differently than if she had simply charged forward. The extended pause, which continued as we moved through the other stages of the SPIRAL, allowed her to really tune in to her truth.

The starting point of transformation is stillness.

When we get still we can listen to our body, hear the soft whisper of our intuition, and tune into the higher desires of God. When we get still, we tune out the noise, let go of distractions, and find an inner truth that was always there but that we were simply too busy to hear.

Stillness is not something you do once expecting your life to change.

Stillness must become a practice.

In fact, one of the takeaways for my client yesterday was that she needed to begin her day with stillness instead of starting immediately with an extensive to-do list.

More than ever in this busy world we live in, we must be intentional about creating moments of stillness in our day.

Stillness might look like waking up fifteen minutes earlier to do a short breath practice, meditation, devotion, or prayer. Stillness might look like sitting down to eat lunch outside in the sunshine without your phone. Stillness might look like taking a yoga class. Stillness might look like putting down your work in the middle of the day to take a walk.

As simple as that.

Stillness is not avoidance or procrastination or numbing out or disengaging from your life.

Stillness is an intentional pause that allows truth to surface before we rush into action.

But stillness will very likely feel uncomfortable if you’re not used to it. You may feel like you’re not being productive. You may even feel like you’re wasting time.

In fact, that discomfort is often a sign you’re doing it right.

The more you resist stillness, the more you probably need it. That’s how these things tend to work.

Daily stillness has become a way of life for me. It’s how I start my day. It doesn’t always look the same, but typically for about ninety days at a time my mornings follow a similar rhythm before I begin a new experiment with stillness. (See below for my current morning stillness routine and links to resources if any of them resonate with you).

I’ve found that when I begin my day with stillness, everything works better.

I’m calmer and more focused. I can better tolerate the stressors of the day. I’m a better mom and partner. And I’m more likely to find moments of stillness throughout the day if I start with stillness in the morning.

The world is full of chaos. Now maybe more than ever. Our instinct is to react, to move faster, to do something. But what if the real starting point of transformation is the opposite?

What if the most powerful step forward is the moment we choose to be still?

For those who are curious, here’s what my morning stillness currently looks like.

• Reading my Jesus Calling devotion and corresponding Bible verses

• Writing in my Sacred Prayer journal

• A 20 minute fascia stretch (my latest obsession - brings so much calm and focus throughout the day. You should try it!)

• An Othership breathwork practice (here’s my current favorite track. You should try it!)

• 20 minutes in the Sauna

To pass the time on the 40-minute drive, we listened to a well-being podcast hosted by a small group of wellness practitioners. They were discussing how the body is more space and light than matter, and how, after working with thousands of patients and using various diagnostic tests, they’ve noticed that human emotion is the contributing factor to health, or a lack thereof.

They shared that time and time again, people who are “happy” tend to have great health, whether or not they do anything deliberately for their well-being.

This got me thinking about all the things I do for my health. The handful of supplements I take morning and night. The HRT I swear by. The 100+ grams of protein I aim to eat. The smoothies with creatine and hemp hearts. The weights I lift two to three times per week. The sleep masks. The dry brushing before showers. Time on the rebounder. And on and on and on.

I trust that these things are good for my body. And yet, what I was hearing was that if I could just find a way to be happy, these other things might not matter so much. I guess one can’t sell happiness quite the same way one can sell all the above-mentioned health solutions.

Being happy could save me time and money and make me healthier?

This made me realize that maybe I should take my happiness as seriously as I take all of my other health regiments.

I’m not saying I’m unhappy. Just that if happiness helps my health as much as those practitioners suggest, maybe I should be seeking ways to be happier, not just the next round of health quackery.

As we continued driving on that cold, gray Cleveland day, the podcast still running in the background, I wondered, Can I find a way to be happier more often in these conditions? If you know Cleveland, you know we have a lot of gray days.

That question made my mind wander to a conversation I once had with my coach, who lived most of her life in Wisconsin but now finds herself living in sunny Florida. She told me that for years she wondered if she was actually happier when she visited Florida, or if it just felt that way because she was on vacation, away from the day-to-day grind. After living there for a few years, she now knows she’s happier there.

Does that mean I need to live somewhere else to optimize my chances of being happy?

I’ve always wished I were one of those people who could be easily and unconditionally effervescent. I think I may have had more capacity to be that way at other stages of my life, but then again, that’s easy to say in hindsight. Midlife has not been a place of easeful happiness for me.

Happiness feels much more conditional these days. And still, I wonder if I can change that.

Perimenopause has taught me that I can optimize a lot of things, but I can’t optimize my way out of being human. Hormones shift. Energy fluctuates. Moods rise and fall.

This podcast got me taking my own happiness more seriously. But it also got me wondering how capable I am of being truly happy.

And the truth is, there are a lot of really good things in my life. I get to share it with the love of my life, my fiancé Jon. I have two beautiful daughters and three healthy, happy bonus kids. I have reclaimed my Christian faith and feel spiritually renewed. I get to do work I love with people I enjoy, and I have the flexibility to keep my family first.

There is a lot to be happy about.

Later in the weekend, in the midst of all this questioning and contemplation, my birthday gift arrived from my sister. A book by Thich Nhat Hanh called No Mud, No Lotus: The Art of Transforming Suffering.

On the very first page, I read this line:

“Being able to enjoy happiness doesn’t require that we have zero suffering. In fact, the art of happiness is also the art of suffering well.”

That one line gave me so much hope. It helped me see that happiness and suffering are not separate, but two sides of the same coin. We can’t have one without the other.

Then this line:

“If we can learn to see and skillfully engage with both the presence of happiness and the presence of suffering, we will go in the direction of enjoying life more.”

All of a sudden, my pursuit of happiness felt much more accessible. I felt permission not to get rid of suffering or dread it, but instead to learn how to suffer well when I’m not feeling happy. In that realization, I felt a new sense of freedom and possibility.

My mind then ping-ponged back to my mindfulness practice, called Unified Mindfulness. The reason I was initially drawn to it was because when they described the benefits of mindfulness, the number one benefit wasn’t “making me happier.” It was “reducing suffering.”

The techniques I learned through that training are still with me today as tools. Somehow, I had just forgotten the role they can play in holding suffering differently.

So where does this leave me in regard to my own happiness?

Can I be more unconditionally happy? Or better yet, can I reduce my suffering? Perhaps by changing my relationship to suffering, I naturally become happier.

More likely, it’s the combination of reducing my suffering, by holding it differently, being present with it, not pushing it away, and not seeing it as in the way of my happiness, and choosing to engage with people and things that genuinely bring me joy.

In the work I teach around conscious leadership, we talk about being aware of our influence. Not just our influence on others, but our influence over our own internal state. I can’t control Cleveland’s gray skies. I can’t control this season of midlife. But I can influence how I meet them.

It isn’t about the ease of feeling happy on a blue-sky, sunshine-filled day every day. It’s about the opportunity of a cold, gray day and suffering less.

And maybe this season isn’t asking me to be happy for no reason.

Maybe it’s asking me to become more gentle with myself. More honest about what hurts. More trusting that even here, even now, God is present in the mud as much as in the lotus.

And perhaps that, too, is its own kind of happiness.

At the time, I didn’t think much of it.

“Surely that one part of the story won’t impact the greater issue we’re working on,” I thought to myself.

It wasn’t until later, after the session, that something began to stir. I realized I had moved past that detail almost automatically. And then a different question surfaced:

What if that one detail I feel so scared to share is actually the part that unlocks a deeper level of healing inside of me?

Sometimes the thing that matters most is the thing we barely even notice ourselves leaving out.

I didn’t sign up for this EMDR intensive to do a half-hearted version of healing. In fact, quite the opposite. I’ve tried a lot of healing modalities for this particular challenge. All of them have helped, and yet the challenge persists.

In some ways, this work feels like standing at a threshold. If this doesn’t lead to a shift, then perhaps the invitation is to live with the challenge, to lean fully into acceptance, with the quiet trust that if God placed it here, it may be meant to be here.

And still, I find myself wondering about vulnerability and intimacy.

Not vulnerability as oversharing or emotional exposure for its own sake, but vulnerability as the act of turning toward something tender and telling the truth about it. And not intimacy as something that happens between people first, but intimacy as the capacity to let someone get close to what’s actually true, including myself.

There are times when withholding is wise and protective. Protective withholding is conscious and discerning. It holds safety as sacred. Avoidant withholding, on the other hand, happens quietly, driven by fear rather than choice.

What struck me most is that I didn’t know which one I was doing in the moment. I only noticed it afterward.

If there’s something we’re leaving out, a detail we’re scared to share, a truth that feels too dangerous to speak, the work isn’t to force ourselves to say it.

The work is first to pause.
To notice the withholding.
To sit with why withholding feels safest.
To allow it room to breathe inside of us.

And then, from that awareness, to decide if and how we choose to share.

This is where vulnerability begins.

And when vulnerability is met with safety, internally or externally, intimacy becomes possible.

Not intimacy as performance. Not intimacy as being seen by everyone. But intimacy as closeness with what is real.

Intimacy, first with yourself.
Into me, I see.

When we pause long enough to truly see into ourselves, we create a safe space to hold what’s there: the hurt, the brokenness, the pain, the grief, the envy, the shadow. Nothing needs to be fixed in that moment. Nothing needs to be explained. That alone is enough.

I’ve been sitting with something Peter Levine said:

“Trauma is not what happens to us, but what we hold inside in the absence of an empathetic witness.”

Perhaps intimacy begins when we slow down enough to notice what we’ve been quietly protecting, with ourselves, with another, and with God.

And when to trust ourselves to decide, in our own time, what is ready to be shared.

As we were waiting for the bus, I reminded them of what today was. Joy said, “Oh, yes, it’s February 9th.”

A day that none of us will forget.
A pain in our hearts we hate to relive, but a love beneath it that we all cherish.

I invited them to share a memory they each had with their dad - Joy said she remembered going on to worksites with him (he was a project manager of solar farms, so they were adventurous worksites!) and Coral said she remembered swinging on the swing at his office.

I shared that my favorite memories were of them playing music together in his studio.

From that tender shared space, Joy paused and said, “I don’t really remember much about him.”

I knew this day would come. They were only 6 when he passed. But I really wished they remembered more about him, mostly the way he showed up for them as their dad.

And so, I want to tell you, Joy and Coral, what I remember about your dad.

He was very hands-on. Because there were two of you, he didn’t have much of an option, but either way, he wanted to be participating as much as possible. We shared in your caretaking - middle-of-the-night feedings, diaper changes etc. He was a very present and available dad from the very beginning.

He loved to hold you close, to hug you, to kiss you. He was a very affectionate dad. His favorite place was near you. When he had to be away, he was always so happy to get home to see you. You were always so happy to see him too.

He loved to play with you. He loved playing with you anywhere and everywhere - in the backyard, at the park, at the beach, in the pool. He delighted in showing you the world and having fun. He loved to let you play his keyboards and guitars and whatever other instruments you might find in his studio.

He was a fierce protector and provider. Though in his heart, he wanted nothing more than to play music for a living, he worked hard to provide doing work he didn’t really enjoy. He was committed to making sure you had a wonderful life, with all of your needs met.

He was quite the ‘girl dad.’ When we first found out we were having two girls, he didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to have one boy and one girl. But once you were born, he couldn’t have imagined it any other way. He had a soft place in his heart for you. You two were certainly the apples of his eye AND he loved that you had the special bond of sisterhood between you.

You may not remember much about your dad.

But you were deeply known by him.

You were held, delighted in, protected, and loved in ways that shaped you long before memory could hold it.

That love did not disappear when he did. It lives on in you, in how you move through the world, in the way you care for each other as sisters, in the quiet confidence of being cherished by me, your Mom.

I will keep telling you these stories.
I will keep remembering for you.

Not so you feel the weight of losing him, but so you always know this truth:

You were, and always will be, deeply loved by your dad.

She’s been around a long time.
And I don’t see her going anywhere anytime soon.

She’s the one whose identity is built on competence and efficiency.
She loves a to-do list and loves checking it off even more.
She hates being sick because it means being unproductive.
She pushes through when she’s exhausted.
She focuses on performing and perfecting.
She cannot let her kids down.
She is hypervigilant, always on guard.

She has no idea what I mean when I tell myself to let go and let God.

I know now that she developed for good reason. She helped me build a life. She helped me show up, provide, lead, and carry responsibility. For a long time, she worked.

But in this season of midlife, with a body and brain that are changing, her voice has gotten louder. More urgent. Less patient. What once felt like motivation now often feels like pressure.

So now that I know she’s here, and that she’s been a big part of my identity for years, the question isn’t how to get rid of her.

It’s this:

How do I allow her to be in me without letting her be me?

I’ve already taken the first step.
I can hear her voice in the background.
I know what she feels like in my body.
I recognize the tightening, the urgency, the push.

Because of this awareness, there is now a small but meaningful space between us.

Viktor Frankl wrote that between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space lies our power to choose.

I’m living inside that space more often these days.

Not perfectly.
Not consistently.
But enough to notice the difference between the days she is driving and the days I am listening.

What I’m learning is that the work isn’t fixing her, silencing her, or proving her wrong.

The work is staying resourced enough to notice when she has taken the wheel.

Pausing.
Breathing.
Letting my nervous system settle.
Giving myself just enough room to choose something different.

This feels especially important now, in a season where so much is reorganizing beneath the surface. Where old strategies no longer work the way they used to, and effort alone isn’t the end all be all.

Leadership, I’m realizing, begins here. Not in how we manage others, but in how we relate to ourselves. Especially the parts of us that once kept us safe, successful, and moving forward.

Those parts do not disappear just because we have outgrown their strategies.

They need to be seen.
Met with compassion.
Held in awareness.

Some days I notice her and still let her run the show.
Some days I don’t.

And I’m learning to trust that this noticing, again and again, is the work.

So I’m sitting with this question:

What other parts of me might be asking to be noticed in this season of my life?

I have two signs that spell out “L-O-V-E,” one that sits in the windowsill at our kitchen sink and another on the dining room buffet.

They’re cute. They’re very Valentine-y.

But as I was balancing the tin letters just right on the kitchen windowsill, I thought to myself, Do I even know what love really means?

I had another thought: Why the hell has it taken me 46 years to ask this question?

I think I can attribute that to perimenopause (more on that later).
But maybe that’s a stretch?

Some say love is a feeling, a heart quality.
Others say, “Love is a verb.”

Conceptually, that makes sense. But I am a word girl. I need definitions.

Some days I just leave questions open and see how God might answer them. I had no desire or instinct to check the dictionary or ask ChatGPT. I wanted to see what definition would find me.

I went on about my week, and during a rather tense and heated moment in an Imago therapy session with my fiancé, our therapist said, “Treat each other like someone you really love.”

That stopped me in my tracks, because I was not, in that moment, treating him like someone I really loved. And I do really love him.

I thought about those four letters on the windowsill, the sign in the dining room, and even the picture that hangs in our foyer.

In my Conscious Leadership work, we talk about leading ourselves first, especially in moments of stress. That session showed me how quickly love can slip when I’m dysregulated, even with someone I deeply care about.

Fortunately, the tense conversation led to healthy dialogue, empathy, and repair in the end. But it still didn’t give me the definition I was looking for.

Later in the week, I started reading a new book by two teachers and friends I admire greatly, Healing Leaders by Raj Sisodia and Nilima Bhat (I HIGHLY recommend it). And right there in the second chapter, “Love Yourself,” was a definition of love that was simple to understand and made sense to me.

Love: the unconditional desire for the well-being of the other.

There was also an extended version that deepened my understanding even more:

Love is the conscious choice to see, value, and serve the essence of another being, holding their well-being, growth, and flourishing as sacred, without seeking to possess, control, or diminish them.

Read those two definitions again. Let the words land.

They made a lot of sense to me, and I will continue to reflect on them.

I’m realizing that love, as they define it, is not just a feeling. It’s a leadership practice. One that begins inside.

The definitions were on page 46, in the chapter about self-love.

So then I began to consider: do I have an unconditional desire for my own well-being?

Lately, love for myself has been feeling quite conditional, depending on any number of factors:

• how much I get done in a day

• how clean my house is

• how good my body looks and feels

• how much my ducks are in (or out of) a row

• how much sleep I’ve gotten

As Raj and Nilima say in the book:

“Self-love is the courageous act of turning that love inward. True self-love is more than passion, friendship, or commitment; it’s a state of deep compassion and kindness toward oneself. It means engaging in self-care, nurturing your body, mind, and spirit so they remain whole and flourish. It involves honoring your own needs, embracing your imperfections, and treating yourself with the same patience and understanding you would offer to someone you truly cherish, without control.”

That sounds quite unconditional, and unlike what I’ve been feeling.

I think I have some work to do, both on loving myself and loving others.

For me, this question ultimately leads back to my relationship with God. One thing I know for sure is that the ultimate source of love is God. I was not meant to love the way God loves. It’s a standard I can hold, but in my humanness, my version of love will always fall short.

So I stay humble. I practice small acts of kindness and love toward myself and others.

In this perimenopause phase of life, with moodiness, rage, and brain fog, love for myself and others can feel distant and downright hard sometimes.

My brain is changing, from being more relational and people-pleasing to being more independent (aka using one hemisphere of the brain to process, see the image below). I learned this thanks to another seminal book I’m reading, Age Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz (also HIGHLY recommend).

In this season, self-regulation and self-care feel like the gateway to love, for myself and for others.

I commit to my practices, prayer, journaling, breathwork, stretching, and return to them again and again.

Love is hard.
Our best attempt at love as humans is imperfect.

In this season of perimenopause, I’m realizing that love feels less performative and more like an ongoing practice.

In a few weeks, the roses and romance of Valentine’s Day will be over, but I will continue to contemplate this question:

What would it look like to lead myself with love?

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Referenced in this essay:
– Healing Leaders by Raj Sisodia & Nilima Bhat
– Age Like a Girl by Dr. Mindy Pelz

I love the idea of stepping into my future identity and becoming a new version of myself. Truly.

I teach transformation as the cornerstone of the Conscious Leadership work I do.

I love a good reinvention, a make-over, becoming my butterfly self. Future Me! Yippee!

And yet, I also miss who I used to be.

I used to be so energetic and enthusiastic.
I used to go headlong into life without fear or a second thought.
I used to travel here and there and everywhere - on and off airplanes and into and out of rental cars and hotel rooms.
I used to drive here, there and yonder with zest and zeal.
I used to change jobs and move houses and try new things often.
I used to multi-task with ease and total abandon.

Now, I feel quite boring. Sometimes guarded, even limited. Often afraid of change.

A year or so ago, one of our kids told another one of our kids that Jon, my fiancé and I, were “kind of lame.” I know that kid had the best of intentions - no blame or shame there. But I have to admit, I was initially furious (thank you perimenopause rage) when I heard that because I thought to myself - what has happened to me?

The truth is, I am “kind of lame (aka uninspiring or dull)” when you compare me to my old self.

And while I miss who I used to be, I am learning to accept the woman I am becoming.

I will be 47 next month, and now clearly understand that I am in the midst of the 3rd great hormonal change of my life. It has been the shake up of all shake ups in my internal world.

As I move through this phase, one thing is sure - I can’t be my old self. My hormones are changing, my brain is reorienting and the people, experiences and things that worked for me before, don’t quite fit anymore.

It is quite disorienting.

You see, while I love transformation, I prefer for it to be on my terms.

In the old days, when I needed a change, I chose the change.

I chose a new career or a new house or a new car or a new partner etc.

Truth is, sometimes we choose transformation, and sometimes it chooses us.

Perimenopause chose me (and if you are a woman between 40-50, it will choose you too at some point).

And here I am.

Learning how to imperfectly navigate this very disruptive life experience.

Yes, I realize that women everywhere have always gone through this transformation. And maybe some think it’s ‘no big deal’ but if you read the statistics on what happens to women’s mental / emotional health in midlife, they will floor you - like most suicides in women happen between 45-55 - peak perimenopause season.

That is a jarring statistic. And there are many more. You can look this up if you want more.

So what’s my “bloom where I’m planted” strategy for thriving in this stage of life?

I don’t have a perfect formula. I’m experimenting in real time. But these are the things helping me stay steady for now.

Lots of self-care, self-compassion, curiosity, solitude, reflection, rest. Walks in nature, hot tea, deep conversations with other women at this same stage of life, books and podcasts about perimenopause, small organizing / cleaning projects around my house. Hormone Replacement Therapy.

I might have 5+ years more of this hormonal shift. And what I know for sure is, I won’t be the same again. I am becoming a new me, and I’m not really sure how I will turn out.

The transcendent questions I’m asking to stay curious is this midlife transformation -
How might I properly grieve the old me that no longer is?
How might I welcome in, with open arms, the new me that’s coming?
How might I have tremendous compassion, self-love and curiosity in this inevitable transformation?

If you’re a woman in midlife too, I’d love to hear: what do you miss about who you used to be, and what do you sense is emerging?

For me, when I read the quote “Nothing can change until you accept it” in Danielle LaPorte’s book How to Be Loving in 2023, I immediately realized something that stopped me in my tracks.

I had done everything but accept something that I deeply wanted to change.

The thing I couldn’t fix

At the time, I was suffering with a debilitating eye condition (that I still carry, but suffer less with now) that was wreaking havoc on my life. The condition, called Binocular Vision Dysfunction for those who care to know, made driving nearly impossible.

And for an independent, go-getter, hyper-self-sufficient person, it was a REAL challenge.

I tried a LOT of healing modalities: glasses with prisms, vision therapy, changing my eating habits, all kinds of woo-woo belief unblocking technologies, and psychic remedies.

I WANTED IT GONE.

The moment everything shifted

When I read that quote, I heard it as a clear invitation to take a step back.

To stop trying to fix it.
To stop trying to change it.
And to first ACCEPT it.

It sounds simple, but it was anything but.

I felt compassion for myself.
I grieved my old life of hopping and bopping around without a care.
I allowed myself tremendous grace.

And slowly, I accepted my limitation.

Believe it or not, I eventually got to a good place living with it, and I was able to drive at least short distances with relative ease.

The relapse

Then I had a relapse when I took a longer drive than usual, and landed back in the panic and despair of driving being nearly impossible again in 2025.

Slowly, reluctantly, and with even more acceptance, I allowed new solutions to come to me. And finally, by the grace of God, I found a doctor who understood my condition and was able to set me up with prism glasses that are actually right.

Driving is still not easy. I’m still in recovery, I would say. But it’s better than it was before.

And I’ve come to ACCEPT something else, too.

I might not ever be able to take road trips on my own.
I might have to rely on others to drive me on highway trips.

And I am open to healing that. But equally important, I’ve accepted that this is where I am right now.

An invitation for you

I share all of that as an invitation.

Look at something in your life that you’ve been white knuckling to change, and ask yourself:

Have I fully accepted it?

Or in all the solutioneering, have I rejected it, cast it aside as “bad” or “wrong,” and just wanted it to be done already?

Nothing the body does is by mistake

In my most recent menopause read, Age Like a Girl by Mindy Pelz, I came across another line that hit home for me:

“Nothing the body does is by mistake.”

I’m realizing in this phase of life, this hormone shift that completely rewires a woman’s brain, that even if what I’m experiencing is uncomfortable or undesirable, my body is not betraying me.

It is becoming new.

With my eyes, maybe I’m meant to see things differently at this stage of my journey.
Maybe it’s good for me to let go of my hyper-independent ways.
Maybe it’s time to be a passenger and not a driver.

Who knows.

I don’t even have to assign it a deeper meaning.

My responsibility is to welcome it, accept it, give it its rightful place in my life, and move forward.

A question to sit with

So I’ll ask you:

Might there be a step back into acceptance that you need to take?
Might there be a deeper truth emerging in the change that you’re resisting?
Might you be willing, with grace and surrender, to accept whatever is happening for you right now?

If this lands, I’d love to hear: what are you being asked to accept in this season of your life?

I’m Adair Cates, founder of First Lead You. I guide change agents to deepen their inner work and embody nervous system regulation, so they can become powerful forces of transformation for their clients, communities, and teams.

Here, I’ll be writing about what it actually looks like to live this work day to day. The kitchen table moments. The reclamation of self in midlife. The hard conversations. The repair after reactivity. Relationships and family systems. Nervous system regulation as a way of being. Embodiment. Integrity. Becoming.

This space won’t be overly polished or performative. It’s not social media. It’s slower, deeper, and more honest.

If that’s what you’ve been craving, you’re welcome here.

Adair

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