The Day I Heard My Own Voice Coming Out of My Child’s Mouth

“Children are not things to be molded, but people to be unfolded.” ~Jess Lair

Growing up, I was often drawn to classmates who were soft-spoken and gentle. I admired how calm they seemed, because inside me was the opposite. I had a temper that flared at the smallest things.

I always gravitated toward people and situations that gave me a sense of peace, the very thing I didn’t have at home. As a child, I couldn’t understand why I craved that peace so badly. It took me becoming a parent to finally understand why.

My childhood home wasn’t peaceful. There was heavy drinking in the house, and my parents fought almost every night. Slowly, without any of us realizing it, that environment was breaking something inside my siblings and me.

The result was a child who grew into an adult carrying too much anger and irritability. People started calling me “short-tempered,” and eventually I accepted that label as simply who I was. I never once stopped to ask myself why I had become this way.

It was only after becoming a parent that I understood something important. A child’s growth begins in the environment of their home, long before anyone starts giving them lessons in right and wrong.

If we want our children to grow into successful, kind, grounded people, we have to give them a stable emotional foundation. A tree only bears good fruit when its roots have been cared for from the very beginning.

My own parents didn’t have much education, and I don’t think they ever realized how deeply the tension at home was affecting us. Perhaps that’s why, even now as adults, my siblings and I still carry traces of that environment with us.

Meeting My Opposite

Everything in my life began to shift when I got married. They say opposites attract, and that’s exactly how it was with my partner. Where I was quick to anger, he was calm, patient, and never one to panic.

His father had been in the military, so his childhood home was built on discipline and steadiness. That upbringing shaped him into someone remarkably even-tempered, and being close to him started to change how I saw myself.

I began to realize something I’d never questioned before: you don’t have to lose your temper over every small thing. Getting irritated just because you don’t feel like doing something ends up hurting you in the end, not just the people around you.

But old patterns don’t dissolve just because you can finally see them. My partner stayed calm and steady while I remained quick to anger. And without meaning to, I began raising my own child the exact same way I had been raised.

Seeing Myself Reflected Back

When my child was small, my outbursts were simply accepted without protest. Honestly, I was satisfied with that. I believed that raising my voice and reacting sharply was how I maintained discipline in the house.

I didn’t realize the damage I was doing underneath the surface. I wasn’t teaching discipline at all. I was planting fear, and my child began to associate every small mistake with the fear of my anger.

Slowly, my child started pulling away from me and growing closer to my partner instead. It wasn’t hard to understand why. He listened, stayed calm, and explained things with patience instead of volume.

I didn’t fully grasp what I had done until the day I experienced it myself, reflected back at me. One day, by accident, I tore a page out of my child’s notebook while tidying up.

The reaction was immediate and sharp: “Don’t you realize this is my school notebook? It’s not your property—you can’t just tear pages out whenever you feel like it.” The words themselves were ordinary, but the tone was unmistakable.

It was my own tone. My own sharpness, spoken back to me in a child’s voice. In that single moment, something in me went still, because I recognized exactly what I was hearing.

This was what I had been giving for years, and I was only now feeling what it was like to receive it. For the first time, I understood what I had actually been teaching at home.

The Decision That Changed Everything

That day, I made a decision that reshaped how I showed up as a parent. If I wanted my child to grow into a secure, emotionally healthy adult, I had to change first, not the other way around.

Whatever we consistently give our children, in tone, in patience, in reaction, is often what they eventually reflect back to us.

Who we are as parents shows up in our children, often more clearly than we’d like. They are mirrors of us, whether or not we’re ready to see our own reflection in them.

What I’d Want Every Parent to Know

Our children don’t just learn from what we tell them. They absorb who we are, moment by moment, especially in the moments we’re not consciously trying to teach anything at all.

The environment we create at home becomes the emotional foundation our children carry for the rest of their lives, long after they’ve grown up and left it behind. That’s a heavier responsibility than most of us realize while we’re in the thick of daily parenting.

If you find yourself repeating patterns you didn’t consciously choose—an unpredictable temper, harsh words, a habit of raising your voice when you’re overwhelmed—please know you’re not a bad parent. You’re likely repeating what was modeled for you, without ever having the chance to unlearn it.

But the moment you notice the pattern, you have the power to interrupt it. That noticing is the whole turning point. It’s the difference between passing pain forward and finally setting it down.

You can choose to pause before reacting. You can choose patience over panic, even when it’s hard, even when old habits pull you the other way. It won’t happen perfectly or all at once.

Start small. The next time you feel that familiar flash of irritation rising, try naming it silently to yourself before you speak. That tiny pause is often enough to change the entire tone of what comes next.

It also helps to apologize when you get it wrong. Telling a child “I raised my voice, and that wasn’t fair to you” doesn’t undermine your authority. It teaches them that accountability and love can exist in the same sentence.

Your children are watching you far more closely than they’re listening to you. The most powerful gift you can give them isn’t perfection. It’s your willingness to grow, to reflect, and to change when you see something in yourself that needs healing.

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About Jyoti Yadav

Jyoti Yadav writes about simple living, minimalism, and finding clarity in a world that often encourages excess. Her life journey reflects experiences that many readers can relate to, making her writing genuine, practical, and deeply personal. Through her articles, she shares real-life insights that help readers navigatge a complicated world with greater ease, purpose, and peace of mind. You can explore more of her work at jyotisimplelife.com.

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When Life Reminds You That Nothing Is Guaranteed

“In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer.” ~Albert Camus

A little over a year ago, I went to a bookstore on a cold night to meet a friend at the café. It’s taken me this long to finally write about it.

We had one of those conversations you need when you’re trying to make sense of things during the busy rush of life. The kind of conversation that makes you feel like you’re in the right place at the right time and you’re making progress.

I left the bookstore feeling like I was a little bit closer to being on the right track in life, got into my car, and started driving home. I was thinking about the conversation, feeling grateful.

Then I stopped at a traffic light on one of the major roads. I looked into my rear-view mirror and saw a car coming toward me at full speed. In an instant, I realized the driver wasn’t slowing down.

There wasn’t time to think. I braced myself for the impact.

I watched him try to swerve, but he couldn’t avoid me. He struck the left taillight of my car with such force that I don’t remember what happened in the few seconds afterward.

The next thing I can recall is being on the side of the intersection, apparently having rolled several hundred feet from where I’d been waiting at the light. I was disoriented and trying to figure out where I was.

The police arrived and asked some basic questions about what had happened. When I tried to answer, all I could do was stutter.

I couldn’t get the words out. I kept repeating myself. A paramedic told me I was in shock.

Being in shock is a strange experience. Your mind is working to comprehend the situation while your body is still freaking out.

I called my wife, and she came to get me. We found out that the person who hit me had fled the scene and had struck several other cars as he escaped.

Several of us were standing in the median with flashing police lights surrounding us. We all started talking, and I learned that one of the women was celebrating her birthday.

I remember looking across the street and seeing a bakery. I thought about going over and getting her a cake. That would’ve been perfect.

We were standing in the middle of a major intersection after a violent collision, surrounded by damaged cars and flashing lights, and still could’ve had cake!

I wanted to celebrate the fact that she was still here. That we all had survived this experience and could still make something good from it.

I’d love to say we had a wonderful time on the side of the road eating cake together, but it never happened. We walked to the bakery, and it was closed.

Standing there on the grass between traffic lanes, looking at that closed shop, something shifted in me. The strange tenderness of wanting to buy a stranger a cake in the middle of a crash site felt just as real as the collision itself.

I like to imagine that life is more predictable than it is. We make plans, build careers, raise children, fall in love, save money, make appointments, go to bookstores, sit at traffic lights, and assume the next moment will resemble the one we’re currently experiencing.

Most of the time, it does.

But sometimes a car comes barreling through a red light. Sometimes a phone rings with news we never expected. Sometimes someone we love gets sick.

Relationships change. Jobs that once felt secure become uncertain. The future we imagined disappears and leaves us standing in a place we never intended to be.

The difficulty I’ve found is that we can’t shield ourselves completely from any of it. That realization can make us afraid. It can also make us awake.

I’m starting to understand that maybe the question isn’t how we can make life safe enough that nothing terrible will ever happen. Maybe it’s more like focusing on the kind of person we want to be while we are here—the choices we make, the way we love, and the way we respond when life doesn’t go the way we had hoped.

I’ve spent decades searching for answers because I want to understand how a human being can live with uncertainty without becoming consumed by it.

I’ve learned that I can’t control everything that happens to me. But I can become more present to what is happening.

I can notice my fear without becoming identified with it. I can embrace my longing for approval without allowing it to determine my actions. I can face the places where I feel empty inside and become curious about them instead of trying to fill them right away.

Right now, I’m writing this essay at a park with my bare feet on the grass. The breeze is cool on my skin, and I hear children laughing on the playground.

I’m breathing. I’m here. I’m alive.

Somewhere, someone is sitting at a red light without giving a second thought to what might happen next.

Being awake means knowing that this moment is not guaranteed and choosing to enter it anyway. It means doing the work that feels like ours to do and loving people even though we can’t keep them forever.

I’m also discovering how important it is, for me at least, to tell the story.

When I share my life’s stories, I don’t know exactly who will read it.

You might be struggling with your own uncertainty. You might be someone who has experienced something much more frightening. You might be sitting at a crossroads in your own life, wondering who you really are and whether there is still time to become that person.

Maybe you’re carrying something nobody else can see; I don’t know. But, when I tell you my story, something beautiful happens. For a moment, I’m not alone in my experience, and I hope that as you read, you’re not alone in yours.

We can’t prevent every collision or know what’s coming through the next intersection. And there’s no guarantee that the bakery will be open when we need a birthday cake.

But we can stand together in the median for a while. We can look at one another and say, “We’re still here.”

That’s enough to make us stop, breathe, and realize what an extraordinary thing it is to be alive.

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About Daniel H. Shapiro

Dr. Daniel H. Shapiro is keynote speaker, author, and mentor. He is passionate about human connection and the stories we carry with us. For more information about his book, The 5 Practices of the Caring Mentor, or his mentoring and speaking services, check out mentoringwithcare.com.

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How to Stop Letting Anxiety Control Your Reactions

“Physical self-awareness is the first step in releasing the tyranny of the past.” ~ Bessel van der Kolk

For years, I thought my anxiety was a character flaw. I thought I could think my way through it. Reason with myself long enough, and I’d finally get to the other side of it. I never did.

Every time I thought I had made peace with it, something small would happen, and I’d be right back in that place. Heart racing. Hands shaking. Anticipating a fallout in something that hadn’t even happened yet.

In my previous marriage, I learned to read a room before I even understood I was reading it. I could tell from the sound of a door closing how the night was going to play out. I walked on eggshells for years.

My body knew things my mind hadn’t caught up to yet. I’d feel my chest tighten and my stomach drop, and I’d start smoothing things over before I even knew what I was smoothing over. I called it being “sensitive” or “too much.” I never once called it what it actually was.

When I finally left that marriage, I thought the anxiety would leave with it. It didn’t. Years later, in situations that weren’t dangerous at all, I’d still feel that same tightness in my chest. A raised voice in another room. A delayed text back. Someone going quiet during an argument. My body would react like I was in danger even when I wasn’t.

My mind would spend hours afterward trying to talk myself down from something it hadn’t fully understood in the first place.

I didn’t understand what was actually happening until I started training as a health counselor and studying attachment theory.

My anxiety was a nervous system that had learned a long time ago that danger could show up without warning. It built a whole set of reactions to keep me safe. Reactions that fired on their own long before my conscious thoughts ever got a vote.

That’s what anxious attachment looks like from the inside. A nervous system that learned early that connection could disappear without warning, so it stays braced for loss even when nothing’s actually wrong.

This is what nervous system dysregulation looks like day to day. A body that learned, at some point, to treat ordinary stress like a real threat. It keeps sounding the alarm until something teaches it otherwise.

This is the part that took me the longest to understand. No amount of reasoning with myself touched it. That reaction lived somewhere older and faster than the reasoning part of my brain.

A part of me that had learned its lessons through repetition, emotion, and the body itself, long before I had words for any of it.

A nervous system responds to repetition, emotion, and physiology. That’s how change actually happens and new neuropathways get formed—by working a new pattern into the body the same way the old one got there.

The shift that changed everything for me started very small. I started paying attention to the reaction while it was happening.

Even now, in a relationship where I’m safe and loved, I sometimes catch it. My partner goes quiet for a few minutes, and my chest tightens before I can stop it. The old questions surface: Is he mad? Did I do something? My body braces for impact that isn’t coming.

But now I notice it. Right as my chest tightens, right as my shoulders creep up toward my ears, I put my hand on my chest and breathe deeply until it softens. I name what my body is actually doing. My chest is tight. My shoulders are up around my ears. I’m holding my breath. That’s all.

Just naming it, staying with it, letting it move through me. I remind myself that silence doesn’t mean what it used to mean. I stay in the present moment instead of disappearing into old stories.

Over time—and it did take time—that pause grew. The gap between the trigger and my reaction went from nothing to a second. Then a few seconds. Then long enough that I could choose what happened next.

I started responding to what was actually happening in front of me, paying attention to the present moment on its own terms. That gap is where my life changed. Slowly, in all the small ordinary moments where I used to disappear into old patterns without even noticing I’d left, it began to shift.

If you’ve spent years feeling like your anxiety is some kind of personal failing or something you should’ve fixed by now through sheer willpower or enough therapy or enough journaling, I want you to hear this. Your body is doing exactly what it learned to do to keep you safe, and it’s still doing that job today. Even in situations where you’re not in danger anymore.

Healing starts in the body, with noticing what’s happening there before your mind even catches up to explain it. Regulating your nervous system can start right where you are, with something as simple as noticing one sensation and staying with it a few seconds longer than usual.

Here’s what I’ve learned about working with a nervous system.

First, notice before you narrate.

The instant something happens in your body, your mind wants to jump in with a story about what it means. Before you get to the story, just notice the sensation itself. The tight chest. The shallow breath. The urge to apologize or explain or disappear. Notice it the way you’d notice weather moving across the sky, without deciding yet what it means about you.

Let’s say someone you love goes quiet. Before you ask what’s wrong or start replaying the last hour looking for what you did, pause. Put your hand somewhere grounding—your chest, your belly, your thigh. Notice what’s happening in your body right now. Name it without explaining it. Tight chest. Shallow breath. Urge to fix. That’s the first step.

Second, breathe through it before you decide what to do next.

Anxiety wants you to act immediately. Fix it. Explain it. Smooth it over. Most of the time, there’s no real emergency requiring that speed. A few slow breaths won’t cost you anything, and they give your body enough time to remember it’s not actually under attack.

In that same moment, with the quiet partner and the tightening chest, try this: Breathe in for four counts. Out for six. Let your exhale be longer than your inhale. Do it two or three times before you say or do anything. You’re not ignoring the situation. You’re giving your body a chance to come back online before you respond from a place that isn’t actually about what’s happening right now.

Third, expect this to take repetition.

The pattern took years to build, and it won’t undo itself the first time you try something new. Every time you pause before reacting, even for one extra second, you’re teaching your nervous system something it didn’t know before. That adds up slowly. Then one day you realize the gap that used to be a fraction of a second is now long enough to actually live in.

This shift is available to you no matter where you’re starting from. Even if therapy hasn’t touched it yet. Even if you’ve read every book and tried every technique and still find yourself reacting the same old way.

The body holds the pattern, and the body can learn a new one. It happens through paying attention, gently and consistently, until your nervous system finally believes what your mind’s known for a while now. That you’re safe and that you get to decide what happens next.

I still catch old patterns sometimes. A voice raised in another room can still make my chest tighten for half a second before I remember where I actually am. The difference now is I notice it. I breathe through it. I get to choose what happens next, and so do you.

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About Rebecca Wells

Rebecca is a certified health counselor through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and an attachment theory certified life coach specializing in nervous system regulation. She created the Wounds to Wisdom Pathway for working through attachment patterns in the body and has logged more than a thousand hours of private coaching alongside her own healing journey. She is the author of seven books and the founder of Wellness with Rebecca. Connect with her at wellnesswithrebecca.com.

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When You Can’t Get Everything Right at Once

“I once heard someone say that a sign of enlightenment was the ability to say (and mean it) ‘Well, this isn’t what I want, but it’s what I got, so okay.’” ~Sylvia Boorstein

I once met a speed-cuber, one of those people who could solve a Rubik’s Cube in sixty seconds. Nice friendly young guy.

I hated him.

Not personally.

I hated him on the level of metaphor.

I hated him because I was jealous. Life always felt to me just like one big insoluble Rubik’s Cube. I could never get things under control on all sides at once. The harder I tried to make one side of my cube all one color, the more infuriatingly multicolored the other sides got.

It’s still like that. I still can’t get everything right at once. I can see clients or do chores around the house. I can spend time with my family or work on my book. I can go to dinner with friends or watch my weight. I can keep up with my professional reading or read mysteries to relax.

The one thing I can’t do is everything. I’m trading off all damn day long.

That seems to be how change works in the larger world too. The more we try to force life to meet our expectations, the more life pushes back.

It is a point made by cautionary tales as old as Midas and Scrooge and as modern as Jurassic Park.

And it is especially relevant to those of us who struggle with addiction to control.

I should explain that I consider myself a control addict.

I consider you one, too.

I don’t mean we’re all bossy or domineering. By control I mean our deep human desire to make reality cooperate—to make people, situations, and outcomes conform to our needs, wants, and expectations.

I’ve spent years thinking about how we do this, and why.

Along the way I’ve come to see three paradoxes hiding inside our attempts at control.

The first paradox is that the more control we need, the less in control we tend to feel. The second paradox is that the harder we try to control other people, the more we force them to control us back

But it’s the third paradox that made me hate the speed-cuber:

To get control in one place, you must give it up in another.

I am not alone in hating this idea.

I can think of many people whose determined attempt to get control over one area of their lives triggered a loss of control in another.

The drinker who used alcohol to manage his feelings, only to lose control of his need for alcohol.

The business executive who achieved success and status at work but became estranged from his wife and kids and extended family.

The mom who made her children the focus of her existence, then found herself so disconnected from her husband that they essentially stopped speaking.

The depressed man who spent years successfully hiding his feelings from everyone, then one morning found himself too exhausted to get out of bed.

And so on.

You’d think watching the third paradox in action over and over again would teach me to remember it.

You would be wrong.

I still want to write the book and spend time with my family. I want to earn money and take time to rest and play. I want bagels and pizza and the number on the bathroom scale to drop.

One thing has changed, though.

I’m getting better at not treating the scrambled side of the cube as meaning I’ve screwed up.

For most of my life, I took the scrambled side as evidence of failure. If the house was a mess, I should have cleaned it. If I wasn’t writing, I was wasting time. If I was writing, I was neglecting something else. If I ate the pizza, I shouldn’t have. If I skipped it, I was missing something I wanted.

There was always another side of the cube accusing me.

Now I see it as a reminder of something.

It reminds me that I’ve made a choice.

That inside every “yes” there’s a “no.” That a good writing day means chores don’t get done. That a good chore day means the book doesn’t get written.

Every choice costs me something.

Stated that plainly, the lesson seems Duh-obvious.

That it’s not obvious, for me or for most people, returns me to the idea of control.

Because there’s a part of each of us that simply wants what it wants. That wants and expects and demands and feels hurt and angry when that demand is not met. That doesn’t just want choices, but choices without cost. That wants to have the cake and to eat it at the same time.

Call this part stubborn, or childish, or addicted, as I do.

Whatever you call it, I’m guessing you carry some version of it too.

Don’t misunderstand me. I still envy that kid. I’d still love to know what it feels like to watch all six sides click perfectly into place.

But the addicted part of me is also coming­­­­—slowly —to accept that life isn’t a Rubik’s Cube.

Let me close with a story that shows what I mean.

During a routine physical my doc runs a cardiogram and finds a blip that suggests a TIA (transient ischemic attack). He tells me to drive to the ER. I feel fine, but I go.

At the hospital they put me on a gurney and park me in a hallway for four hours while they run tests. I have to cancel six client sessions, calm my worried wife over the phone, wonder what all this will cost, and then just lie there and wait.

At one time I would have reacted to all this with frustration, worry, or anger. Now I surprise myself by taking a one-hour nap. It’s a pretty good nap, too.

The surprise here was discovering that the addicted part of me has become willing to accept tradeoffs without protest.

To believe I’m not failing at life just because I can’t solve it.

And that the one thing I can’t do is everything.

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About Steve Hauptman, LCSW

Steve Hauptman, LCSW, is a psychotherapist and the author of Monkeytraps: Why We Try to Control Everything and How We Can Stop (2015; revised edition forthcoming), a book about our addiction to control and the problems it creates in our lives and relationships. His writing explores control, emotional safety, relationships, and what becomes possible when we stop trying to make reality cooperate. Learn more at https://monkeytraps.wordpress.com and https://ift.tt/FvYLVlZ.

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How Being Authentic Taught Me to Love Myself

“Sometimes the hardest challenge isn’t receiving acceptance from God or other people; it’s receiving acceptance from ourselves.” ~Leigh Finke, Queerfully and Wonderfully Made

Growing up as a pastor’s kid, I had to hide who I was. I was taught that love from parents was conditional. I was taught that mistakes were met with a strict hand and harsh words. I was taught that I had to prove over and over that I was deserving of love.

As I grew up and learned more about the world around me and myself, I had to come to terms with my own sexuality and gender. I had to hide these parts as well. I was constantly told that those parts of me were “of the world” and sinful. But no matter how much I prayed or tried to change, my identity was still pushing through.

There were times I didn’t want this. I didn’t want to be queer. What I wanted was to be the perfect little “Christian Girl.”

But it doesn’t work out like that.

Because in the end, I didn’t have to choose one side or the other. These identities weren’t opposing sides, no matter how much others believed they were. 

What changed for me was when I had the space to actually be myself.

I was disowned by my parents and told that they would never respect my names, pronouns, or identity. So I moved out.

I went to college. I learned from my classes. I joined communities that fit who I was. I made new friends. I was around people that liked me for me.

I went to therapy. I slowly started to embrace who I truly was. I had the space and time to consider all parts and aspects of myself. I allowed myself to be authentic. And it was hard.

But I found my place in the world. I studied social work and got my bachelor’s and my master’s degree. I knew I wanted to help others in the way that I needed help.

To be authentic, I had to go against everything I was taught.

I struggled with being authentic and true to myself at first, because it meant that I wasn’t “acting like I was supposed to.” I had so many ideas in my head on how I was supposed to act, look, speak, and be. I was supposed to keep my long natural hair. I should never get tattoos or piercings. I was supposed to always be evangelizing about Jesus. I was supposed to be quiet and demure and never speak first.

But now, there was no one to report to. There was no one checking in on me. There was no one tracking what I did, what I said, what I changed.

So I started to slowly make changes. I quit going to things just out of obligation. I chose people that I actually liked to hang out with. I wore different clothes and I cut my hair. I started dating who I wanted to.

“But what if…” was always in my head.

Or “I don’t want to be too much…”

And then, “This is too weird…”

But I was hearing other phrases from people I had grown to care about, support, and love. They said the complete opposite. They said, “Go for it!” and “Why not?” Because I wasn’t doing anything wrong.

 What was different was that I wasn’t holding myself to someone else’s expectations.

“You look happier.”

I was leaning into my core self, what I wanted to be, and how I wanted to act.

I wasn’t happier just because I was being queer and presenting as myself. But that helped, of course. I was happier because I wasn’t holding myself back. I wasn’t constantly wearing a mask to be what others wanted.

But self-love came way after.

Self-love comes from within. And even though I was doing everything to be authentic, it wasn’t natural for me yet.

We are taught how to love from those who raise us, whether that is our parents, siblings, grandparents, caregivers, anyone. Our past relationships are the models for how we understand what love is. They also teach us what kind of love we “deserve.”

I was taught that “love” is very specific. It has to be constantly fought over. It can be taken away at any moment. And it was waiting for you to mess up and make a mistake.

I was still living under my parents’ version of love, even when it was just me. I wasn’t taught to love the “weird” and the “different” parts of myself. I had to learn to embrace them until it felt natural.

But I had my support systems. I had my community. I had my therapy. I had my loved ones.

They continued to show up and show me what love truly is. They taught me different types of love. They taught me that love is actually unconditional. Love is patient, kind, caring, supportive, and free.

I didn’t have to do anything to deserve their love.

Relearning love takes time.

Now, years down the line, I have relearned and retaught myself what love can be. I do everything I can to not only receive that love but to also give that love.

The motto that I am currently embracing is “to have community, you must be community.” As a therapist, I help individuals and couples work to look inside themselves to find their own answers. But in my personal life, I am reaching out to friends, sending letters, and keeping in touch with family. I try to go above and beyond to be there for others, in the same way others are there for me.

If you are looking for self-love, look at your authentic self first. What works? What doesn’t? What is easy to accept? What parts do you avoid?

Ask yourself, am I showing up for me or for someone else? Am I being who I want to be, or am I trying to be someone else? What would it look like if I actually was who I wanted to be?

We all have ideas about who we are, what we could be, and what our core self is. The main part is actually accepting it. Accepting can move to authenticity, which can then grow into love.

You are an ever-growing person. and there is always so much to learn, accept, and love.

You are deserving of love.

You are deserving of authenticity.

You are deserving of acceptance.

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About Danny Trip

Danny Trip (He/They) is a queer therapist in the Quad Cities and is a licensed master of social work. They currently work at Bloom Wellness Group in Bettendorf, IA. His clinician focus is with queer and/or questioning individuals, those who have experienced trauma, and neurodiversity. Find more information and schedule with Danny at Bloom Wellness Group, https://www.bloomwellnessgrp.com/.

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How I Rebuilt My Life After Devastating Loss

“You cannot rebuild on an unstable foundation.” ~Angelina Crosby-Pigott

On August 22, 2018, my husband collapsed in our bedroom.

Rudy was my best friend and my partner in every sense of the word. His last word was “911.”

I performed CPR while my youngest daughter and my father-in-law stood nearby, and my oldest daughter shielded our four-year-old in another room. The EMTs worked on him before taking him to the hospital, and my father-in-law and I followed the ambulance.

After what felt like forever, a nurse moved us into a small waiting room at the back of the ER. There was no urgency in the building. It was eerily calm.

Eventually, a doctor came in and quietly said, “I’m sorry.”

All I could say was, “Sorry? SORRY? How?”

Everything slowed, and my mind disappeared into a fog. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real.

But it was.

This was eight days before our fifteenth wedding anniversary, and our family was already grieving. My eldest son’s father had died just eighteen days earlier. In less than three weeks, all four of my children had lost their fathers.

It took me time to build up the courage to see Rudy. It took everything in me to remove his wedding ring. Then somehow, I was supposed to leave.

I remember walking through the hospital unable to understand how everything was still moving. Nurses continued down the halls. Cars kept driving outside.

Somewhere people were eating, laughing, sleeping, making plans for tomorrow.

How had the world not stopped?

When I got home, my children were upstairs together. I walked into the room and told them their father was gone.

Then I screamed.

It was a blood-curdling scream that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than my body. My soul screamed.

That is what I mean when I say my life burned to the ground.

The grief was unbearable, but I could not completely collapse. My children were grieving too, and I was now the parent still standing.

So I mothered while grieving. I planned a memorial and a funeral while unraveling. I prayed, led, handled paperwork, answered questions, and did what needed to be done even when I could barely breathe.

But my journal told the truth.

Surviving: I wrote down the as-found condition.

I have spent most of my professional life in planning, cost engineering, project controls, and project management. Early in my career, I planned refinery outages from shutdown through startup. Later, I helped manage complex projects worth millions and billions of dollars.

Before you repair a troubled project, you document the as-found condition: the honest current state, not the state you wish existed. If the starting point is wrong, the recovery plan will be wrong too.

Without realizing it, I began doing the same thing in my journals.

I am not sleeping.

I am angry at him for leaving.

I am angry at God for taking him away from us.

I do not know how to do this without him.

A few weeks after Rudy died, I made a list called The Things I Lost When Rudy Died.

My companion. My lover. My best friend. My confidant. My protector. My encourager.

Then came the ordinary things: my mechanic, my grill master, my handyman, the person who shared my private jokes.

I began to understand that I was not grieving only a person. I was grieving an entire life’s architecture built around another human being.

The journal gave me a place to stop performing “fine.” It let me tell the truth about where I actually was.

That was the first lesson of rebuilding: start with reality.

Stabilizing: I made the world smaller.

Less than a month after Rudy died, I wrote, “The days are getting harder as reality sets in. I feel strengthened and broken at the same time.”

I also wrote, “As a planner, I’m always trying to plan ahead, thinking of the future, but now there is no future with him physically.”

Planning was not simply what I did for work. It was how I oriented myself to life.

There was always a next milestone, a contingency, something ahead. Now the future I had been planning had disappeared.

I knew how to plan for risk. I did not know how to plan for absence.

Thirty-four days after Rudy died, I wrote another prayer: Teach me how to rest.

I stopped trying to solve the rest of my life. I reduced the scope.

Take care of my children.

Take care of myself.

Rest.

Do not make every decision today.

One second. One minute. One hour. One day.

Eventually my body told the truth my mouth had been avoiding. My hair began falling out. I had been functioning so well that even I had confused functioning with healing.

It wasn’t healing.

Remembering: I went looking for Angie.

Rudy and I had spent eighteen years together, fifteen of them married. We truly operated as a we, and that was beautiful.

Death ended the we without my consent. Suddenly there was only me.

I had to decide. I had to parent. I had to build a life I never asked to build.

And somewhere in that transition from we back to me, I ran into a question I was not expecting:

Who is me?

As part of my healing, I began looking much further back than my marriage.

I went looking for Angie.

Angie is what my siblings and the people who knew me growing up call me. If someone calls me Angelina, of course I respond. But if someone calls me Angie, I turn around differently.

If you call me Angie, I know you know me. You know my beginning. You know my origin.

I kept thinking about my nine-year-old self. She was fearless. She spoke her mind.

She was independent.

And I realized I could not find her.

I could not remember where I lost her. I could not remember where I last saw her. I could not remember where I put her.

So I started excavating.

I looked for the places where pain had taught me to hide, shame had taught me to dim myself, and fear had taught me that being fully seen could be dangerous.

There was no single moment when Angie disappeared. The burial happened in layers.

I grew up, achieved, served, mothered, built a career, and became very good at carrying enormous responsibility. From the outside, I was functioning extraordinarily well.

But functioning and being fully yourself are not the same thing.

I also spent decades in male-dominated industries, sometimes learning to soften what I knew so I would not seem threatening and at other times becoming harder because hardness seemed to be the language the room respected.

Those strategies helped me succeed. That is why I did not immediately recognize what they had cost me.

My life had burned in 2018. What I had not known was that parts of me had been buried long before the fire.

The fire made the ground visible.

And when I kept digging, I found her.

Angie was still there.

As I reconnected with her, dreams returned. Pieces of my personality returned. I remembered aspirations, stories, and parts of myself I had not thought about in years.

I remembered myself.

But remembering also uncovered pain I had never fully processed, shame I had learned to live around, and things I needed to forgive or release.

I was grieving my husband, and I was grieving how far I had traveled from myself.

Both needed healing.

Rising: I learned joy did not have to wait for grief to leave.

One of the clearest signs of healing was hidden in an ordinary journal entry from those first weeks.

I had written about how broken I felt. Then, almost casually, I wrote: Went to the beach with friends. We had a nice time.

For years I barely noticed that sentence.

Now I think it tells the truth about returning to life better than almost anything else I wrote.

My husband was dead.

I was devastated.

And I had a nice time at the beach.

Both things were true.

Joy had entered the room without asking grief to leave first.

That changed how I understood healing. Moving forward did not mean leaving Rudy behind. Loving the life still available to me did not mean I had loved our life any less.

Strategy helped me make decisions about the life I could influence. But strategy could not return my husband or make reality become something other than what it was.

That required surrender.

Not surrender as giving up, but surrender as releasing my demand that reality change before I allowed myself to live again.

Looking back, I can see a pattern I could not see while I was inside it: survive, stabilize, remember, rebuild, rise.

I did not follow a framework. I lived it first. The language came later.

If your life has become something you never planned, you do not need to solve all of it today.

Start with what is true.

Make the next thing smaller.

Notice what you are carrying.

Ask what you have been hiding.

And if you no longer recognize yourself, look back with tenderness instead of judgment. You may not be gone. You may simply be buried beneath years of becoming who you needed to be.

I could not remember where I had put Angie either.

But she was there.

She had been there all along.

Given the choice, I would choose Rudy. I would undo this loss in a heartbeat if anyone would let me.

But no one will.

So I stopped waiting for my old life to return. I began tending to the life that remained.

And somewhere beneath the grief, the roles, the armor, the fear, and all those years of becoming who I needed to be, I found the person who remained too.

Angie was still there.

And so was I.

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About Angelina Crosby-Pigott

Angelina Crosby-Pigott is a cost engineer and project-management professional with more than twenty-five years of experience. After sudden loss forced her to rebuild her life, she began writing about grief, identity, strategy, surrender, and intentional rebuilding. She is the founder of I AM Rising and a mother of four. Find her at helloangelina.com.

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When You’re Doing Everything Right but Still Feel Lonely

“We are all so much together, but we are all dying of loneliness.” ~Albert Schweitzer

I pick up my phone even though it has not made a sound.

No missed calls. No new messages. No invitation asking what I am doing or whether I would like to come over. I put it down, but before long I check again.

Still no one.

The only other heartbeat in the house belongs to Oliver, my five-pound chihuahua. He brings me more joy than something so small should be able to carry. I talk to him constantly, and he listens with great interest when he thinks the conversation might involve food. Otherwise, he is not very good at holding up his end.

Most days follow the same routine. I go to work. I go to the gym. I take Oliver for a walk. On the weekends, I take myself to brunch. Occasionally, I travel on my own.

I know how to be alone. That has never been the problem.

The restaurant I go to most often in Buffalo is Roost. I always sit at the bar because, even if no one else talks to me, I know I will have at least some interaction with the people who work there.

I am a regular. Paige always says hello. Martin, the owner, always speaks with me, and when he has time, he will sit down and talk for a little while. Their kindness is genuine, and I value it. I do not walk into Roost unnoticed.

But the people sitting beside me seldom engage beyond hello.

I have tried going at different times: Friday dinner, my usual Saturday brunch, even the busier Sunday brunch, hoping more people might create more opportunities to meet someone.

I follow the advice. I keep my phone out of my hands. I make eye contact. I smile. I keep my posture open. I try to look approachable without looking as though I am trying too hard to be approached.

Most of the time, I finish my meal and go home.

When someone does begin a genuine conversation, something inside me settles. I feel visible. I feel as though, for a little while, my presence matters to someone other than me. The interaction does not have to become a friendship or lead to future plans. It can still relieve the loneliness for the rest of the day.

On the outside, I look put together, independent, and confident. I go to work, exercise, travel alone, and take myself to brunch. I appear to be a woman who is perfectly comfortable on her own.

On the inside, I sometimes feel like a flashing billboard:

Here I am. See me.

Being able to do things alone does not mean I want to experience my life that way. Independence and loneliness can occupy the same chair.

By Christmas 2025, I was tired of spending the holiday at home, feeling sad while imagining everyone else gathered with the people who belonged to them. I decided to try something different. If I was going to be by myself, I could at least be somewhere new.

So I booked a trip to Asheville.

On Christmas Eve, I went out for brunch. It was a beautiful, sunny day, and the restaurant was busy. I took a seat at the end of the bar. The first couple beside me did not engage beyond a polite hello.

After they left, an older couple named Terry and Al picked up their drinks from the other end of the bar and moved into the empty seats beside me.

“We are not going to let you sit alone,” they said.

They began talking to me as though crossing the room to include a stranger on Christmas Eve was the most natural thing in the world. When Terry learned I was visiting Asheville on my own, she gave me an entire itinerary of things to see and do. We had a lovely conversation and exchanged phone numbers.

After I left, I texted to thank them. Later that day, they invited me to meet them at Sparky’s Bardega.

I went.

The people there were warm and welcoming. A gentleman came over and started talking to me. Later that evening, after I had left Sparky’s, Terry and Al texted again and invited me to join them for dinner. I met them and had a drink before leaving to continue my conversation with the gentleman I had met earlier.

On Christmas Day, Terry reached out once more and asked if I wanted to meet later. I was tired and leaving the following morning, so I did not go.

But every invitation mattered. Terry and Al had not simply spoken to me at brunch and returned to their lives. They kept remembering me. They continued making room for me.

For that brief time, my presence had registered in someone else’s life.

I have never forgotten how that felt.

It also left me with a question I have not been able to answer: Is it me, or is it where I live?

I have lived in Buffalo for nine years, yet in my experience it can still be a difficult city to enter as a transplant. Many of the people I meet are surrounded by the families and friends with whom they grew up. They share decades of birthdays, weddings, illnesses, children, losses, and ordinary dinners. I have been invited into people’s homes, but those invitations have not developed into the steady connection I long for. Months, and sometimes years, can pass between them. If I make the effort, people are often receptive. But being friendly to someone is different from making room for her in your life.

I do not blame them. They already have people.

There is a stability in being known by someone who remembers who you were before you became who you are. I can recognize that as a blessing and still envy it. I have never had that kind of permanence.

Would life be different if I moved somewhere with more transplants, people who arrived without established circles and were also searching for connection? Would I meet more people willing to pick up their drinks, cross the room, and make space for someone they did not know?

Or would I unpack the same loneliness in a different house?

I know a new city cannot fix everything. Wherever I go, I will take myself with me. I will carry the same tendency to make myself small, to interpret silence as rejection, and to wonder what I could have done differently.

But I have been doing the work. And Asheville makes me wonder whether sometimes the place matters, too.

There are still evenings when the loneliness becomes so overwhelming that I go to bed simply to make the hours pass faster. It is not that I have nothing to do. I can always find something to fill the time.

Lately, I write. It gives the hours somewhere to go.

What I cannot always find is someone with whom to share them.

On the hardest days, the loneliness gives rise to a more unsettling question: If something happened to me inside this house, how long would it take before anyone noticed? Who would find me, and when?

What I want is to know that my presence registers in someone else’s daily life. That someone would notice if I did not text in the morning, arrive when expected, or answer the phone.

Oliver would notice. He notices when I leave the room for five minutes.

I am grateful for him in ways he will never understand. But my heart still longs for a person with whom I can share my life, someone to sit across from at dinner, tell the small details of my day, travel with occasionally, and love Oliver with me.

The cost of loneliness is not only the absence of company. It is the way that absence turns inward. A silent phone becomes evidence. An empty evening becomes a verdict. Instead of asking why connection can be so difficult to find, I ask what must be wrong with me that no one is looking.

I suspect I am not the only person asking.

Somewhere, another person is following the same advice. They have put away their phone. They are making eye contact, smiling, and trying to appear open. They may be surrounded by people and still wondering whether anyone will choose the empty seat beside them.

Perhaps that is one of loneliness’s cruelest tricks: it convinces each of us that we are the only one no one chose.

Knowing there may be others does not make the house less quiet. It does not make the phone ring or place someone across from me at dinner. But it reminds me that loneliness is not proof that I am uniquely unworthy of being loved.

I do not know yet how to make the loneliness end.

For now, I go to work. I go to the gym. I walk Oliver. I take myself to brunch. I write. I keep putting myself in places where connection might happen, even when it does not.

After Asheville, I returned to the same routine, the same quiet house, and the same silent phone. Nothing had been solved. But the kindness I found there left me questioning the conclusion I have carried for so long.

When do we stop asking what is wrong with us and begin asking whether we are trying to belong in the wrong place?

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5 Harmful Habits That Make a Stressful Day Even Worse

When I was little, I often felt as though I lived in two completely different worlds.

My parents’ home was like an ice castle. Everything looked beautiful. Everything was orderly. Everything appeared exactly as it was supposed to. But it was cold.

My mother rarely let me do what I genuinely wanted to do. Instead, I was expected to only do what had to be done.

Many evenings I went to bed exhausted, frustrated, or quietly holding back tears.

Whenever I complained, my mother would simply say, “You have to endure it. That’s how everyone lives.”

Then there was my grandmother’s world.

Her home was filled with warmth.

It was never perfectly tidy because she was always creating something—baking, sewing, planting flowers, or trying a new recipe simply because it made her happy.

She cooked what she genuinely enjoyed eating, and she never forced me to eat food I didn’t want.

She adored animals.

On warm summer nights, she loved sleeping outside in the garden beneath the stars and always invited me to join her. My mother never allowed it.

My grandmother wasn’t perfect. But she taught me something my nervous system has never forgotten:

Balance.

You don’t have to force yourself through everything. Some things flourish when they’re done with inspiration instead of obligation.

And when the day has already been stressful, don’t continue the race after you get home. The day may have been exhausting. Home doesn’t have to be.

Take a warm bath. Eat something you truly enjoy. Wrap yourself in your favorite blanket. Go to bed early.

Sometimes healing is much simpler than we imagine.

We’ve all had those days. The kind that leaves you emotionally drained before dinner.

Your shoulders ache. Your thoughts refuse to slow down. And all you want is something—anything—that will make the stress disappear.

Unfortunately, many of the habits we reach for after difficult days don’t actually help us recover. They simply distract us long enough to postpone what we’re really feeling.

From my own experience, here are five habits that quietly make tomorrow even harder—and the healthier alternatives that help your nervous system truly reset.

1. Scrolling until you forget why you picked up your phone

It feels harmless. Just a few minutes on social media. Then thirty minutes become two hours. Instead of feeling rested, you somehow feel even more overwhelmed.

Our brains often look for distraction because slowing down means finally noticing how emotionally exhausted we really are.

And perhaps the strangest part? The algorithm rarely shows us what we actually wanted to see.

Instead, it floods our minds with endless recommendations, strangers’ opinions, and content we never asked for.

That’s why I now rely on much simpler rituals. The kind that quiet my mind instead of filling it. The kind that gently return my attention to myself and my own inner world.

Try this instead.

Do absolutely nothing for ten minutes.

Make yourself a cup of tea or whatever feels comforting.

Watch the sunset. Few things are more beautiful than watching the sky slowly change colors. Even better if you can share the moment with someone you love.

Sit beside an open window.

Spend a few minutes near water.

Take a bath.

Take a shower.

Your nervous system doesn’t always need more stimulation. Sometimes it simply needs silence.

I especially love being surrounded by nature and water.

Even spending a few quiet minutes in the small green space near my apartment helps my body relax.

I don’t live in a house with a garden like my grandmother did, and I can’t place a bed beneath the stars the way she loved to. Sometimes I miss that.

But I’ve noticed something surprising. Choosing not to scroll Instagram gives my mind far more inspiration than thirty minutes on Pinterest ever could.

2. Ignoring your emotions

Many of us learned to wear emotional masks long before we became adults.

“I’m fine.”

Even when we’re not.

“It wasn’t that bad.”

Sometimes that’s simply another way of saying, “I don’t believe I deserve better.”

“I’ll deal with it tomorrow.”

Occasionally, that’s a healthy choice.

But when tomorrow becomes next week and next month, our emotions don’t disappear. They wait.

Eventually, they can return as anxiety, irritability, exhaustion, or emotional numbness.

Healing begins the moment we allow ourselves to say one simple sentence:

“Today was hard.”

Many of us were taught that being strong means pretending we’re okay.

In reality, acknowledging your emotions is one of the strongest things you can do.

I wore that mask for most of my childhood. My mother believed that maintaining the appearance of “everything is fine” was simply part of life.

I was expected to smile, even when I didn’t feel like smiling. Maybe that’s why, as an adult, I no longer force myself to pretend.

If I need to cry, I cry.

And I’ve never asked my daughter to pretend she’s okay when she isn’t.

I want her to know that every emotion has a place. That feelings don’t make us weak. Pretending they don’t exist does.

3. Treating stress like a personal failure

We often see stress as proof that we’re not strong enough.

We criticize ourselves for feeling overwhelmed instead of asking a much more important question:

What overwhelmed me in the first place?

Stress is information.

Sometimes it tells us we’ve taken on too much. Sometimes it tells us we need rest. Sometimes it reminds us that our boundaries quietly disappeared.

And sometimes, the stressful day wasn’t entirely our fault.

We can’t control other people’s behavior. People ignore boundaries. They disappoint us. They create unnecessary pressure. The only thing we truly control is how we respond afterward.

When I was little, my grandmother used to joke that emotions were like tiny worms.

“If you keep them trapped inside,” she’d laugh, “they’ll start nibbling at you from within.”

Because of her, those little ‘worms’ never had the chance to stay inside me for very long.

I’m not afraid of my emotions anymore. I love every one of them. I let myself feel them. Then I let them go.

I don’t carry yesterday’s stress into tomorrow. Each morning, I try to begin again—as if someone has placed a clean sheet of paper in front of me.

4. Trying to earn rest

Many of us believe we have to finish just one more thing before we’ve earned the right to rest. One more email. One more load of laundry. One more hour of work.

The problem is that one more thing rarely stays just one thing. There’s always another task waiting. Another notification. Another reason to postpone taking care of ourselves.

The finish line keeps moving.

We forget that rest was never supposed to be something we had to earn. It’s a biological need.

Your brain can’t recover while it’s constantly waiting for permission to slow down. And the truth is, very few people will stop to protect your well-being if you never do.

That’s why putting yourself somewhere near the top of your own priority list isn’t selfish. It’s healthy.

No one has ever found lasting happiness by treating life as one endless race.

I know that because I lived that way for a while.

At first, it even felt productive. I believed I was working hard. I believed I was doing everything I was supposed to do. But after some time, I began to notice something.

Many of my days were filled with automatic habits that consumed my time without bringing meaningful results. I didn’t recognize them until I slowed down.

That’s the strange thing about constantly rushing. When you’re always running, you rarely notice where you’re actually going.

Our minds are full of invisible fears.

The fear of falling behind.

The fear of missing an opportunity.

The fear that everyone else is moving faster than we are.

It’s easy to confuse constant motion with meaningful progress. That’s why balance matters so much. Not balance between work and laziness. Balance between creating and recovering. Between giving your energy away and allowing yourself to restore it.

When I finally let go of the habits that weren’t serving me, something unexpected happened.

My body thanked me. My nervous system thanked me. But so did my creativity. My work became more colorful. More alive.

For the first time, I realized that before, I hadn’t really been creating. I had been producing. I was making content for someone else.

For expectations. For the algorithm.

There was nothing wrong with what I made. Some of it was beautiful. But when I look at my work now, the feeling is completely different.

Now my creativity feels alive. It breathes. And even when I don’t say a single word, it speaks for me.

5. Looking for instant relief instead of real recovery

After a stressful day, comfort feels irresistible.

Sometimes it’s food.

Sometimes online shopping.

Sometimes alcohol.

Sometimes another episode of a TV series.

Sometimes just one more hour on our phones.

None of those things are wrong simply because they’re enjoyable. They only become a problem when they become the only way we know how to cope.

Real recovery usually looks much less dramatic.

A meaningful conversation.

A quiet walk.

Gentle movement.

Music.

Reading.

Journaling.

Eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

None of these things promise instant escape. What they offer is something far more valuable. Healing.

Because healing doesn’t place a beautiful mask over our pain and call everything okay.

Healing gently turns toward the pain itself. It listens. It understands. And little by little, it allows the wound to become something other than an open wound.

For me, letting go of my own “I’m fine” mask wasn’t easy. It took years. And perhaps I’m still learning.

But the moment I admitted that I had been wearing it, it felt as though someone had lifted a heavy weight from my shoulders.

I no longer have to keep patching my soul with temporary distractions, hoping they’ll make the pain disappear.

Instead, I can finally care for the part of me that was hurting all along.

Stress Doesn’t Mean You’re Failing

Perhaps the biggest misconception about stress isn’t that we experience it. It’s that we believe we shouldn’t.

The real problem is that we often punish ourselves simply for feeling overwhelmed.

My grandmother used to tell me something I’ll never forget.

“A stressful day doesn’t mean you’re weak. It doesn’t mean you’re failing. It doesn’t mean you’re doing life wrong. It simply means your mind and body are asking for care instead of criticism.”

For years, I didn’t fully understand what she meant. Now I do.

Recovery isn’t about escaping your emotions. It’s about creating enough safety to finally experience them without drowning in them.

Whenever I have a difficult day, I try to remember something that changes everything.

I imagine that the exhausted version of me isn’t an adult at all. She’s a little girl who had a very hard day.

Would I criticize her?

Would I tell her she should have worked harder?

Would I expect her to smile when she felt like crying?

Of course not.

I’d make her a cup of warm cocoa.

I’d read her a bedtime story.

I’d wrap her in the softest blanket I could find.

I’d stay beside her until she felt safe enough to fall asleep.

So why should I treat my adult self with any less kindness?

Perhaps that’s what healing really looks like.

Not becoming tougher. Not pretending nothing hurts. Not forcing yourself to “stay positive.” But learning to become the safe place you’ve been searching for all along.

Because sometimes the healthiest thing you can do after a stressful day isn’t becoming more productive.

It’s becoming gentler. More patient. More compassionate. Especially with yourself.

And maybe tomorrow won’t begin with the weight of yesterday. Maybe it will begin the way every new day deserves to begin—like a clean sheet of paper.

The world will probably continue asking us to do more.

Move faster. Achieve more. Stay available. Stay productive.

But healing often whispers something completely different.

Slow down. Breathe. Come home to yourself.

The to-do list will still be there tomorrow.

Your nervous system deserves your attention today.

Because your worth has never depended on how much you accomplish in a single day.

Sometimes, the bravest thing you can do is allow yourself to rest.

And trust that tomorrow, you’ll begin again—not because you pushed yourself harder, but because you finally gave yourself permission to recover.

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About Oleksandra Fomichova

Oleksandra Fomichova is a writer and visual storyteller exploring self-worth, boundaries, healing, authenticity, and the quiet process of becoming yourself. Her writing draws from lived experience and a lifelong relationship with creativity. She is the author of Under My Skin and Empath Diaries (Russian-language eBook here) and writes about what happens when we stop performing our lives for others and begin living them for ourselves. Follow her on Instagram here.

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