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The recent news about overturning Roe v. Wade really triggered me. My nervous system dysregulated: I couldn’t focus, I felt outside of myself, everything started to look bleak, and I felt personally attacked in a very visceral way that went deeper than I could articulate. I want to be effective and useful in advancing the […]

Most of us were raised with a survival mindset.  The focus was on meeting basic physical needs, and setting ourselves up to continue meeting those needs successfully in the future. That requires a specific set of skills and beliefs. Optimizing for survival means: choosing safety, predictability, and agreeability over anything else there is little margin […]

I am a ravenous and unapologetic devourer of self-help books. The genre is often greeted with skepticism and eye-rolls. That is a shame, because I can attest from personal experience that many of its contents are profoundly life-changing. Here are a few that have been the most pivotal for me:  When Things Fall Apart by […]

I’ve been in therapy since 2015.  I’ve had a coach since 2018.  Both have been indispensable. In therapy I gained labels and language to understand my past experiences. I learned to identify my relational and emotional patterns, and released a lot of built up pain from the past. From receiving coaching, I saw there were […]

I realize this is heretical for a coach to say, but I have a bone to pick with “self care.” For a long time, I was dutifully checking all the “self care” boxes: eating healthily, going to therapy, taking walks, journaling, acupuncture, the whole nine yards.  I was also resentful the whole time.  I was […]

Imagine you’re sitting in a car, wanting to take a road trip to the destination of your dreams. But the following things are true: You’re sitting in the passenger seat You don’t know how a car works You don’t know where you want to end up You don’t know how to read road signs You […]

It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday morning and I was limping through the streets of Madrid. I had just rolled my ankle badly and heard a loud snap. I was miles away from the nearest metro station and over an hour from my homestay.  My foot was rapidly swelling to the size of a grapefruit […]

I remember the scene clearly: I was sitting on the floor of my walk-in closet with the door closed behind me, light off, staring at a candle, and suddenly starting to implode. This was my first ever attempt at meditating. (I’d read about the candle thing somewhere as an easy way to keep yourself focused. […]

Once, stuck in a crazy-making role early in my career, my best work friend and I invented a game I called the “margarita clock.” We sat down at our desks at 8 am sharp every morning, and we’d see how long we could make it before we felt the intense urge to drink a margarita […]

You don’t owe anyone your story. We are living in an unprecedented period that incentivizes hyper-personal, nonstop sharing about ourselves. Vulnerability, with its many benefits, is finally having its moment – and thank goodness for that. It also, though, creates pressure for some folks to feel like they have to disclose every painful detail of […]