For the people who show up on the worst days of someone else’s life. Most of us have driven past an ambulance with its lights flashing, pulled over for a fire truck racing down the road, or watched police officers responding to something happening in our neighborhood. We might wonder what’s going on. We might…

Darla has absolutely no idea what her job is. She doesn’t know that I spend my days sitting across from people who are sometimes telling me things they have never said out loud before. She doesn’t know what trauma is, or grief, or anxiety, or depression. She has no concept of clinical supervision, treatment plans,…

There is a strange thing that can happen when you finally get somewhere you worked really hard to get. You expect to feel different when you arrive. More confident, maybe. More certain. Like there will be some internal shift where you suddenly think, Okay. I’m ready now. I know what I’m doing. I belong here….

I’ve been thinking about unfinished things lately. The plans we make that don’t happen, the careers we leave, the relationships that end, the dreams that quietly change somewhere along the way. We don’t usually tell those stories when we talk about success. We like stories with clean endings. Someone decides to do something incredibly difficult,…

I’ve been thinking about how many things we want but never actually ask for. Not big, extravagant things. I’m talking about the little things that seem almost ridiculous when you say them out loud. I want someone to notice when I’ve had a long day without having to announce it. I want to be invited…

Have you ever made it through something incredibly difficult, only to find yourself falling apart once it was over? I mean, really think about that for a minute. You’ve spent weeks, months, or maybe even years dealing with something that required every ounce of strength you had. You were making decisions, managing responsibilities, taking care…

The other day I had approximately a million things to accomplish. You know those days. The kind where the list keeps growing faster than you can cross anything off of it, your brain is trying to think about six things at the same time, and somehow you keep walking into rooms without remembering why you…

We talk about healing like it is supposed to be this incredible transformation. Like one day you walk into therapy carrying everything that has ever happened to you, have the right breakthrough, cry the right tears, finally understand why you are the way you are, and somehow walk back into your life lighter. And sometimes…

Today is the anniversary of my Aunt Susie’s death, and if you have followed any of my writing for very long, you probably already know that saying she was my aunt doesn’t really explain who she was to me. Susie was my person. She was one of those rare people who becomes so woven into…

You finally did it. You made the appointment. Maybe you stared at a list of therapists for weeks before choosing one, reading profile after profile until they all started sounding exactly the same: safe space, evidence-based, compassionate, client-centered. Maybe you researched specialties and credentials, or maybe you picked the person with the first opening because…