The Dreams That Keep Me Moving

One of the unexpected gifts of healing has been learning how to dream again.

There was a time in my life when I wasn’t thinking five or ten years into the future. I was simply trying to make it through the next day. When you’re struggling with anxiety, grief, trauma, addiction, or depression, your world becomes very small. The goal isn’t building a meaningful future—it’s surviving the present.

Somewhere along the way, that began to change.

As life became steadier, I found myself asking questions I had never really considered before. What kind of therapist do I want to become? What kind of impact do I hope to leave? If I have one life to live, what do I want to spend it building?

I’ve realized that I don’t have just one dream anymore. I have several. What’s interesting is that they don’t compete with one another. They all seem to point toward the same purpose: helping people heal and creating resources that continue helping long after I’m gone.

One dream is to eventually own my own private practice. Not because I want to own a business for the sake of owning one, but because I want to create the kind of environment where both clinicians and clients thrive. I want therapists to feel supported, challenged, mentored, and encouraged to continue growing throughout their careers. I want clients to know they’re receiving compassionate, evidence-based care from professionals who never stop learning. I want the culture itself to reflect the values that first drew me into this profession.

That desire to teach and mentor has also led me to another goal that continues to grow every year. I hope to earn my doctorate someday. It isn’t about adding more letters behind my name. It’s about continuing to challenge myself, expanding my knowledge, and becoming the best clinician and educator I can be. The more I learn, the more I realize how much there is still to discover, and I hope I never lose that curiosity.

Part of that journey, I hope, includes becoming a college professor. Looking back, I can still remember the professors and supervisors who shaped the way I think about people, therapy, and what it means to sit with someone in their pain. I’d love the opportunity to invest in future therapists the way others invested in me. Knowledge is important, but wisdom, humility, and genuine human connection are what transform good clinicians into exceptional ones.

Another dream that feels both exciting and intimidating is public speaking. I’ve had opportunities to share parts of my story before, and every experience has reminded me how powerful honest storytelling can be. I’d love to spend part of my career speaking across the country—and perhaps one day internationally—about resilience, trauma, purpose, and hope. Every audience is filled with people carrying burdens we can’t see. If sharing my own journey helps even one person believe that healing is possible, then every mile traveled will have been worthwhile.

Writing has become one of the greatest surprises of my life. What began as simple journaling gradually grew into books I hope to one day share with the world. Until then, this blog has become a place where I can think out loud, process what I’m learning, and hopefully encourage someone else who’s trying to make sense of their own life.

One day I hope to publish Proof of Purpose, the memoir I’ve been slowly writing about the experiences that shaped me. It tells the story of anxiety, addiction, grief, loss, faith, healing, and the long journey toward discovering that our hardest seasons don’t have to define the rest of our lives. I don’t expect everyone to relate to every chapter, but I hope they’ll find pieces of themselves somewhere in the pages.

I also hope to publish Adventures in Change, a daily reader designed to offer encouragement and perspective throughout the year. My vision is simple: a book someone can reach for with their morning coffee, after a difficult day at work, or during a season when they need a reminder that growth rarely happens all at once.

Another project close to my heart is Finding Purpose, a guided workbook for people who have survived life’s hardest chapters but are still asking, “Now what?” Healing is important, but eventually many of us begin searching for something beyond healing. We begin searching for meaning. That’s the conversation I hope that workbook helps people have with themselves.

The more I write, the more ideas seem to come. I find myself dreaming about future books, journals, therapist resources, client workbooks, educational materials, and blog series that explore every corner of the human experience. I don’t think I’ll ever run out of things I want to write because I’ll never stop being fascinated by people and the incredible resilience they’re capable of.

When I purchased the Adventures in Change domain, I thought I was starting a blog. Now I realize I’m building something much bigger than that. I hope it becomes a place where people come to learn, heal, reflect, and grow. Whether that’s through books, articles, courses, speaking engagements, therapist training, or resources for clients, I want everything connected to Adventures in Change to point people toward hope.

I also hope to continue creating programs that improve the way people receive care. Building curriculum, developing therapist training, creating supervision resources, and designing tools that make therapy more effective have become some of my favorite parts of this season of life. There is something incredibly rewarding about creating resources that continue helping people long after they’re finished.

Will all of these dreams happen exactly the way I imagine them today? Probably not. Life has a way of rewriting our plans. But I’ve also learned that dreams aren’t contracts—they’re directions. They help us decide where to invest our time, our energy, and our hearts.

If I look back decades from now, I don’t think I’ll care whether every single goal was accomplished exactly as I envisioned it. I hope I’ll simply know that I kept growing, kept learning, kept creating, and kept saying yes whenever an opportunity arose to help another person. For me, that’s what success looks like. Everything else is simply part of the adventure.