Mistakes: The Modality No One Wants, But Everyone Needs

Let’s talk about mistakes.

Not the cute kind, like putting salt instead of sugar in your morning coffee (although, wow, that will wake you up). I’m talking about the bigger ones. The kind that leave you lying in bed at night with your stomach in knots, replaying that conversation, that choice, that relationship, that job you didn’t take, or the one you did.

Mistakes get a bad rap. And sure, I get it. They can cost time, money, resources, relationships. They can wound pride, burn bridges, and test every ounce of our resilience. Sometimes, mistakes hurt other people. Sometimes, they hurt us.

But here’s what we rarely talk about: mistakes are also a modality of learning.

Yes, really. Just like visual, auditory, or experiential learning, mistakes are their own powerful, if unpopular, teacher. They may not come with a workbook or a soothing voice guiding you through the lesson, but make no mistake (pun intended): the lesson is there.

Think about it. We don’t grow solely by getting things right the first time. We grow by bumping into the edges of our understanding. We learn by touching the proverbial hot stove, not because we’re reckless, but because sometimes, theory isn’t enough. We need felt experience.

You might think: “But I wasted so much energy. I invested so much. I got hurt.” That might all be true. And yet, you’re here. Wiser. Maybe a little more cautious. Maybe more compassionate. Maybe more aware of your own blind spots.

The next time you catch yourself mid-regret, spiraling into the shame vortex that so often accompanies mistakes, try this: Pause. Breathe. Ask yourself:

• What did I learn from this?

• How did I mature or grow because of it?

• What would I do differently next time?

We’re so quick to label mistakes as failures. But what if we reframed them as part of the curriculum of being human? What if, instead of seeing them as detours, we recognized them as unexpected (and sometimes messy) parts of our path?

Therapy has taught me that growth rarely happens in the neatly packaged wins. It happens in the awkward stumbles, the painful conversations, the moments we wish we could do over, but can’t. And so, we do the next best thing: we do better because of them.

So, the next time you find yourself face-palming over something you did (or didn’t do), remember: this isn’t the end of your story. It’s a chapter. A lesson. A slightly uncomfortable teacher in the school of life.

Mistakes may not be the modality you wanted, but they might just be the one you needed.

Why I Teach Every Client to Meditate (Even the Ones Who Roll Their Eyes)

One of the first things I teach my new clients is how to meditate. Yup, before we dive into childhood wounds, toxic relationships, or why your boss reminds you of your mother, we start with meditation. Even with my long-term, been-through-it-all-with-me clients, I still ask, “How’s your meditation practice going?” It’s become my version of “Did you drink water today?,” basic, essential, easy to skip, but transformative if you stick with it.

Now, I can already hear the collective groan. “Meditation? Really? I came here for deep psychological insights, not to sit on a cushion and do nothing for 20 minutes.” Trust me, I get it. Meditation has been turned into everything from a wellness trend to a spiritual flex. But here’s why I emphasize it so consistently in my practice and why I believe it's one of the most powerful tools for emotional healing and mental clarity.

Meditation rewires your brain. Literally.

When you meditate for just 20 minutes twice a day (yes, that’s all), you’re not just “calming down” or chasing some elusive state of Zen, you’re laying down new neural pathways from the bottom up. In neuroscience-speak, that means the deeper, older parts of your brain (think: survival and emotional regulation) finally get a chance to connect with the more evolved, rational areas. It’s like rewiring a house where all the rooms can finally talk to each other instead of yelling through walls.

And what does that look like in real life? Less anxiety. Better memory. Quicker decision-making. Sharper focus. More patience with your kids, your partner, or that one friend who always shows up late and blames traffic. You become more efficient, less reactive, and bonus research even suggests your brain ages better when you meditate regularly. It’s like CrossFit for your prefrontal cortex… without the burpees.

Now, let me be clear: meditation is not easy. In fact, it’s incredibly difficult in the beginning. Picture your mind as a puppy in a room full of tennis balls. The moment you sit down and close your eyes, that puppy starts chasing every thought, memory, worry, and song lyric it can find. That’s normal. The chaos is part of the process. No one’s mind is still at first.

But here’s the reframe: you don’t meditate to become good at meditating, you meditate to become better at life. At relationships. At being present. At noticing your own patterns before they pull you under. You meditate so that the next time someone pushes your buttons, you have a moment, just a beat, to choose your response instead of reacting on autopilot. 

You don’t meditate to become the best meditator. You meditate because the simple, yet wildly challenging act of sitting in silence for 20 minutes is practice for life. It’s not about the perfect lotus posture or achieving some blissed-out, floaty state (although, if that happens, great). It’s about choosing, again and again, to come back to yourself in the midst of distraction, discomfort, and chaos. Which… sound familiar? It should. That’s life.

Every time you sit down, close your eyes, and focus on your breath or a mantra, something subtle but powerful is happening. You’re teaching your mind and your nervous system what it feels like to stay centered when the world is pulling you in ten different directions. Your phone buzzes. Your to-do list grows. Someone is upset with you. You forgot to return that text. You’re wondering what’s for dinner. You’re feeling a bit... off. And yet, you sit. You stay. You return. Over and over.

This is the practice.

Because how do you get better at anything? You practice. You show up. You fumble. You get distracted. You come back. And eventually, something shifts. Your attention lasts a little longer. Your reactions soften. Your fuse lengthens. Your capacity to respond, rather than react, grows stronger.

You want to be better at handling conflict with your spouse or your kids? Want to stay calm when your boss makes a snide comment or your teenager rolls their eyes for the fifth time that morning? You don’t need more self-help books or communication hacks (okay, maybe a few), but what you really need is a practice. A way to train your nervous system to not jump ship the moment discomfort arises.

That’s what meditation is. It’s emotional regulation in disguise.

So no, you’re not failing when your mind wanders. You’re not doing it wrong when you feel restless, or bored, or annoyed. That is the work. That moment when you notice you’re distracted and gently come back to your breath? That’s the bicep curl for your emotional muscles. That’s the moment that will carry you through a hard conversation, a stressful day, or a breakup you didn’t see coming.

Meditation isn’t about escaping your life. It’s about being more fully in it, with clarity, with grace, and with a lot more room to breathe.

Let this be your reminder: progress, not perfection. Show up. Sit down. Practice. Your life will thank you for it.

So no, I don’t expect you to become a monk. I’m not asking you to chant in Sanskrit (unless you want to). But I am inviting you to carve out 20 minutes of your day to meet yourself, as you are, with compassion and curiosity. It’s not glamorous. But it is magic.

And if you’re already resisting this idea, good. That’s exactly where we begin.

Grief Isn’t an Ikea Desk

Grief Isn’t an Ikea Desk

Learning how to grieve isn’t like putting together an Ikea desk, though wouldn’t that be nice? A manual. A diagram. A clean, minimalist photo of what life is supposed to look like once everything’s been “assembled” properly. Step A connects to Part B, tighten with Hex Key C, and voilà: a fully constructed version of closure.

But grief?

Grief laughs in the face of tidy.
Grief takes the manual, lights it on fire, and hands you a blank page instead.

Because grieving someone you love doesn’t follow a one-size-fits-all model. It’s not linear, logical, or efficient. It’s more like one of those old-school “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, except you didn’t choose this story. You’re not sure you even want to keep reading. But here you are on page 47, trying to decide what to do next.

And at each bend in the road, you’re met with choices:

Do I walk into the dark forest of memory, not knowing what I’ll find there?
Do I brave the stormy seas of anger, guilt, or longing?
Or do I freeze, numb, paralyzed, unable to even imagine taking another step?

This is the real work of grief, not bypassing the pain, not rushing to the part where you’re “better,” but learning how to be. Really be. In the ache. In the missing. In the after.
It’s sitting in the quiet room of your own heart and learning how to breathe through the silence.

It’s surfing the five stages of grief with as much consciousness as you can muster.
Denial? That freezing, disorienting wave that knocks the wind out of you.
Anger? The boiling sea that churns under your skin.
Bargaining? The chaotic, swirling current of “what if” and “if only.”
Depression? The heavy, still waters of the Dead Sea, where nothing seems to move.
And every now and then, when the waves soften, you get to Acceptance. That calm, expansive sea. The one that doesn’t erase the pain but holds it with compassion.

Grieving, at its core, is about coexisting: continuing forward even as your heart is looking back. Even as it’s calling out behind you: Did you see what I lost? Did you see who I loved?

And maybe that’s the thing. Grief belongs to the heart. It always has.

We don’t grieve what we didn’t love.
We grieve because we loved deeply, irrationally, imperfectly, wholly.
Grief is the twin flame of love. The other side of the coin. The echo that remains when love has no place to land.

That’s why grief doesn’t live only in the tears or the anniversaries. It shows up everywhere in the grocery store, when you see their favorite snack. In the song that randomly plays. In your kid’s laugh. In the mundane moments that suddenly feel not so mundane.

So the question isn’t how to “get over” grief. It’s how to let it live alongside you.

How to let it move through your mornings, your errands, your laughter, your disappointments.
How to let it soften, not harden, your heart.

The how of grieving is this:

• It’s hunkering down in your heart when the sadness hits, instead of fleeing it.

• It’s choosing to live a vibrant, courageous life while still carrying the ache of missing someone.

• It’s forgiving yourself for what you didn’t say and forgiving them for what they couldn’t do.

• It’s knowing that unresolved wounds don’t erase the realness of the love.

• It’s allowing presence to guide you because there is no map. No “after” picture. Only breath. Only the next moment.

And maybe that’s the closest thing we get to a manual after all.

What If Grief Isn't the Enemy?

What If Grief Isn’t the Enemy?

Whether you’ve recently lost someone you love or you’re carrying a loss that happened ten years ago, grief has a way of showing up uninvited. It barges in like a houseguest you never asked for and certainly don’t know how to host. One moment you’re “fine,” and the next you’re in the cereal aisle sobbing over a box of Cheerios because your person used to eat them every morning. Grief doesn’t care about timing. It has no respect for schedules or social norms. It just… shows up.  Rude.  I know. 

And when it does show up, most of us panic. We shove it down, try to distract ourselves, pretend it’s not there, or berate ourselves for “still” feeling it. We treat grief like a problem to solve, something to get over or around or under, anything but through.

But what if, stay with me here, grief has just gotten a bad rap?

What if grief feels so awful, not because it’s inherently wrong or broken, but because no one ever taught you how to do it?

Think about it. If someone handed you a sewing machine and told you to make a ball gown right now or you’d lose everything, you’d understandably freak out. You don’t know how to sew. You don’t know how to cut patterns or hem fabric or thread a bobbin (what even is a bobbin?). It’s not that you’re incapable, it’s just that no one ever showed you how.

Grief is a lot like that. It’s a skill. A practice. A part of life that we somehow expect ourselves to know how to do naturally, even though most of us have had zero preparation. And to make it worse, our culture tends to treat grief like it’s contagious, something to politely look away from or speed through with a tidy casserole and a card that says, “Thinking of you.”

But here’s the truth: No one gets out of this human experience alive. Loss is inevitable. Which means grief is, too.

So instead of avoiding it, or fearing it, what if you learned how to grieve?

What if you allowed yourself to be with grief the way you might sit with a dear friend going through something hard? With patience. With tenderness. Without the need to fix it. Or the need to run away from it.

Grief is not the enemy. It’s not a malfunction. It’s not a failure of resilience. It’s not useless.  Grief is what love looks like after loss. It’s the ache of absence. It’s the indent on their favorite chair of where they used to sit.  It’s the fragrance of their perfume once they’ve vacated the room.   It’s the honoring of what was, and the reshaping of what is. 

Grief is your heart expanding to hold both the love and the loss. It’s not a problem to solve, but a space to inhabit. And more importantly, it’s often in this hollowed empty space that we begin to find our healing. In the emptiness, something else can arrive, wisdom, clarity, compassion, aliveness, love.

Grief is part of the natural world, just like the tides and the trees and the sun setting quietly every evening. It doesn’t need to be resisted. It needs to be understood. Felt. Moved through with grace (or at the very least, with honesty and some tissues).

So maybe the question isn’t how do I get over this, but rather, how do I learn to be with this in a way that I live a lively life?

Because if grief is the cost of loving, then maybe, just maybe, it’s also the path back to living.

Ask For What You Need

Recovery from codependency isn’t about fixing what’s broken, because you’re not broken. It’s about uncovering what’s been buried. Reclaiming the parts of yourself you tucked away to survive.

One of the core tenets of this recovery? Learning to ask for what you need.

I know, easier said than done. Because for the codependent, the very idea of having needs can feel… foreign. Or worse, shameful. It’s as if you were wired with an internal alarm system that says, “Needing something makes you weak. Inconvenient. Too much.”

So what do you do instead? You anticipate. You over-function. You become the emotional concierge in every relationship, offering room service-level attention to everyone else’s needs while ignoring the quiet whisper inside your own chest.

The truth is, codependents often don’t even know they have needs. Not because they’re out of touch or dramatic or lacking self-awareness, but because they were taught, explicitly or implicitly, that their needs weren’t safe. That survival required silence, hyper-vigilance, self-sacrifice.

But survival is not the same as living.

So what now?

Let’s say you’ve made it to that crucial first step in recovery: you’ve realized there is a worthy person inside your skin. Someone who has feelings. Desires. Limits. A voice. And now, your work is to learn how to speak up on her behalf.

Here’s a simple three-part framework I use with my clients:

1. Identify what you're feeling.

2. Name the behavior (yours or someone else’s) that triggered the feeling.

3. Get clear on what you need around this.

Let’s bring this to life with a couple of examples:

Vignette 1: The Quiet Husband

You’re standing at the sink, hands in soapy water, when your husband walks through the door. He breezes past you, wordless, and disappears into the bedroom.

You freeze. Your mind starts spinning. Did I do something? Is he mad? Does he even see me anymore?

Instead of spiraling, try this:

• Step one: What am I feeling? Sadness.

• Step two: What triggered it? He didn’t say hi when he got home.

• Step three: What do I need? A moment of connection.

Now, here’s how you put that into words:

“When you came home and walked straight to the bedroom without saying hi, I felt sad. What I need is just a quick hug or hello when you get home. It helps me feel connected.”

Notice what you didn’t do: You didn’t accuse. You didn’t shame. You didn’t make him wrong. You simply stated your emotional truth, and your need. Direct. Honest. Vulnerable.

Vignette 2: The Accountable Teen

Now for a happier moment. You walk in after a long day and find your teenage daughter doing her homework, no reminders, no nagging. Just… doing it.

Something inside you softens.

• Step one: What am I feeling? Joy.

• Step two: What triggered it? She’s being responsible and self-motivated.

• Step three: What do I need? To express love and appreciation.

Here’s how that might sound:

“When I came home and saw you doing your homework, I felt so happy. I just need you to know how much I love you and appreciate your effort.”

This might seem unnecessary. You might think, Well, she knows I love her. But expressing our needs isn’t always about the outcome. It’s about staying connected to your truth, to your emotional world, to you.

And here’s the part most people miss:
Asking for what you need isn’t about getting a guaranteed “yes.”

It’s about honoring your voice. It’s about stepping into your rightful place as a full human being, not just a mirror for everyone else. Whether the answer is yes or no, you still win. Because you showed up for you.

This kind of communication might feel clunky at first. Like learning a new language when you’ve only ever spoken the dialect of self-denial. But with practice, it becomes second nature. You build emotional fluency. You stop contorting yourself. You start existing in the world with clarity, dignity, and kindness toward your own experience.

Because here’s the truth: your needs aren’t negotiable. They’re part of what make you you.

And when you stop performing for love, and start connecting from your center, something beautiful happens:
You become someone who knows herself.
Who speaks her truth.
Who shows up for her own heart.

And maybe, just maybe, that’s the most revolutionary act of love there is.

“You cannot share what you do not have. If you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else either”

— Don Miguel Ruiz

Independence Day

As the United States of America celebrates its 242nd year of independence from England, I find myself wondering, what do you want to be independent from?

Not in the patriotic, fireworks in the sky kind of way. But in the personal, quiet, soul-searching kind of way. What’s the thing, person, belief, habit, history that has been holding the pen while you try to write your own story?

What does independence mean to you?

How do you experience the cost of not having it, when some part of you is still tethered to something or someone outside of yourself for safety, permission, identity, or even love?

These are the kinds of questions I might ask you if you were sitting on my couch, legs curled under you, hands anxiously fiddling with the corner of a throw pillow. They aren’t always easy questions. But they’re the kind that open doors.

Most of the clients I see, whether they know it or not, are yearning for some form of independence. Freedom from PTSD. From loneliness. From addiction. From perfectionism. From dysfunctional family patterns that were handed down like heirlooms no one wanted but no one knew how to refuse.

We all have something to be free from. Some internal monarchy we’ve been bowing to without realizing it.

Codependent patterns. Cultural conditioning. Childhood beliefs that no longer fit. Relationships we feel responsible for maintaining, even if they shrink us. Careers we’re over-invested in to avoid confronting our inner emptiness. The chains look different, but the result is the same: we’re stuck. Stuck in systems that no longer serve us, rules written by people who were often just as wounded as we are.

When the American colonies sought independence from England, it wasn’t because they hated their roots. It was because the structure they were living under had become oppressive. Outdated. Misaligned with their evolving identity.

Sound familiar?

Sometimes, in order to truly grow, we need to step back and say: This no longer fits who I am or who I want to become.

That’s not rebellion for rebellion’s sake. That’s the beginning of personal sovereignty.

And no, I’m not saying you need to declare war on your parents or burn every bridge with people who didn’t know how to love you well. That’s not healing, that’s just reenactment with fireworks. What I am saying is that independence requires honesty. And courage. The willingness to look at your relationships, your inherited beliefs, your survival strategies, not with judgment, but with curiosity.

What am I still unconsciously loyal to?
What did I need to believe in order to stay safe?
Who told me I couldn’t have needs?
Who benefits from me staying small?

These questions are uncomfortable. And beautiful. Because they crack open the door to something bigger: your freedom.

Had the United States never risked the discomfort of defiance, we wouldn’t have the colorful, rebellious, adventurous (and yes, sometimes messy) country we have today. The same is true of you. If you never risk the discomfort of change, you’ll miss the opportunity to live your full, technicolor life.

Independence, true independence, isn’t about isolation or doing it all on your own. It’s about living in alignment with your truth. It’s about choosing your life from a place of wholeness, not habit.

And like all things worthwhile, it’s a process.

The colonies didn’t become a nation overnight. There were battles. Losses. Standstills. Hopeful declarations followed by moments of uncertainty. That’s what becoming yourself looks like too. There are days when you feel brave and clear and sovereign—and days when you still feel like a frightened child in an adult body, just trying not to get in trouble.

That’s okay. That’s human. That’s the journey.

So if you’re not sure where to begin, try here:
Start by questioning.
Not with blame.
Not with shame.
Just gentle, intentional curiosity.

What do I want to be free from?
What might my life look like if I were truly independent, emotionally, psychologically, spiritually?

And remember: you don’t have to have all the answers to begin. You just have to be willing to ask the questions.

Let your independence begin here.

“The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an of rebellion”

— Alber Camus