First, thank you, Symphony, for sending this in, for reading my little corner of the internet, and for giving me permission to share your name and your question here. I think this is something I've been asked in different ways over the years, but I'm not sure I've ever really sat down and answered it properly. Forgiving myself for my mistakes genuinely took a lot of time. I don't think there was ever one moment where I suddenly decided, "Okay, I forgive myself now," and every

Today, my Nana turns 80...and if you know who she is, she's probably your "Nana" too. And I'm crying as I write this because I'm not sure there are enough words in the world to explain what she means to me. My Nana has been there for every single step of my life. Not just the good ones. Every version of me. Every chapter. Every mistake. Every accomplishment. Every difficult season. Every time I've questioned myself, and every time I've found my way back. Not once has she hung

Today, my parents celebrate 30 years of marriage. Thirty!!! YEARS!!! When I was younger, I don't think I understood what that really meant. Thirty years sounded like an impossibly long time. Now, being married myself, I understand it a little differently. Thirty years isn't just thirty anniversaries. It's thousands of ordinary mornings. Hard conversations. Big decisions. New chapters. Changes neither of them could have predicted. It's raising three children, supporting each o

Dear Reader, I don't know if I ever really knew how to answer the question, “How did you get better?” For a long time, I thought getting better meant that one day I would wake up and the thoughts would just be gone. That food would never feel complicated again. That I would never have a fear around eating something, or have a moment where an old thought crept back in. That isn't really what happened. The biggest change came when I finally started doing the actual healing. The

I’ve been having a bit of a hard time lately. Not necessarily in a way that I know how to explain, and definitely not in a way that I feel ready to put all over the internet. There are some things I want to keep for myself. But I’ve been thinking a lot about what happens to me when I don’t feel okay. When I feel like I’m falling short. When I feel misunderstood. When I don’t know how something is going to turn out. I have this tendency to want answers immediately. I want to k

I have recently decided that I want to be a fitness girlie. Not in the influencer way. Not in the “here are my five favorite protein powders and a link to my matching gym set” way. And certainly not in the personal trainer way. If you know me, I can guarantee that was never your first thought when you heard “fitness girl.” I mean a girl who genuinely enjoys working out. A girl who wakes up and thinks, “I can’t wait to go for a run.” A girl who puts on her running shoes and ac

We baked. A lot. Somehow, the cinnamon buns I had planned turned into donuts instead, and honestly, I think that's exactly what I needed. We spent the weekend in the kitchen, baking and making things just because we could. We put on our TV show, stayed home, and eventually moved the air mattress into the living room and started Breaking Bad because apparently, after all these years, I've somehow never seen it and apparently, according to my husband, this show is tooo good. Th

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about hobbies. Not productivity. Not work. Not things I should be doing. Just things I genuinely enjoy doing for no other reason than I enjoy them. I’ve realized that so much of what keeps me on the right path, aside from having structure through work, is having something to look forward to outside of it. Something that makes me want to put my phone down, get my hands busy, and completely lose track of time. And I really want to get lost in my

There are certain things people have said to me over the years that I've forgotten almost immediately. And then there are the sentences that quietly take up a permanent space in your mind. Just earlier this year, my husband said something to me that I don't think I've ever forgotten. "When you challenge it, you can change it." At the time, I don't know that I fully understood what they meant. I thought changing meant trying harder. Having more discipline. Waiting until I felt

Yesterday, I got off a FaceTime call with my best friend, and I couldn't stop thinking about how much lighter I felt. The things I was working through were still there, but somehow, they didn't feel quite so heavy anymore. It made me realize how easy it is to underestimate what one conversation with the right person can do. Over the last few weeks, I've been quieter than usual. Not just here, but in my day-to-day life too. I wasn't answering messages the way I normally would.

There has been something on my mind lately, and I'm not sure I've fully worked through it yet. Maybe that's exactly why I need to write about it. I've realized that whenever something hurts me, my first instinct has always been to pick up the phone. I don't even think about it. I just call. A parent. A friend. Someone who makes me feel safe. I've been doing this for as long as I can remember, and at 28, I'm still trying to understand why. Maybe it's because I've always felt l

Yesterday morning, I woke up with anxiety...(not the kind where something terrible had happened). The kind where you open your eyes and your brain immediately starts making a list, and this list was loading fast in my brain. The dishes. The laundry. The groceries. The bathroom. The floors. The fridge. The blog. Everything felt equally urgent, which somehow made it feel impossible to know where to begin. After I made my husband and I coffee, he looked at me and asked, "What ca

I'll just start by saying this... I haven't written in almost three weeks. Almost every day after work, I'd type in my website, hover over the Enter key, and then... nothing. I'd stare at the blinking cursor for a while before closing my laptop again. Not because I didn't have anything to say, but because I wasn't in the right place to say it. I've noticed something about myself over the years. When life gets messy, I disappear. From people. From routines. From writing. From

I've always loved birthdays. I still do. Even now, I still wake up with that same little excitement I had as a kid. There's something about birthdays that has always felt a little magical to me. The cake, the candles, the people you love gathered around one table, another year of life. I've never been afraid of getting older. If anything, birthdays have always made me emotional for a completely different reason. Because when I look back, I realize that every birthday has some

One of the strangest parts about writing again is knowing that some people will read these words and think, “I’ve never heard her talk like this before and it's not who I know her to be.” Well they’re absolutely right. Because I’m not writing as the person I was ten years ago, let alone, 6 months ago. I’m writing as the person I’m becoming. For a long time, I became known as the outgoing one. The party girl. The one who was always saying yes, always surrounded by people, alwa

There are moments when living abroad feels exactly the way I imagined it would. The quiet mornings. The little cafés I now call familiar. The freedom of building a life somewhere that once felt impossibly far away. And then there are the moments no one really prepares you for. The birthday dinners you only see in photos. The babies who seem to grow up between FaceTime calls. The weddings, the celebrations, the ordinary weekends where everyone else is together while you're wat

I used to believe that once I learned a lesson, I would never have to learn it again. That after enough life experience, enough reflection, enough disappointment, I would somehow become immune to certain mistakes. I thought growth worked that way. I thought healing worked that way. I imagined there would come a point where I would simply know better. A point where the wrong people would be obvious. A point where I would never again find myself looking back and wondering why I

There is a quiet window in the morning that belongs only to you. Before the messages come in. Before the day begins to ask things of you. Before you are pulled into the pace of everything around you. It’s easy to move through it without noticing. To reach for your phone, to start thinking ahead, to step into the day before you’ve fully arrived in it. But I’ve come to see this time differently. Not as something to rush through, but as something to return to. The way we begin t

This morning, my husband and I woke up to the power being out. At first, it didn’t make sense. Our bills were paid, everything should have been working, and yet nothing was. No electricity, phones barely charged, computers running low and both of us needing to work from home. A situation that, not too long ago, would have completely unravelled us. We would have been stressed, reactive, and frustrated with each other. Arguing, not because of the situation itself, but because o

There's been a noticeable shift in my algorithms lately, especially TikTok. One particularly caught my attention. A woman sharing the changes she noticed in her skin and overall appearance after starting her mornings with a small shot of olive oil and lemon juice....naturally, I wanted to try it for myself. For the past few weeks, I’ve been taking a small shot of it each morning before coffee. Nothing complicated or overly thought out, just a quiet addition to my routine. I w