In the final episode of 2025, I explore how there is no one size fits all method for healing--for some of us it's staying in the relationship longer, for others its leaving more quickly.

I share about a pretty story I put on a pain point, so I didn't have to face it, and how this increased my suffering and my stuckness.

Listen in, to begin to own the ways that you are wanting to be rescued, when really you need to rescue yourself.

I talk about an interaction with my therapist where she anticipates something hard is going to happen between us, and how soothed I felt knowing that it will, rather than being surprised by it when it does.

In this episode, I talk about how we try protecting others from the truth and protecting ourselves from it (by saying "me too," when we don't actually feel that way), and what I am learning about leaning into what's hard. 

You've heard me say that feeling goes against doing.

When I feel grief, I want to do more. I want to tend to others grief instead of sit in my own.

This week, following the death of relative, I noticed this pattern and did something different: this is called opposite action.

I explore why it's so hard to say "can you help me?" and how being a "helper," hides the part of us that needs helping. 

We feel frustration when we are stuck, but in this episode,

I share about my stuckness in a big life decision and what I learned about how to move through stuckness without force.

It starts with getting to know the two opposing energies: stalling and forward moving, and then looking at the bigger fear under the fear you think you have about change. 

This episode is about loneliness and how those of us who give connection to others, can find ourselves in moments when we feel disconnected from ourselves.

I share about how I sometimes hide my greatest wounds under my strengths and instead in this episode reveal the part of the wound I am ready to share, so I can reconnect to it.

We are learning from data that men, at large, are struggling in the US--feeling more isolated, removed, depressed and disconnected.

In this episode, I unpack some of the reasons why, and how women sometimes weaponize their hurt around male unavailability by talking about men as if they are useless--the trope of the buffoon husband who can't make his way around the home. Instead, I revisit the pledge for presence--inviting men in, letting the people in my life know how much their presence matters to me and how wanted they are.

I also talk about what this means for women's anger--as many of you have been waiting a long time for men to show up emotionally. 

In this week's episode, I share about a recent interaction with someone I love where I felt angry and had a split second to decide what I wanted to do with that anger.

Dialectical Behavioral Therapy offers three intentions for communication: objective effectiveness (getting your need met, so you have to appeal to the other person), relationship effectiveness (maintaining the connection), and self-respect effectiveness (speaking about what's important to you, with less concern about how the other receives it.

I walked you through how I picked my strategy, why I picked it, and how I shifted from feeling like I was "restraining" myself to feeling a "release" as I relinquished control of what this other person thought about me. 

This week I talk about how no high is for free, but why so many of us are willing to pay the price of something that harms us with something that takes the edge off for us.

James Baldwin said that many of us want to be "relieved of an affliction" but we don't want to give up a crutch.

Tune in to learn about how choosing control prevents us from wielding our true power, and what we have in common with trees that can help liberate us from the the things that keep us safe, but prevent us from feeling free.

I share about a time when anxiety was actually distracting from my grief.

Therapist Sheryl Paul taught me "the noise in our brain distracts from the pain in our hearts." While anxiety is a very sentient experience, it actually works to conceal the bigger, juicier, often heavier emotions underneath.

In this episode I share my perspective on developing long-term, unrushed, relationships with my wounds.

Letting them know, we've got time.

And instead of trying to rush their healing, just being honest with others about them being unhealed. 

There I said it.

I own that I expect presence in my relationships and this is a tall order in 2025--with so much distraction and things to pay attention to.

Listen in to hear about the difference between healthy expectations and ones that weigh a relationship down, why we gossip and how it fills a gap when presence is too hard, and why I believe we need to demand presence from the people in our lives and from ourselves. 

In this episode, I share about a time when I lost my sense of wonder.

Overly responsible children tend to become overly responsible adults, and these adults have a hard time being comfortable with the fluidity and chaos that comes with wonder.

Listen in to hear how getting lost, giving up attachment to reassurance, learning what's really underneath striving, and more helped me find my way back to my childlike spirit. 

Do visionaries have any fun?

I notice those of us that curate amazing experiences for others, sometimes have the LEAST fun.

We give away the thing we need and we are afraid to own we expect something in return.

In this episode I share about my struggle not with saying the hard things, but letting people into HOW I feel while I say the hard thing.

Why don't we want people to hear the cracks in our voice, see us gulp, admit we want an affirmation?

Listen in to learn about what we can glean from the Pratfall Effect--research shows us that we can be MORE likeable when we expose our blunders. 

In this episode I share about an interaction I had with a friend, when I started to question if I did something wrong because of a shift in her affect that I observed at dinner.

I unpack this interaction by describing why we are hypervigilant to others and reference Meg Josephson's, LCSW, new best-selling book "Are You Mad at Me?" to help us understand where this question comes from.

You will learn about why asking this question enables us to leave ourselves, and instead, how to stay close to ourselves and tolerate the uncertainty of life better. 

This week I share about my desire to teach someone a lesson when I felt wrong.

I unpack why we go into teacher mode when we are hurt or disrespected, and how this actually harms connection rather than fosters it.

As humans, we often try to use our heads to solve problems of the heart, and then we wonder why our kids/friends/partners don't hear us--we are speaking with cognition, when others are in a realm of emotion.

Listen in to hear how I did the thing I didn't want to do (reveal my heart, because it made me feel like I was giving up more power) and how it ultimately got me what I wanted: heard and more connected.

In this episode, I share about a time someone walked away from me because they didn’t want to see me, and I pursued this person, even with their back turned to me.

I unpack what was happening for me, and explore the reasons why we knock on closed doors even when they continue not to open for us.

This week I explore the times I've said "I can make this work," as a way to avoid the inner knowing that something isn't working, that I don't like what I am doing, or who I am spending time with.

I dig into the psychological reasons why women try to make it work and my process of digging into what's underneath it with definiteness and discernment.

It's a topic that we don't want to talk about, but sometimes our needs for our friends, our longings and our fears that get kicked up in friendship, reveal unmet needs we have for our mother.

In this episode I unpack how the mother wound might show up in women's friendships (unrealistic expectations, unclear needs, advice giving, feelings of abandonment, etc) and how totally ok this is.

I also share how to navigate this in a way that makes the friendship closer, not that kills it (which often happens when the mother wound isn't made explicit).

This week, I invite my 7 year old daughter on the podcast to talk about our relationship with mistakes.

She shares about how she disliked her mistakes and what she did to shift that.

I share about how I learned to hide my mistakes to secure belonging (an important fear-driven behavior that perfectionists take, as well as people who have marginalized identities), and how this podcast has helped me expose and celebrate them.

Also, we add ways well meaning caregivers try to convince their kids their mistakes aren't real, rather than leaning into the fact that we all make mistakes, we shouldn't stop--but we can honor them together. 

In this episode I trace the path of the needless person in relationships--she comes across as if she's down with anything, gets angry along the way, and then buries her needs through partner critique, and creates the scenario of her biggest fear realized: she will be a burden.

In reality, it's not her needs that are a burden to the other, it's that they are a burden to herself. Listen in as I share how I rooted myself in my needs, a visualization of a firmly planted oak tree with flexible branches, and how me owning my needs inspired my partner to own his.

I don't want to record a podcast this week and it got me thinking about what do we do when we are not in the mood?

Why do we really procrastinate (hint: we don't procrastinate tasks, we procrastinate feelings that those texts bring up).

In this week's podcast, I talk about sharing one true thing and getting to know the variations in my "I don't want tos." I don't want to talk about this, but I will.

I also throw out the idea of being our best selves and replace it with an invitation to be our mediocre selves. Will you join me there?