This reflection is about the lies we tell ourselves when we are trying to survive familiar chaos. The hope that this time is different. The belief that better words will finally make someone understand. The pressure to stay available in the name of responsibility, even when that availability keeps costing us our peace.

It may resonate with anyone learning the difference between communication and access, between a good mood and real safety, between being calm and abandoning yourself. At the heart of it is a quieter kind of courage: the decision to stop entering the vortex and start trusting the pattern you have already seen.

Themes: boundaries, self-betrayal, emotional over-responsibility, co-parenting, peace, clarity, familiar chaos, coming back to self

Good evening.

Good, good evening.

It is about 11 o’clock tonight, but I just got out of this meeting, and I felt like I needed to get on here and talk about something.

The meeting was about how much we’re investing in ourselves.

And it got me thinking because what I realized is, yeah, I really wasn’t investing in myself until I started going to these groups.

It’s taken me about 40-something years to get to this point in my life where I’m like, “Hey, Camille, girl, get your s**t. You matter. Hello, what are we doing?”

So yeah.

It’s taken me a while to get to this point where I’m actively and intentionally investing in me.

Learning all about me.

Taking accountability and responsibility for me. My actions. My choices. My decisions. All of that.

I definitely wasn’t doing that before.

And it’s like, most of us go to school and they teach us about everything else except us.

The world. Geography. History. Languages. Whatever.

They don’t teach us about mindset.

Definitely not when I was going.

Then you go to college, depending on what your major is, if you go the college route, you’re learning about your particular field. You’re investing in that field. Then you get further degrees and you’re investing more into that.

When I got my master’s in family therapy, I was learning about theories and relationships and mental health and all that stuff.

But again, not really much about me as a person.

Just everything related to that degree.

And yeah, at some point I tried to do some side work to learn about myself. I read self-help books. Books about personal development, mindset work, manifestation.

But really and truly, how much of that information really sticks?

How much am I really applying every single day?

I had to say to myself, “How much am I really applying this?”

After college, you get in relationships. Again, you invest in the relationship.

If you get married, you invest in your marriage, making sure it’s clicking on all cylinders.

If you have children, you’re investing in your children.

You’re working at a job, you’re investing in that company and whatever the mission of that company is.

It’s all of this external investment.

Right?

At what point are we doing internal investment?

So I was in the meeting thinking about it, like, okay, when did it switch for me?

It switched when I started going to these meetings.

When I got into a group.

When I started working with other like-minded individuals.

Because before that, maybe I would have a conversation with a girlfriend and we’d be talking about life.

Was that internal investment?

Or how about when I used to go to church for two hours?

Was that internal investment?

And we’re talking two hours a week compared to the rest of the week, and all the external investment I was doing.

Or how about when I was watching YouTube videos?

Watching those motivational channels with Denzel Washington and David Goggins and all those people.

I’d get inspired in the moment.

Then as soon as the video was done, I was like, okay, back to life.

What was I worrying about again?

It just wasn’t sticking.

Or Oprah.

I was big on Oprah. Super Soul Sundays. I remember me and my girlfriend used to watch those a lot.

Iyanla too.

You get in the moment of those shows and you’re like, “Man, yeah. I get it. I get it.”

But again, after it shuts off, you’re just kind of back to life.

Not really putting anything into practice.

So now I’m really thinking about that.

And I’m wondering where you are with that too.

When do you get an opportunity to come together and really work on yourself?

To work on that internal investment?

When do you get to work on real spiritual principles that are actually moving the needle in your life and in the direction you want it to go?

Because you really can’t heal alone.

You can try.

You can try to heal alone.

But after a while, you’re like, okay, this is just me.

How am I really getting any new information other than what I’m getting from myself?

If it’s just you and your ego, and you’re not really getting anything else downloaded, how are you really getting transformation when you’re doing it by yourself?

I don’t know.

What do you think?

Maybe I’m wrong.

I don’t have all the answers.

I’m just processing it out loud in real time, and I’m like, it wasn’t working for me, so I know I can’t be the only one.

I feel like it really does take a community.

It takes being around other like-minded people on a similar journey.

Healing is a forever journey. I get that.

It’s not like we meet together and then boom, I’m cured.

But I do feel like it takes a true energy of people.

A true level of fellowship for shifts to really occur.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been tired of living my life in contradiction.

Where I have these big, deep desires and vision for my life, but on an everyday basis, I’m not really doing anything to get there.

I think I am.

But I’m really not.

If I really sat back and looked at what I was doing, I wasn’t working on honesty.

I wasn’t working on humility.

Compassion.

Forgiveness.

True unconditional faith.

Blind faith.

Gratitude.

Surrender.

Acceptance.

Being of service.

How was I helping other people?

How was I carrying the message forward?

How was I really and truly making a positive impact on other people’s lives?

How are you doing it?

Let me know.

How are you helping others outside of you?

And true accountability.

That’s what I’m getting now.

I’m being held accountable for what I say I’m going to do and the kind of change I want to make in my life.

It’s hard to hold yourself accountable.

It’s hard to cheerlead yourself.

It’s not impossible.

But it takes a lot when you’ve got a lot of external things happening outside of you.

It took me a while to realize that I was living in contradiction.

Because I wanted peace.

Peace, serenity, all of that.

And side note, if you can hear my dog breathing real loud, I apologize.

But yeah.

I wanted peace.

I wanted calmness in my life.

I wanted to manifest the things I was thinking about and visualizing.

But how am I doing that if I’m still walking around holding on to resentments?

Because I’ve got all these expectations.

I’m looking at these outcomes.

I’m not practicing surrender.

I’m not practicing acceptance principles.

I definitely wasn’t being honest with myself doing it alone.

My relationships were faltering.

It was just a lot going on.

And every day is a journey.

Every day is still a challenge.

But I see the change in myself.

I really, really, truly do.

And I’m liking and loving me more and more each day.

And that’s a big f*****g deal, y’all, because I was not there.

Excuse my language.

I apologize.

I didn’t mean to curse.

But I get passionate sometimes when I talk about growth and healing.

I just love the shifts.

So yeah.

How am I going to get the things I desire?

How can I experience them if I’m still living in contradiction?

So I say all that to say, how are you really investing in yourself?

If we were really to take a step back and do a self-inventory, at what point can you really, truly say, “Yeah, I’m working on me, and the needle is moving”?

Like seriously.

A lot of us got a lot going on.

We got tough relationship stuff.

We have our children.

We’ve got parent stuff.

Some of us are caregivers for our parents.

Our jobs.

Some of us are trying to become entrepreneurs.

Some of us are trying to relocate and start new.

We’re all, in some form or fashion, looking for these shifts.

But we’re carrying our same selves everywhere we go.

In every relationship we encounter.

Into every next day.

So if we’re not really doing any internal investment, how do we expect things to change?

And to be honest, you’ve got to be open.

You’ve got to be willing.

You have to be honest.

And you have to have the self-awareness to be like, “Oh s**t. It is me.”

Because a lot of us, we won’t look at ourselves.

We’re quick to talk about this person needs to do this, and that person needs to do that, and if only I had this amount of money, or whatever it is.

It’s everything outside of us.

But when you really get down to the nitty gritty, it’s you, boo.

It’s you.

It’s me.

We’re the ones that need to change within ourselves.

That’s the real internal work.

If you want to have consistent results, and you really want to have that consistent joy, happiness, attitude of gratitude, that sense of peace, calm, and serenity, and you want to have 80 to 90% of your day looking like that?

It’s you.

It’s me.

It’s us.

We need to figure that part out.

And that takes the internal investment.

I’m grateful for where I am.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, God.

It’s taken a long road to get to this point in my life where I’m comfortable in my own skin.

When I say it’s taking a while to get here, it’s taking a while.

But thank God I am here.

And I’m showing up in a way that honors me and what feels good in my body.

Not what other people say I should be doing.

These kinds of conversations of honesty, as I’m growing and learning and teaching, they feel really good.

I still have my days.

But I’m grateful.

So I’m wondering, where are you?

Where are you on your journey of no longer living in contradiction?

Let me know how that’s working out.

What are some of the things you’re doing to invest in yourself?

Love you.

If this reflection resonated with you, I’m glad you’re here. You’re welcome to subscribe and walk alongside these conversations as they continue.

In this episode, I’m talking about the subtle ways control can disguise itself as love, concern, responsibility, or care. I break down what I’m calling the four M’s of control: managing, manipulating, martyring, and mothering. Not as a way to shame ourselves, but as a way to recognize the moments when we are trying to feel safe by taking over what was never fully ours to carry.

This reflection is for anyone who has ever confused helping with managing, love with over-functioning, or responsibility with emotional overreach. The invitation is not to become cold or detached. It is to get honest about where care ends and control begins.

I’m literally done staying committed to things that no longer feel good.

That’s really the best way I can say it.

I had this revelation the other day because I realized I’ve been splitting myself between two identities. As I’ve shared before, by degree, I’m a marriage and family therapist. I took the national exam, failed it by one point, then created my own system, brought a classmate along with me, and we both passed. My second time, her fourth.

And for a while I kept thinking, I should probably put something together and teach other people how to pass this exam.

So that’s what I did.

I created this digital product, and when I tell you I put man hours into it, I mean man hours. Over 40 documents. Three different Google Sheets. I used NotebookLM to dissect the exam to a T. Then I went back through everything and cleaned it up because you know how Google Docs are just black ink on paper. I bulleted it, highlighted it, bolded it, made the tables colorful. There are so many gems in that product. Really, really good s**t in that product.

And because I believed in it, I was like, okay, I’m going to support it with YouTube videos.

But here’s the problem.

I was mentally checked out.

Burnt out.

I did not want to be teaching in that space. I didn’t want to get on camera and break down vignettes and teach scenarios and do all of that. I wanted to do my podcast. I wanted to grow my Substack. That’s where my heart is. That’s what energizes me. That’s what I actually want to do.

Instead, I kept grinding out content for the MFT stuff because I was trying to make the product work.

And the whole entire time I’m screaming inside, I do not want to do this anymore.

That was the part I had to stop skipping over.

Because I think sometimes we tell ourselves, no, just keep going. Be disciplined. Stay committed. Don’t quit.

But this wasn’t that.

This wasn’t me needing to push through something hard.This was me dragging something my soul was already done with.

And I could feel what it was doing to me.

I started resenting my desk. I didn’t even want to sit down and create. My daughter wasn’t getting much of my time. I’m gaining weight. I’m stressed. I thought I was out of survival mode, and here I am right back in survival mode trying to make this thing work.

And even while I was trying to have the “right mindset” about it, telling myself I want it to work but I don’t need it to work, the truth was still the truth.

I did not want to do that s**t anymore.

But it was hard to let it go because I kept thinking, what about the digital product? How are people going to know about it? I spent so much time on this s**t.

And that right there is the trap.

I stay committed too long to things that are no longer serving me.

When I finally made the decision and said, I’m not creating another video, I’m done, the weight that left me was immediate. Immediate.

And then I started looking back at my life and realized, damn, I do this a lot.

I do this with relationships. I stay way too long.I do this with friendships. I know when I’m giving more than I’m getting.I’ve done this with jobs.I’ve done this with whole identities.

Even when I was getting my associate’s degree in medical billing and coding, halfway through I already knew, I ain’t doing this. I don’t want to do this. This is not me.

But my dad had pushed it so much. Said it was a great field, good opportunity, all of that.

So what did I do?

Stayed committed.Finished the program.Accumulated the debt.Didn’t work one day in the field.

Because mentally, I had already checked out.

That’s the pattern.

And I had to really ask myself, why? Why do I feel like I have to stay committed to things and people when it’s time to let go?

A lot of that does go back to being adopted. Once I attach, I do attach hard. I don’t want to lose relationships. I don’t want the fallout. I don’t want to deal with what happens when I say enough is enough. There’s people pleasing in there. There’s fear in there. There’s that whole thing of worrying about other people’s emotional reactions to my decisions.

But if I’m honest, all that really means is I’ll abandon myself first.

That’s what hit me.

We think we’re holding on to avoid abandonment, but whole time we’re the one doing the abandoning. We abandon our own truth. We abandon what we actually feel. We abandon what our spirit is clearly saying. And then we wonder why we feel heavy, irritated, resistant, drained.

Of course we do.

My brain had learned: it does not matter how you feel, you’re going to keep doing this anyway.

That’s a horrible thing to teach yourself.

And I think that’s why flow felt unfamiliar to me for so long. Because I had ignored that feeling for so long, I didn’t even recognize it anymore. I didn’t know what it felt like when something actually fit. When something actually felt lighter.

But once I let go of the MFT stuff, I felt it.

And I’m not trying to make it all woo-woo and dramatic.

It wasn’t sunflowers and rainbows and s**t.

It was just that I felt lighter.I felt more relaxed.I felt less resistance.

That’s it.

And honestly, that’s enough.

Sometimes flow is not some huge spiritual fireworks moment. Sometimes it’s just that you breathe different. You walk different. You talk to your kids different. You wake up different. You go about your day different.

Small shift.But real.

And that’s why I wanted to talk about this, because I know I’m not the only one. I know somebody else gets exactly what I’m saying.

There are areas in your life where you already know.You already know the relationship is draining you.You already know the friendship is one-sided.You already know the job is sucking the life out of you.You already know the thing you keep calling discipline is actually self-betrayal.

And I’m not saying don’t stay committed.

I’m saying stay committed to your passion.Stay committed to what feels good.Stay committed to what brings you alive.Stay committed to the things that don’t make you resent your own life.

But stop staying committed to s**t that is clearly draining you emotionally just because you’re scared of what happens when you let go.

Because I really do believe that when we’re in flow, things come the way they’re supposed to. And when we’re in frustration, irritability, and resistance, we prolong what we actually want.

So yeah.

I’m done staying committed to things that no longer feel good. And I mean that s**t.

🩷

If something in this landed for you…

if it made you pause or see yourself a little differently…

stay with me. Subscribe

Because I love going into topics like these with truth.

And you don’t have to figure this out alone. It’s all about finding a better way to live and love.

I think commitment was the real issue.

Not talent.Not intelligence.Not even lack of options.

Commitment.

Because if I’m being honest, I have spent a lot of years starting, stopping, pivoting, rethinking, reimagining, getting excited, burning out, and then asking myself the same damn question again:

What the hell am I supposed to be doing with my life?

And that question has followed me through degrees, jobs, side hustles, books, business ideas, and all these little versions of a life I thought maybe I was supposed to want.

I went from medical billing and coding to human services to marriage and family therapy. Before that I thought I wanted to be a nurse. I did the CNA program. One day into the externship, I knew I didn’t want that either.

Three quarters into one program, I already knew I wasn’t going to use it.Finished it anyway.Got the degree anyway.Never worked in the field a day in my life.

That has happened more than once.

And it wasn’t because I’m lazy. It wasn’t because I can’t do hard things. I can. I have. I do. It was more like once I could see what something actually was, once I could feel the weight of it, I knew whether it belonged to me or not.

The problem is I didn’t always trust that.

So instead of trusting it, I kept trying to force myself into things that looked respectable, practical, stable, secure. And if you know what it’s like to keep reaching for certainty because somewhere deep down you’ve never really felt safe, then you probably know this feeling too.

For me, some of that goes all the way back to being adopted. That constant internal reaching for something settled. Something solid. Something that says, here, this is it, now relax.

But that feeling never came from the outside.Not from the degree.Not from the title.Not from the next plan.

And I kept trying.

I had a million jobs. I’m barely exaggerating. Because every time I mastered something, I was like, okay… now what? You mean to tell me I’m supposed to do this exact same thing for the next ten or fifteen years? Absolutely the hell not.

That used to make me mad at myself.

Why can’t you just commit?Why do you keep changing your mind?Why can’t you just pick something and stay there?

And then life really started life-ing.

My marriage was hard.My house felt chaotic.My finances were stretched.I had a baby.I mentally checked out of my full-time job because I just couldn’t do it anymore.

So I cut down to part-time, but I still had to make money. Which meant I was out here doing everything. Mystery shopping. Helping seniors. Washing people’s laundry. Side hustle after side hustle after side hustle, trying to hold it all together while quietly losing my mind.

That season did something to me.

Because when you’re in survival mode, you don’t always have the luxury of asking what is aligned. Sometimes you’re just asking what is going to help me make it through this week.

And I did make it through.

That’s the part I keep coming back to.

I made it through one of the lowest financial seasons of my life. And weirdly enough, inside of that, I learned something I don’t think I could have learned any other way:

Everything I thought I needed, I didn’t actually need.Everything I was panicking about, God had already handled in ways I could not see yet.Everything I thought would break me… didn’t.

That changed something in me.

Because I started to see I don’t need to chase life the way I thought I did. I don’t need to build some huge empire just because that’s what people online keep screaming at us. I don’t need an LLC right now. I don’t need to force myself into entrepreneurship if what I actually want is simplicity. I don’t want to manage a big business with a bunch of employees and all that pressure. I do not want that damn headache.

That is not failure.That is clarity.

And I think this is where a lot of people get stuck.

We keep trying to build lives that match somebody else’s nervous system. Somebody else’s appetite. Somebody else’s definition of success. Then we wonder why our body feels tight, why our mind feels loud, why we feel like we’re dragging ourselves through our own life.

Your body knows.Your spirit knows.The problem is a lot of us have gotten so used to overriding ourselves that when something actually feels natural, we don’t trust it.

For me, what feels natural is talking.

I love to talk.I love to learn.I love to teach.I am much more of a talker than a writer.

So when I sat down with this mic and just started speaking, my body got calm.

That matters to me now.

Not because calm means easy. Not because calm means there won’t be work involved. But because calm is a clue. Calm tells me I’m not forcing myself to become someone else. I’m not trying to perform a version of success that doesn’t belong to me.

And I’m tired of doing that.

I’m tired of trying to make it look right.I’m tired of trying to make it perform well.I’m tired of trying to create according to everybody else’s formulas.

Look at the numbers.Watch the analytics.Pay attention to engagement.Make sure people like it.Make sure they comment.Make sure it grows fast.

All of that had me stuck.

I’ve started and stopped on Substack more times than I want to admit. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I was too busy paying attention to whether anybody was clapping. Nobody liked my notes. Nobody commented on the videos. Nobody seemed to care.

And if I’m not careful, I can let that s**t get all the way in my head.

I would read posts from people saying, “I just made my first post and already got five subscribers,” and I’d be like, you a lie. How? How are you doing that when I’ve posted six or seven things and got nothing?

That comparison will poison the whole experience if you let it.

So now I’m calling it what it is.

Comparison.Complaining.Criticizing.

The three C’s of cancer.

None of that is healthy. None of that creates anything good. None of that helps me stay connected to myself.

So I’m done chasing the polished version. I’m done chasing the version that looks better on paper. I’m done making myself wrong because my path has had a thousand turns in it.

This year, I’m committing.

Not in some dramatic, performative way.Not because I suddenly have every answer.Not because I finally cracked the code.

I’m committing because I can finally see that I kept quitting before I had enough reps to know what something could become.

I’d stop because it got hard.I’d stop because nobody responded.I’d stop because I got in my head.I’d stop because I was comparing.I’d stop because life got loud.

And I’m not judging that version of me. She was carrying a lot.

But I can see her now.

I can see the pattern.

And once you see the pattern, it gets harder to keep calling it confusion when it’s really fear. Or self-doubt. Or wanting guaranteed proof before you give your heart to something.

So I’m making a decision to stay.

To stay with the podcast.To stay with these honest conversations.To stay with being vulnerable.To stay with creating from what is actually true for me.

Even if it’s messy.Even if I say “um” fifty times.Even if it’s not polished.Even if it grows slowly.Even if people don’t get it right away.

I’m not doing this to look impressive.

I’m doing this because I want to sound like a real person again.

And honestly, I think we need more of that. More people telling the truth without packaging every damn thing into some polished, AI-smoothed, perfect little performance. More people sounding like they actually live on this planet and have been through some s**t.

I was a damn good therapist. I know that.

But this right here? This is different.

This is me without the polished frame. This is me speaking from the middle of my own life instead of pretending I’m standing above it with a neat little lesson tied up in a bow. And I think there’s healing in that too. Not because I’m trying to teach it like therapy. Just because honesty does something. Shared experience does something. It reminds people they are not crazy and they are not alone.

That matters to me.

I’m in a season of awareness now. Real awareness. The kind where you can step back and actually see what’s happening in your own life. The kind where you notice your old patterns without instantly becoming them. The kind where you start accepting yourself instead of constantly trying to fix, edit, or outperform who you are.

And I feel grateful for that.

I feel grateful that I’m becoming more okay with being me.I feel grateful that I love me more now.I feel grateful that I care less and less about how it looks to somebody else.

That freedom feels good.

So yeah, this is my commitment.

To do what makes my heart smile.To stay with what naturally flows.To honor the gifts God gave me instead of trying to turn myself into somebody else.To keep showing up.To keep talking.To keep letting this be simple.

And if you’re in your own season of trying to figure it out, maybe that’s the invitation.

Not to force some giant answer.Not to build a whole fake life because you think you’re supposed to.Not to compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle.

Just commit.

Commit to the thing that feels honest.Commit to the thing that lets your body exhale.Commit to the thing that you know you keep circling back to.

Put in the reps.Stay long enough to actually meet yourself there.

That’s what I’m doing.

And if any part of this hit home for you, stay with me.

Subscribe. Listen. Walk with me while I walk this out too.

I do not have all the answers.I’m not pretending to.

But I do believe we can help each other. I do believe healing happens in shared truth. And I damn sure love hearing about people’s wins, so bring those too.

We’re figuring it out.And that counts for something.

Thanks for being here.

If these words found you at the right moment, you’re welcome to subscribe and keep the conversation going.

Good afternoon.

I wanted to bring an old concept back to life because when I heard it again, I was like yeah… this one still hits.

FOG.

Fear.Obligation.Guilt.

And when those three come together, they do exactly what the word suggests. They create fog.

Fear clouds perception.Obligation chains the will.Guilt poisons self-worth.

And once all that gets working together inside of you, it gets hard to see clearly. Hard to see the path. Hard sometimes to even see yourself. Everything starts feeling distorted.

And that’s really what I wanted to talk about.

Because when I’m talking about fog, I’m talking about the stuff that keeps us stuck. The stuff that keeps us doubting ourselves. The stuff that keeps us chained to lives, roles, and relationships that don’t even feel true anymore.

A lot of times we think we need clarity before movement.

We think, once I feel sure, then I’ll act.Once I know exactly what to do, then I’ll speak.Once I feel safe enough, then I’ll move.

But it really works the other way around.

You move first, and that’s when the fog starts to clear.

You step, the fog thins.You start speaking, relief appears.You reach out, connection starts shifting something in you.

That’s why I said before, if you don’t share it, you wear it.

You can’t keep waiting for certainty before you take action. Life just does not work like that. If you wait for everything to feel clear before you move, that fog will sit right there and make a home out of you.

So let’s get into it.

Fear is usually the loudest one.

Fear says if I speak up, I might lose everything.I might lose him.I might lose her.If I tell the truth, they might leave.If I stop playing my role, everything might fall apart.

Fear makes us shrink.

That’s what it does.

It makes us shrink because somewhere in us, we start believing that staying small is how we keep belonging. That if we stay agreeable enough, quiet enough, useful enough, needed enough, then maybe we won’t lose connection.

But that’s not truth.

Then comes obligation.

And obligation can sound noble on the surface, which is why it’s such a trap.

Be the good child.Keep the peace.Don’t rock the boat.Don’t make people uncomfortable.Don’t say that right now.Just let it go.Just keep everybody together.

That sounds noble. But honestly, it’s b******t.

A lot of us learned very early that our role was to manage everyone else’s emotional comfort. We became the one who smooths it over. The one who carries the weight. The one who absorbs the tension. The one who keeps things from falling apart.

And in family systems language, that happens all the time. Somebody becomes the emotional carrier for the whole group. The regulator. The shock absorber. The one everybody unconsciously leans on so they don’t have to deal with themselves.

That is a lot.

That is too much pressure for one human being.

Who signed up to keep everybody calm?Who signed up to keep everybody comfortable?Who signed up to hold the emotional weight of a whole family system or relationship dynamic?

I know I didn’t.

But that’s what happens. And then people call it harmony.

Harmony at all costs.

But there is a cost.

Your peace is the cost.Your sense of self is the cost.Your truth is the cost.Your energy is the cost.

You lose yourself trying to make sure everybody else stays undisturbed.

That will burn you out. It burned me out.

And then right on schedule, here comes guilt.

Guilt is sneaky.

It gets installed so quietly that sometimes you don’t even realize it’s there. Families install it. Culture installs it. Religion can install it. Relationships install it.

And then you start seeing how it works.

You express a need, and somebody hits you with, after everything I’ve done for you?

You set a boundary, and suddenly you’re selfish.You’ve changed.You’re hurting people.You’re making things harder.

And what that teaches you is clear: don’t disturb the pattern.

Because the moment you start telling the truth, the moment you start choosing authenticity, the system around you will often apply pressure to get you back into your old role.

Not because people always know they’re doing it. But because your change interrupts what they’ve grown comfortable with.

They need you to stay familiar.

So if we bring it back to fog:

Fear says, if I speak up, I might lose love.Obligation says, I owe them my silence.Guilt says, if I choose myself, I’m a bad person.

And when all three are running the show, you get emotionally immobilized.

You don’t say what needs to be said.You don’t move how you need to move.You stop honoring your own truth.

And after enough years of that, you don’t even know what your truth sounds like anymore.

That’s the part people don’t always say out loud.

You can live for others for so long that your real voice starts sounding foreign to you.

Then life becomes performance.

That’s what I was really getting at.

You start living a life of performance instead of a life that’s actually yours.

And as I was talking through this, I realized I was talking to myself too.

Because my value got tied up in keeping everybody else comfortable. My authenticity, my truth, my own needs, all of that got pushed back so I could make sure the environment around me stayed okay.

And after a while, you get tired.

Not a cute tired. Not I-need-a-nap tired.

Soul tired.

Then even gratitude gets distorted.

Because gratitude is supposed to come from freedom. It’s supposed to rise naturally. But when appreciation starts feeling expected or demanded, it stops feeling like gratitude and starts feeling like debt.

It stops being I appreciate this.

It becomes I owe you.

That changes everything.

Living like that for a long time will put you so far in the back of your own life, you can’t even see yourself anymore. That’s what happened to me. My value got tied to how well I managed other people’s feelings. As long as I got the thumbs up, as long as everybody else felt good, then I felt okay.

But that’s not love.

That’s performance.

And performance is exhausting.

That’s why so many people are burnt out.

So yeah, I’m trying to move away from harmony at all costs.

I want truth.

And I’m seeing that as I make those shifts, some relationships do get uncomfortable. Some have even fallen away.

And honestly, that’s okay.

Because the ones that remain can actually be real.

I’ve been realizing there’s a huge difference between peace and silence.

Silence is when I’m afraid to speak.Peace is when I’m safe enough to tell the truth.

That right there matters.

I don’t want relationships anymore where I have to shrink, hide, and stay in the fog just to keep things looking calm on the outside.

That’s not harmony.

It’s captivity.

And it takes me right back to what I said before.

What you don’t share, you wear.

You wear the guilt.You wear the obligation.You wear the silence.

Until one day the cost of wearing it becomes heavier than the discomfort of speaking it.

That’s when something starts to change.

That’s when the fog starts lifting.

And I’m not saying this like it’s some perfect formula. It’s not. Getting out of the fog is day by day. Sometimes moment by moment. There isn’t always this big dramatic master plan.

A lot of times it’s subtle.

A small truth.A hard conversation.A boundary.A reach for support.A decision to stop pretending.A decision to stop abandoning yourself.

That’s movement.

And movement compounds.

That’s why I connect with the idea of micro shifts so much. Small shifts add up. One step, then another, then another. And slowly you realize you’re not where you used to be.

My fog is clearing.

And I mean that for real.

Even two months ago, I was in a different place. A dark place. Couldn’t see much of anything. Just deep in it.

And I started making subtle shifts.

That’s what started pulling me out.

So now when I speak about gratitude, it feels real. It’s not forced. It’s coming from freedom. It’s coming from finally feeling some space, some breath, some clarity return.

The fog is moving.

And I hope it moves for you too.

Just start with the shift you already know you need to make.

You do know.

And I hope this serves.

Thanks for being here.

If these words found you at the right moment, you’re welcome to subscribe and keep the conversation going.

Hello, hello, hello.

I’m laughing because when I say that I immediately think about RuPaul’s Drag Race. You know how RuPaul comes out and says that? That’s literally what popped into my head.

Anyway… moving on.

Something came back to me recently from when I was working as a substance abuse counselor and running group therapy. At the time we were doing everything on Zoom, and so many people refused to turn their cameras on. Just black screens everywhere.

And I remember saying to them, over and over:

Addiction loves that.Addiction loves to hide you.It loves isolation.It loves when you stay unseen.

Because the moment light hits something, things start changing.

So I used to tell them something simple that stuck with a lot of people:

If you don’t share it, you wear it.

And when I say “share,” I’m talking about the things people bury. The pain. The shame. The stuff that feels too uncomfortable or too risky to say out loud.

And I get why people hold back. A lot of people have had really harsh experiences when they were vulnerable. They opened up to someone who didn’t hold it with care. Or it got dismissed. Or judged. Or used against them.

So I understand why people learn to keep things inside.

But the problem is… when you don’t share it, you carry it everywhere.

You start stuffing it into the body. Into all these little nooks and crannies inside yourself.

And as human beings, we were never designed to carry pain like that. Especially in silence.

People love talking about the nervous system these days, and for good reason. Your nervous system literally starts to deteriorate under the weight of unspoken experience.

When emotions have nowhere to go — when they’re never voiced, never processed, never released — the body becomes the storage unit.

You just keep stuffing.

And then the stress hormones start circulating.

The mind keeps looping the story.

Shame starts growing mold in the dark.

Because it has nowhere else to go. It just keeps circulating inside of you.

At some point you’re not just feeling pain anymore.

You’re wearing it.

You wear it in your shoulders.You wear it in your sleep.You wear it in your irritability.You wear it in how you talk to your kids, your partner, your coworkers.

You even start wearing it in a more subtle way — the way joy begins to feel foreign. Gratitude feels harder to access. Things that once brought you happiness start feeling distant.

That’s what it looks like when pain gets trapped in the system.

And despite what people say, silence isn’t strength.

Holding it all in doesn’t make someone strong. It just means the pain has nowhere else to go.

There’s actually a term for this in psychology: emotional suppression.

It’s when someone pushes their feelings down instead of expressing them.

And the research around this is pretty clear. Emotional suppression increases anxiety. It increases depression. It puts stress on the cardiovascular system. It even raises the risk of suicidal thinking.

Because the brain keeps trying to resolve what hasn’t been processed.

It keeps replaying the story like a broken record, trying to complete an emotional loop that never got closure.

So the cycle continues.

If you don’t share it, you wear it.

And one of the most dangerous things that starts happening in that state is a belief that creeps in quietly:

I must be the only one going through this.

Now the isolation deepens.

And isolation is gasoline for shame.

Shame has two close friends: secrecy and silence.

Shame thrives in secrecy the same way mold thrives in darkness.

That’s why I used to push my group members to turn their cameras on.

Turn the camera on. Let yourself be seen. Shine light on what’s happening.

Because when shame gets exposed to light, it starts shrinking. Almost like a vampire getting hit by sunlight.

This is why community matters.

Support groups matter.Therapy matters.Spiritual confession matters.Late-night conversations with someone you trust matter.

Sometimes you just need someone to say two simple words:

Me too.

When someone hears that, the nervous system calms down a little. The brain realizes it’s not alone in the jungle anymore.

And something inside starts to shift.

People talk a lot about suicide rates and emotional suffering. But many times people don’t actually want to die.

They want the pain to stop.

Carrying pain alone is unbearable.

So I don’t want silence — yours or anyone else’s — turning pain into identity.

Because that’s what eventually happens when it goes unspoken. The pain stops being something you experienced and starts becoming who you believe you are.

And that’s a heavy thing to carry through life.

I’m sharing these thoughts because I’ve spent years sitting in rooms with people who were brave enough to tell the truth about what they were going through. As a therapist. As a substance abuse counselor. In group spaces. In community spaces.

And it always struck me the same way every time.

You sit there thinking you’re the only one carrying something… and then someone else shares.

And suddenly you realize:

Oh my gosh.

I’m not alone.

Not even close.

I’ve had that experience myself. I’ve had moments in my own life where I thought I was the only one dealing with something.

And then I found a group. I found community.

And everything shifted.

We’re more connected than we think.

The situations might look different on the outside, but the feelings underneath them — the shame, the grief, the fear, the loneliness — those are shared human experiences.

So find your people.

Find a group.Find a therapist.Find a spiritual space if that speaks to you.Find that friend you trust enough to pull aside and say, “This is what’s really going on with me.”

You don’t have to carry it alone.

I love you very much. I hope this serves.

If this reflection resonated with you, I’m glad you’re here.

You’re welcome to subscribe and walk alongside these conversations as they continue.

This morning I had a completely different topic planned.

But life had other plans.

What ended up sitting heavy on my heart was my daughter.

She’s 20 now, so technically not a teenager anymore. But she’s still young, still figuring things out, still in that stage where everybody around you seems to have strong opinions about what your life should look like.

Recently she made the decision to withdraw from college.

And I supported her.

Not reluctantly. Not nervously pretending to be supportive while secretly panicking. I mean genuinely supporting her.

Because I saw myself in her.

I remember being 20 and feeling like everyone else had a blueprint for my life except me. Parents, teachers, friends, society… everybody had ideas about what I should do, who I should become, what success was supposed to look like.

After my second year of college, I dropped out too.

Because I realized I didn’t know what the hell I wanted to do.

Fast forward many years later and I now have three degrees… a lot of student debt… and I’m barely using those degrees in the way everyone thought I would.

That doesn’t mean education isn’t valuable.

But pressure has a funny way of pushing people into paths that look impressive while quietly disconnecting them from themselves.

That’s what happened to me.

I spent years people-pleasing my way through life. Managing other people’s emotions. Trying to live up to expectations that weren’t really mine.

And that kind of living will confuse you.

It’ll have you moving in circles because you’re not operating from your own center. You’re operating from everyone else’s approval.

So when my daughter came to me and said she didn’t want to continue, I told her to handle the practical stuff — talk to her advisor, talk to financial aid, make sure everything is done the right way.

But emotionally?

I wasn’t about to add pressure.

I told her something simple.

College isn’t going anywhere.

Those schools will still be there if she wants to go back later.

If she wants an associate’s degree, that’s fine.

If she wants to work for a while, travel, explore, volunteer, try different things — that’s fine too.

I want her to experience life.

I want her to see what sparks something in her. What fits. What doesn’t.

I don’t want her building a life just to make other people comfortable.

That’s really what was sitting with me today.

So many young people are carrying pressure that doesn’t belong to them.

Parents mean well. Most of the time it comes from love. From wanting stability for their children.

But love mixed with anxiety can start to look a lot like control.

And control can slowly suffocate a person’s identity.

In family systems therapy there’s a concept called fusion.

It’s when someone’s identity becomes tangled up in the emotional expectations of the family system.

You stop living your life.

You start living the life that keeps everyone else calm.

The opposite of that is called differentiation.

Differentiation means you can stay connected to the people you love while still being yourself.

That’s the real developmental work for young people.

Not obedience.

Not rebellion.

Differentiation.

And sometimes when a young person makes a choice that looks uncomfortable to the family, it isn’t rebellion at all.

It’s them trying to become a whole human being.

That thought stayed with me long enough that I ended up writing something.

I’m calling it A Teenager’s Open Letter to Parents / Caregivers.

A Teenager’s Open Letter to Parents

I am your child.I am still learning who I am.

I know you love me.I know you want the best for me.

But sometimes the pressure you put on me feels heavier than the love you’re trying to give.

When you tell me who I should become, what career I should choose, or what path I should follow, it can make me feel like my life is already scripted.

Like I’m just expected to perform it well enough to make everyone proud.

Please don’t try to design my life for me.

Guide me.Teach me.Share your wisdom.

But let me discover who I am.

Don’t panic when I struggle or when I don’t have everything figured out.

I’m young.

I’m not lost.

Don’t compare me to other people.

Not my cousins.Not your friends’ children.Not the version of me you imagined before I even knew who I was.

Comparison doesn’t motivate me.

It makes me feel like I’m already failing.

Please trust that I’m trying to build a life that feels meaningful to me.

Sometimes your anxiety about my future becomes a weight I carry every day.

And when I’m busy managing your fears, it becomes harder to hear my own voice.

I don’t need you to control my life.

I need you to believe that I will grow into it.

Let me try things.Let me change directions.Let me learn who I am through experience.

The world I’m growing up in is different from the one you grew up in.

The paths are different.The rules are different.

Success doesn’t always look the way it used to.

What I need most from you isn’t pressure.

It’s trust.

Trust that the values you taught me matter.Trust that I’m capable of learning.Trust that I will find my own way.

Walk beside me.

You don’t need to carry me.

And please remember something important.

I’m not just your child.

I’m a human being becoming who I was meant to be.Who God intended me to be.

Signed,Your teenager.

What I keep coming back to is this:

Guidance says, I believe in you.

Control says, I don’t trust you.

Guidance builds confidence.

Control builds compliance.

And I don’t want compliance for my children.

I want self-trust.

I want them to know they can explore, pivot, make mistakes, learn, and still be deeply loved.

Sometimes the most loving thing we can do as parents is loosen our grip a little.

Not because we don’t care.

But because we trust that our children are capable of finding their way.

Thanks for spending this time with me.

If these reflections resonate with you, you’re welcome to subscribe and continue the conversation here.

Today I want to talk about surrendering the outcome.

You’ve probably heard that phrase a hundred times.

Focus on the process.Enjoy the journey.Let go of the outcome.

It sounds beautiful when someone says it in a book or a video.

But when your life feels like it’s falling apart, surrender can feel almost impossible.

Because how do you not focus on the outcome when your bills need to be paid?When your life feels unstable?When you’re trying to hold everything together?

For the last three years, that was my life.

I was in this constant state of trying to figure everything out.

Trying to organize everything.Trying to fix everything.Trying to control everything.

I was transitioning out of working for other people and trying to build something for myself online. I didn’t even want to call myself an entrepreneur. I just wanted a little corner of the internet where I could do my thing and make that work.

But while I was trying to build that, life was happening.

A toxic relationship.Postpartum.My oldest child moving out and starting college.Financial stress.

And I kept asking myself the same question over and over:

Where is the money going to come from?

I could only work a certain number of hours because I had a baby at home. I couldn’t depend on my husband at the time. I was in my 40s thinking, How did I get here? Why don’t I have this figured out yet?

So of course I tried to control everything.

I tried to control my circumstances.I tried to control the outcome.I tried to control people around me.

I was basically trying to puppet life.

And the more I tried to control it, the worse everything felt.

My anxiety was through the roof.One day it felt like I was dancing with anxiety.The next day I was dancing with depression.

Back and forth.

There was no peace. There was no Camille. There was just this frantic energy of trying to make something work.

I was deep in YouTube videos trying to figure out the “right” strategy.

What do they say I should do?What identity do I need to become to make this work?

I was trying on identities like outfits.

And none of it was working.

The deeper truth that I didn’t realize at the time was that my energy was completely out of alignment.

My language was desperate.

“I need this to work.”“I need money.”“I need this to happen.”

It was constant urgency.

And when you live in that space long enough, your whole body starts to break down.

I had the shakes.I had stomach issues.I was crying all the time.

I isolated myself because I was embarrassed. I felt shame. I felt guilt.

And the craziest part is when I did talk to friends, I could hear myself sounding like someone who was constantly chasing the next thing.

“Yeah I’m about to do this.”“Yeah I’m trying this next.”

I had been like that my whole life.

Always searching.Always studying something.Always trying to become something.

More degrees.More jobs.More attempts to figure it out.

And eventually everything came to a head.

At the end of 2025, I hit a point where I just looked at myself and said:

This isn’t working.

My bank accounts were negative.My parents were helping me financially.My marriage was falling apart.

And eventually I made the decision to ask my husband to leave. Today I can say that with love because we’re in a different space now, but at the time it was chaos.

Absolute chaos.

That was the lowest point.

And oddly enough, it was also the turning point.

Because that’s when I finally said something I had been resisting for years:

“I can’t keep doing this.”

Up until that point, I would say I was giving things to God… and then five minutes later I would grab them back.

“Actually God, never mind, I’ll handle this.”

Control.

Constant control.

But in that moment I finally said:

“Okay. I’m done.”

I decided I was going to focus only on what felt good to do in that moment, and I was going to let the rest go.

Not perfectly. Not magically. But intentionally.

I stopped obsessing over the outcome.

And slowly things started to shift.

Nothing dramatic happened overnight.

But within days I got one independent contractor role.

Two days later another one came in.

Two weeks later one of my digital products sold.

And I remember sitting there thinking:

Wow…

Life had been working for me all along.

I was just fighting the current.

The best way I can describe it is this:

For years I was trying to swim upstream in whitewater rapids.

When I finally turned my boat around and went with the current, life started carrying me.

Now that doesn’t mean the mind stops trying to pull me back.

Our brains are brilliant, but they’re also patterned.

Multiple times a day my mind still tries to sneak in thoughts like:

“Girl… what are you doing? Don’t forget we worry around here.”

That old identity tries to come back.

But now I see those thoughts for what they are.

Sometimes I literally laugh and say out loud:

“Not today.”

It’s a daily practice.

Sometimes a multiple-times-a-day practice.

But the difference is that my nervous system is finally calm.

The frantic energy is gone.

And when you’re not operating from panic, clarity starts to appear.

I show up differently for myself.

I show up differently for my children.

I show up differently for the work I do.

Even this podcast is an example.

I’m recording these episodes because it feels good to speak.

I’m not worrying about the views.I’m not obsessing over analytics.

Right now I’m just doing the thing that feels aligned and letting the rest unfold.

And I can honestly say this:

Surrendering the outcome has been one of the biggest reliefs of my life.

It’s such a relief to stop trying to control everything.

So if you’re in a place where life feels overwhelming right now, I want you to know something.

You’re not the only one.

And sometimes the breakthrough doesn’t come from pushing harder.

Sometimes it comes from letting go.

Surrender doesn’t mean you stop participating in life.

It just means you stop trying to control every single outcome.

You do your part.

And you trust that life can meet you there.

If this conversation resonated with you, subscribe to receive future reflections from Conscious & Composed.