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.