Willing & Winning

Sometimes life gets busy, the technology decides to stop cooperating, and suddenly it’s been a couple of weeks since you’ve sat down behind the mic.

In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m finally back and catching you up on what’s been going on lately. After navigating some unexpected tech issues, coming out of summer, and settling into September, I felt like it was time to just sit down, press record, and have a good old-fashioned catch-up.

This episode is a little different from some of my more structured conversations. There isn’t really a big theme or one specific lesson I’m trying to unpack. It’s more of a snapshot of where I am right now — what’s been on my mind, what I’ve been navigating, what life has looked like lately, and everything in between.

Because sometimes you don’t need to have a perfectly thought-out conversation. Sometimes you just need to get back on the mic and talk.

So consider this episode your long-overdue life update. A little post-summer reset, a little September check-in, and a chance for me to reconnect with you after being away for a few weeks.

Thanks for sticking around. Now, let’s catch up.

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Summer has a funny way of slowing you down enough to actually hear yourself think.

In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m catching you up on what’s been going on in my life lately — from entering my full-on Nantucket Era with Elin Hilderbrand books, to growing as an entrepreneur, continuing to navigate grief, and taking a step back to reflect on what I want the next chapter of my life to look like.

Because lately, I’ve been realizing that I don’t actually have all the answers. Honestly, I don’t even have most of them. But for the first time in a while, I’m giving myself permission to ask the questions anyway.

What do I want the rest of this year to look like? What am I building toward? Who am I becoming? What do I want my life, my work, my relationships, and this next chapter to feel like?

I don’t know yet. And maybe that’s okay.

Sometimes growth isn’t about having the perfect five-year plan or experiencing some huge breakthrough. Sometimes it’s simply creating enough space to slow down, look at where you’ve been, acknowledge where you are, and start getting curious about where you want to go next.

So consider this episode a little summer life update, a little reflection, and a very honest conversation about what it feels like to be somewhere in between chapters — still healing, still growing, still building, and still figuring it all out.

And maybe that’s the point.

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In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m talking about something I’ve been experiencing in a very real way lately: the reality that healing doesn’t move in a straight line.

I’ve recently said goodbye to my cat, Cosmic. Losing Cosmic, my cat and a deeply loved part of my life, has brought me face-to-face with a kind of grief that I’m still learning how to move through. And one of the hardest parts of grief—and healing in general—is realizing that you can have a day where you feel grounded, present, and okay… and then suddenly find yourself right back in the middle of a feeling you thought you had already worked through.

But that doesn’t mean you’re starting over.

We’re often taught to think about healing as a progression. You experience something painful, you process it, you grow from it, and eventually you move past it. But real healing is much messier than that. It loops. It circles back. It asks us to revisit emotions, memories, and parts of ourselves from a new level of awareness.

Sometimes something resurfaces because there is still something to heal. And sometimes it resurfaces because we’re finally in a different place—one where we can understand it, hold it, and move through it differently.

That distinction has been especially meaningful for me lately. Because grief has reminded me that having a hard day doesn’t erase the progress you’ve made. Feeling something deeply doesn’t mean you’re not healing. And being triggered by something you thought you were “over” doesn’t mean you’ve failed.

Maybe healing was never supposed to make us untouchable.

Maybe it’s meant to teach us how to stay connected to ourselves when life inevitably hurts.

In this episode, I’m exploring the difference between regression and repetition, why our triggers can actually become teachers, and how resilience comes from learning to respond to ourselves with awareness instead of expecting ourselves to be perfectly “healed.”

Because growth isn’t measured by how rarely you struggle.

It’s measured by how you meet yourself when you do.

And if you’re in a season where something you thought you had moved past is showing up again, I hope this episode reminds you: you are not back at the beginning.

You’re meeting it as a different version of yourself.

And that… is a win.

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In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m exploring the feeling of being “behind” and how often that belief has less to do with where we actually are—and more to do with where our attention is being pulled.

The idea of falling behind has become one of the most common ways we measure ourselves. Behind in our careers. Behind in relationships. Behind in success. Behind in becoming the person we thought we would already be.

But that feeling is often built on comparison rather than clarity. We look at other people’s timelines, milestones, and carefully curated moments, and we measure them against the parts of our own lives that are still unfolding.

The problem is that comparison creates a distorted version of reality. We compare our behind-the-scenes to someone else’s highlight reel, and suddenly progress that is meaningful starts to feel inadequate. We mistake urgency for ambition and pressure for motivation, even when those feelings are pulling us further away from ourselves.

Because there is no universal timeline for becoming who you are meant to be. Life does not unfold in a perfect sequence, and you are not late to a life that is uniquely yours.

Maybe the goal isn’t to move faster. Maybe it’s to return your attention to what actually matters. To stop measuring your path against someone else’s and start recognizing the progress that is already happening.

Because you are not behind. You may just be distracted from seeing how far you’ve already come.

And coming back into focus… is a win.

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In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m exploring the difference between wanting to be seen and needing to be approved—and how easily our sense of self can become tied to the reactions of others.

Validation is a natural human desire. We want to feel understood. We want to know that our work, our choices, and our existence matter. But there is a point where seeking connection can quietly become dependence, where external recognition begins to replace internal trust.

In a world built around measurable feedback—likes, comments, views, shares, and reactions—it has become increasingly easy to confuse being noticed with being valuable. We begin creating with an audience in mind before we’ve even checked in with ourselves. We filter our ideas, decisions, and expressions through the question: “How will this be received?”

But when approval becomes the foundation of our confidence, we begin outsourcing our own authority. We stop asking ourselves what feels true and start asking what will be accepted.

The work isn’t to stop caring about how others perceive us. It’s to stop abandoning ourselves in the pursuit of being understood. Because the most powerful form of validation is the kind we learn to give ourselves—the quiet trust that comes from knowing who we are, even when no one else is watching.

Because your worth was never meant to be measured by a reaction. It was always meant to come from within.

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This week is less of a structured conversation and more of a catch-up.

I'm sharing where life has honestly been lately, what I'm learning as I navigate this season, and why I'm choosing to embrace exactly where I am instead of pretending to have everything figured out. Sometimes growth looks less like a breakthrough and more like giving yourself permission to start again.

And because not everything has to be so serious… we're also talking about my newest reality TV obsession: The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. From the friendships and drama to the internet discourse, consider this my official initiation into the fandom.

Pour yourself a drink, get comfortable, and let's catch up.

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Life has been life-ing lately, so I thought it was time for a proper catch-up. In this episode, I’m sharing a real-time look at what’s currently unfolding in my life—from career shifts and creative projects to the challenges, lessons, and moments of uncertainty that have been shaping this season. Sometimes we’re so focused on what’s next that we forget to acknowledge where we are right now, and this conversation is exactly that: an honest check-in.

If you’ve been feeling like you’re in a season of transition, rebuilding, or simply trying to figure things out as you go, this one is for you. 🤍🎙️

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In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m looking at the tension between visibility and authenticity, especially within queer identity, and what happens when being seen starts to turn into being performed.

In a world that constantly asks us to define, explain, and package ourselves, identity can shift from something lived into something curated. Online especially, we learn how to make ourselves legible, even when our lived experience is still evolving in ways that can’t always be explained.

But queerness is not a single aesthetic or performance. It is expansive, personal, and often nonlinear. The pressure to be visibly “understood” can quietly pull us away from authenticity, replacing presence with performance.

True freedom isn’t always about being fully seen, it’s about being allowed to exist without translation. Without explanation. Without having to turn identity into something digestible.

Because you don’t owe anyone a polished version of who you are. Only honesty, even while you’re still becoming.

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In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m exploring the difference between attachment and love, and how often emotional dependency gets mistaken for connection.

We don’t always miss people for who they are. We miss the emotional patterns they created: the intensity, the unpredictability, the highs and lows that keep the nervous system activated. Over time, that cycle can start to feel like love, even when it’s actually just familiarity.

Attachment is rooted in fear,fear of loss, silence, and abandonment. Love is rooted in presence. But when you’re used to inconsistency, stability can feel unfamiliar, even uncomfortable. This is why intensity often gets mistaken for chemistry, when it’s really just emotional activation.

Rewiring this pattern isn’t about finding different people first, it’s about changing how you respond. Learning not to chase clarity from confusion, not to confuse anxiety with intuition, and not to mistake emotional distance for something you need to fix.

Because real connection doesn’t leave you in constant emotional survival mode. And anything that requires you to abandon yourself in order to hold onto it isn’t love, it’s attachment asking to be healed.

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In this episode of Willing & Winning, I’m exploring the space between who we are and who we had to become.

Most of us don’t grow into identity in a clean or intentional way. We adapt. We survive. We learn what keeps us safe, accepted, and moving forward. Over time, those survival patterns can start to feel like personality, even when they were originally just responses to circumstance.

This is what I’m calling a survival identity; the version of you built to get through something, not necessarily to express your full truth. The challenge is that this version doesn’t always retire when life changes. It can quietly continue shaping how you love, work, and see yourself.

But there’s a shift that happens when you start noticing the difference between survival and authenticity. You begin to realize you’ve outgrown certain patterns, even if they once served you. And instead of resisting that, you start paying attention to what actually feels aligned now.

An identity audit is really just that moment of awareness. Asking what parts of you were built out of fear or necessity, and what parts feel true when everything else falls away.

Because you are not fixed. You are evolving.

And at some point, growth becomes less about becoming someone new

and more about choosing who you are on purpose.

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