When You're Standing in All the Rooms at Once

"It was like all the rooms that carried the disappointment I felt from her, I was in all of those rooms all at once." — The Room to Be Brave

Sometimes I am thrown back into rooms I thought I healed from. These are rooms that held significant trauma. Where I woke up from my coma on a ventilator, having no idea that I was fighting for my life from meningitis. The delivery room where I had my daughter and was bleeding out while they worked to save both of our lives. The room where my foot was gray and a limb preservation specialist told me she would do whatever she could to save my foot.

Hospital rooms are rooms of trauma for a lot of people, so I am no different in that way. I wonder how many people feel the weight of those rooms when they are facing a new medical diagnosis, a new, unexplained symptom, a feeling like something is wrong.

I know the weight of that feeling. I've sat in that room many times.

This is a room I am healing in layers. I have worked through what I think is the worst of it and in the day to day I'm good. Until I'm not.

As soon as there is a lab value that's red, or an impression on imaging that recommends further imaging… I am standing in all of the rooms I have been in. I'm 19 again, laying on my stomach on a table while the doctor takes samples from my kidney to run a biopsy and confirm my chronic kidney disease. I'm 22 again, looking at my hand for the first time after my fingers were amputated. I am in every room where uncertainty, my mortality, and almost always pain are overwhelming.

So, what do I do when that overwhelm hits? How do I handle the weight of all of those rooms?

I come back to the room I'm in.

I journal my thoughts to get the fears out of my system, reminding myself on the page that I am not in any of those rooms because I already survived those moments.

I meditate to clear the rapid onslaught of thoughts, the what ifs, the oh my gods.

I call a friend. I am between therapists at the moment so I let someone in and let the words fall on understanding ears.

I find my joy. Rather than look into my own thoughts, I look outward and find somewhere to put my hands. I write, I hug my daughter, husband or cats, I go outside and feel the air on my skin and take joy in each breath.

I do for someone else. I send a text to a friend telling them I love them, I buy my daughter a treat. Doing for someone else takes me out of the panic and stress of my own thoughts.

I don't do all of these every time. I'm not insane, I couldn't keep up with all of them. But I use the most accessible at the time. And they work. These tools pull me out of the layers of rooms that I have already survived and put me into my body, and into the current moment.

Heavy moments carry enough weight without piling the ones you've already survived on top of them.

Whatever rooms you're carrying right now, I hope something here helps you find your way back to where you are.

The Room to Be Brave: Sometimes the Way Forward Begins with Going Back is available now. Order your copy here

What rooms do you keep returning to? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

I QUIT!!

I'm a quitter.

My entire vibe is about how much I'm okay with being terrible at something. The Find Your Joy Project, at its core, is about trying new things and probably not being good at them right away. Then I found something that I had hoped I'd be good at, and I failed at it. It was the most epic of failures. So, I quit everything.

What's really bogging me down is that it took months of holding this quittery in the pit of my stomach. I hoped and prayed that nobody would ask me how the Find Your Joy Project was going, because I didn't want to admit out loud that I gave up, and I really didn't feel good about it. I get so much happiness out of this project that admitting I wasn't doing it, was making me sad, but I couldn't put my finger on why I quit! I wanted to know what my stumbling block was, but instead of seeking out the answers, I threw all my energies into every single distraction that I could find. I even went to the gym for crap's sake! I was really avoiding my quitting, sharing my joy, and my feelings.

But why?!

Why would I quit finding joy, and sharing finding joy, and talking to people about finding joy, and beating my family over the head with all of the joy??? Because I had a vision of something I could do, and be, and it turns out that I couldn't, and I wasn't. And my fragile, flower petal of an ego couldn't stand up against the crushing, debilitating feeling of not being good at something immediately, or not having something go the way I dreamed it would.

Here's the kicker, I would have known what to say to any of you if this happened to you… imagine this scenario…

You come to me and tell me, and all of your closest friends, that you would like to start painting landscapes. You want to Bob Ross the hell out of some canvas! You are excited, the joy is contagious and the people you love are excited for you! You buy paint, brushes, an easel, canvas, a palette, a smock, and a fluffy wig to get you in the spirit. You go out to a beautiful nature scene and you start mixing paint, checking the lighting, taking pictures of your set-up for Instagram and then you start to paint. And you're not just terrible, you're cold, your allergies kick up, your wig is itchy, the "blended colors" come out looking like something you'd see with a stomach virus. This sucks and you hate it!

At this point I would tell you that you have a couple of options:

Start over! Watch some videos on painting, or take a class. You can start smaller, like learning how to mix paints, or learning basic brush techniques. Even if you never become a world renowned public broadcasting painter, you can still paint (even poorly) and have fun with it. With practice, you may even get better.

OR (and this is a big one)

Painting might not be for you! You can totally sell or donate your easel and paints and walk away knowing that AT LEAST YOU TRIED!!

There is no shame in trying and not liking something. Even if you REALLY thought it was going to be your thing. Even if you told everyone how much it was going to be your thing. EVEN IF you bragged about your vision of becoming a painter.

I told a lot of people how I would like to make YouTube videos showcasing other folks who have found their joy. I even had two generous and joyful people share their joy with me, on camera (!!) so that I could get the ball rolling on what I fully thought would be an incredible experience. We would have so much fun sharing in their joy that the videos would practically make themselves!

Man, if you could see how it looked in my head? As far as I was concerned, Netflix was about to pick up my videos for multiple seasons. I wouldn't say I was delusional, because in real life I can have a conversation with anyone I meet and have so much fun doing it, but as it happens, I am zero fun in front of a camera. Where I thought I could bring the best out of people who already had joy; I made finding joy look like an insurance seminar.

That was a hard pill for me to swallow. And instead of trying to address what had stopped me from enjoying the work for The Find Your Joy Project, I just avoided it all together. Until now.

Now I pivot. PIVOT!

I don't quit the parts of this project that I love. I don't beat myself up for not being good at making videos. I don't quit the joy. I do quit the guilt, I quit the negative self-talk, and I quit judging myself on one activity that I didn't take to right away. And I move forward towards the joy.

I will continue to try new ways to bring the joy to you. I will continue to talk to people and encourage them to share their joy. And I will continue to share these adventures with you in whatever form brings me the most joy. At this point, it won't be via YouTube, and I'm finding a way to be 100% ok with that.

Wherever this project takes us, I want you to be there for all of the ups and downs. And please feel free to tell me the things that you tried and loved, or hated! Because we are more than likely not going to find our joy in the first thing we try, but we are absolutely not going to find it by giving up.

So let's find our joy, change our life, and inspire others.

If this post resonated with you, my memoir The Room to Be Brave explores this same theme on a deeper level—the courage it takes to try, to fail, to keep going, and to finally face the rooms we've been afraid to enter. The book releases January 27, 2026.

Want more stories about finding joy, breaking cycles, and choosing courage? Sign up here to get updates about the book launch, and you’ll receive a downloadable guide to finding your own rooms that may be holding you in place.