The Day the Door Opens

Today, The Room to Be Brave enters the world.

That sentence feels both simple and enormous.

This book was written quietly. Slowly. In stolen moments and long pauses. It was written in the spaces between everyday life—between work and parenting and healing and doubt.

It was written without certainty that anyone would ever read it.

What I knew, even before I knew how to say it, was this: We all carry a house inside us.

Rooms filled with memories that shaped us. Rooms we return to often. Rooms we avoid at all costs. Rooms we didn't choose, but learned how to survive inside anyway.

For a long time, I believed bravery meant never going back. Closing doors. Locking them tight. Declaring myself "over it."

But that isn't what healed me.

What healed me was learning how to return—slowly, honestly, with compassion—and letting in just enough light to see what was actually there.

This book isn't a how-to. It isn't a redemption arc. It isn't a promise that everything gets better if you try hard enough.

It's an invitation.

An invitation to notice the rooms that shaped you. To sit down instead of running through them. To understand what you carried—and decide, gently, what you no longer need to.

If you choose to read this book, I hope you feel less alone in your story. I hope you recognize parts of yourself in the rooms I share. And I hope you feel permission—not pressure—to move at your own pace.

You don't have to open every door. You don't have to finish in one sitting. You don't have to be brave every day.

Today, the door opens.

You're welcome whenever you're ready.

Letting the Light In

There's a misconception that healing is about fixing what's broken.

I don't think that's true. Mostly because I don't think any of us are actually broken.

I think healing is about letting in light—just enough to see what's actually there.

For years, I kept certain rooms dark on purpose. Not because I was in denial, but because I genuinely believed that looking too closely would undo me. That opening those doors would mean falling apart, and I'd worked too hard to hold myself together to risk that.

What I didn't understand then is that those dark rooms were already affecting everything. The way I showed up in relationships. The limits I placed on my own joy. The exhaustion I couldn't explain. The patterns I kept repeating without knowing why.

Letting light in didn't mean flooding the space all at once. It meant cracking the door. Sitting on the threshold. Letting my eyes adjust.

Not all rooms need renovation. Some just need acknowledgment. Some need grief. Some need compassion. Some need a chair and a moment of rest.

Some rooms, I discovered, just needed to be seen for what they were—not monsters in the dark, but spaces that held younger versions of me who were doing the best they could with what they knew.

When I wrote The Room to Be Brave, I wasn't trying to offer answers. I was offering permission—for us to return, to reflect, to tell the truth about what shaped us without turning it into a life sentence.

Because here's what I've learned: healing isn't a dramatic transformation where you emerge completely different. It's a series of small, honest moments where you choose to see yourself clearly. Where you stop running. Where you sit down in a room you've avoided and realize you're still standing when you leave.

Healing doesn't require bravery every day. It requires honesty, practiced gently.

If you've been walking through these rooms with me—in the book, in these posts, or quietly on your own—I hope you feel less alone in the process.

And if you're not ready yet, that's okay too.

The doors don't disappear. They wait patiently.

And when you're ready, even a crack of light is enough to begin.

New Year, New You Doesn’t Work (And Here’s Why)

Every January, we’re sold the same idea.

New year.
New you.
New habits. New goals. New energy.

And while I love a fresh start as much as the next guy, I’ve learned something the hard way:

You don’t become new by layering change on top of what you’ve never healed.

Because we are not blank slates on January 1st.
We walk into the new year carrying old rooms.

Rooms where we learned who we had to be to be loved.
Rooms where we learned what was safe.
Rooms where we learned what made us valuable.
Rooms where we learned what to hide.

Our behaviors don’t come out of nowhere.
Our reactions don’t either.

They usually come from beliefs we formed about ourselves, or from how we thought other people saw us.

And those beliefs came from somewhere.

For decades, I carried a belief I didn’t even know I had:
I am only worthy of love if I am useful.

So I was useful.

I volunteered for everything.
I overextended.
I fixed things that were never mine to fix.
I stayed longer than I should have.
I took on more than was healthy.
I made myself indispensable.

You may have seen my life and thought, “She’s so involved. She’s so driven. She’s everywhere.”

And I was.

But underneath that “extra” was fear.

Fear that if I wasn’t helpful, needed, or producing something… I would be rejected.

Over the last year or so, I finally slowed down enough to look at that behavior and ask a braver question:

Where did this come from?

And the answer lived in a room I had avoided.

As a child, I lived with a lot of different family members when my mother, for reasons that were not in my control, couldn’t care for my brother and me.

We would stay for weeks. Sometimes months.
Then my mom would be able to take us back.
And we would move again.

There was no stable foundation.

So my nervous system built one.

Be good.
Be helpful.
Don’t be a burden.
Make people want to keep you.

That belief didn’t stay in childhood.

It followed me into relationships, where I tried to save what wasn’t mine to heal.

It followed me into work, where I took on too much so I would be valued.

It followed me into adulthood, where usefulness quietly became my worth.

Nothing changed until I went back.

Until I returned to the rooms where my mother had left.

And this time, I didn’t go back as the child.

I went back as the adult.

I sat with her.
I comforted her.
I told her the truth she never got to hear:

This wasn’t about you.
You were never unworthy.
You never had to earn being kept.

And that is how the belief started to loosen.

Not through resolutions.
Not through productivity.
Not through becoming “new.”

But through returning.

Through witnessing.
Through grieving.
Through offering the support that was missing.

That is how rooms release us.

So when I hear “new year, new you,” I gently push back.

Because the work is rarely about becoming someone else.

It’s about meeting the parts of us that were never given a choice.

The parts that were groomed by circumstance to believe something about themselves before they were old enough to question it.

So I’ll ask you what I now ask myself:

What belief system have you been carrying for too many years?

What behavior are you exhausted from repeating?

What belief and behavior never really belonged to you anyway…
but were handed to you in a room you didn’t get to choose?

Because that room might not be behind you.

It might be waiting for you.

And going back doesn’t make you weak.

It makes you free.

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.

Why I Had to Go Back

For a long time, I believed healing meant moving on.

Closing chapters. Locking doors. Declaring myself "over it."

I thought that surviving those moments was enough. That I had "overcome" by simply making it through.

And to be fair—that worked, until it didn't.

What I eventually learned is that closing a door doesn't mean a room disappears. It just means you stop visiting it. And rooms we stop visiting don't stop shaping us.

They shape how we love. How we parent. How we rest. How we speak to ourselves when no one else is listening.

They shape how we allow others to treat us and the value we place on our own ability to take up space.

But going back didn't mean I had to relive everything the same way I lived it the first time. That's the fear I felt before I went back. What it actually meant was revisiting the rooms with context I didn't have before.

Adult eyes. Language. Boundaries. Choice.

The bravest thing I did wasn't confronting the past head-on. It was allowing myself to enter slowly—to sit down instead of sprinting through, to notice instead of judge.

Most rooms softened once I saw them clearly. Some needed grieving. Some needed forgiveness. And some just needed to be acknowledged for the role they played.

Every room needed the perspective that I not only survived what happened there, but that I have the power and knowledge to understand it's over. That I am safe. That it is not happening now. And that I won't let it happen again.

I didn't go back to punish myself. I went back to reclaim parts of me that had been left behind.

If you're avoiding a room right now, I want you to know this: You don't go back because you're stuck. You go back because you're ready to live forward with less weight.

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.

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.