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.

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