Often it seems that my writing focuses on a very specific theme that I am exploring from many different angles, and just as often, of course, that theme is a concept that I am grappling with in my own life. I have often said that writing is how I figure out what I am thinking and feeling. This summer I have been focusing quite a bit on the idea of trusting the path I am on, and trusting the process to get me to wherever I am going. This has been coming up over and over for me, in cards I pull, in meditations I listen to, in YouTube videos I watch. It feels like every time I turn around, the Universe is trying to tell me to chill out.

As for whether or not it has worked…sort of?? I do feel like I have been suitably reminded, in that when I get worried about the future I can return myself to that place of trust, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still this part of me that wants to steer the ship and ensure I end up where I want to. Essentially, I trust the Universe up to a point, as long as I can choose the destination, and check the navigation system every now and then to make sure we are still going in the right direction.

I have been told that I am good at accomplishing my goals, and this is true, but again, only up to a point. When I have a specific endpoint in mind, and I can control most of the variables, then yes, I am good at achieving my goals. But what happens when a lot of your success is in the hands of other people, and you don’t control their decision-making? Then what?

If you’re like me, then you frantically try to gain control over factors that are most definitely not within your control, and then throw a hissy fit when people don’t follow your plans for them. The nerve of them to think they have free will!

In a recent article, (this one, if you want to read it) I wrote about my dreams for my future, what it is that I’m trying to create, and how I’m learning to trust my intuition and let the process be fun. This leads me to my next question: how exactly does one do that? I know how to keep my eye on the prize until I reach my goal. I don’t know as much about how to set the intention and then let it go, trusting that whatever the outcome is, it’ll work out in the way that is best for me. I mean, I believe this to be true, theoretically. But putting it into practice in my actual life, with my actual goals and dreams, is another story altogether.

A few weeks ago, we had our family over for dinner. We do this about once a month, and on this particular day, my four-year-old granddaughter arrived, and the instant she got inside the house, I could hear her yelling “Gigi! Gigi!”, accompanied by little feet running as fast as they could go. She appeared around the corner, into the living room, and about two seconds later she was launching herself into my arms. In that moment, with her little arms wrapped around me and a smile of peaceful contentment on her face, I could not have told you a single goal that I had for my life. Not one. Didn’t even care about them. All that mattered was the love between me and this precious little girl.

After my granddaughter gave me that hug, she went and played with her toys for a bit. And in the way of young children, she was fully focused on what she was doing. She wasn’t looking to any metrics to justify what she was doing, she wasn’t worrying if anything she was doing was useful to herself or anyone else. She was just present in the moment. Meanwhile, I’m over here wondering what productive thing I could do every time I have five minutes to spare. Even when I sit on the porch at the end of the day, it’s in service to something. It has a goal attached to it.

It has felt for awhile like I’ve been in this almost-but-not-quite-there phase in a lot of areas of my life, and I gotta tell ya, it’s getting kind of old. I’m ready for things to move on to the next part, the part where I feel I have arrived at something, at the next phase. But what I am learning (relearning, actually. I’ve had this conversation with myself a few times over the years) is that there is no arrival. There is no endpoint, at least not for me. I am one of those people who is always moving the goal post, always reaching for the next thing. And so I will likely never feel like I have crossed the finish line. And this is okay, I’ve accepted that this is just the way I am. But that doesn’t mean I can’t enjoy myself on the journey.

What if the journey is the whole point?

And this has me wondering, what would it look like to let go of the goals?

What would it look like to have the dream, but not be ruled by the dream?

What would it look like to know that my life is already enough, just as it is, even if I don’t accomplish a single thing from this point forward?

How would that impact my writing?

How would it impact how I approach each day?

How I feel when I wake up in the morning?

For that matter, how would it change how I feel when I go to bed at night?

Would the sunset look different if I was only focusing on the poem it inspired in me, and not wondering in the back of my mind if that poem might be the one that goes viral?

How much do my dreams enhance my life, and how much do they actually drain the very energy I need to create the thing I am dreaming of?

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One of the principles I learned in living more intentionally, and specifically bringing your dreams into reality, was the idea of putting the feeling of the dream first. The idea is that the feeling is really the thing you are chasing, and you are just assuming that the big dream will give you that feeling. But if you can start leaning into that feeling now, then you are in effect pulling your dreams towards you. Moreover, sometimes the thing we think we want isn’t really the thing that’s the most aligning for us. There might be a possibility out there that is even better for you, and you can’t even see it as an option because you are tunnel visioning onto that one thing. But if you focus on the feeling, not a specific outcome, you have a better chance of holding on to that feeling, regardless of the outcome, which is the whole point anyway.

I like this idea. Truly, I do. It makes complete sense to me. I have tried countless times to put this principle into action. And every time I try, I hit the same snag. I can identify the feeling I want pretty easily. I mean, I’m a therapist. I can list feeling words like nobody’s business. But when I attempt to list out actions I could take that would bring me that feeling, I get stuck. It’s not that I don’t know what makes me feel confident, or connected, or loved, or adventurous. I do. But I get so focused on the goal I have in mind that I have great difficulty in looking away from it and seeing other ways that I could also channel that feeling.

So this time, instead of trying to force myself to sit down and make a list of different actions I could take to channel a specific feeling, I have spent this summer simply noticing how different things make me feel. When I was sitting outside on the porch and reading a book in the sunshine, I felt relaxed and content. Mental note, let’s do more of that. When I focus on celebrating and supporting other writers on here, I feel more positive myself. Let’s do more of that. When I go for a run, even when I don’t want to, I feel really proud of myself. Let’s definitely do more of that.

When I am chasing those big dreams for myself, I am hoping that they will make me feel creative, proud, and useful. Guess what else I have noticed helps me feel creative, proud, and useful?

**Writing to you on here.

**Running, walking, doing yoga, and basically any other thing I do to care for my body.

**Writing poetry

**Creating memes to share on various platforms

**Taking photos

**Working in my garden

**Making my house feel homey

**And lots of other things, enough that this list would become ridiculous if I tried to include them all.

These are all things I can do now. I don’t actually need the big dream in order to feel creative, proud, or useful. And bonus, I can do every single one of them without any pressure attached. I can do them just for fun. So how does one learn to trust their intuition, and let the process of watching their dreams unfold become part of the fun? Well, I am still trying to figure that out, but I think that just maybe it might have something to do with focusing more on what you are doing with your present, and less on what you are hoping for in the future. I think it might be about making sure your present is feeling the way you want it to feel, and not holding off on all the goodness until some unknown day in the future when you finally allow yourself to feel really, really good.

It’s teaching yourself that your life can feel amazing now, and it can continue to feel that way, whether or not you ever achieve specific goals. It’s being fully present in the now, in ways that feel good for you, in the same way that my granddaughter plays with her toys or hugs the people she loves. It’s in living now with your whole heart. It’s in remembering that I would rather look back on a life that was lived fully and that I was present for, than a life where I technically reached my goal, but I missed 30 years of that life because I couldn’t stop to look around while I was building it.

Because as every road trip girlie knows, the best part isn’t actually the destination. It’s the journey.

Love,

Amy

P.S. Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book. My bookshelf may not thank you, but I do!

P.P.S. Want more support on how to create a life you actually love? Paid subscribers have full access to my Cozy + Creative course, available year-round, whenever you feel you could use a little boost and some gentle, cozy guidance to get closer to your dream life, one sustainable step at a time. The first one is here:

The other morning I was getting ready for work, and I heard my son downstairs in the living room, saying a friendly “good morning”, in a deep voice that is still weird for me to associate with him. A few minutes later, I heard him say it again. And then a third time. Three people had not walked into the room where he was, or even into the adjoining room. He was completely by himself down there. And no, he wasn’t hallucinating, either. He was exhibiting echolalia, the repeating of phrases that is sometimes displayed by people with various developmental disorders. He greets an empty room with a very convincing-sounding “good morning”, on most mornings, often repeatedly.

Our middle child has three different diagnoses, including an intellectual disability, and there’s a fourth diagnosis I strongly suspect but haven’t yet gone through the channels to make it official. He is eighteen years old but developmentally is much younger than that. His reading level is that of a nine-year-old. His math level is that of a seven-year-old. He repeats the same words and phrases over and over again, sometimes at the completely wrong time and sometimes with humorously perfect timing. He invades personal space on a daily basis. Up until he was about 13, he hugged everybody. Everybody. Whether he knew them or not. His gait is clumsy, he can’t get manage to get his fingers to pull a button through a buttonhole, those little metal twist ties on loaves of bread befuddle him completely, and he doesn’t fully understand most conversations.

He will never be able to drive or live independently. It took three years to teach him how to buckle his own seatbelt. I’m not exaggerating. We spent one full year on teaching him how to pull the belt across his lap, another year on getting the buckle positioned into the right spot, and a third year on putting the buckle into the slot. Currently we are teaching him how to hang up his clothes. It’s been probably three years already, and most days we’re almost there. Sometimes getting the pants legs to hang on either side of the hanger is a mystery we are not meant to solve.

He also goes to a regular school, he loves to try to learn the words and the choreography to his favorite song, he loves basketball and bowling, he is aces at perfecting trick shots, and for a long time he wanted to be a chef when he grew up. We have spent a great deal of time wondering about his future. There are so many unanswered questions.

**How will he feel when his younger brother moves out of the house, while he himself isn’t going anywhere?

**What kind of space will he need in our house, as he develops into a fully grown man?

**Will he always travel with us in our retirement, or is there a possibility that he could stay with one of his siblings so my husband and I can occasionally go on trips by ourselves?

**Will he ever learn how to hang up his pants?

And then there are the hard questions, like will he get picked on? Will people understand him, see him the way we do, speak up for him, look out for him, after we can’t take care of him anymore?

From the moment we learned that our son has special needs, we worried about his future. As we shared the news with our family and friends, they all had immediate concerns as well. We didn’t have answers to any of their questions, and the specialists we saw couldn’t give us much reassurance either.

Seventeen(ish) years later, we still don’t have any answers.

But we don’t stay up late at night worrying about him anymore, either. Specifically, we don’t worry about whether or not he will be accepted by his peers at school. Because he goes to a regular high school, he spends part of his time in a typical classroom, and part of his day in a special education room. He has an aide who follows him around and helps him out. He is clearly not like the other kids. But shockingly, this doesn’t seem to matter to his peers.

When he was little, about 2nd grade, he developed the habit of gently petting the shirts of the girls around him when they were in circle time on the rug, especially if their shirts had any kind of texture to them. His teacher, bless her amazing heart, took this as an opportunity to educate the kids on why he was doing this, and to teach them how to respond to him kindly, while also letting him know that they didn’t want him touching them. There was no judgment involved, no scolding. The kids didn’t tease him or point fingers, or call him weird. It was just treated as a learning moment on how to be more loving while at the same time setting appropriate boundaries.

At school, he walks down the hallway and shares a big grin and an enthusiastic high-five with everyone he passes, and they all greet him with equal enthusiasm. When he sprained his ankle and had to wear a boot to support his foot, I walked with him to his classroom on the first school day after it happened, to talk to his teacher about it. It was like walking with a celebrity down the red carpet. At the homecoming parade every year, when the float with the football players on it comes by, the players all yell his name and throw him handfuls of candy, and usually a football as well, which he somehow manages to catch. Dude can’t fasten a button, but he can handle a football like he’s Patrick freaking Mahomes.

This treatment he gets from his peers has been the case his entire school career. Because he grew up with these kids, and he had wonderful teachers who taught his classmates how to respond to him, they treat him with compassion and total acceptance. When he was in Kindergarten, I watched him strut up to a group of girls, plop himself down next to them, and say “what’s up, ladies?” And then they all giggled and greeted him like a friend.

A couple years later, I distinctly remember dropping him off at school, and watching as he and a classmate ran towards each other in greeting, both of them thrilled to be seeing each other. And now in high school, he has a group of girls, all pretty and popular, who have taken it upon themselves to look out for him. They make sure he is heading in the right direction and help him whenever he needs it. He thinks every single one of them is his girlfriend, and I’m pretty sure they don’t even try to correct him.

So why does this kid, who is so clearly different from “normal” kids, happily strut around his school like he owns it? There are many reasons, the fantastic staff in our school district being one of them. But this kid shines in whatever environment he is in. He simply can’t help himself. He can’t help being happy, because he loves who he is. He isn’t ashamed of the fact that he’s different. He doesn’t even fully understand that he is different. He just knows that he likes himself, and he goes into every situation assuming that everyone will like him; therefore, they do.

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Imagine if we all had that kind of confidence, to simply accept and like ourselves exactly as we are.

No pretense. No image to protect.

Imagine if we all could just purely be ourselves. Think about how that might affect your life. Your relationships. What you post on social media. Think how it would dissolve anything you feel shame around. My son might not be able to tell you the meaning behind the story he just read, but he also has no shame, hidden fears, or anxieties in his heart. He knows instinctively that those things lose their power when they are shared.

Recently he has developed a fear of storms. I don’t know if it’s the storm itself that scares him, or just the loud noises that typically come with storms. He also doesn’t like it when the power goes out, which has happened with a couple storms in the past 2-3 years. And really, all it takes is it happening one time, and he will bring it up for the next six years. Because we just had a big storm come through a week ago, and the power did go out, he is nervous about it happening again. He asks me every day if a storm is coming, and we go onto my weather app and we check it out. A few hours later, he asks me again, and we check the app again.

He reminds me, and himself, that if a storm is expected overnight, he can go sleep on the couch in the living room, which for some reason makes him feel better than staying in his room. I suspect that some of the comfort is that he thinks he’ll be able to stay up and watch TV, and I honestly can’t blame him for his reasoning, or his opportunistic nature. But regardless, he doesn’t apologize for asking “too many times”, nor does he try to bury his anxiety. He experiences a worry, he looks to the appropriate person to check into it for him, and he reminds himself of the actions he can take to feel safe, if the feared thing does happen. And then he moves on with his day, repeating the whole process without apology when the anxiety comes up again.

It’s endlessly fascinating to me how quickly and easily he can move through his emotions, how openly he can love, and how authentically he can show up, simply because he doesn’t have any additional narratives to complicate the experience for him. He can just follow his heart and do what his body knows to do. He has a natural wisdom that I, with all of my academic success, can only dream of.

We still don’t have any idea what his future holds. We don’t know what will happen to him when we get old, or when we die. These are big questions that we will have to find answers to in the next few years. But we don’t worry anymore about whether or not he will be happy, at least not while we are here to look after him. We don’t worry about whether or not he will be successful. He may not be academically intelligent, but when it comes to the things that matter, he is smarter than anybody I know. He knows in his bones that the best kind of success you can have is to love the people in your world with your whole heart, to trust in life, and to simply be yourself. Would that we all had that kind of intelligence.

Love,

Amy

P.S. Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book. My bookshelf may not thank you, but I do!

Want more support on how to create a life you actually love? Paid subscribers have full access to my Cozy + Creative course, available year-round, whenever you feel you could use a little boost and some gentle, cozy guidance to get closer to your dream life, one sustainable step at a time. The first one is here:

This article was inspired by ’s article entitled How I Gained 10,000 Subscribers in 6 Months.

Sometimes I look at my goals, and then I hold them up to the metrics, and I feel like giving up on the whole thing. It looks hopeless. There doesn’t seem to be a path, or if there is one, I am nowhere near it. I am wandering out in the wilderness, without a compass and no useful knowledge to guide me. Nor do I have the time to devote to figuring it out, or the discipline to follow through on a possible path long enough and consistently enough to get the results I am wanting.

Recently, I was sitting with a client, and she was sharing about some fun experiences she has had this summer, and it reminded me of what I want for myself and my family. I dream of a cozy, warm, welcoming house on a piece of land that we own, where we grow flowers and herbs and vegetables and fruit. We mayyyybe have chickens and we definitely have a few berry bushes. My grandchildren run outside with me to collect eggs from the chickens in the morning, their little feet in rubber boots, small hands carefully setting the eggs into a bucket.

Later in the day we gather fruit from the blueberry and raspberry bushes, and I teach them how to make jam. We play fetch with the dog(s) in our big backyard, or perhaps we go for a walk in the woods. In the evening, we play a board game in front of the fireplace while sipping chamomile tea and hot chocolate from our favorite handmade mugs.

When I am not playing and cooking with my family, I am running a thriving business focused on teaching people how to create the lives and relationships they want, through writing, client work, teaching courses, podcasting, and a handful of speaking engagements. I am also a photographer who travels the world, taking photographs of what she sees, and then sells those photos around the world. I also have written a book or two, at least.

I have big dreams for myself, clearly, and I don’t apologize for them. I love my dreams. They are so special to me, and I’m working hard to help myself reach them. They fill me with joy and feel spacious and exciting. And then I look at where I am right now, and I crash down to earth for a moment. For a couple seconds, those dreams feel utterly impossible, and suddenly I am certain that they will never happen. I mean, I have less than 200 subscribers right now. That’s not nothing, to be sure, and I’m happy for every single one of them. But I have a long way to go until I’m at a place where this thing I’m doing here is paying for my life.

I occasionally find myself hearing a little voice in the back of my head that tells me I should just toss the whole thing. Throw it all away, file it under “sounds great, but not very realistic”, and move on to more reasonable goals. Some days, that voice gets very loud. I can almost picture her at times. She looks like a matronly librarian, complete with the unsmiling face, the tight bun, and the glasses, and she is peering at me over those glasses, glaring at me as if I have just gotten grubby fingerprints over all of the valuable books in the restricted section. Control yourself, she seems to say. On those days, I have to just stay away from my laptop, lest I make any big decisions that I can’t easily undo later.

“Eventually the urge to be reasonable fades, thank goodness.”

Because eventually, if I wait long enough, the urge to be reasonable fades (thank goodness), and I once again hear a very different voice. This one is much softer, but equally insistent. She doesn’t quite tell me what to do, she more gives me permission to try things out. She wants me to lean into my curiosity, and she winks at me conspiratorially when I want to take the leap into a new idea or long-held dream. I imagine her as a little girl, maybe around 7 or 8 years old, and she is dressed as a princess fairy/wood nymph combo, with a sparkly skirt and a tiara, sometimes a wand with flowing strips of silver, and always she is dancing in the forest.

She could not care less about “should” or being reasonable. Nor is she worried about outcomes. She just wants to play, be curious, and see what happens. She has no idea if a thing will work out in a specific way, and she isn’t even particularly interested in that. She just wants to put her whole heart into a fun endeavor, and trust in whatever comes next.

My little fairy/wood nymph really likes this idea of “being delusional” that is everywhere on Instagram and even here on Substack. The idea is that instead of giving up on our dreams because they aren’t realistic, we can feel free to lean into our biggest hopes and wildest dreams. Mind you, this isn’t a version of delusional that is losing touch with reality, it’s more the kind where we actually believe that our lives can be as good as we want them to be, and then we act accordingly. We step out in faith that our most audacious goals can come true, and we behave as if they are already happening.

“Believe audaciously that your dreams can come true.”

I believe fully in the principle behind this, but the fearful and strict librarian in me struggles to trust it. She is worried about me looking like an idiot. She already feels that my dreams are foolish in their unrealistic-ness, and is severely rolling her eyes at the idea of buying into the delusion even more. But I’ve been noticing something over this summer, as I’ve been focusing more on having fun, playing, and letting myself off the hook quite a bit more than usual. The more I lean into that fairy/wood nymph energy in other areas, the louder I hear her share her thoughts on the topic of my dreams.

Whenever my too-reasonable librarian frets over the lunacy of my dreams, I hear my inner fairy/wood nymph (should we give her a name? I feel like she needs a name. So does the librarian. Suggestions welcome) whisper to me who cares? Who cares if it’s ridiculous and never going to happen? Who cares if it’s foolish? Just think how much fun it could be to get even partway there! She has reminded me this summer that it’s better to have fun just being on the path to ridiculous, expansive, beautiful dreams, than to stay solemn, reasonable, and realistic the rest of my life.

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The other day I posted a Note sharing my observation that I have the most return engagement when I worry less about showing up here in an orderly fashion, and I just let my fancy take me wherever she wants to go. When I limit myself to only what the business-y people on here tell me to do, I do okay. I get a few notifications about a small amount of likes and comments. But when I follow the guidance that feels aligning, and then after that let myself just have fun with it, I get wayyy more likes, comments, and restacks.

This is certainly not business advice of my own, because I am in no way qualified to offer any guidance in that area at all. It’s simply an observation that has been very interesting to me. The very thing that seems silly and fickle is the thing that has led to the most amount of engagement I’ve had in over two years on this platform, and it’s based on just having fun with it.

**To be clear, I have no intention of tossing the business advice, because it absolutely has its place, but I am definitely also going to keep incorporating as much fun as I possibly can.

About a week ago, I read an article written by about her plan to gain 10,000 subscribers in 6 months, rooted in this idea that changing her default assumptions about what is possible will allow her to reach farther, faster, than she ever thought was possible, without stressing herself out or showing up as someone other than herself in order to do it. I love this idea, and immediately felt the truth of it in my bones. It just doesn’t make sense to me that in order to reach our goals, we have to either exhaust ourselves or become someone other than who we are. If my dreams don’t want my goofy, weird, random, messy, fully awake self, than what good are they?

So, inspired by ’s article, here are my own slightly delusional default assumptions:

**my random and slightly unhinged thought trains might actually be interesting to other people as well, so feel free to share them;

**the entire Universe is conspiring to help me reach my goals, and I am not qualified to pre-determine what the Universe can do;

**I don’t have to wear myself out, stand on my tiptoes, or jump over fire in order to accomplish said goals. I can just keep learning, be myself, and most importantly have fun;

**I am on my way to accomplishing amazing things. It’s just getting better from here.

I am excited to see what happens as I stop trying to limit myself to what seems reasonable, and get more delusional, hopefully a little bit more every week! Will I make it to my dream life? Who knows?? Honestly, as much as I still want it, and am still working towards it, I’m not even sure if it ultimately matters if I get there or not. I just want to have fun giving it a try.

Love,

Amy

P.S. Speaking of audacious and delusional dreams, something big is coming for the podcast in September! More details soon!

P.P.S. Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book. My bookshelf may not thank you, but I do!

Want more support on how to create a life you actually love? Paid subscribers have full access to my Cozy + Creative course, available year-round, whenever you feel you could use a little boost and some gentle, cozy guidance to get closer to your dream life, one sustainable step at a time. The first one is here:

When I was in middle school, a classmate of mine started a rumor about me. This is not unusual. It happens in middle schools all around the world, every day. While this particular rumor appeared to be about me, it actually said quite a bit about the person who started it. This is also not unusual. My classmate told a few people that I was staring at her in class, in THAT kind of way. I wasn’t, but that is beside the point. By the end of the day, half the school was whispering that I was clearly a lesbian.

This was in the early 1990’s. AIDS had come out, Ellen had not. It was not a good time to be considered homosexual. People were being beaten and sometimes killed simply for being gay, on a regular basis. Please understand, I recognize homosexuality is still not fully embraced today. People are still being beaten and killed for their sexual orientation. But any acceptance that exists now was certainly not present then. And at the age of 13, I was the recipient of the bullying you would expect from middle school kids towards the local gay kid in the early ‘90’s.

Thankfully, I was never threatened with physical violence. I was lucky in that way, at least. But I still remember the names I was called, and every finger that was pointed at me, accompanied by much laugher and jeering. The more upset I appeared, the more they taunted. I tried my hardest, therefore, to cover my reaction with a blank face, but sometimes the tears would leak through anyway.

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The fact that I was not actually gay was completely irrelevant. In the eyes of my classmates, I was guilty and therefore deserved to be dehumanized. I clearly remember wishing on most days that I was sick so I could go home. I wished so hard that I often talked myself into an actual stomachache. I called home so much that my parents told the school not to call them unless I had a fever or was throwing up (in their defense, they did not realize the full extent of what was happening. They were just working parents who couldn’t take that much time away from their jobs). My escape route was cut off.

The fact that I wasn’t actually gay was a bit irrelevant to me, as well. At 13 years old, I was too young to even understand what “being gay” meant. All I knew was that while I didn’t see any issue personally with boys kissing boys, or girls kissing girls, obviously the world felt it was wrong, and therefore, it must not be an acceptable thing to be, for reasons that were completely unclear to me. I spent a not-insignificant amount of time worrying about the possibility, however unlikely, that I might turn out to be gay after all. I didn’t know how one knew if one was gay or straight. I knew I got crushes on boys, and I felt no attraction whatsoever to the girls at school, so did that mean I was “safe”? I deeply hoped that it did, and I can still remember that fluttery, stomach-dropping feeling of panic when I considered the “what if’s”.

While all of this was going on, I was invited to be part of a program through my school that took students on adventure-based outings of about three days in length. Apparently, my teachers had noticed the change in my demeanor, and thought that maybe I could use some confidence-building activities. My parents signed me up, and soon it was time for the first adventure. We were going on a cross-country skiing trip that involved staying in two large cabins, one for the girls and one for the boys. I would be on an extended trip with my classmates, most of them popular and some of them kids that believed this rumor about me.

I probably could have backed out. But that has never been my style, so I decided to go. For whatever reason, I had the strong feeling that if I could go, and if I could be brave and just be myself, the other kids would see that I was not a threat to them. So, I went, I learned how to ski, I tentatively talked to the other kids, I did my best to be friendly without being weird about it (an essential but very difficult balance to strike when you are an introverted middle-schooler), and I escaped as often as I could to the cabin, so I could restore myself with reading and writing. I remember one of my classmates stopping on her walk through the cabin to grab something, looking at me trying to write a poem in my journal, and saying “You know, you really aren’t that bad. You’re actually pretty cool.” I felt a wave a relief wash over me.

A week after we got back, the bullying and rumors were over. The girl who started them tried to start them back up, and my classmates just stared back at her, no reaction whatsoever. Her power had miraculously evaporated.

I still don’t know exactly what happened. I don’t know why believing in myself made a difference. I didn’t stand up to my bully directly. I just didn’t let her stop me. I didn’t let her hold me down. I didn’t let her influence my opinion of myself. I can’t say that this would work for everyone, and I am certainly not saying it is the only way, or even a safe thing to do. Everyone’s context for their life is different. I realize that for many people, my approach would be disastrous, so this is absolutely not my attempt to urge anyone being bullied to “just be themselves and it’ll all be okay”. That would be naïve at best, and at worst, implies that people being bullied are receiving it because they are somehow not being themselves and therefore bringing it on themselves. That is flatly untrue.

I don’t know anyone else’s story and can’t speak for their best course of action. I just know my story. I know that my experience taught me that everyone’s life is valuable. Everyone’s experience is important. I know that the right to be accepted as you are is a basic right that applies to everyone. The rights of women, of anyone in the LGBTQ+ community, of people of color, are not really political issues or religious issues, despite what many people would have us believe. They are human rights issues. When we take away the basic rights of anyone, what we are actually saying is that that person does not have the right to exist in the world in the same way as the rest of us, simply because that person is different from us in some way.

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They don’t have the right to get married to the person they love because their sexual orientation is different from your own.

They don’t have the right to live without fearing of being targeted because of their skin color.

They don’t have the right to live someplace where they feel safe, away from gangs, drugs, war, or threat of starvation, because they didn’t happen to be born in that country.

They don’t have the right to earn equal pay for equal work, not to mention make decisions regarding what they do with their own bodies, because of their gender.

My experience with being bullied, as awful as it was, only lasted a few weeks, and then I moved on with my life. But the girl who started it was likely staring down the barrel of a lifetime of discrimination based on her sexual orientation. I had it bad for a relatively short period of time. She knew she was facing much worse. As strange as it might sound, I owe a debt of gratitude to that classmate of mine. It took me awhile, but now, with my comfortable distance of three decades from that experience, I’m glad she pointed the finger at me, so I was able to see why she felt the need to point the finger away from herself. I don’t hold any malice against her anymore. People can be cruel. No wonder she was afraid. And for that reason, I am forever working to create a world in which she doesn’t need to hide.

Join me, won’t you?

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

This is part two of a podcast episode. It’s not strictly necessary to have listened to part one first, but it does help. If you haven’t heard it yet, you can listen to it here.

Friends, I don’t know that I have ever been happier to share something with you. Part two of my podcast episode with my husband is out, where we finish our conversation on imposter syndrome, and hold on to your socks, folks, because it is a banger of an episode! He shares about what he has learned about his own version of imposter syndrome, and why it stops him at every turn.

I am so proud of him for talking so vulnerably about how that inner fearful voice and the ways in which it stops him from leaning in to his creative side, and especially with sharing his creations with the world.

We talk about our questioning whether or not we have the right to call ourselves artists. Do we really belong in that world? Sometimes that feels like too bold of a claim, like we are getting too big for our britches. What if we get kicked out of the club, this world of artists that we love so much? We wonder about what imposter syndrome is trying to protect us from, and Leo shares about the real reason he went to college.

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Other topics we touch on:

who gets to decide if your work is “good enough”;

the importance of creating for yourself, not for anyone else;

the Maya Angelou quote that helps me move past my own imposter syndrome and keep putting work out into the world.

We also go over our tips for moving past imposter syndrome and getting back to creating and putting your work out into the world, including a script of what you can say to your own voice of imposter syndrome when it gets loud.

There are so many goodies in this one, so I’m going to stop blabbing and let you get to to it!

**Quick housekeeping note: I am going to be just putting out one article in the month of July, and one in August, so I can put my creative focus onto another project for a bit. But I will still be here reading the gems that everyone else writes, and sharing in Notes, and I expect to be back fully come September.

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

Hello! I’m Amy, a therapist, writer, and photographer. I am passionate about helping people create the lives and relationships they want, and tap into their own creative impulses. I explore all of this in Creating The World, and hope that by me sharing my own journey, I can help you do the same work in your own life. Most of my newsletters and some of the podcast episodes are free for everyone. A paid subscription ($5.00 per month) gets you a special quarterly newsletter on bringing intentionality to each season of the year, plus full access to all podcast episodes and courses, in addition to all the free content.

Two weekends ago, my husband and I sat down to record our final podcast episode of this season. It was not good. We were talking about imposter syndrome, and it triggered something in him so strongly that he just shut down. I did 90% of the talking for the second half of the episode, because he couldn’t think of anything to say. Fortunately, he had a session with his therapist scheduled for a few days later, and he was able to discuss it with her and get to the root of why he had reacted so intensely.

Imposter syndrome is one of those topics that gets to the heart of all of our insecurities. It brings up all our inner doubts and worst fears about ourselves, and if we let it run the show, it can keep us locked up in a tiny box, safe and sheltered.

The problem is, we didn’t come here to this planet to be safe and sheltered. We came here to live. To have new experiences, to try things, take risks, and to encounter the world. We came here with our own unique personality, perspective, and gifts so that we could use them to contribute to the richness of this experience. We didn’t come here so we could keep all of that to ourselves.

Meanwhile, our minds really want us to just stay small and safe.

This contrast is the root system for imposter syndrome, and it can make us truly miserable as we try to both spread our wings and stay safe at the same time.

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It’s really no wonder, then, that talking about imposter syndrome was so challenging for my husband. We talked about it afterwards, and it was clear that neither one of us was happy with how that episode went, so we decided to record it again the following weekend.

The second attempt went so well that we actually ended up dividing our conversation up into two parts, because the whole thing was approximately an hour-and-a-half. In the first half, which we are sharing with you today, we talk about what we have both been up to creatively speaking, and then I share about my own experiences with imposter syndrome, including:

**my initial difficulty with calling myself a photographer, and the moment when it started to shift;

**my experiences with imposter syndrome with poetry, and how writing circles both help me and are fodder for more questioning of myself;

**the realization I had about myself after attending a recent poetry writing retreat.

In the second half, which is coming out next week, Leo talks about how imposter syndrome affects him, and where he thinks his own version is coming from. We also share with you some tips and tricks for dealing with it, so it doesn’t stand in your way and block you from sharing your own unique gifts with the world.

Thank you so much for listening, and we hope you enjoy it!

Love,

Amy

Here’s the photo of Leo’s charcoal drawing that I promised to show you in the episode:

Isn’t he so good?! Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

It’s summer break in my corner of the world, and my kids and husband are home for the next couple of months. This means a lot of things, but namely, that my routines and rituals from the school year need to change a bit. I always underestimate what it’s like when the kids and hubby don’t leave the house to head to school, and even though I myself do still leave the house to go to work, I feel a small amount of panic at the knowledge that they aren’t going anywhere. As an introvert, the idea that there are constantly people in my house causes me to squirm and lowkey want to run away. Just a little bit. Not run far away. Maybe just to the next town over with a good coffee shop and a diner.

It does not help that every year at the start of summer, I set out with such hopeful dreams. With promise in my eyes, I sit down and create a new morning routine for myself. I love the fact that since I don’t have to take the kids to school, I can leave a little later, which gives me more time to play around with at the start of the day. All those things that I want to do in the morning but rarely have time for—journaling, writing a poem, meditating, etc.—they can all happen now. It’s glorious. It’s exciting. It also gets interrupted nearly every morning by someone wandering into my room and deciding that this is a great time to hang out.

Very quickly that time that I have carved out for myself starts to fall away, to be taken over by the rest of my household. I realize I need to set better boundaries around my time, and shoo those darling little interlopers out of my space, but I don’t do it, because then that niggling little voice starts.

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If you are a parent also, perhaps you know what I mean. There’s a special blend of guilt that comes when your child wants to spend time with you, is seeking you out even, especially when that child is a teenager, but they are coming in during times when you are least able to focus on them. My daughter used to be the queen at this. She developed this habit during her teen years of occasionally coming in to our room to chat with us. Most of the time we could barely get the basic information out of her, but sometimes, she would come in, sit on our bed, and just talk. She’d share all kinds of information, surprisingly openly, and it was wonderful and I was always so grateful when she let us into her world willingly.

We’d have the best conversations, you know the ones, the long, meandering kind, the kind I spent the rest of our days longing for. She also, without fail, would choose to do this at around 10:00 at night, when we were just about to turn out the light and go to sleep. Because we treasured our moments of connection with her, my husband and I would stay up and chat for as long as we could, but a small part of us would be groaning at the timing.

In that same vein, I love that our sons, both teenagers, will regularly wander into our bedroom and just hang out with us. It brings me such joy when my youngest, now 14, hops up onto the kitchen counter and chats with me while I wash dishes at the end of the day. He also has a tendency to float into whatever room I am in, while I am working on something, with a thing he needs to talk about right then and there, and proceed to monologue for the next eight-and-a-half minutes.

I know that these boys still wanting to spend time with us is a gift, and the very last thing I want to do is crush that by making them feel rejected.

At the same time, I have a very full life, and I often have to budget my time carefully so I am able to fit in the elements that are just for me. At this moment, I am writing on my (ancient) laptop that is balanced on my knee while I type furiously before the timer runs out. I have it set for 10 minutes, and that is all the writing time I will have today. Once that time is up, I close my laptop, I get ready for work, and it’s go-go-go for the rest of the day. This ten minute block of time is precious to me, and if it gets interrupted by someone else’s chatter, I can’t replace it later. It’s just gone until tomorrow when I get another ten minute block.

Sitting right next to that is my awareness that my kids are only this age once, this moment with them is also fleeting, and I will never get it back, either. What’s a (creative, frustrated, frazzled) mom to do?

In my work as a therapist, one of the concepts I explain to my clients is that of a false dichotomy, the idea that one only has two options, both of which are far removed from each other, and picking one thing means leaving the other behind. Black-and-white thinking is common is the therapy room, and part of our work as therapists is to help our clients add in the grey. Shading, it turns out, is important for more than artwork. It also adds depth to our thinking. Every now and then, I need to remind myself of this when it comes to my own decision making.

When I sit down and create those beautiful routines, I am writing them from the perspective of the creative, spiritual, passionate woman who does not have nearly enough time to lean into that side of herself for three-fourths of the year. That part of me wants to run, jump, and dance all summer long. That part of me also has short-term memory loss, and forgets that the children and husband of that woman don’t just disappear until mid-August.

When she is reminded of this, rather abruptly, by getting interrupted while finally engaging in those long-neglected tasks, she tends to react fairly dramatically. She places the back of her hand over her forehead and declares that clearly she cannot ever do anything for herself, she is not allowed to take any time for herself, ever ever, and why can’t people understand that she is her own person and must be allowed to do her own creative thing in peace and quiet. Privacy, people! Why is this too much to ask? And then she collapses onto her bed in dismay.

But this is not the part of me who outwardly responds to my children or husband when they invariably need me during this time. The part that I try to show them is the dutiful mother and wife who is of course interested in everything they have to say and always has time for them, no matter what she is currently doing. That part of me is hyper aware that this time in our lives in temporary, and worries that if I don’t put all my focus on it, not only will I miss my children’s childhood, I will miss out on opportunities to get to know them as the unique, wonderful individuals they are, and worst of all, they will not feel that they are my ultimate priority, which of course they are.

But this dutiful mom and wife side of me believes the narrative that if I do not always drop everything for them every time they want my attention, they will translate that as lack of interest altogether, and they will feel emotionally neglected.

Obviously, this is an unrealistic, unattainable expectation, not to mention completely untrue. But the guilt she brings up in me compels me to put whatever I am working on aside and listen, resentfully, to whatever they have to say, for as long as they want to say it.

This has a lot of ramifications, but the one that is the most ironic, and likely does the most damage, is that by requiring myself to put my own needs and wants to the side every time someone in my family wants my attention, I create and hold onto so much resentment that it impedes my ability to show up for them with love. I am physically giving them my attention, but I am not showing up as the loving and present parent and spouse that they deserve, and that I genuinely want to be.

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What I am learning is that by giving myself that time for myself, by respecting my own boundaries around my own time and attention, I can then fill my own tank. And then I can interact with my family from my own fullness, instead of giving them a depleted and annoyed version of myself.

It’s not an either/or situation. I don’t have to pick between the creative side of me and the dutiful mom/wife side. Both are important, and both need their own time. They don’t take from each other, they are opposite sides of the same coin. They need each other to complete the picture of who I am.

So this summer, I am going to challenge myself to allow for both sides of me to coexist, and to ask for what my creative side needs, trusting that this will also support my dutiful mom/wife side. They aren’t enemies, they are besties. Maybe it’s time I started treating them as such.

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

I hate to admit this, because I know it’s a deeply unpopular opinion. But the truth is, summer is not my favorite season. I mean, it’s okay, summer and I get along fine, but there was a good stretch of time when I lowkey disliked summer.

I know. A lot of you are probably shocked and horrified. I’ll give you a minute.

I get it. When we were kids, summer was the thing that we spent all year looking forward to. It was the golden ticket, the reward for a whole 9 months of dealing with school. For three full months, we got to run wild, get dirty, sleep in, stay up late, swim, hang out with our friends, catch fireflies. It was magic. I enjoyed all of that, fully. But then I grew up, and summer became something different.

Suddenly it was about a cranky toddler, no money because I wasn’t working so I could be home with the cranky toddler, humidity, and not much else. And then it became about a husband with undiagnosed ADHD home with three kids while I went to work (he’s a teacher, not a layabout), coming home to all four of them bored, a messy house, humidity, and a cranky family because we didn’t have air conditioning.

Summer became the thing I just got through, not the thing I looked forward to.

It took a few years, but eventually we got those details sorted, and now summer and I are on much better terms. I’m not gonna lie, finally living somewhere with central air helped a lot with that, as did my husband learning to create some kind of structure to his days over the summer so he and our kids don’t spend their days living like rabid monkeys.

The other game-changer was me learning how to romanticize summer as an adult. Once I was grown and wasn’t spending all day playing in the kiddie pool, I didn’t know quite how to approach summer. Even when I was in college, even though I was working all summer, I generally still had plenty of time for fun, and the freedom to do what I wanted. But a few years later, when I was at home with a baby all day, and nothing else to do, and it was hot and humid and we were broke, there was no feeling of that freedom I had come to associate with summer.

Reclaiming summer meant learning what I wanted it to look and feel like for me now, recognizing that it might look different from what summer looked like when I was eight years old, but the fun and freedom can still be present.

Here are some of the ways I am romanticizing summer and finding that carefree feeling again:

1. Very typically of me, let’s start with the clothing. Clothing sets the mood for us before we even leave the house. It’s one of the most effective ways to get yourself into the mood and mindset you want to be in. So, when I was looking to change how I felt about summer, clothing was one of the first places I turned. I had been wearing capri pants, ratty t-shirts, and tennis shoes, and no offense to anyone who loves that wardrobe, but it just didn’t feel sexy to me. I felt frumpy. Now, I deck myself out in cute sandals, pretty tank tops, and flirty dresses. And I sleep in things that feel both feminine and comfortable, like silky nightgowns. I put on a short cotton robe before I go downstairs to make my tea in the morning, with my lingerie on underneath, and I wander around my house checking on my plants and opening the curtains to let in the sunshine, and it just feels soft and romantic and light.

2. Speaking of which, plants. Learn to grow something. Doesn’t matter if it’s fruit, vegetables, flowers, or succulents. Consider doing an entire garden, if you have the space. If not, a little windowsill herb garden is great. Snip herbs to add to your food. Run out to the garden to pick tomatoes (barefoot if possible) that you then slice and eat with salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. Spend some time sitting with the flowers and see what they have to teach you.

3. Make yourself a glass of lemonade or iced coffee, preferably in a pretty and kind of vintage-y feeling glass (I like mason jars, but you do you), and go sit outside with a book or a journal. I recommend doing this in the morning or evening, when it’s a bit cooler. Stay out there longer than you normally would, long enough for you to put down your book, sigh, and let your attention wander idly.

4. Go for a walk early in the morning out in nature, or at least somewhere away from a lot of buildings. Watch the sun rise and touch the natural world.

The rest of this article is for paid subscribers. I list a few more ways I am romanticizing summer, plus some seasonal poems and photos available for download. This is one of four seasonal articles I put out for my paid subscribers, aimed at bringing a bit more intention and beauty to every season of the year.

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Question: how do you know if you’re in a relationship rut? Also how to creatively implement intimacy when you are out of the honeymoon phase and are no longer charged for intercourse every time you’re together?

Welcome to our relationship series, where I answer questions I come across from the perspective of a marriage and family therapist.

**Please note, this is just my own perspective, someone else may feel a different way, and my opinion is by no means the final word on anything. Please do what feels best for you, which may or may not align with anything I write here or elsewhere.

I love this question because this is such a relatable and common issue in most long-term relationships. Even friendships can fall into a bit of a rut, where neither person is putting in nearly as much effort as they did in the beginning. It’s very normal and understandable, given that it’s genuinely nearly impossible to sustain that same initial level of excitement for another person years down the road. It’s not even advisable, really. Think about how much a new relationship takes over your time, energy, and thoughts. Work falls by the wayside, friends are forgotten, tasks go undone as you stare dreamily out the window or obsess over every aspect of your conversations. You are practically consumed by that person. This is not a sustainable situation, so thank goodness we eventually settle down and return to regular life!

But the cost of coming back down to earth is that over time, while we may still be completely in love with our partner, we become used to them. The sparkle in their eyes that used to live rent-free in your head is now barely noticed. Their sweet little quirks are now annoying. We put our attention back onto the mundane details of our day-to-day life, or the stressors of demanding jobs/relationships, and we don’t notice that our partner’s interests, opinions, and likes have changed over the years, and now their favorite movie, singer, and drink order is completely different and we have no idea that anything has changed.

So, if you find that you can’t remember the last time you had a conversation with your partner that wasn’t only about the practical aspects of life, if you crash in front of the TV every night and stare at it more than each other, or if your sex life is completely predictable, then you might just be in a rut. But don’t worry, because I have got you covered!

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The best approach, of course, is preventative, but the reality is that most of the time we don’t even realize we are putting our relationship on autopilot. It’s not our intention at all, but simply a natural outcome of having so many things vying for our attention. Between jobs, errands, household duties, and caring for children or aging family members, we have little time left for the things that we love, but feel compelled to put on the back burner. Hobbies, interests, and partners can all fall to the wayside. I suspect that for many of us, taking an honest look at our how stated priorities compare to how we’re actually spending our time would reveal that we are not putting our attention and energy on the things that matter the most to us.

Personally, I cannot tell you the number of times I fully intended to send my husband, who gets to work at an ungodly hour in the morning, a good morning text while I’m getting ready for the day. And then my son pops into the room and is talking to me, and the cat wants to be fed, and my daughter comes in to borrow/steal my socks, and 27 other distractions happen, all of which amounts to the text not getting sent. And when he is done with work, he is picking up our granddaughter, sometimes running to the store, letting the dog out, checking on our boys, picking up around the house, washing the dishes, and starting supper. By the time I get home, which might not be until 8:30, we barely have time to have a brief conversation while I eat dinner, and then we are practically falling asleep in our work clothes.

So if you resonate with the question asked by our friend, my first suggestion would be to look at how you are spending your time. Not at how your partner is spending their time, but at your own actions. Much of the time when a couple comes to my office for their first session, they are wanting me to tell their partner what they are doing wrong, and what they should be doing differently. But in the healthiest relationships, both people are putting much more of their focus on how they themselves are showing up in the relationship, and what they could be doing better, not on pointing their finger at the other person.

My second suggestion is to give both you and your partner some grace. Chances are, neither one of you meant for your relationship to feel like a worn-in pair of old shoes. It just happens, and now you can have the fun of reigniting the spark!

So, here are my top ten ways to get out of a relationship rut, freshen things up, and stay intimate in creative ways:

1. Use the Internet. Start an email chain or a Snapchat focused only on connecting with each other, not on the practical aspects of your life together. Make a point of sending a little something to your partner every day, or as often as you can. Just a little check-in, a “how’s your morning going”, or “I hope you have a great day” can become a ritual that both you and your partner look forward to, and can lead to fun and flirty conversations in the midst of a busy work day.

2. Ask questions. At the start of a relationship, we ask all kinds of questions because we are focused on getting to know this person with whom we are obsessed. But five, seven, ten years in, we are not trying to get to know them anymore because we assume we already know them so well. We forget that people are always changing, and so the things that used to be true about them at the start might not be the case now. Literally just google “great questions to ask your partner” to get tons of questions you can ask each other. Start a Friday night ritual of pouring a glass of something to drink, and pick five questions to ask each other.

3. Touch each other. Once sex enters a relationship, we can forget to touch each other in casual ways that don’t necessarily lead to sex. But touch is a top love language for a lot of people, and a little stroke down your partner’s arm or holding hands while watching TV is exactly the kind of thing we do at the start of a relationship but forget to maintain a few years in. This kind of touching doesn’t have to lead to sex, but it can help keep the physical intimacy alive.

4. Leave notes for each other. Every now and then, I will cut some paper up into long strips, and I will write little notes on them, things like “Your smile makes my whole day”, “I love your sense of humor”, or “I love your big heart.” I hide them around the house for my husband to find. He loves them, and has several of them pinned up on his bulletin board so he can see them every day. It takes only a few minutes for me to do it, but it creates a little spark every time he finds one.

5. Do little things for each other. Start your partner’s coffee for them, bring them tea, wash the dishes for them when you know they’re having a long day. It’s a simple way to let your partner know you see them, you appreciate them, and you want to help them out in practical ways that help them feel cared for.

6. Kiss like you mean it. Similar to bringing back casual touch, we also tend to not really kiss each other when we are caught up in our busy lives. Where we used to kiss in a way that made our knees weak, we are now doing chaste little pecks. Doesn’t have quite the same affect, does it? And when we do engage in real kissing, there’s usually the expectation that it will lead to sex. So if we don’t have the time or energy for sex, we also tend to skip the good kissing. You can get around that by making a point of really kissing your partner at a time when you know that it isn’t going to lead to anything else, like when you are heading out the door. The general impact is that you leave both you and your partner wanting a little something more. That anticipation stays with you and can lead to other things later (wink wink).

7. Talk to each other. I know we are all tired at the end of the day, and if you’re anything like me, you usually just want to decompress by watching TV, in your pajamas, possibly with your face in a bowl of popcorn. But here me out—half an hour of quality conversation can do wonders for your relationship. Just one evening a week, instead of turning on the TV, spend even a few minutes talking to each other. Talk about your day, talk about your frustrations, your achievements, your annoying coworker, about what you want to do when you retire, whatever. Just talk.

8. Give a little something. If your partner is someone who likes gifts, once you have done your conversation about their current likes, make it a point of occasionally picking something up for them, like their favorite drink or snack. Surprise them with it, and watch their face light up. They will feel loved, and in turn will want to do something for you as well.

9. Go old school. Think about the things you used to do when you were starting your relationship. They worked for a reason, and might just work again. You may not be able to do them in the same way, but you can likely find a way to recreate them in your current life.

10. Do things together. Running errands, chores, grocery shopping. Pick up coffee either before or afterwards, crank the music and sing along, do things that make it fun. Focus on spending time together, like you did when your relationship was new and you didn’t care what you did, you just wanted to be together.

Relationship ruts are common, but that doesn’t mean you have to stay there. Dust yourselves off, and get that spark going again. And if you have other ideas that have helped you and your partner get out of a rut, drop them in the comments! The more ideas, the better!

Also, I’m really enjoying answering these questions, so if you have something you’ve been wondering about, feel free to ask in the comments. I might just write an article about it!

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

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I am about to get on a plane and head to Paris, for the second time in my life. The first time, I went there to visit a friend. While I was there, in July of 1996, I heard about the explosion of TWA flight 800, which blew up in the air shortly after it left JFK airport, on its way to Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. It was the third-deadliest aviation accident in US history. This was very upsetting for me not only because of the tragic loss of life, but also because I had just flown on that exact flight a couple weeks earlier. I had flown TWA flight 800, from the JFK airport to the Charles de Gaulle airport, to get to the living room where I was now hearing this news. To make it even more disconcerting, our original travel plans had me leaving later in the month, right around the time of the explosion, but we had had to fly me out sooner because the later arrival wouldn’t work for my hosts.

Obviously I don’t know exactly what would have happened had things gone according to the initial plan, but I remember clearly feeling like I had narrowly escaped death. Somewhere around this same time, within a year or two, I was standing outside our local grocery store with my friend, waiting for a particular someone to show up. We were supposed to be helping this person sell something outside the store, and she had made plans to meet us there with the table, chairs, and and all the stuff we were selling. She was late, and we waited, and then waited some more, and eventually, we decided that she wasn’t coming, and we left.

This was before cell phones, mind you, so we couldn’t just text her and see what was going on. So we left, and a few minutes afterwards a woman lost control of her car and drove into the grocery store, right where we had been standing. Again, I felt like I had escaped death. Realistically, I probably would have just jumped out of the way and been fine, but in my teenage brain, I had 100% outsmarted the Grim Reaper.

Shortly after this happened, someone told me that God must have big plans for me, to have saved me twice.

I liked the sound of that. It sounded important, like maybe I was going to go on to save the world with my bare hands. Or at least the power of my personality. I tucked the idea that God had big plans for me into the back of mind, and carried on with my (super important) life.

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The society in which I live puts a lot of importance on finding one’s purpose, and doing something of value with your life. Leave the world better than you found it, and all that. It sounds great, and I’ve spent a good amount of my life living by that exact philosophy. And always with the idea that God has those big plans for me hanging out in the background of my life. It gave me a feeling of fated-ness, like surely one of these days the doors would open, light would come flooding in, and I would step into this magical life that had just been waiting for me to be ready for it.

I mean, it’s gotta be good, right? When God so clearly saves your life twice, He must have bigger plans for you than He does for the average guy. Seems only logical. What’s the point of going to all that trouble otherwise?

But that day hasn’t come, and over time, that magical promise slowly turned into an expectation on me to pull myself together and get going already. Instead of this promise feeling exciting, it started to feel like pressure. No longer did a “regular” life feel good enough. Everything, from my job to my hobbies to my morning routine, was viewed through how much I could maximize it to get me closer to that life of “more”. I always loved writing, so I started blogging, thinking that maybe that would be my path to greatness. When I got into photography, I immediately started thinking about how I could use that to elevate myself. Even reading a book, which was always a favorite escape for me, became about how reading this particular book might help me in some way, even if it was just to make me look more impressive.

There’s a lot of problems with this mindset, but the two that felt paramount to me were that eventually, it sapped my joy out of the everyday, ordinary miracles of life, and it took away my ability to just focus on being me. My choices became about how that particular action could bring me to that bigger life, not about whether or not that choice, or that moment, brought me joy or felt aligned for me personally.

It has now been almost 30 years since that trip to Paris, and what am I doing? Living a fairly regular life in a state that was many times been voted one of the most boring states in America. There is nothing at all remarkable about my life. All of that effort, and I am still living a pretty average life. And the irony of it all is that I am building a business based on helping people to create the lives and world they want to live in. And I have not created the life I thought I wanted to live.

I thought that I was headed for greatness, and I expected that this greatness would look a certain way. Make a big splash, maybe fame and fortune. Impact millions of people. None of that has happened. I spent 30 years putting pressure on myself, not letting myself fully enjoy my life because it wasn’t “good enough” yet, because I hadn’t done what I thought I was going to do. And it was all for nothing.

Which raises the question: Did I fail? Can you fail at your life? If I haven’t achieved that “more”, does that mean that I messed up somewhere along the line?

These questions lingered in the back of my mind for years, one of those things that you know is there but you are doing your absolute best to ignore. The reality is, I knew I had a beautiful life, but there was this thread of discontent running underneath it. I didn’t want to look at that thread, because I knew that if I leaned into it, I would touch that feeling of failure, of letting someone down because I hadn’t lived up to what I was supposed to have achieved by now.

But the funny thing is, when I look around at my life, I see so many wonderful things about it. I’m very blessed. I have so many things that I didn’t think I would actually get to have. I think about a younger version of me, who was going through a situation that literally threatened my life, and I wonder what she would think of this life I’m living now. There were a couple of years back then when I honestly didn’t think I would make it past adolescence. That version of me would be so relieved to know that we made it out, and she wouldn’t care one bit what we were doing with our life. She would be happy just to know that we had a life to live at all.

My husband and I were talking one day about how I have a tendency to do things even when they scare me, which he admits he struggles with. He tends to talks himself out of doing the scary things, and generally speaking I do not. I feel the fear, and then I do it anyway. I told him that I spent four years living in fear, four years of lying awake in my bedroom at night and not knowing if I would live to see the morning, and that if I let fear stop me now, it would be like I never left that bedroom. I made it to adulthood, and that version of me didn’t hang on that long just to let fear dictate the rest of our choices.

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But that me? She doesn’t care what I do with this life that we get to live now. She just wants me to enjoy it. She wants me to have fun. She wants me to marvel at the flowers every spring, to laugh with my husband, to feel the joy in watching my kids form new relationships with each other as teenagers and young adults. She wants me to enjoy lingering over my tea on the sunny porch on a lazy Saturday morning, or making pancakes with my son while we dance to the music on my playlist. She thinks it’s amazing that I have a career as a therapist, helping other people fight their own monsters. Not only did we make it out, but now we get to hold other people’s hands and help them fight their biggest fights as well? Seriously incredible. It’s an honor that I never take lightly.

When I take the time to listen to her, she reminds me that we are already living a big, meaningful life. It’s not fancy, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t special. I don’t have to make something of it. I get to just enjoy it. If that leads to something bigger some day, I’ll certainly take it. But if not, that’s okay. I’ll have had a hell of a ride anyway.

I’m no longer interested in making something bigger, fancier, splashier with my life. I want to do meaningful things, of course, but not out of a sense of pressure. Now, I want to do them out of a sense of passion. I want to do them because I care so much about that particular cause or topic, not because I think that doing them will get me somewhere. I want to write about the things that I genuinely want to write about, not about the things that I think might get me attention. I want to share my photos with the world because I want everyone to marvel at the miracle of nature, not because I’m looking for fame or fortune. I want to create a life that feels like me, not one that looks a certain way. I want to help create a world that actually feels better to live in. And, I want to have a ton of fun while doing it.

I think that’s something pretty big, don’t you?

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

A few weeks ago, someone asked me how I was doing, and when I automatically answered “I’m good”, I could feel feel the lie in my body. It was as if something shrank inside me, something that resented the shrinking, and it wanted me to immediately change my answer. I didn’t change it, though, because the real answer would have been more like “Well, I’m good in some areas, in that it looks on the surface like I’m managing everything just fine, but I’m actually feeling stressed and deeply frustrated and just plain stuck in a lot of areas in my life. Plus, I have some very challenging clients right now, and my schedule is always too full but I don’t feel I have the ability to do anything about that, and I’m trying to build this side business but it’s really hard when my day job takes up so much of my time and mental capacity, and so it feels like it’s never going to be what I am dreaming of, and then there’s the state of our country, and the worry about what is going on, and anger about what is being revealed, but also hope that it’s finally coming up and maybe we can eradicate it this time, or at least as much as possible.” I know my friend was wanting to hear the truth, but I don’t think she was expecting quite that much.

In addition, while I feel like perimenopause has been very kind with me for the most part, I am noticing that my capacity for bullshit is rapidly flying out the window. I just don’t care to put up with much of anything anymore, and like in my scenario above, when I try to go with the polite-but-not-really-honest answer, my body is beginning to noticeably take issue with it. There are definite advantages to this: for example, I am starting to go to bed whenever my body wants to, regardless of what time it is; I am no longer saying “yes” when I mean “no; and I am taking more charge of my time and holding myself more accountable to what I say I want to be focusing on, because apparently I can’t even bullshit myself anymore.

But this level of honesty has some downsides, too, and while I am not as worried about those downsides with some people, in my important relationships, I have had to have some important but vulnerable conversations lately.

All of it adds up to a lot.

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It kind of tracks, though. It feels like there’s this pattern in my life of things being very calm, and then out of the blue life just hits me with a whole bunch of stuff all at one time. Life is just flowing along, doing its thing, and and then all of a sudden everything feels overwhelming. I used to try to keep juggling everything when that happened, because it didn’t feel like I was allowed to set anything down (you can read more about that here), but in recent years I’ve been intentionally trying to respond to these stressful phases in life with a bit more grace for myself. Not responding with grace just led to poor mental health for myself, and I’ve decided that not feeling like a stressed out basket case all the time really does work better for me. It’s better for my loved ones, as well, because I tend to take out my stressed-out-ness on them. Me taking better care of myself when I’m overwhelmed leads to a better situation not only for me, but also for everyone around me.

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Maybe you are also feeling like life is too much right now ( a lot of us are, so if that includes you, you’re in very good company, and for very legit reasons), and so while I definitely don’t know that I have this figured out yet, I thought I’d share what I have found to be helpful so far, and hopefully it will be of use to you, too.

So here you go, my working list of what to do when life feels hard:

1. Get back to basics. When my head and heart are tied up with emotions, I can’t take on a lot of other things, too. My brain can only hold so many things at one time, and if most of my thoughts are preoccupied with concerns or strong feelings, I can’t also handle big to-do lists. So I push off whatever I can. Instead of dealing with stuff that’s unimportant, I put my focus on the things that are bigger priorities, i.e. whatever helps me hold onto my sanity.

If everything is feeling like an equally big priority right now, try doing the “crystal balls, rubber balls” activity. Write down everything you are juggling. All of it, including other people’s stuff that you are carrying for them. Then draw several big circles on your paper, and label half of them “crystal ball” and the other half “rubber ball”. Sort your items into the circles, based on what would happen if you didn’t do them. The crystal balls are the things that would break if you dropped them. It would create a really big problem. The rubber balls, on the other hand, would just bounce away. It might still be annoying, but not a catastrophe. Consider setting down at least a few of those rubber balls for a time, and letting them roll away. This puts more of your focus where it needs to be, on the crystal balls.

2. Do the things that recharge you. Take a walk out in nature, or down a city block. Just get fresh air and move your body. Journal. Set a timer for five minutes and write. Maybe you’ll write a poem, maybe just a list. Either way, get your thoughts and feelings out onto the page. Plant something. Read a book. Bake bread. Do things that remind you that there’s more to life than working and dealing with crap.

3. Declutter. It sounds contradictory, given what I just wrote about ignoring my to-do list, but sometimes doing a little nesting is exactly what I need to feel calmer internally. I truly believe that your outside environment reflects your inner state of mind, and vice versa. If you have a lot going on in your head, try tidying up your surroundings. It’s amazing how it can create a tidier feeling inside as well.

4. Sleep. Eat an apple. Drink some water. I know. It’s easier said than done. But seriously, dealing with life’s struggles takes it out of you, and taking care of your physical needs really does makes a difference. Everything is a little easier when you are rested, hydrated, and have fed yourself something real. And besides, I don’t need much of a reason to snuggle under a blanket in sweatpants. I mean, really, do you? Embrace the snuggle, friends. We deserve it.

I hope these are helpful for you, and if you have tips for getting through it when life is hard, leave a comment. We can learn from each other. We’ll get there together.

Love, Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

I used to hear it all the time. “She’s just trying to get attention”. Sometimes the “she” in question was a grown adult, and sometimes “she” was a child. Or a baby. Regardless, the message was the same. Wanting attention is not a valid need, and giving in to it will only spoil the person receiving the attention. The best thing to do in such a situation, where someone has the nerve to have an emotional need to be seen and heard, is to ignore it and hope it will go away.

I cannot tell you how many times parents have told me throughout my professional career that they worry that if they pick up their child and comfort him when he is crying, or even just needing a hug, they are spoiling him. They tell me in one way or another that their child should be able to cope with his feelings on his own, as a two-year-old, who has never actually been taught how to cope with any emotion. Never mind that no one taught the parent how to cope with his feelings, either, and he still doesn’t know how, but he tosses back a few beers every night and is one more incident away from getting fired at work because of his anger issues.

Generations of us were taught, over and over again, that we should ignore, suppress, and avoid all our emotional needs, and those of everyone around us. That to “give in” to what we are wanting and needing is a weakness, and will ruin us as adults. We will turn into weak humans who can’t handle ourselves.

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Currently, 19% of the population in the United States suffers from anxiety (Anxiety and Depression Association of America), 11% of us have a diagnosis of depression in our medical records, in 2022 suicide was the 2nd leading cause of death for people aged 10-14, and aged 20-34 (CDC website), and just under 25% of people aged 12 and over have either used illegal drugs or misused prescription drugs within the past year (National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics). While I’m certainly not suggesting that all of this could be addressed with a nice long hug, I also think it’s safe to say that ignoring our emotional needs does not seem to be serving us well.

The idea that picking up our children and comforting them when they are sad or upset constitutes spoiling them comes from behaviorist John Watson, who argued that too much comfort could lead to dependency, and so the amount of nurturance offered to a child should be as little as possible. In his behaviorist manifesto published in 1913, he stated that the internal world (emotions, thoughts, etc.) is unimportant compared to observable behavior, and indicated no substantial difference between humans and the rest of the animal kingdom. If you can do it to a rat, you can do it to a human being.

It’s worth noting that three of Watson’s four children attempted suicide, one of whom eventually did end up dying by suicide, and his granddaughter, Mariette Hartley, suffered psychological struggles which she attributed directly to growing up under her grandfather’s behaviorist principles.

Despite the gaping wide holes in his theories, somehow the idea that comfort and nurturance is a harmful thing has continued. And now here we are, with many of us still worrying on some level that needing attention is not actually valid. At the same time, a lot of us are doing everything we can think of in order to get attention from any place we possibly can. We all want to be seen and heard. It’s a normal part of being human, not a pathological issue to be squashed. If we aren’t getting it in positive, healthy ways, we’ll get it any way we can. The issue is with not being able to get our needs for attention met in healthy ways, not with the need itself.

Over the past 20 years, I have worked in daycares, I have taught parenting and child development, and I now work as a marriage and family therapist. I have listened to hundreds of people over the years talk about their childhoods. I have watched them cry as they tell me about getting screamed at by their parents, punished too harshly, getting kicked out of the house, beaten, and ignored. They tell me that they don’t want to parent their own children the way they were parented, because they want something more, something better, for their kids. They grew up not feeling loved, and they don’t want that for their children.

What I have never heard, not once, is someone tell me that they are messed up because their parents loved them so much. I have heard people tell me that they don’t know how to feel their emotions because their parents never helped them manage their feelings. But no one has ever told me that they struggle now because they got too much emotional support.

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When my granddaughter was two years old and starting to throw tantrums, I watched my daughter get down on the floor next to her own daughter, and quietly rub her back while her child was crying and kicking her legs. She didn’t say anything, she just sat there and rubbed her back. Eventually my granddaughter calmed down, and my daughter calmly, gently, asked her what she was feeling. Was she mad? Or was she sad? She helped her child identify what she was feeling, she validated it, she explained why her daughter couldn’t have what she wanted, and she gave her an alternate option that was acceptable. My granddaughter sniffled one more time, said “okay”, and they moved on. Together. My granddaughter felt heard, the limit on her behavior was still maintained, and their relationship was strengthened instead of harmed.

Imagine if we all got that. Just imagine with me, for a moment, that every time you had big feelings as a child, there had been someone there to teach you how to self-regulate. Imagine if you learned how to manage those big emotions, while also learning how to set and maintain limits around your behavior. If your needs for attention weren’t dismissed as a bother or as something wrong with you, but were treated as completely valid and normal, and even prioritized? What might be different for you?

John Watson would probably have hated that entire scene with my daughter and granddaughter, but personally, I see a kid who is happy, and is learning how to manage her emotions in a safe and supportive environment. She is well behaved, polite, and empathetic. Did she throw that tantrum to get attention, or did she do it because her feelings were overwhelming her? Does it matter? At the end of the day, she’s learning how to express her emotions in healthy ways, and to manage her own behavior. And isn’t that ultimately the point?

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

What does it mean to pay attention to your life?

I’ve been thinking about this since I went to a meditation retreat last month. I don’t know that I’m any closer to figuring it out, honestly. I do think I am realizing how much I haven’t been paying attention to my life lately, which is a bit of a kick to the gut. To be fair, given how scattered my brain is in this perimenopause phase of my life, it’s a miracle I can pay attention to anything, ever. The other day I picked up my phone to write something down in my notes app, and then I proceeded to voice note a friend instead, and an hour later realized I never wrote the thing down. Just so we’re all clear on what we’re working with here.

But perimenopause can really only be blamed for a certain segment of my life. Certainly not how I was in my 20’s, or early 30’s. And yes, I was busy with raising young children, etc. etc. A significant part of my life involved pick-ups of one kind or another: sitting in the school pick-up line; picking up toys; picking up groceries from the store; picking my battles. To a very real extent, paying attention to my life meant attending to these daily duties.

But now my youngest child is in middle school, and spends a lot of time engrossed in his own activities. Being a mom requires different things of me now, and it teases me with the idea that I can in turn do more of my own activities. But then I get in over my head, and I return to this question over and over again: am I paying attention to my actual life, or am I planning my day /week/month around the life I am hoping for in the future?

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Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for manifesting, and the general idea of planning for the life you want, not just the life you have. I’m a big fan of it. It’s basically Cognitive Behavioral Therapy with a spiritual lens over it, so it appeals to both the logical and romantic sides of me. But even with manifestation, the things you put on your to-do list for this week have to actually fit within what is logistically possible. In my current life, I’m not going to have time to put as much energy into this Substack as I would like to. I’m just not. Asking myself to is setting myself up for failure. I can work towards it, I can set better boundaries around my time to maximize what I do have, and I believe I can create that reality for myself someday. But I’m not there yet. Today, I have to work with today. I don’t have to like it, and I can use that contrast as motivation to keep moving towards my dreams, but I can’t magically create extra hours in the day.

Likewise, I have to work with how full my house is right now, and how many hours I am working. I am someone who is fairly sensitive to the energy around me, especially the energy of the people around me. If there are other people in my physical surroundings, and that can mean just in the same house as me, it can greatly impact my ability to think creatively, or even to tune in to what I am actually thinking and feeling. This makes it very hard to focus on writing and photography, or any creative endeavor, when there are almost always other people in the house with me. Not paying attention to how having people around me affects my ability to create, because I don’t want to see it, is tempting, but not particularly helpful.

So that brings me back to my original question. Am I paying attention to my life?

Not just the life I am hoping to create for myself someday. The life I am actually living today.

The truthful answer is, sometimes?? Sometimes I am able to wrangle my thoughts enough to bring them down to earth, to my reality, to the nitty-gritty of my life. But certainly not consistently.

Once a dreamer, always a dreamer

I have always been someone who would rather look up at the clouds and daydream, than deal with whatever thing is in front of me here on solid ground. My fantasy life is rich and full and abundant, and there’s no real pain or struggle in it. Why wouldn’t I rather spend my time there?

There’s also the hopeful-but-slightly-delusional idea that if I am not focusing on it, if I’m trying my hardest to create a different reality, then maybe I won’t have to deal with the uncomfortable parts of my actual reality. I can just blow them away, like dandelion seeds, never to be seen again. But the problem is, life doesn’t work this way. The things I don’t like about my life don’t just disappear simply because I looked away. If anything, they grow bigger and more insistent, until I am forced to look at them because the contrast between real and desired is so vast.

Beyond the discouragement I feel when I don’t pay attention to my life, I also miss all the gifts of my life. I don’t take in the blessing of having two teenage sons who still hug me willingly and want to spend time with me. I don’t fully appreciate having a husband who treats me beautifully and who is genuinely my best friend. I focus on the time my progress notes take, and not how much I love my job as a therapist. Even more, I forget that I get to decide how much of my time I’m willing to give to doing progress notes, or writing, or taking a walk and enjoying the sunshine every week. I don’t take ownership over my time, and the ways in which I give it away. I forget to take control over my choices, and instead spend my valuable life mooning over what I don’t have and can’t do right now.

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I wish my time away, and not only does this not get me closer to what I want, it also causes me to miss what I currently have. It robs me twice, and leaves me feeling frustrated and resentful. It only took four days of sitting on a meditation cushion for me to decide that I don’t want to keep doing that to myself. I don’t want to keep missing what is right in front of me, for the sake of what may be, someday. I don’t want to keep setting myself up for failure. I don’t want to keep ignoring things that bother me, rather than dealing with them and actually improving my life. I want to take action on what is, not what could be.

Paying attention to my life, my actual life, is how I will create that life I’m dreaming of. I will do it not by taking myself out of my life, but by feeling myself in it as fully as possible, and taking it one step at a time. If I am not present in this life now, I won’t know how to be present in it later.

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

Are attachment styles really a thing, or is it just a matter of how much someone likes you?

A few weeks ago, I came across this thread with a ton of relationship questions, and in looking through the thread, I realized that people have a LOT of questions about relationships, and here I am, a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, and I could possibly help people by addressing some of these concepts. So I decided to take a crack at the questions I saw in the thread, in the hopes that it will be helpful for some of you.

The first question I’m tackling relates to anxious and avoidant attachment, and as I understand it, the questioner was essentially asking if these attachment styles are real, or are they just a symptoms of someone either not being that into you, or really into you.

Attachment styles come up a lot in my work with my clients, and as much as this concept is becoming more widely talked about, there’s still a lot of people who have never heard of attachment styles before, let alone how they might be impacting you.

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Let’s first address the topic of attachment styles. The short answer is, yes, they are real. Everybody has an attachment style of some sort, because your attachment style is essentially just the way in which you feel safe approaching relationships with the people in your life, especially those with whom you are the closest.

Attachment styles begin forming in infancy, when you cry because you are hungry, tired, sad, etc., and your main caregiver either responds in some way, or doesn’t respond. Over time, there begins to be a pattern between you signaling a need of some sort, and what happens next. This pattern becomes your working understanding of what love looks like. This understanding then carries over into what you grow to expect not just from your parents, but from all your relationships.

There are two categories of attachment styles, either secure or insecure. Let’s look first at secure attachment, and then we’ll go into the various forms of insecure attachment.

Secure Attachment

Secure attachment is what happens when a child is born into the ideal scenario, where she cries as a newborn, and her parent(s) come to her aid relatively quickly (within a few minutes), respond to her lovingly and calmly, and do whatever needs to be done to address the need. If the baby needs a diaper change, they take care of it. If the baby is hungry, they feed her. If she is just needing interaction, they play with her. If she is sad and/or wanting to be held, they give her some cuddles. All of this is done with smiles and eye contact, while talking to her in a friendly, soothing voice.

Over time, as she grows and her parents continue to respond to her with love, attention, and nurturance, she learns that love is strong and steady. She trusts that her needs are valid, and that she can rely on her friends and family to be there for her. Yes, sometimes she has conflicts with people, occasionally someone might let her down, but she believes that overall love is stable. Therefore, it feels safe to her to be in relationships.

When she needs to state a boundary with someone, she trusts that they will honor it, and she feels confident in her right to maintain it. When someone pulls away or is a bit distant, she doesn’t chase them. She trusts that either they will return, or they won’t, but either way, she’ll be okay. When she is forming a new connection with someone, she welcomes the intimacy, but doesn’t need it. It’s a welcome addition to her life, and she is able to show up with matching vulnerability and closeness, but she doesn’t feel that her well-being depends on that person staying by her side.

Many years ago, I worked in a daycare, and I could tell which babies had a secure attachment, because they could crawl away, go explore, and then periodically they’d come back and check in with me. They might pat my leg, or show me something they had found. And then they’d go back out and explore again. They felt safe leaving my side and having little baby adventures, because they trusted that I would be right there if they needed anything, even if that was just to say hello.

Insecure Attachment

And there’s the insecure ones. These are generally the ones who find their way to my office. These are the ones for whom relationships do not feel safe, because they were taught that love is not actually stable and steady. Instead, love is more like a feather drifting towards the ground. It’s right there, it feels like you should be able to just reach out and grab it. And yet somehow it remains just out of reach. Maybe you can brush your fingers against it, but you can’t quite get your hands around it. Or maybe you do, but it was so hard to catch that you hold on as tight as you can, so the wind can’t come along and steal it again.

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There are three kinds of insecure attachment styles: anxious; avoidant; and ambivalent.

Anxious Attachment

Anxious attachers are the people who managed to grab hold of the feather, and are now clinging to it with all they have. They are terrified of letting that feather go. They typically had parents who responded inconsistently to them, and so they never knew if help was going to show up or not. Their emotional needs might be met, or they might not. Their parent might be available, or they might not.

When you grow up learning that love is inconsistent, one possible response is to hold on very tight to it. Anxious attachers learned that love can walk away at any moment, and so they must do whatever is needed in order to keep hold of that love. They will say what you want them to say, they will do what you want them to do. They might text or call a lot. They probably need a lot of reassurance. When I worked in a daycare, I could tell which babies had an anxious attachment style, because they would not leave my side to go explore the play area. Sometimes they even needed to sit in my lap the entire time. They didn’t want to go explore because they didn’t trust that I would still be there when they came back.

Avoidant Attachment

Avoidant attachers decided that it’s not worth it to try to catch the feather, and furthermore they didn’t really even want it in the first place, so they just sit down and watch the feather from a distance. They had similar experiences as the anxious ones, but instead of trying to find safety in gripping onto love wherever they can find it, they learned to try to convince themselves they they don’t need it. They become very self-sufficient, very independent. The anxiety of wondering if or when love was going to leave was too painful, so they don’t even try to hold on to it anymore. They do their very best to meet their emotional needs themselves, and if they can’t quite do it, at least it’s less scary than opening themselves up to love and then getting hurt again.

Leaning into love feels so threatening, in fact, that when a potential partner (ironically usually an anxious attacher) moves closer to them, avoidant attachers start running in the opposite direction. They might genuinely care about this person. Love them, even. But they will still pull away, because love means the possibility of being abandoned in some way, and they want none of that, thank you very much.

In daycare, the avoidant attachment babies didn’t come and check in. They stayed away, preferring to do their own thing, not even bothering to seek out comfort.

I know, it breaks my heart, too.

Ambivalent Attachment

Lastly, we have the most confusing attachment style. This one is often associated with abusive households, where sometimes it was necessary to stay far away, and at other times one needed to stay close. Safety depended on knowing what was required at any given moment, and quickly adapting.

As a result, ambivalent attachers are sometimes avoidant, and sometimes anxious. They go back and forth, adjusting to whatever is happening right then. This can be very disorienting to their loved ones, because just like ambivalent attachers grew up not knowing what to expect, those who are in a relationship with an ambivalent attacher also never know quite what to expect. They might cling one minute, and then turn around and pull away the second you take a step towards them.

In daycare, these kiddos cried to get down when I held them, but the instant I tried to set them down, they clung to me. They didn't know which felt safer, so they vascilated between the two.

**Note— please keep in mind that these are patterns, not isolated moments. We all have moments of feeling uncertain, or avoidant, or of not knowing what we want. Identifying your attachment style, or someone else's, is about looking at the entire pattern, not just one day, or how they behaved while going through a short rough patch.

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How we show up in a relationship with someone obviously has a lot to do with how much we care about them, but it is not accurate to say that anxious attachers care more and avoidant attachers care less. We are all just doing the best we can to find safety in feeling and showing love, and for some of us that looks one way, and for others it looks very different.

The trick is to notice when your own style is blocking you from love, or creating problems in your relationships, and seeking out help (possibly through therapy) to help you heal those patterns. You deserve to have healthy, stable, and nurturing relationships, regardless of whether or not you started out with them.

What questions do you have about relationships, or therapy in general? Let me know in the comments, and I’ll try my best to answer them!

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

Hello friends!

How are you doing today?

It is a beautiful spring day where I am, and there is such a feeling of renewal in the air. It feel likes anything is possible, and I am ready to turn a corner and step into something new.

I am so happy to be bringing you this podcast episode. It is chockfull of good stuff. We cover sooo much in here. My partner shares about the creative slump he was in, and we try to determine if it’s needed hibernating, or an excuse to not do the scary thing. We also talk about how dopamine depletion can contribute to and exacerbate feelings of stuckness, along with ways to increase your dopamine so you can take actions again. This is especially helpful when you are neurodivergent, and increasing your dopamine levels is a regular need.

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Additionally, we discuss:

—How your environment can motivate you or help you stay stuck.

—Putting good boundaries around our time, especially when time is limited. I explore whether or not I might have more time to work with than I might be telling myself, because I’m giving my time away to other things.

—The challenges of balancing having a full-time job with running a side business.

—Resisting the urge to burn it all down because I’m frustrated, and instead adjusting my approach/mindset.

—Getting back to my “why” and the actual intent, rather than focusing on the metrics, bragging rights, etc. as a way to break through stuckness. Focusing on having fun.

If you have every struggled in any of these areas, especially if you want to know how to deal with feeling stuck, this one’s for you!

Oh, and a bit of housekeeping for you—this episode was recorded in February, with the intention of publishing in March. We ended up needing to push that back a bit, so some of what we talked about is old news by now.

Love,

Amy

P.S. I mention one of my online stores in this episode. I sell shirts, hats, mugs, pillows, and all kinds of other products with little sayings on them that celebrate my fellow introverts and smart-aleks, and along with a couple of my poems. Here’s a link if you would like to check it out: By Amy Clark

P.P.S. Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

There’s this thing I’ve been noticing lately, and it concerns me, partly as a therapist but also just as a kind human who wants us all to be well and healthy. There seems to be this idea out there that while we know being a people-pleaser is not something we are supposed to strive for, and that it doesn’t seem to support our happiness, we also seem to secretly feel like it’s kind of a good thing. It’s like when I used to mention in job interviews that I can be a bit of a perfectionist and workaholic. I knew I was supposed to think of it as a negative, but it actually got me a lot of accolades, so it privately felt like a brag and I knew it would probably impress the interviewer.

One of the things that we learn very early on in graduate school to become a therapist is that as humans, we tend to learn how to find safety in situations that feel inherently unsafe. We learn what we need to do in order to survive a world that can at times (or all the time) feel unsafe, turbulent, even threatening. Sometimes survival requires us to adopt behaviors that are not necessarily healthy in and of themselves, but are natural responses to an unhealthy situation. And these behaviors get us through. Maybe our path through is with numbing strategies, such as drugs, alcohol, shopping, or sex. Maybe we go the avoidance route, and turn to work or dissociating as a way of not facing what is unfaceable. Maybe we turn to anger and aggression. There are all kinds of strategies we can try to help us cope with something that we were never designed to cope with. It’s a normal and natural response. It’s human. And thank goodness we have that ability, because it allows us to get through things that would have otherwise crushed us.

And sometimes, that strategy we used is something we cling to so strongly, we get so used to relying on, that it becomes a behavior we continue turning to even after the danger has passed. It becomes automatic. It can be very, very difficult to realize that these strategies are just that, and that they are not needed anymore. It’s scary. It feels threatening, because our minds quite literally don’t know that we don’t need to depend on those strategies now.

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There’s another factor that also makes it difficult to let go of our survival strategies, and that is when the strategy is one that garners you a lot of approval, such as working a lot, overachieving, or people-pleasing. These behaviors tend to be very tricky behaviors to let go of, in part because they are so rewarded in Western societies. People-pleasing, for example, is called by a lot of terms that feel like compliments, such as “being agreeable” or “easygoing”. “Nice”. “Accommodating”. These are all terms that we associate with positive meaning, and so we feel like we are being praised. We feel like we are being told we are somehow more acceptable, or more liked, and as a result, more safe than if we hadn’t been so accommodating. Why on earth would we give that up? Especially when we fear that the alternative is to lose out on love and acceptance?

The Truth Behind People-Pleasing

The problem is, people-pleasing has some very dark sides. For one, because it supports us in linking being accommodating with our emotional safety, it conversely reinforces for us that if we do not accommodate, then we will not be safe in our relationships. This can be especially triggering, because those of us who tend to be people-pleasers generally have relationships in our history that taught us that we need to behave in a pleasing way in order to maintain that relationship. If we don’t behave in a desired manner, then we will lose the relationship. This is of course very scary for most of us, and so we consciously or unconsciously absorb the message that we need to disconnect from our own wants, needs, and opinions, so that we can stay connected to someone else. Put another way, we learn to abandon ourselves so we are not abandoned (emotionally or physically) by others. This can play out in all kinds of ways, from not stating our opinions when asked what restaurant we want to go to, to saying yes to social commitments when we’d rather say no, all the way to not speaking up when life decisions are being made that directly impact us.

The downside of being a people-pleaser is feeling resentful and unhappy in our lives and relationships, and being confused as to how that happened, because we made the choices that led us here, and yet we somehow feel duped at the same time. It’s the cumulative affect of straying so far from our own inner knowing that we have forgotten how to hear our own guidance. All we know is that we are furious, but we don’t have anything solid at which to direct that anger. But all of that gets hidden underneath a pleasing, easy-going mask.

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Although this kind of behavior often gets framed as being “mature”, “aware”, or “attuned”, do not be fooled. People-pleasing is not actually a sign of emotionally maturity or awareness. It’s anxiety masquerading in a societally acceptable costume. It’s avoiding the feelings of anxiety we experience at the thought of risking abandonment by speaking up for what we want or how we feel. We aren’t being emotionally aware, we are using a highly effective and sophisticated strategy to avoid feeling our emotions.

Emotional Maturity and Awareness Is A Much Better Deal

Actual emotional maturity is being able to notice what you are thinking and feeling, and holding space for yourself while not forcing your opinion on someone else. It’s being able to say what you want while being comfortable with someone else wanting a different thing entirely, and then being able to talk it out without it being a confrontation. It’s knowing when something is really important to you, and standing strong on the things that matter, and also knowing when you are willing to compromise a bit. It’s knowing that your wants, needs, and opinions are as important as the next guy’s. Not more important, but as important, and being able to honor everyone’s perspectives calmly and respectfully.

There is absolutely no shame in being a people-pleaser, but let’s please stop framing it as something we know we probably shouldn’t do but are actually treating as a bit of a brag. Sure, we have outward peace. But we are also disconnected from ourselves. It’s not really a worthy trade-off.

Instead, let’s normalize speaking up for what we actually want. Let’s practice being kind to both ourselves and others, instead of acting like we have to choose between the two. Let’s start small, like with saying what restaurant we actually want to go to. The truth is, stating a preference is not the same as saying we won’t accept anything else. We can say what we want, and someone else can say that they want a different thing, and we can work it out without any harm to the relationship. Really. And, what’s more—we deserve to show ourselves that it’s okay to do that now.

That’s true emotional awareness—being aware that you are in the now, not in the past, and that you can speak to your emotions without being overwhelmed by them. That is the real brag.

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

I’m writing to you from a meditation retreat in Kansas City. This is something I try to go to every year or two, although some times I’m better about that than others. It’s not exactly a fun kind of retreat, but it is a necessary one. My mind tends to be like a runaway train, and I need the structure of a retreat like this to force it to stop, lest it run off a cliff and take me with it. There is something about sitting on a meditation cushion for 30 minutes, without moving, staring at a wall, that forces one to confront a few things. I suspect this is why more people don’t do it. It’s not comfortable, and sometimes it is downright questionable.

But every time I go, I walk away feeling glad that I attended it. I’m not always glad while it’s going on, to tell you the truth. There’s almost always at least one moment where I question my sanity in putting myself through this misery again. I mean, the first time was understandable—I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. But what’s with the second time? Why would I willingly sign myself up for this torture?

Because the misery of sitting on that cushion, with my muscles complaining and an itchy nose that I’m not supposed to scratch for another ten minutes, is nowhere near the misery of a mind unchecked. I was already torturing myself with my thoughts, on a minute by minute basis. At least at the retreat I know that in ten minutes I can stretch my body and scratch my nose. But my pesky little thoughts can continue dogging me for hours, days, weeks, months. Years, even. Potentially a whole lifetime could pass with me being completely controlled by my thoughts.

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And so, I sit. And I attempt to clear my mind. And despite my best efforts, every time I go to this retreat, I walk away with some realizations about myself and my life (here is the article I wrote about last year’s retreat. Please note the similar themes. My teacher told me this weekend, in her very kind manner, that I appear to be “doubling back around”. Yes, in fact, I am. How sweet of you to notice!). I will be sharing more of them with you down the road, but for today, here’s the one that is feeling the most prevalent.

I am not very good at holding both boundaries and acceptance, simultaneously.

I’ve written about giving myself grace while also respecting my own boundaries, but acceptance feels a little different. Acceptance feels a bit like throwing in the towel, while boundaries feels like picking it back up again, and I don’t quite know how to do both at the same time.

Team #1: Acceptance

You see, acceptance requires me to acknowledge the truth of my current reality, whether or not I like what that truth is. Acceptance does NOT mean I am okay with it, or that it will never change. It means I am no longer fighting with reality. I am instead looking reality in the eye and saying “fine, I get it, you aren’t going anywhere, and arguing with you is just exhausting me. I’m ready to stop now”. Reality stares back at me, while looking fresh as a daisy, I might add, and says “About time. You put up a very good fight, I’m quite impressed, but I’m glad you’ve stopped. Now, how about you sit down right here and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea?” My shoulders drop, I sit, I drink my tea (which is lovely, by the way), and I realize that the flowers are blooming, and the sun is shining, and I didn’t even notice any of this before, because I was so busy trying to pretend that all of it didn’t exist. And this suddenly surprises and confuses me a bit, because this thing I was trying to deny isn’t really all that bad. It’s actually pretty nice, in fact. It’s just not what I had envisioned. It’s different, and different can be hard to accept. But it’s not necessarily bad. It might even be pretty great. Acceptance can be a very soothing chick to hang out with, once I spend some time with her.

So far, everything is looking fine and dandy. But then boundaries come in, and the picture starts getting kind of fuzzy. It all starts out innocently enough. After I get to the acceptance stage, I calmly tell myself, okay, so if this is what my life is at the moment, and it’s not changing in the immediate future, then how can I make this work? Because I still want to do the things I want to do (acceptance in my brain only goes so far, apparently), so how can I do that in a way that works with my actual reality?

Team #2: Boundaries

Boundaries. Boundaries always seem like the key to unlock the door to a life where I can work with my current reality, while also having what I want to have, and working towards achieving what I want to achieve. And this is where it gets sticky. Because then I start putting a plan into place, based on what I think is still acceptance, but is really only conditional acceptance. I accept that things are the way they are, as along as I can still find a way to do what I want. But what if I can’t?

What if the thing I am trying to do is still not feasible, even with boundaries? Where is the acceptance then? My problem-solving brain does not ever look at that situation and decide that my preference is just not an option. “Oh well, guess it will have to wait” is never in my immediate vocabulary. And pretty soon I find myself fighting with reality again.

Or, I get myself into a three-way fight between Boundaries, Acceptance, and Grace, where I am attempting to work with my reality, but also hold onto Boundaries, which is fine until I don’t want to do the thing I’m supposed to do, and so Grace steps in and tells me “it’s okay, there’s been a lot going on, of course you need a break”, and then Boundaries gets mad and tells me I should do the thing anyway, at which point Acceptance argues back that “things are crazy right now and she couldn’t possibly”, and Boundaries counters with “but these things will never get done if we don’t find a way to do them, and this lady’s life never slows down, so it’s not like we can wait for a calmer time” and Acceptance is just about to come back with a snippy comment when Grace holds up her hands and asks politely if everyone could just take a deep breath for a moment.

Welcome to my brain. It’s a marvel I get anything done.

“The trick isn’t in bouncing between boundaries and acceptance. It’s in not chasing anything.”

What I have come to, while sitting on my meditation cushion and during the breaks in between, is that the trick doesn’t lie in bouncing between boundaries and acceptance. It’s in not chasing anything. It’s recognizing that yes, things are crazy right now. Things in my life have been crazy for a long time, and will likely continue that way for years to come. That in fact is not changing any time soon. And the reality is that I don’t know what will happen. I know what I dream for, I know what I hope will happen, but I don’t know if it really will, or the timing, or the path my life will take.

One of the things my meditation teacher said during this retreat that really resonated with me was that there is no path laid out in front of us. The idea of a path we can follow is a myth. Our path is something that appears behind us as we go. We are merely taking it one step at a time, figuring it out as we go, and leaving a trail of decisions in our wake. The fact of the matter is, I don’t know if I will get to do any of the things I want to do, or accomplish any of the things I want to accomplish, because there is no path that I am following. And if there is no path, then there is no definite destination, either. This is a hard thing for an innate planner and problem-solver to admit, but it’s the truth. I don’t know.

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Perhaps that’s the real acceptance. Acknowledging that I don’t know what will happen, and therefore letting go of the pressure I put on myself to make my dreams happen. I’m not letting go of my dreams, mind you, just the timing. I’m letting go of the pressure to keep plugging away at things that are constricting my days and causing me to try to bend my life into a shape that it is not meant to hold. The boundaries are still there, but not to hold me accountable to achieving certain things. They are there to help me keep my eyes on my own steps, and make the choices that are more likely to lead me to somewhere that I might like to be one day.

And hey, if there’s no path, then that also means I can’t take the wrong path, so at least there’s that.

Love,

Amy

Oh, and if you would like to support my work, but cannot commit to a paid subscription right now, no worries! If it feels aligned, you can support me on a one-time basis, and buy me a book.

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Welcome to the first ever seasonal article for Creating The World! Since joining Substack, I have enjoyed reading these from many other writers, so it’s fun for me (and a little surreal) to be joining the trend. I love the idea of doing this because I personally find so much joy in celebrating and honoring each season as it comes, and I frankly sometimes run out of ideas, so hearing what other people do refreshes my repertoire. My hope for these articles, which will come out four times a year, once for each season, is that it will inspire you to make the most out of every season, whether it’s your favorite or the three months of the year that you just try to get through (we all have one).

There is something about March that gets me every year. Part of it honestly is that all three of my kids were born in the month of March, so it’s a very big month in our household. But I think it’s also that March is a threshold month, in much the same way that November is. Both months seem to usher us from one season into another. On March 1st (which is also my youngest’s birthday), I feel myself start to make the shift from winter to spring. I realize that technically it isn’t spring yet, but my heart does not care one bit about what the calendar says. As much as I truly love winter, by the time March rolls around, my heart and soul are very ready for the freshening up that spring brings. I need to declutter, I need to start moving things around in my house, I need to spring clean, I need to change up my routines. The energy of spring provides the dopamine my brain needs to start making some much needed changes. Suddenly the obstacles that felt insurmountable last week seem to just melt away, and things feel possible again.

I think many of us are particularly needing that right now. We need to know that the winter we are in with our country, or the world, or maybe our own little personal world, is not a forever state of being. That somewhere underneath the frozen tundra of hate, violence, and fear are little signs of fresh new life. The beginnings of tender green shoots that will pop their heads up and cover the world in beauty. We want to believe that the sun will move closer and bring new light to dark situations and warm frozen hearts. We need to know that change is coming, and that hope is a living thing that is already germinating, even when we can’t see it.

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So in order to capitalize on that feeling, or create it for yourself, here is my list of what is bringing me joy and newfound energy this spring, along with some spring poems and photos that you are welcome to download and keep on your phone for some seasonal joy whenever you need it. And because I get really fed up with coming across the most beautiful ideas for living intentionally that seem to come with the assumption that I actually have time on my hands, these ideas are intended to be simple and quick, tucked into the corners of a hectic life.

Content below is for paid subscribers, and is a list of movies, activities, routines and rituals, along with downloadable poems and photos, to help capture the season and bring a little more intentionality to our days in gentle and easy ways that fit within a busy lifestyle.

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Whenever I participate in any kind of self-help program, I always kind of expect myself to be “fixed” at the end of it, or at the very least feel like I have my shit together a bit more than I did at the start. I tell myself that of course I know that that isn’t realistic, but in the back of my mind, I’m secretly still expecting a total transformation.

And so even with my own content, I have to remind myself that this is about slow and sustainable, gentle growth, not fast and dramatic results. Slow might not be sexy, but gentle, thoughtful growth tends to be much more aligned with what you want and who you are than the fast “growth” which is often focused more on superficial goals and metrics.

So, this last article in this series is largely a practical guide to achieving your goals, setting yourself up to create a plan that works for your own personal tendencies, with a direction that is clear and actionable. These last steps can really make-or-break your plan, because even the best, clearest, and most beautiful vision can easily fall flat if you aren’t taking your own tendencies into consideration, or if you don’t create an effective action plan. If you have ever wondered why you can’t seem to achieve your goals, this article is for you.

What follows, for paid subscribers, is an overview of The Four Tendencies, a link to the quiz to discover your own tendency, and a guide to setting achievable goals, along with a printable to guide you in setting your goals.

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