I.

Am.

Celebrating.

The end of heat and humidity for Massachusetts is in sight, and I could not be happier. I feel better, I function better, and I live better when it’s 50-75 degrees, low humidity, a crispness to the air.

But here’s the thing:

The Ber months also make me aware that time is passing. The light is fading. The darkness is growing. The cold is exhaling onto our skin.

I LOVE that time of year - give me snow, warm drinks, layered clothes, heavy blankets, and I am the happiest of happy.

But I know I may be off in my own world when it comes to those things, and that for a lot of people - specifically women - the Ber months mean something else.

As my client and friend Rebecca said: “It means the gauntlet is coming.”

And what gauntlet is that?

Well, that would be the holidays. And Winter.

Not to be that asshole, but there are 115 days until Christmas, 122 days until New Year’s, and you’re probably already exhausted even thinking about it.

Discouraged because every year you intend to plan ahead, to not go crazy with commitments, to actually ~ gasp ~ enjoy the holidays.

But then back to school comes in like a tidal wave.

Halloween is already in the stores.

Thanksgiving plans will sneak up on you like a thief in the night.

And then it’s Christmas.

What’s an overwhelmed millennial likely in perimenopause with too much on her plate already supposed to do?

Examine What We Carry.

What We Carry are things like Pinterest-perfect holidays, in-law expectations, hopes of creating an idyllic holiday, the most creative DIY costume, a full job, a social life, and not letting your rapidly graying roots show.

What We Carry is a lot, and not all of it is ours. Much of our Ber season battery drain is inherited, assumed, “should,” and people-pleasing. It’s even self-induced pressure because you’re an independent, capable, recovering perfectionist, and you know you don’t have to, but you can, so you might as well.

What We Carry is also, not so coincidentally, my Holiday & Winter Pre-season Stop Sign.

It is a three week guided experience with three 90-minute conversations in a small group setting. We’re going to look at what has, historically, depleted you; what you’d actually want if given a magic wand; and how to pursue that when the other voices around you get loud.

Let’s break it down:

Week 1: Reflect on past holidays/winters.

What worked? What didn’t? What can be kept but adjusted? What would you love to do, but you know it’s not in the cards this year (and that is OK!)? What repeatedly drained you? What repeatedly disappointed you? What repeatedly got left until December 21? Where do you resent people? Where do you overspend? Where do you abandon yourself?

This isn’t just about capacity and scheduling.

This can be about how you interacted with food. Fertility. Politics. Finances and expenses. Grief.

We aren’t going to ignore the awkward topic because that’s the one that is already creeping into your mind and disturbing your REM 86 days before Thanksgiving.

The goal and take-away are to look objectively at the past few years so you can learn from them and make this year more enjoyable. Isn’t that the whole point?

Week 2: What Do You Actually Want?

Let’s dream a bit, wave a magic wand, and imagine:

What is the holiday season and entrance to winter that you truly want?

What are the foods you want to prepare and delight in? Maybe it’s as simple (ha) as you’re done pretending to like the sweet potato casserole your grandmother makes, but she might be dead soon, and so what’s one more year; but there’s a recipe you’re really excited about that feels more “you” and that’s causing you to lose sleep.

(I get it - I also have anxiety). Bring that to What We Carry.

What are the memories you want to make?

Who do you need to pause and grieve?

Maybe you haven’t spoken much to your older sister and brother-in-law because they voted differently from you, which is still a pretty sore wound given that it’s a mid-term year; but you also really miss your nieces and you are sad it’s going to be a third holiday season without them at your table; BUT you also really hate their politics, and want to stand firm in your integrity.

Bring THAT to What We Carry.

What approach to gifts would make you genuinely happy and not financially freaked out?

I get it - the economy is a floating dumpster fire of stress sparks right now, and so maybe you need to commit to that $100 budget for gifts for your family; but also - isn’t credit card debt the norm these days?

Bring THAT to What We Carry.

I can’t promise you the perfect holiday because I’m not a legit Fairy Godmother, but I can promise you 90 minutes of guided contemplation where you can actually get honest with yourself, shine a light on the piece of the season that spirals every year, and circumvent the depletion it has caused in the past.

The goal/take away is to actually reconcile with what is yours, what might be inherited, what you want to choose for yourself, and to work through the apprehension of what those choices create for you. Let’s bolster your resilience up front, create the intentionality you want, and have your boundaries bolstered before the conversations even begin.

Week 3: What Happens When Choosing You Gets Hard?

Week 2 is a doozy, and it’s going to bring up FEELINGS.

I’ve got a plan for that. Week 3 is all about holding hands as we face all the voices in our heads that have gotten L-O-U-D over the past week as you dared to declare what you want, don’t want, and are tired of agreeing to when you don’t actually agree.

Those voices might be deafening.

They will be your mom, your spouse, your grandmother, your kids, your Type A Self, your depleted self.

Week 3 is acknowledging that we have a lot of input, and some of it is really important; and that our decisions make ripples.

But remember: those ripples impact other people AND us. We bear the cost of the decisions we make, don’t make, or give away for others to make.

The goal/take-away is to work through what has come up, who has gotten loud, and work out how to move forward so that you protect yourself, your sanity, your energy, your resilience as you pass from the holidays to winter.

This is the work of Q4 at Lighthouse, on the road to recovery and healing, and I for one am just as excited about this as I am about cool mornings, dry air, maple lattes, pumpkin donuts, vest and sweatah weathah, and dark cozy nights.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this is exactly what you’re looking for and you want to sign up - fantastic. Book a FREE tea chat with me first so we can go over some details. I’m offering this as a group experience, but I get that that’s not for everyone, so I have a limited 1:1 versions that follow the same format. Basically - let’s chat because I have a space for you.

I really am beginning to see midlife and my 40s as not only unlearning all the stuff I learned from like 14 to 35; but also just being able to come back to who I was.

 I think we've talked about being our most genuine selves when we're 14 or maybe it's younger than that.

Maybe it's nine, before the world got really loud and before the lessons not even took root; but like expanded their barbs into us and made us start conforming and shrinking.

We have so much freedom and suspended reality in college; and our brains are between childhood and adulthood. We have big dreams and ideals without a pathway to get there; and I think, while young adulthood isn’t easy, we haven’t yet really come to understand what steel we are made of. It takes a lot of trial by fire, getting burned and recovering, to forge us into who we are by the time we hit 40. And that’s when I think our earlier ideals really become ours.

By your 40s you've sort of surrendered to the fact that you're an adult and that's reality; but you're also able to say, “I’d like  to give less fucks now.” 

Now I have the independence and the place of my own and the dog of my own and all the things; I can actually go back and be that person who I thought I was going to be at 25, but I finally was able to become her at/by 40.

At 40, nothing is gonna hold me back because I've already been held back and I'm done with it and I don't want to be that way anymore.

 I'm so here for that and so the fact that when you found “alis volat propriis” you were just in college; and, at 38, now you are flying by your own wings, like really, truly, and especially because you're giving yourself the space to be solo and single and a dog mom and a professional woman moving up in a great establishment.

I love that, for so many women who get married in their 20s and 30s, by 40 are like “oh fuck that…yeah actually I wanna do the rest of it myself and it's gonna be really fucking hard to do it by myself but oh look how fucking great it is.”

 Someone said to me recently, as a genuine compliment, “I just find you to be really inspirational because I don't have a lot of single friends and to look at you and to see a woman in her 40s who is alone and happy and content and fulfilled is so remarkable.”

 Of course I was like, “Did you just call me a spinster??  Fuck off, but also - thank you?”

She was slightly mortified but also - I think more people would actually be really happy if they gave themselves permission to be solo. She's never seen somebody give themselves permission and make the choice to fly by their own wings and, without taking the motto as my own, it's basically how I have lived my life.

I made the dumb decisions in my 20s. I sacrificed my self-worth and self-respect pursuing guys who didn’t want me. I drank too much and had rough nights, then worked really hard and earned the respect of people who actually mattered.

I built a business in my late 20s and bought a home and knew my path. I intentionally stopped bothering with dating in my mid-30s because I knew that I was always ready to betray myself and what I wanted for a compliment and a smile. I was tired of feeling like shit after, so I stopped. I committed to myself instead, so that every success, failure, struggle, and win was mine. My fidelity was to myself.

 I think women often need a reminder of the incredible capacity of what our own wings can create for us. We need, unfortunately, the hard lessons and the playing field upon which we can prove ourselves - to ourselves - again and again until we believe it. We have survived all of our hardest, ugliest, saddest, worst days. We have created our own homes, jobs, lives, pathways.

Alis volat propriis.

They are the voices of our elders, impressing old legacies and ideas and rules upon us; and we’ve rarely stopped long enough to question whether or not those beliefs truly fit us.

It’s the act of daily living under the weight of someone else’s expectations, taken for granted as our own, that wears us down and burns us out.

Here’s what I mean:

Avery (not her real name) came to me struggling with her body: The way she felt in her skin, the way her clothes fit, the way she “looked pregnant even though I am not.”

The more we talked, however, the clearer it became that the problem wasn’t simply how she felt when she looked in the mirror.

There was an old story underneath it, one she had learned long before she had the ability to decide whether she actually believed it.

It was a legacy of shame: shame passed from grandmother to mother, mother to daughter. As she now raises her own daughter, Avery is caught between the lessons she learned as a child and the cycles she is trying desperately hard to break.

But shame is a deep, exhausting, vicious wound, and it’s not something we unlearn overnight or because we try really hard. Most of the time, we haven’t even thought about what we would choose to believe instead. We don’t know that we get to choose something different.

That’s where working with me begins.

In a Focused Reflection Session, Avery and I sat together to carefully, compassionately, excavate the roots of body shame.

We followed it to her mom and grandmother. We acknowledged all the painful things they had said, and stopped trying to explain them away.

If you’re like Avery and me, you can logic or intellectualize or rationalize ANYTHING...

But we do not owe hurtful comments our logic and compassion. We are allowed to just say, “That fucking hurt,” regardless that it used to be an acceptable thing to say or action to take.

Then, we began to separate the shame Avery learned from what Avery knew to be true about herself.

That she loved to eat delicious foods. That she grew, delivered, and loved her beautiful daughter into existence. That her body is strong, and survived a really terrifying, traumatic birthing experience. That she is a walking ray of sunshine with a dark streak of rage, and she LOVES that about herself. That her body - the luscious, plump, softness of it all - exudes love, and is a safe space for her daughter to rest her head.

We found words Avery loved to use for herself; moments when her body, were it any different, couldn’t have done a thing she’s proud of doing.

We rewrote the story and identified the moments most likely to pull her back into the old one, so she could recognize the spiral sooner and interrupt it before it swallowed the whole day.

We took what seemed like a simple, “I feel fat and I hate it” and found its villain origin story, and changed the ending.

Maybe your recurring struggle isn’t body shame. Maybe it’s resentment, guilt, exhaustion, anger, indecision, or the same fight you keep having with yourself.

The question I’m interested in is: what story is underneath it?

And maybe the more important question is: do you still want to live by it?

You don’t have to keep living by a story simply because you learned it early. In a Focused Reflection Session, we can figure out what’s underneath the thing you keep getting stuck on, separate what you inherited from what you actually believe, and decide what you want instead.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*If you’re intrigued by what you’ve read here and want to experience this healing work live, join my free monthly Bonfire Circles!

The goal is not to leave with your life solved. It is to leave seeing something differently.

[See upcoming Bonfire Circles]

If you feel ready to rewrite your story and heal yourself, learn more about my Focused Reflection Sessions.

• feeling like a failure

• thinking working harder would fix being a failure

• believing no one else in the entire history of the world has ever experienced or could understand the struggle

• You no longer recognize yourself, your thoughts, your moods.

• You don’t know how to connect to gratitude anymore

These were my loudest symptoms of burnout, the stories I kept repeating to myself as I withdrew into a bitter, resentful, unrecognizable version of myself.

But what if I told you that those loudest symptoms weren’t my actual problem?

That my burnout wasn’t the main issue I had to work through?

What if I told you that my burnout at 39 started when I was in high school; and that to heal myself from my burnout, I’d have to go back in time.

Every villain has an origin story, after all…

The problem to solve is the old rule or survival pattern that keeps requiring you to compensate long after the original circumstances are gone.

And until we find that root cause, leach the poison, cover it in salve, and rewrite it the way we actually believe, we get stuck in a loop.

That is how we heal from burnout.

Around the same time as my back pain was ramping up, I switched schools to an all-girls prep school. I wasn’t quite in the infamous “Young & Gifted” group in public school, but I was still longing for something else, something more engaging, something less interrupted by pre-teen boys…

But at this new school, if you weren’t the creme de la creme, you were literally restricted from certain classes. You were expected, even at 14, to be self-motivated enough to seek out help if you were struggling. I was told that my full day of classes, travel team sports, and multiple hours of homework each day were manageable if I managed my time correctly, that I was fully responsible and accountable for getting everything done. And if you tried to evade responsibilities or catch a break, you faced extreme penalties.

A fellow dorm proctor faked sick to get out of a test she hadn’t studied for, and they removed her from her leadership role.

No sympathy, compassion, or warning. No, “let’s figure out why you weren’t able to study (maybe because it’s senior year, college apps are due, traditions are time-consuming and mandatory, there are hours of assigned work, AND you’re a dorm proctor…) Just, “You lied, you’re out.”

So, at the ripe old age of 16, I learned that if you’re incapable of doing everything and you try to catch a break, you get in trouble.

If you can’t get into the AP level classes, you can’t study the subject at all (small school = small class offerings).

Even if you are unable to control your own schedule or the hours in the day, you are responsible for managing your time accordingly and anything else is, well, failure.

Way harsh, Tai.

Cue 39 year old Ashleigh who has been working for 18 months to build a business. I can make my own hours (the limit does not exist); I can invest my own money ($15k in coaching, taking a loan from principle, and credit card debt); I can hyperfocus so fantastically that the hours literally melt away as I’m fanatically obsessing over…

You get the picture.

Is failure my problem?

Or is working too hard my problem?

Is thinking I have to do it all alone my problem?

Is setting the bar super freaking high and always moving it when I get close my problem?

Yes. D - All of the Above.

My pattern was feel like a failure > work harder > isolate > deplete.

My origin was “you have to do all of these things, without help or support or realistic expectations, and maybe by stealing your moments of respite, in order to be successful.”

We have to go to the origin story.

I see, time and again with my clients, that step one is helping them realize the current pain is a red flag to a deeper story. Step two is gradually excavating the origin story, sitting with it, and deciding if we actually believe it. Step three is deciding that, no thanks, I’d rather believe I can all the things, but I don’t want to, so I don’t have to; AND that I am still successful, worthy, and enough.

So let’s find that story. Let’s examine that wound, and let’s fucking heal it.

I was 14-18 years old. It was unreasonable to have so many requirements and expectations on a child. I couldn’t manage that schedule now, let alone at 16. That school taught me a great deal, but it also taught me that struggle was evidence of poor self-management rather than a signal that the expectations themselves might be unreasonable.

So I can go back to high school Ashleigh and say, “Girl, you made a really grown up choice to try something that you hoped would fulfill your love of learning, your fascination with history and English and writing and your absolute aggravation with teenage boys interrupting class. You did not fail at this school. This school let you down, and made you feel like it was your fault.”

AKA we get to stop interpreting a system’s problem as a personal deficiency.

And I can look at 25 year old Ashleigh, now dealing with aggravating but super cute dudes from Penn State, and say, “Sis, you are doing everything you know how to do to get this guy to like you, to want to date you, to appreciate and respect you; but he’s a doofus who just wants to watch football and drink 4Loco. He is not for you, and that doesn’t make you unworthy, a failure, or not enough. It is no reflection on you, but you need to be the one to take care of yourself.”

AKA women do not need to turn structural lack of support/unrequited crushes into evidence that they personally need to try harder.

And I can look at 40 year old Ashleigh and say, “Woman, you see these patterns way fucking faster these days, and you’re saving yourself a lot of grief and suffering. We still have work to do, and maybe we can let go of resentments towards our high school someday; but you’re on the right track.”

AKA This midlife crisis thing is actually pretty fucking fire - look at all the old shit I’m done pretending is mine and how much of a gorgeous blank canvas I get to decorate my way.

Now: how do we create enough distance, pause, support, or reflection to actually see the pattern?

AKA how do we read the labels when we’re inside the bottle?

When it’s 3am and you just wanted to get up to pee, but now you are perseverating on the argument you had with your daughter; the still-unanswered and still-urgent email to a co-worker; the debate about leaving the business you built in exchange for financial stability in corporate…?

Here are the literal things I do when this happens:

• Body scan from my toes to my head

• Name 5 things I can feel, 4 I can touch, 3 I can hear, 2 I can smell, 1 I can taste

• Turn the light on and stream-of-conscious journal

• Audiobook, preferably with smut

• Orgasm

If it’s not 3am or the last option is socially inappropriate, I would:

• Journal

• Take a walk

• Get a coffee/tea

• Voice note a friend

• Email my therapist

Do something to interrupt the loop so you can gain back some perspective.

With back pain, the warning twinge is what makes you stop moving in a way that your body deems threatening.

With spirals and exhaustive thoughts or feelings, view them as a stop sign instead of “Pass Go and Collect Anxiety.”

Once the spiral slows down enough to hear yourself think, start asking different questions:

What am I actually afraid this means?

Where does it come from?

What do I truly believe?

And when you have a rewritten story, of life lessons and beliefs and rules, totally chosen by you, for you - to me, that is healing.

When we talk about healing, getting rid of the pain point is really important. It’s what allows us to function and maintain quality of life.

But true healing is far deeper than the fixing the muscle spasm, the burnout, the overworking.

It evolves and strengthens from learning how to stop the spiral.

To recognize what is really happening underneath the noise.

To trace it back to its origin; and to decide what you actually want to choose. What you believe now. What works for you.

Not what worked for your mom. Not what worked for your sister. Not what worked for your church or school or profession.

We center you in your healing, and we decide what you want to believe. And then we integrate that moment of rewriting into every spiral you have until, eventually, your system is exactly that:

Yours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*If you’re intrigued by what you’ve read here and want to experience this healing work live, join my free monthly Bonfire Circles!

The goal is not to leave with your life solved. It is to leave seeing something differently.

[See upcoming Bonfire Circles]

If you feel ready to rewrite your story and heal yourself, learn more about my Focused Reflection Sessions.

I believed that to treat the site of pain was correct: if someone comes in with back pain, treat the back.

I believed outside interventions alone could fix my pain. I literally went to massage school based on that belief!

I believed that traditional approaches like massage worked because they gave my clients relief for a few days, perhaps a few weeks.

I believed it was normal for the body - a master of evolution, survival, and compensation - to fall apart without my ministrations.

Was it good for business? Yes.

Did my clients get relief? Yes.

Is absence and pause from pain completely valid and desirable? Yes.

But these are not good enough reasons to continue believing a system built on faulty premises.

Because, as I spent the second half of my career learning, pain is not the problem.

Pain is a symptom. A red flag. A Hail Mary thrown by a body that has been compensating for years and can no longer keep doing what it’s been doing.

I also learned that the hard way, personally and professionally: for over 20 years, this story of back pain, spasms and interventions (wash, rinse, repeat) was my story. I was the back pain expert giving massages but sometimes having to cancel my own clients because I was in a back spasm.

Yikes. And OOPS.

Apparently I didn’t recognize the same pattern when it put on a business suit and came back years late

I was working so fervently that I wrecked my own health:

Can I work a weekend here and there to make sure I’m available in case someone might need me? For sure.

If I wake up at 3am to pee and happen to spiral on a social media post that I could have worded differently, I’m just being a diligent CEO, right? Of course.

This is kind of like having back pain and stretching.

Or having your SI joint twinge when you pick up laundry but you shake it off because that laundry isn’t going to put itself away.

Or having a full on back spasm but still going to your kids intramural soccer game or second Mother’s Day brunch for your MIL because these are obviously non-negotiable and you are a shit mom/DIL if you miss them… You’ll just take more Advil.

But how long, and at what cost, until we are actually down for the count, burned out and crispy; and what do we do about it then?

Let’s start here, with this very simple rule, that changed my entire massage therapy business, and helped create Lighthouse:

Don’t chase pain.

Pain is a subjective (and very persuasive) symptom.

But it is not the main problem.

It is a cry for help from a system that can no longer compensate its way to survival.

Your suffering is pointing to something else: somewhere in the system, there isn’t enough support. And when support is missing, another part has to work harder to compensate.

You felt pain, and you wanted out of pain. Of course you did. When you’re exhausted, resentful, short-tempered, or lying awake at 3 a.m. mentally rearranging your entire life, relief feels like the only goal that you actually want, but have no idea how to achieve.

It’s simple and reasonable, but also so fucking hard to figure out how to stop, course correct, and choose how you move forward.

And here’s the most incredible lesson I’ve connected in more recent years:

If we could over-think, schedule, coordinate, and muscle our way out of these situations solo, we would have done so already.

Much like back pain is a cry for help, so is burnout.

We call a lot of things burnout. Exhaustion. Resentment. Brain fog. Decision fatigue. The feeling that one more person needing one more goddamn thing might send you directly into the sea.

It is also a smokescreen, a small flame that distracts from a system that can no longer compensate its way to survival.

And you can chase the loudest symptom for years. But lasting change usually begins somewhere else: by getting curious about what your exhaustion, resentment, pain, or overwhelm has been compensating for all along.

As my client Judi says: “You can’t read the label when you’re in the bottle.”

You can’t get yourself out of the resentment, frustration, or back pain when you’re so deeply into it.

During my burnout, which took place over about seven months, I felt myself withdrawing. I felt like a failure with nothing to show for all the work I’d done. Then I felt deep shame for being a failure; and dread at having to show up to another dinner with friends and have someone ask, “How’s your business going?”

I think I’d rather face four days in bed with a back spasm again.

My loudest symptoms, in hindsight, were feeling like a failure (I’ll trace that to its origin story in Part 2; you’ll probably feel seen/targeted); thinking working harder would fix that; and believing no one else in the entire history of the world had ever experienced or could understand what I was going through.

I say that with some cheek, but isolation made mine so much worse. I withdrew hard. Like, moved to another country for the summer.

But in that withdrawal, and the massive change of scene (aka pressure valve finally turned down), I began to clear my head, to gain perspective, to recognize my pain for what it was:

A system in the final throes of survival mode, begging for relief, and depending on me to choose a new way.

And that’s what we’re going to dive into in Part 2. Stay tuned.

~~~~~~~~~~

*If you’re intrigued by what you’ve read here and want to experience my work live, join my free monthly Bonfire Circles!

The goal is not to leave with your life solved. It is to leave seeing something differently.

[See upcoming Bonfire Circles]

When I asked her how her body was feeling, her chin began to wobble and her eyes filled with tears. She took a few moments to be able to speak and then said:

“I have so many things to do right now: my mom’s house needs a big project. School is about to start and my athletic director hasn’t found another coach, so I’m still on the hook; and I feel like summer is supposed to be my time. But it’s almost over and I haven’t done any of the things I usually look forward to. I feel like August is one big Sunday Scaries.”

I let her talk through her frustrations, and when the moment felt right, asked her to settle into her body with a few deep breaths.

Cue immediate floods of tears. “Bingo,” I thought (with compassion and empathy).

When we pause, even to focus on our breath, we risk a moment of stillness, of silence, and that’s when the floodgates of what we are avoiding slam open.

“I’m so angry, and frustrated, and jealous of my friend with a summer home. And I don’t want to be that person, the one who is angry at her family, frustrated with her job, and jealous of her friends because I can’t do all of this alone.”

That was Alex’s core struggle. No only the myriad things and projects she had to juggle on her summer vacation, but the fear of what being unable to do them (or even scarier - saying “No”) meant for who she was as a person. A wife. A friend. A daughter. An educator and coach.

Nine times out of ten, our spirals and overwhelm are based on a belief, pattern, lesson, etc that is not ours. In order to save our sanity, it helps to voice what is happening beneath the thoughts to cause them so that you can assess what you actually want, believe, value.

Being angry doesn’t make Alex an Angry Person. Let’s think of anger as a red flag, a warning light to alert her that her nervous system or her capacity or her overload are struggling. They are in survival and compensate mode, and they need relief.

This is what I do, and how I help. I love - LOVE - seeing and connecting dots, of helping you name the old wound or ingrained belief underneath the hard decision or scary emotions. Then, we slowly transform that old story into one you actually want for yourself and decide what small steps will help you integrate the new belief.

Then here’s the biggest, and most important step: working with me helps you identify the red flag and the spiral faster in the future so you avoid the overwhelm entirely. You outsmart it. You dodge it. You say, “Not today, Satan.”

So: if, like Alex, you are struggling with too many projects; too many people depending on you; your resilience is faltering; or you’re growing a bit tired of being the cruise director for everyone else (it’s ok to admit that, btw), then here’s what you do:

Book a free 30 minute tea chat with me. Bring your favorite cup of strong beverage. Your Big Scary Feelings. The List of Shit you don’t want to hold anymore (or just right now). And let’s give you 30 whole minutes of focus on you; then we’ll make a game plan for excavating and rewriting old beliefs for a steadier you.

BTW, since I went to Nova Scotia to interrupt my life-spiral (aka major burnout), when I was playing around with naming the framework for what I do, I remembered the acrostic poems I used to love as a kid.

Did you write these, too? They were fun and an good intro to poetry. If I were writing about my bloodhound, Jolene, I would do something like this:

Joyously you shake your gentle head

Out floods streams of delight.

Look how high your drool does fly!

Even to the ceiling, my oh my.

Neither soap nor scrub nor elbow grease;

Eviscerates the joy you share without cease.

You get the idea. So as I was walking said drooling, joyous beastie, I played around with what I do and how I could invoke the feeling of Nova Scotia, of feeling the hard things but also recognizing that a) they don’t define us; b) they likely aren’t ours, deep down; and c) we can change our story at any time.

So:

Nine times out of ten,

Our spirals and overwhelm are based on a belief, pattern, lesson, etc that is not ours.

Voice what is happening beneath the thoughts to cause them so that you can

Assess what you actually want, believe, value.

Stop. Breathe. Pause. Walk Away.

Consider what your spiral is, what it’s telling you, what need it is signaling for you to attend.

Own the origin story and recognize it does not have to be yours anymore.

Transform the story into a belief you actually want.

Integrate that new belief.

Awareness is your best friend. Next time you feel the spiral starting, you can catch it earlier. You know how to interrupt it and take away its power.

Pretty good, yeah? I’m pleased.

Next time you’re mad at your spouse for walking by a sink full of dirty dishes; or overloaded by tasks you’re usually proud to be able to handle without blinking; or deeply irate over another dismissive doctor’s visit, you have three choices:

1. Let that feeling ruin your day.

2. Practice the NOVA SCOTIA Method

3. Book a free tea chat with me and have an objective perspective guide you through the process and connect the dots of what is happening, why it’s so deeply felt, and how you’re going to rewrite it to save your sanity.

See you at tea.

For several years, I’ve been talking to them about sudden onset of menstrual migraines (started in 2019). Then came unexpected weight gain (30 pounds in 3-4 years, starting in 2022/2023), mostly in my belly and breasts despite “doing all the right things.” Last year, I had the absolute worst mental health year I’ve ever known, although the over-achiever in me was proud when I scored a 20/21 on my anxiety screening. #nailedit.

Now, my periods are getting shorter, my PMS is a genuine bitch, and I finally got so fed up with turning on myself every month that I called my dietitian and my doctor. My dietitian gave me a list of labs to request and off I went to pay likely several hundred dollars out of pocket (because this isn’t part of my annual physical) to see what’s going on.

I don’t know why I bothered to get my hopes up this would help.

When my NP came in, I left my weight gain out of the conversation at first; I wanted to talk about my unrelenting fatigue, my changing periods, and my improved but still present anxiety. I asked about perimenopause and she told me I was too young to really be thinking about that.

I’m 40, and I’ve done enough research to call bullshit.

So I explained my timeline of migraines, unexplained weight gain, mental health swings, etc; all of which are signs of perimenopause as well as other underlying issues. My dietitian was leaning towards thyroid, and I wanted to get some clarity on all of this.

So color my flabbers gasted when I opened the visit summary note and read this:

“Patient presents with complaint of ongoing fatigue possibly related to low ferritin (has been taking iron daily for ~ a year). She has been seeing a dietitian regarding this as well as the fact that she is a vegetarian and the dietitian recommends she have a full lab panel checked. Patient had her last physical in November 2025.

She is currently on sertraline 50 mg daily and feels it is helping her anxiety.

Patient is aware she may have to pay out-of-pocket for these labs as they are ordered not in conjunction with a physical exam.”

No mention of perimenopause, migraines, the fact that my iron supplement isn’t working or something else is going on; or my weight change… until I read this:

“Review of Systems

Constitutional: Positive for fatigue. Negative for appetite change, chills and fever.

General: She is not in acute distress.

Appearance: Normal appearance. She is obese. She is not ill-appearing.”

I wasn’t asked if I had appetite changes or what my lifestyle/activity levels/diet are. I don’t even know what “normal appearance” or “not ill-appearing” means. And if you’re going to use BMI, then yeah, I am “obese,” but I’m pretty sure we all recognize by now that BMI is a pretty shit standard by which to assess patients, especially women. BMI was developed by a Belgian man studying Belgian men*; it “…fails to distinguish fat adequately from fat-free mass, such as muscle and bone and other bodily tissue. In fact, a higher BMI really could be due to having ‘big bones’ after all!”* And it doesn’t factor in age, sex, ethnicity, or fat distribution.

It is especially unhelpful for women who have been asking you to help them figure out what could be causing weight changes with no external lifestyle changes (and if you come at me with “you should reduce your stress,” I will lose it). Here’s a clue: I’m pretty sure it’s hormones and at 40, that’s not a huge stretch.

And here’s the kicker: I’m an upper middle class white woman who can get an appointment with her primary care within a few days of calling. By all accounts, that dose of privilege should count for something…

But when I’m met by this lack of care from a “primary care” provider, imagine what other women have to tolerate.

Being dismissed. Told it’s all in their heads. Told to lose weight or that they’re eating too much (this one, to be honest, is why I refuse to see my Dr and prefer the NPS. The first time I met the woman (!) after being a patient at her practice for nearly a decade (!!), she told me my weight gain was likely because I was eating too much (!!!).)

We are constantly blamed for our own health concerns and even when we take measures to try and figure out what is going on, we are dismissed, not believed, or given biased, outdated, or just irrelevant answers.

Women are the social safety net of this entire country, and yet we are given the laziest, under-funded, under-researched, dismissive treatments. When we grasp a few minutes to get help for ourselves, to make the appointment and get there, to ask the questions, to seek the insight and wisdom, we are let down. Again and again and again.

Oh, and of course, my labs are mostly normal, so my NP is unlikely to follow up in any way, despite me clearly explaining that I don’t feel like myself at the moment and I want to understand what’s going on now, and how to support my system moving forward.

It’s an exhausting, disappointing system, adding stress and anxiety and insecurity where we didn’t need more; while relieving zero of our worries. Even when we want to take good care of ourselves, we are met with roadblocks. Most women barely have time and energy to add navigating an easy pathway to their days.

We certainly don’t have time and energy for this bullshit; and nor should we.

Be better, healthcare.

*British Journal of General Practice via the NIH website,

SO: I thought this would be a good time to reintroduce myself and my mission.

I’m Ashleigh Howland, a leader of reflective practice for women as they rise from the ashes of burnout and overwhelm.

I help my clients make sense of what is happening beneath the exhaustion and decision fatigue so they can come back to themselves and move forward with clarity and peace of mind.

I gave a 7-minute training recently, guiding a group of women through one of my own experiences with burnout and several thought prompts.

One of them told me, “This helped me figure out a major block in my marriage, and I can’t believe how much clearer I see what’s going on.”

She actually approached me the next day, tears in her eyes, and said she was still sitting with my words and prompts; and how much impact just 7 minutes with me had for her current struggle.

That? That’s my dream.

My clients are bogged down in decision fatigue, family life, work, building businesses, fertility challenges, and surviving in today’s fast-paced, disconnected world.

The benefit of working with me, especially one-on-one, is that we get to step out of the hustle for an hour and focus on a problem that’s disrupting your peace and focus. You know the one - it’s been looping in your brain for weeks, especially at 3am when you’re prefer to be asleep!

Working with me is like having a conversation with your most objective best friend, focusing entirely on #teamYOU and something in your life keeping you stuck.

I’ve worked in my own experience in burnout - the work really hard, feel like a failure, become ashamed, dread seeing people, and isolate to protect cycle - and I know how hard it is to battle back to “normal” alone.

In my world, you don’t have to do it alone.

There are two ways you can work with me.

1. My virtual Bonfire Circles, which are every month and totally free! Think of them as a gathering of exhausted minds. I provide the theme and the prompts; you get time to write, doodle, rage-draw, etc - whatever feels right to you!

   We also have optional sharing at the end because I believe that hearing our hard seasons explained to us by someone else shreds the stigma of isolation. The next one is Thursday May 7th at 6pm EST, and we’re discussing how burnout and body-image are interconnected.

2. Is a 1:1 session called The Focused Reflection Session. This is a safe, supportive space for you to bring that thing that’s keeping you awake at 3:30am, and have objective ears help you process it.

   I listen, I ask introspective questions, I send you a series of journal/thought prompts for you to work through at your own pace. Past clients have said it was “way more effective than therapy in helping me process“ and “I can’t believe how much I keep coming back to your prompts. You’re really found a gift with this work.“

I’d love to share my gift with you. If you’re ready to gain clarity, peace of mind, and remove a layer of decision fatigue, start here with a free chat

We all (hopefully) learned to walk without being punished for falling. We learned to use a spoon and not poop our pants, to share (some better than others) and to walk in a line in school.

Is that the source? Does our fear of failure begin by seeing that the kids who couldn’t walk in line or share or “behave” were the “bad kids,” designated as the trouble makers; and wanting to differentiate from them?

I was terrified of getting in trouble (of failing to be “good”), because consequences for not doing as I was told were strict and also unpredictable at home. So I leaned into being the “good kid, so mature for your age, like talking to a small adult,” because it was safe. I realized early that failure of behavior was unsafe. That, clearly, leads into feeling like any kind of failure is unsafe, and therefore should be avoided.

From there we develop this gradual understanding that we are creatures set in stone instead of being able to evolve.

I struggled with math from an early age. It just didn’t make sense to me, and I was afraid of asking the same questions repeatedly (probably a story for another time). I came to believe that I would therefore always be bad at math.

I also remember always feeling that I was too late - too late to get better at math or science or wear trendy clothes. From fourth or fifth grade, I felt cemented into this role of “good at history, reading and writing; bad at math and science;” This was the same with my role of older sister, the bookish one, the un-athletic one, the uncool one.

It became a self-fulfilling prophecy: I “knew” I was bad at these subjects or too late to learn something new. Then I was intimidated; I didn’t know how to ask for help, to find someone who could help me with tutoring or shopping trips or coaching. I didn’t know how to study or be witty or dribble a soccer ball. I failed.

The problem is less in the failure itself and more in the lack of reframe coupled with the support one needs to a) bolster confidence and b) improve the skill-set so that failure becomes a re-direct instead of a final verdict.

We’re not taught that failure just means you have to learn in a different way, that you need to have help studying, or that the teacher needs to spend more time with you. Even at really good, well-funded schools, failure is just a burden that is placed on the student.

My anecdotal evidence for this is again my high school. I changed schools for ninth grade, as did many of my classmates. My school began in sixth grade, but high school was a natural swapping point for many of us. I immediately realized I was behind the curve when it came to preparation, time management, studying, even note-taking and highlighting information. I had no idea what I was doing. When teachers warned us not to leave studying for finals to the last minute, to start studying weeks ahead of time, I had no idea how to do that.

Knowing that I was already likely to fail these exams, why would I even bother trying? I didn’t know what questions to ask, and it felt like the teachers just didn’t have time or interest to support me.

I was also surrounded by people who didn’t fail, who knew how to and were good at studying, who had previous experience or who were better in those subjects, and so then it became a comparison factor. Not only was I failing, but others were succeeding, so it must be a “me problem.”

Somewhere along the way, failure stopped being something that happened, and became something I was.

Prompts:

1. When Did Failure Become Dangerous?

Think back to an early memory of getting in trouble, disappointing someone, or “not doing it right.”

What did you learn in that moment about safety and failure?
What did your nervous system decide was necessary in order to belong or stay out of trouble?

2. The Role You Were Given

By late elementary school, what role had you been assigned, or had you assigned yourself?

The smart one. The shy one. The athletic one. The difficult one. The mature one.

How did that role protect you?
How did it limit you?

3. The Fixed Story

Complete this sentence as it would have sounded when you were 10–15 years old:

“I am just not the kind of person who…”

Where did that story come from?
What evidence did you use to cement it?

4. Support vs. Verdict

Think of a failure that felt defining at the time: an exam, a sport, a relationship, a business attempt.

What kind of support would have turned that moment into a pivot instead of a verdict?

Be specific. What would someone have said? Done? Modeled?

5. Separating Event from Identity

Finish this sentence slowly:

Failure happened when…

Now finish this one:

I became a failure when…

Notice the difference between those two statements.
Which one feels true? Which one feels inherited?

“I’ve watched you believe that you are a failure for so long, and now I’m so thrilled (and I had a sort of premonition before the call) that I get to watch you finally realize that you’re not a failure. You have never been a failure.”

And what I said back to her was:

“I think I have felt like I have been failing at so many things for so long; but that I kept failing at those things because I was failing my way towards the right thing for me, the thing that aligned the most with who I am, what I want, my skills, my gifts, the things that I have to offer.”

It’s a huge moment of growth to finally recognize, for now, that failure is not actually a bad thing; and that failing does not make us failures. It makes us human, and it educates us.

In 2017 I took a course call Neurokinetic Therapy, which essentially looks at how some muscles in the body overwork, others under-work, and we get pain and dysfunction as a result.The technique involves manual muscle testing, and you want a muscle to fail its test because you won’t know what the pattern is if the muscle “passes.” A failing muscle teaches us more.

One of the first things our instructor said to us was “You wouldn’t kick a baby because it fell down when it was trying to walk. We have to fail to learn.

He made failure seem like a positive and necessary part of the learning system. We have to have muscles that fail so we know what part of our system isn’t working properly, how to pivot, how to fix the problem.

Logically, I understand this; and I learned what it felt like to have a muscle “fail” a test. What I found most remarkable was that the failure felt so obvious, and thus when we found the right correction, the effect was immediate and powerful.

When I replicated this technique on clients, they worked SO HARD to make sure their muscles didn’t fail. They knew we needed more evidence, and yet they would clench their jaw, hold their breath, or recruit other muscle groups to “prove” that their muscle was working right.

Each of those compensations was evidence of the opposite. The system was scrambling because something couldn’t do its job on its own. We must understand which parts are not working optimally. Then, we can correct them and thus remedy the whole, for it is a sum of its parts.

Even as I explained the baby learning to walk analogy, clients were afraid to let their muscle patterns fail. They were afraid to be seen as dysfunctional or weak, even though they were living in pain and this approach could truly help them. The extra step from painful to failure was a lot to ask of them, deep in that cycle as they were. Their capacity for resilience was low, and even though we needed information to resolve the problem, it was a big ask.

As the professional, it was my job to keep interpreting failure as information, to keep working toward solutions and treating each failure as a pivot point. But the fear of failure, and the shame it carries, is so deeply ingrained that we often stop seeing it as a teacher and start seeing it as proof that we are less than.

And yet, if failure creates information, then avoiding it keeps us poorly informed.

What if the bravest thing we can do is let ourselves fail long enough to learn what actually needs our attention?

Prompts:

1. Failure as Information (gentle entry)

Think of a recent moment that felt like a failure, small or large.
What information might it be offering you, if you didn’t have to judge it or explain it away?

Write without trying to make meaning yet. Just notice what’s there.

2. Where You Learned to Avoid Failing

When you imagine “failing,” what do you feel first in your body: tightness, heat, numbness, urgency, something else?

Trace that sensation back.
What early experiences taught you that failure was unsafe, embarrassing, or something to hide?

3. The Muscle That Won’t Let Go

In your life right now, where do you notice yourself overcompensating: working harder, proving, clenching, holding your breath?

If that effort could speak, what might it be trying to protect you from?

4. Letting Something Fail on Purpose

What is one area of your life where you might experiment with not compensating, just a little?

What would it look like to let something show you where support or adjustment is needed, rather than forcing it to “pass”?

5. Reframing the Story

Finish this sentence as many times as you need to:

If failure is information, then right now I might be learning…

Let the answers be unfinished. You don’t need a conclusion.

Maybe 8 is even too old to avoid some of those influences, but you get the idea. There is a point in our childhood (I hope for us all) where we are merely imagination and sponge, where everything is new, possibilities are both minute and fathomless, and the world hasn’t touched us yet. It has definitely touched our parents and ancestors, and we carry their legacies within us; but I think we have a few years where we are truly free.

Then, perhaps another marker of adulthood is returning as much as we can to that freedom.

Friendships, birthdays, family changes, and seasons exist around thresholds, moving from one space to another, one time and definition to the next. I watch and celebrate each birthday for myself and my friends, grateful for another year of life; and yet feel surprise when I see a deeper line around my eye or another streak of gray in my dark hair. The bodies of my friends have changed with time, pregnancy, and childbirth; the faces I can remember at 8 years old now stare at me from their children.

My mother once made this incredible observation regarding conflict between a friend’s younger sister and their mom. She said: “I imagine your mom is struggling with the changes in her body, of stepping into the phase of her life when her fertility ends as your sister’s begins. It’s a hard moment in which to exist, when she can no longer have children and your sister enters the long period in which she can. And, of course, the hormonal changes in both of them make the circumstances even more fraught.”

Women have so many powerful thresholds, so many cycles and phases. We are creatures of creativity, of fertility in our bodies, our minds, our souls, our ideas. We exist as complex versions of all the women who carried us in their wombs through generations. We stand on our own feet against the world, and find strength in the spaces we create with and for one another.

That is the legacy I appreciate most of my journey; the gifts I am most grateful to have received over 40 years. The women in my life are remarkable. As I celebrate the milestone of friends turning 40, of their daughters becoming young women, and myself accepting that, indeed, I am an adult, I am honored to cross life’s thresholds with the women I know. To sit in liminal times and spaces with them, to weather the discomforts and messy middles together, to rejoice when we emerge, stronger and wiser. I am especially delighted to have learned of Maman Brigitte as I hit this milestone year. She feels like an embrace, a kick in the ass, an absolute raucous time, and a reminder that with age comes not just beauty and wisdom, but a whole lot less you-know-whats to give.

That’s a threshold I’m happy to dive across.

If you’d like to join the next Wintering (or seasonal) Cohort, subscribe here on substack or sign up for my free Lighthouse Starter Kit. You’ll get a “How to Use” guide; gentle suggestions to create your space and setting; and five journal prompts to help you dive in to inner work without “blank page syndrome” or more decision fatigue. I’d love to have you!

She started therapy soon after. One day, as we were talking about how it was going, she sighed.

“It’s fine, I guess. But my therapist asked if I’ve ever considered journaling. And that just feels… underwhelming? Frustrating? Like yes, I’ve thought about it. I just don’t know how that actually helps.”

Her reaction stayed with me.

Not because journaling is a bad suggestion.
But because “just journal about it” is often where guidance stops.

How, exactly?

About what? Where do you begin? How do you know if you’re avoiding the real thing? How do you prevent spiraling deeper instead of processing?

Opening a blank notebook and hoping insight appears can feel like one more task on an already overloaded list.

Journaling isn’t meant to actively fix anything.
It’s meant to gradually slow your nervous system down.
It’s meant to create a safe, contained space where uncomfortable truths can surface at a pace you can tolerate.
It’s where you learn to write what’s real instead of what’s polite.

But structure matters.

Without structure, journaling can turn into venting. Or rumination. Or avoidance disguised as processing.

And when you’re already exhausted, the blank page can feel like one more decision you don’t have energy to make.

This is why guided, focused reflection changes everything.

When we focus on one primary theme - one relationship, one emotional loop, one situation - and move through it intentionally, the work becomes steady instead of overwhelming.

You’re not trying to solve your entire life. You’re simply giving one thing your full attention.

That’s the foundation of The Focused Reflection, a structured and guided journaling experience designed to remove decision fatigue and create containment around what feels heavy.

Not more advice. Not more urgency.

Just focus. Reflection. And steadier navigation. If you ever want support focusing on one situation with structure and steadiness, that’s the work we do inside The Focused Reflection.

For one person, it was the absence of singing and the inability to cry. These are her body’s red flags that she is learning to see, feel, and heed. When these return to her, she knows she is on a path to thawing.

For me, it is a completely unconscious return to reading my favorite childhood books. Last year in my burnout, I read through the entire universe - all 15 books - and it gave me all the support I needed. It never fails me, but I always fail to recognize why I am drawn to those pages.

This ritual of reading and rereading happens frequently (for me) when anxiety is high, or when the real world’s tumult is too much to face. I need an escape, but more than that - I need the ritual of selecting the first book, opening to the first page, seeing a familiar and beloved character. I need the cycle of each book and knowing exactly what happens. I love that even after reading these books repeatedly, there are still pieces I have forgotten. It adds a safe, risk-assessed thrill to a soothing practice in a hard time.

I think rituals help bolster the soul and sustain resilience. One of the most challenging moments of my 2025 Winter was that, upon arriving home from Nova Scotia after 9 weeks away, I still had no plan. I was reasonably sure I was through the worst of my burnout, but I was, one could say, still buried in the ashes. I realized I didn’t want to continue the business I had been building; but I had no idea what came next. I felt extremely uneasy, consistently in discomfort and restlessness, nagged by a feeling of being twitchy and uncertain in my mind as well as my skin.

A voice inside kept telling me that this fog was the point: in order to find my next step, I had to sit in the discomfort. I couldn’t vanish into pages I knew so well (at least not all day). I had to stay present, to understand the unease of not knowing, to let the cycle process until the air began to clear. I had to slow down, to notice the thoughts and ideas and small steps I was taking. I began to try new things, writing longer reflections and looking back at them critically, parsing out sentences and ideas that could prompt the next essay. I began putting them online, then feeling stronger about selling the experience of finding oneself in someone else’s words and having guidance in the messy unclear middle.

Winters, both seasonal and metaphoric, slow us down. They impede our routines and disrupt our schedules. They force us to pivot or to yield, especially when we resist longer and harder. Winters know that rest is needed, that the abundance of life is only reached when all natural things are allowed to settle, to quiet, to absorb nourishment, to prepare.

I think the point, and certainly the power, is in the pause, in the moment of yielding and noticing, and being present. Winters of both kinds provide that dreamy, suspended feeling, the Somewhere Else, the liminal space. We can remember our rituals and perhaps link them back to the cycles of the world around us. We can listen to the voices asking us to rest, to not rush through or escape. We can do our inner work, gently and softly, in a season designed to cocoon us. Growth, after all, requires rest. The flourish of spring does not follow the fall of leaves; first, there must be buds, and they are with us all winter long.

*If you would like to join my next Cohort, I would love to have you! Either subscribe here on substack or sign up for my free Lighthouse Starter Kit. It’s perfect for the solopreneur or overwhelmed woman who wants to carve out a few minutes, release decision-making, and receive gentle journaling prompts to help her return to herself.

-Katherine May, Wintering, pages 80-81

I’ve always remembered Katherine’s passage about buds being present on trees all winter long. As I am power-walked by the bloodhound through neighborhood streets, though the branches whiz by me, I let my eyes linger long enough to see that, indeed, we are surrounded at all times by proof of life.

I see green grass frozen under swirling ice in the horses’ paddocks. I hear the dawn chorus as I drive to the barn (the bloodhound likes her window open and head defenestrated in all seasons). I pause to see the three pairs of ducks that arrive one day at the barn, quacking happily as they paddle in murky water or stand on the ice. They leave as surreptitiously as they came.

I appreciate the art of noticing, the practice of slowing down and the ritual of recording what I’ve seen. One of the notes I make in my nightly journal is of a photograph I’ve taken each day. Usually, and unsurprisingly, this is of the bloodhound in an absurd position or a spectacular barn sunrise.

Recently, though, I was in my yard and happened to look down long enough to see a delicate, dried, and browned flower, four petals still intact, in the middle of a paw-print. It was remarkable that this tiny creation existed and had survived the ferocity of wind, weather, and canine shenanigans.

I am not yet drawn into the art of bird-watching, though I hear its appeal increases as one ages. I mostly fill the bird-feeders to facilitate the dogs’ observations of all things squirrel, but I do sometimes catch myself observing all the creatures as they congregate around the seeds. Both dogs and I appreciate the plumpness of the winterizing squirrels - I am impressed by their ability to survive in the cold, and the dogs hope the less aerodynamic shapes create a more equitable chase if and when they are released.

I have noticed, despite the atrocious cold spells we have had this winter, that my horse is already - as of January 24th - beginning to shed her winter coat. I keep muttering to myself that she must know something I don’t, if she’s already begun the process of leaving mounds of herself behind as she goes out to pasture. Naturally, her white hair sheds much more aggressively than her brown, and I will inevitably be *noticing* white horse hair everywhere until August.

Much like the buds on trees, the start of shedding seasons reminds me that flora and fauna have never forgotten the cycles of the seasons, despite the fact that we pulverize leaves, blow away nature’s natural winter coverage, clip patterns into hair, and blanket animals with precision down to the degree.

Friday morning, the thaw broke and it was bitterly cold with the wind. I finished my chores, collected the dog, took a steaming shower, and sat in bed, wrapped in a blanket, listening to an audiobook as the sun went down and the room darkened.

There was no conscious choice here. My body steered itself, and I am fascinated by what it chose when I allowed it to follow its needs. Past Ashleigh would have at least tried to push through, to do more, to make plans. Past Ashleigh would have viewed this as weakness, as being lazy, as something to overcome.

Yielding this winter has been, honestly, marvelous. I love the feeling of being warm under a heavy blanket in a cool house (I may yield to naps, but I remain a New England WASP and my thermostat stays at 64 during the day, 60 at night.. It is not uncommon for me to wear multiple layers while inside. 🙂). I love pouring enormous cups of hot tea or cocoa. I moved into smaller rooms in my house to conserve energy and feel tucked in. I shifted furniture away from windows and pulled curtains to create my small nest. Overhead lights are forbidden - lamps and candles only. The dogs have their own beds and blankets, but more often, I am sandwiched between them on one couch, sharing one blanket (and then I nap with the scent of hound in my nostrils because this blanket is the best).

The January thaw reminded me how much harder our bodies work in the extreme temperatures, and how yielding is not weakness. It prevents weakness; it restores, nourishes, and replenishes. It reminds me that rest, when not chosen, will eventually demand itself of you, and you will not be able to prevent the crash. We cannot stop the thermometer from dropping, but we can listen to what that change asks of us, for us.

And I could turn up my thermostat... or add more layers. ;)

Her email floored me because it was so vulnerable, so honest, such a brave pulling back of the curtain to reveal what, I truly believe, so many women have done and also believe.

We are not good enough to do the hard thing, so we do something easier; and when we do that part well, we believe we still failed - are failures - because it was the easy choice, and we knew it was the less challenging road.

Meg said this in her email:

“In art class, we’d usually have some kind of still-life week...And every time, every SINGLE time, I had a clever trick. I’d focus in REALLY tight on one area of the still-life. One statue head. One point of a starfish. One zoomed-in area that I knew I could recreate pretty easily.

The art teachers always thought I was being edgy. Like I was breaking the expectation of the assignment and doing something new and cool but… I wasn’t. It was the same trick every time. And I did it because I genuinely didn’t think I could face the whole still-life. The bigger picture with all its details and things I could get wrong was SO overwhelming that I just… didn’t try.

And that’s just one example out of MILLIONS of times that I told myself this same story:

That I’m not good enough to do the “hard” thing, so I’m not even going to try.

That what I could do was easy and obviously, therefore, a failure.

There are very few things in my life that I could say I was genuinely proud of, because, invariably, I always knew, deep inside, that it could have been more. I could have set the bar higher and done something REALLY impressive but… I didn’t.”

If you’re nodding your head, you’re in the right place, in excellent company. I am so relieved to know that I am not alone in this behavior, this pattern, this belief.

Here’s what I responded to Meg:

“We’ve been indoctrinated intensely that if things aren’t hard, we’re not doing enough; or if we enjoyed them and they were easy, we were failing.

I used to wait until the night before papers were due in college, every time. My roommate and I had a running joke about it, because every time, we’d get As.

I assumed it was because the school wasn’t hard enough, or the teacher wasn’t reading closely enough, or that I was somehow still not really deserving of that grade.

My friends from high school mostly went to Ivies, and here I was, cruising through my favorite classes at a decent college, but certainly not working “that hard.” Or “as hard as I could.” The classes I didn’t like, I didn’t try as hard, and my grades showed there, but oh well. Whatever - I couldn’t bring myself to care.

Could I have gotten a tutor? Sure.

Have I used anything from those classes since? Nope.

Do I still have stress dreams where I’m not sure I actually had enough credits from those classes to graduate? Yup. And I’m doing just fine.”

I recently explained myself as a survivor of burnout, of prep school, of being a New England WASP, of growing up as a feral farm kid, of self-imposed and deeply influenced sky-high expectations. In reality, I should say I’m more in recovery from these things: like with other addictions, I am always slightly more at risk of falling back on these habits than of abandoning them entirely.

Instead of celebrating that I was doing well in school, I assumed the school wasn’t hard enough. Instead of enjoying, appreciating, or heck - intentionally choosing to take the easier path that would not result in stress-induced health issues, I simply assumed I wasn’t good enough.

As if being more stressed, more anxious, more overwhelmed, or more dedicated would have meant I was “doing college right.”

Spoiler: I now have intimate knowledge of working (almost...yikes) as hard as I could, of scoring 20/21 on a medical anxiety screening, of sobbing while walking my dog, of burning out completely and I did not, in fact, gain anything more from that process than if I had taken an easier route.

I certainly learned things, and I pivoted into a business and practice that I thoroughly enjoy now; but who is to say that I wouldn’t have come around to those anyway, at some point?

Why must we believe that suffering and doing things the hardest way possible is always right?

Do I believe that hiking a mountain for the view makes you a better person or builds more appreciation than taking a helicopter to the top for the same photo op?

Not really. I think you’ll learn different things on the way. I’ve done intense hikes and been too grumpy, sore, or tired to appreciate the view; and I’ve been helicoptered to a glacier, which was one of the most magical moments of my life.

I would love to unlearn and release the guilt of taking the easy path, to recognize that there is beauty and worth in allowing yourself to work less and live more.

Because, when I look back on my college paper writing or Meg’s still-life micro-focus, chances are that, instead of doing intense work, we were doing other things that brought us joy.

I was absolutely reading, writing for fun, laughing with my sorority sisters (with whom I’m still very close, which I cannot say for my logic class or astronomy lectures), healing from a break-up, or exploring the local haunts.

Taking the easy path does not make us failures or less worthy of success. It allows us to experience more, which I think is the actual point of our journeys on this mortal coil.

Prompts for Your Reflection:

• When have you taken an “easier” option? What did you do with the extra time, energy, or space it gave you? How do you feel about that choice now, compared to then?

• How do you personally define “easy” and “hard”? Where did those definitions come from?

• Is there room for joy, meaning, or growth in both the easy way and the hard way?

The shoulder seasons speak to my soul: the world is emerging and preparing to retire. The flora is flourishing, brilliant and verdant, then golden and fiery. The thawing and the cooling are equally seductive - those early days when the sun warms my winter-pale skin, and then the climactic breaking of humidity’s smothering grasp.

These liminal seasons are everything to me, and I will forever be chasing them, wishing they lasted longer, wanting to enjoy every moment of porch weather (with blanket and tea, preferably), pretending the big, bolder, overbearing seasons of Summer and Winter aren’t on their way.

But here’s the thing: I also LOVE winter. I’m creating an entire cohort around the concept of seasonal winter, metaphoric winter, and reclaiming the season as it’s meant to be: restorative, cocooning our depleted selves into a den to rest and recover, then gently set us to reemerge as the world opens in spring. (Want to join us?? Check it out here)

But Winter itself? It’s got all of my favorite things.

I love big socks and cozy sweaters. I love cuppa after cuppa of hot tea or hot mushroom cocoa. I love long naps after grueling, early barn mornings. I love heated blankets and mattress warmers and soft lighting. I love the darkness because it allows me - a perpetual “must go go go” over achiever - to actually rest.

I love crisp mornings with the world iced over (just not the roads, thanks). I love snow. I love horse breath fogging the air and frozen whiskers. I love the feeling of having worked hard outside in the morning, of cold skin but also sweat rolling down my spine. I love peeling off layers that kept me warm, a hot shower, then bundling into soft house layers.

I love the bird flocking to the birdfeeder, and Jojo torpedoing off the porch to chase the squirrels who purloin seeds. I love walking by the town pond and seeing the hockey rinks swept clean of snow, knowing that the ice is safe enough thanks to multiple nights in the 20s. The joy and laughter and memories those wild skates will bring - that’s the spirit!

As a New Englander, I love bitching about the fact that my Friday morning shift will start at 8° with a real feel of -2°, and then the absolute hedonist thrill of surviving it, of bragging about it later, of absolutely not sitting in a cubicle when I could be battling ice and cold and frozen horse turds. That’s living, man! Keep your palm trees and fruity cocktails - I want the triumph of another day in the wintry trenches and the burn of whisky in my hot toddy.

I love knowing that the buds on trees and shrubs are ready to pop - I see them and greet them as I power walk by, pulled by a bloodhound who loves smelling what the snow has buried.

Ultimately, I would live eternally in winter if I had to choose between that and summer. I loathe summer - I almost need to view it as my “other winter,” the season I like the least while surrounded by people who can’t wait for it. These are often the ones who spend it beach or poolside, or inside with AC. Come spend a summer at the barn with me and then tell me you love it... You can keep its humidity and bugs and scorching days, dust-coated sweat monsters and swamp creatures in riding pants.

No thanks.

I’d rather be in layers, floating in tea mugs, burrowing into my nooks, TBR overflowing with books, sweat earned from work and not just from trying to survive in stifling heat.

Give me the freedom of crisp, cold, darkness.

Give me the season of open air and hygge.

Give me Winter, the perfect stage for my melodrama and odd New England eccentricities and earning all the things. We are made for each other.

Here’s to a year that started with “this is the best I’ve ever felt,” tumbled down into a crevasse of “I don’t know who I am anymore, but I scored 20/21 on the anxiety screening at my doctor’s office, so that’s something,” and is ending with, “thank all the powers that be I’m still standing, and even standing tall.”

I began 2025 so excited to finally hit my stride with the back pain therapy business I’d been driving towards since late 2023. I had big goals, big investments, and big plans. I felt like I was on a roll with social media and building a following, and it was just a few perfect posts away from translating into sales. I chased the right language, the right posting rate, the right balance of “this is me, welcome into my world, here’s my story, here’s how I can help.”

I worked long hours. I tweaked my offers and my website and my schedule and my marketing. I worked weekends. I walked the dog, went to the gym, ate well, and talked with my therapist.

But nothing worked.

By February, I woke up on Mondays, ready to go, confident this would be THE WEEK…and by Friday, I would be crashed on the couch, crying, confused, not knowing what I’d done wrong, why I couldn’t get a single sales call, why nothing was working.

I had a few slivers of hope - clinics that booked, people locally who sounded interested - and that was enough to keep me going. And I loved doing the clinics - I loved the teaching, the helping women connect with their body and their breath and their horse.

I didn’t know how to nurture those people, and I have to take responsibility for letting them slip through my fingers as I searched for bigger and more lucrative options.

I had a reunion with friends in March and I was dreading it. The feeling of failing every single day became deep shame - I had nothing to show for all of my hours worked. My hopes, plans, confidence - they all seemed woefully naive and increasingly fragile.

By April, I was sobbing while walking the dog, wondering why I was failing so hard. I couldn’t do anything right - couldn’t get any engagement or conversations going. I nurtured the wrong potential clients and got ghosted or trashed on Google reviews (33 emails over seven weeks, and this woman had the nerve to say I rushed her.)

My sleep was poor. My body battery was low and never replenishing. Instead of yielding, I started networking. 2-3 online events per week, plus coffee chats and 1:1s. By May, I started to get sick, my anxiety skyrocketing, and then ended up with Covid.

In June, I cleaned up my house, packed up the dog, and I drove to Nova Scotia. I planned it in April - it was close enough to drive, dog-friendly, and reasonably priced for 9 weeks. My then-business coach gently asked me to take some time and consider if the business I was working so hard to build was really what I wanted.

I packed a lot into my summer, from hikes to Bay of Fundy adventures to dog parks to roadtrips up to Cape Breton. I still pushed myself, but I also started to rest. I was too anxious and felt too unsafe when stopping, but my body demanded naps and sitting. I slept late, walked the dog to a coffee shop, read books, and ignored the business. I went to bed and experienced anxiety spirals like I’d never known - an hour or two of just swirling thoughts, every night. It Pandora’s Box: all the thoughts and fears and questions and worries I’d ignored for six months found their way out when I began to pause.

I journaled nearly daily, sometimes opening my notebook two to three times a day to exorcise the panic and fear and worry. My creative writing thrived, and I was overwhelmed by ideas and words and phrases.

I decided that yes, I wanted to focus on this back pain relief for horseback riders niche, and when I felt sane enough to work, I added an hour or two each day. I networking a bit, and I made content and I connected with a few people. I did an intro session that lit me up, and reminded me why I wanted to help people.

As the summer wound down, I felt like I was leaving somewhere incredibly special. Halifax, NS is a vibrant, easy city, surrounded by beaches and forest and hikes and great food, coffee, and culture. It fed my travel lust and my need to rest. I wish I had slowed down even more, that I’d read and written at coffee shops, or rested on the sandy beaches, listening to the waves. That I’d lingered and wondered and dilly dallied.

Slowing down has become my number one goal for 2026 because I still really struggle with it, and I know how important it is for my nervous system.

I returned home in September, and picked up my pitchfork. Working at my barn 3-4 days a week has been another balm for my nervous system. The routine, the repetition, the time outside and amongst the horses, the podcasts and audiobooks and music blocking out my thoughts for hours at a time. It has been a gift. Sometimes I wonder if “exercise for anxiety” is just off the mark; I love lifting and I love feeling strong, but being at the gym doesn’t soothe my anxiety the way four hours of horses and wheelbarrows and routine do.

I sat on my porch one fall day, procrastinating a back pain blog post, and I realized: I didn’t actually give one single, solitary fuck about back pain, horseback riding, or breathing training.

And just like that, I was done. Two years, thousands of dollars and hours and tears, and I put that business aside. I started writing, started sifting through the struggles and the burnout and the fragile self that needed so much nourishing and coddling and coaxing back to life.

And now I’m here, staring down the last few hours until 2026. So much has been said about the numerology, the shift from Year of the Snake to Year of the Horse, of trends changing and marketing adjusting, of the economy and connection and all the things.

But for me, there are three things that I want from 2026: slowing down, nurturing relationships, and down-sizing.

I don’t have a problem with big dreams or goals, but I do think that big dreams/goals become problematic when we assume someone else’s and chase them as if they are our own. Some people have overnight success - they go viral, they have the right offer at the right time, whatever. Most of us do not and will not. We are the ones who play the long game - who carve out pieces of our souls, share them bravely, and nurture those who find us along the way.

I feel like I ran and chased big goals this year, then wondered why I was suddenly feeling so alone. I isolated myself on that journey, to my immense detriment. I wish I had stopped and shaken myself, looked around and seen the people who were right there, who just needed to be checked on or asked after. I wish I’d taken better care of myself in the process, or perhaps instead of the process. That I had slowed down and paused before chasing - asked myself, “is this really right for me? What is the goal towards which this will guide me?”

I probably wouldn’t have listened. I needed to crash and burn, to slink away and lick my wounds, to heal and prioritize, to come back and then feel strong enough to walk away.

I can’t believe that I’m grateful for the dumpster fire of Q1 & Q2, but I’m better, slower, softer, and more honest for them.

I want slower pace, less space and fewer things, and more good people next year. They’re not sexy resolutions, but I feel like I chased the sexy “$12k/month every month!” last year and it led me away from my north star. For 2026, I’m shedding the performance and acting on the intention, the slow down, the intuition I’ve ignored for too long.

Here’s to a year where the burnouts are shorter, the lessons slightly softer, the relationships nourishing, and the pace slower.

Happy New Year.

For Your Consideration & Reflection:

• What terrible, no good, very bad thing ended up being exactly what you needed this year?

• What terrible, no good, very bad thing can continue to fuck all the way off because it still hurts and didn’t help at all?

• How do you want to feel in March 2026, when the spring thaws and the light expands, and the world opens a bit more?

• Would thinking in 60 days or seasons feel more nourishing to your soul?

If you’re read this far, I wish I had an award for you, but I’ll just say, “Thanks.” If any of this resonated, I’d love to know in the comments, or send me a DM on Instagram. My “slow all the way down with friends this winter” Wintering Cohort begins January 18th, 2026, and much of what I wrote about in this post will be the scaffold for that journey. I would love to have you. Find more info here.

I pull myself from bed at 6am, layering my first thermals and socks over cold skin. The dogs and I trundle downstairs for oatmeal, tea, and preparations for the day. I’ve started taking a single-serving of tea and a massive Yeti of chai for the barn. My days of sipping a protein smoothie between stalls are on pause until the temperatures regain their sanity. Somewhere around 40 degrees, a cold smoothie sounds nice. Otherwise, no thanks.

I load the dogs into the car, and wiggle into my snow pants, scarf, hat, sweatshirt. My heavy jacket warms up under one of the dogs as she nestles in for our ten minute drive; and my toes stretch as far as they can in work-boots to feel the car’s heater.

I drop the dogs at my mom’s for their sleep in and squirrel chasing, and head to the barn. By 7.15, the horses are fed and we are leading them out to pasture. The waters in the fields are absolutely frozen, with an inch or so of ice layered over the surface. The pipes in the barn itself are frigid, and the individual spigots immovable unless mechanically heated.

Doing stalls is helpful to build up warmth, and I brace against the chill as I exit the barn to dump my wheelbarrow. Some mornings, the world just looks barren: hard ground, frozen hoofprints, stiff grass, blue sky. Others, it looks enchanting: the days when there’s been just enough humidity for ice crystals to coat the gates, the branches, the leaves, the whiskers of each horse. Those mornings are spectacular as the sun creeps slowly over the horizon, then inch by inch through the forest and over the treetops. We get a few hours of opalite sky (hey swifties), and then the glittering world disappears from whatever warmth we gain in the middle of the day.

We are usually done at the barn by 11, and I retreat to my car to retrieve the dogs and head home. This is when the thaw begins. I make copious hot cuppas (earl greys and chais and mushroom hot cocoas; have you tried the Trader Joe’s spiced vanilla creamer? I’ve yet to meet a drink it didn’t enhance…), and curl up with the dogs, wrung out from their morning at their grandma’s.

I am exhausted, and I don’t recall so acutely feeling the draining impacts of the cold in years past. Inevitably, despite my best attempts at working or reading, I am asleep, cocooned in my dark living room, under an old sheepskin blanket I battle over with the dogs. It is always a stalemate - I get one end, and they the other, at my feet or behind my knees on the couch.

These naps are not the gentle drifting of sultry summer days. They are the dormant sleep of a creature disrupted from her natural hibernation. I am out cold. I feel the fatigue bone-deep, despite the tea and the carb-loading and the fresh air. I think of the creatures that truly hibernate, who still yield to the cold and the darkness, who gorge on calories and tuck away, their bodies surviving instead of producing all winter. I emulate them, at least once my chores and work are done.

We humans (some groups more than others), whether we work with animals or not, seem unwilling to yield, or even remember our roots, our history of following the light and the seasons. We fight, with our artificial lights and work schedules that prohibit us from following our natural rhythm of sleep vs awake. We forget how to acclimate to the cold, how to dress for it and to work with it, and how to yield to it. I’ve noticed we also refuse to yield to the summers - we work through the heat, ignoring the dangers, pushing ourselves for more, more, more. Culturally, this obviously shifts - when I visited family in Greece in July, they stay awake much later, eat later, and rest during the day. The only part of hot country culture I could tolerate is siesta culture; please take me to the cooler lands, always.

My preference for the cold (you can always add layers in winter, but you can only be so naked in summer) creates more surprise when I find myself so tired from being out in it. The WASP New Englander within tells me I should push, do more, have another tea and wake up… But the Winterer in me says, “no. slow down. listen to your body. rest if you need it. reach for the book; watch the movie.”

It’s an on-going battle, but as I enter my 40th year in 2026, I find that my body’s insistence on rest is beginning to prevail. I am slowly shedding the expectation of more and push and produce; and instead appreciating the embrace of ease, softness, rest, and less. I can’t believe how hard it is to release those early lessons and expectations, but my bones, in fact, know best. I rest in the dark and cold days; I yield in the deepest of heat and humidity; I thrive in the spring and fall.

For your journaling enjoyment:

• What were your childhood lessons around rest?

• How do the hours of daylight and darkness impact you as the seasons change?

• What is your season?

• How do you negotiate the deep needs of your body versus the loudest demands on your time and energy?

If you are curious about Wintering and embracing rest, hibernation, and restoration, I would love for you to join my Wintering 2026 Cohort. Check out more details here.

If you’re here because of breathing training, horseback riding, and back pain relief, then this is the email you’ve been waiting for (and wondering when the heck it was coming!).

Part 3 of my Holiday Gift Guide is to say that, yes, I’m still in the back pain/breathing training/horseback riding world, and yes, I would LOVE to work with you or your loved one in the future.

#1. For the rider, athlete, family member, friend, neighbor who is complaining about aching backs, tight muscles, wobbly work-outs, hip or knee pain, get them the 90 minutes Ouch to Ahhh bodywork session. This virtual session includes a full movement screen, breathing training assessment, and 2-5 correctives they start right away to get immediate relief for their aches and pains.

How often does your doctor spend 90 minutes with you?

How long have you been telling yourself you’ll deal with the pain, the tightness, the compensations, etc?

What have you missed or skipped this year because of your pain?

How many PT sessions have you tried that haven’t helped or lasted?

Let’s bring you into 2026 with better attention, personalized programing, and the ability to kick ass and take names in 2026. Book a 90 minutes Ouch to Ahhh bodywork session for yourself or someone you know needs the support.