Going First

Don’t Call Your Mom

Brittany Wiegand — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 19:51:27 GMT

I used to call my mom about everything. Literally. Work sucks, called my mom. She is also a nurse, she can relate. Siblings are frustrating me, called my mom. She was the one who raised them, so it is her fault. My husband isn’t listening to me, call my mom. She has a husband, he probably doesn’t listen to her either. Trying to navigate a relationship with my in-laws and trying to figure out how to say no but still be the perfect daughter-in-law and sister-in-law, call my mom. She has in-laws, I am sure she has dealt with this once or twice.

I called my mom for all of those things. She would listen. She was a great listener. She listened so much she probably got so sick of listening to me… but she still answered the phone. She’s my mom. That’s what moms do. They are there when you need them the most.

That’s what I thought I needed. I thought I needed someone to talk to about this. Almost as if I spoke it to someone else, it would all just fix itself. Problem solved. I talked to mom and all my issues were gone.

Unfortunately, that’s not real life. Like it or not the problems are still there. No matter how many times you talk to your mom about these things she can’t just fix them. Unless she is a witch and can cast a spell or a genie in a bottle who can grant you three wishes. Or maybe you have a helicopter or lawn mower mom that would literally take actions into her own hands and handle the whole situation. Would that really handle it or just open a whole new can of worms? Regardless, that type of parent is a whole different story for a completely different time.

It wasn’t just my mom that I leaned on. My older sister was a listening ear very often for me. And who could forget to call their best friend up and say, “you’re never going to believe what is going on.” I used to think that was a very normal thing to do. Those were the people you called to vent. And honestly that is probably what I would say after they answered with a hello. “I just need to vent for a second.” But one second turned into twenty minutes, which easily turned into an hour, and absolutely nothing was accomplished besides “venting.”

I think venting is just like gossip. You spill all the beans on the problem that is going on in your life to someone that might have absolutely nothing to do with it. You tell them all the details, your version of the details, your perspective. That is it. And in that one venting session so much damage is done and you don’t even realize it is happening.

We don’t just pick any random stranger to let the cat out of the bag with. We pick our people. Our support system. The cheerleaders in our life. The ride or dies. The people that got your back.

Nine out of ten times your best friend is going to say, “no fricken way! I cannot believe they would do that!” Or they might say something like, “omg Brittany, I can’t believe you have to deal with this right now, of all times.” Your mom might even toss the therapy line… “so how does that make you feel?”

And that is what I got. Some version of all of that, each and every time I called. I thought it would make me feel better, venting. It never did. I wasted an hour, or more, on the phone with my cheerleader, venting about a problem and walked away only feeling more frustrated, fired up, stressed, overwhelmed, sad, anxious, depressed, and alone.

I never once cried while I was venting. But the truth is, I cried every single time I hit the red button to end the phone call. Tears immediately started streaming down my face, loud, messy ugly crying. Red faced, swollen and booger galore. I was desperately, silently, asking for help and always hung up feeling ten times worse than when I dialed the number.

Everything You Didn't Sign Up For

Brittany Wiegand — Fri, 14 Aug 2026 18:23:22 GMT

After a year of meeting my husband and hanging out, because we never labeled ourselves as dating, he took a job in Florida. I was beyond happy for him and one hundred percent ugly cried our last night together in Ohio. I was convinced he would meet some bikini rocking Florida girl and forget all about me.

Through all the tears and snot I produced that night, he continued to say, “we are going to be ok. It will work out.”

We did the long distance thing. Florida and Ohio. It wasn’t the worst set up in the world. I worked my three 12-hour shifts at the hospital, flew down to visit for six days, flew back up and worked three more shifts at least once a month. Kinda an expensive relationship. But, honestly, in the grand scheme of things, it probably would have been more expensive if we lived closer to each other. All the date nights and activities… those add up quickly!

The one thing I think a lot of people forget about building a relationship is that you aren’t just building it with one person. That person has at least one other person, if not a whole bunch of people, that are also involved. And if you find a person that doesn’t have any attachments… that is a unicorn. I am not sure if I should tell you to snatch that person up and never let them go or run and hide because they are probably their own special kind of crazy.

I Married The Snack Bar Guy

Brittany Wiegand — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 18:14:42 GMT

Sometimes I feel like my story begins when I met my husband, but I know that it started long before that. It had to, because I met my husband when I was twenty-two years old. I have spent less than half my life with this man. But it feels like he has consumed my entire life in the best and worst ways possible.

If you were to ask me why I thought my story began when I met my husband, I think my answer would be because I went through this huge identity crisis. One conversation led to a spiral of thought processes that changed everything for me.

And for a long time I thought I was the only person who ever experienced anything like this. None of my sisters went through anything like that. If she did, my mom never shared anything similar. My best friend didn’t have anything similar to share. So I was convinced it was only something I went through. Part of me was thinking, “why me?” What did I do to deserve any of this.

I came to realize that I am not that special, not that I thought I was super special to deserve this kind of living punishment at all. My business coach told me that I was not the only person in the world to experience something like this. I didn’t believe her at first. There was no way that other people had to deal with what I was going through… that would be miserable and they don’t deserve that. But the more I began talking with other people and really listening, opening up and sharing, the more I realized that my story is just one version of what so many other people are going through. It took me a long time to admit it to myself, but my business coach was right.

She has been encouraging me since day one to open this side of myself up to other people. A belief that there is power in the human experience that bonds people together. Helps bring them together. Learn from each other. Find common ground and community through good times and bad.

Why I’m Finally Telling You Everything

Brittany Wiegand — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 18:49:04 GMT

My name is Brittany, and quite honestly, I think I’m just your average Joe of a female. But here I am, for some reason, deciding to tell you everything.

I’ve spent years teaching people how to come home to their bodies, how to find mental clarity in the middle of chaos, how to lead and build their life without abandoning themselves in the process.

In my opinion, finding that clarity is probably the hardest thing a person can do.

Not because clarity itself is complicated. Because of everyone standing in the middle of it with you.

Think about how many people in your life have an opinion about what you do. How many people you care about. How many you’re responsible for. How many you care about the way they view you. How many you’re trying to impress, prove yourself to, or convince you’re worthy. How many you wish you didn’t have to worry about, but are stuck with for life anyway.

My guess is there’s at least one person. Probably more.

We don’t just live our lives, we live them around other people. And most of us have no idea how much that shapes us, because it’s been happening since the day we were born.

From the moment you arrived, you were taught how to act, how to think, what’s right, what’s wrong, how to feel, when to obey, when to disobey. Every one of those lessons came from someone. A parent, a sibling, a teacher, a culture, a room full of people watching to see what you’d do next. All of those experiences add up. All of those people add up. And somewhere in that pile-up, it gets almost impossible to tell which parts of you are actually you, and which parts are just what the people around you needed you to be.

I didn’t understand how true that was for me until I started looking back.

I don’t know if it was being the second oldest of five. Or my parents constantly having us involved in community events and volunteer programs. Or the ten-plus years of nursing I have under my belt, where putting other people first isn’t a personality trait, it’s the job. Realistically, it’s probably some combination of all three. But somewhere along the way, I became someone who put everyone else before myself, almost automatically, almost invisibly.

For a long time I thought that just made me a people-pleaser. Like it was some fixed trait, something baked into who I am. I’ve since learned that’s not true.

People-pleasing isn’t a personality trait. It’s a survival strategy your nervous system reaches for when you’re in conflict, overwhelmed, or feeling unsafe. It’s something you learned, something you taught yourself to do, usually because of the people around you and what kept you safest with them.

It is not who you are. But it can absolutely convince you that it is.

That’s the part that makes clarity so hard to find. It’s not just noise in your own head. It’s years of other people’s expectations, opinions, needs, and reactions, so tangled into your thinking that you can’t always tell where they end and you begin.

The pressure you put on yourself. The expectations you hold yourself to. How you see yourself, how you think others see you, how much you value yourself… almost none of that formed in a vacuum. It formed in rooms full of other people.

Years of that build up. Not always in the best way. Sometimes in the most negative way possible, without you ever realizing it’s happening.

And that tension, that pain, that suffering, that survival mode, whatever you want to call it, eventually builds to a point where you feel like you can’t survive it anymore. You look at other people and think: they have it so easy. Why can’t I relax like that? They are so lucky. Why is this happening to me? I wish I was allowed to do that. Why do I feel this way? Wouldn’t that be nice. Will it ever change?

I’ve sat across from women and men who would probably consider themselves ordinary, or who crave to feel ordinary. But honestly, each one of them is brilliant and capable of so much more than they give themselves credit for.

The one thing they all have in common: they’re exhausted. Exhausted by what the people, and the world, around them are forcing on them, what it’s causing them to think about themselves, and what it’s limiting them from doing. I’ve helped them untangle nervous systems wound so tight from years of proving, performing, surviving, all of it in response to someone else.

And for most of that time, I left myself out of it. Not because I didn’t have a story. Because I was afraid of what would happen if I told it.

Here’s what changed.

I was in a session with a client recently, someone I’d shared a piece of my own story with, just enough to help him see his situation more clearly. It wasn’t the most dramatic part of my story. It was actually a more recent revelation I’ve had, one that’s helped so much with life in general.

I shared it with him, and he resonated with it deeply. At the end of our session, I asked him what his biggest takeaway was, like I normally do. Usually he tells me something I half-expect, based on everything we’ve talked about that hour.

This time, he didn’t say the expected thing. He said he wanted to hear more about me, about what I’d actually lived through, and how I’d found my way out the other side.

I froze in my chair. I definitely wasn’t expecting that.

But the more I think about it, the more it tracks. Through the 1:1 work I do with individuals, I’ve come to realize how much I recognize myself in the people sitting across from me. What they’re walking through right now, I’ve walked through before, in an earlier version of my life, shaped by my own crowd of people I was trying to please, impress, or keep from being disappointed in me.

So I started asking myself: if I’m too afraid to talk honestly about my own experience, what am I actually asking of them when I ask them to be honest about theirs?

So this is me, going first.

There are people in my past who, if they read what I’m about to write over the coming weeks and months, might not like how they show up in it. I used to think my job was to manage that, to keep everyone comfortable, to keep the peace, to make sure no one had a reason to be angrier at me than they probably already were. So I stayed quiet.

I told myself that’s just what I was supposed to do. The past is in the past, it shouldn’t be brought up again. But honestly, I don’t think anything was ever truly resolved. Don’t get me wrong, I did try. At least I think I did. Maybe I could have done better. Or maybe I did the best I could. And now it feels like one of those things you just survive, hoping time will heal it, if that’s even possible.

This isn’t going to be a highlight reel. I’m not interested in writing myself as the wise woman who had it all figured out the whole time. I’m no superhero, and I’m not someone to idolize.

I did things I’m not proud of. I also did things I am proud of. I hurt people, and I empowered people. I made choices out of fear, out of pain, out of not yet knowing better, that I wouldn’t make now. I also made selfish choices for the first time in my life and I actually felt like I was doing the right thing, but it felt like my whole world was going to fall apart.

I’m not writing this to relitigate anything or to cast anyone as a villain. That’s not what this is for, and it’s not fair to the people who aren’t here to tell their own side. This is my story, told as honestly as I know how to tell it, including the parts where I was the problem, and including the people who shaped me into someone who could barely tell where I ended and their expectations of me began.

What I do want is to talk about what actually happened, the mental clarity work, the somatic work, the leadership work, all of it, as more than concepts. I want you to see where they came from. I want the women and men I work with, in leadership and in life, to know that the resilience I teach isn’t theoretical. It’s something I built out of necessity, in real time, often badly. It was messy, it involved other people I couldn’t just remove from the equation, and a lot of the time it didn’t make sense while I was living it.

If you’re here, here’s what you can expect from this space:

Real stories from my life, not sanitized, not framed to make me look good
What I actually learned, in the moments where I learned it and in hindsight
How that shows up in the work I do now with clients navigating their own versions of hard
No blame games, no villains, no score-settling, just an honest account of a human life, and the people who helped shape it, for better and worse

I don’t know exactly what this will turn into yet. I know it’s been sitting in me for a long time, and I know it’s time to let it out.

Thank you for being here while I do that.

— Brittany