Growing Pains

What I'd Do Differently If I Was Starting Wilkes Wellness From Scratch

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 01:11:35 GMT

What I Would Do The Same

Educate myself. The only thing that someone can’t take away from you is your education. I was raised by the rule, and I live by that rule. Anytime I’ve ever had an opportunity to educate myself, I have. And no matter where I go in life, pieces of each degree, certificate, program, etc. stick with me. I moved to Paris and got my M…

What If We All Stopped Trying To Be Original and Just Tried To Be Ourselves Instead?

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 02:00:54 GMT

We’ve all seen it: a side-by-side of one person accusing another of stealing their idea—a design, a logo, a pattern. A TikTok captioned, “normalize having an original thought!” A screenshot in a group chat with an accompanying text, “hmm this looks familiar.”

When I was in my graduate program at Parsons Paris, we spent an entire semester on the idea of inspiration vs. ripping off—the legal implications, the morality, what it truly costs to own an idea. I spent the next semester teaching undergraduate students what I’d learned in their Introduction to Fashion Studies class. And what this gave me was a sense of discernment, because not all copying is the same, and some of it isn’t copying at all.

My brother is a fashion designer, and when he was just 20 years old, he got into a legal battle with another company over the name of their brands. Fast forward to today, seven years later, and I’ve been heartbroken for him seeing bigger brands rip off designs he’s hand-sewn and brought to life from a sketch he made in his first office in my Mom’s spare garage. That’s copying, that’s worth calling out, that’s not OK.

But what we’re all caught up in is much different.

The Price I Paid for Skinny (Part 1)

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 17:22:44 GMT

The first time I ever thought about my weight, I was 9 years old, waiting in line for a sno-cone at the beach. A group of high school girls was in line in front of us. The person I was with looked them up and down and said, “Blech, look at how skinny-fat they are.”

Skinny-fat. Skin-ny, fat. Skinny and fat? What does that mean?

I learned that it meant that they weren’t overweight, but they didn’t have any muscle. It was genetic, not earned. The skinny didn’t count; the thin layer of adipose tissue they carried in lieu of lean muscle mass made it all gross.

I looked down at my own bikini-clad body and whispered to myself, “I’ll never be skinny fat.”

I took that vow seriously. I was blessed with a fast metabolism and was always petite, a little bit short, very lanky. As a young girl, I didn’t watch what I ate, but I constantly watched what I looked like in the mirror. Pinching my belly, making sure that it was just skin, that I wasn’t skin-ny-fat.

The Big Lie—What Women Deserve to Know About Our Healing Journeys (Part 1)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 19:44:37 GMT

Sitting in front of my shiny, white acrylic IKEA television console, I pulled the drawer open and looked in. I was hungover as shit, but it was 1 PM and I couldn’t lie in bed anymore. It was December of 2019 and I’d been fired the day before. Two Himalayan salt candles, a copy of The Daily Stoic and an empty Five Minute Journal. This is where it all began for me.

Meditation and journaling became an anchor for me during the pandemic. Every morning (and to be honest, sometimes I was waking up in the afternoons) I would sit on a lawn chair in my Mom’s backyard with The Daily Stoic, Five Minute Journal, and a stack of angel cards. I’d read, pull a card, and dutifully write my thoughts down. I was searching, wandering, hoping.

My practice only intensified as time went on. It rarely ebbed and never flowed; it was more like a maelstrom, its gravitational force only growing with time, pulling more into it. Pulling me into it.

31 Things I Learned In My 31st year

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 20:52:17 GMT

Every year, I keep a list of all the things I’ve learned—from 29 to 30, from 28 to 29 part one, 28 to 29 part two, from 27 - 28. Here’s what I’ve learned from 30 to 31:

Keep your friends close and let your enemies go.
Karma settles the score better than you ever could.
An agile mind and an agile body go hand in hand.
God’s got it covered.
Being tired is part of being in it for the long run.
Acting as if you cannot fail will decrease the likelihood of it happening greatly.
Nothing is too expensive if it buys you peace of mind.
Stop making your intuition repeat itself when it was clear the first time.

12 Books I'll Recommend Over and Over Again

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 22:12:58 GMT

Spirituality

1. Many Lives, Many Masters by Dr. Brian L. Weiss

One of the very first spiritual books I ever read, and this one truly changed my life. I return to it every few years and have sent a copy to almost everyone I love. I even ended up doing past-life regression therapy with a psychologist trained by Dr. Weiss himself and found the experience min…

Taking Right Turns Only Gets You So Far

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 23:27:02 GMT

Maybe you’re like me and spent a lot of your twenties comparing yourself to others. You’d hold up the entirety of your story to the light, noting how the sun didn’t quite illuminate the more opaque pieces, and put it side by side with the table of contents of someone else’s. You’d sigh, frowning at the tattered cover and splitting spine, the uneven edges, the coffee stain on the front page. You’d look longingly at the tidy stack it was up against. Hers is so well made, the chapters the perfect length, such polished cover art, her parents must be so proud.

The Final Step of Healing is Having Fun Again

Mon, 15 Jun 2026 02:12:29 GMT

I was scrolling Threads, unable to fall asleep around 1 AM in my Miami hotel room. This detail is important because the last time I was in Miami was when I was 20, and it was a bad trip.

It was so bad that it ended in the second time (you can read about the first here in My Love Letter to Lexapro) I slipped (maybe crashed and burned) into a serious depressive episode. I left college for the semester, moved back in with my parents, and started new meds. Little did I know that this wasn’t my magnum opus; it was more of an opener for the big crescendo of twenty-six (more on that another time).

But this time in Miami was different; it had a different rhythm, a different beat.

My Notes App Knew More About Me Than I Thought

Mon, 25 May 2026 19:07:02 GMT

I sift through my Notes app and see all the little lists that fill up this chapter of my life. Titled GROCERIES (this needed emphasis), Frequent Flyer #’s (I made this in 2018 whilst living abroad), Shabbat To Do! (exciting), Ed Surgery Instructions (this was important to nail), “I want to play a little game…” (the start of the speech I gave at our wedding).

But then I scroll, pull the page all the way down to the first Notes I ever wrote. The words I spoke at my Nonnie’s funeral (the very first Note), a list of fabric shops I schlepped to as an intern in New York City in 2016, notes from a class in graduate school, some potential Instagram captions.

I Love a Burnt Bridge

Mon, 18 May 2026 02:21:43 GMT

There is this moment from my early twenties that is crystalized in my memory, not just so clear that I close my eyes and see it, but I take a deep breath and I feel it. Someone had hurt me and my closest friend said, “I’m not going to defend you because I don’t want to burn that bridge.”

She didn’t burn that bridge, but she did burn hers with me.

I've Been Thinking About My Friends A Lot Lately

Mon, 11 May 2026 03:40:16 GMT

In January, I wrote about the importance of female friendship. The way the women who love me have carried me when I was determined to waste away in one spot. I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately.

There’s a settling that I can’t quite get out of my head or resist the ebb of as I come close to 31. And the strongest pull of that current is often felt in the way our friendships transform. From living with each other or down the hall to across town or the country. From talking every day to seeing each other when you’re both back home for Christmas.

Yes, there is a parting but not a drifting; almost the opposite happens. You are separated by miles but your connection strengthens, deepens. For some. For others, the relationship fades and that’s OK. It was meant to lose its color the further you stepped back from the picture, depth for a moment but not for a lifetime. More watercolor than acrylic.

Stop Asking Me When I'm Having a Baby

Mon, 04 May 2026 03:21:59 GMT

I understand that you want a cutie to add to the family tree, a pal for your kid, or have run out of things to talk about after asking me how my wedding is. But I have to ask you a question back—am I that uninteresting, so bereft of depth, that there’s nothing else we can talk about? Extra points if you ask me when we’re going to move into a bigger place.

And yes, I know many of you are asking out of love. Because you love me, you love your kids, and you think I’d be a great Mom. Thank you for all of that. I love you too.

And, if you love me that much, don’t you want more from me? Aren’t you curious about what I want for myself before I create someone else?

Because the truth is that before I want to have a child, I want a lot more. For me.

A Watched Pot Never Boils

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 01:03:39 GMT

When you are at your lowest, it is often because you are wed to the idea that if the external circumstances became what you need them to be, the internal angst will dissolve. That kind of marriage only leads you to an acrimonious divorce between yourself and reality. Dragging your feet on your way to this realization results in worn-out soles, and I hate to break it to you—you need some really good shoes for the path that lies ahead.

A Love Letter to Lexapro

Sat, 18 Apr 2026 04:04:44 GMT

Fluorescent lighting, peeling leather couch, a parent on each side of me. It sounds cinematic, almost. But it lacks creativity, depth, an unfortunately accurate and cliché description of what then felt like a unique experience. Later on I would learn that sitting in a psychiatrist’s office and being prescribed 10 mg of Lexapro was more universal than unique, more complicated than cliché.

Envy is the Roadmap to Making Your Dreams Come True

Sat, 11 Apr 2026 00:20:08 GMT

Life is like painting by numbers, and you have every color at your disposal. But you often stick with the ones that came in the set, dutifully filling in every 17 with light blue, every 8 with dusty purple. You look at others’ paintings with admiration and envy, often assuming that they were given a better selection at the beginning of their project; they’ve got something you don’t, that’s why their painting is so vibrant and yours is reading a little flat. You resign to an existence in grayscale, seduced by the idea of a life in color but not enough to take the leap.

Envy is an ugly word, it feels oily in your mouth, heavy on the page. It exists in a universe of scarcity, one in which there is a winner and a loser (you are the loser!), she’s got what you want, and you can’t quite get your plan nailed down for taking it.

But envy isn’t the enemy.

How Mastering Pilates Helped Me Master Myself

Fri, 03 Apr 2026 18:44:32 GMT

When I run a client through a Pilates sequence, it’s the same curriculum, different words. How do we set you up for success? What’s the countdown to the finish line? How can you move through the hardest part? Should we modify? Amplify? Can you deepen your breath?

And it’s eerily similar to how I run private coaching clients through issues with less visco…

The Art of Unfinished Business

Growing Pains by Katie Wilkes — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 20:26:35 GMT

There’s that sinking feeling we all know, when we leave something half-finished—dishes in the sink overnight, putting off a tough conversation, the lingering pressure of the endless to-do list. We live in an illusion that once we just get through it—emptying the inbox, three weekends in a row of travel, the busy season at work—that’s when we can exhale and take time to do the things we really like to do. Or even just have the space to figure out what those things may be.

So there it is, the revolving door that we never quite step out of, the just-out-of-reach moment in which we can button up all the stuff we don’t want to do but we have to do—because we started them.

Sometimes a job well done is one that you choose to leave unfinished.

3 Choices I've Made in My 30th Year That Gave Me My Confidence Back

Growing Pains by Katie Wilkes — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 16:17:21 GMT

Whoever told us that your twenties are the best years of your life was full of it, and most of us learn that truth the hard way. In my experience, your twenties are an experiment graded with no curve, a field trip but you’re unsure who’s supposed to sign the permission slip. At times, they feel gutting, like the most intimate experience you’ll ever have with yourself. At others, impersonal, medical, a means to an end.

I lost my way, myself, and almost my life in my twenties. I gazed towards thirty with an eagerness and a dread, a hope for brighter horizons and a fear that I wouldn’t be thrilled with what my life looked like when the sun came up. Opening the door to thirty felt like I was knocking on a door unsure of who would open, a houseguest in a place I wasn’t quite sure I was ten toes down for making a home.

Thirty! Something about it felt builder-grade, sterile, maybe even passé.

If Art Imitates Life, Exercise is a Masterpiece

Growing Pains by Katie Wilkes — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 22:14:19 GMT

Do you remember the first time you took a group fitness class? Maybe it was like mine, at SoulCycle in New York City (I brought headphones, if that shows you how little I knew about what I had signed up for). Maybe it was The Class or Melissa Wood during COVID. Maybe it was more recently, at your neighborhood Pilates studio. It doesn’t really matter—what matters is how it made you feel.

When I was 18 and took that first SoulCycle class in New York City, something clicked that never un-clicked—the fastest way for me to get out of my head was to get into my body. I’ve spent the 12 years since that hot, June day in Union Square pushing myself into heated rooms, contorting myself on reformers, and even breaking my tailbone at Grit Cycle in Newport Beach (IYKYK).

Yes, I loved the workout. But what I really loved is that when I was depressed, heartbroken, or angry, I knew that all it took was 45-minutes to get to the other side of a feeling that would otherwise have kept me in bed for days.

What we learn in those rooms, sometimes with just one or two other people, other times packed with 30 other bodies, goes beyond that we can look and feel good when we get our heart rates up or weights around our ankles. It’s a masterclass in building a life that feels good, too.

For me, what’s stuck is…

In Defense of the Scenic Route

Growing Pains by Katie Wilkes — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 22:15:18 GMT

“If there’s one thing we all know is true, it’s that when Katie loves, she loves hard.” This is what one of my loved ones said in her speech during my wedding weekend. She knew the string of heartbreaks that it took for me to find my husband, Ed. In that moment, I didn’t feel an exhale of “Wow, I finally found the one!” (I have, found the one, that is.) But I felt really proud of myself more than anything.

I have a PhD in taking the scenic route (and funnily enough, one of the turns I almost took on the scenic route was getting my PhD). It’s something that I used to be embarrassed about. While my friends were getting promoted, getting raises, and updating their LinkedIn profiles, I was quietly building things that didn’t make sense to anyone else (or even myself, at times).