Watch Here 📺

There was a moment during my conversation with when we started talking about accountability.

And somewhere inside that conversation was a question I think we struggle with far more than we admit:

What do we do with people after they get something wrong?

Not whether consequences should exist.

Not whether harm should be ignored.

But what comes after.

Queen talked about periods of her life when she was undiagnosed, unmedicated, struggling with substances, and making choices she eventually had to answer for.

She did probation.

She dealt with consequences.

She had to take responsibility for what she had done.

But something else happened too.

People gave her resources.

People helped her.

People didn’t decide that the worst version of her was the only version she would ever get to be.

And now she’s finished her bachelor’s degree, made the Dean’s List, is headed into graduate school, and works with young people carrying their own complicated histories. Earlier in the conversation she talked about approaching traumatized kids differently because she remembers what she would have needed when she was the person struggling.

That feels important.

Because sometimes we talk about accountability as though compassion somehow weakens it.

As though understanding why somebody behaved a certain way means pretending the behavior was acceptable.

As though the only choices are punishment or forgiveness.

Maybe there’s another option.

Maybe someone can be responsible for the harm they caused and still deserve help.

Maybe consequences can exist alongside resources.

Maybe understanding someone isn’t the same thing as excusing them.

Maybe care isn’t removing accountability.

Maybe real care is asking what gives somebody the best chance of not ending up in the exact same place again.

Queen said something during our conversation that gets right to it:

“We have to treat the whole person.”

And I keep thinking about how many of our systems don’t.

How often we isolate the behavior we want to stop without asking what is underneath it.

How often we punish symptoms.

How quickly we reduce somebody to a diagnosis, mistake, addiction, criminal record, bad relationship, breakdown, relapse, or worst decision.

And how different our communities might look if accountability wasn’t the end of somebody’s story.

Maybe the better question isn’t whether people deserve second chances.

Maybe it’s:

Who could someone become if their worst moment wasn’t where we stopped caring about them?

Step Inside 🗝✨

Read more

Subscribe now

If you prefer listening:

Continue the conversation:

There are decisions we make that feel enormous when we’re making them: moving, leaving, staying, starting over, choosing the person, choosing the job, choosing the city, choosing the version of ourselves we’re convinced we’re finally supposed to become.

And because the decision was enormous, we expect the answer to be permanent.

I know this because I moved my life to Florida.

At one point, Florida was the decision. I packed up the life I knew and moved somewhere completely different. And when you make a decision that big, there’s a certain amount of identity that gets wrapped around it:

I did this.

I chose this.

This is my life now.

And I was grateful for that life.

While I was living in Florida, I became the first person in my immediate family to buy a home. I was in my twenties, and I remember the pride I had in that accomplishment. I had done something that felt enormous to me. I had built something that was mine.

Leaving Florida didn’t take that away from me.

It didn’t make me less proud of buying that house. It didn’t make the accomplishment less significant. It didn’t mean I suddenly looked back at everything Florida had given me and decided none of it mattered.

I was grateful.

And eventually, I also knew I needed something different.

I think sometimes we treat those two feelings as though they can’t exist together.

If I’m grateful for this life, shouldn’t I want to keep it?

If I’m proud of what I’ve built, why would I leave it?

If this was once exactly what I wanted, what does it mean that I don’t want it anymore?

But gratitude doesn’t obligate us to stay.

Eventually, the circumstances around my life changed enough that keeping that house wasn’t going to keep me happy.

That didn’t make leaving easy.

When you make a decision as big as moving your entire life somewhere, deciding to come back can feel like more than another move. Because then pride gets involved.

If I go back, what does that say about the decision I made to come here?

Was I wrong?

Did I fail?

Did I waste all this time?

And I think that’s where we get ourselves stuck sometimes.

We assume that because something is no longer right for us, it must have always been wrong.

I don’t believe that anymore.

I don’t think my time in Florida was wasted. I don’t think moving there was some giant mistake I eventually had to correct.

Florida served a purpose in my life.

Till it didn’t.

And maybe that’s one of the harder things to accept about our lives.

Sometimes we never really know how long something will continue to serve a purpose.

We want guarantees before we choose:

If I move here, will I stay forever?

If I love this person, will we grow old together?

If I build this career, will I still want it twenty years from now?

If I chase this dream, will it eventually become the life I imagined?

But we’re asking our present selves to predict people we haven’t become yet.

How could we possibly know?

Maybe something can be exactly what you needed at 27 and completely wrong for you at 37.

Maybe a relationship can teach you something about love without being the relationship you stay in forever.

Maybe a career can support you, challenge you, introduce you to people who change your life, and still eventually become somewhere you don’t belong anymore.

Maybe a city can become home and then one day stop feeling like it.

None of that erases what came before.

The ending doesn’t get to rewrite the entire story.

And I wonder how often we stay somewhere past its purpose because leaving feels like admitting we were wrong.

There is pride in permanence.

We like being able to say, I knew.

I knew this was the person.

I knew this was the career.

I knew this was where I belonged.

Changing our minds ruins the neatness of that story.

But maybe changing your mind isn’t always an admission that you chose incorrectly.

Sometimes it’s evidence that you’ve been paying attention.

Because there’s another question hiding underneath the one you brought into The Study:

Not Was this the right decision?

But Is this decision still right for me now?

Those questions sound similar, but they’re asking you to look in completely different directions.

The first asks you to put the past on trial.

The second asks you to look at the life you’re actually living.

And maybe that’s where my answer to your question lives.

I don’t think you necessarily have to know the difference between being grateful for your life and wanting something completely different.

Because I’m not sure there is a difference.

You can be grateful for something and still leave it.

You can love what something gave you without requiring it to keep being where you belong.

You can be proud of the life you’ve built without promising to live inside it forever.

You can honor the person who made the original decision without requiring the person you’ve become to keep making it.

Maybe that’s the part we don’t say enough.

You aren’t only choosing your life once.

You’re choosing it over and over again.

And sometimes the most honest thing you can do is notice when you’ve been choosing something simply because you already chose it before.

Before you leave the room…

What in your life might have been the right choice then but deserves to be reconsidered now?

Have something you’d like another perspective on?

Bring it into The Study.

Selected submissions are answered anonymously.

[Enter The Study →]

Subscribe now

Watch Here 📺

There was a moment during my conversation with Andy when they said something that stayed with me:

Sometimes we have to drop the story of what we wanted our future to be and live inside what our present actually is.

And I think there’s a particular kind of grief hidden inside that.

Not only grieving people.

Not only grieving things that happened.

Sometimes we grieve entire lives that never happened.

The family we imagined.

The career we thought would last.

The relationship we were sure would work.

The city we thought would become home.

The version of ourselves we assumed we’d eventually become.

Andy talked openly about wanting motherhood from childhood, going through IVF, losing their father during that same period, and eventually having to confront the possibility that the future they had imagined for most of their life might look completely different.

And what struck me wasn’t some neat story about “everything happening for a reason.”

It was the willingness to leave the door open.

Maybe motherhood happens differently.

Maybe writing becomes part of the dream.

Maybe helping people becomes part of it.

Maybe the next version of your life isn’t something you can even imagine yet.

We spend so much of our lives trying to create certainty.

This is who I’ll be.

This is what my life will look like.

This is where I’m going.

And then life occasionally walks in, knocks the entire blueprint off the table, and asks:

Okay. Now what?

Maybe part of becoming ourselves is learning to answer that question without immediately replacing the old blueprint with another one.

Maybe we can grieve what didn’t happen while still being curious about what might.

Maybe changing the dream doesn’t mean the original dream wasn’t real.

And maybe there are versions of our lives waiting for us that we couldn’t have imagined from where we started.

Below are a few prompts inspired by this week’s conversation. Don’t rush through them. Just sit with the one that stays with you.

Step Inside 🗝✨

Read more

Subscribe now

If you prefer to listen to us:

If you would like to be “grossed” out:

The Poetic Pause 🌄

Porcelain Sunrise

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental…

Read more

2 months ago · 40 likes · 26 comments · Andrea (Andy) Curran 🌄

Continue the Conversation….

I don’t remember ever having a good answer.

I don’t remember much of my childhood in general, but I remember the question. I remember being very young and knowing there were things I liked, but never having that one thing I felt passionately enough about to call a dream.

I loved basketball. But loving basketball and believing I was going to become a basketball player were two different things. I never really saw that life for myself.

I don’t remember seeing another one either.

And for most of my life, I don’t think I thought much about the fact that I never had a childhood dream.

There are so many stories about people who knew.

The singer who was performing for anyone who would listen at four years old. The athlete who spent their entire childhood practicing. The writer who had been filling notebooks since they learned how to hold a pencil.

Then there are the stories about people who dreamed wildly as children until adulthood taught them to be realistic.

We talk a lot about losing our dreams.

I don’t remember having one to lose.

But lately, I’ve realized something strange.

I have one now.

For the first time in my life, I can actually see the life I want.

And when I picture it, I don’t picture a job.

I picture a morning.

I wake up naturally, whenever my body is ready. I take my dog for a walk. I come home and make breakfast without wondering whether there’s enough food in the refrigerator or whether buying more will leave me short somewhere else.

I don’t rush.

I don’t immediately get into my car because I need to make enough money that day to survive. I don’t put thousands of miles on something I can’t afford to replace because my ability to pay my bills depends on continuing to drive it.

My time belongs to me.

I have a space that feels peaceful, a space I’ve created for myself where my mind is allowed to wander.

Maybe I write that morning.

Maybe I’m preparing for a conversation with someone I find interesting.

Maybe I’m revisiting an old discussion and finding something in it I didn’t hear the first time.

Maybe I go somewhere I’ve never been simply because I’m curious.

I create. I talk to people. I explore. I notice things.

And somehow, by living that way and creating from what I find, I’ve built something sustainable.

That’s the dream.

And the bigger I’ve allowed myself to dream, the more I’ve imagined what could happen if that life created more than I needed.

I think about abundance a lot differently now.

I don’t dream about having money just so I can keep accumulating more of it.

I dream about having enough.

Enough that the people I love are okay.

Enough that what I build can continue taking care of people long after I’m gone.

Enough that on some completely ordinary Wednesday, I can notice someone being kind when they don’t know anyone is watching and decide to do something kind for them.

I was moved, so I moved something.

Maybe nobody ever knows about it.

Maybe one day enough people know my name that they recognize what I’m doing.

Either way, I want the person to matter more than the audience.

I want to remain someone who notices.

The stranger thing is, the more clearly I can see this dream now, the more I understand why I might not have been able to name it when I was little.

Where was the example?

What was I supposed to call this when someone asked me what I wanted to be?

We teach children to dream in occupations.

Doctor.

Teacher.

Firefighter.

Athlete.

We hand them nouns and ask them to imagine themselves inside one.

Even as adults, we tend to introduce ourselves by what we do for money. Our work becomes one of the easiest ways to explain who we are.

But nobody ever showed me that the life itself could be the dream.

Nobody showed me what to call someone who wanted to make things, talk to people, follow her curiosity, have ownership over her time, create enough to sustain herself, and eventually have enough left over to pour some of it back into the world.

Maybe there wasn’t a name for what I wanted.

Maybe that’s why none of the answers ever felt like mine.

And maybe that’s why finding this dream now feels less like discovering something completely new and more like finally finding language for something I couldn’t explain before.

Because when I strip away the writing and the podcast and the money and the possibility that one day people might know my name, there’s something much simpler underneath all of it.

I want to move through the world as myself.

Curious.

Creative.

Observant.

Sometimes ridiculous.

Interested in other humans.

Able to follow something simply because it moves me.

I want to make a living without having to become a different version of myself to do it.

Maybe that’s what I couldn’t see when I was little.

Everyone kept asking what I wanted to be when I grew up.

And maybe the reason I never found an answer wasn’t because I didn’t know.

Maybe I never wanted to become somebody else.

Maybe I never wanted the costume.

Maybe I just wanted a life where I was free to be me.

Subscribe now

Before you leave the room…

There are so many versions of a life we’re taught to want before we ever get the chance to imagine our own.

What would your life look like if you stopped asking who you’re supposed to become and started asking how you actually want to live?

If there’s something you’ve been thinking about and want another perspective, bring it into The Study. Questions, situations, thoughts, feelings, whatever you’re sitting with selected submissions become anonymous response pieces inside The Study.

Bring something to The Study.

Watch Here 📺

One of the things that stayed with me after talking with was the idea of self-authorship.

We spend so much time talking about becoming.

Becoming healthier.
Becoming more confident.
Becoming more successful.
Becoming the version of ourselves we think we’re supposed to eventually reach.

But what if some of that becoming is actually unlearning?

talked about deconditioning, recognizing the roles, expectations, masks, and ways of moving through the world that we picked up long before we were conscious enough to choose them.

The code-switching.

The performing.

The instinct to make someone else’s feelings our responsibility.

The need to constantly optimize ourselves because simply existing as we are somehow doesn’t feel like enough.

At one point in the conversation, we landed on this strange contradiction: we are always evolving, but we are also trying to remember who we already are.

And maybe both can be true.

Maybe growth isn’t always about adding something.

Sometimes it’s noticing what you can finally put down.

Sometimes it’s letting your decisions belong to you again.

Sometimes it’s allowing yourself to be seen without changing shape first.

And sometimes the hardest part isn’t discovering who you are.

It’s believing that person was enough before anyone else gave you permission to be them.

Below are a few prompts inspired by this week’s conversation. Don’t rush through them. Just sit with the one that stays with you.

Step Inside 🗝✨

Read more

Subscribe now

If you prefer to listen to us:

Continue the conversation….

How much should it cost you to have a job?

I’m sure most people would instinctively say nothing. You shouldn’t have to pay to work.

Except that isn’t entirely true.

People spend thousands of dollars on degrees to qualify for jobs. Commercial drivers pay to obtain licenses. Some professions require certifications, equipment, uniforms, continuing education or memberships just to remain eligible to do the work.

In one way or another, having a job costs a lot of us something.

But what happens when the cost isn’t simply getting the job?

What happens when doing the job costs you money every single day?

And what happens when the company you’re working for has built its business around that being your problem?

That is the part of the gig economy I didn’t fully understand until I became a part of it.

For almost two years, I have delivered food through Uber Eats.

The arrangement is simple enough on the surface. Uber provides the platform. Restaurants provide the food. Customers place the orders. Drivers pick them up and deliver them.

But drivers provide something else that is essential to making the entire transaction possible.

The vehicle.

Uber doesn’t have to purchase the car I use to perform its deliveries. It doesn’t have to finance it. It doesn’t have to fill the gas tank. It doesn’t have to replace the tires, change the oil, repair the brakes, pay the insurance, fix whatever breaks next or absorb the depreciation created by adding thousands of miles to it.

I do.

That is the agreement. I’m an independent contractor. I provide my own vehicle and I’m responsible for the expenses that come with it.

I understand that.

What I understand differently after almost two years is how much that agreement actually costs.

Because cars don’t send you an invoice at the end of every shift.

The costs arrive slowly.

Another tank of gas. Another oil change. Another 10,000 miles. Then tires. Then brakes. Then something you weren’t expecting, like suspension repairs.

Eventually, the repair costs more than you made that week.

And if the car stops moving, the income stops with it.

The app doesn’t.

The company doesn’t.

You do.

My car is a 2021 Subaru Crosstrek with more than 96,000 miles on it, and I still owe approximately $15,000. It will almost certainly cross 100,000 miles before the end of this year.

Recently, I spent nearly $1,000 getting it back on the road after being without it for two months.

Those numbers are personal to me.

The problem they represent isn’t.

Traditional businesses that operate vehicles already understand that transportation is an operating expense. Fuel, maintenance, repairs, insurance and depreciation are costs of doing business.

Gig delivery didn’t make those expenses disappear.

It changed who pays them.

Even the federal government recognizes that business mileage has a cost. As of July 1, the IRS standard business mileage rate is 76 cents per mile. That isn’t a measurement of what every individual vehicle costs to operate, but the rate exists because using a vehicle for business has an economic cost.

That matters when we talk about what gig workers make.

Uber shows drivers an earnings number. That number can include fares paid by Uber and tips paid by customers.

There are days when customers contribute more to my earnings through tips than Uber contributes through fares.

I appreciate those customers.

But tips are supposed to reward service.

They shouldn’t have to rescue the economics of the job.

Then there is time.

Delivery apps distinguish between the time a worker is actively completing an order and the time they are simply online.

If I’m sitting in my car waiting for an order worth accepting, I’m not delivering anything, but I’m also not doing whatever I want with that time.

If a delivery takes me several miles away from the area where I usually work, getting back takes time and fuel. If I decline an order because the compensation doesn’t justify the distance, I’m still waiting for another opportunity to earn.

This is where the language of flexibility can hide a much more complicated reality.

Flexibility is valuable.

It is one of the reasons I do this work.

There are people who need to work around children, caregiving, school, another job, health, creative work or simply a life that doesn’t fit neatly between nine and five.

But flexibility and financial protection are not opposites.

We have simply allowed much of the gig economy to develop as though they are.

And then there is the transaction itself.

The customer is paying. Depending on the order, they may be paying higher menu prices, delivery fees, service fees, long-range fees or a membership fee to use the platform.

The restaurant is paying. Restaurants can pay Uber marketplace fees of up to 30% on orders generated through the platform.

The driver is paying. We’re supplying the vehicle, the fuel, the insurance, the maintenance and the miles necessary to get the order from one place to another.

Everyone involved is bringing something tangible to make that delivery possible.

The customer brings the money.

The restaurant brings the food, the employees and the physical location necessary to prepare it.

The driver brings the labor and the vehicle necessary to move it.

Uber brings the platform that connects us.

That platform obviously has value. Without it, this particular transaction probably doesn’t happen.

But after doing this work for almost two years, I have started wondering whether the value being extracted from each part of that transaction reflects the value each part is actually contributing.

Because when the customer is paying to use the system, the restaurant is paying to participate in the system and the driver is paying to physically carry out the transaction, it seems reasonable to ask:

Who is the system actually designed to protect?

And money isn’t the only thing the worker absorbs.

There are restaurants I no longer accept orders from because there is nowhere reasonable to park. I learned that lesson by getting tickets.

The ticket is my responsibility. I parked the car.

But I was there because I was performing a delivery.

Then there is the phone.

The entire job lives inside it.

The offer. The distance. The pay. The address. The navigation. The messages from customers. The instructions for completing the delivery.

Uber tells drivers to follow distracted-driving and phone-use laws. Of course we should.

But it is still worth asking what it means to build driving work around an app that necessarily competes for some amount of the driver’s attention.

Even mounted on my dashboard, I have to look at it. I have to process what it’s telling me. I have to make decisions based on the information appearing on it.

I have been pulled over while doing this work because of my phone.

The ticket was mine.

The risk was mine.

The same thing happens when something goes wrong with a delivery.

A restaurant is running behind. A customer enters the wrong address. You can’t get into an apartment building. The customer doesn’t answer. The app glitches.

Suddenly the driver becomes the person trying to solve the problem.

Getting actual help from Uber can become another task entirely, working through menus and options while the minutes keep passing.

None of that appears on an earnings statement.

Neither does the frustration, the tension or the mental load.

The longer I have done this work, the more interested I have become in where the costs and problems land.

Because so many of them seem to travel in the same direction.

Down.

Some governments have already decided that shouldn’t be the entire arrangement.

In New York City, app-based restaurant and grocery delivery workers have minimum pay protections. As of April 2026, covered workers must receive at least $22.13 per hour before tips for the time covered by the city’s minimum-pay rules.

I live in New York.

I deliver for Uber Eats in New York.

But I don’t do it inside New York City.

So those protections don’t apply to me.

Seattle has taken an approach that caught my attention for a different reason.

Mileage.

Its 2026 minimum-payment formula for covered app-based workers includes 47 cents for every engaged minute and 80 cents for every engaged mile, or a minimum of $5.34 per offer, whichever calculation produces the greater minimum payment.

Someone writing that law acknowledged something delivery workers understand every time we turn the key:

Miles cost money.

So this is no longer a hypothetical conversation about whether regulating this industry is possible.

It is already being regulated.

The question is why protection remains so dependent on geography.

Maybe the better question isn’t whether cities like New York and Seattle have gone too far.

Maybe it’s why so many other places haven’t followed them.

Companies like Uber have argued that regulation must preserve one of the things workers value most about gig work: flexibility.

I agree with that.

I don’t want a traditional schedule. I don’t want to ask permission to log off. I don’t want to lose the ability to decide when working makes sense for me.

But I don’t believe our only choices are flexibility with minimal protection or traditional employment with all of its restrictions.

That feels like a false choice.

New York City and Seattle have already shown that gig work can continue while companies are required to meet additional standards.

So maybe the conversation shouldn’t be about whether gig work needs to become something else.

Maybe it should be about what basic protections should exist inside the version we already have.

Mileage is one place to start. Pay transparency is another. Access to support when something goes wrong. Protections that recognize that the person completing the delivery is not only providing the labor but also supplying the equipment necessary to perform it.

None of those things require delivery apps to disappear.

They require us to decide where the line is between flexibility and exploitation.

Because this industry is no longer new.

Gig work has had years to become part of everyday life. Customers understand it. Restaurants understand it. Workers understand it.

The technology has matured.

The business model has matured.

Maybe the protections surrounding the people doing the work should mature too.

But before any of that can change, I think we have to do something much simpler.

We have to stop treating the way things currently work as proof that this is the way they have to work.

Because somewhere along the way, we agreed that this was the deal.

The customer pays.

The restaurant pays.

The driver pays.

The platform grows.

And maybe the first step toward deciding whether that arrangement is fair is finally questioning why we agreed to it in the first place.

Before you leave the room…

There are things we accept every day simply because “that’s how it works.”

What’s something you’ve started questioning?

If there’s something you’ve been thinking about and want another perspective, bring it into The Study.

Questions, situations, thoughts, feelings whatever you’re sitting with. Selected submissions become anonymous response pieces inside The Study.

Bring something to The Study →

Subscribe now

Watch Here 📺

What I liked most about this conversation wasn’t the idea that a birth chart could define us. It was the idea that sometimes we need a different lens to help us notice what has already been there.

kept coming back to self-discovery as a way to better understand ourselves, give ourselves more grace, and make sense of the patterns, beliefs, relationships, and parts of our personality that we may have never really stopped to examine.

Somewhere along the way, the conversation became less about astrology and more about courage, confidence, protecting our energy, loving ourselves, and being curious enough to keep learning who we are.

Maybe the point isn’t to find something outside of yourself that tells us who we are. Maybe it’s to stay open enough to keep discovering yourself.

Below are a few prompts inspired by this week’s conversation. Don’t rush through them. Just sit with the one that stays with you.

Step Inside 🗝✨

Read more

If you prefer to listen:

Subscribe now

Continue the Conversation….:

Watch Here 🎧

One of the things that stood out to me most was how much Anna’s life today exists because she was willing to take a chance on herself before she knew how things would turn out.

The community.

The routine.

The friendships.

The relationship.

None of it came with gurantees. It all came after the decision.

I think a lot of us spend our lives waiting for proof that something will work before we’re willing to try. But life doesnt usually offer certainty first. Sometimes it simply asks us to trust ourselves enough to take the next step.

So I’m curious:

What’s one decision you made before you felt ready that ended up changing your life?

Below are a few prompts inspired by this week’s conversation. Don’t rush through them. Just sit with the one that stays with you.

Step Inside🗝✨

Read more

Subscribe now

If you prefer to just listen:

If you want to see the one from a year ago:

Continue to the Conversation….

A month ago, I posted an invitation in The Den for a virtual sleepover party. The only rule was simple:

Don’t bring a gift.

Bring a game.

What happened next became one of my favorite conversations of the year.

immediately informed me there was clearly a typo because there’s no way I’m turning 37. According to him, the invitation should have said 27.

is bringing a deck of cards, a willingness to relearn poker, and enough snacks to feed an entire party. We’re talking fruit trays, veggies, cheese and crackers, cookies, and cake.

is excited.

approved of the idea.

is bringing tarot cards, which feels like a mandatory sleepover requirement.

is bringing cards and poker chips.

somehow managed to bring a PS2 and the entire SingStar collection, along with earplugs for anyone who values their hearing.

called the whole thing adorable.

is bringing Dream Phone and a wave of childhood nostalgia.

declared the idea ridiculously cute.

is bringing Green Glass Door or Connect Four and plans to join after work.

got so excited she briefly forgot where they were going, then volunteered bringing non-alcoholic beer and Scrabble.

loved the idea and is checking the details.

is hoping to make it after work.

is bringing a game of 20 Questions and only needs to know what time to arrive.

checked to make sure the guys were allowed before celebrating a fellow member of the Class of 1989. Since no game immediately came to mind, he volunteered random trivia with Talon Marlowe while everyone admires Chip, his dog, which honestly sounds like a perfectly acceptable party activity.

is bringing Mastermind.

is bringing Gran Banco, the Costa Rican version of Monopoly, plus Exploding Kittens. As a backup plan, he recruited to lead a game of charades.

immediately volunteered blindfolds.

To this day, nobody has explained how blind charades is supposed to work.

And is bringing Jägerbombs, her bucket list for comparison and additions, and homemade lasagna, the one dish she says she can never mess up.

The funny thing is that I asked people to bring games.

What they actually brought was themselves.

Their humor.

Their nostalgia.

Their curiosity.

Their chaos.

Their kindness.

Some brought cards.

Some brought food.

Some brought strategy.

Some brought stories.

Some brought trivia.

Some brought dogs.

Some brought complete and utter nonsense.

And somehow all of it feels exactly right.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate moments like this more than I ever used to. Moments where people choose to show up. Where they share a laugh, an idea, a memory, or a ridiculous game nobody has thought about in twenty years.

Today may be my birthday, but this post isn’t really about turning 37.

It’s about being reminded that community is built one conversation at a time.

A simple invitation became tarot cards, poker chips, SingStar, Dream Phone, Monopoly, Exploding Kittens, homemade lasagna, random trivia, blindfolds, a dog named Chip, and a game nobody can explain.

It became people making time for each other.

It became something to look forward to.

So thank you to everyone who accepted the invitation. Thank you to everyone bringing games, snacks, stories, laughter, and a little bit of yourselves.

I can’t wait to spend the evening with all of you.

And , for the record, I’m still claiming 27.

It wasn’t prescribed to me. It came from a friend. When I got home, my family noticed a difference almost immediately. Whatever they saw was enough that nobody seemed concerned. If anything, there was a sense of relief.

Maybe this was something that could help.

So I made a doctor’s appointment.

I told the doctor Xanax had helped, and from that point on, it became part of my life.

Over the years, the prescription followed me from one doctor to another. At its highest point, I was taking one milligram three times a day.

Xanax became part of how I managed my anxiety. I knew when I was reaching for it. I knew the situations that made me want it. I knew where I kept it. For years, it was one of the tools I relied on to get through the day.

Looking back, what stands out isn’t that I was taking it. What stands out is that nobody seemed interested in talking about where the road eventually led.

What I don’t remember is anyone talking about what happens next.

I don’t remember conversations about what success would look like five years later.

I don’t remember conversations about dependence.

I don’t remember conversations about what would happen if I ever wanted to stop taking it.

I don’t remember anyone discussing an exit plan.

Maybe those conversations happened, and I don’t remember them. That’s possible. Memory has become a complicated subject for me. What I do know is that if those conversations took place, they never became part of the way I understood my treatment.

The focus was always on starting, never on what came after.

When I moved to Florida, staying on Xanax became easy. I saw my primary care physician twice a year. Refills were routine. The prescription continued.

Looking back, that’s one of the things that troubles me most.

Continuing the medication felt easy.

Questioning whether I should still be taking it never seemed to be part of the process.

Years later, when I moved back to New York, the conversation finally shifted.

Everyone seemed to agree on one thing:

I had been taking Xanax for too long.

The goal became getting me off the medication.

Looking back, I understand why those concerns existed. What surprised me was how different the experience felt.

Getting on the medication was straightforward.

Getting off it felt like something I was expected to figure out on my own.

The dose was reduced, then reduced again, then reduced again.

Everybody seemed concerned about the fact that I was taking Xanax, but fewer people seemed interested in helping me with the thing I was taking it for in the first place.

That’s the part I still struggle with.

If anxiety was the reason I started taking Xanax, what was supposed to replace it?

Where were the conversations about living with anxiety without the medication?

Where were the tools?

Where was the guidance?

Where was the support?

Nobody seemed interested in helping me learn how to live without the thing that had been helping me live with anxiety for more than a decade.

The medication became the problem that needed solving.

The anxiety rarely felt like part of the conversation anymore.

The prescription changed.

The support never seemed to change with it.

Years later, I find myself thinking less about the medication and more about the conversations that never happened.

If I could go back and sit in that doctor’s office again, there are things I wish someone had discussed with me.

I wish someone had explained what researchers knew and didn’t know about long-term use.

I wish someone had explained dependence without shame or judgment.

I wish someone had explained how often we should reevaluate whether the medication was still the best option.

I wish someone had explained what getting off it might involve if I ever decided to stop.

Most of all, I wish someone had explained that starting a medication and staying on a medication are two different conversations.

Because looking back, I don’t think every patient needs the same plan.

Some people may benefit from medication for longer than others. Some people may decide the benefits outweigh the risks. Those decisions belong between patients and their healthcare providers.

What I believe every patient deserves, however, is clarity.

If a medication has an entrance plan, it should have an exit plan.

And somewhere between those two plans, there should be a plan for the person taking it.

My experience isn’t unique.

According to SAMHSA, more than 24 million Americans reported using prescription benzodiazepines in 2024. More than 3 million reported misusing them.

The FDA has reported that tens of millions of benzodiazepine prescriptions continue to be dispensed each year in the United States. The agency has also noted that many patients remain on these medications for extended periods of time and strengthened boxed warnings because of concerns related to misuse, addiction, physical dependence, and withdrawal.

Those numbers suggest that millions of people may eventually face the same questions I did.

What happens next?

What happens when the medication that helped becomes something you’re trying to leave behind?

Who helps you then?

The older I get, the less interested I am in assigning blame.

I’m more interested in asking better questions.

What would happen if every prescription came with a conversation about what comes next?

What would happen if reevaluation was treated as an expected part of care rather than an afterthought?

What would happen if support increased when people decided it was time to stop?

My experience won’t change, but maybe someone else’s can.

That’s reason enough to keep asking the question.

Listen Here 🎧

One of the things that stayed with me after this conversation wasn’t addiction itself. It was how often we mistake survival for living.

Listening to describe the life she’s built today made me realize that healing isn’t always found in one dramatic moment.

Sometimes it looks like paying your own bills. Feeling safe enough to ask for help. Spending a day at the beach without needing proof that it happened. Or finally recognizing that a relationship you’ve been carrying no longer belongs in your future.

Recovery doesn’t only belong to people overcoming addiction.

Many of us are recovering from versions of ourselves that were built around fear, survival, grief, unhealthy relationships, or believing we weren’t worthy of something better.

Maybe getting your life back isn’t about becoming someone new.

Maybe it’s about finally believing you’re allowed to become who you’ve always been capable of becoming.

Below are a few prompts inspired by this week’s conversation. Don’t rush through them. Just sit with the one that stays with you.

Step Inside ✨🗝

Read more

Subscribe now

If you prefer to just listen:

If you haven’t read it yet what are you waiting for?

Continue the conversation….

If you haven’t listened to this week’s conversation with yet, you can start here.

Listen Here 🎧

Some conversations don’t hand us answers.

They hand us better questions.

This week wasn’t really about healthcare, hiring, journalism, or politics. Those were simply the doors we walked through. The conversation underneath all of them asked something much bigger:

It’s easy to point at broken systems and feel powerless. It’s harder to notice the small ways we either reinforce them or quietly resist them every single day.

Every interaction.
Every assumption.
Every story we choose to believe.
Every person we decide is worth listening to.

Real change rarely begins with a headline.

It begins with someone becoming curious enough to question what everyone else has accepted as normal.

Maybe that’s where all meaningful change starts.

Not with certainty, but with curiosity.

Below are a few prompts inspired by this week’s conversation. Don’t rush through them. Just sit with the one that stays with you.

Step Inside 🗝✨

Read more

Subscribe now

If you prefer to just listen to our conversation:

This week’s Perspective Experiment inspired note:

The Perspective Ecperiment is designed to continue to highlight all in this community. Thank you for being this weeks inspo.

If you havent yet read or listened, what are your waiting for?:

Hi, Human

S2 E2: The Great Shirt Hunt

Names have been changed to avoid tampering with active cold-case investigations…

Read more

2 months ago · 17 likes · 3 comments · Chief Absurdist Officer and Garrett

Continue the Conversation…:

There are certain conversations we’ll probably have someday.

We just hope that someday stays far enough away that we don’t have to think about it today.

Over the weekend, I listened to two woman talk about their mothers.

One is paying $16,000 a month for dementia care.

Another was paying $13,000 a month for a nursing home.

The numbers were staggering.

What stayed with me was the realization that both families were trying to do the same thing. They were trying to make sure someone they loved was cared for, & that realization led to a question I haven’t been able to shake.

Because those aren’t the same thing.

One asks whether we’ve saved enough money.

The other asks what kind of world we’ve built for the version of ourselves we all hope to become.

If I’m fortunate enough to live long enough, there may come a day when I need help.

Maybe because my body can’t do what it once could.

Maybe because my memory begins to fade.

Maybe because time eventually reminds us that independence doesn’t last forever.

If that day comes...

What would I hope for?

Would I hope I could afford it?

Or would I hope the place caring for me felt like a community instead of an institution?

Would I hope the people caring for me had enough support to care instead of simply making it through another shift?

Enough dignity built into the system to remind me that growing old didn’t make me any less human?

Maybe there are realities about elder care that I don’t understand yet, but I want to.

Because the more I think about it, the less this feels like a conversation about nursing homes.

It feels like a conversation about the future every one of us hopes to have.

We all hope we’ll live long enough to grow old.

We just don’t spend much time asking what growing old should actually look like. Or what kind of care another human being deserves when they get there.

Nursing homes shouldn’t be places we spend our lives hoping to avoid.

They should be places we’d feel grateful existed if we ever needed them.

Because if we’re fortunate enough to grow old...

The people we’re talking about today won’t be someone else’s parents anymore.

They’ll be us.

Some numbers I couldn’t stop thinking about:

• About 70% of Americans who reach age 65 will need some form of long-term care during their lifetime.

• The national median cost of a private nursing home room is approximately $129,575 per year (about $10,800 per month). A semi-private room averages about $114,975 per year (about $9,600 per month).

• In New York, the median annual cost of a private nursing home room is approximately $200,750 per year (about $16,730 per month). A semi-private room averages about $186,333 per year (about $15,530 per month).

These numbers don’t answer my questions.

They give me more of them.

Where does the money go?

What do caregivers need to provide the kind of care they’d want for the people they love...

Or themselves?

What would residents say they’re missing?

What would families change if they could?

If growing old is a future most of us hope to reach... why aren’t we talking more about the kind of care waiting for us when we get there?

If this topic resonates with you highly recommend you read:

Learning To Live In Translation

Caring for Parents in Need: A Child's Responsibility?

Today’s topic is one of the subjects that our subscriber HATIM requested for me to write about specifically about caring for elderly parents…

Read more

a month ago · 2 likes · C Simone