I know you feel like you always need to be the strong one. I know you believe that your main purpose is to be useful, that whoever is with you doesn’t actually love you, they just need you to feel something inside of themselves. I know that deep down you might feel used, discarded, and unwanted.

And so you have built your whole life around it. Your relationships, your jobs, your daily rhythms — all organized around being helpful. You anticipate the needs of those around you in a state of constant hypervigilance, meeting those needs before anyone even has to ask. You’r good at it.

I know.

You can’t say no. Because not being useful means being useless. And having needs of your own? That feels too scary. Too uncomfortable. Too foreign.

Sometimes the pressure gets so heavy that it comes out sideways… you run, you hide, you silence the call, you don’t respond to the text, or you quietly resent the people around you. Because you can’t have limits, or boundaries, or a voice. And when you do take the risk and ask for what you need, it comes out so big, so intense, maybe even irritated or controlling, not because you want it to, but because you are scared. Deeply scared that you are too much. That having needs will disqualify you from love.

Either way, the response feels like more rejection. More evidence that none of this is really about you. That if you don’t operate the only way you know how, giving people what they want — you will never be safe. You will never be loved. You will never belong.

I see you.

What Really Happened

The truth is, you might not realize this and people might not see it, but you felt rejection at some of the deepest levels, at some of your most vulnerable ages, from the very people who were meant to accept you most, even the parts of you that didn’t ever want to be put in the unfair roles you did

You might not have known that at the time but your body and mind are holding onto the deeply ingrained memory of it.

You were asked to be the parent. The best friend. The spouse. The emotional caretaker — to the very person who was supposed to protect you, supposed to be there to support you, supposed to create safety for you.

Even if it looked like love at the time, even if you thought your parent was choosing you, deep down your nervous system knew the truth on a level you couldn’t yet name: they were asking something from you that a child should never have to give nor is capable of ever giving.

Maybe you were placed between two fighting parents who vented to you about each other. Maybe you became the emotional caretaker and best friend for a fragile lonely mother. Maybe you were handed the weight of financial stress, marital unhappiness, or adult fear and anxiety from a angry father, and made to carry it as if it were yours to carry. Whatever it looked like, you were never meant to be the landing place for their overwhelm, their problems, their emotions, their frustration and their fears.

It was wrong. Deeply wrong.

You were set up to fail, because as a child, you didn’t have the brain or nervous system capable of holding any of that. It’s like handing a child a boulder twice their size and asking them to carry it up a hill. Impossible and crewel.

And the sad part is you would never have been able to make them feel seen enough, safe enough, loved enough, because those needs were never yours to meet.

They were adult needs. And you were a child.

Here’s the other sad truth: being set up to fail was always part of the unconscious system and the role you were made to play in it. While other adults can empathize, have understanding and compassion they can also push back, set boundaries, and hold a adult parent accountable and responsible for what is theres to own and take responsibility for, because they’re equals. A child cannot, and that’s exactly what makes a child so easy to dismiss and devalue if they say something the parent doesn’t like or guilt the child for hurting the parents feelings. Bringing adult problems to a child was never about finding real help, solutions, change and growth; it was about finding someone who couldn’t truly challenge them, so that they could subconsciously stay the eternal victim.​​​​​​

What you experienced has a name.

It’s called parentification.

And in many ways, it’s a form of neglect that’s harder to recognize because it doesn’t look like absence, it looks like too much presence. Too much closeness. Too much weight transferred onto shoulders too small to hold it. But your needs never got met they were in-fact neglected.

The moment anything difficult happened, instead of that moment being about creating safety and stability for you, it became about creating safety and stability for them. And you were left alone to deal with it, a child in a role no child should ever have to play, with no one to parent you in return. While you were busy meeting there emotional needs who was meeting yours, the most vulnerable person in the room? Even if you were safe enough to go to them about other issues in your life and get reassurance that fact is most likely you never able to go to them and get reassurance and repair over the weight of caring them and their problems.

What It Was Never About

Here is something I need you to hear, and I need you to let it land somewhere deep:

That rejection was never about you.

The identity it has spoken over you, the story it has told you about your worth, your needs, your right to take up space, none of that was ever true, none of that is who you actually are. It was the distorted worldview of a wounded person being projected onto an innocent child. You were not the problem. You were never the problem.

You were supposed to have a parent who asked how you were doing. Who let you bring your worry, your frustration, your pain, and responded with comfort, reassurance, and direction. Who created enough safety that you could say “I don’t want to do this” without them taking it personally. Who held and worked through their own emotions so you didn’t have to.

That’s how it was always meant to be.

That’s what you deserved. And you didn’t get it, not because you weren’t worth it, but because they weren’t capable of giving it.

Are your parents evil, horrible people? No. Most likely they are broken humans doing the best they could under the weight of their own unhealed childhood wounds, many of them actually moving the needle toward health from what they were raised with, and deserving real credit for that. You can hold understanding and compassion for them, and even find your way to forgiveness and honor for what they did do well. And you can also hold the truth of what happened. You can name it, grieve it, and stop letting it define you and set boundaries with them if needed. These things are not in conflict. They are both reality.

What It Cost You, And What You Don’t Have to Carry Anymore

When you grow up with a foundation of safety, you don’t question whether having needs will cost you love. You know how to let there be distance in relationships without spinning in anxiety. You know how to be intimate and vulnerable without bracing for impact or withdrawing. You can see where you end and another person begins, without being swept away by their chaos.

If you were parentified, its very difficult to know how that kind of reality could even exist inside of relationships.

And if thats you, you feel the weight of what I’m describing. You know it in your body.

But here is the other truth, the one you should hold from all of this:

You don’t have to carry this for the rest of your life.

You were a victim when you were a child. That is real, and it deserves to be acknowledged and grieved and held in tender regard. But also you are not a child anymore. And the beautiful, hard, life-giving work of healing means going back to those younger parts of yourself, the ones who had to grow up too fast, who never got to just be a kid, a teenager just a child in the relationship and bringing them into your present reality. Holding them. Telling them it wasn’t their fault. And slowly, with help and time and courage, teaching your nervous system what it was never given the chance to learn: that you are safe. That you are allowed to have needs and limits. That saying no will not cost you love. That your voice matters.

You can learn to let the people around you exist in their own chaos without needing to fix, rescue or flee from it. You can have boundaries with your relationships even with your parents or anyone else..real ones, and if they override those boundaries, then you know what you’re working with. Because relationships requires both people being able to have needs, take up space and honor each others limits. And if thats not a possibility then it was never a real relationship it was a dysfunctional, co-dependant attachment .You can grieve that, too, and decide what access that person or parent has to you.

But either way, the most important thing is this:

You can be free.

It might take some work. You might have to look at some painful things. You might have to make some hard choices. But freedom is real, and it is available to you. Healing is not a destination for other people, it is for you, too.

So from someone who sees you, who can see that the little kid inside of you is still hurting and still believes they have to earn their place in the world… let me say this clearly:

It’s worth going back for that kid. You are worth going back for.

You are not too much. You are not useless without your usefulness. You are not only lovable when you are needed.

You are loved. Full stop.

And you are worthy of receiving all the love you never got, and then some.

Go get it.

With love, understanding and compassion.

-Pietze

P.S I wrote this letter after having a conversation with someone close to me who experienced this is in very real way, my heart broke for them and for all the other I have worked with who have experienced parentification. I have seen the very real long term effects of it play out in so many peoples lives and relationships. I believe that Healing starts with curiosity and understanding, My heart to all is to bring understanding, compassion, and healing. I hope this little letter helps.

Ok I’m super excited to be writing this, because what I’m about to share has genuinely changed my life. I used to be someone who could get wrecked by a hard conversation for days, rattled with anxiety, stuck overthinking on a loop or stewing in anger when I felt out of control. These days I can’t stay wrecked for even an hour when something hard hits. Honestly, I’m not the same person I was.

There’s been a lot that’s gone into that, this hasn’t been one thing, it’s been years of work. But a huge piece of where I am now is this exact tool. I spent years in low-grade trauma and diagnosed PTSD, and I’m not living there anymore. Last year was one of the most emotionally intense years of my life, a lot came at me, and more than one person close to me has said some version of, “I don’t know how you’re this stable and handling all this right now.” It’s not that I don’t feel big emotions or get triggered, I still do. It’s that I don’t get stuck in them anymore.

I’ve built a handful of tools over the years that got me here (if you’ve done Pathway to Freedom with me, you know), but this one, this exact process, has been the single best tool I’ve found for taking threat energy in my body and flipping it into actual regulated peace. Not stuffing it. Not white-knuckling it. Actual peace.

And I’m not holding a single piece of it back. What I’m about to give you is what clients pay $$$ to learn in session, and I’m handing it over in full, this is my whole method. I’ve used it to go from completely dys-regulated, ready to blow my whole life up, to calm, connected, and even compassionate (wow, maybe I should call this the 3C method) in about 30 minutes. I’ve used this same method to help clients work through deep trauma they’d been stuck in for years. It’s fascinating how well it works.

This isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach, and some people do struggle with it. If I were working with you one-on-one in a session, I’d tailor it to you and the flow of your nervous system in a way that would get you there. That’s part of what makes me good at my job. I can intuitively, with God’s help, read where someone is and what they need, and go there.

But I can’t meet with all of you, as much as I wish I could, and I have a waitlist. That’s part of why I started this Substack, to connect with all of you in a more meaningful way and help more people. I’ve also had so many clients say to me, “I wish you could have been with me in the moment, I wish you could have walked me through this when I really needed it.”

Before we get into the practical how-tos, let me back up and tell you how I developed it and why this method actually works.

Of course that means taking you into one of my worst moments, because apparently that’s where I learn my best lessons, the ones I end up passing on to everyone I work with. Apparently God is committed to me being an open book and living a shame-free life. Hahah. Honestly I’ll take it.

Let me set the scene…

Jonny and I were mid fight. For the record, we’ve had exactly one fight in our entire marriage, this is like our one bad marriage moment. We’re perfect like that. 😂

I was hurt, really hurt, and when I’m hurt it’s the hardest time for me to access healthy tools and stay regulated. The more I tried to get him to see it, the more he got defensive and eventually shut down, which made me angrier and louder, because I felt desperate, I was at the end of my rope, I needed him to get it, I needed to feel safe again. And somewhere in there my internal monologue turned into “I will die on this hill, even until the end of my relationship with this man.” Healthy. Very healthy. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all about limits and boundaries, but this wasn’t either of those, this was pain, hurt, and disregulation making the calls, basically my hurt little girl was running the show and ready to run my life right off a cliff in righteous anger.

That is not a great place to try to get heard and seen from, and it’s an even worse place to parent, work, or love anybody from. Because when that part of you is in control, the adult, logic-grounded part of you is nowhere to be found. Most of us have been there. Zero to “I might burn my life down” in thirty seconds flat, stuck in a blinded trigger. Not because we are idiots, because we are hurt, in pain, scared, and we can’t find a way out.

If that’s you, you are not broken. You never learned how to walk yourself through an emotion instead of white-knuckling it, exploding it onto whoever’s closest, or smiling through it while you spiral on the inside. And for most of us, we were never taught these tools, our parents did their best with what they had, but most of us learned to suppress to the point of shutdown and eventually depression or chronic anxiety, or get swept away in frustration, anger, and eventually some sort of meltdown or explosion.

This post is a real process for the moment you’re in it, not a breathing exercise you’ll forget to use the second you’re triggered.

One idea changes everything on its own. Most of us think of emotions as feelings that live in our head. They’re not. Emotions are a domino effect from our senses, our brains and memories that end up as energy in the body, which is why anxiety shows up as a tight chest and anger shows up in your jaw and your fists before you’ve thought a single sentence about it, or like the lump in your throat when you need to cry, or the low energy heaviness on your shoulders when you feel depressed. Some emotions run hot (anger, anxiety, frustration) and activate you. Some run low (sadness, hopelessness, depression) and drain you until getting off the couch feels like a lot to ask. Knowing which one you’re in changes what your body needs from you.

That’s one piece of it. That’s just the starting point.

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Emotions are waves, not permanent states

Every emotion runs on a cycle. It builds, it peaks, it comes down. Left alone, most emotions move through your body in around ninety seconds, you heard that right only 90 seconds. If it’s still going strong an hour later, the emotion itself is not what’s keeping you stuck. The thoughts you keep wrapping around it are, your thoughts are keeping you stuck, so part of getting unstuck actually does need to involve feeding the brain the right thoughts, (stay with me all you somatic minded people, this approach is multifaceted , between the brain and the body.)

Your nervous system cannot hold a peak emotion forever, it just can’t. But when you resist the process of the emotion, especially with your thoughts, you interrupt the wave. Instead of moving through it, you get stuck treading water at the top, feeling like you’re drowning.

Make peace with it before you try to fix it

Making peace with an emotion doesn’t mean you have to like it. It looks like “I don’t like this feeling, and I’m willing to sit with it anyway,” or “I don’t understand this yet, and I’m open to what it’s showing me, without judgment.”

Your emotions are not random and they are not against you. Some of the most overwhelming ones I’ve ever had were pointing straight at something in my life that wasn’t working, something I didn’t want to look at. When I finally did, it led to clarity, boundaries, and change I could not have gotten to any other way.

For more on this concept check out my article about it here.

You Are Not too much.

Step 1: Move the energy

If you’re in a high energy emotion (anger, anxiety, frustration), move your body. Walk. Run. Do push-ups. Clean your entire house like your life depends on it. You are not being dramatic, your body is activated and it needs somewhere to put that energy. My go-to: make two fists, squeeze them as hard as you can while you tighten your chest, hold it for a full minute until your body starts to shake, then release. You will feel it move.

If you’re in a low energy emotion (sadness, hopelessness, depression), activate gently instead. Stretch. Breathe. Splash cold water on your face. Sit up instead of lying flat. Go for a short walk. Even a workout you don’t feel like doing can help, since it releases the endorphins your nervous system needs to come back up.

Step 2: Regulate your body

Yes, we’re talking about breathing. Stay with me. Most of us don’t breathe deeply enough to calm our nervous system down. Try slow, deep breaths, box breathing, or slowing everything down on purpose. This isn’t about doing it perfectly. It’s about creating enough calm that you can process what’s happening instead of reacting to it.

Step 3: Attune to the emotion

This is the step that moves you through it. Emotion needs attunement, which means attention, understanding, and validation, in that order.

Almost no one tells you this part: when you first turn your attention toward a feeling, it spikes before it settles. That’s normal. Turning toward the feeling creates distance from it, though most people expect the opposite. You stop being anxiety, and start sitting with anxiety, because paying attention shifts you into the observer instead of the feeling itself. That distance is what makes the emotion tolerable, and tolerable is what lets you move through it instead of getting stuck in it.

This is a muscle, and it takes time to build. I spend a lot of session time helping clients build exactly this one. A few ways to practice it: put on music that matches the emotion, journal, sit quietly and observe what you’re feeling, or talk to a safe person who can reflect back what they hear without trying to fix it.

Music is usually the fastest way in for me. If I’m struggling to feel what’s going on, I’ll put on a song that matches it, and it’s like the song gives my body permission to go there. It’s borrowed language for what I can’t access yet. Instead of numbing me out, it pulls me deeper into the feeling in a way that feels safe, and it helps me move through it faster.

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I ruined the Fourth of July before the fireworks even started, and I have never been prouder of a parenting moment in my life.

Stay with me. This gets worse before it gets good.

If you’ve worked with me, you’ve heard this story already it happened a few years ago. I bring it up with almost every client at some point, because it’s the clearest proof I have of something I believe down to my bones: the hard feeling you’re avoiding is usually the exact thing that would set you free, if you let it sit down at the table.

The Fourth of July is my son’s favorite day of the year. We spend the afternoon at the pool with our whole community, BBQ, cannonballs, bobbing for beer and sodas and the kind of chaos that makes you understand why the Sandlot kids never wanted summer to end. Then at night we meet everyone at our spot to watch fireworks explode from every direction across the city under the shadow of the rocky mountains. Coolers, glow sticks, bikes wrapped in lights, kids up way past bedtime. It’s the best day.

This particular year, my husband Jonny and I woke up already off, after a hard night before with tension that never got resolved. There was no time to sit down and work through it, so we smiled through it instead and let a quiet, cold distance grow between us all day.

My daughter is autistic, and flexibility is the hardest ask in her whole toolkit.

That evening, running late to meet our friends for fireworks, she decided with total conviction that she needed to bring half her bedroom to watch fireworks and this was of the upmost importance.

We tried to be patient. She looped, crying and escalating, and the clock kept moving. My son was sad we were missing things and I felt the pressure to shut her persistance down and get us there.

The thing is I know how to work through these moments with her when she’s stuck and looping, but it takes time and patience and boundaries that are held with grounded regulation. I wanted so bad for this day to end on a good note, I needed it to end on a good note, that her being in a meltdown and us being late was not in the cards. I was getting more and more upset at what was happening, everything in me was resisting her and resisting the moment we were in that…

I snapped. In anger. Like really bad.

“We are leaving right now. Get your shoes on, or we are leaving without you.” Said in the tightest, most triggered voice I own, which is the parenting equivalent of throwing a lit match at a dry field. Also a stupid empty threat because we would never leave her behind. She screamed back and cried harder and completely spun out at this point. Then I was crying angry bitter tears. My son went quiet and sad. Jonny got more stressed and overwhelmed with all of us.

We showed up thirty minutes late to the event we were hosting, my daughter still sobbing and screaming, and every friend and family member at that spot got a front-row seat to the dumpster fire of my life in that moment.

The very situation I was desperately trying to avoid was happing but worse because it was happening in front of our closest friends and family.

I was mad, embarrassed, and at the end of my rope. I wanted to disappear into the ground.

Instead, I did something I don’t always manage to pull off in the moment. That turned the whole thing around.

Twenty minutes later, my son found me in tears for a different reason entirely. What happened next is the part that changed the way I look at and move through hard things, and a lesson I learned that I still come back to years later.

On the other side of this paywall: how I got regulated enough in that parking lot to stop the spiral instead of feeding it, and what my son told me twenty minutes later that broke my heart for a different reason. Plus the exact line from a Pixar movie I used to talk a devastated seven-year-old off the ledge in real time, the same tool I use with clients when a trip they spent months planning falls apart, or when the holiday they needed to go right, goes sideways instead. If you’ve ever white-knuckled your way through a holiday or vacation with a smile bolted to your face with anger silently growing while everything is falling apart, this is the other way through.

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Let’s rewind to January 2025, shall we? Because that’s where this story starts, and honestly, it starts pretty great before it gets absolutely unhinged.

Act I: The Good Stuff

Jonny and I launched Marriage for Humans, our first relationship course, and it was everything. A ridiculous amount of work. Also completely worth it. I poured my whole heart into the content, and watching couples actually experience something real and shifting inside of it? That’s the thing that makes you remember why you do what you do.

One of the biggest surprises: the men’s and women’s breakout sessions ended up being a crowd favorite. Jonny led the men’s group and they loved it so much that we kept the groups going well beyond the course. (Men actually wanting to talk about their inner world in community? Don’t mind me while I wipe a single tear.)

Meanwhile, I was increasingly not doing great physically, migraines crept back in, I felt worse and worse, and after entirely too long, we finally landed on the culprit: terrible allergies. Not dramatic. Not interesting. Just... Colorado being Colorado. Got it under control by summer, and then, finally, Jonny and I celebrated our 18th wedding anniversary in the mountains. Paddleboarding, biking, being annoyingly in love. It was epic. 10/10.

Act II: The Part Where Everything Goes Sideways

We came home from our anniversary trip to a lot of things shifting. Relationships. Family structures. The general feeling that the universe had rearranged some furniture while we were gone. Summer felt heavy and hard, and somewhat heartbreaking. A lot of damage control, a lot of holding space for hard. A lot of okay, what do we do with this.

By fall, we were ready. Back to school, back to routine, back to normal life.

Narrator: It was not going to be normal life.

One ordinary evening in October, I was running the dishwasher and noticed black water seeping out from underneath it. I cleaned it up. Peeled back the kickboard. And discovered that the entire bottom of the cabinet was rotted out with black mold. Like are you freaking kidding me?????

I looked up at Jonny and said, “You will never guess what is under this cabinet.”

He looked at me, completely calm, and said: “Put the baseboard back. We’re not talking about it tonight. We have a class to teach tomorrow morning. I’m going to wake up, get a cup of coffee, and then look.”

He already knew it was bad. He just bought us a few more hours of peace. And honestly? That might be the most loving thing he’s ever done for me.

Those were, as it turned out, our last few hours of peace for quite a while.

Because the next morning revealed that the dishwasher had been quietly leaking, for who knows how long — under an entire row of cabinets, behind the walls, and halfway under the subfloor. Basically the entire kitchen was covered in black mold and we had been breathing it in like it was fine.

“Toxic air much? Yeah. Apparently. Love that for us.”

The pic above was just the tip of the ice burg of the mold! Sick! Que panic attack!

I immediately cleared the kids out, opened every window, and sent them to grandparents’ houses. And then Jonny and I looked at each other and had the very fun conversation of: so we’re replacing the whole kitchen?

Which then became: well, we’ve always hated the layout of the main floor...

Which then became: we’re doing a whole main floor renovation. Overnight. With zero planning and absolutely no warning.

Our insurance, by the way, decided they would not be covering our black mold situation , citing the fact that black mold doesn’t happen in Colorado because we’re so dry. Technically true! Also: very much happened to us! Love a loophole that costs us everything!

So November and December were spent doing demo, figuring out financing, making seventeen thousand design decisions, and — not gonna lie — having the time of my life pretending I’m Joanna Gaines. Our house is a builder-grade mid-90s situation that has been deeply lacking in character. Fixing that. On purpose. Because if you’re going to be traumatized by black mold, at least come out the other side with a kitchen you actually love.

(We’ve tried to move from this house twice. Both times, we got within weeks of closing on a new house before things fell through. At some point you just accept that you’re supposed to be here. So. We’re making it ours.)

Act III: Turning 40 at Disneyland (As One Does)

In the middle of all of this, the renovation, Christmas, family in town, all of it, we had a two-and-a-half-week trip to California that the kids had been looking forward to forever. There was no canceling it. We were going. Chaos be damned. So we made a quick trip of it.

And also: I was turning 40.

I want to be clear that I am the kind of person who believes in aging gracefully. I write about becoming. I talk about stepping into yourself. I counsel other women through transitions and seasons and the beautiful unfolding of who they’re becoming.

And then 40 showed up and I was like oh hell no. Absolutely not. I’m not ready.

There were goals I had for myself by 40, especially around my physical health, that hadn’t happened yet. Things I was still grieving. And something about that number just cracked something open in me. So I entered that trip in a deep grief process, which is a very fun vacation vibe as I’m sure you can imagine.

Here is also where I need to tell you something that I fully acknowledge is objectively hilarious: I consistently have profound spiritual encounters at Disneyland. Every single time. Without fail. Something opens up in me at that park and I end up having what I can only describe as God moments. I either have a very unique relationship with the divine or I have an extremely convenient justification for going to Disneyland as often as possible. The jury’s still out.

“It’s bitter and sweet , you can be having the sweetest moments of your life while deeply processing something you’re going through. That’s just how life is.”

Over the course of that trip, something slowly began to shift. Grief started working its way through. And by the time my actual birthday arrived, which I spent at the beach, which I requested, which was exactly right, I walked into that ocean one person and walked out another.

There’s something about the ocean that is genuinely clearing. I entered the water heavy, and the waves just... took something from me. And while I was out there, I felt God so strongly. I felt where I was going. I felt what was next. Questions I had been holding about my business, about what I was building, about what I wanted to say and who I wanted to say it to, all of it just became suddenly clear.

Going perfectly along with the God moment we got In-N-Out because I absolutely did not need a fancy birthday dinner, and then we went back to Disneyland that night, and there was a fireworks show that felt like it was written specifically for my life and my journey, and I sobbed. Openly. At a theme park.

Jonny looked over at me and said, “Oh. You feel God, don’t you.”

“I totally do.”

“That fireworks show was for you, wasn’t it.”

“It totally was.”

The boy felt it too. And he knows me well!

I entered that trip in grief and left it in rebirth. That’s the only way I know how to describe it.

Act IV: The Birthday That Kept Going

When we got home, Jonny had collected emails from clients and people whose lives I’ve touched, just quietly gathered them without telling me, and presented them as a gift. I wept. Beautifully, obviously.

And then, because Jonny Duffield does not do anything halfway, he surprised me with a birthday getaway. A whole one. That I knew nothing about. Because I had been saying, I don’t think I need anything, I don’t know that we should spend the money , and he looked at that information and decided to ignore it entirely because, in his words: “you only turn 40 once, F*** it! We are celebrating you.”

The itinerary was, and I quote, “Everything Pietze loves. Including a close up tour of the boys Pietze loves” Which turned out to be:

Days by the pool with naps and small spa moments.

Night one: Phantom of the Opera’s last performance in Denver, all dressed up. Stunning.

Night two: Denver Nuggets, incredible seats, close enough to the bench that I could see Aaron Gordon, who is, for the record, my favorite athlete on the planet and the one exception to my general policy of not fangirling.

He planned Night three: my favorite band, amazing seats, seated tickets specifically chosen because as Jonny put it he knew I didn’t want to stand in a pit for three hours with twenty-year-olds. He is correct. I am forty.

And finally: front row Rockies game next to the dugout. Yeah baby!

amazing dinners, walking the city, and smoking cigarettes like we were twenty-two because sometimes you just need to be who you used to be for one evening, and then you wake up and remember you’re 40 and why you don’t close down corner bars anymore!

I will say this boy, is my ultimate crush. I still look and him and think how thankful I am for him. He loved me so well in all of this.

I didn’t expect any of it. I had the time of my life. And something in me shifted even further, I felt more like myself than I had in years. Everything lined up in one of those moments where you can feel God’s fingerprints on the whole thing. I came back to life through fun.

Act V: Coming Home to Myself (And Then to Substack)

We came home from that trip and something totally flipped. I knew I wanted to start writing again. And once I started, I couldn’t stop. I’m waking up at 3am with downloads. I’m writing things I’ve been sitting with for three years that I’ve never said out loud to anyone except Jonny. I am in one of those seasons that feels so alive and so right that it almost makes the hard stuff make sense, because you can feel exactly why you went through it.

That’s a lot of what you’re going to hear me write about this year. Coming home to yourself. Not just healing , healing is the vehicle, not the destination. The destination is becoming who you were always supposed to be. And I feel like I am finally, finally, finally walking into that.

The Kids, The House, The Body … The Full Update

The house is still mid-renovation. It is a lot. We are still in it. Updates to come as things come together because I genuinely cannot wait to share the process of creating a space that finally feels like us.

My daughter who brings a insane amount of joy to our lives, went to her first middle school dance this year and it was possibly the cutest thing I have ever witnessed in my life. She’s autistic, and I will say this every time it comes up: autistic people are the salt of the earth. Bright lights. Golden. They make everything more fun. That whole dance was elevated because of them, they were fully committed to having the time of their lives on that dance floor, and honestly I took notes.

My son is one of the most deeply compassionate and loving humans I have ever met. He’s on a competitive swim team, which means our mornings start at 7:30am practices and our summers revolve around swim meets, and genuinely, we love it. The community, the cheering, all of it.

But what I love most is watching him choose, over and over again, to show up for his sister. They’ve figured out their own language. At night we’ll hear her yell down the hallway to him: “You’re the best and I love you.” And he’ll call back: “You’re the best and I love you. See you tomorrow.”

Every single time. I don’t know that I have ever felt prouder of anything I’ve built in my entire life.

And me, I’ve been working hard on my health. A herniated disc, a lot of time immobile, steroids, weight gains because of all the medication, migraine flare-ups... the last few years did a number on my body. I had to learn how to accept and make peace with that. And I did, slowly. But now? I feel like I’ve turned a corner. I feel more myself physically than I have in a decade, gettin healthy, strong, losing weight and starting to feel like myself again. If you want me to share more of that journey, the real, unsexy, honest version of what it’s like to reclaim your body after years of physical hardship, let me know and I will.

So that’s us. That’s the year. Black mold, a demolished kitchen, a 40th birthday that cracked me open and put me back together better, and a life that is full, and hard, and beautiful, and mine.

I’m so glad you’re here. I have so much to say. Let’s go.

With love,

Pietze

P.S. we are still planing to do our podcast family unfiltered hopefully later this year we are really excited about that, just postponed cuz our whole house is a construction site.

P.P.S. After a ton of requests we are planning to bring Marriage For humans back date is TBD.

I want to tell you about something that quietly changed the way I work, parent, show up, and function as a human being.

And I know. That sounds like the beginning of a wellness influencer post that ends with a supplement code. Bear with me.

This isn’t a hack. It’s not a morning routine. It’s honestly kind of the opposite of everything I used to believe about what it meant to be good at something. When I first heard it, I kind of hated it. Which is probably how you’ll know it’s the thing you need.

I am not a perfectionist by nature.

My junk drawer is evidence of that. So is my car. So is approximately every closet in my house.

But the second I’m in work mode? Or doing something that actually matters to me, something where someone else is watching or depending on me? Something shifts. I go full hyper-fixation. I’m obsessing over details, rewriting things six times, staying up too late because it’s not quite right yet. And here’s what I eventually figured out about myself: it was almost never about the work itself. It was about the people. The boss. The client. The audience. The moment someone else had an opinion about what I was doing, the need to not disappoint them, to earn their approval through what I produced, would quietly take over until I couldn’t tell the difference between doing my best and making myself sick trying to be perfect.

And listen, it made me genuinely great at everything I put my hand to. People noticed. I got the praise. I executed.

The problem was, it was always a ticking clock.

Every job, every season, I would hit the peak. Things would be picking up, momentum was real, the work was good. And then just... nothing. Done. Burnt out. Empty. Usually right around the two-year mark, like clockwork. The confusing part was that the results were still there. The praise hadn’t stopped. From the outside nothing looked wrong. But I had nothing left, because I had been hemorrhaging energy into making it perfect, if I’m honest, probably no one else even noticed.

What I finally had to admit was that the way I was doing it was never going to be sustainable. And if I wanted to keep doing meaningful work for the long haul, something had to change.

Here’s what I noticed in my clients too, especially the ones I worked with around food and wanting to build a real, healthy relationship with their bodies. They’d come in motivated. Clear goals. Great intentions. A whole plan.

And almost every time, the goals were impossible.

Not because they were unrealistic people. But because somewhere along the way they’d been taught that unless the standard was enormous, it didn’t count. That anything reasonable was basically giving up. So they’d set the bar at 100%, white-knuckle it for a few weeks, inevitably fall short, and then the shame would hit. And when the shame hit, they’d spiral further back than where they started. And their brain would quietly file that away as proof that they just weren’t the kind of person who could do this.

It broke my heart every time. Because they weren’t the problem. They never were.

The problem was the pattern they’d inherited.

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If you’re drawn to reading this, chances are you already know — in your body — what I’m about to describe.

You feel it as a low hum of lack. A constant hunger for something just out of reach. Like you’re surviving off bread crumbs of connection in a relationship that should be nourishing you. Like you’re locked in a cage, and your partner holds the only key, except half the time you’re not even sure they know you’re in there.

Maybe this is you:

You’re always reading between the lines. When they say I love you, you’re searching their face for evidence. When they leave the house, you’re fighting the urge to open Find My Friends for the tenth time. Their emotional distance sends you spiraling, anxious, hyper-vigilant, exhausted. Sometimes that anxiety flips into something even uglier: control, criticism, pressure. Because when everything feels this out of control, some part of you just needs to get a grip on something.

Or maybe it looks like the opposite:

You’re the one pulling away. The one who shuts down when things get too intense, who swallows their feelings to avoid conflict, who would rather disappear than take up space. You’re not chasing, you’re withdrawing. Withholding your voice, your honesty, your presence. Not because you don’t care, but because somewhere along the way, showing up felt more dangerous than hiding.

Or (and this one might sting a little) maybe you’re both. You long for closeness, for someone to truly choose you, and then the second they get too close or do something wrong, you’re gone. Pushing away, shutting down, running. Flip, flop. Back and forth. Never quite safe either way.

However it looks for you: this is insecure attachment. And it is very likely running your life, and your relationship, right into the ground.

The Trap We All Fall Into

Here’s what most of us believe, even if we’d never say it out loud:

And honestly? You probably would feel better. Consistency from a partner matters. It’s not nothing, they might need to do their own part in this to have a thriving relationship.

But here’s the hard truth no one wants to hand you: they are human. Imperfect and beautifully, maddeningly flawed. They will have bad seasons. They will get dysregulated. They will sometimes choose self-preservation over connection. And when they do, when they inevitably, humanly fail, where does that leave you?

Right back at square one.

I know because I lived it. Because of a series of traumas and the hardships of life my husband and I both found ourselves shells of who we once were and the opposite of who we thought we married . I went from a completely confident, independent, secure woman, to spending years cycling through anxious, avoidant, and at times disorganized attachment. I did it inside a marriage to a man, who was secure, loving and connected for most of our relationship, but became a deeply avoidant , depressed and shut down version of himself. We were textbook: I pushed for connection, he pulled away. I pushed harder, he retreated further. Round and round, both of us feeling completely unsafe with each other, both of us suffering in our own private ways. Both wishing the other person could show up for us in the ways they once did, but we were both drowning.

We did the work. Real work, hard work , the kind that humbles you. And my husband has changed, healed and grown in ways that now make the whole growling process of it all worth it. He is genuinely not the same man he was in our worst season, And I changed too, a lot. We learned to speak the language of secure attachment together, to create safety for each other. And I will always be proud of that.

But here’s what I eventually had to reckon with (and a lot of the couples I work with do as well): even after all that growth, even after we healed so much of the dynamic between us, there was still a part of me that wasn’t okay. A wound that his growth couldn’t reach. Because the truth is, no matter how much another person improves, they cannot fix what lives inside of you. They can’t fully heal it. And they were never supposed to.

When I Finally Stopped Waiting to Be Rescued

Something shifted in me, slowly at first, then all at once.

I started to feel an intuitive pull to disconnect from the co-dependent entanglement I’d been trapped in. Not from my marriage exactly, but from the desperate grip I had on it. I needed to find out who I was when I wasn’t measuring my okayness by whether he was showing up.

Because here’s what I had lost somewhere along the way:

Before the years of trauma and our broken dynamic, I had been alive. Full. Grounded in myself. I was the woman my husband had fallen in love with, independent, vibrant, sure of herself. Somewhere between the anxious pushing and the desperate managing, I had traded her away piece by piece. I traded my self-worth for scraps of connection. I traded my self-respect for the illusion of control. I traded my power for silence, because silence felt safer than making things worse.

I want you to understand what that actually meant, because it sounds simple and it was anything but. It meant letting go of the one thing I had been white-knuckling for years, the familiar dysfunction I had mistaken for safety. It meant stepping off the ledge of everything I knew and walking into completely uncharted territory, with no guarantee of what I would find on the other side, who I would be and what our relationship would look like. It was terrifying. It was also the most necessary thing I have ever done.

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Let me just say this right off the bat.

You are not too much. Your emotions are not too much. You are not crazy. You are not out of control.

You are a human being who feels, and not just a little bit. You feel in color.

Some people move through the world in black and white. You? You’re out here in full saturation, high definition, surround sound emotion. Y…

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Hi friends.

I am so excited to finally be writing this.

Honestly, it’s long overdue.

Some of you have been with me since 2018. You’ve watched me go through different seasons, different evolutions, and more than a few reinventions. You’ve seen me show up consistently … and you’ve also seen me disappear completely from social media and public life.

If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you probably know that’s just how I move through the world.

When I’m healing, or recalibrating I pull back, I don’t push through, and often social media is the first thing to go.

I get quiet.

I focus on God, my family, my own growth, and whatever work is happening beneath the surface.

And for the last few years, there has been a lot happening beneath the surface.

So. Who is Pietze Duffield?

That’s a great question.

And if I’m being completely honest - I’m still discovering the answer.

I suppose I could tell you that I’m a life coach, writer, wife. For the past eight years, I’ve had the privilege of working with people around the world from Influencers, Leaders, and CEO’s to the ordinary woman just out there trying to make it through deadlines, first dates, or diaper changes. I’ve helped people through trauma, grief, marriage, relationship struggles, spiritual reconstruction, and the complicated, beautiful process of becoming fully themselves.

But who I really am isn’t found in a job title, or in any title I carry for that matter.

I am equally parts feisty but soft, fierce but kind. Extremely loyal but wildly independent, endlessly curious, and hopelessly sarcastic. My husband tells me I’m not just a chapter in his life I’m the whole damn plot twist.

A dreamer.

An adventurer.

A woman who still believes there is more life to be lived.

Put me anywhere in nature and you’ll find some of the brightest parts of me.

Let me lay out in the sun and you will see the laziest part of me.

Take me to see one of my favorite teams play and you will see a ridiculous side of me.

I love to get dressed up and have a good night on the town whether that be with one of my girls or my boy.

Give me road trips with the windows down and music turned up and watch me come alive.

I’m also a seeker of beauty.

Not perfection.

Beauty.

I find it in mountain sunsets and ocean air.

In laughter around a dinner table.

In the courage it takes for someone to become fully themselves.

I love beautiful spaces, beautiful stories, beautiful design, beautiful clothes, and beautiful ideas.

I love fashion, art, music, good food, and creating a home that feels like a sanctuary.

I have been married for 19 years to my favorite adventure partner Jonny.

We’ve fought hard for our marriage.

We’ve learned how to create secure attachment, repair, communication, how to honor each other as individuals and what it means to truly choose each other.

Today, we are still each other’s pain in the asses, way more ourselves and way more in love than we’ve ever been.

He also happens to be a ridiculously amazing dad.

We made two incredible humans who have taught me more about life than any book, course, or training ever could, having a family together is one of the greatest joys of our life.

Im an enterpeneur at heart and have done more crazy jobs than one should do in a life time.

But mostly…

I’m a woman who has walked through real fire.

I’ve lived enough life to know that transformation rarely arrives wrapped in certainty. More often, it comes disguised as heartbreak, disappointment, grief, loss, and the moments that bring us to our knees.

I’ve walked through trauma, crippling anxiety from ptsd and learned how to heal and live again without fear.

I’ve navigated chronic illness and pain the long road of healing my body, losing weight from inflammation, and feeling strong and capable again.

I’ve learned to parent a daughter whose autism has become one of my greatest teachers and in turn one of my greatest gifts.

I’ve watched my marriage nearly fall apart and fought my way back to love and healthy life giving relationship.

I’ve deconstructed my faith, questioned everything I thought I knew, and somehow found God waiting for me in the middle of the mess. Not in performance, religion, or certainty, but in presence, connection, grace and the brutal honesty of a broken heart laid open.

Again and again, life has stripped away who I thought I was so I could become who I actually am.

That’s why I often say:

I was made through the fire.

Not because my life has been harder than anyone else’s.

But because every season that threatened to destroy me ended up refining me.

I’ve watched entire versions of my life burn to the ground.

And I’ve watched myself rise from the ashes every single time.

Not stronger.

Not tougher.

More authentically myself.

Something started stirring in me a few years ago.

Something I didn’t tell many people about.

I felt this tiny spark inside me that needed protecting. I didn’t want opinions. I didn’t want outside influence. I just wanted to listen.

And what I started realizing was this:

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life simply surviving well.

I wanted to thrive.

I wanted to know what it actually looked like to fully come home to myself. To fully heal, to fully come alive.

That journey required some hard decisions. Boundaries. Letting go of things that no longer fit. Re-evaluating EVERYTHING … including whether I even wanted to continue being in this space, putting my life out there, teaching, or running my business at all.

For a season, I questioned everything.

And I gave myself permission to.

But through prayer, mediation, deep reflection, healing, and some truly profound encounters with God, something unexpected happened.

I found my voice again. I found my heart again. In the most gentle and beautiful unfolding.

And I knew I couldn’t keep what I was learning, putting together and figuring out to myself. The pull to pass on not just to my clients but to so many more became so big.

So I started writing.

One random Substack article led me down a rabbit trail, and before I knew it, a fire had been lit inside me.

Because here’s the thing … I’ve always loved writing. I think it’s actually where I communicate best. Which is actually hilarious for a girl with a pretty bad case of dyslexia.

Social media has its place, and I appreciate what it’s allowed me to do over the years. But I’ve increasingly felt limited by how fast everything has become.

Scroll. Swipe. Consume. Repeat.

My heart has always wanted to go deeper.

And Substack gives me the space to do exactly that.

For the last year, I’ve been quietly writing essays, reflections, stories, teachings… ideas I’ve never shared publicly before. Lessons from my own healing journey. What I’ve learned about trauma, attachment, faith, relationships, nervous system regulation, midlife, purpose, and becoming.

And most importantly: what it actually looks like to move beyond survival and build a life that feels fully alive and thriving, and exactly how I did it.

This is what you’ll find here.

Coming home to yourself.

Finding your way back after trauma and how to use that as the foundation to good abundant living.

Learning to regulate your nervous system and trust your own voice.

How to build a connection with your emotions and use them as your greatest catalyst to living.

Building relationships that feel safe, secure, and alive, and knowing when to walk away.

Healing attachment wounds and taking your power back.

Reconnecting with God without fear, performance, or shame and living a deeply spiritual and sacred life in the midst of the mundane.

Creating a life that feels aligned with who you truly are, and honestly how to have some freaking fun while doing it, cuz we got one big beautiful life and I want to live it well!

I turned forty this year. And while that milestone surprised me more than I expected, I’m discovering that this season might be my favorite yet.

If you’ve ever felt lost.

If you’re rebuilding after heartbreak.

If you’re questioning everything you once believed.

If you’re tired of merely coping and ready to actually heal, and thrive.

If your ready to stop surviving your life and actually start living it.

If you are ready to come home to yourself.

You’re in the right place.

I genuinely believe the next few years can be transformative. I believe many of us are standing at the edge of a new chapter … one where we stop simply managing our lives and start fully living them.

And I can’t wait to explore that journey together.

With love,

Pietze

P.S. For everyone asking about Marriage for Humans — yes, it’s coming back. We’re planning to reopen in January 2027, and we’ll share more details as we get closer.

P.P.S. The podcast is still happening. Look for Family Unfiltered toward the end of 2026. We already have more than 50 episodes mapped out and we’re incredibly excited about it.