If you noticed — thank you for noticing. If you didn’t — that’s okay too, because you were probably elbow deep in your own version of the same thing I was in mine.

The end of August is its own kind of chaos. Last trips, last outings, last dinners on the patio before the air turns. Back to school lists and school night bedtimes and the particular exhaustion that comes from summer winding down while fall hasn’t quite started yet. Everyone hits reset on September 1 and the week before that reset is a lot.

I didn’t skip last week because I forgot. I skipped it because my energy needed to go somewhere else. And I made a choice to let it.

We are in the middle of a kitchen renovation.

I have dreamed about this kitchen since the day we moved in. And right now, in the middle of all the chaos of late August — back to school, hosting my in-laws, a full-time job, two kids, a life — I am watching that dream come to life in real time.

And that is exactly where my extra energy needed to be.

I’ve talked before about how working with my hands calms my nervous system in a way that almost nothing else does. Building something, creating something, watching a space transform — it quiets the noise in my brain and gives me something to hold onto that is entirely mine. The kitchen renovation has been that for me this summer. My creative outlet. My therapy. My joy project.

So when I sat down last Thursday and thought about whether to write or to go work on the kitchen — my body and my mind gave me a very clear answer. And I listened.

Here’s what I want to say about that.

There are things in your life you cannot pause. Being a mom. Showing up for your job. The actual requirements of keeping people alive and a household running. Those don’t get a rest day.

But the secondary things — the things that are meaningful and important but not crucial to your livelihood or anyone’s survival — those can wait. And sometimes they need to wait. Sometimes pressing pause on one thing is exactly what allows you to show up fully for everything else.

I didn’t feel guilty about missing last week. I felt like I was honoring something.

I did have a passing thought that maybe I was letting my readers down. And then I remembered — you are all in the exact same boat. You are all wrapping up summers and getting kids back to school and trying to squeeze every last drop out of August before September arrives with its full schedule and its early alarms. You did not need one more thing in your inbox last Thursday. You needed the same thing I needed — a minute to breathe.

This is the work.

Not the newsletter. Not the schedule. Not the consistency for its own sake.

The work is learning to read what you actually need and giving yourself permission to honor it. The work is knowing the difference between rest and avoidance, between a necessary pause and giving up. The work is trusting yourself enough to say — not this week, my energy belongs somewhere else right now — and not spiraling into guilt about it.

You have permission to pause the things that can be paused.

You have permission to rest.

You have permission to let the non-essential things wait while you pour yourself into the thing that is calling you right now — whether that’s a renovation, a trip, a season of just being present with your kids before they go back to school, or simply a week of doing less and feeling more.

Honor what your body needs. Honor what your mind needs. Honor what your soul needs.

The newsletter will be here next Thursday. So will I.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is about how I actually decide what gets my energy and what doesn’t — the framework I use when everything feels equally urgent and I have to choose. Join the community here →

Subscribe now

I don’t. That’s the honest answer. I don’t do it all — I just get really intentional about what gets my energy and what doesn’t. And I’ve gotten a lot better at being okay with the things that have to wait.

Today I want to walk you through how I actually think about this. Not a perfectly curated productivity system — I don’t…

Read more

My New York group calls ourselves the Shine.

I did not plan to open a post about female friendship with that. But something about naming them — actually saying out loud that these groups of women have names, that we gave ourselves names, that we are a thing with an identity — feels like exactly the right place to start.

Because that’s what real female friendship is. It’s not casual. It’s not convenient. It is a thing with a name and a history and a weight to it that I don’t think we talk about enough.

Female friendships have always been one of my top priorities. That is just true about me. And I think some people would hear that and assume it means it’s been easy — that the friendships just maintained themselves, that nothing got in the way, that I’ve always had exactly what I needed.

That’s not the whole story.

COVID hit and some friendships flourished and some did not. My college group — the Birds — did a beautiful job of daily check-ins, weekly calls, a standing monthly video call that became a lifeline. One of them had her daughter within a month of me having my son and having someone in the exact same situation, going through the exact same thing at the exact same time, was more than I can describe.

My New York group — the Shine — has been harder. They all stayed out east. They get to see each other through work and life in ways that are just geographically impossible for me now. I am on the outside of that one sometimes and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. We stay connected through a group chat and I know the love is there. But it’s not the same as being in the room.

That’s the thing nobody tells you about female friendships in your thirties and forties: geography becomes a villain. Life becomes a villain. Not because the love goes anywhere — but because the logistics get harder and the time gets shorter and suddenly you look up and realize you haven’t seen your person in six months and you don’t know how that happened.

I have a few people I would call my person. I want to tell you about them because I think the specifics matter.

The first came in the package of meeting my husband.

I met my sister-in-law six weeks into dating Chris. She took one of my spin classes, we got coffee afterward, and that was it — instant. I cannot fully describe what it is to meet someone and just know. We are the same person. We are one. She brings such light into my life that I cannot imagine who I would be without her in it. I did not just gain a husband when I married Chris. I gained my soul sister. My actual sister. And that — that specific gift — is one of the things I am most grateful for in my entire life.

My oldest friend has been in my life since I was one year old. There is no pause with her — ever. I need to talk? She drops everything. It doesn’t matter that she lives in Colorado. It doesn’t matter that we go stretches without talking. When we pick up it is exactly where we left off, always, because that is the kind of friendship that doesn’t require maintenance to stay alive. It just is. She will show up for me anywhere, anytime, no questions asked. I know this the way I know very few things.

Here in Chicago I have my Covid bestie — we met working in fitness, lived under a mile apart when the world shut down, and her daughter and my son are six months apart. When everything locked down they were the only friends we really saw. We kept each other sane in a way I don’t have words for. Now she’s up on the north shore, fifteen minutes away, with four kids and a full life — and I know without a single doubt she would drop everything if I needed her. She is an incredible mom and an even better friend.

And then there is my neighbor.

I cannot fully explain what it has meant to have her move in next door. I was so anxious when they bought that house — would they have kids? Would we click? Would they be people we could actually grow alongside? They are our age, they have two kids one year younger than ours, and they are so aligned with us on the things that matter that it sometimes feels too good to be true. She has filled my cup in a way I didn’t even know I needed. I can see us getting older together. Watching our kids grow up together. Getting grey together. And that — that specific vision of the future — makes me so happy I could cry.

What I miss most about the NYC era is the density of it.

Four and a half years of seeing those women three, four nights a week for something or another. We depended on each other, leaned on each other, showed up for each other constantly. I met one of them in my first six weeks in the city and essentially forced her to be my friend — which spawned everything that eventually became the Shine. I am so grateful for that audacity. I got four and a half years of some of the best friendship of my life because I decided we were going to be friends before she had any say in the matter.

What I want now — what I’m actively chasing — is depth. I don’t want superficial. I want the conversations that go somewhere real. The Birds do this beautifully — we dig into the deep stuff, we ask the hard questions, we really talk. I want more of that everywhere.

And I get it, unexpectedly, from some of my personal training clients who have been with me for years. Each session becomes something like a therapy session for both of us. They know things about me that some of my closest friends don’t. The trust in those rooms is something I am genuinely grateful for.

The Birds and the Shine joke that we’re all going to outlive our husbands, so we need to start saving for our retirement homes near each other.

We are joking. But we are also not joking.

The intention behind it is real: we plan to grow old together. Laughing, sharing, showing up for each other, still talking about the hard stuff well into our seventies and eighties. That’s the vision. That’s what we’re building toward even when life makes it complicated and geography makes it inconvenient.

I sobbed through the entire final scene of Wicked. The moment where they realize they’re not going to see each other again — it wrecked me completely. Because losing a friendship like that, a real one, would feel like losing a limb. Like losing a member of your family.

Find the women who fill your cup. The ones who don’t judge, don’t falter, show up without being asked. The ones you could call at 2am. The ones who know your whole story and love you anyway.

Find them. Name yourselves if you want to. And hold on tight.

Those women are a lifeline. Don’t let go.

The interrupted sleep. The rage that started in my luteal phase and has now spread to the week before and after. The headaches. The acne I haven’t had since I was a teenager. I laid it all out — everything I’ve been writing about here for weeks, everything I’ve been living for months — and I told her I wanted to get my hormone levels checked.

Her response:

“You know — we just don’t do that for someone your age. Perimenopause starts more around 47. At your age I would recommend putting you back on birth control to manage all the symptoms you’ve described.”

I am 41 years old. I have been off birth control for two years. I went off it intentionally, with my husband, after he had a vasectomy, because I wanted to know what my body actually feels like without synthetic hormones managing everything for me.

And my OB’s solution to the symptoms I described — symptoms that are textbook perimenopause, symptoms that are significantly impacting my quality of life — was to put me back on birth control and call it a day.

I left that office so angry I could barely see straight.

Let me tell you why that response is a problem.

First — the timeline. Perimenopause does not start at 47. It can start anywhere between 35 and 45 and the average age of onset is 47 — meaning half of women begin experiencing it before that. I am 41. I am well within the range. This is not controversial. This is established medical information that my OB either doesn’t know or chose not to apply to me.

Second — birth control is not a treatment for perimenopause. It can mask symptoms by overriding your natural hormone cycle with synthetic ones. That is not the same as understanding what is actually happening in your body and addressing it. It does not tell you anything about your hormone levels. It does not address the root cause. It is a band-aid over a conversation your doctor doesn’t want to have.

Third — and most importantly — I told her what I was experiencing and she didn’t believe me. Or she didn’t think it warranted investigation. Either way, I left that appointment feeling exactly the way women have been made to feel by the medical system for generations: dismissed. Unheard. Like my symptoms were an inconvenience rather than information.

I was so frustrated I drove home and immediately reached out to my NP at Innovative Vitality.

Here is what I want to say to every woman who has ever left a doctor’s office feeling the way I felt that day:

You do not have to settle.

That is not the doctor for you. That appointment is not the end of the conversation. Your symptoms are real, they are valid, and you deserve a provider who will take them seriously — who will actually look at your bloodwork, listen to what you’re experiencing, and work with you to figure out what’s going on instead of defaulting to the easiest prescription and sending you on your way.

I am going back to Innovative Vitality. I want to be heard. I want someone who will actually run the panel, look at the results, and help me be proactive about what’s happening in my body as I head into perimenopause and eventually menopause. I am not interested in masking symptoms. I am interested in understanding them.

And if your current doctor won’t do that for you — find one who will.

Ask around. Talk to everyone you know. Ask your friends who they see, what their experience has been, whether they feel heard. Look into functional medicine doctors. Look into hormone specialists. Look into wellness clinics that specialize in this work. They exist. They are worth finding.

You are your own best advocate. Nobody is going to fight for your health the way you will. And if the first person you bring that fight to dismisses you — go find someone else.

Do not stop until someone listens.

To the women who have been told they’re too young, too healthy, too something — for the conversation they’re asking to have about their own body:

I see you. I am you. And I am so tired of us being made to feel like our experience of our own bodies isn’t enough evidence to warrant taking a closer look.

Keep pushing. Keep asking. Keep going until you find someone who will actually help you.

You deserve that. Don’t settle for anything less.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is exactly what I’m bringing to Innovative Vitality — the full list of what I’m asking for, what I expect to find, and how I’m approaching this appointment differently than the last one. Join the community here →

Subscribe now

I’m not nervous. I’m not preparing a case. I’m not rehearsing how to explain my symptoms in a way that won’t get dismissed. I’m not steeling myself for pushback or pre-emptively softening my requests so I don’t seem difficult.

I’m just going.

And the fact that that feels remarkable — the…

Read more

My anxiety doesn’t look like panic attacks.

It looks like silence.

When my anxiety gets bad I go mute. I internalize everything. I stop expressing anything — not frustration, not fear, not what I need. I get very, very quiet. From the outside I probably just look tired. From the inside I am holding everything so tightly I can barely breathe.

The first place it hits is sleep. It takes forever to fall asleep, and then I wake up — usually somewhere between 1:30 and 3:30am — completely alert, lying there while my brain does whatever it wants with me. And here’s the cruel part: sleep deprivation makes anxiety worse. So the anxiety disrupts the sleep and the sleep deprivation feeds the anxiety and you end up in a loop that feels impossible to break.

A bad anxiety day looks like a terrible night’s sleep followed by zero fuse with my kids and my husband. I’m quiet. I don’t express anything. I try to get to bed early just to have one moment of peace — and then I wake up in the middle of the night and do it all over again.

I want to talk about this today because I think the quiet kind of anxiety is the most misunderstood kind. And I think a lot of women reading this know exactly what I mean.

My anxiety didn’t come out of nowhere.

Looking back, I think it started early in my relationship with Chris. The conversations that hurt me that I’ve talked about before — the ones that made me stop expressing myself — I think those planted the seed. Anxiety around tough conversations. Anxiety around conflict. A slow-building fear of saying the wrong thing that eventually just became background noise I stopped noticing.

And then I had kids. And everything got louder.

All the normal fears that come with being a mom got layered on top of what was already there. And then the second baby came and I was sleep deprived and isolated and my hormones were doing things nobody had warned me about and the anxiety had nowhere to go because I wasn’t talking about it.

Right now, perimenopause is making it worse. My hormones are all over the place and that is not helping my anxiety, not helping my sleep, not helping my mood. It’s all connected — the hormones, the sleep, the anxiety — and I’m figuring that out in real time just like I’m figuring out everything else.

Here’s what actually helps me. The real list, not the pretty one.

Medication. I take a low dose anti-anxiety medication every night and I am not ashamed of that. It helps me sleep. It takes the edge off the baseline hum that used to be there constantly. If you have been white-knuckling your way through anxiety without any support — please talk to your doctor. You do not have to do this alone and there is no prize for suffering through it.

THC/CBD gummies. I want to be honest about this because I think there’s still stigma around it and I don’t think there should be. I am not a THC person — it generally hits me weird and I’ve always shied away from it. But I tried a low dose calming gummy from a brand called Feals and I cannot describe how much better I’ve been sleeping. Low dose, intentional, specifically designed for calm and sleep. It has been a genuine game changer and I wanted to say that out loud.

Movement. Getting to the gym. Going for a run. The correlation between how much I’m moving and how my anxiety feels is undeniable. When I move, it gets quieter. When I don’t — watch out.

Working with my hands. This one might surprise you but it is real. I am currently refreshing my entire stairwell and the act of doing something physical and creative with my hands — building, painting, problem solving — genuinely calms my nervous system in a way that’s hard to explain. There is something about being completely absorbed in making something that gives my brain the break it’s been looking for.

If you are sitting in anxiety right now — I want you to hear this:

You are not alone. This is not permanent. You will not feel like this forever.

Anxiety ebbs and flows. The moments that feel like walls are actually waves — they come and they go, and the fact that you are in one right now does not mean you will be in it forever.

When it gets loud, I go back to the reset. Five minutes of stillness — just sit, breathe, let your nervous system know it’s safe. Ten minutes of doing something that brings you joy — a run, a book, cooking, building something, whatever it is that makes you feel like yourself. Five minutes to come back down on the other side.

Intentional breath. Intentional movement. Intentional whatever it is that is yours.

And if you need more than that — if the reset isn’t enough and the anxiety is louder than you can manage on your own — please talk to someone. A doctor. A therapist. A friend who will actually listen. You do not have to white-knuckle your way through this.

You are not broken. You are human. And you are not alone in this.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is everything I’ve learned about managing anxiety — what I actually do when it spikes, the questions I ask myself to figure out what’s underneath it, and the things that have made the biggest difference. Join the community here:

Subscribe now

I am not great at immediately addressing my anxiety when it shows up.

I wish I could tell you that I have a perfectly calibrated system — that the second I feel it coming I gracefully pivot into my reset, journal my feelings, do my breathwork, and emerge thirty minutes later centered an…

Read more

Today I want to tell you what it actually looked like. The structure, the timeline, the rules I set for myself — and what I’d tell you to do if you’re standing at the beginning o…

Read more

Not the version where I tell you I laced up my sneakers, felt a surge of motivation, and never looked back. The real version. The one that started with me standing in front of a mirror in workout clothes, looking at a body I barely recognized, genuinely terrified to begin.

My body was so different. I felt so weak. And I was scared — scared that I would push too hard too fast, get injured, and have to start all over again. Scared that the woman I used to be in that space was gone for good and I was just going to have to grieve her.

Turns out, I was right about the grief part. I just wasn’t right about the rest.

The first few weeks back were wildly humbling.

I had spent years as a fitness instructor. I knew how to train. I knew what my body was capable of — or at least I knew what it used to be capable of. And the gap between that version and the one showing up to the gym in 2024 was significant enough to bring me to my knees a little.

I had to start lighter than I wanted to. Move slower than I wanted to. Accept that rebuilding takes time in a way that knowing it and living it are two completely different things.

But then something started to happen.

Strength came back. Slowly, then all at once. And I cannot fully describe what it felt like the first time I picked up a weight that used to feel heavy and it felt easy. Or the first time I finished a workout and felt that thing — that specific thing — where your body is tired and your mind is clear and you feel like yourself in a way you forgot was possible.

That was the beginning of coming back.

I want to be honest about the grief though. Because I think we skip over it too fast in these conversations.

I grieved my old body. The pre-baby body. The six pack. The fitness instructor body that I had worked for years to build and that two pregnancies and four years of fight or flight mode had fundamentally changed.

I don’t know if I’ve fully let go of her yet. I think I’m still working on that. Because there is a difference between accepting your body and loving it, and I am somewhere in between on most days.

What I know is this: sulking in an uncomfortable body that I wasn’t doing anything about felt infinitely worse than the humbling, hard, slow process of rebuilding. So I chose the rebuild. Even when it was hard. Even when it didn’t look like I thought it would.

The real shift happened going into 2025.

I made a decision — not a New Year’s resolution, a genuine decision — that I was taking back control of my health. Fully. Completely. No more waiting for the right time or the right circumstances or the right version of my body to show up first.

Going to Innovative Vitality was part of it. Getting my bloodwork done and finally understanding what was happening inside my body gave me the information I needed to stop blaming myself and start actually addressing the root causes. Finally starting to feel even a remote amount of strong was part of it.

But mostly it was a mindset shift. A decision that I was worth the effort. That my health was worth prioritizing. That I was done waiting.

Has it been all sunshine and rainbows since? Definitely not. But it has been a hell of a lot better than sitting in an uncomfortable body for another year hoping something would magically change.

Here is where I am now:

I move to feel good.

Yes, of course there will always be an element of wanting to look great — that’s human and I’m not going to pretend otherwise. But that is no longer the primary reason I show up. I move my body because I want to be strong. Not just now — for the rest of my life. I am setting my 60, 70, 80, 90 year old self up for success right now, today, in this gym, with this body.

And I move for my mental health. If I don’t move — watch out. There is a direct, undeniable correlation between how much I’m moving my body and how I feel mentally. It is not a nice-to-have. It is load-bearing. It is medicine.

That reframe — from moving to change my body to moving to take care of it — changed everything. It stopped feeling like punishment and started feeling like the most loving thing I could do for myself.

If you are standing where I was standing — looking at a body that feels foreign, feeling weak, not knowing where to start — here is what I want you to hear:

Start anyway. Start lighter than you think you should. Start slower than feels right. Start somewhere.

The strength comes back. I promise you it comes back. And when it does — when you pick up something heavy and it feels easy, when you finish something hard and feel that thing — you will remember who you are in a way nothing else can give you.

Your body has been waiting for you to come back to it.

Go. Start today.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is exactly how I structured my return to fitness — what I did, in what order, and how I protected myself from going too hard too fast. Join the community here →

Subscribe now

Outside of mom. Outside of wife. Outside of Program Manager, fitness coach, DIY builder, content creator. Outside of all the things I do and all the people I show up for every single day.

I had to sit with that for a minute.

Because the honest answer is: I’m still figuring it out. And I think that’s exactly the point.

At my core — underneath everything — I am an outgoing, humanitarian, sport-loving, world-traveling, want-to-experience-everything, never-slowing-down girl.

That is who I have always been. That is who I was at 22, at 25, at 29 living in New York City with my best friend as a roommate and a girlfriend group so tight we did everything together. Teaching boutique fitness and personal training, feeling on top of the world. Broke but so rich in life.

I was spontaneous. Down for anything. Let’s gooooo energy, always. The person who said yes before she even knew what she was saying yes to.

I loved people loudly and let them know it. I filled rooms. I was present everywhere I went.

I know that woman. I remember her well.

And then, slowly, she got quiet.

I’ve talked about this in different ways over the past few weeks — the isolation of having a baby during COVID, the loss of the fitness career that fueled me, the affirmations that disappeared when I stopped teaching. The resentment. The body that stopped responding. The anxiety that became my baseline.

But what I haven’t said directly is this: the part of me that got buried the deepest was the explorer. The spontaneous one. The let’s go girl who was down for anything.

She went into a shell. And she hasn’t fully come back out yet.

I used to move through the world like it was mine to experience. Now there are days I have to talk myself into leaving the house. That’s not who I am — or rather, it’s not who I was. And for a long time I thought I had lost her for good.

I didn’t. She just got buried.

Here is what I want you to hear — really hear — before I tell you the rest:

You didn’t lose yourself either.

I know it can feel that way. I know there are mornings you look in the mirror and don’t recognize the woman looking back. I know there are moments when someone asks you what you enjoy, what you want, who you are — and you go blank. Not because the answer doesn’t exist but because it’s been so long since anyone asked, including you.

You didn’t lose her. She got buried. Under the marriage and the kids and the mortgage and the job and the grief and the moves and the years that passed faster than you expected. Life piled up and she went under and you’ve been so busy keeping everything else afloat that you haven’t had a chance to dig.

That’s not failure. That’s just what happened.

What I’m reclaiming right now looks different than what I lost. And I think that’s important to say out loud.

I’m not trying to get back to the 29-year-old in New York. She was wonderful and I miss her energy but I am not her anymore and I don’t need to be. Time has passed. I have been changed by things — having kids, losing a career I loved, hitting rock bottom and clawing my way back — and that change is not something to undo. It’s something to integrate.

What I’m reclaiming is the spirit of her. The parts that were always mine, that got buried but never disappeared.

Total control over my movement and my body — and being completely unapologetic about taking that time for myself. Asking for what I need instead of swallowing it. Making space for myself and actually protecting it.

And leaning into my passions instead of just dreaming about them. Building custom closets? Designing spaces? Writing a newsletter every week that thousands of women are reading? A few years ago that would have felt impossible. Now it just feels like me — a new version of me, one I’m still getting to know, but mine completely.

Here’s what I want you to take with you:

It’s okay that you feel like you’ve lost some of yourself. In reality — you didn’t lose her. She got buried. And slowly, one small decision at a time, you will start to dig her out.

But here’s the part nobody tells you: the you on the other side might look a little different than the one who went in. And that is not just okay — it’s actually kind of beautiful.

You are different. Time has passed. You have experiences under your belt — kids, loss, reinvention, survival — that have changed you in ways that don’t erase who you were, they just add to it. She’s still in there. She just has more layers now.

So let’s stop trying to go back. Let’s ask a better question instead:

Who do you choose to be moving forward?

She’s already in there. She’s already awesome. She’s been waiting for you to come find her.

Let’s go meet her.

If you're ready to start doing that work, my Come Back to You guide is a good place to begin. It's waiting for you whenever you are.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is the exercise I did at the retreat that helped me figure out who I actually am underneath all the roles — and how you can do it too. Join the community here →

Subscribe now

There was no single exercise. No one retreat moment where I sat down, did the work, and walked out knowing exactly who I was outside of all my roles. I want to tell you that story because it would be cleaner and easier to package. But it wouldn’t be true.

What actually happened was mess…

Read more

Not the inspirational version where I tell you I figured it out and now I never do it anymore. The real version. The one that started when I was ten years old and has followed me — in different forms, at different volumes — for the thirty years since.

Because I think we need to be honest about how deep this goes before we can talk about what to do with it.

The year after I had my son, comparison was at its loudest.

I had gone from being a 6-pack fitness instructor — someone whose entire career was built around her body — to feeling like I didn’t recognize a single inch of myself. I knew how to lose weight. I knew how to train. I had spent years teaching other people how to do exactly that. And none of it was working. My body wasn’t responding and I didn’t understand why yet.

And then there was my friend.

Her body is just built different. Always has been. She can eat whatever she wants, she looks absolutely rock solid, and having babies for her was no different — she bounced back fast and effortlessly in a way that was, genuinely, soul crushing for me to witness. Not because I wanted her to struggle. But because her ease made my struggle feel like a personal failure.

Instagram made it worse. Women posting their bodies 6 to 12 weeks postpartum, flat and glowing and seemingly unchanged. Old photos of myself crushed me — the before version, the fitness instructor version, the version I couldn’t get back no matter what I did.

I went from looking like someone who lived in a gym to feeling like the Michelin Man with no return in sight.

And I know how terrible that sounds. I know. But that’s what comparison does — it takes something that is just different and turns it into a hierarchy. She’s better. You’re worse. She bounced back. You failed.

Here’s what I think is important to name, because I don’t think we say it enough:

We were set up for this.

Our generation was fed a specific and deeply damaging idea of what a woman’s body was supposed to look like. Heroin chic. Tara Reid. The early 2000s magazine covers that said, in every possible way, that thin was the only acceptable form of female. That your body’s appearance was tied to your worth as a person.

That was the water we grew up swimming in. And you don’t just rinse that off.

I have been comparing myself to other women since I was ten years old. Not because I am an insecure person or a shallow one. Because I was taught to. We all were. And the fact that we’re still carrying it at 40 is not a character flaw — it’s an injury that was never properly treated.

It’s not just bodies anymore. I want to be honest about that too.

I compare careers — seeing women who have built the thing I’m working toward and wondering why I’m not there yet. I compare relationships — because everyone online looks perfectly happy and in love and I know firsthand that’s not the whole story, and yet. I compare lifestyles — seeing people with more resources, more freedom, more ability to do things for their families — and feeling like I’m somehow not doing enough.

Comparison doesn’t have an off switch. It just changes subjects.

What I come back to, every time, is this:

I am so lucky.

I have a home. I have two beautiful, healthy children. I have a husband who, despite sometimes making me want to throttle him, supports me and loves me and would do anything for me. I have a body that is healthy and happy most days — a body that carried two babies, that runs marathons, that shows up for me even when I haven’t always shown up for it.

Could I always have more? Sure. But more doesn’t always equal more happy. I know that now in a way I didn’t four years ago.

And when I’m at the pool this summer — when I’m on a boat with my daughter, when I’m living my actual life in my actual body — I am not thinking about anyone else. I am just there. Present. In it.

So here is what I want to say to you before you pack for your next trip, before you put on your swimsuit, before you scroll through everyone else’s summer and feel yourself starting to shrink:

The harshest critic of your body is you.

I promise you — I look at women at the pool of all shapes and sizes and zero thoughts run through my head about their bodies. Zero. Not one. We are all just out there living our lives and nobody is thinking about you the way you think about yourself.

Wear the shorts.

Wear the bikini.

Put on the thing you’ve been talking yourself out of and go live your summer. Your kids don’t see your loose skin or your cellulite or the weight you haven’t lost yet. They see their mom. They see the person they love most in the world, present and alive and there.

Be there.

The only person keeping score is you. And you can stop whenever you’re ready.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is the honest list of everything I still compare — and the actual framework I use to pull myself out of it when it gets loud. Join the community here →

Subscribe now

Today I want to tell you about the moment things actually started to shift. Not the retreat itself — the specific thing that happened inside me there that I carry with…

Read more

Not because I didn’t want to. Not because I didn’t know I needed to. But because somewhere along the way I absorbed this idea that wanting things for myself — time, space, a career, a body that felt good, a mind that felt clear — meant I was taking something away from my kids. From my husband. From the people who needed me.

So I stopped wanting. Or I wanted quietly, in the back of my head, where no one could see it and I could pretend it wasn’t there.

That’s what mom guilt does. It doesn’t just make you feel bad for the things you do. It makes you feel bad for the things you want.

I felt guilty going to the retreat.

Four days away from my kids, no cell phone, no checking in — and that voice in my head was loud. What kind of mother leaves her family for four days to work on herself? Who does that?

But I also knew it was necessary. I knew it the way you know something in your bones before your brain catches up. So I forced myself to get over the guilt and I went anyway.

And it was one of the best decisions I have ever made for my family.

Not just for me. For them. Because the version of me that came home from that retreat was more present, more patient, more myself than the version who had been sleepwalking through her own life for four years.

I still leave the whole family on weekend mornings to go exercise. And yes, that voice still shows up sometimes — the one that says you should be here, you should be making breakfast, you should be present. But I’ve gotten a lot better at talking back to it. Because I know now what happens when I don’t take that time. I know what the alternative looks like. And it isn’t better for anyone.

Here’s the thing nobody told me that I had to be practically shaken into believing:

I am worth prioritizing.

That sounds simple. It might even sound obvious. But I genuinely had to be told — harshly, directly, in a room where I couldn’t deflect or minimize it — that I was worthy of taking up space in my own life. That my needs weren’t an inconvenience. That choosing myself wasn’t selfish. That it was, in fact, the most generous thing I could do for the people I love.

I didn’t believe it at first. I nodded along and went home and kept putting myself last because that’s what felt safe. That’s what felt like what a good mom was supposed to do.

But slowly — after the retreat, after the clinic, after a year of genuinely trying to show up for myself the way I showed up for everyone else — something clicked.

A happier, healthier me is a happier, healthier mom.

Not a perfect mom. Not a mom who has it all figured out. Just a mom who feels like herself. Who has something to give because she’s not running on empty. Who can be present for her kids because she’s not disappearing into herself.

That’s it. That’s the whole reframe. And it changed everything.

You can’t pour from an empty cup. And yet we keep trying.

For years I kept trying. Kept showing up for everyone else while quietly running out of everything I had. And the thing nobody tells you is that it doesn’t just hurt you — it hurts the people you’re trying so hard to show up for. A depleted, disconnected, lost version of you isn’t more available to your kids. She’s less.

The most present, patient, loving version of you exists on the other side of taking care of yourself first. Not last. First.

I want to say something to the woman who is where I was four years ago.

The one who hasn’t done anything for herself in months. The one who can’t remember the last time she did something just because she wanted to. The one who feels guilty for even reading this right now because there’s probably something else she should be doing.

You are allowed to want things.

You are allowed to want more than what you currently have. A different career. A stronger body. A quieter mind. More time. More space. More of yourself. You are allowed to want those things without it meaning you’re ungrateful for what you have or that you love your kids any less.

You don’t need to earn the right to take care of yourself. You don’t need to hit a breaking point before you’re allowed to ask for help or take an hour or book the thing or say the need out loud. You are worthy of it right now, today, exactly as you are.

Not when the kids are older. Not when things slow down. Not when you finally feel like you deserve it.

Now.

Give yourself the permission slip nobody gave you.

You’ve been waiting for someone to tell you it’s okay. Consider this me telling you.

It’s okay. You’re worth it. Go.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is the mindset shift that actually made me start believing I was worth prioritizing — and the three questions I ask myself now when the guilt starts to creep back in. Join the community here →

I want to lead with that because there is so much noise right now — so many supplements, so many podcasts, so many women with perfectly curated wellness routines telling you exactly what to take and when to take it — and I am not adding to that pile today.

What I am is a 40-year-old woman who is deep in it, figuring it out in real time, and tired of pretending I have it more together than I do.

So this is what it actually looks like from the inside.

I have never been a highly emotional person. Ask anyone who knows me — I am pretty even keeled. Steady. Not someone who flies off the handle or loses her temper easily.

That changed.

In the last three to six months, during my luteal phase — the week or two before my period — I become a different person. I am mad at the air. I am mad at everything and nothing simultaneously. My fuse doesn’t shorten, it disappears entirely. Everything pisses me off and I know, somewhere in the rational part of my brain, that the intensity of what I’m feeling doesn’t match the situation — and I cannot stop it.

I have never been like this before. Ever.

Add to that: headaches I didn’t used to get. Sleep that has completely fallen apart — I wake up between 1:30 and 3:30am almost every night and cannot get back to sleep. Not tossing and turning. Just awake. Staring at the ceiling. Completely alert at 2am for no reason while my body refuses to let me rest.

I went off birth control two years ago when my husband got a vasectomy. My cycle has stayed regular. So for a while I wrote off what I was feeling as just — life. Stress. Two kids. A busy schedule. The general weight of being a woman in her early forties doing too many things at once.

But this doesn’t feel like stress. This feels like something shifted in my chemistry without asking my permission.

Here’s what I find both comforting and completely overwhelming about this moment in time:

We are finally talking about perimenopause. Openly, loudly, in ways that my sister’s generation — she’s five years older than me — never did. I don’t think she has ever once mentioned it. I don’t think their generation had the language for it, or the permission to use it.

We do. And I am genuinely grateful for that.

But the conversation has gotten so loud and so crowded that I am having a hard time figuring out what is real. What supplements are actually evidence-based versus trending. What symptoms are validated versus coincidental. What I should actually be walking into my doctor’s office and asking for versus what is wellness marketing dressed up as medical advice.

There is a lot of noise. And when you’re already not sleeping and rage-crying at your kitchen counter at 7pm because someone left a cup on the wrong side of the sink — the noise is a lot.

Here is where I am right now, honestly:

I have an appointment with my NP next month and I am going in with questions. Specifically, I want my estrogen levels checked. Everything I’m reading, everything I’m experiencing, points to the fact that something hormonal has shifted — and I want data, not assumptions.

If she gives me the runaround — and after my experience with the weight stuff I know now that runaround is a real possibility — I will go back to Meredith at Innovative Vitality and figure it out from there. I am not sitting in symptoms and accepting “you’re fine” as an answer anymore. I learned that lesson.

I am 40, turning 41 in July. Perimenopause typically starts between 35 and 45, and honestly, looking back, I think some of what I was experiencing with the weight — the fight or flight mode, the cortisol, the inflammation — was likely part of this too. The body keeps the score even when the doctor’s office doesn’t.

I don’t have a tidy ending for this one. I don’t have the answers yet because I am still looking for them.

But I think there is something important in saying that out loud — that you can be the person who talks about wellness, who has spent her career in fitness, who knows more than the average person about how bodies work — and still be standing in the middle of your own biology going what is happening to me right now.

Perimenopause is humbling. It is disorienting. And it is apparently very angry, at least in my house.

If you are in this too — if you recognized yourself in any of this — I want to hear from you. Because I think we figure this out better together than alone.

And I will keep reporting back.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is everything I’m actually bringing to my NP appointment next month — the specific questions, the hormone panel to ask for, and how to advocate for yourself when your symptoms get dismissed. Join the community here →

Subscribe now

Today I want to give you something practical.

Because the thing I wish someone had handed me before I started down this rabbit hole was a list. Not another podcast episode. Not another su…

Read more

Read more

I want to lead with that because what came next makes no sense without it.

After my daughter was born, I did everything right. The same things that worked before. And for two and a half years, nothing happened. Actually — worse than nothing. I gained weight.

Let me be really specific about what “everything right” looked like, because I think a lot of women are living this exact story right now and beating themselves up over it.

I was running and lifting five days a week. Following a strict caloric intake. Tracking everything. Doing exactly what I had always done — the same approach that had worked my entire career as a fitness instructor, the same approach that had gotten my body back after my first baby.

And I was gaining weight.

Not maintaining. Not plateauing. Gaining. While working out five days a week and eating less than my body needed. For two and a half years.

If you have ever been told that breastfeeding will help you lose the baby weight — I need you to hear me when I say that is not true for so many women, and that bullshit ideology needs to get out of our brains immediately. It made me feel like I was failing at something that was supposedly automatic. Like my body was broken in some uniquely personal way. Like I just wasn’t trying hard enough, even while I was trying harder than I ever had in my life.

Two and a half years of that. Of looking in the mirror and not recognizing what I saw. Of doing everything “right” and feeling like my body was actively working against me. Of the quiet, grinding shame that comes with believing you are the only variable in an equation that clearly isn’t adding up.

I didn’t know yet that my body actually was working against me — just not in the way I thought. It wasn’t lazy or broken or resistant to effort. It was in survival mode. Fight or flight, all day, every day, for years. And no amount of running or restricting was ever going to override that.

I just didn’t know it yet.

The shift happened at a wellness clinic called Innovative Vitality.

They ran bloodwork I had never had done before. And what they found explained everything.

My cortisol levels were elevated — not slightly, dramatically. My inflammation markers were through the roof. Metabolically, my body was in a state where losing weight wasn’t just hard. It was not going to happen. Not with any amount of effort, not with any workout program, not with any meal plan. Not without medical intervention first.

My nurse practitioner - Meredith, aka savior - looked at my results and said something I will never forget:

“The door is deadbolted. Nothing you could do or could have done would have changed your weight. We need to address these issues first — get your body regulated — and then things will start happening.”

I cannot fully explain the relief I felt in that moment. I still feel it now, just thinking about it.

For two and a half years I had been blaming myself. Quietly, constantly, exhaustingly blaming myself for a body that wasn’t responding to effort I was pouring everything into. And in one sentence, someone looked at actual data and told me: this was never something willpower could fix.

We started addressing the inflammation. The cortisol. The hormonal imbalances. And things started happening. Not overnight — but they started.

I’m back to my pre-baby weight now. I feel more like myself than I have in years.

But I want to be honest about what “back” actually means, because I am so tired of the bounce-back narrative that pretends everything snaps back into place like nothing happened.

My skin is still soft. Still loose in places it never used to be. My body carried two babies and it shows that, and it probably always will, and I am working on being okay with that — not loving it every day, just okay with it.

And I’m in perimenopause now, which is its own entire chapter I’m only just beginning to understand. My body is still changing. I’m still figuring it out, in real time, as it happens.

But here’s what’s different this time: I’m not waiting until I’m desperate to ask for help. I’m making appointments. I’m staying ahead of it. I’m being proactive instead of reactive, because I know now what happens when you don’t — when you spend years blaming yourself for something your body was never going to let you fix on your own.

If you are in that two and a half year stretch right now — if you are doing everything right and your body isn’t responding and you are starting to believe it’s because something is wrong with you — please hear this:

It might not be willpower. It might not be effort. It might be a door that’s deadbolted, and no amount of pushing against it is going to open it.

Get your bloodwork done. Find someone who will actually look at it. Ask about cortisol, inflammation, thyroid, hormones. Advocate for yourself the way I wish I had advocated for myself two and a half years sooner.

The door can open. It just might need a different key than the one you’ve been using.

In the world of wellness “influencers” selling you this or that it can be hard to figure out who to trust and listen to. Meredith and our friend and wellness extraordinaire, Mel, have started FORMHER which brings together clinical expertise and real fitness coaching to help you understand your body, your hormones, and your options. Follow them on socials - they’re the real thing.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is everything I wish I’d known sooner — the specific markers to ask your doctor about, what “fight or flight mode” actually does to your body long term, and how to advocate for yourself when a doctor brushes you off. Join the community here →

Not overnight. Not dramatically. Just slowly, quietly, over months and then years — I stopped talking. Stopped sharing. Stopped asking for what I needed. I put on a good face on social media and from the outside looking in I doubt many people would have known.

But inside my marriage, inside my home, inside myself — there was so much silence.

And underneath the silence was something I didn’t have a name for at the time. Something I was too ashamed to admit, too exhausted to examine, too lost to even fully feel.

Resentment.

I was postpartum. I was isolated. I was recovering from having a baby during a pandemic while the world I had built my identity around — the studios, the people, the constant affirmation — had completely disappeared.

And I felt unseen. Unappreciated. Like I was carrying everything alone while no one stopped to ask if I was okay.

The intimacy vanished. There was no touching. No thank yous. Just two people moving through the motions of a life that looked fine from the outside. Ships passing. Not broken — just disconnected. And disconnected, if you let it go long enough, starts to feel like normal.

It was the loneliest I have ever felt in my life.

But here’s the part I have to own — and I say this not to let anyone off the hook but because it’s true and because I think a lot of us are living this same story:

I never said anything.

I never set expectations. I never voiced my unhappiness. I never told him what I needed because I didn’t even fully know what I needed, and because somewhere along the way I had decided that keeping the peace was more important than asking for what I deserved.

So I went mute. And I resented him for not being able to read my mind.

Four and a half years.

That is how long I carried it. Four and a half years from the day my son was born to the day I walked into that retreat and finally — finally — put it all down.

I want you to sit with that number for a second because I need you to understand how insidious this kind of resentment is. It doesn’t announce itself. It doesn’t feel like rage. It feels like distance. Like exhaustion. Like not wanting to be touched. Like a version of yourself you don’t recognize looking back at you from the mirror.

It disguises itself as just the way things are. And if you’re not paying attention — if no one is asking the right questions and you’re not asking them of yourself — four and a half years can disappear before you realize what you lost.

This is not a story about a marriage falling apart. This is a story about what happens to so many of us in good marriages, with good partners, when we stop talking and start disappearing instead. It is more common than anyone admits. And that is exactly why I’m saying it out loud.

The retreat cracked me open in ways I am still unpacking.

For the first time I took real ownership of my part in all of it. Not his fault, not mine — both of ours, together. I had been so focused on what I wasn’t getting that I hadn’t looked honestly at what I wasn’t giving. I wasn’t giving him the chance to show up for me because I wasn’t telling him what showing up looked like.

I forgave myself for that. For not taking better care of myself. For not voicing my needs. For four and a half years of silence that hurt both of us.

And I let go of the resentment I had been holding toward Chris.

To say it was cleansing would be an understatement. It was hard as hell. It was necessary as breathing.

I am not perfect now. Our marriage is not perfect now. But I voice my needs. I set expectations and I actually say them out loud. I stopped waiting to be rescued from a situation I never described.

The biggest thing I left that retreat knowing — the thing I come back to every single time I feel myself starting to shrink again:

I am not responsible for his feelings or his reactions to my feelings.

I am responsible for mine. My health. My mental health. My emotional health. Those have to come first — not because I matter more, but because I cannot show up for anyone else when I am running on empty and swallowing everything I feel.

If you are in the silence right now — if you recognize yourself in any of this — I want to ask you something:

What have you been waiting for permission to say?

Because here is what I know: he cannot meet needs he doesn’t know you have. And you cannot resent someone forever for failing a test you never told them they were taking.

Say the thing. Voice the need. Set the expectation.

Not for him. For you.

Want to go deeper? This week’s paid post is the one I almost didn’t write — what I actually said out loud at that retreat, the exact moment the resentment broke, and the framework I use now when I feel myself going silent again. Join the community here →

Read more