Last night, I decided to write down my thoughts. I just opened a note on my phone and wrote down everything that popped into my head. I didn’t think about it. Every few minutes, I’d set the phone down and get my brain busy doing something else…but when a thought would pop into my head, I’d go right back to the note (or is it ‘write’ back to the note? 🤪). This morning, instead of opening social media or my email or text messages, I opened that note and read everything I had written. Now, you would think I would have remembered everything in that note. You would be wrong.…

My task this week is to write one kind thing about myself daily. For some reason, that is harder than my predictive analytics homework. Why is that so difficult? Why does that make me cringe internally? Why is being a friend to myself so much harder than being a friend to others? If you asked me to say a kind thing to a friend, I’d have multiple at the ready. For myself, I draw a complete blank. To the point I am barely able to form words. Maybe after so many years of tearing myself down, reversing course and choosing kindness is too foreign. It is so much easier to…

Smack dab in the middle of week 1 of school, I hit a brick wall. I wanted to call my dad to tell him about everything. I’d even take a chat with everything repeated a million times, or one where he double checked that there wasn’t a bear in my Texas backyard (dementia is a hell of a disease). But he is no longer with us…and it hit me. Again. He won’t see my girls graduate high school and college next May. He won’t see me finish my MBA. There are so many things he will miss. But also, I know that two things can be true at the same…

Slowly but surely, I’m coming to realize a simple truth about myself and my life: for longer than I’d care to admit, I’ve been walking through the world like an animal complete with a gaping, bleeding wound. Some time ago, a person I thought was a medic found me and administered a balm to help the wound heal. But it didn’t heal, because this person wasn’t a medic. And what was administered wasn’t a balm to the wound. While the wound didn’t bleed actively anymore, it never scabbed over. It remained raw and painful sometimes. I got used to it. I lived my life with varying degrees of pain; but,…

There is someone I have to face. I haven’t seen this person in a year and a half. In May, in what ought to be a joyous and momentous occasion for my children, a part of me will be filled with anxiety and fear regarding seeing this person. In nine months, I need to be ready. This should be a rebirth of sorts, so it is fitting that there is the same gestation period as pregnancy. Can our emotional reactions subside? You always hear ‘everything gets better with time’ but is nine months truly enough time to stop being triggered by the past? By a voice, by a look, by…