Exhausted. Wired. Wide awake at 1am. Here's what's actually going on. Do you struggle to fall asleep because your brain won’t shut off? Stress and anxiety keep you up, and then it takes you days to recover. You sleep and sleep and still feel tired, like you can never catch up. Can your family tell the second they see you whether you slept well or not? I feel all of that. And here’s the truth: sleep isn’t optional for your mental health, it’s critical. When you’re not sleeping

You’re touched out. Someone’s been on your body, in your space, or needing something from you since 6am, and you haven’t had a single unclaimed moment since. Your eyes keep doing that thing, scanning for the next meltdown before it even starts. A tone shift. A look. A quiet that’s a little too quiet. You’re on high alert, and you didn’t even choose to be. Then there’s the other version of this: you know you need to start dinner, answer that text, get off the couch, and your b

How everything I went through became the reason I built a space for the woman holding it all together, alone. If you’ve been following along, you know where I’ve been. The drowning. The going numb. The depression medication that didn’t fix what it was never designed to fix. The four emotions I had to take apart piece by piece, guilt, shame, anger, grief, just to find out who I actually was underneath all of it. This is the part where I tell you what I found. And why it change

Going back to school didn’t just teach me music therapy. It forced me to take myself apart and decide what I actually wanted to keep. Last week I told you about the moment everything cracked open, the character in the novel, the audition I had one week to prepare for, the leap I took because I had nothing left to lose. This week I want to tell you what happened after I landed. Because the raw truth about choosing yourself is it doesn’t feel like relief right away. First it fe

My First Day Back to School I loved my children. I was exhausted, overwhelmed, and resentful. And I hated my life. I know that’s a lot to admit. But if I’m going to do this, show up here and be honest with you, then that’s where we start. Not with the version of the story where I figured it all out. With the version where I was drowning and didn’t see a path out. That’s the version that might actually matter to you. The Life I Was Supposed to Want I had been taught my entire

I was working the lunch rush at the college dining center, somewhere between the steam trays and the salad bar, when I made the mistake of asking to learn something new. It was slow. I was bored. I’d finished my section and wanted to be useful, so I asked one of my supervisors if she could show me a different station. Something to do. Something to learn. What happened next left a mark I carried for years. A handful of my female supervisors were upset. Not just mildly bothered

Someone who loves you looks you in the eye during a panic spiral and says: “Just calm down.” Be honest. What does that do for you? For most people? It makes it worse. The anxiety spikes. The frustration doubles. And somewhere in the back of your brain, a part of you thinks: “Oh thanks. If only I’d known I just needed to calm down. Problem solved.” Here’s the thing: that advice isn’t just unhelpful. It usually will make it worse, the rumination and spiral intensifies. So what

. I sat in my therapist’s office and laughed. I laughed while I told her my kids were struggling. I laughed while I told her I couldn’t sleep. I laughed while I told her I had a list of things I needed to do and absolutely zero desire to do any of them. She looked at me, tilted her head, and asked: “Why is that funny?” I didn’t have an answer. Not a real one. The real answer, the one I couldn’t say out loud yet, was this: if I don’t laugh, I will cry. And I genuinely don’t kn

So there’s this thing that happens to me. My family has a name for it. It goes like this: Someone calls for me from the other room. Nothing. They call again. Still nothing. Eventually one of my kids wanders in to find me, and my husband says from down the hall, “Don’t bother, your mom can’t hear you. She’s doing music.” Or I’m at the piano. Or I’m playing guitar. Or I’m in the middle of writing something and the song takes over and I’m gone. Completely, fully, unapologeticall

I was crying in a wheelchair. Two grown men were pushing me, and I wanted to disappear. I was supposed to be having fun. Vacation. The thing I’d been looking forward to, planned around, needed. And now here I was, broken foot, tears streaming, completely unable to do what I’d told everyone I could do. And the first thought my brain served up? “How could I have been so stupid. I’m such a burden.” Not: this really hurts. Not: I need help. Not even: well, that was unlucky. A bur

I bought five new swimsuits this week. Not because I wanted to. Because I'm going on vacation, and somewhere between the online shopping, the bathroom mirror and the spiral that follows, buying new suits every single time has become my ritual. My armor. My way of trying to control something that still, after all these years, controls me more than I'd like to admit. I'm a music therapist. I help women reclaim their voices and celebrate who they are. And I still stand in front

Every Sunday morning last December, I woke up dreading church. I was the youth chorister. I stood in front of a room full of beautiful children every week and taught them to sing songs about love, hope, and faith. And every single week, I felt like a fraud, because I didn’t have any of those things, not right then. I was running on empty, barely holding my house together, and showing up week after week because I was good at it and because I felt like I was supposed to. Then o

She’s ten, curled up on the couch next to her dad, watching Brave. It is near the end, when the fate of the mother is still up in the air and everything hangs in the balance and my daughter is sobbing. Full, real, from-the-gut tears. My husband, completely caught off guard, says: “It’s a Disney movie. You know what always happens.” And then he says it. “You’re overreacting. Why are you being so emotional? It seems like a lot to cry that hard.” I glared at him. Then I sat down

They told me I was too blunt. Too loud. Too emotional. That I wore my heart on my sleeve. That I talked too much. That I had so much potential, if only I could just... tone it down a little. I was a kid and I can still hear those words now. I was learning that who I was, naturally, was too much. I spent years trying to adjust, controlling my volume, rephrasing my bluntness so it landed softer. I learned how to read people really well, what was important to them and adjusted m

A place where we use music to find our voice, tell our truth, and celebrate who we've always been, unfiltered and unapologetically free. You found this place for a reason. Maybe you're exhausted and overwhelmed. Maybe you've been doing everything for everyone else for so long that when someone asks what YOU want, you go blank. Maybe you've been told your whole life that you're too sensitive, too emotional, too much, and somewhere along the way, you started believing it. Maybe