The Story: When Shadow Work Became a Trend

If you’ve scrolled TikTok lately, you’ve seen it: candle-lit journal sessions, moody captions about “meeting your shadow,” and creators whispering affirmations like spells. Shadow Work is trending—but for many of us, it’s not a trend. It’s survival. It...

Healing is often framed as a personal triumph. But what happens when your growth unsettles the people around you?

It’s a question many survivors, advocates, and therapists wrestle with: Why do some people pull away when we start to thrive? Why does becoming more whole sometimes lead to relationa...

“I didn’t lose my softness. I chose to carry it through the fire.”--Leslie Noble

The Chipped Teacup

There was a woman I once worked with who kept a chipped teacup on her desk. Not tucked away—displayed. She told me it had cracked during a fight with someone she loved. She’d thrown it, then r...

During martial arts class, one of the dojo instructors paused to explain how energy—Chi—can be used to exert force, redirect momentum, and stabilize the body. He wasn’t being mystical. He was describing something real, something felt. And I realized: he was confirming what I’ve known through Reik...

It Started With a Windy Afternoon in St. Petersburg

I met my son when he was 11 months old, bundled in layers inside a quiet orphanage in St. Petersburg, Russia. He had spent the first part of his life in institutional care—no toys, no family, no wind on his face. And yet, when I brought him hom...

“You’ve gone full Rapunzel,” my friend teased, half-laughing, half-concerned. “Are you ever coming down from that tower?”

She meant it playfully, but the image stuck. A woman in a tower, wrapped in quiet, choosing solitude not as punishment—but as medicine. For me, stillness has been a way to re...

I saw a TikTok yesterday. A woman stood in front of her bathroom mirror, mascara smudged, holding a sticky note that read: “I am still worthy.” She whispered it like a secret. The caption said: “Day 37 of loving myself after betrayal.” It had 2.3 million views.

There’s a whole genre of these now...

Last night in martial arts class, the instructor said:

“Picture yourself facing you.”

Not an opponent.

Not a stranger.

You.

It was meant to help us hit harder. But it hit me differently.

Because when you’re stuck—when you freeze, flinch, or fold—it’s not the world holding you back.

It...

A reflection on integrity, quiet power, and Netflix’s Love Con Revenge

I recently watched Love Con Revenge, Netflix’s docuseries on romance scams. Smart, kind people were conned out of thousands—sometimes millions. Their trust was weaponized. Their relationships were used as currency by people w...

There’s a quiet pressure that creeps in after betrayal trauma. A whisper that says: You must be fully healed before you let anyone close again. You must be flawless, boundary-bound, trigger-free, and emotionally enlightened before you’re safe to connect.

It’s seductive, isn’t it? The idea that h...

I took a hit once in martial arts because I forgot to keep my hands up. It was fast, sharp, and humbling. But the hits that stayed with me weren’t physical—they came from people who never asked what I’d survived, only what I’d done wrong. In betrayal trauma recovery,  judgment often arrives faster t...