Reflecting, Reconnecting, and Reclaiming: A Year of Growth

This episode is all about pulling back the curtain on a transformative year—messy, unpredictable, but deeply necessary. Here's the tea: the path to fulfillment isn't about hustling for achievements or chasing perfect relationships. It's about you—your desires, your boundaries, and your willingness to prioritize your own damn happiness.

What you'll hear:

• 🔑 Understanding what you really want: After years of putting others first, finding clarity about my own desires was a game-changer.
• 🛑 Setting boundaries that stick: From honest convos with my husband about holiday plans to saying "no" to family expectations, small steps = big shifts.
• 🎾 Embracing new hobbies just for fun: Tennis, anyone? Stepping into joy without tying it to work feels revolutionary.
• 🧠 Navigating neurodivergence: How tools like breathwork help me stay present and manage life's curveballs.
• 💔 Processing loss: Reflecting on losing a loved one and a friendship while learning to honor my needs and emotions.
• 🌈 Reigniting my coaching biz: Reclaiming authenticity, championing inclusivity, and building with curiosity at the center.

This isn’t just my story—it’s an invitation to think about how you can unapologetically claim your own well-being. Because let’s be real if you’re not showing up for yourself, who will?

Where to find me:
Connect with me on Instagram
Check out my website
Sign up for a free consult
LinkTree

Chapters

• 0:00 Navigating Identity and Self-Discovery in 2025
• 6:13 Embracing Personal Growth and Exploration

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:32

Hey, bestie, happy New Year. It has been a minute and I hope that you're doing well and that you survived the holiday season. I am doing okay. 2024 was quite the year for me and I wanted to check back in with you all in the new year to let you know where I'm at and sort of what to expect for me moving forward in 2025. And the real answer to that question is I don't know, and I also really want to model that for you as best I can, for any of you who are in the same or a similar place that I'm in. And what place is that, you ask? Well, it's one of a lot of confusion, to be honest. And what place is that, you ask? Well, it's one of a lot of confusion, to be honest.

Speaker 1: 1:24

2024 left me with more questions than answers and, knowing that people often come to the pod for answers, I feel like I need to be very transparent, that right now, I don't have a lot of them, and I want to talk about how I got here, and I think that it was a long time coming. I've been chasing meaning for so long and I have kind of finally run out of steam. I've realized that the things that I was chasing are maybe not as important as I once thought they were. It's funny because I actually said in my about page on my website that you know this very thing like I was chasing relationships and jobs and achievements, only to still be longing for something like, something kind of like that. And in the last I don't know at least six months, I've really stopped looking to those external things like for real, and when I say I've stopped looking to them, I've stopped looking to them for meaning, but in doing so I don't really know what I want anymore. It's left me with this kind of void. So that's what I'm focusing on at the moment.

Speaker 1: 2:25

What do I want? Just that simple question, and it does seem really simple, but as someone who has always put other people's wants and needs in front of their own, I've had a very hard time answering this question, like even in its like most basic form. Like what do I want for dinner? What do I want to do with my downtime? What do I want to wear? Well, that last one I actually keep pretty simple, because I basically wear the same thing every day, like it's giving Steve Jobs. I have like seven of the same black v-neck and three of the same pairs of jeans, but, like, is that what I want or is that just what's easy? And maybe that's a little bit of both. I like the ease of knowing what I'm going to wear every day, but maybe I've also kind of given up on truly knowing what I want or what feels good because I've just opted for that easy.

Speaker 1: 3:18

I've also realized that my people pleasing has been a big factor in my life that, to be honest, I thought I had solved and that's like laughable that word solved right Because, like, first of all, I've seen myself as a problem that needs fixing, and that's very evident in my own personal self-talk and I'm sharing this because I know a lot of you out there have treated yourselves similarly. That was really what my whole self-help obsession is really all about Always trying to get to the root issue so that I could once and for all be free from myself, or something like that. And I really think it's time to stop running from myself so that I could once and for all be free from myself, or something like that. And I really think it's time to stop running from myself so that I can actually get to know myself. So that is what 2025 will be about for me, mostly getting to know me. What that looks like is still kind of elusive. I know that it starts with really focusing on pleasing myself over others, whether what I need and want is going to be upsetting for the people around me. I've already started this in some ways.

Speaker 1: 4:30

I expressed my feelings about traveling for the holidays in a really open and authentic way with my husband, and, even though we did end up deciding to travel in the end, I feel really good about not holding back from my partner what my concerns were and what I was going to need to help me feel good and safe while traveling and while we were away. And that was a really scary conversation because I didn't know what his reaction would be and I've been so concerned about other people's reactions that's really hindered me in the past from being really, really honest about what I need. I also had to be like really upfront with my own family who is currently visiting, and they showed up basically the day after we got home, but I had to be very clear about the fact that, like they couldn't show up the day that I was going to be getting home because that was going to be too much for me and that I had a limit as to, like, how long they could stay, because we have to get back to work and we really need some downtime before that happens, and these steps may seem small, but they're quite significant when you've spent most of your life acquiescing to others, and so I want you to think about that for yourself, like, are there places where you can stop prioritizing other people and how they might be feeling and thinking, and how they might receive you standing up for yourself, and really just small ways that are going to, like help move you forward, because that's what I'm doing right now. Other things that I'm going to be exploring are things that I like to do and how I like to spend my time.

Speaker 1: 6:14

The past few years, I've gotten very reclusive, and I do think that it's time to venture back out into the world and start exploring things and experiences that I might enjoy. Now I will say my perfectionism has been a really big factor in not trying new things, so one thing I want to see, if I like, in the new year, is tennis. It's been something that I've been intrigued about for a while. I played with my family as a kid, but I was never really like good at it Like me and sports were not really like hitting it off, but that's kind of my point. My whole life I've always gone after things that I had a natural aptitude for, so I was pretty sure that I was going to avoid any kind of failure. And not only would I avoid failure, I'd usually end up turning around and making a career out of whatever my latest special interest was. Well, right now I have no special interest. I was kind of my special interest for so long and I turned myself into a project and then I made a career out of helping other people figure themselves out. And I still want to help people, but I'm figuring out how to do that Now that self-help and self-betterment aren't the goal necessarily.

Speaker 1: 7:26

I have said this in the past, but none of us needs fixing, but so many of us are unfulfilled and dissatisfied and searching for something. It's time to start searching and start living, at least for me. It's time to start letting myself do things for fun. I need to explore things that I might not be good at or even like, so I can figure out what I do like and what is fun, and I need to not have them be tied to capitalism. No more turning everything I do and I enjoy into a career.

Speaker 1: 7:57

That's going to be a hard one, and another thing I'm doing is learning how to slow down and get more in tune with my body. This is hard for me, and I know it's hard for a lot of neurodivergent people. With the way we're wired, we can be on the extremes of the spectrums of sensory experiences. I'm very sensitive to light and noise, but I'm equally as like detached from my own internal experience, and this makes for a very interesting way of going through the world. I can walk into a bright room and immediately be uncomfortable, but not always be aware of why or how exactly that it's affecting me, like it takes a moment for me to process the stimulus and ultimately understand that I need to make adjustments to my environment. And I'm learning how to accommodate myself in a way that I never have before. I'm learning how to really use, in a way that I never have before. I'm learning how to really use the tools of breathwork and body scanning to center myself and get information from them. Learning tools is one thing, but implementing them and learning from them is another story. It's a very active process that takes a lot of intention to actually do and I often forget I have these tools. So step one is going to be remembering to use them and step two is going to be really learning from them.

Speaker 1: 9:11

And if I can get like super real for a second, I'm grieving a lot. The pain of the loss of Benjamin is still very fresh and it really ramped up over the holidays as we experienced so many firsts without him and I know there are many firsts yet to come. I also lost a friendship this year in a very sudden and unexpected way, and I'm also grieving what could have been had I known what I needed from a younger age. I should have been taught how to care for myself and support myself instead of learning that my needs were a burden is also something that I, like, need to grieve and heal from. So, all that being said, I honestly feel like I don't really know myself at all, if I'm being honest, and I'm both excited and nervous to continue to meet who I am now. My therapist always says that I have not had the pleasure of meeting me, which he says when I'm sort of getting down on myself, but I have to say I would like to get to know me, and I've talked about this before, but I think this is where I can rely a little on other people in my life to help me know me better. I want to see myself through the eyes of others who respect, like and even love me. I want to be able to appreciate the things they see in me instead of focusing on the things that I think are wrong with me.

Speaker 1: 10:29

I have this kind of addiction to negative noticing, and it's something that we all do as humans. We look for problems to solve. It's a survival instinct, and for some of us we get hooked into this and have a hard time seeing anything but what is wrong with a situation, and oftentimes that situation is ourselves. We just look for our flaws and our problems. I know that this is a feature of my brain, and one that's kind of like turned up a little bit more than it is for others. If you have a brain like mine, you might do this too, but we can take our brains back by interrupting that negative noticing and replacing it with positive noticing. I call it giving equal airtime. If we're going to let our brains go to worst case scenarios, then we need to consider the best case scenario as well. It's only fair.

Speaker 1: 11:17

And finally, for 2025, I'm reacquainting myself with my business. I still love coaching, but I've been on a bit of a break from really putting that out there in any kind of significant way, and as I learn to love myself better, I want to help others do the same. I'm looking at what I value most in life and infusing my business with those same values. Authenticity, self-authority, contribution, knowledge, curiosity, inclusivity and accessibility are all things that are so important to me as a human and as a business owner. There's a lot going on in the world right now, and I feel more than ever that we need all of our voices out there, in whatever way that we can, to continue the fight for our rights, our communities and ourselves. So that is what I am up to for 2025. I hope that you had an amazing finish to 2024. And I plan to be back to talk to you more in the new year as I continue this journey of self-discovery. All right, bestie, we'll talk soon. Bye.