I used to think identity was something I could sculpt. That if I looked a certain way, ate the “right” things, or performed enough emotional strength, I’d finally arrive at the version of me who was enough.
But healing has a funny way of undoing the stories we were never meant to carry.

As a relational therapist, I see every day how we exist in relationship—to our partners, our parents, our clients, our friends, our communities, and even to the parts of ourselves we’re still learning to understand.

Every Halloween, bowls of candy seem to appear everywhere: on desks, counters, and in our feeds.
And right alongside them comes one of the most persistent myths we hear about Intuitive Eating:

“It’s just about letting yourself eat all the candy.”

Sometimes prioritizing my well-being means doing something I don’t enjoy, like letting something go.  Not because I’ve stopped caring about it. Not because it doesn’t matter. But because holding onto it — at least right now — costs me more than it gives back. The weight of it may be invisible to everyone else, but I feel it in my shoulders, in my calendar, in the way I sigh before I start another task.

This past week marked Weight Stigma Awareness Week (WSAW), an annual reminder of the deep impact that anti-fat bias has on people’s lives. The theme this year, “Healing Without Harm: Ending Weight Stigma in Healthcare,” shines a light on an issue that affects millions of people every day. Often silently, often painfully.

When a dear friend gets three different cancer diagnoses in six months, it changes the way you look at bodies. Every week seems to bring another plot twist, scarier than the last. And through it all, I keep thinking: how senseless it is that so much of our cultural energy still goes into worrying about how our bodies look. Flat stomachs, toned arms, wrinkle-free skin—these standards feel so small when you’re face-to-face with a body that is simply fighting to survive.

September always sneaks up on me. One day I’m wearing sandals and sweating in the late summer sun, and the next, I’m reaching for a sweater in the cool morning air. The change feels sudden, but it also carries a sense of comfort. The shifting seasons remind me that change doesn’t have to mean something has gone wrong. It’s simply a natural part of being alive.

A few weeks ago, I had to make the gut-wrenching decision to put one of my dogs down. She was very ill, getting worse, and suffering greatly. Even with the knowledge that this was the most sound decision given the circumstances, it was, and still is, very painful. I experienced a huge sense of loss and things felt surreal that day and over the next several days as I came to terms with my “new normal.”

Next time you see a wellness product or program, ask yourself:  Who benefits from me believing I need to control my body this way?

Becoming your future self isn’t about fixing who you’ve been. It’s about carrying every version of yourself forward with compassion, acceptance, and gratitude.

Because when you stop waging war on your past, you free up all that energy to create the future you’ve been dreaming of.

I’m inspired by the Bechdel Test—a brilliant and biting way to measure how well women are represented in film. It’s simple, elegant, and often sobering: Do two women talk to each other about something other than a man? But what if we applied the same kind of clarity to body representation? What if we had a test for how larger-bodied characters show up in our stories—not as jokes, cautionary tales, or redemption arcs, but as fully human?

If you’ve watched the news or logged onto your social media recently, chances are that you’ve seen some upsetting and potentially traumatic images or videos.  For me, I use grounding techniques to connect myself to the present and to my body. I find ways to check in with myself, especially when things feel so overwhelming that it’s hard to do more than just go through the motions.

No one talks about how lonely healing can feel—even when it’s the right decision. Even when you're the one who left. Even when you’ve done all the right things since then: therapy, journaling, setting boundaries, chasing freedom.

What no one prepared me for was how often I’d find myself unconsciously reaching for a sense of safety that no longer existed outside of me.

When I first began eating disorder recovery, I thought it would be about food. About adding things back in. About not skipping meals. About “getting healthy again.”

But what it really became was a mirror. A mirror that showed me how much of my life I had been spending trying to be small—not just physically, but emotionally, spiritually, and relationally.

June is PTSD Awareness Month, and at Inner Revolution, we want to gently remind you that trauma doesn't always look the way it's portrayed in the media. PTSD isn't just combat-related or tied to one-time catastrophic events—it can stem from ongoing experiences of shame, neglect, abuse, fatphobia, medical trauma, and the chronic stress of living in a world that doesn't always feel safe.