Life’ing

A reflection on identity, belonging, and what happens when you stop trying to fit into stories never made for you.

Today, I no longer treat anxiety as a flaw to fix. I treat it as a compass.
I regulate my nervous system through rhythm, space, and honesty.
It’s more than a schedule—it’s a standard of care I’ve created for myself.

I’ve always been wired to connect—with people, places, energy. But that same openness often leaves me overwhelmed. This is what it looks like to be a highly sensitive extrovert: craving connection, absorbing everything, and learning how to stay whole.

I’ve always been wired to feel life more deeply—mentally, emotionally, physically. But for years, I didn’t have the language for my experience. Diagnosed with ADHD in my twenties, I spent decades trying to make sense of my sensitivity, my panic attacks, and my constant search for calm in a world that felt too loud.

I went on HRT expecting it to fix everything. But no one told me that rebuilding my life — not just replacing a hormone — would be the real work. This is the story I wish someone had told me about menopause, healing, and starting over.

Eventually, the long way home wasn’t about arriving somewhere new. It was about arriving back to myself—more whole, more honest, more free. 

A reflection on the quiet strength, unresolved distance, and unexpected tenderness I shared with my mother. This is how I came to see her not just as “Mom,” but as a woman—with her own rhythm, resilience, and fire. And how, in writing, I’ve found a way to keep her close.

When you’re left out of the conversation but expected to go along anyway, it’s not overreacting—it’s a boundary. And sometimes, choosing yourself means no longer twisting to fit where you were never truly considered.

There was a time when silence unnerved me and constant motion felt safer than stillness.
But after everything fell away—the job, the urgency, the grief—I softened into the quiet. Now, I’m protective of it.

A personal reflection on what happens when the noise stops—when grief, disorientation, and the weight of life transitions catch up.