Forgive Yourself

Healing doesn't mean forgetting the past or pretending it didn't hurt. It means no longer allowing what you didn't receive to define who you are. In the final episode of this three-part series on the father wound, forgiveness, and healing, we explore what it truly means to move beyond awareness and begin rebuilding your relationship with yourself. I share how childhood experiences with an emotiona...

The father wound isn’t just about your father. It’s about the beliefs you formed about yourself when you didn’t feel fully seen, safe, protected, chosen, or emotionally met. In this second episode of my When Father’s Day Feels Complicated series, we’re exploring how those beliefs can quietly shape the way you love, trust, and choose long after childhood. I’ll share some of my own experiences with...

Father’s Day can bring up more than celebration. It can stir grief, longing, anger, confusion, gratitude, or the ache of something that was never fully there. In the first episode of this three-part series, I explore the father wound and the impact of growing up with a father who may have been physically present but emotionally unavailable, absent, critical, inconsistent, or simply unable to give...

Better conversations don’t begin with perfect words—they begin with a more honest relationship with yourself. In this final episode of the self-trust series, I bring everything we've explored together and focus on what self-trust looks like in real life, especially in the conversations, decisions, and boundaries that feel the hardest. Too often, we overexplain, people-please, or abandon our own ne...

Why do some decisions feel impossible to make? Why do certain conversations leave you overthinking for days? And why do you keep finding yourself people-pleasing, seeking reassurance, or ignoring what you know is true? Beneath avoidance, over-explaining, and self-doubt, there is often an unmet need asking for attention. In this episode, I continue our three-part series on self-trust by exploring t...

Self-trust is not about having all the answers or never feeling afraid. It’s about learning to stay connected to yourself while taking the next honest step forward. In this first episode of a special three-part series on self-trust, I explore why so many of us keep searching for more advice, more reassurance, and more opinions when deep down, we already know what feels true. I unpack the patterns...

There are some wounds that change the course of a life, and some healing journeys that change it again. In this deeply vulnerable conversation, I sit down with author and memoirist Heather Conn to talk about surviving childhood incest, the long and layered process of healing, and the unexpected path that eventually led her toward forgiveness. Heather shares how years of therapy, body-based healing...

So many women carry a quiet promise inside themselves: ‘I will be different from my mother.’ Maybe you grew up feeling unseen, emotionally alone, criticized, or responsible for everyone else’s feelings. And when you became a mother yourself, you vowed your children would never feel what you felt. But what happens when that promise turns into pressure? In this episode, I talk about the emotional we...

Mother guilt is something so many women carry, but rarely say out loud. In this episode, I talk about the kind of guilt that shows up in everyday moments. The guilt of not being present enough, patient enough, or doing enough. The guilt that lingers from the past and the pressure we place on ourselves in the present. But this conversation is not about judging yourself or trying to “just let it go....

There are losses we talk about, and then there are the ones we carry quietly. In this episode, I sit down with pregnancy loss coach Shruti Trivedi to talk about a kind of grief that so often goes unspoken. Pregnancy loss is something many experience, but few feel safe enough to fully process. What gets left behind is not just sadness, but guilt, shame, and the constant loop of “what if.” Shruti sh...

Giving comes naturally. Receiving does not. In this episode, I’m diving into why receiving can feel so uncomfortable, especially for high-achieving, high-functioning women who are used to being the ones who give, support, and hold everything together. This isn’t just about brushing off compliments. It shows up in your relationships, your work, your business, and even your ability to receive succes...

I didn’t lose myself all at once. It happened slowly, quietly, in ways I didn’t recognize until my body started speaking louder than I could ignore. In this episode, I’m sharing something I’m not just teaching, I’m living. We’re talking about what it really looks like to lose yourself while taking care of everyone else, and how patterns like people-pleasing and codependency can feel loving on the...

When we hear the word dementia, most of us think of loss. Decline. Goodbye. But what if that’s not the full story? In this conversation, I sit down with Marilyn Raichle, who gently challenges everything we think we know about dementia. After being told her whole life to "walk away" when Alzheimer's came, Marilyn, Marilyn did the opposite. She stayed. And what she discovered changed everything. Wha...

So many of us have spent our lives outsourcing our authority, worth, and wisdom to expectations, roles, and other people. In this episode, we explore how to bring it back to yourself. In this conversation, I sit down with the deeply insightful Sheila Delaney to talk about what it really means to come back home to yourself, especially after burnout, chronic stress, or years of putting everyone else...

One of the most complicated relationships we have is the relationship with our own body. When chronic illness, pain, injury, or unexpected physical changes show up, many of us quietly begin blaming ourselves or believing our bodies have betrayed us. In this episode, I share how the journey through nerve-damage and chronic pain forced me to confront the harsh inner voices that judged, blamed, and t...

What if the real healing begins the moment we stop fighting our bodies? In this compassionate conversation, I sit down with Tami Stackelhouse—health coach, founder of the International Fibromyalgia Coaching Institute, and host of the Fibromyalgia Podcast—to talk about self-forgiveness in the face of chronic illness. Tami shares her personal journey with lifelong health challenges and fibromyalgia,...

“I thought I’d be further along by now.” That’s a sentence I hear all the time, and if I’m honest, it’s one I’ve said to myself, too. In this episode, I’m talking about the quiet ache so many women carry: the feeling of being behind in life. Behind in our careers. Behind in healing. Behind in love, confidence, health, or fulfillment. On the outside, we may look capable and responsible—often the on...

You don’t have to fix yourself first to deserve your own kindness. So many high-achieving women I work with don’t hate themselves…but they don’t really like themselves, either. They tolerate themselves. They manage themselves. They critique themselves. And often, they live in a quiet, ongoing relationship with judgment. Self-judgment doesn’t always scream. Sometimes it sounds reasonable. Motivatin...

When we think about forgiveness, we usually think about other people. But some of the deepest resentment we carry is self-directed, and it often hides as guilt, self-criticism, exhaustion, regret, or a constant feeling that something just isn’t quite right. In this episode, I walk through the 10 most common things we struggle to forgive ourselves for, especially as women in midlife: how we showed...

When we think about forgiveness, we usually think about other people. But some of the deepest resentment we carry is self-directed, and it often hides as guilt, self-criticism, exhaustion, regret, or a constant feeling that something just isn’t quite right. In this episode, I walk through the 10 most common things we struggle to forgive ourselves for, especially as women in midlife: how we showed...

In a world that feels increasingly uncertain, overwhelming, and emotionally charged, how do we stay rooted without bypassing what’s real? In this episode, I explore what it truly means to hold two truths at the same time: acknowledging fear, grief, and instability while also choosing presence, agency, and inner steadiness. Drawing from my personal caregiving journey, recent moments of self-doubt,...

Sometimes healing doesn’t come from pushing harder, but from allowing ourselves to receive. In this episode, I share my experience at Miraval Resort in Arizona and the unexpected insights that emerged after a season of caregiving, grief, betrayal, and deep self-awareness. Through equine therapy and the art of Kintsugi, I reflect on perception, self-trust, and what it means to love ourselves deeply...

Two years ago, I made one of the hardest decisions of my life: moving my husband into memory care. Last year, I shared the raw shock, grief, and guilt of that first year. This episode is about what the second year has taught me. I thought year two would feel easier. More settled. Instead, it brought new crises, a nervous system stuck on high alert, and an unexpected moment that finally cracked my...

What happens when we stop outsourcing our knowledge and begin listening to the wisdom that’s been living inside us all along? Brenda is joined by somatic and expressive arts therapist Cathy Williams to explore what it truly means to come home to your body after trauma, burnout, and self-abandonment. Cathy shares her personal healing journey, from living in her head and overriding her intuition, to...

In this deeply vulnerable episode, Brenda opens up about a powerful and unexpected moment in her caregiving journey with her husband, who lives in memory care due to dementia. What began as shock and heartbreak became a profound awakening, revealing a pattern so many high-achieving, caring women carry quietly into adulthood: the Good Girl Syndrome. Brenda explores how early conditioning to be “goo...