Some ideas stay with me. They return through conversations, books, therapy sessions, and ordinary moments of living.
This is a place for a few of those ideas—not advice or essays, but reflections that continue to shape the way I think about existence and the human condition.
I am a work in progress, just like all of us, and this page is too.
on healing in relationship
A friend asked me, while walking under the BQE, “do you think we need to heal before we get into relationships or can we heal in them?” Coming to a complete stop, we turned to each other and I said “in them.” And of course it was happening even then in real time. What a pleasure in life to be aware in the moment, what luck.
That evening I sat with the question, meditating on it, mulling it over, letting it wander through me for the rest of the night and every day since. Working as a therapist I have the opportunity to support relational healing, witnessing, learning to give and receive and all these pieces that feel so important to being human.
There is something powerful and precious about letting ourselves be seen and appreciated by another person, whether a friend, a lover, a family member, a therapist, a stranger or that most underrated of relationships, an acquaintance. It happens in so many ways, but at this moment I am thinking about how it feels when we receive genuine curiosity. It’s that “what do you think?” that breaks down the walls and lets the relationship soften into something that resembles play that we could call relational joy.
Being seen, being asked, being curious together shifts us away from stories of self-judgment and into an experience of connection and value. These moments require all of it, the asking, the seeing and what can be the hardest part - the openness to receive it.
on guilt
In my office and in my life, I often find myself returning to guilt. I break it apart, working to separate the pieces, the sources, the voices it comes in.
Guilt. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.
Yes, I am hearing that to the tune of Edwin Starr’s War. Perhaps they’re connected. Guilt is its own kind of battle, one that takes place internally. It is often a conversation we have with ourselves. It can shape and even control the way we behave and the stories we tell about our experiences, stories often steeped in self-blame and shame.
For a long time, I have been approaching guilt through a binary lens. There is the external, shaming kind of guilt, and the internal kind that can move us toward repair. The reality is more nuanced than that, but let's explore here for a moment.
Guilt can be useful when it leads to action. Replacing the empty toilet paper roll. Not leaving the last sip of juice in the carton. Apologizing after stepping on someone's toe. Catching ourselves before we do something that could hurt a friend. Directing us into acknowledgement or true apology. It serves a purpose when it nudges us toward responsibility, repair, or greater understanding.
The relational therapist Terrence Real suggests that if guilt lasts more than five minutes, it's useless. We are aligned on this, though perhaps five minutes implies a level of speed to insight and sometimes we need more time to get there.
Guilt becomes harmful when it simmers, when it becomes untethered. It can leave us unable to move as we replay the same mistake over and over. Or it can turn into defensiveness and anger directed at the person we believe we've hurt, or simply fear we've hurt.
One question I return to is, Where is this guilt coming from? Is it even mine?
And then, What do I do with it?
Can I use it? Can I shift toward repair instead of shame? Can I let it deepen connection rather than pull me further into self-condemnation? Can I meet both myself and the other person with a little more compassion?
on time
I have been thinking about constructs of time: timelines, anniversaries (the good ones, the hard ones, the ones we feel but can't quite remember), deep memories, and how they shape each person's experience of moving through life. They define the lived pace of it all, alongside that looming and often unspoken awareness of mortality.
Beginning to notice how we move through time can make more space to choose our path forward.
Time and memory are central when working with trauma of all kinds. We forget and remember in ways that can feel strange and non-linear. Time gets stuck, memories get stuck, the body gets stuck. Finding movement often means gently sifting through these experiences, making room to understand what is happening to us.
The physicist and writer Alan Lightman wrote Einstein's Dreams as a way of exploring different conceptions of time. That intersection of scientific curiosity and fiction is something I recognize in my approach to therapy. I am interested in how careful observation, imagination, and awe can expand our understanding of ourselves and our relationships.