On Friendships, Motherhood, and Saying Yes When Everything In You Says No

New York is where I first stepped into my creative purpose. I had just dropped out of college, wasn't very clear on what came next, and took a leap of faith anyway.

I recently traveled back to New York City and going back all these years later felt like a full circle moment in a way I didn't fully expect. The city looked the same. I didn't. And that's the part that got me.

I walked through those streets as someone who actually became the person she was reaching for back then...not perfectly, not without detours, but genuinely. That's not something I take lightly.

This month had a lot of those full-circle moments, actually. Quiet ones. Heavy ones. Funny ones. All of them required something of me.

---

ON FRIENDSHIPS

The Friend I Almost Let Stay Gone

Five years ago, my friendship with someone I cared about quietly faded. There was no dramatic falling out: no argument, no defining moment where we decided we were done. Just the slow drift that happens when life moves fast and neither person reaches back. And then one day you realize it's been months. And then a year. And then more.

We didn't talk about why. And honestly, I'm not sure I fully understood my own role in it until this month.

A few months ago, I ended up at a creatives networking event and she was there. Something about seeing each other in that room made it easy to close the gap — we reconnected, exchanged numbers, set up a lunch date. And over lunch, we had one of those conversations that quietly rearranges something in you.

I learned that time is one of the things she values most. When people don't keep their word or don't show up when they say they will really mattered to her. As she spoke, I listened...and somewhere in the middle of that I had to get honest with myself.

I move through a lot of my friendships in a very relaxed way. We talk when we talk. No pressure, no schedule, no check-ins unless something big happens. And for some friendships that works beautifully: it's genuine, it's easy, it's mutual. But I had been applying that same framework to everyone, including people who are wired completely differently than I am. People who experience that silence not as freedom, but as neglect.

That was hard to sit with. Not because she said it harshly...she didn't. But because I realized I had been confusing my comfort with their needs, and those aren't the same thing.

Trying to maintain the feeling of a relationship without doing the work to sustain it is exactly how relationships die over time.

Making space for people who don't do things the way I do...that's not a compromise. That's just love in a language that isn't mine. I'm still learning that.

---

ON MOTHERHOOD

Tyler Is 12. Pray for Me.

Being a single mom has been kicking my entire behind this month, and I say that with all the love in my heart for my son.

Tyler is 12. Which means we have officially transitioned from the bullying phase directly into: he has friends, a social life, opinions about everything, and...Lord help me, a girlfriend.

I am stressed. I'm trying to give him room to grow while also holding the line on discipline, and most days I feel like the bad guy. Like I am constantly the one saying no, the one enforcing things, the one he's frustrated with while he's out here just trying to figure out who he is.

But this month kept handing me reminders: in the quiet, in the hard moments, in the rooms I almost didn't walk into, that I can do hard things. In a "I'm still standing and so is he" kind of way.

---

ON SHOWING UP

I Almost Said No to Both of Them

This month I was invited to participate in two events: a women's day panel and the Free Mama Experience, both as a speaker and influencer. And I want to be honest about something I don't always say out loud: it has been years since I've been invited into spaces like this in that capacity. Years since someone looked at what I was building and said, we want you at our table.

That matters to me more than I probably let on.

But here's the thing about social anxiety...it doesn't care about your accolades. It doesn't care that you've been doing this for over a decade, that you have a podcast and a platform and books with your name on the spine. It still shows up in the days before an event and starts whispering that you're too tired, too much, maybe not quite the right fit for the room. It makes opting out feel responsible instead of fearful.

I've gotten very good at finding graceful sounding exits.

But last month, something shifted in how I think about this. A woman at a bouquet workshop told me something I hadn't been able to shake: I don't dislike being outside. I just like being out with intention, in the right rooms. That reframe changed the story I was telling myself — from I'm not an outside person to I'm a discerning person. Small difference in words. Completely different identity.

So when both of those invitations came months ago, I thought about that. I thought: are these the right rooms? And the answer was yes. So I went.

Both events asked something real of me. The panel required me to be present and honest in front of a room full of women who needed something more than a polished answer. The Free Mama Experience required me to show up as an example of what it looks like to keep going. Neither one was easy. Both of them were exactly where I was supposed to be.

The old me would have found a way out of both of those invitations. The new version of me went anyway.

The growth isn't always loud. Sometimes it just looks like showing up when the voice in your head is telling you not to. And trusting that the room was made for you even before you walked in.

Want more candid doses of faith, creativity and inspiration straight from my mind to your inbox? Subscribe to the I Have Thoughts newsletter!