No spoiler alerts needed for this one. It says it all in the title. This is a blog I am wholly unqualified to write. But as I was thinking about what I wanted to share with you all this week, this little voice kept nagging at me.
“Are you seriously going to push out a blog that doesn’t address the current conditions of our country?”

No. No I’m not.

The other day, a friend’s daughter was going through a rough time at work. She was dealing with a boss who had clearly confused professional responses with personal ones when it came to carrying out her role as a supervisor. The lack of emotional intelligence in her comments that seemed to “go for the jugular” left my friend’s daughter frustrated and teary.

For the past two months, I have been dealing with a cancer scare.
In February, I had a mammogram that revealed a suspicious growth. A mass that hadn’t been there before, in a place that often felt painful with no rhyme or reason. But I chalked up the random pains to hormone fluctuations and didn’t think much of it.

The other day, I woke up with a song in my head.

Do you ever do that?

Like- a portion of a song is already playing in your head before you’re even fully awake. It’s like your own personal alarm, calling you into consciousness; whispering something you didn’t know you needed to hear.

The other day, a dear friend wrote in words that she had the nerve to share out loud, and then in an even gutsier move, shared publicly. Apparently, she had mustered the gumption to admit that despite the good things she’s able to see in her world right now, she’s struggling a bit with grieving both the uncertain and the certainty of what has been lost because of our “new normal”.

By now all of us have been made painfully aware of the COVID-19 pandemic that is sweeping the planet. While we’re all trying to figure out what our “new normal” will look like in these trying times, we’ve seen a wide range of responses from responsibly cautious to fear mongering and dissemination of half true news to blatant and irresponsible disregard.

Recently, I’ve experienced what seems to be an influx of people struggling with relationship challenges, grieving and confused over the state of their connection with someone they love. While relationship issues aren’t exactly new territory for me in my line of work (#therapist), there seems to be a theme to what I’ve encountered lately.

“Love holds no record of wrongs.” 1 Corinthians 13:5 What was your first reaction to reading that verse?

I have a confession to make.
I LOVE a good Disney flick. Not all of them, mind you (I’m not your “handsome-prince-saves-damsel-in-distress” kind of girl), but there are a few Disney plots that take me on a much deeper journey than the bright colors and unrealistically drawn characters I see on my screen.

Have you ever seen the movie National Treasure? (Strange place for us to begin, I know. But just stick with me here…)

Recently I had a conversation with a friend whose loved one is struggling with addiction. I listened as this friend expressed his concern along with his sorrow and frustration over how the addiction was impacting him personally.

Here we are at the beginning of 2020 and already there is no shortage of articles and soundbites flooding our feeds about ways to practice self-care in the New Year.

Each year around this time, we find ourselves preparing to answer that dreaded annual question:
“What’s your resolution for the New Year?”

The past couple of weeks I’ve had the privilege of working with some incredible artists to create a new logo for My Out Loud Voice. The idea for it has been swimming around in my head for some time now, just waiting for the right people to come along and bring it to life.

We’re just coming out of an exciting Challenge here at MOLV!
For the past ten days, we have had the privilege of reading hundreds of messages of gratitude and love, reflected by many of you, towards your family, friends, colleagues and neighbors. It has been uplifting and encouraging to see so many of you not only express your gratefulness, but to read that your messages included words of encouragement and support for each other too. I must admit, I’m a little sad it’s over.

What a fitting time of year to talk about gratefulness!Thanksgiving is the season when we’re all paying a little more attention to what it is we each have to be grateful for.
But did you know that gratitude actually changes our brain? And consequently, the quality of our lives?

The other day, I had the privilege of spending some time with an amazing group of women.


They were gracious and funny; easy to talk to and comfortable to be around.
It seemed as though I’d known them so much longer than the handful of minutes we had spent together before our conversations took a deeper turn.

We all have a story that we believe about ourselves. It’s what we live out of each and every day.
What we think about ourselves is reflected in our behaviors, thoughts and feelings. And our behaviors, thoughts and feelings impact the way we think about ourselves. One could say it's sort of a circular relationship.

Reading in the evenings before bed is one of my favorite ways to relax. Typically, I try to read something entertaining or uplifting to help me wind down at the end of the day and prepare for restful sleep.

I don't know about you, but I love to learn. I don't always love the process of learning, or that sometimes we have to do it 'the hard way', but I have come to learn (see what I did there?) that in the long run, I'm usually grateful for the experience.