I've been thinking a lot about attachment lately.

It's amazing how often it disguises itself as planning, certainty, or simply wanting life to unfold a certain way.

I've become attached to certain outcomes.

I keep wondering, When is it going to happen?

When.

When.

When.

As I've sat with it, I've realized something deeper.

I'm not only attached to these outcomes—I'm also afraid they won't happen.

That's a tough combination.

When we're attached to one specific outcome and fearful of not getting it, we close ourselves off. We stop seeing possibilities that don't fit the picture we've created in our minds. We grip tighter instead of opening wider.

And sometimes, we become the very thing standing in our own way…

Last week, I was having a perfectly lovely conversation with a friend. We were talking about our plans for the future when something they said completely triggered me. I nearly burst into tears right in the middle of the conversation. I eventually got off the call and then went into a full-blown spiral.

Not their fault. They were simply sharing what was happening in their life. They had absolutely no idea that I had launched into a spectacular pity party, complete with all my old stories, yelling at the universe to give me a break.

A bit dramatic? Perhaps.

But I couldn't ignore it.

One thing I've learned about myself is that I'm usually pretty aware of what triggers me. I don't let myself off the hook. I sit with it and try to understand why it landed so hard. Eventually, I have to surrender to it and trust that, if I'm willing to stay with it long enough, something deeper will reveal itself.

More often than not, it's something I've faced before.

In fact, I was convinced I'd already dealt with this one…

What made you decide you weren't enough?

Why do you think something is wrong with you?

We look to external sources for most things that need fixing -emotional needs, physical needs, material needs. Cars. Homes. Our devices.

In most cases, that's the wise route. Not all of us have the skill set to fix a car or build a home. We call someone. We hire someone. We buy something. That's not a flaw. That's just how we take care of things.

But somewhere along the way, we started applying that same logic to ourselves…

A couple of years ago, if someone had told me that in a single week I would experience a family emergency, blow out a tire, drive through a desert monsoon, and be evacuated because of a wildfire, I would have assumed they were pitching a screenplay for a low-budget disaster movie.

And yet... here we are.

This past week was one of the strangest I've had in a long time. It was a week of mishaps, literal disasters, near disasters, and more than one moment of asking, "What just happened?" It was also a week that reminded me of something important: no matter what happens, I'm going to be OK.

Let me start at the beginning…

There are moments in life when something inside whispers, “You can’t keep doing it this way anymore.”

Not because everything is falling apart.
Not because you’ve failed.
But because some deeper part of you is asking to be heard.

I’ve been in that space lately.

You know how sometimes you just need to pause and refocus? To step back from the noise and reconnect with what truly matters? That’s where I am right now.

What feels different this time is that this isn’t coming from urgency, fear, or the need to reinvent myself AGAIN. It feels more honest. It’s a knowing.

I have been missing my mom a great deal lately. She transitioned in March of 2018, and not a day has gone by that I haven’t thought of her. But this month feels different. Her presence has been especially close.

I’ve been thinking about the things she taught me, not only through her words, but through the way she lived.

Some of those lessons were beautiful: resilience, loyalty, devotion to family, perseverance. But some of what I absorbed no longer serves me. The biggest ones are a scarcity mindset and a deep feeling that somehow I don’t matter as much as everyone else.