How can we heal what we’ve spent years suppressing, avoiding, and numbing just to survive? That question changed everything. It changed the way I built this office. The way I think about therapy. The way I think about healing itself. I stopped asking what the right thing to do was. I started listening to what my body needed. It wasn’t just safety in my environment. It was learning how to create safety within myself. For years, I stayed busy because slowing down meant risking feelings that seemed too overwhelming to survive. Until one day, the right answers stopped working. The right routines. The right coping skills. The right career. But having control isn’t the same thing as having safety. What I needed wasn’t just to make space for joy. I needed to make space for grief. To allow my body to exhale. Somewhere along the way, I realized I wasn’t actually afraid of grief. I was afraid of what would happen if I slowed down long enough to feel it. I believed I wouldn’t be able to handle it on my own. But the moment I trusted myself enough to begin before I felt ready, something shifted. I realized my biggest fear wasn’t grief. It was the belief that I had to carry it alone.