I hate celebrating my birthday.

Let me rephrase that: I grew up with emotionally unavailable parents who didn’t make a big deal about my birthday, so I developed a belief that I’m not important and I have let that water down my birthday for most of my life.

This week, I ran into a friend while surfing and he asked, “What are you doing for you birthday?”

I immediately felt my chest tighten and replied, “I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“Why not? Let’s get some people together and do something fun! Do you want to go for a run? Do you want to go out to eat?”

His excitement would normally be contagious, but the shame had put up armor so thick that it wasn’t letting anything interfere with my plans to wallow in self-pity on my birthday.

I hit an emotional rock bottom on October 17, 2020.

It’s too much to fully unpack here, but I share the full story in my memoir, Running in Slippers. Link to book  

After I was released from the hospital, I called a friend and told her everything that had happened. She responded with, “It’s not your time.”

Her words sent a chill through my entire body. In that moment, I stopped seeing myself as a victim of life and realized that the way I had been living wasn't working. I wanted something different, and I knew I was responsible for creating it.

So, I invested in myself and hired a coach. Through that work, I learned how to trust myself, respect myself, and ultimately love myself. One day, I noticed a warm energy radiating from my chest. It felt peaceful and loving. The people around me started commenting that I looked different, happier, lighter, like I was glowing.

That feeling was self-love.

The upsides of loving yourself are endless: make decisions in minutes because your self-trust is so fierce, using your voice without giving a shit what other people think of it, no more chasing after people who can’t meet you where you are, recovering faster from rejections or setbacks, feeling more resilient when life isn’t perfect, and asking “What do I want?” instead of “What will everyone else think?” just to name a few.

The downside was that I started noticing where I was still abandoning myself: my corporate America job.

Months prior to the Gary Vee and Tony Robbins event in May 2018, imposter syndrome about my dream to move to Hawaii and become a writer was paralyzing me, so I decided to fake it until I make it.

I Googled Oahu real estate agents and emailed Agnes, who was regularly featured on HGTV’s Hawaii Life. I confidently typed out that I was moving to Hawaii at the end of that year and gave her a price range that was a terrifying amount over my actual budget. If I was going to fake it, I was going hard on all aspects. We arranged a time to have a conversation about the specifics.

After we talked, she set me up on a weekly email alert for new listings. I felt like such a fraud because I couldn’t afford any of them and it would probably be years before I actually moved to Hawaii.

In early 2017, my dad unexpectedly passed away.

I was thirty-seven years old and I had spent thirty-seven years repressing and numbing my feelings, mainly through undereating and overexercising.

But the grief was so profound that it was impossible not to feel my feelings. And because I had no tools for processing my grief, I felt like a numb zombie for the rest of that year. I felt like life was happening to me and I was helpless against it.

With the turn of 2018, I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. For the first time in almost a year, I felt a spark of inspiration, which felt like a grand finale fireworks display in the grief void of my heart.

For the first time in my life, I started thinking about what I wanted from life and what would make me happy. My dad was only sixty-three years old when he passed, and that was a wake-up call that life is too short not to do what you want to do.

I almost threw away my 2024 presidential ballot because it seemed as valuable as junk mail right next to it.

The first presidential election that I participated in was 2000: Bush vs. Gore. This was back when everybody had to vote in person, so I went to the local library to vote before work. I will never forget the pep in my step as I walked out of the voting booth, fueled by a sense of pride of being an American and participating in such an important event.

People have fought and died in wars for this right! I must not take it for granted!

Over the years, I have grown jaded by the left and right wings always undermining each other, the bureaucratic process, and a sense of what difference does it make?

Recently, I went surfing at my usual local spot on Oahu's south shore.

I almost always choose that spot out of convenience. I store my board there, and logistically, it just makes sense. Plus, the waves are nice.

The downside of this is that this spot is right in the center of Waikiki, so it tends to be overcrowded with tourist kooks (beginners who lack ocean awareness and basic etiquette, which can make things feel chaotic and, at times, unsafe).

Because I have been surfing at this break for years, I am very fortunate that a lot of the locals are very nice to me.

How does the word spontaneous make you feel?

Excited? Or slightly panicked?

If the word spontaneous makes you feel a little anxious, this is for you.

If you are anything like Old Me, anything that triggers uncertainty feels terrifying because you don’t trust yourself to handle it.

I used to deal with uncertainty by trying to control everything outside of myself, instead of facing the part of me that couldn’t handle being thrown off.

Recently, I had planned to go running at 6 am. After throwing on a sports bra and running shorts, pulling my hair back into a ponytail, and slipping my feet into my pink running shoes, I stepped into the pre-dawn air to start my day.

In my life this has looked like locking my keys in my car while still running, my condo flooding, my refrigerator dying, my washing machine dying, cancelled flights, unexpected surgeries, getting betrayed, and the list goes on and on.

Sometimes I pass by responding to the situation in a new way that’s aligned to the person I want to become and make it to the next level.

Sometimes, I fall back into old patterns, and I repeat the level until I learn the lesson.

I have repeated many levels in my life. I used to be so fragile that any minor inconvenience would send me into a crying ball on the floor. I had chronic, debilitating anxiety, low self-trust, and pretty much zero self-worth, so anything extra on top of my normal existence was too overwhelming.

A few months ago, I went hiking with a friend wearing one of my favorite pairs of sunglasses: Tom Ford aviators with custom blue mirror lenses.

Halfway through the hike, I took them off to wipe the sweat off my face and dropped them on a rock.

When I picked them up, there was huge gash on the right lens. Not a scratch. A gash.

I have scratch repair paste so I wasn’t too worried because I was optimistic that would take care of it.

Except it didn’t because the scratch was too deep.

I knew how powerful and effective visualization was, but I was recently reminded and the lesson it came with surprised me.

I was doing some inner work over the weekend because I’ve been noticing recently how I’ve been rejecting my beach bum identity. I love to surf. I love the beach. But I had all these negative connotations in my head about beach bums, like they’re lazy and broke.

I didn’t want to accept that identity for myself.

I started visualizing what this version of me would look like if I fully embraced my inner beach bum. And what I came up with was a bougie beach bum.

Take a moment to relax your shoulders and take a deep breath.

Seriously. I’ll wait.

How does that feel in your body?

There is a lot of heavy sh*t going on in the world right now, and we need to take care of ourselves first, just like the cliché oxygen mask analogy.

I was reminded of this recently from a negative comment on Instagram. Before I get into that, let’s zoom out and look at current events on a macro level.

Recently, I was walking home after a surfing session. My mind was racing with thoughts of taking a warm shower, my to-do list, and everything I had to get done before the end of the day.

Then, a man with a homeless aesthetic interrupted my hectic thoughts.

“I’m giving out free massages. Would you like one?”

Are you kidding me?

I was so stunned and simultaneously appalled that I didn’t even break my Chicagoan walking pace. By the time my brain processed what happened, I passed him. Which was for the best because the only response I could think of wasn’t very friendly.

But my next immediate thought was unexpected.

When You Realize You’re Over-Investing

Over the weekend, I went to a birthday gathering at a beach park hosted by a friend.

She was the only person that I knew, so when I arrived, she introduced me to the other guests. While I was there, I only talked to three or four other people. And by talk, I mean saying more than “Hi, what is your name?”

At one point, I found myself in a conversation with a man who was telling me all about his world travels and the properties he owns. I noticed that he had shown zero interest in me.

On a few occasions, I felt the urge to respond to him in a way that made me feel relatable or that would give him something to grasp onto to be interested in me.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, and I had only been there for about an hour, but suddenly, a wave of exhaustion fell over me.

Why am I feeling so drained?

It Started With a Decision

The first time I truly decided to uplevel my life in a major way was early 2018, when I decided I wanted to move to Hawaii and become a writer.

I had no idea what "being a writer" meant.  

Recently, I noticed that my windows were dirty. Washing my windows is one of those things where I make a big deal about it in my head, but then once I actually do it, it doesn’t take as long as I had imagined, and I even find it enjoyable if I am listening to music or a good podcast.

Despite being very aware of my tendency to catastrophize this task, I almost always procrastinate when it occasionally happens. In the thinking-about-it stage, I get all-or-nothing tunnel vision and put pressure on myself to do it all at once, when the truth is I could do it over two to three days to make it more manageable. I get so overwhelmed with anxiety that I find something distracting to avoid starting altogether.

Obsessed with Personal Peace.

Yeah, you know me!

The Addiction to External Validation

I used to be addicted to external validation.

Not because I was surrounded by high-quality people who were making moves in their lives, and I valued their opinions. But because I had very little self-worth.

And when you don’t value your own worth, you search for it in everything outside of yourself.

For me, that meant anxiety, people-pleasing, perfectionism, and constantly chasing approval instead of trusting myself.

It took me years to realize that personal peace, not other people’s opinions, was the thing I had been looking for the entire time.

Unsolicited Advice Isn’t “Being Helpful.” It’s a Trauma Response.

This blog is for both sides of the dynamic.

If you’re the one who gives unsolicited advice, meaning you jump into fixing mode, feel responsible for other people’s emotions, or get uncomfortable watching someone struggle, then this is for you.

And if you’re the one who constantly receives unsolicited advice, meaning that you feel unseen, second-guessed, or subtly controlled even when the other person “means well,” then this is also for you.

Because unsolicited advice isn’t about being helpful, it’s about nervous system safety, control, and survival patterns.

I was a guest on a podcast this week, and at one point, we were talking about my story, my work, my journey, the things I’ve lived and learned.

Mid-conversation, the host paused and said, “Do you know how amazing you are?”

And it completely caught me off guard.

Because, despite the years of inner work I’ve done and even though I genuinely do love myself, I realized something uncomfortable in that moment:

I don’t always see myself that way. At least not consistently, instinctively, or without effort.

And that surprised me.

Because I talk a lot about self-worth, self-trust, and self-acceptance, and here I was thinking I was walking the walk, but realizing that I don’t always hold myself in the same regard as others sometimes do.

So, I took time to process what that means and how I can show up differently for myself.

I have jump rope trauma.

Generally, it lives in the undercurrents of my brain. But every time I see someone jump roping, it punches me in the face. Luckily, this is not a sight I see too often. However, I was at the gym last weekend, and I saw a woman jump roping with some crazy moves like side swings and criss-cross arms.

Initially, I was mesmerized by her skills, but then the shame hit me.

Why am I not over this by now?

It was not a rhetorical question. I earnestly thought about why I wasn’t over it. And I found that it’s not about jump roping. It’s about what happens when you outsource your worth to people who don’t even like themselves.

Since I already wrote about the full version of the jump rope shaming incident in my book, Running in Slippers, I am pasting some excerpts below, and then will follow with a reflection from 2026 Me.

To give some context around these excerpts, I was in Guam in late 2019 for a three-week dog-sitting assignment for five dogs. I was referred to this by a girl who told me I needed Botox (this will be addressed in the reflections!).

Several months ago, a friend invited me to a swimwear fashion show. She invited me via text and sent the link to secure a ticket. Our tickets were free because she knew a vendor so all I had to do was do was click, register, and show up.

The day of the event, as we were waiting in line to get in, I ran into a guy that I know from surfing. And when I say “know,” I mean just that. I simply know him. I am not friends with him. And I wouldn’t call him an acquaintance either.

I know his name. I know of know what he does for work. But other than that, we generally only talk about surfing.

Let’s call him Tom.