Wholeness, Redefined
Asking for help doesn’t mean you’re broken
I had just finished writing Tuesday’s article, The Kind of Friend I Want to Be, when it struck me that it needed a deeper follow-up.
In this new world of writing, I’m trying to impose structure on what often feels like the wild west. The Type A in me needs that. In the absence of an operating system, I built my own.
Tuesdays are my EDITS for everyone—public, grounding, thematic. They’re meant to shape the listening for the week ahead. A lens. Something to sit with.
The weekend EDIT is different. It’s personal. It goes deeper. It’s paid—inside The Preferred Circle subscription. It’s where the message is meant to land.
Every note in between is intended to spark inquiry—like a thread line that can be pulled all the way through.
That sense of order gives my brain relief.
What I didn’t anticipate was how starting a Substack would feel like lighting fireworks in my head—a constant explosion of thoughts that haven’t stopped since day one. I love it. I’m learning. Growing. Evolving. But as my cowboy cousin from Colorado likes to say, “Dude, it’s exhausting.”
Often, as I write, I wonder: Am I even allowed to share this? Is there some unspoken Substack rulebook I missed—one that defines the limits? If so, the rule breaker in me continues to charge ahead with unabashed authority.
Honestly, I’m making it up as I go. I’m reminded of my late husband, who started his business without a company name or a website. His success was unparalleled in his world, and his advice was always the same: don’t get lost in the weeds—they’re paralyzing.
In a different but oddly similar way, my daughter—who was born with hearing loss—has a favorite response whenever she forgets to take out the overflowing trash or does something that makes us all pause and wonder if that really just happened:
“What? I’m deaf?”
As if her hearing has anything to do with that moment.
That’s how I feel here.
Unapologetically writing—with the seams of imperfection showing.
So there I was in yoga class, more than a week before this EDIT would even publish, folded into a deep hip-opening pose, wondering what could possibly follow Tuesday’s post in a way that actually matters. Something that makes you want to read all the way through.
(And if you do make it to the bottom, I’d love to know—with a single reply in the form of your favorite emoji.)
And then it hit me.
This week is about generosity.And the question I hadn’t asked—while stretched open in a pose yoga people know holds far more than muscle—was the most obvious one of all:
When was the last time you were truly generous with yourself?
Not the spa-day, retail-therapy kind of generosity.
Real generosity.
The kind that looks like self-forgiveness.
Firm boundaries.
Asking for help.
Letting go of perfection.
Practicing self-compassion instead of self-discipline as punishment (yes the workout-aholic in me needs to sit with that).With all these thoughts swirling through my head—it was the next one that left me momentarily breathless.
Oh shit. I have to share that.
Not because I have to. But because if this platform is about inquiry—for me and for you—then the places I resist going are usually the places where the opportunity lives.
I briefly touched on this earlier but not in a personal way. It landed in one of my first EDITs more as a “how to” than a reality.
What follows is the lived version, unedited.
Life was hard when my late husband died. I mean really hard. But I am a survivor and I have grit. I own those powerful words. Ten marathons later, I earned them.
What ultimately broke me wasn’t one thing. It was the accumulation of many—that seemed to occur sequentially like a rocket that didn’t stop firing.
Elise left for college—I expected that. I sold my home and moved—I own that. My late husband’s adult children edited me out of the family tree—I anticipated that.
But when my daughter got bullied (in the worst possible way)—I was rocked. When my best friend had a stroke and died unexpectedly—I was devastated. When my former brother-in-law and beloved uncle to Elise lost his battle to brain cancer—I was forlorn. When my lifelong friend suddenly began to ghost me without explanation—I was distraught. And worse, when an early childhood memory resurfaced—I was paralyzed.
The war wound of each remained unhealed as the next battle unfolded.
All while I was training for another marathon. Unpacking boxes. Navigating estate attorneys and school officials. Trying to stay strong for my heartbroken daughter—while quietly breaking myself.
I didn’t crash. I sank.
My personal low falls below this paywall.
