I have been lifting weights in a gym since 2005.

That was at a time when it wasn’t trendy for women to lift heavy weights. I had little five-pound dumbbells that I stored under my couch, but my main form of exercise was running.

Excessive, self-inflicted, torturous, long-distance running.

Some people use alcohol and drugs to numb their feelings. Some people run marathons. This is a whole separate topic that I could write about all day, but I won’t (this time). Because my point is, I was running to fill a huge black hole in my heart.

Because I ran until I was in physical pain, it should come as no surprise that I developed a stress fracture on my foot during the summer of 2005.

I found a small white pill in my pill bottle last week.

While this may not sound like breaking news, my pills are large and beige, so this pill was unlike the others and clearly did not belong in my bottle. So it was, in fact, alarming.

I Googled the “C” and “158” that were clearly stamped on its sides to find out that it’s an anti-inflammatory.

I didn’t want to be a Karen about it, but it was concerning, especially since the only other people I have ever seen in line at my pharmacy are senior citizens and it’s not certain if they could catch such an error, especially since a lot of pills look the same.

I had to run other errands that day, so I made the pharmacy the first stop.

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Scene: Long’s Pharmacy. There is a young girl working behind a glass window. After she finishes with her customer, I approach the counter.

Me: "Hi, I just wanted to let you know that I found this pill that is not Armour Thyroid..." (holds up a tiny Ziploc bag containing one mysterious white pill) "...in this bottle of Armour Thyroid that I had filled here."

(Gen Z Stare)

I have been wearing real flower earrings for at least four years now.

I string pua (flower) on pukas (hoop earrings). I double-reinforce the backing on the earrings, but if the flowers come off while surfing, it’s part of the natural cycle of being returned to nature.

I surf almost every day, so at my regular surf spot, I am known for the flower earrings. Some people don’t even know my name. They just call me “the girl with the flower earrings.”

Prepping the earrings is just as much part of my getting-ready-to-surf routine as putting on sunscreen or packing my leash. Even on days when I am getting off a long stretch of work calls and frazzled with eagerness to get in the ocean, I never forget the earrings.

Until last week.

When I was little, I didn't just feel painfully shy. I physically tried to disappear.

Being around strangers, even other kids my age, felt terrifying.

When I was in pre-school, my mom would drop me off and I would walk into the building by myself (this was the 80’s). I would stand just outside the classroom door, summoning the courage to go join the other students. A lot of times, my self-hype-up was interrupted by other students arriving, so I would piggyback on their entrance so that all eyes weren’t on me.

Looking back, I understand why. I don’t have many a lot of memories from my childhood, but I remember my mother constantly criticizing my appearance, preferences, or behaviors.

Our self-worth has an origin story.

Most of us never sat down and consciously decided what we were worth. We didn't have to. Someone did it for us.

Long before we were old enough to question it, the adults around us were handing us a story about money, worth, and how much space we were allowed to take up in the world. They did it through what they said, what they didn't say, what they ignored, swept under the rug, or made us responsible for carrying on their behalf.

For most of us, that story became the operating system running our lives long after we left home.

This is mine.

Fun is threatening when your identity is built around earning your worth.

Because if joy creates results, then what happens to the story that says you have to suffer for success?

Early on in our lives, we were taught that: hard work = worthy, struggle = noble, pressure = productive, and sacrifice = success.

Success became associated with stress, effort, and proving ourselves. And while discipline absolutely has a place, many of us took it too far. That’s why when something feels fun, easy, playful, or joyful, we unconsciously distrust it.

Which raises an interesting question:

If fun is so effective, why are so many of us convinced that success has to hurt?

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.