Whose Bright Idea Was This?
I’m starting to get the feeling that whoever is behind these Daily Prompts is reading my journal.
I assume we’re talking about inner growth, not waistlines, which makes this conversation considerably easier.
If you’re into astrology, you’ll understand when I say that as a Pisces, I’ve been told 2026 is a year of integration and rebirth. According to the stars, this is the year I’m supposed to shed old versions of myself, embrace new beginnings, and emerge wiser, stronger, and more authentic.
I want to speak to management.
Because so far, 2026 feels like I’ve been going through the longest birth canal known to humanity.
Growth sounds beautiful when you’re reading about it in books or watching inspirational videos on Instagram. It’s all butterflies, breakthroughs, and uplifting quotes written in fancy fonts.
Actually growing is a whole different experience.
It’s questioning things you’ve believed about yourself for decades. Setting boundaries that make people uncomfortable. Letting go of relationships that no longer belong in your life. And perhaps hardest of all, discovering that some of the stories you’ve told yourself your entire life aren’t true.
Exhausting doesn’t begin to cover it.
That’s the funny—not funny haha—thing about growth. When you’re in the middle of it, the last thing it feels like is progress.
It feels more like a home renovation.
You start out replacing a cabinet, only to discover a plumbing problem. While fixing the plumbing, you uncover electrical issues. By the time you’re finished, you’ve remodeled half the house and can’t remember why you touched the cabinet in the first place.
A year ago, I volunteered to become the president of my community’s HOA.
Talk about stepping out of my comfort zone.
Since then, I’ve found myself navigating conflicts, making difficult decisions, speaking up when I’d rather stay quiet, and learning lessons nobody bothered to include in the orientation packet.
There were days when I felt like I’d been tossed into uncharted waters with nothing more than a pool noodle.
More than once, I found myself bobbing along with my head barely above water, wondering, “Whose bright idea was this?”
Apparently, mine.
What surprised me wasn’t the challenges. It was discovering that I could handle them.
Not perfectly. Not gracefully. Not without occasionally questioning my sanity. But I handled them.
Today was another one of those moments. I had to stand in front of a room full of people and speak into a microphone.
Lord, have mercy.
My body immediately transported me back to fifth grade and Sister Geraldine’s classroom. We had to give oral presentations. I was terrified. Halfway through mine, I started crying.
“SIT DOWN!” she barked.
Not exactly the compassionate response I expected from a woman who worked for Jesus.
Later that week, I had to try again. As I walked to the front of the room, a boy named Daniel McDevitt looked at me and said, “Are you gonna cry again?”
And just like that, a moment was born that would follow me around for the next fifty years.
Amazing, isn’t it? A few careless words from a ten-year-old kid. One humiliating moment. Fifty years of self-doubt.
All week leading up to today’s presentation, my mind and body launched a full-scale self-sabotage.
I was convinced I had a fatal disease. A heart attack seemed possible. Maybe a mysterious neurological condition. Anything, really, that would excuse me from standing in front of that microphone.
The timing was suspicious. Every symptom seemed to appear whenever I thought about the meeting.
Fortunately, my sister wasn’t buying it. I called her. I’m looking for sympathy.
Instead, she gave me reality.
“So let me get this straight,” she said. “You only feel like you’re dying when you have something big coming up? Wow. That’s convenient.”
Well.
When she put it that way, it did sound a little ridiculous. And that’s when I realized something.
Growth isn’t becoming someone new.
It’s recognizing the stories you’ve been carrying around for decades and deciding they no longer get to run the show.
It’s realizing that the frightened fifth grader and the woman standing at the microphone are the same person.
My voice shook as I started, so I stopped and told the room to be patient with me, that speaking in public was difficult.
And guess what? They were. For the next hour and forty-two minutes, nobody laughed. Nobody told me to sit down. Nobody asked if I was going to cry.
I simply did the thing I’d spent fifty years believing I couldn’t do.
The difference is that one of them finally learned she could do hard things.
Which, now that I think about it, sounds suspiciously like integration and rebirth.
Maybe the stars knew what they were talking about after all.
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Oh, We’re a Throuple
How do you handle fear and self-doubt?
The short answer is “not well.” But that answer wouldn’t make a very good essay
Let’s just say my relationship with fear and self-doubt has been… complicated. It’s stretched on for decades and feels less like an ordinary struggle and more like a bad marriage, or in this case, a throuple. One of those relationships you read about, where the participants love to hate each other. I think it might be professionally called Trauma Bonding.
At this point in my life, one of us has done some work to break the cycle, but the other two always find a way to lurk around the corner. Just when I think they’re out of my life, they find their way back in like a 3a.m. booty call, uninvited and somehow impossible to ignore.
Now I recognize them for what they are, do my best to give them the cold shoulder, and focus on what I’m meant to do without their two cents yelling from the sidelines.
If there is anything funny about it, and not the ha-ha kind, it’s that after decades, therapy, growth, self-awareness, and every other healing cliche you can think of, they still show up. Like toxic exes whose only form of consistency is showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time.
That consistency is what’s given me the upper hand. How? Well, whenever I’m about to embark on something new, I expect the dynamic negative duo to come knocking. But now, I welcome them in for coffee. I tell them to take a load off and let them know their presence carries a different meaning these days.
So, how do I handle fear and self-doubt? Awkwardly. I haven’t evicted them. I certainly haven’t conquered them, and even with all of my efforts, I haven’t been able to silence them either.
Maybe that was never the goal. Maybe the goal wasn’t to get rid of them at all. Maybe it was to stop treating them like enemies and start seeing them as familiar faces. The kind you unexpectedly run into at the grocery store after five years, only to realize you’re now trapped in aisle six for an hour.
Now my reaction is different. I hear them, but I don’t hand them the microphone.
I’ve finally understood that if these two have entered the picture, chances are I’m standing on the edge of something bigger than comfort, and they don’t like it.
They wouldn’t be there if I weren’t about to do something great.
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Unspoken No’s
I’m starting to get the impression that WordPress is honing in on my innermost thoughts, like Instagram and Facebook. It’s no accident that this question was presented to me today.
Freedom has three different meanings. The first kind of freedom is “freedom from,” freedom from the constraints of society. Second is “freedom to,” freedom to do what we want. Thirdly, there is “freedom to be,” not just to do what we want but to be who we were meant to be.
As I teeter on the edge of entering the third chapter of my life, the “freedom to be” resonates with me the most. Probably because it is truly the only one I can change myself, yet it seems complicated. Why?
Well, I’m learning that when you’ve been conditioned for decades that specific belief systems are etched in stone for the rest of eternity, it takes some time to believe that; well, that’s bullshit. Practice makes perfect, as they say.
For me, it all started with the labels. Oh, yes. Not that they were necessarily wrong labels. Who wouldn’t want to be crowned “the good one” or “the one with the big heart?” They seemed like compliments then, but it has been a heavy load and, frankly, a lot of responsibility. A ton of unspoken no’s on my back.
That seemingly small, good intention has created a woman who has given her power to everyone and everything for so long that she has forgotten she has the freedom to just be. A fraud!
This is not the first time an epiphany has presented itself. I’ve recognized this at other times in my life, in other situations, but this was different. Peeling the layers over time.
Things were quietly being revealed over the last two years. Bit by bit, I recognized the chains that were holding me back from the life I was meant to live. Not realizing I had the keys the whole time.
I know I must be getting very close to healing the core because suddenly, all the pieces of my complicated makeup came together, and I wept and wept. Cleansing the soul.
Someone asked, “Why are you crying?” and I didn’t have an answer. It was as if all the words I was trying to say hit a roadblock in my mouth. I was crying because I recognized the freedom.
Over the past few days, I’ve thought about my tears and those of everyone else who experienced freedom in one way or another. The only way to describe it is an enormous relief, followed by the question … Now what?
Enjoy the Ride!
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Level Up
Ten years ago, I came across this little parable. It arrived in an unlikely fashion. It brought me to tears, and I only recognized a portion of its power then. I was only operating on a low frequency at that moment.
Now I see that my consciousness was operating at a lower frequency. A level that prevented me from the enormity of the content. Growth is slow and steady. 10 years to be exact.
An old man and his son lived in an abandoned fortress on the side of a hill. The son was the sole support of his father, and their only possession of value was a horse. One day, the horse ran away. The neighbors came by to offer sympathy. “This is a terrible thing,” they said. “How do you know?” asked the old man.
Several days later, the horse returned, bringing several wild horses. The old man and the son shut them all inside the gate. The neighbors hurried over. “This is fabulous,” they said. “How do you know?” asked the old man.
The following day the son tried riding one of the wild horses. Alas, he fell and broke his leg. Sure enough, the neighbors came around as soon as they heard the news. “What a tragedy!” they said. “How do you know?” asked the old man.
The following week, the emperor’s army entered the village, forcing every young man into service to fight faraway battles. Many of them would never return. But the son couldn’t go. He had a broken leg.
Now for the good part. I re-read it this morning as if I had read it for the first time. Whoa!
This time around, I recognized the certainty. When things happen in our life, good or bad, they are happening for us, not to us. This trust isn’t easy, especially for me. I’ve never felt safe enough not to doubt what I was thinking, let alone being told. Even when all of the evidence proved otherwise.
Another vital message missed, primarily because I’m a people pleaser in recovery, was the power of opinions, both our own and those of others. I feel like I was hit by a lightning bolt.
This time, the “How do you know?” jumped right off the page. Suddenly, every bit of advice/opinion ever given or taken flashed before my eyes, whether it was solicited or not. Whew, that was quite a show!
I am so proud of myself for seeing these messages this time around. I’ve been working hard to heal, and it felt like my progress was being revealed.
Hey, listen up. We’re all human, so don’t think re-reading a parable and getting hit with an imaginary lightning bolt fixed decades of damage. I wish!
I’ll still have doubts, but now I’m more aware of their negative power, and you better believe I’ll be giving my two cents, but not before pausing to consider what I know as opposed to spewing off words based on my own scarcity. A work in process.
It’s never too late to resurrect your life. So, get to it.
Enjoy the Ride!
Life With The Top Down 
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