Letting Go and Finding Closure

Growing up means facing endings. Sometimes our friendships fade. Our relationships shift. Some people who were once a source of positivity may no longer bring out the best. It’s normal to want to hold on, but sometimes the healthiest thing to do is to let go.

In Morgan Richard Olivier’s poem, Let Them Lose You, he reminds us: “You need to let people lose you. Let them believe what they want to believe. Let them think they have better. Let them sleep on your worth.”

Closure doesn’t always come from an apology or explanation. Sometimes closure is you deciding that ‘I will no longer pour my energy where it isn’t respected’. Letting go doesn’t erase the good moments or the lessons learned, it just helps us free ourselves from carrying what no longer fits.

And in time, as the poem says, “they will realize the mistake they made, and it will just be enough time for you to accept that you’re better off without them.” Letting go is not about rejection. It’s about protecting your energy. It’s about choosing yourself, choosing peace, and making room for people and places that are good for you.

Making Space to Speak About Pain

Often we try to tuck pain away. We smile through it, distract ourselves, or say we’re fine. Admitting we hurt can feel risky. What if no one understands?

Pain doesn’t shrink when it’s ignored. It lingers quietly, waiting to step forward. Making space to speak to it, even a little, is courageous.

Rumi said, “The wound is the place where the Light enters you.”  Speaking our pain doesn’t require every detail. Sometimes it’s enough to say, “I’m struggling,” or “this feels heavy.”  Sometimes it’s those words that crack us open, that shatters the silence and opens us up to a new place.

Naming our pain is often the first real step toward healing. When we say it out loud, it doesn’t magically fix everything, but it does lighten the load a bit. It gives us space to breathe, to move, to take that next small step. And sometimes, that’s all we need to let a little bit of light in, especially in the places that once felt completely shut off.

Understanding Choice: How Choice Theory Can Empower You

Every day, we make countless choices: what to eat, how to respond to others, and where to focus our time for example. Some decisions feel automatic, but Choice Theory reminds us that we have more control over our lives than we often realize.

Developed by psychiatrist Dr. William Glasser, Choice Theory is built on a simple but powerful idea that we are internally motivated and choose many of our behaviors around five basic needs: love & belonging, power, freedom, fun, and survival.

Rather than blaming our circumstances, people, or past, Choice Theory invites us to take ownership of our behavior and emotions. It encourages us to ask questions like:

• What need am I trying to meet right now?

• Is this choice helping or hurting my relationships?

• What can I do differently to get what I want without causing harm?

In therapy, this approach can be incredibly powerful. Instead of feeling stuck or helpless, clients begin to see new paths forward. They realize that while we can’t always control what happens around us, we can control how we respond, and in turn those choices shape the quality of our lives.

Teens struggling with peer pressure, couples facing communication breakdowns, parents navigating tough family dynamics, and men who feel emotionally disconnected can all benefit from understanding how their choices impact their well-being and relationships. When we start seeing our behavior as a choice and not just a reaction, change become possible.

If you're feeling overwhelmed or disempowered, exploring Choice Theory with a therapist might help you reconnect with agency. Ultimately, it can support you to make choices that move you closer to the life you truly want.

Adolescents and the Unfolding of Potential

The teenage years can feel like a mix of chaos and growth. One minute they’re full of ideas and energy, the next they’re shutting down or pushing back. But underneath it all, something powerful is happening. They’re becoming who they are.

The decade of adolescence is a messy one. They’re no longer kids but not quite adults either. It’s a time of exploring identity, testing limits, and discovering what matters to them.

So, how can we support them? We can stay curious, not reactive. We let them try new things and let them fail. We listen more than we advise. We notice and encourage their strengths. We be as steady as possible.

The teenage years are about becoming. They are a bounty of potential. They are beginning their move from who they are, to who they could be. We are just helping foster potential into it’s highest vision.

Hope Through Meaning

Life can feel overwhelming . Especially in times like these when our politics and social structures look as if they’re crumbling. When the world feels heavy, hope is nowhere to be found. One of the most powerful ways to reconnect with hope is by discovering what is meaningful.

Meaning doesn’t have to be big or dramatic. It might be caring for loved ones, creating something, or just showing kindness. What matters is that it gives you a reason to keep moving upward and onward, in spite of discouragement.

When we know what matters to us the most, our challenges feel more manageable. Meaning reminds us that our lives have direction and value, even in difficult times. It can turn uncertainty into growth, sort of lighting up the darkness.

If you’re searching for hope, ask: What am I avoiding that I can carry? Why is that important? How will I feel about myself if I take that on? It may guide you towards what’s meaningful, and ultimately, to the adventure of your life, even in an uncertain world.

Hope grows stronger when it’s rooted in meaning. And we’re in an all in proposition. What does it mean to you to be all in?

One Sunday Morning

Wilco’s “One Sunday Morning” is a quiet, meandering song about family, deficiency, and the complexity of love. It doesn’t move quickly, but invites us to slow down and turn inward.

Tweedy sings:

“And your father’s last words,
Were ‘I can’t believe
What I’ve done…’”

These lines reflect the weight of regret that many of us carry, even when it isn’t our own. Therapy often becomes a space to explore how the echoes of time, the memory of words behind us, or words never said continue to shape us.

Later, he admits, “I said it’s your God I don’t believe in.” This line captivates the tender pain of stepping away from someone else’s beliefs. When we do that it can feel both freeing and lonely. It’s a reminder that growth sometimes asks us to create distance without rejecting those we love.

Tweedy also sings, “I was told the world would never end.” That lyric carries both innocence and disillusionment. It’s like those moments when we’re confronted with the limitations of our childhood certainties and they slip away from us to adult realities, sort of like an annihilation of a worldview. In therapy, many of us return to moments of reckoning, reinvestigating what something was and learning how to grieve what we once believed while opening space up for a new kind of hope.

And then, the refrain: “One Sunday morning, the end of it all.” It returns again and again, just as a memory returns in waves. The song holds a quiet wisdom, that healing isn’t about closure, but about learning to carry both love and hurt side by side. Like this song, we can practice simply being with the tension: listening, breathing, remembering, and trusting that meaning can grow even in what we don’t fully understand.

You Must Change Your Life

The last line of Rilke’s poem, Archaic Torso of Apollo, “You must change your life.” feels like a gentle nudge to wake up. The poem starts by describing an old broken statue that’s incomplete but is still full of life. And as we consider it, we’re reminded that life itself is often unfinished and messy. Deep down we know the brokenness mirrors the thing within us that is uncomfortable to acknowledge. Then there’s a call to face reality, to face our own life today. It’s a cliche, but a heavy reminder to live more intentionally, to pay attention, and to be willing to change.

This line doesn’t give easy answers or echo the excuses we give ourselves. Instead, it points to the fact that each of us has the freedom and the responsibility to choose how we live. The broken statue is a metaphor for the issues of the real world. That beauty and truth aren’t distant ideas but part of everyday life, even when things are messy or hard. Rilke’s words ask us to take part in our lives fully. To change our life means to accept who we are right now and to be brave enough to transform. It’s an invitation and a quest, if we choose.

Parenting Through Big Emotions

One of the biggest parenting myths is that if you show empathy, you’re giving in. But here’s the truth: empathy is not agreeing. You can make room to understand why your child is upset without changing your decision. When your kid yells, “You’re the worst!” because you won’t buy them candy, you don’t have to argue or give in. You can calmly say, “You’re really feeling upset about this. I get it.” That’s empathy. You’re not agreeing with the behavior—you’re just showing them you see how they feel.

This shift is huge. It means you can stay connected even during meltdowns, backtalk, or teen eye rolls. Instead of trying to fix the emotion or shut it down, you just hold space for it. And at the same time, you still hold your boundary. “I know you're feeling angry, and we're still leaving the park.” This type of balance, being kind but firm maintains structure, is value driven, and builds trust over time.

Most of us weren’t raised like this. We were told to “stop crying” or “be grateful”, so sitting with a child’s big feelings can be uncomfortable. When we stop viewing feelings as something to control and start seeing them as something to connect through, everything softens. You don’t have to agree with your child to show up for them. You just have to stay present and remind them that even when it’s hard, you’re still on their side.

The Sweet Sadness of Life

There is a kind of sadness that isn’t a problem to be solved or a wound to be healed. It’s like a sunset over the desert horizon. Arriving quietly.  It’s soft and reminds us that life is fragile, and that love and loss are always intertwined.

In therapy, people often come looking for ways to avoid sadness. But sometimes we’re summoned to learn how to sit with it, and to notice the sweetness hidden within it. Sadness shows us what matters. It reveals where our love lives, where our hopes have been planted, and what stories have shaped us.

The sweet sadness of life is the recognition that beauty moves on, the song ends, the child grows, the season turns.  That impermanence is what makes life meaningful.  Instead of rejecting this kind of sadness, we can let it soften us. We can accept the invitation to slow us down, to savor the laugh, to hug a little longer, and to express our love while there’s still time.

Perhaps the goal isn’t to erase sadness but to let it deepen our well, and our capacity for joy, gratitude, and tenderness. The sweet sadness of life is not only a burden, it’s a reminder that we are alive, and that to love fully is to sometimes ache.

What Freedom Really Is: A Therapeutic Reflection

Freedom is one of the most misunderstood ideas in modern life. We often picture it as the ability to do whatever we want, whenever we want—no rules, no restrictions, no expectations. But that version of freedom, while seductive, is shallow. It leads not to fulfillment, but often to chaos, anxiety, and emptiness. Real freedom is not the absence of structure. It is the ability to live meaningfully within it.

True freedom comes when you voluntarily accept responsibility—when you choose your values, commit to them, and align your actions with something greater than immediate pleasure. It’s not about escaping obligation; it’s about stepping into it with open eyes and an open heart.

If you try to live without responsibility, you may avoid short-term discomfort, but you invite long-term suffering through disconnection, purposelessness, drifting through life. Paradoxically, the act of embracing responsibility, such as caring for yourself, others, your work, your community—builds the strength and stability required to live with real agency.

Freedom, then, is not the liberty to ignore life’s burdens. It is the power to carry them with intention. To wake up each morning, choose your direction, and walk toward it regardless of how steep the grade becomes. When we commit to what matters, even when it's hard, we begin to feel a sense of meaning that no external freedom can provide. We are no longer prisoners to impulse, fear, or avoidance. We become authors of our own lives.

So ask yourself: What is one thing I can take responsibility for today? One small act of order in the face of disarray. Begin there. Because real freedom isn’t found in running away—it’s found in stepping forward, with courage, into what life demands of you.