A Therapist Walks Into A Blog: Random thougts, big Feelings, and the occasional meltdown

Author: Stephanie Wharton

  • My Friend

    My Friend

    I didn’t think I’d be writing about grief so soon after my Grieving for the Grieving post, but here the frick I am. This one is all mine though. It’s my own grief – the hit by the SEPTA bus kind.

    The phone call from my sister came at 5:17 pm on Saturday March 7th – Uncle Mario collapsed. The boys (his two sons, my cousins) are giving him CPR until the ambulance gets there.

    Waiting. WTF.

    5:42 pm call from mom: Brief update – On the way to the hospital. He’s non-responsive. Two shots of adrenaline, but his heart won’t beat on its own.

    5:44 pm call to my sister: Relayed brief update from mom.

    6:13 pm call to mom: She’s speechless, sobbing. He’s gone.

    I immediately lose my shit. I can’t stop crying. I can NOT believe this is happening. He’s only 57. His birthday is in three days. We were JUST at his house celebrating Christmas Eve. No, this is not happening. This did not happen.

    Except it did.

    The usual family drama ensued for a short while because why the hell not. I get it. People need to feel in control when something like this happens. I suppose it’s because the pain is too crushing and distractions of idiocy muffle the blow just enough to keep from shattering to pieces.

    The next day I stayed in bed. It was either that or stare at the wall all day, which I did at times anyway, but at least I could snuggle up with my blankets and nest of pillows. It was easier to doze off after a crying jag, and I really didn’t feel like participating in the outside world knowing that Mario was no longer in it. Besides, I had to get my shit together for work. People were counting on me to be present.

    On Monday I went into the office, even though Anna had thoughtfully offered to cancel my appointments for me. I needed the distraction too, and drama isn’t really my style, so helping my clients manage their pain helped me manage mine. It wasn’t gone. Just contained a little.

    The funeral came and went, and the check-ins and sympathy calls slowly stopped coming, which is normal, of course. The tears gradually subside, but the staggering weight of sorrow is still slow to lift. It lingers in the quiet moments, the ordinary actions in a day, like stopping for coffee or pumping gas which now feel surreal – almost offensive, like betrayal because it feels like moving on when I’m still not ready.

    Mario was directly responsible for my taste in music since childhood. For my 18th birthday, he got me a Jimi Hendrix cassette and a book of his song lyrics with various pictures from his career. For some weird reason, one of the pages of the book was covered in duct tape, and naturally I was curious as to why?

    I carefully peeled the tape back, and underneath was a picture of the original cover from Electric Ladyland, which, if you didn’t know, was a group of about 20 women just chilling out fully in the nude. I had to laugh as I thought, “Jesus, ya prude. I’m an adult woman. I have boobs too.” That’s Mario for ya.

    So as I drove home from work a few days after his death, I put on the playlist cultivated by our shared bond over Jimi. The memories that I took for granted began to emerge, quiet, deep and comforting, while at the same time reminding me that there will be no more to make – only the retelling of ones created over the past 50 years of love and connection.

    I often share with my clients that I believe grief is the most sacred emotion. I don’t mean that in some grand abstract way. Happiness, or anger, or excitement are flashes in time, but grief is all of those feelings woven through the little and big moments shared over the course of a lifetime. It’s the loss of accumulated love.

    A moment of joy passes, but grief is forever. We eventually get through it, but we never get over it.

    Mario was only six years older than I am, so we didn’t have a typical uncle and niece relationship. He was also my friend. I lost both on the day he died.

    The music is still there. The memories are still there. All of it is still there.

    He just isn’t.

    And I really fucking miss him.

    I’m finding out that it’s…not so easy
    Especially when your only friend
    Talks, looks, sees and feels like you
    And you do the same just like him

    – My Friend by Jimi Hendrix

  • You Can’t Eat Cereal Out of Soul-Crushing Trauma

    You Can’t Eat Cereal Out of Soul-Crushing Trauma

    Brokenness is a state that all too often carries enormous shame. I’ve heard clients say, “I’m just broken,” as if being injured or anguished is somehow a defect in character. I think it’s stupid to view brokenness as a negative, because who among us hasn’t been smashed to pieces at some point in our lives?

    Is it painful? Yes. Are we defective? Absolutely not. Suffering is not a failure, and if you think it is, maybe you’re just kind of an asshole. Learn some empathy.

    Being broken is something that is very rarely caused by our own doing. It happens when an external force exerts pressure so forcefully that eventually something snaps.

    Would anyone fault a person who fractures a collar bone after falling down a flight of stairs? No, that’s ridiculous. You’d blame the external forces: gravity, stairs, a hard landing, and maybe some ill-fitting footwear – unless you really are kind of an asshole, in which case, refer to my early comment about empathy.

    Still, for some reason, people blame themselves for their emotional brokenness, without even stopping to consider that it wasn’t their fault, but rather that a different sort of gravity was grinding down.

    In Japanese culture, the art of pottery repair is called kintsugi. In kintsugi, the broken fragments of a bowl or plate are meticulously joined back together with lacquer and gold, making the damaged piece whole again, but altered in the loveliest way. The finished results are typically stunning and the imperfections only serve to add character and complexity that enhance the original piece.  

    One Christmas several years ago, I gave my father a piece of kintsugi that I made by hand. I took a dull gray bowl, broke it, glued the pieces back together, then painted the cracks with gold. It took days of frustrating attempts and several sacrificial bowls to create. The final product was a bit wonky, but I was proud of it, and I’m working on allowing myself to be messy anyway, so at least I was being consistent.

    Merry Frickin’ Christmas. No, you can’t eat cereal out of it.

    That particular gift held deep meaning for me. As a therapist (and for myself), I routinely use kintsugi as a metaphor for suffering. It represents our own unique brokenness, requiring gentle repair that alters us in the most exquisite new way. For me, it’s the ideal symbol for hope and healing, beauty for ashes, and how pain can shape us into something even better.

    As my father turned the bowl over in his hands, I quickly tried to explain the meaning behind the Christmas present, but it was pointless. His frown said it all, but he felt compelled to add, “You can’t even eat cereal out of this.” Ah, a master class in adding insult to injury. Dick. The crowd of 20+ family members laughed, and I faked a chuckle because in that moment I felt like a piece of broken pottery myself. I didn’t realize that the utility of a breakfast vessel was the appropriate metric. Silly me.

    My mom ended up taking the bowl for herself, as she usually does with all of the Christmas, birthday, and Father’s Day gifts that my father bluntly rebuffs. It’s her way of layering more gold over the old cracks, strengthening the ones I had patched up myself over the years.

    With kintsugi, the finished product is the focus. The broken vessel whose flaws make a thing more beautiful has become an increasingly popular symbol of the wounded human being, especially in healing spaces, but what about the process itself?

    During the grueling, sometimes dangerous work of cobbling our jagged pieces back together, we risk being cut by sharp edges, or letting discouragement set in when the parts slip and won’t quite fit the way we’d like them to. Still, we know deep down that the repair is worth it because without the breaking, the possibility of transformation doesn’t exist.

    Very few people get to see the full creative process – the anguish felt or the tiny cuts on the hands of the maker. We see the gilded veins that make it pretty, but forget that the real healing is not the end result, but rather how we got there. We refuse to ignore the drops of blood on the floor, and when the gravity of pain and trauma crush down, we stagger through it anyway to become something wholly new and beautiful.

  • A Lost Wallet and A Found Reminder

    A Lost Wallet and A Found Reminder

    Yesterday my husband Chris and I had a lovely family lunch with my sister, her husband, and three of our niblings. We decided on Mexican cuisine, and since we were already visiting the area, we chose a restaurant that was near my sister’s home, but about 40 minutes and 30 miles away from mine. Keep that last detail in mind.

    The food was great, the service was excellent, and the company was sublime. I love spending time with family. We walked out of the restaurant with full bellies and fuller hearts, and after a round of hugs, Chris and I made our way home. Little did we know that on the way back to our car, Chris dropped his wallet in the parking lot.

    We had just pulled into the gas station down the road from our house when I got a phone call. I didn’t recognize the number, so I ignored it, but when my phone buzzed with a text notification a few seconds later, I decided to check it out.

    The text was from a complete stranger. It read, “Hi! Any chance you’re related to a Chris? If so, we found his wallet.” I replied that he was my husband, and confirmed the name of the restaurant we had been to that afternoon (shout out to Plaza Azteca in KOP). The kind stranger informed me that my husband’s wallet was waiting for him at the front desk of the restaurant.

    At first I wanted to choke him, but Chris beat himself up enough as we began the trek back, so I chose not to lose my shit and spared him the scolding. I knew he was looking forward to going home and loafing on the couch after a brutal week of laborious work. I knew how tired he was. Dude dozed off sitting up in his chair at the restaurant.

    He was so close, literally blocks away, but couldn’t go home to spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch, drifting in and out of consciousness under his coziest blanket – at least not for another hour and a half or so.

    I wanted to cheer him up, so I reminded him of the time I had lost my wallet, only then the wretched person who found it tried to buy almost $3000.00 of goodies from Game Stop, Apple, and Target. The scoundrel even tried to withdraw money with my debit card.

    Luckily my bank and credit card companies flagged the transactions and shut down my cards and accounts, but that meant that I had to switch all of our recurring payments – the mortgage, internet, phone, utilities, college loan payments, streaming services, everything had to be transferred to the new account information. It was a mother-frickin’ nightmare that I did not want to repeat.

    But thankfully, Chris’ wallet was discovered by someone with integrity and a heart. And I reminded him of that too. Life nowadays is hard, and too often the worst of humanity is shoved in our faces by needlessly cruel internet trolls, racists, misogynists, and the assholes who don’t pull over far enough when making a left turn so the rest of us can pass by. There’s a special place in Hades for those selfish douchebags.

    Chris was eventually able to shake out of his funk, and we could both feel grateful that there are still people with compassionate hearts who will take the time to track down the owner of a lost wallet (or wife of said owner).

    It didn’t erase the long drive or lost time, but it reminded us of something better – that in a world where the shittiest voices are often the loudest, there are still good people quietly choosing to be kind.

    To the finder of the wallet, may you always snag the best parking spot at any location, may your snacks never run out before the end of a movie, and may your kindness be returned to you a thousand fold.

    Chris eventually did make it to the couch.

  • A Cricket, a Windshield, and an Accidental Abduction

    A Cricket, a Windshield, and an Accidental Abduction

    Many years ago, on a cool autumn evening, I accidentally kidnapped a cricket. It was unintentional, of course. I make it a rule never to pick up hitchhikers, so I was surprised when, about halfway home, I discovered him stowing away on my windshield. At first, I thought he was an untidy package left by a local sparrow, but quickly realized that rarely does bird pooh have antennae.

    At first, I didn’t give him much thought, but after glancing in his direction a few times, I became increasingly amazed that he was still there, resolutely sitting above the wipers as his little feelers swayed with the breeze.

    At each stoplight I had another opportunity to check on my rogue passenger. He was hunkered down, gently waving his antennae, and probably deeply curious about the sudden unexpected change in scenery. Driving along, I wondered how and why the cricket had ended up there. He must have crept onto the hood while I was visiting with my then boyfriend.

    Was his home life so bad that he just couldn’t take it anymore? Maybe he had just finished reading some Kerouac and wanted to experience the poetry of the open road firsthand. Or could he have simply slipped away for some down time, only to be unwittingly snatched away from everything he knew and loved? “Honey, I’m running to the store for a minute. We need bread.” Famous last words. With a sudden twinge of guilt, I hoped that he hadn’t left any little mouths to feed back at the nest.

    The shabby grey Dodge I drove at the time was by no means a glamorous mode of transportation (I dubbed it Stallie due to how often the damn thing crapped out), but whatever his reasons may have been, the cricket was doggedly clinging to it for dear life.

    Growing rapidly more invested in his journey, I tried slowing down to prevent my new friend from getting blown off the windshield, but I could tell by the angry headlights on my bumper that my caution was not appreciated by the driver behind me. How aerodynamic were crickets anyway?  Hang on, Jiminy. We’re almost home. “He’s a tough little bugger,” I thought to myself. “He’s got more determination than some people I know.“

    As I pulled up to the curb in front of my house, I had one last chance to make sure my chirpy friend was still safe, and sure enough, there he sat, inquisitively looking around at his new home. I hoped he liked his new neighborhood and welcomed the chance for a fresh start. 

    I left the headlights on for a while, just watching him, feeling truly relieved that he had safely completed the journey.  I wondered what his next move would be. He had a whole new world to explore, an entire treasure box of experience waiting to be opened.  I thought about what my reaction would be if I had been in his place.  Could I handle the pressure of such a drastic change, or would I merely get blown off the windshield?

    On the evening of my ride with Jiminy, it just so happened that I was approaching an inflection point in my own life. Within a few short months I had dumped the very boyfriend I had been visiting that night, quit the minimum wage job that I hated and got one that I loved, and went back to college to finish my degree in English, while somehow managing to work 40 hours a week while going to school full-time. Two years later I met my husband, which is funny because I never wanted to get married.

    Then came the career shift, and I started working in the mental health field. Grad school was the obvious next step, and again I managed to work full-time while getting my degree. As if I hadn’t tortured myself enough, I decided to pursue my PhD, while also leaving the agency I had been with for 10 years to start a private therapy practice.

    I’m not rehashing my professional and academic history to brag about what a remarkable human being I am (although I am a delight). During those times, I felt like the cricket – clinging wildly, antennae flailing, trying not to get flattened by the wind. Life continued to happen underneath the challenges, and progress often felt really hard. Sacrifices were made, and there was quite a bit of tantruming involved, but in all of it I learned so much about myself and what I was capable of achieving.

    Like my little cricket friend, it sometimes felt like I was clinging to a windshield as forces bore down and tried to fling me into the void. If I’m being honest, it can still feel that way from time to time. I chose to hang on though, and after finding myself in new and strange places, as hard as it sometimes was, I created a life that had joy and meaning.

    It has been almost 25 years since I inadvertently abducted that cricket, but every once in a while, he’ll cross my mind, usually when I’m feeling pensive or simply flipping back through the earlier chapters of my story. Who would have thought that a noisy little insect would have played such a big role.

    He taught me that whether we hold tight and arrive somewhere unfamiliar, or let go and allow ourselves to be flung, we still have to choose what kind of landing to make. Inevitably, life will surprise us with struggle. So when people tell me that they’re afraid the other shoe will drop (or in my case get stuck on a windshield), I say, “Of course it will. It always does.” The question is: what do we do at the moment of impact?

  • Becoming Junie

    Becoming Junie

    Some conversations are so absurd that they force your mind into tangential reflection. During a recent phone call with my eldest nephew Junie, his roommate/platonic life partner Tor walked into the kitchen as Junie was making pancakes. Somehow the subject of ravioli came up, Tor’s argument being that every culture has some form of stuffed dumpling, from the Spanish empanada to the Japanese shumai, and that in America, our version is the Pop-Tart.

    This was a hill she was willing to die upon. Junie then wondered where that left UnCrustables, and he had a valid point. Arguably, they are more ravioli shaped, and since they’re sealed, doesn’t that mean they’re no longer just a sandwich?

    I just love this kid. I don’t even think he knows how funny he is. I mean, he did name his cat Lady Bimble of Lansdowne Borough. Junie isn’t exactly a Whiskers or Fluffy kinda guy. If only he could see himself the way that I do. From the second he was born, Junie made me believe in love at first sight, and that’s saying a lot because his head was so pointy from a difficult labor that the little hospital beanie he had to wear after delivery barely hit him mid-forehead. Don’t worry, it rounded out eventually.

    In my heart, Junie will always be that perfect little baby, but if we want to get all chronologically technical about it, Junie is a 27-year-old man: a 27-year-old man who struggles with very big feelings. Like his auntie (yours truly), he has spent most of his life grappling mano a mano with depression and anxiety. Unlike his auntie, he hasn’t quite mastered the one-two punch yet, and I stress yet, because I have an unyielding conviction that he’ll land that haymaker and send his depression flying one day.

    Like I said, I wish Junie could see himself through my eyes. He puts so much pressure on himself to live up to the expectations of others, and Dear Dolly Parton, do I know what that’s like. The thing is, Junie hasn’t quite figured out his path yet. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve been there myself. But Junie thinks it’s a problem, which just adds to his depression, because in his mind, the problem is him.

    He’s not the problem though. Neither is the fact that he doesn’t have a clear course planned. J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “Not all those who wander are lost,” and I vigorously agree with that sentiment. In a way, I think Junie is trying to get off the path that was set before him, so a bit of wandering has been necessary. I can’t say I blame him. Junie’s path has been cluttered with trauma.

    The shit this kid witnessed when he was little would make anyone with half a heart sob. On top of growing up in a home where domestic violence and drug use were too commonly observed, when he was 10-years-old his baby brother was killed in a housefire caused by his own father who, after being released from prison for said fire, overdosed on heroin and died.

    Then his mother, who couldn’t cope with her son’s death, turned to drugs herself, ultimately resulting in my parents (his grandparents) taking custody of Junie and his little sister, whom he had bravely rescued from the fire.

    This could have broken him. It could have made him resentful, cold, mean, cynical, but it didn’t. Junie’s trauma made him gentler, kinder, funnier, more protective, compassionate, and marvelously sensitive. While sometimes it flickers, Junie didn’t let his light fade into the grief of his past.

    Instead, he turned bitter into sweet without even trying. It’s just who he is, and I’m so proud of him for it.  Does he struggle with depression and anxiety? Yes, but isn’t he fucking entitled to that?

    So ahem, back to the ravioli theory. Listening to Junie and Tor debate with unapologetic seriousness about Pop-Tarts, I delighted in how silly he was able to be in that moment.

    That’s the real Junie. Playful and unpretentious. For all the pain that could have swallowed him whole, Junie is still here – still gentle, still hilarious, and still leaning into joy and connection over ridiculous philosophical arguments about stuffed pasta and toaster pastries.

    He may not see it yet, but I do. Junie is not broken. He is not lost. Junie is becoming. And I have no doubt that the same tender heart that turned unimaginable pain into unshakeable kindness will lead him to the exact path where he belongs.

    You have no responsibility to live up to what other people think you ought to accomplish

    – Richard Feynman

  • Christmas Lunch and Asparagus Poop

    Christmas Lunch and Asparagus Poop

    Random Thoughts on 32 Years of Friendship

    A solo car ride is the perfect time for me to squeeze in uninterrupted contemplation. On my way to any given destination, random thoughts wander in and out of my mind like deviant tumbleweeds, and I’ll choose the most entertaining one to untangle as I pensively drive along.

    It’s not a full-on daydream. Unlike my husband, who I frequently catch gazing out the driver-side window at a bird or pebble, I’m more than capable of remaining focused on the road while concurrently scripting my imaginary podcasts. I haven’t crashed in over 30 years, so don’t come at me!

    A few days before Christmas, I was heading to my friend Hilda’s house for a pre-holiday lunch with the third member of our trio Karen. The quiet drive was a perfect opportunity for me to relax and reflect on the meaning behind the afternoon’s festivities.

    Hilda, Karen, and I have been friends for almost 32 years. Because of our ridiculous schedules, we don’t get to see each other as often as we’d like to, but when we do, we pick up right where we left off, keepin’ it real and laughing our asses off, and this happy reunion would be another such occasion.

    I’ll admit, I got a little weepy thinking about our shared history, and how auspiciously long that history has been. Hilda and Karen have been my friends for more than half of my life, and the longer we live, the more space they will take up in my timeline.

    We’ve seen each other through breakups and ridiculous exes, job changes, birthdays, marriages, the death of parents, new homes, weight loss journeys, weight gain journeys, gluten intolerances, personal triumphs, bad hair days, PMS meltdowns, and most of the universal experiences of ordinary life. Still, as important as all those unifying events are, they’re just a part of why thinking about my friendship with Hilda and Karen got me so misty eyed.

    These two ineffably beautiful women have witnessed the shittiest version of me evolve into the best versions of me, from the girl who made sure her wounds bled all over everyone else to the woman who made her career and entire life’s mission to staunch the bleeding for others. They walked with me in my darkest days and loved me straight through to the other side.

    Ugh, there I go, getting all weepy again.

    I wasn’t a complete asshole back then in the early days of our friendship – just deeply unfinished. I did have some redeeming qualities, or else I wouldn’t have been able to maintain their friendship for 30+ years. The majority of my friendships today are long-term, some established even before I met Hilda and Karen, and I’ll get to those another time, but that day my internal Ted Talk was about the two besties I was on my way to share the afternoon with.

    As always, Karen was late (it’s part of her charm), but when the three of us were eventually all situated around the granite-top island of Hilda’s fabulous newly designed kitchen, I told them what I had been thinking about on my way over, and we all agreed on one thing – we were so damn lucky to have each other. Lifers, baby!

    We laughed over memories from our collective past (like the weekend get-aways to Wildwood) and caught up on the latest developments in our day-to-day lives (like Hilda removing some foliage from her dog’s butt), savoring the kind of indescribable connection that is sculpted and made flawless over decades of friendship.

    Hilda and Karen are the kind of friends with whom I can be brazenly vulnerable, and not like the “Whoops, I farted” kind, but rather the “Guys, when I was in the hospital getting my gallbladder out, my poop looked like juiced asparagus for days” kind, and they don’t even blink. It’s the intensity of disclosure that counts.

    The three of us have very different and distinctive personalities, but somehow we just fit. Friendships like these don’t just make life survivable – they make it sweeter.  For those of you who have this kind of loving friendship, you know exactly what I’m talking about. For those of you who don’t, I sincerely hope you find your own Hilda and Karen someday. Mine are deeply loved and utterly priceless, and will be for the next 32 years.

    Then and Now

  • Grieving for the Grieving

    Grieving for the Grieving

    Grief never enters a room quietly. Sometimes it’s like falling down a flight of stairs, and sometimes it’s like getting hit by a SEPTA bus at 40 mph. Either way, it will kick your ass loudly, and the recovery process depends on the degree of injury and what lingers after the impact.

    In my personal life and in my profession, I have become deeply acquainted with the inevitability of grief. It comes in many forms, and doesn’t only show up when a loved one dies. We can also grieve the loss of a marriage or a friendship, a home, a job, an older version of ourselves, a treasured object, or a particular moment in time (I’m looking at you, pre-mobile device era).

    Elizabeth Kubler-Ross gave us the Five Stages of Grief, and later her protégé David Kessler added meaning-making as a sixth stage to the original denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance model we’re all too familiar with. While these stages can apply to any form of loss (usually not in order and sometimes all at once), for today’s purpose I’m talking about the SEPTA bus kind: the death of a loved one.

    On my first day back to the office after Christmas vacation, within the course of three hours, I learned that the mother of one client and the father of another had passed away. In my work, holding space for grief is an absolute privilege, so on some days, as the gravity of loss hits me all at once, the weight reminds me of just how gloriously human this work is.

    You’ll never hear me complain about being a highly empathetic person. Compassion is a gift, one that I try to cultivate every day (usually successfully, but sometimes with an egregious faceplant). Still, it can bump up against my emotional threshold on occasion, so when I heard that not only one, but TWO of my clients had experienced loss on the same evening, the news landed like a prize fighter’s left hook.

    Why would I grieve for someone I didn’t know, you ask? Well, first, I’m not an asshole. Watching others suffer hurts my heart. I even get weepy when the kids in a baking competition get eliminated, so in MY world, when someone tells you that their parent just died, empathy is automatically required.  

    Secondly, it wasn’t so much that I was grieving the loss of the parents themselves, but rather for two people I sit across from week after week, whose pain I’ve witnessed, stories I know, growth I’ve celebrated, and with whom I’ve built the weirdly comfortable alliance that exists only in the therapy office or confessional booth.

    When people I care about are hurting, I feel it with them, not because it overwhelms me, but because connection is part of the healing process. Being a therapist may be my job, but being deliberately human informs how I do it.  

    I’m lucky enough to share a space with two of my safe people. Anna (my biz partner), Pam (another therapist friend), and I have offices in the same building, so we usually have lunch together, talking business and letting off steam. The next day at work, I texted Anna with, “I’m very sad,” so she and Pam came to my office to let me unload a bit. As I began talking about the loss my clients had just experienced, I started to cry.

    But then, at the most exquisitely precise moment, Anna cracked a joke, and I started to laugh. I don’t remember exactly what she said, probably something about farts, because let’s be honest, even in grief, nothing compares to a well-timed fart joke. She wasn’t being insensitive. She just knew I needed a pause, like the space between words that give them each meaning and allows us to take a breath. I felt much better after that release.

    I noticed that the same thing happened when I met with each of my grieving clients that week. They both processed their feelings, of course, and recounted the circumstances of their parents’ deaths, but there were moments when offering a little levity felt natural, and both chose to welcome it. Although those silly interludes wouldn’t take away the gripping pain of loss, somehow, they loosened it just enough to break through the sadness for a while, not to bypass the process, but to create a little room to breathe.

    David Kessler said that, “Grief doesn’t always look heavy. Sometimes it laughs. Sometimes it connects us to something beyond words,” and he is so right. As I advance in my own grief and loss pilgrimage, I find that my favorite memories of my departed loved ones are rarely the sad or angry ones, but the ones that make me laugh – the funny stories we retell with relatives on birthdays, anniversaries, and holidays that become written into the family lore. Maybe laughter really is the best medicine – even after you’ve been run over by a speeding bus and have to learn to walk all over again.

  • On Not Losing My Mind (completely)

    On Not Losing My Mind (completely)

    My friend Mollie is going through a tough time. Both professionally and personally, there have been some stressors piling up in her life, and as she listed off some of the bigger ones, I found that I could completely relate to her experience. The past few months have been, well, a lot. In addition to the day-to-day fuckery, our washer crapped out and leaked water all over the floor of the laundry room, then the following week our water heater died and leaked all over the laundry room AND kitchen floor, and my windshield got cracked by a flying rock on the highway. But wait! It gets better. Just as temperatures began to dip for the winter, the blower on my car’s heater decided to rally with the bitch ass equipment in the house and wheezed its last breath, followed days later by the frickin’ alarm clock. Out out out goes thousands of dollars, right in time for Christmas shopping. Perfect. wtf.

    Then things got really heavy. During the same time as the appliance revolt of Winter 2025, my aunt Luci passed away very unexpectedly, my husband suffered from a painful infection in his tooth (literally on the same day as the funeral) that was subsequently scheduled to be pulled two days before Christmas, and my best friend, who is also the co-owner of our therapy practice, was in the hospital for almost two weeks with a near fatal intestinal infection, was released, and then ended up back in the hospital less than a week later with pneumonia. During this time, I tried to stay calm and optimistic, but the truth was that I was really scared, sad, overwhelmed, and getting progressively more pissed off by the emotional bitch slaps that kept coming, one after the other after the other.

    I’m definitely not one to embrace toxic positivity. Spare me the bromides, please. I believe that people should feel their feelings. Hell, it’s in the name, and what kind of therapist would I be to neglect my own? Of course, I am SO grateful that my husband and I have the means to replace all of the crap that was breaking, but those events were just the fart flavored icing on the nervous breakdown cake. My loved ones were suffering, my clients were suffering, the world was suffering, and my big feelings were building like the steam in my Abuela’s old steel pressure cooker.

    Yes, I know breathing helps. No, I did not want to breathe!

    This is the part where I would normally tell a client to slow down, breathe, and practice any one of the numerous cognitive behavioral strategies we had worked on in sessions. I’ll admit, I did none of those things. I was losing a tug-of-war with the cynical view, seeing recent events as bad luck, feeling targeted by the universe, increasingly panicked by the expenses piling up, so for a while, wallowing felt righteous. Nevertheless, I knew that wouldn’t serve me if I didn’t want to get choked out by the blistering barbed wire knot of anxiety and depression in my gut. I was hurting, so something needed to be done, and I thought it only fair that I took the advice I always gave to everybody else. I had to dig deeper into my clinical tool bag and go for the more top-shelf existential stuff though. Some meaning-making shit was required here.

    Ever since I heard the illustrious Tony Robbins ask, “Why is this happening FOR me, not TO me?” I have tried to frame my proverbial slings and arrows from that perspective. Along with the advice from Mr. Robbins, I have two additional strategies for avoiding a Category 5 emotional meltdown:

    1. Look for one beautiful thing.

    2. Find the lesson or the blessin’.

    And that was the advice I gave Mollie. I also suggested that she imagine smacking her problematic co-worker on the head with a shovel. Maybe dark fantasies aren’t as mature or spiritually evolved as the love and light solution, but they can certainly feel oh so satisfying, and although violence is never the answer, sometimes the nervous system needs to feel fierce before it can feel regulated. We’re not shooting for elegance here – just peace.

    Look for One Beautiful Thing (when everything feels like trash)

    As fate would have it, a friend of mine from college recently sent me a text with a photograph he had taken. In it there were three columns of red light reflecting off wet pavement. The color was concentrated in the center, feathering out toward the edges the way watercolors spread when the paper is too wet. I wondered what was casting the pillars of light, what was going on around the scene, and what exactly was it that caused my friend to snap that picture. What did he see? How did it make him feel? How did it make me feel?

    When I’m intentionally looking for one beautiful thing, my mind is engaged elsewhere rather than the source of my anxiety or depressed mood. It’s kind of like standing on one foot when you’re mad. You’re only able to focus on not falling over, and not what triggered your anger.

    The beautiful thing doesn’t even need to be related to the source of distress, like when I’m driving and some shithead pulls out in front of me while there was NO ONE ELSE BEHIND ME, DUDE then proceeds to drive 15 miles below the speed limit, I can just look for some wildflowers on the side of the road, or the way the ice glistens on tree branches like melted diamonds. The best part is, when focused on the one beautiful thing, my brain is flooded with dopamine, and my nervous system goes from “Where’s my head smacking shovel?” to softly yet deviously chuckling as I imagine that driver getting a flat tire. He definitely isn’t getting a speeding ticket. Slow-ass jerk.

    Find the Lesson or the Blessin’ (while trying not to spiritually gaslight myself)

    Finding the blessin’ part isn’t always easy, especially when the bleeding won’t stop. Yes, I have an amazing husband, the most incredible friends, a (mostly) loving family, cozy home, job I love, savings in the bank, health, food, hot water (now), and all of the other obvious wells from which gratitude springs, but sometimes it’s really hard to list all of the things I’m grateful for when it feels like I’m being punished for my transgressions from eighteen lifetimes ago. Fuck you, Karma.

    Still, I would not be bested, so here’s where I landed. The blessing of a dead water heater meant having to get a new water heater, which, on top of not having to take an ice-cold shower, meant that my brother-in-law, an expert HVAC technician, stopped by to check my husband’s handiwork, so I got to spend the afternoon hanging out with my sister while the guys did their thing. (Okay, that helped a little. Let’s keep going). Anna was finally out of the hospital, and my playmate was back at work. (Oh crap, this is actually working). 2026 was only two months away, so I could close the door on all the crap that happened in 2025 (Bye, bitch). Ah! I could feel the barbed wire uncoiling.

    The harder part for me is learning the lesson. Everyone who knows me can confirm that I’m highly oppositional, and sometimes I just don’t want to be introspective. There are times when I’d rather whine and cuss and throw things that shatter – when I must wrestle my inner child to the ground to prevent any real carnage. But I’m a grownup, so I don’t actually throw breakable things.

    Also, just to reiterate, I don’t run around smacking people on their heads with shovels either. Now the cussing and whining, that’s a different story. Those just come with the territory. Anyway, as I was saying, there had to be a lesson or two to glean from the mental and emotional turmoil of the past two months. After all, I was making it through, and that was enough for the time being. Besides, I only had to find the lesson OR the blessin’, not both. I’ll leave the epiphanies for when I’m feeling a bit peppier.

    I Couldn’t Do It, But Mollie Did

    Recently Mollie texted me that she and her troublesome co-worker had sat down for a heart-to-heart and opened up about some of their shared struggles. Both were battling hellish perimenopausal symptoms (Girl, FELT!), both were grappling with uncomfortable changes at work, and both admitted that they were taking it out on each other.  Mollie said, “Sometimes you just don’t know what other people are going through or maybe how your own actions are perceived even unintentionally.” Damn, Mollie. What do the kids say nowadays? She understood the assignment.

    Mollie certainly found the lesson there. It’s a pretty universal one too, right? What would this world look like if we simply took some time to really consider the other person’s point of view? I always tell my clients, and I try (and yes, I fail) to live by this rule: in any meaningful relationship, you don’t need to agree, but you have to understand. Vulnerability can be such a relief when someone truly values your pain. It connects and heals us because let’s be real, we’re all getting our butts kicked out here and it’s nice to know we’re not alone. Besides, compassion costs absolutely nothing, and sometimes that’s the only currency I’ve got.

    What Helped (Eventually)

    So back to my original ordeal…the last two months of 2025 were an outright dumpster fire. Sometimes regulating is easy. Even the simplest pleasure can chill me out, like putting a warm pair of socks on my cold feet, or a fabulously raucous belly laugh during an overwhelming day.

    My friend Anna is notoriously good at cracking a joke at the perfect moment to defuse my meltdowns. However, Anna had just gotten out of the hospital after almost DYING, so I certainly wasn’t going to trouble her with my problems, and comfy hosiery just wasn’t going to cut it this time.  

    I just had to get through it and hope I didn’t get my ass blown off by one more goddamn emotional landmine before Christmas vacation. Maybe that’s the whole point. Not to feel better, or wiser, or wholly transformed, but accepting what is, and noticing something beautiful while everything else feels like trash.

    Some days that’s all I’ve got. I didn’t emerge from this enlightened. Like I’ve said before, I’m not the Buddha. I’m still oppositional and tired and hostile toward platitudes. What I found instead was that I survived it all without losing myself. I stayed human and found some beauty along the way – a photograph casting red light on wet pavement, a hard conversation transforming umbrage into empathy, a moment when the barbed wire loosens just enough to breathe.

    Some days, that’s enough. No lesson. No fixing. Just staying present when Life drags you around by the butt crack – and still finding one beautiful thing anyway.

  • What My Therapist Said

    What My Therapist Said

    Perfectionism… you twat

    If I can’t do it perfectly, I don’t want to do it at all (which is how perfectionism convinces you it’s helping, right up until it ruins your life). In my own therapy and general self-reflection, I am becoming more and more aware of how perfectionism acted as a driving force in my life, and to be quite honest, I find perfectionism to be a real twat.

    Thinking about the many projects I refused to share or even start because I didn’t have all the elements perfectly lined up, made me feel so sad for the younger versions of myself. I thought about all of the times I became exhausted by the obsessive editing, refining, and ultimately scrapping of a once exciting creative endeavor, and wished I could go back in time and tell all of the earlier Stephanies to draw and paint more just because it’s fun, publish that thesis your professor said no one had ever written about before (such a clever girl, alas) and if someone didn’t like it, they could go kick rocks.

    It wasn’t that easy though. If I didn’t “do it the right way” based on the expectations of certain others, the consequences were mentally, emotionally, sometimes physically, and almost always spiritually dangerous and painful. That shield of perfectionism, which for me was a protective force, actually almost snuffed me out, but at the time, conditional acceptance was better than zero acceptance (turns out, that’s a terrible long-term business model). Still, the result was years of coping with depression and anxiety, and a loss of Self that made the burden even heavier.

    As a therapist, I believe that inner child work is an important part of healing, but I also think that the inner teenager and the early 20s selves get left out of the discussion a lot. That really needs to change. Their stories are just as valuable, just as informative, and those poor beaten up parts need healing just as much as our littlest selves do. No wonder we act like such assholes at that age.

    Perfection: The ridiculous standard that we all strive for, despite knowing full well that it doesn’t even exits. GAH! Exist.

    While I have learned to take more risks in my life, (hell, I’m out here showing my ass on this blog) my current brand of perfectionism is less about protecting against real threats and more about protecting against perceived threats (from a bruised butt to a bruised ego), but it’s still running the frickin’ show. You know how I know? Because on paper, I look pretty damn accomplished (I do have a PhD after all), but I still feel like it’s not enough. Like I’m not enough. So when my therapist said, “It’s okay to be messy,” this was a paradigm shattering shift for me.

    Her words began to vibrate softly in my mind, at first like a whisper, then building into a force that within minutes cracked open something inside me, and out of that crack began to pour a feeling that had been walled up for decades: I was messy, and it felt so damn good.

    But There’s MORE (UGH! Can’t I just take a nap and process this in six to eight business days?)

    During our next session, my therapist said, “You carry that stupid high bar with you.” The reality of her statement whacked me in the head as if an actual lead bar had been dropped on my skull. Thinking back on it now, that bar was a burden whose weight I had grown so accustomed to that I had forgotten it was constantly dangling over me like a rusted guillotine I’d named “motivation.”

    I didn’t put the bar there. It had been placed by outside forces who made me think that it was my idea all along, but I was too young, too naive, too afraid to question the truth that I never wanted the damn thing there in the first place. I guess I’d call it coerced consent, because to maintain the approval (or more likely to avoid punishment) of my adult caregivers, I had to agree to the terms of the “stupid high bar.”

    We all know what setting the bar means, but in this context, the “stupid” context, what my therapist was referring to was the unrealistic expectations that were grafted onto my psyche before I could understand what was happening; the arbitrary standards for perfection that I never asked for because they were never mine in the first place. I just wanted to be a kid.

    So when my therapist said, “You carry that stupid high bar with you,” I immediately paused the session so I could write down her exact words. I knew I needed to remember precisely what she said because I knew in my soul that it was my liberation. It was the first step toward healing the wounds that stupid bar had inflicted and perpetuated until today – TODAY, when I rip that confounded thing out from above me and chuck it into a fucking lake.

  • Billy, the Bully, and the Backseat Buckle

    Billy, the Bully, and the Backseat Buckle

    As much as I hate to admit it, I wasn’t always the well-adjusted (generally), emotionally intelligent (for the most part) therapist and human that I am today. In many ways, I was a pretty normal child, spending most of my time outdoors riding bikes, roller-skating, and making mischief with the other neighborhood kids. I loved to read and draw, go to the movies, and have sleepovers with my friends or at Grandmom’s house. Pretty ordinary stuff, right?

    But in other ways, I was the emotional equivalent of a midair lawn dart. When I was “in a mood,” I expressed myself with swift, blindsiding punches, typically accompanied by a verbal mugging or a fiercely hurled sarcastic taunt. Even into my twenties (ok, fine, and even now), I was a bit of a sharp-tongued hussy, but as anyone who knows me now can attest, I’m 90% loving and supportive nurturer, 10% verbally mugging lawn dart. I’m comfortable with that particular ratio.

    For the most part, I don’t feel shame for the actions I took as a little kid. I didn’t know any better, and I used the broken tools I had to protect myself and keep others at a safe distance. One of the lessons I learned at home was that aggression evoked terror, because that was how I felt, and in turn, I projected that onto others. The common saying “hurt people hurt people” could not have been more on the nose (foreshadowing pun not intended), but there is one memory from my childhood that I still regret to this day.

    So, as one might have already guessed, since I am neither Billy nor the seatbelt buckle of a van, the bully in this story is referring to yours truly. It was me. I did it. I’m the asshole.

    When I was in elementary school, my parents forced me and my two younger sisters into an agonizing summer activity known as Vacation Bible School. I absolutely hated it. It was loud, chaotic, crowded, and hot AF, and as an introvert and Highly Sensitive Person – a discovery made in therapy during my mid 20s (God bless you, Dr. Elaine Aron), by the end of each day my nervous system was an arc flash waiting to happen. Because I was just a kid, I didn’t have the language for overwhelm, or any skills to regulate it. All I had was impulse: no flight, freeze, or fawn. Only fight. 100% Id, 0% Superego.

    At the end of the week, on the last day, I and about ten other weary passengers were crammed into the church van transporting us home. In the row behind me sat Billy, the unfortunate soul who just so happened to poke this cranky bear at exactly the wrong time. I don’t remember what he said that sparked my fury, but I do remember grabbing the unused seatbelt next to me and flinging it right at him. I never meant to hurt him. I just wanted to give him a fright. But didn’t that goddamn metal buckle bash poor Billy right on the bridge of his nose.

    I still remember the look on his face: the shock, the confusion, the pain, followed by a determined expression that said, “I will not cry.” I immediately felt awful, a gut-wrenching, root chakra-rumbling remorse that I can still feel now, recalling what a terrible thing I had just done. The worst part is that I never got to apologize, to tell him how sincerely and profoundly sorry I was that I almost broke his face.

    It took years of therapy and excruciating self-work to polish this angry little turd. Certain stretches of my ongoing journey have involved moving from shame (there’s something wrong with me) to guilt (there’s something wrong with what I did), and Billy was part of that. For that, I will always be grateful to him. Growth doesn’t erase harm, but it does change how we hold it, so if you’re out there somewhere, I’M SORRY, BILLY! I hope you eventually became a happy, healthy millionaire.

    May you always dodge flying objects and be immeasurably loved.