You know those daily Facebook memories that pop up without warning?
Some of them feel like a warm hug. Tiny Asher. Little moments you forgot you captured. Proof that there has always been love here.
And then there are the other ones.
The ones you wish you could unread.
The ones that make your stomach drop.
Lately, I’ve noticed something strange. A lot of my memories are from 2019. And what’s unsettling isn’t that they’re painful—it’s that so many of them sound like me now. The words. The awareness. The gratitude. The way I talked about life and possibility and hope.
I read them and think, Wow… that’s exactly what I would say today.
And then the question hits me hard:
What happened in the middle?
Where did that version of me go?
When did I stop speaking that way?
When did I stop living with that openness, that gratitude, that willingness to dream bigger?
There’s a gap there. And it matters.
I think so many of us spend our lives running—not toward anything, but away from discomfort. We shield our eyes from the hard moments, the heavy ones, the ones that require us to sit still and feel something we don’t want to feel.
And honestly, society makes it easy.
Look at the phone in your hand—the one you’re probably reading this on. It’s designed to distract you from your life. From your thoughts. From your pain. From your healing. It takes your attention, your presence, your time.
And time is the one thing we never get back.
You can always make more money. I know that sounds cliché—especially if groceries feel impossible right now—but there is always some way forward financially. There is never more time.
So I started asking myself harder questions.
What happened nine years ago?
What changed?
And the truth is—I know exactly what happened.
I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Maybe one day. But I do know this: there was one defining moment, and because I didn’t stop to acknowledge it—because I didn’t let myself feel the weight of it—I spent years running from it instead.
Years.
I damaged relationships. I hurt people I loved. I hurt myself deeply. I let my unhealed parts take the wheel, and at times, I let my demons raise my child for me because I hadn’t yet learned how to face them.
That’s a hard thing to admit.
But here’s the other truth: I don’t take this awareness lightly.
I feel incredibly grateful to have it now. And I also want to pause—to honor the girl who walked through all those years lost and running. The one who survived without the tools she needed. The one who kept going anyway.
Maybe the person I’m trying to become now is the one who would have noticed her.
The one who would have stopped, knelt down beside her, and asked, “Are you okay?”
And then stayed quiet long enough to actually listen to the answer.
I sometimes wonder what life would look like if there were some kind of internal warning light. Something that flicked on and said, “This is one of those moments. If you don’t stop here, you will be changed forever—and not in a good way.”
That’s why they say the comfort zone kills you.
Because it does.
The more we avoid discomfort, the smaller and heavier our lives become. The more stuck we feel. The more disconnected we are from joy.
Do you want to know how to slowly ruin your life?
Do nothing.
You don’t have to do anything bad.
You don’t have to do anything good.
Just do nothing.
Over time, you’ll wake up in a life you never meant to build.
So my wish for you today—my real, honest wish—is this:
Give yourself enough grace and love to ask, When did things change?
When was the last time you felt real joy?
When was the last time you laughed so hard your cheeks hurt?
And what happened after that?
Acknowledge it. Sit with it. Let it hurt—because yes, it will. There’s no way around that.
But also sit with the version of yourself that had to emerge just to survive until now. That person deserves acknowledgment too. They kept you alive.
Just know this: you don’t have to live in survival mode anymore.
That’s the power of awareness. Once you see it—once you name it—it loses its grip on you. You don’t have to numb yourself. You don’t have to stay busy to avoid feeling. You don’t have to keep running.
Life is meant to be good.
It’s meant to be sweet.
Yes, there are sour moments. Hard ones. Heavy ones. But in the grand scheme of things, life is supposed to be beautiful.
The key is this:
You have to sit with the uncomfortable moments.
You have to feel them.
You have to grow through them.
And then—slowly, gently—it gets so good.
I promise.
It gets so good.