Roots

If this were a TV show, the narrator would probably tell you that I spent most of my life convinced everyone else had received a handbook for life that somehow got lost in the mail on its way to me.

I was adopted at birth into a family that loved me deeply.
That's important, because this isn't a story about not being loved.

It's a story about never quite feeling like I fit.
I was the black sheep. The odd one out. The kid who seemed to experience the world just a little differently than everyone around her.

Even when I had a seat at the table,
I wasn't always sure I belonged there.

For a long time, I assumed the problem was me. Maybe I was
too emotional. Too loud. Too sensitive. Too much.
Or maybe not enough.

The truth is, I spent years trying to figure out why I felt so different from the people around me.
Sometimes that difference looked like being the only girl on an all-boys baseball team.
Sometimes it looked like struggling in school while teachers reassured me I was capable.
Sometimes it looked like searching for acceptance in places that couldn't possibly give it to me.
Sometimes it looked like trying so hard to become what everyone else needed that I lost sight of who I was.

I chased belonging through achievement.
Through relationships.
Through substances.
Through helping other people.
Through becoming the person everyone could count on.
The problem was that no amount of external validation could answer an internal question.

Am I worthy of taking up space exactly as I am?

That question followed me through boarding school, failed college classes, unhealthy relationships, addiction, recovery, social work school, burnout, entrepreneurship, and nearly every chapter in between.

The answer didn't arrive all at once. It arrived in pieces.
A teacher who believed in me.
A mentor who challenged me.
A recovery community that taught me honesty.
A husband who loved me before I fully knew how to love myself. Clients who trusted me with their stories.
Eventually, my own willingness to stop trying to earn my worth and start believing I already had it.

Today, when people ask why I became a therapist, the answer isn't because I have life figured out.
It's because I know what it's like to spend years wondering if you're too different, too complicated, too broken, or too much.
I know what it's like to sit across from yourself and wonder whether you're worthy of the life you want.
I know what can happen when someone finally has the space to discover that they are.

Not because they changed who they are.
But because they stopped apologizing for it.

For a long time, I thought my story was about adoption, recovery, social work, entrepreneurship, or any of the other chapters that shaped me.

Now I think it's about something much simpler.

It's about learning that belonging isn't something you earn.
It's something you allow. Everything I've built [the businesses, the communities, the relationships, and the life I have today] grew from that realization.

While I'm still learning, still growing, and still writing the next chapter, I no longer care to spend my life trying to prove that I deserve a seat at the table.

Now I spend it helping create tables where other people can pull up a chair, too.