Everywhere you look, the message seems to be the same. Do more. Buy more. Optimize more. Give your kids more experiences. Make your life more interesting. Keep improving, keep adding, keep proving that you’re making the most of everything. Even when all of that more is exhausting, it can still feel safer than letting any of it go. I’ve been noticing how deeply attached I am to that idea, not just with clothes and things, but with my time, my work, my health, and the way I mea

You open a retailer’s website just to look, and suddenly there’s a countdown clock, a low-stock warning, and a message reminding you that the item in your cart may be gone if you wait. Everything is designed to make this moment feel like the only moment that matters, and before you know it, you’re buying from urgency instead of stopping long enough to think. This is bigger than sleeping on a purchase before you click buy. Retailers aren’t only encouraging you to shop. They’re

A client of mine recently posted a photo of her highest heels and announced that she was done wearing them. Not taking a break. Not saving them for special occasions. Done. She works in finance, where heels are part of the expected power look, so it might have seemed like a snap decision, but I don’t think these decisions are sudden. I think they’re honest. They’re the culmination of dozens, maybe even hundreds, of moments when you’ve thought, Why am I doing this anymore? Who

I’m getting ready to move to Pella, Iowa, a small farm town deeply rooted in its Dutch heritage, and based on the few times I’ve visited, I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to stick out. This isn’t exactly new. I’m used to not dressing like the people around me, but this might be a pretty big difference. And as I started packing up my closet, I realized pretty quickly that I wasn’t just deciding what clothes to bring. I was actually making decisions about identity. Moving,

Leonard Cohen has a lyric in his song Anthem that goes, "There is a crack, a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in." Most of us spend our lives patching over the cracks, trying to manage the fractures and keep everything looking intact. But what if the moment your identity starts to break open is when something more real can finally come through? Identity shifts are inevitable. Whether you choose the transition or it chooses you, you reach a point where the versio

“I used to be so intimidated by you.” Earlier in my career, that’s what I’d hear from client service team members after we’d worked together for months, and it always floored me. When I’d ask why, the answer was some version of, “You just look so polished and put together. It looks like you don’t struggle at all.” And every time, it bothered me, because that wasn’t how I felt on the inside. Not even close. If you’ve ever been around me, worked with me, or been in my zone, you

I was playing charades with my family when I realized I had no idea how to act out the card in my hand. Instead of laughing, guessing, or letting myself be bad at something for a minute, I froze. Then I got angry. Then I stormed out of the room like a full-grown adult having a tantrum. And that moment has haunted me for years because it showed me something I did not want to see. I had taken something that was supposed to be fun and turned it into something I had to do perfect

There is a strange moment that can happen when you realize you’ve been performing for so long, you’re not even sure where the performance ends and the real you begins. For me, that realization did not come all at once. It came slowly over the past year as I started questioning things I had accepted and normalized for a long time, including the way I was living, the work I was doing, the way I was showing up, the clothes I was wearing, and the things I thought made me valuable

You have a closet full of clothes, and nothing in it feels quite like you. Maybe you've tried subscription boxes, made appointments with Nordstrom stylists, or fit in a session with M.M.LaFleur while traveling for work. You've spent real time and real money trying to solve this, and you're still standing in front of your closet feeling like something is off. One of my clients, Erin Wood, described it perfectly, there were nice pieces, but nothing great, nothing that made her