We’ve all felt it — that quiet pressure that rises when you look at another woman’s life and think, I don’t know how she does it. But the truth is, this phrase isn’t admiration. It’s a symptom. A cultural script that rewards women for surviving unrealistic standards, insufficient support, and self‑erasing levels of responsibility.

The real work isn’t figuring out how she does it. It’s asking why we keep applauding overload in the first place — and what it might look like to build a life defined not by endurance, but by boundaries, help, and humane expectations.

I’m 4 months postpartum and my relationship with time, productivity, money, career, and boundaries is being rebuilt from the ground up. This article is my attempt to name those changes and explore what it means to center motherhood as a new, defining role in my life.

Take a peek at my goals for the next 60 days to wrap up the quarter and join me with your own goals!

What if the most honest writing isn’t crafted for an audience at all, but for the part of ourselves that’s finally ready to speak?

I gave birth about four months ago and the experience didn’t go as planned but ended up being so perfect and amazing. I’m grateful everyone is so happy and healthy. I love hearing birth stories so thought this would be a fun opportunity to share our story. Here goes…

What can a 1910 prosperity book teach us about modern creativity, ambition, and the way we build a life? In this summary of The Science of Getting Rich, I explore the ideas that shaped today’s manifestation culture long before it had a name. From Wattles’ belief in “Formless Substance” to his insistence that wealth is created—not competed for—the book offers a surprisingly expansive view of desire, creativity, and the ethics of abundance. I share the concepts that resonated with me most, including why “free spenders often get rich,” what it means to create in a Certain Way, and how giving more value than you take becomes a quiet form of spiritual practice.

We all carry both “white cat” and “black cat” energy—one rooted in caretaking, warmth, and vigilance, the other in sovereignty, boundaries, and selfhood. Most women live with the dial turned all the way up on white cat energy, especially in seasons of caregiving, pregnancy, or running a household. But without its counterpart, we lose the very softness we’re trying to protect. In this piece, I explore how reclaiming even small moments of black cat energy—solitude, ambition, pleasure, boundaries—can restore balance, deepen our relationships, and bring us back to ourselves. It’s not about choosing one or the other, but learning to honor both.

So much of modern beauty culture is built on performance—rituals, purchases, and routines meant to prove something to the world. In this essay, I explore what happens when you quietly step outside that loop. What if beauty isn’t something to chase or correct, but something you define for yourself?

This piece is a small rebellion against vanity and consumption, and an invitation to consider a different kind of beauty—one rooted in ease, self-trust, and the freedom to feel at home in your own skin.

I recently finished reading Isola, a fictional story based on a true story.

I read this story of resilience just in time. It’s like I stored up Marguerite’s strength just when I needed it most during my own pregnancy.

A few days ago, I woke up in the middle of the night in excruciating pain. We went to the hospital to make sure there wasn’t too much fluid around my heart.

This is the most amount of pain I’ve felt during my pregnancy. I worried about the baby. I was breathing hard and fast. I whispered through my body to the baby, “We’re safe.” I thought of Marguerite, who lived in the harsh winters with little food and who birthed her baby in the wild.

I used this story as resilience and fuel during my ER visit. If Marguerite could survive her incredible ordeal, then surely my baby and I would survive this. There was heroism in her bravery, same as mine.

Fiction pulses the truth through us. It injects us with wisdom, knowledge, and story. This experience solidified my thoughts on self-improvement, nonfiction, and fiction — and the roles they play in our lives.

Pregnancy has rewired something in me in a deeper, almost primal sense — a pull toward privacy, presence, and protecting what’s sacred. I started noticing how often people reached for their phones, how fragmented our attention had become, and how much I wanted the opposite for myself, my marriage, and this baby. Stepping away from social media wasn’t a dramatic decision. It was a quiet knowing. A shift toward becoming the mother I’ve always imagined, one rooted in connection rather than performance.

What if the formulas we’ve been taught for “personal branding” don’t fit everyone? For years, the model of thought leadership has emphasized consistency, expertise, and polished funnels that lead to a sale. But there’s another path—one that values curiosity, depth, and the ebb and flow of real life.

In this essay, I explore the difference between Branded Thought Leadership and what I call Leading Through Learning. The first is familiar: weekly posts, tidy niches, and a clear brand identity. The second is quieter, more scholarly, and less about being “the expert” than about sharing discoveries as they unfold.

If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by the pressure to niche down or show up on a schedule, you may find relief here. This is about choosing a lane that honors learning over branding, resonance over formula, and the joy of following passions wherever they lead.

Discipline isn’t one-size-fits-all—it’s shaped by the way we respond to expectations. In The Four Tendencies, Gretchen Rubin outlines how Upholders, Questioners, Obligers, and Rebels each navigate motivation differently. This piece explores what those patterns reveal about your relationship with discipline, and how understanding your tendency can help you create systems that truly stick. Maybe you’re a Rebel like me?

A near death experience.

A pregnancy.

2025 was full of change.

I set goals that I did not meet, but wow, this year has been one of the most pivotal ones for me ever.

I hope these reflections help you as you reflect on your own year.

Every month, I sit down with my “Business Finances” spreadsheet and comb through my recurring expenses like I’m editing a piece of writing: what’s essential, what’s fluff, and what’s quietly draining my energy or budget. I’ve learned that software subscriptions can sneak into my workflow like clutter—tools I once loved but now barely use, or platforms that overcomplicate what I’m trying to keep simple. Switching from Flodesk to Substack wasn’t just a financial decision; it was a creative one. I wanted to write and hit send, not format and fuss.

Keeping my recurring expenses lean isn’t about deprivation—it’s about clarity. When I cut out what’s not serving me, I make room for bigger investments that actually move the needle: courses, collaborations, travel, growth. I don’t want my money tied up in tools that don’t teach me anything. I want it to open doors.

A few months ago, I shared the raw, real story of how I met my husband on the Issy Living podcast.

Tomorrow—June 16th—marks two years since we met. In that time, we’ve bought a house, gotten engaged, planned an intimate wedding, honeymooned, renovated our home, and weathered a few real storms together—like when I was in the ICU with a cardiac effusion and Trace slept in a chair beside me for nights on end. I needed an emergency pericardiocentesis and had a tube in my chest. He never once left my side.

I truly believe the heartbreak and loss I endured before meeting him were part of the path—so I could feel everything, write about it in my novels, and share it with others. That pain became the soil for something richer: stories worth telling, lessons worth learning, and a kind of gratitude I don’t think I could have known otherwise.

This is my inner debate…

Part of me wants to be like Henry David Thoreau in Walden: live in the woods, leave social media, work with my hands, read, and write.

Another part of me wants to embrace the internet: building in public, filming and recording on YouTube, writing on my blog, and sharing posts on Instagram.

This is how I’ve resolved this inner debate (for now!)

The Courage to Be Disliked is about a lot more than the courage to be disliked. It covers all of Adlerian psychology—a philosophical approach to psychology established by Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler. This approach to psychology is antithetical to traditional talk therapy where one could argue there are times where you mull on your problems and loop around them in circles. Rather, this philosophy puts you in charge of your mood, happiness, health, wealth, etc. You are at the center of your universe and get to decide when it can all change at any given moment. Putting responsibility on yourself can be challenging, especially when there are elements of our lives that are at times truly out of our control. But Adler psychology always pushes us back into what we can control: ourselves.

The bigger your goal or challenge, the more value you can provide others when you solve it.

I’ve thought about this a lot over the last decade of pursuing my dreams. Do I need to justify the money I choose to invest in my dream? Does it need to pay back this month, this year, or this decade? And if I never achieve my dream will I still be glad I invested in it? My short answer: I believe investing money toward achieving our dreams is perhaps the best money we’ve ever spent.

I had an idea in January to build a Favorites page on my website, including affiliate links in one place like a library for me and others to use. I built the template for the page. Then I stared at the screen with all of the empty boxes where images should go. I’ve been at this crossroads before: where my design skills are lacking and I wish someone with better design skills could take over the project and bring it to the finish line. That’s when it dawned on me: what if I hired a virtual assistant to do this?