What's not being said lately...
Early in my career, I worked as a case manager for individuals reentering society after incarceration. One of my first clients was a woman who had spent over twelve years in prison. When she was incarcerated, she was the same age I was when we met. When she was released, I was responsible for helping her rebuild the basics of her life; food, clothing, housing, medical care. From the very beginning, it was clear that something stood between us and it didn’t feel like logistics, it felt like it was something deeper.
The Conversation That Shaped My Work
Tuesday, May 19, 2026
Before I had language for mediation or facilitated conversation, I learned something foundational through reentry work: people do not become less human because they have been incarcerated, but they are often treated as if they have.
In the United States, more than 600,000 people return home from prison each year, and nearly two-thirds are rearrested within three years. These outcomes are often framed as individual failure, but they are deeply shaped by the conditions people.......
The Work of Seeing
Tuesday, May 26, 2026
As I write this, I am listening to “About Today” by The National.
The song lives in the quiet distance between two people that are close enough to feel that something has changed, but unable, or perhaps afraid, to name it. Nothing dramatic happens. There is simply the growing awareness that something important has remained unspoken for too long.
It feels like the interior soundtrack of a conversation being rehearsed but never had....
The Conversation You Keep Rehearsing But Never Have
Tuesday, August 4th
Silence is rarely empty.
Sometimes it is thoughtful. It gives anger time to settle before words become wounds. It allows grief to exist without explanation. Between people who feel secure with one another, silence can even be a form of intimacy.
But silence can also communicate indirectly what someone is unwilling to say aloud. Susan Sontag was writing about silence in art...
Silence Is Still Communication
Tuesday, August 11th
“What role did you play in your family of origin?” The question reaches beyond personality. It asks us to consider who we learned to become in order to belong.
Were you the easy one, the responsible one, the peacemaker, or the one who challenged what no one else would name? These roles were often intelligent responses to the emotional world around us. The easy one learned not to add pressure. The responsible one learned to earn trust through competence. The peacemaker learned to manage everyone else’s discomfort.....
Why We Avoid Hard Conversations
Tuesday, August 18th
Long before a woman says, I am unhappy, something within her has usually been trying to speak. It might appear as a heaviness in her chest when she agrees to something she does not want, a quiet ache after a conversation in which she once again made herself smaller, or the strange exhaustion that comes from carrying a life that looks manageable from the outside but feels increasingly difficult to inhabit......
Finding Your Voice Before You Speak
Tuesday, September 1st
Silence is not always the absence of words. Sometimes it is a way of holding the body like a tightening in the throat, a breath drawn shallowly into the chest, an impulse interrupted before it can become sound. We learn to become still in the presence of what feels dangerous, even when the danger is only the possibility of disappointing someone, creating tension, or losing our place of belonging....
The Silence We Learn to Carry
Tuesday, August 25th
I am sorry to bother you, but could you help me? I am sorry for being emotional, but that hurt. I am sorry to ask, but I need a little more from you.
These apologies arrive before anything has gone wrong. They soften a request, cushion a feeling, and reassure the other person that our needs will not become too inconvenient. Beneath them is often a more vulnerable question: Will I still belong if I ask for something?...
Why Women Apologize Before Asking for What They Need
Tuesday, September 8th
