Tag: mindset

  • Commencement Season: Tassels, Tears, and One Last Trip to the Snack Bar

    There’s something strange about graduation season. For four years, students spend most of high school counting down to the end of school—talking about summer, freedom, and escaping homework forever. Then suddenly, during the final few weeks, everyone starts walking around campus like they’re in the last ten minutes of a movie. People who normally sprint…

  • The Discipline of Presence

    I said this to a group of colleagues the other day. We were talking about the apparent apathy we see in students—and in many adults. “Failing to show up is giving the world your consent to move on without you.” Their response was thoughtful. They said the line had weight—but maybe it was too harsh.…

  • Throwing Words Into the Wind

    Let me tell you a story…something I learned about myself, and only fully recently acknowledged. This won’t be a confession of weakness, nor a tale of courage or inner strength. Those are just labels. And the truth is, labels are strangers to far more people like me than most realize. If anything, this story is…

  • The Longest Day – Sanitized, Signed In, and Socially Distanced

    I’ve had long days before. I mean, who hasn’t. Everyone has a horror story or two about work, some more drink worthy than others. A friend and I were recently comparing notes over coffee, as one does when caffeine doubles as a therapist. The conversation inevitably twisted itself around the question: who had the longest…

  • Out of the Dark to Find Me Again

    So last night, I had a realization. Not one of those cinematic, lightning-strikes-the-soul kind of realizations. No dramatic music, no sudden gasp into the void. More like… sitting there, minding my business, and boom—my brain quietly taps me on the shoulder like, “Hey… you good?” And apparently, I wasn’t. Or at least, my writing wasn’t.…

  • Speaking Into Silence — That’s Faith with Wi-Fi

    There’s a specific type of crazy needed to be a content creator. And I mean that in the most loving way possible.  Think about it…. You sit there, just you and a camera (usually a phone) and talk to it about …stuff.  It’s one way dialogue.  Sometimes it’s live, otherwise you aren’t talking to anyone…

  • Like Therapy – No Appointment Required

    Life is a journey—and what a messy, beautiful one it is. There are peaks that make you feel invincible, and valleys that make you question if you packed the right shoes.  Triumphs feel like fireworks; failures feel like stepping on Legos in the dark. Each stumble, each victory, leaves a little mark, whether we notice…

  • The Art of School Discipline

    (Or: Why Your Kid Probably Isn’t a Villain, But Also Isn’t Perfect Either) There’s a part of me that’s always been a storyteller. I’ve spent years watching the chaos of childhood—my own and others’—and turning it into little stories that make sense of the messy, funny, absurd moments of growing up. I like noticing the…

  • The Noise of Learning

    I used to think learning was supposed to be quiet.Neat. Orderly. Predictable. But in my world, it never sounded that way. It sounded like pencil scratches in the margins of a notebook, screws rattling on a garage floor, the click of a camera shutter, the uneven notes of a song I hadn’t yet learned how…

  • Several Hundred Words Later

    We’ve all been there. Not as heroes, not as villains—just as silent witnesses to someone else’s emotional eruption. That strange moment when you realize you’re no longer part of a conversation, but the audience to a performance you never bought tickets for. You don’t interrupt.You don’t argue. You simply stand there, nodding politely, mentally taking…

  • Me, My Thoughts, and That Morning Cup of Joe

    As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the morning quite a whole lot more. Not the dramatic, cinematic kind—the kind you see in a travel magazine with the sunlight spilling over mountains—but the ordinary, quiet of a house that hasn’t fully woken up yet. The kind of quiet where the world hasn’t started asking…

  • Being me…

    The hardest thing about being me is forgetting how hard it is to be me. I wake, I move, I mend the cracks and call it progress. I joke, I help, I give what’s left and call it love. Some days I remember the weight of it all— and some days I wear it so…

  • The Power and Purpose of School Discipline

    The Power and Purpose of School Discipline

    In today’s world, some may question why schools emphasize discipline. Why require students to wear their full uniform each day? Why insist on punctuality, preparedness, and adherence to classroom expectations? Why limit distractions like phones, and why hold students to high standards of behavior and academic effort? The answer is simple, yet deeply important: we…