Living the Question: Why Participation Beats Certainty

There’s a Rilke line I keep coming back to. In Letters to a Young Poet, he writes about the importance of living the questions rather than forcing answers; sitting inside the uncertainty long enough to let life move you through it. It’s one of those ideas that sounds beautiful in theory and is genuinely uncomfortable in practice, because most of us would rather have the answer than live in the not-knowing.

Here’s what I’ve learned: certainty doesn’t come from having it figured out. It comes from doing the thing anyway.

I want to talk about participation. Not the inspirational-poster version where you show up and try your best and everyone learns something meaningful. The real version, which is messier and more instructive and occasionally involves you standing at a podium forty-five minutes late while an event organizer stares daggers into the back of your skull.

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The Keynote

In April, I bombed a keynote.

Not in the graceful way where something doesn’t land quite right, and you adjust on the fly. I mean, I arrived forty-five minutes late because Nashville had apparently decided to become a parking lot that afternoon. I missed the A/V check. The A/V, predictably, did not work. The organizer was pissed. The room was already restless.

And then, because I apparently have a flair for the dramatic, I decided this was the moment to tell one of the most vulnerable stories I have ever told publicly for the first time. I wanted to invite those women deeper into their own experience. I wanted them to feel something real.

They looked up at me like I had eight heads. They wanted to redeem their drink tickets.

For someone who loves communicating to a larger group of women, or anyone really (I do love to talk), it was a complete bust. I left feeling profoundly misunderstood, which, if you know anything about Enneagram Fours, is roughly equivalent to a fate worse than death. We can survive almost anything except not being understood. It’s our particular flavor of catastrophe.

The vulnerability hangover lasted a few days. I booked two emergency sessions with my therapist in the same week. I ate some feelings. I questioned my entire professional trajectory.

And then, when the fog lifted, I started looking for the data.

Failure as Information

An executive coach I worked with years ago introduced me to a concept he calls the failure files. Every month, he assigns his clients to write down at least five failures. Not near-misses or things that didn’t go perfectly—actual failures. Things that didn’t work, fell flat, cost something.

The first time he told me about this, I thought it sounded like a clever reframe for people who needed permission to be human, and it is that. But it’s also something more practical: it’s a data collection system. It’s a way of treating your life like a scientist rather than a judge.

Most of us have this backwards. We think success is the teacher and failure is the punishment. But success mostly confirms what we already know. Failure tells us something new. It shows us where our assumptions were wrong, where our timing was off, where the fit wasn’t right, where we were operating out of hope rather than information.

If you aren’t failing at anything, you probably aren’t putting yourself out there. And if you aren’t putting yourself out there, you are not generating the information you need to build a life that’s actually yours.

Certainty doesn’t come first; participation does. As we show up and do the next thing, we gain clarity, not always certainty. (Sorry to be a buzzkill.)

Living the Question

Back to Rilke. He was writing to a young poet who wanted answers: Am I talented enough? Is this the right path? How do I know? And Rilke essentially said: you don’t. Not yet. Live inside the question. The living itself will eventually deliver you to the answer.

This is not passive advice. Living the question is not the same as waiting. It means taking action in the direction of your desire before you know if it’s going to work. It means getting on stage when you’re forty-five minutes late, and the A/V is broken, and you don’t know if the room is with you. It means telling the vulnerable story even when you’re not sure the audience is ready for it. It means you don’t wait for certainty to grant you permission to participate.

The failure doesn’t mean you were wrong to try. Sometimes it just means the room wanted their drink tickets.

What This Looks Like for Every Type

Here’s the thing about the Enneagram: every type has its own sophisticated and deeply convincing reason to delay participation. Every type has a story it tells itself about why now isn’t the right time, why it needs more information or more preparation, or a slightly better set of circumstances before it can really go for it.

And every type has something specific to lose, or rather, something it fears losing, when it steps into the arena before it’s ready.

Ones wait for conditions that will never fully arrive.

They need the approach to be right before they begin, which means they’re editing the plan instead of executing it. They aren’t afraid of failure so much as they’re afraid of doing it wrong.

Participation for a One means beginning before it’s perfect, and trusting that the refinement can happen in motion.

Twos hold back when they can’t locate an explicit invitation.

They’re generous to a fault, but often only when it’s clearly wanted. Going first, claiming space, offering something that hasn’t been asked for; that’s the stretch.

Participation for a Two means showing up without waiting to be needed.

Threes are often the most visibly active, but they’re also capable of quietly avoiding the things that might actually matter by staying busy with the things they know they can win.

They can succeed their way around the real risk.

Participation for a Three means choosing the opportunity that could genuinely fail over the one that guarantees a good outcome.

Fours will wait until they can show up as the fullest, most authentic version of themselves, which is a beautiful idea that can become a lifelong postponement.

They want the moment to be worthy of them. They want to be understood before they’ve said anything. (I can say this because I am one.)

Participation for a Four means going before the moment feels right, knowing that misunderstanding is survivable.

Fives are gathering information. Indefinitely.

There’s always more to learn, another layer of competence to develop, another corner of the landscape to map before it’s time to move.

Participation for a Five means entering the room while there’s still something they don’t know, which is always.

Sixes are running simulations.

The anxiety isn’t laziness; it’s thoroughness applied to every possible way things could go wrong. They’ve already failed in their minds seventeen times before they’ve started.

Participation for a Six means taking the first step without resolution of the doubt, because the doubt will not resolve in advance.

Sevens can look like the most willing participants because they love possibility, and they move fast.

But they can also skim the surface, pivoting before depth requires something of them.

Participation for a Seven means staying long enough to find out what they’re actually made of.

Eights show up fully, often loudly, and they are not afraid of the fight, but they can be quietly terrified of the kind of vulnerability that participation in deeper relationship or creative exposure requires.

Participation for an Eight means letting people see what it costs them.

Nines are extraordinarily skilled at becoming comfortable with a life that keeps almost happening.

They merge with the inertia of the day. The perpetual next season.

Participation for a Nine means taking up space without waiting for someone else to create the conditions that make it okay.

Every type has a different texture to its avoidance. Every type is also capable of something remarkable when it steps through it.

What the Keynote Actually Taught Me

When I finally got past the vulnerability hangover and started treating April like a case study rather than a verdict, two things came into focus.

The first was alignment. The opportunity wasn’t wrong because I failed it. It was wrong before I walked in the door. It wasn’t my audience, it wasn’t my context, and somewhere underneath my “happy to be here” energy, I probably knew that. I said yes to it the way I used to say yes to a lot of things: gratefully, a little uncritically, out of a generosity I was performing partly for myself.

The second was that I am done with my “oh, I’m just so happy to be here” era. You know this era. It’s when you give your time and your craft and your most vulnerable stories away for free or close to it, because being chosen feels like enough. Because you’re still asking to be let in rather than deciding where you belong. That era served me. I needed it. And now we’re moving right along.

Participation generates information. That information, if you’re willing to look at it honestly, will start to show you the shape of what’s actually yours—what fits, what doesn’t, what you should lean into and what you should release. It builds discernment. Not the defensive kind that keeps you safe and small, but the earned kind that comes from having been out there enough to know the difference.

You don’t get that by watching from the sidelines. You don’t get it by waiting until you’re ready. You get it by getting on the stage when you’re forty-five minutes late, and the A/V doesn’t work, and the room might not be with you.

Sometimes they’re with you. Sometimes they want their drink tickets. Either way, you find out something true.

And I believe that, my friend, is exactly the point.

Love & Gratitude,

Katie

Summer Self-Care Edit

Summer arrives and immediately hands you a list.

Make memories. Get outside. See everyone. Go somewhere. Be present. Slow down, but also don’t waste it. Look good in the photos. Feel good about looking good in the photos. Have the best summer of your life, ideally by the end of June.

Your nervous system, once again, would like a word.

There’s a particular kind of exhaustion that comes from trying to perform a season, and summer is the loudest offender.

No other time of year comes pre-loaded with this much cultural pressure—the nostalgia, the FOMO, the ambient sense that everyone else is living their most golden, sun-drenched, effortlessly joyful life while you’re just...trying to stay hydrated and answer your emails and stop Googling whether your weird fatigue is dehydration or a personality flaw.

The “best summer ever” mythology starts early. It’s built into every end-of-school countdown, every travel influencer, every Instagram grid that looks like a highlights reel of a life you haven’t quite figured out how to live yet, and honestly, neither has she, but her color-grading is exceptional.

But here’s what nobody mentions: the pressure to maximize a season is the fastest way to stop actually experiencing it. You can’t be present and perform simultaneously. You have to pick one.

Real summer self-care is the quiet, slightly countercultural act of choosing presence over performance; letting this season be what it actually is, not what you’ve been told it should look like.

So here is my Summer Self-Care Edit. Less highlight reel and more real life.

1. Let Summer Be Ordinary Sometimes

Not every day needs to be an event.

Some of the best summer moments are the ones nobody photographs—the slow morning with nowhere to be, the conversation that goes longer than planned, the evening walk where nothing happened except the light was nice and you noticed it.

Ordinary is not a consolation prize. Sometimes it’s the whole point. (This is something I have to tell myself approximately four times per week, so.)

2. Protect Your Rest Like It’s a Reservation

Summer schedules have a way of filling themselves. Every weekend suddenly has somewhere to be, someone to see, something not to miss.

Rest doesn’t get added to the calendar unless you add it; so add it. And add it with the same energy that you’d protect a non-refundable flight with.

The cost of skipping it is real. You just don’t always feel the bill until you’re crying in the Target parking lot in late August and you’re not totally sure why.

3. Give Your Body Grace in the Season That Asks the Most of It

Summer is the season that makes the most demands on how we feel about our bodies—and the least forgiving about them. The swimsuits. The shorts. The photos. The relentless, unasked-for commentary.

This is not an invitation to fix your body before you let yourself enjoy the season. It’s an invitation to enjoy the season in the body you have right now.

Wear the swimsuit. Eat the thing. Go to the thing. Don’t let a number or a reflection determine how much summer you’re allowed to have. (For the record: you’re allowed to have all of it.)

4. Redefine What “Not Wasting It” Means

The fear of wasting summer runs deep. It’s practically encoded in childhood, right next to the theme song for whatever show you watched on Saturday mornings.

But rest is not waste. Saying no is not waste. A quiet weekend at home is not waste. Reading an entire book by a fan because it’s too hot to go anywhere is not waste.

You know what actually wastes summer? Spending it so anxious about missing out that you couldn’t feel the parts you were actually in. Don’t do that.

5. Let Yourself Want Simple Things

Summer has a way of making everything feel like it should be bigger, better, more.

But sometimes what you actually want is a porch and a cold drink and nobody asking you anything for an hour. Sometimes you want to swim. Sometimes you want a nap. Sometimes you want to watch a movie in the dark in the middle of the afternoon, like a person who has fully opted out and is not sorry about it.

Simple wants are not small wants. They’re often the most honest ones. The porch and the cold drink? That’s a life.

6. Move for the Feeling, Not the Outcome

Summer movement has a different energy than the rest of the year, and it’s worth leaning into.

The early morning walk before the heat arrives. The swim that’s actually just floating. The spontaneous something that doesn’t count as a workout but definitely counts as alive.

Let your body move because it wants to, not because it owes you something. Your body does not owe you anything. It’s been out here doing its best.

7. Stay in the Moment Long Enough to Actually Have It

Put the phone down for a minute.

Not as a digital wellness prescription—I’m not your therapist right now (well, I am, but I’m off the clock)—just as a small act of generosity toward yourself. You genuinely cannot take a memory home if you were busy documenting it instead of being inside it.

The best summer moments don’t need a caption. They need your full attention. Give them that.

What Your Enneagram Type Needs This Summer

Because the pressure to have the “best summer ever” doesn’t land the same way for all nine of us—and your type has something specific to say about where you’re most likely to get in your own way.

Type 1 — The Improver Summer will tempt you to optimize your leisure. Better sleep schedule. More intentional mornings. A reading list with actual goals. (A reading list with goals, you guys.) Your invitation this season: let fun be inefficient. Do something with no measurable outcome. Let a day go sideways without calling it a failure. Rest that you haven’t earned is still rest you deserve. Write that down somewhere you’ll actually see it.

Type 2 — The Helper You will coordinate the trip, remember everyone’s food preferences, and make sure the whole thing comes together beautifully, and then quietly wonder why you feel depleted by vacation. Honey. This summer, build something into the season that’s yours alone. A morning. A day. A trip nobody needed you to plan. You are allowed to have summer for yourself. (And I say this with love: nobody is going to give it to you. You have to take it.)

Type 3 — The Achiever The “best summer ever” pressure was basically written for you, and it will absolutely run you if you let it. Your self-care this season is radical ordinariness. A weekend with no agenda. A day that doesn’t produce anything. Let summer be something you live rather than something you accomplish. This will feel wrong. Do it anyway.

Type 4 — The Romantic You’re already attuned to the bittersweetness of it all—the way the long days feel both endless and fleeting, the nostalgia that shows up before the season has even finished, the small grief of a good thing passing. (Deeply relatable. Hi, it's me.) Your invitation is to stay in the present tense. Let this summer be its own thing, not a comparison to every summer before it or a trailer for when it’s over.

Type 5 — The Investigator Summer is loud and social and full of unstructured time, which is either a dream or a genuine personal threat depending on how yours is set up. Your self-care this season is scheduling solitude on purpose, so it doesn’t have to be seized defensively like you’re rationing emergency reserves. Protect your recharge time before you’re depleted. And then, from that full place, actually let someone in. Just a little. You can do it.

Type 6 — The Loyalist You may spend the whole summer half-present because some part of your nervous system is already scanning for fall—the schedule, the unknown, the thing that might go wrong before you’ve even bought school supplies. Your self-care is practicing landing in the day you’re actually in. Summer is asking you to trust it a little. Let it be good without waiting for the catch. (There might not be a catch. I know. Wild.)

Type 7 — The Enthusiast You planned the best summer ever—possibly in January, over a color-coded spreadsheet. The trips, the concerts, the experiences, the spontaneous adventures that you somehow also pre-planned. (There’s a version of you that has already mentally had a spritz in Positano and it’s February.) And somewhere in the middle of all of it, you’ll feel a flicker of emptiness you can’t quite name. That’s not a sign to add more. It’s a sign to go deeper. Let one thing fully land before you’re already onto the next. The season is enough. You’re enough. (Yes, even without the next thing.)

Type 8 — The Challenger You want summer on your own terms, and you will absolutely fight for the right to have it that way. That energy is good, and I respect it. Your invitation is to channel it toward receiving, not just controlling. Let someone else plan the thing. Let yourself be taken care of for once. Let summer surprise you. You don’t always have to be the one holding it all together, and sometimes the people around you would really love the chance to try.

Type 9 — The Peacemaker You’ll accommodate everyone else’s summer and call it easy-going. And you’ll be good at it. And you’ll get to September and quietly realize you never once asked for what you wanted. Your self-care this season is wanting things out loud, before the window closes. What do you want summer to include? What would make it feel like yours? Don’t wait until the leaves turn to figure that out. Ask now. Then ask again.

The best summer ever isn’t the one with the most stamps in the passport or the fullest camera roll or the body you finally felt good in.

It’s the one where you were actually there—present, honest about what you needed, generous with yourself about what you couldn’t do or be or have yet.

Some of it will be golden. Some of it will be humid and hard and ordinary and fine.

All of it counts.

Have a real summer, not a performed one. That’s the only version worth having.

With Love & Gratitude,

Katie

Naked Truths | Reclaiming Who You Were Before the World Told You to Hide

Spoiler alert: we are born naked—bare-skinned and bare-souled, wide-eyed and wobbly, wailing out our needs and shrieking at simple joys, but none of us stay that way.

Somewhere along the way, we learn it isn’t safe to be who we really are—our raw, needy, messy, beautiful, most honest selves. So we find ways to hide. We try on personas like costumes: the good girl, the achiever, the funny one, the easygoing one. We become whoever seems most likely to earn us a seat at life’s cafeteria table.

But here’s the cosmic joke: the layers we think are protecting us become the source of our pain. Suddenly, life doesn’t fit, like we accidentally ordered it two sizes too small. Cue the questions: What’s wrong with me? How did I get here? And most importantly, do I need to burn my life to the ground or just take a really good nap?

As a psychotherapist and an Enneagram facilitator, I’ve seen this a thousand times. I’ve also lived it.

Like many therapists, my path to “professional” began at “patient”. I was a floundering, existentially fraught twenty-two-year-old when I finally went to therapy. The idea that anything can be “finally” at twenty-two continues to blow my mind. After years of undiagnosed depression, disordered eating, and a few hospital visits, you better believe it felt pretty final. Getting through the day was a grind. I could slap on a smile and laugh at a joke, but I wasn’t who I wanted to be or where I wanted to be. I always felt deeply and essentially… different.

And like Samantha Baker for Jake Ryan, I kept waiting for the real me, the right me, to arrive.

I chalked the perpetual longing, exhaustion, overwhelm, anxiety, and anorexia up to good ol’-fashioned growing pains. I told myself it was just part of becoming an adult, and once I got to adulthood, I could be “who I wanted to be”—like Ariel, GI Joe, Mom, Dad, and a handful of B-team Care Bears had taught me. And I knew exactly who I wanted to be too: lovable, irresistible, witty, maybe with a little mystery thrown in for good measure (ideally, the French kind). I wanted to be kind and humble, too, a decent Christian (thankfully, I had enough self-awareness to aim for just “decent” in this department). I figured that if I put in the work, then it (I) would happen.

We Xennials got a ton of messaging that told us “who we were” was entirely our decision—a matter of elbow grease and intention. We could choose to be vivacious, or brooding, or sassy, or funny. We could choose to be thoughtful or serene (but y’all, fat chance in my case).

On the outside, the idea that identity was something malleable, a messy hunk of stuff we could slap on a pottery bench and shape all on our own, was deliciously empowering. Or at least, it was supposed to be. On the inside, it was ruinous. “Fake it ‘til you make it” was the credo of the times, and plenty of us, myself included, almost didn’t make it at all.

It’s taken me years of therapy, on both the couch and in the spinny chair, to understand the truth: becoming someone isn’t our job; being ourselves is.

At the time, I was living out of a binding story I now hear every week in my work as a therapist. It goes a little something like this: “I feel like if I don’t stand out, no one will notice me. If I make myself unforgettable, then I’ll be loved.”

I didn’t know it yet, but I was an Enneagram Four, The Romantic, and that story was their signature. Every type has a similar story – while each is beautifully unique, they also have a “distress mode” they slip into when life gets hard. They try to fix this by wrapping themselves in thick layers of striving, ego (the maladaptive kind), and fear until they lose sight of who they really are.

Friends, I’m excited to invite you on a journey. It’s time to strip it all down. Let’s find our way back to, as Ian Cron says, “who we were before the world told us who we should be.”

You ready?

Love,

Katie

How Mindful Movement Can Heal Trauma

Today, you’re in for a treat! I’m bringing my friend, Koula Callahan—master yoga instructor and speaker for the Self Care Workshop—onto the blog to share why movement, especially yoga, is such a powerful practice for healing and everyday life.

If you’ve ever wondered what the fuss is about or why yoga is so effective, today you’ll get answers.

Let’s dive into my chat with Koula!

1) How does movement help regulate and process emotions?

Koula: Movement is a critical part of the healing journey. So many of us forget to listen to our bodies when we’re processing emotions or hardships—and we wonder why we feel stuck.

Here’s the truth: our life’s story is stored in our cells and body tissues. Each part of the body actually shares responsibility for memory with the brain. In fact, our bodies hold more information than our minds do.

So when we only process emotions with our brains, we miss a huge reservoir of wisdom stored in the body. Movement helps us access that “data” and creates a more integrated way of healing.

2) Why yoga? What’s all the fuss?

Koula: Yoga is helpful for so many reasons. Yes, it’s a fantastic workout (hello, long lean muscles!), but it’s also the only movement practice that prioritizes presence and awareness first.

A lot of people think they “aren’t good at yoga” because they’re not flexible. That’s not true at all. Yoga isn’t about touching your toes, being strong, or mastering poses—it’s about connecting with yourself and uniting your mind, body, and spirit.

The practice becomes a moving meditation. And while that can be challenging—you’re forced to face what’s really going on within you—it’s also deeply healing. Plus, yes, you’ll build strong abs and triceps along the way.

3) Why should we be practicing yoga?

Koula: The benefits of yoga are endless. It reduces anxiety and stress, improves sleep, balances hormones, detoxifies organs, and boosts the immune system.

But here’s what I really love about it: yoga grounds you. In a chaotic world, it’s a simple and practical tool that anyone can use to stay calm, centered, and steady.

4) Why is yoga so important to you personally?

Koula: Yoga has been the throughline of my adult life. It’s the tool I rely on most to regulate my emotions, no matter what’s happening around me.

When I step onto my mat, I’m reminded to get present and simplify the things I’ve overcomplicated. In hard seasons, my mat becomes a sanctuary where I can pay attention to how I feel and give myself what I need.

And honestly—I notice when I skip it. My sleep suffers, I’m more irritable, and I’m less kind to myself.

I also love teaching because of what I learn from my students. Their willingness to show up fully inspires me. The connection a yoga class creates is beautiful and life-giving. To be a good teacher, I have to be a student first—and I’m grateful for what each of my students teaches me.

Thank you, Koula! Your passion and wisdom have enriched my life and the lives of so many others.

If you’re ready to start moving with us and experience the healing benefits of yoga for yourself, join us at the Self Care Workshop on October 11. You’ll experience yoga with Koula firsthand, alongside writing, reflection, and space to simply breathe.

✨ Reserve your spot today!

With love & gratitude,

Katie

Burnout Nearly Broke Me - Here’s What Healed Me

Six months before my breast cancer diagnosis, I was quietly falling apart. From the outside, my life looked fine - juggling responsibilities, showing up where I was needed aka a nine month old baby boy—but inside, I was unraveling.

My body kept whispering: slow down, breathe, find clarity. But between the lingering postpartum and a then unknown diagnosis, the tools I’d been teaching for years seemed out of reacch.

It reminded me of when I first stumbled upon the Enneagram 20 years prior.  I didn’t think it could help. A personality framework? Really? But then I read the description of my type—Type Four—and something in me broke open.

I wept.

Not because the words were painful, but because for the first time, I felt seen. I wasn’t broken. I wasn’t too much. I was simply human, and one desperately trying to also feel understood.

Leave it to human suffering to point us in lovely direction of a wake-up call! That moment planted the seeds of healing. Slowly, I began to choose self-compassion over self-criticism. Therapy helped me untangle old patterns. Writing gave me words for feelings I’d buried. Movement reminded me I had a body, not just a brain. Bit by bit, I started to build a life rooted in who I really was—instead of who I thought I was supposed to be.

And that’s why I created the Self Care Workshop.

I can honestly say that a dedicated self care practice helped me beat cancer.  My oncologist will vouch for me! 

So, I wanted to build the kind of experience I wish I had back then:

• A place to breathe deeply.

• A place to connect without pressure or performance.

• A place to let your body rest and be heard.

• A place where your heart has space to speak—through the wisdom of the Enneagram, through guided writing, through movement and stillness.

Because healing doesn’t happen in isolation. It happens in the presence of others, when our stories are witnessed and honored.

If you feel like you’ve lost yourself, if you’re standing at a crossroads, or if you simply need space to reset, this day was created for you.

You’re not too much. You’re not alone. You’re right on time.

Join us for the Self Care Workshop on October 11.

Click here to register now and take your next step home.

Love & Gratitude,

Katie