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What if becoming someone was never the goal? A therapist and Enneagram facilitator on shedding the personas we mistake for our true selves.
Today you’re in for a treat! I’m bringing my pal Koula Callahan, master yoga instructor and speaker for the Self-Care Workshop, on the blog to share why movement, namely yoga, is incredibly powerful and important for us to practice as we move through our days. If you’ve always wondered what all the fuss is about —and yoga and why is really effective, today is the day—you’re going to get some answers.
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In April, I bombed a keynote—45 minutes late, broken A/V, a room that wanted their drink tickets.
Here's what that failure taught me about participation, discernment, and why every Enneagram type has its own sophisticated reason to wait until it's "ready."
What if becoming someone was never the goal? A therapist and Enneagram facilitator on shedding the personas we mistake for our true selves.
Today you’re in for a treat! I’m bringing my pal Koula Callahan, master yoga instructor and speaker for the Self-Care Workshop, on the blog to share why movement, namely yoga, is incredibly powerful and important for us to practice as we move through our days. If you’ve always wondered what all the fuss is about —and yoga and why is really effective, today is the day—you’re going to get some answers.
Six months before my breast cancer diagnosis, I was quietly falling apart. This is my story and the heart behind why I created the Self Care Workshop.
Discover how each Enneagram type relates to structure—and why the right kind of rhythm can help you thrive. Learn how to create supportive routines without stifling growth.
When we hear the phrase self-care, most of us picture bubble baths, yoga classes, or carving out an hour to finally read that book on our nightstand. And while those things absolutely have their place, if we stop there, we miss the deeper, sustaining work that actually helps us thrive.
What I’ve learned in my own healing and in my work with clients is this: self-care without self-compassion can feel more like another to-do list item when it’s really a relationship to nurture.
There’s a moment, sometimes subtle and sometimes seismic, when you realize you have the chance to begin again. Maybe it’s the first crisp morning after a long summer. Maybe it’s a job change, a new relationship, or even the quiet decision to show up differently in the one you’re already in.
I’ve learned that beginnings—whether chosen or thrust upon us—are vulnerable places. They ask something of us: a willingness to step into what we don’t yet know. And if you’re anything like me, that’s both exciting and a little unnerving.
This is where curiosity comes in.
Are you ready to stop running on empty and start living from a place of wholeness?
Join me, alongside Ally Fallon (best selling author + writing coach) and Koula Callahan (yoga teacher + speaker), for an unforgettable day of enneagram insight, intentional writing, and embodied movement — what I call the trifecta of true self-care.
Somewhere between the smell of freshly sharpened pencils and the first rustle of fall leaves, we’re invited into a familiar rhythm—one that feels both nostalgic and energizing. Whether or not you have a backpack in your life anymore, the back-to-school season has a way of nudging us to recalibrate, recommit, and reset. It’s not just for students. It’s for all of us seeking a deeper sense of alignment and intention.
So, in the spirit of fresh starts and The Back-to-School Edit.
“You can’t stay in your corner of the Forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
“Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes…including you.”
— Anne Lamott
“The way you get meaning into your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning.”
Mitch Albom
“The Enneagram helps you discover who you were before the world told you who you were supposed to be.”
-Ian Cron
“Distractions are everywhere. Notice what takes your attention, acknowledge it, and then let it go.”
-Andy Puddicombe, Founder of Headspace
Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life.
-Anne Lamott
“As long as you keep secrets and suppress information, you are fundamentally at war with yourself…The critical issue is allowing yourself to know what you know. That takes an enormous amount of courage.”
Bessel van der Kolk
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”
-Rumi
“Where we think we need more self-discipline, we usually need more self-love.”
- Tara Mohr
“The human body is a river of intelligence, energy, and information that is constantly renewing itself in every second of our existence.”
- Deepak Chopra
“When I look back on all these worries, I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.”
– Winston Churchill
“If we observe ourselves truthfully and non-judgmentally, seeing the mechanisms of our personality in action, we can wake up, and our lives can be a miraculous unfolding of beauty and joy.”
-Richard Rohr
“People will forget what you said, forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
-Maya Angelou
Letting Go of Extremes - To Embrace the "Both-And"
Our Western dualistic minds do not process paradoxes very well. Without a contemplative mind, we do not know how to hold creative tensions. We are better at rushing to judgment and demanding a complete resolution to things before we have learned what they have to teach us.
-Richard Rohr
I remember sitting in my therapist’s office several years ago. Gosh, it must have been about twelve. Her name was Gail, and she’s everything a brilliant therapist is in my mind: accepting, compassionate, wise, firm, seasoned by her own broken story, and the kind of listener that makes you feel like you’re the only soul on the planet.
I was in the chapter of my life I refer to as the “falling” stage. Everything around me seemed to be crumbling, and my job was to let it do so against every ounce of my will. She held the sacred space for that painful fall to unfold. At every break, she simply wanted to better understand me, not try and fix me. Gail saw me.
Have you ever been in that frustrating place where the best and safest thing to do is NOT break the fall? I’ve often heard this with surfing and skydiving, for example (two pastimes I have zero experience with). In my understanding, there are actual ways we must learn to fall—to lean into the plummet.
Resisting with tension, grit, and that secret stash of Xanax bars you snaked from your mama aren’t included.
Gail patiently taught me how to fall, over time. Something she said to me one day, in the vortex of my despair was this: “Katie, it doesn’t have to look a certain way. You get to choose.”
This stuck with me perhaps more than anything she ever said. Funny how that works isn’t it? We remember much more poignantly how people make us feel, not necessarily what they say. However, I carry her words with me to this day.
You see, so much of my struggle was existing in a world of extremes, all-or-nothing thinking and the “either-or.” Either I'd be alone and depressed my whole life with little hope for anything resembling joy or I'd be a hyper version of myself, feeding heavily on perfectionism and people-pleasing. (Clearly, this was before I came into my own combination skin: quirky, stubborn, and embracing my inner introvert.)
Looking back, I’m so grateful that zipped up idea of success stayed just that, an idea.
Falling for me meant moving from this dualistic or binary way of extreme thinking and leaning into the open relief that life, in fact, didn’t have to look a certain way. It could be “both-and.”
I could feel majorly depressed and understand that hope was possible. I could feel lonely, longing for relationship and community and know that it very well may look different in several weeks time. I could long for certainty and lean into the unknown. Richard Rohr calls it “holding creative tensions.”
Holding the tension between a longing and its unmet fulfillment is indeed a creative, tight place. It looks a whole lot like faith.
Does your extreme thinking feel exhausting? Do you find yourself awfulizing situations by projecting worst-case scenarios onto perfectly neutral possibilities? If so, I feel you; it’s a relentless habit.
Take heart though! That old way of “either-or” that is judgment-heavy and rigid is a habit worth breaking so we can wake up to the lovely landscape of balance, curiosity, and “both-and.”
Next time you get stuck in either-or, simply notice it, honor it, and let it be. Then ask yourself what you need at that moment. Is it hope, acceptance, a friend, time, or provision?
Find the space in that very moment that allows for the lack as well as the possibility. “I’m overwhelmed with deadlines, and, I know there is light at the end of the tunnel.” Or it might sound like this, “I’m so angry with my friend and how she’s treating me, and, she may be really struggling right now.”
Lean into the contemplative, creative space that invites possibility. When we rush into our old judgmental patterns, we snuff out hope with our need to control. Loosen the reigns a bit. Let go of that death grip. There’s a bright world of life in those tiny spaces.
Love & Gratitude,
Katie
In April, I bombed a keynote—45 minutes late, broken A/V, a room that wanted their drink tickets.
Here's what that failure taught me about participation, discernment, and why every Enneagram type has its own sophisticated reason to wait until it's "ready."