Explore the real meaning of humility as grounded, human self-accuracy, not self-erasure, and how nervous system healing can transform life from the inside out.

Let’s talk about Karen. You know her. We all do. She’s the one losing it in the grocery store, demanding a manager over nothing, calling the cops on kids selling lemonade, spiraling over a mask policy. She’s reactive, entitled, and exhausting to be around.

Collapse after awareness is often mistaken for failure. In reality, it is a protective nervous system response that allows integration and recovery.

When people begin to notice patterns in their behavior, relationships, or reactions, shame often follows quickly. They see themselves repeating things they no longer agree with. They recognize roles they didn’t consciously choose. They wonder how they could have been so unaware for so long.

Many people expect that gaining awareness will bring clarity, relief, or empowerment. Instead, they feel more anxious, more tired, more sensitive, or more withdrawn than before. Old coping strategies stop working. Emotions surface without clear reasons. The body seems to lag behind what the mind now understands.

Moral injury describes the quiet disorientation that can follow new awareness — when values wake up faster than the nervous system can integrate.

There were two days I should’ve said no. Both of them happened in white dresses. The first time, I thought I was saying yes to adulthood. Yes to doing what every small-town Midwest girl was expected to do: Say yes at the right age, to the right boy, in the right church, and then vanish neatly into a version of womanhood that looked good on paper. I wasn’t saying yes to love. I was saying yes to programming. I didn’t even know it was allowed to be a no. The second time, I told