Michaela Kozlik
Illinois therapist

I need to tell you something that might change how you see yourself: your brain is making new cells right now. Today. This moment. For years, maybe you’ve carried this quiet belief that the damage is done. That whatever happened to you left permanent marks. That at your age, this is just who you are now. Anxious. Hypervigilant. Exhausted. Forgetful. That maybe you missed your window for healing. That’s not true. The Part of Your Brain That Holds Everything There’s a region de

So many of us are afraid to grieve. Somewhere inside, a quiet voice whispers: If I go there, I might never come back. That fear makes perfect sense. Grief can feel like a vast, bottomless ocean, impossible to swim across. For many of us, no one ever showed us that it’s possible to go into those deep waters and return changed, not destroyed. Maybe you learned early on that emotions were dangerous, that if you started crying, you might never stop. Maybe you were told that stren

There’s a homecoming that requires departure first, and not just physically walking out the door, but truly leaving. Leaving behind who you thought you should be, the expectations, the version of yourself you performed for so long you almost forgot it was a performance. It’s a paradox that makes no sense until you’ve lived it: sometimes the only way to find home is to lose it first. Geography of Belonging Some of us never leave the town we grew up in and spend our whole lives