The personal story behind a powerful new approach to emotional healing and mental wellness.

Over the years, I’ve sat across from so many people—grieving, broken, numb, angry, and afraid.
I’ve heard stories that would bring most people to their knees and cause you to question how people go on in this life.
Stories filled with loss, trauma, injustice, and heartbreak.
And while each story is different, there’s one thing that never fails to jar me:
the moment when a person loses all hope.

Grief is heavy. Trauma is deep. But the loss of hope is something different.
It’s when the light goes out.
It’s when a person doesn’t believe anything can ever change—not even a little.

It’s when a person is on a planet with eight billion other people, yet they are all alone.

I know that place too well.

The Hardest Part of My Work as a Therapist

People often tell me how lucky I am to do what I do—and they’re right. It is a gift. I get to walk beside people as they find their way back to themselves. I get to help them find healing, forgiveness, direction, and self-love.

But this work comes with weight.

Holding space for people in their darkest moments isn’t just emotional—it’s soul-deep.
And no matter how strong I am, no matter how trained or seasoned I’ve become, hope is something I’ve had to fight to hold on to myself.
Not just hold on—but to actively grow.
To build a reservoir so deep that I could return to it again and again, and also invite others to do the same.

Because when you do this work long enough, you learn:
Hope can’t just be a feeling. Hope has to become a skill.

How “Hoping Skills” Came to Life

This wasn’t something I read in a book.
This was something I lived through.
Through my own personal struggles. Through years of listening to the pain of others. Through the quiet after the tears, when you sit with someone who has given up—and you have to become the light for both of you.

I began to meditate deeply on the idea of hope. What is it really? How do we get more of it? How do we protect it?
And that’s when it came to me:
We don’t just need hope—we need hoping skills.

Just like coping skills help us survive, hoping skills help us believe.
They help us dream.
They help us try again when nothing seems worth trying for.
They help us hold a vision of something better—even if it’s still far away.

Turning Hope into Words: How to Dream

Out of this journey came my first book for adults, How to Dream.
It was born from the trenches of this emotional work—written for adults who have silently stopped believing that good things can happen for them. Or never believed.
How to Dream is a reminder that dreamers don’t have to be the lucky few. That healing is possible. That hope is not for the privileged—it’s for you. Hope and dreams belong to all of us.

And this year, I’m honored to bring this message to children in a new way through Hope in the Nick of Time, a story that teaches kids what hope looks like, sounds like, and feels like—even when life is hard. I was moved to write this story after working with children in therapy and learning that suicide is now the second leading cause of death for children ages 10 to 14. Children who don’t even know what life is yet and have barely hit middle school. We need to teach children how to hope and I hope this book sparks that conversation and keeps it going. We cannot lose any more children to the cancer that is suicide.

In the future, I hope to write a book about what it is like to be a therapist in this world. It is truly a heavy weight. Like, literally. My career has taken a toll on my health as I have sat in a chair for twelve or more hours a day absorbing the pain that this world can bring to my therapy clients. They transfer all of that pain to me. I wouldn’t have it any other way and I consider it a gift that I get to be the one to sit with them.

If my clients ever talk to anyone about me, they will tell them how much I hound them to write. Someone said that reading is breathing in, and writing is breathing out. I agree. So, after many years of carrying the weight of this career, I am breathing out and I can’t wait to share my next book, a fiction novel about what it is like to be a therapist and an overweight person in our culture.

Why it is My Mission to Help the World to Believe in Hope

I know what it feels like when hope is gone.
And I know what it feels like to build it back from nothing.
That’s why I need the world to understand this truth:

Hope is real. Even when it’s really dark. Especially when it’s really dark.
Hope is not just a warm fuzzy feeling. It’s a life force.
It’s a skill.
And like any skill, it can be practiced. Strengthened. Passed down.

I want to be a well of hope—not only for myself but for others: for my family, my children, my therapy clients, and through all the people I hope to touch through a story that makes you laugh, cry, or stop and think.
I want to live in a world where we teach this, talk about it, protect it, and pass it on like a precious powerful heirloom because…

Hope Is Not a Luxury. It’s a Lifeline.

If you are in a hard place right now, I see you.
If you’ve stopped dreaming, I understand.

And if you’ve lost all hope, man… I feel that deeply.

But I am here to tell you: hope is real. And it’s not gone forever. That little light still lives in you. As long as you are taking breaths, that light is real and it is inside of you.

You don’t have to feel it fully today. You just have to choose it in some small way.
And if you don’t know how, that’s okay too. That’s what hoping skills are for.
And that’s what I’m here to help teach.

I am not going to stop talking about this.

Let’s grow this skill together—one breath, one brave thought, one whisper of belief at a time.