The Chapter After Podcast

What does it look like to build a peaceful life when you’re still living with the effects of what happened to you?
In this chapter, I’m talking about the life I’m trying to build while I’m still working through trauma responses and CPTSD. I share how that shows up in motherhood, marriage, our blended family, and the kind of home and community I want to create.
I’m learning that I can want a full, beautiful life without pretending I’m completely healed. What happened to me is part of my story, but I don’t want it making every decision about what comes next.
There’s always a chapter after.

Have you ever looked back at an old version of yourself and thought, I miss her?
In Chapter Eight of The Chapter After, I’m talking about the version of myself I sometimes wish I could get back—not because I want my old life back, but because I miss the woman I was before I knew what was coming.
The woman who had already survived so much, rebuilt her life, found love again, and finally felt safe enough to be soft. She trusted happiness. She felt like she belonged. She wasn't constantly waiting for something to change.
And sometimes, I really fucking miss her.
But maybe healing was never supposed to bring me back to who I used to be.
In this episode, we talk about grieving old versions of ourselves, the strange grief that comes with learning hard lessons, finding softness after survival mode, and how motherhood has changed the woman I am today.
I also talk about experiencing motherhood from two very different places—becoming a mother while surviving an abusive relationship, and later getting another chance to experience the little years from a place where I can actually slow down and enjoy them.
Maybe we don't need the old versions of ourselves back.
Maybe we can take their softness, hope, strength, and ability to love with us—while leaving behind the pieces we've outgrown.
Maybe healing isn't about becoming who you were before. Maybe it's giving yourself permission to become someone you've never been before.
There is always a chapter after. 🤍

You can forgive someone and still decide they no longer get the same access to you.
For a long time, I thought forgiveness meant reconciliation. That if I truly forgave someone, I had to let it go, move forward, rebuild the relationship, and stop allowing what happened in the past to affect how I interacted with them in the present.
I'm learning that forgiveness can look very different.
In this episode, we're talking about forgiving people who may never apologize, accepting that some people may never change, and realizing that understanding why someone hurt you doesn't require you to put yourself back in a position to be hurt again.
I also talk about something I've had to learn in some of my closest relationships: you can genuinely love someone and still not feel completely safe with them.
You can forgive.
You can release resentment.
You can accept someone for exactly who they are.
You can even choose to maintain a relationship with them.
And still have boundaries around what that relationship gets to look like.
Because forgiveness is something I can work toward within myself.
Reconciliation requires two people.
And sometimes healing isn't getting the apology, accountability, or changed relationship you hoped for.
Sometimes it's accepting that you may never get those things—and deciding you don't want to carry the resentment anymore anyway.
This is Chapter Seven: Forgiveness Doesn't Mean Reconciliation.

What if breaking the cycle isn’t about making sure our kids never experience pain—but making sure they don’t lose themselves when they do?
In Part 2 of our conversation about boundaries, I’m looking at them through a completely different lens: motherhood.
One of my biggest fears as a mom is watching my children grow up with the same things I’ve spent my adulthood trying to unlearn—people-pleasing, low self-worth, struggling to say no, tolerating disrespect, and believing someone else’s approval determines their value.
I want my sons to grow into men who are kind but strong, soft but resilient, and who fiercely protect the families they build someday. I want my daughter to know her worth before anyone else gets the opportunity to define it for her.
But that also means I have to look at what I’m modeling for them now.
Because I can tell my children they deserve respect all day long—but what are they learning when they watch what I tolerate?
We’re talking about boundaries as parents, the parts of ourselves we hope our children inherit, the parts we hope end with us, allowing our kids to experience hard things without carrying our trauma for them, and learning that empathy does not require self-abandonment.
I don't want to raise children who are afraid of hard relationships.
I want to raise children who know the difference between a relationship worth fighting for and one where they're constantly fighting to be respected.
This is Boundaries, Part 2.

Boundaries sound simple until you actually have to set one with someone you love.
In this episode, I’m talking about what boundaries have looked like for me in real life—not from the perspective of someone who has mastered them, but as someone who is still actively learning how to set them, communicate them, and actually follow through.
I talk about my history of avoiding conflict and keeping my feelings to myself, the first time I finally found my voice, and a boundary I’m currently navigating with someone close to our family.
Because one of the hardest lessons I’ve learned is that a boundary isn’t about controlling what someone else chooses to do.
They get to make their choice.
And I get to decide what access, relationship, and response I’m comfortable with because of it.
Sometimes boundaries bring peace. Sometimes they bring grief. Sometimes you can love someone deeply and still realize the relationship can’t look the way it used to.
This one is messy, current, and very much unfinished—because sometimes healing happens while you’re still living the chapter.
Welcome to Boundaries, Part 1.

Sometimes the hardest part of healing isn’t forgiving.
It’s realizing that the environment you’ve been trying to heal in is the very one keeping your nervous system stuck in survival.
In this episode, I share the patterns that followed me through different relationships, the family dynamics that shaped me, why I kept recreating familiar environments, and the painful lessons that taught me boundaries weren’t punishment—they were protection.
We’ll talk about generational patterns, people-pleasing, trauma responses, faith, family, and why healing sometimes requires changing more than your mindset.
It requires changing your environment.
Because healing doesn’t grow where survival is constantly being watered.