Meditation: Coming Home to Yourself

When I was six years old, my father, a WWII pilot, was dying from the long-term effects of nuclear fallout. With my mother by his side in a hospital four hours away, my older sister, brother, and I were left in the care of a rotating cast of adults. 

One of those people never should have been left in charge of six year old me. 

I ended up in the hospital with a bladder infection that marked the premature end to my childhood innocence.

Soon after, my father died on the operating table during an attempt to remove his brain tumor. My mother, lost in her own heartbreak, was unable to offer comfort. 

A few days later, I stumbled into my first grade classroom fatherless, confused, and deeply wounded. People were talking, but all I heard was noise. Kids were playing, but all I saw was motion. Inside, I was frozen.

My nervous system learned to live in constant guard, alert and bracing for threats, real and imagined. I grew up to be capable and strong on the outside, yet inside I was that six year old girl, still holding her breath.

By eighteen, I realized that I needed something more than survival. I needed to unfreeze. I needed a way to feel safe in my own body again.

That’s when I found meditation. It became my lifeline. A place where stillness becomes comfort. A place where breath slowly thawed what had been locked tight for years*. A place to return to myself. To come home.

Since then, I’ve been meditating almost daily. Not gonna lie…some days it’s hard, some days it flows like a river. But I always learn something and often get solutions to problems that have been plaguing me. Wisdom bubbles up out of the stillness.

I meditate to slow down my overactive mind. I meditate to reach a place of calm within. I meditate because life is unpredictable.

When the world feels tilted toward chaos.
When a diagnosis cuts you off at the knees.
When grief arrives without warning and breaks your heart open.

Meditation does not erase the pain, but it changes our brain so we can meet it with clarity, courage, and compassion. It teaches us that no matter what is happening around us, we can learn to stand steady inside ourselves, allow our emotions to flow, and offer genuine empathy to others.

And if you are reading this thinking, I cannot meditate…I understand. I used to believe the same thing. I thought meditation meant sitting perfectly still, crosslegged, and forcing my busy mind to stop thinking altogether. It does not.

Meditation is gently bringing your awareness back to yourself, one breath at a time.

So I created a short video for you. Made especially for the people who think they cannot meditate. It’s simple. It’s only a few minutes long. And it will challenge that old story that “you cannot meditate.”

Try it. See what happens.
Use it every day if you like.

Your brain will change.
Your heart will soften.
Your nervous system will thank you.

May you be safe. May you be strong. May you be content. May you live with ease.

* Meditation practice was the beginning of my healing journey. EMDR, psychedelic-assisted and somatic therapies, and other modalities also helped me. But those are stories yet to be told.