Freedom Starts from Within.

Every Fourth of July, I’m reminded of how our country won its freedom from England and became a free nation. And in the most famous line of the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men [people] are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness."

When dealing with grief, however, Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness can feel incredibly elusive. It feels more like Death, Imprisonment, and Sadness—all the time.

Through years of learning to navigate and manage my own grief, I’ve come to understand that freedom is an inside job.

Our brains aren’t wired for happiness; they’re wired for survival.
After an intense experience, like the loss of a loved one, our brains associate that pain with danger. So, when we try to experience joy again, the brain throws up red flags: “It’s not safe to be happy.” And we snap back into survival mode.

That’s when we need to send in our inner forces to defend against negative thinking, by seeking out moments of gratitude, connection, and genuine joy.

This isn’t just “positive thinking.” (That rarely works—because when you try to convince yourself you're happy when you're not, the brain calls BS.) This is nervous system reconditioning.

It starts by accepting how you truly feel.
Allow yourself to fully experience the emotion, and then decide how (or if) you want to shift it.

Sadness, anger, frustration—they all get a bad rap. There’s nothing wrong with these emotions. Yes, they’re uncomfortable and often disempowering, and they’re also completely human. These emotions serve as reminders of what we value. You can't have happiness without sadness. Both need to exist to experience either of them. 

That’s why we need to become the guardians of our own minds.

Pay attention to your self-talk.
Notice the inner monologue running through your head.
Are you being kind to yourself, or constantly criticizing? Would you talk to a good friend the way you talk to yourself? Probably not.

If you want to escape your inner prison, find the smallest hole in the wall and start digging. With steady, repeated effort, that hole will grow.
And, one day, you'll crawl through it into freedom.