Why I’m Writing This

There’s something I’ve been carrying for a long time that I haven’t known how to say out loud.

Not because it’s dramatic.

Because it’s tender.

Over the last few years, as I’ve been building Mind Circuit and trying to bring a nervous-system regulation tool into the world, I’ve learned a lot about trauma, neuroscience, and what it takes to make something actually usable for real people.

But I’ve also been learning something else.

What it feels like to be a woman creating something new inside a field that is supposed to be about care — and still feel quietly doubted.

There’s language for this. I didn’t know it at first, but now I do.

In women’s leadership research, it’s often called the double bind — the thing Lean In talks about when it names how women are expected to be warm but not too confident, competent but not too visible, helpful but not too owning. We’re allowed to contribute. We’re less allowed to claim.

In philosophy and healthcare research, there’s another term for it: epistemic injustice — what happens when someone’s knowledge is discounted not because it’s wrong, but because of who they are. When your ideas are questioned, softened, or treated as less credible simply because you don’t look or sound like the “default expert.”

When I first read those words, something in me relaxed.

Because it meant the tightness I kept feeling when I talked about what I was building wasn’t a personal flaw. It was a pattern.

This six-part series is me writing from inside that pattern.

Not to blame anyone.

Not to tear anything down.

But to tell the truth about what it feels like to build something new — especially as a woman, a clinician, and a founder — and try to stand in authorship instead of shrinking back into safety.

Once a month, on the first day of the month, I’ll be publishing one piece in this series. It will run alongside my podcast and my usual work, but it won’t follow my marketing calendar. This is where I’m letting myself talk about the part of the journey that doesn’t fit neatly into a pitch deck or an Instagram caption.

Some of these pieces will be quiet.

Some will be uncomfortable.

All of them will be honest.

If you’re building something — a practice, a program, a platform, a book, a new way of helping people — and you’ve ever felt that strange mix of excitement and isolation, I think you’ll recognize yourself here.

You don’t have to read every issue.

You don’t have to agree with everything I say.

This is just me choosing not to disappear while I’m still becoming.

The first piece will be out on the first of next month.

I’m glad you’re here.