Live Joy

  Parenting is hard. I am incredibly blessed to have two great kids. Even as teenagers, they are respectful, kind, and rule followers. Their dad and I actually laugh sometimes that maybe we did too good of a job teaching them to follow the rules, because now we are trying to teach them something that feels almost opposite: You are allowed to speak up. You are allowed to ask questions. You are allowed to disagree. You can question something and still be respectful. At 14 and 15—almost 16—my boys rarely want to question an adult or speak up when they disagree with something. Unless, of course, that adult is me or their dad. They have no problem finding their voices at home. But we want them to understand that their voices matter outside of our house, too. As adults, we know that if you don't ask for what you want, you'll never know if you could have gotten it. If you don't ask the question, you may never get the explanation. And if you disagree but never say anyth...

  Tomorrow is October 1st, which means we are officially entering the last quarter of 2026. The last 90 days. Okay, technically 92 days, but you get the point. And I want you to think about something for a minute. Think back to July 1st. Where were you? What was going on in your life? What were you worried about? What were you working toward? What have you accomplished since then? What has changed that you didn't expect? Three months can feel like such a short amount of time when we're looking ahead, but when we look backward, we realize just how much life can happen in 90 days. So instead of waiting for January to start thinking about what you want next, what if you used these last three months of 2026 intentionally? Because we all know what's coming. Halloween turns into Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving turns into Christmas, and suddenly our calendars are packed with parties, school events, shopping, family obligations, travel, traditions, and everything else that comes with ...

  This week, fall didn't exactly ease its way in. We went from a heat index of 105 degrees to 60s in a matter of days. Suddenly I'm reaching for a sweatshirt, and it actually feels like fall. And with the Fall Equinox this week, we're also entering the part of the year when the nights become longer than the days. The sun starts setting earlier, darkness comes sooner, and if you're anything like me, 7:30 PM can suddenly feel like 10:00. I've already noticed the difference in my energy. When it's light outside until late in the evening, I feel like there is still so much day left. There are things to do, places to go, walks to take, projects to finish. But when the sun disappears earlier, something in me naturally wants to slow down. And my first instinct is sometimes to fight it. I should be doing something. I should be more productive. I shouldn't be sitting here already. But maybe we're not supposed to move through every season of the year...

  September 26th is the September Full Moon. There is something powerful about the Full Moon arriving in the same week as the Fall Equinox. The Equinox marks a change of seasons and a moment of balance between light and darkness. The Full Moon is often used as a time for reflection and release. Together, they offer a simple reminder: you don't have to carry everything into your next season. We spend so much time thinking about what we want to add to our lives, new goals, habits, relationships, opportunities, and dreams. But sometimes moving forward isn't about adding more. It's about deciding what we're finally ready to put down. Maybe it's resentment. An old version of yourself. The need to control an outcome. Someone else's expectations. A relationship you've outgrown. A mistake you keep replaying. Or simply the belief that you should be further along by now. Fall gives us the perfect reminder. Trees don't fight to hold onto leaves that have co...

We all have that weight we think we should be. Maybe it’s what we weighed in college, what we weighed when we were 30, or what we weighed when we felt like we were in the best shape of our lives. Somewhere along the way, that number became our “ideal weight,” and we continue to use it as the number we need to get back to or maintain, regardless of how much our bodies, lifestyles, and goals have changed. For most of our lives, we have been conditioned to believe that the number on the scale is one of the biggest indicators of our health. The lower the number, the “healthier” we assume we are. But weight alone tells us very little about what is actually happening inside our bodies, and as we get older, body composition becomes much more important than simply trying to make the number on the scale smaller. Two people can both weigh 130 pounds and have completely different body compositions. One person could have a much higher percentage of body fat and very little muscle, while anothe...

  There is something about the beginning of fall that naturally feels like a reset. The mornings become cooler, the days get a little shorter, routines settle back in after summer, and there is a noticeable shift in the energy around us. While January gets most of the attention when it comes to fresh starts, I have always thought fall offers its own opportunity to pause, reflect and decide how we want to move through the remainder of the year. The Fall Equinox marks the astronomical beginning of fall in the Northern Hemisphere and occurs when the sun crosses the celestial equator. Around the equinox, daylight and nighttime are nearly equal before we begin moving toward shorter days and longer nights. Because of this near equality between light and darkness, the equinox has long been associated with balance, transition, gratitude and letting go. I love the symbolism behind it because balance doesn't necessarily mean giving equal amounts of ourselves to every area of our lives. T...