Reader,

So I just turned a blind left-handed corner, downhill, into my mid-forties 2 Mondays ago on the only holiday with a movie named after it that always feels so unfortunately on-tone for my birthday: Groundhog’s Day.

And this year, I was joined in celebration by:

• My moon cycle (arriving weeks early, you know, just to be there!)
• Perioral dermatitis under my nose and eyelids (apparently a thing that happens at precisely this age. *Bleep!*)
• A notice that I was losing my health insurance come Spring.
• And the ever-humbling realization that a wad of toilet paper had been stuck in my butt (as my husband and I discovered separate, trailing pieces on the living room floor).

“SURPRISE!” They all sing-song shouted at me, like they’d shown up to a Rage Against The Machine Concert right at the chorus of “Killing in the Name.”

Not. Amusing.

But guess what?

I didn’t cry this year.

(Oh wait… I did cry once walking down the hallway to pick up my son from daycare.)

But, I didn’t cry any more than that! And that – for my birthday history, folks – is progress!

I’ve alluded to some of the core “birthday” memories that have shaped my Phil Connors-esque (played by Bill Murray) response to birthdays in The birthday everyone forgets. So I won’t go into it more here.

But the impact of that reverberates, and 45 years later, colors the very day (and month) around it.

That’s how this childhood stuff works. This inner-child stuff. These (sometimes) traumas that interrupt our basic needs from getting met. That interrupts our ability to connect. To feel seen or cared for. To feel worthy of having needs at all.

It sticks around a looong time (when left unattended). And it doesn’t get less sticky the longer it’s left.

I bring this up to let you know, I get it. And I get why it’s so hard for you to… {choose the most familiar option to you right now}

If even reading those options makes something in your chest tighten, there’s a nourishment barrier there, dear.

And crying only once? This is what it looks like when a nourishment barrier loosens a li’l.
Not fireworks or Calvin Klein’s Obsession commercial-level transcendence. Just a little less bracing, incrementally.

So I went back to my Nourishment Barrier Guide and deepened the heck out of it. And in that process, I’ve been seeing this pattern everywhere lately: in my clients. In your emails. In myself, my hubs, and especially the way I raise my 2-year-old son (who happens to be right in the heart of developmental territory where the nourishment barrier can take hold).

Because this pattern doesn’t just show up on birthdays.

It shows up in how we ask for help.

How we receive praise.

How we let someone support us without tensing.

My birthday used to get stuck in The Neverending Story’s Swamp of Sadness, grieving alongside Atreyu (a.k.a. Phase 3 of the Sensitivity Cycle gone wonk).

There was NO asking for what I wanted.

So, NO help planning it. (Just quietly hoping someone would read my mind.) And then bracing for the inevitable letdown.

The new Guide is for that version of me.

And maybe for you.

If even one of those “I get why it’s hard to…” options above touched something tender, start there.

​Download the updated guide here.

See where your cycle gets interrupted.

Notice what part of the stuckness loosens, even a li’l.
​
​※ Koa

Did you get something out of this email?

A giggle. Some wisdom. Resonance. A witness. The gift of grace in simply acknowledging how absurd it is to be a human right now in a culture that offers LOTS of input but little help? Then, please share with another human who may need this too.

Thank you for reading and sharing,
​Koa

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