Journey Counseling, LLC

12/27/2025

Good morning 🙃
Robert 💙

12/27/2025

❤️

12/27/2025

Sending love 💕🫂

12/27/2025

12/16/2025

1. Abandonment is not merely a relational event. It is a psychic rupture. When a child is emotionally left, unseen, or unsupported, the psyche fractures in order to survive. One part grows forward into adulthood, competence, and function. Another part remains frozen in the moment it was left behind.

2. In comments…

12/16/2025

Everyone’s experience will be different, and, what I've often come to witness and experience is that as we do our own work, the lenses in which we view the people around us change. Especially the lens we view our parents through.

Sometimes we begin to see just how much pain our parents have been carrying their whole life. Sometimes we begin to recognize that the hurt we carried from them was all they knew. This doesn't excuse it, and it doesn't mean we will forgive it, rather, sometimes it highlights something for us. Sometimes it redirects our desire to change or fix our parents or repair the past with them to now focusing on breaking the cycle ourselves.

Sometimes it shifts how we see our experience and allows for some space to tend to our own pain without needing something to be resolved with our caregivers first. Sometimes it shows us what we need to see in order to decide that the pattern ends with us, that we now longer need to stay in the cycle that our parents might always stay in. Sometimes it shows us what we so deeply want to change for our own future generations.

It's quite the phenomenon to begin seeing your parents as something more than just "mom/dad". And like I said, this doesn't mean any of the pain they might have brought onto us becomes valid or is something we even forgive - maybe it is for some, and maybe it isn't for others. Rather, it sometimes can give us a sense of freedom to choose if we want to continue the cycle that our parents did.

When we begin to heal, we see our parents wounding, and sometimes with that comes so many other pieces that are important for our journey of breaking the cycle. -

12/11/2025

USA TODAY BESTSELLER 📖 Michelle’s new book, Dear Friend, is out now!
A daily companion with 365 reflections to help you cultivate self-love, clarity, and inner peace.
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12/11/2025

This time of year can be such a difficult time for so many of us. The holidays, whether you celebrate them or not, are all around us and may seem inescapable. December for those of us in the snowy regions sort of seems quiet in many ways when then snow is a fresh fallen blanket… but December also has a way of turning up the volume on so many things. If you are struggling, and finding the noise of it all overwhelming, please reach out… reach out to someone here on the page, to a friend, to a loved one, to someone safe in your life. If you know someone who may struggle during this time, please PLEASE reach out and check on them!! Anyone be it a family member, a friend or work colleague, even an acquaintance… if they seem distant, or appear off in some way, check in with them. Don’t pressure them to share, but offer to sit with them even if they don’t want to share. Just reaching out and checking on someone can make all the difference in the world. Be kind folks — to yourself and to others. Kindness is FREE!
~Deb 🩷