This is the Croatia story. The one where a pixelated FaceTime call from my mom, a particular shade of Adriatic blue, and a curly hair business plan that was never really a business plan cracked something open in me and reoriented my life toward joy.

Also: I jumped on a sea urchin. It did not deter me.

This episode is about the moments that change us. How they usually don't announce themselves. How meaning mostly shows up sideways, in the middle of an ordinary morning, when you turn your head slightly to the left and the sea is just there, waiting for you to notice.

Who are you? It's a deceptively simple question and one that deserves more than a quick answer. In this episode, I finally introduce myself because after two episodes introducing the podcast, it felt like maybe I should tell you about the person behind it.

I explore what it means to narrate yourself: how our brains build schemas and cognitive shortcuts to categorize people, why the labels we reach for are useful but never quite enough, and the difference between doing something and being something. I walk through a social psychology exercise on identity and invite you to try it yourself. What do you reach for first when asked who you are? What do you avoid?

I share my own winding path through research, a summer in psychiatric hospitals in Indonesia and India, three years of affective neuroscience at Stanford, and a moment in Croatia that cracked open everything I thought my worth depended on. That moment reoriented me toward the question that drives my PhD in counseling psychology and everything I do now: not what breaks us, but what we do after. Not the absence of suffering, but flourishing: what it actually looks like to live well in the moment.

This is a vantage point on a mountain range. Not the whole thing. But a beginning.

What happens when you discover a power so profound at age 10 that it terrifies you into silence for two decades?

In this episode, I share a story about a fourth-grade writing assignment that made someone cry—and changed everything. It's about stumbling onto the ability to make people feel through words, then spending 20 years too scared to try again.

Why do we hide our creative powers? What does it cost us? And how do we finally stop?

This is about fear, perfectionism, the myths we tell ourselves about writing, and what it takes to step out of the shadows and start again—even when you're terrified.

Also: behind-the-scenes bloopers, because starting is always the hardest part.