For some reason, people have always felt comfortable opening up to me.

I’m not a therapist, and I don’t always know why that happens. But I think people can feel when they’re truly being seen.

My mother showed me what that looked like. She pulled me aside when I was eighteen and said something I've never forgotten: Be careful with their hearts. Men are sensitive too. Don't hurt them. Those words floated like a feather and landed softly in my heart, because in that moment I understood that if we can all be hurt the same way, and we all need the same tenderness, then how different are we really?

It took me most of my life to learn the other half of what she meant: that tenderness has to flow in both directions, and that honoring someone else's heart can never mean abandoning your own. But that lesson never made me love the tenderness less. It made me want it for everyone.

Because the truth underneath everything is the same. All of us are asking the same question: Is it safe to show you who I really am?

The problem isn't men or women. It's the boxes we've been sorted into: the "divine feminine," the "masculine warrior"…the tidy opposite poles that promise simplicity and deliver loneliness. But people are not archetypes. There is so much more to each of us than the roles we have been handed.

I write, coach, and create tools for people who want to move beyond the beliefs that keep us disconnected from ourselves and each other, people who are ready to access the full breadth of who they are. Our hearts are not defined by the roles we’ve been taught to play, and it’s only when we give ourselves, and each other, permission to be fully human that we find the richest connections available to us.

And that, my friends, is really what it's all about.