Sabotage isn’t failure — it’s the nervous system returning us to what’s familiar.
I bought this print right before COVID.
At the time, it spoke to me deeply.
I understood the message.
The gravity.
The lesson.
What I didn’t yet have was **embodiment.**
Each year since, as Life continued to strip away what I thought was solid, its meaning has taken on new depth.
Since then, I’ve lost my home.
Left the area I grew up in—the trails my pack and I hiked daily, my sanctuary.
Lost the business I spent years building, loving, and nurturing.
Lost each of my beloved dogs within a 23-month window.
Lost the life and lifestyle I had built—and loved.
And then came Ava and the pups.
The final pushing into learning this lesson: Letting go.
I struggled with "letting go" for years.
I lived so long in survival mode—tough times mode—that whenever something good entered my life, I clutched onto it with everything I had. Holding on felt like safety.
But here’s what I’ve come to understand—
and what I’m still learning as I continue to practice this important lesson:
Letting go isn’t something we understand once.
It’s something we practice.
Something we return to.
Something we learn in layers—through loss, through change, through surrender.
If we want to become someone we’ve never been—
If we want to transition into a version of ourselves we hope to become—
We can’t bring the same energy, the same thoughts, the same patterns with us.
It doesn't work that way.
We can’t bring untended wounds.
Unresolved trauma.
Old survival strategies dressed up as productivity, ambition, discipline, or adaptability.
Because when we do, we don’t fail—we sabotage.
Not because we’re broken, but because our nervous systems are pumping the brakes—returning us to what’s known and familiar, especially in certain environments or in the presence of certain people.
Even when what’s familiar isn’t good.
Even when it isn’t what we want.
Familiar feels safe to the nervous system because we know how to navigate it.
It’s predictable.
It’s rehearsed.
It lives inside our comfort zone.
And comfort zones aren’t always healthy.
They’re just familiar.
More often than not, it isn’t you getting in your way.
It’s unconscious trauma responses doing exactly what they were designed to do: **protect.**
A successful life.
A healthy relationship.
A regulated body.
A spacious, adaptable nervous system.
Those things demand preparation.
Facing.
Addressing.
Healing.
These aren’t optional steps—they’re prerequisites.
Capacity isn’t built through force—
it’s built slowly and intentionally.
Change—aside from death—is the only guarantee in life.
And it’s also the thing we’re most uncomfortable with.
The unpredictable.
The uncertain.
The unfamiliar.
And all the discomfort that comes with it.
What I’ve learned—and am still learning—is this:
Letting go isn’t loss—it’s alignment.
What falls away was built for a version of us we no longer are.
And what waits on the other side isn’t emptiness.
It’s truer.
It’s quieter.
It fits.
Do your trauma work. We all have it. No one alive is exempt from this.
Have the hard conversations.
Do the tough stuff.
Get curious instead of passing judgment.
Face the unfaceable.
And slowly—intentionally— your life will change for the better.
This is the work.
And it’s more than worth it.
YOU. Are more than worth it.
Let it go.
--------------
This is all covered in more depth in the new book, "The Human End of the Leash: Dog Training's Missing Link", which can be found here:
Signed & personalized copies:
