Welcome back to your anxiety toolkit. The format of today is going to be a little different.

The title of this episode is called Your Bravest Year Yet. And the reason that I'm sharing

this story is that on the eve of 2025, I was actually flying across the international

date line where the pilot said, everybody I would like to welcome you into 2025. We've just

crossed the international date line. And I thought to myself, this was your absolute bravest year

that you've ever, ever had, that you've been through the hardest things, maybe that you've ever

to date had to go through. And I felt that this was something I was ready finally to share after not being ready to share for

quite a long time. Now, again, the reason that the format is a little different here is that I

embarrassingly have re-recorded this episode more times than I would like to admit to. I did my best to

structure it and share by myself in a solo episode and I just couldn't get it done. Not that I was

being perfectionistic. It's just that it was scary and hard and I couldn't seem to do it.

So as always, when you're having a hard time, your best thing to do is to reach out and ask someone

to help you. And so today I have my husband here and he's going to ask me questions and we're

going to do this together because it's actually

something we went through together and he held my hand through. So, all right, so let's get going.

So how do you feel sharing this? I know you've been through this a number of times where you tried

to record it on

your own and for some reason it just didn't feel right or fit right. So how do you feel talking to me

about this? If I'm going to be completely honest, I've had a lot of hyper responsibility about

this episode worrying that I wouldn't say it right or that I'd tell it wrong or I wasn't going to honor the people right in how I shared it.

So I'm pretty nervous, but I'm also happy, thank you.

My nervous system is happy that you're here.

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