From time to time, I get bummed out by life.

From time to time, I get really bummed out by life.

There’s no single cause — just a collection of things that seem to pile up. Sometimes it’s the heaviness of the world: the state of the economy, short-sighted decisions by leaders, the heartbreak of war, a sad event that leaves a family without a mother, or other noise of social media constantly telling us to pick a side or fight harder.

And sometimes, it’s closer to home. It’s finding balance in my life, it’s holding space when my loved ones work through trauma, unfairness and grief.  In my work — whether I’m in boardrooms or coaching conversations — I often hear people wrestle with change, overwhelmed, and feeling like they’re not enough. It is in those moments, I recognize a familiar path in the mind. A path I know intimately — the one that quietly says: it’s all too much.

In those moments, a familiar thought pattern creeps in — one I’ve walked many times before. It’s the path that whispers, what’s the point? It’s the path that makes despair feel logical, even justified. And it’s a path I battle often.

But on the days I win that battle — on the days I remember to connect inward and find myself — I find something surprising: I find peace.

That’s really where my search for beauty began.

I felt disconnected from my creativity and something in me yearned to feel connected to something — to life, to stillness, to meaning. So I began a quiet, mindful practice: noticing beauty.  Noticing the details in nature. Slowing down. Grounding myself before stepping into the day, before showing up for my children, my husband, my family, my clients — and hopefully, eventually, for myself too.

And then, November 27, 2023  something small and extraordinary happened.

That morning, I was waiting for news about my father in his battle with cancer, overwhelmed, and alone. I couldn’t be with my family immediately, and I was in that suspended space of anticipatory grief, knowing what was coming.

When I finally got the courage to step outside, there — right in front of my door — was a heart-shaped leaf. It had fallen from the tree next to my window, a tree that doesn’t typically offer heart-shaped anything.

In that quiet, deeply personal moment, I felt it.
You are loved. You are supported. You are held. There is beauty.
Even in this. Even here.

Later that day, my dad passed.
And the message stayed with me.

Grief changes everything.  It’s an experience I wouldn’t wish on anyone, yet I know it’s one we all must walk through in some form. For a while, everything felt grey. I continued to see beauty — but I no longer had the energy or desire to capture it. What was going on inside of me felt so painful and raw, I couldn’t bear to reflect anything beautiful outwardly. Not yet.

Life & grief continued — with its rhythms of joy and sorrow. More grief followed.  Betrayal.  Heartless people and even more heartless systems exaggerating my despair and pain. And in my grief, I had forgotten that duality is part of life — that pain and beauty can sit side by side. That you don’t need to wait for the darkness to lift before honoring what is still good, still sacred, still lovely.

I’ve come to realize that beauty isn’t always obvious — it’s often subtle, silent, and soft. It requires attention. It requires choice.

And so, at the end of 2024 — one year after my dad’s passing — I did something to remind myself of that choice. Something I never thought I could do.  I got a tattoo.

A small, simple symbol: the heart-shaped leaf.
The same one I found on the hardest morning of my life.

It reminds me, every day, to look for beauty anyway.
To notice. To feel. To stay open. To be real.
To choose softness in a world that hardens us.
To find peace in the midst of chaos.
To stay connected — to life, to nature, to people, to myself.

This isn’t a story about a perfect transformation. It’s not a tidy before-and-after.

It’s a lifelong practice.

It’s a practice of searching for the quiet good — in the world, in others, amid systems that hurt, in places that disappoint, in people who fail, in the tender parts of ourselves.

Because when life gets hard — and it will — we still have a choice.

We can choose numbness or presence.
Bitterness or gratitude.
Blame or healing.
Revenge or restoration.
Despair or hope.

We can choose to see only the ugly — or we can look closer.

We can notice the small signs, the unexpected leaves, and the gentle reminders that beauty still lives here too.

Beauty doesn’t erase suffering — but it offers us a softness or warmth through it.

It invites us to stay soft in a world that begs us to harden. It reminds us that in the worst of moments, we are still connected — to life, to each other, to something greater.

We don’t always get to choose our circumstances. But we do get to choose our lens.

This, I’ve learned, is the real work.

The brave work.

The lifelong practice of finding beauty anyway.