Anchored in Love
We’re always trying to build a better life. Learning new habits, having healthier relationships, refining our sense of purpose.
But here’s the reality behind that: you can’t build anything lasting without checking the foundation first.
And the foundation may not be what you think it is.
The Foundation Isn’t About Fixing
Most of us spend years trying to fix what we think is broken. We collect coping strategies like trading cards, hoping the right combination will finally make us feel whole.
But healing isn’t about fixing. It’s about remembering.
This foundation informs the work I do with clients and how I live my life. It’s rooted in a simple truth:
Love holds everything together.
Not the Hallmark version. Not the “love and light” spiritual bypassing.
The kind of Love that SEES you, UNDERSTANDS you, and KNOWS who you truly are.
Love gently expands the space within for you to remember who you have always been.
Love softly encourages you to live your life rather than just survive it.
The Gateway Between Worlds
Your nervous system is the gateway between your internal world and your external reality.
It’s the bridge between what you’re experiencing with your senses and what your brain does with that information. It’s how we learn about our preferences, our limits, our values. You are having your own individual experience as the beautifully complex human that you are.
We’re all trying to make sense of what works for us in this world.
Your nervous system reveals information about yourself and informs how you show up in your life. It lives in the in-between of what you feel inside and what you express outside.
If you want to show up differently in your relationships, your work, your life, this is where you begin. By creating space WITHIN first.
This is neuroscience, not woo-woo. Your nervous system determines whether you’re responding or reacting. Whether you’re present or in survival mode. Whether you can hold the complexity of being human or need to collapse into black-and-white thinking just to get through the day.
The Wise Fool’s Journey
Here’s the mistake most of us make: we think becoming aware is the same as changing.
We have that breakthrough moment in therapy. We finally see the pattern clearly. We understand why we do what we do, how our past shaped our present, what triggers us and why. We think, “Oh my god, I get it now. Everything makes sense.”
And we expect that awareness alone to shift everything.
But awareness is just the first step. It’s crucial, yes. We can’t change what we don’t know. But knowing isn’t the same as doing.
Or we go the other direction. We try to force change without clarity about where we’re going. We know something needs to shift, but we’re practicing random strategies without understanding OUR way, without knowing HOW to redirect OUR brain specifically.
Let’s say we get the awareness, we get clarity about what we want...
and then we don’t practice.
We try to think our way through instead of taking conscious action.
The brain rewires through repetition. Through actually thinking better thoughts, repeatedly. Through actually practicing new responses, over and over.
This part of the process can be humbling. The realization that you need all three steps, not just one or two.
You need the awareness. You need the direction. You need the practice.
This is where the real work begins.
Return to Earth
So let’s ground. Let’s get clear about what “showing up differently” actually means.
Showing up differently means expanding your capacity to hold the full range of your human experience.
All of it. The joy and the grief. The excitement and the fear. The clarity and the confusion.
You can be sad AND find the good. You can go through grief or loss AND look forward to a new future. You can feel anxious in this moment AND recognize how far you’ve come.
This is building your capacity to hold complexity. To welcome all the emotions as they arrive, to let them move through you without needing to fix or bypass or perform your way out of them.
That’s what it means to be human. That’s what it means to be ALIVE.
Rewiring to Find the Good
Here’s the thing about nervous system rewiring: we’re not bypassing the hard stuff.
We’re teaching your brain that safety and goodness can be familiar too.
Most of us spent years (decades, lifetimes) with our nervous systems wired for hypervigilance and shutdown. Scanning for danger. Bracing for impact. Oscillating between panic and numbness just to survive.
That was adaptive. That kept you safe. And it makes perfect sense.
But now? Now we’re teaching your brain a different pattern. Not because the old one was wrong, but because you’re ready for something more.
Learning about the mechanics behind why we do what we do and how to change it is where the foundation building actually happens.
This process is not linear.
It’s circular.
You become curious and start listening (internal) and that informs what changes you want to make (external). Then that practice shifts what you experience internally. You become curious, listening again. Round and round.
We’re constantly refining our idea of who we are and what we want.
As Carl Jung said, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
And it starts with the nervous system. With learning what it means to rewire the brain through practice and repetition.
We move through 3 steps:
Becoming conscious/aware of the current patterns
We can’t change what we don’t know.
A desire to change and clarity over what direction we want to change in
This informs YOUR way and HOW we redirect your brain.
The integration/embodiment of taking action
Your brain forms new neural pathways in real-time through practice.
Practicing is the way. Repetition is the key.
We make the feeling of being at ease the normal state of being. We make conscious presence the new normal. The good becomes familiar.
The Practice of Self-Confrontation
This work requires something from you.
It requires practice. We build on your capability to love, to offer grace, to forgive. To extend compassion and empathy. This starts by extending it to yourself first. Then we practice extending it toward others.
Being anchored in Love means this: you remember that you are worthy of the same grace you offer others. That self-love isn’t selfish. It’s the foundation. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and you can’t hold space for others without first holding space for yourself.
You can’t look at your patterns, your defense mechanisms, your ways of protecting yourself without developing the capacity to hold what you find with tenderness.
This is where and how we begin. By having a flexible mind, an open heart, and being anchored in Love.
Love is the anchor that keeps you steady when the self-confrontation gets hard. When you look at your patterns and feel shame. When you see your defense mechanisms and want to judge yourself. The anchor reminds you: this is all part of being human.
Response vs. Reaction
When your nervous system has space, you get to respond rather than react. When you’ve done the foundational work of rewiring, of building capacity, of making safety familiar, you get to actually live your life rather than survive it.
You get to pause. To choose. To feel the feelings and consciously decide how you want to show up.
This is freedom. Not the absence of hard things, but the presence of choice within them.
This is what it means to feel at ease with who you are and this big, beautiful, complex life you’re experiencing.
What Becomes Possible
This foundation isn’t the end goal. The nervous system work, the capacity building, the space creating...
It’s the beginning.
Once you have this foundation, so much possibility comes into our awareness.
The deep identity work. The relationship healing. The pattern shifting.
The life you actually want to live becomes possible.
You get to ask bigger questions. Explore who you really are beneath the survival strategies. Build the kind of intimacy that requires vulnerability. Take risks that feel aligned rather than forceful.
But none of that works without the ground beneath your feet being solid first.
The foundation is where we start. From the ground, up.
The Invitation
We start where you are. We become self-aware by being rooted curiosity, not criticism. We confront ourselves rooted in grace, not condemnation.
We make actual change anchored in Love.
Let’s create space in your nervous system to remember who you’ve always been.
Let’s teach your brain that safety can be the new familiar.
Let’s build your capacity to hold the fullness of being human. To experience all there is to experience in this one big, beautiful life of yours.
Because Love is the interconnectedness that holds everything together.
And the work laid out in this essay? That’s where the work begins.
Learn to slow down and pause.
Take a moment.
Respira.
Always remember: Si no sana hoy, sanará mañana.
(If it doesn’t heal today, it will heal tomorrow.)
Con amor,
Hanna
P.S. While I’m a Licensed Professional Counselor, this space isn’t professional advice or therapy. This is me sharing my personal journey, my mess, my learning. Take what resonates with you and leave the rest. And if something I share sparks curiosity or brings something up for you? Bring it to your own therapy sessions. That’s where the real work happens.
