Writing

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.” -Albert Camus

 I don’t recall who chose to watch a film about the Enigma code that particular Saturday night. Was it my husband or me?

Ironic, I thought much later. The Imitation Game, a film about the British cracking the German code that masked so many powerful secrets and ultimately led to the liberation of Europe, was a metaphor for the revelations about to unfold in my life.

My husband sat at a distance, engrossed in the film, while I perched on the sofa, ignoring it. My eyes were focused on a pile of unopened envelopes that held eight years of bank statements.

I discovered the paper trail when I uncovered a private account on my husband’s computer. The account was buried beneath a layer of security that erased daily searches and routinely changed passwords. I was an inexperienced sleuth, but once I learned of the bank account, I surreptitiously ordered every obtainable statement. I feared they would open Pandora’s box, and I would learn things from which there would be no return.

For days, the envelopes remained unopened, taunting me.

I recall the moment my hand reached for the top statement but recoiled. I thought: Destroy them. Toss them unopened into the fireplace that is providing the only warmth in the room this evening. Preserve your perfect life and your idyllic twenty-eight-year marriage, let those envelopes keep their secrets. Save yourself from what is likely to spill forth and char your most treasured memories.

Over the previous six weeks, something long dormant stirred and then emerged as a formidable force that demanded I take a closer look at my life. It prodded me to begin pulling at threads. Each thread I tugged revealed something incongruous with the life I thought I was living. Each thread exposed events that teased me with the knowledge that things were far different from what I believed about my husband and our long, happy marriage. The more I unraveled, the more I yearned to see it all. How could I get a clear bird’s-eye view of my life?

The answer came as I recalled a friend’s offhand comment from long ago: “When you want to know the truth about anything, follow the money.” Her voice led me to the bank account and, ultimately, to the bank statements.

I was at an inflection point from which there would be no return. My chest literally hurt. My breathing shallowed.

My intuition did not fail me. What I learned that night changed everything. Opening those envelopes obliterated thirty years of certainty. I remember thinking that my marriage was a precious crystal, and that night it shattered. So much of what I thought to be true turned out to be a myth, outwardly beautiful, but nonetheless a myth. Ultimately, the envelopes led me to a well-concealed parallel life, one woven into our story from its earliest days. They shattered the storybook illusion that held my family together.

That night I pulled back the curtain, and, like the revered Wizard of Oz, my husband turned out to be someone far different from his public persona. He was a man I no longer recognized.

Only in time would I come to see that this rupture had its genesis in lives lived long before we even met, in fault lines formed well before I entered his story, and in my own complicity: moving through the world in a way I had learned young, with an unguarded, self-assured tendency to trust what was offered, to mistake what was visible for the whole. But this reckoning of my marriage would come much later.

That evening I wasn’t thinking about the undercurrents, only the consequences. What would I, what could I, do with the information as it spilled forth? Could I walk away from the three-decade relationship at the core of my life, a source of strength and, as I long thought, love? How would this affect my two young adult children whose happiness meant everything to me? Could I dismantle a life that had given them, and me, solace and joy for decades?

There’s no question it might have been easier to stay in my marriage. But given what I’d learned, I didn’t hesitate a moment before deciding to end it on April 26, 2015. In a single instant, I confronted an avalanche of questions about my own life and about the marriage I long treasured.

That night, despite all the questions that spilled forth, there was one thing about which I had absolute, unshakable clarity: I deserved better.

The first two envelopes dealt a fatal blow to my long marriage. In the wee hours, at 2:00 a.m., I asked my husband to leave. I made a life-shattering decision to let go of someone I loved and the one person who shared my most intimate memories. In making that decision, I knew I had opened myself to emotional and financial vulnerability. Was terrified but undeterred as I opted to free-fall without a net, giving up what most people strive for—companionship, security, and love. That evening set me on a course in which I had to rebuilt my entire life, one that is today unrecognizable from the one I had been living.

This wasn’t my first crucible.

Recognize the Power of The Things You Think

Your thoughts hold extraordinary power.  John Milton captured this timeless truth in Paradise Lost, “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” Your thoughts don’t reflect reality, they shape it.

They can infuse your life with equanimity, clarity, and vitality, fueling a life where you thrive, or your thoughts can pepper your days with fear, resentment, and despair, dragging you into emotional loops that leave you depleted. The choice is yours alone. Where you place your attention becomes your reality. Your thoughts are the architecture of your experience. This is basic psychology.

Even the most fleeting thought can spark a decision, a habit, a change in direction. Your life is, in many ways, the sum of what you’ve chosen to notice. Your job, relationships, the book you’re reading, even the dog curled up next to you, each began as a thought that lingered long enough to shape a choice.

Let’s take the dog for example. It initially was a passing thought: Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a dog? That thought becomes a quiet intention. You imagined the perfect pup—maybe a cream retriever or a rescue. Your intention guided your attention. You began noticing dogs in parks, reading articles, and researching shelters and breeders. That attention led to action. One day, you brought home your beautiful puppy.

This is how it works. Where intention goes, attention follows. Attention fuels action. Action shapes reality. Similar to “you are what you eat,” we become what we repeatedly think about. Manifesting isn’t sorcery or luck, it is focused thought paired with purposeful action. 

Here's how your dog could have been otherwise. You had the thought, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a dog,” but rather than focusing on the thought, you let it drift. If you waited for the universe to drop a puppy in your lap, you would still be waiting. The power lies not in the thought alone but in what you do with it. 

It’s not wishful thinking. It’s momentum. And momentum begins with a thought you choose to embrace and act on. 

Mahatma Gandhi summed this up perfectly: “Your beliefs become your thoughts. Your thoughts become your words. Your words become your actions. Your actions become your habits. Your habits become your values.  Your values become your destiny.”

Gandhi was ahead of his time. Long before neuroscience confirmed it, Ghandhi intuitively understood: thoughts have a cascading effect that shapes our destiny. They influence how you feel, how you behave, and, importantly, what you believe is possible. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), one of the most effective psychological approaches used today, is built on the premise that to change your thoughts is to change your life.

Once you embrace this understanding, you will stop being a passenger in your life and take the wheel.

CBT teaches us our thoughts shape emotions, and emotions shape behaviors. A shift in your thinking creates a chain reaction. Therapists routinely use it to help people reframe self-defeating beliefs, challenge inner narratives, and make decisions that foster happiness and resilience. CBT is so effective that it’s a first-line treatment for everything from anxiety to insomnia. In some cases, it’s been shown to be as effective as medication without the side effects.

A woman I know was grappling with a serious cancer diagnosis and shared with me how alone she felt because her husband was emotionally distant and unsupportive.  She chose to do some cognitive reframing. Instead of focusing her thoughts on what he wasn’t giving, she chose to focus on the fact that he, too, was scared and overwhelmed by their cancer journey. He didn’t change, but she changed how she thought about it and was able to release her resentment and respond with greater compassion. 

Here's how CBT aligns with manifesting. CBT and manifesting both rest on the foundational principle that thoughts drive reality. CBT helps you challenge the thoughts that hold you back. Manifesting invites you to choose and reinforce the thoughts that move you forward. Both are practices of intentional thinking, and when aligned with action, give you the power to reshape your life and boost your resilience. 

Observe the Thoughts Whispering in your Ear

Changing your thoughts can change your life. But before that can happen, you have to notice what you’re thinking. You need to become aware of the mental loops running through your mind, the patterns that shape your emotions, choices, and reactions. This awareness is the first step toward taking the wheel and becoming more resilient, present, and at peace.

Here's one of the most life-changing realizations you can have:

You are not your thoughts.

“As an athlete, I learned structure. In recovery, I use that same mindset.

This is what gave me seventeen years of sobriety.

IIt was a moment of reckoning: step toward healing or fall back into the abyss of darkness.

Chris Herren had overdosed a third time. He lay in a treatment center, thinking his life was over. “We were on food stamps, had no electricity, and, at times, no heat. We had two young children and a third on the way.”

This time, a counselor looked him in the eye and said, “You’re a has-been. A junkie. You don’t have any business being a father. Have your wife tell your kids their dad died in a car accident because they do not deserve you.”

Those words broke something open. That night, Chris fell to his knees and prayed. “My mom, who died young, was spiriual. So was I. I had nowhere else to turn. For five years, I went to bed contemplating an exit. That night, I chose life.”

But sobriety wouldn’t be easy. It would be a long, bumpy path requiring daily vigilance.

Chris grew up in Fall River, Massachusetts, in a loving family that grappled with generational addiction. Both sides struggled with alcoholism. His young parents worked hard to give their children a better life, eventually moving them out of subsidized housing.

For all the instability of his youth, Chris discovered he had a gift: basketball. His talent was undeniable. He was hailed as one of the top players in the country.

While fans watched his highlight reels in awe, Chris was unraveling. At Boston College, he was introduced to cocaine. It changed everything,” he recalls. “I fell in love with the effect.

Cocaine allowed me to be honest about my emotions. For the first time, I could tell the story of my struggle and pain.”

At twenty-three, Chris was drafted into the NBA by the Denver Nuggets. “It should have been the best day of my life,” he says. “But I knew it wouldn’t last. I wasn’t ready. I had been battling addiction since I was eighteen. I knew it would win.”

Within months, he was introduced to OxyContin. At his worst, he was taking sixteen hundred milligrams a day and spending $20,000 a month.

Chris went on to play for the dream team of his childhood—the Boston Celtics—and then for professional teams overseas.

As his career progressed, so did his addiction. “I transitioned

from pills to heroin. I used everywhere.”

His first overdose came when he was twenty-five, in a parking lot. The car was in gear and rolled into another car, alerting EMTs. Had it been in park, he would have died. “That accident saved my life and shattered everything. I had just finished playing with the Celtics. Now I was on the news as a heroin addict.

It was devastating for me and my family.”

He tried recovery several times. “Each time, I thought I could spend five days and walk out. I saw it as punishment—not healing.”

At thirty-two, Chris entered inpatient treatment again— this time Chris committed to treatment for eleven months. “I was terrified to go home,” he says. “I saw the hope in my famiy’s eyes. I didn’t want to break their hearts again.

“I was broken. I felt deep shame. I had no money, no education, no career. Every night for six months, I thought about running.

But I didn’t. That drive to persist gave me the life I have today.”

Even after seventeen years of sobriety, he says the work isn’t over. “The real work began when I started to revisit the trauma and pain.”

A year into Chris’s recovery, serendipity led him to his purpose. “A private school principal handed me keys to a gym and told me to teach kids how to play ball.”

That moment inspired Hoop Dreams, a basketball training and mentoring program. Soon after, a health teacher invited him to speak at a local high school. “She picked me up and said she’d pay me in Dunkin’ Donuts. That was the start of my speaking career. Since then, I have spoken to a couple million kids through Herren Talks.”

At first, he talked about his worst day. But that changed. “I began talking about the first day. We always show kids how addiction ends. But we don’t ask why it begins. We don’t ask the single most important question: Why?”

Chris founded the Herren Project in 2011—a nonprofit that’s helped over five thousand people access treatment—and Herren Wellness in 2018—a recovery center built on holistic healing, from breath work to eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR). His life’s work is to use his pain to help others find recovery and restore hope to the families who love them.

But even long-term sobriety isn’t a straight line. “Years four-teen to sixteen were the hardest. I had a hip replacement. I lost people I loved. My dad got dementia. I didn’t want to be me.”

Then a therapist walked into his center. “We started talking. I had never done therapy. He introduced me to Internal Family Systems. I met my inner child. My inner adult. They both needed healing.”

Chris credits his resilience to his sports mindset. “As a pro athlete, I knew structure. Recovery is the same. It’s commitment, repetition, mindset.”

Today, when asked what he’s most proud of, Chris doesn’t hesitate. “My sobriety made my children smile again. The smile isn’t just on their faces. I see it in their eyes. That’s everything.”

“I didn’t want to just survive grief but rather to under-

stand it and in the end, to find meaning in it.”

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Sheshni Moodlier was intimately familiar with grief. She had spent years helping her patients navigate sorrow, depression, and trauma. She was an expert at offering strategies for healing. But nothing—not her training nor her deep understanding of the human experience—prepared her for the death of her mother in the most violent way imaginable.

Sheshni’s mother, a respected teacher in Durban, South Africa, had been murdered in her home—by someone she trusted, a man she had employed. The brutality of it was staggering. When Sheshni received the news in London, where she lived, the facts were too cruel to absorb.

The shock was compounded by a world in lockdown. The COVID-19 pandemic made it impossible for Sheshni to travel home to South Africa to say goodbye and bury her mother.

As she recalls, “There was no funeral to attend, no ritual to mark the loss of an extraordinary woman. There was a phone call and then nothing, just silence.”

In the aftermath, Sheshni had to resist her instinct to retreat into work, intellectualize the cavernous loss, and push forward without looking back. “That was my tendency, but this time allowed myself to let it hit me, to feel the stages of grief, the anger, the despair, and the disbelief,” she says.

She chose to sit in an ocean of grief and to allow herself

to be pulled along by the tides of sorrow. She endured every emotion—some days, it was a deep ache; other days, it was a wave that took her breath away. Feeling her feelings, as she recalls today, saved her.

As Sheshni grappled with the loss of a woman whom she adored, she didn’t try to process it alone. “I allowed myself to be vulnerable. I began talking openly about my grief. I posted on social media, gave radio interviews, talked with friends, and told the story to strangers.”

By not trying to go it alone, she found something unexpected: a huge community of support. “My mother was deeply loved. Hundreds of her former students and colleagues reached but to share memories of how greatly she had motivated them.

Hundreds of people, many of them strangers who had read about the tragedy, wrote and offered small kindnesses—­ flowers left on the doorstep, meals prepared by friends, phone calls from friends who simply sat with me in silence. At the time, these small gifts felt monumental.

“It was a reminder that grief isn’t just about loss—it’s about love. The deeper the loss, the deeper the love.”

Yet there was another battle to fight—a quest for justice. Her mother’s murder case wasn’t open and shut. Corruption in South Africa’s local police force threatened to let the killer walk free. Sheshni embarked on a crusade for justice, contacting lawyers, demanding action, and even reaching out to the South African president’s office. And it worked. The man responsible was arrested.

“It wasn’t about revenge,” she says. “My mother wasn’t here to fight for herself, so I fought for her.”

Sheshni initially believed justice would bring her peace, but it didn’t. She learned that justice alone doesn’t offer closure.

Closure is something more enduring—it comes when dignity is restored through acknowledgment that her mother’s life mattered. That realization came to her later, after she had time to reflect on her mother’s enormous gifts and the profound impact she had on those around her. Only then did Sheshni find a sense of peace, rooted not in justice, but in honoring her mother’s legacy.

She soon realized grief isn’t about what happens in a court oom. It’s about learning to live with the loss.

And there was another choice to make—one that felt even harder. Should she forgive the man who murdered her mother?

“I decided to forgive him,” she said. “I did it because Irefused to let hatred steal any more of my life.”

During this time, the Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono, a meditation of reconciliation and healing, brought Sheshni comfort. Over and over, she would repeat the words I’m sorry.

Please forgive me. Thank you. I love you. She did this not to absolve the man who had taken her mother but to release herself from the weight of her anger.

Sheshni had always believed that those we love and lose remain with us in some way. Now she was being tested to learn if this were true. Her conclusion: “My mother is still here,” she says. “She’s in the way I speak, in how I raise my children, and in the way I do my work.”

She holds on to the words of the poet Rumi, which bring her comfort: “Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes.

Because for those who love with heart and soul, there is no such thing as separation.”

Her mother had been a deeply spiritual woman—one who lit candles in Hindu temples and Catholic churches alike, who believed in kindness above all else. On the days when her grief returns and feels almost unbearable, Sheshni turns to ritual.

She prays. She cooks dishes she learned from her mother. She holds space for the memories. She has learned that these rituals transform grief into gratitude.

Two other rituals brought Sheshni acceptance and deep peace. The first was when Sheshni and her twin sister honored their mother’s wish by performing a sacred Hindu rite for the soul’s liberation—scattering their mother’s ashes in the Ganges River. The second came later, when she made a deeply meaningful visit to her mother’s ancestral home in India and offered prayers.

“Grief,” Sheshni says, “never goes away, but becomes something we can carry. Lighter, but never gone.”

Her advice to others?

“Strength isn’t about suppressing pain. It’s about allowing yourself to feel it, to move through it, and to emerge, not untouched, but transformed. Grief isn’t something you can run from. Let yourself grieve because that’s how we survive. It is the path to healing.”