In this episode, I share the story of one holiday that changed how I showed up for myself: the year I drove away from a family gathering in my white Volkswagen Bug, numb and done pretending everything was fine.

From that moment, we talk about small but brave choices — saying no to draining plans, choosing therapy over gifts, leaving early when your body asks for rest, and learning the language of boundaries. Through a therapist’s lens, I explore how the holidays can reactivate old family roles and nervous-system memory, and why protecting your energy isn’t selfish — it’s necessary.

With honesty, humor (yes, I’m terrible at ice skating), and clinical clarity, we unpack what it really means to romanticize your life — not perfection, but intention, self-respect, and choosing your own pace. This episode is a permission slip: you’re not broken, you’re not behind — you’re becoming. Tune in for a warm, real conversation about investing in yourself during the holidays and beyond.

I can't believe this is episode 10 — double fucking digits. In this intimate, unfiltered episode, Healy Rose Bloom walks you through a raw weekend of emotions: Mercury in retrograde, holiday pressure, and the heavy silence of a New York apartment after a long day. She welcomes you into her world with the kind of honesty that feels like a late-night conversation with your bravest friend.

She tells a story: the practicum student returning to a tiny bedroom, dropping her bag on the floor, and feeling that familiar ache of wanting someone to hold the weight. From that small, stinging image the episode unfolds into a larger exploration of singlehood — not as a temporary checkpoint, but as a season full of discoveries, small rituals, surviving heartbreak, and learning to be your own anchor.

Through vivid moments — walking the West Side Highway, turning up music in an empty apartment, buying your own roses, and savoring solo dinners — Healy makes the case that single life can be both brutal and liberating. She names the common villains: social timelines, family interrogations, and the internal voice that whispers you’re behind. But she also offers a different story: one where you stop performing for others, learn your rhythms, and raise your standards from a place of knowing your worth.

She weaves in therapy moments that landed — a therapist’s blunt question that cracked her open and the discovery that asking friends to hold you is not weakness; it’s communication. She shares the surprising healing found in new work like deep brain reorienting (DBR), and the embodied realization that trauma lives in the body — and that learning to soothe your nervous system is a radical act of self-care.

Music and metaphor thread through the episode too: Olivia Dean’s tender lyrics become a soundtrack for small victories — turning off the lights alone, putting roses on a shelf for yourself — and a reminder that joy often hides in micro-moments. Healy challenges the idea that partnership equals safety, reframing singlehood as a teacher that asks you to feel, to sit with your wounds, and to stop outsourcing your solace.

By the end, this episode is equal parts manifesto and comfort. Healy balances the ache of lonely Fridays and engagement posts with the fierce truth that learning to be alone well raises your capacity to choose love without needing it to rescue you. She offers practical invites — rituals, honest conversations with friends, and small acts of tenderness — that turn solitude into a foundation rather than a gap.

This is a story about presence: about being awake to who you are when no one else is watching, about building a life you can’t wait to come home to, and about trusting that your person is out there preparing too. Whether you are exhausted, grieving, celebrating, or simply curious, Episode 10 holds space for the full mess and the quiet magic of singlehood — and leaves you with one fierce message: don’t forget how fucking fabulous you are.

This week on Blooming Out Loud, Halie Rose Bloom cracks open the myth that asking for help means failure. Through honest stories and practical tips, she explores where our fear of needing others comes from and how asking can actually be an act of strength. If you’ve been carrying everything alone, this episode gives you permission to finally put some of it down. It’s raw, real, and a reminder that you don’t have to earn support to deserve it. This episode shows you exactly how to start asking for what you need without shame.