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.

Step onto a plane with Haley Rose Bloom and feel that familiar twist in your gut—the quiet alarm that goes off every time you head home. The city below glitters with holiday markets and crisp air, but Haley’s memories are not all tinsel and light. She takes you back to a childhood where she was the glue: driving a little brother to school, calming arguments she didn’t start, and holding everyone together while her parents hurt. This episode opens a door on what it really means to be a parentified child—how survival tactics became personality, how praise like “You’re so strong” often hid a kid doing what they had to do to keep breathing.

Through candid, sometimes raw storytelling, Haley tracks the echoes of those childhood roles into the present: the perfectionism that arrives with hosting holiday dinners, the stiff shoulders that remember vigilance the moment you cross a threshold, the grief masked by smiling photos. She shares a personal memory—a little picture of Haley she talks to every day—and invites you to speak to your own younger self, the one who kept the family afloat at nine years old.

But this episode is not only about pain; it’s about choice. Haley guides you from obligation to possibility—breathing through the dread, inventing new rituals, and taking small, brave steps toward including yourself in your own holidays. She offers compassionate, practical moments: noticing the city’s sounds on a walk, softening your expectations, and honoring the sorrow that proves something mattered. Whether you’re estranged, caregiving, or simply exhausted by old roles, Haley’s voice becomes the steady presence you didn’t always have.

By the end, the message is clear and fierce: you don’t have to keep saving the day to be worthy of love. This episode holds the child who was forced to grow up, and it hands them a choice—a chance to rest, set boundaries, and create gentle, new traditions. Tune in for a story that will sit with you long after the last bell jingles, and leave you feeling seen, less alone, and oddly hopeful for the holidays ahead.

In this episode of Blooming Out Loud, Halie Rose Bloom dives into one emotion that shaped her year — disappointment. She opens up about an internship that broke her spirit more than it built her, friendships that faded, and family expectations that cracked under the light.

With her signature honesty and humor, Halie turns personal heartbreak into a universal story of growth. She explores how disappointment can actually guide us — revealing what matters most, teaching us how to release what’s no longer serving us, and helping us move forward with more compassion.

This episode is raw, real, and healing — a reminder that feeling disappointed doesn’t mean you failed; it means you cared deeply enough to try.

Welcome to month one of Blooming Out Loud. Let’s talk about one tiny word that has shaped so much of my life: should. It slips into our goals, our bodies, our worth—until it feels like a weight we can’t shake. For me, it showed up in the five times I failed my licensing exam, each one echoing with “I should have done better.”

What saved me wasn’t perfection, but permission. I learned to swap should for could and want, to speak to myself with kindness, and to lean on community that believed in me when I couldn’t. Slowly, I realized the test didn’t own my competence—I did.

This episode is for anyone carrying invisible rulebooks. Shoulds are everywhere—on social media, in childhood judgments, in the way we measure ourselves against moving finish lines. But your body is not a problem to fix; it’s your home. When the critic whispers should, pause and ask: What do I actually want?

By the end, I hope you feel permission—to be late, to be messy, to pass on the fifth try and still be brilliant. You are not broken. You are enough.

Halie Rose Bloom cracks open the grief of friendship breakups—the ones nobody talks about but that cut the deepest. With raw honesty and vivid storytelling, she names the heartbreak of losing friends, the silence that follows, and the lessons hidden inside. This episode offers permission to grieve, guidance on setting boundaries, and hope that endings can make space for deeper, truer connections.

Halie Rose Bloom opens with a simple question: How are you, really? From there, she strips away small talk to share the raw truth — healing isn’t gentle. It rips, it aches, and her body often knew the danger before her mind did. From childhood burdens to sleepless nights and stomach cramps, Halie traces how the body speaks when words fail. Through therapy and reflection, she learns to reparent her younger self, trading armor for grief and finding that pain can be proof of progress.