Wild Growth Co.

My partner and I watched two full episodes of Love is Blind last night without touching our phones once.

I didn't even notice until 15 minutes into the second episode when I looked over and said "did you realize we haven't picked up our phones since we started?"

We talked. We laughed. We yelled at the TV. We made eye contact every time Steven opened his mouth. (IYKYK.)

And this season is in OHIO.
In COLUMBUS.
So obviously we had opinions.

Here's why I'm telling you this.

Watching reality TV sounds like a mindless activity. Like the thing you're supposed to be replacing with journaling or stretching or whatever.

But last night wasn't zoning out. It was connection.

Scrolling alone on the couch at 9pm? Your nervous system is grabbing the closest hit of micro-dopamine. No connection. No shared experience.

Watching something together, reacting out loud, laughing at the same moment? That's dopamine AND oxytocin. Anticipation AND connection. Completely different neurological experience.

Same couch. Same TV. Completely different nervous system state.

The goal isn't to replace everything you enjoy with something "healthier." The goal is to notice the difference between reaching for something on autopilot and choosing it on purpose.

That's what I'm teaching inside the Dopamine Menu Challenge.
Starts Feb 23rd inside Cycle Breaker's Society. (comment 'dopamine' if you want to know more)

Now here's what I really want to. know... What's your guilty pleasure show and who do you watch it with? 👇

I used to sit in the car after groceries.

Not because I forgot something. Not because I was on the phone.

Because going back inside meant being Mom again. And I needed two more minutes of nothing before I could do that.

Those two minutes usually turned into fifteen. Me, in the driveway, scrolling something I wouldn’t remember. Eating something I didn’t taste. Staring at the garage door like it owed me something.

I wasn’t sad, exactly. I was just… used up.

If you know that feeling, keep reading.

If you don’t, this probably isn’t for you.

Something happens when you run on empty for months at a time.

Your brain starts narrowing.

Not in a dramatic, something-is-wrong way. In a quiet way. Like how you don’t notice a room getting dark until you can’t read anymore.

Your list of things that feel good gets shorter. And shorter. Until the only things left are the ones that require zero effort.

Scroll. Snack. Zone out. Repeat.

That’s the whole menu.

Maybe you add online shopping at 11pm. Maybe it’s TikTok until your eyes burn. Maybe it’s the pantry again even though you’re not hungry. You just want something to happen in your mouth because nothing’s happening in your life that’s for you anymore.

And every single night, you go to bed saying the same thing.

I’m not doing this again tomorrow.

And every single night, you do.

That’s neurochemistry.

When your nervous system has been in survival mode long enough, your baseline dopamine drops. It’s a real, measurable thing. And when baseline drops, your brain stops reaching for the things that take effort… the walk, the book, the bath, the hobby you used to love. It only reaches for the fast hits. The ones that spike hard and crash harder.

Which is why willpower doesn’t work here. Willpower is a prefrontal cortex function and yours has been offline since… honestly, you probably can’t remember when it wasn’t.

You’re not lazy. You’re not broken. Your menu is just too short.

I’m a therapist. Over 20 years in crisis work. I’ve sat with hundreds of women who look like they have it together from the outside and are running on three dopamine sources on the inside.

And the ones who started getting better… they didn’t get better because they tried harder. They didn’t get better because they finally found the right morning routine or the right journal prompt or the right meditation app.

They got better because they built a longer menu.

More options. Different options. Options for when they were barely surviving and options for when they actually had a little bit of capacity. Options that were fast. Options that were slow. Options that felt like guilty pleasures but weren’t guilty at all because they were doing them on purpose.

That’s what changed things. Not discipline. Not motivation. Just… more things to reach for.

I tried everything else first.

I bought the planner. I downloaded the habit tracker. I made the vision board at 2am one Sunday in January and felt amazing for exactly 36 hours.

I tried cutting out the "bad" stuff cold turkey. No more scrolling. No more snacking. No more numbing.

Do you know what happens when you take away someone’s only source of dopamine without replacing it with anything?

They get worse.

I got worse.

Because I was treating the symptom like it was the problem. The scrolling wasn’t the problem. The three items on the menu was the problem. My nervous system was starving and I was trying to put it on a diet.

So I stopped trying to fix myself and I started feeding myself instead.

Nothing big. Nothing dramatic. Just… what if I had more than three things to reach for?

What if I had something for the 3pm wall that wasn’t the pantry?

Something for the 11pm couch that wasn’t my phone?

Something for Saturday when the kids are with their dad and I have four hours and no idea what to do with myself because I’ve forgotten what I even like?

Not a self-care list from somebody with a ring light and a nanny telling you to take a bath. Real things. For real energy levels. On real days.

That’s what I built.

The Survival Mode Dopamine Menu started as something I made for myself. Five categories of dopamine, matched to different energy levels. Tiny Hits for the barely-surviving moments. Slow Burns for when I had a sliver of capacity. Full Pours for when I could actually give myself something real. Glow-Ups… the guilty pleasures, used on purpose. And Big Magic for the rare days when I wanted to feel like a whole person again.

I kept it on my phone. I used it every day. And something shifted.

Not overnight. Not in a cinematic montage kind of way. More like… I stopped reaching for the same three things. I started remembering that I had options. My body started to believe that feeling good didn’t have to be accidental.

I taught it to the women in my community. They started building their own menus. They started texting each other what they ordered from their menu that day. They started saying things like "I almost grabbed my phone and then I looked at my menu and went outside for three minutes instead."

Three minutes. That’s it. That’s what changed the pattern.

Not a 30-day challenge. Not a $2,000 program. Three minutes and a menu.

I’m not going to pretend this fixes everything.

I still have hard days. I still scroll sometimes. I’m a single mom with four boys and a full-time job and a business I’m building at 4am. I don’t have it figured out.

But I have a menu now. And on the worst days, having a menu means I have a choice. And having a choice means I’m not just defaulting to whatever my burnt-out brain grabs first.

That’s what I want for you.

Not perfection. Not a glow-up. Just… more than three things.

Here’s what I made:

https://www.skool.com/cyclebreakersociety/about

A 7-day challenge inside my Cycle Breaker’s Society community. One lesson a day. Brain science that makes you go "oh, that’s why." Real-life examples that sound like your life. And by Day 7, you have a completed, personalized Dopamine Menu that you keep forever.

After the 7 days, it becomes a daily practice. You check in, you share what you ordered from your menu, and the community holds it with you.

You get 7 days free.

After that, it’s $7 a month.

Cancel whenever you want.

That’s less than one of those online shopping carts you fill at 11pm and delete in the morning.

Come look around. Try the menu for a week. See what other women are saying.

And then decide if having more than three things to reach for is worth seven dollars.

See you inside.

Joyce

🔥 GET 7 FREE DAYS 👇

I barely remembered my son's first birthday last Sunday....

I was there. But I wasn't THERE.

Too busy running from store to store. Too stressed about making it "big" because he's my last. Too overwhelmed to actually be present.

And then after the party, after the boys were finally asleep, December 1st was staring me in the face.

The elves. The advent calendars I forgot. The tooth fairy. The 8 spirit days. (EIGHT. My brain exploded.)

My mom watched us spiral and asked: "Is this how every Sunday is?"

Yes. Yes it is.

And I thought: I can't do 30 more days of this.

So I built something.

Not a planner. Not a course. Not another thing to add to your list.

A survival container.

✨ The Survive the Season Challenge ✨
30 days. December 8 - January 6.

Here's what's inside:

🎄 5 Daily Survival Behaviors: micro-actions that actually work when your capacity is in the toilet and everyone needs something from you. 60 seconds to 10 minutes. That's it.

🎄 A Survival Dashboard: not to add pressure, but to give you PROOF you didn't completely abandon yourself this month.

🎄 Weekly resource drops: boundary scripts, reset cheat sheets, a "Let That Sh*t Go" guide, and a Christmas Eve Survival Kit (because we all know that day is chaos).

🎄 A community of women who actually get it: because surviving alone is harder than surviving together.

🎄 Me, in the trenches with you: therapist, mom of 4 boys, new job, December madness. I'm not pretending I have it figured out. I'm surviving right alongside you.

The rules are simple:

1️⃣ Showing up = winning. Not perfection. Not doing all 5 behaviors. Just showing up.

2️⃣ No catching up. Miss a day? Start where you are. There's no "behind" here.

3️⃣ ONE is enough. You'll learn 5 survival behaviors. Do ONE, get a green box. That's the whole game.

The goal?

Enter January with something left in the tank.

Not needing a week to recover. Not hating yourself for how you showed up. Not wondering where the whole month went.

Just... intact. Still here. Still you.

🎁 JOIN BY SUNDAY, DEC 7TH & GET A BONUS:
35 Holiday Stress-Buster Cards: digital cards with quick resets, reminders, and permission slips for the moments when December is December-ing all over you.

This bonus disappears when the challenge starts.

👉 Start with 7-day FREE trial
💰 Just $7/month after (locked forever, price goes up Jan 1)
🚪 Cancel anytime. No guilt. No hoops.

⏰ We start Monday, December 8th.

Ready to survive this with me?

👇 Click the link to join 👇
https://www.skool.com/cyclebreakersociety/about

It’s that look on the ultrasound tech’s face you never forget....

If you’ve seen it before, your stomach drops instantly.
If it’s the first time, you still know.
Something’s wrong.

They try to keep their voice steady.
They force a smile.
And then they say, “the doctor will be right in.”

But you already know why.

The heartbeat you were desperate to see,
never flickers on the screen.
The tiny hands and feet you dreamed of,
never appear.

After that, no pregnancy is ever the same again.

Fear.
Grief.
Pain.

They speak louder than the joy of two pink lines.
You know too well how fragile it all is.

I’ve been told to “move on.”
To “just try again.”
As if another baby replaces the one I lost.

As if you can forget a child
you never got the chance to name.

Sometimes you’re the only one
who even remembers they existed.

No birthdays.
No photos.
Just silence.

And then, for some,
after all that, comes a rainbow.

AJ & Theo are my rainbow babies-

They brought color back into my life.
They gave me laughter after silence.
They reminded me that hope can grow again in the same soil where grief lives.

And while they didn't erase the storm.
They carry it with them.

They are living proof that grief and love can exist in the same heartbeat.

That you can ache for the babies you’ll never hold while fiercely loving the ones in your arms.

National Rainbow Baby Day (August 22nd) matters because no one talks about this enough.
Behind every rainbow is a storm.
Behind every smile is a scar.

I honor every parent
who has ever carried both love and loss
in the same heartbeat.

If you’re parenting after loss, you already know.
If you’re still waiting for your rainbow, you’re not alone.

🤍🌈

You avoid because you’re overwhelmed.

You feel guilty for avoiding.

You try to fix everything in one cortisol-fueled sprint.

Then crash.
Shame.
Restart the cycle.

When everything feels like too much, your brain goes into survival mode—

avoid → guilt → panic → exhaustion → repeat.

Here’s what’s actually happening:

• Your amygdala sounds the alarm 🚨
• Your prefrontal cortex (logic/judgment) goes offline
• You end up scrolling, planning too much, or snapping—just to feel some sense of control

But here’s the shift: your nervous system needs pattern interruption, not another to‑do list.

So this week, we’re using a 3‑step emergency reset:

1️⃣ Interrupt the spiral with a fast sensory reset
2️⃣ Orient to the real ask—what’s actually needed right now?
3️⃣ Respond with just ONE anchored action—no overwhelm

Think of it as hitting the pause button when your brain hits turbo.

➡️ Swipe to see the tools that help you do this in real time.
➡️ Save this post for your next meltdown moment.

✨ Try it today—pick one step and say it out loud.

DM me “FiredUp” and I’ll send you the flowchart!

💐 Mother’s Day can hold a lot at once.

For some, it’s sweet and celebratory.
For others, it’s grief, disappointment, or complicated history.

Some are missing moms they’ve lost.
Some are grieving the motherhood they never got to have.
Some are just… tired from being everything to everyone.

And for a lot of us, there’s this quiet pressure to make it about everyone else.

To smile.
Be grateful.
“Enjoy the day.”
Even if what we really need is space to fall apart—or just breathe.

So let me say this clearly:
✨ You get to matter today.
✨ You get to set boundaries today.
✨ You get to take time for you—without guilt.

Your tiny act of rebellion today?

👉 Give yourself what you actually want.

🔥Maybe that’s bingeing trashy reality TV guilt-free.
📵 Maybe it’s not getting off the couch, not replying to texts, not answering to anyone else’s needs.
🚿Maybe it’s showering without rushing—like the long, hot, stand-there-forever kind where you don’t hear anyone calling your name through the door.
🙅🏽‍♀️Or just stay in your PJs and do nothing for anyone else

It doesn’t have to be profound.
It just has to be yours.

That’s not selfish.
That’s what real resetting looks like when you’ve been expected to power through your whole life.

However you feel today—joyful, numb, tender, tired—you are not alone.

You’re allowed to protect your peace.

💛 Sending softness to every woman navigating today in her own way.