Todd Smith

What happens when you no longer feel clear about who you are? One moment you are a hardworking homemaker; the next, a single parent. Many people go through periods when they feel disconnected from themselves. They might feel lost or empty or think, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Although this experience is often […]

“Who am I?” This is a question many of us ask at some point during our lives. In adolescence this question is particularly important as we begin to explore our values, interests, relationships, and future direction. But not everyone has a stable sense of who they are by the time they reach adulthood, and it’s

When we lose someone close, life rarely returns to normal after a few weeks of mourning. Grief has its own rhythm and time. It can soften, surge, disappear for a while, and then return unexpectedly in the middle of an ordinary day. Coping with grief involves a gentle adjustment to living with loss that takes

Hard times make ordinary life tasks difficult to manage. When you are dealing with loss, change, stress, or uncertainty, it is natural to want answers and a clear way forward. Building resilience to get you through hard times begins with self-care that supports steadiness and taking the next small step. This one-week resilience reset offers

Think about the friends you’ve kept since high school or the coworkers you’ve stayed close to over the years. Have you stopped to ask whether these connections mirror who you are now and what you really need? Having a structured way to reflect on these questions and bring that self-knowledge into your relational choices can

Most of us likely know at least a few of our personal strengths, but the harder question is whether those strengths work in tandem. A personal strength stack is what happens when two or three of your strengths are combined with intention, with each one making the others more effective. Research shows that strength stacking

There can be something incredibly disorienting about feeling burned out when doing the activities you genuinely love. If you’re doing what comes naturally and relying on your personal strengths, then why do you sometimes feel exhausted after? It comes down to a fact many people often miss: Knowing how to use your strengths sustainably can

There is no shortage of parent education resources available today. While the quantity of information might be viewed as a positive step in the child-rearing space, the explosion of modern parenting styles and labels can leave many parents—and the professionals who support them—confused and overwhelmed. As a long-time parent educator and former therapist, I have

It can be one of the harder things to witness as a practitioner—clients who are caring and generous toward others yet hard on themselves. What would it take for them to turn that same warmth inward? You know that self-compassion takes practice. And, as with establishing any practice, the hardest part is making it part

When parents seek guidance on teaching self-regulation in their families, it is easy for them to get tripped up in a smorgasbord of advice on discipline, willpower, obedience, impulse control, gratification, and motivation, with a dash of tantrums and meltdowns on the side. For that reason, in this guide we will focus on self-control. We