by Daniela LaFave | Apr 4, 2020 | Mental Health, Personal Growth, Professional Development
You assume your life is going to be a mess until your mid-late twenties. And you think it’s pretty normal. But then the hard work starts paying off, and you get lucky. You’ve got it all – the career, the relationship, the home, the pets. And life... 
by Daniela LaFave | Mar 11, 2020 | Personal Growth
When you get honest with yourself, you find out who’s in your life for the right reasons. I’ve spent most of my life hiding to survive. It’s called masking. And it’s not done from a place of envy or vanity. Masking is something autistic women do to survive. We pretend... 
by Daniela LaFave | Jul 31, 2019 | All, Mental Health, Personal Growth
This Saturday begins the last year of my twenties. In the spirit of reflecting on another closed chapter, here are some things I’ve been thinking about. The best friends are people who believe good things about you at your highs and lows. Fun is worthwhile.... 
by Daniela LaFave | Jul 28, 2019 | All, Mental Health, Personal Growth
My liberal arts degree paved the way to a career in STEM. But engineers I work with now would sneer if they knew about my previous life as a professional counseling student. Even in grad school, I was always more into reading psych journals than doing exercises with... 
by Daniela LaFave | May 2, 2019 | All, Mental Health, Personal Growth
For years, I longed to try paddleboarding, but was too afraid of being bad at it. I’m no stranger to being terrible at new things, but what if failing at something so cool made me fall out of love with being on/around/in the water? What if being too heavy to try... 
by Daniela LaFave | Mar 13, 2018 | All, Mental Health, Personal Growth
Even if your drinking has never gotten you into trouble, there’s no harm in taking a break from alcohol. Really, anything that gives you pleasure can become addictive if you turn to it too much. I wrote this list because it always seems like there are a million... 