I spent more than a year anticipating the day I would drop my youngest son off at college and come home to a truly empty house. I expected to miss him terribly—and I do. What I didn't expect was to discover that being alone and feeling alone are two very different things. Somewhere along the way, before the house ever became quiet, I had already started building a life I loved coming home to.

What if some of the things you've spent years believing you can't do aren't actually impossible at all? The day I emptied almost my entire walk-in closet taught me something that had very little to do with clothes: sometimes the rules we live by aren't really rules. They're expectations, habits, and other people's ideas about what we're supposed to do. And sometimes, the most freeing question we can ask ourselves is simply, “Who says I can't?”

Some of the hardest decisions of my life began when I stopped asking what everyone else thought I should do and started listening to my own voice. I didn't know it then, but giving myself permission to choose peace would eventually change almost everything.

The family you choose can be every bit as meaningful as the family you inherit.

It's easy to look at someone else's life and assume happiness comes from money. I've learned that peace has very little to do with what you own and everything to do with how intentionally you choose to live.

Somewhere between taking care of everyone else, building careers, raising families, and simply getting through each day, many of us stopped asking one important question: "What do I want?" This is a conversation about finding your way back to yourself.