Transformation by Design

10/03/2026

09/24/2026

At midnight, the house is quiet. The estate paperwork is still on the table.

One study estimates that an executor spends roughly 570 hours settling an estate. That is time spent making calls, finding documents, answering questions, and making decisions, often alongside a regular job. And on so many of those forms is the name of someone you miss.

If that is where you are tonight, the weight you feel is real. You are not falling behind. You are carrying the work left by a death while living with the loss itself.

We need workplaces that understand that these responsibilities do not end when bereavement leave does.

What task after a death caught you by surprise? You are welcome to answer without sharing anything private.

Source: EstateExec, Estate Settlement and Executor Statistics.

09/23/2026

Most bereavement leave, when it's offered at all, assumes grief will fit into a few days in a row, right after the loss. But grief rarely works that way.

Sometimes the hardest days come weeks or months later, long after the casseroles stop arriving and everyone else has gone back to ordinary life.

Researchers studying bereavement leave are now recommending flexible days that can be taken across a whole year, when grief actually asks for them. What a gentle idea: time off that follows the heart rather than the calendar.

If grief is visiting you on a day no one else would expect, you are not behind. You are simply grieving on love's timeline.

09/21/2026

Gratitude does not ask us to pretend that life is easy.

It does not erase grief, disappointment, uncertainty, or the tender places that still ache. Gratitude simply helps us notice that pain is not the whole story.

There is still beauty at the window.
There is still kindness arriving unexpectedly.
There is still laughter that catches us by surprise.
There are still people who walk beside us and remind us that we are not alone.

Today, on International Gratitude Day, I am grateful for the people I have loved, the people who continue to love me, and the quiet strength that keeps revealing itself one day at a time.

Gratitude and grief can share the same heart. I know because mine holds both.

What is one small thing your heart is grateful for today?

09/18/2026

When a major life transition happens, we often expect ourselves to have it all figured out right away. But subconscious healing and emotional integration take time.

If you're currently in the middle of a quiet shift, give yourself permission to move at your own pace. You don't have to carry the whole weight of the journey alone.

What is one small way you are honoring your space today?

08/22/2026

Susana Trimarco disguised herself as a madam and walked into brothels across northern Argentina, searching for her missing daughter among women trapped in s*xual slavery -- and in the process, she sparked a movement that would free over 3,000 s*x trafficking victims. It began in April 2002, when her 23-year-old daughter, María de los Ángeles Verón, left for a doctor's appointment in their city of San Miguel de Tucumán and never returned home. Frustrated by a police investigation she believed was deliberately sabotaged by corruption, Trimarco obtained the names of known pimps and s*x traffickers from police files and launched her own search.

She posed as a buyer interested in purchasing the captive women and girls -- some as young as 14, who could be traded for about $800. One r**e victim told her she had seen María drugged, with swollen eyes, in a trafficker's home that doubled as a holding place for newly abducted women. But by the time Trimarco could follow the lead, her daughter had been moved. Though María was never found, Trimarco's relentless pursuit transformed her into one of Argentina's most powerful human rights activists and forced s*x trafficking onto the national agenda. "The desperation of a mother blinds you," she says. "It makes you fearless."

Through this dangerous work, Trimarco discovered the full scope of s*x trafficking and the corruption within the police and judiciary that kept women trapped in forced prostitution. "The police would hand [the trafficked women] back to the criminals," she recalls. "They used to say: 'Don't leave me. Take me with you.'" Trimarco ended up becoming the personal guardian to 129 survivors of s*x trafficking, sheltering them in her home and helping them reunite with their families.

Trimarco's relentless advocacy forced change at the highest levels. Her work helped lead to the first law, passed in 2008, making human trafficking a federal crime; the subsequent reforms have led to thousands of people being rescued from s*x traffickers. These successes, however, have come with a high personal cost to Trimarco: she has suffered many reprisals over the years including countless death threats, having her house set on fire, and several attempts to run her over in the street.

As more trafficking survivors and families of trafficking victims reached out to her for help, Trimarco says, "It came to a point where I just did not have the capacity to help them all. That is when I decided to open a foundation." In 2007, she founded Fundación María de los Ángeles, a non-governmental organization focused on helping people escape from trafficking and lobbying for legislation to prevent it. Her efforts focused on her daughter's disappearance eventually resulted in trials for 13 people, including several police officers, in 2012; all 13 were acquitted, a ruling that prompted outrage by many and led to impeachment proceedings against three judges.

In December 2013, the Tucumán Supreme Court reversed the acquittals and convicted ten of the defendants, who received sentences ranging from 10 to 22 years in April 2014. But despite it all, Trimarco still hasn't found out what she wants to know most: what happened to her daughter. Some witnesses say she was murdered -- although her body has never been found -- and others say she was taken overseas.

Twenty-three years later, Trimarco's work continues in her daughter's name and for all survivors. Her foundation remains at the forefront of the country's fight against human trafficking, recently helping to dismantle trafficking rings in 2024 and 2025. In recent years, the foundation has expanded its role as a legal plaintiff in trafficking cases, ensuring survivors have representation throughout the judicial process. Now in her seventies, Trimarco remains internationally recognized for her work, though her search for answers about María's fate has never ceased. "Every woman I help somehow helps María," she reflects. "They represent hope in this new life of mine."

To learn more about her foundation, Maria de los Fundación María de los Ángeles, visit https://fundacionmariadelosangeles.net/

For a gripping memoir by a victim of the Epstein s*x trafficking ring, we highly recommend "Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice," visit https://bookshop.org/a/8011/9780593493120 (Bookshop) and https://amzn.to/4nZbSAZ (Amazon)

For an eye-opening book about an American teen girl who becomes trapped in the underworld of human trafficking, we highly recommend "The Life I'm In" for ages 14 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/the-life-i-m-in

For a moving memoir by a woman dedicated to ending the trafficking of girls in the U.S. as the founder of Girls Are Not For Sale, who herself is a survivor, check out “Girls Like Us: Fighting for a World Where Girls Are Not for Sale” at https://www.amightygirl.com/girls-like-us-for-sale

For an excellent though challenging novel about one Nepalese girl's experience being trafficked into prostitution, we recommend "Sold" for readers 14 and up at https://www.amightygirl.com/sold

For a powerful book for teen readers about how girls and women are fighting against child marriage, s*x trafficking, and gender discrimination around the world, we highly recommend "Girl Rising: Changing the World One Girl at a Time," for ages 13 and up, visit https://www.amightygirl.com/girl-rising-book

For two inspiring books for young readers filled with practical advice on how to make change on issues they care about, we recommend "Start Now! You Can Make a Difference!" for ages 7 to 11 (https://www.amightygirl.com/start-now) and "It's Your World! Get Informed, Get Inspired, & Get Going!" for ages 10 and up (https://www.amightygirl.com/it-s-your-world)

08/03/2026

The Stick

This morning I finished my usual two mile walk.The last stretch is always the hardest. Not because of the hill, but because I know what is waiting for me at the end.

An empty house.

Howard is gone.
Colby is gone.
Mocha is gone.

As I turned toward home, I felt my feet begin to drag, almost without realizing it. Grief has a way of making the body tell the truth before the mind catches up.

Then Colby came into my thoughts.

I remembered the walks we used to take together. Whenever we headed up the hill, he would gradually slow down. Slower. Then slower still. I would smile, wait for him, and we’d make our way home together at his pace.

As that memory drifted through my mind, I looked down. There, lying almost directly in my path, was the perfect stick.

Not just any stick.

A Colby stick.

The kind he would have proudly picked up and carried through the neighborhood as if he’d discovered buried treasure. I could almost see him trotting beside me, head held high, delighted with his prize.

I stood there and smiled.

Whether you call it coincidence, synchronicity, memory, or something beyond our understanding doesn’t really matter.

What mattered was how it landed in my heart.

It felt like a gentle whisper.

“We’re still here.”

“It’s okay.”

Grief has changed the way I notice the world. I no longer rush past small things. Some people will dismiss moments like these.

I don’t need them to believe what I experienced.

I only know that for one brief moment, the loneliness loosened its grip. I felt accompanied instead of alone.

06/21/2026

"He did the best he could with the emotional capacity he had." Sometimes that is the hardest truth to sit with.

On a day like today, society tells us we have to choose between flawless praise or bitter resentment. But the human heart lives in the spaces in between. You can love someone and wish things had been different.

If you are holding a complicated relationship in your heart this Father's Day, I wrote a piece just for you. It’s a quiet reminder that today isn't about perfection. It's about the gentle power of grace and the freedom of self-forgiveness.

Head over to the blog to read

Grief, Grace, and the Imperfect Dad by krothstein | Jun 21, 2026 | The Road | 0 comments The Unspoken Weight of Father’s Day Let’s be honest for a moment: most of our lives don’t look like an old-school, black-and-white sitcom. We don’t live in a “Leave It to Beaver” reality where every ...