Protecting My Delusional Optimism at All Costs

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about how the energy we put out has a way of circling back. So when I came across a reel the other night that honestly spoke to my soul, it felt… timely. Jolie Steel was talking about how you can accomplish “damn near anything you want,” but how you go about it matters just as much as getting there.

You can push, force, hustle, control — all fear-based — and yes, you might reach your goal. But you won’t feel calm once you arrive. You’ll still be gripping everything tightly, waiting for something (anything) to go wrong.

Or you can move through life with trust — opening, allowing, receiving, believing things will come together without micromanaging the universe. And when you get there from that place, you actually get to enjoy it. That idea hit me in all the right places.

A little while later, I stumbled on a TikTok from Lucie Fink about how her mom used to tell her, constantly, “You’re so lucky. Good things just happen to you.” Even about the tiny things. And how that shaped her whole attitude, not because her life was perfect, but because she learned to expect that good things would find her.

It made me think about my own default settings. I’ve always been a positive person. I joke that I wear rose-colored glasses when it comes to other people, but it’s true: I look for the good. And I don’t plan on losing that part of myself. Infertility, and losing one of my best friends to breast cancer, taught me that life can be brutal... and somehow still full of bright spots, even in the darkest moments.

For me, it really comes down to this: the energy you put out tends to be the energy you get back. And I’m choosing to keep putting out something hopeful.

Ask Clara:

"How does mindset actually influence stress and wellbeing?"

The Postpartum Chapter That Doesn’t Make the Baby Books

I like to joke that my postpartum experience with the twins was “a lot,” but honestly, that doesn’t even scratch the surface. A vaginal birth with Twin A, a C-section with Twin B, and a postpartum period that brought more challenges than I expected — physically, mentally, and emotionally — it was the kind of initiation into motherhood that changes your brain chemistry in ways you don’t fully understand until much, much later.

So with my third baby (who somehow turns one next week!), I thought I might finally get a simpler recovery. And in many ways, I did. No intense, overwhelming moments, no medical emergencies. I felt strangely… okay.

Until postpartum brain fog showed up.

And not the occasional forgetfulness; the kind where focus feels slippery, words disappear, and everyday tasks require way more effort than they should. As someone whose mind moves a while a minute, I’m no stranger to misplaced thoughts, but this was different. My usual quirks suddenly had layers I couldn’t explain.

The science actually does explain it, though. After birth, estrogen and progesterone levels drop rapidly, and both hormones influence cognition and mood regulation. Sleep fragmentation disrupts the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for planning, memory, and attention. And pregnancy, birth, and breastfeeding can deplete nutrients like DHA, choline, B vitamins, and iron, all of which support neurotransmitter function and mental clarity. 

That’s why I started Needed’s Cognitive Support. It’s built around nutrients and botanicals that actually support cognition postpartum, especially when you’re dealing with hormone shifts, sleep loss, and, in my case, ADHD. It includes Alpha-GPC, a bioavailable choline source for memory and attention; Sensoril® ashwagandha to help regulate occasional stress when sleep is fragmented; Bacopa monnieri to support memory and processing; CognatiQ® coffee fruit extract, a stimulant-free ingredient shown to support cognitive performance; and phosphatidylserine, which helps maintain healthy brain cell function. For me, it hasn’t been a dramatic before-and-after — just a steadier, more accessible version of my brain on the days I need it most.

I’ve loved Needed’s products for years and truly depend on them, which is why I’m so excited to finally be partnering together. If you’re thinking about trying them, use my code GIRLHOOD20 for an extra 20% off your first purchase. It even works on subscriptions and already discounted plans! 

If you're in the thick of it, remember this: postpartum brain fog is real, it’s common, and it does lift... even if you need a little bit of help to get there.

Ask Clara:

"Why does postpartum brain fog happen?"

Another Decision for Parents Who Can’t Even Pick a Show

This week, ACIP (the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel) voted 8–3 to change the long-standing guideline that all newborns receive the Hepatitis B vaccine at birth. If the baby's mother tests negative for Hep B, the shot is now categorized as “shared decision-making.” Translation: parents and providers will decide together whether to give it in the hospital or delay it.

My first reaction was immediate and visceral: If this decision had been handed to me in those first 24 hours postpartum, I would’ve spiraled. I remember lying in that hospital bed after my twins were born — exhausted, stitched, overwhelmed, trying to make sense of what had just happened to my body and my life. If someone had asked, “Do you want the Hep B vaccine now or wait?” I wouldn’t have had the capacity to process the question, let alone the risk. 

But here’s why the birth dose existed in the first place. Since the early ’90s, universal newborn vaccination has helped drive childhood Hep B infections down by roughly 99%. The vaccine is extremely effective when given within 24 hours, and infants who contract Hep B are far more likely to develop lifelong chronic infection, which can lead to liver disease and cancer. Screening helps, but it isn’t perfect — infections can be missed, acquired later in pregnancy, or come from household contacts.

The American Academy of Pediatrics responded almost immediately, reaffirming that the birth dose is still the safest, most effective way to protect infants, emphasizing that chronic infection is far more likely when the vaccine is delayed. In their words: timing matters.

That’s what made the birth dose a safety net. A simple, predictable layer of protection.

Now? Parents may get different answers depending on the hospital, the provider, or the philosophy of the moment. And that feels less like choice and more like pressure, especially for people who are already depleted, hormonal, and trying to keep a tiny human alive.

If you’re expecting, consider asking about Hep B before delivery, when your brain is still functioning. And ask directly: “What’s the actual risk of delaying this?” Their answer might tell you more than the policy does.

Ask Clara:

"What are some pregnancy-safe acne treatments?"

Learning to Let People Not Be “My People”

It’s taken me 36.75 years to realize that not everyone has to be my cup of tea. Which, if you know me, feels almost groundbreaking. I should start by saying: I’m a Pisces. I generally assume I’ll get along with most people, and honestly, I usually do.

I’ve never been someone with a huge group of best friends — I get along with many, but I’m close with a select few. Still, there are very few people in this world I genuinely struggle to have a conversation with.

And yet, last week at a holiday party, I met someone where… it just wasn’t landing. The small talk felt effortful. The energy was off. And of course, instead of just moving on with my life, I spent the next 48 hours replaying every interaction like I was studying game tape.

Was I awkward? Did I misread the whole thing? Why is this bothering me so much?

Somewhere around Sunday night, it finally clicked: it’s okay if I don’t connect with everyone. It doesn’t make them wrong. It doesn’t make me wrong. It just means we’re not each other’s people, and that's allowed.

But for someone who’s spent most of her life trying to be approachable, warm, and easy to talk to, that realization felt like unlearning a very old reflex — the belief that if the vibe is off, I must have caused it. When really, sometimes two humans just aren’t a fit. No drama, no deeper meaning, no character flaw to investigate.

Protecting my energy, I’m learning, means accepting that not everyone will get it (or me). And that maybe nothing has to be “wrong” for two people not to click. A reminder that not every interaction deserves a postmortem, and not every mismatch needs fixing.

Ask Clara:

"Why do women so often take it personally when someone doesn’t click with us?"

The Great Lock-In (A Trend I Can Actually Get Behind)

When I first heard about “The Great Lock-In,” I braced for another internet challenge built to make us feel inadequate. But, believe it or not, this one feels… reasonable. The idea is simple: spend the last stretch of the year tightening up the habits that support you — not in a dramatic self-reinvention way, but in a “let’s steady the ship a little” way.

Social media is full of people documenting these micro-shifts:

"I think that the best thing you can do for yourself is to have the audacity to want more than what everyone else around you has settled for." -@audrey_fit

"Please know that it's okay to take three months to lock in on rest, healing, financial savings, and softness." -@twelve21am

And my personal favorite: “If I could stay committed to an oversized mama's boy, I can stay committed to showing up for myself” -@chelseyfromladder

It all feels refreshingly honest, a trend that acknowledges growth doesn’t have to mean pushing harder or becoming a hyper-optimized version of yourself. Healing counts. Rest counts. Choosing a different path for yourself counts.

I get it. During my fertility journey, I learned that the only manageable way forward was one day at a time. Not in a motivational-poster sense, but in a survival sense. You focus on the next right thing, the one step you can actually take, and you let the rest go. In a strange way, The Great Lock-In echoes that mindset: small, steady choices instead of a dramatic overhaul.

And maybe that’s why I’ve slipped into my own version without even realizing it. About a month ago, I committed to Pilates twice a week — not to get smaller, but to get myself out of the house, because working, sleeping, and attempting to exercise in the same four walls was starting to break my brain. It’s not glamorous, but leaving my house for that one hour has made everything feel a little quieter, a little less compressed. It’s one of the few moments in my week where my brain actually gets to be in one place at a time.

What I like most about The Great Lock-In is that it isn’t asking us to reinvent ourselves by January. It’s simply reminding us to look at our lives with a little more honesty. What’s helping? What isn’t? And what tiny shift might make tomorrow feel just a touch more manageable? It’s a reset: quiet, steady, and actually doable.

Ask Clara:

"How do I build habits that can survive real life?"

What We Get Wrong About Teen Pregnancy

Curling up with The Girls Who Grew Big, I thought it would be the kind of novel you unwind with at the end of the day. By page twenty, I was already thinking, Oh right… we were never actually taught any of this. Not in a way that made sense for real girls with real bodies in real situations. What I assumed would be a simple coming-of-age story turned into a far more honest conversation about teen pregnancy — one we should’ve had years ago.

And definitely not the version of sex ed many of us grew up with, where the message was basically: “If you have sex, you will get pregnant… and die.” That old script trained us to see teen pregnancy as a moral failure instead of a human experience. This book does the opposite. It refuses to flatten these girls into cautionary tales.

What it captures so beautifully is that complicated in-between space: when a girl is still very much a girl, yet suddenly expected to carry adult responsibilities (and consequences). As I read, I kept thinking about how unprepared most of us were for our own bodies at that age. Fear was handed to us instead of education. Judgment showed up long before support ever did.

So is it any surprise that teen pregnancy still carries such heavy stigma? We shame girls for outcomes we never equipped them to navigate. We expect them to protect themselves without giving them the language, context, or confidence to do so, and then act shocked when they’re left piecing together adulthood in the dark.

And honestly? Rescripted’s State of Sex Ed Report backs that up. Only 35% of women said sex ed helped them understand the menstrual cycle and pregnancy prevention. We weren’t misremembering; we were undereducated.

What moved me most in The Girls Who Grew Big were the moments the girls start recognizing their own bigness: the emotional, brave, terrifying kind that arrives way too early. Watching them navigate friendships, family expectations, the healthcare system, and the fragile hope that they’re still allowed to dream is heartbreaking... and profoundly hopeful.

Girlhood doesn’t end the moment a pregnancy test turns positive. Pregnant teens are just as deserving of compassion, options, and possibilities as any other young person still learning who they are and who they hope to become.

Ask Clara:

"Why is there so much stigma around teen pregnancy?"

The Return of the “Good Girl” Body

I’ve been thinking a lot about how diet culture didn’t disappear; it just learned how to blend in. What used to sound like “being good” or “watching your weight” now gets repackaged as “optimizing,” “clean eating,” “hormone balancing,” or “longevity.” The words changed; the pressure didn’t.

And lately, that pressure feels louder than ever. There’s this whole dialogue happening online about how women in Hollywood just keep shrinking — the same unmistakable trend, everywhere you look. And, of course, young girls are seeing it, which makes it hard not to feel like we’re inching back toward those early-2000s beauty standards we all swore we’d outgrown.

Meanwhile, the rest of us are just trying to get through the day while being fed a nonstop scroll of “wellness.” One minute you’re minding your business, and the next you’re mentally tracking glucose, fasting until noon, avoiding seed oils, lifting heavy, healing your gut, sleeping eight hours, keeping cortisol low, hitting 10,000 steps, and drinking a $14 green juice that tastes like regret. And somehow we’re also expected to have opinions about medications none of us had even heard of three years ago.

The wildest part? It’s sold as empowerment.

But honestly, there are days when “wellness” feels less like caring for myself and more like trying to get an A+ in womanhood. Like there’s this quiet, judgmental narrator grading me on a rubric I never agreed to. And I see the same pressure in my friends — smart, steady, wildly capable women — who can handle real-life crises but still feel compelled to manage a forehead line at 35.

Sometimes I wonder what would happen if wellness actually meant feeling at home in our bodies. Not fixing them. Not managing them like projects. Just being in them.

Girls aren’t born worrying about macros or inflammation or whether their breakfast “supports blood sugar.” They learn it. Which means maybe we can learn something different, too.

Ask Clara:

"Why is diet culture so toxic?"

For Good: What Wicked Reminds Us About Female Friendship

I took my 7-year-old Wicked-obsessed daughter to see Wicked: For Good, and it was a magical experience (pun very much intended). Longtime readers know I was a full-blown theater kid, the kind who lived for cast recordings and has collected over 50 playbills since high school. So watching both Wicked movies with my daughter, and with my best friend and her daughter, felt like witnessing a core memory in real time.

And the movie did not disappoint. 

I don’t think there was a dry eye in the theater when Glinda and Elphaba (or really, Ari and Cynthia) sang “For Good.” And that final shot with the nod to the original show poster? Jon M. Chu, you win. I can die happy now.

What struck me most, though, was how quickly it transported me back to the girl I was before I became a wife and mom: the girl who loved stories, dreamed big, and didn’t apologize for being dramatic in all the best ways. There’s something about being in your late 30s that makes you want to revisit those early passions — not in a midlife-crisis way, but in a “Wait, that’s still me” kind of way.

And Wicked, for so many of us, was never just a musical. It was an introduction to the idea that female friendship can be messy and transformative. That you can be ambitious and complicated and not always likable... and still be deeply loved. That the people who challenge you aren’t necessarily holding you back; sometimes they’re the ones pushing you forward.

Watching my daughter take it all in reminded me how rare it is to see stories that center on that kind of connection without making it a subplot. Wicked lets women be the whole story: flaws, flying monkeys, and all.

Ask Clara:

"Why is genuine human connection good for your health?"

Preterm Birth Report Card: Why a D+ Isn’t Just a Grade

When I saw the news that the U.S. earned a D+ (again) for preterm births, my body reacted before my mind even caught up. The grade comes from the March of Dimes’ 2025 Report Card, which tracks maternal and infant health across the country each year. And even though my own brush with preterm labor happened back in 2018, there’s still a part of me that remembers exactly what it feels like when a pregnancy suddenly tilts from “routine” to “uncertain.”

I was 27 weeks with my twins when a standard scan turned into an unexpected sprint to the hospital. One day my cervix looked perfectly normal; the next, it had shortened dramatically, and I was contracting every few minutes without realizing it. It’s such a surreal shift — going from thinking about your baby shower to being on bed rest, trying to steady yourself while everything around you changes.

So when I see that D+, it doesn’t land like a distant statistic. It hits in the place that remembers how fragile those moments are, and how deeply the quality of your care shapes what happens next. I was incredibly fortunate. I had a hospital close by, doctors who didn’t hesitate, and the privilege of hearing, “We’re keeping you here until it’s safe.” Not everyone gets that sentence. In fact, according to the March of Dimes, half of U.S. states received a D or an F, and more states saw their preterm birth rates worsen than improve.

And those disparities baked into the numbers? They’re not about biology. They’re about access, longstanding inequities, and the reality that some mothers are navigating pregnancy with far fewer supports than others. If a healthy pregnancy can unravel overnight, imagine facing that same fear without the safety nets so many of us assume will be there.

That’s why this grade matters. Not because it’s disappointing, but because it’s personal. It’s lived. It’s a reflection of the women who’ve been through it, the women who weren’t supported, and the women who still won’t be unless something drastically changes.

Ask Clara:

"What puts someone at higher risk for preterm birth?"

Pilates, But Make It Strength

Lately, it feels like everyone is choosing sides in the low-impact vs. high-impact conversation, as if your workout says something about your entire personality. Are you the person who lifts heavy and crushes intervals, or the person who prioritizes cortisol regulation and long walks? And stuck in the middle of that false divide is Pilates, which somehow still gets labeled as the “gentle” option.

But here’s the thing I’ve had to unlearn: Pilates is strength. Full stop. Those slow, controlled movements light up muscles traditional training barely taps. The shaking isn’t a sign of weakness; it’s your stabilizers finally being invited to the party. I spent years thinking Pilates was something you added to your real routine, and now I can’t unsee how foundational it actually is.

What feels especially relevant right now, in a world where so many of us are dealing with autoimmune conditions, burnout, or just chronic fatigue from trying to be everything to everyone, is that Pilates challenges you without wiping you out. It’s effort without aftermath. Strength without the system overload. And that kind of consistency-friendly movement is wildly underrated.

Pilates also forces you to pay attention in a way high-intensity workouts sometimes let you bypass. You can’t rush through it. You can’t zone out. You have to listen. Which, ironically, is exactly how you get stronger when you have a chronic illness or a sensitive nervous system in the first place.

So if you’ve ever brushed off Pilates as “extra” or “not enough,” consider this your reminder that low-impact does not mean low-strength. Sometimes the savviest thing you can do for your body is choose the kind of hard that supports you, not the kind that depletes you.

Ask Clara:

"What are the benefits of low-impact exercise?"