I Just Learned to Handle Things

When we came back to Texas, life with my mom was different.

My dad lived about five hours away, so I saw him during holidays and summers. He came to my eighth-grade graduation, but he wasn't part of my everyday life anymore.

My mom worked full time, and when she came home, she would often get dressed and go back out. In those first few years, I hated watching her leave.

There were nights when I would chase her down the driveway crying, “Momma, don't leave me.”

But she left anyway.

Eventually, I stopped chasing.

Going to the bar with her became normal too. This was the '90s, and there were other kids around sometimes, so parts of it could actually be fun. But there were also times when my mom would disappear. Sometimes I went home with a friend because I didn't know where she had gone.

So I learned to get myself home.

I started driving when I was eleven. My dad gave me my first car when I was twelve. There were nights when I drove myself home because my mom had left with someone else.

At twelve, I took over the checkbook too.

Bills weren't always getting paid. Things would get shut off. There wasn't always food in the house. I learned to eat as much as I could at school, grab an extra breakfast or lunch when one was available, or eat at a friend's house.

But even then, I didn't think there was something wrong with my childhood.

This was simply my life, and I knew how to handle it.

And I wasn't completely alone.

I had incredible teachers who cared about me. My friends' parents cared about me too. They fed me, looked out for me, and gave me places where I was welcome. I had people around me who loved me, even if I didn't yet understand that some of them were filling spaces that normally would have been filled by a parent.

My mom never came to my school functions. Not the talent shows when I was little, the sports I played later, or theater in high school.

But at the time, I wasn't standing on a stage or playing a game thinking about what I was missing.

I was living my life.

I was independent because I had to be, although I didn't know that yet. I figured things out. I solved problems. I took care of myself.

And somewhere along the way, I also became someone other people trusted with their problems.

By the time I reached ninth grade, something I had been doing naturally since elementary school became a little more official. I was certified through the college as a peer mediator.

Even as a little kid, friends would tell me about problems happening in their families. I would listen, talk things through with them, and try to help them feel better. I've always been drawn to the underdog—the person who feels misunderstood, overlooked, different, or simply needs someone in their corner.

In ninth grade, the adults around me recognized that ability too. I wasn't tied to one particular clique. I had friends everywhere, and I could sit between people without immediately taking a side. I listened. I tried to understand what was actually happening underneath the conflict.

I didn't know anything about trauma coaching then. I hadn't studied psychology. I certainly hadn't heard of Human Design.

I just knew how to listen to people without making their story about me.

I didn't know anything about trauma coaching then.

I hadn't studied psychology.

I certainly hadn't heard of Human Design.

I just knew how to listen to people without making their story about me.

And then, at fifteen years old, my life changed again.

I became a mother.

Surviving Was the Only Thing I Knew

Life kept moving, because it always does.

I eventually moved to College Station and had my second daughter in 2000. Her father was verbally abusive and controlling. I wasn't really free to just live my life or make my own choices. When he was supposed to leave for the military, I went to Indiana to visit my family.

He never ended up going.

And I never went back.

I stayed in Indiana with my sisters and began building another life there.

A few years later, in 2003, I had my third child—my son.

By then, I had spent most of my life doing what I knew how to do best: survive, adapt, take care of everyone, and keep moving.

But after my son was born, I fell into a depression.

And for the first time, instead of simply pushing through it, I started looking backward.

I started talking about my childhood. Really talking about it. I began telling someone else the stories that had always seemed completely normal to me.

And hearing another person's reaction to those stories changed something.

Things I had never considered traumatic suddenly sounded very different when I said them out loud.

Driving myself home at eleven.

Managing bills at twelve.

Finding food wherever I could.

A mother who rarely showed up.

Different men moving in and out of our lives.

Losing both of my parents before I had really even entered adulthood.

I began realizing that the childhood I remembered as happy could also have been traumatic.

Both things could be true.

I had been a happy child.

And I had been a child who wasn't always properly cared for.

That realization brought up a lot—including anger toward my mom. For a while, I looked at everything she hadn't done. Everything I hadn't received. Everything I had been forced to figure out far too young.

But looking backward also helped me begin climbing out of the depression.

I started finding pieces of myself again.

And as I changed, my marriage changed too.

My husband at the time felt that I wasn't the same person anymore.

He was right.

I wasn't.

But I wasn't becoming someone completely new.

I was becoming myself again.

That marriage eventually ended, and I returned to Texas with my children.

My healing certainly wasn't finished. In many ways, it had barely begun. There would be more relationships, more lessons, more survival, and plenty of things I still didn't understand about myself.

But something fundamental had changed.

For the first time in my life, I wasn't only asking:

“How do I get through this?”

I was beginning to ask:

“Why am I carrying this in the first place?”

Then I Met Someone Who Stayed

In 2013, I met Tyler.

By then, I had three children. Tyler had a little boy,, who was three when I came into his life. Tyler had gotten custody of him when he was only eighteen months old, and before he turned four, his biological mother stepped away.

Our families became one.

Tyler and I didn't have a perfect relationship—I'm not sure I believe those exist—but it was different from the relationships I had known before.

We weren't fighting and arguing all the time. There wasn't the chaos I had become accustomed to navigating. But we were still two people bringing our histories into a relationship.

Tyler had trauma of his own, particularly surrounding his relationship with his mother. I had mine. Sometimes those experiences affected the way we responded to situations and to each other, even when neither of us completely understood why.

But there was something different between us.

We were willing to understand each other.

And over the years, that willingness became one of the most important parts of our relationship.

Tyler gave me something I hadn't always had in relationships: the freedom to keep becoming myself.

He has loved me while I've healed, changed, learned, created, changed directions, started businesses, written books, chased ideas, and occasionally disappeared down whatever research rabbit hole caught my attention that week.

And I've loved him through his healing too.

We became partners.

Eventually, we became best friends.

I can tell him anything without worrying that he's going to judge me. And somewhere along the way, I began learning that a relationship didn't have to require one person to stop evolving in order for the other person to feel safe.

Two people could heal and evolve together.

I didn't know it yet, but one of those random research rabbit holes was about to give both of us an entirely new way of understanding each other.

And, eventually, everyone else in our family too.

It started with blood.

Because apparently that's how some of the biggest changes in my life begin:

I get curious and start researching something. 😂

Then I Had to Understand Myself

Human Design changed the way I understood my family almost immediately.

But eventually, I had to turn everything I was learning back toward myself.

For most of my life, I had been a person who just kept going.

I raised children. I worked. I took care of people. I solved problems. I started over when I needed to. I survived relationships, losses, motherhood, businesses, and whatever else life put in front of me.

I was always doing something.

But as a Projector, I began understanding that some of the way I had learned to move through the world wasn't necessarily how I was naturally designed to function.

I had become incredibly good at surviving.

But survival and alignment aren't the same thing.

Human Design gave me a starting point. It helped me recognize pieces of myself that felt natural—and begin noticing the things that didn't.

And that's when the harder questions started.

If this isn't actually who I am, where did it come from?

Was it something I had been taught?

Was it something I learned because of a relationship?

Was it something I developed because, at some point, it kept me safe?

Was it a trauma response?

And if it wasn't really mine, why was I still carrying it?

I entered a period I call my dark night of the soul.

For roughly two years, I stepped away from almost everything outside my immediate family. I left social media. I pulled away from friendships and much of the outside noise.

I went inward.

And I started taking apart my own life.

My childhood. My relationships. My parenting. My reactions. My beliefs. My patterns. The things I had survived and the things I had normalized simply because I had lived with them for so long.

It wasn't my first experience with healing. I had already spent years looking backward, learning about trauma, working through depression, studying psychology, and helping other people understand their own experiences.

But this was deeper.

Human Design had given me something I hadn't had before:

a clearer picture of who I believed I was underneath everything that had happened to me.

From there, I could begin separating the pieces.

First, understand who I am.

Then identify what doesn't belong.

Trace it backward.

Understand where it came from, why it developed, and what it had once been trying to do for me.

And then decide whether I still needed to carry it.

I didn't know it at the time, but I was beginning to build the process I would eventually call The GUIDE Method™.

I wasn't trying to become somebody new.

Just like years earlier when I had climbed out of depression, I was doing something that has repeated throughout my life:

I was finding my way back to myself.

We Learned to Heal Together

Human Design didn't only change the way I understood my children.

It changed my marriage.

Tyler and I already had a good relationship, but we were still two people with completely different histories, different ways of moving through the world, and our own things to heal.

Before Human Design, I could recognize many of Tyler's trauma responses. Understanding trauma had been part of my life for years.

But I didn't always know what was trauma and what was simply Tyler.

Human Design helped me see the difference.

It taught me that he needed choices. It helped me understand his energy and the way he naturally responded to the world. And at the same time, it showed me how differently I was designed to move through life.

Tyler is a Generator.

I'm a Projector.

For years, I had lived like I was supposed to keep going and going and going. Work harder. Do more. Take care of everyone. Handle everything.

Tyler actually has that go-go-go energy.

I don't.

Understanding that was one thing.

Having a partner who allowed me to actually live it was another.

Tyler has given me room to slow down, change direction, explore whatever I'm curious about, build things, abandon things that no longer fit, heal, create, and continually become more of myself.

And I've tried to give him that same space.

We've learned each other's triggers. We've learned when something happening between us isn't actually about the other person. We've learned how to communicate through things rather than automatically reacting to them.

We haven't done it perfectly.

We've done it together.

Over thirteen years, that man has become my best friend.

I can tell him anything without feeling judged. He has loved me through healing, and I've loved him through healing.

That experience has shaped the way I work with couples too.

I don't believe understanding automatically means two people should stay together. Sometimes understanding gives people the clarity to recognize that a relationship needs to end.

But sometimes two people really do love each other and simply don't understand the person standing in front of them.

Trauma gets triggered.

Differences get interpreted as rejection.

One person's natural way of functioning gets taken personally by the other.

And two people who love each other can spend years fighting against things neither of them fully understands.

Tyler and I taught each other something I now carry into my work:

You don't have to be completely healed before you can be loved.

Sometimes, when two people are willing, you can love each other through the healing.

And you can evolve together.

I Was Always The Guide

For a long time, I thought all the different parts of my life were separate.

The little girl listening to her friends talk about problems at home.

The ninth grader trained as a peer mediator.

The teenage mother trying to figure out how to raise a child while she was still growing up herself.

The woman studying psychology and child development.

The daycare provider caring for children who didn't all experience the world the same way.

The trauma coach helping people understand what happened to them.

The Human Design guide helping people understand who they are underneath it.

The woman sitting with couples trying to understand each other.

The real estate agent helping someone navigate a move.

The lender and financial strategist helping someone figure out how to build the life they're trying to reach.

The author putting everything she's learned into words so it can reach someone she may never meet.

For years, those looked like different things.

Now I understand that I've been doing the same thing all along.

I meet people where they are.

I listen.

I look at the bigger picture.

I try to understand what's underneath what they're experiencing.

And then I help them find a path from where they are to where they want to go.

That's what a GUIDE does.

I don't believe my job is to tell someone who they should become.

I don't want people to need me forever.

I want to help them understand themselves well enough that eventually, they don't.

Sometimes that means understanding your Human Design.

Sometimes it means identifying a trauma response you've carried for decades.

Sometimes it's understanding your child instead of trying to change them.

Sometimes it's recognizing why you and your partner keep triggering each other.

Sometimes it's figuring out how to buy a house, build financial stability, make a huge life change, or finally take the next step toward something you've wanted for years.

The subject changes.

The work underneath it doesn't.

That's what eventually became The GUIDE Method™:

Gather. Understand. Identify. Discover. Evolve.

Gather where you are and what you're experiencing.

Understand who you naturally are.

Identify what is truly yours—and what may be conditioning, beliefs, patterns, or trauma responses.

Discover where those things came from and why they developed.

And then evolve beyond what no longer belongs to you.

It's the process I use when I help other people because, in one form or another, it's the process I've spent my own life living.

It's also why I wrote Parenting Through Understanding.

It's why I created the Miriam the Guide app.

It's why there are more books sitting inside me waiting to be written.

And it's why I don't see real estate, finances, relationships, parenting, Human Design, trauma, or personal growth as completely separate worlds.

They're all pieces of a life.

And I care about the whole person living it.

Maybe that's also why I've always found the underdog.

The child nobody quite understands.

The adult who has spent a lifetime believing something is wrong with them.

The person starting over.

The parent who loves their child desperately but doesn't know how to reach them.

The couple who can't understand why love doesn't seem to be enough.

The person who knows they want something different but has absolutely no idea how to get there.

I know what it feels like to figure things out as you go.

I've been doing that my entire life.

But I also know now that we don't have to stay in survival mode forever.

We can understand what shaped us without allowing it to define the rest of our lives.

We can love the people who did the best they knew how to do while still acknowledging the ways they hurt us.

We can take responsibility for the ways our own unhealed pieces have affected other people.

We can learn.

We can heal.

We can choose differently.

We can evolve.

I didn't become “The Guide” when I created a business.

I didn't become her when I discovered Human Design, became certified, started coaching, got into real estate, wrote a book, or built an app.

Looking back, I can see her everywhere.

She was sitting beside another little girl in elementary school, listening to problems she was probably too young to understand and trying to make her friend feel better.

She was standing up for the underdog.

She was mediating conflicts in ninth grade.

She was raising babies while still growing up herself.

She was surviving.

She was healing.

She was learning.

She was becoming.

I didn't become The Guide.

I finally gave a name to the person I'd always been.

And I'm still becoming.

Because I don't believe any of us arrive at some final, perfectly healed version of ourselves.

There is always more to understand.

More to experience.

More to create.

More ways to love.

More opportunities to evolve.

And wherever you are in that process—

I'll meet you there.