Hope with Holly

Men and women can live in the exact same town, walk the exact same streets, and experience two very different realities. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

When a man tells me he never locks his doors because he feels perfectly safe, I believe him.

What I need him to understand is that his feeling safe does not mean women are equally safe.

Women learn very young to calculate risk.

Where did I park?
Who is walking behind me?
Should I tell someone where I’m going?
Is my drink safe?
Should I meet him somewhere public?
Did I lock the door?
Does he know where I live?
How do I reject him without making him angry?

And the statistics explain why.

Globally, roughly 1 in 3 women experience physical and/or s*xual violence in their lifetime. In the United States, about 1 in 5 women report having experienced completed or attempted r**e.

That doesn’t mean all men are dangerous. It doesn’t mean men aren’t victims of violence. And it certainly doesn’t mean women should spend their lives terrified of men.

It means the risk is real enough that dismissing women as paranoid, dramatic, traumatized, or “afraid of everything” completely misses the point.

And here’s what I find particularly strange:

Some men proudly call themselves the “protectors of women” while knowing remarkably little about the violence women are actually protecting themselves from.

If you genuinely love women, listen to women.

Learn about s*xual violence.
Learn about intimate-partner violence.
Learn about stalking.
Learn about coercive control.
Learn why women develop the safety habits we do.

You don’t have to personally experience someone’s vulnerability to take it seriously.

And women: awareness is not helplessness.

Learn the risks. Trust observable behavior. Build your independence. Learn boundaries. Create community. Have a safety plan when appropriate.

Then go build your life.

Because being aware of the world we live in doesn’t mean we have to be afraid to live in it.

Love,
Hope with Holly

I spent years trying to “break” spiritual causes of pain when what I actually needed was to understand trauma. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

In my early 20s, I was trained in a church-based inner healing model influenced by John and Paula Sandford. We talked about generational sin, bitter-root judgments, inner vows, prenatal wounds, strongholds, and demonic influence—and we believed prayer, repentance, forgiveness, and deliverance could bring healing.

The problem is that people were disclosing real trauma, abuse, grief, family dysfunction, and mental-health struggles to people like me who were not licensed therapists.

Prayer can be meaningful. Faith can be supportive. Churches can absolutely be part of someone’s healing.

But prayer is not trauma therapy.

And when churches blur that line, people can spend years spiritualizing symptoms that actually need competent mental-health care.

Every church offering counseling should either have a properly licensed mental-health professional involved or have a clear referral relationship with one.

People deserve more than good intentions.

They deserve informed, ethical care.

Some s*xism is easy to recognize. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

Other s*xism shows up dressed like love, protection, romance, and respect.

That’s benevolent s*xism.

It can sound like:

“Women are naturally better caregivers.”
“A real man should make the decisions.”
“Women shouldn’t have to worry about money.”
“Women are too precious for certain jobs.”
“A man should protect his woman.”

And here’s the nuance: kindness is not s*xism. Protection is not s*xism. Providing is not s*xism. Traditional relationships are not automatically s*xist.

The problem is when those things are built on the belief that women are less capable, less competent, less independent, or need men to direct their lives.

A healthy relationship can include care, protection, provision, and generosity without taking away a woman’s agency.

A question worth asking:

Does this person’s care increase my freedom, or quietly reduce it?

You can be deeply loved and cared for without surrendering authority over your own life.

I have complex PTSD. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

For a long time, I didn’t understand why certain situations could create such a huge emotional response in me. Why criticism could cut so deeply. Why conflict could feel threatening. Why my brain could go into fight, flight, freeze, or fawn before I even had time to think.

I scored a 9 out of 10 on the Adverse Childhood Experiences quiz. That score doesn’t diagnose CPTSD, but it helped me understand the amount of chronic stress and trauma my nervous system had adapted to. Eventually, I was diagnosed with complex PTSD by my therapist.

But a diagnosis isn’t where the story ends.

I’ve had to learn how to notice when I’m triggered, identify what I’m feeling, regulate my nervous system, question the story my brain is telling me, communicate instead of react, set boundaries when something really is unhealthy, and repair things when I get it wrong.

Because life does not stop being hard just because you start healing.

People disappoint you. Relationships change. Grief happens. Money gets tight. Your children grow up. People leave. S**t happens.

Healing isn’t creating a life where nothing ever triggers you.

It’s building enough awareness, skills, and self-trust that when life happens, your trauma doesn’t automatically get to run the show.

I’ve been through some s**t.

But I am stubborn as hell about believing life can still be good. 💜

Anguish and despair. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

That’s the closest language I have for this season of my life.

Grief. Rejection. Abandonment. Anger. Helplessness. Sadness.

Most days it feels like there is a hole in my chest with cold rain pouring through it.

And I wish I could tell you that because I’m a coach, I know exactly how to make it stop.

I don’t. It’s a human emotion.

I have to coach myself through this s**t too.

I have to remind myself not to shame the pain. To let myself cry. To keep eating, showering, working, moving, connecting, and participating in my own life even when part of me wants to disappear into bed and stay there.

And now I’m aware that surviving cannot be the whole plan.

I also have to intentionally make room for pleasure, beauty, laughter, connection, curiosity, peace, and awe.

Not because those things erase grief.

Because I need to keep reminding my brain that grief is not the only thing happening in my life.

This season may last longer than I want it to.

So I’m playing the long game.

One million tiny choices to keep choosing life while something in my life still hurts.

Maybe healing isn’t always making the grief disappear.

Maybe sometimes healing is making your life bigger until grief is no longer the biggest thing in it.

And just to be clear: I’m sharing how I’m coping while I’m still able to function. If you’re loosing hope, unable to care for yourself, or feel unsafe with yourself, that deserves immediate professional support — not just self-help.

Love is important. But love by itself does not create a healthy relationship. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

Healthy relationships require skills—and those skills can be learned.

The five I would put at the top of the list are:

1. Self-awareness
2. Emotional regulation
3. Communication
4. Conflict & repair
5. Boundaries & interdependence

You do not need to be perfectly healed, perfectly regulated, or perfectly skilled to deserve love.

But if you want a relationship that is healthy enough to last, both people need to be willing to learn, take responsibility, repair what they damage, and keep growing.

Because a relationship is a garden—and one person cannot tend the whole thing alone. 🌿

Patriarchy is real. But that does not mean women are powerless. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

We can understand the system we inherited without allowing it to define what happens next.

Build financial independence. Build a life that does not revolve around being chosen. Learn how power works. Question the rules you inherited. Choose relationships that expand you. Build strong community with other women. Use your anger constructively. Learn women’s history. Reject internalized misogyny. And remember: systems created by humans can be changed by humans.

Women before us changed laws, institutions, expectations, and opportunities that once looked permanent.

We are not starting from zero.

The goal is not to become bitter toward men. The goal is to become harder to control, harder to silence, and more capable of building a life that actually belongs to you.

Patriarchy may have shaped the world you inherited.

It does not get to decide the woman you become.

Success is creating a life you don’t constantly need to escape from. Follow Hope With Holly for more.

Yes, money matters. Financial stability matters. Being able to pay your bills, take care of yourself, save for the future, and have choices can make life significantly easier.

But money is not the same thing as a good life.

You can have a huge house, a high income, and an impressive retirement account and still be lonely, emotionally miserable, disconnected from your family, or trapped in an unhealthy relationship.

Real success also looks like:

Having people you can call when life falls apart.
Knowing how to regulate yourself when you’re overwhelmed.
Being able to communicate, apologize, and repair relationships.
Having friendships and community.
Taking care of your physical and mental health.
Having purpose and something meaningful to contribute.
Feeling safe enough in your own life that you don’t constantly need to numb yourself or run away from it.

Build financial security.

But also build emotional maturity, relationships, community, health, meaning, and peace.

Because the goal isn’t to have a life that looks impressive to everybody else.

The goal is to build a life you actually want to be present for.

“Define a woman.” Follow Hope With Holly for more.

That question is often used as a gotcha, but human biology and human identity are more complicated than a two-word answer.

A woman is an adult person whose gender identity is female—a gender category historically associated with the female s*x.

Most women are cisgender. Most have XX chromosomes and typical female reproductive anatomy. But most is not the same thing as all.

Not every woman has a uterus.
Not every woman can give birth.
Not every woman menstruates.
And chromosomes, hormones, reproductive anatomy, and gender identity do not line up exactly the same way in every human being.

I think about it like motherhood.

Acknowledging an adoptive mother doesn’t erase a biological mother.

Or citizenship.

Acknowledging a naturalized American doesn’t erase an American who was born here.

And I love Cindy Noir’s analogy of womanhood being like a neighborhood: the houses don’t all look exactly alike, but they can still belong to the same neighborhood.

Recognizing transgender women does not require pretending biological s*x isn’t real.

We can understand biological s*x.
We can understand gender.
We can understand that they are related but not identical.
And we can still treat people with dignity.

Your doctor may need to know your reproductive anatomy.

The woman standing beside you in Target does not.

You don’t have to understand someone’s entire life experience before deciding they deserve respect.

💜 I’ll also be hosting a transgender retreat this November in the Charlotte, North Carolina area, creating a safe and supportive space for transgender adults to connect, heal, and simply be themselves.

I also have upcoming women’s retreats in September, October, and November for women who are ready to heal, reconnect with themselves, build self-respect, and create lives that actually feel like their own.

If you’re interested in either retreat, send me a message or check the link in my bio.

Human beings are complicated. Respect really doesn’t have to be.