Author: Kristine Binder

Yes

Kristine Binder

For most of my life, “yes” came easily — sometimes too easily. I said yes to responsibility, to caregiving, to stepping in, smoothing things over, and holding everything together. I said yes to being strong even when it was quietly breaking me. I said yes to survival because it felt necessary, even when what I really wanted was to live.
That kind of yes kept me moving, but it also kept me stuck.
This year feels different. Not because everything around me has changed, but because I’m willing to respond differently.
This is the year of yes – and yes, most importantly, to myself.
I’m not talking about impulsive decisions or forced optimism. I’m talking about intentional yeses. Yeses to things I’ve never done before. Yeses to invitations I would have declined because they felt uncomfortable or unfamiliar. Yeses to challenges that pull me out of anxiety and into motion.
For a long time, fear made my choices for me. It disguised itself as caution and convinced me that staying where I was kept me safe. But staying where I was didn’t protect me – it just kept me circling the same thoughts and patterns, hoping for change without taking steps toward it.
Saying yes now means choosing experience over imagination. It means allowing myself to try without needing certainty or guarantees. I may not love everything. I may not enjoy every moment. But I am willing to show up and see what happens instead of deciding in advance that something won’t work.
This year of yes is about movement. It’s about curiosity instead of avoidance. It’s about letting action interrupt anxiety. I don’t need every step to feel comfortable –
I just need it to keep moving me forward.
So I’m saying yes – to new experiences, to challenges, to invitations, and to change. Not because I have everything figured out, but because fear doesn’t get to lead anymore.
This is my yes.
And I’m ready to see where it takes me.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Happy

Kristine Binder

“The best gift you can give your children is them seeing you happy.”
Jeremiah Brent

I’ve spent the better part of the last eleven years being angry. At first, I thought anger was what I needed to survive. It felt active, protective, justified. But the truth is, I’m tired of anger. I’m tired of fighting. I’m tired in a way that no amount of rest ever really touches.
What I know now is that beneath the anger has always been sadness.
I’m sad that I lost my immediate family. I’m sad that my children and the people who love me carry anger on my behalf. I’m sad because this is not how I imagined things ending. And I’m sad that people can be cruel in moments when kindness would cost them nothing. My heart has carried all of that for a long time.
The last thirteen months intensified everything. Loss piled on top of loss, and grief was complicated by disappointment, distance, and coldness I wasn’t prepared for. Grief alone is heavy. Grief mixed with betrayal and unkindness settles into the body in ways that change how you move through the world.
I’m tired of living there.
I’ve always been someone who looks for joy. It’s instinctive for me. I’m the helper, the caretaker, the one who holds things together. I know how to create light for others even when I’m running on empty. What I didn’t know how to do – and am learning now – is to choose joy for myself without guilt.
Somewhere along the way, I built walls meant to protect me, but they also kept happiness at arm’s length. I stayed in motion because slowing down felt dangerous. I told myself I was coping, that I was managing, that I was fine. But treading water isn’t the same as swimming, and survival isn’t the same as living.
What shifted for me was realizing how much my kids see.
I don’t want them to see a mother who is always bracing, always exhausted, always carrying the weight of what happened. I don’t want them worrying about me or feeling like they need to protect me. I want them to see what it looks like to choose happiness – not as denial, not as a performance, but as a deliberate act of self-care after years of putting everyone else first.
The gift that keeps on giving isn’t perfection or strength or sacrifice. It’s allowing my children to see me genuinely happy. To see me laugh without restraint. To see me rest without apology. To see me live a life that isn’t defined by grief, even though grief will always be part of my story.
Choosing happiness doesn’t mean the pain disappears. It means it no longer gets to lead. It means I’m allowed to step toward joy even while carrying loss. It means I can honor what I’ve been through without staying stuck there.
I don’t have a dramatic ending or a sudden transformation to offer. What I have is a choice I’m making – again and again – to move toward happiness instead of anger, toward living instead of surviving.
Because Jeremiah Brent is right. The greatest gift I can give my children is letting them see me happy.
I’m still learning how to do that.
But I’m choosing it.
And that choice matters.
For today
and for what comes next
that’s enough.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Becoming

Kristine Binder

Your past does not define your future. Not the good choices you made, not the decisions you aren’t proud of, not the moments that brought you joy, and not the experiences that tore you apart. All of it happened, all of it shaped you, but none of it gets to decide what comes next unless you allow it to.
For a long time, I carried my past like a verdict. I treated certain choices as proof that I should know better by now or that I had somehow failed myself. I replayed moments that went beautifully and moments that broke me open, trying to figure out what they said about who I was and what I deserved. I gave the past far more authority than it ever earned.
What I’m learning, over and over again, is that the past is information, not destiny. It can teach you. It can inform you. It can offer wisdom if you’re willing to listen. But it does not get to write your future on your behalf.
I’ve also come to understand how deeply belief shapes experience. What we expect, we prepare for. What we fear, we rehearse. What we believe we deserve, we either make room for or quietly push away. The energy we carry, consciously or not, has a way of finding its way back to us. What you believe, you receive.
This is a lesson I am still learning. Some days I catch myself slipping into old narratives, bracing for disappointment, waiting for the other shoe to drop, assuming the next chapter will be harder than the last. Other days, I notice that pattern and choose something different. I remind myself that change doesn’t require perfection — it requires progress. Small shifts. Better questions. A little more trust than yesterday.
Calling in the good doesn’t mean ignoring what hurt or pretending difficult things didn’t happen. It means refusing to let pain have the final word. It means allowing joy to arrive without immediately questioning how long it will last or what it will cost. It means making space for possibility instead of living in constant state of anticipatory grief.
I don’t want my future to be a reaction to my past. I want it to be a response to who I am now. The mistakes I’ve made don’t disqualify me from what’s ahead. The joy I’ve experienced doesn’t trap me in nostalgia. And the grief I’ve carried doesn’t mean more loss is inevitable.
So this is what I’m practicing now: choosing progress over perfection, loosening my grip on the past, and intentionally calling in what I want more of. Not perfectly. Not every day. But with awareness, patience, and intention.
Because the future isn’t something I inherit. It’s something I help create. And I’m learning, one step at a time, to call in the good.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

Here

Kristine Binder

I’ve spent most of my life living everywhere except the present.
If I’m honest, being here has always felt unfamiliar — even unsafe. My mind learned early that it was better to stay busy traveling through time: backward into analysis, forward into fear. If I wasn’t replaying what already happened, I was scanning the horizon for what might go wrong next.
I told myself that was responsibility.
That it was preparation.
That it was being smart.
It wasn’t.
It didn’t protect me.
It didn’t prevent pain.
It didn’t make me safer.
All it did was keep me from actually living the life that was happening right in front of me.
Not being present has not served me well. It has cost me peace, softened moments, and entire stretches of time I can’t get back. It has kept me braced instead of open, vigilant instead of curious, exhausted instead of grounded.
Part of presence, for me, is letting go of control.
I’ve wanted to control everything — outcomes, conversations, relationships, timing — because control felt like safety. If I could anticipate every possible problem, maybe I could avoid the worst of it. But when I can’t control something — and so much of life can’t be controlled — my brain jumps straight to catastrophe. I rehearse disasters that haven’t happened and may never happen, as if fear itself is a form of armor.
It isn’t.
Being here means trusting that worry is not preparedness.
It means understanding that anxiety doesn’t equal foresight.
It means choosing intention over survival mode.
Presence asks something different of me. It asks me to notice instead of anticipate. To respond instead of brace. To breathe instead of grip tighter.
I want to wake up and feel the morning instead of immediately reviewing the past or forecasting the future. I want to notice the way light moves across a room, the sound of a laugh, the quiet moments that pass unnoticed when I’m stuck in my head.
I don’t want to live in hindsight or hypotheticals anymore.
I want to be here.
Right now.
In the tiny details that actually make up a life.
Presence is not something I’ve mastered. It feels like a muscle I never learned how to use and am now strengthening one small moment at a time. Some days I catch myself drifting back into old patterns — analyzing, worrying, controlling — and other days I manage to stay.
But I know this much: the present moment is the only place I can actually live. It’s the only place joy exists. It’s the only place connection happens. And it’s the only place I get to choose how I show up.
For the rest of my life — however long it is, however it unfolds — I want to be present for it.
Not perfect.
Not fearless
Just here.
And for the first time, that feels like enough.

Peace,
#tutulady
#forwardisapace

60

Kristine Binder

Sixty Trips Around the Sun:
Notes From A Life Well Lived.

I showed up in 1966, the Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel was number one the day I was born in the year of the Horse and the moon landing was on the horizon. Childhood was Sesame Street, school lunches, and learning how the world worked, vinyl spinning in the background.
’76 to ’86 was adolescence: Aqua Net bangs, Swisher Sweets, Miller Ki11ers, and the Rumors album became my soundtrack. Walkmans and MTV changing music forever. Prince and Glam/Hair Metal ruled the radio while I learned that growing up means experimenting, messing up, and somehow still making it home by curfew(most of the time!).
From ’86 to ’96, college faded in the rearview and Chicago became home. I followed the Dead and found U2. I taught kindergarten by day, cocktail waitressed by night, met a guy, got married, and welcomed my first baby as the world shifted from landlines to dial-up.
’96 to ’06 was all babies, teaching, minivans, and birthday parties, with Barney and Disney tunes as the soundtrack of family life. Love multiplied even when energy(and coffee) didn’t.
’06 to ’16 was a decade of becoming. The housing bubble burst, iPhones arrived, Gaga pushed the edges, Adele nailed heartbreak, and I quietly dismantled then began to rebuild a life. Freedom took time, strength, and came with new adventures
’16 to ’26 has been all about reinvention. New jobs, new keys, new losses, new joys. I buried both parents, said goodbye to friends, advocated for causes I care about, Everybody suddenly had eras, playlists replaced CDs, and I kept showing up for the music — back to live music, Dead shows, Stevie Nicks, and connecting at concerts with my kids. All while I began to figure out who I am on my own.
If there’s one lesson after 60 years, it’s this: every decade has its own rhythm. The music shifts and the beat changes, but the soundtrack connects it all. It’s the thing that bridges eras and generations, stitching the story together while the world keeps moving forward. Freedom takes courage, joy takes intention, and peace is worth protecting.
Here’s to 60 years behind me—it’s been a long strange trip. “Time makes you bolder… and I’m gettin’ older too.” The music keeps evolving, and so do I. Here’s to all the wild, beautiful, ordinary, extraordinary days ahead.