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?"

Living Longer, But Only If You Can Afford It

My co-founder Abby recently sent me a link for — wait for it — a bra insert that discreetly tracks your health data. And look, I work in women’s health. I love innovation. I love information. I love a gadget. But even I stared at my phone and thought: Okay… that’s where I draw the line.

Lately it feels like everyone on social media is deep into longevity hacking. Full-body scans every quarter. Monthly functional testing. Supplements made from the first milk a cow produces after giving birth (yes, I'm looking at you, colostrum). And now… surveillance lingerie. 

Meanwhile, during the very same month, the government was shut down, and SNAP benefits were hanging in the balance. Millions of families were warned they might not receive their November food assistance unless lawmakers figured things out. Meaning: while some of us are fine-tuning our “biological age,” others are genuinely wondering how to put dinner on the table.

The contrast is… a lot.

And then you zoom out even further. Fitt Insider reports that global longevity spending is on track to hit $8 trillion by 2030. A massive, glimmering industry built on the promise of living longer and better. And yet nearly half of U.S. counties don’t have a single practicing OB/GYN. So many women can’t even access routine care, let alone $3,000 scans or a bra that doubles as a data center.

I’m all for innovation, truly. Better prevention and earlier detection could change everything for women. But I also want a version of wellness that isn’t reserved only for the people who can afford to “bio-hack” their way through life.

Ask Clara:

"What are some innovative ways to track ovulation?"

When Your Body Says “Not Today”

Last week, I spent an entire Girlhood entry talking about my new home gym and how it felt like this tiny pocket of peace in my very full, very chaotic house. A place to breathe. A place to feel like myself for thirty uninterrupted minutes, which, honestly, feels like a luxury these days.

And then — because the universe loves a plot twist — my body promptly reminded me to slow down. As it tends to do when you’re living with a chronic illness.

I have Hashimoto’s, an autoimmune disease of the thyroid, and while I’m symptom-free about 85% of the time (as long as my TSH stays in check), every so often it makes itself known. Not dramatically, just a quiet, persistent nope that’s impossible to ignore.

What really gets me is that these flare-y moments always seem to show up when I’m genuinely trying to do something healthy. This time, I apparently worked out a little too close to the sun (hi, Taylor). I felt amazing in the moment — proud, energized — and then woke up the next day with a full-body hangover. And not the fun kind that follows a great night out. The kind where simply existing feels like a sport. 

It’s one of those cruel realities of living with an invisible illness, especially one we still don’t fully understand. My endocrinologist and PCP don’t think my thyroid antibodies matter as long as my TSH looks good. I respectfully disagree, because my body clearly does.

So here’s the lesson I keep relearning: I don’t earn worthiness by pushing through. Rest isn’t retreat; sometimes it’s the most productive thing I can do. And maybe the healthiest choice isn’t trying to "optimize" my body at all, it's simply listening to it. 

Ask Clara:

"Do thyroid antibodies actually affect symptoms?"

The Luck I Didn’t See at First

When I repeated genetic testing during my most recent IVF cycle, I expected it to be uneventful. I’d already done it before; it felt like just another box to check. But then the results came back: I carry an ATM gene mutation, which puts me at about a 20% lifetime risk of breast cancer.

It was one of those moments where the room doesn’t spin, exactly, but everything suddenly feels sharper. Clearer. Heavier. I had been focused on getting through another retrieval, another transfer… and now here I was, learning I’d need a mammogram and breast ultrasound every year, plus a breast MRI six months in between. Not someday. Not “after 40.” Now.

What made it even harder to process was that it didn’t feel abstract. One of my best friends died of breast cancer at 31. I watched her fight. I watched how fast it moved. I watched how young she was. So reading the word risk wasn’t just informational; it felt like someone tapping on a bruise I’d spent years protecting. 

And yet, life didn’t pause. I was running a business, managing a household, juggling calendars and deadlines. There’s something surreal about learning you need ongoing surveillance in the middle of answering work emails.

But here’s what I’ve settled into: this isn’t a sentence. It’s a roadmap. Knowing my risk means I get to do something. Not everything, but something. I can monitor, ask questions, stay ahead, and refuse to pretend this isn’t hard while still moving forward.

And while the screenings are another layer to an already full life, they’re also a lifeline — a way to stay ahead of something that once blindsided someone I loved.

I didn’t choose this knowledge, but I feel pretty damn lucky to be able to decide what I do with it.

Ask Clara:

"What to know about cancer in women under 40"

Proof That “Good Enough” Can Still Be Good

If I posted a photo of my new “home gym” on Instagram, I could absolutely fool you. I’d angle the shot just right so the lighting hits my dumbbells at a flattering angle, crop out the chaos, maybe even toss on a filter for good measure. You’d probably think, Wow, she’s really got it together.

But if you zoomed out even an inch, you’d see the truth: the other half of my garage is a jumble of bikes, scooters, soccer balls, and whatever random kid treasures have migrated there. There are holes in the walls, dust on the floor, and a general vibe of “this was never meant to be a gym,” because… it wasn’t. It’s a garage.

That’s what you might see.

What I see is very different. I see a small corner of my life that doesn’t belong to anyone else — no toys, no laundry piles, no one asking me where their water bottle went. It’s not fancy, but it’s quiet. It’s mine. And for thirty to forty minutes a day, that’s enough.

I’ve always been someone who prioritizes movement, but working from home changed the game. Suddenly, I was living, parenting, and working all in the same few rooms. I didn’t need perfect conditions to work out; I just needed a place that wasn’t tied to everyone else’s needs. A place where my brain could switch gears the second I stepped inside.

So no, it’s not influencer-worthy. But it’s real, and it works, and it gives me a tiny pocket of breathing room in a very full house. And maybe that’s the real win: not the gym itself, but finally letting “good enough” be the bar.

Ask Clara:

"Why does moving your body help your mood so much?"